The only result reported is this: 2.66 GHz P4 = 255, 2 GHz G5 = 254. What is so impressive about that?
Yes, I see the article talks a lot about performance per MHz, but that's a useless measurement. That would be like comparing cars by looking at speed/RPM. If you want to get somewhere, car A that goes 60 MPH and runs at 6000 RPM will get you there faster than car B at 50 MPH and 2500 RPM, even though car B has a better speed/RPM ratio.
I still watch some commercials with my UTV. When a commercial comes on, I have to pick up the remote, and hit the ~30 second skip until I recognize I've skipped the block of ads, then hit the ~7 second backward skip to back up to where the show resumed.
This means I almost always see the first couple of seconds of the first ad, and if it is interesting, I'll watch it.
Same goes for the last ad in the block...I'll see the end of it, and if the end is very interesting, I'll back up and watch.
So, to reach me, the best shot the advertisers have is at the ends of commercial blocks. An ad in the middle only has a chance if it is so interesting that in the time it it takes me to recognize it is not the show as I skip past, I'll be grabbed, or if the ad next to it is interesting enough that I decide to watch that neighbor ad, and while skipping to the start of that, the other ad catches me.
That gives these rules for ads if you want the PVR crowd to see them:
The first and last spot in the block are the most valuable.
The first ad in the block needs be interesting from the beginning.
The last ad in the block needs to end in a way that will be interesting to people who haven't seen the begining of the ad.
The value of interior spots depends on what is around them.
A clever advertiser could use this to try to get people to skip the following ads, which might make it more likely the consumer will remember their ad. For example, instead of spending all 30 seconds on your product, do a 20 second interesting ad, and a 10 second boring ad or public service announcement or something--the idea is to give people some time to start skipping before some other company's ad can start. If the only ad people see during a break is yours, you've won.
Since gcc uses different code generators and optimizers for PPC and x86, they aren't really the same compiler. All they are normalizing out is the front end and some generic code generation.
First thing to realize is that it is all about look and feel. Down at the kernel and utility level, Linux is as good or better than OS X or Windows right now. Their advantage is in what they put on top of the kernel and base system.
Take an arbitrary commercial OS maker. Could be MS. Could be Apple. Could be Sun.
Suppose they do some particular thing better than Linux, and better than the other commercial OS makers. If that thing is good enough...it can kill the competing commercial OS makers.
However, it cannot kill Linux. Linux is good enough, and has attracted enough developer attention, that it will continue, even if Windows or OS X or Solaris or something else is better by some measure, simply based on price (we talk about "free as in speech, not free as in beer", but a lot of people want that free beer, too!).
So, Linux will always be out there, perhaps playing catchup as the Gnome or KDE (or other) people snarf up good ideas from OS X or Windows and clone them...but eventually it will catch up. Sure, Windows and OS X will have moved forward by then...but the improvements are getting smaller and smaller as time goes by. Eventually, the Linux GUIs will be close enough that having a nicer GUI will not be a factor for Windows or OS X, at least as far as the functionality and objective qualities of the GUI go.
The proprietary companies like Apple and MS can put more money into aesthetics than Linux developers can, so they will have nicer looking interfaces, but eventually that is where all of their advantage will be: they will have prettier icons or nicer animation.
At that point, Linux wins big...because people will put up with averageness of looks to save money.
Stupid. What does the world gain from you not using his code?
It's not his code that is the problem. The man lies to people on usenet, telling them things that, if they follow them, can get them put in jail.
He supports these lies by citing court cases, that if you go to any law library (every county law library in the US will have copies, so they are easy to find), you can read for yourself and see that there is absolutely no way anyone could misunderstand them the way Cinege does.
There are only two possible conclusions: he is purposefully trying to hurt people, or he is insane and/or very stupid.
