Go on, someone, be a hero and show us the code, we're all meant to be using illegally. There's turnips in it for you!
Some time ago, a few people claimed to have been shown the code without signing the NDA. They said that the only significant part of the kernel that was an issue was the scheduler, which looked like it had been copied "line by line" from Unix sources (one presumes the copying wasn't in the other direction).
I'd guess the scheduler will undergo a significant rewrite before kernel 2.6 goes gold...;-)
The other claimed "infringing" areas are things like JFS and NUMA support that IBM initially developed for AIX and then ported to Linux.
I think it very unlikely that these various subsystems will be found to infringe on SCO's IP.
He goes through all of that to simply tell us that a left-handed matter clock is equivalent in every way to a right-handed antimatter clock. Unfortunately for sci-fi novelists, changing matter to antimatter merely alters the handedness of the particles, rather than actually violating symmetry or having any other noticeable effect. Of course, his lectures are no longer cutting-edge and the book only gives a laymans description of the underlying physics, but it doesn't look too good.
Hmmm. I was going to say that perhaps left-over antimatter from the Big Bang was the source of "dark energy" that is inferred from recent Hubble observations. That struck me as a very bizarre result.
If antimatter repelled everything, including itself, then there couldn't be astronomical objects made of antimatter. I suppose another possibility might be that antimatter attracts itself (normal G law) but repels normal matter, and vice versa. This would tend to segregate the universe into distinct matter/antimatter regions.
Interesting stuff. Never forget that we live in an object more exotic than a black hole (the universe).
Here I am typing this on my shiny new 17" Powerbook (which is great so far BTW)...thinking that this is something that Apple really needs to fix.
According to the terms of this license, I shouldn't be able to listen to the songs if I take a trip outside the U.S. That's not "Insanely Great" just "Insane". It has "Record Company" written all over it.
Heaven forfend that GPS be integrated with Powerbook or iPod...
The good news is that music ripped from CD is immune from this nonsense...so go get those good-condition, used CDs. That is a market force the recording industry seems to ignore quite a bit. I've been ripping my CD collection, the iPod is also very cool.
What the music industry really needs is some good new music.;-)
First of all I don't know why people are so hung up on the idea of "humanoid" robots. That shouldn't be a requirement, and may not be close to the most efficient design. None of the many currently successful robots is humanoid (including Aibo).
Otherwise, I generally agree with the premise of the article. It could happen either faster or slower, since it requires "breakthroughs" like human-type AI.
We already live in a highly artificial economy, with some of the most highly compensated individuals producing no tangible product (actors, athletes). In principle, there should be no problem with having machines produce abundance with no human intervention (see Philip Jose Farmers "The Riders of the Purple Wage"). It will, however, require serious restructuring of the economy.
I've been told Python does everything Java does and better.
Whats to believe?
What's the fastest runtime for Python? Can it translate to C code?
The fastest Java runtimes are approaching C++/Fortran speeds.
My personal quest has been for a productive, portable language that's efficient enough for high-end gaming applications. C++ isn't too productive, but GC pauses and portability (consoles) are still issues for Java games. Gcj looks interesting - with it you can disable bounds checking and GC (not a problem if you use mostly static objects).
One point of synergy between Python and Java is Jython - Python that compiles to Java byte code. Perhaps the JVM is the fastest Python runtime...;-)
For every Falcon 4 there are 20 titles that we never hear about becasue they miss their market window, and are cancelled even before initial release. Anyone who has worked in a development house knows that overengineering (feature creep) is almost more of a danger than underengineering. A good orginization will know when to say 'enough' and freeze the design so the darn thing can get done!
You (and possibly the original poster) are confusing design and implementation. When you talk about "overengineering" I interpret it to mean obsessive attention to FPS, engine performance, bugfixing and so on.
The engineers aren't necessarily that involved in the game design end of things - and you have a point that plenty of problems can originate there.;-)
Is it just me or does this ideology seem to lead to titles dying from over engineering. I don't think it'll come as a shock to anyone that when you let the engineers decide when a product is ready to ship, that it will never ship. On the other side of the rope are the marketers who want to realease it now, now, now.
