The Intel dual-core setup looks a LOT like the old dual-cpu systems but just without the second cpu socket. Intel even uses two dies for the two cores. Those smp systems have been around for years but haven't set the world on fire because they don't speed up single-threaded stuff. They do have some benefits for software that specifically takes advantage of the second cpu but those benefits have historically not been enough to entice many people to pay the extra money for a dual-cpu system. The new Intel cpu will probably make the dualie a little more 'mainstream' so the software support for it will eventually increase but it still doesn't look especially attractive, given the power and heat overhead that it adds.
AMD, OTOH, has gone beyond the old dual-cpu approach with their new system that have said they will release this Thursday. AMD puts both cores on one die. More importantly, the L2 cache of both cpus is shared via something AMD calls the "system request interface". Both cores share a common memory controller (that is also on-die) and access to hypertransport. What all of this means is that the AMD design has the potential to speed up even single-threaded stuff as well as offering two cores for multi-threaded software.
I cannot recall ever hearing Intel sound so desperate. First they ship pre-release samples to a handful of friendly reviewers and then they announce that they have 'shipped' the product, apparently to beat AMD's planned announcement on April 21 but the sum total of the evidence for the alleged 'shipment' seems to be a claim that they have shipped the product to Intel-friendly Dell. No one seems to actually have it to sell anywhere and even Dell just says they will be shipping 'soon.' In better days, Intel used to send a new product around to reviewers under NDA a few days before an actual release. The NDA would expire on the day of the product announcement and then you would actually be able to buy it at the time it was 'released.' How times have changed for Intel...and for AMD.
After the gamma ray burst, most of us might have received a fatal dose but we would probably still have a few hours or days before our organs shut down and we kicked the bucket. That would give us time to get those last things finished up and say goodbye to each other. A handful of people would probably survive, though, such as, for example, miners working in tunnels 2000 feet below the surface. Also, people on the far side of the Earth from the gamma ray burst might survive if the Earth shielded them, assuming, of course, that the 'far side' from the burst was land rather than water.
Dell has screwed over AMD so many times that this has become an industry joke. Dell will NEVER use AMD products as long as Intel continues to make products that are even somewhat remotely competitive with AMD products. If AMD hasn't figured that out by now, then they would be establishing new metrics for gullibility. Con men probably use an 'AMD 0-10 scale' to define how big a sucker their target is as in 'That guy's an AMD 10' when they spot a guy just getting off of the turnip truck. Frevvinsake, AMD, wise up!
The electrical resistance of any conductor is a function of both its length and its cross-sectional area. On logic chips, the effect of length predominates.
No, the electrical resistance is not constant but has apparently been dramatically lowered by AMD's move to 90 nm technology. AMD processors have had lower electrical resistance than Intel processors for the last two years due to AMD's use of Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology which AMD introduced with their 64-bit processors in 2003. This has meant that AMD SOI-based processors typically released much less heat than Intel processors. Now, however, AMD has moved to 90 nm technology which further reduces electrical resistance thereby allowing higher clock rates. AMD processors typically outperform Intel processors at the generally lower AMD clock rates because the AMD design does more during each clock cycle. Now, with the move to 90 nm tech along with the SOI process, the clock rate of AMD processors seems likely to ramp up again and the AMD processors apparently are on the verge of taking us all another step up in performance. And of course, the dual-core cpus are also apparently on the way but that's a different story for another day the week after next.
Why does that matter? Well, the things that we find for computers to do just keeps on growing and the need for more cycles, more storage, and more memory appears to therefore be infinite. AMD is bringing increasingly more powerful and low-cost machines to the world at large and good things will come from that.
It wasn't very smart of the UCSB admins to let the grading system access password be reset using common personal information such as ssn and birthdate. Better would have been to send a new password to the users email address or to have him stop by or telephone.
Also, charging the girl with four felonies seems a little over the top, given the nature of the crime. What she did doesn't seem any different than cheating on a final exam but cheating usually calls for expulsion rather than a felony criminal charge. It isn't as if the girl vandalized the system, sold grades to others, or used the professor's info to open credit card accounts or something. Do they really want to send people like this girl to prison for several years? For what reason?
T-Rex survived for millions of years through asteroid impacts, earthquakes, global climate change, flood, drought, disease, and competition for food. By comparison, our H. Sapiens species has been around for only 50,000 years or so and our numbers and technology have expanded during only the last 2,000. Extrapolating our most recent 100 years of history into the future doesn't make our prospects look very good either. Disease, war, and environmental destruction are likely to thin us out quite a bit or even lead to our extinction. At this very moment, millions of scientists and engineers all over the globe are hard at work thinking of new, more effective, ways to kill large numbers of us. Whose life is sadder, T-rex or H-Sapiens?
