I don't know where this myth comes from, but it's bullshit. If you properly test the system, you'll catch any error producing instability before depending on it. A bit flipped is a bit flipped. They happen on stock systems too. This is why any sane system handling critical data has built in sanity checks.
No, the BS myth is that you can test for instability. Every manufactured CPU is unique. Its weaknesses unique. The point and manner that it fails unique. Some failing with a modest amount of overclocking, other not failing until much greater overclocking. And again, the failure is not necessarily something resulting in a crash. The mildest of overclocking errors can simply be an erroneous result of a mathematical operation.
Where a bit flips will vary from one CPU to the next. How can you test for that? And in a specific case when a bit flips in an instruction may depend upon the preceding sequence of instructions and upon a specific data pattern. How can you test for that, the prerequisites are unknown and vary one individual CPU to the next?
Testing by a manufacturer can involve things far more probative than running a software test. So a CPU rated for a certain speed can be confidently run at that speed. However once overclocked the confidence is lost. How much tolerance there is for overclocking can vary from one design to the next, one manufacturing process to the next, and from one individual CPU to the next.
For "quiet" video cards you sometimes have to look for a previous generation design that has gone through a new manufacturing process (same circuitry but laid out at a smaller scale, a process with fewer nanometers (nm)). These may get smaller or slower speed fans. Might even go passively cooled if it was a modest GPU to begin with. Of course you won't get the greatest performance but perhaps something good enough for play.
For what its worth I tend to install auxiliary low-RPM fans that blow directly on passively cooled motherboard chipsets (often under a heat sink) and on passively cooled GPUs.
Overclocking is fine if its only a gaming PC but if it is also used for anything serious, anything where the correct results are important... do *not* overclock.
Overclocking errors are not some black and white easy to recognize situation. It is literally a progression through various shades of gray. At the lightest shades of gray, where overclocking errors begin, at perhaps quite modest overclocking settings, the errors are subtle. Literally it may simply give the wrong answer, the wrong numeric value, no crash or anything dramatic. And what instruction yields this simple wrong answer, and beginning at what overclocking setting, and what instructions must precede it if any... are all variable and will change from one specific CPU to another. Hence the inability to reliably test for overclocking errors. The errors manifest different on every CPU, and the required conditions manifest differently, and these conditions may include being immediately preceded certain instructions or certain data patterns. Instructions and data patterns that also differ CPU to CPU.
So if a PC is just for gaming and other casual use, overclocking does little harm. However if the computer is also used for serious numeric work, software development, etc... its best to avoid overclocking.
Building a custom computer? All you do is put the parts together. The hard part is picking the right parts.
Which is the same thing that Dell, HP, etc do. Screw together some parts, at least for desktops. Laptops can involve a little bit of design with respect to layout, to get airflow cooling right.
My school day recollections are of PDP-11 having quite the problem with response time with multiple users as well. It was best not to expect to use the PDP as assignment deadlines neared. Anyone's, not just yours.
Actually all I really need to add is the same USB wifi adapter I've been using on Pis for years, US$10. At that points its a Linux box I can ssh in to.
That was just the external hard drive, more a full sized rack in their 1st generation, plus another rack for peripherals. They eventually got down to desktop workstation size. Maybe palm sized now with the Pi. How does a Pi with a remote text terminal session compare performance wise to a PDP-11:-)
I don't think he said it lacks drama and character development, I think he said it lacks the drama and character development he proposed. And his work is not know for a lack of high speed chases and things blowing up either.
If we only could get a HD release of the original theatrical releases of the first ones (S.W., the Empre Strikes back and just to complete it Return)
My opinion changes. At times I would love the originals. At other times I would like a careful merging of the originals and Lucas' reworks. The CGI for the space scenes may a nice modernization. No plot changes though, Han shoots first, no infantile CGI additions like turning the corner during a chase and finding 50 additional unexpected stormtroopers rather than a few more unexpected, etc.
