yeah I actually thought of something like that,too. Z80 assembler is what I was first exposed to (build your own computer books, then Sinclair's..) so I thought lots of registers and the higher clock rate made the Z80 superior.
Then I looked at the 6502 a bit, and I thought, that's interesting.. now if only it had some kind of really fast cache for those memory addresses that would kind of simulate the advantage of registers. And maybe that, in general, invisible caches were the solution to everything. Why not just have one huge address space, and simply cache things for speed? The conclusion of that line of thinking was that there should be no real distinction between registers, memory, or hardrive... just one big address range and the faster types of memory just serve as caches for the slower kinds.
Of course this would probably not have worked very well with the 16 bit address range available at the time...
You know, I was actually going to note that in my post. Yep, the Z80 is probably the antithesis of RISC at the time. It had a lot of instructions for the day. I dont think any instruction was less than 4 clock cycles, and many or most were more than 2 of these 4 clock cycles (for 8 or more total clock ticks). If I remember right.
Much more risc like would have been the 6502 or something. But then they had few internal registers, where the Z80 had lots... and I think RISC designs all have lots of registers.
I figured the Z80 would work better in such an extremely high core count device for that reason. The 6502 needed a lot more memory accesses to get things done.
Of course, the final conclusion to this line of thinking was, how simple of a core could you possibly make? And then how many could you get into a modern chip?
I don't remember the name but there were some people that made a many-core cpu of processors that ran forth as their language. That was interesting...
That wouldn't exactly be the same thing. Yeah, that would be some parallel processing there and multiple cores on one chip, but they were designed that way from the start and the 'cores' were not quite the same as full processors.
I think the idea here is "take an older architecture and just scale it out to multiple cores on the latest chip process".
In the early 80's I wanted to design and build a home computer using multiple Z80's (so yes, I had Steve Ciarcia's book and some others..). Years later, I realized the whole thing could be implemented in one modern chip. The logical, back-of-a-napkin calculations led to the idea of not just four but maybe hundreds of processors on a chip.
I'm sure I am not the only one to think of this, of course. But I am always amazed at the "new" ideas that come along and I just think, well, duh...
at least 20 years ago, I thought, hey, with the density and speed of transistors these days, and with RISC being popular, why not go all the way and make chip with literally hundreds of (wait for it..) Z80 cpu's?
Of course I and others dismissed the idea as being just slightly ludicrous. But then, at the time, I also thought eventually there would be Amiga emulators and interpreted versions of C language, for which I was also called crazy to think...
I got a sony clie TG50 palm device some years ago. It was a great device. Except that Sony crippled it and made things incompatible. Still, its a great device.
But why I can't get a half way decent web browser on it? From what I can tell, even the newest Centro palm phone, which I have considered upgrading to, still has a browser not much better than this 5+ year old clie.
I have trouble using the UI (particularly the scroll bars) even with a stylus, much less a finger. Its also been unstable, frequently crashing.
When there are things like iPhones or iPod Touch, why the hell should I pay just as much for a Palm device anymore? The only thing stopping me from getting one is that I dont want to switch cell phone carriers.
I thought their apparent plan to make palmos on top of linux was a great idea, but where is it?
It all just kinda feels like Amiga all over again. Great technology -- initially, but then it just ages badly and festers under poor company management.
It seems like Palm is all but dead, and approaching the time when there's just no point in keeping it going or resurrecting it.
Its too bad. I have my TG50 and my wife has a Palm Tungsten, both great little units, but practically useless anymore.
How about a copy of Gortek and the microchips, complete with 44 page book, 2 cassettes and a "badge" (a 3" sticker) proclaiming "I program with gortek".
Manager: Go through these documents and redact anything sensitive. Peon: What does redact mean? Manager: Just black things out. Peon: What things? Manager: Just make it look good. Anything that seems important Peon: OK sir!
Manager was a Peon 6 months earlier, and got promoted. His name is Peter. He reports to another manager with whom he had mostly the same conversation with an hour earlier with the places reversed..
