Itantium will go the way of the Pentium Pro, another hyped up CPU that never really delivered.
You've got to be kidding with that comment.
At the time the Pentium Pro CPU came out, the transition to 32-bit code had already begun, and there were a good number of operating systems that could fully take advantage of the CPU (Windows NT, commercial UNIX variants, BSD variants, and Linux). Also, Windows 95 when you ran Windows 95-specific programs ran quite well on the Pentium Pro CPU.
Besides, the CPU core that the Pentium Pro pioneered became the basis for the Slot 1/Socket 370 Pentium II, Pentium III, and Celeron CPU's.
I think the biggest problem with the Intel Itanium CPU was the fact you literally had to code from scratch to fully take advantage of the CPU. Of course, that is extremely costly, to say the least.
Meanwhile, the AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon CPU's can pretty much use the legacy base of x86 program code, updated of course to take full advantage of these server CPU's.
I think while Firefox is an excellent browser, there is a free add-on program called Maxthon that allows you to turn IE into a pretty powerful web browser with most of the features of Firefox, especially the ability to do tabbed browsing. Maxthon is even more or less officially approved by Microsoft, given that one MS web page has a pointer to the Maxthon web page.
I wouldn't be surprised that if Microsoft does decide to produce a standalone replacement for IE 6.01 SP1 it may incorporate the functionality of Maxthon into the browser.
Actually, I think the bigger danger here is that this finding will be used to argue against wind farms and thus by default cause us to stick with the vastly more damaging forms of energy we use now.
I think here in California we have enough areas--notably Carquinez Strait, Altamont Pass and Techachapi Pass--that have more than enough steady winds to create windfarms generating 1,000 MW or more of power per windfarm. But no thanks to those environmentalists who claim that windfarms are a threat to birds, much of that potential generating capacity has yet to be built.
I'm likely going to get modded WAY down for this, but several commentators have said that the last refuge of socialists is in the environmental movement. I've noticed that to be very true especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, where environmentalists and far-Left liberals almost tend to be a mutually inclusive group.
The reason why I expect the next IE to be Windows 2000/XP/Longhorn only is the fact by no longer having to support Win9x legacy code they can simplify coding practices for IE.
Besides, given the fact that practically most of the new computers built since the fall of 2001 come with Windows XP Home/Professional installed, the user base for the IE 6.01 SP1 replacement will still be quite large.
Watch what Microsoft does next.
on
Firefox 1.0 Released
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Given that someone on MSDN said that Microsoft is seriously looking at developing a new standalone version of Internet Explorer, don't be surprised that before 2004 ends Microsoft will announce the public beta of Internet Explorer 7.0.
If such a program does exist, I expect the following changes compared to IE 6.01 SP1:
1. Much tighter security.
2. Multi-level ad blocking (that includes blocking Flash and Shockwave animations in addition to pop-up and pop-under blocking).
A separate high-end graphics card offloads far more of the graphics drawing functions for very complex 3-D graphics in both OpenGL and DirectX operations than onboard graphics, which means less CPU cycles needed for complex graphics operations.
Even ATI's new chipset for the Athlon64 CPU won't process graphics as fast as ATI's higher-end graphics cards, that's to be sure.
I think people forget that Burt Rutan's company is probably the leading candidate to win this US$50,000,000 prize.
Scaled Composites did a lot of development work for both the McDonnell-Douglas Delta Clipper and Lockheed Martin Venture Star projects. This means Scaled Composites already has enough technical knowledge to start work on a space vehicle to win this prize as soon as they get enough funding to pull it off (Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures could easily part with the US$200,000,000 estimated development cost; Allen's group paid US$30,000,000 to develop the X-Prize winner).
I would not be surprised that on-drive memory cache size goes to as much as 64 MB very soon. This especially with Serial ATA going to possibly four times the burst transfer rate of current Serial ATA devices as early as 2007.
However, I do have a couple of concerns about hard drives:
1. They tend to use a lot of power because of the fact you have to maintain the motor spinning on the hard drive.
2. Hard drives--because they involve actual mechanical movement of parts--could break down sooner or later. This especially considering how much an iPod is moved around in general.
