Yup, you can buy servers/blades from Dell that have RedHat installed on them. Sounds like reasonable business in that he is keeping one of his suppliers afloat. Whether it will actually be a good investment or not, only time will tell.
Which non-standard components are those? The last time I bought a Dell desktop (granted, this was several years ago), I had no problems buying off-the-shelf components to put into it. However, the motherboard/powersupply tend to be custom to Dell so you can't just change those two things out, but the rest seemed fine (video, HDD, PCI cards, etc.).
Define "lose overall". With asymmetric processors, you have to worry about compiling the code multiple times (one for each architecture), loading the right executables onto the right processors, and having all the code in-place to deal with communications between different architectures. That's a lot of work.
I have to wonder if the next step will be asymmetrical multi processors. I could see adding a few low speed, low heat cpus to handle things like virus scanning, firewalls, TCP/IP, and other small light weight house keeping tasks to free up the main CPUs to run the big honking nasty tasks like Doom4.
Like a step back to 1970 or so? Back then, it was *very* common for a machine to have a CentralPU and (many) I/O Processors (which weren't the same hardware as the CPU). For example, I could run a program on an old UniSys machine and use, like, 0.00001 second of CPU time but like 1.0 seconds of I/O time if I were doing a lot of disk/tape access. The nifty thing was that the system handled it all. I just wrote in Fortran (or C) just like any other system. The IO calls 'did the magic' to use the IO Processors without my having to deal with it.
Multiprocessor machines (along with AsymmetricMultiProcessing) have been around a *long* time. They're just now making it into the commodity desktop world.
Yeah... unfortunately this is reflected in many other things...
there vs. their vs. they're duel vs. dual then vs. than
and the list goes on for quite a while.
When you do something regularly, it becomes your norm. Typing in idiot-speak and before long, idiot-speak is your norm, not something you use in the exception cases of when you have to text your friend about what color your new pair of shoes are.
Actually, every one of your "assumptions" are incorrect. There are times when I'm not available as well. For instance, if I'm in a meeting, in a movie theatre watching a movie, or I'm driving. My friends know that if they call and don't get me on the cell phone to call my home and leave a message on my answering machine. If they want to contact me faster, they can call back in 30 minutes or so or even better yet, send me email. Another trick, if and only if your message is urgent, is to call and let the phone ring until it is cut off multiple times. I will answer if I have my phone turned on in those cases, but it had better be urgent.
You see, my life doesn't revolve around my cell phone. It's a tool so that others can have more immediate access to me regardless of geographic location (as long as there are cell towers nearby). I have zero problems with turning my cell phone off and/or not answering it when it rings if it is lower priority than what I'm currently doing.
I don't use phones to do that. I barely even suffer to keep a cell phone just so people can talk to me. If I want to text message someone, I do it from my computer where I do have a full sized keyboard.
And if I'm away from my keyboard and all I have is a phone, then *why the hell don't I just call them on the damn thing and say what I want to say to them in 30 seconds rather than typing one character every 5 seconds for the next 10 minutes to them?*
How many of those who work for large companies as a "day job" are actually hired to work on the Linux kernel as their "day job"?
How many of them don't work for IBM or some other company that have a huge vested interest in the Linux kernel (SuSE/Novell, RedHat, etc)
How many of these people work on non-OSS for a day job and basically are subsidising OSS through non-OSS work?
If any work for non-OSS companies, how many of those companies know that this is going on?
If any work for non-OSS companies, how many can actually be working in a conflict of interest situation?
My theory has always been that few people actually work and make a living doing OSS. Most work for non-OSS/commercial/proprietary companies and are basically subsidized by these companies. Also, if these people aren't already independently wealthy, they wouldn't be able to feed themselves or their families by their work in OSS.
Some of us do consulting/contract work outside of what our "day jobs" are. I was doing this before I started working where I am and worked this into my contract. Outside of the office, unless I'm working at home on "day job" work, what I do is my own (or whoever is paying me to write it for them).
I'm a touch typist and what I think just goes to my hands. It's actually harder (and takes longer) for me to type "u" to mean "you" than it does to type "you" because I have to throw my brain into idiot mode and override my normal typing skills to get idiot-speak onto the screen.
Strangely enough, that's what the vast majority of users want it to be too. I don't know any non-programmer, non-geek, or non-geek-wannabe who actually wants to use a command line, for example. Heck, most of them can't even touch type.
Well... it's a definite reminder of the past. Comparing the Intel part to the AMD part, from what I've seen on review sites, the AMD part may be 10% faster (much less on all but very few benchmarks) but costs over 2X as much. It isn't a matter of which design is more elegant or beautiful, it's about what you get for your $$$.
