For the moment, I won't gripe too hard about 'shifting from PPC back to commodity hardware.'
But if you then say ANYTHING about IA-64, I'm going to jump down your throat with lawn aerators on both feet.
Be cautious about what you call commodity and what you call proprietary. Just because a lot of something is made doesn't mean it's not proprietary. Just because it's low volume doesn't mean it is proprietary, or not a commodity.
IMHO, Intel is only kept in check pricewise, by the presence of AMD, to a lesser extent, Via and Transmeta, and to a still lesser extent by PPC and other 'non-commodity' processors.
IA-64 is simply THE MOST PROPRIETARY processer there is. It's IP is held by a separate company, licensed to Intel and HP, so that prior contracts those two have don't give anyone else IA-64 access. The PII bus was patented, the PIV bus is patented, SSE (and/or SSE-II_ is patented.
They're perfectly within their rights to do this. But then you have to watch what you call 'closed' and 'open'.
The whole mess we have with space travel looks astonishingly like a half-dozen Democratic Presidential candidates.
They're all criticizing the incumbent, be it Bush or NASA, they're all making their own proposals, and they're all tearing down the others' proposals. In the end, the incumbent (Bush or NASA) gets trashed and no viable alternative emerges.
NO! NO! Mars is a much better place to go. The Moon is a pile of dead rock!
We need SSTO.
NO! NO! SSTO is too difficult and expensive! Expendables can do the job more cheaply until we've developed better technology.
Capsules are stupid, you have little control over your landing area.
Winged spacecraft are stupid! Wings are dead weight on the way up.
Coming down on rockets (Delta Clipper) is stupid. You have to carry your landing fuel up, and then down, again.
No concensus whatsoever. As a result, we either do NOTHING, or we do things halfway, and then change direction, which is WORSE.
IMHO, one thing the space station has taught us is that building and running a space station is HARD. If there's ONE piece of value we should get out of the ISS, it's how the heck we can do it BETTER, if we can just get a Next Time.
There is an implicit assumption that any market Microsoft enters, they're going to WIN, and destroy ALL competitors. It may well take until the third of fourth version, but once Microsoft enters your market, you may as well roll over and die, if you weren't lucky enough to get bought out by Microsoft.
This doesn't always happen, but it hasn't done much to damage the teflon impression of invincible Microsoft. Perhaps the most significant damage to that teflon has been done by Linux in the server space. But the desktop is Microsoft's Bastion!
Of course this is all perception, and has nothing to do with reality.
The premise: In the 20th Century we observed only 1/3 of the solar neutrinos predicted by theory. We figure our theory needs work. But in the book, it's the Sun that needs work, because at the core, it's going out. But just like light from the core takes 1000 years to reach the photosphere, the news that all is not well takes a long time.
In the book, we had almost 1000 years to develop interstellar travel, or die. Mankind's exodus is in successive waves, and the story takes place as a later wave visits a planet colonized for several hundred years by an earlier wave.
But maybe we really don't have 1000 years. Maybe the countdown started long ago, and these sunspots are the news reaching the surface.
No guarantee whatsoever that the human-readable part and the machine-readable part are identical.
Instead, generate a ballot where the same content is human-readable and optically-readable by machine. Even straightforward printing would be fully scannable, since a machine is generating the text, another machine will know exactly what to expect, and could read it accurately.
I've used the fill-in-between-the-arrows ballots ever since moving to the town where I live. (in Vermont) I always thought it was a pretty decent system. Easy to use, looked like it would be easy to machine-evaluate.
But I never thought of myself as lucky in this respect until the Diebold noise started.
Thank you for helping me appreciate a part of my life.
So far the SCO mess could have been considered a "domestic squabble" between US-based corporations. There was a little noise in Europe and Australia over threats and such, but that died down fairly rapidly, and could have bogged down in the 'definition of thread' issue.
