But you can see that right in the article SuSE says, "Today, SuSE Linux, the international Open Source technology leader and solutions provider..."
SuSE is obviously the leader in Linux and all Open Source because they said so in the article. Debian has nothing. Or they're tooting their own horn a little hard maybe. I'm not sure they can lay claim to the title of international Open Source technology leader.
My AP Chem teacher from a few years ago told this to me. I have no way of saying it's true, but it's almost one of those you'd have to try really hard to make up.
Anyway, he was the chem head at a little high school at the time the story took place. I think it was in Kentucky but that hardly matters. They were doing the little bits of sodium in water thing and all the kids were greatly amused. One so much that he decided to lift a small stick of sodium, maybe half a pencil sized, from the oil filled jar. Apparently this story was used to get locks on the chemical cabinets at this school afterwards, and without locks the kid had fairly easy access.
So the kid, not sure what to do with his treasure, puts the oil logged piece of sodium in a paper towel and puts it in his pocket. He wanders to the library as such to study hall. He's getting nervous because he just stole it and starts to sweat a little, and notices his pocket getting a little warm. After a while his pocket is getting really hot and he pulls out the sodium and tosses it on the floor, apparently allowing it to react a little with muggy air. It starts to flame and flare a bit and the kid, brilliantly, steps on it to try and put it out, like one might a small bit of campfire that fell out of the fire pit. So, you guessed it, his shoe now has putty-like sodium metal molded to it and he's kicking bits of it around the library, trying to get it off as it flares a little here and there. Another student sees the small fire flickering on his shoes, calmly goes to janitor's closet and gets the mop water. He then pours it on the sodium and sets it off really well, displaying why kids shouldn't have ready access to things like sodium.
The bit I'm not sure about is why it started sputtering flame when he removed it from his pocket. Enough of the oil may have been absorbed into the poor fellow's pants and his sweat may have started it a bit, but I'm not sure if dry sodium metal would sputter in humid air. Nor have I had the chance to find out. The way he told the story though was quite funny, and none of us questioned it, so who knows.
Don't go jumping in the pond immediately after doing this, at least not in the spot where you toss in the sodium. You'd have a pretty basic spot full of sodium hydroxide for a while until it spreads out at least. I don't think a pond of any decent size is going to be too affected by a mere 3.5 pounds though. But I could be wrong on that...
Even better would be a ruling that all the lawsuits have been frivolous and Mr. Novak being forced to reimburse everybody for their lawyers. Though Google alone winning such would be good because then maybe future sue-ees would go get themselves some decent council with the knowledge that abusive lawsuits don't have to cost them money.
First off, I'd like to say thanks for the quality links and all of this information. Searching around for a few hours yesterday left me with a couple little things, but nothing to really go off of.
Perhaps I'm wrong on the monopoly bit. I just see the recent wars between Intel and AMD, price, performance, PR, the whole thing, and see that finally some decent competition has come to the PC market. I hope that AMD will be able to keep up their work for this reason. God knows Apple hasn't given anybody a run for their money since the days of the IIe.
Personally, I'm wondering what Intel's 64-bit plans are for the desktop. Right now they say it isn't needed, and is probably right about it, though AMD could have a card with the more bits is better, even if it doesn't matter. I think that'll be interesting.
I also have no real idea of how adopted the Itanium is becoming. I know of all of one company near me that has a quad setup, but no more than that. Granted the first one wasn't all that powerful. I'm wondering how wide of an adoption Itanium 2 will get, but I haven't heard too much fuss about the whole chip. Perhaps it's because people aren't looking to expand their business too much these days. Maybe the thing is just doomed to fail. Given the problems to this point and the issues for the future maybe it will, I don't know.
Finally, come to think of it I've been impressed for a long time that the iMac has no fans. While I have no idea about the G4 towers and such, as I've never had the opportunity to dissect one, most x86 machines these days have at the minimum a fan on the CPU. I've seen specialized x86 machines that have no fan but the one in the power supply and a complex system of ducts and the like, but it does speak volumes about the heat generated in a Mac. I'm not sure where my line of absurd for power comes in, though I know it is somewhere below requiring a 400W power supply and fans on the CPU that sound like jets taking off (a la most Athlon's my friends have).
If I could find a nice board and a reasonably priced PowerPC or other RISC chip that I could run GNU/Linux on and get reasonable performance I would seriously consider it. But I'd want something I can put together myself, not a pull it out of the box and it works setup. I suppose I'm a weird consumer like that.
I'm not arguing that the Power4 isn't attractive or that the Itanium may not have more cost than just the up-front purchase price. Heat and power will certainly add up if you have many of these things in one place. Of course cooling the room is going to cost something, and extra draw from the CPU will make some amount of influence on an electric budget. This will certainly be more pronounced the more you have. I'm sure there's a break even point with all of these things considered, where after so many hours/days/years of run-time the costs of either platform are equal. There's also as you're implying, the potential cost that Intel will take over in the server arena by undercutting its competitors.
I don't think that I did prove your point though, all I said was that Intel's offering was selling for less; acquisition price as you noted, and performing comparably. Actually I was just repeating the comments made by the post you replied to. I have no hard data about what their actual costs to manufacture an Itanium are, nor did I post any. I'll go along, however, and speculate that they're not recouping their R&D costs at the moment, but are instead hoping that lower costs will mean larger acceptance. If dumping is illegal in domestic trade I'm sure Intel is selling just at or above actual costs of manufacture. And yes, it is rather doubtless that their strong presence in the PC market is helping to keep their business afloat, along with the networking division and whereever else Intel has diversified to. However, Intel isn't a monopoly on the desktop. A little over a week ago AMD anounced it has about 19% market share. Here's a read about it. That doesn't count the people using Macs or older Sun's or SGI's or anything, though that is a pretty small portion. Just because it's their architecture that has a monopoly on the PC market doesn't mean that they have a monopoly. Had you made the assertion before the Athlon, however, I would have been quite inclined to agree.
