...but I can pretty much guess where this is going. If you look at the massive parallelization improvements we've witnessed among supercomputers over the past couple decades, you can predict that at some point, most of the low hanging fruit would eventually be picked at which point the underlying latency between interconnects would start to become a limiting factor. Couple that with the fact that there's been a complete lack of significant performance improvement in desktop/server CPU space in say the past 5 years and you can predict that it wouldn't be long before we'd see a leveling off of the supercomputer performance curve.
1. As much as they need to re-think the whole Metro implementation for users without touchscreen hardware, from what I've read they are *NOT* bringing back the old desktop Start Menu, they are simply putting an icon in the familiar place to get to Metro. Metro is still the place where you will launch programs/apps from... and I will continue to bypass it altogether with Classic Shell on my desktop PC. I don't need a complete context change just to open a command prompt, control panel or start programs. Perhaps surprising to MS, I prefer to do my computing at a desk with a 24" non-touchscreen monitor, and I will not be replacing it anytime soon just so that I can bend forward and reach across the keyboard to smudge a hidden menu with my index finger.
2. As we all know, the 100 million licenses sold BS is just that. MS is conflating OEM licenses shipped with actual users actively purchasing and/or using Windows 8 software. They can pull this off because Windows is the de facto shipping OS on virtually all PC hardware. It is obviously to their advantage to maintain this sleight of hand, so don't expect them to get honest any time soon.
Most of the major AV software suites utilize some form of behavioral heuristics to detect unknown threats. I'm not saying it's 100%, but you'd be surprised how effective it can be if implemented right.
Ok, but Haswell delivers virtually nothing computing performance-wise over a reasonably overclocked Sandy Bridge which is a full tick-tock cycle earlier.
Haswell parts are expected to be 10-15% faster than Ivy Bridge, which was itself barely any faster than Sandy Bridge.
Anyone remember the days when computing performance doubled or even tripled between generations?
I have a desktop PC running a Sandy Bridge i5-2500K running at a consistent 4.5GHz (on air). At this rate, it could be another couple generations before Intel has anything worthwhile as an upgrade... I suspect that discrete-GPU-buying home PC enthusiasts are going to continue to be completely ignored going forward while Intel continues to focus on chips for tablets and ultrabooks.
Look, PC sales are on the decline. This we all know. So MS decided to tackle tablets in a big, audacious way in order to increase their relevance in the post-PC era. And it might have worked...
HAD THEY NOT BEEN SO ARROGANT AS TO REMOVE THE GODDAMNED START MENU AND FORCED OLD PC HARDWARE TO USE THEIR TOUCHSCREEN UI!
Seriously, how difficult would it have been to do a quick hardware check upon install and say "hmmm, it looks like you have a keyboard, mouse and non-touchscreen monitor. Let's make Metro an icon on the classic desktop and boot to explorer.exe with a mouse-friendly start menu by default."
Personally, I think Windows 8 offers several welcome improvements over Win7. I installed the OS, downloaded and configured Classic Shell, and haven't so much as whiffed a Metro screen in at least 2 months on my PC. It's great for me, but I'm not your average Windows user! The masses are clueless and if you give them enough reason to dislike your product, you're doomed.
MS, you successfully borrowed Steve Jobs' arrogant decision-making skills, but failed to deliver on the other half of the equation: an overall better user experience.
If we're going to say that drone strikes are ok, then what's the difference whether they happen on US soil or not? It's an awfully arbitrary delineation to say that this technology should only be used against bad guys if they happen to reside on foreign soil.
If you believe the use of military drones are ok, then why not have them patrolling the skies wherever you suspect bad guys are hiding out?
What makes you think that our rightful genetic destiny must be toward smarter and smarter human beings? We may have reached a point where evolutionarily, we're already as smart as we're likely ever to get due to pressures that you nor I can completely comprehend. What we're starting to understand is that evolution proceeds in fits and starts and many dead ends toward a somewhat unpredictable concept of 'fittest'.
Do you mean Samsung? In 2012 they were the only manufacturer using TLC NAND and in only one line of drives (840). Don't let me steal your thunder though...
An incidentally, the 840 has been shown to do over 400 TB of writes (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm&p=5163560&viewfull=1#post5163560), which is probably fine for most desktop uses...
