What a lame excuse. If you want a laptop without a Microsoft OS installed, then shop for a laptop without a Microsoft OS installed. Sometimes you have to make sacrafices like not getting the slimmest new Vaio when you are in the freakishly small minority that wants to run Linux on a laptop.
Microsoft should be help accountable for what is in their (possibly) binding EULA.
If you are referring to the "return this product to the manufacturer if you do not accept these terms" clause that started the whole Windows Refund day stink almost 4 years ago, I believe that clause has long since been removed from the EULA.
First generation 1.5 Gbps SATA is over 3 times faster than current 400 Mbps firewire, and 2nd gen 3.0 Gbps SATA will probably be out by the time the 1.6 Gbps firewire becomes a reality
The only reason SATA can be backwards compatible is because the protocol is so dang flexible- it can also do a lot more than just standard PATA features
SATA uses 250 mV signalling which makes it really easy to integrate it into ICs
The 1.5 Gbps for SATA is dedicated to each port, rather than the shared bandwidth of a firewire port (the 63 devices per port or whatever the limit is)
Native firewire storage devices are VERY hard to find, and non-native solutions are at the mercy of the firewire bridge chip on the device. The bandwidth that those chips can crank out is often as low as 12 MB/sec- nowhere near the 50 MB/sec potential of the bus or even an IDE drive.
Don't get me wrong- firewire is pretty cool and there are a lot of good uses for it, but I think that SATA is a much better solution for storage, and I don't think that blanket claims like yours are justified.
You would think that after 130 graphs comparing the controllers he could come up with a stronger conclusion than "I cant really decide which one is the best"
They also said 3.06 GHz in 1H03, but it has been released for a month now, so they are well ahead of their posted schedule.
I say "sell" 'cause even though they "released" it, you can't get one
Not true- a quick look at several stores listed on pricewatch, and they all have the chip in stock. Dell also has been shipping systems with the chip for a few weeks now. Now stand back and compare that with the Athlon 2700 and 2800 (both announced waaaay back in September to great fan-fare on/.). The 2700 is hard to find, and the 2800 isn't even available at all.
Prescott (i.e..9) delayed to "Q4".
While we are talking about delays, look how far back AMD has pushed Hammer over the past year. They first wanted to release it this year, now its mid 2003.
P4 3.06GHz consumes >100W peak
Not true- its peak is just over 81W. And the AMD 2700 at a much lower clock rate consumes around 75W.
How is P4 going to address the 64-bit issue without a major redesign?
What? Intel has said that they don't think there is a "64-bit issue" to address for desktop systems in the near future. I do think that Intel has thought it through, though, and they do have a backup plan in case there actually is a decent market for 64 bit desktop chips. Whether that is a major redesign of the P4 or something completely different is anybodys guess.
Hammer is a much more efficient chip.
Much more efficient with its 100 million transistors (compared to 54 million transistors on the P4)?
Uses onboard memory controller.
Sure you can save a few cycles for memory accesses, but then you have to buy a whole new processor to upgrade to the newest memory technology in 6 months. There are advantages, but there are also disadvantages.
Did I mention glueless multiprocessing?
If you like multiprocessing, take a look at HT.
Hammer is much more than mere "fast x86."
At this point, that is all that it is. There are few desktop applications right now that require the higher memory addressing and other features of Hammer. The AMD model number of the first Hammer will probably be in the mid 3000's, meaning they are targeting the 3.4 or 3.5 GHz P4 as direct competition. If Intel has reached or beat these speeds by the time Hammer is released, then Intel could be equal or better than Hammer in the only benchmark that counts (how fast does it do what I want it to do), and they can do it with 32 bits.
Intel will scramble to introduce a new chip Yamhill(?) designed to provide the backward compatibility that IA64 lacks.
I think you can rest assured that Intel already has a backup plan for a 64 bit desktop chip in case AMD finds a market there - it will not be much of a scramble. For now they are predicting that the P4 clock speeds will have increased enough by the time the first Hammer chips are introduced (still around 5 months) that they will outperform Hammer anyway.
And IA64 does provide backward compatibility with an on-chip emulator. It might not be the fastest right now, but it does have a lot of potential.
Re:Just to remind people why more bits is good..
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
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· Score: 2
2^64 addressing is not the only benefit of the change
I don't know of any of the 64 bit procs that actually use 64 bit addresses yet. AMD's Hammer will only use 40 bit addresses IIRC.
