I was using pre-802.11 stuff long before Apple released Airport. Apple started with 802.11b - there were standards before that. Originally, the main player was Lucient - they had their original equipment at 1.5Mbit/s but it wasn't a standard. After a few more companies brought products into the 2.4GHz spectrum it was decided that it would be best for everyone if they worked together - hence the IEEE standards.
Honestly, Apple was a first adopter to integrate the technology into their computers - but the tech was around, and in use, long before Apple decided to use it. I was piecing together wireless linux routers to interconnect towns before 802.11 was even released..
On the other hand you're using Wikipedia for definitions- which is a problem in and of itself since Wikipedia is just a collection of shared ignorance.
There is nothing wrong with using Wikipedia for definitions. Facts, ya, that can be a problem but definitions are fine. The whole point of having a term defined is so that everyone can agree on it's meaning. So when I posted the definition of evolution, I was referring to the accepted meaning of the term. If it means something else to you then that's OK, but you should assume that the definition accurately describes what it means to other people. If you want to argue about the definition, provide references.
Thus the complaint still stands- evolution and thories like it are proof by consensus, which is a logical fallacy
Every single accepted theory is a proof by consensus because nothing can ever be proven correct for certain. Will gravity stop working tomorrow? Possibly. Who really knows. We have models that have been shown to be very accurate at predicting the future but we can't assume they always will be. A good theory can be proven false quite easily, but can never be proven correct. Only after years of tests by multiple scientists where the data always fits with the theory can a theory actually be accepted by the scientific community. Note that it is never proven, just accepted by consensus.
I believe evolution ought to be taught with the one liner added: some people believe that a supreme being guided evolution, that it was not strictly natural selection. I really can't see the problem with that.
Here is a quote from Wikipedia: The modern understanding of evolution is based on the theory of natural selection..... Natural selection is the idea that individual organisms which possess variations giving them advantageous heritable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce and, in doing so, increase the frequency of such traits in subsequent generations.
Ok, so if a supreme being is guiding evolution then it is no longer evolution by our definition of evolution. I guess the supreme being could be deciding who gets to reproduce, but that would imply we have no free will. Without free will we can justify doing whatever we want as it's always God's will and not our own. Murder, theft, it's all OK now.
I guess one could say that a supreme being started life and let it progress to where it is today, but that's the extent of their involvement. To say that a supreme being is guiding evolution is basically saying that evolution doesn't exist.
QEMU will allow you to run Windows on MacOSX inside a "virtual" computer. Granted, it's not as fast as running Windows natively but when using the QEMU Accellerator it is reported to only suffer a 1-2x speed slowdown.
Check out the QEMU webpage here
A nice GUI interface for OSX is here
And another GUI interface is here
Considering that the majority of the time one will be able to run native OSX apps, the QEMU solution looks pretty good.
Willy
Re:Not for military really.. except maybe suppleme
on
Flexible Body Armor
·
· Score: 1
The kevlar is mainly used for shrapnel and such. It has little impact on a full metal jacket round. The metal plate protects against the round. It's unlikely that d3o will ever match the stopping power of a metal plate.
However, d3o could be very useful in non-military bullet proof vests. Currently, a round can be stopped by kevlar but it still penetrates the body and effectively immobilizes whoever gets hit. A layer of d3o could help dissipate the energy over a larger area and prevent serious damage as a result of an impact. Police officers could greatly benefit from such a product.
they use a big white LED - or at least they do now (old laptops might use bulbs). The LEDs are thinner, use less energy, and should last longer. Unfortunately, they are more expensive and don't produce the full colour spectrum most CRT users are accustomed with.
I've had to take my powerbook LCD apart a few times (I left it outside in -40 temperatures... not a good idea... it now has flaky internal connections and requires 'shims' to maintain those connections.) Anyway, if you need a new display, just get a new module and install it. I don't have the link right now (reply if you're interested) but I found a link that details the replacement and provides multiple generic component ids that work in powerbooks.
