I am saying that MIPS processors are no longer being used in the manufacturing of new computers, nor are Alpha processors.
The Alpha based supercomputers that are numbers 3 and 4 on the list were installed in 2001 and the one that's number 6 was installed this year. Clearly, the Alpha is nearly dead, but it's not quite dead yet.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that fewer than 10,000 Alpha systems were ever sold
The three supercomputers I just mentioned (nos 3, 4, and 6) have a combined count of 7600 CPU's. Admittedly, that's only three systems, but your statement is just ridiculous.
Also, The hammer and Itanium processors will far exceed the Alpha on floating point operations. I mean, if they can't beat a four year old processor, they shouldn't be in business.
Floating point operations have never been Intel's strong suit. For similar clock speeds, their CPU's get roundly trounced by Alpha, PPC, and others as well. I found an interesting page here that contains some enlightening comparisons. An 833 MHz Alpha beats a Pentium 4/2000 on the Specfp2000 benchmark, and it remains generally comparable throughout the tests. I suspect that Intel will beef up their results with the Itanium, but they have had the benefit of all the Dec/Compaq experience now that they own it.
One thing I love about the Alpha is how incredibly cool it runs. It's amazing to open the case of my 533 MHz AlphaPC to look at relatively sparsely populated motherboard and note that the CPU has but a modest heat sink and no fan.
I must confess my bias, because I have two Alphas faithfully running Red Hat Linux at home. So far as performance is concerned, I'll be surprised if the Intel Itanium or even the AMD Hammer chips will compare favorably to comparable Alphas on floating point performance, which is very important in many high end applications.
I don't think you can blame the English or the Americans on nautical miles. Nautical miles are based on the earth's geometry and are used to make sea and air navigation convenient. A nautical mile is basically the distance along a meridian (line of longitude) between two points separated by one minute of arc in latitude. Consequently, it's really easy to measure distances on a chart that shows latitude and longitude lines. The earth's circumference is basically 21600 (360 x 60) nm.
I think you're making a mistake in assuming that performance in the past predicts exactly the performance in the future. One of the biggest problems with 32-bit systems is memory addressing. 32-bit systems can only address 4 GB RAM, and modern desktops are easily capable of having a couple GB RAM, especially when swap is thrown into the mix. Hell, my laptop even has 1.5 GB RAM (512 MB h/w, 1 GB swap).
To quote some relevant observations from the last link in the original post:
If you are watching Live TV at the time TiVo will ask permission to change channels to record the Promo. Note if you are not around to say no TiVo will go ahead. I *think* the buffer up to the time of the channel change will still be available.
This is a bit rude, if you're watching TV and happen to leave the room at the wrong time for a bio break or something, expecting that the TiVo is faithfully recording things for when you return. Not a high probability occurrence, I'll grant you, but it's still pretty rude behavior.
The Dossa & Jo promo contains some strong language and is unsuitable for younger viewers. Parental controls are not effective so be careful.
Don't you folks who think that this is no big deal see something a little wrong with this? How are users supposed to "be careful" if they are given no ability to remove the offending programming? Seems like a completely ludicrous statement to me.
If anyone really thinks that a $25k donation would have anything to do with a $95,000,000.00 deal for software, they need to get reacquainted with reality. $25k is nothing unusual. It's a Red Herring, and doesn't belong in an informed discussion on the Oracle/California mess.
Hmmmm. I wonder if you'd voice the same opinion if the recipient were a Republican instead of a Democrat. Methinks you need to get reacquainted with political reality.
I have never used Access to create an application, so you're probably right about the front end stuff. However, SQL Anywhere is a "real" server that runs on pretty nearly anything, and you can definitely use all the MS GUI tools to write apps that go against it. Its replication features are awesome, as is its performance. If I were writing a database application using MS tools and I needed more horsepower than what Access provides, I'd consider using VB and SQL Anywhere.
