Actually I was thinking more about AMD than Intel. As someone said, the P4 lets programs run faster if you optimise the code for SSE2. The Athlon XP made existing code run about 15% faster without having to re-write anything.
The Athlon's FPU is much, much faster than the P4's.
And optimising for SSE2 or Altivec will only take you so far. 3D Studio MAX has recently been optimised for the Pentium 4 (by Intel programmers) and it still runs faster on Athlons. Some algorithms are simply not suited to vector optimisations.
Apple may be moving to DDR266, but x86 platforms are moving to DDR333 and DDR400. And the Athlon also benefits a lot from faster memory (the P4 has RAMBUS, wich is even faster). Anyway, 3D rendering for example doesn't depend too much on memory performance; it depends on pure FPU power.
If the Xserve was cheaper and / or faster, I could see it as an alternative to dual Athlons / Xeons. I guess it'll depend on the performance of the G5 and how it compares to the x86 alternatives (the Hammer seems to be coming along nicely, and the P4 can probably be pushed up to 3 / 4 GHz during the next 12 months).
You really should try to understand the difference between "trolling" and "fact". A fact isn't necessarily something you like, it's just something that's true.
The G4 is slower than the Intel / AMD alternatives (see this test, for example), and PCs are cheaper than Macs (especially if you run Linux and thus save the "Windows tax").
Once you're inside a compositing (or animation) program, the actual operating system isn't relevant. What matters is quality and speed. If a program exists for two platforms, then its quality will be the same. So it boils down to speed (or, more precisely, the price / speed ratio, because all these programs can be set up in render farms). So the platform that gives you more "bang for the buck" will inevitably win.
Now, Apple could gain market share by killing the competition, but there's no way they can kill all the competition. Discreet rules the high-end and there's no way Apple can buy them (Autodesk is far too big). So to be competitive, Apple must either sell very cheap render nodes (the Xserve could be a step in that direction) or come up with much faster hardware (wasn't the G5 supposed to be out yet?).
Unlike 99% of people writing in this thread, I actually do work in animation and post-production, so I have some clues as to what I'm talking about. Maybe that just doesn't fit in with/. "culture"...
Will I go from "troll" to "insightful" if I say Bill Gates is the devil...? Personally, I think those posts should be modded as redundant. Everbody knows it already.
If you "do 3D" (or compositing) professionally you will be using the platform that lets you meet deadlines. And the G4 is definitely not it. Unless the G5 manages to at least keep up with the Pentium 4 / Athlon / Hammer, Apple doesn't really stand much of a chance in the high-end.
If they continue to support Linux render nodes it's not because they like Linux, it's because that's the only way people will buy the (slower, more expensive) Apple workstations.
Digital Fusion has, IMO, a better interface than Combustion or Shake. I only used RayZ for about 30 minutes but I didn't like it much. I like to be able to drag the viewports to the places I want, instead of being stuck with the layout that the authors decided I should use.
RayZ did seem to do more stuff than the other programs, but I really can't speak about quality because I didn't use it for long enough.
The point is, Quake is something people actually run (BTW, 60 fps? Even on my (poor old) Pentium III I find it hard to have less than 75...). A synthetic benchmark is just that. Good for testing individual aspects of the hardware, but not really useful in terms of judging how the CPU (or graphics card, or whatever) will perform in normal use.
As I said, I wish they'd run some 3DS MAX tests. Even with the "Intel optimizations" added in R4.26, most tasks are still faster on Athlons. With the improved FP units of the Hammer and support for SSE2, it should be very interesting indeed...
I'll start this by saying YES, I work for Intel. Hate me...whatever.
We should we hate you? You don't even say what you do for Intel. Do you design processors? Do you clean the toilets? Do you work in marketing? Are you director of the Department of FUD? I have nothing against Intel, and I'm sure neither do most people here. But I do have a lot against the P4. It's a fraud. But that doesn't mean Intel can't make good products. Personally I'd love to have a Hammer system with an Intel chipset.