If you consider two house that both have a full concrete cellar, where one built a very secure retail shop (BSD server) on top, while the other built a very nice reisdential house (OS X desktop), then your analogy is correct!
MacOSX and BSD do share much of their userland applications. All the little apps typically associated with BSD are also in MacOSX. The actuall difference is in the kernel. MacOSX does not use a BSD kernel - they use a modified MACH microkernel. So in your analagy, it's really the cellar that differentiates the two.
One thing to note about OSX - the kernel was designed to provide maximum performance and as such, moves much of what should be outside the kernel into the kernel. The result is a faster OS that is better suited for desktop and workstation usage. But it's no BSD. Maybe in time it will prove to be just as reliable but for now and the near future it really can't touch OSes like Solaris or AIX when it comes to servers. But personally, I'm just fine with that - it's a good compromise.
I assume that the main reason they haven't been is that it's harder to engineer CRTs that don't have roughly a square screen
Actually, it's because of those old western movies. Back in the day it was decided that a 4:3 aspect ratio was optimal to display a person riding a horse. The standard stuck..
Hunting plays a role, but the main reason for the declining number of caribou is habitat loss. Caribou rely on old growth forests for their food supply (lichens and mosses) so as logging increases, their food supply goes down. Also, building logging roads into such areas and performing limited logging bring in moose - attracted by the new growth forests. The wolves follow the moose and with the help of the logging roads can travel long distances quickly. Caribou, with their wide snowshoe like hooves, can escape wolves in the snow but not if the wolves have these great roads to travel along. So the caribou like to stay in the old growth forests where they have food and are safe but with current logging practices, only pockets of these forests remain. Without proper forest management techniques the caribou are isolated in these pockets with no way to interbreed with other caribou herds. Then it is just a matter of time before the herd dies out.
This was a great little Apple IIe style game that I enjoyed in elementary school. Looking back, I now see that it taught basic electronics and logic. It was lots of fun at the time. More info can be found here.
But I wonder how true this really is. Why do we need ~8h of sleep? Why do we have different levels of sleep?
Here's my take on it - and for the record, I have narcolepsy so I've researched this quite a bit. Firstly, we need sleep but the reason why we sleep for ~8h is that during our evolution there was no need for us to be awake at night. It's dark, so to be awake would be a waste of energy. But it would also be dangerous for us to sleep deeply throughout the entire night - predators might attack.
The solution is to sleep for ~8h per night but to also sleep in cycles. During some cycles you are fast asleep and during others you'll wake up at the drop of a pin. When sleeping in groups, it's very likely that there would always be someone alert enough to wake up and alert the group in case of predators.
This solutions minimizes energy use by sleeping throughout the night, minimizes potential danger from predators (remember that people evolved in groups), while still allowing us to get the necessary recovery time.
Ok, enough with the past. In today's world, do we really need to sleep for ~8h a night? We have electricity and can be productive during the night. We don't have to worry about starving. And finally, we don't have to worry about predators. So if we can trick our body into going into a deep sleep and getting the required rest in ~3h, why don't we?
So I agree that there is no such thing as "a whim of nature", but do we really have to wait for us to evolve in order to change? Now I don't think that this drug is the right solution to this problem, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep looking.
fyi, Narcolepsy is the result of missing a small portion of the brain required for producing this chemical required for going into deep sleep. As a result, one sleeps all the time without getting rested. It sucks... They are currently looking at creating that chemical artificially - but it is still 10-15 years away.
Well, it might be for some, but I think that most companies would be fine with publishing any minor kernel modifications made to Linux. The real reason why companies are a little afraid of the GPL is that there is always the potential for lawsuits. Granted, it's a remote possibility, but a possibility all the same; most companies would rather not be bothered with the GPL if given a choice.
And this is where FreeBSD can give people a choice. And assuming it's just as good as Linux, it's a better choice due to legal issues.
One last thing about the GPL is that most companies don't see distributing changes as a free endeavor. Someone has to be in charge of overseeing the process - and labour isn't free. In addition, distributing the changes requires other resources (like bandwidth) which, while not very expensive, just add to the complexity of using Linux. While this might be a minor issue, it's still an issue that companies would rather avoid.