Wow are you dead wrong.
When the "marketeers" (also known as management) decide to ship a title before the techies think it's ready, debacles like Falcon 4 happen.
It's a great game now...after many patches. The initial reviews sucked, and sales never recovered.
So the answer is "use another languague". ROTFL. How do you do generics in Java?
You complained (essentially) about the lack of a "peek" and "poke" primitive - not exactly rocket science, or a "power" programming language feature. Java was always advertised as a "C" family language, and learning C is not that difficult. Learning C++ (especially well) is quite difficult.
How do you do generics in Java?
Given that generics aren't necessary in Java, I don't. There have been preprocessors (Pizza etc.) for quite a while.
Generics will be part of 'standard' Java in JDK 1.5, IIRC.
How do you do your own memory management in Java.
I use the realtime extensions, gcj, or some other Java environment that gives me the control I want or desire.
Believe it or not, C++ is better for some things.
True C or C++ are better for some things, though there is generally something better than C++ in the same space. Java is really a better choice for 90%+ of software today...and the marketplace is slowly catching on to this fact.
How do you manipulate hardware devices (ie. pointers) in Java? Ain't got the "power", eh?
In the case where you need to do this, you need to use JNI, CNI or some other native binding. C (not C++) is a nice, small language to learn for such things.
In the other 99.99999% of cases, JNI & C (or ASM, FORTRAN etc.) aren't needed.
I'm pretty sure the realtime (embedded) Java extensions have some direct way to poke/peek memory.
See, you linux junkies don't really know crap about MS, do you?
Far too much, in most cases.
In most cases, the CLR out-performs native Win32 because of better heap management, caching, and other little things here and there.
Said heap management, caching, etc. couldn't have been implemented in a pre-compiled language?!? Sure.
And there will be cross-platform compatibility once linux developers finish Mono.
So long as Microsoft sees fit not to exercise it's massive patent portfolio. I'd sure bet my business on Microsoft playing nice...not.
If anything that runs on a VM is slow - it's Java. It has to JIT everything before running it while the CLR JITs on demand and it even does that faster!
That would depend on which Java implementation you're talking about. There are fully pre-compiled Java systems available, however the VM based versions are very competitive. They are certainly neck and neck with the CLR...and are available on many platforms, now. Even enterprise class platforms.:-)
Java has tremendous momentum - which.Not has largely failed to affect.
You are stuck with NVIDIA. Things could be much worse! NVIDIA's drivers, at least, are solid and fast. The differences between the two card families are not that big.
If you want good ATI support in a Unixlike environment, you might want to check out a Mac. The G5s are primarily available with ATI cards. And hey, you can even run a big selection of proprietary apps and games!:-)
Perhaps ATI decided that the energy going into supporting Linux should be going into better MacOS X support instead...?
It seems like that sort of situation is what the FCC is for. If someone is illegally saturating public airwaves, they are supposed to put a stop to it.
Exactly. Plus, if you can't find a signal source that strong, you're simply clueless. If the original poster is really interested in solving the problem, he should be all over the FCC.
If you spin it as a form of terrorism, you might get a quicker response.;)
Absolutely. Tell 'em it's possibly (this is 100% true) Al Quaeda doing the jamming...that should get some results.;-)
The 17" has a ridiculous keyboard placement. Take it for a test drive at an Apple store to see what I mean. It's too high up, ie too close to the screen.
I'll have to check it out before buying. It'd be a shame if so, it looks like great system!
The TiBook is great! We do both Java development(via eclipse) and DV on it and it works flawlessly. If you can swing it, I highly recomend getting the Superdrive. Also, these dudes will double the RAM for a $40 "installation fee". I bought mine through them and they shipped it immediately.
