Notably, the communication system needed for this type of war machine is a mesh network of high bandwidth radio links (each robot would need several megabits, mostly for data from the video cameras) using electronically steered antennae to filter out jamming and allow for thousands of robots sharing the same slice of spectrum. All data would need to be communicated using a one time encryption pad. Radio spectrum being finite as it is, this is still (and will probably always be) basically impossible. You simply can't deliver high bandwidth to a large number of robots over radio. You need robots that use less bandwidth, and are therefore more autonomous, or you need a non-RF communication mechanism.
I work for a company that is involved in several military contracts, including FCS, though we have nothing to do with Land Warrior. From some conversations I've had with vendors we work with, the Land Warrior system is being cut because it doesn't work, and because the company developing it is apparently incompetent. As a result, FCS is moving to the Future Force Warrior system as a replacement.
This is much ado about nothing. One system sucked, so the Army is dumping it in favor of a better one.
I don't think I've ever had that problem with 1.5.x (Linux, Windows, or Mac). Of course, it's probably that adblock is taking out all the really offensive elements of the page. Personally, I can't tolerate espn.com at all without it.
> Motherboards, chipsets, video cards, hell even computer cases are all part of the Apple experience. If you want to believe that the only "premium" you're paying for is the operating system, then believe it all you like. But when you run out and try one of the machines, you'll realize there's a lot more to it.
But thats really the whole point... Apple's going to Intel, ergo their motherboard and chipset choices will be the same as everybody else's (I'd imagine they'll use Intel-brand boards and chipsets, but we'll see), and their video card choices are *already* the same as PCs, except they like to give you a low end one. For RAM, well duh, any PC manufacturer that wants to make money in the long run uses decent memory. So, once the Intel move is complete, the only thing separating Apple from Dell will be the case and the software. This, IMO, makes paying the Apple premium much harder to justify.
The Latitude my company furnished me with has firewire built-in. And its not as though they bought it special... I have no particular use for firewire.
There's no magic to Windows that makes that work. You could make the same sort of package/installer for Linux. Heck, what do you think Doom3 and UT2004 do? Distros don't do it because they all have package managers (which are better!).
Linux apps under OSX all seem pretty kludgey to me, even the ones I can get through fink. In fact, several of the *NIX apps that have OSX ports feel that way. GVIM, for instance, was a small headache.
Umm... except for the part where the carriers don't operate in a free market. Unless you haven't noticed, local service telcos are still regulated local monopolies.
I think the grandparent's point is that building blocks are already there, and all you'd really need is Gnome, KDE, or whoever to rework their file manager so that it sees apps that way. Define a nice standard way to package the things and get the app developers to buy into it, and you're done.
There are some pretty solid IA-64 cluster setups out there, most of which probably run Linux. It's a niche market, but it is a market. (unlike, say SPARC32)
Actually Dyson's not a great example. The Dyson DC07 that's being hyped everywhere is ALL marketing. It doesn't work for crap. It appalls me that they're selling so well.
How do I know? I worked for a company who tests these things. Dyson did quite badly in all our tests. Miele and the new Hoover kicked the crap out of it.
> IMO this was caused by them designing chips that had to function like Intel chips but be different enough architecturally to keep them from getting sued (more than they already were).
That doesn't really make sense. Architecturally Intel and AMD are and always have been almost identical in that they're both x86. As far as how they actually implement that architecture, its pretty impossible for two separate entities to create the same chip unless they use the exact same plans, which in the case of Intel and AMD would imply that someone stole secret documents from the other. You can't really create a "knockoff" microprocessor the way other products are knocked-off, ie. by reverse engineering. Or rather, you could, but its probably easier to design your own.
IMO what happened is AMD simply got better at designing high performance microprocessors. Maybe they hired some smart people, or maybe its because of their increasing level of partnership with IBM, or maybe they just learned from their mistakes. Of course Intel's colossally bad design for the Pentium 4 probably helped too.
Um, hrm... Dell's been putting out nothing but nonstandard power supplies since at least the Pentium 3 days AFAIK. I've plugged em into standard boards by mistake before. Never burned one, but I'd be careful.
To me the main bonus of Debian has always been Apt + Debian repositories.
I recently inherited a Mac at work, and OSX is neat and all, but the fink repository doesn't have half the apps I'm looking for. And I don't really get what the fink application does either. Woulda been happier with just apt.
They also have less to do. In the case of FreeBSD that means they support less architectures, and put in less work on their non-core "ports" packages. Of course NetBSD supports every architecture there is, but has relatively few packages if I remember.
