I just recently got into using optical mice, and I love them-- for some reason (maybe it's my own fault) dust and whatnot screws up old-style ball mice for me faster than anything (sometimes to the point where left/right motion won't function).. with this optical mouse though, there's just about nothing that can cause me to have that same experience. As for your concerns about "pointing better and tracking more accurately", I believe they are unfounded. Microsoft's IntelliMouse Optical, IntelliMouse Explorer and Wheel Mouse Optical all take snapshots 6000 times a second-- that's more sampling than your typical ball mouse receives. (Granted, it likely never sends all that data down the wire, but it does likely process this data in the mouse to create a more accurate representation of your movements.)
I dunno, maybe it's different mice for different folks, but you should give them another chance. =)
(OT) Something I've always had a problem with...
on
Quake3 v1.30 Final Is Out
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
I use an ATI Rage Fury Pro 32MB ViVo AGP card, and while playing Q3A (retail) the textures will ocassionally become corrupted and look "funky" (honestly, for lack of a better term-- I'll explain "funky" at the bottom in more detail), but everything will continue as normal (eg: poly's still moving and I can still make out SHAPES of objects). I actually have this problem with more than just Q3A, but other titles (like Emperor: Battle for Dune) appear to handle it more gracefully or atleast update their textures often enough that this corruption lasts only briefly.
Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, was there a solution or work-around to keep it from happening?
(Definition of "Funky" -- Textures will sometimes keep SOME of their original image, but will have dots or hatches in them (lines dotted through the texture), while other times the colors will become corrupted but everything else remains the same. Usually though, it's a combination of both of these, colors AND texture become corrupted and it never reverts back unless I quit (again, this is only in Q3A that I've noticed so far, Emperor: B4D appears to update cached textures (I assume this is the problem) frequently, so if a texture does become corrupted it's usually updated again within a few seconds.).)
(Other system specs-- Windows 2000 Server, 1.25GB PC133 SDRAM, Tyan Tiger 133 (S1834D) motherboard, Intel Pro/100S Ethernet adapter, Dual Pentium III 800 MHz processors, SB Live! Value (OEM), various (more than 4) hard drives, and a Promise Ultra100 IDE controller (used in conjunction with the onboard Via ATA/66 controller).)
You clearly haven't ever seen DS9-- it's a pretty good opening theme, especially coming from Dennis McCarthy. Dennis also did the music for Star Trek Generations (his first motion picture piece), as well as the background music for almost all of the modern Trek shows (TOS excluded, obviously, since it's less modern and more OLD).
As for opening themes.. WHY GOD WHY didn't they get Jerry Goldsmith to do it?! Roddenberry is rolling around in his tomb right now, I assure you. (And before some dumbass shows up and says he was cremated, fine, his ashes are stirring into a tornado.) I hope to heaven above that they ditch the current opening theme for something more Trek-like (and less lame-like) in the next episode..
Captain on DS9 was Sisko-- a really good series, IMHO, that should be given a chance in the movies (though, like the TV show, I question how much action they can manage on a space station). And of course, I keep forgetting if Sisko lived through the end of the series finale or not.. (it doesn't help, that for whatever reason, all of the affiliates DROPPED DS9 almost entirely after the series ended instead of showing repeats ala ST:TNG; especially true in Spokane, WA). Atleast there was a half-assed tie-in with DS9 in First Contact.
I'd agree with your position, except for the fact that in most states geeks are "professionals", and exempt from being paid overtime (this is especially the case where I live and work, Washington State). My first dot-com employer took full advantage of this fact, never paying me a dime extra for all the Saturday's I worked, but the first time I was sick or missed a weekday, he docked my paycheck for an amount equal to my salary / 52 (weeks in year) / 5 (days in week).
So sure, they get PAID, but are they paid fairly and accurately given the hours they work, no.
Uh, you're an idiot. Maxtor drives are the best, and fail far less often than drives from Seagate (I've bought Seagate drives and had them die, not just one or two, but LOTs) and when I used Maxtor drives in those same systems, they worked FLAWLESSLY. As the other replier pointed out, Maxtor also has awesome warranty coverage, usually going so far as to send you a replacement the SAME DAY YOU CALL **BEFORE** you send in your broken drive (yes, they require a credit card number in case you don't follow through on shipping it in). It doesn't get much better than that.
