I have no problem with Microsoft, or Bill Gates. As long as his billions actually end up doing something besides pillaging my wallet with every broken version of windows I'm forced to upgrade to (cough VISTA cough)! But I do have a problem with someone saying "Here's how we got rich..." because their actions are usually not repeatable. After all, we can't start an operating system revolution by stealing someone else's GUI because it's already been done. Many times over.
while(true) { //Begin Microsoft Bashing ad-infinitum }
I thought you weren't allowed to get a patent for something that's considered basic functionality? Or is he exempted because it's a "legal document"? However, one can never underestimate the stupidity of the common American. After all, we wouldn't need a "Do not use while sleeping" warning on hair dryers unless there was litigation around it. Now appearing on all the new business-oriented, online, create-a-law-document websites: Privacy Statements!
I agree. Furthermore, the iPhone SDK works on OS X 10.5 only to my knowledge. It certainly doesn't run on any PC and probably doesn't run on OS X 10.4 since Apple is fond of dropping everything but the latest and greatest from the list of supported products. So if a company wants to develop a game for the iPhone they'll have to do it in OS X and that's not something any "real" game studios are doing and I hardly see a huge market for applications on a single device when the device in question hasn't been out for more than a year. What's more, how do we know that the current iPhone and the next generation of the iPhone, the so-called iPhone 2.0, will run the same code? It likely will, but the possibility is still there.
My favorite example of Apple breaking functionality on purpose is the 32-bit version of OpenGL in OS X 10.4. The day Leopard was released so was a 64-bit version of OpenGL, but it was for Leopard only. Thus I couldn't compile anything in 64-bit that used OpenGL because the OpenGL library was 32-bit only and I couldn't upgrade the library without upgrading to Leopard. Microsoft would draw so much more bad press if they did this with every Windows release.
The end of the article makes a good point. While we have dual- and tri-core graphics setups now, the programs are not designed to exploit them. This is the same issue that is being faced in the general CPU market as well. If you don't have a multi-threaded app for multiple CPUs, you only gain in multitasking, but not in a single program. A serial program can ONLY run serially. There's only so much parallelism that a CPU can infer. And at that point, you have out-of-order execution to make up for mutli-cycle instructions.
The two ways to do multi-core graphics would be to have each GPU generate a separate frame. This would be done in the driver, but since video is dependant on the previous frame there's not as much gain as is theoretically possible because you're still dependant upon the result from the previous frame. The other option is in the app itself, which "knows" what's going to be where at a certain frame and can just send that to each GPU. This would create tremendous speedups because now each frame is generated independently. Thus a 3X setup would achieve 3X performance (again theoretically). These options are probably mutually exclusive though because an app written to take advantage of mutli-GPUs could be foiled by a driver written to take advantage of them. It's a choose your poison option. And currently we're not getting either.
Maybe I'm wrong, but can't you send mail from ANY port for SMTP? After all it's just an abstraction anyway. Last time I checked there was nothing that required you to use port 25 for a mail server. It's the default, but if these guys are sending encrypted AND customized UDP and TCP packets do you really think they'd use port 25 to send spam? What's more, if they're clever enough to avoid detection, they're also probably clever enough to sink their claws deep into the system settings to avoid whatever port they're using from being blocked (a la Windows Firewall advanced settings). Simply suggesting that one of the 2^16 ports be blocked will not solve the problem. If detection of these things is so easy, then why hasn't someone at the major ISP's been designated to just stare at suspicious traffic logs all day? It's to the ISP's advantage to do this because they support more traffic than a single business.
I agree with you that the biggest issue in every Windows release has been hardware and not software. Many hardware manufacturers are much worse at providing drivers for Vista.
When I upgraded my 4 year old Inspiron XPS to Vista Business, I found drivers for everything except my Logitech MX500 mouse and mutlifunction printer. There is simply no incentive for manufacturers to move drivers to a new driver framework, regardless of how much better it is, for hardware that is beyond the (usually) short warranty period.
The reason Apple gets away with breaking functionality is because they had/have a still tiny market share AND their OS is hardware-locked. Microsoft just does not have this, dare I say it, advantage. They have to support all of the old functionality so Joe Cheapskate's 6 year old Digital Camera and printer can still function. They will never get away with just dropping the old for the new. Probably the best solution would be to refuse to support drivers written the old way after the new way is widely used/released. Forcing manufacturers to update their drivers for new software while still supporting (albeit in limited functionality) the old drivers can at least keep users happy until their hardware reaches end-of-life, which comes several years after the warranty and thus the manufacturer's cares expire.
