You also get benefits in multitasking. Sure your PC might be able to burn a CD, rip a DVD, play some MP3s, and run a ton of web browser windows now, but with two processors, things really seem smoother.
You'd notice the most difference if you had one CPU bound app and a ton of others that weren't. For example you were running some big simulation or POVray, and at the same time checking your e-mail and surfing the web. With two processors even if the prorams don't use them (they aren't SMP aware), as long as the OS is (Linux and Windows NT/2k/XP for example) things will be smoother because one CPU can do the heavy lifting, and the other can juggle the little tasks so you're not stuck waiting 100ms here and there for your interactive task to get CPU time.
It sounds a little odd and I'm sure I haven't described it very well, but trust me, things feel smoother on my dual PIII 600 even when heavily loaded than my PIII 933 when it's only mildly loaded. If you already have a 3.4ghz processor, the effect probably won't be as pronounced.
PS: Quake III did support SMP, but as I remember it didn't take full advantage and it didn't provide a huge performance boost. Are there any (big) games that DO take full advantage of dual processors? With HyperThreading and such, I would think that would be more common now.
I understand your reasoning, but according to this article (I found the link on Ace's Hardware) the dual core chips will be compatible with current motherboards and sockets with as little as a BIOS flash (to recognise the new CPUID I assume). The downside of this is that the two cores will SHARE the dual channel memory bus. But because the bus is so effiencent, each core will probably STILL get more bandwidth than most P4s. At worst it shouldn't be much worse than having two single channel Athlon64s (which also are often faster than the P4). I think this is FANTASTIC news. For one thing, this means you could put FOUR CORES in that dual opteron SFF PC that was revealed a short while ago.
Really, it only makes sense. A dual channel processor has 939 pins, a single channel has 754 pins. So while some are power, you're looking at about 190 pins for the second memory channel. So that would mean that to have two cores on one die with their own memory channels, you'd need 1120 pins or so. That's a LOT of pins.
Instead of that enginering nightmare (you'd probably need 7 layer mobos to support that), we get drop in replacements that meet the same thermal requirements. Just think. You're dual operton not cutting the mustard any more? Buy two processors, drop 'em in, flash the BIOS, and now you've got FOUR processors without a new mobo or anything. All you'd have to worry about then is software licenses (unless of course you don't use any software that requirs that, for example you're all open source).
So to answer the grandparent's question, I'd say buy now. That said, I'm not sure if socket 939 will get dual cores or if it's only for 940s. I assume 939 will get them too.
Speculation: I'd like to know if the dual channel memory controler is shared by the two cores (like some kind of cross-bar architecture thing like nVidia used to promote) or if each core got exclusive access to one of the two channels. My guess is the former.
More speculation: Will there be a socket 754 dual core? That'd be cool, and I don't think the performance would be too much of a problem memory wise, unless you were doing memory intensive tasks. For CPU bound tasks I think you'd be fine.
I have wondered in the past why AOL put out AIM for free. I obviously understand letting AOL members use it, but allowing non-members always confused me. I guess they thought that by letting users use it for free, they would discover they like AOL and switch to it or some such. They couldn't have been dumb enough to think that the ads would cover it (I don't think much of AOL, but even I don't think they are that dumb). I'm not suprised that they will charge for video and audio chats. Text is one thing, but video and audio are bandwidth monsters compared to "lol u kil me". I assume that AOL will still be routing everything through their central server instead of doing the video/audio conferencing straight from one PC to another.
So what happens? As audio and video chats take off, I think that AIM will decline in use. Many people love AIM, but I think AOL is overestimating how many people like free things better. They'll find something else. In the end it is only those who already subscribe to AOL that will use those services because they won't have to pay extra. There will be a few, but I doubt many will use it with free offerings out there.
I have seen FAR FAR too many students in my various college programing classes who think nothing of calling functions with 15 parameters and copies of large datastructures (not references) and other such things. I really think that assembly should be one of the FIRST things taught to future programmers. So many people I've run up against don't have any idea how computers work. Sure things are "mentioned" in classes, but so much is lost on them. Somthing as simple as "passing 2 things is much MUCH faster/easier than passing 10" don't get taught.
By passing 10 things, their job is easy. That's all they see. They don't know about registers (other than they exist and are sorta like variables on the CPU). So they don't know that to pass 10 things you might put some in registers but the rest will have to be passed in memory (which is slow) as opposed to puting everything in registers (if at all possible) which is faster (especially for simple functions).
The only problem with assembly is the catch-22 mentioned in the article: you have to do all sorts of "magic" to print out to the screen or read from the keyboard, which can be confusing. And it takes a while to get them up to the point where they can start to understand that magic. My school teaches assembly (sorta) on little 68HC12 development boards that have built in callable routines that perform things equivelent to printf and such, so there is little voodoo involved which is nice.
I'm not saying assembly is neccessary, but I DEFINATLY think it's important for programers to learn how things work under the compiler. I have seen FAR too many hideous bits of code that no one who understood the underpinnings of assembly would never dream of.
I'm on Windows right now. And while it's OK, I have firmly made up my mind to switch to a Mac when my current computer (a 3 year old laptop) needs replacing. Why? Oh the reasons (in order I thought them up in, so the order is meaningless).