I think you are forgetting that there is somebody named Dmitry involved here- I highly doubt he wants to lose his criminal trial just on the off chance that the law gets repealed afterwards. Its easy for you to say that because you are not the person on trial here. "Come on Dmitry- take one for the team!"
you can install the windows equivalent in 15 minutes
Good for you. I guess you are more 133t than me, because I have never installed Linux or FreeBSD in less than about 45 minutes. But I stand by my statement- Windows installation and maintenance is nowhere near as time consuming as you imply. Linux is fairly easy to install and maintain, but I think Windows is easier.
I didnt say that I never update my system- most weeks I don't have to though. Whenever the critical update notification pops up, or every once in a while when I decide to go to windows update, I install the patches. That is not even close to every week, though.
After running Windows and using Outlook or Outlook express for years now, I have yet to be infected with a worm or virus. I don't even have any anti-virus installed most of the time. An occasional browse through my outgoing traffic on my router, and a virus scan every once in a while is about all I need. In fact, I think the last virus I had was back in 92 or something (the John Lennon virus- on some day in Dec suddenly "Give Peace a chance" appeared all over the screen).
Even to just install Windows requires several hours of rebooting and locating and downloading the latest drivers for all the hardware. Soundcards, video cards, NIC's, scanners, printers.
My install of XP took 30 min, and it was completely automated. It found all of the drivers that I needed and configured them by itself.
That helps to speed it the process the next time you need to start over. Which usually is every 3 months.
Bullcrap. I'm going on a year of heavy use with a lot of software installs/uninstalls with no performance loss or stability issues whatsoever.
To recap, Linux requires about 1/2 installation time with 10 minutes maintainance a week.
If you can install Linux in 15 minutes, then I am impressed. And my normal maintainance time per week is NOTHING. I don't have to do anything to keep it running. If I do install something from WindowsUpdate, and it does require a reboot, it takes less than 90 seconds until everything is up and running again.
What makes you think these people have lost the right to modify their hardware? They can do whatever the hell they want to their hardware- that hasn't changed.
I was talking about kernel panic. Granted this extreme case has only happened to me twice, but it does happen. One time this system hang was even accompanied by a nice high pitched buzzing noise coming from my speakers (when I was trying to configure X for a new vid card).
And many times it is either not possible to connect remotely (like if the computer is not connected to a network at all), or it is just a hell of a lot easier to reboot the thing than go find a computer that you can telnet with...
Ah- another common/. attitude- if you are having problems with Linux it is because you don't know what you are doing. It is that kind of dedication to usability that will help propel Linux to the desktop...
I've seen X bring down a system too many times to just dismiss the parent as somebody who doesnt understand whats is going on.
Q: Is "Palladium" Microsoft's implementation of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) specification?
A: No, "Palladium" is not an implementation of TCPA spec. The two projects do share some features, such as attestation and sealed storage, but they have fundamentally different architectures. (To learn more about the TCPA's approach, you can download a copy of version 1.1 of its spec from its Web site, http://www.trustedcomputing.org/.)
a pleasant side-effect, render the GPL useless
For some good commentary about why this statement borders between misleading and pure crap, see Seth Schoen's thoughts (near the bottom).
Pure bullcrap. Microsoft, like every other business in the world, is trying to maximize profits. A solid majority are willing to pay the current prices for Microsoft software. It would be insanely stupid of them to sell it for less.
I don't think the "socially desirable" thing is for the government to wipe my ass for me so I can get cheaper software. Econ 101 will tell you that unnatural forces, like external price ceilings, are what hurt the economy most. There are lots of important things that a government should do, but dictating the price that an independent software company can sell their product for is definitely not one of them.
The fact is IBM had some quality control problems with the 75 GXPs, but they have been fixed. And it wasn't too many years ago when people were saying the same things about Western Digital drives.
I think you always have to take this anecdotal evidence (i.e. "My friend had this drive and it sucked") with a grain of salt.
Lets see, data security is usually defined according to 4 different goals: confidentiality of data, integrity of data, authenticity of data, and availability of data. Palladium offers a solution to 3 out of 4.
I don't see any FUD coming from Microsoft about this- that FAQ on their website does not make any false claims about the goals of Palladium. They flat out say that Palladium will enable DRM systems to be built. It is not (by any stretch of the imagination) dishonest of them to claim that Palladium will also have useful features to the user.