The other drives I like are Western Digital, but as far as JUNK goes, Seagate (for IDE devices!) sucks ass. IMHO, SCSI drives from Seagate are of a much higher quality though...
CNN.com has dropped all of their advertising and replaced their main webpage with a short bulletted listing of the incidents and status so far under the headline "AMERICA UNDER ATTACK", and the single link on their main page takes you to another advertisement free page with the fully info so far (http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/worldtrade.crash/index.html).
It's absolutely amazing that these attacks managed to get pulled off, and it really redefines the word "terrorism".
(Note Slashdot's tendancy to insert spaces in URL's before blindly clicking/copying-pasting. And, in fact having previewed it just now, it DID insert a space between 2259 and 753.. remove the spaces before using this URL.)
Your message is listed as one of the messages caught during the DB crash.
I REALLY doubt Bush walked into John Ashcroft's office and said "Y'know John, we've been giving Microsoft a really hard time.. d'ya think we could drop the 'split MS in two' idea and go for a more leniant punishment?". The BBC doesn't really say where they got their idea that Bush made the decision, and in fact, it doesn't even really say Bush specifically was involved. It says the BUSH ADMINISTRATION (which John Ashcroft could be considered part of).
Slashdot wanted a biased article though and they got it. Suddenly Bush (even though he likely wasn't even involved with the decision, but likely heard of it) is yet another villain for the left-wing anti-corporate zealots to try to feed to the media at large. [shakes head]
Re:IA64 is the "heir apparent"
on
Itanium Update
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· Score: 1
Back in the day, before AMD made it big, Intel basically used this as a slap in the face to imitators since it'd be illegal to reproduce this text string in an AMD processor (or any other makers, Cyrix being another contender at the time). Of course this does let you verify that you have an Intel CPU in your system without tearing it apart (for those who bought them pre-assembled off the shelf, for example).
Re:IA64 is the "heir apparent"
on
Itanium Update
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· Score: 2
Realizing now that I never explained what CPUID really was-- CPUID is an instruction introduced in the original Pentium (and some late model 486's, though undocumented and unsupported) that returns a plethora of useful info on what kind of processor is being used, as well as what features it has. AMD and Intel share a lot of the same info (as far as the data layout), but diverge on others. In Intel's incarnation, a bit-flag is returned that exposes the status of such features as an on-board FPU, MMX, SSE and SSE2, as well as some individual instructions such as CMPXCHG8B. Both AMD and Intel reveal Family, Model and Stepping information, as well as an ASCII string representing their company slogan (in Intel CPU's, "Genuine Intel"). Even newer processors tell you their name and speed in an ASCIIZ string.
Quite useful, and pretty much does away with arcane checks to see what processor the code is really being ran on (like the various methods of checking to see if you're running on an 8086 or 286, or 386 vs. 486, for example).. =) Unfortunately, if you want to run on these golden oldies, you still have to do those arcane checks, but once you establish that you're working with a Pentium or higher processor, you simply do a CPUID and you're done.
Are all these >300 registers "general purpose" or do we still have CISC "features" like doing divisions with only DX? If so this "is" a performance enhacement (also answers power problem).
I don't know the answers off-hand to your other questions, but this one I do-- there are 128 general purpose 64-bit registers, and 128 floating point registers (also general purpose). IA-64 allows code to "allocate" registers as needed from this set of 128, and also supports register renaming. Gone are the days of EAX, EBX, ECX and EDX for the most part.
Wrong. Good news for data intensive apps that tend to read a lot of the same data (say, database indexes) from memory. Cache doesn't have a whole lot to do with "lazy programmers" other than allow code and data fetching to occur faster (especially in loops or, in this case, larger loops, I'd imagine).
256 of them are numbered generic registers (so instead of EAX, EBX, ECX and EDX, you get r0 through r127, then 128 (or 127) more floating point registers). They're also 64-bit in size, vs. 32-bit on x86 based CPU's.
