>Far more than Apple, I might point out, who has taken 16 years to give us preemptive multitasking (technically, they still haven't, of course).
Here you are doing Apple a disservice. Yes, the "guts" of their OS are only now approaching those of more modern OSes. They have been held back by the same rationale that MS supposedly has -- keep everything backwards compatible. On *top* of that, they managed to switch processor architectures (and may do it again, if Moto doesn't pull its head out of its ass).
Apple innovates more in the product design realm than anybody. But they also try very hard to bring advanced technology to their products, yet keep it useable. Witness:
OS level speech recognition since the early 1990's Built-in OS scripting since before that First use of trackpads in notebooks Built in wireless networking in current products
Their execution often sucks, especially the first time around, but just because MS often gets underappreciated for the innovation they do accomplish (I love my scrolling mouse, for example), there is no reason to believe that Apple innovates less than they really do, which is pretty much more than anyone else in the industry.
My wife recently started work at Sun, and previously to being hired had never touched a Unix box (her experience was mainly Mac, w/ limited Win). Yes, she was confused by CDE for the first week, and had a bit of difficulty getting used to StarOffice vs MS Office, but it was not at all cataclysmic. Much as I love her, she is *not* someone I would consider inherently computer savvy. However, she is getting comfortable with Solaris, something I highly encourage her to do.
The point is (I hope) that Sun would go out of business if the cycle were really unbreakable. As would Apple, SGI, and everyone else who used non-windows office suites. People can adapt, albeit some quicker than others, and are getting more and more used to a lack of GUI standards in this day and age of Web-based applications (an excellent point made by an earlier poster).
Arguably one could make the same endless cycle argument for OSes, but obviously there are quite a few/.ers who think otherwise.
Another problem - unfortunately most developing countries (esp. those in south america) are in the process of destroying the rail systems it took so many years to build. So, by the time such a system becomes viable, there is no track to use it on anymore.
Perhaps i'm wrong, but the new high speed trains that Amtrak will be using in the eastern corridor (and maybe someday, hopefully, out west), have some kind of net access on-board.
Somehow I don't think graphics performance would be terribly important to the server market. However, if it slowed down the *network* cards, that would be a problem.
"At WWDC today, Apple demonstrated a version of X Windows runnings on top of Darwin 1.0, Apple's open-source, operating system core for Mac OS X. The significance of this is that bringing X Windows/Linux applications to Mac OS X should be a far easier task now."
How are they supposed to tell which packets are from phone traffic and which are from computers? Scan the packet headers as they come through?
Actually, I suppose they could just keep a list of which IP addresses are phones, and charge per packet out of those IP addresses. However, could this be done w/o slowing down the net too much? Would it hold up in court?
Yes. And you can dial out from an IP phone. From what I understand, the phone does DSP to take the voice signal to packets directly. The numbers that are other IP phones get packets. The numbers that aren't get circuit-switched, so the call is dealt with correctly by a normal phone.
Unfortunately, with that logic we should all be driving '71 Cadillacs and city buses...
It just pisses me off that more and more people are buying huge vehicles to mask their terrible driving skills, not to mention road manners, consequently making the roads more dangerous for those of us who drive responsible cars.
Given your career, perhaps you can also tell us why people seem obsessed about buying 5000lb SUVs that get 12mpg.
I have a hard time believing that very many of the full-size SUV buyers "use it all", and yet there are a lot of buyers out there.
The interesting point of this article (did you read it?) isn't that the price of storage is going down -- I agree, BFD -- but that we might have access to "instant-on" memory. *That* would be a very big deal indeed.
Here's a link that might change your mind.
on
Be on the G4
·
· Score: 1
"Get real...300MHz is 300MHz no matter what."
What planet are you from? So you're telling me that that overclocked 700mhz Celeron is going to stomp a 500mhz K7 in 3D? No, it will choke, because of Cache and FP performance defecits.
Mhz is a measure of processor performance, but not the only one. If you know anything about hardware, you'd know that instruction set efficiency is as important as anything else, and the PPC instruction set is far more efficient than that of the x86 series, thus allowing it to perform the same number or more tasks as the x86 at lower clock speeds.
Yes, the K7 may narrowly beat the G4 SpecInt and SpecFP, but once altivec is taken into account, forget it -- the K7 is toast. Besides, I don't think we're going to see PIII or K7 notebooks any day soon...
Why, oh why did they decide to call AltiVec the "velocity engine" ? -- that makes it sounds like a victorian era mechanical technology. But aside from that, I can only drool and dream of OSX Client. I want.
