Actually consoles are only sold at a loss when they are first released. Once margins pick up they are sold at cost for a while. Eventually the price of the components needed to build the thing falls, and the units are sold at a profit.
Do you really think it costs the same amount of money to make a PS2 as it did when they came out? Microsoft believed this myth the same way you did and kind of hosed themselves. But they have $40 billion in the bank, so who cares.
After at least a year they do make a profit on the machines, and thats when most of them are sold.
it's called The digital millennium copyright act. Not the Digital Millennium Profit act. Putting a USB port on something has absolutely nothing to do with copyright. And thus nothing to do with the DMCA. If Microsoft wants to give away free PCs and dosn't make any money, tough shit. They should have picked a bussness model that worked.
Writing books can *never* be against the DMCA
on
Hacking the XBox
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· Score: 4, Informative
Back when the US had crypto export laws, the book applied cryptography could still be exported. Why? Because it was a book. The first amendment trumped any crypto export laws. It was only when the code was put on a computer that it became illegal.
In fact, the text of the DMCA EXPLICITLY allows you to DISCUSS the circumvention of copyright. It only becomes illegal when you apply the idea to a physical device (or, based on the DeCSS trial, a compiled computer program) and then distribute it.
A lot of people here seem spew random crap (like the completely non-sensical intro paragraph) about the DMCA without actually knowing that much about it(and the GPL, as we've seen in these SCO stories).
I mean, would it kill you people to read the thing?
He claimed GNU was the "operating system" and that Linux was just the "Kernel". I find this a little specious. Syscalls and other OS level stuff are all pure Linux and don't have much to do with the GPL. GNU is more like the "Operating environment" used with Linux. Just like Finder on the Mac, and explorer, IE, etc on windows.
That said though, there are a lot of other technologies that make up the Linux "environment" so it's kind of silly that GNU should get top billing.
Cringely actualy knows who wrote this code Paul McKenney at Sequent (now IBM). And how the code got there (Paul copied and pasted some of his own code into the Linux kernel). And exactly why SCO is wrong (They don't own the 'general concept' of RCU and other tech thought up by Sequent).
This should be what slashdot linked too, not RMS's rant. Cringely did some real reporting and answered a lot of important questions.
Okay, now I know you are trolling. IBM made both chips, presumably this makes them pretty good experts on which is faster.
When did IBM say the power4 was slower? Do you have links to the press release? I was under the impression that the PPC 970 had a smaller floating point unit.
You linked to the spec int scores of the power4, not the spec fp. The spec int scores of the power4 chip are lower then the p4 scores.
Anyway. It's simple. If apple wants to prove they have a superior system, they are going to need to find their best compiler, and put out a benchmark showing that they are actually faster then Intel machines. Benchmarks of the power4 chip have absolutely zero bearing on this.
Based on your reasoning above, z is faster than y, but we know that z is slower than y. This is a negative proof demonstrating the flaw in your reasoning.
How do we know this? The POWER4 may be on a different mobo and use different memory. It is possible that 'z' is faster then 'y'.
In any event, both 'y' and 'z' are much slower then 'x' in any measurement ever performed.
It's worth noting that IBM's own 1500MHz Power4 CPU "kicks the crap" out of the published results for the G5. Guess what? The Power4 processor is the slower processor. IBM's own SPEC benchmarks show that the G5 at 1.8GHz should "kick the crap" out of that 1500MHz CPU, let alone a 2GHz model.
I don't really know what point your trying to make, as the 1500mhz power4 CPU is still slower then an intel P4 @ 3ghz.
When I was a very young boy without a computer of my own. Then I took a programming class that used DOS and I thought the "Command Line" was the coolest thing EVAR. After that, I was hooked.
As a final word, sometimes the slowest factor in getting a job done, is not necessarily the computer, but the user taking their time, because the application has been so badly implemented, to be difficult to use and understandable.
Just a anecdote. Where I work we have SGI machines and PCs. The SGI machines come with a program called Multigen Creator which is just shit. Most of the people there would probably rather use 3ds max on a 486 then deal with creator, even on our million dollar SGI machine.
Hearing Mac Zealots constantly denigrate the PC while I was growing up made me hate the company, which only added fuel to the fire by publishing bullshit benchmarks and misleading information like what they've just done.
I have no problem with things like the BeBox, the Amega, SGI machines or anything else, and I'd probably enjoy trying them. But Apple constantly lies and misleads and insults my intelligence. Mac Zealots constantly lap it up and spit it out. These days it's just annoying but when I was a kid it was downright insulting. That's why I dislike apple so much. I've grown out of platform zealotry myself, but apple still has a huge legacy of BS to overcome in my mind. And they are not doing anything at all to overcome it.
Compare this to the way Linux users in general have handled themselves, especially after the Linux Advocacy HOWTO which tells people not to insult others and that kind of thing.
Say what you want, but the already published SPEC results for the p4 at 3ghz with ICC kicks the crap out of the published results for the g5. No amount of theorizing is going to change that.
GCC is the fastest compiler for PPC. If it isn't, then they should have used that mythical faster compiler.
