Okay, repeat after me: "I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post." The actual story referenced mentioned it as a problem with *Gateway's* GHz Athlon system. It is *NOT* a flaw in the chip, it is a flaw in Gateway's crappy, shitty, pissy, worthless motherboard/chipset/firmware/drivers, pick any or all of the above. Read the Techweb story at http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000630S0011 for better coverage.
Unfortunately, the idiot who submitted the story was clearly--read his words, his bias--an Intel nut, who was ready to jump the gun and blame AMD for the problem which is Gateway's fault. Now, look at the commentary by Slashdot guy timothy right after the quote from the submitter, that it appears to be a Gateway problem not an AMD problem.
What you must understand is that motherboards by Gateway, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Packard-Bell (yuck), and most other big-name systems manufacturers are substandard pieces of junk. To begin with, they are usually so tightly integrated that they have no available AGP slot and few PCI slots, with integrated crappy audio unfit for an old Gravis Ultrasound, integrated video that's four or six generations behind and shares system memory instead of using its own, an integrated NIC which is okay since a NIC is a NIC is a NIC but often it has an IRQ conflict with whatever you plug into the PCI slot, and uses ancient in-house circuitry designed for older chips and manufactured in some third-world hellhole by people who are more skilled with using stone implements than modern silicon-working machinery, by third-tier motherboard manufacturers whom you wouldn't trust to make a decent wristwatch much less a functional motherboard. The BIOSes are almost always in-house vendor-specific stuff, and usually nonstandard and way behind in their support of anything recent. Which is why when you buy a Gateway system it comes with, in addition to the OS, a "system restoration CD" with custom drivers because Windows doesn't even work properly on such a nonstandard shitty motherboard with crufty old custom logic without special nonstandard drivers. The Gateway 1 GHz motherboard in question is manufactured by Jabil. Ever heard of them? Few have or ever will, because they produce crap that no one would ever buy unless it were in a Gateway box with pretty cow-colored cardboard all over it.
This is all, completely, totally, absolutely, undoubtedly a Gatway problem. AMD's Athlon does not bear any responsibility whatsoever for this. Intel zealots will want to exploit it and blame AMD, but the fact remains that the Athlon gives superior performance numbers now that the L2 cache has been integrated on-die, and that there is no problem with the 1 GHz or any other Athlon.
New Slashdot Poll Topic...
on
Publius
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· Score: 5
You're on to something. This would make a great poll:
Who would you most like to see in jail?
1) CmdrTaco 2) Hemos 3) michael 4) Jon Katz 5) Roblimo 6) Janet Reno 7) Bill Gates 8) everyone at Intel 9) Jack Straw 10) Metallica 11) Hemos' new wife, CmdrTaco's gf, and Natalie Portman, in a prison shower scene like in "Caged Heat" 12) Cowboy Neal and Whalen Smithers, in a prison shower scene like in "Cellblock Cumpanions"
Of course, poor Jon Katz would win, even though in our hearts we all know we want that prison shower scene with the girls. Except for the ten percent of us who studies say would want to see the Cowboy Neal/Smithers scene...:-)
> The "spliting the 64-bit core into two x86 32-bit cores" idea could not possibly work efficiently.
That's a very definite declarative you just made, and a wise man once said "The less apt a man is to make declarative statements, the less apt he is to look like a fool in retrospect." Nothing personal, but it's always a bad idea to bandy about phrases like "could not possibly." Not too long ago, people thought that light "could not possibly" travel faster than it does in a vacuum, and well...
Point being, as much as you may know about processor architecture, you don't know as much as the AMD design team. If at one point they thought it possible to design a processor which could perform as I mentioned above, then it is doubtless possible, even if they have since abandoned the idea in favor of something easier to design.
You know what else "could not possibly work efficiently"? Utilizing a VLIW core to process an ISA overlay which exists in software. I mean, that's just such a terribly inefficient concept that it couldn't possibly be worth doing, right? The VLIW core of such a badly designed processor would have to be so powerful and clocked so high that it would consume far more power than is necessary to run a normal x86 processor, right? As we all know, such conventional thinking turned out to be very, very mistaken. Transmeta's Crusoe has proven that such a thing can be done, though few would have ever thought it would work and work so well.
I think that should prove my point, but let me continue de-FUDifying your post.
> x86 *is* a terrible ISA and backwards compatibility *does* hold back tech, both > in terms of performance and price/performance.
I already admitted that x86 is a poor ISA--of course it is, it's ancient; pre-Cambrian by the standards of microprocessor tech. However, thanks to good compilers the ISA is as easy to write for as any other--few people do handwritten assembler any more, for any ISA. And yes, it is inefficient--but most current x86 processors actually use a RISC-like core to process data after it has been decoded in hardware from the CISC x86 ISA into smaller RISCy instructions; being done in efficient hardware, little overhead occurs and performance is impressive from something like an Athlon. The net effect of that is that you get RISC-like performance with backward compatibility with very little overhead. And, let us not forget that contemporary RISC processors are, as noted at http://arstechnica.com/cpu/4q99/risc-cisc/rvc-1.ht ml , every bit as complex as CISC ISAa like x86.
The main reason people such as yourself complain on/. about x86 being so horrible and holding back progress is that you think x86 is "unsexy." And, it is. It's old and ugly. But it does the job more than well enough, thanks to modern processor designs which break down the x86 instructions and execute them in RISCy fashion. Do you prefer Alpha? Great, Alphas kick ass...except...well, I can get a nice un-sexy Athlon system together which will whomp all but the highest-end single processor Alpha system, thanks to increased clock speeds. The Athlon's FPU is even enough to make it outperform the lower-clocked Alpha, for less than half the price. And I can use more cards and peripherals and operating systems with the Athlon. Alpha ONLY makes sense on servers and high-end multiprocessor workstations, nowhere else.
So, what should we replace x86 with on the desktop? Gee, UltraSparcs run around 10 grand for entry-level boxes, so that's not realistic. How about StrongARM? Very poor FPU performance and very low clockspeeds, don't make me laugh. Itanium? Intel will price those out of reach of God for the next few years. Oh, wait, I know: PowerPC. And yes, PPC is a great architecture, very powerful and extensible. I would love for x86 to be supplanted by PPC, but that'll never happen because Motorola and Big Blue have a stranglehold on production and have no financial need to push up clockspeeds and puch to high production levels--IBM uses them in some of their own boxes, but doesn't have reason to push out lots of them since Apple is the only other game in town--other PPC boards have remained very fringe despite the release of the CHRP specs. Non-geeks aren't interested in non-Apple PPC based systems. Learn to live with that for the next several years at least. Aside from which, thanks to the ever-increasing x86 clockspeeds, top-tier Athlons and Willamettes will be outperforming top-tier PPCs for a while.
> backwards compatibility *does* hold back tech, both in terms of performance and price/performance
I think I just disproved that, too. x86 processors consistently outperform all others on price/performance ratio. Come up with a better solution or shut up. There are many other ISAs out there, and new ones coming, and yet not a single one of them can unseat x86 on price/performance, where it counts. The x86 ISA is old and ugly--but processor designers have come up with very sexy ways to push its performance up, by melding RISC core technologies with the older CISC instruction decoders. And then, they use brute force of higher clockspeeds to outperform most of the competition, and to outprice all the competition. It's not holding us back at all, it's forcing us to innovate cores and to brute force clockspeeds well above all other processors.
And that isn't even counting the importance on price/performance of maintaining backward compatibility. The same software can be re-used through many upgrades, which is even more important for businesses who've developed custom software solutions than it is for individuals.
Not to mention the lack of competition and subsequent higher prices which would be inherent in any new ISAs. Why the fuck aren't Alphas and UltraSparcs running at higher clockspeeds and costing less, eh? Because there's no competition. The ISAs are owned and licensed by single companies, who don't feel the pressure to do more, faster, better, like x86 companies do. Look at Intel's snail-pace development in the desktop range before AMD started turning up the heat. x86 is, effectively, an open-source ISA, *the* open-source ISA. That's why they're unmatched on price/performance. If Itanium or any other proprietary ISA becomes the new standard, we're all fucked.
So, think before you hand out that party-line BS about x86 being so terrible. x86 is responsible for the home computer revolution, and without it the Internet would have remained a toy for universities. Think about it.
The nice thing about Sledgehammer and any derived desktop versions will be that the processor core will be able to recognize between 32- and 64-bit apps, and switch between them. I'm not sure if it's still true of the current design, but early on the AMD folks were saying that Sledgehammer would be able to work with 32-bit apps by effectively "splitting" the core as if it were 2 32-bit x86 cores working in tandem, therefore doubling the number of 32-bit instructions that a normal core would be able to deal with at any given clock cycle. Likwise, for 64-bit apps the core would work in lockstep like a normal 64-bit core. Interesting, if the concept still holds true...
At any rate, it *will* be able to run 32-bit apps natively, not through emulation as with Merced--err, Itanium (dumb name). As much as many/.ers bitch about x86 being such a horrible ISA (it is, but who cares unless you're unlucky enough to have to code in assembler...), and about the desire for backwards-compatibility holding tech back (sure it does, but it also saves time, effort, and apps, for the user), there are advantages. First of all, I'll still be able to multi-boot Windows 98 on my future Sledgehammer to play all those wonderful old DOS and early Windows games I've collected over the years and come to love dearly--it'll be ages and ages before Linux or anything else is able to effectively emulate Windows well enough to get top-notch performance from even fairly old games, and even then most of that will be thanks to increased processor power (like emulating an Apple ][c on my 400MHz processor--easy because the whole damned machine can be executed virtually thanks to processing muscle many, many times more than the original). Not just that, but businesses with legacy, custom x86 software will be able to upgrade with virtually no software costs. Backwards-compatibility may induce cruft, but is often desirable for both personal and business reasons. I look forward, two or so years from now, to being able to run 64-bit Linux, Windows 98, BeOS, and maybe Windows 2002, all on the same AMD box. Now, if only someone would create a VMS environment for x86...;-)
Umm, so what if a car's catalytic converter (I guess that's what you mean when you say "car catalyst") is currently made of expensive materials like platinum or rhodium? You're assuming no one will innovate to bring prices down. If a company can find a way to make a catalytic converter using cheap alloys, that company could wipe up the competition in sales--so there's pressure to innovate. Companies always invest a lot in R&D, and often invent exotic but cheap alloys that can do the same thing as more expensive materials. TECH DOESN'T SIT STILL, it moves forward. People will eventually invent cheaper ways to do any given task, to create any given object. That includes catalytic converters and LCD screens. Not that we'll need catalytic converters in ten or fifteen years, since the electric car is becoming more of a reality and even more of a necessity, what with OPEC's price-fixing bullshit.
Hopefully, the Crusoe Netwinder will be as fully-functional as the current Netwinder family, and not "just" the "gateway" product mentioned in the article. After all, it could be used as more than just a gateway/firewall/router type of box; I'd love to use one as a small file server networked to my current AMD box. All I need is for it to have a PCI slot capable of using a Promise IDE RAID card; it would free up a PCI slot and a couple drive bays from my current computer, and I'd be very happy with it--serving files to a local box isn't so processor-intensive that the Crusoe would be overwhelmed.
