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Intel Seeking Moore's Law Original Publication

ackthpt writes "Gordon Moore's famous prediction, labeled Moore's Law, was originally published in the April 19, 1965 issued of Electronics. Sometime since, he lent out his copy and it has never been returned. Intel would like an original copy of the now defunct magazine and is offering $10,000 for a copy, presumably in good condition. The story is carried on Reuters, and if you happen to have a copy (of your own, not stolen from a museum or library) you may contact Intel via eBay's WantItNow."

257 comments

  1. Be fast by Rei · · Score: 4, Funny

    Better get them a copy quickly - in a year and a half, the reward goes down to 5,000$, then 2,500$ another year and a half later....

    --
    Margaret Thatcher died the other day. It was a sad day, but I like to think that she's looking up at us right now."
  2. AHAH by DonniKatz · · Score: 0, Troll

    congrats, you've duped a message from several hours earlier

  3. Well... by Sottilde · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's the last time I use old science magazines to start a fire...

  4. You can have my copy... by Cylix · · Score: 4, Funny

    When you pry it from my cold dead hands.

    --
    "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
    1. Re:You can have my copy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your proposal is acceptable.

    2. Re:You can have my copy... by Cylix · · Score: 1

      Your proposal is acceptable.

      How did the mods miss this... I laughed a good bit mr. ac.

      In the immortal words of Bruce Campbell, "Come get some."

      --
      "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
    3. Re:You can have my copy... by larien · · Score: 2, Funny

      ObReply: Your terms are acceptable.

  5. oops by sfcat · · Score: 2, Funny

    He didn't keep a copy. I guess he used a typewriter, it was written in 1965 after all.

    --
    "Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
    1. Re:oops by imsabbel · · Score: 0, Redundant

      He had a copy of the magazine, but at some point the last decades it got lost and if nowhere to find...

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    2. Re:oops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Free advice for whomever attempts to "recreate" the original; Use Courier New 12 and manually center all headings. Also, you'll want to put in some effort to get the superscripts to look appropriately crappy.

    3. Re:oops by JVert · · Score: 2, Funny

      I once wrote an article, showed it to a magazine and they said it was good but I have rewrite it if they were going to print it.

      Fuck that, i'll just use a copy machine.

    4. Re:oops by Verteiron · · Score: 1

      JVert said:
      I once wrote an article, showed it to a magazine and they said it was good but I have rewrite it if they were going to print it.

      Fuck that, i'll just use a copy machine.


      Rest in peace, Mitch. Rest in peace.

      --
      End of lesson. You may press the button.
    5. Re:oops by benna · · Score: 1

      :'( Clearly the relentless media coverage should of been of his death.

      --
      "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
    6. Re:oops by JVert · · Score: 1
      Amen



    7. Re:oops by tOaOMiB · · Score: 1

      You don't just steal sigs, but one-liners too.
      Sounds an awful lot like Mitch Hedberg:
      I wrote a script for a guy, and he said he liked it but he thought that I needed to rewrite it. I said, "Fuck that, I'll just make a copy."

    8. Re:oops by JVert · · Score: 1

      It was supposed to be an omage but they way I butchered the punchline just kinda made it sad. And really I did not steal my sig. I just saw it on someone else and made a copy.

      Getting slammed on this though, I'll promise to link any more quotes.

    9. Re:oops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I once wrote an article, showed it to a magazine and they said it was good but I have rewrite it if they were going to print it.

      Fuck that, i'll just use a copy machine.


      Rewriting an article doesn't mean physically duplicating it you dork. They meant you need to redo parts of the article because they didn't like the content. You're pretty dense.

    10. Re:oops by JVert · · Score: 1

      I uhhh.

      wow.

  6. Count me in, but... by AtariAmarok · · Score: 5, Funny

    Count me in, if you make it worth my while: Double the prize every 18 months.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:Count me in, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *That would be interesting*

      How long do you think people would hold out before some dork cashed in the prize?

      How fast do you think it would take to set up
      a collusion?

  7. moore's defunct law? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why would they want it now? isn't moore's law beginning to unravel?

    1. Re:moore's defunct law? by phorm · · Score: 1

      Maybe for bragging rights that they've beat it?

    2. Re:moore's defunct law? by cfalcon · · Score: 1

      Well, even if it does, it's still held true for so many orders of magnitude as to be ridiculous. For a technological observation, it was truly excellent.

    3. Re:moore's defunct law? by dunc78 · · Score: 1

      Of course it had to unravel at some point, but for a good chunk of time, (whether self fulfilling or not), it was pretty accurate.

    4. Re:moore's defunct law? by SCPRedMage · · Score: 1

      Moore was one of Intel's co-founders, as I understand.

      --
      My sig can beat up your sig.
  8. Unfourtunately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks to his evil brother's law (Murphy), everything that could go wrong has, and there are no copies left in existence...

    1. Re:Unfourtunately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
      This is actually an evil plot. Intel has secretly laid plans to purchase every copy of this magazine known to be in existance. Years from now, when Moore's Law breaks down, critics everywhere will proclaim "Moore was a moron! He didn't know at all what he was talking about."

      And Intel, being the snide company, will simply ask: "And what law would you be referring to? Provide us with evidence, please."

      Only no evidence will exist, besides that which is safely locked away in the Intel safe.

      Evil, I say... plain 'ol evil.

    2. Re:Unfourtunately by MindStalker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There are several photocopies and digital copies that are floating around (even someoen ebaying a PDF version for 50 bucks, and he has bidders..??) So all evidence won't be completly destroyed.

    3. Re:Unfourtunately by jallen02 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is a concept I am going to try and explain in simple and eloquent terms that even the most humorless slashdotter can understand. I know, being a crowd of logically minded folk the responses tend to be well thought out and analyzed from every angle to ensure that nothing but the highest quality ideas and posts make it to this site. With that in mind, I do believe the original poster was attempting this odd thing known as 'humor' This is an act where one makes a statement that is very outlandish and silly. It is typically an attempt to make others 'laugh' or 'smile'.

      Well then. I feel better now.

      Jeremy

    4. Re:Unfourtunately by MyLongNickName · · Score: 1

      Was that supposed to be a joke?!?! ;)

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    5. Re:Unfourtunately by fo0bar · · Score: 1

      Thanks to his evil brother's law (Murphy), everything that could go wrong has, and there are no copies left in existence...

      Meanwhile, his cousin, Godwin, left to join the Nazis.

    6. Re:Unfourtunately by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

      Thanks to his evil brother's law (Murphy), everything that could go wrong has, and there are no copies left in existence...

      They combined forces and created a new set of laws:

      1. Shit happens

      2. Shit doubles every 18 months

      3. Can't stop shit

    7. Re:Unfourtunately by MyLongNickName · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nah. We will just claim that some of Moore's friends who outlived him cooked up this scheme to make him look good. PDFs can be easily faked after all.

      In fact a few generations after Moore is dead, a group of people will say the Moore never existed.

      "Simply a group of folks with too much time on their hands concoted the whole thing. You see, the geeks needed a leader to rally around. So they invented Moore (and that Linus guy too... archeolgical digs found he was really a fictional cartoon character created by a Schultz guy). The cult grew on this place called Slashdot (which more research showed to be full of other fictional characters too).

      "Eventually, people bought into this, and it got taken for granted that Moore and Linus really existed. The lack of the original documents is the smoking gun.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    8. Re:Unfourtunately by xenocide2 · · Score: 1

      Pshh, that ebay seller is just a shill for Intel's New Moore's Law. Their plan is already working better than expected, if they've got you tricked...

      --
      I Browse at +4 Flamebait

      Open Source Sysadmin

    9. Re:Unfourtunately by MindStalker · · Score: 1

      Their plan is already working better than expected, if they've got you tricked...

      Hey buddy, I think your should know, I'm really easy to trick. So its not much of a feat!

  9. Sounds Fishy to me... by pentalive · · Score: 0

    10,000 for a magazine?

    Really?

    1) subscribe to all magazines
    2) Rent a warehouse to keep them
    3) ???
    4) Profit!!!!

    BTW how do I know if I got first post???

    1. Re:Sounds Fishy to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      BTW how do I know if I got first post???

      Oh, I know! I know!

      You can rely on a wise-ass, such as myself, to provide you with an answer.

      My answer: Your post wasn't the first. Or, to put it in less nice terms, you failed to make a difference.

    2. Re:Sounds Fishy to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BTW how do I know if I got first post???

      Change your view settings to Threshold = -1, Threaded, Oldest First, and you'd see that you fail it by 12 previous posts! Perhaps you should've asked "BTW how do I know if I got 13th post???".

    3. Re:Sounds Fishy to me... by hdparm · · Score: 1
      BTW how do I know if I got first post???

      Just grep replies, looking for "FAILED". You don't want anything returned.

    4. Re:Sounds Fishy to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you're stupid. 1) borrow a magazine from Moore. 2) keep quiet about it and wait until he forgets. 3) ... 4) profit!!!

    5. Re:Sounds Fishy to me... by sharkey · · Score: 1
      BTW how do I know if I got first post???

      Why, you win the grand prize, of course: CowboyNeal comes over to your house with a bucket of warm butter, wearing only a sombrero.

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
    6. Re:Sounds Fishy to me... by zakezuke · · Score: 5, Interesting

      1) subscribe to all magazines
      2) Rent a warehouse to keep them
      3) ???
      4) Profit!!!!


      There was a man by the name of Mike Myers(sp) in San Jose who worked out a deal with comic book companies to buy their surplus stock from warehouses, have them shipped to him via train, which he then in turn bagged, stuck a 99cent for 3 label on them, and sold them to discount chains such as Walmart. This upset collectors greatly as mint condition previously uncirculated issues of rare comics started to flood the market, all available to those willing to sort through the bargain bins. Eventually he started putting stickers on them denoting them as being surplus rather than collectible, but still maintained a store front which I presume contained some gems found by the employees as they were bagging 3 for 99cent comics. He was making enough money off the 3 for 99cent deal he wasn't worried anything rare or valueable.

      Needless to say your business model is actually a somewhat valid one, but chances are there already is a warehouse filled with crap that you could buy cheaply if you are willing to take the time, or if you prefer sell at walmart for 99cents a bag.

      --
      There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
  10. Who borrowed it? by modemboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if whoever borrowed the copy Moore had knows that they have it? Has he tried calling his friends? ;)

    1. Re:Who borrowed it? by Trejkaz · · Score: 1

      If they know, I imagine they would be happy to sell back Intel's own copy for the reward.

      --
      Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
    2. Re:Who borrowed it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      D'oh. It was Murphy! Everybody knows that... :-)

  11. Moore's Law by bonch · · Score: 0, Troll

    For those interested, here is the original paper. While I think it was a valid observation at the time, it's unfortunately become a driving marketing factor for the industry. While processor speed may be increasing all the time, I question the demand for it. Already, computer sales are leveling off as people realize they don't really need more than a 1Ghz to surf the web, send pictures, and listen to music. Even an Intel research paper suggested Moore's Law was coming to an end based on simple technical limitations.

    I guess I'm just finding it difficult to imagine what I would ever need, say, 32Ghz for, other than gaming--which would be what my ultra-hip game console would be for.

    1. Re:Moore's Law by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Interesting
      For those interested, here is the original paper.

      It's interesting that the cartoon, about half way down, shows Handy Home Computers, about the size of the Mac Mini... I wonder how much the cartoonist would pay for same issue of magazine where his/her illustration prediction has finally come true.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    2. Re:Moore's Law by rekenner · · Score: 1

      Photo editing, video rendering, heavy multi-tasking, as use in server box...