Programming - This is one of the major things that I like about OS X. I like that you can run GCC from the command line and how it comes with a IDE and such. The environment is Unix (like Linux), and I don't have to resort to what I consider a hack to use GCC and have a compiler (I mean Cygwin, which I like but it seems like a hack to me) or pay out $$$ for the stuff (VC++ or CodeWarrior (which I also like)). I get standard libraries, end up with easily portable code, and can even write for X-Win. Windows just doesn't seem... programmer friendly... in a way.
It Doesn't Just Work - While some things in Windows work, and some even "just work", it's nothing like the expiriances I've had on Macs (pre and post OS X). Ignoring the patches and exploits and other things making life confusing, there are so many other issues. Let's take wireless. When my network doesn't broadcast it's ID and my neighbor's does, Windows goes nuts. It doesn't MATTER that I have TOLD it to connect to MY network which has a much stronger signal, it desides to constantly connect and drop and cause problems. The solution to this "convience" that Windows does for me? Turn off the wireless configuration. So if I WANT to change to a different wireless network, I have to start up WZC, connect, disable WZC, and then repeat if I need to change again. Windows just DOESN'T RESPECT MY SETTINGS many times.
Other Little Things - How do you save a GIF image as a GIF image on your hard drive from Internet Explorer. You right click and choose "Save Picture As..." and then save it as a BITMAP. Why? Because some Java applet or active X controll or something that was downloaded on a web page has some problem. But what does that have to do with saving an image in the format that it was downloaded off the server in?. Strange things like this that make no sense. When I add my network printer (a HP LaserJet with a JetDirect card), why do I have to tell Windows it's a local printer when it's so obviously a network printer. But since it's only ON THE DAMN NETWORK and not just shared by a computer on the network, that makes it a local printer. HUH?. Why is it that when I want the status bar to show up on Internet Explorer windows, many times Windows will disable it for me. When I only surf in windows that are maximized, why does IE constantly want to open new windows in a corner of the screen, or 100x150 pixels, or other weird things. Why can't it just leave things like I left them? Why can't Explorer remember that I like to see more than 3 icons in newly opened Explorer windows, leaving half the space empty so that if I just widen it a hair more it displays two colums instead of one? Why can't it remember that I like things sorted by filetype, not by name. With folders at the top (like by file type), not randomly strewn about?
Unix - I've come to love using Linux. I love bash, I love all the utilities, I love all I can do. OS X has that same stuff, Windows doesn't (without Cygwin, which I've already been through). In Linux and OS X it's a coherent part of the OS, in Windows it's "tacked on" (IMO).
Filesystem Hell - Nothing makes sense! I install a program, and then uninstall it. Half the time the directory is left with stuff in it, half the time just the empty directory is left. Is it that hard to remove a directory? Things are easier on the Mac. You drag the program off the CD into the Applications folder and it's installed. You delete the program from the folder and it's gone. No registery. No files it put into the Windows directory. Nothing else weird.
Networking Stuff - Why does accessing a FTP site freeze up every IE and Explorer window for like 30 seconds while it connects, and then is slow as hell when browsing the FTP site? Why is it half
I must say, my personal pet peeve would have to be flash ads. You can see them everywhere. Slashdot pages tend to have them, but even worse are the sites where you can have 3 or 4 on screen at once.
They suck CPU, they are often just plain annoying (flashing and such, no pun intended). Many times they are doing things that a simple animated GIF could do. I think there are MUCH better uses for Flash than ads, and I wish companies would get that through their heads.
There are many ways to generate revenue. Google AdWords (as mentioned in the submission), a "Donate" button (as mentioned in another post), blackmailing, whatever. But please, don't allow flash ads.
But it CAN be. Because you have the source, you can build a version in which you've stripped out the DRM stuff that you don't want. And THAT would remove the DRM worries.
Of course, as you mentioned, all they have to do is require that the BIOS is signed to prevent the end user from doing that, which would be unfortunate. This also assumes that the open source part is functionally complete (i.e. not a layer ontop of the layer that drives the hardware, which could be closed source so nothing you made could be booted because you lacked that part).
I worry it won't happen, but I would LOVE to be able to tweek my own BIOS code. Imagine if you could do that with the computers you own now. Be able to go back to that old PII and add the ability to boot off of USB, or add LBA to an old PC, or just rearrage that horrid BIOS user interface on that no-name PC in the corner. Or you could disable more stuff you're not using to speed up the boot processor. And there are always patches to the Linux kernel and such to work around buggy BIOSes, think if you could fix that yourself. And corporations wouldn't have to worry about the support nightmare, thanks to that classic phrase in the computer industry "We don't support what we didn't ship". You touch it, YOU'RE responsible, good or bad. And if you change something and they like it, it's open source so they can check it out and implement it and make everyone's life better.
I hope the industry sees the light and allows what I suggested above (something that Linux BIOS is working towards too, in many ways). But even if things end up like they are now, I'll be happy as long as I can flash my own BIOS and it doesn't have to be MS DRMed. Because I'm not buying a computer that is programed to not let me use it.
After all, would you buy a car that you're not allowed to drive? (As a car for everyday use, I'm not talking buying the Bonne & Clyde car or something like that).
