The G5 is 10 percent slower than the P4 and Xeon in SPEC int scores in single-proc units, but 20 percent faster in FPU scores, and the dual-proc G5 beats the dual-proc Xeon in all SPEC scores.
Which Xeon? The 2 Ghz Xeon?
'Course the SPEC benchmarks arn't everything and this is just a very limited test, but damn, those G5 scores ain't nothing special. It's both slower and faster, it almost balances out. And on top of that, you know the regular 'ol Xeon is commonly available at 3+ Ghz. That's still hella faster than the Mac any way you look at it. Not to mention if you had two of them.
I do have to give Apple credit for getting the prices down. Still, a Dual 3 Ghz Xeon machine is cheaper and much faster.
Of course I'm ignoring the nice Apple designs and workable functionality (even if OS X has craploads of overhead and slowness).
Yes, this is exactly what tax funded government research is for.
You probably don't realize the wealth of information that is already public domain from government research.
And I agree, these government projects should be BSD licensed or public domain. GPL is too restrictive (eg. you can make BSD-licensed software GPL, but you can't make GPL'd software BSD-licensed).
Wine already does this for some DirectX stuff, including 3D (Transgaming). I don't think it would be that hard to make VMware (or Win4Lin if you really feel that's what you want) do something similar.
The only reason I can think of as to why it hasn't been done is because the market is too small. Lets face it, this is really only for gamers and are gamers gonna pay $300 for VMware just so they can run games in Linux? Or even $100 for Win4Lin? Not likely. At least with VMware it's going to take a fairly large effort to virtualize an entire 3D accelerated graphics card. It's not impossible though.
I'd really like to have that functionality myself so I'm hoping one day we'll have 3D support. I'll continue to push the "VMware needs to support the 3D modeling and CAD market" suggestion.
And nobody ever said they wanted full performance in a virtualized environment. I mean there is some overhead, but even so, with modern hardware it's quite fast.
Virtualization is fine while we're in this transition state (you know, everyone transitioning to Linux;)
By accessing the above link, you are downloading copryighted material without the permission of the author.
No kidding.... but will also criminalize the downloading of material from the Internet without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.
I haven't read the article, but if I take this statement literally then that would technically mean you could not legally use the Internet at all. You would have to snail-mail every web site to get permission beforehand. I mean, every web page on the 'Net is copyrighted by someone.
That would be ridiculous so I have to wonder if that's really what this proposal says.
I didn't try tuning until I noticed it was effecting my system.
The "hanging" I'm talking about is not something very obvious unless you're paying attending. It's not like my system locks-up for a while. It's more subtle. The system pauses here and there when there is a lot of disk activity going on. I've tried it on 3 or 4 different systems and they all acted the same way. Note that I'm comparing this against EXT or Reiser.
It's no so bad that you go "oh my, XFS sucks". However, when compared to EXT2 when doing a lot of disk activity the system is much less responsive.
I guess I should've said my systems "pauses" instead of "hangs".
I've tried XFS a couple times over the years and one thing I've noticed every time is that it didn't seem that great for an average desktop machine. It seems to hang the system while doing lots of file operations. It feels like the file system is taking precedence over the OS, therefore making an interactive system seem sluggish.
For a server this might be OK because you may get a performance increase due to the filesystem getting lots of CPU time but on the desktop it just makes your apps hang when the filesystem kicks into high gear. I didn't like it at all.
It could be that I have something configured incorrectly, but I've tried tuning it as best as I could and it still ran the same. I welcome any ideas.
I find that Reiser or EXT2/3 run mostly as fast as XFS anyway and don't hang up my system while doing stuff.
I'd lose the band and keep it in my pocket
on
Palm OS Wristwatch
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· Score: 1
Interesting. However, I do not wear stuff like watches and rings. I also hardly ever have my Palm with me because it's too damn bulky.
BUT, I depending on the shape of this thing (it looks completely flat hopefully), I would take the band off and just keep it in my pocket. That's the kind of device I really want. Like those no longer available credit card sized PDA devices (Rex or something like that?). I want something I can easily keep in my pocket, then I'll be sure to always have it.
If they made a knife and/or pliers fold out of it... woohoo, I'd buy two.
Dispite others saying this is because people model TV for the hell of it, I'll suggest something different.
