"If X is true and Y is true, does that make Z true?"
People will sall him a liar if Z is in fact false. But he never said Z was true, he only asked.
If Moore has undeniable evidence, then he states it as fact. If all he has is evidence that suggests, then he asks the question that anybody would and that should hopefully cause the audience to think about.
If they come out, thinking he said something that he did not, then they have comprehension difficulties. Do you want Moore to constantly provide verbal disclaimers to every question along the lines of, "now, don't get me wrong, I am not stating this is fact, I am merely raising the obvious question"? It would be ridiculous and an insult to the intelligence of the audience.
He exploits his subjects (tasteless interview with Charlton Heston,
Heston's marches were not tasteless?
harasses security guards and receptionists in an attempt to talk to the "big cheese,"
Represent a fucking arsehole, then expect to get treated like one or at least bear the brunt of discomfort from someone who wants to get to that arsehole big cheese.
not to mention what he did with those crippled kids at K-Mart.)
They may have been under 21, but I would hardly call them children. They appeared very willing to accept Moores help and it seemed a mother was present and perhaps consenting.
DO YOU THINK THE SUBJECT OF THESE PEOPLES WOES DOES NOT WARRANT SOME STRONG WORDS TO BRING IT INTO THE FOCUS IT DESERVES?
INNOCENT CHILDREN DIED AND YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT RESPECTING SOME RICH OLD ELITIST FUCK WHO WAS GROSSLY DISRESPECTFUL TO FAMILY, FRIENDS AND COMMUNITY OF THE DECEASED CHILDREN?
I once dated the niece of Teb Bundy (the serial killer).
Ah, yes of course, Teb Bundy the serial killer who force feeds nerds with Jolt until they suffer cardiac arrest (not to be confused with Ted Bundy, another sick fuck).
Nothing, once the kernel is _built_ to your needs on an OpenBSD machine, you _really_ don't need to recompile it, ever.
Or, looking at it another way, if you are a user tracking -stable, so as to stay up-to-date with security and stability patches, you should be recompiling the OpenBSD kernel (and then some) a lot more often than never.
That said, I'm going back to Linux. Why? The scheduler: I really miss the ability to do a bunch of things at once and still keep playing Ogg files.
This is surprising. I ran OpenBSD on a PII-300. I would run MP3's without any skipping, while surfing the net and making -stable release in a minimized xterm.
I have not tried the Linux 2.6 kernel yet, however, so I can't comment on feel.
Linux 2.4 certainly did skip MP3's on this machine.
I was using a 3.4 install disk. The Compaq that I tried it on wouldn't even boot at all with 3.4. If the boot code is different on 3.5, I'll give it another try.
Oh cool, I hope it works for you.
Sometimes when I create OpenBSD -stable UltraSPARC CD's, I boot from older genuine OpenBSD UltraSPARC media and then swap with my -stable CD (because I have put little effort into figuring out how to make a bootable UltraSPARC OpenBSD CD). One day, I rekon it might bite me. ; )
My Thinkpad is a type 1161-41U. OpenBSD 3.5 bootable CD (home made from -stable), I can confirm, still does not boot.
The OpenBSD team needs to give their installer some more polish (from the functional standpoint not the prettiness standpoint)
It seems you have been quite unlucky.
I've been using OpenBSD since 2.5. The installer was a bit of a shock at first, but once it makes sense, it is wonderful (and it is sensible). I usually can install OpenBSD with X in under 5 minutes and I've only ever found one machine to not install for me (an IBM Thinkpad series 1300).
I've installed on tons of x86 machines, some MacPPC, a 68k Mac and a Sun Ultra 10. No problems. I cannot say the same for some Linux distros or the other BSD's.
I plan to have another crack at that Thinkpad, now that OpenBSD 3.5 has new boot code.
There are times when OpenBSD won't work, where some Linux distro does or vice versa. So try again. Don't write OpenBSD off because of a few bad initial attempts. I've been using Linux for about 7 years and tried lots of distros and the BSD's. I settled on OpenBSD (and Debian when I must use Linux).
I was joking, for the love of God. Do you think after 12 years of 3D Studio usage, that I would have actually meant it? I've been programming for a hell of a lot longer than that too.
The technique is borrowed from machine learning (which is my current area of study, so I feel I have some understanding of it).