Go through these documents and redact anything sensitive. What does redact mean? Just black things out. What things? Just make it look good. Anything that seems important OK sir!
was a 6 months earlier, and got promoted. His name is Peter. He reports to another manager with whom he had mostly the same conversation with an hour earlier with the places reversed...
If you are a computer forensic investigator you already have many available tools (EnCase, etc) to do the same thing, not to mention the obvious linux based free tools (Helix, etc) that let you pound away on a computer (or captured image) and get whatever you want off it.
Keeping your computer completely secure is about as practical as copyright owners keeping their data totally protected. Its always an escalating two way battle and the winner is just the one who's willing to go the farthest with it, but nothing is 100% safe.
Privacy and DRM are both doomed for the same reasons.
CD's are hardly a Sony format. The actual technology was mainly developed by Philips, but they did collaborate with Sony to get the final product going. Considering there was nothing else out there, it really didn't matter how they did it, unlike today.
DVD's weren't created by Sony either, though they certainly played a role in defining it. But more credit goes to Philips and Matsushita than sony.
You can credit Sony with creating the 3.5" floppy, though.
So what other failed formats did Sony bring us?
Memory Stick -- while everyone else uses SD. UMD (PSP) disks -- why couldn't they just use a mini DVD? Min-disk -- actually was kinda cool, if only it was used by everyone like CD's.. Super Audio CD -- no comment Beta -- ok, so it was probably superior in many ways. Clie -- ok, not a format, just a nice PDA that is unnecessarily made incompatible by having memory sticks and a modified PalmOS.
Don't get me wrong, they make really nice hardware. If only they could go with the standards instead of being different just for the sake of being different (or to foist more DRM on us)
What if by declaring hd-dvd dead it causes hd-dvd to become more popular than blu-ray?
By this I mean, the prices of drives are dropping because they are getting rid of them. The movies, too. At the same time, blu-ray is going up.
Will a lot of people even know that hd-dvd is dead? They will just see how cheap it is.
If this were timed right, hd-dvd could hit a critical mass very quickly. Yes they'd lose a bunch of money on the current supplies, but that's going to happen anyway. If at the right time they could resurect it and keep the prices way below blu-ray they could make a comeback. In the mean time they don't really have to waste money on advertising etc.
Myself, I would buy an hd-dvd burner and media right now if the prices were really low, just for storage purposes. They should continue to sell them for pcs for storage purposes.
I just wanted to add something based on a comment in that story, though it may be directly applicable to this particular case.
The comment had to do with some other case, over the law of adverse possession (which I believe is just another way saying squating). He said in that case the just was just doing his job, and judging based on the law.
Well that's not entirely correct. Yes, a judges job is to know the law and try to decide if one has been broken or not. And the judge can overide the jury if he chooses. But a judge (and the jury) can also decide to rule in a way disregarding the law at hand, if they believe the law to be wrong. That's one of the important powers of the judicial system and its how laws can get changed.
In the case of current patent law, its probably going to take more cases like this where the law is disregarded and the jury or judge rule in favor of common sense before our patent system has a chance of being reformed..
That's the problem with XML. We have all these wonderful XML tools, so the solution to everything looks like XML.
I am sure XML has its uses.
Recently I interviewed for a job where they proposed a problem to me, asking how I might solve it. It was an issue of needing to track a lot user permissions for potentially thousands of users across hundreds groups of users; how do we add/remove a permission for a range of users? How do we set a default set of permissions and then override certain perms? etc. My answer was: store it in relational database tables. user, group, perm, group-perm-xref, user-perm-xref. I almost couldn't give an answer to their problem because I didn't understand why it was a problem. Yes, it would have ended up with millions of records. Big deal. MySql is fast.
You know what their solution was going to be? Just have a text field in the user record and put all the permissions in there as.. wait for it.. XML! Oh joy!
