Almost none of the games I like to play are available on a console. The ones that are have far too limited choices. Try playing a game ported from the PC where every key on the keyboard was a command, for example. The console version gets downright frustrating to use because the input is so limited through just the gamepad.
Console games are fun, but the games that are available on them fall into just a few categories, few of which I find entertaining.
The only difference being you could program a home computer, and most people did, even if it was just something like:
Exactly. A little knowledge is a bad thing. These days, everyone with a console thinks they know all about computer architecture and computer programming when, at most, the most technical thing they've done is take the case off their XBox to mod it.
For example, every day I see tons of people talking about how 1337 it is to overclock when they have no clue as to what really goes on inside the CPU. They think that the clock generator is just a gas pedal or something. These are the same people who complain that whatever OS is so unstable that it crashes on them 10 times a day. Also, these are the people that think that going to 64-bit will speed up everything they do by 2X because 64 = 2 * 32.
Actually, that quote makes me think much less of the guy. Basically, he's using things that are 'tickling to the ear' to promote his own agenda. Microsoft has already been pretty much stopped in their tracks as far as "monopoly" is concerned (at least slowed down a lot by the EU and others). Witness the browser usages and the adoption of other OSs like Linux and OS X (Microsoft's market share is already slipping across the board).
Anyone who is now claiming that they are "preventing the further spread of the Microsoft monopoly" is just latching on to the tail end of a popular train that has already left the station in order for some of the trend to rub off on himself ni order to attempt to gain favor.
Since when does the Press care about what they publish? Case in point: the Press hears that the US military is tracking OBL by his use of a satellite phone. No further calls from the phone are ever made. Perhaps if the Press would have thought about what they were doing...
True... but I would argue that the quality of "unqualified amateurs" back then was much greater than "unqualified amateurs" of today. I mean, really, *anyone* can go out and buy a computer today. Back then, having a computer wasn't the norm. Only the *real* geeks had computers back then, not just every Tom, Dick, and Harry like today. Many/most of them were practically engineers (even if self-taught).
It's been a long time, but I think that was probably due to a protocol switchover between "short" and "long" messages. IIRC, the short messages would send the headers and the data all at once, which may require additional copying and buffering on the receiver side. Long messages simply sent an address and a length to pull over and the DMA engines did the work. There may have also been an issue with alignment (it's been so long I might be confusing the T3D with the T3E) so that DMA transfers had to be 64-bit aligned. Any misaligned buffers had to have potential heading and trailing pieces of the buffer sent over seperately so that the two buffers could both be aligned properly. I think that was the T3D but it might have been the T3E as well.
I did some work on the Cray T3D and T3E and liked them fairly well. There were some "tricks" to the T3D but the T3E fixed them and was a decent machine.
Yeah.... you can spend all your time moving a mouse around on a screen, or you can add context menus that are available by right button. It's essentially the same. You have to provide context menus in the menubar depending on what you have selected. With right click pop up menus, you don't even have to have the item selected.
Spending my time moving a mouse pointer around the screen to get to things that should be "at my right hand" is not my idea of good functionality or good design.
It works both ways though... If you implement something on Linux with it, the app will probably run on Windows too. Both sides will benefit. Who will benefit more though? I'd probably think Linux would benefit more but that's my first reaction. I'd need to think about it more... (for example, many research projects are Linux native and Windows as an afterthought... if any good research projects started with Mono instead, Microsoft would get benefit from any "breakthroughs" that would normally hit Linux first).
Yeah... it'd make you think about what the term "friend" means. I'd have no problems telling my friends that I couldn't give them a copy of something because I was under NDA on it. In fact, they probably wouldn't even ask. Of course, my friends and I have been under many NDAs in the past and we all know what is expected of us.
I don't get these "MS will change.NET to make it incompatible" conspiracy theories. Why go through the trouble of getting the stuff down as an ECMA standard (open for anyone to use), throw tons of money at it to get practically your whole developer base on it, just to throw it away. They would strand their own developer base which pretty much goes against everything that they've done in the past years. I'm sure you've seen the Balmer video of "Developers! Developers! Developers!". If they throw away their developers, who is writing anything on their platform (which is what keeps the platform going).
Have you priced thin clients? There's not much difference between getting (a modern) one of them and a regular PC and simply network booting it.
The main reason to go to thin clients is saving time and money on administration.
Thin clients won't be viable in the home until broadband is a bit faster (10Mb at least I'd think). Even then, as you state, home users will want to play games and stuff and those don't translate to thin clients very well.
Mostly hype right now. Most people have no clue what 64-bit buys them over 32-bit other than it's the latest thing from AMD and it's ubar!!!1!1!
Is there much performance gain?
This greatly depends on what you are doing. Some things (like encryption, GIS, and other application areas) can get good speedups. Most things will get marginal to no speedup. A few things will actually slow down in 64-bit mode (code that uses lots of pointers may slow down because pointers now take up 2x the amount of cache than in 32-bit mode, leaving less room in cache... this may be a problem for Java, C#, and similar systems).
