That happened with MMX, but it can't happen forever.
AMD implemented MMX because Intel owned the place and because there were absolutely NO previous DSP instructions in the x86 family.
Now Intel doesn't own anything more, and AMD wouldn't bother to implement their instructions for 2 reasons:
a. They already have their equivalent ones.
b. They don't wish to bow down to Intel in any way.
I wouldn't downplay SSE's importance either, because _every single article_ mentions it as a point where Intel prevails. On the marketing side, SSE is great, since Intel pays a couple of companies to develop some products with SSE extensions and shows off how fast the processor is. [Since we're discussing marketing, why exactly do you suppose Intel is pushing their processors' clock instead of striving for a better processor/MHz ratio? That's part of the reason]. On the technical side it's also good, but as I've said, it's bound to fail.
Intel keeps constantly betting on extra SIMD instructions like SSE, but must've realized already that only a small niche of developers is actually going to support them if not directly payed to optimize their software.
I ask myself: why bother? Don't they see that playing their cards on such proprietary instructions is a very bad thing?
I remember that not a lot of people complained when Intel decided to introduce Slot1, and I still don't know why. It looked perfectly clear that Slot1 wasn't necessary at that time and Intel was doing it to screw AMD and Cyrix over. (Only Intel's processors would be Slot1, and you wouldn't be able to use both on the same motherboard).
It didn't work quite like they expected, even with their quite large market share. At this moment the situation's even worse, and I can't see a very good future to the ones who decide to fragment the market like this.
Not only this is bad for Intel, it's bad for us (developers AND consumers) as well. AMD also occasionally releases new instructions, even less successful than Intel's.
I, as a developer, wouldn't want to write my software 3 different times to make them compatible with (a) old MMX-only machines; (b) AMD's processors and (c) Intel's processors.
People in general, as consumers, wouldn't get software that's optimized for anything because developers aren't _willing_ to optimize their stuff.
The bottomline: everyone loses.
Note that I don't blame Intel for this practice. The new instructions are good for marketing and they NEED to get out because they are intelligent solutions to coding problems. AMD thinks the same way. The problem is we need compatibility.
The next step, which should've been the first step, is psychoacoustic modelling. MD5 is so inadequate for this application that I'm impressed they've decided to use it in the first place.
Now to distinguish one song from thousands of others WILL be difficult, and I'm willing to see how this works. [in comparison to software that's supposed to screen images for porn.]
I'm on 256kbps DSL right now, but even if I were in a modem, things wouldn't be that problematic. I only see an advantage to DSL when downloading large movies and game demos. Of course getting slashdot in 3-4 seconds versus 10 seconds is comfortable but IMHO it doesn't warrant for better image compression. I'm used to browsing with 3-4 netscape windows open and downloading at the same time and load times certainly don't bother me when I'm with a 33.6 modem.
While I don't assume everyone has a T1 at home, I usually assume everyone has a half-decent machine. Thinking otherwise reminds me of Andy Tanenbaum arguing with Linus Torvalds and reasoning that it was a bad idea to make Linux run only on 386 machines, thus breaking compatibility with older x86 processors.
IMHO there's very little need for highly compressed images on the web right now. With so much bandwidth available and the notion that images aren't always mandatory, what difference does 100kB of data make to a web page?
Of course the concept's interesting, and if it's really innovative it could be used in conjunction with other techniques to improve video compression, but considering the format's not open [(don't even get me started on this, because we're considering the web here)] and perhaps not all that fantastic, why bother?
The Nokia 9210 Communicator is a significant advance toward the mobile information society, combining many key elements of third generation technology such as a high-resolution color display, high speed mobile e-mail, a new user interface, and multimedia capabilities like full color video clips.
All these features and not the one I'd really want: encrypted communication. With so much DSP power available, why not?
Yet again, most people use license plates and birthdates for their bank account passwords, among others. Not considering the government and conspiracy theories.
No, I'm not visually impaired. The fact you'll need to "redesign" (ha!) software for Whistler doesn't mean jack, because I'm commenting on its usability features, as was the article.
This reasoning that proves Whistler is totally new reminds me of advertisements that say "New Ford Escort limited edition: now with lame stickers on the sides". [Ford Escort was the first thing that came to mind and there's no connection between the quote and the Real World]
I mean, for God's sake, it's not even "New Pepsi: now in a different aluminum can!".
