There was an opportunity to try. It may even have been an opportunity to succeed, but we will likely never know, as we collectively took a different option.
The initial DDR4 models will be only marginal increases over DDR3, true. But remember how the original DDR3 models were only marginally better than DDR2, or even how some initial DDR2 modules were *worse* than DDR?
DDR3 is hitting a wall, where increasing the frequency any further is causing exponentially higher power usage and heat. I can't find any air-cooled DDR3-1866 or DDR3-2133 - every module I can find is water-cooled, because that's the only way to dissipate the heat. DDR4 begins at DDR4-2133, apparently without even needing a heat sink. And it's expected to scale to double those speeds, over time. And *those* you *can* upgrade - if you buy a DDR4-2133 device now, you can upgrade to DDR4-3200 or DDR4-4266 whenever you wish, if your memory controller supports it.
DDR4 is also making a rather significant shift in architecture, going from a dual/triple/quad-channel-memory paradigm to a point-to-point system. So better scalability with multiple modules.
Oh, and one quote cited a 40% decrease in power usage compared to an equivalent DDR3 module. That's hardly "slightly" lower.
This one is better. More expensive, true, but also better.
What do you mean, "better in what way"? What are you, a commie terrorist nazi baby-killer illegal immigrant or something? It's better. That's all you need to know, and probably all you're cleared to know. It's all very top-secret, classified, but just trust us that it's better, and that it's totally worth the cost. SUPPORT THE TROOPS! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Well, it *will* be aimed at China. It will also be aimed at North Korea, Iran, Russia, really any place that a) still has buildings to blow up and b) once looked at us funny.
Having RTFAd, the "hard way" boils down to... use Google Translate to access it.
How the hell does that qualify as "hard"? Or even, really, different from a proxy? I was using that exact* trick in fifth grade to get around stupid school filters (fun fact: blocking any page including the characters "xxx" makes it *really* hard to write a paper on Roman Numerals).
I was expecting something at least involving Tor or the like, or maybe some weird hosts file trick. Something actually, y'know, interesting.
* technically, it wasn't the "exact" same trick, as I was using Babelfish - I don't think Google Translate existed at the time - but it's close enough
Except that, as far as this civilian knows, pilots in the USAF are commissioned officers. So even if I did buy that "officers-only" argument (which I don't, unless you can provide some evidence), it still does not apply to this case.
If this is for your own, personal use, I can only recommend that you take a week or two (or a month, if you like) and try out as many new and interesting languages as you can, then decide for yourself which of them you liked best. There's literally dozens of languages people will recommend, and very few of them are going to be "wrong".
I'll note that members of the military are sworn to follow only lawful orders, and are likewise duty-bound to disobey unlawful orders.
One could definitely argue that while "fly this plane into extremely dangerous enemy territory and blow them up, we'll give you all the support we can but there's still pretty good odds you won't make it back" is a lawful order, "fly this plane on a routine practice mission over our own, undisputed territory, that's likely to kill you for no reason" is not. At the very least, you could argue that your death and the subsequent loss of the aircraft would amount to sabotage of America's defenses.
Or, you can contact a workshop with a machine, and have them make you a 3D printer, and then you use the 3D printer to make yourself a car, as well as whatever else you want.
Yes - at a time when the PS3 was literally being outsold by every other console on the market, including its predecessor. The Wii was outselling it four-to-one, and the 360 was peaking at three-to-one. Even the preceding PS2 was often outselling it *before* the new model.
Remember, back in '07, the PS3 showed every sign of dying, while even to this day the PS2 is the best-selling console of all time. Many were speculating that Sony would (or at the very least should) discontinue the PS3, cutting their losses, and instead rely on PS2 sales while readying a new next-gen console. It would have been a logical move, at least in the short-term.
Somehow, I doubt that's what's happening here. The iPad 3 is selling quite well - there's no fear that it will fail. The iPad 2 would do well as a low-end variant, as they're effectively cross-compatible.
You bring up some valid facts, but you fail to make any valid conclusions:
1) They *already* released the "successor" product. This would be like Sony releasing the PS4, then a few months later releasing a new model of the PS3. If you treat the products as strict successors, it makes no sense - why continue not just to manufacture obsolete hardware, but continue engineering work on it?
2) "Two models" is simple enough to not confuse even Apple users, and in fact aligns much better with Apple's other product lines - you have two laptops (the MacBook and MacBook Air), three desktops (the Mac Mini, the iMac, and the Mac Pro), three "current" iPhones (the 3, 4, and 4S are currently produced), and four iPods (Shuffle, Nano, Classic, Touch (although you could argue that the Touch is just a non-cellular iPhone)).