Such selective merging works with the general theme that Lucas can come up with some good ideas but he needs adult supervision to prevent him from taking something too far.
Star Wars works best when Lucas' role is limited. For example he wrote the story for the Empire Strikes Back but others wrote the screen play and directed the film. For the original Star Wars movie (ep 4) the studio had more control while he wrote and directed. The Phantom Menace being an example of an unrestrained Lucas, well that and the awful reworking of the original trilogy. If those reworks represent the vision that was always in his head then than goodness technology and budget had restrained him. Maybe we are at the point where Lucas has told enough of the "story" for this universe via film, animation, literature and games and we can just say thank you and move on.
I was a little kid when I saw that show, and even then, it was obvious it was a piece of crap.
A little kid in the 1960s when it originally aired, or later decades when it was in syndication? The special effects and such need to be viewed in that context. We were barely putting people into orbit at the time, viewers had little reference for "space". Silver spray paint on army surplus boots was pretty common, even in feature films. At least until Kubrick's 2001 increased consumer expectations.
The 1970s Battlestar Galactic had special effects and production values and plots that we laugh/cringe at today, however look at what was done with that remake.
While Microsoft did port NT to those 3 CPUs you mention,...
Actually MIPS was not a port. MIPS was the original development platform, one way to make sure its not x86 dependent, then x86 was added. NT was essentially developed on MIPS and x86 in parallel.
... they did not support it beyond getting the OS itself on them. Like Visual Studio - they did Intel only,...
Actually Microsoft Word and Excel were PowerPC native. Adobe Photoshop too.
... and DEC had to support the Alpha version, and maybe NEC the MIPS one.
Alpha wasn't targeting consumers like PowerPC was. It was targeting servers and high end workstations, productivity apps weren't really needed.
What I suggested above was that had Microsoft made Windows 7 for the RISC versions - letting their memory requirements be 4GB or above - and put all their own major apps on that, they would have had a good chance of succeeding. Some of the Alphas of that time were equivalent to some of today's x64s, so given a 64-bit OS, that could have worked, and Alpha too would have gone towards reducing the power consumption.
The market had spoken long before Windows 7. The market wanted low cost and backwards compatibility.
As far as CHRP goes, the primary blame goes on IBM for failing to deliver on OS/2 for PowerPC. NT was never gonna be a primary driver for PowerPC, given that it was already there on MIPS and Alpha. CHRP was good as long as there was something to run on it, but Apple failed to deliver on Pink, Copeland or Gerschwin, and once they acquired NEXT, Steve recognized the futility of trying to go against Microsoft and canned Power Computing. So given that Apple wasn't committed to defining the standard, IBM should have done it w/ OS/2 on PPC. It would have enabled them to move both their hardware and software solutions to a single platform that they could brand all their own for the PC market.
I don't know, I think the market had spoken on OS/2 as well. I remember OS/2 2.0, it was amazing compared to its contemporary 16-bit Windows 3.1. Windows NT was still only in beta. And the market largely did not care, on a platform where OS/2 2.0 offered absolutely superb legacy support for existing Windows apps. Something one would not have under PowerPC. The only thing that made sense with respect to PowerPC would be a single platform able to run Windows NT and Mac OS. We already had a single platform for Windows NT and OS/2.
Because ransomware attacks are for money, and target business and in some cases government itself, and involve large numbers of people at once, surely it's NOT being treated as a local problem: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stori...
By different jurisdictions I am referring to different nations, places where the FBI would receive little to no cooperation.
And the NSA would love to be able to mail a ransomware operation to burnish its battered image. If it could do so, it would.
No. Why in the world would they potentially compromise their sources and methods on something as petty as ransomeware? The NSA is not law enforcement, they are in the intelligence gathering business. Discovering a petty criminal is something to note in their database, not do anything about.
>> That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Android users have no interest in Linux, do not even know it is there. The operating system these users care about is Android, and Linux
That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Windows users have no interest in Windows. They rather would like to get work done.
