I think that possibly a combination of PyGame (==SDL) and Pyrex is more what he's thinking of. It's true that Python + NumPy can do a lot, but hardly everything needed for a good fast 3-D game.
Well, if it's Turing-complete, all I need is a highly efficient optimizing compiler.;-) In fact, that's all I'm after.
Also, Jython is considerably slower than native Python owing to the overhead of turning Python code into Java forms. The only real advantage of Jython is that it lets you easily call Java routines from an almost Python environment. Sometimes this is enough of an advantage to make it worthwhile, but not if speed is what you are after.
I don't think this is right - the Jython page claims there's a compiler to compile Python to Java bytecode - that should be as fast as native Java, assuming the compiler does a decent job.
You'd better tell someone down at Lawrence Livermore National Labs that they are insane because they show up at every Python conference and by now have spent millions on Python code. I don't see Java or C# mentioned on their list of key languages. Java in particular is a horrible language for that sort of thing. Do a Google for "Java Floating Point".
Er, I'd dispute that Java is a horrible HPC language. The last benchmarks I saw that compared Java to the fastest Python implementation the author could find (though he didn't try Jython which might have been faster;) left Python behind by a factor of 10. I don't have the link handy, sorry.
Python is a nice language, and I'd love to see a very high performance implementation - suitable for 3D game development, for instance. Do you have any pointers?
And, frankly, in today's climate, the same applies to Sun. The computer game is too rough and too fast moving for any second-tier player, like Sun, to have any guarantees of surviving. And people aren't going to bet their businesses on a technology which might disappear from under them just because Bill Gates decided to buy Sun with the spare change for a couple of beers.
Er, are IBM and HP "second-tier" players also? They both have large Java investments. I'm pretty sure IBM ships makes more Java related revenue than anyone else.
There are also free Java implementations (Kaffe, gcj etc.) which are making progress.
In short, I don't see Java going away, regardless of what happens to the various players involved. Mono, on the other hand, is vulnerable to Microsoft legal action.
If Sun GPL Java they still own Java and they can still sue if Microsoft breaks the terms of the GPL. For Sun to adopt the strategy outlined in this article would, in my mind, be a win for all of us - for you and me as software developers, for our customers' security in their business strategies, and for Sun. I really hope (but don't in the least expect) that Sun will follow this advice.
As another poster pointed out (but it's worth repeating) GPLing Java won't prevent Microsoft from "polluting" it. I think Sun has found a middle ground which, like all compromises, isn't perfect...but is workable. Perhaps gcj or Kaffe will eventually become usable "free" Java implementations. Sun has no problem with them.
Blackdown has also done a nice job of doing a third-party port for Linux.
I totally agree with your post, and in addition I'd like to see the native interface be lighter weight than JNI - as "light" as possible, but of course, no lighter.;-)
Calling through to native code efficiently (even for small calls like single-function math routines) should be as fast as possible. Period.
Gcj is a good alternative right now if you can use it.
Java proponents should be asking themselves why Flash has taken over for most web apps and games.
First of all, I'd dispute that Flash has "taken over for most web apps and games". Much is done using Flash, but Flash script is scarcely an industrial strength general-purpose development language. Many of the major web-apps and games are in Java, see "Yahoo Games" and many others. Many "web-apps" are server-side, in which Java thoroughly dominates.
Whatever advantages Flash has are simply largely related to being endorsed by Mr. Monopoly - Microsoft. Web developers, being able to count on Flash being there bundled with IEEEEEEE (pronounced Aieeeeeee!;) simply went with that rather than risk user disgust with a JRE download and slow Java startup times (due to no pre-load with the browser)s.
Sad, but true.
Sun's recent bundling deals with major PC OEMs, as well as more general broadband availability may help, but Java now has an uphill climb as far as applets go. Fortunately, full-blown Java apps (including those using Java Web Start) are more interesting anyhow...:-)
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
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AMD Back in the Black
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· Score: 5, Informative
They don't have a bigger marketshare because even though the chips perform well, their construction hasn't (in the past) been up to that of Intel. Take, for example, the cooling required for AMD chips. Compare it to that of their pentium equivalents. When said cooling falls off (or stops working) - the pentiums don't burst into flames. That's the difference - higher manufacturing quality.
Modded +5 Insightful? Now that shows the weakness of the Slashdot moderation system...
