Umm, They've had 800Mhz parts sitting in warehouses since NOVEMBER. where have you been? And yes, they've been waiting for Intel to make a move. What do you think Intel did when they totally controlled the market? They waited for a competitor to release something comparable to their current high-end stuff (or make an announcment of somethign comparable, or better), and then they would release, in volume, the next highest grade. One step ahead, or at par, all the way.
And, IMHO, AMD could drop 1Ghz on us right now, but they aren't because they're making a killing competing with Intel the way Intel competed with them for a decade.
Actually, they don't have a choice in the matter: IIRC, they MUST allow for some form of ability to copy the material on the specified medium for personal home use - ie. a backup. This falls squarely within fair use laws, and that the DVD Fucks are trying to PREVENT this from happeneing should get the case thrown out per lack of merit.
It also helps that not every country in the world recognizes the fucked up American copyright system:)
Actually, it is _NOT_ our government given right to mock and sneer at all politicians. It is our NATURAL right to free speech (the 1st amendment is merely the written acknowledgement of this, see Federalist Papers and writings by Jefferson), however, there are some limits to what we can and cannot say, publicly. As long as you are not printing/saying libellous or slanderous remarks about someone, you are in the clear, otherwise, look out. IANAL,BIPOOTV
After initially reading the question, I was of two minds, after reading others comments and taking a few minutes to think about it, I'm of single mind on this. Software products are tools, much in the same way a hammer and screwdriver are tools. To hold the developer of a software tool responsible for its use is absurd. I CAN see some exceptions: viruses, BUT, as another poster has noted, viruses tend to be very nice peices of code that can (and IMO, SHOULD) be used for educational purposes. A good example (used here by others) is the drunk driver. While sober, the driver behaves and uses his car responsibly, however, after a 6 pack of Newcastle Brown he really shouldn't be driving. He gets in his car anyway, and ends up killing somebody in an accident. Who's at fault? Not the car manufacturer. In fact, I can't think of any sane person who would even consider holding the manufacturer responsible. The driver, on the other hand, is completely responsible. He got drunk, drove, and killed someone. The question still remains wrt software: is the developer responsible? Yes and no. No, because in general, the software created will likely have a multitude of uses, most of them legal. An example would be if we tried to hold Quicken responsible for an organized crime family using their software to manage their books. Yes, they should be held responsible if the developer is knowinglly developing a tool with the goal of it being used for illegal activities (virii, primarily). BO2K is a legitimate product, MS and other companies make similar products that noone has a complaint about. The only reason people bitch about BO2K is that it was NOT developed by a major software house. Again: Yes, in some cases developers should be held responsible, however, in the general case the users are responsible for their own actions, as the developers have no control over the use of their package once it hits the shelves.
Heh, I dropped out of school and am making 35 a year in Baltimore *grin* With the experience I've garned in that year and a half, the degree will push me up to closer to 50-55 *grin*
The article stated that it'd be a PAPER intro as early as this December. Not Silicon, Paper. Silicon won't hit the OEMs for another two months, which means systems on shelves in March/April. Frankly, I can't see it. Intel has been botching a LOT of technology up lately (Rambus....), and by speeding up their releases, their marketoids could be setting Intel up for a VERY hard fall...QA anyone? Also, if Intel HAS been using "Athlon Killer" in internal documentation wrt Willamette, that's bad news...DoJ anyone? Heh. I'm not slamming Intel, i think it'd be a cool thing if they pull this off, but I don't know if they can. We'll see in 6 weeks:)
From what I read in the release, it requires glibc 2.1 because of threading issues. Previous versiosn of Glibc were _NOT_ threadsafe enough for Mozilla, apparently, so they use 2.1= exclusively. Deal.