In either of those cases, are you going to trust a security product from him? There is not enough time to verify personally all open source code, so at some point, just like with closed source, you need to trust the person/company offering the code. Cinege cannot be trusted. Since there are other router projects from people who aren't known to be either malicious or stupid, there's no reason to use LRP.
He probably can't get a job because no sane employer would go near him. Before he started work on LRP, he was quite active on Usenet in the legal and taxes groups, talking about how the IRS is not really a government agency, and you don't have to pay income taxes, and all the usual bullshit, complete with the usual mishmash of quotes from court cases that turn out to be at best out of context, and at worst blatant fabrications, when you go to the library and read the actual court opinion.
If he actually follows through with his beliefs in real life, as opposed to just arguing them on Usenet, he would want his employer to pay him in gold or silver, not be willing to supply a taxpayer ID number, and not allow any withholding.
Would you put up with that hassle if you were an employer? I wouldn't.
The P4 was only an exercise in marketing by Intel - redesign the chipset so it can be clocked nice and high (so it appeals to the average consumer) and to hell with the performance
The P4 handily outperforms the P3. It is irrelevant that it does so partly by running at a higher clockrate.
I've used the encryption algorithm from CSS when I've needed a weak system that I'm sure won't get the export control people or the NSA pissed off at me.:-)
In college, we'd drop acid and go to the arcade (early 1980's) and play video games. I was a pretty good Missile Command player normally, but on LSD, I was basically perfect. The game was slow, smooth, and also had a weird 3D quality (it looked kind of like claymation animation).
Everybody pays a premium for the newest processors. Try buying a Gateway with the latest and greatest from Intel. It'll probably be $3000
Yeah...and six months later, the price will be way down, as the high end has continued to drift up. Six months later with Apple, the price might be slightly down.
x86 PCs improve in frequent small steps, whereas Macs tend to improve in infrequent big steps. Combine this with there being many sources of x86 PCs, and every point between "cheap old technology" and "overpriced very new technology" is covered. With Macs, you've got basically a choice between "almost not expensive but not very fast" or "way overpriced and fast".
All that's left is for Jobs to market these big jumps in the Mac line as "quantum computing".:-)
Romeo and Juliet: "Romeo and Juliet love each other, but their families hate each other, so they kill themselves."
The things that's most amusing about Romeo and Juliet is that they have become the symbol of love...yet all they really had was basically a teenage crush, with maybe some good old lust thrown in. How did they ever become such major symbols?
Re:Same gloom and doom story as inflicted on Apple
on
Sun's Last Stand
·
· Score: 1
And just like predictions of Apple's demise over the years, it's a load of crap
Here's the difference:
Apple sells hardware that costs more and performs poorly compared to commodity hardware, but runs distinctive software that many people like a lot that is only available for that hardware, and Apple sells style (which can be a factor for a computer that is going to be in a home).
Sun sells hardware that, for most server and workstation tasks, costs more and performs poorly compared to commodity hardware, and doesn't really have distinctive software.
Suppose Apple ditched OS X and licensed XP from Microsoft and ported it to PPC, and made that their OS, and then ported all their iApps to XP and also released x86 versions. How long do you think Apple would last as a company getting most of its money from hardware sales? Not very long.
Another difference is that Apple isn't doing anything like Java. Think about Java: what is Sun's biggest problem as a hardware company? It is too easy to move from Sun hardware to x86 hardware, because of the lack of Solaris-only software that is compelling. So...how does Java fit in here? It makes it easier to move away from Sun. Great move, Scott!
Thats the offset between christian and moslem religions. So You have to wait something like 300 hundred years to get moslem religion to some civilized state
Shouldn't that be at least 300 years, since you can't put a definite number on it until Christianity becomes civilized?
It looks like what people want is the driver source, so that certain wireless chips can be supported under Linux.
If Linksys did things right, however, those drivers will be compiled as modules, which they don't have to release source for (well...unless they started from GPL'ed driver source, of course).
Aside from the drivers, everything else interesting should be implemented as applications, which can be closed source on Linux.
