Have found nothing about this in the internet except a highly speculative, non-authoritative post in the Beowulf forum. Guess we'll have to wait for more details.
To be fair, IBM recently announced a new version with significant improvements to the double precision performance. Links: Wikipedia, HPC Wire. Whether this improvement will end up in commodity hardware remains to be seen.
(Yes, for really interesting things I could look at the page source, but manually ignoring HTML tags is a crappy way to parse information)
Most modern browsers also offer the option of not using styles (e.g. View->Page Style->No style in Firefox), which is much better than reading the source and ignoring all the tags. Of course, this is no excuse for not making a site with cross browser compatibility in mind.
In chess everything is known so all possible moves can be calculated.
Chess engines do not calculate every possible move, since there is not enough computing power to do so. There are several reasons that would lead a human to beat a chess engine, but, as GP already stated, there is no bluffing and no chance. Some interesting information about this matter can be found in Wikipedia.
The most common way I used to use the old URL bar is to type just "en" and let it fill out the rest of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/, delete the something, and type in whatever noun it is I'm interested in.
I access Wikipedia in the exact same manner as you do: a quick workaround to this problem is accessing "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/" a couple of times so it stays on top of the address bar suggestion list. It's actually quicker than accessing "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A" because you don't have to delete the A.
Example: I've typed in web, am I more likely to be looking for "xkcd - A *web*comic of..." or "GameFAQs... Video games *web* site..", perhaps I want "Lets turn this fucking *web*site yellow" or "Rapidshare: 1-Click *Web*hosting" or maybe, just maybe, I've started typing in webmail.bath.ac.uk like I do reasonably often (but probably not as much as I visit xkcd or GameFAQs).
I had the same impression as you did when I first started using Firefox 3, but actually unless you typed "web" when accessing xkcd, Rapidshare or GameFAQs, the address bar will quickly learn that when you type "web", you probably mean webmail.bath.ac.uk. I thought the new behavior was pretty annoying at first too, but the address bar "learns" and after 2 or 3 days using it, I find it pretty handy.
Perhaps you missed my statement about the user's perceived performance. It is true, I grant you, that hardware performance has gotten better. But the user's perception of that performance has not - it's gone the opposite.
Yes, I had noticed that statement both in your post and in GP's post and there is anecdotal evidence that the perceived performance has not increased. The objectiveness of such a statement notwithstanding, one could argue that this increase in performance has not led to an increase in the users' perceived performance, but this argument has a tenuous relation at best with the other statements presented in your and the GP's post, such as statements about the increase in clock frequency. Particularly, the statement by the GP that x86 processors have not been speeding up for the past 5-7 years is patently false.
And yes, the OS can, and has been able to for years since SMP first came about, spread loads across multiple processors and cores. But that cannot change how a single program functions in and of itself - it cannot make that single program work at any given moment on more than one single core if it was not designed to do so (i.e. if the program is not designed to use multiple threads or processes).
I find it baffling that you insist in trying to explain to me the point I myself had made in my first post in the thread.
Of course, comparing a P4 to a Core2 is like comparing Apples to Oranges as there are architecture changes across the whole chip that would change that (like the move away from P4's netburst architecture). So there are reasons other than clock frequency for that performance difference.
That was my point. In opposition to what you had said, the fact that the clock frequency has not increased does not mean that CPU performance has not increased. Unless you didn't mean that an increase in clock frequency is necessary for an increase in performance, in which case I don't understand why you posted about clock frequency at all.
That only works across all the different programs. An OS cannot break a single program into multiple threads/processes for the program - the program has to be coded to do so.
Again, that was my point, quote with emphasis added: (...) the OS can still run different programs in each core, improving the overall user performance. I would suggest reading my post with a little more attention.
In the end, despite the increase in processing power, the programs run as slow or slower than before. Numerous reasons for it. The GP of my original post in this thread is still correct.
Quoting the GP, emphasis added: the fact remains that the x86 processors (due to the OS-s that run on them, actually) have not gone much faster in the last 5-7 years. The only thing that has shown serious progress is power consumption and heat dissipation. What do the OS's that run on them have to do with the processors' performance? Recent processors have had significant improvements in performance in the last 5-7 years, which makes the GP incorrect.
Do notice that in 5 years we have barely increased the clock frequency of the CPUs
Do notice that multi-cores don't increase the overall clock frequency,
Clock frequency is not an indicative of CPU performance. For example, the Core 2 chips, despite generally operating at a lower frequency than the Pentium 4's outperform them significantly.
just divide the work up among a set of lower clock frequency cores - yet most programs don't take advantage of that.;-)
If I'm not mistaken, even if a specific program was not designed to use several cores, the OS can still run different programs in each core, improving the overall user performance. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Do notice that despite clock frequencies going from 33 mhz to 2.3 GHz, the user's perceived performance of the computer has either stayed the same (most likely) or diminished over that same time period.
