Uhhm, AMD 760MP boards (Tyan Thunder/Tiger) come with 33MHz 64bit PCI slots. They are backwards compatible with 33MHz 32bit PCI slots. The 760MPX chipset (due out soon) will support 66MHz 64bit PCI slots. Then there are ServerWorks chipsets that support 66MHz 64bit PCI already. They (as the name suggests) are often used in servers.
No drive in existence can even come close to saturating ATA/66. Under some conditions they break through 33MB/s, but that's about it. ATA/100 and ATA/133 then are totally useless. But let's make a few calculations:
ATA/133 interface can transfer data from the HD's cache to memory at 133 MB/s, while ATA/66 drive can do so at 66 MB/s. The standard cache size on modern HDs is 2MB. At 66MB/s it takes 0.03 seconds to read the entire cache. At 133MB/s, it takes 0.015 seconds. Therefore, whenever you try to read data from disk, an ATA/66 drive will operate at 66MB/s for the first 0.03 seconds! After that, the speed will be limited by the speed of the spindles. Similarly, an ATA/133 drive will operate at 133MB/s for the first 0.015 seconds. Also, an ATA/133 drive will be faster than ATA/66 drive for a whopping 0.015 seconds at a time! Wow!!! (and that's assuming that the desired data is in the cache in the first place...)
How about improving IDE so that multiple drives can operate concurrently? That would justify the interface speed increase. How about making it hot-swappable? How about making it usable for external devices? But no, they have to keep on making ATA/100, ATA/133, ATA/999, ATA/2000, etc. so that Joe Consumer has yet another marketing gimmick to buy...
The only way this paragraph makes sense is if somewhere along the line internal use of software by a company has been explicitly declared as not being distribution.
Oh, I see what you mean. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the 1854 (?) supreme court ruling that corporations are individuals and thus have all the rights mere mortals have. (Their vast resourses in effect make them super-people). But in any case, companies are generally treated as one entity in matters such as this. The secretary receiving the peice of software is an employee of the company and, therefore, a part of the same entity. She uses the software for the benefit of the company while doing her job (i.e. she does not get a copy for her home machine). Also, as I mentioned earlier, any work you do for the company is the property of the company (this mystical entity). If the secretary were able to legally get the copy of the software while off work and off the copany's property, then she would be treated as individual if the matter went to cort, and she would not be under contractual obligations to the company. But that implies that the software is distributed outside the company.
So I guess basically what I'm saying is that an employee is not an individual; an employee is a number in the HR database;-) When you become an employee, you voluntarily choose to give up some rights in exchange for a paycheque.
By no means do I claim to be an expert on the subject, but it just wouldn't make sense to me otherwise.
This is the entire point of the GPL. You are claiming that an NDA (an artifact of contract law) can override the GPL (another artifact of contract law).
1. False. I am not claiming that at all. Read my post again. And again. As long as it takes for you to understand. What I said was: you are still allowed to distribute the original (unmodified) version; you are not allowed to distribute the code that you wrote by contract because you don't own it -- the company does. If the comany decides to distribute this code then they must do so according to the terms of GPL. If they decide not to distribute it then they can do whatever they want. Point is: the company owns the code, not you -- therefore the company makes decisions about the code, not you.
2. GPL has absolutely nothing to do with contract law. It is based entirely in copyright law. Therefore, it is actually stronger than most proprietary licenses (well, until all states pass UCITA anyway;-)
I can answer this. You can distribute only the code that you either own (the one that you wrote yourself) or when you have an explicit permission to distribute it (such as GPL, BSD, etc.). When you write code for a company, you do not own it. Repeat: it doesn't matter that you wrote the code -- whoever pays you to write the code owns it. Therefore, if the contract you signed prevents you from distributing the code, you cannot distribute it because 1) it's not yours; 2) you don't have permission. The company you did the work for -- and only the company -- can decide whether to distribute the code or not. You can of course distribute the original, unmodified version.
