"Cell chips are essentially insanely fast PowerPC chips. Apple could have OS X running on a Cell chip in about the same time it takes for them to support any other new PowerPC chip that comes out"
Wrong. The PowerPC part of the cell is quite stripped down compared to the CPUs found in Macs. The bulk of the die is taken up by the SPEs. These are the components responsible for the Cells "insanely fast" numbers. While some parts of OS X can make very good use of the SPEs, the work to make that happen is far from trivial.
Actually, I think this could work in Apples favour. They can release OS X for the PS3, it won't be very fast, but it'll give people a taste of OS X, and maybe they'll buy a Mac.
The OP said "write for Linux (or indeed, any other OS), and then provide their games on a bootable disc". Linux also provides an abstraction to the hardware, via OpenGL, SDL, ALSA, etc. Just because it has a CLI doesn't make it DOS.
"right winger"? I've got an idea. How about you can the stupid political labels and putting words in peoples mouths and actually respond to what was said?
Thinking hydrogen is a stupid idea is valid, and there are many arguments why. Why don't you go do the calculation to see how far your roof covered in solar panels will drive a car. Use best case for everything. Or maybe you could just appeal to your rightthinking ways, and that'll make it work.
The fact that your hard drive was failing and a 1/10th of a second jump screws up your dancing game is irrelevant. That class of games does nothing to challenge the hardware, and emulation should be trivial.
Timing problems in other emulators you might be familiar with arise from the fact that early console hardware was tightly synced to scanlines and such.
You're a troll, but your first paragraph accurately represents what many feel about this.
The research and motivation for this is important. If peer to peer networks can be subverted, then they have lost their usefulness. IMO, the sharing of copyrighted data is unavoidable, and sacrificing the freedom of a protocol in an attempt to prevent it is shortsighted.
It probably would have been better for Cornell if it had been left as a paper, rather than implementing it.
I don't get it. Maybe the guy has never done any dev on Linux and thinks it harder than it is. He's already using cross-platform libraries, how hard can it be? I've ported small OpenGL (GLUT, no SDL) apps in a matter of a few minutes. Porting from OS X is even easier.
I found out a long time ago that the best way for me to learn something, was to try to write a quick tutorial. It forces me to encapsulate what I do know, and makes what I don't know very clear.
Robots are cheaper, safer, and expendable. I hope that no deep sea researcher ever misses out on going to the bottom a few times, but that same reseacher can get 100 times the work done useing robots.
It's the same for space travel. Just because it's romantic to have humans in space, doesn't mean it's a good idea to blow 90% of our space budget on LEO manned 'missions'.
English, as spoken in England, says "NASA are". People from Europe, also known as "Europeans" speak a wide variety of languages other than English, and when they speak English, they generally use the British pronunciation. Of course, none of those people have internet access, or post on slashdot.
The consumer is likely to get a much more feature rich device with linux. The designers don't have to waste energy doing things linux already provides. TCP, threads, loads of API's, gcc, etc. There's also the obvious advantage of having access to all Linux software, although this means little to many people.
The linux kernels running on these devices are highly optimized. Access to source allows one to strip out all unneeded functionality, and these kernels compare well to custom ones. Linux has come a very long way since the early days, and the kernel code is highly device independent. It's the compilers job to optimize. Although you could custom code a (somewhat) faster and smaller OS for a predefined set of features, any speed advantage would be outweighed by development cost for all but the largest firms (Sony).
Actually, it was reading lamda-the-ultimate that motivated me to learn Haskell. I was sick of reading about all those cool features and having most of it go over my head. I had done some Lisp in school, but didn't grok it at all at the time, probably due to an instructor who couldn't care less.
That, LTU, and one guy writing a Perl 6 compiler/interpeter in ~3 months convinced me it was worth having a look at.
but what I really need is a decent Haskell IDE (that's hopefully not emacs).
Can anyone point out any strong advantages Lisp has over more modern functional languages? I've been learning Haskell, and really enjoying it, and wouldn't mind another FP language...I was thinking O'Caml, for performance reasons.
On the subject of those wacky FP languages, here's something I ran across last night, quicksort in 'J';
qsort =: id ` (($: o selLEF),first,($: o selGTF)) choose notEmpty
'$' is the self reference operator, making this an anonymous recursive function. Pretty cool.
I just don't think it's as easy as you make it sound, by many orders of magnitude. Cost per Kg is very high, and the input of resources required would be insanely high, and for what return? A self sustaining colony (ie; only needing the highest tech they need imported) would bankrupt the Earth, if it could be done at all. The idea of living on Mars is fantasy, presented to us in all sorts of romatisised forms, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
As penance for the snarky tone of my original post, I present my long term plan for humanity in space;
1. Stop all manned exploration now. Robots do more, cheaper, faster. And when they blow up, barely any one even notices.
2. Design, build, and launch a bunch of probes to nearby stars. Provide probes with spore samples, so if they find liquid water, they can start terraforming right away. Also launch a big, expensive imaging system of some sort that can return data about planets orbiting local stars.
