Slashback: Hardware, Lexis, Free

Slashback tonight has followups and clarifications on glitch-delayed Pentium IV shipments, Free software for chainware operating systems, the real distinction between 3G and 2.5G phone systems and more -- read on below for the details.

More RAM than I can afford. RyanT5000 writes "The article referenced in "Getting Rid of the Disks" incorrectly states that the maximum RAM for a 32-bit Intel compatible system is 4 GB. This was true up to and including the original Pentium processor, and it makes a lot of sense (after all, 2^32 = 4 294 967 296). However, with the Pentium Pro, Intel added 4 pins to the address bus, expanding the maximum physical address space to 64 GB (using paging, since it still uses 32 bit addressing). I would assume AMD has a similar feature. If you're on Windows, you'll need a server version to get above 4 GB, but most major Linux/BSD/etc. OSes support it. This would probably be cheaper (and definitely faster) than SCSI SSDs. If you need more than 64 GB of solid state storage, you probably shouldn't be running on an Intel."

"Free" always makes people suspicious. imevil writes "A while ago slashdotters asked some questions to the GNUWin II team. Well, here are the answers. In the meantime, more people joined the team, and more languages were added (this one looks pretty cool)." There's also a short article about GNUWin running at NewsForge.

On a related note, cos(0) writes "According to this(1), this(2), and other stories, many people are interested in running open source, high-quality software on MS Windows. The author of this site provides an up-to-date CD image of the latest versions of numerous high-quality OSS applications (complete list on the site), updated monthly, downloadable via BitTorrent. (The same site also offers a web-based Code Beautifier.)"

Cool distribution method! (And if you're on dialup, $5 seems like a great bargain -- Are you listening, Cheapbytes?)

Toys are so tempting to the wallet ... OrenWolf writes "Ars Technica Has a review up of BroadQ's QCast Tuner software. Unlike the earlier /. review, this article goes into great detail about the technical capabilities of the software. A must read for PS2 owners looking for a PC-PVR-esque solution."

Yeah, but does this review include any original software? ;) And david_adams writes "Slashdot linked to an article I wrote last month about my experience with a CDMA2000 1x wireless network from SprintPCS. It sparked quite a bit of controversy, but not for the reasons I expected. Because I called Sprint's service 3G in the title, but admitted it was 2.5G in the first paragraph, I heard from people on both sides, chiding me on the one hand for calling it 3G, and on the other for calling it 2.5G. I decided to research and write a new article to get to the bottom of it. What is truly 3G? Where is the line between 2.5G and 3G?"

The time to wait is now! ThunderDawg writes "Intel resumed Canterwood Pentium 4 3 GHz 800FSB shipments yesterday. TAFKAEFKAF (The Anomaly Formerly Known as Errata Formerly Known as Flaw) was corrected with a software patch.

Intel is again shipping its new 3GHz Pentium 4 processor, a week after it halted shipments due to the discovery of an "anomaly," an Intel spokesman said Monday. PC makers that use the chip in their systems have been supplied with a software update to fix the issue, George Alfs, an Intel spokesman said. Vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computer, and Gateway introduced desktop systems based on the chip when it was released on Monday last week. The issue with the 3GHz Pentium 4 with support for an 800MHz system bus occurs only in rare circumstances and users are unlikely to be affected, according to Alfs."

I'd take google and a strong AI any day. hondo77 writes "A bit of a followup to this article from back in February, LexisNexis has been named the publisher of official reports by the California Supreme Court, according to this press release. "The public will have free access to the official text of the opinions at a Web site hosted by LexisNexis linked to the court's Web site." IANAL but it doesn't sound ominous to me."

Comments

more like 16 gigabytes

[jrstewart]

While theoretically you can put up to 64 gigs into a recent IA32 machine, my understanding is that in Linux at least the practical limit is 16 gigabytes. After that the page tables won't fit in kernel space.

I'd expect that most other OSes have limits like that due to architectures designed when nobody was close to using a full 4 gigs.

Re:more like 16 gigabytes

[coupland]

Well historically maximum memory sizes have always been limited by implementations (how long after OS/2 2.0 before you could buy a server with 4.0 GB RAM?). However demand usually pushes supply. When 32GB of RAM becomes needed by the IA32 architecture it's a sure bet that Linux and eventually Windows will catch up to meet the need. The fact that it isn't realistically possible today is immaterial. There is no demand. (Please spare me the examples of theoretical clients...)

Re:more like 16 gigabytes

[afidel]

Ummm, large X86 systems from Dell, HP, Unisys and others already support the full 64GB of ram that the architecture allows. Sure not everyone (or even many) who uses Linux needs large PAE support but it would be nice for those who do. Of course most of the people I know who wanted to use large amounts of ram on x86 are waiting for Opteron because generally if you need that much ram you need it all for one or two processes and that doesn't work with PAE. btw if you think no one wants access to large chunks of ram on x86 then you haven't dealt with people with large databases or who route large ASIC's/cpus. It costs shedloads to buy Sun's with lots of ram, an Opteron or Xeon with the same amount of ram will probably cost about 1/3rd as much, which when you are talking about dozens of systems adds up to a lot of money. (My back of the envelope calculation was that for our ASIC group it would save somewhere in the neighborhood of about a quarter million a year =)

Also

[The Bungi]

CD image of the latest versions of numerous high-quality OSS applications

There's also Cygwin, which is a sort of mini-distro for Windows complete with XFree and a few basic window managers (fwm and OpenBox among them). Great package manager, lots of mirrors and great quality overall. It sometimes beats booting into Debian =)

Note that you'll want to run it in NT4 or better (IMO), but it's a very nice introduction to UNIX-like environments, especially the X server support (since bash is not very flashy). It's actually quite neat to have a full screen X session running on top of the Windows desktop.

