I was actually wondering about how we could encourage more Linux gaming:) I'm with the very teeny Saskatoon Linux Users' Group; we're not exactly rich. There's been talk of an installfest recently, and having games to give out (or sell for small amounts) would really help out. --
The VESA extension is a port, not a slot. It hooks directly to the front side bus of older hardware. This, and some signalling reasons, is why you could only use so many VESA ports as you ramped up the bus speed (3 @ 25Mhz, 2 @ 33Mhz, 1 @ 40Mhz, 0 @ 50Mhz).
I laugh my ass off at the poor BIND using admins as much as I do the poor IE using clients.
Really, I use djbdns. It's an alternative that is available to me, just like Mozilla is an alternative available to me. I use these programs every day, and I don't have to deal with any problems.
BIND sucks, IE sucks, most code sucks. Go for the relatively open stuff, stuff that is designed well, and you don't get these problems. --
1) If you're using a public terminal or something similar, the people who provide it can probably just record the keystrokes at the keyboard level.
** Third-party hardware cannot be made secure by the addition of code to one component **
2) If this is your private system which has become compromised, secure login info is the least of your worries.
** Local machines are not made secure by the addition of code to this one area **
This is a really old, mostly useless standard left over from the rainbow book series. It looks good on paper, but won't get you far in the real world. --
Perhaps it'll be easier to discredit GPL software.
Think of it. You release software under an NDA and lots of licences. Then someone leaks it. After a while, people who had looked at it as teens move into the world. They write some GPL utility.
Now they have to prove that MS code did not influence them! It's like turning the world into a non-cleanroom environment, in order to get rid of opensource software (since they can inspect it easily..). --
K5 innovative? Maybe. We still don't have a lot of the features which the Slash code base has. At the same time, we have a lot of features they don't have. If K5 had been first, would you call it innovative to have a closed story submission queue which allowed much stronger steering of content on the site?
When you say people migrate from slashdot to Kuro5hin, you make it sound like it's one way./. is all about your quick fix for news -- K5 can't ever replace that. I get news from here. Just filter out the bs (score below +3 mostly:)), and everything's fine. K5 is an addition, not a replacement, to the online weblogs.
The reason, which you and the people who replied to you seem to have missed, is because Microsoft said themselves that Windows 2000 would never required fixes. They lied to the corporate managers and other people who choose what to run on the servers in order to get more money.
That is what people don't like about MS Win2k. Linus never claimed that 2.4.0 would be bugfree (or if he did, he did it tongue-in-cheek). If MS had more truth in their advertising, I know I'd be happier.
No. Zero Wing was an Arcade game in 1989, and then a Sega Genesis game in 1991. They added the engrish demo to the console version.
For those carefully looking at any shots of it, you'll note that Zero Wing's demo is predominately red and purple, common colours for Genesis games. Most first gen (1991 was the year of the SNES release) games for the SNES tended towards much broader palettes. --
While I know there are people out there who complain about "being forced to upgrade," I think using existing stanards is good. I mean, it's 2001 -- when will I be able to use CSS1 (a 1996 specification) fully? How about CSS2?
Mozilla's/finally/ (as of 0.8) replaced Netscape for me on the desktop for browsing. It supports it. --
Linux: not going anywhere fast.
on
GTK+ without X!
·
· Score: 2
(Consider this circa 1993 in terms of how 'old Unix' businesses and users felt)
You know, I used to follow Linux. I was hopeful that it might provide the replacement for UNIX within my professional lifetime. I have since given up hope.
Linux development is moving at a snail's place. They don't have just a whole lot of people working on it, and I'm not sure they have *anyone* working on it full time. While the attempt is certainly noble, I don't think it's going anywhere.
More importantly, even if they manage to finish the project and come out with a reasonable, clean replacement for commercial UNIX, how are they going to persuade the industry to use it? There is a ridiculous amount of binary code written for SunOS, AIX, Ultrix, etc. To make any inroads they are going to have to have backwards compatibility with them, in which case they've moved to a new house, but carried the old baggage with them.
