Why? You would be getting exactly what you played for.
If me and a friend walk into an apple store and buy Mac Minis, I expect that mine will be just as good as his. I doubt there is anything illegal about this since the machine isn't below the specs marked on the box. But if there are 2 mac minis available for X dollars, and one has better specs, I want the one with better specs.
Apple should either discount the older model a few bucks, or keep them the same price and label the packages accurately. If they did the second option then those of us who care about performance can do our research and get the best model. Those who don't care can be the ones who end up with the old inventory.
If there are original spec minis still available, I would be pretty pissed if I ended up with one of them instead of the better ones. If thats the case Apple was probably just hoping no one would notice.
How did you determine that? Mac users spend thousands on their machines and certianly pay for software. There is a whole community of Mac shareware where piracy hasn't completely taken over like in the case of windows. The same can't be said for linux users who are used to getting everything for free.
I determined that the mac market is iffy, because in absolute numbers there are not nearly as many people using MacOS as Windows. That is why when you have a limited development budget you see applications made for Windows first (assuming they're mean for mass market appeal).
That doesn't mean Mac isn't profitable for WoW. I'm sure it is, and fortunately Blizzard is a company with the financial resources to fund two major client developments at once.
Linux on the desktop is way less common than Mac. Mac is about 3-5% of the desktop market, Linux is about.25%. That is 6-10 times less, and I'll bet a good portion of those desktops are work machines (I know departments at my company that use Linux for desktops instead of Windows).
Lets just get realistic....the market for Mac is iffy, the market for Linux is nil. Linux is not a realistic desktop market that can justify spending a lot of money.
ZigBee would be a cool technology to use for this. It is a low speed adhoc wireless standard with a smallish range (but sufficient for classroom use). The problem is that there isn't much silicon available yet because it is a relatively new standard, but you should be able to find a few things out there.
You could use USB for the interface back to a piece of host software on a regular computer. There are lots of cheap microcontrollers with USB interfaces built in, and they even come with reference firmware and drivers. USB is an incredibly easy bus from a hardware circuit perspective too.
Combine that with pcb123.com and a couple hundred dollars for boards and parts, and you've got your clickers. The only hard part will be finding some kind of plastic case to put them in that will be durable enough for classroom use. You can save money by not soldering the USB connector onto all the boards.
Well, I don't...with either 1.0.1 or 1.0.4. However, if this only pops up once I wouldn't be surprised if I had just missed it, because I leave my browser open all the time and wont necessarily see a popup.
Windows update on the other hand pops that stupid balloon up over and over and over again until you relent and install their update.
Re:Exactly what *is* the Dell aversion to AMD?
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Dell Dumping Itanium
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· Score: 1
One has to wonder, outside the obvious explanation of Intel's anti-competitive trade practices, what is Dell's aversion to AMD 64-bit / dual-core processors?
I think that Intel gives a slightly better volume discount to Dell than anybody else. Partly this is because Dell's volume is bigger than most anyone else (I forget if they have exceeded HP yet), but the obvious suspicion is that there is also an "exclusivity bonus" - yet lower prices for a vendor who does not sell any of the competition's products. If Dell actually sold AMD Opteron based products, I suspect they would do very well on those products, but if they drove up their costs on every other system they sell, all still containing Intel cpus, then it might be a net loss, at least initially.
That is exactly the allegation AMD seems to be making in their lawsuit. From a monopolist, an exclusivity bonus is illegal.
Ummm, Firefox tells you when there is a new version out. It is the little green tree next to the spinning circle of dots when you load a page... I wasn't really aware of this until I clicked on it and it asked me if I wanted to get the newest Firefox,
I had never noticed that either. My tree is red and the mouseover says there are critical updates. Nice to know, but it would be better if it was a little more obvious. I doubt that you and I are the only people who didn't notice.