This proves you know little... See, now you have to go and be a jerk. I hadn't read about VLIW, and thus EPIC's compiler optimizations not carrying forward generations. A simple pointing it out would have sufficed. If you could supply a link with detail I would appreciate it. The best I've found is that because of heavy compile time optimization future EPIC processors may run the code essentially the same since the number of functional units the code was compiled for remains the same in the compiled code. And while a recompile would make it all better, I too would rather have it just work with a new processor. It'll still run older code though and it doesn't sound like they're changing the ISA in a way that would break it with their next Itanium. That was the basis of my statement.
I'm actually kinda upset that we're going to see only one more Alpha. I wish DEC and then Compaq would have done something about marketing or anything to keep the things around. Why Intel, upon aquiring a lot of the talent that went into Alpha, isn't going to do more to further what the Alpha had going is beyond me. Intel would have a hell of an offering if they extended the Alpha.
And why EPIC indeed. The performance of the Itanium shows that it isn't a total flop, despite whatever issues about size/heat/actual cost are brought up. I don't think that at this stage you can classify the Itanium line as inferior. The performance is on par and we've yet to really see how it scales. If, when Itanium 2 has gone though its rigors, I hear that there are a whole slew of problems and performance is going nowhere I'll be the next to say that there are problems with the architechture. I'm not about to discount it on the basis of size, heat, or potential issues. Of course, I'd probably wait to see if I were thinking about buying one too.
Lastly again I'm not sure about the power of the IA-32 deal. I'm no EE, but looking around at Intel's and Motorola's pages I see the Pentium 4 with a core voltage no higher than 1.75V and the G4 fixed at 1.8V. From personal experience I've run a dual Pentium 3 with two hard drives, two cd drives, two floppies, and a decently powered video card off of a 235W power supply. My 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 has a 300W power supply and is perfectly happy. I couldn't find a smaller one, and I'm not sure if it needs that kind of power either. Comparably I did a little poking around and the G4 cube uses a modest 205W power supply (part 611-0150) and I found a G4 power supply (part 661-2303) that's a 235W piece. From the images, however, that one didn't appear to have the ability to run many drives off of it. So while the numbers are smaller I'm not sure I'd call it absurd to have a machine as powerful as the IA-32 line with power requirements at least in the neighborhood of where Apple's are. Heck, Apple doesn't post much information about what is used where, so I'm not sure the newer, comparable G4's can even use the 235W power supply either. I would say from my experience that most of the older G4 models were comparable in performance to my dual Pentium 3 machine. The cubes I've used always seemed slower.
But if the Power4 has equivalent performance being smaller, cooler, and more compatible in its own processor family, then we have again an issue of Intel leveraging its monopoly to push an inferior product, as Microsoft does with its Windows.
Huh? The smaller, cooler bit may make the Power4 more attractive, especially to those with power/heat restraints in their business, but equivilent performance at a lower price hardly slaps the Itanium into a "inferior product" category. Really, what does size have to do with it anyway? A bigger die size will mean lower yield and increased cost, perhaps lower clock rate, but it was already mentioned that the Itanium is selling for less and performing comparably to the Power4. And compatability to processor family? Itanium is its own processor family. Itanium 2 will follow the same IA-64 set as far as I know. Itanium just tries to run x86 code as well so migration isn't as painful. And guess what, 32-bit x86 code is going to suck on the Itanium, like 16-bit code suffered on the Pentium Pro, despite compatability to the processor family.
Don't get me wrong, the Power4 is an incredibly attractive chip. However, IBM is in no position of hurt with its processors as far as I know. Calling Intel a monopoly in this area and then upholding IBM's offering doesn't exactly hold water. Remember, Intel wants this to invade the high performance 64-bit arena. People like Sun, IBM, and what was DEC had 64-bit offerings well in advance. The Power3 from IBM is 64-bit and was released 4 years ago. The Itanium got it's actual name instead of Merced less than 3 years ago.
So basically Intel is a newcomer here, not in any means a monopoly. It may have a good grip in the desktop area, but there's still competition there as well. Just because they're big doesn't make them an evil monopoly. That they are able to make a product that matches performance with a leader in the area is impressive, even if the chip has been in development forever. That it has a couple non-performance shortcomings is forgivable, especially if it is selling at a lower price.
And indeed. It will be interesting to see the Power4 work its way to the desktop area, more well performing options are always welcome from my viewpoint.
Lastly, the power consumption by IA-32 processors isn't that absurd. If you're running a PC with a 300 watt power supply for 24 hours it really would be difficult to use more power than running 3 light bulbs, each of them 100 watts. It might be easier just to replace all the 100 W bulbs in a company with 60 W bulbs if you wanted a massive lowering of power consumption.
The hunt for more GHz will continue until computing demands are met. Given that we still have supercomputers which take up rooms, clustered from thousands of processors, I'd say we aren't there yet. You'd be a complete fool to say that any amount of computing power will satisfy everybody. There will always be new applications. Even when we can go into a digital simulation completely unable to tell that it isn't real, somebody is going to want to make a bigger one. We'll never run out of a need for speed.
That being said, I, in theory, agree with your statement that a better architechture might be smarter than just milking speeds. In practice, however, there already are new architectures being employed, they just have a CISC front end slapped on them for compatability's sake. It's just RISC pretending to be CISC in the x86 arena.
Burning power is an issue, and it is one that is being seriously looked at, at least by Intel. Go check the temp poll (running now at least) for all the people who have P4's running at least 15 C cooler than the lowest option on the poll. Intel, with Banias is going for a big leap in power conservation while preserving performance. I think that's great. I'm not sure what AMD is up to in the power/heat realm, but would hope they're following suit. The P4, as pointed out by somebody else, is the 20 stage pipeline, P3 was 10. But you forget the P4 was designed with a huge pipeline in mind. Its branch prediction is sufficent that it is still incredibly powerful. Not on a clock for clock rating with other chips, but that speed makes up for it. That was the goal. And it still runs cooler with a stock heatsink/fan than a comparable chip with a seriously powered fan.
