That's one example. Both systems have their advantages.
However, I'm thinking more along the lines of AMD's general strategy: More work-per-clock. The K7 was intended as a direct competitor to the Pentium III, and the design was great. (It even holds up pretty well against the P4.)
The Pentium Pro had two integer units and a single floating-point unit. The k7 had three of each.
If it crashes, how do you know if the radiation dose was administered or not? Was it the whole dose? was it just part of the dose? Did the machine even turn off?
Those are awfully important questions for the doctors and radiation techs. Even moreso for the cancer patient that has to go through a battery of tests to determine the effect of a software glitch.
Part of the problem is that the vendors chose Windows as a development platform.
I'm a rabid Linux user, but if I were designing equipment that held human lives in its anthropomorphic hands, I'd build it as an entirely atomic OS built from Linux or a BSD variant. And communications would be data-only, over a serial port. No network.
In high school, a nurse from St Mary's (here in Grand Rapids, MI) was showing us screenshots of their radiation therapy machine. I recognized CDE...she didn't know what version of UNIX it ran, though.
If you're talking about NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday, they tend to stick to politically charged discussions like stem cell research, cloning, genetically-modified crops, the Endangered Species act, global warming, bio-fuels. You know, stuff that stirs people up.
Of course, that's what Talk of the Nation does...I stopped listening to radio for a while back in 2000 because TotN was what was on when I got out of school. I preferred to go home and get on Slashdot. It calmed down after the 2000 presidential elections, though.
Yeah, their review is screwed up on several different levels. If it were me, I'd compare the Xeon setup against the closest-priced Opteron setup. Fixating on processor speed in reviews is silly as long as you know benchmark results and prices are going to be dissimilar, anyway.
To be fair, the Athlon64 processor compared is a 3500+, while Intel's is a 3.6GHz. So AMD chose to rate their processor at that performance level.
To be fair again, Xeons generally outperform Pentium 4s at the same clock speed, due to various things like more cache and hyperthreading (before Intel added it to the Pentium line). The Xeon is normally targetted for servers and high-end workstations.
Finally, at the end of the article, they promise to benchmark the Xeons against the Opterons.
Hard drives keep a certain percentage of their sectors available in case other sectors go bad. (They re-map the bad sector to a hidden good one. I don't see why any read/writable media of sufficient size couldn't do the same.
But, as others have mentioned, it's only a format, not a device. I doubt they'd build read-write count limitations into the format. (Though I could picture keeping usage failure statistics to make predictions on when other sectors will fail.)
It's a double-edged sword, sure. But I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Remember Microsoft's hypocritical FUD about "Who's liable for Linux?" How about the situations where the community can't sue for slander or libel? Or other situations where the community can't make it's voice heard in the legal system?
The concept of a class-action suit doesn't work in this case, because Linux developers aren't financially harmed by such things. (I've never heard of a class-action libel or slander suit. Is there a lawyer in the house who could describe if that's possible?)
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which means we have to try to port our code to it or loose that customer.
Yeah, I wasn't fair. Potentially losing a customer is a force to contend with.
That's one example. Both systems have their advantages.
However, I'm thinking more along the lines of AMD's general strategy: More work-per-clock. The K7 was intended as a direct competitor to the Pentium III, and the design was great. (It even holds up pretty well against the P4.)
The Pentium Pro had two integer units and a single floating-point unit. The k7 had three of each.
Very true. All of it.
Crashes would be a problem.
If it crashes, how do you know if the radiation dose was administered or not? Was it the whole dose? was it just part of the dose? Did the machine even turn off?
Those are awfully important questions for the doctors and radiation techs. Even moreso for the cancer patient that has to go through a battery of tests to determine the effect of a software glitch.
Part of the problem is that the vendors chose Windows as a development platform.
I'm a rabid Linux user, but if I were designing equipment that held human lives in its anthropomorphic hands, I'd build it as an entirely atomic OS built from Linux or a BSD variant. And communications would be data-only, over a serial port. No network.
In high school, a nurse from St Mary's (here in Grand Rapids, MI) was showing us screenshots of their radiation therapy machine. I recognized CDE...she didn't know what version of UNIX it ran, though.
If you're talking about NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday, they tend to stick to politically charged discussions like stem cell research, cloning, genetically-modified crops, the Endangered Species act, global warming, bio-fuels. You know, stuff that stirs people up.
Of course, that's what Talk of the Nation does...I stopped listening to radio for a while back in 2000 because TotN was what was on when I got out of school. I preferred to go home and get on Slashdot. It calmed down after the 2000 presidential elections, though.
I bet he rolls a critical failure...that seems to be the popular opinion of Enterprise around here.
(Personally, I liked the first episode. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD so I can watch more.)
Yeah, their review is screwed up on several different levels. If it were me, I'd compare the Xeon setup against the closest-priced Opteron setup. Fixating on processor speed in reviews is silly as long as you know benchmark results and prices are going to be dissimilar, anyway.
It's dod.
Odd, even.
To be fair, the Athlon64 processor compared is a 3500+, while Intel's is a 3.6GHz. So AMD chose to rate their processor at that performance level.
To be fair again, Xeons generally outperform Pentium 4s at the same clock speed, due to various things like more cache and hyperthreading (before Intel added it to the Pentium line). The Xeon is normally targetted for servers and high-end workstations.
Finally, at the end of the article, they promise to benchmark the Xeons against the Opterons.
I'll bite:
:)
I'm an AMD fan. I like their design decision.
Well, you can try the Babelfish translation, but IMO it's not as good as the Googlefish one supplied.
See this article.
PCIe is a switched network on your motherboard. If you're technically inclined, read this article for further details.
Hard drives keep a certain percentage of their sectors available in case other sectors go bad. (They re-map the bad sector to a hidden good one. I don't see why any read/writable media of sufficient size couldn't do the same.
But, as others have mentioned, it's only a format, not a device. I doubt they'd build read-write count limitations into the format. (Though I could picture keeping usage failure statistics to make predictions on when other sectors will fail.)
Yeah, but can you imagine the time required for "shred /dev/sda" ?
I don't see any reason you couldn't paint over the wallpaper. Seems like the more appropriate way to do it, to me.
According to this Register article, that's a problem they're already facing.
How are their claims this time any more specific? I'd say they're even less.
First, they're not even claiming a number of lines. (And I'd be willing to bet that they have licensed IBM code previously.)
Second, they haven't filed suit.
But who goes after them for violating that declaration?
PHB's are also in control of the hiring process. They may just as well fire the Linux afficionado and hire an MSCE.
It's a double-edged sword, sure. But I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Remember Microsoft's hypocritical FUD about "Who's liable for Linux?" How about the situations where the community can't sue for slander or libel? Or other situations where the community can't make it's voice heard in the legal system?
The concept of a class-action suit doesn't work in this case, because Linux developers aren't financially harmed by such things. (I've never heard of a class-action libel or slander suit. Is there a lawyer in the house who could describe if that's possible?)
It's still Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. But that doesn't make it untrue.
The company selling Linux indemnification insurance has a stake in corporations worrying about legal risks involved in using Linux.
The funny thing is, near as I can tell, Bruce Perens feels that Linux insurance will aid its adoption.
That does seem to be a disadvantage to how Linux development is organized. If IBM were to put it in a written contract, who would the other party be?
I'd like to see Linux become owned by a non-profit that's run by the community members. Or something. Give Linux a legal presence.
When I looked at the link on FireFox's home page a few minutes ago, it was still pointing at 0.9.2. Thus my post above about an incorrect link.
I hope they don't mod you down as redundant.