The average buyer has no clue about performance and will believe the FUD that is shouted the loudest
Not necessarily. I think the average consumer measures performance. Granted, it's on a purely MHz-rated scale, but they do. They may not know that an Athlon is faster clock for clock than PIII (in fact it's likely they don't know). I don't see the FUD-factor as being all that strong here. Whoever has the most MHz will be seen by most consumers as being the fastest.
One thing to consider...
on
Which BSD?
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· Score: 1
...is which of the systems you mentioned support the hardware in your machine. Coming from the Windows world, it can be easy to forget that the OS might not have drivers for your hardware.
I'd like to ask everyone out there, since I really don't know much about Linux or *BSD, where is a good place to find out what hardware has Linux and/or BSD drivers? I'm thinking of installing Linux again (I had installed RedHat a couple of times before and played with it a bit a couple of years ago, but don't have it installed now). I would try BSD but I want one of those GeForce-based cards, and nVidia seems to have Linux drivers but not BSD.
I'm also curious (though somewhat wary of starting a flame war:) as to which distro would be best. My ideas for this right now are (in no particular order), RedHat, Caldera, and Debian. RedHat simply because I've dealt with it a little before, though I have no real attachment to it. Caldera because I've heard the install is simpler, though this isn't really a significant issue to me. I'm kinda curious about Debian, I see a lot of people on/. who seem to like it better than the other distros, but I've never really seen an explanation of why/what's different.
Background-wise, I'm primarily a Windows user, though I have some basic Unix knowledge. The ease of installation isn't all that big of a deal, so I'm leaning more towards Debian or RedHat. Though I might try another distro if someone gives me a good reason why it might be better for me. My main concerns, ie things I'd want/need to be able to set up without extreme amounts of hassle (though I realize there's bound to be some):
1. An appropriate desktop environment, I like the looks of GNOME, though I won't rule out KDE.
2. Sound. All those mp3s:-)
3. Web/email, but I figure I can just use Netscape Communicator for this (unless there's a better email app?)
4. FTP client and server.
5. An office suite, or possibly just a word processor. WordPerfect?
6. Gcc and the like, since I'm trying to get a little experience coding. I'd just need C and C++ compilers.
Anyone have a suggestion as to which distro might be best? I'd really appreciate any information/insight you could provide.
I think you miss the point. Obviously, the guys who wrote the Unreal engine aren't morons for using VB to write UnrealEd. They used the tools appropriate to the task at hand. I'm sure they didn't write *Unreal* in VB. VB is best at making front-ends (and since an editor like that is primarily made up of the interface, VB is the natural choice); for other tasks other languages are often better.
Using VB does not make one a moron; but the thing with VB is that because it's very simple to learn it tends to attract more morons than a lot of other languages. Thus VB programmers get a bad reputation (which may or may not be deserved, though every VB programmer I've known has fit the stereotype).
It stands for "Flip Chip Pin Grid Array", and is the new format for the Coppermines (which will also be available in Slot 1). Intel expects to move the PIIIs over to FCPGA by late 2000 (and discontinue Slot 1 at that point).
Advantages of FCPGA: lower cost, lower power consumption, and lower EMF interference.
This isn't really news for AMD, they (and just about everyone else) knew that the Coppermines were coming out today. One thing to note, that is in AMD's favor, is that the.25 micron 700MHz Athlon is holding its own against the.18 micron 733MHz CuMines. AMD's Dresden facility is in the final stages of quality-assurance testing for the move to.18, and should be mass-producing.18 micron Athlons within 90 days. The fact that AMD's chip could easily hit 700MHz at.25 but Intel's couldn't says a lot for the Athlon design, and when AMD moves to.18 it should be able to scale up to much higher speeds, quite possibly beyond those of the Intel chips (and we already know that clock for clock, the Athlon is faster, especially in floating point). The smaller process ought to help out the Athlon's power consumption, as well.
Not that Intel is taking this laying down, of course:) The enhanced core and full-speed cache on the CuMines is proof of this.
Coppermine details and enhancements (note that these are pretty much ripped off of Sharky Extreme's coverage of the Coppermines. Be sure to check out their site!):
28 million transistors
106 mm2 die size
1.1 to 1.7 V operation
.18 micron process
Not only did they shrink the size of the transistors from the previous.25 microns (thus increasing the speed), but also moved to a fluorine-doped silicon dielectric for reduced capacitance, resulting in a further performance speedup.
Enhanced L2 cache
Rather than the 512KB, half-speed L2 cache that's been around in the P6 family for quite a while, the L2 is now 256KB running at full processor speed (and has been moved onto the same die as the core).
