Øblog

ATI/Amd and Asus are about to release external graphic cards. Asus’ is ready this spring but unfortunately we wont be able to purchase the component seperately, it will be sold with new portables only. For now. ATI/Amd’s new device code named ‘Lasso’ takes the unit to the next step, it will be possible to bind more than one graphic card to the unit.

The GPU (Graphical Prosessing Unit) is not just a graphic card, it is a master of math, graphic is all math. The GPU will relief the main CPU of heavy mathwork. Which bring me to Distributed Computing. It is already possible to download a GPU-client for Folding@Home and hopefully many will follow. A GPU client can speed up crunching x30/x40 compared to a CPU on certain operations. Not all GPUs are supported, and not all math operations are fitting the GPUs architecture. Folding@Home is currently supporting ATI/Amd’s X1600, X1800 and X1900 class. The Processor R580 in the X1900XT card is recommended since it has 48 pixel shaders. You will need the Catalyst drivers, which means there is no Linux client yet, but this wil be possible in near future.

There is also activity on Cure@PS3 project, where you can use your PS3 to crunch Folding@Home packages. Here is a link to the PS3 Faq at Standford.

Picture having a bunch of dull Linux-servers with no monitors connected, hooking on a few ‘Lasso’s on it and start crunching, I really hope more Distributed Computing projects will follow in Stanfords footsteps.

Check out this page for an image of an early ‘Lasso’.

Sony delayed the release of the european version of the PS3 because they desperately needed to cut the cost. Now Sony has released information that the european version has been modified. The PS2 hardware compability has been removed and have been replaced with a software emulation. Good grief, on this page (http://faq.eu.playstation.com/bc/) you will be informed what games you can’t use on the EU PS3. It will be updated the same day of the release because they hope people won’t check this before they hurry to buy it.

This means that you will be forced to buy PS3 releases, and they will push prices up. The european PS3 is allready more expencive than the US and JP versjon.

All of this are well known issues with Sony, compability were reduced with the slim PS2, so I guess this is not a shock to gamers around the world.

There are already teams out there who develop chip-systems for PS3, I have a feeling the market for chipped PS3 will be bigger than what we’ve seen with the PS2. Sony is too greedy, using 600 on a crippled version of PS3 is too much. And having to pay 50 for 1 game is a crime.

Good luck Sony, The Pirate Bay will have to expand its bandwith when people start to download PS3 games for real..

Many of us struggled years ago to achieve stability and good enogh line-quality to get ADSL. Desparate queries on Kapax gave grief reports like “you are 301m too far away from nearest central” and the equipment was some old ALCAUD boxes. One were happy when they upgraded central and got a 2Mbit adsl but after a few weeks the central got overloaded and they had to reduce it to 1MBit because of line-noise. Many struggled for weeks to get connected and some of them got happy messages like “we’ve routed you through a neighbor central and increased your line speed, will not cost you anything”, but then after a couple of months that central too went bananas because of overload. Sounds familiar?

Now Cybercity (Telenor) announces that they will challenge the market with a 50Mbit/s product, via existing coppernetwork. Sounds fun? I say recycle all copper!

Yay! I received a _lot_ of spam on my hoysater.net domain and I’ve tried lots of different attack angles against the spam. My mom on her 56k modem struggled when she popped the mail account, not fun to watch the counter reading ‘downloading 3 of 754′ unread mails. I’ve tried server based mail washers, whitelists, blacklists, blacklist services, dictionaries but none of them have solved the problem entirely.

A few days ago I talked with someone who recomended Google Apps, I researched a bit and dived into it. Now I have changed my MX records to Google’s and activated mail hosting. Google’s spamfilter is working very well and now all of my family have 2.8GB, and still counting upwards, mailboxes. The calendar is pretty fun too.

I wish we soon can organize mailservices a bit better than now, too many open relays, bad configured mailservers out there. And those who have proper configured mailservers, well – many of those are spammers…

I’ve joined Team-Norway, a group of vikings berserking DC-projects. Its very fun and it has reinspired me to continue with Boinc and other fun projects like PI Segment, Major 12, DPAD, Dimes etc. I have to admit that I prefer the Boinc’ed ones like Seti, Rosetta, Einstein, Climate Prediction etc but the special clients are worth a study.

They are a cheerful group of people, visit them at http://www.team-norway.org. Maybe you would like to join?

I’ve redecided to write in english, again. Maybe Google soon will offer translation from english to norwegian. I’m trying to activate a translation plugin but I don’t like the look of it. Those flags keeps spreading all over the place.