Athlon, Athlon 64 and Opteron all have thermal protection, just like the P4s...and have had it for some time.
Further, current P4s dissipate more power than the AMD solutions, due to high clockspeeds that don't equate to better performance except for a slight edge in multimedia codec performance.
In short, at this point AMD is flat out better - and a much better deal to boot. You can pick up an Athlon 64 3000+ for about $210...that's a steal!
Re:Does AMD have anything to compete with Centrino
on
AMD Back in the Black
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· Score: 1
Anyone ever run Linux on one of those eMachines M6805 or M6807s?
I'm wondering about this too. They use the nice ATI 9600 mobility graphics chipset, so I'm curious how close accelerated XFree86 drivers are (particularly ones supporting pixel shaders). ATI's website specifically states that mobile devices won't get generic drivers, and one doubts that E-machines will release Linux drivers. I hope I'm wrong about that. Is the DRI project still working on ATI drivers?
For everything you get with those laptops, though, I guess I could live with a simple framebuffer when I'm booted to Linux...;-)
It's space, but isn't it still a very hostile place to be, even for a space telescope? You've orbital junk, radiation, etc., so what is the "shelf life" of a space telescope, even in a higher, "safe" orbit?
A "safe" orbit refers to one that's not in imminent danger of reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. The HST was originally in a 600 km orbit, and truthfully I'm not sure that the orbit itself is an issue as much as the probable failure of gyroscopes and other equipment. Replacing equipment, however, is a much more ambitious project whether for robots or humans (different challenges with each).
The HST is quite radiation-hard, on the other hand solid objects could be a big problem. NASA maps "space junk" down to fairly small objects and plans orbits accordingly, but there's always a finite chance that a significant meteor could hit the HST (or anything else in space, such as an EVA astronaut). You pays your money, you takes your chances...;-)
So, how long can you wait to do maintenance, before it's just space junk?
Quite a while, depending on how much maintenance you're willing to do once you do it....always providing a non-trivial meteor doesn't hit.
The other risk factor is NASA de-orbiting it, for whatever reason. I'm not sure why they'd feel the need to, but I believe I read something to the effect that they would at some point.
While far more ambitious than the first X-Prize, a privatized mission to save the Hubble would have vast implications for the advancement of spaceflight without the inertia and inefficiency of government. Perhaps robotic missions to a) boost it into a higher, safe orbit and b) at some later time replace the aging gyroscopes and other components.
Thoughts?
Re:Server-side makes no difference...
on
How C# Was Made
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· Score: 1
Server-side makes no difference for commercial products. The competitor merely buys a copy.
It certainly does if your product is a service delivered from your servers...you know, like E-bay, Amazon, or Yahoo. You've heard of them I hope?;-) (Sorry about the delayed response BTW - I hope you notice the reply.)
Traditional software sales are only one possibility out of many...
The compilers are not true compilers, as far as I know. They compile to byte code.
You don't know far enough. They are true, traditional compilers, compiling to a regular executable file. ELF in the case of Linux, I believe. (To preempt one of your replies, gcj also includes a bytecode interpreter so it can handle truly dynamic code - but high performance code is compiled traditionally.)
I hope that cleared things up a bit.:-)
Re:Why do big companies want pseudo-compiled langs
on
How C# Was Made
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It seems to me that big companies like Sun and Microsoft like pseudo-compiled languages like Java
I guess you've not heard of gcj, TowerJ or the other traditional ahead-of-time compilers for Java, eh?
Java is not necessarily a VM based language - that's not to say that VMs aren't useful in lots of situations. Obfuscators also often work well. Of course, if you're doing server-side code, decompilation isn't an issue at all...
Because Java has freely available, industrial strength implementations on dozens of platforms. If you use it, you aren't locked in to deploying on any particular OS or hardware. (BTW, don't forget gcj in your list of "free" alternatives.)
.Nyet, on the other hand, leaves you with only Windows as a deployment option - it's not at all clear that Mono will be allowed to finish/distribute a complete cross-platform.Net implementation. Many important libraries aren't in the ECMA standards, such as Winforms.
On the Portland Group's website. If you have the money, they're darn good compilers. Microway sells them as their preferred C/C++ suite, which says something... They support AMD64 too!:-)
The only downside, for some, is that they're Linux-only.
