Thats actually an interesting point in the consumer space even. WinXP Home is not SMP Enabled but WinXP Professional is. And historically we've seen that with Win9x vs NT based OS (Yes this was an architectural limitation as well but still based upon expectation of the computing needs of the average consumer)
So when, in one or 2 years, dual cores become more common possibly on upper end desktops - will Microsoft have to ditch their policy of charging more for SMP enabled operating systems for consumers?
A game does not have to be multithreaded to take advantage of a dual processor system.
Back in the day my friend had an Abit BP6 with Dual Celerons in it. Before you start laughing it was a pretty decent system. I have a screenshot somewhere of Unreal Tournament running with 50% CPU usage for each processor. He could, on his modest system run a dedicated server, and then join it.
Something I could not do on my faster Pentium II system or on my friends faster Pentium III system, both uniprocessor.
He could also burn a CD, encode MP3s, or Rip a DVD and Play UT all at the same time, using IDE - I'm well aware that SCSI would have enabled a uniprocessor system to do many of these things.
So - why do gamers drool over dual processor systems? You don't need a second box to host a dedicated server - you don't have to sacrifice any functionality or other projects you want to do in the background so you can play a game instead.
That's why we want dual processor machines, plus lots of us are into Photoshop, running SETI @ Home and many other programs which may take advantage of SMP.
"Why is it puzzling? In their historic "Intel Inside" world, they were basically competing against themselves. Adding a bigger cache is not only easy, but a cheap way to rake in more cash without doing much R&D work."
You are forgetting a key deficiency of the P4 "netburst" architecture. Its incredibly long pipeline which makes it very susceptable to cache misses. Therefore the larger the L2 cache the less of a performance hit the processor will take if it misses an instruction or two.
It is possible that adding a bigger cache is 'cheap' but if that were the case we'd see a dramatic reduction in the price of P4EEs as they are getting schooled by AMDs. L2 Cache is not cheap to implement. And significantly adds to the manufacturing cost of the processor.
Additionally the lack of a FSB upgrade on the Xeons is troubling, but that apparantly is coming later this year, and this may reduce the advantage of the Opteron's to SOME degree. However, in the current architecture the Xeon's FSB bandwidth will always be shared - while the Opteron's get dedicated bandwidth for every processor. This is really the most remarkable advantage of 'Hammer' family of AMD CPUs over the Netburst generation of P4s/Xeons.
"I believe Intel had thought they had reached monopoly status, which really they had, and the culture had become complacent. This did not happen at the underdog AMD, who has recently been able to quickly leapfrog Intel's offerings."
Intel put a lot of money and R&D into a product line (P4 NetBurst) and honestly - even with AMD making inroads - they still do not have that large a share of the CPU market. Intel has however observed their lead eroding and have canned Tejas - successor to the Prescott. So Intel is able to step up and make the big changes even when it has sacrificed large amounts of R&D money.
If you cannot catch the play on words between "doh" and "dough" in a story related to a wage increase, then perhaps sir you need to watch more television.
I'm sick of it - totally sick of wrestling with drivers and the OS and hardware and whatever just to get games working.
And it has ALWAYS been this way. I remember using debug to free up more EMS memory so Falcon 3.0 would run faster on my 386 sx 20 with 2 megs of RAM. I remember spending hours tweaking autoexec/config.sys to get the most conventional memory possible (i think 622 was about as high as I got)
So then enter Windows - yay its so much better - no its not - I have YET to run my legally purchased copy of Neverwinter Nights on PC without it crashing, I didn't return it out of support for a canadian software development company. And in the end I've nearly given up on gaming and I can't beleive that I'm alone. I see the hoops I have to jump through just to get a game to work on a PC - how many people really have the know how or the time to do this? Not many - will the PC die as a gaming platform - probably not but it will never go mainstream unless there are some serious changes that occur in usability. I long for the day I can put a disc in and load up a game without having to download a patch - without having to update my graphics card/soundcard/chipset drivers. Oh wait its called a Console.
I remember when Steve Jobs came back and Apple revoked all the licenses of the "Mac Clones" (see: UMAX 1998 Article that were in the market and then "woosh" magically Apple's profits increased it shipped more computers and was "regaining marketshare". January 19th Article on "Big Jump" in Apple profits.