I'm not sure what the other 100+ registers are, though I believe there are 64 "predicate" registers that have a 1-bit accuracy (eg: set to 1 or 0) and can't be used as generics (and wouldn't be useful even if they could).
Re:IA64 is the "heir apparent"
on
Itanium Update
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· Score: 1
I don't see how it's broken, considering it works. If you write a special piece of software (say, something proprietary) and want a way to lock it so it only executes on certain workstations, PSN is the way to do it that doesn't heavily trample on the users rights. The only upgrade they could make that would break the software is if they switched to a new CPU-- change the motherboard, change the videocard, change anything else but the CPU, and the software keeps working.
As I said, it does have weaknesses, but for general users this weakness isn't easily exploitable. As for Microsoft, shrug, it all depends on your point of view.. If *I* wrote a piece of software that did something that big business might find useful and wanted to sell it to corporations and STILL make sure it wasn't ran on more than one workstation, *I'D* implement PSN in my code to stop them from using it on different systems than sold for.
But clearly your logic diverges from mine on this singular point, so you'll never agree.
Re:IA64 is the "heir apparent"
on
Itanium Update
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· Score: 1
If you upgrade your system enough that it involves upgrading your CPU, then you should discuss it with the individual vendor. I really don't see your point, since in fact my idea is a more leniant system than Microsoft's Product Activation crap in Windows XP (change enough items and you're screwed, even if the CPU stays the same).
PSN works better for this, IMHO.
Re:IA64 is the "heir apparent"
on
Itanium Update
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· Score: 3, Informative
Pentium III: CPUID - A 'workstation idea' that once again missed its market. Maybe if they'd found a way to node-lock software that can't be used for machine tracing. Maybe that's not what they were after.
I think you're confusing CPUID with Processor Serial Number (PSN).. PSN, IMHO, was a good idea, but the privacy zealots cried foul and ruined an otherwise good way to lock software to a specific individuals CPU. (YES, I know there are work-arounds that pirates can use (from simply hex-editting the instructions that check for the PSN to writing drivers return false info).) I really wish Intel hadn't backed down on PSN and included it in the P4 (afterall, for those naysayers that don't want PSN, or their identity, revealed to websites or software, you can disable it in the BIOS).
Oh well. Thought I'd clear that up. CPUID is GOOD. PSN is BAD (to the privacy folk, anyways).
Nobody is saying Intel invented anything revolutionary (unless you're speaking of Intel claiming they designed this specific part of the system). EPIC is marketing speak though, but you're understating the importance it has-- current Itanium's only have I believe 1 or 2 pipelines, but because instructions are bundled together by the compiler to execute simultaneously, as more pipelines are added in future Itanium's, the performance will scale increasingly.
First gen Itanium? Sucks ass, I wouldn't buy one except to experiment on or develop with. But as future generations are fabbed, we'll start to see the performance shine. Ditto for compilers as they mature.
My money is with Intel's Itanium in the long run over AMD's 64-bit offering.
I disagree completely-- the programming manuals are FAR from marketing hype, and the amount of documentation Intel has put out to the public so far (and so far ahead of actually releasing any working silicon) shows their commitment to this architecture. You talk about having read the manuals and spoken to CPU architects, but you seem to have no grasp on the actual way a CPU works.
Out of order execution is HORRIBLE on performance-- you're right, CPU designers and compiler writers (and low level assembly developers) have found ways to eek out every bit of performance from current generation processors, but in an IN ORDER execution unit, all of this SPECULATION isn't needed.
Your example of a load from memory being missed in the cache killing everything else is outright wrong. It's the COMPILER's responsibility to order the instructions such that a cache miss shouldn't ever occur. One of the hallmarks of the design is in fact that instead of doing branch prediction, EVERY branch is taken (fail or pass), and when the result of the the comparison that affects that branch is known, the code is either already in the pipe or in fact already executing (since IA-64 binaries are output in such a way that as more pipelines are added, more code can be executed SIMULTANEOUSLY).
Your notion that there "isn't enough information available at compile time" is horseshit. If you know compiler writers that think along those lines, could you ask them when Visual Basic will quit sucking for me? Compilers can (and should) do multiple passes to gather all of the information they need, then write the most optimized and streamlined binary they can. This is in fact in the Intel documentation-- and even Intel admitted it will take time to get compilers to work as desired.
