Your faith in your fellow man is touching, but unwarranted.
The one thing that I've learned about banks is that they only care about money, specifically their money. They will not spend a penny on security unless provided with a cost-benefit analysis that shows that the alternative is more costly to the bank. Costs to customers are the customer's problem.
That depends on the market. If it's profitable to test, distribute, and support a PPC version, why wouldn't they do it? Apple is going to make it as painless as possible to generate binaries that support PPC and x86.
Is OS X going to run in 32-bit mode on the x86? Given the timing of the transition, Apple may decide to only support the newer chips that can run in AMD64 mode.
So does this mean we're going to get some huge appologies from all of the Apple Zealots who claimed x86 to be inferior?
Hell no!:-)
The Intel x86 is still an architectural kludge and nightmare. The problem is that Intel has the bucks and fabs to make it fast, cheap, and in huge quantities. They've cheated by using x86 object code as an intermediate file format, which get translated to something more rational by the CPU at execution time. They still have to preserve x86 semantics, which is probably a major headache.
From a programmer's point of view, the Power architecture is much cleaner and orthogonal. Not that end users care about such things. Elegant architectures don't sell computers.
I'd like to hear more about IBM's role in this. Did they tell Apple that their engineers were busy on PPC chips for the next-generation game consoles, and Apple wasn't a big enough or profitable customer?
Where did he say that the new Macs were going to be IBM PC compatible? Apple can switch to Intel processors without inheriting all the dreck that is associated with Wintel boxes.
E-mail is not a file transfer mechanism. Don't even try it with really huge files, and it probably shouldn't be used as a file repository (Everything you've gotten over the past 5 years, including 10 iterations of the same document, etc)
Why not? I use it all the time for small to medium size files. It's the most convenient way for me to send someone one or more files. For example, I'll do some data analysis, plot the results to several PDF files, and send the PDF files as attachments to an explanatory email message. With the right email client, the plots get displayed with the message.
I'm sure there is some system administrator at the receiving end who is unhappy about his email system getting clogged up with attached files. I don't care, and he better get used to it. The email system was installed to meet the needs of the users, not the system administrator.
Is that why they use taxiways and runways? I was watching Army helicopters operate at an Air Force base and it seemed odd that they would hover and follow the taxiways just like a fixed wing aircraft. I had assumed that they would just get a clearance and go straight up.
You're missing the point. The advantage of designing it with SSI/MSI logic is that you can be a computer architect. You get to design everything, busses, register set, instruction set, ALU, control logic.
For specialized applications, a custom-designed computer can still kick the ass of modern, general-purpose computers, even if it is only clocked at 1-10 MHz.
Don't forget OS/2 and its Windows compatibility mode.
Piss off Microsoft, like IBM did, and Microsoft will invent lots of new ways to break your software. You just can't keep up with such a moving target, even if Microsoft isn't actively trying to destroy you.
You can't run NT programs without dragging along the hideous, huge, complex mess that they depend on. You might as well use a real Windows box. It will keep the infection localized.
Define binary incompatibility. Software run under emulation should be 100% compatible, if a bit slow. Recompiling sloppily written C code for a different target may result in many problems due to architectural differences. That's one of the advantages of maintaining a code base for multiple targets. It tends to flush out portability problems.
The United States Government takes it seriously. While they may be exempt from this law, there are regulations and policies in place to safeguard personal information. These policies are stricter than anything you're likely to find in the private sector.
It was still much better than using WWV or LORAN to set the clock. The engineers knew about relativistic effects, which were far too small to worry about for most purposes. For the timing systems that I've worked with, microsecond-level accuracy is sufficient.
There is still a market for atomic clocks. An atomic clock provides two services, the current time and an extremely stable and accurate oscillator. Many applications, like the telephone system, may not care about the current time, but they need very high quality frequency standards to keep the network synchronized. Even if periodically synchronized to a remote atomic clock, the quality of the time provided by a local clock is heavily dependent on the stability of its oscillator.
