Slap together 4-5 G5 (conceivable to be together in an office) and you have your home-brewn supercomputer cluster.
Then there's only the need of coming up with the applications to use it (besides research), apart from gobbling up seti@home data snippets for breakfast.
However, XCode and Rendezvous enable something in this front, enabling distributed seamless compilation of big projects.
Definitely yeah. Vaporware stuff all over. Just show some benchmarks and real-world apps when available in the mainstream (not calling it shipped when three are available to licker mags and 'select OEMs').
Just FUD to stave off AMD and the Apple-IBM consortium with the G5 and its 1GHz shipping-now bus.
It is to be shelved unceremoniously for later inspection, just like Jobs statement that the G5 will reach 3GHz next year.
Which BTW, brings up the: come on, just end the GHz stupidity, please!!!
dani++ (Intel will keep you warm all year long, leader in Alaska and North Pole)
My first impression on the news is that the new advantatges look fairly good and are a welcome deviation of the NIH (not invented here) syndrome that plagued Apple in the past.
Apple has looked for -and seemingly found- which websites, tools and goodies its users actually use, even if they do not come from Apple, a big-name VAR or software company.
Then, if the deals themselves are good or not is a matter of debate. I am a.Mac subscriber and I am right now debating wheter to renew my subscription, as thousands of Mac users are doing as well. These benefits might tip the balance... Paid web services are still on shaky ground, I think Apple any many others are still getting the hang of it (users too).
Oooops! Nope. Google is your friend here. Check out the original PPC 970 announcement by IBM at the microprocessor forum. Date: Oct' 14, 2002. On the other hand, check out Apple's PR announcement of the G5. Wow! Date: June 23, 2003.
Of course, IBM tried not to blow the lid, addressing Altivec vaguely, as: "[...] specialized circuitry known as a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) unit."
If IBM did this with the original G5 proc., expect that they will surely do it with a 970 revision! They are not complete idiots, Jobs or no Jobs, they trumpet their achievements, whilst trying hard not to kick Apple in the balls, whom they are trying very hard to help.
Come on folks! Until a discreet PR move by IBM, no mobile G5 in sight.
dani++
IBM announcement of a new G5 revision sure signal
on
G5 PowerBook "Challenge"
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Yeah. But...
We can only start to hold our collective breaths (for a significant time) until IBM kinda announces a G5 revision that's suspiciously low-power and is much cooler (surely helped with some of the latest IBM fab breakthroughs). They might or might not talk the same Moto gibberish of aiming at the embedded market, blah blah.
Only then Rubinstein and his faeries can reasonably start to work their magic. Supposedly, once bi'blue hints them they can start engineering the wondruous shrinkage of the original G5 motherboard without actually having a G5' sample. After that heroic feat, that industrial design archangel and his minions will come down and design yet another striking enclosure...
By then, a couple of revisions of the motherboard will have shipped, as well as a couple of G5 tower speed bumps. Besides, one might expect that preceding the mobile G5 we will see the infamous speedy G3+Altivec (IBM's G4) that bi'blue is secretly eager to hurl into Motto's face, to prove their incompetence.
My two eurocents. You can safely spend your money now
I was in obscurity as well until I read this this story.
It is a story about a detailed PDF on MacOSX/Darwin+PPC specific ways to run malignant code once and if an exploit is found. The posting is somewhat misleading, the PDF is not about vulnerabilities at all but what to do once they are found, as some reply clarifies.
I am pretty sure that similar docs exist for Linux+i386 and a-plenty of other architectures (MS Wind anyone?).
Mmmmm... I bet that to know how does that work one needs at least a PhD on CS or a bunch of them, anyway. Believe me, 'em these people academics are SMART.
In my humble ignorance, I can devise a simple stratagem (surely far simpler, very inneficient and dumber than the one used by VT). Just duplicate all calculations (effectively halving processing power) on different machines, chances the same error hitting both machines would be vanishingly small.. If a discrepancy in results is found, just recalculate.
Of course, principles such as this can work on your non-ECC Linux boxen, just get the dust off those CS books...
