The study projects that Windows CE-based devices may outsell Windows-based PCs within 5 years.
So? Does this mean the CE based devices will be performing the same tasks the PCs were?
Almost certainly not.
Further, in five years Linux based PCs "may outsell" Windows based PCs. For that matter Macs "may outsell" Windows based PCs in five years. The point being, most pundits crystal balls have been pretty cloudy over the years.
For myself, I'm pretty sure I'll be buying new PCs at about the same rate I buy new PDAs - every two years or so as the new technology becomes too compelling to pass up.;-)
The one trend I think will continue is the intrusion of "desknotes" onto the scene. These will be notebook machines that are powerful enough to completely replace desktops for 99% of computer users. I hope they'll plug into a (Hypertransport?) connection that'll allow external AGP and PCI devices in the docking station, providing upgradeable graphics at least when used in the desktop role. One hopes the processors won't run hot enough to really endanger the users though...;-)
The attitude you've adopted tends to suggest that any questioning along those lines from you would strongly seek one particular answer.
It's called "having an opinion". However, I have a very open mind. If I see evidence of other motives from our administration than those stated, or evidence that Saddam is really a great guy that should stay in power, or atrocities by Coalition troops (as opposed to the numerous, well documented atrocities by Saddam's troops)...THEN I'll reconsider my position.
Further, I'm of the view that this war will help American interests and prestige worldwide, especially once a free Iraq is a reality. Most Iraqis that aren't under the gun (literally) seem to be very happy to see Saddam go.
Our leadership should be commended for doing a great job, not denigrated by those without a clear understanding of the situation, or simply with an axe to grind.
Honestly, what percentage of the remaining antiwar folk do you think are simply "Bush haters"?
Personally I'd like to take these purple-faced ignorant fuckwits and drop them right into the front line to see how fond of war they really are.
"Fond" isn't the right term. However, I'm sure the Coalition forces are much more positive about how things are going than are the Iraqis.:-)
That apparent 20% swing isn't made up people who changed their mind and thought war was a good idea after all. It's made up of people who have been intimidated by hawks into adopting a "patriotic" attitude.
Au contraire. (Ack that was French.:-P)
No, many of the folk that made the switch (finally) realized we are DOING THE RIGHT THING.
As witness the way support for the anti-war movement just melted away in the last days leading up to the war - right about the time it became really clear that Bush didn't give a flying fuck about public opinion.
I don't see it that way at all. Before the war, something like 60% were in favor of it. Right now, somewhere around 80% are in favor of it. Not ambivalent, in favor of it.
As to Bush, you have to admire his chutzpah.
The vast majority of people just gave up. I don't wish to be hypocritical; I count myself among them.
I don't think so. Wasn't that 100,000 strong crowd of dupes, er, protesters in NYC well after the war started?
I do think it's funny that the news networks aren't carrying antiwar protests much now. They may be run by liberal editorial staff, but they know who pays the bills...and the great majority of the public simply doesn't want to see antiwar anything right now. Ratings speak louder than ethics, apparently.
On the other hand, there is Fox with actual pro-American coverage. What a concept.;-)
In her wonderful world of fantasy, THE GOVERNMENT probably fills some kind of fatherly figure, good, powerful and caring.
Hi, I fixed the capitalization in the part I quoted.;-)
Just wanted to chime in and say I agree 100% with your viewpoint.
THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT OUR FRIEND.
Repeat this 1000 times, or until it is burned into every brain cell.
The government is a necessary evil, imperfect and run by fallible human beings. This was well understood by the founding fathers, thus almost every aspect of the Constitution is there TO LIMIT GOVERNMENT POWER.
Every attempt to increase the power, size and scope of government should be resisted. The long-term goal of our society should be to encourage better citizens to develop, so less and less government intrusion is needed over time. The lower taxes entailed by a smaller government are simply a nice side benefit.
We'll see how that theory plays out... Given the quality of the posts I see here on Slashdot it may be a long road...;-)
Thanks for the links...I did know about those actually.
What I was really hoping for is some unified explanation of the Linux sound architecture. That would explain the relationship between/dev/mixer, the actual audio device, and the overall capabilities or lack thereof (3D sound, surround sound, etc.).
I guess, though, if I find the right combination of incantations it'll "just work".;-)
I also have another issue I'm going to have to work out...at the moment I'm booting from floppy because the RH 8.0 didn't install dual boot successfully (I even have XP and RH 8 on separate hard disks). sigh
I think my best strategy is going to be to let RH 9 settle out for a bit and wait for A7N8X support, as well as functional dual boot.
They could only do this if their competitor(s?) raised their prices accordingly. Otherwise, they'd just lose the consumer market.