Needless to say I did not get the job. Which is fine since I got a job a week later where I work from home and when I suggest a method of doing something my co-workers actually listen. The topic of using XML for essentially a config file has been brought up and thanks to this thread I have some alternatives to consider (YAML).
it would be more interesting if the parts were a bit more low level. I would like to see something like this at just the board level (and maybe therefore cheaper) with maybe an option for a few case designs that would contain the base + x modules. Or leave the case design to you (which was my first thought).
I got this book right when it came out, to replace the well worn previous edition.
The back cover claims there is "a chart displaying detailed information about CSS support for every style element and its cross-browser compatibility."
I saw no chart in the book.
Maybe they tried to do the chart without tables and gave up..
Yes, that's right. My previous job provided me with a macbook pro for the 6 months I was there. I had to give it back when I took a much better job that provided me with a windows (vista..) notebook.
I hadn't used a mac in many years. I used to be an Amiga guy. So I really wanted to be alternative pc guy again. I really wanted to be convinced to switch to mac. I wasn't. Maybe my brain has just turned to mush from the years of being mainstream pc-clone guy.
What I liked about mac: the hardware is simply a work of modern art. Its a fabulously engineered machine. If I could afford it, I might buy one just for that reason and run windows on it. Unfortunately I cannot. Macos is, obviously, at its core, a superior OS. Sure its based on UNIX which was invented what, a whole decade before windows? So for what it does, it does extremely well. I love the near instant ON stand by mode, even though it runs the battery down it can last days. Dashboard is kinda cool, but I rarely used it, same thing for expose. Installing apps is great, usually just copying a folder into applications. Nice. Parallels is genious, especially coherance mode. Why can't the windows and linux versions do that?
Fortunately for the mac, parallels is the only thing that made the mac bearable. Strangely, windows seemed to run better in parallels that it did directly on a pc (starting up faster, etc). Maybe that is just a testament to the apple hardware. But I simply couldn't do without some windows software I have grown used to, not to mention just having a much wider selection of things when I go looking for new software. I hate the finder, its worse than windows built in file manager, which also sucks, so I use directory opus (so I am making my pc more Amiga-like). This is huge for me.
What I like about windows: the task bar. Sorry but I just cannot get used to the all-iconic mac ways. The dock or whatever its called is just confusing to me. I hate it. I like the textual windows task bar. I like the window previews in vista. I like the start menu even though it requires constant management to keep it from becoming cluttered by every program installing stuff on it. I like the menus on the windows not at the top of the screen (I've always hated that on the mac). windows runs on cheap hardware.
Summary:
Mac pros: what it does do, it does better. Parallels. Easy application install. Standby that works. Smooth but otherwise useless bling. Beautiful hardware. More secure.
Mac cons: expen$ive, feels like a toy with limited options to protect me from myself, limited software selection
Windows pros: task bar, cheap, more software, doesn't limit your options, directory opus file manager
Windows cons: grossly inefficient design, buggy, ugly, standby is worthless, insecure, too long between major updates.
* note: vista is largely excluded for me. It's total F*cking crap and I am about to revert to xp. I admire the concept behind the new composited desktop (an Idea I thought of years ago, and apparently isn't that hard to implement since linux and mac both have it). In theory, readyboost is neat idea. Doesn't seem to help though. If I had the choice between only Vista and Macos, I might choose macos, but only because I can run XP in parallels on the mac.
I'm not sure if this is a joke or you are misinformed. However each version of OS X has had more features and ran better not worse on the exact same hardware. Or not: Updated Leopard requirements to exclude 800MHz systems
People are already starting to use graphics hardware to solve more general computations, even with all their highly specific rasterization functionality.
so.. ray tracing is in many ways easier than current techniques, meaning the hardware to do it is more generalized, which has two benefits: it can be highly parallelized (ie, easily makes use of many cores, which is now the trend in CPUs as well) and it would likely result in GPU's that are even more usefull for general computation. This would expand the possible market for GPU's, an incentive for the graphics guys.
Imagine the new generation of GPU's that are just multiple core jobs (not sure, are they doing this already?). I think the day of the separate GPU is getting close to ending, just like the external FPU. I wont be long before they are integrated into CPU's and will be used for both graphics rendering or other things.