I don't care how they go about acheiving it in the end. The theory, based on the article, is that adjacent trianges with similar face directions, can be reduced to fewer triangles or polygons, possibly with an acceptable, adjustable loss of detail. There is NOTHING new about that in 3D mesh complexity reduction. NOTHING.
The technique to achieve it might be interesting, but reducing adjacent triangles with similar face directions is neither new or super complex.
PS, I DID read the article. My "rant" is based on the article, not the technique involved. Good things can be badly hyped you know.
This is really hyped. This is not compression in the sense of MP3, where you have to decode it. It's just replacing lots of small trianges that make up a flatish surface, with fewer large triangles or polygons. Big deal!
Uh... using your analogy, DCT+quantization based video compression is just replacing lots of different frequencies of similar magnitudes with one magnitude. Transforms aren't necessary for compression, especially if the input data is already in a somewhat analyzed state, like triangle vertex data.
Notice I used the word "not". Stating that this is NOT like audio compression? This technique searches for adjacent triangles which share a similar face direction and then replaces them with a larger triangle or polygon. End result being less data required to encode that area with the loss of some detail ("this approach to geometry approximation"). Nothing at all like audio or video compression (unless you compare with RLE compression that allows ).
I didn't mention anything about video compression and this story has nothing at all to do with video compression.
I did not state that transforms are required for compression, but transforms are most certainly used in this form.
Do you dispute this... "It's just replacing lots of small trianges that make up a flatish surface, with fewer large triangles or polygons." because this is a caption from the image, "Simplifying by condensing small triangles (colored) into larger ones, and then into polygons.".
I've been using 3D Studio for about 12 years. I can't remember when this type of triangle reduction feature came in, but 3DS had it.
It would basically reduce the number of trianges more where they together made flatish surfaces and practically not touch the triangles that made up significant details.
"Mathieu Desbrun, assistant professor of computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering says that digital sound, pictures and video are relatively easy to compress today but that the complex files of 3-D objects present a much greater challenge."
What!? How hard is it to remove triangles based on the direction that they face!?
"His "Variational Shape Approximation" scheme created with two collaborators produces simplified but highly accurate "meshes" representing 3-D shapes. The meshes are orders of magnitude smaller than those produced by existing ways of handling such files but remain completely compatible with all widely used methods to display and use the information."
This is really hyped. This is not compression in the sense of MP3, where you have to decode it. It's just replacing lots of small trianges that make up a flatish surface, with fewer large triangles or polygons. Big deal!
"The proxy representation, once refined, is then reconverted into a now-optimized mesh -- but not necessarily a mesh of triangles. The technique turns them instead into an assortment of polygons -- some triangles, but also four, five, six or more sided figures that more efficiently represent the shape"
Could this be a cop out? Since it could be difficult to replace some triangle groups with a larger triangle without changing the overall shape?
Polygon's are traditionally reduced to triangles for speed benefits! So why not go that little extra?
"This is not a hack," says another expert, in the field GÈrard Medioni, professor of computer science and chair of the department at the Viterbi School, using the term for a makeshift, unsystematic improvisation. "It has a strong formal basis. You can make up extreme cases that will trick it, but for ordinary shapes, it works remarkably well."
Cool, Shrek 3 will be nothing but primitives! Move along, nothing to see here...
The OpenBSD project simply has too few resources, and that's for sure! And that has nothing to do with "different set of priorities then Linux". I'm pretty sure, that Linux developers are numerous enough to aim for all three goals: reliability, safety and efficiency.
SMP opens up huge security implications, it has absolutely everything to do with "different set of priorities then Linux".
OpenBSD has a better security track record than Linux, with those numerous Linux developers and manages to deliver it without hurting functionality.
I think a big reason OpenBSD might be pushing forward with SMP now, is due to multicore CPU's and technoligies like HT.
Before that, with security being the prime focus of OpenBSD, they would have been silly to put any efforts into SMP, since the performance gains are nowhere near worth the security hassles.
People will only upgrade when their gadgets break, or a new technology comes out they really need.
My GSM phone is going on 7 years old. I keep it because it is a mobile telephone, which works well and has a standby time of about 3 weeks or talk time of about 8 hours. Until I find a phone I can rely on to keep me contactable all day almost guaranteed or until it breaks, I will keep it.