Great, macmall looks like a good choice. Thanks for the link! BTW, I will definitely be getting a Superdrive, and a Firewire digital camcorder shortly thereafter.:-)
Even my 15" Tibook 550 is faster than most unplugged intel based laptops. These machines are top of the line in nearly every respect, but two great things (besides OS X) which seperate this from other laptops are size and weight (mine goes wherever I go), and that they are not intentionally crippled! They include a full G4 (not some scaled down mobile version), L3 cache (not mine, but the new ones do), damn nice video chips, and FW/GigE. A new version is expected very soon (next Tuesday?), which will likely be in an Al case w/ options for g and FW800... maybe even USB 2.0.
You're talking about a refresh of the 15" PowerBook only, correct? As I posted in an earlier response, I'm also considering the 17" this morning...in fact, unless I find out some dirt (or a refresh changes my mind, see below) I'm 90% sure I'll go with the 17" version for the better graphics and memory subsystems.
They include a full G4 (not some scaled down mobile version), L3 cache (not mine, but the new ones do), damn nice video chips, and FW/GigE. A new version is expected very soon (next Tuesday?), which will likely be in an Al case w/ options for g and FW800... maybe even USB 2.0. It would be worth your while to wait a week or two for these.
If there is to be a refresh soon, I'll wait and see what happens. Is there any hard information on when this might occur? I'd given up on it, since the WWDC keynote was mute on the subject of portables.
At any rate, I'm getting pretty excited...I've never bought a notebook with my own money! (I've had several x86 laptops through work.)
G5's wont be in Powerbooks until the process goes to.09 microns, as the current 2G G5 consumes some 96 W!
Well, I have some interesting information for you on this topic.:-) I have IBM's PPC970 PDF (sorry, don't have a link handy, you should be able to search ibm.com for it). It lists the 1.3V 1.8 GHz. model at 42W power dissipation, and the 1.1V 1.2 GHz.(!) version at 19W(!). Both of these are to be fabricated at 130 nm./SOI. So 1) it seems highly likely that a G5 will appear in a notebook sooner rather than later and 2) 96W sounds a little high for the 2 GHz. version of the G5.
One thing I will say - if I buy a 17" PowerBook and a week later the G5 version comes out at the same (or possibly lower) price point...well who knows what I might do.;-) So, I'll try to read the tea leaves (or at least wait a couple of weeks as you suggest) to see if new models are coming shortly. Sheesh, computer buying decisions are never easy....
In short, my Tibook feels faster than many G4's of the same speed, and the 166Mhz bus and DDR Ram offerings that will likely come soon will sweaten the deal. How this compares to PC desktops, I don't really care. How does a simple BMW 3 series compare to some ghetto-ass mid-90's Honda Civic with flashing ground effects and tinted windows? I wouldn't even want to know. Powerbooks are speedy, powerfull, and elegant, and they come stock with a lot of cool options. One thing I'm certain of -- I've never met a person whom regrets buying their powerbook.
Apt comparison.
From an engineering standpoint, Windows has evolved into a mess. MacOS seems much cleaner these days, in so many ways.;-)
I'm extremely excited! The timing is good, since there's a confluence of cash and desire.;-) I'll just have to hang on for a bit and try and predict the product refresh cycle...
Thanks a lot, to you and the others that responded!
I take it your TiBook is the 15" model? This morning I was pondering perhaps doing the 17", to get the highest-end graphics processor and the DDR333 memory. I will check the forums and newsgroups to see how people have liked those. I'll also do the Select ADC membership, and then in one year when I renew I'll get a dual-proc G5 and display using my single system hardware discount. Life is good.:-)
I think Apple is due for a resurgence in marketshare.
In fact, the collections part of.NET illustrates this -- you learn how to use the collections classes in.NET and you've pretty much learned how to use the collections across those 4 languages -- the same library is callable from all of.net's languages. This is the power of CLR.
I guess you haven't seen the plethora of languages available for the JVM. You can start with Jython, and go from there. BTW, Jython has access to the full set of Java libraries...;-)
(Also, Java can call just about any natively compiled code through JNI/CNI/etc.).
