Daveoc64
Apr 15, 11:32 AM
But it's not *hateful*. I don't see how a rational being could find that hateful. That's just something that shuts down discussion and mischaracterizes an opponent.
The stance itself isn't rational (i.e. based on anything empirical), so it's hard to take it seriously as anything other than "hateful" as you put it.
The stance itself isn't rational (i.e. based on anything empirical), so it's hard to take it seriously as anything other than "hateful" as you put it.
LegendKillerUK
Apr 20, 05:23 PM
How about use some of that money to get iTunes/App Store login fixed up. Many reporting it down like me on Twitter.
makinao
Mar 11, 01:50 AM
I'm in the Philippines, and one side of the country is facing the epicenter. Right now, we are on tsunami alert level 1. This was the advisory an hour and a half ago. http://ndcc.gov.ph/attachments/article/165/Tsunami%20Bulletin%20No.%201%2011%20March2011,%202PM.pdf
We pray it doesn't get here.
We pray it doesn't get here.
jettredmont
May 2, 11:50 AM
I haven't seen this malware first hand, but a zip file can be made with absolute paths, making "unzipping" the file put everything where it needs to be to start up automatically on next log in/reboot.
Who's the brainiac who made zip files "safe" ?
I don't believe the default .zip file handler will expand these zip files correctly. It will only unzip inside its own folder. At least, that used to be the case. Perhaps there is an exploitable bug there which has cropped up more recently.
I suspect they are taking advantage of one of the other security holes in OS X to get items added to login items, etc. Presumably this is at the user level only so I'm not sure even a "standard" user will be less at risk (there are minor differences between admin and standard users, such as needing permission to add something to /Applications, but if the malware here (it isn't a virus as it doesn't self-propagate; it isn't a trojan as it isn't disguised on entry) relies on that permission it was just poorly written. Each user has an Applications folder that even standard users can write to.
Who's the brainiac who made zip files "safe" ?
I don't believe the default .zip file handler will expand these zip files correctly. It will only unzip inside its own folder. At least, that used to be the case. Perhaps there is an exploitable bug there which has cropped up more recently.
I suspect they are taking advantage of one of the other security holes in OS X to get items added to login items, etc. Presumably this is at the user level only so I'm not sure even a "standard" user will be less at risk (there are minor differences between admin and standard users, such as needing permission to add something to /Applications, but if the malware here (it isn't a virus as it doesn't self-propagate; it isn't a trojan as it isn't disguised on entry) relies on that permission it was just poorly written. Each user has an Applications folder that even standard users can write to.
chrono1081
Apr 20, 07:41 PM
But just like Windows, it's practically impossible to have any problems unless you do something stupid.
Another analogy - if you buy a car and put the wrong type of oil in it or inflate the tyres to the wrong pressure, bad things will probably happen.
If you don't know what you're doing with your own devices then maybe you need Apple to hold your hand.
You obviously don't work in IT or no anything about how viruses are spread. Windows can get a virus just by being on a network with an infected machine or opening an email in Outlook from someone on an infected machine. I fix these kind of issues for a living and see it all the time. The truth is its insanely easy for viruses to get onto, and hide in Windows. Windows allows the files to completely hide themselves even if hidden and system files are set to show. The only way to see them on an infected machine is to yank the hard drive and plug it into a mac or linux based machine then you can spot hidden infected files if you know where they are located.
So please, don't start with the "as long as users are smart" myth. It can easily happen to anyone, its a flaw in the OS.
Another analogy - if you buy a car and put the wrong type of oil in it or inflate the tyres to the wrong pressure, bad things will probably happen.
If you don't know what you're doing with your own devices then maybe you need Apple to hold your hand.
You obviously don't work in IT or no anything about how viruses are spread. Windows can get a virus just by being on a network with an infected machine or opening an email in Outlook from someone on an infected machine. I fix these kind of issues for a living and see it all the time. The truth is its insanely easy for viruses to get onto, and hide in Windows. Windows allows the files to completely hide themselves even if hidden and system files are set to show. The only way to see them on an infected machine is to yank the hard drive and plug it into a mac or linux based machine then you can spot hidden infected files if you know where they are located.
So please, don't start with the "as long as users are smart" myth. It can easily happen to anyone, its a flaw in the OS.
