It's obviously not an issue that the Conservatives feel strongly about, otherwise all of them would have been told to turn up and vote in a particular way.
Therefore, the Conservative leadership did help this bill to pass, by doing nothing to block it. The headline is accurate.
That reminds me of something. Let me think. Oh yes, it's the Conservative voting record, where they supported every nasty little illberal and authoritarian thing that Labour wanted during the last decade. Some "opposition" they are.
How are other parties supposed to rise up and represent the people who share their values if the citizens won't vote for them "because they can't win?"
How indeed. Popular anti-government movements do seem to get going, but they end up being hijacked by weirdos and discredited in the media. Like those Tea Party people (teabaggers, lol) or Ron Paul supporters (paultards, lolololol). If the Pirate Party ever becomes a really big movement, it will end up in a similar place.
And meanwhile control is passed from one bunch of authoritarian statists to another. It's just the same here in the UK; both major parties offering the same thing. No wonder half the country has stopped voting.
Ah, it's always a good day to rip the piss out of libertarians. Goddamn anti-government morons with their old fashioned ideas about "liberty" and "individual freedom"! Bunch of retards, eh? What do they know?
But I think you've called it wrong. I'm inclined in that direction, and I'm pleased about every government non-job that disappears due to improvements in the efficiency of the public sector. The UK public sector bureaucracies spend huge amounts of tax money just on admin and anything that reduces that expense is good! Once made redundant, bureaucrats could get proper jobs doing something productive, and contribute to the economy instead of feeding off it.
I don't believe for one moment that anything will get better, but it's a nice thought.
If only all AGW proponents were this reasonable. Unfortunately, many are not. My thanks to you.
Of course I agree that it is important to minimise pollution as far as we can. Although I am not much of a "tree hugger", I hate waste and try to recycle everything I can. These are self-evidently good ideas. But I am also very suspicious of government, and particularly the "crisis mentality" that inflames the mob and justifies the removal of liberty and the imposition of additional regulations and taxes.
Ha ha. I actually thought this was really funny. Good stuff.
But I do think the AGW "nut jobs" are fascist. Really, honestly. It's not so much the climatologists, who have at least studied this stuff, but the ordinary people who have jumped on the bandwagon and formed a sort of online lynch mob, seeking out any dissent. There also seems to be a crowd of far-left wackos who see AGW as a golden opportunity to get *their* ideas implemented while nobody is thinking critically.
There'll be a Great Flood as well, sent by God to wash away all the "denialists" and their multitude of sins.
However I think AGW is more like a fascist cult than an Abrahamic religion, because it is an all-out attack on free minds and free thought: "believe exactly as we do, do not question our authority, or the Earth will be destroyed and it will be your fault".
The thought restrictions go way beyond questions about the science. They also require belief in a government solution, summarised by the claim: "Well, even if it isn't happening, why shouldn't we do something anyway? Our plans will make the world a better place no matter what." I've never seen any evidence for that claim, although I believe that Karl Marx wrote a few books about it.
Forget gas chambers and gulags, "if you are not with us, you are against us" is the very definition of fascism. Here are some more:
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."
"It is for the Greater Good."
"The science is settled."
"There is a consensus."
"The debate is over."
I never thought I would see a Slashdot discussion dominated by fascists, but here we are. -1, Free Thinking, and +5, Agrees Totally With Authority.
Sorry... you meant to say "CLIMATE IS NOT WEATHER, RTARD", but you seem to have accidentally said "climate is weather whenever it supports my beliefs".
Naturally present day events resemble the things in that book, and others like it.
That's because the statists and the collectivists always operate in the same way: (1) There is a crisis! (2) Only the Government can resolve it, and then only if we are all willing to put aside politics and work together! (3) For the common good, the people must be compelled to work together by any means necessary.
Over time, they have changed the nature of the crisis, but the tactics have not changed. What is really sad is how easily some Slashdotters are fooled by Government propaganda. The same people who railed against the Patriot Act and the War on Drugs are falling over themselves to tell everyone who is even slightly cynical about this blatant Government job-creation scheme that they're a Nazi Fox News viewer.