Uhhm, there is no such thing as "hardware journalling". It's an oxymoron. By definition, journalling is file system-dependent.
As for restoring changes with specific time stamp, there are three problems with that:
1. The amount of storage space required would grow exponentially (depending on how fine-grained the timestep is).
2. The speed would go down the toilet (again, depending on the timestep).
3. It would still be file system-dependent.
FYI, the NetApp filers have the "snapshot" feature which allows you to recover deleted files. But note that it works only for deleted files. It does not keep track of modifications. So that's really trivial (something similar to "recycle bin" in windows), and could easily be implemented in any file system. Speaking of which, I'm surprised it hasn't been done yet.
In debian you can't install apps from other branches.. so if you want the latest ( when ever they get around to porting it ) apps. You _need_ to run unstable..
False. This is an outdated information. You can now select which branch you want to install a package from.
And "FreeBSD is soooo much superior to linux.." because it's consistant. It's not dependent on the current flavor of the insecure linux kernel you happen to be running.
Uh-huh. And FreeBSD never gets security holes? Why, the guy who discovered the recent security hole in Linux kernel said specifically that it's exactly the same hole that was previously found in *BSD.
Don't forget the whole linux thing is just a kernel with apps; and FreeBSD is a complete OS.
Riiight.... And BSD is not "just a kernel with apps". Are you telling me that FreeBSD team wrote every single package that comes with the base install of FreeBSD?
I tried FreeBSD myself too, and I share the same sentiment. It's a nice OS, but it's not the end-all be-all that *BSD zealots make it out to be. And it is the *BSD zealots who actually ruin it. When I asked for help I was met with the same elitism that you have just demonstrated. Just like the poster above, I didn't see a significant advantage over Debian (though, of course, it's way better than RedHat/Mandrake/etc.) And the elitism demostrated by the FreeBSD zealots made me wish I never installed it in the first place. I'll probably give it a try again at some point but not in the near future.
I remember reading a comple of months ago that Dell would offer Athlons on thier laptops. Well, the other day I went to Dell's web site to check them out and gasp! no Athlons. And now that Dell discontinued Linux too, they are back to being the Wintel bitch they always were.
Anyway, I think Sanders is overly optimistic in his analysis. It doesn't matter that Pentium 4 is a dog -- it's made by Intel, therefore it will sell. Also, without support of large OEMs, AMD is going to have a tough time. I only hope that it doesn't end up like Alpha -- a great technology that's been effectively killed and buried.
THE TENTATIVE SETTLEMENT calls for a five-year consent decree between the government and Microsoft governing the company's conduct, The New York Times reported on its Web site Wednesday evening, citing anonymous sources. The Times reported that the deal included the possibility of a two-year extension if the company violates the terms of the agreement.
Huh? So let me get this straight: if Microsoft violates the terms of the agreement, the deal will be extended so that Microsoft can violate them for two more years. ??? Tough on crime we are today, ain't we?
huh? what? This is the most uninformed garbage I have ever read. I don't have time to refute all of the nonsense, so I'll just take on the biggies.
The price of having virtual memory is terrible performance once paging between active processes starts.
When that happens, you are running a lot more processes that can fit into memory. Without VM you would not be able to do that at all.
A basic problem with shared libraries is that you load in the whole library, needed or not, when you need any function from it.
False. Any decent VM does demand paging. Only the pages that are needed are loaded from the executable. The parts of the program that are never executed are never loaded from disk, notwithstanding read-ahead optimization. A shared library is just an extention of the executable so the same rules apply. Further, a shared library can be used by multiple processes and only *one* copy of it is loaded into memory.
I'd argue that it's time to go back to a swapping model - all of an app has to be in before it runs.
That would be absolutely stupid. It would slow down the system tremedously. Se above about demand paging.
