...never been a big fan myself, but I remember seeing the concept shots of an actress dressed up in the Tomb Raider outfit that were apparently used as the "inspiration" for the digital art of Lara Croft.
Why couldn't they have just picked up the "real" Lara Croft for the movie adaptation? I can't imagine a video-game-turned-movie is going to have much in the way of acting requirements, anyway.
"At some point" might be within your monitor which. through legal trickery, you are not allowed to tamper with. There are display vendors that are creating systems that encrypt the video signal that is fed from the video card to the display.
If Big Business thinks that we are going to "hack the raw output", then they will take every measure to ensure that you don't *get* the raw output.
There's nothing wrong with not being well-informed. However, there are better and worse ways of looking for information.
His question, as stated, can not really be answered. Thus, we have to second-guess the guy in order to provide *any* answer. "Real-time, high-end mathematical computations" doesn't make much sense. About the only systems that really match that description are military grade custom hardware systems. If he is truly trying to implement such a system on commodity x86, then he doesn't understand what he is getting into. This, in turn, means that he hasn't done his homework, and is wanting the Slashdot community to do it for him. To use the Unix lexicon, he should RTFM.
Now, if he *had* done some homework, and was instead asking about people's particular experiences with certain systems or configurations to gauge how the theory works out in practice, then I would have sympathy for his cause. But, asking about *just* the microprocessor implies no understanding of the situation. Actually, your processor has very little to do with the real-time behavior of a system. Real time characteristics are more influenced by choice of OS and memory system.
However, I doubt that he was really asking about anything hard real time. He may be trying to build a shoutcast server, on-the-fly mp3 encoder, or somesuch. This is a fairly interesting project, and fits the description of "soft" real-time. It does not fit the description of "mathematical", however.
Given the scenario presented doesn't much pertain to processors, it seems to come down to "Which is better: Athlon or PIII". Without background, we can only answer this in the general case. In the general case, this question has been answered *many* times over and does not need to be repeated in Ask Slashdot.
I'll apologize now if I came off as being abrasive, but it is irksome when people ask questions that they don't even understand enough to communicate properly. My impression is that he threw "mathematical" in there just to sound more interesting, but I could be wrong.
Are you referring to hard real-time applications? If so, you don't want an SMP system. Infact, you don't even want a system with a cache. Why? Because hard real-time applications optimize for worst case performance. Caches do well to improve average case performance, but usually hurt worst case performance. Thus, hard real time systems usually don't use caches.
In general, real time apps (even soft real time, like video or audio decode) are concerned more with low latency then high throughput. As a result, you aren't going to want an SMP system. The complex caching systems in SMP's is going to make performance even *less* predictable which is precisely *not* what you want for real-time.
If you just want a really fast media-cruncher, then you don't want to be running x86. If you're serious, you'll go for something like an Alpha, that will smoke any x86 in FPU. Besides, if you really want to get into real time media processing, you are going to need a great deal of bandwidth, and commodity x86 hardware isn't going to get you where you need to go.
If what you really want is a budget box to run games on, then get an Athlon. A quick review of any games site in existence will tell you that Athlons beat Intel's offering in every regard these days. There's no reason to bother Slashdot with such common questions. Any of the DIY gamer sites will have a host of articles with benchmarks running Quake or Unreal or whatever it is kids play these days.
I get the impression that this post is from someone who doesn't understand real time computation, and just through that phrase in there to make their question sound more sophisticated.
Several people are knocking the idea, without even mentioning that
Hotel Mir --> Sex in Space.
It seems like it would be about the *first* thing on a geek's mind. Hell, I didn't even see any trolls talking about it. Are there no hormones on this site today?
...its like posting a sign in your front lawn with a note attached that said "if you don't own this house, then you'd *better* not be looking here".
Ticketmaster's claim was obscene, too, but they are a company. Corporate greed tends to overshadow reason. Universities, though? They shouldn't be motivated by the same factors as companies, and they should be more knowledgable about what it means to be on the internet.
After all, in the early days, the internet was pretty much all.edu and.mil. Its.com that are the new-comers. And what a culture clash it has created!
If you want to take the Judeo-Christian belief that humans are special because they are endowed with a "spirit", then there is something else that you need to take into account.
According to J-C beliefs, humans are created in the image of the creator. Thus, doesn't it follow that we ourselves are creators, if only of a lesser order? Taking this view, creation becomes recursive. The Creator (God) creates a race of intelligent beings, imbued with a spirit. Why do we have a spirit and animals don't? Because we are formed in the image of the creator, and they aren't.
Humankind then labors to produce an intelligence which can reason as they do. Is this not creating a being in our own image? Are we not god to this intelligence that we have created? "Spirit" and "intelligence" are terms that don't have satisfactory explanations. They fill in for a category of things that we don't fully understand, but that somehow we feel seperate us from other, less blessed animals. What is there to convince us that they are seperate at all? If they aren't, then *any* true intelligence (including true AI) by definition has a soul.
You claim that this intelligence will know from day-one that it is a machine. Why is that? We are still in continuous debate over what "humans" really are. Some say we are merely meat, some say we are purely spirit and that no physical world really exists. Most beliefs lie in between. What is right? How would a computer intelligence truly understand what it is if we can't understand what we are?
As for doctorates on a chip, I have read no scientific articles that lead me to believe that this will be possible in the near future, if ever. This sounds like utter science fiction. Do you have links to reference here? From what we can tell, our brains don't operate in binary, so how could a digital circuit be integrated into our brains? We don't understand how thoughts are formed, so how on earth can we implant them?
Discussing spirit is fine for a religious debate, but isn't very useful in any sort of technical debate. Unfortunately, many of the questions that arise in AI are non-technical. Oh how confusing things get when we start mixing religion and philosophy with computing!