"dangitman" and those who modded him up are a case in point. According to them, if you don't buy into the Government bullshit, then you must be an "arrogant asshole" and "stupid". Unlike them. According to the Government, being an AGW believer is definitive proof that you are (1) right about everything, and (2) really smart.
No, not even slightly. To address your points about Hitler:
(1) Hitler had no interest in conserving the existing culture in Germany; he wished to replace it with the radical and progressive Nazi doctrine. In contrast, I do not want the existing culture in my country to be replaced.
(2) Nazism is based on racial rather than cultural superiority. One distinction between race and culture is that you can adopt a different culture, but you can never change your race.
(3) Hitler advocated the invasion of other countries, whereas I would be perfectly happy for other cultures and other societies to exist in other countries.
The same points apply to communism as well, since it is almost identical to Nazism in every important respect, merely substituting "class superiority" for "racial superiority".
I think you have read my advocacy of cultural absolutism as a mandate for monoculture and the forced removal of everyone who will not conform. But this is not what I am getting at.
I am simply advocating the defence of what we already have. We cannot defend our way of life unless we are willing to admit that we believe it is better. And we cannot do that unless we are willing to make a comparison. In short, we must stand up for ourselves. Doing so does not make us Nazis or communists.
Well, obviously, when the "liberal" left call people Nazis, the description is justified. Particularly in the case of the BNP who definitely do model themselves on the National Socialists. However, "Nazi" is a general purpose insult directed by the "liberal" left at everyone who won't conform to their "consensus", including people who have nothing in common with the Nazis such as conservatives, libertarians and Thatcherites.
I try very hard to avoid talking about left versus right these days, because it's rarely helpful to do so. It creates divisions where they need not exist. I'm pleased that my earlier post did well in moderation, but I think this is mostly because I didn't blame "the Left" for the problems caused by multiculturalism, and the subsequent refusal to acknowledge those problems. Had I done so, the post would have looked like a troll to many people here.
Nevertheless, I basically agree with Viol8.
There are of course many different sorts of Leftie. The liberal variety is not the same as the Nazi variety, the Fascist variety, or the Stalinist variety. So it is quite unfair of anyone to associate you with totalitarian fascism.
However, the term "liberal left" has been co-opted by people who are anything but liberal. They are extreme idealists and refuse to acknowledge any flaw in their beliefs, regardless of evidence. New Labour and the BBC seem to fall into this category, along with the UAF and many journalists and self-described left-wing bloggers. They have an intense, almost fundamentalist belief that legitimate political debate can only take place within the framework of "liberal socialism" set by themselves. They call this the "consensus". It defines their reality. Anything outside it is considered to be in the realm of invisible pink unicorns and gods.
When Viol8 complains about the "liberal left", this is who (I think) he is writing about: Jack Straws and Tony Blairs, Polly Toynbees and Sunny Hundals. They are left-wing authoritarians pretending to be liberals. They are the people who will call you a Nazi if you step outside the "consensus" and express any idea that differs from their own.
I doubt that you are this type of "liberal left". I think liberty is what concerns you. You say "the left/right political spectrum is a very poor analogy for the real world".
But, unfortunately, the anger and resentment that is directed at these fake liberals is also directed at you, because you use the same label to identify yourself, a label which you do not personally associate with anything unpleasant. It is not right or fair that you are attacked. It's also stupid because it plays right into the hands of the authoritarians. They would love it if you believed that you had nothing in common with the right wing, when in fact there is probably substantial common ground.
It's a very difficult problem, and the response of the three major parties is "Denial". All three say "Immigration and Islamisation are not a problem. We will not even consider them as issues. P.S. You are a racist." I see you have already been called a Nazi for posting this.
Which is ironic, because your post is a warning about the Nazis in their BNP form. The National Socialists recognise and acknowledge the issues that the main parties do not. They are capitalising on the refusal of the main parties to talk about the issues.
I think it is obvious now that the multiculturalism policy of the UK government has been a complete disaster. It's created ghettos. Entire cities like Birmingham and Bradford are divided by ethnic groupings. It's encouraged fear and hatred between the groups, fueling terrorism. It's exactly what should never have happened.
