Possibly, although I'm less pessimistic about their potential. I could see sites like WebMD and others revived a bit with this kind of "premier" EMR-interpretation service, although it would be entirely optional. As with other subscription services, customers will only pay if they feel the content is worthwhile, and a brand gets damaged if this is abused. For instance, use of TurboTax doesn't result in an influx of spam for dubious financial investments.
There are some obvious benefits, and a number of potential drawbacks to this trend. I personally would like to have electronic access to my medical records, however I'm concerned about what the implications would be for health care quality and costs. I work in a sector that is involved in standardization of medical records, so take this with 2 grains of semi-informed salt, and call me in the morning:
Benefits
Some patients may have the interest, background, and temperament to actually improve their health by exploring their records and trends
Physicians will be held to a high level of scrutiny (by the patients) on the quality of their EMR entries
Drawbacks
Some patients may be confused or upset by what is in their records, costing more either in clarification or (in extreme cases) legal challenges
Physicians may feel compelled to either "dumb down" or "soften" established clinical terminology (e.g. obese), making it less efficient (and more error-prone) for medical professionals to interchange information about the patient through the EMR
In the longer run, assuming that patient portals to EMR data allow users access to the standardized EMR formats (a myriad of standards, really), I expect to see some new companies developing software to help patients interpret and track their healthcare (beyond what the portal provides). These sites would require patient approval, but would be free to analyze and recommend the EMR outside of the constraints of the "healthcare entity" policies.
That is, the EMR is the raw "spreadsheet" of health statistics, and I would expect to see Intuit (Quicken) or Mint-like companies and services come along to make more sense of it.
I suspect my 8 year old, low-functioning ASD son would also not keep on a wrist bracelet, but I'm intrigued enough in this article that I'm going to buy him a cheap watch and see what he does. The form-factor may be an issue.
Given my son's level of functioning (barely verbal), if there was a safe implant tech available (and affordable) that would let me track him within ~1/2 mile, and had a failsafe to start transmitting a locator signal to authorities once he exceeded the range of one of the families smartphones (or some device), I'd buy it, and I suspect many other parents of low-functioning ASD kids would as well.
The problem is that, for most people, they grasp at straws and try to find some observable "cause" they can link with autism. It's quite possible that it has more to do with environmental and/or emotional stresses on the mother but people try to put the cart before the horse and "prove" that a vaccine - which may have been due to travel (hint - enviro/emo stress) or bad health conditions (same) - was the cause.
OK - as a parent of a six-year old with "primary" autism (e.g. low-functioning), I'd like to clear the air on a few points:
"Most" of the parents of autistic kids don't buy into the vaccine-causes-autism bunk - only a very vocal minority, which unfortunately our media amplifies
The mechanism behind autism is, as you undoubtedly know, not well-understood. In the absence of a good understanding, this kind of uninformed speculation thrives.
Lives have been lost as a result due to botched "Chelation" therapies, and money is being made by the self-styled DAN doctors who tell desperate parents what they want to hear
Please, move on, you're just embarrassing yourselves.
I have met a number of other parents of autistic kids. Those that are desperate enough to by into these theories are (often) otherwise rational, intelligent people. They are desperate for hope, and feel they owe it to their child to attempt some kind of cure. Whether this is due to denial (of the permanent disability) or unrelenting hope and a moral code that says "anything is better than nothing", I don't know. I do know I can relate to this, to a point, and was frustrated at the limited medical treatments available for my own son. Please have some sympathy for these misguided parents, as the real culprits are the alt-medicine charlatans who claimed to have found the cure, and the DAN doctors who really ought to know better.
That's evil. The rest is icing on the cake.
It's OK to be importing an unprecedented amount of Chinese goods and exploit the cheap labor for every other aspect of the western economy, but Google is evil because they set up a satellite search service that institutes the required Chinese national policies?
Since the suppression of information is happening regardless of Google's presence, that should clarify that the root of the suppression is not due to U.S. companies agreeing to Chinese government demands, but is the Chinese government itself.
Frankly, it's also better for U.S. interests to have a "bubble" of Google servers that have a set of blacklisted/censored material for the time being, instead of watching Google lose out entirely in the fastest growing economy to the Chinese domestic engines (e.g. Baidu)
These politicians who (while it was a popular subject) wanted to crucify Google don't have any qualms about continuing to support China by importing their cheap goods and exploiting the cheap labor costs.
