> And for the anti-FORTRAN fraction. It is still the fastest thing out there!!! Anyone who tried solving a system of linear equations containing 1000 equations knows what I mean.
I beg to differ. At least, about the linear algebra part. There are some very fast numeric libraries out there. I mean, its not like you are wroting the code to solve the equations in Fortran yourself.
Um, yes. The current market is flooded with adventures.
> underlying economic considerations,
LucasArts is nearly broke and it costs a wagons full of money to develop a current adventure, featuring stunning 2D-graphics and top-of-the-edge anti-aliased text-to-screen synthesisation and multi-single-player no-network support.
> Now its obvious you're trolling. [...] The long and short is that all PC sounds cards equally suck until you get to professional grade gear.
You must be joking. Most of the integrated sound I've had the joy to listen to produced noticeable background-noise. The most obvious one was the Eden-M board. Most mb-producers don't give much about seperating the analogue part from the digital, so accompanied with an intergrated graphics card, you can practically hear how a window is restored. It is usually not the quality of the on-board sound, which sells it, but purely the capability of producing some sound.
> I've played the same game in both OpenGL and DirectX (Unreal 2003 or Unreal2...I forgot which one) and they flawlessly. In fact, I can't tell which one is better. > But if your going to program a game in an API, why not DirectX?
On that matter, I'd quote some post, which maybe has some relevance to your question:
>> Why build for a closed platform (DirectX)?
id Software is not only producing games of the Quake and Doom-series on various platforms, which are not very demanding on the input devices, and usually only have a minimum of video. They also sell the graphics engine to other companies. IRC, that is actually the main income of the company. So, why should a company which makes its money mainly from graphics engines restrict oneself to one platform? Its not like they can't use DirectX for video, audio, and input anymore when they use OpenGL for graphics. Especially, when they have experts on that API and at the time when Quake emerged, DirectX 3D was nothing more than a hack.
The only thing which resembles is very specific how his employees should behave:
[...} generous sales incentives, a focus on customer service, an insistence on well-groomed, dark-suited salesmen and an evangelical fervor for instilling company pride and loyalty in every worker. Watson boosted company spirit with employee sports teams, family outings and a company band. He preached a positive outlook, and his favorite slogan, "THINK," became a mantra for C-T-R's employees.
I fail to see anything, which contradicts international expansion and profit maximisation. Quite the contrary, if you read the following line:
He also expanded the company's operations to Europe, South America, Asia and Australia.
IBM has been from its earliest beginnings an international corperation, hence its name.
> Fortunately, the free economy guarantees that if people want a network unfettered by government regulation, they will pay for it (see satellite radio and cable TV)
Ah, yes. ABC is a goverment controlled company. I'd say, companies are even more willingly following the public opinion (call of the buck) than governmental agencies.
IANAL, but aren't governmental agencies more strictly bound by the consitution and laws? For example, you can certainly demand from a govermental ISP to publish all what you want, which is covered by the First Amendement, but I'd say you can't do the same with a commercial ISP.
> A similar argument has been made to coerce libraries into installing net nannies on their public computers.
I think the main argument was not the costs incurring due to such use, but more the public nature of the computers. Arguing through the costs could backfire as the costs for maintaining such control is probably more expensive than the actual use of the net.
I find it somehow funny, that people cringe in fear of a goverment, which controls all information, while you already have a corporate media, which is excerting hurrying obedience in censoring.
That is your government, participate. The quote "Every people gets the government it deserves" holds true, especially in democracies. Others spend ridiculous amounts of money for it.
On the other hand, a survey showed that users of toll based systems are more satisfied.
I wasn't doubting the statement that Canada has a higher broadband penetration than the US as this isn't the topic of this discussion and, I assume, of your post.
You said that the U.S was in the lead in being the origin of spam because of more computers with broadband connections. In the US, there are 20M broadband subscribers, Korea 10M, Japan approx. 10M. Still, the US accounts for over 50% of the spam.
So, the point that more computers with broad-band connection are the reason for this statistical oddity has a weak basis, as it isn't the case.
