The reason iPod was so successful was that it was the first portable music player with mainstream appeal which let folks play non-DRM'd music on it.
Rio is going to send hired goons to your house for saying that...
"mainstream appeal" is the ONLY THING the iPod had over the rest. Throw lots of money at introducing people to something most didn't know existed, and you've got a market.
It's been quite a few years since I was in school, but my experience was exactly the same...
Through Elementary School, you are really learning. They go through and teach you the major concepts of everything... Science, Math, History, English, etc. That's the first 7 years.
Then in middle and high school, you go through and pretty much just re-learn everything once again.
I was doing basic single-digit algebra in elementary school. Then, every year of middle and high school I was taught algebra again, and again, and again, and again, and again. It was unbelievably ridiculous. To anybody that wasn't in the lower 20% or so, it was just pure busy-work for 3/4 of the year.
I really had a low tolerance for that sort of thing. I really wouldn't have made it through, except I was usually lucky enough to have teachers that based ~70% of your grade on the tests.
Science was exactly the same... Spend 90% of the time drawing diagrams, memorizing the periodic table (how does that help ANYONE?), re-learning how electricity works (GAH! I was building rather complex circuits on my own at that point), memorizing the names of important people, etc.
English was mostly just writing and writing nonsense until your hand turns blue. It didn't matter what you write, just that you turn in a page full of words, spelled correctly.
History was more memorization and recitation of dates and names, as well as memorizing the "lesson" you're supposed to learn from the actions of each famous person: Hilter, Bad. FDR, Good. Blah, blah, blah.
Not only was all of this unbelievable repetitive, year after year, but it really didn't involve any though at all. You repeat what you're told, use the formula out of the book, say that you've learned exactly what the instructor says you're supposed to learn, etc.
Not only is there no room for independant though; you will be failed for it. If you work out math problems via some other method, and still get the correct answer, you fail. If your opinion of a historic figure is different than the text-book opinion of a historic figure, you fail. If you think some writer used a specific wording, not because of some deep meaning and imagery, but because he was paid by the word, and on a deadline, you fail. etc. etc.
Not only does the school system waste your time, teach you nothing, and fail to encourage independant though... The single thing it does is to PREVENT you from exercising independent thinking on any subject. It will take the independent thinkers, and go to great lengths to change them into memorizing and reciting machines.
I don't know how people can be surprised by this. It's not like they've been trying, and fallen short... Fostering thought is the absolute opposite of what 7th-12th grade is aiming to do.
Remind us again what the F I in FISA stands for, and how the Rev. MLK fits into that?
The title of the law doesn't dictate the body of the law.
You clearly didn't even READ the PAGE YOU LINKED, because it does begin to cover the issue:
5. Can FISA be used for ordinary criminal investigation?
Yes, but with qualifications.
[...] 12. So FISA doesn't treat aliens and U.S. citizens equally?
[...] 14. Can the FBI use FISA surveillance to get evidence for criminal prosecution?
[...] "Congress recognized that in many cases the concerns of government with respect for foreign intelligence will overlap with those with respect to law enforcement."
Excuse me, *this* administration. You lost quite a bit of credibility on that one. *Any* administration can do such things. Read up on President John F Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy's surveilance of Martin Luther King.
Excuse me, *Kennedy*. You lost quite a bit of credibility on that one. Read up on FISA and specifically what year it was enacted.
If you exceed this limit occasionally and by a small amout, your ISP will feel that it costs them more to send you an extra invoice than they could charge you.
Or perhaps, being a monopoly and all, they might decide that one byte over your quota (which you surely won't be able to check-up on) means you move into the next tier, meaning you get an added $20 on your bill, because of that one large JPEG which you downloaded on 11:59PM, on the 31st of the month...
I really, really don't see why people are making such a big deal of metering. They have a much simpler, much easier method of slowing you down if you don't want to pay as much... LOWER BANDWIDTH. Give me $5/month 128/32K DSL, and I'll be happy... As will 90% of people in this country.