I remember SegaNet. My cousins had it and I would have KILLED for that. But it was ahead of it's time. Here it is what, 5 or 7 years later and we're only NOW starting to see this with consoles designed to get their games over broadband (often cable) like the Phantom. Or was SegaNet the their "X-Box Live" type idea for the DC?
Sega did have a bit of a resurgence during the Dreamcast era and did make some fantastic games. I LOVED Space Channel 5 and Jet Set Radio and Shen Mue; but none of them were commercially successful. I think if they would market some of the games more (like Jet Set Radio) I think they could have done much better. It seems like some of the best games on ANY system never seem to get much advertising and sales. Ico for the PS2 didn't get much (I think it should have gotten a TV campaign, it was beautiful) or Sly Cooper (a fantastic game, they did some but they should have pushed harder). Such is life, I suppose.
As for the "romanticized Sega" you mention, I wrote in another post that such could easily be the case for me. I was maybe 10 or 11 when the SNES came out, and that whole time (with the Sega magazine that competed with Nintendo Power, remember that?) I see as sort of a "godlen age". I won't deny there were faults (SegaCD, some of the games (Michael Jackson's Moonwalker?), etc), but they was probably Sega's best time.
To me they have always seemed like fantastic ads. They really caught your attention, and if you didn't pay attention the first time you made sure to keep alert for the next time they were on. They showed off some of ther great graphics and peaked your interest in the product. The fact that I still remember them to this day shows the effect that they had on me.
That said, I can COMPLETELY see the wisdom in including more "traditional" ads. Ones that were just footage of games with a voiceover talking about the system or some such. The combination could be very effective.
I really liked the "old" sega. Maybe it's all just nostalgia because I was about 9 or 10 during the height of the Game Gear and the Genesis and Super Nintendo; and I see that as sort of a golden age of games in some senses. Either way I still think Sega could be doing a better job today than they are.
Sorry to reply to myself but I just remembered this...
Maybe the reason I can't think of more Sega stuff is the advertising. Sega used to have FANTASTIC advertising. I already mentioned the Sega scream. I remember the commercial for the Game Gear where they had a guy playing a Genesis on a plane and there was a big orange extention cord that went to the ground, and after a second the cord got pulled out of the wall and the guy couldn't play any more. Then they showed the teenager next to him playing Sonic on the Game Gear and talked about how great it was. Then the flight attendant came up with the cart and asked the question that I will never forget: "Coffee? Tea? Water? SEGA!!!".
And how about those awesome commercials they had for the Saturn. Remember the "Theater of the Eye" commercials? Where they'd show some of the awesome graphics of the system (often Panzer Dragoon, IIRC).
Maybe Sega could use some help in the brand name department. Make it stronger, like it used to be.
Also, yes I have played Sonic Advanced 1 and 2 and they were great games, but we need more than that (before anyone mentions them). They also "felt" different than the old school Sonics, but I'm not quite sure how. Starting with just releasing the "four main" Sonic games as a GBA cart would be great (1, 2, 3, and Sonic & Knuckles). Or release Sonic CD for the GBA. You could compress the music, and the platform is powerfull enough you could do a very good job of it.
PS: Sonic CD is my all time favorite Sonic game, I think it's the best they ever made. Too bad so many people have never played it.
Bringing back the old Sega is fine with me. Let's get a really good Sonic game for the 'cube (or PS2 or anything else). The reviews I saw for the latest Sonic game said that the speed sequences were fantastic, but everythin in between wasn't very good at all. Bring me a game the quality of Sonic 2 or 3. And bring back the Sega attitude. Sega used to be "hip". All their commercials had the "Sega scream", which I liked. When you start to play a game, show the little Sega logo like you used to get on the Genesis where a female voice sings "Sega". Bring them back to who they were.
Today, Sega doesn't seem like much to me. They make a Sonic game once and a while, and they make sports games. What else do they do? Sure they released Toejam & Earl III (which wasn't supposed to be too hot), or occational House of the Dead sequels, but let's get them making a bunch of games again. They seem to be stuck in sequel-ville with many other parts of the industry.
If it makes Sega better, I'm all for it.
But get a better logo. Use the old Sega logo from the 16bit days.
Not neccessarily. I'm sure they'll be able to improve it, but I would buy one (under the right circumstancfes) if it never changes.
Imagine if you needed a new monitor. So you go out and buy a new OLED display. After use it eventually starts to fail (after your 42 day marathon CS session, or your 2 years of only checking your e-mail, or whatever). Instead of going out and buying a whole new display ($$$), you don't.
You open a little panel on the top (or side) of the screen and pull out the OLED pannel not unlike pulling a film plate out of a camera. You go down to the local computer store and buy a new OLED pannel (not display) for a little bit of money ($), stick it in your display, and you're all set.
Now because they cost less to manufacture, they cost less at the start, and the "refills" are cheap (unlike LCD panels which cost a fortune). Now only that, but because electronics can be integrated onto the panel, the new one you buy might all of a sudden offer you a higher refresh rate, more colors, higher resolution, lower power consumption, or some other feature that has been cooked up or improved since you bought your panel.