Care to illustrate it a bit? Are you speaking from first hand experience, or hear-say?
Unless you have a first hand experience, I doubt your assertion that the Japanese judicative does not upheld the right of foreign companies (which they have, thanks WIPO and TRIPS).
Next, it seems a bit unlikely to me that someone from the US tries to enforce a patent in Japan by going through a Japanese law-suit instead of a US ligitation. US courts are more than willing to accept a case, when the there is any involvement with a US citizen, US company, or US subsidary. Not to mention that one had the favour of a American jury.
The enforcement would also be no problem, unless it is a purely local company, which has no business, directly or indirectly, with the US. But I guess, such a company would be hard to find.
A comment is not racist because it is based on the basis of the supposed race of the person, but on the fact that the statement implies that a person of that nation shares a certain common distinctive (obviously bad) trait with National Liberation Front, pureley because of his descent. That is, at least according to M-W, a definition for race, which makes the statement racist.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that you are a racist, but the comment can be seen so. Especially, just reading it in a public forum, without knowing you personally and seeing your face and hearing how you say it. A lot of information important for judging off-coloured remarks is lost.
Finally, I found the joke funny, because I took it as a joke about his co-workers and the stereotypical view of most people.
The inclusion of x86-64 itself may be supportive for AMD and even the death toll to IA64.
> this is the first time that AMD has taken a technological lead and Intel is following.
IRC, AMD first used copper interconnects in its Athlons. Intel followed. AMD used DDR. Intel chosed RD-RAM, and later followed AMDs step.
What I wanted to point out is that by pussyfooting around they do not help their case. Instead of casually stating it, and people thinking, Intel 100:1 AMD, they actually make it known to the people how embaressing it is for them.
Besides, this happens all after Sun and HP selling Athlon-64 systems and Microsofts announcement to release their OS for it.
> AMD can take Intel chipsets and make them better (Athlon),
Actually, Intel always produced new generations of processors which were slower than the previous ones with current code. (Pentium-60 vs. Am486-DX4-100). They are the technological leaders. They produce a new generation of chips and the software industry has to follow suit. The Pentium-4 is again a chip which is newer and slower with old code, while the Athlon is essentially nothing more than a very fast Pentium-II.
And the Athlon-64? Now, AMD modifies the Athlon by integrating the memory controller, doubling the L2-Cache and widens the ALU and address-lines to 64bit (64bitness accounts for 5% of the die-size). Then modifies the instruction-set to accomodate the changes, and while at it, exposes some more registers.
From the technological stand-point this is less than impressive, especially when compared to the trace-cache or hyper-threading or the branch-prediction necessary for such long pipelines.
The U.S. spends more total dollars [in total] and more dollars per capita on health care than any other nation and New Zealand is in approximately the top 10% in spending. [...] The WHO data on health care quality rankings of 191 member nations gave very low scores to the U.S. and the three countries that have adopted the U.S. system: Australia, Canada and New Zealand (hereafter called U.S. et al.). Their rankings were 37, 30, 32 and 41, respectively, for overall health care quality. In a ranking of level of actual health, the US and NZ were much worse, ranking 72 and 80, respectively. [...]
> "ok we're going to make our instruction set just a little differnt and then use our dominance in the market to win over AMD."
That has never been a possibility, since AMD produced the first x86 64bit extension. Microsoft said, either you stick with AMDs extensions, or there will be no support for yours. They'd be no so happy, having to bear the weight of such spins.
> 64-bit x86, something that they've been denying that they've been working on IRC, they never denied it. They just refused to comment on it and said (and still) something along the lines "64bit is not ready for the desktop".
> It's all about PR and marketing
Yeah, but wouldn't it make less of a fuss, when they simply said: "Look, our wonderful next processor XGHz, SSE4, Super-Hyper-Threading, Speed-TwoStep... and as an extra, not that anybody would care, it supports AMDs 64bit extensions."
