Memory Limitations with IBM Enterprise COBOL Compiler

, 1 min read

Recently I learned the hard way that IBM Enterprise COBOL compiler for z/OS (mainframe) cannot generate 8-byte long POINTER variables, but only 4-byte pointers. This means, you cannot use more than 2GB in COBOL on a mainframe. I.e., you cannot make use of AMODE=64 with COBOL on the mainframe. You…

Generators are now in PHP 5.5

, 1 min read

Generators (and therefore coroutines) are now part of PHP (Wikipedia) 5.5, as of 20-Jun-2013. Here is an example: function xrange($start,$end) { for ($i = $start; $i<=$end; ++$i) yield($i); } The Icon programming language (Wikipeda) was one of the first computer languages where…

WordPress Market Share 2011

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I read a short note in Heise, that in 2011 WordPress was one of the most popular CMS. The report compared Alfresco WCM CMSMadeSimple Concrete5 DotNetNuke Drupal e107 eZ Publish Joomla! Liferay MODx Movable Type OpenCms Plone SilverStripe Textpattern Tiki Wiki CMS…

CUDA Performance

, 1 min read

I ran below commands under different load for my Gigabyte GTX 560 graphic card. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$CUDA_PATH/lib64 time /usr/local/cuda/samples/sdk/0_Simple/matrixMul/matrixMul time /usr/local/cuda/samples/sdk/0_Simple/matrixMulCUBLAS/matrixMulCUBLAS I was interested in the value…

Kepler’s Hypothesis explained by Brian Koberlein

, 2 min read

I copy Brian Koberlein's explanations on the history of Kepler's law. Kepler’s first two rules, that the orbit of a planet is an ellipse, and that a line drawn from the Sun to a planet sweeps out area at a constant rate were proposed in 1609. While these rules allowed for a more accurate…

Running CPU/GPU Intensive Jobs on Titan Supercomputer

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There is a an INCITE program (HPC Call for Proposals), where one can apply for CPU/GPU intensive jobs, the link is INCITE (dead link). From the FAQ: The INCITE program is open to US- and non-US-based researchers and research organizations needing large allocations of computer time, supporting…

Positive Erfahrungen mit Unitymedia

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Bisher habe ich mit der Firma Unitymedia ausschließlich positive Erfahrungen gemacht. Sie sind es wert, kurz festgehalten zu werden. Am 20. August 2009 habe ich bei Unitymedia Internet (20MBit/s) und Telefon bestellt. Am nächsten Tag stand ein Herr Niclas Roth von Computer-Füchse vor der Tür…

Cisco Cablemodem Signal to Noise Ratio

, 1 min read

For internet connection I use a cable modem EPC3208 from Cisco, which was supplied by the cable provider, Unitymedia (now Vodafone) in my case. It shows the following measurements regarding signal-to-noise ratio, modem is at 192.168.100.1: More information on this modem can be found here: Cisco…

Mainframe Rehosting: Cost Reduction, Hardware Sizing, Tools, and Methodology

, 1 min read

Mainframe rehosting is about replacing the whole mainframe with one or multiple Linux boxes, or at times, move portions of the application landscape from the mainframe to Linux. Thereby you basically keep many of the hitherto used development- and runtime-environment, like COBOL, DB2, IMS, CICS,…

WordPress March 2009 Wrap-Up

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Impressive numbers from WordPress.com: 827 terabytes of data, 400.000 new users, 7 million logins, 1 billion of pageviews. From March Wrap-Up, written by Matt Mullenweg: In March we brought you P2, an awesome theme perfect for short-form and group blogging, made with love by Automatticians. Next,…

Vasily Volkov (UC Berkeley): Unrolling parallel loops

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Loop unrolling is not only good for sequential programming, it has similar dramatic effects in highly parallel codes as well, see Unrolling parallel loops (local copy), also see #pragma unroll in the NVidia CUDA programming guide. Some bullet points of the presentation: More resources consumed per…

WordPress Statistics of this Blog: Top Views by Country

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How to use TrueType Fonts in xterm or uxterm

, 1 min read

See how to use ttf fonts in xterm in the NetBSD tutorial. To get TrueType fonts by default in uxterm or xterm I added the following lines in .Xdefaults: XTerm*faceName: Bitstream Vera Serif Mono XTerm*faceSize: 14 UXTerm*faceName: Bitstream Vera Serif Mono UXTerm*faceSize: 14 It didn't work if I…

The New Digital Company: Distributed, Online, and Transparent

, 1 min read

Very good article on open company communication by Sara Rosso, who works for WordPress. The article below centers around these headlines. Be distributed Be Online Be Transparent Work Hard, Play Hard When I Have Time by Sara Rosso Update: I gave a similar presentation at LeWeb about the Future…

CUDA without X Window System

, 1 min read

Instead of starting X like xinit /usr/bin/icewm and therefore loading the NVidia CUDA environment, one can simply add [ -c /dev/nvidia0 ] || mknod -m 666 /dev/nvidia0 c 195 0 [ -c /dev/nvidiactl ] || mknod -m 666 /dev/nvidiactl c 195 255 to `/etc/init.d/boinc-client` assuming one has a single…

Porting Source to Linux - Valve's Lessons Learned

, 1 min read

Interesting slides from Valve on their venture to Linux: Porting Source to Linux - Valve's Lessons Learned

John Raff / Dmitry Sandalov: Access Google translate from a terminal

, 1 min read

See an article by a guy named johnraff, Access Google translate from a terminal, or reblogged by Dmitry Sandalov here Access Google translate from a terminal. Works great. Here are some examples: translate Weg Way translate "Ich gehe nach Hause" I'm going home

Phoronix: NVIDIA vs. Nouveau Drivers On Ubuntu 13.04

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In Phoronix there is an interesting comparison between Nouveau and proprietary NVidia graphics driver, see NVIDIA vs. Nouveau Drivers On Ubuntu 13.04.

A Praise for IceWM

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Since more than ten years I use IceWM, a clean and compact window manager for X. I can only recommend it. IceWM in its own words: The goal of IceWM is speed, simplicity, and not getting in the user's way. These goals are nicely met. Among the features of IceWM: multiple workspaces easily move…

0x5f3759df - calculating inverse square root

, 1 min read

An interesting article in Wikipedia on calculating a first approximation of the inverse of the square root Fast inverse square root, or 0x5f3759df - calculating inverse square root