That is not what he's saying. There's no such thing as free energy. It has to come from somewhere (maybe you can get enery out of nowhere but then you also get some anti-energy, and would have a lot of trouble keeping them apart).
It is possible to convert matter into energy with great eficiency. Fireflies do it all the time. With a bit of work, it would probably even be possible to convert all matter into pure energy. The main problem would be converting that energy back to exactly the same matter that it originally was. Probably, the only way to do it would be to send extra energy with information about the original matter's properties.
But the whole process is a bit silly.
If you have the technology to create the matter you want (from "raw" energy), there's no need to convert the original matter to energy in the first place. This would be a bit like converting your hard disk into energy so that it could be sent over the network wires and rebuilt at the other end. It's simpler to transfer just the information necessary to reconstruct the disk, and when the (perfect) copy has been created, you destroy the original one (or keep it, if you prefer). The two problems here are a) how do you determine the exact structure of the original disk and b) how to you build a new disc that matches that structure perfectly. It's easy when you're dealing with abstract entities such as bits and sectors, but not when you need every single particle to match the original one.
I suspect we (humans) will get there, eventually. But I doubt it'll be before Duke Nukem Forever and Team Fortress 2 are actually released.
Exactly. The difference between rendering a page in 0.5 seconds and rendering it in 0.3 seconds is irrelevant. But things like Ctrl+Shift+Click (open in background), the way the cursor jumps to the address bar when you hit Ctrl+N, searching for selected text on the net directly from the context menu, zooming in on pages, etc., are things I find really hard to live without.
Unfortunately, while Opera 7 (beta) has much better support for dynamic HTML / CSS / DOM (nearly as good as Mozilla), the interface is still nowhere near as polished as Opera 6's.
No, it doesn't. In fact, it doesn't even cache any page that's protected by a password, nor does it add them to the list of recently visited addresses (which is nice both for security and privacy reasons).
They are only kept in the RAM cache (i.e., when you press "back" or "forward", it will usually show you a page's last state (down to the position of the scroll bars), without reloading it. This is quite useful, BTW; it means you can go back and forth between pages without losing what you were writing in a form (unlike MSIE, where forms are reset).
After this, they will hire an ape-like president with sweaty armpits and a face like Fester Addams who will try to boost sales by shouting "Yeeeeeeeaaaaah!", "I love this company!", "Come on!" and "Developers! Developers! Developers!".
OS/2 and BeOS have died a long time ago (thoug they only realised it recently). Neither was able to run Windows software. Linux and OS X are (to a point). If they had used this time (between 94 and now) to make an OS that could run Windows software and offered new features not found in Windows (such as a database / property-based file-system, a 3D interface, screen zooming, etc.), their position would be quite different today.
A lower price by itself will not win the battle. In some countries Windows comes pre-installed on almost all computers, and in the remaining countries it's trivial to get a pirate copy, so Windows is "free" for most people too. Using a CPU analogy, Linux needs its Hammer or, at least, its Athlon XP. It needs to come up with something that can do what Windows does better than Windows does it.
A lot of people find interacting with their computer hard. If something is a few pixels to the left, a few pixels to the right, or a different colour
Following your reasoning, no-one would have used Windows XP, because it looked quite different from Windows 2000 / 98 / etc. And yet, about 50% of Windows users today are using XP (I am not one of them, BTW). The visual differences between 98 and XP are not much smaller than the differences between XP and OS X or between XP and KDE. The problem is not the way things look, it's the way things work. If someone is used to Photoshop, they'll prefer Photoshop (with a different look) over Photo-Paint (with the traditional look). Because they know the menus, they know what each option does, they know what can be dragged and dropped, etc..
What Linux needs is very good Windows emulation, and useful features not found in Windows. BeOS and OS/2 looked great (and not too different from Windows). Lot of good that did.
The main threat to Microsoft comes from Lindows (and other "emulation-oriented" distros). Sometihng that can run the same tools, not something that just looks similar.