After the first trickle of photos started appearing, I thought, hmm, ok I guess cross-processing (an old photography technique where you develop one film using the chemicals for a different film type) is coming back in style. Little did I know that some website was allowing anyone to do it with a mouse click and that everyone and their grandmother would discover it all at once, rendering virtually all photos from the past few years an ugly mess. Funny thing is we'll probably look back on these photos and think, oh yeah that must've been taken between 2010-2012.
Well, in the early growth years it wasn't the immediate strategy.
The way I look at it (along with every other free social network type thing) is that you grow it as long as you can, and then when it starts to level off (because you either don't provide enough value to expand beyond your niche, or in the case of Facebook, just about anyone who could get on is already on) you figure out ways to monetize that captive audience.
Facebook is only different from Myspace, Friendster, Sixdegrees and so on in that they were able to appeal to a broader audience and sustain the growth for much longer. It will plateau, and it will fade away just like all the others, but it will take much longer from peak to irrelevance (I'd say roughly 8-12 years) because that many more people were there at the peak.
Up until a couple months ago, there were *both* backscatter X-Ray machines and millimeter wave machines in use in US airports. The backscatter X-Ray machines WERE NOT properly tested and WERE deployed FIRST. They're undoing that mistake now by removing the backscatter machines (at least from the airport checkpoints I frequent.)
I heard that the backscatter machines were being relegated to smaller airports, but I have no firsthand knowledge of that situation.
I travel every other week between LAX and SFO and both airports have removed the backscatter machines from security checkpoints I use. In addition to standard metal detectors, you will still find the older millimeter wave machines (the ones that give a simple red or green indicator) in some places.
It's nice not to have to go through the "opt out" groping routine on a regular basis any longer.
Maybe on a system that you've been using for only a week, but on my system, with dozens of installed desktop applications, the start screen is a step backward, specifically because it's convoluted to access a list of all those applications without completely changing context and getting blasted in the face with a screen full of animated Metro tiles that take up most of the start screen when first opened. Then I have to right-click, select "all apps" and then scroll horizontally over several pages worth of app tiles to find what I need. Control panel stuff is all over the place. Administrative tools are not easily accessible and recent documents are nowhere to be found.
I'm sure it's fine for someone who's mainly consuming information on a tablet. I use an ipad for that, but if you want a Metro-ified slate, more power to you. Just don't force this stuff on my desktop when I'm trying to get work done. Give me the start screen as an optional operating mode when I'm not on a touchscreen device, sort of like Windows Media Center. Don't force it upon me as the new operating mode when it's not as good at accomplishing various desktop-oriented tasks.
You gotta admit, this is possibly the most exciting tech-related drama of all time. Hans Reiser's trial pales in comparison.
Let's see, you've got:
* eccentric millionaire going off the grid to do obscure 'antibiotics' research in the jungles of Belize flanked by various hot young babes * a compound with military-grade security * allegations of corrupt local officials with commando units demanding bribes * embedded American journalists following the saga * a murder with alternate allegations of settling a vendetta versus a framing job * millionaire hiding in dirt to avoid authorities * extreme measures to hide location, including numerous disguises and a decoy with a North Korean passport * arrest and detection in yet another third-world country * fake heart attacks to escape detention
Grab some popcorn, the second act hasn't even begun yet...
Microsoft had a great little OS on their hands. It works better on the same hardware than the rock solid Windows 7 and incorporates real performance and useability improvements.
All they had to do to have made Windows 8 a great success on both existing and next-generation devices was: 1. Default to the desktop on systems that don't have a touchscreen. 2. Bring back the start menu.
Simple! Yet, they but on the blinders, and said to themselves 'we can be like Apple too' and proceeded to completely alienate their existing user base in favor of a user base that hasn't been proven to exist (touchscreen device users who prefer Metro to Android or iOS).
For what it's worth, I happily use Windows 8 with the free Classic Shell utility that resolves Microsoft's blunders.
Slashdot Mirror
...but I can pretty much guess where this is going. If you look at the massive parallelization improvements we've witnessed among supercomputers over the past couple decades, you can predict that at some point, most of the low hanging fruit would eventually be picked at which point the underlying latency between interconnects would start to become a limiting factor. Couple that with the fact that there's been a complete lack of significant performance improvement in desktop/server CPU space in say the past 5 years and you can predict that it wouldn't be long before we'd see a leveling off of the supercomputer performance curve.
