If you look at applications where performance really matters, i.e. supecomputing clusters, they are running Alphas, Power5s, or Itaniums.
While only one system in the top 10 is x86, if you look at the whole list there are plenty of x86 supercomputers out there. Even Cray is using Opteron in one of its lines.
Perhaps they are doing this for deterrence purposes? ie, to keep Intel from continuing its practices during the trial?
Yes, Intel will have to be much more careful since if they engage in illegal practices and the vendor decides to nail them, it will look very bad in court. "Despite ongoing legal proceedings, Intel has engaged yet again in...".
It'll be interesting to see if there's a perceptible uptick in AMD marketshare after this...
Maybe JIT moved Java from being fully interpreted, but it's still interpreted and "compiled" at runtime making it theoretically (a.k.a Javaly) and realistically on average always slower and more of a memory hog than unnamed alternatives, that's all. But, sometimes that's ok right?
Apparently, in the case of VB, Perl, Python, Ruby etc. etc. etc. Besides, as I pointed out above, there are ahead-of-time Java compilers. (JET is a commercial alternative for Windows.)
Look at how Java has taken over the desktop application market where that least matters. How many Java desktop applications do you run?
Several.
Can you tell it's Java?
No, not in the case of Eclipse, Azureus or RSSOwl. Can you? (BTW Azureus is one of the top applications on Sourceforge.) Others are minimally identifiable, but their interfaces are no stranger than Winamp or many other current applications.
If programming will always be hard, one might wonder what skeletons in the closets Java fanatics have at the price of conformity to an interface. Java version incompatibilities, buggy VMs, oh my.
As opposed to (just to pick my favorite whipping boy) C++ compiler incompatibilities, memory issues, third-party library incompatibilities, and fragility?
Java isn't perfect. I'm personally interested in seeing a truly open language developed which is more suitable for HPC, numerics and realtime, and leverages the best features of Java and C#. Until then, however, I think Java is a very good alternative for many projects, large and small.
There are many many disputes about evolution--wow here's a recognized science which lacks any proof whatsoever, and still you all believe it. Now isn't that amazing.
It is crystal clear from the fossil record, that species have come and gone over time. It is also quite obvious that the most complex organisms are relatively recent. The details of evolution's mechanisms may not be well understood, but anyone who looks at the evidence with an open mind will reach the conclusion that the broad concepts of evolution are correct.
We also see current examples of evolution in action...for instance disease organisms.
Actually, you need to hollow out the walls, and then place an insulated airtight container inside (a thermos) so that the heat stays away from the asteroid.
The shell must be made airtight (not a big problem), but the asteroid is already a thermos, being surrounded by vacuum. The skin should be designed so a) it is largely photoelectric for electricity generation and b) has a mechanism for varying the energy radiated from the shaded side. If the photoelectric coating is high enough efficiency, that will cut the amount of heat that's absorbed by the object. A reflective outer coating may also be used. Also, the orbit can be chosen so that it spends as much time as needed, up to 50%, in the Earth's shadow to ameliorate heating issues (note that in a polar orbit, such habitats could be sunlit 100% of the time). In all, heat control isn't that difficult of an issue.
In fact, thinking a bit more, one could envision the following setup: a panel on the sunward side, which is essentially a large solar collector, coupled mechanically to the habitat by two beams which connect to bearings at the poles of the habitat spin axis. The beams extend back beyond the habitat to where the heat exchanger sits. The power panel would not only provide power for the habitat, but would power gyroscopes to keep things oriented properly. The power panel could be oriented dynamically to allow more insolation of the habitat to occur if needed, keeping the interior temperature at desired levels.
And plenty of reading material and lots of things to do.
World of Warcraft II (and siblings) should take care of that issue...;-)
Because their hardware requires certain operating temp parameters that only an Itel chip can achieve.
On the desktop side of things, AMD CPUs are cooler, faster and more efficient than Intel these days. On the portable side, AMD is playing a bit of catchup, but Turion will at least be competitive if not faster.
