I think what Microsoft did NOT anticipate was the fact that people were less interested in "proprietary" online services and more and more interested in connecting to the Internet using their local ISP.
Outside of America Online, how many "proprietary" services has prospered and grown today since 1995? Even Microsoft Network and Prodigy have evolved into essentially another ISP like Earthlink.
As for the UNIX command line, yes, it is very powerful, but trying to figure out the syntax is like an American trying to learn Chinese at times. And some UNIX fans think that's the "charm" of the operating system....
I know I'll be flamed for this (and get moderated down), but let's face it: if it weren't for Windows 95 with its built-in Dial-Up Networking feature that included TCP/IP support a LOT less people would be on the Internet right now. I mean, that's how Netscape became popular when its 2.x and 3.x versions could use that feature.
While Linux can be lauded for its kernel stability, the fact that Linux is based on the UNIX--with one of the most user-unfriendly command line interfaces around--has kept it out of the spotlight of serious users until today with several development efforts to give it a more "friendly" feel for newbies.
Let's face it: without Microsoft giving 85% of the world's desktop computers the ability to easily setup an Internet connection, the "Internet economy" would not have taken off like it did.
I think motherboards using the i815 chipset are much-underappreciated because people think the built-in video and sound subsystems are "junk."
They are certainly NOT "junk"; the speed is quite good and the sound subsystem does support full wavetable MIDI sound. Combine that with a 733 MHz Pentium IIIEB CPU and you have a very nice system for business users and the majority of home users.
I think the reason why the Tinma chip has been cancelled is simple: it would have been too limiting compared to a motherboard that uses the Intel i815 chipset, which has dramatically dropped in cost lately.
Remember, the i815 chipset has a fairly good graphics subsystem (it may not be nVidia GeForce quality but then the majority of computer users don't need that level of graphics chips) and a very good sound subsystem (it has full wavetable MIDI support); that's why many medium-cost computers are now using the i815 chipset matched to a FC-PGA form-factor 600-700 MHz Celeron CPU.
Besides, the Tinma CPU would definitely not have compared well against the AMD Duron 700 MHz systems.
I believed that the Pentium II and the current Pentium III's all use the CPU core that was pioneered by the Pentium Pro.
The only reason why PPro's were subsequently phased out was their very high cost of manufacture, especially with you considered 512 KB and 1 MB L2 cache on the CPU die.
The current Pentium IIIEB's has pretty much maxxed out the P6 core; that's why the upcoming Pentium 4 will have an all-new CPU core design, one that won't be taken advantage of for some years. After all, when the Pentium II first came out in 1997, Windows 95 was reporting it as a "Pentium Pro" CPU, indicating that the PII used the P6 core. Windows 98 properly recognized it as the Pentium II, though.
I think the most frightening form of corporate power is not somebody like Microsoft.
It is a corporation that has the power to make a mockery of our First Amendment rights. The proposed merger of America Online and Time-Warner is absolutely terrifying, because if this merger goes through a -very- substantial fraction of mass media content creation AND distribution will be in the hands of one company. Go look at the asset list for AOL and Time-Warner; the combination of the two produces a media superpower that makes the fictional Elliot Carver from the James Bond movie TOMORROW NEVER DIES a very plausible reality.
The average American, surprisingly, likes Microsoft and feels the government has wronged the company. But the average Americans' views change quite drastically when they look at how a company like AOL Time-Warner has the power to dictate of a lot of what we see in the movies and TV, what we hear on radio, what records to buy, what magazines to read and what they can view on the Internet.
While some of you folks want to overclock the heck out of the CPU, have you all considered that there are other ways to speed up your computer?
How about installing more RAM and a faster hard drive? Getting more RAM into a computer can make a BIG difference, especially in graphical environments. And definitely get a 7200 RPM ATA-66 hard drive, too, because you want to be able to read and write data on the hard drive faster.
In my personal opinion, once CPU's went past 500 MHz in speed, for most home users they would be better served by getting as much RAM as they can afford and making sure the system has a decently fast hard drive.
Not likely, for this reason: the signal frequencies used for the wireless Internet access is very close to that of the frequencies used for telephone and TV systems, and the result is potentially serious interference problems.
By putting them on grain elevators, they already have access to a building with pretty high elevation that have line of sight far out into the countryside.
Well, the idea of putting 802.11 wireless Internet connections on top of grain elevators is a GREAT idea.
Remember, the northern Great Plains has flat enough topology that the top of grain elevators have a long line of sight out into the country. That is sufficient for most communities to get connected to the Internet using a wireless connection.
Besides, farmers are surprisingly techno-savvy; they want direct access to the weather and agricultural price information to properly plan the year's operation on the farm. In fact, farmers are some of the biggest users of GPS satellites so they can precisely meter out the amount of fertilizer and pesticide/herbicide needed to properly maintain the farm; this has drastically reduced the fertilizer and agricultural chemical runoff that has caused water pollution problems in the past.