I don't ever want to go back to the days of having a mobile that cuts out before the business day is over and I'm nowhere near a power outlet.
I see friends who have these super expensive mobiles that do-it-all, but don't last a day if they listen to some mp3's. Keep your old phone and buy an iPod!
Many people choose FreeBSD because of its maturity (its been around longer than linux)
That is arguable. 'FreeBSD' (1993) has not been around as long as Linux (1991), however the codebase that FreeBSD is built on is much older than Linux.
Linux is cool, but I love the BSD's, especially OpenBSD. The BSD's are maintained as complete systems and the consistency which that brings really shows. This is not to say that any given Linux distribution does not try to maintain their complete system (thinking Debian).
CISC is currently in fashion, but RISC will be back......
CISC might be in fashion, but the CISC supermodels are all RISC wearing some fancy CISC frocks. ; )
As far as I'm concerned, a big turning point for major RISC dominance over CISC, came with the Pentium Pro.
The way I see it (not that it goes against your view), is that "CISC" is still largely "around" only due to it's unfortunate legacy in a very popular market.
They should also build a SPARC->x86 dynamic binary translator to ease the migration path to the new ISA.
Although it might appear that Sun are not killing the UltraSPARC line, just the V, I think they will be. It seems to me that they know they can build faster machines much more economically with AMD64 and build multi-core UltraSPARCS to give them time to safely migrate while still allowing performance bumps.
Just a thought. I don't see the point in R&D of a 64bit CPU which could not compete with AMD64.
This is most unfortunate since the UltraSPARC line was extremely efficient. Under heavy loads even an UltraSPARC II with 128MB of RAM could outperform an Intel chip with ten times the RAM.
I have:
333MHz UltraSPARC IIi: Ultra 10 128MB RAM in one bank. 300MHz IBM G3: Old Clamshell iBook 192MB 222 PC-100 SDRAM 300MHz Intel Pentium II: Generic PC 384MB 222 PC-100 SDRAM
In Ubench, the x86 and PPC are much faster than the UltraSPARC (in the processing test, not memory). I can't remember how much quicker the PII was, but the little G3 was 2-3 TIMES faster than the UltraSPARC.
Building a full release of OpenBSD 3.4 (including X), the UltraSPARC took 7 hours and the G3 took 5. I assume the slow notebook drive slows the iBook considerably in this regard.
I was shocked.
They say that the UltraSPARC FPU is where its performance is impressive, but I've seen benchmarks which don't seem all that great to me.
From all accounts I have heard from, the Blade 100 with it's relatively highly clocked III, runs like a two legged dog, compared with generic Intel gear.
I own a SunSPARC 10. It's a work of art. Sometimes I pull the cover off just to look at it.
Yeah. I got an introduction to Sun taking engineering very seriously, when I noticed that they don't use wire links or bridge soldered pads on PCB's. They use zero ohm resistors instead (seriously). ; )
First they settle with Microsoft for $2 billion, and now this. Are things really this bad for Sun?
No, they are just being smart.
The days of 64bit Unix being dominated by names like Sun, HP/Compaq and IBM might soon be over. Previously, they could all comfortably compete with each other with a relatively even footing.
But now that a company like AMD, sell 64bit CPU's which have features like per page security, a company like Sun would be stupid to compete against their massive economies of scale power.
AMD will be able to build a better CPU for a lower cost, because they can afford to build so many more units and put lots more money back into R&D.
Sun would be fighting against the dollars of Ma's and Pa's. The niche that a few smaller companies had in 64bit CPU's, is now over. No point in trying to make a minority architecture, go head-to-head against a majority architecture.
I said months ago to friends, that Sun would kill the UltraSPARC soon, due to AMD64. I didn't realise it would be this soon though.
This is a smart move by Sun. Any company that continues to make an exotic 64bit CPU (ie NOT PPC or x86) which will inevitably compete with AMD's manufacturing and R&D power, will lose. Why R&D and build an uncompetitive CPU when you can buy a better one cheaper?
I think we will eventually see Compaq move to AMD64 too.
Whether Sun is or is not in financial trouble, this move is not proof of it.
PS, per page security in the AMD64's is killer, in my opinion. Especially considering that I use OpenBSD.
