I don't want a Merced. I would prefer a SledgeHammer. What is that you say? Why, that is the next Gen AMD chip. It will run x86 instructions MUCH faster than the Merced's.
Oh but you say you don't NEED that right? Well, given that most software out there right now runs on X86 you might find that you need the backwards compatibility.
Now, you might not need the x86 instrutions at all. Fine, then why wait? Get a Mac or a Alpha. They are not x86, and they are out right now.
A more insightful description of this is avalible over at Toms Hardware, here.
Will there be "tons of support" for Merced? I don't know about that; but then thats why I posted the link.
Yes, except that this time Palm controls the Majority OS (along with Visor). So MS can "integrate features" as much as they want. Netscape was displaced mainly because of the fact that it was included with windows. (And later versons crashed less.)
So this time Palm has the upper hand because they have the major market share AND the OS control in this case. I am not saying that it would be impossible for MS to do this, but their track record with WinCE has not been good so far.
I will be up front in this, I own a Palm IIIx. So here, my view is a little biased. Still, I think that MS has little chance in this arena because the palm already controls 70% of the PDA market and the Palm OS does what it does so well.
I admit that it would be neat if my Palm had the capability to play MP3's and had color (like the IIIc) - But I don't need it. I use my Palm as a organizer, and a E book. It does these things very well. Sure, the new features are nice (like the Ebook reader) but again, MS is missing the point of a PDA.
It is, first and foremost, an organizer. Everything else is secondary to this. Palm spent a good deal of time optimizing their interface for the "tap number" to make them easy and fast to use. For anyone who has used a CE device (and I have) you realize just how much they behave like windows... EXACTLY like Windows. Try using the search function on a CE device and then try it on a Palm, you should notice a signifigant difference in speed.
The idea that MS has that people want the interface on their PDA to be a windows one is not a bad idea, but its not great either. The Windows interface was simply not designed with a PDA in mind. The Palm OS was.
In fact, upon refection I think that MANY GUI's could learn a thing or two from the Palm. I have been working with computers for some time, and I have yet to see a GUI that has been as intuitive to use as the one on a Palm. Everyone that I show my Palm to masters the interface quickly (although not the grafitti). I have seen people struggle with the "standard" Windows interface for YEARS, never mind the looks that they give me when they see Gnome running E and my themes... But I digress.
The Palm OS has IMO become the standard, much as Win9X has become the standard OS on 90% of PC's. You don't need to have WinCE on a PDA, and Palm OS is easier to use. I think that the people have already spoken. The Palm has already won this battle.
Slight physics problem with the earth rotation theory (I know I know it was a cartoon and I am being pedantic.)
The earth would have to be rotating 17 times faster than it is now to have enough momentum to overcome gravity when it suddenly stopped rotating.
Never mind the HUGE impact it would have on the core/plates/oceans etc.
Also, the earth would get EXTREMELY hot due to the conservation of energy. (Carl Sagan notes in "Broca's Brain" that the Earth would reach amazing tempuratures if it suddenly stopped, and in fact, if it slowed over a period of 24 hours it would release enough energy to make the oceans BOIL!!)
There, how is that for a bizzare quickie response? :)
The author makes the point that the compiler itself can be trojaned. (This was noted 17 years ago!)
In this case, the compiler was trojaned so that it recognized when the "login" program was being compiled and inserted a backdoor. It ALSO would insert this same code when compling the source code for the compiler ITSELF.
So you could download the source code for the compiler, and it would be clean, but then you would have to COMPILE it, and as soon as you did the trojaned compiler would generate another trojaned binary. So the authors point is that you have to use a binary compiler, and it can be a weakness - even if its open source.
I have to wonder if the binaries would be identical however... And if running the diff command on them would result in any difference between them?
I have been wondering when Abit was going to follow up with a sucessor to the wonderful BP6.
I read the inkiling of an article over at BP6.com that you could run the PIII FC-PGA in a BP6 with an adapter. I suspect that the same should be capable with the new celerons, still a newer board would be even nicer.
However, the most interesting thing I heard was this from ars:
But there's more than higher clock speeds to these puppies. For one thing, they include the SSE instructions which, while they may or may not help you personally, definitely can't hurt to have. More importantly, they will be fabbed at 0.18 micron and include 256k of L2 cache. Now before anybody gets too excited, they plan to cripple them down to the standard 128k cache size. But if the BP6 showed us anything, it's that disabling can beundone... could be some exciting times ahead for overclockers...
Mmmmm. Imagine O/Cing one of these and enabling the crippled cache! Wooo!!!
