Other than the public announcement, how is this any different from the way things already work?
Actually this really is something new, and quite an announcement. It was never the case before that any old random driver would get created by the open source community. The way OSS development generally works is there has to be a strong need, strong backing, or a high fun factor, for things to get done.
Prior to this announcement it's not like there was a group of people dedicated to writing drivers -- just waiting for companies to release new hardware, then they'd scurry to reverse engineer it and write a driver. Nor do companies (generally) release hardware specs in the hopes that others will provide a driver for their product.
A significant portion of initial open source driver development comes from the device manufacturers themselves, and smaller companies without the resources to spearhead these developments simply don't have the ability to have Linux support.
Your conception that "The community already writes free drivers for vendors who provide specs and loan some hardware" isn't true in the vast majority of cases.
This really is a big change, because now anyone can create a hardware device and actually have formal linux support, and have this printed on the box. This creates a formal avenue for companies to easily, reliably, and cheaply have Linux support for their products.
You have free healthcare? Where do I sign up. I currently pay nearly $1,000 a month for health care, not including my out-of-pockets and co-pays.
Canada.
Honest impartial police forces? Hmmm...I'll bet you don't live in a major city like Detroit or Los Angeles, do you?
Nope!
At any rate, let me say this:
You exemplify typical American ignorance. You are precisely the reason the rest of the world hates your people. If you can actually compare the police forces of Detroit and LA to say China, where they have Death Vans, or Egypt where the police can detain any person, without cause, for (renewable) periods of 45 days, then you've obviously never left your country.
And do you really intend to suggest that you have it as bad as 3rd world countries in the US? I hope not... so instead of bickering about semantics, try actually thinking about what the grand-parent poster said... because it's all true.
In first world nations we do have things like health care, trash collection, pensions, government assistance, plumbing, streets, etc, etc. Just because they don't function as well as you'd like, doesn't mean they don't exist, and cost a ton of money to support.
To remind you what you were actually replying to:
I'm personally sick of this bleeding heart crap where it's all "OMFG You make xx,xxx per year, but these people make $1 an hour making the things you buy, FEEL BAD FOR THEM!" I'm sorry, but their economy is based around a lower income level and just because YOU can't fathom living on that much, people around the world do it just fine.
Again, this is more of why no one likes Americans. A statement like this comes from a person who lives in a house, isn't afraid of being bombed on a daily basis, and who never has to worry about food, or water. Sometimes they do it "just fine", but let me see you live under those conditions and then make the post that you did. And just so you know... sometimes they die. Not from a heart attack from eating a giant bucket of fries everyday, but from starvation from having no food to eat.
Most network admins don't think of the possibility of bootable USB volumes and thus don't disable it in BIOS. On top of that, most BIOS manufacturers don't think people need an option for disabling booting from a USB disk and don't provide it.
I think it's a good idea to carry around a small bootable OS, but I'm not sure it's going to be as useful as you suggest. In fact, my personal experiences directly contradict what you're saying.
ANY sysadmin, even a crappy one, will have thought of this. Every motherboard BIOS I've ever seen in the last few years (which is quite a few) has the option to disable this, or at least change the boot order thus effectively disabling the feature.
Granted, there are likely going to be exceptions, which is why I would say, it can't hurt. Never know when you'll need a small bootable linux thumbdrive.
First of all I agree with you that in USA vs rest of world the USA would _probably_ lose, but it's not as clear cut as you propose... nor would that actually be the scenario. We do need to worry about the US military, and yes, from a global standpoint.
The USA spends 466 Billion of the entire world's 900 billion dollar expenditures on military. China alone has more soldiers than USA has regular people, but that doesn't necessarily count for much in modern warfare.
Simply put in a conventional (modern) military engagement between USA and the rest of the world, there would be no winners. Our entire planet would be totally messed up, billions would be dead.
But even that isn't the likely scenario... some countries would undoubtedly side with the US, and the game of diplomacy would begin (which is what happens in nearly every war). Try to think of the world as a big ol' Risk board game right now. Then put yourself in the shoes of a born again Christian who is driven by faith (and thus has a moral excuse for his actions), and has significantly more little army figurines than most other countries combined.
In such a scenario, there's no clear cut winner -- like I said before, everyone will lose.
If you really believe what you just posted, then you are the one who's blinding yourself.
Yes, they are supposed to be unique, but MAC addresses have a couple of inherent flaws. Mac-48, for example, is expected to run out of addresses by the year 2100.
Also, it's trivial to change the MAC address on a NIC via software spoofing, or in some cases to actually modify the card permanently (see MACChanger). I'm not sure if any of these techniques are possible with the 360, but I guarantee you if MS relies on the MAC, someone will find a way to produce a hardware address spoofer that you can just plug in or solder onto the 360's mobo.