I see the most Fear, Uncertanty, and Doubt coming from people like you. Examples:
Claim- Palladium will allow for remote deletion of pirated software or even censorship of objectionable material (Fear- and both of these baseless claims are made by Ross Andersen in that FAQ that is floating around)
Claim- Palladium will only run signed code, so you can kiss Linux goodbye (Uncertanty)
Claim- The real goals of Palladium are not security but to give Microsoft more power over you (Doubt)
Palladium is a totally passive entity- it will only do something if a process requests its services (through an API). Therefore, to "turn off" Palladium, you just don't use the API's.
Why is Microsoft doing this? It is simple- there is a huge demand for digital content, and a lack of supply because the media companies don't want to release it. Eventually somebody was going to figure out how to facilitate this, and that person would definately make a lot of money and grab a huge market. Microsoft is making sure they are not left out of this movement. I see this as a defensive move by Microsoft.
Microsoft has said from the beginning that Palladium is designed to protect software from software. The goal is to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of data. Whether you like the terminology or not, that is by definition "security". DRM is a subset of this. It is impossible to distinguish between protecting Company X's super-duper top secret confidential files from protecting the new electronic N'Sync download from copyright infringement - they are both solving the same problem. And this problem is provably impossible to solve without hardware support.
I think that Microsoft has been very straightforward about the goals of Palladium, but the baseless rhetoric from the likes of RMS and that half true Palladium FAQ by Ross Anderson that you see all over the place have whipped/. up into such a frenzy that they can't see straight.
despite the fact that it's utterly impossible for Microsoft to protect against viruses and trojans and still maintain backward compatibility with unsigned software and/or viruses
Q: Will "Palladium" really stop spam/prevent viruses for me?
A: Unfortunately, no. Despite the hype in the media, "Palladium" will not stop spam or prevent viruses all by itself. But by using "Palladium" as a foundation, there are a number of trust and infrastructure models we can build that will help combat spam and viruses in new and effective ways.
Nobody (not even microsoft) is claiming that Palladium will protect against viruses. What Palladium can do is prevent any trojan or virus from seeing/modifying secure data.
Slashdot Mirror
What a lame excuse. If you want a laptop without a Microsoft OS installed, then shop for a laptop without a Microsoft OS installed. Sometimes you have to make sacrafices like not getting the slimmest new Vaio when you are in the freakishly small minority that wants to run Linux on a laptop.
Microsoft should be help accountable for what is in their (possibly) binding EULA.
If you are referring to the "return this product to the manufacturer if you do not accept these terms" clause that started the whole Windows Refund day stink almost 4 years ago, I believe that clause has long since been removed from the EULA.
First generation 1.5 Gbps SATA is over 3 times faster than current 400 Mbps firewire, and 2nd gen 3.0 Gbps SATA will probably be out by the time the 1.6 Gbps firewire becomes a reality
The only reason SATA can be backwards compatible is because the protocol is so dang flexible- it can also do a lot more than just standard PATA features
SATA uses 250 mV signalling which makes it really easy to integrate it into ICs
The 1.5 Gbps for SATA is dedicated to each port, rather than the shared bandwidth of a firewire port (the 63 devices per port or whatever the limit is)
Native firewire storage devices are VERY hard to find, and non-native solutions are at the mercy of the firewire bridge chip on the device. The bandwidth that those chips can crank out is often as low as 12 MB/sec- nowhere near the 50 MB/sec potential of the bus or even an IDE drive.
Don't get me wrong- firewire is pretty cool and there are a lot of good uses for it, but I think that SATA is a much better solution for storage, and I don't think that blanket claims like yours are justified.
You would think that after 130 graphs comparing the controllers he could come up with a stronger conclusion than "I cant really decide which one is the best"
Intel itself says 3.4GHz by the end of 2003
/.). The 2700 is hard to find, and the 2800 isn't even available at all.
.9) delayed to "Q4".
They also said 3.06 GHz in 1H03, but it has been released for a month now, so they are well ahead of their posted schedule.
I say "sell" 'cause even though they "released" it, you can't get one
Not true- a quick look at several stores listed on pricewatch, and they all have the chip in stock. Dell also has been shipping systems with the chip for a few weeks now. Now stand back and compare that with the Athlon 2700 and 2800 (both announced waaaay back in September to great fan-fare on
Prescott (i.e.
