They kept saying how superior their Power PC chip was, then with the switch to Intel they're saying its now working so much better. WTF?
Disclaimer: I'm a PowerPC fanboy. Still am. (NOT PowerMac. PowerPC.)
When the comparison last made sense, it was between the G5 and the Pentium 4 "Prescott". The G5's pipelines are 10 stages long, the Pentium 4's are 31 stages long. Since then, Intel has changed their focus away from insanely deep pipelines, with the Core series being the first to really shine (especially on TDP). Any questions?
I've never seen a fan reply to the complaint of the iPod's lack of ability to play Ogg Vorbis as "You know, they should really include that".
You know, they really should include that.
(Typed on my Rev B Power Mac G5 with my PowerBook G3 heating my lap and my Mac Mini churning away on my other desk... oh, and a PowerMac 5200 as my doorstop.)
It's more like ordering a meal, then complaining that they DID immediately bring you the uncooked ingredients, hoping that they'll have time to cook it for the people who order later.
Compare an LCD SDTV with an HDTV when both are showing actual movement and you'll only be able to see one difference: the HDTV display size is 16:9 compared to the SDTV's 4:3.
Sitting five meters away from my parents' 50" DLP, I can see pixels at 1080i. (And they bug me, during the few moments we have >480p media playing on that thing.)
What about game and engine devs? Where do they see the future going?
IAAGD. My current paid project is to have both a raytracing module and a rasterizing module, and is designed to use them completely interchangeably. Personally, I'm a much bigger fan of raytracing than rasterization, and I'm going to a great deal of effort to make sure that it can be done efficiently with my engine.
Well, for one thing, with no extra complexity or power input of any kind you could have a fan that automatically speeds up as the CPU gets hotter. Not to mention that, by definition, the conversion of some of the heat into mechanical energy sucks up some of the heat.
Yep. Before they were pretending to do a moon landing when they actually faked it... now they're pretending to fake a moon landing while they actually do it!
Me too. In fact, I wished for a personal fab just the other day. How cool would it be to botch modifications to an open source CPU and then lose interest after sinking $15,000 of raw materials and equipment into it?:D
You're conflating the current system (automatic) with the proposed system (pay tax or get no copyright).
Yes, but by doing so he's pointing out one con to such a system. In that system, for instance, modifying and relicensing GPL software to be closed-source would be legal (in fact, encouraged) unless the author of that software paid a copyright fee.
Which would probably end with something like our modern-day patent system, where big corporations can easily absorb the copyright fees and be invincible while the smaller "people" it was designed to protect get shafted.
-:sigma.SB
Re:I really like the addition of ZFS in FressBSD 7
on
What's New In FreeBSD 7.0
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
I switched from Gentoo Linux on my server to FreeBSD solely for ZFS.
Yes, I'm running FreeBSD on a SPARC for ZFS. Not Solaris. LONG story; nothing against Solaris.
I've been lamenting for years that the R300 card in my G4 (now a G5, long story) would never get specs. I figured they'd start releasing only specs for R500 and up. So when I read this story, I LITERALLY jumped for joy. I'm so happy that I'm switching from nVidia to ATI in my next custom Linux box.
Anyone else notice where their programming languages are going? Extensibility, re-usability, modularity, and *really* good library support... we're finally seeing an effective implementation of what object oriented programming claimed to be all along.
I'm guessing you've never used Cocoa/OpenStep, then? Let's see, how long has OpenStep been around...
If you start in Utah and move east long enough (including crossing the Atlantic) you eventually end up in Nevada. Therefore, Nevada and Utah are on opposite sides of the Atlantic, even though they border each other.
I have an Efika: 128MB of RAM, 400MHz e300 processor, 100Mb Ethernet, 2x USB 1.1, IRDA, RS-232, 3.3v PCI slot, and 44-pin IDE; 1080mW draw for the whole board.
You make a valid point. However, your networking stack isn't synchronous; USB is. That's a lot more than a 50% performance drop, that's sometimes as much as a 99% performance drop. (in practice, usually around 75%.)
In any case, there is a place for USB hard disks, just not to the exclusion of IEEE 1394 and eSATA, which was the point I was responding to.
(I have yet to see an eSATA connector in person, but as other posters have already pointed out I'm routinely behind in hardware.)
Slashdot Mirror
You can pronounce "mmcndmgr.dll"?
-:sigma.SB
Disclaimer: I'm a PowerPC fanboy. Still am. (NOT PowerMac. PowerPC.)
