Are there all that many people that use floppy drives anymore anyway? I remember my freshmen year of college when the start of a CS lab involved everyone pulling out there disk to get there saved code. A few of the super cool people pulled out a CD-R or CD-RW with it. Now days when I walk into one of those lab classes nobody pulls out anything, they all bring up an scp or ftp client or something of that nature. I don't even own a single floppy disk anymore. I don't think floppy drives neccesarily need to be replaced, I think that method of moving data around might just go extinct.
That is totally true. Processor-specific microcode optimizations are definitly the compilers job. But you have to conceed the fact that the compiler can only do so much. If the programmer doesn't choose a good method or solving the problem at hand there isn't much a good compiler can do to optimize the code, especially if the problem being solved is complex.
Compilers simply can't be asked to pick up the slack for programs written with a poor logical flow. They can't be ask to figure out a completely different and improved algorithm for solving a complex problem they don't completely understand the parameters for.
Well when the whole world upgrades to BMW's, Mercedes, and the like where the outside world sound evaporates as soon as you enter the passenger cabin and the high quality stereo systems come in the form of just another $2000 option HD radio will be totally necesary.
Of coures BMW will have to stop piping engine sounds into the cabin on purpose, but they usually regulate that so you can only here it when you push the revs past 4000rpm's anyway (note to you suped up civic drivers... 4000 rpm's is pretty high when your engine actually produces some low end tourque).
You right, very few people can code a program that works well on an SMT processor. It is a lot to keep track of and quite honestly, most of the code I have seen churned out at software companies was done in such a rush because of deadlines the programmers didn't have time to optimize there code.
However, there is no reason why you can take two single threaded processes and use one to fill the holes in the pipeline left by the other so SMT should still have a decent benifit if the kernel scheduler is prepared for this.
Also remember that in the few wars we have been involved in recently MANY less lives have been lost then in the wars of the past.
One of the reasons for this is things like smart bombs and surgical strikes all which require a lot of military technology.
So while I certainly don't endorse war in any current situation I would rather us be able to hit a target with one small strike then 30 large scale strikes like it took back in the WWI and WWII days.
You can't very well replace a Cisco router with one of these. One of the selling points of those routers is there ability to push so much data they can fill all there ports with full bandwidth. Try doing that with PCI...
This might not seam important but when you start having networks with multiple routers and switches with such low total bandwidth limitations on each all of a sudden your network will start to really suck.
If you aren't doing complex things like that then I have to ask why the hell you bought a $2500 cisco instead of a $150 linksys to begin with.
You remember DIVX? (Not the MPEG-4 decoder, the attempt to make limited use DVD's for rental purposes so you don't have to take them back).
Unfortunetly DIVX went out of business. I know alot of people didn't like DIVX, but quite frankly I don't buy most of my DVD's, I rent them from the video store. I also have a terrible time remember to return them and thus have paid a fair amount of late fees in my time. Degrading media would be just fine for rentals as long as a) they don't cost more, and b) they play in all our players, and c) they were actually bio degradable/recyclable so they don't quadruple the land fill size.
Just so you know, if you sign up for the AT&T on-line account stuff (free) you can view your usage in mostly real time. But I agree it is annoying they disabled those features on your phone. My phone, however, still has them all even though it is an AT&T network phone.
You can build your own CPU in and FPGA these days and run linux on it..... Though a big FPGA isn't exactly cheap.
Anyway, most of us that went through college engineering programs did something similar to this at one time. Whether it was building a computer out of parts or designing and architecture in VHDL and throwing it with some assembly code on an FPGA. It is a good way to learn how architectures really work.
Believe me, I am very familure with MP3's. It was just my impression that you couldn't actually burn them to CD's and whatnot. However, having now actually used the service I realized I was wrong and you can use iTunes to burn a CD of the music. Plus I also found that if you buy many full CD's they don't actually charge you 99c a song, they usually charge you around $10.
As much as we all like to harp on Microsoft and how much there software sucks and what not this kind of lawsuit sets a terrible precidence.
Sure, I realize that GPL'd software typically says the software is distributed as is with no warrenty or guarentee... blah blah blah.