So, don't get too excited: becoming fully GPL-compliant might consist of them simply putting up source for a stock kernel, and putting something about the GPL in their documentation.
Q) What is a lottery (in the US sense of the word)?
A) A tax for people bad at math
However, because the prize rolls over and is added to the next drawing if it is not won, the lottery occasionally becomes favorable.
There was a group of Australians once who tried to buy one of each possible combination for a US lottery, to guarantee a win. The prize was high enough that, even taking into account the chance of having to share with anyone else who picked the right numbers, they would come out way ahead. They only actually managed to buy about 1/3 of the possible combinations, but still won, and then got into a dispute with the IRS over how the thing was to be taxed (which is why I know about this...we studied the case in law school).
I only read the first two or three pages, but from what I've seen, it doesn't sound like the machines are cheating, any more than, say, lotteries cheat with scratch off tickets: when you buy a scratch off ticket, it is predetermined whether it is a winner or not, after all.
IANAL, but can they still prove the individual's guilt if they wiped there hard drive?
If they were smart about it, it won't be too hard. Bring in some people who will testify that they downloaded the illegal copies on specific times/dates from specific IP addresses, and that have records or logs that show that, and that will testify to their logging procedure.
Then use data from Verizon to show that on those dates/times those IP addresses were assigned to the specific people being accused (perhaps Verizon can even tell the MAC address of the customer machine, which can really help pin that down).
It then simply comes down to whose testimony the jury believes. If the record companies had good legal advice when they started investigating, they will have documented their tracks well enough that winning won't be much of a problem.
The RSA algorithms are public. However, the specific code included with WASTE is not, both for RSA and for MD5. That code is from RSA Data Security, has an RSA Data Security copyright notice, and includes a license that is not compatible with GPL.
Of course it could be replaced. The point, though, is that WASTE as distributed by Nullsoft, cannot be distributed in compliance with GPL...you have to do extra work to extract the parts that say they are GPL'ed, and combine them with a GPL'ed (or compatible) implementation of RSA and MD5 to make something that you can use under GPL. Presumably, if this had really been an authorized release, they would have done that themselves, rather than violate RSA Data Security's license.
To me, this makes AOL's claim that the release was not authorized quite believable, and it makes it so that any reasonable person looking at the release would suspect there may be problems.
The test is whether the other party to the deal in good faith believed that the employee had the authority, or should have known that something was amiss
It's obvious upon examing the source that something is amiss: the source includes RSA code that is under a license that is NOT compatible with the GPL. That should make people suspicious about the legitimacy of the release.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I see the article talks a lot about performance per MHz, but that's a useless measurement. That would be like comparing cars by looking at speed/RPM. If you want to get somewhere, car A that goes 60 MPH and runs at 6000 RPM will get you there faster than car B at 50 MPH and 2500 RPM, even though car B has a better speed/RPM ratio.
Have you read the article slashdot linked to?
This means I almost always see the first couple of seconds of the first ad, and if it is interesting, I'll watch it.
Same goes for the last ad in the block...I'll see the end of it, and if the end is very interesting, I'll back up and watch.
So, to reach me, the best shot the advertisers have is at the ends of commercial blocks. An ad in the middle only has a chance if it is so interesting that in the time it it takes me to recognize it is not the show as I skip past, I'll be grabbed, or if the ad next to it is interesting enough that I decide to watch that neighbor ad, and while skipping to the start of that, the other ad catches me.
That gives these rules for ads if you want the PVR crowd to see them:
The first ad in the block needs be interesting from the beginning.
The last ad in the block needs to end in a way that will be interesting to people who haven't seen the begining of the ad.
The value of interior spots depends on what is around them.
A clever advertiser could use this to try to get people to skip the following ads, which might make it more likely the consumer will remember their ad. For example, instead of spending all 30 seconds on your product, do a 20 second interesting ad, and a 10 second boring ad or public service announcement or something--the idea is to give people some time to start skipping before some other company's ad can start. If the only ad people see during a break is yours, you've won.
