When the old 12" powerbook came out, a major issue of contention was that the G4 was losing a significant chunk of its performance advantage over the G3, because it didn't have the 1 meg of L3 cache (google cache link) that the rest of the powerbook line came with.
My first thought about these updates was "maybe apple has finally put some L3 cache in the 12" model!" But when I went to check it out, they had removed every mention of L3 cache on their pages.
I doubt that they took the cache OUT of the larger models, so is this just an attempt at obfuscation by no longer mentioning the cache, or did they finally equalize the chipset?
Umm... if you had taken a look at the (very pretty) spec chart on the homepage, you'd have noted that they're comparing the 2 ghz G5 to the 3.06 GHZ Xeon.
Yes, you'd be 100% correct, if we lived in a world where everyone played the bidding game by a purely logical strategy, and knew everyone else would as well.
But people don't. Last minute bids take on an importance that they shouldn't have, because not everyone on ebay bids their maximum amount right away.
If I place a 50 dollar bid on an item that someone else has previously placed a bid on, for 34 dollars, the new price will be 35 dollars, with me as the winner. In theory, if 34 dollars was in fact the theoretical maximum that the other guy had been willing to pay, it would end there.
But this guy thinks to himself, and decides that hey... he really wants this gold plated ant farm, and it's worth 48 dollars to him. So he bids 48 dollars. And suddenly, I'm still winning the bid, but it's at 49 dollars.
"Hmm..." he thinks to himself, "I know what I'll do. I'll bid on this item at the last second, and I'll bid... oh... 75 dollars. Now, I know that this item isn't worth 75 dollars, but there's no way this other guy already bid higher than that. So I'll be winning, at whatever the old bid was, plus a buck! Perfect!"
So he does this, and he wins the auction at 51 dollars. Of course, he wound up spending 17 dollars more than he planned to, but the thing is, he won the auction. I lost it. And if I would have been willing to bid higher, on second thought, I won't get the chance to.
If, on the other hand, I had waited until the last second, and he had thought he was safe and secure at 34 dollars, I could have come in and stolen the bid at 35.
The thing to realize is that last minute bids matter, not because it pays to bid later in the bidding, but because it pays to bid last. If we all had infinitely fast reaction time and internet connections, that would not be the case, and we'd all (theoretically) be back to the position by which the person who's willing to bid the most will always win.
those guys are dumb. Everyone knows you just leave a single block wide path in the center... you're _sure_ to get a 4-long column before you hit the... ARGH!... this would be so much easier if I had a version of tetris that told me all the pieces in advance, like theirs does...
I mean... it's great news that Apple won't have to rely on Motorolla's decidedly passive desktop chip development strategy anymore...
But man. First off, this kills any possibility of a big surprise hit. Second, this dooms apple sales for the next year or so... who wants to buy a stagnating desktop model when the next edition has so much promise?
Then again, Apple's desktop offerings have been a little stagnant anyway... most people probably won't want to play the waiting game for as long as it'll take for these to come out.
I just hope that by the time they do, they're worth it.
The RISC vs CISC argument is all-but dead in the water by now. x86 chips are only CISC in the loosest sense of the word, for backwards-compatibility. They all run internal mini-RISC chips that convert CISC commands to RISC sequences via microcode.
I bought my first PowerPC-based Mac during that short, happy time when we could actually claim, without a hint of guilt or fear of reprisal, that G3 chips were "pentium crushers."
Unfortunately, despite my love for the mac platform, and my desire to claim that our hardware is "just as good"... it's not. RISC vs CISC stopped being an issue when Intel chips became RISC chips pretending to be x86's. PowerPC's still do more per clock than Pentiums, but the differences in clock speed, bus speed, and sundry other ephemerals has finally gotten to the point where for 90% of tasks, intel chips are just faster.
Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to switch until they pry my computer from my clenched, arthritic hands... but I can no longer look a computer-newbie in the eye and tell him that "Macs are just as fast". Better experiences, maybe... but as fast? No.
Of course, for most people, we're close to that point where chip-speed stops mattering... (maybe 1-2 more cycles of Moore's Law ought to do it.) How many people think about the speed of their computer while surfing, emailing, word-processing, or any such thing? (I know, I know, it's a cliche, but cliches are cliches because they're _true_.)
