Willian Illsey Atkinson wrote a book called nanocosm. I didn't find it that great a read, but he goes on to say that people have misconceptions of what nanobots would be like and how they would work, if we ever make them and get them to work.
We have slow progress when it comes to making nanobots to cure illnesses mainly because we have many poeple touting the great potential, but we have very few people willing to learn quantum mechanics and biology. Instead, you have medical doctors who think you can build something equivalent to a car in the nanocosm, and nanotechnology researchers who might think that these robots would only have to perform a simple operation. (But they are limited too, since it is very hard to engineer and build anything at this scale)
As funny as it is, the brain stops seaching because it has found what it was looking for. How would a computer know that it's found a match to what it's searching for?
From what I've been told, (this could be wrong, or a lie, I'm not sure) is that Epic didn't give them a working engine. It was so bad that it would be impossible to make a game from it. I could see why this would result in delays from them and other companies.
I'd say more, but I promised this person/these people I woldn't.:p
This is EXACTLY the case.
You get people who don't know anything about gaming teaching how to make games.
You get no solid foundation in any aspect of creating a game, just generalizations.
The only advantage to game schools is the cash they bring in for the phonies operating them.
I've known people who have gone to these schools and nothing great has come out of it for them. They end up going back to the hard stuff and the basics. (math, CS, strict 3D modeling/art)
And if they were so great, why all the ads? Those are just there to convince you to spend your money there in the first place. Everyone who knows anything about videogames or wants to make them seriously would do a little bit of research on their own I imagine.
Is it the responsibility of the labour unions to make sure the market doesn't get screwed? These unions are another roadblock in providing people in the market more value. If the company is reaping huge profits, that can either be seen as good business or abusing their market position. In the case of abusing their market position, the government should step in. Otherwise, people are willing to pay the same amount for the same product, and it becomes an even better deal for the company! Maybe the people could buy from another company that can produce cars for cheaper and sells them for cheaper.
And what about these untrained people making $27/hour to push a button? Maybe they should train themselves to be useful. If they provided a little more value to the world none of this would be a problem in the first place.
Conclusion? 4 cores right now need much software support.
But shouldn't it be improvements in hardware that make software run faster as opposed to the other way around?
For instance, my 3 year old 2GHz Athlon64 is way faster than my 1.6GHz dualcore Athlon64 for all the games I play. Why is it that something that uses twice as much space and is on a smaller process node (90nm) and has twice the memory channel width (dual channel vs. single channel) runs slower?
It's newer hardware, and it's running my old software slower. That is destroying the value of the product to customers. Something is wrong here.
I bet you a 3GHz core 2 duo would run circles around a 2.4GHz Penryn in any game, despite having 2x the potential processing power.
Running code that is directed at one architecture or another was an issue for RISC.
If you look at the x86 CISC machines, you'll have a lot less variance. When it comes to RISC vs. CISC, it's not so important to omptimize for a specific architeture on CISC simply because the CPU handles a lot of things instead of the programmer/compiler code.
The variances between running a program on CISC architectures is much smallar then doing the same for RISC architectures.
What happened is that the P4 architecture was more of a marketing scheme to push MHz, but not performance. AMD came out with an architecture directed at high performance. Intel came out with the Core 2 products which also focused on peroformance instead of clock speed. Intel has a lead in the manufacturing process side with respect to node size. This helps them to produce a lot at a lower cost. And If you look at Intel's and AMD's financials, you'll see how much each has to spend on R&D. Intel has a lot more money to put down on more designs and more engineers than AMD does.
oftware Engineering is NOT the same as Computer Science. I know. I'm in a 4 year computer science program, and I have a full year software engineering course within this program. Of the 4 years, over a quarter of my classes deal with algebra, stats, calc, algorithms and plenty of discrete math.
What I'm saying is that CS should focus on pure CS, while also going into detail topics of software and systems engineering.
"Computer science curricula are old, stale and increasing irrelevant. Curricula needs to be vocational, and divergent, widening the computing student's view of the world, not creating a sterile bubble, closed off from the wider issues in the world, and from the networking, the integration, the global reach of computers."
I don't know what CS program this guy is talking about, but the software engineering course in my program has been all about this issue. In this class we actually work with people/professors from different faculties and work on a semester long project, going through a software development cycle. The whole point of it is "get out of the closed off bubble you nerds!"
All forms of education should widen our world view. If it doesn't, you aren't learning anything except how to be dumber.
Slashdot Mirror
We have space, hardware, your rights online, apple, etc...