Mmmm... ECC RAM on a non-military non-nuclear-control pro-sumer model is a fair tradeoff, IMHO. Otherwise millions would be complaining why the G5 were stalling on the **** benchmarks because of the slower ECC RAM. I can hear 'em anyway...
I first started UNIXing on OSF/1 which had 'tcsh' as the default shell. I have been its happy user for many years. I am an even happier interactive user now.
I know of the 'tcsh''s shortcomings in shell-script programming, so I use bash, ksh or sh to do that, just Yet Another Programming Language(tm), that simple.
I'll regret the new default *if it's true*, and happily change my user shell default setting to tcsh.
You'll have to pry 'tcsh' from my cold, dead hands.
1st rule of Linux club: You must agree on a single distribution
2nd rule of Linux club: You must agree on a single packaging format
3rd rule of Linux club: You must agree on a single desktop environment
4th rule of Linux club: You musy agree on a single web browser
5th rule of Linux club: You must develop a groupware suite
6th rule of Linux club: You must NOT mimic rival OS's
7th rule of Linux club: You must lay down your holier than thou ego's
8th and final rule: if this do this, we will all bask in the glory of Linux on the desktop.
</QUOTE>
I might add the following:
9th rule of Linux club: You must not reinvent the wheel
10th rule of Linux club: You must get rid of YetAnother*** hell-spawn program derivatives
WO is a de-facto extensively tested and proven rich layer over java that Apple and third parties use to develop web apps (instead of re-inventing and re-implementing on top of plain vanilla J2EE).
Much as we all would love to see it, getting HyperTransport outta-box would involve a lot of tradeoffs that would lower its speed, ending up possibly lower than FW800 (that is designed from the ground up to be external).
<pedantically>
I think that Apple has already developed a tried and true solution for external, non-ethernet-based, high-speed data transfer. It is called FireWire800.
Of course, an IP substack can be built on top of the FW, to have additional networking options. (Check out)</pedantically>
WOW, now you'd better get a new 64MB SIMM to upgrade your good 'ol Mac!!! Otherwise you will not be able to run the latest version of Quark. You bought the previous version and the PM at the same time, right?
Brace yourself for the speed bump in copying files. After the surrealistic experience, shut up.
Slashdot Mirror
Then there's only the need of coming up with the applications to use it (besides research), apart from gobbling up seti@home data snippets for breakfast.
However, XCode and Rendezvous enable something in this front, enabling distributed seamless compilation of big projects.
Just FUD to stave off AMD and the Apple-IBM consortium with the G5 and its 1GHz shipping-now bus.
It is to be shelved unceremoniously for later inspection, just like Jobs statement that the G5 will reach 3GHz next year.
Which BTW, brings up the: come on, just end the GHz stupidity, please!!!
dani++ (Intel will keep you warm all year long, leader in Alaska and North Pole)
Apple has looked for -and seemingly found- which websites, tools and goodies its users actually use, even if they do not come from Apple, a big-name VAR or software company.
Then, if the deals themselves are good or not is a matter of debate. I am a .Mac subscriber and I am right now debating wheter to renew my subscription, as thousands of Mac users are doing as well. These benefits might tip the balance... Paid web services are still on shaky ground, I think Apple any many others are still getting the hang of it (users too).
My two eurocents...
dani++
Oooops! Nope. Google is your friend here. Check out the original PPC 970 announcement by IBM at the microprocessor forum. Date: Oct' 14, 2002. On the other hand, check out Apple's PR announcement of the G5. Wow! Date: June 23, 2003.
Of course, IBM tried not to blow the lid, addressing Altivec vaguely, as: "[...] specialized circuitry known as a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) unit."
If IBM did this with the original G5 proc., expect that they will surely do it with a 970 revision! They are not complete idiots, Jobs or no Jobs, they trumpet their achievements, whilst trying hard not to kick Apple in the balls, whom they are trying very hard to help.
