Perhaps I didn't explain it clearly enough for you to understand. Yes, the processing units are separate things (albeit in the same package, connected by an internal bus), and I'm not why you thought I was suggesting otherwise.
Then substitute the Power Processor Element with a dual core X86_64 element.
Then substitute the Synergistic Processor Elements with new processor elements derived from ATIs GPU work (eg the same technology that Folding@Home uses to accelerate their X1900 GPU client math).
Or maybe I'm dreaming and only IBM, Sony, and Toshiba are capable of creating nonsensical and impossible CPUs.
AMD's only real hope is to keep producing entire new twists. Not stepwise refinements - entire new directions.
The ATI merger suggests one of three things to me: 1) wanting to compete with Intel in the IGP segment, 2) wanting to branch out, or 3) wanting technology that ATI has to improve their CPU product. Option 1) seems very "meh" to me, option 2) seems very badly timed, while option 3) is both ballsy and risky. If AMD rolled out a Cell-like processor with 2 or 4 improved x86-64 cores, and a handful of on-chip stream-processor cores (presumably with help from the ATI engineers) with ridiculous floating point performance, it might just be radical enough to get the market's attention.
You're right, but IMHO, that just tells me that the monkeys and us are not so different. They haven'thad to evolve that behaviour, but they're capable of implementing it. It suggests that monkeys would be capable of arriving at a society similar to ours, given enough time and environmental pressure to do so (including specialization, see the post about the female bonobo monkey).
We'll see. Fear of piracy is a red herring - we're talking about GPU access, nothing more. Loss of revenue is a fair argument though, because if people are buying PS3 and not buying games, that's costing Sony money. OTOH, Sony could double the price and it would still be cheap for that kind of usage.
From Wikipedia, "Because we have plans for having Linux on board the PS3, we also recognize Linux programming activities... Other than game studios tied to official developer licenses, we had like to see various individuals participate in content creation for the PS3."
Now, if they're serious about this they'll hear the cries from their Linux community customers (who, btw, likely also buy games for their PS3) for direct access to the GPU. The current framebuffer access is a dog, although it's just fine if you want to crunch numbers. If they do that, they're opening the PS3 up to be more of a "PC" machine, albeit with little memory. If they can get talented non-gamer programmers into it, we're potentially looking at the next Amiga here ( as in, a revolution in content and multi-processing power... hopefully without the horrible mismanagement;-) ). I'm sure Sony knows this, given some of Ken Kataguri's quotes.
Please Sony, give the next revision upgradeable memory and a hypervisor that allows RSX access.
Though I don't understand why, seeing as they're losing 5.1 sound thanks to the pathetic codec and format support and lack of tools to generate h.264 + 5.1.
FWIW, mencoder will do h.264 + 5.1 just fine.
Linux on the PS3 is junk. No access to RSX means you're running with next to no memory and very poor video drivers, so forget a nippy desktop or decent video playback.
They'll get direct access to the RSX sorted in time, but for now we have to live with framebuffer access through the hypervisor. I don't mind though, because it's a fraction of the price of anything else you can buy with a Cell processor (eg IBM QS20 or Mercury Cell). I think the significant purpose of supporting Linux is to provide a low-cost Cell BE environment for interested parties to play with.
Agreed. C'mon Aussie, don't let your politicians set a precedent for other nations (like NZ!) to follow. Make some noise and get it repealed, 'cause you guys are better than that.
-- Don't call it "terrorism", because I'm not afraid.
Educating the masses to use PKI though is difficult.
Why so? PKI is a pretty simple concept at the high level, and most folks would just need to mentally replace their SSN/PIN/Whatever with their private key. Are people really that stupid in mass?
Actualy, they probably are, and I guess Spam Co X would just ask for their Private Key to "verify their identity" or somesuch anyway. And also consider that the folks making these kinds of decisions are generally not as IT or security savvy as the IT professionals on Slashdot... so even if someone advised the appropriate politician to go with it, without enormous lobbying, convincing, public relations, scare tactics, etc, the punters wouldn't accept such a change anyway. For most (older, non-technical, wealthy) people, the Status Quo is always preferred.
Really though, I think the main issue is that They (Govt, Marketing/Spammers, Whoever) want a unique identifier, not a secure identifier. Once identify theft and cross-corruption of identifiers in databases becomes a big enough problem for Them, the system will change.
(I must apologise for the paranoid They/Them terminology, but I can't think of a more appropriate term...)