I'm uncertain has to how you speak to what 'most users' will or will not do. Just because you're lazy doesn't mean everyone else is. I patch my Firefox whenever it tells me to, or when I see that a patch has been released. Everyone I know who uses Firefox does the exact same thing.
Stop making general statements as to the habits of millions of other users based solely on your activities:)
I am comfortable saying that I am way less lazy than the "average" user, who barely knows their mouse from their monitor. Firefox has never prompted me to patch or upgrade, and I believe I have 1.0.1. Assuming there has been any security update in the mean time, I haven't seen any indication of it. I don't visit the firefox website regularly, so I wouldn't know otherwise.
This actually sparks an idea...I know that my firewall and antivirus software have some kind of hook into the Microsoft sercurity console thing where it complains when the database is out of date or something. It would be cool if Microsoft would then allow all applications to register their patches and security upgrades through some kind of program.
They would need to ensure it isn't used for advertising, pimping a new version that isn't related to security, etc....but this would be a nice value add for Windows users. Especially if I could enable/disable these alerts selectively for various programs.
The biggest weakness of firefox is that most users will never patch it. For example, I've never been aware of a firefox patch, nor have I applied one. Windows on the other hand harasses me relentlessly now to install patches IMMEDIATELY even if I'm in the middle of a game or something.
Actually, every fucking internal webpage in my company doesn't work with firefox. I really can't even explain how they've done it. They're not using ActiveX or other complex technologies, they've just managed to write such terrible code that it flat out doesn't work.
So I have to use two browsers, one for regular browsing and one for internal website (expense reports, hr, timesheet, etc. etc). I'd love to be able to have tabs for IE so that I don't end up with multiple windows for intranet sites. I'll probably try this tomorrow.
And no, I can't get them to change the sites. We're a "major" company, but not large in the sense that IBM or Intel or Microsoft are. Yet the buerocracy on stuff like this is extensive enough that suggesting a change would just go into a black hole. I'll have to wait until I'm a vice president or something to make this happen (ie, never).
How did this get modded insightful? Not only isn't there a law preventing libraries from restricting internet access, there are laws requiring it in many cases!
I call bullshit. If you've been pulled over 57 times in 5 years and it isn't one cop with a vendetta then you're probably just a liar who cant accept that the law applies to you too.
You've made a good decision. The Intel compiler may not be the best choice for AMD chips. However, imagine that you're a software developer and your products use the Intel compiler. You're considering getting some AMD systems due to their superior performance. Switching compilers is no easy task. And not only that, but you probably want to buy a system or two and test your same codebase on both to benchmark them.
So, this issue still matters. As I'm sure you know, as your program gets more complex you rely on specific compiler features more and more to ensure a correct result. So transitioning isn't necessarily a simple task. Nerfing code in the Intel compiler deters people from using AMD products.
Its easy to write a compiler that generates working code for a processor (My team of 3 people in a Compilers class wrote an x86 compiler, front to back, in about 8 weeks). It is much much harder to write a compiler that generated good and fast code (now you need hundreds of experienced engineers working for years). Essentially what you do is use really basic and crappy alogorithms for one code path, then use your best optimization algorithms for another path. Now, you just use the crappy path for one processor and the good path for the other, based on the value returned by the CPUID instruction. Viola!
Also, the lawsuit claims that Intel's compiler wont use x86 ISA extensions such as SSE2 even when they're available on AMD processors. There is a reason we have these kinds of ISA extensions, and it is becaue performance is much much better when you use them.
Not only that, but you set up your internal network to operate at gigabit speeds, can't you? There is more to the network than the connection to the public internet even for those who don't have a fiber connection.
In this case, it's best to turn down the resolution so that you can see the difference in CPU power. If you're limited by the video card, you're not getting information that helps you decide what CPU to get - which is the point.
Thats exactly what I said! Its not that 1024x768 doesn't use more CPU resources, but that it will also tie up the video card. If you use 800x600 then you minimize video card delays, thus isolating the CPU (and system memory) performance.
