Actually, most users wouldn't know what to do with this kind of installation screen. They just want to press one button labeled "GO" and have all of it set up. You give users choices that they neither understand nor want to take the time to understand. This frustrates them and leads to more problems down the road when they didn't install something they really wanted installed.
This confirms the Commission's preliminary conclusion that Microsoft's tying of Windows Media Player to the Windows operating system weakens competition on the merits, stifles product innovation, and ultimately reduces consumer choice.
Well... here is my take...
Users like one-stop shopping. You buy a computer, you can surf the web, you can listen to music, you can play games, you can do all that stuff without having to first hook up to the Internet to download even *more* stuff or buy even *more* stuff to make it work like you expect that it should.
Few things I have ever seen infuriate a customer more than buying something and then realizing that what they bought was incomplete and that they have to get/buy even more stuff to make it do what they want.
The inclusion of IE in Windows was a big hullabaloo. At the time it was introduced, it was very much inferior to the other offerings out there, but did allow the user to browse the web. So, Microsoft saw that a browser with extentions could replace the file/system viewer Explorer so they merged the two things - far easier to have one thing that does both than have two development teams doing basically the same things maintaining two seperate code bases. That's why IE became integral to the OS - because it was also the viewer for everything from the file system to the control panel to a file viewer. Removing IE would remove the capability to do any of that.
Having IE bundled didn't prevent you from loading any other browser that was your favorite, but it did offer (some say) superior Internet Browser features to others at the time so users felt little reason to use anything else. It was good enough for users, they didn't have to get/buy more software to make their pooter work so they used it. Very simple.
Same with MediaPlayer. Users expect to be able to listen to music or play videos on their computer now from the instant they plug it into the wall. Microsoft delivers a way for them to do it. They improve it, and now it is "good enough" for most folks and they don't have to get/buy something extra to have this functionality. Very simple.
Personally, I wouldn't use/buy ANY computer that didn't come bundled with some form of web browser and a media player of some sort. Very frequently, no matter the OS I choose, the one that comes bundled is good enough to do exactly what I want to do (I'm not an audiophile and I don't have special web browsing needs like special sites that are browser specific. I do like WinAMP better than MediaPlayer though so I tend to install it on all the Windows boxes I use but the default stuff delivered with whatever Linux distro that I have loaded is good enough.)
So, does it stifle competition? I guess it does in the way that there is no need for me to buy yet-another DVD viewer program for my PS2. (Where is all the hubbub about that? The PS2 is in a very dominant position in that market.) However, these functions are becoming basic services that *have* to be delivered with an OS these days for the common users.
Again, most users just want to use what they buy without additional fuss (having to get even more stuff to make it work in basic functions like web browsing and playing music/videos).
In some ways, computer OSs these days are evolving more towards set-top boxes in many ways as the list of "basic services" the thing has to provide become longer and longer. There was a time when listening to music, watching videos, and such things were add-ons. You got these apps when you bought a video card or a sound card. Today, most users consider these to be basic functionality rather than add-ons. An OS that does not deliver these services in at least some basic capacity will not succeed. All the Linux distros know this as well and likewise deliver these basic services.
Yup. My HP48SX still works great and I use it frequently. I got it within a month of its being for sale in our student union (upgraded from a 28S) and think it's quite possibly the best calculator ever made. I can't tell you how many times it's been dropped from desks and has only lost a vertical row of pixels (the 4th from the left). Definitely one of the best, if not *the* best, that HP ever made, IMO.
Yes... there are such things as too many choices. The average user just wants something put down in front of them that works. Having to choose, and understand why they are choosing, one particular distribution over all the others is beyond most of them and beyond what they care about.
For most, they know they need whatever is the latest Windows to run all their software and games. In your post, a user would have to choose among (using only those you listed) five different distributions, would have to know that in many ways they are the same, but are slightly different, and why they are different, and why it helps them to be different.
But when my CD scratches up, I download a new one. There are a lot of conditions I think it applies - like when you bought the CD outright once, lost it, had it stolen, damaged, etc.
Yup, I'd classify this under "fair use" and would have no problem with that either. When I buy a CD, I consider myself buying the license to listen to the music on that CD whenever I feel like it for the rest of my life (maybe this isn't the way they see it, but that's how I see it). If the media that I bought the music on fails, I should be able to replace the media with the music on it (maybe even for a small charge like $0.25 for the cost of the CD media plus shipping) or get the music on another media (with appropriate costs - maybe even free if I download it) without a problem.
