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Important feature...PowerPC 970 is its 900MHz DDR frontside bus. This bus physically runs at 450MHz, but it's double-pumped.

The PPC970 was designed to run multi-processor.

The PowerPC 970, on the other hand, is designed from the ground up with multiprocessing in mind--IBM intends to see the 970 used in 4-way or higher desktop SMP systems.

See here

All this seems very nice.
Lets get it out now.

The thing to remember is that the PowerPC is originally based on the IBM POWER chip -- a native 64 bit chip that can do 32 bit programs as well.

IBM tends to undersestimate and overproduce. They arent just making it for Apple, they will put the 970 in their own Linux blade servers and NetVista boxes for financial stuff. Also, the 970 is a variant of the POWER4 dualcore Risc monster processor in IBMs big server iron.

IBM doesnt screw around. Motorola is becoming irrelevant.

Heres another key reason why this chip might actually be as fast as MacBidoulle claims:

The system bus runs at 900 MHZ. The current mac system bus runs at 167 mhz. Think about it. A 900 lane highway vs a 167 lane highway? This chip will have monstrous bandwith. And the power consumption will be reduced a big deal as well..

Look at this official IBM presentation from last october

and this ArsTechnica review as well

The 970, being a 64 bit chip, allows more memory than 4GB, the current 32 bit limit. Servers need more than 4 gigs, especially IBM's monster iron.

10 years ago my Mac used 32 MB's of ram. Now its up to 768 megs. Sooner or later, it will go past 4 gigs. Better to get this transition done now than later.

The current PPCs (The g4s) are wide, but shallow. The much faster Pentium 4s are deep but narrow.

This is a guess, and if any cpu engineer wants to help out, id appreciate it.
The P4 stuffs all execution data down the pipe as fast as it can. If there's a break in the chain of execution instructions, the whole chain must be shoved down the pipe again.

The G4 spreads it all out over multiple pipes, but the pipes arent deep. The main work is figuring out which pipe is free to shove stuff into.

This is a gross simplification, so please bear with me.

The 970, on the other hand, has more pipes than the G4 and the Pentium 4, but the pipes are deeper than the P4. So it can stuff a whole ton of stuff down and be very efficient. Wide and deep. Theres a bit of a tradeoff, but the chip is just engineered much better.

I read the Ars technica article a long time ago and the IBM PDF file a while ago too. I would not be suprised if the data on Mac Bidoulle is accurate.

I am waiting for apple to stuff a 970 into a PowerBook, preferably the 15 inch one. I am waiting on that for my next computer. I do not want the G4. The Mobo on the G4 just doesnt have a wide enough bus to suck up massive amounts of data. The 970 mobo will.

The 970 mobo will be 900 Mhz. Intel has the 533 mhz mobo and soon will have the 800 mhz mobo.

Motorola and Apple were fighting about how to make the data path on the mobo. Motorola had the chips, they were just being strange. Motorola's problems stunted apple with the g4 for a long time. Apple had to overclock the g4 so much that the g4 tower got obscenely loud.

I welcome the 970 and want it in a Mac ASAP. I think that WWCD was delayed to show the developers the chip and a version of Panther that will have it. Bring it on! Lets see IBM take on Intel in the chipmaking business.

My bets are on IBM

All this seems very nice.
Lets get it out now.

The thing to remember is that the PowerPC is originally based on the IBM POWER chip -- a native 64 bit chip that can do 32 bit programs as well.

IBM tends to undersestimate and overproduce. They arent just making it for Apple, they will put the 970 in their own Linux blade servers and NetVista boxes for financial stuff. Also, the 970 is a variant of the POWER4 dualcore Risc monster processor in IBMs big server iron.

IBM doesnt screw around. Motorola is becoming irrelevant.

Heres another key reason why this chip might actually be as fast as MacBidoulle claims:

The system bus runs at 900 MHZ. The current mac system bus runs at 167 mhz. Think about it. A 900 lane highway vs a 167 lane highway? This chip will have monstrous bandwith. And the power consumption will be reduced a big deal as well..

