Whilst talking to a friend of mine who’s now in the UK working for BetFair, who have just had a surprise..
I wonder if they fine people who talk to people who work for companies on the ACMA blacklist ?
I hope not.. 😉
Author Archives: Chris Samuel
This is completely nuts
Excuse me – but can someone unbreak Australia ? (…and no, that’s not an invitation to the Liberal/National party, you introduced this in the first place and would just screw it up even more).
On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media Authority added Wikileaks to their blacklist, and threatened anyone linking to the site with $AU11,000-a-day fines. The site will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme is implemented as planned.
You’ve got to wonder what sort of blacklist has the website of a Queensland dentist on it – I know people are afraid of dentists but this is taking it a bit far..
Apparently you can get fined $11,000 a day for linking to a page that you’re not allowed to know is banned, it makes the EU’s secret ban on tennis racquets (ok, blunt instruments) on planes seem almost tame..
For useful insights see Brendan Scott’s blog on the topic, and this one on the leaking…
Another Melbourne Earthquake (Updated)
I missed this one (unlike the last one), but according to Geoscience Australia there was a magnitude 4.6 quake, again around Korumburra (USGS info here).
There’s an ABC news story just been created about it, and also a Geoscience Australia seismograph for it (cached locally as the version on the server disappears after 90 days).
Ironically this occurred during a talk at a conference in the Melbourne Docklands (V21) about the use of new media during the last earthquake.. 😉
Happy Birthday Alan!
As is traditional at this time of the year I must embarrass my brother through a public proclamation of his birthday.. 😉
Happy birthday Alan! 😎
Comparing Fortran Compilers
I’m just testing out the Fortran 90 compilers on our AMD quad core cluster Tango based on some code that Joe Landman wrote as a test case in January 2008, using the same input file as him. The compilers I’m using are GCC 4.3.3, Intel 11.0.81 and PGI 8.0-3.
For the unoptimised (-O0) version I get:
- GCC: 1.884s
- Intel: 3.891s
- PGI: 1.170s
For basic optimisation (-O) I get:
- GCC: 1.617s
- Intel: 3.515s
- PGI: 0.954s
Cranking up the optimisation to -O2 sees no change:
- GCC: 1.610s
- Intel: 3.514s
- PGI: 0.954s
Now we add compiler specific flags:
- GCC (-march=amdfam10 -O3): 0.956s
- Intel (-fast): 3.507s
- PGI (-fast -tp shanghai-64): 0.997s
That got me wondering which had the greater impact, -O3 or the -march=amdfam10 and the result was surprising:
- GCC (-O3): 1.611s
- GCC (-march=amdfam10 -O0): 1.238s
So that’s pretty conclusive, just enabling the AMD k10h CPU (i.e. Barcelona/Shanghai processors) with no optimisations gives a better speedup than the highest level of optimisation! Of course it’s better with both, as you can see from the previous set of results.
I’m *really* impressed by GCC’s performance there, as well as the PGI unoptimised speed, and disappointed by the Intel compilers general lack of performance. I suspect Intels answer would be (not unreasonably) that they don’t necessarily target performance for their competitors CPUs.
ACTA is a classified document in the US ?
Why on earth would the proposed drafts for the ACTA treaty that will (probably) bring in new enforcement measures against copyright infringement, new rights to search & seize property, etc, be treated as a classified document in the US ? What can’t they share with the public that they can share with other governments and cleared corporate lobbyists ?
So much for change..
(Via LWN)
That’s not a moon, that’s the IPv6 address range!
IPv6 is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the subnet to the IPv4 broadcast address, but that’s just peanuts to IPv6. – not quite DA
Whether or not you think IPv6 is a good thing the sheer size of the addressable range is very very easy to underestimate, so Aaron Toponce’s method of translating it into a (rather large) image is a rather nice one. I love his final little comment:
(If I wanted to fit the entire IPv6 space on my physical monitor right now, each pixel would need to represent 192,903,836,122,980,988,357,922,113,056,557 IP addresses. Cool.)
🙂
Rock and Rebuild – Hurstbridge – 7th March 2009
Tomorrow (Friday) we’re off to Rock’n’Rebuild at Hurstbridge High Oval which is being held to raise money for the Bendigo Bank Bushfire Appeal to assist people in the Kinglake, Flowerdale, etc areas that were burnt out recently.
My wife’s band “Donna and the Aspinauts” are playing at 2:50pm and they have The Vagrants headlining! 🙂
Melbourne Earthquake (Updated with magnitude and location)
Note: If you’re looking for the 18th March quake you want this blog post instead..
Wow – that was wild, I thought at first one of the big gums trees was coming down here at the base of Mount Dandenong but that doesn’t get felt by a friend up the mountain and especially not a friend in Glen Iris!
There was a fairly rapid rise to a large shake (about 2-5 seconds) and then it died down again over the space of about another 5-10 seconds.
Update: The USGS is reporting that it was a magnitude 4.7 located around Loch near Korumburra over in Gippsland.
GeoScience Australia now have their website back up with their information about the quake, they estimate it as magnitude 4.6, and I’ve grabbed a copy of the seismograph as it’ll disappear in 90 days.