The problem is that OSS isn't even concidered during the bidding phase of procurement. It is not even given a chance to provide a TCO or ROI against companies, most notibly MS. If OSS was not being selected because there were specific requirements that it could not meet, then yes your post would be correct and we wouldn't have to do all this campaigning. We would just make a better product. But what is happening is all the middle management people, the ones who OK or sink a project/proposal, just flat out refuse to look at OSS. Their thinking is "No one was ever fired for buying MS", much like the old IBM saying back in the day. The only way to fight this is to hit them over the head with a clue-by-four, OR legally require them to look at ALL bidders, not just the proprietary ones like MS.
So... you would rather they NOT annouce that they have found another *possible* exploit and just let it sit there until regular users find them and call for their blood after being exploited? I'd rather have them do the smaller releases like this because it is quicker to examin and see what is being changed, which means Redhat (my distro) will have updated rpm on up2date in about 10 minutes.
It's not an "alliance" by choice. Intel knows that Windows is on 95% of the desktops. All they have to do is write a few new subroutines to detect Intel chips and to degrade the system performance if they wanted to hurt Intel. Look at their recent adoption of AMD's 64 bit ISA. It's their way of telling Intel "You better do what we say, because we can always decide to help out your competition instead of you". There was a big lawsuit about this a while back where Bill directly threatened Barret if they didn't do what MS wanted. Hence why Barret is saying this. It's also part of the reason why one half of Intel is pushing Linux and another what's to hide the first half. They don't want to piss MS off.
But is it more popular because it is technically better, or is it because it is coming from the underdog AMD? People love rooting for the underdog, hence why people love AMD. It's been a while since they've had a good quarter, and if things don't improve for them and fast they will fail as a business.
I think that their answer to 64 bit computing is a "patch" at best. They are trying to bring the x86 world into 64 bit computing when it's really to wrong answer. Extending the x86 architecture is a mistake. It needs to be completely scrapped and started over, hence why Intel designed the Itanium. I'm not saying that the Itanium is the end-all-be-all for 64 bit computing, but the basic idea is the right one. Take the opportunity of the 64 bit upgrade to start from scratch. Fix all the aspects of the x86 instruction set that caused all these CPUs to take so many transistors and die space. Intel knows this, that's why they are investing in the Itanium line instead of just changing their ALUs and FPUs from 32 bit to 64 bit and from changing the size of their registers. That's more of a hack than a solution from a technical stand point.
Will AMD's answer to 64 bit suceed? I a word, no. Some will adopt it, but mainly it will only be the AMD fanboy types, both in the home and in the fringe technical world. Those who have to worry about more than supporting their favorite underdog will look at the Opteron from a technical stand point and see the same thing Intel has seen. It is a simple hack to extend x86 into 64 bit computing, not a true jump from 32 bit to 64 computing. The ability to address more than 4 GB of memory is nice, and more general registers is also welcomed, but there is not great advancement in computing from the Opteron.
But either way you have to get experts on staff to run the system. You think the bank tellers are going to know how to fix any problems that creep up? How about all those VPs banks have? Nope, either way you go you have to hire people specificly to handle these machines. With MS, they do the customization for you, which you will have to pay them for, and then an on going fee for each ATM. Now, with Linux the fee for customization will be hirer since you would have to pay your experts more, initially. But then you can put it on as many ATMs as you want without paying one cent more in licensing fees. So, it's pick your poisen: pay now or pay later? Since this is America, doesn't suprise me they want to pay later. We in the US LOVE that fake feeling of getting something for free (until the CC bill shows up, then we get angry and have to buy more in order to feel better). Oh, and there is that whole pesky thing of "who controls your business: you or a compy from Redmond, WA?".
Actually, using the SI units makes perfect sense. The only problem is that everyone is use to them being applied to base 10 math, while everything in the computer world is base 2. So:
10^3 meters = 1 kilometer
2^3 bytes = 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes
This isn't like saying "1 kilobyte = 1234 bytes" or 4723 bytes or some other arbitrary number. There is real mathematical sense behind it. It's also what the industry has been using for a LONG time. It wasn't until marketing types got involved that this whole issue came up. If you want to market a 100GB drive, make damn sure that when the user plugs it all in, it say 100GB!. And no, just having MS change their definition won't help matters. At the hard of the problem is marketing wanting to get some "free" space by switching from the industry standard of measurement to something else. I support this lawsuite 100%!
