Slashdot Mirror


Slashback: Grids, Netscape, AMD

Slashback tonight (is this number 200 already?) brings a few updates and amplifications on grid computing and AMD's plans vis a vis Intel. Also, it seems that some of the best features of Mozilla have finally infiltrated the world of Netscape. Read on the for the details.

And Campbell's puts glass marbles in their soup pictures. Roland Piquepaille writes "We saw several grid computing announcements in the last couple of days.Of course, Gateway stole the show. In 'Gateway makes store PCs work overtime,' you can read that 'Gateway's network of 8,000 PCs can deliver 14 teraflops.' This is plain wrong. You all know that this number of 14 teraflops is meaningless. It's just the addition of the peak speed of all the PCs -- never reached anyway on individual PCs. You need specialized software to work efficiently with a grid. And two companies are releasing new products to power grids. Avaki rolled out what it believes is the first Java-based data grid software for enterprise-class IT environments. Kontiki, for its part, on Monday released a grid server that brings its content delivery system into the server realm, whereas previously it was only available for PCs. Check this column for a summary, or this article for more details."

Why aren't those things called 'stick-up' ads, anyhow? Internet Ninja writes "Netscape today released version 7.01 of Netscape based on Mozilla 1.0.2. Back in is popup blocking which they got a lashing for in 7.0 as well as tabs as home pages just like Mozilla. Release notes here and there's a couple articles on Netscape devedge which may be of interest to developers."

And they will continue to have produced my Athlon, too. schnoz writes "And you thought AMD was quitting the PC chip market? Then check out this article on Business Week. Not only are they releasing new chips and plan to continue to do so, they're also still very active research wise, working on new transistor making techniques such as the double gate design as well as metal-rather-than-silicon design. Keep going at it AMD!!"

251 comments

  1. WHOO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    GO AMD!

  2. Opensource Grid Computing by happyloman · · Score: 1

    Where is the opensource grid software?

    1. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by shepard · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's called The Globus Toolkit.

    2. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by 1lus10n · · Score: 3, Informative

      here: SGE

      its a good piece of software at that.
      i have had some experience with it.

      --
      "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
    3. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by Bonker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Grid computing is definied as super-efficient, superfast clustering... provided you use any languaged BESIDES Java to impliment your algorithms

      Yes, yes, imagine a beowulf cluster of these and then imagine the incredible total overhead wasted by hundreds or thousands of instances of any given JVM.

      --
      The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    4. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by ruriruri · · Score: 2, Funny

      I believe what you meant to say was "imagine the incredible total overhead wasted by hundreds or thousands of instances on a reference-implementation-quality JVM."

    5. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by DA-MAN · · Score: 2, Informative

      IBM has a cluster VM just for this occasion.

      --
      Can I get an eye poke?
      Dog House Forum
    6. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by deanj · · Score: 2, Informative
      Well, they have their own license.

      It's also a complete bear to install.

    7. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hot grids!!

      Down my pants!!

    8. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by ElfKnight · · Score: 1

      Grid computing is definied as super-efficient, superfast clustering... provided you use any languaged BESIDES Java to impliment your algorithms

      That's rather missing the point; sure, for the heavy numerical stuff you'll write in C or (gasp) FORTRAN, but for setting up, coordinating and monitoring the distributed processes, Java is ideal - performance doesn't matter much there, and all the networking stuff is relatively painless.

      --
      -- I would have got out of bed earlier...but I was asleep.
    9. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by zachjb · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't it be nice if someone would work on a piece of software that would allow anyone to tap into the power of unused computer cycles of the open source community to compile code, chomp graphics data, or just plain help with regular computing.

      It would be a Gnutella network for shared processing.

      --

      --If only there was a license required to use a computer.
    10. Re:Opensource Grid Computing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Come now, unless you're using AIX, it's not that bad to install. And if you're using AIX, well, you should expect pain.

  3. We saw several grid computing announcements.... by mgblst · · Score: 2

    with one pertaining to gateway, and this little lite relief at the bottom of the page:

    Two heads are better than one. -- John Heywood

    Coincidence?

    1. Re:We saw several grid computing announcements.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Two heads are better than one. -- John Heywood
      And four heads have IQ of one.

  4. y2k3? by Verne · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    from the getting-ready-for-the-2k3-problem dept

    What is the Y2K3 problem?

    Should 2k3 actually be 2k003? or is it 2300?

    I don't get it.

    --


    There are only two things in this world that smell like fish. And one of them's fish...
    1. Re:y2k3? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, the y is year, 2 is 2, k is 1000, and 3 is 3. Put it together. Year 2003. It's kinda December 11th.

    2. Re:y2k3? by Trogre · · Score: 2, Informative

      2k3:
      2k and 3
      2000 and 3
      2003

      For the year 2300:
      2k and 300
      2k3c or 2k300

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    3. Re:y2k3? by Verne · · Score: 1

      in engineering, 2k3 is the shorthand way of writting 2.3k

      and what's the big problem with 2003 anyway?

      Also, why did my post get marked as offtopic. Surely it's on topic because it's regarding the news post...?

      --


      There are only two things in this world that smell like fish. And one of them's fish...
    4. Re:y2k3? by Spice+E+Hot · · Score: 1

      2k3 is shorthand for 2.3k? What exactly are you saving with that shorthand?

    5. Re:y2k3? by Verne · · Score: 1

      the . obviously.

      It's more apparent when spoken than written.

      A 'four k seven' resistor is shorter to say than a 'four point seven k' resistor.

      Who knows where these things come from. It's just what everyone says.

      --


      There are only two things in this world that smell like fish. And one of them's fish...
    6. Re:y2k3? by the_greywolf · · Score: 1

      well, that does apply in engineering as it's something that's well understood, but i fail to see how you made the connection for "y2k3 problem".

      --
      grey wolf
      LET FORTRAN DIE!
    7. Re:y2k3? by Verne · · Score: 1

      Slashback: Grids, Netscape, AMD
      Posted by timothy on Thu 12 Dec 12:59PM
      from the getting-ready-for-the-2k3-problem dept.
      Slashback tonight (is this number 200 already?) brings a few updates and amplifications on grid computing and AMD's plans vis a vis Intel. Also, it seems that some of the best features of Mozilla have finally infiltrated the world of Netscape. Read on the for the details.


      Hmm. maybe this isn't refering to years... I don't understand what it's on about in that case.. why is 2300 a problem, and what is it refering to?

      --


      There are only two things in this world that smell like fish. And one of them's fish...
    8. Re:y2k3? by noc007 · · Score: 1

      2k300 makes sense, but why do it? 2300 is what it means and it's shorter.

    9. Re:y2k3? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would there be a problem with Y3K? Computers use 4 digits instead of the 2, maybe the year 10,000 would be a problem, but by then if the Human Race still exsists the problem would be fixed.

  5. Gateway did it.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    they built the beowulf cluster we have been talking about for YEARS on /.

    Crap, now that they did it, what next? A cluster of clusters, clustering?

    1. Re:Gateway did it.... by Matias+D'Ambrosio · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't that be clusters within clusters within clusters?

      --
      The geek shall inherit the Earth.
    2. Re:Gateway did it.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The next step is a program to check and repair file system integrity across the entire cluster. Project will be called "cluster fsck".

  6. Physicists thinking about the Grid by majordomo · · Score: 3, Informative

    It might interest some to know that physicists are thinking a lot about grid computing, especially those who use computation heavily, such as numerical relativists and fluid dynamicists. An interesting article appeared last year in Physics Today. Let's hope that the academic community's tradition of openness takes root in the Grid.

    1. Re:Physicists thinking about the Grid by grid+geek · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Physicists are more than thinking about the Grid, I should know as they're funding my PhD in Data Grid Computing 8*).

      The main reason for this is the Large Hadron Collider, which is due to go into production at CERN in about 2007. For the younger members of the audience, CERN was where Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web in the early 1990's

      When it goes online it has 4 major experiments, each of which stores data at 100-400MB/sec, and I stress stores data at 100+ MB/sec, the first level is processing 40Terabytes a second. This equals a few petabytes a year (1PB = 1000TB = 1000000GB) which then has to be shipped to sites around Europe and the US.

      All this is going to have data, processing and network requirements which make most techies gasp, i.e. Google only has a 20TB database, current physics ones are at 650TB+. At this level 14TFlops is kinda a cute little toy.

      And yes, most of it's open source and based on the Globus Toolkit.

    2. Re:Physicists thinking about the Grid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Agreed. The physicists are putting massive resources into grid computing... trying to get all the scientific equipment onto a common paradigm of network resource access. I should also know, as I was co-opted into testing grid resources and grid algorithms when I was working for the University.

      I think that there are a few more reasons than just the Hadron Collider, however.

      The astrophysicists have got their Hubble Telescope and the radio telescopes which the SETI@Home project gets it's data from. The nuclear medical technicians have their magnetic resonance imagers (nMRI) and their picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). The geologists have got their seismographs. And the geneticists have got their DNA databases.

      Surprisingly, a lot of scientific equipment is actually able to generate between 100MB to 1GB of data per second. Not just a collider or accelerator, although they are certainly known for generating alot of information.

      Information is cheap and free, if you understand how to generate digital content. MRI scanners, for instance, are able to generate that much information, and are nearly always underclocked because physicians generally aren't looking at the atomic or molecular level.

      Agreed on the Google point. It goes to show that high end computing is still order's of magnitude faster than home appliances (PCs). I was impressed at college with the virtual reality workstations we used to navigate the grid network (Internet2 connection, via the CERN group, Argonne National Laboratories, Enrico Fermi Institute, et al. I happend to have studied under one of the Globus Toolkit authors, working out of Argonne, for a very short while.).

      Anyhow, a moderate scientific/medical workstation nowdays has perhaps 4 to 32 GB of RAM. We would use that RAM to generate immersive 3D rendering of nucleic acids, genomes, proteins, biotech designs, astrometic simulations, and so forth. Now, considering a stereoscopic projection monitor, you've got anywhere between 2 and 16 GB of data streaming to you, per second, per eye, via the projection monitor. Stereoscopic photorealistic virtual environments, grid overlays, you name it. It can definately be information overload at times.

      The interesting thing, I found, was that at 2GB of information, per second, per eye, was the threshhold before I really and truly began to get mentally 'tricked' into being totally immersed, visually. That is, 20/20 vision, photorealistic, full spectrum color, stereoscopic, requires about 4 GB of memory to acurately and artificially calculate and project a pixel for each rod/cone in the human retina. A little bit of neurobiology for you, I suppose. Yep, them darn Turring machines are pretty neat, when they're hooked up to a grid network.

    3. Re:Physicists thinking about the Grid by SN74S181 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For the younger members of the audience, CERN was where Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web in the early 1990's

      Geez-Louise!

      It's a sad-sad day for Physics when CERN is reduced to 'the place where the Web was developed.'

      There's one HELL of a lot more interesting stuff done at CERN, and there has been for decades, than the WWW.

      This isn't meant to slight Berners-Lee or the web or anything, but mercy me. CERN is and has been coolness itself for longer than many people reading this have been alive.

    4. Re:Physicists thinking about the Grid by Harbinjer · · Score: 1

      Sure there's been some great stuff, but the WWW has affected my life more than any physics since the Manhatten project I think. Although I would gladly be proven wrong.

      Plus everyone reading /. will know what WWW is, but some people are clueless about physics and don't care, so this is an easy way to show them some of the magnitude of CERN's importace and accomplishment.

    5. Re:Physicists thinking about the Grid by VoidEngineer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      hmmm...

      microchips
      microwaves
      cellular phone/beeper
      telescopes (star wars, eschelon system)

      that may be some physics between the manhattan project and WWW, which have probably affected you a lot.

