I've got a dual G5 and it's 64bit... I'm not aware of a single application, for a regular person, that even uses the '64 bit-ness' much less requires it. Come to think of it I can count on one hand the number of applications, that are useful to normal people and are not games, I've found that use any of the advanced features of the G5: the 64 bit addressed memory, the 64 bit instructions, and the Alti-vec unit.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not an Intel fan and I'm generally disappointed by the whole MacIntel debacle... but then again I don't do the whole portable thing very much.
I'm just saying that between OS X and Linux normal users probably wouldn't notice much of a difference a similarly clocked 486 and single core 64bit Intel machine unless they were gaming.
Actually I've thought for a while that the US should be paying the Russians to host all of the American launches using chemical engines. Hell the EU should probably do the same thing. I wonder how much more science we could do if we subcontracted with Russians for launch vehicles?
That would free many scientists & engineers to concentrate on newer more novel ways to get into orbit that don't include sitting on top of a bomb. Really there now there isn't an advantage to have US, French, British, Russian, &tc... designed chemical rocket engines, when everyone knows they suck. Once a working alternative has been demonstrated, the Russian scientists & engineers can transition from designing & building chemical launch vehicles to building a working production version this new launch system. Given the current cost of launches... I would imagine the incentive to build and operate an alternative that is safer & cheaper would be quite high.
I've given up on the Americans actually producing an actual spacecraft capable of supporting human life... they don't have the political willpower or national vision required.
While that is a very tempting attitude to have, lately I've come to the conclusion that it's not correct.
Highly intelligent people are subject to the same human failings and can be even more difficult to convince of it (after all they are smarter than everyone else).
Oh and by the way... What makes you think that CNN has an overarching goal to turn America into a socialist nation... not watching it and only sometimes reading their web page I must be missing something.
It's interesting you say that... I worked as an automobile mechanic all the way through university and doing so amassed a sizeable tool collection (Tools are something a mechanic is expected to provide and maintain on his own).
Years later I still have all of those tools (and even occasionally use them) and was shocked when my home insurance agent insisted they be included in the insurance contract and valued...
Using the current mod system on Slashdot you are using someone else's blinders. Using the Friend / Foe system you are using a static subset.
Less than 20% of the comments around here are either meaningful, thought provoking, or relevant... I want to see those that truly are interesting and between the current mod system and the outright volume I can't in the amount of time I'm willing to spend reading Slashdot.
Slashdot is not like the Internet equivalent of a bar brawl it's more like kids talking about sex in the playground of an elementary school after a heavy rain.
Someone should develop a client side Bayesian Filter / Moderation system for Slashdot.
Think about it...
A sizable portion of people around here are not consistantly assholes so it doesn't really make sense to add them to a "foe" list. Frequently things are in strange topics so it doesn't make sense to ignore whole topics. Not all new members are trolls so modding all new members down doesn't make sense either. And the current moderation system is subjected to other people's current peeves and political leanings.
And please don't tell me to do it, I'm an embedded developer not a web developer... I have no idea where to even begin with it.
I'm not disagreeing with your main point but a quick googling reveals that Itanium sales are measured in the billions of dollars. So SOMEONE must be using them!
Tell me... If the in the US freedom of speech is so "strongly enshrined" why is it that the ranking of US Freedom of the Press has been falling? It can't possibly be all George W. Bush's fault... it's been falling since before he was in office.
If freedom of speech isn't strongly protected in Germany (or for that matter in the EU) why is Germany and the rest of the EU above the US in these rankings?
Even in America not all speech is protected, what makes you think the American ideology is so much better (or as you insinuate, perfect) when it's just a matter of social priority what is protected speech and what isn't?
David Irwing is British not Australian He was arrested here in Austria not in Germany He was not arrested "immediately detained upon ever setting foot" here He was not arrested for violating Austrian law in another country but rather for making a public speech to students in Wien. The Law he was arrested on is not some "Anti-Free Speech Law" but rather they are laws aimed at preventing the reoccurrence of previous atrocities. The US also has speech that is not protected... this isn't all that different.
Why is it that you American Nationalists always want to distort what is going on in Europe when you obviously don't have a clue?
Did you ever think that it was because there is no currently supported version of WINDOWS for the PowerPC or MIPS or ARM or Sparc... or ANYTHING that is not X86?
