The relevant optimisations when comparing two CPUs are precisely the ones that are different between the two CPUs. Some things that can be optimised in one cannot be optimised in the other, and vice versa. That's what gives one the advantage over the other, and that's why clock speed isn't everything. PPC and x86 are two very different architectures. Just because the compiler is the same doesn't mean it's as well optimised for one as it is for the other.
Furthermore, Apple did not use the same compiler for both systems. The Xeon benchmark was compiled with a "plain vanilla" version of the compiler, with no special optimisations. The G5 version, on the other hand, was compiledwith Apple's custom version of GCC, and highly optimised for the G5.
See the section "manipulating the results", in this article.
Also rather conspicuous is the absence of any Opteron benchmarks. You see, even with GCC and without any special tweaking, SPEC results for the Opteron (dual 1.8 GHz) are about 60% better than Apple's proposed results for the G5 (dual 2 GHz). So they just pretend the Opteron doesn't exist.
As many people have pointed out throughout this discussion (and the ones before it - BTW, can we please have some articles not about Apple's paper launches?), this is not information and it's not a hardware review, it's marketing.
Anyone who belives this sort of thing must have a lot of disappointments in life.
Then why not use the standard version...? I mean, if they go to the trouble of running their own P4 benchmarks (which, whaddayaknow, turn in results almost 50% below the ones listed in SPEC's database), and are careful to avoid any mention of the Opteron, what are the chances that they didn't optimize the Mac benchmark as much as they could?
Which is fine, and in fact the right thing to do, IMO. But they should compare it to the best compiler for the P4, not the worst. Of course, their hope is that no-one will notice, or even bother to check SPEC's actual database. But after the tricks they tried to pull off over the last decade, I doubt anyone will give their tests any credibility, no matter how many times they manage to write "SPEC" in the same page.
Looks like Apple and Inte^H^H, I mean BAPCo share the same vision for benchmarks: if the benchmark doesn't show your product in the first place, then... "adjust" the benchmark.
> Apple's numbers are a valid comparison of the benchmarks > *when compiled with GCC 3.3*.
They used different versions of GCC (look at the report). The G5 test was compiled with an Apple-optimized version, the Dell test was compiled with a "plain" version.
> The numbers you saw were done with different compilers.
How many Windows programs are compiled with GCC? If you want a meaningful comparison, you need to use a compiler that's likely to be used in the real world. For most of x86 software, that means Intel's or Microsoft's compiler. Do you have any doubt that Apple used the compiler that gave the G5 the best possible results?
> Should Apple compile the fp benchmarks using > AltiVec optimizations?
Of course. And with SSE2 optimizations on the P4. How else can you get an idea of the system's true potential? Isn't Altivec standard on all G5 Macs? So why should they ignore such an important part of the system?
Personally, I don't find synthetic benchamrks all that relevant, but the fact that Apple felt the need to lie about the results of their competitors (by quite a big margin) is significant. Here are the results (ordered by score):
int_base_rate
- (in the real world) Dual Opteron 1.8 GHz = 25 - (in the real world) Dual Xeon 3 GHz = 21.7 - (according to Apple) Dual G5 2ghz = 17.2 - (according to Apple) Dual Xeon 3 GHz = 16.7 - (in the real world) P4 3 GHz = 13.8 - (according to Apple) P4 3 GHz = 10.3
fp_base_rate
- (in the real world) Dual Opteron 1.8 GHz = 24.7 - (in the real world) Dual Xeon 3ghz = 16.7 - (according to Apple) Dual G5 2 GHz = 15.7 - (in the real world) P4 3 GHz = 13.6 - (according to Apple) Dual Xeon 3 GHz = 11.1 - (according to Apple) P4 3 GHz = 8.1
int_base
- (in the real world) P4 3 GHz = 1213 - (in the real world) Xeon 3 GHz = 1053 - (according to Apple) G5 2 GHz = 840 - (according to Apple) P4 3 GHz = 693 - (according to Apple) Xeon 3 GHz = 646
> The Photoshop tests suggest that these new machines will > at least hold their own against the Wintel world
The conditions of the test were not revealed. Namely, they did not disclose what kind of drives each system was using (which is kind of relevant when you're opening and saving a 360 MB file).
> The user experience. This is a slam dunk for Apple - > after all, they wouldn't be in business at all if > not for their vastly superior user experience
If the user experience was that vastly superior, perhaps they'd have a bit more than a 4% market share. User experience is largely a subjective issue. Some people think Lacoste makes superior shirts and, to them, Lacostes feel more comfortable than shirts from other (usually cheaper) brands, even though they may be made from exactly the same fabric and have exactly the same design (minus green crocodile).
My experience with Macs is paying more and getting less. I put up with them for a long time (usually dressed up in Avid clothes), and seeing how Apple continues to lie outrageously in their "product presentations", I doubt it would be any different this time.
Still, I hold back my final judgement until I see some real-world benchmarks made by independent institutions.
