It remains to be seen whether the PS3 HDD kit will become popular. If it is optional, then many game developers will design their games assuming it isn't available. Only some features will make use of the optional HDD e.g for saved games or perhaps screenshots. It's all a feed-back loop though. If the HDD becomes popular for some reason, then game developers will be more inclined to make use of it, on the assumption that "most people have one anyway". But there has to be some reason for it to become popular in the first place. People aren't going to cough up $100-$200 for something they don't need or want. So we'll have to wait and see how Sony markets the PS/3 and HDD peripheral. It's possible that pressure from the Xbox 360 might make them change. But the original Xbox had a HD as well and doesn't seem to have influenced them. The excuse of "we'll never make it big enough for everyone" is pretty lame, IMNSHO.
As to cracking the PS/3 DRM, I doubt it. Sony controls almost every aspect of the hardware. Unlike the Xbox it won't simply be a modified PC, with a modified BIOS and hard drive (?). I haven't heard about anyone cracking the PS/2 yet, so I don't expect the PS/3 to be easily cracked either.
That would be Sony. It's not mentioned very much, but (IIRC) the PS/2 has some pretty strong DRM measures. For example, you can't simply compile your own kernel to run on the PS/2. The PS/2 Linux kit comes with a signed kernel and you're stuck with it. You also can't make your own bootable CD's with it. Sony wouldn't want people to start making PS/2 games without a pricey license! And (IIRC) the PS/2 doesn't accept CDR's anyway, so the only way for would-be game/demo developers to move their wares around is on USB thumb drives. I would be surprised if this PS/3 Linux kit is any better.
First of you can't install a application as a user, now how stupid is that?
Right. Lets try some substitution shall we...
First of you can't install a VIRUS as a user, now how stupid is that?
See how stupid your complaint is? If you let users install system software then we go back to the days of rampant viruses and worms... which Windows still hasn't escaped.
You still want to install software? Well it's your machine isn't it? Login to root and install it, FFS! Otherwise ask the admin.
Secondly Debian packages work great, but only for stuff that is in Debian...
Bzzt, wrong! If you knew anything about Debian (which you clearly don't) then you'd know about adding APT respositories to your sources.list file. Do a google search, there's lots of third-party repositories out there for Debian packages. Fedora even uses a variant called APT-RPM that uses the same mechanism. It's very simple, all you really need is some web or FTP space for some files.
What good is it to release a software today and having to wait three or more years till it finds it way into Debian?
*sigh* the whole three-year thing... Look, I've been running the unstable "sid" branch for many years now. My systems are always up to date and only occasionally have problems, although the switch to GlibC 2.1 still sticks in my mind. Most packages are updated within a week, although it can take much longer for packages that upset a lot of other packages. Debian takes very seriously the stability of the system, even the unstable branch. For people who want new0ish software but don't like the idea of running something "unstable" there's the testing branch. Packages are delayed from unstable until they haven't had a bug report for (IIRC) two weeks.
Understand this: the "stable" branch of Debian really is stable. It's for people who are serious about having a reliable system that runs like clockwork.
The GP post was talking about legal music downloads, moron. I haven't heard of SoulSeek before, but AllofMP3 has the advantage that they offer the music in several formats. I much prefer Ogg Vorbis or even FLAC (even though you pay more for it) to crappy MP3's ripped by a retarded monkey who thinks 128Kbps CBR is "CD quality".
Apple has little or nothing to gain by Intel producing 970 clones except, possibly, fractional improvements in price.
What about avilability? The GP post mentions certain criteria being specified in the contract between Apple and IBM. What if IBM hasn't been able to produce the 970 in large enough numbers? Perhaps Apple is doing this to ramp up production and bring down prices.
Yeah! Militant Muslims versus Crusading Christians. Then buy the expansion pack to play as the Ultra Orthodox Jews.
And it'll be called.... The Middle East!
Ah right, thanks for the info. I didn't know about the various parts, but my point still stands. The cores made with a smaller process produce less heat and (I'm pretty sure) require lower voltage. So running a 4000+ part at the same speed as a 2000+ will make it cooler than a 2000+ part running at its intended speed. That's what this article is about.
