Yes, that is true, there are always low-power cards (almost completely useless for gaming, though).
But I'm more interested in what's going to happen on the high-end and how that's going to work out. I can (unfortunately) imagine 400W "cards" for DirectX 11:/
Current top cards (2900 and 8800) already use a lot of power, something like 200W or even more. They require powerful cooling, but it seems that every new graphics card generation tends to use a lot more power than the previous one. It's likely that a better manufacturing process (45nm?) will lower the power consumption slightly, but that's probably going to be offset by higher clocks to get it to the same thermal envelope.
What's the future of the cards' successors like? How long before graphics cards are going to be moved outside the computer, to their specialized cases? Or do you think something like Conroe will happen in the GPU market (vastly lower power consumption than the P4/Tbird, better performance on the same clock speed)? Is that even possible with GPUs and the never-ending quest for framerate and visual effects?
You are mistaken. A picture of the 'device' is posted, the exhibit was pulled. According to some who have seen the video feed, "Looks like a ferris (ferrite?) wheel"
This is exactly what these guys also do: going to allow you to spectate the machine from the pre-defined angles only, and ask for venture capital to continue. The device is on display in a London art museum, and if I'm not mistaken, the museum is open to the public. It doesn't say anything about visitors taking photos, so maybe we'll have some high-res pictures online tomorrow?
Since they allow archives on the site, are people going to use this to upload and share warez? Or does the system scan uploaded archives and rejects non-images based on content?
BTW, I visited the site about 10 hours ago, and the tag cloud was full of injected JavaScript - it was pretty much benign (only a couple of alert functions), but funny nevertheless, and seems like the whole thing was put together very quickly. They've fixed the problem now.
There are severalhighlymoderated-up posts that basically said the same thing as I did (but I got -1 Troll from an Apple fanboy, and it's impossible to get moderated back up - the first point always decides the final outcome, as nobody browses below +2).
Perhaps you should go write something as witty in reply to those...?
Don't underestimate the number of people using Firefox just because "everyone else uses it", or those whose children have installed it instead of the blue "e". There's plenty of them. If Safari becomes the new Firefox, a lot of people will switch, especially if there's a tiny little checked-by-default checkbox in the installer, under Advanced Options, that says "Make Safari my default browser".
Keep in mind that the "joke" comes from a company which displays false speed benchmarks on the product's page.
Come one, did you consider the hypothesis that the second pie chart was a playful joke that fell flat on the audience?
No. Neither did Mozilla's Chief Operating Officer, John Lilly, whose blog I've linked to. Is bundling Safari with every iTunes and QuickTime installation - and those range in hundreds of millions - also a playful joke, and they have no intention of doing so?
As I said, stop making excuses. They want their search money from Google.
FTFA: John Lilly, Mozilla's chief operating officer, focused on the part of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote where Jobs spelled out existing browser shares of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari -- 78%, 15% and 2%, respectively -- before displaying another pie chart that showed Safari with about a quarter of the market, IE with the remainder.
Steve Jobs wants to push Firefox out. Period. It doesn't have anything to do with opening a development platform for the iPhone. Stop making those excuses! Apple is going to bundle Safari with iTunes and QuickTime in hope of massive market penetration, and in their vision, there is no room for alternative browsers.
And look how popular Intel's Core series was (and still is) when it was released; people really didn't like the P4 series of inefficient processors.
Do you remember when Pentium M came out? It ran faster than most of the desktop offerings and used less power. However, it used a different socket, so even if you were prepared to pay five times more money for it, compared to an equivalent desktop CPU, you couldn't have used it. It took like a year to get a few Socket 479 motherboards "on the market" - they weren't readily available, they didn't have the latest features like USB 2.0, and their price was also through the roof. Technically, having a Pentium M on the desktop was an option. Realistically, it wasn't.
Your numbers need correcting. First, this is platform power, which includes a lot more than CPU (the memory subsystem can have a large impact too).
