This article explains the difficulty of emulating the PowerPC instruction set:
The 68K processor is a 32-bit processor, but its instructions are 16-bit. This means that there are at most 65,536 items in the instruction matrix that need to be translated to the X86's instruction set. This creates a relatively small loop to run through for emulation. This small number of translations also requires little memory and can even reside in the cache for optimal emulation performance.
....
Emulating the PowerPC is a far more difficult proposition, as it is a true 32-bit processor. This means that millions of instructions need to be translated. This larger 'hash' table explains why memory performance is so crucial in emulation. Moreover, such a large matrix running in the emulation loop can stymie performance.
The PowerPC ATX motherboard has been one of the longest running vaporware products on slashdotters' wishlists. Well, not exactly vaporware. They did exist, but the problem was that the motherboard itself cost as much as a complete x86 system. It would be nice if they managed to sell them for a decent price this time. Might even be able to run MacOnLinux, but if that ever happened, Apple would definitely complain.
I really hate the "I'm not going to to judge" comment, because it the fact that you've made it means that you've passed judgement, and don't have the balls to own up.
Then again, maybe it's because I'm not a sanctimonious prick.
Not going to judge that one way or the other, but one alternative is to buy the older games in the bargain bin for $20. Some of them are only a year or two old, and is Madden 2004 really any better than Madden 2002?
What you need is not an intelligence test. You need a skills test (a real one like in Europe, not the drive around the block test that any incompetent could pass). You don't need calculus and an extensive vocabulary to fly any more than a truck driver or heavy equipment operator. Intelligent people can improve themselves if they apply the theory of physics and engineering to practical driving skills and vehicle maintenance, but intelligence by itself makes no difference if you don't bother to learn a specific skill.
"Human power is renewable, but it's hardly clean. Or haven't you noticed the waste products?"
And it's expensive too. A bicycle racer on a 100 mi stage might burn 8000 to 10000 calories! Of course if you're touring on easy terrain and not racing through the Alps it'll be less than that, but even 2000 calories is a lot of Powerbars. Maybe you can plan your trip around all you can eat buffets. Even with gas at $2/gallon, I can go 100 mi on the motorcycle for 5 bucks.
This isn't a savings bond where you pay in and get your money out at the end. This is like a life insurance policy for when the cheap oil runs out. The payoff is survival of human civilization as we know it. Google for "peak oil" if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Re:Still not a justification for ISS
on
Testing Relativity
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"Humans are needed when things go wrong"
Humans are resourceful and adaptable, but we also have fragile bodies that need lots of facilities and supplies to survive in space. For the enourmous price of providing life support for a manned mission, you could duplicate an unmanned mission many times over. There are many good reasons for putting humans in space, but doing science experiments better than robots is not one of them.
"the threate is a rogue nation or organization getting thier hands on a ICBM and launching it at some major metropoliton area as an act of terror"
Yes, this is *so* much more likely than terrorists sneaking the nuke in a container ship and sailing it in to one of our ports. Missile defense is the Maginot Line of the 21st century.
5. Vanpools, if you can find a vanpool running along your commute. If there's an HOV lane it's faster than driving. Plus you can sleep, read, and not put all those miles on the car.
Actually, if you're browsing on a PocketPC tann.net will detect the user agent and reformat the page accordingly. It looks as good as you can reasonably expect on a 320x240 screen. It could be useful if you have a cell modem and have a decent data calling plan. Not useful to me since I only have WiFi. If you're commuting and not making trips all around town, it's easier to just check the traffic maps from a computer at home or the office before you leave. For me, the way I beat traffic is take my motorcycle. Lane splitting is legal in California and I can use the HOV lanes too. I wouldn't recommend it to a novice rider though. You definitely need the right skills and attitude to handle LA traffic on a motorcycle.
Re:arguing against manned space missions?
on
The Wrong Stuff
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yeah, going to the moon and Mars is a laudable goal, but Bush's proposal got panned because it was poorly planned. Now here's some substantive criticism. How do we pay for it? We get a billion and change this year by shuffling NASA's budget and gutting all their other programs. Now what about the other 100+ billion? (200+ billion?) A billion dollar down payment on a manned Mars mission is like Queen Isabella sending off Columbus with a rowboat and a ham sandwich.