They just won't even consider doing it because then their advertisements won't look quite as good as other companies. And they want the BASE PRICE to be as high as they can make it... Their whole business model is to squeeze the most money possible out of the people that barely use their internet connection at all.
You can see this with some providers. Companies like Charter Cable used-to provide 512K cable internet for ~$30/mo (back when DSL was 756k for $50/mo). Now, instead of lowering their prices to match DSL, they've DROPPED the lower-priced plan, and restricted everyone to their $50/mo 3Mbps plan. So, if DSL isn't available in your area, but cable is, you are forced to pay $50/mo even if you only do some occasional web browsing.
Did you (or the mods for that matter) bother to read past that first sentence? Immediately after the part you quoted, it says:
If a provider were to offer increase VoIP performance, for instance, the bill would require such providers to prioritize or offer enhanced quality of service "to all data of that type... without imposing a surcharge or other consideration for such prioritization or enhances quality of service."
In other words, QoS and the like is still allowed, it just has to be fair. You can't give one company (or one P2P network) higher QoS than another.
That statement in the article is, in-fact accurate, and further reading reveals that you're completely wrong about the rest of your assertions as well...
2. If a broadband provider prioritizes traffic of a particular type, it must prioritize all traffic of that same type, with no additional fee. 3. Nothing prevents broadband providers from nondiscriminatorily:
a. managing the network to promote security;
b. give priority to emergency communications;
c. prevent a violation of law or comply with a court order. http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/358
In the west we have (effectively) free, clean drinking water, yet people spend billions each year buying it from stores.
What "west" do you live in. I live in the west, and the tap water is the most disgusting-tasting chlorinated crap.
If not for *real* bottled water (spring water, not filtered tap water) and impressively good and inexpensive water filters, I might have to move to Canada to avoid dying of thirst...
Do you think that we could see a renaissance of Ham Radio among 21st century techies?
Actually, limiting the question to "Ham Radio" is too specific. The HF frequency has been historically the most interesting, because of it's unique propogation. These days, that worldwide propogation simply isn't as desirable as it used-to be.
OTOH, communications in other frequencies have skyrocketed. Digital Satellite TV/Radio/Internet cover most of the planet. Cell towers are going up everywhere. Wireless communications with 802.11 is incredibly popular, and some cities are being fully covered. Digital terrestrial TV/Radio promise to seriously increase the number of people recieving transmissions via the airwaves. et al.
So, while voice communications over HF seem to be declining, I expect you'll see most people refocusing their efforts in higher frequency digital communications. 802.11 certainly has the potential to bring the same kind of community aspect (and do-it-yourself improvents) as Ham has, except it will be digital content of every kind, including music and high-def videos, not just voice communications.
The quality of AM/MW wasn't really the point, though. The point was the seriously limited bandwidth in that range, and the large ammount of power and large antenna needed to broadcasting. That makes MW completely useless for 2-way communications (fire/police/ambulance), and too expensive for niche broadcasters.
It continues to amaze me the trememdous ammount of money and effort the rich put into trying to increase the gap even further...
You have to make a special case for the poor, because that's where everyone looks first, but it just has to SOUND like it will help them... it can actually increase the burden on most of them even more than the current situation, as almost nobody will check the numbers, or ask for specifics.
But you don't have any such restriction on the middle class. Everyone's worried about the poor, but nobody pays attention when you suggest vastly increasing the tax burden on the middle-class. Gee, I wonder why the very rich and poor vote Republican, while the middle-class doesn't...
And lies by omission are fair game... You don't need to bring up the list of the unlimited ways someone can circumvent the new tax system, but be sure and mention ALL of the (few) ways you can with the current system. Also, saying the rich spend more, not mentioning that it's only spend a fraction as much of their income as the middle-class and the poor spend, is a great way to garnish support for your proposal.
In other words, with an allocation in the 20MHz range, a user is theoretically capable of covering an entire continent with just a single tower.
Problem: Internet access is bidirectional.