Yes, because as we all know, since Linux can only ever have one interface, this one will automatically prevent anybody from using KDE. Get a clue.
So first you say that this GUI is a great thing for people who are so clueless that they panic if a button is one pixel off, and then you suggest that those same people would be able to replace it with a new desktop? Looks like, if I'm to get a clue, it won't be from you.
Also, by the time this is ready, Microsoft will probably be close to releasing Longhorn (XP 2 or whatever they call it). Now on one side you'll have an OS (Linux + XPDE) that looks exactly like XP but doesn't run most of Windows' software. On the other side you'll have something that looks quite different but does run all existing Windows software. Which one do you think 90% of people will pick...?
It sounds like you think the only reason people use Linux is because they hate microsoft. You lend ms too much importance.
I don't think it's possible to "lend too much importance" to a company that makes software used in over 98% of computers worldwide. But it's one thing to acknowledge Microsoft's importance, and a very different thing to be obssessed by it. I'm not the one losing sleep to make Linux look more and more like Windows. In fact, partly due to that trend, I'm using Linux less and less these days.
When I say something new I don't mean "something released recently"; I mean something innovative. Something that let the users do things they couldn't do before, or that radically changes the way people use computers. Things like mice, or windows, or multitasking. New concepts. Not just new (prettier, faster, whatever) versions of what we already have. If Microsoft does go ahead with a "property-based" file system in the next version of Windows, that will be something new. And it's coming from Microsoft. How depressing is that?
OSX is a GUI running on top of BSD. Neither BSD nor GUIs are a new thing (and neither was invented by Apple, BTW). You might as well say that XP is "new" because it has a new window manager running on top of the NT kernel.
It's also quite easy to understand that, even if you think the winxp interface sucks beyond belief, it's what everybody else is used to, and so, making it at least an option for Linux users will aid migration.
No, it won't. Running all (or nearly all) Windows software with a better interface will get people to switch. Running a fraction of the software while looking the same just makes it completely uninteresting. People who like XP's interface will stick with XP (if they already have it, why would they bother switching to a different OS that won't run most of their software?) and people who don't like XP's interface have even less reasons to switch.
The only people who will use this are Linux users who, deep down, want to run XP.
Look at Apple. I dislike their way of doing business as much as I dislike Microsoft's, but at least they're making something that looks different (even if it behaves more or less the same). At least people have a choice. You have less software, you pay a bit more, but maybe it's worth it if you prefer the interface. But if Apple made OS X look and behave exactly like XP, do you think anyone would buy it?
Honestly, I think some people in the Linux community are just too obssessed with Microsoft to produce anything useful. They say Microsoft sucks but then they waste their time copying it. Why would someone want to "migrate" to something that looks the same and can't run most software? It makes no sense.
"Hey great! It looks just like Windows XP and won't run half of my software! I can't wait to 'migrate'!"
Please! For the last six years neither Microsoft nor Apple have come up with anything really new. This time could have been used creating something better that would give Linux (and its users) an advantage. Instead, it was wasted making Linux look more and more like Windows. This is like AMD and Intel in the 386 era. It's almost as good and a lot cheaper!... Well, as long as you're just following the leader, you'll never put any real pressure on them.
They were not developed under EA management. EA usually buys companies when they have a couple of good games almost ready to launch (they may be crap at creating games, but they're not completely stupid when it comes to business). Privateer was developed by "native" Origin people from start to finish, and it shows in the way it creates a credible, consistent, interesting universe. Armada (that shares very few team members with the previous games) was more of a technology demo than a complete game (moving from sprite-based to polygon-based).