Going with Intel had more to do with going with the market leader, being assured of supply down the road, and getting a proven great mobile CPU.
Apple didn't want to announce an architecture shift to the #2 PC CPU supplier - that wouldn't have looked to be a strong move.
Did they confirm that they're going to use x86 with the switch to Intel? I'm a bit behind on the news. They could use another architecture. Again, just guessing here.
The best analysis I've seen is that Apple went with Intel to get good laptop chips, since laptops are the fastest growing PC segment. Apple laptops are one of the flagships of the industry, but they're behind on performance.
I'm 100% sure that the first Apple/Intel laptops will be based on Pentium-M technology, so yes, they'll be x86. Itanic is going nowhere fast.
KDE is slow because GCC 3.X is not an optimized compiler. When the improvement in GCC 4.X are used on KDE you should see a much faster improvement in start up times.
The benchmarks I've seen so far for GCC 4.0 haven't been too stellar. So, I'm guessing KDE won't see much of an improvement. It'd be interesting to benchmark GCC 4.0 against Intel's compilers.
Part of what makes apple successful, is that they limit the hardware that they run on. If and when they start supporting more than just their own hardware (think white box PCs), you can expect the same problems to plague apple.
This is just BS, so I'm in the right thread (heh).
First of all, even in Windows the market-leading hardware is well supported. What percentage of PCs (where the user actually cares about sound) run Creative soundcards do you think? We are down to essentially three video chipset manufacturers also, Intel, NVIDIA and ATI. On AMD systems, there are only two.
If Apple wanted to support whiteboxes (which it evidently doesn't at this point), all it would have to do is specify the Intel chipsets/motherboards it supports, and let NVIDIA, ATI and Creative supply drivers. Scarcely rocket science (it's called a "supported hardware list" just like the one at the Red Hat site). Unlike Linux, which has the goal of supporting legacy hardware, Apple can be much pickier about what hardware OS X might support.
On the AMD side, things could be even simpler if Apple wanted white box support. If I were Apple, I'd make a deal with NVIDIA and Creative, and only support nForce/GeForce/Creative based systems. That is the direct opposite of a "support nightmare". NeXT used to support WAY more hardware with many fewer resources, and do it near perfectly.
Apple may eventually sell a whitebox version of MacOS X (for $500 or more dollars it'd be quite profitable). If it does it'll be fairly painless for Apple and should work very well.
In the meantime, I'm interested to see what Apple does with its hardware line as it transitions to Intel. I think a Pentium-M Powerbook sounds very appealing...and it should triple-boot.
Frozen water takes up more volume than liquid water. Even when the ice caps melt, the levels of the oceans will probally remain unchanged.
The floating ice shelves off Antarctica and the floating Arctic ice shelf melting wouldn't raise sea levels at all. If the ice on the Antarctic land mass and Greenland were to all melt, sea levels would rise 500 feet.
Such drastic melting is a long ways away, and I think the problem will be solved long before things become critical, either by man's ingenuity if civilized progress continues, or by a nuclear winter.
So.. what's the point in underclocking an expensive CPU ? Rather than buying a CPU which is specificly designed for the task ?
Not much, especially when they could have used a $150 Athlon64 3000 for this test. That was the silliest part of the whole thing... Using a high-end power-sucking 3D card (with an active cooler no less) was the second silliest.
Bullshit. It was primarily a Motorola 68k OS that was renamed and ported to architectures including x86 and SPARC. I've got a NeXTstation slab humming away on the desk next to me, and that's a 68040 box.
Sorry, you're right, I misspoke. NeXTStep (to use the right capitalization) was 68xxx. OPENSTEP (the next and final incarnation of the OS, from which MacOS X was derived) was primarily x86. Thanks for the correction.
In addition, CNET's main answer to the insane technical issues that this would involve is, "Steve Jobs said it would work."