As humans we really don't understand intelligence well enough to expect true AI anytime soon, so much of this debate is moot. However, I do see in the humanity's drive to create shades of the Creator. Why do we create? We create because creation is joyful. And how can we possibly be closer to the creator than when we, ourselves are creating?
How possible (or desirable) would it be for someone to take Darwin for Intel and build another open-source OS around it?
Darwin is based on CMU's Mach microkernel, and FreeBSD. So, in "releasing" Darwin, Apple is pretty much releasing the changes they made to existing open projects. Mach already ran on x86, and FreeBSD, like Linux, started out on i386, so it shouldn't have been very difficult to build Darwin on i386.
Building an OSOS around Darwin would pretty much be reinventing the wheel. Just tweak FreeBSD to make it do what you need.
...between MHz on different platforms doesn't mean that useful comparisons can't be made.
I fully believe that a G4 will beat an Athlon clock-for-clock in a lot of applications. How much faster is it, though? I don't know...perhaps 30% on some apps. So clock for clock, the G4 might be 30% faster. Granted 2x clock != 2x performance, but that still that doesn't come close to making up for the 2x clock advantage that the x86 chips currently have.
Don't believe the marketing hype about G3's being twice as fast as PIII's. That figure might be theoretically true in very contrived cases. In contrived cases, the Athlon may be twice as fast as the PIII as well. Benchmarks are a wicked game.
Quite a lot of a processor's performance is dependent on its architecture. However, the G4 isn't very different architecturally than the Athlon and PIII. The Altivec unit is the main departure. x86 chips have SIMD media units, but they are less advanced. But, at the moment, using *any* of these multimedia extensions involves hand-coding at the ASM level, so these extensions won't get much use for a while. There is a fair amount of work going into vectorizing compilers, but it is a *very* hairy problem.
The point of this all is that Motorolla has let the G4 fall embarassingly far behind the x86 chips. Its a darn good thing for Apple that Jobs has drawn people's attention away from system performance and moved it toward case-aesthetics. One drawn to conspiracy theories might even infer a causal relationship there.
...is not to find theories that are true, but rather to find theories that are less wrong.
Scientists understand this. It is the mass media, and the general populace who do not. Scientists are charged with creating models that are more accurate than the previous model. They understand that it too will be replaced by an even more accurate model in time.
Science says nothing of truth. We do not "know" that our laws of physics are "right" or "true". All we do know is that they fit the data very well. That's really all that we can ever hope for: to fit the data. If a theory or model fits the data, then it is useful and we use it.
This is a rather subtle point, that I think is lost on the masses. I think that most lack the scientific education needed to really grasp this. At this point, I could go off on a rant about American education, but I'll leave that to other Slashdot readers.
Still, your point is well taken. People that buy into the current theory wholesale are misleading themselves. However, I maintain that scientists don't buy into them wholesale. They know that such theories are fleeting. Its the largely uneducated media who distorts the picture.
AMD doesn't have the market presence to make a new standard archtitecture. They don't have the legal rights to make a clone of the IA-64 chips. Thus, they have to stick to the x86.
They have extended x86 to include a 64-bit mode. No, the instruction set isn't really "RISC", but that doesn't mean much anyway. The internals of x86 chips for some time have been RISC-like processors, with complicated decode/translation units on the front-end.
The instruction set that you use to program a chip says little about the instructions that are actually getting executed by the core. In the decode, the x86 instruction is cracked into smaller instructions to do a simple load, store, or compute. I believe that AMD has done this since the K5, and Intel has done this since the PPro.
Even the old VAX (whose instruction set was as CISC as CISC got) translated its instruction set down into microcode for what was essentially a load/store back-end. That is when people realized that that decode complexity could be moved into the compiler instead, and everyone started talking about RISC.
AMD has already worked out the problems of dealing with an x86 instruction set. Decode on the Athlon is nastier than it should be as a result, but it works. The technological problem has been solved. To AMD, a more complex decode unit is a small price to pay for compatibility with the massive x86 code base.
Given Intel's slip-ups with Merced, its just possible that AMD might gain some marketshare with this architecture. From an aesthetic point of view, it is unfortunate that it is still a child of the x86, but that is the fate of the PC. IBM made a standard with DOS/x86, and that standard holds to this day in Windows/P6.
I have a friend who works at IBM, and just about every time I bump into him, he mentions how much IBM is sold on Linux these days. They're really behind it, it seems.
IBM was the original recipient of the MS-Shaft back in the 80's. I, personally, think that they view Linux as a real opportunity to get MS back.
This implies that there's some absolute standard of musical quality, which is clearly untrue.
I won't argue with that point. However, you seem to be implying that, since there isn't an absolute standard, using someone else's standard is useless. It isn't. And it is *certainly* better than nothing. If some site, be it commercial, community-based, or a combination, would choose some representative individuals to sift through and rate things, it would provide a wonderful starting point for the rest of us.
If you don't agree with their opinions, then no bother. You don't gain anything by their rating, but you also don't lose anything. The full archive is still there for you to dig through. But if the rater happens to have similar tastes, then that person has saved you a great deal of time by locating "good" music for you.
You're dead on that record companies provide a filtering service for mainstream music. Unfortunately, they cut out a lot of music that we happen to like, so it never makes it to the radio and Blockbuster. With a rating system, that isn't a problem. If a reviewer doesn't like it, he gives it low marks. The piece is still there to be discovered by others, though.
And what if you think all the reviewers are loco? No problem, you can band together with some others are pick out music that you want to emphasize.
With mp3's, the community can provide its own means of distribution. I don't see any reason why the community can not provide its own filtering, as well. Picture this: a music 'zine web site, financed by banner ads, or a subscription or whatever, hires a few reviewers to maintain sections discussing different genres of music. These people keep abreast of the new music pooring into the archive and rate it as it goes by. They pick out their favorites, and discuss the strengths of various groups. Seems feasible to me.
