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User: eabrek

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Comments · 115

  1. Re:Iran must go on The Missile Impasse In the Iran Negotiations · · Score: 1

    I never understood all the Iran bashing

    I think it is due to the Cold War - Iran was cozy with the USSR (particularly their freely elected leader whom we quickly deposed, which led to the Ayatollahs taking over), while the Saudis were willing to play with the West...

  2. Re:Uber is the perfect example of free-market fail on Voting With Dollars: Politicians and Their Staffers Roll With Uber · · Score: 1

    Let's examine your points:

    1. cheaper
    2. better customer service
    3. more polite drivers (better experience for everyone on the road)
    4. risk from insurance (debunked elsewhere)

    So, Uber is cheaper and better - that's failure?

    And Uber is replacing a non-free solution (government regulated taxis)

  3. Re:Damned if he does...Damned if he doesn't on Obama Says He's 'A Strong Believer In Strong Encryption' · · Score: 1

    with the shutdown of those programs

    Have these programs been shutdown? I haven't seen any indication of that...

    a difficult one to sell to the public

    Obama does not need to sell it to the public (nor has he tried). These programs are unconstitutional, and executing under his authority (he doesn't even need Congress to do anything). He simply needs to order the programs to stop.

    the fight is now over when and how strong encryption will be permitted

    The enemy will have access to strong encryption. Much like gun control, only law abiding citizens will suffer.

  4. Re:Oh my ... on US Pushing Local Police To Keep Quiet On Cell-Phone Surveillance Technology · · Score: 1

    I understand. An open and free society is pretty easy to destroy (imagine if 1% of the people all decided to kill the other 99 one day).

    That said, I think we agree that we are willing to take that risk - that the risks from being free are better than the certainty that comes from a police state.

    I guess I'm most saddened that there is no debate.

  5. Re:Oh my ... on US Pushing Local Police To Keep Quiet On Cell-Phone Surveillance Technology · · Score: 1

    I assume you mean that as an amusing quip, rather than an actual argument

    Keep in mind, this is a justification for stripping us of our rights and keeping us in the dark.

  6. Re:Oh my ... on US Pushing Local Police To Keep Quiet On Cell-Phone Surveillance Technology · · Score: 1

    I don't believe there is any external threat worthy of violating the Constitution (violating the Constitution is the greatest threat to our nation). If it's really that scary, they can tell us (we're grown ups).

    It's far easier to believe that he saw the power and liked it. That he was lying in order to get elected. If he's not a liar, it's easy for him to show us.

  7. Re:Nearing theoretical limit? on Moore's Law Fails At NAND Flash Node · · Score: 1

    19 nm is 190 angstroms. Transistors have been demonstrated operating at ~20 angstroms feature size.

    However, current trends show the market will not generate sufficient revenue to keep pushing on Moore's Law.

    Economics will break before physics does.

  8. Re:Not just for the extra memory. on 64-bit x86 Computing Reaches 10th Anniversary · · Score: 1

    3.4 was the last one.

  9. Re:Terrorist or freedom fighter? on One Boston Marathon Bomb Suspect Dead, Other At Large After Shootout With Police · · Score: 0

    Except the Civil War was fought against the people who wanted to control their own lives (the South) - without the interference of the overarching government (which had fallen into control of the North).

  10. Re:Poor AMD on Next-Gen Intel Chip Brings Big Gains For Floating-Point Apps · · Score: 1

    The "n" in FMAn refers to the number of register arguments:
    r1 = fma3(r1 + r2 * r3) vs. r1 = fma4(r2 + r3 * r4)

    FMA4 can save you a move or two, depending on where you've got the accumulator now, and where you want it to be.

  11. Re:Online, offline - is it even fun? on Hacker Skips SimCity Full-Time Network Requirement · · Score: 2

    TOOK HIS JERB

    You, sir, win one internet. Use it wisely.

  12. Old fashioned? on What's the Best RSS Reader Not Named Google Reader? · · Score: 1

    Maybe I'm old fashioned. I use the NewsFox add-in to Firefox at work, and Thunderbird at home. They are not cloud based. I keep my own data, so I don't need to worry about people shutting off service...

  13. Re:Why would Intel want to kill the x86? on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 1

    Uops on P6 were 118 bits: http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~moshovos/ACA05/read/ppro1.pdf

    That would have a slight impact on code density :)

  14. Re:exactly on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Individually they aren't too bad. Taken all together they create real problems.

    64 predicate registers (which is way too many) yields 6 bits per syllable (the Itanium term for instruction). Combine that with 128 int regs (7 bits per) and 3 register operands - you've got 27 bits before specifying any instruction bits.

    The impact of the middle one (instruction steering) was also not seen until late in the design cycle. Instruction decode information got mixed in there, so that not every instruction could go to every position. This led to a large number of NOPs inserted into the instruction stream. The final code density for Itanium was significantly lower than RISC (and way under x86).

    These factors also work against out-of-order implementations - but there were organizational impediments to that happening anyway...

  15. Re:exactly on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 1

    The result wasn't discarded, but it caused everything to stall behind it.

  16. Re:It will on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 1
  17. Re:exactly on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 1

    Predication is a big one. The other was attempting to steer instruction dispatch through the template bits. Another was exposing too many integer registers.

  18. Re:It will on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 1

    What time frame do you have in mind? When Itanium was first developed, you could barely fit one of that in the reticle (max die size). It wasn't until later that we started having multiple core on a die.

  19. Re:Article is 20 years too late on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 1

    Correct. Server products don't need high floating point bandwidth (which Itanium had)

  20. Re:exactly on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 1

    Actually Intel has come with at least two replacements (i432 and Itanium). Both suffered from bad design choices and (more importantly) poor implementations.

  21. ISA doesn't matter on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 1

    As much as people like to dig on x86, ISA simply doesn't matter. The benefits of programmer familiarity and tools infrastructure (not to mention installed base and compatibility) dwarf any possible technical advantage (of which there are few)

  22. Re:What's twice a small number? on Intel Details Eight-Core Poulson Itanium Processor · · Score: 2

    The early processors had a functional unit for translating x86 into Itanium (it was probably area-wise bigger than a 386, but it just read x86 opcodes and produced Itanium instructions). It was later removed, and x86 support was handled in software: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20060120105942.html

  23. Re:Just dreaming on Ask Slashdot: How To Get Old Commercial Software To Be Open-Sourced? · · Score: 1

    What do you think of Manic Digger?

  24. Re:More information on What 2D GUI Foundation Do You Use? · · Score: 1

    I've started playing with something like this (Magic clone). I use Tcl/Tk (pure Tcl at this point, with a plan to add some functionality in C++). The cards are 'canvas' objects, and the playing area is a canvas (you can embed a canvas in a canvas). Cards are bitmaps, with text (canvas supports both, plus drawing functions). The hardest part was getting the drag and drop right.

    I even have network functionality done.

  25. Re:FOR ALL AUTOTOOLS "REPLACEMENTS" on Autotools · · Score: 1

    Thanks AC!