Immigrants should have been welcomed into Britain provided that they were willing to merge into the existing culture and society, as many immigrants are. But instead, they were encouraged to be separate from the existing societies. Ghettos were created, and any concern about the ghettoisation process was dismissed by the UK Establishment as "racism", even though the concerns were well-founded. And it's not just the UK. The same problems exist in France for the same reason.
It is time to abandon cultural relativism, the idea that each culture - each approach to life - is just as valid as any other. It is simply nonsense. Some cultures are inherently better than others. Absolute comparisons are possible and useful.
The UK Establishment tells us that such comparisons are "racist" - but why? What is racist about comparing one society and another? Racism is discrimination based on ethnic grouping, not discrimination based on social structure or cultural values.
It is our duty to discriminate against the values and culture of dark age theocracies. We must not allow the civilisation we have built to be undermined by Sharia and the Middle Eastern dictatorships. The only way to do that is to stick up for what we have, and that means we must all be able to acknowledge that our ways are better.
Yeah. I watched it. The ARM CPU is doing one thing: shovelling video data into the video decoder. which is implemented in hardware.
Inside the Tegra SoC, if you swap out the ARM core for an Atom or a PowerPC, you'll get exactly the same result.
The 20W to 150mW comparison is apples to oranges. 150mW (Tegra) is a custom SoC with dedicated hardware to decode HD video. 20W (Intel) is a motherboard - multiple chips, a complete chipset - comprising a CPU, Northbridge, and GPU in separate packages, plus other peripherals.
This is the very definition of an unfair comparison.
Apple doesn't like DRM? I think that's a bit of a stretch, given that their iPhone needs to be jailbroken before it can load applications that aren't approved by Apple. What is jailbreaking if it is not circumvention of DRM?
When Apple decides that there will be no third-party development on Mac without a $100 developer key, we will be reliably informed that this is actually a great thing because it benefits the integrity of the platform against viruses and trojans. When Apple decides that all Mac software will have to be distributed through their App Store with their approval, we will again be informed that this will help to ensure that all software for Mac is of the highest quality.
No matter what Apple does, no matter how heavily their platforms are locked down, their users will be telling us that Mac is still a great platform for everything that anyone could possibly want to do.
It's hard to get people to leave a cult because (1) they've invested a lot of money and time in it, (2) all their friends are still in it, and (3) they are happy. The only thing that would make them happier is if you joined too. So, stop whining and buy a Mac, I guess, because who cares about freedom anyway.
ARM has a history of legal action against people who try to reimplement the ISA, e.g. on an FPGA. There are a couple of Opencores.org projects that have been cease-and-desisted for doing this, and I know of at least one other from the 90s. ARM is protective of their IP - fine - but they seem to believe that the ISA itself is IP.
In contrast, the right to clone the x86 architecture, at least up to 80486, is protected by a number of court judgements which say "Your ISA is not IP". This is why chips like those from Cyrix and Transmeta were able to exist. It's also related to Intel's use of names like "Pentium", which can be trademarked (numbers cannot).
For some reason ARM seems to have fanboys and I don't know why. If we stop using x86 CPUs, that will actually be a bad thing, because the lack of backward compatibility will leave hardware vendors free to impose whatever DRM they feel like. Case in point: the iPhone.
Your post goes against the accepted wisdom, but I think it's accurate. The future of netbooks and smartphones is x86-compatible CPUs: no reason they can't be low power too.
I'd like to add that ARM is also an extremely litigious company whose main focus is not on creating the best technology but on "protecting ARM IP". While I am sure that Intel or IBM would go after anyone making money by infringing their patents, ARM appears to believe that anyone reimplementing their ISA should also be threatened and sued, even if it's a free project being done by some students or hobbyists. Legal threats have closed down a couple of free open-source projects on Opencores.org, merely for attempting a clean-room implementation of the ARM ISA. This is, I think, quite nasty behaviour.
Yes.. and the article you refer to is very interesting, but I'm still not convinced by the ISA argument. In Atom, a frontend is needed to translate x86 operations to uops. However, something similar is needed in ARM, because the ARM ISA doesn't really fit a high-speed pipeline very well either.