The bridge is a truss arch bridge built in 1967. The design doesn't interfere with river traffic (well, up until two days ago anyways) - but I did hear an interview with a Berkeley professor describe how such bridges are no longer built due to their lack of redundancy in case of span failure.
This smacks of criminal negligence - complete catastrophic failure in 4 seconds could not have been an undetectable condition.
You have way to much confidence in science and technology. I think it's certainly possible that the inspections done didn't detect the problem with the bridge. Science isn't perfect, and there's always assumptions and things no one knows.
I do have high confidence in civil and structural engineering. This bridge was built in 1967, and is a style that would not be built today, due to an intrinsic lack of redundancy in the support structure. One span breaking was known as all that was needed to cause the bridge to collapse.
This was a known limitation of the architecture. Given this fact, I *do* believe that proper engineering to frequently inspect, and monitor the bridge (including real-time strain gauges) would have detected the problem. I also doubt that the proper engineering was done - and I suspect that this was not due to lack of recommendations, but more likely due to "fiscally conservative" minded legislature that was ultimately only penny-wise.
There's conflicting reports about it. The Feds inspected it a few years ago and said it was in immediate need of repair, but the state sent in people who claimed it would be viable until 2020. While it might appear that the state just didn't want to spend money, keep in mind that Minnesota has the third lowest percentage of structurally deficient bridges, so it's not like there were other major priorities that were sucking up funding.
Thanks for the statemaster link - good research link.
I have heard about these conflicts, and have an incredibly hard time understanding why:
If a federal inspection says it needs repair, how does a state inspection override this?
Why should the state be responsible for the safety and inspection of a federal bridge?
What oversight is there to insure that the state doesn't "pay for what they want to hear", and that they make sure they get a contractor who saves them from expensive maintenance?
Something is rotten (aside from the beams) about the whole situation. Why would a random engineer happen to know this bridge was unsafe and avoid driving on it? Why wouldn't the legislature listen to the more cautious reports from a "higher authority", instead of the less cautious ones (money?)
And the really terrifying question is of course, what's to keep this from happening again?
I'm a Twin Cities resident (local name for Minneapolis/St. Paul), and have taken this bridge hundreds of times, as well as biked along trails on the riverbanks below it. It was never an attractive bridge, but certainly showed no obvious signs of problems.
I was shocked to learn that a good friend of mine was told by a structural engineer two weeks ago that he "always avoids driving on that bridge during rush hour" - apparently the engineer had already read/heard something that we're just finding out.
This smacks of criminal negligence - complete catastrophic failure in 4 seconds could not have been an undetectable condition.
Obsession being the mother of invention, I did some further digging, and discovered the comp.arch folks were discussing this two years ago.
From what I've gleaned from a few postings and white papers, and thinking about how WOW64 works, this really seems like it ought to be possible - the fact that it isn't here already must mean the effort is extremely high (unlike 16->32, it appears MS didn't give any "extender hooks" to make this easy to do.)
Only a fraction of the 64-bit capable desktops and workstations are running 64-bit applications. What's more, there are very few mainstream 64-bit applications out there, despite the fact that for gaming, audio processing, image processing/photoshop apps, and video there would still be performance advantages (memory bandwidth and operation throughput), even if you don't yet have > 4GB of RAM.
It's not really compelling - plus or minus a few percent. And you need to test two binaries which is expensive. So unless you're absolutely forced to use more than 4GB per process, I think people won't bother.
Looks pretty compelling from here! Take a look at the 32-bit vs. 64-bit benchmarks shown here for instance!
If I was a game developer, I'd gladly take 40FPS over 30FPS if it only meant a recompile targeting a 64-bit platform! You only need to test two binaries if you also choose to support 32-bit as well - a suitably advanced app/game could just make a 64-bit capable AMD/Intel chip a prerequisite these days (DOOM required a 386 or better during a similiar 16/32-bit transition period)
"Sherman set the wayback machine to the early 90's, and the great 16-32 bit transition" You might recollect the introduction of the mighty 386 processor, extended memory modes, the Win32s API, but probably most importantly, killer apps like DOOM loading up their own 32-bit memory managers to sidestep the OS, which really wasn't ready to provide good 32-bit native support. Apps that did this completely took over the system, putting the host OS in stasis until the app was exited.