I think what people forget about the Pentium III core is that it's just a highly-evolved version of the original P6 core dating from the middle 1990's. Unfortunately, Intel seems to be reaching the limits of the PIII core right about now.
The Athlon core is literally a "from scratch" design, with faster pipelines, a generous 128 KB L1 cache, and an all-new FPU core that processes FPU and MMX instructions much faster per clock cycle than a Pentium III does. The latest "Thunderbird" Athlons now also has on-die CPU-speed 256 KB L2 cache, which really cranks up the speed of the CPU.
The results are obvious: in tests where FPU power is at a premium, the "Thunderbird" Athlon beats the PIII hands down at the same clock speed. The Athlon has found its niche for users of Windows NT4/2000 and Linux because of its flat-out internal CPU speed.
The Athlon is still somewhat throttled by the somewhat weak VIA KX133 and KT133 chipsets (though the vast majority of users won't know the difference), but that will change soon with new VIA, ALi and AMD chipsets that not only will support DDR-SDRAM but also SMP using the features of the EV6 CPU bus that the Athlon runs on.
I think I know why the Pentium IIIEB 1,130 MHz units were having problems.
Simply, Intel has pushed the Slot 1 design beyond the limits that Intel expected for that form factor. That explains why the PIIIEB 1,130 MHz chips are experiencing so many failures.
What I do find a bit puzzling is the dearth of PIIIEB CPU's using the PC-PGA Socket 370 form factor beyond 800 MHz. Intel has yet to ship in reasonable quantities of the PIIIEB 900 MHz or above in FC-PGA packaging. Is it possible because the PIIIEB chip runs extremely hot at very high speeds that FC-PGA becomes impractical for 1,000 and 1,130 MHz versions?
Note difference between Intel and AMD on this issue. The "Thunderbird" Athlon CPU's -were- designed right from the start for socket-type packaging (Socket A), hence the reason why AMD can ship the "Thunderbird" Athlon in Socket A format from 700 to 1,100 MHz with no fears of overheating issues. (Note that except for a very tiny production batch for a few OEM's using Slot A, all "Thunderbird" Athlons are use the Socket A form factor.)
The reason why we can't get the BMW 330d or the new 2001 Mercedes-Benz C270 is the fact that diesel fuel sold in the USA has way too much sulfur compounds in the fuel (somewhere between 800-1200 parts per billion). Unfortunately, the high level of sulfur compounds can corrode the fuel delivery system on modern diesel engines sold in Europe.
However, this is changing. The EPA will soon require that diesel fuel have sulfur compounds no more than 80 parts per billion, which will allow these high-tech diesel engines to show up in the US market. I think the BMW 330d will be particularly popular, since when driven at normal freeway speeds (e.g. 55-75 mph) fuel mileage of 35-40 miles per US gallon is the norm. But the BMW 330d has such a fat torque curve down low that the car has a top speed of 143 mph (!) and accelerates just as fast as the 330i with its gasoline-fuelled engine.
One reason why the rest of the USA can't really get to SULEV is the fact that in most of the USA, gasoline and diesel fuel have a very high level of sulfur compounds (usually 800 parts per billion or more).
The CARB standard for these fuels are 80 parts per billion; if the entire USA were to go to this standard (and the EPA does plan to do this within the next 24 months), this opens up new possibilities for cars sold in the USA.
For one thing, direct-injection gasoline engines will become viable for the US market for the first time. Instead of injecting fuel into each cylinder's intake manifold pipe just before the air fuel mixture enters the combustion chamber, direct-injection engine inject the fuel right into the combustion chamber itself. The problem is that high levels of sulfur compounds common in US gasoline stocks will corrode such a fuel injector; that's why direct-injection engines are only sold in Japan and some countries in Europe, where sulfur compounds in gasoline is under 300 parts per billion. The same situation applies for diesel fuel, also.
Once the US goes to the 80 parts/billion standard for sulfur compounds, most cars should be able to meet at least ULEV standards; many cars will meet or exceed the SULEV standard with no problems.
If you're talking about very low emission vehicles, they are here NOW.
Ever heard of the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius? They achieve their extremely low emissions because it uses a very small gasoline motor (with closely-coupled emission control system) plus battery power to get the car going. The result is extremely low emissions, qualifying for the California Air Resources Board's standard called Super Low Emissions Vehicle (SULEV).
Nissan has also achieved this with a special version of the current Nissan Sentra, which uses a very tightly-controlled emissions control system to keep emissions to the level defined by the SULEV standard. We do know that Honda and Toyota plan to introduce soon new variants of Civic and Corolla models that also achieve SULEV compliance.