You guys may say I don't pay attention to details, but I can't see a difference between this so called "new" Whistler and the current Windows 98 interface.
Sure, icons and bars all over got whiter and everything appears flatter, but overall we're talking about exactly the same thing.
Talking usability-wise, I can't see any advantage in comparison to Windows 98, and quite frankly, I don't expect to see any. I think Windows is decent as it is and couldn't think of a way to execute things faster and better without a CLI. (please respect my views here:)
Am I the only one that thinks the clean Window Maker interface can't be beaten? Most argue about "the average user" finding it more complicated, but come on!, the average user gets dumber each day. Let's consider for a change that Whistler isn't really something new (at all) and that maybe it's very good already.
As for KDE/Gnome [I've got to comment on them, otherwise this would risk being offtopic], they're far from being Whistler. Linux's power doesn't come from nowhere and to channel such versatility is a very hard task. Anyway, I'm not sure I even want them to be like Whistler.
What exactly qualifies as "real work"? Or "adequate technical formation"?
"Real" work is tangible, determinable. Real work provides you with useful results. I'm not saying social studies give you vague answers all the time, but they do more than not.
Engineering's a good example of what an adequate technical formation is. A technical formation allows you to do "real work". A non-technical formation will leave you to comment vaguely about phenomena you see without being able to directly assert facts about them.
Actually, the social sciences are the most self-critical disciplines around
Between its highest inner circles of discussion, maybe, and this is another issue that does not apply to what happens in the real world. The criticism between social "scientists" themselves prevents any definitive results from being given. You can compare such discussions as the thought-restricted questioning of God's existence. The field gets nowhere ideologically with such reasoning, because there will always be digressions and diversions between its own researchers. Trends define temporal tendencies, ones more absurd than others, but there never is consensus over anything.
On the other hand, if this were the largest problem I'd be happy. But now, instead of reading about the newest medical research in the paper I always read about the newest social research results that prove the obvious. Now why is that? It's because people don't care about natural science anymore than they care about the inner discussions of social science. Natural science is over their heads tecnically, and social science never reaches any results as journalists would want them, thus making a news article nonexistent in the first place.
It is ludicrous to think that there is a "current trend" to overemphasize social science over the physical and natural sciences in education. Scientific departments tend to be far, far better funded, and social science graduates usually have few illusions how their degrees will be received by potential employers.
Scientific departments require large funds otherwise they can't exist. Social science departments don't need such large fundings, and this doesn't prove one is overemphasized.
Social sciences are less "exact" because they simply deal with more complex variables.
Agreed. But IMHO, there are too many divergences inside your own field, each one claiming to have answers it doesn't and each one slamming the other for incompetence. The result, unfortunately, tends to [quote: "tends to", not "are"] dispersion and ineffectiveness when such rules are applied.
I agree with your points, with the exception of the 24 superstar engineers one. What wouldn't I give to be in a good team for the first time in my life...
I state my points from personal experience, and of course that doesn't prove me right in the real world.
My father runs his own business, and he's an electrical engineer. He manages everything exceedingly well, in my opinion, and he's never taken any course that are now judged almost mandatory.
There are a lot of things that must be obvious to the manager, whether or not he/she has a degree in management. An academic course doesn't change who you are. A course can, on average, make people who have no management skills into someone a little bit more capable of directing efforts, but it's the individual who has the key to success.
Having said that, I return to your point. You've probably proven yourself right on the general sense. The generic guy is afraid to use logic and deduction and needs a set of predetermined rules to direct him on how to act based on previous experience, no matter how simple the situation.
More and more, companies are realizing it was the folks studying social sciences who can better meet the expectations of this new generation of tech work.
This reasoning is flawed. No real work can be done by someone who doesn't have an adequate technical formation. Social sciences are notorious for leading to nowhere whilst leaving the illusion of progress (forged by social scientists, of course). Althought they are helpful in many personal aspects and should not be neglected, one should be careful not follow the current trend and overemphasize them in favor of science.
As other posters have put forth, it's a LOT easier to have a degree on a social science or on pathetic humanities courses that exist out there instead of Electrical Engineering or Physics.
Engineers don't receive recognition for what they do, basically because most people can't understand what they work with. Anyone can readily understand topics of social sciences and that tends to make these courses highly popular.
Fortunately there are still some that like challenges and study exact sciences.
Next time you read on the paper about ground-breaking social studies that prove what's already obvious, remember what I've written.
