Yeah my example was a bad choice, I was more thinking of IDE being such a load on the CPU. I'm sure any of us can think of a good example of doing something that hogs your CPU but would be almost unnoticeable in a dual core environment.
And yes, dumping the pipeline due to page faults or cache misses is a big deal. Miss penalties are a huge deal in any system. Most nowadays just go do something else if a program faults (assuming there's something else to do).
In software like video/audio processing, then yes, there is a veritable orgasm of parallelizable code. For most single programs a user wants to execute, the max speedup you can expect to see is about 1.2 with 2 cores versus one. (I'll spare you the computation, it's rather long, I had to do it in my Advanced Computer Architecture class and again in my High Performance Architecture class).
Also don't forget that with multiple cores you're introducing a host of new problems such as scheduling, cache coherency, synchronization, etc. It's a complex thing to have more than one core working on the same problem. The best application for this type of multiprocessor system is multitasking. Before, when copying 40 GB of movies/tv/pr0n from your friend's removable HDD, your computer would tank, practically deadlocked. With a dual core machine, you'll barely notice anything is running in the background (I've tried it myself, it's awesome). You'll see the same effect installing software, torrenting, etc.
So in general there isn't a ton of parallelizable code running in a single program, but there is a good amount of parallelizable code running on a machine at a given time.
This is really a recurring problem. Do we hand over our privacy for increased security? Or by handing over our privacy do we lose both?
It's a tough question. I have no doubt whatsoever that the story you describe happened, I also don't doubt there are numerous other potential benefits of a US-wide tracking system. But it's a bit creepy to think your cell phone, that lovable device that you're hopelessly addicted to, is silently phoning home (no pun intended) all the time. It has a little microphone in it, you know. And it has speakerphone, so it's a sensitive little bugger.
Wouldn't take much to silently start recording...I mean, maybe you're being robbed! We should be able to find out so we can help you. Maybe you're minding your own business, maybe you're stealing music or dealing drugs. If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide (yes, I hate this awful line as much as you do).
The whole concept of people not being able to make decisions for themselves is what is so scary.
Or just blame piracy. See, it's win-win. Blaming piracy can never lose because it's unfalsifiable.
Blame pirates, being suing people randomly/needlessly. There are three possibilities:
1) Sales go up (The pirates were the problem! Let's kill the bastards! 2) Sales go down. (We aren't being harsh enough on the pirates! They're still stealing from us, we need to crack down harder!) 3) Sales stay the same. (The pirates are still pirating as much as they always have, we need to send a firmer message! KILL THE PIRATES!)
By blaming all their problems on the invisible spectre of "pirates" companies can justify virtually any legal action and come out looking fine since, after all, they were just protecting themselves against those damned pirates.
I also nominate myself for the Award for Post with the Most Uses of the word "Pirate."
You're right. I'm also worried about the implications of this logic, especially if it suceeds. What if other organizations begin to think this way? I can see the RIAA claiming that a PC without built-in DRM is a pirate ship and should be destroyed.
Either way, corporations are crawling toward a total consumer lock-in, and not allowing a "naked" PC to install Windows seems to a reasonable step forward in this admittedly evil scheme.
People love macs. They are sexy. The powerbook is the hottest laptop to exist on this PLANET. Everybody wants one. Everybody talks about how amazing they are, with all their kickass features and whatnot. But, no one buys them because:
* They are expensive.
* They run MacOS, which doesn't run many of the programs they want/need to use.
Running Windows is the best thing that could ever happen to a Mac. Now people don't have an excuse, they can buy that hot mini they've wanted or grab a powerbook, and never lose all their favorite programs and games. Brilliant.
Well, I'll admit, you definitely live up to your name.
There have been thousands of posts about why MacOS is a nice thing to have. Maybe I like to use an OS that is comfortable on the eyes, updated more often than once a decade, and makes sense from an HCI standpoint? Maybe at work I have programs that only run on Windows, or I like to play games that don't run on Flash. Windows might be a nice thing to have, I mean especially since it runs almost all of the software people use.
No OS is supremely "better" than any other, making the rest look like a pile of horse manure. They are all compromises.
Disclaimer: I'm assuming you're talking about America when you say "our country."
We have public libraries equipped with scores of computers, all with high speed connections to the internet. Free.
