I'd say just the opposite, that the PDA features that Apple has been grudgingly adding to the iPod over the past few years are Jobs' admittance that people want a PDA. Remember, many of the PDA-like features that you mentioned started out as third party hacks that were rolled into the official firmware after Apple realized that the features were actually useful. I'm willing to bet that in a few years, there's going to be an iPod 3 or whatever that has an optional keyboard you can plug in so that you can manage your ever-growing contact info. The spirit of the newton will be there, it just won't be called that because of Jobs' immense ego^Wvision.
Bluetooth won't kill the PAN, in fact, I'd be one to argue that ditching bluetooth will increase the viability of the PAN. Add technologies such as Zeroconf to an 802.11[a,g,a+g], and suddenly, you have enough bandwidth to stream cd-quality music to your wireless headphones, while surfing the net on your PDA/info device. Really, the only interesting bits of bluetooth is that bluetooth devices pretty much know how to talk to each other out of the box. As that technology can be duplicated using faster connections, there's really little to no reason to keep around bluetooth.
An be stuck with an ugly-ass, expensive machine that is slower in integer performance (you know, the stuff that people actually do on a regular basis), than a comparably priced x86 box? Yeah, part of the problem is that windows doesn't know how to properly allocate resources, but that comes partially from the fact that PCs are designed to mold to what you need, instead of marching lockstep to what herr Jobs says you should think.
Currently contemplating setting the mac I've got upstairs on fire. If you want, I'll send you the slag once I've done it.
I work with a dual 500mhz G4 with 1 G of memory. A Video of any length (currently working with a 5 hour video) rarely pushes the memory usage more than 75%.
I do however regularly grind the processors to 100% of long periods of time, 5-6 hours typical.
The issue with your memory usage is the fact that the program is internally swapping that memory in and out, adding to your CPU load as it has to fetch part of the file from the hard drive, and then bring it into main memory so it can actually use it. Thus, going to 64 bits and greater memory, even with all else the same, can most likely cause your CPU load to drop when using memory-intensive programs. It's not much CPU load, but it's still there, and can make the process a bit friendlier.
I can only guess that mmap(2) is some kind of memory handle or something similar in c or c++
Yeah, mmap is a function that binds some other item, like I/O or disk space to memory.
Yes, in many cases, an app running with >4GB RAM can be made to be run in a 1GB memory space, but at the cost of efficiency. You've got to run your own swapping and virtual memory management routines so that the massive dataset can actually be used. And before you say you can't think of an app off hand that would benefit the common person, imagine how much nicer it would be to have faster random access when dealing with the 20gigs of uncompressed footage you shot using your video camera. Suddenly, 64 bit memory access starts making sense, non?
Uh, desktop video perhaps? Making it so that you can record and edit a decent amount of movie footage with the entire movie in memory so that there is little to no perceivable lag in playback.
Similar cases can head down to the filesystem level. Set up your entire hard disk as one large virtual memory subsystem so that any action is just an mmap(2) away. Seems to me it would make programs a lot simpler, as many file operations would be able to be handled by easier to use memory management operations instead.
I work for a webhosting provider, and occasionally get a call from someone who is wondering why the keyword-based spam filters occasionally "break". Almost inevitably, when I look at these messages, I notice exactly like what you're talking about. They're almost always embedded in HTML comments, so HTML-based email programs like outlook merrily display the messages, and the recipient is left wondering why their spam filters stopped working.
Course the other trick I've noticed lately is that spammers have begun using accented characters when dealing with "forbidden" words, to further attempt to circumvent spam filters. Gods, why can't the spammer types just stop trying to circumvent filters. Don't they realize that the people who filter probably don't want their messages?
Daily new patches? I'm sorry, but unless you're running every server program imaginable, you don't need to patch daily. Keeping a good, stable install, OTOH, with software like qmail, one can have a nice stable reliable OS that has great security. And aren't windows updates pay as you go as well, or is there some place I could have upgraded my copy of NT 4 to XP without paying a dime?
What's going to happen is that the programs are being taken apart so that they're smaller, faster, etc. Work's being done so that the mail component can act as a "plugin" for the browser. Don't have a link handy -- it's 5:40am, and I need to get to bed -- but they're working on that front. A small, quick browser for most people is extremely sexy, especially considering that most people browse more than check email.
