Not the first time Apple has to pull an advert
on
Apple G5 Ads Banned In UK
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This isn't a first for Apple in the UK. When they first used the PowerPC they advertised it as the first RISC based home computer. That might have been true in the US, but in the UK the ARM based Acorn Archimedes had already been out for a while, so they were forced to pull that ad.
No. The ABI is documented with the developer tools - without it you'd have to try and reverse engineer it from existing binaries to write assembly code.
To be honest, I'd say get over it and learn Objective C. For an experienced programmer it won't take you long to get to grasps with the basics of Objective C, and Cocoa is really easy to work with. Who knows, you might even grow to like it:) At first I thought Objective C was weird, but now I really like it.
Get a beginners book and work your way through it. I recommend Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass, published by Addison Wesley, ISBN 0201726831. This seems to be what most people learn from.
I too joined the ADC as a student member. For your $99 you get a 10% to 20% once in a life time hardware discount (I got a 20% discount on my iBook in the UK), and all the developer goodness that they ship out. It's worth every penny if you're a developer and plan on getting a Mac soon.
More modern devices are harder to destroy. If you mis-configure your I/O pins then you're in trouble, but within the array devices like the Xilinx Virtex seem much harder to destroy (I was chatting to someone who was trying just that, but failed without using the I/O pins).
As a flip side, here's a paper about destroying less secure FPGAs and ways to prevent it.
In which case I see your point. Your initial posting sounded like you were encouraging people who wouldn't normally buy the game to do so.
BTW - is it generally possible to buy the Linux version and then download the Windows executable? (I know it's technically possible - my question is is this current practice?) So I could support Linux developments, but let non-linux savy people (e.g. younger siblings) use the game under Windows when I'm not about the help them?
>...everybody to chip in and buy their stuff. Because they deserve our support.
Why not buy their stuff because it's good? Loki seem esablished enough now that they should survive off people wanting to buy their games because they want the games. If they can't survive on that alone, then perhaps they're barking up the wrong tree. A company based on sympathy sales isn't going to go very far!
Loki seem to be doing a good job - go buy their stuff if you want to!
> If only Sony were smart enough to put this chip in their regular Vaios, they
wouldn't be able to keep them on the shelves.
I question this one. Firstly, I'm all for Transmeta - they've done some really cool stuff, and are one of the few processor groups that have done anything radical in the last few years, so this isn't a rant at them. I'm curious about the quote above.
To the general public, they won't care what processor is under the hood - they just want something that runs Windows in a small package. In fact, not having "Intel Inside" written on it could be a detractor as far as Joe Public is concerned - PC = Intel for a lot of people.
In addition, I'm not sure how much of a battery saving a Crusoe chip will bring this kind of device - I'd imagine that the LCD panel, hard disk, etc. are going to take a fair whack too.
Adding "Transmeta Inside" may make it appeal to geeks, but I don't think it'll significantly cause the product to shift, unless it really does provide significant battery savings.
Still, on the plus side, the low power sleep mode on the Crusoe really makes sense for this kind of device. And it's good to see Transmeta getting the validation they deserve after all those ney-sayers crying "where are the customers?".
I've read that you're considering building a sort of PDA/GPS/net device that will be a "Hitch Hikers Guide To The Earth". How big an uptake to you expect? Do you think you can get it in a price range for the kind of person getting around the planet for less than five Alterian Dollars a day?
Fine, if you have an old 386, an ISA ethernet card. Lucent make an ISA version of their card too, which I spotted on the web for $60.
However, at $299 the Airport is fairly cheap and requires little in the way of setting up. It also comes in a tiny quiet package - few 386s did that - and it's very quiet too.
I for one think it's a pretty cool thing. Nice to see that Apple have pulled themselves together of late.
You could always (as I believe has been suggested here) place it on a FPGA. The price of FPGA development systems are quite cheap (we are talking low thousands I believe) - try VCC for example.
Using FPGAs to prototype and play with hardware is becoming more and more commonplace. I believe (though I must admit I've not seen hard evidance) that the sparc core will place and route on a Xilinx Virtex device.
