You shouldn't be using 1x1 gifs for spacing anyway... In a decently designed website there is no need for them. Use CSS, or whatever else, but relying on 1x1 images for spacing isn't the brightest idea. It destroys the way HTML was indtended to function - structurally, with UI separated out. Why blame mozilla for having such difficulty making a browser work if the true culprits are the people abusing rendering implementations on specific browsers.
Apart from that, if anyone were to implement a 1x1 filterer, that obviously shouldn't effect layout, so it would still space things as before (to not break any web sites) but simply not load the images. Would only make your web server faster because of fewer requests.
Point taken, however you are talking about hardware and microcode emulator/optimizing software on the chip itself, I was talking about software.
Supporting realtime optimizations with optimized hardware is an eventual goal, however, if you look at the HP dynamo, a real world product, it's a piece of plain old software - optimizing (amongst other things) native code to run faster that directly natively.
Wrong!, Plex86 will only feature x86 virtualisation, emulating an x86 on an x86 would be silly. [My emphasis]
Things aren't that simple... emulation can actually be faster than native code do to real-time optimization possibilities. I already posted a message to this extent so I'll just quote it here, but think about the Crusoe, java (esp the improved JIT in jdk 1.3), and the like - emulation really is possible to do quickly.
I think the whole concept of emulation/VM is something to be embraced and which could _really_ revolutionize the computing model. So as opposed to encapsulating already native code to sneakily let it think it's running as a base system, go ahead and really change it, emulate it - don't just "bracket" it.
Why? Currently, we're essentially writing compilers for a non-existing platform. The x86 platform as originally seen has long been "dead", what we're seeing now is chips that convert this "universal" language into their own microops and then execute them. The internal structure of a P3 / Athlon has a large section dedicated to this very task. But what if we could throw all that away, and make a chip that simply crunches numbers as good as current technology allows? We have the making of a darn fast chip. If I had to make a completely uninformed guess, we could well stuff two "Athlons" (if we can still call them that) on the same die if the whole x86 ISA is dropped.
In comes the virtual machine... we simply convert the bytecode into native code and run. Sort of like java does it - but better, as we have a chip that can run faster and possibly more efficiently.
Guess what? Sun is already doing just that with MAJC. The point is, Plex86 should not try to run code natively at all. It simply happens to have a bytecode that's identical to the native code. This gives us an architechture that is far longer-lived than something that can run legacy x86 systems on x86 systems. This might be portable to newer things as well.
Proof that this sort of thing is possible is incarnate in the Transmeta Crusoe chip. Of course, they chose to have a chip that is really power efficient, but imagine a a chip that is to speed what Crusoe is to power - Yummy.
I've heard objections that speed gains in the architecture might be outweighed by speed losses in the transformation. This is not true. The optimizations that a run-time VM can do are quite astounding - it can not only decide to unroll loops when necessary, but to expand a frequent multiplication by a memory adress into constant bitshifts, it could dynamically choose what to place into registers far more wisely that a traditional compiler can, look ahead and do IO access before the program needs to... I am no expert, but there's obvious potential here.
And here again, there are some innovative people at work, just look at HP's Dynamo - which takes native code and does real time optimizations (actually it does more than this, and is an interesting read. Transmeta wasn't the first. One of the interesting things is that actual optimized native code can still run faster under dynamo than simply natively. Obviously, this isn't the case for all programs, but its certainly not the case that Emulation/VM-ing is by definition slower than native execution. And realize, we're talking about an architecture (originally PA-RISC but porting activities are ongoing I believe) that wasn't even designed for this sort of activity. A CPU with this in mind could well do even better.
So my conclusion is that we shouldn't emulate VMware, we should, well emulate. Weird as it may sound, emulation is the future.
--EMN
Re:Congradulations in order -- running DOS!
on
Plex86 Runs DOS
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· Score: 5
I think that the success they have had to date is truly not to be derided. But I also here see another Open Source project that could be breaking more interesting ground - as, unfortunately, many.
I'm sure there are enough people around here that have differing opinions about open source, but to head off discussion in that direction, it's merely an impression I have and I'm possibly wrong. I've never contributed a line of code - something I hope to change.
I think the whole concept of emulation/VM is something to be embraced and which could _really_ revolutionize the computing model. So as opposed to encapsulating already native code to sneakily let it think it's running as a base system, go ahead and really change it, emulate it - don't just "bracket" it.
Why? Currently, we're essentially writing compilers for a non-existing platform. The x86 platform as originally seen has long been "dead", what we're seeing now is chips that convert this "universal" language into their own microops and then execute them. The internal structure of a P3 / Athlon has a large section dedicated to this very task. But what if we could throw all that away, and make a chip that simply crunches numbers as good as current technology allows? We have the making of a darn fast chip. If I had to make a completely uninformed guess, we could well stuff two "Athlons" (if we can still call them that) on the same die if the whole x86 ISA is dropped.
In comes the virtual machine... we simply convert the bytecode into native code and run. Sort of like java does it - but better, as we have a chip that can run faster and possibly more efficiently.
Guess what? Sun is already doing just that with MAJC. The point is, Plex86 should not try to run code natively at all. It simply happens to have a bytecode that's identical to the native code. This gives us an architechture that is far longer-lived than something that can run legacy x86 systems on x86 systems. This might be portable to newer things as well.
Proof that this sort of thing is possible is incarnate in the Transmeta Crusoe chip. Of course, they chose to have a chip that is really power efficient, but imagine a a chip that is to speed what Crusoe is to power - Yummy.
I've heard objections that speed gains in the architecture might be outweighed by speed losses in the transformation. This is not true. The optimizations that a run-time VM can do are quite astounding - it can not only decide to unroll loops when necessary, but to expand a frequent multiplication by a memory adress into constant bitshifts, it could dynamically choose what to place into registers far more wisely that a traditional compiler can, look ahead and do IO access before the program needs to... I am no expert, but there's obvious potential here.