If you are talking about the US constitution, it's here:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, known as the Commerce Clause, empowers the United States Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
US Corporate Law is what ensures vile and reprehensible behavior as standard practice... It's known as "Profit Maximization" and it's part of the corporate charter in most western capitalist societies.
In my opinion this is the one of the most significant flaws in capitalism and in modern societies in general.
While agree with all of what you said, I feel the need to point out that Freescale has had a much better high end dual core e600 PowerPC CPU out for quite sometime.
I've really enjoyed the entire Ghost in the Shell series. The bits that attracted me appear to be the bits that turned you off... I own all of J.D. Salinger's works and enjoyed the tie-ins. I also really enjoyed the philosophical monologs and side issues. And I'm glad they got rid of the ridiculous outfit, for the most part, the Major had in the original series as I felt it detracted from the overall effect.
I also think that many anime pieces fall flat when they try to make an extensive (and often ludicrous) technical explanation.
While I enjoyed Cowboy Bebop, I'm perfectly willing to go get the entirety of a series if the complexity of plot is worthy... there is only so much ecchi & general immaturity (which I think goes hand in hand with the ability to skip episodes) I can put up with, even in animated works. And I'm put off by the recent works in the hack & slash Goth genres due primarily to the lack in artistic innovation and the apparent arms race of bigger & bigger weapons and battles.
Recently I read & then saw Ai Yazawa's "Paradise Kiss". I found this to be quite good and very enjoyable despite being far outside my normal genres and being geared towards an audience which I can barely tolerate, much less enjoy. I found myself sometimes wishing the animators had spent a little more time with a scene or two... but all in all it's still a worthy series. This has led me to "La nouvelle" manga genre but I'm having trouble finding it in German or English. Hopefuly these will be animated soon!
Oh and I don't who did it... but I saw "The Glass Ocean" at a friend's and I must say that's the best animation I saw in 2005.
No this is not a typo. This is English. SMART-1 has been launched and this new, recently tested, engine proves to be ten times more efficent.
Oh... By the way the "E" in "ESA" stands for EUROPEAN. It may amaze you to hear this... The European Space Agency is comprised of a collection of cooperating nations which includes the United Kingdom.
Given the recent goings on in US Space research funding and some of NASA's recent projects, I'm glad to see the ESA engaging in space research which is not directly related to the military.
As someone who has a ridiculous amount of money tied up in lenses, I'm shamed to admit it... but I have a lot of fun with my Holga... Enough to buy a 'boutique' pinhole which, oddly enough I don't use as much.
If you're into photography give it a whirl... you might find it very entertaining.
Unfortunately Mr. Savage failed to some fairly fundamental things into account. Then the whole thing sort of collapsed like a house of cards. Given the nature of the people the project attracted, long after the project had obviously ended they were still doing "Research" and publishing some things on the Internet, from what looked like a trailer park in Florida.
Some of the individual technologies Savaged championed still come up here on Slashdot from time to time and cause a momentary flutter but little ever comes of it.
Hah! You're right... but until Slashdot employs a Bayesian automod system I at least have to scroll by those posts.
Anyway I had thought using video encoding as a good example but then I thought of the G4. Linux practically ignores the vector extensions for the G4, actually let me restate that: I don't think Linux uses AltiVec At.All.Ever. I've seen the auto-vectoring code in GCC current it's a start but it absolutely isn't finished or even what I would call design complete. I don't know of an encoding application hand coded for the G4. So in summary I'm not aware of an encoding application that would actually use one of the more interesting facets of G4 and that basicly extends to the complete Power PC processor line.
Given that the PowerPC has been as long as it has and few applications take full advantage of it I have to presume that there are not any existing applications (That are open source, compile with GCC, and run in a POSIX environment) that take advantage of *ANY* of the interesting features of modern processors (excepting clock speed).
Now I admit the only reason I am even aware of this is that I just finished an embedded PowerPC project which used Altivec.
The IBM PowerPC 970fx is a 64 bit processor... that's supposed to be an advantage but I don't think there is a single application on my PowerMac that takes advantage of that aspect of the G5. Maybe there is one but it's doing it secretly... A CoreData app, maybe???
