"And what's more, when you start running programs that use more than 2GB of data, the 64-bit machine is going to beat the pants off the 32-bit one, since the 32-bit machine (i.e. intel) is going to have to resort to slow and hacky solutions such as segments and paging."
a few problems:
(A) the barrier on 32 bit addressing is 4 GB, not 2. Not to be a hardass, just pointing out a typo.
(B) Both Windows and OSX use paging as their method of memory management all the time. It's not a "hacky" solution, it's how you maintain independent memory for separate processes. The 64-bit processor gets the advantage here because it can pull the entire memory address in a single read, where the PC (unless there's a way around it) would have to read the address as 2 successive 32-bit uints.
(C) Windows has a 4 GB barrier (~2GB stack, ~2GB heap) for each program. It's the maximum amount of RAM any single process is allowed to chew up. This is done so that programs can still use uints for their pointers (I'd assume).
(D) You're right, the days of 32-bit are numbered. In the PC world, we're already on negative numbers, though. 64-bit AMD Opterons came out recently, but Intel's Itanium chipset has been on the market for years. G5's aren't on the market just yet (though admittedly they're extremely close). I would love to see IBM's brand new G5 offering up against AMD's slightly less new Opterons. Especially the quads!
Oh wait... that's right... you can't get a quad G5.
I know Intel has its own compiler, but the AMD 3200+(2.2 GHz) beat it out too. Is there an AMD specific compiler, or do they use GCC?
Also, Apple did add G5 specific optimizations to GCC for this benchmark.... that's probably not on the scale of the Intel compiler, but it certainly makes a difference.
funny enough... I get e-mails from my brother at work (in a pharmacy of all places) where almost this same exact text verbatum is automatically attached to the bottom of the letter automatically by their system.
Yes, but it would be another paragraph of buzz-words for apple to put in their press release.:)
Though I still am pretty sure that 1T SRAM is done on separate chips (since it's L2 cache, not L1). Perhaps you're thinking of it as it would be in modern PC processors (like Athlons, where you can see the L2 cache chips on the heat sink surrounding the processor core). L2 cache doesn't need to be directly on the processor, but does need to be a part of the processor's logical assembly.
But then you get into it being physically part of the processor as opposed to virtually part of the processor. Gives me headache.... I concede the point to you... saves on stress!
Sun and Apple are more or less unrelated. If you want just a dual processor Sun, then face it, you're a genuine novice. Sun produces hard-working number-crunching workstations and servers. You run Sun when you have to do something like heat-stress simulation on a 1,000+ part product.
In that light, how can you compare it to Apple's G5 lineup? I have no doubt that the G5 2.0 GHz is faster than the Sun's 1.2 GHz offering,... but when you can get a Sun Blade setup with 100+ processors, it's obvious that you're paying for the expandability.
Apple is for personal computing and Sun is for professional computing and PC's are generally jacks of all trades, but masters of none.
ugh... I hate it when Apple tries to pull this sh... stuff.
Take a look at some of the feature claims... apple G5 has spdif and optical out, PC's don't,... apple G5 has an airflow oriented case, PC's don't... apple G5 can fit everything you want with ease... impossile to cram stuff into a PC..... look at the side by side case pics, and what word springs to mind?
Cheap! That's a $25 computer show case! Heck.. the cables aren't even plugged into drives. They built a second-hand PC that doesn't even work right, and then complained that it's not aerodynamic.
Trust me, Apple, if I spent $1,999 on just the tower, my computer would be aerodynamic, fast, have digital out (and in!), have quad Opterons, >8GB of memory, and it would definitely be pretty.
The first rule of making a comparrison is to make sure the things you are comparing are comparable in the first place.
After all, those new Dell Dimensions sure are a lot spiffier than those Mac Quadra 650's.
They might as well go with MoSys' 1T SRAM (what the gamecube uses, with a PPC archetecture, I might add). They claim it's pretty much like low-grade L2 cache, making it a whole hell of a lot faster than DDR.
I don't know if it would actually make it go any faster, but with what they're charging for the system, I don't think it'll impact the price that much.
BTW, they mention how memory is "40x" faster than virtual memory repeatedly. It just reminds me about when Sega kept stating that the 32X made the Genesis "40x" faster. Not bashing apple, but a funny coincidence.
Re:Ugh! Another $129 x 2 Machines!
on
Jaguar is Over
·
· Score: 1
As for me, Windows has always worked just the way I wanted it to all the time. Also, it's the ultimate cheap machine.
