A) if they don't sue soon, then it won't matter, will it? I don't believe they do; they just rattle swords well B) oh yeah, juridictions that support sotware patents.... let' say some 590M users in US, Japan, Canada, etc? C) we agree that patent baiting through Novell would be beyond explosive D) MS fears and deals with all competitors eventually, but they've softened on Linux because they're still getting loads of server revenues, so it's not so bad for them, especially with the DOJ looking over their shoulders. E) we agree.
Don't be so sure the sabres won't be rattled by MS again soon, though. They do it for practice.
This site keeps track of conservative lipfarts and propaganda. They have an RSS feed for the most rabid of liberals, although that might be an oxymoron. They're nice enough to cite chapter-and-verse when they believe there's been bias in a blog, media, or print story. Fun to watch.
And not listening to their customers was stated. Yes, it looks like a screw job on Creative's part. If it were the first, or the thousandth time that someone like Creative, or a whole list of hardware makers did something like this, we'd be surprised, wouldn't we? That's what the whole upgrade madness is all about: guaranteeing a constant churn of revenue cycles to keep the coffers fat, so the shareholders love them, right? But it's their stuff and while we can hack it and discover this problem, this exposure does no good until you buy something else and teach them the economics of customer choice. I like what he did. Creative should do a lot of soul searching, but it's unlikely they will. It's endemic to hardware makers, especially peripheral makers, to see any lesson in this.
Hardware makers, especially those that make drivers for their gear, don't understand a hacker's mentality, or even the rebuke they get from not listening to customers. I applaud the guy; did what he needed to get the Vista Not Ready gear working. They should hire him after they throw out their software contractor and their VP of whoever thought that killing the driver was a good idea.
Yes, the 68K is CISC... an evolution from the 6800. My mistake. I started on 8008s and 8080s, then Z80s, then 6502s for an education, then 8086 family from there. Once I had some distractions from Power and went down the hard road of math CPU integration. Then assembler was no fun anymore. I wanted to learn Sparc, but my background in CISC and mindless register manipulations, the push pop dance, and integer math was an addiction.
I saw a MIPS running NT; I don't know of anyone that put it into production, just as the Alpha and PPC ports were oddball and not found in nature. That Windows 2008 server has specific editions for the Itanium Is a bit silly. It's a nice CPU, don't get me wrong, but as a joint venture and marketable device for its formerly intended target market, it's dead dead dead.
1) cheap geothermal power 2) cheap geothermal cooling 3) easy freight 4) educated and even DNA-tracked populace 5) computing is an indoor sport
Five considerations:
1) they like to go whaling; not necessarily a friendly thing in by some opinions 2) latency; not as a bad as a sat, but not as good as Chicago for US; geo centric for North America and EU 3) earthquakes and unsettled geography 4) too many thermal pools to screw off in 5) don't want my server called 'homerdottir'
Consider that parallel computing means keeping extra monolitic cores busy. There are a number of programmers that need the discipline to know how to spawn, use, and tear down threads to keep them busy. But there are a helluva lot of them that plainly don't need to know. What we lack are reasonable compilers that allow the hardware layer to be sufficiently abstracted so that code can adapt to hardware infrasturcture appropriately. If that doesn't happen, then code becomes machine-specific rather than task-specific/fulfilling. If an app is written, then it should be able to take advantage of parallelism, and the plumbing should take care of the substrate, be that substrate a core-duo, or 64 cores and more, perhaps on separate systems with the obvious latencies that distance might inject.
Those layers are only nominally addressed in operating systems, which should be the core arbiter of how parallelism can be manifested to an application instance. It's up to the kernel makers to figure out how to take advantage and make that advantage useful to applications writers-- who should be at least knowledgable about how to twig those features in the operating system. But app writers needn't have to know all of the underlaying differential to write flexible code.
We disagree. There is no wireless transmission media that can support the bidirectional broadband speeds necessary to fulfill burgeoning bandwidth needs. Such speeds aren't even on the horizon for wireless. In a single fibre, I can get transmission speeds far beyond what the backhaul is possibly able to deliver. If you invested in fiber 25 years ago, you can still use it today. The same cannot be said for wireless.