I've been hoping that the Crusoe would make it into some desktop products like the Netwinder, since notebook products are inevitably too bloody expensive (and fairly useless to me, anyway--drive bays! I need more drive bays! not a hobbled travelling PC). After all, not everyone wants/needs the screaming-fast performance of an 800MHz Athlon; some of us want a Crusoe desktop machine for both the "wow factor" and to support the company, but given the nature of the new processor and its chipset DIY commodity mobos and retail processors aren't realistic for any time soon.
Personally, my old 400MHz K6-2 is still fast enough for everything I do on a daily basis--the occasional video clip rendering notwithstanding (just leave the box alone for a few hours, and...), and I bought the thing over a year ago to support AMD even though the Inetl Celeron 366 was faster for the same price. I can't in good conscience buy five-year-old tech from Intel, I have to support competition in the market--and now with Thunderbird and Duron it looks like AMD is finally tromping Intel on all fronts, hooray for supporting the underdog. Look at all the good we who have supported AMD through the dark ages have now brought about: AMD chips that whomp Intel, but just as significant, lower Intel prices and higher Intel clockspeeds. How can self-respecting geeks buy Intel, knowing that Intel's own roadmap had us all still using processors in the 400-600MHz range right now, with AMD's Athlon being the only thing which picked up the pace? And now, because of AMD, Willamette is going to be released not just for servers, but as a replacement for the ancient-cored P!!! with the P!!! Coppermine becoming their new low-end processor to compete against Duron. Intel had been planning to shove that integrated bullshit Timna (think Cyrix MediaGX) down our throats as a Celeron replacement, with the P!!! for higher-end consumers, and the Willamette for high-end workstations and servers only. That's what their roadmaps said before AMD put the Athlon squeeze on. Folks, unless you need a dual- or quad-processor box *right now*, don't support Intel--they don't deserve it. AMD is now the real innovator, even though they're still the little guy. And Transmeta, support Transmeta as well--they're innovating in different and commendable ways. But there's no excuse for supporting Intel, the company which was going to move us at a snail's pace until AMD stepped it up.
Anyway, I was planning to turn my old 400MHz box into a fileserver at the end of the year/early next year when I can get my hands on a dual Athlon motherboard, but I'd gladly buy a Crusoe desktop to do that fileserving. Thank you, Rebel.com, if you follow through and make it good.
So, am I the only one who wants a Crusoe desktop, or are there other technogeeks out there who'll buy a Crusoe desktop system aither in its Netwinder incarnation or otherwise?
Notice the one and only fact which is important when contemplating the fact that companies have already been accepting Rambus' claims to DDR patents: they're all Japanese companies which have knuckled under. Japanese companies operate under the Keiretsu (sp?) system, in which companies cooperate and share patented IP for small royalties, building up strategic relationships and making the companies interdependant and strategically allied. By knuckling under to Rambus right now, Toshiba et al feel that they'll end up getting better, lower, licensing terms from Rambus, and they're right...except...for the US and other non-Japanese based companies. Remember Micron, for example? They'll simply fight this in court because Americans and Europeans don't do business this way. We don't believe in Keiretsu (sp?) systems stifling competition by patenting everything and sharing it only with "preferred" partners to engender a market dominance/monopoly. We especially don't believe in such systems when they exclusively benefit foreign companies. Look for the patent to be invalidated in the US and Rambus and its early-adopter partners to get anally fucked by the lack of an American patent, making any company here able to produce DDR SDRAM and related tech at 2-3 percent cheaper margins than the Japanese and some others. After all, there's plenty of prior art here, especially by Big Blue. One thing you can definitely count on about the American patent system is, it benefits American companies over foreign ones when it comes to patent disputes. This isn't even mentioning the EU, which takes a dim view of companies trying to stifle competition by forcing competing tech to pay up or get out based on very shaky IP claims. Rambus' own admittance to this being the case, will be brought up in Court both in the US and EU and be part of their undoing.
I'm a proud user of Netscape 3.04. It plays well with others, and apps can't connect with it like they can with IE. App makers who want to be underhanded know that IE is available to "hijack" if they really want to, but there's no way they can count on an ancient version of Netscape being installed and IE being denied permission to contact the Net. Windows Explorer is completely denied permission to send packets anywhere. I'll get Mozilla when it reaches M17 and switch to that, but for now Netscape 3.04 is entirely adequate. I can't complain about its quick and admirable performance. Its only shortcoming is that pages created sloppily using Style Sheets and Microsoft-extended protocols display oddly, but they still display well enough.
Seriously, for all the (understandable) bluster about privacy, we have not yet gotten to the point that online privacy isn't easy to have. Just like I don't want anyone to hack or flood my box, therefore I run a firewall (Black Ice), I don't want applications uploading info about me so I run an "internal firewall" called Zone Alarm which allows me to forbid any but permitted apps from sending packets. I don't want advertisers to track me with cookies, so I set cookie permissions through Junkbuster Proxy and have the added benefit of blocking ads altogether, plus quashing the "refer" and "user-agent" headers. I protect my "real" e-mail from spammers by having throw-away addresses for USENET and other public posts. If any website I visit demands a home address, and actually checks the validity of the address I enter, I pick a random name and address from an online directory (underhanded but it works)--otherwise I just write "fuck you" on every line of the form.
At first look that seems like it might be a lot of work, but it isn't. All of those applications are set up with a few clicks (even Junkbuster, text-based, has pre-made blockfiles available), and no detailed info is necessary--there is zero learning curve for the average Windows user. The trick is convincing the average windows user to install a few privacy-safeguarding firewall apps, to not accept or delete cookies from all but sites they want to give info to, and to submit false information to anyone who wants their address online. If people could be convinced to take similar safeguarding actions, then companies would cease to bother gathering such data in the first place. As I said, the trick is educating the public--the actual safeguarding of online privacy is quite easy, even for an average Win user.
The threat comes when even such simple safeguards as installing some software and not giving a real address can no longer work. Right now it takes minimal efforts to protect privacy, but it's foreseeable that companies will create ways of locking us in. If there's ever infrastructure to connect data about the ISP used by a particular address, for example, to visitors' IPs, it would make it more difficult to simply give false information to websites which demand addresses. Likewise, if every site demanded cookies and malfunctioned without them, it would be a bit more difficult to keep private although you could still keep cookies persisten on a per-session basis.
People are so pissed off about online companies trading information about consumers. But the real answer is educating consumers not to give up personal information in the first place, because then there's nothing for companies to trade. Doubleclick knows nothing about my online habits and never will.
The real threat is offline privacy, not online. Credit companies are evil, with intimate details of your buying habits available to them through non-Internet sources. Few people understand that when they sign up for a "club card" at a grocery store, every item they buy with it is recorded for posterity, from food to drugs to hygeine products. Few people realize that if they ever fail to pay a bill on time, even a magazine subscription or something else small it can linger in the files of credit bureaus for all time and fuck with their credit ten years down the line. Few people realize that their banks are required to report all sorts of sensitive financial data to the government thanks to laws purportedly designed to make it easier to force payments from deadbeat dads, but which apply to everyone with a bank account. Few people realize that the FBI knows exactly how many guns you own and what type (unless you bought them in a private sale), not for the public's protection but so that whenever the type of gun you own is outlawed they can knock on your door to collect it.
In short, worry more about privacy off-line than on-line. There are steps you can take online, but off-line you're fucked.
I love that guy, and I've never met him personally. He's just so incredibly likable and nice in everything he's ever said in public. Plus, despite the fact that Apple moved away from openness pretty quickly, I'm sure it wasn't Woz's idea. He originally wanted to give all the specs away for free. He was an open-source hardware guru saddled with Steve "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs. Not that that's bad, because if Woz hadn't had Jobs by his side to handle the business end, Apple wouldn't exist today. Unfortunately, businesses need the suits to make money...
But anway, it couldn't have gone to a nicer person. Take RMS for example--love the philosophy, but I'd hate to have a drink with the man. He'd intimidate the hello out of me, correct my use of the term "open source", and not be much fun. But Woz, you just get the feeling, would be a great guy to socialize with and not be intimidating despite his legendary status.
Oops, I'm blubbering. Time to go before I embarass myself and offer him a blow job or something... [kidding...]
Twofish isn't all that more difficult to understand than Blowfish, because it's basically just Blowfish with a few improvements and a change in block size as per AES standards.
The key to the popularity of Blowfish over Twofish is merely that Blowfish has been around for many more years. That would normally mean that the cipher is more "proven" than Twofish and others, except that the AES candidates which are still in the running have defied more cryptanalytic attacks than most other ciphers because of the barrage of attacks engendered by the AES process. This leaves the fact that Blowfish has been around longer and therefore gotten into more stuff as its only advantage.
Blowfish and Twofish are both very, very fast on 32-bit microprocessors, which is why they're generally the best contenders for inclusion in crypto programs. Triple-DES, on the other hand, is ungodly slow anywhere but in specialized hardware--because it was meant only as a stop-gap measure for when the 56-bit key length of DES became too short. As for AES candidates with potential, MARS is slower than Twofish but has an extraordinary security margin. It's the only cipher which uses all forms of cryptological tranformations, and therefore should be resistant to most forms of attack if not all. MARS is the one AES contender I'd trust as much as Twofish.
I mean, why is my own PC more secure than those on which the Government keeps classified information? Not that anyone would want to steal my HD and its 15 Gigs of porn or anything, but the point is if anyone stole my computer all they'd get is a standard Windows installation and a couple of encrypted drives. But from the way the reports have been depicting it, the classified data on these stolen computers wasn't encrypted.
Why oh why is my fetish for doggie porn and Britney Spears fakes more well-guarded than classified data? If I can get into the habit of entering a passphrase to access my data drives, why can't the DoD, State Department, et al. make disk encryption an across-the-board standard for all employees dealing with sensitive data? We can be sure that this isn't the case, because otherwise the government would be downplaying its irresponsibility by mentioning that the stolen data encrypted and secure. So the question becomes, why isn't this policy, and when will they wake up and make it policy?
[For the curious, I use a free Windows program called Scramdisk which can make encrytpted "virtual drives" or encrypt whole partitions. Its source code is freely available, but is not GPL. It's very secure with a choice of 256-bit Twofish or eight other ciphers. It ensures that family and friends will not uncover my secret she-male fixation. Oops, did I type that out loud?]
The only problem is, a 1 GHz Crusoe chip wouldn't perform as well as an equivalently clocked P!!! or Athlon. Of course, you're also not going to see 1 GHz P!!! or Athlon notebooks for a long time anyway, thanks to the huge power consumption issues, but I just wanted to remind of the "megahertz trap" too many people fall into, thinking that the clock speed of the processor has anything to do with its actual speed.