And here again, there are some innovative people at work, just look at HP's Dynamo - which takes native code and does real time optimizations (actually it does more than this, and is an interesting read. Transmeta wasn't the first. One of the interesting things is that actual optimized native code can still run faster under dynamo than simply natively. Obviously, this isn't the case for all programs, but its certainly not the case that Emulation/VM-ing is by definition slower than native execution. And realize, we're talking about an architecture (originally PA-RISC but porting activities are ongoing I believe) that wasn't even designed for this sort of activity. A CPU with this in mind could well do even better.
So my conclusion is that we shouldn't emulate VMware, we should, well emulate. Weird as it may sound, emulation is the future.
I completely concur with respect to the FUD that intel loves to spout...
I hope nobody forgot their ridiculous advertising scheme about "internet-power" chips. So idiotic a tale it's actually funny. (Microsoft FUD at least makes sense sometimes).
Or the hopeless Pentium 1GHz... anyone ever seen one? I've never seen one. The Gigahertz pentium is a paper monster.
Intel still has not clean up that disaster, and they now, to show their technical prowess, bring out a 1.13 GHz monster - in Slot1. I would be positively surprised if they can deliver this one, but even more so, I'ld be VERY surprised.
What also frightens me is the adoptation of SSE above 3dnow! - this paints the athlon in a needlessly bad light.
Then there is the absurd Rambus deal with intel. You should look at their "divine intervention" benchmarking data - anything less than divine intervention won't explain these results. Intel, for shady reasons, fully supports the Rambus humbug. It looks like silicon politics to me, and if I buy an intel system, I really can do without Rambus being rammed where the sun don't shine...
Someday, perhaps intel will have a real rival, but at the moment, I hope they get slaughtered, for I really don't like their "business model". They seem to think the consumer is lobotomized.
Until that attitude changes I am not buying any intel system.
It's rather simplistic to place a chip on a linear scale somewhere. The processing power is the K6 family is decent (certainly intel comparable) in integer performance, and the FPU is less good, though the K6-3 tries to patch that up with the improved 3dNOW (feel free to improve my capitalization). Sort of reminds me of P2 vs. P3 that... add SSE, and we have an internet enabled chip (riiiight....). Anyhow, the core of the K6-2 / K6-3 (it would surprise me if the K6-3 really got far) is never going to be as good as the athlon or the P3/P2 for games and as I don't work for AMD or have any inside information I don't know if they can scale highly with this architecture, though I don't think so.
The point is, it's a low power chip. Take a look at the power rating bandied about, and you'll see that the Athlon is very power-hungry, and the P3 is no lightweight either.
This chip may be neat for upgraders, but its clearly a low-end (cpu-wise) solution, it's almost certainly never going to compete with P4.
I've seen several complaints about the way the moderation scheme works. Usually their reactionary posts I personally don't value very highly, and their always pretty offtopic(-1). But as moderation is core to slashdot, I suppose it's necessary to discuss it even when it is not the explicit topic. Thus this message.
First of all, the entire tree about religion is all nice and interesting, but doesn't belong for two reasons: it's offtopic; and (as must be obvious to anyone who's tried to discuss religion as we're doing now online) absolutely not going to get anywhere. Let Katz post some weird Religion rant so we get real interesting response. The religion comments are plainly empty.
Additionally, the moderation guidelines also call - somewhat inherently conflictlingly - for moderators to moderate total bullshit down. Well, some moderators (and can we _really_ blame them?) thought that this creationist attitude is simply bullshit, and doesn't increase the value of the discussion. I can't say I blame them. I'll admit I can't disprove creationism, but it strikes me as a needlessly complex explanation for something that can be explained more straightforwardly. Where to draw the line, I ask, when do you say something is new and interesting and when is something plainly wacko?
I really think people criticize the moderation scheme too frequently. It allows me to read only a fraction of the posts and the few times I read more than those, I discover that the rest is of far lower quality. So I applaud the conceivers, the slashdot staff, as well as those that at any given time have moderation access and are willing to plow through the bullshit so that I can get to the juicy bits. They're really doing me a big favour.
Discussions about religion very quickly degrade into universal truths. It's a fundamental problem of todays (not that it's been otherwise) screwed up religious institutes that they fail to accept the fact that other religions are possibly as accurate as they - or more so. This statement probably brands me as un-/ir- (choose yourself) -religious, which is true. Our beliefs, wishes, state of mind, you name it affects our recollection of events. Information passed on by several interconnected sources of dubious nature that are severely partial does not strike me as "historical fact"
I don't know that it didn't. I don't believe - and admittedly, more importantly, don't want to believe - that it did.
Anybody kidding themselves that there is significant evidence beyond their personal belief, isn't doing themselves justice. Religion should be banned - it's caused so much grief, wars, chaos, misinformation, and "what-religion-calls-evil" in this world that by it's own standards it has no right to exist.
But if you believe in Jesus, God and "all that" (no I don't) then do so. Everyone has their own beliefs - their basis on which they (sub)conciously form other deductions. There is no way, absolutely no way (whatever those atheists like me say), that you can objectively claim one basis as superior to another. But by all means don't turn it into such a mass-delusion as the churches have. It's just too hypocritical.
Fundamental belief is one thing. Pretending it's anything but belief is another.
As you rightly say, absolute truth is virtually unknown in science. Mathematics perhaps? Philosophers have long aimed for absolute truths, but essentially, I think that since it is possible that our very own minds are inherently illogical - but such that we can't derive this ourselves - nothing can be known for sure.
Just for the sake of toying with a few thoughts - so don't take this too seriously - let's hypothesize that indeed god created the world recently, from scratch. One thing we observe is that our existence is explicable by evolution, in other words, god created the world in such a way that it seems to show all the traces of having been formed by another. Does this mean he doesn't want us to think he made the world? Will divine retribution strike down believing infidels (much like a secret service agency doesn't want to be uncovered)?
I think, if we start off and don't take evidence at face value, we can pretty much argue anything. The sky is green - it's those aliens manipulating our senses (including those reading scientific equipment) telling us otherwise (go disprove me). Actually, you are 500 years older than you think, but a secret government projects stole your memory. Windows is stable. I mean, come on:-).