Worse, there are no usable models for MAN distribution of wireless that make economic sense right now, because of capacity versus asset costs. Telcos use cellular/mobile technologies with three competing standards to deliver speeds that represent impossible delivery of the same content one can get from DSL, cable, or FTTH.
Add to this problem, the lack of session management agreements (handoffs) between technologies, the high payload of even highly compressed one-way (let alone FDX) multimedia, and wireless is plainly screwed today.
Cable companies have gotten a bit better; we still don't have the dialtone reliability established by Ma Bell. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, it doesn't matter the US domestic carrier; they're all crooks in my opinion. MuniWiFi didn't take off because it costs money-- it's a utility-- and it's a LAN technology serving a MAN/WAN role. Better to put fibre into the ground and use it for backhaul in population-based cells.
I would generally concur, but rather say that it makes for more monolithic and inflexible interfaces. IMHO. And I have a PowerBook G4 with the sloppy one button one, and a Microsoft grafted rollerball with three button scroll mouse for an Apple Tower. There is bliss in simplicity, but there's also a weakness, too. Linux: three buttons traditionally from SVR4 and Solaris and X/Motif; two buttons on Windows derivatives, one button must be coupled with keys to offer more choices (with no guaranteed, only implied consistency).
We agree that the game machine market uses PPC/RISC designs as their basis. And they're for entertainment. I've yet to use any of the three. Call me not-the-target-market for such things. The 68K, and subsequent versions leading to the PPC designs were great and ahead of their time, and a nice choice for Apple. You may recall that Microsoft was going to allow NT to work on Alpha, the 68K/PPC, as well as the Intel family and even the MIPS. It was a dice roll that I think was more lip service than reality, but that's all history. Moto couldn't keep up; IBM held the PPC alive, but despite the fact that there are only (arguably) four chip families left, at least it's choice. If you're a developer, choice is good, in the same way that it's good for business and consumer purchasers. Soon, the arguments about real greenness, efficiencies, and newer substrates will start to distract these older arguments once more. I can't wait to see graphene substrates, and subsystem throttle-backs, and SSD, LCD, and low-V power sourcing. It'll be a new and interesting world.
A key concept missing from your understanding of my reply is the subject line.
The most vehement component of your arguments is also the weakest. You ignore untold amounts of i86/960 and other Intel (and Cyrix, IBM, Via, and a raft of other licensees) in embedded markets. The RISC vs CISC arguments are mooted by sheer numbers.
Just like MuniWiFi did. Google, where are your commitments to that??
Just like WiMAX works so well .
Just like Earthlink, master of all that's good, wireless, and now nearly bankrupt might think.
Sure, software-defined radios might be nice. But let's put in real freaking fibre instead of still another plan to screw telcos/cellular carriers. If Google needs more bandwidth for YouTube, let them finally invest in the infrastructure to deliver it, not 'convenient' short-term wireless ploys. Egads.
I do speak for myself; the 'we' has to do with my older colleagues. These things are just tools, which people forget. I like not having to scrape various malware and viruses from my machines, or figure out obscure hklm references. That is, unless I can bill by the hour for it. That's the damn thing.
Macs were somewhat solid. There are a large number of wiffs in there, too. Simplicity, in the form of a single-button mouse, worked well decades ago. It's still part-and-parcel for newbies. Context switching was better in MacOS but otherwise was a bit too proprietary. The lasers had too high of an expense to run, eventually.
And PCs (actually everything from VAXes south) had technologies that eventually devolved to Ethernet at generous speeds and in network contexts that make AppleTalk/PhoneTalk look as silly as it was. Imagine an ARCNet card for an Apple. Makes me shudder to think of it but is an example of what a closed platform does for choice. Not to mention still another Apple proprietary shot at an evolving technology. Even AppleTalk over Ethernet was silly; no one gravitated to it and like other things, Apple evolved it in a vacuum.
We'll agree that Moto/IBM/Apple did nice things at an early stage to the PPC, but the processor technology evolved slowly. Lack of cross-platform code evolution meant that Apple was an island. That's still somewhat the case, but less so as Java, scripting languages/schemes, and UI commonalities favor Linux, MacOS and Windows. Once Jobs moved to KoreUhOh Apple hit the mainstream. VirtualPC and other schemes were silly. Now the software layer matters less. I'd still like to buy an HP or Lenovo or Dell with MacOS on it. But then, it would cost Apple dearly to do so because their cult of hardware gives them plenty of bottom-line margin.