I have been foaming at the mouth to get a dual core AMD ever since they started talking about them actually being made. However, at the price point they are likely to be at for the next year, I'll wait. Heck, comparing a dual-core AMD machine to a dual-CPU Opteron machine (CPU + motherboard since the rest is almost equal except for maybe memory costs), for about $100 more you can get the dual CPU machine (dual-core AMD costs about the same as two seperate CPUs and Asus makes a dual socket motherboard they sell for about $250 while a good S939 or single socket S940 board is around $150). For some problems (ones that need lots of memory bandwidth) the dual socket would win.
Anyway, I know why AMD is pricing things as they are, but I don't have to be happy about it and I don't have to buy one until the prices make sense to me. I'll wait until their prices are more sane to buy. If everyone else thinks like I do, AMD isn't going to be selling many except to either the people who need them no matter the cost and the people who want them simply because it makes their ePenis bigger.
Heh... Even though most of the population in more developed countries are literate, the quality of the output is pretty bad. Just scan/. and see all the bad grammar, spelling, and just general stupidity evident from many posts here.
So, those who were actually skilled at reading/writing (scribes) were driven out of business and replaced with poorer quality workers, in effect, who work for free doing their own reading/writing.
It's good that various individuals can read/write but some probably shouldn't be allowed to do so;)
It's a placebo. There's nothing wrong with something 'making you happy' but you have to remember it's a placebo. Using this optimization and then crowing about it, for example, is just silly. Be happy all you want but don't think (and claim) that it's more "real" than it is.
Except there really isn't such thing as RISC any more. Go look up the number of ops that a PowerPC supports, for example, and compare that to the number a Pentium 4 supports (include both Altivec and SSE2). You might be surprised at what you find (Spoiler: PowerPC has more opcodes than Pentium 4 x86). This might have changed since the adoption of x86-64, though, I haven't counted since that addition.
Load/store vs. memory/memory is the best comparison terms.
I think all the compiler did was during the startup runtime check to see what the current processor supported (like MMX, SSE, etc.), it didn't identify the AMD part as something it could run on so it exited.
Itanium is something different. It isn't related to x86 at all. Intel may have wanted everyone to migrate to the new ISA eventually, but it wasn't an extention to x86.
It's an 8% CPU clock bump... 2.5GHz -> 2.7GHz and a new DVDR (DVDRW?). 8% is small.
Id take a true dual cpu machine over dual 'core' any day.
Good thing you can have both or either in the x86 world (even a true dual CPU machine where each CPU is dual core even:)) There are cases where dual-core will be faster than dual-chip (see the recent benchmarks of the AMD Opterons published in the last week or so). There are times when dual-chip is faster, for example: if each chip has its own memory bank and a NUMA aware OS and you put the data in the right banks.
Not wanting dual-cores simply sounds like sour grapes.
Not necessarily. If he is logged in and running a script that wants to map a network drive to D$ on 127.0.0.1 (or whatever), it will eventually attempt to log in as the logged in user (standard Windows behavior). Assuming that he was logged in as Administrator (if someone had delusions of grandeur like this guy seems to have, he would have been logged in as Administrator), he should be able to delete files from there just fine.
After posting, I thought that I may have been going off on a tangent with the Caterpillar discussion. However, I think it lends insight into his character, which does have some relevance when discussing his views on other subjects.
Point taken. I made a poor choice in deciding which words to get my point across. While I would agree that his ideas are quite simple, I would argue about being quite "profound". I would say that they are idealistic and, while nice to think about, aren't necessarily a good thing on the whole.
I think RMS has lived his whole career in academia. This undoubtedly has had some effect on his views.
Checking out his homepage shows a lot of insight into his character. One item that stood out is the first bullet under his "Long term action items". If he's willing to boycott Caterpillar for those reasons, why not boycott AM because their fab machines use dangerous chemicals that pollute the environment. We should stop all chip production and destroy all ICs, too. That, by the way, would solve his software issues as well since there'd be no computers. But hey... I guess some evils you can live with because you like them (computers) but some you don't want to live with.
Doesn't matter. Doing good in one field doesn't give you carte blache expert status in every field. I wouldn't trust RMS to do open heart surgery on anyone, for example. One of the biggest/best strengths anyone can have is to know when they aren't an expert and to defer to others. Just because he is great in software doesn't make him an expert in economics (this isn't to say that he can't be an expert in economics, I just highly doubt it). Similarly, anyone who bestows trusted status on someone in all things simply because that person did something good in one thing is also a fool.
RMS is perfectly capable of being a brilliant programmer and a complete idiot, just like anyone else. I would be surprised if there wasn't at least one subject where my knowledge in the subject exceeds his just as there are subjects that he has more knowledge than I do. He is just a man. He is not a god.
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Yup, you can buy servers/blades from Dell that have RedHat installed on them. Sounds like reasonable business in that he is keeping one of his suppliers afloat. Whether it will actually be a good investment or not, only time will tell.