I know. And the GPU is also very power-hungry, despite idling. It's still a shitload of power just for the CPU. The QX6800 should be using around 110W by itself, so the V8 and the QuadFX are roughly double that (slightly lower, though).
Second, look at the power per core: QX6800: 319W / 4 = 79.8 W QuadFX: 498W / 4 = 124.5 W V8 : 474W / 8 = 59.5 W So your conclusion is reversed: this is the kind of trend we want for power: downward.
That doesn't automagically make things better, because you are not looking at the overall picture:)
How about a 16-core CPU with 35W per core, which by the numbers above would indicate a trend downward? 16*35W=560W. Whoops!
Maybe a 32-core CPU with 20W per core? 32*20=640W. Double whoops!
Okay, in this case, the CPUs all use a bit more than 25W per core - which is really neat - so the numbers above are wrong, although they show what I wanted to say.
However, my point still stands: what if in five years we CANNOT buy a 50W CPU? What if Intel and AMD will be manufacturing only eight-core CPUs at the low end, with a record-breaking 15W per core? That's still 120W, which is more than today.
Our testing showed the V8 ssytem consumping much more power than anything else while idling at the Windows desktop; almost 50W more than QuadFX and over 100W more than the QX6800. With the processors operating under full load, however, the tables turned somewhat.
Yeah, the tables did turn. Under full load, the QX6800 - which is already power-hungry - uses 319W. The V8 and the QuadFX are at 474W and 498W, respectively. That's an extra 155-179W... For what?!
Is this a continuation of the P4 Prescotts, which used 130W+, IIRC? These beasts use *even more* juice.
Yeah, such CPUs have their place, but if this is an indication of the future of desktop computers, fu*k it. The V8 uses more power over a QX6800 (50W) while idling than what my CPU (E4300) uses at full load. Are we going to be able to buy 50W CPUs in five years, or are we going to have to deal with insane cooling solutions for 200W CPU monsters?
Some really, really great coolers, like the Noctua U12 or the Ultra 120 Extreme, don't fare very well on their test.
Also, if you haven't noticed, there's no word about fan noise... Which is extremely important to a lot of people. What good is a couple of degrees difference between cooler A and cooler B, if the latter includes a 4000 fan that sounds like a jet engine while the former is inaudible in a closed case?
Lookelsewhere if you want to read proper articles about the subject.
Except as expressly permitted in this Agreement, Licensee shall not, and shall not permit others to: ... (ii) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise reduce the Software to source code form;
Now what did one of the emails from Microsoft say?
Thank you for not registering your project extender during installation and turning off your hacks by default. It appears that by setting a registry key your hacks can still be enabled. When do you plan to remove the Visual Studio express hacks, including your addin activator, from your product.
How did they find out about this, except from reverse engineering TD.NET?
Also, if my product was continuously being called a hack, I'd be seriously pissed off. The MS guy is an asshole, full of himself.
I haven't bookmarked anything in years. I do have some old bookmarks (the youngest one is two years old, the second youngest almost four years), and unsurprisingly, more than two thirds of the links are dead. Anyway, I digress...
Are bookmarks useful? When I want to find something - anything - I use a search engine. Unless the page is really obscure (in which case a bookmark would have been useful, yes), I can find it in less time than it would take to browse through all the bookmarks, not to mention the time initially needed to bookmark/rename/tag/label/describe/nickname/whatev er. For others I guess bookmarks are the better choice.
What I'd like to see in a browser is a history tracker. For example, I visited site A, then I clicked on its page links 1, 2 and 3, and eventually went from site A to site B to site C, on which I clicked page links 1 and 2, and 2 had a link back to site A (which I didn't follow). It would be neat to see a browsing diagram. In this case, a big circle named A would be connected with B, B would be connected with C, and C back with A. The links between A&B / B&C would be a solid (as I followed them) line with an arrowhead, but C&A would be a dashed light gray or something. The caption on the lines would be the link name.
What's odd is that Opera packs all that stuff in and more (even a BitTorrent client!), and it's faster and more lightweight in terms of resource requirements.
