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...it seems with this machine that the hardware has finally caught up with the GUI.

...when economy of scale dictates you can run that architecture insanely fast for incredibly cheap.

the relative simplicity of design also allows you to scale the architecture to incredibly high speeds. this is why "beautiful" designs like mips and 68k never made it into the ghz range.

mips and ppc might be "beautiful" internal architectures, but they are also not economical ones.

hell, sparc is a "beautiful" design with register windows and all. didn't save them in the long run though.

unless you're programming in assembly all the time, C/C++ will insulate you from the architecture details, so "ugly" instruction sets are largely irrelevant.

there is also nothing preventing someone from making a "beautiful" x86 hardware design. hell, SGI did this once with their visual workstation series. the linux kernel still has support for this subarchitecture type (processor type and features -> subarchitecture type -> sgi 320 / 540).

I hear the pipeline on the P5 is going to be so long that Halliburton want to license it for reconstruction work in Iraq.

Well, you must have heard wrong. The Pentium only has 5 stages. Or did you mean whatever comes after the P4?

In other news, there are some benchmarks on AMD's dualcore Opteron: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=dl&s=5 0009562&f=174096756&x_id=1097194717&x_subject=Opte ron+dual-core+details+emerge&x_link=http://arstech nica.com&x_ddp=Y/

It appears AMD designed the Opteron from ground up to be dualcore.

OT, i know, but DAMN, wtf?
who's in charge here, .. for the past year we've seen the quality of /. articles deteriorate and deteriorate, .. but this without a doubt tops 'm off...
a _frontpage_ thread that isjust one big rtfm flame waiting to happen
anyhoo,.. /me is packing my bags and upping. c'yall on http://www.kuro5hin.org/, http://www.arstechnica.com/ and / or http://www.theregister.co.uk/ hopefully the newsvalue of /. rises above the current http://www.fark.com/ in a year or so,...
in other words;
screw you guys, .. I'm going home

From Ars Technica: ...the numbers that the RIAA uses to talk about "sales" are actually just numbers relating to shipments. The gist of it is pretty simple: the RIAA has their own tracking system based on units shipped, while Nielsen Ratings bases their Soundscan tracking system on actual barcode-scanned purchases. The problem is that Soundscan shows a 10% increase in music sales when comparing the first quarter of 2004 to 1Q 2003.

PS Why Creative Labs?

Read about it here.

In short, Creative pulled out a patent they claim covers Carmack's Reverse shadow rendering algorithm, and blackmailed Id Software into supporting Creative EAX in future versions of the Doom 3 engine.

What's more, the technique was actually first published by NVIDIA... at a conference hosted at Creative Labs.

And Creative's side of the story is utter bollocks. It goes something like "Id was thumbing through some patents and discovered, 'Wow! Creative Labs holds a patent on our shadowing algorithm! We'd better contact Creative and license it!' But we, in our benevolence, don't want to charge them money for the use of our patent, so we'll kindly ask them to incorporate our 3D sound technology in the Doom 3 engine."

Years ago, you needed a Creative Labs sound card if you wanted to play games. Third-party clones were just horrible. But these days, unless you're an audiophile, integrated sound solutions on new motherboards are 100% satisfactory. So Creative, in an effort to remain relevant, basically wants to be able to say that new and future games need an Audigy in order to be fully experienced. Hence pressuring Id into supporting EAX. Carmack was against the idea from the beginning, since he wants the sound to be identical on any machine. But future Id titles will have to have special support for Creative's glorified reverb engine.

IE is losing marketshare at an amazing rate.

IE's market share has dropped ...from 95.73% to 94.73%. In a free market it wouldn't even register on the chart.

That's untrue. MS pre-selecting IE does not preclude others from competing. That's a blatantly untrue statement. It makes it more difficult. That's a big difference.

It's still immoral, probably illegal and causing incredible amounts of harm to innovation and productivity.

The courts did nothing to MS. So ask yourself. Is there more or less competition than there was in the 90's?

Irrelevant. The issue is whether Microsoft's competitors are allowed to compete fairly in this so-called free market.

How is that possible if MS was able to do what the government allege? If MS had an illegal monopoly on operating systems for x86 computers, how come there are more now than at anytime in history? How come users have dozens more choices than ever?

And if MS leveraged the operating system lock up browsers, how come we have more choice now than ever for browsers? How come on x86 alone there are at least 4 major choices for quality web-browsing?

Because while hardware has advanced in accordance with Moore's Law, the Microsoft-dominated software industry has stagnated. People have got so dissatisfied with your corrupt government and what the monopolised market provides that they actually had to invent a whole new form of production and freely donate huge amounts of time to it.

