In various interviews with Apple VP's that occured after the macworld announcement, they have officially stated they WILL NOT ALLOW MAC OSX TO RUN ON ANYTHING BUT THEIR DRM'D MACHINES.
This is a fact.
If you'd do a little googling, you'd have discovered this.
The Intel compiler (inlcuding the fortran one) is generating code that looks something like:
if (processor == real intel processor && processor supports SSE/MMX/SSE2/SSE3) {
Use super optimized code path using MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3 } else {
Use slower, stupid code path. }
Instead of if (processor supports MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3) {
Use super optimized code path using MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3 } else {
Use slower, stupid code path. }
They do this *very specfically* to make sure that even though AMD supports the instructions it wants to execute, it won't use the fast path.
This is not some accidental design where it was easier to do this. Intel's marketing folks basically told the compiler folks to do this, or so the story goes.
If you were to patch the check at the beginning of your programs so that it returned true on AMD cpus as well, everything still works fine (in *all* cases), *and* it will run faster on AMD cpus.
Try it. If you look at the posts above, someone has posted the variable you need to reset that it is checking.
I'm a patent lawyer, and want badly to reform the patent system, so to answer your question,"me".
Also, as a bit of a correction, it's not a new goldmine, its been a goldmine forever.
As a GCC developer (bias: I work for IBM Research), the only time i've ever seen David Edelsohn complain about something not working on AIX, it was broken on other significant platforms as well (Cygwin, etc), or was latently buggy and just working by luck.
Judge for yourself. Go read the gcc list. Count the number of patches backed out in the past year because they broke AIX vs because they broke some other platform.
It sounds like an unnecessary personal snipe, which, for people who know Uli, well, i won't bother finishing that.
So if this is the most "notorious case" Ulrich's got, then he's wrong.
Particularly the "GCC would be developed much faster". That is in fact, the funniest thing i've heard all day.
GCC would be developed faster if there was less sniping and fiefdom's and more collaboration. Which, except for a few people, has been what is generally happening. Our development process is accelerating, not slowing down.
And It certainly isn't slowed down because people need to bootstrap on AIX, which they don't.
Nobody has ever required patches be bootstrapped on AIX unless it is very likely to have some material affect on that platform.
This is just the same requirement we pose for any wide ranging change: Test it by compiling it for the architectures it is likely to break on.
Note i didn't say running. We don't require anyone have AIX boxen around. Cross compiles work fine.
Though if you break some architecture, you are expected to at least try to help the maintainer of that arch fix it.
This is completely untrue and misinformed.
The original patent on graph coloring has expired (or will expire soon), and IBM granted the right to use it in any GPL'd software anyway.
Rice University also granted the use of the patent on Preston Brigg's improvements to GPL'd software.
So GCC could, and in fact has, implemented graph coloring register allocation (see the new-regalloc branch), over 2 years ago.
Significant difference.
If you ask gcc folk (like me), we'd happily tell you that 4.0 will probably be, performance wise, win in some cases, and a lose in others.
Anytime you add large numbers of optimizations, it takes a while to tune everything else so that we get good generated code.
4.0 is more a test of the new optimizers than something that is supposed to produce spectacular results in all cases.
Autovectorization is rarely going to make things "massively faster" for most applications.
It just makes people feel better when they see their code is vectorized because they think it's cool.
(Not that there aren't real applications for autovectorization, SIMD packing, etc. It's just not going to speed up OpenOffice, for example).
Tivo 4.0 (including support for wireless USB cards) actually works on Series 2 DirectTivo's. See the dealdatabase forums for more details. My HDVR2 now runs Tivo 4.0 with no problems, and I have a wireless USB adapter connected to Tivo that it uses for downloads.
This is actually a completely incorrect statement. The reason the court said that 3com could possibly infringe (all the federal circuit did was reverse the grant of summary judgement of non-infringement of the patent, due to the incorrect claims construction) is because the patent *didn't* specify that it was to be credit-card sized. It only specified that it was to be an "electronic multi-function card".
Cert. was denied in State Street Bank in 1999. That's why it's still good law. The Supreme Court has smacked down CAFC on quite a few occasions when they produce completely strange opinions. This happens because CAFC seems to have a bunch of judges who think patents are god's gift, and that everything should be patentable under the sun, and a bunch of judges who think that patents should be strictly limited and enforced. I find myself agreeing with about half the decisions, and vehemently hating the other half.
In this case, however, you are correct, and the Supreme Court thought Congress should do something about it.
Which they did. They passed the "Intellectual Property and Communications Omnibus Reform Act of 1999".