After all, this is where all the good Warez are.
$500 for Photoshop? Not according to my pal Kazaa.:)
LINUX r0x0rs! LOLOLOLOL!
Seriously, you don't have to run Linux/Unix/OS/2 Warp to get good performance out of a PII 500. I've got WinXP Pro installed on a PII 400 and it seems quite happy (though with 256 MB of memory). All I'm saying is that you shouldn't underestimate the power of an old computer. Most observable lag time is from HDD access anyway, and a faster processor won't fix that.
But if you wanna impress, get Callus or Raine... show them arcade games that crawl under Mame absolutely smoke on your li'l piece of crap.
Also, I wonder what they mean by "Action games." GTA is one thing, and yeah 5 objects at once is impressive, but have you played Mars Matrix? Heck, if you can get through level 1 in that game without dying, then you must be able to track at least 20 or 30 objects at once. Also, what about DDR? I can track a lot of arrows (though they all move in the same direction) and do it on a purposfully confusing background. In short, I'd like to see a more detailed study like this done.
Actually, they said that action games tend to help visual acuity more, so Virtual Valerie may be giving your eyes a little boost, but with all that masturbation, it's probably just enough to keep you from going blind.
I appreciate your stance against Moore, though I see his innacuracies to be acceptable still. I see Moore as a politician, and therefore take him with a grain of salt. He makes some very valid suppositions in the film, and then uses faulty data to back it up. I've seen other politicians do a lot worse.
But I was specifically referring to Moore's positive portrayal of Canada in Columbine. From what he shows (socialized healthcare, a robust welfare system), their national stance on war, my few visits, and a specific good job offer, Canada is looking pretty sweet.
As if America could be behind in anything? America is teh 5up3r10r!
Seriously, though, with everything I read about how far behind we are on basic stuff (healthcare, unemployment services, alternative energy), seeing Bowling for Columbine, and then seeing "W" on the news every night, it makes me wanna move to Canada more and more every day.
I'm one Comp-Sci person who tried it, and for the most part went with a blend. I like the XP skin, but hate its start menu (mostly beccuase the thing I use most is burried). I like the cleaner input-box style, I despise that stupid dog that added another step to my search process.
See, it's not the visual part of the UI that I dislike, it's the usability. Add a step to search that helps it none and I get mad. Institute a default "thumbnail" view which adds load time to folders and I get mad. Create a start menu that occupies half the screen and yet "programs" stays just as small, and I get mad. Lock all toolbars by default, hide desktop icons, and try to shove both IE and MSN Messenger down my throat and I get really really mad.
So as long as they don't force any features on me (hey, best intentions aside, not all users love all new features), I'll be happy.
I really want a PDA... my last job they issued us Handsprings (bottom of the line ones) and I loved mine... even knowing it was the worst one on the market.
Unfortunately, old ones never seem to come down in price and the new ones are somewhere above $500 (which in my budget is just an utterly incalculatable number). Maybe I'll find a Visor at a garage sale someime soon or something. I've seen them used as doorstops, so it's not that far of a stretch.
I'm afraid of the flames I'm gonna get for this... but the problem with people adopting linux isn't linux, it's people.
See, you say linux has a good OS, many good GUIs (I really love GNOME), and office tools for people to work on. I wouldn't disagree with you there... but that's not the problem. People just don't wanna use linux. And by "People" I mean "the masses."
Here's an example. Dreamweaver is the most incredibly wonderful GUI-based web design program there is. It has everything anyone needs, and it outputs tight, compatible code. But do "people" use it? No.... I work in a place where we have enough licenses to go around, and what does everyone want? Frontpage. F'ing Frontpage. Not Claris Homepage, not Netscape Composer. F'ing Frontpage. And they ask me stupid things like "I want to use Frontpage, can you install it on the server for me?" ARGH!
See, Frontpage isn't requested because it's... well.. good... or useable... or functional for that matter. Everyone wants it because it's MS Word for web pages. It may be a disgusting train wreck of a program the likes of which should warrant its creators' executions on a public street in broad daylight as a warning to other MS programmers, but the "people" are too lazy and dumb to contest their friend who says "Frontpage is the best" because he heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from a sales-bot at CompUSA. Why do sales clerks reccommend Frontpage? Because it's wizard-based, and any monkey can do that... less chance of returned product.