I'll readily agree that Debian could be much, much more efficient. But it should be remembered that they're trying to do quite a bit more than most other projects.
I wasn't that impressed by the demo either. Maybe I'm not "with it" enough to see the beauty in all this point-and-click programming, but I think I could have written the same demo app in Java/Swing in about half the time. And I'm by no means an expert Java programmer.
Nope. Sorry. Pentium M should always smack the G4 clock-for-clock. Go look up the SPEC results. G4 is clock competitive with P6. Pentium M is P6 plus branch-predict optimizations plus 2MB L2, i.e. faster.
G4s might be cheap, but thats only because they suck.
As has been noted before, these licensing terms are GPL-incompatible. That "notice of attribution" part sounds similar to the issue with the new XFree86 license, and of course there's the whole patent issue.
But hey, I'll take a BSD-licensed office suite that can perfectly read MS formats anyday. For that matter, this may not even conflict with the OO.org licensing.
The decision to go towards dual core is IMO more because making single core go much faster is really hard right now. So assuming no advances in semis in the near future which change that reality, app developers are just going to have to learn to code SMP if they want good performance. It kinda sucks, and I'm sure if Intel could produce an efficient 6GHz processor they'd go that way instead, but SMP appears to be the reality going forward.
Well I think the idea was to introduce HT to get app developers thinking about it, the hope being that by the time dual-core comes out applications will be (nearly) ready to take advantage. Theres no reason games or really any app can't take advantage of SMP, they just don't generally get written for it.
But that would be following AMD's footsteps. I think what they're trying to do here is one-up the Athlon. "Oh you've got 64bit? Well *we've* got dual-core, so ha!"
Admittedly, I don't know what the roadmap is for AMD dual core chips, so maybe Intel's just trying to keep up by pretending the whole 64-bit thing never happened.
To be fair to Microsoft (yeah, I know), as of SP2 OEMs or anyone else are free to decide what media player, office suite, browser, etc. they bundle. Oh its true you can't actually get rid of the MS programs (except office, which has always been a "choice"). But if you select alternatives via the framework MS added in SP2, you never hear a peep from the offending programs again.
As much as I'm disappointed in the antitrust settlement, getting this functionality in Windows is a decent bonus. Its made it very easy for me to convert family members seamlessly over to Firefox/Thunderbird.
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> But it's Apple. They don't expect you to upgrade things on your own.
Well they should. I know my MacBook manual has instructions on how to add RAM, and I bet the desktops do too.
I work for a company that is involved in several military contracts, including FCS, though we have nothing to do with Land Warrior. From some conversations I've had with vendors we work with, the Land Warrior system is being cut because it doesn't work, and because the company developing it is apparently incompetent. As a result, FCS is moving to the Future Force Warrior system as a replacement.
This is much ado about nothing. One system sucked, so the Army is dumping it in favor of a better one.
I don't think I've ever had that problem with 1.5.x (Linux, Windows, or Mac). Of course, it's probably that adblock is taking out all the really offensive elements of the page. Personally, I can't tolerate espn.com at all without it.
> Motherboards, chipsets, video cards, hell even computer cases are all part of the Apple experience. If you want to believe that the only "premium" you're paying for is the operating system, then believe it all you like. But when you run out and try one of the machines, you'll realize there's a lot more to it.
But thats really the whole point... Apple's going to Intel, ergo their motherboard and chipset choices will be the same as everybody else's (I'd imagine they'll use Intel-brand boards and chipsets, but we'll see), and their video card choices are *already* the same as PCs, except they like to give you a low end one. For RAM, well duh, any PC manufacturer that wants to make money in the long run uses decent memory. So, once the Intel move is complete, the only thing separating Apple from Dell will be the case and the software. This, IMO, makes paying the Apple premium much harder to justify.
The Latitude my company furnished me with has firewire built-in. And its not as though they bought it special... I have no particular use for firewire.
That saying was definitely not coined by a mechanical engineer.
There's no magic to Windows that makes that work. You could make the same sort of package/installer for Linux. Heck, what do you think Doom3 and UT2004 do? Distros don't do it because they all have package managers (which are better!).
Linux apps under OSX all seem pretty kludgey to me, even the ones I can get through fink. In fact, several of the *NIX apps that have OSX ports feel that way. GVIM, for instance, was a small headache.
Umm... except for the part where the carriers don't operate in a free market. Unless you haven't noticed, local service telcos are still regulated local monopolies.
