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A rant about the state of the current OS X Finder, and its non-intuitivity for spatially-oriented persons (i.e. most everybody who lives in meatspace).
The spatial finder.
But, once you get used to it, I think that the current single-window-change-current-window model is acceptable. But it can be highly confusing to people who are spatially oriented. Such people prefer files/icons in the computer to act like objects in the real world: stay where they last put them (assuming no one else moves them).

Yikes, well, for one thing, it presented the location and view settings of folders with a 1-to-1 correspondence.

Read John Siracusa's famous (at least I thought it was famously great) article at Ars Technica : http://www.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder- 1.html

You should mean the M series, because there is a lot more to it than PM and variable clock, something the regular Pentium line has had for years. Read this article and you'll realize just how much went into it.

First, gamers Want the fastest possible speed on their platforms. They're the people driving the overclocking movement; who buy five grand, tricked out systems, and who also push the gaming industry. They're not going to buy games where there hardware and wideband net connections doesn't matter.

• Abit NF7-S off Pricewatch, about $90-100, depending on whether you pay tax.
• Fry's regularly has an ECS board + Athlon chip (usually in the 2000 - 2400 range) for very good prices - keep the chip and eBay off the board for $35 or so.[0]
• 2x512 of DDR333, about $100-$120.
• Radeon 9600XT, $150 or so
• It seems every week there's a CD-RW for next to nothing after MIR. Let's say $15.
• Similiarly, it's usually possible to find something like a 160gb 7200RPM harddrive for $100 or so.
• Not that a gaming box needs a DVD-ROM, but those run about $30.[1]
• The onboard Soundstorm audio can work just fine, but so can a $50 card like the TBSC.
• Case with decent 350w PSU, $50 or so.[2]
• Maybe $150 or so for a good 17" CRT or even a 19" with rebate, if you find a nice one.
• Allow $75 for misc stuff[3]
• Throw in a $50 or so set of speakers.

I got the Google lucky cookie! It's the second time for me. This time google.com is added to my cookie whitelist for good! And yes, for all the smartasses out there, I *do want* a cookie ;P

The whole point of RAID is that the disks are closly dependednt on each other

Really? What about RAID 1? Mirrored disks are in no way dependent on each other. You can do a little learnin' here.

Mac OS X 10.3 only supports a 32 bit virtual address space per process although it can address more than 4GB RAM in total.

From Mac.Ars:

It was originally hoped that Panther would be truly 64-bit after the PPC 970 was announced, but that turned out not to be the case. For an OS to be 64-bit, you need the following: the ability to address more than 4GB of RAM, the ability to use 64-bit integers for "fast math," and support for a 64-bit address space for each process. What is Panther missing?

One may run up to 8GB of RAM in the G5s, which is twice the amount supported by a 32-bit OS. Indeed, the G5 will even support 2GB DIMMs, so if you have an inordinate amount of disposable income you can run your aluminum tower with 16GB of RAM. Panther also provides support for 64-bit integers. However, the virtual address space for processes in Panther is 32-bit, which means that applications still hit the 4GB ceiling. Thus, while Panther breaks the RAM limitations of a 32-bit OS and offers 64-bit integers, it doesn't support 64-bit addresses spaces for the applications.

Actually the I/O Processor in the PS2 is based on the PS1's CPU - this chip is the one that takes over when you boot the PS2 with a PSOne game. Sony killed two birds with one stone with this "Playstation-in-a-chip": they got an I/O processor and a way to get almost flawless PS1 emulation... the keyword being almost flawless, since there are PS1 games that are incompatible. This wouldn't be the case if Sony had decided to just stick a PS1 inside a PS2.

Anyway, I can see Sony working right now in a "PS2 in a chip" for the PS3 - they have been revising the hardware for the PS2 to reduce the number of components with every new model, just as they did with the PS1, and I expect they eventually will get around to having most of the functionality of the Emotion Engine in a single, cheap chip. We can also expect a smaller, cuter and cheaper PSTwo after the PS3 is launched.

But now that I think about it... Since they are separate chips, will the PS3 be compatible with the PS1? I'd think so, but they would have to use two different chips into the PS3. I/O processor and matemathical co-processor? Or will they integrate the "PS1-in-a-chip" in the new mini-Emotion Engine?