The theory of evolution, as you so pointedly call it, has survived critical analysis - far more critical analysis than most other theories, because of criticism like yours - and it is at a point at which scientific arguments clearly bring it out as the until-now best theory proposed. If you have an argument agaist it, please state it clearly and precisely. "No 'blind watchmaker' could have come up with something like the eye..." which is entirely speculative, doesn't cut it. I would be extremely interested in and excited about a real, well based criticism you could give.
While I'm at it, you may be interested in this web-page about exactly your argument: The Human Eye: A design review, which takes exactly the opposite stance. To boot, it's well written:-).
You say that "prejudices" are preventing the ability to make reason arguments. I could say the same thing. I don't think it's fair though - we believe in different things, and howevermuch I believe in evolution, and also disbelieve the existence of divinity, I recognize there is a damn good chance that I'm wrong. I'm just human - but so are you.
I do not. But it's obvious that it is a lot of responsibility and work. It's unimaginable for parents to be able to look after their kids every second of the day, and it should not be required of them, nor is it only their fault when the kid does "evil" things while not under their supervision. Under the assumption that internet is a good place for kids to play/learn (which isn't settled in my mind), Parental control ideally permits at least some control when you're absent.
You know that cookie-jar in the top shelf, placed "out of reach" of most children? Yes, that restriction is circumventable, so why have it?
By placing something out of immediate reach a person - here kids - need to consciously decide to break that barrier. It's a way to train kids to be aware of the rules.
There's got to be some amount of trust, indeed, I don't want to imagine a family without it.
I completely concurr. I learned both java and VB from online doc's, and java is a LOT easier to learn based on the documentation. One of the problems with MSDN is that it is hard to see which document fit's in where - as it handles MSSQL, VB, and well lot's of stuff. The selection mechanism to select only the VB subset is not satisfactory. Additionally, sun has a whole java tutorial online, which is great. I learnteverything from there, and used the reference as just that - a reference. The sun documentation is a lot better.
I'm just a user and no sys-expert, but at the university I'm at, until recently, the network I was on had at least 45 pure xterms over a 10 mbit network at it might not be great, but it's was OK. I don't know how many network cards the central hpux's had, but they were _definitely_ 10 mbit. Obviously, you want more than that, but I think I wouldn't worry too much if you're going to put only 25 machines over a 100 mbit connection onto your servers...
Essentially where I disagree with you is that all media are the same. I'll expand a bit on the TV vs. book issue.
Have you ever tried to take a TV on a trip?
More fundamentally though, a book is a linear medium that does _not_ dictate the speed at which you read it. This means that you can adapt your reading speed however you want to to what it is your reading. That's important. When I try to understand the proof behind fourier transformations, I need to slow down some times, bu some other things are just really obvious. This is in general an advantage of printed text over any fixed-speed medium.
Much more practically though, it's obvious that the type of information available in different media differs significantly. Those differences are caused - big suprise - by differences in the media. Have you ever seen anything approaching Lord of the Rings in Film? Lord of the Rings takes you on a detailed trip that lasts for at least two full days. There is nothing like that on TV. There can't be - TV requires full attention all the time. If you don't pay attention, well, you miss something. In a book, you merely slow down.
Books force you to absorb every detail. Generally, you need to read everything. In a film, most of what happens on screen is backdrop. These are important differences to me.
I wouldn't put it as black and white. I know a lot of people that value integrity highly, and certainly have (on purpose, and by the nature of who they are) forfeited monetary gain over what they believe. For me, and I believe many others, moeny _is_ very important, and if I needed to, I don't know how far I would go (ever read lord of the flies:-( - great book ). But as long as I have "enough" - which isn't much - I'm happy and certainly can resist the lure of those greenbacks you referred to.
For those reviewers, well most of them will have normal jobs. Now, I can't excuse somebody acting unethically if they don't need to. That's where I stand.
You haven't looked around if you believe IE is the only XML tool around. Also, Amaya isn't really intended to be a normal browser. Note that it's an editor, and is used as a test-bed for w3c standards. A nice toy for instance is MathML, which it supports. Want cool looking formula's:-)? (BTW, at http://www.w3.org/Amaya/, amaya version 3.2.1 is out...)
Anyhow, you may be interested to know that smil, a pretty cool language, is what RealPlayer and so on are based on. So if you write your smil correctly, and are aware of realplayers multitude of limitations, I suggest NOT writing for IE, but for realplayer as that actually works on many platforms. Incidentally don't use the smil tag, it's somewhat undefined in behaviour (I don't think it'll be in smil 2.0). Also realplayer's realtext and realpix formats are xml and pretty neat.
I'm currently doing a stage in the french arm of w3c. CSS1 is not that hard to implement... it's ridiculous that MS, which has so much more resources that the w3c does, is unable to get a working version of CSS1 out. And CSS2... oh boy. Also, one of the strengths of XML is that it's very easy to extend. However, any xml extension will be correctly parsed by any xml-parser, meaning that the obvious choice for an extension mechanism would be to base it on XML, at least ensuring that the extensions don't interfere with existing software.
So why is microsoft's "DHTML" not XML compliant? I truly hope this goes the way ActiveX did... the "no go" way.
Furthermore, I would make sure that the extensions can easily be transformed to existing tags using XSLT. XSLT (frequently referred to as XSL) is a language that essentially allows one XML document to be transformed into another. Simplistically put, you make you're own markup (extensions) and "map" them onto different xml elements (tags).
Meaning if a browser wanted to, it could load a compatibility XSL transformation from, say, it's website so it could at least make something from the new tags, even if some functionality is missing.
Notice that this only works when those extensions are xml... guess why microsoft didn't want that...
BTW, I have no clue about official w3c opinions...