Anyway, a slightly less stringent standard, ULEV, is already achieved by many 2001 model-year automobiles. I believe that the entire 2001 Honda Civic model lineup will be ULEV compliant, and the next-generation Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedans (C240 and C320) will also be ULEV compliant, to show only a few examples.
Besides, it should be noted that the CARB SULEV standard is the basis for the Japanese Stage III and European Euro2004 emissions standards. By 2004, the average automobile rolling off the assembly line in the USA/Canada/Mexico, Europe and Japan will have over 98% less carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and unburned hydrocarbons than 1970 model-year cars. These three pollutants are the major source of smog from automobiles.
I'm sure you're going to mention the issue of diesel engines, too. But even here, major improvements are on the way. The development of cleaner diesel fuels, improved engine combustion thanks to common-rail fuel systems and direct-injection fuel delivery, and a new generation of particulate traps will dramatically reduce the soot and other emissions that is a big problem with diesel engines.
In short, the technology is essentially available to reduce emissions from gasoline and diesel internal combustion engines by an astonishing 96% or more compared to 1970 levels.
And the improvements already in place today has drastically reduced pollution problems. Los Angeles in 2000 has much less smog alerts than even 10-15 years ago.
After Digital Domain successfully used Linux-based computers to do much of the computer animation rendering in TITANIC, I think a lot of people realized that modified versions of Linux can be used for computer animation purposes.
That's why companies like VA Linux and Penguin Computing have sold many, many systems to a number of computer animation companies--especially dual and quad Pentium III/Xeon boxes, with the boxes often running in clustered fashion using Beowulf. It's a case of where the relatively cheap software can run the high-end hardware built by the companies I mentioned.
I know of one computer animation company that is a massively large user of VA Linux boxes, but I can't reveal who the company is.
I think the fact that we've seen life exist in conditions we thought in the past could not allow the existance of life--namely bacteria living in the Arctic and Antarctic and the underwater volcanic vents of the mid-Atlantic Ridge--means that life as we know it is not as uncommon as some people think.
After all, for gawd's sakes, we've seen meteoritess with -amino acids- embedded in them!
This is the reason why a Mars mission returning samples of the planet's soil and rocks and a mission to land a spacecraft to Jupiter to land on the ice of Europa to do remote sampling may be critical in our future. If we can prove that life at least evolved to the cellular level on both Mars and the liquid water beneath the surface ice of Europa, it would be the final proof that life can exist on somewhere else besides Earth.
However, how religions will deal with this discovery is going to be a -big- problem. If you remember Carl Sagan's novel CONTACT, he mentions a lot about how humanity will deal with proof that there is life in outer space. Even though it's not as exciting as getting a signal from an extraterrestrial source, just the proof that life can exist off our planet will have a huge impact on our religious and philosophical views of our place in the Universe.
However, you do forget that the Palm device is mostly going to display just on a small LCD panel, and its functionality is pretty much a replacement for a DayTimer book for the vast majority of users. In that case, you don't need ridiculous amounts of CPU horsepower to get things going.
The problem for Transmeta is that they may have to better-define their niche between the CPU's used on Palm-like devices and full-blown x86 CPU's. With x86-compatible CPU's dropping in rapidly in power consumption, especially when both AMD and Intel plan to use the 0.13-micron process CPU's within the next 18 months, it's possible that people who manufacture "webpad" units will end up with a 500-600 MHz super-low-power AMD Duron or Intel Celeron mobile CPU running Linux, BeOS, etc.
I think what Toshiba may be discovering is that the semi-software solution to running CPU registers may not be the best solution to run operating systems reasonably fast.
Besides, note that Intel recently has made massive strides in reducing the battery drain of their Celeron/Pentium III CPU's designed for laptop operation. And AMD is heading towards that direction by going to a 0.13-micron process for their mobile Duron/Athlon CPU's to be released within the next 18 months.
Transmeta will have to crank up the speed of their CPU's substantially if they are to stay competitive against these new generations of AMD and Intel mobile CPU's.
Alvin Toffler predicted this 20 years ago!
on
The New Mediascape
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· Score: 2
Jon,
Perhaps it's time for you to dig up copies of Alvin Toffer's three major books, FUTURE SHOCK, THE THIRD WAVE and POWERSHIFT.
Especially THE THIRD WAVE. That book has become one of the most prophetic books I've EVER read, because many of the ideas he espoused in that book (written in 1980) -has become reality today-.
One idea Toffler was "demassification," where mass media outlets could not dictate news on a synchronized basis. He predicted in 1980 that the rapid rise of cable TV, VCR's, and online communications will drastically change the way people disseminate and gather information. The commercialization of the Internet in 1992 has made that a reality in the year 2000. I mean, think about it: before CNN, you had to wait for the nightly news broadcasts to get the day's news. With CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, etc. you can get the latest news -as it happens-. The Internet has made it possible for almost anyone of any political persuasion to disseminate information at unheard-of speeds. Sites like Drudge Report, NewsMax, WorldNetDaily, and even Slashdot are providing information and commentary that would have been difficult if not impossible to disseminate in the past.