Ah, but there's a difference. For the price of an apple box, I can get a dual Athlon64 mobo and CPUs, buy the extension cables to place the system in the closet where the noise is not noticable, and use the leftover money to have a few rather good nights on the town. Personally, I think that partying is a rather good reason to buy x86, don't you
NTFS does have write support in 2.6, it's limited to write operations that don't change filesize, but it is extant. Problem with full NTFS write support is that NTFS is totally undocumented and internally evil, requiring massive time and effort to write a compatible layer that can create and resize files. Now, were MS to write a spec on how NTFS was put together, the kernel developers would more than likely have a much easier time writing a driver for it. Course, that doesn't seem too likely given Redmond's track record.
Sounds like standard legal boilerplate to me. If you listen to pretty much any radio commercial for financial services, they all say to a greater or lesser degree that you can lose everything, so don't go crying to mommy if our company explodes in a firey ball of pink slips tomorrow and our ceos take the next jet to the south pacific. Yeah, the language is a bit more gloom and doom than the traditional stock market warning, but not by all that much.
Well, logically, a frozen system is a paragon of stability. Regardless of the network packet, regardless of the keyboard input, it retains the same usability, and the same functionality. In entropic terms, it's at its natural state, the lowest stable energy level. It is the act of booting that makes a system unstable, and the system's crashes and segfaults are the results of the machine working to return to this natural, stable state.
The one size fits all, reuse as much UI as possible approach may break down slightly inasmuch as individual apps are not quite as powerful as they could possibly be, but the experience for the typical user is greatly improved by the fact that the email program, the web browser, and the calendaring app are all similar enough that someone can walk in, and with minimal familiarity with the programs, and obtain a reasonable degree of functionality by just learning the interface quirks of one program. Yes, the upper end is affected slightly by the fact that the app isn't as "powerful" as it could be, but for most people, familiarity is much more important than power.
Besides, the mozilla team has a framework for dealing with any deficiencies the one size fits all approach provides. The xpi/xul plugin framework for creating plugins and apps that create cross-platform plugins that work seamlessly beats the tar out of anything I've seen from the Microsoft camp in terms of browser development.
Hrnn, considering that all of the non-browser components of mozilla are optional installs, that doesn't sound like bloat to me. The useful thing about mozilla is that it offers all of these pieces, but at the same time, doesn't cram them down your throat.
And your lame arguement that one project can't produce quality on more than one front doesn't hold water either. Or do Apple, MS, et al suck as well? After all, they've got developers working on more than one project at any given time.
Because many new viruses have their own internal SMTP engines. Yeah, the virus has to execute, but it's possible for viruses to masquerade as another process, or do some sneaky dll hijacking. If you don't trust the AV software, then use another program. Course, if you believe that the AV software is scanning your emails to report back to the mothership, I've got some lovely headgear for you, made from the finest aluminum.
Sort of like how Jobs copied countless other online music purchasing systems, non? Face it, everyone copies from everyone. Period. Linux copies from Windows, Windows copies from OS X, OS X copies from Linux, the process is eternal, as everyone looks at what everyone else does, and does the next logical step in the next product line refresh/upgrade.
Additionally, don't knock cheap PCs. A $2000 system isn't for everyone, period. A $1000 system isn't for everyone, either. Some people just need a simple machine that doesn't offer all of the bells and whistles of the latest and greatest. Just like a BMW is a nice car, for a large swath of the market, a little Nissan is just as practical, and a hell of a lot cheaper. Quit being such an elitist asshole, and give some reasonable suggestions for actually fixing the PC market, mmmkay?
It also take many, many months to negotiate with record company execs for such an ambitious project. Time that could have been spent getting a development team together and writing the windows software.
The issue with hyperthreading's performance drop comes from the fact that both logical threads are contending for the same cache. Thus, code has to be rewritten in an HT-equipped machine to only use half the cache it normally would take. Thus, in your typical 512k cache machine, you've got to profile your loops, etc, so that it only uses half that cache. The typical program is not written with specific requirements on how much cache they use, thus they throw as much data as possible into cache, causing the two logical threads to fight over the cache, degrading performance. Pretty much any program will act this way, unless compilers get smart enough to have compile-time control of a cache model so that one can recompile everything to take advantage of HT.