Cache :
8-way set associative, 1024 sets
32 byte line (32 bytes data, 4 bytes ECC every 2 clocks, equals 11.7GB/sec throughput at 733MHz
36-bit physical address space
4 x reduction in latency versus Katmai P3 L2
Cache bus speed fully scalable with core frequency
288-bit transfer width (256 data, 32 ECC)
2 cycle back to back throughput
Improved system buffering
6 Fill Buffers (previously 4), increasing the number of concurrent non-blocking data-cache ops that can be done.
8 Bus Queue Entires (previously 4) to allow more outstanding memory/bus operations.
4 Writeback buffers (previously 1) for reduced blocking during cache operations.
"Enhanced Power Management" for Mobile PIIIs
While the smaller process results in lower power consumption, Intel has also added a technique they call Enhanced Power Management, or EPM. EPM essentially puts the CPU continuously into pseudo-standby mode, from which it can instantly accelerate to full speed when needed. This should lower power consumption further while maintaining the full capabilities of the chip.
Packaging
As well as the SECC2 Slot-1 catridge of previous PIIIs, the Coppermine will be available in a new format called "Flip Chip Pin Grid Array", or FCPGA, which offers lower power consumption and EMF interference, as well as being a less costly solution than Slot-1. Intel expects to move all the PIIIs to this format by late 2000.
Yes, but when it was first put on the books, it was put there (IIRC) to deal with whatever monopoly was being a pain in the ass at the time (I don't remember which, it's been a while since I took history:) He actually does have a bit of a point, though I don't see how that would in any way invalidate anti-trust law, especially today as it's been around for decades now.
industry/corporate America is responsible for most of the legal difficulties of our U.S. system
How so? It seems to me that our legal difficulties are due to two problems: 1) the idiots we have in government, and 2) ourselves for putting those idiots in office. After all, the companies aren't the ones writing the damn laws. I will admit though that companies (and unions, for that matter) have way more influence under our current system than they ought to. The situation could be fixed but simply banning any political contributions from any entity other than US citizens (and put a reasonable limit to how much individuals can contribute). Of course, that would require that the idiots in office actually do what's right; and that the voters actually vote them out of office if they don't.
If cigs kill people (they do), shouldn't the cig companies STOP selling them?
Well, they probably *should*, from a moral perspective. But we shouldn't be legislating morality (history has shown us it's a bad idea). It's really the responsibility of the individual to not smoke. The laws shouldn't be used against the tobacco companies, unless the tobacco companies lied about or withheld evidence about the harmful effects of smoking (there is evidence that they did indeed do that). If people are stupid enough to smoke and not quit, well I guess it's natural selection at work.
As I see it, the laws are there to protect our citizens from each other, not to protect John Doe from himself. If I want to smoke myself to death, then that should be my right. As long as I don't expose anyone else to the fumes, why not?
If you think an individual can make up their mind on their own, then how come cig manufactures spend billions each year on advertising?
Because they need some way to distinguish their products from the competition. If you don't advertise, how is your customer supposed to know if your product is better? Name recognition doesn't hurt, either.
If drinking weren't made into such a big deal here in the US, I think our problems with drunken idiots would be a lot fewer (look at the much more mature manner in which Europeans in general handle alcohol, versus the attitude in the US). It could be argued that the way to get less drunk 15 year olds is to *decrease* the drinking age, not increase it. If kids are taught responsibility with alcohol early on, they're less likely to abuse it. And it also then is no longer the "rite of passage" some make it out to be with the current age restrictions.
Besides that, I find it rather odd that most states are willing to give a 16-year old the privilege of driving a motor vehicle, with which they could easily kill themselves or someone else; yet people are not allowed to drink (which usually just affects themselves) until age 21. Something's a little screwed up here. Oh yeah, and I can vote at 18, serve in the military at 18, but drink? Wait 'till 21. It's as if the government is totally ass backwards...oh wait, it's the government:)
Really...
Driving a car has the potential to kill yourself or others fairly easily. Age: 16
Serving in the military, possibly killing people during your service. Age, 18
Use tobacco products (harm to oneself, and those unfortunate enough to get the secondhand smoke): 18
Use alcohol (harm to oneself, that's just about it): 21
Not only is it ridiculous from a risk point of view (since as you can see above we let younger people do far riskier things than drink), but from a responsibility point of view it's dumb too. Being able to vote, living on your own, serving in the military, etc demand at least as much responsibility as drinking a beer.
Sure, some age limits are probably necessary. But let's make them follow some sort of logical order. The way the laws are now, there seems to be no reasoning behind the different age restrictions. If *everything* was at 18, it'd make sense. Or if the less risky things you were allowed to do at a younger age, that would make sense. But we're not doing either approach.
I think the problem is not so much that being young and being naive go hand in hand, but that age does not go hand in hand with wisdom. Our politicians, despite usually not being all that young, pass idiotic and inconsistent laws. So what can we do but complain?