I certainly do not believe the commercial Unix vendors are going to embrace such a new development. Would the Linux supporters be confident enough to break compatibility and go their own way? I don't see the balance of power between open / commercial shifting that quickly. And so far I have seen zero support of Linux from any commercial entities (even big companies like IBM).
If Linux is used, I expect it will be in "fringe" applications first, not mainline workstations. Particularly, embedded applications might pick it up. They have a much smaller pool of software to tote around, and would probably be happy to have a kernel system smaller, and more open, than commercial UNIX.
To bring this to a close, as "cool" as Linux may sound, the software is far from complete, is advancing slowly, and will face serious obstacles once it *is* complete. I, personally, have given up hope on Linux. I do not think it will replace UNIX. My hopes lie instead with Solaris. There is much that can be done in the way of gradually extending Solaris, and deprecating old features. Over time, they can drift Solaris towards a cleaner system, relegating cruft to libraries which get loaded less and less often. This is less inspiring, but probably more feasible.
Three reorganizations are worth one revolution.
The lesson is: have patience, and contribute -- the rest will follow in time. --
*) telneting as root is considered bad. Please replace telnet with OpenSSH. It encrypts thing so that people can't spy on your sessions. If you want an example, learn how to use tcpdump, and see what happens. It's also a good idea to not ssh as root so that it requires another level of passwords to get total control over your box.
*) Nobody is a generic dummy account on most UNIX systems. Its purpose is to allow you to run various daemons under the lowest priviledges possible (that of a user which can't login and doesn't own any files). A better practice is to create on user account per daemon, and have it own only the files it requires to write to.
*) -- MARK -- is a generic placeholder put there every n amount of time (the default is 20 minutes.. man syslogd for more information).
*) DENY and REJECT act slightly differently. If you are going to utterly blackhole a machine, or simply want to eat packets coming in, DENY is the option you want. REJECT simply sends back a connection refused packet (for TCP, UDP and other protocols have slighty different packets). If you're going to be filtering TCP ports, use REJECT -- DENY will show up as 'filtered' on nmap and any other quality scanner which notes the lack of a reply packet (despite the host being up).
*) OpenBSD is an audited branch of the BSD family tree. This code can trace its lineage back to the original UNIX code. For many people, it's a great replacement for Linux on their firewalls because it's simple to setup, and secure out of the box. If you require SMP, or are going to be doing things like high volume web traffic, you may want to review the performance of it vs. Linux, or combine them via firewall + proxy network setup.
If you have any other questions, head to #kuro5hin on slashnet (or irc.kuro5hin.org if you don't know what slashnet is;)). We'll help you out. --
Like Alan Sherman's "Rape of the A.P.E." a book published in the 1970s. I can't find a new copy of the book.
Books have limited runs. Being able to share that among people who wouldn't otherwise be able to read it is a good thing. If a book sells 200,000 copies, the author makes money. Their contracts are renewed, and they're happy. But if the publisher doesn't reprint the books, what about the other people who want to read it? That's where used books come in.
This cash grab is rather transparent -- if there's a demand, they can certainly print more books. The problem is they don't want to go through the expense of actually printing them. Instead they want to tax used book sales. --
Yeah, my K7 info is kinda spotty. I think I actually read about "Recycled" T-bird -> Duron on/. somewhere (gee, that should learn me to not believe all that I read;)).
I think the most AMD got from the K6-III was just how hard it could be to do get a good yield on those chips (something Intel learned with the PentiumPro which suffered similar problems). The K6-III comes in 3-4 forms. The most comment are the 2.2v 4x100 model, and the 2.4v 4.5x100 model (I have one of each at my house right now.. the 450 is not mine, it's just here because it happens to be here).