Please, just because I list three or four does not mean that there are only three or four.

Sure, but these problems aren't exactly world-shattering. Using the File-menu for app-related stuff isn't too bad as long as it is wrong consistently. You learn it once and then you can deal with it. The level of problems in OS X that I talked about is much more serious IMHO because you can't really adapt to them.

I could list many more, but I thought I could make my point my listing a few that OS-9-ers insist are broken by OS X when in fact they were fixed.

I've never heard people claim that the application-menu is a bad idea (although they may disagree with the implementation). Using a new shortcut for creating a folder is a different case, because it basically hinges around the design of the Finder. The old Finder was spatial, which means that it attempts to give a 'real' representation of your files. Creating a new window does not really fit into that paradigm, since views do not exist. Windows equal folders and you create a new window by opening an existing folder. Creating a window an sich is appropriate for a 'browser' Finder, which just shows you a specific view of your files. There you can create a view which shows the same folder as another window, so there is no 1-on-1 relationship between folders and windows. This has certain advantages and certain disadvantages, which I won't go into at the moment. Suffice it to say that both are useful, but you cannot use them at the same time, since some features are mutually exclusive.

Anyway, the problem is that Apple did away with the spatial Finder and replaced it by a partially browser, partially spatial abomination. A good example of the problems you get is that it's nearly impossible to understand the view options of windows. John Siracusa has asked for consistent Finder which seperates the spatial and the browser elements in seperate modes, so that things actually work consistently and you have the best of both worlds instead of the worst.

At the moment, the fact that the OS X Finder is neither purely spatial or browser-based means that the new keyboard shortcut is broken. The old one was not broken in the OS 9 (since it is suitable to a spatial Finder), but it would be broken in the OS X Finder.

Ooo, hoo, hoo, who made you so smart? Just goes to show that all curmudgeons are the same. They all apparently assume that they've been using MacOS longer and that they use it harder than anyone else.

I never claimed that using more apps makes me smarter, better or whatever. The problem is that the dock cannot really cope with such a workflow. It's so overloaded that it works best if you use just a few apps (there is a reason why Apple's screenshots always show just a few apps). People like me go in the territory where the dock sucks. I don't believe that I'm unreasonable when I desire to use a lot of apps and documents and still want to use the features that the dock supposedly offers. Or do you want to claim that the dock is still as effective when you want fast access to 30 apps and 30 documents (where many docs have the same icon)?

BTW, the problem is not that I "operate differently". You can use that excuse for everything. A software developer can claim that a crash after selecting a menu item is caused by me 'operating differently', because other people don't select that menu option.

Awww... And MacOS 9's solution of having the trashcan on the desktop -- where it's either inaccessible or you have to warp your style to make sure it's always visible -- is better?

In OS 9, I only touched the trashcan when I wanted to deal with already deleted files (also use the shortcut). The easiest solution was just to hide all apps and open the can on the desk

Please, just because I list three or four does not mean that there are only three or four.

Sure, but these problems aren't exactly world-shattering. Using the File-menu for app-related stuff isn't too bad as long as it is wrong consistently. You learn it once and then you can deal with it. The level of problems in OS X that I talked about is much more serious IMHO because you can't really adapt to them.

I could list many more, but I thought I could make my point my listing a few that OS-9-ers insist are broken by OS X when in fact they were fixed.

I've never heard people claim that the application-menu is a bad idea (although they may disagree with the implementation). Using a new shortcut for creating a folder is a different case, because it basically hinges around the design of the Finder. The old Finder was spatial, which means that it attempts to give a 'real' representation of your files. Creating a new window does not really fit into that paradigm, since views do not exist. Windows equal folders and you create a new window by opening an existing folder. Creating a window an sich is appropriate for a 'browser' Finder, which just shows you a specific view of your files. There you can create a view which shows the same folder as another window, so there is no 1-on-1 relationship between folders and windows. This has certain advantages and certain disadvantages, which I won't go into at the moment. Suffice it to say that both are useful, but you cannot use them at the same time, since some features are mutually exclusive.

Anyway, the problem is that Apple did away with the spatial Finder and replaced it by a partially browser, partially spatial abomination. A good example of the problems you get is that it's nearly impossible to understand the view options of windows. John Siracusa has asked for consistent Finder which seperates the spatial and the browser elements in seperate modes, so that things actually work consistently and you have the best of both worlds instead of the worst.