      Designed to be invisible, however. They call it "Transparent Technology"...

    6. Re:Physicists thinking about the Grid by nexex · · Score: 1
      I believe byu has implemented a distributed computing program. they put their client on all the computer labs for nodes. when i read about it, there where doing something with DNA.

      --
      Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
    7. Re:Physicists thinking about the Grid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What technology do they use to store all this data?

    8. Re:Physicists thinking about the Grid by infolib · · Score: 1

      but the WWW has affected my life more than any physics since the Manhatten project I think.

      How about the laser? Developed after WWII, now used in the fiber links you use to surf the web. More important is computer chips, based on semiconductors. Bardeen, Brattain and Schockley sure used some nifty physics to get that first transistor going...

      Although I would gladly be proven wrong.

      Happy now? ;-)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
  7. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by Cheeziologist · · Score: 1

    bottleneck my ass....have you seen the specs on ddr-2?

  8. gateway's math is correct... by edrugtrader · · Score: 5, Funny

    i confirmed it on my 3.6 ghtz athlon system (dual 1.8 MPs)...

    --
    MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
    1. Re:gateway's math is correct... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fact that your system has dual processors probably didn't weigh into this calculation much unless you were using multithreaded software to do it.

    2. Re:gateway's math is correct... by DaHat · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Your math is wrong. 2 1.8ghz cpus != 3.6ghz. 2 1.8ghz cpus == 2 1.8ghz cpus.

    3. Re:gateway's math is correct... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      well technically, his system still does get ~3.6 billion cycles per second... you're just making the fallacy of equating clock speed and performance

    4. Re:gateway's math is correct... by PurpleFloyd · · Score: 3, Informative

      And you can't take a joke. The previous poster was poking fun at Gateway's calculations, where all PCs run at maximum flops, all dedicated to the problem no less. Like the previous poster, they made no accounting for moving data around or other overheads in "grid computing".

      --

      That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
    5. Re:gateway's math is correct... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      duhhhh... get the fucking joke you moron??!??

  9. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by KarateBob · · Score: 1

    I Could have sworn RDRAM was dying (just like BSD) And DDR is the future, have you ever heard of i845 Intel Chipsets? PC3200 DDR RAM?

    HELLO?

  10. Re:Sigh of releif by Trevalyx · · Score: 0

    Does anyone else feel weird typing "/.!"? ""/.!"?" is pretty weird too. It goes along with what Douglas Adams said in this article (http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-02-a.html) about typing qwerty. Go ahead. Try it.
    Typoed, didn't ya?

  11. All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST browser! by Trogre · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow, the fastest netscape I've used to date is (IIRC) Netscape 3.x. All subsequent versions have been progressively slower.

    Except this one, apparently.

    I wonder how they got it so fast? They must have geavily modified the Mozilla 1.0.2 code because, compared to NS 3.x, it runs like a dog with no legs.

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  12. Thank god for competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was starting to worry when I heard that AMD wasn't going to compete anymore in the CPU market. They are going to have to try very hard to keep up with the new hyperthreading technologies from Intel, but who really needs a 3 GHZ CPU. Poor college students like me want something that is the most bang for the buck, and I haven't had any problems playing my games (battlefield 1942, UT2003) on my Athlon 1700 yet!!!!
    Keep on chuggin' AMD. College students are behind you!

    1. Re:Thank god for competition by TrollBridge · · Score: 4, Funny
      "...but who really needs a 3 GHZ CPU?"

      You're new to Slashdot, aren't you?

      --
      There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
    2. Re:Thank god for competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah dude... This is what I would buy for a cheap, yet high-quality upgrade:
      AMD Duron 1.1 GHz - $30
      Asus A7V266-E - $75
      Micron 256MB PC2100 - $40 (saw this deal in a Best Buy ad today)
      Decent Quality Heat Sink and Fan - $20

      Total cost = $165

      Add $30 if you want Athlon XP 1700 instead.

      Only $105 for a mobo and CPU, can't complain!

  13. Heh.. by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "And you thought AMD was quittingthe PC chip market?"

    I didn't think they were quitting the PC Chip market. I actually read the article.

    1. Re:Heh.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please mod parent down, this isn't funny. At all. If anything it's uninformed. Any avid slashdoter already heard amd's CEO claimed they would stop focusing on their pc CPU production. Hence, the artical rebutes that fact, it doesn't make the poster wrong.

    2. Re:Heh.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whoa, AMD is quitting the PC chip market? Damn, I'm going to tell everyone I know!

    3. Re:Heh.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, bullshit. I didn't read the article, yet even I remember seeing dozens of comments which said "You idiot! How did you manage to submit that without even reading it?"

      Personally, I think it's a new trolling game: See how misleading of a headline / summary you can get past the editors.

      So far I haven't managed to get any cleverly hidden goatse.cx links by, but maybe one day.......

    4. Re:Heh.. by ackthpt · · Score: 1
      I didn't think they were quitting the PC Chip market. I actually read the article.

      What are you, some kind of troublemaker?

      Yeah, I read it too, back when the original confusion came out. It's all about positioning and Ruiz, IMHO, is correct, whereas Intel vs AMD looks, atm, like Ford vs GM vs Chrysler up to 1973, when bigger and bigger engines ruled, but also thirsty engines. What with declining payrolls and some people taking salary cuts, better bang for the buck seems a pretty wise strategy. Though it's kinda ironic this is the same company which is readying a P4 stompin' 64bit Athlong (Hammer)

      Ah well, I just plunked the C-Notes for 2600/333 and it sure is fascinating to see how it actually makes WinXP appear fast. Though, once I make the Linux drive and have dual boot I expect I'll need some speed goggles 8-)

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    5. Re:Heh.. by ppanon · · Score: 1
      stompin' 64bit Athlong (Hammer)


      I couldn't help but smile at that typo and think "My Athlong is bigger than your 'thlong"
      --
      Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
    6. Re:Heh.. by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      informed it is.

      the amd ceo said something about expanding their views outside of the desktop market, not LEAVING the desktop market.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    7. Re:Heh.. by ackthpt · · Score: 1
      stompin' 64bit Athlong (Hammer)

      I couldn't help but smile at that typo and think "My Athlong is bigger than your 'thlong"

      Doh!

      Yeah, I saw it as I was hitting the submit button. Funny how the motor nerves learn certain combinations, which frequenly repeated become automatic. So, type 'long' a lot for several years and then try to just type 'lon' when you're tired and cognitive fails to recognize and override. Yeah, the CPU is new, but the ape driving the keyboard is the same old one :-)

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  14. *Redundant* BeoWulf Cluster refrence by KarateBob · · Score: 0, Redundant

    *Redundant* BeoWulf Cluster refrence Imagine a BeoWulf CLuster of AMD Thoroughbred-B 2.4GHz Processers compiling Netscape 7.01! *drool*

  15. Did anyone see Aqua Teen Hunger Force Sunday? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's good to see (or bad to see) pop-up ads hitting the mainstream world.

    1. Re:Did anyone see Aqua Teen Hunger Force Sunday? by F2F · · Score: 2

      "and the surgery to implant the chip at the base of your skull is so painless it's no wonder I'm number one." -the wwwyzzerdd.

    2. Re:Did anyone see Aqua Teen Hunger Force Sunday? by Znonymous+Coward · · Score: 2

      Master shake is the same as my grandpaw when it comes to pop up ads. He's always calling me saying "I got an error message... Alert, your computer is too slow. Click here to fix. What should I do?"

      --

      Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

    3. Re:Did anyone see Aqua Teen Hunger Force Sunday? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was good, but not as good as the "TinFins" Sealab 2021 episode. That was one of their best ever.

  16. Mozilla - No tabs in home pages... by ksheka · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...at least not yet.

    Maybe you're thinking of the Mozilla derivative (soon to have a new name) Phoenix?

    --
    alias uptime="echo '5:33pm up 22342352324 days, 6:28, 2124315623 users, load average: 2432.40, 12312.31, 123123.19'"
    1. Re:Mozilla - No tabs in home pages... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fee nicks

    2. Re:Mozilla - No tabs in home pages... by sweetooth · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's in the Mozilla nightly builds, though I have no idea if it's in 1.2.1

    3. Re:Mozilla - No tabs in home pages... by Galewind · · Score: 1

      Try the "Use Current Group" button under Home Page.

    4. Re:Mozilla - No tabs in home pages... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mozilla 1.1 has tabs

    5. Re:Mozilla - No tabs in home pages... by Teach · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's in the Mozilla nightly builds, though I have no idea if it's in 1.2.1

      Yeah, it's in 1.2.1. Just load up tabs for all the pages you want, then go to Edit | Preferences | Navigator and click "Use Current Group".

      --
      Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
  17. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Flamebait if I ever saw it..

    The rambus technology is unique in that it was designed to co-operate with the P4 "netburst" architecture. That is, delivering very quick transfer of data, but the latency wasn't very good, and still isn't extremely good even though it is at 533mhz.

    DDR is both cheaper and has better potential for the future. Do you ever see video cards (such as NV30 and ATI R300+) use rambus?

    That and DDR2 is just around the corner. Basically, AMD has always followed the cheaper and faster route, and DDR is a lot cheaper than DDR.

    My 2c.

  18. Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by dagg · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It makes sense that Netscape 7.01 has the pop-up-disabling feature in it. Once that ad came out on TV that showed that guy closing pop up windows (while some type of space invader music was playing in the background), it was only a matter of time. At this point... only non-web-savvy folks still have to deal with the popups. You don't want to look like the guy in that ad.

    I bet the next version of IE will have a popup blocking feature.

    --
    Sex - Find It
  19. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 2

    "Wow, the fastest netscape I've used to date is (IIRC) Netscape 3.x. All subsequent versions have been progressively slower."

    No no no, you see everybody had Pentiums running at 120 mhz when Netscape 3.0 was out. So technically they're right!

  20. Addendum by ObviousGuy · · Score: 1, Informative

    This is not to say that I think AMD doesn't have some good technology. Their FPU is second to none, and they have certainly advanced chip cooling to new levels.

    But the fact remains that DDR is a stopgap chip technology. Anything built on top of it will be hampered by its lack of scalability. This includes Intel chipsets based on DDR as well.

    With RDRAM and DDR equivalent in price, there isn't any reason to stick with DDR.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Addendum by TCaM · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'll bet you also have an extensive collection of Betamax tapes as well right?

    2. Re:Addendum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      With RDRAM and DDR equivalent in price, there isn't any reason to stick with DDR.

      Except the only motherboards that supports it are all made to run Intel chips. So basically, you choose RDRAM, 2 years from now, when there are no RDRAM based boards around, you have piles of worthless silicon. Intel doesn't even have faith in RDRAM anymore. Seems like you and Rambus are the only people left trumpeting how "awesome RDRAM is".

    3. Re:Addendum by TrancePhreak · · Score: 1

      Yes, however who in their right mind would put slower memory than what was out into a new motherboard... That kinda makes upgrading not so worthwhile. You expect a big speed increase, but then your memory holds you back.

      --

      -]Phreak Out[-
    4. Re:Addendum by connorbd · · Score: 2

      RDRAM is not a bad idea in theory, though -- it's the same idea as replacing 1284 and SCSI with USB and Firewire. After a certain point it's not worth the trouble trying to maintain a wide paralell link -- the modern interconnect busses are serial (including SATA, which I'm still a bit skeptical of), and Rambus has only a 16-bit pipe with some mighty fast bit bang going on.