I would buy that. It seems perfectly reasonable to me. By leaving things in the case of the display (power supply, connectors, speakers, USB hubs, anything else you want to put in there; maybe driver circuitry) when you buy a new panel to put in your display things are cheap. When your LCD or CRT dies, you not only have to buy a new tube, you have to re-buy all the electronics around it because you can't (easily) get a new tube to fix your monitor. Same with LCDs. So in the long run it would be cheaper. Instead of paying $300 every 3 or 4 years (let's just assume that), you pay $150, then $25 every year. Eight years out you've spent $325 ($25 * 7 + $150), instead of the $600 you'd spend normally. The difference is that each year you get little incremental upgrades. And if the displays are even cheaper than that (maybe $100 to start, or the "refills" are $15) things look even better, don't they.
And if the display manufactures got together and set a standard for how the panels interface to the display and such so they all took the same refills, the competition would be FANTASTIC for the consumer in price and quantity. And before you say "they won't do that, just like printer ink doesn't do that", don't forget that a company like Dell (or Dell + others) could force it on them. If that happened, it would be such a great day for the consumer.
It could work. Maybe things will go my way (we'll see), or maybe the things will be improved in lifespan to where it's like a normal LCD. Either way it's competition for LCDs which means that consumers can benefit even if they never replace LCDs totally.
An interesting idea, but I don't think it works that way in FF:CC. I think all that it shows in FF:CC is the player's map (at least that's what the screenshots seem to indicate). If you know much about the game, you know all the players must be in the same place because there is poisin gas around that eats at your health unless you are near a special bucket that someone in the party has to carry around. Because of all this, the maps are all the same, for all intents and purposes.
Now you could do some cool things in sports games like let you choose your plays in a football game without everyone else seeing. The GBA GC connection is the Dreamcast's VMU in many ways. Only the screen on the GBA is VASTLY better than the VMU, but what do you expect since they were designed for different purposes origionally.
I'm not sure how you would use it to encourage co-operation above what would be needed in the first place to play a four player game.
PS: Doesn't that first paragraph sound almost like a troll trying to make up some rediculous explanation of the game that's obviously wrong? But it's close to that. Odd.:)
I know there is imperative stuff in Scheme and Lisp, but in my Lisp expiriance (not much) it was very confusing. I had a TERRIBLE time with Lisp's syntax. It's amazing how easy it is to do some things in Lisp, so some things were so hard to do and you had to jump through so many hoops to do, it just doesn't seem like something to teach someone programming unless the poster really knew what they were doing in it. If I was looking for a language to teach my mom, I wouldn't pick Lisp, because I have such a terrible time with it.
I think something with a simple algebra like syntax would be better. Considder:
x = 50 x = x / 10 print "X is: ", x
Like you see in Python would be much easier for someone new to programming to pick up than Lisp. Just my opinion.
I was trying to think of the language that was DESIGNED for teaching when I was writing my post, and Pascal is probably what I was thinking of. It doesn't matter though because I know basically nothing about Pascal so I can't recomend it (or avoiding it).
Yes, I forgot it but it doesn't matter, because I can't write anything intelligent about it. TCL is one of the few languages that I haven't looked into, so other than the fact that it exists and is often used with Tk, I know nothing about it. Thanks for the info.
Like I said, to get her used to making the computer do what she wants, it would be good. I think messing with HTML could be a valuable exercise in making her more comfortable with this kind of stuff.
That said, people calling HTML a programming language is a major pet peeve of mine. It doesn't have an assignment statment (ala X = 3), so it's not imperative. It isn't recursive (how do you call a function in HTML, and what IS a function in HTML) so it's not functional. You can't automate actions on a shell or anything else so it's not a scripting language. Yes you can add those things with Javascript, PHP, CGI, and other things, but then it's not HTML that you're programming in, is it? It's JavaScript, PHP, CGI (usually Perl), or whatever.
Good to get someone comfortable, but NOT A LANGUAGE! I would LOVE to hear a good definition of a programming language that would include HTML (remember: using JavaScript and such doesn't count).
Here are my thoughts on various languages. Personally I think Python would be perfect, and that you should give that more of a try, perhaps with a good book (O'Reilly makes good ones). So here are various languages:
Python - As I said, this would be my choice. It has an interpreter so you can type in commands and see the results immediatly if you want. Runs on every platform (for all intents and purposes). You can later learn things like PyQT and other libraries to allow you to do GUI stuff and there are Python bindings for SDL so you could make games/graphics and such. It also teaches good habits IMO (like indenting insteade of blocks). None of those "you forgot the semicolon stupid" errors all over the place. Can also later learn object oriented stuff which is in Python too.
C/C++ - Great languages, but not great for a first language (IMO). If you do this, make SURE to avoid things like pointers and references untill after she has a FIRM grasp on the basics, because they will confuse the hell out of her (just like everyone else the first time they saw them). I wouldn't recomend this.
Java - I wouldn't recomend this for complexity and such. I would put this about the same as C/C++, only a little better.
Hypercard - Probably not an option, but it's where I cut my teeth. I had a GREAT time with Hypercard. It was so great to be able to do all that visual stuff easily (switching cards to switch UIs, etc). Too bad Hypercard is basically gone today (you'd need a Mac running at least 9.x, if not before plus a copy and such). *sobs*.