Funny, when I go to SCO's site...
on
SCO Offline
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· Score: 4, Funny
all I get is "Document contains no data".
Just like the IBM lawsuit...;-)
I don't advocate virus attacks to further the OSS community's aims...all Linux software authors and organizations ought to be suing SCO instead. That kind of attack will cost them real money and time, and won't generate any sympathy from anyone (who's sane anyhow).
Why are so many GUI systems still closely coupled with specific languages? Why not divorce the GUI engine from languages? I don't know of any library that has successfuly done that. Although Tk comes close, it still requires a specific interpreter be installed.
I can think of some that do pretty well: GTK+ (usable from many different languages) and the Aqua widget set (usable from Objective-C, Java and C++ at least - probably more). For that matter, the Windows GUI is accessible from many languages.
All of them were written in C, which as a simple language, makes interfacing practical/possible. Simplicity has it's virtues.;-)
...in your humble opinion (not shared by many) AND solely if you want to run Windows. Not only do you have to run on a still inferior server OS, you are likely stuck there indefinitely. Nasty, and expensive in more than one way (dollars, lack of scalability, downtime, security issues...).
and is lightyears ahead of java.
An extremely debatable point. It's certainly not "lightyears ahead" in market penetration, or use on large server systems (or cell phones, or in embedded programming or...). As to features, Java is not set in stone, though it does tend to change a bit more slowly since it has an open improvement process. What is C#'s corresponding process for change?
Hopefully it [C#] will catch up soon.
What?!? You just said it was "lightyears ahead"! Make up your mind...;-)
Awww...poor wittle baby doesn't make $150/hour doing "web programming" any more? It's all those dirty foreigners' fault.
I don't recall saying anything about "web programming" or "$150/hour". Please cite.
Web programming is hard!
It certainly can be (at least as far as technology selection, design and the 'full software lifecycle' goes). However, there seems to be quite a surplus of talent in all software development areas, not just "web programming".
Further, if people were being paid $150/hour for the work, it certainly follows that it wasn't that easy...otherwise lower-level talent such as yourself could have done it.;-)
It's amazing that during an election year that I've yet to hear one thing from Dean or Bush about this. Is everyone bought and paid for?
Sadly, this appears to fall into the "globalization" groupthink. It's a "free market economy" therefore it must be good...right?
Since we've lost all kinds of other industries overseas (for instance, steel production) this latest trend is taken as simply the latest incarnation. No one seems to be thinking "gee, we were supposed to lose the manufacturing jobs while the high tech jobs stayed here".
There are many stupid things about outsourcing IT jobs. First of all, 50% of all software projects failed before outsourcing became prevalent. I'm personally sure that percentage will be significantly higher with outsourced work. Second, U.S. companies are paying to train large foreign workforces to compete with them down the road. Third, the lack of high-paying tech jobs here in America will ultimately hurt the economy, as well as causing many skilled tech workers to move to non-tech positions. One wonders if this new "lack of tech workers" will be used to justify new H1-B visa bills as the economy heats up again.
In my opinion, the whole debacle arose from executives being annoyed over the high cost of tech labor - they didn't understand that tech is hard, requires lots of education, and should be compensated accordingly. It's sad that contract software rates have fallen to about 50% of their level of a few years ago. It also looks like permanent position salaries have been impacted.
I'd like to see a few executive teams outsourced to India...then we'd see some real screaming about the practice.
This will right itself eventually.
I'd like to think so, but we'll have to see...
In the meantime, classified government work looks like the best bet as far as job security goes - that will never be outsourced.
Sure you can. It's called Dual Opteron:-) (or 4-way... or 8-way...)
I'd like to do a dual-Opteron machine myself, running Linux. However, if you want a nice, commercially supported OS, MacOS X seems the way to go. Even when Win64 actually ships for AMD64, it'll be distinctly second-rate compared with MacOS.
Performance wise, the G5s at least hold their own with Opteron, and they are able to handle twice as many double-precision FP ops per cycle. Altivec is also strong compared with SSE2.
Leadership is determined by who's got more out there, not by who's following whose standard. By your definition, AMD could never ever achieve leadership position because it's usinng Intel's instructions.
No, leadership is determined by who introduces the technology that everyone will be using in the future.
