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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1. Tooth 2. Enamel 3. Dentin 4. Dental pulp ::5. cameral pulp ::6. root pulp :7. Cementum :8. Crown ::9. Cusp ::10. Sulcus :11. Neck :12. Root ::13. Furcation ::14. Root apex :::15. Apical foramen 16. Gingival sulcus
17. Periodontium :18. Gingiva: ::19. free or interdental ::20. marginal ::21. alveolar :22. Periodontal ligament :23. Alveolar bone
24. Vessels and nerves: :25. dental :26. periodontal :27. alveolar through alveolar canals
Attribute Matrix for Officers by Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke for Military science / Management science. The bottom line: leave the stupid & lazy alone, DO NOT turn them under any circumstance into stupid & industrious!!!

Wikipedia – I came for more knowledge, I stayed to correct the stupidity. I will leave disappointed…

On problem solvers, that the world does not need

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Man of the year 18xx had a problem: his project was in need of track ballast. So he solved that problem… »The ancient city of Harappa was heavily damaged under British rule, when bricks from the ruins were used as track ballast in the construction of the Lahore-Multan Railway.« from Harappa

The article chicken tax does mention, that France started the process, then names German and Japanese products, that lost substantial market share due to the imposed chicken tax, and then it fails to name French products. Or any other, then German and Japanese cars manufactured abroad.

… without providing any further information to render a translation of the marketing-speak nonsense into something technically understandable possible.

The Witcher vs. A Song of Ice and Fire

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The Club of Rome is supposed to have foreseen the necessity of choice for titi-tainment and Game of Thrones is certainly that kind of "education". Is Andrzej Sapkowski better then George R. R. Martin? What is Steven King's opinion of these works? Is this the Clash of Civilizations between east and west? User:ScotXWt@lk 16:48, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Personal reality distortion field

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The personal reality distortion field is available as equipment for the men in black. This amazing technology is also available for a bus or a truck, and of course stationary in form of a fiurer bunker.

Getting money to be (behave like) an idiot, incentives such behavior

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Since economists ponder on human behavior, more precisely on "optimal" human behavior, they know best.


Opt-out

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Main articles: opt-out, opt-in

Instead of giving people the option to be put in the list, they are automatically put in and then have the option to request to be taken out. This approach is illegal in the European Union and many other jurisdictions.

Opt-in is a term used when someone is not initially added to a participant group and is instead given the option to join it explicitly.

The term opt-out refers to several methods by which individuals can avoid receiving unsolicited product or service information.

unsolicited = nicht angefordert by default = automatisch, ohne Zutun explicitly = ausdrücklich

Opt-in und opt-out sind englische Begriffe welches das Verfahren|die Vorgehensweise bezeichnen, mit welcher eine Auswahl getroffen wird.

  • Beim opt-in ist die Vorgabe, dass KEINER ausgewählt wird, sodass Einzelne gezwungen sind sich selbst anzumelden, wenn sie teilzunehmen wünschen. siehe auch: Zustimmungsregelung
  • Beim opt-out ist die Vorgabe, dass ALLE ausgewählt werden, sodass Einzelne gezwungen sind sich selbst abzumelden, wenn sie nicht teilzunehmen wünschen. siehe auch: Widerspruchsregelung

Typography

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de Linux ≠ T2

The hardware: computer keyboard, specifically some IBM PC keyboard; involves µController, switches, involves multiplexing, interfaces: PS/2 is not hot-pluggable and uses Mini-DIN-6 connector
We want to configure the operating system to use the intended Keyboard layout / keymap / Tastaturbelegung; we especially want to be able to conveniently enter punctuation signs and Sonderzeichen

Nice wording

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  • description of the the on-disk structure of __a zip|opus|txt|mp3__ file (file as in file format)

Ugly wording

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  • is encoded for: WTF you mean by encoded?
  • is a standard: when exactly does a description|specification become a standard? In the WP any spec is = standard...

Books

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Stuff

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  • Die eye only detects light. The Brain only detect nerve impulses, electrical crackles => we perceive nothing as what it really is… all observation (& perception) is theory-laden. Scientific knowledge isn't derived from anything, like all knowledge conjectural (i.e. hypothetical, guesswork). Scientific knowledge is TESTED by observation, not derived from it! Scientific theories are testable conjectures.
  • Curse of the modern Abacuses:
  • Grand Ages: Rome, Grand Ages: Medieval, Nobunaga's Ambition, Crusader Kings II, Kalypso Media, Dungeon Keeper
  • Mercator projection => thetruesize.com sonnenverlauf.de suncalc.org
  • c't vom 2015-05-16 pp. 140 erklärt HBM hervorragend! »Auf gewöhnlichem Platinenmaterial lassen sich 5000 Leitungen nicht unterbringen, deswegen der Interposer aus Silizium!«
    • 500MHz, DDR, 1024 Leitungen: max 128 GiB/s per chip
  • Sugar: The Bitter Truth: "Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Recorded on 05/26/2009. (#16717)"
  • on installing Fedora, do

sudo yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm sudo dnf install audacious-plugins-freeworld audacious-plugins-freeworld-* vlc

  • archaeologist Ezra Marcus incidentally mentions on UCTV that sea levels in 7500 BC were at least 10 probably even 12m lower then today!!! It rose very rapidly, about 400 BC it was 6m lower then today; that means, that e.g. some Mediterranean shores were maybe 3-4km more seaward; these lanes were probably insufficiently drained and therefore swampy; when sea levels raised, they became salty and today they are sea floor;
    • very important to sieve the cultural deposits
  • 100 BC North Africa, i.e. Carthage, etc., was more or much more wet, cf. Little Ice Age
  • "exclusive fullscreen" vs. "non-exclusive fullscreen" = "borderless window mode"

