After twelve years of procedural programming, my first contact with functional programming was this semester.
If anything, Scheme has taught me clean iteration techniques (through its tail-recursion syntax). Recursion isn't really that hard to grasp, but iteration is easy to screw up. And, judging from my fellow non-programmer students' reactions, teaching Scheme as a first language (and introducing set! as late as possible) creates programmers who enjoy writing clean code in general - modularized, high-level, generic code.
The system menu is a wonderful thing for us die-hard keyboard users. I don't know how many times a day I use the alt-space,n shortcut to minimize windows, but I know I'm really frustrated that my X server doesn't allow that for X applications.
Keyboard usability in Windows is continuously getting worse - please don't contribute to that trend! Every button deserves its menu equivalent!
Please. Steve isn't expressing any of these opinions - he's commenting on the attitudes of extreme right-wingers in the States. And a system that actually protects its weaker citizens is indeed considered communist by some of these people.
Are you kidding me? This is certainly the most significant piece I've seen in a long time here on Slashdot. It may not be 'news for nerds' but it certainly is 'stuff that matters'.
Actually, just by visiting their homepage you can find out that the translated code is in ordinary RAM since the cache would be much to small. And one suggestion they have is that you would select yourself (in BIOS setup) how much of your RAM is going to be translation cache and how much will be available to the x86 machine, whatever turns out to be a good balance for your needs. In future operating systems this would probably be handled more intelligently in runtime.
With two parties involved, one of them is guaranteed to be in majority and can often enforce its will unchallenged, while with three parties anyone trying to achieve anything would have to cooperate with at least one other party. Wouldn't this be democratically desirable, and a way to soften majority rule?
A lot happened politically in Sweden in the 80's, and maybe even more in the 90's. A report from 1981 doesn't have much relevance in a modern context.
In the mid-90's, severe rationalizations, tax cuts and budget cuts were made in order to balance the financial state of the nation, and today Sweden not only has a rapid GNP growth, but also low and falling unemployment rates. We also have the money to pay our foreign debt.
All this is accomplished while maintaining high taxes, an extensive welfare system and public free-of-charge education even on university level.
To many Swedes, the USA is a terrifying example of what would happen if we cut government funding any further. The reason why public health care doesn't seem to work in the States is that the government doesn't have sufficient funds to support it properly.
I don't see how those definitions conflict. 'republic' is just a more narrow definition than 'democracy'. It defines what representatives are elected and how, but it is still "government by the people [...] through elected representatives".
That's interesting. I consider myself a bit more christian than the common Swedish citizen (my parents raised me that way, being devoted christians), yet I haven't said a prayer, not even the kind you describe, since the my parents stopped saying goodnight prayers with me. I guess it's more of a cultural touch, rather than a religous one.
If you do need Crystal Space (because you're on a tight budget) you're unlikely to be granted PS/2 development status. I think targetting Crystal Space at the PS/2 is a waste of time.
The point is, if you use Crystal Space you won't need PS2 development status. You just compile-and-go. Sony letting them develop such a system without attaching severe strings to the package is an unlikely situation, though. Why would Sony support a project that aims to remove their source of income?
Several companies have announced that they will release Crusoe-based platforms, which of course is easy to say, but at least that means TM are not alone in their vapor cloud.
If you visit their homepage you will not have to guess. Crusoe processors do indeed translate instructions in software, but they also profile and optimize the code during run-time. Specialized hardware helps them achieve this more efficiently than ordinary processors, like the PPC. This kit is tailored, hardware and software, for emulating x86.
As for performance, check out the same homepage for biased but probably to some extent correct benchmarks, both energywise and performancewise.
Now that's just ridiculous. If you by this mean that they are using the x86 ISA, then you should realize that this is necessary to gain market, since they simply do not have the kind of resources that would be needed to invade that market with an incompatible chip (Heck, even Intel and AMD are afraid of trying). It's not a choice. If you mean something else:
RISC and CISC are old terms referring to the structure of the instruction set. TM x86 processors are definitely no less RISC in this aspect than AMD or Intel x86 processors, since they share the same external instruction set.
