The drawbacks of the Cell are obvious: 1) all your software needs to be rewritten from scratch, and 2) to get the full benefit of the processing elements, you need compilers that are a lot smarter than most compilers available today...
Sounds a bit like (or at least part of) what killed Itanium.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the restrictions on drawing and disseminating a picture of Mickey Mouse smoking a joint fall under trademarks rather than copyrights?
ie copyright covers any specific instances of Mickey Mouse images created by Disney, but the likeness of Mickey Mouse is covered by trademarks.
Trademarks don't expire if they are defended, whereas copyrights eventually expire (barring law changes) and don't need defending. Thats why you generally see trademarks defended more vigorously and widely than copyrights.
The developers admit it's pretty crude. It just uses the one big lock technique that most first time SMP projects seem to.
Don't forget SMP opens up new opportunities for security problems, and the OpenBSD devs will be treading very cautiously and conservatively with their implementation. For them security outweighs performance.
Don't expect it to compete with Linux 2.6 or FreeBSD 5 in terms of performance and scalability anytime soon (if ever).
Re:What does it do differently?
on
Learning PHP 5
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· Score: 2, Informative
Absolutely not. ASP is a scripting language. PHP is a scripting language with string OOP features. ASP.net is a framework for the web, which allows you to use a fully featured OOP language such as C#.
The original ASP wasn't a language, it was a framework too. You could write ASP pages in vbscript, jscript or even perl.
Re:If You Want a Serious Answer... Don't Get Cute
on
Rob Pike Responds
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· Score: 1
The questioner wasn't actually comparing patents to nukes (of course that is silly) - it was drawing a parallel between the justification of the buildup and stockpiling of each of them.
That is a valid comparison in my opinion. The flawed reasoning seems to be with those who think the items themselves rather than the buildup were being compared.
It is a big deal - one will be able to upgrade a Xeon system to Itanium with minimum effort. Of course, the OS and the apps will have to be re-installed, but the box itself won't require rewiring and rack-mounting. In data center environment the mobo itself doesn't contribute to performance a lot, but the key is in lowering the TCO, so it will matter. And as the article said, having interchangeable mobos will make every Intel Xeon reseller also an Intel Itanium reseller at no extra cost.
Are you kidding? For enterprise IT and vendors, hardware is cheap and software is expensive.
Do you really think any sane IT dept will get some Xeon servers and decide that a few years later the best or cheapest thing to do would be to upgrade their cpus to a whole new arch?
Never mind that the ram and cpu sockets will probably be out of date by then, let alone the enormous expense of changing ALL your software.
Theoretically you could have motherboards into which you could put either a K7 or an Alpha, by changing the BIOS.
I was under the impression the sockets were electrically compatible but not physically compatible - ie it would take more than a BIOS change to make it work.
So we have four possibilities: 1: Intel is trying to enable Itanium to creep downward into the Xeon market. 2: Intel is trying to enable Xeon to creep upward into the Itanium market. 3: Intel is confused, and trying to hedge their bets. 4: Beancounter have gained some ascendancy over the marketdroids, and have gotten fed up with the costs of 'socket differentiation.'
Option 1 IMO. AMD64 has thrown a spanner in the works of Intels IA64 migration plans, and this is part of their attempts to get it back on track.
There's not much point chasing MS and Apple 'database filesystem' features when they aren't really going to be part of the filesystem anyway but just higher level services.
I also agree that the networking features of current filesystems are the weakest point.
As you said a more secure NFS would be good, and the widespread use of IO Slaves also. I would also want the distributed filesystems to mature and become more widespread and a bit simpler to set up (eg self discovery etc) - especially cross platform ones like AFS etc.
Has it occurred to you that maybe people need to actually understand a product before they can write documentation for it? Now, who understands better how a piece of software works: the original developer(s), or potential customers?
Then again, who usually does a better job explaining how to use it to newbies? The developer or another ex newbie who has worked out how to use it?
Give me full XHTML and CSS2 compliance please. Oh, and transparent PNGs.
Agreed. I don't care about interface limitations in IE - that only affects its users. And they can either live with it or switch to another browser or even install an add-in to fix that if they have to.
But IEs rendering limitations affects the web itself and everyone that creates or maintains content on it, and that in a smaller way indirectly affects users of other browsers too.
It been a while since I've had anything to do with graphics and rendering etc, so this might be a dumb thing to say...
I was under the impression that ray tracing and radiosity weren't exclusive techniques, and using both produced excellent results.
ie ray tracing is excellent for reflections and refractions but tends to look too harsh when dealing with soft shadows and ambient light which is where radiosity works well.