They had to increase the voltage on the early 450 models, as they just didn't work at 2.2v stably. This led to interesting heat problems, too, as they ran up to 5 degrees hotter than a K6-2 (especially with dnetc). My K6-III 400 runs at 48 to 53 degrees (right after replacing the CPU fan). The K6-III 450 is between 52 and 58. It can easily go over 60 degrees:-\
Since the K6 series had a large (8192) BTU and a complex algorithm, I'm guessing it tended to starve for instructions because it hit the end of an execution pipe, rather than need to reload its execution pipelines because it mispredicated a branch. This is why the K6-2+ can probably get away with 128kb of cache -- because the "end of pipeline" stalls occur far less often than the "mispredicted branch" stall would happen (if the BTU was not as overpowered). AMD probably learned some of the magic of making the L2 cache size such that the reduced latency balanced with the rest of the chip.
The K7 has a different BTU which has a lower accuracy rate (90% I think). This is offset by the faster CPU < -- > northbridge speed (200, and more recently, 266Mhz using DDR singnalling). Going from the original K7 half-to-a-third-speed-but-large L2 cache to the fairly small on-chip stuff seemed to me a good move. The Duron with 64kb is not enough, IMO, especially without DDR ram support. Yes, you can combine with the L1 cache, but when it branch mispredicts, all of the pipeline has to be flushed and reloaded (arg). Since their instruction decoding mechanism is enough to issue a lot of CISC into mu-ops and fill the pipeline, it's mainly a problem of the memory speed. That's why the DDR 760 is so freakin' cool and kicks everything's ass in benchmarks:)
I thought it was logical, since cache is the only difference I can think of between the T-bird and the Duron. If a proc comes off the line, but the L2 cache has an error, AMD may be able to save it by doing some creative wiring. I do doubt that AMD does this, since mass marketting has lead to the end of hotfixes to make "mostly OK" products into "OK" products (go look into any older machines for hotfix wires).
As for the cache size being off.. whoops, I don't own a T-bird. I do own a K6-III and a K6-2, so I know the specifics of those chips from dealing with them daily (cat/proc/cpuinfo:))
"Had me half convinced..".. sigh.. must everyone think that every other post on Slashdot written with any form of coherency is a fscking troll? I guess that's why I live more on Kuro5hin. --
Ok. You benchmark the Transmeta, a neat processor . It is light years ahead of the "magical underclocker" technology from Intel (slowstep;)). hey are targetting lower power consumption in your laptop while in Word and other apps (which Win9x doesn't do because of not HLTing the processor). It's designed so that the only significant draw of power is the LCD (the HD spins down while idle, and the proc is self reconfiguring for greater efficiency).
Naturally, since it's not targetting performance, it benchmarks poorly. Do they (the various Quake 3 monkeys) rerun the benchmarks? No.
The Pentium IV comes out. People plug 'em in, benchmark them. They also suck. They benchmark them again, showing the suck by a larger margin. Then they benchmark them again, showing it's actually not such a bad suckage after all.
The K6-III was the exact same as a K6-2, except it had integrated L2 cache (256kb) running at chip speed. This was evolutionary, but a major gain for the K6 series which was mainly bottlenecked by the slow L2 cache. A K6-2 400 and a K6-III 400 in the exact same motherboard, with the exact same Voodoo3, shows how much of a difference this makes. The K6-2 400 does between 12 and 26 fps. The K6-III does between 18 and 33 fps. Everything else was the same, except for the processor.
Even underclocked, the K6-III did more per clock than the K6-2. The K6 series processor had an admittedly over-engineered branch predictor, so it had to constantly be getting instructions to be living up to its full potential. The L2 cache on the K6-III let it live up to this potential, and the K6-III 400 actually out performs the P2-450 on many operations (except FPU).
The K6-III was not a testbed. It was an evolution step in the series, and allowed people to get even better performance out of relatively inexpensive processors. The only problem was ramping up the speed of the chip, which prooved too much for AMD as they refocused their efforts on the K7 development.