Lets recap: No one has any RIGHT to make money. Got that? They make money because they have a product that people want and are willing to buy, and can deliver it, and have a workable business model. If they aren't able to make fly, they go out of business. Happens all over the world, every day. No one has the right to use the government to protect their revenue stream. Period.
I didn't disagree with this statement in my post. I believe that they should go out of business, as well, if they cannot compete. I'll get back to this later.
As has been stressed many times over in this thread, "sharing" mp3s is not theft. It's copyright violation. Copyrights are something that the government does have a stake in protecting (and, in my opinion, rightly so). If music artists want to give up their copyrights (everyone has copyrights to their original works by default, btw) or define them in a way that allows anyone to give a copy of their music away, then that's the artist's business. I have no problem with that. EVEN if a musician sells his/her own music off their *own* website in mp3 format without any safeguards or protections against "sharing", unless they explicitly give permission for "sharing", the "sharing" folks are *still* in violation of copyright laws.
Now, back to competing in the electronic world... First, the way you support a change is to buy (or whatever) music from "labels"/independents who support the same ideas as you do but you don't break existing laws necessarily to do it (this isn't something like a civil liberties issue where you may need to break laws to invoke a change). You *stop* buying from companies that you do not like and you *do not listen* to music that those companies put out... at all... in any form... radio/television/CDs/Vinyl/8-track/cassette/mp3/og g/movies/whatever... just stay away from it. This means to not download the music in mp3s and listen to it if the music copyright is held by one of the companies you don't like. Deal with the companies that you believe have the right approach for "this era" and completely divorce yourself from companies (and their products) that do not have the right approach.
Claiming that you are "bucking the system" by downloading mp3s and that you are forcing a change through this is simply rationalizing your breaking of copyright laws to ease your own conscience. If you truly believe in what you are doing, you wouldn't have anything to do with the companies you dislike or any product in any form which they produce. Some folks would call "hypocrit" on you, otherwise. Basically you want your cake and to eat it too. I guess the next thing that the downloaders would whinge about is that they can't do it because all the music they like is controlled by the companies they don't like. This would be the time to become active and let your favorite artists know how you feel and give them the support to break away from the "bad guys" and do "the right thing". Awww.... but that's too hard..../sniff
back to this statement: No one has the right to use the government to protect their revenue stream. Period.
I disagree... if I'm protecting my revenue stream through patents and/or copyrights, I fully expect the government to help protect me because that's some of the reasons why they (copyrights/patents/governments) exist. This is true of an independent artist who puts all his/her works on the internet for $0.01USD per copy or a mega-corporation who sticks it to the public. The laws need to be the same no matter who the participants are. It's YOUR choice whether you want to support someone/something that is using copyrights to protect their revenue stream. If you don't like them, don't give them money.
What I think you might have wanted to say is that the government shouldn't support a monopoly. But this, again, is not how things work (look at utilities). I would agree with you if you said "Government shouldn't support a monopoly in the music industry".
2. People who pirate, but couldn't afford to buy the music in the first place
It's called "doing without"... something that folks these days seem to not be able to understand.
3. People who pirate, but also buy music they like
This is the "test drive" group. To me, this is a very valid (the only one of the three) use of music sharing, although I wouldn't call it sharing. I go to CD stores that allow me to listen to the CD before I purchase it. If I don't like it, they reshrink-wrap it and put it back on the shelf. If I like it enough to buy it, I buy it. If I can't afford to buy a CD, I don't go into a CD store or browse the CD isles in other stores.
Having some way to download mp3s for test listening before purchase, to me, is a very good idea. Unfortunately, even if you somehow watermark legit mp3s or put expiration times in them or something, folks will attempt to (and succeed most likely) disable those things so that they can be used for groups 1 and 2.
They are actually getting MORE money from group number 3 and neither losing or getting more from people in group number 2. Granted there're probably more people in group number 1 than group number 3.
And there is steady migration FROM group 3 TO group 1 (and maybe group 2 given the economy). Which means they make less money.
I think CDs should be cheaper, but hey, I think everything should be cheaper. I don't particularly mind paying for music and I think something like iTunes is a good idea. I'd really like to be able to download individual songs and pay like $1 per song and I can make my own CDs from those. That way I get only the songs that I like (even though I'd probably miss out on some music because some songs take a while to grow on me). Unfortunately, I don't know of a good way for the music industry to be able to do that and be able to prevent people from just "sharing" the songs and basically being the same thing that goes on now.
Yeah, we need a java-like syntax so you too can create lots of debug info in programs with 'if (global_debug==1) ' rather than the infinitely more efficient #ifdef DEBUG.