Without VM, you would need to increase the memory requirements by a factor of N, where N is the number of processes running concurrently. Further, the startup time of each process would always be slower since all of the code would have to be read in memory. With VM part of it is already there (shared libraries), and the code is loaded on demand.
In short, this is the biggest pile of uninformed garbage. You *really* need to take an OS course before you can talk about OS design.
I've seen this mentioned in only one post so far and I have not seen an adequate answer yet. It is my understanding that the copyright law allows for non-commercial copying. Sony can stop the distribution of the software only if it can show damages resulting from the distribution. In this case there are none. The distribution of said software does not cause Sony to lose sales (indeed, it actually stimulates sales), since you need to have this aibo thingy in order to use the software. So, techinically, Sony cannot just bust in swinging DMCA and force the software off the net: since there are no damages in this case, the copying is legal. IANAL and I would like a lawyer to comment on this (if there is one here). Now, I do realize that in practice it doesn't matter: he who has the deepest pockets always wins.
Secondly, what "copy-protection" is this guy talking about? What exactly does it "protect" and what does it have to do with aibo?
On a side note, it really irritates me when they refer to "copy-protection mechanism". Let's call it what it really is: copy-prevention mechanism. It does not "protect" anything; it prevents you from making copies. I guess "protection" puts a better spin on it...
Besides graphial boot screen, what else does it offer that LILO and Grub do not? (btw, it's already possible to have graphical boot screen even without it). And while we are on the subject, what does Grub have that LILO doesn't? What's the point of switching the boot loader?
1.There's no support built into the product. Yes, you can hire people to support it for you, but it's a seperate cost.
Last time I checked you had to pay for support of proprietary software too. True, sometimes you get a free phone number that you can call when it's not busy, but's that's not an enterprise level support.
2.Similarly, There is no warrantee of any kind. If it breaks, you have no one to complain to: "you get what you pay for."
This is the most blatant piece of FUD that Microsoft trolls keep spouting. Ever read Microsoft EULA? (or a EULA for any other proprietary software for that matter). It reads, in part, something along the lines of: "To the maximum extent permitted by the applicable law, Microsoft hereby disclaims all liability". You have no warranty, no matter what software you use. About 2 years ago there was a case where some proprietary software caused millions of dollars worth of damage to some manufacturing company. The vendor admitted to producing buggy software but refused to pay based on EULA. The court agreed. (Search slashdot archives, ithe story is probably still there).
3.The programmers may suddenly decide they have no vested interest in continuing the project, or development may slow to a crawl (eg, mozilla), and there's nothing you can do about it.
False. The one key advantage you have with open source is that *anyone* can continue the project, including yourself. The original programmer cannot prevent anyone from developing the project. On the other hand, with proprietary software, you have no such recourse. If the company suddenly decides it is no longer interested in the product, it can drop it and you can do absolutely nothing about it. Neither you nor anyone else can continue the project. You are solely at the mercy of the vendor. This is actually one of the key arguments *for* open source.
Searching through the long article there is exactly one mention of Linux, at the very end:
Ravens Coach Brian Billick faults last week's defensive breakdown on team's switch to Linux operating system
That's it. There is no explanation nor elaboration of that. Just this one sentence in the entire article, uttered apparently by a pissed off coach. There is nothing to suggest that any member of the team even knows what Linux is, much less blame the loss on it. Nor is there any explanation of what Linux has to do with this football team in the first place. So, michael & co, would you please read the fucking article before posting garbage next time?
It takes so long for a patch to make it's way out in to the world because they have to verify that all the actual features in the code didn't break.
Really? Is that why their service packs keep breaking your machine instead of fixing it? NT4 Service Pack 2 was widely known as "service pack of death". HP refused to support their own machines running NT4 with service pack 4 (while at the same time advertizing "the unstoppable windows nt"). Service pack 6 broke Lotus and was quickly replaced by service pack 6a. They are also known to release patches that undo previous patches. And that's just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head.