What did Apple Claim: "The strong sales combined with internal market research "makes it clear our products are reaching many new customers beyond Apple's installed base," said Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO." Bullshit. Apple was simply picking up all the business it "lost" to the clone manufacturers it had previously licensed.
Apple sits in an precarious position. It is dependent upon an outside source for CPUs - and that's fine its competitors are as well - but its dependent upon different uncompatible cpus.
It competes with Microsoft & Linux for market/mind-share in the Software Arena.
It competes with Creative/Sony in the consumer device arena.
The list goes on... Apple is quick becoming the jack of all trades and master of none. Apple needs to refocus on A strength instead of trying to tackle everyone/everything under the sun.
XEONS do not currently run at 800mhz frontside bus but will later this year which considering a data center environment - i'm sure that is what he was referring to.
As well the Pentium 4 achitecture shares the fsb bandwidth (800mb/s for each cpu) between all the processors on a multi-processor setup - while Operton's have independent memory channels (6.4gb/s for each cpu)
The recent anandtech article will provide some good information on this.
I suppose that depends whether or not you..
on
Can Software Kill?
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· Score: 1
I beta tested Windows 98 (dangerous to admit that here) and would just like to point out that the beta version ran better and used less memory than the final did because the Final had more features than the beta did, and I'm sure for other reasons as well.
So the submitter's comment that "Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources" isn't necessarily true.
Cache may always help but this is not as straightforward a statement as you indicate. It is highly dependent upon the architecture of the processor.
The reason the 4mb Xeon's are significantly outperforming the 2mb Xeon's is due to the shared bandwidth architecture of the Xeon's. The cache makes up for the lack of access to data via the FSB and keeps the very deep pipeline of the P4 series processors full. The long pipeline is the reason that cache misses impact the speed of the P4s so much - despite Intels attempt to improve branch prediction. Simply look @ the P4 Celeron's to see how they can be so utterly trounced by regular P4s @ the same clockspeed with little architectural difference but cache size.
Opterons/AMD 64s do not benefit as much from the boost in L2 Cache. Perfect example of this is the Athlon 64 3000+ and Athlon 64 3200+
The 3200 has 1meg of L2 - and the 3000 has 512k - and both run @ 2 ghz. The performance difference between these two (in most benchmarks) is less than 10% Anand Review of Athlon 64 3400+
So a doubling of cache at the same processor speed results in a 10% boost in performance 'maybe'.
Finally some applications are more sensitive to L2 cache sizes then others.
Therefore your statement "more L2 cache always helps" is strictly true - but the degree of performance increase must be compared against the increase in cost. And this benefit will change from processor to processor and application to application.
Transnational corporations will destroy their own markets. Perhaps this seems apocalyptic but allow me to clarify.
There is the historical "fordist" model of development. No when Ford started out - very few people could afford to purchase his products - so he paid a very good wage to his employees which granted them sufficient buying power to purchase his product. The spinoff benefits from this increase in buying power spread through the economy and the buying power of many increased. (This is of course over simplified)
Many people believe that: "Ultimately, free trade works out well; I think one of the issues is that white collar jobs are just beginning to feel the pinch, and are acting like manufacturers did in the 1970s and 1980s."
The real problem is this. Transnational corporations (this term is interchangable with multinational corporations but it is a more effective term in that it accurately demonstrates that such corporations exist among many nations and also supersede the boundaries and perhaps legal jurisdiction of nation states) are moving jobs out of the country to areas where workers have the necessary skills but not the same level of income requirements as workers within developed nations. Therefore Company X may move its software development efforts to India. Great, these people are now receiving a wage they might not otherwise have had - BUT they do not have the same purchasing power as the now fired employee in the developed nation had.
This is key. Transnational corporations WILL NOT lower their prices because their costs of production are lower - simply because their costs of production are lower (such a move would be dictated by external competition or another initiative) so the prices of these products remain relatively constant. But the buying power of the United States, Canada, and Europe etc. is decreased. They will be producing a product at a price their traditional markets cannot afford - and they won't pay their new markets enough to improve their buying power to the point where they can consume the produced goods.