I've never seen that happen in any other field. The situation is just plain bizarre. No wonder OSS suffers credibility.

The government was wrong. MS had a large marketshare, but short of patenting everything in sight, it is impossible to have a monopoly on intellectual property like software.

No, you are wrong. Every single one of your arguments has been effectively rebutted and your post merely serves to highlight you as the Microsoft lackey that you are.

From the article:

Internet Explorer will continue its chokehold on the World Wide Web.
That's a joke. IE is losing marketshare at an amazing rate. Link. All kinds of technical and non-technical sources are recomending a shift-away from Internet Explorer.

But switching can be difficult. Windows users who want to access a document on the Web are sometimes required to use Internet Explorer, flaws and all, even if they have chosen a different product for that purpose.
That's right. A web-publisher can put any conditions he/she wants on viewing the content in the question. You can be asked to pay money, watch an advert, or use certain software.

By tilting Windows users toward Internet Explorer in this and other ways over the past nine years, Microsoft has ensured that many consumers are using a less secure browser than they would if offered a neutral choice, and prevented other software companies from competing for these customers on the merits.
That's untrue. MS pre-selecting IE does not preclude others from competing. That's a blatantly untrue statement. It makes it more difficult. That's a big difference.

The Clinton Justice Department proved all of these facts at trial. Yet the lower courts did not move to restore freedom of competition in the market for Web browsers, because they found Microsoft's appeal for freedom more compelling.
MS's argument all along was that it's market share was at risk, and that any moment, a competitor could grap the reigns and win back the web. They argued that the barriers to entry - regardless of what they did - were very low. Low and behold, the best browser on the market is free, open source, and multi-platform. On top of that, other browsers like Opera are low-cost and multi-platform (and also superior).

One such innovation was in writing the shared blocks of code that support both operating system and Web browsing functions in Windows. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, describing Windows and Internet Explorer as "physically and technologically integrated" through this sharing of code.
Microsoft was right. Using this method of integration is very common place now. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. What if MS loses market share and Konqueror becomes the dominant browser. Will makers of file-manager utilities sue the developers and because their product cannot compete with products that tie into the rendering engine?

By a software product does not consist of code. If it did, you would own the Windows code on your computer and could sell copies of that code with impunity.
You license the code, as you goes on to point out. But regardless of the license, the heart of software is code, not IP.

The courts have missed a golden opportunity to affirm the freedom to compete in the information age.
The courts did nothing to MS. So ask yourself. Is there more or less competition than there was in the 90's? How is that possible if MS was able to do what the government allege? If MS had an illegal monopoly on operating systems for x86 computers, how come there are more now than at anytime in history? How come users have dozens more choices than ever? And if MS leveraged the operating system lock up browsers, how come we have more choice now than ever for browsers? How come on x86 alone there are at least 4 major choices for quality web-browsing?

The government was wrong. MS had a large marketshare, but short of patenting everything in sight, it is impossible to have a monopoly on intellectual property like software.

You cannot corner the supply side of software!

Postscript is probably subject to more controls than PDF. Take the use of Display PDF rather than Display Postscript in OSX for example - Ars Technica mentions the licensing fees that Apple would have had to pay. Surely we're better off with pdf than gzipped ps?

Actually some of the pipeline steps on the P4 are there specifically for signal propogation.

The P4's basic pipeline was the first one that I'd ever seen that included drive stages. These drive stages are there solely to handle shuttling signals across the chip's wires. They keep signal propagation times from limiting the clock speed of the chip, and they're one of the factors in making the P4's clock speed so scalable.

linky

"POWER is a implementation of PowerPC architecture"

You've got to be kidding me. PowerPC is a *cut-down* version of the POWER architecture!

Check out these references here, here, here, and here.

"POWER is a implementation of PowerPC architecture"

You've got to be kidding me. PowerPC is a *cut-down* version of the POWER architecture!

Check out these references here, here, here, and here.

Now that HP will stop making Itanium servers...

Re-read the original post, please. HP is discontinuing Itanium workstations, not servers.

For all its flaws, Itanium does have more headroom to grow than the x86-64 architecture. The whole reason HP and Intel got into bed over Itanium and its EPIC architecture was because it's getting harder and harder to wring more performance out of a chip by adding parallel instruction pipelines. In order to crank clockspeeds higher, those pipelines have to get longer and longer (witness Prescott's 31-stage pipeline). The more pipelines you have and the longer they are, the worse is the penalty for branch misprediction.