There are jobs here (yes, you *can* get a job if you really try). There are tons of government-funded programs if, for whatever reason, you really just can't seem to land a job. Education is also plentiful here, few people have never heard of how germs or diseases are spread. Money and educations are not issues here. In some parts of Africa they have no understanding of modern science, or even how germs are spread.
This is about education, not a "no one should be computerless" project. Negroponte has tried numerous times to get this message across. Hence his latest comment, "this is an education project, not a laptop project."
All religions are intolerant of each other, because each religion defines a mutually-exclusive lock on a God they believe exists
This is just wrong. Ever heard of Unitarian Universalism? Hell, do you know anything about Hinduism? Buddhism? Mahatma Gandhi? Study up and come back to explain that "lock" to me. Seriously, you can only say this if you section off the absolute literlists/fundamentalists/Ned Flanders's's of Western religions and call them all that exists.
And all this fighting assumes their God -- or any god -- actually even exists; over 2000 years of non-proval of a god's existence sure paves the way towards a high probability that he/she/it does not.
Yeah, that argument totally worked for the atom. Just because something hasn't been proven "in 2000 years" does not make it false or even have a high likelihood of being false. It just means it hasn't been proven. Evidence to the contrary of a theory paves the way towards a high probability of the theory being false, but that's not the case here. Besides, you've made the grand assumption you can even prove the existence of God. I am not interested in a huge debate here, since this is WAY offtopic, but you get the idea.
Re:Apple Provides SOME Legacy Support
on
Why Windows is Slow
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· Score: 2, Interesting
See, I think I can see how you could mean that, but I have a hard time attributing to malice what I can much more easily attribute to incompetence.
The security holes, malware, Registry, etc. can all be attributed to people trying to do a good job and failing. I don't think Windows intentionally left numerous security holes in their systems -- why would any company want that kind of negative PR? The registry probably sounded like a really good idea, and in theory it isn't that bad. The problem is nobody realized that programs would be too lazy to properly clean up after themselves and it would bloat and become cumbersome. And the malware -- that one I attribute to Windows simply being a humongous target. If you're gonna target naive, uninformed users who had to practice to learn how to double-click, you'll attack Windows. I doubt many people who still can't handle the concept of e-mail have Gentoo on their box.
Even the legacy support is Microsoft trying to help people out. They don't want customers to lose their old applications. Of course, you could also attribute this to them being afraid to lose customers, but at the time of the 98->NT switch, Apple still wasn't even a blip on the radar. Neither was Linux. Backwards compatibility was, in all likelihood, what they thought their customers wanted.
This is definitely something that could be very powerful -- like iTunes, except you get the CD in the mail as well. My guess for the "ownership" part of the movie would be it only works on the computer you downloaded it to initially and is, of course, bogged down with DRM that requires you to authenticate each time you use the media.
This service could really be huge if they implemented something vaguely similar to FairPlay in the sense that you can put it on a few other computers, and instead of putting it on your iPod, you could have a 30 day "timeout" -- if you don't connect to the internet in 30 days and reauthenticate your DRM'ed movie, you can't play it. This way it'll still work if you go on vacation or whatnot.
The big issue here is we're talking about a movie -- a multi-million dollar venue, corporations don't lightly toss around the idea of letting you put a $500 million production on five other computers for nothing. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction and not just some kind of sick ploy, like if they load it with horrible DRM that eats your soul and then afterwards (when the service rightfully bombs) they just say "eh, there's no market for this kind of service" and never try again. Anyway here's hoping.
Dude...that is a *REALLY* good idea. Coupled with the offline mode you mentioned earlier I'd say you have something companies should actually consider using. No more carry discs around, if you know you'll be offline on vacation for a while you simply insert the disc and "refill" your days remaining until disc reauthentication to 30 (or whatever). It could work for virtually any media (CD, DVD, whatever).
It does entail some privacy issues though, in the sense that I can pinpoint your exact PS3 using this registration coding scheme. Also you need to think about the case where a copy is made of the disc, then when an identical registration code is detected, two people insert discs and they both seem legit. Who is the "original owner"? You might say the person who owned it for longer, but did I just make a copy and sell my original to someone perhaps? It gets hairy in those annoying details, but I'm sure they can be worked out. Overall you've got a really great idea here.
Re:Wow, has Sony started to LEARN?
on
Region-free PS3
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Stop thinking that just because they've made a one or two moves that seem reasonable that they've had some kind of religious experience.
