"My biggest problem with integrating so much into the systemboard is the lack of upgrade options."
--
Fair enough; however, many of these components are becoming commodity items.
--
"It's cool now, but five years from now?"
--
You won't have "five years from now" ability to upgrade, even if it weren't integrated. Bus, memory, chipset -- all these things are moving too rapidly for that now.
--
"Why not focus on improving memory access or AGP speed?"
--
They did; furthermore, it's quite possible to have very-much-higher-than AGP access speeds with an on-die solution; this should give you a better idea of where the future will be.
At a guess, for example, Hammer or some near-future version will have memory controllers on die. I expect integration to be a strong trend, because we've gotten to the point where the current bottlenecks are the communication channels between parts.
--
"Why not further communication between the graphic chipset and the CPU instead of developing these (IMHO) silly integrated solutions?"
--
Sounds to me as if you haven't read much about nForce...
"The size of a company is limited primarily by the ability of its management to manage complexity"
----
I should say that there's probably cases where it's the other way around: the optimal size of some companies might be larger than instinct suggests, because there is something about the collective power of the company as a whole which allows it to manage complexity better.
"I have no idea where the "cross-bar" part of the memory system comes into play... The idea doesn't even make sense. You have a chipset, and two banks of DDR. That's two point-point links, for which the term cross-bar seems ill-fitting."
----
If this is anything like their X-box setup, I'd guess that each bank is cross-barred. But I don't right know.
"It's not clear why this new chip is GeForce 2,..."
----
It almost certainly has something to do with transistor count; there is only so much you can squeeze onto a.15 micron die before the die gets too large. Remember, this is an integrated ON-DIE Geforce 2.
Perhaps "making a huge hardware comeback" just doesn't fit with the realities of today's market. Take, for example, the darling of all semiconductors, the Alpha. For a good five years, the Alpha has been the reigning champion piece of silicon in existence. And yet, in some ways, it is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Don't get me wrong; I think the Alpha is a truly wonderful piece of silicon, and think it's sad that the market hasn't done more with it. The day that the Apple-DEC deal fell through on the Alpha (yes, boys and girls, we had a chance to have Alpha-powered Macs, but got PPC instead) was a sad day indeed.
I just think that the market dynamics are asserting a reality that companies are having a very hard time escaping, and this is reshaping the market into what we're seeing now.
"Any one of the millions of posters on Usenet could potentially sue them for including their posts in their archives. Including that clause just make it less likely that something like that will happen."
---
Millions still can; Google is at best protecting themselves from people posting _using Google_. All the other posters possess the right to rescind Google's ability to distribute copies of their messages at any given time. There was a day in which Google would voluntarily purge any message in their system at the request of the poster; such a policy is prudent.
----
"Usenet posts are a fairly grey area when it comes to copyright law... "
----
Only if you believe that arbitrary redistribution constitutes "fair use".
"The industry has been gradually moving toward a 64-bit architecture [From 32 Bits], which multiplies the amount of data the processor can access by four (sic)."
----
Someone misspelled "four billion".
"This will be a test of the weakest portion of the GPL that is assumed to be defensible by the FSF - whether dynamic linking to a library makes something a derivative work in the copyright sense."
----
If this is a "weak" part of the GPL, then the GPL should be revised. Holders of copyrights are permitted under law to dictate whatever terms they please regarding the use of their copyrighted material. That's the strength of the GPL: the original author owns the copyright to the material, while the person using the material agrees to the terms set out in the license. "Permission to copy, distribute, or to excerpt source code from this library is refused in the event that the [insert your own draconian terms here]..." is a perfectly legitimate stipulation. The copyright holder is not under _ANY_ obligation to give up his or her copyright, excepting fair uses clauses, etc.
The NET Act was signed into law by President Clinton in December 1997, making it illegal to reproduce or distribute copyrighted works, such as software programs and musical recordings, even if the defendant acts without a commercial purpose or for private financial gain. If the defendant reproduces or distributes 10 or more copyrighted works that have a total value of more than $2,500, he or she can be charged with a felony, and faces a sentence of up to 3 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000. A defendant who reproduces or distributes one or more copies of copyrighted works with a value of more than $1,000 can be charged with a misdemeanor, and face up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
"The user interface is one. Lets just hope it is
one that is for the good of the community, and
not one that just wants to dominate the world."
----
IIRC, OSF made Motif open source.
In the Motif Era (tm), David Flanagan produced a
library called "Motif Power Tools" (Xmt) which
included the most genuinely powerful, capable,
and just plain _right_ window layout manager I've
ever come across. Xmt's other capabilities
included the ability to make massive changes in
appearance and functionality to a Motif user
interface without so much as recompiling a single
line of code. This was a truly and genuinely
useful construct, and I still rue the day that I
eventually moved to another environment where Xmt
wasn't handy.