Since gcc uses different code generators and optimizers for PPC and x86, they aren't really the same compiler. All they are normalizing out is the front end and some generic code generation.
Take an arbitrary commercial OS maker. Could be MS. Could be Apple. Could be Sun.
Suppose they do some particular thing better than Linux, and better than the other commercial OS makers. If that thing is good enough...it can kill the competing commercial OS makers.
However, it cannot kill Linux. Linux is good enough, and has attracted enough developer attention, that it will continue, even if Windows or OS X or Solaris or something else is better by some measure, simply based on price (we talk about "free as in speech, not free as in beer", but a lot of people want that free beer, too!).
So, Linux will always be out there, perhaps playing catchup as the Gnome or KDE (or other) people snarf up good ideas from OS X or Windows and clone them...but eventually it will catch up. Sure, Windows and OS X will have moved forward by then...but the improvements are getting smaller and smaller as time goes by. Eventually, the Linux GUIs will be close enough that having a nicer GUI will not be a factor for Windows or OS X, at least as far as the functionality and objective qualities of the GUI go.
The proprietary companies like Apple and MS can put more money into aesthetics than Linux developers can, so they will have nicer looking interfaces, but eventually that is where all of their advantage will be: they will have prettier icons or nicer animation.
At that point, Linux wins big...because people will put up with averageness of looks to save money.
It's not his code that is the problem. The man lies to people on usenet, telling them things that, if they follow them, can get them put in jail.
He supports these lies by citing court cases, that if you go to any law library (every county law library in the US will have copies, so they are easy to find), you can read for yourself and see that there is absolutely no way anyone could misunderstand them the way Cinege does.
There are only two possible conclusions: he is purposefully trying to hurt people, or he is insane and/or very stupid.
In either of those cases, are you going to trust a security product from him? There is not enough time to verify personally all open source code, so at some point, just like with closed source, you need to trust the person/company offering the code. Cinege cannot be trusted. Since there are other router projects from people who aren't known to be either malicious or stupid, there's no reason to use LRP.
He probably can't get a job because no sane employer would go near him. Before he started work on LRP, he was quite active on Usenet in the legal and taxes groups, talking about how the IRS is not really a government agency, and you don't have to pay income taxes, and all the usual bullshit, complete with the usual mishmash of quotes from court cases that turn out to be at best out of context, and at worst blatant fabrications, when you go to the library and read the actual court opinion.
If he actually follows through with his beliefs in real life, as opposed to just arguing them on Usenet, he would want his employer to pay him in gold or silver, not be willing to supply a taxpayer ID number, and not allow any withholding.
Would you put up with that hassle if you were an employer? I wouldn't.
The P4 handily outperforms the P3. It is irrelevant that it does so partly by running at a higher clockrate.
I've used the encryption algorithm from CSS when I've needed a weak system that I'm sure won't get the export control people or the NSA pissed off at me. :-)
Such a site is illegal under copyright laws going back to at least the Copyright Act of 1909, and probably back well before that.
Try LSD.
In college, we'd drop acid and go to the arcade (early 1980's) and play video games. I was a pretty good Missile Command player normally, but on LSD, I was basically perfect. The game was slow, smooth, and also had a weird 3D quality (it looked kind of like claymation animation).
Yeah...and six months later, the price will be way down, as the high end has continued to drift up. Six months later with Apple, the price might be slightly down.
x86 PCs improve in frequent small steps, whereas Macs tend to improve in infrequent big steps. Combine this with there being many sources of x86 PCs, and every point between "cheap old technology" and "overpriced very new technology" is covered. With Macs, you've got basically a choice between "almost not expensive but not very fast" or "way overpriced and fast".
All that's left is for Jobs to market these big jumps in the Mac line as "quantum computing". :-)
They aren't claiming rights to RCU. They are claiming rights to a particular implementation.