Not all ARM instructions map directly to a single uop. The LDM/STM family are the most obvious examples. But there are also instructions with exotic addressing modes, instructions that *might* be branches depending on whether they write to r15 or not, and several ways to do common operations such as "return". The reference manual documents all sorts of special cases for various operations, apparently just to retain compatibility with legacy code. It's highly reminiscent of x86.
So, yes, there is a difference, but it's more like a move from a 1975-vintage CPU design to a 1985 vintage. Not such a huge change. ARM is not a modern ISA. I think the differences in power consumption have more to do with the fabrication process than the ISA, and that's something that Intel can easily change.
Another ARM gotcha is that "char" is "unsigned" unless you specifically make it "signed", because "unsigned char" can be manipulated more efficiently by the instruction set. This is not what C programmers usually expect, although it is permitted by ANSI C. It can cause some interesting bugs.
But ARM does have competition. Atom. Currently, Atom's power consumption is higher, but that will change. There is nothing special about the ARM ISA that makes it require less power.
Intel and ARM are going for the same market space: powerful smartphones, netbooks with long battery life. ARM has a head start in the "low power consumption" business. But Intel has a huge advantage in the "application compatibility" business. Intel will catch up with low power consumption. What then for ARM?
In my view, ARM have crippled themselves by refusing to adopt hardware support for the x86 ISA, which will be necessary in order to compete in this area of the market. Without that, and the application compatibility that it brings, ARM will be relegated to low-end phones, embedded CPUs and microcontrollers.
Slashdot Mirror
It's obviously not an issue that the Conservatives feel strongly about, otherwise all of them would have been told to turn up and vote in a particular way.
Therefore, the Conservative leadership did help this bill to pass, by doing nothing to block it. The headline is accurate.
That reminds me of something. Let me think. Oh yes, it's the Conservative voting record, where they supported every nasty little illberal and authoritarian thing that Labour wanted during the last decade. Some "opposition" they are.
How are other parties supposed to rise up and represent the people who share their values if the citizens won't vote for them "because they can't win?"
How indeed. Popular anti-government movements do seem to get going, but they end up being hijacked by weirdos and discredited in the media. Like those Tea Party people (teabaggers, lol) or Ron Paul supporters (paultards, lolololol). If the Pirate Party ever becomes a really big movement, it will end up in a similar place.
And meanwhile control is passed from one bunch of authoritarian statists to another. It's just the same here in the UK; both major parties offering the same thing. No wonder half the country has stopped voting.
Ah, it's always a good day to rip the piss out of libertarians. Goddamn anti-government morons with their old fashioned ideas about "liberty" and "individual freedom"! Bunch of retards, eh? What do they know?
But I think you've called it wrong. I'm inclined in that direction, and I'm pleased about every government non-job that disappears due to improvements in the efficiency of the public sector. The UK public sector bureaucracies spend huge amounts of tax money just on admin and anything that reduces that expense is good! Once made redundant, bureaucrats could get proper jobs doing something productive, and contribute to the economy instead of feeding off it.
I don't believe for one moment that anything will get better, but it's a nice thought.
If only all AGW proponents were this reasonable. Unfortunately, many are not. My thanks to you.
Of course I agree that it is important to minimise pollution as far as we can. Although I am not much of a "tree hugger", I hate waste and try to recycle everything I can. These are self-evidently good ideas. But I am also very suspicious of government, and particularly the "crisis mentality" that inflames the mob and justifies the removal of liberty and the imposition of additional regulations and taxes.
Ha ha. I actually thought this was really funny. Good stuff.
But I do think the AGW "nut jobs" are fascist. Really, honestly. It's not so much the climatologists, who have at least studied this stuff, but the ordinary people who have jumped on the bandwagon and formed a sort of online lynch mob, seeking out any dissent. There also seems to be a crowd of far-left wackos who see AGW as a golden opportunity to get *their* ideas implemented while nobody is thinking critically.
There'll be a Great Flood as well, sent by God to wash away all the "denialists" and their multitude of sins.
