SAAB had a similar concept known as the vehicle exhaust recirculation concept. It was an experiment to address the fact that the majority of pollution given off by modern automobiles occurs at startup, before the catalytic converter reaches the critical temperature needed to properly "scrub" the exhaust of its pollutants.
SAAB's response was to develop a system that would route the exhaust of the car for the first 25 seconds into a balloon. After 25 seconds, the catalytic converter SAAB was using had heated sufficiently to properly scrub the exhaust, so the balloon's exhaust contents would then be filtered back through the intake manifold into the engine to be run through it again. The flow is regulated so as not to affect engine performance.
The net result from this system was lower emissions than the US Ultra Low Emission Vehicle (ULEV) standard, but SAAB hasn't announced any plans to put it into commercial use.
There is an article with more details here. Once the page loads, you can quickly get to the SAAB information by searching for "SAAB".
The best Sci Fi on TV right now is clearly all the repeat runs of Star Trek, ST Next Generation and ST Voyager. And let's not forget the occasional Superstation presentation of Stallone in "Judge Dredd".... a stunning cinematic masterpiece, with Rob Schneider playing a wonderfully refreshing role as comic relief.
The best sci fi not on TV right now is Robotech. Episodes can be found on Gnutella and Hotline, and are also available on DVD from the Robotech website, Robotech.com.
This probably means new PPC possibilities.
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An Amiga Round-up
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· Score: 1
If this company is coming out with PPC-based motherboards, it probably means that Linux and BSD fans will have new, cheaper and non-Intel alternatives soon than they have from Apple at the moment. The PPC has long been cited as a CPU platform that Open Source and FSF folks have an interest in seeing available, but not with the MacOS tax that they have to pay to get the same thing right now - the new PPC motherboards mentioned in this article would probably present that opportunity.
No more Intel electronic chip keys for people to track you!
Microsoft probably understands Open Source and Free Sotware very well.... they probably know it a lot better than most people who support Open Source and Free Software do. Why? Because Microsoft may be evil, but it doesn't remain evil without having incredibly talented and intelligent people working for it.
The issue isn't whether Microsoft gets it or not - they get it, for sure.
The real issue is how Microsoft is going to respond to Open/Free source. We've seen time and again how Microsoft will take a non-Microsoft standard and either introduce their own modified version of it, or introduce an alternative and push it as a competing standard. They want control of everything, and they are going to try to gain control of the resources of the Open Source and Free Software communities, or try to make them irrelevant.
Microsoft will try to re-define what "Open Source" is, or they will try to steal all of the source code press, or they will try to achieve "buy-in" from Open Source community participants.
Just as a basketball team in an away game will try to quickly silence the hometown crowd, Microsoft will try to marginalize the advantages and resources of Open/Free source. But don't for a second think that Microsoft doesn't "get it" right now, or that they have any potential to become the good guys in all of this. Microsoft wants money, and is trying to position their products, services and public image in a way that will allow them to capture more sales.
In truth, regardless of whether Congress is furthering the re-monopolization of the telecom infrastructure or not, that's how it's going to evolve anyway.
Maintaining wireline infrastructure is prohibitively expensive, and the costs are simply too high to support alternative, smaller scale competitors like the CLECs.
Covad, NorthPoint, e.Spire, whoever... they tried to compete with telecom companies by lowering prices, and yet using the same unbundled loops and last-mile infrastructure, and experiencing the same last-mile costs.
That is not a sustainable business model.
The reality of the situation is that the costs involved in building out voice and data services are too high to support competition. The existing infrastructure composed of millions of miles of copper wiring to houses and businesses is too costly for upstarts to replace with either new copper or fiber.
The ROI on network infrastructure build-out requires too much time for non-incumbent providers to break even, meaning that only the incumbents that have been recovering costs on the existing infrastructure for decades are the only companies that have actually seen positive returns on it, and they're the only companies that can survive long enough to see ROI on new infrastructure build-out.
That's the reality of the telecom infrastructure folks. Wireline infrastructure involves massive expenditures that can only be absorbed by the companies that originally had heavy government funding to install the infrastructure in the first place. Companies that have to go it alone, laying down fiber to the curb or home or office, or buying unbundled loops from the ILECs, cannot recover their costs.
The only infrastructures that will actually sustain new competition are the wireless infrastructures: 3G, MMDS / LMDS, wireless optical, and maybe satellite broadband. Wireline competition isn't going to continue much longer.
Conclusion: there will be competition, but don't assume or expect or demand competition in the form of DSL and Cable and Optical Ethernet and other wireline broadband standards.
Another alternative avenue for competition is the ILECs moving into new territory, competing against other ILECs. That has already happened quite a bit, with some of the RBOCs gaining CLEC status and having an almost nation-wide presence (for the US and Canada and some of Europe anyway).