It contains the so-called "First Inventor Defense." This defense provides a first inventor (or "prior user") with a complete defense in patent infringement lawsuits, whenever an inventor of a business method (or prior user) uses the invention but does not patent it.
"and I devise a business process that streamlines my manufacturing to eke out more profits,"
This sounds much more like a process patent than a *business* process patent. Like a new manufacturing process that is cheaper.
These have been patentable as long as the patent system has been around, unlike business patents.
The article starts off wrong, and continues on from there to just reek of "I'm not there, so nothing good could *possibly be done*".
For starters, Marc didn't co-create Mosaic.
See here
Second, Mark didn't add any innovations to web browsing himself, either.
Lastly, he wasn't the "brains behind netscape".
Nobody reported to him, except his secretary.
His only job was to run around playing poster boy for investors.
This really has nothing to do with user usability, performance, or anything else.
The MPAA and RIAA are tired of having to wait for dir/s to finish (assuming they've hacked your computer) to figure out if you have any pirated music or movies. It's too slow to make it feasible to run scans of large numbers of computers. It's also quite noticeable to the user.
Give them a simple backdoor to access WinFS remotely on any computer (through some bill they push through congress soon after the release of LongHorn), and they can scan entire networks in a reasonable amount of time. Doesn't require them to run indexing software on your computer, since Microsoft has done it for them. Trivial application to write if WinFS is really based on SQL Server, one would imagine.
It's not just DRM boys and girls, it's easily enforceable DRM.
Hey, maybe they can use the "Messenger" Service that runs by default that does pop-up messages
Message from User 'YerFucked':
Click ok to pay us for the 1800 MP3's you've downloaded or click cancel and the police will be dispatched to your location. Thank you for your compliance.
The little guy fills out the necessary paperwork to proceed in forma pauperis?
Check out the Supreme Court of the US's order lists sometimes. Look for "Motion for petitioner to proceed in forma pauperis is granted". That means "I don't have to pay the legal fees cause I can't afford it".:)
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This isn't true anymore. The old JVM was based on sun's code. The new one is completely cleanroom.
Apple doesn't get preferred vendor pricing. They don't come anywhere near the volume necessary
In various interviews with Apple VP's that occured after the macworld announcement, they have officially stated they WILL NOT ALLOW MAC OSX TO RUN ON ANYTHING BUT THEIR DRM'D MACHINES.
This is a fact.
If you'd do a little googling, you'd have discovered this.
You don't get it.
The Intel compiler (inlcuding the fortran one) is generating code that looks something like:
if (processor == real intel processor && processor supports SSE/MMX/SSE2/SSE3)
{
Use super optimized code path using MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3
}
else
{
Use slower, stupid code path.
}
Instead of
if (processor supports MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3)
{
Use super optimized code path using MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3
}
else
{
Use slower, stupid code path.
}
They do this *very specfically* to make sure that even though AMD supports the instructions it wants to execute, it won't use the fast path.
This is not some accidental design where it was easier to do this. Intel's marketing folks basically told the compiler folks to do this, or so the story goes.
If you were to patch the check at the beginning of your programs so that it returned true on AMD cpus as well, everything still works fine (in *all* cases), *and* it will run faster on AMD cpus.
Try it. If you look at the posts above, someone has posted the variable you need to reset that it is checking.
I'm a patent lawyer, and want badly to reform the patent system, so to answer your question,"me". Also, as a bit of a correction, it's not a new goldmine, its been a goldmine forever.
Ulrich isn't even right about that part, which is sad.
He just seems to have an axe to grind with dje.
As a GCC developer (bias: I work for IBM Research), the only time i've ever seen David Edelsohn complain about something not working on AIX, it was broken on other significant platforms as well (Cygwin, etc), or was latently buggy and just working by luck.
Judge for yourself. Go read the gcc list. Count the number of patches backed out in the past year because they broke AIX vs because they broke some other platform.
It sounds like an unnecessary personal snipe, which, for people who know Uli, well, i won't bother finishing that.
So if this is the most "notorious case" Ulrich's got, then he's wrong.
Particularly the "GCC would be developed much faster".
That is in fact, the funniest thing i've heard all day.
GCC would be developed faster if there was less sniping and fiefdom's and more collaboration. Which, except for a few people, has been what is generally happening. Our development process is accelerating, not slowing down.
And It certainly isn't slowed down because people need to bootstrap on AIX, which they don't.
Nobody has ever required patches be bootstrapped on AIX unless it is very likely to have some material affect on that platform.
This is just the same requirement we pose for any wide ranging change: Test it by compiling it for the architectures it is likely to break on.
