Then what do you want us to do, go back to being isolationists?
Sorry, bud, but that is not going to work. With the explosive growth in both commnications and transportation technology during the 19th and 20th Centuries, goods can be delivered between any shipping port within three weeks by boat and 24 hours by airplane. Information can be spread around the world in mere seconds, thanks to our modern telecommunications networks.
Given the rapid movement of people, goods, and information, being isolationist is just about impossible to do. Heck, thanks to satellite phones we can even broadcast video from the even the most remote locations.
Globalization has been around a long time
on
Globalization
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· Score: 2
Jon,
I think you kind of misjudge that globalization has been a recent trend.
I say that is completely wrong. After all, during the zenith of the Roman Empire in the 1st and 2nd Centuries AD the entire Mediterranean Sea was under Roman control, so Roman culture homogenized the culture of that part of the world. The same happened when Islam spread starting the 7th Century AD, which by 1000 AD created an fairly homogeneous Moslem culture that went from southern Spain to the west, down the east coast of Africa to the south, and much of central Asia to the east. And Arab merchants based in the Arabian Peninsula in those days became extremely wealthy, just like the multinational corporations of today.
In short, the globalization of today is just repeating what happened 1000 to 2000 years ago, only we have faster means of goods transport.
However, the MiG-25 was mostly stainless steel, NOT titanium. Sure, it was very heat resistant, but it was also quite heavy on a per kilogram basis in regards to that plane. And while the Mig-25 could dash to Mach 3 it's top cruise speed was more like Mach 2.5 due to limits on the huge Tumansky-designed engines.
I believe the Russians mounted a scramjet model on top of a former SS-20 missile to see how it works at high speed. I'm not sure if they got decent research results, though.
By the way, those supercavitation torpedoes you mentioned are a bit dangerous to use--I've read that one of those torpedoes exploded in the torpedo launching tube of the Kursk, which caused its unfortunate sinking.
I read with interest the article on system cooling fans.
I really think the type of cooling you need really depends on the architecture of the entire system case itself. For one thing, if you want lots of hot air being pulled out of the system case through the power supply, get something akin to the Enermax units, which sport two fans on the power supply itself.
Also, those little expansion slot exhaust fans--despite what some people think about them,:-) are actually quite useful, exhausting air out of the lower part of the system case. Expansion slot fans work especially well installed close to today's high-end AGP graphics cards, since newer cards using nVidia's GeForce3 and ATI's Radeon chipsets generate considerable amounts of heat even with small cooling fans installed on the graphics card itself.
I think that Matsushita's announcement of the 100 GB 5.25" optical disk designed close to the Sony-Phillips proposal could mean an agreement by this super-capacity DVD could come may be the fall of 2002.
Remember, today's DiVX format compression can store something like a 2-hour movie with near-DVD quality on a single 650 MB CD-R disc. Imagine applying next-generation video compression (now under development by the MPEG standards groups) to the new disc format; we could see 1080i HDTV movies that won't require 50 GB's of storage space per disc side--imagine storing the entire Godfather] trilogy in 1080i wide screen format on a single-sided disc including all the extras.
I can also guess that a recordable version of this new disk could store around 85 GB in a disk format similar to the old optical disk formats from the early 1990's. With today's improved optical disk recording technologies and the availability of better I/O interfaces such as SCSI Ultra-Wide 160/320 and Fibre Channel, imagine a whole bank of these new optical disk drives backing up large HD arrays in a small fraction of the time that tape backup systems require.
I wonder will the Linux kernel writers seriously look at incorporating support for the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) for the 2.5 kernel test release.
This could be very significant since ACPI allows for highly-automated system configuration, which is necessary if you want seamless hot-docking of external devices and ease of system upgrades.
The big question is how close are the new Australian launch sites are to the Equator?
If they're pretty close the same rocket used on the Sea Launch system can be used for these Australian sites.