Silentwave
Jul 11, 11:32 PM
Here's a little list i put together last week of my predictions for the next 6 months or so of a roadmap (whenever merom goes to 800 MHz on its bus, so maybe 9 months)
Portable:
MacBook: Yonah through 1q 667MHz bus Merom thereafter
MacBook Pro: Yonah through 3q2006, 667MHz bus Merom through 1q2007,
800MHz bus Merom thereafter
Desktop:
Mac mini: Yonah through 1q2007, 667MHz bus Merom thereafter
iMac: Yonah through 3q2006, 800MHz bus Conroe thereafter
Mac Pro: 1333MHz bus Woodcrest
I agree for the most part, but there is no conroe with 800MHz FSB, and the only core 2 desktop processor with it will be a single variant of Allendale at 1.6GHz. If it gets Core 2, iMac will see at least 1066MHz FSB.
Portable:
MacBook: Yonah through 1q 667MHz bus Merom thereafter
MacBook Pro: Yonah through 3q2006, 667MHz bus Merom through 1q2007,
800MHz bus Merom thereafter
Desktop:
Mac mini: Yonah through 1q2007, 667MHz bus Merom thereafter
iMac: Yonah through 3q2006, 800MHz bus Conroe thereafter
Mac Pro: 1333MHz bus Woodcrest
I agree for the most part, but there is no conroe with 800MHz FSB, and the only core 2 desktop processor with it will be a single variant of Allendale at 1.6GHz. If it gets Core 2, iMac will see at least 1066MHz FSB.
KnightWRX
May 2, 05:51 PM
Until Vista and Win 7, it was effectively impossible to run a Windows NT system as anything but Administrator. To the point that other than locked-down corporate sites where an IT Professional was required to install the Corporate Approved version of any software you need to do your job, I never knew anyone running XP (or 2k, or for that matter NT 3.x) who in a day-to-day fashion used a Standard user account.
Of course, I don't know of any Linux distribution that doesn't require root to install system wide software either. Kind of negates your point there...
In contrast, an "Administrator" account on OS X was in reality a limited user account, just with some system-level privileges like being able to install apps that other people could run. A "Standard" user account was far more usable on OS X than the equivalent on Windows, because "Standard" users could install software into their user sandbox, etc. Still, most people I know run OS X as Administrator.
You could do the same as far back as Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. The fact that most software vendors wrote their applications for the non-secure DOS based versions of Windows is moot, that is not a problem of the OS's security model, it is a problem of the Application. This is not "Unix security" being better, it's "Software vendors for Windows" being dumber.
It's no different than if instead of writing my preferences to $HOME/.myapp/ I'd write a software that required writing everything to /usr/share/myapp/username/. That would require root in any decent Unix installation, or it would require me to set permissions on that folder to 775 and make all users of myapp part of the owning group. Or I could just go the lazy route, make the binary 4755 and set mount opts to suid on the filesystem where this binary resides... (ugh...).
This is no different on Windows NT based architectures. If you were so inclined, with tools like Filemon and Regmon, you could granularly set permissions in a way to install these misbehaving software so that they would work for regular users.
I know I did many times in a past life (back when I was sort of forced to do Windows systems administration... ugh... Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server edition... what a wreck...).
Let's face it, Windows NT and Unix systems have very similar security models (in fact, Windows NT has superior ACL support out of the box, akin to Novell's close to perfect ACLs, Unix is far more limited with it's read/write/execute permission scheme, even with Posix ACLs in place). It's the hoops that software vendors outside the control of Microsoft made you go through that forced lazy users to run as Administrator all the time and gave Microsoft such headaches.
As far back as I remember (when I did some Windows systems programming), Microsoft was already advising to use the user's home folder/the user's registry hive for preferences and to never write to system locations.
The real differenc, though, is that an NT Administrator was really equivalent to the Unix root account. An OS X Administrator was a Unix non-root user with 'admin' group access. You could not start up the UI as the 'root' user (and the 'root' account was disabled by default).
Actually, the Administrator account (much less a standard user in the Administrators group) is not a root level account at all.
Notice how a root account on Unix can do everything, just by virtue of its 0 uid. It can write/delete/read files from filesystems it does not even have permissions on. It can kill any system process, no matter the owner.