Or, if you don't like the centralized approach, you could simply have a listener-supported rating system where the listener base rates music that they download. Surely other people around here remember the Hornet Archive? It is now closed, but I used to follow it quite closely, and it would rate mod's as they were released. I don't see any reason why their system couldn't be applied to mp3's.
I think a web music index to mp3.com could work. I've seen something similar work on Hornet. However, it would take someone who was quite dedicated to set it up. Hornet had Snowman, I'm not sure who could be recruited for an independent mp3 site.
...unfortunately you have to wade through *seas* of crap to find it. A while ago, I went off on a "screw record companies" trip and tried finding new music on mp3.com instead. It was a depressing experience. I found pounds of poorly recorded ska and kilos of uninsprired techno. I soon went back to the record store.
mp3.com keeps track of the most popular downloads, which is a pretty good idea. It seems that that would help you zero in on the "good" stuff, right? Unfortunately, I found that it wasn't very useful. Perhaps most people download indiscriminately, or perhaps they have poor taste. Or perhaps there just isn't much to be had at mp3.com
What I've really been longing for is a series of independent websites that act as indices into the massive mp3.com archive. An independent site could post reviews from people they pay to wade through all the noise, searching for the elusive signal. I can understand mp3.com not wanting to post star ratings themself, but it would be very nice if another site(s) could take this up, to give us some clue of what's good and what's not.
...and stop complaining. Putting linux on everything (including Palm Pilots) is just a geek game. Welcome to Slashdot.
If it wasn't for people with this hackish spirit, we may never have had PC's in the first place. Do you have any idea how useless early systems like the Altair were? All you had was switches and lights, but hackers went nuts over them. Over time, they improved them, and now we have our modern PC's.
I think its an interesting post. The hack wasn't very technical, but it is kind of cute.
But what it doesn't have is anyone who pays attention to HOW MOST PEOPLE REALLY USE COMPUTERS.
Alright. You are proposing that Linux developers don't understand how common folk really use computers. Interesting. Let's see your arguments...
Where's the trash can in the GNOME interface?
I don't know, but I don't like GNOME, either. KDE has always seemed more attractive, consistent, stable and complete to me. Use KDE.
Why are there no keyboard modifiers for copy, move, or link mouse operations in KDE?
I don't know, and I would like to have them. However, if you think that this is how most people really use computers, then I think you are sadly mistaken. Like it or no, the sad fact is that people who use mouse + keyboard combinations are the advanced users. Most people have no clue what the contextual menu is or does, and they certainly don't know the shortcuts to those functions. Desktop interfaces are designed for most people.
Thus, I argue that those shortcuts aren't important except to power users. Further, I am most pleased with KDE's decision to always present a contextual menu to the user. This guarantees that the user is aware of the options available and knows exactly which option he is selecting.
The way windows approaches this is atrocious. For instance, dragging a file in explorer executes a different action depending on whether you are dragging between different drive letters or not. If you are in folder-view, it isn't at all apparent to which drive letter the source and destination folders belong. I guarantee you, that most people don't think "Gee, this GUI presents a nice interface for me to [link, copy, move] my files between folders". They think "drag this thingy here". Since "drag here" isn't implemented consistently, it very easy for a user to make a mistake. The worst part is that, once a file is lost, the user tends to blame himself and his lack of computer skills, rather than blaming the poor design of Windows.
Why is it that when I use a marquee to select and move icons on the GNOME desktop, that it only displays the top-most icon?
Don't use GNOME. If I recall, KDE uses a "bundle" icon to represent a set of files. To me, this seems a better interface for new users since it isn't as likely to overload him. This is largely a matter of taste, though.
Why is copying files using the KDE file manager harder typing "cp -Rf" on the command line?
Copying in the KDE file manager is just as easy as copying in Windows/Mac. Most of us agree that the command line tools are more powerful/convenient, but that does nothing to help a "desktop" user, who (by definition) uses only GUI apps.
What's up with all the flicker and redraw with X, anyway? Don't you guys hate that? You should!
Hmm. Perhaps you should fill out a bug report. I don't have problems with flicker, and I have very meager hardware (a K6/200 and a S3 Trio64V+). X is more sluggish than Windows for certain operations. It also beats up on Windows for certain operations. Overall, I view them pretty much even on performance, with Windows possibly a bit faster. Of course, the network transparency of X is indispensable for me, so I prefer X.
Enlightenment (or any other X window manager) is not the answer.
I agree. But we are talking about desktops, and Enlightenment isn't one. KDE, Gnome and GnuStep are. So if you are faulting Linux desktops, then Enlightenment shouldn't even come up.
I'm sick of eye candy. I want GUI meat and potatoes!
What does this statement mean? To me, meat and potatoes would be a consistent widget set/ look / drag and drop interface and desktop metaphor. Pervasive Help helps as well. I think KDE is on par with Windows in most of these aspects.
I have to teach people how to use KDE. However, I also have to teach them to use Windows. I really don't think that Windows is any easier to learn, or more consistent. Its just that people are more likely to have already learned it.
If they don't, maybe someone could rape the NEXTSTEP Human Interface Guidelines and produce a real NEXTSTEP workalike.
Ah...a NEXT guy. If that's what you want, then you are in luck. We already have it. (Well...almost) Its called GnuStep, and its almost done. Check the link in the post above.
My basic argument is that KDE is no less fit than Windows as a desktop. It's just less common. Like it or not, Windows is pretty much the definition of desktop right now. If you think that NEXT is better, then you may be right, but unfortunately that's not the standard. KDE follows the standard. If you want NEXT, then stop looking at KDE and get GnuStep
I've played with Sawmill some lately. There are some things about it that I rather like. Its nicely themeable without feeling Over The Top like Enlightenment does. Plus, the flexibility of using LISP to define commands seems promising.