      That said, all indications are it's a bear to work with, and perhaps narrow memory busses aren't the Right Thing? (Don't forget -- Intel RDRAM chipsets, with the exception of i820, all operate on dual-channel RDRAM, which means a 32-bit bus instead of 16... says something rather interesting about the limitations of serialized memory. On the flipside, I wouldn't want to be the engineer trying to root out crosstalk problems on a dual-DDR mobo design either... that's got to be even more of a nightmare.) /Brian

  21. A little context for the Soup Marbles by teamhasnoi · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ripped from usenet somewhere -

    Like, there's one where the mom is home alone with her little kid, and everyone knows that women are only motivated to actually cook when there's a hunky man around. So she's about to make the kid a FROZEN PIZZA when the kid holds up a drawing from school and says "Look, Mommy, I drawded you a pitcher!" and Mom oohs over it and to reward the kid she puts away the frozen pizza and instead the kid gets A BOWL OF CAMPBELL'S SOLID PINK "TOMATO" SOUP for lunch. This is love in the same sense that this is nutrition. Lumpless flesh-colored soup. Remember how Campbell's tried to use the slogan "Soup Is Good Food" for a few months until enough dieticians complained that that was an outright lie in the case of Campbell's watery slime? Remember how they got busted for always showing pictures of soup with the few measly pathetic little veggie bits standing on the surface of the soup because the bowls were always filled with GLASS MARBLES to hold up the little fragments of orange-gray carrots and caved-in peas?

    1. Re:A little context for the Soup Marbles by scotch · · Score: 2

      Your post is the most angry prose regarding soup I've ever read. Congratulations. I prefer soup in a box, or sometimes soup in a foil wrapper. Foods in cans scare me.

      --
      XML causes global warming.
    2. Re:A little context for the Soup Marbles by Moses+Lawn · · Score: 1

      Remember how they got busted for always showing pictures of soup with the few measly pathetic little veggie bits standing on the surface of the soup because the bowls were always filled with GLASS MARBLES to hold up the little fragments of orange-gray carrots and caved-in peas?


      No, I don't remember it. Neither does anybody else. That's what you get for believing what you see on Usenet. My father worked for 30 years in the advertising business, and I recall having this exact conversation with him. He told me that there are extremely strict government regulations regarding truth in advertising, up to and including having an observer on the set making sure everything is done to the letter. Besides, anyone who did something like this would be dead in the industry if it ever came out. It would not be worth it just to get a good shot.

      Of course, the whole business of retouching pictures of orgies into the ice in liquor ads and skulls into cigarette ads? That really happens. Yup.

      --

      What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?

    3. Re:A little context for the Soup Marbles by teamhasnoi · · Score: 2
      Sweet. You read 'The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard? Actually, it was the word 'SEX' in an ice cube.

      Ask Microsoft (to give a recent example) about truth in advertising, with their use of stock photos and 'stories' to go with them.

      I posted that snippet because I had no idea what marbles and soup had to do with each other - I figured someone else might not either.

      If you think that the ad industry has your 'best interests' in mind, you're right! That's why they are using CAT scans to see what happens in your brain when you see boobies, so they can do the same thing with mac n' cheese.

      You are a $.

      The whole 'sex' in an ice cube thing was crazy back in '57 when the Hidden Persuaders was published, I'm sure Madison Avenue have leared a few things since then.

    4. Re:A little context for the Soup Marbles by arb · · Score: 2



      A quick search on Google will find this and this andthis as three of the top four results...

      You may find that the "truth in advertising" regulations might have come into effect after several companies were caught trying such tricks. There have been many documented cases where advertisers have been even more deceitful than simply putting marbles in a bowl of soup.

    5. Re:A little context for the Soup Marbles by dWhisper · · Score: 1

      Actually, I do remember it. It's a legal precedent for Truth in Advertising. However, it's something that companies, especially car companies, get busted for all the time.

      Why did you think that you'd see a commercial for some truck or some car doing something amazing, and then never see it again. The FCC busted them, and they can't show it. The same thing happened to Campbell's, and will keep happening as more things get debunked.

      Take a business law, marketing, or advertising course at a local college, and they will bring up this case. They also teach what false advertising really means, so you can laugh at people in stores yelling about false advertising when something is sold out. It makes for amusing days at the mall.

  22. wait a sec by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    netscape > mozilla > netscape.

    is this like when the parents go into the old-folks home and we have to take care of them?

  23. Pop-up Blocker is a BAD idea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    What do you think is going to happen once everyone starts using a pop-up blocking web browser? Something even more annoying like those fullscreen flash ads that appear from nowhere...soon they will be everywhere! I say keep pop-up blocking in Mozilla only, so that the niche that uses it benefits while the mainstream continues to get screwed...

    1. Re:Pop-up Blocker is a BAD idea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Once everyone starts blocking pop-ups the advertisers will start using a pop-up blocker-blocker. And the browsers will have to start using a pop-up blocker-blocker-blocker.

  24. Does Gateway really think they are going... by norculf · · Score: 1

    ...to build an effective cluster?

    To have a really cool one, they will need crazy bandwidth between all sites. If they just do something like seti@home or d.net, it will be easier, but with less versatility.

    Plus you have pricks removing their software and installing dnetc on all of the machines in the store.

    1. Re:Does Gateway really think they are going... by zabieru · · Score: 1

      Well, Gateway doesn't need a supercomputer. And really, no one else is going to pay then for 14 teraflops. Most of the people who need that kind of power can get it elsewhere (Especially if projects like the one a few weeks back to network machines at Canada's universities for a day become more common). This is for people who occasionally need some really serious (supercomputer-class but not world-class) computing power, but don't need it often enough to find another solution. And as I recall, they have T1 lines to all the stores, which should provide enough bandwidth for that kind of use.

  25. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why do you care about IE anyways? You read SLASHDOT! News for NERDS! NERDS DON'T LET NERDS USE IE!

    www.litepc.com

  26. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    DDR is a dead end, folks.

    What does dance, dance revolution have to do with any of this?

  27. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by dirkdidit · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    HELLO?

    Hello. This is your friendly Slashdot operator. Please stay on the line if you wish to be Slashdotted or flamed. To troll press 1. To post an insightful, interesting or informative comment press 2. If you would like to make karma whoring posts with no point much like this one, press 3. Your call is very important to us and it will be answered in the order in which it was received. Thank you for calling Slashdot and have a geeky day!

  28. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by greechneb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It sure wouldn't suprise me if they did include some form of popup blocking, or for that matter tabbed browsing. Microsoft will proclaim their wonderful "innovations" and how they will change the internet. Which is what they have done consistantly...

    I would imagine we will start to see a IE 6.5 beta hit the net shortly, possibly incorporating the popup blocking, but my guess is that IE 7 will be the version to really grab mozilla(and opera for that matter) innovations.

    Same old, same old

  29. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is a disaster. If IE implements pop-up stopping natively, then the ads are simply going to get more annoying and invasive. Like fullscreen flash ads that pop-up stoppers can't stop and force you to watch...its already beginning on some sites...keep the feature out of mainstream browsers so we can fly under the radar using it in Mozilla.

  30. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by dirkdidit · · Score: 3, Funny
    bottleneck my ass

    Alright, I guess if thats what you really want. Personally, I think it'd hurt but thats just me. :)
  31. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by bmwm3nut · · Score: 5, Informative

    i sure hope not. i don't want the average joe to be blocking pop-ups. once pop-up blocking becomes mainstream then the advertisers are going to switch to a format that is harder to deal with. i like using mozilla and blocking pop-ups, but if the advertisers change their format to a harder to block type, then i'll be seeing ads again.

  32. it was a joke moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    get a life

  33. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Basically, AMD has always followed the cheaper and faster route, and DDR is a lot cheaper than DDR.

    Well, that was coherent...

  34. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by FyRE666 · · Score: 2

    Wow, the fastest netscape I've used to date is (IIRC) Netscape 3.x. All subsequent versions have been progressively slower.

    Yes well I'm sure I could write a browser that really kicks ass, if, like NS3 it ignores all stylesheets, screws up tables and frames and only parses a handful of tags.

    Actually the slowest version of NS I've used was the first effort at V6 - I almost gave up on them when I saw just how bad it was. Mozilla has really come along though - it's very close to IE with dynamic content now - I'm sure it'll pass IE7 for speed, as IE has been getting bigger and slower since V5...

  35. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Mignon · · Score: 3, Funny
    At this point... only non-web-savvy folks still have to deal with the popups. You don't want to look like the guy in that ad.

    Or this guy. (Warning: many megs, but worth it if you have the bandwidth.)

  36. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ironically, "Dead End" is also a pretty well known DDR song. Not exactly an easy one either.

  37. Old IBM anecdote by chrysrobyn · · Score: 5, Funny

    working on new transistor making techniques such as the double gate design as well as metal-rather-than-silicon design.

    This reminds me of one of my favorite IBM stories told to me by an ex-IBMer professor a few years back.

    It would appear that some time in the 70s (it's been a few years since I heard this story), IBM was having problems with boules* falling over and breaking, costing a great deal of money. IBM being what it was, put out a solicitation for employee suggestions on how to remedy the problem.

    One technician was very disappointed to hear that the boules were made of silicon and suggested using a stronger material. It was his wager that a stainless steel boule would be much more resistant to breaking. So, he suggested replacing all the silicon boules with stainless steel.

    True story.

    * Boules are very tall cylinders of monocrystalline silicon. They are sliced up into fairly thin, circular wafers. These wafers are then processed through the steps that make chips and lastly diced into the silicon chips we commonly see put on plastic or ceramic packages.

    1. Re:Old IBM anecdote by idontgno · · Score: 1

      Never mind the obvious bit about missing the point of using the wrong material. I'm just boggled about the idea of a macro-scale monocrystalline lump of steel! (or iron). Last I dimly recall, wouldn't that require some pretty monstrous advances in metallurgical crystallography? (sp?)

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    2. Re:Old IBM anecdote by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This reminds me an old joke (from communist era), when a boss-comunist is visiting a research gruoup with new development plan:
      "Dear all,
      We have to surpass those bloody capitalists in the West with their rottening technology. From now, we will focus our development and production not on semi-conductors, but on the full-blown-ones!"

  38. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by momovt · · Score: 1

    The new MSN 8.0 has pop-up blockers. It's instrumental to their ad campaign.

  39. Mozilla user using parents' IE over Thanksgiving by Fastball · · Score: 3, Funny
    I had forgotten how annoying popups were until I went home to my parents over Thanksgiving. They have Microsoft and IE installed (Dad's choice as he uses those at work). So when I started to surf, I was back to fighting popups everywhere I went. I didn't even want to think about cookies.

    I took a long shower when I got home and scrubbed vigorously.

  40. Netscape 7.01 released for spin? by molo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Note that it was just announced that Netscape is laying off people:

    http://money.cnn.com/2002/12/10/news/companies/a ol _layoffs/

    Was this release of 7.01 just for spin, to try and keep the positve in the news more than the negative?

    I hate marketing.

    --
    Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
    1. Re:Netscape 7.01 released for spin? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The release of 7.01 has nothing to do with the lay-offs. 7.01 was released to fix bugs and repair the damage done by not having pop-up blocking in 7.0. As for the lay-offs, only 10 people from the browser division have gone. That still leaves several hundred Netscape developers working on Mozilla.

  41. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    DDR is the name of a type of SDRAM employed by many higher end PCs these days. It stands for double data rate. Rambus sucks compared to DDR since it is MUCH more expensive and runs hotter.

  42. still no support for DNS SRV record by emptybody · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The SRV record can be used to tell a client what server and port to go to for a named service.

    Rather than using hostnames (www.foo.baz)
    use a SRV record to send http traffic to a host:port pair, frp traffic to a different host:port pair, and on and on::

    ; SRV priority weight port target
    _http._tcp IN SRV 0 0 8080 heuey.foo.baz.
    _http._tcp IN SRV 0 0 8080 deuey.foo.baz.
    _ftp._tcp.ftp IN SRV 0 0 21 louie.foo.baz.