There is a basic law of procreation at work here. There have been tons and tons of studies that show we look for physical clues just like any animal. We're attracted to stronger, healthier people (often this also means youth). These clues let us know that (supposedly) they will make better babies and give us a better chance for survival.
They saw and liked big women because that's all they ever knew. Then they saw these people with all these enhanced sexual clues. Men go "wow", we didn't know what we where missing. And the women go "wow" I want to look like that to get even more men. Yes, often women go way too far trying to lose weight because they're goals are unrealistic. The problem is these enhanced sexual clues are often very fake and that's what creates the unrealistic goals. It's just a play on and enhancement of sexual clues (however fake).
I don't find that the KHTML/Konqueror browser works that great with a large number of web sites.
On Linux I mostly use MozillaFirebird (what a stupid name, phoenix was better) and when things don't work I'll run Opera in "IE" mode. Konqueror is not even on my list, it works with less sites than Mozilla. On Windows I use Firebird and rarely have problems (sometimes I have to back off to IE). On OS X I've been using Mozilla, but I admit that I don't use my Mac very much.
So why is Safari so popular on Mac when Mozilla is available? Is it because Firebird isn't available? Although the whole Mozilla suite is kinda chunky, I think Firebird would kill Safari.
The antenna must be an 802.11 antenna or something, this person obviously likes doodads and gadgets all over his machine. I mean, damn, look at all the drives, bays, and other assorted crap on the front. Tacky. Look at all those fans! Egads! Blech.
I'm by no means a Mac fan, but one thing they are is quiet. Either no fans or very quiet fans. This machine is old-sk00l, large and loud. Again, blech.
The paint looks like an old boat or something. Hehe. The problem is that it's real hard to paint computer equipment and make it look good. It almost always looks amateurish. I think that's why a lot of people use aluminum, new or original plastic, and/or plexiglass instead of paint. Airbrushing might look OK if you're good.
With that said, this person seems like a good fabricator. I really like the workmanship. Quality work, but the overall design is too clunky and bloated for me.
But they certainly didn't ask for my opinion so I'll STFU now.
If Microsoft sells you 100000 Windows licenses for $1 (to "beat" Linux maybe) are you liable for the taxes on the "normal" license costs or just the $1?
Large companies get deals like this all the time, how much tax do they pay? They certainly don't pay the full amount for each license when they get a bulk deal.
This not only applies to software, but if I strike a deal with a company to purchase some computer hardware at a discount, I only pay taxes on the discounted amount, correct?
Actually you have only 1 true general-purpose license for the Windows OS (non-server) from an MSDN subscription.
Really? I was under the impression that all of them are development/test/demo only. The only exception is a Universal subscription comes with one general purpose Office license.
And the 10 license limit is only with XP because of the activation stuff. Everything else is pretty much unlimited (for one user/developer though).
Iâ(TM)m still not clear on the rules for this software AFTER your subscription run out.
From the Microsoft FAQ:
When a subscription expires, do the licenses terminate or are they still valid?
MSDN Subscriptions has a perpetual license, so subscribers can still use the products received with their MSDN Subscription after their subscription has expired.
... and more draconian licensing schemes are making customers re-evaluate their need for Microsoft Products.
And that says it for a lot of people. Seriously, I would be using Windows right now if it wasn't for their licensing scheme.
And it's not because I don't want to pay. In fact, I have 10 Windows licenses sitting unused (came with my MSDN subscription). Of course, that's not totally true because sometimes I use them when I need to develop on that platform for a customer (I run it in VMware). However, I don't use Windows as my primary OS.
It's a sad state of affairs really. Windows works a lot better with my hardware (laptop, firewire, etc.) than Linux does but Microsoft scares me away. This is giving Linux plenty of time to catch up, and it will eventually.
Well OK, it's probably not the original minimal window manager, but there are a ton of "minimal" WM's out there that started with Oroborus as their base.
The Oroborus code base is small and easy to hack. The executable is tiny and hardly uses any memory (it often uses much less memory than those other minimal WM's). I find myself adding features sometimes because it's so easy (I don't normally hack on things like window managers).
It supports themes, looks good, and is easy to configure. I use it with DeskMenu and fsPanel. It takes less than 1 second to login from xdm/gdm.