But Sawmill is still young, and not as stable as one would like a default to be. Further, it is *slow*. On my box, Window Maker beats it into the ground, and I've never thought of WM as "light weight". Perhaps this is a direct result of the above mentioned LISP scripting. I'm not sure. I hope that the John Harper can speed up the code some in later versions. If it ran faster on modest hardware (another requirement of a default WM, IMHO), I'd play with it a lot more.
I'll definately be keeping an eye on Sawmill, though...
Its good to see a decent review of a chip from an architectural standpoint. Sites like Ars are starting to address such things, but don't go into much technical detail.
The cache discussion is very interesting. Its true that most academic papers make large simplifying assumptions. (You spend that much time running hardware sims, and you'll look for ways to simplify your life, too.) Its interesting that other companies maintained those assumptions in their designs, even when they weren't particularly valid.
This paper is also good for illustrating the simple fact that processor performance relies on a hell of a lot more than just MHz. I think any serious computer user should learn atleast some basics of computer architecture, so that they will be better informed when comparing different hardware systems.
Most software folks I know (except the compiler guys) are fairly ignorant of computer architecture as a field. Articles like this are good for drawing people in a bit. Many techies are drawn to Linux because they can see what's "under the hood". Its also good to know a bit about what's "under the hood" of your hardware.
This would be a moderately funny pun, except that it involves people dieing. In my opinion, the joke is in poor taste. I would moderate you down, but there is no entry for "tasteless" (perhaps there should be), and I don't consider this flamebait.
At 2 points, perhaps it *is* overrated, though...
--Lenny
No, I *don't* want to use VI...
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Interface Zen
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· Score: 4
This article makes me shiver. It is not -- as billed -- an analysis of computer interface. Rather, it is a fervent piece of VI advocacy from someone who has been stuck on that interface so long that their mind has irrevocably wrapped around it. I do *not* view VI as a superior editor, and for the record, I've had a number of "transcendent" experiences with Emacs.
The basic argument for VI is: "You never have to move your hands! Isn't it amazing?". Well, that's all nice, I suppose, but I view the interface as archaic and clunky. He goes off on how control keys slow down an interface...CTRL slows me down a hell of a lot less than switching modes does. (Yes: I've used VI for more than 5 minutes at a stretch, and I'll confess it has its merits, but I've never liked editing "modes").
And arguments against arrow keys? Please...if you don't like them, then don't use them. I for one find them useful even if they are "exiled". And the argument that they can only operate on characters is wholly wrong. I have Emacs set up so that CTRL+ARROW skips words horizontally and paragraphs vertically. Very useful, that.
While I'll agree that CAPS LOCK deserves to be exiled and that the shrinking of SPACE BAR at the hands of the "vanity" keys is tragic, I like my function keys, and I like my arrow keys...even if they are a bit "out of the way". So up is stacked on top of down? Damn, I can't do trills all day long like I can in VI. But wait...I don't *need* to do up/down trills when editing code. Maybe VI users like them, but they've always struck me as unproductive.
Let me close this by saying I respect Tom and enjoy his books a lot. I can't believe that I am flaming him. However, I'm offended at VI propaganda being passed off as an interface analysis. Minimum finger movement is important, but it is far from the only thing one should be concerned about in an interface.
--Lenny
Hmmm...the banner add strikes me as odd.
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redhat.com Redone
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· Score: 2
When I loaded up the site, I was gretted by a Sun advertisement up top. I guess they must be moving towards portal-dom if they accept advertising. from a competitor in the OS business.:)
Organisationally, I think the site is an improvement over their old one. It has a simpler layout, and I find it easier to browse. I think they could make it more attractive while keeping the fairly uncluttered layout, though...
The relabelling problem is a serious one for the Do-it-yourself audience, and I suspect a large number of Slashdot reader are also into DIY.
I, personally, have never bought a prebuilt system. (neither have I ever owned an Intel processor). I get my parts from local hole-in-the-wall component stores which may be shadier than they look. I still wonder what kind of K6 I have in this system. Its supposed to be a 200, but the old K6's were very easy to relabel, so it might be a 166. I guess it doesn't much matter. I have run it at 166-233 without any troubles, but I do wonder.
Someone like Dell or Gateway would never try relabelling. If anyone ever found out, the company would lose all credibility with their customers and their market would completely dry up. Its the local companies, which often come and go quite quickly, which may be interested in some quick money and not too concerned about reputation.
And I suppose its nice for Intel to provide this, but its really for them and not us. If the customer is willing to pay the huge premium that Intel charges for their high-end chips, than Intel really wants to see that money. That is where they make the real money...the massive margin on their current top-of-the-line.
I have to laugh when I see "hot-swappable" listed as a compelling reason to "upgrade" to USB. Yeah? My COM ports have always been hot-swappable. I switch back in forth between my track ball and mouse all the time and I'm sure as *hell* not going to reboot for that. PS/2 was a bad idea.
("I've got an idea! Why don't we make the keyboard plug look *exactly* like the mouse plug! Now *that's* ease of use...." "Great! Then we'll make it so that your system crashes whenever accidentally unplug a periphereal. They'll *love* that!")
ISA should definately die, and USB should probably take over as well, but software on the PC side is not to the point where we can make the USB plunge yet. Of course, it may take a drastic action such as this to *force* the software to come in line, but I pitty the poor users caught in the middle.
("Why can't I use my keyboard/mouse in safe mode? My display settings are messed up and I can't fix them! I'm stuck!" "This is a known issue with MS Windows, and will be addressed in the next service pack. Please wait patiently for your patch".)
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of the funniest posts I have *ever* read on slashdot.
For the love of God, moderate this up!
--Lenny
...never been a big fan myself, but I remember seeing the concept shots of an actress dressed up in the Tomb Raider outfit that were apparently used as the "inspiration" for the digital art of Lara Croft.