Most Slashdot readers know the difference between performance and clockspeed, but I think this will be an issue that'll be important when Transmeta-powered equipment hits the mainstream notebook/PDA/appliance market: Joe Sixpack and Joe Marketing will get their Crusoe-powered notebooks, and realize, "Hey, what gives, this 1 GHz Crusoe notebook isn't any better than my P!!! 600 notebook. I've been cheated!" I fear that the clockspeed/performance differential between Crusoe and x86 processors will become an albatross around Transmeta's neck, possibly damaging its reputation among non-geeks. After all, the non-Geek would read that it takes a 1 GHz Crusoe to be as powerful as a 600MHz P!!! or Athlon*, and deduce that somehow the Crusoe is inferior, not realizing the Crusoe's strong points and completely different architecture. I fear that magazines for the semi-computer-literate will fuel the fire, magazines like those in ZD's stable of consumer-targeted stuff. A similar thing dogged the K6-2, though the K6-2 certainly didn't have Crusoe's low power consumption or nifty new architecture; but, not being clock-for-clock as powerful as P!!! or even Celeron did hurt its image.
*: The comparison here is pulled out of my ass rather than from actual figures since I don't have the time to look them up/calculate a good comparison, but they shouldn't be too far off the mark.
WRONG: Corporations Have NO *Right* to Make Money
on
Copyrant
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· Score: 5
You seem to suffer from the common corporate post-Reaganomics delusion that companies are entitled to make money, that they somehow have a right to make profits. But that isn't true. You see, corporations exist and are granted certain rights, akin to the rights of an individual, based on a body of legislation and case law going back to the last century. But at any time those rights could be taken away through legislative or judicial action, because a corporation is a fictitious person and not a real one. We granted companies certain rights because it was expediant to do so, and good for the consumer--it offered more incentive for companies to expand and innovate.
But if companies cease to serve the needs of consumers, corporate rights can be taken away as easily as they were granted. That's why the "no media" policy which is becoming attractive to software makers won't last long if the voters of the U.S. launch a major campaign to have legislation introduced which would outlaw the practice. You see, a corporation has no inherent right to sell me a license to use software, without including the installation media. In fact, a corporation has no inherent right to exist at all--they exist merely because their existence is generally beneficial to consumers, not vice versa.
I want Microsoft and Adobe to continue fucking consumers in the ass, because the more they do so, the more likely it is that courts will overturn UCITA and similar legislation, and the more likely it is that laws will be passed to require media to be provided and prices to be fair. The corporations may have considerable sway and lobbying ability on Capitol Hill, but they don't have the one thing we consumers have: votes. Enough voters will start complaining that their computers say "Insert Windows Install Media" and yet their OEM says Microsoft told them not to provide media, that laws will be passed and assurances made. Microsoft has no inherent rights to do as it pleases. Meanwhile, more and more people will be forced to download ISO images of real Windows installation media, and that's a good thing because, I repeat, Microsoft has no inherent rights to keep those media to itself. It has only the rights that we, as a society, have granted it, and those rights can be taken away. Those rights are in fact fictitious rights since a corporation is a fictitious person under the law.
I in fact support piracy of software from big corporations like Microsoft and Adobe, though not from small-time operations. Why? People have real rights, and corporations have legal-fiction rights, and big corporations have been abusing their rights as of late. Abuse it and lose it. Microsoft has no inherent right to charge me $89 for a simple upgrade (Win98) to a piece of software I paid a lot of money for in the first place (Win95 A), so I burnt a copy of a friend's CD. Did I take money from the mouths of hungry programmers? No, Microsoft is not a hungry programmer, it is a powerful multinational corporation which has been so abusive of its rights as to suffer the ultimate in corporate punishments: break-up under anti-trust laws. It employs programmers, none of whom will have to go hungry because I helped myself to a copy of a Win98 upgrade CD. I wouldn't have bought the CD anyway, because I honestly can't afford it--I spend on average about $100 a week inclusive of food, so I wasn't going to buy that CD ever. Did my illicit copy of that CD harm anyone, then? No.
Some people would say, "But that doesn't matter, because it's not your property, it belongs to someone else and you have no right to take it." I had more right to take it than M$ had to withold it, because I am a real person and Microsoft is a fictitious entity; I have natural rights, but M$ has only un-natural ones created in the last century not for the purpose of benefitting companies, but for the purpose of benefitting consumers. And now that Microsoft has seen fit to try to strangle consumers once again, I feel entitled to upgrade to Win2K for free. I think I'll go to USENET and find an ISO image. And do you know who I'll be hurting? No one. Microsoft has abused its power to force competitors out and force prices up--prices on hardware have fallen tenfold in recent years, while performance has met or exceeded Moore's Law, and yet software prices have remained high yet software has hardly improved. I wasn't lying when I said that Win98 was a mere upgrade to Win95, and we all know it. Likewise, years ago in the college lab I used a PowerMac 7200 running Adobe Photoshop 3.0, and yet the newest version of Photoshop is at least as expensive and doesn't have much more useful functionality. The largest software companies are price-gouging, and since they have no right to do that I *do* have the right to neutralize their gouging.
The same goes for music. Up until 60 years ago, musicians didn't make money from album sales--and today most still don't since record companies gouge, and blame it on middlemen who in fact are usually owned by the self-same record company. Musicians made money by holding concerts. Then along came record companies, who capitalized on new technologies to create an industry where once there was nothing. See, the recording industry isn't about music--that's what concerts are about. The recording industry is about selling recordings of music which, while nice to listen to in your home, don't compare at all to a real live concert experience. Therefore, no matter what happens to the record companies, musicians will still be able to make money off concerts just as they always have. The recording industry has no inherent rights to sell me something which, until the selfsame recording industry had laws passed to prevent it, I could have gotten for myself by attending a concert and bringing a recording device. Screw that. The recording industry has engaged in unlawful price-fixing for years, as the results of federal actions against them have recently proven, and since I have several hundred CDs on my shelf which I was unlawfully forced to pay a price-fixed premium for, I am damn well entitled to have a gig or two of mp3 files I got from USENET and Napster. Not to mention that, again, a corporation has no inherent right to be able to sell me something which, were it not for the meddling of the very same industry, I could get for free whenever I go to a concert--and I go to more concerts now that I don't buy CDs. Once we reduce the recording industry to little more than a streamlined distribution channel to sell cheap CDs and a scouting industry for new musicians, instead of a corporate price-fixing monstrosity with more rights than the consumers have, musicians will by-and-large be much happier and will make a larger share in the profits. I reiterate that such industries have the right to exist only insofar as they can benefit the consumer, and right now the recording industry is choking the consumer with unlawful cartel pricing structures and, dare I say it, too damn many NSYNC pre-packaged culture-killing mind-numbing artificial groups designed to exploit stupid teenagers and turn them into mindless buying drones.
In summation, fuck the price-gouging corporations which have ceased their purpose of serving us and have instead started usurping our rights and raping our asses whenever they get the chance just to make a few dollars more. Bill Gates and the chairman of Sony can lick my asshole, because they have no right to get into my wallet by taking away my rights to a fair and non-cartel/monopoly pricing structure.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Legal Disclaimer: I lied about having any pirated software and mp3s. I own only licensed software and licensed music.:-)
Catchy title for a research paper, eh?;-) But seriously, in Hawking's *Brief History of Time* he tells us exactly how a black hole could do like this one is apparently doing. The radio emissions aren't the most important part; the really interesting thing is that black holes can actually potentially "create matter" accounting for the "from suck to blow" effect mentioned here.
See, space isn't really a vacuum, as Hawking points out in his book. In actuality, in the vacuum of space particles and their associated anti-particles blink in and out of existence constantly--they appear, move apart from one another an imperceptible distance, and then are immediately drawn back together and "cancel out" and disappear with no remnants. So, although we on the macroscopic level perceive space to be empty, on a sub-atomic scale it is quite full and active.
But that's where black holes come in. The only force strong enough to prevent those sub-atomic particles from re-colliding and blinking out of existence is, you guessed it, the event horizon of a black hole. If the particles pop into existence right at the event horizon, and one crosses the event horizon and the other doesn't, then both particles will be forced into continued existence instead of cancelling out--the anti-particle can get sucked into the black hole and actually cause the black hole's mass to decrease by one particle when it cancels out part of the black hole's central point, while the particle which escapes becomes part of the rest of the universe just like any other particle. Hawking mentioned this as a possible way that black holes could decrease in mass/size of event horizon over time, and this process could account for the "blow" effect of the black hole mentioned in the article if, for whatever physical reasons, the black hole's situation is conducive to the condition of capturing these anti-particles at its event horizon and thus "emitting" particles. It's complicated, but I've tried to explain it as simplistically as possible, so forgive me if the explanation is slightly inaccurate. But, that's how this could happen.
Last time I heard a discussion about supercomputers, someone said that a supercomputer had to have a sustainable throughput of at least 1 Gigaflop. Is that accurate? If not, what *is* the definition of a supercomputer these days?
Which reminds me, if anyone is interested in the "flopsability," to coin a silly-sounding word, of common x86 processors, visit http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?pc/temp/TW/linpac k --interesting, if practically useless, scores...
But, why would anyone want to say "I conceived the use of a purpose-designed network employing packet switching in which the stream of bits is broken up into short messages, or 'packets', that find their way individually to the destination, where they are reassembled into the original stream," when one could put it as simply and eloquently as Al Gore when he said "I invented the Internet"?:-)
But seriously, it's sad whenever we lose one of the pioneers. Not too many people these days really know or understand that the Internet didn't just "materialize" in the mid-nineties, and so the pioneering work done by so many universities and by so many involved with Arpanet and Usenet gets ignored in the popular consciousness. If you tell the average Internet user that the roots of the Internet really go back at least to the sixties with the work that was being done at universities and in the government, they'll stare at you in disbelief. Or apathy...
I can see it now: Tomb Raider IV: PCS Edition, in glorious 120 by 150 monochrome. "Yes Lara, shake that little green ass! Jump! Shoot! Darn, I can't seem to find the Phallus of Kefru in this level..." Which reminds me, I wonder how many processor cycles have been spent rendering Lara's impressive cleavage since the first Tomb Raider came out. I think with that kind of processing power we could have cracked 128-bit Blowfish by now...;-)
> Wavelet image compression is lossy. Therefore you can get much smaller file > sizes compared to PNG, which is lossless as you point out. One of the reasons > to use wavelet compressed images is for high compression.
Yes, you *do* get much smaller file sizes with Wavelet images than with PNG, depending on quality settings of course; but I'm afraid it's a case of me not being clear, rather than a mistake about the technology. What I meant to say in that sentence, and expressed poorly, is that I doubt an equivalently high-quality JP2K image would be at all smaller than the same image saved as a PNG, nor would an equivalently low-quality JP2K save much space over a regular JPEG. But I should have used the "Preview" button on that and caught my poor expression of the notion. My intent was to separate the high-quality from the low-quality uses of JP2K, and state that PNG is better for high-quality and JPEG is at least as useful for low- to medium-quality. There is absolutely no need to use a clunky hack of a file format to do the work of 2 other formate which are better suited to the task. It's like using a Swiss Army knife in place of a screwdriver and a pair of scissors--it'll do the job, but not as easily and comfortably as just having a screwdriver and a pair of scissors ready.
