First off, let me state that I am a rather devout C++ developer with about 8 years experience developing in the language.
But for server apps, I think it's the wrong choice. Let's face it, languages with security features are more suitable for servers. Bittorrent is in python. mldonkey is in objective-caml. And I'm sure there's something in java out there somewhere. No, I haven't seen any really professonal looking GUIs written in any of these languages, but I'd rather have the added security any day when it comes to promiscuous networking.
Well, my last 2 cpus were a celeron 300a overclocked to 450, and a celeron 566 overclocked to 850. I can tell you, overclocking boosted the performance by far more than 1%. And I have not broken any parts.
I can understand slowing things down to make them quieter, but if you think running your ram slower is saving significantly on repair costs you're nuts.
On the other hand, with every new video card or CPU review on slashdot, we hear a chorus of "why bother? Nobody can even use the power of a $400 system!" so that harmonizes nicely with "Doom3 is unrealistic! It requires too much computer!" The only time things are REALLY wrong is when there aren't people moaning on both sides of the issue.
As for the 1 GHz barrier, I haven't broken it yet. I'm playing BF1942 with a C566 overclocked to 850, in a motherboard+ram I bought for a C300A overclocked to 450. Thanks to a new Geforce4 ti4200 bought for $80 at Compusa, most of the maps run just fine! I was planning to upgrade the computer, but changed my mind because BF1942 runs well enough. So maybe Doom3 (or a better subsequent title using the Doom engine) will give me reason to stimulate the tech economy.
I guess when 970 ships, we will have similar situation as we have right now. x86 machines will consume enormous amount of power and dissipate enormous amount of heat, what usually results in this nice "quadruple augmented turbofan" sound that accompanies most PC desktops or "not enough battery life even to watch a full DVD" laptops.
That seems like an unfair assessment, due to the Pentium-M - 24 watts at 1.6 GHz (with roughly the performance of a P4-2.4), vs 42 watts at 1.8 GHz for the PPC970 (according to another poster).
So it seems Intel has taken the low-power crown as well.
Re:Nearly classical economics
on
Mighty Amazon
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· Score: 1
The question isn't *why* companies would want patents on everything; obviously a monopoly is wonderful for whoever owns it. The question is why "we the people" are granting these patents to our own detriment.
If there are no drug patents, nobody will spend billions to research new drugs. That I can understand. But if there are no one-click or new+used patents, nobody will offer one-click shopping, or sell new and used items? Of course they would. So granting patents on these things is harmful.
An 8 bit z-buffer? If you're that sure your objects will never touch, just draw them from back to front. If they do touch, you'll get a big jaggy ol' line along the intersection.
I had a card that allowed you to select a 16 vs 32 bit z buffer in the setup panel, and even then it did make a difference on some (poorly implemented?) games.
That article was short and uninformative. The only "innovative" feature clearly alleged stolen is the particular aspect ratio of the screen, which 1) who cares and 2) isn't an "idea", just a design choice.
$100 for 1GB of ram is cheap compared to what? I don't expect to pay $100 for a little bottle of cinnamon just because people were fighting and dying over it 300 years ago.
Re:The price of exploration
on
Shuttle Politics
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· Score: 2, Insightful
One can be "for" space exploration - and even NASA - and "against" the space shuttle. Just think how many unmanned and "big dumb rocket" manned missions could be bought with that Shuttle and ISS money.
Why should we tell people they can't if they're willing to take on the risk?
It's not a matter of "telling people they can't." It's a matter of NOT pouring billions into an overpriced, underproducing, dangerous program.
I would be willing to bet that this is more motivated by the cost of replacing shuttles and crew than it is the potential loss of life. Cynical yes, but sadly enough, probalby true.
Cynical how? According to your own argument, the loss of life is no problem, since they're volunteers anyways. But on the basis of science per dollars alone, the shuttle is a bad deal. (Factor back in the loss of life - as most of us do - and the damage to popular perception of space exploration, and it's an even worse deal).
You are wrong. A standard TV can only show 480 scan lines, and if you use some for showing black bars, they are NOT used for showing picture. You most certainly *do* lose resolution.