The RS/6000 that I ran NetBSD on was one of the PREP boxes. So it had a PowerPC processor, ISA and PCI slots, an S3 video chip, and used PS/2 keyboard and mouse. In all regards except for running on a PPC, it was a PC. I ran NetBSD/PREP on it.
I found one thrown out in a residential area. With "PowerPC" written on the front and RS/6000 I had to have it (BTW, it was built like a main battle tank! So bloody heavy for such a little box!). When I got it home, I found it had no HDD (which I would assume would be no problem), no CDROM, no floppy drive and no RAM.
An AIX expert friend of mine told me that I would have trouble even getting AIX on it without a supported CDROM drive (apparently just any SCSI CDROM drive would not do), so after many weeks I ditched it. ; ( It was picked up again within hours, BTW, I guess a little box with IBM written on it would have been snapped up by a PC user. ; )
Not all RS/6000 boxes are as 'PC compatible' as that machine (a 7248 box). I now have an absolutely ancient box, one based on the Power1 processor, that I seem to be limited to running AIX on. Though I will be checking on that before long.
This one seemed to have what looked like PS/2 connectors for K, M and C (Console?).
Maybe I should have kept it. ; (
It did not have anything that looked like a VGA connector though. Mostly lots of DB25 connectors, seemingly for serial, parallel and SCSI.
If you're just talking about some home theatre kind of movie sharing, there really wouldn't be a need for it.
Yes, 100Mbit should be plenty for that.
Watching a raw DVD file served from my OpenBSD Samba server, uses about 7Mbit. That's not to say that other DVD's won't require more though, but certainly not 100Mbit, let alone 1Gbit.
Slashdot Mirror
"If X is true and Y is true, does that make Z true?"
People will sall him a liar if Z is in fact false. But he never said Z was true, he only asked.
If Moore has undeniable evidence, then he states it as fact. If all he has is evidence that suggests, then he asks the question that anybody would and that should hopefully cause the audience to think about.
If they come out, thinking he said something that he did not, then they have comprehension difficulties. Do you want Moore to constantly provide verbal disclaimers to every question along the lines of, "now, don't get me wrong, I am not stating this is fact, I am merely raising the obvious question"? It would be ridiculous and an insult to the intelligence of the audience.
I don't see anything wrong with what he is doing.
He exploits his subjects (tasteless interview with Charlton Heston,
Heston's marches were not tasteless?
harasses security guards and receptionists in an attempt to talk to the "big cheese,"
Represent a fucking arsehole, then expect to get treated like one or at least bear the brunt of discomfort from someone who wants to get to that arsehole big cheese.
not to mention what he did with those crippled kids at K-Mart.)
They may have been under 21, but I would hardly call them children. They appeared very willing to accept Moores help and it seemed a mother was present and perhaps consenting.
DO YOU THINK THE SUBJECT OF THESE PEOPLES WOES DOES NOT WARRANT SOME STRONG WORDS TO BRING IT INTO THE FOCUS IT DESERVES?
INNOCENT CHILDREN DIED AND YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT RESPECTING SOME RICH OLD ELITIST FUCK WHO WAS GROSSLY DISRESPECTFUL TO FAMILY, FRIENDS AND COMMUNITY OF THE DECEASED CHILDREN?
YOU NEED TO WAKE UP TO YOURSELF
I once dated the niece of Teb Bundy (the serial killer).
Ah, yes of course, Teb Bundy the serial killer who force feeds nerds with Jolt until they suffer cardiac arrest (not to be confused with Ted Bundy, another sick fuck).
Nothing, once the kernel is _built_ to your needs on an OpenBSD machine, you _really_ don't need to recompile it, ever.
Or, looking at it another way, if you are a user tracking -stable, so as to stay up-to-date with security and stability patches, you should be recompiling the OpenBSD kernel (and then some) a lot more often than never.
That said, I'm going back to Linux. Why? The scheduler: I really miss the ability to do a bunch of things at once and still keep playing Ogg files.
This is surprising. I ran OpenBSD on a PII-300. I would run MP3's without any skipping, while surfing the net and making -stable release in a minimized xterm.
I have not tried the Linux 2.6 kernel yet, however, so I can't comment on feel.
Linux 2.4 certainly did skip MP3's on this machine.