There's also an irony here. David Flanagan is
"somewhat famous" for his authoring of _Java in
a Nutshell_, which he'd admit he threw together
fairly haphazardly (and in any case, was pretty
cruddy). Meanwhile, his Xmt effort was an effort
of love, both at the source level, as well as the
documentation level... a genuine feat.
The irony is that _Java in a Nutshell_ made Mr.
Flanagan truly big bucks. _Motif Power Tools_
was a financial flop.
"We're incorporated, don't you know what that
means"
----
Apparently he didn't. Incorporation does not
protect employees from the consequences of
illegal behavior. It protects INVESTORS, and
only then when they don't participate in the
illegal behavior.
"It's actually written in Cyrillic, not Roman
characters."
----
You have a point there; it's kind of like when
people think they know how to spell Qaddaffi
in English when the sound of the first phoneme
of his name can't even be EXPRESSED in English.
"It sounds somewhat like a dog throwing up
chicken bone, please don't lecture me on spelling,
ha ha."
As for Stallman being a communist, this reminds
me of the ye ole sophomorical debate about the
ability to sell one's own rights. As a matter of
practice, one obviously can in many contexts.
So if you're not liking Stallman's and GNU's
brand of communism, I'd suggest you not buy.
And I think this is the way it SHOULD be. Take
Stalin's communism, for example. If the people had
actually been free to "buy" or to "not buy," it
would have collapsed far sooner than it did.
But speaking of the ego, the best fulfillment
strategy might be for the flamer to finally
pay for that surgery. Bigger may not be better,
but... well, one has to do what one can for
the ego, eh? Perhaps then he'll finally get a
girl.
This is a case of the cycle being more powerful
than the rider; at certain g forces, the rider
simply cannot hold onto and guide the bike
properly. It's kind of like F16's: the plane
can seriously outperform the pilot.
Heh. Surprised the government hasn't already
put one up. Just think what you could do with
a multi-gigawatt directed energy beam. "Lemme
see. Saddam is annoying us again? He wants
power does he?! Well let's give him some!!!!
MUHAHAHAHAHA."
"Kind of a double-standard here? It's okay if
the site in question just bitches about a
company, but not if they make money?"
---
No, it's not a double standard. If someone makes
use of the market presence of someone else's
trademark in order to make market headway them-
selves, the is a clear misuse of that other
party's trade, and protected under law.
"Fuck General Motors" is a Constitutionally-
protected expression of free speech which is an
example of something which is arguably one of the
main reasons for the existence of the 1st
Amendment: the freedom to criticize.
Note: I'm deliberately dodging the issue of
whether or not "AIMster" is something that
actually or obviously violates AOL's trade on
AIM. That decision requires more information than
I personally have.
The domain name system is All Fucked Up (tm).
Where is it written that "all of.com is one
giant space in protection of a Trade"? The
domain name system is as much an expression of
ideas as it is labels of trade; The ability to
register a website called "Fuck Ford" isn't a
abuse of Ford's trade mark, it is an expression
of free speech reflecting the right of citizens
everywhere to express their dislike of the Ford
corporation.
Companies these days attempt to acquire all known
permutations of their name, including ones which
are negative derivations of their name in order
to protect themselves from things like this.
However, I believe that this should _not_ be
allowed. A company should _not_ be able to buy
up the right to free itself from criticism; this
is tantamount to allowing those with the most
money to buy away the rights of others.
The internet domain system is screwed up, as are
its current policies.
"Doesn't the beam of light have to contain
the data that the user is looking for so
that the match can be made?"
----
I think so, yes. This is a search for key,
find value lookup approach, I think.
"...before brute forcing a 256 bit key becomes
feasible..."
Just remember that a 256 bit key has 2^128
_TIMES_ as many states as a 128 bit key.
That's 3.4 x 10^38 _TIMES_ more bits than a
128 bit key, or 1.56 x 10^77 total states.
A computer which is a billion times faster
still _CANNOT_ approach this problem. A
computer would have to be many QUADRILLION,
QUADRILLION times faster to even have a
chance.
Slashdot Mirror
"My biggest problem with integrating so much into the systemboard is the lack of upgrade options."
--
Fair enough; however, many of these components are becoming commodity items.
--
"It's cool now, but five years from now?"
--
You won't have "five years from now" ability to upgrade, even if it weren't integrated. Bus, memory, chipset -- all these things are moving too rapidly for that now.
--
"Why not focus on improving memory access or AGP speed?"