Believe me, they are still the same old rootkit slinging, DRM-pushing, grandma-jailing, DCMA-humping, RIAA-loving Sony they've always been.
Even this move is probably just a ploy to make mod chips even less legitimate, as the first poster said. Call me cynical but companies don't make moves unless they believe that it will increase their revenue somehow. They are planning to make more money off of you in some way, don't ever doubt that.
Re:Not THAT surprising...
on
Region-free PS3
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· Score: 3, Funny
Umm...who said they were going to re-use questions?
If you read the article you'll see the tests are at specific dates and times. One night they use a set of questions, the next another, and so on.
A better argument would be to suggest that this opens the doorway for collusion since you can use AIM, your phone, a bunch of friends, whatever to draw from a bigger Q/A pool but all you'll buy yourself is an embarassing interview and written test later on.
Exactly. Sony isn't stupid, although they do make mistakes.
The negative PR Sony gets in geekland is outweighed by the average consumer's perception of the quality of Sony products. Sony's rootkit was absolutely unacceptable, but don't think Sony didn't already know that.
You'll never know what your boundaries are unless you surpass them. This way, when they slowly reintroduce the same technology years later when DRM and consumer hard-drive snooping has become largely perfunctory, they can measure how far they've come.
The real difference here is people willingly give up the information to the private sector, and they know exactly why and how the private sector will use the data. Since they have no vested interest in the consumer besides selling them stuff, the consumer generally doesn't care (note that yes, controlling the consumer is an insidious private sector habit, and handing over that personal data doesn't exactly make it harder to accomplish, but the public at large believes this to be a conspiracy theory not worthy of actual consideration).
The government, however, is all about secrets and spying. They have no vested interest in selling you stuff, they just take your money and give you nothing back (from the mind of the consumer). Why do they want to know about me? Just to spy! That's perverse!
See the difference? So long as the consumer understands why they are being spied on and sees a potential benefit to it they are cool with it. It's when someone is spying on your for what seems to be the sake of spying on you. Or if they are just curious about "how you work".
Also note that the spying the private sector does never includes the things people consider private enough not to reveal (relationships, phone conversations, e-mails, etc.) I can hear someone screaming "GMAIL" in the background, but remember the public was very concerned about gmail at first and had to be repeatedly assured that no human would ever view their emails.
Basically, in the eye of the consumer, privacy is good, and so long as they can do what they want, they'll accept whatever spying comes their way if they can understand it and see a potential benefit from it.
You're right for the first part, but the second part you're waaay off.
If google cared one iota for the rights of its users, it wouldn't be censoring the search results of Chinese users
Umm...in China, Google is protecting their "rights" as Chinese citizens. Google is not the U.N., changing laws is not their business, they're working in a foreign market. How would you like it if Chinese companies started forcing Chinese laws on Americans/British/whatever? It's their country and their laws, just because you don't agree doesn't mean you have the right to demand they change to accomodate your sense of right and wrong.
Then you say Google's only reason for hating the subpoena is they don't want the general public to know how much data they retain, and their competitors could use the data against them. Wow, that couldn't be more wrong. First, the Government isn't going to release the information to the public so points one and two instantly fail. Second, the public largely already knows how much information Google retains, and doesn't care. Finally, Google is really just concerned about the negative PR associated with releasing "private" browsing habits. Everyone trusts Google and they intend to keep it that way (until they own the universe:) )
Slashdot Mirror
And yes, dumping the pipeline due to page faults or cache misses is a big deal. Miss penalties are a huge deal in any system. Most nowadays just go do something else if a program faults (assuming there's something else to do).
"And where are the city's snowplows? Sold off to billionaire Montgomery Burns in a veritable orgasm of poor planning." -Kent Brockman
Also don't forget that with multiple cores you're introducing a host of new problems such as scheduling, cache coherency, synchronization, etc. It's a complex thing to have more than one core working on the same problem. The best application for this type of multiprocessor system is multitasking. Before, when copying 40 GB of movies/tv/pr0n from your friend's removable HDD, your computer would tank, practically deadlocked. With a dual core machine, you'll barely notice anything is running in the background (I've tried it myself, it's awesome). You'll see the same effect installing software, torrenting, etc.
So in general there isn't a ton of parallelizable code running in a single program, but there is a good amount of parallelizable code running on a machine at a given time.