Administrator on Windows NT is far more limited. Don't ever break your ACLs or don't try to kill processes owned by "System". SysInternals provided tools that let you do it, but Microsoft did not.
All that having been said, UAC has really evened the bar for Windows Vista and 7 (moreso in 7 after the usability tweaks Microsoft put in to stop people from disabling it). I see no functional security difference between the OS X authorization scheme and the Windows UAC scheme.
UAC is simply a gui front-end to the runas command. Heck, shift-right-click already had the "Run As" option. It's a glorified sudo. It uses RDP (since Vista, user sessions are really local RDP sessions) to prevent being able to "fake it", by showing up on the "console" session while the user's display resides on a RDP session.
There, you did it, you made me go on a defensive rant for Microsoft. I hate you now.
My response, why bother worrying about this when the attacker can do the same thing via shellcode generated in the background by exploiting a running process so the the user is unaware that code is being executed on the system
Because this required no particular exploit or vulnerability. A simple Javascript auto-download and Safari auto-opening an archive and running code.
Why bother, you're not "getting it". The only reason the user is aware of MACDefender is because it runs a GUI based installer. If the executable had had 0 GUI code and just run stuff in the background, you would have never known until you couldn't find your files or some chinese guy was buying goods with your CC info, fished right out of your "Bank stuff.xls" file.
That's the thing, infecting a computer at the system level is fine if you want to build a DoS botnet or something (and even then, you don't really need privilege escalation for that, just set login items for the current user, and run off a non-privilege port, root privileges are not required for ICMP access, only raw sockets).
These days, malware authors and users are much more interested in your data than your system. That's where the money is. Identity theft, phishing, they mean big bucks.
Of course, I don't know of any Linux distribution that doesn't require root to install system wide software either. Kind of negates your point there...
In contrast, an "Administrator" account on OS X was in reality a limited user account, just with some system-level privileges like being able to install apps that other people could run. A "Standard" user account was far more usable on OS X than the equivalent on Windows, because "Standard" users could install software into their user sandbox, etc. Still, most people I know run OS X as Administrator.
You could do the same as far back as Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. The fact that most software vendors wrote their applications for the non-secure DOS based versions of Windows is moot, that is not a problem of the OS's security model, it is a problem of the Application. This is not "Unix security" being better, it's "Software vendors for Windows" being dumber.
It's no different than if instead of writing my preferences to $HOME/.myapp/ I'd write a software that required writing everything to /usr/share/myapp/username/. That would require root in any decent Unix installation, or it would require me to set permissions on that folder to 775 and make all users of myapp part of the owning group. Or I could just go the lazy route, make the binary 4755 and set mount opts to suid on the filesystem where this binary resides... (ugh...).
This is no different on Windows NT based architectures. If you were so inclined, with tools like Filemon and Regmon, you could granularly set permissions in a way to install these misbehaving software so that they would work for regular users.
I know I did many times in a past life (back when I was sort of forced to do Windows systems administration... ugh... Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server edition... what a wreck...).
Let's face it, Windows NT and Unix systems have very similar security models (in fact, Windows NT has superior ACL support out of the box, akin to Novell's close to perfect ACLs, Unix is far more limited with it's read/write/execute permission scheme, even with Posix ACLs in place). It's the hoops that software vendors outside the control of Microsoft made you go through that forced lazy users to run as Administrator all the time and gave Microsoft such headaches.
As far back as I remember (when I did some Windows systems programming), Microsoft was already advising to use the user's home folder/the user's registry hive for preferences and to never write to system locations.
The real differenc, though, is that an NT Administrator was really equivalent to the Unix root account. An OS X Administrator was a Unix non-root user with 'admin' group access. You could not start up the UI as the 'root' user (and the 'root' account was disabled by default).
Actually, the Administrator account (much less a standard user in the Administrators group) is not a root level account at all.
Notice how a root account on Unix can do everything, just by virtue of its 0 uid. It can write/delete/read files from filesystems it does not even have permissions on. It can kill any system process, no matter the owner.
Administrator on Windows NT is far more limited. Don't ever break your ACLs or don't try to kill processes owned by "System". SysInternals provided tools that let you do it, but Microsoft did not.