At the moment, the fact that the OS X Finder is neither purely spatial or browser-based means that the new keyboard shortcut is broken. The old one was not broken in the OS 9 (since it is suitable to a spatial Finder), but it would be broken in the OS X Finder.

Ooo, hoo, hoo, who made you so smart? Just goes to show that all curmudgeons are the same. They all apparently assume that they've been using MacOS longer and that they use it harder than anyone else.

I never claimed that using more apps makes me smarter, better or whatever. The problem is that the dock cannot really cope with such a workflow. It's so overloaded that it works best if you use just a few apps (there is a reason why Apple's screenshots always show just a few apps). People like me go in the territory where the dock sucks. I don't believe that I'm unreasonable when I desire to use a lot of apps and documents and still want to use the features that the dock supposedly offers. Or do you want to claim that the dock is still as effective when you want fast access to 30 apps and 30 documents (where many docs have the same icon)?

BTW, the problem is not that I "operate differently". You can use that excuse for everything. A software developer can claim that a crash after selecting a menu item is caused by me 'operating differently', because other people don't select that menu option.

Awww... And MacOS 9's solution of having the trashcan on the desktop -- where it's either inaccessible or you have to warp your style to make sure it's always visible -- is better?

In OS 9, I only touched the trashcan when I wanted to deal with already deleted files (also use the shortcut). The easiest solution was just to hide all apps and open the can on the desk

GNOME vs. KDE will perhaps be one of the holy wars of this millennium, and this is certainly another kick in the teeth for the ever-so-slightly clunky KDE (in my opinion). As said in the article, the developers have done some superb work and, well, put it this way, it is almost making me want to lose Mac OS X on one of my iBooks. Do not underestimate the pulling power of eye candy and the HIG!

Liberal inspiration has, of course, been taken from the Apple way of doing things - the spatial navigation is, as noted in the Ars Technica article, based on the pre-OS X MacOS Finder. And that's no bad thing, certainly if FOSS wants to move towards real usability on the desktop.
The file dialogue boxes are also notably similar to Mac OS X's way of doing things, although the puzzling (at least to me) scrollbars that the Mac uses to browse up and down a directory tree are here replaced with arguably simpler tabs. Very nice touch.

Personally I'll keep Mac OS X on this for the moment, if only to avoid kernel recompiles and incompatibilities arising from that, but hell, if I were a Windows user, I'd be sitting here asking myself why the fuck I am waiting till 2006 for Longhorn when I can have this now...
Zealots were quick to criticise the most prominent competition - Mac OS X 10.3 - in terms of eye candy on the desktop when it came to making comparisons with their darling Longorn (which is, rather pointedly, not available for purchase yet). Now that UNIX is offering two superb alternatives, one of them properly FOSS (and, more importantly, runnable on x86), Windows' days should surely be numbered...?

iqu :)

GCC is capable of optimizing divides by constant integers, but nothing else. Also, AltiVec has a very fast float-to-int method which we used in the LAME Altivec patch (which I still haven't submitted because of changes in the upstream; I have some binaries if asked). There's a great thread about optimizing here at Ars Technica. Also, Shark is great.

A bit of a plug here, but still a good resource nonetheless...

Ars Bachelor Chow!: It's a 50+ page book chock full of great (and a few not-so-great) recipes for geek bachelors. Hey, it's probably better than the bachelor chow advertised on Futurama... ^_^

So, it may not be the Google of Cooking, But it still has great recipies.

Ars Technica

The Ars Technica batchelor chow cookbook.

The new GITS:SAC game just released in Japan could be of interest perhaps? thread on ArsTechnica. Supposedly playes much like Oni, but with Tachikomas and multiplayer. It's for PS2 BTW.

Literally, people were claiming that KMart would go bankrupt for about 20 years ... and then they finally did! So much for that non-argument :P

Furthermore, that's 100% knee-jerk defensiveness -- especially because I made it clear that I don't think Apple is dying at all.

Most of the Unix Geeks I know have always used Apple equipment on and off over the years, so I don't see the massive market growth you are predicting from Apple capturing this oh-so-not-crucial .01% of the market (that doesn't really buy shrinkwrapped software anyway).

