3 jobs back (oooh, 1998-ish) every friday afternoon at 4:30 I and some mates at work would down tools and have a "web treasure-hunt". Someone not playing would shout out an off-the-wall topic which we would all have to search for, and the race was on. Almost always it was for images.
I almost always won and I used Lynx. I only popped open a graphical browser as a last resort.
Since then I met my "blind" girlfriend who is consistantly faster than me in finding information on the Web. (she uses lynx too).
The Lotus Elise doesn't have carpets or decorative fittings. That's the "sporty" way. Lynx is the same. And it's not necessarily to do with being blind or not.
My "registered blind" girlfriend (who can see enough to survive without a white stick or anything) always uses Lynx (in 80x25 text mode on a 21" monitor with her face 8" from the screen.
Therefore she only uses the ALT tags, as there aren't any images, and can't be any images.
However for the truly blind, the web is often "viewed" using a speech synthesiser.
There are also Braille interfaces too, but they are a mechanical add-on, but a speech interface is simply software and a standard soundcard.
Watching her browse, I've learned that "Image 384x240 32K" is a totally useless ALT tag.
a) The site isn't a simple hierarchy of pages which can just be done one at a time, but is database driven, and there's no provision for the design of the database to be augmented with this new feature.
b) They only deal in years and millions, they are unable to charge less or make it quicker.
Either way makes IBM look bad in my eyes.
However, if the original requirements document did _not_ include the need for or capability to support ALT tags, then IBM are the teflon men. Otherwise, they should be standing in the dock, and doing the whole thing _tomorrow_ for _free_.
"
And before the left wing around here goes after me with pitch forks and flaming torches,...
"
Nice image.
As one of the most "left wing" people I've seen on Slashdot (but still a very pragmatic one, a "free market socialist" to be more precise) I'm glad to let you know that the non-loony left (probably) agree with you.
"
Wasn't there a discussion a while back concerning the effects of English on programming? Most languages I've seen (well, all the ones that are'nt assembler!) use English keywords. Why is that?:)
"
Because you've never seen APL.
"
People will probably try to say that the 'net is a great democritizer, but remember that the Chinese government censors the net at the backbone!
"
The telephone is hard to censor. The company paying me as I post this is rolling out telephony access multiplexers (i.e. telephones for a whole village) by the bucketload to China at the moment. As long as you only want low speed comms, then an old 2400 modem will do the job, and is impossible to censor. Unless the government resorts to the same technique as used Berlusconi's government in Italy in 1994. He didn't like one of the minority political parties, so he sent the police in to raid their headquarters and the addresses of their registered members and confiscated Computers, Modems and Telephones.
So don't think the "Western world" is so much more advanced in these matters.
(I guess the outside world probably never heard about this as Berlusconi controlled about 70% of the Italian Media too.)
I think you've missed the point of this technology.
This uses the dynamics of the whole piece to fingerprint the piece, the details aren't important. i.e. everyones copy of Achy Breaky Heart will have the same finger print. So whoeverer made the.mp3 is not known or knowable.
There are other "fingerprinting" technologies which do what you say though, but they are not totally effective.
Great summary.
Whilst device penetration is huge, and ARM-powered machines from thousands of vendors, the other impressive thing is the range of licencing partners ARM have had. It's not just Digital (thence Intel), they've been in bed with other huge uP and DSP companies. For instance they had a cut-down ARM called Thumb, which was used as the master processor on things such as the Texas Instruments 7000/AV processor family - a tru multimedia chip which included several DSPs on one slab of silicon. TI could do _anything_ they want in-house - but no, they knew they'd not be able to improve on the off-the-shelf ARM core. Impressive.
The wizzy feature that this "new microarchitecture" has seems to be no cleverer than the power/performance management which AMD already have in their chips.
It seems as if the processor (rather than PM) architecture is unchanged from the ARM core, yet they've puffed themselves up in their press release to make it sound as if the whole thing is new and improved.
Oooh, look at the price of Durons, must buy one some time...
The reason they were up there so quickly, before it was proved that there really was an economic want to be satisfied was due to competition.
In total there were going to be _12_ different satelite telephony service providers. 6 voice oriented, 6 data. The stooopid way these companies decided to _pretend_ to be ahead of each other was by shooting more satelites into orbit. The one I did some consultancy for (ICO) was definitely slow at putting satelites into space, as we have a far more down to earth approach to our marketting and releases. It also pulled the plug quicker when it became obvious that the end was nigh.