It's not confusing to customers to have a "cheap" and a "professional" set of products, each with a few permutations of simple options (3G or Wifi-only? 16GB, 32GB or 64GB?). Compare the number of tablets made by other vendors - Amazon has three Kindle models. Asus has so many tablets I can't even find an exact count.
3) It does indeed become cheaper to manufacture via continual die-shrinks. You get less die space, lower power usage, and less heat. But again, it only makes sense to improve a product if you intend to continue selling it.
If they're continuing to update the "old" iPad well after the "new" iPad came out, it seems logical to conclude that they intend to maintain two lines of iPads.
I can see some logic to this - the iPad 2 is becoming their "low-end" tablet, and the iPad 3 is becoming their "high-end" tablet. You'll note that the 32GB and 64GB iPad 2s were discontinued, but the 16GB (aka cheapest) models are still made. Most likely they'll keep trying to chip down the price of the iPad 2 to make it more competitive with the cheaper Android tablets, while producing higher-spec (and higher-price) iPad 3 models.
There's probably going to be some brand-shuffling going on. Most likely they'll rename them to "iPad" and "iPad Pro", mirroring their old MacBook / MacBook Pro branding.
And in any case, wouldn't it make more sense to make the *censorship* opt-in, rather than making the *porn* opt-in? After all, only 21% of the UK is under the age of 18 - even if you do buy into the argument that watching porn at 14 totally destroys your life, isn't it logical to make the default state match the significant majority, rather than a minority?
Unless, of course, you're a politician, CEO or other Important Person. Then you can pretty much get away with it with little more than a slap on the wrist and a tsk-tsk from the media.
DOSBox and Bochs are the only ones there that actually implement any non-trivial part of the x86 ISA. Notably, they are a) open-source, either GPL or LGPL, and b) the developers had no special access to any of the "APIs". All they stuff they used was open literature - and you can't sue someone for violating a license you didn't have on the "intellectual property".
VirtualBox, VirtualPC, and VMWare are all virtualizers - they *require* an Intel-compatible CPU to run. They do not implement any of the x86 instruction set (except as needed to trap restricted instructions and "emulate" them in software). Intel would be stupid to sue them, especially since their existence drives up the demand for Intel (and sometimes compatible) processors.
Uh, there's a reason many Linux/BSD distros refer to their x86-64 port as "AMD64" - AMD *invented* the 64-bit x86 extension. And they've always been just slightly ahead of the curve on multi-core - for quite some time, AMD had viable dual-core desktop processors while Intel's were nigh-unusable due to heat and performance.
And there's a reason many supercomputers are built around massive piles of Opterons - AMD makes a superior massive-number-crunching processor.
Not to mention that the classic Athlon was flat-out *better* than the Pentium III. Even as early as the K5, AMD had technically-superior designs held back by implementation issues. Just like Bulldozer, come to think of it. It's a very *interesting* design, and I'm not entirely convinced the rather obvious shortcomings are due to faulty design work, rather than faulty production work.
Oh, and the Fusion "APUs" are great low/middle-end laptop chips. Far, far better integrated graphics with comparable CPU performance and power draw, compared to Intel's offerings. If I were to buy a laptop for standard home usage, I'd grab one of those.
Then there's the whole graphics thing. Sure, you could argue that's more ATI than AMD, but they're definitely beating Intel in the graphics market, that's for sure.
I'm about to get a new laptop. As soon as I do, I'm going to be loading in the range of 300-600GB as fast as my connection will allow - probably 1-3 days, depending on how fast my off-peak bandwidth is. All entirely legal, from my Steam account and MSDNAA account, and at least one Linux distro to dual-boot.
All I have to say is thank GOD I don't have Comcast anymore. Verizon's cellular division is as bad as any other (worse, even, in some respects), but their fiber-to-the-home division hasn't yet given me any reason to complain.
But, for a grand enough definition of "grand scheme of things", your entire life is irrelevant. The history books will forget you, no matter how important, after enough millennia. And I'm pretty sure the rotation of the galaxy cares not one whit for the combined accomplishments (to date) of the entire human race.
So, in the end, who cares for the grand scheme of things? As long as it's relevant to you, it's relevant enough.
Personally, I have an OpenBSD box (normally my experimental-server-slash-tertiary-backup-desktop, currently my experimental-server-slash-secondary-backup-desktop, as my primary-desktop is currently my primary-doorstop). And I haven't updated it since... 4.6? 4.8? Can't be assed to ssh in and check. So 5.1 isn't important to me, but OpenBSD itself somewhat is.
Current ones, maybe. You could cast one of the old Nokias (the old, phone-shaped ones) into Mt. Doom and it would still work (although I bet Mordor gets pretty bad reception).
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There was an opportunity to try. It may even have been an opportunity to succeed, but we will likely never know, as we collectively took a different option.
The initial DDR4 models will be only marginal increases over DDR3, true. But remember how the original DDR3 models were only marginally better than DDR2, or even how some initial DDR2 modules were *worse* than DDR?