I don't use Firefox except for testing, so I can't compare, but I'm a devoted Opera user since late 2001, when Opera 6 was released.
I'm not really sure about your claims. Today at work, Opera was using 280 MB memory at one point. Right now, it's using 103 MB here at home; okay, I do have 13 tabs open (though they're light on graphics, no Flash) and some have an extensive history, but it's still a lot. I have several User JavaScripts installed (10, I think), and some might be leaking memory. I can close all tabs, and the situation wouldn't improve much. Maybe it's the memory cache? I don't know... But it definitely sounds *exactly* like what I can hear about Firefox.
But that's not the problem. After a few hours of extensive use, I find Opera to become sluggish when it comes to loading images. There's a distinct pause before it renders them. Not loads, but renders. The solution is easy - switch to "cached images". I don't know why the slowdown occurs and why this fixes it.
Another problem is Opera's RSS reader. If you're subscribed to a lot of feeds (like, a hundred), upon starting the browser you can safely go make yourself a cup of coffee. It'll take a couple of minutes until Opera fetches everything, and it's practically unusable for browsing during that initial fetching process. Something I often see is the claim that Opera starts faster than Firefox; that's probably true, unless you're using RSS.
Etc.
Both browsers have their good and bad points. The situation is nowhere near black/white, as a lot of Firefox and Opera users want to paint it. There's not much point in childish "my browser is better than yours" attempt at argumentation - opinions differ and what's good for one person isn't necessarily good for another. Some people rely on Roboform, Google toolbars and specialized community and web game extensions, some swear by built-in mouse gestures, the Links window, or practically infinite keyboard and UI customizability. Leave it at that.
Well, Apple has always had a large presence and awareness in the USA, but not in Europe. That makes me sad, as that kind of development, IMHO, played a large role in the current MS monoculture. Only recently have things started changing... Still not much Apple, however, at least not here. I'm also not sure how - if at all - Apple fares in, for example, Russia, India and China, which are literally booming in IT and might even be accounting for the majority of computers worldwide. I'll try to find out.
But you are correct, people are getting more and more disgruntled with MS. I've even noticed it amongst non-techie friends and acquaintances. Ubuntu in particular seems to be making incredibly large progress. So if I hear that someone's had enough of MS, they're thinking of Linux. In the States, I guess it's the exact opposite...
Oh, and I'm living in one of the countries that used to be a part of Yugoslavia almost two decades ago. The AC troll above will probably be pleased to know that we have plenty of fresh water and can even drink from some clean rivers;)
Two-thirds of the people in my office drop kicked their PCs and bought Macs in the last couple of years. That's a trend I'm watching first hand.
I take it you're living in the USA, right? While I don't in any way want to oppose your opinion, as I do believe that the trend you're watching is very much real, you have to think outside the box a little.
I live in a small and rather undeveloped country (but it's getting better); last week was the first time I have ever (!) seen a Mac. It was an iMac running Windows; the guy, an English person, bought it solely for the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). Also, none of the people I know own any Apple products whatsoever. I've never seen somebody with an iPod -- hell, I've never *seen* an iPod. Not even a Shuffle.
What you are observing is probably very specific to your country. I might be wrong, but I will reserve my doubts about Apple products gaining popularity in the world in general. There is still a vast European and Asian market. It's likely that Apple is doing well in some western-European countries, but that's _still_ a small market when the whole world is taken into account.
That said, what *I* am seeing where I live is a trend of switching to Linux, and judging by a whole lot of reports from all around the world, *that* is the real revolution that is happening. I am still on XP, but there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that my next OS is going to be Linux-based, no matter what it takes.
I was thinking more along the lines of "View Source" and debugging HTML and CSS. Other examples might be different, but for this one, you have to look at the generated source somehow. Also, if there's no source, search engines go crazy, and screen readers for visually impaired people aren't very useful.
I'm all for faster and easier development, but when such an app gets stuck on the client side, then you are in a lot of trouble; at first glance, it looks undebuggable (if that's even a word).