Except that with the former, you can debug any time you need to, without using/loading a new (and different) executable. In addition, if you do it right, you can turn debugging on/off in a system without shutting it down (a feature that can be invaluable at times).
Using #ifdef DEBUG, you, by definition, change the executable, which can change the properties of the execution of the code (things like timing). Ever had a program that worked in debug mode but not -O2 mode? Ever put a printf() into the code that caused it to work but not having it there caused the program to crash? (not talking about using variables before a value is assigned or stack corruption)
Granted, #ifdef DEBUG can remove code that has cache destroying calls/code in it. However, just because #ifdef DEBUG can be more efficient does not mean that it is always the best approach to the problem.
By using GCC Apple removed the compiler from the factors effecting system speed and gave a more direct CPU to CPU comparison. This is a better comparison if you just want to compare CPUs and prevents the CPU vendor from getting inflated results due to the compiler.
shows this.
A direct CPU to CPU comparison would be hand optimized assembly to show what the CPU can really do (the most optimal). Everything else is an approximation. Do you answer what the top speed of a car is by driving it around on the Interstates in USA where your speed will not go above 100 and reporting that or do you take it to a closed race track and run it around the track with the gas fully on?
The reasons why we have portable benchmarks is so that the cost of running them are much lower than the hand tuned assembly. If every benchmark had to be hand tuned, no one would use them as they'd take person-years of work, potentially, to run.
By running the G5 and the P4 on the same compiler, supposedly to eliminate the compiler question, it isn't to isolate the compiler. It is to put restrictor plates on the carbs to slow them both down from best performance to some standard (basically like having a speed race from New York to Miami on I-95 but requiring all participants to obey all traffic speed limits). In this race, a Dodge Neon is just as likely to win the race as Ferrari 575M.
It's just easier to use a gui - not faster but certainly easier.
Maybe for you it is, personally I find a nice clean xml config file way easier to deal with.
Good, then that should be one less complaint you have against IIS in Windows Server 2003. Supposedly Microsoft is going a lot more towards this type of configurability in Win2003.
To address the question put forth by the parent post,.NET uses XML encoded messages sent from the service requester to the service provider. This is typically done to keep the messages simple and human readable(?) -- however CORBA sends code (binary) in its communication protocol and achieves the same task with a large reduction in the number of bytes actually transmitted. From examples i have seen it is it is typically between 25:1 and 40:1.
Wrong on all counts.
First, you have the option of using a number of representation ranging from binary to XML representations for data in.NET. The purpose of this is in no way meant to keep the messages simple or in a human readable form and has nothing to do with either (not to mention that you don't have to use XML if you don't want - you typically would actually need a reason to choose XML as your representation). The reason why XML is an option is for interoperability. Using XML as your representation, you can talk to anything across the wire and it can understand what you are sending. It doesn't matter whether it is big/little endian, uses 2/4 bytes for an int, is hosted on a Linux box, a Sun box, or another Windows box. *IF* you decide to use XML, you are doing so for interoperability (pretty much only for web services, IMO). *IF* you are developing just about anything else, you'll use a binary protocol for exactly the same reasons as you mention using CORBA above.
As the developer, you have the choice to specify how you transfer the data. For a Windows only app that is basically using remoting, you would chose binary as it is the fastest and most efficient for that platform. If you wanted to write a web service that anyone in the world could use, you'd use XML. XML is particularly useful when you don't care what the receiving machine is. For many interoperable binary representations, you have to communicate to the receiver to figure out what each other are, at least in terms of endianness and data sizes (int = 4 bytes, double = 8 bytes, etc.) and either the sender or the receiver is required to translate the data before it can be used. In XML, you really don't care. You just formulate XML and send it, the other side only has to have an XML parser (which is nasty in itself) to reassemble the data into a native form.
Besides, parsing XML is work. You not only take a hit in how much data you send across the wire but you have to have an XML parser to turn the stuff into a native representation on the receiving sides in order to manipulate it. Again, the only reasons you'd use this is for interoperability, not for performance, and definitely not to keep them simple (XML representations of data can get quite complex) and definitely not to have it in human readable form (who cares if humans can read it?).
If you want performance and are only on Windows, you use native. If you want interoperability and performance, you use a different binary form. If you want maximum interoperability, you use XML.
Hmm... the Java interface should be there somewhere. I forgot where we put ours. But... depending on how coarse grained your app is, just using normal Java communication may be good enough. Only in the fine grained communication schemes would you need MPI.