The biggest advantage in regards to Sea Launch is the fact they can be literally at the Equator, which means maximum assistance of the Earth's rotation. That's why a satellite that would have required a bigger rocket such as the Atlas III when launched from Cape Canaveral only needs the smaller Russian Zenit rocket when launched from the Sea Launch platform.
I am not surprised that Linux is not exactly doing well with desktop installations.
The big problem is that Linux still doesn't have the completely seamless support for hot-docked USB and IEEE-1394 devices, which can cause installation problems for many novice users.
Despite what everyone things about Windows 9x/ME/2000 here, you have to admit that having single unified UI and API makes for a lot easier programming when it comes to writing applications. Besides the issue of seamless automatic configuration, Linux has to contend with two different GUI environments, KDE and GNOME. The question is what company is willing to spend the money to write applications for both GUI's?
And with the arrival of Windows XP Home Edition this fall, many of the issues Linux users have been complaining about are being addressed. With tightened compatibility requirements for full WinXP compatibility certification, every program running in its own distinct memory space, and incorporation of firewall capability, Windows XP will have far highly levels of stability than now and customers will complain far less about system crashes caused by memory leaks.
Linux, in my opinion, is already perfect for the server environment, where kernel-level stability is very important and interface issues are not so important. With the 2.4.3 kernel, Linux now can do the extremely high-volume applications that was once the province of Solaris and OpenBSD boxes, as the recent success of the TPC benchmarks with the 16-CPU SGI server machine shows.
But there is hope for Linux, though. The Linux Standard Base (LSB) project will likely become a central clearinghouse for all kernel and API issues, so everyone will more or less be on the same page when it comes to writing Linux applications. This will dramatically simplify programming issues, and eventually will allow Linux to evolve to the point it can have the same ease of automatic configuration that Windows 9x/ME/2000 now enjoys (for the most part).
I think Microsoft is waiting for when will the various domain registrars (e.g., Network Solutions) start supporting IPv6 addresses on a large scale.
Once that happens, don't be surprised that Microsoft will offer an update for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP that will change the network support to include IPv6 addresses.
Given that IBM is a big seller of hard drives with extremely fast interfaces, I'm sure the first drives that use this new coating material technology on the drive platters will be 15,000 RPM drives with LVD Ultra160 SCSI or FibreChannel interfaces and 4-8 MB drive memory buffers. It'll be quite a while before we see this on ATA-100 IDE drives, though.
I think at the rate things are going, we might just see this happen: Sony will buy out both Palm and Handspring, merge Palm and Handspring, and the new entity becomes a Sony subsidiary. Future PDA's will say Palm by Sony marked on the case.
Its just that the hardware speed and ability catches up with their software faster than they can screw it up.
That I definitely agree upon. When Windows 98 first came out in May 1998, ATX-form factor machines using Slot 1 CPU's that ran Windows 98 decently fast were still expensive and relatively rare. But when hardware price dropped rapidly since then, today you can build from scratch a very nice machine that can run even Windows 2000 Professional decently fast for under US$500.
Secondly, remember computer-animated movies take a LONG to render. I think Shrek required over a year of computer rendering time with multiple computers to get 70+ minutes of computer animation at 24 frames per second. After all, movies like the two Toy Story movies, Antz, and A Bug's Life aren't much longer than Shrek is now.
Besides, two-hour plus live action movies ain't cheap nowadays, either. For a epic or action film, the budget can easily run over US$100 million.
As a brother of one of the employees at Pacific Data Images (who did the computer animation work for Shrek), I can say that pretty much the entire movie's computer animation was rendered on relatively inexpensive Linux boxes.
It uses a highly-modified version of Red Hat Linux to pull this off; the results of course is quite spectular, and also well-received by the mass media (most of whom said Shrek will have a boffo b.o., to use the Variety lingo).
Having tried both Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 controllers, I think the DC controller feels too unwieldly (no thanks to having to fit both Rumble Pack and the VMU unit) and the PS2 controller--while otherwise excellent--feels a bit too small to be useful.
