Another thing that amazed me was the adaptability that the animals showed. I am really starting to think that we greatly underestimate their intelligence. It reminds me of the treatment of immigrants: they can't speak English, therefore they are stupid. I personally can't detect or understand the scent signals that many animals use. With the huge amount of redundancy apparently in the brain, is comparing brain size all that accurate? Maybe we just have more redundancy than other primates and our technological progress is solely due to the sophisticated languages and writing systems we have developed. I still don't believe that yet, but I think the perceived differences between us and other higher level animals will shrink as we learn more.
Of course I'm just a layman who happens to have an interest in this topic.
The amazing thing? One of the arms was 600 miles away.
No, the amazing thing was that they successfully decoded the neural impulses of the monkey's motor cortex and generated commands that drove a robotic arm in sync with the monkey's arm.
Who gives a shit if they also sent those signals 600 miles away? Let me introduce you to something called the Internet...
If you're a Mac user ignore the above post. Quartz Extreme really chews up VRAM: 16MB minimum, 32MB recommended. If you're buying a new card then shoot for 64MB. If you do any kind of serious OpenGL work that isn't full screen, take that into account. I think 128 MB might be overkill for the time being...
but the fact remains that America has always been considered -- at least in theory -- 'The Promised Land.' (I suspect these days that notion is met with jeers around the globe.)
Well, we'll find out if IBM's new chip has a different cache line size on October 15th. If Apple does use it, it probably won't be for almost a year. Developers will have at least six months to fix the routines that will break.
Big companies making products like Photoshop should have the cache line size as a #define anyway or preferably, autodetect it. I'm assuming the programmers of large pieces of software with a lots of optimized code know what they're doing and have at least partially planned for a change in line size
Smaller outfits won't have as much to do. Let's hope they get started soon.
Good point, I had forgotten about that. However, the specs (IIRC) clearly state that cache line size isn't fixed. Any code that is relying on 32-byte lines should have a big/* XXX */ next to it. dcbz (Data Cache Block Clear to Zero) will probably break stuff. This is bad. Apple will probably have to put in a function that you can call to get the cache line size.
I've never fiddled with anything that requires me to know cache line sizes. Anyone more knowledgeable have any info?
Yes, but they're one of the largest companies on the planet. If they want to capture the non-DRM market, all they have to do is lobby the government to *not* pass compulsory DRM laws.
This being Apple, one can infer the following future events:
1) That "state-o-the-art" Powerbook you just bought won't run the next version of the OS.
2) All of your current software will still work but in some sort of wierd "Compatibility Mode" that is ten times slower than it runs today.
3) Developers will get screwed (again).
Look, I'm sorry but I'm sick of these posts. The PPC instruction set was designed to be a 64bit architecture. There is a 32bit subset that all current mac programs use and Mac CPUs understand. Theoretically, running 32bit code on a 64bit PPC should be as simple as setting a bit in a special register in the CPU, putting it in 32bit mode.
In fact it might make sense to make 64bit mode an option to the developer. If they don't need very large integers or 4+GB of address space, they could use 32bit mode. This would mean that you don't waste RAM and memory bandwidth using 64bit pointers when you don't need them. The OS would still be 64bit of course.
All applications should run flawlessly (if they did before:-). There is no emulation. And even if there was, how would that hurt the developers? The only time Apple has switched processor architectures before was 68k->PPC. I can still run a 1984 68k copy of MacPaint in Mac OS X's Classic environment. Hell, their 68k emulator was so good that they didn't update all of the OS to PPC straight away! Yes, the jump from OS9 to OSX was difficult for developers but this wont be, even if Apple had to use some sort of emulator (which they wont).
Enterprise is stuck in a rut. In Australia we're still somewhere in first season and it seems like every second episode involves the Captain being invited to a planet, being captured, beaten up a few times, and then rescued by the rest of the crew. He always has at least one other crew member captured with him. Who this other crew member is seems to alternate among all main characters.
Seriously, I like the show but every time that idiot accepts an invitation to a strange planet, without some sort of backup plan, I want to hit him.
The US wants a war for reasons more to do with domestic US politics. Virtually none of the rest of the planet is interested in a war with Iraq. Apart from the US only the UK and Israeli governments appear to think there is cause.
And the Australian Government. But we are basically the 51st state of the US under our current government.
True, but in that case there is no one to blame other than the owner of the car (or computer). Security updates are a different matter. My analogy is apt. There is a malicious other person who is responsible. Just because who can't find them or prosecute them doesn't remove them from the equation. Blaming the victim is just looking for a scapegoat. It is similar to the detaining of Japanese Americans during WWII, we couldn't hurt the actual Japanese Government so we found a scapegoat.