In the somewhat modern meaning of the terms, RISC means that the instruction set is well thought out and adapted to hardware solutions, allowing advanced hardware to run the code faster by pipelining, branch prediction and out-of-order execution. In this sense a TM processor is less a RISC processor than an AMD or Intel one, since the latter carry RISC-like hardware.
Certain Ars Technica articles
( 1 )
( 2 )
claim that neither CISC nor RISC processors are developed any more (for the high-end market). They call modern processors post-RISC, borrowing from the advantages of both worlds - CISC hardware has become more sophisticated, whereas RISC instruction sets have become more complex. TM replaced the complex, increasingly troublesome hardware with an elegant software solution.
So TM is not post-RISC, which would be the modern interpretation of both CISC and RISC.
The real beauty of TM, which few seem to get in this discussion, is not that they bring RISC to CISC. Intel and AMD have already done that hardwarewise, and it has improved performance tremendously. But they faced new problems with pipeline performance (miss penalties for deep pipelines) and heat dissipation. Classic processor construction could only take them this far.
At this stage TM chose to rethink once more the concepts of processor construction. Just like old times' RISC developers saw the flaws and limitations of CISC processors, TM pinpointed the problems of post-RISC processors.
So the TM processors definitely stand a chance. But what are they? What catchy term could we coin to ignite the modern version of the RISC<->CISC wars?
PS It seems RISC never obliterated CISC, but merged with it instead. (Any dialectic historians out there?:) ) DS
Actually, I've heard that in some countries one of the prerequisites for obtaining an amateur radio license is building your own radio. So you may be on to something..;-)
Re:My e-mail to TrollTech.
on
Qt Going GPL
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· Score: 1
RMS would be pleased indeed if they released it exclusively under the GPL. Since there is an alternative license allowing closed source he probably doesn't give a flying rat's ass about TT choosing GPL over LGPL.
Like so many others have commented, if you use QT22 in your program you can either open up or pay. Not very evangelistic, just plain old financial interests.
Annoying? I just love x2x and x2vnc! Especially x2vnc, since it allows me to run both Linux and Win* on one keyb/mouse set without the need for an input device switch.
And like other posters explained, you're not rebooting, just switching or multitasking OSes, depending on the achievments of the project at the time.
In Sweden you are not allowed to give your child a [not already established] name that could be of discomfort to the child (like of you named your boy Excrement). Sometimes people have been rejected names for being outright silly (like Blomsterblomma == Floweryflower) or impossible to pronounce (like Mxyzptlk).
Other unconventional names like Laser and Månstråle (== Moonlight Ray) have been accepted, though. And I haven't heard anything about a need for sex distinguishability.
A name already in use by someone (thereby being an 'established' name) is always OK, AFAIK.
I was thinking about the morphing software, too. After all, to some extent it actually 'parallellizes' execution into the pipelines of the Crusoe. Although i bet the network overhead would be too great for this to actually gain anything (I understand you have this problem even with software actually written for clusters), it's a cool thought.. Another thought: What if Transmeta made a processor that could share pipelines? You add another of them TM5400's and you get another four pipelines to shove your instructions through, without the underlying x86 code even knowing it! I'm not saying it's possible, but I'm trying to be indiscriminate here...
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry 'bout the whoring..
Cool OT fact about Gibson: Born 1948, released Neuromancer 1984. ;-)
If anything, Scheme has taught me clean iteration techniques (through its tail-recursion syntax). Recursion isn't really that hard to grasp, but iteration is easy to screw up. And, judging from my fellow non-programmer students' reactions, teaching Scheme as a first language (and introducing set! as late as possible) creates programmers who enjoy writing clean code in general - modularized, high-level, generic code.
Maybe it's not the best platform - but that has nothing to do with logic.
Keyboard usability in Windows is continuously getting worse - please don't contribute to that trend! Every button deserves its menu equivalent!
Invade us, and find out for yourself..
Please. Steve isn't expressing any of these opinions - he's commenting on the attitudes of extreme right-wingers in the States. And a system that actually protects its weaker citizens is indeed considered communist by some of these people.
You didn't get it, did you? If you do understand everything, you should get your money back! ;-)
You're forgetting that in the States, judges are political...