Remember though that compiling hardware is a lot more computationally expensive than software - need oodles of memory and CPU cycles:-)
Notoriously slow? I worked on Nemesis and it worked fine. FYI we even had things like Hereitc running on it (it supports X-apps) and were able to apply QoS to them.
One problem is that by default Nemesis has heap paranoia turned on - this is a debugging aid that checks the heap every time you do a malloc. Turn that off and Nemesis runs quite quickly.
Nemesis was designed from the ground up to be a QoS operating system, including base support for things like asynchronous I/O. I'd imagine that Nemesis would do a better job of providing QoS over all resources than a hacked BSD.
For example: Under tradiational X-Windows you have a shared server - so while applications can get guarentees, the moment they start using the X-Server you lose all your benefits - your subject to a shared resource. Nemesis, on the other hand, is vertically structured so that almost all work it done in the client's process. Thus your use of the X-Server is subject to your scheduling parameters - thus no one can steal your time!.
While I agree with you in principle, I'm afraid that it's a moot point. Yes, the story wasn't a Linux story, but/. is, whether it pretends to be or not, a Linux oriented site. I'd imagine (I'm sure there are polls on this) that the majority of people here are pro-Linux, Anti-Microsoft people. Just look at the way the news about the Microsoft case is presented.
Note: I think I'm about to wonder off-topic:-)
It comes back to an interesting question - should journalists present just the raw facts, or are they allowed to put there own personal spin on them? I don't see any harm in the later (just my opinion) as long as the reader knows this. Now I know, and I'm sure most readers do when they come here, that/. has a Linux bias. Thankfully it's not overwhelming -/. will carry stories against Linux too.
My point (if I have one) is that the majority of readers here will be more interested in getting their hands on the Linux version of WolfGL (or whatever). I'm sure Malda, Hemos, etal know their audiance and what they want. Perhaps they should have linked to a Windows version too, but that doesn't mean that their oringial decision was wrong.
I think one problem with comments about the journalistic style of/. is that people expect it to behave like a newspaper or industry magazine. That's probably a bad typecast. Yes,/. does serve many of the same features of them, but that is just the way news things work - but we shouldn't expect it to behave the same. We all saw this when the recriminations appeared about the April the 1st joke happened. People started to rely on/. for the law on the news - but I never remember Rob or anyone promising this to any of us - people just assume that 'cos it looks like a newspaper it follws the same rules. It doesn't have to, and thankfully doesn't.
People need to remember what/. is and not expect it to be anything else unless the powers that be decide otherwise.
I've seen a lot of complaints that the SCSL isn't open enough - but does it need to be? I can't really see anyone privately trying to fab a chip anyway...:-) I'm yet to be convinced that Open Source hardware will work until desktop PCs come with FPGAs in them.
As a PhD student trying to design a new processor type, having the source of an existing processor to modify, rather than write one from scratch, is great. It'll save me a lot of time hopefully. From reading the list of points on the web page, this is more the type of market they're aiming at with this release. That and allowing SoC developers "try before they buy". More of a shareware licence than an open source licence in the later respect.
Just my thoughts on the matter:-)
-- Dougal
BTW: Can anyone see the actual download page for this? I can only find the download for the picoJava core.
I'm not sure what people expect from/. radio. I'm not sure you guys know even:-)
For what it's worth, I like it. I'm not expecting serious discussion, and it makes me smile/laugh - thus I think it's good. Of course its a bit rough around the edges - but that's part of the charm (IMHO). My only word of warning is don't read from/. directly (I think you verged on that in show 2 once) - I can read/. perfectly well thank you very much!
I hope it continues, as long as it doesn't take itself to seriously.
Yeah, a new hardware architecture can help lots. At Cambridge Computer Labs (part of the University) they have a prototype computer built on the Desk Area Network. The premis here was that the main system bus was replaced with an ATM switching fabric, so any device could talk directly to any other device, and these conversations could go on in parallel.
A good example is drawing video to the screen from a camera. The data would come off the capture device, and talk straight to the video card. No going thru main memory. Or network packets could go straight into the processor cache.