It's this problem that led HP and Intel to VLIW, where the parallelism is explicitly compiled into the code, reducing or eliminating the need for a lot of transistors that currently break code down into parallel-izable chunks and try to predict branches.

Unless somebody invents a new way of architecting chips that will eliminate or substantially reduce the branch misprediction penalty without substantially breaking x86 compatibility, Itanium (or something like it) will eventually reign supreme.

Ars Technica has a pretty good review of USB 2.0 flash drives, for those curious about performance benchmarks.

Someone said something about pictures of the Cruzer Micro. SanDsik has easily available images of their products for press kits, even huge EPS files. Here's a nearly sane JPEG of the Cruzer Micro 512 MB

Ars Technica has a pretty good review of USB 2.0 flash drives, for those curious about performance benchmarks.

Someone said something about pictures of the Cruzer Micro. SanDsik has easily available images of their products for press kits, even huge EPS files. Here's a nearly sane JPEG of the Cruzer Micro 512 MB

Here is the link
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=dl&s=5 0009562&f=174096756&x_id=1095956039&x_subject=SP2+ Internet+Explorer+enhancements+for+Windows+XP+only &x_link=http://arstechnica.com&x_ddp=Y

I read a review of a whole series of flashdrives on Ars Technica before I bought my JetFlash 256 MB, and it has been amazing. Check out the review of 8 flash drives (all USB 2.0 High Speed compatible).

...in the geek world, at least.

Ars Technica does a system guide that has multiple levels of computer. Just slap a number on each one, and poof.

The problem is that time changes these things. My computer six months ago was a "Hot Rod", but now it's an "Ultimate Budget Box." In the future, I'll buy a Level 7, but in a couple of months it'll become a Level 5. How do I know what level my computer currently is so I know whether or not it'll run that great new game that requires a Level 6 PC?

...and how many experience points does my PC need to get to level 8?

There are numbers out there about the longevity of Macs in workplaces, both in terms of their not breaking down and in terms of how long they're usable for their task. The Gartner Group has done some, I know.

The evidence isn't just anecdotal, but it is muddied by stuff like the fact that OS X has actually been getting noticably faster for older machines. (Ars technica: "Here's another way to look at Panther's performance. For over three years now, Mac OS X has gotten faster with every release -- and not just "faster in the experience of most end users", but faster on the same hardware. This trend is unheard of among contemporary desktop operating systems.") That's not just a physical measure of the machine, it's to do with the whole set of end-to-end stuff that Apple can control in its little proprietary world. And yeah, it's a high-quality market niche, and nope, that's not just an imagined difference.

It's a choice you can still make, but it's not an illusory choice. Some people drive a Kia, some people drive a BMW, and some people drive a Subaru. Even met someone who was religious about their brand of cars because it had been so dang reliable?

One gigabit is 128MB. Assuming a 64-bit memory bus width, one chip per bus bit, and 2 gigabits of storage per chip, you're talking about a 16GB DIMM.

So the the terminology inclined, it is a significant advancement.

A good summary of memory technology is here.

Or you kould run Firefox's rendering kode inside Konqueror. But would that put you in the KKK?

Today was the official launch day of Amazon's A9.com search engine

Ars link here.

Actually, this may not be as horrible as everyone makes it out to be.

I disagree. This isn't limited to just Microsoft. Take a look

• Microsoft pushes technological solutions to protect data (DRM) with "trusted computing" via "secure BIOS".
• RIAA pushes for DMCA-like laws that prevent circumvention of the aforementioned technological solutions by making it unlawful to do so. The RIAA has demonstrated that it is will not hesitate to use these tools to their advantage.
• The RIAA is using propaganda campaigns to indoctrine our youth and to gloss over the many concerns that we have for our civil liberties. Take, for example, the RIAA's blurring of the distinction between copyright infringement and theft.

So, you see, there's end-to-end lockout being put in place. If you happen to be smart enough to see through the bullshit, you can't do what you want because the technology stops you. If you happen to be smart enough to circumvent the technology, you can't tell others unless you want to risk going to jail. And even if you were some kind of law-savvy uber-hacker, do you have enough money to survive the SLAPP?

I'm not an alarmist, but come on, folks, this is alarming! Microsoft learned the hard way that their behavior isn't beyond the scope of anti-trust regulation, but they also realized that the government is too damn slow to properly stop them. I don't doubt for an instant that they won't use every competitive advantage available to them. Content producers also learned the hard way about fair use with the Betamax decision; don't fool yourself into thinking that they're going to let the Internet slip past them.

http://www.apache.org/foundation/docs/sender-id-po sition.html http://lwn.net/Articles/100873/ http://lwn.net/Articles/100659/ http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040902-4153.ht ml http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/09/02/apach e_rejects_sender_id_proposal.html

Wiebetech had a Firewire Keychain flash firewire drive back in 2002.