Finally, while parallel CPUs are nice, you have overhead to deal with and it doesn't do a thing for code that isn't multi-threaded. Moreover, there is overhead for running a single program on multiple processors. The real nicety (I know, I had a dual CPU P3 machine until the mobo went) is in multitasking. Running multiple applications with half the job swapping. Enough processes will take advantage of multiple CPUs quick enough.
However, why not do both? Make the CPUs fast and parallelizable. I was very disappointed when upgrading that there was no multi-CPU option for the P4 outside of the Xeon. The cost of that was only a little prohibitive, but the motherboards were outrageous. I paid only a slight premium for the dual P3 board. I would have paid another slight premium if I could run two normal P4s.
I'm not, however, sure about the sanity of a dual processor on a chip design. I would imagine yields would be lower because if one of the CPU's on the chip was taken out then it wouldn't be a dual chip. That and the amount of heat in one spot would increase as well. It would be interesting to see for density solutions though, getting 4 CPU's into a 1U unit.
Check out this article at info-sec. It describes NT bringing an AEGIS cruiser to its knees. As far as I know nothing ever came of this though. That was back in 1998.
Also look how hooked on MS marketing they are. Although Unix is more reliable, Redman said, NT may become more reliable with time. Personally, and for my tax dollars, I'd like to see the most reliable system available used, regardless of how reliable it may be in the future. It would keep people safer and probably would reduce the chances of our cruisers being crippled.
Saw it Sunday. It lives up to expectations.
on
Review: Spirited Away
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I just saw it today, the 22nd, in Minneapolis at the Uptown theater. I must say that I enjoyed it greatly. I'm a big fan of his other work, and Studio Ghibli's work in general, but I must say that this film takes the cake. (Well, I love Totoro, but for more kiddie reasons I guess.) This film was, as many others have pointed out, a masterpiece.
I think possibly the best thing of the movie is the way that Chihiro develops over the film. She starts out all whiny and soft but, well, go see the film if you can. It is a magnificent transformation. It shows something about responsibility in a subtle way here, something I think a lot of movies in the family category miss. There is really growth, not some cooked moral spoon fed to you.
I also like the animation; Chihiro had a bit of Mei from My Neighbor Totoro drawn into her. Some of the spirits and scenery had a look of Mononoke Hime to them. Overall it was an enchanting place that was created. It put the two together along with some of its own style and made a style greater than either.
I had some expectations for the film. Seeing the trailer made the film look great, and hearing that it won awards brought the expectations up even higher. Being Miyazaki's Spirited Away brought them up to levels I try to stay away from for films on fear of being disappointed. I'm happy to say, however, that I wasn't let down in the least and the movie was more than I expected of it.
Honestly, go see this if you can. Bring your kids if you have them. It is a great film for everybody.
And I'm going to go see it at the Uptown theater in Minneapolis this weekend. There's an anime club on campus and I just got a poster for it tonight as the theater sent us a bunch of them. It looks excellent and I can see from the poster the Ghibli look that Totoro had is in there too.
I think the point is to make something presentable. If it runs everything the user wants, but behaves like Win95 I don't think the end user is going to be as happy either. There are alternatives to many apps out there that are pretty decent. And really, most home users, the desktop sitting there in the family room user, probably don't care much about full macro support for their word processor. That's businessy stuff. They want something that will let them do what they need, most likely web and email with some light word processing and maybe some other stuff. Important stuff like solitare or minesweeper.
That said, the screenshots on that page looked absolutely god-awful. I wouldn't let that theme sit there for a second. I personally don't care if it looks like windows or not, but the screenshots looked like the desktop was a cold, lifeless thing, not something I would want peeking out around my apps. If you're pushing pretty UI work like you say won't make a difference, at least do that well. I think that without both usability and a bit of aesthetics you're going to lose users. Not many Joe-users I know want to their desktop to look like its going backwards, regardless of how progressive it may really be under the hood.
Why? If it was constantly for large changes I might be somewhat scared. If their team is constantly making small improvements, maybe fixing a bug here and there, and then releasing the work without delay then I'm all for weekly updates. Mainly because you don't have to do the updates but if you need drivers then you always have the latest greatest from the nVidia team. And they never seem to break anything with the new drivers so I would think that they're decently tested too. Hats off to them.
Hey, you forgot to mention buying another one when that one gets old. If you want real expandability in a Mac you need a tower, then you're looking at more than the $1500. And for $1500 as other replies have stated, you're not getting a nice PC, you're getting a nice PC. You're not getting inferior. And the plug-n-play better work well if that's the only way you have to expand the machine. Not that I've ever had a problem with plug and play in Windows land, nor have I had too much difficulty with non-bleeding edge peripherals under linux.
I'll agree that if you can't troubleshoot your own machines maybe a Mac makes more sense. If you're in the business of routinely mucking around with your machine and know how to fix things if you break them I don't see how you can justify a Mac for the price. If you want something simple, with the slick shiny interface and have no interest in poking around the system Macs may be the better alternative. In that situation its probably being used more like an appliance and wouldn't need the extra muscle a PC has to offer. Hell, if you want to read email, browse web pages, and write documents you can do that with a heck of a lot less than the processing power being sold today.
Well, you can buy perfectly high grade PC hardware for what is still a fraction of the Mac equivilent cost. True, when your PC costs $400 including your monitor you will have problems. However, for $1500 these days you can build a fast, high quality PC. Puts to shame Mac prices.
I just picked up the Konamix version for the Playstation, got a couple dance pads, and can say that yes, yes this game is a workout. Enough of a workout that there is a workout mode of the game that keeps track of calories you burn. Play the game for a bit, not just the easy hokey pokey dances and you'll be sweating pretty well.