He brings up both of those points in the article, so I'm assuming you stopped reading at the title of the story and hit the reply button.
He says exactly what you said: no one will get rich, or even make a profit, selling Linux games (just check out Loki!). His angle is that since Linux gamers have really helped out on the dedicated server side with Half Life 1, maybe its time to expect Valve to return the favor a little. Most of the lastest-n-greatest games/engines have native Linux versions, so it is technically possible if you keep portability in mind (and isn't that just plain good programing?). Of all the big game producers, Valve is one of the few that do great FPS that don't have Linux ports.
I want to play HL2, and I will buy HL2, but I'm not going to buy it until a) WineX is reported to run it with no problems or b) there is a native Linux port. I will not use Windows for it. But that's just me. No skin off Valve's back if they don't get my money since I'm not their target market.
There's some truth to that. Intel engineers would love to be told "Ok, the 3GHz is out, get working on the 4GHz" and not have to worry about getting the 3.1, 3.2, 3.3,..., 3.9GHz versions working first. But as long as there are people willing to buy those speeds, or a competitor is going to put out a 3.1GHz and say they are now the best because they have a faster chip, Intel will keep making the incremental upgrades.
I remember the days when an increase in only 50 MHz as a big deal! Now they role at a 200 MHz increase and people say "it's only a 6.7% increase, big deal"?!?. What, do you expect them to role out a 1 GHz increase with each new chip they put out? Time for a little visit back to reality.
Why do we need 64 bits? Are you running into the 4GB memmory limit the current 32 bit line of CPUs has? Do you personally need terabytes of RAM? Because that's about all you get when you move up to a 64 bit processor. Sure, they also throw in a few optimizations so it appears to go a bit faster doing common applications, but there is no real benifit to desktop users. There are real benifits to servers and data centers, which is why Intel aims their 64 bit Itanium products towards that market instead of the desktop. A large amount of cache though will produce real benifits that everyone and everyone program can use. AMD is gambling on the 64 bit on the desktop, its not a for sure "we need this" thing. That's why Intel isn't doing it. If it was a definate need, Intel would have done it already.
That's the beauty of the Linux model. At its heart is a network OS and always has been. What the users don't know won't hurt them. Let the tech savvy admins push the updates out to the servers and the desktop computers. Unlike Windows, a Linux computer only needs to be rebooted if the kernel gets updated, so there will be no real preceived downtime for the users. I use Redhat's up2date service for the computers I have a home, it I can push updates out to them through a nice web interface from anywhere in the world. And the corporate version is supposed to be even better about handling large numbers of computers. The same day that the SSH patch came out, I had it waiting to be pushed out to my computers, all with a single click. This is something Windows really lacks, and they have admitted this on many occations.
I disagree with you. MS has, lately, been decent about releasing information about an exploit and a patch at the same time. BUT, there have been several instances of exploits that they are informed of YEARS ago and that they still haven't patched! I prefer the Linux/OSS method better. Instead of releasing a patch and acknowledging there is an exploit, possibily months since it was discovered by some nice white hat hacker and who knows how many black hats, they give system owners a heads up so they have a chance to protect themselves until the patch is released. People who use these systems are usually a LOT more diligent about protecting there systems than the average MCSE, as MSBlaster showed us since they had a month to fix it and most places still got hit badly. Also, the turn around time seems to be a LOT faster on the Linux/OSS side than on the MS side. An SSH exploit is found and the next day there is a patch. Another has been found today because others got a chance to see what that type of exploit looks like and took advantage of the open nature of OSS to locate other places that need to be fixed.
OSS only appears to have more holes than MS because we aren't scared to be open and honest about our mistakes and to fix them ASAP, while MS counts on hiding their problems hoping it will buy them time to fix it, if they deem it is worth the cost in man time and loss of adding yet another new feature to their latest-n-greatest program.