For example, the number of pipelines is important. For example, Athlons have nine (or did at one point, I haven't looked at this one specifically). 3 x86 decoders, 3 fp, and 3 int.
I have to question if you understand the word pipeline. A decoder and its associated execution unit are the same pipeline, not two separate ones. Athlons have three pipes.
What that means, is that an Athlon performs ~9 operations per cycle, or 9 * 2.8 Ghz = ~25.2 billion instructions per second, and the intel would do 6 * 3.8Ghz = ~22.8. Those are very, very rough estimates.
Again, completely wrong. AMD's architecture can at best issue 3 instructions per cycle (and this depends on there being 3 instructions present in a 16 byte fetch window, plus various other factors such as branching into the middle of the window and predecode bits being correct), and they can only retire 3 instructions per cycle. As a result the best possible IPC is 3. In reality, a good application will exceed an IPC of 1.
So basically, the Ghz of the processor doesn't mean a whole lot. There's a lot more to take into consideration.
This at least is correct. You might want to read this article for a start, although it really only covers the processor's front end:
I don't think so. At 640x480 the vid card can probably handle everything all by itself. You need to put a big load on it so that the work has to run on the cpu since the vid card can't do it all itself.
That is nonsense. A useful gaming benchmark would make sure the graphics card is doing what any normal gamer would have it doing but not giving it such a high workload that a slowdown is seen that is due to the graphics card.
That way you isolate the benchmark to measure what a gamer expects to have his/her CPU doing. If they turned off all hardware accelleration, this would become a useless benchmark because that is not a workload I ever expect my processor to have.
Slashdot Mirror
This is flat out wrong.
Worst. Analogy. Ever.
If me and a friend walk into an apple store and buy Mac Minis, I expect that mine will be just as good as his. I doubt there is anything illegal about this since the machine isn't below the specs marked on the box. But if there are 2 mac minis available for X dollars, and one has better specs, I want the one with better specs.
Apple should either discount the older model a few bucks, or keep them the same price and label the packages accurately. If they did the second option then those of us who care about performance can do our research and get the best model. Those who don't care can be the ones who end up with the old inventory.
If there are original spec minis still available, I would be pretty pissed if I ended up with one of them instead of the better ones. If thats the case Apple was probably just hoping no one would notice.
I determined that the mac market is iffy, because in absolute numbers there are not nearly as many people using MacOS as Windows. That is why when you have a limited development budget you see applications made for Windows first (assuming they're mean for mass market appeal).
That doesn't mean Mac isn't profitable for WoW. I'm sure it is, and fortunately Blizzard is a company with the financial resources to fund two major client developments at once.
Linux on the desktop is way less common than Mac. Mac is about 3-5% of the desktop market, Linux is about
Lets just get realistic....the market for Mac is iffy, the market for Linux is nil. Linux is not a realistic desktop market that can justify spending a lot of money.
You could use USB for the interface back to a piece of host software on a regular computer. There are lots of cheap microcontrollers with USB interfaces built in, and they even come with reference firmware and drivers. USB is an incredibly easy bus from a hardware circuit perspective too.
Combine that with pcb123.com and a couple hundred dollars for boards and parts, and you've got your clickers. The only hard part will be finding some kind of plastic case to put them in that will be durable enough for classroom use. You can save money by not soldering the USB connector onto all the boards.
Windows update on the other hand pops that stupid balloon up over and over and over again until you relent and install their update.
I think that Intel gives a slightly better volume discount to Dell than anybody else. Partly this is because Dell's volume is bigger than most anyone else (I forget if they have exceeded HP yet), but the obvious suspicion is that there is also an "exclusivity bonus" - yet lower prices for a vendor who does not sell any of the competition's products. If Dell actually sold AMD Opteron based products, I suspect they would do very well on those products, but if they drove up their costs on every other system they sell, all still containing Intel cpus, then it might be a net loss, at least initially.