Not necessarily. The higher-rated processors are often made with a smaller process. This is the reason they can operate at the higher clock speed without overheating in the first place. This A64 4000+ is probably (?) the first in a new line made with a smaller process.
It would depend a lot on your algorithm. The shader units in modern GPU's are really focused on doing operations that are common in computer graphics. With a little work they could become good vector units. If your algorithm works by plowing through masses of data and doing relatively simple things with that data, and it maps well to a vector unit, then your algorithm would work very well on a GPU. More complicated work could be broken down into stages and worked on by different shader fragments/programs, perhaps even in parallel. Otherwise, stick with SSE/SSE2 or Altivec, or even plain old FPU instructions.
Are you suggesting we run a general purpose OS on a GPU? That doesn't sound like a good idea, even if it were possible. Sure, the GPU's coming out of ATI and nVidia have a lot of theoretical processing power, but it's really mostly only for doing vector calculations (vectors, colours, etc) on massive amounts of independent data. And with little or no branching. It's your classic SIMD setup. The shader programs are explicitely limited in the data they can access, so they can easily be run in parallel. The latest GPU's have 12 or 16 parallel pixel shaders, possibly more.
A GPU would be well suited as a kind of co-processor though. I understand that is one of the goals of PCIe. AGP was mostly about allowing the GPU to suck up large amounts of data from the main memory. It really sucks though for sending data back. But with PCIe a lot of data could be easily sent back and forth between the main CPU(s), the GPU(s), and main memory. People have already been experimenting with using the shaders units in modern GPU's to do vector processing. In essence this situation could be much like the Cell processor. The main CPU loads data into graphics memory and the shader units process it in parallel. I'll stop rambling now...:P
My psychic forecast is that the PowerPC would outperform the x86 setup because Apple has tuned gcc for the PowerPC platform.
Which would probably even things up, if anything. Remember that GCC's largest user base is probably x86, and most of its developers are probably working on x86 PC's. So it stands to reason that a lot of work has gone into the x86 optimisations in GCC over the years. But, they're very different CPU's (translated-CISC vs kinda-RISC) so different things have to be done to optimise for each processor family. Maybe it's easier to optimise for PPC. Maybe it's easier for Apple to create optimisations for the few PPC CPU's it uses (603, G3, G4, G5), while it takes an army of volunteers to create optimisations for the plethora x86 CPU's (386, 486, p5, p6, pentium 3, pentium 4, amd386, amd486, k5, k6, k7, k8, and all the ones from Cyrix and now Via).
That would be the LZW patent held by Unisys (and IBM in some countries). You're right in that it has expired in most countries now. Gzip was made as an alternative to the Unix compress program because it used LZW, not to PKZIP. Gzip uses the LZ algorithm, which is older and slightly slower but compresses better.
Because Google has shown that it knows how to handle large amounts of human-created content and create useful information from it. The search engine was just the start. Just look at the spell checker they added. It doesn't use a dictionary, just the mass of web pages they spider monthly. It's not always perfect, but it allows it to be more adaptive than other methods. This translator looks like something similar along those lines.
Exactly. Most people don't really need to have an upgradable machine. Today's multi-gigahertz processors are now more than enough for most people and won't need upgrading for a long time, if ever. The Mac mini is a little on the low end of the scale when it comes to processor power, but it's still plenty for most home users (the usual email, web, office apps, and simple games).
Add to that the kind of devices that can be connected using either USB or Firewire and you no longer have any great need to open the case for every little change. Hard disk enclosures, CD/DVD burners, DVB/ATSC tuners, even 5.1 audio devices can all be connected through these external buses.
Sure, it might not be the *perfect* computer for all of us geeks. But it's just right for a lot of home users. And that's why they're running off of the shelves.
Wow. Installing software on Windows sounds really hard. On my Debian box I just have to give one command as root:
~# debfoster -u openoffice.org
For the GUI crowd there's probably a nice GUI frontend (synaptic? aptitude?) but I've never found the need to use them.
On a less condescending note, I am amazed that OpenOffice.org still seems to use the old packaging style from the StarOffice days. A zip file full of data files and one executable. That is bad. They should put together an MSI package, or use that NullSoft installer, or something like that.