In the unlikely event that your ISP block access to all sites except Slashdot (which would explain why you decided to come here instead of to a DVD- or video-oriented site), here's the deal:
DVD-R has the best compatibility, closely followed by DVD+R. The RW formats are far less compatible. Media quality and authoring software also have an influence on compatibility. Best results are achieved with DVDs authored in professional or semi-professional software (ex., DVD Maestro, Reel DVD, DVD Studio Pro, etc.), recorded on brand-name DVD-R media (Maxell is pretty good) at the lowest speed. Also, always create a disc image, or burn with a program that is capable of correctly structuring the title set folders (ex., PrimoDVD). Data burning programs (ex., Nero) will sometimes create discs that do not play on set-top players.
Under these conditions you can expect the disc to play on about 80% of current models (some models dont play recordable discs at all). DVD+R will play on about 75% of players, and the RW formats will play in around 20% of players. For data, DVD+RW is the most versatile format.
If these cards are getting so powerful at computations then why do we need a Intel/AMD processor at all?
Exactly. And if the Playstation 2 can do over 6 GFLOP/s, why doesn't Cray just make a cluster of Playstations instead of buying a shitload of Opterons? Really, someone should give these guys a clue...
I was answering the poster that said that "Fahrenheit makes way more sense for human-experienced temperatures" and that "0-100 is the range of temperatures in which humans can expect to be able to survive", concluding that "it's quite logical".
First, none of those issues was taken into account when creating the scale (so even if they were objective arguments, they wouldn't make Fahrenheit "quite logical", it would simply be a coincidence).
Second, they are not objective arguments. Different people are used to different temperatures (and I wouldn't be surprised if there was some degree of genetic adaptation). People in central Africa can be comfortable at 45 C (113 F) while people in northern regions (ex., Siberia) probably start feeling pretty uncomfortable at 30 C (86 F).
I doubt anyone will survive for long at 0 F without a very thick coat (meaning they won't actually be in contact with 0 F). 0 F is below freezing point, and the water in their bodies (starting with their skins) would freeze and form crystals. Very nasty. On the other hand, people can swim in water at just above freezing point - 0 C - for some time and be perfectly alright. They'll be cold, and may pass out from hypothermia (which can lead to death if they stop breathing), but will not freeze (no crystallization means no permanent damage to the tissues).
Kelvin is a great scale for physicists, but centigrade is actually more practical for some areas of chemistry and - especially - biology, because water plays a big role in those sciences.
I definitely don't think it's stupid to justify a measurement system on the basis that it's better for scientists. Mesuring something objectively (i.e., in abstract units instead of saying that something is "hot" or "cold" or "big" or "small") is a scientific notion.
And no, it doesn't "bother" me at all that Fahrenheit is based on random values. As I said above, for the purpose of measuring temperatures, any linear scale will do roughly the same job. It's simply a matter of convention and habit.
The Celsius scale has its "key points" (0 and 100) set at temperatures where very obvious, very visible "natural" things happen (water phase changes). And that's why I disagree that Farhenheit is any more "logical" or "makes more sense" for the temperatures we deal with than centigrade. Just because you're used to something that doesn't make it more intuitive, and certainly doesn't make it more logical. In abstract, centigrade is slightly more "elegant". As a tool, both scales are more or less equivalent (centigrade is perhaps a bit more practical for cooking, but most people don't actually measure temperatures when they're cooking).
You're right, it is arbitrary psychological crap. When it's 25 C (77 F) here in Lisbon, most locals are wearing coats and most tourists are wearing T-shirts. When it's 40 C (104 F), most locals are wearing t-shirts and most tourists are melting.
I suspect that if we move to other planets we'll change their atmosphere to match the Earth's. Either that or we'll live inside closed biospheres with Earth-like conditions. So we'll still be using centigrade. And x86. And a DOS compatibility layer. And complaining about the CowboyNeal option in polls (or the lack of it).
Again: you are coming up with a justification a posteriori. Farenheit was not thinking of "human comfort" when he defined the scale. And it would be a pretty silly argument for a scientist, anyway. Is -1 F particularly more "uncomfortable" than 0 F? Are there "comfort thresholds"? Did I miss an RFC...?
The Farenheit scale is simply a consequence of the equipment he had and the results of some experiences he made (which turned out not to be very accurate).
The centigrade scale, on the other hand, is based on the substance we deal with more often: water. And has pretty well-defined critical points: phase changes (at 0 and 100, hence the name "centigrade", which means "with 100 degrees"). Of course, you also need to take pressure into account, etc., but it's still based on something "real", it's not just a bunch of numbers picked at random.
To measure temperatures in abstract, any linear scale works equally well. But as far as a connection to "everyday physics" is concerned, centigrade is certainly more direct.
During the 80s, the UNIX with the biggest user base was... XENIX (made by none other than Microsoft), which was later sold to SCO, and which was one of the systems used as a basis for the POSIX standard. NT (and, subsequently, W2K and XP) does comply with a big chunk of the POSIX standard (I suspect one of the reasons was to make it easier to port software from Xenix to NT - Microsoft didn't want to lose market share to the other UNIXes). In some ways, though, NT is closer to VMS than to XENIX.
