I didnt believe that it could be as good as it is for porn video searching. Thats pretty freaking sweet. Mouse over to see a preview... VERY nice!
Google has definately met its match in the video search arena, and the killer thing is that for google to catch up it seems like they will be making their own youtube less relevant in the process, allowing competitors to be more easily visible.
Well, for one thing if you need a prime divisor, 2^n-1 primes have some good properties...
Modulus or Division by such numbers can be accomplished with a few fast operations (bitwise Shift/And, a comparison, and maybe a subtraction) instead of a single very slow one (an actual division.)
There was NEVER a time when IE6 was the only browser. Did you forget about Netscape? (all over the post you JUST replied to?)
IE6 was the best browser because it REALLY WAS the best browser, it wasnt because it was "the only browser." You are either ignoring history on purpose (because you don't like it,) or you are ignorant but feel like having a vocal opinion on the subject you are ignorant about anyways.
Netscape had all the advantages, being pushed by the largest internet service, AOL. Availability wasn't even an issue, since you couldn't help but recieve dozens of AOL CD's (in the mail, at grocery stores, colleges, and so on and on.) The average first timer "got online" by installing Netscape and giving AOL their credit card number.
You claim that "firefox has proven that the only thing keeping back innovation was IE," yet IE is *still* bundled with Windows.. but there it is.. Firefox has a very respectable market share in spite of it. You are just imagining that innovation was held back by I.E. when the reality was that Netscape fucked up and did a 100% rewrite. The lag in innovation was a direct result of the competition WILLINGLY taking YEARS to reinvent the wheel. They threw away FOUR YEARS of work and THEN took another SIX YEARS to catch up. By my math, thats a whole decade wasted, not by Internet Explorer, but instead by the Netscape/Mozilla team.
The argument is that a company which maintains a *monopoly* in as far as what operating system people are more likely to use is abusing this position of monopoly to push their own browser which is in turn stiffling innovation and advancement in browsers.
Firefox proves that you are wrong, right?
You cannot on the one hand say that they stiffled innovation and on the other rejoice that innovation by the competiton is winning the market over.
The fact is that Netscape was a piece of crud, and worse yet they decided to do an entire rewrite of that piece of crud, producing an even bigger piece of crud that was even worse than the original.
Lets get some history here.
Its 1998, the U.S. went after Microsoft for anti-trust practices for bundling I.E., meanwhile.. Netscape is on version 4.x, the second biggest piece of crud given the name Netscape. Knowing how really bad their browser was, Netscape open sourced it and formed Mozilla, who decided that it was so bad that a full 100% re-write was needed.
AOL, the most dominant internet service provider at the time, then bought Netscape this same year.
Its now 2000, and the U.S. finally ruled against Microsoft in its anti-trust case. Netscape finally has a new release. They skipped 5.x and went right to 6.x. This turns out to be the biggest piece of crud they ever put their name on.
AOL decides to go after Microsoft in civil court for anti-trust compensation.
Its now 2003, and AOL's case against Microsoft comes to a conclusion. One of the things AOL demanded was the right to distribute Internet Explorer royalty free. This is what their users wanted. AOL then disbanded Netscape Communications and Mozilla announced that they would be focusing on developing Firefox.
Its now 2004 and Firefox 1.0 has arrived.
Thats 6 years of Internet Explorer without any competition, not because of anti-trust, but because the competitors simply didn't have a good product and made some pretty big mistakes along the way.
Firefox 1.0 grabbed market share immediately.
Its now 2009, 5 years after Firefox was released, and 11 years after Netscape committed suicide. It has at least 220 million users, and has been downloaded from the official site over 700 million times. "Market Share" estimates all fall somewhere between 20% and 40%.
So in the 5 years its been live, Firefox has proved that quality and innovation does work. It has proven that "bundling the browser" it not a barrier to entry, just like Internet Explorer proved that AOL's Netscape dominance wasnt a barrier (AOL sued them for the right to distribute Microsofts superior product! Think about that.)