Blasphemy! You mean that installing linux hardware equivilent to their O2 systems wouldn't have gotten them a five fold increase in speed? According to this the O2 doesn't support linux, but many other SGIs do. I wonder what their performance would be like...
Sarcasm aside though, I didn't see too many other comments (no other modded up) to the obvious conclusion that its the hardware that is increasing in speed, not the OS. I'm sure if they were running Maya on Windows on their new boxes it would kick the old O2s around as well. I'm not sure they would have made the transition as easily, nor could they have made their custom applications so easily either I'm thinking. However, attributing the speed to linux seems just silly.
Around the Milwaukee area there have been some radio ads about how ex-employees can "get back" at their former employers by reporting suspected piracy. It doesn't even have to be real, it can be just a mean spirited act of vengence to get the good old BSA fired up now. And they're advertising this.
My question is what legal right do they have to storm in and do an audit? I wouldn't think that they'd just be allowed in, and I'm pretty sure they would have to go through legal channels to squeeze money out of people, unless they're dead scared. If a company is pirating and destroys all the evidence before the BSA gets them in court what sort of case do they have? I mean, "Yes your honor, we took a lead from an ex-employee hell bent on vengence, and we have no real evidence," doesn't sound like a case winner to me.
Whatever, my boss would just give them the finger if they showed up here, then probably call the cops.
Except Dreamcast was a competitor of the N64 and the Playstation, not the newest generation of consoles. The launch of the Dreamcast was scheduled for late 99. Years before Xbox and it's ilk.
Not that I agree per se with the original arguement, but I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second here.
What if Ford did this? First we'd get the people who didn't read the agreement, went ahead and broke it, and found themselves in a world of trouble. Here the courts may or may not side with Ford, who knows. It is Ford's right, however, to draw up whatever contract they wish. If you agree to it then it is your own dumb fault. I think it would be appealed to no end, finally being in Ford's favor.
After this consumers would be wary. Very wary. After having their car repossesed or whatever for breaking the contract, then being put in limbo in their lawsuit because they don't read, and ultimately losing because they probably would have signed a contract, these people are going to be pissed. Everybody would find out if people were actually getting busted for it.
So fast forward and we have organizations who hate Ford's new practices along with wary consumers. My guess is Ford is going to be losing a lot of business. With a long enough militant run of the policy the only customers Ford would have left would be those who couldn't live without a Ford (I only know a couple) and those who could live with the agreement. Ford would probably lose enough income that it would break, and serve as a nice example to others.
So, you say, if that's your prediction, why hasn't this happened with software companies? Well, there are a few main differences. First, we're talking software and not cars. Cars are easier to inspect, track, identify them in use, etc. Software can be hidden. The nature of the break in the agreement is more covert when applied to software. Short of a snitch or an audit you can't tell if illegal software is being used somewhere. Anybody could see your neon green Escort rolling down the street, clearly unauthorized. Police already look for your speeding, and the other offences you've listed are all fairly public. Or at least recognizable, go off-roading and then go in for repairs, Ford might be able tell. Of course, that may be your way to break the agreement like so many pirates break software license agreements.
Second, my prediction applies only to Ford, not the whole auto industry. If every auto maker adopted such policy they might swing it, though sales of used cars before such policy was implemented peak, as would mass transit usage if the contract was carried out with enough force. Consumer rights law suit or not, these people would be signing contracts. I can see the government pressuring them, but ultimately people have the right to give up methods with which they use things. It would, however, probably hurt the auto makers to implement something like this. And there's little to gain for them as well. Already nobody can mass produce exact copies, and if they did they would be in a world of legal trouble as it would be hard to explain where these new vehicles were coming from, and auto plants are typically large. It isn't worth it to reproduce autos.
Lastly, software companies really don't persue legal action against people who pirate their software as much as they could. Individual lawsuits are poorly publicised if they happen often. The software companies are mainly concerned with businesses, which are the majority of their sales anyway. Software companies seem to keep the power of their license agreements in reserve for when there are large scale breakages of it. Suing thousands of home users isn't going to gain any popularity, won't entrench their standards, and isn't going to make them as much money as their lucrative business contracts. And possibly, if they did enfore their agreement militantly among all people, there probably would be the large backlash that I think would happen against Ford in your suggestion. I think it doesn't happen because most people know that you can easily get away with piracy on an individual scale, and no company in their right mind is willing to risk the backlash for going after the little man.
My honest thoughts on the subject though; the companies are way out of line with their demands at times. I have little problem with the illegality of copying the software. However, most software seems to be far over-valued for its performance, and far too buggy as well. Piracy seems to me like the sort of vigilante way around the high prices. I think that if useful software was priced lower more people would go out of their way to be legitamate. And of course, there's always free software as a way out as well.
Well, I've worked for an ISP, though no broadband, and I've taken a few classes in the networking arena. I'm fully aware that this is how the ISP's handle their traffic, and ideally anybody should be able to.
Where the problem is though, is that companies are having people sign contracts that say they have x amount for a bandwidth cap for y dollars a month. Sure, there are the jerks that use all x bandwidth all the time, but under the legally binding contract this is completely allowed. Just because on average an ISP is expecting that they can fit more users on a pipe due to switching doesn't mean they will.
So what should be done about it? The ISP should suck it up. To change the rules mid-game and say "Nope, you're gonna pay more than we contracted" is completely morally wrong, especially since nobody ever sees the full x bandwidth to begin with, its always "Best Effort" service. Yes, I'm saying that selling a line rated at x, performing at.5 -.9 times x, and then charging extra for using that reduced speed as much as they want is wrong.
Like I said, I've worked for an ISP. I know there always exists at least one user who is a pain in the ass, asking for things that aren't technically possible due to circumstances outside of the provider's control. How fat a pipe your company has is in your control though, and you have contracts to provide service to your best ability at speed x. Overselling will land you in a world of trouble, and I agree, is probably the cable company's big problem. Congratulations to your company on being responsible about how many people you can fit on a line.
