I'm not sure how it could be anything other than FUD to be honest. The Constitution enumerates the what the *government* is and isn't allowed to do, not individuals and private organizations.
I think the most interesting thing to note about HL2 is the fact that it does an excellent job of giving the *illusion* of emergent gameplay. For the uninitiated, emergent gameplay is a hot topic in gaming right now, and is basically a fancy term for the idea that the solutions to a given problem in a game should only really be limited by the creativity of the person playing it.
What makes HL2's design so interesting is the fact that while many of the puzzles and levels appear to allow the player a lot of choice, the game is actually *highly* linear in reality. There were a number of situations where I thought I'd found or thought up an alternate solution to a puzzle only to discover that the level was designed in such a way that only the "intended" solution would work. Disappointing in a way, but for the most part, they did an amazing job of keeping the illusion up.
*********SPOILER WARNING************** Sort of ironic given the G-Man's comment about "rather than giving you the illusion of free choice," eh?:-) *********SPOILER WARNING**************
Re:if you're going to compare
on
Hacking Vodka
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· Score: 1
I've seriously considered saving up the $200 for a bottle of the stuff, not for the vodka itself so much as the bottle.
After all, how often do you see a liquor bottle shaped like an AK-47?:)
The key to vodka, IMO, is getting it cold enough. Almost any vodka is perfectly good if it's cold. The only exception I've run into so far was Seagram's, which was just horrible, even mixed - let alone straight (which is how I generally prefer vodka).
The reason Blizzard's torrent client is that they (stupidly) give you no way to limit your upstream bandwidth usage. So you end up saturating your upstream and your downstream suffers severely as a result.
The Banias cores had 1MB L2 cache and the new Dothans have 2MB L2 cache, yes, but that's not the sole reason for them performing as they do. The current Prescotts have 1MB L2 and Intel's slated to introduce 6xx P4s in January with 2MB L2, but I can promise you that the additional cache won't suddenly cause Prescott to perform simliarly to Dothan clock for clock.
It's a design philosophy based around high IPC, not the large cache, that makes the Pentium M such a strong performer.
That was part of my complaint - it didn't just work. I ran into a number of stability and packaging issues I wasn't happy with and were key in me discarding it rather quickly. My point was, there are other distros out there that "just work," and I see nothing compelling about FC that would make me consider it above other such distros.
When did I say that Mandrake doesn't do well in other fields? I was mainly just pointing out the strengths each of these distributions is known for. I'm rather a fan of MDK, personally, even if it's been a couple of years since I used it as my own distribution of choice. It's the distribution that got me into Linux, specifically because it was easy for someone with no Linux background to use, and for that, it'll always have a special place with me.
Overall ease of use *does* make MDK a great starter distribution, which is all I was trying to point out. I fail to see how pointing out the strength of a distro is somehow criticizing or demeaning it.
Here's the thing, most of the newer distros I've dealt with "just work." In fact, I specifically mentioned Dropline Gnome because DG 2.8 paired up with Kernel 2.6.9 is the most impressive thing I've seen when it comes to desktop Linux I've ever seen, going back to when I got into the scene around '98.
Freedesktop.org's HAL, while still immature and definitely not without bugs, essentially turned Linux into a completely different OS from a desktop perspective for me. The nasty supermount hacks are replaced by CD automounting that works like it should, hardware autoconfigures itself, config files are handled on their own. It's really amazing how different my ease of use was after a simple system update.
As far as NLD goes, the only thing you have to pay for are the Red Carpet updates, the OS itself is free for download. I'm sure free updates will spring up from the community much like they did with RH, and the distribution itself is so polished that it really does add to the sense that FC is somehow lacking something. And it's based on a history of SuSe releases almost as lengthy as FC's.:-) I can't wait til they put out a release with Gnome 2.8+ and the HAL stuff enabled, as that should elevate it from being a nice distro, to being a really great one, IMO.