You will like it even better if you ever try to get another programming job. VB.NET is in higher demand in the US, and pays more to boot.
You'd be shocked (and I don't mean positively) if I told you how much I earned where I live. If you're in the US, let's just say that an average US programmer's monthly salary roughly equals my yearly salary, or is even slightly higher:)
Remember what I said about personal preferences?:)
They have nothing to do with liking programming as such.
Now what would you say if I told you I preferred Motorola-style x86 syntax in Free Pascal under DOS over straight Intel-style x86 assembler? Do I like programming, or not? If I have written code for the 16C84, 68000, 8052 and 80x86, and preferred the 68000, do I like programming, or not?
You cannot judge a person based on his/her choice of programming language. The same for natural languages; I absolutely *adore* Portuguese. I like how it sounds. Someone else enjoys Japanese and says No offense, but you not liking Japanese and preferring Portuguese is akin to saying "I don't like talking."
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that is true, there are always low-power cards (almost completely useless for gaming, though).
:/
But I'm more interested in what's going to happen on the high-end and how that's going to work out. I can (unfortunately) imagine 400W "cards" for DirectX 11
Current top cards (2900 and 8800) already use a lot of power, something like 200W or even more. They require powerful cooling, but it seems that every new graphics card generation tends to use a lot more power than the previous one. It's likely that a better manufacturing process (45nm?) will lower the power consumption slightly, but that's probably going to be offset by higher clocks to get it to the same thermal envelope.
What's the future of the cards' successors like? How long before graphics cards are going to be moved outside the computer, to their specialized cases? Or do you think something like Conroe will happen in the GPU market (vastly lower power consumption than the P4/Tbird, better performance on the same clock speed)? Is that even possible with GPUs and the never-ending quest for framerate and visual effects?
There's something else earlier in the thread: "the self-rotating wheel will be housed in clear plastic, allowing members of the public to inspect it for a hidden battery", so it seems that the picture on Engadget is something else.
Ah, that makes sense, thank you. I'd mod you up informative, but I've posted here so I can't use my mod points ;)
Since they allow archives on the site, are people going to use this to upload and share warez? Or does the system scan uploaded archives and rejects non-images based on content?
BTW, I visited the site about 10 hours ago, and the tag cloud was full of injected JavaScript - it was pretty much benign (only a couple of alert functions), but funny nevertheless, and seems like the whole thing was put together very quickly. They've fixed the problem now.
There are several highly moderated-up posts that basically said the same thing as I did (but I got -1 Troll from an Apple fanboy, and it's impossible to get moderated back up - the first point always decides the final outcome, as nobody browses below +2).
Perhaps you should go write something as witty in reply to those...?
Don't underestimate the number of people using Firefox just because "everyone else uses it", or those whose children have installed it instead of the blue "e". There's plenty of them. If Safari becomes the new Firefox, a lot of people will switch, especially if there's a tiny little checked-by-default checkbox in the installer, under Advanced Options, that says "Make Safari my default browser".
Keep in mind that the "joke" comes from a company which displays false speed benchmarks on the product's page.
As I said, stop making excuses. They want their search money from Google.
FTFA: John Lilly, Mozilla's chief operating officer, focused on the part of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote where Jobs spelled out existing browser shares of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari -- 78%, 15% and 2%, respectively -- before displaying another pie chart that showed Safari with about a quarter of the market, IE with the remainder.
I've posted that already. Here's the link (with screenshots), if you don't want to read my previous comment.
Steve Jobs wants to push Firefox out. Period. It doesn't have anything to do with opening a development platform for the iPhone. Stop making those excuses! Apple is going to bundle Safari with iTunes and QuickTime in hope of massive market penetration, and in their vision, there is no room for alternative browsers.
How about a 16-core CPU with 35W per core, which by the numbers above would indicate a trend downward? 16*35W=560W. Whoops!
Maybe a 32-core CPU with 20W per core? 32*20=640W. Double whoops!