So the moral? "People" will continue to use Windows and slink away from linux as long as we keep thinking that they're too stupid to learn anything else. It's about time to shirk the attitude of "I use linux, but that's because I'm a genius. You lower life forms can use Windows." It'll go a long way.
Oh, and never use your Windows discs as frisbees. Instead, keep them around to make copies for all of your friends.:)
It's kinda useless to speculate on what their next-gen cards can do. Let's face it, we haven't really even seen what the 9700 and FX can do yet. I am starting to feel like Rodney King while reading all the posts here, though. I just keep thinking to myself "can't we all just get along?!?!"
I never understood why people get so up-in-arms about graphics cards. I mean, I have my preference in cards, but that's based on feature set and power. I think a lot of ATi's technology will be adopted by game makers (because it's just so damned neato... just look at the demos), and a lot of nVidia's technology will too (because nVidia still holds the crown and you always program toward the common standard).
That said... unless I get a huge influx of cash, I'm sticking with my Radeon AIW. Y'know... that first powerful card ATi put out that's compatible with roughly 85% of games.
But that's the risk you take when you buy computer hardware. Sometimes you have to guess based on the specs (I bought it because it outperformed the GeForces on low-end PC test-beds, which was a lot more similar to my comptuer than 1.5+ GHz testbeds where the GeForces shine). If it's not so compatable, meh, deal with it.
And to think... I consider my 17" CRT to be huge. If anyone would like to dump a "tiny" 17" CRT to get a "huge" LCD (which is like $300 for a good 15 incher)... I'll be glad to take the old monitor off your hands.
Heck... My Dreamcast was getting tired of TV anyway.
Never fear, even under their patent, you are not at fault. Or at least, that's the way I see it.
The 5 patents presented specify a method by which one would transmit or recieve digital audio or video. Your site is not a method, but a repository... The server itself is the method. It (probably apache or IIS), or rather the makers of the server, are actually liable for this one because they are the ones who produced a method for transmission and playback.
Think of it this way... I patent a method for cleaning a floor by means of sucking dust into a bag. Then, hoover starts making vacuum cleaners and I want to sue. Hoover, the company that made the transgressing product is liable, but the many users out there trying to clean their floors cannot be held liable.
It's like if I had patented a toy which consisted of building objects with joining bricks, and then LEGO started making their toys. I could sue Lego for the transgression, but I would not be able to sue every kid that plays with Lego products.
I must warn that I am not a patent lawyer, just a Comp Sci. student. But I know a fucking scam when I see one.... don't give in. Fight the good fight.
I dunno about 3D navigation, but we have one of these in a teaching lab at my school... (various prehipheral companies have been making cheapo-quality versions of these for a while now). I gave a presentation there, and that mouse was a godsend.... I could stand in front of the projected screen and just move my hand around to move the pointer... kinda like using a laser pointer during a demonstration, except much more effective. It helped the presentation a lot. If you're in charge of putting together any presntation stuff, I'd recommend it.
Yeah, I use flask... so sue me... unless you're MPAA...
But anyhow, anyone who runs Flask to convert MPEG2 video to either MPEG1 or AVI will tell you that CPU speed is sometimes not the bottleneck. Believed this myth for a long time, but when I upgraded from my Duron 600 to a TBird 1200 and only saw a 1 fps boost, I realized I was wrong. So I tried it out on my friend's Athlon XP 1400+ (about 1200 MHz) and it doubled my framerate.
The moral of the story? Find the bottleneck in your system and work on that. If you're using flask, it's apparently memory speed. (he has DDR 2100 and I have PC133). For boot times and program loading, it's memory size, speed, and HDD size and speed. There is probably nothing you do now on your current system that a P4 3 GHz machine will do better next year.
As a fellow site-maintenece guy (they say I'm a graphic designer,... ha), I totally sympathize with Slashdot's crew. I work on www.ramapo.edu and we're up to 19,000+ files in the site. All maitained by 4 people w/o content management. I say, so what if there's duplicates? Sometimes I forget to read one day, miss the first post. This is the first I've heard of Tenebrae, and I think it's very very cool. I will try it the instant I get home to a real computer. I'm sure my Radeon will chug on it (Radeon != stencil buffer performance), but it will be cool to have alongside panquake and fisheye quake.:) Thanks again Slashdot for finding another awesome, $0 quake mod... even if it is a re-post.