Was there a big commotion about Intel turning away from Rambus to DDR-RAM? (Where they also followed AMDs footsteps)
> It's disaster after disaster waiting to happen, and there is absolutely no excuse for it. Performance is not an excuse -- we have machines running at multiple gigahertz.
No, most desktop machines and servers run at several GHz, they could spare some cycles for most their applications. Fine, use a bound checking version of the STL and don't meddle with pointers, it's not like you have, too.
But the point is, most processors aren't on the desktop and don't have the cycles or space to check every pointer. And some applications are real-time. You just have 1ms to do X. So maybe you have go down to assember to get the work.
C++ gives you the possiblity to work low-level, when you need it, but lets you program high-level, if you don't want to.
> The next step is to realize that C/C++ is horribly, unbelievably broken at a fundamental level and needs to be discarded.
The first step is to realise that a bad programmer produces broken code whatever language he/she uses. Bounds-checking is no substitute for correct error-checking and -handling, code-review, testing and debugging, whatever the language
Actually it says not so. It says Ultra-WideBand (UWB) will form a common basis-band protocol for WUSB as it will probably for the next generation Bluetooth. The fact that Bluetooth in its current form will not stay for more than 10 years is pretty much self-evident.
"The idea is that Bluetooth might ultimately exist as one of the protocols sitting on top of the convergence layer and the underlying UWB radio."
No, the Outer Space Treaty (OST) only explicitly bans nuclear weapons, because it was of the greatest concern of all parties.
Otherwise, please enlighten me, how the deployment of weapons in space is " [...] carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries". Start reading the treaty from the beginning and you'll understand the intention of it.
The major point of a treaty is not that you can find loop-holes to make what you want, but have the reciprocal trust of the participating parties, so that all sides adhere to it (and other treaties).
And strangely enough, when one follows ones own interpretation of the letter of a treaty, one loses the trust of the other parties, which diminishes the value of treaties with the respective party.
"Over time, UWB could replace Bluetooth," he said, "but it's a way, way off. Bluetooth has been shipping for five years and it will ship for five or ten more - it's a very successful technology."
So in, say, 10 millenia, it probably be the old climate again. How comforting. This will make the storms, droughts, floodings and the massive migration caused by it much more bearable.
> why would a run-away process happen now?
Um, some totally unimportant lifeform achieved to increase the CO2 level in the last 50 years to the highest amount in the last 100 millenia.
Probably more important, those impertinent pigs and cows are producing tremendous amounts of CH4.
Slashdot Mirror
> And for the anti-FORTRAN fraction. It is still the fastest thing out there!!! Anyone who tried solving a system of linear equations containing 1000 equations knows what I mean.
I beg to differ.
At least, about the linear algebra part. There are some very fast numeric libraries out there. I mean, its not like you are wroting the code to solve the equations in Fortran yourself.
Um, yes. The current market is flooded with adventures.
> underlying economic considerations,
LucasArts is nearly broke and it costs a wagons full of money to develop a current adventure, featuring stunning 2D-graphics and top-of-the-edge anti-aliased text-to-screen synthesisation and multi-single-player no-network support.
> Now its obvious you're trolling. [...] The long and short is that all PC sounds cards equally suck until you get to professional grade gear.
You must be joking. Most of the integrated sound I've had the joy to listen to produced noticeable background-noise. The most obvious one was the Eden-M board. Most mb-producers don't give much about seperating the analogue part from the digital, so accompanied with an intergrated graphics card, you can practically hear how a window is restored. It is usually not the quality of the on-board sound, which sells it, but purely the capability of producing some sound.
> I've played the same game in both OpenGL and DirectX (Unreal 2003 or Unreal2...I forgot which one) and they flawlessly. In fact, I can't tell which one is better.
> But if your going to program a game in an API, why not DirectX?
On that matter, I'd quote some post, which maybe has some relevance to your question:
>> Why build for a closed platform (DirectX)?
id Software is not only producing games of the Quake and Doom-series on various platforms, which are not very demanding on the input devices, and usually only have a minimum of video. They also sell the graphics engine to other companies. IRC, that is actually the main income of the company.