Well... I agree with you to some degree. However, the number of folks who like to play games is an extremely large number. In fact, I've seen CNN and other sources state numbers as high as 40% of the population of the USA play video games, I think. Anyway, there are a lot of folks who want to play games simply as the number of game players shows. The problem is as you state... it takes money to develop games - production costs and paying programmers. Game shops are usually sweat shops, requiring 80+ hour work weeks. This means that you have to do it for a living which means you have to get paid by it as a programmer, you can't work for one job and let that subsidize your hobby as some folks do for some OSS software.
I haven't done extensive testing but I've generally found that.NET C# code runs typically with less than 5% of a decrease in speed compared to compiled C code on numerically intensive things (basically doing the simplest of ports from C to C#). i.e. Compiled C app runs in 100 seconds, C# runs in 105 seconds.
If you have an app that runs for the first time, you have to pay for the JIT translation but even that is usually pretty fast. Again, this is numerically intensive apps with no GUI or really any I/O either.
I've seen similar performance with Java. When you get down to it, C# is basically just Microsoft's version of Java. If you know the syntax of one, you can get the other one pretty fast (within minutes). The only significant differences are in the class libraries and both have libraries with similar functionality. If/When Mono solves the portability issues, it'll be a six-to-one/half-dozen-to-the-other type argument and will only have political/religious arguments to keep the fire going.
Re:Hold up... RISC vs CISC, folks...
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Yet Another G5 Roundup
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· Score: 2, Informative
First, RISC vs. CISC arguments died about a decade ago. What was RISC became Load/Store architectures because they have load and store operations for memory access and everything else is register based. Most so called "RISC" machines tended to have nearly as many (if not more) instructions than their "CISC" counterparts.
I posted a while back (sometime in the past year) the number of instructions a G4 (including Altavec) has compared to the P4 (including SSE2) and the G4 had quite a few more opcodes than the P4. Feel free to look the post up or do the same research.
This also tels you how many floating point ops per CYCLE the chip can do, which is always intresting.
Actually, it doesn't. Get the assembly and look at it. I'd bet that it isn't pure FPU code. Probably a non-trivial amount of the code will be integer operations. Also, all it shows is how well the compilers they use generate FPU code. Better compilers may do a better job.
I would expect this is because of a crappy compiler. Even at a minimum, SSE2 registers can be used simply as a register file of general purpose FPU registers (one double per register) much like any other non-stack based FPU, which should be faster than the x87 stack.
If Altavec speeds up the benchmark, I'd find it hard to believe that SSE2 wouldn't as well (again, unless you have junk compilers) because they are practically the same thing except that I think SSE2 lacks a MAC (for some unknown reason).
Likewise, I want a system which works. I don't care if your PC is faster than my Mac, I want a system which does not crash when I am in the middle of writing my thesis or processing my video data. No crash, EVER.
Actually... it's funny that you say this because Pre-OSX Macs were fabulously famous for their lockups. Also, the PCs that I build are routinely more stable than the OEM machines you get from Dell or whoever because I buy name brand components that I know are well supported in addition to being fast. My Windows boxes crash/lockup about as often as my Linux boxes (basically never). I can't speak for the stability of OSX because I haven't used it that much.
The machine that a dual 2GHz G5 trounced in all the real-world app tests was a Dell with dual 3.06GHz Xeons.
Just curious... are there any published (repeatable) scores for these real-world app trouncings? or were these the ones that were shown on the stage?
Re:I need a G5 to keep track of all the claims
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G5 Benchmark Roundup
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· Score: 1
A G5 with a fat & fast bus coupled with a kick-ass floating point vector unit will allow applications that Wintel can only dream of...
We've yet to see anything that convinces us that the G5 is actually any faster than a P4/Opteron. If you go to the SPEC pages (http://www.spec.org) and compare with what is seen on the Apple pages, you get a very different picture. Give Apple some time to put together a real compiler and we'll talk. Perhaps the G5 release was a huge thing in the Apple world but it is still underwhelming the rest of the world. We've all seen 64-bit machines before so there is nothing new there. The performance, while it is unarguably faster than previous Macs (G4, etc), is something that isn't that interesting either (yet - maybe better compilers will help) because we've seen better.
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Actually, most users wouldn't know what to do with this kind of installation screen. They just want to press one button labeled "GO" and have all of it set up. You give users choices that they neither understand nor want to take the time to understand. This frustrates them and leads to more problems down the road when they didn't install something they really wanted installed.