Actually they have an interest in Windows-based apps so they do have an interest in Windows. Note the negative reviews of Chromebooks, lots and lots of complaints about not being able to installed Windows apps.
And this tangent has little to do with the fact that nearly all Android users and developers don't care about Linux and Linux does little to let them get their work done. It simply hosts Android, the operating system that their apps run on, the apps that let users get things done. The "embedded" Linux vs desktop Windows comparison made earlier remains absurd.
We are looking at 30 years of shoddy software because of shoddy programmers outside of microsoft, 3rd party application and driver developers. Such can screw up any ecosystem. See Linux hosted Android for a modern incarnation of this phenomena.
To be fair to microsoft Windows NT was OK. Modern, capable, and one bad 3rd party driver away from disaster just like Linux and FreeBSD. I've been going the build-your-own route for my PCs for decades and I am somewhat picky about my parts, I've had pretty good luck with Windows and Linux. When running installers I tend to do a custom install and deselect the crapware and unnecessary stuff, when browser extensions are requested I say no.
MacOS X's stability is to a large degree due to a lack of such 3rd party drivers, an artifact of Apple having such tight control over the hardware and providing most drivers. An open architecture with expansion slots is both a blessing and a curse.
I remember in college where I struggled w/ Unix terminals, not knowing much more than ls. Using a NEXT in our Computer Center totally exposed the power of Unix for me.
My computer science department evolved out of the math department. While computer science degrees had been awarded for quite some time the CS department was organizationally a specialty within the math department. When CS became its own independent department in the 90s assets had to allocated. There was a fight over who would get the NeXT workstations and who would get "stuck" with the Sun workstations. Students and faculty loved NeXTSTEP and its development tools.
Microsoft did follow through on portability, the retail WinNT 4 CD had x86, MIPS, and PowerPC. Maybe Alpha but I think that may have been offered after launch day. WinNT was absolutely proven with respect to portability. Actually it was already proven, supporting MIPS and x86 from the beginning. NT 4 proved the "ease" at which new architectures could be supported.
If any corporation had a large part to play in failing to "level the microprocessor field" it was Apple. By failing to deliver CHRP, a PowerPC based motherboard capable of dual booting Windows NT and Mac OS there was no point to PowerPC Windows NT. Alpha performed better, x86 was less expensive.
As far as Alpha goes, few people needed the performance advantage.
And finally, hats off to Intel, they were absolutely miracle workers. The ability to keep x86 close to PowerPC was unexpected. Its not really that PowerPC failed to deliver on its expected performance, its really that no one ever imagined that Intel could get the x86 architecture to those performance levels. Yeah CISC is harder to work with than RISC, but with sufficient money to throw at the problem the difficulty can be overcome. Well, sort of, modern x86s are RISC at their core, the CISC instructions being translated to the RISC instructions on the fly and behind the scenes.
There are more Linux devices in the world than Windows devices...
That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Android users have no interest in Linux, do not even know it is there. The operating system these users care about is Android, and Linux merely sits behind the scenes hosting Android. If Linux were to be replaced by BSD as Android's underlying host nearly zero Android users would know or care if told.
Even the vast majority of Android developers have no interest in the underlying Linux host. Linux does not compromise part of the Android API.
In comparison, people who are buying personal computers are expecting Windows. Hell, even many people buying Macs have some interest in Windows and dual boot.
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I don't know where this myth comes from, but it's bullshit. If you properly test the system, you'll catch any error producing instability before depending on it. A bit flipped is a bit flipped. They happen on stock systems too. This is why any sane system handling critical data has built in sanity checks.
No, the BS myth is that you can test for instability. Every manufactured CPU is unique. Its weaknesses unique. The point and manner that it fails unique. Some failing with a modest amount of overclocking, other not failing until much greater overclocking. And again, the failure is not necessarily something resulting in a crash. The mildest of overclocking errors can simply be an erroneous result of a mathematical operation.