But this is different. Now SCO is violating copyright law, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Obviously they're testing the GPL, and thinking about US law. But now they have to worry about the status of the GPL under other nations, as well.
And perhaps here you've hit the reason to use Linux.
No doubt every film has some geek somewhere who is responsible for setting up computer shots. It's easier to customize a Linux screen, perhaps easier than using a powerpoint slide, especially when it comes to having the screen do something. Then with powerpoint there's the extra work of fitting it back into the movie.
Two years of Newtrition investment and research had produced CHOW(TM). CHOW(TM) contained spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colorings, and flavorings. The end result was a foodstuff almost indistinguishable from any other except for two things. Firstly, the price, which was slightly hgher, and secondly the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman. It didn't matter how much you ate, you lost weight.*
* And hair. And skin tone. And, if you ate enought of it long enough, vital signs.
From Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. (pg 110 in my copy)
And 2 of those Big 5 that aren't American have been fielding hybrids for about half a decade, now. Unfortunately they're on subcompacts, where it doesn't really matter that much.
Using miles-per-gallon is a silly figure of merit. After all, nobody goes out and drives 5 gallons of gas, and then sees how far they got. They drive a distance and see how many gallons it took to get there. (really how many $$$ it took to fill the tank)
Ounces-per-mile would be a much better figure of merit. As an example, a car that gets 20 mi/gal actually burns 6.4 oz/mi. Drop 10 mi/gal and you're burning 12.8 oz/mi. Add 10 mi/gal and you're burning 4.1 oz/mi. Going after the low efficiency vehicles saves more gas. Doubling the mileage of a 40 mpg vehicle does practically nothing. (3.2 oz/mi -> 1.6 oz/mi, but compare that to the base of 6.4 oz/mi or the SUV number of 12.8 oz/mi )
For the most part, you can take out "studios" and put in "Corporate America" and be completely accurate.
But look for a moment at the underlying cause. Those suits are money-men. They're connected - to money. They know - money. Unfortunately they head - studios, car companies, technology companies, etc.
Time was when a car man ran the car company. So even if he made a stupid move or two, (Edsel) he didn't make too many, and there was another car man waiting to replace him. Today it's a money man, and he doesn't understand cars, doesn't have cars in his blood. He then makes decisions that make short-term monetary sense, though in the long run not good car sense.
Apply the same procedure to studios and it becomes obvious why movies are tending toward sequals and comic book adaptations, and why the major labels are having a hard time putting out good music.
Actually, it might be a Good Thing in the long run if oil money quit flowing to the Middle East, even though it would probably be distruptive and painful in the short run.
From what I can see, Middle East governments appear to be corrupt despots funding their control on oil revenues. Of course that's a US-centric point of view, and perhaps to them the US government appears to be a bunch of corrupt despots funding their control on arms and entertainment revenues.
But with that assumption, and that the common citizen's living is largely made on things other than oil, (big assumptions, perhaps) weakening oil revenue would weaken central control without significantly hurting ordinary citizens.
It's a theory, anyway, and it's worth at least what you paid me for it.
Slashdot Mirror
For the moment, I won't gripe too hard about 'shifting from PPC back to commodity hardware.'
But if you then say ANYTHING about IA-64, I'm going to jump down your throat with lawn aerators on both feet.
Be cautious about what you call commodity and what you call proprietary.
Just because a lot of something is made doesn't mean it's not proprietary.
Just because it's low volume doesn't mean it is proprietary, or not a commodity.
IMHO, Intel is only kept in check pricewise, by the presence of AMD, to a lesser extent, Via and Transmeta, and to a still lesser extent by PPC and other 'non-commodity' processors.
IA-64 is simply THE MOST PROPRIETARY processer there is. It's IP is held by a separate company, licensed to Intel and HP, so that prior contracts those two have don't give anyone else IA-64 access. The PII bus was patented, the PIV bus is patented, SSE (and/or SSE-II_ is patented.