I still think, though, that if you offer a service you'd better be willing to uphold your end of the bargain if you're taking a customer's money. And if I were on a service and was a "trouble user" who was making use of the bandwidth promised, and there were some other number of trouble users on the same line, causing utterly poor performance, I would expect my provider to accomodate somehow. I would not be doing anything at all outside the contract between my provider and myself. A provider's failing to resolve such a problem would, however, be against their "Best Effort" terms.
In short, fill your lines as much as you can so you can make a buck, but don't forget that you're contractually bound to provide the service you're saying you can provide. It may be because of "trouble" users that the crunch is there, but they're only trouble users because they're using the service to the extent of your contract.
While an entire generation is learning Java, you have to realize that that's being learned as an intro type language. At my university the two intro programming classes are Scheme and now Java (rather than C++). Of course, when you get to an operating systems class, or compilers, or anything else, you don't use Java but you use C or C++. Java is a great language to learn because it is so ideal for the programmer. However, if they don't work out some performance issues the widespread usage of Java in things that are useful isn't going to happen soon..NET should at least have some primetime usage I would think, what with MS pushing so hard.
Also, DDR and RDRAM have pretty much reached a price parity, you're not paying more for one or the other anymore really. With the massive amount of bandwidth that the Pentium 4 loves and needs to perform, especially as we've seen from some of the previews of the chip, I think it might be safe to say you're on the money with the thought that this is just rumor. I can't see Intel cutting off Rambus now that prices are nearly the same and performance is shown to be there.
This next to the poll about joining the Liberty Project which has AOL for one of the big members. Lets just track everybodies habits and mail them, that's it...
would be to have the media makers who are pushing for these new standards to obsolete current generation HDTVs purchase new HDTVs of the same quality for those affected by the switch. I would hope that that would make these media companies think twice about doing these things in the future.
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SuSE is obviously the leader in Linux and all Open Source because they said so in the article. Debian has nothing. Or they're tooting their own horn a little hard maybe. I'm not sure they can lay claim to the title of international Open Source technology leader.
Anyway, he was the chem head at a little high school at the time the story took place. I think it was in Kentucky but that hardly matters. They were doing the little bits of sodium in water thing and all the kids were greatly amused. One so much that he decided to lift a small stick of sodium, maybe half a pencil sized, from the oil filled jar. Apparently this story was used to get locks on the chemical cabinets at this school afterwards, and without locks the kid had fairly easy access.
So the kid, not sure what to do with his treasure, puts the oil logged piece of sodium in a paper towel and puts it in his pocket. He wanders to the library as such to study hall. He's getting nervous because he just stole it and starts to sweat a little, and notices his pocket getting a little warm. After a while his pocket is getting really hot and he pulls out the sodium and tosses it on the floor, apparently allowing it to react a little with muggy air. It starts to flame and flare a bit and the kid, brilliantly, steps on it to try and put it out, like one might a small bit of campfire that fell out of the fire pit. So, you guessed it, his shoe now has putty-like sodium metal molded to it and he's kicking bits of it around the library, trying to get it off as it flares a little here and there. Another student sees the small fire flickering on his shoes, calmly goes to janitor's closet and gets the mop water. He then pours it on the sodium and sets it off really well, displaying why kids shouldn't have ready access to things like sodium.
The bit I'm not sure about is why it started sputtering flame when he removed it from his pocket. Enough of the oil may have been absorbed into the poor fellow's pants and his sweat may have started it a bit, but I'm not sure if dry sodium metal would sputter in humid air. Nor have I had the chance to find out. The way he told the story though was quite funny, and none of us questioned it, so who knows.
Don't go jumping in the pond immediately after doing this, at least not in the spot where you toss in the sodium. You'd have a pretty basic spot full of sodium hydroxide for a while until it spreads out at least. I don't think a pond of any decent size is going to be too affected by a mere 3.5 pounds though. But I could be wrong on that...
Even better would be a ruling that all the lawsuits have been frivolous and Mr. Novak being forced to reimburse everybody for their lawyers. Though Google alone winning such would be good because then maybe future sue-ees would go get themselves some decent council with the knowledge that abusive lawsuits don't have to cost them money.
Perhaps I'm wrong on the monopoly bit. I just see the recent wars between Intel and AMD, price, performance, PR, the whole thing, and see that finally some decent competition has come to the PC market. I hope that AMD will be able to keep up their work for this reason. God knows Apple hasn't given anybody a run for their money since the days of the IIe.
Personally, I'm wondering what Intel's 64-bit plans are for the desktop. Right now they say it isn't needed, and is probably right about it, though AMD could have a card with the more bits is better, even if it doesn't matter. I think that'll be interesting.
I also have no real idea of how adopted the Itanium is becoming. I know of all of one company near me that has a quad setup, but no more than that. Granted the first one wasn't all that powerful. I'm wondering how wide of an adoption Itanium 2 will get, but I haven't heard too much fuss about the whole chip. Perhaps it's because people aren't looking to expand their business too much these days. Maybe the thing is just doomed to fail. Given the problems to this point and the issues for the future maybe it will, I don't know.
Finally, come to think of it I've been impressed for a long time that the iMac has no fans. While I have no idea about the G4 towers and such, as I've never had the opportunity to dissect one, most x86 machines these days have at the minimum a fan on the CPU. I've seen specialized x86 machines that have no fan but the one in the power supply and a complex system of ducts and the like, but it does speak volumes about the heat generated in a Mac. I'm not sure where my line of absurd for power comes in, though I know it is somewhere below requiring a 400W power supply and fans on the CPU that sound like jets taking off (a la most Athlon's my friends have).
If I could find a nice board and a reasonably priced PowerPC or other RISC chip that I could run GNU/Linux on and get reasonable performance I would seriously consider it. But I'd want something I can put together myself, not a pull it out of the box and it works setup. I suppose I'm a weird consumer like that.