If you have a single tower for a state, every user is going to have to put up their own tower, so they can transmit back... Not to mention the large ammounts of power it will take to broadcast across hundreds of miles at 20MHz.
By far the most obvious hog on the chart is the AM radio spectrum, but the VHF and UHF TV bands are pretty bad, too, for what most people get from them.
Bah! AM radio LOOKS big on that chart, but it's actually quite a tiny ammount of bandwidth, and completely useless for just about any other purposes...
Who's going to built a huge antenna, use up all that power, just to broadcast (intermittent) low-quality voice, or perhaps text?
Let the barber shop have their oldies AM radio station... There's select few other purposes that would make using that band worthwhile.
After all, look at the frequenies below the AM band, and all you've got are a few radio beacons spread around, and there's already more than enough bandwidth to accomodate them.
I'll hold back on my rant about VHF and UHF and just say that the switch to HDTV is not a moment too soon.
And in a further development, when questioned about the fact that these "revolutionary" feet look, act, and sound suspiciously like suction cups, the lead scientist ran out of the room, mumbling something about misleading names for racehorses...
if i remember correctly, the climbing bit is achieved by a combination of friction (between all the little hair things, there is a rather lot of surface area when they all lay sideways) and static cling.
Didn't even bother to read the article, eh, my Candian friend?
"Each of these hairs is attracted to the wall by an intermolecular force called the van der Waals force, and this allows the gecko's feet to adhere."
It's not your comment that pisses me off, it's the fact that it got moderated up... BAD MODS! NO COOKIE!
So what is the difference between doing that today, which I do with great regularity, and doing the same thing using a 64-bit processor?
The ability to have multiple GBs of RAM for fast caching, rather than waiting for the very slow hard drive to catch-up.
With all else beign equal, my original statemnet remains true
Nice one. Don't even try to refute any evidence to the contrary (I made many points you're just ignoring), and continue asserting that you are correct.
Well since you need a 64-bit processor to address a 64-bit memory space...
This is like talking to a brick wall...
You've read the exact opposite of what I wrote, even though I even emphasized my point...
As I said, 64-bits doesn't JUST give you 64-bit memory space, it gives you MUCH MORE as well.
If you're just going to ignore all evidence, and keep trolling, I won't bother to reply. You can have the last word if it makes you feel better...
The computer is useful if they get something useful out of it. More than they put into it.
Sorry, but no.
Computers are very much like cars... Either you learn enough about how they work, yourself, or you pay someone else to do it for you. If you do neither, you're fully responsible when your breaks go out and people get killed.
With computers, it's not life-and-death. However, a very serious ammount of money may be at-stake.
Just like a car, you shouldn't be using a computer unsupervised, until you know enough of the basics to be safe.
Or is this already possible with any OS? The ability to specify a list of allowed executables and the disability for a user application to change the list.
With a Unix-like OS, just mount/home,/tmp, and/var (and any other filesystem the user can write to) with the "noexec" option.
It's much more hassle with Windows, but "poledit" and it's kin can do the job.
Forgive ME, but I am using Mozilla, with of course no Flash or Javascript or other silliness enabled, and there is no "Download" link coming up on the right side of the page - or anywhere.
Use the "noscript" extension. I have javascript disabled for all sites, and make exceptions for very few. In fact, only Google and Netflix are in my list of allowed sites.
There is no such thing as a 64-bit x86 chip, or an AMD64 chip that is 32-bit. In other words, you can't JUST talk about the advantages of 64-bit, because you can't get 64-bit support on a chip, ala-carte.
The closest use I can see is photographers and video editors but that starts to move out of the realm of consumer equipment and more into the grey "prosumer" area.
So anyone that ever burns a DVD-R isn't a consumer anymore? Anyone that records videos on their computers (from a capture card, or downloaded), and wants to edit out a few bits is no longer a consumer?
Added registers - nothing to do with a chip being 64-bit or not.
You can't get a 32-bit x86 chip WITH the extra registers, nor can you get an AMD64 64-bit chip WITHOUT the extra registers, so it is obviously an issue.