Where a bit flips will vary from one CPU to the next. How can you test for that? And in a specific case when a bit flips in an instruction may depend upon the preceding sequence of instructions and upon a specific data pattern. How can you test for that, the prerequisites are unknown and vary one individual CPU to the next?
Testing by a manufacturer can involve things far more probative than running a software test. So a CPU rated for a certain speed can be confidently run at that speed. However once overclocked the confidence is lost. How much tolerance there is for overclocking can vary from one design to the next, one manufacturing process to the next, and from one individual CPU to the next.
Apple offers a lighting / usb adapter. Its readily available in the US too.
Building your own can be an important part of learning enough to no longer be a noob. Research too, not just the build and debugging.
For "quiet" video cards you sometimes have to look for a previous generation design that has gone through a new manufacturing process (same circuitry but laid out at a smaller scale, a process with fewer nanometers (nm)). These may get smaller or slower speed fans. Might even go passively cooled if it was a modest GPU to begin with. Of course you won't get the greatest performance but perhaps something good enough for play.
For what its worth I tend to install auxiliary low-RPM fans that blow directly on passively cooled motherboard chipsets (often under a heat sink) and on passively cooled GPUs.
Overclocking is fine if its only a gaming PC but if it is also used for anything serious, anything where the correct results are important ... do *not* overclock.
... are all variable and will change from one specific CPU to another. Hence the inability to reliably test for overclocking errors. The errors manifest different on every CPU, and the required conditions manifest differently, and these conditions may include being immediately preceded certain instructions or certain data patterns. Instructions and data patterns that also differ CPU to CPU.
... its best to avoid overclocking.
Overclocking errors are not some black and white easy to recognize situation. It is literally a progression through various shades of gray. At the lightest shades of gray, where overclocking errors begin, at perhaps quite modest overclocking settings, the errors are subtle. Literally it may simply give the wrong answer, the wrong numeric value, no crash or anything dramatic. And what instruction yields this simple wrong answer, and beginning at what overclocking setting, and what instructions must precede it if any
So if a PC is just for gaming and other casual use, overclocking does little harm. However if the computer is also used for serious numeric work, software development, etc
The only good way to get what you want is to build one.
Absolutely, you get the exact parts that you want. Pre-built always seems to involve some compromise in one part or another.
Careful selection of parts is also very helpful if you want to do something like dual boot Linux.
Building your own is no longer the money saver that it once was though. But quality and compatibility are reason enough.
Building a custom computer? All you do is put the parts together. The hard part is picking the right parts.
Which is the same thing that Dell, HP, etc do. Screw together some parts, at least for desktops. Laptops can involve a little bit of design with respect to layout, to get airflow cooling right.
My school day recollections are of PDP-11 having quite the problem with response time with multiple users as well. It was best not to expect to use the PDP as assignment deadlines neared. Anyone's, not just yours.
Actually all I really need to add is the same USB wifi adapter I've been using on Pis for years, US$10. At that points its a Linux box I can ssh in to.
To be fair a Pi may equal old school minicomputers in terms of performance, so in that context the name isn't so bad. :-)
$10 USB wifi adapters are extremely common among Pi users. Wifi is a reasonable thing to leave off in order to keep the design simple.
Aren't they the size of a filing cabinet?
That was just the external hard drive, more a full sized rack in their 1st generation, plus another rack for peripherals. They eventually got down to desktop workstation size. Maybe palm sized now with the Pi. How does a Pi with a remote text terminal session compare performance wise to a PDP-11 :-)
I don't think he said it lacks drama and character development, I think he said it lacks the drama and character development he proposed. And his work is not know for a lack of high speed chases and things blowing up either.
If we only could get a HD release of the original theatrical releases of the first ones (S.W., the Empre Strikes back and just to complete it Return)
My opinion changes. At times I would love the originals. At other times I would like a careful merging of the originals and Lucas' reworks. The CGI for the space scenes may a nice modernization. No plot changes though, Han shoots first, no infantile CGI additions like turning the corner during a chase and finding 50 additional unexpected stormtroopers rather than a few more unexpected, etc.
