antonywilliams.com

Most somewhat techie users know all about Microsoft and their recent Vista disaster.
One of the biggest problems is that they have about 16 different versions of it, and the average users doesn't know which one to get.
They have
Vista Basic
Vista Home Premium
Vista Business
Vista Enterprise
Vista Ultimate
(they also have a starter edition, and 'N' versions that they sell abroad)

That's not all. Each version comes with a choice of either 32 bit, or 64 bit.
Basically 64 bit should be a bit faster, more stable, have improved security and, more importantly, they can address a full 4GB of RAM (and way more than that).
Because of the way binary works, the most RAM an operating system can use is 2^bits.
In a 32bit OS it's 2^32, which ends up being 4GB (although most windows machines max out at around 3GB). Unlike Apple, they've been unable to combine both editions, letting the OS take care of bit problems. Because of this, almost every copy of vista sold is 32bit, which can't use more than about 3.2GB. This used to be fine, but now that RAM is so cheap (I bought 4GB of RAM for my desktop for $80. At that price, does it really make sense to get any less?)

The issue is deeper though. Computer manufacturers want to boast of new machines that are faster and have more memory than their predecessors. The problem is, what good does more memory do you when your OS can't use it.
If you right click on "My Computer" and go to properties, it will show the amount of RAM that your computer can see. This is perfectly fine, but sometimes the ignorant consumer buys 4GB of RAM, and thinks there is a problem when their OS only reports 3GB.
So, what does the richest company in the world do about it?
Fix the problem at the core?
Enforce manufacturers to use 64bit?
nope. They just have their OS lie about it.
Starting next month, with the release of the first Service Pack for Vista, going to the properties of "My Computer" will show you how much RAM is actually installed on your computer, regardless of whether Vista can actually even use it.
Isn't this despicable? Now there will be even more clueless people who will be upgrading without any benefits.
Does Microsoft ever get anything right?
The only good thing ever to come out of Redmond is Office (Office 2007 is great, but I'm just fine using OpenOffice.org)
I personally am running the 64bit version of Ubuntu.
Here's a link detailing some of the other changes Microsoft are planning.

http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/10/windows-vista-sp1-guides-for-it-professionals/

Gael Duval, the creator of Mandriva and now CEO of Ulteo (ironically Ulteo is based on Debian, and not Mandriva, or any other RPM based distro) has taken the open source OOo (OpenOffice.org) and put it online. This takes googledocs (formerly Writely) and takes it several steps further.
All it requires is relatively up to date web browser and a JVM (Java Virtual Machine)
Fortunately, OOo is pretty much identical to its desktop counterpart, which gives it way more features than its competitors, that have built (from the ground up) very limited web based (usually ajax or flash) Office imitations.
you can sign up at www.ulteo.com/home/ooo




It is a shame that Duval chose OOo, as even when running on a local machine, it's a bit bloated. Ideally they could have used Abiword (a very light, yet still good word processor), but I'm sure the fact that OOo has java all over it made this port possible.

In case anyone is wondering why this would be useful...
Imagine you have a laptop, a desktop, a work computer, and you sometimes travel, and use random computers.
This way, you store your documents online, and they're all accessible from anywhere with a web browser. It's kinda similar to how web based email took over from POP and IMAP for most non business users.

It's true, Steve Ballmer (#2 at Microsoft after Bill Gates) has twisted the figures yet again!
Apparently, Vista is being pirated half as much as Windows XP.
Obviously this can be interpreted in one of two ways. Can you guess in which way Steve chose to interpret it?
"..Microsoft claims the sharp dip in piracy is due to Vista's amped up authentication system, which it says is a 'proven and effective way to combat piracy.'.." (taken from engadget.com)

Of course, anyone who knows anything about computers knows that Vista is a complete botch-up, and a disaster 6-7 years in the making (yup, that pile of deuce took over 6 years to make).
There's proof of work being done on it as early as in 2000.
It was originally expected to ship sometime late in 2003. Can you believe it! It was delayed over 3 years. Now, this isn't some po'dunk company with lack of funding, or some actual valid excuse. They just made so many incorrect design decisions, that they had to keep starting over.

So, to answer the question and title of this post, I'll use the best comparison I can think of.

Fords are stolen half as much as Hondas, therefore one can conclude that Ford must have much better anti-theft security.......

Get the point?

Within its first month, 20 million copies of Vista were sold, an increase from the 17 million sales of XP within its first two months in October 2001, five years earlier.
Does this not seem funny? With the massive increase in the number of computers in each household (my household had 1 when XP came out. now it has 7).

It's because of this that I recommend all my friends get a Mac. Sure, they're a little more expensive, but it runs on a Unix derivative BSD kernel that is super stable and secure.
I use a mac at work, and do like it, but I prefer the flexibility of a GNU/Linux system, that'll run on my custom built computers. Still, GNU/Linux is far from being easy enough for me to recommend to your average Joe. Then I'd just be their free tech support for years to come!

My advice. Get a mac. If you need windows, just stick with XP for as long as you can. Despite Microsoft not officially admitting the problem, I'm sure they are aware that at least everyone else hates it, and are probably rushing out the next version codenamed Windows 7. I think the next windows is Microsoft's last shot. If they botch that up, they can kiss goodbye their market dominance, as there will be many more options by 2010. Apple will probably have OS X 10.7, there will be Ubuntu 10.4, Open Solaris: Project Indiana. FreeBSD 9, Fedora 13 etc.. All of which are becoming easier to use. Not to mention the recent gOS and EeePC stuff going on.