It's a tough question. I have no doubt whatsoever that the story you describe happened, I also don't doubt there are numerous other potential benefits of a US-wide tracking system. But it's a bit creepy to think your cell phone, that lovable device that you're hopelessly addicted to, is silently phoning home (no pun intended) all the time. It has a little microphone in it, you know. And it has speakerphone, so it's a sensitive little bugger.
Wouldn't take much to silently start recording...I mean, maybe you're being robbed! We should be able to find out so we can help you. Maybe you're minding your own business, maybe you're stealing music or dealing drugs. If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide (yes, I hate this awful line as much as you do).
The whole concept of people not being able to make decisions for themselves is what is so scary.
Blame pirates, being suing people randomly/needlessly. There are three possibilities:
1) Sales go up (The pirates were the problem! Let's kill the bastards!
2) Sales go down. (We aren't being harsh enough on the pirates! They're still stealing from us, we need to crack down harder!)
3) Sales stay the same. (The pirates are still pirating as much as they always have, we need to send a firmer message! KILL THE PIRATES!)
By blaming all their problems on the invisible spectre of "pirates" companies can justify virtually any legal action and come out looking fine since, after all, they were just protecting themselves against those damned pirates.
I also nominate myself for the Award for Post with the Most Uses of the word "Pirate."
Either way, corporations are crawling toward a total consumer lock-in, and not allowing a "naked" PC to install Windows seems to a reasonable step forward in this admittedly evil scheme.
Only Google can save us now! Oh, wait...
* They are expensive.
* They run MacOS, which doesn't run many of the programs they want/need to use.
Running Windows is the best thing that could ever happen to a Mac. Now people don't have an excuse, they can buy that hot mini they've wanted or grab a powerbook, and never lose all their favorite programs and games. Brilliant.
There have been thousands of posts about why MacOS is a nice thing to have. Maybe I like to use an OS that is comfortable on the eyes, updated more often than once a decade, and makes sense from an HCI standpoint? Maybe at work I have programs that only run on Windows, or I like to play games that don't run on Flash. Windows might be a nice thing to have, I mean especially since it runs almost all of the software people use.
No OS is supremely "better" than any other, making the rest look like a pile of horse manure. They are all compromises.
Are you trying to steal my business model or something? Jeez!
We have public libraries equipped with scores of computers, all with high speed connections to the internet. Free.
There are jobs here (yes, you *can* get a job if you really try). There are tons of government-funded programs if, for whatever reason, you really just can't seem to land a job. Education is also plentiful here, few people have never heard of how germs or diseases are spread. Money and educations are not issues here. In some parts of Africa they have no understanding of modern science, or even how germs are spread.
This is about education, not a "no one should be computerless" project. Negroponte has tried numerous times to get this message across. Hence his latest comment, "this is an education project, not a laptop project."
We hate those here at slashdot.
Especially since in Soviet Russia, a (running Linux?) beowulf cluster of new overlords welcome YOU!
This is just wrong. Ever heard of Unitarian Universalism? Hell, do you know anything about Hinduism? Buddhism? Mahatma Gandhi? Study up and come back to explain that "lock" to me. Seriously, you can only say this if you section off the absolute literlists/fundamentalists/Ned Flanders's's of Western religions and call them all that exists.
Yeah, that argument totally worked for the atom. Just because something hasn't been proven "in 2000 years" does not make it false or even have a high likelihood of being false. It just means it hasn't been proven. Evidence to the contrary of a theory paves the way towards a high probability of the theory being false, but that's not the case here. Besides, you've made the grand assumption you can even prove the existence of God. I am not interested in a huge debate here, since this is WAY offtopic, but you get the idea.
The security holes, malware, Registry, etc. can all be attributed to people trying to do a good job and failing. I don't think Windows intentionally left numerous security holes in their systems -- why would any company want that kind of negative PR? The registry probably sounded like a really good idea, and in theory it isn't that bad. The problem is nobody realized that programs would be too lazy to properly clean up after themselves and it would bloat and become cumbersome. And the malware -- that one I attribute to Windows simply being a humongous target. If you're gonna target naive, uninformed users who had to practice to learn how to double-click, you'll attack Windows. I doubt many people who still can't handle the concept of e-mail have Gentoo on their box.
Even the legacy support is Microsoft trying to help people out. They don't want customers to lose their old applications. Of course, you could also attribute this to them being afraid to lose customers, but at the time of the 98->NT switch, Apple still wasn't even a blip on the radar. Neither was Linux. Backwards compatibility was, in all likelihood, what they thought their customers wanted.