And he also predicted there would be clashes between the old and new ways of disseminating data. The ongoing war of RIAA vs. Napster and MPAA versus DeCSS is proof that new rules will have to be invented in this age of rapid information dissemination.
In short, the whole idea of a nightly network news broadcast is approaching obselescence. We don't need to wait for the 6 o'clock news when we can get it RIGHT NOW using all-news cable channels and the Internet.
While the Nintendo Gamecube looks like a potential winnner, the problem is that it's not "forward-looking" enough in terms of technology.
If the specs on X-Box are correct, not only does X-Box support full DVD discs (which means you can put in 4.7 or 9 GB of data on the disc), but it also has a 8 GB hard drive for "scratch data," which means extremely fast loading of new scenes in the game even in high-resolution 32-bit color fully anti-aliased mode. Given that X-Box will use nVidia graphics chip technology (anyone who's seen the GeForce2 GTS running a game in 32-bit color at 1280x1024 resolution are usually extremely impressed, and the X-Box is supposed to use an even better nVidia chip), it'll certainly be able to do very realistic lighting and other graphical effects. And X-Box has true surround-sound capabilities you normally associate with a Creative Sound Blaster Live! card.
If Microsoft allows X-Box games to be written with Linux, X-Box games may graphically be the most impressive of them all. And given what I've read, several Japanese game companies are chomping at the bit to really push the limits of graphics using X-Box.
Primarily for large data set programs?
on
2Ghz P4 Shown Off
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· Score: 2
Folks,
From what we know about the Intel Pentium 4, it appears that the CPU is not optimized for something like Windows 95/98/ME, let alone desktop versions of Linux! It's better-suited for things that use large data sets, things such as large image files, large CAD/CAM drawings, and large databases, something more in the Windows 2000 or Linux server edition category.
I think people who will use Windows 98 SE, Windows ME and Linux desktop distributions will be far better off using the Celeron, Pentium III, Athlon and Duron CPU's.
It'll be interesting to see what the "Mustang" variant of the Athlon with its larger on-die L2 cache will do; if it is just a standard "Thunderbird" CPU but with a bigger L2 on-die cache it could become a great CPU for server machines (and will probably have the same pricing as the Pentium 4).
Getting back to the situation with the Kursk, here's one possible scenario:
1. Something flammable in the front of the sub "cooked off" or a torpedo had a propellent explosion, which caused the first explosion recorded by US Navy and Norwegian authorities.
2. The explosion set off a series of catastrophic events throughout the front of the sub, and this may have caused the propellents in the torpedoes and/or forward SS-N-19 missiles to "cook off," which caused the second, much louder explosion and the major structural damage to the sub.
Whatever it is, the crew is now on "eternal patrol," as the old Navy hymn goes.:-(
If I remember for the year before the Scorpion went down, they scrimped on general repairs on the ship (they spent way less than normal for maintainance for that class of sub).
It's small wonder why there was mechanical problems on that sub and your scenario of the TDU failure causing a major rush of seawater into the sub, which shorted out the batteries to cause the ka-boom! that destroyed the ship is not so far-fetched.
I should remind you that there's still a -huge- problem of diesel emissions most everywhere, since diesel emissions are not as tightly regulated until just very recently. In any city with lots of trucks and buses, that's still a major problem.
Certainly, you have to admit that smog alerts per year in the Los Angeles basin are now far less than it was even 15 years ago, mostly because automobiles have become so much cleaner.
But help is on the way: buses can be switched to clean-burning natural gas (like they have in Sacramento, CA), and the advent of improved diesel fuel formulations (especially the drastic reduction of sulfur compounds to under 80 parts per billion) and modern diesel engine design will dramatically reduce exhaust emissions, including the big issue of particulate emissions.
With modern computer engine controls, we can very tightly control the combustion process, which goes a very long way in reducing exhaust emissions.
Of course, that's assuming you get crude oil from pumping it out of the ground.
I think Dr. Hubbert forgot about coal, oil shale, tar sands, and even agricultural byproducts, all of which can be converted to biochemical products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, etc. Remember what coal is: mostly hardened hydrocarbons. We've barely begun to exploit the technology to turn coal into fuels usable by current internal combustion engines. And since the world's coal supply is far bigger than the world's oil supply, extracting fuel from them is still viable for the next 600 years.
I think Dr. Hubbert didn't count on the rapid advances in oil-extracting technology in the last 30 years that has made supposedly tapped-out oil fields viable again and the development of technology to extract oil products from coal, oil shale and tar sands. There is enough tar sands in western Canada to make the equivalent of more than ALL the known oil fields in the Persian Gulf COMBINED.