I will admit that Microsoft has made database administration a snap with its various databases, especially SQL Server 7 on Win2K, which is the last MS database product with which I worked. Sybase really dropped the ball on making their version usable. If you look at what Microsoft and Sybase did with SQL Server after they parted company, it's easy to see that Microsoft has done amazing things starting from the same code base and Sybase has let itself fall way behind. Well, that was the situation a couple years ago, when I last worked with these databases. Anyway, Microsoft may be an evil empire and all that, but most of their competitors have done more to screw themselves than Microsoft ever did to help them.
Also, getting back to SQL Anywhere, the original creators were the Watcom folks up in Waterloo, Ontario. Sybase acquired their technology when they purchased Powersoft. The real magic was done by Watcom.
We may all agree that this is funny, but it's those same 13 year old girls who turned Titanic into the all-time 800 pound gorilla of movies -- to the tune of nearly 2 gigabucks world-wide box office. Maybe George sold out, but he just may have sold out for really big bucks.
I think you're overlooking the fact that Linux is a HUGE hit on the server, and the folks who manage all those servers are going to mostly run Linux on their workstations as well. There's no way that Apple hardware is going to replace PC hardware in server farms, particularly rack mounted stacks of servers. That alone is why Linux will continue to thrive for some time to come.
Having said that, I sure wish I could justify the expense of a new Mac with one of those luscious cinema-style displays. But for me, it would just be a toy, and I don't have the funds to splurge on a system like that at the moment.
I went to the site mentioned in the article and tried out the various ad links. They all worked as advertised for me, running Mozilla 0.9.6 on Mandrake 8.2. So I don't think this technology is really restricted to IE/Windows.
Like building a competing system that has the secondary capability of jamming GPS? That way, if the Europeans wanted to, they could jam the U.S. system and control use to their system! It could even be field tested somewhere over Siberia.
Another small thingy: why do you mention Timmys name like that every other sentence; it makes you sound like a patronising know-it-all, which doesn't help getting your (valid) points across.
You're right. Pretty demeaning tone, but he still manages to get mod'ed up to a 5.
Or Gore Junior claiming to be a resident of Tennessee.
Although I suspect that the critical difference is that the Bush and Gore claims are actually LEGAL, while the legality of your router rationale is highly doubtful. Still, I do like the concept. It's OK by me.
You're simply protecting your own and not supporting other nations (ie France)
YO! How about not once, but twice during the last century we sailed across the briny deep to bail the French out from some homegrown European mess???? In fact, the latter time was to expunge those same troublesome Nazi's that the French let run all over themselves. So what if we want to sell Nazi memorabilia among ourselves? We stole it from them fair and square.
Why is this rated as insightful? What insights does it provide? Companies use software all the time without spending enormous amounts on attorney fees to review the licenses under which the software is released. How does BurritoWarrior explain that?
I doubt seriously that licensing concerns will be the "downfall" of OSS. For one thing, once an open source software package is out there, it's out there. There's pretty much no going back. Even if the original author rescinds the license for a later version, the code that has been released can form the basis for a different fork.
I think people should not overlook the fact that the backbone of this wonderful thing we call the Internet runs on a heck of a lot of open source software: bind, apache, sendmail,.... OSS is holding up just fine, thanks. I doubt that will ever change.
You might be on the right track, but I'm pretty sure that 15,000 feet is way too low. 50,000 or 60,000 might work. OTOH, to run at the airspeeds these guys are talking about, they would have to run pretty high anyway.
Because of the sonic boom, jets are restricted to subsonic flight over populated areas. So for planes whose primary purpose is to move passengers within the U.S. and/or Canada, the capacity for supersonic flight is a worthless, yet expensive, feature.
Sure they could - provided all of the users of XP were the sort of people who don't mind downloading and recompiling a new kernel every two weeks.