There's also as you're implying, the potential cost that Intel will take over in the server arena by undercutting its competitors.
I don't think that I did prove your point though, all I said was that Intel's offering was selling for less; acquisition price as you noted, and performing comparably. Actually I was just repeating the comments made by the post you replied to. I have no hard data about what their actual costs to manufacture an Itanium are, nor did I post any. I'll go along, however, and speculate that they're not recouping their R&D costs at the moment, but are instead hoping that lower costs will mean larger acceptance. If dumping is illegal in domestic trade I'm sure Intel is selling just at or above actual costs of manufacture. And yes, it is rather doubtless that their strong presence in the PC market is helping to keep their business afloat, along with the networking division and whereever else Intel has diversified to. However, Intel isn't a monopoly on the desktop. A little over a week ago AMD anounced it has about 19% market share. Here's a read about it. That doesn't count the people using Macs or older Sun's or SGI's or anything, though that is a pretty small portion. Just because it's their architecture that has a monopoly on the PC market doesn't mean that they have a monopoly. Had you made the assertion before the Athlon, however, I would have been quite inclined to agree.
This proves you know little...
See, now you have to go and be a jerk. I hadn't read about VLIW, and thus EPIC's compiler optimizations not carrying forward generations. A simple pointing it out would have sufficed. If you could supply a link with detail I would appreciate it. The best I've found is that because of heavy compile time optimization future EPIC processors may run the code essentially the same since the number of functional units the code was compiled for remains the same in the compiled code. And while a recompile would make it all better, I too would rather have it just work with a new processor.
It'll still run older code though and it doesn't sound like they're changing the ISA in a way that would break it with their next Itanium. That was the basis of my statement.
I'm actually kinda upset that we're going to see only one more Alpha. I wish DEC and then Compaq would have done something about marketing or anything to keep the things around. Why Intel, upon aquiring a lot of the talent that went into Alpha, isn't going to do more to further what the Alpha had going is beyond me. Intel would have a hell of an offering if they extended the Alpha.
And why EPIC indeed. The performance of the Itanium shows that it isn't a total flop, despite whatever issues about size/heat/actual cost are brought up. I don't think that at this stage you can classify the Itanium line as inferior. The performance is on par and we've yet to really see how it scales. If, when Itanium 2 has gone though its rigors, I hear that there are a whole slew of problems and performance is going nowhere I'll be the next to say that there are problems with the architechture. I'm not about to discount it on the basis of size, heat, or potential issues. Of course, I'd probably wait to see if I were thinking about buying one too.
Lastly again I'm not sure about the power of the IA-32 deal. I'm no EE, but looking around at Intel's and Motorola's pages I see the Pentium 4 with a core voltage no higher than 1.75V and the G4 fixed at 1.8V. From personal experience I've run a dual Pentium 3 with two hard drives, two cd drives, two floppies, and a decently powered video card off of a 235W power supply. My 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 has a 300W power supply and is perfectly happy. I couldn't find a smaller one, and I'm not sure if it needs that kind of power either. Comparably I did a little poking around and the G4 cube uses a modest 205W power supply (part 611-0150) and I found a G4 power supply (part 661-2303) that's a 235W piece. From the images, however, that one didn't appear to have the ability to run many drives off of it. So while the numbers are smaller I'm not sure I'd call it absurd to have a machine as powerful as the IA-32 line with power requirements at least in the neighborhood of where Apple's are. Heck, Apple doesn't post much information about what is used where, so I'm not sure the newer, comparable G4's can even use the 235W power supply either. I would say from my experience that most of the older G4 models were comparable in performance to my dual Pentium 3 machine. The cubes I've used always seemed slower.
Huh? The smaller, cooler bit may make the Power4 more attractive, especially to those with power/heat restraints in their business, but equivilent performance at a lower price hardly slaps the Itanium into a "inferior product" category. Really, what does size have to do with it anyway? A bigger die size will mean lower yield and increased cost, perhaps lower clock rate, but it was already mentioned that the Itanium is selling for less and performing comparably to the Power4. And compatability to processor family? Itanium is its own processor family. Itanium 2 will follow the same IA-64 set as far as I know. Itanium just tries to run x86 code as well so migration isn't as painful. And guess what, 32-bit x86 code is going to suck on the Itanium, like 16-bit code suffered on the Pentium Pro, despite compatability to the processor family.
Don't get me wrong, the Power4 is an incredibly attractive chip. However, IBM is in no position of hurt with its processors as far as I know. Calling Intel a monopoly in this area and then upholding IBM's offering doesn't exactly hold water. Remember, Intel wants this to invade the high performance 64-bit arena. People like Sun, IBM, and what was DEC had 64-bit offerings well in advance. The Power3 from IBM is 64-bit and was released 4 years ago. The Itanium got it's actual name instead of Merced less than 3 years ago.
So basically Intel is a newcomer here, not in any means a monopoly. It may have a good grip in the desktop area, but there's still competition there as well. Just because they're big doesn't make them an evil monopoly. That they are able to make a product that matches performance with a leader in the area is impressive, even if the chip has been in development forever. That it has a couple non-performance shortcomings is forgivable, especially if it is selling at a lower price.
And indeed. It will be interesting to see the Power4 work its way to the desktop area, more well performing options are always welcome from my viewpoint.
Lastly, the power consumption by IA-32 processors isn't that absurd. If you're running a PC with a 300 watt power supply for 24 hours it really would be difficult to use more power than running 3 light bulbs, each of them 100 watts. It might be easier just to replace all the 100 W bulbs in a company with 60 W bulbs if you wanted a massive lowering of power consumption.
That being said, I, in theory, agree with your statement that a better architechture might be smarter than just milking speeds. In practice, however, there already are new architectures being employed, they just have a CISC front end slapped on them for compatability's sake. It's just RISC pretending to be CISC in the x86 arena.