Also, for anyone wondering I'm using the developer preview now and if the release of Panther is anything like the preview, holy crap. It is nice. There are a ton of tiny improvements here and there that really make it nice, even nicer than Jaguar. These are little things that weren't mentioned in the keynote.
Yeehah! I must say that I'm very close to getting new Mac (which one is controversial...I'm tempted to go for a dual 2 GHz. G5, but really the 15" Powerbook makes the most sense for me right now). Is the 1 GHz. G4 a decent performer? For most development work, will the 15" Powerbook be an adequate system?
Having thrashed with x86 hardware in general, and Windows and Linux ad nauseum (different issues with each, obviously) the Mac and OS X are looking real good to me right now...
Slashdot Mirror
First off, Athlons and Athlon MPs have garnered a lot of respect around the industry.
Secondly, I'd say Intel's efforts have gained a reputation - however in many cases it's a bad one.
There is no question that Opteron pretty well smokes all current Intel offerings, especially in 2P and above configurations. :-)
Yeah, like FDR. Look what a screwup he turned out to be... ;-)
Geez, Anonymous, I've seen you make some damn silly posts but this one tops 'em all.
The stock market is always right?!? Sure, like when it sent Enron stock over $80/share? What's it worth now?
Right. Now crawl back under your rock.
Some time ago, a few people claimed to have been shown the code without signing the NDA. They said that the only significant part of the kernel that was an issue was the scheduler, which looked like it had been copied "line by line" from Unix sources (one presumes the copying wasn't in the other direction).
I'd guess the scheduler will undergo a significant rewrite before kernel 2.6 goes gold... ;-)
The other claimed "infringing" areas are things like JFS and NUMA support that IBM initially developed for AIX and then ported to Linux.
I think it very unlikely that these various subsystems will be found to infringe on SCO's IP.
Hmmm. I was going to say that perhaps left-over antimatter from the Big Bang was the source of "dark energy" that is inferred from recent Hubble observations. That struck me as a very bizarre result.
If antimatter repelled everything, including itself, then there couldn't be astronomical objects made of antimatter. I suppose another possibility might be that antimatter attracts itself (normal G law) but repels normal matter, and vice versa. This would tend to segregate the universe into distinct matter/antimatter regions.
Interesting stuff. Never forget that we live in an object more exotic than a black hole (the universe).
Here I am typing this on my shiny new 17" Powerbook (which is great so far BTW)...thinking that this is something that Apple really needs to fix.
According to the terms of this license, I shouldn't be able to listen to the songs if I take a trip outside the U.S. That's not "Insanely Great" just "Insane". It has "Record Company" written all over it.
Heaven forfend that GPS be integrated with Powerbook or iPod...
The good news is that music ripped from CD is immune from this nonsense...so go get those good-condition, used CDs. That is a market force the recording industry seems to ignore quite a bit. I've been ripping my CD collection, the iPod is also very cool.
What the music industry really needs is some good new music. ;-)
Otherwise, I generally agree with the premise of the article. It could happen either faster or slower, since it requires "breakthroughs" like human-type AI.
We already live in a highly artificial economy, with some of the most highly compensated individuals producing no tangible product (actors, athletes). In principle, there should be no problem with having machines produce abundance with no human intervention (see Philip Jose Farmers "The Riders of the Purple Wage"). It will, however, require serious restructuring of the economy.
Whats to believe?
What's the fastest runtime for Python? Can it translate to C code?
The fastest Java runtimes are approaching C++/Fortran speeds.
My personal quest has been for a productive, portable language that's efficient enough for high-end gaming applications. C++ isn't too productive, but GC pauses and portability (consoles) are still issues for Java games. Gcj looks interesting - with it you can disable bounds checking and GC (not a problem if you use mostly static objects).
One point of synergy between Python and Java is Jython - Python that compiles to Java byte code. Perhaps the JVM is the fastest Python runtime... ;-)
You (and possibly the original poster) are confusing design and implementation. When you talk about "overengineering" I interpret it to mean obsessive attention to FPS, engine performance, bugfixing and so on.
