I just want to point out that if you encode your mp3s in 320kbps, they are not bad at all. Standard 128kbps does suck, but at 256 or 320 they are pretty good... I'd say better than WAV (well, I know that *technically* speaking they can't be, but still... it works out better, for my ears...) Check them out.
As we used to say some months ago, "Linux is about choice."
<RANT to="the KDE and GNome lot">
It's sad to see that projects like that start arguing about *market* share and who gets to be the dominant one.:-( This isn't about dominance, people, it's about quality! Have we started to forget that?
I'm sure all of us would rather hear that you are actually sitting down together and helping each-other out.
</RANT>
Apart from that, I've seen several posts comparing the eye-candy in either of them. I have one point to make on that: the more eye candy you have, the more likely it is that the user gets distracted by that and can't focus that much on his/her task.
At home, I use KDE with a low-contrast, low-colour-saturation custom theme that I find very relaxing. I hate WMs with loads of fancy-dandy pictures that make the desktop look like an angry fruit salad at any time. But that's me...:-/
Trian
PS. With the current increase in Linux-awareness all over the place, I hope we don't end up like the "BIG ONES" were (and still are) a few years ago...
Errrm, go take a nap, stay a few hours/days away from the computer and then read it again.
I never said I agree with the Napster pirates. Go read it carefully and preferrably not on one of your dim days, like this one.
I don't mean to be flamebait, but you seem like a guy who'd had a very long day in front of the computer when you wrote that (or else, you need to improve your understanding of the English language).
It's one thing to distribute freely something that is not meant to be distributed freely (i.e. music) under current copyright laws (*), as in the Napster case, and it is another thing to distribute for a price something that is meant to be distributed for free.
Now, did I short-circuit your brain on that one? What makes/.ers upset is that this information (the theses) are meant to be distributed freely and some tossers at NBC want to make money out of it instead. The same exact tossers that sue you for freely distributing their copyrighted products! Isn't that rather ironic?
People (Napster users) take goods for sale and distribute them freely.
Corps take free goods, claim their rights and distribute them for a price.
It's one thing to distribute copyrighted material freely (a la Napster) and another thing to collect freely available copyrighted material (who of those authors will not be happy to pass you a copy of his/her thesis?) and sell it when you do not own the copyrights yourself.
Not to say that Napster distribution is legal, but the ContentVille is WAY worse than Napster.
Just had an idea... wait till my supervisor hears about this... he's HOD and has authored / co-authored some 300+ papers so far...:-) That should get him a bit pissed... And then he gets to tell the rest of the department......and then it starts to become interesting (knowing them)...
Intel CPUs would cost as much if they didn't sell as many as they do. If the Alpha had the marketshare that the Pentium does, it would be much more reasonably priced.
True, but if Compaq and Compaq resellers don't make the start (to drop the prices), don't expect the people to follow.
I'm sure Compaq's marketing would love it if everybody started buing Alphas with their prices staying that high, but that simply will not happen.
It's as plain as that.
Trian
PS. I love the Alpha platform and I'd definitely buy one and scrap my Intel box, but I don't have the few extra thousands $$$ it takes...
Yet, as Alpha hardware aren't that cheap if you want to build a decent server, I could also suggest a parallel system of cheaper IA32/64 boxes.
A friend of mine was building something similar and since these people aren't going to be modelling fluid flows (which would more or less require a cluster of Alphas), a beowulf cluster of some Athlons should do the trick.(I don't know how much FPU-intensive are database applications. I guess they shouldn't be that much, so even Cyrix's should also work well).
The node machines don't have to contain much: 1-2 processors and 1/2 to 1GB of RAM (depending on number of machines) and some (preferrably) fast network card (Ethernet for cheap, Myrinet or similar if you're serious about it).
Where would we be without the MPAA? Gathered in the kitchen listenting to AM radio while grandma knits a new pair of knickers for junior, that's where!
So, I guess that if we took away your beloved MPAA, you'd wither away and die. Entire cultures have flourished so far without the MPAA and RIAA. People have lived w/o them for thousands of years. Such technology as the DVD, CDs etc. should be regarded as an add-on to our entertainment and not THE entertainment.