Do notice that programs are more bloated than ever, and programmers are lazier than ever.
Your second point in the blockquote corroborates the first one: the problem isn't that the CPU isn't getting faster, we're just throwing bigger and more bloated stuff at it.
And let me tell you I have indeed used MINIX 3 and it is very much a work in progress. I used it in my OS class in college. Thumbs up for the simplicity of fiddling with its source code (it was, after all, first designed with educational purposes), but I would find it unbearable to use it on a daily basis.
I think this is great news.
Quote: (...) and it has posted guidelines on how to ward off the automatic update if admins want to keep the older IE6 browser on their companies' machines.
So you can keep IE6 if you want to, but all the non-tech savvy users get a safer, more standards compliant browser.
Actually, the one big reason someone would buy a Dell laptop with Linux pre-installed is that it is guaranteed to work with all the hardware, no driver headaches included.
You might argue that "OK, since Dell guarantees this hardware works with Ubuntu, I could just buy the cheaper Windows laptop while following the specs for the Linux one." But I would seriously doubt that Dell would install vanilla Ubuntu instead of making some patches to work some hardware issues out. So even if you do install Ubuntu on your own on Dell guaranteed supported hardware, it could still potentially give you some headache. So, yes, if you don't mind doing a bit of the dirty work, it is pretty useless. But if you want something that Just Works (TM), I think the Dell offering is pretty attractive.
On the other hand, Dell ships a crapload more Windows licenses than you do, probably. I think Microsoft would consider giving them a price much lower than the standard. And, as stated by other people, it's not only the lack of trial software, technical support is also an issue in determining the price.
Mod parent down! Nice try, but your search listed the vulnerabilities for all Apache related products (httpd 1.x, httpd 2.x, Tomcat, etc), totaling 383 advisories, while listing the vulnerabilites for only a specific version of IIS (IIS 6.0), totaling 3 advisories. Comparing IIS 6.0 to, say, Apache 2.2, we see 3 advisories for each product. Also, the comparison fails for only comparing the number of advisories and not the severity level of each one of them. Granted, Apache 2.2 has one unpatched advisory compared to zero for IIS 6.0, but it is not nearly as clear cut and one sided as your post made it seem.
Ok, I wasn't really shooting for "Funny" with my previous post. I know it's a *shudders* RPC framework released by Facebook and it's hard to take the story seriously, but I do believe it is important not to make unsubstantiated claims such as the one outlined in the story. Oh well. Got to take what the moderators give.
Post benchmarks to prove a statement or don't state it at all. Don't use weasel words to try to convey a point of view without solid evidence. BTW, it seems this statement was made by either the submitter or the editor, since I couldn't find anything mentioning it on TFA.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Guarani Aquifer in South America, one of the largest aquifer systems in the planet. According to Wikipedia: "(...) it covers 1,200,000 km^2, with a volume of about 40,000 km^3, a thickness of between 50 m and 800 m and a maximum depth of about 1,800 m."
The article about the reservoir in Asia says it is at least the size of the Arctic Ocean. I don't know how much volume that is comparing to the Guarani Aquifer, but it is much deeper (and therefore much harder to extract, in fact impossible with current technology), since Guarani's max depth is about 1800m. So I think this new reservoir is not nearly as significant as the water reserves in South America (even more if you factor the Amazon in).
Note that I don't disagree with you, an "Untitled Project" gives me no guarantees that it's not just in the list to inflate the number of games and the GP surely seems astroturfing.
What I really wish existed was a screen that popped up every time you went to a new site that informed the user of the site, and asked for a cookie preference for that site. That way, all cookies could be accepted at the corporate site, and no cookies might be accepted at google.
Actually, Konqueror does that if you set it up to ask what to do when you receive a cookie. I fiddled around with Firefox and couldn't find a way to do it, but maybe messing around with Network.cookie.cookieBehavior and Network.cookie.p3p
Maybe they picked it up since it names itself GNU/Linux instead of just Linux as Ubuntu does.
No, actually they picked gNewSense because Ubuntu has some non-free (as in speech) software in their repositories, as well as some non-free firmware in the kernel. gNewSense is a distro based on Ubuntu without the non-free stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Have found nothing about this in the internet except a highly speculative, non-authoritative post in the Beowulf forum. Guess we'll have to wait for more details.
The number of ad clicks is obviously correlated to the number of ad views.
To be fair, IBM recently announced a new version with significant improvements to the double precision performance. Links: Wikipedia, HPC Wire. Whether this improvement will end up in commodity hardware remains to be seen.
That was an incredible brain fart, I read backgammon and thought of checkers. Sorry, my bad. And I proof-read it too...
if you had to be able to play Halo, SimCity 4, Command & Conquer, Tetris, Line Rider, bridge, backgammon, and parcheesi on a standard chessboard?
I'm guessing playing backgammon on a standard chessboard wouldn't be so difficult...
