User: rblinne

Microsoft Shows Interest in Intel VPC

On: MacBook Pros Upgraded and Shipped

While dual-booting is probably needed for full-screen games there still is a need to run other Windows apps on a Mac where VPC would be adequate if it ran fast. It should do so once the need to emulate a Power PC instruction set is eliminated. Thus, I've been looking to see any indication from Microsoft that they plan to do this. I found it. http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=macI ntelQA

Q. What does the announcement about Intel-based Macs mean for Virtual PC for Mac?

A. Virtual PC for Mac Version 7 is still the best emulation solution for users who have PowerPC-based Macs, but it does not run on Intel-based Macs. We are working with Apple to determine the feasibility of developing Virtual PC for Mac for Intel-based Macs. Virtual PC for Mac is highly dependent on the operating system and hardware and will require additional development to run on Intel-based Macs.

No date promised but at least they aren't against it. In fact, it sounds like me when my manager asks me for a schedule before I have fully scoped the project. My gut tells me this should be easy but Microsoft is hedging their bets just in case it is not. The OS integration portion is already solved and they enhance by deleting the processor emulation layer. Hopefully they did their VPC development in gcc (ideally 4.0 but even 3.x would be OK) rather than with Microsoft compilers as this provides for a faster port. My experience with porting between OSes (in my case Solaris and Linux) is that changing compilers is a more difficult task than retargetting architectures.

Re:Good News and Bad News

On: NASA Public-Affairs Appointee Resigns in Disgrace

Could this actually mean that well intentioned christians are actually beginning to crawl out from under the thumb of the right-wing extremists like Dobson, Robertson, Bush, etc? I know this is only a small beginning and may be offering false hope, but at least its better than the complete lack of any hope for American socieity I'd been feeling recently.

It is better than you hoped. Actually there is a groundswell amongst evangelicals against this. The WaPo version of the noted this http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/02/08/AR2006020801223_2.html:

The leaders said a poll they commissioned of 1,000 evangelical Protestants showed that two thirds were convinced global warming was taking place. Additionally, 63 percent said the United States must start to address the issue immediately and half said it must act even if there was a high economic cost.

Christian colleges have also been instrumental in addressing this issue. Note the "crisis" in Christian colleges from creationist web site, Answers in Genesis. http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0131colle ges.asp

Recently, both the Wheaton College student newspaper (this is a prominent Christian school near Chicago) and Chicago Tribune ran stories about the age of the earth in Christian colleges. Now, controversy in Christian colleges is not new. Nor is young-earth versus old-earth a new conflict in the church, for it's been with us for over two centuries. But, as the author of the Tribune article implied, this conflict might be getting worse.

So why is there a conflict? The rub comes from the fact that although 44-47% of the population seems to believe in something resembling young-age creationism, probably more than 90% of Christian colleges and their professors do not. With the exception of Seventh Day Adventist colleges, it's virtually impossible to find young-age creation taught at denominational colleges (Southern Baptist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, etc.), and some, such as (Southern Baptist) Baylor University, won't even teach Intelligent Design. The Christian colleges which teach young-age creation are few and far between.

For example, among the nondenominational colleges, the only regionally accredited Christian colleges where you can get a young-earth-oriented biology major that I know of are (listed with increasing size): Bryan College (Tennessee), Grace College (Indiana), Master's College (California), Cedarville University (Ohio), and Liberty University (Virginia). And, if you want a young-earth geology major ... well, you're simply "out of luck."

...

As an example, the Tribune article mentions three biology majors at Olivet Nazarene College who entered the school as creationists, but who are now theistic evolutionists. As a further example, the Wheaton College newspaper shows the results of a student survey (42% of the students responded) which showed that whereas 47% believed in a young earth before entering Wheaton (the same percentage which Gallup finds for the population at large in its polls), only 27% believed in a young earth by the time of the survey. The same survey indicated that Wheaton professors were a greater influence on their age-of-earth belief than their parents were!