Which non-standard components are those? The last time I bought a Dell desktop (granted, this was several years ago), I had no problems buying off-the-shelf components to put into it. However, the motherboard/powersupply tend to be custom to Dell so you can't just change those two things out, but the rest seemed fine (video, HDD, PCI cards, etc.).
Define "lose overall". With asymmetric processors, you have to worry about compiling the code multiple times (one for each architecture), loading the right executables onto the right processors, and having all the code in-place to deal with communications between different architectures. That's a lot of work.
I have to wonder if the next step will be asymmetrical multi processors. I could see adding a few low speed, low heat cpus to handle things like virus scanning, firewalls, TCP/IP, and other small light weight house keeping tasks to free up the main CPUs to run the big honking nasty tasks like Doom4.
Like a step back to 1970 or so? Back then, it was *very* common for a machine to have a CentralPU and (many) I/O Processors (which weren't the same hardware as the CPU). For example, I could run a program on an old UniSys machine and use, like, 0.00001 second of CPU time but like 1.0 seconds of I/O time if I were doing a lot of disk/tape access. The nifty thing was that the system handled it all. I just wrote in Fortran (or C) just like any other system. The IO calls 'did the magic' to use the IO Processors without my having to deal with it.
Multiprocessor machines (along with AsymmetricMultiProcessing) have been around a *long* time. They're just now making it into the commodity desktop world.
Yeah... unfortunately this is reflected in many other things...
there vs. their vs. they're
duel vs. dual
then vs. than
and the list goes on for quite a while.
When you do something regularly, it becomes your norm. Typing in idiot-speak and before long, idiot-speak is your norm, not something you use in the exception cases of when you have to text your friend about what color your new pair of shoes are.
Actually, every one of your "assumptions" are incorrect. There are times when I'm not available as well. For instance, if I'm in a meeting, in a movie theatre watching a movie, or I'm driving. My friends know that if they call and don't get me on the cell phone to call my home and leave a message on my answering machine. If they want to contact me faster, they can call back in 30 minutes or so or even better yet, send me email. Another trick, if and only if your message is urgent, is to call and let the phone ring until it is cut off multiple times. I will answer if I have my phone turned on in those cases, but it had better be urgent.
You see, my life doesn't revolve around my cell phone. It's a tool so that others can have more immediate access to me regardless of geographic location (as long as there are cell towers nearby). I have zero problems with turning my cell phone off and/or not answering it when it rings if it is lower priority than what I'm currently doing.
I don't use phones to do that. I barely even suffer to keep a cell phone just so people can talk to me. If I want to text message someone, I do it from my computer where I do have a full sized keyboard.
And if I'm away from my keyboard and all I have is a phone, then *why the hell don't I just call them on the damn thing and say what I want to say to them in 30 seconds rather than typing one character every 5 seconds for the next 10 minutes to them?*
Sometimes you gotta use some common sense.
How many of those who work for large companies as a "day job" are actually hired to work on the Linux kernel as their "day job"?
How many of them don't work for IBM or some other company that have a huge vested interest in the Linux kernel (SuSE/Novell, RedHat, etc)
How many of these people work on non-OSS for a day job and basically are subsidising OSS through non-OSS work?
If any work for non-OSS companies, how many of those companies know that this is going on?
If any work for non-OSS companies, how many can actually be working in a conflict of interest situation?
My theory has always been that few people actually work and make a living doing OSS. Most work for non-OSS/commercial/proprietary companies and are basically subsidized by these companies. Also, if these people aren't already independently wealthy, they wouldn't be able to feed themselves or their families by their work in OSS.
Some of us do consulting/contract work outside of what our "day jobs" are. I was doing this before I started working where I am and worked this into my contract. Outside of the office, unless I'm working at home on "day job" work, what I do is my own (or whoever is paying me to write it for them).
I'm a touch typist and what I think just goes to my hands. It's actually harder (and takes longer) for me to type "u" to mean "you" than it does to type "you" because I have to throw my brain into idiot mode and override my normal typing skills to get idiot-speak onto the screen.
The privacy nuts that frequent this board think this is cool but will complain when they see a camera watching the floor of a store?
Strangely enough, that's what the vast majority of users want it to be too. I don't know any non-programmer, non-geek, or non-geek-wannabe who actually wants to use a command line, for example. Heck, most of them can't even touch type.
...and a socket upgrade. My Athlon64s are S754. Dual core A64s will initially use S939 and dual core Opterons use S940.
Well... it's a definite reminder of the past. Comparing the Intel part to the AMD part, from what I've seen on review sites, the AMD part may be 10% faster (much less on all but very few benchmarks) but costs over 2X as much. It isn't a matter of which design is more elegant or beautiful, it's about what you get for your $$$.