The Athlons were released with separate L2 cache at first, but the new T-birds and Durons both have integrated L2 cache. Yes, AMD probably learned a few lessons on the K6-III about it, but they also applied it elsewhere. The K6-2+ for laptops is a K6-2 with 128kb of L2 cache in the CPU core. The T-bird/Duron core is the exact same, except for flaws in the L2 cache which leave the Duron with 64kb of working L2 cache, and the T-bird with 128kb of working L2 cache. --
"But if the market itself is pricing it that low, then why would you need a government regulation stipulating that it's below $50? It would seem to be creating an unnecessary bureaucracy"
Ugh. It's not like we create a beuro of price-fixing at the CRTC. They just say you can't charge more than 50$ Cdn. It doesn't mean they can't charge less as competition works, it just means they can't go and put a gun to your head and charge you a lot. Think of how much better off a lot of people in the US would be if they had a similar price control on drugs.
Anyways, in Saskatchewan, there are two broadband providers: Sasktel, and Shaw cable service. Shaw started and stayed as 40$/month. Sasktel started as 90$/month. They also forced you into service contracts. Essentially, everyone jumped ship to Shaw. Their prices remained at 90$/month. Then about 6-10 months ago, their prices dropped to 44.95$/month.
So in a way it made them more competitive. Otherwise, Sasktel would've had a chicken/egg problem with obtaining subscribers. They can and do still charge > 50$ for some of their access packages, but now there's a "ground floor" for the great unwashed to get in on. I think too often you Americans are blinded to "changes which mean to grow the Social environment" and consider it pure "unnecessary bureaucracy." It's not, it's just how we live. --
"A professor of mine once examined the power use of a laptop but disassembling it, and reassembling it on sheet of plywood. He added ammeters between the major components and discovered that 1/3 of the power is used by the hard drive, 1/3 by the LCD, and 1/3 by the processor."
A friend of mine once examine how a laptop saves power. By using it, he noticed that the harddrive could spin down, and that the LCD could turn off. One thing that wasn't changing to save power was the CPU -- it was always going at one hundred percent when being used in normal mode, and wasn't changing its power profile based on code.
Your argument is called a straw man. You're distracting from the truth by putting a simplified picture of the issues out there. Say your laptop-equiped CEO is running Word on a plane. Chances are the HD will have a chance to spin down, as it'll be working in memory. Obviously the LCD won't be turning off as the CEO works on the document. BUT thanks to the Crusoe, it can use its codemorphing to adapt its emulation to the task at hand, and change its power draw from a couple of watts to one watt or less. That's an important savings. --
"MS To Virginia Beach: Prove You Own Your Software"
This has to be a misnomer, since all the EULAs that Microsoft employs are very careful to state that AT NO TIME DO YOU OWN THE SOFTWARE -- it's all licenced from MS, and they have the right to yank you licence, change terms, etc.
Illegal? Hell yes, but because people are stupid, they still accept signing away their rights for something they are utterly dependant on. I *like* being able to say I own my software. --
Slashdot Mirror
I was actually wondering about how we could encourage more Linux gaming :) I'm with the very teeny Saskatoon Linux Users' Group; we're not exactly rich. There's been talk of an installfest recently, and having games to give out (or sell for small amounts) would really help out.
--
The VESA extension is a port, not a slot. It hooks directly to the front side bus of older hardware. This, and some signalling reasons, is why you could only use so many VESA ports as you ramped up the bus speed (3 @ 25Mhz, 2 @ 33Mhz, 1 @ 40Mhz, 0 @ 50Mhz).
--
I laugh my ass off at the poor BIND using admins as much as I do the poor IE using clients.
Really, I use djbdns. It's an alternative that is available to me, just like Mozilla is an alternative available to me. I use these programs every day, and I don't have to deal with any problems.