> Utter crap. Wavelet compressed images offer a couple benefits. They look better > than standard jpgs if both are highly compressed
But as for the image quality of Wavelet compressed images, I have to respectfully disagree that they look better than existing formats. They re-scale to a larger size better, but that begs the question of why you aren't just using a larger JPEG in the first place. Remember the "clunky hack" comment I made above? Doubly so. Plus, re-scaling the images back upwards *does* result in loss of quality, just a different sort of loss from that found in regular JPEGS. You see, as you re-scale a Wavelet compressed image upwards, you lose detail information--the repeated color areas often start to look dull and not nearly as detailed. This is the opposite of JPEG images which, when re-scaled, show too many artifacts of the type of compression which was designed in the first place to preserve that detail. So, Wavelet compressed images once re-scaled lack detail, whereas JPEG gets some of the detail wrong when re-scaled due to compression artifacts. Before you get obnoxious again and say I'm full of crap, or whatever, the reason I *know* what I'm talking about is because I work with graphics files all the time, and often have to scale them up or down for various uses. I've also experimented with most of the availably formats, including the LuraWave Format (LWF) which is essentially very, very similar to JP2K. So don't get your panties in a bundle, I know what I'm talking about. Which brings me to another point as to why JP2K is useless: after much experimenting, I came to the conclusion that the best way to store graphics for high-quality non-bandwidth-limited usage is PNG, plain and simple, there's nothing more useful and compact for the quality. For bandwidth or disk space limited uses, nothing is usually better than JPEG with the proper settings, especially for compatibility's sake; however, many times PNG would be a better answer in terms of both size and quality *if you reduce the palette* to between 256 and 5000 colors, depending on the image and the amount of colors you can take away before the average human eye even notices. Even on a big 32-bit screen, many images--even photographic ones--look better as PNGs with about 1000 colors than as JPEGS with 30+ thousand colors. One reason is the retention of detail with PNG, which is NOT present with Wavelet-compressed images. I repeat, make your images the right size before you save them in their finished formats, and no one will have to resize them later to either too-low-detail resized JP2Ks or too-artifected JPEG. And at any rate, PNG remains the best format in terms of ability to be resized well, even with lowered palette counts. So I repeat, *JP2K is USELESS.*
> Oh yeah, and aside from images, wavelet compression has uses in audio. Useless > isn't a word I would describe it with.
Don't get all anooying.:-) I wasn't talking about the type of compression, I was clearly talking about its application to image files. I repeat: *useless*. There are better tools for the job, and this is coming from someone who works with image files of different formats and uses intensely, day after day. JP2K is a bad hack, which attempts to replace other, better, tools.
> My question to the group here is, if JPEG2000 takes off and > companies and individuals who have not previously declared > IP come forward and want royalties, will the standard be hurt?
Of course the standard would be hurt; in fact, I dare wager it would die. There simply isn't any place in the crowded market for any more IP-laden so-called "standards." Quite frankly, the existing JPEG format is good enough for most Internet images requiring 16 bit color, and for high-quality lossless images nothing beats PNG. I seriously doubt that the JP2K (needs shortening) standard will use less disk space/bandwidth than PNG, and it definitely won't create better quality since PNG is essentially lossless in the first place. JP2K decoding will also be more hardware-intensive than PNG, meaning it will be entirely inadequate for low-powered cellphones/PDAs/other portable appliances, which negates the benefits of being able to encode once for streaming from different bandwidths. Another advantage of PNG which most people don't realize is that by reducing the color palette of low-res web graphics to 256, the same palette of GIF, you get a file which typically can be only 25-75% of the size of the same file saved as GIF. But that's a non-issue since the GIF patent is running out soon, and most people never get shaken down now as it is. In other words, there's really no need for JP2K. Since PNG hasn't been picked up very well outside of Japan, where it is a fairly common format (just go to a japan.binaries.* anime newsgroup to see some...iluminating...examples), look for 1 of 2 things to happen to JP2K if it is indeed royalty-free: either it will be incorporated into new Web browsers and image viewers by default since it's heralded as the JPEG for the new millenium, and slowly take over with old JPEGs still dominating for a couple of years, or no one will care and continue to use JPEGS since they're easier and more standardized. If however someone pushes IP claims and the new standard is tainted with charges, look for no one to ever, ever, ever use it except for Adobe Photoshop and its clones; it will never come into general usage. Look at how common the similar LuraWave Format is, after all: not common at all. Fact is, there's no need at all for JP2K. Wavelet compression has a coolness factor for geeks, but it's essentially useless. As I said, JPEG and GIF are already at the "sweet spots" for bandwidth/features, especially with the GIF patent issue ending soon. PNG with a reduced palette would be ideal for a lower-bandwidth GIF replacement if only it'd be heralded as a standard and PNG support were made almost universal, and for high-res images PNG is already perfect, lossless, beautiful. There's just no need at all for JP2K, and it would have been much better for everyone if the standards group had just endorsed PNG and the options of reduced-palette variants instead of uselessly inventing a new and IP-complicated standard.
> Is there a place for a part-2 which contains IP which is not free?
Yes: in a musty corner of a Photoshop dialogue box, where it will stay and not bother the rest of us.
> And, what applications does the community here see as being crucial > for the adoption of JPEG2000?
The more important question is: How can the JP2K group convince people that there's a need for a new standard to replace 2 that are working just fine for general Net use, and 1 more which is perfect for high-res graphics and can also create smaller-sized GIF replacements when the palette is reduced in your image editor. We should just ignore JP2K and hope it goes away, since it's a resource-hog which doesn't make a better JPEG than JPEG, a better GIF than GIF, or a better PNG than PNG. But we should quietly implement it in Mozilla and Gimp and whatever else, just in case, as long as it's free.
Yes, nVidia is now king of 3D performance--by a slim but tangible margin. But the really interesting, freaky fact is that 3Dfx is now king of 3D visual quality. Thanks to 3Dfx's superior hardware-assisted implementation of 4x anti-aliasing, their visual quality kicks the crap out of nVidia's inferior technique. All of the reviews I've read linked over at AnandTech which were done with the drivers 3Dfx will ship with, rather than the older immature drivers which came with pre-release factory samples which had been floating around the review sites, state that the Voodoo 5 5500's 4x anti-aliasing and arguably its 2x anti-aliasing really trounce the visual quality of the GeForce 2's anti-aliasing.
The weird thing is that 3Dfx used to be the king of performance, evangelizing fill rate and frame rate over visual quality, and nVidia argued that visual quality was more important than fill rates. That's the essence of the whole argument that broke out when the TNT and TNT2 had 32-bit color but the Voodoo 3's had only 16-bit color but more speed. Now the roles are reversed. I feel like Alice, through the looking glass...
But unfortunately I fear that 3Dfx's superior image quality is just a fluke, and that they're touting it now because it's 3Dfx's only advantage. Remember that the Voodoo 4 and 5 were supposed to be out by last Christmas, before their design and fab difficulties, so effectively they're now a product cycle behind nVidia. If 3Dfx fails to treat the current emerging lineup as an "interim" line of products, and doesn't bust its collective ass to get another and vastly superior product cycle out the door before this Christmas, it will go down faster than a freshman at a frat party. Goodbye, 3Dfx.
I hope this doesn't happen, because I have respect for what 3Dfx did to advance 3D on the PC, and I'd hate to see yet another graphics company go bust, but at this point it looks grim for 3Dfx. The top of their current emerging lineup has superior image quality, perhaps the best in 3D right now, but at framerates which can't be considered more than just "passable." Their Voodoo 5 6000 is an utter joke, if and when it finally gets released; it'll cost twice as much as a GeForce 2, but definitely won't double the performance, and will require 4 chips and an external power connector. Yes, the very thought of such a massive, impressive piece of hardware makes me want to jam my slot 1 into a tight little socket 370, so to speak [nudge-nudge, wink-wink], but the card isn't financially sound since we know nVidia's next product cycle will probably surpass it.
But, anyway, it is interesting how the roles have reversed, and 3Dfx's visual quality is now their selling point while nVidia's raw performance is now their selling point. My poor ATI A-i-W 128 feels so...inadequate... I need some video card Viagra...
Everybody but Mac is moving toward integrating the file browser with the Internet browser; just look at KDE and Be and their directions as examples. KDE is basically ripping off Win98's concept of browser integration, because it's a good concept, without all the bloat that is IE. And Be is steadily working towards unifying just about everything to do with file/net browsing. So, if IE is made a new company then MS will have 2 choices: re-code a new browser from scratch, or license IE from the new company. They're definitely not going to go back to the Win95 style shell because they're all about integrating the whole user experience from local files to Internet connectivity into something seamless. They're even migrating their whole Help system to an HTML base. So, they need a browser, and will pay the new company to license IE.
that sex isn't bad? That seeing movies with "mainstream" sexuality, or even "softcore porn" which is tame and not fetishistic, doesn't even harm kids? In most other civilized, non-Islamic nations, parents don't try so hard to shield their youngsters from the realities of sexuality, and the kids in those countries grow up healthier with fewer hang-ups and dysfunctions. I'm not one of those Jocelyn Elders liberals who thinks masturbation should be taught to kindergarteners, but by the time kids are 8 they've already heard about sex from all their friends, and are usually filled up with misconceptions and errors about sex. Kids should hear the facts about sex from their parents before they hear misconceptions and tall-tales from classmates. And as for stuff like the Playboy channel--hell, in France they show hardcore pornography on basic cable and softcore porn on late-night broadcast TV, and yet the French seem healthier and happier than we poor Puritanical Americans. When will Americans grow up and join the rest of the world in acknowledging that sex is not "dirty" or too private to be discussed in public, or have softcore porn on cable? It makes me ill to see how much violence we allow in PG-rated movies, or kids' cartoons, compared to the backwards restrictions placed on the sexuality that can be depicted in an R-rated movie. When they butchered Kubrick's *Eyes Wide Shut* for having softcore scenes nowhere near as vivid as shown on Cinemax at 11 PM any night of the week, I realized how alarmingly backwards our country really is. I'm glad the Supreme Court ruled correctly on this one, but I fear for thye future. Don't think that a Democrat in the White House to fill future Supreme Court vacancies is the option, either; Democrats want censorship, too, just for different reasons. Remember that Tipper Gore is almost single-handedly responsible for the ratings system for music which prevents teenagers from buying CDs with even mildly explicit lyrics about sex. I'm increasingly believing that Noam Chomsky was right, and that the two=party system we have is really just two sides to one party with no real, different, truly libertarian options at all...
With such a system, the risks are far greater than with simply using a regular, proven piece of software, with a passphrase. Have enough RAM so as not to need a swap partition or swapfile, and you avoid the risks of the passphrase being written to disk; a utility can then be used to "wipe" the RAM on shutdown and startup, to avoid a well-funded intruder with physical access to the machine being able to inspect the residual charges in the RAM, if this is a real security concern. The only real danger then is an intruder installing a keyboard sniffer, but an intruder who could do that would as easily be able to install software to capture the authentication from this fingerprint device. The inherent problem with a piece of hardware like this is that you can't be sure how secure the implementation is, whereas with open-source software the implementation can easily be reviewed. Rest assured that this hardware very likely has a security flaw--possibly one requested by the FBI/NSA, for "investigative" purposes. Remember the "Clipper Chip" initiative? Just because the FBI and NSA didn't win that argument doesn't mean that they haven't requested, and been granted, workarounds to the security afforded by other security devices. Trust only systems with *full documentation* which is publicly viewable.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, repeat after me: "I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post." The actual story referenced mentioned it as a problem with *Gateway's* GHz Athlon system. It is *NOT* a flaw in the chip, it is a flaw in Gateway's crappy, shitty, pissy, worthless motherboard/chipset/firmware/drivers, pick any or all of the above. Read the Techweb story at http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000630S0011 for better coverage.