"P'shaw"...now there's an expression I hadn't heard in a while! Are you Polish or of Polish descent, by any chance? (the only place I really remember hearing that expression was from my grandfather, who was of Polish descent and knew some Polish)
If I had thought that his post was actually serious, I might have gone into why nobody in their right mind would try to design a complex circuit using asynchronous design. Sure, async is useful for some things, but nobody would use it to design something like a CPU...you'd never manage to get the thing designed and debugged.
But I think you're right, it's spam. Not only that, but nonsensical spam. I really don't know who the target audience is, since (presumably) anyone who knows enough about logic design to be interested in their tools would know better.
Computer Organization and Design is excellent. We do use it at CMU, for the introductory Computer Architecture class.
There is another book, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (Amazon link) by the same authors. It covers the same material, but does go into more depth (and covers superscalar processors, which I don't think CO&D does much with). So if you're really hardcore into this stuff, go for CA: AQA (it is used in the CMU courses beyond the intro architecture course). If you're not going hardcore, CO&D should be very much sufficient for your needs.
The only other differences besides depth between the two books are: A) the authors names are switched on the cover and B) each author wrote the opposite chapters of what he did in CO&D.
I figured I'd explain the difference so if any of you see both books, you'd know which one was appropriate.
And in case you're wondering, Hennessy and Patterson were among the leaders of the "RISC-revolution". They are also (IMO) excellent authors, and the book includes plenty of diagrams and things to help you understand what's going on. If you've ever wondered how your CPU, cache memories, virtual memory, etc work, it's an excellent book to read.
Sure it's possible to work around problems, but the question is at what time/expense? The game is based on the Quake2 engine, IIRC, which is starting to get a little on the old side. Not onyl that, but there are new cool games coming out (Q3, Unreal Tournament, etc). It's kinda hard to sell a game that has been around for around a year, and by the time the problems were fixed would have been over 2 years old, when your competition is the likes of Q3, UT, and similar titles. Maybe they just decided that they wouldn't be able to get Mac Half-Life out in time to succeed. Let's not get too paranoid about the great anti-Mac conspiracy:)
Another issue to consider in your comparisons with Quake, Q3, etc is that those games were designed from the beginning to be relatively platform-independent. This makes porting to another OS somewhat trivial. Quake 2 on the other hand, was not (read John Carmack's.plan file for details). Since Half-Life is based on Q2, there are I'm sure many issues with porting to the Mac (or anything else for that matter). The port in this case is NOT easy.
It seems to me that you're getting upset at the company because after they made an honest effort (as best we know) to make the Mac port, they found it can't be done in a reasonable time schedule (gee, they only have to do a little hacking of the engine, reverse engineer some networking protocols, etc etc.) Give them a break. Things don't always work out how one might want them to. I'm sure they would have loved to ship the Mac version, any company likes to make money. But if they can't do it, they can't. I don't see much point in boycotting Sierra for this, I really don't think it was an attempt to screw over the Mac community. And anyway, I doubt Mac users boycotting the company will have any significant effect, except perhaps to make the PHBs think future Mac ports aren't worth bothering with.
My suspicion is that the site is a spoof. I don't see the fundamentalist-Christian types going for this sort of thing. Or even the not-so-fundamentalist ones:) (Though I haven't been able to actually visit the Eternal Warriors site, it seems to be/.ed)
I don't think we're going to be seeing Christian Porn anytime soon (whatever *that* would be! funny idea...), since Christianity IMHO has not done its assimilating blindly. Using local art forms to spread your message is one thing, but using something you find offensive is another.
I think "Thou Shalt Kick Ass" would be a bitchin' 11th Commandment. Add a 12th: "Thou Shalt Be Assimilated".
Hmm...Christianity as the Borg?
std_disclaimer: yes, I am a Christian. No, not one of the annoying ones:-p
Nobody said that the little guy is somehow entitled to more than the major corporations, nor did the post imply that the law should give "little guys" arbitrary preferences to supercede other laws.
As I read it, Ralman was simply complaining that his company, which presumably has a domain name of a legitimate nature (ie they're not squatters and don't believe they are infringing on the trademark), is being harassed by a major corporation that has a trademark similar to the domain in question. Said big company threatens a lawsuit in an attempt to coerce small company into giving up the domain name, regardless of whether the small company has the right to the name under the law. Being a small company, chances are they can't afford huge legal bills; big companies know that and use the threat of a lawsuit to force the "little guy" to give up profitable domain name(s). It *is* OK for everyone to pursue their own interests, but this "I can spend more money on lawsuits than you" coercion is *not* OK.