I hate to point this out here, but come to think of it, what we do (or we are told to do if you're a conspiracy theorist) is work as hard as we can so that we can buy whatever the "entertainment" industry is shoving down our throats and then defines it as entertainment.
To make the long story short: snap out of it, mate! Your life will be equally full and interesting w/o the MPAA crap. What movies and the rest of "their" products are are a quick and easy way (due to marketing / advertising) to make us:
think of ourselves / appear to our immediate environment as people who actually have a life.
perceive their products as THE entertainment and that humanity before that technology was in the dark ages or something.
You know, just like you give a horse its sugar candy when it's been a good horse...
You gotta be kidding mate. Are you even vaguely aware of the time it takes a patch to be released for an open-source program, compared to a closed source one? Where the former takes a few hours typically, the latter can be expected in a few weeks at the earliest.
This is the first time I hear M$ will be releasing a patch that soon and it's an incredibly short time for their practices. Definitely a first for them.
as far as I recall, "virii" is the Latin and "viruses" is the modern English. So, he's not really at fault. Just a bit more linguistically educated than you.
What's the bonus? Do I get to sell my ATI Fury 32 (yes, I was one of those ppl who had to wait for months and DID buy the fucker in the end --stupid of me) and get one of those in exchange now?
But, to be fair, it still works and it's good nuff for what I'm doing with it (which isn't too much gaming).
But imagine the following workstation:
4 of those new 1.2GHz Alphas IBM plans on
1.5GB PC133RAM
The graphics card in the above link.
A couple of those cheesy 9GB, 15K rpm Cheetahs...
That'd have some speed...:-} Quake III on that... Ahhhh... That'd put some framerates into it! Trian
I wouldn't call the S2000 a trade-off between performance and technology. Nor the Accord Type-R. (though I'd prefer them to slide a bit more;-). Ever been in one of those?
The latter was once compared to a Porsche 911 (Carrera I think, but some 911 for sure) in terms of performance. Try driving the LUPO (or any VW to that respect) at 9000 rpm (which those Hondas can) and NASA will be on the phone to you to take your pistons out of orbit. B-]
I agree: they've got some of the finest engineers in there. But, furthermore, they also build some of the most efficient engines (certainly so for the mass consumption market) around. BTW, isn't it about time the American car manufacturers considered making their engines efficient too? They are really the other end when it comes to efficiency, say all you like. If you're not convinced, take any of the latest US-made cars (w/o a turbo) and make an average of their BHP/litre efficiency and compare that to the European and the Japanese ones (again w/o a turbo).
Ahhh, the sound of a VTEC engine at 8000 rpm!!! 8-)
Then again, I wouldn't complain about one of those babes 8-)
Yes, and I may also add that European governments have set a goal to stop Europeans from driving.
They do their best to make driving as expensive a habit as possible, in all respects (fuel, car prices, other taxes etc.).
It's just that some anorgasmic bureaucrat vegetable probably once saw an Impreza WRC or something overtake his/her Merc S600 combined with "sideways action" and were scared shitless:}
(PAH! Some "politically correct" people like those is what ruins the fun in many things in Europe.)
Trian
BTW, I live in Munich/Germany this year and they've got an excellent public transport system. Fast, safe (so far) and frequent enough. You really don't need a car, except for Saturday nights...;-)
but I think most people would be suprised by the kind of nasty stuff that Intel gets away with (just ask intergraph!)
Ahemmmm, can you enlighten us on that one a bit? I'm sure it'd be an interesting topic.
And something offtopic, but it crossed my mind when I read this comment:
OTOH, I think AMD is shooting itself in the foot by making claims that it'll stick to the x86 architecture for many years to come.
it's a very old arch. and
by not introducing their own ISA that could do magic with their new chips, they just show they are too afraid to push their technology on and will wait to follow on whatever new ISA Intel will push
...I think they should come down to earth for a bit (pun intended).