1-pixel borders?? Bah, at 1600x1200 that's painful (both mentally and physically).
I've always wanted to play with that kind of stuff.
What type of equipment is needed? Is it expensive type stuff or basically just an RF receiver taped to your head?
What frequency are brain waves at? I would assume they are not very constant... kinda like reading a FM signal?
Re:Pixar: Good movies, suck-ass company
on
A Tour of Pixar
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· Score: 1
Bzzzt, sorry but most of those papers are just public published papers from SIGGRAPH and have nothing whatsoever to do with Pixar other than they're hosting the papers.
There are a couple written by people at Pixar, but their funding was from government grants and other sources not from Pixar.
The deep shadow mask paper was the only one I saw that actually came from Pixar (well, Pixar funding university grants?). I'm sure they have some patents waiting to zap any successful products using that (hehe, I'm just bashing, but still it wouldn't surprise me).
Re:Pixar: Good movies, suck-ass company
on
A Tour of Pixar
·
· Score: 1
Er, yes most companies are self-serving. However, when a company uses their money to start legal battles that the little guys can't afford for the sole purpose of ruining said little guys, then that's wrong (*cough* Microsoft *cough*). Even if the inovative company has a good case, they can't afford to fight the fight (monopoly type situation).
It's not purely because they're self-serving. It's that they go out of their way to hold back inovation if it serves their purposes. Rather than create better products, they stay on top with money.
It just gets on my nerves. Much of the computer graphics industry is being held back by stupid stuff. Nobody is helping each other and everyone is reinventing and keeping everything to themselves. We could have so much better technology (software and otherwise) if there was more cooperation. Companies like Weta seem to realize this.
Slashdot Mirror
The G5 is 10 percent slower than the P4 and Xeon in SPEC int scores in single-proc units, but 20 percent faster in FPU scores, and the dual-proc G5 beats the dual-proc Xeon in all SPEC scores.
Which Xeon? The 2 Ghz Xeon?
'Course the SPEC benchmarks arn't everything and this is just a very limited test, but damn, those G5 scores ain't nothing special. It's both slower and faster, it almost balances out. And on top of that, you know the regular 'ol Xeon is commonly available at 3+ Ghz. That's still hella faster than the Mac any way you look at it. Not to mention if you had two of them.
I do have to give Apple credit for getting the prices down. Still, a Dual 3 Ghz Xeon machine is cheaper and much faster.
Of course I'm ignoring the nice Apple designs and workable functionality (even if OS X has craploads of overhead and slowness).
Is that Slashdot user "AOTheDeacon" really him?
I mean, there's a crapload of posts from the account that make Derek Smart look mature.
Maybe it's just somebody playing the crowd. If that's not the case then, well, everything makes sense.
You think Windows is an original product?
How about MacOS?
Was Photoshop the first computer painting program?
Is that Hyundai you drive the first wheeled vehicle ever invented?
Hmmm...
I don't know if this particular thingy runs in VMware, but I run regular Knoppix in VMware all the time.
Yes, this is exactly what tax funded government research is for.
You probably don't realize the wealth of information that is already public domain from government research.
And I agree, these government projects should be BSD licensed or public domain. GPL is too restrictive (eg. you can make BSD-licensed software GPL, but you can't make GPL'd software BSD-licensed).
Yeah, so it's not perfect, but it definitely beat the hell out of VMware or any other similar programs.
Oh, so Win4Lin can run DOS, Windows 3.x, 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, XP, Advanced Server, Linux, and the *BSD's also (and other OS's)??
And it supports USB devices?
And it never crashes??
Win4Lin is available for Windows?
Wow, they musta made some serious progress lately. VMware just sucks I guess.
But Bochs can (very slowly, but still).
I love VMware by the way. It's one truely useful tool.
Wine already does this for some DirectX stuff, including 3D (Transgaming). I don't think it would be that hard to make VMware (or Win4Lin if you really feel that's what you want) do something similar.
;)
The only reason I can think of as to why it hasn't been done is because the market is too small. Lets face it, this is really only for gamers and are gamers gonna pay $300 for VMware just so they can run games in Linux? Or even $100 for Win4Lin? Not likely. At least with VMware it's going to take a fairly large effort to virtualize an entire 3D accelerated graphics card. It's not impossible though.