We don't have enough information to claim that the small company (or for that matter, the big company) is "on poor ethical ground". Registering multiple domains is no big deal, people do it all the time. If you sell Product X and Product Y, it's reasonable to expect you might register ProductX.com, ProductY.com, companyname.com, yadda yadda yadda. It's quite possible that the small and big companies in question have the same company name, and there maybe is where the dispute is coming about. If that's the case, then provided the companies are in different industries, then the big company's trademark may not entitle them to the domain.
The raised SDRAM prices are NOT the reason for the delay in getting 500MHz machines out the door. Jobs & Co. made the comment about the SDRAM to indicate that they aren't making any money off shifting the parts down by 50MHz. That comment was made just so nobody gets thinking that this is just an Apple stunt to get more money out of people.
The reason that Apple can't sell 500MHz G4 machines is that the 500MHz CPUs are not available from Motorola. Motorola can't supply the 500MHz chips because there is a bug in the silicon, such that when the chip hits 500MHz or above it starts getting data corruption in the processor's cache memory. Motorola has stated that they expect this bug to be fixed by December. So basically, if you want a 500MHz part from Apple, you'll have to wait until then. The Register has an article about this.
Actually, you wouldn't want to overclock the G4 to 500MHz, because then the cache-data-corruption bug that is in the G4 would appear (this bug is why Motorola can't fab the 500MHz parts, because as soon as the part hits 500MHz the bug starts manifesting itself). If you want a 500+MHz G4, you'll just have to wait until around December when Motorola expects to have the bug fixed.
Some companies, like Intel and Microsoft would just try to string people out forever with vaporware like Merced and Win 2K
Merced and Win2K vaporware? I don't see any evidence to support that claim. Merced (now known by the ridiculous marketing name of "Itanium") is slated for production in mid-2000. Intel customers already have engineering samples of the chip so they can start designing products around it. The product clearly exists, even though mass production won't be until the middle of next year. And Intel has been up-front about the Merced schedule. Win2K doesn't really qualify for the vaporware title either; release candidates are in the hands of testers and it should ship before the year 2000 (MS clearly gave themselves some breathing room by naming the OS as 2000 rather 99 or some such thing).
You are right though about the Apple thing, it was a little out of their control. If Motorola can't fab the chips at 500 MHz due to a bug in the silicon, there's not much Apple can do about that. Though, if Apple knew about the Motorola bug and still took orders for 500MHz machines (I'm not saying they did know, but if they did) then people would have good reason to complain.
Well, if the man is alone in the forest, by the definition of "alone" there is no woman there to hear him:-)
And as to whether he's wrong, probably not. In fact, the reason for him being alone in the forest is probably to get away from a woman who (mistakenly) thought he was wrong:-) I mean really, why else would a guy be wandering a forest *alone*?
Actually, it's really not meaningful at all, for the following reasons:
1. The ByteMark processor benchmarks Apple uses are in no way representative of typical performance. In fact, if you look at the numbers, they are downright misleading. This has been hashed over a lot on/., so I won't go into the specifics here (though if someone really wants me to, I will). Those numbers are Apple marketing, not real-world performance.
2. Apple is not comparing machines of the same class (for purposes of comparison, let's say that the targeted class is consumer machines costing $1299 to $1499). A Wintel system costing the $1299 (or $1499) the new iMacs do would not have an ancient Rage Pro video card, and would probably have a better CPU than a 400MHz Celeron. In fact, for $1299 you can get a PIII/500, a 16MB Voodoo3, 17" monitor, 13 Gig HD, etc etc from Quantex (where I got my computer), which makes excellent machines and has one of, if not the best, tech support staffs of the computer makers out there (important to the consumer class the machines are targeting). I'm sure other PC OEMs have comparable systems/prices, this was just a 30-second lookup on Quantex's website.
No iMac even compares in performance at a given price point. Clearly the iMac does not have the "best technology in its class".
3. PC manfacturers do tend to scrimp on their underpowered systems. Thing is, the "underpowered" systems tend to be the sub-$700 segment. Machines that cost $1299 and up are by no means underpowered, generally speaking.
It seems fairly evident to me that nothing has significantly changed here. Apple still maintains a hefty price premium over machines of comparable performance. And still uses misleading marketing to imply that the performance of their machines is greater when that is not the case. Essentially, you're paying a whole lot of $$ for the privilege of having colored plastic instead of beige.
MacMillan should do the honorable thing and allow Mandrake to market the name of its distribution
Well, the boxed package they sell in the software stores (that I've seen) says "Linux Mandrake" on it in big letters across the front of the box, with MacMillan in a corner somewhere. Unless they've changed it recently, I'd say the name-marketing was pretty well in favor of Mandrake.