Unfortunately, the idiot who submitted the story was clearly--read his words, his bias--an Intel nut, who was ready to jump the gun and blame AMD for the problem which is Gateway's fault. Now, look at the commentary by Slashdot guy timothy right after the quote from the submitter, that it appears to be a Gateway problem not an AMD problem.
What you must understand is that motherboards by Gateway, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Packard-Bell (yuck), and most other big-name systems manufacturers are substandard pieces of junk. To begin with, they are usually so tightly integrated that they have no available AGP slot and few PCI slots, with integrated crappy audio unfit for an old Gravis Ultrasound, integrated video that's four or six generations behind and shares system memory instead of using its own, an integrated NIC which is okay since a NIC is a NIC is a NIC but often it has an IRQ conflict with whatever you plug into the PCI slot, and uses ancient in-house circuitry designed for older chips and manufactured in some third-world hellhole by people who are more skilled with using stone implements than modern silicon-working machinery, by third-tier motherboard manufacturers whom you wouldn't trust to make a decent wristwatch much less a functional motherboard. The BIOSes are almost always in-house vendor-specific stuff, and usually nonstandard and way behind in their support of anything recent. Which is why when you buy a Gateway system it comes with, in addition to the OS, a "system restoration CD" with custom drivers because Windows doesn't even work properly on such a nonstandard shitty motherboard with crufty old custom logic without special nonstandard drivers. The Gateway 1 GHz motherboard in question is manufactured by Jabil. Ever heard of them? Few have or ever will, because they produce crap that no one would ever buy unless it were in a Gateway box with pretty cow-colored cardboard all over it.
This is all, completely, totally, absolutely, undoubtedly a Gatway problem. AMD's Athlon does not bear any responsibility whatsoever for this. Intel zealots will want to exploit it and blame AMD, but the fact remains that the Athlon gives superior performance numbers now that the L2 cache has been integrated on-die, and that there is no problem with the 1 GHz or any other Athlon.
You're on to something. This would make a great poll:
:-)
Who would you most like to see in jail?
1) CmdrTaco
2) Hemos
3) michael
4) Jon Katz
5) Roblimo
6) Janet Reno
7) Bill Gates
8) everyone at Intel
9) Jack Straw
10) Metallica
11) Hemos' new wife, CmdrTaco's gf, and Natalie Portman, in a prison shower scene like in "Caged Heat"
12) Cowboy Neal and Whalen Smithers, in a prison shower scene like in "Cellblock Cumpanions"
Of course, poor Jon Katz would win, even though in our hearts we all know we want that prison shower scene with the girls. Except for the ten percent of us who studies say would want to see the Cowboy Neal/Smithers scene...
> The "spliting the 64-bit core into two x86 32-bit cores" idea could not possibly work efficiently.
t ml , every bit as complex as CISC ISAa like x86.
/. about x86 being so horrible and holding back progress is that you think x86 is "unsexy." And, it is. It's old and ugly. But it does the job more than well enough, thanks to modern processor designs which break down the x86 instructions and execute them in RISCy fashion. Do you prefer Alpha? Great, Alphas kick ass...except...well, I can get a nice un-sexy Athlon system together which will whomp all but the highest-end single processor Alpha system, thanks to increased clock speeds. The Athlon's FPU is even enough to make it outperform the lower-clocked Alpha, for less than half the price. And I can use more cards and peripherals and operating systems with the Athlon. Alpha ONLY makes sense on servers and high-end multiprocessor workstations, nowhere else.
That's a very definite declarative you just made, and a wise man once said "The less apt a man is to make declarative statements, the less apt he is to look like a fool in retrospect." Nothing personal, but it's always a bad idea to bandy about phrases like "could not possibly." Not too long ago, people thought that light "could not possibly" travel faster than it does in a vacuum, and well...
Point being, as much as you may know about processor architecture, you don't know as much as the AMD design team. If at one point they thought it possible to design a processor which could perform as I mentioned above, then it is doubtless possible, even if they have since abandoned the idea in favor of something easier to design.
You know what else "could not possibly work efficiently"? Utilizing a VLIW core to process an ISA overlay which exists in software. I mean, that's just such a terribly inefficient concept that it couldn't possibly be worth doing, right? The VLIW core of such a badly designed processor would have to be so powerful and clocked so high that it would consume far more power than is necessary to run a normal x86 processor, right? As we all know, such conventional thinking turned out to be very, very mistaken. Transmeta's Crusoe has proven that such a thing can be done, though few would have ever thought it would work and work so well.
I think that should prove my point, but let me continue de-FUDifying your post.
> x86 *is* a terrible ISA and backwards compatibility *does* hold back tech, both
> in terms of performance and price/performance.
I already admitted that x86 is a poor ISA--of course it is, it's ancient; pre-Cambrian by the standards of microprocessor tech. However, thanks to good compilers the ISA is as easy to write for as any other--few people do handwritten assembler any more, for any ISA. And yes, it is inefficient--but most current x86 processors actually use a RISC-like core to process data after it has been decoded in hardware from the CISC x86 ISA into smaller RISCy instructions; being done in efficient hardware, little overhead occurs and performance is impressive from something like an Athlon. The net effect of that is that you get RISC-like performance with backward compatibility with very little overhead. And, let us not forget that contemporary RISC processors are, as noted at http://arstechnica.com/cpu/4q99/risc-cisc/rvc-1.h
The main reason people such as yourself complain on
So, what should we replace x86 with on the desktop? Gee, UltraSparcs run around 10 grand for entry-level boxes, so that's not realistic. How about StrongARM? Very poor FPU performance and very low clockspeeds, don't make me laugh. Itanium? Intel will price those out of reach of God for the next few years. Oh, wait, I know: PowerPC. And yes, PPC is a great architecture, very powerful and extensible. I would love for x86 to be supplanted by PPC, but that'll never happen because Motorola and Big Blue have a stranglehold on production and have no financial need to push up clockspeeds and puch to high production levels--IBM uses them in some of their own boxes, but doesn't have reason to push out lots of them since Apple is the only other game in town--other PPC boards have remained very fringe despite the release of the CHRP specs. Non-geeks aren't interested in non-Apple PPC based systems. Learn to live with that for the next several years at least. Aside from which, thanks to the ever-increasing x86 clockspeeds, top-tier Athlons and Willamettes will be outperforming top-tier PPCs for a while.
> backwards compatibility *does* hold back tech, both in terms of performance and price/performance
I think I just disproved that, too. x86 processors consistently outperform all others on price/performance ratio. Come up with a better solution or shut up. There are many other ISAs out there, and new ones coming, and yet not a single one of them can unseat x86 on price/performance, where it counts. The x86 ISA is old and ugly--but processor designers have come up with very sexy ways to push its performance up, by melding RISC core technologies with the older CISC instruction decoders. And then, they use brute force of higher clockspeeds to outperform most of the competition, and to outprice all the competition. It's not holding us back at all, it's forcing us to innovate cores and to brute force clockspeeds well above all other processors.
And that isn't even counting the importance on price/performance of maintaining backward compatibility. The same software can be re-used through many upgrades, which is even more important for businesses who've developed custom software solutions than it is for individuals.
Not to mention the lack of competition and subsequent higher prices which would be inherent in any new ISAs. Why the fuck aren't Alphas and UltraSparcs running at higher clockspeeds and costing less, eh? Because there's no competition. The ISAs are owned and licensed by single companies, who don't feel the pressure to do more, faster, better, like x86 companies do. Look at Intel's snail-pace development in the desktop range before AMD started turning up the heat. x86 is, effectively, an open-source ISA, *the* open-source ISA. That's why they're unmatched on price/performance. If Itanium or any other proprietary ISA becomes the new standard, we're all fucked.
So, think before you hand out that party-line BS about x86 being so terrible. x86 is responsible for the home computer revolution, and without it the Internet would have remained a toy for universities. Think about it.
The nice thing about Sledgehammer and any derived desktop versions will be that the processor core will be able to recognize between 32- and 64-bit apps, and switch between them. I'm not sure if it's still true of the current design, but early on the AMD folks were saying that Sledgehammer would be able to work with 32-bit apps by effectively "splitting" the core as if it were 2 32-bit x86 cores working in tandem, therefore doubling the number of 32-bit instructions that a normal core would be able to deal with at any given clock cycle. Likwise, for 64-bit apps the core would work in lockstep like a normal 64-bit core. Interesting, if the concept still holds true...
/.ers bitch about x86 being such a horrible ISA (it is, but who cares unless you're unlucky enough to have to code in assembler...), and about the desire for backwards-compatibility holding tech back (sure it does, but it also saves time, effort, and apps, for the user), there are advantages. First of all, I'll still be able to multi-boot Windows 98 on my future Sledgehammer to play all those wonderful old DOS and early Windows games I've collected over the years and come to love dearly--it'll be ages and ages before Linux or anything else is able to effectively emulate Windows well enough to get top-notch performance from even fairly old games, and even then most of that will be thanks to increased processor power (like emulating an Apple ][c on my 400MHz processor--easy because the whole damned machine can be executed virtually thanks to processing muscle many, many times more than the original). Not just that, but businesses with legacy, custom x86 software will be able to upgrade with virtually no software costs. Backwards-compatibility may induce cruft, but is often desirable for both personal and business reasons. I look forward, two or so years from now, to being able to run 64-bit Linux, Windows 98, BeOS, and maybe Windows 2002, all on the same AMD box. Now, if only someone would create a VMS environment for x86... ;-)
At any rate, it *will* be able to run 32-bit apps natively, not through emulation as with Merced--err, Itanium (dumb name). As much as many
Umm, so what if a car's catalytic converter (I guess that's what you mean when you say "car catalyst") is currently made of expensive materials like platinum or rhodium? You're assuming no one will innovate to bring prices down. If a company can find a way to make a catalytic converter using cheap alloys, that company could wipe up the competition in sales--so there's pressure to innovate. Companies always invest a lot in R&D, and often invent exotic but cheap alloys that can do the same thing as more expensive materials. TECH DOESN'T SIT STILL, it moves forward. People will eventually invent cheaper ways to do any given task, to create any given object. That includes catalytic converters and LCD screens. Not that we'll need catalytic converters in ten or fifteen years, since the electric car is becoming more of a reality and even more of a necessity, what with OPEC's price-fixing bullshit.
Hopefully, the Crusoe Netwinder will be as fully-functional as the current Netwinder family, and not "just" the "gateway" product mentioned in the article. After all, it could be used as more than just a gateway/firewall/router type of box; I'd love to use one as a small file server networked to my current AMD box. All I need is for it to have a PCI slot capable of using a Promise IDE RAID card; it would free up a PCI slot and a couple drive bays from my current computer, and I'd be very happy with it--serving files to a local box isn't so processor-intensive that the Crusoe would be overwhelmed.