Intel didn't do that to tick you or anyone else off. They did that because the slot form factor CPUs costed more to make and took longer to assemble. They also took up a lot of space on the motherboard which just wasn't acceptable. When Intel does something like that it's always for technical reasons, not just to piss people off and make them buy new stuff. Trust me, if Intel could use the same Socket7 connector type and run the next generation of Pentiums on it they would. It costs them money too to retool for the new form factors and a lot of time designing it and getting it out to mobo manufacturers so people can actually use the CPU.
I work at a very technical oriented company (you all know them and either love them or hate them (no, not MS or SCO since everyone just plain hates them)), and most of the male geeks are married, some of them are the geekiest people I've ever seen. Most even have pretty attractive wives.
My point? Once women get past their immature years (puperty to some time in college), they wise up and seek out intelligent, kind men. This kid probably has a very good chance of getting laid due to being intelligent, creative, and not the sterotypical geek.
Don't forget, there is a large geek girl, or cHiXoR, crowd out there that are actually pretty damn cute. Just check out some of those action shots for the ladies tshirts on thinkgeek;)
Re:What's with all of the bellyaching about speed?
on
Does C# Measure Up?
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· Score: 1
I disagree. When you are talking making one box appear on the screen or copying one large file into memory or to another disk location, sure the performance difference isn't something to use as a make or break deal. But when you talk about running something for a long time, say hours or days, the difference becomes brutely clear. I have a Java application (GUI based) that I need to run for up to 24 hours sometimes. The longer it runs, the worse it gets. Memory bloat, performance degradations, etc. They all add up. Remember: Java is running on an emulation layer, so each instruction has to be executed twice. Once by the Java code, and once by the Java machine. It's the reason emulators like Wine and WineX don't have as good performance as straight Windows.
If the probject is small, does or or two small activities and doesn't have to run for more than short periods, the it's just fine. For something that will do big work, require lots of memory and run for long periods, Java will come to bite you in the ass.
There's a difference between loosing your job because your skill set has stagnated and loosing your job to a 17 year old Indian kid who will work for $5,000/year.
How? We don't produce anything in the country any more, only consume what the rest of the world exports. I think dropping all tarriffs, even if slowly, will only lead to more raping of third world countries by multinational corporations that can then import the cheap-as-dirt products back into the US where it gets consumed. This way, the US appears to have great economic power while the third world nations never advance any further than the companies want them to (ie, none). Sure it will work for a few decades, but sooner or later it will all colapse as people start to realize that there are NO jobs in the US! One of the few things we produced in this country for the past decode and a half has been high technology. Now that is being farmed overseas. What's left? Manufacturing work? Where?!?! It's all down in Mexico! Design work? India!
About the only white-collar jobs left where design work. I don't count management activities as work since it doesn't produce anything in-and-of itself. It has to rely on the secondary results of their activies to produce anything tangable besides more paperwork.
The only fields left that haven't been sent overseas are work like hairdressers and plumbers. Of course, a country full of hairdressers, plumbers, and managers does not lead to a very stable, productive, or happy country.
I can: a person who can affort to void with their wallet. If enough people went with hybrids (this is all just hypothetical, I don't actually think there are enough to really make a difference yet), the car companies would respond to their customers by prodiving more hybrid cars and to increase their R&D into non gas powered cars. This creates a feedback loop that keeps dropping our dependance on oil, all the way to the point that what we can get at home is more than we need, thus reducing our need to medle with the Middle East. That would be a good thing. Plus there is the added bonus of reducing pollution, which is a good way to help make sure that your grandkids can walk outside and take a deep breath without ending up in the hospital.
The point to all that? Some people will choose to go the slightly more expensive rought when buying something to advance a cause, political or otherwise. That is the reason I can see someone not going with a traditional gas guzzler.
No, the problem is that people don't even have to actually make something, they just have to think it up and get a software patent. Doesn't matter what size the corporation or group is that came up with it or who is trying to use it. I doubt very much that MS was flipping through the patents in the USPO and found their patent and said "hey, we're big, they're small, and this looks nice. let's steal it".