I wonder if there is a serial number on these chips... Hmmm.
And finally, I know that someone is going to start posting how overclocking can destroy your chip YADDDA YADDDA YADDDA. Well I have heard it before and this Celery 300A @450 in my machine has not exploded yet. If you don't like overclocking, don't do it. Just don't tell others not to because you are not comfortable with it.
You must use straws, the kind you find at fast food restraunts. But you must use a straw from a different place for each straw you use. If you don't THEY will be able to get through. Then you see, take these straws and make a pyramid over your system. Then cover your pyramid in aluminum foil. But make certain to use the Alcan kind. Its made in Canada. Canada is too cold you see for the CIA to bother with so they leave the Alcan aluminum alone.
So to recap, use different straws (for god sakes dont use storebought! The CIA owns all the stores!) And use Alcan aluminum foil. Make certain your pyramid is secure and you should be safe.
Now if I could only find out how to get the alien tracking devices out of my teeth.....
I found the article and his post to both be funny.
You will notice that the frontpage post has a foot next to it. That means that the link/story therin are to be considered funny. I thought it was so hilarious I emailed it to all my friends, some of whom will actually BELIEVE it. That makes me laugh even harder.
Everyone has different taste in humor. (I know some people that don't find Monty Pyton funny... They SCARE me.)
You may complain that slashdot is getting worse. Maybe it is. Every thread nowdays has a few posts in it lamenting about how slashdot has gone downhill. Really? Slashdot is just a linking system generated buy the COMMUNITY'S submissions. If that is the case, then we, the internet (or perhaps to some degree the free software) community are the ones going downhill.
Slashdot is just an indicator. Something to think about at any rate.
I guess the best point to make though is that if you don't like something on slashdot, just stop reading those parts.
Pump is a nice little program that tells the DHCP server that you want a new IP lease. Its kind of like running Winipcfg and clicking on "renew" except of course, pump is a command for Linux.
It comes with Red Hat IIRC, I am using Mandrake 7 now and I had to use Rpmfind to get it. (Why it does not come with Mandrake I do not know...)
It is generally assumed to be reserved for stuck up nobility who would look down on the lower classes and say "pish". It is an insult where you impy that the ideas of the lower classes are nonsense.
I got it. Is a binary installer. From the page it claims that it will be released GPL.
Is it yet? Or, because AOL owns the source (because it was made on their time) then AOL should have the right too keep the source closed if it is not GPLed yet.
Is it GPL? And is AOL able to keep the source closed? (After all they DO have the rights to it so they should be able to close it....)
But I have a binary now... Do I have the right to demand the source or not?
It is proper to question the motives of an individual. It is not however, proper to question the argument. The argument should be taken on its own merits regardless of the source.
Questioning the arguer instead of the argument is known as "Ad Hominim" Latin for "to the man". Ad Hominim attacks are slanderous and have no place in an argument.
Yes they do! No they don't! Yes they do! This isn't an argument! Yes it is!
I did not think that it did either, but I found a link off the utah GLX project that said it did. I cannot confirm this though. I could be talking out of my ass...
I think his point is if you toast a $87 celeron no great damage is done. But if you toast a $5000-9000 processor you are either Bill Gates or you are out one processor that is worth more than my car.
I think few people have the cash to "risc" overclocking such expensive processors.
I suspect that it will be some time before this technology ends up in consumer PC's. The fact that its meant for servers aside, most stuff is not coded to support multi-threading.
Sure, *nix is, BeOS, and NT (2000) are, but the majority of people still run 9X on their desktops.
Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament support SMP, but there are few consumer level applications that support it. Apparently BeOS can force multithreading, and this is cool, but what we really need are more apps that can take advantage of paralell calculations. Even Carmack states that dual processors running Q3A only increases performance in the most demanding situations.
Even the guys who maintain the Beowulf-How-to (someone is going to post this...) say that paralell computing is great for crunching data, well, IN PARALELL. Quake is not paralell. Clock speed matters more in 3d shooters than overall crunching power (Unless you *like* a slideshow.)
Don't get me wrong, I personally would love to have a machine running either Linux or BSD with one of these things in it (or many) but I don't know what the hell I would do with it.
Until then I will stick with a BP6 and dual-celerons, heck, maybe flip-chips or the new Jalapeno's from VIA/Cyrix.
I think that this is the way of the future, but we won't see it on the desktop for at least 5 years. (IMHO)
My system: Celeron 300a @ 450 Mhz Matrox G400 Max (32 Mb ram 'natch.) 192 MB Ram 13 GB HDD Asus P2B MoBo. Sound Blaster Live. Mandrake 7.0 Running Gnome w/ E.