This is how transnational corporations are slowly destroying their own market. A revisitation of the Fordist perspective or an understanding of the importance of the strength of key domestic markets would be helpful.
Susan Strange has written two books that would be an excellent primer regarding many of these issues and other issues surrounding globalization and financial capital. Mad Money - and Casino Capitalism are very much worth the read.
Actually considering that IBM is manufacturing/assisting with the design of CELL for Playstation 3 - designed & built the Gecko processor for the Gamecube - and now finds its way into Xbox 2 would indicate that: "Well the 970 is a serious midrange contender and I'm sure they want people to know it. Being the chip in one of the big 3 consoles certianly goes a long way for that."
IBM doesn't just have 'a chip' in one of the big three consoles - it is making all the chips in all the consoles.
As well process innovations in fabrication will allow IBM to reduce the cost of production on the 970s over the lifespan of the X-Box 2 - in addition - economies of scale should kick in to a large degree considering the scale of the resource commitment for the cpu's in a console.
I think you need to re-read this book again - the big plot turn in the end was the final "test" and after the successfull destruction of the simulated 'bugger' homeworld. Everyone is all whooping and hollering and he doesn't get it - it is only then revealed to him by Mazer Rackham that it wasn't a simulation that it was the real battle.
" Which do you think will win the War on Terror--guns or minds?... The more they understand the role society plays in terrorism, the better they'll be able to counteract it."
The problem with your statement is that this initiative is incapable of acheiveing either end. It will not be able to simulate the behavior or individuals or even groups of individuals beyond what the article mentions as crowd reactions (probably to falling bombs).
It will not give insight into how terrorists operate or how they operate or where they are or even how they might attack. Conceivably this program would be capable of simulating the actual impact of a suspected terrorist action. There was lots of news recently about Al-Queda possibly hijacking an oil tanker or some other ships, well this program could probably demonstrate the ecological impact of something like this - but nothing more.
I would believe that existing analysts would be able to game out possible targets & impacts already without requiring such a simulator - as nice as it may be to have.
This initiative is also incapable of 'winning the war on terror' it is a military simulator on earth scale - and that is it. It is not capable of simulating capital flows and other investments so that we could determine exactly how Al-Qeada is funneling money. Since it will not be possible to accurately simulate individual behaviour within it - it is also impossible to simulate communications networks so we can find out how terrorists communicate and where they meet etc.
All this is - is a giant war game - that's it. Any other claims to usefulness are bullshit. It gives the US military a way to game out conflicts in pretty 3d. Look for them to model Taiwan and area after they've finished modeling the middle east. Just an educated guess.
"War is terrible. Games are fun. Ne'er the two should meet. IMHO." I'm sure someone else will point it out but this wonderful book by Orson Scott Card really comes down to this.
It make so much sense though doesn't it? Currently UAV's are remotely flown why not place the pilots in an immersive 3d environment giving them access to all kinds of terrain data from various perspectives they otherwise wouldn't have access to?
The further step, and the step Ender's Game takes, is that as weapons become increasingly capable of being operated remotely, and the simulations are being done inside an immersive game - how can you tell if your are destroying a virtual city / or an actual city?
There was also a rather good Seaquest DSV (yes the show on the whole was very poor) espiode about this as well where people were actually destroying the world but thought they were playing a game.
I would like to amend your "Scenario 2" because even if the technology to retaliate against the weapon itself is out of a terrorist's grasp - they can still retaliate against the political source of the weapon and its interests.
This doesn't make America or anyone else safer. Best/Worst case scenario is another MAD situation, but with Space based weapons instead of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
I wouldn't be surprised if India and China with their much larger engineering base, and China's lack of democratic political challenges might result in the United State being given a real run for the money in this, if not beaten technologically.
The next 'space race' is not in the bag for the United States, and as a Canadian I'm unfortunately tied to whatever the USA chooses to do, and this strikes me as an incredibly destabilizing move.
"My view is that it may be a good idea in some third world countries, with no telephone service, where there are no alternatives for Internet. "
You are making the assumption that developing nations posses a quality of infrastructure sufficient to allow for broadband access over powerlines. This technology has been difficult enough to introduce within the developed world with our level of infrastructure, this is not a viable option for developing nations.