So basically a Facebook 'like' button for scientific papers? Hmmm, not a bad idea.
1. As much as they need to re-think the whole Metro implementation for users without touchscreen hardware, from what I've read they are *NOT* bringing back the old desktop Start Menu, they are simply putting an icon in the familiar place to get to Metro. Metro is still the place where you will launch programs/apps from... and I will continue to bypass it altogether with Classic Shell on my desktop PC. I don't need a complete context change just to open a command prompt, control panel or start programs. Perhaps surprising to MS, I prefer to do my computing at a desk with a 24" non-touchscreen monitor, and I will not be replacing it anytime soon just so that I can bend forward and reach across the keyboard to smudge a hidden menu with my index finger.
2. As we all know, the 100 million licenses sold BS is just that. MS is conflating OEM licenses shipped with actual users actively purchasing and/or using Windows 8 software. They can pull this off because Windows is the de facto shipping OS on virtually all PC hardware. It is obviously to their advantage to maintain this sleight of hand, so don't expect them to get honest any time soon.
Most of the major AV software suites utilize some form of behavioral heuristics to detect unknown threats. I'm not saying it's 100%, but you'd be surprised how effective it can be if implemented right.
Ok, but Haswell delivers virtually nothing computing performance-wise over a reasonably overclocked Sandy Bridge which is a full tick-tock cycle earlier.
Haswell parts are expected to be 10-15% faster than Ivy Bridge, which was itself barely any faster than Sandy Bridge.
Anyone remember the days when computing performance doubled or even tripled between generations?
I have a desktop PC running a Sandy Bridge i5-2500K running at a consistent 4.5GHz (on air). At this rate, it could be another couple generations before Intel has anything worthwhile as an upgrade... I suspect that discrete-GPU-buying home PC enthusiasts are going to continue to be completely ignored going forward while Intel continues to focus on chips for tablets and ultrabooks.
http://www.passmark.com/ftp/antivirus_win8-performance-testing-ed1.pdf
Look, PC sales are on the decline. This we all know. So MS decided to tackle tablets in a big, audacious way in order to increase their relevance in the post-PC era. And it might have worked...
HAD THEY NOT BEEN SO ARROGANT AS TO REMOVE THE GODDAMNED START MENU AND FORCED OLD PC HARDWARE TO USE THEIR TOUCHSCREEN UI!
Seriously, how difficult would it have been to do a quick hardware check upon install and say "hmmm, it looks like you have a keyboard, mouse and non-touchscreen monitor. Let's make Metro an icon on the classic desktop and boot to explorer.exe with a mouse-friendly start menu by default."
Personally, I think Windows 8 offers several welcome improvements over Win7. I installed the OS, downloaded and configured Classic Shell, and haven't so much as whiffed a Metro screen in at least 2 months on my PC. It's great for me, but I'm not your average Windows user! The masses are clueless and if you give them enough reason to dislike your product, you're doomed.
MS, you successfully borrowed Steve Jobs' arrogant decision-making skills, but failed to deliver on the other half of the equation: an overall better user experience.
If we're going to say that drone strikes are ok, then what's the difference whether they happen on US soil or not? It's an awfully arbitrary delineation to say that this technology should only be used against bad guys if they happen to reside on foreign soil.
If you believe the use of military drones are ok, then why not have them patrolling the skies wherever you suspect bad guys are hiding out?
Well, it's a slippery slope from there to Eugenics.
What makes you think that our rightful genetic destiny must be toward smarter and smarter human beings? We may have reached a point where evolutionarily, we're already as smart as we're likely ever to get due to pressures that you nor I can completely comprehend. What we're starting to understand is that evolution proceeds in fits and starts and many dead ends toward a somewhat unpredictable concept of 'fittest'.
They should apologize to you for what, pray tell? For updating their *free* web browser more often than you'd like?
Rather than ranting, why don't you go here if the update schedule is keeping you up at night:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.htm
Do you mean Samsung? In 2012 they were the only manufacturer using TLC NAND and in only one line of drives (840). Don't let me steal your thunder though...
An incidentally, the 840 has been shown to do over 400 TB of writes (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm&p=5163560&viewfull=1#post5163560), which is probably fine for most desktop uses...
I run Shibby's builds on my Linksys E4200... Can't recommend them enough:
http://tomato.groov.pl/?page_id=164
Yeah, I never understood this Instagram thing.