Using the same compiler is like trying to test the 0-60 time of various cars while using the exact same fuel. It's stupid. You should use the best fuel for the car.
Actually, my favorite was the Mathematica guy who commented (IIRC) "We tried to come up with an example to show how being able to use more than 4GB of memory was helpful, but we couldn't come up with an example that didn't crash the Xeon"
I think he mistook "The Xeon" with "our buggy intel implementation"
Okay, you're right that the SPEC benchmarks test both the compiler and the processor. But if the compiler is the same, you're testing just the processor, right?
No, there is no way that a compiler for one platform can be 'the same' as a compiler for another platform. What GCC does when targeting PPC is totaly diffrent then what GCC does when targeting x86 or any other chip. The compiler 'cores' are totaly diffrent.
Apple uses that compiler as their dev compiler, and poors a lot of money into it.
If you want to measure the "power of the chip" then you should measure with the best compiler for bragging rights, then you should measure with the best compiler for that chip.
If you have your own code you want to compile, you should look at benchmarks based on compilers you have access to.
If you spend most of your time in one app (available on both platforms), like a CAD app, or Quake 3 or whatever, you should look at benchmarks of that app or at least similar app.
The argument that you need to work out the compiler doesn't make any sense at all. Presumably most shipping software is going to use the best compiler available before they release binaries. The compiler has a huge impact on performance. When you test using the same compiler, you're basically testing the CPU and the optimizations available for that compiler.
The only reasonable test is to use the 'best' compiler for each platform. Probably this means compiling the test platform on all the available compilers, and choosing the highest score.
I was under the impression that their economy had tanked after all the phosphate had been mined and their government was in chaos. I'm suprised anyone had the time or money to actualy go out and do this : P
My dual G4/450 with 1.5 GB RAM and Radeon 9000 already gags on that enough so that it's a hassle when I have to design and edit that kind of stuff. Believe me, I'm going to be first in line as soon as I scrape together the $2500 or so for a new G5 system with added RAM (the more RAM, the merrier -- Photoshop is VERY hungry for RAM).
450mhz? Nevermind that you could have droped a grand and gotten a much faster PC for a long time.
A 2ghz P4 is probably going to be about twice as fast as a 1ghz p4. Simply from the relative speed deltas, its easy to see that intel chips have been accelerating much more quickly then the g4.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually consoles are only sold at a loss when they are first released. Once margins pick up they are sold at cost for a while. Eventually the price of the components needed to build the thing falls, and the units are sold at a profit.
Do you really think it costs the same amount of money to make a PS2 as it did when they came out? Microsoft believed this myth the same way you did and kind of hosed themselves. But they have $40 billion in the bank, so who cares.
After at least a year they do make a profit on the machines, and thats when most of them are sold.
it's called The digital millennium copyright act. Not the Digital Millennium Profit act. Putting a USB port on something has absolutely nothing to do with copyright. And thus nothing to do with the DMCA. If Microsoft wants to give away free PCs and dosn't make any money, tough shit. They should have picked a bussness model that worked.
Back when the US had crypto export laws, the book applied cryptography could still be exported. Why? Because it was a book. The first amendment trumped any crypto export laws. It was only when the code was put on a computer that it became illegal.
In fact, the text of the DMCA EXPLICITLY allows you to DISCUSS the circumvention of copyright. It only becomes illegal when you apply the idea to a physical device (or, based on the DeCSS trial, a compiled computer program) and then distribute it.
A lot of people here seem spew random crap (like the completely non-sensical intro paragraph) about the DMCA without actually knowing that much about it(and the GPL, as we've seen in these SCO stories).
I mean, would it kill you people to read the thing?
He claimed GNU was the "operating system" and that Linux was just the "Kernel". I find this a little specious. Syscalls and other OS level stuff are all pure Linux and don't have much to do with the GPL. GNU is more like the "Operating environment" used with Linux. Just like Finder on the Mac, and explorer, IE, etc on windows.
That said though, there are a lot of other technologies that make up the Linux "environment" so it's kind of silly that GNU should get top billing.
Cringely actualy knows who wrote this code Paul McKenney at Sequent (now IBM). And how the code got there (Paul copied and pasted some of his own code into the Linux kernel). And exactly why SCO is wrong (They don't own the 'general concept' of RCU and other tech thought up by Sequent).
This should be what slashdot linked too, not RMS's rant. Cringely did some real reporting and answered a lot of important questions.
Okay, now I know you are trolling. IBM made both chips, presumably this makes them pretty good experts on which is faster.
When did IBM say the power4 was slower? Do you have links to the press release? I was under the impression that the PPC 970 had a smaller floating point unit.
You linked to the spec int scores of the power4, not the spec fp. The spec int scores of the power4 chip are lower then the p4 scores.
Anyway. It's simple. If apple wants to prove they have a superior system, they are going to need to find their best compiler, and put out a benchmark showing that they are actually faster then Intel machines. Benchmarks of the power4 chip have absolutely zero bearing on this.
Based on your reasoning above, z is faster than y, but we know that z is slower than y. This is a negative proof demonstrating the flaw in your reasoning.
