With an opteron running a 32 bit app is that app limited to a 4gb limit, or can it address above 4gb?
Depends on the operating system. Some kernels support allocation of memory through "far pointers" that refer to a "segment" of large memory, then a smaller offset within that segment. The Windows/286 operating system, versions 2.03 through 3.1, used far pointers as the common memory allocation type because the 286 limited offsets to 64 KB. Likewise, with the 4 GB offsets on the 386, 32-bit apps running on a suitable OS will be able to allocate multigigabytes of memory in 4 GB chunks. For instance, non-Celeron PIIs, PIIIs, P4s, and Xeon processors already support up to 64 GB of physical memory, given an appropriate motherboard. I'm not as sure about the Athlon, given that it still uses an older socket.
10fps is not compatible with my reflexes
on
AMD's 64-Bit Chip
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· Score: 2
It is just not native code, therefore it is slower. But it runs 32-bit versions of Windows and Linux JUST FINE.
Except the FUDsters are right this time, as software written for x86 doesn't run on Itanium. Rather, it crawls on Itanium. The difference is most noticeable in soft-real-time applications such as video games.
Intel could have done the x86 emulation much more efficiently; read my other comment. Efficient recompilation in silicon is the approach AMD has used since the K5 processor and perfected in the Athlon product line.
ARM and Thumb instruction encodings
on
AMD's 64-Bit Chip
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· Score: 5, Informative
"64-bit code is twice as big as 32-bit code" bloatware excuse
Unfounded. Though I find Itanium's instruction coding (16 bytes per 3 instructions) bloated, not all high-"bit" machines have to have bloated bytecodes. The ARMv4 architecture, used in processors such as the ARM7TDMI in the Game Boy Advance, has a standard 4-byte-per-instruction encoding, and an optional 2-byte-per-instruction encoding called "Thumb". Thumb code runs at about two-thirds of the speed of ARM code on machines with fast memory because some operations take more instructions on ARM than on Thumb, but Thumb code really shines when running on small or slow memory and can help drain less battery power on mobile machines. Apps will often have most of the app in Thumb but some of the time-critical inner loops in ARM.
thought [reverse-engineering a proprietary protocol] was no longer legal in [the United States]
1. Only if the protocol "effectively controls access to a work protected under this title". If you test the app using Charlie Chaplin movies or other pre-1923 content, you're not triggering the DMCA's circumvention ban (17 USC 1201).
2. The circumvention ban contains an exemption in 1201(f) for reverse engineering necessary to achieve interoperability. It's not my fault Judge Kaplan ignored this subsection; I consider it an incompetent error.
Re:Installing programs in /home/pinocchio/bin
on
Triangle Boy Lives
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· Score: 1
[Win2k allows unprivileged users to run EXEs from their home directories] Only if the ACLs are set up poorly.
Could you describe how to set up ACLs to prohibit EXEs in/Documents and Settings/ from running?
I would be happy to help the [GIMP team] in other ways if they needed it but I 'm not sure what I can offer that they might want.
Try writing them and suggesting that you contribute a few licenses for Adobe Photoshop to test with. Remember, even machines that the FSF owns are allowed to have proprietary software on them for the purpose of developing a free alternative. Once there's a free "image editor that accepts Photoshop-ABI plug-ins" then we're set.
do not allow users to have sufficient priviledges to install software!
write your own scripts to call registry entries
Some programs' installers do NOT write to the registry and do NOT write outside of the user's home directory. How will the Windows operating system detect such an installation?
fire anyone using any software not explicitly authorised
So somebody who in the course of his or her employment happens upon a site with a Java applet (applets are programs) should be fired?
Installing programs in /home/pinocchio/bin
on
Triangle Boy Lives
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· Score: 1
That windows let users install programs like triangle-boy without administrator privileges (or that administrators regularly give users administrator privileges).
The Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system allows unprivileged users to install programs that don't 1. write to the registry outside of HKEY_CURRENT_USER, or 2. write to the filesystem outside of/home (called "/Documents and Settings" in English versions). So do most UNIX systems.