I think, business-wise, a switch to intel would be near-suicide for Apple. But Motorolla is dead in the water, desktop-computer-wise. Perhaps this theoretical IBM chip is the future... who knows?
I can understand why, as B&N is a little obfuscated in their language, but Neil's site seems to imply that while there will be a coraline release in Union Square at 6pm, he himself will be in San Fran at 6:30... which strongly conflicts with a personal appearance in New York...
I didn't realize robotics had gotten anywhere near this point. I think a lot of people underestimate exactly how hard it is to get a robot to do something like, for example, find a ball. Now these robots are walking (a significant challenge, from my experience...:) kicking a ball, and interacting with each other? Pretty incredible.
I wonder how sophisticated these humanoids can get. Can they pick themselves up if they stumble? Can they figure out whether another robot is on their team? Can they pass? The article seems to imply that at this point, they're not that much more than glorified mechanical penalty kickers.
To be honest, I had not thought that much about "software licensing" up till this point, mainly because it seems to me that entrepreneurial hackers will always find a way around that type of thing. But when a piece of software actually requires connection to a corporate server to continue functioning (as with a virusscan program), this seems to fall only slightly short of blackmail.
Diablo II automatically updated software when you logged onto Battle.net. Imagine if one day, everyone who logged on recieved with their "update" a notice that from now on, all character classes but barbarian would be available on a subscription-based service only.
Ridiculous, yes... but the analogy is apt. People who bought something 4 years ago with a certain promise of functionality deserve to be able to keep that functionality.
What if car manufacturers randomly repo'ed our cars because they figured the engines were out of date?
I am more scared than I have been any day since the bombing occured. I'm sitting here in my manhattan apartment, and I just heard on the radio that the pentagon has predicted a close to 100% chance of terrorist response, and no one _cares_. No one even seems to think this bombing is a big deal. My mother just contacted me, crying, because she doesn't think she wants to use the subway system today. And all I can think is... to what extent can I continue living my everyday life when the U.S. government is fully willing to treat me and my loved ones as a human shield?
Maybe I'm overreacting. If so, I'm sorry. I don't mean to incite flames.
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No. It can't infect a mac. Nor can it infect a machine through webmail.
When the old 12" powerbook came out, a major issue of contention was that the G4 was losing a significant chunk of its performance advantage over the G3, because it didn't have the 1 meg of L3 cache (google cache link) that the rest of the powerbook line came with.
My first thought about these updates was "maybe apple has finally put some L3 cache in the 12" model!" But when I went to check it out, they had removed every mention of L3 cache on their pages. I doubt that they took the cache OUT of the larger models, so is this just an attempt at obfuscation by no longer mentioning the cache, or did they finally equalize the chipset?
Umm... if you had taken a look at the (very pretty) spec chart on the homepage, you'd have noted that they're comparing the 2 ghz G5 to the 3.06 GHZ Xeon.
Some ketchup with that crow?
Yes, you'd be 100% correct, if we lived in a world where everyone played the bidding game by a purely logical strategy, and knew everyone else would as well.
But people don't. Last minute bids take on an importance that they shouldn't have, because not everyone on ebay bids their maximum amount right away.
If I place a 50 dollar bid on an item that someone else has previously placed a bid on, for 34 dollars, the new price will be 35 dollars, with me as the winner. In theory, if 34 dollars was in fact the theoretical maximum that the other guy had been willing to pay, it would end there.
But this guy thinks to himself, and decides that hey... he really wants this gold plated ant farm, and it's worth 48 dollars to him. So he bids 48 dollars. And suddenly, I'm still winning the bid, but it's at 49 dollars.
"Hmm..." he thinks to himself, "I know what I'll do. I'll bid on this item at the last second, and I'll bid... oh... 75 dollars. Now, I know that this item isn't worth 75 dollars, but there's no way this other guy already bid higher than that. So I'll be winning, at whatever the old bid was, plus a buck! Perfect!"
So he does this, and he wins the auction at 51 dollars. Of course, he wound up spending 17 dollars more than he planned to, but the thing is, he won the auction. I lost it. And if I would have been willing to bid higher, on second thought, I won't get the chance to.
If, on the other hand, I had waited until the last second, and he had thought he was safe and secure at 34 dollars, I could have come in and stolen the bid at 35.
The thing to realize is that last minute bids matter, not because it pays to bid later in the bidding, but because it pays to bid last. If we all had infinitely fast reaction time and internet connections, that would not be the case, and we'd all (theoretically) be back to the position by which the person who's willing to bid the most will always win.