You're talking about "marketshare" which is a different concept.;-)
The fact that Intel has such a commanding lead in marketshare at the moment is mainly a glowing endorsement of effective marketing practices. The P4 has been a stunning failure as a technology - all it has really achieved is lower performance at 1/3 higher clockspeed (P4 3.2 GHz. vs. Athlon FX 2.2 GHz.). The only place that P4 excels is the SIMD instruction set, where latency doesn't matter - and those instructions don't help much at all with general purpose computing.
x86-64-bit processor will 'soon' arrive from Intel
Do you mean AMD64? Will the Intel chips really be fully compatible with an AMD-designed instruction set?
If this happens, it will only reinforce the fact that Intel has lost it's leadership position in the x86 compatible market. It will also severely impact any eventual large scale adoption of Itanium.
AMD just needs to bite the bullet and actually do some marketing. It has clearly superior products at this point. The Athlon 64 3000+ looks like a great buy, and a nice way to check out 64 bit computing at a low price point. If you have the money laying around, though, you really can't beat the PowerMac G5s.:-)
BTW, it's also too bad that Microsoft has delayed 64-bit Windows. It shows all too clearly that the "Wintel" partnership is alive, well, and smelly. On the other hand, it does provide a nice platform for Linux to tout it's superiority - "What's taking so long Microsoft, we've had an AMD64 version of Linux for months already!". So much for the "advantages" of Microsoft's software development practices...:-P
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if it's Turing-complete, all I need is a highly efficient optimizing compiler. ;-) In fact, that's all I'm after.
But then neither can Java.
Why do you say this? Did you ever hear of or see the Grand Canyon demo? Also check out this setup for realtime Java computing with J2SE. Looks pretty good to me. There are also now official OpenGL bindings for Java.
Also, Jython is considerably slower than native Python owing to the overhead of turning Python code into Java forms. The only real advantage of Jython is that it lets you easily call Java routines from an almost Python environment. Sometimes this is enough of an advantage to make it worthwhile, but not if speed is what you are after.
I don't think this is right - the Jython page claims there's a compiler to compile Python to Java bytecode - that should be as fast as native Java, assuming the compiler does a decent job.
Er, I'd dispute that Java is a horrible HPC language. The last benchmarks I saw that compared Java to the fastest Python implementation the author could find (though he didn't try Jython which might have been faster;) left Python behind by a factor of 10. I don't have the link handy, sorry.
Python is a nice language, and I'd love to see a very high performance implementation - suitable for 3D game development, for instance. Do you have any pointers?
TIA!
Er, are IBM and HP "second-tier" players also? They both have large Java investments. I'm pretty sure IBM ships makes more Java related revenue than anyone else.
There are also free Java implementations (Kaffe, gcj etc.) which are making progress.
In short, I don't see Java going away, regardless of what happens to the various players involved. Mono, on the other hand, is vulnerable to Microsoft legal action.
If Sun GPL Java they still own Java and they can still sue if Microsoft breaks the terms of the GPL. For Sun to adopt the strategy outlined in this article would, in my mind, be a win for all of us - for you and me as software developers, for our customers' security in their business strategies, and for Sun. I really hope (but don't in the least expect) that Sun will follow this advice.
As another poster pointed out (but it's worth repeating) GPLing Java won't prevent Microsoft from "polluting" it. I think Sun has found a middle ground which, like all compromises, isn't perfect...but is workable. Perhaps gcj or Kaffe will eventually become usable "free" Java implementations. Sun has no problem with them.
Blackdown has also done a nice job of doing a third-party port for Linux.
Calling through to native code efficiently (even for small calls like single-function math routines) should be as fast as possible. Period.
Gcj is a good alternative right now if you can use it.
First of all, I'd dispute that Flash has "taken over for most web apps and games". Much is done using Flash, but Flash script is scarcely an industrial strength general-purpose development language. Many of the major web-apps and games are in Java, see "Yahoo Games" and many others. Many "web-apps" are server-side, in which Java thoroughly dominates.
Whatever advantages Flash has are simply largely related to being endorsed by Mr. Monopoly - Microsoft. Web developers, being able to count on Flash being there bundled with IEEEEEEE (pronounced Aieeeeeee!;) simply went with that rather than risk user disgust with a JRE download and slow Java startup times (due to no pre-load with the browser)s.
Sad, but true.
