I'm not even sure about the more difficult to debug thing.
I'm a fan of RISC, really, mostly because their architecture is more sane and it's much nicer to write a compiler for them, but with increasing chip size CISC has several advantages.
The decoder is an ever smaller portion of the whole chip; the innards use basically the same optimizations as RISC chips do. As you say, instruction size is smaller, which is good. Most of all, even multi-cycle-x86 instructions get translated into micro-ops (just like on some RISC implementations) so in the end they ARE micro-ops. It's only a compression at the programming level. Deep down in the core the same stuff happens.
I think x86 (or maybe its 64bit extension with more nice registers) has won. Apple got that.
The exception, IMHO, would be embedded, or mobile applications, where the decoding logic is still important. ARM is a great architecture, and it also has "compressed" (THUMB) instructions, to reduce code footprint.
For desktops and servers expect nothing better than x86/64.
Now that we have loads of federal money, we can finally create thousands of jobs, we can create new technology that wouldn't be possible without the wisdom of central government, we can be more environment-friendly, and of course we have already chosen the One Good new fuel that deserves to be funded. This is our new three-year-plan.
For just $10M we get a guaranteed great technology, and if it doesn't work out as well, we can do as with public schools and other government programs: just increase funding incredibly, so the darn thing will get done!
With communication things are different. Chances are that you did a lot of work using semaphores and condition variables, which are kind of hard to use. DragonflyBSD was created for just that reason: to build an OS not on top of locking, but on top of messaging.
If you use messaging, there are tons of theories at your disposal to even *prove* the correctness (i.e. deadlockfreeness) of your code, such as Hoare's CSP, Milner's pi-calculus and others.
The point about iBooks was never the graphics card; it was that they included toilet flat screens (I used a G4 for more than a year).
If Apple gives the new MacBook a decent (i.e. competitive) screen, and a competitive price (and the most-of-the-time fanlessness I'm used to from the old iBook), I might even buy it.
Unless you want an Intel. I don't have a PC, but I'd really like to be able to run something like VMWare or Parallels Workstation *efficiently*. Virtual PC is SOOOO slow on even the "fast" Mac mini G4 (Qemu is even slower, but Virtual PC simply chokes on some software, like OpenBSD, or Arch Linux).
I'd have sold my mini and bought a new one, if there *hadn't* been this significant price increase. This way I don't think it's worth it. I'm even considering to switch back to PC + Linux or OpenBSD.
Macs really are great consumer devices, but when you're not using 90% of what's bundled anyway (I'm a Unix guy, that's why), then X11 isn't that much worse after all. Gnome has become quite nice over time, too.
So the problem isn't really that there's no public healthcare in the US. The problem is that there's no healthcare that people can afford.
That should be hardly surprising, given that for every little common sickness, you need to visit a highly paid expert controlled by the AMA cartel, and for everything they prescribe you expensive drugs that we didn't even have 50 years ago (and still people didn't die that much younger). Nevermind that drug companies and cartelized doctors have a huge interest to keep the current system which pays them large amounts of money.
I live in Germany where healthcare is pretty much public, but still I don't usually bother to go to the doctor anymore. I'm sick of expensive medicine that only cures symptoms, not the disease.
There used to be affordable healthcare for almost everybody (and the rest could have it, if there was a little welfare or charity), before government "fixed" it with lots of regulations.
About the UK I've only heard horror stories with loooong waiting lines and patients that aren't getting treated, because the centrally planned health economy doesn't really work *that* well. France reportedly also has those waiting lines, and here at home in Germany you're lucky if your doctor's visit takes less than two hours.
Because your godly "system" is horribly, utterly broken by a huge cartel of government, doctors (AMA), drug companies and insurance.
There used to be times when a doctor's visit didn't cost you several hundred bucks, and I'm not talking inflation here (no, I didn't live then, but I've gotten the message).
So what? You have the choice between having your employer pay you out in full - but then you take your own holidays, you make your own savings.
Or your employer puts away a good share of your salary (because he chooses to, or because government forces him, as in many EU countries), pays you much less, but then you get paid holidays automagically.
Just don't think the money for the holiday falls from the sky - it has to be paid for, usually by your employer.
