I most certainly agree: All Windoze machines I have run Windows NT or XP Professional. Never XP Home: It's simply missing too many features. (Especially when one considers that even Microsoft admits that XP Home doesn't fully support preemptive multitasking and protected memory!)
You did precisely the mistake to which he was refering: The G5 FPUs can perform a "fused, multipl[y]-add operation per cycle, so you get 2 flops per cycle" per processor. Therefore:
2 FPUs/ CPU * _2_ floating point operation per cycle per FPU = _4_ flop per CPU per cycle _4_ flop per CPU per cycle * 2 Gcycles per second = _8_ Gflops per CPU _8_ Gflop/s per CPU * 2 CPU per machine = _16_ Gflop/s per machine
Grant Elliott (keysdezes@hotmail.com) states:
As an analogy, I use the Second Ammendment.... People argue that they have the right to own a gun becuase of the Second Ammendment. Where are the Redcoats and the revolutions in the country-side? The Second Ammendment starts by stating that it exists becuase a millia is necessary....
The second amendment does state:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
However, if you check into the history of this, and other Bill of Rights amendments, you will find that they were written more to defend the states, and their citizens, from the new Federal Government than to defend them against England, or any other external threat---the founders were rather paranoid about the potential dangers of governments (after all, they had seen first hand what their former government had done).
To tie this back to the topic on hand. This same paranoia is the reason for the fourth amendment against unreasonable search and seizure (which does use the "upon probable cause" criteria---though it goes on to state that the warrant must be "supported by oath or affirmation" [not that that means much anymore], and that the warrant must "particularly [describe] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized").
I absolutely agree---Microsoft, its shareholders, the tax payers, and Microsoft's customers all win with a breakup along product lines (a structural solution), vs. the kind of regulation and oversight that would be needed (the needed behavioral solution). This is especially true since such a breakup will free up the resulting parts to actually innovate, rather than always having to shore up barriers to entry. For instance, the application software portion will finally have incentive to broaden the choice of systems upon which their products run, and the OS portion will have a greater incentive to support a broader variety of processors. (Unfortunately, this is not necessarily good for the OSS/Linux communities, but I see it as good for the industry in general---especially since it should help bring back competition upon merit, rather than marketing alone.)
My fear is that we will, again, get an insufficient behavioral remedy that will ultimately hurt the industry---especially since we will find ourselves back in court in a few years.
I'm especially concerned about Microsoft's ability to erect barriers to entry (or, rather, barriers to exit [for application software getting off Windows, onto other platforms])---as illustrated by its machinations against alternate browsers and Java.
I have been contemplating an idea, for the past decade, or so, that would provide all the claimed benefits of Java's "write once, run anywhere" without the performance penalties, or restriction to, essentially, one language. The idea is to bring back innovation in hardware (and OS) by eliminating the "chicken and egg" problem. (Even Intel would welcome being freed from the IA-32 [x86 compatible instruction set].)
Unfortunately, I'm concerned that Microsoft's power is too great. That a realization of this idea will be squashed before it has a viable chance to take hold. I certainly have nowhere near the power and resources of even Sun, let alone Microsoft.
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I most certainly agree: All Windoze machines I have run Windows NT or XP Professional. Never XP Home: It's simply missing too many features. (Especially when one considers that even Microsoft admits that XP Home doesn't fully support preemptive multitasking and protected memory!)
Yes! A 23", High Def. (1920 X 1200) version, with an HDTV tuner (FireWire, or, even better, built in) will do the trick for me. :-)
You did precisely the mistake to which he was refering: The G5 FPUs can perform a "fused, multipl[y]-add operation per cycle, so you get 2 flops per cycle" per processor. Therefore:
2 FPUs/ CPU * _2_ floating point operation per cycle per FPU = _4_ flop per CPU per cycle
_4_ flop per CPU per cycle * 2 Gcycles per second = _8_ Gflops per CPU
_8_ Gflop/s per CPU * 2 CPU per machine = _16_ Gflop/s per machine
The second amendment does state: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
However, if you check into the history of this, and other Bill of Rights amendments, you will find that they were written more to defend the states, and their citizens, from the new Federal Government than to defend them against England, or any other external threat---the founders were rather paranoid about the potential dangers of governments (after all, they had seen first hand what their former government had done).
To tie this back to the topic on hand. This same paranoia is the reason for the fourth amendment against unreasonable search and seizure (which does use the "upon probable cause" criteria---though it goes on to state that the warrant must be "supported by oath or affirmation" [not that that means much anymore], and that the warrant must "particularly [describe] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized").
Moderate this UP!
I absolutely agree---Microsoft, its shareholders, the tax payers, and Microsoft's customers all win with a breakup along product lines (a structural solution), vs. the kind of regulation and oversight that would be needed (the needed behavioral solution). This is especially true since such a breakup will free up the resulting parts to actually innovate, rather than always having to shore up barriers to entry. For instance, the application software portion will finally have incentive to broaden the choice of systems upon which their products run, and the OS portion will have a greater incentive to support a broader variety of processors. (Unfortunately, this is not necessarily good for the OSS/Linux communities, but I see it as good for the industry in general---especially since it should help bring back competition upon merit, rather than marketing alone.)
My fear is that we will, again, get an insufficient behavioral remedy that will ultimately hurt the industry---especially since we will find ourselves back in court in a few years.
I'm especially concerned about Microsoft's ability to erect barriers to entry (or, rather, barriers to exit [for application software getting off Windows, onto other platforms])---as illustrated by its machinations against alternate browsers and Java.
I have been contemplating an idea, for the past decade, or so, that would provide all the claimed benefits of Java's "write once, run anywhere" without the performance penalties, or restriction to, essentially, one language. The idea is to bring back innovation in hardware (and OS) by eliminating the "chicken and egg" problem. (Even Intel would welcome being freed from the IA-32 [x86 compatible instruction set].)
Unfortunately, I'm concerned that Microsoft's power is too great. That a realization of this idea will be squashed before it has a viable chance to take hold. I certainly have nowhere near the power and resources of even Sun, let alone Microsoft.