Hardware

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The GPU executes only shaders! Anything else including Mesa 3D (= FOSS implementation of OpenGL and Vulkan) and SDL is executed on the CPU.
  • Pascal: 64 single-precision shader cores AND 32 double-precision units per SM (streaming multiprocessor) in a GP100; GP100 SM is partitioned into two processing blocks, each having 32 single-precision CUDA Cores, an instruction buffer, a warp scheduler, and two dispatch units. providing a 2:1 ratio of single- to double-precision throughput. Compared to the 3:1 ratio in Kepler GK110 GPUs, this allows Tesla P100 to process FP64 workloads more efficiently. Using FP16 computation improves performance up to 2x compared to FP32 arithmetic, and similarly FP16 data transfers take less time than FP32 or FP64 transfers. The GP100 SM ISA provides new arithmetic operations that can perform two FP16 operations at once on a single-precision CUDA Core, and 32-bit GP100 registers can store two FP16 values. Nvidia Blog
  • OpenGL is a state machine. A single monolithic set of states that control all aspects of the rendering (Bildsynthese) process. The API is used to put the OpenGL driver into various modes. The modes remain in effect until they get changed again. Current color, vertex and buffers array, viewport, depth ranges, rasterization, culling, multi sampling texture modes are set with glEnable and glDisable.
  • In Vulkan there is no huge state machine. Instead Pipelines State Objects (PSOs) are constructed. PSOs are containers that store all the information required for the current rendering. A PSO represents the processing paths that vertices go through on their way to being rendered. PSOs define the stages like Vertex, Tessellation Control, Tessellation Evaluation, Geometry and Fragment and the compiled shaders that are to be used for those stages. PSOs additionally contain information about color blending, the viewport, i.e. the area and the render target to render to, multisampling, i.e. the number of samples to calculate at each pixel on the render target, etc.
    • PSO can also hold information about the dynamic state, i.e. properties of the PSO that are dynamic, i.e. they can be changed independently.
    • Once build and compiled PSOs can be cached or serialized from one execution to another; far more encompassing then OpenGL pre-compiled shaders
  • In OpenGL you issue a list of GL commands to do rendering, but there is no easy way to store these commands for re-use!
  • Vulkan uses Command Buffers. Commands are recorded into a Command Buffer and subsequently submitted to a device queue for execution on the GPU; Command Buffers can be re-used and re-recorded. Recorded commands include such that bind pipelines and descriptor sets, such that draw, such that modify dynamic state, etc.
    • Command Buffers are allocated from Command Pools, which allocate memory for the Command Buffer as it is being recorded. Recording Command Buffers has a big impact on performance: in case they are created during rendering, it is to be considered to use threads to build the command buffers.
  • Shaders access resources such as buffers and images:
    • In OpenGL use glGet_bla to figure out where to set resources like e.g. textures, that some shader will access
    • In Vulkan shader resources are known as resource descriptors, and there are about 12 types supported by Vulkan: Sampler, Uniform Buffer, Storage Buffer, etc.
  • Threading requires synchronization between Command Buffers when they get build. With Vulkan there is also concurrency between the driver and the device and between queues. Vulkan has synchronization primitives:
    • Fences: used to determine the completion of submissions made to queues; after submitting wait on the fence to become available and continue on
    • Semaphores: used to coordinate operations between queues, e.g. marshal ownership of shared data
    • Events: used to gauge progress through a sequence of commands
    • Pipeline, memory and buffer barriers:

Desktop GPUs

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The GPU executes only shaders on its numerous ALUs (also called "cores"). This work needs also be dispatched and scheduled.
Main articles: GeForce 1000 Series, Pascal (microarchitecture), and AMD Radeon 400 series
  • AMD: 7 chips in 28nm since 2012:
    • 2016: 2 chips in 14nm: Polaris 10, Polaris 11
  • Nvidia: 9 chips in 28nm since 2012: 5 Kepler (GK107, GK208, GK106, GK104, GK110); 4 Maxwell (GM107; GM206, GM204, GM200), +1 chip dedicated to computation: The GK210 __cannot__ be used as GPU it is found only on "K80 GPU Accelerator" PCIe-cards
    • 2016: 4 chips in 16nm since 2016: GP107, GP104, GP106, GP102, +1 chip dedicated to computation: The GP100 __cannot__ be used as GPU!

A part of the price of a graphics card is the cost of the GPU chip. The cost of the GPU chip could be split into design and manufacturing. The cost for manufacturing could be split into wafer and microfabrication. The bigger the share of the cost for the production of the wafer, the bigger the influence of the GPU's die surface on the graphics card end price, the more elegant to produce a relatively smaller chip that can run a high clock speeds. Nvidia has had rather a tendency towards bigger chips, yet their Tesla 1.0 design clocked the shader ALUs at 1.5 GHz, and now again, their Pascal-based GPUs are clocked at 1.5 GHz.

The GP106 (4400 Mio, 200mm²) competes with both the Polaris 10 (5700Mio,232mm²) and the Polaris 11 (3000Mio,123mm²) chips, meaning the GP104 (7200Mio, 297mm²) as well as the GP102 (12,000Mio, 471mm²) have no 14/16nm competition from AMD.