However, having written some GPL's software myself I have to ask the question, how am I going to pay to defend myself if I get sued next? The answer is simple, I can't.
We all know that lawsuits, no matter how rediculous can crush the little guys. If Microsoft losses this lawsuit then it just makes it more likely others will be sued for similar types of things.
People have to realize software has bugs. Not just Windows, but all software. I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect a fix for a bug or security hole in a timely manner. I have to say, as far as I know Microsoft acted in a timely manner with regards to this situation.
Of course I agree Microsoft should take security into mind earlier in the design process but I don't think they are sitting there in Redmond making software they know is going to be riddled with security holes and bugs. It really is unfortunet that the average consumer would rather buy an operating system because it has semi-transparent windows and a large collection of avaible 3D games then a solid security record. Which of course means that we whom care about things like that get hung out to dry because we make up the minority of the userbase.
So anyway, for once I hope Microsoft actually wins a lawsuit so that perhaps we don't have to deal with such rediculous lawsuits here in the open source community in the future.
I have discussed this point with many people, in this is how most of us feel about buying MP3's. I would be all for it, but when you think about 99c a song, that is way to much money.
If I want the newest CD from any band I can go to the record store and buy it for $10-20. I averaged out my last 10 CD purchases and on a $/song amount it was very close (but actually slightly lower) then 99c/song. Why should I have to pay the same amount for something I can't take around with me and play anywhere? I would be all for buying MP3's if they were say, $5 for a CD's worth of music, but why pay the same I already do for a product with limitations when I can just buy a CD and rip the MP3's (I didn't say anything about distribution) and have the best of both worlds?
99c a song might not seam like a lot, but it adds up real quick if you like to purchase entire cd's worth of a bands music.
The 745i uses that computer to do absolutely everything. It has a single button that controls a rediculous amount of stuff from the navigation system to the radio controls to the on-board computer stuff. They claim there are over 700 functions on that one button alone. On top of that I believe that the heat/AC, and transmittion, which are basically the only devices with there own sets of buttons are controlled by that same computer. In all, it is doing so much that I can understand them wanting to start with an embedded computer that actually has an OS.
Being an embedded computer person I wouldn't want to have to write all that code from scratch. Of course I proably wouldn't have choosen WindowsCE but that is an entirely different arguement I don't feel like getting into.
Everyone should take back there DVD players and cancel there Satilite TV subscriptions as watching MPEG2 video will distroy your eye site and cause you to see artifacts in normal everyday life....
But on a serious note... we have all been using telephones for years and the sound quality and distortion on that is way worse then any digital music I have... Of course I realize part of the arguement is the fact that it is so close to perfect that makes it so bad but it all seams very speculative.
The track will be elevated, so most of the issues that cause trains to slow or stop on conventional track are gone. Much like a subway track, there will be a third rail or some sort powering this thing, so it is important to keep people/animals away from it. There are other bonus's as well.
For one, the track is a lot lighter. And doesn't require all the ground fortification work that a conventional rail requires. As it turns out, mag-lev tracks are usually cheaper per mile then conventional rail (with the exception of the German design that included magnets on the track itself).
And of course, the speed.... Mag-lev trains have the potential of being VERY fast.
There are negatives as well... Like the fact that they aren't so good for heavy cargo runs. But that is partially because the people developing the current mag-lev technology are pretty much only building it to deal with passenger cars.
3DFX was the pioneer in 3D graphics. But making the statement that Nvidia sucked before they bought 3dfx is rediculous. The Voodoo 2 was the last product 3dfx made that lead the industry. Nvidia released the TNT (decent, but not quite there yet), and then the industry leading TNT2 well before they purchased 3dfx and that was really what started Nvidia's domination.
If you want to look at the single biggest even that attributed to 3dfx's downfall it was deciding to be the only manufacturer of products with there chips. Buying STB never paid off for them.
Now I don't totally agree with the post you responded too but I look at the situation this way... AMD has definitly built some awsome processors in the last few years, and will continue to do so. But in my mind they have yet to engineer the complete product. The Athlon performance is great, but the packaging, chipsets, ect. never achieved the quality of Intel counterparts.