Burning power is an issue, and it is one that is being seriously looked at, at least by Intel. Go check the temp poll (running now at least) for all the people who have P4's running at least 15 C cooler than the lowest option on the poll. Intel, with Banias is going for a big leap in power conservation while preserving performance. I think that's great. I'm not sure what AMD is up to in the power/heat realm, but would hope they're following suit. The P4, as pointed out by somebody else, is the 20 stage pipeline, P3 was 10. But you forget the P4 was designed with a huge pipeline in mind. Its branch prediction is sufficent that it is still incredibly powerful. Not on a clock for clock rating with other chips, but that speed makes up for it. That was the goal. And it still runs cooler with a stock heatsink/fan than a comparable chip with a seriously powered fan.
Finally, while parallel CPUs are nice, you have overhead to deal with and it doesn't do a thing for code that isn't multi-threaded. Moreover, there is overhead for running a single program on multiple processors. The real nicety (I know, I had a dual CPU P3 machine until the mobo went) is in multitasking. Running multiple applications with half the job swapping. Enough processes will take advantage of multiple CPUs quick enough.
However, why not do both? Make the CPUs fast and parallelizable. I was very disappointed when upgrading that there was no multi-CPU option for the P4 outside of the Xeon. The cost of that was only a little prohibitive, but the motherboards were outrageous. I paid only a slight premium for the dual P3 board. I would have paid another slight premium if I could run two normal P4s.
I'm not, however, sure about the sanity of a dual processor on a chip design. I would imagine yields would be lower because if one of the CPU's on the chip was taken out then it wouldn't be a dual chip. That and the amount of heat in one spot would increase as well. It would be interesting to see for density solutions though, getting 4 CPU's into a 1U unit.
Also look how hooked on MS marketing they are. Although Unix is more reliable, Redman said, NT may become more reliable with time. Personally, and for my tax dollars, I'd like to see the most reliable system available used, regardless of how reliable it may be in the future. It would keep people safer and probably would reduce the chances of our cruisers being crippled.
I think possibly the best thing of the movie is the way that Chihiro develops over the film. She starts out all whiny and soft but, well, go see the film if you can. It is a magnificent transformation. It shows something about responsibility in a subtle way here, something I think a lot of movies in the family category miss. There is really growth, not some cooked moral spoon fed to you.
I also like the animation; Chihiro had a bit of Mei from My Neighbor Totoro drawn into her. Some of the spirits and scenery had a look of Mononoke Hime to them. Overall it was an enchanting place that was created. It put the two together along with some of its own style and made a style greater than either.
I had some expectations for the film. Seeing the trailer made the film look great, and hearing that it won awards brought the expectations up even higher. Being Miyazaki's Spirited Away brought them up to levels I try to stay away from for films on fear of being disappointed. I'm happy to say, however, that I wasn't let down in the least and the movie was more than I expected of it.
Honestly, go see this if you can. Bring your kids if you have them. It is a great film for everybody.
Can't wait.
That said, the screenshots on that page looked absolutely god-awful. I wouldn't let that theme sit there for a second. I personally don't care if it looks like windows or not, but the screenshots looked like the desktop was a cold, lifeless thing, not something I would want peeking out around my apps. If you're pushing pretty UI work like you say won't make a difference, at least do that well. I think that without both usability and a bit of aesthetics you're going to lose users. Not many Joe-users I know want to their desktop to look like its going backwards, regardless of how progressive it may really be under the hood.
Why? If it was constantly for large changes I might be somewhat scared. If their team is constantly making small improvements, maybe fixing a bug here and there, and then releasing the work without delay then I'm all for weekly updates. Mainly because you don't have to do the updates but if you need drivers then you always have the latest greatest from the nVidia team. And they never seem to break anything with the new drivers so I would think that they're decently tested too. Hats off to them.
I'll agree that if you can't troubleshoot your own machines maybe a Mac makes more sense. If you're in the business of routinely mucking around with your machine and know how to fix things if you break them I don't see how you can justify a Mac for the price. If you want something simple, with the slick shiny interface and have no interest in poking around the system Macs may be the better alternative. In that situation its probably being used more like an appliance and wouldn't need the extra muscle a PC has to offer. Hell, if you want to read email, browse web pages, and write documents you can do that with a heck of a lot less than the processing power being sold today.
Well, you can buy perfectly high grade PC hardware for what is still a fraction of the Mac equivilent cost. True, when your PC costs $400 including your monitor you will have problems. However, for $1500 these days you can build a fast, high quality PC. Puts to shame Mac prices.
I just picked up the Konamix version for the Playstation, got a couple dance pads, and can say that yes, yes this game is a workout. Enough of a workout that there is a workout mode of the game that keeps track of calories you burn. Play the game for a bit, not just the easy hokey pokey dances and you'll be sweating pretty well.
Sarcasm aside though, I didn't see too many other comments (no other modded up) to the obvious conclusion that its the hardware that is increasing in speed, not the OS. I'm sure if they were running Maya on Windows on their new boxes it would kick the old O2s around as well. I'm not sure they would have made the transition as easily, nor could they have made their custom applications so easily either I'm thinking. However, attributing the speed to linux seems just silly.
My question is what legal right do they have to storm in and do an audit? I wouldn't think that they'd just be allowed in, and I'm pretty sure they would have to go through legal channels to squeeze money out of people, unless they're dead scared. If a company is pirating and destroys all the evidence before the BSA gets them in court what sort of case do they have? I mean, "Yes your honor, we took a lead from an ex-employee hell bent on vengence, and we have no real evidence," doesn't sound like a case winner to me.
Whatever, my boss would just give them the finger if they showed up here, then probably call the cops.
Except Dreamcast was a competitor of the N64 and the Playstation, not the newest generation of consoles. The launch of the Dreamcast was scheduled for late 99. Years before Xbox and it's ilk.