Keep in mind that AMD hasn't even made their presentation at the MPF, yet. This article is most likely based on what little AMD has said/allowed to be said about the chip prior to their presentation. Hell, most of the information could very well come from whatever they have in the MPF press guide. AFTR, I've not seen the press guide or whatever literature is handed out at the Microprocesor Forum, I'm just making some (somewhat) educated guesses as to why detail is so abhorrently missing in this article (ooh, don't forget NDAs, as well:)
Re:not much info about the chip
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If it's competing with Merced that pretty much means that it'll be a 64-bit chip. Everything tht I've seen/heard about this thing leads me to believe that it'll be at LEAST.18u, and possibly smaller, copper, etc. I'm beginning to wonder if Intel realizes that AMD is making a very strong case to NOT use Intel CPUs for the time being...After all, AMD is stockpiling 800Mhz K7s as we speak:) Coppermine? 700 and 733? WTF? That's slow man. When ya have parts being tested at 900Mhz and 1 Ghz already (ie, we're STILL talking.25u and non-copper) and over clocking said parts to 1.1Ghz with NORMAL cooling (amdzone.com), something was designed right, and implemented right. AMD is also supposedly getting REALLY good yields right now. Intel should be worried about CuMine, Willamette and Foster making ANY sort of dent in the IA32 performance arena with AMD crankign about monsters like this.
Except what you're talking about would just about require that ALL countries agree on some sort of Internet taxation strategy. This harkens MUCH too close to a single world government to me, and I'm not about to let non-Americans determine where money I earned and then paid in taxes is spent. Hell, under the scheme you're talking about, I'd pay a tax on something from Mexico, and then watch that money used to finance a war against the US! (or more likely, pay taxes for somethign I bought over the 'net from Russia and watch the Russians continue to bomb the bejesus out of the Chechnians, something I do _NOT_ support). There's no way that a majority of the citizens of the US would allow for that to happen...except they're not paying attention to anything remotely political (thanks Nixon).
1. In general, very. IIRC, you can get a 533Mhz 21264 for like 1500 bucks or something. It's tempting:) 2. The Alpha processors are the current speed kings of the world. Being fully RISC and 64bit, any x86 32bit processor cannot compare. 3. Yes, they are available to the general public...if you can afford them:) 4. I don't know of any specific distribution that is optimized only for Alpha use, but I know RedHat ships an Alpha CD with it's distro. 5. Alpha's have just about ALWAYS supported SMP:) Where do you think the Athlon's EV6 bus came from?! 6. I'm not sure of the performance, but it DOES scale much better than PIII's. It's still not linear (I can't image what would be needed to get a linear plot in SMP with current tech), but you get a larger increase with each added processor than with Intel. 7. Compaq:) Actually, there's a couple of other vendors that you should be able to get one from, VA Linux comes to mind a s possibily. API may have a list of vendors on their site, but I'm not sure.
Do we smoke crack? Utah is _NOT_ Pacific Northwest (That's British Columbia, CA, WA, OR, and the ID panhandle). Utah is considered a solid part of the Rocky Mountain west, geographically speaking.
Actually, Avery is somewhat common. Every here of Tex Avery? He was a cartoonist, and I KNOW you've seen is work. Anyone who watches Saturday morning cartoons has:) Dennison is a little bit more uncommon, but it's still not as uncommon as one would think. There are MUCH more uncommon names out there than Dennison and Avery (particularly Avery. Grab the White Pages for NYC sometime:).
While I agree with your last point, I strongly disagree with your argument in general. This IS a good precedent to set for several reason, IMHO. First and formost we have a Judicial body recognizing that there IS a difference between.com,.net and.org, and that many organizations have abused the registration process in an effort to "protect" their trademarks (and NSOL abuses it daily). A commercial entity with no ties to the network infrastructure has absolutely no business having a.net domain..com was originally reserved for normal companies, IIRC, and that's where they should have sayed. Second is that, in general, Tradmark law has been applied only in cases where the offender was involved in the same industry as the original owner. There is absolutely NOTHING that Ford Motor Co. can do to me if I were to open a computer repair shop called Ford Computing Services. There would also be nothing they could do to me if I had opened this shop ten years ago, and owned the domain ford.com. I believe the ruling was intended to force a company who wishes to steal a domain from a previous registrant to prove actual harm to the company. If there is no harm to be proven, and particularly if the tradmark holder is in a different industry than the domain owner, there is nothing the holder can do. Don't like it? Tough. Trademark law is almost as silly as Patent law, however, I CAN understand the point behind Trademarks, I CAN'T understand the point behind software patents.
1. Go to firing Squad's website and read their most recent K7 review. AMDs AGP implementation is at _LEAST_ as good as what is currently on Intel boards. It also appears that when you hit 4x AGP, AMD is going to blow Intel away.