What we need from AMD is not just a good performing processor, but better packaging (not exposed, easy to crack cores), better heat management, and more reliable chipsets. Having memory that is 33Mhz. faster doesn't mean a damn thing when the chipsets show instabilities...
It really would be nice to be able to watch one thing and record another, or record multiple things.
The problem is tuners. You need one tuner per feed, with no execptions. With the current technology of tuners right now it isn't really resonable to put more then two in a set top box as far as cost, and space go.
What will make DVR technology better in my mind is signal tuners that can tune to multiple (10?, more?) stations at once, and DVRs with enough processing power to actually record that much data.
For now I settle with two tuners, one so I can watch a show and the other so I can record too...
Actually the statistics aren't all that wrong. Yes, there are definitly places where you can't get any kind of reasonable broadband, but if you look at population density charts vs. broadband availibility maps a large percent of the population can get broadband.
You do bring up a valid point though, lots of the people who would and could pay for a service like broadband live outside major metro areas where broadband is harder to find.
This is probably more of a matter of bandwidth usage then anything else. I know at Gatech the uplink was being maxed out constantly in the fall and spring last year causing even ssh to computers on campus from off campus to be slow.
They won't officially tell us what they did to fix the problem but they sure didn't come out and say we couldn't use file trading programs. What it basically looks like is they selectively drop so many packets from the typical file sharing programs to lighten the load so that other types of packets have no trouble getting out. By dropping only the occassional packet they can let the connection stay alive and not interrupt the transfer but effectively slow it down and leave more burst bandwidth for other stuff.
I think they have fixed WarCraft 3 so it requires no modification... Trouble is you really have to subscribe to get the good stuff I think, because I don't think they release the copy protection code on the CVS tree ever.
True, Dependancies can be hell. However, you have a entire level of control over things that you don't have with Windows. I have no idea what of the hundreds of random DLL's are needed by what apps under windows. But when I install something in Linux, I know what it's dependancies are, and I know where all the libraries are kept, and it isn't that hard to go clean things up when I am done with something.
Sure, windows programs have uninstall scripts, but they always leave stuff all over the place, leave litter in the registery, and overall do a half-assed job at uninstallation.
All systems probably have a tendancy to degrade, but Windows is probably the worst because there isn't quite as much you can do about it, except not install anything to being with.
That may be true, but having gotten a nasty letter from the BSA at my company saying they could come in a take over our computers to see if we had pirated software I have to say I agree they support some Draconian measures, though I agree they probably don't support the DMCA.
All I have to say is they better come with federal agents and a search warrent if they hope to get past the front door. Of course, we are ligitimate and pay for all the commercial software we use, but the fact they think they can go around trying to bully people with letters talking about millions of dollars in fines is annoying.
I love linux, I have been running it for a few years now. However, there are some major core problems they need to fix that I think they are overlooking.
One, is the ever popular package management system debate. RPM is flawed, if you don't believe me then tell me why we need a different rpm install for each version of Redhat and Mandrake with a lot of programs.
What we need is a system that checks dependancies, does automatic upgrades, kind of like apt-get (which is arguable the best package format around). It should be robust, it shouldn't matter what you have version wise, it should always be able to upgrade a system from any state.
Another problem is configuration. The easy way to provide good graphical and non-graphical configuration is have everything use a strict mark-up language for for all config files. This way one gui program could configure everything and it is easy to read if you are logged in without graphics. Commericial Unixes like Solaris do this all ready.
Of course there are other problems as well.. but these two are a good example of problems United Linux isn't going to fix.
I think it is reasonable to except a counter offer. The fact that your current company is willing to counter does tell you something about how important they think you are for there business.
Basically, you are in a really good possition now, you can choose any path you wish. So evaluate both companies. Look at the people you will be working with, the stability of the company, all those things I am sure you are considering anyway, and pick which one seams best for you. In fact, you should have a smile on your face, because in an economy where many can't find a job, you have two!