You know, I have to wonder why "smart phones" and even just plain ("dumb phones"?) phones still cost so much. $400 for an iphone, or the HTC touch? And more for Treo's? I don't get it. I bought a Clie TG50 like 5 years ago with similar specs for $400. And the phone circuitry by now should be cheap to add.
I want to see something for like $200 (which with new phone plan subsidies would be almost free, like most plain phones..), with a decent CPU in the 200mhz range, a reasonable amount of flash memory (a gig costs what, $20 these days? or less?), at least 320 x 320 lcd (I don't want a huge honking device). Basically hardware like my TG50 but with more memory. Have it run linux. Have it be OPEN, so anybody can write software EASILY. Design a gui for it that uses gestures and doesnt require a stylus (but have that as an option if you need precision). Gestures aren't rocket science that only Apple can divine.
It needs a great browser, mainly, so you can access google mail/calendar/etc. If it came with emulators for some game playing goodness, that would be sweet.
Keep the case design simple and clean. its not evil to have a few buttons, maybe a tiny joystick or something.
I have to wonder what the gPhone will be like when there's already the iPhone getting all the attention. Because certainly they've been working on this since before the iPhone came out, and, since Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on the Apple board, they probably knew more about the iPhone than the public did before it came out...
One has to wonder if Google would even want to compete head on with the iPhone..
But they wouldn't be making something of lesser gee-whiz functionality, would they..
If it wasn't for my knowing that Apple hasn't traditionally been interested in sharing their IP with "clone" companies, I would almost start to think the gPhone is going to be a lot like the iPhone..
Maybe there's more going on between Apple and Google than we know...
Slashdot Mirror
yeah I actually thought of something like that,too. Z80 assembler is what I was first exposed to (build your own computer books, then Sinclair's..) so I thought lots of registers and the higher clock rate made the Z80 superior.
Then I looked at the 6502 a bit, and I thought, that's interesting.. now if only it had some kind of really fast cache for those memory addresses that would kind of simulate the advantage of registers. And maybe that, in general, invisible caches were the solution to everything. Why not just have one huge address space, and simply cache things for speed? The conclusion of that line of thinking was that there should be no real distinction between registers, memory, or hardrive... just one big address range and the faster types of memory just serve as caches for the slower kinds.
Of course this would probably not have worked very well with the 16 bit address range available at the time...
You know, I was actually going to note that in my post. Yep, the Z80 is probably the antithesis of RISC at the time. It had a lot of instructions for the day. I dont think any instruction was less than 4 clock cycles, and many or most were more than 2 of these 4 clock cycles (for 8 or more total clock ticks). If I remember right.
Much more risc like would have been the 6502 or something. But then they had few internal registers, where the Z80 had lots... and I think RISC designs all have lots of registers.
I figured the Z80 would work better in such an extremely high core count device for that reason. The 6502 needed a lot more memory accesses to get things done.
Of course, the final conclusion to this line of thinking was, how simple of a core could you possibly make? And then how many could you get into a modern chip?
I don't remember the name but there were some people that made a many-core cpu of processors that ran forth as their language. That was interesting...
That wouldn't exactly be the same thing. Yeah, that would be some parallel processing there and multiple cores on one chip, but they were designed that way from the start and the 'cores' were not quite the same as full processors.
I think the idea here is "take an older architecture and just scale it out to multiple cores on the latest chip process".
In the early 80's I wanted to design and build a home computer using multiple Z80's (so yes, I had Steve Ciarcia's book and some others..). Years later, I realized the whole thing could be implemented in one modern chip. The logical, back-of-a-napkin calculations led to the idea of not just four but maybe hundreds of processors on a chip.
I'm sure I am not the only one to think of this, of course. But I am always amazed at the "new" ideas that come along and I just think, well, duh...
at least 20 years ago, I thought, hey, with the density and speed of transistors these days, and with RISC being popular, why not go all the way and make chip with literally hundreds of (wait for it..) Z80 cpu's?