And what happens when the slashdot community burns a company for forgetting to post something, or posting modifications that are difficult to utilize. Remember Apple and Konqueror?
Oh well, but to respond to your last point, I don't think there will be many adverse consequences. The work currently being paid for by these companies is under the BSD license and I don't see them being that protective of the kernel. The GUI however is another story.
Some guy and Apple both independently created this "interface."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the iPod interface just a refined and slightly extended version of the iTunes interface? It seems to me that Apple purposely designed the iPod interface to resemble iTunes so users would have a seamless user experience when going between the two interfaces. Apple released iTunes sometime in 1999 so it's likely that both patent applications were inspired by iTunes. Is implementing an existing interface on an embedded device really that new?
It is easy to confuse the meaning of a "yes" or "no" response if the question isn't correctly stated. It leaves the possibility of a double negative which can easily confuse the user - especially if that user uses english as a second language.
By using verbs as button labels, you don't get these problems. For example, imagine the message box that occurs when closing a document - "Do you wish to save the changes?" - or something similar. The options might be "Yes", "No", and "Cancel". Here, the difference between "No" and "Cancel" is obvious to most people, but not new users. An alternative would be to use "Save", "Don't Save", and "Cancel". Here, three verbs are used to describe the three different opperations. To new users, this is far less confusing. There is less chance of error.
For the majority of people out there, computers are needlessly complex. If the KDE group wants KDE to be usable by the majority of people, little changes like this have to be made. It might piss off some of the regular users, but thoses regular users can quickly adapt to the changes. In fact, most of those pissed off users will probably admit to prefering the new system once then have gotten used to it. Just look at the original backlash to OSX by traditional Mac users. I liked the traditional MacOS, but after using OSX for some time I must say that it has a vastly superior UI design then the old MacOS.
And it just so happens that Intel has been moving technical mountains to build strong DRM into its processor architecture, whereas IBM doesn't see it as a priority.
You can't be serious. IBM doesn't care about DRM because nobody has asked for it. If Apple wanted DRM they would simply ask IBM to include in into their CPU and it would be done. Another option would be to include it in the G5 chipset that Apple already designs. If Apple wanted hardware DRM they would already have it.
Or at least that is how it is for the majority of cable and DSL subscribers out there. The idea of P2P is great and all but so long as the average upload speed is slower then the average download speed then performance will be lacking compared to a simple download.
Just look how Apple serves up movie trailers. They have their servers and the data is transparently mirrored in order to support massive concurrent downloads. Works great.
Instead of complicating things with P2P, why not create a "mirrored ftp" type protocol that ISPs could buffer. They could just monitor outgoing traffic for "mirrored ftp" requests and serve them from a local server if available - kind of like virtual memory. Bandwidth from the ISP to the home user is cheap for the ISP, it's the traffic leaving the ISPs network that costs them money. As such, they would have great incentive to provide a "buffered ftp" server for their users.
I'm living in northern Canada and have access to a portable mill. I also have access to limitless pine, spruce, poplar, and birch. My question is about the birch. What is it best suited for? The wood might be free, but the time and saw blades are not. In addition, drying wood takes a lot of time and space. Would products made of birch be worth the time and effort required to produce the lumber?
I was too young when this first came out to remember the exact details. However, I do remember it being a big screw up for the prosecution.
While I'll still have to do some research, (taking the word of an AC on slashdot isn't the smartest thing to do), I suspect there is a certain amount of truth in your post. It's informative to say the least.
CPUs are already plenty powerful. What we really need is a way for the external bus connecting the GPU to the CPU to scale.
I read a great article on Ars Technica here that shows how Apple is moving the rendering from the CPU to the GPU. Included are some nice graphs that show the relative available bandwidth between the components. To get to the point, it's not that the CPUs aren't fast enough for rendering, it's that the bandwidth to fill the GPU isn't there. Hence, they're moving the rendering to the GPU.