Come on folks! Until a discreet PR move by IBM, no mobile G5 in sight.
dani++
We can only start to hold our collective breaths (for a significant time) until IBM kinda announces a G5 revision that's suspiciously low-power and is much cooler (surely helped with some of the latest IBM fab breakthroughs). They might or might not talk the same Moto gibberish of aiming at the embedded market, blah blah.
Only then Rubinstein and his faeries can reasonably start to work their magic. Supposedly, once bi'blue hints them they can start engineering the wondruous shrinkage of the original G5 motherboard without actually having a G5' sample. After that heroic feat, that industrial design archangel and his minions will come down and design yet another striking enclosure...
By then, a couple of revisions of the motherboard will have shipped, as well as a couple of G5 tower speed bumps. Besides, one might expect that preceding the mobile G5 we will see the infamous speedy G3+Altivec (IBM's G4) that bi'blue is secretly eager to hurl into Motto's face, to prove their incompetence.
My two eurocents. You can safely spend your money now
dani++
It is a story about a detailed PDF on MacOSX/Darwin+PPC specific ways to run malignant code once and if an exploit is found. The posting is somewhat misleading, the PDF is not about vulnerabilities at all but what to do once they are found, as some reply clarifies.
I am pretty sure that similar docs exist for Linux+i386 and a-plenty of other architectures (MS Wind anyone?).
Dani++
On MacOSX, Apple has a free patching mechanism that can be (and is) put to good use.
There is a GUI and a nifty CLI app called 'softwareupdate' for remote updating.
In my humble ignorance, I can devise a simple stratagem (surely far simpler, very inneficient and dumber than the one used by VT). Just duplicate all calculations (effectively halving processing power) on different machines, chances the same error hitting both machines would be vanishingly small.. If a discrepancy in results is found, just recalculate.
Of course, principles such as this can work on your non-ECC Linux boxen, just get the dust off those CS books...
Mmmm... ECC RAM on a non-military non-nuclear-control pro-sumer model is a fair tradeoff, IMHO. Otherwise millions would be complaining why the G5 were stalling on the **** benchmarks because of the slower ECC RAM. I can hear 'em anyway...
I first started UNIXing on OSF/1 which had 'tcsh' as the default shell. I have been its happy user for many years. I am an even happier interactive user now.
I know of the 'tcsh''s shortcomings in shell-script programming, so I use bash, ksh or sh to do that, just Yet Another Programming Language(tm), that simple.
I'll regret the new default *if it's true*, and happily change my user shell default setting to tcsh.
You'll have to pry 'tcsh' from my cold, dead hands.
dani++
Can't resist contributing to your sig:
Mac Users: MUsers, MacOSX Users: XUsers
Yeah, I know it's offtopic... but it was too tempting.
dani++
Checkout the press release.
dani++
1st rule of Linux club: You must agree on a single distribution
2nd rule of Linux club: You must agree on a single packaging format
3rd rule of Linux club: You must agree on a single desktop environment
4th rule of Linux club: You musy agree on a single web browser
5th rule of Linux club: You must develop a groupware suite
6th rule of Linux club: You must NOT mimic rival OS's
7th rule of Linux club: You must lay down your holier than thou ego's
8th and final rule: if this do this, we will all bask in the glory of Linux on the desktop.
</QUOTE>
I might add the following:
9th rule of Linux club: You must not reinvent the wheel
10th rule of Linux club: You must get rid of YetAnother***
hell-spawn program derivatives
Just my 0.02 euro
Check out Apple Store.
WO is a de-facto extensively tested and proven rich layer over java that Apple and third parties use to develop web apps (instead of re-inventing and re-implementing on top of plain vanilla J2EE).
dani++
<pedantically> I think that Apple has already developed a tried and true solution for external, non-ethernet-based, high-speed data transfer. It is called FireWire800.
Of course, an IP substack can be built on top of the FW, to have additional networking options. (Check out)</pedantically>
0.02â
WOW, now you'd better get a new 64MB SIMM to upgrade your good 'ol Mac!!! Otherwise you will not be able to run the latest version of Quark. You bought the previous version and the PM at the same time, right?
Brace yourself for the speed bump in copying files. After the surrealistic experience, shut up.