It's funny how lust colors one's opinions. When SmallTalk arrived decades ago, we thought it was lovely. Apple's implementations were lovely (but in NO WAY UNIQUE) and they worked. But I've had Apple as a girlfriend for several decades. You're only getting laid right now. Once that lust and sex-haze evaporates, perhaps you'll see what's underneath.
It's nice that they've worked this long, but their capacity, chemistry, and power expense has been long exceeded by many others. If you're still using them, your cost per impression (toner+power) is about 4x what it should be. This is not to put down a long asset life, but they're truly expensive to run when you consider capex+opex-depreciation.
Crappy, closed-technology machines. The cult of the single-button mouse. Reseller programs from hell. Lovely laser printers that became ultimately useless. Two wire AppleTalk networks with all of the speed of ISDN on a good day. Cute little useless Newtons. Servers that could never rise above simple workgroup needs. Special connections and exceptions needed to network with anything else but perhaps NFS or wicked Novell patches. Wonderful and proprietary (given few others used them) PPC CPUs. I'm sure others can count the way. Others can see the bloom on the rose, and I still have marks from the thorns. Oddly, I still use a PowerBook G4, alongside a heavy-duty (and less expensive) HP core-duo notebook. Only for games, of course....
Geo Bush was governor of TX, and Clinton was governor of AR. Geo Bush Sr was director of the CIA at one time. Reagan was governor of CA. Carter, GA. Mrs Clinton? Senator. McCain? Senator. Obama, Senator. Do you want someone that has a long history in government, given it's recent current history of being bribed by lobbyists, questionable financing, and other shenanigans?
I think it's the media that's overplayed it, not Obama-- as you otherwise cite. Clinton's the perfect target, however. And she's as squishy as McCain. There's a possible breath of non-old school ideology that's refreshing about Obama. I'm tired of the bribed Congress and WH. Foo on that.
However, it's difficult to get past your entitlement/welfare state part, as it's a part of a propaganda-based diatribe. We agree that spending needs to be cut, and somehow, the unbelievable national debt needs to be cut back dramatically. Nonetheless, social responsibility needs to be re-thought. Reducing the amount of military expense is one way, not dropping expensive and provocative post-cold war missiles into Poland could be an example. Cutting exported dollars to the oil exporters can be another. Forcing China to float the yuan could be another.
Of the three, Obama's plans are clearest and seem to have the least deviation, so far, among what I've seen in the candidates. Clinton can't win; I'm convinced of that. McCain's more like Clinton than most understand, but he's also rather old for a candidate and is heavily annealed to failed international policies. That leaves us, IMHO, with Obama.
The United Church of Christ along with any number of denominations are regularly investigated by the IRS. I find church ads generally offensive. That doesn't mean that in this race, it capitulates Obama. I think the whole 501c3/6 political endorsement mess is just a way to hassle churches, if from the pulpit. When religious orgs use funds to publicly endorse, then they go beyond the pulpit and their reach of free speech becomes unbalanced against the public's. Still, what of Swiftboating, and the morass of phantom orgs?
Michelle Obama tends to typify a large segment of black America in her vehemence, with a Chicagoan's fervor. I have neighbors that are similarly vehement. When I see how black women are often subjugated and marginalized in actuality and rhetorically in urban America, I understand where she's coming from. When you consider how the Bush administration's done little to help veracity in the presidency, and has played character assassination politics, hugging a small but vocal marginalized segment of the Christian 'Right', I applaud her desire to be vocal about what she believes in.
Read his speech from last week. Think about leaders that you've disagreed with, too, but followed because you had faith in where they were going. There are lots of those in my history; we're not perfect beings and his pastor obviously has some issues with where America's been going. So do I. His pastor's not a showstopper for me. Given Clinton, who can't win, and McCain, who's too much of a turncoat and politico, Obama's the only remaining horse that can win this race and try to mend the mistakes made in two terms of an elected fear-monger.
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Arrrrr, Pass Me The Soldering Iron and The C++ Compiler, and that Slide Rule, too, Matey!