"Second, open source contributors are going to be less likely to develop software for MacOS X if they're going to be expected to clear all of their development plans with Apple's legal department first. It's hard to be creative and "Think Different" under these kinds of restrictions."
Apple's legal actions should not at all be interpreted as a sign of anti-Open Source activity. Apple has a history of legal actions against UI "themes" projects - all until now have been proprietary. It is pursuing the themes nature of this project, and not at all the Open Source aspect of it.
On the other hand, Apple has allowed all sorts of porting of its APSL software to other platforms, it has allowed the GNUStep project to continue for ages, all without any incident.
In truth, this is probably the trickery of the actual theme project maintainers - I wouldn't be surprised if the project leaders were behind the proprietary theme packages. They're attempting to wedge the Open Source community in between them and Apple Legal.
As you may recall, Lars Ulrich said the exact same thing with Napster - Napster made it seem like Metallica was going after its fans, when in reality the company wasn't going after the fans at all.
Apple Legal is going after the themes project - this has nothing to do with Open Source.
First of all, even if MS did that, not only would people find plenty of hacks and workarounds, but there are alternative formats to MP3 that will work just fine.
Secondly, if MS ever tried to do the extreme thing, and eliminate the ability of Windows to play MP3s, Linux and Mac and alternative OSes would start to get a lot of attention - bad for MS.
No, that isn't correct... RAM is supposed to be made to certain specifications, and if the RAM conforms to the proper SDRAM specifications, then it should work.
In this case, Apple is declaring RAM that is to-spec as not-to-spec. The RAM works perfectly well - why else would people suddenly find RAM that isn't good, when they've been using it fine until the firmware upgrade?
No, Apple is imposing an arbitrary decision - there is absolutely no mention of "dodgy" RAM in the PC world, nor in the Apple world. There has never been any official word from Apple about what type of RAM is good, versus bad.
This is an arbitrary decision handed down by Apple, and is actually limiting the speed of Apple machines in the case of CAS2 RAM, which is slightly faste than the CAS3 RAM that Apple uses in its machines.
Apple isn't forcing users to buy its RAM, but it aparently does have "preferred" RAM vendors, of which there are three or four that, in general, make excellent RAM anyway. Kingston is one of them, I'm not sure of the others but I know they exist.
Overall, though, it is really stupid for Apple to do this - this is going to go down as another fiasco that resulted from idiocy and questionable business practices.
Apple also recently announced a firmware "upgrade" that is causing a lot of Mac computers to not recognize some 3rd party RAM modules that worked perfectly and without fail prior to the firmware upgrade.
Apple claims that it had to impose tighter RAM specifications. My take is that if they were aware that they needed to do that, then they should have informed customers a long time ago. The company has so far refused to offer any further details... like actually explaining WHY the RAM doesn't work now, whereas before it worked fine.
This is true to a large extent, but for a customer with your needs (i.e. lowest price PC) Apple obviously was never a consideration for you anyway.
OSX is not intended as a low-end OS. It is based on Unix, of which most is either FreeBSD or NetBSD, and it has some serious high-end graphics and application capabilities.
To that end, it is clear that Apple hopes to strengthen one end of its product spectrum - high-end. Looking at the applications coming to OSX, it is clear that OSX has some significant high-end solutions now that simply could not be available in the MacOS.
Maya is coming to OSX, so is Apache, SendMail, OpenSSH, and a ton of BSD software, in addition to many other commercial Unix and high-end products. Apple is also working closely with companies like Oracle, PeopleSoft and Siebel to bring some of their enterprise-class software to OSX. Clearly, OSX is going to strengthen the Mac in the high-end arena far more than the low-end arena, and Apple is working hard to maximize its gains in the high-end.
So to someone like yourself, your solution of choice is clearly not going to be an Apple product, and realistically it never will be. Apple will never be the low-cost leader - their entire business strategy is based on product innovation and quality, and that strategy just doesn't translate into low-end price advantages or even parity.
Although, to be honest, if you are a programmer and would like to see OSX migrate to the PC, you can download Darwin right now with rudimentary support for x86, and perhaps contribute some driver work. Apple is very interested in getting Darwin onto x86 and would welcome any support they could get in that area.
Here's some URLs for anyone interested. Sorry about not using HTML.
Yipes - the Ethernet service provider. 100 Mbit/second for $1000 a month... nice. Mind you, they're a startup, and probably bound to go bankrupt if their peers are any indication.
http://www.yipes.com/
Enkido - 100 Mbit not fast enough for you? How about your own personal OC-768 connection? Trouble is - there isn't a single company or use on the planet requiring 40 Gigabit/second speeds.
http://www.enkido.com/
Light Reading - the best news site on the Internet for optical networking, IMO:
http://www.lightreading.com/
Verizon - the bastards offering 7.1 Mbit/second and getting sued by many, many parties:
http://www.bellatlantic.com/smallbiz/prodserv/id sl.htm
Of course, Verizon's service varies wildly with the area in which you live, so be sure to navigate to their homepage and start from there> Products and Services > (Home or Small Biz) > Choose state, etc...