Well, you're ignoring several issues. First, the first development kits for MacOS X (Rhapsody) were for x86, since NEXTSTEP was primarily a x86 OS. Second, there is a complete x86 port of the BSD portion of the OS, called Darwin. Third, Macs already use a lot of PC infrstructure like PCI, USB, and AGP video cards, so drivers should port easily. Fourth, there has long been a rumor that Apple internally maintains an x86 port, which I regard as very reliable, since Apple would be insane not to do it.
It would technically be trivial to make MacOS x86 only boot on Apple-branded hardware, so lockin isn't an issue. In fact, one very practical dongle would be to include a G4 chip to run legacy code...
I would HOPE Apple would be smart enough to use AMD chips, since I feel they're technically superior and AMD has a strong roadmap ahead.
I also hope that Apple will go forward with a dual-architecture strategy that will let PowerPC and x86 compete. That would be healthiest for the computer industry, but I doubt it'll happen - it's too much of a mixed message, and higher costs for Apple.
Truthfully, all in all I hope this rumor is BS, since Apple finally seems to be gaining some traction and this kind of maneuver will kill sales until the x86 boxes are released (plus I like the idea of PowerPC Macs really) but I guess we'll see.
But is led by a couple of nutjobs (McNealy and Schwartz)...witness the hell that Carly did to HP, McNealy and Schwartz may not be as bad as Carly, but they certainly aren't doing that great with all the talent and technology assets they have at their disposal.
At least McNealy helped found the company and has been there since the beginning, unlike Carly who came in with basically no clue.
Yes they have smart people doing cool stuff, but their ability to execute sucks ass, the SPARC has been a dog for at least 5 years now and they still don't fully admit it for obvious reasons and their delays at releasing viable product is saddening.
I think it tacitly admits it with it's Opteron strategy. Sun has had the courage to embrace Opteron as a first-class server CPU, unlike any of the other 1st tier manufacturers except HP. On the software side, Solaris and Java are strong offerings (Dtrace is impressive) though it's not clear how much software directly contributes to the bottom line.
Not just a complete CPU scrapped but an entire line of systems designed for it...ouch.
Sometimes that's the smart thing to do...look at Intel struggling along with Itanium. It does show decisive management, which is something.
My point with my original post wasn't that Sun would soon return to being a powerhouse of computing. It might happen, but I wouldn't predict that at this point. However, I also don't think it'll "die", or significantly switch direction away from servers, Unix, and Java.
This strikes me as something close to an exit strategy by way of diversification for Sun.
I don't think so.
Their core server business is seriously erroding and under attack from all sides.
Actually, its server business has grown the last couple of quarters. Plus, its Opteron line coupled with Solaris is a strong offering. Yahoo Finance shows Sun as profitable with a P/E of 19 right now...low for a tech company.
This gives them potentially two things. First, a way to provide integrated product lines. Servers and storage are complementary businesses and I could see Sun offering tightly bundled turnkey installations. Second, this gets Sun a profit center to keep them afloat as they transition their business model.
Transition its business model to what? Sun has always sold (and resold) storage solutions.
Though it might not be advertised as such, this might be akin to a reverse acquisition since StorageTek is profitable and Sun isn't.
Yahoo Finance shows Sun as profitable with a P/E of 19 right now...low for a tech company.
It's interesting, though not surprising, that Sun had to pay cash. Their stock isn't worth much these days and no one is going to lend them money with a BB+ credit rating.
Don't count Sun out yet...it employs many smart people.
Missiles WILL be brought down by high-powered lasers, they haven't really succeeded yet, and not when its cloudy and raining, and other factors.
Actually, the first practical application of this, which is close to its first major trials, is the 747 Airborne Laser. It won't suffer from either of those problems, since it flies above the weather, where the atmosphere is quite clear. Might be nice to have a couple of those orbiting over North Korea, eh?;-)
an ARM running at 400mhz would outdo a pentium M at 1200MHz. Since the Pentium M at 1200MHz is about the speed of a 1.42GHz G4 Mac Mini, then this machine is about the speed of a mac mini.