There are loads of other viable sources of energy. For example, it was said that if we build a big enough array of solar panels in a desert (say, Sahara), it would be sufficient to provide for the needs of the entire planet. Then, of course one could argue about the costs of building this array and the political implications behind it (like that the country in whose land this fell pretty much controlled the power supply for the rest of the world) could be huge, but wouldn't that be the case for the moon-mission too?
Dunno, just a thought. Solar power is something we have in abundance, yet we throw away very easily. With proper planning, we could use it to power our needs 24/7 at minimal cost (that of maintenance).
Can't say much about North Europe or elsewhere, so I'll stick to my bit: South Europe:)
I've been in Munich 9 months now on an industrial placement from my uni. and apart from the Germans:) it's a pretty nice town. Loads of companies and loads of Americans, if that makes a difference to you. It's dubbed "the Silicon Valley of Europe". Lots of places to visit in the nearby area (Salzburg, lake Constanz, Herrsching just to name a few) plus a very interesting town by itself. Oh, and you'll have 24/7 access to the Oktoberfest (German for "infinite beer" %-) without having to pay for those ridiculously expensive hotels.
Other places I'd be considering: -------------------------------- Madrid (or anywhere in Spain). OK, so I don't know what it is tech-like, but I know it's a great place to live, cheap life, good food and pleasant culture.
Thessaloniki (Greece). Seems like the Balkan's tech center right now, especially for telecomms. Beautiful place and good life, on the seaside. Good food, lots of places to visit, average infrastructures and administration that most of the times doesn't make sense. Crypto-laws and censorship? You've gotta be kidding. They (the govt.) know better than to mess with the population on those matters >:-} Again, probably not the best-paid jobs, but at least you'll enjoy yourself.
Places to avoid: ---------------- Athens: horrible place to live, trust me. And the jobs also suck (unless you're willing to start your own somewhere there, but then choose places around and not IN it).
Any small town in South Europe. It'll be an enjoyable stay but not much more than that.
They've filled the Earth and now they're going for the moon!
(having lived in Britain a few years, I can't resist to take the piss out of them a bit:)
Now, seriously, India has many far more serious problems to worry about (like illiteracy) than sending some metal on the moon (and probably an Indian, later).
It may be highly prestigious for the Indian whatever (government / space agency / ?), but I'd seriously recommend them to direct all that money somewhere where the people will benefit. I don't think that the average Indian over there cares whether they send a man on the moon. They will care, however, if all this money is spent to improve, say, water supplies, at least in some cities.
I say that because I've lived with some Indians for some time and I know they have many more important things to worry than seeing a fellow Indian in orbit:)
Give me one of those and I'd go for it. I think most people reading this article would be prepared to spend some extra money to get their PC to shut up, me included.
I am a bit of a hifi maniac too, and having a 1-room house,:( listening to music or watching a movie (esp. if you've spent some money on an AC-3 amp and some decent speakers) is not very rewarding... I find the noise PCs make is very annoying and I'm actively looking into ways to shut them up.
I have a PII/300 and 2HDDs and they are not the problem. The problem is the power supply. It's a good thing that silent PSs are starting to appear more and more. I've seen some in Germany and I'm very tempted!
I've also seen some quiet-ish (double walled) cases for something like 250DM (can't be bothered to do the conversion) and I'm very tempted to get myself one too. Then I'll be happier!!!:) They also look very kewl!
...it's either me forgetting my courses on processor (and ISA) architectures and construction or...
I think they somewhat got the details a bit wrong on what an ISA is. Or maybe what they have in mind is what modern processors tend to be.
The ISA is (normally) the bottom-level instructions a certain processor can accept. Those instructions are then passed to the processor's instruction decoding unit and from there some parts of the instruction are passed to the arithmetic-and-logic unit (ALU) and some are passed to the address translation unit. So, the ISA is the really-bottom level language a certain CPU can recognise.
What happens in modern processors is that they are x86 *compatible*. They have their own ISA, but that is also compatible with the x86 ISA. I remember back in the days before the Athlon, when AMD was saying that the new processor (Athlon) will have its own instruction set AND will be compatible with the X86.