I agree 100%... In fact, I would go even further. There are times that multi threaded algorithms greatly simplify their equivalent single threaded algorithms. But in the past, the performance hit of running multiple threads on a single CPU often made it better to use the quicker single threaded algorithm. But with newer hardware, this isn't the case.
Once one knows about the issues in multithreaded programming it is actually quite simple. However, as the original poster pointed out, it is also very hard to debug and easy to make mistakes. This is where design comes in. Those mistakes shouldn't be made in the first place. Today, programmers have a nasty tendency to jump into code too quickly and rely on tools to debug and evolve the code into the final product. This approach works surprisingly well for simple programs, but you'll crash and burn if you try to use this approach with a multithreaded application.
For my undergraduate I concentrated on learning to program using threads. I took courses like Distributed Systems, Concurrent Systems, Parallel Computing... I observed first hand many of the problems associated with using threads - and I also learned by making most of the common mistakes. Looking back, I see that I learned a great deal. I see how multithreaded applications will play a bigger and bigger part of programming in the future. I also see how all those programming habits picked up in previous years will have to be thrown out and how proper software engineering practices must be adopted...
I can't speak for Spotlight, but I've been using LaunchBar for a while now and it completely transforms how I use my computer - for the better. I also first thought that it would be a waste of time, but I was very wrong. I now list LaunchBar as a "must have" application - along with vim.
For example, say I want to read my eMail then all I have to do is this:
"cmd+space" - M - a - return
This can be done from anywhere, I don't even have to be in a terminal to do it. The same process can be applied to launch any program. I can also check a phone number without opening the address book, select a song to play in iTunes, or even just simply browse the file system. All of this can be done without removing my hands from the keyboard - so in a lot of ways it is kind of like using vim.
The reason why people are making such a big deal of this is because it is radically different from how we currently do things. In addition, it is that much more productive.
So give it a chance and try it out when it is available. Your point of view is just like was before I tried it, and it made a big difference for me.;)
WinXP isn't designed for MP? At least MS has had some practice with MP, preemptive multitasking and virtual memory. BSD isn't famous for its MP support.
MacOSX isn't BSD. It contains much of the user-land applications from BSD but it doesn't run a BSD kernel. It runs a MACH microkernel which is very good for MP support.
"and is RISC based..."
So what? It's the performance that matters.
Well, you're partially right. Performance is the most important measure of a CPU but there are other characteristics to consider. For example, the transistor count. More transistors typically equals more power consumption. This results in larger power supplies and stricter cooling requirements. You end up with a more expensive, louder computer that cost more to run. Of course, what does RISC have to do with this? Well, RISC CPUs were designed to be pipelined and as such, result in simpler CPUs. Granted, Intel has worked wonders with their P4, but the complexities of converting the opcode to microcode for that architecture greatly effect the design. Hell, even Intel want to drop the x86 architecture but the market won't let them.
If CISC were really as good as RISC; Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft wouldn't all be looking at IBM to power their next console designs. Legacy PC software prevents everyone from ditching the x86, not the technical merits of the design. Now just imagine the innovation in CPU design that would result if everyone used portable open source software...
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, Apple was a first adopter to integrate the technology into their computers - but the tech was around, and in use, long before Apple decided to use it. I was piecing together wireless linux routers to interconnect towns before 802.11 was even released..
Willy
Because they use an Intel chipset, any RAM that works on PCs should also work on a new Mac. But even with PPCs, I've never had any problems.
Willy
Check out spore. Ok, so it's not from Google, but it is hosted on their page. I'm posting this link because it just looks like such a cool idea.
Willy
There is nothing wrong with using Wikipedia for definitions. Facts, ya, that can be a problem but definitions are fine. The whole point of having a term defined is so that everyone can agree on it's meaning. So when I posted the definition of evolution, I was referring to the accepted meaning of the term. If it means something else to you then that's OK, but you should assume that the definition accurately describes what it means to other people. If you want to argue about the definition, provide references.