If you can, try to learn about your country's real history. Learn about what your forebears have done to countries in Central America and South America to say the least.
People are usually shocked to know about conspirations developed directly by agencies like the CIA and think these were very isolated occurrences. They weren't.
Your country is democratic only in paper. Proof is everywhere if you care to look.
For the ones interested, the uncertainty principle variant for this situation is:
dE * dt >= h-bar,
where
dE = the pair's energy, meaning the amount of energy that is "borrowed" from vacuum in order to create it
dt = the amount of time the pair lives
h-bar = Planck's constant divided by 2*pi
Sure he uses a TWM, but the fact he freaked out in a KDE-bash kind of points out (IMHO, at least) that he may not care about GNOME _that_ much, but he surely dislikes KDE.
Perhaps Mr. Stallman doesn't care about GUIs and doesn't care about KDE or GNOME. But he _dislikes_ KDE, so that's what I'm trying to say.
These people finally managed to transform a concept that exists in the mind of every programmer in a reality.
Java packs only very high-level bytecode/native code translation on a not-so-flexible language. Now this is truly perfect.
I don't believe they could've done a better job,
and I just hope people don't get too interested in processor-specific optimizations and lose the focus on the systems' whole intent.
Well stated. As a Brazilian, I've got to agree with you. I believe everyone in South America would agree with you.
However, there's one point for improvement left: the nationality you've mentioned is spelled colombian (with an O). I suppose 99,9% of USians (but a much smaller percentage of Americans) get it wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
That happened with MMX, but it can't happen forever.
AMD implemented MMX because Intel owned the place and because there were absolutely NO previous DSP instructions in the x86 family.
Now Intel doesn't own anything more, and AMD wouldn't bother to implement their instructions for 2 reasons:
a. They already have their equivalent ones.
b. They don't wish to bow down to Intel in any way.
I wouldn't downplay SSE's importance either, because _every single article_ mentions it as a point where Intel prevails. On the marketing side, SSE is great, since Intel pays a couple of companies to develop some products with SSE extensions and shows off how fast the processor is. [Since we're discussing marketing, why exactly do you suppose Intel is pushing their processors' clock instead of striving for a better processor/MHz ratio? That's part of the reason]. On the technical side it's also good, but as I've said, it's bound to fail.
Flavio
Intel keeps constantly betting on extra SIMD instructions like SSE, but must've realized already that only a small niche of developers is actually going to support them if not directly payed to optimize their software.
I ask myself: why bother? Don't they see that playing their cards on such proprietary instructions is a very bad thing?
I remember that not a lot of people complained when Intel decided to introduce Slot1, and I still don't know why. It looked perfectly clear that Slot1 wasn't necessary at that time and Intel was doing it to screw AMD and Cyrix over. (Only Intel's processors would be Slot1, and you wouldn't be able to use both on the same motherboard).
It didn't work quite like they expected, even with their quite large market share. At this moment the situation's even worse, and I can't see a very good future to the ones who decide to fragment the market like this.
Not only this is bad for Intel, it's bad for us (developers AND consumers) as well. AMD also occasionally releases new instructions, even less successful than Intel's.
I, as a developer, wouldn't want to write my software 3 different times to make them compatible with (a) old MMX-only machines; (b) AMD's processors and (c) Intel's processors.
People in general, as consumers, wouldn't get software that's optimized for anything because developers aren't _willing_ to optimize their stuff.
The bottomline: everyone loses.
Note that I don't blame Intel for this practice. The new instructions are good for marketing and they NEED to get out because they are intelligent solutions to coding problems. AMD thinks the same way. The problem is we need compatibility.
Flavio
Either a space elevator or Heinlein's catapult/bombardment combo. You choose.
Flavio
What teleconf? I'm talking about the Wired article.
Even thought "acoustic fingerprinting" is mentioned, no importance whatsoever is given to this technique.
Flavio
The next step, which should've been the first step, is psychoacoustic modelling. MD5 is so inadequate for this application that I'm impressed they've decided to use it in the first place.
Now to distinguish one song from thousands of others WILL be difficult, and I'm willing to see how this works. [in comparison to software that's supposed to screen images for porn.]
Flavio
I see what you mean.