Yes, but HD quality != DVD quality. and It's definitely not YouTube quality. Agreed.
So, while what they're offering isn't HD quality, it is DVD quality... Not so much.
From the Press Release: "Movies downloaded from the iTunes Store are downloaded in near-DVD quality at a resolution of 640x480 (up to 480, depending on the aspect ratio)"
Where I'm from, DVD in PAL format is 720*576, and the movies are typically 4GB+ on the DVD. Now, given that the resolution has been reduced (particularly if we're talking about widescreen: 640 * X) and given that the download size is around 1.3 GB, I'd say guess that the compression has been upped as well. No mention is made of the compression codec used, but hopefully it's H.264. Anyway, some folks now have the ability to pay for a movie download of quality that's comparable to those available to a typical DivX via P2P - watchable sure, but not DVD quality, especially on a bigger screen. Apple's only competitive advantage is that it's legal...
So anyways, I'm wondering if Linux has good out-of-box support for digital audio on most motherboards these days?
It's doable. Just not "out of the box" IME.
Alsa supports digital/optical out on many chipsets, but you likely need to configure digital out and the sample rate conversion chains yourself. It's tricky to be honest, but there are guides out there (Alsa Wiki now has some info on this). I set up a MythTV system for an ex-flatmate a while back, with a 5.1 A/V receiver via optical cable and it sounds great. IIRC, it used the Envy24HT chipset (try an M-Audio Revolution 5.1 if you want a PCI card on Linux - sounds very nice)
When the majority of people seem perfectly happy with YouTube quality, why invest in more bandwidth/storage/quality? Because YouTube is free, and Apple wants use to pay. Because DVDs are cheap to rent. And because the pirated copies we can download are generally top quality rips. If I'm paying for movies from Apple, I want something of competitive quality that gives me a reason to spend my dollars (including bandwidth costs, which are significant in some markets).
Besides, Apple wants to sell these movies to play on their users' iPods, whose screens dont't even have NTSC resolution. Then they're missing an enormous chunk of their market.
I don't believe that morality comes into it. Possibly ethics, but my limited experience with the US tells me that if you can a) gain advantage, b) get away with it, and c) the exposure is less than the cost of doing it yourself, then you steal/copy/infringe on the "IP". Anything less would be bad business. China isn't so different...
So why not build the apps as client-server? You avoid the headaches of browser implementations, and you retain the maintainability of centralised apps. It's faster/more-responsive than browser-based web systems, and easier on the clients than a full desktop app. I think internet connected or distributed apps are great, but I also think "web" based desktop apps are layer upon layer of kludge to make a display medium behave like an application.
It's a very nice car... But, they won't yet sell them outside the California, and have no plans to sell them outside the US at all! Good luck getting one, and if you do get one, I wouldn't expect a company that short-sighted to be around for long.
Goverment (local or otherwise) does step in to enforce values such as these, for precisely the reason that it is annoying, and because (as above) a small percentage of asshats simply won't respond to anything other than violence (be it legal, financial, or physical). Given - as you rightly say - that people will be held accountable if they get physical, Goverment has to supply legal and financial alternatives on behalf of the people.
Just two mundane examples... 1) Commercial parking in often banned residential areas, because it's annoying to residents, and 2) Quiet areas are usually enforced in most libraries, because it's annoying to people reading.
It also implies there's more to the story than is written here. I suspect her insurance company will be most interested in getting those Craigslist records.
Indeed. It would be awesome if the paint on the car held the solar generating dyes under a clearcoat, so it was continuously generating electricity. Location tracking and purpose designed street lights might even enable pay-per-mile night time driving.
I suspect that's more-or-less where they're going with this - but with shaders rather than FPGA.
On-core graphics is a cute trick that might some money and mainboard real-estate, but on-core stream processors with programmable shaders has real potential. This will be comparable to on-chip integration of the first FPUs. As an idea of what this might do for non-graphics apps, look at the FAH stats, and you'll see what the ATI GPU and PS3 are currently doing with their stream processors ( http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype= osstats ).
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps I didn't explain it clearly enough for you to understand. Yes, the processing units are separate things (albeit in the same package, connected by an internal bus), and I'm not why you thought I was suggesting otherwise.
h tml
Read this - http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell1_v2.
Then substitute the Power Processor Element with a dual core X86_64 element.
Then substitute the Synergistic Processor Elements with new processor elements derived from ATIs GPU work (eg the same technology that Folding@Home uses to accelerate their X1900 GPU client math).
