The quality of a console is not defined by the hardware, but the games. So far I haven't heard anyone saying nice things about the PS2 already published (nor has anyone complemented the games coming out in the next few months). I'm sure it will be a good system given some time, but it isn't there yet.
I'll answer that question with another question: Who do you think will have a better chance of reducing governments power, a president who believes goverment should have less pover, or a guy at slashdot complaining that government has too much power?
Sometimes, to change the system, you have to be a part of the system.
Has enyone else noticed how any stupid comment can get up to "+5, Interesting" if they include the word interesting in the subject line? Just like this redundant comment that has no new information to people who actually read the story.
Suddenly I'm much more worried that it might mutate.. This really puts that Microsoft ad in to a whole new perspective, it wasn't just some random propaganda, it was a virus bulletin.
M$ can dedicate huge amount of money to hurt linux, and as the coming election shows, you don't need to have substance to win if you have enough money.
To win what? Market share? I can only speak for myself, but I for one wont be loosing any sleep if some dotcom decides to use Win2K instead of Linux for their e-bussiness thing. It's not like Microsoft can buy Linux and then tell me that I can't use it, and that is really all I care about.
You don't like my OS for reason XYZ? Fine, no harm done.
Context switching doens't really take insane amounts of bandwithdth. You copy the contents of all the registers to memory (including all registers not visible to programmer), then copy the registers of the new process from RAM to CPU. I am intimately famiar with x86 CPU, but I'd guesstimate this shouldn't take more than maybe half a kilobyte of memory transfers total. Do that 400 times and second a we are talking about one fifth of a megabyte of used bandwith per second. I can live with that.
Of course you are right in that cache does increase available bandwidth and that this is a good thing, but latency really is the thing we want to cure. For the original Athlon (though I'm guessing this is one of the faster models with 1/3 L2 dividor), 24 clock cycles go to waste even if the data is on L2, and even that is considerably faster than DRAM. Add to this that x86 is a really architecture because almost every instrucion can (and will) reference memory at least once (in addition to the mandatory instruction fetch).
It's not like it's just "somewhere out there", both the trajectory and velocity are well known. The only things that can change to course of this thing are a close encounter with an asteroid (an extremely unlikely event) and gravitational fields of stars (whose effect is easily calculated). All you need is some spreadsheet-magic and a ship that can do Warp 2.
Microprocessor with living brain tissue is cool and all, but how about the other way? Every time I need to do complex arithmetic operations (like multiplication..) without a calculator I start dreaming of an ALU inside my brains (put a whole cpu with memory and you not only run Linux, you are Linux). Any chance this would be possible within the next 10-20 years?
I really can see no real purpose for computers in classrooms, generally speaking. If parents want to buy their kids one, great
As a person whose first contact with computers was at school at the age of ten, I couldn't disagree with you more. Not all parents want to buy a computer, some do but can't afford one. Everyone has to learn to use computer someday, and having seen newbies of various ages, I can guarantee you that it's better to start young.
Starting early isn't good just because learing is faster and easier, but also because it's more fun. If I hadn't had such a great teacher, I might not have become so interested in computers. Now I am studying computer science in a university, and could probably find an interesting and a well paying job in couple of weeks (days). All this thanks to a teacher who ten years ago decided that this time the class should try writing an essay with MSWrite (vi might have been to hard for a ten-year old *g*) instead of writing it on paper by hand.
Well, not all but most of you. "I'm gonna patent the use of keyboard to produce a series of characters, HAHAHA". "I want to patent the Internet, BUAHAH!". Please try to come up with something orginal, preferebly something that doess't have tons of prior art ("I'll patent breathing...heh").
JC's run a story about the AMD Reseller Confrence a while back. What really cought my eye was the following qoute (on the second page): "Also, according to the tech guy the multi-processor boards will be able to use processors with differing speed grades (i.e. a 700MHz and a 900MHz processor running on the same board simultaneously)".
Can someone who has knowledge about operating systems, especially process cheduling, comment that a bit? Can users be sure that the most CPU hungry thread/process is run on the fastest CPU?
I propose that whenever Amazon sues someone for infringing their One-Click-patent, this guy be appointed as the judge for the case. Agree with him or not, but at least more than 2% of his braincells seem to be functioning ok.
It's just that the screenshots are almost identical to current version of windows
So What? People are critizising MS because their new product looks like their old product. It's the changes under the hood that count, not how much more sugar coating there is (although there is a lot of that too, in the form of fully skinnable GUI). Technologically Whistler is major step, the first ever consumer windows that uses the NT-kernel and filesystem.