Somewhat hypocritical, he is, is he? Well, in his defense, I'ld like to say, better a idealistic thought and interesting thing to say, than nothing to say. As to publishing books online: A book is a serious investment. It deserves some form of return - yet the internet can hardly give this. Also, a book allows in-depth expansion and extrapolation of thoughts, not merely a shallow comment here and a short essay there. I have never read nearly a full length book online, and from a practical point of view I don't want to. Books have there purpose, and the advent of the internet doesn't mean you should catagorically shun them:-).
I do agree, however, that at least extracts of the book online might prove sappy bits, perhaps even act as advertisement.
I think its extremely simplistic to simply classify "media" into a group without interest in differentiating between them. Media is media is media... that's great, but the differences between them are staggering. Could something like slashdot exist in another medium? Probably thousands of comments a day, frequently each discussed quickly? Is a book a TV? You can't merely classify media and pretend there all the same.
Here's an analogy: Humans live on a planet. But that planet is quite specific, and it forms us a lot. That planet influences who and what we are, to an inordinate amount. Similarly, the medium influences the information it carries.
Katz may make radical comments occasionally. OK, he rants all the time:-). But the point remains - what with this age divide? I don't think that an age divide is this generation's invention - think of the "hippy culture" versus their parents - but just saying "all people are created equal" and thus concluding that the age divide is imaginary is absurd.
I don't think that the age divide is "an extremist invention" or "incited hatred". It's entirely natural for people to try to differentiate themselves from their parents and the accepted social order when growing up; this was always so. The rapid change we as a species are experiencing means that it's easier to see those "age divides". It also means that it isn't always necessary to eventually adapt to your parents - the change just catches up on you.
Katz is quite right in suggesting that this may pose problems. The general public's interest in politics is falling... but how should democrasy work without interested individuals? What happens when the existing system impedes change?
I'm not saying that all old people are old farts... heck, my father works in artificial intelligence and alpha infomatica, and my grandfather developed an one of the first functioning solar car and is still a developer in the photovoltaic industry. But we're talking trends here. The trend is that young people know more about computers and such technology than others.
We need to think about that, not stuff it in a closet and pretend it isn't so. We need to make sure that the inevitable age divide doesn't turn into "incited hatred" and social disarray.
There are two cases to analyze: Hobbyist overclocking is, or is not widespread. I don't think it is widespread, but in both cases AMD has good reason to attempt to limit overclockability.
Let's say that overclocking is widespread. Then AMD is losing significant income because of it. People are getting essentially better pieces than they payed for, basically ripping AMD off, not good for them.
However, if overclocking is not widespread, then arguments such as the economic gain from the 440BX fall to pieces, and really, the company, here AMD, has no reason to allow overclocking - apart, perhaps, from the vocal "special interest" group, i.e. overclockers, giving them bad press.
However, I don't think this small group really factors into their decision process, because it isn't those lone hobbyists that they are so afraid of, but systematic overclocking. AMD has had problems in Australia and elsewhere in the region where overclocked CPU's were sold remarked as if they were intended for the higher price. The unknowing customer gets a worse piece, and blames AMD for it, not something they want. In addition, AMD loses revenue, because all those people buying illegally remarked CPU's would have bought legal parts as well. It is this form of systematic overclocking that AMD really wants to prevent, and alas, but thay really can't make that a priority, this means no fun for us (unless your really crazy about scratching around on your CPU):-(.
Why was this moderated up? Did you actually read the question?
He said that linux and Windows are BOTH a MUST... there is no question about cross-platformness, it is required. It's merely a launch-platform issue: and here it also makes more sense why to launch on linux as opposed to on windows: precisely because the demand will probably be smaller it will be easier to fix bugs and distribute new beta-versions. Additionally, I think linux users are perhaps more capable at debugging since developers form a larger percentage of the user base.
It isn't at all clear to me that ion drives are a better idea.
First of all, I consider the danger to be minimal compared to ion drives - The laser would be earth bound, and nothing more than a a large peace of equipment. A laser pointing towards the sky shouldn't scare anyone. However, ion drives, though safe, are on the vessel itself so if they crash, there is potentially - however small - the danger of radiation leakage. There is no such danger with light sails.
This brings me directly to the second advantage - where the propulsion system lies. The fact that the propulsion system remains on earth has several HUGE advantages. First of all, energy on earth is cheep compared to energy in space. Then, fuel doesn't need to be carried, and not even the drive needs to be carried - Actually, only a super light sail is all, meaning the mass can be much lower, making space flight cheaper and easier. Lastly, there is the issue of whethre the laser source even needs to be man made. The sun provides a large source of free energy here... and we don't care much if the acceleration is 0.0001 g, eventually, it'll get somewhere, for in space, friction is entirely negligible.
Light sails work by using the momentum of photons for to speed up. They reflect the light, essentially inverting it's direction and thus get a speed boost. The lasers that form the backbone here are a valid technology in and of themselves, as are the interesting new materials for the sails. As frequently, this space-oriented research is useful whether or not it ever moves a vessel.
I wonder whether mankind will ever be able to truly "expand" into space. It takes a lot of energy to lift anything into space from (any) planetary surface. I could well imagine that the energy costs of doing this regurlary are prohibitive - making a real planet-hopping society impossible.
Even at 100% efficiency, according to my calculations, you would need 62.5 million joules of energy per kilogram to reach Space from Earth. That's equivalent, per pound, to taking something that weighs a million pounds and lifting it twenty feet! And it's clear that perfect efficiency can never be reached, in fact, due to entropy, we won't even get close.
But perhaps a society of (probably necessarily genetically engineerd) people could exist in space permanently - always in space stations, and on (or in) asteroids and small moons. If fusion and He-3 ever become a reality, then such a society could live of the minerals in space debree, with the energy from fusion.
For those that are interested, Scientific American had a set of articles concerning new/alternative methods of space propulsion, also mentioning light sails.
While I'm at it, you might want to check out a fantastic (recreational) sf novel - The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton - any sf fan must read this (I think...:-) )!