The code may or may not execute faster depending on what it is doing, but in some cases can be slower.
In other words, a faster chip isn't always faster, so everyone should stick with the slower one... Good logic there.
Please explain how 64-bit chips help any of those things.
The 64-bit AMD chips have that NOW, and the 32-bit Intel chips do not. That is the issue. Those things aren't going to be ignored for the next several months, until Intel releases their new 64-bit chip.
You didn't say 64-bit memory space... You said "64-bit processors", and rightly so. The 64-bit chips have many advantages other than JUST being 64-bit.
You were also replying to a post which was talking about the faster FPU of the 64-bit processors in question, so you can't just ignore that now.
If this is true, it would be the first time intel made anything better than amd.
Not even remotely true. It wasn't until Intel made the gigantic mistake in releasing the P4 that AMD got the crown. Then AMD added to their lead by developing the Opteron/AMD64/x86-64, which soundly humiliated Intel's Itanium efforts, and they've continued aggressively pushing the Opteron line forward.
Before then, Intel was the leader by FAR. During the start of the P4 days, although Intel's chips were vastly more expensive, the Athlons earned their reputations as being hot... not because of their maximum operating temps (which were lower than the early P4s) but because their moronic S2K method of power management (which wasn't implimented in motherboards until near the end of the Athlon's life) meant their CPUs operated at full power, even when completely idle.
Before the, the PIIIs were superior to Athlons (and K6s!) both in maximum power, and power while idle. The only reason AMD got the top performance seat was that Intel was unwilling to push their PIII chips up to the high power-levels Athlons were operating at. That would have been a very smart move in the long term, as the trend is for lower power levels once again, except they blinked, and introduced the P4 for no reason other than P.R.. The thought of AMD having a chip that was better in ANY WAY (including nonsense MHz ratings) was so abhorent, that they drove the company into the ground to avoid it, and made the situation infinitely worse for themselves.
Before the Athlon, AMD was hardly a footnote in the CPU game. They weren't even the choice for CHEAP systems. You would just as likely gone with a Cyrix, WinChip, etc., as a K6.
Over their full history, the places where AMD was better are the minority...
Until then the consumer space really doesn't need 64-bit processors for most work people do.
That's the most baseless, ridiculous, nonsensical claim I've heard in a long time. There's serious demand for the benefits that 64-bit CPUs bring. The added memory space... Additional registers... All-around faster performance... etc.
Not to mention that the consumer space really DOES need faster FPU performance, fast CPUs that don't need to be overclocked, lower prices, etc.
It's quite sad that Intel's bullshit has people comparing limited-release products, future Intel products, and paper products to current, widespread AMD products.
The reason that Joe Public goes to see a movie is not for the plot, nor for the special effects, but for the star power.
Right... Like Star Wars... Or E.T. Or Titanic... Or The Terminator... Or any of the huge list of other massively-successful movie lacking "stars".
Not to mention the inverse... The huge number of flops, that happened to be filled with highly-paid "stars".
Not to mention that these same "stars" have continued making movies for the past couple years, and yet the decline continues.
People will see Pirates of the Caribean for Keira Knightly and Johnny Depp, not because it's about pirates.
There seem to be a few cases where that happens, but not many.
I personally will be more likely to see a movie when it stars someone who has done nothing but good movies the past several times out, or by a writer/director/producer with an equally good record, but that's as far as it goes, and I believe that's true for the large majority of the movie-going public as well.
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Rio is going to send hired goons to your house for saying that...
"mainstream appeal" is the ONLY THING the iPod had over the rest. Throw lots of money at introducing people to something most didn't know existed, and you've got a market.
It's been quite a few years since I was in school, but my experience was exactly the same...
Through Elementary School, you are really learning. They go through and teach you the major concepts of everything... Science, Math, History, English, etc. That's the first 7 years.
Then in middle and high school, you go through and pretty much just re-learn everything once again.