In the old days, it was common to use "flying clocks" to synchronize atomic clocks around the world. A flying clock is just a portable version of an atomic clock, with a rechargeable battery for its power supply. Someone would take the flying clock to the place where the primary time standard was maintained, synchronize it with the primary time standard, and hop on a commercial airplane flight to the field site. When they arrived at the field site, they would synchronize the local atomic clock with the flying clock. I've seen a flying clock that was built into a medium sized suitcase. The clock usually had its own seat and airplane ticket while traveling.
Today, for most applications it is simpler to install a GPS receiver that is designed for time/frequency distribution.
They used astronomical observations. Observatories like Greenwich and the USNO have special telescopes that are designed to detect the exact moment that a star crosses the zenith. This gives you an accurate measurement of the Earth's rotation in the celestial frame of reference.
What's so great about old growth forests? A friend of mine from Maine is a history buff. He told me about the American invasion of Canada in 1775. Benedict Arnold (yes, the infamous Benedict Arnold) led 1100 soldiers up through Maine to Quebec. It was a disaster. Many of his soldiers died from starvation. That seemed odd to me, why didn't they just shoot some deer or other game? According to my friend, they were marching through old forests whose ecosystems supported little other than trees, and you can't eat a tree. They were marching through a dead zone, great for established trees, death for everything else.
I think the Intersil IM6100 (PDP-8 on a chip) was also fully static CMOS. I read a neat design article for a data collection buoy where they underclocked it by some insane factor. The engineer knew how many CPU cycles were needed per day and set the clock accordingly. Battery life was extremely good.
According to my astronomy teacher, when the Sun started fusing hydrogen, it blew out the light and volatile material from the inner solar system. That's why the inner planets are mostly rock and iron. When you get to Jupiter and beyond, the planets captured most of the light and volatile material. Titan's surface temperature is very low, so that helps reduce the rate at which it loses its atmosphere. Its atmosphere is mostly molecular nitrogen, which is a relatively heavy molecule. It may have already lost almost all of the hydrogen and helium that was in its early atmosphere.
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The one thing that I've learned about banks is that they only care about money, specifically their money. They will not spend a penny on security unless provided with a cost-benefit analysis that shows that the alternative is more costly to the bank. Costs to customers are the customer's problem.
I've read that large quantities of diamonds are shipped in plain packages via registered mail. It's also used for lower-level classified documents.
Apple is a systems company.
Is OS X going to run in 32-bit mode on the x86? Given the timing of the transition, Apple may decide to only support the newer chips that can run in AMD64 mode.
Hell no! :-)
The Intel x86 is still an architectural kludge and nightmare. The problem is that Intel has the bucks and fabs to make it fast, cheap, and in huge quantities. They've cheated by using x86 object code as an intermediate file format, which get translated to something more rational by the CPU at execution time. They still have to preserve x86 semantics, which is probably a major headache.
From a programmer's point of view, the Power architecture is much cleaner and orthogonal. Not that end users care about such things. Elegant architectures don't sell computers.
I'd like to hear more about IBM's role in this. Did they tell Apple that their engineers were busy on PPC chips for the next-generation game consoles, and Apple wasn't a big enough or profitable customer?
Where did he say that the new Macs were going to be IBM PC compatible? Apple can switch to Intel processors without inheriting all the dreck that is associated with Wintel boxes.
Why not? I use it all the time for small to medium size files. It's the most convenient way for me to send someone one or more files. For example, I'll do some data analysis, plot the results to several PDF files, and send the PDF files as attachments to an explanatory email message. With the right email client, the plots get displayed with the message.
I'm sure there is some system administrator at the receiving end who is unhappy about his email system getting clogged up with attached files. I don't care, and he better get used to it. The email system was installed to meet the needs of the users, not the system administrator.
Is that why they use taxiways and runways? I was watching Army helicopters operate at an Air Force base and it seemed odd that they would hover and follow the taxiways just like a fixed wing aircraft. I had assumed that they would just get a clearance and go straight up.
