Well, sort of. The system memory is DDR, for sure, but the connection between the "northbridge" (or whatever Apple calls it) and the processors is still shared 1.06Gb/s PC/133. Ouch! So the Xserve isn't going to be any less memory starved than the current Quicksilver Powermacs, although anything DMA would be better.
And the jury's still out on whether the G4 is really memory starved, anyway. Sure, getting a fatter pipe to the Altivec would be huge, but only for code that can reasonably be rewritten to take advantage of it, and, while certainly there might be big wins in there, it's/not/ automatic.
Anyway. I'm waiting for MWNY, to see if Motorola can roll out a DDR capable G4. Or, in my wildest dreams, a DDR TiBook...
Sorry, can't agree. He bought a machine that is in fact working properly. If the consumer can't be expected to do even the tiniest modicum of research before plopping down two large on a computer, it's hardly Toshiba's fault.
OF COURSE putting a desktop x86 processor in a laptop is a laughably stupid idea, no sane person would argue that. But once that bridge has been crossed, the system needs to be able to dramatically reduce power output when heat builds up in the machine -- which it does by throttling the processor, or in extreme cases shutting it down entirely.
I repeat: THIS IS A WELL KNOWN AND PERFECTLY REASONABLE BEHAVIOR, given the way the computer has been built. If he doesn't like it (and honestly, he's right to be upset with the performance), he ought not to have blown the money on such a poorly designed machine.
As opposed to all of those cool running high performance processors, right? Hell, even the TiBook gets too hot to hold in your lap, and that uses a low-power glorified router controller, not one of thess 80w space heating AMD or Intel jobs.
The newest "Mobile" P3s run surprisingly cool, for what little that's worth.
The box has a desktop processor in it. This information was widely known before you bought the box. The box performs AS ONE WOULD EXPECT, given the heat dissipation of a desktop processor. Sure, throttling back to less than half-speed is irritating. Sure, putting a desktop processor in a laptop is a dirt-stupid false economy. But all of this information was fully public before you plunked down the $2k, right?
How else do you propose to "handle" this? We live in a society of laws, and legislation is how the will of the people is expressed. The laws we currently have are incompatible with music sharing; laws can be changed. You'd prefer... what? A "market solution"? Do you actually believe that there's a "free market" that exists? It doesn't -- the market metaphor is a way to describe certain mechanisms of exchange, not predicative, provable fact -- and it's certainly got nothing at all in common with any sort of natural law, cretinous Chicago-school idealogues or no.
Just for the record, a $1/month/user surcharge is a goofy stupid idea, but at least it's an idea. Without someone holding a bigger stick than the RIAA's control of virtually all rights to the music that you want to listen too, we're stuck with their ideas.
I've been checking that USGS earthquake page since I moved to California a couple of years ago. The only two website worth reading these days are the CDC and the USGS. I'm proud of my tax money going to provide such in-depth time wasting. Carry on, beloved Federal agencies.
This iDrive idiocy sounds a lot more like a GM "innovation" than a German one. Jesus, my 635 is about the simplest goddamn car ever designed. I'm a little surprised that BMW -- a company supposedly devoted to the art of driving -- would produce such an elephantine, Microsoftian nightmare.
It bodes ill. Happily, I'll never have a buck and a quarter to drop on a 745 (or a 760), so it's not likely to bother me except it the abstract.
"The simple truth is that you are wrong about Compaq purchasing all of the parts from other people and assembling them."
You are of course correct. I plead rhetorical exaggeration: in this instance, because the HPaq merger is idiotic for HP, which at least passes a semblance of being a research-driven technology company. Truly, you have to admit that there's nothing at Compaq like the PA-RISC people (oops, sold to Intel), or their compiler team (uh oh, off to MS and Intel), or their printer and instrumentation folks (how much longer can they last)?
Compaq's been on a downward spiral since, well, since Dell. The fact that the DL740 (or whatever the 8 Xeon box is) has some tidy h/w engineering in it is swamped by the fact that nobody needs them, at least, nobody needs them badly enough to shell out the premium over Dell's offerings.
The commodity PC market -- and yes, those servers *are* commodity PCs, even if they're bigger -- is dead. HP is buying a huge exposure to zero margin commodity PCs in addition to the dysfunctional and hateful "services" group. The only winners are IBM and Dell. Oh, and Fiorina, who'll no doubt ride off with another $18,000,000 payday as HPaq dies an ignominous death. Lucent, anyone?
Oh, you mean "big" like a 64 processor E10k? Or "big" like an SGI Origin 3k? Or "huge", like an IBM zSeries, for that matter?
Oh, sorry, you meant "big" as in quad processor x86. Or were you referring to the Tandem Nonstop technology that Compaq bought (*not* designed)? Or the big DEC Alpha machines -- again, you do know that they didn't do anything to Alpha but fuck it royally right up, yes?
Putting the best quality parts -- as purchased from other people -- into a box with a copy of NT and a custom powersupply doesn't really qualify as building "big" computers.