BIND sucks, IE sucks, most code sucks. Go for the relatively open stuff, stuff that is designed well, and you don't get these problems.
--
Not really.
1) If you're using a public terminal or something similar, the people who provide it can probably just record the keystrokes at the keyboard level.
** Third-party hardware cannot be made secure by the addition of code to one component **
2) If this is your private system which has become compromised, secure login info is the least of your worries.
** Local machines are not made secure by the addition of code to this one area **
This is a really old, mostly useless standard left over from the rainbow book series. It looks good on paper, but won't get you far in the real world.
--
Perhaps it'll be easier to discredit GPL software.
Think of it. You release software under an NDA and lots of licences. Then someone leaks it. After a while, people who had looked at it as teens move into the world. They write some GPL utility.
Now they have to prove that MS code did not influence them! It's like turning the world into a non-cleanroom environment, in order to get rid of opensource software (since they can inspect it easily..).
--
K5 innovative? Maybe. We still don't have a lot of the features which the Slash code base has. At the same time, we have a lot of features they don't have. If K5 had been first, would you call it innovative to have a closed story submission queue which allowed much stronger steering of content on the site?
/. is all about your quick fix for news -- K5 can't ever replace that. I get news from here. Just filter out the bs (score below +3 mostly :)), and everything's fine. K5 is an addition, not a replacement, to the online weblogs.
When you say people migrate from slashdot to Kuro5hin, you make it sound like it's one way.
Kuro5hin -- we're not the anti-slashdot!
--
The reason, which you and the people who replied to you seem to have missed, is because Microsoft said themselves that Windows 2000 would never required fixes. They lied to the corporate managers and other people who choose what to run on the servers in order to get more money.
That is what people don't like about MS Win2k. Linus never claimed that 2.4.0 would be bugfree (or if he did, he did it tongue-in-cheek). If MS had more truth in their advertising, I know I'd be happier.
--
It's set up us. Please, if you're going to make nice, off-topic ZeroWing jokes, try to follow the ZeroWing script a little closer.
--
No. Zero Wing was an Arcade game in 1989, and then a Sega Genesis game in 1991. They added the engrish demo to the console version.
For those carefully looking at any shots of it, you'll note that Zero Wing's demo is predominately red and purple, common colours for Genesis games. Most first gen (1991 was the year of the SNES release) games for the SNES tended towards much broader palettes.
--
While I know there are people out there who complain about "being forced to upgrade," I think using existing stanards is good. I mean, it's 2001 -- when will I be able to use CSS1 (a 1996 specification) fully? How about CSS2?
/finally/ (as of 0.8) replaced Netscape for me on the desktop for browsing. It supports it.
Mozilla's
--
I don't know why rusty named Scoop Scoop, but I do know that Slashcode isn't alone in getting support emails for PHPSlash :p
.."
Consider this email regardling PHPNuke:
"Subject: The best nuked site Ive never seen
To: Kuro5hin.org Help
Dear Sirs of Kuro5hin,
Im journalist and Im new to PHP nuke.
Ive been visiting many nuked sites and yours is the VERY best.
I wonder if you could send my your theme files, not to use or copy it in my
site, I dont have a site, just to learn to develope a good theme.
Thank you very much, and sorry about my english.
Best regards,
--
Yeah, we need to kick some ass and get the group think out. Sigh.
--
Kuro5hin had that too, and only 362 days ago! :p
--
(Consider this circa 1993 in terms of how 'old Unix' businesses and users felt)
You know, I used to follow Linux. I was hopeful that it might provide the replacement for UNIX within my professional lifetime. I have since given up hope.
Linux development is moving at a snail's place. They don't have just a whole lot of people working on it, and I'm not sure they have *anyone* working on it full time. While the attempt is certainly noble, I don't think it's going anywhere.