Slashdot needs to be more discerning in which reviews it accepts. Accepting a poor quality review simply because it is submitted is unacceptable and does not make a positive contribution to the website.
Throughout the review the reviewer speaks in reference of the ease of use he had when he was with the regular Panther Client version, or how he is not sure how feature X works or why is this so complicated?
It was not designed for the reviwer's needs. Nor is this review of use to anyone who may actually use the features of Mac OSX Server. This simply displays that this user lacks the need, and the knowledge to properly take advantage of the product.
If we break down the reviewer's conclusion we discover that. a) Oh well I really should've done my homework because Server doesn't really offer anything I need, but its not bad. b) "For commercial use, however, Server is an excellent product that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend. It can offer the majority of services any business environment needs, for much less than the cost of Windows alternatives, and the man-hours cost saved with Server Admin is worth the price alone."
How can you possibly come to this conclusion based upon the experiences you have had? The reviewer has not faced the challenges of a sysadmin in a broader environment nor is the reviewer qualified,from his own statements throughout the review, to make such an assessment.
If Slashdot wishes to increase its content - it should do so by accepting the submission of quality reviews, not reviews such as Part 1/2 of this.
I would like to put forward the example of Saskatchewan Canada, where I reside.
Population less of just a hair over a 1 million, square area of 651,900km. With our 2 biggest cities just over 200k population. Why does this matter?
The population density of Saskatchewan, and much of rural Canada, is very low and from what I can see it is very similar in density to rural American States.
Our telco (Sasktel) has committed to every town, with greater than 40 people in this province having access to ADSL. Several of the enlightened employees I have spoken too have commented on the deployment as well.
In addition our Telco (Sasktel - a government owned corporation 'crown corporation') also distributes Digital television via DSL - so these communities also will in the near term get access to this service as well.
But of course we must be paying an absolute fortune for this wonderful widely distributed service - right? Because we "pay for choice (even if it doesn't exist in your area)"
1.54 down / 384 up = $45.99 Canadian a month. Which (with our current great exchange rate) would work out to about $36 American. Where our dollar traditionally resides it would work out to right around $30 American.
So even in a rural province - we have an extremely high level of access, and we don't pay through the nose for it.
And yes there are competitors so there is a free market in effect (in dense population areas) but for rural communities it takes a benevolent (i use that term with some sarcasm) organization to push access upward and outward.
"Apple doesn't place a giant markup on its products. They put a lot of money into product and industrial design. Therefore, Apple computer's cost more." Wrong. Anyone who has sold computers or has industry experience will probably let you in on a little secret: there is a tiny markup in computers. Period. Money is made in accessories and service plans.
And for (hopefully the last time)Macintoshes are not more expensive! This point has been made many many times on Slashdot. But to make it one more time (IANAMU [I am not a Mac User]):
$6,174.00 Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 4GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 4x1GB 2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 56k V.92 internal modem SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW) Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English Mac OS X - U.S. English
$6,634 Dell Precision Workstation 650 2 xIntel(R) Xeon(TM) Processor,3.06GHz,512K Cache Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional Hyper-Threading feature preset to "ON." Memory: 4GB,DDR266 SDRAM Memory,NECC Keyboard: Entry Level, PS/2, No Hot Keys Mouse: PS/2,Dell, 2 button w/no scroll Monitor: No Monitor Option Graphics Cards: nVidia, Quadro NVS 280, 64MB, dual monitor VGA capable Speakers: Internal Chassis Speaker Productivity Software: Dell Precision Workstation 4X DVD+RW/+R AND 16XDVD-ROM,DVD Decode/Sonic SE(for Professional Authoring) DRWDV4X 2x250GB SATA, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with DataBurst Cache(TM) SARC RAID Floppy Drive: 3.5 inch 1.44MB Floppy Drive
So what was that about macintoshes being more expensive?
(Note I had to reformat the Dell Quote so that it would look ok)
Slashdot Mirror
Thats actually an interesting point in the consumer space even. WinXP Home is not SMP Enabled but WinXP Professional is. And historically we've seen that with Win9x vs NT based OS (Yes this was an architectural limitation as well but still based upon expectation of the computing needs of the average consumer)
So when, in one or 2 years, dual cores become more common possibly on upper end desktops - will Microsoft have to ditch their policy of charging more for SMP enabled operating systems for consumers?