If Microsoft had not lost that anti-trust case, Netscape then might still be alive, because AOL never would have won the right to distribute Internet Explorer. Carefull what you wish for.
When I click the button, it says "unable to connect to the internet." I dont have internet! Thats why I got the version of windows without internet explorer! The button doesnt fix the problem like you imagined it did.
What it comes down to is that people on this site believe themselves to possess a God-given right to enjoy other people's work without paying, and they'll demand that "right" be defended by any means necessary.
Come on, most slashdotters surely don't think the right is god-given, being athiestic heathen basement dwellers.
Anybody familiar enough with the basics to estimate the environmental impact of seperate browser CD's?
They need to be manufactured: raw materials -> CD pressing factory
They need to make their way to retailers: factory -> retailers
They need to make their way to customers: retailers -> customers
They need to make their way to landfill/recycler: customers -> waste disposal
I would think that 100,000,000 units in europe would be a conservative estimate over a 10 year period.
As the other poster had touched upon, there is a limit to the amount of input validation that can be accomplished because of simple economic/performance constraints.
MMO's are in-general spartan as far as information passed back-and-forth because if it was any different, the servers would need a lot more bandwidth. This is also true for multi-player FPS's.
Because of this, it is imperative that they DO hide the weaknesses behind a veil of secracy. A good example of this is Diablo II, where the entire level instance is transmitted once to the client. The server cannot afford the bandwidth to be constantly updating the map as the player explores, nor can it afford the memory required to keep a sanity copy in order to detect when the client is displaying things it shouldn't.
At its height in popularity, there were easily times with a hundreds of thousands of Diablo II players playing simultaneously worldwide. Each server had to handle thousands of players, so the servers were responsible for very little that wasn't absolutely essential as a result.
I'd also question its price/longevity scale as well, since the sort of folks who are going to drop $700+ on a basic (no video card, no monitor, no hd's) high performance system are probably the same sort of folks who are going to scrap that box as soon as Larrabee hits.
My AMDx2 3800+ is starting to show its age, but there is no way I am going to buy a high end part with Larrabee so close.
I don't think it does.. and I also don't think it would even if it could. It would surely be less performant.
The SIMD instruction sets (MMX, SSEx) arent made for stuff that requires random/arbitrary memory access. For instance, an array of pointers is just about useless from an SSE standpoint since it cannot load the data they point to. If you wanted to increment every pointer in the array then thats a good job for SIMD, but if you want to process what they point to, thats not.
Even with its automatic vectorization, its best utilized when the programmer codes towards it (structure-of-arrays instead of array-of-structures.)
What is on the horizon, and what 4-core CPU's are just now touching on, is a different beast entirely and most certainly should not only be capable of, but could certainly benefit from, automatic parallelization such as with your STL container iteration.
What is less obvious is that the vectorization can also be enhanced further, since 4+ cores doing SIMD is certainly better than 1 core doing SIMD. This is pretty much where video cards are now.. instead of just making the SIMD units wider and wider, a more balanced approach has been settled upon.
With Larrabee, the typical desktop will eventualy have 8+ spare cores that are not fit for top level general purpose threading, but will certainly be fit for large scale parallel crunching for tasks that need it.
So what you are saying is that the common misinterpretation, that Wolfram Alpha is a search engine, doesnt in any way invalidate the GP's point when he references it as, and relies on it being, a search engine.
One could argue that XP is a vital component for a lot of businesses and that by artificially restricting it as MS is doing, you are forcing them to incur an unnecessary cost.
Microsoft is not accused of artificialy restricting any legally licensed copy of XP, so no, one cannot argue what you are claiming.
Your analogy would be valid if they caused XP to stop working. They didn't tho.. they just don't want to sell new licenses.
Surely the Mozilla folks picked up on the idea soon after, right? Well, no.. Netscape 6 (Mozilla 0.6) was released 6 years later but did not support tabbed browsing. It was only in 2001 that there was even a hint of a decent browser comming from them that would have tabbed browsing, which they were calling Phoenix (later to be called Firefox)
Great ideas surely can be thought of by multiple people, but it very much seems like even when they don't have to do ANY of the thinking, it takes more than the idea... It also takes the will to implement it, which even the Mozilla boys seem to only do after years and years of the killer feature being right in their face.