Perhaps, except that if software actually used the pro features, those other cards would run like crap by comparison.
Also, you are presuming that NVIDIA wouldn't make up the difference in volume, as the thousands of firms using pro cards switch almost exclusively to NVIDIA. That wouldn't help those competitors much, would it?
Here's the problem: nVidia and ATI make professional and consumer versions of their cards with the same hardware.
Yes, and the real problem is that these companies insist on this dichotomy. I'm pretty sure NVIDIA could raise the price on it's consumer chips by 10% and eliminate the "professional" line with no loss of profit. The beauty of this would be (among other things) that consumer apps could use useful pro features like fast line drawing;-) and fast pixel reads, which are disabled in consumer drivers.
It has always irked me when chip companies do totally artificial things to boost prices on some part of their line - like making 486 chips with a math coprocessor then disabling it to make "SX" chips. Silly practice.
I bought a A7N8X based system recently, figuring that I would have a single-vendor system as far as hardware goes (GeForce 4 ti4600 vid card). Surely this would be one of the best supported configurations under Linux, I reasoned...NVIDIA has been pretty good about Linux support.
Now, here I am weeks later with no sound, under (updated) RH 8.0. Could someone please point me at a useful resource for diagnosing why sound isn't working, and fixing it? TIA!!!
I wouldn't mind upgrading to RH 9, except nForce 2 drivers aren't out for it yet, AFAIK.
Uh huh...
on
BSA IDC FUD
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
'Overall, the countries that have the poorest record of IP rights have slower rates of IT growth,' BSA CEO Robert Holleyman said.
In related news, it was revealed that 20% of reckless drivers smoked marijuana. (Of course, so does 20% of the general population;).
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Truer words were never spoken...
What good are open standards if your implementation is the only one?
True, plus now that ISO has accepted the base version of C#, I'm sure Microsoft will busily add some new keywords and other syntactic incompatibilities in order to lock people in to the MS implementation - all in the name of "innovation" and "customer convenience" of course...;-)
My problem is, to meet today's demands the x86 platform has been "extended." Extended-Mode, Protected-Mode,SSE,SSE2,MMX,3d Now, and now "-64".
Well, the SSE stuff (all that really matters at this point) is an extension and isn't too horrible to deal with. Opteron has SSE2, though I saw today that Intel may be shipping SSE3 soon. *sigh*
x86-64 is a fairly clean shot at extending x86 to 64 bit. Nothing wrong with that.
Eventually, you have to stop bolting on and build something DESIGNED for the future. I think this is what Intel is trying with Itanium but they're not having much success at it.
What I was trying to point out with my comment about Itanium is that Intel took a ground-up approach with Itanium, losing all that "x86 baggage". Yet, Itanic ended up using a huge die, and not being particularly fast.
Itanium, Sparc, Power-series, etc. are designed from the start for high-performance, IT services.
So is x86 (P4, Xeon, Athlon, Opteron).
Would they make a great desktop? Who knows, probably not.
I guess you've not seen that arcane computer called "Macintosh".
A little slow, but a definitely a nice computer!
Do they kick x86's arse in the server / workstation world? You betcha.
Only where 64 bit processing is necessary, and this is exactly where Opteron is aimed. Itanium is Intel's 64-bit solution, at least for the time being, yet it isn't substantially faster than Opteron (in fact, it is substantially slower than Opteron at integer ops). It is also far more expensive than Opteron will be.
x86 supports the latest memory technologies and front-bus speeds, and also the fastest graphics interconnects. Are any of the other "high performance" platforms supporting AGP 8x yet?
That's great, but x86 doesn't support "larger memories."
Repeat after me..."Opteron". You can say it.
Also, I think the Xeons can use some kind of bank switching approach (how quaint!) to address 16 GB of RAM, IIRC.
While this benchmark isn't the best, it is true that for the VAST majority of processing the 3.06 GHz. P4 is simply much faster than the 1.25 GHz. G4. The only thing that will save the Mac in some cases is when the second CPU can be used, which is not possible for some processing. Altivec vs. SSE2 (given the respective clock speeds) is at best a wash, AFAIK.
I've advocated Apple adopting Opteron/Athlon for quite a while. It has the perfect OS for such a move.
By the way, Miguel, (having just noticed who I'm replying to) I still think your adoption of.Net/C# over Java was a horrible decision. You could be using the increasingly stable and useful gcj instead.
I wonder how long it'll be until Mono is tied up in patent/copyright lawsuits...
Bush and Saddam are happyly sitting in their sofa watching TV, while Civilians keep dying
You're confused. Saddam is in a hospital bed somewhere (most likely), and Bush doesn't watch much TV.