I followed the directions on lokigames site as per installing the G400. It seemed to work well, my suspicion is that I fscked up with the agpgart.o module though. I say this because:
[root@localhost flibble]# lsmod Module Size Used by agpgart 11508 0 (unused) tulip 24932 1 emu10k1 48076 1 [root@localhost flibble]#
This is my best guess as agpgart.o does not seem to be used. I also tried the dma settings for my glx.conf and all that seemed to do was kill X. (As per John Carmacks directions on the Utah GLX site.)
Kinda neat that I can ask this and *STILL* be on topic. (Bet some moderator whacks me anyhow...)
I own a Matrox G400 Max. I just upgraded from a Matrox 400 (sold that to a friend.)
Its a damn nice card, and has full Linux support via the Utah GLX project. It plays Quake pretty well, (I bought it for the Linux support specifically.) but unfortunatly I currently get ~21 FPS in Quake 3 Arena under Linux @ 640x480 (with some special speed optimizations.)
In windows on the other hand, with no optimizations I get ~67 FPS @ 640x480 and 25 FPS @ 1024x728. It is a bit depressing I must say.
The dual head technology is VERY cool. I have not tried the Xi graphics dual-head addon for Linux yet. I have however tried it under windows, and I can testify to its high coolness factor.
The reviews you have heard about the bump mapping are all true. You cannot get a good impression of it until you have actually SEEN it in action. By this I mean movment, not a static screenshot.
It is unfortunate that there are no games for Linux that currently support this feature.:(
If you are looking for a Linux compatible graphics card I would highly reccomend the G400 or G400 Max. It is not as fast as a GForce (but then in Linux my Voodoo 1 is faster than a GForce!!!) But it is fast nonetheless. The image quality is nothing short of amazing.
And hey, the great Carmack is working on the GLX project. That can only mean great things!:)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want a Merced. I would prefer a SledgeHammer. What is that you say? Why, that is the next Gen AMD chip. It will run x86 instructions MUCH faster than the Merced's.
Oh but you say you don't NEED that right? Well, given that most software out there right now runs on X86 you might find that you need the backwards compatibility.
Now, you might not need the x86 instrutions at all. Fine, then why wait? Get a Mac or a Alpha. They are not x86, and they are out right now.
A more insightful description of this is avalible over at Toms Hardware, here.
Will there be "tons of support" for Merced? I don't know about that; but then thats why I posted the link.
Yes, except that this time Palm controls the Majority OS (along with Visor). So MS can "integrate features" as much as they want. Netscape was displaced mainly because of the fact that it was included with windows. (And later versons crashed less.)
So this time Palm has the upper hand because they have the major market share AND the OS control in this case. I am not saying that it would be impossible for MS to do this, but their track record with WinCE has not been good so far.
I will be up front in this, I own a Palm IIIx. So here, my view is a little biased. Still, I think that MS has little chance in this arena because the palm already controls 70% of the PDA market and the Palm OS does what it does so well.
I admit that it would be neat if my Palm had the capability to play MP3's and had color (like the IIIc) - But I don't need it. I use my Palm as a organizer, and a E book. It does these things very well. Sure, the new features are nice (like the Ebook reader) but again, MS is missing the point of a PDA.
It is, first and foremost, an organizer. Everything else is secondary to this. Palm spent a good deal of time optimizing their interface for the "tap number" to make them easy and fast to use. For anyone who has used a CE device (and I have) you realize just how much they behave like windows... EXACTLY like Windows. Try using the search function on a CE device and then try it on a Palm, you should notice a signifigant difference in speed.
The idea that MS has that people want the interface on their PDA to be a windows one is not a bad idea, but its not great either. The Windows interface was simply not designed with a PDA in mind. The Palm OS was.
In fact, upon refection I think that MANY GUI's could learn a thing or two from the Palm. I have been working with computers for some time, and I have yet to see a GUI that has been as intuitive to use as the one on a Palm. Everyone that I show my Palm to masters the interface quickly (although not the grafitti). I have seen people struggle with the "standard" Windows interface for YEARS, never mind the looks that they give me when they see Gnome running E and my themes... But I digress.
The Palm OS has IMO become the standard, much as Win9X has become the standard OS on 90% of PC's. You don't need to have WinCE on a PDA, and Palm OS is easier to use. I think that the people have already spoken. The Palm has already won this battle.