This confirms the Commission's preliminary conclusion that Microsoft's tying of Windows Media Player to the Windows operating system weakens competition on the merits, stifles product innovation, and ultimately reduces consumer choice.
Well... here is my take...
Users like one-stop shopping. You buy a computer, you can surf the web, you can listen to music, you can play games, you can do all that stuff without having to first hook up to the Internet to download even *more* stuff or buy even *more* stuff to make it work like you expect that it should.
Few things I have ever seen infuriate a customer more than buying something and then realizing that what they bought was incomplete and that they have to get/buy even more stuff to make it do what they want.
The inclusion of IE in Windows was a big hullabaloo. At the time it was introduced, it was very much inferior to the other offerings out there, but did allow the user to browse the web. So, Microsoft saw that a browser with extentions could replace the file/system viewer Explorer so they merged the two things - far easier to have one thing that does both than have two development teams doing basically the same things maintaining two seperate code bases. That's why IE became integral to the OS - because it was also the viewer for everything from the file system to the control panel to a file viewer. Removing IE would remove the capability to do any of that.
Having IE bundled didn't prevent you from loading any other browser that was your favorite, but it did offer (some say) superior Internet Browser features to others at the time so users felt little reason to use anything else. It was good enough for users, they didn't have to get/buy more software to make their pooter work so they used it. Very simple.
Same with MediaPlayer. Users expect to be able to listen to music or play videos on their computer now from the instant they plug it into the wall. Microsoft delivers a way for them to do it. They improve it, and now it is "good enough" for most folks and they don't have to get/buy something extra to have this functionality. Very simple.
Personally, I wouldn't use/buy ANY computer that didn't come bundled with some form of web browser and a media player of some sort. Very frequently, no matter the OS I choose, the one that comes bundled is good enough to do exactly what I want to do (I'm not an audiophile and I don't have special web browsing needs like special sites that are browser specific. I do like WinAMP better than MediaPlayer though so I tend to install it on all the Windows boxes I use but the default stuff delivered with whatever Linux distro that I have loaded is good enough.)
So, does it stifle competition? I guess it does in the way that there is no need for me to buy yet-another DVD viewer program for my PS2. (Where is all the hubbub about that? The PS2 is in a very dominant position in that market.) However, these functions are becoming basic services that *have* to be delivered with an OS these days for the common users.
Again, most users just want to use what they buy without additional fuss (having to get even more stuff to make it work in basic functions like web browsing and playing music/videos).
In some ways, computer OSs these days are evolving more towards set-top boxes in many ways as the list of "basic services" the thing has to provide become longer and longer. There was a time when listening to music, watching videos, and such things were add-ons. You got these apps when you bought a video card or a sound card. Today, most users consider these to be basic functionality rather than add-ons. An OS that does not deliver these services in at least some basic capacity will not succeed. All the Linux distros know this as well and likewise deliver these basic services.
Yup. My HP48SX still works great and I use it frequently. I got it within a month of its being for sale in our student union (upgraded from a 28S) and think it's quite possibly the best calculator ever made. I can't tell you how many times it's been dropped from desks and has only lost a vertical row of pixels (the 4th from the left). Definitely one of the best, if not *the* best, that HP ever made, IMO.
The example you are probably looking for is:
Given:
int* i,j;
Question: What are the types of i and j?
Answer: i is a pointer to an integer and j is an integer;
Yeah... they have it listed as a dual processor MIPS R4000 (they claim 32-bit) running at 333MHz as well...
Yes... there are such things as too many choices. The average user just wants something put down in front of them that works. Having to choose, and understand why they are choosing, one particular distribution over all the others is beyond most of them and beyond what they care about.
For most, they know they need whatever is the latest Windows to run all their software and games. In your post, a user would have to choose among (using only those you listed) five different distributions, would have to know that in many ways they are the same, but are slightly different, and why they are different, and why it helps them to be different.
But when my CD scratches up, I download a new one. There are a lot of conditions I think it applies - like when you bought the CD outright once, lost it, had it stolen, damaged, etc.
Yup, I'd classify this under "fair use" and would have no problem with that either. When I buy a CD, I consider myself buying the license to listen to the music on that CD whenever I feel like it for the rest of my life (maybe this isn't the way they see it, but that's how I see it). If the media that I bought the music on fails, I should be able to replace the media with the music on it (maybe even for a small charge like $0.25 for the cost of the CD media plus shipping) or get the music on another media (with appropriate costs - maybe even free if I download it) without a problem.