    3. Re:Moore's Law by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...it's unfortunately become a driving marketing factor for the industry...
      ...people realize they don't really need more than a 1Ghz to surf the web, send pictures, and listen to music...
      ...Moore's Law was coming to an end based on simple technical limitations...

      Huh? These three points don't mesh at all. A driving marketing factor -> people don't need that much power -> but it doesn't matter because it's coming to an end.

      If you can't imagine the use for more processing power, then you're not very imaginative.

      Processing power is a remarkable thing - you're talking about 1Ghz as being a pedestrian, adequate level of computing, yet you in a prior life (or rather prior year), back in 2001, were undoubtedly saying "Oh who'd need these crazy 1Ghz processors? A 300Mhz is all anyone would ever need...". Even the luddites somehow pull their requirements forward to be just behind the curve, and I've been hearing the same "who needs more than X" mantra quite seriously since the 386 days. Some people never learn from history though.

    4. Re:Moore's Law by mondoterrifico · · Score: 3, Informative

      Repeat after me:
      Moore's Law has nothing to do with clockspeed.
      Maybe get that tatooed somewhere.

    5. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Ooh, I'd love to have a 32GHz machine... it would make my acoustic modelling here at work that much faster... I occasionally get run times measured in hours on a 3.2GHz P4, and when it's an iterative process, requiring manual tweaks between runs, it gets kinda tedious, not to mention time consuming! And I imagine there are plenty of other scientists / engineers / economists / mathematicians out there who'd appreciate a ten-fold increase in speed, for an affordable price.

      Oh, yeah, and maybe then I'd be able to run Operation: Flashpoint (http://www.flashpoint1985.com/) at maximum detail settings, too! It brings my Athlon 3000XP & 9800pro to its knees when I crank up the detail (especially if you push view distance beyond about 2.5km)

    6. Re:Moore's Law by nbert · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They might be marketing driven, but on the other hand the processing power nowadays really extends computers. Use hardware from '95 and you'll soon realize that you can't listen to mp3s in real time or that you can't encode some video within a week. I guess that we all agree that every modern computer mostly wastes its cycles, but sometimes it's rather handy to have that extra power at your fingertips.

      If they need some stupid "law" to follow it's allright to me.

      There is just one thing that bugs me since years: That every new gerneration of chips consumes more power in order to fulfill Moore's prophecy. But I guess we can only blame the consumers in this case.

    7. Re:Moore's Law by tepples · · Score: 1

      Moore's Law has nothing to do with clockspeed.

      Other than that the same fabrication improvements that allow for smaller features on a chip (which was Moore's actual observation) also allow those features to be clocked faster.

    8. Re:Moore's Law by bonch · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree with you to a point, but in 2001, I was never saying 300mhz was all anyone would need. Applications like Office were still slow and memory-hungry. Booting up Windows was a minute-long affair.

      That has changed. 512MB of RAM and 1Ghz are a very common baseline now. Office runs just fine on it. E-mail clients run just fine. Web browsing has never really been a system-hungry activity. Gamers are a special niche; most computer users have no need now for more than 512MB of RAM and 1Ghz.

      Honestly, can you tell me what they'd need more for if all they're going to do is type documents, send pictures, and surf the web? A friend of mine is still running his 800mhz Powerbook at work with 128MB of RAM with no complaints.

      Look at it this way. Cars used to be really slow, and you had to hand-crank them. They got faster and faster and more practical with each decade. Now you could build a car that could go 500mph, but nobody needs it except race car drivers. The only thing that's really changed with cars is more efficient fuel consumption and various niceties like stereo systems and computer navigation. And yet, I'm still getting along with my car made in 1993. Before that, a car made in 1984. A friend of mine still drives a 1960s pickup truck. He simply doesn't need more than that.

      I think computers have hit that plateau. I also think that's part of the motivation behind rearchitecturing all of Windows Longhorn so that it's all "managed" and requires an extra layer and more hardware resources to run it all, and therefore a new computer purchase much to Intel's delight. In the Apple world, Mac users hang on to their machines longer because they're not living in a Moore's Law-inspired annual PC upgrade cycle that takes your money every year.

      Just my $0.02.

    9. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I imagine you would want it along with a high speed connection to try to render a server unslashdottable ... good luck!

    10. Re:Moore's Law by bonch · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Moore's Law has "nothing" to do with clockspeed?

      Moore's law describes component integration on integrated circuits that are economical to manufacture. This results in, among other things, increased processor speed. Generally speaking, Moore's Law has been adopted as an observation on general computing power.

      This is like the people who desperately argue that "hacker" originally meant something else, and that we should all use "cracker" instead. You and I know what we're all referring to, so the argument is just a nuisance.

    11. Re:Moore's Law by deanoaz · · Score: 1

      What happens is that heavy users demand all possible speed. The chip and motherboard makers compete for that market and build faster pcs. Then it soon becomes more efficient to mass market them than to keep a bunch of old-tech slow PC's in the product stream. So grandma ends up with 3.2 GHZ P4 when she buys a new PC because it's an entry-level machine, even though it's capable of doing all the processing she will ever do on it in about fifteen minutes.

      --
      If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
    12. Re:Moore's Law by Rakishi · · Score: 1

      As someone else said, you simply lack imagination. Research and simulation, as well as companies will need faster processors.

      In addition, gaming is a large segment of the market. What do you think powers your ultra-hip console: magic gnomes? No it's called a cpu, amazing isn't it?

      As for your lack of imagination, consider a rescue dog or any of the other uses of trained dogs. Now imagine trying to teach a mouse to do those things. I doubt you'd get very far by the simple fact that the dog's brain is so much bigger. What you're saying in essence is that "well we have a mouse, why would we ever need anything more."

      I for one want intelligent computers (or at least ones which seem intelligent), robots that can do useful things (real time imagine processing alone kills modern comps), and so on.

    13. Re:Moore's Law by CSMastermind · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "28k Ought to be enough for anybody", Bill Gates.

      Some uses........everything you do now but better. If you think webpages are good now, the music you listen to is high quality, and the images that your computer can render are good I beg to differ. Compared to the rate at which it was orginally recorded, the mp3s ect you use are terrible quality. The web will get alot snazzier with better hardware, and we're still awhile away from photorealistic computer-generated images.

      As for reaching technological limitations, remember that your brain is nothing but a computer, it's just one with hardware so incredibly far past what we can create it's not funny. We're hitting technological limits but only with the current technologies, that's why we keep inventing new things.

    14. Re:Moore's Law by VAXman · · Score: 1

      Moore's Law has nothing to do with clockspeed.

      Are you new to semiconductor physics?

    15. Re:Moore's Law by BHearsum · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think there will always be a big demand for faster processors, but I don't think there is a need for them. I also don't think that the main focus should be on how to make faster things fit in smaller spaces. They seriously need to do something about this heat problem. 70C for a 775 Prescott chip is an O.K. temperature. That's a bad thing. Let's put some money into fixing the problems with the technology.

      To me, making things faster without improving any other aspect of them is like making a car that goes 300km/h but has no additional safety features.

    16. Re:Moore's Law by lheal · · Score: 1
      • I guess I'm just finding it difficult to imagine what I would ever need, say, 32Ghz for, other than gaming--which would be what my ultra-hip game console would be for.
      1. Speech recognition. Not the easy kind, where a user sitting at his laptop controls the mouse cursor, but the hard kind, which listens to a room full of people and nails the transcript in real time.
      2. Robots. Not the easy kind, that do a few simple preprogrammed maneuvers, but the hard kind, which do what you would have told them if you'd thought of it first. Then they take over and hunt us down like rats to use as an energy source, but that's a different story (or two stories).
      3. There is a whole class of problems (computer scientists call them "NP-hard") which essentially take as much computing power as you have. Examples include completing the timetable for a university's class schedule based on which students want which class at which time, etc. (a form of the "Traveling Salesman Problem").
      4. Three-dimensional interfaces. Bitmap images currently use only 2-D; imagine how much more horsepower it will take to manipulate and display 3-D bitmaps. And that's just the bitmaps themselves, not the a whole 3-D space that the user manipulates instead of this little flat thing you're looking at now.
      5. Real-time cartoons. It's currently impractical to generate realistic animation from a script. With enough computing power, you could do all the sprite movement and ray-tracing in something like Display Postscript.
      6. Whatever is next. We'll always find things to do with more processor cycles.
      --
      Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
    17. Re:Moore's Law by ergo98 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      OpFlash is a remarkable game, and like you said it can utilize a level of PC far beyond what is available today. OpFlash is actually a great example of the compromises of inadequate computing power (even putting aside visual requirements) - instead of having a complex, full island war, they had to resort to small little areas of units, with the rest of the islands basically uninhabited. They did this because of the inability to reasonable model the AI of a large number of units. My dream game would be opflash but with a fully populated, fully operating island world where you really could fight the war the way you wanted.

      Another game that demands more power than even exists today is Falcon 4. Release in 1999, it can still bring a modern PC to a crawl.

    18. Re:Moore's Law by cheekyboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      mp2s would play, though I am kicking my self for not taking out the mp2 audio codecs out of VCD in '93 and making an mp2 player for windows (in '94 when beta win95 was out)

      --
      Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
    19. Re:Moore's Law by The+FooMiester · · Score: 2, Funny

      No. If you can't imagine the use for more processing power and why there is the drive that perpetuates Moore's Law, perhaps you've forgotten about Gates's Law.

      --
      The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
    20. Re:Moore's Law by mondoterrifico · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Has clockspeed doubled in the last 18 months? No, not even close.
      Will it continue to ramp up as it has in the past. Probably not.
      Has the number of transistors doubled every 18 months? Yes and it will continue to do so for awhile yet. Moore's Law is valid and will be valid even if there is no clockspeed increase, until we stop doubling transistor counts. You make the mistake in directly tying increases in performance to increase in clockspeed, which is a an oversimplification of what goes on in a cpu.
      As to what the average person calls something I could care less, Moore's Law has always pertained to transistor counts.
      Performance isn't tied down to clockspeed.

    21. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
      "28k Ought to be enough for anybody", Bill Gates
      Arg! You mangled a fictitious quote!

      The Fictitious quote is "640k should be enough for anybody."

      Bill Gates didn't say it.
    22. Re:Moore's Law by xeer0 · · Score: 1


      I guess I'm just finding it difficult to imagine what I would ever need, say, 32Ghz for...

      That's alright, you just need to practice imagining more. You'll get the hang of it after awhile...

      --
      "Hey... don't be mean." --Buckaroo Banzai
    23. Re:Moore's Law by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Huh? These three points don't mesh at all. A driving marketing factor -> people don't need that much power -> but it doesn't matter because it's coming to an end.

      Moore's law has held for roughly 40 years. By the time computers were commonplace among normal people, people had come to expect that they would become cheaper and faster every year. When that became more difficult, the expectations (driving market factor) caused Intel and others to spend an increasing amount of money and effort to maintain the pace, eventually compromising their architecture to achieve percieved performance advantages (p4 high clock rate mess) over actual performance. For the past few years more and more people have noticed that they really have no need for more power for the stuff they want to do.

      Meanwhile, Moore's law is coming to an end (again). That, and Apple hasn't been reported as being on the verge of bankruptcy for at least a year, which is in itself unusual.

      If you can't imagine the use for more processing power, then you're not very imaginative.