Nobody is forced to buy every single version of windows, you can skip the upgrade if you like. Every new 9x-version of Windows has been just minor update over the previous one, but go back a couple of generations and you start to see some differencies that make the upgrade worth buying
(personally though, only some kind of serious head-injury could convince me to go back to 9x).
Microsoft has worked long and hard to create a GUI that is clean and usable. And they have done very good job too. There is no reason to do a major UI overhaull, so they stick with the old -- why is that a bad thing? Why should Microsoft force 200 million people to learn some new obscure user interface paradigm?
There are many important changes, most of which the user never sees. That is the way it should be done. No need to recompile the kernel or find patches, no need to spend time reading countless manuals etc. I sincearly hope that some day Linux achieve such "lack of innovation".
People will have stop thinking WAP as wireless Internet. It was never meant to be that, although the marketdroids did make those promises (and shot themselves in the foot). WAP could be very usefull for checking timetables, doing phonenumber lookups and such. Seeking information, not looking for pr0n.
As for M-Commerce.. Well, I agree I wouldn't want use a phone for browsing a book listing (especially at those prices). But what if you see an advertisment for something (a book will be a fine example) while walking to work. The ad has a little barcode*, your phone has a barcode scanner. Just scan the code, the phone connects and retrieves addtional info (price being the most important one) and asks an if you want to buy the book. You ansver yes and the phone automatically places an order which will be delivered in couple of days. You hardly need 1024x768 display for that.
Slashdot Mirror
I just wish more editors did some research before posting.
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> From pornography.
Granted, I got $4000 when I sold my porno collection, but I doubt that even the libertarians have $50bn worth of old Playboys.
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Sometimes, to change the system, you have to be a part of the system.
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To win what? Market share? I can only speak for myself, but I for one wont be loosing any sleep if some dotcom decides to use Win2K instead of Linux for their e-bussiness thing. It's not like Microsoft can buy Linux and then tell me that I can't use it, and that is really all I care about.
You don't like my OS for reason XYZ? Fine, no harm done.
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Sigh. Meant to say that I am NOT intimately famiar with x86 CPUs, but...
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Of course you are right in that cache does increase available bandwidth and that this is a good thing, but latency really is the thing we want to cure. For the original Athlon (though I'm guessing this is one of the faster models with 1/3 L2 dividor), 24 clock cycles go to waste even if the data is on L2, and even that is considerably faster than DRAM. Add to this that x86 is a really architecture because almost every instrucion can (and will) reference memory at least once (in addition to the mandatory instruction fetch).
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As a person whose first contact with computers was at school at the age of ten, I couldn't disagree with you more. Not all parents want to buy a computer, some do but can't afford one. Everyone has to learn to use computer someday, and having seen newbies of various ages, I can guarantee you that it's better to start young.
Starting early isn't good just because learing is faster and easier, but also because it's more fun. If I hadn't had such a great teacher, I might not have become so interested in computers. Now I am studying computer science in a university, and could probably find an interesting and a well paying job in couple of weeks (days). All this thanks to a teacher who ten years ago decided that this time the class should try writing an essay with MSWrite (vi might have been to hard for a ten-year old *g*) instead of writing it on paper by hand.
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Can someone who has knowledge about operating systems, especially process cheduling, comment that a bit? Can users be sure that the most CPU hungry thread/process is run on the fastest CPU?
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So What? People are critizising MS because their new product looks like their old product. It's the changes under the hood that count, not how much more sugar coating there is (although there is a lot of that too, in the form of fully skinnable GUI). Technologically Whistler is major step, the first ever consumer windows that uses the NT-kernel and filesystem.
Nobody is forced to buy every single version of windows, you can skip the upgrade if you like. Every new 9x-version of Windows has been just minor update over the previous one, but go back a couple of generations and you start to see some differencies that make the upgrade worth buying (personally though, only some kind of serious head-injury could convince me to go back to 9x).
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There are many important changes, most of which the user never sees. That is the way it should be done. No need to recompile the kernel or find patches, no need to spend time reading countless manuals etc. I sincearly hope that some day Linux achieve such "lack of innovation".
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Besides, the RFC clearly states that the writers worked for Cray Communications and NTT.
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As for M-Commerce.. Well, I agree I wouldn't want use a phone for browsing a book listing (especially at those prices). But what if you see an advertisment for something (a book will be a fine example) while walking to work. The ad has a little barcode*, your phone has a barcode scanner. Just scan the code, the phone connects and retrieves addtional info (price being the most important one) and asks an if you want to buy the book. You ansver yes and the phone automatically places an order which will be delivered in couple of days. You hardly need 1024x768 display for that.
*or a bluetooth chip or something.
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Well, I guess you would then have the biggest collection of badly encoded and half finished mp3's in the world.
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