All that having been said, UAC has really evened the bar for Windows Vista and 7 (moreso in 7 after the usability tweaks Microsoft put in to stop people from disabling it). I see no functional security difference between the OS X authorization scheme and the Windows UAC scheme.
UAC is simply a gui front-end to the runas command. Heck, shift-right-click already had the "Run As" option. It's a glorified sudo. It uses RDP (since Vista, user sessions are really local RDP sessions) to prevent being able to "fake it", by showing up on the "console" session while the user's display resides on a RDP session.
There, you did it, you made me go on a defensive rant for Microsoft. I hate you now.
My response, why bother worrying about this when the attacker can do the same thing via shellcode generated in the background by exploiting a running process so the the user is unaware that code is being executed on the system
Because this required no particular exploit or vulnerability. A simple Javascript auto-download and Safari auto-opening an archive and running code.
Why bother, you're not "getting it". The only reason the user is aware of MACDefender is because it runs a GUI based installer. If the executable had had 0 GUI code and just run stuff in the background, you would have never known until you couldn't find your files or some chinese guy was buying goods with your CC info, fished right out of your "Bank stuff.xls" file.
That's the thing, infecting a computer at the system level is fine if you want to build a DoS botnet or something (and even then, you don't really need privilege escalation for that, just set login items for the current user, and run off a non-privilege port, root privileges are not required for ICMP access, only raw sockets).
These days, malware authors and users are much more interested in your data than your system. That's where the money is. Identity theft, phishing, they mean big bucks.
milozauckerman
Jul 14, 02:20 PM
I got excited for a second - hey a $1799 low end quad, I'm sold! Oh, wait, just one processor, never mind.
Too expensive on the low-end, if true. I suspect we'll see a lot of reviews and benchmarks giving a bad cost to value ratio for the Macs.
Too expensive on the low-end, if true. I suspect we'll see a lot of reviews and benchmarks giving a bad cost to value ratio for the Macs.
myamid
Sep 12, 07:17 PM
Here's another pic from the event today, taken by the Gizmodo guys...
http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2006/09/IMG_3701.JPG
http://www.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2006/09/IMG_3701-thumb.JPG
Looks like a squished Mini :p
http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2006/09/IMG_3701.JPG
http://www.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2006/09/IMG_3701-thumb.JPG
Looks like a squished Mini :p
OllyW
Apr 28, 07:32 AM
188% growth... that's impressive.
Almost all of that is due to the iPad. They had around 4% of the global market for computers last year.
Almost all of that is due to the iPad. They had around 4% of the global market for computers last year.
appleguy123
Apr 22, 10:42 PM
I'm not referring to my beliefs, nor am I interested in discussing them. I'm simply curious if there are specifically identifiable elements of religion as we know it that is uniquely off-putting to so many people. I'm trying to understand what makes it so detestable to some.
My objection to religion is faith. Nothing more, nothing less.
I think that accepting demonstrably stupid claims( virgin birth, transubtansiation, creationism) on blind faith. These claims are huge and should be supported with huge amount of evidence for people to be expected to stake their afterlife on them.
My objection to religion is faith. Nothing more, nothing less.
I think that accepting demonstrably stupid claims( virgin birth, transubtansiation, creationism) on blind faith. These claims are huge and should be supported with huge amount of evidence for people to be expected to stake their afterlife on them.
UnixMac
Oct 11, 09:04 AM
How does it run on an UltraSparc III 900?
How does it run on an Alpha?
Lets get an assortment of score, there could be a code bug for the G4, I am not an expert, but 10-20 times slower sounds like science fiction.
How does it run on an Alpha?
Lets get an assortment of score, there could be a code bug for the G4, I am not an expert, but 10-20 times slower sounds like science fiction.
Red-red
Apr 9, 07:25 PM
It's quite obvious what Apple are doing.
They're not going to make a console as such because it's a cumbersome solution. What they'll do is continue to improve and expand their current iOS platform and the games involved.
The "console" solution they're working on is quite simple. Airplay. If the rumours are true about Apple trying to licence the tech and if we go by the relatively cheap Apple TV iteration the future is staring you in the face.