To respond:
A) if they don't sue soon, then it won't matter, will it? I don't believe they do; they just rattle swords well
B) oh yeah, juridictions that support sotware patents.... let' say some 590M users in US, Japan, Canada, etc?
C) we agree that patent baiting through Novell would be beyond explosive
D) MS fears and deals with all competitors eventually, but they've softened on Linux because they're still getting loads of server revenues, so it's not so bad for them, especially with the DOJ looking over their shoulders.
E) we agree.
Don't be so sure the sabres won't be rattled by MS again soon, though. They do it for practice.
This site keeps track of conservative lipfarts and propaganda. They have an RSS feed for the most rabid of liberals, although that might be an oxymoron. They're nice enough to cite chapter-and-verse when they believe there's been bias in a blog, media, or print story. Fun to watch.
And not listening to their customers was stated. Yes, it looks like a screw job on Creative's part. If it were the first, or the thousandth time that someone like Creative, or a whole list of hardware makers did something like this, we'd be surprised, wouldn't we? That's what the whole upgrade madness is all about: guaranteeing a constant churn of revenue cycles to keep the coffers fat, so the shareholders love them, right? But it's their stuff and while we can hack it and discover this problem, this exposure does no good until you buy something else and teach them the economics of customer choice. I like what he did. Creative should do a lot of soul searching, but it's unlikely they will. It's endemic to hardware makers, especially peripheral makers, to see any lesson in this.
Hardware makers, especially those that make drivers for their gear, don't understand a hacker's mentality, or even the rebuke they get from not listening to customers. I applaud the guy; did what he needed to get the Vista Not Ready gear working. They should hire him after they throw out their software contractor and their VP of whoever thought that killing the driver was a good idea.
Yes, the 68K is CISC... an evolution from the 6800. My mistake. I started on 8008s and 8080s, then Z80s, then 6502s for an education, then 8086 family from there. Once I had some distractions from Power and went down the hard road of math CPU integration. Then assembler was no fun anymore. I wanted to learn Sparc, but my background in CISC and mindless register manipulations, the push pop dance, and integer math was an addiction.
I saw a MIPS running NT; I don't know of anyone that put it into production, just as the Alpha and PPC ports were oddball and not found in nature. That Windows 2008 server has specific editions for the Itanium Is a bit silly. It's a nice CPU, don't get me wrong, but as a joint venture and marketable device for its formerly intended target market, it's dead dead dead.
Sounds like a Hari Seldon moment happened to Stephenson. The Second Foundation all over again.
Five good reasons:
1) cheap geothermal power
2) cheap geothermal cooling
3) easy freight
4) educated and even DNA-tracked populace
5) computing is an indoor sport
Five considerations:
1) they like to go whaling; not necessarily a friendly thing in by some opinions
2) latency; not as a bad as a sat, but not as good as Chicago for US; geo centric for North America and EU
3) earthquakes and unsettled geography
4) too many thermal pools to screw off in
5) don't want my server called 'homerdottir'
Your number is a bit insulting.
Consider that parallel computing means keeping extra monolitic cores busy. There are a number of programmers that need the discipline to know how to spawn, use, and tear down threads to keep them busy. But there are a helluva lot of them that plainly don't need to know. What we lack are reasonable compilers that allow the hardware layer to be sufficiently abstracted so that code can adapt to hardware infrasturcture appropriately. If that doesn't happen, then code becomes machine-specific rather than task-specific/fulfilling. If an app is written, then it should be able to take advantage of parallelism, and the plumbing should take care of the substrate, be that substrate a core-duo, or 64 cores and more, perhaps on separate systems with the obvious latencies that distance might inject.
Those layers are only nominally addressed in operating systems, which should be the core arbiter of how parallelism can be manifested to an application instance. It's up to the kernel makers to figure out how to take advantage and make that advantage useful to applications writers-- who should be at least knowledgable about how to twig those features in the operating system. But app writers needn't have to know all of the underlaying differential to write flexible code.
We disagree. There is no wireless transmission media that can support the bidirectional broadband speeds necessary to fulfill burgeoning bandwidth needs. Such speeds aren't even on the horizon for wireless. In a single fibre, I can get transmission speeds far beyond what the backhaul is possibly able to deliver. If you invested in fiber 25 years ago, you can still use it today. The same cannot be said for wireless.