At any rate, it's well known that you can't rely on MACs to be unique... in the real world they're just not, even though they are supposed to be.
I agree with you, although... I have to wonder, how did it get on the iPod in the first place? If you look at the W32/Rjump worm you can see that it spreads itself by copying itself to mounted removeable storage drives.
Perhaps someone tested a prototype on an infected windows machine, to make sure some minor manufacturing change didn't bork the device. Then after working on it a bit they got it to work, copied the image over, and all of a sudden you have iPods being pumped out of the factor with a virus on them. Clearly just a guess, but if something similar to that happened and I was Apple I'd sure as hell be pissed that Windows lack of security caused my hardware devices to get factory shipped with a virus on them.
Note that this scenario is supported by TFA: "Joswiak said it was traced to a particular Windows machine in the manufacturing lines of a contract manufacturer that builds the iPods for Apple."
In that context, Apple has every right to be irritated. Either way though you're right, it's a pretty stupid PR move to make a comment like that. They should just apologize, fix the problem, and move on.
I get what you're saying, but if I didn't know better what you said could be a little misleading. To be totally correct a real time operating system has nothing to do with task completions, but rather with providing the ability (often mathematically proven) to respond to interrupt and thread context switches within a pre-determined (and known) time constant. This is generally referred to as the interrupt or thread switch latency.
And actually the grand parent is right to wonder about whether or not this will allow for a more responsive feeling system, because in general, it will. Much more so than the pre-emptive kernel routines already in = 2.6.17.*. If you've ever used a real time OS you'll know what I mean -- nothing feels so nice to use. The processor can be pegged, and have a ridiculous load average of say... 100 or something (100 tasks are trying to use 100% of the CPU), and you won't really notice any sluggishness... but, of course, tasks will just take a long time to complete.
It's not without it's downfalls though. Obviously being able to guarantee low latency interrupt responses is going to require some overhead. You'll definitely slow your computer down by using a real time OS, although unless you're a gamer you might not even notice.
All that said and done, unless you're using your computer for some very specific things like embedded devices, critical applications (medical, power station management, etc), and audio / video stuff, you'll probably never notice the difference.
I know a lot of audio people are happy about the real time patches because the delay between turning a dial, or moving the mouse, and the noises that come out of the speakers is quite noticeable even with really small delays.
That's not necessarily true. It is a relatively new field of computer science, and thus there's not all that much info out there yet. But once you understand the basic concepts of general purpose GPU programming anyone can do it.
What's most likely is that the guys at Stanford started pushing the hardware to the limit, and in ways the driver developers might not have anticipated. Probably what they ran up against was bugs in the driver, and the help came from ATI in terms of ways to work around the bugs. Evidence backs this up from Folding@Home's GPU FAQ:
[You must use] Catalyst driver version 6.5 or version 6.10, but not any other versions: 6.6 and 6.7 will work, but at a major performance hit; 6.8 and 6.9 will not work at all.
Your next question might be, if that's true then why use ATI (who are known for poor driver quality)... it might simply be a matter of that's the hardware they had to test with, so that's what they needed to use.
At any rate, it's definitely possible to get started doing GPU programming without vendor support.
There's even a fairly large community of people using Nvidia's own Cg library for doing general purpose stuff.
There's also GPUSort (source code available to look at), which is a high performance sorting example that uses the GPU to do the sorting, and it trounces the fastest CPUs: http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/GPUSORT/results.html
And last but not least there's the GPGPU site that is a great resource for all sorts of general purpose computing the GPUs: http://www.gpgpu.org/
FF Miles, or Air Miles, or AeroMiles, etc, are not a one to one mapping between distance travelled and point earned. Nor are they redeemed for a one to one mapping between point miles and free travel miles. There is some relationship between the two, but in the end it's pretty arbitrary.
There's things like bonus miles... you know fly right now and earn 10x the air miles! Plus yeah then there's ways to earn air miles by purchasing things.
BTW Vista and Longhorn Server ship with a full BSD *nix subsystem (minus an XServer.)
Uhh... no it hasn't. First of all the link you pasted doesn't even mention POSIX once. Usually when you post a link to corroborate a claim, it's supposed to actually do that.
You can see that Windows has only ever been [optionally] posix compliant with respect to its C api and API language bindings. This is one (perhaps two) sections of more than 12 that are required for full POSIX compliance.
Clearly what the grandparent meant is the suite of posix compliant command line utilities and other useful things that make unix so nice to use. It was also a funny joke, because microsoft would never do this.
As for your claim that vista server will ship with a full BSD subsystem, I would really like to see some evidence to back this up. I've never heard this, and a few searches with google didn't turn anything up. Not only is it an unsubstantiated claim, but it makes no sense. What purpose would it serve, why would they do that?