Not hardly. Compaq's just a screwdriver shop, albeit a huge and stupidly-run one. There's no one at Compaq with brains enough to pour piss out of a boot -- the only thing that they do is package up other people's research (while taking a massive loss.) Sadly, this is also becoming true of HP.
I give HPaq 18 months, until they sell off printing and imaging and go bankrupt in an orgy of finger-pointing and recrimination. Fiorina, the architect of this train-wreck, will, naturally, be fired upwards. Again.
It's a line generated by a text disassociator that I wrote and then pointed at a bunch of articles from those stupid rah-rah-rah Business 2.0 style rags a couple of years back. I wish I'd have saved the rest of the generated text: it was hilarious.
A $15 ps/2 -> usb dongle. Keep your old Model-M -- or, in my case, my $250 Kinesis Classic. PS/2 was a shitty stupid idea when it was introduced, and it's no less stupid now. I'm happy to see it go away.
Right, I understand this, and it's very impressive *to a developer*. But from a user experience standpoint, it's pretty much just broken. Admittedly, the dysfunction of a unified file/&c browser is an argument that I've lost, but on my personal workstation, darn it, I WILL retain control.
Ironically, this problem arises because the http rendering control is so well done, that to load mozilla on top of the already large and in charge KDE environment seems pointless.
But what I want is to have, say, the main toolbar be text only, with a Location widget, when I'm looking at HTML, and when I'm browsing the filesystem, have a totally different set of options. Possible?
> (fonts) Should be possible, with a custom > (manual - read vim/emacs) stylesheet
emacs doesn't scare me off, but oughtn't this be an option in, say, the accessibility panel? Not everyone who's font needs are different is going to want to write their own CSS. Both Mozilla and IE make this a simple one check-box operation.
Thanks for the reply, and I'll be sure to try some of this stuff out later.
Slashdot Mirror
> What the Xserve does is incorporate DDR RAM.
/not/ automatic.
...
Well, sort of. The system memory is DDR, for sure, but the connection between the "northbridge" (or whatever Apple calls it) and the processors is still shared 1.06Gb/s PC/133. Ouch! So the Xserve isn't going to be any less memory starved than the current Quicksilver Powermacs, although anything DMA would be better.
And the jury's still out on whether the G4 is really memory starved, anyway. Sure, getting a fatter pipe to the Altivec would be huge, but only for code that can reasonably be rewritten to take advantage of it, and, while certainly there might be big wins in there, it's
Anyway. I'm waiting for MWNY, to see if Motorola can roll out a DDR capable G4. Or, in my wildest dreams, a DDR TiBook
Best,
'jfb
That's a five minute major for Misusing A Big Word Trying To Sound Smarter Than You Are.
'jfb
Exactly. And besides, nobody is discussing potential OS X virus problems in LATIN, for Jebus' sake. When in English, use the damn English plurals!
'j
Come on, people. Get with the English program.
'j
Sorry, can't agree. He bought a machine that is in fact working properly. If the consumer can't be expected to do even the tiniest modicum of research before plopping down two large on a computer, it's hardly Toshiba's fault.
OF COURSE putting a desktop x86 processor in a laptop is a laughably stupid idea, no sane person would argue that. But once that bridge has been crossed, the system needs to be able to dramatically reduce power output when heat builds up in the machine -- which it does by throttling the processor, or in extreme cases shutting it down entirely.
I repeat: THIS IS A WELL KNOWN AND PERFECTLY REASONABLE BEHAVIOR, given the way the computer has been built. If he doesn't like it (and honestly, he's right to be upset with the performance), he ought not to have blown the money on such a poorly designed machine.
'jfb
As opposed to all of those cool running high performance processors, right? Hell, even the TiBook gets too hot to hold in your lap, and that uses a low-power glorified router controller, not one of thess 80w space heating AMD or Intel jobs.
The newest "Mobile" P3s run surprisingly cool, for what little that's worth.
'jfb
The box has a desktop processor in it. This information was widely known before you bought the box. The box performs AS ONE WOULD EXPECT, given the heat dissipation of a desktop processor. Sure, throttling back to less than half-speed is irritating. Sure, putting a desktop processor in a laptop is a dirt-stupid false economy. But all of this information was fully public before you plunked down the $2k, right?
And you want Toshiba to do what, exactly?
Sheesh.
'jfb
How else do you propose to "handle" this? We live in a society of laws, and legislation is how the will of the people is expressed. The laws we currently have are incompatible with music sharing; laws can be changed. You'd prefer ... what? A "market solution"? Do you actually believe that there's a "free market" that exists? It doesn't -- the market metaphor is a way to describe certain mechanisms of exchange, not predicative, provable fact -- and it's certainly got nothing at all in common with any sort of natural law, cretinous Chicago-school idealogues or no.
Just for the record, a $1/month/user surcharge is a goofy stupid idea, but at least it's an idea. Without someone holding a bigger stick than the RIAA's control of virtually all rights to the music that you want to listen too, we're stuck with their ideas.
'jfb
I have two. They're hellaciously fast, to say nothing of MUCH quieter and cooler running than a 10k SCSI, let alone a 15k.