Slight physics problem with the earth rotation theory (I know I know it was a cartoon and I am being pedantic.)
The earth would have to be rotating 17 times faster than it is now to have enough momentum to overcome gravity when it suddenly stopped rotating.
Never mind the HUGE impact it would have on the core/plates/oceans etc.
Also, the earth would get EXTREMELY hot due to the conservation of energy. (Carl Sagan notes in "Broca's Brain" that the Earth would reach amazing tempuratures if it suddenly stopped, and in fact, if it slowed over a period of 24 hours it would release enough energy to make the oceans BOIL!!)
There, how is that for a bizzare quickie response?
:)
Three Letter Agency would have the resources to build and implant such a chip, but if your paranoid ... :)
IBM?
;)
The author makes the point that the compiler itself can be trojaned. (This was noted 17 years ago!)
In this case, the compiler was trojaned so that it recognized when the "login" program was being compiled and inserted a backdoor. It ALSO would insert this same code when compling the source code for the compiler ITSELF.
So you could download the source code for the compiler, and it would be clean, but then you would have to COMPILE it, and as soon as you did the trojaned compiler would generate another trojaned binary. So the authors point is that you have to use a binary compiler, and it can be a weakness - even if its open source.
I have to wonder if the binaries would be identical however... And if running the diff command on them would result in any difference between them?
It certanly creates an interesting problem.
I read the inkiling of an article over at BP6.com that you could run the PIII FC-PGA in a BP6 with an adapter. I suspect that the same should be capable with the new celerons, still a newer board would be even nicer.
However, the most interesting thing I heard was this from ars
But there's more than higher clock speeds to these puppies. For one thing, they include the SSE instructions which, while they may or may not help you personally, definitely can't hurt to have. More importantly, they will be fabbed at 0.18 micron and include 256k of L2 cache. Now before anybody gets too excited, they plan to cripple them down to the standard 128k cache size. But if the BP6 showed us anything, it's that disabling can beundone... could be some exciting times ahead for overclockers...
Mmmmm. Imagine O/Cing one of these and enabling the crippled cache! Wooo!!!
I wonder if there is a serial number on these chips... Hmmm.
And finally, I know that someone is going to start posting how overclocking can destroy your chip YADDDA YADDDA YADDDA. Well I have heard it before and this Celery 300A @450 in my machine has not exploded yet. If you don't like overclocking, don't do it. Just don't tell others not to because you are not comfortable with it.
Try the links here. Look at the ASDM mini-how-to and the backup with MSDOS Mini-HOWTO.
You must use straws, the kind you find at fast food restraunts. But you must use a straw from a different place for each straw you use. If you don't THEY will be able to get through. Then you see, take these straws and make a pyramid over your system. Then cover your pyramid in aluminum foil. But make certain to use the Alcan kind. Its made in Canada. Canada is too cold you see for the CIA to bother with so they leave the Alcan aluminum alone.
So to recap, use different straws (for god sakes dont use storebought! The CIA owns all the stores!) And use Alcan aluminum foil. Make certain your pyramid is secure and you should be safe.
Now if I could only find out how to get the alien tracking devices out of my teeth.....
I found the article and his post to both be funny.
You will notice that the frontpage post has a foot next to it. That means that the link/story therin are to be considered funny. I thought it was so hilarious I emailed it to all my friends, some of whom will actually BELIEVE it. That makes me laugh even harder.
Everyone has different taste in humor. (I know some people that don't find Monty Pyton funny... They SCARE me.)
You may complain that slashdot is getting worse. Maybe it is. Every thread nowdays has a few posts in it lamenting about how slashdot has gone downhill. Really? Slashdot is just a linking system generated buy the COMMUNITY'S submissions. If that is the case, then we, the internet (or perhaps to some degree the free software) community are the ones going downhill.
Slashdot is just an indicator. Something to think about at any rate.
I guess the best point to make though is that if you don't like something on slashdot, just stop reading those parts.
Pump is a nice little program that tells the DHCP server that you want a new IP lease. Its kind of like running Winipcfg and clicking on "renew" except of course, pump is a command for Linux.
It comes with Red Hat IIRC, I am using Mandrake 7 now and I had to use Rpmfind to get it. (Why it does not come with Mandrake I do not know...)
Pish is an expression.
"pish tosh!"
It is generally assumed to be reserved for stuck up nobility who would look down on the lower classes and say "pish". It is an insult where you impy that the ideas of the lower classes are nonsense.
Good site that. Worth checking out if you are a Canuck.
Or, better yet. Just buy their parts from Taiwan and avoid the US restrictions altogether.