What about the whole dual core thing? I can tell you now that OS X doesn't use dual processors as well as everyone would like to think and it's rare that an application even attempts to be multi-processor. It's been years since I even booted a dual processor Linux box... Does Linux use multi-processors well or is it still more of "it doesn't crash" sort of thing?
Next up is multithreading... I've never in my life written a multi-threaded application, so I'm not the most knowledgeable but I do lurk on few mailing lists for open source applications that are beginning to add multithreading capability. I must say I am strongly reminded of rumors of sex when I was in high school. Everyone wants to do it, a lot people are claiming they have done it, some are claiming they are really good at it, but verifiable facts are few and far between.
Honestly I am absolutely certain that (for example) if there was a Gentoo port for a reference board for each of these CPUs and you compiled the entire system, from scratch, with the secrete squirrel magic Gentoo GCC arguments, you wouldn't have anything to do an honest test with.
So lacking an OS, a compiler, and applications which take advantage of all of these new and interesting features how does one conduct a real world test that does not just treat all of the CPUs as if they are fast 486s?
But AMD and Intel aren't the only manufacturers with interesting new chips which Linux runs on.
Freescale has the MPC8641D a dual core e600 IBM has their PowerPC 970 dual core What about Sun's UltraSparc T1?
I'm just really tired of hearing the same old Intel vs. AMD fan boy flame wars.
And what I'd really like to here about is how well the compilers and or OS is actually using these new processor features or are they just being treated like faster 486s.
Honestly I don't really see the point in wanting to run windows on a Mac but I'm sure that's because 99% of what I want to use runs on a Mac to begin with.
I'd like to see Linux run on it, if only to give me hope that Linux can be made to run on future "Trusted Computing" laden devices featuring EFI.
What I'm really surprised not to see is interest in getting OS X running on the Xbox360.
Now that could be fairly interesting...
Given a decent set of open libraries for the groovy bits.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a dual G5 and it's 64bit... I'm not aware of a single application, for a regular person, that even uses the '64 bit-ness' much less requires it. Come to think of it I can count on one hand the number of applications, that are useful to normal people and are not games, I've found that use any of the advanced features of the G5: the 64 bit addressed memory, the 64 bit instructions, and the Alti-vec unit.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not an Intel fan and I'm generally disappointed by the whole MacIntel debacle... but then again I don't do the whole portable thing very much.
I'm just saying that between OS X and Linux normal users probably wouldn't notice much of a difference a similarly clocked 486 and single core 64bit Intel machine unless they were gaming.
I'll take a 10GBASE-CX4 starter kit for my home network...
One 4 or 6 port Internet router, 2 PCI-X or PCI-E cards and 2 CX4 cables.
It's worth 700 euros... max.
Fuck, just typing this is making me bitter.
Actually I've thought for a while that the US should be paying the Russians to host all of the American launches using chemical engines.
Hell the EU should probably do the same thing. I wonder how much more science we could do if we subcontracted with Russians for launch vehicles?
That would free many scientists & engineers to concentrate on newer more novel ways to get into orbit that don't include sitting on top of a bomb. Really there now there isn't an advantage to have US, French, British, Russian, &tc... designed chemical rocket engines, when everyone knows they suck. Once a working alternative has been demonstrated, the Russian scientists & engineers can transition from designing & building chemical launch vehicles to building a working production version this new launch system. Given the current cost of launches... I would imagine the incentive to build and operate an alternative that is safer & cheaper would be quite high.
I've given up on the Americans actually producing an actual spacecraft capable of supporting human life... they don't have the political willpower or national vision required.
Bah... a true slashdotter would have just read the url.
While that is a very tempting attitude to have, lately I've come to the conclusion that it's not correct.
Highly intelligent people are subject to the same human failings and can be even more difficult to convince of it (after all they are smarter than everyone else).
Oh and by the way... What makes you think that CNN has an overarching goal to turn America into a socialist nation... not watching it and only sometimes reading their web page I must be missing something.
It's interesting you say that... I worked as an automobile mechanic all the way through university and doing so amassed a sizeable tool collection (Tools are something a mechanic is expected to provide and maintain on his own).
Years later I still have all of those tools (and even occasionally use them) and was shocked when my home insurance agent insisted they be included in the insurance contract and valued...
at a sum in excess of 30,000.
I think you are looking at it the wrong way:
Using the current mod system on Slashdot you are using someone else's blinders.
Using the Friend / Foe system you are using a static subset.