I was doing basic single-digit algebra in elementary school. Then, every year of middle and high school I was taught algebra again, and again, and again, and again, and again. It was unbelievably ridiculous. To anybody that wasn't in the lower 20% or so, it was just pure busy-work for 3/4 of the year.
I really had a low tolerance for that sort of thing. I really wouldn't have made it through, except I was usually lucky enough to have teachers that based ~70% of your grade on the tests.
Science was exactly the same... Spend 90% of the time drawing diagrams, memorizing the periodic table (how does that help ANYONE?), re-learning how electricity works (GAH! I was building rather complex circuits on my own at that point), memorizing the names of important people, etc.
English was mostly just writing and writing nonsense until your hand turns blue. It didn't matter what you write, just that you turn in a page full of words, spelled correctly.
History was more memorization and recitation of dates and names, as well as memorizing the "lesson" you're supposed to learn from the actions of each famous person: Hilter, Bad. FDR, Good. Blah, blah, blah.
Not only was all of this unbelievable repetitive, year after year, but it really didn't involve any though at all. You repeat what you're told, use the formula out of the book, say that you've learned exactly what the instructor says you're supposed to learn, etc.
Not only is there no room for independant though; you will be failed for it. If you work out math problems via some other method, and still get the correct answer, you fail. If your opinion of a historic figure is different than the text-book opinion of a historic figure, you fail. If you think some writer used a specific wording, not because of some deep meaning and imagery, but because he was paid by the word, and on a deadline, you fail. etc. etc.
Not only does the school system waste your time, teach you nothing, and fail to encourage independant though... The single thing it does is to PREVENT you from exercising independent thinking on any subject. It will take the independent thinkers, and go to great lengths to change them into memorizing and reciting machines.
I don't know how people can be surprised by this. It's not like they've been trying, and fallen short... Fostering thought is the absolute opposite of what 7th-12th grade is aiming to do.
The title of the law doesn't dictate the body of the law.
You clearly didn't even READ the PAGE YOU LINKED, because it does begin to cover the issue:
etc. etc.
Excuse me, *Kennedy*. You lost quite a bit of credibility on that one. Read up on FISA and specifically what year it was enacted.
Sounds good to me. I can certainly live without a phone (quite easily in-fact).
Now if it was property or income tax, I'd be pissed.
Or perhaps, being a monopoly and all, they might decide that one byte over your quota (which you surely won't be able to check-up on) means you move into the next tier, meaning you get an added $20 on your bill, because of that one large JPEG which you downloaded on 11:59PM, on the 31st of the month...
I really, really don't see why people are making such a big deal of metering. They have a much simpler, much easier method of slowing you down if you don't want to pay as much... LOWER BANDWIDTH. Give me $5/month 128/32K DSL, and I'll be happy... As will 90% of people in this country.
They just won't even consider doing it because then their advertisements won't look quite as good as other companies. And they want the BASE PRICE to be as high as they can make it... Their whole business model is to squeeze the most money possible out of the people that barely use their internet connection at all.
You can see this with some providers. Companies like Charter Cable used-to provide 512K cable internet for ~$30/mo (back when DSL was 756k for $50/mo). Now, instead of lowering their prices to match DSL, they've DROPPED the lower-priced plan, and restricted everyone to their $50/mo 3Mbps plan. So, if DSL isn't available in your area, but cable is, you are forced to pay $50/mo even if you only do some occasional web browsing.
In other words, QoS and the like is still allowed, it just has to be fair. You can't give one company (or one P2P network) higher QoS than another.
That statement in the article is, in-fact accurate, and further reading reveals that you're completely wrong about the rest of your assertions as well...
What "west" do you live in. I live in the west, and the tap water is the most disgusting-tasting chlorinated crap.
If not for *real* bottled water (spring water, not filtered tap water) and impressively good and inexpensive water filters, I might have to move to Canada to avoid dying of thirst...
Actually, limiting the question to "Ham Radio" is too specific. The HF frequency has been historically the most interesting, because of it's unique propogation. These days, that worldwide propogation simply isn't as desirable as it used-to be.