Can we have a john dvorak section so I have a shot at filtering out all his crap?
Willian Illsey Atkinson wrote a book called nanocosm. I didn't find it that great a read, but he goes on to say that people have misconceptions of what nanobots would be like and how they would work, if we ever make them and get them to work. We have slow progress when it comes to making nanobots to cure illnesses mainly because we have many poeple touting the great potential, but we have very few people willing to learn quantum mechanics and biology. Instead, you have medical doctors who think you can build something equivalent to a car in the nanocosm, and nanotechnology researchers who might think that these robots would only have to perform a simple operation. (But they are limited too, since it is very hard to engineer and build anything at this scale)
As funny as it is, the brain stops seaching because it has found what it was looking for. How would a computer know that it's found a match to what it's searching for?
Ever bother to think that the Russians have better things to do than be like the Polish?
Clearly, they are a different country in a different situation, and they probably have different values.
I have a few friends that are in the know at SK.
:p
From what I've been told, (this could be wrong, or a lie, I'm not sure) is that Epic didn't give them a working engine. It was so bad that it would be impossible to make a game from it. I could see why this would result in delays from them and other companies.
I'd say more, but I promised this person/these people I woldn't.
This is EXACTLY the case. You get people who don't know anything about gaming teaching how to make games. You get no solid foundation in any aspect of creating a game, just generalizations. The only advantage to game schools is the cash they bring in for the phonies operating them. I've known people who have gone to these schools and nothing great has come out of it for them. They end up going back to the hard stuff and the basics. (math, CS, strict 3D modeling/art) And if they were so great, why all the ads? Those are just there to convince you to spend your money there in the first place. Everyone who knows anything about videogames or wants to make them seriously would do a little bit of research on their own I imagine.
Is it the responsibility of the labour unions to make sure the market doesn't get screwed? These unions are another roadblock in providing people in the market more value. If the company is reaping huge profits, that can either be seen as good business or abusing their market position. In the case of abusing their market position, the government should step in. Otherwise, people are willing to pay the same amount for the same product, and it becomes an even better deal for the company! Maybe the people could buy from another company that can produce cars for cheaper and sells them for cheaper. And what about these untrained people making $27/hour to push a button? Maybe they should train themselves to be useful. If they provided a little more value to the world none of this would be a problem in the first place.
Conclusion? 4 cores right now need much software support. But shouldn't it be improvements in hardware that make software run faster as opposed to the other way around? For instance, my 3 year old 2GHz Athlon64 is way faster than my 1.6GHz dualcore Athlon64 for all the games I play. Why is it that something that uses twice as much space and is on a smaller process node (90nm) and has twice the memory channel width (dual channel vs. single channel) runs slower? It's newer hardware, and it's running my old software slower. That is destroying the value of the product to customers. Something is wrong here. I bet you a 3GHz core 2 duo would run circles around a 2.4GHz Penryn in any game, despite having 2x the potential processing power.
that's the term my gf used when she mentioned having sex with her ex-boyfriend.
Running code that is directed at one architecture or another was an issue for RISC. If you look at the x86 CISC machines, you'll have a lot less variance. When it comes to RISC vs. CISC, it's not so important to omptimize for a specific architeture on CISC simply because the CPU handles a lot of things instead of the programmer/compiler code. The variances between running a program on CISC architectures is much smallar then doing the same for RISC architectures.
What happened is that the P4 architecture was more of a marketing scheme to push MHz, but not performance. AMD came out with an architecture directed at high performance. Intel came out with the Core 2 products which also focused on peroformance instead of clock speed. Intel has a lead in the manufacturing process side with respect to node size. This helps them to produce a lot at a lower cost. And If you look at Intel's and AMD's financials, you'll see how much each has to spend on R&D. Intel has a lot more money to put down on more designs and more engineers than AMD does.
"Computer science curricula are old, stale and increasing irrelevant. Curricula needs to be vocational, and divergent, widening the computing student's view of the world, not creating a sterile bubble, closed off from the wider issues in the world, and from the networking, the integration, the global reach of computers."
I don't know what CS program this guy is talking about, but the software engineering course in my program has been all about this issue. In this class we actually work with people/professors from different faculties and work on a semester long project, going through a software development cycle. The whole point of it is "get out of the closed off bubble you nerds!"
All forms of education should widen our world view. If it doesn't, you aren't learning anything except how to be dumber.
http://www.fitpod.com/node/692 :) You won't go blind, either!