'jfb
I've been checking that USGS earthquake page since I moved to California a couple of years ago. The only two website worth reading these days are the CDC and the USGS. I'm proud of my tax money going to provide such in-depth time wasting. Carry on, beloved Federal agencies.
'jfb
Yeah, the new cars are hideous. I personally feel that BMW peaked, designwise, in 1989, but that's just my 635csi pride speaking.
'jfb
This iDrive idiocy sounds a lot more like a GM "innovation" than a German one. Jesus, my 635 is about the simplest goddamn car ever designed. I'm a little surprised that BMW -- a company supposedly devoted to the art of driving -- would produce such an elephantine, Microsoftian nightmare.
It bodes ill. Happily, I'll never have a buck and a quarter to drop on a 745 (or a 760), so it's not likely to bother me except it the abstract.
Best,
'jfb
Heh.
"The simple truth is that you are wrong about Compaq purchasing all of the parts from other people and assembling them."
You are of course correct. I plead rhetorical exaggeration: in this instance, because the HPaq merger is idiotic for HP, which at least passes a semblance of being a research-driven technology company. Truly, you have to admit that there's nothing at Compaq like the PA-RISC people (oops, sold to Intel), or their compiler team (uh oh, off to MS and Intel), or their printer and instrumentation folks (how much longer can they last)?
Compaq's been on a downward spiral since, well, since Dell. The fact that the DL740 (or whatever the 8 Xeon box is) has some tidy h/w engineering in it is swamped by the fact that nobody needs them, at least, nobody needs them badly enough to shell out the premium over Dell's offerings.
The commodity PC market -- and yes, those servers *are* commodity PCs, even if they're bigger -- is dead. HP is buying a huge exposure to zero margin commodity PCs in addition to the dysfunctional and hateful "services" group. The only winners are IBM and Dell. Oh, and Fiorina, who'll no doubt ride off with another $18,000,000 payday as HPaq dies an ignominous death. Lucent, anyone?
'jfb
Oh, you mean "big" like a 64 processor E10k? Or "big" like an SGI Origin 3k? Or "huge", like an IBM zSeries, for that matter?
Oh, sorry, you meant "big" as in quad processor x86. Or were you referring to the Tandem Nonstop technology that Compaq bought (*not* designed)? Or the big DEC Alpha machines -- again, you do know that they didn't do anything to Alpha but fuck it royally right up, yes?
Putting the best quality parts -- as purchased from other people -- into a box with a copy of NT and a custom powersupply doesn't really qualify as building "big" computers.
'jfb
Not hardly. Compaq's just a screwdriver shop, albeit a huge and stupidly-run one. There's no one at Compaq with brains enough to pour piss out of a boot -- the only thing that they do is package up other people's research (while taking a massive loss.) Sadly, this is also becoming true of HP.
I give HPaq 18 months, until they sell off printing and imaging and go bankrupt in an orgy of finger-pointing and recrimination. Fiorina, the architect of this train-wreck, will, naturally, be fired upwards. Again.
'jfb
You're the first person who's ever asked me that.
It's a line generated by a text disassociator that I wrote and then pointed at a bunch of articles from those stupid rah-rah-rah Business 2.0 style rags a couple of years back. I wish I'd have saved the rest of the generated text: it was hilarious.
Best,
'jfb
Welcome to Gnus. Have a sandwich.
(jfb)
What on earth does a captive-released pair of condors properly incubating their egg have to do with cloning?
'(jfb)
THAT didn't take them long.
(jfb)
YHBT. YHL. HTH. HAND.
(jfb)
A $15 ps/2 -> usb dongle. Keep your old Model-M -- or, in my case, my $250 Kinesis Classic. PS/2 was a shitty stupid idea when it was introduced, and it's no less stupid now. I'm happy to see it go away.
(jfb)
It's not just IBM that considers POWER superior to SPARC, for the simple reason that SPARC is a joke, and PoWER is not.
Peace,
(jfb)
Took me 164 minutes of user time last night on my dual P3 @ 1.4ghz. Yow!
(jfb)
Right, I understand this, and it's very impressive *to a developer*. But from a user experience standpoint, it's pretty much just broken. Admittedly, the dysfunction of a unified file/&c browser is an argument that I've lost, but on my personal workstation, darn it, I WILL retain control.
Ironically, this problem arises because the http rendering control is so well done, that to load mozilla on top of the already large and in charge KDE environment seems pointless.
Best,
(jfb)
> See Window-> administrate view Profiles
But what I want is to have, say, the main toolbar be text only, with a Location widget, when I'm looking at HTML, and when I'm browsing the filesystem, have a totally different set of options. Possible?
> (fonts) Should be possible, with a custom
> (manual - read vim/emacs) stylesheet
emacs doesn't scare me off, but oughtn't this be an option in, say, the accessibility panel? Not everyone who's font needs are different is going to want to write their own CSS. Both Mozilla and IE make this a simple one check-box operation.
Thanks for the reply, and I'll be sure to try some of this stuff out later.
Best,
(jfb)