Most of Apple's G4 speed claims this time come from (I believe) the fact that these apps were AltiVec enabled (esp. that Pshop demo), and because the G4's FP kicks ass over the G3. Those apps that aren't optimized would probably see a 50% speed boost at best.
I've been waiting for this chip for a while (still have a 604ev). Maybe when I get back from my honeymoon I can convince the (future) missus that we need one of these;)
It matters because of the starting assumption for your point - yes, people *can* do pretty much anything if they put their mind to it, and that should always be rewarded in our society.
However it is equally important to bear in mind that a lot of people have a lot of help in getting where they are, so they have no right to pretend that the playing field is level.
Good for you - i'm (seriously) happy that you've are strong enough to make it as far as you have. Do you think you're indicative of the average IT worker, or online user for that matter? Would you be willing bet $50 on the matter?
I find some of these viewpoints amazing. It seems there are many complaining that because the internet is a true meritocracy, nobody should bitch and whine about racial differences. In theory perhaps this is true, but this is a very easy conclsion for/.ers to reach, given that:
Many of us grew up in good neighborhoods, went to good schools, and had parents that encouraged education.
Many of us (I suspect) are not a minority, and have not been the subject of prejudice in our lives.
Many of us had a computer at a young age which our parents could afford to buy for us.
Many of us went to good universities paid for by, yep, you guessed it, our parents.
I'm not saying that any of these are necessarily impossible for someone from a disadvantaged background to achieve, but the probability that they will achieve it against overwhelming odds is low, so please don't act as if getting online (which can, I think, be seen as a pretty natural byproduct of the things I mentioned above) is somehow *natural* and is equally easy and obvious to everyone.
My mother has a Masters degree and speaks seven languages, yet until recently she was hesitant to get online -- does this make her lazy or stupid? Now that she's playing the game, learning it is slow and intimidating because it is still a foreign world to her. The same could be said for many from poorer (unfortuantely often coinciding with minority) families. Don't pretend that the playing field is level, because it ain't. The internet may be a meritocracy when you get there, but if you aren't given directions on how to find it, you're as screwed as the next guy.
MacOS running on these boxen would help greatly, but realistically i see the saving grace being the Linux hype. Contrary to popular belief, in similar quantities the PPC chip is faster and cheaper to produce than the x86 equivalent. I see large IT dept's looking for fast and cheap thin OS clients being the real sales instigator, combined with the ex-apple/anti-ms geek crowd. I see hardware companies drooling over the thought of taking advantage of the G4 and all of its advantages - imagine what could happen if a large mobo manufacturer like FIC joined into the fray...
As for the sw, there is plenty there already for free and binaries for almost anything could be available as soon as someone (commercial) smelled profit. Just look at StarDivision and Loki.
I never said such a box would necessarily be useful to the Mac user (potentially it could be, if future OS X versions don't need a boot ROM as is claimed by some) -- i'm just happy to see a kickass chip finally get its due.
I'll try to be clearer in my joy/skepticism next time, but please don't jump to conclusions. thx.
Man, what a cool horror story this subject would make. Out of control nanobots reverse engineer their maker. "Attack of the killer tomatoes" would start to be scarier than it was funny!
Funny that nobody has mentioned Darwin. True macophiles know that Apple has been putting most of its ROM in RAM nowadays, and that with OSX running on a microkernel and using the Darwin project's "open source" underpinnings (the basis of OSX), there is no theoretical reason that somebody couldn't get OSX to run on any PPC based machine.
This is, however, *if* Apple doesn't sabotage its own good intentions by going back on their word as they have so many times before.
An earlier post mentioned that the PPC was *more* expensive to produce than the Pentium -- AFAIK, this is a total fallacy; perhaps the quantities are lower, but the die size is much much smaller.
It's good to finally see the underappreciated PPC get its due, and Linux may be its ticket out of obscurity (one can only hope). Can't wait for some G4 lovin'!
Although pervious posts seem to conclude that the Power and PowerPC lines are different, the designs seem remarkably similar - multiple processor cores, large L2 caches, good SMP support... Does anyone know exactly how similar these two processors really are, and whether or not a variant of LinuxPPC could be run on such a beast?
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>Far more than Apple, I might point out, who has taken 16 years to give us preemptive multitasking (technically, they still haven't, of course).
Here you are doing Apple a disservice. Yes, the "guts" of their OS are only now approaching those of more modern OSes. They have been held back by the same rationale that MS supposedly has -- keep everything backwards compatible. On *top* of that, they managed to switch processor architectures (and may do it again, if Moto doesn't pull its head out of its ass).
