If I recall, they also don't include the cost of migrating from NT to Linux, nor do they include the cost of laying off people either.
And whoever described Amazon as having a consistent or solid business plan has a short memory. Sellings books and movies is a solid business plan. Selling hammers and furniture is insane.
Just FYI, if it's not asking you about the network, then there's no module loaded for your NIC. You have to have the module.so on another disk, then during the install you tell the installer to load the module.
I've had to do this a few times, I think with the eepro module. You're right in that the installer should explicitly ask you if you want to install a NIC driver, though.
"For some reason, a short pipe [fewer operations until done] gives faster execution but lower clock frequencys, maybe because of heat or something. Could anyone fill me in here ?"
Each stage in the pipeline lets the hardware work on the instruction a bit, to setup register access and whatnot. Quite a few of the steps in modern x86 processors are 'unwrapping' the CISC
instruction and turning it into RISC. (This is a bit simplified). The more steps there are, the shorter (less time) each step can be, letting the clock rate go up. Fewer steps means (generally) that each step needs more time, therefor limiting clock speed.
Long pipelines have one drawback, though.
Assume there's one instruction currently being executed. The next one, in memory, will be in the stage that's one back. The next instruction after that will be in the stage before THAT, and so on. This works most of the time, where you have many sequential steps in a row. However, if there's a branch, the pipeline has to be flushed; it'll take at least as many clockcyles as there are stages in the pipeline before any instructions start getting actually executed; there's a lag time there while the instructions are making there way from the start to the end of the pipeline. There may/will be overhead on top of that which can make the stall time greater than if there was no pipeline at all.
So, back to yer original question, a high-MHZ deep-pipelined chip can be slower than a lower-MHZ shallow-pipelined chip IF there are a lot of branches in the program, because each branch will require a pipeline flush, which takes a lot of time to recover from. Speculative branching helps out a lot here, but it's not 100percent accurate, and also requires a lot of silicon to deal with.
All the extra real estate on the chip dedicated to the logic for deep pipelines could be, instead, dedicated to speeding up operations or extra cache or whatever. But x86 chips need fargin' deep pipelines these days to get high MHZ numbers, or else each complicated CISC instruction would take a year or so to decode.
You will not see this phase out, and I'll tell you why. If the post-hippie boomer generation didn't lighten up on restrictions towards kids (remember Tipper Gore?), it's not going to happen from the geeks either. You have kids, your mindset changes. I personally think it's silly that the alcohol age is 21 rather than 18 in the USA, but I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep campaigning against it (I'm 29 now).
I have to admit I'm confused why someone would WANT a full time job at age 15 or 17 or whatever. You have the rest of your life to work. Take a slack job and spend a month driving across the country or go to college or something. Read books while you still have enough copious free time to do that. Anything.
Where is it illegal? To the best of my knowledge, age discrimination is only illegal if you discriminate against older people. Younger people are still fair game. If you know of a state where the reverse is the case I'd love to hear about it.
Watching the History Channel will not make you remarkably more well-informed either.
In a book written probably back in the 80s, Amusing Ourselves to Death, the author makes a point that news and other "informative" programs had to use "entertainment" methods in order to capture viewers.
This is actually fairly obvious if you look at the History Channel, how much information is disseminated, how much the viewer carries with them, the general breadth and depth of the programs. Since most people watch TV passively, it's really not very much. Look at the TV news, and it's the same story - stories are intended to provoke controversy, because that is what sells, but not to actually inform.
Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with watching TV for the entertainment of it. But it generally isn't expanding your mind. Even thumbing through a copy of Scientific American is more useful in that regard.
A few people have posted bemoaning the one-dimensional student who is going to be produced by such a system. The article gave no indication of this, and if you look at the website, you'll see that part of the graduation requirements is that the students must present a portfolio proving that they can do the work. For example:
They have to be able to read a magazine in a foreign language.
They have to be able to apply Geometry, Stats, Algebra, and Trig.
They have to be able to present and support a logical argument.
They have to present a formal research paper.
Overall, I have to say they have higher expectations than my high school's, even without figuring the computer technology stuff into it. Must take a helluva long time to review all those portfolios though.
Evidently I was too terse. The book to which I refer, written by Levy, was published in 1984. It's worthwhile reading still, I think there was a review of it on Slashdot some months ago. I was under the impression that everyone who reads/. would know the book, would remember that it was a book written in the mid-1980s about the computer revolution up to that point in time, and that it included some information about Wozniak, Jobs, Gates, etc. etc.
One of the things it mentioned was the infamous letter to the Homebrew Computer Club, a hyperlink to which was in the comments above. In brief, it was a letter, from Gates, which nagged the users about taking software and not paying for it; there are a few other incidents along these lines in the book.
Cosmo is almost their own self-parody, but you're missing the nuances here: the idea they have is more of using sex as a weapon to turn a man into a moron. Most issues have some item on "How cheating helps your self-esteem" or "10 sex tricks to turn him into a slavering idiot who will do your bidding." Of course, this only works if you're dating an idiot, and it takes a while for women to figure this out.
The advertising for the games is really not operating on this level - not saying it's better, just saying it's different. Nudity is generally not a problem for the people complaining about this; it's the placement and nuances. Why is this person naked, particularly if it has nothing to do with the game?
It's amazing to me, actually, that sex still sells. If I'm going to buy a game, I read reviews, talk to people, look at screenshots, so on. I'm not sure the thought process that goes from "hot chick" to "I must have this game" - I expect nerds to have a higher IQ than your average American.