I happen to be a college student who upgraded to Vista SP1 on Tuesday when it showed up on my Windows Update. I have had no problems whatsoever in the past 5 or so days since the upgrade and my machine hasn't been shut down since the upgrade.
Your response appears to be more conjecture and, dare I say, fear mongering. If you haven't upgraded to SP1, which I suspect you haven't, then please stop making the entire OS sound absolutely horrible. The wait and see attitude works fine, just don't make it sound like you should never upgrade. Why would Penn's IT department, which provides end-user support for students and staff, advocate upgrading? They have to support many more boneheaded users across a much wider array of systems than any corporate IT staff ever will. The number of unknowns and unresolved issues at the release of any patch, however large, is the reason for the wait and see attitude.
They would much rather have someone else deal with problems as a result of the upgrade than deal with it themselves. That's the main reason for "wait and see". Allow someone else to iron out the problems, and hopefully it's Microsoft and whoever made the application that's broken. So there's nothing new here, just more fodder for people to say Vista is such a bad OS without ever using it for more than 10 minutes at Best Buy.
General Electric's GEnx is going to be used on the Dreamliner. It has a composite fan case and composite fan blades with a titanium leading edge. As part of the FAA certification for the engine to be certified to fly, it must withstand several tests: endurance, icing, foreign object ingestion, crosswind, and blade-out.
-Endurance runs the engine at take-off power for over a week straight.
-Icing involves shooting ice into the engine until it stalls or until you can't shoot a larger amount of ice. This is also done with water. The GEnx did not stall on this test.
-Foreign Object Ingestion is where organic objects are shot into the engine (birds of various sizes). Think meat grinder.
-Crosswind involves applying winds from non-standard directions. Fairly straight forward.
-Blade-out is where an explosive charge is placed in the forward fan and detonated causing a blade to shoot out and get sucked into the engine. By FAA regulations the forward fan case and engine must completely contain the failure. The end result is a destroyed engine. For the GEnx, I have personally seen the fan case from the blade-out, and the carbon-fibre fan case withstood the blade-out on its first run. This truly attests to the strength of composites.
Just my 2 cents.
Actually, I read somewhere that in future releases of IE 7 (beta or final), there will be a built in uninstaller for those of us who (inadvertantly or not) deleted the uninstaller package left by the install of the beta. Note: there is NOT an uninstaller for previous beta versions included in the current IE 7 Beta 3 download.
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I have no problem with Microsoft, or Bill Gates. As long as his billions actually end up doing something besides pillaging my wallet with every broken version of windows I'm forced to upgrade to (cough VISTA cough)! But I do have a problem with someone saying "Here's how we got rich..." because their actions are usually not repeatable. After all, we can't start an operating system revolution by stealing someone else's GUI because it's already been done. Many times over.
while(true)
{
//Begin Microsoft Bashing ad-infinitum
}
I thought you weren't allowed to get a patent for something that's considered basic functionality? Or is he exempted because it's a "legal document"? However, one can never underestimate the stupidity of the common American. After all, we wouldn't need a "Do not use while sleeping" warning on hair dryers unless there was litigation around it.
Now appearing on all the new business-oriented, online, create-a-law-document websites: Privacy Statements!
I agree. Furthermore, the iPhone SDK works on OS X 10.5 only to my knowledge. It certainly doesn't run on any PC and probably doesn't run on OS X 10.4 since Apple is fond of dropping everything but the latest and greatest from the list of supported products. So if a company wants to develop a game for the iPhone they'll have to do it in OS X and that's not something any "real" game studios are doing and I hardly see a huge market for applications on a single device when the device in question hasn't been out for more than a year. What's more, how do we know that the current iPhone and the next generation of the iPhone, the so-called iPhone 2.0, will run the same code? It likely will, but the possibility is still there.
My favorite example of Apple breaking functionality on purpose is the 32-bit version of OpenGL in OS X 10.4. The day Leopard was released so was a 64-bit version of OpenGL, but it was for Leopard only. Thus I couldn't compile anything in 64-bit that used OpenGL because the OpenGL library was 32-bit only and I couldn't upgrade the library without upgrading to Leopard. Microsoft would draw so much more bad press if they did this with every Windows release.
The end of the article makes a good point. While we have dual- and tri-core graphics setups now, the programs are not designed to exploit them. This is the same issue that is being faced in the general CPU market as well. If you don't have a multi-threaded app for multiple CPUs, you only gain in multitasking, but not in a single program. A serial program can ONLY run serially. There's only so much parallelism that a CPU can infer. And at that point, you have out-of-order execution to make up for mutli-cycle instructions.