Pascal Maximum Digital Resolution: 7680x4320@60Hz (7680x4320 at 60Hz RGB 8-bit with dual DisplayPort connectors or 7680x4320 at 60Hz YUV420 8-bit with one DisplayPort 1.3 connector.) Maximum Digital Resolution: DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, Dual Link-DVI


Graphics card Launch Release Price (US-$) TDP (watts) API support (version) GPU chip Memory Configuration Theoretical (=calculated) values Real-life benchmarks4
Direct3D OpenGL OpenCL Vulkan Arch Name Transistors (Million) Die size (mm²) Core config1 Clock rate Amount (GiB) Bus width (bit) DRAM type Memory (MT/s) Bandwidth (GB/s) Processing Power (GFLOPS)2 Fillrate3 Game x Game y Game z
Base (MHz) Boost (MHz) Half Precision Single Precision Double Precision Texture (GT/s) Pixel (GP/s) Frame rate FPS/Price FPS/Power Frame rate FPS/Price FPS/Power Frame rate FPS/Price FPS/Power
8800 GTS 512 2007-12-11 $380 135W 10.0 3.3 1.1 no Telsa 1.0 G92-400 (65nm) 754 324 128:64:16 650
1625 		— 0.5 256 GDDR3 1940 62.1 — 416 — 41.6 10.4
GTX 285 2009-01-15 $ 204W 10.1 Telsa 2.0 GT200 (55nm) 1400 470 240:80:32 648
1476 		— 1 512 2484 159.0 — 708.5 — 51.84 20.7
GTX 480 2010-03-26 $500 250W 12.0 (11_0) 4.6 1.2 Fermi GF100 (40nm) 3000 529 480:60:48 700
1401 		— 1.5 384 GDDR5 3696 177.4 ? 1344.96 168.12 42 33.6
GTX 650 2012-09-13 $110 64W 1.1 Kepler GK107 1300 118 384:32:16 1058 1058 1
2 		128 5000 80 ? 33.86 812.54 33.8 16.9
GTX 650 Ti 2012-10-09 $150 110W GK106 2540 221 768:64:16 928 928 1
2 		5400 86.4 ? 1425.41 59.39 59.4 14.8
GTX 660 2012-09-13 $230 140W 960:80:24 980 980 2 192 6008 144.2 ? 1881.6 78.40 78.4 23.5
GTX 680 2012-03-22 $500 195W GK104 3540 294 1536:128:32 1006 1058 2
4 		256 6008 192.0 ? 2258 94.1 94.1 31.4
GTX 770 2013-05-30 $400 230W 1046 1085 7010 224 ? 3213 134 134 33.5
GTX 780 2013-05-23 $650 250W GK110 7080 561 2304:192:48 863 900 3 384 6008 288 ? 3977 166 166 41.4
GTX 780 Ti 2013-11-07 $700 2880:240:48 876 928 3 7000 336 ? 5046 210 210 42.0
GTX 950 2015-08-20 $160 90W 12.0 (12_1) Maxwell 2.0 GM206 2940 227 768:48:32 1024 1188 2
4 		128 6610 106 ? 1572 49.1 49.2 32.7
GTX 960 2015-01-22 $200 120W 1024:64:32 1127 1178 2
4 		7010 112 ? 2308 72.1 72.1 39.3
GTX 970 2014-09-18 $330 145W GM204 5200 398 1664:104:56 1050 1178 3.5+0.5 196+28 192+32 ? 3494 109 109.2 54.6
GTX 980 $550 165W 2048:128:64 1126 1216 4 256 224 ? 4612 144 144 72.1
GTX 980 Ti 2015-06-02 $649 250W GM200 8000 601 2816:176:96 1000 1076 6 384 336 ? 5632 1/32 176 96
GTX Titan X 2015-03-17 $1000 3072:192:96 1089 12 192 ? 6144 192
Tesla P100 2016-06-20 ??? 300W No No No Pascal GP100 12,000 471 3840:0:0 1354 1455 12
24 		1024 HBM1 ? ? ? No No
GT 1030 2017-05-17 $80 305W 12.0 (12_1) 4.5 1.0 GP108 1800 70 384:24:16 1227 1468 2 64 GDDR5 6000 48 15 942 29 29.4 19.6
GTX 1050 2016-10-25 $110 75W GP107 3300 132 640:40:32 1354 1455 2 128 7000 112 ? 1800 ? 84.2 42.1
GTX 1050 Ti $140 768:64:32 1290 1392 4 ? 2100 ? 84.2 42.1
GTX 1060 3 2016-09-18 $200 120W GP106 4400 200 1152:72:48 1506 1708 3 192 8000 180 ? 3470 108 108.4 72.3
GTX 1060 6 2016-07-19 $250 1280:80:48 6 ? 3855 120 120.5
GTX 1070 2016-06-10 $380 150W GP104 7200 297 1920:120:64 1683 8 256 256 ? 5783 181 180.7 96.4
GTX 1070 Ti 2017-11-?? $ W 2432:152:64 1607 256 ?
GTX 1080 2016-05-27 $600 180W 2560:160:64 1733 GDDR5X 10240 320 ? 8228 257 257.1 102.8
GTX 1080 Ti 2017-03-05 $700 250W GP102 12,000 471 3584:224:88 1480 1582 11 352 11000 482 ?
Titan X 2016-08-02 $1200 3584:224:96 1417 1531 12 384 10240 480 ? 10157 317 317.4 136
Titan Xp 2017-04-06 3840:240:96 1405 1582 12 11410 547.7 ? 10157 317 317.4 136
Tesla V100 2017-06-21 $ 300W No No 2.1? No Volta GV100 21,200 815 5.376:0:0 TBA TBA 16
32 		4096 HBM2 900 900 TBA TBA TBA No No
GeForce 2018-Q2 $ W 12.0 (12_1) 4.5 2.1? 1.0 Ampere? GA104 ? ? TBA TBA TBA GDDR5/GDDR5X/GDDR6 TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA

Direct3D is a proprietary API only available on the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. Direct3D 12 is only available on Microsoft Windows version 10 and on the the Xbox One. Vulkan is available on Microsoft Windows 7–10, Linux and Android 7 Nougat and it may be available on the PlayStation 4.