I was using a 3.4 install disk. The Compaq that I tried it on wouldn't even boot at all with 3.4. If the boot code is different on 3.5, I'll give it another try.
Oh cool, I hope it works for you.
Sometimes when I create OpenBSD -stable UltraSPARC CD's, I boot from older genuine OpenBSD UltraSPARC media and then swap with my -stable CD (because I have put little effort into figuring out how to make a bootable UltraSPARC OpenBSD CD). One day, I rekon it might bite me. ; )
My Thinkpad is a type 1161-41U. OpenBSD 3.5 bootable CD (home made from -stable), I can confirm, still does not boot.
I might try booting from various 3.5 floppies...
The OpenBSD team needs to give their installer some more polish (from the functional standpoint not the prettiness standpoint)
It seems you have been quite unlucky.
I've been using OpenBSD since 2.5. The installer was a bit of a shock at first, but once it makes sense, it is wonderful (and it is sensible). I usually can install OpenBSD with X in under 5 minutes and I've only ever found one machine to not install for me (an IBM Thinkpad series 1300).
I've installed on tons of x86 machines, some MacPPC, a 68k Mac and a Sun Ultra 10. No problems. I cannot say the same for some Linux distros or the other BSD's.
I plan to have another crack at that Thinkpad, now that OpenBSD 3.5 has new boot code.
There are times when OpenBSD won't work, where some Linux distro does or vice versa. So try again. Don't write OpenBSD off because of a few bad initial attempts. I've been using Linux for about 7 years and tried lots of distros and the BSD's. I settled on OpenBSD (and Debian when I must use Linux).
Ordinary != primitives.
I was joking, for the love of God. Do you think after 12 years of 3D Studio usage, that I would have actually meant it? I've been programming for a hell of a lot longer than that too.
The technique is borrowed from machine learning (which is my current area of study, so I feel I have some understanding of it).
I don't care how they go about acheiving it in the end. The theory, based on the article, is that adjacent trianges with similar face directions, can be reduced to fewer triangles or polygons, possibly with an acceptable, adjustable loss of detail. There is NOTHING new about that in 3D mesh complexity reduction. NOTHING.
The technique to achieve it might be interesting, but reducing adjacent triangles with similar face directions is neither new or super complex.
PS, I DID read the article. My "rant" is based on the article, not the technique involved. Good things can be badly hyped you know.
This is really hyped. This is not compression in the sense of MP3, where you have to decode it. It's just replacing lots of small trianges that make up a flatish surface, with fewer large triangles or polygons. Big deal!
Uh... using your analogy, DCT+quantization based video compression is just replacing lots of different frequencies of similar magnitudes with one magnitude. Transforms aren't necessary for compression, especially if the input data is already in a somewhat analyzed state, like triangle vertex data.
Notice I used the word "not". Stating that this is NOT like audio compression? This technique searches for adjacent triangles which share a similar face direction and then replaces them with a larger triangle or polygon. End result being less data required to encode that area with the loss of some detail ("this approach to geometry approximation"). Nothing at all like audio or video compression (unless you compare with RLE compression that allows ).
I didn't mention anything about video compression and this story has nothing at all to do with video compression.
I did not state that transforms are required for compression, but transforms are most certainly used in this form.
Do you dispute this... "It's just replacing lots of small trianges that make up a flatish surface, with fewer large triangles or polygons." because this is a caption from the image, "Simplifying by condensing small triangles (colored) into larger ones, and then into polygons.".
Did you fail to read the story and my post?
I've been using 3D Studio for about 12 years. I can't remember when this type of triangle reduction feature came in, but 3DS had it.
It would basically reduce the number of trianges more where they together made flatish surfaces and practically not touch the triangles that made up significant details.
"Mathieu Desbrun, assistant professor of computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering says that digital sound, pictures and video are relatively easy to compress today but that the complex files of 3-D objects present a much greater challenge."
What!? How hard is it to remove triangles based on the direction that they face!?
"His "Variational Shape Approximation" scheme created with two collaborators produces simplified but highly accurate "meshes" representing 3-D shapes. The meshes are orders of magnitude smaller than those produced by existing ways of handling such files but remain completely compatible with all widely used methods to display and use the information."
This is really hyped. This is not compression in the sense of MP3, where you have to decode it. It's just replacing lots of small trianges that make up a flatish surface, with fewer large triangles or polygons. Big deal!