BTW, Ultima 8 and 9 are also "Lord British games" and they are absolute crap when you compare them to Ultima 6, Ultima 7 (either part, but especially the first one) or Underworld (either part). Chris Roberts and Richard Garriott may be the ones that "sign" the game, but the quality of the final product depends on the talent of the whole team and on the producers' policy. I have talked (via e-mail) with a few members of the U8 and U9 team and I know they did not agree with many decisions that were made by "the management" ("this needs more action", "who needs a party?", "no-one wants to bake bread in a game"). In fact, many left half-way through. Garriott was getting a bit tired and decided to cash in and let EA do as they pleased. And, oops, they did it again.
Wing Commander means the original game, plus Wing Commander 2 and the first Privateer game. All the rest were just endless video sequences with some short and repetitive gameplay between them. They weren't even described as games, the box said "interactive CD-ROM movie".
For a couple of years before being bought by EA, Origin really did create worlds. They made some of the best games of all times (Ultima 7, Wing Commander, Privateer, Underworld). Same goes for Bullfrog, and many other companies swallowed up by EA (I doubt Maxis will ever make another original game; they will just keep releasing Sims add-ons with more and more advertising). EA seems to have the Midas touch with a twist: all the gold it touches turns into crap.
Oh well, as long as they make some gold out of companies' last breaths, I guess the shareholders will be happy.
You do? Then it's quite simple. Try it. Use the same files, on the same systems, and see if your results match is. No need to stress your brain wondering.
THG is hardly a reliable source for anything. Regardless, HyperThreading is not the same as SMP. HyperThreading basically allocates one area of the CPU (FPU or ALU) for one thread. When the thread needs to use the other area, it has to wait until it's empty. That takes time. In a real SMP system, each thread has a full CPU at its disposal.
If you are seeing overhead when running a single-threaded application on an SMP system, check the CPU usage. If the process is jumping back and forth between the two CPUs, you can probably improve performance by enforcing processor affinity (ie, forcing it to run on a specific CPU, preferably not the first one). It also means the SMP OS kernel could probably be improved (this is one area where Windows NT / 2K / XP is actually quite good).
Also, there are diferences in the way different sytems share resources between CPUs. For example, Athlon MPs usually scale better than Xeons because they have a smarter cache consistency algorithm.
> Another msg in this thread reported a dualie 1.25ghz > mac 50% faster at Cleaner than a dual 1.8Athlon (IIRC), > and that's fairly representative of my experiences.
So putting two CPUs on the Mac and just one on the PC is "stacking the deck" in favour of the PC...? This must be a deck made of anti-matter, because the more things you take away, the more stacked it gets.
Can you please post the actual results and exact setup of those benchmarks (as the article's author did with his)? Just so that others can (try to) reproduce them, and confirm that you're not just making that up. Thank you.
I absolutely loved this message; it deserves a "+7, Witty" rating. Unfortunately, I'm afraid most Slashdot moderators won't quite get the irony (which I hope was deliberate, but either way, it made my day).
I really don't care what happened back in version 2.5. This is 2002, we are comparing current systems running current software. That means Photoshop 7 on Windows 2000 or XP and Photoshop 7 on OS X. What are the differences now?
I think it would be important and educational if you could provide some real, objective examples (ie, facts), and not just empty sentences like "it just feels different" or "it's just something you can't quite put into words".
Tell me, then, what is the difference (besides the way the menus and title bars look) between Photoshop 7 on OS X and Photoshop 7 on Windows? Do the brushes behave differently? Do layers stack in a different order? Does the cursor go left when you move the pen (or the mouse) to the right? Do the pixels smell different?
Please provide clear examples (facts), for everyone's education.
Slashdot Mirror
That is not what he's saying. There's no such thing as free energy. It has to come from somewhere (maybe you can get enery out of nowhere but then you also get some anti-energy, and would have a lot of trouble keeping them apart).
It is possible to convert matter into energy with great eficiency. Fireflies do it all the time. With a bit of work, it would probably even be possible to convert all matter into pure energy. The main problem would be converting that energy back to exactly the same matter that it originally was. Probably, the only way to do it would be to send extra energy with information about the original matter's properties.
But the whole process is a bit silly.