It also ships with the GNU toolchain so you can even write your own little aps (console, GTK or plain X).

LexisNexis

[Jedi Paramedic]

I think it's interesting that California chose Lexis, but perhaps not as ominous as it would seem. As part of their obligation to provide true public access to the law, many (or maybe most) courts have law libraries.

Yes, it's on paper, yes, it's not searchable from the comfort of your home... but I think that's what you pay for when you get the access through Lexis or Westlaw's online service.

Many law libraries even have searchable case law on archived CDs, or cheap/free alternatives (like Loislaw and Lexis One.

Remember, lots of legal treatises (and perhaps some other states' "official publications") are published by LexisNexis, as are any books that used to be published under the Matthew Bender name...

Sorry, 4GB is probably it for most folks

[unfortunateson]

I was just looking into motherboards this afternoon, and most of the newest P4 motherboards only support 4 gig -- and the older ones only support 3 or 2 gig.

Go check out Tom's Hardware if you don't believe me.

So maybe the chip does support 64GB (I don't have a link for that)... the limit could be the chipset, the motherboard makers, or perhaps its just the max size of RAM available?

Re:Sorry, 4GB is probably it for most folks

[afidel]

Get large systems fron Dell, HP, IBM, or Unisys and you get large memory support, up to 64GB for most of them on the largest x86 servers. The low end 1 and 2 way chipsets don't support large amounts of memory because PAE support takes a lot of silicon that just isn't needed by 99.9999% of the people who buy such systems. That and you'd need more slots as the largest commonly available ram modules are 1GB, though 4GB modules are seen a little more often these days.

Re:Sounds eerily familiar...

[uchi]

A quick thought popped into my head when you said microcode patch: If infact it is patchable with an executable which fixes the microcode, isn't it likewise "patchable" by a virus or something of some sort, rendering the processor completely useless? I would assume that the microcode controlled non-trivial things, since they went all the way of releasing a patch for it. Just a thought - please tell me if its true? Thanks. -Uchi

Overclocking Virus....

[TibbonZero]

Dvorak, of PC Magazine fame, had a conspiratorial article once about the threat that this presents in that information on how to reset the microcode in the hands of a virus writer could be devastating (and achieve the holy pinnacle of computer vandals of actually damaging hardware, and least perceptably).
Perhaps I shouldn't say this.... because perhaps I am unleashing some evil from my mind on the world that should never be unleashed...

Ah, what the hell, let's open pandora's box!!!

What if you wrote a virus that simply overclocked some part on the computer? If the processor was software overclockable (I don't overclock much so I don't know...) you could perhaps have a virus that would simply change the clock multiplier from say... 6x to perhaps 10x. That would fry the chip? I don't know much about CPU overclocking, but I know that video overclocking is easily done.
Alot of people use either Nvidia or ATI cards, and i know the Nvidia cards share the detonator driver set (on windows), not sure about ATI. What if you had something that just forced the card to it's Max??? And if you have a program that controls fans... turn them off? Just have the virus try for ATI cards, Nvidia cards, and susecptable CPUs, and mobo's with controlable fans- then send them through the roof. Sure your computer would run faster for a few seconds... but i remember a Tom's Hardware where they took the fan off an Athalon, and it burst into flames...

I hope I never see this virus in my inbox...

LexisNexis vs. Google

[danb35]

Quoth Timothy:

I'd take google and a strong AI any day.

...which just goes to show that you don't know much about LexisNexis (or you've got lots better AI than I've ever seen). Google indexes and searches a lot of information, almost certainly more than LexisNexis. However, if you're an attorney (which is one of LN's major markets), LN carries a lot of stuff that you're just not going to find on Google, or anywhere else on the web. Their search engine is also considerably more advanced--it'll allow you to search proximity (x within 5 words of y), caps/lowercase, minimum number of occurrences of a term, etc., which Google doesn't do.

Now, in this case, LN has gotten the contract to be the official publisher of the Cal. case reports; West had previously had the contract. This isn't really a big deal for the public as such; after all, somebody has to publish them, at least as far as the dead tree version is concerned. The actual text of the opinions will remain in the public domain, of course, and lawyers (and the public) will still be able to get them from LN, Westlaw, the local law library, web sites, or any of a number of other sources.

It's interesting to note that often, publishers lose money on the things they publish as the "official" publisher. Several states, for example, set insanely low prices for their codes, particularly when you consider that they are heavy-duty, hardbound volumes. Publishers do it, of course, because they expect to sell other things to attorneys in those states, and figure there's money to be made on those items. Whether this is the case with the Cal. reports, I don't know.

Disclaimer: I do work for LN, but the above are entirely my own opinions.