Posts by Michael Strorm

Re: The truth a bout Truth Social

Yeah, that's the word I meant. (I was thinking "exponentially" didn't sound *quite* right even as I typed it...)

Humm and Hummer

> Seriously. I thought Hummers were ridiculous. These are even dumber.

Hummerer?

Re: Disconnection

> He believes that the vocal minority that cheers him on to bring out the outlandish-looking Cybertruck represents a large part of America's middle-class.

Remember the huge amount of online hype, memes and discussion surrounding Snakes on a Plane before its release? It was pretty much taken for granted that this would translate into the film itself being a huge success at the box office and... it wasn't. (*)

That was apparently eighteen years ago(!), so you'd think people should have learned by now that cult-like online buzz doesn't necessarily translate to real-world, mass-market success.

(*) Also, checking the figures for that brought a more recent example back to my attention- "Morbius", which flopped initially and then became the subject of numerous tongue-in-cheek/piss-take memes. The makers thought that might translate to more success if they reissued it, which they did... whereupon it flopped even harder.

Re: The truth a bout Truth Social

> It won't drop to zero

But it'll exponentially approach it.

Re: The truth a bout Truth Social

> Of course a lot of people also don't really understand how stock works. A lot of the cult members faithful think that if they buy a share of Truth Social that money goes directly into Trump's pocket.

You're only saying that because you and your fellow liberal deep state conspiracists want to stop us supporting Trump, nice try, but I'm going to invest my remaining $10,000 of savings just to prove you wrong.

(Disclaimer: A BIG FLASHING SIGN IN THE CENTRE OF SCREEN READING "SATIRE". But I've no doubt that this is how some of the cult members would respond to that comment).

"No, I said he was a *cult*... though he's that as well"

> You have people who buy into the cult of personality for a particular CEO and can't seem to understand it when they wind up penniless.

In Trump's case, it's because he *is* a cult that his followers can't- and won't- "understand it". Cult members generally respond to the failure of their central belief by- perversely- doubling down on it, and rationalising it as being the fault of everything else except that.

In this case, that means people investing more after seeing seen their initial investment plummet in value in just a few weeks and blaming *that* on a deep state/liberal/whatever conspiracy against Trump

I mean, look at this; the mentality is practically that of a holy war with cult-like behaviour towards those who show any signs of doubt (i.e. an ounce of common sense). There's a comment in the article:-

> “I know good and well it’s in Trump’s hands, and he’s got plans,” he said. “I have no doubt it’s going to explode sometime.”

This would only need "Trump" to be replaced with "God" to be an utterly standard representation of blind, uncritical religious faith.

So, they won't blame Trump, and they won't "understand" that he- and their gullible belief in him- is the cause of the problem when their cult's entire belief system depends upon their not understanding that.

And, in turn, the grift to fleece those rubes depends upon those at the top being fully aware of that.

Third time lucky?

Whether or not all that is the case is beside the point. I hadn't asked about whether Intel already had a 64-bit x86 design for chips that were "in the pipeline". (*)

I made quite clear that I was interested in- and specifically asking about- was your claim that they had "actually implemented 64 bit support in their x86 chips sold to the public well before AMD did, but didn't activate it".

In other words, you appeared to be suggesting that Intel had already released and sold nominally "32-bit" chips that contained secret, unactivated 64-bit capabilities just waiting to be unlocked?

*That* would be somewhat interesting if it turned out to be true, but- given the subsequent lack of evidence to back it up- I suspect that it isn't.

(*) As I already said, it would have been far more surprising if Intel *hadn't* been hedging their bets by secretly working on one or more 64-bit extensions to the x86 design for several years prior, regardless of what it suited them to admit publicly.

Re: Rolling rolling rolling ... rawhide

I did so, and Google returned numerous results confirming that Intel had been working on a 64-bit implementation of x86 in secret. That in itself is hardly surprising. (*)

But none of them appear to back up your far more wide-ranging claim- the one I quoted and made clear I was replying to!- that

> They actually implemented 64 bit support in their x86 chips sold to the public well before AMD did, but didn't activate it, they intended it as a backstop in case AMD did that, so they could enable it and say "here's the REAL 64 bit version of x86!"

So, as I said, if you have any evidence that Intel were secretly including their own implementation of 64-bit in their chips long before they officially did so, I'd be interested to see it. Otherwise, you'll excuse my scepticism.

(*) While Intel would never have publicly admitted that while pushing Itanium as the only route to 64-bit, it'd have been far more surprising if a company so large and so tied to x86 *hadn't* at least hedged their bets by doing so, even if only to keep their options open- and as a fallback to the expectation that AMD might try- on the assumption they *probably* wouldn't need it.