Or maybe I'm dreaming and only IBM, Sony, and Toshiba are capable of creating nonsensical and impossible CPUs.
So, this dude needs cash and support... and I need a high-risk, high return investment.
Where do I sign? Or, to the Slashdot community at large, where do WE sign?
AMD's only real hope is to keep producing entire new twists. Not stepwise refinements - entire new directions.
The ATI merger suggests one of three things to me: 1) wanting to compete with Intel in the IGP segment, 2) wanting to branch out, or 3) wanting technology that ATI has to improve their CPU product. Option 1) seems very "meh" to me, option 2) seems very badly timed, while option 3) is both ballsy and risky. If AMD rolled out a Cell-like processor with 2 or 4 improved x86-64 cores, and a handful of on-chip stream-processor cores (presumably with help from the ATI engineers) with ridiculous floating point performance, it might just be radical enough to get the market's attention.
It is well timed, isn't it?
In computer science, Big O notation is used for the complexity of a task.
Meanwhile, outside computer science, Big O faces are used for the completion of a task.
You're right, but IMHO, that just tells me that the monkeys and us are not so different. They haven'thad to evolve that behaviour, but they're capable of implementing it. It suggests that monkeys would be capable of arriving at a society similar to ours, given enough time and environmental pressure to do so (including specialization, see the post about the female bonobo monkey).
We'll see. Fear of piracy is a red herring - we're talking about GPU access, nothing more. Loss of revenue is a fair argument though, because if people are buying PS3 and not buying games, that's costing Sony money. OTOH, Sony could double the price and it would still be cheap for that kind of usage.
No, by "they" I mean Sony.
;-) ). I'm sure Sony knows this, given some of Ken Kataguri's quotes.
From Wikipedia, "Because we have plans for having Linux on board the PS3, we also recognize Linux programming activities... Other than game studios tied to official developer licenses, we had like to see various individuals participate in content creation for the PS3."
Now, if they're serious about this they'll hear the cries from their Linux community customers (who, btw, likely also buy games for their PS3) for direct access to the GPU. The current framebuffer access is a dog, although it's just fine if you want to crunch numbers. If they do that, they're opening the PS3 up to be more of a "PC" machine, albeit with little memory. If they can get talented non-gamer programmers into it, we're potentially looking at the next Amiga here ( as in, a revolution in content and multi-processing power... hopefully without the horrible mismanagement
Please Sony, give the next revision upgradeable memory and a hypervisor that allows RSX access.
Though I don't understand why, seeing as they're losing 5.1 sound thanks to the pathetic codec and format support and lack of tools to generate h.264 + 5.1.
FWIW, mencoder will do h.264 + 5.1 just fine.
Linux on the PS3 is junk. No access to RSX means you're running with next to no memory and very poor video drivers, so forget a nippy desktop or decent video playback.
They'll get direct access to the RSX sorted in time, but for now we have to live with framebuffer access through the hypervisor. I don't mind though, because it's a fraction of the price of anything else you can buy with a Cell processor (eg IBM QS20 or Mercury Cell). I think the significant purpose of supporting Linux is to provide a low-cost Cell BE environment for interested parties to play with.
Sorry, but censorship is not "appropriate".
Agreed. C'mon Aussie, don't let your politicians set a precedent for other nations (like NZ!) to follow. Make some noise and get it repealed, 'cause you guys are better than that.
--
Don't call it "terrorism", because I'm not afraid.
Educating the masses to use PKI though is difficult.
Why so? PKI is a pretty simple concept at the high level, and most folks would just need to mentally replace their SSN/PIN/Whatever with their private key. Are people really that stupid in mass?
Actualy, they probably are, and I guess Spam Co X would just ask for their Private Key to "verify their identity" or somesuch anyway. And also consider that the folks making these kinds of decisions are generally not as IT or security savvy as the IT professionals on Slashdot... so even if someone advised the appropriate politician to go with it, without enormous lobbying, convincing, public relations, scare tactics, etc, the punters wouldn't accept such a change anyway. For most (older, non-technical, wealthy) people, the Status Quo is always preferred.
Really though, I think the main issue is that They (Govt, Marketing/Spammers, Whoever) want a unique identifier, not a secure identifier. Once identify theft and cross-corruption of identifiers in databases becomes a big enough problem for Them, the system will change.
(I must apologise for the paranoid They/Them terminology, but I can't think of a more appropriate term...)
Yes, but HD quality != DVD quality. and It's definitely not YouTube quality.