    No more do you need to include non-standard ports for http. (8080, 81, etc) just make the app SRV aware and update DNS. done.

    This would allow for much simpler Server configs too!!

    --
    comment directly in my journal
    1. Re:still no support for DNS SRV record by stimpy · · Score: 2, Funny

      My favorite SRV record is "Couldn't Stand the Weather"...Oh, wait...

    2. Re:still no support for DNS SRV record by Degrees · · Score: 1
      For what it's worth, Novell uses a solution to the same problem using a protocol developed by Apple a long time ago. SLP is Service Location Protocol that does the same thing. However, devices with services register themselves with an agent; and, devices find the agent by either DHCP, config file, or multicast.

      Of course, your ISP probably does not support multicast, so internet-wide implementation is a while off.

      I think Microsoft's implementation was Universal Plug And Play.

      --
      "The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
  43. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by KarateBob · · Score: 1

    RAMBUS in other things:

    I Could have sworn I had RAMBUS memory in my Nintendo64, and also in my Playstation 2 (or was it XBox?)

  44. Pop-up Blocking by Professor_Quail · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now that Netscape has re-introduced popup blocking, Microsoft may soon follow suit. However, I did see an article on /. a while back about a group of advertisers that claimed any kind of blockage on their advertisements was theft (they claimed being able to see a site without having to see the ads constituted theft of bandwidth). If all future browsers incorporate popup blocking, where is the future of online advertising headed?

    1. Re:Pop-up Blocking by damiam · · Score: 1

      Back to banner and text ads, where it belongs.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    2. Re:Pop-up Blocking by distributed.karma · · Score: 2

      Banner ads are also blocked easily -- I use Privoxy for that. However, text ads are quite a different thing. They are much harder to spot and block, but then again, not nearly as annoying. For instance Google's sponsored links are hardly annoying at all, IMHO.

      --

      --
      If you moderate this, then your children will be next.

    3. Re:Pop-up Blocking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google.

  45. False by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's the same price as DDR and it runs faster and cooler. Imagine that!

    If you think RDRAM is still more expensive than DDR, you haven't done any memory shopping lately. And if you think it runs hotter than DDR, you've probably been reading too much Slashdot. Fact is that DDR is stuck where it is because it can't exceed its current speed due to signal noise. Rambus doesn't have this problem, and as a result has a latency greater than DDR. However, the latency issue is moot when the speed is raised to such ungodly levels that DDR looks like a snail comparably.

  46. HOWTO: How to avoid flash ads by Znonymous+Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    HOWTO: How to avoid flash ads (in any browser)

    Step 1. Don't install flash plugin.
    Step 2. ???
    Step 3. Profit? err... not with flash ads.

    --

    Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

    1. Re:HOWTO: How to avoid flash ads by NFNNMIDATA · · Score: 1

      Ahh and then you also will have to disable scripting because they always check to see if you have flash then give you the installer window. I ran into this when I discovered I could reliably crash my pc by going to yahoo news in IE until I disabled flash (by uninstalling it). I had to disable scripting for yahoo's domain so I could avoid getting the installer popups on every damn page. But in doing that I couldn't access any javascript, including popups which are used in many links in their news section. I think I eventually upgraded IE when the new version came out and then flash as well. That may have fixed it, but I don't care because I now use Phoenix happily.

    2. Re:HOWTO: How to avoid flash ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or you can remove libnullplugin.so or whatever it's called in your plugins directory

    3. Re:HOWTO: How to avoid flash ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hell I turn off javascript anyway. I use Opera and theres a nifty little "Quick Preferences" menu which lets turn it back on if you need it.

      I also disable images (theres an easily accessible button which lets you switch them back on).

      of course I am on 56k.... so I need to "cut the fat" as it were.

    4. Re:HOWTO: How to avoid flash ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nearly there. Assuming you use Mozilla, you need one more step to shut off that damned-annoying dialog that asks if you want to get a plugin to handle it.

      Edit your chrome/userContent.css and throw this in there:

      [type="application/x-shockwave-flash"]
      {
      display: none !important;
      }

      Then restart the browser and go to a page with Flash - it's almost magic. No more stupid windows stealing the focus from you.

  47. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by Luke-Jr · · Score: 1

    Mozilla for Linux is, unfortunately, horribly slow.

    --
    Luke-Jr
  48. The way I'd like to see popup blocking done... by rlk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Rather than having window.open() return a null handle, have it return a real handle, but simply don't create the window. Better yet, have it optionally load the contents of the window, so the remote site never even knows that the window simply was never popped up.

    1. Re:The way I'd like to see popup blocking done... by distributed.karma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Downloading the contents, even in the background, goes against one basic reason for ad blocking: I pay for the bandwidth, so I decide what goes through.

      --

      --
      If you moderate this, then your children will be next.

    2. Re:The way I'd like to see popup blocking done... by autechre · · Score: 4, Interesting


      True. So make it an option. Popup blocking will return a real handle but not actually draw the window. You can decide whether or not you want it to actually download the content (via an option which is off by default). This might not even have to be in the GUI (the dev team already complains about how complex it's become), but just in prefs.js.

      Maybe there could also be an option for popups to open in a tab in the background; I seem to remember someone mentioning this, but I haven't been able to find it.

      --
      WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
    3. Re:The way I'd like to see popup blocking done... by vadim_t · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, it doesn't!

      The ad provider pays for bandwidth as well. If you started loading banners without showing them you'd really annoy advertisers. Now bandwidth is being used, the servers are under load, but they can't be certain the ad actually appeared anywhere.

      If you have a connection like mine and don't pay for the bandwidth you use, this costs you nothing. The browser could delay loading ads until your connection is idle.

      The result: you don't see ads, advertisers pay for the server bandwidth, but get to results. If you want them to go away, nothing better than costing them some money.

    4. Re:The way I'd like to see popup blocking done... by Woodrose · · Score: 0

      Idea from a friend in Perth: revector popup sites to single-pixel invisible .gif

      --

      Thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint - Henry IV, Act I scene II

    5. Re:The way I'd like to see popup blocking done... by dveditz · · Score: 1

      Creating invisible windows is a bad idea from a security standpoint, and anything you do short of actually loading and running the content could be detected if sites really care to find out.

      Since there are other ways sites can force you to look at ads returning null should be good enough at this point in the ads arms race.

    6. Re:The way I'd like to see popup blocking done... by Rambo,+John+J. · · Score: 1

      This is a very, very good idea. It's like returning those postage paid envelopes from junk mailers and writing a big "screw you" note inside them.

      Most consumers don't for the bandwidth used by retrieving ads anyway.

  49. What?!? by KarateBob · · Score: 1

    RDRAM runs cooler than DDR?

    My Friend's 4x 256MB Samsung PC800 RDRAM (1024MB) ran WAYYY to hot to touch, on his dual Pentium 3 Computer.

    After he shut down, he would have to wait a few hours to be able to handle the RDRAM.

    Then, he sent his RDRAM in to Samsung and they exchanged him for new RIMM's (also PC800, 4x256MB), and they run cooler, but still very hot compared to (DDR) SDRAM.

    DDR SDRAM Heat spreaders are basically only for high performance systems, and overclocking, not for your average user.

    So can you please tell me what specs are for the RDRAM and DDR RAM you are using?

    1. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      After he shut down, he would have to wait a few hours to be able to handle the RDRAM.

      Hours. Riiight.

  50. Nerds don't let nerds use IE... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...they use Konqueror instead, what IE should have been but isn't. Konqui 3 ROCKS.

  51. What the hell? by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    A JAVA based computing initiative?? I have to say, that's one of the stupidest things I've heard in a long time. I guess I can kind of understand the attraction of being able to use the grid across various architectures, but you're throwing away (at least) 90% of your computing power.

    Java has its place, but it just seems silly to use it for this purpose.

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    1. Re:What the hell? by pheared · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As a long time C coder, I'm normally the last one to come to the aid of Java, but there are some things you should understand before making statements like that.

      First, Java is a language. A language cannot be fast or slow. However, the implementation of the Java interpreter can be described as fast or slow.

      Secondly, just because the memory heavy, CPU intensive Sun Java VM that you load on your linux or windows or solaris box is slow, doesn't mean that all other implementations are slow.

      Thirdly, consider that a Java program that is written poorly will perform poorly. This is the case with any language. If you haven't carefully audited the source code to make sure it is making optimal use of your CPU's time, you can't say for sure that the program isn't at fault.

    2. Re:What the hell? by Phroggy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I guess I can kind of understand the attraction of being able to use the grid across various architectures, but you're throwing away (at least) 90% of your computing power.

      huh? Where'd that 90% come from? Are you talking about the JRE? As I understand it, Java bytecode gets compiled at runtime, so for computational stuff where you're only launching the app once and letting it run for awhile, it should be pretty fast.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
    3. Re:What the hell? by deanj · · Score: 1
      Tell ya what...go install Globus and come back and say what you think of that.

      People can do dumb stuff in any language, but sorry, it's not a Java problem.

    4. Re:What the hell? by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 3, Informative

      First, Java is a language. [...] doesn't mean that all other implementations are slow.

      Java is an environment as well as a language. Unless this Java grid is planning to throw away the JVM, I think it's fair to say that it's probably using that standard Java environment. I'm not ruling out that a "magic" JVM might come along that somehow overcomes all the baggage of how Java is designed, but so far we've not seen this. Given the current state of technology, it seems foolish to me to throw away all that performance.

      Based on my own experience, Java is on the average about 1/10th the speed of an equivalent C program, although clearly it depends on what you're doing. Where Java is particularly bad is very data intensive work, such as string manipulation. Where I was particularly appalled at Java's performance was XML parsing.

      Java works best when it's a "glue" mechanism to pass communication between systems. Where it is not appropriate IMO is very computationally intensive applications, which presumably would be what you would use a grid for.

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    5. Re:What the hell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where I was particularly appalled at Java's performance was XML parsing.

      Did you think they were going to rent out an 8000-PC distributed computing grid for XML parsing?

    6. Re:What the hell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, they probably only need 1000 PCs or so for that. :)

    7. Re:What the hell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So what are you saying, it's hard or easy to install Globus?

    8. Re:What the hell? by adam+arndt · · Score: 1

      I think the parent refers to the fact that Java runs in emulation... so while it's byte codes are interpreted once, the resulting blob that executes still does so as a state machine.
      The assumption is the state machine has a huge overhead not borne by "native" binary excutables on the same platform.

      When Java first started getting hot, I went to a seminar by David Flanagan. He suggested that because there was this interpretation just before runtime, there was room for a new kind of runtime optimisation which would let some java code run _faster_ than native code. He must have been referring to memory allocation or something?

      Since I gave up on java when I learned PERL, I can't confirm what David said. Perl, on the other hand, does run pretty slow. A basic cruel comparison of a subroutine call loop in Perl and a function call loop in C (both doing 10M calls) shows Perl to be running at 27 wallclock secs and C at .38 of a second.. so about a hundred times slower. Still, many of Perl's neat internals such as regexps, grep, map etc run faster than this as they are linked in code. It's the overhead of the state machine that is the issue.

      Hrrmmf! Our little java app with a for loop calling a method to test this did it in 0.685 seconds. Oh well, case in point. Spose it would need to instantiate an object to do any real work though!

    9. Re:What the hell? by deanj · · Score: 1

      It's really tough, at least a few days, IF you can get it to work.

    10. Re:What the hell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not quite correct...the JRE is quite active during the runtime of anytime program..hence the acroynm (J)ava (R)untime (E)nvironment....the JRE is always busy ensuring that the application does not violate security polices, doing garbage collection, loading classes, etc....hence the poor performance.