Are you kidding me? This is certainly the most significant piece I've seen in a long time here on Slashdot. It may not be 'news for nerds' but it certainly is 'stuff that matters'.
Actually, just by visiting their homepage you can find out that the translated code is in ordinary RAM since the cache would be much to small. And one suggestion they have is that you would select yourself (in BIOS setup) how much of your RAM is going to be translation cache and how much will be available to the x86 machine, whatever turns out to be a good balance for your needs. In future operating systems this would probably be handled more intelligently in runtime.
With two parties involved, one of them is guaranteed to be in majority and can often enforce its will unchallenged, while with three parties anyone trying to achieve anything would have to cooperate with at least one other party. Wouldn't this be democratically desirable, and a way to soften majority rule?
In the mid-90's, severe rationalizations, tax cuts and budget cuts were made in order to balance the financial state of the nation, and today Sweden not only has a rapid GNP growth, but also low and falling unemployment rates. We also have the money to pay our foreign debt.
All this is accomplished while maintaining high taxes, an extensive welfare system and public free-of-charge education even on university level.
To many Swedes, the USA is a terrifying example of what would happen if we cut government funding any further. The reason why public health care doesn't seem to work in the States is that the government doesn't have sufficient funds to support it properly.
If a third party representative would be possible in Executive, why wouldn't it be possible in Congress?
I don't see how those definitions conflict. 'republic' is just a more narrow definition than 'democracy'. It defines what representatives are elected and how, but it is still "government by the people [...] through elected representatives".
That's interesting. I consider myself a bit more christian than the common Swedish citizen (my parents raised me that way, being devoted christians), yet I haven't said a prayer, not even the kind you describe, since the my parents stopped saying goodnight prayers with me. I guess it's more of a cultural touch, rather than a religous one.
This is of course very hard to believe, since the Intel 4004 is considered the first CPU ever. ;-)
If you visit their homepage you will not have to guess. Crusoe processors do indeed translate instructions in software, but they also profile and optimize the code during run-time. Specialized hardware helps them achieve this more efficiently than ordinary processors, like the PPC. This kit is tailored, hardware and software, for emulating x86.
As for performance, check out the same homepage for biased but probably to some extent correct benchmarks, both energywise and performancewise.
The real beauty of TM, which few seem to get in this discussion, is not that they bring RISC to CISC. Intel and AMD have already done that hardwarewise, and it has improved performance tremendously. But they faced new problems with pipeline performance (miss penalties for deep pipelines) and heat dissipation. Classic processor construction could only take them this far. At this stage TM chose to rethink once more the concepts of processor construction. Just like old times' RISC developers saw the flaws and limitations of CISC processors, TM pinpointed the problems of post-RISC processors.
So the TM processors definitely stand a chance. But what are they? What catchy term could we coin to ignite the modern version of the RISC<->CISC wars?
PS :) )
It seems RISC never obliterated CISC, but merged with it instead. (Any dialectic historians out there?
DS
Actually, I've heard that in some countries one of the prerequisites for obtaining an amateur radio license is building your own radio. So you may be on to something.. ;-)
Like so many others have commented, if you use QT22 in your program you can either open up or pay. Not very evangelistic, just plain old financial interests.
Annoying? I just love x2x and x2vnc! Especially x2vnc, since it allows me to run both Linux and Win* on one keyb/mouse set without the need for an input device switch. And like other posters explained, you're not rebooting, just switching or multitasking OSes, depending on the achievments of the project at the time.
Other unconventional names like Laser and Månstråle (== Moonlight Ray) have been accepted, though. And I haven't heard anything about a need for sex distinguishability.
A name already in use by someone (thereby being an 'established' name) is always OK, AFAIK.
I was thinking about the morphing software, too. After all, to some extent it actually 'parallellizes' execution into the pipelines of the Crusoe. Although i bet the network overhead would be too great for this to actually gain anything (I understand you have this problem even with software actually written for clusters), it's a cool thought.. Another thought: What if Transmeta made a processor that could share pipelines? You add another of them TM5400's and you get another four pipelines to shove your instructions through, without the underlying x86 code even knowing it! I'm not saying it's possible, but I'm trying to be indiscriminate here...