"The proxy representation, once refined, is then reconverted into a now-optimized mesh -- but not necessarily a mesh of triangles. The technique turns them instead into an assortment of polygons -- some triangles, but also four, five, six or more sided figures that more efficiently represent the shape"
Could this be a cop out? Since it could be difficult to replace some triangle groups with a larger triangle without changing the overall shape?
Polygon's are traditionally reduced to triangles for speed benefits! So why not go that little extra?
"This is not a hack," says another expert, in the field GÈrard Medioni, professor of computer science and chair of the department at the Viterbi School, using the term for a makeshift, unsystematic improvisation. "It has a strong formal basis. You can make up extreme cases that will trick it, but for ordinary shapes, it works remarkably well."
Cool, Shrek 3 will be nothing but primitives! Move along, nothing to see here...
The OpenBSD project simply has too few resources, and that's for sure! And that has nothing to do with "different set of priorities then Linux". I'm pretty sure, that Linux developers are numerous enough to aim for all three goals: reliability, safety and efficiency.
SMP opens up huge security implications, it has absolutely everything to do with "different set of priorities then Linux".
OpenBSD has a better security track record than Linux, with those numerous Linux developers and manages to deliver it without hurting functionality.
I think a big reason OpenBSD might be pushing forward with SMP now, is due to multicore CPU's and technoligies like HT.
Before that, with security being the prime focus of OpenBSD, they would have been silly to put any efforts into SMP, since the performance gains are nowhere near worth the security hassles.
is there some other use for ^ of which I'm unaware?
XOR in C and doesn't it also mean "to the power of"?
People will only upgrade when their gadgets break, or a new technology comes out they really need.
My GSM phone is going on 7 years old. I keep it because it is a mobile telephone, which works well and has a standby time of about 3 weeks or talk time of about 8 hours. Until I find a phone I can rely on to keep me contactable all day almost guaranteed or until it breaks, I will keep it.
I don't ever want to go back to the days of having a mobile that cuts out before the business day is over and I'm nowhere near a power outlet.
I see friends who have these super expensive mobiles that do-it-all, but don't last a day if they listen to some mp3's. Keep your old phone and buy an iPod!
Many people choose FreeBSD because of its maturity (its been around longer than linux)
That is arguable. 'FreeBSD' (1993) has not been around as long as Linux (1991), however the codebase that FreeBSD is built on is much older than Linux.
Linux is cool, but I love the BSD's, especially OpenBSD. The BSD's are maintained as complete systems and the consistency which that brings really shows. This is not to say that any given Linux distribution does not try to maintain their complete system (thinking Debian).
CISC is currently in fashion, but RISC will be back......
CISC might be in fashion, but the CISC supermodels are all RISC wearing some fancy CISC frocks. ; )
As far as I'm concerned, a big turning point for major RISC dominance over CISC, came with the Pentium Pro.
The way I see it (not that it goes against your view), is that "CISC" is still largely "around" only due to it's unfortunate legacy in a very popular market.
They should also build a SPARC->x86 dynamic binary translator to ease the migration path to the new ISA.
Although it might appear that Sun are not killing the UltraSPARC line, just the V, I think they will be. It seems to me that they know they can build faster machines much more economically with AMD64 and build multi-core UltraSPARCS to give them time to safely migrate while still allowing performance bumps.
Just a thought. I don't see the point in R&D of a 64bit CPU which could not compete with AMD64.
This is most unfortunate since the UltraSPARC line was extremely efficient. Under heavy loads even an UltraSPARC II with 128MB of RAM could outperform an Intel chip with ten times the RAM.
I have:
333MHz UltraSPARC IIi: Ultra 10 128MB RAM in one bank.
300MHz IBM G3: Old Clamshell iBook 192MB 222 PC-100 SDRAM
300MHz Intel Pentium II: Generic PC 384MB 222 PC-100 SDRAM
In Ubench, the x86 and PPC are much faster than the UltraSPARC (in the processing test, not memory). I can't remember how much quicker the PII was, but the little G3 was 2-3 TIMES faster than the UltraSPARC.
Building a full release of OpenBSD 3.4 (including X), the UltraSPARC took 7 hours and the G3 took 5. I assume the slow notebook drive slows the iBook considerably in this regard.