I saw it running 6 odd real time video displays (some TV, some local camera) at a very good framerate, yet the processor was only an Arm 6.
So, to cope with modern loads (especially multimedia data types) a good architecture helps a lot. You can download the PhD thesis describing the DAN architecture from the cambridge FTP stie somewhere. Can't remember the URL off the top of my head though.
-- Michael
PS: Little factlet - the DAN prototype site right next to the (in)famous coffee pot that was the subject of one of the first web cams:-)
Okay, so this is probably me just being picky - but for something that's mean to serve the Linux community, which is WORLD WIDE then putting up a banner saying "...please wait coming this evening..." seems a little short sited to me. There are people outside the US (I know, I've seen some of them).
A small point, but I don't want this to be a trend of not looking further than linux.com's back yard.
As I've said below (in another post), I don't think this is what they mean - but even if you can upgrade the instructions, I think this would be a little too large an operation to fit in a single instruction!!! However, security checks will be needed, as you will almost certainly bypass normal OS security checks.
Some extenable OS's (which allow users to load code into the kernal for speed/upgrade reasons) have already addressed this issue by only allowing the OS extensions to be produced by a "secure" compiler. This won't allow obviously malitious code to get into the kernal. A similar approach could be applied here.
I'm sure they'll have thought this thru though!!!:-)
Well, I don't for certain, but I'm pretty sure that's the limitation of the microcode patches in the Pentium series, although I'm more than willing to be corrected!!!:-)
When you say small, how small? I've very much like to know - if you have a bit of text then let me know. But I stand by my original belief that microcode upgrades can only fix the control algorithm in the processor. So while that gives you a little scope for upgrades, you certainly can't add functionality like completely new instructions.
Part of the problem is that Intel don't publish this info for the average person - and quite rightly too - the last thing you want is some fool to make a virus which fried your chip!
I've trashed my bookmarks recently, but I'll see if I can find the web page where I did manage to find the info. In the meantime, sorry if I sounded harsh in my original comment (deadlines and I go on holiday tomorrow!!!:-)
Speaking from a technical point of view, Re: the upgrading.
Upgrading the microcode is nothing new, Intel have been doing it since early Pentiums, as have Alpha's too (AFAIK). This is fine and dandy, a good way of fixing those little bugs that crop up. However...
The purpose of microcode is to set the control paths in the microprocessor, it does not however allow you to add any major new functionality to the processor - that can only be done using new function units. The best you could do by changing microcode is string together a series on existing functions to make a new "macro" function as it were.
To upgrade the functionality of the processor as the artical describe probably requires some form of reconfigurable logic. This is similar to what I have planned for my next few years work;-)
I'd be very interested to know if the author of the artical heard about the microcode upgrade and made a leap to adding (for example) 3D graphics instructions, or the other way round.
I thought that there were no new trailers after latest one - however a cinema near me is advertising "4 minute star wars trailer coming soon" (it's the Odean in Edinburgh). Anyone know anyting about this?
This will help developers, and especially accademia. Imagine being able to highlight examples in lectures (be they good or bad) by pointing to the Windows Source code! I know you can do this with Linux, but Windows is still the most popular desktop OS, so makes a better example (IMHO:-)
Another advantage is if they release the source for somehting like the NT kernal. AFAIK, and I may be wrong, but the NT kernal is pretty well designed (by that I'm refering to the modularity of the thing). As a researcher in a University working on OSs, I'd be very interested in seeing this.
As for comments that "no one will understand it as it's so large" well, if the day ever happends (and I'm very skeptical) then expect thrid party books on the matter to appear very soon afterward. Imagine having "NT Kernal Internals" next to "Linux Kernal Internals".
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't a first for Apple in the UK. When they first used the PowerPC they advertised it as the first RISC based home computer. That might have been true in the US, but in the UK the ARM based Acorn Archimedes had already been out for a while, so they were forced to pull that ad.
> I wonder if Apple tried to keep this secret...