So, why should a company which makes its money mainly from graphics engines restrict oneself to one platform? Its not like they can't use DirectX for video, audio, and input anymore when they use OpenGL for graphics.
Especially, when they have experts on that API and at the time when Quake emerged, DirectX 3D was nothing more than a hack.
I fail to see anything, which contradicts international expansion and profit maximisation. Quite the contrary, if you read the following line:
IBM has been from its earliest beginnings an international corperation, hence its name.
> Totally against the original principles of which the company was founded.
So, on what principle do you think International Business Machines was founded?
> Fortunately, the free economy guarantees that if people want a network unfettered by government regulation, they will pay for it (see satellite radio and cable TV)
Ah, yes. ABC is a goverment controlled company. I'd say, companies are even more willingly following the public opinion (call of the buck) than governmental agencies.
IANAL, but aren't governmental agencies more strictly bound by the consitution and laws?
For example, you can certainly demand from a govermental ISP to publish all what you want, which is covered by the First Amendement, but I'd say you can't do the same with a commercial ISP.
> A similar argument has been made to coerce libraries into installing net nannies on their public computers.
I think the main argument was not the costs incurring due to such use, but more the public nature of the computers.
Arguing through the costs could backfire as the costs for maintaining such control is probably more expensive than the actual use of the net.
I find it somehow funny, that people cringe in fear of a goverment, which controls all information, while you already have a corporate media, which is excerting hurrying obedience in censoring.
That is your government, participate. The quote "Every people gets the government it deserves" holds true, especially in democracies.
Others spend ridiculous amounts of money for it.
On the other hand, a survey showed that users of toll based systems are more satisfied.
I wasn't doubting the statement that Canada has a higher broadband penetration than the US as this isn't the topic of this discussion and, I assume, of your post.
You said that the U.S was in the lead in being the origin of spam because of more computers with broadband connections.
In the US, there are 20M broadband subscribers, Korea 10M, Japan approx. 10M. Still, the US accounts for over 50% of the spam.
So, the point that more computers with broad-band connection are the reason for this statistical oddity has a weak basis, as it isn't the case.
You must get your information from a different site than I do.
Even easier, the BIOS has support to boot net via DCHP and TFTP.
Care to illustrate it a bit? Are you speaking from first hand experience, or hear-say?
Unless you have a first hand experience, I doubt your assertion that the Japanese judicative does not upheld the right of foreign companies (which they have, thanks WIPO and TRIPS).
Next, it seems a bit unlikely to me that someone from the US tries to enforce a patent in Japan by going through a Japanese law-suit instead of a US ligitation. US courts are more than willing to accept a case, when the there is any involvement with a US citizen, US company, or US subsidary.
Not to mention that one had the favour of a American jury.
The enforcement would also be no problem, unless it is a purely local company, which has no business, directly or indirectly, with the US. But I guess, such a company would be hard to find.
A comment is not racist because it is based on the basis of the supposed race of the person, but on the fact that the statement implies that a person of that nation shares a certain common distinctive (obviously bad) trait with National Liberation Front, pureley because of his descent. That is, at least according to M-W, a definition for race, which makes the statement racist.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that you are a racist, but the comment can be seen so. Especially, just reading it in a public forum, without knowing you personally and seeing your face and hearing how you say it. A lot of information important for judging off-coloured remarks is lost.
Finally, I found the joke funny, because I took it as a joke about his co-workers and the stereotypical view of most people.
The inclusion of x86-64 itself may be supportive for AMD and even the death toll to IA64.
:).
> this is the first time that AMD has taken a technological lead and Intel is following.
IRC, AMD first used copper interconnects in its Athlons. Intel followed. AMD used DDR. Intel chosed RD-RAM, and later followed AMDs step.
What I wanted to point out is that by pussyfooting around they do not help their case. Instead of casually stating it, and people thinking, Intel 100:1 AMD, they actually make it known to the people how embaressing it is for them.
Besides, this happens all after Sun and HP selling Athlon-64 systems and Microsofts announcement to release their OS for it.