Tech Support for the Family?
Allow me to refute this.
A game does not have to be multithreaded to take advantage of a dual processor system.
Back in the day my friend had an Abit BP6 with Dual Celerons in it. Before you start laughing it was a pretty decent system. I have a screenshot somewhere of Unreal Tournament running with 50% CPU usage for each processor. He could, on his modest system run a dedicated server, and then join it.
Something I could not do on my faster Pentium II system or on my friends faster Pentium III system, both uniprocessor.
He could also burn a CD, encode MP3s, or Rip a DVD and Play UT all at the same time, using IDE - I'm well aware that SCSI would have enabled a uniprocessor system to do many of these things.
So - why do gamers drool over dual processor systems? You don't need a second box to host a dedicated server - you don't have to sacrifice any functionality or other projects you want to do in the background so you can play a game instead.
That's why we want dual processor machines, plus lots of us are into Photoshop, running SETI @ Home and many other programs which may take advantage of SMP.
"Why is it puzzling? In their historic "Intel Inside" world, they were basically competing against themselves. Adding a bigger cache is not only easy, but a cheap way to rake in more cash without doing much R&D work."
You are forgetting a key deficiency of the P4 "netburst" architecture. Its incredibly long pipeline which makes it very susceptable to cache misses. Therefore the larger the L2 cache the less of a performance hit the processor will take if it misses an instruction or two.
It is possible that adding a bigger cache is 'cheap' but if that were the case we'd see a dramatic reduction in the price of P4EEs as they are getting schooled by AMDs. L2 Cache is not cheap to implement. And significantly adds to the manufacturing cost of the processor.
Additionally the lack of a FSB upgrade on the Xeons is troubling, but that apparantly is coming later this year, and this may reduce the advantage of the Opteron's to SOME degree. However, in the current architecture the Xeon's FSB bandwidth will always be shared - while the Opteron's get dedicated bandwidth for every processor. This is really the most remarkable advantage of 'Hammer' family of AMD CPUs over the Netburst generation of P4s/Xeons.
"I believe Intel had thought they had reached monopoly status, which really they had, and the culture had become complacent. This did not happen at the underdog AMD, who has recently been able to quickly leapfrog Intel's offerings."
Intel put a lot of money and R&D into a product line (P4 NetBurst) and honestly - even with AMD making inroads - they still do not have that large a share of the CPU market. Intel has however observed their lead eroding and have canned Tejas - successor to the Prescott. So Intel is able to step up and make the big changes even when it has sacrificed large amounts of R&D money.
Intel to formally confirm Tejas canned
Intel may have canned Tejas...
Taipei Times Picture of the Visby.
Detailed Article including Construction Information and many pictures.
If you cannot catch the play on words between "doh" and "dough" in a story related to a wage increase, then perhaps sir you need to watch more television.
I'm sick of it - totally sick of wrestling with drivers and the OS and hardware and whatever just to get games working.
And it has ALWAYS been this way. I remember using debug to free up more EMS memory so Falcon 3.0 would run faster on my 386 sx 20 with 2 megs of RAM. I remember spending hours tweaking autoexec/config.sys to get the most conventional memory possible (i think 622 was about as high as I got)
So then enter Windows - yay its so much better - no its not - I have YET to run my legally purchased copy of Neverwinter Nights on PC without it crashing, I didn't return it out of support for a canadian software development company. And in the end I've nearly given up on gaming and I can't beleive that I'm alone. I see the hoops I have to jump through just to get a game to work on a PC - how many people really have the know how or the time to do this? Not many - will the PC die as a gaming platform - probably not but it will never go mainstream unless there are some serious changes that occur in usability. I long for the day I can put a disc in and load up a game without having to download a patch - without having to update my graphics card/soundcard/chipset drivers. Oh wait its called a Console.
I remember when Steve Jobs came back and Apple revoked all the licenses of the "Mac Clones" (see: UMAX 1998 Article that were in the market and then "woosh" magically Apple's profits increased it shipped more computers and was "regaining marketshare". January 19th Article on "Big Jump" in Apple profits.