Sounds much like the same situation - the majority of users are running an OS that can't tap the full potential their CPU has to offer. So - why aren't we seeing similar application tricks, like those that enabled 32-bit protected mode now? The proposition of writing an application which would sidestep Windows XP 32-bit and set up a mini 64-bit host environment (not really a full OS) is not that radically different, right?
If you really want 64 bit, I don't see why you can't use Windows x64. Sure you'll need to be careful that you have hardware which has x64 drivers, but that's life.
*I* can (and regularly use XP-64, W2K3 64-bit, and even Vista 64-bit these days) - but if I'm writing a high-end app/game for a reasonably wide audience, you have to realize there's a lot of Windows XP 32-bit boxes out there running on CPUs capable of running in 64-bit "long" mode. It would be mighty sweet to tap into that power for high-end gaming, audio/video processing/transcoding, ray-tracing, etc.
32 bit Windows already has PAE which is the moral equivalent of a Dos extender. I think Outlook and MS SQL server can use it. So there isn't really a hole for a 64 bit Windows extender.
PAE only gives you access to more memory, it doesn't enable the CPU 64-bit processing, so it's not interesting to me. What's more - programming to these "bank switching" style memory extensions really is quite cumbersome.
I've often wondered what would happen if you could make bootable games - e.g. Linux+ATI and NVidia drivers+a game binary on a LiveCD. But to make it work you'd need to be able to offer much better graphics performance than regular Windows, just like Doom's extended Dos had better performance than regular Dos.
And given the amount of effort NVidia and ATI spend on Linux drivers compared to Windows ones, I'm not sure that's the case. DirectX is thinner layer over the driver than OpenGL too.
Yes - using a stripped down Unix core could achieve the same goal, I suppose. Again the DOS4GW dos extender did some mojo regarding drivers such that it leveraged the existing 16-bit DOS drivers for a number of s
A couple clarifications: I was referring to the DOS extender technology, and the x86-64 article does indeed refer to it being "possible" to enter x86-64 "long mode" using such a technique.
Is anyone actually doing this for a non-turnkey application?
Only a fraction of the 64-bit capable desktops and workstations are running 64-bit applications. What's more, there are very few mainstream 64-bit applications out there, despite the fact that for gaming, audio processing, image processing/photoshop apps, and video there would still be performance advantages (memory bandwidth and operation throughput), even if you don't yet have > 4GB of RAM.
As a veteran of the 16->32 bit transition (for that matter, the 8->16 bit as well), I've been wondering about this, as I would like to start to benefit, both as a programmer and user, of the benefits of 64-bit AMD and Intel CPUs. The comparison is admittedly a bit forced, as developers of 32-bit apps aren't being forced into programming using a segmented architecture as they were in 16-bit days.
Warning: Readers of the following will have to cope with the fact that the installed OS on virtually all PCs is Windows XP, 32-bit. (Please assume crash positions.)
This means that MS effectively has these machines "locked in" to 32-bit mode, until the user upgrades their OS to XP-64 (little motive) or Vista 64-bit (or one of the server 64-bit flavors) - wait, this sounds familiar...
"Sherman set the wayback machine to the early 90's, and the great 16->32 bit transition" You might recollect the introduction of the mighty 386 processor, extended memory modes, the Win32s API, but probably most importantly, killer apps like DOOM loading up their own 32-bit memory managers to sidestep the OS, which really wasn't ready to provide good 32-bit native support. Apps that did this completely took over the system, putting the host OS in stasis until the app was exited.
Sounds much like the same situation - the majority of users are running an OS that can't tap the full potential their CPU has to offer. So - why aren't we seeing similar application tricks, like those that enabled 32-bit protected mode now? The proposition of writing an application which would sidestep Windows XP 32-bit and set up a mini 64-bit host environment (not really a full OS) is not that radically different, right?