(Yes, you can get chips from there.)
A post above mine revealed the answer. :)
The answers can be found here.
The faq sayeth all.
I got it. Is a binary installer.
From the page it claims that it will be released GPL.
Is it yet? Or, because AOL owns the source (because it was made on their time) then AOL should have the right too keep the source closed if it is not GPLed yet.
Is it GPL? And is AOL able to keep the source closed? (After all they DO have the rights to it so they should be able to close it....)
But I have a binary now... Do I have the right to demand the source or not?
If something gets a large number of upward moderations it will get a 6. It is very rare, but as you can see it happens.
It is proper to question the motives of an individual. It is not however, proper to question the argument. The argument should be taken on its own merits regardless of the source.
Questioning the arguer instead of the argument is known as "Ad Hominim" Latin for "to the man". Ad Hominim attacks are slanderous and have no place in an argument.
Yes they do!
No they don't!
Yes they do!
This isn't an argument!
Yes it is!
But I digress....
I was wrong, the link I was thinking of is here and it has nothing to do with Unreal SMP. Oops.
I did not think that it did either, but I found a link off the utah GLX project that said it did. I cannot confirm this though. I could be talking out of my ass...
I think his point is if you toast a $87 celeron no great damage is done. But if you toast a $5000-9000 processor you are either Bill Gates or you are out one processor that is worth more than my car.
I think few people have the cash to "risc" overclocking such expensive processors.
I suspect that it will be some time before this technology ends up in consumer PC's. The fact that its meant for servers aside, most stuff is not coded to support multi-threading.
Sure, *nix is, BeOS, and NT (2000) are, but the majority of people still run 9X on their desktops.
Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament support SMP, but there are few consumer level applications that support it. Apparently BeOS can force multithreading, and this is cool, but what we really need are more apps that can take advantage of paralell calculations. Even Carmack states that dual processors running Q3A only increases performance in the most demanding situations.
Even the guys who maintain the Beowulf-How-to (someone is going to post this...) say that paralell computing is great for crunching data, well, IN PARALELL. Quake is not paralell. Clock speed matters more in 3d shooters than overall crunching power (Unless you *like* a slideshow.)
Don't get me wrong, I personally would love to have a machine running either Linux or BSD with one of these things in it (or many) but I don't know what the hell I would do with it.
Until then I will stick with a BP6 and dual-celerons, heck, maybe flip-chips or the new Jalapeno's from VIA/Cyrix.
I think that this is the way of the future, but we won't see it on the desktop for at least 5 years. (IMHO)
Celeron 300a @ 450 Mhz
Matrox G400 Max (32 Mb ram 'natch.)
192 MB Ram
13 GB HDD
Asus P2B MoBo.
Sound Blaster Live.
Mandrake 7.0
Running Gnome w/ E.
I followed the directions on lokigames site as per installing the G400. It seemed to work well, my suspicion is that I fscked up with the agpgart.o module though. I say this because:
This is my best guess as agpgart.o does not seem to be used. I also tried the dma settings for my glx.conf and all that seemed to do was kill X. (As per John Carmacks directions on the Utah GLX site.)
Kinda neat that I can ask this and *STILL* be on topic. (Bet some moderator whacks me anyhow...)
I own a Matrox G400 Max. I just upgraded from a Matrox 400 (sold that to a friend.)
:(
:)
Its a damn nice card, and has full Linux support via the Utah GLX project. It plays Quake pretty well, (I bought it for the Linux support specifically.) but unfortunatly I currently get ~21 FPS in Quake 3 Arena under Linux @ 640x480 (with some special speed optimizations.)
In windows on the other hand, with no optimizations I get ~67 FPS @ 640x480 and 25 FPS @ 1024x728. It is a bit depressing I must say.
The dual head technology is VERY cool. I have not tried the Xi graphics dual-head addon for Linux yet. I have however tried it under windows, and I can testify to its high coolness factor.
The reviews you have heard about the bump mapping are all true. You cannot get a good impression of it until you have actually SEEN it in action. By this I mean movment, not a static screenshot.
It is unfortunate that there are no games for Linux that currently support this feature.
If you are looking for a Linux compatible graphics card I would highly reccomend the G400 or G400 Max. It is not as fast as a GForce (but then in Linux my Voodoo 1 is faster than a GForce!!!) But it is fast nonetheless. The image quality is nothing short of amazing.
And hey, the great Carmack is working on the GLX project. That can only mean great things!
O'reilly already does this and their book on samba has been online for some time. It just got converted to HTML/PDF though.