I'd really like to have that functionality myself so I'm hoping one day we'll have 3D support. I'll continue to push the "VMware needs to support the 3D modeling and CAD market" suggestion.
And nobody ever said they wanted full performance in a virtualized environment. I mean there is some overhead, but even so, with modern hardware it's quite fast.
Virtualization is fine while we're in this transition state (you know, everyone transitioning to Linux
By accessing the above link, you are downloading copryighted material without the permission of the author.
... but will also criminalize the downloading of material from the Internet without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.
No kidding.
I haven't read the article, but if I take this statement literally then that would technically mean you could not legally use the Internet at all. You would have to snail-mail every web site to get permission beforehand. I mean, every web page on the 'Net is copyrighted by someone.
That would be ridiculous so I have to wonder if that's really what this proposal says.
I didn't try tuning until I noticed it was effecting my system.
The "hanging" I'm talking about is not something very obvious unless you're paying attending. It's not like my system locks-up for a while. It's more subtle. The system pauses here and there when there is a lot of disk activity going on. I've tried it on 3 or 4 different systems and they all acted the same way. Note that I'm comparing this against EXT or Reiser.
It's no so bad that you go "oh my, XFS sucks". However, when compared to EXT2 when doing a lot of disk activity the system is much less responsive.
I guess I should've said my systems "pauses" instead of "hangs".
I've tried XFS a couple times over the years and one thing I've noticed every time is that it didn't seem that great for an average desktop machine. It seems to hang the system while doing lots of file operations. It feels like the file system is taking precedence over the OS, therefore making an interactive system seem sluggish.
For a server this might be OK because you may get a performance increase due to the filesystem getting lots of CPU time but on the desktop it just makes your apps hang when the filesystem kicks into high gear. I didn't like it at all.
It could be that I have something configured incorrectly, but I've tried tuning it as best as I could and it still ran the same. I welcome any ideas.
I find that Reiser or EXT2/3 run mostly as fast as XFS anyway and don't hang up my system while doing stuff.
Interesting. However, I do not wear stuff like watches and rings. I also hardly ever have my Palm with me because it's too damn bulky.
BUT, I depending on the shape of this thing (it looks completely flat hopefully), I would take the band off and just keep it in my pocket. That's the kind of device I really want. Like those no longer available credit card sized PDA devices (Rex or something like that?). I want something I can easily keep in my pocket, then I'll be sure to always have it.
If they made a knife and/or pliers fold out of it... woohoo, I'd buy two.
Gotta love that K&R C... spblech.
Dispite others saying this is because people model TV for the hell of it, I'll suggest something different.
There is a basic law of procreation at work here. There have been tons and tons of studies that show we look for physical clues just like any animal. We're attracted to stronger, healthier people (often this also means youth). These clues let us know that (supposedly) they will make better babies and give us a better chance for survival.
They saw and liked big women because that's all they ever knew. Then they saw these people with all these enhanced sexual clues. Men go "wow", we didn't know what we where missing. And the women go "wow" I want to look like that to get even more men. Yes, often women go way too far trying to lose weight because they're goals are unrealistic. The problem is these enhanced sexual clues are often very fake and that's what creates the unrealistic goals. It's just a play on and enhancement of sexual clues (however fake).
Is Safari better than Mozilla(Firebird)?
I don't find that the KHTML/Konqueror browser works that great with a large number of web sites.
On Linux I mostly use MozillaFirebird (what a stupid name, phoenix was better) and when things don't work I'll run Opera in "IE" mode. Konqueror is not even on my list, it works with less sites than Mozilla. On Windows I use Firebird and rarely have problems (sometimes I have to back off to IE). On OS X I've been using Mozilla, but I admit that I don't use my Mac very much.
So why is Safari so popular on Mac when Mozilla is available? Is it because Firebird isn't available? Although the whole Mozilla suite is kinda chunky, I think Firebird would kill Safari.
The antenna must be an 802.11 antenna or something, this person obviously likes doodads and gadgets all over his machine. I mean, damn, look at all the drives, bays, and other assorted crap on the front. Tacky. Look at all those fans! Egads! Blech.
I'm by no means a Mac fan, but one thing they are is quiet. Either no fans or very quiet fans. This machine is old-sk00l, large and loud. Again, blech.
