No, they don't have to provide source code unless they distribute binaries. Even if they did, they'd only have to provide source to those they distribute to.
I mostly agree. But did the industrial revolution obsolete work for the majority of the population? Did the computer revolution?
No, the robotic revolution will simply force humans into jobs that the machines can't do. Does that mean that only 5% of the population will have a job? No, I doubt it. What if all 6 billion of us did those jobs, with the robots doing everything else? How much more would we be capable of as a planet?
Imagine telling someone from a pre-industrial society about the Apollo program. They would likely not be able to understand how such a program was carried out, and not just because of the tech.
I think robots will be one more step towards freeing humanity to do what it wants, rather than simply working to survive. This doesn't mean retreating into art, etc, it means doing all the things that we want to do but that are currently considered prohibitively expensive, like a moon shot was before the modern era (yes, yes it was technically impossible too, but ignore that).
Of course, no one can really predict the future. I could easily be wrong.
You make some good points, but just because other companies have non-obvious to pronounce names, that doesn't make it a good idea.
Look, I wasn't claiming that this thing would fail because of its name (read my last line), just that it wasn't the best name for the project. I didn't mean to come a cross as a flame.
Many people (gasp!) don't have English as their first language - or do, but speak other languages - certainly enough to know that 'ouvert' means 'open'
I speak another language (Italian. OK, not well). I don't speak French, which is far from a universal language these days. I didn't know that 'ouvert' means 'open'. Are you implying that being able to speak another language means that you can understand all words in all languages? I don't know many German words either. I guess I'm just ignorant. I should spend all my time learning as many languages as I can, so that I can understand the names of software projects.
Xouvert is a piss poor name for a project. Not because it's french, but because its pronunciation isn't immediately obvious to an English speaker. A name doesn't have to mean anything, it just has to be unique and have an obvious pronunciation. Nobody is going to mispronounce 'Windows' or 'Macintosh'.
Not that it really matters. End users probably won't be installing this themselves. If it's good, the distros will pick it up.
You're missing the point. Maybe there was nothing NASA could do to save the astronauts after launch but what kind of an excuse is that? Columbia wasn't the first shuttle to suffer tile damage due to falling foam (actually it was, on its maiden f-ing flight!). Maybe if NASA had recognized that it was a serious problem, instead of brushing it aside like so many other problems (*cough* o-rings *cough*), those astronauts would still be alive today (not to mention the multibillion dollar shuttle they were flying in).
Should people risk their lives flying in expensive spacecraft for no purpose other than exploration and the furthering of science? Absolutely. Should we tolerate it when said people lose their lives due to bad design and poor risk assessment? Absolutely not!
Frankly, I am not a computer guru (by any stretch of the imagination), but don't you all find it pretty lame that Apple needs a 64 bit processor to come close to the speeds of a 32 bit Pentium?
The 970 (G5) being 64-bit just means it can handle larger integers. That's it. You can address >4 GB of RAM and you can express integers >4.3 billion. In general, 64-bit isn't faster than 32-bit unless you're specifically doing 64-bit math (which would have to be emulated on a 32-bit processor). In fact, it's often slower. If you're using 64-bit integers and you don't really need them, you're sucking up twice the memory bandwidth for no reason.
Many people have this idea that 64-bit processing is some kind of SIMD (like MMX, SSE, or AltiVec). It isn't. The 970 can't process two 32-bit integers with one instruction (unless you're using AltiVec, but we're talking about its 64-bit capabilities here). There is no reason to expect a 64-bit chip to be intrinsically faster than a 32-bit chip.
OK I can't believe the mac world is going gaga over these specs. The screenshot font, color and layout do NOT match that of anywhere else on the Apple site. Taking a look through the specs is also quite revealing
Or maybe they are changing the site design?
- 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz or Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 Processors
It's not a G5, it's a PPC970, completely different beasts. Not to mention neither Motorola or IBM have 2GHz chips in their roadmap until 2005. Bzzzt One point impossible
Sorry? You do realise that "G4" wasn't the official name for that processor either, don't you? It was the 7400. Apple can call the 970 whatever they want. The specs match the 970 perfectly.
