Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand how performance per watt is useful as *the* statistic for comparing processors. Granted, clockspeeds aren't the law of the land, but at least they gave you some idea of how processors stack up against each other. The lines have become fuzzier recently, but I can know with a resonable amount of certaintly that a 3ghz P4 will kick the living daylight out of a 1mhz CPU.
Performance per watt tells a different story. While performance return per unit power consumed may tell how efficient a processor is, it doesn't tell me how good a processor is at doing what I want it to -- crunch numbers, really fast.
Performance per watt is a ratio, so the rating can increase when performance increases or power consumption decreases. Therefore, a solar calculator with a 5mhz processor and (I'm making this up) 0.1 watt power consumption would have a 50 mhz/watt rating, and a 3ghz CPU with a 100 watt consumption would have a rating of 30 mhz/watt. So, now Intel sells both these processors and advertises their performance/watt ratings. When someone goes to buy a new computer, they're surprised to find that the 50 mhz/watt computer is actually slower/worse/crappier than the 30 mhz/watt one.
A rock has infinite performance per power usage. It performs one instruction using no power.
I live in Howard County. After a semester in college, I spent my winter break living at home. When I went to the library, I noticed that the library was running linux on their terminals. They've done a very good job setting up their computers to suit everyone's needs. The free wifi is a great service, too.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I think that the best keyboard ever made was the IBM Model M PS/2 keyboard. It's got individual springs for each of the keys, the keys give satisfying clicks, the keycaps are removable, and it's even got a nifty drainage hole on the bottom. It'll even double as a baseball bat in a pinch (steel baseplate). I'm here at work typing on a Dell laptop keyboard which, frankly, is a steaming pile of crap.
All these newfangled keyboards with their plastic membranes and mushy keys. I'll take my Model M any day.
Ah, crap. I hit the wrong button and now it's all one jumbled mess. Sorry about that. Here it is again with proper markup.
I agree that the author certiainly had personal reasons for forking the project; he explicitly states this in his essay. What is important, however, is that he weighed the interests of his business and the community along side with his personal feelings when he made the decision.
After reading his essay, I give the author a lot of respect. The very fact that he took the time to rationally explain his background, his involvement with gentoo, and his reasons for a fork give merit to his character. He is the type of man that I want to work for.
I have to disagree with you when you say that he is overconfident with his importance. From the begining, the author made it clear that while he wanted to contribute to the linux community, he was not coding "just for fun." At the end of the day, he still had food to put on the table and bills to pay. As a programmer with background in embedded systems, he saw that the embedded market was a beneficial direction for gentoo to move in. He invested his time, effort, and capital to forward this venture.
It is clear from his essay that the author consistently had the interests of the community as a whole in mind in addition to his on personal and business interests. After putting hours of his blood and sweat into Gentoo Embeded, he was blindsided by Daniel Robbins, completely left out of the loop. I think that it is a fair assumption of the author that he would be involved in "Gentoo Devices" spinoff. Robbins saw that there was money to be made and began to hedge the author out.
Robbins runs a business, and so does the author. After many displays of Robbins' character, it became clear to the author that Robbins' was a danger to his business and to himself. I feel that the author has more than enough justification for the fork. As stated in his essay, there are clear business, technical, and cultural reasons for this. Certainly, the author has personal reasons, but they played second-chair.
The author stuck with things far longer than I would have. Had his reasons for forking been merely personal, he would have done so long before today.
I agree that the author certiainly had personal reasons for forking the project; he explicitly states this in his essay. What is important, however, is that he weighed the interests of his business and the community along side with his personal feelings when he made the decision.
After reading his essay, I give the author a lot of respect. The very fact that he took the time to rationally explain his background, his involvement with gentoo, and his reasons for a fork give merit to his character. He is the type of man that I want to work for.