Thus the complaint still stands- evolution and thories like it are proof by consensus, which is a logical fallacy
Every single accepted theory is a proof by consensus because nothing can ever be proven correct for certain. Will gravity stop working tomorrow? Possibly. Who really knows. We have models that have been shown to be very accurate at predicting the future but we can't assume they always will be. A good theory can be proven false quite easily, but can never be proven correct. Only after years of tests by multiple scientists where the data always fits with the theory can a theory actually be accepted by the scientific community. Note that it is never proven, just accepted by consensus.
Willy
Here is a quote from Wikipedia: ..... Natural selection is the idea that individual organisms which possess variations giving them advantageous heritable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce and, in doing so, increase the frequency of such traits in subsequent generations.
The modern understanding of evolution is based on the theory of natural selection
Ok, so if a supreme being is guiding evolution then it is no longer evolution by our definition of evolution. I guess the supreme being could be deciding who gets to reproduce, but that would imply we have no free will. Without free will we can justify doing whatever we want as it's always God's will and not our own. Murder, theft, it's all OK now.
I guess one could say that a supreme being started life and let it progress to where it is today, but that's the extent of their involvement. To say that a supreme being is guiding evolution is basically saying that evolution doesn't exist.
Willy
Check out the QEMU webpage here
A nice GUI interface for OSX is here
And another GUI interface is here
Considering that the majority of the time one will be able to run native OSX apps, the QEMU solution looks pretty good.
Willy
However, d3o could be very useful in non-military bullet proof vests. Currently, a round can be stopped by kevlar but it still penetrates the body and effectively immobilizes whoever gets hit. A layer of d3o could help dissipate the energy over a larger area and prevent serious damage as a result of an impact. Police officers could greatly benefit from such a product.
I've had to take my powerbook LCD apart a few times (I left it outside in -40 temperatures... not a good idea... it now has flaky internal connections and requires 'shims' to maintain those connections.) Anyway, if you need a new display, just get a new module and install it. I don't have the link right now (reply if you're interested) but I found a link that details the replacement and provides multiple generic component ids that work in powerbooks.
MacOSX and BSD do share much of their userland applications. All the little apps typically associated with BSD are also in MacOSX. The actuall difference is in the kernel. MacOSX does not use a BSD kernel - they use a modified MACH microkernel. So in your analagy, it's really the cellar that differentiates the two.
One thing to note about OSX - the kernel was designed to provide maximum performance and as such, moves much of what should be outside the kernel into the kernel. The result is a faster OS that is better suited for desktop and workstation usage. But it's no BSD. Maybe in time it will prove to be just as reliable but for now and the near future it really can't touch OSes like Solaris or AIX when it comes to servers. But personally, I'm just fine with that - it's a good compromise.
Willy
Actually, it's because of those old western movies. Back in the day it was decided that a 4:3 aspect ratio was optimal to display a person riding a horse. The standard stuck..
Hunting plays a role, but the main reason for the declining number of caribou is habitat loss. Caribou rely on old growth forests for their food supply (lichens and mosses) so as logging increases, their food supply goes down. Also, building logging roads into such areas and performing limited logging bring in moose - attracted by the new growth forests. The wolves follow the moose and with the help of the logging roads can travel long distances quickly. Caribou, with their wide snowshoe like hooves, can escape wolves in the snow but not if the wolves have these great roads to travel along. So the caribou like to stay in the old growth forests where they have food and are safe but with current logging practices, only pockets of these forests remain. Without proper forest management techniques the caribou are isolated in these pockets with no way to interbreed with other caribou herds. Then it is just a matter of time before the herd dies out.
This was a great little Apple IIe style game that I enjoyed in elementary school. Looking back, I now see that it taught basic electronics and logic. It was lots of fun at the time. More info can be found here.
But I wonder how true this really is. Why do we need ~8h of sleep? Why do we have different levels of sleep?
Here's my take on it - and for the record, I have narcolepsy so I've researched this quite a bit. Firstly, we need sleep but the reason why we sleep for ~8h is that during our evolution there was no need for us to be awake at night. It's dark, so to be awake would be a waste of energy. But it would also be dangerous for us to sleep deeply throughout the entire night - predators might attack.