It's a small historical point but the first 64-bit AMD processor was released in April, 2003 which was 23 months ago, not 18 months ago as the article states. I remember this because I started using a 64-bit Opteron 240 workstation with an ASUS SK8N motherboard in July, 2003 which was 20 months ago. The 64-bit Windows XP and Linux OS's as well as a lot of 64-bit software were developed on 64-bit AMD systems since there were no 64-bit Intel x86-64 systems existing.
Back in 1996, IBM released a competitor to VB on Windows that they called "Visual Age for Basic." VAB was a fairly good tool and received good reviews. Woe to the hapless developers who bought into it, though, because IBM suddenly dumped it so hard and so quickly a couple of years later that today you can find nary a mention of it on ibm.com and IBM will not even replace media for it. VAB was sophisticated cross-platform product that IBM obviously spent a lot of money and time developing and yet they ultimately tossed it away like it was old fish.
Proprietary RAD tools like VB and VAB are relatively simple and quick to use, as well as powerful, but they are like crack in that once you start using them, you cannot stop and their corporate owners then own you.
Can Windows ever be secure?
on
IE7 Details Emerge
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Improving the security of Windows will require a lot more than an IE update. Microsoft starts with basically insecure processes and then trys to plug all of the unintended uses (aka security holes) that they can think of.
For example, look at the standard Windows update procedure for Windows XP. First, you have to go to a website to download software that you then allow to run on your system looking for updates. Then, you have to let the software download a sometimes long list of self-installing 'updates' from some location that the Microsoft software selects for you. The download procedure gives the user very little supervisory control over the process and doesn't even do very simple things such as display checksum data to let the user verify the integrity of the downloads. There is also little, if any, indication of what the downloads will do or replace. Yet Microsoft considers this inherently insecure process to be their standard procedure for updating their flagship operating system.
Microsoft needs to change their entire philosophy wherein they think that they should be able to anything they want with your computer at any time while the bad guys are not supposed to use the same mechanisms to steal your data and your cycles.
When the Firefox idea of separate apps arrived, I didn't get goodness. It just seemed like a sop to Windows users who were used to having IE and Outlook slightly separated in Windows. Putting everything together seems better. Their usability is all interrelated anyway, so why not? You can still use another html editor or email client or whatever if you want. I want to drag and drop URLs seamlessly back and forth between email, browser, and composer. It is great to have everything quickly launch together and be available with a click.
If the future is to have the suite split up, then at least there should be uniform hooks that will allow any conforming app to interface with the others, as the suite allows now. If not, we have lost something.
Yes, Intel got caught but the 'penalty' for their crime seems to be that they promise to never, never do that again. The benefits that Intel has secured by locking up the big Japanese computer makers such as Sony, NEC, etc. as exclusive Intel-only shops seem to far exceed the 'cost' of the penalty. If you look at the overall computer market, most computer makers are now either Intel-only or nearly Intel-only which doesn't leave many crumbs for AMD to pick up. For example, if you want to buy an AMD-inside desktop machine in the US, you are pretty much limited to going either HP or building it yourself . Even with HP, the AMD-based models to choose from have low-end hardware and processors so if you want to get a powerful AMD machine, you have to get out your screwdriver and build a white box. The bottom line is that getting a monopoly is a very profitable business objective for Intel and they are doing a good job for their shareholders by pursuing it.
The Intel 660 reviewed in the article has closed the gap quite a bit
with the Athlon 64 4000+ but it looks like heat is still a problem for
Intel, even with the new 6xx 'prescott' cpus. The Intel 660 has a
thermal design envelope of 115 watts vs only 89 watts for the Athlon 64
4000+. More significantly, the Intel 660 has hardware and
software mechanisms to automatically reduce the core voltage and clock
speed when high temperatures occur as described in this review:
Thermal
Monitoring 2
TM2
is overheat protection, controlled by the processor's PROCHOT signal
(processor hot). This signal is activated if the CPU's thermal diode
detects critical temperature levels. TM2 will dynamically reduce core
voltage and clock speed in order to cool down the CPU.
Enhanced
SpeedStep
SpeedStep
does exactly the same as TM2, with the difference that it is initiated
by the operating system. Whenever the system load is low, Windows XP
SP2 will cause the CPU to lower the clock speed in 200 MHz increments
by using ACPI mechanisms. Again, this is performed dynamically, which
means that executing a demanding application will cause the system to
speed up again.
These sorts of protective mechanisms mean that your "3.6 Ghz" Intel
processor might not be operating at either 3.6 Ghz or the core voltage
that you have selected when either the motherboard or the Windows XP
operating system determine that the thermal situation is getting out of
hand. The original idea behind the early implementations of this
stuff was to protect your cpu from catastrophic damage when the cooling
fan failed, or some similar catastrophic event. Now, however, the
stealthy way that Intel is implementing these mechanisms in both the
hardware and the OS suggests that they have moved into the realm of
selling performance that the system may not thermally be capable of
delivering on a sustained basis. Will the user see any indication
that their system is slowing down or that the voltage has been
decreased? In effect, the Intel systems are becoming more like
'dragsters' that are capable of short periods of high acceleration and
speed but perhaps unable to operate at speed on a sustained
basis.