As I already said, it's different if you have an HDTV.
Then again, you lose something by additional shrinking to fit the "widescreen" format onto the tv. I put "widescreen" in quotes because obviously it doesn't make your TV screen wider, so it should be called "shortscreen."
Put another way, with pan and scan you use all 640x480 of your TV; with widescreen your TV becomes 640x350 or so (and the same holds fo HDTV screens, unless it's a real widescreen, or has resolution significantly in excess of the source).
Open data formats is where it's at. Interoperable software interfaces are far less important, at least now that the Internet standards (tcp/ip, http) have established connectivity. Drag and drop is relatively unimportant. OLE is comparatively pointless.
The single most basic, important standard should be for business documents. let's talk about how many commercial products support.doc! Then let's talk about how many different compilers are available for C# and VB. And how many different commercial operating systems support SMB file and printer sharing.
Did you see the graph in the article though? Canada's broadband penetration is over 2x the US. We're getting spanked by Canada. Now there's a densely populated country for you.
And yes, I do care, because I'm American and computers are my bread and butter. I worry that we're losing our edge. People in Korea and elsewhere are rapidly embracing the technology, while all Comcast (my broadband provider) can think to do is raise rates and tell me not to use the Internet for anything too unconventional.
Are we really worried what AMD has to offer in comparison to Intel? AMD seems to have FSB issues (not greater than 400MHz).
Personally, yes, I was/am interested to see if the 64-bit AMD is any good, IF it is priced consistently with other desktop chips, and not with Sparc/Itanium/etc.
Well, if you'd looked at the bar charts in the artcle, you'd have seen that the 1.4 GHz
benchmarks at about the same or a little faster than a 3 GHz P4.
The 1.4 PPC 970, that is, not the G4 1.4.
Of they G4, they write,
By reading these benchmarks you'll understand that we couldn't publish them before.
Now we know that PM G4 sells are stuck at a very low level, the following test results won't have much incidence. It will however make the ones switching to PC wait for the next generation of Power Macs.
Now, maybe I'm reading too much into a rough translation, but it sounds like they were witholding benchmarks that showed how the single P4 3.0 spanked the dual 1.4 G4. That doesn't seem very forthright.
Meanwhile, comparing *today's* Intel product against *tomorrow's* PPC must also be done with caution; by the time you can buy that PPC 970, Intel and AMD will have something else, too.
What I meant by "balance" is that eventually there would be no differential in the cost of US vs foreign labor (but until then, there will be cheap foreign labor).
How much of that will be them going up, and how much will be us going down, I don't know. Ultimately I'm sure the world's total economic output will be larger than it is now, but again one can only guess how much of that will raise standards of living around the world, vs. how much will go to the world's first trillionaire.
You left out another alternative: what if (C) the cost of living increases elsewhere ? What if the third world countries outgrow being third world countries ?
Yes, things will come into balance eventually, but that will take decades. Until then, cheap foreign labor is beneficial to most Americans, but bad for those in "information worker" (telecommutable) jobs.
First, public-key encryption is not an "easy algorithm" in any sense. It is much more computationally expensive than symmetric key encryption.
Public key encryption is "weaker" in the sense that the ratio between the time taken to decrypt with and without the key is lower. So a much longer key must be used, slowing things down. Since public-key encryption provides far less protection for a given key length, it could fairly be said to be "easier."
I would think that "Opportunistic Encryption" is an appropriate defence against "Opportunistic Sniffing" - people who are monitoring anybody and everybody just for the heck of it. Predator comes to mind. It wouldn't be easy to man-in-the-middle that much traffic all at once, especially without being very noticeable.
Can they, really? The Taliban were supposed to have all these Stingers, which they didn't. Then Iraqi air defense turned out with little more than AAA.
Or better (like thats gonna happen); try to eliminate the reason behind the fact that there actually are (probably) somone who wants to fire a LCCM on New York.
I doubt you could appease Kim Chong-il, Timothy McVeigh, Bin Laden, and the Unibomber all at the same time, even if you tried.
Also, read up about the "red scare" in the 50's and the way people were treated for actually beliving that communism wasn't so bad. It wasn't a popular belief, but whatever happened to political freedom?