Okay, in this case, the CPUs all use a bit more than 25W per core - which is really neat - so the numbers above are wrong, although they show what I wanted to say.
However, my point still stands: what if in five years we CANNOT buy a 50W CPU? What if Intel and AMD will be manufacturing only eight-core CPUs at the low end, with a record-breaking 15W per core? That's still 120W, which is more than today.
That's my concern.
FTFA:
Our testing showed the V8 ssytem consumping much more power than anything else while idling at the Windows desktop; almost 50W more than QuadFX and over 100W more than the QX6800. With the processors operating under full load, however, the tables turned somewhat.
Yeah, the tables did turn. Under full load, the QX6800 - which is already power-hungry - uses 319W. The V8 and the QuadFX are at 474W and 498W, respectively. That's an extra 155-179W... For what?!
Is this a continuation of the P4 Prescotts, which used 130W+, IIRC? These beasts use *even more* juice.
Yeah, such CPUs have their place, but if this is an indication of the future of desktop computers, fu*k it. The V8 uses more power over a QX6800 (50W) while idling than what my CPU (E4300) uses at full load. Are we going to be able to buy 50W CPUs in five years, or are we going to have to deal with insane cooling solutions for 200W CPU monsters?
Still, there's not much of a difference between the Extreme and the regular version. A couple of degrees at most.
Some really, really great coolers, like the Noctua U12 or the Ultra 120 Extreme, don't fare very well on their test.
Also, if you haven't noticed, there's no word about fan noise... Which is extremely important to a lot of people. What good is a couple of degrees difference between cooler A and cooler B, if the latter includes a 4000 fan that sounds like a jet engine while the former is inaudible in a closed case?
Look elsewhere if you want to read proper articles about the subject.
According to TestDriven.NET's EULA,
...
Except as expressly permitted in this Agreement, Licensee shall not, and shall not permit others to:
(ii) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise reduce the Software to source code form;
Now what did one of the emails from Microsoft say?
Thank you for not registering your project extender during installation and turning off your hacks by default. It appears that by setting a registry key your hacks can still be enabled. When do you plan to remove the Visual Studio express hacks, including your addin activator, from your product.
How did they find out about this, except from reverse engineering TD.NET?
Also, if my product was continuously being called a hack, I'd be seriously pissed off. The MS guy is an asshole, full of himself.
I haven't bookmarked anything in years. I do have some old bookmarks (the youngest one is two years old, the second youngest almost four years), and unsurprisingly, more than two thirds of the links are dead. Anyway, I digress...
v er. For others I guess bookmarks are the better choice.
Are bookmarks useful? When I want to find something - anything - I use a search engine. Unless the page is really obscure (in which case a bookmark would have been useful, yes), I can find it in less time than it would take to browse through all the bookmarks, not to mention the time initially needed to bookmark/rename/tag/label/describe/nickname/whate
What I'd like to see in a browser is a history tracker. For example, I visited site A, then I clicked on its page links 1, 2 and 3, and eventually went from site A to site B to site C, on which I clicked page links 1 and 2, and 2 had a link back to site A (which I didn't follow). It would be neat to see a browsing diagram. In this case, a big circle named A would be connected with B, B would be connected with C, and C back with A. The links between A&B / B&C would be a solid (as I followed them) line with an arrowhead, but C&A would be a dashed light gray or something. The caption on the lines would be the link name.
I'm not really sure about your claims. Today at work, Opera was using 280 MB memory at one point. Right now, it's using 103 MB here at home; okay, I do have 13 tabs open (though they're light on graphics, no Flash) and some have an extensive history, but it's still a lot. I have several User JavaScripts installed (10, I think), and some might be leaking memory. I can close all tabs, and the situation wouldn't improve much. Maybe it's the memory cache? I don't know... But it definitely sounds *exactly* like what I can hear about Firefox.