IIRC, one of the reasons that the 32-bit app could be launched this way was that there was a way to allow it to converse with the 16-bit drivers already installed for disk I/O, audio, video, etc. (I honestly don't know if this is possible to provide a bridge from 64-bit to the 32-bit drivers in the same fashion or not.) This made it feasible to write apps in 32-bit protected mode without having to write 32-bit drivers for every possible piece of hardware in the system.
I am also certain that XP, and most users, would not be nearly as tolerant of an application taking over the entire OS unless it had the same "quantum leap of experience" that a game like DOOM brought to the PC in it's day.
All that aside - I do wonder how often Vista 64-bit is being pre-installed on new platforms vs. the 32-bit edition. If users are not strongly encouraged to upgrade now, this will continue to be a barrier to introducing 64-bit applications to the mass market. (At least Vista licensing and distribution is such that an upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit is free - although I'm not sure how painless it would be.)
By now you've seen dozens of postings about using OpenOffice as an alternative until Redmond patches this (One might even suspect this is a marketing ploy to encourage everyone to upgrade to Office 2007, but... naaahhh)
Folks - if there's malicious content - why take *any* chances? Upload the document to Google's Writely.com and be really insulated from malicious code!
They are indeed using cooperative multitasking - as stated in their FAQ:
Does Contiki support pre-emptive multitasking?
No, Contiki does cooperative multitasking. The reason for not supporting pre-emptive multitasking is that it would unnecessarily increase the complexity not only of the operating system, but also of the applications that would run under it. Pre-emptive multitasking is primarily useful in general purpose multiuser operating systems such as *nix, or in real-time systems where response time is critial. Contiki does not fit in either of those categories.
Well parsed, oh Applesoft guru! How quickly I forgot the 280x192 graphics limitation (memory-mapped conveniently to $2000-$3fff and $4000-5fff) Should never have sold that last//c...
Comparing a IIGS to a IIe is a wide stretch, of course, since it was using a significantly faster 65816 than the classic 6502. I, too, had a super-serial board that could run 19.2kpbs for direct link to PCs, but I was referring to internal modems of the day such as the Hayes and AppleCat. Your point is good, though, a fast serial card could drive a reasonable external comm device.
You're dead-on about the lack of hardware interrupts to hook into (especially if you don't have the luxurious IIGS!) On the other hand, the simple, non-preemptive nature of the beast makes it easy to count clock cycles for a particular code fragment, so perhaps a "virtual machine" approach with fixed time-slicing per process is the approach they'll take. I'm keeping this one bookmarked...
This is really clever - Kudos to Adam and his crew for breathing new life into old technology!
Not only will this allow a new lease on life to old equipment (which otherwise would likely be leaching arsenic into a third world water table somewhere), it's also an opportunity for low-income folks to get onto the net.
My college days were spent writing educational software for these 8-bit, 6502-based systems (typing tutors, etc.) These were great machines to "cut your teeth" on - ROM-based BASIC interpreters, software bootstrapped OS, 320x200 graphics in "8" colors - including black and white (Okay - C64 had more than Apple ][, I admit...) Ahh... 10 HGR2 : HCOLOR 3 : HPLOT 20,20 TO 300, 200...
These ~1Mhz systems are going to have their work cut out for them trying to multitask, but I presume that their TCP/IP traffic is going to be limited to the comm technology of their day (1200/2400 baud)
.NET in the drinking water!.NET eats babies!.NET is the Antichrist! This interesting mixture of fact and FUD is much like some MS marketing campaigns!
Having a CLR, CLS, and class library usable from any language is a really good idea. I'm sick of retaining all of non-overlapping bits of X11, Motif, Qt, MFC, Java, COM, ATL, etc. information in my head or on my shelf - any technology that stands a chance of reducing this pointless complexity in the industry deserves a shot. I strongly recommend trying out the technology before dismissing it. Reviewsabound. Oh yeah, you can keep that thousand bucks in your pocket and download the SDK for free here.
Demonizing all of the MS product line because of some ethically questionable business practices by MS marketing is excessive. You do realize that many of their employees are some of the best talent available in their fields (Borland, SGI, etc.), and many didn't even have to be drugged. The company is answering for some of it's transgressions, and I have confidence that the DOJ will keep MS in check.