Your iPhone, iPod or iPad will become the console or the controller in the tradition console sense. Games will be sent wirelessly without lag to the TV where others can join in with their own iOS devices. The devices can change depending on the game and the flexibility of the touch screen. Once you've finished you take your iOS device with you and carry on playing on the go.
Apple will never make a traditional games console. It isn't in their DNA to make something so vulgar. They'll simply integrate experiences into a whole. Airplay is the way they'll do it in regards to the TV.
short hair styles fat women
short hair cuts for women over
They're not going to make a console as such because it's a cumbersome solution. What they'll do is continue to improve and expand their current iOS platform and the games involved.
The "console" solution they're working on is quite simple. Airplay. If the rumours are true about Apple trying to licence the tech and if we go by the relatively cheap Apple TV iteration the future is staring you in the face.
Your iPhone, iPod or iPad will become the console or the controller in the tradition console sense. Games will be sent wirelessly without lag to the TV where others can join in with their own iOS devices. The devices can change depending on the game and the flexibility of the touch screen. Once you've finished you take your iOS device with you and carry on playing on the go.
Apple will never make a traditional games console. It isn't in their DNA to make something so vulgar. They'll simply integrate experiences into a whole. Airplay is the way they'll do it in regards to the TV.
alex_ant
Oct 10, 12:04 PM
Originally posted by TheFink
Do you have any pics of your closest attempt at an 8 lb turd?
Yes actually!
Do you have any pics of your closest attempt at an 8 lb turd?
Yes actually!
Peterkro
Mar 13, 11:14 AM
well flooding the inner containment vessel with seawater + added boric acid is by all means an absolute last resort option in any playbook
(hardly a DIY solution: many reactors have the option and external connectors to do just that)
quot;hairstyles for women over
short hair styles for women
quot;hair styles over 40 women
hairstyles women over 40
(hardly a DIY solution: many reactors have the option and external connectors to do just that)
fewture
Jul 12, 11:15 AM
have to agree with Manik and generik,
Doesn't make business sense to hold out the Macbook with just Yonah when all the other companies will be filling their 13.3/14 laptops with 64bit Meroms as soon as possible. Apple has to compete with the other companies now, and if it doesn't fill Macbook with Merom, it doesnt have a small laptop with latest specs - while its competitors will.
Unless they introduce a smaller Macbook Pro which no one is suggesting. Makes business sense to throw the same price Merom into the Macbook.
Could someone please explain, other than this 'we must make some distinction' between MB and MBP (which already exists) why apple wouldn't put in Meroms into the Macbook asap?
Doesn't make business sense to hold out the Macbook with just Yonah when all the other companies will be filling their 13.3/14 laptops with 64bit Meroms as soon as possible. Apple has to compete with the other companies now, and if it doesn't fill Macbook with Merom, it doesnt have a small laptop with latest specs - while its competitors will.
Unless they introduce a smaller Macbook Pro which no one is suggesting. Makes business sense to throw the same price Merom into the Macbook.
Could someone please explain, other than this 'we must make some distinction' between MB and MBP (which already exists) why apple wouldn't put in Meroms into the Macbook asap?
iJohnHenry
Mar 15, 02:47 PM
Are you drunk?
I thought he was suffering from extreme youth.
I thought he was suffering from extreme youth.
Salacion
Apr 20, 06:57 PM
Yeah! My battery lasts for upwards of two days. Definitely not comparable at all to an iPhone.
Inferior interface is subjective, and you've given no reference so that comment is irrelevant.
Name me one app that you have on your iPhone that doesn't have a similar if not identical app on the Android Market.
No, it's not comparable to the iPhone.
Interface: harsh colors, sharp geometrics, poor graphical enhancements, Windows-esque aesthetics.
About that last one. There might be an Android app with identical functionality to an iPhone app, but it's how that functionality is presented to you that makes the difference. See, the App Store has quality control.
Inferior interface is subjective, and you've given no reference so that comment is irrelevant.
Name me one app that you have on your iPhone that doesn't have a similar if not identical app on the Android Market.
No, it's not comparable to the iPhone.
Interface: harsh colors, sharp geometrics, poor graphical enhancements, Windows-esque aesthetics.
