PowerPC with Altivec does in fact find its way into scientific computing (big PPC clusters) and image editing (Macintosh computers).
On the Windows desktop, on the other hand, these applications aren't important enough for a switch to processors with a new instruction set but which can't run the old apps in parallel on the same machine. When Apple first introduced Power Macintosh computers to replace 68K computers, Apple solved this problem by emulating legacy apps and making half the OS run in emulation until the rest could be ported. AMD's new processor will introduce hardware support for such emulation ("virtual i386" mode), making it even easier for Microsoft to port only half the OS, just as Intel did when its V86-capable 386 processor led to Windows 3.x, the first Windows version that multitasked DOS apps well.
... and then he'll go find someone who'll install what he WANTS, not what you THINK he should have.
Most of the time, they ask "can you get me office", not "can you get me Microsoft Office". Yes, they would like Microsoft Office, but I give them exactly what they ask for orally. I give them an office suite that behaves enough like Microsoft Office that not only do skills gained at work transfer easily, but the suite could almost be mistaken for the new version of Microsoft Office that rearranges all the menus. I give them an office suite that preserves their freedoms; they'll thank me in the long run.
software that requires the DRM patch before it'll operate
Other than Microsoft, what Windows application publisher has expressed plans to publish apps that require the digital restrictions management patch?
media that will only play with the patch in place
If Disney does that, I'll just buy DVDs of other studios' film adaptations of the same stories Disney ripped off. DVDs play just fine in the PowerDVD software that came with my DVD-ROM drive, and that's without the DRM patch.
Still, even if the application software is not immediately recompiled, the system software can be recompiled to give a quick benefit. This will probably make a difference in I/O, graphics, full-motion video, and several other places.
Besides, can't Gentoo users just recompile their whole system and apps by giving one command and going to bed?
IBM chose to build the PC around the x86 architecture, which pretty much dried up the market for other 16 bit processors.
Other 16-bit processor architectures lived on in game consoles. The Sega Genesis and Atari Jaguar had a 68000 processor, and the WDC 65c816 found its way into the Super NES. Why couldn't Zilog manage to market its CPUs for use in 16-bit consoles?
Re:Performance doesn't come directly from 64 bits
on
Is Prescott 64-bit?
·
· Score: 1
i was under the impression that RISC chips and such had way more than 16 registers.
Not all RISC architectures are register-heavy; the ARM architecture has 15 general-purpose registers. Remember that more registers means either 1. the instruction word grows longer, or 2. some features must be forfeited.
The Mac went through almost the same growing pains in the early 7.0 era. IIRC, Mac OS 7.0 and 7.1 could run in 24-bit mode or 32-bit mode, but some apps required a bit of reengineering by their authors before they could work with 32-bit mode, and in fact, some 68020-based and early 68030-based Mac models had "dirty" ROM code that didn't work with 32-bit addressing. Apple finally dropped support for "dirty" models in Mac OS 7.6, the first to require a 68030 processor and a "clean" ROM.
Yes, there's Windows for the platform, but what vendor sells a new IA-64 machine to end users for under $1,000? A workstation platform is generally not a "desktop" platform until it is common in homes, and it won't be in many homes until it gets below that psychological price point.
Sadly, most code we care about needs to be executed serially.
Think anything with big for loops. Think signal processing. GIMP and Photoshop filters could almost certainly be reengineered to use wide parallelism. Weather prediction models would benefit as well.
Why don't we just put more then one standard core on the same die?
Because then the Slashdot trolls wouldn't be able to make as much of a Beowulf cluster joke.
if whoever wrote this up told us (us as in the rest of the world) what the heck Vonager is
You mean "Vonage".
If you find something you've seen on Slashdot unfamiliar, the editors may have already run an article about it. Try the little search box at the bottom of this page. No wait, I've tried it for you.
Only congress (legislative branch) can legally create and levy a tax. No other part of government can.
Can't the U.S. Congress delegate some of its legislative authority to an executive agency? "The Commission has the right to create and levy user fees, within these limits..."
