Apple is inexplicably going from a 64-bit processor with a 128-bit memory bus to a 32-bit clunky piece of junk.
1) What's the point of a 128-bit memory bus? That's something on the range of 2x10^23 PETABYTES of addressable space. I think it's going to be a while before anyone has that much memory in a single CONTINENT, much less a single machine.
2) If Intel's flagship product is a 32-bit clunky piece of junk, why do they have 80% of the CPU market?
I'll grant you that Pentiums aren't perfect--there's a reason we studied PPC 601 machine code rather than x86 code at university--but despite their flaws they have a 30-year pedigree of performance that I would be loath to dismiss so offhandedly.
The point of a band is to make money for its label???
Of COURSE it is. Why else would labels ever make investments in bands? Media companies doesn't give a FUCK about our culture, except in terms of how they can sell it back to us.
having an instruction set that was amenable to automated optimization.
You cite this as proof that RISC code is optimizable by the compiler, but doesn't it also work as proof that RISC code is optimizable on-the-fly by the CPU itself?
When every instruction has a similar execution time (within 100% or so), pipelining becomes a lot easier to manage. When you have pipelining, you know what the ALU has done in the past and what it's going to need to do next, which allow for predictive branching and out-of-order execution.
It seems like the trend in compilers lately has been to emphasize cross-platformity over optimization for any specific CPU. Makes sense to me; we're in a cross-platform world now, more than ever before, and it's better to have a piece of code that runs relatively slowly on your machine rather than one that doesn't compile at all.
Probably not. Even if they have x86 CPUs, I don't expect Apple to replace the ENTIRE motherboard chipset with off-the-shelf PC parts. The Amiga and the early Macintoshes were both 680X0-based machines, but you couldn't run software for one on the other because of all the differences in supporting hardware.
2. Will Apple offer some kind of Window compatibility using something like WINE?
Probably not. I would hope they learned a lesson from the failure of OS/2 and its Windows compatibility; if developers have the choice of writing apps for your OS and having it run only on your system, or apps for your opponent's OS and having it run on both systems, there won't be any native apps for your system.
3. What will happen to Yellow Dog Linux?
Probably nothing. A few compiler flags will be changed, but it's not like there isn't room for another x86-based Linux distro.
1. Intel probably wouldn't want to produce PowerPCs.
Why not? All three of the 2006 videogame consoles are going to be PPC-based (if you consider the Cell to be PPC-derived). More and more personal computers and even some embedded devices are using the PPC processor architecture. The only reasons for Intel not to start pressing PPC chips are 1) the "Not Developed Here" syndrome, and 2) to not take any fabrication resources away from the x86 cash cow. I'd imagine there could be a business case that overrides both of those concerns.
the 970 will need some design work to get faster and/or use less power.
And who better than Intel's chip designers to implement such improvements? More so the "faster" than the "less power", but still.
they use SSI (Server Side Includes) to put their sidebar items into each story. Seems like a bit of an antiquated method for these days, no?
If the wheel is still round, why re-invent it?
BBC's site is not ad-driven, and content changes are infrequent enough that redeploying from their backend CMS is good enough. Their edge servers don't require a great deal of dynamicism, and SSI seems to meet their needs, so why not.
the console's capabilities will be fully exploited by developers from day one
I don't know about that... developers working with new console hardware for the first time will never be able to realize the full potential. It takes years of experience to truly get the most out the machine; compare early NES titles like Excitebike to later titles like Battletoads, for example.
The advantage that consoles have over PCs for gaming is that because hardware is not a moving target, developers have the luxury of spending 4 years gaining experience tweaking code for a particular chipset, instead of abstracting the code so it'll work passably on last year's model and amazingly on this year's, every single year.
It's laughable to mock IE for memory leaks when Firefox is X (where X > 1) times worse at sucking up and retaining memory.
Your allegations are intriguing. Do you have any empirical statistics that support your claim?
IE on Win32 is [...] "embedded into the OS" and somehow brushed off this advantage
Advantage? Why is it an advantage to have a userspace application inextricably commingled with operating system internals? Besides load time.
IE may be guilty of having a buggy implementation of web standards such as CSS2.1 but during the browser wars wasn't it IE producing functionality that hadn't even been drafted by the W3C yet?
Yes, and yes. Both of these implementation strategies are rightfully classified as Very Bad.
There have only been a few instances in history where it was right for browsers to innovate beyond web standards due to foot-dragging by the W3C. Mosaic's IMG tag was one. The XMLHttp features are another (though Mozilla's implementation is far cleaner than IE's original ActiveX control).
Most every other case where browser coders have spent time inventing new features out of thin air rather than aiming for compliance with existing standards is bad for the web as a whole.
If you work around a problem, it hides from the user that the problem exists.
And why is that bad practice? I thought software designers are SUPPOSED to make things effortless and problem-free for the user?
The demand to have it fixed, therefore, dissipates
Users don't demand to have things fixed. They overwhelmingly either shrug and live with it, or they abandon your product entirely and go to your competitiors. And those that DO complain will be complaining to YOU that your site is broken, not to Microsoft that their browser is broken.
Anyway, if you write things specifically for IE -- then you've already got a more serious problem that you have to address first.
Only if you consider "keeping the customer satisfied" to be a serious problem. When there's money on the line, business pragmatism is ALWAYS going to take priority over technical idealism.
What changed? How is that an "improvement" exactly?
Well, when third parties have to do clean room reverse-engineering of these new MSXML document formats to avoid licensing issues, they'll be able to use plain textfile tools to analyze sample documents, instead of having to dump binary files to hex first.
And even if it's not immediately obvious from the license who the copyright holder is, that doesn't matter in court; not knowing who has standing to prosecute is no defense.
No, but if it's established that a plaintiff has no standing to file suit, the case is going to be dismissed immediately on procedural grounds.
(IANAL, I just watch a lot of Law & Order reruns...)
The code is in both versions, which are copyrighted by the GPL
Copyrighted... by the GPL...?
Looks like confusion about the relationship between the GPL and copyright may be more widespread than the article alleges.
Re:Hopefully Homebrew Will Run Soon..
on
PSP Emulation Madness
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Sony would be wise to open the machine up - it'll drive hardware sales certainly more than UMD movies will.
If the PSP is anything like the PSX, PS2, and presumably PS3, Sony doesn't WANT to drive hardware sales -- unless sales of game and movie media are driven at least equally as hard. The hardware is the razor, they make their money from selling blades.
Let's keep the attractiveness of emulation on PSP in perspective, too; out beyond Slashdot, very few people actually have enough interest in homebrew projects. More people buy PSP's thinking "hey, I can watch Spider-Man on the airplane" than "hey, I bet if someone manages to hack the firmware this thing would make a sweet Gameboy emulator"...
the EU should increase their participation within open source community!
Basically, yeah.
If their complaint is that the Open Source community seems to have been subjugated by American multinational corporations (how can one be both American and multinational...?), the obvious way to counter that would be to encourage EUROPEAN multinational corporations to take advantage of Open Source as well, and cancel out the Americans' perceived advantage.
i love how gov. agencies will probably crack down on the hackers defacing the phishing sites
Will they?
Regardless of whether defacing a website is considered a criminal or civil act, law enforcement isn't going to find out about it unless a) they knew of the phishing site's existance and were already surveilling it, or b) the phisher themself reports it to the authorities.
In neither case do I foresee the cops acting sympathetically towards someone who is caught in the act of trying to commit credit card fraud.
Just set up bandwidth shaping so that each MAC address gradually starts slowing way down after an hour. Slow, not stopped, means they have a chance to finish their work and log off cleanly.
"Aw, fook! My Linux ISO download just got to 90% complete, and my transfer rate just got shot to shit. Oh well, I'm not going to quit now. I'll just sit here taking up space until it completes, no matter how long that takes."
The real problem for Nintendo is that all their games seem to be aimed at kids.
"Suitable for all ages" does not equal "aimed at kids."
One might as well say that the real problem for Sony/Microsoft/etc. is that all their games FAIL to aim at kids. Why unecessarily limit your market like that?
If Nintendo can stay afloat financially until 2020, when all the GBA-toting kids of today are in THEIR twenties and have piles of disposable income (and I think they will survive until then), they're going to dominate the industry. Again. MicroSony are making a mistake in focusing on today's markets to the exclusion of tomorrow's.
Personally I would not call Netscape a competitor [to Firefox]. Netscape is more like a partner.
Netscape and Firefox are both competitors AND partners. They have a lot in common technologically because of their shared codebase, but they're fighting for the same market. Nobody's going to install both Netscape and Firefox's browsers and switch between them; they're going to pick one OR the other and stick with it.
That is why it makes sense for a Firefox project lead to make public statements that are negative towards Netscape's product -- because if the perception that Netscape is just as good as Firefox were allowed to stand, Firefox's market share could be hurt.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple is inexplicably going from a 64-bit processor with a 128-bit memory bus to a 32-bit clunky piece of junk.
1) What's the point of a 128-bit memory bus? That's something on the range of 2x10^23 PETABYTES of addressable space. I think it's going to be a while before anyone has that much memory in a single CONTINENT, much less a single machine.
2) If Intel's flagship product is a 32-bit clunky piece of junk, why do they have 80% of the CPU market?
I'll grant you that Pentiums aren't perfect--there's a reason we studied PPC 601 machine code rather than x86 code at university--but despite their flaws they have a 30-year pedigree of performance that I would be loath to dismiss so offhandedly.
'ripped off'? Didn't most of the living cast support Spamalot?
All of the living Pythons responded to the concept with enthusiasm. The dead one may have, too.
The "ripped off" allegation is taken directly from the show's own marketing:
http://www.montypythonsspamalot.com/low_band/
(a little hard to read, but at least it's not the Flash version of the site)
The point of a band is to make money for its label???
Of COURSE it is. Why else would labels ever make investments in bands? Media companies doesn't give a FUCK about our culture, except in terms of how they can sell it back to us.
having an instruction set that was amenable to automated optimization.
You cite this as proof that RISC code is optimizable by the compiler, but doesn't it also work as proof that RISC code is optimizable on-the-fly by the CPU itself?
When every instruction has a similar execution time (within 100% or so), pipelining becomes a lot easier to manage. When you have pipelining, you know what the ALU has done in the past and what it's going to need to do next, which allow for predictive branching and out-of-order execution.
It seems like the trend in compilers lately has been to emphasize cross-platformity over optimization for any specific CPU. Makes sense to me; we're in a cross-platform world now, more than ever before, and it's better to have a piece of code that runs relatively slowly on your machine rather than one that doesn't compile at all.
a PC must be intel
Unless it's AMD, or Cyrix, or a PC-XT that had its i8088 swapped out for a NEC V20...
A PC must be x86 would be the correct statement.
1. Will Windows run on these machines?
Probably not. Even if they have x86 CPUs, I don't expect Apple to replace the ENTIRE motherboard chipset with off-the-shelf PC parts. The Amiga and the early Macintoshes were both 680X0-based machines, but you couldn't run software for one on the other because of all the differences in supporting hardware.
2. Will Apple offer some kind of Window compatibility using something like WINE?
Probably not. I would hope they learned a lesson from the failure of OS/2 and its Windows compatibility; if developers have the choice of writing apps for your OS and having it run only on your system, or apps for your opponent's OS and having it run on both systems, there won't be any native apps for your system.
3. What will happen to Yellow Dog Linux?
Probably nothing. A few compiler flags will be changed, but it's not like there isn't room for another x86-based Linux distro.
1. Intel probably wouldn't want to produce PowerPCs.
Why not? All three of the 2006 videogame consoles are going to be PPC-based (if you consider the Cell to be PPC-derived). More and more personal computers and even some embedded devices are using the PPC processor architecture. The only reasons for Intel not to start pressing PPC chips are 1) the "Not Developed Here" syndrome, and 2) to not take any fabrication resources away from the x86 cash cow. I'd imagine there could be a business case that overrides both of those concerns.
the 970 will need some design work to get faster and/or use less power.
And who better than Intel's chip designers to implement such improvements? More so the "faster" than the "less power", but still.
And it would be a smart move for Intel to start making PPC chips - there's nothing stopping that from happening.
Maybe that's the deal that is about to be announced?
Everyone seems to assume that "Apple will switch to Intel" means "Apple will switch to x86", but there's no reason that has to be the case...
they use SSI (Server Side Includes) to put their sidebar items into each story. Seems like a bit of an antiquated method for these days, no?
If the wheel is still round, why re-invent it?
BBC's site is not ad-driven, and content changes are infrequent enough that redeploying from their backend CMS is good enough. Their edge servers don't require a great deal of dynamicism, and SSI seems to meet their needs, so why not.
the console's capabilities will be fully exploited by developers from day one
I don't know about that... developers working with new console hardware for the first time will never be able to realize the full potential. It takes years of experience to truly get the most out the machine; compare early NES titles like Excitebike to later titles like Battletoads, for example.
The advantage that consoles have over PCs for gaming is that because hardware is not a moving target, developers have the luxury of spending 4 years gaining experience tweaking code for a particular chipset, instead of abstracting the code so it'll work passably on last year's model and amazingly on this year's, every single year.
video card manufacturers don't get kickbacks from developers... and most don't have in house development shops.
If they don't have in-house development shops, how do all those full-featured, bug-free device drivers get written?
Oh... wait... I see your point.
Remember Descent? The game where there were enemies that used actual strategy? Well, the market punishes innovation.
Damn right. Why, Descent only got 1 or 2 cookie-cutter sequels and rereleases before they discontinued the franchise!
It's laughable to mock IE for memory leaks when Firefox is X (where X > 1) times worse at sucking up and retaining memory.
Your allegations are intriguing. Do you have any empirical statistics that support your claim?
IE on Win32 is [...] "embedded into the OS" and somehow brushed off this advantage
Advantage? Why is it an advantage to have a userspace application inextricably commingled with operating system internals? Besides load time.
IE may be guilty of having a buggy implementation of web standards such as CSS2.1 but during the browser wars wasn't it IE producing functionality that hadn't even been drafted by the W3C yet?
Yes, and yes. Both of these implementation strategies are rightfully classified as Very Bad.
There have only been a few instances in history where it was right for browsers to innovate beyond web standards due to foot-dragging by the W3C. Mosaic's IMG tag was one. The XMLHttp features are another (though Mozilla's implementation is far cleaner than IE's original ActiveX control).
Most every other case where browser coders have spent time inventing new features out of thin air rather than aiming for compliance with existing standards is bad for the web as a whole.
If you work around a problem, it hides from the user that the problem exists.
And why is that bad practice? I thought software designers are SUPPOSED to make things effortless and problem-free for the user?
The demand to have it fixed, therefore, dissipates
Users don't demand to have things fixed. They overwhelmingly either shrug and live with it, or they abandon your product entirely and go to your competitiors. And those that DO complain will be complaining to YOU that your site is broken, not to Microsoft that their browser is broken.
Anyway, if you write things specifically for IE -- then you've already got a more serious problem that you have to address first.
Only if you consider "keeping the customer satisfied" to be a serious problem. When there's money on the line, business pragmatism is ALWAYS going to take priority over technical idealism.
What changed? How is that an "improvement" exactly?