I know this sounds cynical, but I think he's just talking up big plans and big dreams in an election year knowing that Congress will shoot it down because we don't have the money. When Congress shoots it down, it'll be their fault and Bush will say hey at least we tried.
Yeah, and not just humans either. The worms are starting to use encryption too. Some versions of Bagle are spreading themselves in password encrypted Zip files, with the password in the message body. The pace of the arms race is incredible. Antivirus vendors then updated their scanners to scan the message body for the Zip file password and decrypt the attachment. The virus writers then started sending the password in a bitmap attachment to foil the virus scanners.
Of course that story was from 2 weeks ago so it's old news. This week the latest variant has no attachment at all. It's just HTML that exploits an IE bug that downloads the worm from the infected computer that sent the message.
Opera for handhelds might be better, but Web surfing just plain sucks on a 320x240 screen. Pocket IE takes forever to render long pages even on a 400Mhz Xscale CPU. A browser with landscape display and more efficient rendering engine would help, but for best results stick with the sites formatted for handheld screens like at Pocket IE Friendly, but that limits you to a tiny fraction of the web.
Reading email is no problem. Writing email with the stylus sucks. A thumb keyboard helps. A full size keyboard is better, but you'd have to set it down on a table.
The engine is emissions legal, but the chassis doesn't have a chance of passing a DOT crash test. The way it squeaks by that requirement is that it's registered as a kit car or custom construction. If you want do-it-yourself simplicity in a new, street-legal ride, custom construction is still possible in most states. All kinds of things like street rods with '32 Ford body shells, Cobra replicas, Beck 550 Spyder replicas, and the Caterham 7's you pointed out. Just remember it won't be cheap, especially if you pay a shop $80/hr to assemble it. Mass production does have its advantages.
Yup, I watched all those shows plus BJ and the Bear, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Simon & Simon. Same corny reaction when I see the reruns. The only shows that really hold up well are Three's Company (farce sitcoms follow the same formula even today) and Magnum P.I.
Is that really so surprising? Organized crime is a business, and petty street crime is bad for business. It drives the customers away. It's in the triads' interest to keep street crime under control. Same thing in New York. I bet John Gotti's neighborhood is really safe to walk around in too.
They ran checksums on the MP3 files, not the audio CD. MP3 compression is lossy and files will be different depending on encoder and options, but once ripped the MP3 files that are traded will be identical byte for byte. There's not that many different rips of the same song being traded so the RIAA has SHA or MD5 sums of the song files being traded online. If the woman's files were identical to the ones on Kazaa, then she must have downloaded them from Kazaa or (less likely) ripped them from her CD with the exact same encoder, bitrate and options as the person who first uploaded it.
What follows is the development process for our next major release, Mandrake Linux 10.0:
1) After the traditional debugging of several Beta and Release Candidates, the final version of "Mandrake Linux 10.0 Community" will be released in February/March. This version will be available for download and as a DVD-set through e-Commerce.
2) Then a Mandrake Linux 10.0 Stable branch will be opened, based on Mandrake Linux 10.0 Community. Security updates and bug fixes will be applied to this tree and will be publicly available in real time.
3) Two or three months later, in April/May, "Mandrake Linux 10.0 Official" will be created from the Mandrake 10.0 Stable branch. It will then be packaged for several products such as the Mandrake Linux PowerPack. Mandrake 10.0 Official ISO images will also be available for all contributors and Club Members; then, after a short delay, Mandrake Linux 10.0 Official Download Edition will be made available on public FTP mirrors.
"isnt that why people love the ipod in the 1st place"
Maybe for some of the buyers, maybe even for most of the buyers, but still Apple had a huge advantage because for a long time, they were the ONLY pocket sized hard drive player. People *do* buy Apple for practical reasons too.:-)
I've read ebooks on an old school Palm III and a PocketPC. The 160x160 screen on the Palm was terrible with the blocky fonts. The 320x240 screen on the PocketPC looks great. I'd imagine the 320x320 screens on the new Palms are even better.