--
They did; furthermore, it's quite possible to have very-much-higher-than AGP access speeds with an on-die solution; this should give you a better idea of where the future will be.
At a guess, for example, Hammer or some near-future version will have memory controllers on die. I expect integration to be a strong trend, because we've gotten to the point where the current bottlenecks are the communication channels between parts.
--
"Why not further communication between the graphic chipset and the CPU instead of developing these (IMHO) silly integrated solutions?"
--
Sounds to me as if you haven't read much about nForce...
C//
"The size of a company is limited primarily by the ability of its management to manage complexity"
----
I should say that there's probably cases where it's the other way around: the optimal size of some companies might be larger than instinct suggests, because there is something about the collective power of the company as a whole which allows it to manage complexity better.
C//
"I have no idea where the "cross-bar" part of the memory system comes into play... The idea doesn't even make sense. You have a chipset, and two banks of DDR. That's two point-point links, for which the term cross-bar seems ill-fitting."
----
If this is anything like their X-box setup, I'd guess that each bank is cross-barred. But I don't right know.
C//
"It's not clear why this new chip is GeForce 2,..." .15 micron die before the die gets too large. Remember, this is an integrated ON-DIE Geforce 2.
----
It almost certainly has something to do with transistor count; there is only so much you can squeeze onto a
C//
Perhaps "making a huge hardware comeback" just doesn't fit with the realities of today's market. Take, for example, the darling of all semiconductors, the Alpha. For a good five years, the Alpha has been the reigning champion piece of silicon in existence. And yet, in some ways, it is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Don't get me wrong; I think the Alpha is a truly wonderful piece of silicon, and think it's sad that the market hasn't done more with it. The day that the Apple-DEC deal fell through on the Alpha (yes, boys and girls, we had a chance to have Alpha-powered Macs, but got PPC instead) was a sad day indeed.
I just think that the market dynamics are asserting a reality that companies are having a very hard time escaping, and this is reshaping the market into what we're seeing now.
C//
"Any one of the millions of posters on Usenet could potentially sue them for including their posts in their archives. Including that clause just make it less likely that something like that will happen."
---
Millions still can; Google is at best protecting themselves from people posting _using Google_. All the other posters possess the right to rescind Google's ability to distribute copies of their messages at any given time. There was a day in which Google would voluntarily purge any message in their system at the request of the poster; such a policy is prudent.
----
"Usenet posts are a fairly grey area when it comes to copyright law... "
----
Only if you believe that arbitrary redistribution constitutes "fair use".
C//
Ouch. You blothied hiths nothes.
:-)
C//
"The industry has been gradually moving toward a 64-bit architecture [From 32 Bits], which multiplies the amount of data the processor can access by four (sic)."
----
Someone misspelled "four billion".
C//
"This will be a test of the weakest portion of the GPL that is assumed to be defensible by the FSF - whether dynamic linking to a library makes something a derivative work in the copyright sense."
----
If this is a "weak" part of the GPL, then the GPL should be revised. Holders of copyrights are permitted under law to dictate whatever terms they please regarding the use of their copyrighted material. That's the strength of the GPL: the original author owns the copyright to the material, while the person using the material agrees to the terms set out in the license. "Permission to copy, distribute, or to excerpt source code from this library is refused in the event that the [insert your own draconian terms here]..." is a perfectly legitimate stipulation. The copyright holder is not under _ANY_ obligation to give up his or her copyright, excepting fair uses clauses, etc.
C//
The NET Act was signed into law by President Clinton in December 1997, making it illegal to reproduce or distribute copyrighted works, such as software programs and musical recordings, even if the defendant acts without a commercial purpose or for private financial gain. If the defendant reproduces or distributes 10 or more copyrighted works that have a total value of more than $2,500, he or she can be charged with a felony, and faces a sentence of up to 3 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000. A defendant who reproduces or distributes one or more copies of copyrighted works with a value of more than $1,000 can be charged with a misdemeanor, and face up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
"The user interface is one. Lets just hope it is
one that is for the good of the community, and
not one that just wants to dominate the world."
----
IIRC, OSF made Motif open source.
C//
In the Motif Era (tm), David Flanagan produced a
library called "Motif Power Tools" (Xmt) which
included the most genuinely powerful, capable,
and just plain _right_ window layout manager I've
ever come across. Xmt's other capabilities
included the ability to make massive changes in
appearance and functionality to a Motif user
interface without so much as recompiling a single
line of code. This was a truly and genuinely
useful construct, and I still rue the day that I
eventually moved to another environment where Xmt
wasn't handy.