Slashdot Mirror
"And what's more, when you start running programs that use more than 2GB of data, the 64-bit machine is going to beat the pants off the 32-bit one, since the 32-bit machine (i.e. intel) is going to have to resort to slow and hacky solutions such as segments and paging."
a few problems:
(A) the barrier on 32 bit addressing is 4 GB, not 2. Not to be a hardass, just pointing out a typo.
(B) Both Windows and OSX use paging as their method of memory management all the time. It's not a "hacky" solution, it's how you maintain independent memory for separate processes. The 64-bit processor gets the advantage here because it can pull the entire memory address in a single read, where the PC (unless there's a way around it) would have to read the address as 2 successive 32-bit uints.
(C) Windows has a 4 GB barrier (~2GB stack, ~2GB heap) for each program. It's the maximum amount of RAM any single process is allowed to chew up. This is done so that programs can still use uints for their pointers (I'd assume).
(D) You're right, the days of 32-bit are numbered. In the PC world, we're already on negative numbers, though. 64-bit AMD Opterons came out recently, but Intel's Itanium chipset has been on the market for years. G5's aren't on the market just yet (though admittedly they're extremely close). I would love to see IBM's brand new G5 offering up against AMD's slightly less new Opterons. Especially the quads!
Oh wait... that's right... you can't get a quad G5.
I know Intel has its own compiler, but the AMD 3200+(2.2 GHz) beat it out too. Is there an AMD specific compiler, or do they use GCC?
Also, Apple did add G5 specific optimizations to GCC for this benchmark.... that's probably not on the scale of the Intel compiler, but it certainly makes a difference.
funny enough... I get e-mails from my brother at work (in a pharmacy of all places) where almost this same exact text verbatum is automatically attached to the bottom of the letter automatically by their system.
I'm sure if you have $14k to spend on the system, you already own an iPod or two.
... or 4
or 3
Yes, but it would be another paragraph of buzz-words for apple to put in their press release. :)
Though I still am pretty sure that 1T SRAM is done on separate chips (since it's L2 cache, not L1). Perhaps you're thinking of it as it would be in modern PC processors (like Athlons, where you can see the L2 cache chips on the heat sink surrounding the processor core). L2 cache doesn't need to be directly on the processor, but does need to be a part of the processor's logical assembly.
But then you get into it being physically part of the processor as opposed to virtually part of the processor. Gives me headache.... I concede the point to you... saves on stress!
Sun and Apple are more or less unrelated. If you want just a dual processor Sun, then face it, you're a genuine novice. Sun produces hard-working number-crunching workstations and servers. You run Sun when you have to do something like heat-stress simulation on a 1,000+ part product.
In that light, how can you compare it to Apple's G5 lineup? I have no doubt that the G5 2.0 GHz is faster than the Sun's 1.2 GHz offering,... but when you can get a Sun Blade setup with 100+ processors, it's obvious that you're paying for the expandability.
Apple is for personal computing and Sun is for professional computing and PC's are generally jacks of all trades, but masters of none.
ugh... I hate it when Apple tries to pull this sh... stuff.
Take a look at some of the feature claims... apple G5 has spdif and optical out, PC's don't,... apple G5 has an airflow oriented case, PC's don't... apple G5 can fit everything you want with ease... impossile to cram stuff into a PC..... look at the side by side case pics, and what word springs to mind?
Cheap! That's a $25 computer show case! Heck.. the cables aren't even plugged into drives. They built a second-hand PC that doesn't even work right, and then complained that it's not aerodynamic.
Trust me, Apple, if I spent $1,999 on just the tower, my computer would be aerodynamic, fast, have digital out (and in!), have quad Opterons, >8GB of memory, and it would definitely be pretty.
The first rule of making a comparrison is to make sure the things you are comparing are comparable in the first place.
After all, those new Dell Dimensions sure are a lot spiffier than those Mac Quadra 650's.
They might as well go with MoSys' 1T SRAM (what the gamecube uses, with a PPC archetecture, I might add). They claim it's pretty much like low-grade L2 cache, making it a whole hell of a lot faster than DDR.
I don't know if it would actually make it go any faster, but with what they're charging for the system, I don't think it'll impact the price that much.
BTW, they mention how memory is "40x" faster than virtual memory repeatedly. It just reminds me about when Sega kept stating that the 32X made the Genesis "40x" faster. Not bashing apple, but a funny coincidence.
As for me, Windows has always worked just the way I wanted it to all the time. Also, it's the ultimate cheap machine.
