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Comment Re:Sadly, I don't see an "out" for AMD (Score 1) 133

Sigh, where to begin.

AMD has .28 nm chips. Intel is down to .17 nm and skylark with .14 nm is just around the corner!AMD has .28 nm chips. Intel is down to .17 nm and skylark with .14 nm is just around the corner!

Not .28nm, just 28nm and Broadwell is made on the same 14nm process as Skylake.

Only saving grace is ATI graphics. If nvidia gets a hold of .17 nm chips then it's game over too.

They haven't called it ATI graphics for 5 years, but now I'm quibbling. What's important is that both AMD and nVidia makes their GPUs at TSMC and so have access to the exact same technology if they pay.

I was a loyal AMD user too. I tried and stayed til last year. It is frustrating but an i7 4 core with 8 virtuals with hyperthreading really sped uo my games compared to the 6 core./

Hyperthreading has little to do with it, the step down with pure quad-core (i5-2500k, i5-3570k, i5-4690k) has usually been far more cost effective for gaming. Four Intel cores simply beat eight AMD Bulldozer cores.

AMD needs to leave [x86] and go all ATI to stay solvent.

They're in the same boat on graphics, the last major new architecture was GCN in 2011 and it's way overdue for a replacement. So that depends, have they actually invested in a new architecture? With their R&D money going everywhere else, I don't see how.

Comment Re:We all need to realize... (Score 1) 133

...we need AMD. Because if AMD goes away, Intel has zero competitors in the x86/64 market.

AMD gave up on the markets I care about in 2012 so I don't really care, what's worse it that without AMD there's really no competitor to nVidia in the high end GPU market either.

If AMD goes the way of the dodo bird, so do our cheap processors.

That's what smartphones and tablets are for, you only need x86 if you're doing anything CPU intensive and anything CPU intensive you shouldn't be doing on a cheap CPU in the first place.

Moreover, we'll likely lose a great deal of software freedom as what Intel says becomes law across the whole board. UEFI and TPM?

AMD supports all the same DRM standards as Intel.

What used to be the "traditional" AMD has already imploded, if anything they'll exit the consumer market and become a pure specialist/custom player but they're not recovering to compete with Intel/nVidia. They got $17 million left in stockholder equity, losing both on revenue and margin every quarter and way behind on both CPU and GPU technology. I don't think they can be saved in a way that matters to us.

Comment Re:my two cents (Score 3, Insightful) 599

To your point (sorry!) There is no "fault". Girls tend not to care about STEM subjects. It's that simple. STEM requires endless hours studying alone, about subjects that would bore an anvil to tears. We literally drug our children to hold still and have the stuff poured into them. It isn't for everyone; that's why so many antisocial types gravitate towards it. You either like it, or you don't.

Teachers don't "fail" - students fail. And "failure" is not the right word. You can't force interest into a human child like some personality-altering enema. A teacher can instill the basics of how to be a human being, like history, and arithmetic, and reading. The rest comes from the child and the matrix the child lives in. You can't manufacture Alan Turings, and God help us if you could - the world does NOT need to be composed of semi-autistic math prodigies. We need the other types as well.

Let the DAMNED children become what they want to become. Here's a poser: has any one of these STEM-pushers asked the kids what they think about their "failure" to become good corporate tech fodder?

Comment Re:my two cents (Score 1) 599

The whole "privatize schools into moneymaking ventures to raise test scores and thus provide cheaper, better labor for corporations" IS the experiment. But finding failure in the experimental results will not be tolerated. The schools will be turned into corporate labor factories, and we've no mechanism to stop them.

What are we losing? Imagination. The overworked, no-time-for-play lab mice have no damned imaginations. They will not be able to grow their minds that way. That requires free time, and freedom to wander around and do nothing but dream. That is no longer tolerated. Damaged mice. And eventually, a damaged culture, a passive, corporatized citizenry that can't even perceive what it has lost.

Comment Re:Occam's razor? (Score 1) 599

And oh yeah: this is being done because employers want more job applicants and thus will be able, over time. to turn STEM jobs into a paper hat minimum wage paradise - for them. They are sick at the idea of all that money flowing out of their platinum parachute accounts and into the pockets of mere laborers. It has to stop!

Comment Occam's razor? (Score 1) 599

Perhaps girls aren't as interested in STEM subjects as boys, because their intrinsic culture, the floating "girlness" passed on from mother to daughter and from playmate to playmate, veers towards social interaction and the softer subjects. STEM is inherently a loner's paradise.

Reengineering people is not a good idea. Girls will find their own way into whatever they wish to do. You can't force them to like what you like, no matter how many Starfleet academies you lock them into.

Comment Does it now support HDDs larger than 2 GB? (Score 4, Insightful) 229

Does it now support HDDs larger than 2 GB? I'm not even joking here.

Last time I heard (like 10 years ago or so) it was a theorists wet dream but basically unusable.

What's the state of things with Hurd nwo? Is it usefull already?
What are big steps Hurd still needs to take to be ready for prime time?
What are the plans? When are we there?

Please note: I have no problem replacing Unix with something better, like ome coolDMI thing where everything isn't a file but an object and the system is cleanly designed from top to bottom and back. Top notch but everything modifiable. But it has to be real-world usable and useful. Until then I'm sticking with *nix derivates such as OS X on Apple hardware or some x86 Linux like Debian or Ubuntu on ThinkPads.