What if Ford did this? First we'd get the people who didn't read the agreement, went ahead and broke it, and found themselves in a world of trouble. Here the courts may or may not side with Ford, who knows. It is Ford's right, however, to draw up whatever contract they wish. If you agree to it then it is your own dumb fault. I think it would be appealed to no end, finally being in Ford's favor.
After this consumers would be wary. Very wary. After having their car repossesed or whatever for breaking the contract, then being put in limbo in their lawsuit because they don't read, and ultimately losing because they probably would have signed a contract, these people are going to be pissed. Everybody would find out if people were actually getting busted for it.
So fast forward and we have organizations who hate Ford's new practices along with wary consumers. My guess is Ford is going to be losing a lot of business. With a long enough militant run of the policy the only customers Ford would have left would be those who couldn't live without a Ford (I only know a couple) and those who could live with the agreement. Ford would probably lose enough income that it would break, and serve as a nice example to others.
So, you say, if that's your prediction, why hasn't this happened with software companies? Well, there are a few main differences.
First, we're talking software and not cars. Cars are easier to inspect, track, identify them in use, etc. Software can be hidden. The nature of the break in the agreement is more covert when applied to software. Short of a snitch or an audit you can't tell if illegal software is being used somewhere. Anybody could see your neon green Escort rolling down the street, clearly unauthorized. Police already look for your speeding, and the other offences you've listed are all fairly public. Or at least recognizable, go off-roading and then go in for repairs, Ford might be able tell. Of course, that may be your way to break the agreement like so many pirates break software license agreements.
Second, my prediction applies only to Ford, not the whole auto industry. If every auto maker adopted such policy they might swing it, though sales of used cars before such policy was implemented peak, as would mass transit usage if the contract was carried out with enough force. Consumer rights law suit or not, these people would be signing contracts. I can see the government pressuring them, but ultimately people have the right to give up methods with which they use things. It would, however, probably hurt the auto makers to implement something like this. And there's little to gain for them as well. Already nobody can mass produce exact copies, and if they did they would be in a world of legal trouble as it would be hard to explain where these new vehicles were coming from, and auto plants are typically large. It isn't worth it to reproduce autos.
Lastly, software companies really don't persue legal action against people who pirate their software as much as they could. Individual lawsuits are poorly publicised if they happen often. The software companies are mainly concerned with businesses, which are the majority of their sales anyway. Software companies seem to keep the power of their license agreements in reserve for when there are large scale breakages of it. Suing thousands of home users isn't going to gain any popularity, won't entrench their standards, and isn't going to make them as much money as their lucrative business contracts. And possibly, if they did enfore their agreement militantly among all people, there probably would be the large backlash that I think would happen against Ford in your suggestion. I think it doesn't happen because most people know that you can easily get away with piracy on an individual scale, and no company in their right mind is willing to risk the backlash for going after the little man.
My honest thoughts on the subject though; the companies are way out of line with their demands at times. I have little problem with the illegality of copying the software. However, most software seems to be far over-valued for its performance, and far too buggy as well. Piracy seems to me like the sort of vigilante way around the high prices. I think that if useful software was priced lower more people would go out of their way to be legitamate. And of course, there's always free software as a way out as well.
Where the problem is though, is that companies are having people sign contracts that say they have x amount for a bandwidth cap for y dollars a month. Sure, there are the jerks that use all x bandwidth all the time, but under the legally binding contract this is completely allowed. Just because on average an ISP is expecting that they can fit more users on a pipe due to switching doesn't mean they will.
So what should be done about it? The ISP should suck it up. To change the rules mid-game and say "Nope, you're gonna pay more than we contracted" is completely morally wrong, especially since nobody ever sees the full x bandwidth to begin with, its always "Best Effort" service. Yes, I'm saying that selling a line rated at x, performing at .5 - .9 times x, and then charging extra for using that reduced speed as much as they want is wrong.
Like I said, I've worked for an ISP. I know there always exists at least one user who is a pain in the ass, asking for things that aren't technically possible due to circumstances outside of the provider's control. How fat a pipe your company has is in your control though, and you have contracts to provide service to your best ability at speed x. Overselling will land you in a world of trouble, and I agree, is probably the cable company's big problem. Congratulations to your company on being responsible about how many people you can fit on a line.
I still think, though, that if you offer a service you'd better be willing to uphold your end of the bargain if you're taking a customer's money. And if I were on a service and was a "trouble user" who was making use of the bandwidth promised, and there were some other number of trouble users on the same line, causing utterly poor performance, I would expect my provider to accomodate somehow. I would not be doing anything at all outside the contract between my provider and myself. A provider's failing to resolve such a problem would, however, be against their "Best Effort" terms.
In short, fill your lines as much as you can so you can make a buck, but don't forget that you're contractually bound to provide the service you're saying you can provide. It may be because of "trouble" users that the crunch is there, but they're only trouble users because they're using the service to the extent of your contract.
While an entire generation is learning Java, you have to realize that that's being learned as an intro type language. At my university the two intro programming classes are Scheme and now Java (rather than C++). Of course, when you get to an operating systems class, or compilers, or anything else, you don't use Java but you use C or C++. Java is a great language to learn because it is so ideal for the programmer. However, if they don't work out some performance issues the widespread usage of Java in things that are useful isn't going to happen soon. .NET should at least have some primetime usage I would think, what with MS pushing so hard.
Also, DDR and RDRAM have pretty much reached a price parity, you're not paying more for one or the other anymore really. With the massive amount of bandwidth that the Pentium 4 loves and needs to perform, especially as we've seen from some of the previews of the chip, I think it might be safe to say you're on the money with the thought that this is just rumor. I can't see Intel cutting off Rambus now that prices are nearly the same and performance is shown to be there.
This next to the poll about joining the Liberty Project which has AOL for one of the big members. Lets just track everybodies habits and mail them, that's it...
would be to have the media makers who are pushing for these new standards to obsolete current generation HDTVs purchase new HDTVs of the same quality for those affected by the switch. I would hope that that would make these media companies think twice about doing these things in the future.