  • 1 Single-precision shader processors : texture mapping units (TMUs) : render output units (ROPs)
  • 2 The processing powers are calculated, i.e. theoretical values! See e.g. Maxwell (microarchitecture)#Performance.
    • The theoretical half-precision processing power of a Pascal GPU is 2× of the single precision performance on GP100 and 1/64 on GP104.
    • The theoretical single-precision processing power of a Pascal GPU in GFLOPS is calculated as 2 (operations per FMA instruction per CUDA core per cycle) × number of CUDA cores × core clock speed (in GHz).
    • The theoretical double-precision processing power of a Pascal GPU is 1/2 of the single precision performance on GP100, and 1/32 on GP102 and GP104.
  • 3 The fillrates are calculated i.e. theoretical values!
    • The Pixel fillrate as the number of ROPs multiplied by the base core clock speed
    • Texture fillrate as the number of TMUs multiplied by the base core clock speed.
  • 4 The obtain comparable benchmark values, the everything but the graphics card has to be identical: the other hardware (CPU, RAM, …) and the software (OS, graphics device driver version, game patch level, …)
Model Launch Release Price (US-$) TDP (watts) API support (version) Chip Core config1 Clock rate Memory configuration Fillrate Processing Power
(GFLOPS)
Direct3D OpenGL OpenCL Vulkan Arch Name Transistors (Million) Die Size (mm2) Core (MHz) Boost (MHz) Memory (MT/s) Amount (GiB) Bus width (bit) DRAM type Bandwidth (GB/s) Pixel (GP/s)2 Texture (GT/s)3 Single Precision Double Precision
HD 7730 2013-04-?? $60 47W 12.0 (11_1) 4.5 1.2 1.0 GCN 1st gen Cape Verde LE 1500 123 384:24:8 800 1125 1 128 GDDR3
GDDR5		 25.6
72 		6.4 19.2 614.4 38.4
HD 7750 2012-02-15 $110 55W Cape Verde PRO 512:32:16 800
900		 800
1125 		1
2
4		 GDDR3
GDDR5		 25.6
72 		12.8
14.4		 25.6
28.8		 819.2
921.6		 51.2
57.6
HD 7770 2012-02-15 $160 80W Cape Verde XT 640:40:16 1000 1125 1
2		 GDDR5 72 16 40 1280 80
HD 7850 2012-03-19 $250 130W Pitcairn PRO 2800 212 1024:64:32 860 1200 1
2		 256 153.6 27.52 55.04 1761.28 110.08
HD 7870 2012-03-19 $350 175W Pitcairn XT 1280:80:32 1000 1200 2 153.6 32 80 2560 160
HD 7870 XT 2012-11-19 $270 185W Tahiti LE 4313 352 1536:96:32 925 975 1500 2 192.0 29.6 88.8 2841.6
2995.2		 710.4
748.8
HD 7950 2012-01-31 $450 200W Tahiti PRO 1792:112:32 800 1250 3 384 240 25.6 89.6 2867.2 717
HD 7970 2012-01-09 $550 250W Tahiti XT 2048:128:32 925 1375 3
6		 264 29.6 118.4 3788.8 947.2
HD 7790 2013-03-22 $150 85W 12.0 (12_0) 2.1 GCN 2nd gen Bonaire XT 2080 160 896:56:16 1000 1500 1
2		 128 96 16.0 56.0 1792 128
R9 290 2013-11-05 $400 250W Hawaii PRO 6200 438 2560:160:64 947 — 5000 4 512 320 60 152 4848.6 606.1
R9 290X 2013-10-24 $550 Hawaii XT 2816:176:64 1000 — 5000 4
8 		64 176 5632 704
R9 285 2014-09-02 $250 190W GCN 3rd gen Tonga PRO 5000 359 1792:112:32 918 — 5500 2 256 176 29.4 102.8 3290 206.6
R9 380X 2015-11-19 $230 Tonga XT 2048:128:32 970 — 5700 4 182.4 31 124.2 3973.1 248.3
R9 Fury 2015-07-14 $550 275W Fiji Pro 8900 596 3584:224:64 1000 — 1000 4 4096 HBM1 512 64 224 7168 448
R9 Nano 2015-08-27 $650 175W Fiji XT 4096:256:64 1000 — 64 256 8192 512
R9 Fury X 2015-06-24 $650 275W 4096:256:64 1050 — 67.2 268.8 8601.6 537.6
RX 460 2016-08-08 $110 (2GB)
$140 (4GB)		 <75W GCN 4th gen Polaris 11 3000 123 896:56:16 1090 1200 7000 2
4		 128 GDDR5 112 17.4 61 1953 122
RX 470 2016-08-04 $180 120W Polaris 10 5700 232 2048:128:32 926 1206 6600 4 256 211 29.6 118.5 3793 237
RX 480 2016-06-29 $200 (4 GB)
$240 (8 GB)		 150W 2304:144:32 1120 1266 7000
8000 		4
8		 224
256 		35.8 161.3 5161 323
RX Vega 56 2017-08-14/28 $400 210W GCN 5th gen? Vega 12,500 486 mm² 3584:224:64 1156 1471 1600 8 2048 HBM2 410 74.0/94.1 258.9/329.5
RX Vega 64 2017-08-28 $500 295W 4096:256:64 1247 1546 1890 483.8 79.8/98.9 319.2/395.8

1Shader ALUs : Texture Mapping Units : Render Output Units

Desktop CPUs

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The new Core i9 are available exclusively for the new LGA 2066 (Socket R4). In case this "Exclusive" Interview with Intel engineer about the new Core i9 Series on YouTube confuses you, there are also a couple of Core i5 and Core i7 processors available for this new socket. ;-) Now who is this Brian?