Note i didn't say running. We don't require anyone have AIX boxen around. Cross compiles work fine.
Though if you break some architecture, you are expected to at least try to help the maintainer of that arch fix it.
This is completely untrue and misinformed. The original patent on graph coloring has expired (or will expire soon), and IBM granted the right to use it in any GPL'd software anyway. Rice University also granted the use of the patent on Preston Brigg's improvements to GPL'd software. So GCC could, and in fact has, implemented graph coloring register allocation (see the new-regalloc branch), over 2 years ago.
of the ones you listed, only -ftree-loop-linear and -ftree-vectorize are not on by default. (you also missed a couple, though they slipped my mind)
Significant difference. If you ask gcc folk (like me), we'd happily tell you that 4.0 will probably be, performance wise, win in some cases, and a lose in others. Anytime you add large numbers of optimizations, it takes a while to tune everything else so that we get good generated code. 4.0 is more a test of the new optimizers than something that is supposed to produce spectacular results in all cases.
This works on the incredibly false premise that these loops are a significant source of runtime.
Autovectorization is rarely going to make things "massively faster" for most applications. It just makes people feel better when they see their code is vectorized because they think it's cool. (Not that there aren't real applications for autovectorization, SIMD packing, etc. It's just not going to speed up OpenOffice, for example).
Tivo 4.0 (including support for wireless USB cards) actually works on Series 2 DirectTivo's.
See the dealdatabase forums for more details.
My HDVR2 now runs Tivo 4.0 with no problems, and I have a wireless USB adapter connected to Tivo that it uses for downloads.
This is actually a completely incorrect statement.
The reason the court said that 3com could possibly infringe (all the federal circuit did was reverse the grant of summary judgement of non-infringement of the patent, due to the incorrect claims construction) is because the patent *didn't* specify that it was to be credit-card sized. It only specified that it was to be an "electronic multi-function card".
Cert. was denied in State Street Bank in 1999.
That's why it's still good law.
The Supreme Court has smacked down CAFC on quite a few occasions when they produce completely strange opinions.
This happens because CAFC seems to have a bunch of judges who think patents are god's gift, and that everything should be patentable under the sun, and a bunch of judges who think that patents should be strictly limited and enforced.
I find myself agreeing with about half the decisions, and vehemently hating the other half.
In this case, however, you are correct, and the Supreme Court thought Congress should do something about it.
Which they did.
They passed the "Intellectual Property and Communications Omnibus Reform Act of 1999".
It contains the so-called "First Inventor Defense." This defense provides a first inventor (or "prior user") with a complete defense in patent infringement lawsuits, whenever an inventor of a business method (or prior user) uses the invention but does not patent it.
"and I devise a business process that streamlines my manufacturing to eke out more profits," This sounds much more like a process patent than a *business* process patent. Like a new manufacturing process that is cheaper. These have been patentable as long as the patent system has been around, unlike business patents.
The article starts off wrong, and continues on from there to just reek of "I'm not there, so nothing good could *possibly be done*".
For starters, Marc didn't co-create Mosaic.
See here
Second, Mark didn't add any innovations to web browsing himself, either.
Lastly, he wasn't the "brains behind netscape".
Nobody reported to him, except his secretary.
His only job was to run around playing poster boy for investors.
He's announcing them right now. If the submitter hadn't blew his load, it would have been one big story.
Plurality opinion here.
Dissents are here and here.
Concurrences are here and here.
This really has nothing to do with user usability, performance, or anything else. The MPAA and RIAA are tired of having to wait for dir /s to finish (assuming they've hacked your computer) to figure out if you have any pirated music or movies. It's too slow to make it feasible to run scans of large numbers of computers. It's also quite noticeable to the user.
Give them a simple backdoor to access WinFS remotely on any computer (through some bill they push through congress soon after the release of LongHorn), and they can scan entire networks in a reasonable amount of time. Doesn't require them to run indexing software on your computer, since Microsoft has done it for them. Trivial application to write if WinFS is really based on SQL Server, one would imagine.
It's not just DRM boys and girls, it's easily enforceable DRM.
Hey, maybe they can use the "Messenger" Service that runs by default that does pop-up messages
Message from User 'YerFucked':
Click ok to pay us for the 1800 MP3's you've downloaded or click cancel and the police will be dispatched to your location. Thank you for your compliance.
The little guy fills out the necessary paperwork to proceed in forma pauperis?
:)
Check out the Supreme Court of the US's order lists sometimes.
Look for "Motion for petitioner to proceed in forma pauperis is granted".
That means "I don't have to pay the legal fees cause I can't afford it".