After the first trickle of photos started appearing, I thought, hmm, ok I guess cross-processing (an old photography technique where you develop one film using the chemicals for a different film type) is coming back in style. Little did I know that some website was allowing anyone to do it with a mouse click and that everyone and their grandmother would discover it all at once, rendering virtually all photos from the past few years an ugly mess. Funny thing is we'll probably look back on these photos and think, oh yeah that must've been taken between 2010-2012.
tax avoidance is wrong... blah, blah, blah
So, are you willing to go on the record claiming that you personally pay more taxes than you have to (for the good of society)?
An appocryphal quote comes to mind: Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Well, in the early growth years it wasn't the immediate strategy.
The way I look at it (along with every other free social network type thing) is that you grow it as long as you can, and then when it starts to level off (because you either don't provide enough value to expand beyond your niche, or in the case of Facebook, just about anyone who could get on is already on) you figure out ways to monetize that captive audience.
Facebook is only different from Myspace, Friendster, Sixdegrees and so on in that they were able to appeal to a broader audience and sustain the growth for much longer. It will plateau, and it will fade away just like all the others, but it will take much longer from peak to irrelevance (I'd say roughly 8-12 years) because that many more people were there at the peak.
Unless you type this at the command line: powercfg -h off
Bye bye hiberfil.sys
Now you know.
Up until a couple months ago, there were *both* backscatter X-Ray machines and millimeter wave machines in use in US airports. The backscatter X-Ray machines WERE NOT properly tested and WERE deployed FIRST. They're undoing that mistake now by removing the backscatter machines (at least from the airport checkpoints I frequent.)
I heard that the backscatter machines were being relegated to smaller airports, but I have no firsthand knowledge of that situation.
I travel every other week between LAX and SFO and both airports have removed the backscatter machines from security checkpoints I use. In addition to standard metal detectors, you will still find the older millimeter wave machines (the ones that give a simple red or green indicator) in some places.
It's nice not to have to go through the "opt out" groping routine on a regular basis any longer.
Maybe on a system that you've been using for only a week, but on my system, with dozens of installed desktop applications, the start screen is a step backward, specifically because it's convoluted to access a list of all those applications without completely changing context and getting blasted in the face with a screen full of animated Metro tiles that take up most of the start screen when first opened. Then I have to right-click, select "all apps" and then scroll horizontally over several pages worth of app tiles to find what I need. Control panel stuff is all over the place. Administrative tools are not easily accessible and recent documents are nowhere to be found.
I'm sure it's fine for someone who's mainly consuming information on a tablet. I use an ipad for that, but if you want a Metro-ified slate, more power to you. Just don't force this stuff on my desktop when I'm trying to get work done. Give me the start screen as an optional operating mode when I'm not on a touchscreen device, sort of like Windows Media Center. Don't force it upon me as the new operating mode when it's not as good at accomplishing various desktop-oriented tasks.
Oh yeah, forgot about the allegations of experimental drug use on part of said millionaire.
You gotta admit, this is possibly the most exciting tech-related drama of all time. Hans Reiser's trial pales in comparison.
Let's see, you've got:
* eccentric millionaire going off the grid to do obscure 'antibiotics' research in the jungles of Belize flanked by various hot young babes
* a compound with military-grade security
* allegations of corrupt local officials with commando units demanding bribes
* embedded American journalists following the saga
* a murder with alternate allegations of settling a vendetta versus a framing job
* millionaire hiding in dirt to avoid authorities
* extreme measures to hide location, including numerous disguises and a decoy with a North Korean passport
* arrest and detection in yet another third-world country
* fake heart attacks to escape detention
Grab some popcorn, the second act hasn't even begun yet...
Microsoft had a great little OS on their hands. It works better on the same hardware than the rock solid Windows 7 and incorporates real performance and useability improvements.
All they had to do to have made Windows 8 a great success on both existing and next-generation devices was:
1. Default to the desktop on systems that don't have a touchscreen.
2. Bring back the start menu.
Simple! Yet, they but on the blinders, and said to themselves 'we can be like Apple too' and proceeded to completely alienate their existing user base in favor of a user base that hasn't been proven to exist (touchscreen device users who prefer Metro to Android or iOS).
For what it's worth, I happily use Windows 8 with the free Classic Shell utility that resolves Microsoft's blunders.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which OS will have an order or magnitude more market share than the other in 6-12 months...