You forget that Microsoft's excellent Usability Lab was heavily used to Xbox development, so as a result you get a controller that comfortably fits into your hand without feeling oversized like the DC controller.
And zero PS2 consoles available to play them on...
You are so correct.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I've checked CompUSA, Fry's Electronics, Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, Toys 'R Us, and KB Toys--NONE of them have PlayStation 2 machines stocked on the floor. The only way you can get one is to order it online.:-(
If both Microsoft and Nintendo can have 800,000-1,000,000 units of their respective game consoles for sale within two weeks after their November launch dates, this could hit Sony especially hard, unless Sony is willing to sacrifice the Japanese and European markets and do nothing but build PS2's for the US market and have 3-4 million PS2's available for sale by November 1, 2001 in order to blunt the introduction of GameCube and Xbox.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, PlayStation 2's are still sadly VERY hard to find in a retail store. I've checked CompUSA, Fry's Electronics, Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, KB Toys, and several other places--I've never seen any PS2's on display for sale even now. At least for me, the only way I can get one is to order it online.:-(
My guess is that Microsoft may have as many as 1 million consoles available for sale within a few weeks of its November 8, 2001 launch date. This will avoid the shortages that has plagued Sony since the PS2 shipped in the first place.
Yes, but what has been publicly shown so far in regards to Xbox is absolutely stunning, to say the least.
I think what Microsoft has in its favor is the fact that if you can write Windows 2000 programs and write for the DirectX 8.0x API, you're already most of the way there to writing an Xbox game. And Microsoft has sent out several thousand Xbox development kits to just about every major game manufacturer in the world, including most of the important game manufacturers in Japan.
One thing that Microsoft did with Xbox was to use its excellent Usability Lab to come up with an excellent design for its machine. MS even bothered to develop two different game controllers, one for larger hands in the Western world and one for smaller hands in Asia.
Microsoft also has the advantage that both EA Sports and Sega are going to release Xbox games. This will mean competition for sports games and that means we'll have top-notch quality sports games on Xbox.
I think it may not be a success on the PlayStation 2 platform. The reason is simple: PS2 doesn't currently support higher-resolution TV's of both CRT and projection variety, which means not much improvement over WebTV now.
One far-reaching idea about Xbox was that they designed the system to support even 1080i HDTV monitors and projection TV's. This will make surfing the Internet a far more pleasant experience than on PS2.
According to the article, AOL said this is not an exclusive deal with Sony; that means we may see AOL on Xbox by this time next year.
There's also one more thing about Xbox: it has quite a bit more computing power than PlayStation 2. And Xbox will support higher-resolution projection TV's, including HDTV, which means surfing AOL on Xbox could be a more pleasant experience than on PS2.
Remember AOL has said it may offer AOL on other Net-compatible gaming consoles in the future. That means we may also see AOL on Xbox by this time next year.
I hate to say this, but the Harry Potter books are not aimed at the same audience as Lord of the Rings.
Joanne K. Rowling's works are aimed primarily at readers around 9 to 18 years old; J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece is aimed more at an audience about 16-25 years old. I think many younger readers will have some difficulties grasping some of the mythos behind Lord of the Rings.
It is only coincidence that production of the Fellowship of the Ring and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in movie form went on at the same time.
One thing the article mentioned was the concept that houses could be assembled from pre-fabricated whole rooms.
In fact, this has become reality in a number of countries. In Japan, this has been the norm for a couple of decades; we're starting to see this becoming widespread even here in the USA. Imagine the idea of a custom house where you mix and match pre-fabricated rooms to create the house--that will be the future of homebuilding. This concept could be applied to condominium and townhouse design also.
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Then what do you want us to do, go back to being isolationists?
Sorry, bud, but that is not going to work. With the explosive growth in both commnications and transportation technology during the 19th and 20th Centuries, goods can be delivered between any shipping port within three weeks by boat and 24 hours by airplane. Information can be spread around the world in mere seconds, thanks to our modern telecommunications networks.