How do we know this? The POWER4 may be on a different mobo and use different memory. It is possible that 'z' is faster then 'y'.
In any event, both 'y' and 'z' are much slower then 'x' in any measurement ever performed.
It's worth noting that IBM's own 1500MHz Power4 CPU "kicks the crap" out of the published results for the G5. Guess what? The Power4 processor is the slower processor. IBM's own SPEC benchmarks show that the G5 at 1.8GHz should "kick the crap" out of that 1500MHz CPU, let alone a 2GHz model.
I don't really know what point your trying to make, as the 1500mhz power4 CPU is still slower then an intel P4 @ 3ghz.
When I was a very young boy without a computer of my own. Then I took a programming class that used DOS and I thought the "Command Line" was the coolest thing EVAR. After that, I was hooked.
Pretty weird, in retrospect.
The opteron has been out for a while.
As a final word, sometimes the slowest factor in getting a job done, is not necessarily the computer, but the user taking their time, because the application has been so badly implemented, to be difficult to use and understandable.
Just a anecdote. Where I work we have SGI machines and PCs. The SGI machines come with a program called Multigen Creator which is just shit. Most of the people there would probably rather use 3ds max on a 486 then deal with creator, even on our million dollar SGI machine.
Hearing Mac Zealots constantly denigrate the PC while I was growing up made me hate the company, which only added fuel to the fire by publishing bullshit benchmarks and misleading information like what they've just done.
I have no problem with things like the BeBox, the Amega, SGI machines or anything else, and I'd probably enjoy trying them. But Apple constantly lies and misleads and insults my intelligence. Mac Zealots constantly lap it up and spit it out. These days it's just annoying but when I was a kid it was downright insulting. That's why I dislike apple so much. I've grown out of platform zealotry myself, but apple still has a huge legacy of BS to overcome in my mind. And they are not doing anything at all to overcome it.
Compare this to the way Linux users in general have handled themselves, especially after the Linux Advocacy HOWTO which tells people not to insult others and that kind of thing.
I'm sure gcc hurt Apple more than it hurt the P4.
the SPEC resutls for the p4 with with ICC kick the crap out of the G5 with GCC.
Using the same compiler for the G5 and the P4 and benchmarking them is like trying to compare a Ferrari and a Honda Accord and using 87 octane gas.
Say what you want, but the already published SPEC results for the p4 at 3ghz with ICC kicks the crap out of the published results for the g5. No amount of theorizing is going to change that.
GCC is the fastest compiler for PPC. If it isn't, then they should have used that mythical faster compiler.
Using the same compiler is like trying to test the 0-60 time of various cars while using the exact same fuel. It's stupid. You should use the best fuel for the car.
Actually, my favorite was the Mathematica guy who commented (IIRC) "We tried to come up with an example to show how being able to use more than 4GB of memory was helpful, but we couldn't come up with an example that didn't crash the Xeon"
I think he mistook "The Xeon" with "our buggy intel implementation"
Okay, you're right that the SPEC benchmarks test both the compiler and the processor. But if the compiler is the same, you're testing just the processor, right?
No, there is no way that a compiler for one platform can be 'the same' as a compiler for another platform. What GCC does when targeting PPC is totaly diffrent then what GCC does when targeting x86 or any other chip. The compiler 'cores' are totaly diffrent.
Apple uses that compiler as their dev compiler, and poors a lot of money into it.
If you want to measure the "power of the chip" then you should measure with the best compiler for bragging rights, then you should measure with the best compiler for that chip.
If you have your own code you want to compile, you should look at benchmarks based on compilers you have access to.
If you spend most of your time in one app (available on both platforms), like a CAD app, or Quake 3 or whatever, you should look at benchmarks of that app or at least similar app.
The argument that you need to work out the compiler doesn't make any sense at all. Presumably most shipping software is going to use the best compiler available before they release binaries. The compiler has a huge impact on performance. When you test using the same compiler, you're basically testing the CPU and the optimizations available for that compiler.
The only reasonable test is to use the 'best' compiler for each platform. Probably this means compiling the test platform on all the available compilers, and choosing the highest score.
I was under the impression that their economy had tanked after all the phosphate had been mined and their government was in chaos. I'm suprised anyone had the time or money to actualy go out and do this : P
My dual G4/450 with 1.5 GB RAM and Radeon 9000 already gags on that enough so that it's a hassle when I have to design and edit that kind of stuff. Believe me, I'm going to be first in line as soon as I scrape together the $2500 or so for a new G5 system with added RAM (the more RAM, the merrier -- Photoshop is VERY hungry for RAM).
450mhz? Nevermind that you could have droped a grand and gotten a much faster PC for a long time.
The diffrence between a 'desktop' and a 'workstation' is like the diffrence between a 'coup' and a 'sports car'.
Its the same thing, just targed to diffrent people.
A 2ghz P4 is probably going to be about twice as fast as a 1ghz p4. Simply from the relative speed deltas, its easy to see that intel chips have been accelerating much more quickly then the g4.
The GPL spesificaly say you don't need to agree to it to distribute the to use the stuff