Look at this official IBM presentation from last october

and this ArsTechnica review as well

The 970, being a 64 bit chip, allows more memory than 4GB, the current 32 bit limit. Servers need more than 4 gigs, especially IBM's monster iron.

10 years ago my Mac used 32 MB's of ram. Now its up to 768 megs. Sooner or later, it will go past 4 gigs. Better to get this transition done now than later.

The current PPCs (The g4s) are wide, but shallow. The much faster Pentium 4s are deep but narrow.

This is a guess, and if any cpu engineer wants to help out, id appreciate it.
The P4 stuffs all execution data down the pipe as fast as it can. If there's a break in the chain of execution instructions, the whole chain must be shoved down the pipe again.

The G4 spreads it all out over multiple pipes, but the pipes arent deep. The main work is figuring out which pipe is free to shove stuff into.

This is a gross simplification, so please bear with me.

The 970, on the other hand, has more pipes than the G4 and the Pentium 4, but the pipes are deeper than the P4. So it can stuff a whole ton of stuff down and be very efficient. Wide and deep. Theres a bit of a tradeoff, but the chip is just engineered much better.

I read the Ars technica article a long time ago and the IBM PDF file a while ago too. I would not be suprised if the data on Mac Bidoulle is accurate.

I am waiting for apple to stuff a 970 into a PowerBook, preferably the 15 inch one. I am waiting on that for my next computer. I do not want the G4. The Mobo on the G4 just doesnt have a wide enough bus to suck up massive amounts of data. The 970 mobo will.

The 970 mobo will be 900 Mhz. Intel has the 533 mhz mobo and soon will have the 800 mhz mobo.

Motorola and Apple were fighting about how to make the data path on the mobo. Motorola had the chips, they were just being strange. Motorola's problems stunted apple with the g4 for a long time. Apple had to overclock the g4 so much that the g4 tower got obscenely loud.

I welcome the 970 and want it in a Mac ASAP. I think that WWCD was delayed to show the developers the chip and a version of Panther that will have it. Bring it on! Lets see IBM take on Intel in the chipmaking business.

My bets are on IBM

When the PowerPC 970 first ships in the second half of 2003, it should clock in at around 1.8GHz on a 0.13 micron, 8-layer SOI process with copper interconnects. [...] The estimated SPEC INT and SPEC FP numbers (937 and 1051) would allow the 970 to clearly dominate the desktop scene were it released tomorrow, but by the time we see this chip in a shipping system the performance landscape will look significantly different in both the 32-bit (P4 at 4GHz+ with SMT) and 64-bit (AMD's Hammer) desktop markets. I won't try to predict exactly how it will stack up to the x86 and x86-64 offerings in late 2003/early 2004, but when it finally ships the 970 certainly won't spanking anything from Intel or AMD in the SPEC benchmarks. It should, however, enable Apple to avoid the kind of overpriced embarrassment (from a hardware perspective, at least) that is their current "pro" desktop line. And in fact a dual- or quad-970 system could potentially compare quite nicely in terms of price/performance to a single-processor Prescott or Hammer machine.

No, that's just not true. "64 bit" these days only tells you something about the size of a pointer but not much more.

It is very unlikely that on a well-defined 64 bit processors, half the processor remains idle when you use 32 bit operations.

From my understanding, that's exactly what happens. x86-64 simply extends the existing x86 standard of allowing each register to hold smaller values, but only a certain number of them by giving each portion of the register its own name. You don't gain access to 4 times the registers in 32-bit mode, unfortunately. In fact, you only have access to the standard 8 registers because 32-bit x86 only knows about 8 registers. But not even by running 32-bit data in 64-bit mode do you gain the ability to store two 32-bit values in each GPR.

Check out this chart from the article I linked in my earlier post.