Well, my high school had *no* programming courses at all. Zip, nada, nothing...you get the idea:)
A couple years after I left I hear they're finally getting a CS class, in C++ no less. Which surprised the hell out of me, since in my experience my school is as technologically inept as they come (they apparently consider changing the default start page of Netscape on a teacher's machine to be some 3l33t exploit. Seriously! They even offered me a position with them after I did that too. Which I politely declined (-: ).
Maybe they finally got somebody with half a brain in there - they now have relatively new PII machines (versus old 486 Win3.1 and even more ancient Mac systems when I was there), and are actually using them for something!
Slashdot Mirror
The average buyer has no clue about performance and will believe the FUD that is shouted the loudest
Not necessarily. I think the average consumer measures performance. Granted, it's on a purely MHz-rated scale, but they do. They may not know that an Athlon is faster clock for clock than PIII (in fact it's likely they don't know). I don't see the FUD-factor as being all that strong here. Whoever has the most MHz will be seen by most consumers as being the fastest.
...is which of the systems you mentioned support the hardware in your machine. Coming from the Windows world, it can be easy to forget that the OS might not have drivers for your hardware.
:) as to which distro would be best. My ideas for this right now are (in no particular order), RedHat, Caldera, and Debian. RedHat simply because I've dealt with it a little before, though I have no real attachment to it. Caldera because I've heard the install is simpler, though this isn't really a significant issue to me. I'm kinda curious about Debian, I see a lot of people on /. who seem to like it better than the other distros, but I've never really seen an explanation of why/what's different.
:-)
I'd like to ask everyone out there, since I really don't know much about Linux or *BSD, where is a good place to find out what hardware has Linux and/or BSD drivers? I'm thinking of installing Linux again (I had installed RedHat a couple of times before and played with it a bit a couple of years ago, but don't have it installed now). I would try BSD but I want one of those GeForce-based cards, and nVidia seems to have Linux drivers but not BSD.
I'm also curious (though somewhat wary of starting a flame war
Background-wise, I'm primarily a Windows user, though I have some basic Unix knowledge. The ease of installation isn't all that big of a deal, so I'm leaning more towards Debian or RedHat. Though I might try another distro if someone gives me a good reason why it might be better for me. My main concerns, ie things I'd want/need to be able to set up without extreme amounts of hassle (though I realize there's bound to be some):
1. An appropriate desktop environment, I like the looks of GNOME, though I won't rule out KDE.
2. Sound. All those mp3s
3. Web/email, but I figure I can just use Netscape Communicator for this (unless there's a better email app?)
4. FTP client and server.
5. An office suite, or possibly just a word processor. WordPerfect?
6. Gcc and the like, since I'm trying to get a little experience coding. I'd just need C and C++ compilers.
Anyone have a suggestion as to which distro might be best? I'd really appreciate any information/insight you could provide.
Thanks,
Stradivarius
Ever notice how many good programmers/software engineers are or were also muscians (I looked at your web page)?
:)
Don't forget us hardware folks (I played trumpet)
-Stradivarius
I think you miss the point. Obviously, the guys who wrote the Unreal engine aren't morons for using VB to write UnrealEd. They used the tools appropriate to the task at hand. I'm sure they didn't write *Unreal* in VB. VB is best at making front-ends (and since an editor like that is primarily made up of the interface, VB is the natural choice); for other tasks other languages are often better.
Using VB does not make one a moron; but the thing with VB is that because it's very simple to learn it tends to attract more morons than a lot of other languages. Thus VB programmers get a bad reputation (which may or may not be deserved, though every VB programmer I've known has fit the stereotype).
--Just my $.02
It stands for "Flip Chip Pin Grid Array", and is the new format for the Coppermines (which will also be available in Slot 1). Intel expects to move the PIIIs over to FCPGA by late 2000 (and discontinue Slot 1 at that point).
Advantages of FCPGA: lower cost, lower power consumption, and lower EMF interference.
Not that Intel is taking this laying down, of course
Coppermine details and enhancements (note that these are pretty much ripped off of Sharky Extreme's coverage of the Coppermines. Be sure to check out their site!):
Not only did they shrink the size of the transistors from the previous
Enhanced L2 cache
Rather than the 512KB, half-speed L2 cache that's been around in the P6 family for quite a while, the L2 is now 256KB running at full processor speed (and has been moved onto the same die as the core).
Cache :
Improved system buffering
"Enhanced Power Management" for Mobile PIIIs
While the smaller process results in lower power consumption, Intel has also added a technique they call Enhanced Power Management, or EPM. EPM essentially puts the CPU continuously into pseudo-standby mode, from which it can instantly accelerate to full speed when needed. This should lower power consumption further while maintaining the full capabilities of the chip.