- Up to 1GHz processor bus
1GHz bus? gimme a break. Intel hasn't yet reached this. Two points impossible
Do some reading on the 970. Its bus is clocked at 1/4 the speed of the processor, DDR. So the effective bus speed of the 2 GHz version is 1 GHz.
- AGP 8X Pro graphics options from NVIDIA or ATI
Almost believable, but for the moment Apple are phasing out the use of NVIDIA cards in their machines. I highly doubt they'll be used. Half a point impossible
Impossible? That's a strong word for someone with no supporting evidence.
- Three USB 2.0 ports
The rest of Apples site would say "3 USB Ports" not "Three". Also, Apple have a long standing habit of using Firewire instead of USB 2.0. I take this as one point impossible
- One FireWire 800, two FireWire 400 ports
Once again use of the verbal "One" instead of the numeric. Only one FW800 port? Why would Apple stick with FireWire 400 anyway? I mark this impossible
- Optical and analog audio in and out
Bad grammar, but optical audio in a graphics machine? I'm sorry but this sounds like wishful thinking. One more point impossible.
Once again, impossible? Do you even know what that word means? If you said "In my opinion it's unlikely" then I'd let it go but "impossible"?!
In total, that's 4 and a half impossible features out of ten. If you're waiting on this machine, you'll be waiting a LONG time people.
This may well turn out to be fake but your reasoning leaves much to be desired. I'm putting my money on this being true.
I haven't done this in a while but, IIRC, you put the number of the syscall you want to make in r0 and the arguments in r3 and up (like a normal function call). The result is put into r3.
Now, if the system call succeeds, control is returned to the instruction *after* the next instruction (ie. it skips one). If the syscall fails, the instruction is not skipped.
Hmm... that's not very clear. Here's an example:
li r0, [syscall_num]
li r3, [arg1]
li r4, [arg2]
[etc...]
sc
b ERROR
[code for if the syscall succeeds]
b END
ERROR:
[code for if the syscall fails]
END:
If the call succeeds, the branch to ERROR is not executed. To find the syscall number you need, have a look at/usr/include/sys/syscall.h.
This is the same mistake that the Moon landing hoax theorists make. The planets are so much brighter than the stars that it's pretty near impossible to take a photo showing both clearly. Either the planets are clear and the stars are underexposed (invisibile) or the stars are clear and the planets are overexposed (featureless white).
If you're looking through a converter then you're not looking with the naked eye.
Re:What the heck is 'Altivec' anyway?
on
Inside the PowerPC 970
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Basically, intead of looping through a list of 50,000 values one by one and multiplying each value by PI for instance, you simply tell the CPU where the list is, and to multiply it by PI.
Well, not really, but you're close. You can't just pass the Altivec unit an array of numbers and tell it to do some operation on them. Altivec (and MMX, etc) simply allows you to process the data in bigger chunks that normal.
Altivec can process 128 bits of data at a time. For example, it can add 16 8-bit integers to another 16 8-bit integers, resulting in yet another vector of 16 8-bit integers with a single instruction, rather than doing them one at a time.
What were the examples? If they're mostly doing graphics stuff (rotating cubes, etc) then why would there be any difference? That's either native code or hardware accelerated.
How good is.NET at heavy calculation? Games are more than just graphics.
If they *were* realistic examples of all the stuff a modern games does, then disregard this post.
Mars is constantly leaking gases, and oxygen, being lighter than C02 would escape even more easily. You may be able to generate a thick C02 atmosphere for a short time, but once the temperature started to rise you might start loosing gas faster than you could produce it.
Define "short time". Are we talking a million years? 10,000?
Even if the atmosphere only lasts a short period on a geological timescale, it would still give us plenty of time for useful colonisation. Maybe even enough time to develop a way to make the teraforming permanent. Remember how old our civilisation is. A couple of thousand years is a very long time.