Maybe even with paid holidays some EU jobs would pay the same as a US job, but that's due to other factors. You pays your price and makes your choice...
Well, I guess it's not really easy to do anything about it. Of course if you live in the US, you can write your reps, but I doubt it's gonna help anything.
I don't make the rules. If you don't like the simple fact that, even if it's prohibited by government or whoever, whereever something is in demand, somebody is going to offer it, i.e. even if you don't like free trade, it's gonna happen...
I'm not saying it's perfect, but every alternative has been historically proven to be inhuman, and to not prevent any of the desasters they claimed humanity would be spared from.
I can only again and again suggest that if you don't like free trade and the companies in it, you should *tell* people to vote with their wallets.
Oh, and never forget that today's economy in the USA and in Europe is *very* far away from anything like free trade. Good old English aristocrats would be fucking proud of today's class society.
Somewould would sell shoes, you say? Right, that was before WM came to town. But they didn't destroy any jobs; they HIRED. That is, whoever was unemployed, or employed in worse jobs.
Only months later, it was *customers* who decided to shop there instead of in the expensive store downtown...
At that point workers were replaced, right. But it's too easy to just blame WM for any unemployment or costs to the taxpayer, when the only costs to the taxpayer are in the hands of government. (Of course WM has good connections to government, but that's just another reason why government power should be severely restricted.)
Actually I've lived in Western Wisconsin for almost a year, and they even had two WMs right there.
Ok, I quite believe that many WMs aren't profitable in the long term, but even so it's something that small businesses in the area would have had to deal with anyway: competition from cheap Chinese bastards (though I don't have anything against Chinese in general).
That's just how the game goes. You close down; five years later your business might be needed again, when WM notices that the small town can't sustain them and their management.
I'm not really excited about WM or anything, but there are economic rules, and the only thing I can advise anybody, is to avoid them if you can, and to offer better products if you're a competitor. It's all about trust. Maybe try to change politics if you can (though the Dems wouldn't really change anything, but that's another story).
Where did I ever say that starting a business is easy or anything? Especially given the tons of US or German regulations (plus patent laws), I'd think at least twice before doing that.
I just don't think you should criticize somebody else for not paying good wages, even if they could afford it in theory.
Of course if your only client is WM, you don't have much of an option, but then you should really look into having flexible contracts. If WM cancels, it's likewise time for you to.
Capitalism is "creative destruction" and often that's hard, but I don't make the rules, especially not in our aristocratic bastard world. I'm going the easy/boring/cowardly safe route and I think everybody should be careful, but that's just me...
How can they influence wages? WM moves somewhere, and *start hiring*. Either they have to offer a better job than other people in the area, or they'll get lots of unemployeds working for them. In either situation, it's good. After all: why should people - voluntarily - choose to work for WM otherwise, if it's such a bad deal?
And if you're dealing with WM as a supplier, you can opt out (as recently mentioned here on/. ), or you can sell them stuff. In that case WM might ask you to become cheaper, which you can bow to, or which you can decline. Your choice is between selling more for lower price, or selling just as much as before for the same price as before (again: as mentioned in a recent article here).
If a company chooses to sell a product for cheap and lowers wages in return, their decision. Don't buy their products if you don't like that. But if every company does that, in the end we'll just end up with a little deflation (as would actually be normal for an industrial society with a non-inflating currency): both prices and wages sink.
1) WM can't give the town money. They can only buy or rent some land and build their store there. Assuming that *someone* sells them the land, they start building. Of course everyone in town can just live on as usual, ignoring the WM. WM will probably close the store very soon, if that happens.
I don't quite understand what WM is bribing the city for, in that situation... So after all, they should probably just take the money, as WM could build just as well without bribing in the first place.
So what's your solution? Without WM there, all those people on $8/h would be unemployed. Is THAT the glorious alternative? Simply close down the WM?
Besides, if WM was that much of a danger to the community, how come people don't just ignore it until it closes its doors? If people would be off well without WM, they could choose to live without WM -- just like before.
Also, WM can't throttle businesses; they can only compete. When people choose to buy at the local WM, even though it's such a danger to them, then that's their choice, nothing more or less.