Furthermore, Microsoft patches frequently break third party software. Is it because they don't test or is it intentional? Hmmm.....
VA Linux Systems - Rode the Linux bubble up with one of the biggest IPOs in history. Sold off their core money-maker (the hardware business) and instead acquired liabilities such as various linux-oriented community sites. Plans to make its money by selling a piece of software that can be downloaded free from the web. VA is currently on the verge of being delisted, and bankruptcy may soon follow.
Almost right but you reversed the order. They bought Slashdot et al a long time ago. They stopped selling hardware fairly recently. Turns out anyone can build an x86 box. Even Dell.
Every single AMD CPU from Duron to Athlon MP supports SMP. There are reports that AMD will simply try to disable SMP on the XP line. But the core architecture is SMP-capable.
Unlike Intel, AMD does not like to screw you over by constantly changing sockets. AMD has stated that the *all* the new CPUs they release should work even the oldest SocketA boards provided that the power requirements are met. And they will keep the same socket for all the future CPUs. So in a year or two you'll be able to upgrade to something like 2x 2.0GHz or more. (Upgrading it right now to 1800XP makes no sense though. The performance increase is too small). Also, AMD has stated that they'll try to keep the same socket for the ClawHammer/SledgeHammer series -- they'll change it only if neccessary.
Compare that to Intel. Over the past 3 years we've had Socket 7 (pentium), Socket 8 (pentium pro), Slot 1 (p2/p3/celeron), Slot 2 (xeon), Socket 370 (p3/celeron), Socket 423 (p4), Socket 478 (p4)...
There is a difference between pre-emptive multitasking and pre-emptible kernel.
Pre-emptive multitasking means that the kernel can interrupt any thread and give control to another thread, so that a thread cannot hog the CPU resources. This is what all modern operating systems do, except Windows 3.1/9x/Me and MacOS (pre- X), though it could be argued that Windows 3.1/9x/Me is not an operating system much less a modern one;-)
Pre-emptible kernel is a different beast. It means that the kernel can interrupt itself (i.e. a thread running in the kernel mode) and give control to another thread running in the kernel mode. This is used in real-time operating systems where you need to have a guaranteed maximum response time (i.e. a thread must not wait longer than a certain amount of time before it gets control). However, this is not all that useful for general-purpose OSes and may even be detrimental to servers, where throughput matter more than response time. So it's good to know that this will be a compile-time option.
Slashdot Mirror
Uhhm, AMD 760MP boards (Tyan Thunder/Tiger) come with 33MHz 64bit PCI slots. They are backwards compatible with 33MHz 32bit PCI slots. The 760MPX chipset (due out soon) will support 66MHz 64bit PCI slots. Then there are ServerWorks chipsets that support 66MHz 64bit PCI already. They (as the name suggests) are often used in servers.
I couldn't agree more.
No drive in existence can even come close to saturating ATA/66. Under some conditions they break through 33MB/s, but that's about it. ATA/100 and ATA/133 then are totally useless. But let's make a few calculations:
ATA/133 interface can transfer data from the HD's cache to memory at 133 MB/s, while ATA/66 drive can do so at 66 MB/s. The standard cache size on modern HDs is 2MB. At 66MB/s it takes 0.03 seconds to read the entire cache. At 133MB/s, it takes 0.015 seconds. Therefore, whenever you try to read data from disk, an ATA/66 drive will operate at 66MB/s for the first 0.03 seconds! After that, the speed will be limited by the speed of the spindles. Similarly, an ATA/133 drive will operate at 133MB/s for the first 0.015 seconds. Also, an ATA/133 drive will be faster than ATA/66 drive for a whopping 0.015 seconds at a time! Wow!!! (and that's assuming that the desired data is in the cache in the first place...)
How about improving IDE so that multiple drives can operate concurrently? That would justify the interface speed increase. How about making it hot-swappable? How about making it usable for external devices? But no, they have to keep on making ATA/100, ATA/133, ATA/999, ATA/2000, etc. so that Joe Consumer has yet another marketing gimmick to buy...