Quotes are for those that don't know what to say...;-)
I disagree: Most companies have lost out to microsoft in direct competition. However, eventually someone must confront them, the situation as it is is ridiculous. And the previous confrontation I know of (Word vs. Wordperfect) was corel trying to retain its hold on an outdated program fighting against a clearly superior user interface. Now, corel is using a capable approach, and though a lot of changes are necessary (esp. in X/XFree86 and by extension the window managers - but those less so IMHO), they can be made.
Finally, I don't think microsoft is really unbeatable - and my aims are clearly not Corels but Linux's. So, if this looks subjective: look again, it is.
Slashdot Mirror
You shouldn't be using 1x1 gifs for spacing anyway... In a decently designed website there is no need for them. Use CSS, or whatever else, but relying on 1x1 images for spacing isn't the brightest idea. It destroys the way HTML was indtended to function - structurally, with UI separated out. Why blame mozilla for having such difficulty making a browser work if the true culprits are the people abusing rendering implementations on specific browsers.
Apart from that, if anyone were to implement a 1x1 filterer, that obviously shouldn't effect layout, so it would still space things as before (to not break any web sites) but simply not load the images. Would only make your web server faster because of fewer requests.
Point taken, however you are talking about hardware and microcode emulator/optimizing software on the chip itself, I was talking about software.
Supporting realtime optimizations with optimized hardware is an eventual goal, however, if you look at the HP dynamo, a real world product, it's a piece of plain old software - optimizing (amongst other things) native code to run faster that directly natively.
--EMN
Things aren't that simple... emulation can actually be faster than native code do to real-time optimization possibilities. I already posted a message to this extent so I'll just quote it here, but think about the Crusoe, java (esp the improved JIT in jdk 1.3), and the like - emulation really is possible to do quickly.
I think the whole concept of emulation/VM is something to be embraced and which could _really_ revolutionize the computing model. So as opposed to encapsulating already native code to sneakily let it think it's running as a base system, go ahead and really change it, emulate it - don't just "bracket" it.
Why? Currently, we're essentially writing compilers for a non-existing platform. The x86 platform as originally seen has long been "dead", what we're seeing now is chips that convert this "universal" language into their own microops and then execute them. The internal structure of a P3 / Athlon has a large section dedicated to this very task. But what if we could throw all that away, and make a chip that simply crunches numbers as good as current technology allows? We have the making of a darn fast chip. If I had to make a completely uninformed guess, we could well stuff two "Athlons" (if we can still call them that) on the same die if the whole x86 ISA is dropped.
In comes the virtual machine... we simply convert the bytecode into native code and run. Sort of like java does it - but better, as we have a chip that can run faster and possibly more efficiently.
Guess what? Sun is already doing just that with MAJC. The point is, Plex86 should not try to run code natively at all. It simply happens to have a bytecode that's identical to the native code. This gives us an architechture that is far longer-lived than something that can run legacy x86 systems on x86 systems. This might be portable to newer things as well.
Proof that this sort of thing is possible is incarnate in the Transmeta Crusoe chip. Of course, they chose to have a chip that is really power efficient, but imagine a a chip that is to speed what Crusoe is to power - Yummy.
I've heard objections that speed gains in the architecture might be outweighed by speed losses in the transformation. This is not true. The optimizations that a run-time VM can do are quite astounding - it can not only decide to unroll loops when necessary, but to expand a frequent multiplication by a memory adress into constant bitshifts, it could dynamically choose what to place into registers far more wisely that a traditional compiler can, look ahead and do IO access before the program needs to... I am no expert, but there's obvious potential here.
And here again, there are some innovative people at work, just look at HP's Dynamo - which takes native code and does real time optimizations (actually it does more than this, and is an interesting read. Transmeta wasn't the first. One of the interesting things is that actual optimized native code can still run faster under dynamo than simply natively. Obviously, this isn't the case for all programs, but its certainly not the case that Emulation/VM-ing is by definition slower than native execution. And realize, we're talking about an architecture (originally PA-RISC but porting activities are ongoing I believe) that wasn't even designed for this sort of activity. A CPU with this in mind could well do even better.
So my conclusion is that we shouldn't emulate VMware, we should, well emulate. Weird as it may sound, emulation is the future.
--EMN
I'm sure there are enough people around here that have differing opinions about open source, but to head off discussion in that direction, it's merely an impression I have and I'm possibly wrong. I've never contributed a line of code - something I hope to change.
I think the whole concept of emulation/VM is something to be embraced and which could _really_ revolutionize the computing model. So as opposed to encapsulating already native code to sneakily let it think it's running as a base system, go ahead and really change it, emulate it - don't just "bracket" it.
Why? Currently, we're essentially writing compilers for a non-existing platform. The x86 platform as originally seen has long been "dead", what we're seeing now is chips that convert this "universal" language into their own microops and then execute them. The internal structure of a P3 / Athlon has a large section dedicated to this very task. But what if we could throw all that away, and make a chip that simply crunches numbers as good as current technology allows? We have the making of a darn fast chip. If I had to make a completely uninformed guess, we could well stuff two "Athlons" (if we can still call them that) on the same die if the whole x86 ISA is dropped.
In comes the virtual machine... we simply convert the bytecode into native code and run. Sort of like java does it - but better, as we have a chip that can run faster and possibly more efficiently.
Guess what? Sun is already doing just that with MAJC. The point is, Plex86 should not try to run code natively at all. It simply happens to have a bytecode that's identical to the native code. This gives us an architechture that is far longer-lived than something that can run legacy x86 systems on x86 systems. This might be portable to newer things as well.
Proof that this sort of thing is possible is incarnate in the Transmeta Crusoe chip. Of course, they chose to have a chip that is really power efficient, but imagine a a chip that is to speed what Crusoe is to power - Yummy.
I've heard objections that speed gains in the architecture might be outweighed by speed losses in the transformation. This is not true. The optimizations that a run-time VM can do are quite astounding - it can not only decide to unroll loops when necessary, but to expand a frequent multiplication by a memory adress into constant bitshifts, it could dynamically choose what to place into registers far more wisely that a traditional compiler can, look ahead and do IO access before the program needs to... I am no expert, but there's obvious potential here.