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The problem is that OSS isn't even concidered during the bidding phase of procurement. It is not even given a chance to provide a TCO or ROI against companies, most notibly MS. If OSS was not being selected because there were specific requirements that it could not meet, then yes your post would be correct and we wouldn't have to do all this campaigning. We would just make a better product. But what is happening is all the middle management people, the ones who OK or sink a project/proposal, just flat out refuse to look at OSS. Their thinking is "No one was ever fired for buying MS", much like the old IBM saying back in the day. The only way to fight this is to hit them over the head with a clue-by-four, OR legally require them to look at ALL bidders, not just the proprietary ones like MS.
New kernel is faster and better than current ones :) And I didn't even RTFA :)
So... you would rather they NOT annouce that they have found another *possible* exploit and just let it sit there until regular users find them and call for their blood after being exploited? I'd rather have them do the smaller releases like this because it is quicker to examin and see what is being changed, which means Redhat (my distro) will have updated rpm on up2date in about 10 minutes.
One well aimed nuclear warhead will do the job nicely
It's not an "alliance" by choice. Intel knows that Windows is on 95% of the desktops. All they have to do is write a few new subroutines to detect Intel chips and to degrade the system performance if they wanted to hurt Intel. Look at their recent adoption of AMD's 64 bit ISA. It's their way of telling Intel "You better do what we say, because we can always decide to help out your competition instead of you". There was a big lawsuit about this a while back where Bill directly threatened Barret if they didn't do what MS wanted. Hence why Barret is saying this. It's also part of the reason why one half of Intel is pushing Linux and another what's to hide the first half. They don't want to piss MS off.
But is it more popular because it is technically better, or is it because it is coming from the underdog AMD? People love rooting for the underdog, hence why people love AMD. It's been a while since they've had a good quarter, and if things don't improve for them and fast they will fail as a business.
I think that their answer to 64 bit computing is a "patch" at best. They are trying to bring the x86 world into 64 bit computing when it's really to wrong answer. Extending the x86 architecture is a mistake. It needs to be completely scrapped and started over, hence why Intel designed the Itanium. I'm not saying that the Itanium is the end-all-be-all for 64 bit computing, but the basic idea is the right one. Take the opportunity of the 64 bit upgrade to start from scratch. Fix all the aspects of the x86 instruction set that caused all these CPUs to take so many transistors and die space. Intel knows this, that's why they are investing in the Itanium line instead of just changing their ALUs and FPUs from 32 bit to 64 bit and from changing the size of their registers. That's more of a hack than a solution from a technical stand point.
Will AMD's answer to 64 bit suceed? I a word, no. Some will adopt it, but mainly it will only be the AMD fanboy types, both in the home and in the fringe technical world. Those who have to worry about more than supporting their favorite underdog will look at the Opteron from a technical stand point and see the same thing Intel has seen. It is a simple hack to extend x86 into 64 bit computing, not a true jump from 32 bit to 64 computing. The ability to address more than 4 GB of memory is nice, and more general registers is also welcomed, but there is not great advancement in computing from the Opteron.
But either way you have to get experts on staff to run the system. You think the bank tellers are going to know how to fix any problems that creep up? How about all those VPs banks have? Nope, either way you go you have to hire people specificly to handle these machines. With MS, they do the customization for you, which you will have to pay them for, and then an on going fee for each ATM. Now, with Linux the fee for customization will be hirer since you would have to pay your experts more, initially. But then you can put it on as many ATMs as you want without paying one cent more in licensing fees. So, it's pick your poisen: pay now or pay later? Since this is America, doesn't suprise me they want to pay later. We in the US LOVE that fake feeling of getting something for free (until the CC bill shows up, then we get angry and have to buy more in order to feel better). Oh, and there is that whole pesky thing of "who controls your business: you or a compy from Redmond, WA?".
Actually, using the SI units makes perfect sense. The only problem is that everyone is use to them being applied to base 10 math, while everything in the computer world is base 2. So:
10^3 meters = 1 kilometer
2^3 bytes = 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes
This isn't like saying "1 kilobyte = 1234 bytes" or 4723 bytes or some other arbitrary number. There is real mathematical sense behind it. It's also what the industry has been using for a LONG time. It wasn't until marketing types got involved that this whole issue came up. If you want to market a 100GB drive, make damn sure that when the user plugs it all in, it say 100GB!. And no, just having MS change their definition won't help matters. At the hard of the problem is marketing wanting to get some "free" space by switching from the industry standard of measurement to something else. I support this lawsuite 100%!