I have to disagree with you when you say that he is overconfident with his importance. From the begining, the author made it clear that while he wanted to contribute to the linux community, he was not coding "just for fun." At the end of the day, he still had food to put on the table and bills to pay. As a programmer with background in embedded systems, he saw that the embedded market was a beneficial direction for gentoo to move in. He invested his time, effort, and capital to forward this venture.
It is clear from his essay that the author consistently had the interests of the community as a whole in mind in addition to his on personal and business interests. After putting hours of his blood and sweat into Gentoo Embeded, he was blindsided by Daniel Robbins, completely left out of the loop. I think that it is a fair assumption of the author that he would be involved in "Gentoo Devices" spinoff. Robbins saw that there was money to be made and began to hedge the author out.
Robbins runs a business, and so does the author. After many displays of Robbins' character, it became clear to the author that Robbins' was a danger to his business and to himself. I feel that the author has more than enough justification for the fork. As stated in his essay, there are clear business, technical, and cultural reasons for this. Certainly, the author has personal reasons, but they played second-chair.
The author stuck with things far longer than I would have. Had his reasons for forking been merely personal, he would have done so long before today.
I'm starting to loose a lot of respect for Adobe. Last year, they sued Macromedia because Flash 5 had a "tabbed panel interface" that Adobe claims they made first. They wanted Macromedia to pay fines and stop the release of Flash 5.
I'm supprised that Apple, or Xerox for that matter, doesn't sue for the invention of the graphical user interface.
All of these companies now are naming their products with common words. I could make a lot of money if I started a company, developed a program called "Programmer" and sued everyone who used that word.
I've read Flatterland and I don't really like it as much as the original. In Flatland, Mr. A. Square lived on a 2D plane and was suddenly lifed into the third dimension. In Flatterland, however, this perspective of the universe is not preserved. The author invents a device called a VUE that can do everything. If the author is describing the complex number plane, then the VUE transports the main character to it. Poof! Thats it. Not much fun. Overall, I think the book does a good job of explaining scientific ideas in simple terms, but it doesn't keep with the theme and tone of the original.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand how performance per watt is useful as *the* statistic for comparing processors. Granted, clockspeeds aren't the law of the land, but at least they gave you some idea of how processors stack up against each other. The lines have become fuzzier recently, but I can know with a resonable amount of certaintly that a 3ghz P4 will kick the living daylight out of a 1mhz CPU.
Performance per watt tells a different story. While performance return per unit power consumed may tell how efficient a processor is, it doesn't tell me how good a processor is at doing what I want it to -- crunch numbers, really fast.
Performance per watt is a ratio, so the rating can increase when performance increases or power consumption decreases. Therefore, a solar calculator with a 5mhz processor and (I'm making this up) 0.1 watt power consumption would have a 50 mhz/watt rating, and a 3ghz CPU with a 100 watt consumption would have a rating of 30 mhz/watt. So, now Intel sells both these processors and advertises their performance/watt ratings. When someone goes to buy a new computer, they're surprised to find that the 50 mhz/watt computer is actually slower/worse/crappier than the 30 mhz/watt one.
A rock has infinite performance per power usage. It performs one instruction using no power.
I live in Howard County. After a semester in college, I spent my winter break living at home. When I went to the library, I noticed that the library was running linux on their terminals. They've done a very good job setting up their computers to suit everyone's needs. The free wifi is a great service, too.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I think that the best keyboard ever made was the IBM Model M PS/2 keyboard. It's got individual springs for each of the keys, the keys give satisfying clicks, the keycaps are removable, and it's even got a nifty drainage hole on the bottom. It'll even double as a baseball bat in a pinch (steel baseplate). I'm here at work typing on a Dell laptop keyboard which, frankly, is a steaming pile of crap.
All these newfangled keyboards with their plastic membranes and mushy keys. I'll take my Model M any day.
Ah, crap. I hit the wrong button and now it's all one jumbled mess. Sorry about that. Here it is again with proper markup.