2. RAMBUS Sucks. Plain and simple. SDDRAM is MUCH faster, even if its bus is smaller. Intel is betting part of its future on RAMBUS, and may very well force a true divergence in the x86 market because of it.
3. You can't go wrong with a 200Mhz point to point bus that (with SlotB) is Alpha compatible. I've heard rumours of API (Alpha Processor) working on a chipset to allow one to swap a K7 for an Alpha and vice-versa.
Please take a moment to check out this URL. AMD is in production at the Dresden FAB (ahead of schedule by a couple of months) with copper K6s. I may very well have been wrong abou the PIII cache, but I DO know that Xeons have been used in some of these performance comparisions, and got beat. Second: Thrash was using a performance impaired beta release of the processor on a performance impaired beta board. I'd take any all numbers from that test with a pound of salt.
re: Intel beating AMD to 1Ghz. Only if Intel is putting them in the fabs by Thanksgiving. The Dresden FAB staff seem to have gotten it into their heads that 1Ghz will be rolling off their lines before 1/1/00, putting them in the market EARLY in 1Q/2000. This is a potentially devestating blow to Intel's server market, particluarly since AMD should also be running 8-way SMP about the same time. It'll be a VERY interest 1H 2k, that's for sure. Oh, and I think the Athlon is going to sell fairly well for one, and only one, reason: it's faster than any other x86 processor currently on the market. If AMD plays it right, in 5 years people will be saying "Intel used to do WHAT??"
You don't call differences as high as 45-50% blowing away PIII performance? Can I ask who your dealer is so I can buy some of what you're smoking?
Seriously dude. Intel is the one lagging. AMD's Dresden fab is ALREADY producing copper K6-series processors (not on the market YET), and are looking at putting 1Ghz processors through by late 99, VERY early 00. Intel's roadmap has 1Ghz in 2/3Q IIRC. AMD is beating them to the punch, and Intel supporters can't stand it. Oh, and considering that the Athlon w/HALF speed cache is doing these kind of benchmarks against PIII's with full-speed, I consider _ANY_ win on AMD's part "blowing away" the PIIIs. THe full speed benchmarks could very well be embarrassing to Intel (read: 100% or more difference).
AMD is forcing innovation by all parties, they're the first to successfully bring the EV-6 bus to the consumer market, and they're pre-empting the whole RAMBUS/DDRRAM argument by supporting the latter, rather then the former because the latter is simply a BETTER RAM process. Intel needs to seriously reconsider the resources they're spending on Willamette and Merced (Merced especially) if they don't want to spend a year or more as No. 2 in the high performance x86 market.
Oh, and I see AMD at.18u in 1 or 2Q of next year, so Intel really does have their work cut out for them. They're getting beat down by.25u processors, and even though they WILL see a ramp up with.18u, it may not be enough to overcome the statistical 75-150Mhz performance differences they're lagging behind right now with the Athlon, particularly with the addition of copper parts in all lines by early 1Q of 00 from AMD.
1. Linux exists because a geek had an itch to scratch. He scratched that itch, and now its blossomed into something the PHBs, VARs and everyone else has to take notice of. 2. Usability is a factor, but the MOST useful GUIs I've ever used were designed from the inside out. Outside in design of a GUI does not necessarily add to usability, and may take it away. I don't _WANT_ to click through 3 different drop down menus to get to a command I need to use. I want a keystroke shortcut because it's FASTER and EASIER to do. 3. You're argument about using ed or pico is just about pointless with regards to the audience here on/. I use Pico as my editor of choice. I know a LOT of people who use vi, gvim, vim or some other variant as THEIR editor of choice. CLI != Bad. On the same tack, GUI != Bad, although there are horrible examples of both (MacOS comes to mind).
The author of the original article is missing the boat with regards to the history and goals of Linux and its developers. Allowing us to have whatever tools we need at our fingertips, without havign to go through the time waster that is clicking in buttons and links (I can type a command faster than the average user can find/click on a link) is key to the survival of Linux, _NOT_ catering to the masses. If the Masses want to use Linux, great, but the Masses need to realize that Linux _IS NOT_ windows, and was never meant to be windows. The GUI is seperate from the OS, and should remain that way. Would GUI based admin tools be useful? For some people, yes. For me, probably not.