Sony plans on developing a toaster with a CELL Processor. It will have DRM and only toast Sony brand bread though which will come in an odd size and cost twice as much as any other bread.
Don't forget:
- the ToastMan spys on you at night and reports its findings back to Sony - ToastMax bread soon to compete with Very White Bread (VWB) for dominant market share. Although appearing identical in every way ToastMax is incompatible with VWB. Somehow it holds 60% more peanut butter than VWB, but interestingly initial tests show that the PB sandwiches made from both types of bread taste pretty much the same. - the ToastMan comes with: an integrated module that scorches the current weather forecast onto your toast, a remote control -- because the toaster is always too far away, a bread maker that creates ToastMax bread which is unfit to eat until toasted in a ToastMan toaster. - the ToastMan will cost about $700 USD. Repsonding to public outcry Sony officials released statements indicating that they feel consumers want more from their toasters. They don't want to just toast bread with them, they want the full bread experience.
Has it been a while since you gave them a shot? My experience couldn't be farther from yours. One thing I wil say is that setup is a chore, regardless of the OS. After you have a well running setup, the interface and usability couldn't be better. MythTV and even media center edition 2005 make using a modern DVD player somewhat like using one of those ancient microwaves with the really strange input methodology where one button is used to increase the cooking time by 15 seconds.
And the thing with a media center pc is it's always on. You don't turn it off because it's recording programs and so forth. So when you insert a DVD it starts playing it instantly.
Basically an HTPC trounces a traditional setup all over the place. ESPECIALLY in regards to usability.
Sorry, I worded that badly. What I was trying to say was that in every relationship there's always a boundary check with regard to sexuality and attraction even if it's a hetero -> hetero same sex relationship.
On a side note... I feel for you. All I can say is, it's a lot easier for guys to tell gay jokes than it is to look long and hard at their own sexuality and face the truth that the lines of attraction aren't always as black and white as we tend to think.
I agree that you shouldn't have to bear the burden, nor do I blame you for taking whatever steps are required to protect your family.
It just seems to me that if it's really at the point that it is... where all a female has to do is make up a small lie and get anyone she wants fired... well there's a SERIOUS problem there.
Why isn't there more of an outrage? public demonstrations? Not only that but companies should be lobying, and should be putting their collective monetary foot down because this undoubtedly has huge ramifications for the american economy.
It has to make morale suffer. It also means men and women aren't going to form teams that function as well. Basically every American company is running at some percentage of efficiency lower than they otherwise could be simply because the justice system is fucked.
My point is not that individuals should throw themselves on the fire. My point is that there should be more outcry about this. Women yelled for years about inequality and they were heard. Now apparently, it's the male gender's turn.
I'm really shocked by your sentiments. I mean, I understand where they come from. Eventually with every relationship you have to deal with a sexual counterpart. And I'm not just talking about male / female. Guys go through it too... you know, you're getting to become friends with someone and inevitably you both have to make sure each other isn't gay. Or in the event that one party is dealing with that is required.
Same goes for male / female. You eventually have to deal with attraction issues. Maybe one party is maybe both are, and even if neither are you still have to mutually define your relationship boundaries.
Suggesting that having to work with the opposite sex is a form of abuse is nothing short of absurd. In fact I'd go as far as to say working in a totally male or totally female environment is more akin to abuse. The workplace, just like the world at large, needs both male and female perspectives on order to function at its optimum.
As for the rampant fear of harassment suits... this must be an american thing. The legal system is still a joke here in Canada, and we do take sexual harassment seriously, but it's not like people are afraid to ask co-workers to lunch. How is that harassment? It's not.
If the system is that fucked up then you shouldn't just be afraid of women, you should be afraid of everyone. Your same-sex co-worker could easily do the same thing to you and it would be even more damaging to you since you'd have to deal with your friends and family questioning your sexuality.
I personally don't believe it's as messed up as you (and others) say. But even if it is, take a stand people! Avoiding women will not fix the issue. That's like sticking your head in the sand and hoping the lion can't see you.
I can't believe how often this is used as a legitimate justification for the US's crap broadband.
Yeah no kidding... population density really has very little to do with how easy it is to offer proper internet.
If the argument were to hold true then why are there many countries (including Canada) with a significantly lower population density that offer better internet access for a lower price?
And if you really think about it almost the entire infrastructure is already in place in the united states (cable and telephone lines). I know it's not that simple, equipment has to me upgraded or modified, but it's not like they have to roll out new wire to all the communities.
If you ask me the whole problem is the states overly capitalistic government. All of the infrastructure is controlled by a select few companies (with little regulation compared to the countries that rank high in internet access). The companies set the rates and the little guys have to live with it. While they're making a profit there's not much anyone can do about it.