      Sure I can, but most people won't be demanding that sort of power for some time. The stuff they have works quite well for a lot of people, TYVM. Thermal design and quiet computers that don't break are likely to be more interesting than the latest whizbang in the near future.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
    24. Re:Moore's Law by ergo98 · · Score: 1

      Yes, exactly - Software "bloats" and gets slower because it adds features and functionality, or quite simply aesthetics and pizazz (which to many users is just as worthwhile. w. It isn't just Windows users that are buying Athlon 64 level machines - Mac users seem to be rushing to the get the G5, and most Linux users have cutting edge machines as well.

    25. Re:Moore's Law by fbartho · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I am very certain that if all I had access to was 1Ghz with 512Mb RAM that I would find some way to make do... And yes I am a gamer, so I'm not gonna go into that side of requirements... but I have a gaming system that I use everyday for routine activities as well, 3Ghz, 2Gb ram, and I can tell you I very much notice the difference.

      As humans we are creative enough to find more ways to use resources than we have resources to use... Thats why the next processor/mem/speed combination is never enough for very long. We find ways to expand until we are constrained by our resources.

      my personal computer is so much better than these (2-3ghz?--system info applet is disabled)p4 512 ram that I actually almost always remote desktop into my own machine, and take the network latency hit because my current computer usage style swamps the systems my university provides.

      Right now I have 11 explorer windows open, 2 e-mail, 4 messenger windows with one tabbed with 10 internal windows 4 firefox windows with no less than 8 pages open in each, 1 dos prompt, 2 ssh windows / filetransfer windows 5 notepadwindows 3 pdfs 2 visual studio windows

      All of this just for my work (well minus some of the messenger windows). Then I also have a few random apps like skype, bittorrent and itunes, copernic desktop search as mentioned on slashdot, daemon tools and mcafee

      Now minus the random crap at the end... all the rest is continuously active... + is my friend 1600x1200 is my pal -- sometime soon I'll be getting another monitor...

      The point is that though office, e-mail and webbrowsing a single page all works perfectly fine on the baseline system, people will only be satisfied with the baseline for so long... people's usage habits change as the become accustomed to a certain technology... I wouldn't have started using this many programs if I had to still do it on a 400mhz as we moved up in systems I kept modifying my usage patterns such that after the initial newness of a system wears off I find myself at the limit of its capabilities...

      I disagree with your thought that computers have hit that plateau. The car analogy is flawed in this case... I think that along with a gradual modification of the populace's general usage habits, more and more applications will be made available that need more resources. --This is happening already. With more resources available, people will think of more brilliant uses for those resources... AI problems and other complex problems will find more and more solutions in the available hardware... but that hardware will have to grow to fully take advantage of it...

      (my $0.02 for yours ;) )

      --
      Gravity Sucks
    26. Re:Moore's Law by ediron2 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Honestly, can you tell me what they'd need more for if all they're going to do is type documents, send pictures, and surf the web? A friend of mine is still running his 800mhz Powerbook at work with 128MB of RAM with no complaints.

      They're not the cutting edge. Hell, I'm not, but I see a need for speed because of: mp3's, video-on-demand, podcasting, voice-recognition, rippin' dvd's, capturing TV (myth, xptv, or whatever), centralized media and multiple remote players, kids doing homemade animation, gaming, backups, making backups of dvds so the 2-year-old doesn't destroy the original, advanced video processing, sound editing, home photography archives...


      Nah, I don't need a gigabit net, firewire, raid or fast computers. This here 1-mhz Altair, wordstar, and 8" floppies will do me just fine. Together with a daisy-wheel, I can do all the writing I want. Really.


      Still to come: videophones, real-time avatars, bespoke animation/video, more on-demand video/audio (including education and games), always-on videoconference ability, trivial offsite backups/redundancy, depth-of-field or other non-video data added to video feeds, any-to-any video feeds (think n-megapixel streaming cameraphone), realtime data analysis on problems that currently are out of reach, even broader upheavals between mainstream-media and blogs/indy musicians, etc.


      Every time you give me more power, I'll find problems worth solving and places to use it. I used to slip a digit in some finite element work and take puzzles from 40-hrs of cpu time to unsolvable. Given a few more years, my old work will be running at 30 frames a second.


      Right now, a pic of the Power5 chip is pinned to my wall: 8 cpu cores, 4 mmus, 144mb cache, one chip/die. Ads say this baby scales up to 16-ways for 128 cpus possible, at 2ghz. I say it's just a good start...

    27. Re:Moore's Law by de+Selby · · Score: 1

      "There is just one thing that bugs me" ...

      I love how faster speeds enable new things, but the one thing that bugs me is how the old software gets upgraded and expands to fill all the new clocks and MBs but buys you minimal actual improvement in return.

      I know, change is impossible... I complain anyway.

    28. Re:Moore's Law by vdub12 · · Score: 1

      Its the whole AMD / Intel thing. If performance was all about MHz then Intels would be faster processors but its common knowledge the AMD's are faster CPU's and they are clocked slower. And about the Hacker thing. I hate it when news people use the word Hacker to talk about someone breaking the law. Its not fair and its not the definition of what they are referring to. Its just politically correct because Cracker has two meanings It can be a person that cracks technology for piracy or some other form of law breaking or it can be a racial term used to call a white person. The fact is if every news source started calling serial killers "Doctors" the medical profession would be up in arms screaming but its not ok for Hackers to scream about the misrepresentation of there hobby.

    29. Re:Moore's Law by mikael · · Score: 1

      Processing power is a remarkable thing - you're talking about 1Ghz as being a pedestrian, adequate level of computing, yet you in a prior life (or rather prior year), back in 2001, were undoubtedly saying "Oh who'd need these crazy 1Ghz processors? A 300Mhz is all anyone would ever need...".


      I remember spending a bundleful of cash on a high-end 450 MHz PC system back in 1998. Everyone at work asked "why on earth do you want a system that fast - only web-server owners need something that fast".

      Three years later, and that system could barely play compressed movies without glitching (realplayer), 3D demos run slow (as compared to new systems). and it takes 4-5 minutes to boot Windows 98.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    30. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the funny part is that most people are wrong in their "need" for more speed.

      I recently built a linux machine for a friend, his first. it was a Sun Ultrasparc pizzabox. Running KDE/Gentoo. He has called me 3 times a week thanking me for this really fast computer that makes his 2.8ghz P4 windows XP machine feel slow.

      He does silly things like mathematical modelling and other research that has lots of software under linux and he is able to run his fortran stuff from years ago on it...
      sometimes 10 year old tech outperforms the new stuff....

    31. Re:Moore's Law by GlassHeart · · Score: 1
      Look at it this way. Cars used to be really slow, and you had to hand-crank them. They got faster and faster and more practical with each decade. Now you could build a car that could go 500mph, but nobody needs it except race car drivers. The only thing that's really changed with cars is more efficient fuel consumption and various niceties like stereo systems and computer navigation.

      Human response times are a key limitation here. All except the most highly trained drivers are not likely to be able to drive a 500 mph car safely. Similarly, jet fighter designers have realized that a limiting factor in the aircraft's aerobatic performance is the human in the cockpit.

      Similar limitations exist in computer technology. We (the general public) are unlikely to need more than 1200 dpi in a video display, because any more is likely indistinguishable. We are unlikely to need animations of more than a certain fps, or mice of more than a certain resolution, or keyboards that require more than ten fingers. However, many of those limits have not yet been reached. There's no real reason why people won't want (ignoring whether they can afford it) their video displays to have laser printer resolutions, and such a video display is going to take some power to drive.

      There are limits that we have hit. For probably 99% of the people, a good computer chess game running on a contemporary PC is as good as unbeatable. However, there are still many tasks that are short of instantaneous. My email program slows down once in a while for some reason. People who need to process video, render graphics, or compile code obviously have to wait for their computers.

      I think computers have hit that plateau.

      Computers have hit a plateau. That doesn't mean the next killer application that would require all that power and more isn't just around the corner.

    32. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have heard the same thing so many times from people who lack vision.

      "Why would I ever need more than a 20 Megabyte Harddrive?" my boss asked in 1990.

    33. Re:Moore's Law by forkazoo · · Score: 1

      Bah, a 486 will play an MP3 in real-time*.

      *It does, however, have to be done in fixed point mono, and it takes the vast majority of the CPU time from what I recall. But, I think that was only a 33 MHz system, the later 486's probably could have run vi and an MP3 player simultaneously!

      Certainly, my 40 MHz SPARC boxes managed to decode an MP3, and they were nearly the same early 90's vintage.

      That said, I do video and 3D rendering. I've just started tinkering with some physics sim. My hobbies love fast hardware. I'll be looking very closely at a dual-socket, dual-core opteron in the very near future. :) 3D rendering is one case where even very old software can run very slowly on modern hardware. Just use higher resolutions and more objects, and may ray recursion, and you can slow down the very latest hardware.

    34. Re:Moore's Law by nacturation · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Look at it this way. Cars used to be really slow, and you had to hand-crank them. They got faster and faster and more practical with each decade. Now you could build a car that could go 500mph, but nobody needs it except race car drivers. The only thing that's really changed with cars is more efficient fuel consumption and various niceties like stereo systems and computer navigation. And yet, I'm still getting along with my car made in 1993. Before that, a car made in 1984. A friend of mine still drives a 1960s pickup truck. He simply doesn't need more than that.

      I think computers have hit that plateau.


      Your analogy is flawed. Computer speeds have to keep up with the increasing requirements of software. As software gets larger and does more, processors need to become faster in order to present the same speed of interface to the user. Cars, on the other hand, don't have changing requirements. The roads they run on today are the same roads as fifty years ago. The only reason we'd *need* faster and more powerful cars would be if the roads kept getting steeper and steeper. Since that's not the case, cars don't change much and you can get by with an older car because it runs on the same road as a modern one.

      So if you're happy running the software you did a decade ago then you don't need a faster computer. But if you want your software to do more and more, you're going to need a faster processor unless you enjoy waiting around longer and longer.

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    35. Re:Moore's Law by StarManta.Mini · · Score: 1

      Honestly, can you tell me what they'd need more for if all they're going to do is type documents, send pictures, and surf the web?

      Honestly, can you tell me that that's all the computer users of 3 years from now will be doing? I can safely say: no, they'll be doing a hell of a lot more. What, exactly? I don't know. Perhaps merely running Longhorn. (Better make that 6 years? ;-) ) But it will take more processing power than we've got now.

      Put another way: several years ago, the average user couldn't get pictures ONto a computer, much less send them over the (barely existent) Web. The question would have been, "Who will ever need more than a 486 to run a word processor and spreadsheet?" because that's all the general population was doing.

      The flaw in the car analogy is that you can only tell when it's hit the plateau well AFTER it hits; you can't tell when the flat part is coming up by looking at the slope.

    36. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess that we all agree that every modern computer mostly wastes its cycles, but sometimes it's rather handy to have that extra power at your fingertips.

      Which is why a certain chipmaker has designed its processors to underclock themselves when those extra cycles aren't needed.

      That every new gerneration of chips consumes more power in order to fulfill Moore's prophecy.

      I thought I was the only one who called it that. =D

    37. Re:Moore's Law by ZosX · · Score: 1

      and it takes 4-5 minutes to boot Windows 98.

      It takes 4-5 minutes to boot Windows 98 on anything. I don't think I've seen it come up faster than 4 minutes on any machine I've ever used it with. Hell, Windows 2000 on average takes 5 minutes to boot on a 1ghz machine with 256 megs of RAM. Getting the desktop to be usable takes a few more minutes. Fortunately, I rarely every reboot. You can't like go get a coffee or something, or use the restroom when your computer is rebooting?