Lets recap: No one has any RIGHT to make money. Got that? They make money because they have a product that people want and are willing to buy, and can deliver it, and have a workable business model. If they aren't able to make fly, they go out of business. Happens all over the world, every day. No one has the right to use the government to protect their revenue stream. Period.
g g/movies/whatever... just stay away from it. This means to not download the music in mp3s and listen to it if the music copyright is held by one of the companies you don't like. Deal with the companies that you believe have the right approach for "this era" and completely divorce yourself from companies (and their products) that do not have the right approach.
/sniff
I didn't disagree with this statement in my post. I believe that they should go out of business, as well, if they cannot compete. I'll get back to this later.
As has been stressed many times over in this thread, "sharing" mp3s is not theft. It's copyright violation. Copyrights are something that the government does have a stake in protecting (and, in my opinion, rightly so). If music artists want to give up their copyrights (everyone has copyrights to their original works by default, btw) or define them in a way that allows anyone to give a copy of their music away, then that's the artist's business. I have no problem with that. EVEN if a musician sells his/her own music off their *own* website in mp3 format without any safeguards or protections against "sharing", unless they explicitly give permission for "sharing", the "sharing" folks are *still* in violation of copyright laws.
Now, back to competing in the electronic world... First, the way you support a change is to buy (or whatever) music from "labels"/independents who support the same ideas as you do but you don't break existing laws necessarily to do it (this isn't something like a civil liberties issue where you may need to break laws to invoke a change). You *stop* buying from companies that you do not like and you *do not listen* to music that those companies put out... at all... in any form... radio/television/CDs/Vinyl/8-track/cassette/mp3/o
Claiming that you are "bucking the system" by downloading mp3s and that you are forcing a change through this is simply rationalizing your breaking of copyright laws to ease your own conscience. If you truly believe in what you are doing, you wouldn't have anything to do with the companies you dislike or any product in any form which they produce. Some folks would call "hypocrit" on you, otherwise. Basically you want your cake and to eat it too. I guess the next thing that the downloaders would whinge about is that they can't do it because all the music they like is controlled by the companies they don't like. This would be the time to become active and let your favorite artists know how you feel and give them the support to break away from the "bad guys" and do "the right thing". Awww.... but that's too hard....
back to this statement:
No one has the right to use the government to protect their revenue stream. Period.
I disagree... if I'm protecting my revenue stream through patents and/or copyrights, I fully expect the government to help protect me because that's some of the reasons why they (copyrights/patents/governments) exist. This is true of an independent artist who puts all his/her works on the internet for $0.01USD per copy or a mega-corporation who sticks it to the public. The laws need to be the same no matter who the participants are. It's YOUR choice whether you want to support someone/something that is using copyrights to protect their revenue stream. If you don't like them, don't give them money.
What I think you might have wanted to say is that the government shouldn't support a monopoly. But this, again, is not how things work (look at utilities). I would agree with you if you said "Government shouldn't support a monopoly in the music industry".
1. People who pirate to avoid buying
There are a *lot* of people in this group.
2. People who pirate, but couldn't afford to buy the music in the first place
It's called "doing without"... something that folks these days seem to not be able to understand.
3. People who pirate, but also buy music they like
This is the "test drive" group. To me, this is a very valid (the only one of the three) use of music sharing, although I wouldn't call it sharing. I go to CD stores that allow me to listen to the CD before I purchase it. If I don't like it, they reshrink-wrap it and put it back on the shelf. If I like it enough to buy it, I buy it. If I can't afford to buy a CD, I don't go into a CD store or browse the CD isles in other stores.
Having some way to download mp3s for test listening before purchase, to me, is a very good idea. Unfortunately, even if you somehow watermark legit mp3s or put expiration times in them or something, folks will attempt to (and succeed most likely) disable those things so that they can be used for groups 1 and 2.
They are actually getting MORE money from group number 3 and neither losing or getting more from people in group number 2. Granted there're probably more people in group number 1 than group number 3.
And there is steady migration FROM group 3 TO group 1 (and maybe group 2 given the economy). Which means they make less money.
I think CDs should be cheaper, but hey, I think everything should be cheaper. I don't particularly mind paying for music and I think something like iTunes is a good idea. I'd really like to be able to download individual songs and pay like $1 per song and I can make my own CDs from those. That way I get only the songs that I like (even though I'd probably miss out on some music because some songs take a while to grow on me). Unfortunately, I don't know of a good way for the music industry to be able to do that and be able to prevent people from just "sharing" the songs and basically being the same thing that goes on now.