If you have the technology to create the matter you want (from "raw" energy), there's no need to convert the original matter to energy in the first place. This would be a bit like converting your hard disk into energy so that it could be sent over the network wires and rebuilt at the other end. It's simpler to transfer just the information necessary to reconstruct the disk, and when the (perfect) copy has been created, you destroy the original one (or keep it, if you prefer). The two problems here are a) how do you determine the exact structure of the original disk and b) how to you build a new disc that matches that structure perfectly. It's easy when you're dealing with abstract entities such as bits and sectors, but not when you need every single particle to match the original one.
I suspect we (humans) will get there, eventually. But I doubt it'll be before Duke Nukem Forever and Team Fortress 2 are actually released.
RMN
~~~
So basically you're missing [2. ???] in order to reach [3. Profit]. Welcome to the club.
RMN
~~~
Scientists have concluded that they can use a bacteria's DNA to store the complete description of... a bacteria. Revolutionary.
What I really want to know is, can the same be done with the DNA of a bug? Because if it can, I'm going to buy some MSFT shares...
RMN
~~~
Exactly. The difference between rendering a page in 0.5 seconds and rendering it in 0.3 seconds is irrelevant. But things like Ctrl+Shift+Click (open in background), the way the cursor jumps to the address bar when you hit Ctrl+N, searching for selected text on the net directly from the context menu, zooming in on pages, etc., are things I find really hard to live without.
Unfortunately, while Opera 7 (beta) has much better support for dynamic HTML / CSS / DOM (nearly as good as Mozilla), the interface is still nowhere near as polished as Opera 6's.
RMN
~~~
Yes, in fact version 1.3 doesn't even use the graphics memory; it just sends the data straight from the TCP packets to the monitor's CRT.
RMN
~~~
They couldn't determine the ? for the underpants, so now they're trying it with socks.
RMN
~~~
No, it doesn't. In fact, it doesn't even cache any page that's protected by a password, nor does it add them to the list of recently visited addresses (which is nice both for security and privacy reasons).
They are only kept in the RAM cache (i.e., when you press "back" or "forward", it will usually show you a page's last state (down to the position of the scroll bars), without reloading it. This is quite useful, BTW; it means you can go back and forth between pages without losing what you were writing in a form (unlike MSIE, where forms are reset).
RMN
~~~
After this, they will hire an ape-like president with sweaty armpits and a face like Fester Addams who will try to boost sales by shouting "Yeeeeeeeaaaaah!", "I love this company!", "Come on!" and "Developers! Developers! Developers!".
RMN
~~~
...but Uri Geller bent it.
RMN
~~~
OS/2 and BeOS have died a long time ago (thoug they only realised it recently). Neither was able to run Windows software. Linux and OS X are (to a point). If they had used this time (between 94 and now) to make an OS that could run Windows software and offered new features not found in Windows (such as a database / property-based file-system, a 3D interface, screen zooming, etc.), their position would be quite different today.
A lower price by itself will not win the battle. In some countries Windows comes pre-installed on almost all computers, and in the remaining countries it's trivial to get a pirate copy, so Windows is "free" for most people too. Using a CPU analogy, Linux needs its Hammer or, at least, its Athlon XP. It needs to come up with something that can do what Windows does better than Windows does it.
RMN
~~~
A lot of people find interacting with their computer hard. If something is a few pixels to the left, a few pixels to the right, or a different colour
Following your reasoning, no-one would have used Windows XP, because it looked quite different from Windows 2000 / 98 / etc. And yet, about 50% of Windows users today are using XP (I am not one of them, BTW). The visual differences between 98 and XP are not much smaller than the differences between XP and OS X or between XP and KDE. The problem is not the way things look, it's the way things work. If someone is used to Photoshop, they'll prefer Photoshop (with a different look) over Photo-Paint (with the traditional look). Because they know the menus, they know what each option does, they know what can be dragged and dropped, etc..