Their wages are too low? Oh, come on! Just pretend Wal-Mart doesn't exist, and work elsewhere, but don't complain about them. If you think, wages should be higher and general, and there should be more jobs, provide some yourself.
They force their plans on somebody? How can they do that? Either politicians force their plans on somebody (that's not really new, is it?), or Wal-Mart can't do anything, because it's Just A Company. They only have lots of money, but you don't have to sell them anything.
On the definition of organic food, I'd probably agree with you. Mislabeling or selling something as something it isn't should clearly be considered fraud, not more and not less.
The difference is that in the USA the states were supposed to be independent and be the center of power. The Nation was only an add-on. In Germany we are simply a nation, while the "states" are only an afterthought (IMO).
The different parts of Germany can't really do anything on their own. Even their tax money isn't their own, but AFAIK just part of the national VAT (plus some local corporate taxes).
I'd strongly wish Germany would decrease national power and give much more power to the Bundesländer, but of course the power-hungry bastards won't ever allow that.
No, basically that's like analog copying of audio content. Play it and re-rip it to an unencumbered data format.
The downside is that you might lose some formatting, and the quality of images decreases (think original = SVG; your scanned copy = crappy png maybe). Maybe you have to manually recreate some sort of index, if you care about that.
Of course for simple novels or other sequentially oriented textual stuff, screen scraping is just fine.
They're making choices, but not rational choices. If something is purely emotional, and not based on any rational arguments, I don't consider that a choice, because it's usually not conscious. Try to nail people on *why* they like something over something else. Often they've never thought about anything at all. It's just animal instinct. To me, chemical brain reactions don't really make up a choice.
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I'm not even sure about the more difficult to debug thing.
I'm a fan of RISC, really, mostly because their architecture is more sane and it's much nicer to write a compiler for them, but with increasing chip size CISC has several advantages.
The decoder is an ever smaller portion of the whole chip; the innards use basically the same optimizations as RISC chips do. As you say, instruction size is smaller, which is good. Most of all, even multi-cycle-x86 instructions get translated into micro-ops (just like on some RISC implementations) so in the end they ARE micro-ops. It's only a compression at the programming level. Deep down in the core the same stuff happens.
I think x86 (or maybe its 64bit extension with more nice registers) has won. Apple got that.
The exception, IMHO, would be embedded, or mobile applications, where the decoding logic is still important. ARM is a great architecture, and it also has "compressed" (THUMB) instructions, to reduce code footprint.
For desktops and servers expect nothing better than x86/64.
Now that we have loads of federal money, we can finally create thousands of jobs, we can create new technology that wouldn't be possible without the wisdom of central government, we can be more environment-friendly, and of course we have already chosen the One Good new fuel that deserves to be funded. This is our new three-year-plan.
For just $10M we get a guaranteed great technology, and if it doesn't work out as well, we can do as with public schools and other government programs: just increase funding incredibly, so the darn thing will get done!
Agreed with the Very Bad Things.
With communication things are different. Chances are that you did a lot of work using semaphores and condition variables, which are kind of hard to use. DragonflyBSD was created for just that reason: to build an OS not on top of locking, but on top of messaging.
If you use messaging, there are tons of theories at your disposal to even *prove* the correctness (i.e. deadlockfreeness) of your code, such as Hoare's CSP, Milner's pi-calculus and others.
L4-Linux is reported to be 10% slower than Linux (2.4 AFAIK).
I'm positive that these 10% apply for newer CPUs as well as older ones (or maybe the newer ones are faster, with the syscall instruction).
QNX is a real-time kernel, so I'm not sure if there's a tradeoff of throughput/performance for very small latency that "ordinary" users don't need.
Oddly enough, modern microkernels (not the bloated beast Mach) like L4 can run Linux (L4-linux) with only 10% speed penalty.
That's not really a reason to go monolithic kernel.
The point about iBooks was never the graphics card; it was that they included toilet flat screens (I used a G4 for more than a year).
If Apple gives the new MacBook a decent (i.e. competitive) screen, and a competitive price (and the most-of-the-time fanlessness I'm used to from the old iBook), I might even buy it.