OK...first of all I challenge your figures, please cite some references for a 400 MHz. ARM (Palm/PocketPC CPU) being as fast as a 1.2 GHz. Pentium M, or a 1.42 GHz. G4. Does this ARM even have hardware floating point? Most don't...
Secondly, the Mac Mini comes with a great software bundle, a ton of available software, a good (if not great) graphics adapter, and for the cost of the ARM box I could get it with 1 GB RAM and the Superdrive.
In a smaller case. That sounds worth it to me.
I doubt you'd even notice the size difference (Mac Mini is 6.5"x6.5"x2"). You and I have very different concepts of "worth it".
Linux on the Desktop is dead. The Linux desktops have had nearly a decade to mature, and they are all still far, far behind the other major commercial offerings.
This simply isn't true...have you ever used the Solaris desktop? You know, the one where a bunch of commercial software is available? However, in general I agree with you that Linux probably shouldn't be the #1 choice. If the apps you need are available there I'd personally recommend Apple systems. They're a nice combination of Unix and usability. Linux is improving at a rapid pace, so it may be a contender soon enough though...IF commercial companies can be persuaded to port desktop apps to it.
I mean, seriously -- I use Fedora for development at work, and it's a joke. The desktop is slow and unresponsive, and installation of new programs is a pain in the ass.
I use Fedora Core 2 on the same hardware as Windows XP, and both are fast and responsive. One trend, though, is Linux seems to get faster and more responsive with new releases, while Windows gets slower and more bloated. Regardless, though, you're either running on anemic hardware or don't know what you're doing.
I've yet to find anything discussing the costs of prevention vs. mitigation of warming. I guess the risk assessment hasnt been carried out yet.
Exactly.
There's also another factor to consider. What if, for instance, in 1960 it had been determined that a gigaflop computing facility was of national importance? Billions of dollars would have been spent, acres of vacuum tube era computers would have been installed and so on... However, by simply waiting 40 years that gigaflop computer fit on one person's desk and cost $3000.
The parallel to global warming is that we could spend untold amounts of money trying to "mitigate" global warming in the short term (which by the way is not expected to have a measurable impact for decades), or we can continue to aggressively study the situation and work on new, advanced technologies that'll allow effective, shorter term, cost effective changes that'll actually fix the problem (if any).
Do you think CPUs account worldwide for 3/4 of US oil consumption?
Probably not, though I didn't go through the exercise of doing my own estimate. According to the linked article at lostcircuits, someone had made a "4 Hoover dam" estimate for 2001, which would still be almost 1/4 of US oil production worth (again according to the GP posters conversion factors which I can't vouch for).
I just realized that the GP article's numbers didn't look right, and did the arithmetic correctly. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out which assumptions he made aren't correct and fix things...;-)
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The actual issue is having other interrupts not delay the RT process by more than a specified amount.
While only one system in the top 10 is x86, if you look at the whole list there are plenty of x86 supercomputers out there. Even Cray is using Opteron in one of its lines.
Yes, Intel will have to be much more careful since if they engage in illegal practices and the vendor decides to nail them, it will look very bad in court. "Despite ongoing legal proceedings, Intel has engaged yet again in...".
It'll be interesting to see if there's a perceptible uptick in AMD marketshare after this...
You missed gcj, which eliminates both the VM and runtime compiliation overhead.
Might as well screw deterministic memory- something more than necessary with realtime embedded systems.
This problem is eliminated with gcj, as long as you know what you're doing regarding GC. There is also a real-time specification for Java, which was apparently used to program a sophisiticated Boeing drone. This was announced at JavaOne earlier this week. Finally, the Javolution library is a useful tool in this area as well.
Maybe JIT moved Java from being fully interpreted, but it's still interpreted and "compiled" at runtime making it theoretically (a.k.a Javaly) and realistically on average always slower and more of a memory hog than unnamed alternatives, that's all. But, sometimes that's ok right?
Apparently, in the case of VB, Perl, Python, Ruby etc. etc. etc. Besides, as I pointed out above, there are ahead-of-time Java compilers. (JET is a commercial alternative for Windows.)