Well, when third parties have to do clean room reverse-engineering of these new MSXML document formats to avoid licensing issues, they'll be able to use plain textfile tools to analyze sample documents, instead of having to dump binary files to hex first.
That should make their lives MARGINALLY easier.
And even if it's not immediately obvious from the license who the copyright holder is, that doesn't matter in court; not knowing who has standing to prosecute is no defense.
No, but if it's established that a plaintiff has no standing to file suit, the case is going to be dismissed immediately on procedural grounds.
(IANAL, I just watch a lot of Law & Order reruns...)
The code is in both versions, which are copyrighted by the GPL
Copyrighted... by the GPL...?
Looks like confusion about the relationship between the GPL and copyright may be more widespread than the article alleges.
Sony would be wise to open the machine up - it'll drive hardware sales certainly more than UMD movies will.
If the PSP is anything like the PSX, PS2, and presumably PS3, Sony doesn't WANT to drive hardware sales -- unless sales of game and movie media are driven at least equally as hard. The hardware is the razor, they make their money from selling blades.
Let's keep the attractiveness of emulation on PSP in perspective, too; out beyond Slashdot, very few people actually have enough interest in homebrew projects. More people buy PSP's thinking "hey, I can watch Spider-Man on the airplane" than "hey, I bet if someone manages to hack the firmware this thing would make a sweet Gameboy emulator"...
the EU should increase their participation within open source community!
Basically, yeah.
If their complaint is that the Open Source community seems to have been subjugated by American multinational corporations (how can one be both American and multinational...?), the obvious way to counter that would be to encourage EUROPEAN multinational corporations to take advantage of Open Source as well, and cancel out the Americans' perceived advantage.
People who write code because they think they're going to change the world never do.
Richard Stallman might disagree with you.
And that Hurd kernel is where, exactly?
Even EMACS can be viewed as having started with a developer merely scratching his own itch, and then progressing from there.
i love how gov. agencies will probably crack down on the hackers defacing the phishing sites
Will they?
Regardless of whether defacing a website is considered a criminal or civil act, law enforcement isn't going to find out about it unless a) they knew of the phishing site's existance and were already surveilling it, or b) the phisher themself reports it to the authorities.
In neither case do I foresee the cops acting sympathetically towards someone who is caught in the act of trying to commit credit card fraud.
Just set up bandwidth shaping so that each MAC address gradually starts slowing way down after an hour. Slow, not stopped, means they have a chance to finish their work and log off cleanly.
"Aw, fook! My Linux ISO download just got to 90% complete, and my transfer rate just got shot to shit. Oh well, I'm not going to quit now. I'll just sit here taking up space until it completes, no matter how long that takes."
The real problem for Nintendo is that all their games seem to be aimed at kids.
"Suitable for all ages" does not equal "aimed at kids."
One might as well say that the real problem for Sony/Microsoft/etc. is that all their games FAIL to aim at kids. Why unecessarily limit your market like that?
If Nintendo can stay afloat financially until 2020, when all the GBA-toting kids of today are in THEIR twenties and have piles of disposable income (and I think they will survive until then), they're going to dominate the industry. Again. MicroSony are making a mistake in focusing on today's markets to the exclusion of tomorrow's.
Who doesn't like a cool, balanced opinion? /me raises hand
I'm more likely to pay attention to what someone is saying if they are passionate about it, rather than seeming cool and disinterested.
And if it were balanced, it wouldn't be an opinion, would it?
Personally I would not call Netscape a competitor [to Firefox]. Netscape is more like a partner.
Netscape and Firefox are both competitors AND partners. They have a lot in common technologically because of their shared codebase, but they're fighting for the same market. Nobody's going to install both Netscape and Firefox's browsers and switch between them; they're going to pick one OR the other and stick with it.
That is why it makes sense for a Firefox project lead to make public statements that are negative towards Netscape's product -- because if the perception that Netscape is just as good as Firefox were allowed to stand, Firefox's market share could be hurt.