Besides, didn't I emphasize future generation flash memory? In a few years, we'll start seeing flash memory that 1) will be quite cheap for its storage capacity, 2) will have far higher storage density than today's flash memory, and 3) can be re-written to safely just as many times as today's hard disk drives. I wouldn't be surprised that by 2010 such flash memory devices will exist.
I remember reading that the way Apple designed the internal CPU unit for the iPod allows it to have very high quality audio output consistently when you are operating the controls of the unit.
I would suggest to Apple, however, to make some improvements to the iPod:
1. Allow users to change the battery on their own.
2. Design the next-generation iPod to be fully-compatible with future-generation high-capacity flash memory cards that can be re-written to many times.
I think they should seriously consider doing a double full-page ad in the New York Times given how much they've raised. And see if they can do it in full color, too. =)
I think if the iPod had stayed primarily a device connected via an IEEE-1394 (FireWire) port, it would have pretty much stayed a niche device primarily sold to Macintosh users.
But Apple smartly realized that for the iPod to really succeed it had to accommodate PC's running Windows; once Apple produced an iPod that could be connected through the USB 2.0 port and run with Windows-based software, that's when the iPod really took off in popularity.
I think you're all forgetting that if we do build a rocket with a nuclear reactor we're NOT going to be using old-style nuclear reactors.
We will use the so-called pebble-bed reactor, which is designed to be inherently safe even if the coolant flow is cut off. Also, pebble-bed reactors are quite a bit smaller than the original reactors used in the NERVA program.
The big advantage of a nuclear rocket is that instead of a big burst of power then a long coast, it will just be a steady output of power running for extremely long periods of time. This could mean instead of a six to nine month trip each direction between Earth and Mars we're talking six to seven weeks transit time!:-) Reducing the travel time to six-seven weeks has one huge advantage, namely that the amount of space needed for consumables for the astronauts will be drastically reduced, saving considerable weight on the spaceship itself.
That would be true in the past, but this is 2004, mind you. Careful placement of electronics and careful insulation of wiring usually solves the problem of EMP.
Also, it's because none of the major Japanese electronics companies are interested.
Given that Sony is selling LCD RPTV's, Panasonic is selling both LCD and DLP RPTV's, and now Mitsubishi is selling DLP RPTV's, small wonder why Intel shelved its LCOS program.
Samsung's DLP rear projection TV (RPTV) units are excellent, but its cost is still quite high--their current HL-5063W costs around US$3,400 to US$3,500 depending on where you buy it from.
Fortunately, more manufacturers are bringing out DLP RPTV's, and other competing technologies such as IL-DLA and LCD RPTV's will result in lower prices over the next 18 months.
But you have to admit that Samsung DLP's are impressively sharp--I've seen widescreen DVD movies and ESPN HD broadcasts on them and it's not likely you will go back to normal TV's again.:-)
I hate to say this, but they better raise a LOT of money for a full-page New York Times ad. I believe such an ad will cost US$50,000 for the national edition, and circa US$80,000 for the New York metro edition.
I do think that putting it in USA Today is a better choice, since USA Today is widely available all over the USA.
Actually, THX certification for DVD's is more than just better quality sound. It's also better quality picture during the mastering process, too. That's the reason why THX-certified DVD's tend to look quite good on average.
Surprisingly, I actually liked Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as the best of the Indiana Jones movies. I think it's because of the superb interaction between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery.
1. Industrial Light and Magic essentially pioneered the modern age of cinematic special effects. They took "traditional" special effects to new levels of excellence and helped pioneer CGI effects for movies.
2. Pixar pioneered much of what computer animation can do, and under subsequent leadership of Steve Jobs the company has produced several blockbuster hit movies.
3. Lucas Sound helped develop the THX certification for high quality movie presentation in the theaters, and it has extended that certification to DVD mastering, too. A THX-certified DVD tends to have high-quality picture and sound on average.
I think we may see a surge of interest in 2.5" 1/4 height hard drives for desktop use due to the potential to dramatically reduce the size of the BTX form factor system case. With today's very small Serial ATA connectors, 2.5" 1/4 height Serial ATA drives with storage capacities in the 200-300 GB range is within technical reach.
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Itantium will go the way of the Pentium Pro, another hyped up CPU that never really delivered.
You've got to be kidding with that comment.