In other words you are (theoretically) capable of writing a program in Athlon-assembly that is incompatible with X86, especially if you can bypass the x86-to-native-ISA interface.
The way the K7 and the PIII work is they have a frontend that understands the x86 architecture and then they have the processor's own *proper* ISA that hopefully will sometime replace X86, whichever that may be. This is where the word "microcode" comes into play. Right now in your PIIIs / Athlons there is an extra layer of electronics that acts as an interface between your processor's native ISA (usually called "core" or "core ISA") and x86 ISA. This interface is the microcode. So, in fact, even now the K7/PIII are doing X86 *emulation*.
That, as you might have guessed, is a performance loss in its own virtue and hopefully will disappear sometime soon (along with x86:).
Anyway, hope this clears a couple of things. I'll probably write some more when I'm more lucid.
Trian
(arghhh, can't wait for the days when those Alphas will be affordable for the rest of us too...:-/ )
I don't. It's got one of the least intuitive user interfaces (UIs) I've seen, if not the worst. As light as it might be, it's a head-twister when you try to figure it out.
It wasn't my fault. I was just holding the knife and the policeman accidentally fell on it 17 times!
(irrelevant to the DeCSS case, but it sprang to mind:-)
Now, seriously, have you ever considered how many times some deeply technical issues are being discussed and decided upon by commitee members and others who are completely clueless on the matter? Or how many times an "expert" has been called (expert being some guy the board members knew of as a "knowledgeable" guy)?
We DO need some experts from the hacker ("hacker" in the proper sense) community down there, guys!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yeah... sort of.
I just want to point out that if you encode your mp3s in 320kbps, they are not bad at all. Standard 128kbps does suck, but at 256 or 320 they are pretty good... I'd say better than WAV (well, I know that *technically* speaking they can't be, but still... it works out better, for my ears...) Check them out.
Trian
BTW, I also like hifi stuff >:-)
I absolutely agree on that one.
:-( This isn't about dominance, people, it's about quality! Have we started to forget that?
:-/
As we used to say some months ago, "Linux is about choice."
<RANT to="the KDE and GNome lot">
It's sad to see that projects like that start arguing about *market* share and who gets to be the dominant one.
I'm sure all of us would rather hear that you are actually sitting down together and helping each-other out.
</RANT>
Apart from that, I've seen several posts comparing the eye-candy in either of them. I have one point to make on that: the more eye candy you have, the more likely it is that the user gets distracted by that and can't focus that much on his/her task.
At home, I use KDE with a low-contrast, low-colour-saturation custom theme that I find very relaxing. I hate WMs with loads of fancy-dandy pictures that make the desktop look like an angry fruit salad at any time. But that's me...
Trian
PS. With the current increase in Linux-awareness all over the place, I hope we don't end up like the "BIG ONES" were (and still are) a few years ago...
Errrm, go take a nap, stay a few hours/days away from the computer and then read it again.
I never said I agree with the Napster pirates. Go read it carefully and preferrably not on one of your dim days, like this one.
I don't mean to be flamebait, but you seem like a guy who'd had a very long day in front of the computer when you wrote that (or else, you need to improve your understanding of the English language).
Trian
Errrm, do you work for ContentVille, mate?
It's one thing to distribute freely something that is not meant to be distributed freely (i.e. music) under current copyright laws (*), as in the Napster case, and it is another thing to distribute for a price something that is meant to be distributed for free.
Now, did I short-circuit your brain on that one? What makes /.ers upset is that this information (the theses) are meant to be distributed freely and some tossers at NBC want to make money out of it instead. The same exact tossers that sue you for freely distributing their copyrighted products! Isn't that rather ironic?
People (Napster users) take goods for sale and distribute them freely.
Corps take free goods, claim their rights and distribute them for a price.
'Nuff said.
Trian
Errrrm, yes!
If it were distributed via Napster, nobody would be charging anything for my (freely distributable anyway) intellectual work.
Ahem, kinda.