The concept of international/intercompany cooperation seemed to have eluded them. The idea of only having one swarm of satelites rather than 12 seemed completely alien. They lose money, remote areas lose useful comms potential. It was a lose lose situation.
Use the IP address of the site instead of the domain name.
After they've blocked that too, then there's another method, equally simple, but I don't want to share it with anyone writing Censorware so I'll keep schtum.
Oh - and for the content filterers there's something _even easier_ still. - Only go to Japanese sites, or A.N.Other language which the censorware can't understand.
You say "it _is_ the first overhaul by Intel"
I say "it's _not_ an overhaul".
My introduction of the other companies into the argument was simply (blimey, I add things to simplify my argument and I start losing people) to indicate what a "complete architectural overhaul" _really_ means.
If my statement is correct, that the change does not classify as a "complete architectural overhaul", then your, and the original statement are vacuously false as they refer.
Do people not learn logic and grammer any more?
Reread what I posted; see what I put; unravel the rhetoric of using sarcastic irony if you may; and condense what I wrote in your mind to 'Intel have not performed a "complete architectural overhaul'". It is there.
If you still don't get it watch the "he's got a knife" scene from Crocodile Dundee.
About 5 years ago I was called a "linux spazza", due to being so pro-free-Unices and anti-MS-crash-a-day-garbage. Be that as it may, I can't see why the whole world is gibbering "linux-this", "linux-that" all the time. Is that what/. has stagnated to? Where are the issues or discoveries or anything with actual content?
Christ - this is going straight to -1 isn't it. I don't mean it that way, I'm just bored.
One Instruction (Set) Computer has one instruction:
Subtract operand X from operand Y and if zero jump to location specified by operand Z.
Or something like that (the 'if zero' bit is the bit I'm not sure about).
However, I was talking about what a "complete architectural overhaul" is. Not what it means to solely Intel, but what it means when looking at the broader history of microprocessor architectures.
In fact, the misunderstanding _is_ the essence of my point.
As in "Quake 3 Arena is the first new genre of game from ID since 1998." To which I'd reply "new genre?"
Vax is digital. Axp is digital.
Vax->Axp was a "complete architectural overhaul" performed by Digital.
68K is motorola. PPC is part Motorola.
68K->PPC was a "complete architectural overhaul" performed by Motorola in cooperation with others.
If you aren't flaimbait, then go reread my post, and see if you can work out what I may not have said clearly enough first time. (In which case my bad.)
To have MMIs is not anti-RISC.
RISC is more an instruction decoding/orthogonality issue than an instruction set richness issue. Many RISCs have far richer instructions than CISCs!
I remember one (thanks to those large foreheaded types in Texas) which had _every_ possible bitwise logical operation available.
So x86 gives you AND, OR, and XOR, big deal.
This had NAND, NOR, IMP, NIMP, RIMP, NRIMP,...
Back onto
If you have two spare bits in your opcode, then you could use those to implement
00 = act as 64bit words
01 = act as 2 32bit words
10 = act as 4 16bit words
11 = act as 8 8bit words
et voila! every instruction can be turned into a "MMI" instruction!
(OK, in reality you'd only need the arithmetic ones to have this feature.,
e.g. with 3 bits
0xx = MMI arithmetic instructions as above
100 = logical operations
100 = control flow
101 = moves
111 = something else
Nothing non-RISC about this at all. (I assume all operations are (R1, R2) -> R3 type or similar).
Of course, it's perfectly possible to throw orthogonality and symmetry out of the window and implement this as a complete dogs breakfast too! Intel would never do that I'm sure.
CNET:
"The chip [...] represents the first complete architectural overhaul of the company's processor line since 1995, when the original Pentium emerged."
Erm. I've programmed for z80, 68K, Arm, C80-MP, H8, PPC, Axp, Sparc, HP-PA and the ubiquitous x86 (all varieties).
If the Pentium is a "complete architectural overhaul", then what the blazes does one call the Vax->Axp change, or the 68K->PPC change, or the C80->C6000 change?
Some people live in very sheltered worlds, evidently.
FatPhil
genres from white to black via all shades of grey
on
Vanishing Game Genres
·
· Score: 1
I can trace a direct line between the first few games I got addicted to in the early eighties and the most recent game I got hooked on.
The first was some hack/rogue/moria type game on the ZX81, the most recent was Quake.
The first person shooter really is nothing more than an evolution of the early maze adventures, and not a recent genre at all.