At the time the Pentium Pro CPU came out, the transition to 32-bit code had already begun, and there were a good number of operating systems that could fully take advantage of the CPU (Windows NT, commercial UNIX variants, BSD variants, and Linux). Also, Windows 95 when you ran Windows 95-specific programs ran quite well on the Pentium Pro CPU.
Besides, the CPU core that the Pentium Pro pioneered became the basis for the Slot 1/Socket 370 Pentium II, Pentium III, and Celeron CPU's.
I think the biggest problem with the Intel Itanium CPU was the fact you literally had to code from scratch to fully take advantage of the CPU. Of course, that is extremely costly, to say the least.
Meanwhile, the AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon CPU's can pretty much use the legacy base of x86 program code, updated of course to take full advantage of these server CPU's.
I think while Firefox is an excellent browser, there is a free add-on program called Maxthon that allows you to turn IE into a pretty powerful web browser with most of the features of Firefox, especially the ability to do tabbed browsing. Maxthon is even more or less officially approved by Microsoft, given that one MS web page has a pointer to the Maxthon web page.
I wouldn't be surprised that if Microsoft does decide to produce a standalone replacement for IE 6.01 SP1 it may incorporate the functionality of Maxthon into the browser.
Actually, I think the bigger danger here is that this finding will be used to argue against wind farms and thus by default cause us to stick with the vastly more damaging forms of energy we use now.
I think here in California we have enough areas--notably Carquinez Strait, Altamont Pass and Techachapi Pass--that have more than enough steady winds to create windfarms generating 1,000 MW or more of power per windfarm. But no thanks to those environmentalists who claim that windfarms are a threat to birds, much of that potential generating capacity has yet to be built.
You are definitely correct.
I'm likely going to get modded WAY down for this, but several commentators have said that the last refuge of socialists is in the environmental movement. I've noticed that to be very true especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, where environmentalists and far-Left liberals almost tend to be a mutually inclusive group.
I think it's very likely that you may see a combination FireFox 1.x/Thunderbird 1.x that will become the Mozilla 2.x suite.
The reason why I expect the next IE to be Windows 2000/XP/Longhorn only is the fact by no longer having to support Win9x legacy code they can simplify coding practices for IE.
Besides, given the fact that practically most of the new computers built since the fall of 2001 come with Windows XP Home/Professional installed, the user base for the IE 6.01 SP1 replacement will still be quite large.
Given that someone on MSDN said that Microsoft is seriously looking at developing a new standalone version of Internet Explorer, don't be surprised that before 2004 ends Microsoft will announce the public beta of Internet Explorer 7.0.
If such a program does exist, I expect the following changes compared to IE 6.01 SP1:
1. Much tighter security.
2. Multi-level ad blocking (that includes blocking Flash and Shockwave animations in addition to pop-up and pop-under blocking).
3. Tabbed browsing.
4. Full Sidebar controls.
5. Totally redesigned toolbar.
6. Will only run in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
A separate high-end graphics card offloads far more of the graphics drawing functions for very complex 3-D graphics in both OpenGL and DirectX operations than onboard graphics, which means less CPU cycles needed for complex graphics operations.
Even ATI's new chipset for the Athlon64 CPU won't process graphics as fast as ATI's higher-end graphics cards, that's to be sure.
I think people forget that Burt Rutan's company is probably the leading candidate to win this US$50,000,000 prize.
Scaled Composites did a lot of development work for both the McDonnell-Douglas Delta Clipper and Lockheed Martin Venture Star projects. This means Scaled Composites already has enough technical knowledge to start work on a space vehicle to win this prize as soon as they get enough funding to pull it off (Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures could easily part with the US$200,000,000 estimated development cost; Allen's group paid US$30,000,000 to develop the X-Prize winner).
Especially since SPAM is extremely popular in Hawaii and Guam. Just the number of recipes using SPAM from Hawaii is nothing short of mind-boggling.
I would not be surprised that on-drive memory cache size goes to as much as 64 MB very soon. This especially with Serial ATA going to possibly four times the burst transfer rate of current Serial ATA devices as early as 2007.
However, I do have a couple of concerns about hard drives:
1. They tend to use a lot of power because of the fact you have to maintain the motor spinning on the hard drive.
2. Hard drives--because they involve actual mechanical movement of parts--could break down sooner or later. This especially considering how much an iPod is moved around in general.