Anyone still using Windows 3 (or even older) for a project? Microsoft would just looove that sort of publicity. Or even better to embarass MS, use a legacy Windows 3 app running under emulation on a modern Mac. Bonus points if the Mac is running Linux:)
Intel bought the StrongARM processor design from Digital a number of years ago. They now produce them under the Xscale brand. They've been used in heaps of devices, including the Compaq iPAQ, and lots of small embedded boards. Apple has previously used AMD's MIPS-based processors in some of their Airport AP's. Given the Xscale's low power/heat and relative processing power, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple use the Xscale in another funky little portable device.
It depends on what files the patch touches, and what areas within the file it changes. If the two patches only alter different files, then it's fine. Otherwise, the "diff" format contains some context around the altered line(s), so that "patch" can fudge things a little if the line(s) aren't exactly where they're supposed to be. But sometimes they collide or patch can't figure it out. Then you either roll up your sleaves and try to figure out what's going on, find someone else that's already done so, or give up. It helps if you're a C programmer:P
@ Windows has SUS, whereas Linux doesn't seem (excuse me if I'm wrong) to have any kind of distributed patch management for large businesses.
Debian's APT just uses FTP or HTTP, other distros are probably fairly simple as well. Just put the.deb's in a directory or two, run a command to create a package file (text descriptions, dependencies, etc all in one file), and you're done. Set up your office machines to to have a line (and probably only the one line) in their sources.list file and create a cron job to auto-update after hours. Sure, there's no slick GUI (that I know of), but it shouldn't be too difficult.
It should be noted that the performance of the PS3 is dependent on utilizing the 8 SPU's in the cell efficiently. Even arm-chair commentators like myself know that one of the biggest problems in parallel processing is parallelizing algorithms. Luckily, I'm sure that a lot of the tasks that the Cell will perform in PS3 games will be fairly parallelizable. Think simulating behaviours (AI) and physics, processing graphics and sounds, etc.
You'll take me up on the bet, yet you post as an AC? Right. And post a link to supposed evidence to back up your claim. But when I view the comment, there's another person replying, raising similar doubts to mine about the editor's claims . And on top of that, he quotes a part of the editor's blog saying that the sys-con servers had previously been hit by the slashdot effect, resulting in their web sites being "unavailable or severely degraded". The slashdot effect is alive and well!
I stand by my original assertion.
Slashdot Mirror
The PS/2 Linux kit also came with an ethernet adaptor (photo of complete kit).
It remains to be seen whether the PS3 HDD kit will become popular. If it is optional, then many game developers will design their games assuming it isn't available. Only some features will make use of the optional HDD e.g for saved games or perhaps screenshots. It's all a feed-back loop though. If the HDD becomes popular for some reason, then game developers will be more inclined to make use of it, on the assumption that "most people have one anyway". But there has to be some reason for it to become popular in the first place. People aren't going to cough up $100-$200 for something they don't need or want. So we'll have to wait and see how Sony markets the PS/3 and HDD peripheral. It's possible that pressure from the Xbox 360 might make them change. But the original Xbox had a HD as well and doesn't seem to have influenced them. The excuse of "we'll never make it big enough for everyone" is pretty lame, IMNSHO.
As to cracking the PS/3 DRM, I doubt it. Sony controls almost every aspect of the hardware. Unlike the Xbox it won't simply be a modified PC, with a modified BIOS and hard drive (?). I haven't heard about anyone cracking the PS/2 yet, so I don't expect the PS/3 to be easily cracked either.
That would be Sony. It's not mentioned very much, but (IIRC) the PS/2 has some pretty strong DRM measures. For example, you can't simply compile your own kernel to run on the PS/2. The PS/2 Linux kit comes with a signed kernel and you're stuck with it. You also can't make your own bootable CD's with it. Sony wouldn't want people to start making PS/2 games without a pricey license! And (IIRC) the PS/2 doesn't accept CDR's anyway, so the only way for would-be game/demo developers to move their wares around is on USB thumb drives. I would be surprised if this PS/3 Linux kit is any better.
Right. Lets try some substitution shall we...
See how stupid your complaint is? If you let users install system software then we go back to the days of rampant viruses and worms... which Windows still hasn't escaped.
You still want to install software? Well it's your machine isn't it? Login to root and install it, FFS! Otherwise ask the admin.