As for knowing about mounting drives, and what video card you have etc: You _SHOULD_ know what video card, network card, modem, etc you have. Not knowing leads to the user fscking things up (I used to work as a PC Tech, I know for a FACT that knowing what the hardware is would eliminate half of all calls). I'm rambling, but that's my nickel.
These are issues that the vendors apparently don't care too much about, particularly since one of the provisions is that they can disclaim all warranties on their products. Yes, OSS will DEFINATELY be a true alternative if this frightening piece of legislation becomes law. However, how useful will such OSS be if we cannot get our work done because of the reverse engineering clauses? This is both a blessing to OSS and it could also kill OSS. It is a blessing in that OSS will gain speed at rates currently dreamt about. The bad part is, is that any OSS (or even payware) that used any sort of RE to be compatable with other payware products can be killed. Imagine if this passed in Washington State. StarDivision would be dragged into court the same day on RE charges against this law wrt their StarOffice suite.
1. This is draconian legislation (or whatever you want to call it) in every sense of the word. The software companies will not be held liable for the software to work, and they can kill "your" copy of their product on a whim.
2. The belief that the consumer market will be able to police the proposed legislation, putting companies out of business if they shut users down, is so absolutely ludicrous that it's almost funny. The average consumer deals with MS failing on a daily basis, and yet continue to purchase their products, although there are others out there. This will make it even MORE difficult to bring competition and fair play into the market. I don't think frightening can be used too much here.
3. Big Brother, here we come. This is the complete and total annihilation of any rights that a software purchaser may have had before. Not allowed to resell/give/transfer a software package without vendor permission? WTF is with micromanaging consumer use/reuse? Again, we're looking at a very scary scenario here. If this passes, what is to prevent the federal government to pass a similar law/set of laws? What is to prevent them from passing a similar law/set of laws with provisions that the NSA/FBI/CIA have access to every shred of data on every individual's computer system? This is the logical progression from such a law, and if this happens, it will become VERY difficult to get rid of.
The gist of what I read in the aforemention article is that the software companies (and is anyone really suprised that MS is in favor of this?) want complete and total control of what users can and cannot do on their computers. I can agree with the concern about piracy and RE, to an extent. HOWEVER, without RE (reverse engineering) we'd probably not even have half the products (payware and otherwise) that we have today. This is including Windows (c'mon, Xerox and Apple had a GUI LONG before MS even thought of it, and need I bring up Mesa, Samba, etc? All solid products making use of RE to figure out necessary hidden/proprietary protocols).
The only way to stop such a draconion piece of legislation is to make it crystal clear to our state legislatures (for those of us who are in the USA) that anyone who votes FOR this thing will have a bitch of a time getting reelected. We also need to make it clear that there WILL be a series of court challenges to this legislation, as I seriously doubt the ACLU will allow for this to occur.
Possibly. Keep in mind what these "rumblings" from some of the "big guns" COULD mean. 1. We have Corel already working on a distribution, one that, IMHO, will be a bit finer tuned to run whatever apps they've decided to port (ie: all of 'em). 2. Linux intreroperability between Unices could be (hell, IS) a step towards a possible reunification in the *nix world. Binary cross-platform compatibility would go a LONG way towards killing the current FUD with respect to "splintering" Linux. 3. The definition of the LSB needs to get set _REALLY_ quick so that if Big Blue, and anyone else, DOES decide to do a distro, we'll have a base in place from which to build. Packages built on one distribution would be even more easily pluggable into others using whatever package manager is deemed worthy to be deigned as the LSB package manger.
*coughs* *Points at GPL* Only way that that would happen (MS Linux w/merged kernel&browser) is if they adhere to the GPL. They try it as proprietary crap and Stallman will probably be all over them. Now, MS coming up withe a library or three and THEN porting the browser over would be a likely scenario...but of course, what they'll port is the APIs and not the acutal browser, leaving us with the bloated crap the we've all come to love to hate.
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Umm, They've had 800Mhz parts sitting in warehouses since NOVEMBER.
where have you been?