€-prices for graphics cards =

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Hmmm, the Radeon RX 580 is listed with a release price of $230,– for the 8 GiB-versions). Yet the cheapest one costs €271,46 and there are prices as high as €400,–. Anything above the manufacturer's suggested retail price (+ taxes) goes to the retailer and will not benefit AMD at all. The high prices are reported to be because of yet another cryptocurrency-craze. Not foreseeing this, costs AMD money, they could have had from their customers. But neither the stock holders nor the R&D-division nor the driver-developers mind; AMD's attitude "barely good enough" keeps everybody happy and the duopoly keeps the company in business.

Direct Heat Exhaust cooling solution

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A Direct Heat Exhaust cooling solution is found in any well designed computer: all the PlayStations, motherboards + casings for 19-inch racks, Industrial PCs, laptops, Dell-, Fujitsu-PCs, etc. Many GeForce graphics cards came with a DHE cooler with a fan (de:Ventilator); see Centrifugal fan and Computer fan.

Linux kernel-based family of operating systems

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While Linux distributos may not have a big interest in a long-term stabel Linux ABI across distributions, any end-user that wishes to purchase proprietary software has. There is Wikipedia article for the x32 ABI.
Highly simplified structure of the Linux kernel: process scheduler (e.g. Completely Fair Scheduler), I/O scheduler, packet scheduler and other subsystems. Missing: cgroups, Linux Namespaces, Linux Security Modules, etc.
  • What a kernel does: the bootloader GNU GRUB does not duplicate kernel functionality: to execute the Linux kernel, it simply copies the binary file to be executed into RAM and then tells the CPU to execute it (thereby ending/destroying it's own instance?). When instead the Linux kernel is asked to execute a program, its own kernel threads keep running in the background. Actually the program could not be executed without the Linux kernel running.

Software development

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  • »Sounds good ... when can we start using it?«  – anybody
  • »A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.«  – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  • »Good designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory interaction between one (or at most a small handful of) exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population.« – unknown
  • »Nine women can't make a baby in one month.« or »Adding man-power to a late project makes it later« – Brooks's law see his book "The Mythical Man-Month"
  • most FOSS projects are do-o-cracies, the person who does decides
    • Upstream should always be the driving force forwards thus carrying the most modern code as well as being the decisive factor when it's time to obsolete things from their code base
    • Downstream should carry the burden of maintaining legacy code, if they choose to stick with it
  • We fix things where they are broken, never tape over them!
  • »Mozilla Corporation isn't a company that's trying to win the market. It's a community that's trying to change the world.« – Richard Newman, here ... by holding a certain market share, because if people don't actively use Firefox, they obviously do not care about the world changing stuff
  • From 2014 onward, "we" can push for more FOSS for proprietary walled gardens (cf. e.g. Category:Windows-only free software) or "we" rather push for an FOSS and open platform operating system, i.e. Linux API, OpenGL, Simple DirectMedia Layer, Wayland + XWayland, KDE Plasma 5 / GNOME Shell / Cinnamon.
    • Having some key software running on the walled gardens as well, is of course good, e.g. VLC media player, Firefox, Subsurface, etc. But is there a point in porting every software?
    • Looking at the history of Microsoft involving themselves in avoiding the growing of market share/installed base of competing products (operating systems, office suites), maybe it is about time to concentrate more on developing and establishing "Linux", as a free and open-source AND open platform for FOSS and for proprietary software. Looking at Apple's successful digital distribution software and how they forbid GPL'ed software in it...
    • Programming Linux-only would create unique selling propositions for this platform, and while such may be regarded as "rude" and "impolite" towards other free and open-source operating systems, it should be decided on the technical merits. Comparing the Linux kernel–user space API with other such APIs, does it offer advantages to the programmer? For example netsniff-ng, Weston and systemd are Linux-only software, because their authors preferred the "Linux kernel–user space API" over POSIX/UNIX because of the technical advantages.
  • Approaches to writing software:
    • "write software": from top to bottom, an algorithm with some IF-statements; ideal for small programs to be written by a single person scratching an own itch
    • "build software": like assembling building blocks; combine black-box subsystems written by different individuals with one another;
      • the specifications must have been explicit about what functionality each subsystems must have; yet it sill happens that author of subsystem A assumed some function will be in subsystem B and not in A
      • the interfaces between the black-box-subsystems are not perfect;
      • subsystems are like black-boxes because even though the source code is available, the author may not be, so until somebody else has worked himself though the source code of that subsystems it is factually a black-box for everybody else, especially for the team assembling the end-system! They HAVE TO rely on the specs being aboded by. Even though the author is available, in case something does not work as specified (or intended?), there needs to be communication with that author without further misunderstanding.
    • "let software grow": start with the main loop, and implement subsystems one after the other, do take missing subsystems into consideration by stubbing them out. That idea behind this approach is the possibility to test immediately in concert. Test while the system grows, instead of not until all the subsystems are ready. What this approach does is to minimize the possible amount of bugs introduced with each new LoC. The early tests show bugs early and makes them easier to find. Now because software IS complex, it is of course still possible that something new interacts in a faulty way with code written early. Depending of how well subsystems are isolated from one another, and of the sequence the subsystems are added to the main loop, this becomes less likely. This approach is not possible when using only already written subsystems.
      • Testing subsystems independently does not reveal any of the bugs or missing functionality that only make themselves noticeable when all (are supposed to) work in concert.
  • source code in high-level language pretty much represents the intention of its human author; given a high enough amount of source-code and enough individual authors, assembling a new software from such subsystems is already quite demanding. To make things really complicated, this all has to be compiled into machine code, then executed on some computer in the context of some operating system.