This was such a great tool. I might use this if I had access to it.
Scheme/Lisp - Avoid it at all costs. I think that most people would go nuts trying to understand functional programming. I think you should stick with an imperative langauge, as they should already be familiar with the concept of variables from algebra.
VB - Overkill. Just because it has "Basic" in the name does not make it easy for people. It may be easier than VC++ to make full programs, but I don't think that it is a good language to teach programming in. I'm ignoring all the reasons I think that VB is a scourge on the Earth (I don't know about VB.NET, never used it).
BASIC/QBASIC - This is what they were designed for. They are old, but they'll work for the theory and basic programs. The biggest problem is teaching the "evil" GOTO and such.
HTML - Saw this in this thread. IT'S NOT A PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE!
Assembly - Will give her a FANTASTIC grasp of how computers work I think it will make her a far more competent programmer in the long run. The only down side is that you'll be cut out of her will, she'll try to kill you, throw her computer out the window, and regret having a son:)
JavaScript - I think something like Python would be much better. I don't think it's a good language to learn in.
Perl - Yeah. @_ = (@*, $thing['bob']); won't confuse her at all. It's a good scripting language, but to use it to teach programming is just asking for trouble.
PHP - No. Don't use a server side language.
In conclusion I think that the best are probably BASIC or Python, and I would lean to the latter. And no matter how much you want to help her yourself, I would suggest getting her a good book on the language to read. Preferable one geared to new programmers (instead of a "___ for C++ programmers" type books, or a massive tome of everything in the language).
Hope that helps. I'll answer any questions on the why I think such and such about the languages above or any other language if you just reply to this.
Now HTML may be a good way to get her feet wet. Every computer sold has everything you need (a copy of IE or other browser, and notepad or other text editor) and it could start to get her comfortable with things. It's something to try if you want.
But HTML is not a programming langauge! I HATE that idea. It's a MARKUP language, as seen in the "ML" at the end of "HTML".
This ends my HTML Is Not A Programming Language Rant. Thanks you.
Maybe it should be called the "Achilies", because battery life will be the thing's Achilies heel. iPods and other players only get 8 hours of battery life because they spin up the HD, load 64 megs of songs (about an hour), and spin down. The rest of the time they use about the same ammount of power as a flash player because they are getting songs from memory. If you constantly fast forward causing frequent disk access, the battery life plummets.
And THAT will be the problem with these video players. They will either have to have a TON of memory so they can do what an iPod does, or will have to spin the HD up/down alot or just keep it running; which will suck battery life.
I'm not sure how usefull one of these things would be, but I would want a MINIMUM of 5 hours of video playback, and I doubt these devices will be able to achieve that (at least reliably).
I'm worried about battery life and you should be too.
Allow me to put the submission into English for those of you who don't want to do it yourself.
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is scared of satellite radio because of it's uncanny ability to provide radio that terrestrial stations are unable to for various reasons. These include good music, choices in music, music stations with a few commercials (as opposed to FM stations playing commercials with some music), higher quality (audio wise) broadcasts, etc. A official of the NAB was not quoted as saying "We're worried that they are good and will put us out of business, but we don't want to change so we'll get the governement to do it for us."
Too bad for them. They could have developed better radio (digital radio) but they didn't untill satellite started to get big. They could have offered more choices, but they decided that one centeralized list of songs for the whole country was easier. They could have given us more kinds of music, but they have decided that giving each city 3 country stations that play nearly the same stuff is choice.
Anyone who votes for this will NOT get my vote in the next election. Not shutting down the RIAA (which is basically a racketerring organisation as far as I can tell) is bad enough, but to shut down something that is actually opening the market that they worked so hard to close would be uncontionable.
Good question. Just a while ago Tom's Hardware reviewed a product that was a USB->Ethernet converter.
The idea was you installed a driver on your PC. Then you plugged your USB stuff into this device, which plugged into ethernet. Then any computer on your ethernet network could use that USB device (assuming it had all the drivers/etc).
It only worked with some things (HDs, printers, etc) and not others (can't think of any off the top of my head, but I doubt that an ethernet adapter or wifi adapter would work). OH! Hubs wouldn't work either.
The product had it's problems (such as only one computer could "use" each device at a time) but it was still a neat product. It would let you do the same thing, but only one person could use it at a time.
As for the Linksys thing, my guess is that it appears as a Samba server on the network and multiple people can use it at once (like any Samba server). I think it's just a NAS device without the hard drive already attached.
I must admit I've never really looked into VOIP, I'm just following from the sidelines. I've never thought about that downloading issue you talked about. Interesting.
That said, I would think it would be easy to handle with a simple Linux router (or any other that would allow you) to give VOIP traffic priority over everything else. Whatever is left of your bandwidth after the VOIP packets, goes to other stuff. This wouldn't be that hard to do, would it?
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You'd notice the most difference if you had one CPU bound app and a ton of others that weren't. For example you were running some big simulation or POVray, and at the same time checking your e-mail and surfing the web. With two processors even if the prorams don't use them (they aren't SMP aware), as long as the OS is (Linux and Windows NT/2k/XP for example) things will be smoother because one CPU can do the heavy lifting, and the other can juggle the little tasks so you're not stuck waiting 100ms here and there for your interactive task to get CPU time.