The difference between Vonage and Skype is that Vonage is, in a way, dial-up telephony. Vonage, unlike Skype and its pure-VoIP brethren, actually connects to the public switched telephone network.
in most states, it's illegal to "absorb" the sales tax into the advertised price
How do soft drink vending machines in those states work? If it says $1.00, I stick in a $1 note, push the button, and out pops a Vanilla Crack. It doesn't say "add six more cents to pay for Indiana sales tax."
Except when Slashdot users create their replacement terms (digital restrictions management, restricted computing platform alliance, crippled disc, etc.), they're actually using the most ordinary dictionary definitions of the replacement words. "Rights" in "DRM" is doublespeak for "a contract granting a license under a government-granted monopoly", and few people understand the military meaning of "trusted" that the TCPA uses.
It doesn't mean that my archives that are not password protected can no longer be extracted, or that I must password protect everything.
But if the common zip programs started password protecting everything by default (default password: !seineew era sreenigne ERAWKP), that would help create lock-in.
You think they're going to lock down the sound & video API's in the OS so that nobody can make their own media players?
No, I think Microsoft's going to turn on DRM by default in the WMA and WMV encoders and in Office 2006.
And the competitor's programs will not require it. I understand about Microsoft's monopoly on operating systems that are compatible with the apps on Best Buy stores' shelves, but Microsoft still doesn't have a monopoly on Win32 compatible office software. For instance, when somebody asks me to pirate him MS Office, I download and install Sun's OpenOffice.org suite instead.
Actually, digital restrictions management protects authors[1] from consumers in several ways:
it helps to enforce the author's exclusive right under Title 17, United States Code, to authorize reproduction or modification of a work;
it often extends the author's monopoly to prohibit uses otherwise exempted from Title 17 exclusive rights, especially those exempted in 17 USC 107, 109, 117, and 1008; and
it raises the cost of publishing a work, thereby protecting established authors from individuals who are consumers but who would become authors.
The "anti-consumer" sentiment toward DRM typically relates to reasons 2 and 3.
[1] U.S. copyright law uses "author" and "works" instead of "creator" (n) and "content" (n). Mr. Stallman agrees that we should use the same terminology used by the letter of the law.
This has held back Word for a long time really, meaning legal docs and contracts always had to be PDF'd before being sent to clients. So it's nice to see it in Office this time around.
The problem with.doc is that there exists more thorough publicly available documentation on how to read a PDF than on how to read a.doc file. Without thorough publicly available documentation, authors of free software cannot hope to compete.
Clients don't have to use DRM in their Word documents. It's completely optional.
The fear that many users will express here is that in a future version, Microsoft will set up a future version of Microsoft Word to enable digital restrictions management by default on all new documents. The unexpressed goal here is to nip it in the bud.
However, Microsoft is referring to its implementation of DRM as RMS, which Mr. Stallman would expand as Restrictions Management Services. Windows users who don't read Slashdot are likely to confuse these initials with Mr. Stallman's initials and think Mr. Stallman endorses Restrictions Management Services.
the point is that any newer (media) software written for Windows will eventually tie-in with the RM APIs, so you won't have a choice in the future.
You mean any newer (media) software written for Windows and published by Microsoft will eventually tie-in with the RM APIs. Though Microsoft makes the official Windows_Media(tm) player, Microsoft doesn't make the only media player for the Windows platform. The DivX media player doesn't have to use the DRM API. Neither does the QuickTime media player; by early 2004, it'll start using the iTunes DRM infrastructure instead. The world of sound recordings and audiovisual works playable on Windows is not limited to just Microsoft's own *.wma and *.wmv; it encompasses *.avi, *.mp?, *.mov, and other formats as well.
voters have given governments (like Orange County, California) the right to dream up fees on unrelated activities (like speeding) to pay for their own mismanagement and bankruptcies (speeding causes bankruptcy?)
Speeding causes auto collisions. Auto collisions cause damage to human bodies. Damage to human bodies causes health care expenses. Health care expenses cause deficits. Deficits cause bankruptcy.
Slashdot Mirror
PowerPC with Altivec does in fact find its way into scientific computing (big PPC clusters) and image editing (Macintosh computers).