OTOH, communications in other frequencies have skyrocketed. Digital Satellite TV/Radio/Internet cover most of the planet. Cell towers are going up everywhere. Wireless communications with 802.11 is incredibly popular, and some cities are being fully covered. Digital terrestrial TV/Radio promise to seriously increase the number of people recieving transmissions via the airwaves. et al.
So, while voice communications over HF seem to be declining, I expect you'll see most people refocusing their efforts in higher frequency digital communications. 802.11 certainly has the potential to bring the same kind of community aspect (and do-it-yourself improvents) as Ham has, except it will be digital content of every kind, including music and high-def videos, not just voice communications.
Yes, as well as the open source software: http://drm.sourceforge.net/
The quality of AM/MW wasn't really the point, though. The point was the seriously limited bandwidth in that range, and the large ammount of power and large antenna needed to broadcasting. That makes MW completely useless for 2-way communications (fire/police/ambulance), and too expensive for niche broadcasters.
It continues to amaze me the trememdous ammount of money and effort the rich put into trying to increase the gap even further...
You have to make a special case for the poor, because that's where everyone looks first, but it just has to SOUND like it will help them... it can actually increase the burden on most of them even more than the current situation, as almost nobody will check the numbers, or ask for specifics.
But you don't have any such restriction on the middle class. Everyone's worried about the poor, but nobody pays attention when you suggest vastly increasing the tax burden on the middle-class. Gee, I wonder why the very rich and poor vote Republican, while the middle-class doesn't...
And lies by omission are fair game... You don't need to bring up the list of the unlimited ways someone can circumvent the new tax system, but be sure and mention ALL of the (few) ways you can with the current system. Also, saying the rich spend more, not mentioning that it's only spend a fraction as much of their income as the middle-class and the poor spend, is a great way to garnish support for your proposal.
Problem: Internet access is bidirectional.
If you have a single tower for a state, every user is going to have to put up their own tower, so they can transmit back... Not to mention the large ammounts of power it will take to broadcast across hundreds of miles at 20MHz.
Yeah, the summary sucked.
Bah! AM radio LOOKS big on that chart, but it's actually quite a tiny ammount of bandwidth, and completely useless for just about any other purposes...
Who's going to built a huge antenna, use up all that power, just to broadcast (intermittent) low-quality voice, or perhaps text?
Let the barber shop have their oldies AM radio station... There's select few other purposes that would make using that band worthwhile.
After all, look at the frequenies below the AM band, and all you've got are a few radio beacons spread around, and there's already more than enough bandwidth to accomodate them.
I'll hold back on my rant about VHF and UHF and just say that the switch to HDTV is not a moment too soon.
And in a further development, when questioned about the fact that these "revolutionary" feet look, act, and sound suspiciously like suction cups, the lead scientist ran out of the room, mumbling something about misleading names for racehorses...
Didn't even bother to read the article, eh, my Candian friend?
"Each of these hairs is attracted to the wall by an intermolecular force called the van der Waals force, and this allows the gecko's feet to adhere."
It's not your comment that pisses me off, it's the fact that it got moderated up... BAD MODS! NO COOKIE!
Sounds good!
The ability to have multiple GBs of RAM for fast caching, rather than waiting for the very slow hard drive to catch-up.
Nice one. Don't even try to refute any evidence to the contrary (I made many points you're just ignoring), and continue asserting that you are correct.
This is like talking to a brick wall...
You've read the exact opposite of what I wrote, even though I even emphasized my point...
As I said, 64-bits doesn't JUST give you 64-bit memory space, it gives you MUCH MORE as well.
If you're just going to ignore all evidence, and keep trolling, I won't bother to reply. You can have the last word if it makes you feel better...
Sorry, but no.
Computers are very much like cars... Either you learn enough about how they work, yourself, or you pay someone else to do it for you. If you do neither, you're fully responsible when your breaks go out and people get killed.
With computers, it's not life-and-death. However, a very serious ammount of money may be at-stake.