Techweb - good general tech industry website, some optical and wireless announcements:
http://www.techweb.com/
Silicon Strategies - good site for silicon-related info, especially chips like MPUs, RAM, and companies involved with them. Also wireless and optical announcements here as well:
http://www.siliconstrategies.com
I've been working for one of the largest networking company right now, in precisely a position to comment.
The situation with DSL speeds and prices is related to a number of things, including:
- the provider's bandwidth allocation policy and/or DSL packages
- the provider's competition in a particular area
- the network infrastructure
- your last mile infrastructure
- what your needs are
- what else you subscribe to from the provider (e.g. long distance, cellular, cable TV)
Generally, the US and Canadian DSL landscape are identical. You can get slow speed DSL in the range of 684 Kbits/second downstream and 128K upstream, or if you're lucky enough to live near a Verizon Central Office, you can get their Premium DSL, which clocks in at 7.1 Mbits/second downstream, and somewhere in the 1.7 Mbits/second upstream. Now the only problem is - Verizon are assholes, and are getting sued by customers and competitors alike. They're the largest RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company) in the US, with more fiber and local loops than any other RBOC, and they know it. They're a massive bureaucracy.
Then, there are two physical factors - your distance to your DSL provider's central office, and the quality of the copper wiring in your apartment or home. Truth be told, you can purchase the fastest DSL available, but if the infrastructure and/or distance are poor, you can end up with bandwidth much lower than a guy paying for much cheaper DSL.
All in all, the DSL landscape is relatively the same - you're limited by a variety of factors and there isn't a lot you can do about it, short of either moving or paying for your entire last-mile infrastructure to be upgraded to new copper or coaxial or fiber.
On the horizon, we can all look forward to two technologies in the 3 to 5 year timeframe that will alleviate things a bit:
VDSL - this is just DSL with new, better DSL modems and a provider that has planted fiber in the network further to the edge, like into your neighborhood.
1st generation VDSL downstream speeds will be up to 13 Mbits/second average, upstream will be 1.6 Mbits. Then VDSL version 2 will deliver 26 Mbits/second downstream. VDSL version 3 will deliver 53 Mbits/second downstream.
The second technology to watch for is optical Ethernet. Various groups are currently working on making Ethernet as robust as Sonet, and companies like Yipes are offering Ethernet service by the Megabit. Eventually, the network in your metro area may be identical to the network in your office, and the long-haul DWDM highways doing little more than serving as fat Ethernet pipes.
Anyhow, T3 = 45 Megabits/second, costs roughly $3000 a month as per my latest figures. Yipes sells 100 Megabits/second Optical Ethernet bandwidth for $1000 a month, so over 2x the bandwidth for 1/3rd the price.
Eventually, Ethernet will probably migrate to residential applications as well, most likely multi-tenant units first (read: apartments, condos).
This rollout is contingent largely on one thing - competition. ILECs and CLECs are in competition with each other, and with other startups, and with fixed wireless MMDS and LMDS providers, and now with WON (wireless optical networks) providers, and lastly with the pervasive cable cos.
However, in some areas the ILEC is... the ILEC. The incumbent, with little to no competition. With these folks getting their margins on voice and data squeezed like crazy, they are not going to start planting down Fiber to the curb or fiber to the MTU when it's going for $250,000+ dollars per mile and they need to lay down multiple miles of the stuff.
So the short explanation for the DSL situation - your access to DSL is, for the most part, the product of the competition for the money you shell out in voice and data services.
In Canada, Rogers and Shaw have been pretty aggressive with their @Home Cable rollout, so therefore the ILECs and CLECs have been forced to either respond, or watch their customers migrate away. That translates directly into: faster DSL speeds and more aggressive pricing.
In the US, there are still towns where the only game in town, short of you shelling out 6 to 7 figures, is to take whatever your ILEC offers. That may very well be dialup for all I know, in some of the smaller tier cities.
In the long run - if 3G wireless providers are smart and the rollout is quick (highly unlikely given the massive prices paid for spectrum, and other issues), you may end up getting your broadband from your cellular provider.
Hope that explains or helps, in some part. Too lengthy... sorry.
IBM multi-threaded CPU, circa 1998.
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Emergence of SMT
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· Score: 1
IBM demonstrated a multi-threaded POWER CPU destined for their AS/400 series of workstations and servers at the ISSCC conference back in 1998. The synopsis of their presentation is available here, as paper 15.3.
To my knowledge, this chip is either now in use, or very close to being put in an AS/400 or i Series box.
Hollow fiberoptic strands using dielectric mirrors to transmit light without loss in the strand cavity, wrapped in superconducting plastic to transmit electricity without loss.
"The tech divide is important to many; just b/c it's subject is not directly life threatening does not mean it holds no value as a discussion piece."