Quotes

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  • Idiocracy-style advertisement like for Tarrlytons/Tarrlytons won't do much good to Linux
  • http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Shelbyville
  • Zapp Brannigan: "... then for all I cared they could sit around the whole day drinking beer in their underpants"
  • NASA-guy: ".. we got to find a way to make this fit into the hole for this, using nothing else but that" in Apollo 13
  • In case you want to know what a producer is responsible for, watch Wag the Dog; no, there is no Oscar for producing...

Whatever

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Android – market share

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Main article: Mobile operating system § Market share
Android market share on smartphones

VLC media player

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VLC media player's default keyboard shortcuts (that can all be reconfigured):

  • Cycle through audio tracks: b
  • Cycle through subtitle tracks: v
  • Next frame: e
  • Jump 3 seconds: ⇧ Shift+← and ⇧ Shift+→
  • Jump 10 seconds: Alt+← and Alt+→
  • Jump 60 seconds: Ctrl+← and Ctrl+→
  • Jump 120 seconds: Alt+⇧ Shift+← and Alt+⇧ Shift+→
  • Jump 600 seconds: Ctrl+Alt+← and Ctrl+Alt+→

VLC media player is not based on GStreamer, VLC media player has some problems with ogv-file format when jumping wildly through the file. What useful key-bindings does GNOME Videos offer? Maybe prefer Snappy over it. Clutter+GStreamer+minimum amount of own code


Debian – configuration beyond my competence and understanding

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OS start-up 1: "system services" Why bother to create and delete symlinks manually? Use sysv-rc-conf
OS start-up 2: "session services" How to elegantly configure your session?

To deal with more complex situations, a configuration must be complex itself. Is it possible to either hide away some of that complexity, or to rather adopt a solution, that does not cover complex situations and and is therefore simple and plain? As long as blindly fol­low­ing on-line guides works…

A simple situation is a single user using Inkscape/etc work on his desktop computer. In case fast-user switching goes hand in hand with a sane plumbing layer, so be it. Other then that, fast-user switching is no priority here.

Most Linux distributions are far beyond the understanding and competence of most private end-users… Examples:

  • GNU GRUB's /boot/grub/grub.cfg shall not be edited directly, because it is replaced in case of some kernel-update. Being already confusing itself, the user is forced to edit files in /etc/grub.d instead. Well, while I am able to edit grub.cfg to change e.g. the back-ground image, I am sadly too stupid to achieve this by editing some file in /etc/grub.d => no customizing GRUB for me, e.g. add amdgpu.powerplay=1 or nouveau.pstate=1
    • Why is that? In this case, how else to solve the given problem? Maybe GRUB3 will be able to deal with that without having to rely on shell scripts parsing shell scripts.
    • Additionally and in general terms, because Debian does not explicitly address the simple (and less competent) end-user installing Debian on his desktop computer. Debian is regularly and on a broad bases installed on HTTP servers and maintained by seasoned computer administrators… these setups require more complicated settings and don't care about the added complexity.
  • systemd's three-level configuration: it was implemented that way, to support even complicated and unusual setups. For the not-so-typical Linux desktop end-user, this ads serious and – for him – totally unnecessary complexity to the basic configuration of his operating system. What's wrong with systemd being that way? Absolutely nothing! It is the Linux distribution that could address this "bloated complexity for the simple desktop end-user problem".
  • configuring your network interfaces: /etc/network/interfaces vs. systemd-networkd vs. NetworkManager vs. ConnectivityManager vs. ConnMan:
    • NetworkManager is meant for your mobile computer (laptop) to deal with WLAN
    • systemd-networkd is meant for containers and all sorts of complicated setups
    • /etc/network/interfaces is meant for the typical stationary computer: as simple as possible, reliable and strait forward.
  • /etc/crontab vs. /etc/cron.d/ /etc/cron.daily/ /etc/cron.hourly/ /etc/cron.monthly/ /etc/cron.weekly/
  • /etc/fstab vs. udisks vs. systemd-mountd
  • using iptables directly in some shell script vs. using all sorts of wrappers
  • sysv-rc-conf gives you an overview over ALL daemons/services started by init over all run-levels!! I am missing such a simple tool for systemd.

Why abandon working solutions?

  1. Because the replacement solution is better for YOU!
  2. Because YOU want to play the guinea pig for the new solution, though it does not suit you!
  3. Because YOU want to obsolete your acquired and readily available knowledge, in favor of the new solution…

Conclusion: To be able to handle the operating system running on the desktop/laptop computer, it may prove much more productive for the typical office/home computer user to learn this, by bothering with Linux From Scratch or Arch Linux instead of starting to learn the – from his perspective totally bloated – Debian configuration.

Why use GIMP when Tux Paint would suffice?

Buildroot vs. Yocto

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  • The "Deciding between Buildroot & Yocto" article on LWN.net from April 6, 2016 by Nathan Willis explains the differences between Buildroot and Yocto Project; Buildroot is simply to understand, there is only one file where ALL the configuration goes, and therefore adding support for a new platform requires a lot of copy-paste work; Yocto stores configuration into multiple files, therefore variations can be build with little additional work. The disadvantage of this is, that one has to learn a lot, one has to know all the files where information is stored, all their variations.