Bzzt, wrong! If you knew anything about Debian (which you clearly don't) then you'd know about adding APT respositories to your sources.list file. Do a google search, there's lots of third-party repositories out there for Debian packages. Fedora even uses a variant called APT-RPM that uses the same mechanism. It's very simple, all you really need is some web or FTP space for some files.
*sigh* the whole three-year thing... Look, I've been running the unstable "sid" branch for many years now. My systems are always up to date and only occasionally have problems, although the switch to GlibC 2.1 still sticks in my mind. Most packages are updated within a week, although it can take much longer for packages that upset a lot of other packages. Debian takes very seriously the stability of the system, even the unstable branch. For people who want new0ish software but don't like the idea of running something "unstable" there's the testing branch. Packages are delayed from unstable until they haven't had a bug report for (IIRC) two weeks.
Understand this: the "stable" branch of Debian really is stable. It's for people who are serious about having a reliable system that runs like clockwork.
The GP post was talking about legal music downloads, moron. I haven't heard of SoulSeek before, but AllofMP3 has the advantage that they offer the music in several formats. I much prefer Ogg Vorbis or even FLAC (even though you pay more for it) to crappy MP3's ripped by a retarded monkey who thinks 128Kbps CBR is "CD quality".
What about avilability? The GP post mentions certain criteria being specified in the contract between Apple and IBM. What if IBM hasn't been able to produce the 970 in large enough numbers? Perhaps Apple is doing this to ramp up production and bring down prices.
Yeah! Militant Muslims versus Crusading Christians. Then buy the expansion pack to play as the Ultra Orthodox Jews.
And it'll be called.... The Middle East!
</cheapshot>
According to the Wikipedia article:
Does the audio program mention the word "skyhook"?
Why bring up the Aussie 70's supergroup?
Browsing the web inside a game? Somehow this reminds me of Penny Arcade comic. Yeah, I'm Karma whoring...
Ah right, thanks for the info. I didn't know about the various parts, but my point still stands. The cores made with a smaller process produce less heat and (I'm pretty sure) require lower voltage. So running a 4000+ part at the same speed as a 2000+ will make it cooler than a 2000+ part running at its intended speed. That's what this article is about.
Not necessarily. The higher-rated processors are often made with a smaller process. This is the reason they can operate at the higher clock speed without overheating in the first place. This A64 4000+ is probably (?) the first in a new line made with a smaller process.
It would depend a lot on your algorithm. The shader units in modern GPU's are really focused on doing operations that are common in computer graphics. With a little work they could become good vector units. If your algorithm works by plowing through masses of data and doing relatively simple things with that data, and it maps well to a vector unit, then your algorithm would work very well on a GPU. More complicated work could be broken down into stages and worked on by different shader fragments/programs, perhaps even in parallel. Otherwise, stick with SSE/SSE2 or Altivec, or even plain old FPU instructions.
Are you suggesting we run a general purpose OS on a GPU? That doesn't sound like a good idea, even if it were possible. Sure, the GPU's coming out of ATI and nVidia have a lot of theoretical processing power, but it's really mostly only for doing vector calculations (vectors, colours, etc) on massive amounts of independent data. And with little or no branching. It's your classic SIMD setup. The shader programs are explicitely limited in the data they can access, so they can easily be run in parallel. The latest GPU's have 12 or 16 parallel pixel shaders, possibly more.
A GPU would be well suited as a kind of co-processor though. I understand that is one of the goals of PCIe. AGP was mostly about allowing the GPU to suck up large amounts of data from the main memory. It really sucks though for sending data back. But with PCIe a lot of data could be easily sent back and forth between the main CPU(s), the GPU(s), and main memory. People have already been experimenting with using the shaders units in modern GPU's to do vector processing. In essence this situation could be much like the Cell processor. The main CPU loads data into graphics memory and the shader units process it in parallel. I'll stop rambling now... :P
Which would probably even things up, if anything. Remember that GCC's largest user base is probably x86, and most of its developers are probably working on x86 PC's. So it stands to reason that a lot of work has gone into the x86 optimisations in GCC over the years. But, they're very different CPU's (translated-CISC vs kinda-RISC) so different things have to be done to optimise for each processor family. Maybe it's easier to optimise for PPC. Maybe it's easier for Apple to create optimisations for the few PPC CPU's it uses (603, G3, G4, G5), while it takes an army of volunteers to create optimisations for the plethora x86 CPU's (386, 486, p5, p6, pentium 3, pentium 4, amd386, amd486, k5, k6, k7, k8, and all the ones from Cyrix and now Via).