      For what its worth, my linux boxes all stay up for weeks at a time, only ever really rebooting when the power fails which happens from time to time. (Maybe once a month or so for a few seconds)

      Good thing we have journalling file systems these days. I shudder to think about using FAT again.

    38. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're not getting it, he's not "making the mistake," he's doing what we all do and use Moore's Law to refer to processor speed because that's what it's typically used to refer to. And that because the increased transistor complexity of microprocessors has always led to an increase in features and power.

      If you want to get into specifics, transistor numbers haven't doubled every 18 months anyway.

    39. Re:Moore's Law by jerkychew · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I have to disagree a bit. Back when the PII 300 was king, there was still a lot of 'waiting' going on. I'm sure a lot of it may have had to do with memory limits back then (remember, Win95 can't address more than 64MB efficiently), but overall everything was still somewhat slow. We all felt that things could go faster.

      Also, keep in mind that when the high end was 300MHZ, the low end was still in the 486 range. That was one hell of a defecit between the low and the high. Low end machines could barely run the latest office apps.

      Fast forward to now. The low end box out there is roughly a 1GHZ machine with 128-256MB RAM. Let's say 256MB is the low end for argument's sake. The high end box (in a corporate or home environment; we're not talking video rendering here) is in the 3GHZ range with 1GB RAM.

      Now, take your average home user or administrative assistant, and have them speed test each machine for a day. Then ask them which was faster overall. I'd bet that many of them can't tell the difference. Even those that could would most likely tell you that the difference was negligible, once all the apps load into RAM.

      My point is, the low-to-high end performance gap now compared to 2001 is exponentially smaller. We really are reaching the point where a two or three year old computer is more than enough for the majority of computer users out there.

      I think if you could quantify the 'usefulness' of the personal computer, contrast it with the machine's power on paper, and put it on a reverse timeline, you'd see something on par with Moore's Law, only in reverse, and much more accelerated.

      Hell, I think I'll chart it all and release a paper on the subject. I'll call it Jerky's Law, and will someday offer a reward for the original slashdot posting ;-)

    40. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um, clockspeed is by FAR the single most influential factor in processor performance. There are hard limits to the computational ability a clocked circuit can do for a given process.

    41. Re:Moore's Law by crazysim · · Score: 0

      Please give your buddy a memory stick for his Powerbook for his birthday. Thanks! It'll make OS X fly

    42. Re:Moore's Law by cgenman · · Score: 1

      Data mining of personal data for faster searching. Voice recognition. Meaning-aware grammar correction. Adaptive context-sensitive help. Automatic data discover, adaptation, and importation.

      Editing together home movies. Splicing together TV programs. Recording and compressing home video camera feeds in the background while using your computer. 3D spacial reconstruction from video feeds.

      Programs that check for buffer overflows. Personal servers for remote mail / HDD / system access. Intelligent firewalling. Behavioral virus scanners. Crash-proof sandboxing. External system emulation.

      3D computer interfaces driving 3d display devices. Adaptive, intelligent, intent-aware computer interfaces. Actual fast booting.

      I'm not saying that the above will all happen, or that your point is without merit. But we still have a long way to go before we have run out of good uses for computer power.

    43. Re:Moore's Law by mahulth · · Score: 1

      First off, I have to say that I understand your point and I know where it comes from. I do think that commonplace bookkeeping, info-browsing, office work, etc., has reached a plateau. But that still misses the main value of what a computer is for.

      Simply put, it is a means to an end - a tool - and nothing more. A car? Now that does provide transportation, but it also caters to human emotion with the thrill of driving, it's used in sanctioned racing - a sport in itself - and lastly, but not least, it's regulated by the government (speed limits, for one). The computer, on the other hand, does not provide any stimulation beyond the end result (3DMark test-result posting aside), be it the app, the visualization, the created content, or what have you - it's a means to an end.

      Thus, viewing it for what it is, the infinite application of the computer should become apparent. The metaphor of comparing a car's technological development in the last century to a computer's just doesn't seem to be applicable. One is regulated, the other is not. One is human-control limited, the other is machine-technology limited. One caters to human-emotions, the other does not. One provides thrills, the other other only performance. They are two completely different animals.

      It is difficult to not see the computer as a tool of infinite application, if one views it from the abstractness it deserves. The same way a comp sci degree needs application in order to survive, so too must a computer. And luckily, that's where computer scientists and hobbyists refuse to to give up - they seek application constantly. The computer still has a pretty bright future for the consumer and researcher alike. If you need examples, simply read some of the other posts again.

    44. Re:Moore's Law by Trepalium · · Score: 1

      This, perhaps, brings us to another point. There's no "killer app" that people need a faster machine for. Anything beyond 1GHz is pretty much the same for the vast majority of computer users. Until something shows up that everyone's gotta have, there's no driving force.

      --
      I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
    45. Re:Moore's Law by aka1nas · · Score: 1

      From looking up specs on Falcon 4, it looks like it's only DirectX5.0 or so compatible. So you don't have hardware transform and lighting or any of the more modern stuff that GPUs can do now. Of course it will bring a modern computer to it's knees as CPU's are generally sucky at doing all those nice vector-type calculations GPUs are so specialized at. Not to bring down falcon 4, I remember my uncle introducing me to computer games with the falcon series when I was about 10 or so.

    46. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Still to come [...]

      And we still have a *long* way to go to creating the Metaverse. I imagine that will have some impressive hardware requirements.

    47. Re:Moore's Law by jafuser · · Score: 1

      Keep in mind that just because we've reached something of a plateau now doesn't mean a new killer application won't come along tomorrow and blast it to rubble.

      --
      Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
    48. Re:Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You might not need 32 GHz personally, but have you ever wondered if you might benefit from cheap fast cpus even though M$ word runs just fine on your 3 GHz HT machine?
      Science benefits greatly from the development in computation speed. Dual core or not, as long as we get faster cpus for the same money we can not only speed up research but also open the door for better accuracy in the predictions we make.

      So, even though office workers (who probably should work more and surf less ;-)) do not need a 32 GHz super-ultra-multi-hardcore machine on their desktop, they might like the inventions that can be made possible because of these machines.

    49. Re:Moore's Law by ergo98 · · Score: 1

      A good hypothesis, however graphics really weren't the most demanding part of Falcon 4. While they are pretty good looking, vector wise it was relatively simplistic.

      The real demands in Falcon 4 came about because of the intensity with which it modeled the FLOT (where the action happens) - as you approached, at a time when it wasn't visually displaying anything, the game would start to successively slow to a crawl trying to model all of the military characters on the ground. This game actually tried to superficially model a entire war, and the result was very computationally demanding.

    50. Re:Moore's Law by mikael · · Score: 1

      It takes 4-5 minutes to boot Windows 98 on anything. I don't think I've seen it come up faster than 4 minutes on any machine I've ever used it with. Hell, Windows 2000 on average takes 5 minutes to boot on a 1ghz machine with 256 megs of RAM.

      This is my experience with my old laptop (450MHz Pentium III) has worn out its keyboard (no F12, Scroll-Lock, Left Shift or F8), the battery is flat, and the LCD backlight replacement has fried). Getting to the login screen seems to take far longer than it used too, and with so many applications that seem to install a "quick-start" option on the toolbar, that 128 Megs of memory is just frittered away (Explorer takes 27 Megs!, let alone RealPlayer, Quicktime, Adobe Acrobat, ZoneAlarm, VirusGuard, Hacker Eliminator, Mozilla, Network drivers, DSL Cable Model drivers).

      Fortunately, my replacement laptop is dual-boot, so I only have to worry about selecting the right OS for 'Grub' to load; usually Linux, as the command line is much easier to work with, especially for applications development work.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    51. Re:Moore's Law by skubeedooo · · Score: 1
      I think that most of the things you mention require a larger pipe rather than a faster processor. The applications that are processor intensive seem not to be mainstream. Whilst there will still be demand from some industries for faster chips, it will not come from home users, IMO. I think that consumers will be wanting smaller, less power hungry chips for embedded devices and fat connections.

      OTOH, when we start getting monster video screens with huge resolutions, it will need a very hefty GPU to access it.

    52. Re:Moore's Law by ergo98 · · Score: 1

      BTW: When I say "model" in that post, I'm referring to it modelling the AI and actions of each unit, individually controlling the "motives" and actions of a mobile SA launcher, a tank, and so on.

    53. Re:Moore's Law by cortex · · Score: 1

      This reminds me of Gate's Law -- No computer will ever neeed more than 640k of RAM.

    54. Re:Moore's Law by KeithIrwin · · Score: 1

      You fundamentally misunderstand why consumer chip speeds are increasing. Chip speed is not now and never has been driven economically by the home/office desktop market. It likely never will be.

      Chip speed increases are driven economically by the high end market: scientific processing, special effects and other high-end multimedia work, high speed databases, data mining, compilation farms, that sort of thing. Those are the consumers who drive the cycle of increasing speed because those are the consumers who want more speed enough to buy comuters which cost several thousand dollars and lots of them. The high-end gamer and guy who just loves power account for a small fraction of it, but if they go away, it's not going to make much difference. Plus, they probably aren't going away.

      The research and development costs to design a chip and to increase the number of transistors which they can fit on a wafer are driven by this market. If a chip maker does not recover their design costs within the first year on the market, they aren't ever going to. The high-end market is where they make the bulk of the profit.

      What happens after that first year is that normal desktop users then get last year's top of the line chips. Last year's top of the line chips are always going to be significantly cheap than this year's. The silicon wafers on which chips are printed have defects. If there are 4 defects randomly placed on a wafer and there are four chips on that wafer, the odds are that you'll probably get one functioning chip from that wafer. However, as Moore's Law (the number of semiconductors on a wafer will double every 18 months) applies, you start to be able to fit more chips on a wafer using the same chip design. So, 18 months later, you'll have 8 chips on that wafer. You'll then get 4 or 5 useful chips out of it. In another 18 months, you'll have 16 chips, and you'll get 12 or 13 useful ones. And the design costs are already paid for.

      This is why get a slightly older chip is so much cheaper, and always will be. Now, even if the consumer market doesn't really care much about power, it's still the case that they're going to buy a faster chip than a slower one if the cost difference is negligible. I mean, there's pretty much no one who would rather pay $1 for a 1Ghz chip than $2 for a 2Ghz chip. Who's going to not pay the extra dollar when spending several hundred for a system? Also, there's a limit to how much you want to lag your consumer chips behind the high-end market, because if the chips get small enough it gets tough to get all the pins attached (literally). So the consumer chips will never lag behind the high-end ones by much so long as the number of transistors is still increasing, and the number of transistors is going to keep increasing so long as the high-end market is still there (and no final size limit is discovered).

      Keith Irwin

    55. Re:Moore's Law by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      That has changed. 512MB of RAM and 1Ghz are a very common baseline now.

      Here at work, we have flat panel 24 inch monitors, Gigabit Internet2, and I've got a SLOW computer because it only has 512MB of RAM.

      We save a lot of money by using flat panal LCD monitors, so much that we can afford to have extra boxen.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    56. Re:Moore's Law by menem · · Score: 1

      It's not only the processor speed, but also the memory bus speed, and graphics coprocessor speeds. There is a big difference between a computer today and a computer of 3 years ago. Some examples, Google maps, PDF's of scientific papers, any web page that has complex rendering.