I agree that the author certiainly had personal reasons for forking the project; he explicitly states this in his essay. What is important, however, is that he weighed the interests of his business and the community along side with his personal feelings when he made the decision.
After reading his essay, I give the author a lot of respect. The very fact that he took the time to rationally explain his background, his involvement with gentoo, and his reasons for a fork give merit to his character. He is the type of man that I want to work for.
I have to disagree with you when you say that he is overconfident with his importance. From the begining, the author made it clear that while he wanted to contribute to the linux community, he was not coding "just for fun." At the end of the day, he still had food to put on the table and bills to pay. As a programmer with background in embedded systems, he saw that the embedded market was a beneficial direction for gentoo to move in. He invested his time, effort, and capital to forward this venture.
It is clear from his essay that the author consistently had the interests of the community as a whole in mind in addition to his on personal and business interests. After putting hours of his blood and sweat into Gentoo Embeded, he was blindsided by Daniel Robbins, completely left out of the loop. I think that it is a fair assumption of the author that he would be involved in "Gentoo Devices" spinoff. Robbins saw that there was money to be made and began to hedge the author out.
Robbins runs a business, and so does the author. After many displays of Robbins' character, it became clear to the author that Robbins' was a danger to his business and to himself. I feel that the author has more than enough justification for the fork. As stated in his essay, there are clear business, technical, and cultural reasons for this. Certainly, the author has personal reasons, but they played second-chair.
The author stuck with things far longer than I would have. Had his reasons for forking been merely personal, he would have done so long before today.
I agree that the author certiainly had personal reasons for forking the project; he explicitly states this in his essay. What is important, however, is that he weighed the interests of his business and the community along side with his personal feelings when he made the decision. After reading his essay, I give the author a lot of respect. The very fact that he took the time to rationally explain his background, his involvement with gentoo, and his reasons for a fork give merit to his character. He is the type of man that I want to work for. I have to disagree with you when you say that he is overconfident with his importance. From the begining, the author made it clear that while he wanted to contribute to the linux community, he was not coding "just for fun." At the end of the day, he still had food to put on the table and bills to pay. As a programmer with background in embedded systems, he saw that the embedded market was a beneficial direction for gentoo to move in. He invested his time, effort, and capital to forward this venture. It is clear from his essay that the author consistently had the interests of the community as a whole in mind in addition to his on personal and business interests. After putting hours of his blood and sweat into Gentoo Embeded, he was blindsided by Daniel Robbins, completely left out of the loop. I think that it is a fair assumption of the author that he would be involved in "Gentoo Devices" spinoff. Robbins saw that there was money to be made and began to hedge the author out. Robbins runs a business, and so does the author. After many displays of Robbins' character, it became clear to the author that Robbins' was a danger to his business and to himself. I feel that the author has more than enough justification for the fork. As stated in his essay, there are clear business, technical, and cultural reasons for this. Certainly, the author has personal reasons, but they played second-chair. The author stuck with things far longer than I would have. Had his reasons for forking been merely personal, he would have done so long before today.
I'm starting to loose a lot of respect for Adobe. Last year, they sued Macromedia because Flash 5 had a "tabbed panel interface" that Adobe claims they made first. They wanted Macromedia to pay fines and stop the release of Flash 5. I'm supprised that Apple, or Xerox for that matter, doesn't sue for the invention of the graphical user interface. All of these companies now are naming their products with common words. I could make a lot of money if I started a company, developed a program called "Programmer" and sued everyone who used that word.
I've read Flatterland and I don't really like it as much as the original. In Flatland, Mr. A. Square lived on a 2D plane and was suddenly lifed into the third dimension. In Flatterland, however, this perspective of the universe is not preserved. The author invents a device called a VUE that can do everything. If the author is describing the complex number plane, then the VUE transports the main character to it. Poof! Thats it. Not much fun. Overall, I think the book does a good job of explaining scientific ideas in simple terms, but it doesn't keep with the theme and tone of the original.