The solution is to sleep for ~8h per night but to also sleep in cycles. During some cycles you are fast asleep and during others you'll wake up at the drop of a pin. When sleeping in groups, it's very likely that there would always be someone alert enough to wake up and alert the group in case of predators.
This solutions minimizes energy use by sleeping throughout the night, minimizes potential danger from predators (remember that people evolved in groups), while still allowing us to get the necessary recovery time.
Ok, enough with the past. In today's world, do we really need to sleep for ~8h a night? We have electricity and can be productive during the night. We don't have to worry about starving. And finally, we don't have to worry about predators. So if we can trick our body into going into a deep sleep and getting the required rest in ~3h, why don't we?
So I agree that there is no such thing as "a whim of nature", but do we really have to wait for us to evolve in order to change? Now I don't think that this drug is the right solution to this problem, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep looking.
fyi, Narcolepsy is the result of missing a small portion of the brain required for producing this chemical required for going into deep sleep. As a result, one sleeps all the time without getting rested. It sucks... They are currently looking at creating that chemical artificially - but it is still 10-15 years away.
Well, it might be for some, but I think that most companies would be fine with publishing any minor kernel modifications made to Linux. The real reason why companies are a little afraid of the GPL is that there is always the potential for lawsuits. Granted, it's a remote possibility, but a possibility all the same; most companies would rather not be bothered with the GPL if given a choice.
And this is where FreeBSD can give people a choice. And assuming it's just as good as Linux, it's a better choice due to legal issues.
One last thing about the GPL is that most companies don't see distributing changes as a free endeavor. Someone has to be in charge of overseeing the process - and labour isn't free. In addition, distributing the changes requires other resources (like bandwidth) which, while not very expensive, just add to the complexity of using Linux. While this might be a minor issue, it's still an issue that companies would rather avoid.
And what happens when the slashdot community burns a company for forgetting to post something, or posting modifications that are difficult to utilize. Remember Apple and Konqueror?
Oh well, but to respond to your last point, I don't think there will be many adverse consequences. The work currently being paid for by these companies is under the BSD license and I don't see them being that protective of the kernel. The GUI however is another story.
Willy
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the iPod interface just a refined and slightly extended version of the iTunes interface? It seems to me that Apple purposely designed the iPod interface to resemble iTunes so users would have a seamless user experience when going between the two interfaces. Apple released iTunes sometime in 1999 so it's likely that both patent applications were inspired by iTunes. Is implementing an existing interface on an embedded device really that new?
It is easy to confuse the meaning of a "yes" or "no" response if the question isn't correctly stated. It leaves the possibility of a double negative which can easily confuse the user - especially if that user uses english as a second language.
By using verbs as button labels, you don't get these problems. For example, imagine the message box that occurs when closing a document - "Do you wish to save the changes?" - or something similar. The options might be "Yes", "No", and "Cancel". Here, the difference between "No" and "Cancel" is obvious to most people, but not new users. An alternative would be to use "Save", "Don't Save", and "Cancel". Here, three verbs are used to describe the three different opperations. To new users, this is far less confusing. There is less chance of error.
For the majority of people out there, computers are needlessly complex. If the KDE group wants KDE to be usable by the majority of people, little changes like this have to be made. It might piss off some of the regular users, but thoses regular users can quickly adapt to the changes. In fact, most of those pissed off users will probably admit to prefering the new system once then have gotten used to it. Just look at the original backlash to OSX by traditional Mac users. I liked the traditional MacOS, but after using OSX for some time I must say that it has a vastly superior UI design then the old MacOS.
You can't be serious. IBM doesn't care about DRM because nobody has asked for it. If Apple wanted DRM they would simply ask IBM to include in into their CPU and it would be done. Another option would be to include it in the G5 chipset that Apple already designs. If Apple wanted hardware DRM they would already have it.