    57. Re:Moore's Law by spicydragonz · · Score: 1

      Try a better Algorithm in your application to save time.

    58. Re:Moore's Law by spicydragonz · · Score: 1

      You can do two things to get more dies. Make the dies smaller or increase the wafer size. I don't really think that fabs are going to move from 300mm wafers for the foreseeable future. Then the next step is reducing the line width. http://www.intel.com/technology/silicon/si08041.ht m

  12. One might think by MrAnnoyanceToYou · · Score: 1

    That a technology company would find its money better spent upon building the future than enshrining the most important things of its past.

    But then, I'm bitter, Intel rejected me for a job long ago.

    1. Re:One might think by Cunk · · Score: 1

      This counts as petty cash for Intel.

      --

      I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
    2. Re:One might think by Mahou · · Score: 2, Funny

      more like--a penny for moore's thoughts, sir.

      --
      if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
      ...te?
    3. Re:One might think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't worry, intel pays well but treats their employees like robots to turn the cranks on their machine, and tosses them to the side when they burn out.

    4. Re:One might think by KILNA · · Score: 1

      I know these are getting tired real quick, but I couldn't resist. A penny, doubled every 18 months since 1965 would be $671,088.64. Intel is trying to get a bargain on eBay!

      --
      Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
  13. That explains... by N5 · · Score: 1

    the last few years, they lost Moore's law. But they are going to make up for their slips by sticking all the transistors they should have had into one chip, Montecito, the 1.7 billion transistor chip based on an architecture no one wants. go intel!

    --
    John 3:16 - The easiest way to a BETTER YOU.
  14. I got Gordon's copy by xbytor · · Score: 4, Funny

    But the price just doubled.

  15. it's just words - they want to be free! by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Funny

    of your own, not stolen from a museum or library

    I believe the local vernacular is "shared."

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    1. Re:it's just words - they want to be free! by bozojoe · · Score: 1

      I think you were looking for p2p -not- shared

      --
      lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
  16. LoC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Library of Congress should have it. At least in Austria every publication (magazine, book, ...) is kept in the national library at least twice(!)

  17. I'd save all my old magazines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...but it would cost me $20,000 just for the storage.

    (Anyone remember when Computer Shopper was the size of a phone book? I had a trunk full of those until I realized I didn't need a $4000 '286 anymore.)

  18. Re:I found it on EBAY! by 2*2*53*4127 · · Score: 0

    wow! only 7 minutes after it hit slashdot! my hats off to you, kind scammer!

  19. Bargain ? by shashark · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When ordinary memorabilia auctions (baseballs fetching more than $10k) at much more, $10k would be a pretty small sum to pay for this original copy.

    If it's a unique copy, this could be worth much more. And the price will rise as the time progresses.
    --
    All your magazines are belong to us.

    1. Re:Bargain ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is Intel's contingency plan.

  20. PDF by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Informative
    This item is listed on Ebay: [item]

    It's a Digital Reproduction, PDF. Fooey on that!

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  21. Warning - Buyer Feedback score of zero by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it safe to do business with Intel on Ebay ?

  22. eBay feedback by tuxedobob · · Score: 5, Funny

    They've got a feedback score of 0. I'm not so sure I'd want to sell to them...

    1. Re:eBay feedback by tepples · · Score: 1, Redundant

      They've got a feedback score of 0.

      Everybody is a new eBay user at some time. Or do you prefer to deal only with people who have used eBay since it was limited to the sfBay area?

    2. Re:eBay feedback by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Funny

      They've got a feedback score of 0. I'm not so sure I'd want to sell to them...

      Hmmm. I get a score of 0.00023829376 on my Wintel machine.

  23. Re:I found it on EBAY! by charon_1 · · Score: 0

    "This auction is for a digital copy of the above magazine article" RTFA

  24. Oh no... by jjthe2 · · Score: 3, Funny

    My mom threw out my shoebox filled with old electrical engineering journals last year. And I'm positive I a had a mint-condition copy of the '65 Electronics.

    1. Re:Oh no... by Slashdolt · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, you are 64 years old now... Perhaps it's time you moved out...

  25. Local vernacular by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1, Troll
    "I believe the local vernacular is "shared."" In the local vernacular, the term "shared" is used a lot for file sharing. It is technically, legally, and morally impossible to steal when participating in file sharing, as files end up duplicated and nothing is taken, let alone stolen

    If someone had "shared" Intel's magazine, Intel would still have it, and the other person would be in possession of a perfect copy of the one that Intel had. This is not what happened here.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:Local vernacular by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're a dork.

    2. Re:Local vernacular by Legion303 · · Score: 1

      Congratulations on a successful humorectomy.

    3. Re:Local vernacular by jea6 · · Score: 1

      I would propose that your pseudo-definition of theft relies largely on your implied definition of what constitutes property. Your implied definition of property as something tangible ignores the characteristic of property whereby its worth is a function of its scarcity.

      --

      sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
    4. Re:Local vernacular by x2A · · Score: 1

      What about identity theft?

      -2A

      --
      The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
    5. Re:Local vernacular by N3wsByt3 · · Score: 1

      "I would propose that your pseudo-definition of theft relies largely on your implied definition of what constitutes property."

      As far as I can see, the definition was largely based on the characteristics of theft itself. One *could* use other definitions, ofcourse, but I must say I agree with the parent poster that 'stealing', by definition, always means you steal something *from* someone.

      An example: if I steal a vase from a shop, then the shop has lost it's vase, and it could, in effect, sue me for stealing it. If I *copied* the vase, however, but never take the vase away, then that shop could not sue me for theft, because I didn't steal it. (It could possibly sue me for copy/patent infringement, if it owned the rights, but that's another story).

      So, yes, his definition of 'theft' seems valid.

      --
      --- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
  26. about that "ultra-hip gaming console" of yours.... by Phil+Urich · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I guess I'm just finding it difficult to imagine what I would ever need, say, 32Ghz for, other than gaming--which would be what my ultra-hip game console would be for. Thing is, computers are still advancing at a rate that console have a problem catching up with, due to the fact that every aspect of the hardware has to be released at once and, of course, that they can't come in pieces developed seperately and be interoperable between wildly different hardware (all for obvious reasons due to the nature of consoles; I'm really just imperfectly repeating the obvious).

    So, for truely impressive games media-wise (alas, the more complex they are technically the less time is able to be spent directly on gameplay and etc, but that's another issue) computers have for quite some time been far better, and probably will remain so for quite some time hence. Consoles sometimes nowadays seem nearly comparable, at least in some cases, but then you look at the abysmal resolutions and you realize that they're cheating performance-wise.

    Other than that, I enjoy my rather fast computer (far beyond any console currently available) for many things, for example quick encoding, compression, and reformatting of video and audio (usuallly for entirely legitimate purposes, oddly enough!). As media types are advancing, it's nice to have the hardware to keep up. And to be able to digitally record, edit, and redistribute a movie "filmed" (a misnomer now) by myself, at quality certainly below DVD but superior to VHS and anything concievable at a lower level of technology . . . no, I'm glad that computers are advancing at the pace that they are, and I certainly do find the use.

    That being said . . . about two years ago, I became unable to really use the computer that my family was using, a state of the art machine but it was constantly under use by my other family members. Being still in high school at the time, I certainly needed a computer. Especially for chatting and browsing late at night, and at those times I wouldn't be able to make my way through my unbelievably creaky house all the way to the downstairs anyways. So I dug out an old computer of mine, a Pentium-S 100-mHz if I recall correctly, with a massive 8MB of ram or something equally woeful.

    And you know what? Armed with programs made in the era it was from (which was a bit tricky to find old ones that would interoperate with the state of things nowadays, but it's possible), it performed quite adequately. I even abused it with programs that should have been far beyond it's ken, but it still trotted along fine (until one day I accidentally destroyed the HDD, but that's another story). And so this computer from the mid-ninetys was easily good enough and functional in the modern age.

    In other words . . . I disagree with parent. And then, on further reflection, I completely agree. I hold two conflicting opinions.

    --
    I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
  27. Oh yeah? by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1

    I had a matchbox full of mint-condition, unfolded, bagged and carded issues of "Action Comics #1". My mother found them and threw them out!

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:Oh yeah? by Eccles · · Score: 1

      I had a matchbox full of mint-condition, unfolded, bagged and carded issues of "Action Comics #1"

      A matchbox? I don't think they're worth much to collectors if you've cremated them...

      --
      Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
    2. Re:Oh yeah? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      A matchbox? I don't think they're worth much to collectors if you've cremated them...

      Kinda like how electrical engineering journals wouldn't fit in a shoebox...

  28. new marketing campaign? by d34thm0nk3y · · Score: 1

    Buy Intel, we 0wn Moore's Law!

  29. whoever, not whomever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Subject - who
    Object - whom

    1. Re:whoever, not whomever by powdered+toast+dude · · Score: 0, Offtopic
      Um... in the phrase "for whomever", the latter word is indeed an object -- in fact, one of the prepositional variety.

      We have enough trouble here with pedantry against legitimate grammar fouls... let's try to leave the correct ones alone shall we? :)

      $0.02,
      ptd

      --
      I'm an animal lover -- they're delicious!
    2. Re:whoever, not whomever by Aruthra · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I would have thought that it's a subject of the noun clause (whoever attempts), with the whole clause being the object of the preposition, not just the "whoever"

    3. Re:whoever, not whomever by powdered+toast+dude · · Score: 1
      I would have thought that it's a subject of the noun clause (whoever attempts), with the whole clause being the object of the preposition, not just the "whoever"

      Very nicely conjectured, actually, and while the entirety of the prepositional phrase may constitute a subject equivalence, the prepositional phrase trumps during its context, and within it the rules of prepositional objects apply.

      $0.02,
      ptd

      --
      I'm an animal lover -- they're delicious!
    4. Re:whoever, not whomever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the really cool thing is..I understand what's being said either way.

      *sigh*

  30. Re:why is it by snuf23 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Not too mention the trolling anonymous cowards!

    --
    Sometimes my arms bend back.
  31. He used a typewriter in 1965 by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    "I guess he used a typewriter, it was written in 1965 after all."

    I'm sure he has it somewhere. I read on a right-wing blog that all the fonts appearing in the article were proportional TrueType fonts which were first used in Microsoft Office very recently.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  32. I'm the one who never gave back by indiefusion · · Score: 0

    It's not mine, so I guess I'll keep it then.

  33. MOD PARENT DOWN by the+pickle · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the auction description:

    This auction is for a digital copy of the above magazine article, including the issue cover and credits page. This is a MINT CONDITION copy because it has been fully restored digitally and available in Adobe PDF format. All raster graphics have been restored and saved at 300 dpi for quality reproduction.

    In other words, the person is selling a copyright violation. Methinks eBay would love to know about that.

    p

    1. Re:MOD PARENT DOWN by Frankie70 · · Score: 1


      In other words, the person is selling a copyright violation.


      Isn't the magazine defunct now?
      Who would own the copyright now?

      Anyway, why does somebody auction a digital copy?
      It isn't as if he can only sell it to one person.
      He can make as many copies as he wants & sell it, can't he?

    2. Re:MOD PARENT DOWN by benh57 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Even funnier, the PDF currently bid at $90 is just from intel's site:

      (pdf link)

    3. Re:MOD PARENT DOWN by templest · · Score: 1

      No, the one in the auction has the entire magazine, including covers, etc. The PDF on intel's site is just his article.