Slashdot Mirror
I think what Microsoft did NOT anticipate was the fact that people were less interested in "proprietary" online services and more and more interested in connecting to the Internet using their local ISP.
Outside of America Online, how many "proprietary" services has prospered and grown today since 1995? Even Microsoft Network and Prodigy have evolved into essentially another ISP like Earthlink.
As for the UNIX command line, yes, it is very powerful, but trying to figure out the syntax is like an American trying to learn Chinese at times. And some UNIX fans think that's the "charm" of the operating system....
I know I'll be flamed for this (and get moderated down), but let's face it: if it weren't for Windows 95 with its built-in Dial-Up Networking feature that included TCP/IP support a LOT less people would be on the Internet right now. I mean, that's how Netscape became popular when its 2.x and 3.x versions could use that feature.
While Linux can be lauded for its kernel stability, the fact that Linux is based on the UNIX--with one of the most user-unfriendly command line interfaces around--has kept it out of the spotlight of serious users until today with several development efforts to give it a more "friendly" feel for newbies.
Let's face it: without Microsoft giving 85% of the world's desktop computers the ability to easily setup an Internet connection, the "Internet economy" would not have taken off like it did.
I think motherboards using the i815 chipset are much-underappreciated because people think the built-in video and sound subsystems are "junk."
They are certainly NOT "junk"; the speed is quite good and the sound subsystem does support full wavetable MIDI sound. Combine that with a 733 MHz Pentium IIIEB CPU and you have a very nice system for business users and the majority of home users.
Folks,
I think the reason why the Tinma chip has been cancelled is simple: it would have been too limiting compared to a motherboard that uses the Intel i815 chipset, which has dramatically dropped in cost lately.
Remember, the i815 chipset has a fairly good graphics subsystem (it may not be nVidia GeForce quality but then the majority of computer users don't need that level of graphics chips) and a very good sound subsystem (it has full wavetable MIDI support); that's why many medium-cost computers are now using the i815 chipset matched to a FC-PGA form-factor 600-700 MHz Celeron CPU.
Besides, the Tinma CPU would definitely not have compared well against the AMD Duron 700 MHz systems.
I believed that the Pentium II and the current Pentium III's all use the CPU core that was pioneered by the Pentium Pro.
The only reason why PPro's were subsequently phased out was their very high cost of manufacture, especially with you considered 512 KB and 1 MB L2 cache on the CPU die.
The current Pentium IIIEB's has pretty much maxxed out the P6 core; that's why the upcoming Pentium 4 will have an all-new CPU core design, one that won't be taken advantage of for some years. After all, when the Pentium II first came out in 1997, Windows 95 was reporting it as a "Pentium Pro" CPU, indicating that the PII used the P6 core. Windows 98 properly recognized it as the Pentium II, though.
InitZero,
I think the most frightening form of corporate power is not somebody like Microsoft.
It is a corporation that has the power to make a mockery of our First Amendment rights. The proposed merger of America Online and Time-Warner is absolutely terrifying, because if this merger goes through a -very- substantial fraction of mass media content creation AND distribution will be in the hands of one company. Go look at the asset list for AOL and Time-Warner; the combination of the two produces a media superpower that makes the fictional Elliot Carver from the James Bond movie TOMORROW NEVER DIES a very plausible reality.
The average American, surprisingly, likes Microsoft and feels the government has wronged the company. But the average Americans' views change quite drastically when they look at how a company like AOL Time-Warner has the power to dictate of a lot of what we see in the movies and TV, what we hear on radio, what records to buy, what magazines to read and what they can view on the Internet.
Folks,
While some of you folks want to overclock the heck out of the CPU, have you all considered that there are other ways to speed up your computer?
How about installing more RAM and a faster hard drive? Getting more RAM into a computer can make a BIG difference, especially in graphical environments. And definitely get a 7200 RPM ATA-66 hard drive, too, because you want to be able to read and write data on the hard drive faster.
In my personal opinion, once CPU's went past 500 MHz in speed, for most home users they would be better served by getting as much RAM as they can afford and making sure the system has a decently fast hard drive.
Not likely, for this reason: the signal frequencies used for the wireless Internet access is very close to that of the frequencies used for telephone and TV systems, and the result is potentially serious interference problems.
By putting them on grain elevators, they already have access to a building with pretty high elevation that have line of sight far out into the countryside.
Well, the idea of putting 802.11 wireless Internet connections on top of grain elevators is a GREAT idea.
Remember, the northern Great Plains has flat enough topology that the top of grain elevators have a long line of sight out into the country. That is sufficient for most communities to get connected to the Internet using a wireless connection.