More importantly, even if they manage to finish the project and come out with a reasonable, clean replacement for commercial UNIX, how are they going to persuade the industry to use it? There is a ridiculous amount of binary code written for SunOS, AIX, Ultrix, etc. To make any inroads they are going to have to have backwards compatibility with them, in which case they've moved to a new house, but carried the old baggage with them.
I certainly do not believe the commercial Unix vendors are going to embrace such a new development. Would the Linux supporters be confident enough to break compatibility and go their own way? I don't see the balance of power between open / commercial shifting that quickly. And so far I have seen zero support of Linux from any commercial entities (even big companies like IBM).
If Linux is used, I expect it will be in "fringe" applications first, not mainline workstations. Particularly, embedded applications might pick it up. They have a much smaller pool of software to tote around, and would probably be happy to have a kernel system smaller, and more open, than commercial UNIX.
To bring this to a close, as "cool" as Linux may sound, the software is far from complete, is advancing slowly, and will face serious obstacles once it *is* complete. I, personally, have given up hope on Linux. I do not think it will replace UNIX. My hopes lie instead with Solaris. There is much that can be done in the way of gradually extending Solaris, and deprecating old features. Over time, they can drift Solaris towards a cleaner system, relegating cruft to libraries which get loaded less and less often. This is less inspiring, but probably more feasible.
Three reorganizations are worth one revolution.
The lesson is: have patience, and contribute -- the rest will follow in time.
--
*) telneting as root is considered bad. Please replace telnet with OpenSSH. It encrypts thing so that people can't spy on your sessions. If you want an example, learn how to use tcpdump, and see what happens. It's also a good idea to not ssh as root so that it requires another level of passwords to get total control over your box.
;)). We'll help you out.
*) Nobody is a generic dummy account on most UNIX systems. Its purpose is to allow you to run various daemons under the lowest priviledges possible (that of a user which can't login and doesn't own any files). A better practice is to create on user account per daemon, and have it own only the files it requires to write to.
*) -- MARK -- is a generic placeholder put there every n amount of time (the default is 20 minutes.. man syslogd for more information).
*) DENY and REJECT act slightly differently. If you are going to utterly blackhole a machine, or simply want to eat packets coming in, DENY is the option you want. REJECT simply sends back a connection refused packet (for TCP, UDP and other protocols have slighty different packets). If you're going to be filtering TCP ports, use REJECT -- DENY will show up as 'filtered' on nmap and any other quality scanner which notes the lack of a reply packet (despite the host being up).
*) OpenBSD is an audited branch of the BSD family tree. This code can trace its lineage back to the original UNIX code. For many people, it's a great replacement for Linux on their firewalls because it's simple to setup, and secure out of the box. If you require SMP, or are going to be doing things like high volume web traffic, you may want to review the performance of it vs. Linux, or combine them via firewall + proxy network setup.
If you have any other questions, head to #kuro5hin on slashnet (or irc.kuro5hin.org if you don't know what slashnet is
--
Like Alan Sherman's "Rape of the A.P.E." a book published in the 1970s. I can't find a new copy of the book.
Books have limited runs. Being able to share that among people who wouldn't otherwise be able to read it is a good thing. If a book sells 200,000 copies, the author makes money. Their contracts are renewed, and they're happy. But if the publisher doesn't reprint the books, what about the other people who want to read it? That's where used books come in.
This cash grab is rather transparent -- if there's a demand, they can certainly print more books. The problem is they don't want to go through the expense of actually printing them. Instead they want to tax used book sales.
--
Yeah, my K7 info is kinda spotty. I think I actually read about "Recycled" T-bird -> Duron on /. somewhere (gee, that should learn me to not believe all that I read ;)).
:-\
:)
I think the most AMD got from the K6-III was just how hard it could be to do get a good yield on those chips (something Intel learned with the PentiumPro which suffered similar problems). The K6-III comes in 3-4 forms. The most comment are the 2.2v 4x100 model, and the 2.4v 4.5x100 model (I have one of each at my house right now.. the 450 is not mine, it's just here because it happens to be here).