Why couldn't they have just picked up the "real" Lara Croft for the movie adaptation? I can't imagine a video-game-turned-movie is going to have much in the way of acting requirements, anyway.
Then again, I've been wrong before...
--Lenny
"At some point" might be within your monitor which. through legal trickery, you are not allowed to tamper with. There are display vendors that are creating systems that encrypt the video signal that is fed from the video card to the display.
If Big Business thinks that we are going to "hack the raw output", then they will take every measure to ensure that you don't *get* the raw output.
Chilling, no?
Lenny,
There's nothing wrong with not being well-informed. However, there are better and worse ways of looking for information.
His question, as stated, can not really be answered. Thus, we have to second-guess the guy in order to provide *any* answer. "Real-time, high-end mathematical computations" doesn't make much sense. About the only systems that really match that description are military grade custom hardware systems. If he is truly trying to implement such a system on commodity x86, then he doesn't understand what he is getting into. This, in turn, means that he hasn't done his homework, and is wanting the Slashdot community to do it for him. To use the Unix lexicon, he should RTFM.
Now, if he *had* done some homework, and was instead asking about people's particular experiences with certain systems or configurations to gauge how the theory works out in practice, then I would have sympathy for his cause. But, asking about *just* the microprocessor implies no understanding of the situation. Actually, your processor has very little to do with the real-time behavior of a system. Real time characteristics are more influenced by choice of OS and memory system.
However, I doubt that he was really asking about anything hard real time. He may be trying to build a shoutcast server, on-the-fly mp3 encoder, or somesuch. This is a fairly interesting project, and fits the description of "soft" real-time. It does not fit the description of "mathematical", however.
Given the scenario presented doesn't much pertain to processors, it seems to come down to "Which is better: Athlon or PIII". Without background, we can only answer this in the general case. In the general case, this question has been answered *many* times over and does not need to be repeated in Ask Slashdot.
I'll apologize now if I came off as being abrasive, but it is irksome when people ask questions that they don't even understand enough to communicate properly. My impression is that he threw "mathematical" in there just to sound more interesting, but I could be wrong.
--Lenny
Are you referring to hard real-time applications? If so, you don't want an SMP system. Infact, you don't even want a system with a cache. Why? Because hard real-time applications optimize for worst case performance. Caches do well to improve average case performance, but usually hurt worst case performance. Thus, hard real time systems usually don't use caches.
In general, real time apps (even soft real time, like video or audio decode) are concerned more with low latency then high throughput. As a result, you aren't going to want an SMP system. The complex caching systems in SMP's is going to make performance even *less* predictable which is precisely *not* what you want for real-time.
If you just want a really fast media-cruncher, then you don't want to be running x86. If you're serious, you'll go for something like an Alpha, that will smoke any x86 in FPU. Besides, if you really want to get into real time media processing, you are going to need a great deal of bandwidth, and commodity x86 hardware isn't going to get you where you need to go.
If what you really want is a budget box to run games on, then get an Athlon. A quick review of any games site in existence will tell you that Athlons beat Intel's offering in every regard these days. There's no reason to bother Slashdot with such common questions. Any of the DIY gamer sites will have a host of articles with benchmarks running Quake or Unreal or whatever it is kids play these days.
I get the impression that this post is from someone who doesn't understand real time computation, and just through that phrase in there to make their question sound more sophisticated.
--Lenny
Several people are knocking the idea, without even mentioning that
Hotel Mir --> Sex in Space.
It seems like it would be about the *first* thing on a geek's mind. Hell, I didn't even see any trolls talking about it. Are there no hormones on this site today?
--Lenny
...its like posting a sign in your front lawn with a note attached that said "if you don't own this house, then you'd *better* not be looking here".
.edu and .mil. Its .com that are the new-comers. And what a culture clash it has created!
Ticketmaster's claim was obscene, too, but they are a company. Corporate greed tends to overshadow reason. Universities, though? They shouldn't be motivated by the same factors as companies, and they should be more knowledgable about what it means to be on the internet.
After all, in the early days, the internet was pretty much all
--Lenny
If you want to take the Judeo-Christian belief that humans are special because they are endowed with a "spirit", then there is something else that you need to take into account.
According to J-C beliefs, humans are created in the image of the creator. Thus, doesn't it follow that we ourselves are creators, if only of a lesser order? Taking this view, creation becomes recursive. The Creator (God) creates a race of intelligent beings, imbued with a spirit. Why do we have a spirit and animals don't? Because we are formed in the image of the creator, and they aren't.
Humankind then labors to produce an intelligence which can reason as they do. Is this not creating a being in our own image? Are we not god to this intelligence that we have created? "Spirit" and "intelligence" are terms that don't have satisfactory explanations. They fill in for a category of things that we don't fully understand, but that somehow we feel seperate us from other, less blessed animals. What is there to convince us that they are seperate at all? If they aren't, then *any* true intelligence (including true AI) by definition has a soul.
You claim that this intelligence will know from day-one that it is a machine. Why is that? We are still in continuous debate over what "humans" really are. Some say we are merely meat, some say we are purely spirit and that no physical world really exists. Most beliefs lie in between. What is right? How would a computer intelligence truly understand what it is if we can't understand what we are?
As for doctorates on a chip, I have read no scientific articles that lead me to believe that
this will be possible in the near future, if ever. This sounds like utter science fiction. Do you have links to reference here? From what we can tell, our brains don't operate in binary, so how could a digital circuit be integrated into our brains? We don't understand how thoughts are formed, so how on earth can we implant them?
Discussing spirit is fine for a religious debate, but isn't very useful in any sort of technical debate. Unfortunately, many of the questions that arise in AI are non-technical. Oh how confusing things get when we start mixing religion and philosophy with computing!