:-) That should get him a bit pissed... And then he gets to tell the rest of the department... ...and then it starts to become interesting (knowing them)...
It's one thing to distribute copyrighted material freely (a la Napster) and another thing to collect freely available copyrighted material (who of those authors will not be happy to pass you a copy of his/her thesis?) and sell it when you do not own the copyrights yourself.
Not to say that Napster distribution is legal, but the ContentVille is WAY worse than Napster.
Just had an idea... wait till my supervisor hears about this... he's HOD and has authored / co-authored some 300+ papers so far...
Trian
(yes, I am a Computer Science undergraduate... )
Intel CPUs would cost as much if they didn't sell as many as they do. If the Alpha had the marketshare that the Pentium does, it would be much more reasonably priced.
True, but if Compaq and Compaq resellers don't make the start (to drop the prices), don't expect the people to follow.
I'm sure Compaq's marketing would love it if everybody started buing Alphas with their prices staying that high, but that simply will not happen.
It's as plain as that.
Trian
PS. I love the Alpha platform and I'd definitely buy one and scrap my Intel box, but I don't have the few extra thousands $$$ it takes...
I'll agree on that.
Yet, as Alpha hardware aren't that cheap if you want to build a decent server, I could also suggest a parallel system of cheaper IA32/64 boxes.
A friend of mine was building something similar and since these people aren't going to be modelling fluid flows (which would more or less require a cluster of Alphas), a beowulf cluster of some Athlons should do the trick.(I don't know how much FPU-intensive are database applications. I guess they shouldn't be that much, so even Cyrix's should also work well).
The node machines don't have to contain much: 1-2 processors and 1/2 to 1GB of RAM (depending on number of machines) and some (preferrably) fast network card (Ethernet for cheap, Myrinet or similar if you're serious about it).
I have no experience with such database deployments, but a cluster after all might not be as bad an idea as some here have suggested.
Trianno further comments... <grin>
So, I guess that if we took away your beloved MPAA, you'd wither away and die. Entire cultures have flourished so far without the MPAA and RIAA. People have lived w/o them for thousands of years. Such technology as the DVD, CDs etc. should be regarded as an add-on to our entertainment and not THE entertainment.
I hate to point this out here, but come to think of it, what we do (or we are told to do if you're a conspiracy theorist) is work as hard as we can so that we can buy whatever the "entertainment" industry is shoving down our throats and then defines it as entertainment.
To make the long story short: snap out of it, mate! Your life will be equally full and interesting w/o the MPAA crap. What movies and the rest of "their" products are are a quick and easy way (due to marketing / advertising) to make us:
- think of ourselves / appear to our immediate environment as people who actually have a life.
- perceive their products as THE entertainment and that humanity before that technology was in the dark ages or something.
You know, just like you give a horse its sugar candy when it's been a good horse...Just some thoughts...
TrianAhem, what?!?
You gotta be kidding mate. Are you even vaguely aware of the time it takes a patch to be released for an open-source program, compared to a closed source one? Where the former takes a few hours typically, the latter can be expected in a few weeks at the earliest.
This is the first time I hear M$ will be releasing a patch that soon and it's an incredibly short time for their practices. Definitely a first for them.
Trian
Well,
as far as I recall, "virii" is the Latin and "viruses" is the modern English. So, he's not really at fault. Just a bit more linguistically educated than you.
Trian
Yeah, I see the pattern :-/
What's the bonus?
Do I get to sell my ATI Fury 32 (yes, I was one of those ppl who had to wait for months and DID buy the fucker in the end --stupid of me) and get one of those in exchange now?
But, to be fair, it still works and it's good nuff for what I'm doing with it (which isn't too much gaming).
But imagine the following workstation:
- 4 of those new 1.2GHz Alphas IBM plans on
- 1.5GB PC133RAM
- The graphics card in the above link.
- A couple of those cheesy 9GB, 15K rpm Cheetahs...
That'd have some speed...Very well said! Period. Trian
I wouldn't call the S2000 a trade-off between performance and technology. Nor the Accord Type-R. (though I'd prefer them to slide a bit more ;-). Ever been in one of those?