First, executables are called executables because the computer interprets them. They are made of instructions, and unlike a document you cannot simply tamper with things because it will confuse the computer when it tries to run the executable.
Of course you can tamper with executables! As long as your modified version does the same thing, there is no harm done. If you change the addition of a positive number to the subtraction of a negative number, you get the same result if you run it. You run through the binary and if the current bit of data to be hidden is a 0, you don't modify that particular addition instruction and if the data bit is 1 then you *do* modify it. If you compare the modified binary to an original, you can see all the changes and extract the hidden data.
Second, and most importantly, the size of the file is dependent on the size of the bytes within the file. Because the bytes in the file have differing values depending on the instructions they encode, altering the data will alter the size unless you're borrowing from one byte to inflate another -- and in this case, again, you run afoul of the first problem.
This makes no sense to me. The replacement instruction is the same size as the original.
I'm surprised the editors didn't review this before approving it for posting. This is really pretty elementary to anyone who understands object code.
I don't doubt that you understand object code but you don't seem to understand this technique.
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No, they don't have to provide source code unless they distribute binaries. Even if they did, they'd only have to provide source to those they distribute to.
3 Kelvin = -454.27 degrees Fahrenheit
0 Kelvin = -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit
Note: the temp of deep space isn't exactly 3 K, so don't put too much faith in those digits after the decimal point.
0.999... = 0.9+0.09+0.009+...
This is a geometric series with initial term 0.9 and common ratio 0.1.
The infinite sum is:
initial term/(1-common ratio)
= 0.9/(1-0.1)
= 0.9/0.9
= 1
See MathWorld.
No, the robotic revolution will simply force humans into jobs that the machines can't do. Does that mean that only 5% of the population will have a job? No, I doubt it. What if all 6 billion of us did those jobs, with the robots doing everything else? How much more would we be capable of as a planet?
Imagine telling someone from a pre-industrial society about the Apollo program. They would likely not be able to understand how such a program was carried out, and not just because of the tech.
I think robots will be one more step towards freeing humanity to do what it wants, rather than simply working to survive. This doesn't mean retreating into art, etc, it means doing all the things that we want to do but that are currently considered prohibitively expensive, like a moon shot was before the modern era (yes, yes it was technically impossible too, but ignore that).
Of course, no one can really predict the future. I could easily be wrong.
Look, I wasn't claiming that this thing would fail because of its name (read my last line), just that it wasn't the best name for the project. I didn't mean to come a cross as a flame.
I speak another language (Italian. OK, not well). I don't speak French, which is far from a universal language these days. I didn't know that 'ouvert' means 'open'. Are you implying that being able to speak another language means that you can understand all words in all languages? I don't know many German words either. I guess I'm just ignorant. I should spend all my time learning as many languages as I can, so that I can understand the names of software projects.
Xouvert is a piss poor name for a project. Not because it's french, but because its pronunciation isn't immediately obvious to an English speaker. A name doesn't have to mean anything, it just has to be unique and have an obvious pronunciation. Nobody is going to mispronounce 'Windows' or 'Macintosh'.
Not that it really matters. End users probably won't be installing this themselves. If it's good, the distros will pick it up.
Should people risk their lives flying in expensive spacecraft for no purpose other than exploration and the furthering of science? Absolutely. Should we tolerate it when said people lose their lives due to bad design and poor risk assessment? Absolutely not!
Ah, sorry.
The 970 (G5) being 64-bit just means it can handle larger integers. That's it. You can address >4 GB of RAM and you can express integers >4.3 billion. In general, 64-bit isn't faster than 32-bit unless you're specifically doing 64-bit math (which would have to be emulated on a 32-bit processor). In fact, it's often slower. If you're using 64-bit integers and you don't really need them, you're sucking up twice the memory bandwidth for no reason.
Many people have this idea that 64-bit processing is some kind of SIMD (like MMX, SSE, or AltiVec). It isn't. The 970 can't process two 32-bit integers with one instruction (unless you're using AltiVec, but we're talking about its 64-bit capabilities here). There is no reason to expect a 64-bit chip to be intrinsically faster than a 32-bit chip.