At $1000 per month, a full T1 connection is way out of a typical home user's price range, and unless you live in a neighborhood with really good line of sight for wireless communication, splitting the cost of the T1 won't work well.
Censorship is government action to forbid you from publishing or speaking on Any outlet. [thales continues about the right of the monopoly ISP to exercise editorial control]
Thus, how am I wrong in concluding that the exclusive franchise on the last mile, granted by municipal governments, constitutes censorship?
Freedom of speech or the press only means one thing, that the government can't stop you from speaking or publishing.
The government stops me from speaking over the radio because the FCC refuses to open new application filing windows for low-power FM radio stations.
The government stops me from publishing over the Internet because municipal governments have granted exclusive last-mile franchises to the telcos and the cable companies.
A lot of commercial software likely is using libraries/code licensed from 3rd parties making opening up the code (or selling it) extremely unlikely.
id Software's Doom was originally opened without sound code because it had used the proprietary MIDAS library. The developers of Doom Legacy filled in the gap with the Allegro cross-platform multimedia programming library (similar to SDL).
Or they could do as sybase did when it opened Watcom C++: first open it to previous owners, with a build that requires the DLLs already included with the compiler, then after you rewrite everything you don't own, release source code to the general public so that they can bootstrap the compiler.
Will the donations per day be constant? Linear? Exponentially increasing? Exponentially decaying?
The growth of a population, such as the spread of a computer worm, typically follows a "logistic growth" curve, that is, starting out with roughly exponential growth and ending up with exponential decay of the rate at which new infections occur as the worm reaches "carrying capacity". A worm begins to reach carrying capacity as the number of vulnerable uninfected hosts dies down. See more about the growth rate of a worm population in this article about Warhol Worms by Nicholas C Weaver.
In the case of a pledge drive, exponential growth comes from word of mouth spread, and Slashdot seems to provide a strong burst in the population of donors. As of this writing, 20854 has been pledged, and the Blender Foundation has collected 11775 of that. The big question in this case is whether the carrying capacity measured in donor contributions exceeds $100,000.
MasterCard shows how computers become consoles
on
The Internet Power Grab
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I got PD/Freeware stuff for my amiga, I dont think people will ever stop making freely available software.
How will you be able to make it if you can't afford a computer that will run it? How do you know that it won't cost 20 times more to get a "developer's computer" that can run binaries that have not been approved by the computer vendor? This is already the situation with the Xbox and GameCube, and it's pretty close to the situation with the PS2 (that is, until somebody reverses the I/O subsystem).
Scene: Computer store of the future. Personal computer that runs only signed binaries: $500. Personal computer that runs unsigned binaries: $10,000. Tools for signing binaries: $1,000,000. Look on Bill Gates's face once his company wields its DRM OS patent to control the entire industry: Priceless.
There are some things money can't buy. U.S. Senators aren't one of them.
[CDs shattering in a CD-ROM drive once they spin up] is most likely an urban legend.
No. It happened to my neighbor. He had to go out and buy a new burner and a new copy of the CD. It was especially tough for him because he wasn't even old enough to have a real job; child labor laws.
If they've already manufactured the drive, they've already lost the money it took to make it.
But if you buy the drive, you run up the sales figures for that drive, and the part of the company that chooses which product to make will choose to make more of that drive.
Slashdot Mirror
With an opteron running a 32 bit app is that app limited to a 4gb limit, or can it address above 4gb?
Depends on the operating system. Some kernels support allocation of memory through "far pointers" that refer to a "segment" of large memory, then a smaller offset within that segment. The Windows/286 operating system, versions 2.03 through 3.1, used far pointers as the common memory allocation type because the 286 limited offsets to 64 KB. Likewise, with the 4 GB offsets on the 386, 32-bit apps running on a suitable OS will be able to allocate multigigabytes of memory in 4 GB chunks. For instance, non-Celeron PIIs, PIIIs, P4s, and Xeon processors already support up to 64 GB of physical memory, given an appropriate motherboard. I'm not as sure about the Athlon, given that it still uses an older socket.