At present I think a better punishment for spammers would be to have an implant inserted into their inner that constantly plays Greensleeves or Macarena constantly.
Now you're going too far!! That's just outright sadism.
Ahhh, I see that you've had Canada's psuedo version of Foster's lager. When I returned to the US after living in the UK for while, I acquired some Foster's from the store and found that it not only tasted completely different than what I had in the UK & Austrailia, but it came packaged with a *wicked* hangover. I took a look at the can and noticed that it was indeed imported: from Canada and trying to pass itself off as Australian.
So lets get this straight... Someone found a way to make Fosters worse? Wow!
If you want cutting edge software then OpenBSD may not be for you, because it stresses stability over recency. It's so conservative in this regard it makes Debian-stable seem daring.
Even as a big Debian fan, I still have to admit OpenBSD has newer software than Debian Woody.
OpenBSD ain't bad, it comes out every 6 months and is usually fairly up to date.
Or you could see a real physician. Be sceptical of chiropractic care. It's flimflammery.
I'm skeptical about chiropractors myself, but that post was pretty good advice.
A lot of people get treatment for things like CTS or tendinitis etc, when those are just the symptoms of constricted or damaged nerves or other issues further 'upstream'. The treatment will work in the short term, but the cause hasn't been addressed and similar problems will crop up again later.
Personally I have found that a combination of finding a massage therapist that knows enough about this stuff to concentrate on your neck and shoulders, along with adjustments in posture and workload, plus some exercise to strengthen muscles and improve flexibility will help long term.
I found this book
to be a great help in understanding my problems.
Slashdot Mirror
It always seemed to me like this was Groove's main plan to begin with.
The drawbacks of the Cell are obvious: 1) all your software needs to be rewritten from scratch, and 2) to get the full benefit of the processing elements, you need compilers that are a lot smarter than most compilers available today...
Sounds a bit like (or at least part of) what killed Itanium.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the restrictions on drawing and disseminating a picture of Mickey Mouse smoking a joint fall under trademarks rather than copyrights?
ie copyright covers any specific instances of Mickey Mouse images created by Disney, but the likeness of Mickey Mouse is covered by trademarks.
Trademarks don't expire if they are defended, whereas copyrights eventually expire (barring law changes) and don't need defending. Thats why you generally see trademarks defended more vigorously and widely than copyrights.
As a matter of fact, they killed it off for the most part (during the beta stage of Windows 2000)
That was Alpha, I seem to remember NT PPC being killed off sometime around NT4 SP3 (possibly SP2 maybe).
HAHAHA, that's one of the funniest things i've ever seen said about microsoft.
What, that they have smooth soapy knobs?
There's probably some manager at Intel right now looking for a certain 'A. Coward' in the staff directory ;)
The developers admit it's pretty crude. It just uses the one big lock technique that most first time SMP projects seem to.
Don't forget SMP opens up new opportunities for security problems, and the OpenBSD devs will be treading very cautiously and conservatively with their implementation. For them security outweighs performance.
Don't expect it to compete with Linux 2.6 or FreeBSD 5 in terms of performance and scalability anytime soon (if ever).
Absolutely not. ASP is a scripting language. PHP is a scripting language with string OOP features. ASP.net is a framework for the web, which allows you to use a fully featured OOP language such as C#.
The original ASP wasn't a language, it was a framework too. You could write ASP pages in vbscript, jscript or even perl.
The questioner wasn't actually comparing patents to nukes (of course that is silly) - it was drawing a parallel between the justification of the buildup and stockpiling of each of them.
That is a valid comparison in my opinion. The flawed reasoning seems to be with those who think the items themselves rather than the buildup were being compared.
Funny? When I saw it I found myself thinking about how Wonko the Sane must've felt when he came across toothpick instructions.
Really? Can you point me towards those official public AMD roadmaps detailing their platform infrastructure in 2007?
Since when have Intels announced plans that far out ever matched reality?
How long ago were they saying that there would be no 64 bit x86 from them?
How long ago were they saying RAMBUS was the future?
How long ago were they saying that IA64 would be the mainstream architecture by now?
It is a big deal - one will be able to upgrade a Xeon system to Itanium with minimum effort.
Of course, the OS and the apps will have to be re-installed, but the box itself won't require rewiring and rack-mounting.
In data center environment the mobo itself doesn't contribute to performance a lot, but the key is in lowering the TCO, so it will matter.
And as the article said, having interchangeable mobos will make every Intel Xeon reseller also an Intel Itanium reseller at no extra cost.
Are you kidding? For enterprise IT and vendors, hardware is cheap and software is expensive.