Worse, there are no usable models for MAN distribution of wireless that make economic sense right now, because of capacity versus asset costs. Telcos use cellular/mobile technologies with three competing standards to deliver speeds that represent impossible delivery of the same content one can get from DSL, cable, or FTTH.
Add to this problem, the lack of session management agreements (handoffs) between technologies, the high payload of even highly compressed one-way (let alone FDX) multimedia, and wireless is plainly screwed today.
Cable companies have gotten a bit better; we still don't have the dialtone reliability established by Ma Bell. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, it doesn't matter the US domestic carrier; they're all crooks in my opinion. MuniWiFi didn't take off because it costs money-- it's a utility-- and it's a LAN technology serving a MAN/WAN role. Better to put fibre into the ground and use it for backhaul in population-based cells.
I would generally concur, but rather say that it makes for more monolithic and inflexible interfaces. IMHO. And I have a PowerBook G4 with the sloppy one button one, and a Microsoft grafted rollerball with three button scroll mouse for an Apple Tower. There is bliss in simplicity, but there's also a weakness, too. Linux: three buttons traditionally from SVR4 and Solaris and X/Motif; two buttons on Windows derivatives, one button must be coupled with keys to offer more choices (with no guaranteed, only implied consistency).
We agree that the game machine market uses PPC/RISC designs as their basis. And they're for entertainment. I've yet to use any of the three. Call me not-the-target-market for such things. The 68K, and subsequent versions leading to the PPC designs were great and ahead of their time, and a nice choice for Apple. You may recall that Microsoft was going to allow NT to work on Alpha, the 68K/PPC, as well as the Intel family and even the MIPS. It was a dice roll that I think was more lip service than reality, but that's all history. Moto couldn't keep up; IBM held the PPC alive, but despite the fact that there are only (arguably) four chip families left, at least it's choice. If you're a developer, choice is good, in the same way that it's good for business and consumer purchasers. Soon, the arguments about real greenness, efficiencies, and newer substrates will start to distract these older arguments once more. I can't wait to see graphene substrates, and subsystem throttle-backs, and SSD, LCD, and low-V power sourcing. It'll be a new and interesting world.
A key concept missing from your understanding of my reply is the subject line.
The most vehement component of your arguments is also the weakest. You ignore untold amounts of i86/960 and other Intel (and Cyrix, IBM, Via, and a raft of other licensees) in embedded markets. The RISC vs CISC arguments are mooted by sheer numbers.
Just like MuniWiFi did. Google, where are your commitments to that??
Just like WiMAX works so well .
Just like Earthlink, master of all that's good, wireless, and now nearly bankrupt might think.
Sure, software-defined radios might be nice. But let's put in real freaking fibre instead of still another plan to screw telcos/cellular carriers. If Google needs more bandwidth for YouTube, let them finally invest in the infrastructure to deliver it, not 'convenient' short-term wireless ploys. Egads.
I do speak for myself; the 'we' has to do with my older colleagues. These things are just tools, which people forget. I like not having to scrape various malware and viruses from my machines, or figure out obscure hklm references. That is, unless I can bill by the hour for it. That's the damn thing.
Macs were somewhat solid. There are a large number of wiffs in there, too. Simplicity, in the form of a single-button mouse, worked well decades ago. It's still part-and-parcel for newbies. Context switching was better in MacOS but otherwise was a bit too proprietary. The lasers had too high of an expense to run, eventually.
And PCs (actually everything from VAXes south) had technologies that eventually devolved to Ethernet at generous speeds and in network contexts that make AppleTalk/PhoneTalk look as silly as it was. Imagine an ARCNet card for an Apple. Makes me shudder to think of it but is an example of what a closed platform does for choice. Not to mention still another Apple proprietary shot at an evolving technology. Even AppleTalk over Ethernet was silly; no one gravitated to it and like other things, Apple evolved it in a vacuum.
We'll agree that Moto/IBM/Apple did nice things at an early stage to the PPC, but the processor technology evolved slowly. Lack of cross-platform code evolution meant that Apple was an island. That's still somewhat the case, but less so as Java, scripting languages/schemes, and UI commonalities favor Linux, MacOS and Windows. Once Jobs moved to KoreUhOh Apple hit the mainstream. VirtualPC and other schemes were silly. Now the software layer matters less. I'd still like to buy an HP or Lenovo or Dell with MacOS on it. But then, it would cost Apple dearly to do so because their cult of hardware gives them plenty of bottom-line margin.