The two ways to do multi-core graphics would be to have each GPU generate a separate frame. This would be done in the driver, but since video is dependant on the previous frame there's not as much gain as is theoretically possible because you're still dependant upon the result from the previous frame. The other option is in the app itself, which "knows" what's going to be where at a certain frame and can just send that to each GPU. This would create tremendous speedups because now each frame is generated independently. Thus a 3X setup would achieve 3X performance (again theoretically). These options are probably mutually exclusive though because an app written to take advantage of mutli-GPUs could be foiled by a driver written to take advantage of them. It's a choose your poison option. And currently we're not getting either.
Maybe I'm wrong, but can't you send mail from ANY port for SMTP? After all it's just an abstraction anyway. Last time I checked there was nothing that required you to use port 25 for a mail server. It's the default, but if these guys are sending encrypted AND customized UDP and TCP packets do you really think they'd use port 25 to send spam? What's more, if they're clever enough to avoid detection, they're also probably clever enough to sink their claws deep into the system settings to avoid whatever port they're using from being blocked (a la Windows Firewall advanced settings). Simply suggesting that one of the 2^16 ports be blocked will not solve the problem. If detection of these things is so easy, then why hasn't someone at the major ISP's been designated to just stare at suspicious traffic logs all day? It's to the ISP's advantage to do this because they support more traffic than a single business.
I agree with you that the biggest issue in every Windows release has been hardware and not software. Many hardware manufacturers are much worse at providing drivers for Vista. When I upgraded my 4 year old Inspiron XPS to Vista Business, I found drivers for everything except my Logitech MX500 mouse and mutlifunction printer. There is simply no incentive for manufacturers to move drivers to a new driver framework, regardless of how much better it is, for hardware that is beyond the (usually) short warranty period. The reason Apple gets away with breaking functionality is because they had/have a still tiny market share AND their OS is hardware-locked. Microsoft just does not have this, dare I say it, advantage. They have to support all of the old functionality so Joe Cheapskate's 6 year old Digital Camera and printer can still function. They will never get away with just dropping the old for the new. Probably the best solution would be to refuse to support drivers written the old way after the new way is widely used/released. Forcing manufacturers to update their drivers for new software while still supporting (albeit in limited functionality) the old drivers can at least keep users happy until their hardware reaches end-of-life, which comes several years after the warranty and thus the manufacturer's cares expire.
I happen to be a college student who upgraded to Vista SP1 on Tuesday when it showed up on my Windows Update. I have had no problems whatsoever in the past 5 or so days since the upgrade and my machine hasn't been shut down since the upgrade. Your response appears to be more conjecture and, dare I say, fear mongering. If you haven't upgraded to SP1, which I suspect you haven't, then please stop making the entire OS sound absolutely horrible. The wait and see attitude works fine, just don't make it sound like you should never upgrade. Why would Penn's IT department, which provides end-user support for students and staff, advocate upgrading? They have to support many more boneheaded users across a much wider array of systems than any corporate IT staff ever will. The number of unknowns and unresolved issues at the release of any patch, however large, is the reason for the wait and see attitude. They would much rather have someone else deal with problems as a result of the upgrade than deal with it themselves. That's the main reason for "wait and see". Allow someone else to iron out the problems, and hopefully it's Microsoft and whoever made the application that's broken. So there's nothing new here, just more fodder for people to say Vista is such a bad OS without ever using it for more than 10 minutes at Best Buy.
General Electric's GEnx is going to be used on the Dreamliner. It has a composite fan case and composite fan blades with a titanium leading edge. As part of the FAA certification for the engine to be certified to fly, it must withstand several tests: endurance, icing, foreign object ingestion, crosswind, and blade-out. -Endurance runs the engine at take-off power for over a week straight. -Icing involves shooting ice into the engine until it stalls or until you can't shoot a larger amount of ice. This is also done with water. The GEnx did not stall on this test. -Foreign Object Ingestion is where organic objects are shot into the engine (birds of various sizes). Think meat grinder. -Crosswind involves applying winds from non-standard directions. Fairly straight forward. -Blade-out is where an explosive charge is placed in the forward fan and detonated causing a blade to shoot out and get sucked into the engine. By FAA regulations the forward fan case and engine must completely contain the failure. The end result is a destroyed engine. For the GEnx, I have personally seen the fan case from the blade-out, and the carbon-fibre fan case withstood the blade-out on its first run. This truly attests to the strength of composites. Just my 2 cents.
Actually, I read somewhere that in future releases of IE 7 (beta or final), there will be a built in uninstaller for those of us who (inadvertantly or not) deleted the uninstaller package left by the install of the beta. Note: there is NOT an uninstaller for previous beta versions included in the current IE 7 Beta 3 download.