Check it out:

• Firewire Keychain Review
• Firewire Keychain
• Wiebetech Announced Firewire Keychain
• WiebeTECH 1GB FireWire KeyChain review

considering the apple airport express website *specifically* says "AirPort Express can extend the range only of an AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express wireless network." its really not surprising it didnt like your netgear router

ok so maybe you want it to work anyway. if you had read this previous slashdot article you would have had some idea why - from the article

"Sure, Apple says the Express will only do bridging with AirPort Base Stations. That's because WDS is not a standardized part of the 802.11g spec. " (not to mention as posted somewhere in this discussion netgear has some spec-meeting issues)

never the less, it seems it is possible (again from the article)

"We can report that it will work with the Linksys WRT54G 802.11g router. The procedure for getting it working involves using the open source firmware and is fairly straightforward. But it's not for the faint of heart: keep in mind that if you do update using the open source firmware, you will find your router outside the tender embrace of Linksys customer support."

i do think its a good idea to have a list of (ideally) cheaper routers that work with AE - but I still think ill save up for a perdy apple base station instead.

PS - again, from the ars article, you should note that there are some security issues

"One note: when using the AirPort Express as a WDS, you are limited to either using 128-bit WEP or turning off security altogether. This was not mentioned on the AirPort Express pages on apple.com, although it is addressed in the manual. WPA is generally not supported over bridged connections on WiFi products due to the fact that WPA encrypts the MAC addresses which WDS relies on for communication. Keep this limitation in mind when using the Express as a bridge."

Actually, the PP970 is a single-cored POWER4 with AltiVec, and designed to reach higher clocks. Ars Technica has several good references:

A Brief Look at the PowerPC 970
Inside the PowerPC 970
Inside the PowerPC 970, Part II

Actually, the PP970 is a single-cored POWER4 with AltiVec, and designed to reach higher clocks. Ars Technica has several good references:

A Brief Look at the PowerPC 970
Inside the PowerPC 970
Inside the PowerPC 970, Part II

Actually, the PP970 is a single-cored POWER4 with AltiVec, and designed to reach higher clocks. Ars Technica has several good references:

A Brief Look at the PowerPC 970
Inside the PowerPC 970
Inside the PowerPC 970, Part II

Actually, the PP970 is a single-cored POWER4 with AltiVec, and designed to reach higher clocks. Ars Technica has several good references:

A Brief Look at the PowerPC 970
Inside the PowerPC 970
Inside the PowerPC 970, Part II

This link? Seems pretty interesting. Ars is full of all kinds of fun stuff.

there's a solution to the DLL and .so hell -- mac OSX uses frameworks to bundle and manage versions of shared libraries so that the particular shared library you use doesn't end up containing an incompatible version of the functions you need. We've all seen this happen, for example, when an impolite installer overwrites an existing shared library with an older (or newer!) version of that library that breaks applications that used the previously installed version.

Frameworks enjoy the same "single item" install/remove process as Application Packages. Contrast this with, say, the traditional Unix shared library installation which puts the library file(s) in one place (/lib, /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib, etc.), the header files in another (/include, /usr/include, /usr/local/include, etc.), and the documentation in yet another location (/usr/man/man3, /usr/man/man3c++, etc.)--hardly a system that facilitates ease of maintenance!

regards,
j.

More screenshots I've seen:

http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/xorg-mplayer.j pg
http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/metacity-compo sitor.png
http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/skippy-xd.jpg
http://albin.abo.fi/~jfors/images/saya-20040830-1. png
http://members.arstechnica.com/x/ioslipstream/milk shot.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~amsilveira/screenshots/08 -27-04bg.jpg
http://www.rpi.edu/~penwan/ss-20040829.png
http://home.pacbell.net/elomire/screenshot.png
http://thorin.battleaxe.net/~prototyped/kde33.png
http://members.arstechnica.com/x/treatment/Screens hot-14.jpg
http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/xorg-glxgears. png
http://www.arslinux.com/~jorge/screenshots/xorg.pn g
http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/xorg-transvide o.jpg

More screenshots I've seen:

http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/xorg-mplayer.j pg
http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/metacity-compo sitor.png
http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/skippy-xd.jpg
http://albin.abo.fi/~jfors/images/saya-20040830-1. png
http://members.arstechnica.com/x/ioslipstream/milk shot.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~amsilveira/screenshots/08 -27-04bg.jpg
http://www.rpi.edu/~penwan/ss-20040829.png
http://home.pacbell.net/elomire/screenshot.png
http://thorin.battleaxe.net/~prototyped/kde33.png
http://members.arstechnica.com/x/treatment/Screens hot-14.jpg
http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/xorg-glxgears. png
http://www.arslinux.com/~jorge/screenshots/xorg.pn g
http://home.centurytel.net/jacob002/xorg-transvide o.jpg

I don't believe java can be as fast as native code, although probably extremely close. And sure, a good java compiler will generate faster code then a crappy C++ compiler.