Given the rapid movement of people, goods, and information, being isolationist is just about impossible to do. Heck, thanks to satellite phones we can even broadcast video from the even the most remote locations.
Jon,
I think you kind of misjudge that globalization has been a recent trend.
I say that is completely wrong. After all, during the zenith of the Roman Empire in the 1st and 2nd Centuries AD the entire Mediterranean Sea was under Roman control, so Roman culture homogenized the culture of that part of the world. The same happened when Islam spread starting the 7th Century AD, which by 1000 AD created an fairly homogeneous Moslem culture that went from southern Spain to the west, down the east coast of Africa to the south, and much of central Asia to the east. And Arab merchants based in the Arabian Peninsula in those days became extremely wealthy, just like the multinational corporations of today.
In short, the globalization of today is just repeating what happened 1000 to 2000 years ago, only we have faster means of goods transport.
However, the MiG-25 was mostly stainless steel, NOT titanium. Sure, it was very heat resistant, but it was also quite heavy on a per kilogram basis in regards to that plane. And while the Mig-25 could dash to Mach 3 it's top cruise speed was more like Mach 2.5 due to limits on the huge Tumansky-designed engines.
I believe the Russians mounted a scramjet model on top of a former SS-20 missile to see how it works at high speed. I'm not sure if they got decent research results, though.
By the way, those supercavitation torpedoes you mentioned are a bit dangerous to use--I've read that one of those torpedoes exploded in the torpedo launching tube of the Kursk, which caused its unfortunate sinking.
I read with interest the article on system cooling fans.
:-) are actually quite useful, exhausting air out of the lower part of the system case. Expansion slot fans work especially well installed close to today's high-end AGP graphics cards, since newer cards using nVidia's GeForce3 and ATI's Radeon chipsets generate considerable amounts of heat even with small cooling fans installed on the graphics card itself.
I really think the type of cooling you need really depends on the architecture of the entire system case itself. For one thing, if you want lots of hot air being pulled out of the system case through the power supply, get something akin to the Enermax units, which sport two fans on the power supply itself.
Also, those little expansion slot exhaust fans--despite what some people think about them,
I think that Matsushita's announcement of the 100 GB 5.25" optical disk designed close to the Sony-Phillips proposal could mean an agreement by this super-capacity DVD could come may be the fall of 2002.
Remember, today's DiVX format compression can store something like a 2-hour movie with near-DVD quality on a single 650 MB CD-R disc. Imagine applying next-generation video compression (now under development by the MPEG standards groups) to the new disc format; we could see 1080i HDTV movies that won't require 50 GB's of storage space per disc side--imagine storing the entire Godfather] trilogy in 1080i wide screen format on a single-sided disc including all the extras.
I can also guess that a recordable version of this new disk could store around 85 GB in a disk format similar to the old optical disk formats from the early 1990's. With today's improved optical disk recording technologies and the availability of better I/O interfaces such as SCSI Ultra-Wide 160/320 and Fibre Channel, imagine a whole bank of these new optical disk drives backing up large HD arrays in a small fraction of the time that tape backup systems require.
I wonder will the Linux kernel writers seriously look at incorporating support for the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) for the 2.5 kernel test release.
This could be very significant since ACPI allows for highly-automated system configuration, which is necessary if you want seamless hot-docking of external devices and ease of system upgrades.
The big question is how close are the new Australian launch sites are to the Equator?
If they're pretty close the same rocket used on the Sea Launch system can be used for these Australian sites.
The biggest advantage in regards to Sea Launch is the fact they can be literally at the Equator, which means maximum assistance of the Earth's rotation. That's why a satellite that would have required a bigger rocket such as the Atlas III when launched from Cape Canaveral only needs the smaller Russian Zenit rocket when launched from the Sea Launch platform.
