Many of us read Katz's articles because we LIKE to know what people we disagree with think. Hey, sometimes we actually find something we like that he says. That's what being open-minded is about.
Just read this site for some fine examples of it. Look at this thread alone. Everytime someone pops their head up to say, "I agree -- I'm not like this at all. I'm (religious/not liberatarian/not a pure techie/dressed in purple chiffon/etc.)," 5 or 6 different people pop up to violently disagree with whatever non-stereotypical viewpoint they espouse.
For that matter, read a Jon Katz story. He seems to assume that all geeks, like him, are liberatarians and are against the religious establishment, especially the Christian religious establishment. For the most, part he's right. Most of the people on this site fall under that viewpoint. I don't, so I see it just as much as the originator of this topic did.
If you follow your right hand, you see index finger on Alt, ring finger on Ctrl, and pinky stretching over to Del...at least on my keyboard, where I can actually reach all 3 keys one handed.
Seriously, get a life, man. You obviously are stuck in the two-handed mindset. There's a reason it's also sometimes called "the vulcan nerve pinch," due to the awkward way you have to crook your fingers to do it. "3-finger salute," anybody?
Still, I say Ctrl-Atl-Delete because it's more musical sounding. Alt-Ctrl-Del sounds like you're barking out commands in Klingon.
I was reading the white paper on XFS when I noticed a section that had some information which might be useful for Mac OS X:
3.2.5 Attribute Management
XFS supports user defined Arbitrary Attributes which allow information about a file to be stored outside of the file. For example, a graphic image could have an associated description or a text document could have an attribute showing the language in which the document is written. An unlimited number of attributes can be associated with a file or directory. They can have any name, type or size of value. These Attributes represent the first substantial enhancement to the UNIX file interface in 10 years.
Wouldn't this be a great way to preserve the Mac OS idea of resource forks? Any ideas?
No. Sorry. While the POWER3 and POWER4 are members of the PPC family, they will not be droppable into a Mac ever.
Yes, they could run the 32-bit Mac PPC code, but there are some serious archetectural differences regarding bus implementation that will make it impossible to place them in PowerMacs. The difference between PCI and NuBus Macs pales compared to the current 100 MHz memory bus archetecture and the newer 500 MHz memory bus archetecture. Not to mention that, I believe, the POWER3 family uses a 128-bit bus while the current G3s all use a 64-bit bus.
Sorry, but the performance difference is way too extreme to even bother with trying to make a ZIF card that can talk between the bus archetectures. It would be way too expensive for way too little performance gain.
IBM has been working on this for at least 3 years already. I remember back when the G3s were just a product plan, that the AIM map for the PPC family included the G2K project which included such features as multi-core PPCs and 1GHz operating speeds. The 1.1 GHz chip demoed over a year ago was part of the fruition of that project.
This is IBM, not Intel. They are one of the more conservative corporations about press releases. This targetted release date is exactly consistent with the estimates that the G2K project had projected 3 years ago -- that they would have test chips in 2000 and production silicon by 2001. Compare this to the ever shifting projections for the IA-64 family's debut.
POWER3 is a 64-bit PowerPC chip. The PowerPC family of processors was designed from the ground up with 32-bit and 64-bit binary compatibility. Code compiled for a POWER3 will run on a PPC 750, albiet a bit slower since the PPC 750 was not designed with 64-bit words in mind. (32-bit code will also run slower than 64-bit code on a POWER3, so it's not that more bits is faster.) However, all the instructions that work with 32-bit and 64-bit values are implemented in both 32-bit and 64-bit silicon, I believe. Of course, the 64-bit / 32-bit deal is just over integers. The FPU on both series of chips is 64-bits.
This is fruition of the G2K project that Motorola and IBM were working together on before the split over Altivec. Multiple processor cores on a single chip and 1 GHz speeds were their goals for that project. While the 500 MHz memory bus is probably a long way off from coming to Macs due to the expense, I wouldn't be too sure that a multi-core G4 is so far away from being in Macs.
What's happening here is that the media is catering to the human need for a modern legend. Throughout history, people have looked for their hereos in the acts of "great" men. Who knows if these people truly were great or not. That's how they are remembered, though.
Modern media takes people, makes them into modern legends, and then feeds off the people's desire to hear more and more about these media appointed heroes and demigods. While, in the past, you had may one or two heroes a generation, like Lindenburgh for flying across the Atlantic, or any of the great gunslingers of the American Old West, you didn't have many more since that was as fast as the people spreading the word around about them could create them.
Now, however, we have Instant News via television and the Internet. In a matter of a few years, or even a few months, the legend around a person and their glamour can be built up in record time. Otherwise insignificant happenings ( a small plane crash, an affair between a married man and an employee of his, etc. ) become world-worshipped events. However, it's all a feedback loop.