Bill Gates is a guy with essentially a high school education who presides over one of the largest and most oppressive monopoly corporations ever created. Having him advise us on better educational approaches is a little like Al Capone advising us on better tax collection methods.
In a larger sense, though, his argument is essentially the perennial 'training' vs. 'education' argument. Training proponents such as Gates would have us all learn 'skills' that quickly become obsolete anyway (this is also what communist countries typically advocate) while 'education' proponents recognize the value of an educated populace capable of independent thinking about a variety of topics.
I guess this thread is about a comparison of Linux vs. Windows security which, of course, is obvious. But what I think isn't being noticed is that the Windows security situation is in a crisis. Now, I know, it's easy to laugh at Windows and say well, sure, Micrsoft was stupid enough to implement stuff like the COM 'Browser Helper Objects,' the unprotected scripting engines, the IE Active-X controls, etc. and so, 'of course', the Windows security sucks. But consider that a major portion of the world uses Windows now for email, the internet, and document exchange and these people are hurting. Yes, the big enterprises have double redundant hardware and software firewalls, virus scanning, spyware extraction, and large staffs of experts to roam around and put out the fires. But the little users don't have any of that stuff and they are finding it increasingly difficult just to keep Windows going day-to-day. Basically, there seems to be a worldwide cyber war going on in which the holes in Windows are being cracked so wide and so frequently that the anti-virus/spyware/trojan software cannot keep up and users are left with systems that barely function, even when they run the latest anti-virus software with the latest downloaded updates. The purveyors of viruses, spyware, trojans, and spam are winning here and there are bad consequences for all of us, even if we don't use Windows. If you are able to help, consider donating a little of your time to helping a neighbor, small business, school, or church with their Windows problems. Maybe you can even help them migrate their system off of Windows. They are probably going to be interested.
The author suggests that Microsoft is moving to hardware independence with.NET apps running on the upcoming Cell processor and VirtualPC to run old non-.NET software. The Cell processor is a joint product of IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. It's hard to imagine Microsoft getting into bed with longtime foes IBM and Sony, while kicking Intel out from under the sheets and onto the floor.
Also, the author suggest that Microsoft has a version of NT4 that could be used on the allegedly PowerPC-compatible Cell. This flies in the face of what Microsoft has been doing for the last 3 years in developing the next version of Windows code-named 'Longhorn' which is being developed for x86 and x86-64 rather than PowerPC.
The author seems to be attempting to create the idea that Windows will run on Cell but that is not in anyone's plans and is not likely to ever be, unless the Cell performance is much better than even its hype. The Cell design seems to be adapted entirely to real-time processing of massive amounts of data rather than as a competitor for x86 processors, and will likely find applications in video devices, cameras, scanners, printers, copiers, automobiles, and similar embedded device applications rather than general purpose desktop computers.
"Finally, before signing off, I should clarify my earlier remarks to the effect that I don't think that Apple will use this CPU. I originally based this assessment on the fact that I knew that the SPUs would not use VMX/Altivec. However, the PPC core does have a VMX unit. Nonetheless, I expect this VMX to be very simple, and roughly comparable to the Altivec unit o the first G4. Everything on this processor is stripped down to the bare minimum, so don't expect a ton of VMX performance out of it, and definitely not anything comparable to the G5. Furthermore, any Altivec code written for the new G4 or G5 would have to be completely reoptimized due to inorder nature of the PPC core's issue.
So the short answer is, Apple's use of this chip is within the realm of concievability, but it's extremely unlikely in the short- and medium-term. Apple is just too heavily invested in Altivec, and this processor is going to be a relative weakling in that department. Sure, it'll pack a major SIMD punch, but that will not be a double-precision Alitvec-type punch."
IBM still has OS/2
to push, but Microsoft pushed Windows 3.0 for $$ reasons rather than
technical ones. If there had been no protected mode applications
on Windows 3.0, Microsoft probably would have just trumpeted that as a
feature. The US DOJ vs Microsoft antitrust trial "Findings of
Fact", based on some very compelling testimony by IBM executive,
revealed for all time that the only reason that IBM backed away from
OS/2 was due to pressure from Microsoft. Here are some relevant
quotes:
These are from the section on IBM under 'The Similar Experiences of
Other Firms in Dealing with Microsoft.' Here's some quotes:
"Of course, accepting the terms would have required IBM, as a practical
matter, to abandon its own operating system, OS/2."
"The message was clear: IBM could resolve the impasse ostensibly
blocking the issuance of a Windows 95 license -- the royalties audit --
by de-emphasizing those products of its own that competed with
Microsoft and instead promoting Microsoft's products."