DDR3 is hitting a wall, where increasing the frequency any further is causing exponentially higher power usage and heat. I can't find any air-cooled DDR3-1866 or DDR3-2133 - every module I can find is water-cooled, because that's the only way to dissipate the heat. DDR4 begins at DDR4-2133, apparently without even needing a heat sink. And it's expected to scale to double those speeds, over time. And *those* you *can* upgrade - if you buy a DDR4-2133 device now, you can upgrade to DDR4-3200 or DDR4-4266 whenever you wish, if your memory controller supports it.
DDR4 is also making a rather significant shift in architecture, going from a dual/triple/quad-channel-memory paradigm to a point-to-point system. So better scalability with multiple modules.
Oh, and one quote cited a 40% decrease in power usage compared to an equivalent DDR3 module. That's hardly "slightly" lower.
This one is better. More expensive, true, but also better.
What do you mean, "better in what way"? What are you, a commie terrorist nazi baby-killer illegal immigrant or something? It's better. That's all you need to know, and probably all you're cleared to know. It's all very top-secret, classified, but just trust us that it's better, and that it's totally worth the cost. SUPPORT THE TROOPS! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Well, it *will* be aimed at China. It will also be aimed at North Korea, Iran, Russia, really any place that a) still has buildings to blow up and b) once looked at us funny.
All of the above.
Having RTFAd, the "hard way" boils down to... use Google Translate to access it.
How the hell does that qualify as "hard"? Or even, really, different from a proxy? I was using that exact* trick in fifth grade to get around stupid school filters (fun fact: blocking any page including the characters "xxx" makes it *really* hard to write a paper on Roman Numerals).
I was expecting something at least involving Tor or the like, or maybe some weird hosts file trick. Something actually, y'know, interesting.
* technically, it wasn't the "exact" same trick, as I was using Babelfish - I don't think Google Translate existed at the time - but it's close enough
Except that, as far as this civilian knows, pilots in the USAF are commissioned officers. So even if I did buy that "officers-only" argument (which I don't, unless you can provide some evidence), it still does not apply to this case.
If this is for your own, personal use, I can only recommend that you take a week or two (or a month, if you like) and try out as many new and interesting languages as you can, then decide for yourself which of them you liked best. There's literally dozens of languages people will recommend, and very few of them are going to be "wrong".
Precisely.
I'll note that members of the military are sworn to follow only lawful orders, and are likewise duty-bound to disobey unlawful orders.
One could definitely argue that while "fly this plane into extremely dangerous enemy territory and blow them up, we'll give you all the support we can but there's still pretty good odds you won't make it back" is a lawful order, "fly this plane on a routine practice mission over our own, undisputed territory, that's likely to kill you for no reason" is not. At the very least, you could argue that your death and the subsequent loss of the aircraft would amount to sabotage of America's defenses.
Or, you can contact a workshop with a machine, and have them make you a 3D printer, and then you use the 3D printer to make yourself a car, as well as whatever else you want.
Yes - at a time when the PS3 was literally being outsold by every other console on the market, including its predecessor. The Wii was outselling it four-to-one, and the 360 was peaking at three-to-one. Even the preceding PS2 was often outselling it *before* the new model.
Remember, back in '07, the PS3 showed every sign of dying, while even to this day the PS2 is the best-selling console of all time. Many were speculating that Sony would (or at the very least should) discontinue the PS3, cutting their losses, and instead rely on PS2 sales while readying a new next-gen console. It would have been a logical move, at least in the short-term.
Somehow, I doubt that's what's happening here. The iPad 3 is selling quite well - there's no fear that it will fail. The iPad 2 would do well as a low-end variant, as they're effectively cross-compatible.
You bring up some valid facts, but you fail to make any valid conclusions:
1) They *already* released the "successor" product. This would be like Sony releasing the PS4, then a few months later releasing a new model of the PS3. If you treat the products as strict successors, it makes no sense - why continue not just to manufacture obsolete hardware, but continue engineering work on it?
2) "Two models" is simple enough to not confuse even Apple users, and in fact aligns much better with Apple's other product lines - you have two laptops (the MacBook and MacBook Air), three desktops (the Mac Mini, the iMac, and the Mac Pro), three "current" iPhones (the 3, 4, and 4S are currently produced), and four iPods (Shuffle, Nano, Classic, Touch (although you could argue that the Touch is just a non-cellular iPhone)).
It's not confusing to customers to have a "cheap" and a "professional" set of products, each with a few permutations of simple options (3G or Wifi-only? 16GB, 32GB or 64GB?). Compare the number of tablets made by other vendors - Amazon has three Kindle models. Asus has so many tablets I can't even find an exact count.