Two old but interesting articles about the evolution of NT:
NTFS has other nice features such as symbolic links, named streams, non-continuous files, etc.. I learned a few tricks a couple of years ago in a newsgroup discussion from a guy working at Microsoft. Some of these features appear to be completely undocumented (or at least the documentation is very well hidden).
I see what you mean. I look at rain turning into hail and I immediately say "it's so obvious, it must be... 32 degrees!". Or I look at water in a pan, and when it starts boiling it just screams "212 degreees"! Amazing how well it adapts to daily experiences.
What relevant thing happens at 0 F...? Or at 100 F, for that matter?
The centigrade scale is based on water, which is "just" one of the most common (and arguably the most important) substances on Earth. Do you know what the Farenheit scale is based on? Let me quote from a History site: "For seven years Fahrenheit worked out an alcohol thermometer scale based on three points. He chose the freezing point of a certain salt-water mixture for zero. He used the freezing point of water for 32 degrees. And body temperature he called 96 degrees.
Why the funny numbers? He originally used a twelve-point scale with zero, four, and twelve for those three benchmarks. Then he put eight gradations in each large division. That's how he got that strange 96 number - it was eight times twelve. Body temperature is actually a tad higher than 96, but it was close. Later, Fahrenheit made mercury thermometers that let him use the boiling point of water instead of human body temperature for the high mark."
But of course, by then the "standard" had been defined, so water now had to boil at the lovely temperature of "212 degrees".
In other words, Farenheit is the way it is because of legacy support (what does that remind me of?). Its "design" was shaped by the equipment's limitations and by totally arbitrary things such as "the freezing point of a certain salt-water mixture".
Just because you're used to something doesn't mean it's "better" and it certainly doesn't mean that whoever invented it spent much time thinking about it. Look at some modern "standards" and you'll see things haven't changed much since 1700.
RMN ~~~
P.S. - If centigrade is "stupid" but Kelvin is "smart", then why did Kelvin adopt the same "size" for the degrees? The only difference between Celsius (centigrade) and Kelvin is that Celsius' zero is based on water and Kelvin uses the absolute zero.
Are there any Microsoft tools for de/compressing normal archives (like ZIP, RAR, TAR.GZ, etc.)? Maybe in XP? I just use W2K + WinRAR.
Anyway, there's nothing wrong about treating compressed files as directories (especially if they have more than one file inside them). Technically, there isn't a big diference between, say, a ZIP file and a directory with file compression enabled.
Windows' default directory structure is reasonable, but I find some of the names too long (you can change them, BTW; programs will still install in the right places). I don't like drive letters at all, I would prefer drive / device names. It's possible to implement it with shares (ex., "boot:\\" instead of "c:\"), but some programs have problems with it.
On NTFS drives you can also mount volumes as directories (ex., mount your CD drive as c:\cdrom instead of e:, or whatever). NTFS is actually quite civilised.
Define "little pieces". If you play a sequence of 50 notes from some existing (copyrighted) song and use that sequence in one of your songs, are you infringing on the copyright? What if the sequence is just 10 notes long? Or what if it's just 3 notes long?
Does it matter if you made them up yourself (and just happened to sound exactly like that existing song) or if you deliberately copied them? Or if you think you made them up, but may in fact have heard the song before, and got the idea from there?
It's not a matter of "coming up with your own ideas", it's just that sometimes you have an idea that someone else had had before. And sometimes your idea involves (deliberately) using some pre-existing material in some new way.
If you write a book, chances are some sentences you use have already been written in other books. Some of which you may even have read. Does that mean you're "copying" from those books? Some sentences from Douglas Adam's books, Monty Python's, etc., are used over and over in lots of different contexts. Should people be forbidden from using them? Does the fact that your book or article has a paragraph starting with "and now for something completely different" mean you have "no ideas" and that you should "get out of the writing business"?
The first step in deciding whether someone is "copying" a part of a song or not should be to determine if that part of the song is unique enough (i.e., if there are 50 songs using extremely similar chords, it's kind of hard to say it was an "original idea" in the first place).
Then you have to determine if the sample is easily recognisable in the new song (if it's reversed, full of echo, etc., it's virtually impossible to determine its origin, even if the author admits he started with a sample from an existing song).
Finally, you need to determine if that sample could have been replaced with a custom sample that would result in the same overall effect (ex., instead of using an explosion from "Doom", could you have recorded a "new" explosion, and used that instead, resulting in something almost indistinguishable from the Doom explosion?).
Naturally, all this is still rather subjective, but at least it's "objectively subjective" (in other words: you know there's a subjective element). Saying "all tiny little pieces of a copyrighted song are copyrighted and can never be used in another song" sounds very "neat" and very objective but doesn't make any sense.