This war is a just war that'll depose a horrible dictator THAT HAS MURDERED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS. Thousands have been killed with chemical weapons. I guess you haven't seen all the interviews with Iraqi citizens that're ECSTATIC that Saddam is getting ousted.
Slashdot Mirror
While you're at it, the parent's parent (grandparent?) could use about 4 "overrated" mods.
TIA!
So? Does this mean the CE based devices will be performing the same tasks the PCs were?
Almost certainly not.
Further, in five years Linux based PCs "may outsell" Windows based PCs. For that matter Macs "may outsell" Windows based PCs in five years. The point being, most pundits crystal balls have been pretty cloudy over the years.
For myself, I'm pretty sure I'll be buying new PCs at about the same rate I buy new PDAs - every two years or so as the new technology becomes too compelling to pass up. ;-)
The one trend I think will continue is the intrusion of "desknotes" onto the scene. These will be notebook machines that are powerful enough to completely replace desktops for 99% of computer users. I hope they'll plug into a (Hypertransport?) connection that'll allow external AGP and PCI devices in the docking station, providing upgradeable graphics at least when used in the desktop role. One hopes the processors won't run hot enough to really endanger the users though... ;-)
It's called "having an opinion". However, I have a very open mind. If I see evidence of other motives from our administration than those stated, or evidence that Saddam is really a great guy that should stay in power, or atrocities by Coalition troops (as opposed to the numerous, well documented atrocities by Saddam's troops)...THEN I'll reconsider my position.
Further, I'm of the view that this war will help American interests and prestige worldwide, especially once a free Iraq is a reality. Most Iraqis that aren't under the gun (literally) seem to be very happy to see Saddam go.
Our leadership should be commended for doing a great job, not denigrated by those without a clear understanding of the situation, or simply with an axe to grind.
Honestly, what percentage of the remaining antiwar folk do you think are simply "Bush haters"?
"Fond" isn't the right term. However, I'm sure the Coalition forces are much more positive about how things are going than are the Iraqis. :-)
That apparent 20% swing isn't made up people who changed their mind and thought war was a good idea after all. It's made up of people who have been intimidated by hawks into adopting a "patriotic" attitude.
Au contraire. (Ack that was French. :-P)
No, many of the folk that made the switch (finally) realized we are DOING THE RIGHT THING.
Its really very simple.
I don't see it that way at all. Before the war, something like 60% were in favor of it. Right now, somewhere around 80% are in favor of it. Not ambivalent, in favor of it.
As to Bush, you have to admire his chutzpah.
The vast majority of people just gave up. I don't wish to be hypocritical; I count myself among them.
I don't think so. Wasn't that 100,000 strong crowd of dupes, er, protesters in NYC well after the war started?
I do think it's funny that the news networks aren't carrying antiwar protests much now. They may be run by liberal editorial staff, but they know who pays the bills...and the great majority of the public simply doesn't want to see antiwar anything right now. Ratings speak louder than ethics, apparently.
On the other hand, there is Fox with actual pro-American coverage. What a concept. ;-)
Hi, I fixed the capitalization in the part I quoted. ;-)
Just wanted to chime in and say I agree 100% with your viewpoint.
THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT OUR FRIEND.
Repeat this 1000 times, or until it is burned into every brain cell.
The government is a necessary evil, imperfect and run by fallible human beings. This was well understood by the founding fathers, thus almost every aspect of the Constitution is there TO LIMIT GOVERNMENT POWER.
Every attempt to increase the power, size and scope of government should be resisted. The long-term goal of our society should be to encourage better citizens to develop, so less and less government intrusion is needed over time. The lower taxes entailed by a smaller government are simply a nice side benefit.
We'll see how that theory plays out... Given the quality of the posts I see here on Slashdot it may be a long road... ;-)
What I was really hoping for is some unified explanation of the Linux sound architecture. That would explain the relationship between /dev/mixer, the actual audio device, and the overall capabilities or lack thereof (3D sound, surround sound, etc.).
I guess, though, if I find the right combination of incantations it'll "just work". ;-)
Thanks anyhow...I should get some other distributions up on other boxes and see what I'm missing... ;-)
You'd think. Not so far, though...
One error I did find in the readme.txt for the nforce2 platform drivers is that they claim:
rpm -rebuild foo.rpm
should work, however from what I can glean:
rpmbuild -rebuild foo.rpm
is actually correct.
I think my best strategy is going to be to let RH 9 settle out for a bit and wait for A7N8X support, as well as functional dual boot.
Thanks for the post though!
I'm a 'dirty hippie' (not even close BTW) because I want fully accelerated OpenGL on consumer hardware?
You need a good smack with a cluebat.