I think the grandparent's point is that building blocks are already there, and all you'd really need is Gnome, KDE, or whoever to rework their file manager so that it sees apps that way. Define a nice standard way to package the things and get the app developers to buy into it, and you're done.
> I also like not being more beholden to big companies for my communication.
Of course even when running your own server, your ISP is ultimately in control.
There are some pretty solid IA-64 cluster setups out there, most of which probably run Linux. It's a niche market, but it is a market. (unlike, say SPARC32)
Actually Dyson's not a great example. The Dyson DC07 that's being hyped everywhere is ALL marketing. It doesn't work for crap. It appalls me that they're selling so well.
How do I know? I worked for a company who tests these things. Dyson did quite badly in all our tests. Miele and the new Hoover kicked the crap out of it.
> IMO this was caused by them designing chips that had to function like Intel chips but be different enough architecturally to keep them from getting sued (more than they already were).
That doesn't really make sense. Architecturally Intel and AMD are and always have been almost identical in that they're both x86. As far as how they actually implement that architecture, its pretty impossible for two separate entities to create the same chip unless they use the exact same plans, which in the case of Intel and AMD would imply that someone stole secret documents from the other. You can't really create a "knockoff" microprocessor the way other products are knocked-off, ie. by reverse engineering. Or rather, you could, but its probably easier to design your own.
IMO what happened is AMD simply got better at designing high performance microprocessors. Maybe they hired some smart people, or maybe its because of their increasing level of partnership with IBM, or maybe they just learned from their mistakes. Of course Intel's colossally bad design for the Pentium 4 probably helped too.
Um, hrm... Dell's been putting out nothing but nonstandard power supplies since at least the Pentium 3 days AFAIK. I've plugged em into standard boards by mistake before. Never burned one, but I'd be careful.
To me the main bonus of Debian has always been Apt + Debian repositories.
I recently inherited a Mac at work, and OSX is neat and all, but the fink repository doesn't have half the apps I'm looking for. And I don't really get what the fink application does either. Woulda been happier with just apt.
Bottom line is OSX+Fink != Debian+Apt
They also have less to do. In the case of FreeBSD that means they support less architectures, and put in less work on their non-core "ports" packages. Of course NetBSD supports every architecture there is, but has relatively few packages if I remember.
I'll readily agree that Debian could be much, much more efficient. But it should be remembered that they're trying to do quite a bit more than most other projects.
I wasn't that impressed by the demo either. Maybe I'm not "with it" enough to see the beauty in all this point-and-click programming, but I think I could have written the same demo app in Java/Swing in about half the time. And I'm by no means an expert Java programmer.
Nope. Sorry. Pentium M should always smack the G4 clock-for-clock. Go look up the SPEC results. G4 is clock competitive with P6. Pentium M is P6 plus branch-predict optimizations plus 2MB L2, i.e. faster.
G4s might be cheap, but thats only because they suck.
As has been noted before, these licensing terms are GPL-incompatible. That "notice of attribution" part sounds similar to the issue with the new XFree86 license, and of course there's the whole patent issue.
But hey, I'll take a BSD-licensed office suite that can perfectly read MS formats anyday. For that matter, this may not even conflict with the OO.org licensing.
The decision to go towards dual core is IMO more because making single core go much faster is really hard right now. So assuming no advances in semis in the near future which change that reality, app developers are just going to have to learn to code SMP if they want good performance. It kinda sucks, and I'm sure if Intel could produce an efficient 6GHz processor they'd go that way instead, but SMP appears to be the reality going forward.
Well I think the idea was to introduce HT to get app developers thinking about it, the hope being that by the time dual-core comes out applications will be (nearly) ready to take advantage. Theres no reason games or really any app can't take advantage of SMP, they just don't generally get written for it.
But that would be following AMD's footsteps. I think what they're trying to do here is one-up the Athlon. "Oh you've got 64bit? Well *we've* got dual-core, so ha!"
Admittedly, I don't know what the roadmap is for AMD dual core chips, so maybe Intel's just trying to keep up by pretending the whole 64-bit thing never happened.
To be fair to Microsoft (yeah, I know), as of SP2 OEMs or anyone else are free to decide what media player, office suite, browser, etc. they bundle. Oh its true you can't actually get rid of the MS programs (except office, which has always been a "choice"). But if you select alternatives via the framework MS added in SP2, you never hear a peep from the offending programs again.
As much as I'm disappointed in the antitrust settlement, getting this functionality in Windows is a decent bonus. Its made it very easy for me to convert family members seamlessly over to Firefox/Thunderbird.