Such selective merging works with the general theme that Lucas can come up with some good ideas but he needs adult supervision to prevent him from taking something too far.
Star Wars works best when Lucas' role is limited. For example he wrote the story for the Empire Strikes Back but others wrote the screen play and directed the film. For the original Star Wars movie (ep 4) the studio had more control while he wrote and directed. The Phantom Menace being an example of an unrestrained Lucas, well that and the awful reworking of the original trilogy. If those reworks represent the vision that was always in his head then than goodness technology and budget had restrained him. Maybe we are at the point where Lucas has told enough of the "story" for this universe via film, animation, literature and games and we can just say thank you and move on.
.... still use one. This makes me want to go get an iPhone.
Why, isn't this the same policy they always had? They have a copy of the encryption keys and release them when a lawful warrant is received?
I was a little kid when I saw that show, and even then, it was obvious it was a piece of crap.
A little kid in the 1960s when it originally aired, or later decades when it was in syndication? The special effects and such need to be viewed in that context. We were barely putting people into orbit at the time, viewers had little reference for "space". Silver spray paint on army surplus boots was pretty common, even in feature films. At least until Kubrick's 2001 increased consumer expectations.
The 1970s Battlestar Galactic had special effects and production values and plots that we laugh/cringe at today, however look at what was done with that remake.
Space 1999, U.F.O. (The British show).
Plus "The Starlost" (Canadian show), writer Harlan Ellison.
:-)
As a child I was a sucker for anything space related. Still am.
While Microsoft did port NT to those 3 CPUs you mention, ...
Actually MIPS was not a port. MIPS was the original development platform, one way to make sure its not x86 dependent, then x86 was added. NT was essentially developed on MIPS and x86 in parallel.
... they did not support it beyond getting the OS itself on them. Like Visual Studio - they did Intel only, ...
Actually Microsoft Word and Excel were PowerPC native. Adobe Photoshop too.
... and DEC had to support the Alpha version, and maybe NEC the MIPS one.
Alpha wasn't targeting consumers like PowerPC was. It was targeting servers and high end workstations, productivity apps weren't really needed.
What I suggested above was that had Microsoft made Windows 7 for the RISC versions - letting their memory requirements be 4GB or above - and put all their own major apps on that, they would have had a good chance of succeeding. Some of the Alphas of that time were equivalent to some of today's x64s, so given a 64-bit OS, that could have worked, and Alpha too would have gone towards reducing the power consumption.
The market had spoken long before Windows 7. The market wanted low cost and backwards compatibility.
As far as CHRP goes, the primary blame goes on IBM for failing to deliver on OS/2 for PowerPC. NT was never gonna be a primary driver for PowerPC, given that it was already there on MIPS and Alpha. CHRP was good as long as there was something to run on it, but Apple failed to deliver on Pink, Copeland or Gerschwin, and once they acquired NEXT, Steve recognized the futility of trying to go against Microsoft and canned Power Computing. So given that Apple wasn't committed to defining the standard, IBM should have done it w/ OS/2 on PPC. It would have enabled them to move both their hardware and software solutions to a single platform that they could brand all their own for the PC market.
I don't know, I think the market had spoken on OS/2 as well. I remember OS/2 2.0, it was amazing compared to its contemporary 16-bit Windows 3.1. Windows NT was still only in beta. And the market largely did not care, on a platform where OS/2 2.0 offered absolutely superb legacy support for existing Windows apps. Something one would not have under PowerPC. The only thing that made sense with respect to PowerPC would be a single platform able to run Windows NT and Mac OS. We already had a single platform for Windows NT and OS/2.
Because ransomware attacks are for money, and target business and in some cases government itself, and involve large numbers of people at once, surely it's NOT being treated as a local problem: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stori...