Apple innovates more in the product design realm than anybody. But they also try very hard to bring advanced technology to their products, yet keep it useable. Witness:
OS level speech recognition since the early 1990's
Built-in OS scripting since before that
First use of trackpads in notebooks
Built in wireless networking in current products
Their execution often sucks, especially the first time around, but just because MS often gets underappreciated for the innovation they do accomplish (I love my scrolling mouse, for example), there is no reason to believe that Apple innovates less than they really do, which is pretty much more than anyone else in the industry.
>, since his government could control a '.se' national domain or something similar if that has already gone.
.se to Sealand :)
I think Sweden would be kind of pissed if Network Solutions suddenly awarded
My wife recently started work at Sun, and previously to being hired had never touched a Unix box (her experience was mainly Mac, w/ limited Win). Yes, she was confused by CDE for the first week, and had a bit of difficulty getting used to StarOffice vs MS Office, but it was not at all cataclysmic. Much as I love her, she is *not* someone I would consider inherently computer savvy. However, she is getting comfortable with Solaris, something I highly encourage her to do.
/.ers who think otherwise.
The point is (I hope) that Sun would go out of business if the cycle were really unbreakable. As would Apple, SGI, and everyone else who used non-windows office suites. People can adapt, albeit some quicker than others, and are getting more and more used to a lack of GUI standards in this day and age of Web-based applications (an excellent point made by an earlier poster).
Arguably one could make the same endless cycle argument for OSes, but obviously there are quite a few
In theory you can filter files in Gnutella as well (at least by file extension). The problem is, most users will never get that far...
Another problem - unfortunately most developing countries (esp. those in south america) are in the process of destroying the rail systems it took so many years to build. So, by the time such a system becomes viable, there is no track to use it on anymore.
Perhaps i'm wrong, but the new high speed trains that Amtrak will be using in the eastern corridor (and maybe someday, hopefully, out west), have some kind of net access on-board.
Somehow I don't think graphics performance would be terribly important to the server market. However, if it slowed down the *network* cards, that would be a problem.
"At WWDC today, Apple demonstrated a version of X Windows runnings on top of Darwin 1.0, Apple's open-source, operating system core for Mac OS X. The significance of this is that bringing X Windows/Linux applications to Mac OS X should be a far easier task now."
'Bout time!
How are they supposed to tell which packets are from phone traffic and which are from computers? Scan the packet headers as they come through?
;)
Actually, I suppose they could just keep a list of which IP addresses are phones, and charge per packet out of those IP addresses. However, could this be done w/o slowing down the net too much? Would it hold up in court?
Guess I just answered my own question
Yes. And you can dial out from an IP phone. From what I understand, the phone does DSP to take the voice signal to packets directly. The numbers that are other IP phones get packets. The numbers that aren't get circuit-switched, so the call is dealt with correctly by a normal phone.
How about,
:)
LAME: An MP3 Encoder
This preserves the recursive acronym,
or:
LAME: Among other things, an MP3 Encoder
Unfortunately, with that logic we should all be driving '71 Cadillacs and city buses...
:)
It just pisses me off that more and more people are buying huge vehicles to mask their terrible driving skills, not to mention road manners, consequently making the roads more dangerous for those of us who drive responsible cars.
BTW, I'm even more RIP in my Miata
Given your career, perhaps you can also tell us why people seem obsessed about buying 5000lb SUVs that get 12mpg.
I have a hard time believing that very many of the full-size SUV buyers "use it all", and yet there are a lot of buyers out there.
The interesting point of this article (did you read it?) isn't that the price of storage
is going down -- I agree, BFD -- but that we might have access to "instant-on" memory. *That* would be a very big deal indeed.
What planet are you from? So you're telling me that that overclocked 700mhz Celeron is going to stomp a 500mhz K7 in 3D? No, it will choke, because of Cache and FP performance defecits.
Mhz is a measure of processor performance, but not the only one. If you know anything about hardware, you'd know that instruction set efficiency is as important as anything else, and the PPC instruction set is far more efficient than that of the x86 series, thus allowing it to perform the same number or more tasks as the x86 at lower clock speeds.
Yes, the K7 may narrowly beat the G4 SpecInt and SpecFP, but once altivec is taken into account, forget it -- the K7 is toast. Besides, I don't think we're going to see PIII or K7 notebooks any day soon...
Here's the link:
http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/AltiVecVsKNI.html
Enjoy.
Enough to sell a sh*tload of iMacs.
;)
Why, oh why did they decide to call AltiVec the "velocity engine" ? -- that makes it sounds like a victorian era mechanical technology. But aside from that, I can only drool and dream of OSX Client. I want.