The engineers aren't necessarily that involved in the game design end of things - and you have a point that plenty of problems can originate there. ;-)
Wow are you dead wrong.
When the "marketeers" (also known as management) decide to ship a title before the techies think it's ready, debacles like Falcon 4 happen.
It's a great game now...after many patches. The initial reviews sucked, and sales never recovered.
Ah, for a total of 3.40e38 total? That would be a 128-bit address.
More than enough for everyone to have an internet controlled Etch-A-Sketch
It's enough for each grain of sand in the Etch-A-Sketch to have a unique address.
One hopes we'll have some form of planet-wide NAT for IPv7 (GalaxyNet).
You complained (essentially) about the lack of a "peek" and "poke" primitive - not exactly rocket science, or a "power" programming language feature. Java was always advertised as a "C" family language, and learning C is not that difficult. Learning C++ (especially well) is quite difficult.
How do you do generics in Java?
Given that generics aren't necessary in Java, I don't. There have been preprocessors (Pizza etc.) for quite a while.
Generics will be part of 'standard' Java in JDK 1.5, IIRC.
How do you do your own memory management in Java.
I use the realtime extensions, gcj, or some other Java environment that gives me the control I want or desire.
Believe it or not, C++ is better for some things.
True C or C++ are better for some things, though there is generally something better than C++ in the same space. Java is really a better choice for 90%+ of software today...and the marketplace is slowly catching on to this fact.
In the case where you need to do this, you need to use JNI, CNI or some other native binding. C (not C++) is a nice, small language to learn for such things.
In the other 99.99999% of cases, JNI & C (or ASM, FORTRAN etc.) aren't needed.
I'm pretty sure the realtime (embedded) Java extensions have some direct way to poke/peek memory.
Far too much, in most cases.
In most cases, the CLR out-performs native Win32 because of better heap management, caching, and other little things here and there.
Said heap management, caching, etc. couldn't have been implemented in a pre-compiled language?!? Sure.
And there will be cross-platform compatibility once linux developers finish Mono.
So long as Microsoft sees fit not to exercise it's massive patent portfolio. I'd sure bet my business on Microsoft playing nice...not.
If anything that runs on a VM is slow - it's Java. It has to JIT everything before running it while the CLR JITs on demand and it even does that faster!
That would depend on which Java implementation you're talking about. There are fully pre-compiled Java systems available, however the VM based versions are very competitive. They are certainly neck and neck with the CLR...and are available on many platforms, now. Even enterprise class platforms. :-)
Java has tremendous momentum - which .Not has largely failed to affect.
Plugged into the wall it might manage two times faster on some tasks (less on others).
Unplugged, it would be much more even...and the PowerBook runs a better OS and has much longer battery life.
Did you measure the weight of the powerbook without the battery?
Nope, that's including battery, Superdrive, and up to 1 GB RAM. :-)
If you want good ATI support in a Unixlike environment, you might want to check out a Mac. The G5s are primarily available with ATI cards. And hey, you can even run a big selection of proprietary apps and games! :-)
Perhaps ATI decided that the energy going into supporting Linux should be going into better MacOS X support instead...?
Exactly. Plus, if you can't find a signal source that strong, you're simply clueless. If the original poster is really interested in solving the problem, he should be all over the FCC.
If you spin it as a form of terrorism, you might get a quicker response. ;)
Absolutely. Tell 'em it's possibly (this is 100% true) Al Quaeda doing the jamming...that should get some results. ;-)
No doubt it's some form of economic terrorism.
Not for very bloody long...trust me. ;-)
I'll have to check it out before buying. It'd be a shame if so, it looks like great system!
The TiBook is great! We do both Java development(via eclipse) and DV on it and it works flawlessly. If you can swing it, I highly recomend getting the Superdrive. Also, these dudes will double the RAM for a $40 "installation fee". I bought mine through them and they shipped it immediately.
