Panther doesn't like being squeezed for space. If you haven't maxed-out the RAM on your system, you probably ought to look into it.
My G4-450 is significantly more responsive with 10.3 than it was with 10.2. Actually, even my original iBook G3-300 was (marginally) faster with 10.3 for many things. But both of those systems have the maximum amount of RAM I could get in them.
One other thing I've heard is that some folks had performance problems after upgrading, but a clean install was smoother. I have no idea why that would be the case, but it might be worth a shot.
"What is it about debugging code? It's almost mythical the level of speed upds people think they'll gain once all this debug code has gone."
People are ignorant...
Okay, for you non-developer folks playing along at home, here's what you need to know:
1. "Debugging Symbols" are extra information stored (typically) in the program's executable file, that make it easier to run that code under a source-level debugger and see the right names for variables, functions, and other program entities.
In general, any software that's released to customers (yes, INCLUDING beta versions) will have the debugging symbols "stripped" from the programs, because they're not useful for the customer, and also because many companies fear (for no apparent good reason) that they represent a leak of confidential information. There is a slight performance penalty on some platforms for running a binary with symbols, but it's only going to effect load time, and only by a tiny fraction.
2. "Debugging Code" is not as well defined of a term, but sometimes, early development builds of software will include extra checks on the integrity of key data structures, or extra error-recovery code. Again, in general, these sorts of builds would never be distributed to a customer.
3. So why do programs generally improve in performance towards the end of the development cycle? It's for the rather self-evident reason that the software has to be working correctly before it's worth the effort to try to make it run faster. In fact, optimizing performance before the feature set has been frozen is one of the classic blunders of software development!
Microsoft's research budget is nearly as large as Apple's annual income.
No, really. For 2003, Apple's income was $6.2 billion. For the same year, Microsoft's R&D spending was $4.7 billion. That's almost exactly 10 times as much as Apple's R&D spending of $471 million
Actually, the 30" LCD has a viewable area of about 26 x 14.5 inches, so you could fit THREE full-sized pages on there side by side in the normal orientation, and still have room left over for a tool palette.
You've got to see one in person to truly appreciate it - they're really, really BIG.
I seriously doubt that this project, or the Experience Music project, or the Science Fiction Museum, or the Human Cognome Project, are ever going to earn him any money.
As to whether it's an "elitist distraction", that's entirely a function of where your priorities are. And it *is* his money, after all. At least he's not devoting all his effort to just making a bigger pile.
You've got to hand it to Paul Allen - here's a guy who knows what to do with more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime. Making it possible for other people to pursue their dreams and possibly improve the world for everyone is just about the best possible use for all that wealth.
Hydrogen is half the density of Helium, not 1/4. And it wouldn't give anything like twice the buoyancy, either. If you're confused as to why this should be so, I recommend doing a little web research on the following terms: "monatomic gas", "chemical mole", "ideal gas law". "density of air".
"It is possible to build a fission reactor from natural U metal but I don't think it's easy at all"
Google "CANDU". If you have a sufficient supply of Heavy Water, you can just stack bricks of uranium in it to make a reactor. Of course you'd die pretty quickly if you built it that simply, but it's hardly rocket science.
"But it still makes me wanna kick myself for not thinking of it first."
That's how you know it's a really good idea. I think there's a hierarchy, from good to bad:
Initial reactions to new inventions: 1) How the hell did someone come up with that? It's brilliant! 2) Why didn't I think of that? 3) I don't get it. 4) Who thought that was a good idea?
"Do you really get your Windows box owned just because Windows is insecure out of the box?"
Yes. It's actually possible to install Windows XP on a system connected to the Internet and have it be infected by a virus before you can connect to Windows Update and download the appropriate critical fixes.
It happened to me on a LAN at work. Any network configuration where there's more than just your machine on your subnet is vulnerable to this.
Windows XP SP2 is obviously only going to help if the user base has XP installed. I expect there'll be lots of systems out there running older versions of Windows for some time to come.
I don't think we'll ever have a good solution for "attachment-clicking syndrome". Wouldn't be too hard for the OS to check for obvious problems, though -
"Your computer has attempted to connect to more than 5 different email (SMTP) servers in the last ten seconds. This is USUALLY the result of a computer virus. Click > to disable smtp to any server other than your default email server(s)"
I think there's an inherent conflict there in that the corporate market is going to want many services enabled by default (computer browsing, etc), and the home user should have those disabled.
I guess since XP does the Wizard" thing for Internet setup, they could use your answer to "are you on a local area network" to shut down things for a home user. On the other hand, lots of people have home networks now...