Packaging
As well as the SECC2 Slot-1 catridge of previous PIIIs, the Coppermine will be available in a new format called "Flip Chip Pin Grid Array", or FCPGA, which offers lower power consumption and EMF interference, as well as being a less costly solution than Slot-1. Intel expects to move all the PIIIs to this format by late 2000.
I couldn't have said it better myself...
-Stradivarius
Just for clarification for the AC: I am neither a libertarian nor a smoker...
The restaurant, airplane thing should be dealt with by simply banning smoking in public.
Anyway, I'd write more but I gotta go...
not really. Just curious.
Anti-trust law has been on the books for decades
:) He actually does have a bit of a point, though I don't see how that would in any way invalidate anti-trust law, especially today as it's been around for decades now.
Yes, but when it was first put on the books, it was put there (IIRC) to deal with whatever monopoly was being a pain in the ass at the time (I don't remember which, it's been a while since I took history
industry/corporate America is responsible for most of the legal difficulties of our U.S. system
How so? It seems to me that our legal difficulties are due to two problems: 1) the idiots we have in government, and 2) ourselves for putting those idiots in office. After all, the companies aren't the ones writing the damn laws. I will admit though that companies (and unions, for that matter) have way more influence under our current system than they ought to. The situation could be fixed but simply banning any political contributions from any entity other than US citizens (and put a reasonable limit to how much individuals can contribute). Of course, that would require that the idiots in office actually do what's right; and that the voters actually vote them out of office if they don't.
If cigs kill people (they do), shouldn't the cig companies STOP selling them?
Well, they probably *should*, from a moral perspective. But we shouldn't be legislating morality (history has shown us it's a bad idea). It's really the responsibility of the individual to not smoke. The laws shouldn't be used against the tobacco companies, unless the tobacco companies lied about or withheld evidence about the harmful effects of smoking (there is evidence that they did indeed do that). If people are stupid enough to smoke and not quit, well I guess it's natural selection at work.
As I see it, the laws are there to protect our citizens from each other, not to protect John Doe from himself. If I want to smoke myself to death, then that should be my right. As long as I don't expose anyone else to the fumes, why not?
If you think an individual can make up their mind on their own, then how come cig manufactures spend billions each year on advertising?
Because they need some way to distinguish their products from the competition. If you don't advertise, how is your customer supposed to know if your product is better? Name recognition doesn't hurt, either.
>All we need is *more* drunk 15 year olds
:)
If drinking weren't made into such a big deal here in the US, I think our problems with drunken idiots would be a lot fewer (look at the much more mature manner in which Europeans in general handle alcohol, versus the attitude in the US). It could be argued that the way to get less drunk 15 year olds is to *decrease* the drinking age, not increase it. If kids are taught responsibility with alcohol early on, they're less likely to abuse it. And it also then is no longer the "rite of passage" some make it out to be with the current age restrictions.
Besides that, I find it rather odd that most states are willing to give a 16-year old the privilege of driving a motor vehicle, with which they could easily kill themselves or someone else; yet people are not allowed to drink (which usually just affects themselves) until age 21. Something's a little screwed up here. Oh yeah, and I can vote at 18, serve in the military at 18, but drink? Wait 'till 21. It's as if the government is totally ass backwards...oh wait, it's the government
Really...
Driving a car has the potential to kill yourself or others fairly easily. Age: 16
Serving in the military, possibly killing people during your service. Age, 18
Use tobacco products (harm to oneself, and those unfortunate enough to get the secondhand smoke): 18
Use alcohol (harm to oneself, that's just about it): 21
Not only is it ridiculous from a risk point of view (since as you can see above we let younger people do far riskier things than drink), but from a responsibility point of view it's dumb too. Being able to vote, living on your own, serving in the military, etc demand at least as much responsibility as drinking a beer.
Sure, some age limits are probably necessary. But let's make them follow some sort of logical order. The way the laws are now, there seems to be no reasoning behind the different age restrictions. If *everything* was at 18, it'd make sense. Or if the less risky things you were allowed to do at a younger age, that would make sense. But we're not doing either approach.
I think the problem is not so much that being young and being naive go hand in hand, but that age does not go hand in hand with wisdom. Our politicians, despite usually not being all that young, pass idiotic and inconsistent laws. So what can we do but complain?
"P'shaw"...now there's an expression I hadn't heard in a while! Are you Polish or of Polish descent, by any chance? (the only place I really remember hearing that expression was from my grandfather, who was of Polish descent and knew some Polish)
-Stradivarius
Right on...
If I had thought that his post was actually serious, I might have gone into why nobody in their right mind would try to design a complex circuit using asynchronous design. Sure, async is useful for some things, but nobody would use it to design something like a CPU...you'd never manage to get the thing designed and debugged.
But I think you're right, it's spam. Not only that, but nonsensical spam. I really don't know who the target audience is, since (presumably) anyone who knows enough about logic design to be interested in their tools would know better.