Well let's be honest - foreign aid gets NO discussion at this site, by virtue of people thinking "It's a news for nerds site, so foreign aid is beyond the scope of the site." And yet, since when does being a nerd exclude philanthropy and foreign aid?
After all - we have only so much time to devote, so what are we nerds devoting it to? What would you rather pay attention to, computers in the US, or food in the stomach of people that will die without it?
"this is, by and large, a site about computer technology and the like"
News for nerds... so that also includes legal issues, comets, freedom of speech, movie reviews, articles about frigid lakes and the origins of life, and banner ads for "America's National Tree"?
Hey Jon Katz, has it ever occurred to you that there's a much bigger divide in the world? Ever heard of "third world nations"? They don't even have adequate food.... where are all of your articles about the "food divide"? How about the "adequate living conditions divide"? How about the "rudimentary medical resources divide"?
I think you are far too US-centric in your perspective on things. You attack the so-called "digital divide" as if it were something meaningful at all.
What are you thinking? Do you honestly think getting rid of the "digital divide" will suddenly eliminate the world's problems? Will it stop your US corporations from exploiting third world resources and people?
It's time for you to broaden your perspective on issues, and start writing about the REAL divide in the world - the divide between the US and other first world nations, and the impoverished third world. THAT is the REAL divide!
And no, the "third world divide" is not showing any sign of closing.
Help the world for a change... rather than your writing career.
Awesome it is... I can't believe how few people actually take OSX seriously.. it's going to be as awesome to Mac users as the original MacOS was.. even more so, in my opinion.
March 24th.... Perhaps it is a GOOD day to upgrade!!!
XML, GNOME, you'll just have to wait.
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Inside XML
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Years after the virtues of XML were first extolled XML still isn't the do-all, be-all wonder we were led to believe.
However, his technical assessment and comparison of OSX to FreeBSD is on the second page, here.
To quote some of his comments:
"But as a portability benchmark -- a criterion with which to judge how easy it is to get foreign software running in Mac OS X -- this was certainly not bad at all and I had much the same good results with TCL, another popular open-source application. Porting Unix software to OS X is clearly far less work than trying to port it to Windows 2000 and with OS X providing such a high degree of Unix-compatibility, something like the FreeBSD ports collection (which highly automates the process) would make the third-party software situation pretty close to ideal."
Also, Apple is making some contributions to the Open Packages project. Fred Sanchez, the former technical lead for Darwin, is a developer on the project. Fred recently left Apple, but that is moot - he will still have a lot of involvement with Open Packages, Darwin and BSD from what I am to understand.
All in all, it looks like Darwin is as close to a BSD as one could expect from a proprietary company like Apple - certainly, within one year of March 24th, OSX/Darwin will have a large installed base of users depending daily on BSD code, and Apple will be one of the biggest distributors of Open Source software, as well as software available under its own APSL license.
Cheers.
"I'd hope that architecture politics stay away from the linux kernel."
And substitute what in its place? Linux versus BSD? Vi versus Emacs? Ksh versus Bash versus sh, csh, zsh, sh? Gnome versus KDE? Free Software versus Open Source? CmdrTaco versus CowboyNeal?
I am looking forward to an orderly bloodbath that will avoid the need for senseless debate.
This underscores the freedom of FSS/OSS: do whatever the hell you want, and don't give a damn what anyone else is doing unless you want to.
Linus doesn't support the patches - someone else does. You don't need Linus' blessing to do anything with Linux, so whether he supports the patches or not is moot.
Without the intention of offending, I notice that your pictures indicate that you have an issue with weight and thousands of other men and women are, so it is not uncommon. For example, pictures of RMS indicate he is in the same boat. There is undeniably a significant health risk associated with obesity and I am curious about your thoughts on this issue.
Do you have plans to lose weight, and what are those plans?
If you've been following the Rambus litigation, many of their largest defendants have settles out of court, agreeing to huge monetary settlements.
They haven't had a case tossed out because nobody has had the balls to stand up for themselves yet.
Further, you're missing the larger issue with the US court system - the side with the strongest argument wins... either these lawyers know that the case couldn't be tossed out, or they have forgotten previous litigation along these lines and are missing a very strong point in their cases.
Nope, I don't care that it is "freer", since that is purely a matter of opinion and license loyalty. APSL allows me to:
1. Get the complete source code for free.
2. Get binaries for free.
As far as I'm concerned, that makes the software as free as I want it, and at the right price, and with the freedom for me to do whatever I want with it.
As for better products - I don't care about that either. There is always something better coming along for everything.... even better than whatever program you claim is better than HeaderDoc.
The truth of the matter - I was suggesting one product as a solution to the guy's question. You can reply claiming that the product you're talking about is freer or better - you're missing the point, which is to suggest the idea to the guy asking the question, not the guy giving his own suggested solution.