Sun's recent bundling deals with major PC OEMs, as well as more general broadband availability may help, but Java now has an uphill climb as far as applets go. Fortunately, full-blown Java apps (including those using Java Web Start) are more interesting anyhow... :-)
jFlash is interesting as well...
Modded +5 Insightful? Now that shows the weakness of the Slashdot moderation system...
Athlon, Athlon 64 and Opteron all have thermal protection, just like the P4s...and have had it for some time.
Further, current P4s dissipate more power than the AMD solutions, due to high clockspeeds that don't equate to better performance except for a slight edge in multimedia codec performance.
In short, at this point AMD is flat out better - and a much better deal to boot. You can pick up an Athlon 64 3000+ for about $210...that's a steal!
I'm wondering about this too. They use the nice ATI 9600 mobility graphics chipset, so I'm curious how close accelerated XFree86 drivers are (particularly ones supporting pixel shaders). ATI's website specifically states that mobile devices won't get generic drivers, and one doubts that E-machines will release Linux drivers. I hope I'm wrong about that. Is the DRI project still working on ATI drivers?
For everything you get with those laptops, though, I guess I could live with a simple framebuffer when I'm booted to Linux... ;-)
Anyone know about wi-fi support?
A "safe" orbit refers to one that's not in imminent danger of reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. The HST was originally in a 600 km orbit, and truthfully I'm not sure that the orbit itself is an issue as much as the probable failure of gyroscopes and other equipment. Replacing equipment, however, is a much more ambitious project whether for robots or humans (different challenges with each).
The HST is quite radiation-hard, on the other hand solid objects could be a big problem. NASA maps "space junk" down to fairly small objects and plans orbits accordingly, but there's always a finite chance that a significant meteor could hit the HST (or anything else in space, such as an EVA astronaut). You pays your money, you takes your chances... ;-)
So, how long can you wait to do maintenance, before it's just space junk?
Quite a while, depending on how much maintenance you're willing to do once you do it....always providing a non-trivial meteor doesn't hit.
The other risk factor is NASA de-orbiting it, for whatever reason. I'm not sure why they'd feel the need to, but I believe I read something to the effect that they would at some point.
Thoughts?
It certainly does if your product is a service delivered from your servers...you know, like E-bay, Amazon, or Yahoo. You've heard of them I hope? ;-) (Sorry about the delayed response BTW - I hope you notice the reply.)
Traditional software sales are only one possibility out of many...
The compilers are not true compilers, as far as I know. They compile to byte code.
You don't know far enough. They are true, traditional compilers, compiling to a regular executable file. ELF in the case of Linux, I believe. (To preempt one of your replies, gcj also includes a bytecode interpreter so it can handle truly dynamic code - but high performance code is compiled traditionally.)
I hope that cleared things up a bit. :-)
I guess you've not heard of gcj, TowerJ or the other traditional ahead-of-time compilers for Java, eh?
Java is not necessarily a VM based language - that's not to say that VMs aren't useful in lots of situations. Obfuscators also often work well. Of course, if you're doing server-side code, decompilation isn't an issue at all...
Nice straw man though... ;-)
Because Java has freely available, industrial strength implementations on dozens of platforms. If you use it, you aren't locked in to deploying on any particular OS or hardware. (BTW, don't forget gcj in your list of "free" alternatives.)
I hope that helped clear things up...
On the Portland Group's website. If you have the money, they're darn good compilers. Microway sells them as their preferred C/C++ suite, which says something... They support AMD64 too! :-)
The only downside, for some, is that they're Linux-only.
Just like the IBM lawsuit... ;-)
I don't advocate virus attacks to further the OSS community's aims...all Linux software authors and organizations ought to be suing SCO instead. That kind of attack will cost them real money and time, and won't generate any sympathy from anyone (who's sane anyhow).
C'mon all you "alpha geeks" (snort) time to buy the better technology that's available now...AMD!
The Athlon 64s and Opterons are faster at much lower clockspeed, and run Linux really well! :-)
I can think of some that do pretty well: GTK+ (usable from many different languages) and the Aqua widget set (usable from Objective-C, Java and C++ at least - probably more). For that matter, the Windows GUI is accessible from many languages.
All of them were written in C, which as a simple language, makes interfacing practical/possible. Simplicity has it's virtues. ;-)
Who are, as has been said before, "asses".
