"I'm not sure if tank tracks count as a wheel since they don't orbit a central axis."
Actually, the wheels are inside the tank tracks. The tracks themselves are a sort of 'moving platform' on which the wheels roll. It's like they make their own traction, which is why they work so well in all sorts of terrain.
" The first comment recommended hiding from his accusers instead of fighting them."
Actually, he recommended going to America, finding an American, (or Canadian - if you like snow) girlfriend, and marrying her for the citizenship so you could live there. It was funny.
"The second post agreed, and bemoaned the sad state that France is in these days, and how much nicer of a place to live the USA is."
Nope (or are you trying to be funny?). The second poster asked him why he would want to live in the USA when everyone in the world detests its citizens, when it has a government with a president that caters to rich people and their companies, etc., etc... He then said it was better to go to Canada, which is a thousand times more sensible than the USA. (I'm paraphrasing here, since my French isn't so good these days.)
"No. In 1993 Microsoft had 88%, Apple had 10%, Commodore had 1% and others split the rest."
Well, that just helps my point, really.
I can't think of any other operating systems available for x86.
"There were a few, including GEM and DR-DOS (which competed independently against Windows3.x and MS-DOS). Ironically, if Novell had given away DR-DOS for free in 1992, instead of continuing to charge for it (but making no profit), they could've killed the MS monopoly."
AFAICR, GEM only had a foothold on the Atari computers. I never once saw GEM running on a PC. The Unix workstations had market share in corporations, but they were hardly in the consumer/small business space.
Win 3.1/.11 ran on top of MS/PC/DR DOS. And almost everyone who had a PC was running Win 3.1/.11. Even though it wasn't considered an OS, it went a long way to solidifying the MS monopoly. When Win95 came out, it was like an atom bomb on the competition. The war was over. All that was left was to mop up and occupy the territory.
Apple had 20% market share then. I can't think of any other operating systems available for x86. I'd say Microsoft in those days was as close to a monopoly as anyone would like to see.
PCI pushed out VESA and ISA within a processor generation. The same is likely for PCI-X. The benefits are just too great. PCI might linger on like ISA did, but I doubt it, since PCI-X is backwards compatible.
It took a while for SDRAM to push out EDO DRAM, too. It wasn't really until PC-100 came out that people actually started using it. The same will happend with DDR-II. When DDR tops out at 466 or 500, and DDR-II is at 566 or 600, the choice will be obvious.
I find the biggest difference in switching between the various Windows and the Unix flavours can be summed up right there. Despite the fact that NT/2k/XP say they are 'multi-user', the OS and applications behave like there is a single user per machine. Unix expects there to be more than one user per machine, and the applications are written accordingly. With Unix it's trivial to share applications over the netowork through NFS. With Windows it's not even close.
In fact, I still can't seem to switch between HTML and plaintext email composition without changing my overall composition preferences, which is buried at least four or five clicks away from the composition window.
That's funny....when I want compose a message in HTML in Outlook XP, I simply click Format->HTML in the command menu of the message...
"This is because Intel refused to grant them licenses to manufacture Slot-1, and then Socket-370 compatible CPUs."
Cite sources, please? I've never heard this before. Ever.
It was common commentary in the on-line press at the time. I found this bit here:
"But the most controversial debate was over Intel's apparent decision to lock out its rivals AMD and Cyrix from following in its footsteps, as AMD and Cyrix had done in creating the K5 and 6x86 chips to compete with the Pentium. The slot 1 interface designed for the Pentium II was patented by Intel, all but assuring that the other two companies would not use it for their new CPUs. This has led to a firestorm of criticism from PC users concerned about competition, upgradability and other issues. With AMD and Cyrix deciding to stick with Socket 7, the market has basically "split" here, and we will have to see what happens in the future."
This take was repeated all over the place. I'm surprised you never heard it.
The "Super" Socket 7 may have been aging, but the K6-3 was still a kickass chip that used Socket7 to its full potential.
True...and irrelevant. While with the K6-3 AMD did manage to push Socket 7 to new performance heights, it doesn't negate the fact that that platform was a technological dead end. Every platform is a technological dead end, given time.... so they still would have had a choice to make for the future: piggyback Intel's platform, or produce their own. Since Intel had locked them out, the choice was made for them.