By different jurisdictions I am referring to different nations, places where the FBI would receive little to no cooperation.
And the NSA would love to be able to mail a ransomware operation to burnish its battered image. If it could do so, it would.
No. Why in the world would they potentially compromise their sources and methods on something as petty as ransomeware? The NSA is not law enforcement, they are in the intelligence gathering business. Discovering a petty criminal is something to note in their database, not do anything about.
>> That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Android users have no interest in Linux, do not even know it is there. The operating system these users care about is Android, and Linux
That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Windows users have no interest in Windows. They rather would like to get work done.
Actually they have an interest in Windows-based apps so they do have an interest in Windows. Note the negative reviews of Chromebooks, lots and lots of complaints about not being able to installed Windows apps.
And this tangent has little to do with the fact that nearly all Android users and developers don't care about Linux and Linux does little to let them get their work done. It simply hosts Android, the operating system that their apps run on, the apps that let users get things done. The "embedded" Linux vs desktop Windows comparison made earlier remains absurd.
We are looking at 30 years of shoddy software because of shoddy programmers outside of microsoft, 3rd party application and driver developers. Such can screw up any ecosystem. See Linux hosted Android for a modern incarnation of this phenomena.
To be fair to microsoft Windows NT was OK. Modern, capable, and one bad 3rd party driver away from disaster just like Linux and FreeBSD. I've been going the build-your-own route for my PCs for decades and I am somewhat picky about my parts, I've had pretty good luck with Windows and Linux. When running installers I tend to do a custom install and deselect the crapware and unnecessary stuff, when browser extensions are requested I say no.
MacOS X's stability is to a large degree due to a lack of such 3rd party drivers, an artifact of Apple having such tight control over the hardware and providing most drivers. An open architecture with expansion slots is both a blessing and a curse.
I remember in college where I struggled w/ Unix terminals, not knowing much more than ls. Using a NEXT in our Computer Center totally exposed the power of Unix for me.
My computer science department evolved out of the math department. While computer science degrees had been awarded for quite some time the CS department was organizationally a specialty within the math department. When CS became its own independent department in the 90s assets had to allocated. There was a fight over who would get the NeXT workstations and who would get "stuck" with the Sun workstations. Students and faculty loved NeXTSTEP and its development tools.
Microsoft did follow through on portability, the retail WinNT 4 CD had x86, MIPS, and PowerPC. Maybe Alpha but I think that may have been offered after launch day. WinNT was absolutely proven with respect to portability. Actually it was already proven, supporting MIPS and x86 from the beginning. NT 4 proved the "ease" at which new architectures could be supported.
If any corporation had a large part to play in failing to "level the microprocessor field" it was Apple. By failing to deliver CHRP, a PowerPC based motherboard capable of dual booting Windows NT and Mac OS there was no point to PowerPC Windows NT. Alpha performed better, x86 was less expensive.
As far as Alpha goes, few people needed the performance advantage.
And finally, hats off to Intel, they were absolutely miracle workers. The ability to keep x86 close to PowerPC was unexpected. Its not really that PowerPC failed to deliver on its expected performance, its really that no one ever imagined that Intel could get the x86 architecture to those performance levels. Yeah CISC is harder to work with than RISC, but with sufficient money to throw at the problem the difficulty can be overcome. Well, sort of, modern x86s are RISC at their core, the CISC instructions being translated to the RISC instructions on the fly and behind the scenes.
There are more Linux devices in the world than Windows devices ...
That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Android users have no interest in Linux, do not even know it is there. The operating system these users care about is Android, and Linux merely sits behind the scenes hosting Android. If Linux were to be replaced by BSD as Android's underlying host nearly zero Android users would know or care if told.
Even the vast majority of Android developers have no interest in the underlying Linux host. Linux does not compromise part of the Android API.
In comparison, people who are buying personal computers are expecting Windows. Hell, even many people buying Macs have some interest in Windows and dual boot.