About that last one. There might be an Android app with identical functionality to an iPhone app, but it's how that functionality is presented to you that makes the difference. See, the App Store has quality control.
awmazz
Mar 13, 11:45 AM
This is what I dislike. Not to get all political here, but alternative energy, however nice, is nowhere even close to providing the power we need. Windmills cannot ever meet energy demand; we're talking about a 5% fill if we put them everywhere. They're also too costly at this point for their given power output. Solar energy, though promising, still has a piss poor efficiency, and thus isn't ready for prime usage for some time. There's really no other alternatives.
And this is what I dislike about the pro-nuclear rhetoric. This is not true at all. Geo thermal energy. Cleaner, cheaper, safer than nuclear by magnitudes.
A nuclear power station is just a steam turbine fueled by poisonous rocks instead of carbonized trees as a heat source. I believe the iPad app version of Popular Science has an illustrated article about an test plant using geothermal heat instead to run steam turbines.
And this is what I dislike about the pro-nuclear rhetoric. This is not true at all. Geo thermal energy. Cleaner, cheaper, safer than nuclear by magnitudes.
A nuclear power station is just a steam turbine fueled by poisonous rocks instead of carbonized trees as a heat source. I believe the iPad app version of Popular Science has an illustrated article about an test plant using geothermal heat instead to run steam turbines.
TMay
Apr 21, 07:05 AM
Well this is adding in iPod touch witch is something that android is not really producing any real devices to compete with. If you where to simply compare smartphones the Android is wiping the floor with iOS.
As of now android is predominately a smartphone OS. It is on tablets but it has not really began yet. In a few years looking at tablet OSs I believe it would be interesting where android will stand in comparison to apple.
What you are saying is that it isn't fair to compare Android with iOS because iOS is so ubiquitous throughout Apple's ecosystem of hardware; soon to include iOS on OSX, that the Android platform can't compete.
I agree with that. Take away the carriers, the two for ones, and the giveaways, and what you are left with is a platform bereft of profit other than a few top manufacturers, and developers surviving on advertising. Some win.
Let's see how this plays out when the retail channel has to sell Android tablets against the iPad, because I just don't see the same success without the carrier subsidies, albeit an Amazon branded Android phone/tablet would enjoy great success hijacking the Android ecosystem from Google.
As of now android is predominately a smartphone OS. It is on tablets but it has not really began yet. In a few years looking at tablet OSs I believe it would be interesting where android will stand in comparison to apple.
What you are saying is that it isn't fair to compare Android with iOS because iOS is so ubiquitous throughout Apple's ecosystem of hardware; soon to include iOS on OSX, that the Android platform can't compete.
I agree with that. Take away the carriers, the two for ones, and the giveaways, and what you are left with is a platform bereft of profit other than a few top manufacturers, and developers surviving on advertising. Some win.
Let's see how this plays out when the retail channel has to sell Android tablets against the iPad, because I just don't see the same success without the carrier subsidies, albeit an Amazon branded Android phone/tablet would enjoy great success hijacking the Android ecosystem from Google.
Evangelion
Jul 13, 08:46 AM
So theres no need to say all that stuff- fact of the matter is you could put a faster chip in for the same price.
What makes you think that? Do you believe that it doesn't take any time or money to re-design the internals of the iMac? Apple has two choice basically:
a) replace the Core Duo in iMac and replace it with Merom
b) re-design the internals of the iMac, and replace the Core Duo with Conroe
And heat-output might come in to play here. Conroe might not be P4-hot, but it's a lot hotter than Merom is.
What makes you think that? Do you believe that it doesn't take any time or money to re-design the internals of the iMac? Apple has two choice basically:
a) replace the Core Duo in iMac and replace it with Merom
b) re-design the internals of the iMac, and replace the Core Duo with Conroe
And heat-output might come in to play here. Conroe might not be P4-hot, but it's a lot hotter than Merom is.
twoodcc
Oct 10, 10:32 AM
it's too early to tell yet. this is all just speculation at this point. wait until more android phones and android 1.5 is out first
AidenShaw
Jul 13, 09:06 AM
Nope, it doesn't. Besides, I already told you in another thread that Intel agrees with my intrepetation on this matter. The see dual-dual systems as 2-way systems, whereas according to you, they are 4-way systems. Are you saying that Intel does not know what they are doing?