(text adventures)
-> 2D maze
-> 90o grid 2D maze with 3D rendering (3D monster maze)
-> same but view not stuck on a rectininear grid (Wolfenstein)
-> Introduction of height into the above (Doom)
-> Full 3D (Quake)
You've got to admit, the same story line has lasted very well.
Hmm, when did I get my ST... 1989, I think.
In 1989 more UK companies were using Atari STs for desk top publishing than Apple Macs.
It's a slightly misleading statistic, because the big companies were using Macs, and several of them, but the ST was an enabling technology - every little company could afford a #300 Atari ST to do their in-house DTP.
My Mac-fan mates (including Wombat - hi there!) happily informed me that the Mac market was worth far more, and prefered to use that statistic, but I would always counter with a comment that that was because they cost more!
FatPhil
"
Computers:
- framebuffer
- hardware support for scrolling of the pixels
- blitters
- hblank interrupt for effects
"
Atari ST scores 1/4
But the ST was a home computer was it not?
"
Arcade games:
- n planes of tile oriented video (i.e, the screen is divided into 8x8 elements selected by number)
- sprites generator (usually a plane of its own)
- priority manager
- hardware support for global scrolling of the tile planes
- horizontal and vertical line scrolling
- vblank interrupt only
"
Commodore 64 scores roughly 4/6.
But the commodore 64 was not an arcade machine.
Your memory seems to be not quite as clear as it could be.
Similar to ARM is what you should have said.
It looks like Transmeta's technology is the first thing to be able to look ARM straight in the eyes finally.
It's a shame for Transmeta that ARM has been an established product for 10 years, and has its core licenced by probably half of the other big chip manufacturers.
There are still plenty of real-time embedded applications which have the same kind of time and space constraints. I remember working to a 48K RAM limit and 7%CPU of an Hitachi H8 processor only 18 months ago, and that was to impliment a GUI!
I'm a better programmer for the experience, certainly.
Slashdot Mirror
3 jobs back (oooh, 1998-ish) every friday afternoon at 4:30 I and some mates at work would down tools and have a "web treasure-hunt". Someone not playing would shout out an off-the-wall topic which we would all have to search for, and the race was on. Almost always it was for images.
I almost always won and I used Lynx. I only popped open a graphical browser as a last resort.
Since then I met my "blind" girlfriend who is consistantly faster than me in finding information on the Web. (she uses lynx too).
The Lotus Elise doesn't have carpets or decorative fittings. That's the "sporty" way. Lynx is the same. And it's not necessarily to do with being blind or not.
Phil
My "registered blind" girlfriend (who can see enough to survive without a white stick or anything) always uses Lynx (in 80x25 text mode on a 21" monitor with her face 8" from the screen.
Therefore she only uses the ALT tags, as there aren't any images, and can't be any images.
However for the truly blind, the web is often "viewed" using a speech synthesiser.
There are also Braille interfaces too, but they are a mechanical add-on, but a speech interface is simply software and a standard soundcard.
Watching her browse, I've learned that "Image 384x240 32K" is a totally useless ALT tag.
Phil
Total guesses at answers (but serious ones)
a) The site isn't a simple hierarchy of pages which can just be done one at a time, but is database driven, and there's no provision for the design of the database to be augmented with this new feature.
b) They only deal in years and millions, they are unable to charge less or make it quicker.
Either way makes IBM look bad in my eyes.
However, if the original requirements document did _not_ include the need for or capability to support ALT tags, then IBM are the teflon men. Otherwise, they should be standing in the dock, and doing the whole thing _tomorrow_ for _free_.
FatPhil
"
And before the left wing around here goes after me with pitch forks and flaming torches,...
"
Nice image.
As one of the most "left wing" people I've seen on Slashdot (but still a very pragmatic one, a "free market socialist" to be more precise) I'm glad to let you know that the non-loony left (probably) agree with you.
FatPhil
" :)
Wasn't there a discussion a while back concerning the effects of English on programming? Most languages I've seen (well, all the ones that are'nt assembler!) use English keywords. Why is that?
"
Because you've never seen APL.
"
People will probably try to say that the 'net is a great democritizer, but remember that the Chinese government censors the net at the backbone!
"
The telephone is hard to censor. The company paying me as I post this is rolling out telephony access multiplexers (i.e. telephones for a whole village) by the bucketload to China at the moment. As long as you only want low speed comms, then an old 2400 modem will do the job, and is impossible to censor. Unless the government resorts to the same technique as used Berlusconi's government in Italy in 1994. He didn't like one of the minority political parties, so he sent the police in to raid their headquarters and the addresses of their registered members and confiscated Computers, Modems and Telephones.