"In sum, from 1994 to 1997 Microsoft consistently pressured IBM to
reduce its support for software products that competed with Microsoft's
offerings, and it used its monopoly power in the market for
Intel-compatible PC operating systems to punish IBM for its refusal to
cooperate."
These were not opinions but were the conclusions of the court that were
reached after all of the evidence was evaluated at trial. There
were also findings on the application barrier to entry that prevented a
non-Windows OS from gaining significant market share.
The result of the M$ vs IBM battle over OS/2 was probably a secret
agreement that was likely similar in its effects on competition to the agreement
that Sun recently reached with Microsoft. You can even hear
Lou Gerstner, IBM's CEO at the time, describing his decision to stop
fighting with Micosoft over OS/2 back in the mid-90s in this
zipped up mp3.
It is remarkable how little improvement there has been in ease of use between Fortran in 1954 and Java 2 in 2004, even though the power of the underlying hardware has increased by about 10**12. Where is the development environment that is as simple to use as lego blocks which anyone over the age of 6 can use to quickly create powerful apps? Is such a thing impossible, no matter how powerful the hardware becomes?
Perhaps the global warming crisis is at hand and immediate drastic measures are needed now. Perhaps we've been complacent, shortsighted, ignorant, slow to respond, stupic, etc. etc.
But this alleged report is all about the horrible consequences of our past sins rather than about about the modeling of the future climate. That makes it sound like just another attempt by people with a point of view to scare people into doing what they want rather than a serious attempt to shape opinion with insight, facts, and arguments. People everywhere are weary of terrorism and scare tactics being used as a tool for action. If this is truly a potential crisis, it deserves a sober approach and not just a lot of hysterical arm waving by an anonymous group identified only as "...a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world."
The article pitches this as a cell vs PC fight where the cell will be 10x faster than the PC we use today and therefore we will all purchase cells. Uh-huh.
When will these kind of guys get it? It has taken years of time and zillions of hours to get to where we are today. The new 10x faster whatever pales into insignificance if it can't do what we are doing right now. The cell approach obviously has a lot of potential but it will never get mainstream adoption unless it integrates into what we already have. If the promise of the technology is actually realized (and that's a big if), it will reach the PC platform only as some sort of transparent add-on to the current platform architechture. Then it will be gradually integrated until new PCs have a sticker on the front that says 'includes CELL' or whatever.
We are software limited, not hardware limited, and anything new had better work great with everything we are doing now. Otherwise, that new standalone CELL thingy will be just another piece of really fast hardware that everyone ignores because it can't do anything.
Several related articles repeatedly make an unreferenced claim that solar output between the '50s' and the present has not declined, as allegedly measured by 'satellites.' The conclusion, therefore, is that the reduced solar radiation observed at ground level is due entirely to changes in the atmosphere, such as particulates.
The problem with this, though, is that the 'Solar and Heliospheric Observatory' satellite was not even launched until 1995 and it does not seem to have been designed to measure total solar output, at least directly and routinely, but seems to be more focused on observing the solar interior, the solar atmosphere, and the solar wind. I suspect that when SOHO was being designed, no one gave much thought to the possibility that it might be interesting to monitor and track solar radiation spectral output because there wasn't any thought that it might be changing and it would be easier to observe on earth, anyway. Maybe solar output is truly not changing between the '50s' and 2005 but I don't think anyone really knows.
At the liklihood of being branded a heretic, it should be said that global warming, its causes, its effects, and its magnitude, if any, are not understood yet and this article just illustrates that. We have been assured for many years that rising atmospheric CO2 levels (which is factual) will cause the earth's temperature to increase due to the 'greenhouse effect' of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which reduces heat radiation into space (also factual). Scientists have attempted to create all sorts of sophisticated computer models to predict the magnitude of the warming and its effects on the global climate. Other scientists have attempted to reconstruct the historical climate by looking at tree rings, glacial ice gas bubbles, sedimentary rock layers, etc. to determine what has happened in the past. So far, so good.
The problem with all of this is that we are modeling a very large amount of heat reaching the earth from the sun every day minus an equally large amount of heat leaving the earth every day which leaves a tiny little theoretical residue of heat remaining on the earth to allegedly warm us up. Our current computer modeling techniques are just too crude to be used to draw any conclusions from. This article points out that the amount of heat reaching the earth has decreased significantly due to particulates in the atmosphere but also from increased cloud cover, caused by the particulates, or occuring independently of them. It is also possible, even likely, that the output from the sun is declining, which happens to be the currently-popular theory for explaining the cause of recent, and periodic, 'ice ages.'
What we are seeing is that even with a significant decline in solar radiation, the effect on temperatures has been relatively small. The fans of the global warming models will, of course, claim that the carbon dioxide effects have almost exactly balanced out the solar radiation decline but another, much more likely, conclusion, is that the earth's climate has a feedback control in the circulation of ocean currents, the amount of water evaporated, and the degree of cloud cover and that the computer models we currently have are not nearly sophisticated enough to give us any idea at all of what will happen in the future due to changes in solar radiation or carbon dioxide levels.