Slashdot Mirror
SAAB had a similar concept known as the vehicle exhaust recirculation concept. It was an experiment to address the fact that the majority of pollution given off by modern automobiles occurs at startup, before the catalytic converter reaches the critical temperature needed to properly "scrub" the exhaust of its pollutants.
SAAB's response was to develop a system that would route the exhaust of the car for the first 25 seconds into a balloon. After 25 seconds, the catalytic converter SAAB was using had heated sufficiently to properly scrub the exhaust, so the balloon's exhaust contents would then be filtered back through the intake manifold into the engine to be run through it again. The flow is regulated so as not to affect engine performance.
The net result from this system was lower emissions than the US Ultra Low Emission Vehicle (ULEV) standard, but SAAB hasn't announced any plans to put it into commercial use.
There is an article with more details here. Once the page loads, you can quickly get to the SAAB information by searching for "SAAB".
The best Sci Fi on TV right now is clearly all the repeat runs of Star Trek, ST Next Generation and ST Voyager. And let's not forget the occasional Superstation presentation of Stallone in "Judge Dredd".... a stunning cinematic masterpiece, with Rob Schneider playing a wonderfully refreshing role as comic relief.
The best sci fi not on TV right now is Robotech. Episodes can be found on Gnutella and Hotline, and are also available on DVD from the Robotech website, Robotech.com.
If this company is coming out with PPC-based motherboards, it probably means that Linux and BSD fans will have new, cheaper and non-Intel alternatives soon than they have from Apple at the moment. The PPC has long been cited as a CPU platform that Open Source and FSF folks have an interest in seeing available, but not with the MacOS tax that they have to pay to get the same thing right now - the new PPC motherboards mentioned in this article would probably present that opportunity.
No more Intel electronic chip keys for people to track you!
"is it a Good Thing for [Microsoft] to "get it"?"
Microsoft probably understands Open Source and Free Sotware very well.... they probably know it a lot better than most people who support Open Source and Free Software do. Why? Because Microsoft may be evil, but it doesn't remain evil without having incredibly talented and intelligent people working for it.
The issue isn't whether Microsoft gets it or not - they get it, for sure.
The real issue is how Microsoft is going to respond to Open/Free source. We've seen time and again how Microsoft will take a non-Microsoft standard and either introduce their own modified version of it, or introduce an alternative and push it as a competing standard. They want control of everything, and they are going to try to gain control of the resources of the Open Source and Free Software communities, or try to make them irrelevant.
Microsoft will try to re-define what "Open Source" is, or they will try to steal all of the source code press, or they will try to achieve "buy-in" from Open Source community participants.
Just as a basketball team in an away game will try to quickly silence the hometown crowd, Microsoft will try to marginalize the advantages and resources of Open/Free source. But don't for a second think that Microsoft doesn't "get it" right now, or that they have any potential to become the good guys in all of this. Microsoft wants money, and is trying to position their products, services and public image in a way that will allow them to capture more sales.
In truth, regardless of whether Congress is furthering the re-monopolization of the telecom infrastructure or not, that's how it's going to evolve anyway.
Maintaining wireline infrastructure is prohibitively expensive, and the costs are simply too high to support alternative, smaller scale competitors like the CLECs.
Covad, NorthPoint, e.Spire, whoever... they tried to compete with telecom companies by lowering prices, and yet using the same unbundled loops and last-mile infrastructure, and experiencing the same last-mile costs.
That is not a sustainable business model.
The reality of the situation is that the costs involved in building out voice and data services are too high to support competition. The existing infrastructure composed of millions of miles of copper wiring to houses and businesses is too costly for upstarts to replace with either new copper or fiber.
The ROI on network infrastructure build-out requires too much time for non-incumbent providers to break even, meaning that only the incumbents that have been recovering costs on the existing infrastructure for decades are the only companies that have actually seen positive returns on it, and they're the only companies that can survive long enough to see ROI on new infrastructure build-out.
That's the reality of the telecom infrastructure folks. Wireline infrastructure involves massive expenditures that can only be absorbed by the companies that originally had heavy government funding to install the infrastructure in the first place. Companies that have to go it alone, laying down fiber to the curb or home or office, or buying unbundled loops from the ILECs, cannot recover their costs.
The only infrastructures that will actually sustain new competition are the wireless infrastructures: 3G, MMDS / LMDS, wireless optical, and maybe satellite broadband. Wireline competition isn't going to continue much longer.
Conclusion: there will be competition, but don't assume or expect or demand competition in the form of DSL and Cable and Optical Ethernet and other wireline broadband standards.
Another alternative avenue for competition is the ILECs moving into new territory, competing against other ILECs. That has already happened quite a bit, with some of the RBOCs gaining CLEC status and having an almost nation-wide presence (for the US and Canada and some of Europe anyway).
Cheers and wireless.
"Second, open source contributors are going to be less likely to develop software for MacOS X if they're going to be expected to clear all of their development plans with Apple's legal department first. It's hard to be creative and "Think Different" under these kinds of restrictions."