They're perfectly within their rights to do this. But then you have to watch what you call 'closed' and 'open'.
From time to time I like to go for 'Funny' too. But I strive for more than that, and I have been given more than one 'Off Topic', too.
I was trying to be fair, since the comparison between Bush and NASA seemed so apt.
But like it or not, at the moment, NASA is the USA's only path into space. I'd rather not trash them too hard until another path exists.
The whole mess we have with space travel looks astonishingly like a half-dozen Democratic Presidential candidates.
They're all criticizing the incumbent, be it Bush or NASA, they're all making their own proposals, and they're all tearing down the others' proposals. In the end, the incumbent (Bush or NASA) gets trashed and no viable alternative emerges.
Returning to the Moon should be our next step.
NO! NO! Mars is a much better place to go. The Moon is a pile of dead rock!
We need SSTO.
NO! NO! SSTO is too difficult and expensive! Expendables can do the job more cheaply until we've developed better technology.
Capsules are stupid, you have little control over your landing area.
Winged spacecraft are stupid! Wings are dead weight on the way up.
Coming down on rockets (Delta Clipper) is stupid. You have to carry your landing fuel up, and then down, again.
No concensus whatsoever. As a result, we either do NOTHING, or we do things halfway, and then change direction, which is WORSE.
IMHO, one thing the space station has taught us is that building and running a space station is HARD. If there's ONE piece of value we should get out of the ISS, it's how the heck we can do it BETTER, if we can just get a Next Time.
Now that you mention it, me too.
I had mod points just a few days ago, but the Real World was so busy most of them ended up expiring.
Either get an account, which is free, or quit being an AC, if you already have one. Then go to your settings and check, "willing to moderate".
Then you can show us your IQ and sense of humor when you're called on to moderate.
There is an implicit assumption that any market Microsoft enters, they're going to WIN, and destroy ALL competitors. It may well take until the third of fourth version, but once Microsoft enters your market, you may as well roll over and die, if you weren't lucky enough to get bought out by Microsoft.
This doesn't always happen, but it hasn't done much to damage the teflon impression of invincible Microsoft. Perhaps the most significant damage to that teflon has been done by Linux in the server space. But the desktop is Microsoft's Bastion!
Of course this is all perception, and has nothing to do with reality.
Then Linux had better hope that he and Linux look more like a concrete barrier, because they/we are right in the middle of, "The Road Ahead."
Some years back?
Don't you mean P4EE?
or was that Prescott?
or was that multi-core ItaniumX?
But by all means, DON'T go out and buy any sort of Athlon64 product.
(I know the P4EE is available now, but one could consider the announcement timing suspicious.)
They're still hiding from angry Democrats after having siphoned votes away from Gore in 2000, delivering the election to Bush.
Squares of the first three primes...
"...and why did we stop at three dimensions?..."
Read the book.
by Arthur C Clarke
The premise: In the 20th Century we observed only 1/3 of the solar neutrinos predicted by theory. We figure our theory needs work. But in the book, it's the Sun that needs work, because at the core, it's going out. But just like light from the core takes 1000 years to reach the photosphere, the news that all is not well takes a long time.
In the book, we had almost 1000 years to develop interstellar travel, or die. Mankind's exodus is in successive waves, and the story takes place as a later wave visits a planet colonized for several hundred years by an earlier wave.
But maybe we really don't have 1000 years. Maybe the countdown started long ago, and these sunspots are the news reaching the surface.
More likely they're just big sunspots.
No guarantee whatsoever that the human-readable part and the machine-readable part are identical.
Instead, generate a ballot where the same content is human-readable and optically-readable by machine. Even straightforward printing would be fully scannable, since a machine is generating the text, another machine will know exactly what to expect, and could read it accurately.
I've used the fill-in-between-the-arrows ballots ever since moving to the town where I live. (in Vermont) I always thought it was a pretty decent system. Easy to use, looked like it would be easy to machine-evaluate.