It's funny how lust colors one's opinions. When SmallTalk arrived decades ago, we thought it was lovely. Apple's implementations were lovely (but in NO WAY UNIQUE) and they worked. But I've had Apple as a girlfriend for several decades. You're only getting laid right now. Once that lust and sex-haze evaporates, perhaps you'll see what's underneath.
It's nice that they've worked this long, but their capacity, chemistry, and power expense has been long exceeded by many others. If you're still using them, your cost per impression (toner+power) is about 4x what it should be. This is not to put down a long asset life, but they're truly expensive to run when you consider capex+opex-depreciation.
Crappy, closed-technology machines. The cult of the single-button mouse. Reseller programs from hell. Lovely laser printers that became ultimately useless. Two wire AppleTalk networks with all of the speed of ISDN on a good day. Cute little useless Newtons. Servers that could never rise above simple workgroup needs. Special connections and exceptions needed to network with anything else but perhaps NFS or wicked Novell patches. Wonderful and proprietary (given few others used them) PPC CPUs. I'm sure others can count the way. Others can see the bloom on the rose, and I still have marks from the thorns. Oddly, I still use a PowerBook G4, alongside a heavy-duty (and less expensive) HP core-duo notebook. Only for games, of course....
Geo Bush was governor of TX, and Clinton was governor of AR. Geo Bush Sr was director of the CIA at one time. Reagan was governor of CA. Carter, GA. Mrs Clinton? Senator. McCain? Senator. Obama, Senator. Do you want someone that has a long history in government, given it's recent current history of being bribed by lobbyists, questionable financing, and other shenanigans?
I think it's the media that's overplayed it, not Obama-- as you otherwise cite. Clinton's the perfect target, however. And she's as squishy as McCain. There's a possible breath of non-old school ideology that's refreshing about Obama. I'm tired of the bribed Congress and WH. Foo on that.
Lemming? Heavens no.
However, it's difficult to get past your entitlement/welfare state part, as it's a part of a propaganda-based diatribe. We agree that spending needs to be cut, and somehow, the unbelievable national debt needs to be cut back dramatically. Nonetheless, social responsibility needs to be re-thought. Reducing the amount of military expense is one way, not dropping expensive and provocative post-cold war missiles into Poland could be an example. Cutting exported dollars to the oil exporters can be another. Forcing China to float the yuan could be another.
Of the three, Obama's plans are clearest and seem to have the least deviation, so far, among what I've seen in the candidates. Clinton can't win; I'm convinced of that. McCain's more like Clinton than most understand, but he's also rather old for a candidate and is heavily annealed to failed international policies. That leaves us, IMHO, with Obama.
The United Church of Christ along with any number of denominations are regularly investigated by the IRS. I find church ads generally offensive. That doesn't mean that in this race, it capitulates Obama. I think the whole 501c3/6 political endorsement mess is just a way to hassle churches, if from the pulpit. When religious orgs use funds to publicly endorse, then they go beyond the pulpit and their reach of free speech becomes unbalanced against the public's. Still, what of Swiftboating, and the morass of phantom orgs?
Michelle Obama tends to typify a large segment of black America in her vehemence, with a Chicagoan's fervor. I have neighbors that are similarly vehement. When I see how black women are often subjugated and marginalized in actuality and rhetorically in urban America, I understand where she's coming from. When you consider how the Bush administration's done little to help veracity in the presidency, and has played character assassination politics, hugging a small but vocal marginalized segment of the Christian 'Right', I applaud her desire to be vocal about what she believes in.
Read his speech from last week. Think about leaders that you've disagreed with, too, but followed because you had faith in where they were going. There are lots of those in my history; we're not perfect beings and his pastor obviously has some issues with where America's been going. So do I. His pastor's not a showstopper for me. Given Clinton, who can't win, and McCain, who's too much of a turncoat and politico, Obama's the only remaining horse that can win this race and try to mend the mistakes made in two terms of an elected fear-monger.