I'm on 256kbps DSL right now, but even if I were in a modem, things wouldn't be that problematic. I only see an advantage to DSL when downloading large movies and game demos. Of course getting slashdot in 3-4 seconds versus 10 seconds is comfortable but IMHO it doesn't warrant for better image compression. I'm used to browsing with 3-4 netscape windows open and downloading at the same time and load times certainly don't bother me when I'm with a 33.6 modem.
While I don't assume everyone has a T1 at home, I usually assume everyone has a half-decent machine. Thinking otherwise reminds me of Andy Tanenbaum arguing with Linus Torvalds and reasoning that it was a bad idea to make Linux run only on 386 machines, thus breaking compatibility with older x86 processors.
Flavio
Flash? Hell, no! check out my home page and see how many images and plugins I've used (hint: none).
IMHO there's very little need for highly compressed images on the web right now. With so much bandwidth available and the notion that images aren't always mandatory, what difference does 100kB of data make to a web page?
Of course the concept's interesting, and if it's really innovative it could be used in conjunction with other techniques to improve video compression, but considering the format's not open [(don't even get me started on this, because we're considering the web here)] and perhaps not all that fantastic, why bother?
Flavio
In case you're getting the "server busy" message, check out ShugaSh ack's mirror.
All these features and not the one I'd really want: encrypted communication. With so much DSP power available, why not?
Yet again, most people use license plates and birthdates for their bank account passwords, among others. Not considering the government and conspiracy theories.
Flavio
No, I'm not visually impaired. The fact you'll need to "redesign" (ha!) software for Whistler doesn't mean jack, because I'm commenting on its usability features, as was the article.
This reasoning that proves Whistler is totally new reminds me of advertisements that say "New Ford Escort limited edition: now with lame stickers on the sides". [Ford Escort was the first thing that came to mind and there's no connection between the quote and the Real World]
I mean, for God's sake, it's not even "New Pepsi: now in a different aluminum can!".
Flavio
You guys may say I don't pay attention to details, but I can't see a difference between this so called "new" Whistler and the current Windows 98 interface.
:)
Sure, icons and bars all over got whiter and everything appears flatter, but overall we're talking about exactly the same thing.
Talking usability-wise, I can't see any advantage in comparison to Windows 98, and quite frankly, I don't expect to see any. I think Windows is decent as it is and couldn't think of a way to execute things faster and better without a CLI. (please respect my views here
Am I the only one that thinks the clean Window Maker interface can't be beaten? Most argue about "the average user" finding it more complicated, but come on!, the average user gets dumber each day. Let's consider for a change that Whistler isn't really something new (at all) and that maybe it's very good already.
As for KDE/Gnome [I've got to comment on them, otherwise this would risk being offtopic], they're far from being Whistler. Linux's power doesn't come from nowhere and to channel such versatility is a very hard task. Anyway, I'm not sure I even want them to be like Whistler.
Flavio
"Real" work is tangible, determinable. Real work provides you with useful results. I'm not saying social studies give you vague answers all the time, but they do more than not.
Engineering's a good example of what an adequate technical formation is. A technical formation allows you to do "real work". A non-technical formation will leave you to comment vaguely about phenomena you see without being able to directly assert facts about them.
Actually, the social sciences are the most self-critical disciplines around
Between its highest inner circles of discussion, maybe, and this is another issue that does not apply to what happens in the real world. The criticism between social "scientists" themselves prevents any definitive results from being given. You can compare such discussions as the thought-restricted questioning of God's existence. The field gets nowhere ideologically with such reasoning, because there will always be digressions and diversions between its own researchers. Trends define temporal tendencies, ones more absurd than others, but there never is consensus over anything.
On the other hand, if this were the largest problem I'd be happy. But now, instead of reading about the newest medical research in the paper I always read about the newest social research results that prove the obvious. Now why is that? It's because people don't care about natural science anymore than they care about the inner discussions of social science. Natural science is over their heads tecnically, and social science never reaches any results as journalists would want them, thus making a news article nonexistent in the first place.
It is ludicrous to think that there is a "current trend" to overemphasize social science over the physical and natural sciences in education. Scientific departments tend to be far, far better funded, and social science graduates usually have few illusions how their degrees will be received by potential employers.
Scientific departments require large funds otherwise they can't exist. Social science departments don't need such large fundings, and this doesn't prove one is overemphasized.
Social sciences are less "exact" because they simply deal with more complex variables.