Not only does nobody else but Opera seem to be innovative, it doesnt even seem like the others can even recognize a good idea when they see it, requiring years and years of sinking in.
I'm glad that the mozilla boys finally listened to the raves.. I'm sad that I have to include the word "finally" in there.
The latest Opera has a bittorrent client, an email client, an IRC client, an instant messenger, a spell checker, web developer tools such as UserJS and Dragonfly, RSS reader, voice recognition, mouse gestures, history search, content blocking, and on and on and on...
The best feature of all: No AwesomeBar (mod me troll, please)
You stated that users should have a choice about features based on "their needs and PC resources".. why is it that Opera packs so much more into less space than firefox, explorer, or safari, and how does that jive with your concern over resources?
Games tend to be single-threaded because of the lowest common denominator. No point making the game run faster on a Core2 Quad if a chunk of your market is still single-core, where such threading will actualy degrade performance.
If it runs acceptably on a fast P4, then a single core of the Core2 is going to own it anyways.
Rendering is outsourced middleware (usualy from I.D., Epic, or Valve) in the majority of games, and generally *is* multi-threaded at one point or another (even the core rendering API, DirectX, utilizes some threading.)
Slashdot Mirror
I didnt believe that it could be as good as it is for porn video searching. Thats pretty freaking sweet. Mouse over to see a preview... VERY nice!
Google has definately met its match in the video search arena, and the killer thing is that for google to catch up it seems like they will be making their own youtube less relevant in the process, allowing competitors to be more easily visible.
Well, for one thing if you need a prime divisor, 2^n-1 primes have some good properties...
Modulus or Division by such numbers can be accomplished with a few fast operations (bitwise Shift/And, a comparison, and maybe a subtraction) instead of a single very slow one (an actual division.)
For the record, your facts are wrong.
There was NEVER a time when IE6 was the only browser. Did you forget about Netscape? (all over the post you JUST replied to?)
IE6 was the best browser because it REALLY WAS the best browser, it wasnt because it was "the only browser." You are either ignoring history on purpose (because you don't like it,) or you are ignorant but feel like having a vocal opinion on the subject you are ignorant about anyways.
Netscape had all the advantages, being pushed by the largest internet service, AOL. Availability wasn't even an issue, since you couldn't help but recieve dozens of AOL CD's (in the mail, at grocery stores, colleges, and so on and on.) The average first timer "got online" by installing Netscape and giving AOL their credit card number.
You claim that "firefox has proven that the only thing keeping back innovation was IE," yet IE is *still* bundled with Windows.. but there it is.. Firefox has a very respectable market share in spite of it. You are just imagining that innovation was held back by I.E. when the reality was that Netscape fucked up and did a 100% rewrite. The lag in innovation was a direct result of the competition WILLINGLY taking YEARS to reinvent the wheel. They threw away FOUR YEARS of work and THEN took another SIX YEARS to catch up. By my math, thats a whole decade wasted, not by Internet Explorer, but instead by the Netscape/Mozilla team.
The facts are right there. Internet Explorer enjoys the momentum it has not because of bundling, but because the competition really REALLY fucked up. The single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make.
The argument is that a company which maintains a *monopoly* in as far as what operating system people are more likely to use is abusing this position of monopoly to push their own browser which is in turn stiffling innovation and advancement in browsers.
Firefox proves that you are wrong, right?
You cannot on the one hand say that they stiffled innovation and on the other rejoice that innovation by the competiton is winning the market over.
The fact is that Netscape was a piece of crud, and worse yet they decided to do an entire rewrite of that piece of crud, producing an even bigger piece of crud that was even worse than the original.
Lets get some history here.