The plain fact is that MS is developing some very good products. The Dev Studio.NET IDE is one of the best I've worked with (and I've been coding for 15+ years). What's more, the.NET framework is a well-engineered, ECMA standardized, and significant advancement to the world of software interoperability. Undoubtedly, this conclusion is what inspired the Mono and DotGNU projects, and vendors like Borland to make Delphi.NET-aware.
I'd love to see some threads discussing the merits/drawbacks of.NET vs. Open source tools in terms of time and expense to develop projects, and a critique of the final products.
If you like wxWindows, you'll positively wet yourself over wxPython! (Ain't SWIG grand?) Can't wait for an embedded flavor of this!
Yes, you can finally fling that VB reference manual into the river. There, it sits, until it's find by the most unlikely creature... "Precious.... precious!"... ooops. Sorry.
Don't worry about all the old TV's. Max Headroom and all the other homeless avatars have to live somewhere!
If the idiots on the hill hadn't already hawked the current broadcast spectrum and counted the cash in the budget, you can bet that no five-year deadline would be out there.
Perhaps we can kluge up a couple more particle accelerators out of a few million CRTs and duct tape?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, there is now an iOS app of Starfall (just the alphabet portion)
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monkey-preschool-lunchbox/id328205875?mt=8
Of course, the "Cut the Rope" and "Fruit Ninja" games are good in there "can't lose" modes.
Starfall app (same as the website)
PBS.org (warning - essentially streaming video - you need to moderate use of this one!)
Possibly, although I'm less pessimistic about their potential. I could see sites like WebMD and others revived a bit with this kind of "premier" EMR-interpretation service, although it would be entirely optional. As with other subscription services, customers will only pay if they feel the content is worthwhile, and a brand gets damaged if this is abused. For instance, use of TurboTax doesn't result in an influx of spam for dubious financial investments.
Benefits
Drawbacks
In the longer run, assuming that patient portals to EMR data allow users access to the standardized EMR formats (a myriad of standards, really), I expect to see some new companies developing software to help patients interpret and track their healthcare (beyond what the portal provides). These sites would require patient approval, but would be free to analyze and recommend the EMR outside of the constraints of the "healthcare entity" policies. That is, the EMR is the raw "spreadsheet" of health statistics, and I would expect to see Intuit (Quicken) or Mint-like companies and services come along to make more sense of it.
Surely we can inject Red Bull instead of water, and get all our daily energy needs met!
I suspect my 8 year old, low-functioning ASD son would also not keep on a wrist bracelet, but I'm intrigued enough in this article that I'm going to buy him a cheap watch and see what he does. The form-factor may be an issue. Given my son's level of functioning (barely verbal), if there was a safe implant tech available (and affordable) that would let me track him within ~1/2 mile, and had a failsafe to start transmitting a locator signal to authorities once he exceeded the range of one of the families smartphones (or some device), I'd buy it, and I suspect many other parents of low-functioning ASD kids would as well.
but shouldn't it really be at number 0?
The problem is that, for most people, they grasp at straws and try to find some observable "cause" they can link with autism. It's quite possible that it has more to do with environmental and/or emotional stresses on the mother but people try to put the cart before the horse and "prove" that a vaccine - which may have been due to travel (hint - enviro/emo stress) or bad health conditions (same) - was the cause.
OK - as a parent of a six-year old with "primary" autism (e.g. low-functioning), I'd like to clear the air on a few points:
Please, move on, you're just embarrassing yourselves.
I have met a number of other parents of autistic kids. Those that are desperate enough to by into these theories are (often) otherwise rational, intelligent people. They are desperate for hope, and feel they owe it to their child to attempt some kind of cure. Whether this is due to denial (of the permanent disability) or unrelenting hope and a moral code that says "anything is better than nothing", I don't know. I do know I can relate to this, to a point, and was frustrated at the limited medical treatments available for my own son. Please have some sympathy for these misguided parents, as the real culprits are the alt-medicine charlatans who claimed to have found the cure, and the DAN doctors who really ought to know better.
It's OK to be importing an unprecedented amount of Chinese goods and exploit the cheap labor for every other aspect of the western economy, but Google is evil because they set up a satellite search service that institutes the required Chinese national policies?