Slashdot Mirror
The PowerPC ATX motherboard has been one of the longest running vaporware products on slashdotters' wishlists. Well, not exactly vaporware. They did exist, but the problem was that the motherboard itself cost as much as a complete x86 system. It would be nice if they managed to sell them for a decent price this time. Might even be able to run MacOnLinux, but if that ever happened, Apple would definitely complain.
I really hate the "I'm not going to to judge" comment, because it the fact that you've made it means that you've passed judgement, and don't have the balls to own up.
Then again, maybe it's because I'm not a sanctimonious prick.
Not going to judge that one way or the other, but one alternative is to buy the older games in the bargain bin for $20. Some of them are only a year or two old, and is Madden 2004 really any better than Madden 2002?
What you need is not an intelligence test. You need a skills test (a real one like in Europe, not the drive around the block test that any incompetent could pass). You don't need calculus and an extensive vocabulary to fly any more than a truck driver or heavy equipment operator. Intelligent people can improve themselves if they apply the theory of physics and engineering to practical driving skills and vehicle maintenance, but intelligence by itself makes no difference if you don't bother to learn a specific skill.
"Human power is renewable, but it's hardly clean. Or haven't you noticed the waste products?"
And it's expensive too. A bicycle racer on a 100 mi stage might burn 8000 to 10000 calories! Of course if you're touring on easy terrain and not racing through the Alps it'll be less than that, but even 2000 calories is a lot of Powerbars. Maybe you can plan your trip around all you can eat buffets. Even with gas at $2/gallon, I can go 100 mi on the motorcycle for 5 bucks.
This isn't a savings bond where you pay in and get your money out at the end. This is like a life insurance policy for when the cheap oil runs out. The payoff is survival of human civilization as we know it. Google for "peak oil" if you don't know what I'm talking about.
"Humans are needed when things go wrong"
Humans are resourceful and adaptable, but we also have fragile bodies that need lots of facilities and supplies to survive in space. For the enourmous price of providing life support for a manned mission, you could duplicate an unmanned mission many times over. There are many good reasons for putting humans in space, but doing science experiments better than robots is not one of them.
"the threate is a rogue nation or organization getting thier hands on a ICBM and launching it at some major metropoliton area as an act of terror"
Yes, this is *so* much more likely than terrorists sneaking the nuke in a container ship and sailing it in to one of our ports. Missile defense is the Maginot Line of the 21st century.
or another option we have here:
5. Vanpools, if you can find a vanpool running along your commute. If there's an HOV lane it's faster than driving. Plus you can sleep, read, and not put all those miles on the car.
Actually, if you're browsing on a PocketPC tann.net will detect the user agent and reformat the page accordingly. It looks as good as you can reasonably expect on a 320x240 screen. It could be useful if you have a cell modem and have a decent data calling plan. Not useful to me since I only have WiFi. If you're commuting and not making trips all around town, it's easier to just check the traffic maps from a computer at home or the office before you leave.
For me, the way I beat traffic is take my motorcycle. Lane splitting is legal in California and I can use the HOV lanes too. I wouldn't recommend it to a novice rider though. You definitely need the right skills and attitude to handle LA traffic on a motorcycle.
Yeah, going to the moon and Mars is a laudable goal, but Bush's proposal got panned because it was poorly planned. Now here's some substantive criticism. How do we pay for it? We get a billion and change this year by shuffling NASA's budget and gutting all their other programs. Now what about the other 100+ billion? (200+ billion?) A billion dollar down payment on a manned Mars mission is like Queen Isabella sending off Columbus with a rowboat and a ham sandwich.
I know this sounds cynical, but I think he's just talking up big plans and big dreams in an election year knowing that Congress will shoot it down because we don't have the money. When Congress shoots it down, it'll be their fault and Bush will say hey at least we tried.
"Following your logic, I guess it's safe to take the bus in Israel since they've already done that one."
Not the same. Israel and New York City are as different as Stalingrad and New York City in WW2. You don't make a sneak attack twice in the same place.