In what way is the Pentium M "dumbed down?" Quite frankly, I'm firmly of the opinion that it's the best processor that Intel has produced to date, and I'm not alone in that view point.
The Pentium M is based on the old P6 core, with things like SSE added it to bring it up to current standards, and power saving circuitry of its own added in to suit the mobile role. The one major complaint about the chip is the fact that it's somewhat bottlenecked by a 400MHz FSB, but there's speculation that that's partly related to it currently being a mobile part. Even so, a relatively low clocked Pentium M compares very favorably to a much higher clocked P4.
Basically, the Pentium M is a move back to a P3 type design philosophy, away from the 30-stage pipeline madness Intel's gotten themselves into with Prescott. I fail to see how going with a more intelligent design is going with a dumbed down processor.
I sure hope it's a marked improvement over FC2. I downloaded and installed FC2 on a test machine of mine on the day of release, expecting great things, and ended up being so thoroughly underwhelmed that I'd replaced the load with something else inside of a couple of days.
It's not that FC is a bad distribution, per se, it's just that I fail to see anything particularly special about it. At the time, I'd just discovered Dropline Gnome, which is an excellent desktop-oriented meta distribution on top of Slackware. But even so, Debian fits for the hardcore freedom types who want easy updates, with Ubuntu looking like it's going to fill the desktop end of that, Mandrake does well as a starter distro, Gentoo is great for the "1337" types, but where does FC fit in?
It's supposed to be a desktop distro, as I understand it, but frankly, it palled in comparison to others when I tried it last. It's going to be especially hard to convince me otherwise now that Novell's recently introduced Novell Linux Desktop is out. It's SuSe based, but with a level of polish added, and quite frankly, is the most impressed I've been with a desktop distribution since somewhere around Mandrake 7.3 (ie: the first graphical installer that actually worked that I dealt with).
Basically, what I'm saying is I fail to see where FC stands out above other distributions that would make me want to use it. Granted, after the general buginess I experienced with FC2, I may be biased, but the whole point is the fact that I wasn't having similar issues with the other distributions, so why should I have to put up with them with FC?
If this were a Linux comparison, I'd probably agree with you. But as it stands, outside of the Mozilla test, I saw almost entirely commercial Windows software, which you don't have the option of compiling yourself.
While a Linux comparison might give you a better idea of the raw capability of each processor, keep in mind that Windows has a 90% marketshare, and as such, the way Anandtech tests is closer to "real world" performance for most people.
Bluetooth is fun like that. I've got a few mp3 files from times I've called friends while they're out and talked about talked about the most random things. The best by far was calling a friend who was sitting in the Wendy's drive through at like 1:00am, then hearing him realize how he'd left his apartment : "Oh shit... I'm not wearing any pants.":)
The fact that it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux perfectly is nice. I have several friends with Macs, a Linux notebook myself, and everyone else in the world uses Windows, so the fact that this works on all three platforms is nice.
Skype Out is definitely a Big Deal(TM) as well. I've got a friend studying in Japan for about a year, and before he had internet access, Skype was a much cheaper way of getting in touch with him for people here stateside than international calls through POTS providers.
I have, and it works beautifully. I was fully expecting to have to fight it to get it working, but as I recall all it took was untarring it and running the Skype executable. I've been nothing but impressed with it, myself.
There's a certain geeky coolness to sitting in the lobby someplace with my Slackware-running notebook, holding a conversation with a friend in another state, via VoIP over WiFi.:-)
Except that Aiport Extreme cards are based on chipsets by Broadcom who are notorious for refusing to provide drivers or specs to the OSS community. Oops.
Except that the PM does about the same amount of work per clock as an Athlon 64 - IE: *much* more than a P4.
I'm firmly of the opinion that the Pentium M is the best chip Intel has released to date. The fact that the Pentium M is a 7xx series chip while Prescott P4s are 5xx series chips seems to suggest Intel would agree with me there.
Meh, I can't say I agree with you at all. Personally, I have a strong sense of cynicism about the world and the power of big business, but I refuse to see "corporate" as a dirty word as many Slashdotters do.