And, to end, an actual picture of Bill Gates showing off the latest version of windows in a press conference as it crashes :)

I finally got around to getting Matlab 2007b (7.5) to work in Linux.
It's not overly difficult, but it certainly isn't the double-click the .exe we're all used to ;)
For it to work in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy), I had to do the following

sudo mkdir /usr/local/matlab75
sudo cp license.dat /usr/local/matlab75/license.dat
sudo sh /media/cdrom/install

#tell it the location of your matlab dir
/usr/local/matlab75
#select arch and options

sudo sh /usr/local/matlab75/bin/scripts/matlab
#It will now work if you're using the metacity windows manager, but if you're running compiz
gksudo gedit /usr/local/matlab75/bin/matlab
#add the following line directly after the '#!/bin/sh'
export MATLAB_JAVA=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/
#note, java-6-sun is a symbolic link for java 1.6.0.03

#add a shortcut that loads the following
/usr/local/matlab75/bin/matlab -desktop

I tested this by installing it on both my desktop (64bit) and laptop (32bit) and it worked perfectly.

Since previously I'd only been running matlab in Windows, I thought it would be a good oportunity to compare some benchmarks.
The built in matlab 'bench' is a terrible benchmark, and gets faster the more times you run it, so i decided to run a benchmark written by Jan Mandel, which tests matlab's speed at LLU (local loop unbundling).
I decided to be fair, to compare my laptop running matlab natively in both Windows and Linux.
I also added my desktops scores for comparison, but it's running different hardware, and the 64bit version of matlab, so we can't compare with windows.
Specs are as follows for my laptop
Thinkpad T61 T7500 C2D 2.2Ghz
3GB 667 RAM
Santa Rosa chipset
Hitachi 5K160 HD
nVidia Quadro NVS 140M 128MB
(the rest of the specs don't matter as they wouldn't affect benchmark scores)
The results are measured in the amount of seconds it takes to complete the operation, so obviously the lower the better

Matlab benchmark
Jan Mandel, December 2000
Last updated August 2004
Matlab version 7.5.0.338 (R2007b)

Linux x86 (32bit) Thinkpad T61
1. large LU: 0.205
2. small LU: 0.506
3. sparse : 0.133

Windows Vista x86 Thinkpad T61
1. large LU: 0.261
2. small LU: 0.664
3. sparse : 0.172

----
Here's my desktop scores

Linux x64
1. large LU: 0.186
2. small LU: 0.507
3. sparse : 0.133

large LLU was 27% faster in linux
small LLU was 31% faster in linux
Sparse was 29% faster in linux

Considering the hardware is identical, that difference is HUGE. And all because of all the screwups Microsoft have made, Vista might well be the biggest! (I should really test Windows XP. I would guess it's about 10-15% faster than Vista, but still 15% or more slower than Linux)

64bit saw marginal improvements of about 10%. Obviously Matlab isn't optimized for 64bit :(
One thing of note is that recently, Mathworks added multi-threading optimisations to Matlab.
They give a hefty improvement on a dual/quad core machine. The improvement is fairly linear, ranging from 50-70% improvement when you double the cores, with my quad core being over 200% faster with multi-threading enabled. Multi-threading is, however, disabled by default because crash recovery is not yet possible, as information would be split across 4 cores and separate L2 caches.
In the screenshot the first benchmark was single, 2nd with quad, and 3rd in dual mode.

The benchmark named "AntonyJMbench.m was a modification I made of the above benchmark. The JMbench was written years ago when computers were much slower. A benchmark can't be accurate when it takes a few hundred miliseconds to run, so I modified it so that the first test take 40 seconds on a decent single core machine.

note, the 3rd test works in an way that cannot be optimized for multiple cores.

below is the code for the benchmark should you want to compare your scores with mine.


% function jmbench

disp('Matlab benchmark')
disp('Jan Mandel, December 2000')
disp('Last updated August 2004')
disp('updated by Antony Williams - December 2007')

disp(['Matlab version ',version])

for iii=1:1
disp(' ')

f='%7.3f\n';
fprintf('1. large LU: ')
n=5000;m=3;
A=ones(n)+eye(n);
tic
for i=1:m,R=chol(A); end
t=toc; fprintf(f,t)

fprintf('2. small LU: ')
n=500;m=3000;
A=ones(n)+eye(n);
tic
for i=1:m,R=chol(A);end
t=toc; fprintf(f,t)

fprintf('3. sparse : ')
n=100000;m=50;k=10;
B=ones(n,2*m+1);
B(:,m+1)=m+1;
d=[-m:m];
tic
A=spdiags(B,d,n,n);
R=chol(A);
R=A-R'*R;
t=toc; fprintf(f,t)

pause(1)

end
disp(' ')
disp('end of jmbench')

The last of the parts arrived on Thursday.

The most important thing to do when building a computer is to make sure that it runs cool. Heat is the cause of a large percentage of computer problems.
This is usually fixed by either adding fans, or improving airflow. In the case of the CPU, you have to make sure that the Heatsink (which absorbs heat from the CPU) gets good contact with the CPU. I do this by using a special type or thermal grease made of 99% silver (a very good conductor) called Artic silver 3. You can see in the below picture that I've put a thin layer over the CPU.

I then attached the Heatsink and Fan

Then I put the RAM and Hard Drives in
2x2GB of PC6400 RAM (800Mhz)
2x Western Digital 750GB SATA

Then I put all of it together

Including the DVD drive, and the Memory card reader

And closed it, and connected all the cables to it.

And connected it to all my stuff.
I'm using the same monitor (BenQ FP241W) and speakers (Logitech Z-5500) and mouse (Logitech G7)
Pictured to the left is my Thinkpad T61, that's connected to the monitor via a dock.