Unless you want an Intel. I don't have a PC, but I'd really like to be able to run something like VMWare or Parallels Workstation *efficiently*. Virtual PC is SOOOO slow on even the "fast" Mac mini G4 (Qemu is even slower, but Virtual PC simply chokes on some software, like OpenBSD, or Arch Linux).
I'd have sold my mini and bought a new one, if there *hadn't* been this significant price increase. This way I don't think it's worth it. I'm even considering to switch back to PC + Linux or OpenBSD.
Macs really are great consumer devices, but when you're not using 90% of what's bundled anyway (I'm a Unix guy, that's why), then X11 isn't that much worse after all. Gnome has become quite nice over time, too.
So the problem isn't really that there's no public healthcare in the US. The problem is that there's no healthcare that people can afford.
That should be hardly surprising, given that for every little common sickness, you need to visit a highly paid expert controlled by the AMA cartel, and for everything they prescribe you expensive drugs that we didn't even have 50 years ago (and still people didn't die that much younger). Nevermind that drug companies and cartelized doctors have a huge interest to keep the current system which pays them large amounts of money.
I live in Germany where healthcare is pretty much public, but still I don't usually bother to go to the doctor anymore. I'm sick of expensive medicine that only cures symptoms, not the disease.
There used to be affordable healthcare for almost everybody (and the rest could have it, if there was a little welfare or charity), before government "fixed" it with lots of regulations.
About the UK I've only heard horror stories with loooong waiting lines and patients that aren't getting treated, because the centrally planned health economy doesn't really work *that* well. France reportedly also has those waiting lines, and here at home in Germany you're lucky if your doctor's visit takes less than two hours.
Because your godly "system" is horribly, utterly broken by a huge cartel of government, doctors (AMA), drug companies and insurance.
There used to be times when a doctor's visit didn't cost you several hundred bucks, and I'm not talking inflation here (no, I didn't live then, but I've gotten the message).
So what? You have the choice between having your employer pay you out in full - but then you take your own holidays, you make your own savings.
Or your employer puts away a good share of your salary (because he chooses to, or because government forces him, as in many EU countries), pays you much less, but then you get paid holidays automagically.
Just don't think the money for the holiday falls from the sky - it has to be paid for, usually by your employer.
Maybe even with paid holidays some EU jobs would pay the same as a US job, but that's due to other factors. You pays your price and makes your choice...
There's only one Jobs, and his name is Steve.
(And to be honest, I'm pretty sure Scott McNealy didn't create him.)
Good luck trying to convince 100M Americans to vote for something that's not democratic or republican...
Ouch, that really sucks.
Well, I guess it's not really easy to do anything about it. Of course if you live in the US, you can write your reps, but I doubt it's gonna help anything.
I don't make the rules. If you don't like the simple fact that, even if it's prohibited by government or whoever, whereever something is in demand, somebody is going to offer it, i.e. even if you don't like free trade, it's gonna happen...
I'm not saying it's perfect, but every alternative has been historically proven to be inhuman, and to not prevent any of the desasters they claimed humanity would be spared from.
I can only again and again suggest that if you don't like free trade and the companies in it, you should *tell* people to vote with their wallets.
Oh, and never forget that today's economy in the USA and in Europe is *very* far away from anything like free trade. Good old English aristocrats would be fucking proud of today's class society.
Somewould would sell shoes, you say? Right, that was before WM came to town. But they didn't destroy any jobs; they HIRED. That is, whoever was unemployed, or employed in worse jobs.
Only months later, it was *customers* who decided to shop there instead of in the expensive store downtown...
At that point workers were replaced, right. But it's too easy to just blame WM for any unemployment or costs to the taxpayer, when the only costs to the taxpayer are in the hands of government. (Of course WM has good connections to government, but that's just another reason why government power should be severely restricted.)
Actually I've lived in Western Wisconsin for almost a year, and they even had two WMs right there.
Ok, I quite believe that many WMs aren't profitable in the long term, but even so it's something that small businesses in the area would have had to deal with anyway: competition from cheap Chinese bastards (though I don't have anything against Chinese in general).
That's just how the game goes. You close down; five years later your business might be needed again, when WM notices that the small town can't sustain them and their management.