I also see a distinction between "corporate" and "professional," myself. While corporate generally implies professional, professional does not necessarily mean corporate. It's entirely possible to have a professional looking logo while retaining a free thinking attitude.
The whole point of this logo is that it *doesn't* look like some kid sketched it in the margin of his notes during class. It doesn't look like the programmer took 5 minutes away from hacking source to apply his minimal artistic ability to throwing together a logo just because he needed one. It can be the difference between someone feeling comfortable enough to give your project a try or ignoring it. Your logo represents your project, and if it looks like it was slapped together in 5 minutes, people are going to assume that a simliar amount of effort was put into the code, rightfully so or not.
*Professional* logos look the way they do not because the thing they represent is cold and souless, but because a well designed logo should be easy to reproduce, scale, xerox all day long and remain recognizable. If it's simple, it's easier for people to recognize, which makes it easier to remember whatever it represents. If this offends your hacker sensibillities, I'm sorry. To me this is just a good example of why most hackers are poor graphic and UI designers.
It was more the tone of your post than anything. You make it sound like there's no real alternative to x86 on the market, when the case is quite the contrary. Even in the consumer-oriented market, there's at least Apple/PPC, but you made using a 300MHz MIPS out to be a badge of pride, holding out unagainst the unholy alternative. Alternative platforms are still out there, they're just pricey in relation to commodity equipment. Welcome to a normal market system.
The fact is, there are, and will continue to be alternatives, but they're niche products. Most people are fairly pragmatic and don't care what the processor is so long as it works and does what they wish. When compaitbility and software availibility are issues, the market is going to drift toward a single, mainstream option. Niches exist, but that's exactly what they are, and they're going to be expensive.
I don't particularly care for x86 myself. I'm also looking at picking up an Apple machine in the near future, but processor architechture has nearly zero relavence in the decision - I simply feel I'd be better able to get work done on a Mac. As I stated before, a modern x86 processor has *very* little in common with the original x86 design outside of the instruction set.
Hell, if you want to be technical, even the original Pentium was a RISC chip with an x86 wrapper - about 1/3 of its transistors were dedicated to x86 compatibility. It took a significant performance hit for it compared to then current RISC chips which could dedicated that silicon to getting actual work done. But in today's environment, with transistor budgets in the tens of millions, it doesn't really matter. This is the reason I don't see the point in going against the grain other than just to be different. Each platform has its merits, and for an overwhelming majority of people, x86 is the best overall solution.
If you have the need and desire to justify spending more on an alternative, again, that's fine. I just feel that it's rather pointless to bitch about normal market convergence and commoditization as a negative.
So because they use an external interface that's less than perfect, your main stream solutions are horrible chips? You do realize that, interally, almost any modern x86 CPU is very RISC-like in nature right?
I suppose the 64-bit versions are different, but if they still run x86 instructions... what's the point?
My car gets 40mpg on the highway, but if it still burns nasty old gasoline... what's the point?
Really, other than as a matter of academic holier-than-thou showery, your position is a bit silly. While modern chips are held up some by some legacy underpinnings (BIOS, register starvation in IA32), dismissing the whole architechture as useless for that reason is pointless and burying your head in the sand.
x86 will likely continue to dominate the mainstream for years to come, while RISC/EPIC/Whatever architechtures will be relegated to high end use where their specific strengths matter. If you're happy with a machine significantly underpowered by the standards of *any* modern architechture or dropping several grand on a specialized workstation on ideological ground, then hey, more power to you. Myself, I'll go with what makes the most sense for getting work done in the most economical manner possible.
You do realize that the newer iPods use a dock connector which then uses another cable with either USB or Firewire, right? It's not an issue of the cable, it's an issue of supporting the protocol to do it.
It seems like the camera industry has effectively settled on PictBridge, which, as I pointed out further in the thread, is why it's puzzling that it's not listed as a feature. It wouldn't be difficult to include and would add imensely to the device's usefulness.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure how it could be anything other than FUD to be honest. The Constitution enumerates the what the *government* is and isn't allowed to do, not individuals and private organizations.