And here again, there are some innovative people at work, just look at HP's Dynamo - which takes native code and does real time optimizations (actually it does more than this, and is an interesting read. Transmeta wasn't the first. One of the interesting things is that actual optimized native code can still run faster under dynamo than simply natively. Obviously, this isn't the case for all programs, but its certainly not the case that Emulation/VM-ing is by definition slower than native execution. And realize, we're talking about an architecture (originally PA-RISC but porting activities are ongoing I believe) that wasn't even designed for this sort of activity. A CPU with this in mind could well do even better.
So my conclusion is that we shouldn't emulate VMware, we should, well emulate. Weird as it may sound, emulation is the future.
--EMN
A self reply for the url of the benchmarking data: http://www.rambus.com/pr oducts/products_benchmark_840.html
I completely concur with respect to the FUD that intel loves to spout...
I hope nobody forgot their ridiculous advertising scheme about "internet-power" chips. So idiotic a tale it's actually funny. (Microsoft FUD at least makes sense sometimes).
Or the hopeless Pentium 1GHz... anyone ever seen one? I've never seen one. The Gigahertz pentium is a paper monster.
Intel still has not clean up that disaster, and they now, to show their technical prowess, bring out a 1.13 GHz monster - in Slot1. I would be positively surprised if they can deliver this one, but even more so, I'ld be VERY surprised.
What also frightens me is the adoptation of SSE above 3dnow! - this paints the athlon in a needlessly bad light.
Then there is the absurd Rambus deal with intel. You should look at their "divine intervention" benchmarking data - anything less than divine intervention won't explain these results. Intel, for shady reasons, fully supports the Rambus humbug. It looks like silicon politics to me, and if I buy an intel system, I really can do without Rambus being rammed where the sun don't shine...
Someday, perhaps intel will have a real rival, but at the moment, I hope they get slaughtered, for I really don't like their "business model". They seem to think the consumer is lobotomized.
Until that attitude changes I am not buying any intel system.
It's rather simplistic to place a chip on a linear scale somewhere.
The processing power is the K6 family is decent (certainly intel comparable) in integer performance, and the FPU is less good, though the K6-3 tries to patch that up with the improved 3dNOW (feel free to improve my capitalization). Sort of reminds me of P2 vs. P3 that... add SSE, and we have an internet enabled chip (riiiight....).
Anyhow, the core of the K6-2 / K6-3 (it would surprise me if the K6-3 really got far) is never going to be as good as the athlon or the P3/P2 for games and as I don't work for AMD or have any inside information I don't know if they can scale highly with this architecture, though I don't think so.
The point is, it's a low power chip. Take a look at the power rating bandied about, and you'll see that the Athlon is very power-hungry, and the P3 is no lightweight either.
This chip may be neat for upgraders, but its clearly a low-end (cpu-wise) solution, it's almost certainly never going to compete with P4.
--EMN
I've seen several complaints about the way the moderation scheme works. Usually their reactionary posts I personally don't value very highly, and their always pretty offtopic(-1). But as moderation is core to slashdot, I suppose it's necessary to discuss it even when it is not the explicit topic. Thus this message.
First of all, the entire tree about religion is all nice and interesting, but doesn't belong for two reasons: it's offtopic; and (as must be obvious to anyone who's tried to discuss religion as we're doing now online) absolutely not going to get anywhere. Let Katz post some weird Religion rant so we get real interesting response. The religion comments are plainly empty.
Additionally, the moderation guidelines also call - somewhat inherently conflictlingly - for moderators to moderate total bullshit down. Well, some moderators (and can we _really_ blame them?) thought that this creationist attitude is simply bullshit, and doesn't increase the value of the discussion. I can't say I blame them. I'll admit I can't disprove creationism, but it strikes me as a needlessly complex explanation for something that can be explained more straightforwardly. Where to draw the line, I ask, when do you say something is new and interesting and when is something plainly wacko?
I really think people criticize the moderation scheme too frequently. It allows me to read only a fraction of the posts and the few times I read more than those, I discover that the rest is of far lower quality. So I applaud the conceivers, the slashdot staff, as well as those that at any given time have moderation access and are willing to plow through the bullshit so that I can get to the juicy bits. They're really doing me a big favour.
Discussions about religion very quickly degrade into universal truths. It's a fundamental problem of todays (not that it's been otherwise) screwed up religious institutes that they fail to accept the fact that other religions are possibly as accurate as they - or more so. This statement probably brands me as un-/ir- (choose yourself) -religious, which is true. Our beliefs, wishes, state of mind, you name it affects our recollection of events. Information passed on by several interconnected sources of dubious nature that are severely partial does not strike me as "historical fact"
I don't know that it didn't. I don't believe - and admittedly, more importantly, don't want to believe - that it did.
Anybody kidding themselves that there is significant evidence beyond their personal belief, isn't doing themselves justice. Religion should be banned - it's caused so much grief, wars, chaos, misinformation, and "what-religion-calls-evil" in this world that by it's own standards it has no right to exist.
But if you believe in Jesus, God and "all that" (no I don't) then do so. Everyone has their own beliefs - their basis on which they (sub)conciously form other deductions. There is no way, absolutely no way (whatever those atheists like me say), that you can objectively claim one basis as superior to another. But by all means don't turn it into such a mass-delusion as the churches have. It's just too hypocritical.
Fundamental belief is one thing. Pretending it's anything but belief is another.
--EMN
Just for the sake of toying with a few thoughts - so don't take this too seriously - let's hypothesize that indeed god created the world recently, from scratch. One thing we observe is that our existence is explicable by evolution, in other words, god created the world in such a way that it seems to show all the traces of having been formed by another. Does this mean he doesn't want us to think he made the world? Will divine retribution strike down believing infidels (much like a secret service agency doesn't want to be uncovered)?