...they'd pick a random sampling of n NT admins and n Linux admins and say, OK, here's your box, here's what we're going to do on it, you have x hours to make it secure, fast, and stable.
This would have the following results:
Benchmarks would start getting more interesting again.
Benchmarks would start getting realistic. An OS is only as good as its admins.
We wouldn't have to keep hearing the guys running the benchmark saying "Hey, it's not like this out of the box" vs. the linux people pointing out the obvious.
Obviously #2 is the real issue here. If NT "works better" out of the box, and your average linux admin is savvy enough to tweak appropriately, then an out-of-the-box benchmark isn't consistent w/ performance in the real-world business environs.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup. And they'll have it build itself a long arm, and it'll keep flushing the toilet everytime you take a shower.
If I recall, they also don't include the cost of migrating from NT to Linux, nor do they include the cost of laying off people either.
And whoever described Amazon as having a consistent or solid business plan has a short memory. Sellings books and movies is a solid business plan. Selling hammers and furniture is insane.
Just FYI, if it's not asking you about the network, then there's no module loaded for your NIC. You have to have the module .so on another disk, then during the install you tell the installer to load the module.
I've had to do this a few times, I think with the eepro module. You're right in that the installer should explicitly ask you if you want to install a NIC driver, though.
Each stage in the pipeline lets the hardware work on the instruction a bit, to setup register access and whatnot. Quite a few of the steps in modern x86 processors are 'unwrapping' the CISC instruction and turning it into RISC. (This is a bit simplified). The more steps there are, the shorter (less time) each step can be, letting the clock rate go up. Fewer steps means (generally) that each step needs more time, therefor limiting clock speed.
Long pipelines have one drawback, though. Assume there's one instruction currently being executed. The next one, in memory, will be in the stage that's one back. The next instruction after that will be in the stage before THAT, and so on. This works most of the time, where you have many sequential steps in a row. However, if there's a branch, the pipeline has to be flushed; it'll take at least as many clockcyles as there are stages in the pipeline before any instructions start getting actually executed; there's a lag time there while the instructions are making there way from the start to the end of the pipeline. There may/will be overhead on top of that which can make the stall time greater than if there was no pipeline at all.
So, back to yer original question, a high-MHZ deep-pipelined chip can be slower than a lower-MHZ shallow-pipelined chip IF there are a lot of branches in the program, because each branch will require a pipeline flush, which takes a lot of time to recover from. Speculative branching helps out a lot here, but it's not 100percent accurate, and also requires a lot of silicon to deal with.
All the extra real estate on the chip dedicated to the logic for deep pipelines could be, instead, dedicated to speeding up operations or extra cache or whatever. But x86 chips need fargin' deep pipelines these days to get high MHZ numbers, or else each complicated CISC instruction would take a year or so to decode.
I have to admit I'm confused why someone would WANT a full time job at age 15 or 17 or whatever. You have the rest of your life to work. Take a slack job and spend a month driving across the country or go to college or something. Read books while you still have enough copious free time to do that. Anything.
Where is it illegal? To the best of my knowledge, age discrimination is only illegal if you discriminate against older people. Younger people are still fair game. If you know of a state where the reverse is the case I'd love to hear about it.
In a book written probably back in the 80s, Amusing Ourselves to Death, the author makes a point that news and other "informative" programs had to use "entertainment" methods in order to capture viewers.
This is actually fairly obvious if you look at the History Channel, how much information is disseminated, how much the viewer carries with them, the general breadth and depth of the programs. Since most people watch TV passively, it's really not very much. Look at the TV news, and it's the same story - stories are intended to provoke controversy, because that is what sells, but not to actually inform.
Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with watching TV for the entertainment of it. But it generally isn't expanding your mind. Even thumbing through a copy of Scientific American is more useful in that regard.
- They have to be able to read a magazine in a foreign language.
- They have to be able to apply Geometry, Stats, Algebra, and Trig.
- They have to be able to present and support a logical argument.
- They have to present a formal research paper.
Overall, I have to say they have higher expectations than my high school's, even without figuring the computer technology stuff into it. Must take a helluva long time to review all those portfolios though.One of the things it mentioned was the infamous letter to the Homebrew Computer Club, a hyperlink to which was in the comments above. In brief, it was a letter, from Gates, which nagged the users about taking software and not paying for it; there are a few other incidents along these lines in the book.
If you grab a copy of Hackers, by Steven Levy, this kind of behavior along with cease/desist requests to software pirates, is adequately documented.
The advertising for the games is really not operating on this level - not saying it's better, just saying it's different. Nudity is generally not a problem for the people complaining about this; it's the placement and nuances. Why is this person naked, particularly if it has nothing to do with the game?
It's amazing to me, actually, that sex still sells. If I'm going to buy a game, I read reviews, talk to people, look at screenshots, so on. I'm not sure the thought process that goes from "hot chick" to "I must have this game" - I expect nerds to have a higher IQ than your average American.
This would have the following results:
- Benchmarks would start getting more interesting again.
- Benchmarks would start getting realistic. An OS is only as good as its admins.
- We wouldn't have to keep hearing the guys running the benchmark saying "Hey, it's not like this out of the box" vs. the linux people pointing out the obvious.
Obviously #2 is the real issue here. If NT "works better" out of the box, and your average linux admin is savvy enough to tweak appropriately, then an out-of-the-box benchmark isn't consistent w/ performance in the real-world business environs.