Government control would most certainly help the situation, but that isn't the american way. I suspect the american public will have to wait for a new infrastructure to be built for the rules to change (perhaps WiFi). And even then, if it's rolled out by the same companies that control the wires, it may not help.
As already pointed out many, many... many, many, games use TCP.
Transmission control protocol is itself designed specifically for stream based transmissions. If you want a stream transmission, generally speaking, you use TCP, not UDP.
But it sounds like you probably meant streaming, as in "streaming" video, that kind of thing? It all depends on the situation.
Also missing packets isn't easier to deal with than waiting for missed packets at all. In fact it's a real PITA. But it does cause delay.
And that being said, you're right... the founders likely don't know much about networking, and are counting on the fact that most other people don't either.
It's pretty obvious that the only reason it would run Linux is if it does QoS on the packets... so maybe this card will let you play games and leave your downloads running at the same time. If so that might actually make it worth while.
But it's not really possible for the device to lower ping times on an unsaturated connection.
Your question is irrelevant. Since the program is already cross platform it's reasonable to assume the developed some form of abstraction for doing things like blitting and drawing and so forth -- so that's already done, and then after than the only code that differs between the two OSes is the GUI code -- and since they already have a mac version that's done too.
So basically they're ready to ship!:).
I think it's pretty clear that this move is motivated more by business politics than it is by technological merits. Which is fine, they have every right to do that.
In my opinion MS has likely realized they aren't going to win this particular battle. With VMWare entering the arena, they might as well just give up -- and save a few hundred million bucks (and hassle) in the process.
Why companies can't just say what's really going on I have no idea, but I guess once you get used to lying it just becomes your natural response to everything.
If you're trying to argue that the hardware market is somehow more profitable than the software one I think you're sadly mistaken. If Apple were smart (which they are) they would rather sell you $350-$1000 dollar software and make TONS of ROI rather than try to compete in the tight hardware market which is currently on a downward trend.
No one will believe me, just as no one believed me when I said as soon as Apple releases OSX intel, it'll run on commodity hardware -- but it'll happen. Because Steve is smart dude.
Just so you know, since even before OSX Intel was publically released, you've been able to run OSX on most standard PCs supporting SSE2 (SSE3 is much better as Rosetta apps will actually run).
In my opinion, moving to intel hardware is the smartest move Apple has made since... well... the Apple IIe. Yes even smarter than the iPod IMO.
I think a lot of what keeps people stuck using Windows, is not an inherent love for Windows itself, but rather a reliance on the software base, and ease of use / maintenance. I also believe that a lot of Windows success is directly related to software piracy. I can see piracy really helping Apple.
I would never pay the extra money for an Apple... but if I am given a choice between using OS X and Windows without having to pay extra money for one over the other, I'll choose OS X any day.
You realize of course that you can already run OSX on any SSE3 capable intel machine. Just do a search on your favorite torrent site for "OSX JaS patched" or something like that. Opendarwin or not, OSX intel will always run on any machine. Always has been able to, always will.
Ahh sorry, I was misunderstanding you. All valid points. It's an unfortunate truth in todays hyper-political world. All I can say is... I hope you're wrong!
You could be right, and I see how the push to go back to the moon could be viewed as nothing more than a PR stunt, but after thinking about it for a bit I have to say that I take the opposite opinion.
Heading to other bodies is exactly what we should be doing. We might not learn as much about the solar system as if we'd spent that money on a new telescope or whatever, but the knowledge we gain about getting to other planets, and potentially existing there is invaluable.
What's our ultimate goal with space travel? Well right now it's probably to colonize some body other than Earth. Why bother? Well there's about a million reasons, not the least of which is the fact that right now we've got all our eggs in one basket.
I also believe that extra-planetary colonization will likely help put things into psychological perspective for our race. It's no solution to our problems, but it's a start.
At any rate, even though the money may not provide the same bang per buck as a telescope or another ISS module, it's the kind of experience that you just can't get by peering through a lens. It's like the difference between reading a book about driving, and actually driving. Real driving may be a lot more expensive, and inherently dangerous, but you'll never truly know how until you do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Other than the public announcement, how is this any different from the way things already work?
Actually this really is something new, and quite an announcement. It was never the case before that any old random driver would get created by the open source community. The way OSS development generally works is there has to be a strong need, strong backing, or a high fun factor, for things to get done.
Prior to this announcement it's not like there was a group of people dedicated to writing drivers -- just waiting for companies to release new hardware, then they'd scurry to reverse engineer it and write a driver. Nor do companies (generally) release hardware specs in the hopes that others will provide a driver for their product.