And if you knew anything about CPU's, you'd know clock speed means crap-- AMD's Athlon has a lower clock speed, but out-performs Intel's higher-clocked Pentium 4 CPU's. If the pipeline is shorter than any CPU on the market (and thus, instructions execute MUCH faster), then the cycle count is going to be irrelevent (or inaccurate) for comparing one CPU against another.
Again.. this is their FIRST release of the processor. You may be some anti-Intel / pro-AMD zealot, but take your preachy attitude elsewhere. I've pointed out that their current processor definately does not meet the performance people were expecting or hoping for-- but it takes TIME for an architecture to mature. Were you expecting it to out-perform everything on it's first day?
I was gonna ask, glad I read the reply.;) Very interesting, considering the way the architecture is designed, I can't imagine how they could wring poor performance out of their code unless their compiler wasn't designed to emit the correct instruction sequences. IA-64, if you read the programming manuals, is very compiler-centric-- specifically, the compiler has to order sequences of operations to best take advantage of predication and other CPU features. This is different from IA-32, where instruction sequences CAN matter, but aren't usually fine tuned on the scale IA-64 would require.
Still, this is their first iteration of the new architecture-- I'm sure it'll take time to re-engineer it so they can squeeze the performance out of it that we expect.
My understanding is that everything in the core OS has been recompiled as a 64-bit binary, this would include the kernel (obviously), shell (including support DLL's and EXPLORER.EXE, for example), and most likely server components such as IIS (this is my speculation here, if IIS is still a 32-bit binary, someone speak up, because that really WOULD make the entire release almost pointless).
But I've read on MSDN and elsewhere that Explorer and other basic (ie: integrated) components of Windows 2000 were ported to IA-64 for this release.
The benchmarks you're referring to (the ones that placed an Itanium at a slower speed than Pentium III's or Pentium 4's) were running 32-bit code, not native 64-bit code. Intel's Itanium processor family (IA-64) are backwards compatible with their Pentium family (IA-32).. in other words, it can execute the code without any on-the-fly emulation or translation.
The problem with this is that apperently Itanium's implementation of the IA-32 execution unit is shoddy (and thus, slow). However, code written to the native IA-64 spec (which is what this release of Windows 2000 Advanced Server is) should perform MUCH faster.
Besides, an important thing to remember about Quake III is that it's not the CPU that matters really, it's the graphics card.
Once more IA-64 binaries are released I think the benefits of the architecture will become clearer. (Hopefully! I'm not saying Intel can do no wrong, but basing your assessment of their processor on it's EMULATION (basically) of IA-32 is totally off-base-- IA-64 is it's native, preferred mode. IA-32 is just there to make transitioning easier.)
At least you MANAGED to get registered...
on
ICANN At-Large Study
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· Score: 2, Insightful
...I tried numerous times, repeatedly, and couldn't in over a week of random attempts. ICANN's "legitimacy" to me is ALWAYS in question when they pull stupid stunts like this. If anything, it should be administered as the United States political system is-- each netizen can vote for a person to represent their part of the world, and each part of the world is given up to X many reps to represent them. (This would more closely model the U.S. Senate I suppose.) These same netizens would also elect a Director or President which would have veto power and be able to try to define the tasks ICANN tackles.
As it is right now, ICANN isn't much more than a government (DoC) mandated farce.
(Forgive me if this seems flame-like, but I'm sincerely unhappy with ICANN (on so many levels this post probably only hit the top one or two things I dislike about them).)
Actually their backpack ought to be lighter if they implement this change RIGHT-- ditch textbooks: if everyone has a laptop at these schools (is it more than one that's doing this?), then they should either a) be hooked up to a network and be reading PDF versions of their textbooks (or some exchangable document format, but you get the idea) or b) have CD-ROM copies of their textbooks, again, in a popular (or hell, even an unpopular) format for viewing.
That just leaves whatever the kid totes to school in his/her backpack.