The next ice age might be just beginning or we might be on the verge of catastrophic warming but we simply do not know.
Slashdot Mirror
The Intel dual-core setup looks a LOT like the old dual-cpu systems but just without the second cpu socket. Intel even uses two dies for the two cores. Those smp systems have been around for years but haven't set the world on fire because they don't speed up single-threaded stuff. They do have some benefits for software that specifically takes advantage of the second cpu but those benefits have historically not been enough to entice many people to pay the extra money for a dual-cpu system. The new Intel cpu will probably make the dualie a little more 'mainstream' so the software support for it will eventually increase but it still doesn't look especially attractive, given the power and heat overhead that it adds.
AMD, OTOH, has gone beyond the old dual-cpu approach with their new system that have said they will release this Thursday. AMD puts both cores on one die. More importantly, the L2 cache of both cpus is shared via something AMD calls the "system request interface". Both cores share a common memory controller (that is also on-die) and access to hypertransport. What all of this means is that the AMD design has the potential to speed up even single-threaded stuff as well as offering two cores for multi-threaded software.
I cannot recall ever hearing Intel sound so desperate. First they ship pre-release samples to a handful of friendly reviewers and then they announce that they have 'shipped' the product, apparently to beat AMD's planned announcement on April 21 but the sum total of the evidence for the alleged 'shipment' seems to be a claim that they have shipped the product to Intel-friendly Dell. No one seems to actually have it to sell anywhere and even Dell just says they will be shipping 'soon.' In better days, Intel used to send a new product around to reviewers under NDA a few days before an actual release. The NDA would expire on the day of the product announcement and then you would actually be able to buy it at the time it was 'released.' How times have changed for Intel...and for AMD.
After the gamma ray burst, most of us might have received a fatal dose but we would probably still have a few hours or days before our organs shut down and we kicked the bucket. That would give us time to get those last things finished up and say goodbye to each other. A handful of people would probably survive, though, such as, for example, miners working in tunnels 2000 feet below the surface. Also, people on the far side of the Earth from the gamma ray burst might survive if the Earth shielded them, assuming, of course, that the 'far side' from the burst was land rather than water.
Dell has screwed over AMD so many times that this has become an industry joke. Dell will NEVER use AMD products as long as Intel continues to make products that are even somewhat remotely competitive with AMD products. If AMD hasn't figured that out by now, then they would be establishing new metrics for gullibility. Con men probably use an 'AMD 0-10 scale' to define how big a sucker their target is as in 'That guy's an AMD 10' when they spot a guy just getting off of the turnip truck. Frevvinsake, AMD, wise up!
The electrical resistance of any conductor is a function of both its length and its cross-sectional area. On logic chips, the effect of length predominates.
No, the electrical resistance is not constant but has apparently been dramatically lowered by AMD's move to 90 nm technology. AMD processors have had lower electrical resistance than Intel processors for the last two years due to AMD's use of Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology which AMD introduced with their 64-bit processors in 2003. This has meant that AMD SOI-based processors typically released much less heat than Intel processors. Now, however, AMD has moved to 90 nm technology which further reduces electrical resistance thereby allowing higher clock rates. AMD processors typically outperform Intel processors at the generally lower AMD clock rates because the AMD design does more during each clock cycle. Now, with the move to 90 nm tech along with the SOI process, the clock rate of AMD processors seems likely to ramp up again and the AMD processors apparently are on the verge of taking us all another step up in performance. And of course, the dual-core cpus are also apparently on the way but that's a different story for another day the week after next.
Why does that matter? Well, the things that we find for computers to do just keeps on growing and the need for more cycles, more storage, and more memory appears to therefore be infinite. AMD is bringing increasingly more powerful and low-cost machines to the world at large and good things will come from that.
It wasn't very smart of the UCSB admins to let the grading system access password be reset using common personal information such as ssn and birthdate. Better would have been to send a new password to the users email address or to have him stop by or telephone.
Also, charging the girl with four felonies seems a little over the top, given the nature of the crime. What she did doesn't seem any different than cheating on a final exam but cheating usually calls for expulsion rather than a felony criminal charge. It isn't as if the girl vandalized the system, sold grades to others, or used the professor's info to open credit card accounts or something. Do they really want to send people like this girl to prison for several years? For what reason?
A sad life?
T-Rex survived for millions of years through asteroid impacts, earthquakes, global climate change, flood, drought, disease, and competition for food. By comparison, our H. Sapiens species has been around for only 50,000 years or so and our numbers and technology have expanded during only the last 2,000. Extrapolating our most recent 100 years of history into the future doesn't make our prospects look very good either. Disease, war, and environmental destruction are likely to thin us out quite a bit or even lead to our extinction. At this very moment, millions of scientists and engineers all over the globe are hard at work thinking of new, more effective, ways to kill large numbers of us. Whose life is sadder, T-rex or H-Sapiens?