Thank goodness none of them hang out here at /. ;-)
How 'bout +1 Ironic and +1 Sarcastic? :-)
Sorry!
We'll see...I'll rebut further down.
Its [C#] easy for gui development
So is Java (Netbeans, JBuilder and many more).
and is better for the back-end
and is lightyears ahead of java.
An extremely debatable point. It's certainly not "lightyears ahead" in market penetration, or use on large server systems (or cell phones, or in embedded programming or...). As to features, Java is not set in stone, though it does tend to change a bit more slowly since it has an open improvement process. What is C#'s corresponding process for change?
Hopefully it [C#] will catch up soon.
What?!? You just said it was "lightyears ahead"! Make up your mind... ;-)
I don't recall saying anything about "web programming" or "$150/hour". Please cite.
Web programming is hard!
It certainly can be (at least as far as technology selection, design and the 'full software lifecycle' goes). However, there seems to be quite a surplus of talent in all software development areas, not just "web programming".
Further, if people were being paid $150/hour for the work, it certainly follows that it wasn't that easy...otherwise lower-level talent such as yourself could have done it. ;-)
Sadly, this appears to fall into the "globalization" groupthink. It's a "free market economy" therefore it must be good...right?
Since we've lost all kinds of other industries overseas (for instance, steel production) this latest trend is taken as simply the latest incarnation. No one seems to be thinking "gee, we were supposed to lose the manufacturing jobs while the high tech jobs stayed here".
There are many stupid things about outsourcing IT jobs. First of all, 50% of all software projects failed before outsourcing became prevalent. I'm personally sure that percentage will be significantly higher with outsourced work. Second, U.S. companies are paying to train large foreign workforces to compete with them down the road. Third, the lack of high-paying tech jobs here in America will ultimately hurt the economy, as well as causing many skilled tech workers to move to non-tech positions. One wonders if this new "lack of tech workers" will be used to justify new H1-B visa bills as the economy heats up again.
In my opinion, the whole debacle arose from executives being annoyed over the high cost of tech labor - they didn't understand that tech is hard, requires lots of education, and should be compensated accordingly. It's sad that contract software rates have fallen to about 50% of their level of a few years ago. It also looks like permanent position salaries have been impacted.
I'd like to see a few executive teams outsourced to India...then we'd see some real screaming about the practice.
This will right itself eventually.
I'd like to think so, but we'll have to see...
In the meantime, classified government work looks like the best bet as far as job security goes - that will never be outsourced.
I'd like to do a dual-Opteron machine myself, running Linux. However, if you want a nice, commercially supported OS, MacOS X seems the way to go. Even when Win64 actually ships for AMD64, it'll be distinctly second-rate compared with MacOS.
Performance wise, the G5s at least hold their own with Opteron, and they are able to handle twice as many double-precision FP ops per cycle. Altivec is also strong compared with SSE2.
No, leadership is determined by who introduces the technology that everyone will be using in the future.
You're talking about "marketshare" which is a different concept. ;-)
The fact that Intel has such a commanding lead in marketshare at the moment is mainly a glowing endorsement of effective marketing practices. The P4 has been a stunning failure as a technology - all it has really achieved is lower performance at 1/3 higher clockspeed (P4 3.2 GHz. vs. Athlon FX 2.2 GHz.). The only place that P4 excels is the SIMD instruction set, where latency doesn't matter - and those instructions don't help much at all with general purpose computing.
Intel Inside - Just Say No. :-)
Do you mean AMD64? Will the Intel chips really be fully compatible with an AMD-designed instruction set?
If this happens, it will only reinforce the fact that Intel has lost it's leadership position in the x86 compatible market. It will also severely impact any eventual large scale adoption of Itanium.
AMD just needs to bite the bullet and actually do some marketing. It has clearly superior products at this point. The Athlon 64 3000+ looks like a great buy, and a nice way to check out 64 bit computing at a low price point. If you have the money laying around, though, you really can't beat the PowerMac G5s. :-)
BTW, it's also too bad that Microsoft has delayed 64-bit Windows. It shows all too clearly that the "Wintel" partnership is alive, well, and smelly. On the other hand, it does provide a nice platform for Linux to tout it's superiority - "What's taking so long Microsoft, we've had an AMD64 version of Linux for months already!". So much for the "advantages" of Microsoft's software development practices... :-P