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Are there all that many people that use floppy drives anymore anyway? I remember my freshmen year of college when the start of a CS lab involved everyone pulling out there disk to get there saved code. A few of the super cool people pulled out a CD-R or CD-RW with it. Now days when I walk into one of those lab classes nobody pulls out anything, they all bring up an scp or ftp client or something of that nature. I don't even own a single floppy disk anymore. I don't think floppy drives neccesarily need to be replaced, I think that method of moving data around might just go extinct.
That is totally true. Processor-specific microcode optimizations are definitly the compilers job. But you have to conceed the fact that the compiler can only do so much. If the programmer doesn't choose a good method or solving the problem at hand there isn't much a good compiler can do to optimize the code, especially if the problem being solved is complex.
Compilers simply can't be asked to pick up the slack for programs written with a poor logical flow. They can't be ask to figure out a completely different and improved algorithm for solving a complex problem they don't completely understand the parameters for.
Well when the whole world upgrades to BMW's, Mercedes, and the like where the outside world sound evaporates as soon as you enter the passenger cabin and the high quality stereo systems come in the form of just another $2000 option HD radio will be totally necesary.
Of coures BMW will have to stop piping engine sounds into the cabin on purpose, but they usually regulate that so you can only here it when you push the revs past 4000rpm's anyway (note to you suped up civic drivers... 4000 rpm's is pretty high when your engine actually produces some low end tourque).
You right, very few people can code a program that works well on an SMT processor. It is a lot to keep track of and quite honestly, most of the code I have seen churned out at software companies was done in such a rush because of deadlines the programmers didn't have time to optimize there code.
However, there is no reason why you can take two single threaded processes and use one to fill the holes in the pipeline left by the other so SMT should still have a decent benifit if the kernel scheduler is prepared for this.
Also remember that in the few wars we have been involved in recently MANY less lives have been lost then in the wars of the past.
One of the reasons for this is things like smart bombs and surgical strikes all which require a lot of military technology.
So while I certainly don't endorse war in any current situation I would rather us be able to hit a target with one small strike then 30 large scale strikes like it took back in the WWI and WWII days.
You can't very well replace a Cisco router with one of these. One of the selling points of those routers is there ability to push so much data they can fill all there ports with full bandwidth. Try doing that with PCI...
This might not seam important but when you start having networks with multiple routers and switches with such low total bandwidth limitations on each all of a sudden your network will start to really suck.
If you aren't doing complex things like that then I have to ask why the hell you bought a $2500 cisco instead of a $150 linksys to begin with.
You remember DIVX? (Not the MPEG-4 decoder, the attempt to make limited use DVD's for rental purposes so you don't have to take them back).
Unfortunetly DIVX went out of business. I know alot of people didn't like DIVX, but quite frankly I don't buy most of my DVD's, I rent them from the video store. I also have a terrible time remember to return them and thus have paid a fair amount of late fees in my time. Degrading media would be just fine for rentals as long as a) they don't cost more, and b) they play in all our players, and c) they were actually bio degradable/recyclable so they don't quadruple the land fill size.
Just so you know, if you sign up for the AT&T on-line account stuff (free) you can view your usage in mostly real time. But I agree it is annoying they disabled those features on your phone. My phone, however, still has them all even though it is an AT&T network phone.
You can build your own CPU in and FPGA these days and run linux on it..... Though a big FPGA isn't exactly cheap.
Anyway, most of us that went through college engineering programs did something similar to this at one time. Whether it was building a computer out of parts or designing and architecture in VHDL and throwing it with some assembly code on an FPGA. It is a good way to learn how architectures really work.
Believe me, I am very familure with MP3's. It was just my impression that you couldn't actually burn them to CD's and whatnot. However, having now actually used the service I realized I was wrong and you can use iTunes to burn a CD of the music. Plus I also found that if you buy many full CD's they don't actually charge you 99c a song, they usually charge you around $10.
As much as we all like to harp on Microsoft and how much there software sucks and what not this kind of lawsuit sets a terrible precidence.
Sure, I realize that GPL'd software typically says the software is distributed as is with no warrenty or guarentee... blah blah blah.