Last week Intel dropped the prices of its processors. AMD was forced to follow suit, dropping their prices about 2 days later. Did the Slashdot community cheer Intel?
Why should we? Intel CPUs are still more expensive, they are still slower and they still can't run in SMP (except for the Xeons, but those are priced in the "hilarious" range).
So along comes this news...AMD Opteron 800 MHz beats a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz by one frame pre second. I guess I fail to see why everyone is so excited?
How about... because it's faster while running at half the clock speed?
I'll wager ANYTHING that when it ships, a 800MHz Opteron will sell for at LEAST twice the price of a Pentium 4 1.6Ghz.
I'll wager anything that you'll never see an 800 MHz Opteron on sale. o_O
You're probably thinking of [someoneelse]'s Hardware (cough*tom*cough)...
To judge real-world performance, Quake is at least as good as any synthetic benchmark. Personally, I'd like to see benchmarks for 3DS MAX, TMPGEnc or Photoshop (because those are some of the programs I use daily). But between Quake and WhateverMark2002, I prefer Quake (and I don't even play Quake).
I think there are two issues here. One is making the format descriptions publicly available. Another is forbidding other people from writing programs that are able to read and/or write those formats.
If a format is still evolving, it's understandable that the people who created it don't want to deal with files written by other programs, that might do things that are "in spec" but that their "official" program still doesn't cope with very well (ex., images that are too large, etc.).
So they don't make the file format publicly available. But chances are, some people will be able to understand it even without any documentation. And in most situations they'll be able to read and write those files without using any of the original code, so copyrighting the code isn't enough. To make sure they don't have to deal with files generated by "unofficial" 3rd party software, the only solution is to copyright the format itself.
But (except for very specific cases, involving encryption) I don't see what harm comes to the original authors from people making programs that are able to read it. If something goes wrong with one of these programs (because the authors changed the format, for example), it's not their problem.
China has 4.6 times the population of the USA (1210 million people). India has 3.6 times the population of the USA (952 million people). Together thay have over 8 times the population of the USA.
They actually produce less than 1/8th of the USA's pollution per capita.
And both are extremely poor countries whose industry is mostly owned by foreign companies (mostly american).
The USA should save some money on bombs and aircraft carriers and spy satellites and spend some money modernising its industry. US industry needs to be competitive and play by global rules; not live off subsidies and tariffs and produce one quarter of the world's pollution. And the only way the american government is going to chage its policy is if the american people start to make some noise. Unfortunately, some (most) people in the USA don't know there's a planet outside their borders.
Funny thing is, the Earth fights back. The USA has more (and bigger) natural disasters (tornados, earthquakes, floods, etc.) than any other country in the world. Makes you think about the Gaia theory...
Technically, a cosmonaut is someone who travels through space (cosmos). An astronaut is someone who travels to a planet/star/asteroid/whatever (astro).
Anyway, if my vote counts, I say we send Steve Ballmer. His armpits alone can cover the planet in an ocean several developers deep.
It would solve the biggest problem, though. Heat is one of the easiest things to produce (solar power, nuclear plants, even heat from the planet's core). And once you have an atmosphere going, heat becomes much easier to conserve.
Creating a functional, stable atmosphere is easier said than done, though. We don't even quite understand how the Earth's atmosphere works (nor, according to a recent Slashdot poll, how the atmosphere of a romantic evening works).
And as to there being enough water to cover the entire planet in an ocean 1/2 Km deep, I doubt it. They're probably assuming the water will not be absorbed by the soil. I have no idea how deep martian bedrock is, but the surface is quite "sandy".
It can be used to visualize protein structures and to plan surgical and radiation treatment by locating the exact position of a tumour on an x- ray or mammogram.
Finally, something to get geeks interested in breasts.
Opera will try several prefixes and suffixes automatically. You can configure them manually. For example, I use "www" for prefixes and "com,org,net,pt" for suffixes.
> I don't need an EA game to play my {XBox, PS2, Gamecube}.