The latter was once compared to a Porsche 911 (Carrera I think, but some 911 for sure) in terms of performance. Try driving the LUPO (or any VW to that respect) at 9000 rpm (which those Hondas can) and NASA will be on the phone to you to take your pistons out of orbit. B-]I agree: they've got some of the finest engineers in there. But, furthermore, they also build some of the most efficient engines (certainly so for the mass consumption market) around. BTW, isn't it about time the American car manufacturers considered making their engines efficient too? They are really the other end when it comes to efficiency, say all you like. If you're not convinced, take any of the latest US-made cars (w/o a turbo) and make an average of their BHP/litre efficiency and compare that to the European and the Japanese ones (again w/o a turbo).
Ahhh, the sound of a VTEC engine at 8000 rpm!!! 8-)
Then again, I wouldn't complain about one of those babes 8-)
TrianYes, and I may also add that European governments have set a goal to stop Europeans from driving.
:}
;-)
They do their best to make driving as expensive a habit as possible, in all respects (fuel, car prices, other taxes etc.).
It's just that some anorgasmic bureaucrat vegetable probably once saw an Impreza WRC or something overtake his/her Merc S600 combined with "sideways action" and were scared shitless
(PAH! Some "politically correct" people like those is what ruins the fun in many things in Europe.)
Trian
BTW, I live in Munich/Germany this year and they've got an excellent public transport system. Fast, safe (so far) and frequent enough. You really don't need a car, except for Saturday nights...
Ahemmmm, can you enlighten us on that one a bit? I'm sure it'd be an interesting topic.
And something offtopic, but it crossed my mind when I read this comment:
OTOH, I think AMD is shooting itself in the foot by making claims that it'll stick to the x86 architecture for many years to come.
...I think they should come down to earth for a bit (pun intended).
There are loads of other viable sources of energy. For example, it was said that if we build a big enough array of solar panels in a desert (say, Sahara), it would be sufficient to provide for the needs of the entire planet. Then, of course one could argue about the costs of building this array and the political implications behind it (like that the country in whose land this fell pretty much controlled the power supply for the rest of the world) could be huge, but wouldn't that be the case for the moon-mission too?
Dunno, just a thought. Solar power is something we have in abundance, yet we throw away very easily. With proper planning, we could use it to power our needs 24/7 at minimal cost (that of maintenance).
Trian
Can't say much about North Europe or elsewhere, so I'll stick to my bit: South Europe :)
:) it's a pretty nice town. Loads of companies and loads of Americans, if that makes a difference to you. It's dubbed "the Silicon Valley of Europe". Lots of places to visit in the nearby area (Salzburg, lake Constanz, Herrsching just to name a few) plus a very interesting town by itself.
I've been in Munich 9 months now on an industrial placement from my uni. and apart from the Germans
Oh, and you'll have 24/7 access to the Oktoberfest (German for "infinite beer" %-) without having to pay for those ridiculously expensive hotels.
Other places I'd be considering:
--------------------------------
Madrid (or anywhere in Spain). OK, so I don't know what it is tech-like, but I know it's a great place to live, cheap life, good food and pleasant culture.
Thessaloniki (Greece). Seems like the Balkan's tech center right now, especially for telecomms. Beautiful place and good life, on the seaside. Good food, lots of places to visit, average infrastructures and administration that most of the times doesn't make sense. Crypto-laws and censorship? You've gotta be kidding. They (the govt.) know better than to mess with the population on those matters >:-} Again, probably not the best-paid jobs, but at least you'll enjoy yourself.
Places to avoid:
----------------
Athens: horrible place to live, trust me. And the jobs also suck (unless you're willing to start your own somewhere there, but then choose places around and not IN it).
Any small town in South Europe. It'll be an enjoyable stay but not much more than that.
One thing I liked about the article:
:)
:)
"to (boldly) go where no Indian has gone before"
Warp 5, ensign Mohla!
They've filled the Earth and now they're going for the moon!