  52. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by Zippy+the+Pinhead · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes well I'm sure I could write a browser that really kicks ass, if, like NS3 it ignores all stylesheets, screws up tables and frames and only parses a handful of tags.

    Don't bother, someone else already has. It's a GTK-based browser called Dillo.
    And it does kick ass.

  53. 200th Slashback...umm... by abartlett_219 · · Score: 1

    A good search would reveal that the 200th Slashback fell a few slashbacks back...this is about the 230th (or 220th dependant on how you search, category or just searching for the word slashback in topics)

  54. Re:Mozilla user using parents' IE over Thanksgivin by TheAwfulTruth · · Score: 2

    Webwasher. Live it, Love it, Use it. Install it on your parents computer and show them you love them.

    --
    Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
  55. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by Doomdark · · Score: 2

    He must have been referring to former east Germany, which was referred to as DDR ("Deutsche Democratic Republic" or something?)

    --
    I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
  56. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by TheAwfulTruth · · Score: 2

    Actually Microsoft is great at leaving the value added innovations to their clients. Try looking at "Crazy Browzer". It only takes a few nights coding to add tabs to IE. If MS added tabs they'd be using their monopoly power to stomp the small value added companies, and if they don't include them , they are being dimwitted trogglodites. Well which is it?

    There are entire companies that make their living providing value added enhancements to windows that match and frequently beat the OSS offerings on Linux. (Object Desktop beats the hell out of any customizable desktop solution I've seen anywhere elase) They have to be careful about what gets included because any single feature at this point will have some segment of people FREAKING OUT about it.

    --
    Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
  57. Netscape Mail client broken by MrCreosote · · Score: 2

    Hmmmm.
    Double click on a mail message no longer opens the message in a separate window
    right click - "open message in new window" no longer opens the message in a separate window

    Don't tell me to get another mail client - Netscape has done the job for me so far.

    --
    MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
    1. Re:Netscape Mail client broken by pheared · · Score: 2, Informative

      Don't tell me to get another mail client - Netscape has done the job for me so far.

      How about, "Report the bug to Netscape, not Slashdot".

    2. Re:Netscape Mail client broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got 7.01 and it works for me. It must be you.

    3. Re:Netscape Mail client broken by MrCreosote · · Score: 1

      yeah, well, i could do that. In fact, just did it.

      --
      MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
  58. isn't any reason to stick with DDR by dpilot · · Score: 3

    Except for supporting the ethically bankrupt attempt of the Rambus company to subvert the industry standard. Playing by competition is one thing. Playing by courting Intel and having Intel twist everyones' arms is worse. Rambus went way beyond that.

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
  59. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by Trogre · · Score: 2

    Yes well I'm sure I could write a browser that really kicks ass, if, like NS3 it ignores all stylesheets, screws up tables and frames and only parses a handful of tags.

    Not that I actually use or even like earlier versions of Netscape; I just thought it was a very bold claim. Modern browsers seem to be superior in every way, except for speed and memory footprint.

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  60. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by dotgod · · Score: 2

    I'm not so sure how good it's gonna be once ad-blocking browsers become popular with mainstream internet users. Marketing companies are just gonna end up replacing pop-ups with some other more invasive, more annoying, and more ridiculous ads.

  61. Re:Netscape 7.0 Speed, Mozilla, Phoenix by billstewart · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Netscape 6 was bad, bad, mindbogglingly amazingly bad, at least on a machine with only 24MB of RAM. 6.1 or 6.2 was much closer to usable, at least on my machines with 64MB, but by then Mozilla was working adequately. If Netscape 7.0 is fast, a large part of it is probably from using lots of memory to accelerate other functions.

    I'm now using Phoenix 0.5, which came out just recently, and it's quite toasty - I think it's ready to replace Mozilla as my main browser. The main plugins work (I'd had trouble getting them installed on 0.3 and 0.4) and it's very very fast, especially since I set the startup delay to 0 (default is 1200ms, which lets it recover from slow-loading graphics that would otherwise force redraws.) The Google-search-bar extension is really convenient, though I gather than newer Mozillas also have it. I'm normally no fan of themes (why clutter up the GUI at the cost of making it larger and slower?), but the "LittlePhoenix 1.3" theme has icons that are enough smaller that I can reclaim significant screen space, and the "Linky" extension has been a good way to handle pages with lots of links (e.g. letting you leech all the pictures into a separate window or tab, or examine a page by grabbing all the URLs on it into a tab, which can be cleaner than View Source for some ugly web pages.)

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  62. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Chemical · · Score: 1

    Welcome to the Internet (Best viewed with Internet Explorer)

  63. AMD's True Performance Initiative by DeadBugs · · Score: 3, Informative

    AMD is also not quiting it's "True Performance Initiative" Read an update at the Tech Report.

    --
    http://www.kubuntu.org/
  64. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ooo, a whole 8MB RDRAM in the PS2.

  65. Re:Netscape 7.0 Speed, Mozilla, Phoenix by Moses+Lawn · · Score: 1
    Netscape 6 was bad, bad, mindbogglingly amazingly bad, at least on a machine with only 24MB of RAM. 6.1 or 6.2 was much closer to usable, at least on my machines with 64MB, but by then Mozilla was working adequately. If Netscape 7.0 is fast, a large part of it is probably from using lots of memory to accelerate other functions.

    Good lord, man, what system are you running that runs a GUI in 24 meg of memory? I didn't realize that Netscape 6 ran on Windows 3.1.

    I should think that the only browser you could run in such circumstances would be Lynx (or Links). Or maybe Opera 3.

    --

    What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?

  66. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by KarateBob · · Score: 1

    Better than the 0MB RDRAM in my OverClocked AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with 512MB PC3000 DDR RAM.

  67. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Guppy06 · · Score: 2

    "I bet the next version of IE will have a popup blocking feature."

    HAH! More like "The next version of MSN will have a pop-up blocking feature." Why put it in for free when Microsoft can get away with selling it to you instead?

  68. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funny, but slow at parts and someone anti-climatic. For those with limited bandwidth, just watch the first minute or two.

  69. Re:Mozilla user using parents' IE over Thanksgivin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People that turn off cookies annoy the fuck out of me.

    As a PC tech, I would just like to point that out. 99.999% of customers are fucking clueless.

    In the words of Tony Soprano, "Log off that thing, those cookies scare me!"

    LoL

  70. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Trevalyx · · Score: 0

    Ah, but there's the wonder of our community. No sooner than pop-ups get replaced by "more invasive, more annoying, and more ridiculous ads" I can fully expect our more programming-savvy comrades to develop browserrs that stop those as well, so we can continue "stealing" from advertisers once more. It is one of the wonders of the techworld. As people come up with more obnoxious ways to do things, we come up with ways to avoid them, all but entirely. And there are already efforts to stop those insanely obnoxious ads that FORCE you to interact with them. I know of several people who sent some very trite e-mails to CNET when they started using them.
    I should go into the advertising industry if just to make it more consumer-friendly..

  71. Moore's Law is Wrong in that Article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I always thought it was every 18 months, not every 2 years as the article has it.

  72. Re:Netscape 7.0 Speed, Mozilla, Phoenix by vadim_t · · Score: 1

    Heh, bloat seems to have reached incredible levels lately.

    Win95 is capable of running with just 4 MB RAM, although there's no comparison with OS/2 that does it well. Windows swaps if you just boot and open the explorer window. Hell, with 4MB it's even possible to render stuff in 3D Studio 4.

    Win95 is very usable with 16MB RAM, and with 24 it should work pretty well for most things. Excepting stuff like Mozilla, of course, that uses 30MB on my computer...

  73. Re:Netscape 7.0 Speed, Mozilla, Phoenix by ickyfreak · · Score: 0

    he probably thinks debian development speed is fast :)

    --

    ---------------
    100% Australian

  74. Wow- Not /.'d by CuriousGeorge113 · · Score: 1

    Wow, a movie link on slash that isn't slashdotted.

    Impressive :)

    --
    No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
  75. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by jonadab · · Score: 3, Informative

    > No no no, you see everybody had Pentiums running at 120 mhz
    > when Netscape 3.0 was out.

    Err, no, Pentiums didn't run that fast until a year or two later --
    at least not the ones anyone could afford to actually buy. A
    486 DX4/100 was still considered competitive as a new system even
    when Netscape 4.0 came out. (Which, incidentally, tells you how
    *old* Netscape 4.x is. Considering that Netscape 6 was really
    ony of beta quality, we can be quite thankful that the long wait
    is over and Netscape has a decent browser out again (since 7.0PR1,
    which "Preview" or not made 6.2.anything look like junk).) This
    new Netscape release, from what I've seen of it so far (admittedly,
    not extensive use) seems to be quite solid, though of course it
    lacks the majority of the features added during the 1.1 and 1.2
    milestones. Which is fine; 1.1 lacked stability, and 1.2 is new
    enough that it's hard to say (though I'm using 1.2.1 and it seems
    very solid to me so far); Netscape is right to go with 1.0.2 for
    now. I'm thinking they'll stick with that 1.0.x branch through
    several minor releases and go back to the trunk for a new stable
    branch around 1.4 or 1.6 or so. (This is not inside information,
    just a prediction based on the pattern I've observed in their
    behavior over the last couple of years.) By then, the branch
    they are using will feel really obsolete to people who have been
    testing the Mozilla builds, but that means that when users upgrade
    to the next branch they'll notice a sudden influx of features.
    That branch could be 7.5, but I'm predicting it will be 8.0

    --
    Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  76. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by ledestin · · Score: 1

    It would lead to some changes in the way people push ads, but, the best thing I can think of they could do is to serve ads from the server where content resides, so that I couldn't block images selectively. Well, at that point, I think I would do without images at all on such sites.

  77. The future of internet advertising.... by raehl · · Score: 2

    Is something other than pop-up ads.

    We all know the "If we can't do it the way we're doing it now, it won't get done at all" argument, and we all know that it's BS. If a product or service has value, people will find a way to deliver it.

    Outlawing supermarkets wouldn't stop people from eating.

  78. AMD 64-Bit chips drop in? by sparrow_hawk · · Score: 1

    Okay, I'm looking forward to the new 64-bitters from AMD -- I'm a big fan of the Alpha. (a little sob now at its passing)

    Can AMD's desktop-targeted 64-bit chips run, say, a standard x86 RedHat 8.0? Or do they need specially-compiled OSes like the Alpha did? I would presume they'll need a special motherboard.

    I'd love to replace my current 32-bit machine with a new 64-bit AMD one to complement my Alpha...

    1. Re:AMD 64-Bit chips drop in? by NerveGas · · Score: 3, Informative


      Yes, you can run a standard x86 RedHat. That's the attractive thing about the Hammer/Athlon64/Opteron/Whatever. They can run 32- or 64-bit code. In fact, they can run BOTH at the same time. One of the demos that AMD showed was a dual-monitor Opteron, with two spinning 3D objects. One was running as a 32-bit app, the other as a 64-bit app - on the same machine.

      However, I believe that RedHat IS going to have a release for the Hammer. Considering that some packages (like Apache) are having a good amount of work done to make them really take advantage of the 64-bit environment, I'm not sure how much of a difference the special distro will make, but there's plenty of time for that.

      steve

      --
      Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
    2. Re:AMD 64-Bit chips drop in? by jpmorgan · · Score: 2
      Wait, you're a big fan of the Alpha so you're in favour of x86-64?

      To answer your question, yes, you'll need a OS specifically built for the chip, and a new motherboard. There is some tentative support for x86-64 from a few companies (I believe SuSE).

      But this raises the question of, why would you want to? The Alpha is an elegant architecture. x86-64 is a sin against nature.