> AMD can take Intel chipsets and make them better (Athlon),
Actually, Intel always produced new generations of processors which were slower than the previous ones with current code. (Pentium-60 vs. Am486-DX4-100). They are the technological leaders. They produce a new generation of chips and the software industry has to follow suit.
The Pentium-4 is again a chip which is newer and slower with old code, while the Athlon is essentially nothing more than a very fast Pentium-II.
And the Athlon-64? Now, AMD modifies the Athlon by integrating the memory controller, doubling the L2-Cache and widens the ALU and address-lines to 64bit (64bitness accounts for 5% of the die-size). Then modifies the instruction-set to accomodate the changes, and while at it, exposes some more registers.
From the technological stand-point this is less than impressive, especially when compared to the trace-cache or hyper-threading or the branch-prediction necessary for such long pipelines.
Nonetheless, I'll buy an Athlon-64
You are from the university, where John T. A. Ely is professor emeritus, who has published a comment about the WHO World Health Report 2000?
To quote:
> "ok we're going to make our instruction set just a little differnt and then use our dominance in the market to win over AMD."
That has never been a possibility, since AMD produced the first x86 64bit extension. Microsoft said, either you stick with AMDs extensions, or there will be no support for yours.
They'd be no so happy, having to bear the weight of such spins.
> 64-bit x86, something that they've been denying that they've been working on
IRC, they never denied it. They just refused to comment on it and said (and still) something along the lines "64bit is not ready for the desktop".
> It's all about PR and marketing
Yeah, but wouldn't it make less of a fuss, when they simply said: "Look, our wonderful next processor XGHz, SSE4, Super-Hyper-Threading, Speed-TwoStep... and as an extra, not that anybody would care, it supports AMDs 64bit extensions."
Was there a big commotion about Intel turning away from Rambus to DDR-RAM? (Where they also followed AMDs footsteps)
> It's disaster after disaster waiting to happen, and there is absolutely no excuse for it. Performance is not an excuse -- we have machines running at multiple gigahertz.
No, most desktop machines and servers run at several GHz, they could spare some cycles for most their applications. Fine, use a bound checking version of the STL and don't meddle with pointers, it's not like you have, too.
But the point is, most processors aren't on the desktop and don't have the cycles or space to check every pointer. And some applications are real-time. You just have 1ms to do X. So maybe you have go down to assember to get the work.
C++ gives you the possiblity to work low-level, when you need it, but lets you program high-level, if you don't want to.
> The next step is to realize that C/C++ is horribly, unbelievably broken at a fundamental level and needs to be discarded.
The first step is to realise that a bad programmer produces broken code whatever language he/she uses. Bounds-checking is no substitute for correct error-checking and -handling, code-review, testing and debugging, whatever the language
No, the Outer Space Treaty (OST) only explicitly bans nuclear weapons, because it was of the greatest concern of all parties.
Otherwise, please enlighten me, how the deployment of weapons in space is " [...] carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries". Start reading the treaty from the beginning and you'll understand the intention of it.
The major point of a treaty is not that you can find loop-holes to make what you want, but have the reciprocal trust of the participating parties, so that all sides adhere to it (and other treaties).
And strangely enough, when one follows ones own interpretation of the letter of a treaty, one loses the trust of the other parties, which diminishes the value of treaties with the respective party.
Sounds remotely like Posix capabilities. They appeared in Linux in kernel 2.2. Here an article: Taking Advantage of Linux Capabilities
I what way makes it problematic? AFAIK, the ABI is fairly stable. I've used the NVidia driver with XFree 4.4 RC2 without problems.
So in, say, 10 millenia, it probably be the old climate again. How comforting.
This will make the storms, droughts, floodings and the massive migration caused by it much more bearable.
> why would a run-away process happen now?
Um, some totally unimportant lifeform achieved to increase the CO2 level in the last 50 years to the highest amount in the last 100 millenia.
Probably more important, those impertinent pigs and cows are producing tremendous amounts of CH4.