Do you really think any sane IT dept will get some Xeon servers and decide that a few years later the best or cheapest thing to do would be to upgrade their cpus to a whole new arch?
Never mind that the ram and cpu sockets will probably be out of date by then, let alone the enormous expense of changing ALL your software.
Wasn't IA64 supposed to have completely replaced x86 years ago?
Every year for nearly a decade those plans got later and smaller in scope.
IA64 for so long (and might still be in cynics eyes) was (is?) the biggest vapourware around.
Theoretically you could have motherboards into which you could put either a K7 or an Alpha, by changing the BIOS.
I was under the impression the sockets were electrically compatible but not physically compatible - ie it would take more than a BIOS change to make it work.
So we have four possibilities:
1: Intel is trying to enable Itanium to creep downward into the Xeon market.
2: Intel is trying to enable Xeon to creep upward into the Itanium market.
3: Intel is confused, and trying to hedge their bets.
4: Beancounter have gained some ascendancy over the marketdroids, and have gotten fed up with the costs of 'socket differentiation.'
Option 1 IMO. AMD64 has thrown a spanner in the works of Intels IA64 migration plans, and this is part of their attempts to get it back on track.
Agreed.
There's not much point chasing MS and Apple 'database filesystem' features when they aren't really going to be part of the filesystem anyway but just higher level services.
I also agree that the networking features of current filesystems are the weakest point.
As you said a more secure NFS would be good, and the widespread use of IO Slaves also. I would also want the distributed filesystems to mature and become more widespread and a bit simpler to set up (eg self discovery etc) - especially cross platform ones like AFS etc.
Has it occurred to you that maybe people need to actually understand a product before they can write documentation for it? Now, who understands better how a piece of software works: the original developer(s), or potential customers?
Then again, who usually does a better job explaining how to use it to newbies? The developer or another ex newbie who has worked out how to use it?
Give me full XHTML and CSS2 compliance please. Oh, and transparent PNGs.
Agreed. I don't care about interface limitations in IE - that only affects its users. And they can either live with it or switch to another browser or even install an add-in to fix that if they have to.
But IEs rendering limitations affects the web itself and everyone that creates or maintains content on it, and that in a smaller way indirectly affects users of other browsers too.
It been a while since I've had anything to do with graphics and rendering etc, so this might be a dumb thing to say...
:)
I was under the impression that ray tracing and radiosity weren't exclusive techniques, and using both produced excellent results.
ie ray tracing is excellent for reflections and refractions but tends to look too harsh when dealing with soft shadows and ambient light which is where radiosity works well.
Corrections welcome
At present I think a better punishment for spammers would be to have an implant inserted into their inner that constantly plays Greensleeves or Macarena constantly.
Now you're going too far!! That's just outright sadism.
Being executed and the family being billed for the bullet will certainly prevent them from spamming again.
I have grave reservations about putting spammers in front of a firing squad.
They need something far more agonising and drawn out. Eaten alive by rats maybe?
Ahhh, I see that you've had Canada's psuedo version of Foster's lager. When I returned to the US after living in the UK for while, I acquired some Foster's from the store and found that it not only tasted completely different than what I had in the UK & Austrailia, but it came packaged with a *wicked* hangover. I took a look at the can and noticed that it was indeed imported: from Canada and trying to pass itself off as Australian.
So lets get this straight... Someone found a way to make Fosters worse? Wow!
email client: Evolution in place of Outlook on ...uhhh...oops.
Didn't that recent OSNews interview with Miguel say that Ximian is porting Evolution 2.0 to Windows?
If you want cutting edge software then OpenBSD may not be for you, because it stresses stability over recency. It's so conservative in this regard it makes Debian-stable seem daring.
Even as a big Debian fan, I still have to admit OpenBSD has newer software than Debian Woody.
OpenBSD ain't bad, it comes out every 6 months and is usually fairly up to date.
I'm skeptical about chiropractors myself, but that post was pretty good advice.
A lot of people get treatment for things like CTS or tendinitis etc, when those are just the symptoms of constricted or damaged nerves or other issues further 'upstream'. The treatment will work in the short term, but the cause hasn't been addressed and similar problems will crop up again later. Personally I have found that a combination of finding a massage therapist that knows enough about this stuff to concentrate on your neck and shoulders, along with adjustments in posture and workload, plus some exercise to strengthen muscles and improve flexibility will help long term.
I found this book to be a great help in understanding my problems.
It eats memory like a whore in a chocolate dick factory.
Really? I'm a little confused as to why a whore in a chocolate dick factory would eat a lot of memory.