There's an interesting argument regarding the future of the Mac platform here.

Note that I fall purely on the pro-Mac side -- I would love to see Apple return the Mac platform to a competitive position in the general purpose personal computing market. Just that over the last 5 years Apple's shown 0 interest in doing so and instead has time and time again gone back to soak their installed base. Sorry, that I'm not excited as the rest of you about Apple making big revenue selling iPods, RIAA Tunes, and other consumer do-dads, but it's hardly trolling.

John Siracusa is that you?

I don't have a lot of suggestions for you (maybe K5 and Ars Technica), but finding sights similar to those in your "net-sphere" is easy. Do a Google query for them, using a form like "related:slashdot.org" (replacing with your favorite site names). Some of the results may be what you're looking for, some may not, but they'll get you started, at least.

The relation of Lisa and Mac development to Xerox boils down to two (count them 2) trips that Apple engineers made to Xerox PARC in 1979 for Smalltalk technology demonstration (a common practice) by Xerox after Apple signed an agreement with them that allowed Xerox to buy $1 million worth of Apple stock at throw-away pre-IPO price (their investment was up almost 1800% just a year later on IPO). The two visits by Apple including nothing more than a technology demonstration. There was no code provided or stolen. Yes Apple was inspired by Xerox's Alto, you will never find any Apple employee who does not give Xerox due credit for their technology and vision. However having said that both Lisa and the Mac were far cry the technology demo that Smalltalk was. Xerox's Smalltalk did not have a file finder, drag and drop file manipulation, file types, imaging and windowing model, clipboard, pull-down menus, self redrawing windows, control panels, and a zillion other things that made the commerically viable operating System that embodied the Lisa and the Mac.

The Xerox PARC director at the time had this to say, "Just like the Russians and the A-bomb, they developed it very quickly once they knew it was doable." Apple independently developed the first GUI operating system and also invented most (some by Xerox) of the underlying concept and technologies. Yes they were inspired by the Xerox's Smalltalk but an inspiration does take away from all the hard-work and brilliance of the Apple Engineers who poured their hearts and souls into Lisa and the Mac. If you have doubts about that just ask the father of modern physics.

Now in contrast Microsoft being a future developer for the Lisa/Mac had the actual source code from Apple which they blatantly STOLE. You should read up on a subject before posting sweet nothings. These might help:

Apple and Xerox

Apple history Books

Microsoft's founding principle, "Steal first, ask questions later". There are probably thousands of examples of this principle at work, but here is a sampler or two:

The real origins of ClearType

Virtual Desktop manager "invented" at Microsoft

Apple is like a guy who, saw someone else who built a wooden raft for the first time but never actually tried it on water, and said, hey this is a good idea let me build my own version. Only they built a proper boat with a sail that could and for the first time did carry many people on water. Microsoft is like another guy who saw Apple's Sail boat and said hey this is a good idea, let me steal one. They stole it repainted it and sold it as their own.

BIG DIFFERENCE!

Make sure you don't boot or shut down an unpatched system while connected to the 'net if you are using ICF, it does not work during startup or shutdown. That will apparently be fixed in SP2.

Meanwhile the PSP has two processors based on an R4000 core, each at 333MHz. Compare this to a Sony Playstation with a single R3000 at 33.8688 MHz (30 MIPS, bus bandwidth 132 Mb/sec), Sega Saturn with two Hitachi SuperH (SH-2) at 28.6 MHz (each 25 MIPS Plus 22.6MHz Yamaha FH1 24-bit DSP and a couple of video processor chips, and just for giggles, Playstation 2 which is harder to quantify from specifications but its Emotion Engine based around a 2-issue 128 bit MIPS design with 3.2GB/sec bandwidth to main memory, not to mention the couple of vector coprocessors more powerful (though less general-purpose) than the core. Oh yeah, and the same R3000 core (or something programatically the same) as the Playstation is tucked in there too. But, I digress. The PSP is slightly like a baby PS2. It has only one vector unit, but it still has one. The clock rate is basically the same (slightly higher, but not really worth mentioning) as a PS2. It should be a powerhouse of a system. My only regret is that it will probably be locked down pretty tight and I hate to support that kind of thing.