I am really not so sure about the freedom to push communism. It's just like the freedom to own slaves - the freedom to deprive others of freedom. No, I don't think people should be persecuted for discussing communism, or reading books on it, even if communism is portrayed positively. But allowing a communist candidate in a democratic election seems inherently contradictory, like voting to do away with voting.
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But for server apps, I think it's the wrong choice. Let's face it, languages with security features are more suitable for servers. Bittorrent is in python. mldonkey is in objective-caml. And I'm sure there's something in java out there somewhere. No, I haven't seen any really professonal looking GUIs written in any of these languages, but I'd rather have the added security any day when it comes to promiscuous networking.
I can understand slowing things down to make them quieter, but if you think running your ram slower is saving significantly on repair costs you're nuts.
...if your video card cost more than your CPU. Mine did.
But how far are you really going to get before trigonometry rears its ugly head?
On the other hand, with every new video card or CPU review on slashdot, we hear a chorus of "why bother? Nobody can even use the power of a $400 system!" so that harmonizes nicely with "Doom3 is unrealistic! It requires too much computer!" The only time things are REALLY wrong is when there aren't people moaning on both sides of the issue.
As for the 1 GHz barrier, I haven't broken it yet. I'm playing BF1942 with a C566 overclocked to 850, in a motherboard+ram I bought for a C300A overclocked to 450. Thanks to a new Geforce4 ti4200 bought for $80 at Compusa, most of the maps run just fine! I was planning to upgrade the computer, but changed my mind because BF1942 runs well enough. So maybe Doom3 (or a better subsequent title using the Doom engine) will give me reason to stimulate the tech economy.
So it seems Intel has taken the low-power crown as well.
If there are no drug patents, nobody will spend billions to research new drugs. That I can understand. But if there are no one-click or new+used patents, nobody will offer one-click shopping, or sell new and used items? Of course they would. So granting patents on these things is harmful.
I had a card that allowed you to select a 16 vs 32 bit z buffer in the setup panel, and even then it did make a difference on some (poorly implemented?) games.
That article was short and uninformative. The only "innovative" feature clearly alleged stolen is the particular aspect ratio of the screen, which 1) who cares and 2) isn't an "idea", just a design choice.
One can be "for" space exploration - and even NASA - and "against" the space shuttle. Just think how many unmanned and "big dumb rocket" manned missions could be bought with that Shuttle and ISS money.
As I already said, it's different if you have an HDTV.
Put another way, with pan and scan you use all 640x480 of your TV; with widescreen your TV becomes 640x350 or so (and the same holds fo HDTV screens, unless it's a real widescreen, or has resolution significantly in excess of the source).
The single most basic, important standard should be for business documents. let's talk about how many commercial products support .doc! Then let's talk about how many different compilers are available for C# and VB. And how many different commercial operating systems support SMB file and printer sharing.
And yes, I do care, because I'm American and computers are my bread and butter. I worry that we're losing our edge. People in Korea and elsewhere are rapidly embracing the technology, while all Comcast (my broadband provider) can think to do is raise rates and tell me not to use the Internet for anything too unconventional.
Of they G4, they write,
Now, maybe I'm reading too much into a rough translation, but it sounds like they were witholding benchmarks that showed how the single P4 3.0 spanked the dual 1.4 G4. That doesn't seem very forthright.Meanwhile, comparing *today's* Intel product against *tomorrow's* PPC must also be done with caution; by the time you can buy that PPC 970, Intel and AMD will have something else, too.
How much of that will be them going up, and how much will be us going down, I don't know. Ultimately I'm sure the world's total economic output will be larger than it is now, but again one can only guess how much of that will raise standards of living around the world, vs. how much will go to the world's first trillionaire.
I would think that "Opportunistic Encryption" is an appropriate defence against "Opportunistic Sniffing" - people who are monitoring anybody and everybody just for the heck of it. Predator comes to mind. It wouldn't be easy to man-in-the-middle that much traffic all at once, especially without being very noticeable.
Can they, really? The Taliban were supposed to have all these Stingers, which they didn't. Then Iraqi air defense turned out with little more than AAA.