The dontspyon.us site is chock full of info about CAPPS II, TIA, etc.
Yeah, and not just humans either. The worms are starting to use encryption too. Some versions of Bagle are spreading themselves in password encrypted Zip files, with the password in the message body. The pace of the arms race is incredible. Antivirus vendors then updated their scanners to scan the message body for the Zip file password and decrypt the attachment. The virus writers then started sending the password in a bitmap attachment to foil the virus scanners.
Of course that story was from 2 weeks ago so it's old news. This week the latest variant has no attachment at all. It's just HTML that exploits an IE bug that downloads the worm from the infected computer that sent the message.
"Put Opie on a PocketPC, and it's very useful."
Opera for handhelds might be better, but Web surfing just plain sucks on a 320x240 screen. Pocket IE takes forever to render long pages even on a 400Mhz Xscale CPU. A browser with landscape display and more efficient rendering engine would help, but for best results stick with the sites formatted for handheld screens like at Pocket IE Friendly, but that limits you to a tiny fraction of the web.
Reading email is no problem. Writing email with the stylus sucks. A thumb keyboard helps. A full size keyboard is better, but you'd have to set it down on a table.
The engine is emissions legal, but the chassis doesn't have a chance of passing a DOT crash test. The way it squeaks by that requirement is that it's registered as a kit car or custom construction. If you want do-it-yourself simplicity in a new, street-legal ride, custom construction is still possible in most states. All kinds of things like street rods with '32 Ford body shells, Cobra replicas, Beck 550 Spyder replicas, and the Caterham 7's you pointed out. Just remember it won't be cheap, especially if you pay a shop $80/hr to assemble it. Mass production does have its advantages.
Yup, I watched all those shows plus BJ and the Bear, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Simon & Simon. Same corny reaction when I see the reruns. The only shows that really hold up well are Three's Company (farce sitcoms follow the same formula even today) and Magnum P.I.
Is that really so surprising? Organized crime is a business, and petty street crime is bad for business. It drives the customers away. It's in the triads' interest to keep street crime under control. Same thing in New York. I bet John Gotti's neighborhood is really safe to walk around in too.
They ran checksums on the MP3 files, not the audio CD. MP3 compression is lossy and files will be different depending on encoder and options, but once ripped the MP3 files that are traded will be identical byte for byte. There's not that many different rips of the same song being traded so the RIAA has SHA or MD5 sums of the song files being traded online. If the woman's files were identical to the ones on Kazaa, then she must have downloaded them from Kazaa or (less likely) ripped them from her CD with the exact same encoder, bitrate and options as the person who first uploaded it.
This should explain it:
What follows is the development process for our next major release, Mandrake Linux 10.0:
1) After the traditional debugging of several Beta and Release Candidates, the final version of "Mandrake Linux 10.0 Community" will be released in February/March. This version will be available for download and as a DVD-set through e-Commerce.
2) Then a Mandrake Linux 10.0 Stable branch will be opened, based on Mandrake Linux 10.0 Community. Security updates and bug fixes will be applied to this tree and will be publicly available in real time.
3) Two or three months later, in April/May, "Mandrake Linux 10.0 Official" will be created from the Mandrake 10.0 Stable branch. It will then be packaged for several products such as the Mandrake Linux PowerPack. Mandrake 10.0 Official ISO images will also be available for all contributors and Club Members; then, after a short delay, Mandrake Linux 10.0 Official Download Edition will be made available on public FTP mirrors.
And also When Bad Software Can Kill about the Uwatec dive computer.
"isnt that why people love the ipod in the 1st place"
:-)
Maybe for some of the buyers, maybe even for most of the buyers, but still Apple had a huge advantage because for a long time, they were the ONLY pocket sized hard drive player. People *do* buy Apple for practical reasons too.
"If knowledge is power... explain George W. Bush!"
Two words: Karl Rove
I've read ebooks on an old school Palm III and a PocketPC. The 160x160 screen on the Palm was terrible with the blocky fonts. The 320x240 screen on the PocketPC looks great. I'd imagine the 320x320 screens on the new Palms are even better.