So don't think the "Western world" is so much more advanced in these matters.
(I guess the outside world probably never heard about this as Berlusconi controlled about 70% of the Italian Media too.)
FatPhil
I think you've missed the point of this technology. .mp3 is not known or knowable.
This uses the dynamics of the whole piece to fingerprint the piece, the details aren't important. i.e. everyones copy of Achy Breaky Heart will have the same finger print. So whoeverer made the
There are other "fingerprinting" technologies which do what you say though, but they are not totally effective.
FatPhil
If you're an investor and you're not given what you are promised you have every right to complain.
Never believe hype, whoever it's from.
FatPhil
Great summary.
Whilst device penetration is huge, and ARM-powered machines from thousands of vendors, the other impressive thing is the range of licencing partners ARM have had. It's not just Digital (thence Intel), they've been in bed with other huge uP and DSP companies. For instance they had a cut-down ARM called Thumb, which was used as the master processor on things such as the Texas Instruments 7000/AV processor family - a tru multimedia chip which included several DSPs on one slab of silicon. TI could do _anything_ they want in-house - but no, they knew they'd not be able to improve on the off-the-shelf ARM core. Impressive.
FatPhil
The wizzy feature that this "new microarchitecture" has seems to be no cleverer than the power/performance management which AMD already have in their chips.
It seems as if the processor (rather than PM) architecture is unchanged from the ARM core, yet they've puffed themselves up in their press release to make it sound as if the whole thing is new and improved.
Oooh, look at the price of Durons, must buy one some time...
FatPhil
The reason they were up there so quickly, before it was proved that there really was an economic want to be satisfied was due to competition.
In total there were going to be _12_ different satelite telephony service providers. 6 voice oriented, 6 data. The stooopid way these companies decided to _pretend_ to be ahead of each other was by shooting more satelites into orbit. The one I did some consultancy for (ICO) was definitely slow at putting satelites into space, as we have a far more down to earth approach to our marketting and releases. It also pulled the plug quicker when it became obvious that the end was nigh.
The concept of international/intercompany cooperation seemed to have eluded them. The idea of only having one swarm of satelites rather than 12 seemed completely alien. They lose money, remote areas lose useful comms potential. It was a lose lose situation.
Bunch of arse!
FatPhil
"...beyond 2 Ghz this will make it the performance leader for some time. "
An "in the shops" AlphaServer will out SpecFP an "in your dreams" 2GHz Intel P4. What definition of "leader" are you using?
FatPhil
(Proud Alpha owner)
Use the IP address of the site instead of the domain name.
After they've blocked that too, then there's another method, equally simple, but I don't want to share it with anyone writing Censorware so I'll keep schtum.
Oh - and for the content filterers there's something _even easier_ still. - Only go to Japanese sites, or A.N.Other language which the censorware can't understand.
Where there's a willy there's a way.
FatPhil
FatPhil
You've missed the point again. Please.
You say "it _is_ the first overhaul by Intel"
I say "it's _not_ an overhaul".
My introduction of the other companies into the argument was simply (blimey, I add things to simplify my argument and I start losing people) to indicate what a "complete architectural overhaul" _really_ means.
If my statement is correct, that the change does not classify as a "complete architectural overhaul", then your, and the original statement are vacuously false as they refer.
Do people not learn logic and grammer any more?
Reread what I posted; see what I put; unravel the rhetoric of using sarcastic irony if you may; and condense what I wrote in your mind to 'Intel have not performed a "complete architectural overhaul'". It is there.
If you still don't get it watch the "he's got a knife" scene from Crocodile Dundee.
FatPhil
About 5 years ago I was called a "linux spazza", due to being so pro-free-Unices and anti-MS-crash-a-day-garbage. Be that as it may, I can't see why the whole world is gibbering "linux-this", "linux-that" all the time. Is that what /. has stagnated to? Where are the issues or discoveries or anything with actual content?
Christ - this is going straight to -1 isn't it. I don't mean it that way, I'm just bored.
FatPhil
(I could've AC'd this, you know)
One Instruction (Set) Computer has one instruction:
Subtract operand X from operand Y and if zero jump to location specified by operand Z.
Or something like that (the 'if zero' bit is the bit I'm not sure about).
Provably Turing complete.
However, I was talking about what a "complete architectural overhaul" is. Not what it means to solely Intel, but what it means when looking at the broader history of microprocessor architectures.
In fact, the misunderstanding _is_ the essence of my point.
As in "Quake 3 Arena is the first new genre of game from ID since 1998." To which I'd reply "new genre?"