Your take on the rest seems plausible. It's possible that being locked out of Slot 1 was just the push that Jerry Sanders needed to convince the board to go with his dream. At any rate, I for one am glad they did go this route. The K7 and K8 are terrific examples of what can be done with the x86 platform, and have provided the public with an excellent (some would say better) alternative to Intel's offerings - at substatially lower cost.
Actually, AMD came out with an entirely new "socket" with the original K7, the Athlon. It actually debuted in a slot form factor, but the resulty remains the same - AMD has been independent of Intel sockets since '99. AMD and Intel have numerous cross-licensing agreements, which is why Intel is offering an AMD64-compatible bunch of CPUs fairly soon. AMD could have used socket 423 or socket 478, but why would you want to redesign your chip to work with a socket that'll make it slower? It also would have killed upgrade routes for AMD's existing customers had they gone to Socket 423 when the P4 came out.
I'm not disputing that AMD came out with their own 'socket' with the Athlon. I was wrong, in fact, about the generation of CPU that forced AMD's hand.
AMD came out with their own packaging starting with the Slot-A Athlon. This is because Intel refused to grant them licenses to manufacture Slot-1, and then Socket-370 compatible CPUs. As a result of this, AMD was forced to go its own way and develop independent CPU/Chipset x86 platforms. It was either that, or continue making Socket-7 compatible CPUs and spiral down the obsolete technology commode.
I'm pretty sure that, had they been granted a license, AMD would have manufactured Slot-1 and then Socket 370 compatible CPUs and saved themselves the costs of developing their own chipsets, partnering with other chipset manufaturers to develop Athlon chipsets, convincing motherboard manufacturers to build on their platforms, etc. As it was, once they had gone down the Athlon path, there was no going back.
And I would *LOVE* it if Intel would support AMD in their motherboards, like they did in the old days. 'course, with AMD's reliance on Hypertransport, that might not be such a good idea...
AFAIK, Intel has never made a compatible CPU for an AMD-develped platform. It was AMD who built their CPUs to be compatible with Intel motherboards/sockets/chipsets. When Intel made the PIV, they either refused to license AMD to build compatible CPUs, or AMD declined to manufacture them.
"I yelled my butt off when I saw LotR win Best Picture. Man, that was so freakin' awesome. It was like winning an award at Nationals in Science Olympiad all over again!..."
Too bad this can't be moderated [-1] for "Pointlessly inserting an irrelevant Glory Days triumph into a post."
This might sound like a bunch of BS, but I remember when I was a kid of about 13 or so seeing a demo of 3D images transmitted in a regular TV signal.
It was on a show called "PM Magazine" that was produced out of Spokane, WA. I think it was something like a syncidated franchise with different cities having their own hosts...
Anyway, they profiled a company that was developing 3D TV technology. They said it wasn't ready yet due to image stability issues, but they demo'd it on the show, showing the female host walking away from a tree in a park. I can recall sitting in my living room, watching the image sort of bounce up and down slightly, but I also remember it appearing to be very much 3-dimensional. Anybody else remember something like this? I wonder what happened to those guys?
One of their biggest backers is the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, which regularly donates to many other groups such as Greenpeace, labeled by some as ecoterrorists.
I love that 'labeled by some' phrase, by the way. It's a very useful tool for discrediting something when you don't have the balls to take responsibilty for doing so yourself. If you did THAT, why, you actually might have to provide some evidence to back your claim, and you can't have that, can you? "Yes, it's been labeled by some that way. Not by me of course..." Pathetic.
It may also be that MS is waiting for the Intel product so that they don't have to make massive code changes if Intel's implementation is somewhat different than AMDs.
I'm not saying Microsft dragged its feet on Win64 (remember how late NT5.0/Win2k was), but that argument doesn't wash. With an AMD64 Windows already out there and established, Intel would be foolish to implement an incompatible set of 64-bit extensions.
I used to work for a small high-tech firm that was set up above a machine shop. There was a lot of milling, grinding and machining going on below us, and there was next to no air quality control in our offices. I'd go home every day, blow my nose, and the tissue would be black with the stuff I'd been breathing into my lungs all day....I'm never going back there.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm not sure if tank tracks count as a wheel since they don't orbit a central axis."
Actually, the wheels are inside the tank tracks. The tracks themselves are a sort of 'moving platform' on which the wheels roll. It's like they make their own traction, which is why they work so well in all sorts of terrain.
Oops:
./?
"This application is requesting unrestricted access to your local machine and network."
Still, no thanks. I mean really man, why are you spreading this crap on
"The applet DataDino is requesting unrestricted access to your hard drive and machine."