Of course I and others dismissed the idea as being just slightly ludicrous. But then, at the time, I also thought eventually there would be Amiga emulators and interpreted versions of C language, for which I was also called crazy to think...
I got a sony clie TG50 palm device some years ago. It was a great device. Except that Sony crippled it and made things incompatible. Still, its a great device.
But why I can't get a half way decent web browser on it? From what I can tell, even the newest Centro palm phone, which I have considered upgrading to, still has a browser not much better than this 5+ year old clie.
I have trouble using the UI (particularly the scroll bars) even with a stylus, much less a finger. Its also been unstable, frequently crashing.
When there are things like iPhones or iPod Touch, why the hell should I pay just as much for a Palm device anymore? The only thing stopping me from getting one is that I dont want to switch cell phone carriers.
I thought their apparent plan to make palmos on top of linux was a great idea, but where is it?
It all just kinda feels like Amiga all over again. Great technology -- initially, but then it just ages badly and festers under poor company management.
It seems like Palm is all but dead, and approaching the time when there's just no point in keeping it going or resurrecting it.
Its too bad. I have my TG50 and my wife has a Palm Tungsten, both great little units, but practically useless anymore.
Am I missing something, or is true to say that now the only barrier to perfect (or better) vision restoration is moore's law?
Or in other words, approximately every 18 months, artificial vision will double in quality?
Ok, I guess the other limitation is FDA approval on each generation..
How about a copy of Gortek and the microchips, complete with 44 page book, 2 cassettes and a "badge" (a 3" sticker) proclaiming "I program with gortek".
This was C64 software to teach you to program.
Thats what I get for not looking at the preview..
Manager: Go through these documents and redact anything sensitive.
Peon: What does redact mean?
Manager: Just black things out.
Peon: What things?
Manager: Just make it look good. Anything that seems important
Peon: OK sir!
Manager was a Peon 6 months earlier, and got promoted. His name is Peter. He reports to another manager with whom he had mostly the same conversation with an hour earlier with the places reversed..
Go through these documents and redact anything sensitive.
What does redact mean?
Just black things out.
What things?
Just make it look good. Anything that seems important
OK sir!
was a 6 months earlier, and got promoted. His name is Peter. He reports to another manager with whom he had mostly the same conversation with an hour earlier with the places reversed...
Not sure what the big deal is.
If you are a computer forensic investigator you already have many available tools (EnCase, etc) to do the same thing, not to mention the obvious linux based free tools (Helix, etc) that let you pound away on a computer (or captured image) and get whatever you want off it.
Keeping your computer completely secure is about as practical as copyright owners keeping their data totally protected. Its always an escalating two way battle and the winner is just the one who's willing to go the farthest with it, but nothing is 100% safe.
Privacy and DRM are both doomed for the same reasons.
Get over it.
The big question for me is, can Stan Lee claim prior art against any attempt to patent this device?
Brainf*ck?
CD's are hardly a Sony format. The actual technology was mainly developed by Philips, but they did collaborate with Sony to get the final product going. Considering there was nothing else out there, it really didn't matter how they did it, unlike today.
DVD's weren't created by Sony either, though they certainly played a role in defining it. But more credit goes to Philips and Matsushita than sony.
You can credit Sony with creating the 3.5" floppy, though.
So what other failed formats did Sony bring us?
Memory Stick -- while everyone else uses SD.
UMD (PSP) disks -- why couldn't they just use a mini DVD?
Min-disk -- actually was kinda cool, if only it was used by everyone like CD's..
Super Audio CD -- no comment
Beta -- ok, so it was probably superior in many ways.
Clie -- ok, not a format, just a nice PDA that is unnecessarily made incompatible by having memory sticks and a modified PalmOS.
Don't get me wrong, they make really nice hardware. If only they could go with the standards instead of being different just for the sake of being different (or to foist more DRM on us)
Just a little too much wishfull thinking I guess.
I just despise Sony and their formats...
this probably wont happen, but:
What if by declaring hd-dvd dead it causes hd-dvd to become more popular than blu-ray?