Since the suppression of information is happening regardless of Google's presence, that should clarify that the root of the suppression is not due to U.S. companies agreeing to Chinese government demands, but is the Chinese government itself.
Frankly, it's also better for U.S. interests to have a "bubble" of Google servers that have a set of blacklisted/censored material for the time being, instead of watching Google lose out entirely in the fastest growing economy to the Chinese domestic engines (e.g. Baidu)
These politicians who (while it was a popular subject) wanted to crucify Google don't have any qualms about continuing to support China by importing their cheap goods and exploiting the cheap labor costs.
Hypocrits.
Yes - there's a good writeup here already.
The bridge is a truss arch bridge built in 1967. The design doesn't interfere with river traffic (well, up until two days ago anyways) - but I did hear an interview with a Berkeley professor describe how such bridges are no longer built due to their lack of redundancy in case of span failure.
This smacks of criminal negligence - complete catastrophic failure in 4 seconds could not have been an undetectable condition.
You have way to much confidence in science and technology. I think it's certainly possible that the inspections done didn't detect the problem with the bridge. Science isn't perfect, and there's always assumptions and things no one knows.
I do have high confidence in civil and structural engineering. This bridge was built in 1967, and is a style that would not be built today, due to an intrinsic lack of redundancy in the support structure. One span breaking was known as all that was needed to cause the bridge to collapse.
This was a known limitation of the architecture. Given this fact, I *do* believe that proper engineering to frequently inspect, and monitor the bridge (including real-time strain gauges) would have detected the problem. I also doubt that the proper engineering was done - and I suspect that this was not due to lack of recommendations, but more likely due to "fiscally conservative" minded legislature that was ultimately only penny-wise.
Thanks for the statemaster link - good research link.
I have heard about these conflicts, and have an incredibly hard time understanding why:
Something is rotten (aside from the beams) about the whole situation. Why would a random engineer happen to know this bridge was unsafe and avoid driving on it? Why wouldn't the legislature listen to the more cautious reports from a "higher authority", instead of the less cautious ones (money?)
And the really terrifying question is of course, what's to keep this from happening again?
I'm a Twin Cities resident (local name for Minneapolis/St. Paul), and have taken this bridge hundreds of times, as well as biked along trails on the riverbanks below it. It was never an attractive bridge, but certainly showed no obvious signs of problems. I was shocked to learn that a good friend of mine was told by a structural engineer two weeks ago that he "always avoids driving on that bridge during rush hour" - apparently the engineer had already read/heard something that we're just finding out.
This smacks of criminal negligence - complete catastrophic failure in 4 seconds could not have been an undetectable condition.
Obsession being the mother of invention, I did some further digging, and discovered the comp.arch folks were discussing this two years ago. From what I've gleaned from a few postings and white papers, and thinking about how WOW64 works, this really seems like it ought to be possible - the fact that it isn't here already must mean the effort is extremely high (unlike 16->32, it appears MS didn't give any "extender hooks" to make this easy to do.)
Only a fraction of the 64-bit capable desktops and workstations are running 64-bit applications. What's more, there are very few mainstream 64-bit applications out there, despite the fact that for gaming, audio processing, image processing/photoshop apps, and video there would still be performance advantages (memory bandwidth and operation throughput), even if you don't yet have > 4GB of RAM.
It's not really compelling - plus or minus a few percent. And you need to test two binaries which is expensive. So unless you're absolutely forced to use more than 4GB per process, I think people won't bother.
Looks pretty compelling from here! Take a look at the 32-bit vs. 64-bit benchmarks shown here for instance! If I was a game developer, I'd gladly take 40FPS over 30FPS if it only meant a recompile targeting a 64-bit platform! You only need to test two binaries if you also choose to support 32-bit as well - a suitably advanced app/game could just make a 64-bit capable AMD/Intel chip a prerequisite these days (DOOM required a 386 or better during a similiar 16/32-bit transition period)
"Sherman set the wayback machine to the early 90's, and the great 16-32 bit transition" You might recollect the introduction of the mighty 386 processor, extended memory modes, the Win32s API, but probably most importantly, killer apps like DOOM loading up their own 32-bit memory managers to sidestep the OS, which really wasn't ready to provide good 32-bit native support. Apps that did this completely took over the system, putting the host OS in stasis until the app was exited.