Are you saying that the users of Microsoft Windows XP can download and recompile the OS? I'm not familiar with this new licensing arrangement that Microsoft must now provide. I will say this much for Microsoft. They do respond quickly to critical bugs in their software -- often within months, sometimes within weeks.
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BTW, for which division of Microsoft do you work?
The Alpha based supercomputers that are numbers 3 and 4 on the list were installed in 2001 and the one that's number 6 was installed this year. Clearly, the Alpha is nearly dead, but it's not quite dead yet.
The three supercomputers I just mentioned (nos 3, 4, and 6) have a combined count of 7600 CPU's. Admittedly, that's only three systems, but your statement is just ridiculous.
Floating point operations have never been Intel's strong suit. For similar clock speeds, their CPU's get roundly trounced by Alpha, PPC, and others as well. I found an interesting page here that contains some enlightening comparisons. An 833 MHz Alpha beats a Pentium 4/2000 on the Specfp2000 benchmark, and it remains generally comparable throughout the tests. I suspect that Intel will beef up their results with the Itanium, but they have had the benefit of all the Dec/Compaq experience now that they own it.
One thing I love about the Alpha is how incredibly cool it runs. It's amazing to open the case of my 533 MHz AlphaPC to look at relatively sparsely populated motherboard and note that the CPU has but a modest heat sink and no fan.
How about the third and fourth fastest supercomputers in the world? Including the fastest in Europe.
Not to forget that Titanic, by far the highest grossing motion picture of all time, was rendered with the help of an AlphaPC server farm running Red Hat Linux. Admittedly, that was five years ago. But it was still a 64 bit OS.
I must confess my bias, because I have two Alphas faithfully running Red Hat Linux at home. So far as performance is concerned, I'll be surprised if the Intel Itanium or even the AMD Hammer chips will compare favorably to comparable Alphas on floating point performance, which is very important in many high end applications.
Of course, I could be wrong....
I don't think you can blame the English or the Americans on nautical miles. Nautical miles are based on the earth's geometry and are used to make sea and air navigation convenient. A nautical mile is basically the distance along a meridian (line of longitude) between two points separated by one minute of arc in latitude. Consequently, it's really easy to measure distances on a chart that shows latitude and longitude lines. The earth's circumference is basically 21600 (360 x 60) nm.
Great picture! I was afraid it was going to be another goatse.cx link at first.
I think you're making a mistake in assuming that performance in the past predicts exactly the performance in the future. One of the biggest problems with 32-bit systems is memory addressing. 32-bit systems can only address 4 GB RAM, and modern desktops are easily capable of having a couple GB RAM, especially when swap is thrown into the mix. Hell, my laptop even has 1.5 GB RAM (512 MB h/w, 1 GB swap).
This is a bit rude, if you're watching TV and happen to leave the room at the wrong time for a bio break or something, expecting that the TiVo is faithfully recording things for when you return. Not a high probability occurrence, I'll grant you, but it's still pretty rude behavior.
Don't you folks who think that this is no big deal see something a little wrong with this? How are users supposed to "be careful" if they are given no ability to remove the offending programming? Seems like a completely ludicrous statement to me.
Hmmmm. I wonder if you'd voice the same opinion if the recipient were a Republican instead of a Democrat. Methinks you need to get reacquainted with political reality.
I have never used Access to create an application, so you're probably right about the front end stuff. However, SQL Anywhere is a "real" server that runs on pretty nearly anything, and you can definitely use all the MS GUI tools to write apps that go against it. Its replication features are awesome, as is its performance. If I were writing a database application using MS tools and I needed more horsepower than what Access provides, I'd consider using VB and SQL Anywhere.
I will admit that Microsoft has made database administration a snap with its various databases, especially SQL Server 7 on Win2K, which is the last MS database product with which I worked. Sybase really dropped the ball on making their version usable. If you look at what Microsoft and Sybase did with SQL Server after they parted company, it's easy to see that Microsoft has done amazing things starting from the same code base and Sybase has let itself fall way behind. Well, that was the situation a couple years ago, when I last worked with these databases. Anyway, Microsoft may be an evil empire and all that, but most of their competitors have done more to screw themselves than Microsoft ever did to help them.