I still find it mystifying that any ISP would allow/encourage users to directly connect completely unprotected machines to a high-speed internet connection.
Sure, Windows could be better in terms of security, but that wouldn't even be a problem if all those insecure services were behind (even a minimal) firewall.
-Mark (My DSL account came with a "free" firewall-enabled router)
In any industrial or commercial setting where accuracy is important, you'll always find decimal inches (i.e. 123.456"). I've never seen a blueprint for a machined or manufactured part or assembly dimensioned in anything but inches, and decimal fractions of an inch.
For some reason, the true Imperial system of feet, inches and fractions is still used in building construction and architecture. Perhaps they're just more conservative. Or, maybe it's simply because contractor's measuring tapes are still made with feet, inch, and fraction markings.
If you think that the price asked for OS and iLife upgrades is unreasonable, then don't upgrade. Of the 5 Macintoshes I use on a regular basis:
1 runs Mac OS 10.1.5
2 run Mac OS X 10.2.8
2 run Mac OS X 10.3.2 Admittedly, I'm probably a special case, but the general point I'm trying to make is that you're not required to pay for upgrades unless you need the new features.
I also note that iLife '04 runs on Mac OS 10.2 as well as 10.3, so you don't have to buy the latest OS to run the new iLife.
You've got the effect of caffeine on the blood vessels exactly backwards. Caffeine causes constriction of blood vessels. When somebody stops ingesting caffeine, their blood vessels will tend to expand. This may or may not have anything to do with the resulting headache.
On an individual-gate basis, smaller gates use less power, since there's less capacitance at the gate to charge or discharge. Of course, smaller gates mean more components in a given area, which increases power consumption.
These two effects should just about cancel out, since gate capacitance increases with the square of the feature size, and the number of gates drops at the same rate.
Which leaves you with the other effects (including leakage), which are all worse with smaller gates. So, a maximum-size part will have a higher power consumption on a smaller process, but if you took an existing design (like a Pentium 4) and rebuilt it on a smaller process, you should get a lower power consumption (and smaller/cheaper die size).
That depends on the bug, and on the application. If you have any kind of complexity at all, it's hard to know where to start looking for the problem.
This program basically spins away, then gives you a list of places in the source to inspect to find the error. You might still have to break out gdb, but you're saved the first stage of debugging - figuring out where the problem is.
It's not like they just grab one out of a box that a customer returns, and run a polishing mitt over it, and ship it out to you.
Any Apple reconditioned product gets thoroughly tested before it gets sent out. That's why they offer a warranty on reconditioned items. If they're not worried about it breaking prematurely, why should you be?
The tool executes your program multiple times, and examines the internal state of the program (variable values and memory contents) at various stages in the execution.
It then automatically isolates the root cause of the failure. This is pretty cool stuff, and ought to save a lot of time tracking down complex bugs.
I haven't heard of any large-scale studies of the effectiveness of that treatment. Granted, I'm not a doctor, but a quick web search turned up a couple articles at NIH and WHO along the lines of "it's been tried a couple of times, but no one knows if it helps". Do you have references for a more detailed treatment?
In any case, a vaccine or an effective replication inhibiter drug would be a lot more useful than serum if a large-scale infection ever breaks out.
Some reasons: 1. It's really, really deadly. Currently, it's not so contagious, but that sort of thing has been known to change for other viruses. 2. It's easier to vaccinate against than HIV. HIV is a real moving target - it mutates a lot. It also mounts an attack against the immune system itself, which makes it hard to defend against. 3. There is already a version of Ebola that is (probably) transmitted through the air - "Ebola Reston". For some reason, it doesn't affect humans, but it's incredibly deadly to monkeys. 4. There aren't any effective treatments for infected individuals. Once you've caught the disease, you're either going to die or not, and nothing anybody does will help you at all. 5. The process of dying from Ebola is incredibly awful to experience, and terrifying to watch, by all accounts.
As a public-health problem, Ebola currently ranks pretty low. But the possibility of a contagious Ebola scares the hell out of a lot of people. If such a virus ever appears in a populous area, it'll be way too late to start developing a vaccine.
Slashdot Mirror
Panther doesn't like being squeezed for space. If you haven't maxed-out the RAM on your system, you probably ought to look into it.
My G4-450 is significantly more responsive with 10.3 than it was with 10.2. Actually, even my original iBook G3-300 was (marginally) faster with 10.3 for many things. But both of those systems have the maximum amount of RAM I could get in them.
One other thing I've heard is that some folks had performance problems after upgrading, but a clean install was smoother. I have no idea why that would be the case, but it might be worth a shot.