While we are talking about delays, look how far back AMD has pushed Hammer over the past year. They first wanted to release it this year, now its mid 2003.
P4 3.06GHz consumes >100W peak
Not true- its peak is just over 81W. And the AMD 2700 at a much lower clock rate consumes around 75W.
How is P4 going to address the 64-bit issue without a major redesign?
What? Intel has said that they don't think there is a "64-bit issue" to address for desktop systems in the near future. I do think that Intel has thought it through, though, and they do have a backup plan in case there actually is a decent market for 64 bit desktop chips. Whether that is a major redesign of the P4 or something completely different is anybodys guess.
Hammer is a much more efficient chip.
Much more efficient with its 100 million transistors (compared to 54 million transistors on the P4)?
Uses onboard memory controller.
Sure you can save a few cycles for memory accesses, but then you have to buy a whole new processor to upgrade to the newest memory technology in 6 months. There are advantages, but there are also disadvantages.
Did I mention glueless multiprocessing?
If you like multiprocessing, take a look at HT.
Hammer is much more than mere "fast x86."
At this point, that is all that it is. There are few desktop applications right now that require the higher memory addressing and other features of Hammer. The AMD model number of the first Hammer will probably be in the mid 3000's, meaning they are targeting the 3.4 or 3.5 GHz P4 as direct competition. If Intel has reached or beat these speeds by the time Hammer is released, then Intel could be equal or better than Hammer in the only benchmark that counts (how fast does it do what I want it to do), and they can do it with 32 bits.
Intel will scramble to introduce a new chip Yamhill(?) designed to provide the backward compatibility that IA64 lacks.
I think you can rest assured that Intel already has a backup plan for a 64 bit desktop chip in case AMD finds a market there - it will not be much of a scramble. For now they are predicting that the P4 clock speeds will have increased enough by the time the first Hammer chips are introduced (still around 5 months) that they will outperform Hammer anyway.
And IA64 does provide backward compatibility with an on-chip emulator. It might not be the fastest right now, but it does have a lot of potential.
2^64 addressing is not the only benefit of the change
I don't know of any of the 64 bit procs that actually use 64 bit addresses yet. AMD's Hammer will only use 40 bit addresses IIRC.
I think you are forgetting that there is somebody named Dmitry involved here- I highly doubt he wants to lose his criminal trial just on the off chance that the law gets repealed afterwards. Its easy for you to say that because you are not the person on trial here. "Come on Dmitry- take one for the team!"
you can install the windows equivalent in 15 minutes
Good for you. I guess you are more 133t than me, because I have never installed Linux or FreeBSD in less than about 45 minutes. But I stand by my statement- Windows installation and maintenance is nowhere near as time consuming as you imply. Linux is fairly easy to install and maintain, but I think Windows is easier.
I didnt say that I never update my system- most weeks I don't have to though. Whenever the critical update notification pops up, or every once in a while when I decide to go to windows update, I install the patches. That is not even close to every week, though.
After running Windows and using Outlook or Outlook express for years now, I have yet to be infected with a worm or virus. I don't even have any anti-virus installed most of the time. An occasional browse through my outgoing traffic on my router, and a virus scan every once in a while is about all I need. In fact, I think the last virus I had was back in 92 or something (the John Lennon virus- on some day in Dec suddenly "Give Peace a chance" appeared all over the screen).
Bullcrap.
Even to just install Windows requires several hours of rebooting and locating and downloading the latest drivers for all the hardware. Soundcards, video cards, NIC's, scanners, printers.
My install of XP took 30 min, and it was completely automated. It found all of the drivers that I needed and configured them by itself.
That helps to speed it the process the next time you need to start over. Which usually is every 3 months.
Bullcrap. I'm going on a year of heavy use with a lot of software installs/uninstalls with no performance loss or stability issues whatsoever.
To recap, Linux requires about 1/2 installation time with 10 minutes maintainance a week.
If you can install Linux in 15 minutes, then I am impressed. And my normal maintainance time per week is NOTHING. I don't have to do anything to keep it running. If I do install something from WindowsUpdate, and it does require a reboot, it takes less than 90 seconds until everything is up and running again.
What makes you think these people have lost the right to modify their hardware? They can do whatever the hell they want to their hardware- that hasn't changed.
