Upon a little research, I think the simpsons started it; Reverend Lovejoy's wife, Helen, says it in multiple episodes, most likely predating south park by several years.
Yea, I'd be pretty sure the effective price did drop, but the point was that since 2000 the effective price has plummeted. The above poster is partially correct in saying the reason why we have great computers well under 2000$ and acceptable computers under 1000$ is because CPUs were fast enough and RAM was big enough (for the average user). Hardware has actually beaten programmer's inefficiencies, but I have little doubt that some new 'killer' app (insert mandatory vista bashing) will come out and solve this 'problem' and be twice as slow as before. See table top computing, games, AI, etc.
You've also got to look at economics. As the number of units sold increases dramatically (because cost is down, demand is up), economies of scale apply, and they apply more heavily to the computing industry than any other industry (save IP based industries).
In short? Have I made a point? Probably not. But thanks to moore's law/. can handle my pointless rants.
1. Cost - You're wrong, at least at the price points consumers care about. Gaming 'laptops' can be very expensive, but only because they try to cram 4-8 gb of ram, a massive video card, a dual or quad core, 200 gb hd....into a laptop. Realistically for a core 2, if you sacrifice for the mobile core 2 and accept 2gb of ram, you can come out within 200$ for most models.
2. Upgrades - Beaten to death, but most users don't care enough to upgrade. This will be especially true as laptops (and computers in general) continue their price descent.
3. Vendor lockin - number 2.
4. Heat - Are you seriously contending that desktop processors generate LESS heat per performance measurement than a laptop? Heat is wasted electricity, and people like battery life. Laptops lead the way in this front, which is why core 2 is descended from the centrino line rather than the monsters that the P4 was. Yes, they're a bit slower, have lower FSB, and slightly smaller cache. I'll explain later why this is irrelevant.
5. Displays/space (since you can't count) For both these, add external displays to the list. You can't travel with the display anyways, so you'd need one at any location you want a large screen. You're saying that re-purchasing the computer attached to the monitor is an economically valid reason why? Also external hard drives are good enough for the data you typically need to store beyond 100-200 gb, which is....data. Your programs will fit fine on a 160 gb hard drive.
6. Defects - The average user doesn't replace the graphics card in their desktop, so this isn't a good point either.
My counter
A lot of this depends on trends in computing, but even running vista and doing any amount of day-day routines (to the point of light graphics/home video editing), but lacking some new, killer app, there isn't a oft used piece of software that the consumer is going "I need more power!" What, does word take another quarter second to open? Firefox can only handle 30 tabs open at once? Seriously, name a commonly used application that a mobile user can't run at sufficient speed. Beyond games released 1+ years after the laptop, there aren't any that i can see. And any number of gamers play console games anyways, so the market for a desktop is really the hard core people who need bleeding edge speed, or who want to be able to tweak their parts. As computing is accepted by more and more people, this will make up a decreasing percentage of the market.
And we're talking about time travel. Negative speed in general makes no sense, but then again, a negative second doesn't really make sense either - but we do indeed have one if we go back in time, don't we?
I'm probably wrong here, but if the speed of light is a constant, and something travels faster than it, wouldn't any object compared to it be traveling at negative speed?
Also, if I'm traveling FTL, and speed is measured in distance/time, and the time is negative (flowing backwards), doesn't that imply that i'm going a negative speed?
Hmmm. I should probably lie down now.
Because this is Slashdot. Everyone knows open source transcended hardware ages ago. Also it cannot affect OS X systems, as Apple is never to blame for anything going wrong with their computers. That leaves Windows as the only logical choice. You like logic, don't you?
What you're describing is relativity. It is possible for one to speed up or slow down the perception of time for the outsider, based on relativistic speeds. In that sense, you could time travel into the future (assuming we somehow accelerate you to.xxxxxx C instantly, ignore the fact that your pinky outweighs the universe, and while we're at it, find a way to decelerate you instantly back to the standard speed (something like zero)) You will not have aged, and the place you're at will have experienced X years. In that sense, you can time travel forward, but not backward. (Because you can't travel at negative speed, if HS physics was right)
Time travel in the alternate universe sense implies that you can skip all that and simply pop in somewhere. This implies numerous things, but for starters implies that the universe has an infinite memory for everywhere it's been (and consequently, where it will be), and that this memory is not limited to the atom, particle or anything else, since it has to be remembered even if the atom/particle was destroyed or converted to energy.