What's a metre?
I told you that I would never go to bestiality porn sites! It must be the neighbors with their damn wireless keyboard! Hold me...
those guys are dumb. Everyone knows you just leave a single block wide path in the center... you're _sure_ to get a 4-long column before you hit the... ARGH! ... this would be so much easier if I had a version of tetris that told me all the pieces in advance, like theirs does...
I mean... it's great news that Apple won't have to rely on Motorolla's decidedly passive desktop chip development strategy anymore...
But man. First off, this kills any possibility of a big surprise hit. Second, this dooms apple sales for the next year or so... who wants to buy a stagnating desktop model when the next edition has so much promise?
Then again, Apple's desktop offerings have been a little stagnant anyway... most people probably won't want to play the waiting game for as long as it'll take for these to come out.
I just hope that by the time they do, they're worth it.
The RISC vs CISC argument is all-but dead in the water by now. x86 chips are only CISC in the loosest sense of the word, for backwards-compatibility. They all run internal mini-RISC chips that convert CISC commands to RISC sequences via microcode.
I bought my first PowerPC-based Mac during that short, happy time when we could actually claim, without a hint of guilt or fear of reprisal, that G3 chips were "pentium crushers."
Unfortunately, despite my love for the mac platform, and my desire to claim that our hardware is "just as good"... it's not. RISC vs CISC stopped being an issue when Intel chips became RISC chips pretending to be x86's. PowerPC's still do more per clock than Pentiums, but the differences in clock speed, bus speed, and sundry other ephemerals has finally gotten to the point where for 90% of tasks, intel chips are just faster.
Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to switch until they pry my computer from my clenched, arthritic hands... but I can no longer look a computer-newbie in the eye and tell him that "Macs are just as fast". Better experiences, maybe... but as fast? No.
Of course, for most people, we're close to that point where chip-speed stops mattering... (maybe 1-2 more cycles of Moore's Law ought to do it.) How many people think about the speed of their computer while surfing, emailing, word-processing, or any such thing? (I know, I know, it's a cliche, but cliches are cliches because they're _true_.)
I think, business-wise, a switch to intel would be near-suicide for Apple. But Motorolla is dead in the water, desktop-computer-wise. Perhaps this theoretical IBM chip is the future... who knows?
I can understand why, as B&N is a little obfuscated in their language, but Neil's site seems to imply that while there will be a coraline release in Union Square at 6pm, he himself will be in San Fran at 6:30... which strongly conflicts with a personal appearance in New York...
I think the article specified that the robots must be programmed, not controlled.
I didn't realize robotics had gotten anywhere near this point. I think a lot of people underestimate exactly how hard it is to get a robot to do something like, for example, find a ball. Now these robots are walking (a significant challenge, from my experience... :) kicking a ball, and interacting with each other? Pretty incredible.
I wonder how sophisticated these humanoids can get. Can they pick themselves up if they stumble? Can they figure out whether another robot is on their team? Can they pass? The article seems to imply that at this point, they're not that much more than glorified mechanical penalty kickers.
To be honest, I had not thought that much about "software licensing" up till this point, mainly because it seems to me that entrepreneurial hackers will always find a way around that type of thing. But when a piece of software actually requires connection to a corporate server to continue functioning (as with a virusscan program), this seems to fall only slightly short of blackmail.
Diablo II automatically updated software when you logged onto Battle.net. Imagine if one day, everyone who logged on recieved with their "update" a notice that from now on, all character classes but barbarian would be available on a subscription-based service only.
Ridiculous, yes... but the analogy is apt. People who bought something 4 years ago with a certain promise of functionality deserve to be able to keep that functionality.
What if car manufacturers randomly repo'ed our cars because they figured the engines were out of date?
I am more scared than I have been any day since the bombing occured. I'm sitting here in my manhattan apartment, and I just heard on the radio that the pentagon has predicted a close to 100% chance of terrorist response, and no one _cares_. No one even seems to think this bombing is a big deal. My mother just contacted me, crying, because she doesn't think she wants to use the subway system today. And all I can think is... to what extent can I continue living my everyday life when the U.S. government is fully willing to treat me and my loved ones as a human shield?
Maybe I'm overreacting. If so, I'm sorry. I don't mean to incite flames.