Oh, I see what you mean. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the 1854 (?) supreme court ruling that corporations are individuals and thus have all the rights mere mortals have. (Their vast resourses in effect make them super-people). But in any case, companies are generally treated as one entity in matters such as this. The secretary receiving the peice of software is an employee of the company and, therefore, a part of the same entity. She uses the software for the benefit of the company while doing her job (i.e. she does not get a copy for her home machine). Also, as I mentioned earlier, any work you do for the company is the property of the company (this mystical entity). If the secretary were able to legally get the copy of the software while off work and off the copany's property, then she would be treated as individual if the matter went to cort, and she would not be under contractual obligations to the company. But that implies that the software is distributed outside the company.
So I guess basically what I'm saying is that an employee is not an individual; an employee is a number in the HR database ;-) When you become an employee, you voluntarily choose to give up some rights in exchange for a paycheque.
By no means do I claim to be an expert on the subject, but it just wouldn't make sense to me otherwise.
1. False. I am not claiming that at all. Read my post again. And again. As long as it takes for you to understand. What I said was: you are still allowed to distribute the original (unmodified) version; you are not allowed to distribute the code that you wrote by contract because you don't own it -- the company does. If the comany decides to distribute this code then they must do so according to the terms of GPL. If they decide not to distribute it then they can do whatever they want. Point is: the company owns the code, not you -- therefore the company makes decisions about the code, not you.
2. GPL has absolutely nothing to do with contract law. It is based entirely in copyright law. Therefore, it is actually stronger than most proprietary licenses (well, until all states pass UCITA anyway ;-)
I can answer this. You can distribute only the code that you either own (the one that you wrote yourself) or when you have an explicit permission to distribute it (such as GPL, BSD, etc.). When you write code for a company, you do not own it. Repeat: it doesn't matter that you wrote the code -- whoever pays you to write the code owns it. Therefore, if the contract you signed prevents you from distributing the code, you cannot distribute it because 1) it's not yours; 2) you don't have permission. The company you did the work for -- and only the company -- can decide whether to distribute the code or not. You can of course distribute the original, unmodified version.
No grey area there. Move along.
Uhhm, there is no such thing as "hardware journalling". It's an oxymoron. By definition, journalling is file system-dependent.
As for restoring changes with specific time stamp, there are three problems with that:
1. The amount of storage space required would grow exponentially (depending on how fine-grained the timestep is).
2. The speed would go down the toilet (again, depending on the timestep).
3. It would still be file system-dependent.
FYI, the NetApp filers have the "snapshot" feature which allows you to recover deleted files. But note that it works only for deleted files. It does not keep track of modifications. So that's really trivial (something similar to "recycle bin" in windows), and could easily be implemented in any file system. Speaking of which, I'm surprised it hasn't been done yet.
False. This is an outdated information. You can now select which branch you want to install a package from.
And "FreeBSD is soooo much superior to linux.." because it's consistant. It's not dependent on the current flavor of the insecure linux kernel you happen to be running.
Uh-huh. And FreeBSD never gets security holes? Why, the guy who discovered the recent security hole in Linux kernel said specifically that it's exactly the same hole that was previously found in *BSD.
Don't forget the whole linux thing is just a kernel with apps; and FreeBSD is a complete OS.
Riiight.... And BSD is not "just a kernel with apps". Are you telling me that FreeBSD team wrote every single package that comes with the base install of FreeBSD?
I tried FreeBSD myself too, and I share the same sentiment. It's a nice OS, but it's not the end-all be-all that *BSD zealots make it out to be. And it is the *BSD zealots who actually ruin it. When I asked for help I was met with the same elitism that you have just demonstrated. Just like the poster above, I didn't see a significant advantage over Debian (though, of course, it's way better than RedHat/Mandrake/etc.) And the elitism demostrated by the FreeBSD zealots made me wish I never installed it in the first place. I'll probably give it a try again at some point but not in the near future.