I'm not really excited about WM or anything, but there are economic rules, and the only thing I can advise anybody, is to avoid them if you can, and to offer better products if you're a competitor. It's all about trust. Maybe try to change politics if you can (though the Dems wouldn't really change anything, but that's another story).
Where did I ever say that starting a business is easy or anything? Especially given the tons of US or German regulations (plus patent laws), I'd think at least twice before doing that.
I just don't think you should criticize somebody else for not paying good wages, even if they could afford it in theory.
Of course if your only client is WM, you don't have much of an option, but then you should really look into having flexible contracts. If WM cancels, it's likewise time for you to.
Capitalism is "creative destruction" and often that's hard, but I don't make the rules, especially not in our aristocratic bastard world. I'm going the easy/boring/cowardly safe route and I think everybody should be careful, but that's just me...
How can they influence wages? WM moves somewhere, and *start hiring*. Either they have to offer a better job than other people in the area, or they'll get lots of unemployeds working for them. In either situation, it's good. After all: why should people - voluntarily - choose to work for WM otherwise, if it's such a bad deal?
/. ), or you can sell them stuff. In that case WM might ask you to become cheaper, which you can bow to, or which you can decline. Your choice is between selling more for lower price, or selling just as much as before for the same price as before (again: as mentioned in a recent article here).
And if you're dealing with WM as a supplier, you can opt out (as recently mentioned here on
If a company chooses to sell a product for cheap and lowers wages in return, their decision. Don't buy their products if you don't like that. But if every company does that, in the end we'll just end up with a little deflation (as would actually be normal for an industrial society with a non-inflating currency): both prices and wages sink.
Oh, and forget the starships...
1) WM can't give the town money. They can only buy or rent some land and build their store there. Assuming that *someone* sells them the land, they start building. Of course everyone in town can just live on as usual, ignoring the WM. WM will probably close the store very soon, if that happens.
I don't quite understand what WM is bribing the city for, in that situation... So after all, they should probably just take the money, as WM could build just as well without bribing in the first place.
So what's your solution? Without WM there, all those people on $8/h would be unemployed. Is THAT the glorious alternative? Simply close down the WM?
Besides, if WM was that much of a danger to the community, how come people don't just ignore it until it closes its doors? If people would be off well without WM, they could choose to live without WM -- just like before.
Also, WM can't throttle businesses; they can only compete. When people choose to buy at the local WM, even though it's such a danger to them, then that's their choice, nothing more or less.
Their wages are too low? Oh, come on! Just pretend Wal-Mart doesn't exist, and work elsewhere, but don't complain about them. If you think, wages should be higher and general, and there should be more jobs, provide some yourself.
They force their plans on somebody? How can they do that? Either politicians force their plans on somebody (that's not really new, is it?), or Wal-Mart can't do anything, because it's Just A Company. They only have lots of money, but you don't have to sell them anything.
On the definition of organic food, I'd probably agree with you. Mislabeling or selling something as something it isn't should clearly be considered fraud, not more and not less.
The difference is that in the USA the states were supposed to be independent and be the center of power. The Nation was only an add-on. In Germany we are simply a nation, while the "states" are only an afterthought (IMO).
The different parts of Germany can't really do anything on their own. Even their tax money isn't their own, but AFAIK just part of the national VAT (plus some local corporate taxes).
I'd strongly wish Germany would decrease national power and give much more power to the Bundesländer, but of course the power-hungry bastards won't ever allow that.
Fight The Law (i.e. some policeman who thinks he's king) and the law always wins. Sad reality.
No, basically that's like analog copying of audio content. Play it and re-rip it to an unencumbered data format.
The downside is that you might lose some formatting, and the quality of images decreases (think original = SVG; your scanned copy = crappy png maybe). Maybe you have to manually recreate some sort of index, if you care about that.
Of course for simple novels or other sequentially oriented textual stuff, screen scraping is just fine.
Ok, bad wording.
They're making choices, but not rational choices. If something is purely emotional, and not based on any rational arguments, I don't consider that a choice, because it's usually not conscious. Try to nail people on *why* they like something over something else. Often they've never thought about anything at all. It's just animal instinct. To me, chemical brain reactions don't really make up a choice.