As humans we really don't understand intelligence well enough to expect true AI anytime soon, so much of this debate is moot. However, I do see in the humanity's drive to create shades of the Creator. Why do we create? We create because creation is joyful. And how can we possibly be closer to the creator than when we, ourselves are creating?
--Lenny
How possible (or desirable) would it be for someone to take Darwin for Intel and build another open-source OS around it?
Darwin is based on CMU's Mach microkernel, and FreeBSD. So, in "releasing" Darwin, Apple is pretty much releasing the changes they made to existing open projects. Mach already ran on x86, and FreeBSD, like Linux, started out on i386, so it shouldn't have been very difficult to build Darwin on i386.
Building an OSOS around Darwin would pretty much be reinventing the wheel. Just tweak FreeBSD to make it do what you need.
--Lenny
...between MHz on different platforms doesn't mean that useful comparisons can't be made.
I fully believe that a G4 will beat an Athlon clock-for-clock in a lot of applications. How much faster is it, though? I don't know...perhaps 30% on some apps. So clock for clock, the G4 might be 30% faster. Granted 2x clock != 2x performance, but that still that doesn't come close to making up for the 2x clock advantage that the x86 chips currently have.
Don't believe the marketing hype about G3's being twice as fast as PIII's. That figure might be theoretically true in very contrived cases. In contrived cases, the Athlon may be twice as fast as the PIII as well. Benchmarks are a wicked game.
Quite a lot of a processor's performance is dependent on its architecture. However, the G4 isn't very different architecturally than the Athlon and PIII. The Altivec unit is the main departure. x86 chips have SIMD media units, but they are less advanced. But, at the moment, using *any* of these multimedia extensions involves hand-coding at the ASM level, so these extensions won't get much use for a while. There is a fair amount of work going into vectorizing compilers, but it is a *very* hairy problem.
The point of this all is that Motorolla has let the G4 fall embarassingly far behind the x86 chips. Its a darn good thing for Apple that Jobs has drawn people's attention away from system performance and moved it toward case-aesthetics.
One drawn to conspiracy theories might even infer a causal relationship there.
--Lenny
...is not to find theories that are true, but rather to find theories that are less wrong.
Scientists understand this. It is the mass media, and the general populace who do not. Scientists are charged with creating models that are more accurate than the previous model. They understand that it too will be replaced by an even more accurate model in time.
Science says nothing of truth. We do not "know" that our laws of physics are "right" or "true". All we do know is that they fit the data very well. That's really all that we can ever hope for: to fit the data. If a theory or model fits the data, then it is useful and we use it.
This is a rather subtle point, that I think is lost on the masses. I think that most lack the scientific education needed to really grasp this. At this point, I could go off on a rant about American education, but I'll leave that to other Slashdot readers.
Still, your point is well taken. People that buy into the current theory wholesale are misleading themselves. However, I maintain that scientists don't buy into them wholesale. They know that such theories are fleeting. Its the largely uneducated media who distorts the picture.
--Lenny
AMD doesn't have the market presence to make a new standard archtitecture. They don't have the legal rights to make a clone of the IA-64 chips. Thus, they have to stick to the x86.
They have extended x86 to include a 64-bit mode. No, the instruction set isn't really "RISC", but that doesn't mean much anyway. The internals of x86 chips for some time have been RISC-like processors, with complicated decode/translation units on the front-end.
The instruction set that you use to program a chip says little about the instructions that are actually getting executed by the core. In the decode, the x86 instruction is cracked into smaller instructions to do a simple load, store, or compute. I believe that AMD has done this since the K5, and Intel has done this since the PPro.
Even the old VAX (whose instruction set was as CISC as CISC got) translated its instruction set down into microcode for what was essentially a load/store back-end. That is when people realized that that decode complexity could be moved into the compiler instead, and everyone started talking about RISC.
AMD has already worked out the problems of dealing with an x86 instruction set. Decode on the Athlon is nastier than it should be as a result, but it works. The technological problem has been solved. To AMD, a more complex decode unit is a small price to pay for compatibility with the massive x86 code base.
Given Intel's slip-ups with Merced, its just possible that AMD might gain some marketshare with this architecture. From an aesthetic point of view, it is unfortunate that it is still a child of the x86, but that is the fate of the PC. IBM made a standard with DOS/x86, and that standard holds to this day in Windows/P6.
--Lenny
I have a friend who works at IBM, and just about every time I bump into him, he mentions how much IBM is sold on Linux these days. They're really behind it, it seems.
IBM was the original recipient of the MS-Shaft back in the 80's. I, personally, think that they view Linux as a real opportunity to get MS back.
But maybe I'm just being silly.
--Lenny
This implies that there's some absolute standard of musical quality, which is clearly untrue.
I won't argue with that point. However, you seem to be implying that, since there isn't an absolute standard, using someone else's standard is useless. It isn't. And it is *certainly* better than nothing. If some site, be it commercial, community-based, or a combination, would choose some representative individuals to sift through and rate things, it would provide a wonderful starting point for the rest of us.
If you don't agree with their opinions, then no bother. You don't gain anything by their rating, but you also don't lose anything. The full archive is still there for you to dig through. But if the rater happens to have similar tastes, then that person has saved you a great deal of time by locating "good" music for you.
You're dead on that record companies provide a filtering service for mainstream music. Unfortunately, they cut out a lot of music that we happen to like, so it never makes it to the radio and Blockbuster. With a rating system, that isn't a problem. If a reviewer doesn't like it, he gives it low marks. The piece is still there to be discovered by others, though.
And what if you think all the reviewers are loco? No problem, you can band together with some others are pick out music that you want to emphasize.
With mp3's, the community can provide its own means of distribution. I don't see any reason why the community can not provide its own filtering, as well. Picture this: a music 'zine web site, financed by banner ads, or a subscription or whatever, hires a few reviewers to maintain sections discussing different genres of music. These people keep abreast of the new music pooring into the archive and rate it as it goes by. They pick out their favorites, and discuss the strengths of various groups. Seems feasible to me.