For specialized applications, a custom-designed computer can still kick the ass of modern, general-purpose computers, even if it is only clocked at 1-10 MHz.
ECL is the non-saturated logic family.
Piss off Microsoft, like IBM did, and Microsoft will invent lots of new ways to break your software. You just can't keep up with such a moving target, even if Microsoft isn't actively trying to destroy you.
You can't run NT programs without dragging along the hideous, huge, complex mess that they depend on. You might as well use a real Windows box. It will keep the infection localized.
Define binary incompatibility. Software run under emulation should be 100% compatible, if a bit slow. Recompiling sloppily written C code for a different target may result in many problems due to architectural differences. That's one of the advantages of maintaining a code base for multiple targets. It tends to flush out portability problems.
The United States Government takes it seriously. While they may be exempt from this law, there are regulations and policies in place to safeguard personal information. These policies are stricter than anything you're likely to find in the private sector.
If you cant afford to properly safeguard your customer's data, maybe you should switch to a less demanding career, like french fry technician.
It was still much better than using WWV or LORAN to set the clock. The engineers knew about relativistic effects, which were far too small to worry about for most purposes. For the timing systems that I've worked with, microsecond-level accuracy is sufficient.
There is still a market for atomic clocks. An atomic clock provides two services, the current time and an extremely stable and accurate oscillator. Many applications, like the telephone system, may not care about the current time, but they need very high quality frequency standards to keep the network synchronized. Even if periodically synchronized to a remote atomic clock, the quality of the time provided by a local clock is heavily dependent on the stability of its oscillator.
In the old days, it was common to use "flying clocks" to synchronize atomic clocks around the world. A flying clock is just a portable version of an atomic clock, with a rechargeable battery for its power supply. Someone would take the flying clock to the place where the primary time standard was maintained, synchronize it with the primary time standard, and hop on a commercial airplane flight to the field site. When they arrived at the field site, they would synchronize the local atomic clock with the flying clock. I've seen a flying clock that was built into a medium sized suitcase. The clock usually had its own seat and airplane ticket while traveling. Today, for most applications it is simpler to install a GPS receiver that is designed for time/frequency distribution.
They used astronomical observations. Observatories like Greenwich and the USNO have special telescopes that are designed to detect the exact moment that a star crosses the zenith. This gives you an accurate measurement of the Earth's rotation in the celestial frame of reference.
What's so great about old growth forests? A friend of mine from Maine is a history buff. He told me about the American invasion of Canada in 1775. Benedict Arnold (yes, the infamous Benedict Arnold) led 1100 soldiers up through Maine to Quebec. It was a disaster. Many of his soldiers died from starvation. That seemed odd to me, why didn't they just shoot some deer or other game? According to my friend, they were marching through old forests whose ecosystems supported little other than trees, and you can't eat a tree. They were marching through a dead zone, great for established trees, death for everything else.
See http://www.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/TIV_imp_IRQ _70-04.pdf for the truth. Notice where the US is on the list.
I think the Intersil IM6100 (PDP-8 on a chip) was also fully static CMOS. I read a neat design article for a data collection buoy where they underclocked it by some insane factor. The engineer knew how many CPU cycles were needed per day and set the clock accordingly. Battery life was extremely good.
I have a Seagate 120 GB 7200 rpm IDE drive (ST3120023A) in my Mac that is dead silent.
CCAFS (Cape Canaveral Air Force Station) is an Air Force facility. KSC (Kennedy Space Center) is a NASA facility. The two are geographically distinct.
According to my astronomy teacher, when the Sun started fusing hydrogen, it blew out the light and volatile material from the inner solar system. That's why the inner planets are mostly rock and iron. When you get to Jupiter and beyond, the planets captured most of the light and volatile material. Titan's surface temperature is very low, so that helps reduce the rate at which it loses its atmosphere. Its atmosphere is mostly molecular nitrogen, which is a relatively heavy molecule. It may have already lost almost all of the hydrogen and helium that was in its early atmosphere.