It's a small historical point but the first 64-bit AMD processor was released in April, 2003 which was 23 months ago, not 18 months ago as the article states. I remember this because I started using a 64-bit Opteron 240 workstation with an ASUS SK8N motherboard in July, 2003 which was 20 months ago. The 64-bit Windows XP and Linux OS's as well as a lot of 64-bit software were developed on 64-bit AMD systems since there were no 64-bit Intel x86-64 systems existing.
Back in 1996, IBM released a competitor to VB on Windows that they called "Visual Age for Basic." VAB was a fairly good tool and received good reviews. Woe to the hapless developers who bought into it, though, because IBM suddenly dumped it so hard and so quickly a couple of years later that today you can find nary a mention of it on ibm.com and IBM will not even replace media for it. VAB was sophisticated cross-platform product that IBM obviously spent a lot of money and time developing and yet they ultimately tossed it away like it was old fish.
Proprietary RAD tools like VB and VAB are relatively simple and quick to use, as well as powerful, but they are like crack in that once you start using them, you cannot stop and their corporate owners then own you.
Improving the security of Windows will require a lot more than an IE update. Microsoft starts with basically insecure processes and then trys to plug all of the unintended uses (aka security holes) that they can think of.
For example, look at the standard Windows update procedure for Windows XP. First, you have to go to a website to download software that you then allow to run on your system looking for updates. Then, you have to let the software download a sometimes long list of self-installing 'updates' from some location that the Microsoft software selects for you. The download procedure gives the user very little supervisory control over the process and doesn't even do very simple things such as display checksum data to let the user verify the integrity of the downloads. There is also little, if any, indication of what the downloads will do or replace. Yet Microsoft considers this inherently insecure process to be their standard procedure for updating their flagship operating system.
Microsoft needs to change their entire philosophy wherein they think that they should be able to anything they want with your computer at any time while the bad guys are not supposed to use the same mechanisms to steal your data and your cycles.
When the Firefox idea of separate apps arrived, I didn't get goodness. It just seemed like a sop to Windows users who were used to having IE and Outlook slightly separated in Windows. Putting everything together seems better. Their usability is all interrelated anyway, so why not? You can still use another html editor or email client or whatever if you want. I want to drag and drop URLs seamlessly back and forth between email, browser, and composer. It is great to have everything quickly launch together and be available with a click.
If the future is to have the suite split up, then at least there should be uniform hooks that will allow any conforming app to interface with the others, as the suite allows now. If not, we have lost something.
Yes, Intel got caught but the 'penalty' for their crime seems to be that they promise to never, never do that again. The benefits that Intel has secured by locking up the big Japanese computer makers such as Sony, NEC, etc. as exclusive Intel-only shops seem to far exceed the 'cost' of the penalty. If you look at the overall computer market, most computer makers are now either Intel-only or nearly Intel-only which doesn't leave many crumbs for AMD to pick up. For example, if you want to buy an AMD-inside desktop machine in the US, you are pretty much limited to going either HP or building it yourself . Even with HP, the AMD-based models to choose from have low-end hardware and processors so if you want to get a powerful AMD machine, you have to get out your screwdriver and build a white box. The bottom line is that getting a monopoly is a very profitable business objective for Intel and they are doing a good job for their shareholders by pursuing it.
TM2 is overheat protection, controlled by the processor's PROCHOT signal (processor hot). This signal is activated if the CPU's thermal diode detects critical temperature levels. TM2 will dynamically reduce core voltage and clock speed in order to cool down the CPU.
SpeedStep does exactly the same as TM2, with the difference that it is initiated by the operating system. Whenever the system load is low, Windows XP SP2 will cause the CPU to lower the clock speed in 200 MHz increments by using ACPI mechanisms. Again, this is performed dynamically, which means that executing a demanding application will cause the system to speed up again.
These sorts of protective mechanisms mean that your "3.6 Ghz" Intel processor might not be operating at either 3.6 Ghz or the core voltage that you have selected when either the motherboard or the Windows XP operating system determine that the thermal situation is getting out of hand. The original idea behind the early implementations of this stuff was to protect your cpu from catastrophic damage when the cooling fan failed, or some similar catastrophic event. Now, however, the stealthy way that Intel is implementing these mechanisms in both the hardware and the OS suggests that they have moved into the realm of selling performance that the system may not thermally be capable of delivering on a sustained basis. Will the user see any indication that their system is slowing down or that the voltage has been decreased? In effect, the Intel systems are becoming more like 'dragsters' that are capable of short periods of high acceleration and speed but perhaps unable to operate at speed on a sustained basis.