A significant portion of initial open source driver development comes from the device manufacturers themselves, and smaller companies without the resources to spearhead these developments simply don't have the ability to have Linux support.
Your conception that "The community already writes free drivers for vendors who provide specs and loan some hardware" isn't true in the vast majority of cases.
This really is a big change, because now anyone can create a hardware device and actually have formal linux support, and have this printed on the box. This creates a formal avenue for companies to easily, reliably, and cheaply have Linux support for their products.
You have free healthcare? Where do I sign up. I currently pay nearly $1,000 a month for health care, not including my out-of-pockets and co-pays.
Canada.
Honest impartial police forces? Hmmm...I'll bet you don't live in a major city like Detroit or Los Angeles, do you?
Nope!
At any rate, let me say this:
You exemplify typical American ignorance. You are precisely the reason the rest of the world hates your people. If you can actually compare the police forces of Detroit and LA to say China, where they have Death Vans, or Egypt where the police can detain any person, without cause, for (renewable) periods of 45 days, then you've obviously never left your country.
And do you really intend to suggest that you have it as bad as 3rd world countries in the US? I hope not... so instead of bickering about semantics, try actually thinking about what the grand-parent poster said... because it's all true.
In first world nations we do have things like health care, trash collection, pensions, government assistance, plumbing, streets, etc, etc. Just because they don't function as well as you'd like, doesn't mean they don't exist, and cost a ton of money to support.
To remind you what you were actually replying to:
I'm personally sick of this bleeding heart crap where it's all "OMFG You make xx,xxx per year, but these people make $1 an hour making the things you buy, FEEL BAD FOR THEM!" I'm sorry, but their economy is based around a lower income level and just because YOU can't fathom living on that much, people around the world do it just fine.
Again, this is more of why no one likes Americans. A statement like this comes from a person who lives in a house, isn't afraid of being bombed on a daily basis, and who never has to worry about food, or water. Sometimes they do it "just fine", but let me see you live under those conditions and then make the post that you did. And just so you know... sometimes they die. Not from a heart attack from eating a giant bucket of fries everyday, but from starvation from having no food to eat.
Most network admins don't think of the possibility of bootable USB volumes and thus don't disable it in BIOS. On top of that, most BIOS manufacturers don't think people need an option for disabling booting from a USB disk and don't provide it.
I think it's a good idea to carry around a small bootable OS, but I'm not sure it's going to be as useful as you suggest. In fact, my personal experiences directly contradict what you're saying.
ANY sysadmin, even a crappy one, will have thought of this. Every motherboard BIOS I've ever seen in the last few years (which is quite a few) has the option to disable this, or at least change the boot order thus effectively disabling the feature.
Granted, there are likely going to be exceptions, which is why I would say, it can't hurt. Never know when you'll need a small bootable linux thumbdrive.
If it were me I'd probably just load the drive up with a bunch of apps designed to run from a thumb drive like portable firefox and thunderbird.
First of all I agree with you that in USA vs rest of world the USA would _probably_ lose, but it's not as clear cut as you propose... nor would that actually be the scenario. We do need to worry about the US military, and yes, from a global standpoint.
The USA spends 466 Billion of the entire world's 900 billion dollar expenditures on military. China alone has more soldiers than USA has regular people, but that doesn't necessarily count for much in modern warfare.
Simply put in a conventional (modern) military engagement between USA and the rest of the world, there would be no winners. Our entire planet would be totally messed up, billions would be dead.
But even that isn't the likely scenario... some countries would undoubtedly side with the US, and the game of diplomacy would begin (which is what happens in nearly every war). Try to think of the world as a big ol' Risk board game right now. Then put yourself in the shoes of a born again Christian who is driven by faith (and thus has a moral excuse for his actions), and has significantly more little army figurines than most other countries combined.
In such a scenario, there's no clear cut winner -- like I said before, everyone will lose.
If you really believe what you just posted, then you are the one who's blinding yourself.
Yes, they are supposed to be unique, but MAC addresses have a couple of inherent flaws. Mac-48, for example, is expected to run out of addresses by the year 2100.
Also, it's trivial to change the MAC address on a NIC via software spoofing, or in some cases to actually modify the card permanently (see MACChanger). I'm not sure if any of these techniques are possible with the 360, but I guarantee you if MS relies on the MAC, someone will find a way to produce a hardware address spoofer that you can just plug in or solder onto the 360's mobo.
At any rate, it's well known that you can't rely on MACs to be unique... in the real world they're just not, even though they are supposed to be.
I agree with you, although... I have to wonder, how did it get on the iPod in the first place? If you look at the W32/Rjump worm you can see that it spreads itself by copying itself to mounted removeable storage drives.