The things that's most amusing about Romeo and Juliet is that they have become the symbol of love...yet all they really had was basically a teenage crush, with maybe some good old lust thrown in. How did they ever become such major symbols?
Here's the difference:
Apple sells hardware that costs more and performs poorly compared to commodity hardware, but runs distinctive software that many people like a lot that is only available for that hardware, and Apple sells style (which can be a factor for a computer that is going to be in a home).
Sun sells hardware that, for most server and workstation tasks, costs more and performs poorly compared to commodity hardware, and doesn't really have distinctive software.
Suppose Apple ditched OS X and licensed XP from Microsoft and ported it to PPC, and made that their OS, and then ported all their iApps to XP and also released x86 versions. How long do you think Apple would last as a company getting most of its money from hardware sales? Not very long.
Another difference is that Apple isn't doing anything like Java. Think about Java: what is Sun's biggest problem as a hardware company? It is too easy to move from Sun hardware to x86 hardware, because of the lack of Solaris-only software that is compelling. So...how does Java fit in here? It makes it easier to move away from Sun. Great move, Scott!
True, but there is still room for improvement. The ideal template for a slashdot story is this:
Shouldn't that be at least 300 years, since you can't put a definite number on it until Christianity becomes civilized?
If Linksys did things right, however, those drivers will be compiled as modules, which they don't have to release source for (well...unless they started from GPL'ed driver source, of course).
Aside from the drivers, everything else interesting should be implemented as applications, which can be closed source on Linux.
So, don't get too excited: becoming fully GPL-compliant might consist of them simply putting up source for a stock kernel, and putting something about the GPL in their documentation.
However, because the prize rolls over and is added to the next drawing if it is not won, the lottery occasionally becomes favorable.
There was a group of Australians once who tried to buy one of each possible combination for a US lottery, to guarantee a win. The prize was high enough that, even taking into account the chance of having to share with anyone else who picked the right numbers, they would come out way ahead. They only actually managed to buy about 1/3 of the possible combinations, but still won, and then got into a dispute with the IRS over how the thing was to be taxed (which is why I know about this...we studied the case in law school).
I only read the first two or three pages, but from what I've seen, it doesn't sound like the machines are cheating, any more than, say, lotteries cheat with scratch off tickets: when you buy a scratch off ticket, it is predetermined whether it is a winner or not, after all.
If they were smart about it, it won't be too hard. Bring in some people who will testify that they downloaded the illegal copies on specific times/dates from specific IP addresses, and that have records or logs that show that, and that will testify to their logging procedure.
Then use data from Verizon to show that on those dates/times those IP addresses were assigned to the specific people being accused (perhaps Verizon can even tell the MAC address of the customer machine, which can really help pin that down).
It then simply comes down to whose testimony the jury believes. If the record companies had good legal advice when they started investigating, they will have documented their tracks well enough that winning won't be much of a problem.
The RSA algorithms are public. However, the specific code included with WASTE is not, both for RSA and for MD5. That code is from RSA Data Security, has an RSA Data Security copyright notice, and includes a license that is not compatible with GPL.
Of course it could be replaced. The point, though, is that WASTE as distributed by Nullsoft, cannot be distributed in compliance with GPL...you have to do extra work to extract the parts that say they are GPL'ed, and combine them with a GPL'ed (or compatible) implementation of RSA and MD5 to make something that you can use under GPL. Presumably, if this had really been an authorized release, they would have done that themselves, rather than violate RSA Data Security's license.
To me, this makes AOL's claim that the release was not authorized quite believable, and it makes it so that any reasonable person looking at the release would suspect there may be problems.
It's obvious upon examing the source that something is amiss: the source includes RSA code that is under a license that is NOT compatible with the GPL. That should make people suspicious about the legitimacy of the release.
This will go nowhere until Apple does something like this, and then everyone will say Apple has innovated yet again.
Here's a laptop mod.