It sounds a little odd and I'm sure I haven't described it very well, but trust me, things feel smoother on my dual PIII 600 even when heavily loaded than my PIII 933 when it's only mildly loaded. If you already have a 3.4ghz processor, the effect probably won't be as pronounced.
PS: Quake III did support SMP, but as I remember it didn't take full advantage and it didn't provide a huge performance boost. Are there any (big) games that DO take full advantage of dual processors? With HyperThreading and such, I would think that would be more common now.
I understand your reasoning, but according to this article (I found the link on Ace's Hardware) the dual core chips will be compatible with current motherboards and sockets with as little as a BIOS flash (to recognise the new CPUID I assume). The downside of this is that the two cores will SHARE the dual channel memory bus. But because the bus is so effiencent, each core will probably STILL get more bandwidth than most P4s. At worst it shouldn't be much worse than having two single channel Athlon64s (which also are often faster than the P4). I think this is FANTASTIC news. For one thing, this means you could put FOUR CORES in that dual opteron SFF PC that was revealed a short while ago.
Really, it only makes sense. A dual channel processor has 939 pins, a single channel has 754 pins. So while some are power, you're looking at about 190 pins for the second memory channel. So that would mean that to have two cores on one die with their own memory channels, you'd need 1120 pins or so. That's a LOT of pins.
Instead of that enginering nightmare (you'd probably need 7 layer mobos to support that), we get drop in replacements that meet the same thermal requirements. Just think. You're dual operton not cutting the mustard any more? Buy two processors, drop 'em in, flash the BIOS, and now you've got FOUR processors without a new mobo or anything. All you'd have to worry about then is software licenses (unless of course you don't use any software that requirs that, for example you're all open source).
So to answer the grandparent's question, I'd say buy now. That said, I'm not sure if socket 939 will get dual cores or if it's only for 940s. I assume 939 will get them too.
Speculation: I'd like to know if the dual channel memory controler is shared by the two cores (like some kind of cross-bar architecture thing like nVidia used to promote) or if each core got exclusive access to one of the two channels. My guess is the former.
More speculation: Will there be a socket 754 dual core? That'd be cool, and I don't think the performance would be too much of a problem memory wise, unless you were doing memory intensive tasks. For CPU bound tasks I think you'd be fine.
So what happens? As audio and video chats take off, I think that AIM will decline in use. Many people love AIM, but I think AOL is overestimating how many people like free things better. They'll find something else. In the end it is only those who already subscribe to AOL that will use those services because they won't have to pay extra. There will be a few, but I doubt many will use it with free offerings out there.
I have seen FAR FAR too many students in my various college programing classes who think nothing of calling functions with 15 parameters and copies of large datastructures (not references) and other such things. I really think that assembly should be one of the FIRST things taught to future programmers. So many people I've run up against don't have any idea how computers work. Sure things are "mentioned" in classes, but so much is lost on them. Somthing as simple as "passing 2 things is much MUCH faster/easier than passing 10" don't get taught.
By passing 10 things, their job is easy. That's all they see. They don't know about registers (other than they exist and are sorta like variables on the CPU). So they don't know that to pass 10 things you might put some in registers but the rest will have to be passed in memory (which is slow) as opposed to puting everything in registers (if at all possible) which is faster (especially for simple functions).
The only problem with assembly is the catch-22 mentioned in the article: you have to do all sorts of "magic" to print out to the screen or read from the keyboard, which can be confusing. And it takes a while to get them up to the point where they can start to understand that magic. My school teaches assembly (sorta) on little 68HC12 development boards that have built in callable routines that perform things equivelent to printf and such, so there is little voodoo involved which is nice.
I'm not saying assembly is neccessary, but I DEFINATLY think it's important for programers to learn how things work under the compiler. I have seen FAR too many hideous bits of code that no one who understood the underpinnings of assembly would never dream of.
They suck CPU, they are often just plain annoying (flashing and such, no pun intended). Many times they are doing things that a simple animated GIF could do. I think there are MUCH better uses for Flash than ads, and I wish companies would get that through their heads.
There are many ways to generate revenue. Google AdWords (as mentioned in the submission), a "Donate" button (as mentioned in another post), blackmailing, whatever. But please, don't allow flash ads.
Of course, as you mentioned, all they have to do is require that the BIOS is signed to prevent the end user from doing that, which would be unfortunate. This also assumes that the open source part is functionally complete (i.e. not a layer ontop of the layer that drives the hardware, which could be closed source so nothing you made could be booted because you lacked that part).
I worry it won't happen, but I would LOVE to be able to tweek my own BIOS code. Imagine if you could do that with the computers you own now. Be able to go back to that old PII and add the ability to boot off of USB, or add LBA to an old PC, or just rearrage that horrid BIOS user interface on that no-name PC in the corner. Or you could disable more stuff you're not using to speed up the boot processor. And there are always patches to the Linux kernel and such to work around buggy BIOSes, think if you could fix that yourself. And corporations wouldn't have to worry about the support nightmare, thanks to that classic phrase in the computer industry "We don't support what we didn't ship". You touch it, YOU'RE responsible, good or bad. And if you change something and they like it, it's open source so they can check it out and implement it and make everyone's life better.