Apple's legal actions should not at all be interpreted as a sign of anti-Open Source activity. Apple has a history of legal actions against UI "themes" projects - all until now have been proprietary. It is pursuing the themes nature of this project, and not at all the Open Source aspect of it.
On the other hand, Apple has allowed all sorts of porting of its APSL software to other platforms, it has allowed the GNUStep project to continue for ages, all without any incident.
In truth, this is probably the trickery of the actual theme project maintainers - I wouldn't be surprised if the project leaders were behind the proprietary theme packages. They're attempting to wedge the Open Source community in between them and Apple Legal.
As you may recall, Lars Ulrich said the exact same thing with Napster - Napster made it seem like Metallica was going after its fans, when in reality the company wasn't going after the fans at all.
Apple Legal is going after the themes project - this has nothing to do with Open Source.
First of all, even if MS did that, not only would people find plenty of hacks and workarounds, but there are alternative formats to MP3 that will work just fine. Secondly, if MS ever tried to do the extreme thing, and eliminate the ability of Windows to play MP3s, Linux and Mac and alternative OSes would start to get a lot of attention - bad for MS.
No, that isn't correct... RAM is supposed to be made to certain specifications, and if the RAM conforms to the proper SDRAM specifications, then it should work.
In this case, Apple is declaring RAM that is to-spec as not-to-spec. The RAM works perfectly well - why else would people suddenly find RAM that isn't good, when they've been using it fine until the firmware upgrade?
No, Apple is imposing an arbitrary decision - there is absolutely no mention of "dodgy" RAM in the PC world, nor in the Apple world. There has never been any official word from Apple about what type of RAM is good, versus bad.
This is an arbitrary decision handed down by Apple, and is actually limiting the speed of Apple machines in the case of CAS2 RAM, which is slightly faste than the CAS3 RAM that Apple uses in its machines.
Apple isn't forcing users to buy its RAM, but it aparently does have "preferred" RAM vendors, of which there are three or four that, in general, make excellent RAM anyway. Kingston is one of them, I'm not sure of the others but I know they exist.
Overall, though, it is really stupid for Apple to do this - this is going to go down as another fiasco that resulted from idiocy and questionable business practices.
Apple also recently announced a firmware "upgrade" that is causing a lot of Mac computers to not recognize some 3rd party RAM modules that worked perfectly and without fail prior to the firmware upgrade.
Apple claims that it had to impose tighter RAM specifications. My take is that if they were aware that they needed to do that, then they should have informed customers a long time ago. The company has so far refused to offer any further details... like actually explaining WHY the RAM doesn't work now, whereas before it worked fine.
Articles are at MacCentral and MacNN.
This is true to a large extent, but for a customer with your needs (i.e. lowest price PC) Apple obviously was never a consideration for you anyway.
OSX is not intended as a low-end OS. It is based on Unix, of which most is either FreeBSD or NetBSD, and it has some serious high-end graphics and application capabilities.
To that end, it is clear that Apple hopes to strengthen one end of its product spectrum - high-end. Looking at the applications coming to OSX, it is clear that OSX has some significant high-end solutions now that simply could not be available in the MacOS.
Maya is coming to OSX, so is Apache, SendMail, OpenSSH, and a ton of BSD software, in addition to many other commercial Unix and high-end products. Apple is also working closely with companies like Oracle, PeopleSoft and Siebel to bring some of their enterprise-class software to OSX. Clearly, OSX is going to strengthen the Mac in the high-end arena far more than the low-end arena, and Apple is working hard to maximize its gains in the high-end.
So to someone like yourself, your solution of choice is clearly not going to be an Apple product, and realistically it never will be. Apple will never be the low-cost leader - their entire business strategy is based on product innovation and quality, and that strategy just doesn't translate into low-end price advantages or even parity.
Although, to be honest, if you are a programmer and would like to see OSX migrate to the PC, you can download Darwin right now with rudimentary support for x86, and perhaps contribute some driver work. Apple is very interested in getting Darwin onto x86 and would welcome any support they could get in that area.
Here's some URLs for anyone interested. Sorry about not using HTML.
d sl .htm
Yipes - the Ethernet service provider. 100 Mbit/second for $1000 a month... nice. Mind you, they're a startup, and probably bound to go bankrupt if their peers are any indication.
http://www.yipes.com/
Enkido - 100 Mbit not fast enough for you? How about your own personal OC-768 connection? Trouble is - there isn't a single company or use on the planet requiring 40 Gigabit/second speeds.
http://www.enkido.com/
Light Reading - the best news site on the Internet for optical networking, IMO:
http://www.lightreading.com/
Verizon - the bastards offering 7.1 Mbit/second and getting sued by many, many parties:
http://www.bellatlantic.com/smallbiz/prodserv/i
Of course, Verizon's service varies wildly with the area in which you live, so be sure to navigate to their homepage and start from there> Products and Services > (Home or Small Biz) > Choose state, etc...