He brings up both of those points in the article, so I'm assuming you stopped reading at the title of the story and hit the reply button.
He says exactly what you said: no one will get rich, or even make a profit, selling Linux games (just check out Loki!). His angle is that since Linux gamers have really helped out on the dedicated server side with Half Life 1, maybe its time to expect Valve to return the favor a little. Most of the lastest-n-greatest games/engines have native Linux versions, so it is technically possible if you keep portability in mind (and isn't that just plain good programing?). Of all the big game producers, Valve is one of the few that do great FPS that don't have Linux ports.
I want to play HL2, and I will buy HL2, but I'm not going to buy it until a) WineX is reported to run it with no problems or b) there is a native Linux port. I will not use Windows for it. But that's just me. No skin off Valve's back if they don't get my money since I'm not their target market.
I volunteer for this highly paid and enjoyable job :)
There's some truth to that. Intel engineers would love to be told "Ok, the 3GHz is out, get working on the 4GHz" and not have to worry about getting the 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, ..., 3.9GHz versions working first. But as long as there are people willing to buy those speeds, or a competitor is going to put out a 3.1GHz and say they are now the best because they have a faster chip, Intel will keep making the incremental upgrades.
I remember the days when an increase in only 50 MHz as a big deal! Now they role at a 200 MHz increase and people say "it's only a 6.7% increase, big deal"?!?. What, do you expect them to role out a 1 GHz increase with each new chip they put out? Time for a little visit back to reality.
Why do we need 64 bits? Are you running into the 4GB memmory limit the current 32 bit line of CPUs has? Do you personally need terabytes of RAM? Because that's about all you get when you move up to a 64 bit processor. Sure, they also throw in a few optimizations so it appears to go a bit faster doing common applications, but there is no real benifit to desktop users. There are real benifits to servers and data centers, which is why Intel aims their 64 bit Itanium products towards that market instead of the desktop. A large amount of cache though will produce real benifits that everyone and everyone program can use. AMD is gambling on the 64 bit on the desktop, its not a for sure "we need this" thing. That's why Intel isn't doing it. If it was a definate need, Intel would have done it already.
That's the beauty of the Linux model. At its heart is a network OS and always has been. What the users don't know won't hurt them. Let the tech savvy admins push the updates out to the servers and the desktop computers. Unlike Windows, a Linux computer only needs to be rebooted if the kernel gets updated, so there will be no real preceived downtime for the users. I use Redhat's up2date service for the computers I have a home, it I can push updates out to them through a nice web interface from anywhere in the world. And the corporate version is supposed to be even better about handling large numbers of computers. The same day that the SSH patch came out, I had it waiting to be pushed out to my computers, all with a single click. This is something Windows really lacks, and they have admitted this on many occations.
I disagree with you. MS has, lately, been decent about releasing information about an exploit and a patch at the same time. BUT, there have been several instances of exploits that they are informed of YEARS ago and that they still haven't patched! I prefer the Linux/OSS method better. Instead of releasing a patch and acknowledging there is an exploit, possibily months since it was discovered by some nice white hat hacker and who knows how many black hats, they give system owners a heads up so they have a chance to protect themselves until the patch is released. People who use these systems are usually a LOT more diligent about protecting there systems than the average MCSE, as MSBlaster showed us since they had a month to fix it and most places still got hit badly. Also, the turn around time seems to be a LOT faster on the Linux/OSS side than on the MS side. An SSH exploit is found and the next day there is a patch. Another has been found today because others got a chance to see what that type of exploit looks like and took advantage of the open nature of OSS to locate other places that need to be fixed.
OSS only appears to have more holes than MS because we aren't scared to be open and honest about our mistakes and to fix them ASAP, while MS counts on hiding their problems hoping it will buy them time to fix it, if they deem it is worth the cost in man time and loss of adding yet another new feature to their latest-n-greatest program.