I am not surprised that Linux is not exactly doing well with desktop installations.
The big problem is that Linux still doesn't have the completely seamless support for hot-docked USB and IEEE-1394 devices, which can cause installation problems for many novice users.
Despite what everyone things about Windows 9x/ME/2000 here, you have to admit that having single unified UI and API makes for a lot easier programming when it comes to writing applications. Besides the issue of seamless automatic configuration, Linux has to contend with two different GUI environments, KDE and GNOME. The question is what company is willing to spend the money to write applications for both GUI's?
And with the arrival of Windows XP Home Edition this fall, many of the issues Linux users have been complaining about are being addressed. With tightened compatibility requirements for full WinXP compatibility certification, every program running in its own distinct memory space, and incorporation of firewall capability, Windows XP will have far highly levels of stability than now and customers will complain far less about system crashes caused by memory leaks.
Linux, in my opinion, is already perfect for the server environment, where kernel-level stability is very important and interface issues are not so important. With the 2.4.3 kernel, Linux now can do the extremely high-volume applications that was once the province of Solaris and OpenBSD boxes, as the recent success of the TPC benchmarks with the 16-CPU SGI server machine shows.
But there is hope for Linux, though. The Linux Standard Base (LSB) project will likely become a central clearinghouse for all kernel and API issues, so everyone will more or less be on the same page when it comes to writing Linux applications. This will dramatically simplify programming issues, and eventually will allow Linux to evolve to the point it can have the same ease of automatic configuration that Windows 9x/ME/2000 now enjoys (for the most part).
I think Microsoft is waiting for when will the various domain registrars (e.g., Network Solutions) start supporting IPv6 addresses on a large scale.
Once that happens, don't be surprised that Microsoft will offer an update for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP that will change the network support to include IPv6 addresses.
Given that IBM is a big seller of hard drives with extremely fast interfaces, I'm sure the first drives that use this new coating material technology on the drive platters will be 15,000 RPM drives with LVD Ultra160 SCSI or FibreChannel interfaces and 4-8 MB drive memory buffers. It'll be quite a while before we see this on ATA-100 IDE drives, though.
I think at the rate things are going, we might just see this happen: Sony will buy out both Palm and Handspring, merge Palm and Handspring, and the new entity becomes a Sony subsidiary. Future PDA's will say Palm by Sony marked on the case.
Its just that the hardware speed and ability catches up with their software faster than they can screw it up.
That I definitely agree upon. When Windows 98 first came out in May 1998, ATX-form factor machines using Slot 1 CPU's that ran Windows 98 decently fast were still expensive and relatively rare. But when hardware price dropped rapidly since then, today you can build from scratch a very nice machine that can run even Windows 2000 Professional decently fast for under US$500.
First, go complain to the MPAA, not the RIAA. :-)
Secondly, remember computer-animated movies take a LONG to render. I think Shrek required over a year of computer rendering time with multiple computers to get 70+ minutes of computer animation at 24 frames per second. After all, movies like the two Toy Story movies, Antz, and A Bug's Life aren't much longer than Shrek is now.
Besides, two-hour plus live action movies ain't cheap nowadays, either. For a epic or action film, the budget can easily run over US$100 million.
As a brother of one of the employees at Pacific Data Images (who did the computer animation work for Shrek), I can say that pretty much the entire movie's computer animation was rendered on relatively inexpensive Linux boxes.
It uses a highly-modified version of Red Hat Linux to pull this off; the results of course is quite spectular, and also well-received by the mass media (most of whom said Shrek will have a boffo b.o., to use the Variety lingo).
Having tried both Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 controllers, I think the DC controller feels too unwieldly (no thanks to having to fit both Rumble Pack and the VMU unit) and the PS2 controller--while otherwise excellent--feels a bit too small to be useful.
You forget that Microsoft's excellent Usability Lab was heavily used to Xbox development, so as a result you get a controller that comfortably fits into your hand without feeling oversized like the DC controller.