3. As soon as the materials show up, start building a space elevator. "The first space elevator will be built 20 years after people stop laughing about it" -- A. C. Clark. We can then think about supporting small colonies on Mars. Lowering the cost of getting out of the gravity well is essential if we want to have any real future in space.
4. If we discover a star in the 'hood with a oxygen ecosphere (here's to hopeing), make an Ark, and launch it. This would be more likely to be sustainable than a Mars colony, with a much greater potential payoff.
5. Resume killing each other and depleting finite resources at astonishing rates.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong. The PowerPC part of the cell is quite stripped down compared to the CPUs found in Macs. The bulk of the die is taken up by the SPEs. These are the components responsible for the Cells "insanely fast" numbers. While some parts of OS X can make very good use of the SPEs, the work to make that happen is far from trivial.
Actually, I think this could work in Apples favour. They can release OS X for the PS3, it won't be very fast, but it'll give people a taste of OS X, and maybe they'll buy a Mac.
The OP said "write for Linux (or indeed, any other OS), and then provide their games on a bootable disc". Linux also provides an abstraction to the hardware, via OpenGL, SDL, ALSA, etc. Just because it has a CLI doesn't make it DOS.
Last year I was in a house that got 80% of its energy from solar, and I live in BC. But the energy needs of transportation are another thing entirely.
Thinking hydrogen is a stupid idea is valid, and there are many arguments why. Why don't you go do the calculation to see how far your roof covered in solar panels will drive a car. Use best case for everything. Or maybe you could just appeal to your rightthinking ways, and that'll make it work.
Timing problems in other emulators you might be familiar with arise from the fact that early console hardware was tightly synced to scanlines and such.
So Telus is now the police? The point is Telus is a service provider. It's not up to them to decide what's legal or not.
From a nation with 300,000,000+ teenagers? Enough to fret over.
The research and motivation for this is important. If peer to peer networks can be subverted, then they have lost their usefulness. IMO, the sharing of copyrighted data is unavoidable, and sacrificing the freedom of a protocol in an attempt to prevent it is shortsighted.
It probably would have been better for Cornell if it had been left as a paper, rather than implementing it.
I don't get it. Maybe the guy has never done any dev on Linux and thinks it harder than it is. He's already using cross-platform libraries, how hard can it be? I've ported small OpenGL (GLUT, no SDL) apps in a matter of a few minutes. Porting from OS X is even easier.
I found out a long time ago that the best way for me to learn something, was to try to write a quick tutorial. It forces me to encapsulate what I do know, and makes what I don't know very clear.
It's the spread of tabbed browsing.
It's the same for space travel. Just because it's romantic to have humans in space, doesn't mean it's a good idea to blow 90% of our space budget on LEO manned 'missions'.
What I don't get is why those interns are wasting their time implementing what was done better by google.
English, as spoken in England, says "NASA are". People from Europe, also known as "Europeans" speak a wide variety of languages other than English, and when they speak English, they generally use the British pronunciation. Of course, none of those people have internet access, or post on slashdot.
The Klein Bottle.
Not all of us belive everything we read.
Mod parent down redundant.
The linux kernels running on these devices are highly optimized. Access to source allows one to strip out all unneeded functionality, and these kernels compare well to custom ones. Linux has come a very long way since the early days, and the kernel code is highly device independent. It's the compilers job to optimize. Although you could custom code a (somewhat) faster and smaller OS for a predefined set of features, any speed advantage would be outweighed by development cost for all but the largest firms (Sony).
You're joking right? I'm a linux zealot, and a gamer, but those games mostly suck.
A good hosting service.
High average IQ, and a long history of raising up the less fortunate. (they've had free education for a long time).
That, LTU, and one guy writing a Perl 6 compiler/interpeter in ~3 months convinced me it was worth having a look at.
Can anyone point out any strong advantages Lisp has over more modern functional languages? I've been learning Haskell, and really enjoying it, and wouldn't mind another FP language...I was thinking O'Caml, for performance reasons.
On the subject of those wacky FP languages, here's something I ran across last night, quicksort in 'J';
'$' is the self reference operator, making this an anonymous recursive function. Pretty cool.
As penance for the snarky tone of my original post, I present my long term plan for humanity in space;
1. Stop all manned exploration now. Robots do more, cheaper, faster. And when they blow up, barely any one even notices.
2. Design, build, and launch a bunch of probes to nearby stars. Provide probes with spore samples, so if they find liquid water, they can start terraforming right away. Also launch a big, expensive imaging system of some sort that can return data about planets orbiting local stars.
3. As soon as the materials show up, start building a space elevator. "The first space elevator will be built 20 years after people stop laughing about it" -- A. C. Clark. We can then think about supporting small colonies on Mars. Lowering the cost of getting out of the gravity well is essential if we want to have any real future in space.
4. If we discover a star in the 'hood with a oxygen ecosphere (here's to hopeing), make an Ark, and launch it. This would be more likely to be sustainable than a Mars colony, with a much greater potential payoff.
5. Resume killing each other and depleting finite resources at astonishing rates.