But I never thought of myself as lucky in this respect until the Diebold noise started.
Thank you for helping me appreciate a part of my life.
So far the SCO mess could have been considered a "domestic squabble" between US-based corporations. There was a little noise in Europe and Australia over threats and such, but that died down fairly rapidly, and could have bogged down in the 'definition of thread' issue.
But this is different. Now SCO is violating copyright law, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Obviously they're testing the GPL, and thinking about US law. But now they have to worry about the status of the GPL under other nations, as well.
Any volunteers for a high-profile arrest?
BTW, Newsweek carried a piece by Steven Levy about Diebold this week.
Isn't that part of the premise of The Matrix - that we're stuck in 1999 because we can't handle anything better?
Mod parent up.
Y2K wasn't a disaster because a lot of preparation and work made sure it wasn't.
And perhaps here you've hit the reason to use Linux.
No doubt every film has some geek somewhere who is responsible for setting up computer shots. It's easier to customize a Linux screen, perhaps easier than using a powerpoint slide, especially when it comes to having the screen do something. Then with powerpoint there's the extra work of fitting it back into the movie.
Two years of Newtrition investment and research had produced CHOW(TM). CHOW(TM) contained spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colorings, and flavorings. The end result was a foodstuff almost indistinguishable from any other except for two things. Firstly, the price, which was slightly hgher, and secondly the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman. It didn't matter how much you ate, you lost weight.*
* And hair. And skin tone. And, if you ate enought of it long enough, vital signs.
From Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. (pg 110 in my copy)
besides to run Windows software under Linux? I know there are some other virtualization options, but what of those options really drive purchases?
So if Microsoft has removed the One True Reason for buying VPC, how is it going to undermine VMWare's business and drive them under?
And 2 of those Big 5 that aren't American have been fielding hybrids for about half a decade, now. Unfortunately they're on subcompacts, where it doesn't really matter that much.
Using miles-per-gallon is a silly figure of merit. After all, nobody goes out and drives 5 gallons of gas, and then sees how far they got. They drive a distance and see how many gallons it took to get there. (really how many $$$ it took to fill the tank)
Ounces-per-mile would be a much better figure of merit. As an example, a car that gets 20 mi/gal actually burns 6.4 oz/mi. Drop 10 mi/gal and you're burning 12.8 oz/mi. Add 10 mi/gal and you're burning 4.1 oz/mi. Going after the low efficiency vehicles saves more gas. Doubling the mileage of a 40 mpg vehicle does practically nothing. (3.2 oz/mi -> 1.6 oz/mi, but compare that to the base of 6.4 oz/mi or the SUV number of 12.8 oz/mi )
For the most part, you can take out "studios" and put in "Corporate America" and be completely accurate.
But look for a moment at the underlying cause. Those suits are money-men. They're connected - to money. They know - money. Unfortunately they head - studios, car companies, technology companies, etc.
Time was when a car man ran the car company. So even if he made a stupid move or two, (Edsel) he didn't make too many, and there was another car man waiting to replace him. Today it's a money man, and he doesn't understand cars, doesn't have cars in his blood. He then makes decisions that make short-term monetary sense, though in the long run not good car sense.
Apply the same procedure to studios and it becomes obvious why movies are tending toward sequals and comic book adaptations, and why the major labels are having a hard time putting out good music.
Actually, it might be a Good Thing in the long run if oil money quit flowing to the Middle East, even though it would probably be distruptive and painful in the short run.
From what I can see, Middle East governments appear to be corrupt despots funding their control on oil revenues. Of course that's a US-centric point of view, and perhaps to them the US government appears to be a bunch of corrupt despots funding their control on arms and entertainment revenues.
But with that assumption, and that the common citizen's living is largely made on things other than oil, (big assumptions, perhaps) weakening oil revenue would weaken central control without significantly hurting ordinary citizens.
It's a theory, anyway, and it's worth at least what you paid me for it.