I think you mean KHTML, the rendering engine used by both Konqueror and Safari.
"Velocity Engine" is an Apple term. IBM calls it VMX.
I said 1/4 of 2 GHz *DDR* (Double Data Rate). So the bus is 500 MHz *DDR*, or an effective clockspeed of 1 GHz. Watch who you're calling a moron.
Or maybe they are changing the site design?
Sorry? You do realise that "G4" wasn't the official name for that processor either, don't you? It was the 7400. Apple can call the 970 whatever they want. The specs match the 970 perfectly.
Do some reading on the 970. Its bus is clocked at 1/4 the speed of the processor, DDR. So the effective bus speed of the 2 GHz version is 1 GHz.
Impossible? That's a strong word for someone with no supporting evidence.
Once again, impossible? Do you even know what that word means? If you said "In my opinion it's unlikely" then I'd let it go but "impossible"?!
This may well turn out to be fake but your reasoning leaves much to be desired. I'm putting my money on this being true.
Now, if the system call succeeds, control is returned to the instruction *after* the next instruction (ie. it skips one). If the syscall fails, the instruction is not skipped.
Hmm... that's not very clear. Here's an example:
li r0, [syscall_num]
li r3, [arg1]
li r4, [arg2]
[etc...]
sc
b ERROR
[code for if the syscall succeeds]
b END
ERROR:
[code for if the syscall fails]
END:
If the call succeeds, the branch to ERROR is not executed. To find the syscall number you need, have a look at /usr/include/sys/syscall.h.
Dude, it's a troll. Ignore it and let the mods do their work.
Enron tried that. Didn't work out too well IIRC.
This is the same mistake that the Moon landing hoax theorists make. The planets are so much brighter than the stars that it's pretty near impossible to take a photo showing both clearly. Either the planets are clear and the stars are underexposed (invisibile) or the stars are clear and the planets are overexposed (featureless white).
If you're looking through a converter then you're not looking with the naked eye.
Well, not really, but you're close. You can't just pass the Altivec unit an array of numbers and tell it to do some operation on them. Altivec (and MMX, etc) simply allows you to process the data in bigger chunks that normal.
Altivec can process 128 bits of data at a time. For example, it can add 16 8-bit integers to another 16 8-bit integers, resulting in yet another vector of 16 8-bit integers with a single instruction, rather than doing them one at a time.
Mac OS X is still PPC only, of course.
How good is .NET at heavy calculation? Games are more than just graphics.
If they *were* realistic examples of all the stuff a modern games does, then disregard this post.
Have you heard of a "photon"?
Says who? Where I come from, we put the "and" in. Do you have a World Government decree supporting your claim?
Define "short time". Are we talking a million years? 10,000?
Even if the atmosphere only lasts a short period on a geological timescale, it would still give us plenty of time for useful colonisation. Maybe even enough time to develop a way to make the teraforming permanent. Remember how old our civilisation is. A couple of thousand years is a very long time.
Did you read the article?
First, executables are called executables because the computer interprets them. They are made of instructions, and unlike a document you cannot simply tamper with things because it will confuse the computer when it tries to run the executable.
Of course you can tamper with executables! As long as your modified version does the same thing, there is no harm done. If you change the addition of a positive number to the subtraction of a negative number, you get the same result if you run it. You run through the binary and if the current bit of data to be hidden is a 0, you don't modify that particular addition instruction and if the data bit is 1 then you *do* modify it. If you compare the modified binary to an original, you can see all the changes and extract the hidden data.
Second, and most importantly, the size of the file is dependent on the size of the bytes within the file. Because the bytes in the file have differing values depending on the instructions they encode, altering the data will alter the size unless you're borrowing from one byte to inflate another -- and in this case, again, you run afoul of the first problem.
This makes no sense to me. The replacement instruction is the same size as the original.
I'm surprised the editors didn't review this before approving it for posting. This is really pretty elementary to anyone who understands object code.
I don't doubt that you understand object code but you don't seem to understand this technique.