Techweb - good general tech industry website, some optical and wireless announcements:
http://www.techweb.com/
Silicon Strategies - good site for silicon-related info, especially chips like MPUs, RAM, and companies involved with them. Also wireless and optical announcements here as well:
http://www.siliconstrategies.com
Enjoy!
I've been working for one of the largest networking company right now, in precisely a position to comment.
The situation with DSL speeds and prices is related to a number of things, including:
- the provider's bandwidth allocation policy and/or DSL packages
- the provider's competition in a particular area
- the network infrastructure
- your last mile infrastructure
- what your needs are
- what else you subscribe to from the provider (e.g. long distance, cellular, cable TV)
Generally, the US and Canadian DSL landscape are identical. You can get slow speed DSL in the range of 684 Kbits/second downstream and 128K upstream, or if you're lucky enough to live near a Verizon Central Office, you can get their Premium DSL, which clocks in at 7.1 Mbits/second downstream, and somewhere in the 1.7 Mbits/second upstream. Now the only problem is - Verizon are assholes, and are getting sued by customers and competitors alike. They're the largest RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company) in the US, with more fiber and local loops than any other RBOC, and they know it. They're a massive bureaucracy.
Then, there are two physical factors - your distance to your DSL provider's central office, and the quality of the copper wiring in your apartment or home. Truth be told, you can purchase the fastest DSL available, but if the infrastructure and/or distance are poor, you can end up with bandwidth much lower than a guy paying for much cheaper DSL.
All in all, the DSL landscape is relatively the same - you're limited by a variety of factors and there isn't a lot you can do about it, short of either moving or paying for your entire last-mile infrastructure to be upgraded to new copper or coaxial or fiber.
On the horizon, we can all look forward to two technologies in the 3 to 5 year timeframe that will alleviate things a bit:
VDSL - this is just DSL with new, better DSL modems and a provider that has planted fiber in the network further to the edge, like into your neighborhood.
1st generation VDSL downstream speeds will be up to 13 Mbits/second average, upstream will be 1.6 Mbits. Then VDSL version 2 will deliver 26 Mbits/second downstream. VDSL version 3 will deliver 53 Mbits/second downstream.
The second technology to watch for is optical Ethernet. Various groups are currently working on making Ethernet as robust as Sonet, and companies like Yipes are offering Ethernet service by the Megabit. Eventually, the network in your metro area may be identical to the network in your office, and the long-haul DWDM highways doing little more than serving as fat Ethernet pipes.
Anyhow, T3 = 45 Megabits/second, costs roughly $3000 a month as per my latest figures. Yipes sells 100 Megabits/second Optical Ethernet bandwidth for $1000 a month, so over 2x the bandwidth for 1/3rd the price.
Eventually, Ethernet will probably migrate to residential applications as well, most likely multi-tenant units first (read: apartments, condos).
This rollout is contingent largely on one thing - competition. ILECs and CLECs are in competition with each other, and with other startups, and with fixed wireless MMDS and LMDS providers, and now with WON (wireless optical networks) providers, and lastly with the pervasive cable cos.
However, in some areas the ILEC is... the ILEC. The incumbent, with little to no competition. With these folks getting their margins on voice and data squeezed like crazy, they are not going to start planting down Fiber to the curb or fiber to the MTU when it's going for $250,000+ dollars per mile and they need to lay down multiple miles of the stuff.
So the short explanation for the DSL situation - your access to DSL is, for the most part, the product of the competition for the money you shell out in voice and data services.
In Canada, Rogers and Shaw have been pretty aggressive with their @Home Cable rollout, so therefore the ILECs and CLECs have been forced to either respond, or watch their customers migrate away. That translates directly into: faster DSL speeds and more aggressive pricing.
In the US, there are still towns where the only game in town, short of you shelling out 6 to 7 figures, is to take whatever your ILEC offers. That may very well be dialup for all I know, in some of the smaller tier cities.
In the long run - if 3G wireless providers are smart and the rollout is quick (highly unlikely given the massive prices paid for spectrum, and other issues), you may end up getting your broadband from your cellular provider.
Hope that explains or helps, in some part. Too lengthy... sorry.
IBM demonstrated a multi-threaded POWER CPU destined for their AS/400 series of workstations and servers at the ISSCC conference back in 1998. The synopsis of their presentation is available here, as paper 15.3.
To my knowledge, this chip is either now in use, or very close to being put in an AS/400 or i Series box.
Here's the next utility killer app:
Hollow fiberoptic strands using dielectric mirrors to transmit light without loss in the strand cavity, wrapped in superconducting plastic to transmit electricity without loss.
"The tech divide is important to many; just b/c it's subject is not directly life threatening does not mean it holds no value as a discussion piece."