You don't need an MS OS to use your computer. Only if you want to run Windows software (yes, there are emulators, but they don't exactly work). You need to buy EA's games if you want a football game with the real players' names, for example, because they made a deal with FIFA.
> Other companies actually make games too.
Other companies make operating systems, too. There's Linux, BSD, MacOS, Solaris, etc.
> Have you every tried to 'play' with an M$ OS? That is *nothing* like a game!
Have you ever played EA's FIFA games? They're nothing like real football either.;-)
EA is to games what MS is to operating systems. Most are crap, you have a new version every year (that looks just like last year's, with slightly differennt menus), but they control the market. Like MS, they buy out the competition just to kill them (ex., Origin, Bullfrog, etc.) and release their products based on commercial reasons, whether the software is finished or not.
In other words, they could be long lost brothers, or perhaps clones that grew up in different towns.
That said, this is a major blow for MS. EA controls a lot of games and a lot of different studios, and the X-Box's problem is precisely the lack of software. This may force MS to "speed up" the development of their games, possibly falling into the same traps as EA often does (buggy, unbalanced, unfinished games). And if PC gamers are fairly forgiving of that, console games expect the games to work right the first time.
This could be an opportunity for Infogrames, but I don't think they get along with MS very well, either (does anyone?).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I was thinking more about AMD than Intel. As someone said, the P4 lets programs run faster if you optimise the code for SSE2. The Athlon XP made existing code run about 15% faster without having to re-write anything.
The Athlon's FPU is much, much faster than the P4's.
And optimising for SSE2 or Altivec will only take you so far. 3D Studio MAX has recently been optimised for the Pentium 4 (by Intel programmers) and it still runs faster on Athlons. Some algorithms are simply not suited to vector optimisations.
Apple may be moving to DDR266, but x86 platforms are moving to DDR333 and DDR400. And the Athlon also benefits a lot from faster memory (the P4 has RAMBUS, wich is even faster). Anyway, 3D rendering for example doesn't depend too much on memory performance; it depends on pure FPU power.
If the Xserve was cheaper and / or faster, I could see it as an alternative to dual Athlons / Xeons. I guess it'll depend on the performance of the G5 and how it compares to the x86 alternatives (the Hammer seems to be coming along nicely, and the P4 can probably be pushed up to 3 / 4 GHz during the next 12 months).
RMN
~~~
You really should try to understand the difference between "trolling" and "fact". A fact isn't necessarily something you like, it's just something that's true.
/. "culture"...
The G4 is slower than the Intel / AMD alternatives (see this test, for example), and PCs are cheaper than Macs (especially if you run Linux and thus save the "Windows tax").
Once you're inside a compositing (or animation) program, the actual operating system isn't relevant. What matters is quality and speed. If a program exists for two platforms, then its quality will be the same. So it boils down to speed (or, more precisely, the price / speed ratio, because all these programs can be set up in render farms). So the platform that gives you more "bang for the buck" will inevitably win.
Now, Apple could gain market share by killing the competition, but there's no way they can kill all the competition. Discreet rules the high-end and there's no way Apple can buy them (Autodesk is far too big). So to be competitive, Apple must either sell very cheap render nodes (the Xserve could be a step in that direction) or come up with much faster hardware (wasn't the G5 supposed to be out yet?).
Unlike 99% of people writing in this thread, I actually do work in animation and post-production, so I have some clues as to what I'm talking about. Maybe that just doesn't fit in with
Will I go from "troll" to "insightful" if I say Bill Gates is the devil...? Personally, I think those posts should be modded as redundant. Everbody knows it already.
RMN
~~~
If you "do 3D" (or compositing) professionally you will be using the platform that lets you meet deadlines. And the G4 is definitely not it. Unless the G5 manages to at least keep up with the Pentium 4 / Athlon / Hammer, Apple doesn't really stand much of a chance in the high-end.
If they continue to support Linux render nodes it's not because they like Linux, it's because that's the only way people will buy the (slower, more expensive) Apple workstations.