Also, getting back to SQL Anywhere, the original creators were the Watcom folks up in Waterloo, Ontario. Sybase acquired their technology when they purchased Powersoft. The real magic was done by Watcom.
Sybase SQL Anywhere, formerly Watcom SQL. Blows Access completely to smithereens.
We may all agree that this is funny, but it's those same 13 year old girls who turned Titanic into the all-time 800 pound gorilla of movies -- to the tune of nearly 2 gigabucks world-wide box office. Maybe George sold out, but he just may have sold out for really big bucks.
Uh -- what you threw was a glider , not an airplane .
I think you're overlooking the fact that Linux is a HUGE hit on the server, and the folks who manage all those servers are going to mostly run Linux on their workstations as well. There's no way that Apple hardware is going to replace PC hardware in server farms, particularly rack mounted stacks of servers. That alone is why Linux will continue to thrive for some time to come.
Having said that, I sure wish I could justify the expense of a new Mac with one of those luscious cinema-style displays. But for me, it would just be a toy, and I don't have the funds to splurge on a system like that at the moment.
Just my two cents.
Uh, if it's an int, it ain't a large prime.
I went to the site mentioned in the article and tried out the various ad links. They all worked as advertised for me, running Mozilla 0.9.6 on Mandrake 8.2. So I don't think this technology is really restricted to IE/Windows.
Like building a competing system that has the secondary capability of jamming GPS? That way, if the Europeans wanted to, they could jam the U.S. system and control use to their system! It could even be field tested somewhere over Siberia.
Just a thought.
You're right. Pretty demeaning tone, but he still manages to get mod'ed up to a 5.
Or Gore Junior claiming to be a resident of Tennessee.
Although I suspect that the critical difference is that the Bush and Gore claims are actually LEGAL, while the legality of your router rationale is highly doubtful. Still, I do like the concept. It's OK by me.
You're simply protecting your own and not supporting other nations (ie France)
YO! How about not once, but twice during the last century we sailed across the briny deep to bail the French out from some homegrown European mess???? In fact, the latter time was to expunge those same troublesome Nazi's that the French let run all over themselves. So what if we want to sell Nazi memorabilia among ourselves? We stole it from them fair and square.
Excuse me....
Why is this rated as insightful? What insights does it provide? Companies use software all the time without spending enormous amounts on attorney fees to review the licenses under which the software is released. How does BurritoWarrior explain that?
.... OSS is holding up just fine, thanks. I doubt that will ever change.
I doubt seriously that licensing concerns will be the "downfall" of OSS. For one thing, once an open source software package is out there, it's out there. There's pretty much no going back. Even if the original author rescinds the license for a later version, the code that has been released can form the basis for a different fork.
I think people should not overlook the fact that the backbone of this wonderful thing we call the Internet runs on a heck of a lot of open source software: bind, apache, sendmail,
Not really. It would be A:00, B:00, and 10:00.
Kind of like the way that there is absolutely zero evidence that Bush or anybody in the Bush administration has been "bought" by Microsoft?
You might be on the right track, but I'm pretty sure that 15,000 feet is way too low. 50,000 or 60,000 might work. OTOH, to run at the airspeeds these guys are talking about, they would have to run pretty high anyway.
Because of the sonic boom, jets are restricted to subsonic flight over populated areas. So for planes whose primary purpose is to move passengers within the U.S. and/or Canada, the capacity for supersonic flight is a worthless, yet expensive, feature.
Are you saying that the users of Microsoft Windows XP can download and recompile the OS? I'm not familiar with this new licensing arrangement that Microsoft must now provide. I will say this much for Microsoft. They do respond quickly to critical bugs in their software -- often within months, sometimes within weeks.