Its 1998, the U.S. went after Microsoft for anti-trust practices for bundling I.E., meanwhile.. Netscape is on version 4.x, the second biggest piece of crud given the name Netscape. Knowing how really bad their browser was, Netscape open sourced it and formed Mozilla, who decided that it was so bad that a full 100% re-write was needed.
AOL, the most dominant internet service provider at the time, then bought Netscape this same year.
Its now 2000, and the U.S. finally ruled against Microsoft in its anti-trust case. Netscape finally has a new release. They skipped 5.x and went right to 6.x. This turns out to be the biggest piece of crud they ever put their name on.
AOL decides to go after Microsoft in civil court for anti-trust compensation.
Its now 2003, and AOL's case against Microsoft comes to a conclusion. One of the things AOL demanded was the right to distribute Internet Explorer royalty free. This is what their users wanted. AOL then disbanded Netscape Communications and Mozilla announced that they would be focusing on developing Firefox.
Its now 2004 and Firefox 1.0 has arrived.
Thats 6 years of Internet Explorer without any competition, not because of anti-trust, but because the competitors simply didn't have a good product and made some pretty big mistakes along the way.
Firefox 1.0 grabbed market share immediately.
Its now 2009, 5 years after Firefox was released, and 11 years after Netscape committed suicide. It has at least 220 million users, and has been downloaded from the official site over 700 million times. "Market Share" estimates all fall somewhere between 20% and 40%.
So in the 5 years its been live, Firefox has proved that quality and innovation does work. It has proven that "bundling the browser" it not a barrier to entry, just like Internet Explorer proved that AOL's Netscape dominance wasnt a barrier (AOL sued them for the right to distribute Microsofts superior product! Think about that.)
If Microsoft had not lost that anti-trust case, Netscape then might still be alive, because AOL never would have won the right to distribute Internet Explorer. Carefull what you wish for.
When I click the button, it says "unable to connect to the internet." I dont have internet! Thats why I got the version of windows without internet explorer! The button doesnt fix the problem like you imagined it did.
Download? Whats that? Is that part of that whole internet thing I didnt need, so I opted not to get Internet Explorer with my windows?
What it comes down to is that people on this site believe themselves to possess a God-given right to enjoy other people's work without paying, and they'll demand that "right" be defended by any means necessary.
Come on, most slashdotters surely don't think the right is god-given, being athiestic heathen basement dwellers.
No no.. the producers of the software that requires E.I. cannot "simply install I.E."
.. those users will call tech support.
The users wont do that for them
Anybody familiar enough with the basics to estimate the environmental impact of seperate browser CD's?
They need to be manufactured: raw materials -> CD pressing factory
They need to make their way to retailers: factory -> retailers
They need to make their way to customers: retailers -> customers
They need to make their way to landfill/recycler: customers -> waste disposal
I would think that 100,000,000 units in europe would be a conservative estimate over a 10 year period.
The people whos software no longer works would not 'rejoice' at the outcome.
Is it actualy known that for larger n, systems are inherently less stable than when n=3?
I'm not so sure.
Circuit City put child porn on my computer! If this is the sort of "fix" I paid for, then I want my money back!
..and matters even more so to people who want to export their spreadsheets for use by others
As the other poster had touched upon, there is a limit to the amount of input validation that can be accomplished because of simple economic/performance constraints.
MMO's are in-general spartan as far as information passed back-and-forth because if it was any different, the servers would need a lot more bandwidth. This is also true for multi-player FPS's.
Because of this, it is imperative that they DO hide the weaknesses behind a veil of secracy. A good example of this is Diablo II, where the entire level instance is transmitted once to the client. The server cannot afford the bandwidth to be constantly updating the map as the player explores, nor can it afford the memory required to keep a sanity copy in order to detect when the client is displaying things it shouldn't.
At its height in popularity, there were easily times with a hundreds of thousands of Diablo II players playing simultaneously worldwide. Each server had to handle thousands of players, so the servers were responsible for very little that wasn't absolutely essential as a result.
I'd also question its price/longevity scale as well, since the sort of folks who are going to drop $700+ on a basic (no video card, no monitor, no hd's) high performance system are probably the same sort of folks who are going to scrap that box as soon as Larrabee hits.