It isn't that simple however. Your analogy is also good. With a car when you register (in Australia at least) the car has to pass a roadworthy test. The car owner isn't responsible for their own maintenance, merely for taking the car to someone who is qualified. Maybe we should acknowledge that most people aren't qualified to take care of their computers and work around that. Does your new Ford come with a "Maintenance Wizard" to lead complete novices through the necessary engine adjustments? No. Arguing that everyone should know enough to secure their boxes is similar to demanding that everyone be able to do complex maintenance on their car. Maybe making maintenance "easier" for the user is attacking the problem from the wrong direction?
If your car kills someone because you don't give a fuck about your actions, it's also YOUR fault.
Bad analogy. Better one: If someone steals your car because you don't have a car alarm and then crashes and kills someone, are you to blame?
No! You are the victim of grand theft auto.
If your computer is insecure and it gets broken into and is used for a malicious act, you are the victim of being hacked. It's not your responsibility to protect your computer from hackers anymore than it is your responsibility to secure your car from theft.
If you are the computer security adviser to a large company then you are in trouble. Otherwise, it's the police's fault for not stopping it.
Note: I have secured my box (to the best of my ability) but I am reasonably computer literate. I don't think my Grandmother should have to do it.
First came OSX, which isn't really much more of a modifed PPC port of FreeBSD (Darwin) with a wicked nice (and nicely engineered) GUI (Aqua) slapped on top.
Thanks for enlightening me. I was under the mistaken impression that the only FreeBSD stuff in the Darwin kernel was the filesystem and network code (and a bit more, I'm oversimplifying). I somehow got the idea that it had a completely different driver model (IOKit) and a completely different core (Mach). Silly me thought most of it came from NeXT. Boy, was I ever wrong! Thanks!
Love it or hate it, the US is a great place to live.
No one is denying that. They are picking apart the bit where you claim that this is somehow an American thing. America has taken something that happens all over the world and called it "The American Dream". It's called living in a prosperous country, nothing more.
Did you ever think that maybe those "later rage cards" are missing some critical feature that QE is relying on? Like, non-power of 2 texture sizes maybe?
I'm always amazed by the meanness some people attribute to Apple. I'm an owner of a 450 G4 with a Rage 128 and I planning to get a cheap ATI Radeon card. Your hardware and mine simply isn't up to the job. It isn't planned obsolescence. Get over it.
What is the target audience? Everyone. It is easier than MacOS or Windows and more powerful than Unix. Both games and network servers will run faster than on any other OS. It can also be used in embedded computers.
Wow, that's very humble of them. I'm very interested to see how this turns out, it has some interesting concepts, but I think this answer is a bit far fetched on almost all counts.
The reason seeing this preview choked me up was because it brought back to me the thought that, yes, we could have done it. We could have put those space stations up, we could have gone to Mars. We could have done so much more than we did in space. Instead, the money was spent on military hardware.
Yes, I agree completely. All those who complain about NASA's $14.8 billion budget should take a long, hard look at the US military's $369 billion budget.
There was a good line that I heard that went something like "Imagine what the world would be like if schools got all the moeny they needed and the military had to hold a cake sale to raise funds for a new bomber."
my understanding is that Virtual PC makes Windows thinks that it's on an x86 computer...and it's an elegant hack.)
It actually emulates the hardware of a PC so Linux x86, *BSD, etc will also run fine. One of the reasons that VirtualPC is surprisingly not shitty is that the PPC has a few little tricks to help. For example when emulating x86 code, VirtualPC throws the PPC into little endian mode (it's natively big endian). This saves lots of byte swapping instructions. The PPC was designed to be a great emulator.
I would hardly call a version that requires XFree86 "native" for Mac OS X. It looks like a cheap port of the Linux version and the X Windows stuff it needs isn't found on a stock Mac OS X install.
I mean no disrespect to the OpenOffice people but that build is not a 1.0 release.
/dev/null is just an endless supply of EOFs. If you try to read from it you just immediately get EOF and stop./dev/zero would give you endless zeroed bytes./dev/random would also give you something but/dev/null would just be an empty file.
Slashdot Mirror
The article is in the current issue.
Another thing that amazed me was the adaptability that the animals showed. I am really starting to think that we greatly underestimate their intelligence. It reminds me of the treatment of immigrants: they can't speak English, therefore they are stupid. I personally can't detect or understand the scent signals that many animals use. With the huge amount of redundancy apparently in the brain, is comparing brain size all that accurate? Maybe we just have more redundancy than other primates and our technological progress is solely due to the sophisticated languages and writing systems we have developed. I still don't believe that yet, but I think the perceived differences between us and other higher level animals will shrink as we learn more.
Of course I'm just a layman who happens to have an interest in this topic.
No, the amazing thing was that they successfully decoded the neural impulses of the monkey's motor cortex and generated commands that drove a robotic arm in sync with the monkey's arm.
Who gives a shit if they also sent those signals 600 miles away? Let me introduce you to something called the Internet...
If you're a Mac user ignore the above post. Quartz Extreme really chews up VRAM: 16MB minimum, 32MB recommended. If you're buying a new card then shoot for 64MB. If you do any kind of serious OpenGL work that isn't full screen, take that into account. I think 128 MB might be overkill for the time being...