That would be the LZW patent held by Unisys (and IBM in some countries). You're right in that it has expired in most countries now. Gzip was made as an alternative to the Unix compress program because it used LZW, not to PKZIP. Gzip uses the LZ algorithm, which is older and slightly slower but compresses better.
I think you mean *mice*... sigh... some people just aren't serious when it comes to their nerdiness.
Because Google has shown that it knows how to handle large amounts of human-created content and create useful information from it. The search engine was just the start. Just look at the spell checker they added. It doesn't use a dictionary, just the mass of web pages they spider monthly. It's not always perfect, but it allows it to be more adaptive than other methods. This translator looks like something similar along those lines.
Exactly. Most people don't really need to have an upgradable machine. Today's multi-gigahertz processors are now more than enough for most people and won't need upgrading for a long time, if ever. The Mac mini is a little on the low end of the scale when it comes to processor power, but it's still plenty for most home users (the usual email, web, office apps, and simple games).
Add to that the kind of devices that can be connected using either USB or Firewire and you no longer have any great need to open the case for every little change. Hard disk enclosures, CD/DVD burners, DVB/ATSC tuners, even 5.1 audio devices can all be connected through these external buses.
Sure, it might not be the *perfect* computer for all of us geeks. But it's just right for a lot of home users. And that's why they're running off of the shelves.
Wow. Installing software on Windows sounds really hard. On my Debian box I just have to give one command as root:
For the GUI crowd there's probably a nice GUI frontend (synaptic? aptitude?) but I've never found the need to use them.
On a less condescending note, I am amazed that OpenOffice.org still seems to use the old packaging style from the StarOffice days. A zip file full of data files and one executable. That is bad. They should put together an MSI package, or use that NullSoft installer, or something like that.
Anyone still using Windows 3 (or even older) for a project? Microsoft would just looove that sort of publicity. Or even better to embarass MS, use a legacy Windows 3 app running under emulation on a modern Mac. Bonus points if the Mac is running Linux :)
Intel bought the StrongARM processor design from Digital a number of years ago. They now produce them under the Xscale brand. They've been used in heaps of devices, including the Compaq iPAQ, and lots of small embedded boards. Apple has previously used AMD's MIPS-based processors in some of their Airport AP's. Given the Xscale's low power/heat and relative processing power, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple use the Xscale in another funky little portable device.
It depends on what files the patch touches, and what areas within the file it changes. If the two patches only alter different files, then it's fine. Otherwise, the "diff" format contains some context around the altered line(s), so that "patch" can fudge things a little if the line(s) aren't exactly where they're supposed to be. But sometimes they collide or patch can't figure it out. Then you either roll up your sleaves and try to figure out what's going on, find someone else that's already done so, or give up. It helps if you're a C programmer :P
Debian's APT just uses FTP or HTTP, other distros are probably fairly simple as well. Just put the .deb's in a directory or two, run a command to create a package file (text descriptions, dependencies, etc all in one file), and you're done. Set up your office machines to to have a line (and probably only the one line) in their sources.list file and create a cron job to auto-update after hours. Sure, there's no slick GUI (that I know of), but it shouldn't be too difficult.
It should be noted that the performance of the PS3 is dependent on utilizing the 8 SPU's in the cell efficiently. Even arm-chair commentators like myself know that one of the biggest problems in parallel processing is parallelizing algorithms. Luckily, I'm sure that a lot of the tasks that the Cell will perform in PS3 games will be fairly parallelizable. Think simulating behaviours (AI) and physics, processing graphics and sounds, etc.
You'll take me up on the bet, yet you post as an AC? Right. And post a link to supposed evidence to back up your claim. But when I view the comment, there's another person replying, raising similar doubts to mine about the editor's claims . And on top of that, he quotes a part of the editor's blog saying that the sys-con servers had previously been hit by the slashdot effect, resulting in their web sites being "unavailable or severely degraded". The slashdot effect is alive and well!
I stand by my original assertion.