Besides, farmers are surprisingly techno-savvy; they want direct access to the weather and agricultural price information to properly plan the year's operation on the farm. In fact, farmers are some of the biggest users of GPS satellites so they can precisely meter out the amount of fertilizer and pesticide/herbicide needed to properly maintain the farm; this has drastically reduced the fertilizer and agricultural chemical runoff that has caused water pollution problems in the past.
I think what people forget about the Pentium III core is that it's just a highly-evolved version of the original P6 core dating from the middle 1990's. Unfortunately, Intel seems to be reaching the limits of the PIII core right about now.
The Athlon core is literally a "from scratch" design, with faster pipelines, a generous 128 KB L1 cache, and an all-new FPU core that processes FPU and MMX instructions much faster per clock cycle than a Pentium III does. The latest "Thunderbird" Athlons now also has on-die CPU-speed 256 KB L2 cache, which really cranks up the speed of the CPU.
The results are obvious: in tests where FPU power is at a premium, the "Thunderbird" Athlon beats the PIII hands down at the same clock speed. The Athlon has found its niche for users of Windows NT4/2000 and Linux because of its flat-out internal CPU speed.
The Athlon is still somewhat throttled by the somewhat weak VIA KX133 and KT133 chipsets (though the vast majority of users won't know the difference), but that will change soon with new VIA, ALi and AMD chipsets that not only will support DDR-SDRAM but also SMP using the features of the EV6 CPU bus that the Athlon runs on.
Folks,
I think I know why the Pentium IIIEB 1,130 MHz units were having problems.
Simply, Intel has pushed the Slot 1 design beyond the limits that Intel expected for that form factor. That explains why the PIIIEB 1,130 MHz chips are experiencing so many failures.
What I do find a bit puzzling is the dearth of PIIIEB CPU's using the PC-PGA Socket 370 form factor beyond 800 MHz. Intel has yet to ship in reasonable quantities of the PIIIEB 900 MHz or above in FC-PGA packaging. Is it possible because the PIIIEB chip runs extremely hot at very high speeds that FC-PGA becomes impractical for 1,000 and 1,130 MHz versions?
Note difference between Intel and AMD on this issue. The "Thunderbird" Athlon CPU's -were- designed right from the start for socket-type packaging (Socket A), hence the reason why AMD can ship the "Thunderbird" Athlon in Socket A format from 700 to 1,100 MHz with no fears of overheating issues. (Note that except for a very tiny production batch for a few OEM's using Slot A, all "Thunderbird" Athlons are use the Socket A form factor.)
lobos,
The reason why we can't get the BMW 330d or the new 2001 Mercedes-Benz C270 is the fact that diesel fuel sold in the USA has way too much sulfur compounds in the fuel (somewhere between 800-1200 parts per billion). Unfortunately, the high level of sulfur compounds can corrode the fuel delivery system on modern diesel engines sold in Europe.
However, this is changing. The EPA will soon require that diesel fuel have sulfur compounds no more than 80 parts per billion, which will allow these high-tech diesel engines to show up in the US market. I think the BMW 330d will be particularly popular, since when driven at normal freeway speeds (e.g. 55-75 mph) fuel mileage of 35-40 miles per US gallon is the norm. But the BMW 330d has such a fat torque curve down low that the car has a top speed of 143 mph (!) and accelerates just as fast as the 330i with its gasoline-fuelled engine.
One reason why the rest of the USA can't really get to SULEV is the fact that in most of the USA, gasoline and diesel fuel have a very high level of sulfur compounds (usually 800 parts per billion or more).
The CARB standard for these fuels are 80 parts per billion; if the entire USA were to go to this standard (and the EPA does plan to do this within the next 24 months), this opens up new possibilities for cars sold in the USA.
For one thing, direct-injection gasoline engines will become viable for the US market for the first time. Instead of injecting fuel into each cylinder's intake manifold pipe just before the air fuel mixture enters the combustion chamber, direct-injection engine inject the fuel right into the combustion chamber itself. The problem is that high levels of sulfur compounds common in US gasoline stocks will corrode such a fuel injector; that's why direct-injection engines are only sold in Japan and some countries in Europe, where sulfur compounds in gasoline is under 300 parts per billion. The same situation applies for diesel fuel, also.
Once the US goes to the 80 parts/billion standard for sulfur compounds, most cars should be able to meet at least ULEV standards; many cars will meet or exceed the SULEV standard with no problems.
Folks,
If you're talking about very low emission vehicles, they are here NOW.
Ever heard of the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius? They achieve their extremely low emissions because it uses a very small gasoline motor (with closely-coupled emission control system) plus battery power to get the car going. The result is extremely low emissions, qualifying for the California Air Resources Board's standard called Super Low Emissions Vehicle (SULEV).
Nissan has also achieved this with a special version of the current Nissan Sentra, which uses a very tightly-controlled emissions control system to keep emissions to the level defined by the SULEV standard. We do know that Honda and Toyota plan to introduce soon new variants of Civic and Corolla models that also achieve SULEV compliance.