They had to increase the voltage on the early 450 models, as they just didn't work at 2.2v stably. This led to interesting heat problems, too, as they ran up to 5 degrees hotter than a K6-2 (especially with dnetc). My K6-III 400 runs at 48 to 53 degrees (right after replacing the CPU fan). The K6-III 450 is between 52 and 58. It can easily go over 60 degrees
Since the K6 series had a large (8192) BTU and a complex algorithm, I'm guessing it tended to starve for instructions because it hit the end of an execution pipe, rather than need to reload its execution pipelines because it mispredicated a branch. This is why the K6-2+ can probably get away with 128kb of cache -- because the "end of pipeline" stalls occur far less often than the "mispredicted branch" stall would happen (if the BTU was not as overpowered). AMD probably learned some of the magic of making the L2 cache size such that the reduced latency balanced with the rest of the chip.
The K7 has a different BTU which has a lower accuracy rate (90% I think). This is offset by the faster CPU < -- > northbridge speed (200, and more recently, 266Mhz using DDR singnalling). Going from the original K7 half-to-a-third-speed-but-large L2 cache to the fairly small on-chip stuff seemed to me a good move. The Duron with 64kb is not enough, IMO, especially without DDR ram support. Yes, you can combine with the L1 cache, but when it branch mispredicts, all of the pipeline has to be flushed and reloaded (arg). Since their instruction decoding mechanism is enough to issue a lot of CISC into mu-ops and fill the pipeline, it's mainly a problem of the memory speed. That's why the DDR 760 is so freakin' cool and kicks everything's ass in benchmarks
--
I thought it was logical, since cache is the only difference I can think of between the T-bird and the Duron. If a proc comes off the line, but the L2 cache has an error, AMD may be able to save it by doing some creative wiring. I do doubt that AMD does this, since mass marketting has lead to the end of hotfixes to make "mostly OK" products into "OK" products (go look into any older machines for hotfix wires).
/proc/cpuinfo :))
.. sigh.. must everyone think that every other post on Slashdot written with any form of coherency is a fscking troll? I guess that's why I live more on Kuro5hin.
As for the cache size being off.. whoops, I don't own a T-bird. I do own a K6-III and a K6-2, so I know the specifics of those chips from dealing with them daily (cat
"Had me half convinced.."
--
Ok. You benchmark the Transmeta, a neat processor . It is light years ahead of the "magical underclocker" technology from Intel (slowstep ;)). hey are targetting lower power consumption in your laptop while in Word and other apps (which Win9x doesn't do because of not HLTing the processor). It's designed so that the only significant draw of power is the LCD (the HD spins down while idle, and the proc is self reconfiguring for greater efficiency).
Naturally, since it's not targetting performance, it benchmarks poorly. Do they (the various Quake 3 monkeys) rerun the benchmarks? No.
The Pentium IV comes out. People plug 'em in, benchmark them. They also suck. They benchmark them again, showing the suck by a larger margin. Then they benchmark them again, showing it's actually not such a bad suckage after all.
Isn't that just a bit of Intel favouritism?
--
I think you're way off base here.
The K6-III was the exact same as a K6-2, except it had integrated L2 cache (256kb) running at chip speed. This was evolutionary, but a major gain for the K6 series which was mainly bottlenecked by the slow L2 cache. A K6-2 400 and a K6-III 400 in the exact same motherboard, with the exact same Voodoo3, shows how much of a difference this makes. The K6-2 400 does between 12 and 26 fps. The K6-III does between 18 and 33 fps. Everything else was the same, except for the processor.
Even underclocked, the K6-III did more per clock than the K6-2. The K6 series processor had an admittedly over-engineered branch predictor, so it had to constantly be getting instructions to be living up to its full potential. The L2 cache on the K6-III let it live up to this potential, and the K6-III 400 actually out performs the P2-450 on many operations (except FPU).