Dude, it's called freedom of speech, not freedom from speech. They have every right to broadcast their message. If you don't like it, then take a different route, or god forbid, move to a place where you don't have churches every three blocks. Or do like you said before, and put up signs stating that there is no god.
Goddammit, sometimes, I swear that some atheists are just as religious as the stereotypical southern baptist bible thumper.
Intel's got a similar program for their IA-32 processors. Don't have the link handy for it, but google for it, and you'll find something. It's a move that makes a lot of sense -- give away the optimization guides, and you reap what you sow in programs that benchmark faster, etc.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are going to want a good 64 bit laptop. And they're going to get them next week, when some innovative company releases the first mass-market 64 bit computers designed for the mobile market. Probably be price competetive with current x86 laptops too.
Or, head to $GIANT_COMPUTER_STORE and pick up an OEM copy of XP and a hard drive. $GIANT_COMPUTER_STORE always has some version of last year's drive available for $40-$60, which means not only are you saving money, you're getting extra storage space, too.
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I'd say just the opposite, that the PDA features that Apple has been grudgingly adding to the iPod over the past few years are Jobs' admittance that people want a PDA. Remember, many of the PDA-like features that you mentioned started out as third party hacks that were rolled into the official firmware after Apple realized that the features were actually useful. I'm willing to bet that in a few years, there's going to be an iPod 3 or whatever that has an optional keyboard you can plug in so that you can manage your ever-growing contact info. The spirit of the newton will be there, it just won't be called that because of Jobs' immense ego^Wvision.
Bluetooth won't kill the PAN, in fact, I'd be one to argue that ditching bluetooth will increase the viability of the PAN. Add technologies such as Zeroconf to an 802.11[a,g,a+g], and suddenly, you have enough bandwidth to stream cd-quality music to your wireless headphones, while surfing the net on your PDA/info device. Really, the only interesting bits of bluetooth is that bluetooth devices pretty much know how to talk to each other out of the box. As that technology can be duplicated using faster connections, there's really little to no reason to keep around bluetooth.
Currently contemplating setting the mac I've got upstairs on fire. If you want, I'll send you the slag once I've done it.
The issue with your memory usage is the fact that the program is internally swapping that memory in and out, adding to your CPU load as it has to fetch part of the file from the hard drive, and then bring it into main memory so it can actually use it. Thus, going to 64 bits and greater memory, even with all else the same, can most likely cause your CPU load to drop when using memory-intensive programs. It's not much CPU load, but it's still there, and can make the process a bit friendlier.
Yeah, mmap is a function that binds some other item, like I/O or disk space to memory.Yes, in many cases, an app running with >4GB RAM can be made to be run in a 1GB memory space, but at the cost of efficiency. You've got to run your own swapping and virtual memory management routines so that the massive dataset can actually be used. And before you say you can't think of an app off hand that would benefit the common person, imagine how much nicer it would be to have faster random access when dealing with the 20gigs of uncompressed footage you shot using your video camera. Suddenly, 64 bit memory access starts making sense, non?
Similar cases can head down to the filesystem level. Set up your entire hard disk as one large virtual memory subsystem so that any action is just an mmap(2) away. Seems to me it would make programs a lot simpler, as many file operations would be able to be handled by easier to use memory management operations instead.
Course the other trick I've noticed lately is that spammers have begun using accented characters when dealing with "forbidden" words, to further attempt to circumvent spam filters. Gods, why can't the spammer types just stop trying to circumvent filters. Don't they realize that the people who filter probably don't want their messages?
Daily new patches? I'm sorry, but unless you're running every server program imaginable, you don't need to patch daily. Keeping a good, stable install, OTOH, with software like qmail, one can have a nice stable reliable OS that has great security. And aren't windows updates pay as you go as well, or is there some place I could have upgraded my copy of NT 4 to XP without paying a dime?
What's going to happen is that the programs are being taken apart so that they're smaller, faster, etc. Work's being done so that the mail component can act as a "plugin" for the browser. Don't have a link handy -- it's 5:40am, and I need to get to bed -- but they're working on that front. A small, quick browser for most people is extremely sexy, especially considering that most people browse more than check email.