What did Apple Claim:
"The strong sales combined with internal market research "makes it clear our products are reaching many new customers beyond Apple's installed base," said Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO." Bullshit. Apple was simply picking up all the business it "lost" to the clone manufacturers it had previously licensed.
Apple sits in an precarious position.
It is dependent upon an outside source for CPUs - and that's fine its competitors are as well - but its dependent upon different uncompatible cpus.
It competes with Microsoft & Linux for market/mind-share in the Software Arena.
It competes with Creative/Sony in the consumer device arena.
The list goes on... Apple is quick becoming the jack of all trades and master of none. Apple needs to refocus on A strength instead of trying to tackle everyone/everything under the sun.
XEONS do not currently run at 800mhz frontside bus but will later this year which considering a data center environment - i'm sure that is what he was referring to.
As well the Pentium 4 achitecture shares the fsb bandwidth (800mb/s for each cpu) between all the processors on a multi-processor setup - while Operton's have independent memory channels (6.4gb/s for each cpu)
The recent anandtech article will provide some good information on this.
have epillepsy.
I beta tested Windows 98 (dangerous to admit that here) and would just like to point out that the beta version ran better and used less memory than the final did because the Final had more features than the beta did, and I'm sure for other reasons as well.
So the submitter's comment that "Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources" isn't necessarily true.
Cache may always help but this is not as straightforward a statement as you indicate. It is highly dependent upon the architecture of the processor.
The reason the 4mb Xeon's are significantly outperforming the 2mb Xeon's is due to the shared bandwidth architecture of the Xeon's. The cache makes up for the lack of access to data via the FSB and keeps the very deep pipeline of the P4 series processors full. The long pipeline is the reason that cache misses impact the speed of the P4s so much - despite Intels attempt to improve branch prediction. Simply look @ the P4 Celeron's to see how they can be so utterly trounced by regular P4s @ the same clockspeed with little architectural difference but cache size.
Opterons/AMD 64s do not benefit as much from the boost in L2 Cache. Perfect example of this is the
Athlon 64 3000+ and Athlon 64 3200+
The 3200 has 1meg of L2 - and the 3000 has 512k - and both run @ 2 ghz. The performance difference between these two (in most benchmarks) is less than 10%
Anand Review of Athlon 64 3400+
So a doubling of cache at the same processor speed results in a 10% boost in performance 'maybe'.
Finally some applications are more sensitive to L2 cache sizes then others.
Therefore your statement "more L2 cache always helps" is strictly true - but the degree of performance increase must be compared against the increase in cost. And this benefit will change from processor to processor and application to application.
Transnational corporations will destroy their own markets. Perhaps this seems apocalyptic but allow me to clarify.
There is the historical "fordist" model of development. No when Ford started out - very few people could afford to purchase his products - so he paid a very good wage to his employees which granted them sufficient buying power to purchase his product. The spinoff benefits from this increase in buying power spread through the economy and the buying power of many increased. (This is of course over simplified)
Many people believe that:
"Ultimately, free trade works out well; I think one of the issues is that white collar jobs are just beginning to feel the pinch, and are acting like manufacturers did in the 1970s and 1980s."
The real problem is this. Transnational corporations (this term is interchangable with multinational corporations but it is a more effective term in that it accurately demonstrates that such corporations exist among many nations and also supersede the boundaries and perhaps legal jurisdiction of nation states) are moving jobs out of the country to areas where workers have the necessary skills but not the same level of income requirements as workers within developed nations. Therefore Company X may move its software development efforts to India. Great, these people are now receiving a wage they might not otherwise have had - BUT they do not have the same purchasing power as the now fired employee in the developed nation had.
This is key. Transnational corporations WILL NOT lower their prices because their costs of production are lower - simply because their costs of production are lower (such a move would be dictated by external competition or another initiative) so the prices of these products remain relatively constant. But the buying power of the United States, Canada, and Europe etc. is decreased. They will be producing a product at a price their traditional markets cannot afford - and they won't pay their new markets enough to improve their buying power to the point where they can consume the produced goods.
This is how transnational corporations are slowly destroying their own market. A revisitation of the Fordist perspective or an understanding of the importance of the strength of key domestic markets would be helpful.