Most of Apple's G4 speed claims this time come from (I believe) the fact that these apps were AltiVec enabled (esp. that Pshop demo), and because the G4's FP kicks ass over the G3. Those apps that aren't optimized would probably see a 50% speed boost at best.
I've been waiting for this chip for a while (still have a 604ev). Maybe when I get back from my honeymoon I can convince the (future) missus that we need one of these
It matters because of the starting assumption for your point - yes, people *can* do pretty much anything if they put their mind to it, and that should always be rewarded in our society.
However it is equally important to bear in mind that a lot of people have a lot of help in getting where they are, so they have no right to pretend that the playing field is level.
Good for you - i'm (seriously) happy that you've are strong enough to make it as far as you have. Do you think you're indicative of the average IT worker, or online user for that matter? Would you be willing bet $50 on the matter?
/.ers, not all.
I said *most*
I find some of these viewpoints amazing. It seems there are many complaining that because the internet is a true meritocracy, nobody should bitch and whine about racial differences. In theory perhaps this is true, but this is a very easy conclsion for /.ers to reach, given that:
Many of us grew up in good neighborhoods, went to good schools, and had parents that encouraged education.
Many of us (I suspect) are not a minority, and have not been the subject of prejudice in our lives.
Many of us had a computer at a young age which our parents could afford to buy for us.
Many of us went to good universities paid for by, yep, you guessed it, our parents.
I'm not saying that any of these are necessarily impossible for someone from a disadvantaged background to achieve, but the probability that they will achieve it against overwhelming odds is low, so please don't act as if getting online (which can, I think, be seen as a pretty natural byproduct of the things I mentioned above) is somehow *natural* and is equally easy and obvious to everyone.
My mother has a Masters degree and speaks seven languages, yet until recently she was hesitant to get online -- does this make her lazy or stupid? Now that she's playing the game, learning it is slow and intimidating because it is still a foreign world to her. The same could be said for many from poorer (unfortuantely often coinciding with minority) families. Don't pretend that the playing field is level, because it ain't. The internet may be a meritocracy when you get there, but if you aren't given directions on how to find it, you're as screwed as the next guy.
MacOS running on these boxen would help greatly, but realistically i see the saving grace being the Linux hype. Contrary to popular belief, in similar quantities the PPC chip is faster and cheaper to produce than the x86 equivalent. I see large IT dept's looking for fast and cheap thin OS clients being the real sales instigator, combined with the ex-apple/anti-ms geek crowd. I see hardware companies drooling over the thought of taking advantage of the G4 and all of its advantages - imagine what could happen if a large mobo manufacturer like FIC joined into the fray...
As for the sw, there is plenty there already for free and binaries for almost anything could be available as soon as someone (commercial) smelled profit. Just look at StarDivision and Loki.
I never said such a box would necessarily be useful to the Mac user (potentially it could be, if future OS X versions don't need a boot ROM as is claimed by some) -- i'm just happy to see a kickass chip finally get its due.
I'll try to be clearer in my joy/skepticism next time, but please don't jump to conclusions. thx.
I'd love to see their claims come true and this computer exist, but it sounds too good to be true, especially to a Mac user.
Isn't RedHat located just around the corner from them?
Man, what a cool horror story this subject would make. Out of control nanobots reverse engineer their maker. "Attack of the killer tomatoes" would start to be scarier than it was funny!
It's well known this isn't the G3's strength.
Not today, but soon. The G4 has great FP *and* altivec to boot.
Also, as a previous poster pointed out, Altivec is Motorola's baby, so I have to wonder if it'll be supported by IBM's spec.
IBM has agreed to support Altivec.
Hopefully the PPC will come of age in the portable market where power consumption matters...
Funny that nobody has mentioned Darwin. True macophiles know that Apple has been putting most of its ROM in RAM nowadays, and that with OSX running on a microkernel and using the Darwin project's "open source" underpinnings (the basis of OSX), there is no theoretical reason that somebody couldn't get OSX to run on any PPC based machine.
This is, however, *if* Apple doesn't sabotage its own good intentions by going back on their word as they have so many times before.
An earlier post mentioned that the PPC was *more* expensive to produce than the Pentium -- AFAIK, this is a total fallacy; perhaps the quantities are lower, but the die size is much much smaller.
It's good to finally see the underappreciated PPC get its due, and Linux may be its ticket out of obscurity (one can only hope). Can't wait for some G4 lovin'!
Although pervious posts seem to conclude that the Power and PowerPC lines are different, the designs seem remarkably similar - multiple processor cores, large L2 caches, good SMP support... Does anyone know exactly how similar these two processors really are, and whether or not a variant of LinuxPPC could be run on such a beast?