I remember reading a comple of months ago that Dell would offer Athlons on thier laptops. Well, the other day I went to Dell's web site to check them out and gasp! no Athlons. And now that Dell discontinued Linux too, they are back to being the Wintel bitch they always were.
Anyway, I think Sanders is overly optimistic in his analysis. It doesn't matter that Pentium 4 is a dog -- it's made by Intel, therefore it will sell. Also, without support of large OEMs, AMD is going to have a tough time. I only hope that it doesn't end up like Alpha -- a great technology that's been effectively killed and buried.
Huh? So let me get this straight: if Microsoft violates the terms of the agreement, the deal will be extended so that Microsoft can violate them for two more years. ??? Tough on crime we are today, ain't we?
Yeah, my OS design prof was very proud of the fact that he worked with the only working trinary computer in existence.
The price of having virtual memory is terrible performance once paging between active processes starts.
When that happens, you are running a lot more processes that can fit into memory. Without VM you would not be able to do that at all.
A basic problem with shared libraries is that you load in the whole library, needed or not, when you need any function from it.
False. Any decent VM does demand paging. Only the pages that are needed are loaded from the executable. The parts of the program that are never executed are never loaded from disk, notwithstanding read-ahead optimization. A shared library is just an extention of the executable so the same rules apply. Further, a shared library can be used by multiple processes and only *one* copy of it is loaded into memory.
I'd argue that it's time to go back to a swapping model - all of an app has to be in before it runs.
That would be absolutely stupid. It would slow down the system tremedously. Se above about demand paging.
Without VM, you would need to increase the memory requirements by a factor of N, where N is the number of processes running concurrently. Further, the startup time of each process would always be slower since all of the code would have to be read in memory. With VM part of it is already there (shared libraries), and the code is loaded on demand.
In short, this is the biggest pile of uninformed garbage. You *really* need to take an OS course before you can talk about OS design.
I've seen this mentioned in only one post so far and I have not seen an adequate answer yet. It is my understanding that the copyright law allows for non-commercial copying. Sony can stop the distribution of the software only if it can show damages resulting from the distribution. In this case there are none. The distribution of said software does not cause Sony to lose sales (indeed, it actually stimulates sales), since you need to have this aibo thingy in order to use the software. So, techinically, Sony cannot just bust in swinging DMCA and force the software off the net: since there are no damages in this case, the copying is legal. IANAL and I would like a lawyer to comment on this (if there is one here). Now, I do realize that in practice it doesn't matter: he who has the deepest pockets always wins.
Secondly, what "copy-protection" is this guy talking about? What exactly does it "protect" and what does it have to do with aibo?
On a side note, it really irritates me when they refer to "copy-protection mechanism". Let's call it what it really is: copy-prevention mechanism. It does not "protect" anything; it prevents you from making copies. I guess "protection" puts a better spin on it...
Besides graphial boot screen, what else does it offer that LILO and Grub do not? (btw, it's already possible to have graphical boot screen even without it). And while we are on the subject, what does Grub have that LILO doesn't? What's the point of switching the boot loader?
It's too bad most people don't understand this. Surely everyone must need the latest paperclip!
Last time I checked you had to pay for support of proprietary software too. True, sometimes you get a free phone number that you can call when it's not busy, but's that's not an enterprise level support.
2.Similarly, There is no warrantee of any kind. If it breaks, you have no one to complain to: "you get what you pay for."
This is the most blatant piece of FUD that Microsoft trolls keep spouting. Ever read Microsoft EULA? (or a EULA for any other proprietary software for that matter). It reads, in part, something along the lines of: "To the maximum extent permitted by the applicable law, Microsoft hereby disclaims all liability". You have no warranty, no matter what software you use. About 2 years ago there was a case where some proprietary software caused millions of dollars worth of damage to some manufacturing company. The vendor admitted to producing buggy software but refused to pay based on EULA. The court agreed. (Search slashdot archives, ithe story is probably still there).