Besides, didn't I emphasize future generation flash memory? In a few years, we'll start seeing flash memory that 1) will be quite cheap for its storage capacity, 2) will have far higher storage density than today's flash memory, and 3) can be re-written to safely just as many times as today's hard disk drives. I wouldn't be surprised that by 2010 such flash memory devices will exist.
I remember reading that the way Apple designed the internal CPU unit for the iPod allows it to have very high quality audio output consistently when you are operating the controls of the unit.
I would suggest to Apple, however, to make some improvements to the iPod:
1. Allow users to change the battery on their own.
2. Design the next-generation iPod to be fully-compatible with future-generation high-capacity flash memory cards that can be re-written to many times.
I think they should seriously consider doing a double full-page ad in the New York Times given how much they've raised. And see if they can do it in full color, too. =)
I think if the iPod had stayed primarily a device connected via an IEEE-1394 (FireWire) port, it would have pretty much stayed a niche device primarily sold to Macintosh users.
But Apple smartly realized that for the iPod to really succeed it had to accommodate PC's running Windows; once Apple produced an iPod that could be connected through the USB 2.0 port and run with Windows-based software, that's when the iPod really took off in popularity.
I think you're all forgetting that if we do build a rocket with a nuclear reactor we're NOT going to be using old-style nuclear reactors.
:-) Reducing the travel time to six-seven weeks has one huge advantage, namely that the amount of space needed for consumables for the astronauts will be drastically reduced, saving considerable weight on the spaceship itself.
We will use the so-called pebble-bed reactor, which is designed to be inherently safe even if the coolant flow is cut off. Also, pebble-bed reactors are quite a bit smaller than the original reactors used in the NERVA program.
The big advantage of a nuclear rocket is that instead of a big burst of power then a long coast, it will just be a steady output of power running for extremely long periods of time. This could mean instead of a six to nine month trip each direction between Earth and Mars we're talking six to seven weeks transit time!
That would be true in the past, but this is 2004, mind you. Careful placement of electronics and careful insulation of wiring usually solves the problem of EMP.
Also, it's because none of the major Japanese electronics companies are interested.
Given that Sony is selling LCD RPTV's, Panasonic is selling both LCD and DLP RPTV's, and now Mitsubishi is selling DLP RPTV's, small wonder why Intel shelved its LCOS program.
Samsung's DLP rear projection TV (RPTV) units are excellent, but its cost is still quite high--their current HL-5063W costs around US$3,400 to US$3,500 depending on where you buy it from.
:-)
Fortunately, more manufacturers are bringing out DLP RPTV's, and other competing technologies such as IL-DLA and LCD RPTV's will result in lower prices over the next 18 months.
But you have to admit that Samsung DLP's are impressively sharp--I've seen widescreen DVD movies and ESPN HD broadcasts on them and it's not likely you will go back to normal TV's again.
I hate to say this, but they better raise a LOT of money for a full-page New York Times ad. I believe such an ad will cost US$50,000 for the national edition, and circa US$80,000 for the New York metro edition.
I do think that putting it in USA Today is a better choice, since USA Today is widely available all over the USA.
Actually, THX certification for DVD's is more than just better quality sound. It's also better quality picture during the mastering process, too. That's the reason why THX-certified DVD's tend to look quite good on average.
Surprisingly, I actually liked Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as the best of the Indiana Jones movies. I think it's because of the superb interaction between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery.
I mean think about it:
1. Industrial Light and Magic essentially pioneered the modern age of cinematic special effects. They took "traditional" special effects to new levels of excellence and helped pioneer CGI effects for movies.
2. Pixar pioneered much of what computer animation can do, and under subsequent leadership of Steve Jobs the company has produced several blockbuster hit movies.
3. Lucas Sound helped develop the THX certification for high quality movie presentation in the theaters, and it has extended that certification to DVD mastering, too. A THX-certified DVD tends to have high-quality picture and sound on average.
I think we may see a surge of interest in 2.5" 1/4 height hard drives for desktop use due to the potential to dramatically reduce the size of the BTX form factor system case. With today's very small Serial ATA connectors, 2.5" 1/4 height Serial ATA drives with storage capacities in the 200-300 GB range is within technical reach.