If you buy a DV-CAM 184-minute tape and use it in a "plain" DV recorder, it will magically become 4 and a half hours long. This is because one of the differences (in fact, the main difference) between DV and DV-CAM is the tape speed (this is to make DV-CAM more durable; the actual data is the same, you can copy between the two with no loss).
Not only is DV durable and (reasonably) affordable, it's also extremely easy to capture and manipulate (a DV capture card is very cheap compared to a decent analog capture card). The only expensive part is the recorder itself.
There is another option that might be cheaper, but I don't know how big the tapes are: Digital-8. The data is in the same format as DV; the main difference is usually in the quality of the equipment (ie, Digital-8 cameras usually have worse CCDs than DV cameras, etc.), but here that probably wouldn't matter much (the AD converter is probably worse than the ones on good DV decks, but I doubt it'll be noticeable with VHS).
[...] Could soldiers be screened for homosexuality?
Meaning that homosexuals would be rejected or that they would have priority? In ancient Greece, some divisions of the army were composed primarily of homosexuals. The reasoning was that the bond between them would make them fight harder when they saw the others in danger. So this is an issue that swings both ways (pun intended, har-har).
In most countries a soldier's sexual orientation / preference is not an issue (one way or the other), though.
I think that screening based on predisposition to kill (if it turns out to be something you can identify genetically) would be a lot more likely.
There is nothing pro-Linux in most Linux zealot's rants (same goes for Mac zealots, Intel zealots, and so on). It's all about playing the victim (usually the "intelectually superior", "elite" victim of the stupid, sheeplike masses, manipulated by [insert name of evil enemy here]), and attacking the "enemy" in every way possible. Linux / Mac zealots don't care if Linux / Mac is good, or about making it better, they just feel the need to tell everyone that Windows is crap. Which makes it kind of a mystery why they then use window managers that make Linux look and behave exactly like Windows, but hey, I'm not going to waste my time trying to make sense of their "logic".
Now, if you're not one of these zealots, then you're really unlucky when it comes to choosing your words and getting your facts straight. Let's see:
"[Valve] persistently refused to release a Linux or Mac version of the game."
I think this point has already been discussed enough.
"the Quake (and sequels) sourcebase they worked from was cross-platform."
They licensed and used only the original Quake engine, not the sequels' (this was 1996, remember?). As the article you linked to above (the one about the Mac port) said, most of Half-Life's code was very specific to Windows, and virtually impossible to "port" to other operating systems, requiring a full rewrite.
"That behavior is fully consistent with Microsoft-ism."
This "behaviour" meaning "not releasing a Linux and / or Mac version". So any company that does not release Mac / Linux versions of all their software is "acting like Microsoft". I'm going to start boycotting 3D Studio MAX and TMPGEnc today...
"Microsoft always supports 3rd party addons, as long as they serve as additional glue tieing users to their platform."
I'm not aware of a single free 3rd party application that Microsoft supports. As to "tying the users to their platform", what exactly did you expect? Did you want Valve to start developing and releasing free mods for Unreal Tournament, for example? Or perhaps (to be really platform-independent) they should make mods that would work with any game. That would be the only truly acceptable attitude, and the fact that it's impossible doesn't change anything.
"CS was a free 3rd party add-on for all of it's meaningful development."
CS still is a free add-on, and is still being developed by its original author. The only difference is Valve decided to pay him for it. For some obscure reason, you seem to think that's a bad thing.
"It [CS] had already doubled the sales life of Half-Life by the time Valve bought it, and made it a paid product."
Care to post the sales figures to support that claim? Didn't think you could, either. And Valve never made CS "a paid product" (you can still download it for free from all the usual places). They simply distributed a boxed version for a) people with slow network connections who don't want to spend hours downloading a 120 MB file and b) people who did not want to buy the original Half-Life game just to play CS. Again, for some strange reason you seem to think that's a bad thing.
"They still had to allow free distribution of the basic netplay version, because otherwise hardcore users and server-ops would've been alienated and forked away"
Is that also why they distribute TFC, HLDM and DMC for free? Is that also why they added voice communications, lag compensation and spectator modes to HL for free? Because, if they had decided to release those as commercial add-ons, people would have "forked away"...? Where to? At least try to make some sense.
"they had a Microsoft-centric view of computing"
Here we go again...
"Half-Life helped preserve the use of Microsoft Windows amoung heavy internet users and the technical elite"
Slashdot Mirror
The relevant optimisations when comparing two CPUs are precisely the ones that are different between the two CPUs. Some things that can be optimised in one cannot be optimised in the other, and vice versa. That's what gives one the advantage over the other, and that's why clock speed isn't everything. PPC and x86 are two very different architectures. Just because the compiler is the same doesn't mean it's as well optimised for one as it is for the other.
Furthermore, Apple did not use the same compiler for both systems. The Xeon benchmark was compiled with a "plain vanilla" version of the compiler, with no special optimisations. The G5 version, on the other hand, was compiledwith Apple's custom version of GCC, and highly optimised for the G5.