Computer Organization and Design is excellent. We do use it at CMU, for the introductory Computer Architecture class.
There is another book, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (Amazon link) by the same authors. It covers the same material, but does go into more depth (and covers superscalar processors, which I don't think CO&D does much with). So if you're really hardcore into this stuff, go for CA: AQA (it is used in the CMU courses beyond the intro architecture course). If you're not going hardcore, CO&D should be very much sufficient for your needs.
The only other differences besides depth between the two books are: A) the authors names are switched on the cover and B) each author wrote the opposite chapters of what he did in CO&D.
I figured I'd explain the difference so if any of you see both books, you'd know which one was appropriate.
And in case you're wondering, Hennessy and Patterson were among the leaders of the "RISC-revolution". They are also (IMO) excellent authors, and the book includes plenty of diagrams and things to help you understand what's going on. If you've ever wondered how your CPU, cache memories, virtual memory, etc work, it's an excellent book to read.
Sure it's possible to work around problems, but the question is at what time/expense? The game is based on the Quake2 engine, IIRC, which is starting to get a little on the old side. Not onyl that, but there are new cool games coming out (Q3, Unreal Tournament, etc). It's kinda hard to sell a game that has been around for around a year, and by the time the problems were fixed would have been over 2 years old, when your competition is the likes of Q3, UT, and similar titles. Maybe they just decided that they wouldn't be able to get Mac Half-Life out in time to succeed. Let's not get too paranoid about the great anti-Mac conspiracy :)
.plan file for details). Since Half-Life is based on Q2, there are I'm sure many issues with porting to the Mac (or anything else for that matter). The port in this case is NOT easy.
Another issue to consider in your comparisons with Quake, Q3, etc is that those games were designed from the beginning to be relatively platform-independent. This makes porting to another OS somewhat trivial. Quake 2 on the other hand, was not (read John Carmack's
It seems to me that you're getting upset at the company because after they made an honest effort (as best we know) to make the Mac port, they found it can't be done in a reasonable time schedule (gee, they only have to do a little hacking of the engine, reverse engineer some networking protocols, etc etc.) Give them a break. Things don't always work out how one might want them to. I'm sure they would have loved to ship the Mac version, any company likes to make money. But if they can't do it, they can't. I don't see much point in boycotting Sierra for this, I really don't think it was an attempt to screw over the Mac community. And anyway, I doubt Mac users boycotting the company will have any significant effect, except perhaps to make the PHBs think future Mac ports aren't worth bothering with.
My suspicion is that the site is a spoof. I don't see the fundamentalist-Christian types going for this sort of thing. Or even the not-so-fundamentalist ones :) (Though I haven't been able to actually visit the Eternal Warriors site, it seems to be /.ed)
:-p
I don't think we're going to be seeing Christian Porn anytime soon (whatever *that* would be! funny idea...), since Christianity IMHO has not done its assimilating blindly. Using local art forms to spread your message is one thing, but using something you find offensive is another.
I think "Thou Shalt Kick Ass" would be a bitchin' 11th Commandment. Add a 12th: "Thou Shalt Be Assimilated".
Hmm...Christianity as the Borg?
std_disclaimer: yes, I am a Christian. No, not one of the annoying ones
Nobody said that the little guy is somehow entitled to more than the major corporations, nor did the post imply that the law should give "little guys" arbitrary preferences to supercede other laws.
As I read it, Ralman was simply complaining that his company, which presumably has a domain name of a legitimate nature (ie they're not squatters and don't believe they are infringing on the trademark), is being harassed by a major corporation that has a trademark similar to the domain in question. Said big company threatens a lawsuit in an attempt to coerce small company into giving up the domain name, regardless of whether the small company has the right to the name under the law. Being a small company, chances are they can't afford huge legal bills; big companies know that and use the threat of a lawsuit to force the "little guy" to give up profitable domain name(s). It *is* OK for everyone to pursue their own interests, but this "I can spend more money on lawsuits than you" coercion is *not* OK.
We don't have enough information to claim that the small company (or for that matter, the big company) is "on poor ethical ground". Registering multiple domains is no big deal, people do it all the time. If you sell Product X and Product Y, it's reasonable to expect you might register ProductX.com, ProductY.com, companyname.com, yadda yadda yadda. It's quite possible that the small and big companies in question have the same company name, and there maybe is where the dispute is coming about. If that's the case, then provided the companies are in different industries, then the big company's trademark may not entitle them to the domain.
The raised SDRAM prices are NOT the reason for the delay in getting 500MHz machines out the door. Jobs & Co. made the comment about the SDRAM to indicate that they aren't making any money off shifting the parts down by 50MHz. That comment was made just so nobody gets thinking that this is just an Apple stunt to get more money out of people.