Perhaps, except that if software actually used the pro features, those other cards would run like crap by comparison.
Also, you are presuming that NVIDIA wouldn't make up the difference in volume, as the thousands of firms using pro cards switch almost exclusively to NVIDIA. That wouldn't help those competitors much, would it?
Yes, and the real problem is that these companies insist on this dichotomy. I'm pretty sure NVIDIA could raise the price on it's consumer chips by 10% and eliminate the "professional" line with no loss of profit. The beauty of this would be (among other things) that consumer apps could use useful pro features like fast line drawing ;-) and fast pixel reads, which are disabled in consumer drivers.
It has always irked me when chip companies do totally artificial things to boost prices on some part of their line - like making 486 chips with a math coprocessor then disabling it to make "SX" chips. Silly practice.
Now, here I am weeks later with no sound, under (updated) RH 8.0. Could someone please point me at a useful resource for diagnosing why sound isn't working, and fixing it? TIA!!!
I wouldn't mind upgrading to RH 9, except nForce 2 drivers aren't out for it yet, AFAIK.
In related news, it was revealed that 20% of reckless drivers smoked marijuana. (Of course, so does 20% of the general population;).
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Truer words were never spoken...
Benchmarks?
Is there something similar to the test suites being run on gcj?
I'm sure you're referring to production quality compilers and runtimes...aren't you? ;-)
True, plus now that ISO has accepted the base version of C#, I'm sure Microsoft will busily add some new keywords and other syntactic incompatibilities in order to lock people in to the MS implementation - all in the name of "innovation" and "customer convenience" of course... ;-)
Well, the SSE stuff (all that really matters at this point) is an extension and isn't too horrible to deal with. Opteron has SSE2, though I saw today that Intel may be shipping SSE3 soon. *sigh*
x86-64 is a fairly clean shot at extending x86 to 64 bit. Nothing wrong with that.
Eventually, you have to stop bolting on and build something DESIGNED for the future. I think this is what Intel is trying with Itanium but they're not having much success at it.
What I was trying to point out with my comment about Itanium is that Intel took a ground-up approach with Itanium, losing all that "x86 baggage". Yet, Itanic ended up using a huge die, and not being particularly fast.
Intel must be peeing itself over Opteron. ;-)
So is x86 (P4, Xeon, Athlon, Opteron).
Would they make a great desktop? Who knows, probably not.
I guess you've not seen that arcane computer called "Macintosh".
A little slow, but a definitely a nice computer!
Do they kick x86's arse in the server / workstation world? You betcha.
Only where 64 bit processing is necessary, and this is exactly where Opteron is aimed. Itanium is Intel's 64-bit solution, at least for the time being, yet it isn't substantially faster than Opteron (in fact, it is substantially slower than Opteron at integer ops). It is also far more expensive than Opteron will be.
x86 supports the latest memory technologies and front-bus speeds, and also the fastest graphics interconnects. Are any of the other "high performance" platforms supporting AGP 8x yet?
That's great, but x86 doesn't support "larger memories."
Repeat after me..."Opteron". You can say it.
Also, I think the Xeons can use some kind of bank switching approach (how quaint!) to address 16 GB of RAM, IIRC.
Everyone knows that one...the Apple runs at around 1 GHz., the orange at around 0 GHz.
While this benchmark isn't the best, it is true that for the VAST majority of processing the 3.06 GHz. P4 is simply much faster than the 1.25 GHz. G4. The only thing that will save the Mac in some cases is when the second CPU can be used, which is not possible for some processing. Altivec vs. SSE2 (given the respective clock speeds) is at best a wash, AFAIK.
I've advocated Apple adopting Opteron/Athlon for quite a while. It has the perfect OS for such a move.
The idiots are those who moderated his post +5 Insightful...I presumed it was his celebrity that induced the brain damage... ;-)
Well, Microsoft has already committed to Opteron...therefore the rest of your argument is a straw man. :^)
By the way, Miguel, (having just noticed who I'm replying to) I still think your adoption of .Net/C# over Java was a horrible decision. You could be using the increasingly stable and useful gcj instead.
I wonder how long it'll be until Mono is tied up in patent/copyright lawsuits...
Brilliant observation.
Bush and Saddam are happyly sitting in their sofa watching TV, while Civilians keep dying
You're confused. Saddam is in a hospital bed somewhere (most likely), and Bush doesn't watch much TV.
This war is a just war that'll depose a horrible dictator THAT HAS MURDERED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS. Thousands have been killed with chemical weapons. I guess you haven't seen all the interviews with Iraqi citizens that're ECSTATIC that Saddam is getting ousted.
Take your weak anti-war propaganda elsewhere.