I think the most interesting thing to note about HL2 is the fact that it does an excellent job of giving the *illusion* of emergent gameplay. For the uninitiated, emergent gameplay is a hot topic in gaming right now, and is basically a fancy term for the idea that the solutions to a given problem in a game should only really be limited by the creativity of the person playing it.
:-)
What makes HL2's design so interesting is the fact that while many of the puzzles and levels appear to allow the player a lot of choice, the game is actually *highly* linear in reality. There were a number of situations where I thought I'd found or thought up an alternate solution to a puzzle only to discover that the level was designed in such a way that only the "intended" solution would work. Disappointing in a way, but for the most part, they did an amazing job of keeping the illusion up.
*********SPOILER WARNING**************
Sort of ironic given the G-Man's comment about "rather than giving you the illusion of free choice," eh?
*********SPOILER WARNING**************
I've seriously considered saving up the $200 for a bottle of the stuff, not for the vodka itself so much as the bottle.
:)
After all, how often do you see a liquor bottle shaped like an AK-47?
The key to vodka, IMO, is getting it cold enough. Almost any vodka is perfectly good if it's cold. The only exception I've run into so far was Seagram's, which was just horrible, even mixed - let alone straight (which is how I generally prefer vodka).
Yeah, they're only being questioned in Republican states alright.
You might find Hymn interesting. Works well for me.
Hymn DRM Stripper
The reason Blizzard's torrent client is that they (stupidly) give you no way to limit your upstream bandwidth usage. So you end up saturating your upstream and your downstream suffers severely as a result.
The Banias cores had 1MB L2 cache and the new Dothans have 2MB L2 cache, yes, but that's not the sole reason for them performing as they do. The current Prescotts have 1MB L2 and Intel's slated to introduce 6xx P4s in January with 2MB L2, but I can promise you that the additional cache won't suddenly cause Prescott to perform simliarly to Dothan clock for clock.
It's a design philosophy based around high IPC, not the large cache, that makes the Pentium M such a strong performer.
That was part of my complaint - it didn't just work. I ran into a number of stability and packaging issues I wasn't happy with and were key in me discarding it rather quickly. My point was, there are other distros out there that "just work," and I see nothing compelling about FC that would make me consider it above other such distros.
When did I say that Mandrake doesn't do well in other fields? I was mainly just pointing out the strengths each of these distributions is known for. I'm rather a fan of MDK, personally, even if it's been a couple of years since I used it as my own distribution of choice. It's the distribution that got me into Linux, specifically because it was easy for someone with no Linux background to use, and for that, it'll always have a special place with me.
Overall ease of use *does* make MDK a great starter distribution, which is all I was trying to point out. I fail to see how pointing out the strength of a distro is somehow criticizing or demeaning it.
Here's the thing, most of the newer distros I've dealt with "just work." In fact, I specifically mentioned Dropline Gnome because DG 2.8 paired up with Kernel 2.6.9 is the most impressive thing I've seen when it comes to desktop Linux I've ever seen, going back to when I got into the scene around '98.
:-) I can't wait til they put out a release with Gnome 2.8+ and the HAL stuff enabled, as that should elevate it from being a nice distro, to being a really great one, IMO.
Freedesktop.org's HAL, while still immature and definitely not without bugs, essentially turned Linux into a completely different OS from a desktop perspective for me. The nasty supermount hacks are replaced by CD automounting that works like it should, hardware autoconfigures itself, config files are handled on their own. It's really amazing how different my ease of use was after a simple system update.
As far as NLD goes, the only thing you have to pay for are the Red Carpet updates, the OS itself is free for download. I'm sure free updates will spring up from the community much like they did with RH, and the distribution itself is so polished that it really does add to the sense that FC is somehow lacking something. And it's based on a history of SuSe releases almost as lengthy as FC's.