I was shocked.
They say that the UltraSPARC FPU is where its performance is impressive, but I've seen benchmarks which don't seem all that great to me.
From all accounts I have heard from, the Blade 100 with it's relatively highly clocked III, runs like a two legged dog, compared with generic Intel gear.
Newsflash: That was a little comedy, referencing the "Netcraft confirms, BSD is dead" troll.
I own a SunSPARC 10. It's a work of art. Sometimes I pull the cover off just to look at it.
Yeah. I got an introduction to Sun taking engineering very seriously, when I noticed that they don't use wire links or bridge soldered pads on PCB's. They use zero ohm resistors instead (seriously). ; )
First they settle with Microsoft for $2 billion, and now this. Are things really this bad for Sun?
No, they are just being smart.
The days of 64bit Unix being dominated by names like Sun, HP/Compaq and IBM might soon be over. Previously, they could all comfortably compete with each other with a relatively even footing.
But now that a company like AMD, sell 64bit CPU's which have features like per page security, a company like Sun would be stupid to compete against their massive economies of scale power.
AMD will be able to build a better CPU for a lower cost, because they can afford to build so many more units and put lots more money back into R&D.
Sun would be fighting against the dollars of Ma's and Pa's. The niche that a few smaller companies had in 64bit CPU's, is now over. No point in trying to make a minority architecture, go head-to-head against a majority architecture.
I said months ago to friends, that Sun would kill the UltraSPARC soon, due to AMD64. I didn't realise it would be this soon though.
This is a smart move by Sun. Any company that continues to make an exotic 64bit CPU (ie NOT PPC or x86) which will inevitably compete with AMD's manufacturing and R&D power, will lose. Why R&D and build an uncompetitive CPU when you can buy a better one cheaper?
I think we will eventually see Compaq move to AMD64 too.
Whether Sun is or is not in financial trouble, this move is not proof of it.
PS, per page security in the AMD64's is killer, in my opinion. Especially considering that I use OpenBSD.
The RS/6000 that I ran NetBSD on was one of the PREP boxes. So it had a PowerPC processor, ISA and PCI slots, an S3 video chip, and used PS/2 keyboard and mouse. In all regards except for running on a PPC, it was a PC. I ran NetBSD/PREP on it.
I found one thrown out in a residential area. With "PowerPC" written on the front and RS/6000 I had to have it (BTW, it was built like a main battle tank! So bloody heavy for such a little box!). When I got it home, I found it had no HDD (which I would assume would be no problem), no CDROM, no floppy drive and no RAM.
An AIX expert friend of mine told me that I would have trouble even getting AIX on it without a supported CDROM drive (apparently just any SCSI CDROM drive would not do), so after many weeks I ditched it. ; ( It was picked up again within hours, BTW, I guess a little box with IBM written on it would have been snapped up by a PC user. ; )
Not all RS/6000 boxes are as 'PC compatible' as that machine (a 7248 box). I now have an absolutely ancient box, one based on the Power1 processor, that I seem to be limited to running AIX on. Though I will be checking on that before long.
This one seemed to have what looked like PS/2 connectors for K, M and C (Console?).
Maybe I should have kept it. ; (
It did not have anything that looked like a VGA connector though. Mostly lots of DB25 connectors, seemingly for serial, parallel and SCSI.
Good luck with that Power1.
I wish I had mod points.
Very nicely summarized.
PS, what port did you use for the RS/6000? I couldn't find one a few months ago.
Actually, Wasabi supports NetBSD.
I thought that was his point, that FreeBSD is not the only BSD with commercial support.
7MB/s is pretty darn close to the limit of 100Mb/s. notice the difference between B and b...
Notice that I specifically said, "uses about 7Mbit".
That's less than 1Mbyte/s.
unless the math people have changed something, like adding few new numbers between 7 and 8.
When you're going to be a smart arse, you need to double check what your going to say and what you think the other guy said. ; )
If you're just talking about some home theatre kind of movie sharing, there really wouldn't be a need for it.
Yes, 100Mbit should be plenty for that.
Watching a raw DVD file served from my OpenBSD Samba server, uses about 7Mbit. That's not to say that other DVD's won't require more though, but certainly not 100Mbit, let alone 1Gbit.