The Opteron has 64-bit general purpose registers, so any code that uses 64-bit integer operations should benefit a lot - using 2 32-bit registers, to do a 64-bit integer multiply takes 4 32-bit multiplies, and a 64-bit add requires 2 32-bit adds. To show this we have a custom micro-benchmark just on the Opteron which performs a "dot product" operation on two arrays of integers, which requires a lot of multiplies, with 32-bit and 64-bit integer versions and x86-32 and x86-64 code, using GCC.

[chart omitted]

The x86-64 version is 33% faster for 32-bit integers, probably due to greater loop-unrolling. With 64-bit operations, the x86-64 version is a massive 354% (4.54x) faster, with a combination benefit of more registers and 64-bit processing. Notice also that the 64-bit x86-64 result is the same as the 32-bit x86-32 result - with double the complexity of the data, performance is the same.

So that's what I was talking about, it simply takes more time, more iterations, for a 32-bit processor (one that operates on 32-bit data) to virtually process a 64-bit variable.

--Shon

No, that's just not true. "64 bit" these days only tells you something about the size of a pointer but not much more.

It is very unlikely that on a well-defined 64 bit processors, half the processor remains idle when you use 32 bit operations.

From my understanding, that's exactly what happens. x86-64 simply extends the existing x86 standard of allowing each register to hold smaller values, but only a certain number of them by giving each portion of the register its own name. You don't gain access to 4 times the registers in 32-bit mode, unfortunately. In fact, you only have access to the standard 8 registers because 32-bit x86 only knows about 8 registers. But not even by running 32-bit data in 64-bit mode do you gain the ability to store two 32-bit values in each GPR.

Check out this chart from the article I linked in my earlier post.

The Opteron has 64-bit general purpose registers, so any code that uses 64-bit integer operations should benefit a lot - using 2 32-bit registers, to do a 64-bit integer multiply takes 4 32-bit multiplies, and a 64-bit add requires 2 32-bit adds. To show this we have a custom micro-benchmark just on the Opteron which performs a "dot product" operation on two arrays of integers, which requires a lot of multiplies, with 32-bit and 64-bit integer versions and x86-32 and x86-64 code, using GCC.

[chart omitted]

The x86-64 version is 33% faster for 32-bit integers, probably due to greater loop-unrolling. With 64-bit operations, the x86-64 version is a massive 354% (4.54x) faster, with a combination benefit of more registers and 64-bit processing. Notice also that the 64-bit x86-64 result is the same as the 32-bit x86-32 result - with double the complexity of the data, performance is the same.

So that's what I was talking about, it simply takes more time, more iterations, for a 32-bit processor (one that operates on 32-bit data) to virtually process a 64-bit variable.

--Shon

Actually, the biggest speed boost from operating in 64-bit mode comes from the fact that Opteron/Athlon 64 has twice the general purpose and SSE registers, and also is the first AMD processor to support SSE2. The low register count has always been a stumbling point for x86 processors compared to other technologies like the PowerPC, which have many, many more. This is the fastest and most vital memory to any processor so adding more was an awesome decision, but of course they only work in 64-bit mode.

The fact that it's 64-bit will only help you (double the speed, actually) if you're operating on 64-bit variables, which don't come up in general software very much, but are very good for scientific research, simulations, etc.

And yes, you can directly address more than 4GB of memory... in fact each processor has it's own memory controller built in which also adds to the speed a bit and means that in multi-processor systems each processor gets its own bank of DIMMs.

There's a wonderful article over at ArsTechnica which does a great job of explaining all the benefits of the x86-64 technology here.

--Shon

...and yet you're more than happy to shell out 10 bucks a month for XM radio, which has a far more restrictive IP policy than Apple's service does and has a 128 kbps signal stream.

Yes, I understand that the one is a radio service and the other is a download service, but it would seem that, on principle, you'd rather just listen to (perfectly legal!) free AM/FM radio or CDs than shell out money for a IP-restrictive, 128 kbps stream service...

a few other good sites include: games.ars, gamegirl advance, games.design.art.culture, got game?, how they got game, ludology, or for regular gaming news, the friendlier ones are bluesnews, gamespy, games are fun and shacknews. where do you go?