I think, if we start off and don't take evidence at face value, we can pretty much argue anything. The sky is green - it's those aliens manipulating our senses (including those reading scientific equipment) telling us otherwise (go disprove me). Actually, you are 500 years older than you think, but a secret government projects stole your memory. Windows is stable. I mean, come on :-).
While I'm at it, you may be interested in this web-page about exactly your argument: The Human Eye: A design review, which takes exactly the opposite stance. To boot, it's well written
You say that "prejudices" are preventing the ability to make reason arguments. I could say the same thing. I don't think it's fair though - we believe in different things, and howevermuch I believe in evolution, and also disbelieve the existence of divinity, I recognize there is a damn good chance that I'm wrong. I'm just human - but so are you.
--EMN
I do not. But it's obvious that it is a lot of responsibility and work. It's unimaginable for parents to be able to look after their kids every second of the day, and it should not be required of them, nor is it only their fault when the kid does "evil" things while not under their supervision. Under the assumption that internet is a good place for kids to play/learn (which isn't settled in my mind), Parental control ideally permits at least some control when you're absent.
You know that cookie-jar in the top shelf, placed "out of reach" of most children? Yes, that restriction is circumventable, so why have it?
By placing something out of immediate reach a person - here kids - need to consciously decide to break that barrier. It's a way to train kids to be aware of the rules.
There's got to be some amount of trust, indeed, I don't want to imagine a family without it.
I completely concurr. I learned both java and VB from online doc's, and java is a LOT easier to learn based on the documentation. One of the problems with MSDN is that it is hard to see which document fit's in where - as it handles MSSQL, VB, and well lot's of stuff. The selection mechanism to select only the VB subset is not satisfactory. Additionally, sun has a whole java tutorial online, which is great. I learnteverything from there, and used the reference as just that - a reference. The sun documentation is a lot better.
I'm just a user and no sys-expert, but at the university I'm at, until recently, the network I was on had at least 45 pure xterms over a 10 mbit network at it might not be great, but it's was OK. I don't know how many network cards the central hpux's had, but they were _definitely_ 10 mbit. Obviously, you want more than that, but I think I wouldn't worry too much if you're going to put only 25 machines over a 100 mbit connection onto your servers...
Essentially where I disagree with you is that all media are the same. I'll expand a bit on the TV vs. book issue.
Have you ever tried to take a TV on a trip?
More fundamentally though, a book is a linear medium that does _not_ dictate the speed at which you read it. This means that you can adapt your reading speed however you want to to what it is your reading. That's important. When I try to understand the proof behind fourier transformations, I need to slow down some times, bu some other things are just really obvious. This is in general an advantage of printed text over any fixed-speed medium.
Much more practically though, it's obvious that the type of information available in different media differs significantly. Those differences are caused - big suprise - by differences in the media. Have you ever seen anything approaching Lord of the Rings in Film? Lord of the Rings takes you on a detailed trip that lasts for at least two full days. There is nothing like that on TV. There can't be - TV requires full attention all the time. If you don't pay attention, well, you miss something. In a book, you merely slow down.
Books force you to absorb every detail. Generally, you need to read everything. In a film, most of what happens on screen is backdrop. These are important differences to me.
--EMN
I wouldn't put it as black and white. I know a lot of people that value integrity highly, and certainly have (on purpose, and by the nature of who they are) forfeited monetary gain over what they believe. For me, and I believe many others, moeny _is_ very important, and if I needed to, I don't know how far I would go (ever read lord of the flies :-( - great book ). But as long as I have "enough" - which isn't much - I'm happy and certainly can resist the lure of those greenbacks you referred to.
For those reviewers, well most of them will have normal jobs. Now, I can't excuse somebody acting unethically if they don't need to. That's where I stand.
--EMN
Some details:
:-)? (BTW, at http://www.w3.org/Amaya/, amaya version 3.2.1 is out...)
You haven't looked around if you believe IE is the only XML tool around. Also, Amaya isn't really intended to be a normal browser. Note that it's an editor, and is used as a test-bed for w3c standards. A nice toy for instance is MathML, which it supports. Want cool looking formula's
Anyhow, you may be interested to know that smil, a pretty cool language, is what RealPlayer and so on are based on. So if you write your smil correctly, and are aware of realplayers multitude of limitations, I suggest NOT writing for IE, but for realplayer as that actually works on many platforms. Incidentally don't use the smil tag, it's somewhat undefined in behaviour (I don't think it'll be in smil 2.0). Also realplayer's realtext and realpix formats are xml and pretty neat.
I'm currently doing a stage in the french arm of w3c. CSS1 is not that hard to implement... it's ridiculous that MS, which has so much more resources that the w3c does, is unable to get a working version of CSS1 out. And CSS2... oh boy. Also, one of the strengths of XML is that it's very easy to extend. However, any xml extension will be correctly parsed by any xml-parser, meaning that the obvious choice for an extension mechanism would be to base it on XML, at least ensuring that the extensions don't interfere with existing software.
So why is microsoft's "DHTML" not XML compliant? I truly hope this goes the way ActiveX did... the "no go" way.
Furthermore, I would make sure that the extensions can easily be transformed to existing tags using XSLT. XSLT (frequently referred to as XSL) is a language that essentially allows one XML document to be transformed into another. Simplistically put, you make you're own markup (extensions) and "map" them onto different xml elements (tags).
Meaning if a browser wanted to, it could load a compatibility XSL transformation from, say, it's website so it could at least make something from the new tags, even if some functionality is missing.
Notice that this only works when those extensions are xml... guess why microsoft didn't want that...
BTW, I have no clue about official w3c opinions...
--EMN
Somewhat hypocritical, he is, is he? Well, in his defense, I'ld like to say, better a idealistic thought and interesting thing to say, than nothing to say. As to publishing books online: A book is a serious investment. It deserves some form of return - yet the internet can hardly give this. Also, a book allows in-depth expansion and extrapolation of thoughts, not merely a shallow comment here and a short essay there. I have never read nearly a full length book online, and from a practical point of view I don't want to. Books have there purpose, and the advent of the internet doesn't mean you should catagorically shun them :-).