Nonetheless the PSP is a kind of revolution that puts it dramatically beyond today's handhelds, as today's handhelds are ahead of, well, some of the old handhelds. (You would have a hard time convincing me that a GBA is really that much better than a Turbo Express, for example, or even a Lynx, except for form factor.) Of course GBA is not a speed demon, but it wasn't trying to be. However the fact that the GBA SP is so wildly successful in spite of its lack of power does not show that there is not a market for a more expensive device that does it all. After all, Gamecube and Playstation 2 are both still doing quite well.

Does anyone else think it was poor judgement to have a preteen boy rapping along to a song with these lyrics:

Shit, christina aguilera better switch me chairs
So i can sit next to carson daly and fred durst
And hear 'em argue over who she gave head to first
You little bitch, put me on blast on mtv

I hope this doesn't start anything unpleasant

I don't see why it would. Not sure what you are worried about here. (I hope you aren't worried that I will be unpleasant; I try not to be.)

Modern CPUs from AMD and Intel do this kind of translation, but they're the only ones that do it as far as I know.

How many companies make x86 chips anyway? They are the big two. And Transmeta does their own weird thing. The only other chip I can think of is the Via C3 family, which as I understand it is sort of a 486 on steroids... in other words, it doesn't do the decoding to micro-ops thing.

Meanwhile, on the PowerPC side, they do the micro-ops thing too (but they call them "iops").

If this translation layer isn't holding them back, why does Intel need such an enormous R&D budget to produce chips that, while fast, are not so great when it comes to performance/power?

I said the pain of a wacky instruction set is isolated to the translation layer, and the wacky instruction set doesn't hold back the rest of the chip. I never said there is no pain in a wacky instruction set, or that designing the fastest CPU chips in the world is easy.

As for performance/power, Intel made a deliberate decision to make the fastest clock speeds they could, and that's what they did. AMD focused on performance per clock cycle and wound up with better performance/power (not surprising). I would guess that Intel figured they can keep their power dissipation from getting too insane with die shrinks.

As for why Intel spends so much to design their chips, don't ask me. They would probably be spending a lot even if they were making PowerPC-family chips instead of Pentium 4 chips.

P.S. Intel may not care about performance/power, but I do. I want a CPU that won't dissipate too much heat, because I want a quiet computer. I'm eagerly looking forward to 90 nanometer SOI Athlon64 chips.

steveha

Rhapsody, however, was an abortive effort as mentioned here (descriped as a "hiccup" on the road to OS X). Some might argue that Rhapsody is/isn't a direct anscestor of OS X; again a pointless argument. Pink and Copland were certainly dead ends and the status if Rhapsody is irrelevant to my earier point.

But whatever; I've already spent more time than foul mouthed AC rates.

Some people don't have time to rewrite a nicely worded article, so they post a link to someone else's. I think your also forgetting about sites that provide their own content like Ars Technica and HardOCP which were smallfry's a few years back. The number of "E-zines" and blog sites are continually growing, so people will less and less quote from the Times, The New Scientist or the BBC because they'll find the news elsewhere. And more so if the big fish want to inconvenience their readership with registration.

And then you'll have content that noone has written something up for, so that gives the reader his/her chance to be famous for a day. Look!!! I just found a nice layout of a Terra V rocket. Some people might find this interesting, regardless of the credibility of me or the site. Or take someone's writeup of RoboSapien, or someone else plugging his own webblog because he received a check from the RIAA, or someone plugging their personal coverage of the CodeCon conference, etc. This notion of credibility-by-link should have been shattered as soon as you saw this troll get posted.

Your statement is analagous to the trustworthiness of proprietary code because the corporation is credible or well known. Which means on the flipside that because many open-source coders aren't "credible", then the code should not be trustworthy. Both are bad logic, and sometimes slashdot mods are like that after going through a mind-numbing XY,000+ submissions per day, but it doesnt hold true enough to call it law.

a problem.

Where you want to go wireless is in the FM band. Something like this.

Plug it into the sound-out of a cabled media computer. Put the computer wherever you have the space (closet, basement, attic) and keep your stereo clutter-free. Serve the jukebox control interface via http on the local wireless network and control it via laptop, pda, whatever. Tune the FM transmitter to a free space low on the dial (89.3 or so), and listen to your streams on any stereo in/around/outside the house. So long as you aren't stepping on any other nearby frequencies, and the reception drops off enough a few houses away, you shouldn't have much worry about complaints.

apparently they are compatable: http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1077051210.html

The The Inquirer has some pretty decent (if biased) coverage of this.