And zero PS2 consoles available to play them on...
:-(
You are so correct.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I've checked CompUSA, Fry's Electronics, Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, Toys 'R Us, and KB Toys--NONE of them have PlayStation 2 machines stocked on the floor. The only way you can get one is to order it online.
If both Microsoft and Nintendo can have 800,000-1,000,000 units of their respective game consoles for sale within two weeks after their November launch dates, this could hit Sony especially hard, unless Sony is willing to sacrifice the Japanese and European markets and do nothing but build PS2's for the US market and have 3-4 million PS2's available for sale by November 1, 2001 in order to blunt the introduction of GameCube and Xbox.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, PlayStation 2's are still sadly VERY hard to find in a retail store. I've checked CompUSA, Fry's Electronics, Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, KB Toys, and several other places--I've never seen any PS2's on display for sale even now. At least for me, the only way I can get one is to order it online. :-(
My guess is that Microsoft may have as many as 1 million consoles available for sale within a few weeks of its November 8, 2001 launch date. This will avoid the shortages that has plagued Sony since the PS2 shipped in the first place.
Yes, but what has been publicly shown so far in regards to Xbox is absolutely stunning, to say the least.
I think what Microsoft has in its favor is the fact that if you can write Windows 2000 programs and write for the DirectX 8.0x API, you're already most of the way there to writing an Xbox game. And Microsoft has sent out several thousand Xbox development kits to just about every major game manufacturer in the world, including most of the important game manufacturers in Japan.
One thing that Microsoft did with Xbox was to use its excellent Usability Lab to come up with an excellent design for its machine. MS even bothered to develop two different game controllers, one for larger hands in the Western world and one for smaller hands in Asia.
Microsoft also has the advantage that both EA Sports and Sega are going to release Xbox games. This will mean competition for sports games and that means we'll have top-notch quality sports games on Xbox.
I think it may not be a success on the PlayStation 2 platform. The reason is simple: PS2 doesn't currently support higher-resolution TV's of both CRT and projection variety, which means not much improvement over WebTV now.
One far-reaching idea about Xbox was that they designed the system to support even 1080i HDTV monitors and projection TV's. This will make surfing the Internet a far more pleasant experience than on PS2.
According to the article, AOL said this is not an exclusive deal with Sony; that means we may see AOL on Xbox by this time next year.
There's also one more thing about Xbox: it has quite a bit more computing power than PlayStation 2. And Xbox will support higher-resolution projection TV's, including HDTV, which means surfing AOL on Xbox could be a more pleasant experience than on PS2.
Remember AOL has said it may offer AOL on other Net-compatible gaming consoles in the future. That means we may also see AOL on Xbox by this time next year.
There's one thing people forget about the test: the SGI machine ran 16 CPU's, while the other machines ran 8 CPU's.
I want to see what the benchmarks look like on the SGI machine with 8 CPU's for a much more valid and fair comparison.
I want them to repeat the test with the SGI machine running only 8 CPU's for a fair comparison.
My guess is that with only 8 CPU's the DB2 benchmark results may not be faster than what was achieved with Windows 2000 Datacenter on 8 CPU's.
I hate to say this, but the Harry Potter books are not aimed at the same audience as Lord of the Rings.
Joanne K. Rowling's works are aimed primarily at readers around 9 to 18 years old; J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece is aimed more at an audience about 16-25 years old. I think many younger readers will have some difficulties grasping some of the mythos behind Lord of the Rings.
It is only coincidence that production of the Fellowship of the Ring and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in movie form went on at the same time.
One thing the article mentioned was the concept that houses could be assembled from pre-fabricated whole rooms.
In fact, this has become reality in a number of countries. In Japan, this has been the norm for a couple of decades; we're starting to see this becoming widespread even here in the USA. Imagine the idea of a custom house where you mix and match pre-fabricated rooms to create the house--that will be the future of homebuilding. This concept could be applied to condominium and townhouse design also.