Network Manager

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The fact that I use Debian on a workstation (a desktop computer) makes me dislike the fact, that Debian primarily targets servers and also takes cloud-stuff into account when designing the configuration system. The possible permutation of configurations on such systems thwarts any efforts to keep configuration idiot simple.

Maybe a third iteration of GNU GRUB will do replace shell script with some ini-files, that do not parse but simply declare: I want this background image, this font, this font-color, etc. systemd introduces exactly that, but instead of configuring my network interfaces in one [man.cx/?page=interfaces documented] file /etc/network/interfaces there are 3 times 3 files. This is the Yocto-way and makes it less type work to configure some fancy containers and stuff but at the cost of being more complicated. Naming the network interfaces "blue dog shit" is another fancy thing for such container and cloud stuff, but it drives me mad because it replaced the well-know eth0 with blue dog shit. A quick ifconfig eth0 may therefore FAIL on Debian because what used to be named eth0 is now being named enp4s0. What causes the brain-damage in systemd/Debian land?

I don't even require NetworkManager for my single static Ethernet connection, since its actual role was to handle the configuration of the (wireless) network interfaces when connecting using IEEE 802.11.

Differences of opinion

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Human-machine interfaces: puny human always interacts with some kind of hardware. Different ideas and notion characterize the software implementation of the support for different types periphery.

Despite being full of marketing horse shit up to the point where something is being explained from the view point of some marketing guy, I came upon something I perceive as a serious problem when looking up Wikipedia articles around computer terms, e.g.

A computer file is en entity that is part of a file system. Nothing else. The notion of a computer file was created by the way we store data on persistent storage devices. To further comprehend the terms "directory", "file name", "file format", "file attribute", I would leave the abstraction layer and explain them on the basis of a concrete file system: e.g. ext4.

  • Question_1: How is my data stored on my hard disc?
  • Question_2: How do I interact with my data?

A "Command-line interface" is a kind/type of Human-machine interface, others being e.g. GUIs, TUIs, Voice-command interfaces, …

  • Is the interface of a "command-line interpreter", e.g. bash, csh, …
  • Is the interface offered/provided by the "command-line interpreter" to the computer user sitting either at the computer keyboard in front of the computer screen or sitting in front of some teletypewriter ;-)
  • deterministic feature no1: the notion of files (One deterministic feature of a GUI could be the the notion of icons (cf. WIMP paradigm.)
    • most common use case is to call upon (i.e. execute) individual programs that are available as individual files by typing their file-name maybe augmented with some command-line options and pressing ↵ Enter.
    • To facilitate this calling upon programs available as executable files, ext2/3/4 marks "computer files" (please see my own definition above) as executable by setting a flag, the interpreters interprets the $PATH-variable where (in which directories) to search for files with the given file-name to be executed.
    • When some program is said to have a command-line interface, this usually means, that is it meant to be executed via the command-line interpreter usually involving ample command-line options. It could also mean, that the program itself, when being executed, offers the user a CLI, though this is rather seldom the case.
  • deterministic feature no2: it interprets entire lines, i.e. the user enters a lot of characters (via computer keyboard or via teletypewriter), then type ↵ Enter to make the interpreter ingest, interpret and execute the entire line.
    • NOTE: A different behavior is thinkable, e.g. when each single character was interpreted immediately, making entering an entire "line" impossible. A "line" is always ended by a press of ↵ Enter, this means it can actually comprise multiple screen lines. How many characters a screen line and how many lines a screen contains depends on the "screen mode"/"video mode". Widespread are e.g. 80 chars/line and 40 lines per screen. In a script file for bash, Newline is interpreted as ↵ Enter key press unless there is also a \\ (double backslash) at the end of that line.
  • Usually there is some kind of scripting language understood by the interpreter, e.g. "shell script" (NOTE: "shell script" can refer to a text-file containing a script written in shell script, or it refers to the scripting language understood by bash and consorts, "power shell script" being a different language.
  • there is pwd

Webcam = hardware device to be connected over USB, FireWire or similar to a Computer, in contrast oto IP cam, that is connected over Ethernet. The hardware device produces a video (motion picture) stream at a maximum resolution and at a maximum refresh rate. The data can be compressed by an appropriate ASIC and deliver a compressed video stream/signal or transmit uncompressed in RGB or YUV.

The Xilinx Zynq Z-7020 combines a Cortex-A9 dual-core with a FPGA. The ZedBoard contains the Zynq Z-7020 and all the necessary interfaces.[2]

    • video image sensor: CMV12000-2E5C1PA ~ € 1600,–; CMV12000-2E5C1PN ~ € 1900,–
    • ZedBoard ~ $ 475,–

The image data comes rolling out of 64 serial LVDS channels at a maximum rate of 300Mbits/sec per channel. AXIOM (camera)

Audio coding format

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  1. A computer file consists of the actual data and the metadata. The entirety of the metadata is specified solely by the file system they are part of. The metadata is created and handled by file system management software.
  2. The term computer file format refers to the structure of the actual data of a computer file. This structure is specified in a text document called something along the lines of computer file format specification.
    • One could further group multiple computer file formats into computer file types, e.g. text, raster-graphic, vector-graphic, audio, video or "multimedia".
    • One could force denoting the file format in the file name by making the use of file name extensions mandatory.
  3. There are lossless compression algorithms, and lossy ones for video or audio data that take human audio perception (psychoacoustic) into consideration when throwing away data)

That is ALL there is. But way, lets not omit the brain damage that is rampant in the Wikipedia:

  • some people insist on calling audio and video compression algorithms codecs, while sadly some insist that a codec refer only to the implementation of an algorithm and not to the algorithm itself. I feel confused.
  • some people insist on calling computer file formats containers…

This brain damage would not be a big deal, if there were solidly written and easily understandable articles on computer file, computer file format and compression algorithm. There ain't. Instead there are articles like:

  • Audio coding format
  • etc.
  • I am not sure how much intelligence the understanding computers™ requires, but Wikipedia has become much about Voodoo and black magic. And rampant *peep*.