Great, macmall looks like a good choice. Thanks for the link! BTW, I will definitely be getting a Superdrive, and a Firewire digital camcorder shortly thereafter. :-)
You're talking about a refresh of the 15" PowerBook only, correct? As I posted in an earlier response, I'm also considering the 17" this morning...in fact, unless I find out some dirt (or a refresh changes my mind, see below) I'm 90% sure I'll go with the 17" version for the better graphics and memory subsystems.
They include a full G4 (not some scaled down mobile version), L3 cache (not mine, but the new ones do), damn nice video chips, and FW/GigE. A new version is expected very soon (next Tuesday?), which will likely be in an Al case w/ options for g and FW800... maybe even USB 2.0. It would be worth your while to wait a week or two for these.
If there is to be a refresh soon, I'll wait and see what happens. Is there any hard information on when this might occur? I'd given up on it, since the WWDC keynote was mute on the subject of portables.
At any rate, I'm getting pretty excited...I've never bought a notebook with my own money! (I've had several x86 laptops through work.)
G5's wont be in Powerbooks until the process goes to .09 microns, as the current 2G G5 consumes some 96 W!
Well, I have some interesting information for you on this topic. :-) I have IBM's PPC970 PDF (sorry, don't have a link handy, you should be able to search ibm.com for it). It lists the 1.3V 1.8 GHz. model at 42W power dissipation, and the 1.1V 1.2 GHz.(!) version at 19W(!). Both of these are to be fabricated at 130 nm./SOI. So 1) it seems highly likely that a G5 will appear in a notebook sooner rather than later and 2) 96W sounds a little high for the 2 GHz. version of the G5.
One thing I will say - if I buy a 17" PowerBook and a week later the G5 version comes out at the same (or possibly lower) price point...well who knows what I might do. ;-) So, I'll try to read the tea leaves (or at least wait a couple of weeks as you suggest) to see if new models are coming shortly. Sheesh, computer buying decisions are never easy....
In short, my Tibook feels faster than many G4's of the same speed, and the 166Mhz bus and DDR Ram offerings that will likely come soon will sweaten the deal. How this compares to PC desktops, I don't really care. How does a simple BMW 3 series compare to some ghetto-ass mid-90's Honda Civic with flashing ground effects and tinted windows? I wouldn't even want to know. Powerbooks are speedy, powerfull, and elegant, and they come stock with a lot of cool options. One thing I'm certain of -- I've never met a person whom regrets buying their powerbook.
Apt comparison.
From an engineering standpoint, Windows has evolved into a mess. MacOS seems much cleaner these days, in so many ways. ;-)
I'm extremely excited! The timing is good, since there's a confluence of cash and desire. ;-) I'll just have to hang on for a bit and try and predict the product refresh cycle...
I take it your TiBook is the 15" model? This morning I was pondering perhaps doing the 17", to get the highest-end graphics processor and the DDR333 memory. I will check the forums and newsgroups to see how people have liked those. I'll also do the Select ADC membership, and then in one year when I renew I'll get a dual-proc G5 and display using my single system hardware discount. Life is good. :-)
I think Apple is due for a resurgence in marketshare.
I guess you haven't seen the plethora of languages available for the JVM. You can start with Jython, and go from there. BTW, Jython has access to the full set of Java libraries... ;-)
(Also, Java can call just about any natively compiled code through JNI/CNI/etc.).
Yeehah! I must say that I'm very close to getting new Mac (which one is controversial...I'm tempted to go for a dual 2 GHz. G5, but really the 15" Powerbook makes the most sense for me right now). Is the 1 GHz. G4 a decent performer? For most development work, will the 15" Powerbook be an adequate system?
Having thrashed with x86 hardware in general, and Windows and Linux ad nauseum (different issues with each, obviously) the Mac and OS X are looking real good to me right now...
Nope. Sun and IBM's are both faster, and very competitive with C# and the CLR on Windows.
Er, you mean "couldn't get their hands on Microsoft's broken VM".
Sun and IBM's vastly superior VMs were available throughout...
Your post should be modded "Flamebait" rather than "Interesting". ;-/