No thanks.
" The first comment recommended hiding from his accusers instead of fighting them."
Actually, he recommended going to America, finding an American, (or Canadian - if you like snow) girlfriend, and marrying her for the citizenship so you could live there. It was funny.
"The second post agreed, and bemoaned the sad state that France is in these days, and how much nicer of a place to live the USA is."
Nope (or are you trying to be funny?). The second poster asked him why he would want to live in the USA when everyone in the world detests its citizens, when it has a government with a president that caters to rich people and their companies, etc., etc... He then said it was better to go to Canada, which is a thousand times more sensible than the USA. (I'm paraphrasing here, since my French isn't so good these days.)
"No. In 1993 Microsoft had 88%, Apple had 10%, Commodore had 1% and others split the rest."
Well, that just helps my point, really.
I can't think of any other operating systems available for x86.
"There were a few, including GEM and DR-DOS (which competed independently against Windows3.x and MS-DOS). Ironically, if Novell had given away DR-DOS for free in 1992, instead of continuing to charge for it (but making no profit), they could've killed the MS monopoly."
AFAICR, GEM only had a foothold on the Atari computers. I never once saw GEM running on a PC. The Unix workstations had market share in corporations, but they were hardly in the consumer/small business space.
Win 3.1/.11 ran on top of MS/PC/DR DOS. And almost everyone who had a PC was running Win 3.1/.11. Even though it wasn't considered an OS, it went a long way to solidifying the MS monopoly. When Win95 came out, it was like an atom bomb on the competition. The war was over. All that was left was to mop up and occupy the territory.
" Let's not forget IBM's PC-DOS and OS/2. Was Atari running GEM? I only remember a roommate having a desktop that looked like a console. :)"
Yes, Atari ran GEM, and it was on a MC 68000, not an x86 CPU.
Apple had 20% market share then. I can't think of any other operating systems available for x86. I'd say Microsoft in those days was as close to a monopoly as anyone would like to see.
PCI pushed out VESA and ISA within a processor generation. The same is likely for PCI-X. The benefits are just too great. PCI might linger on like ISA did, but I doubt it, since PCI-X is backwards compatible.
It took a while for SDRAM to push out EDO DRAM, too. It wasn't really until PC-100 came out that people actually started using it. The same will happend with DDR-II. When DDR tops out at 466 or 500, and DDR-II is at 566 or 600, the choice will be obvious.
Some people lack the perspective of history.
Yeah, I agree totally.
I normally hate those hoax e-mail warnings that fill my Inbox, but this is one to be careful of.
If someone comes to your front door, saying they are conducting a survey and asking you to show your genitals, DO NOT display your genitals.
This is an out and out scam. These people only want to see your genitals.
I wish I had received that e-mail yesterday. I feel so stupid and cheap!
I find the biggest difference in switching between the various Windows and the Unix flavours can be summed up right there. Despite the fact that NT/2k/XP say they are 'multi-user', the OS and applications behave like there is a single user per machine. Unix expects there to be more than one user per machine, and the applications are written accordingly. With Unix it's trivial to share applications over the netowork through NFS. With Windows it's not even close.
In fact, I still can't seem to switch between HTML and plaintext email composition without changing my overall composition preferences, which is buried at least four or five clicks away from the composition window.
That's funny....when I want compose a message in HTML in Outlook XP, I simply click Format->HTML in the command menu of the message...
It was common commentary in the on-line press at the time. I found this bit here:
"But the most controversial debate was over Intel's apparent decision to lock out its rivals AMD and Cyrix from following in its footsteps, as AMD and Cyrix had done in creating the K5 and 6x86 chips to compete with the Pentium. The slot 1 interface designed for the Pentium II was patented by Intel, all but assuring that the other two companies would not use it for their new CPUs. This has led to a firestorm of criticism from PC users concerned about competition, upgradability and other issues. With AMD and Cyrix deciding to stick with Socket 7, the market has basically "split" here, and we will have to see what happens in the future."
This take was repeated all over the place. I'm surprised you never heard it.
True...and irrelevant. While with the K6-3 AMD did manage to push Socket 7 to new performance heights, it doesn't negate the fact that that platform was a technological dead end. Every platform is a technological dead end, given time.... so they still would have had a choice to make for the future: piggyback Intel's platform, or produce their own. Since Intel had locked them out, the choice was made for them.