(Yes, for really interesting things I could look at the page source, but manually ignoring HTML tags is a crappy way to parse information)
Most modern browsers also offer the option of not using styles (e.g. View->Page Style->No style in Firefox), which is much better than reading the source and ignoring all the tags. Of course, this is no excuse for not making a site with cross browser compatibility in mind.
In chess everything is known so all possible moves can be calculated.
Chess engines do not calculate every possible move, since there is not enough computing power to do so. There are several reasons that would lead a human to beat a chess engine, but, as GP already stated, there is no bluffing and no chance. Some interesting information about this matter can be found in Wikipedia.
Moddders must be new here...
And let me tell you I have indeed used MINIX 3 and it is very much a work in progress. I used it in my OS class in college. Thumbs up for the simplicity of fiddling with its source code (it was, after all, first designed with educational purposes), but I would find it unbearable to use it on a daily basis.
I think this is great news. Quote: (...) and it has posted guidelines on how to ward off the automatic update if admins want to keep the older IE6 browser on their companies' machines. So you can keep IE6 if you want to, but all the non-tech savvy users get a safer, more standards compliant browser.
Actually, the one big reason someone would buy a Dell laptop with Linux pre-installed is that it is guaranteed to work with all the hardware, no driver headaches included. You might argue that "OK, since Dell guarantees this hardware works with Ubuntu, I could just buy the cheaper Windows laptop while following the specs for the Linux one." But I would seriously doubt that Dell would install vanilla Ubuntu instead of making some patches to work some hardware issues out. So even if you do install Ubuntu on your own on Dell guaranteed supported hardware, it could still potentially give you some headache. So, yes, if you don't mind doing a bit of the dirty work, it is pretty useless. But if you want something that Just Works (TM), I think the Dell offering is pretty attractive.
On the other hand, Dell ships a crapload more Windows licenses than you do, probably. I think Microsoft would consider giving them a price much lower than the standard. And, as stated by other people, it's not only the lack of trial software, technical support is also an issue in determining the price.
Mod parent down! Nice try, but your search listed the vulnerabilities for all Apache related products (httpd 1.x, httpd 2.x, Tomcat, etc), totaling 383 advisories, while listing the vulnerabilites for only a specific version of IIS (IIS 6.0), totaling 3 advisories.
Comparing IIS 6.0 to, say, Apache 2.2, we see 3 advisories for each product. Also, the comparison fails for only comparing the number of advisories and not the severity level of each one of them. Granted, Apache 2.2 has one unpatched advisory compared to zero for IIS 6.0, but it is not nearly as clear cut and one sided as your post made it seem.
Ok, I wasn't really shooting for "Funny" with my previous post. I know it's a *shudders* RPC framework released by Facebook and it's hard to take the story seriously, but I do believe it is important not to make unsubstantiated claims such as the one outlined in the story. Oh well. Got to take what the moderators give.
Post benchmarks to prove a statement or don't state it at all. Don't use weasel words to try to convey a point of view without solid evidence. BTW, it seems this statement was made by either the submitter or the editor, since I couldn't find anything mentioning it on TFA.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Guarani Aquifer in South America, one of the largest aquifer systems in the planet. According to Wikipedia: "(...) it covers 1,200,000 km^2, with a volume of about 40,000 km^3, a thickness of between 50 m and 800 m and a maximum depth of about 1,800 m."
The article about the reservoir in Asia says it is at least the size of the Arctic Ocean. I don't know how much volume that is comparing to the Guarani Aquifer, but it is much deeper (and therefore much harder to extract, in fact impossible with current technology), since Guarani's max depth is about 1800m. So I think this new reservoir is not nearly as significant as the water reserves in South America (even more if you factor the Amazon in).
Actually, I think he means the title is "to be determined". If you look at his post, the developer is on the top of each list of games. For example:
Namco Bandai
* Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire ~BEC, Launch~
(...)
* Untitled ~Anime Project~ ~TBD, TBA~
(...)
Note that I don't disagree with you, an "Untitled Project" gives me no guarantees that it's not just in the list to inflate the number of games and the GP surely seems astroturfing.
Well, being an AC, I think you won't see this, but FYI the default in Konqueror in Kubuntu 6.06 was "accept all cookies".
What I really wish existed was a screen that popped up every time you went to a new site that informed the user of the site, and asked for a cookie preference for that site. That way, all cookies could be accepted at the corporate site, and no cookies might be accepted at google.
Actually, Konqueror does that if you set it up to ask what to do when you receive a cookie. I fiddled around with Firefox and couldn't find a way to do it, but maybe messing around with Network.cookie.cookieBehavior and Network.cookie.p3p
Maybe they picked it up since it names itself GNU/Linux instead of just Linux as Ubuntu does.
No, actually they picked gNewSense because Ubuntu has some non-free (as in speech) software in their repositories, as well as some non-free firmware in the kernel. gNewSense is a distro based on Ubuntu without the non-free stuff.