What Linux needs is very good Windows emulation, and useful features not found in Windows. BeOS and OS/2 looked great (and not too different from Windows). Lot of good that did.
The main threat to Microsoft comes from Lindows (and other "emulation-oriented" distros). Sometihng that can run the same tools, not something that just looks similar.
Yes, because as we all know, since Linux can only ever have one interface, this one will automatically prevent anybody from using KDE. Get a clue.
So first you say that this GUI is a great thing for people who are so clueless that they panic if a button is one pixel off, and then you suggest that those same people would be able to replace it with a new desktop? Looks like, if I'm to get a clue, it won't be from you.
Also, by the time this is ready, Microsoft will probably be close to releasing Longhorn (XP 2 or whatever they call it). Now on one side you'll have an OS (Linux + XPDE) that looks exactly like XP but doesn't run most of Windows' software. On the other side you'll have something that looks quite different but does run all existing Windows software. Which one do you think 90% of people will pick...?
It sounds like you think the only reason people use Linux is because they hate microsoft. You lend ms too much importance.
I don't think it's possible to "lend too much importance" to a company that makes software used in over 98% of computers worldwide. But it's one thing to acknowledge Microsoft's importance, and a very different thing to be obssessed by it. I'm not the one losing sleep to make Linux look more and more like Windows. In fact, partly due to that trend, I'm using Linux less and less these days.
RMN
~~~
When I say something new I don't mean "something released recently"; I mean something innovative. Something that let the users do things they couldn't do before, or that radically changes the way people use computers. Things like mice, or windows, or multitasking. New concepts. Not just new (prettier, faster, whatever) versions of what we already have. If Microsoft does go ahead with a "property-based" file system in the next version of Windows, that will be something new. And it's coming from Microsoft. How depressing is that?
RMN
~~~
OSX is a GUI running on top of BSD. Neither BSD nor GUIs are a new thing (and neither was invented by Apple, BTW). You might as well say that XP is "new" because it has a new window manager running on top of the NT kernel.
It's also quite easy to understand that, even if you think the winxp interface sucks beyond belief, it's what everybody else is used to, and so, making it at least an option for Linux users will aid migration.
No, it won't. Running all (or nearly all) Windows software with a better interface will get people to switch. Running a fraction of the software while looking the same just makes it completely uninteresting. People who like XP's interface will stick with XP (if they already have it, why would they bother switching to a different OS that won't run most of their software?) and people who don't like XP's interface have even less reasons to switch.
The only people who will use this are Linux users who, deep down, want to run XP.
Look at Apple. I dislike their way of doing business as much as I dislike Microsoft's, but at least they're making something that looks different (even if it behaves more or less the same). At least people have a choice. You have less software, you pay a bit more, but maybe it's worth it if you prefer the interface. But if Apple made OS X look and behave exactly like XP, do you think anyone would buy it?
RMN
~~~
Honestly, I think some people in the Linux community are just too obssessed with Microsoft to produce anything useful. They say Microsoft sucks but then they waste their time copying it. Why would someone want to "migrate" to something that looks the same and can't run most software? It makes no sense.
"Hey great! It looks just like Windows XP and won't run half of my software! I can't wait to 'migrate'!"
Please! For the last six years neither Microsoft nor Apple have come up with anything really new. This time could have been used creating something better that would give Linux (and its users) an advantage. Instead, it was wasted making Linux look more and more like Windows. This is like AMD and Intel in the 386 era. It's almost as good and a lot cheaper!... Well, as long as you're just following the leader, you'll never put any real pressure on them.
RMN
~~~
They were not developed under EA management. EA usually buys companies when they have a couple of good games almost ready to launch (they may be crap at creating games, but they're not completely stupid when it comes to business). Privateer was developed by "native" Origin people from start to finish, and it shows in the way it creates a credible, consistent, interesting universe. Armada (that shares very few team members with the previous games) was more of a technology demo than a complete game (moving from sprite-based to polygon-based).