Or, if you don't like the centralized approach, you could simply have a listener-supported rating system where the listener base rates music that they download. Surely other people around here remember the Hornet Archive? It is now closed, but I used to follow it quite closely, and it would rate mod's as they were released. I don't see any reason why their system couldn't be applied to mp3's.
I think a web music index to mp3.com could work. I've seen something similar work on Hornet. However, it would take someone who was quite dedicated to set it up. Hornet had Snowman, I'm not sure who could be recruited for an independent mp3 site.
--Lenny
...unfortunately you have to wade through *seas* of crap to find it. A while ago, I went off on a "screw record companies" trip and tried finding new music on mp3.com instead. It was a depressing experience. I found pounds of poorly recorded ska and kilos of uninsprired techno. I soon went back to the record store.
mp3.com keeps track of the most popular downloads, which is a pretty good idea. It seems that that would help you zero in on the "good" stuff, right? Unfortunately, I found that it wasn't very useful. Perhaps most people download indiscriminately, or perhaps they have poor taste. Or perhaps there just isn't much to be had at mp3.com
What I've really been longing for is a series of independent websites that act as indices into the massive mp3.com archive. An independent site could post reviews from people they pay to wade through all the noise, searching for the elusive signal. I can understand mp3.com not wanting to post star ratings themself, but it would be very nice if another site(s) could take this up, to give us some clue of what's good and what's not.
Perhaps this could even be a community effort?
dreaming on a Sunday,
--Lenny
...and stop complaining. Putting linux on everything (including Palm Pilots) is just a geek game. Welcome to Slashdot.
If it wasn't for people with this hackish spirit, we may never have had PC's in the first place. Do you have any idea how useless early systems like the Altair were? All you had was switches and lights, but hackers went nuts over them. Over time, they improved them, and now we have our modern PC's.
I think its an interesting post. The hack wasn't very technical, but it is kind of cute.
--Lenny
But what it doesn't have is anyone who pays attention to HOW MOST PEOPLE REALLY USE COMPUTERS.
Alright. You are proposing that Linux developers don't understand how common folk really use computers. Interesting. Let's see your arguments...
Where's the trash can in the GNOME interface?
I don't know, but I don't like GNOME, either. KDE has always seemed more attractive, consistent, stable and complete to me. Use KDE.
Why are there no keyboard modifiers for copy, move, or link mouse operations in KDE?
I don't know, and I would like to have them. However, if you think that this is how most people really use computers, then I think you are sadly mistaken. Like it or no, the sad fact is that people who use mouse + keyboard combinations are the advanced users. Most people have no clue what the contextual menu is or does, and they certainly don't know the shortcuts to those functions. Desktop interfaces are designed for most people.
Thus, I argue that those shortcuts aren't important except to power users. Further, I am most pleased with KDE's decision to always present a contextual menu to the user. This guarantees that the user is aware of the options available and knows exactly which option he is selecting.
The way windows approaches this is atrocious. For instance, dragging a file in explorer executes a different action depending on whether you are dragging between different drive letters or not. If you are in folder-view, it isn't at all apparent to which drive letter the source and destination folders belong. I guarantee you, that most people don't think "Gee, this GUI presents a nice interface for me to [link, copy, move] my files between folders". They think "drag this thingy here". Since "drag here" isn't implemented consistently, it very easy for a user to make a mistake. The worst part is that, once a file is lost, the user tends to blame himself and his lack of computer skills, rather than blaming the poor design of Windows.
Why is it that when I use a marquee to select and move icons on the GNOME desktop, that it only displays the top-most icon?
Don't use GNOME. If I recall, KDE uses a "bundle" icon to represent a set of files. To me, this seems a better interface for new users since it isn't as likely to overload him. This is largely a matter of taste, though.
Why is copying files using the KDE file manager harder typing "cp -Rf" on the command line?
Copying in the KDE file manager is just as easy as copying in Windows/Mac. Most of us agree that the command line tools are more powerful/convenient, but that does nothing to help a "desktop" user, who (by definition) uses only GUI apps.
What's up with all the flicker and redraw with X, anyway? Don't you guys hate that? You should!
Hmm. Perhaps you should fill out a bug report. I don't have problems with flicker, and I have very meager hardware (a K6/200 and a S3 Trio64V+). X is more sluggish than Windows for certain operations. It also beats up on Windows for certain operations. Overall, I view them pretty much even on performance, with Windows possibly a bit faster. Of course, the network transparency of X is indispensable for me, so I prefer X.
Enlightenment (or any other X window manager) is not the answer.
I agree. But we are talking about desktops, and Enlightenment isn't one. KDE, Gnome and GnuStep are. So if you are faulting Linux desktops, then Enlightenment shouldn't even come up.
I'm sick of eye candy. I want GUI meat and potatoes!
What does this statement mean? To me, meat and potatoes would be a consistent widget set/ look / drag and drop interface and desktop metaphor. Pervasive Help helps as well. I think KDE is on par with Windows in most of these aspects.
I have to teach people how to use KDE. However, I also have to teach them to use Windows. I really don't think that Windows is any easier to learn, or more consistent. Its just that people are more likely to have already learned it.
If they don't, maybe someone could rape the NEXTSTEP Human Interface Guidelines and produce a real NEXTSTEP workalike.
Ah...a NEXT guy. If that's what you want, then you are in luck. We already have it. (Well...almost) Its called GnuStep, and its almost done. Check the link in the post above.
My basic argument is that KDE is no less fit than Windows as a desktop. It's just less common. Like it or not, Windows is pretty much the definition of desktop right now. If you think that NEXT is better, then you may be right, but unfortunately that's not the standard. KDE follows the standard. If you want NEXT, then stop looking at KDE and get GnuStep
--Lenny
I've played with Sawmill some lately. There are some things about it that I rather like. Its nicely themeable without feeling Over The Top like Enlightenment does. Plus, the flexibility of using LISP to define commands seems promising.