And yes, they've been waiting for Intel to make a move. What do you think Intel did when they totally controlled the market? They waited for a competitor to release something comparable to their current high-end stuff (or make an announcment of somethign comparable, or better), and then they would release, in volume, the next highest grade. One step ahead, or at par, all the way.
And, IMHO, AMD could drop 1Ghz on us right now, but they aren't because they're making a killing competing with Intel the way Intel competed with them for a decade.
Actually, they don't have a choice in the matter:
:)
IIRC, they MUST allow for some form of ability to copy the material on the specified medium for personal home use - ie. a backup. This falls squarely within fair use laws, and that the DVD Fucks are trying to PREVENT this from happeneing should get the case thrown out per lack of merit.
It also helps that not every country in the world recognizes the fucked up American copyright system
Actually, it is _NOT_ our government given right to mock and sneer at all politicians.
It is our NATURAL right to free speech (the 1st amendment is merely the written acknowledgement of this, see Federalist Papers and writings by Jefferson), however, there are some limits to what we can and cannot say, publicly. As long as you are not printing/saying libellous or slanderous remarks about someone, you are in the clear, otherwise, look out.
IANAL,BIPOOTV
After initially reading the question, I was of two minds, after reading others comments and taking a few minutes to think about it, I'm of single mind on this. Software products are tools, much in the same way a hammer and screwdriver are tools. To hold the developer of a software tool responsible for its use is absurd. I CAN see some exceptions: viruses, BUT, as another poster has noted, viruses tend to be very nice peices of code that can (and IMO, SHOULD) be used for educational purposes.
A good example (used here by others) is the drunk driver. While sober, the driver behaves and uses his car responsibly, however, after a 6 pack of Newcastle Brown he really shouldn't be driving. He gets in his car anyway, and ends up killing somebody in an accident. Who's at fault? Not the car manufacturer. In fact, I can't think of any sane person who would even consider holding the manufacturer responsible. The driver, on the other hand, is completely responsible. He got drunk, drove, and killed someone.
The question still remains wrt software: is the developer responsible? Yes and no. No, because in general, the software created will likely have a multitude of uses, most of them legal. An example would be if we tried to hold Quicken responsible for an organized crime family using their software to manage their books. Yes, they should be held responsible if the developer is knowinglly developing a tool with the goal of it being used for illegal activities (virii, primarily). BO2K is a legitimate product, MS and other companies make similar products that noone has a complaint about. The only reason people bitch about BO2K is that it was NOT developed by a major software house.
Again: Yes, in some cases developers should be held responsible, however, in the general case the users are responsible for their own actions, as the developers have no control over the use of their package once it hits the shelves.
Heh, I dropped out of school and am making 35 a year in Baltimore *grin*
With the experience I've garned in that year and a half, the degree will push me up to closer to 50-55 *grin*
(To get that in US$, multiply by 1.64) :)
That's not bad actually: 30k+ a year
The article stated that it'd be a PAPER intro as early as this December. Not Silicon, Paper. Silicon won't hit the OEMs for another two months, which means systems on shelves in March/April. :)
Frankly, I can't see it. Intel has been botching a LOT of technology up lately (Rambus....), and by speeding up their releases, their marketoids could be setting Intel up for a VERY hard fall...QA anyone?
Also, if Intel HAS been using "Athlon Killer" in internal documentation wrt Willamette, that's bad news...DoJ anyone?
Heh.
I'm not slamming Intel, i think it'd be a cool thing if they pull this off, but I don't know if they can. We'll see in 6 weeks
From what I read in the release, it requires glibc 2.1 because of threading issues. Previous versiosn of Glibc were _NOT_ threadsafe enough for Mozilla, apparently, so they use 2.1= exclusively.
Deal.
And there are some, umm, difficulties with 2.3.20 as well.
*points at l-k*
Keep in mind that AMD hasn't even made their presentation at the MPF, yet. This article is most likely based on what little AMD has said/allowed to be said about the chip prior to their presentation. Hell, most of the information could very well come from whatever they have in the MPF press guide. AFTR, I've not seen the press guide or whatever literature is handed out at the Microprocesor Forum, I'm just making some (somewhat) educated guesses as to why detail is so abhorrently missing in this article (ooh, don't forget NDAs, as well :)
If it's competing with Merced that pretty much means that it'll be a 64-bit chip. .18u, and possibly smaller, copper, etc. I'm beginning to wonder if Intel realizes that AMD is making a very strong case to NOT use Intel CPUs for the time being...After all, AMD is stockpiling 800Mhz K7s as we speak :) .25u and non-copper) and over clocking said parts to 1.1Ghz with NORMAL cooling (amdzone.com), something was designed right, and implemented right.