But that's not the problem. After a few hours of extensive use, I find Opera to become sluggish when it comes to loading images. There's a distinct pause before it renders them. Not loads, but renders. The solution is easy - switch to "cached images". I don't know why the slowdown occurs and why this fixes it.
Another problem is Opera's RSS reader. If you're subscribed to a lot of feeds (like, a hundred), upon starting the browser you can safely go make yourself a cup of coffee. It'll take a couple of minutes until Opera fetches everything, and it's practically unusable for browsing during that initial fetching process. Something I often see is the claim that Opera starts faster than Firefox; that's probably true, unless you're using RSS.
Etc.
Both browsers have their good and bad points. The situation is nowhere near black/white, as a lot of Firefox and Opera users want to paint it. There's not much point in childish "my browser is better than yours" attempt at argumentation - opinions differ and what's good for one person isn't necessarily good for another. Some people rely on Roboform, Google toolbars and specialized community and web game extensions, some swear by built-in mouse gestures, the Links window, or practically infinite keyboard and UI customizability. Leave it at that.
Well, Apple has always had a large presence and awareness in the USA, but not in Europe. That makes me sad, as that kind of development, IMHO, played a large role in the current MS monoculture. Only recently have things started changing... Still not much Apple, however, at least not here. I'm also not sure how - if at all - Apple fares in, for example, Russia, India and China, which are literally booming in IT and might even be accounting for the majority of computers worldwide. I'll try to find out.
;)
But you are correct, people are getting more and more disgruntled with MS. I've even noticed it amongst non-techie friends and acquaintances. Ubuntu in particular seems to be making incredibly large progress. So if I hear that someone's had enough of MS, they're thinking of Linux. In the States, I guess it's the exact opposite...
Oh, and I'm living in one of the countries that used to be a part of Yugoslavia almost two decades ago. The AC troll above will probably be pleased to know that we have plenty of fresh water and can even drink from some clean rivers
I live in a small and rather undeveloped country (but it's getting better); last week was the first time I have ever (!) seen a Mac. It was an iMac running Windows; the guy, an English person, bought it solely for the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). Also, none of the people I know own any Apple products whatsoever. I've never seen somebody with an iPod -- hell, I've never *seen* an iPod. Not even a Shuffle.
What you are observing is probably very specific to your country. I might be wrong, but I will reserve my doubts about Apple products gaining popularity in the world in general. There is still a vast European and Asian market. It's likely that Apple is doing well in some western-European countries, but that's _still_ a small market when the whole world is taken into account.
That said, what *I* am seeing where I live is a trend of switching to Linux, and judging by a whole lot of reports from all around the world, *that* is the real revolution that is happening. I am still on XP, but there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that my next OS is going to be Linux-based, no matter what it takes.
I was thinking more along the lines of "View Source" and debugging HTML and CSS. Other examples might be different, but for this one, you have to look at the generated source somehow. Also, if there's no source, search engines go crazy, and screen readers for visually impaired people aren't very useful.
Opera's Hallvord blogged a bit about GWT yesterday. He doesn't seem to like GWT much, and neither do I, based on what I've seen there.
I'm all for faster and easier development, but when such an app gets stuck on the client side, then you are in a lot of trouble; at first glance, it looks undebuggable (if that's even a word).
You'd be shocked (and I don't mean positively) if I told you how much I earned where I live. If you're in the US, let's just say that an average US programmer's monthly salary roughly equals my yearly salary, or is even slightly higher
Remember what I said about personal preferences? :)
They have nothing to do with liking programming as such.
Now what would you say if I told you I preferred Motorola-style x86 syntax in Free Pascal under DOS over straight Intel-style x86 assembler? Do I like programming, or not? If I have written code for the 16C84, 68000, 8052 and 80x86, and preferred the 68000, do I like programming, or not?
You cannot judge a person based on his/her choice of programming language. The same for natural languages; I absolutely *adore* Portuguese. I like how it sounds. Someone else enjoys Japanese and says No offense, but you not liking Japanese and preferring Portuguese is akin to saying "I don't like talking."
To each his own, man.