No. The ABI is documented with the developer tools - without it you'd have to try and reverse engineer it from existing binaries to write assembly code.
To be honest, I'd say get over it and learn Objective C. For an experienced programmer it won't take you long to get to grasps with the basics of Objective C, and Cocoa is really easy to work with. Who knows, you might even grow to like it :) At first I thought Objective C was weird, but now I really like it.
Get a beginners book and work your way through it. I recommend Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass, published by Addison Wesley, ISBN 0201726831. This seems to be what most people learn from.
I too joined the ADC as a student member. For your $99 you get a 10% to 20% once in a life time hardware discount (I got a 20% discount on my iBook in the UK), and all the developer goodness that they ship out. It's worth every penny if you're a developer and plan on getting a Mac soon.
More modern devices are harder to destroy. If you mis-configure your I/O pins then you're in trouble, but within the array devices like the Xilinx Virtex seem much harder to destroy (I was chatting to someone who was trying just that, but failed without using the I/O pins).
As a flip side, here's a paper about destroying less secure FPGAs and ways to prevent it.
-- Michael
In which case I see your point. Your initial posting sounded like you were encouraging people who wouldn't normally buy the game to do so.
BTW - is it generally possible to buy the Linux version and then download the Windows executable? (I know it's technically possible - my question is is this current practice?) So I could support Linux developments, but let non-linux savy people (e.g. younger siblings) use the game under Windows when I'm not about the help them?
-- Michael
> ...everybody to chip in and buy their stuff. Because they deserve our support.
Why not buy their stuff because it's good? Loki seem esablished enough now that they should survive off people wanting to buy their games because they want the games. If they can't survive on that alone, then perhaps they're barking up the wrong tree. A company based on sympathy sales isn't going to go very far!
Loki seem to be doing a good job - go buy their stuff if you want to!
-- Michael
> If only Sony were smart enough to put this chip in their regular Vaios, they wouldn't be able to keep them on the shelves.
I question this one. Firstly, I'm all for Transmeta - they've done some really cool stuff, and are one of the few processor groups that have done anything radical in the last few years, so this isn't a rant at them. I'm curious about the quote above.
To the general public, they won't care what processor is under the hood - they just want something that runs Windows in a small package. In fact, not having "Intel Inside" written on it could be a detractor as far as Joe Public is concerned - PC = Intel for a lot of people.
In addition, I'm not sure how much of a battery saving a Crusoe chip will bring this kind of device - I'd imagine that the LCD panel, hard disk, etc. are going to take a fair whack too.
Adding "Transmeta Inside" may make it appeal to geeks, but I don't think it'll significantly cause the product to shift, unless it really does provide significant battery savings.
Still, on the plus side, the low power sleep mode on the Crusoe really makes sense for this kind of device. And it's good to see Transmeta getting the validation they deserve after all those ney-sayers crying "where are the customers?".
-- Michael
I've read that you're considering building a sort of PDA/GPS/net device that will be a "Hitch Hikers Guide To The Earth". How big an uptake to you expect? Do you think you can get it in a price range for the kind of person getting around the planet for less than five Alterian Dollars a day?
--Michael
Until I decided to look it up ust there, I had no idea what bogo-MIPS was. Enlightenment can be found either here or here.
-- Michael
Fine, if you have an old 386, an ISA ethernet card. Lucent make an ISA version of their card too, which I spotted on the web for $60.
However, at $299 the Airport is fairly cheap and requires little in the way of setting up. It also comes in a tiny quiet package - few 386s did that - and it's very quiet too.
I for one think it's a pretty cool thing. Nice to see that Apple have pulled themselves together of late.
-- Michael
You could always (as I believe has been suggested here) place it on a FPGA. The price of FPGA development systems are quite cheap (we are talking low thousands I believe) - try VCC for example.
Using FPGAs to prototype and play with hardware is becoming more and more commonplace. I believe (though I must admit I've not seen hard evidance) that the sparc core will place and route on a Xilinx Virtex device.
Remember though that compiling hardware is a lot more computationally expensive than software - need oodles of memory and CPU cycles :-)
-- Michael
>...it was notoriously slow...