Please read "Inside the IBM PowerPC 970" by "ARS Technica". The PowerPC 970 clocks at 1.8 gigahertz.

dna computing quantum computing

As for me, next week the birthday elf is gonna bring me a Shuttle SN41G2 and a Athlon 2800+ Barton core CPU -- or I'm going to hunt that little shit down and kick his ass. Santa didn't bring me a tiny PC and it nearly cost him his life. He got to walk away with only having lost two reindeer. The elf ain't going to be so lucky. So pony up with the SFF computer or watch your back...

-B

Inside the IBM PowerPC 970 Part I: Design Philosophy and Front End

Ars Technica Newsdesk A Brief Look at the PowerPC 970

Ars Technica - CPU and Chipset Guide

Added a MS benchmark I found interesting vis a vis Opteron

Opteron the curent King

Inside the IBM PowerPC 970 Part I: Design Philosophy and Front End

Ars Technica Newsdesk A Brief Look at the PowerPC 970

Ars Technica - CPU and Chipset Guide

Added a MS benchmark I found interesting vis a vis Opteron

Opteron the curent King

Inside the IBM PowerPC 970 Part I: Design Philosophy and Front End

Ars Technica Newsdesk A Brief Look at the PowerPC 970

Ars Technica - CPU and Chipset Guide

Added a MS benchmark I found interesting vis a vis Opteron

Opteron the curent King

if you're looking for 970 info, Hannibal has a decent article over at Ars Technica, and a followup is on the way. also there's a +1 thread of deth in Ars' forums.

See here.

Does anyone else thing that piles could be used to implement BeOS-style live searches?

Yes, I know that, but not everyone does. I shouldn't have to do these steps on every new Mac. And when I go to someone else's computer, I shouldn't have to cringe at the dumb, wasteful setup.

Default settings should be good settings. Instead, by doing a lot of work, I can change a computer to be a non-standard interface that is merely poor instead of horrible. But then, I won't be able to show it to other people as an honest example of what they'll get from a Mac.

I wish I could just install a replacement Dock program. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't permit that.

This article on discusses many interesting UI possibilities, but the one I'm most interested in is the 'live search folder' concept, where you declare a 'folder' to contain the continually-updated contents of a search.

iTunes has this (Smart Playlists), and I'm quite smitten by it, and I'd like to see something similar rolled out across the UI (and, possibly, done as a framework for other apps to hook into).

Combined with 'piles', you could have your smart pile of apps, pile of word docs, pile of porn divx, etc.. Makes some sense to me..

I want to remind people to check out this article as well, and keep this in mind as you hear about possible new features.

The Antec SX1040BII definitely has a filter for the intake fans, as indicated in the link and because I have one. It doesn't meet your requirements because it has 4x80mm fans, not 2x120mm. The one I got has a good Antec Truepower 400W power supply. It was $80 at CompUSA (I needed a case fast).

I would suspect that since there is not explicit mention of a filter on Antec's page for the SLK3700AMB that it doesn't have a filter.

You may want to head over to the Case and Cooling Fetish forum at Ars Technica and search for filter-related posts. Some members there know their stuff. The two tips I gleaned were:

• Have positive pressure in the case, i.e., more suck than blow. Otherwise, air will be sucked in through the cracks in the case, not the filters.
• Used fabric softener sheets make good filters. Others in the forum have found cheap filter material at Home Depot.

According to a test on another site there are some issues with performance of the QCast program. Specifically it's unable to play 640x480 videostreams without dropping frames. It's not even able to play SVCD (480x480) without dropping frames. MPEG4 works at 576x432 for 25FPS but not for 30FPS streams.

Does XBM suffer from these same problems? I'd assume not as it's based on "standard" PC hardware and as such a lot easier to optimise for (you'd probably just use standard x86 codecs). (I know that the above is not an issue with the PS2 hardware, so fanboi'isms are not needed.

According to a test on another site there are some issues with performance of the QCast program. Specifically it's unable to play 640x480 videostreams without dropping frames. It's not even able to play SVCD (480x480) without dropping frames. MPEG4 works at 576x432 for 25FPS but not for 30FPS streams.