:)
After all, this is where all the good Warez are.
$500 for Photoshop? Not according to my pal Kazaa.
LINUX r0x0rs! LOLOLOLOL! Seriously, you don't have to run Linux/Unix/OS/2 Warp to get good performance out of a PII 500. I've got WinXP Pro installed on a PII 400 and it seems quite happy (though with 256 MB of memory). All I'm saying is that you shouldn't underestimate the power of an old computer. Most observable lag time is from HDD access anyway, and a faster processor won't fix that. But if you wanna impress, get Callus or Raine... show them arcade games that crawl under Mame absolutely smoke on your li'l piece of crap.
Also, I wonder what they mean by "Action games." GTA is one thing, and yeah 5 objects at once is impressive, but have you played Mars Matrix? Heck, if you can get through level 1 in that game without dying, then you must be able to track at least 20 or 30 objects at once. Also, what about DDR? I can track a lot of arrows (though they all move in the same direction) and do it on a purposfully confusing background. In short, I'd like to see a more detailed study like this done.
Actually, they said that action games tend to help visual acuity more, so Virtual Valerie may be giving your eyes a little boost, but with all that masturbation, it's probably just enough to keep you from going blind.
I appreciate your stance against Moore, though I see his innacuracies to be acceptable still. I see Moore as a politician, and therefore take him with a grain of salt. He makes some very valid suppositions in the film, and then uses faulty data to back it up. I've seen other politicians do a lot worse. But I was specifically referring to Moore's positive portrayal of Canada in Columbine. From what he shows (socialized healthcare, a robust welfare system), their national stance on war, my few visits, and a specific good job offer, Canada is looking pretty sweet.
As if America could be behind in anything? America is teh 5up3r10r!
Seriously, though, with everything I read about how far behind we are on basic stuff (healthcare, unemployment services, alternative energy), seeing Bowling for Columbine, and then seeing "W" on the news every night, it makes me wanna move to Canada more and more every day.
That's great, but the article was slashdotted before I got here. :(
:)
Having no idea what it says, I'm mostly responding to XP complaints.
I'm one Comp-Sci person who tried it, and for the most part went with a blend. I like the XP skin, but hate its start menu (mostly beccuase the thing I use most is burried). I like the cleaner input-box style, I despise that stupid dog that added another step to my search process.
See, it's not the visual part of the UI that I dislike, it's the usability. Add a step to search that helps it none and I get mad. Institute a default "thumbnail" view which adds load time to folders and I get mad. Create a start menu that occupies half the screen and yet "programs" stays just as small, and I get mad. Lock all toolbars by default, hide desktop icons, and try to shove both IE and MSN Messenger down my throat and I get really really mad.
So as long as they don't force any features on me (hey, best intentions aside, not all users love all new features), I'll be happy.
I really want a PDA... my last job they issued us Handsprings (bottom of the line ones) and I loved mine... even knowing it was the worst one on the market.
Unfortunately, old ones never seem to come down in price and the new ones are somewhere above $500 (which in my budget is just an utterly incalculatable number). Maybe I'll find a Visor at a garage sale someime soon or something. I've seen them used as doorstops, so it's not that far of a stretch.
I'm afraid of the flames I'm gonna get for this... but the problem with people adopting linux isn't linux, it's people.
:)
See, you say linux has a good OS, many good GUIs (I really love GNOME), and office tools for people to work on. I wouldn't disagree with you there... but that's not the problem. People just don't wanna use linux. And by "People" I mean "the masses."
Here's an example. Dreamweaver is the most incredibly wonderful GUI-based web design program there is. It has everything anyone needs, and it outputs tight, compatible code. But do "people" use it? No.... I work in a place where we have enough licenses to go around, and what does everyone want? Frontpage. F'ing Frontpage. Not Claris Homepage, not Netscape Composer. F'ing Frontpage. And they ask me stupid things like "I want to use Frontpage, can you install it on the server for me?" ARGH!
See, Frontpage isn't requested because it's... well.. good... or useable... or functional for that matter. Everyone wants it because it's MS Word for web pages. It may be a disgusting train wreck of a program the likes of which should warrant its creators' executions on a public street in broad daylight as a warning to other MS programmers, but the "people" are too lazy and dumb to contest their friend who says "Frontpage is the best" because he heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from a sales-bot at CompUSA. Why do sales clerks reccommend Frontpage? Because it's wizard-based, and any monkey can do that... less chance of returned product.