See the section "manipulating the results", in this article.
Also rather conspicuous is the absence of any Opteron benchmarks. You see, even with GCC and without any special tweaking, SPEC results for the Opteron (dual 1.8 GHz) are about 60% better than Apple's proposed results for the G5 (dual 2 GHz). So they just pretend the Opteron doesn't exist.
As many people have pointed out throughout this discussion (and the ones before it - BTW, can we please have some articles not about Apple's paper launches?), this is not information and it's not a hardware review, it's marketing.
Anyone who belives this sort of thing must have a lot of disappointments in life.
RMN
~~~
At the bottom of the page you will find the following:
"with the exception of HMMer, application software [was] optimized for the PowerPC G5"
The file used was 600 MB, not 360. Meaning the type of drives being used is even more important.
Then why not use the standard version...? I mean, if they go to the trouble of running their own P4 benchmarks (which, whaddayaknow, turn in results almost 50% below the ones listed in SPEC's database), and are careful to avoid any mention of the Opteron, what are the chances that they didn't optimize the Mac benchmark as much as they could?
Which is fine, and in fact the right thing to do, IMO. But they should compare it to the best compiler for the P4, not the worst. Of course, their hope is that no-one will notice, or even bother to check SPEC's actual database. But after the tricks they tried to pull off over the last decade, I doubt anyone will give their tests any credibility, no matter how many times they manage to write "SPEC" in the same page.
Looks like Apple and Inte^H^H, I mean BAPCo share the same vision for benchmarks: if the benchmark doesn't show your product in the first place, then... "adjust" the benchmark.
> Apple's numbers are a valid comparison of the benchmarks
> *when compiled with GCC 3.3*.
They used different versions of GCC (look at the report). The G5 test was compiled with an Apple-optimized version, the Dell test was compiled with a "plain" version.
> The numbers you saw were done with different compilers.
How many Windows programs are compiled with GCC? If you want a meaningful comparison, you need to use a compiler that's likely to be used in the real world. For most of x86 software, that means Intel's or Microsoft's compiler. Do you have any doubt that Apple used the compiler that gave the G5 the best possible results?
> Should Apple compile the fp benchmarks using
> AltiVec optimizations?
Of course. And with SSE2 optimizations on the P4. How else can you get an idea of the system's true potential? Isn't Altivec standard on all G5 Macs? So why should they ignore such an important part of the system?
Personally, I don't find synthetic benchamrks all that relevant, but the fact that Apple felt the need to lie about the results of their competitors (by quite a big margin) is significant. Here are the results (ordered by score):
int_base_rate
- (in the real world) Dual Opteron 1.8 GHz = 25
- (in the real world) Dual Xeon 3 GHz = 21.7
- (according to Apple) Dual G5 2ghz = 17.2
- (according to Apple) Dual Xeon 3 GHz = 16.7
- (in the real world) P4 3 GHz = 13.8
- (according to Apple) P4 3 GHz = 10.3
fp_base_rate
- (in the real world) Dual Opteron 1.8 GHz = 24.7
- (in the real world) Dual Xeon 3ghz = 16.7
- (according to Apple) Dual G5 2 GHz = 15.7
- (in the real world) P4 3 GHz = 13.6
- (according to Apple) Dual Xeon 3 GHz = 11.1
- (according to Apple) P4 3 GHz = 8.1
int_base
- (in the real world) P4 3 GHz = 1213
- (in the real world) Xeon 3 GHz = 1053
- (according to Apple) G5 2 GHz = 840
- (according to Apple) P4 3 GHz = 693
- (according to Apple) Xeon 3 GHz = 646
> The Photoshop tests suggest that these new machines will
> at least hold their own against the Wintel world
The conditions of the test were not revealed. Namely, they did not disclose what kind of drives each system was using (which is kind of relevant when you're opening and saving a 360 MB file).
> The user experience. This is a slam dunk for Apple -
> after all, they wouldn't be in business at all if
> not for their vastly superior user experience
If the user experience was that vastly superior, perhaps they'd have a bit more than a 4% market share. User experience is largely a subjective issue. Some people think Lacoste makes superior shirts and, to them, Lacostes feel more comfortable than shirts from other (usually cheaper) brands, even though they may be made from exactly the same fabric and have exactly the same design (minus green crocodile).
My experience with Macs is paying more and getting less. I put up with them for a long time (usually dressed up in Avid clothes), and seeing how Apple continues to lie outrageously in their "product presentations", I doubt it would be any different this time.
Still, I hold back my final judgement until I see some real-world benchmarks made by independent institutions.
I believe this is appropriate.
In the unlikely event that your ISP block access to all sites except Slashdot (which would explain why you decided to come here instead of to a DVD- or video-oriented site), here's the deal:
DVD-R has the best compatibility, closely followed by DVD+R. The RW formats are far less compatible. Media quality and authoring software also have an influence on compatibility. Best results are achieved with DVDs authored in professional or semi-professional software (ex., DVD Maestro, Reel DVD, DVD Studio Pro, etc.), recorded on brand-name DVD-R media (Maxell is pretty good) at the lowest speed. Also, always create a disc image, or burn with a program that is capable of correctly structuring the title set folders (ex., PrimoDVD). Data burning programs (ex., Nero) will sometimes create discs that do not play on set-top players.