Does XBM suffer from these same problems? I'd assume not as it's based on "standard" PC hardware and as such a lot easier to optimise for (you'd probably just use standard x86 codecs). (I know that the above is not an issue with the PS2 hardware, so fanboi'isms are not needed.

Take a looksee at the IBM 970. Hopefully this will be Apple's next CPU - fast, low power consumption, able to leap small buildings in a single bound...

I don't think you're giving your mother enough credit. If she's not afraid of buzzwords, then she has every right to know what she's getting into.

Her only problem was that she thought she understood more than she actually did. IMHO, rather than grumble at her ignorance, which you deem unnecessary, you ought to be pointing her to websites like Wikipedia, Ars Technica and Everything2, so she can drink from the wells of knowledge. That'll let her decide whether she wants to be "in the know," or whether she wants something that "just works."

As incentive, think about this: Wouldn't you rather she be able to fix her own computer? If she's interested in learning, she will.

As someone who writes for a living, it's nice to be recognized as the source of the story, rather than the yahoo who figured out how to link to a story and attach some comments to it (no offense, Slashdot). Ars is a fine website in its own right, but should only be credited when it writes something of value to the community.

Put another way, that's why you comment your code, right? To point to it and say "I wrote that"?

How about a memory controller right in the CPU?

And a HyperTransport link with 6.4 gigabytes per second of bandwidth (for AGP, PCI, Gigabit, SATA, etc.)

The 970 won't be the only 64-bit consumer chip on the market this October.

There's a really interesting article over at Ars Technica that discusses performance issues and what AMD does about them in their x86-64 architecture.

There's a really interesting article over at Ars Technica that discusses performance issues and what AMD does about them in their x86-64 architecture.

On what basis do you advance that? If you mean 99.9% of consumers do not use their CPU's at 100% all the time then I'll agree. However, most consumers are still not happy with the speed of their computer. The TV still starts working faster, the washing machine just goes, the PC does not. Stick a CPU meter on your desktop and work away for an hour. The day it never hits 100% then we've reached computing nirvana.

The CPU is used to it's fullest level by everyone. Being able to cope with the spike in demand is why we need the fast CPU's.

Also, everyone should bear in mind that there is no inherant speed increase involved with 64-bit computing. Read this for a good explaination of 64-bit computing.

PPC vs x86 IA has nothing to do with VLIW.

VLIW improves performance when the instruction stream can be split up over multiple processing units.

Exhibit A:

LOAD A
LOAD B
LOAD C
LOAD D
ADD A, B
MOD A, C
ADD A, D
STORE A

LOAD E
LOAD F
LOAD G
LOAD H
ADD E, F
MOD E, G
ADD E, H
STORE E

Exhibit B:

LOAD A
LOAD B
LOAD C
LOAD D
LOAD E
LOAD F
LOAD G
LOAD H
ADD A, B
ADD E, F
MOD A, C
MOD E, G
ADD A, D
ADD E, H
STORE A
STORE E

Exhibit A is more difficult to make parallel than exhibit B, since the potentially parallelable code is separated, and, from a CPU's short-range perspective, each operation in exhibit A depends on the previous, which makes executing the instructions in parallel impossible.

In exhibit B, instructions independent of each other are right next to each other. This makes it easy for the CPU to separate the code into parallel units.

I'm no expert, I just read a lot of Ars Technica.

(As an aside...they have an article that may change your views about x86(ala P4) vs PPC(ala G4e). It doesn't take one side or another, it just points out the different approaches used by each architecture.)

PPC vs x86 IA has nothing to do with VLIW.

VLIW improves performance when the instruction stream can be split up over multiple processing units.