About the trust issue, I agree, it's a bit excessive if they're giving the kids $3000 laptops. Those laptops shouldn't cost more than $1000-2000 at most (that's a 12.1 to 14" screen, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD and 600+ MHz Pentium III).. about the only thing that could drive the price up would be an agreement with the laptop manufacturer to replace any laptop, no questions asked, if the laptop stops working (eg: they are kids, kids do drop stuff and are a little more wreckless with technology than we'd like, I'm sure).
Slashdot Mirror
I just recently got into using optical mice, and I love them-- for some reason (maybe it's my own fault) dust and whatnot screws up old-style ball mice for me faster than anything (sometimes to the point where left/right motion won't function).. with this optical mouse though, there's just about nothing that can cause me to have that same experience. As for your concerns about "pointing better and tracking more accurately", I believe they are unfounded. Microsoft's IntelliMouse Optical, IntelliMouse Explorer and Wheel Mouse Optical all take snapshots 6000 times a second-- that's more sampling than your typical ball mouse receives. (Granted, it likely never sends all that data down the wire, but it does likely process this data in the mouse to create a more accurate representation of your movements.)
I dunno, maybe it's different mice for different folks, but you should give them another chance. =)
I use an ATI Rage Fury Pro 32MB ViVo AGP card, and while playing Q3A (retail) the textures will ocassionally become corrupted and look "funky" (honestly, for lack of a better term-- I'll explain "funky" at the bottom in more detail), but everything will continue as normal (eg: poly's still moving and I can still make out SHAPES of objects). I actually have this problem with more than just Q3A, but other titles (like Emperor: Battle for Dune) appear to handle it more gracefully or atleast update their textures often enough that this corruption lasts only briefly.
Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, was there a solution or work-around to keep it from happening?
(Definition of "Funky" -- Textures will sometimes keep SOME of their original image, but will have dots or hatches in them (lines dotted through the texture), while other times the colors will become corrupted but everything else remains the same. Usually though, it's a combination of both of these, colors AND texture become corrupted and it never reverts back unless I quit (again, this is only in Q3A that I've noticed so far, Emperor: B4D appears to update cached textures (I assume this is the problem) frequently, so if a texture does become corrupted it's usually updated again within a few seconds.).)
(Other system specs-- Windows 2000 Server, 1.25GB PC133 SDRAM, Tyan Tiger 133 (S1834D) motherboard, Intel Pro/100S Ethernet adapter, Dual Pentium III 800 MHz processors, SB Live! Value (OEM), various (more than 4) hard drives, and a Promise Ultra100 IDE controller (used in conjunction with the onboard Via ATA/66 controller).)
You clearly haven't ever seen DS9-- it's a pretty good opening theme, especially coming from Dennis McCarthy. Dennis also did the music for Star Trek Generations (his first motion picture piece), as well as the background music for almost all of the modern Trek shows (TOS excluded, obviously, since it's less modern and more OLD).
As for opening themes.. WHY GOD WHY didn't they get Jerry Goldsmith to do it?! Roddenberry is rolling around in his tomb right now, I assure you. (And before some dumbass shows up and says he was cremated, fine, his ashes are stirring into a tornado.) I hope to heaven above that they ditch the current opening theme for something more Trek-like (and less lame-like) in the next episode..
Captain on DS9 was Sisko-- a really good series, IMHO, that should be given a chance in the movies (though, like the TV show, I question how much action they can manage on a space station). And of course, I keep forgetting if Sisko lived through the end of the series finale or not.. (it doesn't help, that for whatever reason, all of the affiliates DROPPED DS9 almost entirely after the series ended instead of showing repeats ala ST:TNG; especially true in Spokane, WA). Atleast there was a half-assed tie-in with DS9 in First Contact.
I'd agree with your position, except for the fact that in most states geeks are "professionals", and exempt from being paid overtime (this is especially the case where I live and work, Washington State). My first dot-com employer took full advantage of this fact, never paying me a dime extra for all the Saturday's I worked, but the first time I was sick or missed a weekday, he docked my paycheck for an amount equal to my salary / 52 (weeks in year) / 5 (days in week).
So sure, they get PAID, but are they paid fairly and accurately given the hours they work, no.