BTW, Ultima 8 and 9 are also "Lord British games" and they are absolute crap when you compare them to Ultima 6, Ultima 7 (either part, but especially the first one) or Underworld (either part). Chris Roberts and Richard Garriott may be the ones that "sign" the game, but the quality of the final product depends on the talent of the whole team and on the producers' policy. I have talked (via e-mail) with a few members of the U8 and U9 team and I know they did not agree with many decisions that were made by "the management" ("this needs more action", "who needs a party?", "no-one wants to bake bread in a game"). In fact, many left half-way through. Garriott was getting a bit tired and decided to cash in and let EA do as they pleased. And, oops, they did it again.
RMN
~~~
Wing Commander means the original game, plus Wing Commander 2 and the first Privateer game. All the rest were just endless video sequences with some short and repetitive gameplay between them. They weren't even described as games, the box said "interactive CD-ROM movie".
For a couple of years before being bought by EA, Origin really did create worlds. They made some of the best games of all times (Ultima 7, Wing Commander, Privateer, Underworld). Same goes for Bullfrog, and many other companies swallowed up by EA (I doubt Maxis will ever make another original game; they will just keep releasing Sims add-ons with more and more advertising). EA seems to have the Midas touch with a twist: all the gold it touches turns into crap.
Oh well, as long as they make some gold out of companies' last breaths, I guess the shareholders will be happy.
RMN
~~~
You do? Then it's quite simple. Try it. Use the same files, on the same systems, and see if your results match is. No need to stress your brain wondering.
RMN
~~~
THG is hardly a reliable source for anything. Regardless, HyperThreading is not the same as SMP. HyperThreading basically allocates one area of the CPU (FPU or ALU) for one thread. When the thread needs to use the other area, it has to wait until it's empty. That takes time. In a real SMP system, each thread has a full CPU at its disposal.
If you are seeing overhead when running a single-threaded application on an SMP system, check the CPU usage. If the process is jumping back and forth between the two CPUs, you can probably improve performance by enforcing processor affinity (ie, forcing it to run on a specific CPU, preferably not the first one). It also means the SMP OS kernel could probably be improved (this is one area where Windows NT / 2K / XP is actually quite good).
Also, there are diferences in the way different sytems share resources between CPUs. For example, Athlon MPs usually scale better than Xeons because they have a smarter cache consistency algorithm.
RMN
~~~
> Another msg in this thread reported a dualie 1.25ghz
> mac 50% faster at Cleaner than a dual 1.8Athlon (IIRC),
> and that's fairly representative of my experiences.
So you are admitting you frequently use LSD...?
RMN
~~~
So putting two CPUs on the Mac and just one on the PC is "stacking the deck" in favour of the PC...? This must be a deck made of anti-matter, because the more things you take away, the more stacked it gets.
P.S. - So now you post as anonymous coward, huh?
RMN
~~~
Can you please post the actual results and exact setup of those benchmarks (as the article's author did with his)? Just so that others can (try to) reproduce them, and confirm that you're not just making that up. Thank you.
RMN
~~~
I absolutely loved this message; it deserves a "+7, Witty" rating. Unfortunately, I'm afraid most Slashdot moderators won't quite get the irony (which I hope was deliberate, but either way, it made my day).
RMN
~~~
I really don't care what happened back in version 2.5. This is 2002, we are comparing current systems running current software. That means Photoshop 7 on Windows 2000 or XP and Photoshop 7 on OS X. What are the differences now?
I think it would be important and educational if you could provide some real, objective examples (ie, facts), and not just empty sentences like "it just feels different" or "it's just something you can't quite put into words".
RMN
~~~
Tell me, then, what is the difference (besides the way the menus and title bars look) between Photoshop 7 on OS X and Photoshop 7 on Windows? Do the brushes behave differently? Do layers stack in a different order? Does the cursor go left when you move the pen (or the mouse) to the right? Do the pixels smell different?
Please provide clear examples (facts), for everyone's education.
RMN
~~~