Exhibit A:

LOAD A
LOAD B
LOAD C
LOAD D
ADD A, B
MOD A, C
ADD A, D
STORE A

LOAD E
LOAD F
LOAD G
LOAD H
ADD E, F
MOD E, G
ADD E, H
STORE E

Exhibit B:

LOAD A
LOAD B
LOAD C
LOAD D
LOAD E
LOAD F
LOAD G
LOAD H
ADD A, B
ADD E, F
MOD A, C
MOD E, G
ADD A, D
ADD E, H
STORE A
STORE E

Exhibit A is more difficult to make parallel than exhibit B, since the potentially parallelable code is separated, and, from a CPU's short-range perspective, each operation in exhibit A depends on the previous, which makes executing the instructions in parallel impossible.

In exhibit B, instructions independent of each other are right next to each other. This makes it easy for the CPU to separate the code into parallel units.

I'm no expert, I just read a lot of Ars Technica.

(As an aside...they have an article that may change your views about x86(ala P4) vs PPC(ala G4e). It doesn't take one side or another, it just points out the different approaches used by each architecture.)

The details article mentions that a lot of the load the hardware normally does is being shunted back on the software. According to ArsTechnia, that's where it should be. (1, 2)

My question is, will compilers be able to bypass the code morphing software, and directly work with the Transmeta's underlying instruction set?

The details article mentions that a lot of the load the hardware normally does is being shunted back on the software. According to ArsTechnia, that's where it should be. (1, 2)

My question is, will compilers be able to bypass the code morphing software, and directly work with the Transmeta's underlying instruction set?

On page three they actually start talking in detail about the hardware and software involved and the difficulty in using CGI to imitate what are basically paper cut-outs.

Actually, the latency of 1xEV is pretty good. You can get less than 80 ms to the gateway, and 150 ms to "close" sites. Check out http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/02q2/qualcomm/1 xEV-1.html

In essence, batteries use well known chemistry/physics which we know a lot more about than making CPUs. Added to this, there are certain hard limits in this based on the chemistry/physics involved. We're probably already fairly near them using current battery techniques. The advances above may help out, but until they've delivered, we're stuck at current battery technology.

To be honest, another approach should be to make CPUs equivalent to 500MHz PIIs; it's enough for most things (word processing, email) and should be able to be designed at a very low power consumption.

This was actually created in OpenStep (nee NeXTstep) nearly a decade ago. Ars Technica has a great overview of frameworks here:

http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/2q00/macos-x-dp 4/macos-x-dp4-2.html
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/2q00/macos-x-dp 4/macos-x-dp4-3.html

(it's good to see microsoft catching up to last decade's solutions. ;-) sarcasm aside -- about time...)

This was actually created in OpenStep (nee NeXTstep) nearly a decade ago. Ars Technica has a great overview of frameworks here:

http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/2q00/macos-x-dp 4/macos-x-dp4-2.html
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/2q00/macos-x-dp 4/macos-x-dp4-3.html

(it's good to see microsoft catching up to last decade's solutions. ;-) sarcasm aside -- about time...)

They shrunk the size of the gates on the transistors, basically trading reliability for performance. Considering that one of the main selling points of Apples is their longevity and ability to hold value due to it, I can't help but wondering if this is the right move.

Apparently, in order to increase the reliability of the Power4 for the high-end server market, IBM used much thicker gate oxides on the chip's transistors. The trade-off for this decreased failure rate and improved reliability was that the Power4's transistors have slower switching speeds, so even with process shrinks it's harder to push the design to higher clock speeds. Since the 970 is made for the desktop market, there's no need for such measures and therefore the new chip's clock speed will scale much higher than the Power4's. In sum, the 970 is made to be faster, cheaper, and significantly less reliable than the Power4. (Of course, when I say "significantly less reliable than the Power4," you have to understand that this puts the 970's product life and failure rate on par with other mainstream CPUs, since the Power4's increased gate oxide thickness makes it significantly more reliable than most mainstream CPUs.)

ArsTechnica overview

It's a given that Apple enthusiasts will be happy as can be once they fire up a brand new powerfull box, the question is how they will feel when they find out it has the lifespan of a typical Intel or AMD CPU.

Here you can find a more technical details than just press release.

Here is the actual spec about the PowerPC 970.