Susan Strange has written two books that would be an excellent primer regarding many of these issues and other issues surrounding globalization and financial capital. Mad Money - and Casino Capitalism are very much worth the read.
Actually considering that IBM is manufacturing/assisting with the design of CELL for Playstation 3 - designed & built the Gecko processor for the Gamecube - and now finds its way into Xbox 2 would indicate that:
"Well the 970 is a serious midrange contender and I'm sure they want people to know it. Being the chip in one of the big 3 consoles certianly goes a long way for that."
IBM doesn't just have 'a chip' in one of the big three consoles - it is making all the chips in all the consoles.
As well process innovations in fabrication will allow IBM to reduce the cost of production on the 970s over the lifespan of the X-Box 2 - in addition - economies of scale should kick in to a large degree considering the scale of the resource commitment for the cpu's in a console.
I think you need to re-read this book again - the big plot turn in the end was the final "test" and after the successfull destruction of the simulated 'bugger' homeworld. Everyone is all whooping and hollering and he doesn't get it - it is only then revealed to him by Mazer Rackham that it wasn't a simulation that it was the real battle.
" Which do you think will win the War on Terror--guns or minds? ... The more they understand the role society plays in terrorism, the better they'll be able to counteract it."
The problem with your statement is that this initiative is incapable of acheiveing either end. It will not be able to simulate the behavior or individuals or even groups of individuals beyond what the article mentions as crowd reactions (probably to falling bombs).
It will not give insight into how terrorists operate or how they operate or where they are or even how they might attack. Conceivably this program would be capable of simulating the actual impact of a suspected terrorist action. There was lots of news recently about Al-Queda possibly hijacking an oil tanker or some other ships, well this program could probably demonstrate the ecological impact of something like this - but nothing more.
I would believe that existing analysts would be able to game out possible targets & impacts already without requiring such a simulator - as nice as it may be to have.
This initiative is also incapable of 'winning the war on terror' it is a military simulator on earth scale - and that is it. It is not capable of simulating capital flows and other investments so that we could determine exactly how Al-Qeada is funneling money. Since it will not be possible to accurately simulate individual behaviour within it - it is also impossible to simulate communications networks so we can find out how terrorists communicate and where they meet etc.
All this is - is a giant war game - that's it. Any other claims to usefulness are bullshit. It gives the US military a way to game out conflicts in pretty 3d. Look for them to model Taiwan and area after they've finished modeling the middle east. Just an educated guess.
P.S. Go watch War Games.
"War is terrible. Games are fun. Ne'er the two should meet. IMHO."
I'm sure someone else will point it out but this wonderful book by Orson Scott Card really comes down to this.
It make so much sense though doesn't it? Currently UAV's are remotely flown why not place the pilots in an immersive 3d environment giving them access to all kinds of terrain data from various perspectives they otherwise wouldn't have access to?
The further step, and the step Ender's Game takes, is that as weapons become increasingly capable of being operated remotely, and the simulations are being done inside an immersive game - how can you tell if your are destroying a virtual city / or an actual city?
There was also a rather good Seaquest DSV (yes the show on the whole was very poor) espiode about this as well where people were actually destroying the world but thought they were playing a game.
Food for thought.
... you buy the license, and then a court decides that SCO's license is not required for the operation of Linux, could you then sue SCO for fraud?
I would like to amend your "Scenario 2" because even if the technology to retaliate against the weapon itself is out of a terrorist's grasp - they can still retaliate against the political source of the weapon and its interests.
This doesn't make America or anyone else safer. Best/Worst case scenario is another MAD situation, but with Space based weapons instead of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
I wouldn't be surprised if India and China with their much larger engineering base, and China's lack of democratic political challenges might result in the United State being given a real run for the money in this, if not beaten technologically.
The next 'space race' is not in the bag for the United States, and as a Canadian I'm unfortunately tied to whatever the USA chooses to do, and this strikes me as an incredibly destabilizing move.
"My view is that it may be a good idea in some third world countries, with no telephone service, where there are no alternatives for Internet. "
You are making the assumption that developing nations posses a quality of infrastructure sufficient to allow for broadband access over powerlines. This technology has been difficult enough to introduce within the developed world with our level of infrastructure, this is not a viable option for developing nations.