Look at how Java has taken over the desktop application market where that least matters. How many Java desktop applications do you run?
Several.
Can you tell it's Java?
No, not in the case of Eclipse, Azureus or RSSOwl. Can you? (BTW Azureus is one of the top applications on Sourceforge.) Others are minimally identifiable, but their interfaces are no stranger than Winamp or many other current applications.
If programming will always be hard, one might wonder what skeletons in the closets Java fanatics have at the price of conformity to an interface. Java version incompatibilities, buggy VMs, oh my.
As opposed to (just to pick my favorite whipping boy) C++ compiler incompatibilities, memory issues, third-party library incompatibilities, and fragility?
Java isn't perfect. I'm personally interested in seeing a truly open language developed which is more suitable for HPC, numerics and realtime, and leverages the best features of Java and C#. Until then, however, I think Java is a very good alternative for many projects, large and small.
It is crystal clear from the fossil record, that species have come and gone over time. It is also quite obvious that the most complex organisms are relatively recent. The details of evolution's mechanisms may not be well understood, but anyone who looks at the evidence with an open mind will reach the conclusion that the broad concepts of evolution are correct.
We also see current examples of evolution in action...for instance disease organisms.
Yes, I know...thus the heat exchanger radiating heat off fins in the shade behind the habitat. :-)
Nice black body applet though.
Cool case mod: use waste heat for power.
In cold climates, just use it to heat the room. Supercomputers make great space heaters.
The shell must be made airtight (not a big problem), but the asteroid is already a thermos, being surrounded by vacuum. The skin should be designed so a) it is largely photoelectric for electricity generation and b) has a mechanism for varying the energy radiated from the shaded side. If the photoelectric coating is high enough efficiency, that will cut the amount of heat that's absorbed by the object. A reflective outer coating may also be used. Also, the orbit can be chosen so that it spends as much time as needed, up to 50%, in the Earth's shadow to ameliorate heating issues (note that in a polar orbit, such habitats could be sunlit 100% of the time). In all, heat control isn't that difficult of an issue.
In fact, thinking a bit more, one could envision the following setup: a panel on the sunward side, which is essentially a large solar collector, coupled mechanically to the habitat by two beams which connect to bearings at the poles of the habitat spin axis. The beams extend back beyond the habitat to where the heat exchanger sits. The power panel would not only provide power for the habitat, but would power gyroscopes to keep things oriented properly. The power panel could be oriented dynamically to allow more insolation of the habitat to occur if needed, keeping the interior temperature at desired levels.
And plenty of reading material and lots of things to do.
World of Warcraft II (and siblings) should take care of that issue... ;-)
On the desktop side of things, AMD CPUs are cooler, faster and more efficient than Intel these days. On the portable side, AMD is playing a bit of catchup, but Turion will at least be competitive if not faster.
Going with Intel had more to do with going with the market leader, being assured of supply down the road, and getting a proven great mobile CPU.
Apple didn't want to announce an architecture shift to the #2 PC CPU supplier - that wouldn't have looked to be a strong move.
The best analysis I've seen is that Apple went with Intel to get good laptop chips, since laptops are the fastest growing PC segment. Apple laptops are one of the flagships of the industry, but they're behind on performance.
I'm 100% sure that the first Apple/Intel laptops will be based on Pentium-M technology, so yes, they'll be x86. Itanic is going nowhere fast.
The benchmarks I've seen so far for GCC 4.0 haven't been too stellar. So, I'm guessing KDE won't see much of an improvement. It'd be interesting to benchmark GCC 4.0 against Intel's compilers.
This is just BS, so I'm in the right thread (heh).
First of all, even in Windows the market-leading hardware is well supported. What percentage of PCs (where the user actually cares about sound) run Creative soundcards do you think? We are down to essentially three video chipset manufacturers also, Intel, NVIDIA and ATI. On AMD systems, there are only two.