Everything tht I've seen/heard about this thing leads me to believe that it'll be at LEAST
Coppermine? 700 and 733? WTF? That's slow man. When ya have parts being tested at 900Mhz and 1 Ghz already (ie, we're STILL talking
AMD is also supposedly getting REALLY good yields right now. Intel should be worried about CuMine, Willamette and Foster making ANY sort of dent in the IA32 performance arena with AMD crankign about monsters like this.
Except what you're talking about would just about require that ALL countries agree on some sort of Internet taxation strategy.
This harkens MUCH too close to a single world government to me, and I'm not about to let non-Americans determine where money I earned and then paid in taxes is spent. Hell, under the scheme you're talking about, I'd pay a tax on something from Mexico, and then watch that money used to finance a war against the US! (or more likely, pay taxes for somethign I bought over the 'net from Russia and watch the Russians continue to bomb the bejesus out of the Chechnians, something I do _NOT_ support).
There's no way that a majority of the citizens of the US would allow for that to happen...except they're not paying attention to anything remotely political (thanks Nixon).
1. In general, very. IIRC, you can get a 533Mhz 21264 for like 1500 bucks or something. It's tempting :) :) :) :) Actually, there's a couple of other vendors that you should be able to get one from, VA Linux comes to mind a s possibily. API may have a list of vendors on their site, but I'm not sure.
2. The Alpha processors are the current speed kings of the world. Being fully RISC and 64bit, any x86 32bit processor cannot compare.
3. Yes, they are available to the general public...if you can afford them
4. I don't know of any specific distribution that is optimized only for Alpha use, but I know RedHat ships an Alpha CD with it's distro.
5. Alpha's have just about ALWAYS supported SMP
Where do you think the Athlon's EV6 bus came from?!
6. I'm not sure of the performance, but it DOES scale much better than PIII's. It's still not linear (I can't image what would be needed to get a linear plot in SMP with current tech), but you get a larger increase with each added processor than with Intel.
7. Compaq
Do we smoke crack?
Utah is _NOT_ Pacific Northwest (That's British Columbia, CA, WA, OR, and the ID panhandle).
Utah is considered a solid part of the Rocky Mountain west, geographically speaking.
Actually, Avery is somewhat common. Every here of Tex Avery? He was a cartoonist, and I KNOW you've seen is work. Anyone who watches Saturday morning cartoons has :) :).
Dennison is a little bit more uncommon, but it's still not as uncommon as one would think. There are MUCH more uncommon names out there than Dennison and Avery (particularly Avery. Grab the White Pages for NYC sometime
While I agree with your last point, I strongly disagree with your argument in general. This IS a good precedent to set for several reason, IMHO. .com, .net and .org, and that many organizations have abused the registration process in an effort to "protect" their trademarks (and NSOL abuses it daily). A commercial entity with no ties to the network infrastructure has absolutely no business having a .net domain. .com was originally reserved for normal companies, IIRC, and that's where they should have sayed.
First and formost we have a Judicial body recognizing that there IS a difference between
Second is that, in general, Tradmark law has been applied only in cases where the offender was involved in the same industry as the original owner. There is absolutely NOTHING that Ford Motor Co. can do to me if I were to open a computer repair shop called Ford Computing Services. There would also be nothing they could do to me if I had opened this shop ten years ago, and owned the domain ford.com.
I believe the ruling was intended to force a company who wishes to steal a domain from a previous registrant to prove actual harm to the company. If there is no harm to be proven, and particularly if the tradmark holder is in a different industry than the domain owner, there is nothing the holder can do. Don't like it? Tough. Trademark law is almost as silly as Patent law, however, I CAN understand the point behind Trademarks, I CAN'T understand the point behind software patents.
1. Go to firing Squad's website and read their most recent K7 review. AMDs AGP implementation is at _LEAST_ as good as what is currently on Intel boards. It also appears that when you hit 4x AGP, AMD is going to blow Intel away.