Bill Gates is a guy with essentially a high school education who presides over one of the largest and most oppressive monopoly corporations ever created. Having him advise us on better educational approaches is a little like Al Capone advising us on better tax collection methods.
In a larger sense, though, his argument is essentially the perennial 'training' vs. 'education' argument. Training proponents such as Gates would have us all learn 'skills' that quickly become obsolete anyway (this is also what communist countries typically advocate) while 'education' proponents recognize the value of an educated populace capable of independent thinking about a variety of topics.
I guess this thread is about a comparison of Linux vs. Windows security which, of course, is obvious. But what I think isn't being noticed is that the Windows security situation is in a crisis. Now, I know, it's easy to laugh at Windows and say well, sure, Micrsoft was stupid enough to implement stuff like the COM 'Browser Helper Objects,' the unprotected scripting engines, the IE Active-X controls, etc. and so, 'of course', the Windows security sucks. But consider that a major portion of the world uses Windows now for email, the internet, and document exchange and these people are hurting. Yes, the big enterprises have double redundant hardware and software firewalls, virus scanning, spyware extraction, and large staffs of experts to roam around and put out the fires. But the little users don't have any of that stuff and they are finding it increasingly difficult just to keep Windows going day-to-day. Basically, there seems to be a worldwide cyber war going on in which the holes in Windows are being cracked so wide and so frequently that the anti-virus/spyware/trojan software cannot keep up and users are left with systems that barely function, even when they run the latest anti-virus software with the latest downloaded updates. The purveyors of viruses, spyware, trojans, and spam are winning here and there are bad consequences for all of us, even if we don't use Windows. If you are able to help, consider donating a little of your time to helping a neighbor, small business, school, or church with their Windows problems. Maybe you can even help them migrate their system off of Windows. They are probably going to be interested.
The author suggests that Microsoft is moving to hardware independence with .NET apps running on the upcoming Cell processor and VirtualPC to run old non-.NET software. The Cell processor is a joint product of IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. It's hard to imagine Microsoft getting into bed with longtime foes IBM and Sony, while kicking Intel out from under the sheets and onto the floor.
Also, the author suggest that Microsoft has a version of NT4 that could be used on the allegedly PowerPC-compatible Cell. This flies in the face of what Microsoft has been doing for the last 3 years in developing the next version of Windows code-named 'Longhorn' which is being developed for x86 and x86-64 rather than PowerPC.
The author seems to be attempting to create the idea that Windows will run on Cell but that is not in anyone's plans and is not likely to ever be, unless the Cell performance is much better than even its hype. The Cell design seems to be adapted entirely to real-time processing of massive amounts of data rather than as a competitor for x86 processors, and will likely find applications in video devices, cameras, scanners, printers, copiers, automobiles, and similar embedded device applications rather than general purpose desktop computers.
In part II, he writes:
"Finally, before signing off, I should clarify my earlier remarks to the effect that I don't think that Apple will use this CPU. I originally based this assessment on the fact that I knew that the SPUs would not use VMX/Altivec. However, the PPC core does have a VMX unit. Nonetheless, I expect this VMX to be very simple, and roughly comparable to the Altivec unit o the first G4. Everything on this processor is stripped down to the bare minimum, so don't expect a ton of VMX performance out of it, and definitely not anything comparable to the G5. Furthermore, any Altivec code written for the new G4 or G5 would have to be completely reoptimized due to inorder nature of the PPC core's issue.
So the short answer is, Apple's use of this chip is within the realm of concievability, but it's extremely unlikely in the short- and medium-term. Apple is just too heavily invested in Altivec, and this processor is going to be a relative weakling in that department. Sure, it'll pack a major SIMD punch, but that will not be a double-precision Alitvec-type punch."
IBM still has OS/2 to push, but Microsoft pushed Windows 3.0 for $$ reasons rather than technical ones. If there had been no protected mode applications on Windows 3.0, Microsoft probably would have just trumpeted that as a feature. The US DOJ vs Microsoft antitrust trial "Findings of Fact", based on some very compelling testimony by IBM executive, revealed for all time that the only reason that IBM backed away from OS/2 was due to pressure from Microsoft. Here are some relevant quotes:
These are from the section on IBM under 'The Similar Experiences of Other Firms in Dealing with Microsoft.' Here's some quotes:
"Of course, accepting the terms would have required IBM, as a practical matter, to abandon its own operating system, OS/2."
"The message was clear: IBM could resolve the impasse ostensibly blocking the issuance of a Windows 95 license -- the royalties audit -- by de-emphasizing those products of its own that competed with Microsoft and instead promoting Microsoft's products."
"In sum, from 1994 to 1997 Microsoft consistently pressured IBM to reduce its support for software products that competed with Microsoft's offerings, and it used its monopoly power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems to punish IBM for its refusal to cooperate."
These were not opinions but were the conclusions of the court that were reached after all of the evidence was evaluated at trial. There were also findings on the application barrier to entry that prevented a non-Windows OS from gaining significant market share.