From an Australian: YEP.
You're not having much luck are you ;-)
Big companies making products like Photoshop should have the cache line size as a #define anyway or preferably, autodetect it. I'm assuming the programmers of large pieces of software with a lots of optimized code know what they're doing and have at least partially planned for a change in line size
Smaller outfits won't have as much to do. Let's hope they get started soon.
I've never fiddled with anything that requires me to know cache line sizes. Anyone more knowledgeable have any info?
Yes, but they're one of the largest companies on the planet. If they want to capture the non-DRM market, all they have to do is lobby the government to *not* pass compulsory DRM laws.
Look, I'm sorry but I'm sick of these posts. The PPC instruction set was designed to be a 64bit architecture. There is a 32bit subset that all current mac programs use and Mac CPUs understand. Theoretically, running 32bit code on a 64bit PPC should be as simple as setting a bit in a special register in the CPU, putting it in 32bit mode.
In fact it might make sense to make 64bit mode an option to the developer. If they don't need very large integers or 4+GB of address space, they could use 32bit mode. This would mean that you don't waste RAM and memory bandwidth using 64bit pointers when you don't need them. The OS would still be 64bit of course.
All applications should run flawlessly (if they did before :-). There is no emulation. And even if there was, how would that hurt the developers? The only time Apple has switched processor architectures before was 68k->PPC. I can still run a 1984 68k copy of MacPaint in Mac OS X's Classic environment. Hell, their 68k emulator was so good that they didn't update all of the OS to PPC straight away! Yes, the jump from OS9 to OSX was difficult for developers but this wont be, even if Apple had to use some sort of emulator (which they wont).
Seriously, I like the show but every time that idiot accepts an invitation to a strange planet, without some sort of backup plan, I want to hit him.
And the Australian Government. But we are basically the 51st state of the US under our current government.
It isn't that simple however. Your analogy is also good. With a car when you register (in Australia at least) the car has to pass a roadworthy test. The car owner isn't responsible for their own maintenance, merely for taking the car to someone who is qualified. Maybe we should acknowledge that most people aren't qualified to take care of their computers and work around that. Does your new Ford come with a "Maintenance Wizard" to lead complete novices through the necessary engine adjustments? No. Arguing that everyone should know enough to secure their boxes is similar to demanding that everyone be able to do complex maintenance on their car. Maybe making maintenance "easier" for the user is attacking the problem from the wrong direction?
Bad analogy. Better one: If someone steals your car because you don't have a car alarm and then crashes and kills someone, are you to blame?
No! You are the victim of grand theft auto.
If your computer is insecure and it gets broken into and is used for a malicious act, you are the victim of being hacked. It's not your responsibility to protect your computer from hackers anymore than it is your responsibility to secure your car from theft.
If you are the computer security adviser to a large company then you are in trouble. Otherwise, it's the police's fault for not stopping it.
Note: I have secured my box (to the best of my ability) but I am reasonably computer literate. I don't think my Grandmother should have to do it.
Think. Is this good for Apple or goog for you? There is a difference.
Quartz Extreme is great but you're right, we need to have *all* of Quartz accelerated.
Thanks for enlightening me. I was under the mistaken impression that the only FreeBSD stuff in the Darwin kernel was the filesystem and network code (and a bit more, I'm oversimplifying). I somehow got the idea that it had a completely different driver model (IOKit) and a completely different core (Mach). Silly me thought most of it came from NeXT. Boy, was I ever wrong! Thanks!
No one is denying that. They are picking apart the bit where you claim that this is somehow an American thing. America has taken something that happens all over the world and called it "The American Dream". It's called living in a prosperous country, nothing more.
I'm always amazed by the meanness some people attribute to Apple. I'm an owner of a 450 G4 with a Rage 128 and I planning to get a cheap ATI Radeon card. Your hardware and mine simply isn't up to the job. It isn't planned obsolescence. Get over it.
From the faq:
Wow, that's very humble of them. I'm very interested to see how this turns out, it has some interesting concepts, but I think this answer is a bit far fetched on almost all counts.
It actually emulates the hardware of a PC so Linux x86, *BSD, etc will also run fine. One of the reasons that VirtualPC is surprisingly not shitty is that the PPC has a few little tricks to help. For example when emulating x86 code, VirtualPC throws the PPC into little endian mode (it's natively big endian). This saves lots of byte swapping instructions. The PPC was designed to be a great emulator.
"cp", "ls" and "pico" all run on Mac OS X, without any extra software. They are native. I wasn't suggesting that only quartz apps are native.
By your logic, Windows apps are native to Mac OS X because you can get a software package (Virtual PC, bochs, etc) that allows them to run.
I mean no disrespect to the OpenOffice people but that build is not a 1.0 release.
/dev/null is just an endless supply of EOFs. If you try to read from it you just immediately get EOF and stop. /dev/zero would give you endless zeroed bytes. /dev/random would also give you something but /dev/null would just be an empty file.