Perhaps someone tested a prototype on an infected windows machine, to make sure some minor manufacturing change didn't bork the device. Then after working on it a bit they got it to work, copied the image over, and all of a sudden you have iPods being pumped out of the factor with a virus on them. Clearly just a guess, but if something similar to that happened and I was Apple I'd sure as hell be pissed that Windows lack of security caused my hardware devices to get factory shipped with a virus on them.
Note that this scenario is supported by TFA: "Joswiak said it was traced to a particular Windows machine in the manufacturing lines of a contract manufacturer that builds the iPods for Apple."
In that context, Apple has every right to be irritated. Either way though you're right, it's a pretty stupid PR move to make a comment like that. They should just apologize, fix the problem, and move on.
I get what you're saying, but if I didn't know better what you said could be a little misleading. To be totally correct a real time operating system has nothing to do with task completions, but rather with providing the ability (often mathematically proven) to respond to interrupt and thread context switches within a pre-determined (and known) time constant. This is generally referred to as the interrupt or thread switch latency.
And actually the grand parent is right to wonder about whether or not this will allow for a more responsive feeling system, because in general, it will. Much more so than the pre-emptive kernel routines already in = 2.6.17.*. If you've ever used a real time OS you'll know what I mean -- nothing feels so nice to use. The processor can be pegged, and have a ridiculous load average of say... 100 or something (100 tasks are trying to use 100% of the CPU), and you won't really notice any sluggishness... but, of course, tasks will just take a long time to complete.
It's not without it's downfalls though. Obviously being able to guarantee low latency interrupt responses is going to require some overhead. You'll definitely slow your computer down by using a real time OS, although unless you're a gamer you might not even notice.
All that said and done, unless you're using your computer for some very specific things like embedded devices, critical applications (medical, power station management, etc), and audio / video stuff, you'll probably never notice the difference.
I know a lot of audio people are happy about the real time patches because the delay between turning a dial, or moving the mouse, and the noises that come out of the speakers is quite noticeable even with really small delays.
That's not necessarily true. It is a relatively new field of computer science, and thus there's not all that much info out there yet. But once you understand the basic concepts of general purpose GPU programming anyone can do it.
d ex.html
What's most likely is that the guys at Stanford started pushing the hardware to the limit, and in ways the driver developers might not have anticipated. Probably what they ran up against was bugs in the driver, and the help came from ATI in terms of ways to work around the bugs. Evidence backs this up from Folding@Home's GPU FAQ:
[You must use] Catalyst driver version 6.5 or version 6.10, but not any other versions: 6.6 and 6.7 will work, but at a major performance hit; 6.8 and 6.9 will not work at all.
Your next question might be, if that's true then why use ATI (who are known for poor driver quality)... it might simply be a matter of that's the hardware they had to test with, so that's what they needed to use.
At any rate, it's definitely possible to get started doing GPU programming without vendor support.
There's even some API's out there to help... The Brook C API (for doing multiprocessor programming) has a GPU version out called BrookGPU: http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/brookgpu/in
There's even a fairly large community of people using Nvidia's own Cg library for doing general purpose stuff.
There's also GPUSort (source code available to look at), which is a high performance sorting example that uses the GPU to do the sorting, and it trounces the fastest CPUs: http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/GPUSORT/results.html
And last but not least there's the GPGPU site that is a great resource for all sorts of general purpose computing the GPUs: http://www.gpgpu.org/
FF Miles, or Air Miles, or AeroMiles, etc, are not a one to one mapping between distance travelled and point earned. Nor are they redeemed for a one to one mapping between point miles and free travel miles. There is some relationship between the two, but in the end it's pretty arbitrary.
There's things like bonus miles... you know fly right now and earn 10x the air miles! Plus yeah then there's ways to earn air miles by purchasing things.
Ya, considering they have been POSIX compliant since NT was built in 1992...
a milyID=896c9688-601b-44f1-81a4-02878ff11778&Displa yLang=en
/ reskit/poscomp.mspx?mfr=true
Useless link posted: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?F
BTW Vista and Longhorn Server ship with a full BSD *nix subsystem (minus an XServer.)
Uhh... no it hasn't. First of all the link you pasted doesn't even mention POSIX once. Usually when you post a link to corroborate a claim, it's supposed to actually do that.
Do you even know what POSIX means? Obviously not. Try doing some reading on it. This page will help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX
Even this page tells you that in order for Windows NT to achieve any measure of POSIX compliance you need to activate optional features.
And if you check Microsoft's own web page about this: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/ntwrkstn
You can see that Windows has only ever been [optionally] posix compliant with respect to its C api and API language bindings. This is one (perhaps two) sections of more than 12 that are required for full POSIX compliance.
Clearly what the grandparent meant is the suite of posix compliant command line utilities and other useful things that make unix so nice to use. It was also a funny joke, because microsoft would never do this.