      --
      I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
    4. Re:MOD PARENT DOWN by the+pickle · · Score: 1

      Actually, it *does* seem to be a unique scan -- the Intel PDF doesn't have the cover, for instance -- but yeah, either way, it's a giant ripoff, and still illegal.

      p

    5. Re:MOD PARENT DOWN by the+pickle · · Score: 1

      Isn't the magazine defunct now?

      Yes.

      Who would own the copyright now?

      The company that published the magazine at the time still owns the copyright, unless that company either sold those rights or was bought up by another company, in which case the purchaser owns the copyright.

      p

  34. Will they pay for a link to a PDF of the orginal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "bonch" (above) may be in for some cash.

  35. I've got the original!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anonymous Coward's Law: The price doubles for every hour they don't buy it from me!

  36. Remember Will's Law by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2, Funny

    The price of a missing document doubles every two years, until it exceeds the cost of a new car.

    Sadly, the price of a new car goes up by n factorial every year ... and it's mileage decreases by the square of its tonnage (in metric tons).

    All figures are in Euros, of course, since the price of a Dollar decreases to n/(n+x) where n is the number of years GWB is in office and x is the trade deficit in trillions of Euros.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:Remember Will's Law by Slashdolt · · Score: 1

      Cars... Euros... GWB...

      You must be thinking of _Michael_ Moore...

  37. It's not a law! by Jon_Hanson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wish people would stop calling Moore's Law a law. Laws don't have the word "about" in them ("transistor counts double about every 18 months"). It should be called "Moore's Observation" or "Moore's Conjecture."

    In physics, do we say that force is about equal to mass times acceleration?

    1. Re:It's not a law! by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2, Informative

      I wish people would stop calling Moore's Law a law. Laws don't have the word "about" in them ("transistor counts double about every 18 months"). It should be called "Moore's Observation" or "Moore's Conjecture."

      But in economics or biology, Laws are that ambiguous.

      Sometimes, for people like you, we call them Rules, as in the Rule of Three (for biological proteins), but they're also called Laws (as in the Law of Small Numbers).

      It depends on what your definition of the word Law is.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    2. Re:It's not a law! by jd · · Score: 1
      Actually, I believe in physics people say that force is proportional to the product of mass and acceleration. IIRC from physics classes, Newton's Second Law (actually invented by Descartes, incidently) is expressed not only as a proportion, but as a second-order differential.


      Moore's Law is a perfectly valid law. You don't get absolutes in any kind of empirical study. What you get is a scatter-plot, which you can draw some line or curve through. In this case, Moore's Law is that the theoretical line has a gradient such that the number of transistors will exactly double every eighteen months, but that actual observations will be scattered either side of this line.


      It strikes me that Gordon Moore not only knew perfectly well what a "law" was, but also knew enough about Real Life to factor in the statistical variations as well. That's damn impressive, if you ask me - engineers who can do statistics don't exactly grow on trees.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    3. Re:It's not a law! by panaceaa · · Score: 1

      In physics, do we say that force is about equal to mass times acceleration?

      Perhaps you should.

    4. Re:It's not a law! by dillon_rinker · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "In physics, do we say that force is about equal to mass times acceleration?"

      No, but you should.

      Have you personally observed the forces involved in the acceleration of a black hole from 0 to c in less than 10^-23 seconds? No? Then how do you know your "law" holds?

    5. Re:It's not a law! by UserGoogol · · Score: 1

      Well yes actually. F = ma doesn't apply for relativistic speeds. Also, as Wikipedia puts it, not all fields hold the word to the same standard.

      --
      "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
    6. Re:It's not a law! by Sanga · · Score: 2, Informative

      >> In physics, do we say that force is about equal to mass times acceleration?

      Heisenberg said so. He said that about velocity -- velocity is even easier to calculate than accelaration.

    7. Re:It's not a law! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heisenberg said so. He said that about velocity -- velocity is even easier to calculate than accelaration.

      Actually he said that about momentum. And yes, the distinction between velocity and momentum can be quite important.

    8. Re:It's not a law! by mordejai · · Score: 2, Funny
      It depends on what your definition of the word Law is.
      Which in turn depends on what your definition of "is" is.
    9. Re:It's not a law! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, then I guess we should get rid of the ideal gas law (not applicable to real gases), Fourier's law of heat conduction (thermal conductivities are not really constant), Newton's law of cooling (at best a rough approximation), Fick's law of diffusion, Newton's laws of motion (not accurate at relativistic velocities), etc. So called "laws" of physics are all really just approximations, usually based purely on observation, before the underlying mechanisms were discovered. I doubt you could name one physical law that is completely accurate.

      One thing that makes Moore's law different, though is that while we expect Newton's laws to be just as accurate 100 years from now, most people wouldn't venture to guess the same of Moore's law. On the other hand, it has shown to be relatively accurate throughout the last few decades, which is saying quite a lot about such a rapidly developing technology.

    10. Re:It's not a law! by hyfe · · Score: 1
      In physics, do we say that force is about equal to mass times acceleration?

      Not that I'm very good at physics, but we do actually do this don't we?

      Isn't F=MA one of the laws that break down near lightspeed? We don't actually write out the 'about' or 'for all practical purposes', but it is certainly implied AFAIK.
      On that note, given how many laws in physic which are simplified, shortened I don't see much of a problem when a law actually for once acknowledges this.

      As far as I'm concerned, it shouldn't be named a Law either, but that is because it is just an obvservation (albeit a good one9 and isn't 'generally true'.

      --
      "" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
    11. Re:It's not a law! by top_down · · Score: 1

      You can never know that a law holds and direct observation won't help here. The point of calling it a law is not that we know it always holds but that we _claim_ it always holds until proven wrong. A law describes what we claim to be a necessary relationship. If A then _always_ B. If you there is one single occasion where you can proof that A doesn't result in B then the law is invalid. Which usually means you have to modify it a bit to make it valid again, at which point the game can start again.

      --
      Anyone who generalizes about slashdotters is a typical slashdotter.
    12. Re:It's not a law! by aziraphale · · Score: 1

      Who said it was meant to be a law in the sense of a physical law? It is possible tht the word 'law' is used in fields other than physics and in those fields, it maybe means something else...

      Some other examples of eponymous laws that you might want to consider before you yell this about Moore's Law in future:

      Metcalfe's Law: the value of a communication system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system
      Gresham's Law: Bad money drives good money out of circulation
      Godwin's Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one
      Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crud

    13. Re:It's not a law! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cole's Law: Finely shredded cabbage in mayonnaise

    14. Re:It's not a law! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Piss off. It's been called a law for 30 years. Whether it really is a law is irrelevant.

    15. Re:It's not a law! by radu124 · · Score: 1

      Well, how does Murphy's Conjecture sound?

      Also think of this: If you are in the processor business, when you are designing a new CPU that will be on the market in 18 months, you just have to make it twice as powerful as the processors are now. Nobody would even conceive of doing anything less because they know they will be out of business. So from my point of view, this helps me get a better computer each year, but I guess you're not so much a fan of good hardware.

  38. ebay = electronic bay of ...... by frovingslosh · · Score: 1
    Methinks eBay would love to know about that.

    Sure, and I guess you believe that they will do something if you point out shilling in auction bids too....

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:ebay = electronic bay of ...... by the+pickle · · Score: 1

      Gee, that's funny, look what happened... *whistles innocently, his faith in eBay temporarily restored*

      p

  39. Sorry Gordon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I know I said I'd return it back in '66. I just wanted to read that article on wiring. I swear I'll return it soon, but there's this other article that I want to read first...

  40. Funny +5 by Slashdolt · · Score: 1

    Sometime since, he lent out his copy and it has never been returned. Intel would like an original copy of the now defunct magazine and is offering $10,000 for a copy...

    And they say that crime does not pay... ;-)

  41. AMD vs Intel by jwymanm · · Score: 4, Funny

    It'd be funny to see if someone did post an auction for the magazine and AMD and Intel got in a bidding war. Possibly even funnier if IBM came along and took it right out from under both of them.

    1. Re:AMD vs Intel by sharkey · · Score: 1

      Not likely. That issue contains SCO's IP, therefore anyone trying to buy, sell, share or read it is stealing intellectual property that righfully belongs to Darl and Chris.

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
  42. They want to burn it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and cover up the truth!

  43. What we can use 32Ghz for by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    So, if you say that we can use it for speech recognition, robots, travelling salesman problems, 3D interfaces, and real-time cartoons, then ...

    It stands to reason it will be used for:

    A talking robot that projects real-time cartoons to confuse travelling salesmen who block your 3D interfaces.

    Right?

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:What we can use 32Ghz for by lheal · · Score: 1

      hehe.

      --
      Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
    2. Re:What we can use 32Ghz for by tomhudson · · Score: 1
      It stands to reason it will be used for:

      A talking robot that projects real-time cartoons to confuse travelling salesmen who block your 3D interfaces.
      More likely real-time talking spam with a 3d avatar that confuses your spam filters.

      Now imagine a whole bunch of pwned 32ghz PCs running that shit ...

      On the plus side - real-time 3d interactive PR0N!

  44. Pages kind of stuck together by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have a copy but the pages a kind of stuck together...

  45. Isn't it ultimately irrelevant? by humankind · · Score: 1

    Am I the only person who has noticed that while computers claim to get faster, software seems to get slower?

    I recall seeing amazing programs running in 16k of RAM on a 2Mhz Z80. What happened to the brilliant software designers of that era? They're sure not working on today's platforms.

    I tend to believe that the drive for more memory and faster CPUs is primarily the result of the decline of quality software development. Moore's law is only of interest as long as the current crop of developers use hardware as an excuse to be lazy and uncreative.

    If software ingenuity progressed anywhere near the rate of hardware, we would have infallible voice and character recognition, true A.I. and the concept of computer crashes and security problems would be a thing of the past. These goals are absolutely nowhere less practical than the hardware predictions of Moore. So what happened? Monopolization in the software arena wiped out innovation? And isn't this really why we need faster computers? And do we really need faster computers? I don't think so. We need better software.

    1. Re:Isn't it ultimately irrelevant? by angst_ridden_hipster · · Score: 1

      I suspect you're remembering stuff running on TRS-80s or Apple IIs.

      Why is software slower today? Well, it does a lot more. For example, think about how many pixels things move around today. My first computer, a TRS-80, had a monochrome screen resolution of 128x48 (today my phone has a 320x320 screen that shows 64k colors).

      In the old days, if you wrote a game, you did it in hand-opimized assembler for a simple processor. (today, compilers will, in general, out-optimize a human being, because processors are much more complex, with multiple pipelines, etc). It didn't move around much memory, and the complexity was relatively small.
      Consider action games today: they present full screens at 800x600 or higher in full color, refreshing dozens or even hundreds of times a second. Consider the difference in updating 1024 bytes (TRS-80 screen) versus 1440000 bytes (800x600 in 24-bit color). That's a lot more work, no matter how you slice it. Bus speeds are only a few hundred times faster than they were, while the data transfered has gone up by over a thousand times.

      What's more, the game logic ("AI") has improved considerably, the data structures gotten more complex, maps have expanded considerably, etc.

      All that being said, a lot of languages/libraries are fairly cavalier when it comes to memory utilization and such efficiencies. Languages today are, in general, more oriented towards maintainability than performance (although I'm sure many people will disagree).

      --
      Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
      www.fogbound.net
    2. Re:Isn't it ultimately irrelevant? by What+is+a+number · · Score: 2, Funny

      What happened to the brilliant software designers of that era?