My AMDx2 3800+ is starting to show its age, but there is no way I am going to buy a high end part with Larrabee so close.
In regards to FPS shooter MMO's.. new ones keep failing for various reasons not specific to being FPS's.
I don't think it does.. and I also don't think it would even if it could. It would surely be less performant.
The SIMD instruction sets (MMX, SSEx) arent made for stuff that requires random/arbitrary memory access. For instance, an array of pointers is just about useless from an SSE standpoint since it cannot load the data they point to. If you wanted to increment every pointer in the array then thats a good job for SIMD, but if you want to process what they point to, thats not.
Even with its automatic vectorization, its best utilized when the programmer codes towards it (structure-of-arrays instead of array-of-structures.)
What is on the horizon, and what 4-core CPU's are just now touching on, is a different beast entirely and most certainly should not only be capable of, but could certainly benefit from, automatic parallelization such as with your STL container iteration.
What is less obvious is that the vectorization can also be enhanced further, since 4+ cores doing SIMD is certainly better than 1 core doing SIMD. This is pretty much where video cards are now.. instead of just making the SIMD units wider and wider, a more balanced approach has been settled upon.
With Larrabee, the typical desktop will eventualy have 8+ spare cores that are not fit for top level general purpose threading, but will certainly be fit for large scale parallel crunching for tasks that need it.
So what you are saying is that the common misinterpretation, that Wolfram Alpha is a search engine, doesnt in any way invalidate the GP's point when he references it as, and relies on it being, a search engine.
k' tx
Wolfram Alpha isn't a search engine.
..and they will do it too, or else Intel will eat their lunch in the compiler arena.
Intel's compiler already does some automatic SIMD, and you can be sure that it will be ready for Larrabee.
One could argue that XP is a vital component for a lot of businesses and that by artificially restricting it as MS is doing, you are forcing them to incur an unnecessary cost.
Microsoft is not accused of artificialy restricting any legally licensed copy of XP, so no, one cannot argue what you are claiming.
Your analogy would be valid if they caused XP to stop working. They didn't tho.. they just don't want to sell new licenses.
Even DOS 1.0 still works.
Tabbed browsing is 1994. Thats right... 1994.
Surely the Mozilla folks picked up on the idea soon after, right? Well, no.. Netscape 6 (Mozilla 0.6) was released 6 years later but did not support tabbed browsing. It was only in 2001 that there was even a hint of a decent browser comming from them that would have tabbed browsing, which they were calling Phoenix (later to be called Firefox)
Great ideas surely can be thought of by multiple people, but it very much seems like even when they don't have to do ANY of the thinking, it takes more than the idea... It also takes the will to implement it, which even the Mozilla boys seem to only do after years and years of the killer feature being right in their face.
Not only does nobody else but Opera seem to be innovative, it doesnt even seem like the others can even recognize a good idea when they see it, requiring years and years of sinking in.
I'm glad that the mozilla boys finally listened to the raves.. I'm sad that I have to include the word "finally" in there.
The latest Opera has a bittorrent client, an email client, an IRC client, an instant messenger, a spell checker, web developer tools such as UserJS and Dragonfly, RSS reader, voice recognition, mouse gestures, history search, content blocking, and on and on and on...
.. why is it that Opera packs so much more into less space than firefox, explorer, or safari, and how does that jive with your concern over resources?
The best feature of all: No AwesomeBar (mod me troll, please)
You stated that users should have a choice about features based on "their needs and PC resources"
Nah, I'd rather build another Great Wall.
Games tend to be single-threaded because of the lowest common denominator. No point making the game run faster on a Core2 Quad if a chunk of your market is still single-core, where such threading will actualy degrade performance.
If it runs acceptably on a fast P4, then a single core of the Core2 is going to own it anyways.
Rendering is outsourced middleware (usualy from I.D., Epic, or Valve) in the majority of games, and generally *is* multi-threaded at one point or another (even the core rendering API, DirectX, utilizes some threading.)