When the comparison last made sense, it was between the G5 and the Pentium 4 "Prescott". The G5's pipelines are 10 stages long, the Pentium 4's are 31 stages long. Since then, Intel has changed their focus away from insanely deep pipelines, with the Core series being the first to really shine (especially on TDP). Any questions?
-:sigma.SB
P.S. I want a PPC750 on a PCI card.
You know, they really should include that.
(Typed on my Rev B Power Mac G5 with my PowerBook G3 heating my lap and my Mac Mini churning away on my other desk... oh, and a PowerMac 5200 as my doorstop.)
-:sigma.SB
It's more like ordering a meal, then complaining that they DID immediately bring you the uncooked ingredients, hoping that they'll have time to cook it for the people who order later.
-:sigma.SB
Sitting five meters away from my parents' 50" DLP, I can see pixels at 1080i. (And they bug me, during the few moments we have >480p media playing on that thing.)
-:sigma.SB
Disclaimer: I have 20/13 vision.
IAAGD. My current paid project is to have both a raytracing module and a rasterizing module, and is designed to use them completely interchangeably. Personally, I'm a much bigger fan of raytracing than rasterization, and I'm going to a great deal of effort to make sure that it can be done efficiently with my engine.
-:sigma.SB
Well, for one thing, with no extra complexity or power input of any kind you could have a fan that automatically speeds up as the CPU gets hotter. Not to mention that, by definition, the conversion of some of the heat into mechanical energy sucks up some of the heat.
-:sigma.SB
Yep. Before they were pretending to do a moon landing when they actually faked it... now they're pretending to fake a moon landing while they actually do it!
The conspiracy deepens...
-:sigma.SB
Safari runs on Windows. Has for some time, too. (Not necessarily well.)
-:sigma.SB
I must be getting desperate, because I read that as "JobSpot" several times, and thought there was now a Google job-search site.
-:sigma.SB
Me too. In fact, I wished for a personal fab just the other day. How cool would it be to botch modifications to an open source CPU and then lose interest after sinking $15,000 of raw materials and equipment into it? :D
-:sigma.SB
Yes, but by doing so he's pointing out one con to such a system. In that system, for instance, modifying and relicensing GPL software to be closed-source would be legal (in fact, encouraged) unless the author of that software paid a copyright fee.
Which would probably end with something like our modern-day patent system, where big corporations can easily absorb the copyright fees and be invincible while the smaller "people" it was designed to protect get shafted.
-:sigma.SB
I switched from Gentoo Linux on my server to FreeBSD solely for ZFS.
Yes, I'm running FreeBSD on a SPARC for ZFS. Not Solaris. LONG story; nothing against Solaris.
-:sigma.SB
You were paying attention when they started giving out specs again, right?
-:sigma.SB
In the true spirit of Gödel, I hereby patent patenting patenting patents.
-:sigma.SB
I've been lamenting for years that the R300 card in my G4 (now a G5, long story) would never get specs. I figured they'd start releasing only specs for R500 and up. So when I read this story, I LITERALLY jumped for joy. I'm so happy that I'm switching from nVidia to ATI in my next custom Linux box.
-:sigma.SB
I run Linux on a PowerPC, you insensitive clod! How much good is proprietary software running on WINE going to do ME?!!
-:sigma.SB
I'm guessing you've never used Cocoa/OpenStep, then? Let's see, how long has OpenStep been around...
-:sigma.SB
If you start in Utah and move east long enough (including crossing the Atlantic) you eventually end up in Nevada. Therefore, Nevada and Utah are on opposite sides of the Atlantic, even though they border each other.
-:sigma.SB
Before you mod the parent down, watch Dr. Strangelove.
-:sigma.SB
Congratulations. You read his post backwards.
-:sigma.SB
At a guess, Wikileaks is SSL-protected to make it harder for evil governments and corporations to know that you're visiting it.
-:sigma.SB
I have an Efika: 128MB of RAM, 400MHz e300 processor, 100Mb Ethernet, 2x USB 1.1, IRDA, RS-232, 3.3v PCI slot, and 44-pin IDE; 1080mW draw for the whole board.
$100.
-:sigma.SB
Does this rootkit work on a hardened Gentoo install with no LKM support on SPARC64? :P
-:sigma.SB
You make a valid point. However, your networking stack isn't synchronous; USB is. That's a lot more than a 50% performance drop, that's sometimes as much as a 99% performance drop. (in practice, usually around 75%.)
In any case, there is a place for USB hard disks, just not to the exclusion of IEEE 1394 and eSATA, which was the point I was responding to.
(I have yet to see an eSATA connector in person, but as other posters have already pointed out I'm routinely behind in hardware.)
-:sigma.SB