I was talking about kernel panic. Granted this extreme case has only happened to me twice, but it does happen. One time this system hang was even accompanied by a nice high pitched buzzing noise coming from my speakers (when I was trying to configure X for a new vid card).
And many times it is either not possible to connect remotely (like if the computer is not connected to a network at all), or it is just a hell of a lot easier to reboot the thing than go find a computer that you can telnet with...
Ah- another common /. attitude- if you are having problems with Linux it is because you don't know what you are doing. It is that kind of dedication to usability that will help propel Linux to the desktop...
I've seen X bring down a system too many times to just dismiss the parent as somebody who doesnt understand whats is going on.
According to the parent post,
I have trouble with Nvidia drivers either crashing XFree or crashing the whole machine.
Funny- people install bad drivers on a Linux machine that crash the computer, and all they say is "Oh well, I hope these drivers improve."
People install bad drivers that crash a computer running Microsoft, and people scream "Look how unstable this Microsoft OS is!!!"
Who do you trust? Linux?
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default
a pleasant side-effect, render the GPL useless
For some good commentary about why this statement borders between misleading and pure crap, see Seth Schoen's thoughts (near the bottom).
Pure bullcrap. Microsoft, like every other business in the world, is trying to maximize profits. A solid majority are willing to pay the current prices for Microsoft software. It would be insanely stupid of them to sell it for less.
I don't think the "socially desirable" thing is for the government to wipe my ass for me so I can get cheaper software. Econ 101 will tell you that unnatural forces, like external price ceilings, are what hurt the economy most. There are lots of important things that a government should do, but dictating the price that an independent software company can sell their product for is definitely not one of them.
No- 89% margin is a very good sign that Microsoft is providing a product that people are willing to pay $300 for. Thats it.
Well, even the Lawyer that is representing the class action lawsuit against IBM (streaming video) is only claiming a 1% failure rate, and the only model in question is the 75 GXP.
The fact is IBM had some quality control problems with the 75 GXPs, but they have been fixed. And it wasn't too many years ago when people were saying the same things about Western Digital drives.
I think you always have to take this anecdotal evidence (i.e. "My friend had this drive and it sucked") with a grain of salt.
Yes- I think this whole story is dumb anyway. What is Microsoft supposed to do- encourage people in India to develop for Linux?
Guess what? Most of the programming shops in the US specialize in Windows too.
I don't see any FUD coming from Microsoft about this- that FAQ on their website does not make any false claims about the goals of Palladium. They flat out say that Palladium will enable DRM systems to be built. It is not (by any stretch of the imagination) dishonest of them to claim that Palladium will also have useful features to the user.
I see the most Fear, Uncertanty, and Doubt coming from people like you. Examples:
Claim- Palladium will allow for remote deletion of pirated software or even censorship of objectionable material (Fear- and both of these baseless claims are made by Ross Andersen in that FAQ that is floating around)
Claim- Palladium will only run signed code, so you can kiss Linux goodbye (Uncertanty)
Claim- The real goals of Palladium are not security but to give Microsoft more power over you (Doubt)
Palladium is a totally passive entity- it will only do something if a process requests its services (through an API). Therefore, to "turn off" Palladium, you just don't use the API's.
Why is Microsoft doing this? It is simple- there is a huge demand for digital content, and a lack of supply because the media companies don't want to release it. Eventually somebody was going to figure out how to facilitate this, and that person would definately make a lot of money and grab a huge market. Microsoft is making sure they are not left out of this movement. I see this as a defensive move by Microsoft.
Microsoft has said from the beginning that Palladium is designed to protect software from software. The goal is to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of data. Whether you like the terminology or not, that is by definition "security". DRM is a subset of this. It is impossible to distinguish between protecting Company X's super-duper top secret confidential files from protecting the new electronic N'Sync download from copyright infringement - they are both solving the same problem. And this problem is provably impossible to solve without hardware support.
/. up into such a frenzy that they can't see straight.
I think that Microsoft has been very straightforward about the goals of Palladium, but the baseless rhetoric from the likes of RMS and that half true Palladium FAQ by Ross Anderson that you see all over the place have whipped
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default
Nobody (not even microsoft) is claiming that Palladium will protect against viruses. What Palladium can do is prevent any trojan or virus from seeing/modifying secure data.