Notoriously slow? I worked on Nemesis and it worked fine. FYI we even had things like Hereitc running on it (it supports X-apps) and were able to apply QoS to them.
One problem is that by default Nemesis has heap paranoia turned on - this is a debugging aid that checks the heap every time you do a malloc. Turn that off and Nemesis runs quite quickly.
Nemesis was designed from the ground up to be a QoS operating system, including base support for things like asynchronous I/O. I'd imagine that Nemesis would do a better job of providing QoS over all resources than a hacked BSD.
For example: Under tradiational X-Windows you have a shared server - so while applications can get guarentees, the moment they start using the X-Server you lose all your benefits - your subject to a shared resource. Nemesis, on the other hand, is vertically structured so that almost all work it done in the client's process. Thus your use of the X-Server is subject to your scheduling parameters - thus no one can steal your time!.
Have a look at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~mich ael/work/bin/msn99.pdf which explains the above in more detail.
> ...and had little hardware support.
But didn't Linux until recently? :-)
-- Michael
While I agree with you in principle, I'm afraid that it's a moot point. Yes, the story wasn't a Linux story, but /. is, whether it pretends to be or not, a Linux oriented site. I'd imagine (I'm sure there are polls on this) that the majority of people here are pro-Linux, Anti-Microsoft people. Just look at the way the news about the Microsoft case is presented.
Note: I think I'm about to wonder off-topic :-)
It comes back to an interesting question - should journalists present just the raw facts, or are they allowed to put there own personal spin on them? I don't see any harm in the later (just my opinion) as long as the reader knows this. Now I know, and I'm sure most readers do when they come here, that /. has a Linux bias. Thankfully it's not overwhelming - /. will carry stories against Linux too.
My point (if I have one) is that the majority of readers here will be more interested in getting their hands on the Linux version of WolfGL (or whatever). I'm sure Malda, Hemos, etal know their audiance and what they want. Perhaps they should have linked to a Windows version too, but that doesn't mean that their oringial decision was wrong.
I think one problem with comments about the journalistic style of /. is that people expect it to behave like a newspaper or industry magazine. That's probably a bad typecast. Yes, /. does serve many of the same features of them, but that is just the way news things work - but we shouldn't expect it to behave the same. We all saw this when the recriminations appeared about the April the 1st joke happened. People started to rely on /. for the law on the news - but I never remember Rob or anyone promising this to any of us - people just assume that 'cos it looks like a newspaper it follws the same rules. It doesn't have to, and thankfully doesn't.
People need to remember what /. is and not expect it to be anything else unless the powers that be decide otherwise.
-- Dougal
I've seen a lot of complaints that the SCSL isn't open enough - but does it need to be? I can't really see anyone privately trying to fab a chip anyway... :-) I'm yet to be convinced that Open Source hardware will work until desktop PCs come with FPGAs in them.
As a PhD student trying to design a new processor type, having the source of an existing processor to modify, rather than write one from scratch, is great. It'll save me a lot of time hopefully. From reading the list of points on the web page, this is more the type of market they're aiming at with this release. That and allowing SoC developers "try before they buy". More of a shareware licence than an open source licence in the later respect.
Just my thoughts on the matter :-)
-- Dougal
BTW: Can anyone see the actual download page for this? I can only find the download for the picoJava core.
>"Breif? What is `breif'?"
The answer can be found here
-- Dougal
I'm not sure what people expect from /. radio. I'm not sure you guys know even :-)
For what it's worth, I like it. I'm not expecting serious discussion, and it makes me smile/laugh - thus I think it's good. Of course its a bit rough around the edges - but that's part of the charm (IMHO). My only word of warning is don't read from /. directly (I think you verged on that in show 2 once) - I can read /. perfectly well thank you very much!
I hope it continues, as long as it doesn't take itself to seriously.
-- Dougal
Yeah, a new hardware architecture can help lots. At Cambridge Computer Labs (part of the University) they have a prototype computer built on the Desk Area Network. The premis here was that the main system bus was replaced with an ATM switching fabric, so any device could talk directly to any other device, and these conversations could go on in parallel.