It is just not native code, therefore it is slower. But it runs 32-bit versions of Windows and Linux JUST FINE.
Except the FUDsters are right this time, as software written for x86 doesn't run on Itanium. Rather, it crawls on Itanium. The difference is most noticeable in soft-real-time applications such as video games.
Intel could have done the x86 emulation much more efficiently; read my other comment. Efficient recompilation in silicon is the approach AMD has used since the K5 processor and perfected in the Athlon product line.
"64-bit code is twice as big as 32-bit code" bloatware excuse
Unfounded. Though I find Itanium's instruction coding (16 bytes per 3 instructions) bloated, not all high-"bit" machines have to have bloated bytecodes. The ARMv4 architecture, used in processors such as the ARM7TDMI in the Game Boy Advance, has a standard 4-byte-per-instruction encoding, and an optional 2-byte-per-instruction encoding called "Thumb". Thumb code runs at about two-thirds of the speed of ARM code on machines with fast memory because some operations take more instructions on ARM than on Thumb, but Thumb code really shines when running on small or slow memory and can help drain less battery power on mobile machines. Apps will often have most of the app in Thumb but some of the time-critical inner loops in ARM.
thought [reverse-engineering a proprietary protocol] was no longer legal in [the United States]
1. Only if the protocol "effectively controls access to a work protected under this title". If you test the app using Charlie Chaplin movies or other pre-1923 content, you're not triggering the DMCA's circumvention ban (17 USC 1201).
2. The circumvention ban contains an exemption in 1201(f) for reverse engineering necessary to achieve interoperability. It's not my fault Judge Kaplan ignored this subsection; I consider it an incompetent error.
[Win2k allows unprivileged users to run EXEs from their home directories] Only if the ACLs are set up poorly.
Could you describe how to set up ACLs to prohibit EXEs in /Documents and Settings/ from running?
I would be happy to help the [GIMP team] in other ways if they needed it but I 'm not sure what I can offer that they might want.
Try writing them and suggesting that you contribute a few licenses for Adobe Photoshop to test with. Remember, even machines that the FSF owns are allowed to have proprietary software on them for the purpose of developing a free alternative. Once there's a free "image editor that accepts Photoshop-ABI plug-ins" then we're set.
Make it impossible to execute software for your home dir
Is this straightforward under FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, or Microsoft Windows? If so, how does one go about it?
do not allow users to have sufficient priviledges to install software!
write your own scripts to call registry entries
Some programs' installers do NOT write to the registry and do NOT write outside of the user's home directory. How will the Windows operating system detect such an installation?
fire anyone using any software not explicitly authorised
So somebody who in the course of his or her employment happens upon a site with a Java applet (applets are programs) should be fired?
That windows let users install programs like triangle-boy without administrator privileges (or that administrators regularly give users administrator privileges).
The Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system allows unprivileged users to install programs that don't 1. write to the registry outside of HKEY_CURRENT_USER, or 2. write to the filesystem outside of /home (called "/Documents and Settings" in English versions). So do most UNIX systems.
Unless the filter just blocks all encrypted connections to unknown sites.
Unless the proxy steganographically hides its encrypted data inside what appears to be normal text.
Yes, I know the answer is 'Terrorists hate Americans', but why?
Because we are the near-monopsony buyer of oil, the Middle East's chief export.
Because the majority of us don't practice Islam.
Because we defend the State of Israel.
It makes the terrorists want to use CD shrapnel to hijack an airplane.
At $1000 per month, a full T1 connection is way out of a typical home user's price range, and unless you live in a neighborhood with really good line of sight for wireless communication, splitting the cost of the T1 won't work well.
CMKY for one thing.
Do you have the money to buy the CMYK patents from their owners (mostly Adobe and Pantone)?
Photoshop plugin support for another.