Virtual terminal

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Compare the Wikipedia "offerings": Linux console, System console, Virtual console, Virtual terminal, Pseudoterminal, …

One could bother to port that knowledge into the Wikipedia, but why bother? The Wikipedia has become such a shit place to work in, that I see not point besides maybe, so that one does not depend on google or other search engines.

  1. More and more seldom I find "knowledge new and useful to me" in the Wikipedia => no point in contributing back to the community
  2. there is little to no co-operation => since I do most work myself, why bother with other people's rules or opinions?
  3. no only is there little to no co-operation, but instead there is an abundance of something titled "de:Blockwart" in the German Wikipedia, denomination not by me, but attitude, horizon fit quite well
  4. I am against giving up my identity, I prefer to contribute anonymously; in case we were forced to work non-anonymously, who would loose more badly? People like me, or people like the "blockwart"? I wonder how much better the climate would become, in case we were all forced to work under our real-life identifications… Anyway, Idiocracy teaches us to "lead, follow or get out of the way"? What is there not to understand?

Linux kernel Virtual File System

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Linux kernel Virtual File System is a subsystem or layer inside of the Linux kernel. It is the result of the very serious attempt to integrate multiple file systems into an orderly single structure. The key idea - it dates back to the pioneering work done by Sun Microsystems employees in 1986. [3] - is to abstract out that part of the file system that is common to all file systems and put that code in a separate layer that calls the underlying concrete file systems to actually manage the data.

» All system calls related to files (or pseudo files!) are directed to the Linux kernel Virtual File System for initial processing. These calls, coming from user processes, are the standard POSIX calls, such as open, read, write, lseek, … .«

DisplayPort

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Resolution @ display refresh rate DisplayPort 1.4 1.3 1.2
7.680 × 4.320 (8K) @ 60 Hz @ HDR ✓ ✗ ✗
3.840 × 2.160 (4K) @ 120 Hz @ HDR ✓ ✗ ✗
7.680 × 4.320 (8K) @ 60 Hz ✓ ✗ ✗
5.120 × 2.880 (5K) @ 120 Hz ✓ ✗ ✗
5.120 × 2.880 (5K) @ 60 Hz ✓ ✗ ✗
3.840 × 2.160 (4K) @ 120 Hz ✓ ✓ ✗
3.840 × 2.160 (4K) @ 60 Hz ✓ ✓ ✓
Food
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Family Seed processing
Expeller pressing Grinding/Milling, abrasive cutting Mix with: Sugar, Honey, …
Asteraceae Sunflower seed … oil +
Press cake		 … paste Halva
Pedaliaceae Sesame seed … oil … paste Halva, Hummus,
Anacardiaceae Pistachio … oil
Betulaceae Hazelnut … oil … flour + sugar for pastry
Rosaceae Almond … oil … paste, … flour, Marzipan
Juglandaceae Walnut … oil … flour + sugar for pastry
Fabaceae Peanut … oil … paste –
Brassicaceae Rapeseed … oil – –
Papaveraceae Poppy seed … oil Poppyseed paste + sugar for pastry
Cannabaceae Hemp seed … oil ? ?
Fagaceae Chestnut – – chestnut puree/chestnut spread
→ Gesztenyepüré (hun)
→ fr:Crème de marrons (frz)

There is much much room in the Wikipedia for commercial and nationalist brands and only little for basic processing… the result of Idiocracy?

Putting AMD TrueAudio to good use

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Programmable audio effects: The task is to do "ray-tracing" for "sound" instead of light, i.e. to calculate what the sound stage should sound like based on the physical makeup of the scene and the direction the player is currently looking to in REAL-TIME!:

  1. position of the sources of sound (analogue to light!)
  2. direction and angle of the surfaces that the sound bounces of
  3. materials of these surfaces (impacts how sound reverberates off that surface)

That's a complex problem to solve in algorithms and results in computationally very expensive code! Besides ray-tracing for sound, appropriate algorithms have to be added to figure out how the listener (with two ears) would perceive the sound and ship that to the speakers.

Is this what Aureal Semiconductor did 15 years ago with theirs Aureal Vortex 2 ASICs?

  • Player's alter ego is in a room closer to one wall and e.g. reloads his weapon. The player should hear the "click" echo from the closer wall sooner and louder, while from the other side it comes later and more fuzzy. With accuratelly modeled audio effects calculated in real-time, the player would be able to tell where is the wall which is closer and where is the one far from you, even if there is pitch dark, i.e. he gets no visual feedback.

Or imagine you ride on train through the tunnel and echo of the wheels bumping the rails is literally pressing on you, and suddenly the tunnel expands to the large room and the echo is suddenly much more delayed and attenuated.

People claim such accurate audio model was available in Half-Life 1, when played on a PC with Aureal Vortex 2 hardware and headphones.

  1. ^ "Cmosis CMV12000 product page". 2016-01-19.
  2. ^ "ZedBoard".
  3. ^ Kleiman
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