    3. Re:AMD 64-Bit chips drop in? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      velociraptors were elegant, streamlined killing machines.

      where are they now?

      yea some will lament that the x86 FRONT END on the intel/amd chips is a sin...but smart people will ignore those oh so superior, earl gray swilling, sceptor carrying, monocled elitist.

      smart people recognize the value in x86, even though not perfect.

      physicist will create wonderous research from them

      artist will creat works of stunning beauty

      cultures eeking out massive efficiencies to handle , yet unheard of amounts of data.

      all the while you adjust your cape.

      p.s. i wouldn't invest dog shit in jpmorgan financial

    4. Re:AMD 64-Bit chips drop in? by ICA · · Score: 1

      As one co-worker used to correctly say:

      "God intended everything to be big-endian"

  79. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Moses+Lawn · · Score: 1

    Every time I see that ad I wonder "what porn site is he going to?"

    I don't expect IE to ever block popups as it comes out of the box, but I'm sure some enterprising hacker will add it in some day. There is an API for munging it, after. Remember the whole change-the-link display thing?

    By the way, the beta of Opera 7 has the option to only display requested popups, which is exactly what I've been waiting for. Good news for the 27 of us who use Opera!

    --

    What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?

  80. Re:Mozilla user using parents' IE over Thanksgivin by TrancePhreak · · Score: 1

    Cookies are easy to block in IE. I don't know what you are talking about unless your dad uses something like 5 or before.

    --

    -]Phreak Out[-
  81. Grid schmid by Enry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I went to a presentation yesterday by Platform (the guys that make LSF) who talked about grid computing. Each person that spoke gave a different definition of what 'grid computing' is: It's clusters of clusters, it's clusters plus processing on individual machines, etc.

    The upside is that such processing using PCs is already taking place, in the form of distributed.net, folding@home and seti@home among many others. If gateway wants to use its spare cycles to create a supercomputer capable of many teraflops, then go for it.

    On the other hand, apps that are well suited to such distributed computing are those that require little I/O and more number crunching. That is, you don't want to use BLAST (comparing gene sequences) as the data sets are on the order of GB. But simple number crunching, like the examples already given, do not require sending much data to the clients for processing.

    BTW, LSF has software to do the same thing with desktop boxes.

  82. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by pod · · Score: 2

    Well, ever since the new version of AOL did away with pop-up ads, it only makes sense. I don't know if AOL/TW properties have popups (I use Mozilla myself so I never see them), but if they do now, that will change soon as well. If AOL doesn't derive any revenus from popup advertising, why would it support it?

    --
    "Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
  83. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by hermescom · · Score: 5, Interesting
    IE 7 is planned to include Popup blocking support. The only big "IF" is wether or not it will be turned on by default. If not, about 80% of the population will keep browsing as they always had.

    As far as new ad formats, right on devedge page linked from the artice, you are seeing the future of web advertising.

    Instead of popup windows (which are *SO* 90's), we will have popup div layers, positioned to cover the page. Look at Netscape's own popup detection example. They show you how to detect a popup blocker, and open up a fixed position DIV to give visitor a "warning". How long do you think it will take an ad network programmer to figure out that instead of the warning, this DIV can actually be used to show the ad itself?

    Better yet, if the window failed to open, you can open the div with an IFRAME in it that points to the same URL. And no popups. :)

    Welcome to the future. Doesn't it look a lot like the past?

  84. Re:HOWTO: Avoid the stupid question box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Delete libnullplugin from your Mozilla plugin directory. It asks something one more time.. check the checkbox not to ask again. Now you deside when you need a plugin instead of being asked all the time.

  85. Re:Netscape 7.0 Speed, Mozilla, Phoenix by dougmc · · Score: 2
    OS/2 2.0 did not run well with 4 MB of RAM. It worked, but didn't work that well. By itself it was ok, but any applications would start it swapping.

    You needed 6 MB for it to really perform well.

    (I haven't used OS/2 since 2.1, so I don't know about later versions, and nobody really seemed to use the pre 2.0 versions :) )

  86. Netscape is a hipocrit by redmond · · Score: 1

    The last time I checked, netscape.com had pop up ads. Interesting that their browser is now going to block them. I think somebody needs to make up their mind.

    --
    :wq
    1. Re:Netscape is a hipocrit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The last time I checked, netscape.com [netscape.com] had pop up ads. Interesting that their browser is now going to block them. I think somebody needs to make up their mind.

      What's wrong with that? It's sending a great message: "Our site is standards-compliant, but it works better with our browser."

      Better than the old non-standard Netscape extensions from back in the day.

    2. Re:Netscape is a hipocrit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is that they sell advertising based, at least in part, on the number of hits to their website. Some of the advertising they sell are the very annoying pop ups. The original post didn't say anything about support or lack of support for any standards, just pointed out the hyprocritical nature of this action.



      Just my 2/100 of a dollar
    3. Re:Netscape is a hipocrit by an+enormous+void · · Score: 1

      The original post ... just pointed out the hyprocritical nature of this action.

      I believe the original post attempted to point out the hipocritical nature of Netscape's actions, not the hyprocritical nature, or even the hypocritical nature. =P

    4. Re:Netscape is a hipocrit by redmond · · Score: 1

      damn grammer nazis

      --
      :wq
  87. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's weird.. it's not all that slow on my 2.53 P4 running ML9?!?!?

    Doh! :-B

  88. NetCaptor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For those who've never heard of it, there is a great browser that uses IE's rendering engine and implements all of these things: NetCaptor.

    It can block unrequested popups, popups by URL, anything else on the page by URL (such as for blocking non-popup ads), tabbed browsing, cookie management, grouped favorites, and much more.

    The downside is that it's Windows-only and $30 shareware.

    But if you're looking for a powerful browser, I think this is well worth the money... download the trial version and judge for yourself. I've been using it for years and can't live without it.

  89. well, which is it? by 192_kbps · · Score: 5, Interesting
    In an article cited just a few stories ("Andy Grove Says End Of Moore's Law At Hand") back, the author writes:
    "Current is becoming a major factor and a limiter on how complex we can build chips," said Grove. He said the company' engineers "just can't get rid of" power leakage... The problem of leakage threatens the future validity of Moores Law. As chips become more powerful and draw more power, leakage tends to increase. The industry is used to power leakage rates of up to fifteen per cent, but chips constructed of increasing numbers of transistors can suffer power leakage of up to 40 per cent said Grove. In chips made up of a billion transistors may leak between 60 and 70 Watts of power, he warned. The power is largely dissipated as heat causing cooling problems for powerful chips.
    Now we have this story about AMD, where in the cited article, the author writes about AMD:
    It's also working on new transistors and new chipmaking techniques that will let it continue to boost chip performance through 2005 and beyond, company representatives said Monday... Two additional papers will discuss AMD's ideas on building transistors that use metal, rather than silicon gates. Using nickel for the gate improves electrical current flow through the transistor, AMD said...
    So Intel wants us to believe chip speeds are nearing a plateau, while AMD wants us to believe everything is rosy. I suspect Grove is talking about a longer time period than AMD. But then, maybe it's time for AMD to eat Intel's lunch.
    1. Re:well, which is it? by jpmorgan · · Score: 2
      Intel's raw fabrication technology is still several years ahead of AMD. Grove might be pessimistic about the long-term future of Moore's law, but Intel still has a couple of year's headstart and about 5 times the R&D budget. And somehow I think he was looking further than three years into the future with that statement.

      Rumours of Intel's demise have been exagerated, I believe.

  90. missed a page of search results :) by timothy · · Score: 1

    I hit search and started counting, multiplying by 30, looks like I missed a page between the first and the last.

    Thanks for the correction :)

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
    1. Re:missed a page of search results :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, now it's readily apparent why you don't have a REAL job.

      Nice (lack of) work.

  91. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by shepd · · Score: 1

    >It makes sense that Netscape 7.01 has the pop-up-disabling feature in it.

    Maybe. What doesn't make sense is the fact that there are still popups on netscape's homepage; unless they're trying to make a point.

    --
    If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
  92. AMD removing themselves as competition was BS by noc007 · · Score: 2, Informative

    AMD stopping competition with Intel was utter BS in the first place. If you've followed their roadmap at all, they've got the Barton core comming out in a couple of months closely followed by ClawHammer and SledgeHammer. They have new cores on the horizon and are researching new technologies. They aren't going anywhere. Forbes is going on my "Company with Idiot Writers List." They're there along with CNet and some other ZD Net and Internet.com companies.

  93. Challenge to the Mozilla Developers by rowanxmas · · Score: 1

    Knowing that advertisers are going to try something new, and also knowing that they can only do what the browser lets them, should it not be easy to not ever allow annoying stuff to happen?
    Call me naive, but an open source project should be thrilled to not have to impelement something annoying, imagine the following bit of code:

    void reallyAnnoyingUIMethod () {
    //do nothing
    }

    1. Re:Challenge to the Mozilla Developers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      now if it weren't for the lameness filter......

  94. Your Definition? by VoidEngineer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm skeptical about your definition.

    I attended a colloquim and seminar by Ian Foster, one of the authors of the Globus Toolkit, who was visiting down from Argonne Nat'l Labs. From what I gathered, grid computing is more about having the right kind of network negotiation and protocols between resources. Supper-efficient and superfast are second order derivatives; that is, they are a bonus and nice touch, but I don't think that is exactly what grid computing is about.

    Specifically, as I understand it, its about global resource management, across distributed, world-wide systems. Joe, who runs a Particle Collider in Europe, can share information and network resources with Jane, who runs a MRI in America, who can share info and resources with Charlie, who runs a radio telescope in Antartica. I may be mistaken, but I understood grid computing to be sort-of the opposite of clustering.

    Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not trying to start any kind of crusade. However, I do know a number of people who swear by Java, and I think that Java may actually be the protocol of choice for a lot of Grid Computing applications (such as sharing of astronomical data, genomic data, and magnetic resonance imaging data). These kinds of applications can greatly benefit by the sandbox architecture, garbage collection, security infrastructure, and virtual machines which Java supports. Sure it adds overhead, but I think that there are millions of programmers and scientists around the world who would gladly take the overhead costs, if it means that they can concentrate on chemistry, astronomy, genetics, or whatever, rather than having to worry about memory pointers, memory leaks, hardware support, and so forth.

    But I only attended a couple of lectures by one of the authors of the Globus Toolkit. I'm not an expert or anything, so I could certainly be mistaken.

    1. Re:Your Definition? by Captn+Pepe · · Score: 2

      No, not mistaken. In fact, you're pretty much spot on. I'm sure Dr. Foster appreciated the fact that you were paying attention instead of fantasizing about Beowulf clusters in the sky. He really isn't driven by the vast (potential) computational powers of the Grid, but by what it enables researchers to accomplish.

      One of these, as you said, is management of distributed resources. Importantly, we want such management to be transparent to the end user. Thus the terminology "Grid computing" -- the system should be like the power grid, except that you plug in your task and get the computational resources that you need, instead of electricity. We'd really like it if you could just submit a request for a given file (or other object representing a desired data product) and have the Grid spit it back at you, without your having to have any knowledge about what resources were needed or what secondary computations were run in order to satisfy your job's dependencies. Of course, the whole system is based on open technologies, and there is lots of monitoring technology built in, but that's more for the benefit of the software and developers than the end users.

      The other great potential benefit of Grid computing is for collaboration. Several researchers can easily examine the same data by requesting the same data product from the Grid, and can all run the same processor-intensive visualization tools using Grid-supplied resources. If things are arranged correctly, the visualization itself never needs to be run more than once. One project I'm involved with, by way of example, is producing a sky browser that can, on demand, dispatch Grid jobs to crunch through Sloan survey data and identify the galaxy clusters in the field you're looking at. Cosmologists think this is really neat.