I hope the industry sees the light and allows what I suggested above (something that Linux BIOS is working towards too, in many ways). But even if things end up like they are now, I'll be happy as long as I can flash my own BIOS and it doesn't have to be MS DRMed. Because I'm not buying a computer that is programed to not let me use it.
After all, would you buy a car that you're not allowed to drive? (As a car for everyday use, I'm not talking buying the Bonne & Clyde car or something like that).
Sega did have a bit of a resurgence during the Dreamcast era and did make some fantastic games. I LOVED Space Channel 5 and Jet Set Radio and Shen Mue; but none of them were commercially successful. I think if they would market some of the games more (like Jet Set Radio) I think they could have done much better. It seems like some of the best games on ANY system never seem to get much advertising and sales. Ico for the PS2 didn't get much (I think it should have gotten a TV campaign, it was beautiful) or Sly Cooper (a fantastic game, they did some but they should have pushed harder). Such is life, I suppose.
As for the "romanticized Sega" you mention, I wrote in another post that such could easily be the case for me. I was maybe 10 or 11 when the SNES came out, and that whole time (with the Sega magazine that competed with Nintendo Power, remember that?) I see as sort of a "godlen age". I won't deny there were faults (SegaCD, some of the games (Michael Jackson's Moonwalker?), etc), but they was probably Sega's best time.
To me they have always seemed like fantastic ads. They really caught your attention, and if you didn't pay attention the first time you made sure to keep alert for the next time they were on. They showed off some of ther great graphics and peaked your interest in the product. The fact that I still remember them to this day shows the effect that they had on me.
That said, I can COMPLETELY see the wisdom in including more "traditional" ads. Ones that were just footage of games with a voiceover talking about the system or some such. The combination could be very effective.
I really liked the "old" sega. Maybe it's all just nostalgia because I was about 9 or 10 during the height of the Game Gear and the Genesis and Super Nintendo; and I see that as sort of a golden age of games in some senses. Either way I still think Sega could be doing a better job today than they are.
Maybe the reason I can't think of more Sega stuff is the advertising. Sega used to have FANTASTIC advertising. I already mentioned the Sega scream. I remember the commercial for the Game Gear where they had a guy playing a Genesis on a plane and there was a big orange extention cord that went to the ground, and after a second the cord got pulled out of the wall and the guy couldn't play any more. Then they showed the teenager next to him playing Sonic on the Game Gear and talked about how great it was. Then the flight attendant came up with the cart and asked the question that I will never forget: "Coffee? Tea? Water? SEGA!!!".
And how about those awesome commercials they had for the Saturn. Remember the "Theater of the Eye" commercials? Where they'd show some of the awesome graphics of the system (often Panzer Dragoon, IIRC).
Maybe Sega could use some help in the brand name department. Make it stronger, like it used to be.
Also, yes I have played Sonic Advanced 1 and 2 and they were great games, but we need more than that (before anyone mentions them). They also "felt" different than the old school Sonics, but I'm not quite sure how. Starting with just releasing the "four main" Sonic games as a GBA cart would be great (1, 2, 3, and Sonic & Knuckles). Or release Sonic CD for the GBA. You could compress the music, and the platform is powerfull enough you could do a very good job of it.
PS: Sonic CD is my all time favorite Sonic game, I think it's the best they ever made. Too bad so many people have never played it.
Today, Sega doesn't seem like much to me. They make a Sonic game once and a while, and they make sports games. What else do they do? Sure they released Toejam & Earl III (which wasn't supposed to be too hot), or occational House of the Dead sequels, but let's get them making a bunch of games again. They seem to be stuck in sequel-ville with many other parts of the industry.
If it makes Sega better, I'm all for it.
But get a better logo. Use the old Sega logo from the 16bit days.
Imagine if you needed a new monitor. So you go out and buy a new OLED display. After use it eventually starts to fail (after your 42 day marathon CS session, or your 2 years of only checking your e-mail, or whatever). Instead of going out and buying a whole new display ($$$), you don't.
You open a little panel on the top (or side) of the screen and pull out the OLED pannel not unlike pulling a film plate out of a camera. You go down to the local computer store and buy a new OLED pannel (not display) for a little bit of money ($), stick it in your display, and you're all set.
Now because they cost less to manufacture, they cost less at the start, and the "refills" are cheap (unlike LCD panels which cost a fortune). Now only that, but because electronics can be integrated onto the panel, the new one you buy might all of a sudden offer you a higher refresh rate, more colors, higher resolution, lower power consumption, or some other feature that has been cooked up or improved since you bought your panel.
I would buy that. It seems perfectly reasonable to me. By leaving things in the case of the display (power supply, connectors, speakers, USB hubs, anything else you want to put in there; maybe driver circuitry) when you buy a new panel to put in your display things are cheap. When your LCD or CRT dies, you not only have to buy a new tube, you have to re-buy all the electronics around it because you can't (easily) get a new tube to fix your monitor. Same with LCDs. So in the long run it would be cheaper. Instead of paying $300 every 3 or 4 years (let's just assume that), you pay $150, then $25 every year. Eight years out you've spent $325 ($25 * 7 + $150), instead of the $600 you'd spend normally. The difference is that each year you get little incremental upgrades. And if the displays are even cheaper than that (maybe $100 to start, or the "refills" are $15) things look even better, don't they.