Well let's be honest - foreign aid gets NO discussion at this site, by virtue of people thinking "It's a news for nerds site, so foreign aid is beyond the scope of the site." And yet, since when does being a nerd exclude philanthropy and foreign aid?
After all - we have only so much time to devote, so what are we nerds devoting it to? What would you rather pay attention to, computers in the US, or food in the stomach of people that will die without it?
"this is, by and large, a site about computer technology and the like"
News for nerds... so that also includes legal issues, comets, freedom of speech, movie reviews, articles about frigid lakes and the origins of life, and banner ads for "America's National Tree"?
Hey Jon Katz, has it ever occurred to you that there's a much bigger divide in the world? Ever heard of "third world nations"? They don't even have adequate food.... where are all of your articles about the "food divide"? How about the "adequate living conditions divide"? How about the "rudimentary medical resources divide"?
I think you are far too US-centric in your perspective on things. You attack the so-called "digital divide" as if it were something meaningful at all.
What are you thinking? Do you honestly think getting rid of the "digital divide" will suddenly eliminate the world's problems? Will it stop your US corporations from exploiting third world resources and people?
It's time for you to broaden your perspective on issues, and start writing about the REAL divide in the world - the divide between the US and other first world nations, and the impoverished third world. THAT is the REAL divide!
And no, the "third world divide" is not showing any sign of closing.
Help the world for a change... rather than your writing career.
Awesome it is... I can't believe how few people actually take OSX seriously.. it's going to be as awesome to Mac users as the original MacOS was.. even more so, in my opinion.
March 24th.... Perhaps it is a GOOD day to upgrade!!!
Years after the virtues of XML were first extolled XML still isn't the do-all, be-all wonder we were led to believe.
GNOME wasn't built in a day.
I've tried neither FreeBSD or Darwin, but I follow the two closely. In terms of compatibility, Jordan Hubbard did a review of OSX here:
Salon Article
However, his technical assessment and comparison of OSX to FreeBSD is on the second page, here.
To quote some of his comments:
"But as a portability benchmark -- a criterion with which to judge how easy it is to get foreign software running in Mac OS X -- this was certainly not bad at all and I had much the same good results with TCL, another popular open-source application. Porting Unix software to OS X is clearly far less work than trying to port it to Windows 2000 and with OS X providing such a high degree of Unix-compatibility, something like the FreeBSD ports collection (which highly automates the process) would make the third-party software situation pretty close to ideal."
Also, Apple is making some contributions to the Open Packages project. Fred Sanchez, the former technical lead for Darwin, is a developer on the project. Fred recently left Apple, but that is moot - he will still have a lot of involvement with Open Packages, Darwin and BSD from what I am to understand.
All in all, it looks like Darwin is as close to a BSD as one could expect from a proprietary company like Apple - certainly, within one year of March 24th, OSX/Darwin will have a large installed base of users depending daily on BSD code, and Apple will be one of the biggest distributors of Open Source software, as well as software available under its own APSL license. Cheers.
"I'd hope that architecture politics stay away from the linux kernel."
And substitute what in its place? Linux versus BSD? Vi versus Emacs? Ksh versus Bash versus sh, csh, zsh, sh? Gnome versus KDE? Free Software versus Open Source? CmdrTaco versus CowboyNeal?
I am looking forward to an orderly bloodbath that will avoid the need for senseless debate.
This underscores the freedom of FSS/OSS: do whatever the hell you want, and don't give a damn what anyone else is doing unless you want to.
Linus doesn't support the patches - someone else does. You don't need Linus' blessing to do anything with Linux, so whether he supports the patches or not is moot.
Without the intention of offending, I notice that your pictures indicate that you have an issue with weight and thousands of other men and women are, so it is not uncommon. For example, pictures of RMS indicate he is in the same boat. There is undeniably a significant health risk associated with obesity and I am curious about your thoughts on this issue.
Do you have plans to lose weight, and what are those plans?
Hmm...
If you've been following the Rambus litigation, many of their largest defendants have settles out of court, agreeing to huge monetary settlements.
They haven't had a case tossed out because nobody has had the balls to stand up for themselves yet.
Further, you're missing the larger issue with the US court system - the side with the strongest argument wins... either these lawyers know that the case couldn't be tossed out, or they have forgotten previous litigation along these lines and are missing a very strong point in their cases.
Nope, I don't care that it is "freer", since that is purely a matter of opinion and license loyalty. APSL allows me to:
1. Get the complete source code for free.
2. Get binaries for free.
As far as I'm concerned, that makes the software as free as I want it, and at the right price, and with the freedom for me to do whatever I want with it.
As for better products - I don't care about that either. There is always something better coming along for everything.... even better than whatever program you claim is better than HeaderDoc.
The truth of the matter - I was suggesting one product as a solution to the guy's question. You can reply claiming that the product you're talking about is freer or better - you're missing the point, which is to suggest the idea to the guy asking the question, not the guy giving his own suggested solution.