Less than 20% of the comments around here are either meaningful, thought provoking, or relevant... I want to see those that truly are interesting and between the current mod system and the outright volume I can't in the amount of time I'm willing to spend reading Slashdot.
Slashdot is not like the Internet equivalent of a bar brawl it's more like kids talking about sex in the playground of an elementary school after a heavy rain.
I've been thinking about this for a while...
Someone should develop a client side Bayesian Filter / Moderation system for Slashdot.
Think about it...
A sizable portion of people around here are not consistantly assholes so it doesn't really make sense to add them to a "foe" list.
Frequently things are in strange topics so it doesn't make sense to ignore whole topics.
Not all new members are trolls so modding all new members down doesn't make sense either.
And the current moderation system is subjected to other people's current peeves and political leanings.
And please don't tell me to do it, I'm an embedded developer not a web developer... I have no idea where to even begin with it.
Bah... outside of like Quake 9 or something, neither will the Windows users...
How many apps are even using *part* of the current crop of GPUs?
I'm not disagreeing with your main point but a quick googling reveals that Itanium sales are measured in the billions of dollars. So SOMEONE must be using them!
Tell me... If the in the US freedom of speech is so "strongly enshrined" why is it that the ranking of US Freedom of the Press has been falling? It can't possibly be all George W. Bush's fault... it's been falling since before he was in office.
If freedom of speech isn't strongly protected in Germany (or for that matter in the EU) why is Germany and the rest of the EU above the US in these rankings?
Even in America not all speech is protected, what makes you think the American ideology is so much better (or as you insinuate, perfect) when it's just a matter of social priority what is protected speech and what isn't?
You've got that completely wrong:
David Irwing is British not Australian
He was arrested here in Austria not in Germany
He was not arrested "immediately detained upon ever setting foot" here
He was not arrested for violating Austrian law in another country but rather for making a public speech to students in Wien.
The Law he was arrested on is not some "Anti-Free Speech Law" but rather they are laws aimed at preventing the reoccurrence of previous atrocities.
The US also has speech that is not protected... this isn't all that different.
Why is it that you American Nationalists always want to distort what is going on in Europe when you obviously don't have a clue?
Did you ever think that it was because there is no currently supported version of WINDOWS for the PowerPC or MIPS or ARM or Sparc... or ANYTHING that is not X86?
If you are talking about the US constitution, it's here:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, known as the Commerce Clause, empowers the United States Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
US Corporate Law is what ensures vile and reprehensible behavior as standard practice... It's known as "Profit Maximization" and it's part of the corporate charter in most western capitalist societies.
In my opinion this is the one of the most significant flaws in capitalism and in modern societies in general.
While agree with all of what you said, I feel the need to point out that Freescale has had a much better high end dual core e600 PowerPC CPU out for quite sometime.
I meant "The Glassy Ocean" http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime .php?id=1942
I've really enjoyed the entire Ghost in the Shell series. The bits that attracted me appear to be the bits that turned you off... I own all of J.D. Salinger's works and enjoyed the tie-ins. I also really enjoyed the philosophical monologs and side issues. And I'm glad they got rid of the ridiculous outfit, for the most part, the Major had in the original series as I felt it detracted from the overall effect.
I also think that many anime pieces fall flat when they try to make an extensive (and often ludicrous) technical explanation.
While I enjoyed Cowboy Bebop, I'm perfectly willing to go get the entirety of a series if the complexity of plot is worthy... there is only so much ecchi & general immaturity (which I think goes hand in hand with the ability to skip episodes) I can put up with, even in animated works. And I'm put off by the recent works in the hack & slash Goth genres due primarily to the lack in artistic innovation and the apparent arms race of bigger & bigger weapons and battles.
Recently I read & then saw Ai Yazawa's "Paradise Kiss". I found this to be quite good and very enjoyable despite being far outside my normal genres and being geared towards an audience which I can barely tolerate, much less enjoy. I found myself sometimes wishing the animators had spent a little more time with a scene or two... but all in all it's still a worthy series. This has led me to "La nouvelle" manga genre but I'm having trouble finding it in German or English. Hopefuly these will be animated soon!
Oh and I don't who did it... but I saw "The Glass Ocean" at a friend's and I must say that's the best animation I saw in 2005.