Coming from an AC, I'll make sure not to take your word at anything more than a steaming pile of dogshit.
Uh, you're an idiot. Maxtor drives are the best, and fail far less often than drives from Seagate (I've bought Seagate drives and had them die, not just one or two, but LOTs) and when I used Maxtor drives in those same systems, they worked FLAWLESSLY. As the other replier pointed out, Maxtor also has awesome warranty coverage, usually going so far as to send you a replacement the SAME DAY YOU CALL **BEFORE** you send in your broken drive (yes, they require a credit card number in case you don't follow through on shipping it in). It doesn't get much better than that.
The other drives I like are Western Digital, but as far as JUNK goes, Seagate (for IDE devices!) sucks ass. IMHO, SCSI drives from Seagate are of a much higher quality though...
CNN.com has dropped all of their advertising and replaced their main webpage with a short bulletted listing of the incidents and status so far under the headline "AMERICA UNDER ATTACK", and the single link on their main page takes you to another advertisement free page with the fully info so far (http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/worldtrade.crash /index.html).
It's absolutely amazing that these attacks managed to get pulled off, and it really redefines the word "terrorism".
Go read Jamie's message then e-mail him, he may be able to restore your Karma--
2 59 753
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=21363&cid=2
(Note Slashdot's tendancy to insert spaces in URL's before blindly clicking/copying-pasting. And, in fact having previewed it just now, it DID insert a space between 2259 and 753.. remove the spaces before using this URL.)
Your message is listed as one of the messages caught during the DB crash.
I REALLY doubt Bush walked into John Ashcroft's office and said "Y'know John, we've been giving Microsoft a really hard time.. d'ya think we could drop the 'split MS in two' idea and go for a more leniant punishment?". The BBC doesn't really say where they got their idea that Bush made the decision, and in fact, it doesn't even really say Bush specifically was involved. It says the BUSH ADMINISTRATION (which John Ashcroft could be considered part of).
Slashdot wanted a biased article though and they got it. Suddenly Bush (even though he likely wasn't even involved with the decision, but likely heard of it) is yet another villain for the left-wing anti-corporate zealots to try to feed to the media at large. [shakes head]
Back in the day, before AMD made it big, Intel basically used this as a slap in the face to imitators since it'd be illegal to reproduce this text string in an AMD processor (or any other makers, Cyrix being another contender at the time). Of course this does let you verify that you have an Intel CPU in your system without tearing it apart (for those who bought them pre-assembled off the shelf, for example).
Realizing now that I never explained what CPUID really was-- CPUID is an instruction introduced in the original Pentium (and some late model 486's, though undocumented and unsupported) that returns a plethora of useful info on what kind of processor is being used, as well as what features it has. AMD and Intel share a lot of the same info (as far as the data layout), but diverge on others. In Intel's incarnation, a bit-flag is returned that exposes the status of such features as an on-board FPU, MMX, SSE and SSE2, as well as some individual instructions such as CMPXCHG8B. Both AMD and Intel reveal Family, Model and Stepping information, as well as an ASCII string representing their company slogan (in Intel CPU's, "Genuine Intel"). Even newer processors tell you their name and speed in an ASCIIZ string.
Quite useful, and pretty much does away with arcane checks to see what processor the code is really being ran on (like the various methods of checking to see if you're running on an 8086 or 286, or 386 vs. 486, for example).. =) Unfortunately, if you want to run on these golden oldies, you still have to do those arcane checks, but once you establish that you're working with a Pentium or higher processor, you simply do a CPUID and you're done.
I don't know the answers off-hand to your other questions, but this one I do-- there are 128 general purpose 64-bit registers, and 128 floating point registers (also general purpose). IA-64 allows code to "allocate" registers as needed from this set of 128, and also supports register renaming. Gone are the days of EAX, EBX, ECX and EDX for the most part.
Wrong. Good news for data intensive apps that tend to read a lot of the same data (say, database indexes) from memory. Cache doesn't have a whole lot to do with "lazy programmers" other than allow code and data fetching to occur faster (especially in loops or, in this case, larger loops, I'd imagine).