The result of the M$ vs IBM battle over OS/2 was probably a secret agreement that was likely similar in its effects on competition to the agreement that Sun recently reached with Microsoft. You can even hear Lou Gerstner, IBM's CEO at the time, describing his decision to stop fighting with Micosoft over OS/2 back in the mid-90s in this zipped up mp3.
It is remarkable how little improvement there has been in ease of use between Fortran in 1954 and Java 2 in 2004, even though the power of the underlying hardware has increased by about 10**12. Where is the development environment that is as simple to use as lego blocks which anyone over the age of 6 can use to quickly create powerful apps? Is such a thing impossible, no matter how powerful the hardware becomes?
Perhaps the global warming crisis is at hand and immediate drastic measures are needed now. Perhaps we've been complacent, shortsighted, ignorant, slow to respond, stupic, etc. etc.
But this alleged report is all about the horrible consequences of our past sins rather than about about the modeling of the future climate. That makes it sound like just another attempt by people with a point of view to scare people into doing what they want rather than a serious attempt to shape opinion with insight, facts, and arguments. People everywhere are weary of terrorism and scare tactics being used as a tool for action. If this is truly a potential crisis, it deserves a sober approach and not just a lot of hysterical arm waving by an anonymous group identified only as "...a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world."
The article pitches this as a cell vs PC fight where the cell will be 10x faster than the PC we use today and therefore we will all purchase cells. Uh-huh.
When will these kind of guys get it? It has taken years of time and zillions of hours to get to where we are today. The new 10x faster whatever pales into insignificance if it can't do what we are doing right now. The cell approach obviously has a lot of potential but it will never get mainstream adoption unless it integrates into what we already have. If the promise of the technology is actually realized (and that's a big if), it will reach the PC platform only as some sort of transparent add-on to the current platform architechture. Then it will be gradually integrated until new PCs have a sticker on the front that says 'includes CELL' or whatever.
We are software limited, not hardware limited, and anything new had better work great with everything we are doing now. Otherwise, that new standalone CELL thingy will be just another piece of really fast hardware that everyone ignores because it can't do anything.
There's nothing to worry about. Microsoft put out a patch for this years ago.
Wait, do you mean that didn't fix it?
Several related articles repeatedly make an unreferenced claim that solar output between the '50s' and the present has not declined, as allegedly measured by 'satellites.' The conclusion, therefore, is that the reduced solar radiation observed at ground level is due entirely to changes in the atmosphere, such as particulates.
The problem with this, though, is that the 'Solar and Heliospheric Observatory' satellite was not even launched until 1995 and it does not seem to have been designed to measure total solar output, at least directly and routinely, but seems to be more focused on observing the solar interior, the solar atmosphere, and the solar wind. I suspect that when SOHO was being designed, no one gave much thought to the possibility that it might be interesting to monitor and track solar radiation spectral output because there wasn't any thought that it might be changing and it would be easier to observe on earth, anyway. Maybe solar output is truly not changing between the '50s' and 2005 but I don't think anyone really knows.
At the liklihood of being branded a heretic, it should be said that global warming, its causes, its effects, and its magnitude, if any, are not understood yet and this article just illustrates that. We have been assured for many years that rising atmospheric CO2 levels (which is factual) will cause the earth's temperature to increase due to the 'greenhouse effect' of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which reduces heat radiation into space (also factual). Scientists have attempted to create all sorts of sophisticated computer models to predict the magnitude of the warming and its effects on the global climate. Other scientists have attempted to reconstruct the historical climate by looking at tree rings, glacial ice gas bubbles, sedimentary rock layers, etc. to determine what has happened in the past. So far, so good.
The problem with all of this is that we are modeling a very large amount of heat reaching the earth from the sun every day minus an equally large amount of heat leaving the earth every day which leaves a tiny little theoretical residue of heat remaining on the earth to allegedly warm us up. Our current computer modeling techniques are just too crude to be used to draw any conclusions from. This article points out that the amount of heat reaching the earth has decreased significantly due to particulates in the atmosphere but also from increased cloud cover, caused by the particulates, or occuring independently of them. It is also possible, even likely, that the output from the sun is declining, which happens to be the currently-popular theory for explaining the cause of recent, and periodic, 'ice ages.'
What we are seeing is that even with a significant decline in solar radiation, the effect on temperatures has been relatively small. The fans of the global warming models will, of course, claim that the carbon dioxide effects have almost exactly balanced out the solar radiation decline but another, much more likely, conclusion, is that the earth's climate has a feedback control in the circulation of ocean currents, the amount of water evaporated, and the degree of cloud cover and that the computer models we currently have are not nearly sophisticated enough to give us any idea at all of what will happen in the future due to changes in solar radiation or carbon dioxide levels.
The next ice age might be just beginning or we might be on the verge of catastrophic warming but we simply do not know.