Under these conditions you can expect the disc to play on about 80% of current models (some models dont play recordable discs at all). DVD+R will play on about 75% of players, and the RW formats will play in around 20% of players. For data, DVD+RW is the most versatile format.
RMN
~~~
Does this mean that RFC 3251 is just around the corner?
RMN
~~~
If these cards are getting so powerful at computations then why do we need a Intel/AMD processor at all?
Exactly. And if the Playstation 2 can do over 6 GFLOP/s, why doesn't Cray just make a cluster of Playstations instead of buying a shitload of Opterons? Really, someone should give these guys a clue...
RMN
~~~
So now all we need is to find something AT&T stole from Apple, and everything will make sense again... right...?
RMN
~~~
And SCO got Xenix from Microsoft...
RMN
~~~
I was answering the poster that said that "Fahrenheit makes way more sense for human-experienced temperatures" and that "0-100 is the range of temperatures in which humans can expect to be able to survive", concluding that "it's quite logical".
First, none of those issues was taken into account when creating the scale (so even if they were objective arguments, they wouldn't make Fahrenheit "quite logical", it would simply be a coincidence).
Second, they are not objective arguments. Different people are used to different temperatures (and I wouldn't be surprised if there was some degree of genetic adaptation). People in central Africa can be comfortable at 45 C (113 F) while people in northern regions (ex., Siberia) probably start feeling pretty uncomfortable at 30 C (86 F).
I doubt anyone will survive for long at 0 F without a very thick coat (meaning they won't actually be in contact with 0 F). 0 F is below freezing point, and the water in their bodies (starting with their skins) would freeze and form crystals. Very nasty. On the other hand, people can swim in water at just above freezing point - 0 C - for some time and be perfectly alright. They'll be cold, and may pass out from hypothermia (which can lead to death if they stop breathing), but will not freeze (no crystallization means no permanent damage to the tissues).
Kelvin is a great scale for physicists, but centigrade is actually more practical for some areas of chemistry and - especially - biology, because water plays a big role in those sciences.
I definitely don't think it's stupid to justify a measurement system on the basis that it's better for scientists. Mesuring something objectively (i.e., in abstract units instead of saying that something is "hot" or "cold" or "big" or "small") is a scientific notion.
And no, it doesn't "bother" me at all that Fahrenheit is based on random values. As I said above, for the purpose of measuring temperatures, any linear scale will do roughly the same job. It's simply a matter of convention and habit.
The Celsius scale has its "key points" (0 and 100) set at temperatures where very obvious, very visible "natural" things happen (water phase changes). And that's why I disagree that Farhenheit is any more "logical" or "makes more sense" for the temperatures we deal with than centigrade. Just because you're used to something that doesn't make it more intuitive, and certainly doesn't make it more logical. In abstract, centigrade is slightly more "elegant". As a tool, both scales are more or less equivalent (centigrade is perhaps a bit more practical for cooking, but most people don't actually measure temperatures when they're cooking).
RMN
~~~
You're right, it is arbitrary psychological crap. When it's 25 C (77 F) here in Lisbon, most locals are wearing coats and most tourists are wearing T-shirts. When it's 40 C (104 F), most locals are wearing t-shirts and most tourists are melting.
I suspect that if we move to other planets we'll change their atmosphere to match the Earth's. Either that or we'll live inside closed biospheres with Earth-like conditions. So we'll still be using centigrade. And x86. And a DOS compatibility layer. And complaining about the CowboyNeal option in polls (or the lack of it).
RMN
~~~
Again: you are coming up with a justification a posteriori. Farenheit was not thinking of "human comfort" when he defined the scale. And it would be a pretty silly argument for a scientist, anyway. Is -1 F particularly more "uncomfortable" than 0 F? Are there "comfort thresholds"? Did I miss an RFC...?
The Farenheit scale is simply a consequence of the equipment he had and the results of some experiences he made (which turned out not to be very accurate).
The centigrade scale, on the other hand, is based on the substance we deal with more often: water. And has pretty well-defined critical points: phase changes (at 0 and 100, hence the name "centigrade", which means "with 100 degrees"). Of course, you also need to take pressure into account, etc., but it's still based on something "real", it's not just a bunch of numbers picked at random.
To measure temperatures in abstract, any linear scale works equally well. But as far as a connection to "everyday physics" is concerned, centigrade is certainly more direct.
RMN
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Are you suggesting that anyone needs more than 640KB...?