3.The programmers may suddenly decide they have no vested interest in continuing the project, or development may slow to a crawl (eg, mozilla), and there's nothing you can do about it.
False. The one key advantage you have with open source is that *anyone* can continue the project, including yourself. The original programmer cannot prevent anyone from developing the project. On the other hand, with proprietary software, you have no such recourse. If the company suddenly decides it is no longer interested in the product, it can drop it and you can do absolutely nothing about it. Neither you nor anyone else can continue the project. You are solely at the mercy of the vendor. This is actually one of the key arguments *for* open source.
Ravens Coach Brian Billick faults last week's defensive breakdown on team's switch to Linux operating system
That's it. There is no explanation nor elaboration of that. Just this one sentence in the entire article, uttered apparently by a pissed off coach. There is nothing to suggest that any member of the team even knows what Linux is, much less blame the loss on it. Nor is there any explanation of what Linux has to do with this football team in the first place. So, michael & co, would you please read the fucking article before posting garbage next time?
Really? Is that why their service packs keep breaking your machine instead of fixing it? NT4 Service Pack 2 was widely known as "service pack of death". HP refused to support their own machines running NT4 with service pack 4 (while at the same time advertizing "the unstoppable windows nt"). Service pack 6 broke Lotus and was quickly replaced by service pack 6a. They are also known to release patches that undo previous patches. And that's just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head.
Furthermore, Microsoft patches frequently break third party software. Is it because they don't test or is it intentional? Hmmm.....
Almost right but you reversed the order. They bought Slashdot et al a long time ago. They stopped selling hardware fairly recently. Turns out anyone can build an x86 box. Even Dell.
Funny? I just can't tolerate trolls like that.
go grab a dictionary and look up the word "joke"
(no offence to our Geekess but here it goes):
There are two types of girls: pretty and smart.
Every single AMD CPU from Duron to Athlon MP supports SMP. There are reports that AMD will simply try to disable SMP on the XP line. But the core architecture is SMP-capable.
Unlike Intel, AMD does not like to screw you over by constantly changing sockets. AMD has stated that the *all* the new CPUs they release should work even the oldest SocketA boards provided that the power requirements are met. And they will keep the same socket for all the future CPUs. So in a year or two you'll be able to upgrade to something like 2x 2.0GHz or more. (Upgrading it right now to 1800XP makes no sense though. The performance increase is too small). Also, AMD has stated that they'll try to keep the same socket for the ClawHammer/SledgeHammer series -- they'll change it only if neccessary.
Compare that to Intel. Over the past 3 years we've had Socket 7 (pentium), Socket 8 (pentium pro), Slot 1 (p2/p3/celeron), Slot 2 (xeon), Socket 370 (p3/celeron), Socket 423 (p4), Socket 478 (p4)...
Anthrax was in Microsoft Office for a long time. But most people called it "The Clippy..."
Really? That's the first time I hear about that.
;-)
There is a difference between pre-emptive multitasking and pre-emptible kernel.
Pre-emptive multitasking means that the kernel can interrupt any thread and give control to another thread, so that a thread cannot hog the CPU resources. This is what all modern operating systems do, except Windows 3.1/9x/Me and MacOS (pre- X), though it could be argued that Windows 3.1/9x/Me is not an operating system much less a modern one
Pre-emptible kernel is a different beast. It means that the kernel can interrupt itself (i.e. a thread running in the kernel mode) and give control to another thread running in the kernel mode. This is used in real-time operating systems where you need to have a guaranteed maximum response time (i.e. a thread must not wait longer than a certain amount of time before it gets control). However, this is not all that useful for general-purpose OSes and may even be detrimental to servers, where throughput matter more than response time. So it's good to know that this will be a compile-time option.