As for your claim that vista server will ship with a full BSD subsystem, I would really like to see some evidence to back this up. I've never heard this, and a few searches with google didn't turn anything up. Not only is it an unsubstantiated claim, but it makes no sense. What purpose would it serve, why would they do that?
Basically I call bullshit.
Sony plans on developing a toaster with a CELL Processor. It will have DRM and only toast Sony brand bread though which will come in an odd size and cost twice as much as any other bread.
Don't forget:
- the ToastMan spys on you at night and reports its findings back to Sony
- ToastMax bread soon to compete with Very White Bread (VWB) for dominant market share. Although appearing identical in every way ToastMax is incompatible with VWB. Somehow it holds 60% more peanut butter than VWB, but interestingly initial tests show that the PB sandwiches made from both types of bread taste pretty much the same.
- the ToastMan comes with: an integrated module that scorches the current weather forecast onto your toast, a remote control -- because the toaster is always too far away, a bread maker that creates ToastMax bread which is unfit to eat until toasted in a ToastMan toaster.
- the ToastMan will cost about $700 USD. Repsonding to public outcry Sony officials released statements indicating that they feel consumers want more from their toasters. They don't want to just toast bread with them, they want the full bread experience.
Has it been a while since you gave them a shot? My experience couldn't be farther from yours. One thing I wil say is that setup is a chore, regardless of the OS. After you have a well running setup, the interface and usability couldn't be better. MythTV and even media center edition 2005 make using a modern DVD player somewhat like using one of those ancient microwaves with the really strange input methodology where one button is used to increase the cooking time by 15 seconds.
And the thing with a media center pc is it's always on. You don't turn it off because it's recording programs and so forth. So when you insert a DVD it starts playing it instantly.
Basically an HTPC trounces a traditional setup all over the place. ESPECIALLY in regards to usability.
Sorry, I worded that badly. What I was trying to say was that in every relationship there's always a boundary check with regard to sexuality and attraction even if it's a hetero -> hetero same sex relationship.
On a side note... I feel for you. All I can say is, it's a lot easier for guys to tell gay jokes than it is to look long and hard at their own sexuality and face the truth that the lines of attraction aren't always as black and white as we tend to think.
I agree that you shouldn't have to bear the burden, nor do I blame you for taking whatever steps are required to protect your family.
It just seems to me that if it's really at the point that it is... where all a female has to do is make up a small lie and get anyone she wants fired... well there's a SERIOUS problem there.
Why isn't there more of an outrage? public demonstrations? Not only that but companies should be lobying, and should be putting their collective monetary foot down because this undoubtedly has huge ramifications for the american economy.
It has to make morale suffer. It also means men and women aren't going to form teams that function as well. Basically every American company is running at some percentage of efficiency lower than they otherwise could be simply because the justice system is fucked.
My point is not that individuals should throw themselves on the fire. My point is that there should be more outcry about this. Women yelled for years about inequality and they were heard. Now apparently, it's the male gender's turn.
That's nuts.
Why don't guys revolt? Just start accusing every person (male and female) of harassment. Seriously. Do something. Because that's not right.
I'm really shocked by your sentiments. I mean, I understand where they come from. Eventually with every relationship you have to deal with a sexual counterpart. And I'm not just talking about male / female. Guys go through it too... you know, you're getting to become friends with someone and inevitably you both have to make sure each other isn't gay. Or in the event that one party is dealing with that is required.
Same goes for male / female. You eventually have to deal with attraction issues. Maybe one party is maybe both are, and even if neither are you still have to mutually define your relationship boundaries.
Suggesting that having to work with the opposite sex is a form of abuse is nothing short of absurd. In fact I'd go as far as to say working in a totally male or totally female environment is more akin to abuse. The workplace, just like the world at large, needs both male and female perspectives on order to function at its optimum.
As for the rampant fear of harassment suits... this must be an american thing. The legal system is still a joke here in Canada, and we do take sexual harassment seriously, but it's not like people are afraid to ask co-workers to lunch. How is that harassment? It's not.
If the system is that fucked up then you shouldn't just be afraid of women, you should be afraid of everyone. Your same-sex co-worker could easily do the same thing to you and it would be even more damaging to you since you'd have to deal with your friends and family questioning your sexuality.
I personally don't believe it's as messed up as you (and others) say. But even if it is, take a stand people! Avoiding women will not fix the issue. That's like sticking your head in the sand and hoping the lion can't see you.
I can't believe how often this is used as a legitimate justification for the US's crap broadband.
Yeah no kidding... population density really has very little to do with how easy it is to offer proper internet.
If the argument were to hold true then why are there many countries (including Canada) with a significantly lower population density that offer better internet access for a lower price?