Truly great people who do not kowtow to the media or inflame their interest by forcing away the paparazzi get little more than a passing mention. Take Mother Teresa for example. This was a woman who spent much of her life working in the slums of one of the most dangerous cities in India helping out the diseased. When she passed away, I was infuriated by the lack of attention in comparison to Diana, who, while she did some charity work, made nothing resembling the same positive contribution to society that Mother Teresa did. Why did she get more attention? She was wrapped in glamour while Mother Teresa was merely well-known.
This is purely a feature of the spread of advanced media. Without communication as fast and pervasive as it is nowdays, we would've just heard in passing about Diana's death a day after it happened, and most of us wouldn't have even known about Mother Teresa at all. Surely, we wouldn't have had the mass mourning of a lady by a majority of people who had never met her once.
This kind of thing is already covered by US law
on
UK Drafts Crypto Bill
·
· Score: 1
Notifying someone of a wiretap on them can be considered interfering in an official investigation. That's already established, I believe.
The other part about making people decrypt stuff is only logical. We currently can issue court orders to make people tun over all relevant documents to an investigation. What's the point if we can't force them to decrypt it?
"What, turn over all the incriminating data on our company? Sure.. I hope the statue of limitations doesn't run out before you break the 2048-bit encryption on everything."
Come on. It's not like they're forcing everyone to make them able to break it at any time with or without a court order like with key escrow. This is simply a necessary part of investigating a company or person who encrypts all their data. If you didn't have this, encryption would be a get out of jail free card since you could bury any and all evidence against yourself.
I watched the MacWorld keynote speech live. If you saw them plug it in, you lift up the keyboard, slide the card into what looks like an internal PCMCIA slot (odd that), and then you attach wires from the antenna inside the machine to the card.
This COULD be just a relabled card. You would have to attach a seperate antenna to the PC version too, right? It depends on whether or not I'm right about the slot it plugs into..
I wish I had a picture of mine. It's look more like a datascope with a keyboard, handle, and two 5.25 floppy drives. I don't know how a handle makes a 40 lbs. boat anchor a "portable" machine, but what do you expect of a Trash-80?
Come on! I mean it's the second worst selling color nationwide! Why not the second best selling Grape or the nice Lime color I desire?
At least the AirPort hub has a nice color scheme. I really wish they'd use the prototype color schemes, though. They're much nicer looking for a laptop.
How #!@)#@ stupid do you have to be to not be able to figure out renaming files on a Mac?
Your CS friend isn't qualified for a McJob, much less anything in the high-tech industry if he can't figure that one out. Fer crying out loud, you simply click to select the icon, and click a second time directly on the words. That's where Windows got its cloned behaviour. Geez, the only way I can see you having a problem is if you tried to name a file with a colon in it -- that's the Mac's path seperator, and it just gets replaced with a dash.
Perhaps your "friend" is actually yourself. You seem to display an amazingly vocal ignorance about the actual workings of the OS. Why don't you sit down with it for a few hours without TRYING to find things to hate about it.
Actually, according to SPEC95 benchmarks, megahertz for megahertz PPCs are slightly faster on integer and Pentium IIs/IIIs are only slightly faster on floating point. They're really comparible now. However, that's desktop Pentiums. The portable versions are notoriously slower for most tasks while the PPCs are the same chip in both desktop and portable versions due to their low power consumption. On the other hand, Pentium IIIs have MMX and SSE, which can give the better performance on some games that someone else mentioned. The iBook, however, has one of the best portable 2D/3D chipsets out there built to help make up that difference. Also, though it's Lord knows how long from finally coming out, the G4 series of chips will have Altivec for pure MMX/SSE crushing power. That's an irrelevant side issue, but I just had to get that jab in there.
When can I go down to a plastic surgeon and get my Beefcake(tm) bio-modifications? Hell, who needs steroids when you can get muscle added the easy way? How about specialized hand work for fine manipulation. What about combat oriented modifications for military and police? Replacement eyes for the blind? That's nothing in light of the eventual potential for replacing your eyes with modified feline eyes for better night-vision and cosmetic reasons.
The ability to fully customize your body to specification with the right amount of money is coming in less than a century, and it's going to have rather freakish social ramifications. Welcome to the dawning of the Post-Human Age.
It's that simple. When they start doing that kind of stuff to us, they are a threat to our survival and, thus, a enemy we need to destroy. It doesn't matter that they may be doing it for their own survival, as in ID4. Our concern should be with our own species' survival and advancement first and foremost, not in rolling over for other species.
Slashdot Mirror
Many of us read Katz's articles because we LIKE to know what people we disagree with think. Hey, sometimes we actually find something we like that he says. That's what being open-minded is about.