However I think AGW is more like a fascist cult than an Abrahamic religion, because it is an all-out attack on free minds and free thought: "believe exactly as we do, do not question our authority, or the Earth will be destroyed and it will be your fault".
The thought restrictions go way beyond questions about the science. They also require belief in a government solution, summarised by the claim: "Well, even if it isn't happening, why shouldn't we do something anyway? Our plans will make the world a better place no matter what." I've never seen any evidence for that claim, although I believe that Karl Marx wrote a few books about it.
Forget gas chambers and gulags, "if you are not with us, you are against us" is the very definition of fascism. Here are some more:
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."
"It is for the Greater Good."
"The science is settled."
"There is a consensus."
"The debate is over."
I never thought I would see a Slashdot discussion dominated by fascists, but here we are. -1, Free Thinking, and +5, Agrees Totally With Authority.
Sorry... you meant to say "CLIMATE IS NOT WEATHER, RTARD", but you seem to have accidentally said "climate is weather whenever it supports my beliefs".
Naturally present day events resemble the things in that book, and others like it.
That's because the statists and the collectivists always operate in the same way: (1) There is a crisis! (2) Only the Government can resolve it, and then only if we are all willing to put aside politics and work together! (3) For the common good, the people must be compelled to work together by any means necessary.
Over time, they have changed the nature of the crisis, but the tactics have not changed. What is really sad is how easily some Slashdotters are fooled by Government propaganda. The same people who railed against the Patriot Act and the War on Drugs are falling over themselves to tell everyone who is even slightly cynical about this blatant Government job-creation scheme that they're a Nazi Fox News viewer.
"dangitman" and those who modded him up are a case in point. According to them, if you don't buy into the Government bullshit, then you must be an "arrogant asshole" and "stupid". Unlike them. According to the Government, being an AGW believer is definitive proof that you are (1) right about everything, and (2) really smart.
No, not even slightly. To address your points about Hitler:
(1) Hitler had no interest in conserving the existing culture in Germany; he wished to replace it with the radical and progressive Nazi doctrine. In contrast, I do not want the existing culture in my country to be replaced.
(2) Nazism is based on racial rather than cultural superiority. One distinction between race and culture is that you can adopt a different culture, but you can never change your race.
(3) Hitler advocated the invasion of other countries, whereas I would be perfectly happy for other cultures and other societies to exist in other countries.
The same points apply to communism as well, since it is almost identical to Nazism in every important respect, merely substituting "class superiority" for "racial superiority".
I think you have read my advocacy of cultural absolutism as a mandate for monoculture and the forced removal of everyone who will not conform. But this is not what I am getting at.
I am simply advocating the defence of what we already have. We cannot defend our way of life unless we are willing to admit that we believe it is better. And we cannot do that unless we are willing to make a comparison. In short, we must stand up for ourselves. Doing so does not make us Nazis or communists.
Well, obviously, when the "liberal" left call people Nazis, the description is justified. Particularly in the case of the BNP who definitely do model themselves on the National Socialists. However, "Nazi" is a general purpose insult directed by the "liberal" left at everyone who won't conform to their "consensus", including people who have nothing in common with the Nazis such as conservatives, libertarians and Thatcherites.
I try very hard to avoid talking about left versus right these days, because it's rarely helpful to do so. It creates divisions where they need not exist. I'm pleased that my earlier post did well in moderation, but I think this is mostly because I didn't blame "the Left" for the problems caused by multiculturalism, and the subsequent refusal to acknowledge those problems. Had I done so, the post would have looked like a troll to many people here.
Nevertheless, I basically agree with Viol8.
There are of course many different sorts of Leftie. The liberal variety is not the same as the Nazi variety, the Fascist variety, or the Stalinist variety. So it is quite unfair of anyone to associate you with totalitarian fascism.
However, the term "liberal left" has been co-opted by people who are anything but liberal. They are extreme idealists and refuse to acknowledge any flaw in their beliefs, regardless of evidence. New Labour and the BBC seem to fall into this category, along with the UAF and many journalists and self-described left-wing bloggers. They have an intense, almost fundamentalist belief that legitimate political debate can only take place within the framework of "liberal socialism" set by themselves. They call this the "consensus". It defines their reality. Anything outside it is considered to be in the realm of invisible pink unicorns and gods.