And if you really think about it almost the entire infrastructure is already in place in the united states (cable and telephone lines). I know it's not that simple, equipment has to me upgraded or modified, but it's not like they have to roll out new wire to all the communities.
If you ask me the whole problem is the states overly capitalistic government. All of the infrastructure is controlled by a select few companies (with little regulation compared to the countries that rank high in internet access). The companies set the rates and the little guys have to live with it. While they're making a profit there's not much anyone can do about it.
Government control would most certainly help the situation, but that isn't the american way. I suspect the american public will have to wait for a new infrastructure to be built for the rules to change (perhaps WiFi). And even then, if it's rolled out by the same companies that control the wires, it may not help.
As already pointed out many, many... many, many, games use TCP.
Transmission control protocol is itself designed specifically for stream based transmissions. If you want a stream transmission, generally speaking, you use TCP, not UDP.
But it sounds like you probably meant streaming, as in "streaming" video, that kind of thing? It all depends on the situation.
Also missing packets isn't easier to deal with than waiting for missed packets at all. In fact it's a real PITA. But it does cause delay.
And that being said, you're right... the founders likely don't know much about networking, and are counting on the fact that most other people don't either.
It's pretty obvious that the only reason it would run Linux is if it does QoS on the packets... so maybe this card will let you play games and leave your downloads running at the same time. If so that might actually make it worth while.
But it's not really possible for the device to lower ping times on an unsaturated connection.
Your question is irrelevant. Since the program is already cross platform it's reasonable to assume the developed some form of abstraction for doing things like blitting and drawing and so forth -- so that's already done, and then after than the only code that differs between the two OSes is the GUI code -- and since they already have a mac version that's done too.
:).
So basically they're ready to ship!
I think it's pretty clear that this move is motivated more by business politics than it is by technological merits. Which is fine, they have every right to do that.
In my opinion MS has likely realized they aren't going to win this particular battle. With VMWare entering the arena, they might as well just give up -- and save a few hundred million bucks (and hassle) in the process.
Why companies can't just say what's really going on I have no idea, but I guess once you get used to lying it just becomes your natural response to everything.
If you're trying to argue that the hardware market is somehow more profitable than the software one I think you're sadly mistaken. If Apple were smart (which they are) they would rather sell you $350-$1000 dollar software and make TONS of ROI rather than try to compete in the tight hardware market which is currently on a downward trend.
No one will believe me, just as no one believed me when I said as soon as Apple releases OSX intel, it'll run on commodity hardware -- but it'll happen. Because Steve is smart dude.
Most definitely... every official release has been hacked.
Just so you know, since even before OSX Intel was publically released, you've been able to run OSX on most standard PCs supporting SSE2 (SSE3 is much better as Rosetta apps will actually run).
e _how_to
You can run it natively, or inside VMWare either under Windows, or Linux. This should get you started: http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Vmwar
In my opinion, moving to intel hardware is the smartest move Apple has made since... well... the Apple IIe. Yes even smarter than the iPod IMO.
I think a lot of what keeps people stuck using Windows, is not an inherent love for Windows itself, but rather a reliance on the software base, and ease of use / maintenance. I also believe that a lot of Windows success is directly related to software piracy. I can see piracy really helping Apple.
I would never pay the extra money for an Apple... but if I am given a choice between using OS X and Windows without having to pay extra money for one over the other, I'll choose OS X any day.
You realize of course that you can already run OSX on any SSE3 capable intel machine. Just do a search on your favorite torrent site for "OSX JaS patched" or something like that. Opendarwin or not, OSX intel will always run on any machine. Always has been able to, always will.
Ahh sorry, I was misunderstanding you. All valid points. It's an unfortunate truth in todays hyper-political world. All I can say is... I hope you're wrong!
You could be right, and I see how the push to go back to the moon could be viewed as nothing more than a PR stunt, but after thinking about it for a bit I have to say that I take the opposite opinion.
Heading to other bodies is exactly what we should be doing. We might not learn as much about the solar system as if we'd spent that money on a new telescope or whatever, but the knowledge we gain about getting to other planets, and potentially existing there is invaluable.
What's our ultimate goal with space travel? Well right now it's probably to colonize some body other than Earth. Why bother? Well there's about a million reasons, not the least of which is the fact that right now we've got all our eggs in one basket.
I also believe that extra-planetary colonization will likely help put things into psychological perspective for our race. It's no solution to our problems, but it's a start.
At any rate, even though the money may not provide the same bang per buck as a telescope or another ISS module, it's the kind of experience that you just can't get by peering through a lens. It's like the difference between reading a book about driving, and actually driving. Real driving may be a lot more expensive, and inherently dangerous, but you'll never truly know how until you do it.