That is exactly the allegation AMD seems to be making in their lawsuit. From a monopolist, an exclusivity bonus is illegal.
I had never noticed that either. My tree is red and the mouseover says there are critical updates. Nice to know, but it would be better if it was a little more obvious. I doubt that you and I are the only people who didn't notice.
Stop making general statements as to the habits of millions of other users based solely on your activities
I am comfortable saying that I am way less lazy than the "average" user, who barely knows their mouse from their monitor. Firefox has never prompted me to patch or upgrade, and I believe I have 1.0.1. Assuming there has been any security update in the mean time, I haven't seen any indication of it. I don't visit the firefox website regularly, so I wouldn't know otherwise.
They would need to ensure it isn't used for advertising, pimping a new version that isn't related to security, etc....but this would be a nice value add for Windows users. Especially if I could enable/disable these alerts selectively for various programs.
I still use firefox of course!
I'll just bet you weren't saying this about Lindows when Microsoft was sueing them.
So I have to use two browsers, one for regular browsing and one for internal website (expense reports, hr, timesheet, etc. etc). I'd love to be able to have tabs for IE so that I don't end up with multiple windows for intranet sites. I'll probably try this tomorrow.
And no, I can't get them to change the sites. We're a "major" company, but not large in the sense that IBM or Intel or Microsoft are. Yet the buerocracy on stuff like this is extensive enough that suggesting a change would just go into a black hole. I'll have to wait until I'm a vice president or something to make this happen (ie, never).
How did this get modded insightful? Not only isn't there a law preventing libraries from restricting internet access, there are laws requiring it in many cases!
I call bullshit. If you've been pulled over 57 times in 5 years and it isn't one cop with a vendetta then you're probably just a liar who cant accept that the law applies to you too.
So, this issue still matters. As I'm sure you know, as your program gets more complex you rely on specific compiler features more and more to ensure a correct result. So transitioning isn't necessarily a simple task. Nerfing code in the Intel compiler deters people from using AMD products.
Also, the lawsuit claims that Intel's compiler wont use x86 ISA extensions such as SSE2 even when they're available on AMD processors. There is a reason we have these kinds of ISA extensions, and it is becaue performance is much much better when you use them.
Not only that, but you set up your internal network to operate at gigabit speeds, can't you? There is more to the network than the connection to the public internet even for those who don't have a fiber connection.
Damn, somehow that reply went to the wrong post. Sorry.
Thats exactly what I said! Its not that 1024x768 doesn't use more CPU resources, but that it will also tie up the video card. If you use 800x600 then you minimize video card delays, thus isolating the CPU (and system memory) performance.
I have to question if you understand the word pipeline. A decoder and its associated execution unit are the same pipeline, not two separate ones. Athlons have three pipes.
What that means, is that an Athlon performs ~9 operations per cycle, or 9 * 2.8 Ghz = ~25.2 billion instructions per second, and the intel would do 6 * 3.8Ghz = ~22.8. Those are very, very rough estimates.
Again, completely wrong. AMD's architecture can at best issue 3 instructions per cycle (and this depends on there being 3 instructions present in a 16 byte fetch window, plus various other factors such as branching into the middle of the window and predecode bits being correct), and they can only retire 3 instructions per cycle. As a result the best possible IPC is 3. In reality, a good application will exceed an IPC of 1.
So basically, the Ghz of the processor doesn't mean a whole lot. There's a lot more to take into consideration.
This at least is correct. You might want to read this article for a start, although it really only covers the processor's front end:
Arstechnica processor overview
That is nonsense. A useful gaming benchmark would make sure the graphics card is doing what any normal gamer would have it doing but not giving it such a high workload that a slowdown is seen that is due to the graphics card.
That way you isolate the benchmark to measure what a gamer expects to have his/her CPU doing. If they turned off all hardware accelleration, this would become a useless benchmark because that is not a workload I ever expect my processor to have.
Whoops, replied to the wrong post sorry!