Plus, it was a very funny post.
Just read this site for some fine examples of it. Look at this thread alone. Everytime someone pops their head up to say, "I agree -- I'm not like this at all. I'm (religious/not liberatarian/not a pure techie/dressed in purple chiffon/etc.)," 5 or 6 different people pop up to violently disagree with whatever non-stereotypical viewpoint they espouse.
For that matter, read a Jon Katz story. He seems to assume that all geeks, like him, are liberatarians and are against the religious establishment, especially the Christian religious establishment. For the most, part he's right. Most of the people on this site fall under that viewpoint. I don't, so I see it just as much as the originator of this topic did.
If you follow your right hand, you see index finger on Alt, ring finger on Ctrl, and pinky stretching over to Del. ..at least on my keyboard, where I can actually reach all 3 keys one handed.
Seriously, get a life, man. You obviously are stuck in the two-handed mindset. There's a reason it's also sometimes called "the vulcan nerve pinch," due to the awkward way you have to crook your fingers to do it. "3-finger salute," anybody?
Still, I say Ctrl-Atl-Delete because it's more musical sounding. Alt-Ctrl-Del sounds like you're barking out commands in Klingon.
I was reading the white paper on XFS when I noticed a section that had some information which might be useful for Mac OS X:
3.2.5 Attribute Management
XFS supports user defined Arbitrary Attributes which allow information about a file to be stored outside of the file. For example, a graphic image could have an associated description or a text document could have an attribute showing the language in which the document is written. An unlimited number of attributes can be associated with a file or directory. They can have any name, type or size of value. These Attributes represent the first substantial enhancement to the UNIX file interface in 10 years.
Wouldn't this be a great way to preserve the Mac OS idea of resource forks? Any ideas?
No. Sorry. While the POWER3 and POWER4 are members of the PPC family, they will not be droppable into a Mac ever.
Yes, they could run the 32-bit Mac PPC code, but there are some serious archetectural differences regarding bus implementation that will make it impossible to place them in PowerMacs. The difference between PCI and NuBus Macs pales compared to the current 100 MHz memory bus archetecture and the newer 500 MHz memory bus archetecture. Not to mention that, I believe, the POWER3 family uses a 128-bit bus while the current G3s all use a 64-bit bus.
Sorry, but the performance difference is way too extreme to even bother with trying to make a ZIF card that can talk between the bus archetectures. It would be way too expensive for way too little performance gain.
IBM has been working on this for at least 3 years already. I remember back when the G3s were just a product plan, that the AIM map for the PPC family included the G2K project which included such features as multi-core PPCs and 1GHz operating speeds. The 1.1 GHz chip demoed over a year ago was part of the fruition of that project.
This is IBM, not Intel. They are one of the more conservative corporations about press releases. This targetted release date is exactly consistent with the estimates that the G2K project had projected 3 years ago -- that they would have test chips in 2000 and production silicon by 2001. Compare this to the ever shifting projections for the IA-64 family's debut.
POWER3 is a 64-bit PowerPC chip. The PowerPC family of processors was designed from the ground up with 32-bit and 64-bit binary compatibility. Code compiled for a POWER3 will run on a PPC 750, albiet a bit slower since the PPC 750 was not designed with 64-bit words in mind. (32-bit code will also run slower than 64-bit code on a POWER3, so it's not that more bits is faster.) However, all the instructions that work with 32-bit and 64-bit values are implemented in both 32-bit and 64-bit silicon, I believe. Of course, the 64-bit / 32-bit deal is just over integers. The FPU on both series of chips is 64-bits.
This is fruition of the G2K project that Motorola and IBM were working together on before the split over Altivec. Multiple processor cores on a single chip and 1 GHz speeds were their goals for that project. While the 500 MHz memory bus is probably a long way off from coming to Macs due to the expense, I wouldn't be too sure that a multi-core G4 is so far away from being in Macs.
You're missing his point.
What's happening here is that the media is catering to the human need for a modern legend. Throughout history, people have looked for their hereos in the acts of "great" men. Who knows if these people truly were great or not. That's how they are remembered, though.
Modern media takes people, makes them into modern legends, and then feeds off the people's desire to hear more and more about these media appointed heroes and demigods. While, in the past, you had may one or two heroes a generation, like Lindenburgh for flying across the Atlantic, or any of the great gunslingers of the American Old West, you didn't have many more since that was as fast as the people spreading the word around about them could create them.
Now, however, we have Instant News via television and the Internet. In a matter of a few years, or even a few months, the legend around a person and their glamour can be built up in record time. Otherwise insignificant happenings ( a small plane crash, an affair between a married man and an employee of his, etc. ) become world-worshipped events. However, it's all a feedback loop.