Probably not.
However if you registered: MineGrowsSoft.com they may take action.
Slashdot needs to be more discerning in which reviews it accepts. Accepting a poor quality review simply because it is submitted is unacceptable and does not make a positive contribution to the website.
,from his own statements throughout the review, to make such an assessment.
Throughout the review the reviewer speaks in reference of the ease of use he had when he was with the regular Panther Client version, or how he is not sure how feature X works or why is this so complicated?
It was not designed for the reviwer's needs. Nor is this review of use to anyone who may actually use the features of Mac OSX Server. This simply displays that this user lacks the need, and the knowledge to properly take advantage of the product.
If we break down the reviewer's conclusion we discover that.
a) Oh well I really should've done my homework because Server doesn't really offer anything I need, but its not bad.
b) "For commercial use, however, Server is an excellent product that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend. It can offer the majority of services any business environment needs, for much less than the cost of Windows alternatives, and the man-hours cost saved with Server Admin is worth the price alone."
How can you possibly come to this conclusion based upon the experiences you have had? The reviewer has not faced the challenges of a sysadmin in a broader environment nor is the reviewer qualified
If Slashdot wishes to increase its content - it should do so by accepting the submission of quality reviews, not reviews such as Part 1/2 of this.
"Hey sexy Mamma, wanna kill all [the] humans?"
I would like to put forward the example of Saskatchewan Canada, where I reside.
Population less of just a hair over a 1 million, square area of 651,900km. With our 2 biggest cities just over 200k population. Why does this matter?
The population density of Saskatchewan, and much of rural Canada, is very low and from what I can see it is very similar in density to rural American States.
Our telco (Sasktel) has committed to every town, with greater than 40 people in this province having access to ADSL. Several of the enlightened employees I have spoken too have commented on the deployment as well.
In addition our Telco (Sasktel - a government owned corporation 'crown corporation') also distributes Digital television via DSL - so these communities also will in the near term get access to this service as well.
But of course we must be paying an absolute fortune for this wonderful widely distributed service - right? Because we "pay for choice (even if it doesn't exist in your area)"
1.54 down / 384 up = $45.99 Canadian a month.
Which (with our current great exchange rate) would work out to about $36 American. Where our dollar traditionally resides it would work out to right around $30 American.
So even in a rural province - we have an extremely high level of access, and we don't pay through the nose for it.
And yes there are competitors so there is a free market in effect (in dense population areas) but for rural communities it takes a benevolent (i use that term with some sarcasm) organization to push access upward and outward.
"Apple doesn't place a giant markup on its products. They put a lot of money into product and industrial design. Therefore, Apple computer's cost more."
Wrong. Anyone who has sold computers or has industry experience will probably let you in on a little secret: there is a tiny markup in computers. Period. Money is made in accessories and service plans.
And for (hopefully the last time)Macintoshes are not more expensive! This point has been made many many times on Slashdot. But to make it one more time (IANAMU [I am not a Mac User]):
$6,174.00
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
4GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 4x1GB
2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
56k V.92 internal modem
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
Mac OS X - U.S. English
$6,634
Dell Precision Workstation 650
2 xIntel(R) Xeon(TM) Processor,3.06GHz,512K Cache
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional
Hyper-Threading feature preset to "ON."
Memory: 4GB,DDR266 SDRAM Memory,NECC
Keyboard: Entry Level, PS/2, No Hot Keys
Mouse: PS/2,Dell, 2 button w/no scroll
Monitor: No Monitor Option
Graphics Cards: nVidia, Quadro NVS 280, 64MB, dual monitor VGA capable
Speakers: Internal Chassis Speaker
Productivity Software: Dell Precision Workstation
4X DVD+RW/+R AND 16XDVD-ROM,DVD Decode/Sonic SE(for Professional Authoring) DRWDV4X
2x250GB SATA, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with DataBurst Cache(TM) SARC RAID
Floppy Drive: 3.5 inch 1.44MB Floppy Drive
So what was that about macintoshes being more expensive?
(Note I had to reformat the Dell Quote so that it would look ok)