256 of them are numbered generic registers (so instead of EAX, EBX, ECX and EDX, you get r0 through r127, then 128 (or 127) more floating point registers). They're also 64-bit in size, vs. 32-bit on x86 based CPU's.
I'm not sure what the other 100+ registers are, though I believe there are 64 "predicate" registers that have a 1-bit accuracy (eg: set to 1 or 0) and can't be used as generics (and wouldn't be useful even if they could).
I don't see how it's broken, considering it works. If you write a special piece of software (say, something proprietary) and want a way to lock it so it only executes on certain workstations, PSN is the way to do it that doesn't heavily trample on the users rights. The only upgrade they could make that would break the software is if they switched to a new CPU-- change the motherboard, change the videocard, change anything else but the CPU, and the software keeps working.
As I said, it does have weaknesses, but for general users this weakness isn't easily exploitable. As for Microsoft, shrug, it all depends on your point of view.. If *I* wrote a piece of software that did something that big business might find useful and wanted to sell it to corporations and STILL make sure it wasn't ran on more than one workstation, *I'D* implement PSN in my code to stop them from using it on different systems than sold for.
But clearly your logic diverges from mine on this singular point, so you'll never agree.
If you upgrade your system enough that it involves upgrading your CPU, then you should discuss it with the individual vendor. I really don't see your point, since in fact my idea is a more leniant system than Microsoft's Product Activation crap in Windows XP (change enough items and you're screwed, even if the CPU stays the same).
PSN works better for this, IMHO.
I think you're confusing CPUID with Processor Serial Number (PSN).. PSN, IMHO, was a good idea, but the privacy zealots cried foul and ruined an otherwise good way to lock software to a specific individuals CPU. (YES, I know there are work-arounds that pirates can use (from simply hex-editting the instructions that check for the PSN to writing drivers return false info).) I really wish Intel hadn't backed down on PSN and included it in the P4 (afterall, for those naysayers that don't want PSN, or their identity, revealed to websites or software, you can disable it in the BIOS).
Oh well. Thought I'd clear that up. CPUID is GOOD. PSN is BAD (to the privacy folk, anyways).
Nobody is saying Intel invented anything revolutionary (unless you're speaking of Intel claiming they designed this specific part of the system). EPIC is marketing speak though, but you're understating the importance it has-- current Itanium's only have I believe 1 or 2 pipelines, but because instructions are bundled together by the compiler to execute simultaneously, as more pipelines are added in future Itanium's, the performance will scale increasingly.
First gen Itanium? Sucks ass, I wouldn't buy one except to experiment on or develop with. But as future generations are fabbed, we'll start to see the performance shine. Ditto for compilers as they mature.
My money is with Intel's Itanium in the long run over AMD's 64-bit offering.
I disagree completely-- the programming manuals are FAR from marketing hype, and the amount of documentation Intel has put out to the public so far (and so far ahead of actually releasing any working silicon) shows their commitment to this architecture. You talk about having read the manuals and spoken to CPU architects, but you seem to have no grasp on the actual way a CPU works.
Out of order execution is HORRIBLE on performance-- you're right, CPU designers and compiler writers (and low level assembly developers) have found ways to eek out every bit of performance from current generation processors, but in an IN ORDER execution unit, all of this SPECULATION isn't needed.
Your example of a load from memory being missed in the cache killing everything else is outright wrong. It's the COMPILER's responsibility to order the instructions such that a cache miss shouldn't ever occur. One of the hallmarks of the design is in fact that instead of doing branch prediction, EVERY branch is taken (fail or pass), and when the result of the the comparison that affects that branch is known, the code is either already in the pipe or in fact already executing (since IA-64 binaries are output in such a way that as more pipelines are added, more code can be executed SIMULTANEOUSLY).
Your notion that there "isn't enough information available at compile time" is horseshit. If you know compiler writers that think along those lines, could you ask them when Visual Basic will quit sucking for me? Compilers can (and should) do multiple passes to gather all of the information they need, then write the most optimized and streamlined binary they can. This is in fact in the Intel documentation-- and even Intel admitted it will take time to get compilers to work as desired.