However, having written some GPL's software myself I have to ask the question, how am I going to pay to defend myself if I get sued next? The answer is simple, I can't.
We all know that lawsuits, no matter how rediculous can crush the little guys. If Microsoft losses this lawsuit then it just makes it more likely others will be sued for similar types of things.
People have to realize software has bugs. Not just Windows, but all software. I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect a fix for a bug or security hole in a timely manner. I have to say, as far as I know Microsoft acted in a timely manner with regards to this situation.
Of course I agree Microsoft should take security into mind earlier in the design process but I don't think they are sitting there in Redmond making software they know is going to be riddled with security holes and bugs. It really is unfortunet that the average consumer would rather buy an operating system because it has semi-transparent windows and a large collection of avaible 3D games then a solid security record. Which of course means that we whom care about things like that get hung out to dry because we make up the minority of the userbase.
So anyway, for once I hope Microsoft actually wins a lawsuit so that perhaps we don't have to deal with such rediculous lawsuits here in the open source community in the future.
I have discussed this point with many people, in this is how most of us feel about buying MP3's. I would be all for it, but when you think about 99c a song, that is way to much money.
If I want the newest CD from any band I can go to the record store and buy it for $10-20. I averaged out my last 10 CD purchases and on a $/song amount it was very close (but actually slightly lower) then 99c/song. Why should I have to pay the same amount for something I can't take around with me and play anywhere? I would be all for buying MP3's if they were say, $5 for a CD's worth of music, but why pay the same I already do for a product with limitations when I can just buy a CD and rip the MP3's (I didn't say anything about distribution) and have the best of both worlds?
99c a song might not seam like a lot, but it adds up real quick if you like to purchase entire cd's worth of a bands music.
The 745i uses that computer to do absolutely everything. It has a single button that controls a rediculous amount of stuff from the navigation system to the radio controls to the on-board computer stuff. They claim there are over 700 functions on that one button alone. On top of that I believe that the heat/AC, and transmittion, which are basically the only devices with there own sets of buttons are controlled by that same computer. In all, it is doing so much that I can understand them wanting to start with an embedded computer that actually has an OS.
Being an embedded computer person I wouldn't want to have to write all that code from scratch. Of course I proably wouldn't have choosen WindowsCE but that is an entirely different arguement I don't feel like getting into.
Everyone should take back there DVD players and cancel there Satilite TV subscriptions as watching MPEG2 video will distroy your eye site and cause you to see artifacts in normal everyday life....
But on a serious note... we have all been using telephones for years and the sound quality and distortion on that is way worse then any digital music I have... Of course I realize part of the arguement is the fact that it is so close to perfect that makes it so bad but it all seams very speculative.
The track will be elevated, so most of the issues that cause trains to slow or stop on conventional track are gone. Much like a subway track, there will be a third rail or some sort powering this thing, so it is important to keep people/animals away from it. There are other bonus's as well.
For one, the track is a lot lighter. And doesn't require all the ground fortification work that a conventional rail requires. As it turns out, mag-lev tracks are usually cheaper per mile then conventional rail (with the exception of the German design that included magnets on the track itself).
And of course, the speed.... Mag-lev trains have the potential of being VERY fast.
There are negatives as well... Like the fact that they aren't so good for heavy cargo runs. But that is partially because the people developing the current mag-lev technology are pretty much only building it to deal with passenger cars.
3DFX was the pioneer in 3D graphics. But making the statement that Nvidia sucked before they bought 3dfx is rediculous. The Voodoo 2 was the last product 3dfx made that lead the industry. Nvidia released the TNT (decent, but not quite there yet), and then the industry leading TNT2 well before they purchased 3dfx and that was really what started Nvidia's domination.
If you want to look at the single biggest even that attributed to 3dfx's downfall it was deciding to be the only manufacturer of products with there chips. Buying STB never paid off for them.
Now I don't totally agree with the post you responded too but I look at the situation this way... AMD has definitly built some awsome processors in the last few years, and will continue to do so. But in my mind they have yet to engineer the complete product. The Athlon performance is great, but the packaging, chipsets, ect. never achieved the quality of Intel counterparts.