RMN
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During the 80s, the UNIX with the biggest user base was... XENIX (made by none other than Microsoft), which was later sold to SCO, and which was one of the systems used as a basis for the POSIX standard. NT (and, subsequently, W2K and XP) does comply with a big chunk of the POSIX standard (I suspect one of the reasons was to make it easier to port software from Xenix to NT - Microsoft didn't want to lose market share to the other UNIXes). In some ways, though, NT is closer to VMS than to XENIX.
D =97&ArticleID=4500
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Two old but interesting articles about the evolution of NT:
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?IssueI
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?IssueI
NTFS has other nice features such as symbolic links, named streams, non-continuous files, etc.. I learned a few tricks a couple of years ago in a newsgroup discussion from a guy working at Microsoft. Some of these features appear to be completely undocumented (or at least the documentation is very well hidden).
RMN
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I see what you mean. I look at rain turning into hail and I immediately say "it's so obvious, it must be... 32 degrees!". Or I look at water in a pan, and when it starts boiling it just screams "212 degreees"! Amazing how well it adapts to daily experiences.
What relevant thing happens at 0 F...? Or at 100 F, for that matter?
The centigrade scale is based on water, which is "just" one of the most common (and arguably the most important) substances on Earth. Do you know what the Farenheit scale is based on? Let me quote from a History site:
"For seven years Fahrenheit worked out an alcohol thermometer scale based on three points. He chose the freezing point of a certain salt-water mixture for zero. He used the freezing point of water for 32 degrees. And body temperature he called 96 degrees.
Why the funny numbers? He originally used a twelve-point scale with zero, four, and twelve for those three benchmarks. Then he put eight gradations in each large division. That's how he got that strange 96 number - it was eight times twelve. Body temperature is actually a tad higher than 96, but it was close. Later, Fahrenheit made mercury thermometers that let him use the boiling point of water instead of human body temperature for the high mark."
But of course, by then the "standard" had been defined, so water now had to boil at the lovely temperature of "212 degrees".
In other words, Farenheit is the way it is because of legacy support (what does that remind me of?). Its "design" was shaped by the equipment's limitations and by totally arbitrary things such as "the freezing point of a certain salt-water mixture".
Just because you're used to something doesn't mean it's "better" and it certainly doesn't mean that whoever invented it spent much time thinking about it. Look at some modern "standards" and you'll see things haven't changed much since 1700.
RMN
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P.S. - If centigrade is "stupid" but Kelvin is "smart", then why did Kelvin adopt the same "size" for the degrees? The only difference between Celsius (centigrade) and Kelvin is that Celsius' zero is based on water and Kelvin uses the absolute zero.
Are there any Microsoft tools for de/compressing normal archives (like ZIP, RAR, TAR.GZ, etc.)? Maybe in XP? I just use W2K + WinRAR.
Anyway, there's nothing wrong about treating compressed files as directories (especially if they have more than one file inside them). Technically, there isn't a big diference between, say, a ZIP file and a directory with file compression enabled.
Windows' default directory structure is reasonable, but I find some of the names too long (you can change them, BTW; programs will still install in the right places). I don't like drive letters at all, I would prefer drive / device names. It's possible to implement it with shares (ex., "boot:\\" instead of "c:\"), but some programs have problems with it.
On NTFS drives you can also mount volumes as directories (ex., mount your CD drive as c:\cdrom instead of e:, or whatever). NTFS is actually quite civilised.
RMN
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What do you care if people in a different city have different streets? It's not like anyone's forcing you to move there.
Some tme ago, ntel tred to copyrght the letter "". Of course, Apple clam they were the ones who nvented t...
RMN
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Things aren't that simple.
Define "little pieces". If you play a sequence of 50 notes from some existing (copyrighted) song and use that sequence in one of your songs, are you infringing on the copyright? What if the sequence is just 10 notes long? Or what if it's just 3 notes long?
Does it matter if you made them up yourself (and just happened to sound exactly like that existing song) or if you deliberately copied them? Or if you think you made them up, but may in fact have heard the song before, and got the idea from there?
It's not a matter of "coming up with your own ideas", it's just that sometimes you have an idea that someone else had had before. And sometimes your idea involves (deliberately) using some pre-existing material in some new way.
If you write a book, chances are some sentences you use have already been written in other books. Some of which you may even have read. Does that mean you're "copying" from those books? Some sentences from Douglas Adam's books, Monty Python's, etc., are used over and over in lots of different contexts. Should people be forbidden from using them? Does the fact that your book or article has a paragraph starting with "and now for something completely different" mean you have "no ideas" and that you should "get out of the writing business"?
The first step in deciding whether someone is "copying" a part of a song or not should be to determine if that part of the song is unique enough (i.e., if there are 50 songs using extremely similar chords, it's kind of hard to say it was an "original idea" in the first place).
Then you have to determine if the sample is easily recognisable in the new song (if it's reversed, full of echo, etc., it's virtually impossible to determine its origin, even if the author admits he started with a sample from an existing song).
Finally, you need to determine if that sample could have been replaced with a custom sample that would result in the same overall effect (ex., instead of using an explosion from "Doom", could you have recorded a "new" explosion, and used that instead, resulting in something almost indistinguishable from the Doom explosion?).