FatPhil
You're flamebait. I'm weak.
Vax is digital. Axp is digital.
Vax->Axp was a "complete architectural overhaul" performed by Digital.
68K is motorola. PPC is part Motorola.
68K->PPC was a "complete architectural overhaul" performed by Motorola in cooperation with others.
If you aren't flaimbait, then go reread my post, and see if you can work out what I may not have said clearly enough first time. (In which case my bad.)
FatPhil
Score 3: Funny?
:-)
I was serious! (CV available on request if you don't believe me.)
OK, downmod to redundant this one now
FatPhil
To have MMIs is not anti-RISC.
...
RISC is more an instruction decoding/orthogonality issue than an instruction set richness issue. Many RISCs have far richer instructions than CISCs!
I remember one (thanks to those large foreheaded types in Texas) which had _every_ possible bitwise logical operation available.
So x86 gives you AND, OR, and XOR, big deal.
This had NAND, NOR, IMP, NIMP, RIMP, NRIMP,
Back onto
If you have two spare bits in your opcode, then you could use those to implement
00 = act as 64bit words
01 = act as 2 32bit words
10 = act as 4 16bit words
11 = act as 8 8bit words
et voila! every instruction can be turned into a "MMI" instruction!
(OK, in reality you'd only need the arithmetic ones to have this feature.,
e.g. with 3 bits
0xx = MMI arithmetic instructions as above
100 = logical operations
100 = control flow
101 = moves
111 = something else
Nothing non-RISC about this at all. (I assume all operations are (R1, R2) -> R3 type or similar).
Of course, it's perfectly possible to throw orthogonality and symmetry out of the window and implement this as a complete dogs breakfast too! Intel would never do that I'm sure.
FatPhil
CNET:
"The chip [...] represents the first complete architectural overhaul of the company's processor line since 1995, when the original Pentium emerged."
Erm. I've programmed for z80, 68K, Arm, C80-MP, H8, PPC, Axp, Sparc, HP-PA and the ubiquitous x86 (all varieties).
If the Pentium is a "complete architectural overhaul", then what the blazes does one call the Vax->Axp change, or the 68K->PPC change, or the C80->C6000 change?
Some people live in very sheltered worlds, evidently.
FatPhil
I can trace a direct line between the first few games I got addicted to in the early eighties and the most recent game I got hooked on.
The first was some hack/rogue/moria type game on the ZX81, the most recent was Quake.
The first person shooter really is nothing more than an evolution of the early maze adventures, and not a recent genre at all.
(text adventures)
-> 2D maze
-> 90o grid 2D maze with 3D rendering (3D monster maze)
-> same but view not stuck on a rectininear grid (Wolfenstein)
-> Introduction of height into the above (Doom)
-> Full 3D (Quake)
You've got to admit, the same story line has lasted very well.
FatPhil
Hmm, when did I get my ST... 1989, I think. In 1989 more UK companies were using Atari STs for desk top publishing than Apple Macs. It's a slightly misleading statistic, because the big companies were using Macs, and several of them, but the ST was an enabling technology - every little company could afford a #300 Atari ST to do their in-house DTP. My Mac-fan mates (including Wombat - hi there!) happily informed me that the Mac market was worth far more, and prefered to use that statistic, but I would always counter with a comment that that was because they cost more! FatPhil
"
Computers:
- framebuffer
- hardware support for scrolling of the pixels
- blitters
- hblank interrupt for effects
"
Atari ST scores 1/4
But the ST was a home computer was it not?
"
Arcade games:
- n planes of tile oriented video (i.e, the screen is divided into 8x8 elements selected by number)
- sprites generator (usually a plane of its own)
- priority manager
- hardware support for global scrolling of the tile planes
- horizontal and vertical line scrolling
- vblank interrupt only
"
Commodore 64 scores roughly 4/6.
But the commodore 64 was not an arcade machine.
Your memory seems to be not quite as clear as it could be.
FatPhil
Similar to ARM is what you should have said.
It looks like Transmeta's technology is the first thing to be able to look ARM straight in the eyes finally.
It's a shame for Transmeta that ARM has been an established product for 10 years, and has its core licenced by probably half of the other big chip manufacturers.
FatPhil
There are still plenty of real-time embedded applications which have the same kind of time and space constraints. I remember working to a 48K RAM limit and 7%CPU of an Hitachi H8 processor only 18 months ago, and that was to impliment a GUI!
I'm a better programmer for the experience, certainly.
FatPhil