Intel and AMD push hard to make sure that a dual-core processor is *licensed* as a single CPU. This is because there are a lot of big software packages that are priced according to the number of processors, often much more expensive for a 4-way than a 2-way.
The CPU makers wouldn't sell as many multi-core chips if the systems were much more expensive (in TCO) than single-core chips. Therefore they pretend that a "processor" is what can be plugged into a socket. The software sees that there are "physical processors" (a package with pins) and "logical processors" (the CPU that we've been familiar with for decades, which requires SMP hardware capabilities to be useful with 2 or more).
They say that software licensing should consider the *physical* processor count for licensing terms. (For example, XP Home will run SMP on a dual-core, but not on a dual-socket. XP Pro will run 4-way SMP on a dual-socket quad-core, but not on a quad-socket quad-core. Microsoft licensing looks at the number of physical processors, while of course the software runs according to the number of logical processors.)
So, Intel/AMD/MS have an agenda that requires them to distort the meaning of the word "processor". They have to warp the word "processor" to justify the licensing stance.
___________________________________
And, if you're so hung up on the hardware distinctions, consider:
Intel and AMD push hard to make sure that a dual-core processor is *licensed* as a single CPU. This is because there are a lot of big software packages that are priced according to the number of processors, often much more expensive for a 4-way than a 2-way.
The CPU makers wouldn't sell as many multi-core chips if the systems were much more expensive (in TCO) than single-core chips. Therefore they pretend that a "processor" is what can be plugged into a socket. The software sees that there are "physical processors" (a package with pins) and "logical processors" (the CPU that we've been familiar with for decades, which requires SMP hardware capabilities to be useful with 2 or more).
They say that software licensing should consider the *physical* processor count for licensing terms. (For example, XP Home will run SMP on a dual-core, but not on a dual-socket. XP Pro will run 4-way SMP on a dual-socket quad-core, but not on a quad-socket quad-core. Microsoft licensing looks at the number of physical processors, while of course the software runs according to the number of logical processors.)
So, Intel/AMD/MS have an agenda that requires them to distort the meaning of the word "processor". They have to warp the word "processor" to justify the licensing stance.
___________________________________
And, if you're so hung up on the hardware distinctions, consider:
AidenShaw
Oct 8, 10:23 AM
Faster at what? I'm too lazy to find the part in the keynote where they showed this. Was it 20% faster at something designed to use all 8 cores?
The task was a multi-threaded matrix multiplication that easily scales to multiple cores.
This is representative of many HPC and rendering apps, but not as realistic for most desktop apps (unless, of course, you're like MultiMedia and run several separate instances of the desktop apps simulataneously).
The sections in the video are at 11:50 to 15:00, and 26:30 to 28:00. (The gap is while the engineer is swapping CPUs and rebooting.)
My earlier numbers were a bit off - rewatching the video the Woodie system was 40% faster than the Opteron, at 17% less power. The Clovertowns were low-voltage parts "about 900MHz" slower than the Woodies. The octo (dual quads) was about 60% faster than the Opteron at 17% less power. (I'd like to have seen them put in faster Clovertowns, and show what the octo Clovertown would do when matching the power draw of the Opteron.)
At about 25:00 minutes in, Gelsinger says that the "two woodies in one socket" is the "right way to do quad-core at 65nm", due to manufacturing and yield issues.
The task was a multi-threaded matrix multiplication that easily scales to multiple cores.
This is representative of many HPC and rendering apps, but not as realistic for most desktop apps (unless, of course, you're like MultiMedia and run several separate instances of the desktop apps simulataneously).
The sections in the video are at 11:50 to 15:00, and 26:30 to 28:00. (The gap is while the engineer is swapping CPUs and rebooting.)
My earlier numbers were a bit off - rewatching the video the Woodie system was 40% faster than the Opteron, at 17% less power. The Clovertowns were low-voltage parts "about 900MHz" slower than the Woodies. The octo (dual quads) was about 60% faster than the Opteron at 17% less power. (I'd like to have seen them put in faster Clovertowns, and show what the octo Clovertown would do when matching the power draw of the Opteron.)
At about 25:00 minutes in, Gelsinger says that the "two woodies in one socket" is the "right way to do quad-core at 65nm", due to manufacturing and yield issues.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment