But they don't provide the price. I could go to pricewatch or whatever and find out what the price is but that's a pain in the ass. If you write an article comparing two systems you should include the price, without that it's useless information.
Unfortunately most of the magazines I've seen (though I don't really read them) tend to only give star ratings or whatever rather than actual benchmarks. What I'd like to see is a comprehensive benchmark comparison between different systems with different CPU, RAM, HD, graphics card, etc, at the same price point. That would be useful to me.
Why didn't they test price/performance? A hundred other sites have already done raw performace comparisons, and they don't mean anything to me because I don't have an unlimited budget. I already know that different processors have different performance so what use is the information they are providing? I don't follow the benchmark scene closely but it seems to me that no-one ever compares price/performace, yet that is by far the most important measure for 99% of computer buyers.
It's a stupid attempt to remove a variable in order to isolate the CPU performance. The problem is that the benchmark community seems to think that CPU comparisons are relevant to normal buyers. They're not. The only thing relevant to 99% of buyers is overall system performace at a given price. Yet I've never seen one attempt to compare systems that way.
How many people build clusters in their bedrooms? Anyone serious about a cluster will be doing their own benchmarks using the apps they intend to run on the cluster. So IMHO it is not relevant, at least for anyone interested in clustering.
Please tell me I didn't need a smiley on that. I do think it's pretty ironic that this article about Amazon's profit turned up the day after my Google one was rejected.
But netscape had a running head start in the browser market, and for a while, Microsoft was constantly playing catchup. Had netscape kept Microsoft in that position, then browser integration would never have been a viable option, because people would have been upset with microsoft if netscape failed to perform properly, or if they didn't really want IE tightly integrated with their OS.
That reasoning is bizarre, at best. MS could have integrated the browser from day one and for a while people would have continued to install and use Netscape. But eventually IE would have been good enough and then people would use it because it's easier not to install another app. There comes a time when adding more features to an app doesn't add value for most of the population (MS Word e.g. hit this situation years ago). Once Netscape and IE reached that point (I'd say with the release of IE4) there is nothing NS could do to the app itself to save its marketshare. Similarly IE would not have gained further marketshare because there wasn't a compelling reason to change. But IE was bundled with the OS so naturally people used it because that was the easiest option.
According to this Google also made a profit, although since it's privately held they ain't saying how much. Also interesting is that they've only had $26 million in VC funding, and nothing since 1999.
Since my article on Google's profit was rejected yesterday I can only assume Slashdot editors only care about the performance of dotcom companies they own stock in.
Yep, it's true. Not only do most Slashdotters not read the articles before commenting on the story, they don't read the articles before submitting the story either.
I noticed all that too, but then it is a history of video games, not computer games. That's why they left out all the PC gaming history too. They do mention the Atari ST though, presumably because it was made by a video game company.
I don't care what the article said. I read the debate on LKML just the same as the article's author. And the main point is about whether there should be an autoconfiguration tool. Still, when I said "the other camp doesn't see the need" I probably should have elaborated a bit. Their argument is that everything necessary to provide the service ESR is talking about is already available, an autoconfiguration tool isn't necessary. The best argument for it is CPU optimization but that's generally not worthwhile and not difficult to support anyway (i.e. you'd only need to read the CPU type and download the right binary kernel package). Anyway ESR will develop the tool but I wouldn't hold out much hope for it to be adopted in the standard kernel tree.
I doubt many people can actually detect a 5% difference in system speed without the aid of benchmarks.
Actually Alan sais something else:
Except for the Athlon, Winchip and maybe the PIV I've seen little evidence it matters.
So for Athlon and P4 it *does* matter.
He says maybe the P4. That leaves the Athlon which is likely to be a small percentage of "Aunt Tillie" class machines (which will mainly be brand-name machines.
So the point is: is the small gain in performance for the small percentage of users enough justification for the tool when those users who care enough about that small gain in performance could learn to configure and compile the kernel themselves anyway? Also note that supporting different CPU families with pre-compiled binaries is not difficult. It's when you have to recompile for different drivers that things get out of hand.
Bipolar is not just a mental health term. According to Merriam-Webster bipolar means "having or marked by two mutually repellent forces or diametrically opposed natures or views" which pretty much does describe Sony's hardware vs content divisions. I think there should be a mod for people who call people out on blatant misuse of the English language when they clearly don't know what they're talking about.
An autoconfigurator would come in handy for CPU-optimization. For example Pentium4 runs significantly faster on some benchmarks when specially compiled software is used.
I don't know of course how much the gain would be, but I think if it's more than 5% it's worth it.
Performance optimization is in fact the only thing that the autoconfigurator gives the user over a fully modularized pre-compiled kernel. And while 5% may be something you care about is "Aunt Tillie" going to even notice? And then according to Alan Cox 5% is very optimisitc.
Am I reading correctly? Is this a debate over limiting vs. allowing certain behavior? What part of the Open Source philosophy got suspended while I was at lunch?
Unfortunately the story submitter felt the need to completely misrepresent the debate. The two camps arguments in a nutshell (IMO):
Eric Raymond's view is that Aunt Tillie, who starts with a standard distribution should be able to click an icon and have a new kernel downloaded, configured, compiled, and installed. He's talking about standard (Linus) kernels here, not the distribution's kernel package.
The other camp (which includes e.g. Alan Cox) doesn't see the need. Aunt Tillie would be better off sticking to the distro's kernel updates. If she wants to go beyond that then the resources are available for her to learn how to configure and compile a kernel using the existing tools.
So no-one is talking about limiting behaviour, that was just poor reporting. Personally I think that there probably aren't many Aunt Tillies who would find a need for the sort of tool Eric is advocating (although others my find it useful).
Every time, and I do mean every time, I refer a friend to Google two things happen.
I have to explain that Google is not a children's site, despite the color scheme and the lack of a tagline indicating that Google is a search engine.
The friend asks, "What does the 'I'm Feeling Lucky?' button do?" Their follow-up question is, "Why would I want to do that?"
You give them google.com as a reference for a search engine and when they get there they can't figure out it's a search engine? Despite the prominent button saying "Google Search"? And they judge the technical ability of the site by the colour scheme? And they can't figure out what "I'm Feeling Lucky" does? You need a smarter set of friends;-).
I admit I never use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button either. It's just a gimick to illustrate how accurate the search is.
A search of 'Bicycle shop UK' will produce many hits, almost all of them not online bicycle retailers.
Your point is valid but not very strong. The first couple of results Google returns are online shops. And if you had of searched for
"bicycle UK online shop" you would have had an even better set of returns. You can't blaim Google for not giving you what you want if you don't ask for it properly.
In Google: "Fairy prince OR princess -dragon". The wildcard's not effective anyway because you probably didn't want pages with "prancer", "princely", "principal", "princeton" or many other words that fit the pattern. Incidentally if you want stories you should have included "story". Poor searching technique is the primary reason people can't find what they want.
Anyway I tried your search on Altavista and not one of the results on the first page is a story. Google returned a couple even without the search term "story".
There are also lots of short ways to find which pages refer to one another (+link:...) or if you want to filter whichever result after a given url part (+url:...)
Google has both of those, and a lot more useful stuff besides. For example you can search for pages which have been updated in past 3,6, or 12 months.
If they're are working to make it possible to rip the songs to MP3 to be copied onto an MP3 player, what's the point of the copy-protection in the first place?
It's market-speak. "We're working on it" means "there's no way in Hell we're ever giving you this but we'll string you along so you'll still buy our stuff".
What will everyone here do if microsoft ceases being the evil empire? What if they can pull this off, and find some middle ground with the government?
We'll move on. I know some of you MS apologists think the majority of Slashdotters' hate of MS is irrational but it ain't. They earned it. But if they manage to change (and personally I don't think it'll happen until Gates is long gone and the culture he has fostered has changed considerably) we'll find a new target. After all IBM was the Evil Empire once.
At the time, they said the accuracy of the measurement was +/-5 inches. How did they improve this?
With laser ranging it is the accuracy of your timing device that determines the accuracy of the measurement (since you're measuring the round trip time of the laser pulse). For the new project (which is called APOLLO btw and has a web page here) they can measure to a precision of a few picoseconds which is well beyond what would have been possible 10 years ago I expect.
Well the major goal of the research does appear to be into gravitation, but quoting the article:
Dr Robert Massey, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, UK, said the Moon was moving away from the Earth by a few centimetres each year. He told BBC News Online: "The experiment will give much more accurate measurements of this changing distance."
Given the moon is receeding at about 2.8cm/year a measurement of the distance to the moon precise to the nearest mm will be obsolete in about a week so they'll certainly be interested in the velocity of the movement.
If they are planning on taking five years to measure the distance once I'll be very suprised. They will be measuring the change in distance over time, i.e. the velocity of the moon's recession.
according to my Solar Systems Dynamics textbook, we already know the rate at which the Moon is receding from the Earth: 1 nanometer/second. Which is, of course, a better precision than this group seeks to take on.
At the bottom of the BBC article is a link to a previous BBC article from 1999 that says that the "McDonald Observatory Laser Ranging Station near Fort Davis in Texas, US, regularly sends a laser beam through an optical telescope to try to hit one of the reflectors". So I'm not sure what's special about the new article. Anyway the McDonald Observatory people have measured the velocity of the moon's recession at about 3.8 centimetres per year. That's where the 1 nanometer per second figure comes from. So it's not better precision at all, they've just used very small units.
Slashdot Mirror
But they don't provide the price. I could go to pricewatch or whatever and find out what the price is but that's a pain in the ass. If you write an article comparing two systems you should include the price, without that it's useless information.
Unfortunately most of the magazines I've seen (though I don't really read them) tend to only give star ratings or whatever rather than actual benchmarks. What I'd like to see is a comprehensive benchmark comparison between different systems with different CPU, RAM, HD, graphics card, etc, at the same price point. That would be useful to me.
Why didn't they test price/performance? A hundred other sites have already done raw performace comparisons, and they don't mean anything to me because I don't have an unlimited budget. I already know that different processors have different performance so what use is the information they are providing? I don't follow the benchmark scene closely but it seems to me that no-one ever compares price/performace, yet that is by far the most important measure for 99% of computer buyers.
It's a stupid attempt to remove a variable in order to isolate the CPU performance. The problem is that the benchmark community seems to think that CPU comparisons are relevant to normal buyers. They're not. The only thing relevant to 99% of buyers is overall system performace at a given price. Yet I've never seen one attempt to compare systems that way.
According to this, yes. Of course they're privately held so there's no proof.
Please tell me I didn't need a smiley on that. I do think it's pretty ironic that this article about Amazon's profit turned up the day after my Google one was rejected.
Since my article on Google's profit was rejected yesterday I can only assume Slashdot editors only care about the performance of dotcom companies they own stock in.
Yep, it's true. Not only do most Slashdotters not read the articles before commenting on the story, they don't read the articles before submitting the story either.
I noticed all that too, but then it is a history of video games, not computer games. That's why they left out all the PC gaming history too. They do mention the Atari ST though, presumably because it was made by a video game company.
I don't care what the article said. I read the debate on LKML just the same as the article's author. And the main point is about whether there should be an autoconfiguration tool. Still, when I said "the other camp doesn't see the need" I probably should have elaborated a bit. Their argument is that everything necessary to provide the service ESR is talking about is already available, an autoconfiguration tool isn't necessary. The best argument for it is CPU optimization but that's generally not worthwhile and not difficult to support anyway (i.e. you'd only need to read the CPU type and download the right binary kernel package). Anyway ESR will develop the tool but I wouldn't hold out much hope for it to be adopted in the standard kernel tree.
So the point is: is the small gain in performance for the small percentage of users enough justification for the tool when those users who care enough about that small gain in performance could learn to configure and compile the kernel themselves anyway? Also note that supporting different CPU families with pre-compiled binaries is not difficult. It's when you have to recompile for different drivers that things get out of hand.
Bipolar is not just a mental health term. According to Merriam-Webster bipolar means "having or marked by two mutually repellent forces or diametrically opposed natures or views" which pretty much does describe Sony's hardware vs content divisions. I think there should be a mod for people who call people out on blatant misuse of the English language when they clearly don't know what they're talking about.
- Eric Raymond's view is that Aunt Tillie, who starts with a standard distribution should be able to click an icon and have a new kernel downloaded, configured, compiled, and installed. He's talking about standard (Linus) kernels here, not the distribution's kernel package.
- The other camp (which includes e.g. Alan Cox) doesn't see the need. Aunt Tillie would be better off sticking to the distro's kernel updates. If she wants to go beyond that then the resources are available for her to learn how to configure and compile a kernel using the existing tools.
So no-one is talking about limiting behaviour, that was just poor reporting. Personally I think that there probably aren't many Aunt Tillies who would find a need for the sort of tool Eric is advocating (although others my find it useful).I admit I never use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button either. It's just a gimick to illustrate how accurate the search is.
Anyway I tried your search on Altavista and not one of the results on the first page is a story. Google returned a couple even without the search term "story".
Google has both of those, and a lot more useful stuff besides. For example you can search for pages which have been updated in past 3,6, or 12 months.If they are planning on taking five years to measure the distance once I'll be very suprised. They will be measuring the change in distance over time, i.e. the velocity of the moon's recession.