2. RAMBUS Sucks. Plain and simple. SDDRAM is MUCH faster, even if its bus is smaller. Intel is betting part of its future on RAMBUS, and may very well force a true divergence in the x86 market because of it.
3. You can't go wrong with a 200Mhz point to point bus that (with SlotB) is Alpha compatible. I've heard rumours of API (Alpha Processor) working on a chipset to allow one to swap a K7 for an Alpha and vice-versa.
Please take a moment to check out this URL. AMD is in production at the Dresden FAB (ahead of schedule by a couple of months) with copper K6s. I may very well have been wrong abou the PIII cache, but I DO know that Xeons have been used in some of these performance comparisions, and got beat. Second: Thrash was using a performance impaired beta release of the processor on a performance impaired beta board. I'd take any all numbers from that test with a pound of salt.
re: Intel beating AMD to 1Ghz.
Only if Intel is putting them in the fabs by Thanksgiving. The Dresden FAB staff seem to have gotten it into their heads that 1Ghz will be rolling off their lines before 1/1/00, putting them in the market EARLY in 1Q/2000. This is a potentially devestating blow to Intel's server market, particluarly since AMD should also be running 8-way SMP about the same time. It'll be a VERY interest 1H 2k, that's for sure. Oh, and I think the Athlon is going to sell fairly well for one, and only one, reason: it's faster than any other x86 processor currently on the market. If AMD plays it right, in 5 years people will be saying "Intel used to do WHAT??"
You don't call differences as high as 45-50% blowing away PIII performance? Can I ask who your dealer is so I can buy some of what you're smoking?
.18u in 1 or 2Q of next year, so Intel really does have their work cut out for them. They're getting beat down by .25u processors, and even though they WILL see a ramp up with .18u, it may not be enough to overcome the statistical 75-150Mhz performance differences they're lagging behind right now with the Athlon, particularly with the addition of copper parts in all lines by early 1Q of 00 from AMD.
Seriously dude. Intel is the one lagging. AMD's Dresden fab is ALREADY producing copper K6-series processors (not on the market YET), and are looking at putting 1Ghz processors through by late 99, VERY early 00. Intel's roadmap has 1Ghz in 2/3Q IIRC. AMD is beating them to the punch, and Intel supporters can't stand it. Oh, and considering that the Athlon w/HALF speed cache is doing these kind of benchmarks against PIII's with full-speed, I consider _ANY_ win on AMD's part "blowing away" the PIIIs. THe full speed benchmarks could very well be embarrassing to Intel (read: 100% or more difference).
AMD is forcing innovation by all parties, they're the first to successfully bring the EV-6 bus to the consumer market, and they're pre-empting the whole RAMBUS/DDRRAM argument by supporting the latter, rather then the former because the latter is simply a BETTER RAM process. Intel needs to seriously reconsider the resources they're spending on Willamette and Merced (Merced especially) if they don't want to spend a year or more as No. 2 in the high performance x86 market.
Oh, and I see AMD at
1. Linux exists because a geek had an itch to scratch. He scratched that itch, and now its blossomed into something the PHBs, VARs and everyone else has to take notice of. /. I use Pico as my editor of choice. I know a LOT of people who use vi, gvim, vim or some other variant as THEIR editor of choice. CLI != Bad. On the same tack, GUI != Bad, although there are horrible examples of both (MacOS comes to mind).
2. Usability is a factor, but the MOST useful GUIs I've ever used were designed from the inside out. Outside in design of a GUI does not necessarily add to usability, and may take it away. I don't _WANT_ to click through 3 different drop down menus to get to a command I need to use. I want a keystroke shortcut because it's FASTER and EASIER to do.
3. You're argument about using ed or pico is just about pointless with regards to the audience here on
The author of the original article is missing the boat with regards to the history and goals of Linux and its developers. Allowing us to have whatever tools we need at our fingertips, without havign to go through the time waster that is clicking in buttons and links (I can type a command faster than the average user can find/click on a link) is key to the survival of Linux, _NOT_ catering to the masses.