By this I mean, the prices of drives are dropping because they are getting rid of them. The movies, too. At the same time, blu-ray is going up.
Will a lot of people even know that hd-dvd is dead? They will just see how cheap it is.
If this were timed right, hd-dvd could hit a critical mass very quickly. Yes they'd lose a bunch of money on the current supplies, but that's going to happen anyway. If at the right time they could resurect it and keep the prices way below blu-ray they could make a comeback. In the mean time they don't really have to waste money on advertising etc.
Myself, I would buy an hd-dvd burner and media right now if the prices were really low, just for storage purposes. They should continue to sell them for pcs for storage purposes.
Just a crazy idea. And what a coup it would be...
I just wanted to add something based on a comment in that story, though it may be directly applicable to this particular case.
The comment had to do with some other case, over the law of adverse possession (which I believe is just another way saying squating). He said in that case the just was just doing his job, and judging based on the law.
Well that's not entirely correct. Yes, a judges job is to know the law and try to decide if one has been broken or not. And the judge can overide the jury if he chooses. But a judge (and the jury) can also decide to rule in a way disregarding the law at hand, if they believe the law to be wrong. That's one of the important powers of the judicial system and its how laws can get changed.
In the case of current patent law, its probably going to take more cases like this where the law is disregarded and the jury or judge rule in favor of common sense before our patent system has a chance of being reformed..
everything looks like a nail.
That's the problem with XML. We have all these wonderful XML tools, so the solution to everything looks like XML.
I am sure XML has its uses.
Recently I interviewed for a job where they proposed a problem to me, asking how I might solve it. It was an issue of needing to track a lot user permissions for potentially thousands of users across hundreds groups of users; how do we add/remove a permission for a range of users? How do we set a default set of permissions and then override certain perms? etc. My answer was: store it in relational database tables. user, group, perm, group-perm-xref, user-perm-xref. I almost couldn't give an answer to their problem because I didn't understand why it was a problem. Yes, it would have ended up with millions of records. Big deal. MySql is fast.
You know what their solution was going to be? Just have a text field in the user record and put all the permissions in there as.. wait for it.. XML! Oh joy!
Needless to say I did not get the job. Which is fine since I got a job a week later where I work from home and when I suggest a method of doing something my co-workers actually listen. The topic of using XML for essentially a config file has been brought up and thanks to this thread I have some alternatives to consider (YAML).
--
Aric Caley,
Fonality, inc.
Somebody needs to go in there and get him.
If we can publicly wage war on whomever we want, certainly we can send somebody in there secretly to kick some ass and save the man.
Of course that's assuming we really are all about liberating the oppressed and ensuring freedoms for all.
it would be more interesting if the parts were a bit more low level. I would like to see something like this at just the board level (and maybe therefore cheaper) with maybe an option for a few case designs that would contain the base + x modules. Or leave the case design to you (which was my first thought).
I got this book right when it came out, to replace the well worn previous edition.
The back cover claims there is "a chart displaying detailed information about CSS support for every style element and its cross-browser compatibility."
I saw no chart in the book.
Maybe they tried to do the chart without tables and gave up..
Yes, that's right. My previous job provided me with a macbook pro for the 6 months I was there. I had to give it back when I took a much better job that provided me with a windows (vista..) notebook.
I hadn't used a mac in many years. I used to be an Amiga guy. So I really wanted to be alternative pc guy again. I really wanted to be convinced to switch to mac. I wasn't. Maybe my brain has just turned to mush from the years of being mainstream pc-clone guy.
What I liked about mac: the hardware is simply a work of modern art. Its a fabulously engineered machine. If I could afford it, I might buy one just for that reason and run windows on it. Unfortunately I cannot. Macos is, obviously, at its core, a superior OS. Sure its based on UNIX which was invented what, a whole decade before windows? So for what it does, it does extremely well. I love the near instant ON stand by mode, even though it runs the battery down it can last days. Dashboard is kinda cool, but I rarely used it, same thing for expose. Installing apps is great, usually just copying a folder into applications. Nice. Parallels is genious, especially coherance mode. Why can't the windows and linux versions do that?