In what way is the Pentium M "dumbed down?" Quite frankly, I'm firmly of the opinion that it's the best processor that Intel has produced to date, and I'm not alone in that view point.
The Pentium M is based on the old P6 core, with things like SSE added it to bring it up to current standards, and power saving circuitry of its own added in to suit the mobile role. The one major complaint about the chip is the fact that it's somewhat bottlenecked by a 400MHz FSB, but there's speculation that that's partly related to it currently being a mobile part. Even so, a relatively low clocked Pentium M compares very favorably to a much higher clocked P4.
Basically, the Pentium M is a move back to a P3 type design philosophy, away from the 30-stage pipeline madness Intel's gotten themselves into with Prescott. I fail to see how going with a more intelligent design is going with a dumbed down processor.
I sure hope it's a marked improvement over FC2. I downloaded and installed FC2 on a test machine of mine on the day of release, expecting great things, and ended up being so thoroughly underwhelmed that I'd replaced the load with something else inside of a couple of days.
It's not that FC is a bad distribution, per se, it's just that I fail to see anything particularly special about it. At the time, I'd just discovered Dropline Gnome, which is an excellent desktop-oriented meta distribution on top of Slackware. But even so, Debian fits for the hardcore freedom types who want easy updates, with Ubuntu looking like it's going to fill the desktop end of that, Mandrake does well as a starter distro, Gentoo is great for the "1337" types, but where does FC fit in?
It's supposed to be a desktop distro, as I understand it, but frankly, it palled in comparison to others when I tried it last. It's going to be especially hard to convince me otherwise now that Novell's recently introduced Novell Linux Desktop is out. It's SuSe based, but with a level of polish added, and quite frankly, is the most impressed I've been with a desktop distribution since somewhere around Mandrake 7.3 (ie: the first graphical installer that actually worked that I dealt with).
Basically, what I'm saying is I fail to see where FC stands out above other distributions that would make me want to use it. Granted, after the general buginess I experienced with FC2, I may be biased, but the whole point is the fact that I wasn't having similar issues with the other distributions, so why should I have to put up with them with FC?
If this were a Linux comparison, I'd probably agree with you. But as it stands, outside of the Mozilla test, I saw almost entirely commercial Windows software, which you don't have the option of compiling yourself.
While a Linux comparison might give you a better idea of the raw capability of each processor, keep in mind that Windows has a 90% marketshare, and as such, the way Anandtech tests is closer to "real world" performance for most people.
Bluetooth is fun like that. I've got a few mp3 files from times I've called friends while they're out and talked about talked about the most random things. The best by far was calling a friend who was sitting in the Wendy's drive through at like 1:00am, then hearing him realize how he'd left his apartment : "Oh shit... I'm not wearing any pants." :)
The fact that it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux perfectly is nice. I have several friends with Macs, a Linux notebook myself, and everyone else in the world uses Windows, so the fact that this works on all three platforms is nice.
Skype Out is definitely a Big Deal(TM) as well. I've got a friend studying in Japan for about a year, and before he had internet access, Skype was a much cheaper way of getting in touch with him for people here stateside than international calls through POTS providers.
I have, and it works beautifully. I was fully expecting to have to fight it to get it working, but as I recall all it took was untarring it and running the Skype executable. I've been nothing but impressed with it, myself.
:-)
There's a certain geeky coolness to sitting in the lobby someplace with my Slackware-running notebook, holding a conversation with a friend in another state, via VoIP over WiFi.
Rockin it hardcore with CGA graphics, even.
Except that Aiport Extreme cards are based on chipsets by Broadcom who are notorious for refusing to provide drivers or specs to the OSS community. Oops.
Except that the PM does about the same amount of work per clock as an Athlon 64 - IE: *much* more than a P4.
I'm firmly of the opinion that the Pentium M is the best chip Intel has released to date. The fact that the Pentium M is a 7xx series chip while Prescott P4s are 5xx series chips seems to suggest Intel would agree with me there.