Naturally, all this is still rather subjective, but at least it's "objectively subjective" (in other words: you know there's a subjective element). Saying "all tiny little pieces of a copyrighted song are copyrighted and can never be used in another song" sounds very "neat" and very objective but doesn't make any sense.
Possibly the most famous musical copyright dispute: Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music.
RMN
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If you buy a DV-CAM 184-minute tape and use it in a "plain" DV recorder, it will magically become 4 and a half hours long. This is because one of the differences (in fact, the main difference) between DV and DV-CAM is the tape speed (this is to make DV-CAM more durable; the actual data is the same, you can copy between the two with no loss).
Not only is DV durable and (reasonably) affordable, it's also extremely easy to capture and manipulate (a DV capture card is very cheap compared to a decent analog capture card). The only expensive part is the recorder itself.
There is another option that might be cheaper, but I don't know how big the tapes are: Digital-8. The data is in the same format as DV; the main difference is usually in the quality of the equipment (ie, Digital-8 cameras usually have worse CCDs than DV cameras, etc.), but here that probably wouldn't matter much (the AD converter is probably worse than the ones on good DV decks, but I doubt it'll be noticeable with VHS).
RMN
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[...] Could soldiers be screened for homosexuality?
Meaning that homosexuals would be rejected or that they would have priority? In ancient Greece, some divisions of the army were composed primarily of homosexuals. The reasoning was that the bond between them would make them fight harder when they saw the others in danger. So this is an issue that swings both ways (pun intended, har-har).
In most countries a soldier's sexual orientation / preference is not an issue (one way or the other), though.
I think that screening based on predisposition to kill (if it turns out to be something you can identify genetically) would be a lot more likely.
RMN
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By positioning the microwave beam across a migration route, the people in the village get roast duck for free.
RMN
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...then women are irrational numbers. ;-)
RMN
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There is nothing pro-Linux in most Linux zealot's rants (same goes for Mac zealots, Intel zealots, and so on). It's all about playing the victim (usually the "intelectually superior", "elite" victim of the stupid, sheeplike masses, manipulated by [insert name of evil enemy here]), and attacking the "enemy" in every way possible. Linux / Mac zealots don't care if Linux / Mac is good, or about making it better, they just feel the need to tell everyone that Windows is crap. Which makes it kind of a mystery why they then use window managers that make Linux look and behave exactly like Windows, but hey, I'm not going to waste my time trying to make sense of their "logic".
Now, if you're not one of these zealots, then you're really unlucky when it comes to choosing your words and getting your facts straight. Let's see:
"[Valve] persistently refused to release a Linux or Mac version of the game."
I think this point has already been discussed enough.
"the Quake (and sequels) sourcebase they worked from was cross-platform."
They licensed and used only the original Quake engine, not the sequels' (this was 1996, remember?). As the article you linked to above (the one about the Mac port) said, most of Half-Life's code was very specific to Windows, and virtually impossible to "port" to other operating systems, requiring a full rewrite.
"That behavior is fully consistent with Microsoft-ism."
This "behaviour" meaning "not releasing a Linux and / or Mac version". So any company that does not release Mac / Linux versions of all their software is "acting like Microsoft". I'm going to start boycotting 3D Studio MAX and TMPGEnc today...
"Microsoft always supports 3rd party addons, as long as they serve as additional glue tieing users to their platform."
I'm not aware of a single free 3rd party application that Microsoft supports. As to "tying the users to their platform", what exactly did you expect? Did you want Valve to start developing and releasing free mods for Unreal Tournament, for example? Or perhaps (to be really platform-independent) they should make mods that would work with any game. That would be the only truly acceptable attitude, and the fact that it's impossible doesn't change anything.
"CS was a free 3rd party add-on for all of it's meaningful development."
CS still is a free add-on, and is still being developed by its original author. The only difference is Valve decided to pay him for it. For some obscure reason, you seem to think that's a bad thing.
"It [CS] had already doubled the sales life of Half-Life by the time Valve bought it, and made it a paid product."
Care to post the sales figures to support that claim? Didn't think you could, either. And Valve never made CS "a paid product" (you can still download it for free from all the usual places). They simply distributed a boxed version for a) people with slow network connections who don't want to spend hours downloading a 120 MB file and b) people who did not want to buy the original Half-Life game just to play CS. Again, for some strange reason you seem to think that's a bad thing.
"They still had to allow free distribution of the basic netplay version, because otherwise hardcore users and server-ops would've been alienated and forked away"
Is that also why they distribute TFC, HLDM and DMC for free? Is that also why they added voice communications, lag compensation and spectator modes to HL for free? Because, if they had decided to release those as commercial add-ons, people would have "forked away"...? Where to? At least try to make some sense.
"they had a Microsoft-centric view of computing"
Here we go again...
"Half-Life helped preserve the use of Microsoft Windows amoung heavy internet users and the technical elite"
This one actually made me laugh