Your take on the rest seems plausible. It's possible that being locked out of Slot 1 was just the push that Jerry Sanders needed to convince the board to go with his dream. At any rate, I for one am glad they did go this route. The K7 and K8 are terrific examples of what can be done with the x86 platform, and have provided the public with an excellent (some would say better) alternative to Intel's offerings - at substatially lower cost.
Actually, AMD came out with an entirely new "socket" with the original K7, the Athlon. It actually debuted in a slot form factor, but the resulty remains the same - AMD has been independent of Intel sockets since '99. AMD and Intel have numerous cross-licensing agreements, which is why Intel is offering an AMD64-compatible bunch of CPUs fairly soon. AMD could have used socket 423 or socket 478, but why would you want to redesign your chip to work with a socket that'll make it slower? It also would have killed upgrade routes for AMD's existing customers had they gone to Socket 423 when the P4 came out.
I'm not disputing that AMD came out with their own 'socket' with the Athlon. I was wrong, in fact, about the generation of CPU that forced AMD's hand.
AMD came out with their own packaging starting with the Slot-A Athlon. This is because Intel refused to grant them licenses to manufacture Slot-1, and then Socket-370 compatible CPUs. As a result of this, AMD was forced to go its own way and develop independent CPU/Chipset x86 platforms. It was either that, or continue making Socket-7 compatible CPUs and spiral down the obsolete technology commode.
I'm pretty sure that, had they been granted a license, AMD would have manufactured Slot-1 and then Socket 370 compatible CPUs and saved themselves the costs of developing their own chipsets, partnering with other chipset manufaturers to develop Athlon chipsets, convincing motherboard manufacturers to build on their platforms, etc. As it was, once they had gone down the Athlon path, there was no going back.
And I would *LOVE* it if Intel would support AMD in their motherboards, like they did in the old days. 'course, with AMD's reliance on Hypertransport, that might not be such a good idea...
AFAIK, Intel has never made a compatible CPU for an AMD-develped platform. It was AMD who built their CPUs to be compatible with Intel motherboards/sockets/chipsets. When Intel made the PIV, they either refused to license AMD to build compatible CPUs, or AMD declined to manufacture them.
Cool! I'm not crazy...
Is the refresh rate any higher with HDTV? I wonder if alternating the frames might be possible then?
"I yelled my butt off when I saw LotR win Best Picture. Man, that was so freakin' awesome. It was like winning an award at Nationals in Science Olympiad all over again!..."
Too bad this can't be moderated [-1] for "Pointlessly inserting an irrelevant Glory Days triumph into a post."
This might sound like a bunch of BS, but I remember when I was a kid of about 13 or so seeing a demo of 3D images transmitted in a regular TV signal.
It was on a show called "PM Magazine" that was produced out of Spokane, WA. I think it was something like a syncidated franchise with different cities having their own hosts...
Anyway, they profiled a company that was developing 3D TV technology. They said it wasn't ready yet due to image stability issues, but they demo'd it on the show, showing the female host walking away from a tree in a park. I can recall sitting in my living room, watching the image sort of bounce up and down slightly, but I also remember it appearing to be very much 3-dimensional. Anybody else remember something like this? I wonder what happened to those guys?
...of people who want to solve their problems by creating a whole new set of problems for others.
...is there anything in that report about where Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been hiding?
I love that 'labeled by some' phrase, by the way. It's a very useful tool for discrediting something when you don't have the balls to take responsibilty for doing so yourself. If you did THAT, why, you actually might have to provide some evidence to back your claim, and you can't have that, can you? "Yes, it's been labeled by some that way. Not by me of course..." Pathetic.
I used to work for a small high-tech firm that was set up above a machine shop. There was a lot of milling, grinding and machining going on below us, and there was next to no air quality control in our offices. I'd go home every day, blow my nose, and the tissue would be black with the stuff I'd been breathing into my lungs all day....I'm never going back there.
Wow. That is impressive. Even more so than the rise of the Canadian dollar over the same period.
Whats wrong with Finland?
"Freezing Winters."
Not to mention those LONG winter nights...
Isn't Itanium a x86-64-bit processor?
"No, It is a new arch (Intel Architexture, IA64) - That's one of the big deals about the AMD 64 bit chip, it is x86 compatible."
[my note]
"Isn't that what I wrote?"
I guess. The first time I read it, though, the 'no' seemed to say that IA64 wasn't a 64-bit architecture. Clearly, I read it wrong. My bad.