I've been hoping that the Crusoe would make it into some desktop products like the Netwinder, since notebook products are inevitably too bloody expensive (and fairly useless to me, anyway--drive bays! I need more drive bays! not a hobbled travelling PC). After all, not everyone wants/needs the screaming-fast performance of an 800MHz Athlon; some of us want a Crusoe desktop machine for both the "wow factor" and to support the company, but given the nature of the new processor and its chipset DIY commodity mobos and retail processors aren't realistic for any time soon.
Personally, my old 400MHz K6-2 is still fast enough for everything I do on a daily basis--the occasional video clip rendering notwithstanding (just leave the box alone for a few hours, and...), and I bought the thing over a year ago to support AMD even though the Inetl Celeron 366 was faster for the same price. I can't in good conscience buy five-year-old tech from Intel, I have to support competition in the market--and now with Thunderbird and Duron it looks like AMD is finally tromping Intel on all fronts, hooray for supporting the underdog. Look at all the good we who have supported AMD through the dark ages have now brought about: AMD chips that whomp Intel, but just as significant, lower Intel prices and higher Intel clockspeeds. How can self-respecting geeks buy Intel, knowing that Intel's own roadmap had us all still using processors in the 400-600MHz range right now, with AMD's Athlon being the only thing which picked up the pace? And now, because of AMD, Willamette is going to be released not just for servers, but as a replacement for the ancient-cored P!!! with the P!!! Coppermine becoming their new low-end processor to compete against Duron. Intel had been planning to shove that integrated bullshit Timna (think Cyrix MediaGX) down our throats as a Celeron replacement, with the P!!! for higher-end consumers, and the Willamette for high-end workstations and servers only. That's what their roadmaps said before AMD put the Athlon squeeze on. Folks, unless you need a dual- or quad-processor box *right now*, don't support Intel--they don't deserve it. AMD is now the real innovator, even though they're still the little guy. And Transmeta, support Transmeta as well--they're innovating in different and commendable ways. But there's no excuse for supporting Intel, the company which was going to move us at a snail's pace until AMD stepped it up.
Anyway, I was planning to turn my old 400MHz box into a fileserver at the end of the year/early next year when I can get my hands on a dual Athlon motherboard, but I'd gladly buy a Crusoe desktop to do that fileserving. Thank you, Rebel.com, if you follow through and make it good.
So, am I the only one who wants a Crusoe desktop, or are there other technogeeks out there who'll buy a Crusoe desktop system aither in its Netwinder incarnation or otherwise?
Notice the one and only fact which is important when contemplating the fact that companies have already been accepting Rambus' claims to DDR patents: they're all Japanese companies which have knuckled under. Japanese companies operate under the Keiretsu (sp?) system, in which companies cooperate and share patented IP for small royalties, building up strategic relationships and making the companies interdependant and strategically allied. By knuckling under to Rambus right now, Toshiba et al feel that they'll end up getting better, lower, licensing terms from Rambus, and they're right...except...for the US and other non-Japanese based companies. Remember Micron, for example? They'll simply fight this in court because Americans and Europeans don't do business this way. We don't believe in Keiretsu (sp?) systems stifling competition by patenting everything and sharing it only with "preferred" partners to engender a market dominance/monopoly. We especially don't believe in such systems when they exclusively benefit foreign companies. Look for the patent to be invalidated in the US and Rambus and its early-adopter partners to get anally fucked by the lack of an American patent, making any company here able to produce DDR SDRAM and related tech at 2-3 percent cheaper margins than the Japanese and some others. After all, there's plenty of prior art here, especially by Big Blue. One thing you can definitely count on about the American patent system is, it benefits American companies over foreign ones when it comes to patent disputes. This isn't even mentioning the EU, which takes a dim view of companies trying to stifle competition by forcing competing tech to pay up or get out based on very shaky IP claims. Rambus' own admittance to this being the case, will be brought up in Court both in the US and EU and be part of their undoing.
I'm a proud user of Netscape 3.04. It plays well with others, and apps can't connect with it like they can with IE. App makers who want to be underhanded know that IE is available to "hijack" if they really want to, but there's no way they can count on an ancient version of Netscape being installed and IE being denied permission to contact the Net. Windows Explorer is completely denied permission to send packets anywhere. I'll get Mozilla when it reaches M17 and switch to that, but for now Netscape 3.04 is entirely adequate. I can't complain about its quick and admirable performance. Its only shortcoming is that pages created sloppily using Style Sheets and Microsoft-extended protocols display oddly, but they still display well enough.
:-)
Who would want to use IE, anyway?
Seriously, for all the (understandable) bluster about privacy, we have not yet gotten to the point that online privacy isn't easy to have. Just like I don't want anyone to hack or flood my box, therefore I run a firewall (Black Ice), I don't want applications uploading info about me so I run an "internal firewall" called Zone Alarm which allows me to forbid any but permitted apps from sending packets. I don't want advertisers to track me with cookies, so I set cookie permissions through Junkbuster Proxy and have the added benefit of blocking ads altogether, plus quashing the "refer" and "user-agent" headers. I protect my "real" e-mail from spammers by having throw-away addresses for USENET and other public posts. If any website I visit demands a home address, and actually checks the validity of the address I enter, I pick a random name and address from an online directory (underhanded but it works)--otherwise I just write "fuck you" on every line of the form.
At first look that seems like it might be a lot of work, but it isn't. All of those applications are set up with a few clicks (even Junkbuster, text-based, has pre-made blockfiles available), and no detailed info is necessary--there is zero learning curve for the average Windows user. The trick is convincing the average windows user to install a few privacy-safeguarding firewall apps, to not accept or delete cookies from all but sites they want to give info to, and to submit false information to anyone who wants their address online. If people could be convinced to take similar safeguarding actions, then companies would cease to bother gathering such data in the first place. As I said, the trick is educating the public--the actual safeguarding of online privacy is quite easy, even for an average Win user.
The threat comes when even such simple safeguards as installing some software and not giving a real address can no longer work. Right now it takes minimal efforts to protect privacy, but it's foreseeable that companies will create ways of locking us in. If there's ever infrastructure to connect data about the ISP used by a particular address, for example, to visitors' IPs, it would make it more difficult to simply give false information to websites which demand addresses. Likewise, if every site demanded cookies and malfunctioned without them, it would be a bit more difficult to keep private although you could still keep cookies persisten on a per-session basis.
People are so pissed off about online companies trading information about consumers. But the real answer is educating consumers not to give up personal information in the first place, because then there's nothing for companies to trade. Doubleclick knows nothing about my online habits and never will.
The real threat is offline privacy, not online. Credit companies are evil, with intimate details of your buying habits available to them through non-Internet sources. Few people understand that when they sign up for a "club card" at a grocery store, every item they buy with it is recorded for posterity, from food to drugs to hygeine products. Few people realize that if they ever fail to pay a bill on time, even a magazine subscription or something else small it can linger in the files of credit bureaus for all time and fuck with their credit ten years down the line. Few people realize that their banks are required to report all sorts of sensitive financial data to the government thanks to laws purportedly designed to make it easier to force payments from deadbeat dads, but which apply to everyone with a bank account. Few people realize that the FBI knows exactly how many guns you own and what type (unless you bought them in a private sale), not for the public's protection but so that whenever the type of gun you own is outlawed they can knock on your door to collect it.
In short, worry more about privacy off-line than on-line. There are steps you can take online, but off-line you're fucked.
I love that guy, and I've never met him personally. He's just so incredibly likable and nice in everything he's ever said in public. Plus, despite the fact that Apple moved away from openness pretty quickly, I'm sure it wasn't Woz's idea. He originally wanted to give all the specs away for free. He was an open-source hardware guru saddled with Steve "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs. Not that that's bad, because if Woz hadn't had Jobs by his side to handle the business end, Apple wouldn't exist today. Unfortunately, businesses need the suits to make money...
But anway, it couldn't have gone to a nicer person. Take RMS for example--love the philosophy, but I'd hate to have a drink with the man. He'd intimidate the hello out of me, correct my use of the term "open source", and not be much fun. But Woz, you just get the feeling, would be a great guy to socialize with and not be intimidating despite his legendary status.
Oops, I'm blubbering. Time to go before I embarass myself and offer him a blow job or something... [kidding...]
Twofish isn't all that more difficult to understand than Blowfish, because it's basically just Blowfish with a few improvements and a change in block size as per AES standards.
The key to the popularity of Blowfish over Twofish is merely that Blowfish has been around for many more years. That would normally mean that the cipher is more "proven" than Twofish and others, except that the AES candidates which are still in the running have defied more cryptanalytic attacks than most other ciphers because of the barrage of attacks engendered by the AES process. This leaves the fact that Blowfish has been around longer and therefore gotten into more stuff as its only advantage.
Blowfish and Twofish are both very, very fast on 32-bit microprocessors, which is why they're generally the best contenders for inclusion in crypto programs. Triple-DES, on the other hand, is ungodly slow anywhere but in specialized hardware--because it was meant only as a stop-gap measure for when the 56-bit key length of DES became too short. As for AES candidates with potential, MARS is slower than Twofish but has an extraordinary security margin. It's the only cipher which uses all forms of cryptological tranformations, and therefore should be resistant to most forms of attack if not all. MARS is the one AES contender I'd trust as much as Twofish.
I mean, why is my own PC more secure than those on which the Government keeps classified information? Not that anyone would want to steal my HD and its 15 Gigs of porn or anything, but the point is if anyone stole my computer all they'd get is a standard Windows installation and a couple of encrypted drives. But from the way the reports have been depicting it, the classified data on these stolen computers wasn't encrypted.
Why oh why is my fetish for doggie porn and Britney Spears fakes more well-guarded than classified data? If I can get into the habit of entering a passphrase to access my data drives, why can't the DoD, State Department, et al. make disk encryption an across-the-board standard for all employees dealing with sensitive data? We can be sure that this isn't the case, because otherwise the government would be downplaying its irresponsibility by mentioning that the stolen data encrypted and secure. So the question becomes, why isn't this policy, and when will they wake up and make it policy?
[For the curious, I use a free Windows program called Scramdisk which can make encrytpted "virtual drives" or encrypt whole partitions. Its source code is freely available, but is not GPL. It's very secure with a choice of 256-bit Twofish or eight other ciphers. It ensures that family and friends will not uncover my secret she-male fixation. Oops, did I type that out loud?]
The only problem is, a 1 GHz Crusoe chip wouldn't perform as well as an equivalently clocked P!!! or Athlon. Of course, you're also not going to see 1 GHz P!!! or Athlon notebooks for a long time anyway, thanks to the huge power consumption issues, but I just wanted to remind of the "megahertz trap" too many people fall into, thinking that the clock speed of the processor has anything to do with its actual speed.
Most Slashdot readers know the difference between performance and clockspeed, but I think this will be an issue that'll be important when Transmeta-powered equipment hits the mainstream notebook/PDA/appliance market: Joe Sixpack and Joe Marketing will get their Crusoe-powered notebooks, and realize, "Hey, what gives, this 1 GHz Crusoe notebook isn't any better than my P!!! 600 notebook. I've been cheated!" I fear that the clockspeed/performance differential between Crusoe and x86 processors will become an albatross around Transmeta's neck, possibly damaging its reputation among non-geeks. After all, the non-Geek would read that it takes a 1 GHz Crusoe to be as powerful as a 600MHz P!!! or Athlon*, and deduce that somehow the Crusoe is inferior, not realizing the Crusoe's strong points and completely different architecture. I fear that magazines for the semi-computer-literate will fuel the fire, magazines like those in ZD's stable of consumer-targeted stuff. A similar thing dogged the K6-2, though the K6-2 certainly didn't have Crusoe's low power consumption or nifty new architecture; but, not being clock-for-clock as powerful as P!!! or even Celeron did hurt its image.