Meh, I can't say I agree with you at all. Personally, I have a strong sense of cynicism about the world and the power of big business, but I refuse to see "corporate" as a dirty word as many Slashdotters do.
I also see a distinction between "corporate" and "professional," myself. While corporate generally implies professional, professional does not necessarily mean corporate. It's entirely possible to have a professional looking logo while retaining a free thinking attitude.
The whole point of this logo is that it *doesn't* look like some kid sketched it in the margin of his notes during class. It doesn't look like the programmer took 5 minutes away from hacking source to apply his minimal artistic ability to throwing together a logo just because he needed one. It can be the difference between someone feeling comfortable enough to give your project a try or ignoring it. Your logo represents your project, and if it looks like it was slapped together in 5 minutes, people are going to assume that a simliar amount of effort was put into the code, rightfully so or not.
*Professional* logos look the way they do not because the thing they represent is cold and souless, but because a well designed logo should be easy to reproduce, scale, xerox all day long and remain recognizable. If it's simple, it's easier for people to recognize, which makes it easier to remember whatever it represents. If this offends your hacker sensibillities, I'm sorry. To me this is just a good example of why most hackers are poor graphic and UI designers.
It was more the tone of your post than anything. You make it sound like there's no real alternative to x86 on the market, when the case is quite the contrary. Even in the consumer-oriented market, there's at least Apple/PPC, but you made using a 300MHz MIPS out to be a badge of pride, holding out unagainst the unholy alternative. Alternative platforms are still out there, they're just pricey in relation to commodity equipment. Welcome to a normal market system.
The fact is, there are, and will continue to be alternatives, but they're niche products. Most people are fairly pragmatic and don't care what the processor is so long as it works and does what they wish. When compaitbility and software availibility are issues, the market is going to drift toward a single, mainstream option. Niches exist, but that's exactly what they are, and they're going to be expensive.
I don't particularly care for x86 myself. I'm also looking at picking up an Apple machine in the near future, but processor architechture has nearly zero relavence in the decision - I simply feel I'd be better able to get work done on a Mac. As I stated before, a modern x86 processor has *very* little in common with the original x86 design outside of the instruction set.
Hell, if you want to be technical, even the original Pentium was a RISC chip with an x86 wrapper - about 1/3 of its transistors were dedicated to x86 compatibility. It took a significant performance hit for it compared to then current RISC chips which could dedicated that silicon to getting actual work done. But in today's environment, with transistor budgets in the tens of millions, it doesn't really matter. This is the reason I don't see the point in going against the grain other than just to be different. Each platform has its merits, and for an overwhelming majority of people, x86 is the best overall solution.
If you have the need and desire to justify spending more on an alternative, again, that's fine. I just feel that it's rather pointless to bitch about normal market convergence and commoditization as a negative.
My car gets 40mpg on the highway, but if it still burns nasty old gasoline... what's the point?
Really, other than as a matter of academic holier-than-thou showery, your position is a bit silly. While modern chips are held up some by some legacy underpinnings (BIOS, register starvation in IA32), dismissing the whole architechture as useless for that reason is pointless and burying your head in the sand.
x86 will likely continue to dominate the mainstream for years to come, while RISC/EPIC/Whatever architechtures will be relegated to high end use where their specific strengths matter. If you're happy with a machine significantly underpowered by the standards of *any* modern architechture or dropping several grand on a specialized workstation on ideological ground, then hey, more power to you. Myself, I'll go with what makes the most sense for getting work done in the most economical manner possible.
How about the case where Creative sued Aureal into oblivion? Even if they're wrong, it still costs money to fight these things in court.
You do realize that the newer iPods use a dock connector which then uses another cable with either USB or Firewire, right? It's not an issue of the cable, it's an issue of supporting the protocol to do it.
It seems like the camera industry has effectively settled on PictBridge, which, as I pointed out further in the thread, is why it's puzzling that it's not listed as a feature. It wouldn't be difficult to include and would add imensely to the device's usefulness.