Ah, but there's a difference. For the price of an apple box, I can get a dual Athlon64 mobo and CPUs, buy the extension cables to place the system in the closet where the noise is not noticable, and use the leftover money to have a few rather good nights on the town. Personally, I think that partying is a rather good reason to buy x86, don't you
NTFS does have write support in 2.6, it's limited to write operations that don't change filesize, but it is extant. Problem with full NTFS write support is that NTFS is totally undocumented and internally evil, requiring massive time and effort to write a compatible layer that can create and resize files. Now, were MS to write a spec on how NTFS was put together, the kernel developers would more than likely have a much easier time writing a driver for it. Course, that doesn't seem too likely given Redmond's track record.
Sounds like standard legal boilerplate to me. If you listen to pretty much any radio commercial for financial services, they all say to a greater or lesser degree that you can lose everything, so don't go crying to mommy if our company explodes in a firey ball of pink slips tomorrow and our ceos take the next jet to the south pacific. Yeah, the language is a bit more gloom and doom than the traditional stock market warning, but not by all that much.
Well, logically, a frozen system is a paragon of stability. Regardless of the network packet, regardless of the keyboard input, it retains the same usability, and the same functionality. In entropic terms, it's at its natural state, the lowest stable energy level. It is the act of booting that makes a system unstable, and the system's crashes and segfaults are the results of the machine working to return to this natural, stable state.
A browser available for the sexy SGI box I've got. :3
Besides, the mozilla team has a framework for dealing with any deficiencies the one size fits all approach provides. The xpi/xul plugin framework for creating plugins and apps that create cross-platform plugins that work seamlessly beats the tar out of anything I've seen from the Microsoft camp in terms of browser development.
And your lame arguement that one project can't produce quality on more than one front doesn't hold water either. Or do Apple, MS, et al suck as well? After all, they've got developers working on more than one project at any given time.
Because many new viruses have their own internal SMTP engines. Yeah, the virus has to execute, but it's possible for viruses to masquerade as another process, or do some sneaky dll hijacking. If you don't trust the AV software, then use another program. Course, if you believe that the AV software is scanning your emails to report back to the mothership, I've got some lovely headgear for you, made from the finest aluminum.
Additionally, don't knock cheap PCs. A $2000 system isn't for everyone, period. A $1000 system isn't for everyone, either. Some people just need a simple machine that doesn't offer all of the bells and whistles of the latest and greatest. Just like a BMW is a nice car, for a large swath of the market, a little Nissan is just as practical, and a hell of a lot cheaper. Quit being such an elitist asshole, and give some reasonable suggestions for actually fixing the PC market, mmmkay?
It also take many, many months to negotiate with record company execs for such an ambitious project. Time that could have been spent getting a development team together and writing the windows software.
ACLs aren't just limited to XFS. ext2/3 has had ACLs for years, with support being rolled into the kernel proper with 2.6.
The issue with hyperthreading's performance drop comes from the fact that both logical threads are contending for the same cache. Thus, code has to be rewritten in an HT-equipped machine to only use half the cache it normally would take. Thus, in your typical 512k cache machine, you've got to profile your loops, etc, so that it only uses half that cache. The typical program is not written with specific requirements on how much cache they use, thus they throw as much data as possible into cache, causing the two logical threads to fight over the cache, degrading performance. Pretty much any program will act this way, unless compilers get smart enough to have compile-time control of a cache model so that one can recompile everything to take advantage of HT.
Goddammit, sometimes, I swear that some atheists are just as religious as the stereotypical southern baptist bible thumper.
Intel's got a similar program for their IA-32 processors. Don't have the link handy for it, but google for it, and you'll find something. It's a move that makes a lot of sense -- give away the optimization guides, and you reap what you sow in programs that benchmark faster, etc.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are going to want a good 64 bit laptop. And they're going to get them next week, when some innovative company releases the first mass-market 64 bit computers designed for the mobile market. Probably be price competetive with current x86 laptops too.
Or, head to $GIANT_COMPUTER_STORE and pick up an OEM copy of XP and a hard drive. $GIANT_COMPUTER_STORE always has some version of last year's drive available for $40-$60, which means not only are you saving money, you're getting extra storage space, too.