      They're busy reading slashdot?

      ---
      I type this every time.

    3. Re:Isn't it ultimately irrelevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      If software ingenuity progressed anywhere near the rate of hardware, we would have infallible voice and character recognition, true A.I. and the concept of computer crashes and security problems would be a thing of the past. These goals are absolutely nowhere less practical than the hardware predictions of Moore. So what happened? Monopolization in the software arena wiped out innovation? And isn't this really why we need faster computers? And do we really need faster computers? I don't think so. We need better software.

      First off, your assertions as to the inevitability of the solution of certain computing problems are rediculous; The very possiblity of 'True AI' is debatable, speech recognition is difficult for most humans (who have vast context databases), much less computers - and there're always the classic example phrases "How do you recognize speech" and "How do you wreck a nice beach?".

      You seem to suggest that a 16k Z80 could perform all these arduous tasks, if only it were fed the right, expertly crafted series of instructions.

      At any rate, the question of "Where have all the clock cycles gone" was answered in a recent slashdot article. Among the reasons for bloated software?
      • Security -- it's not free. You've gotta check for buffer overflow, validate user input, etc. etc.
      • Rapid application development. You can write software that does more, develop it faster, and sell it cheaper today than you could in the days of the TRS80, but it requires layers upon layers of libraries, and in turn more storage and CPU time.
    4. Re:Isn't it ultimately irrelevant? by benna · · Score: 1

      Pfft, the chinese room thought experiment completly misses the point of strong AI. It isn't any individule inside the computer that is supposed to having intentionality. It is the system as a whole. One could say that the room understand chinese.

      --
      "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
    5. Re:Isn't it ultimately irrelevant? by cgenman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I recall seeing amazing programs running in 16k of RAM on a 2Mhz Z80. What happened to the brilliant software designers of that era? They're sure not working on today's platforms.

      Software is designed to do a lot more these days. Team sizes have gone up significantly. Unfortunately, when you have 10 or 100 (or 1000) people working on a piece of software, it can't be made as "tight" as one person trying to squeeze it all onto a machine with 16k of ram. The interface artist wants to include transition animations to give the users a spatial mapping thereby increasing the ease of picking up an application. The Logic coders want the applications to serve the user only with the data that is relevant to them. The backend coders want the application to run on four platforms, supporting any number of hardware and software interfaces. And management wants all of this to be done cheaply and quickly. Alone, any of these things could be optimized well, but integrated into a massive platform which outsizes one person it gets difficult to find and fix all of the bottlenecks. Add to that the additional layers of abstraction that have made coding much, much easier than it once was, and you have a different beast.

      Plus, those 16k of ram applications had terrible interfaces. I remember my father worked on a text editor which shipped with a manual the size of a brick. It had no help functions, no obvious mapping between keys and input, if you gave it input it didn't understand it just didn't do anything... It was like VI, but less user friendly.

      If software ingenuity progressed anywhere near the rate of hardware, we would have infallible voice and character recognition, true A.I. and the concept of computer crashes and security problems would be a thing of the past.

      We have great voice and character recognition (Dragon rocks), but without a lifetime of experiences powering it they fall short of what people expect. "True" A.I. is impossible until we understand how Natural Intelligence functions, a hurdle neuroscientists have yet to overcome. Crashes and bugs are a factor of any engineering project, be it computer programming or building bridges. And as computer power has increased, so has the power afforded to hackers. But it is a lot harder to get a good virus going these days.

      But what do we have? Abstraction layers that let you program a 3D game or a 2D word processor in an afternoon. Inline spelling and grammar correction. Graphical processing suites that can instantly change a photograph into a convincing watercolor. 3D CAD applications that can create functional hardware for extreme circumstances, and rapid prototyping machines to build parts. Atonomous agents which look for RSS feeds of desirable files, and distributed download clients which gather them. Unlimited levels of Undo. 100% fault-tolerant remote communication between any two machines in the world. Machines running virtually inside of other machines. Bayesian spam filtering. Heck, if we're talking 1982 computing, add the concepts of protected memory space, (gasp!) multitasking, and multithreading to that list. And audio / video compression and streaming, or for that matter graphics and pretty much everything that has become standard for the internet. Searches we perform routinely today would have been considered intense data mining operations 20 years ago.

      While it may not have been the direction our forefathers believed (promised?) computing would go, it has still been a very interesting past 20 years.

    6. Re:Isn't it ultimately irrelevant? by humankind · · Score: 1

      Your point justifies my point.

      You claim software is more complex. I agree. I don't necessarily feel that it's any "better" by any stretch of the imagination.

      It was very rare when my TRS-80 crashed. Today Windows users deal with crashes on a daily basis. That's an improvement? That's the result of complexity? That's a bullshit excuse if you ask me.

      Computers have more things to manage which necessitates more processing power? Yes, but are people necessarily any more productive, or is the evolution of technology merely trying to keep pace with the languid state of software and application development?

      There have always been applications that required advanced processing, but when your average computer user has the power of a million ENIACs and is only slightly more productive than he would be without a computer whatsoever, that's sad, and there are a lot of people like that. Yes, a computer allows you to do more, faster, but I contend it's not usually better.

      Technology used to be a tool, now it's a crutch. Yes a crutch can also be considered a tool, but not a very respectable one IMO.

  46. Re:Moore's Law = Kurzweil's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Basically, it has been observed that any evolutionary process...

    Selective perception.

  47. Oh yeah? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But did Kurzweil publish his paper in 1965?

  48. Self Fullfiling prophecy by jakupovic · · Score: 1

    Could it be that Moore's Law is just a self-fullfilling prophecy which we keep perpetrating, or rather the Intel engineers.

    --
    You always point your finger at the bad guy, but what if the bad guy points his finger at you?
  49. Isn't it ultimately irrelevant?-Liquid Drain-O-OH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Am I the only person who has noticed that while computers claim to get faster, software seems to get slower?"

    Well interactive, holographic, taste-fantastic, smellerific, porn does tend to be a drain on one's resources.

  50. Mod -1 Uninformed by koko775 · · Score: 1

    Quick wikiquote check says: You don't know what you're talking about. I suppose that Al Gore invented the Internet too?

    Unless I'm mistaken, we don't need any more decoding power for FLAC or other lossless codecs. That's mainly a bandwidth issue -- investing more into compression algorithms might offer returns, but another radical change in music compression (and how much you can compress) isn't likely to happen.

    Thing is, you can have email, webcam, web pages, and somewhat 3D renderings. The "revolutions" will occur in how these are used (& in fairly specific areas such as gaming) rather than the raw power behind them. Unless holograms become viable for consumer electronics I think it's safe to say that the processor has passed puberty, and for a while will mature more than it will grow.

  51. Moore's Law is Dead, Long Live Moore's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/05/06/writ egreatcode.html

  52. "Moore's Law" a Misnomer by rinkjustice · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some interesting facts I gleened from an article written by Tom R. Halfhill, an analyst for Microprocessor Report.

    Fact #1: More's Law is not a scientific law, but and only an observation describing semiconductors pace of progress.

    Fact #2: Intel cofounder Dr.Gordon E. Moore did not define Moore's law as it is understood today. He didn't even call it a "law" in the original article. Somebody else much later coined the now famous term.

    Fact #3: Moore's law was never about processor clock frequency or other performance issues. Rather, it regards the economic manufacturing of component integration on integrated circuits.

    Fact #4: Moore's law actually stated component integration doubles every 12 months - not 18 - and he actually ammended this prediction to 24 months. 18 months is a number seemingly drawn from a hat.

    Fact #5: Moore's law is extremely inaccurate. Tom Halfhill estimates todays chips would have more than 27 trillion transistors, when in reality Intel's Prescott Pentium sports 169 million transistors.

    1. Re:"Moore's Law" a Misnomer by qbwiz · · Score: 1

      18 months is a number seemingly drawn from a hat.
      It is also, conveniently, halfway between 12 and 24. A compromise, if you will.

      --
      Ewige Blumenkraft.
    2. Re:"Moore's Law" a Misnomer by rinkjustice · · Score: 1

      Very true (and I'm going to boot into Fedora and try out that Risk clone game you wrote ;) Cool stuff.

    3. Re:"Moore's Law" a Misnomer by Frankie70 · · Score: 1


      Some interesting facts I gleened from an article written by Tom R. Halfhill, an analyst for Microprocessor Report.


      I think both you & Halfhill need to get a life.

      Is somebody going to critique Godwin's law next?

    4. Re:"Moore's Law" a Misnomer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is somebody going to critique Godwin's law next?

      Only someone worse than Hitler would do that!

  53. Found one! by elgatozorbas · · Score: 1
    Intel would like an original copy of the now defunct magazine and is offering $10,000 for a copy...

    I bet Max Ary has one!

    ...of your own, not stolen from a museum or library.

    d'OH. Sorry, didn't read the additional clauses yet...

  54. in accordance to Moore's law by krunk4ever · · Score: 2, Funny

    i'd think it'd go in the opposite direction in accordance to Moore's law. the longer you keep it, the more worth it has (as with most of these antique type of things).

    so now it's $10,000. next year it'll be $20,000, then $40,000 and so on.

  55. Let's think this through... by RobertKozak · · Score: 5, Funny


    Let's say that I did have a copy of this magazine. I would expect to be paid for it based on Moore's Law. Its only fitting. So with that in mind, let's see how much it woiuld be:

    Magazine came out 40 years ago. Moore's Law says it doubles every 18 months. That's 26.6 doublings. Let's take 26 to make it easy. So thats 2^26 of the price.

    I could not find what the cover price was but let's be fair and say $0.10 (10 cents). So thats 2^26 * 10 / 100 = $6,710,886.40. Thats a good deal more than the $10,000.00 they are offering.

    I think its a rip-off.

    BTW: here is a link to the original article in PDF format.

    --
    Bet this .sig looks familiar.
  56. The first copy is 10K, after that no one cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Once that one copy that Intel wants to buy is bought and paid for and delivered then there won't be anyone else who wants this mag for more than just a few dollars. Seriously you don't understand the market for collectables. Nothing is worth anything unless their is a willing buyer or the perception that there is a willing buyer. Thus after Intel pays for the one that they want, their will be no one else who wants this specific issue for that price.

    Every issue is not magically made to be that price because one impatient stupid person pays too much for something.

  57. I love it... by AtariAmarok · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Don't you love the smell of self-immolating grammer nazis in the morning?

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  58. Sounds kinda strange to me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    They have a copy of the paper, but they're willing to pay 10 grand for an original hard copy. Why? Do they think that the surviving digital copies have been altered? My guess is that it's some kind of weird publicity stunt. In a week they'll say, "we gave John Doe $10,000 for helping us prove that our processors beat Moore's Law." Reminds me of nVidia bragging about the same thing when they released one of their GeForce GPUs. BTW, if anyone can find a copy of the original press release, I'll gladly pay them $10,000. ;)

  59. Since Pentium, it is actually 17.99972813 months by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    nuf sed

  60. Disclaimer by Frankie70 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is in the disclaimers section
    Intel employees & their families ineligible.

    Why? Why won't they buy from Intel employees?
    Or is that all Intel employees have to pledge their first borns & magazine collections when they join the company?

    1. Re:Disclaimer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pepsi employees are ineligible for their contests, etc. I would imagine this is so the public doesn't give Intel shit for an empoyee winning the... OK, bad example!

    2. Re:Disclaimer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the magazine went missing from Intel, who is likely to have taken it? So why would Intel pay $10,000 to an employee who stole the copy to resell to Intel?