A good example is drawing video to the screen from a camera. The data would come off the capture device, and talk straight to the video card. No going thru main memory. Or network packets could go straight into the processor cache.
I saw it running 6 odd real time video displays (some TV, some local camera) at a very good framerate, yet the processor was only an Arm 6.
So, to cope with modern loads (especially multimedia data types) a good architecture helps a lot. You can download the PhD thesis describing the DAN architecture from the cambridge FTP stie somewhere. Can't remember the URL off the top of my head though.
-- Michael
PS: Little factlet - the DAN prototype site right next to the (in)famous coffee pot that was the subject of one of the first web cams :-)
Okay, so this is probably me just being picky - but for something that's mean to serve the Linux community, which is WORLD WIDE then putting up a banner saying "...please wait coming this evening..." seems a little short sited to me. There are people outside the US (I know, I've seen some of them).
A small point, but I don't want this to be a trend of not looking further than linux.com's back yard.
-- Dougal
As I've said below (in another post), I don't think this is what they mean - but even if you can upgrade the instructions, I think this would be a little too large an operation to fit in a single instruction!!! However, security checks will be needed, as you will almost certainly bypass normal OS security checks.
Some extenable OS's (which allow users to load code into the kernal for speed/upgrade reasons) have already addressed this issue by only allowing the OS extensions to be produced by a "secure" compiler. This won't allow obviously malitious code to get into the kernal. A similar approach could be applied here.
I'm sure they'll have thought this thru though!!! :-)
-- Michael
Well, I don't for certain, but I'm pretty sure that's the limitation of the microcode patches in the Pentium series, although I'm more than willing to be corrected!!! :-)
When you say small, how small? I've very much like to know - if you have a bit of text then let me know. But I stand by my original belief that microcode upgrades can only fix the control algorithm in the processor. So while that gives you a little scope for upgrades, you certainly can't add functionality like completely new instructions.
Part of the problem is that Intel don't publish this info for the average person - and quite rightly too - the last thing you want is some fool to make a virus which fried your chip!
I've trashed my bookmarks recently, but I'll see if I can find the web page where I did manage to find the info. In the meantime, sorry if I sounded harsh in my original comment (deadlines and I go on holiday tomorrow!!! :-)
-- Michael
Speaking from a technical point of view, Re: the upgrading.
Upgrading the microcode is nothing new, Intel have been doing it since early Pentiums, as have Alpha's too (AFAIK). This is fine and dandy, a good way of fixing those little bugs that crop up. However...
The purpose of microcode is to set the control paths in the microprocessor, it does not however allow you to add any major new functionality to the processor - that can only be done using new function units. The best you could do by changing microcode is string together a series on existing functions to make a new "macro" function as it were.
To upgrade the functionality of the processor as the artical describe probably requires some form of reconfigurable logic. This is similar to what I have planned for my next few years work ;-)
I'd be very interested to know if the author of the artical heard about the microcode upgrade and made a leap to adding (for example) 3D graphics instructions, or the other way round.
-- Michael
I thought that there were no new trailers after latest one - however a cinema near me is advertising "4 minute star wars trailer coming soon" (it's the Odean in Edinburgh). Anyone know anyting about this?
--Michael
This will help developers, and especially accademia. Imagine being able to highlight examples in lectures (be they good or bad) by pointing to the Windows Source code! I know you can do this with Linux, but Windows is still the most popular desktop OS, so makes a better example (IMHO :-)
Another advantage is if they release the source for somehting like the NT kernal. AFAIK, and I may be wrong, but the NT kernal is pretty well designed (by that I'm refering to the modularity of the thing). As a researcher in a University working on OSs, I'd be very interested in seeing this.
As for comments that "no one will understand it as it's so large" well, if the day ever happends (and I'm very skeptical) then expect thrid party books on the matter to appear very soon afterward. Imagine having "NT Kernal Internals" next to "Linux Kernal Internals".
-- Dougal