Ars Technica articles. Apparently, PPC 970 just last year's news. The real news is just the cranked-up speed...

• Machall - best..webcomic...ever (updates: "tues, thurs, sat" but more like when he gets around to it)
• Penny Arcade - a very popular, and very funny gaming comic (M W F)
• Megatokyo - a well drawn comic with a strong story mangaish (M W F)
• Ctrl-Alt-Del - cut and paste, but always funny (Daily)
• Something Positive - kinda cut and paste, but often very funny (daily)
• Real Life - cut and paste, but still a pretty funny gaming comic (mostly daily)
• Calvin and Hobbes - rereleasing C+H online, 10 years delayed...my personal fav (daily)
• Errant Story - a well drawn, story based modernish fantasy comic (updates every other day or so)
• Angst Technology - a game software firm and their antics (updates almost daily)

• (as if you need the link)Slashdot
• CBC News Canadian news from the CBC
• Debian Planet good debian news
• Footnotes GNOME news
• Ars Technica another tech site, often has interesting projects too...
• Anime News Network exactly what the name implies.
• Unconventional Conformity a blog.
• The Weather Network - for my local weather
• 
  
  And well, thats about it. That I check frequently at least. I do like webcomics and strongly suggest that you check out Machall Megatokyo and Errant Story if you don't already though! And then there's also everything2 but its not news and I can't check it daily (or else I would do nothing all day but read!) its too good at just drawing you in. And the anime turnpike to go browsing through Anime fansites...

1) Yahoo! Mail - our motto: "Better than Hotmail!"
2) Slashdot - News for Nerds
3) Washington Post - GF takes the morning paper with her
4) ArsTechnica - always looking for new hardware
5) eBay - not news? it's kinda like my price checking engine...

--trb

...when the modern nerd can hack from low-flying aircraft passing over your house! Ars Technica have done it already - twice, no elss: War Flying, 1 and War Flying, 2

This is just too cool.

...when the modern nerd can hack from low-flying aircraft passing over your house! Ars Technica have done it already - twice, no elss: War Flying, 1 and War Flying, 2

This is just too cool.

A while back a couple of brothers managed to get PhDs in physics by typing up gibberish with buzz words. Anyone else think this happened here? I mean, the article says "sometimes competitors should work together for a while" and Slashdot is overcome with astonishment. You could say the same thing about marathons, biking, politics, office culture, zoology, evolution, basically anything with multiple competitors. Nothing new here, move a long.

Having a CLR, CLS, and class library usable from any language is a really good idea. I'm sick of retaining all of non-overlapping bits of X11, Motif, Qt, MFC, Java, COM, ATL, etc. information in my head or on my shelf - any technology that stands a chance of reducing this pointless complexity in the industry deserves a shot. I strongly recommend trying out the technology before dismissing it. Reviews abound. Oh yeah, you can keep that thousand bucks in your pocket and download the SDK for free here.

Demonizing all of the MS product line because of some ethically questionable business practices by MS marketing is excessive. You do realize that many of their employees are some of the best talent available in their fields (Borland, SGI, etc.), and many didn't even have to be drugged. The company is answering for some of it's transgressions, and I have confidence that the DOJ will keep MS in check.

The plain fact is that MS is developing some very good products. The Dev Studio .NET IDE is one of the best I've worked with (and I've been coding for 15+ years). What's more, the .NET framework is a well-engineered, ECMA standardized, and significant advancement to the world of software interoperability. Undoubtedly, this conclusion is what inspired the Mono and DotGNU projects, and vendors like Borland to make Delphi .NET-aware.

I'd love to see some threads discussing the merits/drawbacks of .NET vs. Open source tools in terms of time and expense to develop projects, and a critique of the final products.

Wait a minute, surely size isn't the only parameter of the memory that matters? Sure, you have to ensure there's no swapping (if you don't your benchmarks are sure to be totally screwed), but apart from that shouldn't memory bandwidth and latency be good enough to ensure that CPU is the dominant factor? Here is a nice article on this.