...because we all know what a big betting sport Computer Chess is, right?
right?
>
"What is it about debugging code? It's almost mythical the level of speed upds people think they'll gain once all this debug code has gone."
People are ignorant...
Okay, for you non-developer folks playing along at home, here's what you need to know:
1. "Debugging Symbols" are extra information stored (typically) in the program's executable file, that make it easier to run that code under a source-level debugger and see the right names for variables, functions, and other program entities.
In general, any software that's released to customers (yes, INCLUDING beta versions) will have the debugging symbols "stripped" from the programs, because they're not useful for the customer, and also because many companies fear (for no apparent good reason) that they represent a leak of confidential information. There is a slight performance penalty on some platforms for running a binary with symbols, but it's only going to effect load time, and only by a tiny fraction.
2. "Debugging Code" is not as well defined of a term, but sometimes, early development builds of software will include extra checks on the integrity of key data structures, or extra error-recovery code. Again, in general, these sorts of builds would never be distributed to a customer.
3. So why do programs generally improve in performance towards the end of the development cycle? It's for the rather self-evident reason that the software has to be working correctly before it's worth the effort to try to make it run faster. In fact, optimizing performance before the feature set has been frozen is one of the classic blunders of software development!
-Mark
Microsoft's research budget is nearly as large as Apple's annual income.
No, really. For 2003, Apple's income was $6.2 billion. For the same year, Microsoft's R&D spending was $4.7 billion. That's almost exactly 10 times as much as Apple's R&D spending of $471 million
-Mark
Actually, the 30" LCD has a viewable area of about 26 x 14.5 inches, so you could fit THREE full-sized pages on there side by side in the normal orientation, and still have room left over for a tool palette.
You've got to see one in person to truly appreciate it - they're really, really BIG.
-Mark
I seriously doubt that this project, or the Experience Music project, or the Science Fiction Museum, or the Human Cognome Project, are ever going to earn him any money.
As to whether it's an "elitist distraction", that's entirely a function of where your priorities are. And it *is* his money, after all. At least he's not devoting all his effort to just making a bigger pile.
-Mark
"Encrypted backup disk images of digital pictures of friends, family, myself"
Wow. What kinda tinfoil-beanie wearing nutjob do you have to be to encrypt your family photos? Who're your family, the Sopranos or the Bin Ladens?
You've got to hand it to Paul Allen - here's a guy who knows what to do with more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime. Making it possible for other people to pursue their dreams and possibly improve the world for everyone is just about the best possible use for all that wealth.
-Mark
Hydrogen is half the density of Helium, not 1/4. And it wouldn't give anything like twice the buoyancy, either. If you're confused as to why this should be so, I recommend doing a little web research on the following terms: "monatomic gas", "chemical mole", "ideal gas law". "density of air".
-Mark
"It is possible to build a fission reactor from natural U metal but I don't think it's easy at all"
Google "CANDU". If you have a sufficient supply of Heavy Water, you can just stack bricks of uranium in it to make a reactor. Of course you'd die pretty quickly if you built it that simply, but it's hardly rocket science.
-Mark
"But it still makes me wanna kick myself for not thinking of it first."
That's how you know it's a really good idea. I think there's a hierarchy, from good to bad:
Initial reactions to new inventions:
1) How the hell did someone come up with that? It's brilliant!
2) Why didn't I think of that?
3) I don't get it.
4) Who thought that was a good idea?
-Mark
"Do you really get your Windows box owned just because Windows is insecure out of the box?"
Yes. It's actually possible to install Windows XP on a system connected to the Internet and have it be infected by a virus before you can connect to Windows Update and download the appropriate critical fixes.
It happened to me on a LAN at work. Any network configuration where there's more than just your machine on your subnet is vulnerable to this.
-Mark
Windows XP SP2 is obviously only going to help if the user base has XP installed. I expect there'll be lots of systems out there running older versions of Windows for some time to come.
I don't think we'll ever have a good solution for "attachment-clicking syndrome". Wouldn't be too hard for the OS to check for obvious problems, though -
"Your computer has attempted to connect to more than 5 different email (SMTP) servers in the last ten seconds. This is USUALLY the result of a computer virus. Click > to disable smtp to any server other than your default email server(s)"
-Mark
I think there's an inherent conflict there in that the corporate market is going to want many services enabled by default (computer browsing, etc), and the home user should have those disabled.
I guess since XP does the Wizard" thing for Internet setup, they could use your answer to "are you on a local area network" to shut down things for a home user. On the other hand, lots of people have home networks now...