And if you knew anything about CPU's, you'd know clock speed means crap-- AMD's Athlon has a lower clock speed, but out-performs Intel's higher-clocked Pentium 4 CPU's. If the pipeline is shorter than any CPU on the market (and thus, instructions execute MUCH faster), then the cycle count is going to be irrelevent (or inaccurate) for comparing one CPU against another.
Again.. this is their FIRST release of the processor. You may be some anti-Intel / pro-AMD zealot, but take your preachy attitude elsewhere. I've pointed out that their current processor definately does not meet the performance people were expecting or hoping for-- but it takes TIME for an architecture to mature. Were you expecting it to out-perform everything on it's first day?
I was gonna ask, glad I read the reply. ;) Very interesting, considering the way the architecture is designed, I can't imagine how they could wring poor performance out of their code unless their compiler wasn't designed to emit the correct instruction sequences. IA-64, if you read the programming manuals, is very compiler-centric-- specifically, the compiler has to order sequences of operations to best take advantage of predication and other CPU features. This is different from IA-32, where instruction sequences CAN matter, but aren't usually fine tuned on the scale IA-64 would require.
Still, this is their first iteration of the new architecture-- I'm sure it'll take time to re-engineer it so they can squeeze the performance out of it that we expect.
My understanding is that everything in the core OS has been recompiled as a 64-bit binary, this would include the kernel (obviously), shell (including support DLL's and EXPLORER.EXE, for example), and most likely server components such as IIS (this is my speculation here, if IIS is still a 32-bit binary, someone speak up, because that really WOULD make the entire release almost pointless).
But I've read on MSDN and elsewhere that Explorer and other basic (ie: integrated) components of Windows 2000 were ported to IA-64 for this release.
The benchmarks you're referring to (the ones that placed an Itanium at a slower speed than Pentium III's or Pentium 4's) were running 32-bit code, not native 64-bit code. Intel's Itanium processor family (IA-64) are backwards compatible with their Pentium family (IA-32).. in other words, it can execute the code without any on-the-fly emulation or translation.
The problem with this is that apperently Itanium's implementation of the IA-32 execution unit is shoddy (and thus, slow). However, code written to the native IA-64 spec (which is what this release of Windows 2000 Advanced Server is) should perform MUCH faster.
Besides, an important thing to remember about Quake III is that it's not the CPU that matters really, it's the graphics card.
Once more IA-64 binaries are released I think the benefits of the architecture will become clearer. (Hopefully! I'm not saying Intel can do no wrong, but basing your assessment of their processor on it's EMULATION (basically) of IA-32 is totally off-base-- IA-64 is it's native, preferred mode. IA-32 is just there to make transitioning easier.)
...I tried numerous times, repeatedly, and couldn't in over a week of random attempts. ICANN's "legitimacy" to me is ALWAYS in question when they pull stupid stunts like this. If anything, it should be administered as the United States political system is-- each netizen can vote for a person to represent their part of the world, and each part of the world is given up to X many reps to represent them. (This would more closely model the U.S. Senate I suppose.) These same netizens would also elect a Director or President which would have veto power and be able to try to define the tasks ICANN tackles.
As it is right now, ICANN isn't much more than a government (DoC) mandated farce.
(Forgive me if this seems flame-like, but I'm sincerely unhappy with ICANN (on so many levels this post probably only hit the top one or two things I dislike about them).)
Actually their backpack ought to be lighter if they implement this change RIGHT-- ditch textbooks: if everyone has a laptop at these schools (is it more than one that's doing this?), then they should either a) be hooked up to a network and be reading PDF versions of their textbooks (or some exchangable document format, but you get the idea) or b) have CD-ROM copies of their textbooks, again, in a popular (or hell, even an unpopular) format for viewing.
That just leaves whatever the kid totes to school in his/her backpack.
About the trust issue, I agree, it's a bit excessive if they're giving the kids $3000 laptops. Those laptops shouldn't cost more than $1000-2000 at most (that's a 12.1 to 14" screen, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD and 600+ MHz Pentium III).. about the only thing that could drive the price up would be an agreement with the laptop manufacturer to replace any laptop, no questions asked, if the laptop stops working (eg: they are kids, kids do drop stuff and are a little more wreckless with technology than we'd like, I'm sure).