But Sawmill is still young, and not as stable as one would like a default to be. Further, it is *slow*. On my box, Window Maker beats it into the ground, and I've never thought of WM as "light weight". Perhaps this is a direct result of the above mentioned LISP scripting. I'm not sure. I hope that the John Harper can speed up the code some in later versions. If it ran faster on modest hardware (another requirement of a default WM, IMHO), I'd play with it a lot more.
I'll definately be keeping an eye on Sawmill, though...
--Lenny
Its good to see a decent review of a chip from an architectural standpoint. Sites like Ars are starting to address such things, but don't go into much technical detail.
The cache discussion is very interesting. Its true that most academic papers make large simplifying assumptions. (You spend that much time running hardware sims, and you'll look for ways to simplify your life, too.) Its interesting that other companies maintained those assumptions in their designs, even when they weren't particularly valid.
This paper is also good for illustrating the simple fact that processor performance relies on a hell of a lot more than just MHz. I think any serious computer user should learn atleast some basics of computer architecture, so that they will be better informed when comparing different hardware systems.
Most software folks I know (except the compiler guys) are fairly ignorant of computer architecture as a field. Articles like this are good for drawing people in a bit. Many techies are drawn to Linux because they can see what's "under the hood". Its also good to know a bit about what's "under the hood" of your hardware.
--Lenny
...I can't find any information on this person
Slashdot throwing money around? Remember back when Malda was a poor college kid? My how thing have changed.
--Lenny
This would be a moderately funny pun, except that it involves people dieing. In my opinion, the joke is in poor taste. I would moderate you down, but there is no entry for "tasteless" (perhaps there should be), and I don't consider this flamebait.
At 2 points, perhaps it *is* overrated, though...
--Lenny
This article makes me shiver. It is not -- as billed -- an analysis of computer interface. Rather, it is a fervent piece of VI advocacy from someone who has been stuck on that interface so long that their mind has irrevocably wrapped around it. I do *not* view VI as a superior editor, and for the record, I've had a number of "transcendent" experiences with Emacs.
The basic argument for VI is: "You never have to move your hands! Isn't it amazing?". Well, that's all nice, I suppose, but I view the interface as archaic and clunky. He goes off on how control keys slow down an interface...CTRL slows me down a hell of a lot less than switching modes does. (Yes: I've used VI for more than 5 minutes at a stretch, and I'll confess it has its merits, but I've never liked editing "modes").
And arguments against arrow keys? Please...if you don't like them, then don't use them. I for one find them useful even if they are "exiled". And the argument that they can only operate on characters is wholly wrong. I have Emacs set up so that CTRL+ARROW skips words horizontally and paragraphs vertically. Very useful, that.
While I'll agree that CAPS LOCK deserves to be exiled and that the shrinking of SPACE BAR at the hands of the "vanity" keys is tragic, I like my function keys, and I like my arrow keys...even if they are a bit "out of the way". So up is stacked on top of down? Damn, I can't do trills all day long like I can in VI. But wait...I don't *need* to do up/down trills when editing code. Maybe VI users like them, but they've always struck me as unproductive.
Let me close this by saying I respect Tom and enjoy his books a lot. I can't believe that I am flaming him. However, I'm offended at VI propaganda being passed off as an interface analysis. Minimum finger movement is important, but it is far from the only thing one should be concerned about in an interface.
--Lenny
When I loaded up the site, I was gretted by a Sun advertisement up top. I guess they must be moving towards portal-dom if they accept advertising. from a competitor in the OS business. :)
Organisationally, I think the site is an improvement over their old one. It has a simpler layout, and I find it easier to browse. I think they could make it more attractive while keeping the fairly uncluttered layout, though...
--Lenny
The relabelling problem is a serious one for the Do-it-yourself audience, and I suspect a large number of Slashdot reader are also into DIY.
I, personally, have never bought a prebuilt system. (neither have I ever owned an Intel processor). I get my parts from local hole-in-the-wall component stores which may be shadier than they look. I still wonder what kind of K6 I have in this system. Its supposed to be a 200, but the old K6's were very easy to relabel, so it might be a 166. I guess it doesn't much matter. I have run it at 166-233 without any troubles, but I do wonder.
Someone like Dell or Gateway would never try relabelling. If anyone ever found out, the company would lose all credibility with their customers and their market would completely dry up. Its the local companies, which often come and go quite quickly, which may be interested in some quick money and not too concerned about reputation.
And I suppose its nice for Intel to provide this, but its really for them and not us. If the customer is willing to pay the huge premium that Intel charges for their high-end chips, than Intel really wants to see that money. That is where they make the real money...the massive margin on their current top-of-the-line.
out of things to mutter,
--Lenny
I have to laugh when I see "hot-swappable" listed as a compelling reason to "upgrade" to USB. Yeah? My COM ports have always been hot-swappable. I switch back in forth between my track ball and mouse all the time and I'm sure as *hell* not going to reboot for that. PS/2 was a bad idea.
("I've got an idea! Why don't we make the keyboard plug look *exactly* like the mouse plug! Now *that's* ease of use...." "Great! Then we'll make it so that your system crashes whenever accidentally unplug a periphereal. They'll *love* that!")
ISA should definately die, and USB should probably take over as well, but software on the PC side is not to the point where we can make the USB plunge yet. Of course, it may take a drastic action such as this to *force* the software to come in line, but I pitty the poor users caught in the middle.
("Why can't I use my keyboard/mouse in safe mode? My display settings are messed up and I can't fix them! I'm stuck!" "This is a known issue with MS Windows, and will be addressed in the next service pack. Please wait patiently for your patch".)
*shudder*
--Lenny