*: The comparison here is pulled out of my ass rather than from actual figures since I don't have the time to look them up/calculate a good comparison, but they shouldn't be too far off the mark.
You seem to suffer from the common corporate post-Reaganomics delusion that companies are entitled to make money, that they somehow have a right to make profits. But that isn't true. You see, corporations exist and are granted certain rights, akin to the rights of an individual, based on a body of legislation and case law going back to the last century. But at any time those rights could be taken away through legislative or judicial action, because a corporation is a fictitious person and not a real one. We granted companies certain rights because it was expediant to do so, and good for the consumer--it offered more incentive for companies to expand and innovate.
:-)
But if companies cease to serve the needs of consumers, corporate rights can be taken away as easily as they were granted. That's why the "no media" policy which is becoming attractive to software makers won't last long if the voters of the U.S. launch a major campaign to have legislation introduced which would outlaw the practice. You see, a corporation has no inherent right to sell me a license to use software, without including the installation media. In fact, a corporation has no inherent right to exist at all--they exist merely because their existence is generally beneficial to consumers, not vice versa.
I want Microsoft and Adobe to continue fucking consumers in the ass, because the more they do so, the more likely it is that courts will overturn UCITA and similar legislation, and the more likely it is that laws will be passed to require media to be provided and prices to be fair. The corporations may have considerable sway and lobbying ability on Capitol Hill, but they don't have the one thing we consumers have: votes. Enough voters will start complaining that their computers say "Insert Windows Install Media" and yet their OEM says Microsoft told them not to provide media, that laws will be passed and assurances made. Microsoft has no inherent rights to do as it pleases. Meanwhile, more and more people will be forced to download ISO images of real Windows installation media, and that's a good thing because, I repeat, Microsoft has no inherent rights to keep those media to itself. It has only the rights that we, as a society, have granted it, and those rights can be taken away. Those rights are in fact fictitious rights since a corporation is a fictitious person under the law.
I in fact support piracy of software from big corporations like Microsoft and Adobe, though not from small-time operations. Why? People have real rights, and corporations have legal-fiction rights, and big corporations have been abusing their rights as of late. Abuse it and lose it. Microsoft has no inherent right to charge me $89 for a simple upgrade (Win98) to a piece of software I paid a lot of money for in the first place (Win95 A), so I burnt a copy of a friend's CD. Did I take money from the mouths of hungry programmers? No, Microsoft is not a hungry programmer, it is a powerful multinational corporation which has been so abusive of its rights as to suffer the ultimate in corporate punishments: break-up under anti-trust laws. It employs programmers, none of whom will have to go hungry because I helped myself to a copy of a Win98 upgrade CD. I wouldn't have bought the CD anyway, because I honestly can't afford it--I spend on average about $100 a week inclusive of food, so I wasn't going to buy that CD ever. Did my illicit copy of that CD harm anyone, then? No.
Some people would say, "But that doesn't matter, because it's not your property, it belongs to someone else and you have no right to take it." I had more right to take it than M$ had to withold it, because I am a real person and Microsoft is a fictitious entity; I have natural rights, but M$ has only un-natural ones created in the last century not for the purpose of benefitting companies, but for the purpose of benefitting consumers. And now that Microsoft has seen fit to try to strangle consumers once again, I feel entitled to upgrade to Win2K for free. I think I'll go to USENET and find an ISO image. And do you know who I'll be hurting? No one. Microsoft has abused its power to force competitors out and force prices up--prices on hardware have fallen tenfold in recent years, while performance has met or exceeded Moore's Law, and yet software prices have remained high yet software has hardly improved. I wasn't lying when I said that Win98 was a mere upgrade to Win95, and we all know it. Likewise, years ago in the college lab I used a PowerMac 7200 running Adobe Photoshop 3.0, and yet the newest version of Photoshop is at least as expensive and doesn't have much more useful functionality. The largest software companies are price-gouging, and since they have no right to do that I *do* have the right to neutralize their gouging.
The same goes for music. Up until 60 years ago, musicians didn't make money from album sales--and today most still don't since record companies gouge, and blame it on middlemen who in fact are usually owned by the self-same record company. Musicians made money by holding concerts. Then along came record companies, who capitalized on new technologies to create an industry where once there was nothing. See, the recording industry isn't about music--that's what concerts are about. The recording industry is about selling recordings of music which, while nice to listen to in your home, don't compare at all to a real live concert experience. Therefore, no matter what happens to the record companies, musicians will still be able to make money off concerts just as they always have. The recording industry has no inherent rights to sell me something which, until the selfsame recording industry had laws passed to prevent it, I could have gotten for myself by attending a concert and bringing a recording device. Screw that. The recording industry has engaged in unlawful price-fixing for years, as the results of federal actions against them have recently proven, and since I have several hundred CDs on my shelf which I was unlawfully forced to pay a price-fixed premium for, I am damn well entitled to have a gig or two of mp3 files I got from USENET and Napster. Not to mention that, again, a corporation has no inherent right to be able to sell me something which, were it not for the meddling of the very same industry, I could get for free whenever I go to a concert--and I go to more concerts now that I don't buy CDs. Once we reduce the recording industry to little more than a streamlined distribution channel to sell cheap CDs and a scouting industry for new musicians, instead of a corporate price-fixing monstrosity with more rights than the consumers have, musicians will by-and-large be much happier and will make a larger share in the profits. I reiterate that such industries have the right to exist only insofar as they can benefit the consumer, and right now the recording industry is choking the consumer with unlawful cartel pricing structures and, dare I say it, too damn many NSYNC pre-packaged culture-killing mind-numbing artificial groups designed to exploit stupid teenagers and turn them into mindless buying drones.
In summation, fuck the price-gouging corporations which have ceased their purpose of serving us and have instead started usurping our rights and raping our asses whenever they get the chance just to make a few dollars more. Bill Gates and the chairman of Sony can lick my asshole, because they have no right to get into my wallet by taking away my rights to a fair and non-cartel/monopoly pricing structure.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Legal Disclaimer: I lied about having any pirated software and mp3s. I own only licensed software and licensed music.
Catchy title for a research paper, eh? ;-) But seriously, in Hawking's *Brief History of Time* he tells us exactly how a black hole could do like this one is apparently doing. The radio emissions aren't the most important part; the really interesting thing is that black holes can actually potentially "create matter" accounting for the "from suck to blow" effect mentioned here.
See, space isn't really a vacuum, as Hawking points out in his book. In actuality, in the vacuum of space particles and their associated anti-particles blink in and out of existence constantly--they appear, move apart from one another an imperceptible distance, and then are immediately drawn back together and "cancel out" and disappear with no remnants. So, although we on the macroscopic level perceive space to be empty, on a sub-atomic scale it is quite full and active.
But that's where black holes come in. The only force strong enough to prevent those sub-atomic particles from re-colliding and blinking out of existence is, you guessed it, the event horizon of a black hole. If the particles pop into existence right at the event horizon, and one crosses the event horizon and the other doesn't, then both particles will be forced into continued existence instead of cancelling out--the anti-particle can get sucked into the black hole and actually cause the black hole's mass to decrease by one particle when it cancels out part of the black hole's central point, while the particle which escapes becomes part of the rest of the universe just like any other particle. Hawking mentioned this as a possible way that black holes could decrease in mass/size of event horizon over time, and this process could account for the "blow" effect of the black hole mentioned in the article if, for whatever physical reasons, the black hole's situation is conducive to the condition of capturing these anti-particles at its event horizon and thus "emitting" particles. It's complicated, but I've tried to explain it as simplistically as possible, so forgive me if the explanation is slightly inaccurate. But, that's how this could happen.
Last time I heard a discussion about supercomputers, someone said that a supercomputer had to have a sustainable throughput of at least 1 Gigaflop. Is that accurate? If not, what *is* the definition of a supercomputer these days?
c k --interesting, if practically useless, scores...
Which reminds me, if anyone is interested in the "flopsability," to coin a silly-sounding word, of common x86 processors, visit http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?pc/temp/TW/linpa
But, why would anyone want to say "I conceived the use of a purpose-designed network employing packet switching in which the stream of bits is broken up into short messages, or 'packets', that find their way individually to the destination, where they are reassembled into the original stream," when one could put it as simply and eloquently as Al Gore when he said "I invented the Internet"? :-)
But seriously, it's sad whenever we lose one of the pioneers. Not too many people these days really know or understand that the Internet didn't just "materialize" in the mid-nineties, and so the pioneering work done by so many universities and by so many involved with Arpanet and Usenet gets ignored in the popular consciousness. If you tell the average Internet user that the roots of the Internet really go back at least to the sixties with the work that was being done at universities and in the government, they'll stare at you in disbelief. Or apathy...
I can see it now: Tomb Raider IV: PCS Edition, in glorious 120 by 150 monochrome. "Yes Lara, shake that little green ass! Jump! Shoot! Darn, I can't seem to find the Phallus of Kefru in this level..." Which reminds me, I wonder how many processor cycles have been spent rendering Lara's impressive cleavage since the first Tomb Raider came out. I think with that kind of processing power we could have cracked 128-bit Blowfish by now... ;-)
> Wavelet image compression is lossy. Therefore you can get much smaller file
:-) I wasn't talking about the type of compression, I was clearly talking about its application to image files. I repeat: *useless*. There are better tools for the job, and this is coming from someone who works with image files of different formats and uses intensely, day after day. JP2K is a bad hack, which attempts to replace other, better, tools.
> sizes compared to PNG, which is lossless as you point out. One of the reasons
> to use wavelet compressed images is for high compression.
Yes, you *do* get much smaller file sizes with Wavelet images than with PNG, depending on quality settings of course; but I'm afraid it's a case of me not being clear, rather than a mistake about the technology. What I meant to say in that sentence, and expressed poorly, is that I doubt an equivalently high-quality JP2K image would be at all smaller than the same image saved as a PNG, nor would an equivalently low-quality JP2K save much space over a regular JPEG. But I should have used the "Preview" button on that and caught my poor expression of the notion. My intent was to separate the high-quality from the low-quality uses of JP2K, and state that PNG is better for high-quality and JPEG is at least as useful for low- to medium-quality. There is absolutely no need to use a clunky hack of a file format to do the work of 2 other formate which are better suited to the task. It's like using a Swiss Army knife in place of a screwdriver and a pair of scissors--it'll do the job, but not as easily and comfortably as just having a screwdriver and a pair of scissors ready.