RMN
~~~
Digital Fusion has, IMO, a better interface than Combustion or Shake. I only used RayZ for about 30 minutes but I didn't like it much. I like to be able to drag the viewports to the places I want, instead of being stuck with the layout that the authors decided I should use.
RayZ did seem to do more stuff than the other programs, but I really can't speak about quality because I didn't use it for long enough.
RMN
~~~
The point is, Quake is something people actually run (BTW, 60 fps? Even on my (poor old) Pentium III I find it hard to have less than 75...). A synthetic benchmark is just that. Good for testing individual aspects of the hardware, but not really useful in terms of judging how the CPU (or graphics card, or whatever) will perform in normal use.
As I said, I wish they'd run some 3DS MAX tests. Even with the "Intel optimizations" added in R4.26, most tasks are still faster on Athlons. With the improved FP units of the Hammer and support for SSE2, it should be very interesting indeed...
RMN
~~~
I'll start this by saying YES, I work for Intel. Hate me...whatever.
We should we hate you? You don't even say what you do for Intel. Do you design processors? Do you clean the toilets? Do you work in marketing? Are you director of the Department of FUD? I have nothing against Intel, and I'm sure neither do most people here. But I do have a lot against the P4. It's a fraud. But that doesn't mean Intel can't make good products. Personally I'd love to have a Hammer system with an Intel chipset.
Last week Intel dropped the prices of its processors. AMD was forced to follow suit, dropping their prices about 2 days later. Did the Slashdot community cheer Intel?
Why should we? Intel CPUs are still more expensive, they are still slower and they still can't run in SMP (except for the Xeons, but those are priced in the "hilarious" range).
So along comes this news...AMD Opteron 800 MHz beats a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz by one frame pre second. I guess I fail to see why everyone is so excited?
How about... because it's faster while running at half the clock speed?
I'll wager ANYTHING that when it ships, a 800MHz Opteron will sell for at LEAST twice the price of a Pentium 4 1.6Ghz.
I'll wager anything that you'll never see an 800 MHz Opteron on sale. o_O
RMN
~~~
You're probably thinking of [someoneelse]'s Hardware (cough*tom*cough)...
To judge real-world performance, Quake is at least as good as any synthetic benchmark. Personally, I'd like to see benchmarks for 3DS MAX, TMPGEnc or Photoshop (because those are some of the programs I use daily). But between Quake and WhateverMark2002, I prefer Quake (and I don't even play Quake).
RMN
~~~
If it happened less than 500 years ago, it's not proper History.
RMN
~~~
Tattoo the password inside their body. Or inside their pants; IT operators' pants are never removed near / by other people anyway.
RMN
~~~
Use HTML and make sure the posting mode is set to "Plain text" or "HTML formatted":
<A HREF="http://slashdot.org/">this is a link</A>
...becomes
this is a link
RMN
~~~
If it was american history, it would probably be shorter than the password.
RMN
~~~
I think there are two issues here. One is making the format descriptions publicly available. Another is forbidding other people from writing programs that are able to read and/or write those formats.
If a format is still evolving, it's understandable that the people who created it don't want to deal with files written by other programs, that might do things that are "in spec" but that their "official" program still doesn't cope with very well (ex., images that are too large, etc.).
So they don't make the file format publicly available. But chances are, some people will be able to understand it even without any documentation. And in most situations they'll be able to read and write those files without using any of the original code, so copyrighting the code isn't enough. To make sure they don't have to deal with files generated by "unofficial" 3rd party software, the only solution is to copyright the format itself.
But (except for very specific cases, involving encryption) I don't see what harm comes to the original authors from people making programs that are able to read it. If something goes wrong with one of these programs (because the authors changed the format, for example), it's not their problem.
RMN
~~~
China has 4.6 times the population of the USA (1210 million people). India has 3.6 times the population of the USA (952 million people). Together thay have over 8 times the population of the USA.
They actually produce less than 1/8th of the USA's pollution per capita.
And both are extremely poor countries whose industry is mostly owned by foreign companies (mostly american).