Other obvious benefits are to programs that like lots of memory. Databases love memory so can benefit at least as much by 64-bit addressing as for using 64-bit processing instructions, for example.
Because from what I understand not all programs use 64-bit instructions yet.
Depends. On a 64-bit OS (personally, I use SuSE 9.2 AMD64) there are many applications that are native x86_64 compiled. On Windows, you need to be running Windows XP64 to have any.
Why learn math when you can download a program to do it for you?
Why learn how to write papers when you can just download someone else's paper (hopefully turned in somewhere across the country) on the same subject and turn it in as your own?
it just wants other projects to be able to be compatible if they choose.
Why does it care? Why can't the marketplace settle the issue? What other projects? If they don't like Word, use something else and don't deal with Word formats, for example. Why do they have to be compatible?
And... under a closed source license, an OSS project CAN link to a binary-only library (stripped if necessary) to include the functionality into their code. Nothing would prevent this. There is no *need* for anyone to see the code as long as the API is open and available in some form (by paying for it). All Microsoft has to do is provide a DLL and/or so for the API. Why does it have to be "OSS Compatible". What does that even mean?
Technically, it is available to anyone, or any group, willing to pay the licensing fee. I think the EU is overstepping its bounds by requiring the information to be completely public. They are basically pandering to their own OSS projects and pushing their own agenda. They obviously want the APIs to be open so that they can fund OSS groups to compete with Microsoft. It's an understandable line of thinking, but that doesn't make it not based on some agenda that benefits their own businesses (which, of course, is a natural thing for them to do).
The next step for the EU is simply to declare that MS has to release all of its source for the OS into GPL licensing to close the deal. Since they are a legal body, they could simply declare that Microsoft has to go completely GPL or they can't sell Windows in Europe anymore... what could anyone then do about that?
If the code that was written for the GPL suite was similar to what he does at work, there might be a conflict of interest issue, which, at the very least, can get the guy fired and possibly sued. IANAL, but it's pretty bad ground to be standing on.
Slashdot Mirror
Almost none of the games I like to play are available on a console. The ones that are have far too limited choices. Try playing a game ported from the PC where every key on the keyboard was a command, for example. The console version gets downright frustrating to use because the input is so limited through just the gamepad.
Console games are fun, but the games that are available on them fall into just a few categories, few of which I find entertaining.
The only difference being you could program a home computer, and most people did, even if it was just something like:
Exactly. A little knowledge is a bad thing. These days, everyone with a console thinks they know all about computer architecture and computer programming when, at most, the most technical thing they've done is take the case off their XBox to mod it.
For example, every day I see tons of people talking about how 1337 it is to overclock when they have no clue as to what really goes on inside the CPU. They think that the clock generator is just a gas pedal or something. These are the same people who complain that whatever OS is so unstable that it crashes on them 10 times a day. Also, these are the people that think that going to 64-bit will speed up everything they do by 2X because 64 = 2 * 32.
Actually, that quote makes me think much less of the guy. Basically, he's using things that are 'tickling to the ear' to promote his own agenda. Microsoft has already been pretty much stopped in their tracks as far as "monopoly" is concerned (at least slowed down a lot by the EU and others). Witness the browser usages and the adoption of other OSs like Linux and OS X (Microsoft's market share is already slipping across the board).
Anyone who is now claiming that they are "preventing the further spread of the Microsoft monopoly" is just latching on to the tail end of a popular train that has already left the station in order for some of the trend to rub off on himself ni order to attempt to gain favor.
"We don't get 'French Benefits?'" :)
Since when does the Press care about what they publish? Case in point: the Press hears that the US military is tracking OBL by his use of a satellite phone. No further calls from the phone are ever made. Perhaps if the Press would have thought about what they were doing...
duel/dual
then/than
begs the question/raises the question
Athalon/Athlon
True... but I would argue that the quality of "unqualified amateurs" back then was much greater than "unqualified amateurs" of today. I mean, really, *anyone* can go out and buy a computer today. Back then, having a computer wasn't the norm. Only the *real* geeks had computers back then, not just every Tom, Dick, and Harry like today. Many/most of them were practically engineers (even if self-taught).
It's been a long time, but I think that was probably due to a protocol switchover between "short" and "long" messages. IIRC, the short messages would send the headers and the data all at once, which may require additional copying and buffering on the receiver side. Long messages simply sent an address and a length to pull over and the DMA engines did the work. There may have also been an issue with alignment (it's been so long I might be confusing the T3D with the T3E) so that DMA transfers had to be 64-bit aligned. Any misaligned buffers had to have potential heading and trailing pieces of the buffer sent over seperately so that the two buffers could both be aligned properly. I think that was the T3D but it might have been the T3E as well.
Yep :) The T3D I worked on had 21064As, IIRC. The T3D has 21164As, IIRC. Here's a link to the paper I wrote about my work on the T3E.
I did some work on the Cray T3D and T3E and liked them fairly well. There were some "tricks" to the T3D but the T3E fixed them and was a decent machine.