On the Windows desktop, on the other hand, these applications aren't important enough for a switch to processors with a new instruction set but which can't run the old apps in parallel on the same machine. When Apple first introduced Power Macintosh computers to replace 68K computers, Apple solved this problem by emulating legacy apps and making half the OS run in emulation until the rest could be ported. AMD's new processor will introduce hardware support for such emulation ("virtual i386" mode), making it even easier for Microsoft to port only half the OS, just as Intel did when its V86-capable 386 processor led to Windows 3.x, the first Windows version that multitasked DOS apps well.
Most of the time, they ask "can you get me office", not "can you get me Microsoft Office". Yes, they would like Microsoft Office, but I give them exactly what they ask for orally. I give them an office suite that behaves enough like Microsoft Office that not only do skills gained at work transfer easily, but the suite could almost be mistaken for the new version of Microsoft Office that rearranges all the menus. I give them an office suite that preserves their freedoms; they'll thank me in the long run.
software that requires the DRM patch before it'll operate
Other than Microsoft, what Windows application publisher has expressed plans to publish apps that require the digital restrictions management patch?
media that will only play with the patch in place
If Disney does that, I'll just buy DVDs of other studios' film adaptations of the same stories Disney ripped off. DVDs play just fine in the PowerDVD software that came with my DVD-ROM drive, and that's without the DRM patch.
people hate to "do without"
My mom "does without" a Lexus and doesn't care.
Still, even if the application software is not immediately recompiled, the system software can be recompiled to give a quick benefit. This will probably make a difference in I/O, graphics, full-motion video, and several other places.
Besides, can't Gentoo users just recompile their whole system and apps by giving one command and going to bed?
IBM chose to build the PC around the x86 architecture, which pretty much dried up the market for other 16 bit processors.
Other 16-bit processor architectures lived on in game consoles. The Sega Genesis and Atari Jaguar had a 68000 processor, and the WDC 65c816 found its way into the Super NES. Why couldn't Zilog manage to market its CPUs for use in 16-bit consoles?
i was under the impression that RISC chips and such had way more than 16 registers.
Not all RISC architectures are register-heavy; the ARM architecture has 15 general-purpose registers. Remember that more registers means either 1. the instruction word grows longer, or 2. some features must be forfeited.
The Mac went through almost the same growing pains in the early 7.0 era. IIRC, Mac OS 7.0 and 7.1 could run in 24-bit mode or 32-bit mode, but some apps required a bit of reengineering by their authors before they could work with 32-bit mode, and in fact, some 68020-based and early 68030-based Mac models had "dirty" ROM code that didn't work with 32-bit addressing. Apple finally dropped support for "dirty" models in Mac OS 7.6, the first to require a 68030 processor and a "clean" ROM.
Yes, there's Windows for the platform, but what vendor sells a new IA-64 machine to end users for under $1,000? A workstation platform is generally not a "desktop" platform until it is common in homes, and it won't be in many homes until it gets below that psychological price point.
Sadly, most code we care about needs to be executed serially.
Think anything with big for loops. Think signal processing. GIMP and Photoshop filters could almost certainly be reengineered to use wide parallelism. Weather prediction models would benefit as well.
Why don't we just put more then one standard core on the same die?
Because then the Slashdot trolls wouldn't be able to make as much of a Beowulf cluster joke.
if whoever wrote this up told us (us as in the rest of the world) what the heck Vonager is
You mean "Vonage".
If you find something you've seen on Slashdot unfamiliar, the editors may have already run an article about it. Try the little search box at the bottom of this page. No wait, I've tried it for you.
Only congress (legislative branch) can legally create and levy a tax. No other part of government can.
Can't the U.S. Congress delegate some of its legislative authority to an executive agency? "The Commission has the right to create and levy user fees, within these limits..."
When can we drop this telephone/fee system so I can just call someones IP address without a centralized service?
Now.
It's noones business what I run on top of it.
Who is this Noone fellow? Is he an elected official? Or is it like Ulysses's pseudonym "Nemo"? (in that case...)