The USA should save some money on bombs and aircraft carriers and spy satellites and spend some money modernising its industry. US industry needs to be competitive and play by global rules; not live off subsidies and tariffs and produce one quarter of the world's pollution. And the only way the american government is going to chage its policy is if the american people start to make some noise. Unfortunately, some (most) people in the USA don't know there's a planet outside their borders.
Funny thing is, the Earth fights back. The USA has more (and bigger) natural disasters (tornados, earthquakes, floods, etc.) than any other country in the world. Makes you think about the Gaia theory...
RMN
~~~
Technically, a cosmonaut is someone who travels through space (cosmos). An astronaut is someone who travels to a planet/star/asteroid/whatever (astro).
Anyway, if my vote counts, I say we send Steve Ballmer. His armpits alone can cover the planet in an ocean several developers deep.
RMN
~~~
"Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?"
Er... trained astronauts, perhaps?
RMN
~~~
It would solve the biggest problem, though. Heat is one of the easiest things to produce (solar power, nuclear plants, even heat from the planet's core). And once you have an atmosphere going, heat becomes much easier to conserve.
Creating a functional, stable atmosphere is easier said than done, though. We don't even quite understand how the Earth's atmosphere works (nor, according to a recent Slashdot poll, how the atmosphere of a romantic evening works).
And as to there being enough water to cover the entire planet in an ocean 1/2 Km deep, I doubt it. They're probably assuming the water will not be absorbed by the soil. I have no idea how deep martian bedrock is, but the surface is quite "sandy".
RMN
~~~
Now they can have their scotch on the rocks.
RMN
~~~
You can be interested in anyone's breasts. It's one of the fundamental human rights, I think.
RMN
~~~
It can be used to visualize protein structures and to plan surgical and radiation treatment by locating the exact position of a tumour on an x- ray or mammogram.
Finally, something to get geeks interested in breasts.
RMN
~~~
Opera will try several prefixes and suffixes automatically. You can configure them manually. For example, I use "www" for prefixes and "com,org,net,pt" for suffixes.
RMN
~~~
For a moment there I thought 'Hamidi' was just a creative way of spelling AMD (with a brazilian accent, perhaps):
1. The case between Intel and AMD has also been going on for some years.
2. AMD was also started by an ex-Intel guy with a grievance against the company.
The part that finally made me realise we weren't talking about AMD was this:
[...] in real-dollar terms, Intel has suffered very little.
RMN
~~~
Hm... what does F.I.F.A. stand for...? :-)
RMN
~~~
> I don't need an EA game to play my {XBox, PS2, Gamecube}.
;-)
You don't need an MS OS to use your computer. Only if you want to run Windows software (yes, there are emulators, but they don't exactly work). You need to buy EA's games if you want a football game with the real players' names, for example, because they made a deal with FIFA.
> Other companies actually make games too.
Other companies make operating systems, too. There's Linux, BSD, MacOS, Solaris, etc.
> Have you every tried to 'play' with an M$ OS? That is *nothing* like a game!
Have you ever played EA's FIFA games? They're nothing like real football either.
RMN
~~~
You struck first with Chuck Norris. It was self-defence. ;-)
RMN
~~~
EA is to games what MS is to operating systems. Most are crap, you have a new version every year (that looks just like last year's, with slightly differennt menus), but they control the market. Like MS, they buy out the competition just to kill them (ex., Origin, Bullfrog, etc.) and release their products based on commercial reasons, whether the software is finished or not.
In other words, they could be long lost brothers, or perhaps clones that grew up in different towns.
That said, this is a major blow for MS. EA controls a lot of games and a lot of different studios, and the X-Box's problem is precisely the lack of software. This may force MS to "speed up" the development of their games, possibly falling into the same traps as EA often does (buggy, unbalanced, unfinished games). And if PC gamers are fairly forgiving of that, console games expect the games to work right the first time.
This could be an opportunity for Infogrames, but I don't think they get along with MS very well, either (does anyone?).
RMN
~~~