Republican Economic Failure

Got this from Paul Krugman. Martin Wolf explains why current Republican economic policies are a failure. Double dip recession here we come.

Zip Code Data

After reading a story about the local situation with aging schools and consolidation that provided some population statistics, I went looking for data on Social Security benefits for the area's population. I found it but I need some data on zip codes. During my searching, I discovered that there's no free zip code except for the one that the census produced for a 1999 Census product. It seems as though it's not going to be updated.

I went to the US Postal Services website. You have to purchase the data. If you want the data for the entire US, it will cost you $900 per product. While I can understand the desire for the Post office to recoup their costs, it would seem like this key information about how citizens should be communicating would be free.

Another issue is the fact that zip codes change. I was looking at correlating historical data to the zip code. However, zip codes for particular geographic areas change over time. This makes it hard to correlate data to particular zip codes when there is data that goes back over a period of years. It makes me wonder if there some historical zip code that that can be purchased.

For example, Social Security publishes data broken down by the field office. The field office services particular zip codes. If a person's zip code changes, it's possible that they could change SS field offices. I don't if that's true, but it's a possibility.

In any event the 5 digit zip code data should be free and open to the public.

Hitler in the Bunker (Movie Downfall) Parodies Removed

Apparently the makers of the movie Downfall have asked YouTube to remove all of the parodies of the Bunker Scene. I hadn't even heard of the movie until I started see these parodies way back when. I had been meaning to buy it, but now this movie joins Metallica on my list of Douche Bags not to support. (Metallica came out strongly against mp3 way back when. Look at the industry now, owned by Apple.)

Here it is:

Hitler, as "Downfall producer" orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo.

Note that the director of the film loves the parodies. Too bad the ones that he likes aren't available on YouTube anymore.

Marilla eating

Here's a pic of Marilla eating prunes. It's not the first but not long after the first time. She's about 3.5 months old.

911 Dispatchers

Why do 911 dispatchers show up at news conferences? I don't understand it. I suppose it's a human interest story like this morning when they showed the dispatcher who took the kid's call for a break in. But, I saw that they had interviewed the dispatcher for the California runaway Prius.

Why? Is it really necessary? I don't get any additional information from these people. Does the press request that the dispatcher's show up? How about answering the question as to why they've not caught the perpetrators. I bet that they don't catch them.

A Few Billion Lines of Code Later

A Few Billion Lines of Code Later is an interesting look at the static analysis tool made by Coverity. It was spawned by the static analysis research project at Stanford. It is being used on lots of open source software as a way of testing the tool.

The article is an interesting look at some of the problems with management that must contend with a tool pointing out errors. I highly recommend reading it. You should read it soon. I don't know how long before it will before it goes behind the paywall and the above link is now good.

AMD IOMMU is AMD Vi

This post isn't about the kernel boot error regarding 64MB of memory and IOMMU. This post is about IOMMU and virtualization

Much to my chagrin, I've discovered that the AMD IOMMU virtualization technology now called AMD Vi is not supported on any of its 7xx chipsets. I've recently upgraded from a 780G motherboard to a 790GX. From whatever reason, I was under the impression that AMD was supporting this IOMMU capability already. Intel has been supporting it forever. They call it VT-d. Since Intel has been supporting it for so, it's probably why I assumed that AMD was supporting it. Finally after digging around wikipedia and the AMD website this evening, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't supported. I should have dug around a bit more before I purchased the Intel Gigabit ET ethernet card that has SR-IOV support.

Now, I'm feeling pretty jaded about my decision to buy AMD products. I've been buying them because they have reasonable performance for a good price. All of the AMD processors have virtualization support, whereas not all Intel processors had it. Even some of the higher end Intel desktop processors didn't have it.

Even if I had chosen to go with Intel, I would have had to be careful. Not all of Intel's chipsets support VT-d. Just a quick search with google shows that there has been quite a bit of confusion. Some people were calling Intel support and couldn't get an answer.

The confusion associated with finding out what virtualization tech is supported by a particular processor and chipset should not exist. At the very least the there should be a table for processors and a table for chipsets that list capabilities. Instead there's lots of confusion.

Even PC/laptop manufacturers make it tough for consumers. HP and another big name vendor, either Sony or Lenovo, have been known not to support enabling of virtualization in the BIOS. (Yes you typically have to enable it in the BIOS. It's not on by default.) HP finally enabled it in one model after enough outcry, but the other vendor gave their customers the finger. (Not literally of course.)

Overall, I'm please with how well the virtualization stuff is working. I no longer have to use a proprietary Virtual Machine solution to run windows and other items. KVM+QEMU work well. Fedora 12's implementation is great. I'm just disgusted that determining capabilities about vendor solutions is so problematic.

Update:
If you want IOMMU (VT-d or AMD-Vi) on a desktop chipset, you'll have to stick with Intel for now. The wikipedia page for Intel chipsets seems to have the best information about VT-d support for chipsets in one place. If you can provide a better link to more information, please post.

X86 Virtualization
AMD Server Chipset
AMD-Vi

Update:
AMD's newest chipset for desktops, the 890FX, has support for IOMMU 1.2 according to Anandtech. From what I know, IOMMU 1.2 is AMD-Vi.