Essentially there will be a single OS for the two (Intel and AMD). Unspoken is that Intel's implementation is AMD64 ISA, but a different technical architecture. If it's compatible, who cares. Secondary confirmation via Ars Technica

...where are the 128bit CPUs?
In the playstation 2

Ok, I was wrong. The 6 and 9th circuit court ruled in 2000 that source code is free speech.

Ars Technica has a great article about how code could be classified as speech (it was written before the ruling was passed).

Either way, patents, trade secrets, and copyrights encoumber the MS source code.

More food for thought

It's now all over online news..

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/02/12/HNmicrol eak_1.html
http://www.ebcvg.com/news.php?id=1903
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1076628412.html
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3 312451
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/business/79 41292.htm
http://www.wvec.com/sharedcontent/nationworld/nati onprint/021204cccanatmicrosoft.149f2b31.html
http://www.komotv.com/stories/29778.htm
http://www.cryptonomicon.net/modules.php?name=News &file=article&sid=671
http://www.dvhardware.net/article2423.html
http://searchwin2000.techtarget.com/originalConten t/0,289142,sid1_gci950346,00.html

the reason MS issues a 'lite' version of the flagship OS is to curb piracy.

this has been discuss in arstechnica about what is MS is up to really. basicly MS trying to match the pirates price to get more money in their banks.

anyway, some people would like to start with a blank sheet and add the stuff they need later (GUI, internet browser, Email client , etc)...

Ars Technica has a little more on the story. Here's the text:

Microsoft is reportedly developing a "light" version of Windows XP to be aimed at developing markets. This is the word from the Bangkok Post (irritatingly long registration required), which is reporting that the origin of the project is Thailand's own program to aggressively seed homes with computers.

Thailand's People's PC project, initiated last year by the ICT Ministry, has been the genesis of a new operating system from Microsoft Corporation that is now under development, according to Microsoft Thailand Managing Director Andrew McBean. The new OS, as yet unnamed, but a new "light" addition to the Windows XP "family", will be released in limited, selected markets later this year and will offer reduced functionality when compared with Windows XP Professional and Home editions, he said.

Microsoft has to date been very protective of its pricing model, which aims at more or less parallel prices for its products across the globe. When People's PC was originally announced, Microsoft said that it would offer XP Home and Office Basic at an extremely reduced price, signaling the start of the company's willingness to adjust pricing on national levels. Now, however, it looks like the company is going to develop yet another consumer OS version. Why would the company spend additional resources developing an even-less functional version of Windows XP Home when they could simply just sell Windows XP Home at a reduced rate? The most likely explanation is piracy. In developing countries, piracy is a major problem, and the Redmond Giant is likely trying to avoid mass distribution of its fully functional OS by seeding the populace with a less functional, and probably less attractive OS.

Mr McBean added that the first release would essentially be XP Home edition with some reduced functionality, although for future versions there would be a chance of additional or incremental development and innovation. But he also pointed out that because of the complexity of an operating system, reducing functionality was not a simple process and every modification would have to be thoroughly tested.

A release date is not known for certain, but Microsoft Thailand is saying that this will happen, and not before SP2 for XP is released. It also remains unclear just where this product will be available. It's highly unlikely that it will every be available in the West. Rather, this project seems squarely aimed at recent efforts in Asia to build Linux-based solutions for emerging markets.

Agreed. Ars always puts a lot of time and effort into their reviews, and that always makes them better. Take the recent review of OmniWeb 5 beta. It's a really good in-depth review -- and of a beta product!

A review should add new information or insights which are not obvious or stated in the programm's own announcement.

Take a look at the reviews at ArsTechnica, for instance at this one about Mac OS. The multipage review contains background information about the inner workings, some words about usability, differences with previous versions, information about performance, balanced and substantiated views about what should be improved and an informative conclusion. That is what I think should be considered a review.