There's also an irony here. David Flanagan is
"somewhat famous" for his authoring of _Java in
a Nutshell_, which he'd admit he threw together
fairly haphazardly (and in any case, was pretty
cruddy). Meanwhile, his Xmt effort was an effort
of love, both at the source level, as well as the
documentation level... a genuine feat.
The irony is that _Java in a Nutshell_ made Mr.
Flanagan truly big bucks. _Motif Power Tools_
was a financial flop.
Ah well; them's the breaks.
C//
Many of these were actually Purify brainfarts
having something to do with the unusual mgmt
of memory under the hood in Motif, IIRC.
C//
"We're incorporated, don't you know what that
means"
----
Apparently he didn't. Incorporation does not
protect employees from the consequences of
illegal behavior. It protects INVESTORS, and
only then when they don't participate in the
illegal behavior.
C//
"It's actually written in Cyrillic, not Roman
characters."
----
You have a point there; it's kind of like when
people think they know how to spell Qaddaffi
in English when the sound of the first phoneme
of his name can't even be EXPRESSED in English.
"It sounds somewhat like a dog throwing up
chicken bone, please don't lecture me on spelling,
ha ha."
As for Stallman being a communist, this reminds
me of the ye ole sophomorical debate about the
ability to sell one's own rights. As a matter of
practice, one obviously can in many contexts.
So if you're not liking Stallman's and GNU's
brand of communism, I'd suggest you not buy.
And I think this is the way it SHOULD be. Take
Stalin's communism, for example. If the people had
actually been free to "buy" or to "not buy," it
would have collapsed far sooner than it did.
C//
"A guy named Stallan thought the same way..."
----
"Stalin".
C//
True enough, my error.
But speaking of the ego, the best fulfillment
strategy might be for the flamer to finally
pay for that surgery. Bigger may not be better,
but... well, one has to do what one can for
the ego, eh? Perhaps then he'll finally get a
girl.
C//
This is a case of the cycle being more powerful
than the rider; at certain g forces, the rider
simply cannot hold onto and guide the bike
properly. It's kind of like F16's: the plane
can seriously outperform the pilot.
C//
>> "What's up with using "TT" anyway"?
I prefer to enter my returns by hand.
>> It makes you look lame.
You will have to search some place other
than usenet if your ego is to find what
it's looking for.
C//
Heh. Surprised the government hasn't already
put one up. Just think what you could do with
a multi-gigawatt directed energy beam. "Lemme
see. Saddam is annoying us again? He wants
power does he?! Well let's give him some!!!!
MUHAHAHAHAHA."
C//
"Kind of a double-standard here? It's okay if
the site in question just bitches about a
company, but not if they make money?"
---
No, it's not a double standard. If someone makes
use of the market presence of someone else's
trademark in order to make market headway them-
selves, the is a clear misuse of that other
party's trade, and protected under law.
"Fuck General Motors" is a Constitutionally-
protected expression of free speech which is an
example of something which is arguably one of the
main reasons for the existence of the 1st
Amendment: the freedom to criticize.
Note: I'm deliberately dodging the issue of
whether or not "AIMster" is something that
actually or obviously violates AOL's trade on
AIM. That decision requires more information than
I personally have.
C//
The domain name system is All Fucked Up (tm). .com is one
Where is it written that "all of
giant space in protection of a Trade"? The
domain name system is as much an expression of
ideas as it is labels of trade; The ability to
register a website called "Fuck Ford" isn't a
abuse of Ford's trade mark, it is an expression
of free speech reflecting the right of citizens
everywhere to express their dislike of the Ford
corporation.
Companies these days attempt to acquire all known
permutations of their name, including ones which
are negative derivations of their name in order
to protect themselves from things like this.
However, I believe that this should _not_ be
allowed. A company should _not_ be able to buy
up the right to free itself from criticism; this
is tantamount to allowing those with the most
money to buy away the rights of others.
The internet domain system is screwed up, as are
its current policies.
C//
"The lawsuit angle is unlikely to get
you any more money than just signing
the paper,..."
----
No, but it _will_ punish the guilty.
C//
"Doesn't the beam of light have to contain
the data that the user is looking for so
that the match can be made?"
----
I think so, yes. This is a search for key,
find value lookup approach, I think.
C//
"...before brute forcing a 256 bit key becomes
feasible..."
Just remember that a 256 bit key has 2^128
_TIMES_ as many states as a 128 bit key.
That's 3.4 x 10^38 _TIMES_ more bits than a
128 bit key, or 1.56 x 10^77 total states.
A computer which is a billion times faster
still _CANNOT_ approach this problem. A
computer would have to be many QUADRILLION,
QUADRILLION times faster to even have a
chance.
C//