I do agree, however, that at least extracts of the book online might prove sappy bits, perhaps even act as advertisement.
I think its extremely simplistic to simply classify "media" into a group without interest in differentiating between them. Media is media is media... that's great, but the differences between them are staggering. Could something like slashdot exist in another medium? Probably thousands of comments a day, frequently each discussed quickly? Is a book a TV? You can't merely classify media and pretend there all the same.
:-). But the point remains - what with this age divide? I don't think that an age divide is this generation's invention - think of the "hippy culture" versus their parents - but just saying "all people are created equal" and thus concluding that the age divide is imaginary is absurd.
Here's an analogy: Humans live on a planet. But that planet is quite specific, and it forms us a lot. That planet influences who and what we are, to an inordinate amount. Similarly, the medium influences the information it carries.
Katz may make radical comments occasionally. OK, he rants all the time
I don't think that the age divide is "an extremist invention" or "incited hatred". It's entirely natural for people to try to differentiate themselves from their parents and the accepted social order when growing up; this was always so. The rapid change we as a species are experiencing means that it's easier to see those "age divides". It also means that it isn't always necessary to eventually adapt to your parents - the change just catches up on you.
Katz is quite right in suggesting that this may pose problems. The general public's interest in politics is falling... but how should democrasy work without interested individuals? What happens when the existing system impedes change?
I'm not saying that all old people are old farts... heck, my father works in artificial intelligence and alpha infomatica, and my grandfather developed an one of the first functioning solar car and is still a developer in the photovoltaic industry. But we're talking trends here. The trend is that young people know more about computers and such technology than others.
We need to think about that, not stuff it in a closet and pretend it isn't so. We need to make sure that the inevitable age divide doesn't turn into "incited hatred" and social disarray.
Denial is not a solution, merely another problem.
There are two cases to analyze: Hobbyist overclocking is, or is not widespread. I don't think it is widespread, but in both cases AMD has good reason to attempt to limit overclockability.
:-(.
Let's say that overclocking is widespread. Then AMD is losing significant income because of it. People are getting essentially better pieces than they payed for, basically ripping AMD off, not good for them.
However, if overclocking is not widespread, then arguments such as the economic gain from the 440BX fall to pieces, and really, the company, here AMD, has no reason to allow overclocking - apart, perhaps, from the vocal "special interest" group, i.e. overclockers, giving them bad press.
However, I don't think this small group really factors into their decision process, because it isn't those lone hobbyists that they are so afraid of, but systematic overclocking. AMD has had problems in Australia and elsewhere in the region where overclocked CPU's were sold remarked as if they were intended for the higher price. The unknowing customer gets a worse piece, and blames AMD for it, not something they want. In addition, AMD loses revenue, because all those people buying illegally remarked CPU's would have bought legal parts as well. It is this form of systematic overclocking that AMD really wants to prevent, and alas, but thay really can't make that a priority, this means no fun for us (unless your really crazy about scratching around on your CPU)
--EMN
Why was this moderated up? Did you actually read the question?
He said that linux and Windows are BOTH a MUST... there is no question about cross-platformness, it is required. It's merely a launch-platform issue: and here it also makes more sense why to launch on linux as opposed to on windows: precisely because the demand will probably be smaller it will be easier to fix bugs and distribute new beta-versions. Additionally, I think linux users are perhaps more capable at debugging since developers form a larger percentage of the user base.
It isn't at all clear to me that ion drives are a better idea.
First of all, I consider the danger to be minimal compared to ion drives - The laser would be earth bound, and nothing more than a a large peace of equipment. A laser pointing towards the sky shouldn't scare anyone. However, ion drives, though safe, are on the vessel itself so if they crash, there is potentially - however small - the danger of radiation leakage. There is no such danger with light sails.
This brings me directly to the second advantage - where the propulsion system lies. The fact that the propulsion system remains on earth has several HUGE advantages. First of all, energy on earth is cheep compared to energy in space. Then, fuel doesn't need to be carried, and not even the drive needs to be carried - Actually, only a super light sail is all, meaning the mass can be much lower, making space flight cheaper and easier. Lastly, there is the issue of whethre the laser source even needs to be man made. The sun provides a large source of free energy here... and we don't care much if the acceleration is 0.0001 g, eventually, it'll get somewhere, for in space, friction is entirely negligible.
Light sails work by using the momentum of photons for to speed up. They reflect the light, essentially inverting it's direction and thus get a speed boost. The lasers that form the backbone here are a valid technology in and of themselves, as are the interesting new materials for the sails. As frequently, this space-oriented research is useful whether or not it ever moves a vessel.
Even at 100% efficiency, according to my calculations, you would need 62.5 million joules of energy per kilogram to reach Space from Earth. That's equivalent, per pound, to taking something that weighs a million pounds and lifting it twenty feet! And it's clear that perfect efficiency can never be reached, in fact, due to entropy, we won't even get close.
But perhaps a society of (probably necessarily genetically engineerd) people could exist in space permanently - always in space stations, and on (or in) asteroids and small moons. If fusion and He-3 ever become a reality, then such a society could live of the minerals in space debree, with the energy from fusion.
For those that are interested, Scientific American had a set of articles concerning new/alternative methods of space propulsion, also mentioning light sails.
While I'm at it, you might want to check out a fantastic (recreational) sf novel - The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton - any sf fan must read this (I think...:-) )!
Quotes are for those that don't know what to say... ;-)
--EMN
I disagree: Most companies have lost out to microsoft in direct competition. However, eventually someone must confront them, the situation as it is is ridiculous. And the previous confrontation I know of (Word vs. Wordperfect) was corel trying to retain its hold on an outdated program fighting against a clearly superior user interface. Now, corel is using a capable approach, and though a lot of changes are necessary (esp. in X/XFree86 and by extension the window managers - but those less so IMHO), they can be made.
Finally, I don't think microsoft is really unbeatable - and my aims are clearly not Corels but Linux's. So, if this looks subjective: look again, it is.