This service could really be huge if they implemented something vaguely similar to FairPlay in the sense that you can put it on a few other computers, and instead of putting it on your iPod, you could have a 30 day "timeout" -- if you don't connect to the internet in 30 days and reauthenticate your DRM'ed movie, you can't play it. This way it'll still work if you go on vacation or whatnot.
The big issue here is we're talking about a movie -- a multi-million dollar venue, corporations don't lightly toss around the idea of letting you put a $500 million production on five other computers for nothing. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction and not just some kind of sick ploy, like if they load it with horrible DRM that eats your soul and then afterwards (when the service rightfully bombs) they just say "eh, there's no market for this kind of service" and never try again. Anyway here's hoping.
It does entail some privacy issues though, in the sense that I can pinpoint your exact PS3 using this registration coding scheme. Also you need to think about the case where a copy is made of the disc, then when an identical registration code is detected, two people insert discs and they both seem legit. Who is the "original owner"? You might say the person who owned it for longer, but did I just make a copy and sell my original to someone perhaps? It gets hairy in those annoying details, but I'm sure they can be worked out. Overall you've got a really great idea here.
Believe me, they are still the same old rootkit slinging, DRM-pushing, grandma-jailing, DCMA-humping, RIAA-loving Sony they've always been.
Even this move is probably just a ploy to make mod chips even less legitimate, as the first poster said. Call me cynical but companies don't make moves unless they believe that it will increase their revenue somehow. They are planning to make more money off of you in some way, don't ever doubt that.
Backups are available at affordable prices.
If you read the article you'll see the tests are at specific dates and times. One night they use a set of questions, the next another, and so on.
A better argument would be to suggest that this opens the doorway for collusion since you can use AIM, your phone, a bunch of friends, whatever to draw from a bigger Q/A pool but all you'll buy yourself is an embarassing interview and written test later on.
Also the article summary clearly states that you still must pass an interview and another written test.
Good luck making those into a "googling-contest."
*runs*
Can't find Narcotics smuggler Alberto Ramirez? Use AskJeeves.com!
Make your own heroin, cocaine and ecstasy using our Home ChemLab 2.0!
...just imagine them investigating a pedo case.
The negative PR Sony gets in geekland is outweighed by the average consumer's perception of the quality of Sony products. Sony's rootkit was absolutely unacceptable, but don't think Sony didn't already know that.
You'll never know what your boundaries are unless you surpass them. This way, when they slowly reintroduce the same technology years later when DRM and consumer hard-drive snooping has become largely perfunctory, they can measure how far they've come.
The government, however, is all about secrets and spying. They have no vested interest in selling you stuff, they just take your money and give you nothing back (from the mind of the consumer). Why do they want to know about me? Just to spy! That's perverse!
See the difference? So long as the consumer understands why they are being spied on and sees a potential benefit to it they are cool with it. It's when someone is spying on your for what seems to be the sake of spying on you. Or if they are just curious about "how you work".
Also note that the spying the private sector does never includes the things people consider private enough not to reveal (relationships, phone conversations, e-mails, etc.) I can hear someone screaming "GMAIL" in the background, but remember the public was very concerned about gmail at first and had to be repeatedly assured that no human would ever view their emails.
Basically, in the eye of the consumer, privacy is good, and so long as they can do what they want, they'll accept whatever spying comes their way if they can understand it and see a potential benefit from it.
If google cared one iota for the rights of its users, it wouldn't be censoring the search results of Chinese users
Umm...in China, Google is protecting their "rights" as Chinese citizens. Google is not the U.N., changing laws is not their business, they're working in a foreign market. How would you like it if Chinese companies started forcing Chinese laws on Americans/British/whatever? It's their country and their laws, just because you don't agree doesn't mean you have the right to demand they change to accomodate your sense of right and wrong.
Then you say Google's only reason for hating the subpoena is they don't want the general public to know how much data they retain, and their competitors could use the data against them. Wow, that couldn't be more wrong. First, the Government isn't going to release the information to the public so points one and two instantly fail. Second, the public largely already knows how much information Google retains, and doesn't care. Finally, Google is really just concerned about the negative PR associated with releasing "private" browsing habits. Everyone trusts Google and they intend to keep it that way (until they own the universe :) )
Isn't this technically spyware? Illegal spyware, nonetheless?