I had a look at the linked article. It claims that "Software compilers were initially not up to the task, although researchers did make strides early on. There is no reason to believe they would not have continued to do so if interest had not waned in the architecture.".

Really? This sounds like wishful thinking. Donald Knuth- who ought to know- commented in 2008 that "the "Itanium" approach [was] supposed to be so terrific—until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write".

"Basically impossible" doesn't sound like he's leaving *any* leeway that they would have been "possible" simply by throwing more resources at them. Quite the opposite- it sounds like he's saying that Intel released the Itanium assuming- and *relying* on the assumption- that the problem *could* be solved AT ALL... until it turned out it couldn't.

I mean, Intel and its partners invested multiple *billions* of dollars in Itanium. At one point I read something saying that (in effect) Itanium was a bet-the-farm move for Intel. That may have been wrong, since they're still here, but it makes clear how much money was at stake.

And there's no way they wouldn't have happily thrown hundreds of millions more into compiler research if that had plausible chance of recovering their investment in Itanium.

But- while I'm no expert when it comes to CPU design- the article doesn't really make clear *why* we should want Itanium back on a technical level, beyond the fact that more architectures would be better.

My understanding is that Itanium was a product designed around the concerns and assumptions of early 90s chip design. And that by the time it came to market in the early 2000s, many of those concerns were already proven to be misplaced (e.g. the idea that out-of-order, dynamic and speculative execution wouldn't be workable contradicted by CPUs already on the market) and many of the assumptions were turning out to be wrong (e.g. that efficient parallelism and resource allocation could be done statically at compile time).

Re: Take some credit

> I think the Register needs to take some of the credit for helping destroy the credibility of the chip.

Nah. I don't think The Register was quite *that* influential, at least not back in the early 2000s when it was a far more UK-centric publication, and I doubt it was *that* widely-read among the movers and shakers in Silicon Valley compared to US publications.

Let's remember that Donald Knuth himself "dissed" the Itanium when he said "The Itanium approach...was supposed to be so terrific—until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write."

> Be careful of who you diss Reg because 20 years later we are stuck with only 2 types of mainstream CPU with a 3rd only just coming in. Back in 2000 we had a whole bunch more to choose from and life was more interesting.

You make 2000 sound more like the mid 1970s to the late 1980s. I remember 2000 as being a time when that diversity of CPU architecture was already in decline and everything seemed to be moving towards x86 and Wintel PCs in general. Even Apple gave in and moved to x86 a few years later.

Yes, there were still some other architectures around from the past decade or two, but- even more obviously in hindsight- most of those seemed to be already in decline, the past rather than the future.

Today Apple has moved away from x86 with the "M" series processors, and ARM is a huge player. Granted, ARM has been around since the late 80s- long before 2000- but it's a big player and a big deal in a way it never used to be. You couldn't have seriously imagined a data centre full of ARM-based computers twenty years ago.

And let's remember the reason that Intel didn't implement 64-bit on the x86 was because they hoped by not doing so, they could force those who wanted 64-bit onto the Itanium and have the market to themselves again. If Intel had their way, everyone would be using Itanium by now, and AMD would have been shut out.

So let's avoid seeing Itanium through rose-tinted glasses.

Re: Rolling rolling rolling ... rawhide

> They actually implemented 64 bit support in their x86 chips sold to the public well before AMD did, but didn't activate it, they intended it as a backstop in case AMD did that, so they could enable it and say "here's the REAL 64 bit version of x86!"

I've genuinely never heard that one before- if true, it sounds very interesting. Do you have any concrete evidence that this was the case?

But that's MS all over. They see someone else's success (in this case, Flash), want to create their own version, tell everyone that it's going to be their next big thing and use their market power to railroad developers into investing their time and resources supporting it.

Then, after that latest attempt at throwing mud at the wall doesn't turn out to be the instant success they hoped for, it's dropped and forgotten about without a second thought as they move on to the (would-be) Next Big Thing. Leaving any developers and consumers who fell for it with nothing to show for it except knowledge/possession of another piece of discarded and obsolete MS technology.

Remember Windows RT? Exactly. Just another reason why one shouldn't waste time with anything MS releases until it's clearly shown that it's here for the course.

Linus Torvalds in "*can* actually be diplomatic when it suits him" shocker!

Interestingly, that's one case where he *does* appear to have been uncharacteristically diplomatic in his response:-

> That said, I'd be willing to resurrect itanium support, even though I personally despise the architecture with a passion for being fundamentally based on faulty design premises, and an implementation based on politics rather than good technical design.

> But only if it turns out to actually have some long-term active interest (ie I'd compare it to the situation with m68k etc - clearly dead architectures that we still support despite them being not relevant - because some people care and they don't cause pain).