Well... I'd do it like this:
Start->Run (cmd)
In cmd, I'd
] cd Desktop
] mkdir MyNewFolder
] exit
but that's me.
Yeah.... you can spend all your time moving a mouse around on a screen, or you can add context menus that are available by right button. It's essentially the same. You have to provide context menus in the menubar depending on what you have selected. With right click pop up menus, you don't even have to have the item selected.
Spending my time moving a mouse pointer around the screen to get to things that should be "at my right hand" is not my idea of good functionality or good design.
It works both ways though... If you implement something on Linux with it, the app will probably run on Windows too. Both sides will benefit. Who will benefit more though? I'd probably think Linux would benefit more but that's my first reaction. I'd need to think about it more... (for example, many research projects are Linux native and Windows as an afterthought... if any good research projects started with Mono instead, Microsoft would get benefit from any "breakthroughs" that would normally hit Linux first).
Yeah... it'd make you think about what the term "friend" means. I'd have no problems telling my friends that I couldn't give them a copy of something because I was under NDA on it. In fact, they probably wouldn't even ask. Of course, my friends and I have been under many NDAs in the past and we all know what is expected of us.
I don't get these "MS will change .NET to make it incompatible" conspiracy theories. Why go through the trouble of getting the stuff down as an ECMA standard (open for anyone to use), throw tons of money at it to get practically your whole developer base on it, just to throw it away. They would strand their own developer base which pretty much goes against everything that they've done in the past years. I'm sure you've seen the Balmer video of "Developers! Developers! Developers!". If they throw away their developers, who is writing anything on their platform (which is what keeps the platform going).
It just doesn't add up.
Have you priced thin clients? There's not much difference between getting (a modern) one of them and a regular PC and simply network booting it.
The main reason to go to thin clients is saving time and money on administration.
Thin clients won't be viable in the home until broadband is a bit faster (10Mb at least I'd think). Even then, as you state, home users will want to play games and stuff and those don't translate to thin clients very well.
Ummm... why do you think that the Opterons and the new Intel parts aren't 64-bit?
Good thing it isn't "late last year" then. There have been a number of benchmarks already run on the Intel 64-bit parts.
:)
(Makes me thing of someone at Intel saying: Gaze now upon this fully functional 64-bit processor)
Why is 64-bit so desirable?
Mostly hype right now. Most people have no clue what 64-bit buys them over 32-bit other than it's the latest thing from AMD and it's ubar!!!1!1!
Is there much performance gain?
This greatly depends on what you are doing. Some things (like encryption, GIS, and other application areas) can get good speedups. Most things will get marginal to no speedup. A few things will actually slow down in 64-bit mode (code that uses lots of pointers may slow down because pointers now take up 2x the amount of cache than in 32-bit mode, leaving less room in cache... this may be a problem for Java, C#, and similar systems).
Other obvious benefits are to programs that like lots of memory. Databases love memory so can benefit at least as much by 64-bit addressing as for using 64-bit processing instructions, for example.
Because from what I understand not all programs use 64-bit instructions yet.
Depends. On a 64-bit OS (personally, I use SuSE 9.2 AMD64) there are many applications that are native x86_64 compiled. On Windows, you need to be running Windows XP64 to have any.
Why learn math when you can download a program to do it for you?
Why learn how to write papers when you can just download someone else's paper (hopefully turned in somewhere across the country) on the same subject and turn it in as your own?
it just wants other projects to be able to be compatible if they choose.
Why does it care? Why can't the marketplace settle the issue? What other projects? If they don't like Word, use something else and don't deal with Word formats, for example. Why do they have to be compatible?
And... under a closed source license, an OSS project CAN link to a binary-only library (stripped if necessary) to include the functionality into their code. Nothing would prevent this. There is no *need* for anyone to see the code as long as the API is open and available in some form (by paying for it). All Microsoft has to do is provide a DLL and/or so for the API. Why does it have to be "OSS Compatible". What does that even mean?
Technically, it is available to anyone, or any group, willing to pay the licensing fee. I think the EU is overstepping its bounds by requiring the information to be completely public. They are basically pandering to their own OSS projects and pushing their own agenda. They obviously want the APIs to be open so that they can fund OSS groups to compete with Microsoft. It's an understandable line of thinking, but that doesn't make it not based on some agenda that benefits their own businesses (which, of course, is a natural thing for them to do).
The next step for the EU is simply to declare that MS has to release all of its source for the OS into GPL licensing to close the deal. Since they are a legal body, they could simply declare that Microsoft has to go completely GPL or they can't sell Windows in Europe anymore... what could anyone then do about that?
I did the same. The only time I touched the CD was to take it out of the original box into the caddy. Pretty safe that way.
What about DVDTypeR... surely it's the fastest!
Other candidates...
DVD%R (also known as DVD mod R for the VB folks)...
DVD&R
DVD|R
DVD^R
If the code that was written for the GPL suite was similar to what he does at work, there might be a conflict of interest issue, which, at the very least, can get the guy fired and possibly sued. IANAL, but it's pretty bad ground to be standing on.