(having lived in Britain a few years, I can't resist to take the piss out of them a bit
Now, seriously, India has many far more serious problems to worry about (like illiteracy) than sending some metal on the moon (and probably an Indian, later).
It may be highly prestigious for the Indian whatever (government / space agency / ?), but I'd seriously recommend them to direct all that money somewhere where the people will benefit. I don't think that the average Indian over there cares whether they send a man on the moon. They will care, however, if all this money is spent to improve, say, water supplies, at least in some cities.
I say that because I've lived with some Indians for some time and I know they have many more important things to worry than seeing a fellow Indian in orbit
Trian
Yes, but where are the letters though?
:/
"Fatal exception occured at..."
If that's the clouds, then we've got a pretty fucked up display driver too...
...still in Beta.
Having said that, that's pretty bad: Then god would have to be somebody like Bill Gates!!! *gasp*
naaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh...
Otherwise, this world is doomed and the Big Bang was just a reboot...
Well,
:( listening to music or watching a movie (esp. if you've spent some money on an AC-3 amp and some decent speakers) is not very rewarding... I find the noise PCs make is very annoying and I'm actively looking into ways to shut them up.
:) They also look very kewl!
Give me one of those and I'd go for it. I think most people reading this article would be prepared to spend some extra money to get their PC to shut up, me included.
I am a bit of a hifi maniac too, and having a 1-room house,
I have a PII/300 and 2HDDs and they are not the problem. The problem is the power supply. It's a good thing that silent PSs are starting to appear more and more. I've seen some in Germany and I'm very tempted!
I've also seen some quiet-ish (double walled) cases for something like 250DM (can't be bothered to do the conversion) and I'm very tempted to get myself one too. Then I'll be happier!!!
Trian
...it's either me forgetting my courses on processor (and ISA) architectures and construction or...
:).
:-/ )
I think they somewhat got the details a bit wrong on what an ISA is. Or maybe what they have in mind is what modern processors tend to be.
The ISA is (normally) the bottom-level instructions a certain processor can accept. Those instructions are then passed to the processor's instruction decoding unit and from there some parts of the instruction are passed to the arithmetic-and-logic unit (ALU) and some are passed to the address translation unit. So, the ISA is the really-bottom level language a certain CPU can recognise.
What happens in modern processors is that they are x86 *compatible*. They have their own ISA, but that is also compatible with the x86 ISA. I remember back in the days before the Athlon, when AMD was saying that the new processor (Athlon) will have its own instruction set AND will be compatible with the X86.
In other words you are (theoretically) capable of writing a program in Athlon-assembly that is incompatible with X86, especially if you can bypass the x86-to-native-ISA interface.
The way the K7 and the PIII work is they have a frontend that understands the x86 architecture and then they have the processor's own *proper* ISA that hopefully will sometime replace X86, whichever that may be. This is where the word "microcode" comes into play. Right now in your PIIIs / Athlons there is an extra layer of electronics that acts as an interface between your processor's native ISA (usually called "core" or "core ISA") and x86 ISA. This interface is the microcode. So, in fact, even now the K7/PIII are doing X86 *emulation*.
That, as you might have guessed, is a performance loss in its own virtue and hopefully will disappear sometime soon (along with x86
Anyway, hope this clears a couple of things. I'll probably write some more when I'm more lucid.
Trian
(arghhh, can't wait for the days when those Alphas will be affordable for the rest of us too...
Well,
I don't. It's got one of the least intuitive user interfaces (UIs) I've seen, if not the worst. As light as it might be, it's a head-twister when you try to figure it out.
Trian
I swear, your honour!
:-)
It wasn't my fault. I was just holding the knife and the policeman accidentally fell on it 17 times!
(irrelevant to the DeCSS case, but it sprang to mind
Now, seriously, have you ever considered how many times some deeply technical issues are being discussed and decided upon by commitee members and others who are completely clueless on the matter? Or how many times an "expert" has been called (expert being some guy the board members knew of as a "knowledgeable" guy)?
We DO need some experts from the hacker ("hacker" in the proper sense) community down there, guys!
Trian