This isn't dial up telephony
The difference between Vonage and Skype is that Vonage is, in a way, dial-up telephony. Vonage, unlike Skype and its pure-VoIP brethren, actually connects to the public switched telephone network.
in most states, it's illegal to "absorb" the sales tax into the advertised price
How do soft drink vending machines in those states work? If it says $1.00, I stick in a $1 note, push the button, and out pops a Vanilla Crack. It doesn't say "add six more cents to pay for Indiana sales tax."
Except when Slashdot users create their replacement terms (digital restrictions management, restricted computing platform alliance, crippled disc, etc.), they're actually using the most ordinary dictionary definitions of the replacement words. "Rights" in "DRM" is doublespeak for "a contract granting a license under a government-granted monopoly", and few people understand the military meaning of "trusted" that the TCPA uses.
Marketspeak is ++ungood.
It doesn't mean that my archives that are not password protected can no longer be extracted, or that I must password protect everything.
But if the common zip programs started password protecting everything by default (default password: !seineew era sreenigne ERAWKP), that would help create lock-in.
You think they're going to lock down the sound & video API's in the OS so that nobody can make their own media players?
No, I think Microsoft's going to turn on DRM by default in the WMA and WMV encoders and in Office 2006.
programs and files will start requiring it.
And the competitor's programs will not require it. I understand about Microsoft's monopoly on operating systems that are compatible with the apps on Best Buy stores' shelves, but Microsoft still doesn't have a monopoly on Win32 compatible office software. For instance, when somebody asks me to pirate him MS Office, I download and install Sun's OpenOffice.org suite instead.
It wouldn't suprise me if it was in the next 2K service pack.
More like "50MB service pack". I wish the next Windows 2000 service pack were only 2 KiB in size.
Actually, digital restrictions management protects authors[1] from consumers in several ways:
The "anti-consumer" sentiment toward DRM typically relates to reasons 2 and 3.
[1] U.S. copyright law uses "author" and "works" instead of "creator" (n) and "content" (n). Mr. Stallman agrees that we should use the same terminology used by the letter of the law.
This has held back Word for a long time really, meaning legal docs and contracts always had to be PDF'd before being sent to clients. So it's nice to see it in Office this time around.
The problem with .doc is that there exists more thorough publicly available documentation on how to read a PDF than on how to read a .doc file. Without thorough publicly available documentation, authors of free software cannot hope to compete.
Clients don't have to use DRM in their Word documents. It's completely optional.
The fear that many users will express here is that in a future version, Microsoft will set up a future version of Microsoft Word to enable digital restrictions management by default on all new documents. The unexpressed goal here is to nip it in the bud.
The digital consumer rights groups did revolt a while ago, and they got the U.S. Congress to suspend action on the CBDTPA.
MS/SCO are trying to paint users of other OS's - as "IP" pirates.
Q: Where do you put your iP?
A: In your iLoo.
However, Microsoft is referring to its implementation of DRM as RMS, which Mr. Stallman would expand as Restrictions Management Services. Windows users who don't read Slashdot are likely to confuse these initials with Mr. Stallman's initials and think Mr. Stallman endorses Restrictions Management Services.
the point is that any newer (media) software written for Windows will eventually tie-in with the RM APIs, so you won't have a choice in the future.
You mean any newer (media) software written for Windows and published by Microsoft will eventually tie-in with the RM APIs. Though Microsoft makes the official Windows_Media(tm) player, Microsoft doesn't make the only media player for the Windows platform. The DivX media player doesn't have to use the DRM API. Neither does the QuickTime media player; by early 2004, it'll start using the iTunes DRM infrastructure instead. The world of sound recordings and audiovisual works playable on Windows is not limited to just Microsoft's own *.wma and *.wmv; it encompasses *.avi, *.mp?, *.mov, and other formats as well.
voters have given governments (like Orange County, California) the right to dream up fees on unrelated activities (like speeding) to pay for their own mismanagement and bankruptcies (speeding causes bankruptcy?)
Speeding causes auto collisions. Auto collisions cause damage to human bodies. Damage to human bodies causes health care expenses. Health care expenses cause deficits. Deficits cause bankruptcy.