-Mark
I still find it mystifying that any ISP would allow/encourage users to directly connect completely unprotected machines to a high-speed internet connection.
Sure, Windows could be better in terms of security, but that wouldn't even be a problem if all those insecure services were behind (even a minimal) firewall.
-Mark
(My DSL account came with a "free" firewall-enabled router)
In any industrial or commercial setting where accuracy is important, you'll always find decimal inches (i.e. 123.456"). I've never seen a blueprint for a machined or manufactured part or assembly dimensioned in anything but inches, and decimal fractions of an inch.
For some reason, the true Imperial system of feet, inches and fractions is still used in building construction and architecture. Perhaps they're just more conservative. Or, maybe it's simply because contractor's measuring tapes are still made with feet, inch, and fraction markings.
-Mark
"We are still experimenting, mainly with company employees," Takara marketing executive Kenji Hattori told reporters in Tokyo yesterday.
I mean, after all, it's just a device to program your unconscious mind. What could possibly go wrong?
Quick, somebody call Michael Crichton!
-Mark
If you think that the price asked for OS and iLife upgrades is unreasonable, then don't upgrade. Of the 5 Macintoshes I use on a regular basis:
1 runs Mac OS 10.1.5
2 run Mac OS X 10.2.8
2 run Mac OS X 10.3.2
Admittedly, I'm probably a special case, but the general point I'm trying to make is that you're not required to pay for upgrades unless you need the new features.
I also note that iLife '04 runs on Mac OS 10.2 as well as 10.3, so you don't have to buy the latest OS to run the new iLife.
-Mark
You've got the effect of caffeine on the blood vessels exactly backwards. Caffeine causes constriction of blood vessels. When somebody stops ingesting caffeine, their blood vessels will tend to expand. This may or may not have anything to do with the resulting headache.
-Mark
On an individual-gate basis, smaller gates use less power, since there's less capacitance at the gate to charge or discharge. Of course, smaller gates mean more components in a given area, which increases power consumption.
These two effects should just about cancel out, since gate capacitance increases with the square of the feature size, and the number of gates drops at the same rate.
Which leaves you with the other effects (including leakage), which are all worse with smaller gates. So, a maximum-size part will have a higher power consumption on a smaller process, but if you took an existing design (like a Pentium 4) and rebuilt it on a smaller process, you should get a lower power consumption (and smaller/cheaper die size).
-Mark
That depends on the bug, and on the application. If you have any kind of complexity at all, it's hard to know where to start looking for the problem.
This program basically spins away, then gives you a list of places in the source to inspect to find the error. You might still have to break out gdb, but you're saved the first stage of debugging - figuring out where the problem is.
That's the theory, anyway.
-Mark
It's not like they just grab one out of a box that a customer returns, and run a polishing mitt over it, and ship it out to you.
Any Apple reconditioned product gets thoroughly tested before it gets sent out. That's why they offer a warranty on reconditioned items. If they're not worried about it breaking prematurely, why should you be?
-Mark
Please read the article.
The tool executes your program multiple times, and examines the internal state of the program (variable values and memory contents) at various stages in the execution.
It then automatically isolates the root cause of the failure. This is pretty cool stuff, and ought to save a lot of time tracking down complex bugs.
-Mark
I haven't heard of any large-scale studies of the effectiveness of that treatment. Granted, I'm not a doctor, but a quick web search turned up a couple articles at NIH and WHO along the lines of "it's been tried a couple of times, but no one knows if it helps". Do you have references for a more detailed treatment?
In any case, a vaccine or an effective replication inhibiter drug would be a lot more useful than serum if a large-scale infection ever breaks out.
-Mark
Some reasons:
1. It's really, really deadly. Currently, it's not so contagious, but that sort of thing has been known to change for other viruses.
2. It's easier to vaccinate against than HIV. HIV is a real
moving target - it mutates a lot. It also mounts an attack against the immune system itself, which makes it hard to defend against.
3. There is already a version of Ebola that is (probably) transmitted through the air - "Ebola Reston". For some reason, it doesn't affect humans, but it's incredibly deadly to monkeys.
4. There aren't any effective treatments for infected individuals. Once you've caught the disease, you're either going to die or not, and nothing anybody does will help you at all.
5. The process of dying from Ebola is incredibly awful to experience, and terrifying to watch, by all accounts.
As a public-health problem, Ebola currently ranks pretty low. But the possibility of a contagious Ebola scares the hell out of a lot of people. If such a virus ever appears in a populous area, it'll be way too late to start developing a vaccine.
-Mark