  61. And to think... by slapout · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...my girlfriend wants me to throw out my old computer magazines. I got to show her this. :-)

    --
    Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
    1. Re:And to think... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have a girlfriend? What the hell are you doing on /. then?

  62. Mods: please pay attention by p3d0 · · Score: 1
    Some numbnut says this every fucking time Moore's Law is mentioned. It wasn't Interesting nor Insightful the last dozen times, and it's not this time either.

    In particular, note the definition given here at the bottom: 5. A generalization based on consistent experience or results.

    --
    Patrick Doyle
    I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
  63. Obvious source? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can't Intel just buy a cheap copy from AMD?

  64. Re:Moore's Law = Kurzweil's Law by Belial6 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, but that doesn't take into account the brick wall that is "IP" law, which is just now starting to prevent most of the previous works from being built upon.

  65. Careful with that Kool Aid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Kurzweil, while a heck of an inventor when he was younger, is now IMO not far removed from a nut case. I really hope he hasn't actually made the case that Moore's Law is really just a subset of his own so-vague-they-can't-be-verified assertions.

    Anyway, check back in 25 years and we'll see how that "singularity" is doing.

  66. Completely offtopic... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm stuck on the exalted plane. Damn you moving spinner!

    1. Re:Completely offtopic... by tuxedobob · · Score: 1

      Stop trying so hard.

      No, seriously. The game is easier when you don't try as much.

  67. actually... by 0x20 · · Score: 4, Informative

    In the 1960s, most large computers were used on a timeshare basis. In many instances, if you wanted calculations done, you bought blocks of "computer time" by the minute. Thus, twice the computing power would = half the cost. Therefore something that cost $10000 one year should only cost $5000 the next year (when the computer was twice as fast), etc.

    1. Re:actually... by lcsjk · · Score: 1

      If you apply Moore's law to the computing power that we could buy in 1972 at 10 minutes for $2000 for running SPICE, and since my desktop AMD3000 is as powerful as that machine was then, and since it only takes one minute to run that program instead of 10, and my total one time cost for the computer was only $1100, can you show that the law is either correct or not?

    2. Re:actually... by 0x20 · · Score: 1

      can you show that the law is either correct or not?

      I dunno... will I get a prize?

    3. Re:actually... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The law had nothing to do with power, it was simply an observation of the increasing complexity.

  68. I'll trade it....Not for cash. by Stonent1 · · Score: 1

    For an 8 way opteron system, fully loaded. The catch is, Intel has to purchase the opterons for me.

  69. Hello, Plagiarist by Saeger · · Score: 5, Informative
    Thanks for copy/pasting my exact +5 post from a few days ago w/o attribution.

    The funny thing is that I'd be midly angry if it were any other post you copied, but Singularity awareness must increase by any means...

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
    1. Re:Hello, Plagiarist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not going to mod the original post down, since it actually is useful to the discussion, but modding yours up, because you deserve credit.

      --Ieshan

    2. Re:Hello, Plagiarist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oddly enough, copying the links is not as easy as copy / paste. He had to do at least a little work to avoid the little work of rewording what you wrote.

    3. Re:Hello, Plagiarist by HishamMuhammad · · Score: 0, Troll

      No, he probably just hit on "View Page Source" and copied from there. Still there's a tiny amount of work there, but it's still a low attitude by any standards. Well, guess I finally have a use for the Foe feature of Slashdot.

    4. Re:Hello, Plagiarist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, yes, we will all be enlightened gods by 2012. Old news.

  70. Wonder Why... by djinn2020 · · Score: 4, Funny
    Why would Intel want a copy of this law? New ad campaign?

    Moore stated that computing power would double every 18 months... his estimations were a tad slow -- introducing the new P6!!! released just 5 months after the P5 and over twice as fast *at over 4 times the cost*

    Buy it now at Dell.com!

    --
    Mens et Manus
  71. n/t, but incorrect. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The verb is "attempts". The subject of the verb is "whoever". No additional parsing is required to determine the correct choice.

    The foul is legitimate, the decision is upheld and your $0.02 is forfeited.

    Next case...

  72. Yes, a publicity stunt, and it's already working. by antispam_ben · · Score: 1

    It's in the news (Neal Boortz mentioned it this morning), it's on the used bookselling list I'm on, and now everybody knows about it. So who wrote [the public is being asked] the article making this great prediction that came true? Why, [the public responds] some guy, the president of Intel or some such. That's not [public still thinking] Bill Gates, is it? I know he has a LOT more than ten thousand dollars.

    --
    Tag lost or not installed.
  73. Hitler! Hitler! Let's end this damn thread! by antispam_ben · · Score: 1

    ... yet another misappropriation of a misunderestimated law. Godwin would be spinning in his grave, were he no longer alive!

    --
    Tag lost or not installed.
  74. Ahem... by antispam_ben · · Score: 1

    Quoting out of order:

    Moore's Law is a perfectly valid law. You don't get absolutes in any kind of empirical study. What you get is a scatter-plot, which you can draw some line or curve through. In this case, Moore's Law is that the theoretical line has a gradient such that the number of transistors will exactly double every eighteen months, but that actual observations will be scattered either side of this line.

    There are several meanings of the word law, and this is one of them. There are also the laws passed, so often enforced, and so rarely repealed by governments.

    Then there are laws such as Newton's, which are considered Laws of Nature:

    Actually, I believe in physics people say that force is proportional to the product of mass and acceleration.

    If you use the appropriate units, The Force IS the product of...

    --
    Tag lost or not installed.
  75. "Property of University" by elenaran · · Score: 2, Funny

    Guess it's high time I paid my first visit to the school's library...

  76. They're still there... by Kjella · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I recall seeing amazing programs running in 16k of RAM on a 2Mhz Z80. What happened to the brilliant software designers of that era? They're sure not working on today's platforms. ...embedded platforms, and the system/toolkit libraries we all love and use. Some of that stuff is still assembly optimized. As for RAM, in games graphics, music and game state take far more than any "code" does. In business apps, the data sets do. Nobody cares if you're using 16kB or 1600KB if you're working on 10000kB of data.

    As for CPU speed, most people have far more than they need. But compare the cost of a CPU to developer time - it simply doesn't work out. It is much much cheaper to allow developers to use large abstractions and system libraries (which eventually get very clean and bugfree), than it is to use slower CPUs. Again, except in embedded markets, and even that's changing.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    1. Re:They're still there... by jimwelch · · Score: 1

      I've still doing this after 30 years.
      * "Z80"
      * 0.5MB flash
      * 0.5MB ram
      * battery/solar cell
      * two lines of 40 chars "GUI", 40 keypad (optional)
      * non-licensed radio (or cellphone/Sat/modem...)
      * Shipped over 140,000 in ten years.
      * considered the "top of the line" for our application: Natural Gas flow measurement.

      --
      Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
  77. That depends by avoisin · · Score: 1

    That depends on what grade you got in physics ...

  78. Management Fruitcake!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    are you serious... someone needs to fire the management fruitcake that is just throwing $10,000 to get a copy of a magazine.

    It's a nice idea to get the magazine, but a $10,000 reward is still real money. I'm sure half the guys in his department that haven't seen decent raises since pre-2000 is real happy he's pissing away that budget instead of sharing it within.

    1. Re:Management Fruitcake!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but what about the gulfstreams, the sports teams, the oddball sponsored "research"?

      Pay raises have never been contingent on availability of money.

  79. A few good links to stop Moores Law by tod_miller · · Score: 1

    check out This journal

    Moores law is nothing but a commentary on the trend that was shown clearly in writing. The fact that we could 'rely' to some extent on the improvements in technology (in hindsight I guess the process that got us up to 4ghz is taken for granted) is fine, but calling this a 'law' rather than simple for accuracy: an observation, gives it more credit than it is due, and takes some of the credit from those clever guys who actually got us to 4ghz.

    Read the link, click the links, it even takes the piss out of M$

    --
    #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
  80. Bingo by Moraelin · · Score: 1

    You know, reading your post just made my day.

    That's exactly the thing that I was wondering about while reading all the "whoa, it held true for so long so it must be a law" or "whoa, he must have carefully plotted a curve through a large sample of data. Engineers who understand statistics don't grow on trees." bullshit posts. Was starting to lose faith in humanity already.

    I mean, gee, it's like me postulating "Moraelin upgrades his computer at least once a year" as "Moraelin's Law". Self-fulfilling prophecy, here we come.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  81. Actually, Moore never said 18 months by Moraelin · · Score: 0

    Initially he said 12 months. So then it would be 2^40. At your 10 cents initial cost, it's 1.0995*10^11, or about 101,000,000,000 dollars.

    But wait, he revised it later to say 24 months. So it's 2^20 = 1048576. At a 10 cents initial cost, it's 104,857.60$.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  82. just an experiment by x2A · · Score: 1

    moore's law was just an experiment in meme propogation. There's actually no such thing as a "transistor". We're all just running placebo processors, made out of curry (which is why they get hot).

    -2A

    --
    The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
  83. processor vs clock speed by x2A · · Score: 1

    before everyone gets in a huff, plz note the different terms other posters are using: processor speed vs clock speed. You can increase processor speed without increasing clockspeed (multiple execution units, larger cache, etc).

    Why would you add a load of transistors that don't increase processor speed? (okay, there's register bit depth, but that can be emulated, adding transistors to do it in hardware makes it *faster*).

    So yes Moore's law does directly relate to processor speed, no Moore's law does not directly relate to clock speed, processor speed is not directly related to clock speed, pay attention. God!!!

    -2A

    --
    The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
  84. Wrong sign on your exponent... by abb3w · · Score: 1

    When expressing constant items relative to price, Moore's law says prices fall with time, remember? So your reward should be 2^-26 of the original cover price. But if you ask, Intel will probably round up to a penny to make it easier for their accounting department.

    --
    //Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
  85. Can I have "Chuck's Law"? by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 1

    It's the observation that for every article about "Moore's Law" some asshole will be oblivious to the fact that language is rarely so precise and insist that there's a singular, precise definition of the word "law" that makes it's usage inappropriate in "Moore's Law".

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
  86. in my hands by elenaran · · Score: 1

    I sit here with a copy of this issue in my hands... Damnable library journal-binding! $10,000 almost in my grasp

  87. Bad uses of 32Ghz by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    A talking robot that projects real-time cartoons to confuse travelling salesmen who block your 3D interfaces.

    More likely real-time talking spam with a 3d avatar that confuses your spam filters.

    Now imagine a whole bunch of pwned 32ghz PCs running that shit ...


    Unfortunately, you're probably right, but my guess is the kids will see real-time talking cartoon/anime spam with a 3D cosplay avatar that confuses your spam filters and signs you up for AOL to "protect you against spam".

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  88. Not ignored.... by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    "Your implied definition of property as something tangible ignores the characteristic of property whereby its worth is a function of its scarcity."

    You are going off on a far tangent. In this, you might have the change known as "diminished value", which still has nothing at all to do with theft. Since when did "theft" have to do with how scarce something was? Never.

    If you pee in the punchbowl, you have diminished its value. You have not stolen it. The only pseudo-definitions are yours with have nothing to do with stealing.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  89. Corrected law ~ 1/(n+x) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If it was n/(n+x) then the value of the dollar would increase with n which is not true (the asymptotic value would be one 1 for n tending to infinity)

    Besides,the formula is dimensionally incorrect, a couple of constants should be introduced in order to make it dimensionally consistent.