Sounds much like the same situation - the majority of users are running an OS that can't tap the full potential their CPU has to offer. So - why aren't we seeing similar application tricks, like those that enabled 32-bit protected mode now? The proposition of writing an application which would sidestep Windows XP 32-bit and set up a mini 64-bit host environment (not really a full OS) is not that radically different, right?
If you really want 64 bit, I don't see why you can't use Windows x64. Sure you'll need to be careful that you have hardware which has x64 drivers, but that's life.
*I* can (and regularly use XP-64, W2K3 64-bit, and even Vista 64-bit these days) - but if I'm writing a high-end app/game for a reasonably wide audience, you have to realize there's a lot of Windows XP 32-bit boxes out there running on CPUs capable of running in 64-bit "long" mode. It would be mighty sweet to tap into that power for high-end gaming, audio/video processing/transcoding, ray-tracing, etc.
32 bit Windows already has PAE which is the moral equivalent of a Dos extender. I think Outlook and MS SQL server can use it. So there isn't really a hole for a 64 bit Windows extender.
PAE only gives you access to more memory, it doesn't enable the CPU 64-bit processing, so it's not interesting to me. What's more - programming to these "bank switching" style memory extensions really is quite cumbersome.
I've often wondered what would happen if you could make bootable games - e.g. Linux+ATI and NVidia drivers+a game binary on a LiveCD. But to make it work you'd need to be able to offer much better graphics performance than regular Windows, just like Doom's extended Dos had better performance than regular Dos.
And given the amount of effort NVidia and ATI spend on Linux drivers compared to Windows ones, I'm not sure that's the case. DirectX is thinner layer over the driver than OpenGL too.
Yes - using a stripped down Unix core could achieve the same goal, I suppose. Again the DOS4GW dos extender did some mojo regarding drivers such that it leveraged the existing 16-bit DOS drivers for a number of s
A couple clarifications: I was referring to the DOS extender technology, and the x86-64 article does indeed refer to it being "possible" to enter x86-64 "long mode" using such a technique.
Is anyone actually doing this for a non-turnkey application?
Only a fraction of the 64-bit capable desktops and workstations are running 64-bit applications. What's more, there are very few mainstream 64-bit applications out there, despite the fact that for gaming, audio processing, image processing/photoshop apps, and video there would still be performance advantages (memory bandwidth and operation throughput), even if you don't yet have > 4GB of RAM.
As a veteran of the 16->32 bit transition (for that matter, the 8->16 bit as well), I've been wondering about this, as I would like to start to benefit, both as a programmer and user, of the benefits of 64-bit AMD and Intel CPUs. The comparison is admittedly a bit forced, as developers of 32-bit apps aren't being forced into programming using a segmented architecture as they were in 16-bit days.
Warning: Readers of the following will have to cope with the fact that the installed OS on virtually all PCs is Windows XP, 32-bit. (Please assume crash positions.)
This means that MS effectively has these machines "locked in" to 32-bit mode, until the user upgrades their OS to XP-64 (little motive) or Vista 64-bit (or one of the server 64-bit flavors) - wait, this sounds familiar...
"Sherman set the wayback machine to the early 90's, and the great 16->32 bit transition" You might recollect the introduction of the mighty 386 processor, extended memory modes, the Win32s API, but probably most importantly, killer apps like DOOM loading up their own 32-bit memory managers to sidestep the OS, which really wasn't ready to provide good 32-bit native support. Apps that did this completely took over the system, putting the host OS in stasis until the app was exited.
Sounds much like the same situation - the majority of users are running an OS that can't tap the full potential their CPU has to offer. So - why aren't we seeing similar application tricks, like those that enabled 32-bit protected mode now? The proposition of writing an application which would sidestep Windows XP 32-bit and set up a mini 64-bit host environment (not really a full OS) is not that radically different, right?
IIRC, one of the reasons that the 32-bit app could be launched this way was that there was a way to allow it to converse with the 16-bit drivers already installed for disk I/O, audio, video, etc. (I honestly don't know if this is possible to provide a bridge from 64-bit to the 32-bit drivers in the same fashion or not.) This made it feasible to write apps in 32-bit protected mode without having to write 32-bit drivers for every possible piece of hardware in the system.