Agreed.
So, while what they're offering isn't HD quality, it is DVD quality...
Not so much.
From the Press Release:
"Movies downloaded from the iTunes Store are downloaded in near-DVD quality at a resolution of 640x480 (up to 480, depending on the aspect ratio)"
Where I'm from, DVD in PAL format is 720*576, and the movies are typically 4GB+ on the DVD. Now, given that the resolution has been reduced (particularly if we're talking about widescreen: 640 * X) and given that the download size is around 1.3 GB, I'd say guess that the compression has been upped as well. No mention is made of the compression codec used, but hopefully it's H.264. Anyway, some folks now have the ability to pay for a movie download of quality that's comparable to those available to a typical DivX via P2P - watchable sure, but not DVD quality, especially on a bigger screen. Apple's only competitive advantage is that it's legal...
So anyways, I'm wondering if Linux has good out-of-box support for digital audio on most motherboards these days?
It's doable. Just not "out of the box" IME.
Alsa supports digital/optical out on many chipsets, but you likely need to configure digital out and the sample rate conversion chains yourself. It's tricky to be honest, but there are guides out there (Alsa Wiki now has some info on this). I set up a MythTV system for an ex-flatmate a while back, with a 5.1 A/V receiver via optical cable and it sounds great. IIRC, it used the Envy24HT chipset (try an M-Audio Revolution 5.1 if you want a PCI card on Linux - sounds very nice)
Can monkeys type with their feet? Better make it four threads.
... to add 'Tin Foil Hats' to our anti-terrorist kits. At least the duct tape won't be lonely anymore.
Don't forget the Vasoline.
When the majority of people seem perfectly happy with YouTube quality, why invest in more bandwidth/storage/quality?
Because YouTube is free, and Apple wants use to pay. Because DVDs are cheap to rent. And because the pirated copies we can download are generally top quality rips. If I'm paying for movies from Apple, I want something of competitive quality that gives me a reason to spend my dollars (including bandwidth costs, which are significant in some markets).
Besides, Apple wants to sell these movies to play on their users' iPods, whose screens dont't even have NTSC resolution.
Then they're missing an enormous chunk of their market.
I don't believe that morality comes into it. Possibly ethics, but my limited experience with the US tells me that if you can a) gain advantage, b) get away with it, and c) the exposure is less than the cost of doing it yourself, then you steal/copy/infringe on the "IP". Anything less would be bad business. China isn't so different...
So why not build the apps as client-server? You avoid the headaches of browser implementations, and you retain the maintainability of centralised apps. It's faster/more-responsive than browser-based web systems, and easier on the clients than a full desktop app. I think internet connected or distributed apps are great, but I also think "web" based desktop apps are layer upon layer of kludge to make a display medium behave like an application.
Google may be filled with the best engineers, but once you move out of North America, they know nothing about ethics or morality.
I'm curious how much time you've spent outside of North America, because I'm pretty sure 92% of the world population would disagree with you.
Dude, you should have been modded insightful.
It's a very nice car... But, they won't yet sell them outside the California, and have no plans to sell them outside the US at all! Good luck getting one, and if you do get one, I wouldn't expect a company that short-sighted to be around for long.
You, my friend, are wrong.
Goverment (local or otherwise) does step in to enforce values such as these, for precisely the reason that it is annoying, and because (as above) a small percentage of asshats simply won't respond to anything other than violence (be it legal, financial, or physical). Given - as you rightly say - that people will be held accountable if they get physical, Goverment has to supply legal and financial alternatives on behalf of the people.
Just two mundane examples... 1) Commercial parking in often banned residential areas, because it's annoying to residents, and 2) Quiet areas are usually enforced in most libraries, because it's annoying to people reading.
It also implies there's more to the story than is written here. I suspect her insurance company will be most interested in getting those Craigslist records.
Indeed. It would be awesome if the paint on the car held the solar generating dyes under a clearcoat, so it was continuously generating electricity. Location tracking and purpose designed street lights might even enable pay-per-mile night time driving.
I suspect that's more-or-less where they're going with this - but with shaders rather than FPGA.
On-core graphics is a cute trick that might some money and mainboard real-estate, but on-core stream processors with programmable shaders has real potential. This will be comparable to on-chip integration of the first FPUs. As an idea of what this might do for non-graphics apps, look at the FAH stats, and you'll see what the ATI GPU and PS3 are currently doing with their stream processors ( http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype= osstats ).