Intel didn't do that to tick you or anyone else off. They did that because the slot form factor CPUs costed more to make and took longer to assemble. They also took up a lot of space on the motherboard which just wasn't acceptable. When Intel does something like that it's always for technical reasons, not just to piss people off and make them buy new stuff. Trust me, if Intel could use the same Socket7 connector type and run the next generation of Pentiums on it they would. It costs them money too to retool for the new form factors and a lot of time designing it and getting it out to mobo manufacturers so people can actually use the CPU.
I work at a very technical oriented company (you all know them and either love them or hate them (no, not MS or SCO since everyone just plain hates them)), and most of the male geeks are married, some of them are the geekiest people I've ever seen. Most even have pretty attractive wives.
My point? Once women get past their immature years (puperty to some time in college), they wise up and seek out intelligent, kind men. This kid probably has a very good chance of getting laid due to being intelligent, creative, and not the sterotypical geek.
So?
It's times like these that I wish for a Score:10, Insightful.
Don't forget, there is a large geek girl, or cHiXoR, crowd out there that are actually pretty damn cute. Just check out some of those action shots for the ladies tshirts on thinkgeek ;)
I disagree. When you are talking making one box appear on the screen or copying one large file into memory or to another disk location, sure the performance difference isn't something to use as a make or break deal. But when you talk about running something for a long time, say hours or days, the difference becomes brutely clear. I have a Java application (GUI based) that I need to run for up to 24 hours sometimes. The longer it runs, the worse it gets. Memory bloat, performance degradations, etc. They all add up. Remember: Java is running on an emulation layer, so each instruction has to be executed twice. Once by the Java code, and once by the Java machine. It's the reason emulators like Wine and WineX don't have as good performance as straight Windows.
If the probject is small, does or or two small activities and doesn't have to run for more than short periods, the it's just fine. For something that will do big work, require lots of memory and run for long periods, Java will come to bite you in the ass.
There's a difference between loosing your job because your skill set has stagnated and loosing your job to a 17 year old Indian kid who will work for $5,000/year.
How? We don't produce anything in the country any more, only consume what the rest of the world exports. I think dropping all tarriffs, even if slowly, will only lead to more raping of third world countries by multinational corporations that can then import the cheap-as-dirt products back into the US where it gets consumed. This way, the US appears to have great economic power while the third world nations never advance any further than the companies want them to (ie, none). Sure it will work for a few decades, but sooner or later it will all colapse as people start to realize that there are NO jobs in the US! One of the few things we produced in this country for the past decode and a half has been high technology. Now that is being farmed overseas. What's left? Manufacturing work? Where?!?! It's all down in Mexico! Design work? India!
About the only white-collar jobs left where design work. I don't count management activities as work since it doesn't produce anything in-and-of itself. It has to rely on the secondary results of their activies to produce anything tangable besides more paperwork.
The only fields left that haven't been sent overseas are work like hairdressers and plumbers. Of course, a country full of hairdressers, plumbers, and managers does not lead to a very stable, productive, or happy country.
The only "winers" out of all this are the CxO's.
I can: a person who can affort to void with their wallet. If enough people went with hybrids (this is all just hypothetical, I don't actually think there are enough to really make a difference yet), the car companies would respond to their customers by prodiving more hybrid cars and to increase their R&D into non gas powered cars. This creates a feedback loop that keeps dropping our dependance on oil, all the way to the point that what we can get at home is more than we need, thus reducing our need to medle with the Middle East. That would be a good thing. Plus there is the added bonus of reducing pollution, which is a good way to help make sure that your grandkids can walk outside and take a deep breath without ending up in the hospital.
The point to all that? Some people will choose to go the slightly more expensive rought when buying something to advance a cause, political or otherwise. That is the reason I can see someone not going with a traditional gas guzzler.
No, the problem is that people don't even have to actually make something, they just have to think it up and get a software patent. Doesn't matter what size the corporation or group is that came up with it or who is trying to use it. I doubt very much that MS was flipping through the patents in the USPO and found their patent and said "hey, we're big, they're small, and this looks nice. let's steal it".