So the moral? "People" will continue to use Windows and slink away from linux as long as we keep thinking that they're too stupid to learn anything else. It's about time to shirk the attitude of "I use linux, but that's because I'm a genius. You lower life forms can use Windows." It'll go a long way.
Oh, and never use your Windows discs as frisbees. Instead, keep them around to make copies for all of your friends.
It's kinda useless to speculate on what their next-gen cards can do. Let's face it, we haven't really even seen what the 9700 and FX can do yet. I am starting to feel like Rodney King while reading all the posts here, though. I just keep thinking to myself "can't we all just get along?!?!"
I never understood why people get so up-in-arms about graphics cards. I mean, I have my preference in cards, but that's based on feature set and power. I think a lot of ATi's technology will be adopted by game makers (because it's just so damned neato... just look at the demos), and a lot of nVidia's technology will too (because nVidia still holds the crown and you always program toward the common standard).
That said... unless I get a huge influx of cash, I'm sticking with my Radeon AIW. Y'know... that first powerful card ATi put out that's compatible with roughly 85% of games.
But that's the risk you take when you buy computer hardware. Sometimes you have to guess based on the specs (I bought it because it outperformed the GeForces on low-end PC test-beds, which was a lot more similar to my comptuer than 1.5+ GHz testbeds where the GeForces shine). If it's not so compatable, meh, deal with it.
And to think... I consider my 17" CRT to be huge. If anyone would like to dump a "tiny" 17" CRT to get a "huge" LCD (which is like $300 for a good 15 incher)... I'll be glad to take the old monitor off your hands.
Heck... My Dreamcast was getting tired of TV anyway.
Never fear, even under their patent, you are not at fault. Or at least, that's the way I see it.
The 5 patents presented specify a method by which one would transmit or recieve digital audio or video. Your site is not a method, but a repository... The server itself is the method. It (probably apache or IIS), or rather the makers of the server, are actually liable for this one because they are the ones who produced a method for transmission and playback.
Think of it this way... I patent a method for cleaning a floor by means of sucking dust into a bag. Then, hoover starts making vacuum cleaners and I want to sue. Hoover, the company that made the transgressing product is liable, but the many users out there trying to clean their floors cannot be held liable.
It's like if I had patented a toy which consisted of building objects with joining bricks, and then LEGO started making their toys. I could sue Lego for the transgression, but I would not be able to sue every kid that plays with Lego products.
I must warn that I am not a patent lawyer, just a Comp Sci. student. But I know a fucking scam when I see one.... don't give in. Fight the good fight.
I dunno about 3D navigation, but we have one of these in a teaching lab at my school... (various prehipheral companies have been making cheapo-quality versions of these for a while now). I gave a presentation there, and that mouse was a godsend.... I could stand in front of the projected screen and just move my hand around to move the pointer... kinda like using a laser pointer during a demonstration, except much more effective. It helped the presentation a lot. If you're in charge of putting together any presntation stuff, I'd recommend it.
Yeah, I use flask... so sue me... unless you're MPAA...
But anyhow, anyone who runs Flask to convert MPEG2 video to either MPEG1 or AVI will tell you that CPU speed is sometimes not the bottleneck. Believed this myth for a long time, but when I upgraded from my Duron 600 to a TBird 1200 and only saw a 1 fps boost, I realized I was wrong. So I tried it out on my friend's Athlon XP 1400+ (about 1200 MHz) and it doubled my framerate.
The moral of the story? Find the bottleneck in your system and work on that. If you're using flask, it's apparently memory speed. (he has DDR 2100 and I have PC133). For boot times and program loading, it's memory size, speed, and HDD size and speed. There is probably nothing you do now on your current system that a P4 3 GHz machine will do better next year.
As a fellow site-maintenece guy (they say I'm a graphic designer, ... ha), I totally sympathize with Slashdot's crew. I work on www.ramapo.edu and we're up to 19,000+ files in the site. All maitained by 4 people w/o content management. I say, so what if there's duplicates? Sometimes I forget to read one day, miss the first post. This is the first I've heard of Tenebrae, and I think it's very very cool. I will try it the instant I get home to a real computer. I'm sure my Radeon will chug on it (Radeon != stencil buffer performance), but it will be cool to have alongside panquake and fisheye quake. :) Thanks again Slashdot for finding another awesome, $0 quake mod... even if it is a re-post.