If Apple wanted to support whiteboxes (which it evidently doesn't at this point), all it would have to do is specify the Intel chipsets/motherboards it supports, and let NVIDIA, ATI and Creative supply drivers. Scarcely rocket science (it's called a "supported hardware list" just like the one at the Red Hat site). Unlike Linux, which has the goal of supporting legacy hardware, Apple can be much pickier about what hardware OS X might support.
On the AMD side, things could be even simpler if Apple wanted white box support. If I were Apple, I'd make a deal with NVIDIA and Creative, and only support nForce/GeForce/Creative based systems. That is the direct opposite of a "support nightmare". NeXT used to support WAY more hardware with many fewer resources, and do it near perfectly.
Apple may eventually sell a whitebox version of MacOS X (for $500 or more dollars it'd be quite profitable). If it does it'll be fairly painless for Apple and should work very well.
In the meantime, I'm interested to see what Apple does with its hardware line as it transitions to Intel. I think a Pentium-M Powerbook sounds very appealing...and it should triple-boot.
The floating ice shelves off Antarctica and the floating Arctic ice shelf melting wouldn't raise sea levels at all. If the ice on the Antarctic land mass and Greenland were to all melt, sea levels would rise 500 feet.
Such drastic melting is a long ways away, and I think the problem will be solved long before things become critical, either by man's ingenuity if civilized progress continues, or by a nuclear winter.
Not much, especially when they could have used a $150 Athlon64 3000 for this test. That was the silliest part of the whole thing... Using a high-end power-sucking 3D card (with an active cooler no less) was the second silliest.
Sure:
- AMD64 performs better, in general.
- AMD64 consumes less power.
- AMD64 runs cooler.
- Socket 939 is compatible with dual-core Athlon64 chips.
Hope that was sufficient...Sorry, you're right, I misspoke. NeXTStep (to use the right capitalization) was 68xxx. OPENSTEP (the next and final incarnation of the OS, from which MacOS X was derived) was primarily x86. Thanks for the correction.
Well, you're ignoring several issues. First, the first development kits for MacOS X (Rhapsody) were for x86, since NEXTSTEP was primarily a x86 OS. Second, there is a complete x86 port of the BSD portion of the OS, called Darwin. Third, Macs already use a lot of PC infrstructure like PCI, USB, and AGP video cards, so drivers should port easily. Fourth, there has long been a rumor that Apple internally maintains an x86 port, which I regard as very reliable, since Apple would be insane not to do it.
It would technically be trivial to make MacOS x86 only boot on Apple-branded hardware, so lockin isn't an issue. In fact, one very practical dongle would be to include a G4 chip to run legacy code...
I would HOPE Apple would be smart enough to use AMD chips, since I feel they're technically superior and AMD has a strong roadmap ahead.
I also hope that Apple will go forward with a dual-architecture strategy that will let PowerPC and x86 compete. That would be healthiest for the computer industry, but I doubt it'll happen - it's too much of a mixed message, and higher costs for Apple.
Truthfully, all in all I hope this rumor is BS, since Apple finally seems to be gaining some traction and this kind of maneuver will kill sales until the x86 boxes are released (plus I like the idea of PowerPC Macs really) but I guess we'll see.
At least McNealy helped found the company and has been there since the beginning, unlike Carly who came in with basically no clue.
Yes they have smart people doing cool stuff, but their ability to execute sucks ass, the SPARC has been a dog for at least 5 years now and they still don't fully admit it for obvious reasons and their delays at releasing viable product is saddening.
I think it tacitly admits it with it's Opteron strategy. Sun has had the courage to embrace Opteron as a first-class server CPU, unlike any of the other 1st tier manufacturers except HP. On the software side, Solaris and Java are strong offerings (Dtrace is impressive) though it's not clear how much software directly contributes to the bottom line.
Not just a complete CPU scrapped but an entire line of systems designed for it...ouch.
Sometimes that's the smart thing to do...look at Intel struggling along with Itanium. It does show decisive management, which is something.