I have been foaming at the mouth to get a dual core AMD ever since they started talking about them actually being made. However, at the price point they are likely to be at for the next year, I'll wait. Heck, comparing a dual-core AMD machine to a dual-CPU Opteron machine (CPU + motherboard since the rest is almost equal except for maybe memory costs), for about $100 more you can get the dual CPU machine (dual-core AMD costs about the same as two seperate CPUs and Asus makes a dual socket motherboard they sell for about $250 while a good S939 or single socket S940 board is around $150). For some problems (ones that need lots of memory bandwidth) the dual socket would win.
Anyway, I know why AMD is pricing things as they are, but I don't have to be happy about it and I don't have to buy one until the prices make sense to me. I'll wait until their prices are more sane to buy. If everyone else thinks like I do, AMD isn't going to be selling many except to either the people who need them no matter the cost and the people who want them simply because it makes their ePenis bigger.
Heh... Even though most of the population in more developed countries are literate, the quality of the output is pretty bad. Just scan /. and see all the bad grammar, spelling, and just general stupidity evident from many posts here.
;)
So, those who were actually skilled at reading/writing (scribes) were driven out of business and replaced with poorer quality workers, in effect, who work for free doing their own reading/writing.
It's good that various individuals can read/write but some probably shouldn't be allowed to do so
It's a placebo. There's nothing wrong with something 'making you happy' but you have to remember it's a placebo. Using this optimization and then crowing about it, for example, is just silly. Be happy all you want but don't think (and claim) that it's more "real" than it is.
Except there really isn't such thing as RISC any more. Go look up the number of ops that a PowerPC supports, for example, and compare that to the number a Pentium 4 supports (include both Altivec and SSE2). You might be surprised at what you find (Spoiler: PowerPC has more opcodes than Pentium 4 x86). This might have changed since the adoption of x86-64, though, I haven't counted since that addition.
Load/store vs. memory/memory is the best comparison terms.
I think all the compiler did was during the startup runtime check to see what the current processor supported (like MMX, SSE, etc.), it didn't identify the AMD part as something it could run on so it exited.
Itanium is something different. It isn't related to x86 at all. Intel may have wanted everyone to migrate to the new ISA eventually, but it wasn't an extention to x86.
Kinda like that 640KB "quote"...
It's an 8% CPU clock bump... 2.5GHz -> 2.7GHz and a new DVDR (DVDRW?). 8% is small.
:)) There are cases where dual-core will be faster than dual-chip (see the recent benchmarks of the AMD Opterons published in the last week or so). There are times when dual-chip is faster, for example: if each chip has its own memory bank and a NUMA aware OS and you put the data in the right banks.
Id take a true dual cpu machine over dual 'core' any day.
Good thing you can have both or either in the x86 world (even a true dual CPU machine where each CPU is dual core even
Not wanting dual-cores simply sounds like sour grapes.
Not necessarily. If he is logged in and running a script that wants to map a network drive to D$ on 127.0.0.1 (or whatever), it will eventually attempt to log in as the logged in user (standard Windows behavior). Assuming that he was logged in as Administrator (if someone had delusions of grandeur like this guy seems to have, he would have been logged in as Administrator), he should be able to delete files from there just fine.
After posting, I thought that I may have been going off on a tangent with the Caterpillar discussion. However, I think it lends insight into his character, which does have some relevance when discussing his views on other subjects.
Point taken. I made a poor choice in deciding which words to get my point across. While I would agree that his ideas are quite simple, I would argue about being quite "profound". I would say that they are idealistic and, while nice to think about, aren't necessarily a good thing on the whole.
I think RMS has lived his whole career in academia. This undoubtedly has had some effect on his views.
Checking out his homepage shows a lot of insight into his character. One item that stood out is the first bullet under his "Long term action items". If he's willing to boycott Caterpillar for those reasons, why not boycott AM because their fab machines use dangerous chemicals that pollute the environment. We should stop all chip production and destroy all ICs, too. That, by the way, would solve his software issues as well since there'd be no computers. But hey... I guess some evils you can live with because you like them (computers) but some you don't want to live with.
Doesn't matter. Doing good in one field doesn't give you carte blache expert status in every field. I wouldn't trust RMS to do open heart surgery on anyone, for example. One of the biggest/best strengths anyone can have is to know when they aren't an expert and to defer to others. Just because he is great in software doesn't make him an expert in economics (this isn't to say that he can't be an expert in economics, I just highly doubt it). Similarly, anyone who bestows trusted status on someone in all things simply because that person did something good in one thing is also a fool.
RMS is perfectly capable of being a brilliant programmer and a complete idiot, just like anyone else. I would be surprised if there wasn't at least one subject where my knowledge in the subject exceeds his just as there are subjects that he has more knowledge than I do. He is just a man. He is not a god.