Could someone give some enlightenment on this issue?

Comment I wonder why he bothers... (Score 1) 113

In a later tweet that was subsequently withdrawn, Musk then indicated that "the issue was stiction in the biprop throttle valve, resulting in control system phase lag."

Anything he leaves for more than 0.5 seconds is going to be reported, retweeted, screenshotted and several articles posted. Just google "musk stiction biprop" and you get plenty hits, no real "undo" button for such a public figure.

Comment Re:Students + Anonimity (Score 1) 234

Indifferent is not the right word, but they're looking to see if there's a reasonable chance whether an investigation could result in a conviction and that's far from just rapes. I've had my car vandalized at night, no witnesses and really just reported it for the insurance claim. I've had a pair of brand new shoes stolen at the gym, no cameras pointing in that direction, I just reported it for the statistics so they know how much crime is really going on.

They come into the police station thinking now I'm going to get him caught and punished, but what they often end up hearing is essentially "So you were raped and from what you're telling me he's going to get away with it" and that really hurts. The standard of evidence often feels unreasonable, like what do you expect a written confession or a video recording? That's the flip side to the justice system, if you know you've been the victim of a crime but the perpetrator gets away with it the illusion that the law will protect you shatters.

Which is not to say that the gun nuts are right, it wouldn't have stopped my car from being vandalized or my shoes stolen and if she wasn't in any condition to put up a fight she wouldn't have been able to get hold of and fire a gun either. What you're really experiencing is that bad men will be able to do bad things to you and there's really no sane way of making 100% sure it doesn't. The justice system makes a difference, but it won't make things right and fair. And I'm pretty sure heaven and hell is a fairy tale for adults.

Comment Re:Valve needs to use their clout (Score 1) 309

Their goal is to sell games.

Indeed and their goal with Linux is to have a gaming platform independent of Apple and Microsoft, from their perspective you have a choice of nVidia (closed), AMD (open and closed) and Intel (open) covering all the bases. I don't think Valve feels the need for more choice for Linux to be a choice.

Technology

The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers 104

An anonymous reader writes University of Michigan professors are about to release the design files for a one-cubic-millimeter computer, or mote. They have finally reached a goal set in 1997, when UC Berkeley professor Kristopher Pister coined the term "smart dust" and envisioned computers blanketing the Earth. Such motes are likely to play a key role in the much-ballyhooed Internet of Things. From the article: "When Prabal Dutta accidentally drops a computer, nothing breaks. There’s no crash. The only sound you might hear is a prolonged groan. That’s because these computers are just one cubic millimeter in size, and once they hit the floor, they’re gone. 'We just lose them,' Dutta says. 'It’s worse than jewelry.' To drive the point home, Dutta, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan, emails me a photo of 50 of these computers. They barely fill a thimble halfway to its brim."

Comment Re:And this is news... (Score 2) 309

But why? It seems counter to business interests. The more people using your hardware, the better, yes?

A common misconception, with complex products there's always so many environments and conditions you never get all the corner cases worked out. So what you want is ten million people playing GTA V on Windows (7/8/Vista), not all these niche users finding subtle ways to break it on their special snowflake of a Linux setup. It costs time and money, hurts your brand and most companies would rather just sell to the 95%+ doing mainstream tasks.

Comment Re:Shows just how far the U.S. will go to get him (Score 1) 161

There are no "rape charges". Never were. He's wanted, by order of a single right-wing prosecutor which our intel boys carefully selected, to answer questions about not using a condom once during a threesome - a session be conducted only on a particular spot next to a convenient airport for the US to snatch him up and drag him to a kangaroo trial wherever they care to hold one. If they even bother to charge him. They refuse to ask the questions anywhere but where the US can snatch him. For this he's been in a single room in an embassy for half a decade while the Brits spend millions of pounds to watch the doors, at the behest of the English-speaking intelligence nations little club. The fact that he exposed their crimes seems to be a bit pertinent. They're the charged, and convicted, and yet they have the guns ready to shoot him. No one is waiting for them to leave their holes.

BTW, one of the women has departed this "case" in disgust, because she figured out she's being used by the US. What Assange did, if he did it, was to not use a condom during a night of three-way sex. They said. It's a crime only in that country; nowhere else in the world can this "crime" be charged. And the "crime" isn't rape. Let's put it out there: US intelligence used its NSA superpowers to track down every woman Assange ever slept with, contacted them, and twiggled and wiggled until they found something, somewhere, to start an investigation on territory they could use to grab him. Even then, they had to shop until they found a rightwinger that hated him enough to start the process. Other prosecutors had refused to gin up a crime. Simultaneously they used their widespread network of tame journalists and news companies to spread the "rape" accusation far and wide, to destroy his credibility and blacken his name. And as the HB Gary emails showed, there is software sold by HB Gary and others used by people employed by corporations and the government to set up networks of fake personas to splatter newsgroups such as this with horseshit that they want to promulgate. Truth may just be getting its shoes on while lies run around the world, but now they have paid groups of fake people shooting the truth before it gets out the goddamned door...

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