No this is not a typo. This is English. SMART-1 has been launched and this new, recently tested, engine proves to be ten times more efficent.
Oh... By the way the "E" in "ESA" stands for EUROPEAN. It may amaze you to hear this... The European Space Agency is comprised of a collection of cooperating nations which includes the United Kingdom.
Given the recent goings on in US Space research funding and some of NASA's recent projects, I'm glad to see the ESA engaging in space research which is not directly related to the military.
As someone who has a ridiculous amount of money tied up in lenses, I'm shamed to admit it... but I have a lot of fun with my Holga... Enough to buy a 'boutique' pinhole which, oddly enough I don't use as much.
If you're into photography give it a whirl... you might find it very entertaining.
Unfortunately Mr. Savage failed to some fairly fundamental things into account. Then the whole thing sort of collapsed like a house of cards. Given the nature of the people the project attracted, long after the project had obviously ended they were still doing "Research" and publishing some things on the Internet, from what looked like a trailer park in Florida.
Some of the individual technologies Savaged championed still come up here on Slashdot from time to time and cause a momentary flutter but little ever comes of it.
I'm surprised how many people didn't get this...
It's because they'll throw rocks back at us!
Hah! You're right... but until Slashdot employs a Bayesian automod system I at least have to scroll by those posts.
Anyway I had thought using video encoding as a good example but then I thought of the G4. Linux practically ignores the vector extensions for the G4, actually let me restate that: I don't think Linux uses AltiVec At.All.Ever.
I've seen the auto-vectoring code in GCC current it's a start but it absolutely isn't finished or even what I would call design complete.
I don't know of an encoding application hand coded for the G4. So in summary I'm not aware of an encoding application that would actually use one of the more interesting facets of G4 and that basicly extends to the complete Power PC processor line.
Given that the PowerPC has been as long as it has and few applications take full advantage of it I have to presume that there are not any existing applications (That are open source, compile with GCC, and run in a POSIX environment) that take advantage of *ANY* of the interesting features of modern processors (excepting clock speed).
Now I admit the only reason I am even aware of this is that I just finished an embedded PowerPC project which used Altivec.
The IBM PowerPC 970fx is a 64 bit processor... that's supposed to be an advantage but I don't think there is a single application on my PowerMac that takes advantage of that aspect of the G5. Maybe there is one but it's doing it secretly... A CoreData app, maybe???
What about the whole dual core thing? I can tell you now that OS X doesn't use dual processors as well as everyone would like to think and it's rare that an application even attempts to be multi-processor. It's been years since I even booted a dual processor Linux box... Does Linux use multi-processors well or is it still more of "it doesn't crash" sort of thing?
Next up is multithreading... I've never in my life written a multi-threaded application, so I'm not the most knowledgeable but I do lurk on few mailing lists for open source applications that are beginning to add multithreading capability. I must say I am strongly reminded of rumors of sex when I was in high school. Everyone wants to do it, a lot people are claiming they have done it, some are claiming they are really good at it, but verifiable facts are few and far between.
Honestly I am absolutely certain that (for example) if there was a Gentoo port for a reference board for each of these CPUs and you compiled the entire system, from scratch, with the secrete squirrel magic Gentoo GCC arguments, you wouldn't have anything to do an honest test with.
So lacking an OS, a compiler, and applications which take advantage of all of these new and interesting features how does one conduct a real world test that does not just treat all of the CPUs as if they are fast 486s?
But AMD and Intel aren't the only manufacturers with interesting new chips which Linux runs on.
Freescale has the MPC8641D a dual core e600
IBM has their PowerPC 970 dual core
What about Sun's UltraSparc T1?
I'm just really tired of hearing the same old Intel vs. AMD fan boy flame wars.
And what I'd really like to here about is how well the compilers and or OS is actually using these new processor features or are they just being treated like faster 486s.
Honestly I don't really see the point in wanting to run windows on a Mac but I'm sure that's because 99% of what I want to use runs on a Mac to begin with.
I'd like to see Linux run on it, if only to give me hope that Linux can be made to run on future "Trusted Computing" laden devices featuring EFI.
What I'm really surprised not to see is interest in getting OS X running on the Xbox360.
Now that could be fairly interesting...
Given a decent set of open libraries for the groovy bits.
I have the impression that it would take thousands of judges to grant that many warrants.