> So I'd be willing to come back to the "can we resurrect it" discussion, but not immediately - more along the lines of a "look, we've been maintaining it out of tree for a year, the other infrastructure is still alive, there is no impact on the rest of the kernel, can we please try again"?

As "Mewse" noted here (seen via this Register article) this was a "reasonable proposal" that could be translated as

> "If the people who are complaining about needing more time for this change (*), suddenly find the time to modernize the code they don’t want removed, it can be re-added. It will not happen and I imagine everyone knows it won’t happen."

He didn't explicitly say that because he didn't need to- it was a more diplomatic way of avoiding a fuss and (apparently) giving them the chance to get what they wanted. While in reality putting the ball in their court and removing any basis of complaint if no-one was willing to put *their* effort or resources where their mouth was.

(*) Mewse noted: "They delayed removal of the architecture for as long as possible, and then when they finally committed to removal, they received the inevitable complaint from the one person on the planet who still uses the architecture."

Murder, robbery, arson, gambling, protection rackets and ultra-high-speed computing

Seymour Cray, do you know my name?

Ah, don't say you don't

Please say you do, ah ah

(Then again, what does Morrissey know anyway? He hasn't had a major hit since those Bob the Builder singles over twenty years ago...)

Re: Irony

(Disclaimer; apologies if this gets too much into nitpicking waffle, feel free to ignore it if anyone thinks it's getting too off-topic!)

> But the Isle of Man is part of the British Isles, hence why Mark Cavendish could ride and win gold for TeamGB.

Yes, it's a part of the British Isles, but that doesn't follow, and it's a red herring as far as what I was discussing went.

The actual reason Cavendish competes on behalf of TeamGB is a political/arbitrary decision that the IOM will be represented as part of the (de facto) UK team that happens to be named "GB"- whether or not the IOM is part of the UK or GB (it isn't, and it isn't). It says or proves nothing beyond that.

The Isle of Man may be a part of (the entire geographic grouping of) the British Isles, but still it isn't a part of the island of Great Britain ("GB").

If you think about it, the same logic would also apply to *anyone* on the island of Ireland- which is also a part of the British Isles (*)- but that's not the case for those from the Republic of Ireland. (**)

The fact that it's called "TeamGB"- rather than "TeamUK", which would include NI- is sort of a weird fudge anyway, apparently because those from NI can choose to compete as either a part of the UK/GB team *or* the ROI team. Or something.

But the fact that people chose a technically misleading/inaccurate name for the sports team- or who does or doesn't get to compete for it- is, as I said, a red herring that doesn't change the fact that the IOM isn't a part of the island of Great Britain.

(*) Acknowledging that some in Ireland dislike the name because "British" tends to be treated somewhat synonymously with the United Kingdom- which doesn't cover the entire physical grouping, obviously- and my use of the commonly-accepted term doesn't imply endorsement of it.

(**) Unless they have some other connection that would qualify them to compete for TeamGB, if they wanted to.

Re: Irony

> Great Britain [2] [..] Scotland, England, Wales and Isle of Man. Does not include Northern Ireland or the Channel Islands.

The Isle of Man isn't even a part of the United Kingdom, let alone the island of Great Britain.

I wouldn't want to be in the front row at one of her concerts...

> "Swift emitted 8,300 metric tons — about 1,800 times the average person’s annual emission — of CO2 in 2022"

That's definitely excessive. Has she seen a doctor about a possible dietary intolerance?

That's pretty disappointing- I was looking forward to seeing countless demons from hell mown to death with a Flymo.

3D Monster Maze too, I suppose.

Doom? Almost certainly.

Crysis, almost certainly not.

THE BISHOP

> "Your terms and conditions say the exact opposite of this, but we believe that you are indeed concerned about privacy and security and not about selling everything to everyone for AI training."

Vicar: It's about this letter you sent me regarding my insurance claim.

Devious: Oh, yeah, yeah - well, you see, it's just that we're not, as yet, totally satisfied with the grounds of your claim.

Vicar: But it says something about filling my mouth in with cement.

Devious: Oh well, that's just insurance jargon, you know.

Re: Have to know how to ask

> I heard he nailed someone's head to a table for breaking a guage

Was he also paranoid that he was being watched by a giant hedgehog?

Re: Chocolate?

I agree that Orange Juice would beat Hot Chocolate, as Errol Brown died a few years ago, whereas Edwyn Collins is still with us despite the attempt of a brain haemorrhage to make it otherwise.

That must have been an aftermarket modification then- Wikipedia says Apple never shipped the Macintosh with a Twiggy drive.

Your would-be robotic overlords reply...

"CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, PUNY HUMAN"