What we need from AMD is not just a good performing processor, but better packaging (not exposed, easy to crack cores), better heat management, and more reliable chipsets. Having memory that is 33Mhz. faster doesn't mean a damn thing when the chipsets show instabilities...
It really would be nice to be able to watch one thing and record another, or record multiple things.
The problem is tuners. You need one tuner per feed, with no execptions. With the current technology of tuners right now it isn't really resonable to put more then two in a set top box as far as cost, and space go.
What will make DVR technology better in my mind is signal tuners that can tune to multiple (10?, more?) stations at once, and DVRs with enough processing power to actually record that much data.
For now I settle with two tuners, one so I can watch a show and the other so I can record too...
Yes.. All the Mac hardware...
So when did Windows XP come out for the PPC?
Actually the statistics aren't all that wrong. Yes, there are definitly places where you can't get any kind of reasonable broadband, but if you look at population density charts vs. broadband availibility maps a large percent of the population can get broadband.
You do bring up a valid point though, lots of the people who would and could pay for a service like broadband live outside major metro areas where broadband is harder to find.
This is probably more of a matter of bandwidth usage then anything else. I know at Gatech the uplink was being maxed out constantly in the fall and spring last year causing even ssh to computers on campus from off campus to be slow.
They won't officially tell us what they did to fix the problem but they sure didn't come out and say we couldn't use file trading programs. What it basically looks like is they selectively drop so many packets from the typical file sharing programs to lighten the load so that other types of packets have no trouble getting out. By dropping only the occassional packet they can let the connection stay alive and not interrupt the transfer but effectively slow it down and leave more burst bandwidth for other stuff.
I think they have fixed WarCraft 3 so it requires no modification... Trouble is you really have to subscribe to get the good stuff I think, because I don't think they release the copy protection code on the CVS tree ever.
True, Dependancies can be hell. However, you have a entire level of control over things that you don't have with Windows. I have no idea what of the hundreds of random DLL's are needed by what apps under windows. But when I install something in Linux, I know what it's dependancies are, and I know where all the libraries are kept, and it isn't that hard to go clean things up when I am done with something.
Sure, windows programs have uninstall scripts, but they always leave stuff all over the place, leave litter in the registery, and overall do a half-assed job at uninstallation.
All systems probably have a tendancy to degrade, but Windows is probably the worst because there isn't quite as much you can do about it, except not install anything to being with.
That may be true, but having gotten a nasty letter from the BSA at my company saying they could come in a take over our computers to see if we had pirated software I have to say I agree they support some Draconian measures, though I agree they probably don't support the DMCA.
All I have to say is they better come with federal agents and a search warrent if they hope to get past the front door. Of course, we are ligitimate and pay for all the commercial software we use, but the fact they think they can go around trying to bully people with letters talking about millions of dollars in fines is annoying.
I love linux, I have been running it for a few years now. However, there are some major core problems they need to fix that I think they are overlooking.
One, is the ever popular package management system debate. RPM is flawed, if you don't believe me then tell me why we need a different rpm install for each version of Redhat and Mandrake with a lot of programs.
What we need is a system that checks dependancies, does automatic upgrades, kind of like apt-get (which is arguable the best package format around). It should be robust, it shouldn't matter what you have version wise, it should always be able to upgrade a system from any state.
Another problem is configuration. The easy way to provide good graphical and non-graphical configuration is have everything use a strict mark-up language for for all config files. This way one gui program could configure everything and it is easy to read if you are logged in without graphics. Commericial Unixes like Solaris do this all ready.
Of course there are other problems as well.. but these two are a good example of problems United Linux isn't going to fix.
I think it is reasonable to except a counter offer. The fact that your current company is willing to counter does tell you something about how important they think you are for there business.
Basically, you are in a really good possition now, you can choose any path you wish. So evaluate both companies. Look at the people you will be working with, the stability of the company, all those things I am sure you are considering anyway, and pick which one seams best for you. In fact, you should have a smile on your face, because in an economy where many can't find a job, you have two!