      By and large, new science codes being deployed on the Grid are written in portable things like Java, Python, TCL(!), and so on, precisely because you don't need to care that much what the underlying system looks like. There are a lot of old binaries written in FORTRAN and worse, especially in the particle physics community, that make no end of grief for people setting up production pipelines on the Grid. This is made a little easier by the fact that Linux-based clusters are popping up everywhere these days, so often getting something to run on Linux (or even as specific as i386 Linux) will get you far enough.

      --

      Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
    2. Re:Your Definition? by VoidEngineer · · Score: 1

      Thank you kindly for your assessment. From your other postings it appears that you work at the University of Chicago... And I notice some references to the scavenger hunt, as well...

      FYI, I used to work at NSIT, supporting the USITE clusters. You may have been over to the USITE:Crerar lab. We set up all of the visualization and collaborative computing over there. Anyhow, I designed the basic builds of those workstations, and hacked the Windows NT registry to run the SETI project as a low level background daemon (Service), and not just as a screensaver.

      You should talk to Scott Wilson about hacking the USITE build, and replacing the Seti@Home daemon with a daemon version of your Sloan survey data viewer. It would be sad to see my USITE:Crerar SETI record go away, but I'm working on other stuff now days. Nab the USITE grid, and hack the registry to run your precompiled Sloan survey data binaries as a low level process. Doing so would be a good way to test the resource negotiation across a distributed computing environment (i.e. The USITE cluster... you would have at least three sites: Harper, Crerar, and Regenstein, running a distributed test environment for a larger scale (possibly global?) distribution of the Sloan survey data viewer)

      Postscript: Where are you located? LASR? GeoSci? Argonne?

      post-postscript: Check out Dr. Wimsatt's colloquium and lectures on Big Problems, Cultural Evolution, and the Dimensions of Globalization if you get the chance. I'm sure he and Dr. Foster are going to collaborate some day and bust up all sorts of new stuff for grid networks... Wimsatt's got all of the grid population genetics and memetic theory stuff worked out.

    3. Re:Your Definition? by Captn+Pepe · · Score: 2

      Hi there. Nice work on USITE Crerar, then. I've been in there a number of times since the lab was installed. Impressive Seti numbers, too.

      Since you ask, I work for Dr. Foster under the rubrick of the Computation Institute on campus. Where on campus that is currently is in a state of flux between Ryerson and the RI.

      I think that the USITE computers will continue running Seti for the time being, as we are not suffering from a lack of heterogenous resources, but a lack of software to pull it all together. We've currently got I think twelve grid sites lined up to accept Sloan cluster finding work, not counting the WorldGrid, which we should (hopefully) be able to tie into as well before long. iVDGL might be of interest to you on that front. My group, the Grid Physics Network, is less concerned with these management issues, than with taking the existing tools and wrapping them around real physics problems.

      On the other hand, I do know people who wouldn't mind if those lab computers got set up with some Condor daemons, which would be a lot more useful than some single-purpose cluster finding code, anyway, and more in keeping with the grid computing style of doing things. I don't know how much demand there is for WinNT pools, though.

      --

      Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
  95. Best Netscape in a while by kitzilla · · Score: 2

    So I loaded up the new NS 7.1 on Mac OS X. It feels a lot like Mozilla now. Not as quick as Chimera/Navigator, but quite pleasant.

    The popup filter sounds a system alert when it blocks something. Takes some getting used to, since it's the same noise by default as the new mail sound.

    I was amused to see that popup blocking didn't work on Netscape's portal. The popup preferences warn that blocking might be defeated by sites using "other methods" to raise windows. Guess Netscape is using those Black Arts to do just that.

    With the mail spellcheck and all the default plugins, this is a great mom-and-pop browser. Will probably load it on the family's machines. Nice to see decent Netscape product again.

    --
    This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
  96. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Ilgaz · · Score: 2

    I heard IE 7 will come with popup blocking but will be default to OFF for keeping relations with AD-Companies good.

    Keep this in mind, I guess they will somehow make it passport ... anyway, lets see :)

    I am a registered Opera 7 user, I'd care less ;-)

  97. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Been done. There is tons of third party software to stop popups in IE. I use Panicware's Pop-up Stopper

  98. well if you want the whole story by lingqi · · Score: 5, Informative

    you are right; game consoles do use RDRAM. But in the end, RDRAM is not killed because it's bad technology, but because othere stuff.

    first on the tech. (REALLY quick brief)

    1) RDRAM has a faster interface (duh)
    2) and it has a much more narrow bus
    3) but to make chips drive at such a high frequency ON THE CIRCUIT BOARD, the bus interface for RDRAM is totally wacky

    explanation: RDRAM is serially connected, *kinda* like... SCSI, or COAX ethernet back in the days. and it's heavily terminated. and because the signal goes so damn fast (remember, circuit board made of FR4 here - not cache->CPU interconnects), the routing of the signal traces, while sparse (something they tout - and it's true, DDR has like 2-4 time the wire density as RDRAM on the board), has very small tolerance for length difference. furthermore because the high speed, the chips must have a very strict output impedance (which is why mem-makers got shitty yields at the beginning and the RDRAM price were so high).

    performance wise / practically speaking, since it's the signal routing / RIMM detection and delay adjustment (remember no trace length differences etc) that's difficult and causes trouble - in game consoles where you will never add memory, RDRAM is actually better (easier to work with / better performance - better perf because you don't incur additional delays in the trace by adding more modules, everything is fixed). Same time on PCs, when you do it right, RDRAM still offers better bandwidth than DDR; DDR-2 i am not so sure, but that won't be in massive production for a while so don't wait for it yet. depending on architecture (P4 is, have to say, on the side of "optimized for RDRAM"), you would get better performance out of RDRAM for a little while longer.

    now the non-tech side:

    RAMBUS charges royalty. 2% i think? now - memory business is not high-margin business (or else there won't be only like 4-5 memory makers left!), so when 2% is actually like 40% from the margin - if you can do away with RAMBUS (even at a performance hit), it would enable you to survive, or make more money - depending on the company.

    so... the moral of the story? RDRAM is not bad technology (i.e. has its uses - like in consoles), but it's not GREAT technology, and certainly not good enough to warrent the margin cut and the headaches in engineering (output impedence - and these days they are going to 32/64 bit so the sparse signal lines is less and less of a advertisable benefit). But I expect that it will maintain it's little niche and won't just die off suddenly one day. i mean, heck - even if they only supplied for the game consoles, (especially with the large chunck of change intel gave to RAMBUS) they can survive for quite a while. RAMBUS as a company I think will eventually fail if they continue this path of IP-only, though - for other reasons. but this is getting long already.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

  99. Mostly engineering, not physics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For most of that Maxwell and (relatively) ancient quantum physics are plenty, the errors of using "outdated" theories are insignificant.

    The research at Cern doesnt even produce results too relevant for semiconductor physics or nanostructures ... maybe it will have some relevance for fusion research, but other than that its doubtfull to have any short term impact. It hasnt in the past.

  100. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by tundog · · Score: 1

    IE wil NEVER block pop-up adds. Think of the economics involved. MS isnt just a software company. They are into other things, say MSN for example. For thows of you familiar with Hotmail, think of the millions of site references MS steal via hotmail. If the avaergae Joe you clicks on a link from a ligitamite email offer, the result is a new window, which is essentially two-framed, the controlling frame being held by the MSN. Now use the same logic for pop-ups.

    MS stopped being a consumer technology developer long ago. Now all they have to do is just lead the lemmings.

    --
    All your base are belong to us!
  101. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A voice of reason.

    Little-endianness is the work of satan. Just ask anybody who have done x86 assembly after 680x0.

  102. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 1

    ``if the advertisers change their format to a harder to block type, then i'll be seeing ads again.''
    I don't mind ads. Ads help fund services. They pay for the facilities I use, so that I don't have to. Occassionally (argh...where's the spell checker?), they alert me to things I actually want. Ads are good. Pop-up ads are a different story. I dislike pop-ups in general. They distract and annoy me. I block pop-ups, and avoid sites that rely on them. If advertisers continue to use them, fine, I won't see them. If they switch, fine too. It will be one less annoyance. Of course there is the possibility of them replacing it with something equally or more annoying, but frankly, I don't think that is in their interest. Although sometimes they do indeed seem to want to annoy you...oh well.

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  103. Radeon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only feature I am looking forward to is the one that blocks the ads ala www.gamedev.net and www.flipcode.com

    Does anyone else think it is amazingly intrusive to force someone to close an ad before they can continue browing?

    1. Re:Radeon by samdu · · Score: 2

      I went to both sites with Mozilla 1.2b and got no ads like the ones you described.

  104. Your a fool by oliverthered · · Score: 2

    You should have kept quite and popped down the patent office, either you'd be rich or have the power to stop advertisers using this method.

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
    1. Re:Your a fool by hermescom · · Score: 1
      The method is already in use by some advertisers. It's not widespread, but there's enough prior art out there to stop anyone from getting a patent. I hope.

      Besides, if I did patent it, I would just make money on licensing it to advertisers :)

    2. Re:Your a fool by oliverthered · · Score: 1

      hopefully enough money that they wouldn't use it ;->

      --
      thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  105. Re:AMD chipsets don't support Rambus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Deutsche demokratische Republik

  106. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by jonadab · · Score: 2

    > Actually Microsoft is great at leaving the value added innovations
    > to their clients. Try looking at "Crazy Browzer". It only takes a
    > few nights coding to add tabs to IE.

    This is right, but it is only half the story. Microsoft is great at
    leaving the innovations to ISVs and then buying or cloning the ones
    that prove to be successful or useful. Think back...

    DOSEDIT comes out, and people in-the-know declare that they can't
    live without it. Microsoft produces DOSKEY for 5.0. Stacker is
    successful. Microsoft produces DoubleSpace for the next version of
    DOS. Desqview gets rave reviews, and customers say they want
    windows like Macintosh has. Microsoft produces Windows. Central
    Point and Norton produce useful disk defragmentation utilities;
    Microsoft contracts for a defrag utility to include with DOS.
    Third-party full-screen editors are all the rage; Microsoft drops
    edlin and produces edit.com, leveraging the IDE editor that they
    already developed for QuickBasic (and, in the process, including
    a stripped-down QBasic to avoid the need to extract the editor
    from it; apparently it was too interwoven to separate before 5.0
    shipped; later they did separate it out (or rewrite it) for Win
    95). On and on the list goes.

    Will the next IE include tabbed browsing? Maybe, but if it
    doesn't, the version after will. Will the next IE include popup
    blocking? Maybe, but if it doesn't, more people will use Netscape
    than already do, and Microsoft knows it; which does Microsoft
    value more, strong dominance in the browser market (not mere
    majority, but the kind of overwhelming majority only achieved
    after IE5 came out), or the support of popup advertisers?

    Actually, Microsoft could weasel a way to get both: ship IE with
    popup blocking, but place "select partners" on a whitelist, and
    make it prohibitively difficult for casual users to remove sites
    from the whitelist. (HINT: involve regedit.) On the whole, this
    would be mostly good for user experience, since it would greatly
    reduce the sheer overwhelming quantity of popups. Microsoft could
    claim that "the competitive market" (Netscape) forced them to
    include popup blocking, elicit sympathy, use it as one more argument
    in any antitrust procedings (oh, you thought we'd seen the last of
    those?), and then turn around and tell strategic advertisers that
    it means less competition from nobody advertisers who didn't make
    the whitelist -- and use it as a negotiation point: doubleclick
    would probably bend over backwards and kiss strategic parts of
    Microsoft's corporate anatomy to be on the whitelist.

    I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft just _bought_ CrazyBrowser.
    OTOH, popup blocking is not the hardest thing in the universe to
    implement, and they could just do it from scratch. CrazyBrowser
    would then have to offer more innovations or become irrelevant.