The reason that Apple can't sell 500MHz G4 machines is that the 500MHz CPUs are not available from Motorola. Motorola can't supply the 500MHz chips because there is a bug in the silicon, such that when the chip hits 500MHz or above it starts getting data corruption in the processor's cache memory. Motorola has stated that they expect this bug to be fixed by December. So basically, if you want a 500MHz part from Apple, you'll have to wait until then. The Register has an article about this.
Actually, you wouldn't want to overclock the G4 to 500MHz, because then the cache-data-corruption bug that is in the G4 would appear (this bug is why Motorola can't fab the 500MHz parts, because as soon as the part hits 500MHz the bug starts manifesting itself). If you want a 500+MHz G4, you'll just have to wait until around December when Motorola expects to have the bug fixed.
Some companies, like Intel and Microsoft would just try to string people out forever with vaporware like Merced and Win 2K
Merced and Win2K vaporware? I don't see any evidence to support that claim. Merced (now known by the ridiculous marketing name of "Itanium") is slated for production in mid-2000. Intel customers already have engineering samples of the chip so they can start designing products around it. The product clearly exists, even though mass production won't be until the middle of next year. And Intel has been up-front about the Merced schedule. Win2K doesn't really qualify for the vaporware title either; release candidates are in the hands of testers and it should ship before the year 2000 (MS clearly gave themselves some breathing room by naming the OS as 2000 rather 99 or some such thing).
You are right though about the Apple thing, it was a little out of their control. If Motorola can't fab the chips at 500 MHz due to a bug in the silicon, there's not much Apple can do about that. Though, if Apple knew about the Motorola bug and still took orders for 500MHz machines (I'm not saying they did know, but if they did) then people would have good reason to complain.
Well, if the man is alone in the forest, by the definition of "alone" there is no woman there to hear him :-)
:-) I mean really, why else would a guy be wandering a forest *alone*?
And as to whether he's wrong, probably not. In fact, the reason for him being alone in the forest is probably to get away from a woman who (mistakenly) thought he was wrong
for the price of the new iMacs ($1299 and $1499) I bet you could buy one. Maybe for $999 too, but doubling the score might be hard in that case.
Actually, it's really not meaningful at all, for the following reasons:
/., so I won't go into the specifics here (though if someone really wants me to, I will). Those numbers are Apple marketing, not real-world performance.
1. The ByteMark processor benchmarks Apple uses are in no way representative of typical performance. In fact, if you look at the numbers, they are downright misleading. This has been hashed over a lot on
2. Apple is not comparing machines of the same class (for purposes of comparison, let's say that the targeted class is consumer machines costing $1299 to $1499). A Wintel system costing the $1299 (or $1499) the new iMacs do would not have an ancient Rage Pro video card, and would probably have a better CPU than a 400MHz Celeron. In fact, for $1299 you can get a PIII/500, a 16MB Voodoo3, 17" monitor, 13 Gig HD, etc etc from Quantex (where I got my computer), which makes excellent machines and has one of, if not the best, tech support staffs of the computer makers out there (important to the consumer class the machines are targeting). I'm sure other PC OEMs have comparable systems/prices, this was just a 30-second lookup on Quantex's website.
No iMac even compares in performance at a given price point. Clearly the iMac does not have the "best technology in its class".
3. PC manfacturers do tend to scrimp on their underpowered systems. Thing is, the "underpowered" systems tend to be the sub-$700 segment. Machines that cost $1299 and up are by no means underpowered, generally speaking.
It seems fairly evident to me that nothing has significantly changed here. Apple still maintains a hefty price premium over machines of comparable performance. And still uses misleading marketing to imply that the performance of their machines is greater when that is not the case. Essentially, you're paying a whole lot of $$ for the privilege of having colored plastic instead of beige.
MacMillan should do the honorable thing and allow Mandrake to market the name of its distribution
Well, the boxed package they sell in the software stores (that I've seen) says "Linux Mandrake" on it in big letters across the front of the box, with MacMillan in a corner somewhere. Unless they've changed it recently, I'd say the name-marketing was pretty well in favor of Mandrake.
-My $.02
Well, my high school had *no* programming courses at all. Zip, nada, nothing...you get the idea :)
A couple years after I left I hear they're finally getting a CS class, in C++ no less. Which surprised the hell out of me, since in my experience my school is as technologically inept as they come (they apparently consider changing the default start page of Netscape on a teacher's machine to be some 3l33t exploit. Seriously! They even offered me a position with them after I did that too. Which I politely declined (-: ).
Maybe they finally got somebody with half a brain in there - they now have relatively new PII machines (versus old 486 Win3.1 and even more ancient Mac systems when I was there), and are actually using them for something!