Do you know anything about the Photoshop ABI? Perhaps you could help the GIMP developers hack a Photoshop compatible interface into GIMP for Windows.
Censorship is government action to forbid you from publishing or speaking on Any outlet. [thales continues about the right of the monopoly ISP to exercise editorial control]
Thus, how am I wrong in concluding that the exclusive franchise on the last mile, granted by municipal governments, constitutes censorship?
If you don't like it, then bypass them by hooking your webserver up directly to the internet.
How do I do that if the cable company and the telco have a government-granted duopoly on the last kilometer?
Freedom of speech or the press only means one thing, that the government can't stop you from speaking or publishing.
The government stops me from speaking over the radio because the FCC refuses to open new application filing windows for low-power FM radio stations.
The government stops me from publishing over the Internet because municipal governments have granted exclusive last-mile franchises to the telcos and the cable companies.
I wonder what type of weird experiments happen behind closed doors at Disneyland in those areas marks "Employees Only"
Disney theme park employees are called "Cast Members" or "CMs".
A lot of commercial software likely is using libraries/code licensed from 3rd parties making opening up the code (or selling it) extremely unlikely.
id Software's Doom was originally opened without sound code because it had used the proprietary MIDAS library. The developers of Doom Legacy filled in the gap with the Allegro cross-platform multimedia programming library (similar to SDL).
Or they could do as sybase did when it opened Watcom C++: first open it to previous owners, with a build that requires the DLLs already included with the compiler, then after you rewrite everything you don't own, release source code to the general public so that they can bootstrap the compiler.
Will the donations per day be constant? Linear? Exponentially increasing? Exponentially decaying?
The growth of a population, such as the spread of a computer worm, typically follows a "logistic growth" curve, that is, starting out with roughly exponential growth and ending up with exponential decay of the rate at which new infections occur as the worm reaches "carrying capacity". A worm begins to reach carrying capacity as the number of vulnerable uninfected hosts dies down. See more about the growth rate of a worm population in this article about Warhol Worms by Nicholas C Weaver.
In the case of a pledge drive, exponential growth comes from word of mouth spread, and Slashdot seems to provide a strong burst in the population of donors. As of this writing, 20854 has been pledged, and the Blender Foundation has collected 11775 of that. The big question in this case is whether the carrying capacity measured in donor contributions exceeds $100,000.
I got PD/Freeware stuff for my amiga, I dont think people will ever stop making freely available software.
How will you be able to make it if you can't afford a computer that will run it? How do you know that it won't cost 20 times more to get a "developer's computer" that can run binaries that have not been approved by the computer vendor? This is already the situation with the Xbox and GameCube, and it's pretty close to the situation with the PS2 (that is, until somebody reverses the I/O subsystem).
Scene: Computer store of the future.
Personal computer that runs only signed binaries: $500.
Personal computer that runs unsigned binaries: $10,000.
Tools for signing binaries: $1,000,000.
Look on Bill Gates's face once his company wields its DRM OS patent to control the entire industry: Priceless.
There are some things money can't buy. U.S. Senators aren't one of them.
I don't know anybody that leaves their console on while their not using it for long stretches.
I personally know several. Some people play old NES games that take hours to beat yet do not have a save feature.
[CDs shattering in a CD-ROM drive once they spin up] is most likely an urban legend.
No. It happened to my neighbor. He had to go out and buy a new burner and a new copy of the CD. It was especially tough for him because he wasn't even old enough to have a real job; child labor laws.
If they've already manufactured the drive, they've already lost the money it took to make it.
But if you buy the drive, you run up the sales figures for that drive, and the part of the company that chooses which product to make will choose to make more of that drive.
I think you are mistaking WINE with the core of a OS.
Define "core of an OS".
Wine just implements the win32 calls that win32 programs uses on top on... linux!
Windows 9x just implements the win32 calls that win32 programs uses on top on... dos!
Huh, and I always thought it was exposure to Chemical X that caused brains to double in size.
Chemical X is apparently Ecstasy. I wonder what 'X' really does to human foetuses.