Agreed. But IMHO, there are too many divergences inside your own field, each one claiming to have answers it doesn't and each one slamming the other for incompetence. The result, unfortunately, tends to [quote: "tends to", not "are"] dispersion and ineffectiveness when such rules are applied.
Flavio
I agree with your points, with the exception of the 24 superstar engineers one. What wouldn't I give to be in a good team for the first time in my life...
I state my points from personal experience, and of course that doesn't prove me right in the real world.
My father runs his own business, and he's an electrical engineer. He manages everything exceedingly well, in my opinion, and he's never taken any course that are now judged almost mandatory.
There are a lot of things that must be obvious to the manager, whether or not he/she has a degree in management. An academic course doesn't change who you are. A course can, on average, make people who have no management skills into someone a little bit more capable of directing efforts, but it's the individual who has the key to success.
Having said that, I return to your point. You've probably proven yourself right on the general sense. The generic guy is afraid to use logic and deduction and needs a set of predetermined rules to direct him on how to act based on previous experience, no matter how simple the situation.
Flavio
More and more, companies are realizing it was the folks studying social sciences who can better meet the expectations of this new generation of tech work.
This reasoning is flawed. No real work can be done by someone who doesn't have an adequate technical formation. Social sciences are notorious for leading to nowhere whilst leaving the illusion of progress (forged by social scientists, of course). Althought they are helpful in many personal aspects and should not be neglected, one should be careful not follow the current trend and overemphasize them in favor of science.
As other posters have put forth, it's a LOT easier to have a degree on a social science or on pathetic humanities courses that exist out there instead of Electrical Engineering or Physics.
Engineers don't receive recognition for what they do, basically because most people can't understand what they work with. Anyone can readily understand topics of social sciences and that tends to make these courses highly popular.
Fortunately there are still some that like challenges and study exact sciences.
Next time you read on the paper about ground-breaking social studies that prove what's already obvious, remember what I've written.
Flavio
I've lost all my respect for ICANN.
.name and .info are good, as you've stated, but all others have very restricted or reduntant uses.
.web and .biz. Stupid or what? I feel like marketing people were exclusively responsible for these decisions.
.org?
.aero? WTF? I just don't get this one.
.kids is ok IMHO.
.edu here; go figure).
Perhaps
For examples of redundancy, see
.museum? why not
And
.xxx would be great, and
.ind is very interesting, and we have that as a domain in Brazil. (On the other hand, we don't have
Flavio
Rethink your math. It takes 9 minutes for light to get to Earth from the sun. Would it take 3 minutes to go the the moon and come back? I think not.
Of course it's the "best" country in the world.
If you can, try to learn about your country's real history. Learn about what your forebears have done to countries in Central America and South America to say the least.
People are usually shocked to know about conspirations developed directly by agencies like the CIA and think these were very isolated occurrences. They weren't.
Your country is democratic only in paper. Proof is everywhere if you care to look.
Don't take this as a flame. Take it as the truth.
Flavio
You don't NEED to give the user the password he had if he forgets it. Just generate a new random password and mail it to him
Heinlein wrote TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch), and not that "There's no free lunch" desecration Stephen King wrote.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!! *grin*
Yup, that's a lot better.
For the ones interested, the uncertainty principle variant for this situation is:
dE * dt >= h-bar,
where
dE = the pair's energy, meaning the amount of energy that is "borrowed" from vacuum in order to create it
dt = the amount of time the pair lives
h-bar = Planck's constant divided by 2*pi
Flavio
Sure he uses a TWM, but the fact he freaked out in a KDE-bash kind of points out (IMHO, at least) that he may not care about GNOME _that_ much, but he surely dislikes KDE.
Perhaps Mr. Stallman doesn't care about GUIs and doesn't care about KDE or GNOME. But he _dislikes_ KDE, so that's what I'm trying to say.
These people finally managed to transform a concept that exists in the mind of every programmer in a reality.
Java packs only very high-level bytecode/native code translation on a not-so-flexible language. Now this is truly perfect.
I don't believe they could've done a better job,
and I just hope people don't get too interested in processor-specific optimizations and lose the focus on the systems' whole intent.
Flavio
Well stated. As a Brazilian, I've got to agree with you. I believe everyone in South America would agree with you.
However, there's one point for improvement left: the nationality you've mentioned is spelled colombian (with an O). I suppose 99,9% of USians (but a much smaller percentage of Americans) get it wrong.
Flavio
You're in for one hell of a surprise.