When Viol8 complains about the "liberal left", this is who (I think) he is writing about: Jack Straws and Tony Blairs, Polly Toynbees and Sunny Hundals. They are left-wing authoritarians pretending to be liberals. They are the people who will call you a Nazi if you step outside the "consensus" and express any idea that differs from their own.
I doubt that you are this type of "liberal left". I think liberty is what concerns you. You say "the left/right political spectrum is a very poor analogy for the real world".
But, unfortunately, the anger and resentment that is directed at these fake liberals is also directed at you, because you use the same label to identify yourself, a label which you do not personally associate with anything unpleasant. It is not right or fair that you are attacked. It's also stupid because it plays right into the hands of the authoritarians. They would love it if you believed that you had nothing in common with the right wing, when in fact there is probably substantial common ground.
It's a very difficult problem, and the response of the three major parties is "Denial". All three say "Immigration and Islamisation are not a problem. We will not even consider them as issues. P.S. You are a racist." I see you have already been called a Nazi for posting this.
Which is ironic, because your post is a warning about the Nazis in their BNP form. The National Socialists recognise and acknowledge the issues that the main parties do not. They are capitalising on the refusal of the main parties to talk about the issues.
I think it is obvious now that the multiculturalism policy of the UK government has been a complete disaster. It's created ghettos. Entire cities like Birmingham and Bradford are divided by ethnic groupings. It's encouraged fear and hatred between the groups, fueling terrorism. It's exactly what should never have happened.
Immigrants should have been welcomed into Britain provided that they were willing to merge into the existing culture and society, as many immigrants are. But instead, they were encouraged to be separate from the existing societies. Ghettos were created, and any concern about the ghettoisation process was dismissed by the UK Establishment as "racism", even though the concerns were well-founded. And it's not just the UK. The same problems exist in France for the same reason.
It is time to abandon cultural relativism, the idea that each culture - each approach to life - is just as valid as any other. It is simply nonsense. Some cultures are inherently better than others. Absolute comparisons are possible and useful.
The UK Establishment tells us that such comparisons are "racist" - but why? What is racist about comparing one society and another? Racism is discrimination based on ethnic grouping, not discrimination based on social structure or cultural values.
It is our duty to discriminate against the values and culture of dark age theocracies. We must not allow the civilisation we have built to be undermined by Sharia and the Middle Eastern dictatorships. The only way to do that is to stick up for what we have, and that means we must all be able to acknowledge that our ways are better.
Yeah. I watched it. The ARM CPU is doing one thing: shovelling video data into the video decoder. which is implemented in hardware.
Inside the Tegra SoC, if you swap out the ARM core for an Atom or a PowerPC, you'll get exactly the same result.
The 20W to 150mW comparison is apples to oranges. 150mW (Tegra) is a custom SoC with dedicated hardware to decode HD video. 20W (Intel) is a motherboard - multiple chips, a complete chipset - comprising a CPU, Northbridge, and GPU in separate packages, plus other peripherals.
This is the very definition of an unfair comparison.
So? If you combine that GPU with an Atom CPU you'll get exactly the same result. The performance is all on the Nvidia side.
Apple doesn't like DRM? I think that's a bit of a stretch, given that their iPhone needs to be jailbroken before it can load applications that aren't approved by Apple. What is jailbreaking if it is not circumvention of DRM?
When Apple decides that there will be no third-party development on Mac without a $100 developer key, we will be reliably informed that this is actually a great thing because it benefits the integrity of the platform against viruses and trojans. When Apple decides that all Mac software will have to be distributed through their App Store with their approval, we will again be informed that this will help to ensure that all software for Mac is of the highest quality.
No matter what Apple does, no matter how heavily their platforms are locked down, their users will be telling us that Mac is still a great platform for everything that anyone could possibly want to do.
It's hard to get people to leave a cult because (1) they've invested a lot of money and time in it, (2) all their friends are still in it, and (3) they are happy. The only thing that would make them happier is if you joined too. So, stop whining and buy a Mac, I guess, because who cares about freedom anyway.