Yeah, we need a java-like syntax so you too can create lots of debug info in programs with 'if (global_debug==1) ' rather than the infinitely more efficient #ifdef DEBUG.
Except that with the former, you can debug any time you need to, without using/loading a new (and different) executable. In addition, if you do it right, you can turn debugging on/off in a system without shutting it down (a feature that can be invaluable at times).
Using #ifdef DEBUG, you, by definition, change the executable, which can change the properties of the execution of the code (things like timing). Ever had a program that worked in debug mode but not -O2 mode? Ever put a printf() into the code that caused it to work but not having it there caused the program to crash? (not talking about using variables before a value is assigned or stack corruption)
Granted, #ifdef DEBUG can remove code that has cache destroying calls/code in it. However, just because #ifdef DEBUG can be more efficient does not mean that it is always the best approach to the problem.
His comment:
By using GCC Apple removed the compiler from the factors effecting system speed and gave a more direct CPU to CPU comparison. This is a better comparison if you just want to compare CPUs and prevents the CPU vendor from getting inflated results due to the compiler.
shows this.
A direct CPU to CPU comparison would be hand optimized assembly to show what the CPU can really do (the most optimal). Everything else is an approximation. Do you answer what the top speed of a car is by driving it around on the Interstates in USA where your speed will not go above 100 and reporting that or do you take it to a closed race track and run it around the track with the gas fully on?
The reasons why we have portable benchmarks is so that the cost of running them are much lower than the hand tuned assembly. If every benchmark had to be hand tuned, no one would use them as they'd take person-years of work, potentially, to run.
By running the G5 and the P4 on the same compiler, supposedly to eliminate the compiler question, it isn't to isolate the compiler. It is to put restrictor plates on the carbs to slow them both down from best performance to some standard (basically like having a speed race from New York to Miami on I-95 but requiring all participants to obey all traffic speed limits). In this race, a Dodge Neon is just as likely to win the race as Ferrari 575M.
The 68000 had a 24-bit address bus. Internal registers (address and data) were 32-bits. External data bus was 16-bits.
It's just easier to use a gui - not faster but certainly easier.
Maybe for you it is, personally I find a nice clean xml config file way easier to deal with.
Good, then that should be one less complaint you have against IIS in Windows Server 2003. Supposedly Microsoft is going a lot more towards this type of configurability in Win2003.
To address the question put forth by the parent post, .NET uses XML encoded messages sent from the service requester to the service provider. This is typically done to keep the messages simple and human readable(?) -- however CORBA sends code (binary) in its communication protocol and achieves the same task with a large reduction in the number of bytes actually transmitted. From examples i have seen it is it is typically between 25:1 and 40:1.
.NET. The purpose of this is in no way meant to keep the messages simple or in a human readable form and has nothing to do with either (not to mention that you don't have to use XML if you don't want - you typically would actually need a reason to choose XML as your representation). The reason why XML is an option is for interoperability. Using XML as your representation, you can talk to anything across the wire and it can understand what you are sending. It doesn't matter whether it is big/little endian, uses 2/4 bytes for an int, is hosted on a Linux box, a Sun box, or another Windows box. *IF* you decide to use XML, you are doing so for interoperability (pretty much only for web services, IMO). *IF* you are developing just about anything else, you'll use a binary protocol for exactly the same reasons as you mention using CORBA above.
Wrong on all counts.
First, you have the option of using a number of representation ranging from binary to XML representations for data in
As the developer, you have the choice to specify how you transfer the data. For a Windows only app that is basically using remoting, you would chose binary as it is the fastest and most efficient for that platform. If you wanted to write a web service that anyone in the world could use, you'd use XML. XML is particularly useful when you don't care what the receiving machine is. For many interoperable binary representations, you have to communicate to the receiver to figure out what each other are, at least in terms of endianness and data sizes (int = 4 bytes, double = 8 bytes, etc.) and either the sender or the receiver is required to translate the data before it can be used. In XML, you really don't care. You just formulate XML and send it, the other side only has to have an XML parser (which is nasty in itself) to reassemble the data into a native form.
Besides, parsing XML is work. You not only take a hit in how much data you send across the wire but you have to have an XML parser to turn the stuff into a native representation on the receiving sides in order to manipulate it. Again, the only reasons you'd use this is for interoperability, not for performance, and definitely not to keep them simple (XML representations of data can get quite complex) and definitely not to have it in human readable form (who cares if humans can read it?).
If you want performance and are only on Windows, you use native. If you want interoperability and performance, you use a different binary form. If you want maximum interoperability, you use XML.