Fortunately for the mac, parallels is the only thing that made the mac bearable. Strangely, windows seemed to run better in parallels that it did directly on a pc (starting up faster, etc). Maybe that is just a testament to the apple hardware. But I simply couldn't do without some windows software I have grown used to, not to mention just having a much wider selection of things when I go looking for new software. I hate the finder, its worse than windows built in file manager, which also sucks, so I use directory opus (so I am making my pc more Amiga-like). This is huge for me.
What I like about windows: the task bar. Sorry but I just cannot get used to the all-iconic mac ways. The dock or whatever its called is just confusing to me. I hate it. I like the textual windows task bar. I like the window previews in vista. I like the start menu even though it requires constant management to keep it from becoming cluttered by every program installing stuff on it. I like the menus on the windows not at the top of the screen (I've always hated that on the mac). windows runs on cheap hardware.
Summary:
Mac pros: what it does do, it does better. Parallels. Easy application install. Standby that works. Smooth but otherwise useless bling. Beautiful hardware. More secure.
Mac cons: expen$ive, feels like a toy with limited options to protect me from myself, limited software selection
Windows pros: task bar, cheap, more software, doesn't limit your options, directory opus file manager
Windows cons: grossly inefficient design, buggy, ugly, standby is worthless, insecure, too long between major updates.
* note: vista is largely excluded for me. It's total F*cking crap and I am about to revert to xp. I admire the concept behind the new composited desktop (an Idea I thought of years ago, and apparently isn't that hard to implement since linux and mac both have it). In theory, readyboost is neat idea. Doesn't seem to help though. If I had the choice between only Vista and Macos, I might choose macos, but only because I can run XP in parallels on the mac.
People are already starting to use graphics hardware to solve more general computations, even with all their highly specific rasterization functionality.
so.. ray tracing is in many ways easier than current techniques, meaning the hardware to do it is more generalized, which has two benefits: it can be highly parallelized (ie, easily makes use of many cores, which is now the trend in CPUs as well) and it would likely result in GPU's that are even more usefull for general computation. This would expand the possible market for GPU's, an incentive for the graphics guys.
Imagine the new generation of GPU's that are just multiple core jobs (not sure, are they doing this already?). I think the day of the separate GPU is getting close to ending, just like the external FPU. I wont be long before they are integrated into CPU's and will be used for both graphics rendering or other things.
You know, I have to wonder why "smart phones" and even just plain ("dumb phones"?) phones still cost so much. $400 for an iphone, or the HTC touch? And more for Treo's? I don't get it. I bought a Clie TG50 like 5 years ago with similar specs for $400. And the phone circuitry by now should be cheap to add.
I want to see something for like $200 (which with new phone plan subsidies would be almost free, like most plain phones..), with a decent CPU in the 200mhz range, a reasonable amount of flash memory (a gig costs what, $20 these days? or less?), at least 320 x 320 lcd (I don't want a huge honking device). Basically hardware like my TG50 but with more memory. Have it run linux. Have it be OPEN, so anybody can write software EASILY. Design a gui for it that uses gestures and doesnt require a stylus (but have that as an option if you need precision). Gestures aren't rocket science that only Apple can divine.
It needs a great browser, mainly, so you can access google mail/calendar/etc. If it came with emulators for some game playing goodness, that would be sweet.
Keep the case design simple and clean. its not evil to have a few buttons, maybe a tiny joystick or something.
I have to wonder what the gPhone will be like when there's already the iPhone getting all the attention. Because certainly they've been working on this since before the iPhone came out, and, since Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on the Apple board, they probably knew more about the iPhone than the public did before it came out...
One has to wonder if Google would even want to compete head on with the iPhone..
But they wouldn't be making something of lesser gee-whiz functionality, would they..
If it wasn't for my knowing that Apple hasn't traditionally been interested in sharing their IP with "clone" companies, I would almost start to think the gPhone is going to be a lot like the iPhone..
Maybe there's more going on between Apple and Google than we know...