The K6-III was not a testbed. It was an evolution step in the series, and allowed people to get even better performance out of relatively inexpensive processors. The only problem was ramping up the speed of the chip, which prooved too much for AMD as they refocused their efforts on the K7 development.
The Athlons were released with separate L2 cache at first, but the new T-birds and Durons both have integrated L2 cache. Yes, AMD probably learned a few lessons on the K6-III about it, but they also applied it elsewhere. The K6-2+ for laptops is a K6-2 with 128kb of L2 cache in the CPU core. The T-bird/Duron core is the exact same, except for flaws in the L2 cache which leave the Duron with 64kb of working L2 cache, and the T-bird with 128kb of working L2 cache.
--
coma_bug : no -- I hope not, this is a Cyrix problem. Not an Intel one.
/* Emulate MTRRs using Cyrix's ARRs. */
/* 6x86's contain this bug */
From arch/i386/kernel/setup.c:
c->x86_capability |= X86_FEATURE_MTRR;
c->coma_bug = 1;
Maybe you shouldn't be yelling at Intel for non-Intel bugs. No one deserves that, even if they did screw up their own chips.
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"But if the market itself is pricing it that low, then why would you need a government regulation stipulating that it's below $50? It would seem to be creating an unnecessary bureaucracy"
Ugh. It's not like we create a beuro of price-fixing at the CRTC. They just say you can't charge more than 50$ Cdn. It doesn't mean they can't charge less as competition works, it just means they can't go and put a gun to your head and charge you a lot. Think of how much better off a lot of people in the US would be if they had a similar price control on drugs.
Anyways, in Saskatchewan, there are two broadband providers: Sasktel, and Shaw cable service. Shaw started and stayed as 40$/month. Sasktel started as 90$/month. They also forced you into service contracts. Essentially, everyone jumped ship to Shaw. Their prices remained at 90$/month. Then about 6-10 months ago, their prices dropped to 44.95$/month.
So in a way it made them more competitive. Otherwise, Sasktel would've had a chicken/egg problem with obtaining subscribers. They can and do still charge > 50$ for some of their access packages, but now there's a "ground floor" for the great unwashed to get in on. I think too often you Americans are blinded to "changes which mean to grow the Social environment" and consider it pure "unnecessary bureaucracy." It's not, it's just how we live.
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I've seen a few people complain that they can't view the article because of the slashdot effect.
:-)
We have a copy of the article posted by Lucas on Kuro5hin, complete with everything you need
Happy to help. Have a nice day.
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"A professor of mine once examined the power use of a laptop but disassembling it, and reassembling it on sheet of plywood. He added ammeters between the major components and discovered that 1/3 of the power is used by the hard drive, 1/3 by the LCD, and 1/3 by the processor."
A friend of mine once examine how a laptop saves power. By using it, he noticed that the harddrive could spin down, and that the LCD could turn off. One thing that wasn't changing to save power was the CPU -- it was always going at one hundred percent when being used in normal mode, and wasn't changing its power profile based on code.
Your argument is called a straw man. You're distracting from the truth by putting a simplified picture of the issues out there. Say your laptop-equiped CEO is running Word on a plane. Chances are the HD will have a chance to spin down, as it'll be working in memory. Obviously the LCD won't be turning off as the CEO works on the document. BUT thanks to the Crusoe, it can use its codemorphing to adapt its emulation to the task at hand, and change its power draw from a couple of watts to one watt or less. That's an important savings.
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"MS To Virginia Beach: Prove You Own Your Software"
This has to be a misnomer, since all the EULAs that Microsoft employs are very careful to state that AT NO TIME DO YOU OWN THE SOFTWARE -- it's all licenced from MS, and they have the right to yank you licence, change terms, etc.
Illegal? Hell yes, but because people are stupid, they still accept signing away their rights for something they are utterly dependant on. I *like* being able to say I own my software.
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