10.2 speed, slashdot, and OSX Mathlibs

[Catfish_Man]

There was an article today on slashdot about how OSX was slow at web browsing. In the comments about it at least two people mentioned that the math libraries for OSX were C ones borrowed from BSD, while the OS9 ones were hand tuned PPC assembly. One person said that they had assembly ones for OSX, but he wasn't sure if they'd been included yet, the other said that they were going to port the OS9 ones pretty soon. Sound like 10.2 anyone?

 

[Taft]

mathlibs and web-browsing probably don't have all that much overlap. I mean how many square-roots (or even arithmetic above integer) does it take to render a web page. Integer calculations for layout and a lot of graphics routines which I would assume are mostly independant of the BSD subsystem libraries.

Matthew

 

[Catfish_Man]

Huh?

I mentioned web browsing where?

<edit> I see the misunderstanding. The slashdot article was about web browsing, my post wasn't. I was talking about overall performance</edit>

 

[Taft]

Re: Huh?

Originally posted by Catfish_Man
I mentioned web browsing where?

<edit> I see the misunderstanding. The slashdot article was about web browsing, my post wasn't. I was talking about overall performance</edit>

Makes sense...

Yes, I think that it would make somewhat of a difference in some operations. Mathlib is probably used somewhat be the UI APIs. I think we'll see a lot of performance tweaks to Cocoa and Carbon APIs in 10.2. Lets hope...

Matthew

 

[alex_ant]

It's quite obvious that there's a lot of optimization to be done in OS X. In my experience, Slashdot is full of self-righteous wankers whose only goals in life are to 1) trick out their hack-job PCs with windows and neon lights, and 2) try to convince others that they know a lot more than they really do about whatever topics the very biased site editors happen to select. I honestly can't think of a worse technology discussion site than Slashdot. Anyway, yes... OS X web browsers (aside from iCab) could stand to be quite a bit faster.

Alex

 

[Taft]

Originally posted by alex_ant
In my experience, Slashdot is full of self-righteous wankers whose only goals in life are to 1) trick out their hack-job PCs with windows and neon lights, and 2) try to convince others that they know a lot more than they really do about whatever topics the very biased site editors happen to select. I honestly can't think of a worse technology discussion site than Slashdot.

I couldn't agree more. Except I love the stories they run there. Its a really great site for news. If you can manage to avoid the temptation of the horrible forums and wars that occur there, its an A-O.K. place to visit.

Matthew

 

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by Taft
I couldn't agree more. Except I love the stories they run there. Its a really great site for news. If you can manage to avoid the temptation of the horrible forums and wars that occur there, its an A-O.K. place to visit.

Oh no, Slashdot's news is awful! Thousands of people send in stories every day, and the ones that wind up on the page have been picked seemingly at random. Important/significant news is often missed, and news few people could care less about frequently makes headlines. I suppose it's a good site for interesting geeky things that would otherwise not see the light of day, but what really bugs me more than anything else is the editors, who will accept no stories that deviate in the slightest from the party line (Linux = great; M$ [be sure to include the dollar sign here] = bad; Open source = the savior of freedom and democracy worldwide; etc.) To me, there are better sites than Slashdot for just about everything Slashdot covers: Osopinion, OSNews, Ars Technica, Tom's Hardware, Newsforge, News.com, Macrumors (of course), and so on... none of these are insanely great sites (except Macrumors, of course), but none of them suck as much as Slashdot.

Slashdot's only redeeming value to me is its legion of trolls, who provide endless comedic commentary in a sea of acne-faced virgin geekboys whose senses of humor are either nonexistant or highly skewed towards arcane nerd jokes.

Sorry to rant and take this thread off topic, but I can't resist an argument with anyone about Slashdot's suckiness.

Alex

 

[Taft]

Originally posted by alex_ant

Oh no, Slashdot's news is awful! Thousands of people send in stories every day, and the ones that wind up on the page have been picked seemingly at random. Important/significant news is often missed, and news few people could care less about frequently makes headlines. I suppose it's a good site for interesting geeky things that would otherwise not see the light of day, but what really bugs me more than anything else is the editors, who will accept no stories that deviate in the slightest from the party line (Linux = great; M$ [be sure to include the dollar sign here] = bad; Open source = the savior of freedom and democracy worldwide; etc.) To me, there are better sites than Slashdot for just about everything Slashdot covers: Osopinion, OSNews, Ars Technica, Tom's Hardware, Newsforge, News.com, Macrumors (of course), and so on... none of these are insanely great sites (except Macrumors, of course), but none of them suck as much as Slashdot.

The geeky stories about obscure geeky stuff. And although it does seem somewhat random, I like the variety and assortment. I love the astronomy and science blurbs, privacy and online rights stuff, and the anti-M$ stuff like the security hole stories, and they often have some Java news or interviews that I might have missed otherwise. I tend to skip the Linux is great type stories and some of the other drivel. But the stuff I like the best is the random stuff that ends up on the front page.

The thing I find the best is that its really just a collection of links that is posted by a group of people who post what they like. Just check the front page for some quick links that could be interesting...or maybe not. But its fun to check nonetheless.

Every site has downsides. Overall I like slashdots front page. Especially since they've been covering the Mac more.

Matthew