Anyway, a slightly less stringent standard, ULEV, is already achieved by many 2001 model-year automobiles. I believe that the entire 2001 Honda Civic model lineup will be ULEV compliant, and the next-generation Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedans (C240 and C320) will also be ULEV compliant, to show only a few examples.
Besides, it should be noted that the CARB SULEV standard is the basis for the Japanese Stage III and European Euro2004 emissions standards. By 2004, the average automobile rolling off the assembly line in the USA/Canada/Mexico, Europe and Japan will have over 98% less carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and unburned hydrocarbons than 1970 model-year cars. These three pollutants are the major source of smog from automobiles.
I'm sure you're going to mention the issue of diesel engines, too. But even here, major improvements are on the way. The development of cleaner diesel fuels, improved engine combustion thanks to common-rail fuel systems and direct-injection fuel delivery, and a new generation of particulate traps will dramatically reduce the soot and other emissions that is a big problem with diesel engines.
In short, the technology is essentially available to reduce emissions from gasoline and diesel internal combustion engines by an astonishing 96% or more compared to 1970 levels.
And the improvements already in place today has drastically reduced pollution problems. Los Angeles in 2000 has much less smog alerts than even 10-15 years ago.
thad,
After Digital Domain successfully used Linux-based computers to do much of the computer animation rendering in TITANIC, I think a lot of people realized that modified versions of Linux can be used for computer animation purposes.
That's why companies like VA Linux and Penguin Computing have sold many, many systems to a number of computer animation companies--especially dual and quad Pentium III/Xeon boxes, with the boxes often running in clustered fashion using Beowulf. It's a case of where the relatively cheap software can run the high-end hardware built by the companies I mentioned.
I know of one computer animation company that is a massively large user of VA Linux boxes, but I can't reveal who the company is.
I think the fact that we've seen life exist in conditions we thought in the past could not allow the existance of life--namely bacteria living in the Arctic and Antarctic and the underwater volcanic vents of the mid-Atlantic Ridge--means that life as we know it is not as uncommon as some people think.
After all, for gawd's sakes, we've seen meteoritess with -amino acids- embedded in them!
This is the reason why a Mars mission returning samples of the planet's soil and rocks and a mission to land a spacecraft to Jupiter to land on the ice of Europa to do remote sampling may be critical in our future. If we can prove that life at least evolved to the cellular level on both Mars and the liquid water beneath the surface ice of Europa, it would be the final proof that life can exist on somewhere else besides Earth.
However, how religions will deal with this discovery is going to be a -big- problem. If you remember Carl Sagan's novel CONTACT, he mentions a lot about how humanity will deal with proof that there is life in outer space. Even though it's not as exciting as getting a signal from an extraterrestrial source, just the proof that life can exist off our planet will have a huge impact on our religious and philosophical views of our place in the Universe.
However, you do forget that the Palm device is mostly going to display just on a small LCD panel, and its functionality is pretty much a replacement for a DayTimer book for the vast majority of users. In that case, you don't need ridiculous amounts of CPU horsepower to get things going.
The problem for Transmeta is that they may have to better-define their niche between the CPU's used on Palm-like devices and full-blown x86 CPU's. With x86-compatible CPU's dropping in rapidly in power consumption, especially when both AMD and Intel plan to use the 0.13-micron process CPU's within the next 18 months, it's possible that people who manufacture "webpad" units will end up with a 500-600 MHz super-low-power AMD Duron or Intel Celeron mobile CPU running Linux, BeOS, etc.
I think what Toshiba may be discovering is that the semi-software solution to running CPU registers may not be the best solution to run operating systems reasonably fast.
Besides, note that Intel recently has made massive strides in reducing the battery drain of their Celeron/Pentium III CPU's designed for laptop operation. And AMD is heading towards that direction by going to a 0.13-micron process for their mobile Duron/Athlon CPU's to be released within the next 18 months.
Transmeta will have to crank up the speed of their CPU's substantially if they are to stay competitive against these new generations of AMD and Intel mobile CPU's.
Jon,
Perhaps it's time for you to dig up copies of Alvin Toffer's three major books, FUTURE SHOCK, THE THIRD WAVE and POWERSHIFT.
Especially THE THIRD WAVE. That book has become one of the most prophetic books I've EVER read, because many of the ideas he espoused in that book (written in 1980) -has become reality today-.
One idea Toffler was "demassification," where mass media outlets could not dictate news on a synchronized basis. He predicted in 1980 that the rapid rise of cable TV, VCR's, and online communications will drastically change the way people disseminate and gather information. The commercialization of the Internet in 1992 has made that a reality in the year 2000. I mean, think about it: before CNN, you had to wait for the nightly news broadcasts to get the day's news. With CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, etc. you can get the latest news -as it happens-. The Internet has made it possible for almost anyone of any political persuasion to disseminate information at unheard-of speeds. Sites like Drudge Report, NewsMax, WorldNetDaily, and even Slashdot are providing information and commentary that would have been difficult if not impossible to disseminate in the past.
And he also predicted there would be clashes between the old and new ways of disseminating data. The ongoing war of RIAA vs. Napster and MPAA versus DeCSS is proof that new rules will have to be invented in this age of rapid information dissemination.
In short, the whole idea of a nightly network news broadcast is approaching obselescence. We don't need to wait for the 6 o'clock news when we can get it RIGHT NOW using all-news cable channels and the Internet.
While the Nintendo Gamecube looks like a potential winnner, the problem is that it's not "forward-looking" enough in terms of technology.
If the specs on X-Box are correct, not only does X-Box support full DVD discs (which means you can put in 4.7 or 9 GB of data on the disc), but it also has a 8 GB hard drive for "scratch data," which means extremely fast loading of new scenes in the game even in high-resolution 32-bit color fully anti-aliased mode. Given that X-Box will use nVidia graphics chip technology (anyone who's seen the GeForce2 GTS running a game in 32-bit color at 1280x1024 resolution are usually extremely impressed, and the X-Box is supposed to use an even better nVidia chip), it'll certainly be able to do very realistic lighting and other graphical effects. And X-Box has true surround-sound capabilities you normally associate with a Creative Sound Blaster Live! card.
If Microsoft allows X-Box games to be written with Linux, X-Box games may graphically be the most impressive of them all. And given what I've read, several Japanese game companies are chomping at the bit to really push the limits of graphics using X-Box.
Folks,
From what we know about the Intel Pentium 4, it appears that the CPU is not optimized for something like Windows 95/98/ME, let alone desktop versions of Linux! It's better-suited for things that use large data sets, things such as large image files, large CAD/CAM drawings, and large databases, something more in the Windows 2000 or Linux server edition category.
I think people who will use Windows 98 SE, Windows ME and Linux desktop distributions will be far better off using the Celeron, Pentium III, Athlon and Duron CPU's.
It'll be interesting to see what the "Mustang" variant of the Athlon with its larger on-die L2 cache will do; if it is just a standard "Thunderbird" CPU but with a bigger L2 on-die cache it could become a great CPU for server machines (and will probably have the same pricing as the Pentium 4).
Getting back to the situation with the Kursk, here's one possible scenario:
:-(
1. Something flammable in the front of the sub "cooked off" or a torpedo had a propellent explosion, which caused the first explosion recorded by US Navy and Norwegian authorities.
2. The explosion set off a series of catastrophic events throughout the front of the sub, and this may have caused the propellents in the torpedoes and/or forward SS-N-19 missiles to "cook off," which caused the second, much louder explosion and the major structural damage to the sub.
Whatever it is, the crew is now on "eternal patrol," as the old Navy hymn goes.
If I remember for the year before the Scorpion went down, they scrimped on general repairs on the ship (they spent way less than normal for maintainance for that class of sub).
It's small wonder why there was mechanical problems on that sub and your scenario of the TDU failure causing a major rush of seawater into the sub, which shorted out the batteries to cause the ka-boom! that destroyed the ship is not so far-fetched.
I should remind you that there's still a -huge- problem of diesel emissions most everywhere, since diesel emissions are not as tightly regulated until just very recently. In any city with lots of trucks and buses, that's still a major problem.
Certainly, you have to admit that smog alerts per year in the Los Angeles basin are now far less than it was even 15 years ago, mostly because automobiles have become so much cleaner.
But help is on the way: buses can be switched to clean-burning natural gas (like they have in Sacramento, CA), and the advent of improved diesel fuel formulations (especially the drastic reduction of sulfur compounds to under 80 parts per billion) and modern diesel engine design will dramatically reduce exhaust emissions, including the big issue of particulate emissions.
With modern computer engine controls, we can very tightly control the combustion process, which goes a very long way in reducing exhaust emissions.
Of course, that's assuming you get crude oil from pumping it out of the ground.
I think Dr. Hubbert forgot about coal, oil shale, tar sands, and even agricultural byproducts, all of which can be converted to biochemical products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, etc. Remember what coal is: mostly hardened hydrocarbons. We've barely begun to exploit the technology to turn coal into fuels usable by current internal combustion engines. And since the world's coal supply is far bigger than the world's oil supply, extracting fuel from them is still viable for the next 600 years.
I think Dr. Hubbert didn't count on the rapid advances in oil-extracting technology in the last 30 years that has made supposedly tapped-out oil fields viable again and the development of technology to extract oil products from coal, oil shale and tar sands. There is enough tar sands in western Canada to make the equivalent of more than ALL the known oil fields in the Persian Gulf COMBINED.