My point with my original post wasn't that Sun would soon return to being a powerhouse of computing. It might happen, but I wouldn't predict that at this point. However, I also don't think it'll "die", or significantly switch direction away from servers, Unix, and Java.
I seriously doubt it, I guess the next couple of years will tell the tale...
I don't think so.
Their core server business is seriously erroding and under attack from all sides.
Actually, its server business has grown the last couple of quarters. Plus, its Opteron line coupled with Solaris is a strong offering. Yahoo Finance shows Sun as profitable with a P/E of 19 right now...low for a tech company.
This gives them potentially two things. First, a way to provide integrated product lines. Servers and storage are complementary businesses and I could see Sun offering tightly bundled turnkey installations. Second, this gets Sun a profit center to keep them afloat as they transition their business model.
Transition its business model to what? Sun has always sold (and resold) storage solutions.
Though it might not be advertised as such, this might be akin to a reverse acquisition since StorageTek is profitable and Sun isn't.
Yahoo Finance shows Sun as profitable with a P/E of 19 right now...low for a tech company.
It's interesting, though not surprising, that Sun had to pay cash. Their stock isn't worth much these days and no one is going to lend them money with a BB+ credit rating.
Don't count Sun out yet...it employs many smart people.
Actually, the first practical application of this, which is close to its first major trials, is the 747 Airborne Laser. It won't suffer from either of those problems, since it flies above the weather, where the atmosphere is quite clear. Might be nice to have a couple of those orbiting over North Korea, eh? ;-)
Close enough, though...
OK...first of all I challenge your figures, please cite some references for a 400 MHz. ARM (Palm/PocketPC CPU) being as fast as a 1.2 GHz. Pentium M, or a 1.42 GHz. G4. Does this ARM even have hardware floating point? Most don't...
Secondly, the Mac Mini comes with a great software bundle, a ton of available software, a good (if not great) graphics adapter, and for the cost of the ARM box I could get it with 1 GB RAM and the Superdrive.
In a smaller case. That sounds worth it to me.
I doubt you'd even notice the size difference (Mac Mini is 6.5"x6.5"x2"). You and I have very different concepts of "worth it".
This simply isn't true...have you ever used the Solaris desktop? You know, the one where a bunch of commercial software is available? However, in general I agree with you that Linux probably shouldn't be the #1 choice. If the apps you need are available there I'd personally recommend Apple systems. They're a nice combination of Unix and usability. Linux is improving at a rapid pace, so it may be a contender soon enough though...IF commercial companies can be persuaded to port desktop apps to it.
I mean, seriously -- I use Fedora for development at work, and it's a joke. The desktop is slow and unresponsive, and installation of new programs is a pain in the ass.
I use Fedora Core 2 on the same hardware as Windows XP, and both are fast and responsive. One trend, though, is Linux seems to get faster and more responsive with new releases, while Windows gets slower and more bloated. Regardless, though, you're either running on anemic hardware or don't know what you're doing.
Exactly.
There's also another factor to consider. What if, for instance, in 1960 it had been determined that a gigaflop computing facility was of national importance? Billions of dollars would have been spent, acres of vacuum tube era computers would have been installed and so on... However, by simply waiting 40 years that gigaflop computer fit on one person's desk and cost $3000.
The parallel to global warming is that we could spend untold amounts of money trying to "mitigate" global warming in the short term (which by the way is not expected to have a measurable impact for decades), or we can continue to aggressively study the situation and work on new, advanced technologies that'll allow effective, shorter term, cost effective changes that'll actually fix the problem (if any).
Personally, I vote for plan B.
Probably not, though I didn't go through the exercise of doing my own estimate. According to the linked article at lostcircuits, someone had made a "4 Hoover dam" estimate for 2001, which would still be almost 1/4 of US oil production worth (again according to the GP posters conversion factors which I can't vouch for).
I just realized that the GP article's numbers didn't look right, and did the arithmetic correctly. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out which assumptions he made aren't correct and fix things... ;-)
I'm looking forward to your attempt...