Just like a car, you shouldn't be using a computer unsupervised, until you know enough of the basics to be safe.
With a Unix-like OS, just mount
It's much more hassle with Windows, but "poledit" and it's kin can do the job.
Use the "noscript" extension. I have javascript disabled for all sites, and make exceptions for very few. In fact, only Google and Netflix are in my list of allowed sites.
I also recomend "cookiebutton" and "refcontrol".
That's not even a good troll. You're so completely wrong nobody would possibly get pulled in by it.
There is no such thing as a 64-bit x86 chip, or an AMD64 chip that is 32-bit. In other words, you can't JUST talk about the advantages of 64-bit, because you can't get 64-bit support on a chip, ala-carte.
So anyone that ever burns a DVD-R isn't a consumer anymore? Anyone that records videos on their computers (from a capture card, or downloaded), and wants to edit out a few bits is no longer a consumer?
You can't get a 32-bit x86 chip WITH the extra registers, nor can you get an AMD64 64-bit chip WITHOUT the extra registers, so it is obviously an issue.
In other words, a faster chip isn't always faster, so everyone should stick with the slower one... Good logic there.
The 64-bit AMD chips have that NOW, and the 32-bit Intel chips do not. That is the issue. Those things aren't going to be ignored for the next several months, until Intel releases their new 64-bit chip.
You didn't say 64-bit memory space... You said "64-bit processors", and rightly so. The 64-bit chips have many advantages other than JUST being 64-bit.
You were also replying to a post which was talking about the faster FPU of the 64-bit processors in question, so you can't just ignore that now.
Not even remotely true. It wasn't until Intel made the gigantic mistake in releasing the P4 that AMD got the crown. Then AMD added to their lead by developing the Opteron/AMD64/x86-64, which soundly humiliated Intel's Itanium efforts, and they've continued aggressively pushing the Opteron line forward.
Before then, Intel was the leader by FAR. During the start of the P4 days, although Intel's chips were vastly more expensive, the Athlons earned their reputations as being hot... not because of their maximum operating temps (which were lower than the early P4s) but because their moronic S2K method of power management (which wasn't implimented in motherboards until near the end of the Athlon's life) meant their CPUs operated at full power, even when completely idle.
Before the, the PIIIs were superior to Athlons (and K6s!) both in maximum power, and power while idle. The only reason AMD got the top performance seat was that Intel was unwilling to push their PIII chips up to the high power-levels Athlons were operating at. That would have been a very smart move in the long term, as the trend is for lower power levels once again, except they blinked, and introduced the P4 for no reason other than P.R.. The thought of AMD having a chip that was better in ANY WAY (including nonsense MHz ratings) was so abhorent, that they drove the company into the ground to avoid it, and made the situation infinitely worse for themselves.
Before the Athlon, AMD was hardly a footnote in the CPU game. They weren't even the choice for CHEAP systems. You would just as likely gone with a Cyrix, WinChip, etc., as a K6.
Over their full history, the places where AMD was better are the minority...
That's the most baseless, ridiculous, nonsensical claim I've heard in a long time. There's serious demand for the benefits that 64-bit CPUs bring. The added memory space... Additional registers... All-around faster performance... etc.
Not to mention that the consumer space really DOES need faster FPU performance, fast CPUs that don't need to be overclocked, lower prices, etc.
It's quite sad that Intel's bullshit has people comparing limited-release products, future Intel products, and paper products to current, widespread AMD products.
Right... Like Star Wars... Or E.T. Or Titanic... Or The Terminator... Or any of the huge list of other massively-successful movie lacking "stars".
Not to mention the inverse... The huge number of flops, that happened to be filled with highly-paid "stars".
Not to mention that these same "stars" have continued making movies for the past couple years, and yet the decline continues.
There seem to be a few cases where that happens, but not many.
I personally will be more likely to see a movie when it stars someone who has done nothing but good movies the past several times out, or by a writer/director/producer with an equally good record, but that's as far as it goes, and I believe that's true for the large majority of the movie-going public as well.