> Utter crap. Wavelet compressed images offer a couple benefits. They look better
> than standard jpgs if both are highly compressed
But as for the image quality of Wavelet compressed images, I have to respectfully disagree that they look better than existing formats. They re-scale to a larger size better, but that begs the question of why you aren't just using a larger JPEG in the first place. Remember the "clunky hack" comment I made above? Doubly so. Plus, re-scaling the images back upwards *does* result in loss of quality, just a different sort of loss from that found in regular JPEGS. You see, as you re-scale a Wavelet compressed image upwards, you lose detail information--the repeated color areas often start to look dull and not nearly as detailed. This is the opposite of JPEG images which, when re-scaled, show too many artifacts of the type of compression which was designed in the first place to preserve that detail. So, Wavelet compressed images once re-scaled lack detail, whereas JPEG gets some of the detail wrong when re-scaled due to compression artifacts. Before you get obnoxious again and say I'm full of crap, or whatever, the reason I *know* what I'm talking about is because I work with graphics files all the time, and often have to scale them up or down for various uses. I've also experimented with most of the availably formats, including the LuraWave Format (LWF) which is essentially very, very similar to JP2K. So don't get your panties in a bundle, I know what I'm talking about.
Which brings me to another point as to why JP2K is useless: after much experimenting, I came to the conclusion that the best way to store graphics for high-quality non-bandwidth-limited usage is PNG, plain and simple, there's nothing more useful and compact for the quality. For bandwidth or disk space limited uses, nothing is usually better than JPEG with the proper settings, especially for compatibility's sake; however, many times PNG would be a better answer in terms of both size and quality *if you reduce the palette* to between 256 and 5000 colors, depending on the image and the amount of colors you can take away before the average human eye even notices. Even on a big 32-bit screen, many images--even photographic ones--look better as PNGs with about 1000 colors than as JPEGS with 30+ thousand colors. One reason is the retention of detail with PNG, which is NOT present with Wavelet-compressed images. I repeat, make your images the right size before you save them in their finished formats, and no one will have to resize them later to either too-low-detail resized JP2Ks or too-artifected JPEG. And at any rate, PNG remains the best format in terms of ability to be resized well, even with lowered palette counts. So I repeat, *JP2K is USELESS.*
> Oh yeah, and aside from images, wavelet compression has uses in audio. Useless
> isn't a word I would describe it with.
Don't get all anooying.
> My question to the group here is, if JPEG2000 takes off and
> companies and individuals who have not previously declared
> IP come forward and want royalties, will the standard be hurt?
Of course the standard would be hurt; in fact, I dare wager it would die. There simply isn't any place in the crowded market for any more IP-laden so-called "standards." Quite frankly, the existing JPEG format is good enough for most Internet images requiring 16 bit color, and for high-quality lossless images nothing beats PNG. I seriously doubt that the JP2K (needs shortening) standard will use less disk space/bandwidth than PNG, and it definitely won't create better quality since PNG is essentially lossless in the first place. JP2K decoding will also be more hardware-intensive than PNG, meaning it will be entirely inadequate for low-powered cellphones/PDAs/other portable appliances, which negates the benefits of being able to encode once for streaming from different bandwidths.
Another advantage of PNG which most people don't realize is that by reducing the color palette of low-res web graphics to 256, the same palette of GIF, you get a file which typically can be only 25-75% of the size of the same file saved as GIF. But that's a non-issue since the GIF patent is running out soon, and most people never get shaken down now as it is.
In other words, there's really no need for JP2K. Since PNG hasn't been picked up very well outside of Japan, where it is a fairly common format (just go to a japan.binaries.* anime newsgroup to see some...iluminating...examples), look for 1 of 2 things to happen to JP2K if it is indeed royalty-free: either it will be incorporated into new Web browsers and image viewers by default since it's heralded as the JPEG for the new millenium, and slowly take over with old JPEGs still dominating for a couple of years, or no one will care and continue to use JPEGS since they're easier and more standardized. If however someone pushes IP claims and the new standard is tainted with charges, look for no one to ever, ever, ever use it except for Adobe Photoshop and its clones; it will never come into general usage. Look at how common the similar LuraWave Format is, after all: not common at all.
Fact is, there's no need at all for JP2K. Wavelet compression has a coolness factor for geeks, but it's essentially useless. As I said, JPEG and GIF are already at the "sweet spots" for bandwidth/features, especially with the GIF patent issue ending soon. PNG with a reduced palette would be ideal for a lower-bandwidth GIF replacement if only it'd be heralded as a standard and PNG support were made almost universal, and for high-res images PNG is already perfect, lossless, beautiful. There's just no need at all for JP2K, and it would have been much better for everyone if the standards group had just endorsed PNG and the options of reduced-palette variants instead of uselessly inventing a new and IP-complicated standard.
> Is there a place for a part-2 which contains IP which is not free?
Yes: in a musty corner of a Photoshop dialogue box, where it will stay and not bother the rest of us.
> And, what applications does the community here see as being crucial
> for the adoption of JPEG2000?
The more important question is: How can the JP2K group convince people that there's a need for a new standard to replace 2 that are working just fine for general Net use, and 1 more which is perfect for high-res graphics and can also create smaller-sized GIF replacements when the palette is reduced in your image editor. We should just ignore JP2K and hope it goes away, since it's a resource-hog which doesn't make a better JPEG than JPEG, a better GIF than GIF, or a better PNG than PNG. But we should quietly implement it in Mozilla and Gimp and whatever else, just in case, as long as it's free.
Yes, nVidia is now king of 3D performance--by a slim but tangible margin. But the really interesting, freaky fact is that 3Dfx is now king of 3D visual quality. Thanks to 3Dfx's superior hardware-assisted implementation of 4x anti-aliasing, their visual quality kicks the crap out of nVidia's inferior technique. All of the reviews I've read linked over at AnandTech which were done with the drivers 3Dfx will ship with, rather than the older immature drivers which came with pre-release factory samples which had been floating around the review sites, state that the Voodoo 5 5500's 4x anti-aliasing and arguably its 2x anti-aliasing really trounce the visual quality of the GeForce 2's anti-aliasing.
The weird thing is that 3Dfx used to be the king of performance, evangelizing fill rate and frame rate over visual quality, and nVidia argued that visual quality was more important than fill rates. That's the essence of the whole argument that broke out when the TNT and TNT2 had 32-bit color but the Voodoo 3's had only 16-bit color but more speed. Now the roles are reversed. I feel like Alice, through the looking glass...
But unfortunately I fear that 3Dfx's superior image quality is just a fluke, and that they're touting it now because it's 3Dfx's only advantage. Remember that the Voodoo 4 and 5 were supposed to be out by last Christmas, before their design and fab difficulties, so effectively they're now a product cycle behind nVidia. If 3Dfx fails to treat the current emerging lineup as an "interim" line of products, and doesn't bust its collective ass to get another and vastly superior product cycle out the door before this Christmas, it will go down faster than a freshman at a frat party. Goodbye, 3Dfx.
I hope this doesn't happen, because I have respect for what 3Dfx did to advance 3D on the PC, and I'd hate to see yet another graphics company go bust, but at this point it looks grim for 3Dfx. The top of their current emerging lineup has superior image quality, perhaps the best in 3D right now, but at framerates which can't be considered more than just "passable." Their Voodoo 5 6000 is an utter joke, if and when it finally gets released; it'll cost twice as much as a GeForce 2, but definitely won't double the performance, and will require 4 chips and an external power connector. Yes, the very thought of such a massive, impressive piece of hardware makes me want to jam my slot 1 into a tight little socket 370, so to speak [nudge-nudge, wink-wink], but the card isn't financially sound since we know nVidia's next product cycle will probably surpass it.
But, anyway, it is interesting how the roles have reversed, and 3Dfx's visual quality is now their selling point while nVidia's raw performance is now their selling point. My poor ATI A-i-W 128 feels so...inadequate... I need some video card Viagra...
"I CLAIM THIS ISLAND IN THE NAME OF SPAIN!!!"
;-)
"But, is it an African island or a European island?"
Oops. My Karma just went down like an NT server...
Everybody but Mac is moving toward integrating the file browser with the Internet browser; just look at KDE and Be and their directions as examples. KDE is basically ripping off Win98's concept of browser integration, because it's a good concept, without all the bloat that is IE. And Be is steadily working towards unifying just about everything to do with file/net browsing. So, if IE is made a new company then MS will have 2 choices: re-code a new browser from scratch, or license IE from the new company. They're definitely not going to go back to the Win95 style shell because they're all about integrating the whole user experience from local files to Internet connectivity into something seamless. They're even migrating their whole Help system to an HTML base. So, they need a browser, and will pay the new company to license IE.
that sex isn't bad? That seeing movies with "mainstream" sexuality, or even "softcore porn" which is tame and not fetishistic, doesn't even harm kids? In most other civilized, non-Islamic nations, parents don't try so hard to shield their youngsters from the realities of sexuality, and the kids in those countries grow up healthier with fewer hang-ups and dysfunctions. I'm not one of those Jocelyn Elders liberals who thinks masturbation should be taught to kindergarteners, but by the time kids are 8 they've already heard about sex from all their friends, and are usually filled up with misconceptions and errors about sex. Kids should hear the facts about sex from their parents before they hear misconceptions and tall-tales from classmates. And as for stuff like the Playboy channel--hell, in France they show hardcore pornography on basic cable and softcore porn on late-night broadcast TV, and yet the French seem healthier and happier than we poor Puritanical Americans. When will Americans grow up and join the rest of the world in acknowledging that sex is not "dirty" or too private to be discussed in public, or have softcore porn on cable? It makes me ill to see how much violence we allow in PG-rated movies, or kids' cartoons, compared to the backwards restrictions placed on the sexuality that can be depicted in an R-rated movie. When they butchered Kubrick's *Eyes Wide Shut* for having softcore scenes nowhere near as vivid as shown on Cinemax at 11 PM any night of the week, I realized how alarmingly backwards our country really is. I'm glad the Supreme Court ruled correctly on this one, but I fear for thye future. Don't think that a Democrat in the White House to fill future Supreme Court vacancies is the option, either; Democrats want censorship, too, just for different reasons. Remember that Tipper Gore is almost single-handedly responsible for the ratings system for music which prevents teenagers from buying CDs with even mildly explicit lyrics about sex. I'm increasingly believing that Noam Chomsky was right, and that the two=party system we have is really just two sides to one party with no real, different, truly libertarian options at all...
With such a system, the risks are far greater than with simply using a regular, proven piece of software, with a passphrase. Have enough RAM so as not to need a swap partition or swapfile, and you avoid the risks of the passphrase being written to disk; a utility can then be used to "wipe" the RAM on shutdown and startup, to avoid a well-funded intruder with physical access to the machine being able to inspect the residual charges in the RAM, if this is a real security concern. The only real danger then is an intruder installing a keyboard sniffer, but an intruder who could do that would as easily be able to install software to capture the authentication from this fingerprint device. The inherent problem with a piece of hardware like this is that you can't be sure how secure the implementation is, whereas with open-source software the implementation can easily be reviewed. Rest assured that this hardware very likely has a security flaw--possibly one requested by the FBI/NSA, for "investigative" purposes. Remember the "Clipper Chip" initiative? Just because the FBI and NSA didn't win that argument doesn't mean that they haven't requested, and been granted, workarounds to the security afforded by other security devices. Trust only systems with *full documentation* which is publicly viewable.