If the Masses want to use Linux, great, but the Masses need to realize that Linux _IS NOT_ windows, and was never meant to be windows. The GUI is seperate from the OS, and should remain that way. Would GUI based admin tools be useful? For some people, yes. For me, probably not.
As for knowing about mounting drives, and what video card you have etc: You _SHOULD_ know what video card, network card, modem, etc you have. Not knowing leads to the user fscking things up (I used to work as a PC Tech, I know for a FACT that knowing what the hardware is would eliminate half of all calls). I'm rambling, but that's my nickel.
It's supposed to be able to handle up to 8 processors. Unlike Intels quad arrangements :)
These are issues that the vendors apparently don't care too much about, particularly since one of the provisions is that they can disclaim all warranties on their products.
Yes, OSS will DEFINATELY be a true alternative if this frightening piece of legislation becomes law. However, how useful will such OSS be if we cannot get our work done because of the reverse engineering clauses? This is both a blessing to OSS and it could also kill OSS. It is a blessing in that OSS will gain speed at rates currently dreamt about. The bad part is, is that any OSS (or even payware) that used any sort of RE to be compatable with other payware products can be killed. Imagine if this passed in Washington State. StarDivision would be dragged into court the same day on RE charges against this law wrt their StarOffice suite.
Again, frightening cannot be used to much here.
1. This is draconian legislation (or whatever you want to call it) in every sense of the word. The software companies will not be held liable for the software to work, and they can kill "your" copy of their product on a whim.
2. The belief that the consumer market will be able to police the proposed legislation, putting companies out of business if they shut users down, is so absolutely ludicrous that it's almost funny. The average consumer deals with MS failing on a daily basis, and yet continue to purchase their products, although there are others out there. This will make it even MORE difficult to bring competition and fair play into the market. I don't think frightening can be used too much here.
3. Big Brother, here we come. This is the complete and total annihilation of any rights that a software purchaser may have had before. Not allowed to resell/give/transfer a software package without vendor permission? WTF is with micromanaging consumer use/reuse? Again, we're looking at a very scary scenario here. If this passes, what is to prevent the federal government to pass a similar law/set of laws? What is to prevent them from passing a similar law/set of laws with provisions that the NSA/FBI/CIA have access to every shred of data on every individual's computer system? This is the logical progression from such a law, and if this happens, it will become VERY difficult to get rid of.
The gist of what I read in the aforemention article is that the software companies (and is anyone really suprised that MS is in favor of this?) want complete and total control of what users can and cannot do on their computers. I can agree with the concern about piracy and RE, to an extent. HOWEVER, without RE (reverse engineering) we'd probably not even have half the products (payware and otherwise) that we have today. This is including Windows (c'mon, Xerox and Apple had a GUI LONG before MS even thought of it, and need I bring up Mesa, Samba, etc? All solid products making use of RE to figure out necessary hidden/proprietary protocols).
The only way to stop such a draconion piece of legislation is to make it crystal clear to our state legislatures (for those of us who are in the USA) that anyone who votes FOR this thing will have a bitch of a time getting reelected. We also need to make it clear that there WILL be a series of court challenges to this legislation, as I seriously doubt the ACLU will allow for this to occur.
Possibly.
:)
Keep in mind what these "rumblings" from some of the "big guns" COULD mean.
1. We have Corel already working on a distribution, one that, IMHO, will be a bit finer tuned to run whatever apps they've decided to port (ie: all of 'em).
2. Linux intreroperability between Unices could be (hell, IS) a step towards a possible reunification in the *nix world. Binary cross-platform compatibility would go a LONG way towards killing the current FUD with respect to "splintering" Linux.
3. The definition of the LSB needs to get set _REALLY_ quick so that if Big Blue, and anyone else, DOES decide to do a distro, we'll have a base in place from which to build. Packages built on one distribution would be even more easily pluggable into others using whatever package manager is deemed worthy to be deigned as the LSB package manger.
I'm rambling. YMMV
*coughs*
*Points at GPL* Only way that that would happen (MS Linux w/merged kernel&browser) is if they adhere to the GPL. They try it as proprietary crap and Stallman will probably be all over them. Now, MS coming up withe a library or three and THEN porting the browser over would be a likely scenario...but of course, what they'll port is the APIs and not the acutal browser, leaving us with the bloated crap the we've all come to love to hate.