The paint looks like an old boat or something. Hehe. The problem is that it's real hard to paint computer equipment and make it look good. It almost always looks amateurish. I think that's why a lot of people use aluminum, new or original plastic, and/or plexiglass instead of paint. Airbrushing might look OK if you're good.
With that said, this person seems like a good fabricator. I really like the workmanship. Quality work, but the overall design is too clunky and bloated for me.
But they certainly didn't ask for my opinion so I'll STFU now.
Perfect... I love this answer.
Yes, good question.
If Microsoft sells you 100000 Windows licenses for $1 (to "beat" Linux maybe) are you liable for the taxes on the "normal" license costs or just the $1?
Large companies get deals like this all the time, how much tax do they pay? They certainly don't pay the full amount for each license when they get a bulk deal.
This not only applies to software, but if I strike a deal with a company to purchase some computer hardware at a discount, I only pay taxes on the discounted amount, correct?
Actually you have only 1 true general-purpose license for the Windows OS (non-server) from an MSDN subscription.
Really? I was under the impression that all of them are development/test/demo only. The only exception is a Universal subscription comes with one general purpose Office license.
And the 10 license limit is only with XP because of the activation stuff. Everything else is pretty much unlimited (for one user/developer though).
Iâ(TM)m still not clear on the rules for this software AFTER your subscription run out.
From the Microsoft FAQ:
When a subscription expires, do the licenses terminate or are they still valid?
MSDN Subscriptions has a perpetual license, so subscribers can still use the products received with their MSDN Subscription after their subscription has expired.
MSDN info
... and more draconian licensing schemes are making customers re-evaluate their need for Microsoft Products.
And that says it for a lot of people. Seriously, I would be using Windows right now if it wasn't for their licensing scheme.
And it's not because I don't want to pay. In fact, I have 10 Windows licenses sitting unused (came with my MSDN subscription). Of course, that's not totally true because sometimes I use them when I need to develop on that platform for a customer (I run it in VMware). However, I don't use Windows as my primary OS.
It's a sad state of affairs really. Windows works a lot better with my hardware (laptop, firewire, etc.) than Linux does but Microsoft scares me away. This is giving Linux plenty of time to catch up, and it will eventually.
Well OK, it's probably not the original minimal window manager, but there are a ton of "minimal" WM's out there that started with Oroborus as their base.
The Oroborus code base is small and easy to hack. The executable is tiny and hardly uses any memory (it often uses much less memory than those other minimal WM's). I find myself adding features sometimes because it's so easy (I don't normally hack on things like window managers).
It supports themes, looks good, and is easy to configure. I use it with DeskMenu and fsPanel. It takes less than 1 second to login from xdm/gdm.
1-pixel borders?? Bah, at 1600x1200 that's painful (both mentally and physically).
You could fit an entire city inside one of these things. With no airplanes the hangers would be friggin huge.
Reminds me of a Macross story...
I've always wanted to play with that kind of stuff.
What type of equipment is needed? Is it expensive type stuff or basically just an RF receiver taped to your head?
What frequency are brain waves at? I would assume they are not very constant... kinda like reading a FM signal?
Bzzzt, sorry but most of those papers are just public published papers from SIGGRAPH and have nothing whatsoever to do with Pixar other than they're hosting the papers.
There are a couple written by people at Pixar, but their funding was from government grants and other sources not from Pixar.
The deep shadow mask paper was the only one I saw that actually came from Pixar (well, Pixar funding university grants?). I'm sure they have some patents waiting to zap any successful products using that (hehe, I'm just bashing, but still it wouldn't surprise me).
Er, yes most companies are self-serving. However, when a company uses their money to start legal battles that the little guys can't afford for the sole purpose of ruining said little guys, then that's wrong (*cough* Microsoft *cough*). Even if the inovative company has a good case, they can't afford to fight the fight (monopoly type situation).
It's not purely because they're self-serving. It's that they go out of their way to hold back inovation if it serves their purposes. Rather than create better products, they stay on top with money.
It just gets on my nerves. Much of the computer graphics industry is being held back by stupid stuff. Nobody is helping each other and everyone is reinventing and keeping everything to themselves. We could have so much better technology (software and otherwise) if there was more cooperation. Companies like Weta seem to realize this.