Hmm... the Java interface should be there somewhere. I forgot where we put ours. But... depending on how coarse grained your app is, just using normal Java communication may be good enough. Only in the fine grained communication schemes would you need MPI.
Well... I agree with you to some degree. However, the number of folks who like to play games is an extremely large number. In fact, I've seen CNN and other sources state numbers as high as 40% of the population of the USA play video games, I think. Anyway, there are a lot of folks who want to play games simply as the number of game players shows. The problem is as you state... it takes money to develop games - production costs and paying programmers. Game shops are usually sweat shops, requiring 80+ hour work weeks. This means that you have to do it for a living which means you have to get paid by it as a programmer, you can't work for one job and let that subsidize your hobby as some folks do for some OSS software.
I haven't done extensive testing but I've generally found that .NET C# code runs typically with less than 5% of a decrease in speed compared to compiled C code on numerically intensive things (basically doing the simplest of ports from C to C#). i.e. Compiled C app runs in 100 seconds, C# runs in 105 seconds.
If you have an app that runs for the first time, you have to pay for the JIT translation but even that is usually pretty fast. Again, this is numerically intensive apps with no GUI or really any I/O either.
I've seen similar performance with Java. When you get down to it, C# is basically just Microsoft's version of Java. If you know the syntax of one, you can get the other one pretty fast (within minutes). The only significant differences are in the class libraries and both have libraries with similar functionality. If/When Mono solves the portability issues, it'll be a six-to-one/half-dozen-to-the-other type argument and will only have political/religious arguments to keep the fire going.
Look at 1990 on this timeline:
http://www.rootvg.net/column_risc.htm
First, RISC vs. CISC arguments died about a decade ago. What was RISC became Load/Store architectures because they have load and store operations for memory access and everything else is register based. Most so called "RISC" machines tended to have nearly as many (if not more) instructions than their "CISC" counterparts.
I posted a while back (sometime in the past year) the number of instructions a G4 (including Altavec) has compared to the P4 (including SSE2) and the G4 had quite a few more opcodes than the P4. Feel free to look the post up or do the same research.
>> So why didn't they port their code to SSE2?
Probably because it's not worth it. While Altivec speeds up Jet3D by a factor of 10 to 13, there is no evidence that SSE2 can even double the speed.
Yeah, especially if no one tries to port something to SSE2 to see.
This also tels you how many floating point ops per CYCLE the chip can do, which is always intresting.
Actually, it doesn't. Get the assembly and look at it. I'd bet that it isn't pure FPU code. Probably a non-trivial amount of the code will be integer operations. Also, all it shows is how well the compilers they use generate FPU code. Better compilers may do a better job.
and SSE2 actually degrades the performance
I would expect this is because of a crappy compiler. Even at a minimum, SSE2 registers can be used simply as a register file of general purpose FPU registers (one double per register) much like any other non-stack based FPU, which should be faster than the x87 stack.
If Altavec speeds up the benchmark, I'd find it hard to believe that SSE2 wouldn't as well (again, unless you have junk compilers) because they are practically the same thing except that I think SSE2 lacks a MAC (for some unknown reason).
Likewise, I want a system which works. I don't care if your PC is faster than my Mac, I want a system which does not crash when I am in the middle of writing my thesis or processing my video data. No crash, EVER.
Actually... it's funny that you say this because Pre-OSX Macs were fabulously famous for their lockups. Also, the PCs that I build are routinely more stable than the OEM machines you get from Dell or whoever because I buy name brand components that I know are well supported in addition to being fast. My Windows boxes crash/lockup about as often as my Linux boxes (basically never). I can't speak for the stability of OSX because I haven't used it that much.
The machine that a dual 2GHz G5 trounced in all the real-world app tests was a Dell with dual 3.06GHz Xeons.
Just curious... are there any published (repeatable) scores for these real-world app trouncings? or were these the ones that were shown on the stage?
A G5 with a fat & fast bus coupled with a kick-ass floating point vector unit will allow applications that Wintel can only dream of...
We've yet to see anything that convinces us that the G5 is actually any faster than a P4/Opteron. If you go to the SPEC pages (http://www.spec.org) and compare with what is seen on the Apple pages, you get a very different picture. Give Apple some time to put together a real compiler and we'll talk. Perhaps the G5 release was a huge thing in the Apple world but it is still underwhelming the rest of the world. We've all seen 64-bit machines before so there is nothing new there. The performance, while it is unarguably faster than previous Macs (G4, etc), is something that isn't that interesting either (yet - maybe better compilers will help) because we've seen better.
*yawn*