You think that cpu's are really doing exactly what you tell them to do when you program them in asm? What about hyperthreading and pipelines and pre-fetching and all the other insane stuff modern CPUs do? I hate to break it too you but even ASM is now a higher level language.

http://arstechnica.com/paedia/c/cpu/part-2/cpu2-1. html

There's more there then just that one article, this one just seemed like a good place to start people at.

The extra registers are all integer registers; the SIMD instructions and register count do not change between 32 and 64 bit modes.

According to here at least.

The x87 stack is unchanged, but you shouldn't be using that, anyway. The SSE/SSE2 instruction set is better. Yay, flat register file.

I wouldn't be suprised if Intel tried to 'lock out' Linux, too.

Presumably you mean locking out with something other than EFI, given that Linux supports EFI, as this ArsTechnical article notes ("Nevertheless, one thing is certain: Linux already runs on EFI boxen, so this isn't some evil ploy to kick Linux off of the PC.")

I'm not sure either, but here's a link that talks about the same thing.

Incidentally, there's no gpedit.msc in the Windows XP home edition.

I suspect the future of emulation/virtualization environments will resemble dynamic translation projects like HP's Dynamo as described here. Unfortunately, HP's papers on this project are from 1999, so there doesn't appear to be much activity lately. Anyway, combining something like Dynamo with a virtualization environment would allow non-native applications to run without the excessive overhead of Bochs. In theory.

The gentlemen at Ars have a nice comment on how the industry is feeling about deployment of WiMAX as a replacement for existing broadband.

Make that 3. Be sure to check out the case & cooling forum if you're into the OC.

Also note that the DVD writer software and everything _is_ included in the price.

So is the Macs.

A more exact comparison would be a 2 GHz Celeron machine with el-cheapo SDR RAM. That's still faster than the G4, but not as overkill as the P4.

Completely false. The G4 in the iMac is a far superior chip to the Celeron, and is on par with the P4 in some respects and much better in others,/a>

Plus, the iMac has the same type of RAM, its not SDRAM. You should read more closely.

Tax software also comes with the Mac, and there is no difference between the Pro and Home computer's OS - its identical because Mac OS X is completely scalable for anyone's individual needs.

Plus the Mac has 2 FireWire, 3 USB 2.0, TV out as well, MUCH smaller footprint, is silent, higher-quality audio input and output, PLENTY of games available (I already linked to a crapload of games in another post, so I won't bother here - you're obvioulsy stuck in 1996), iLife software built in (Please - tell me what's equiavalent to GarageBand for PCs - and is free with any new PC).

And when did I say that all PCs were cheaper? Never. I was more taking a shot at Element for their highly overpriced PCs that should be much cheaper because they DON'T pay the MS Tax.

Also note that it involves _no_ assembling stuff on your own.

This should go without saying.

Macs also come WITHOUT spyware, which I would consider worth a ton of money. And without the ability to get the horrendous viruses that plague Windows. See, even though the hardware may seem overpriced to you, the SOFTWARE is what REALLY differentiates Macs, you PC people can't seem to realize that. My time is worth so much more than having to spend it reinstalling Windows every 6 months due to the fact its performance degrades exponentially over time without any sort of user intervention, having to religiously update Virus definitions, fret over e-mail attachments, rebuilding the whole system every time a virus takes it down.

Again, it seems you saved a few bucks, but your personal time is absolutely worthless. Sorry to hear that.

Administration, high-end troubleshooting, and system architecture for all things New Technology (Win2K, XP, and .NET). If you don't know what "HAL" stands for, you should probably post in MSOS&SC for the best results.

Another vote for Ars here. There is, as mentioned above, the NT, 2K and XP Technical Mojo forum, which concentrates on systems management and the like, and there's the MSOS&SC (aka the Microsoft OS and Software Colloquium), which covers more application and home PC-related issues.

There are plenty more forums to have a look at if you go the Ars OpenForum Homepage.

Another vote for Ars here. There is, as mentioned above, the NT, 2K and XP Technical Mojo forum, which concentrates on systems management and the like, and there's the MSOS&SC (aka the Microsoft OS and Software Colloquium), which covers more application and home PC-related issues.

There are plenty more forums to have a look at if you go the Ars OpenForum Homepage.

Ars Technica, known for alot of good articles often referred to on slashdot and other sites, have a very active forum which includes NT, Win2K and XP Technical Mojo. From my limited knowledge it seems like the place you are looking for.