Or at least that is how it is for the majority of cable and DSL subscribers out there. The idea of P2P is great and all but so long as the average upload speed is slower then the average download speed then performance will be lacking compared to a simple download.
Just look how Apple serves up movie trailers. They have their servers and the data is transparently mirrored in order to support massive concurrent downloads. Works great.
Instead of complicating things with P2P, why not create a "mirrored ftp" type protocol that ISPs could buffer. They could just monitor outgoing traffic for "mirrored ftp" requests and serve them from a local server if available - kind of like virtual memory. Bandwidth from the ISP to the home user is cheap for the ISP, it's the traffic leaving the ISPs network that costs them money. As such, they would have great incentive to provide a "buffered ftp" server for their users.
Willy
I'm living in northern Canada and have access to a portable mill. I also have access to limitless pine, spruce, poplar, and birch. My question is about the birch. What is it best suited for? The wood might be free, but the time and saw blades are not. In addition, drying wood takes a lot of time and space. Would products made of birch be worth the time and effort required to produce the lumber?
Willy
While I'll still have to do some research, (taking the word of an AC on slashdot isn't the smartest thing to do), I suspect there is a certain amount of truth in your post. It's informative to say the least.
I read a great article on Ars Technica here that shows how Apple is moving the rendering from the CPU to the GPU. Included are some nice graphs that show the relative available bandwidth between the components. To get to the point, it's not that the CPUs aren't fast enough for rendering, it's that the bandwidth to fill the GPU isn't there. Hence, they're moving the rendering to the GPU.
Once one knows about the issues in multithreaded programming it is actually quite simple. However, as the original poster pointed out, it is also very hard to debug and easy to make mistakes. This is where design comes in. Those mistakes shouldn't be made in the first place. Today, programmers have a nasty tendency to jump into code too quickly and rely on tools to debug and evolve the code into the final product. This approach works surprisingly well for simple programs, but you'll crash and burn if you try to use this approach with a multithreaded application.
For my undergraduate I concentrated on learning to program using threads. I took courses like Distributed Systems, Concurrent Systems, Parallel Computing... I observed first hand many of the problems associated with using threads - and I also learned by making most of the common mistakes. Looking back, I see that I learned a great deal. I see how multithreaded applications will play a bigger and bigger part of programming in the future. I also see how all those programming habits picked up in previous years will have to be thrown out and how proper software engineering practices must be adopted...
William
For example, say I want to read my eMail then all I have to do is this:
"cmd+space" - M - a - return
This can be done from anywhere, I don't even have to be in a terminal to do it. The same process can be applied to launch any program. I can also check a phone number without opening the address book, select a song to play in iTunes, or even just simply browse the file system. All of this can be done without removing my hands from the keyboard - so in a lot of ways it is kind of like using vim.
The reason why people are making such a big deal of this is because it is radically different from how we currently do things. In addition, it is that much more productive.
So give it a chance and try it out when it is available. Your point of view is just like was before I tried it, and it made a big difference for me. ;)
William
MacOSX isn't BSD. It contains much of the user-land applications from BSD but it doesn't run a BSD kernel. It runs a MACH microkernel which is very good for MP support.
"and is RISC based..."
So what? It's the performance that matters.
Well, you're partially right. Performance is the most important measure of a CPU but there are other characteristics to consider. For example, the transistor count. More transistors typically equals more power consumption. This results in larger power supplies and stricter cooling requirements. You end up with a more expensive, louder computer that cost more to run. Of course, what does RISC have to do with this? Well, RISC CPUs were designed to be pipelined and as such, result in simpler CPUs. Granted, Intel has worked wonders with their P4, but the complexities of converting the opcode to microcode for that architecture greatly effect the design. Hell, even Intel want to drop the x86 architecture but the market won't let them.
If CISC were really as good as RISC; Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft wouldn't all be looking at IBM to power their next console designs. Legacy PC software prevents everyone from ditching the x86, not the technical merits of the design. Now just imagine the innovation in CPU design that would result if everyone used portable open source software...
William
That expired in 1998 or 1999.