Truly great people who do not kowtow to the media or inflame their interest by forcing away the paparazzi get little more than a passing mention. Take Mother Teresa for example. This was a woman who spent much of her life working in the slums of one of the most dangerous cities in India helping out the diseased. When she passed away, I was infuriated by the lack of attention in comparison to Diana, who, while she did some charity work, made nothing resembling the same positive contribution to society that Mother Teresa did. Why did she get more attention? She was wrapped in glamour while Mother Teresa was merely well-known.
This is purely a feature of the spread of advanced media. Without communication as fast and pervasive as it is nowdays, we would've just heard in passing about Diana's death a day after it happened, and most of us wouldn't have even known about Mother Teresa at all. Surely, we wouldn't have had the mass mourning of a lady by a majority of people who had never met her once.
Notifying someone of a wiretap on them can be considered interfering in an official investigation. That's already established, I believe.
The other part about making people decrypt stuff is only logical. We currently can issue court orders to make people tun over all relevant documents to an investigation. What's the point if we can't force them to decrypt it?
"What, turn over all the incriminating data on our company? Sure.. I hope the statue of limitations doesn't run out before you break the 2048-bit encryption on everything."
Come on. It's not like they're forcing everyone to make them able to break it at any time with or without a court order like with key escrow. This is simply a necessary part of investigating a company or person who encrypts all their data. If you didn't have this, encryption would be a get out of jail free card since you could bury any and all evidence against yourself.
I watched the MacWorld keynote speech live. If you saw them plug it in, you lift up the keyboard, slide the card into what looks like an internal PCMCIA slot (odd that), and then you attach wires from the antenna inside the machine to the card.
This COULD be just a relabled card. You would have to attach a seperate antenna to the PC version too, right? It depends on whether or not I'm right about the slot it plugs into..
I wish I had a picture of mine. It's look more like a datascope with a keyboard, handle, and two 5.25 floppy drives. I don't know how a handle makes a 40 lbs. boat anchor a "portable" machine, but what do you expect of a Trash-80?
Come on! I mean it's the second worst selling color nationwide! Why not the second best selling Grape or the nice Lime color I desire?
At least the AirPort hub has a nice color scheme. I really wish they'd use the prototype color schemes, though. They're much nicer looking for a laptop.
I hate inflammatory posts, but...
How #!@)#@ stupid do you have to be to not be able to figure out renaming files on a Mac?
Your CS friend isn't qualified for a McJob, much less anything in the high-tech industry if he can't figure that one out. Fer crying out loud, you simply click to select the icon, and click a second time directly on the words. That's where Windows got its cloned behaviour. Geez, the only way I can see you having a problem is if you tried to name a file with a colon in it -- that's the Mac's path seperator, and it just gets replaced with a dash.
Perhaps your "friend" is actually yourself. You seem to display an amazingly vocal ignorance about the actual workings of the OS. Why don't you sit down with it for a few hours without TRYING to find things to hate about it.
Actually, according to SPEC95 benchmarks, megahertz for megahertz PPCs are slightly faster on integer and Pentium IIs/IIIs are only slightly faster on floating point. They're really comparible now. However, that's desktop Pentiums. The portable versions are notoriously slower for most tasks while the PPCs are the same chip in both desktop and portable versions due to their low power consumption. On the other hand, Pentium IIIs have MMX and SSE, which can give the better performance on some games that someone else mentioned. The iBook, however, has one of the best portable 2D/3D chipsets out there built to help make up that difference. Also, though it's Lord knows how long from finally coming out, the G4 series of chips will have Altivec for pure MMX/SSE crushing power. That's an irrelevant side issue, but I just had to get that jab in there.
Why don't you put LinuxPPC on an iMac, then?
To use the 80's Southern California venacular, "Duh!"
Cool!
When can I go down to a plastic surgeon and get my Beefcake(tm) bio-modifications? Hell, who needs steroids when you can get muscle added the easy way? How about specialized hand work for fine manipulation. What about combat oriented modifications for military and police? Replacement eyes for the blind? That's nothing in light of the eventual potential for replacing your eyes with modified feline eyes for better night-vision and cosmetic reasons.
The ability to fully customize your body to specification with the right amount of money is coming in less than a century, and it's going to have rather freakish social ramifications. Welcome to the dawning of the Post-Human Age.
Would you rather we tested on humans first, or would you rather we just not tested at all?
Why? Because they are doing those things to US.
It's that simple. When they start doing that kind of stuff to us, they are a threat to our survival and, thus, a enemy we need to destroy. It doesn't matter that they may be doing it for their own survival, as in ID4. Our concern should be with our own species' survival and advancement first and foremost, not in rolling over for other species.
And just how can an angel be a saint?
Angels != Dead People no matter what "Touched by an Angel" may lead you to believe...