And if the display manufactures got together and set a standard for how the panels interface to the display and such so they all took the same refills, the competition would be FANTASTIC for the consumer in price and quantity. And before you say "they won't do that, just like printer ink doesn't do that", don't forget that a company like Dell (or Dell + others) could force it on them. If that happened, it would be such a great day for the consumer.
It could work. Maybe things will go my way (we'll see), or maybe the things will be improved in lifespan to where it's like a normal LCD. Either way it's competition for LCDs which means that consumers can benefit even if they never replace LCDs totally.
As you can probably guess, while I have read a review or two of the game, I have not played it.
Now you could do some cool things in sports games like let you choose your plays in a football game without everyone else seeing. The GBA GC connection is the Dreamcast's VMU in many ways. Only the screen on the GBA is VASTLY better than the VMU, but what do you expect since they were designed for different purposes origionally.
I'm not sure how you would use it to encourage co-operation above what would be needed in the first place to play a four player game.
PS: Doesn't that first paragraph sound almost like a troll trying to make up some rediculous explanation of the game that's obviously wrong? But it's close to that. Odd. :)
I think something with a simple algebra like syntax would be better. Considder:
Like you see in Python would be much easier for someone new to programming to pick up than Lisp. Just my opinion.
I was trying to think of the language that was DESIGNED for teaching when I was writing my post, and Pascal is probably what I was thinking of. It doesn't matter though because I know basically nothing about Pascal so I can't recomend it (or avoiding it).
Yes, I forgot it but it doesn't matter, because I can't write anything intelligent about it. TCL is one of the few languages that I haven't looked into, so other than the fact that it exists and is often used with Tk, I know nothing about it. Thanks for the info.
That said, people calling HTML a programming language is a major pet peeve of mine. It doesn't have an assignment statment (ala X = 3), so it's not imperative. It isn't recursive (how do you call a function in HTML, and what IS a function in HTML) so it's not functional. You can't automate actions on a shell or anything else so it's not a scripting language. Yes you can add those things with Javascript, PHP, CGI, and other things, but then it's not HTML that you're programming in, is it? It's JavaScript, PHP, CGI (usually Perl), or whatever.
Good to get someone comfortable, but NOT A LANGUAGE! I would LOVE to hear a good definition of a programming language that would include HTML (remember: using JavaScript and such doesn't count).
In conclusion I think that the best are probably BASIC or Python, and I would lean to the latter. And no matter how much you want to help her yourself, I would suggest getting her a good book on the language to read. Preferable one geared to new programmers (instead of a "___ for C++ programmers" type books, or a massive tome of everything in the language).
Hope that helps. I'll answer any questions on the why I think such and such about the languages above or any other language if you just reply to this.
HTML IS NOT A PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE!
Now HTML may be a good way to get her feet wet. Every computer sold has everything you need (a copy of IE or other browser, and notepad or other text editor) and it could start to get her comfortable with things. It's something to try if you want.
But HTML is not a programming langauge! I HATE that idea. It's a MARKUP language, as seen in the "ML" at the end of "HTML".
This ends my HTML Is Not A Programming Language Rant. Thanks you.
And THAT will be the problem with these video players. They will either have to have a TON of memory so they can do what an iPod does, or will have to spin the HD up/down alot or just keep it running; which will suck battery life.
I'm not sure how usefull one of these things would be, but I would want a MINIMUM of 5 hours of video playback, and I doubt these devices will be able to achieve that (at least reliably).
I'm worried about battery life and you should be too.
Too bad for them. They could have developed better radio (digital radio) but they didn't untill satellite started to get big. They could have offered more choices, but they decided that one centeralized list of songs for the whole country was easier. They could have given us more kinds of music, but they have decided that giving each city 3 country stations that play nearly the same stuff is choice.
Anyone who votes for this will NOT get my vote in the next election. Not shutting down the RIAA (which is basically a racketerring organisation as far as I can tell) is bad enough, but to shut down something that is actually opening the market that they worked so hard to close would be uncontionable.
The idea was you installed a driver on your PC. Then you plugged your USB stuff into this device, which plugged into ethernet. Then any computer on your ethernet network could use that USB device (assuming it had all the drivers/etc).
It only worked with some things (HDs, printers, etc) and not others (can't think of any off the top of my head, but I doubt that an ethernet adapter or wifi adapter would work). OH! Hubs wouldn't work either.
The product had it's problems (such as only one computer could "use" each device at a time) but it was still a neat product. It would let you do the same thing, but only one person could use it at a time.
As for the Linksys thing, my guess is that it appears as a Samba server on the network and multiple people can use it at once (like any Samba server). I think it's just a NAS device without the hard drive already attached.
That said, I would think it would be easy to handle with a simple Linux router (or any other that would allow you) to give VOIP traffic priority over everything else. Whatever is left of your bandwidth after the VOIP packets, goes to other stuff. This wouldn't be that hard to do, would it?
Got to admit, for many things it's hard to think of a more perfect interface than a holodeck simulation.