    --
    Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  107. Re:Netscape 7.01 blocks popups. Next will be IE? by jonadab · · Score: 2

    I don't mind advertisements in general; I do mind popups. If popup
    blocking goes mainstream, all it means to me is legacy sites that
    require it for obscure reasons will be forced to be fixed or become
    irrelevant. Then I can happily leave popups disabled *all* the time
    and browse totally in one window (with multiple tabs if desired).
    If advertisers load banners into pages to compensate for the lost
    popups, that's fine with me.

    So yes, I _do_ want IE to ship with popup blocking. On by default,
    if possible. Not because I use IE, but because IE exerts pressure
    on website authors.

    --
    Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  108. Technology Arms Race by ReelOddeeo · · Score: 2

    I said this in another discussion, but here goes....


    It seems inevitable that this will lead to a technology arms race.

    The advertisers get more obnoxious. Browsers and proxies get better at screening out ads. More features will appear to help the end user. And those features will become more sophisticated.

    Here is a hypothetical example. [Disclaimer: this example is purely hypothetical. I have not done this myself, and am not trying to induce browser authors to commit a crime. Remember, a web site has to make money, and not watching ads is stealing!] Anyway, that said, suppose a browser (or proxy?) went through all the motions of running the ad. Executed the ad code, scripts, flash animations, etc. Dutifully simulated the popup windows, and executed their code. Dutifully requested all of the graphics, flash animations, and other inline content for the popup windows. This way the server really thinks that you see the ad. After all, your browser requested a flash that is only embedded in the popup. So you must not be a thief, because you are seeing the ad. The problem is, the authors of this browser or proxy have induced their users into stealing because the browser or proxy doesn't actually display the ads or popup windows. It still consumes the bandwidth, but these evil crooks (i.e. users) don't care.

    This technique will prevent the advertisers from knowing that you've seen the ad. From their perspective, your browser has executed all the right code and requested all the right content from the server that should be associated with viewing this page.

    Seen from the perspective I've described it here (advertiser friendly, and users as thieves) could the above hypothetical example be construed as a circumvention device? "Our content is protected by Anti-Leech, and these evil hackers have circumvented it. That's as bad as spray painting ad billboards!"

    In the end, we'll have heads up displays in cars, with ad billboards constantly popping up in our face while driving. This will be seen as enormously beneficial in eliminating the visual clutter of billboards on buildings and roadways.

    --

    Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
    1. Re:Technology Arms Race by tomk · · Score: 1

      Actually this eliminates one of the benefits of popup-blocking: reduced bandwidth.

      However in most cases bandwidth is unimportant, latency is what counts (how long until I can see the whole page). So you could do a QOS thing: defer the popups from pseudo-loading until every other thing on the page is done loading, and displayed.

    2. Re:Technology Arms Race by DickBreath · · Score: 2

      Actually this eliminates one of the benefits of popup-blocking: reduced bandwidth.

      However in most cases bandwidth is unimportant, latency is what counts (how long until I can see the whole page). So you could do a QOS thing: defer the popups from pseudo-loading until every other thing on the page is done loading, and displayed.


      The problem is that with new tools such as Anti Leech that prevent you from seeing the page at all until / unless you see the ads, the browsers (or proxys in between) will need to simulate the full bandwidth wasting effect of downloading the ads exactly as the browser would do so that from the server perspective, you are not blocking popup ads.

      One thing I see happening is that sites with less obnoxious ads, fewer popups, etc. but with similar content, such as similar models, in similar poses, similar age, same gender, etc. will draw away eyeballs from the sites with similar content but more ads.

      If blocking popups becomes popular, then sites would have to give you a pop quiz to make sure you had seen the ad. The problem with this is that taking such a quiz with one hand is difficult, and also might cause viewers to loose their..... um.... focus.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    3. Re:Technology Arms Race by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      You are wrong to assume that the advertisers will en-masse block users from their sites who have the popups disabled. That's just not how it works. Noone is about to start turning away users.

      If it becomes plainly known that browser XYZ routinely "fakes" popups, people will figure out to use XYZ's strengths in order to still show the ads in another way.

      Here's a test page I threw up yesterday as a proof of concept: LINK See how your Moz deals with that...

      P.S. I thought I was pretty clever coming up with this, but a search revealed others already using it in live systems.

  109. silicon process scale measurements by amigabill · · Score: 1

    >Intel will detail its efforts to bring out higher performing chips at the 90 nanometer level--the next
    >chip manufacturing step, expected in 2005. (The nanometer measurement refers to the average distance
    >between transistors on the chip.)

    Ack! I've been designing my chips wrong all these years... Now where's that goof that told me the 90nm things was a measure of the minimum length of a transistor gate channel?? :)

  110. And people with modems should... by edremy · · Score: 2
    do exactly what while waiting and waiting and waiting for the (invisible) ads to download.

    Not everyone has a high-speed link.

    --
    "Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
    1. Re:And people with modems should... by vadim_t · · Score: 1

      Queue them. Don't know about you, but when I used a modem ads didn't take *that* long to load. The major annoyance was from ads that kept popping up and taking a lot to load bacause there were a lot of them.

      But even with the modem my connection was unused while I was reading slashdot, for example. The browser could always remember the ads, wait until the connection is idle and then download them. If it doesn't become idle, then it could just not load them at all.

      This wouldn't give so nice results on the short term, but on the long term it should be much better. If you just don't load the ads you don't hurt the advertiser. Why would s/he care if you block ads? If you do that chances are you're not going to buy anything anyway.

      This is about the same idea as replying to spam. Yes, it costs you more. But if you swap the spammer with thousands of useless calls it'll be far more effective than just throwing out the spam you get.

  111. Re:Netscape 7.0 Speed, Mozilla, Phoenix by japhmi · · Score: 1

    I ran Win98 and NS4.x on a P100 w/ 16 megs of ram for a long time, it ran fine unless you had a lot of windows open.

    --
    "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
  112. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by swoogan · · Score: 1

    Well, Netscape 7.0 is sure a lot faster than Netscape 5 was.

    --

    Swoogan
    sigs are for losers...and ppl who can think of one.

  113. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, Netscape 1.0 was the fastest. I was using it still even when they were releasing 4.x.

  114. Re:Netscape 7.0 Speed, Mozilla, Phoenix by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Xfree86 on Linux will run with 16 MB of RAM, no problem, I did this with my 486. I think maybe even 8 MB is possible, but your swap partition will get heavy use. But, yeah, anyone with only 24 MB of RAM these days needs to get with the program. I have bought 128MB PC133 modules for free after rebates. If you've got a mobo that uses EDO, you really need to upgrade rather than complain about how slow Mozilla is on your ancient hardware. Computers are sooo cheap these days.

  115. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by edwdig · · Score: 2

    Netscape 1.1 or 1.2 (whatever the final 1.x was) was the latest stable version when I got my Pentium 75. I remember downloading the 2.0 betas about 6 months after I got that system. 100mhz Pentiums had just come out then.

    I remember the 2.0 -> 3.0 timeframe being shorter than 3.0 -> 4.0 was. Even so, I really doubt 3.0 came out before Intel managed to get to 120mhz.

  116. Re:Netscape 7.0 Speed, Mozilla, Phoenix by netsharc · · Score: 2

    This is a "me too" post, damn I can't believe how long I lived with such a configuration.. from 1996 to mid-2000. I think I used IE though, it was faster than Netscape. I did get 32 MB and 8.4 GB upgrade in 1999, but in August 2000 upgraded to an Athlon 650, and then my brother got that, and now I have a Duron 900. Wow, I miss my old computer. :)

    --
    What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
  117. Win98SE, Netscape 4.x, worked fine by billstewart · · Score: 2
    I was using Win98 (I think Second Edition, though it could have been First Edition), and it worked just fine with Netscape 4.x in 24MB. But with Netscape 6 it croaked horribly. The hardware was a 300 MHz Celeron. I later upgraded the box from 24MB to 192MB, and it worked a bit better :-) One of the other machines got upgraded to 640MB, because it seemed like that ought to be enough memory for anybody.


    As somebody else replied, this level of memory bloat is pretty recent - for most kinds of software, you shouldn't be designing it to require a latest-model desktop power box, but a two-year-old laptop, which has a lot less spare resources. That way it will run well for everybody and really rock on high-end machines. Some applications are obvious exceptions, like games, and scientific/engineering numbercrunching.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  118. Not easy. by TheLink · · Score: 2

    Coz lots of website use reallyAnnoyingUIMethod on their website instead of just plain "a hrefs".

    I surf the web with javascript and activeX turned off and I don't get any pop ups at all.

    But there are many annoying websites where what should be just a simple "a href" link, just doesn't work unless javascript is on.

    Sure javascript can be useful (invert check box selection for 500 items etc), but I get suspicious when web designers start using javascript where plain HTML will do.

    Then they have "one big shockwave" sites.

    Maybe they do work for the banner ad companies too.

    Perhaps I'm a neo-luddite but you can have new windows opened whether you have javascript on or off. My webapps do that - if you have javascript on, the window is a nice small size, with javascript off, you get a whole new window which you may have to resize (I use it for stuff like monitoring for new messages).

    --
  119. Re:Netscape 7.0 Speed, Mozilla, Phoenix by p00p · · Score: 0

    wow that was informative. You must think you're pretty cool for a nerd eh? Loser.

  120. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by jonadab · · Score: 1

    > Even so, I really doubt 3.0 came out before Intel managed to get
    > to 120mhz.

    Sorry, I wasn't clear. Note the all-important qualifier in my post
    about "the ones anyone could afford to buy"? Yes, the high-end
    Intel processors were probably doing 120MHz, at least in theory,
    but the cost of motherboards, to say nothing of the chips themselves,
    was a deterrent for many. Living on a college campus, the fastest
    computer I had actually seen as of 1997 was a DX4/100, which one guy
    I knew got during sprint semester. I walked across campus to see it.
    I had also seen a few Pentium systems, but none faster than 75MHz.
    (Yes, the Pentium did more per clock cycle than the 486 DX2, but so
    did the DX4, OSIWT. I suspect the system bus on the DX4 was not as
    fast, though, because I think they used motherboard technologies
    made for the DX2 originally to get the prices into consumer range.)

    Maybe I had my Netscape release dates wrong, but I was thinking
    that Netscape 3 come out by 1996, and 4 in 1997. I know that my
    school had Netscape (I'm pretty sure it was 2.x) by 1995, and I
    was fairly sure they upgraded the following year -- and I _think_
    that by May of '97 when I graduated I was using 4.0, because when
    I grabbed 4.5 in spring of '98 (when I first got the net at home)
    I did not notice any substantial differences (except that the first
    time I downloaded Communicator on a friend's recommendation, and
    it had a bunch of extra junk I had no use for, so I went and got
    the Navigator standalone and did the uninstall/reinstall thing --
    but doing that gave me, I thought, exactly what I'd had at school).

    And yes, I do remember Mosaic, but barely. The school had that
    when I first was shown the web, but after a small number of months
    they got Netscape Navigator.

    --
    Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  121. Re:All NEW Netscape 7.0 - Netscape's FASTEST brows by edwdig · · Score: 2

    Yeah, I think you're right on the years.

    Netscape 2.0 right at the end of 95 or the very beginning of 96. 3.0 betas came out 6 months later.

    I'm amazed at how low end the technology you saw was. I had a P75 at the start of high school, and a bunch of people had P90's or faster. Around 97 a lot of people had Pentium 2's.

  122. Last Post! by alpg · · Score: 1

    *** NEWS FLASH ***

    Archeologists find PDP-11/24 inside brain cavity of fossilized dinosaur
    skeleton! Many Digital users fear that RSX-11M may be even more primitive
    than DEC admits. Price adjustments at 11:00.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...