The usual 'support' for this argument goes: "Java programs have to be interpreted from bytecode and then run, but native code only has to be run. Bytecode interpretation slows you down.".

That seems to ignore HP Labs' Dynamo project, which showed that an HP-PA 8000 emulator running on an HP-PA 8000 could run code faster than native HP-PA 8000 code.

If interpreted HP-PA 8000 code is faster than native HP-PA 8000 code, I imagine a bytecode would have to be pretty poorly designed to perform worse. In fact, since JVM was built to be interpreted, I hope it's a lot better.

Java probably isn't the best example of this, but I see no reason why a high-level, byte-compiled language couldn't run as fast or faster than native code, assuming a standard operating system with libraries and so forth.

I'm curious about what it is that makes 'third-generation' rendering engines so great? What is it that these do that GDI either cannot already do or couldn't be made to do easily? (without a rewrite)

No, it's chock full of 404's. Here are the correct links:

open and vicious attack on fair use
bring civil cases themselves
bends its statistics

No, it's chock full of 404's. Here are the correct links:

open and vicious attack on fair use
bring civil cases themselves
bends its statistics

No, it's chock full of 404's. Here are the correct links:

open and vicious attack on fair use
bring civil cases themselves
bends its statistics

Why should Americans be concerned? They should already know that web privacy policies mean nothing. Microsoft could say whatever they wanted on that page, they do not have to follow those policies with consumers in the U.S. Perhaps they simply decided to be more honest about it and not bother posting one?

If you're going to copy another website's (http://arstechnica.com/) content, you should at least give credit where credit is due.

Ars Technica's Macintoshian Achaia is the best of the Mac discusssion forums, I think, and there's plenty of info for switchers.

Lets rememeber not everyone purchased a PS2 Network Adapter to go online. Almost all the people I know, have used them to hook up hard drives, and the rip games to it.

HD LOADER, most any bargain-of-the-week HD, and a little time and you can have 60+ games on your PS2, without needing a single CD.

There is a 96-CPU Workstation .

Specs should be somewhere there.

At this to your to compare list.

Sidenote - IBM should bring out said headless box, black alu case like the NeXT with a single G5 in it clocked a 2gighz and a 100% linux compat mobo.... That would soon become a cult item I imagine - but apple would have a fit because it would encorage all the unix geeks on their platform to swap and it would encorage a strong user base of a ppc linux to get going. So, like I say, not going to happen. Actually, can someone enlighten the thread as to who *owns* the G5? Could IBM do this?

Motorola, IBM, Apple
All three of these companies participated in the development of the original PowerPC series of CPUs based on the technology for IBM's POWER series of RISC CPUs. IBM is the primary manufacturer of the CPUs with Motorola making some for industrial purposes. Apple buys it's CPUs from IBM. There has even been speculation that we'll see the G5 CPUs in low to midrange pSeries workstations in the near future.

You can find out more about the history of the PowerPC CPUs here: http://arstechnica.com/cpu/004/ppc-1/ppc-1-1.html

IM services have tried repeatedly to block third-party apps. Both AIM and Yahoo have tried to block third-party clients.

Yahoo blocking

AIM blocking

"AOL made changes to their proprietary protocol (called OSCAR) that would ferret out anyone who wasn't using the official client."

Actually, arstechnica, among others mentions the mis-quote that you are talking about, that there was 40 terabytes available through the hub, and that the "agents were able to download 72GB of copyrighted material that included a variety of movies, music, applications, and games."

Now having terabytes available through a P2P network seems like a reasonable number, as does having only 72GB available on the few machines.

Note that they also don't make any distnction between copyrighted materiels which are distributed legally (as many indie composers, musicians, and other artists allow it) versus those materials that aren't authorized (like the cracked Doom3 versions).

Please actually check your sources, rather than just reciting the over-hyped misquotes.

frob

Most likely, using one or the other of these. I don't think they'll be worrying about being left behind just yet.