I am also certain that XP, and most users, would not be nearly as tolerant of an application taking over the entire OS unless it had the same "quantum leap of experience" that a game like DOOM brought to the PC in it's day.
All that aside - I do wonder how often Vista 64-bit is being pre-installed on new platforms vs. the 32-bit edition. If users are not strongly encouraged to upgrade now, this will continue to be a barrier to introducing 64-bit applications to the mass market. (At least Vista licensing and distribution is such that an upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit is free - although I'm not sure how painless it would be.)
By now you've seen dozens of postings about using OpenOffice as an alternative until Redmond patches this (One might even suspect this is a marketing ploy to encourage everyone to upgrade to Office 2007, but... naaahhh)
Folks - if there's malicious content - why take *any* chances? Upload the document to Google's Writely.com and be really insulated from malicious code!
Does Contiki support pre-emptive multitasking?
Comparing a IIGS to a IIe is a wide stretch, of course, since it was using a significantly faster 65816 than the classic 6502. I, too, had a super-serial board that could run 19.2kpbs for direct link to PCs, but I was referring to internal modems of the day such as the Hayes and AppleCat. Your point is good, though, a fast serial card could drive a reasonable external comm device.
You're dead-on about the lack of hardware interrupts to hook into (especially if you don't have the luxurious IIGS!) On the other hand, the simple, non-preemptive nature of the beast makes it easy to count clock cycles for a particular code fragment, so perhaps a "virtual machine" approach with fixed time-slicing per process is the approach they'll take. I'm keeping this one bookmarked...
SVTC
NPR News
Washington Post
Not only will this allow a new lease on life to old equipment (which otherwise would likely be leaching arsenic into a third world water table somewhere), it's also an opportunity for low-income folks to get onto the net.
My college days were spent writing educational software for these 8-bit, 6502-based systems (typing tutors, etc.) These were great machines to "cut your teeth" on - ROM-based BASIC interpreters, software bootstrapped OS, 320x200 graphics in "8" colors - including black and white (Okay - C64 had more than Apple ][, I admit...) Ahh... 10 HGR2 : HCOLOR 3 : HPLOT 20,20 TO 300, 200...
These ~1Mhz systems are going to have their work cut out for them trying to multitask, but I presume that their TCP/IP traffic is going to be limited to the comm technology of their day (1200/2400 baud)
Also - I think the Apple ][ has the drop on C64 in age - Commodore had the PET our before the 64, methinks...
Having a CLR, CLS, and class library usable from any language is a really good idea. I'm sick of retaining all of non-overlapping bits of X11, Motif, Qt, MFC, Java, COM, ATL, etc. information in my head or on my shelf - any technology that stands a chance of reducing this pointless complexity in the industry deserves a shot. I strongly recommend trying out the technology before dismissing it. Reviews abound. Oh yeah, you can keep that thousand bucks in your pocket and download the SDK for free here.
Demonizing all of the MS product line because of some ethically questionable business practices by MS marketing is excessive. You do realize that many of their employees are some of the best talent available in their fields (Borland, SGI, etc.), and many didn't even have to be drugged. The company is answering for some of it's transgressions, and I have confidence that the DOJ will keep MS in check.
The plain fact is that MS is developing some very good products. The Dev Studio .NET IDE is one of the best I've worked with (and I've been coding for 15+ years). What's more, the .NET framework is a well-engineered, ECMA standardized, and significant advancement to the world of software interoperability. Undoubtedly, this conclusion is what inspired the Mono and DotGNU projects, and vendors like Borland to make Delphi .NET-aware.
I'd love to see some threads discussing the merits/drawbacks of .NET vs. Open source tools in terms of time and expense to develop projects, and a critique of the final products.
Yes, you can finally fling that VB reference manual into the river. There, it sits, until it's find by the most unlikely creature... "Precious.... precious!"... ooops. Sorry.
Don't worry about all the old TV's. Max Headroom and all the other homeless avatars have to live somewhere! If the idiots on the hill hadn't already hawked the current broadcast spectrum and counted the cash in the budget, you can bet that no five-year deadline would be out there. Perhaps we can kluge up a couple more particle accelerators out of a few million CRTs and duct tape?