ARM actually isn't nearly as open as x86.
ARM has a history of legal action against people who try to reimplement the ISA, e.g. on an FPGA. There are a couple of Opencores.org projects that have been cease-and-desisted for doing this, and I know of at least one other from the 90s. ARM is protective of their IP - fine - but they seem to believe that the ISA itself is IP.
In contrast, the right to clone the x86 architecture, at least up to 80486, is protected by a number of court judgements which say "Your ISA is not IP". This is why chips like those from Cyrix and Transmeta were able to exist. It's also related to Intel's use of names like "Pentium", which can be trademarked (numbers cannot).
For some reason ARM seems to have fanboys and I don't know why. If we stop using x86 CPUs, that will actually be a bad thing, because the lack of backward compatibility will leave hardware vendors free to impose whatever DRM they feel like. Case in point: the iPhone.
Nobody knows why, but for some reason the collective panties of Slashdot are totally wet at the thought of installing Windows 7 everywhere.
It's the new Windows XP, you know. I can only assume that Microsoft borrowed some of Apple's marketdroidium for the Windows 7 launch.
The two compilers I am thinking of are "gcc" and "armcc".
Your post goes against the accepted wisdom, but I think it's accurate. The future of netbooks and smartphones is x86-compatible CPUs: no reason they can't be low power too.
I'd like to add that ARM is also an extremely litigious company whose main focus is not on creating the best technology but on "protecting ARM IP". While I am sure that Intel or IBM would go after anyone making money by infringing their patents, ARM appears to believe that anyone reimplementing their ISA should also be threatened and sued, even if it's a free project being done by some students or hobbyists. Legal threats have closed down a couple of free open-source projects on Opencores.org, merely for attempting a clean-room implementation of the ARM ISA. This is, I think, quite nasty behaviour.
That's true. It is also the behaviour of both "gcc" and ARM's reference C compiler, so I think it's fair to mention it here.
I seem to recall it's not because of the load instructions at all. It's because of arithmetic instructions.
If you use arithmetic operations on a signed char, you have to sign-extend the result using two operations, e.g.:
If, however, you use an unsigned char (the default), then you only need one operation to mask out the high 24 bits.
That's the difference. If all chars were assumed to be signed, programs would be (unnecessarily) slower.
Yes.. and the article you refer to is very interesting, but I'm still not convinced by the ISA argument. In Atom, a frontend is needed to translate x86 operations to uops. However, something similar is needed in ARM, because the ARM ISA doesn't really fit a high-speed pipeline very well either.
Not all ARM instructions map directly to a single uop. The LDM/STM family are the most obvious examples. But there are also instructions with exotic addressing modes, instructions that *might* be branches depending on whether they write to r15 or not, and several ways to do common operations such as "return". The reference manual documents all sorts of special cases for various operations, apparently just to retain compatibility with legacy code. It's highly reminiscent of x86.
So, yes, there is a difference, but it's more like a move from a 1975-vintage CPU design to a 1985 vintage. Not such a huge change. ARM is not a modern ISA. I think the differences in power consumption have more to do with the fabrication process than the ISA, and that's something that Intel can easily change.
Another ARM gotcha is that "char" is "unsigned" unless you specifically make it "signed", because "unsigned char" can be manipulated more efficiently by the instruction set. This is not what C programmers usually expect, although it is permitted by ANSI C. It can cause some interesting bugs.
But ARM does have competition. Atom. Currently, Atom's power consumption is higher, but that will change. There is nothing special about the ARM ISA that makes it require less power.
Intel and ARM are going for the same market space: powerful smartphones, netbooks with long battery life. ARM has a head start in the "low power consumption" business. But Intel has a huge advantage in the "application compatibility" business. Intel will catch up with low power consumption. What then for ARM?
In my view, ARM have crippled themselves by refusing to adopt hardware support for the x86 ISA, which will be necessary in order to compete in this area of the market. Without that, and the application compatibility that it brings, ARM will be relegated to low-end phones, embedded CPUs and microcontrollers.