3) It does indeed become cheaper to manufacture via continual die-shrinks. You get less die space, lower power usage, and less heat. But again, it only makes sense to improve a product if you intend to continue selling it.
If they're continuing to update the "old" iPad well after the "new" iPad came out, it seems logical to conclude that they intend to maintain two lines of iPads.
I can see some logic to this - the iPad 2 is becoming their "low-end" tablet, and the iPad 3 is becoming their "high-end" tablet. You'll note that the 32GB and 64GB iPad 2s were discontinued, but the 16GB (aka cheapest) models are still made. Most likely they'll keep trying to chip down the price of the iPad 2 to make it more competitive with the cheaper Android tablets, while producing higher-spec (and higher-price) iPad 3 models.
There's probably going to be some brand-shuffling going on. Most likely they'll rename them to "iPad" and "iPad Pro", mirroring their old MacBook / MacBook Pro branding.
[citation needed]
And in any case, wouldn't it make more sense to make the *censorship* opt-in, rather than making the *porn* opt-in? After all, only 21% of the UK is under the age of 18 - even if you do buy into the argument that watching porn at 14 totally destroys your life, isn't it logical to make the default state match the significant majority, rather than a minority?
I.... I don't actually know what a carburetor is.
I had to try three times just to get spell-check to correct it properly.
Unless, of course, you're a politician, CEO or other Important Person. Then you can pretty much get away with it with little more than a slap on the wrist and a tsk-tsk from the media.
What we need is a professional, full-time expert in car metaphors, who can go before the court and say "This case here is like a carburetor..."
DOSBox and Bochs are the only ones there that actually implement any non-trivial part of the x86 ISA. Notably, they are a) open-source, either GPL or LGPL, and b) the developers had no special access to any of the "APIs". All they stuff they used was open literature - and you can't sue someone for violating a license you didn't have on the "intellectual property".
VirtualBox, VirtualPC, and VMWare are all virtualizers - they *require* an Intel-compatible CPU to run. They do not implement any of the x86 instruction set (except as needed to trap restricted instructions and "emulate" them in software). Intel would be stupid to sue them, especially since their existence drives up the demand for Intel (and sometimes compatible) processors.
Uh, there's a reason many Linux/BSD distros refer to their x86-64 port as "AMD64" - AMD *invented* the 64-bit x86 extension. And they've always been just slightly ahead of the curve on multi-core - for quite some time, AMD had viable dual-core desktop processors while Intel's were nigh-unusable due to heat and performance.
And there's a reason many supercomputers are built around massive piles of Opterons - AMD makes a superior massive-number-crunching processor.
Not to mention that the classic Athlon was flat-out *better* than the Pentium III. Even as early as the K5, AMD had technically-superior designs held back by implementation issues. Just like Bulldozer, come to think of it. It's a very *interesting* design, and I'm not entirely convinced the rather obvious shortcomings are due to faulty design work, rather than faulty production work.
Oh, and the Fusion "APUs" are great low/middle-end laptop chips. Far, far better integrated graphics with comparable CPU performance and power draw, compared to Intel's offerings. If I were to buy a laptop for standard home usage, I'd grab one of those.
Then there's the whole graphics thing. Sure, you could argue that's more ATI than AMD, but they're definitely beating Intel in the graphics market, that's for sure.
I'm about to get a new laptop. As soon as I do, I'm going to be loading in the range of 300-600GB as fast as my connection will allow - probably 1-3 days, depending on how fast my off-peak bandwidth is. All entirely legal, from my Steam account and MSDNAA account, and at least one Linux distro to dual-boot.
All I have to say is thank GOD I don't have Comcast anymore. Verizon's cellular division is as bad as any other (worse, even, in some respects), but their fiber-to-the-home division hasn't yet given me any reason to complain.
In the Grand Scheme of Things? No.
But, for a grand enough definition of "grand scheme of things", your entire life is irrelevant. The history books will forget you, no matter how important, after enough millennia. And I'm pretty sure the rotation of the galaxy cares not one whit for the combined accomplishments (to date) of the entire human race.
So, in the end, who cares for the grand scheme of things? As long as it's relevant to you, it's relevant enough.
Personally, I have an OpenBSD box (normally my experimental-server-slash-tertiary-backup-desktop, currently my experimental-server-slash-secondary-backup-desktop, as my primary-desktop is currently my primary-doorstop). And I haven't updated it since... 4.6? 4.8? Can't be assed to ssh in and check. So 5.1 isn't important to me, but OpenBSD itself somewhat is.
Bigger? Perhaps. More evil? Not a chance in hell.
Libraries of Congress per car analogy.
Current ones, maybe. You could cast one of the old Nokias (the old, phone-shaped ones) into Mt. Doom and it would still work (although I bet Mordor gets pretty bad reception).
Hey! "Indestructible" is a quality.