Somehow this gets to that the universe has infinite memory (not just mindnumbingly huge) - it has to store continuous data of the coordinates of everything as well as the probability that any given atom decides to just disappear, etc.
Of course this all gets closer to the concept of God than probably anything else... and the idea that this universe may just be particle/atom in another, larger world...
So is time travel possible? Probably not within our current understanding of physics, certainly not anything that could be truely useful (unless we find a way to send data backwards, and particularly forward backwards - thus forming the ultimate computing system. "I computed Pi to a quadrillion places in -12.43 seconds")
Its actually very close to a webcomic i stumbled upon...
http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/01/
The premise is that the US is fighting a different kind of war, by dropping supplies everywhere, along with robotic spiders controlled by civilians all over the world. They have a camera and voice box and form sort of a social network/game. Millions of these cheap drones, too inexpensive and plentiful to kill them all...
At the very least it's an interesting re-imagining of the Afghanistan war.
Yes and no. Most prototypes (and almost all concept drawings) do, because the engineering and technology wasn't there to support the futuristic look.
That having been said if I could instantly get one of those devices as envisioned, it'd usually be quite cool. (LCD keyboard, concept cars, some concept designs for cell phones, etc.) By time its been waved in the public's face for 5+ years, and comes out with half the functionality it was supposed to have, 3 years later than planned, yea, it looks bad. And concepts for most things 15+ years down the road look downright horrible in hindsight, mostly because technology X & Y never happened, technology Z did, and the zeitgeist changed.
Personally I like the black brushed aluminum quite a lot, at least on the nano. I don't think the brushed metal look would work well with the iMac...
Apples have looked new and clean for a while. I'd say doing something similar to Sony's Vaio/iMac-esq computer would be a good change. Incorporate some clear areas on the computer, and make it look clean and futuristic, not just new/different. Also more than one color/material could do wonders.
Of course I've got a beige box next to me, so...
If this service gets big, I'm going to take a guess that any number of products will come around that will cut out the ads.
This probably will prevent the service from getting big.
Yes, I at least have realized that there's a real problem with a nation's wealth/property increasingly based on IP. There can be no doubt that there is value in the IP, but it suffers the intrinsic flaw that its very very easily reproduced. (hence DRM attempts)
I'm not really sure what the answer is though when other countries go 'oops, we stole 100 billion dollars in software and movies'. Deal with it and buy real stuff from us. There's not a whole lot you can do, and if we think going to war for non-existent WMDs was bad, how much worse will it be to go to war for the latest copy of Britney or Vista?
With respect to whatever background you might have... could it be possible Microsoft has people who are experts who say this is to be expected?
Or at least marketing people to spin it that way... (critical mass is important in software)
I mean, they had how many people spend how many weeks creating the start menu. I think it was something like 10-20 for 15 weeks or something, full time. I think they could afford a few analysts...
Beyond that, yes... AMD has to follow Intel's lead. Furthermore, Intel has to follow Intel's lead. The x86 architecture, like so much else in computing, could be redesigned much more effectively if only legacy problems didn't occur. The Itanium is an attempt at that, and its not seen in consumer applications.
Solaris (Sun, more accurately) has several computers based on the AMD opteron models (and perhaps others), including the new workstations in the Unix lab at my school.
Regardless of your feelings on the Intel/AMD processors, I don't think any one of us wants to envision a world with only Intel making x86 processors. Don't get me wrong, they're doing an excellent job, but just how much of this recent surge was a result of the increased competition from AMD?
I know a lot of people mentioned web-based things. How would this work with browsers (would they then have to memorize exactly how you entered in the password?)
As another, probably more relevant issue, does it need to have 90% accuracy or any such measure? Suppose it only has 50% accuracy, isn't this still an improvement (provided it allows the true user in 99-100% of the time). It is afterall in addition to a password, and so adds another level of complexity, similar to adding a new character or possible characters. It also should completely deny programs which guess passwords - or slow them down significantly, as they need to wait at least 1-2 seconds between each password attempt.
There are 0/44 in Comp. Eng, and 6/31 in Comp Sci. Not that it lends any credence to the article, there are 11/80 in the Computer Science & business program, which is lower as a percent than CS... (It's also worth noting that a fair number of CSB's drop the program for a business/information systems major)
As a disclaimer, the general campus population is 42% female, 58% male. Oddly enough, the females in those fields tend to take slightly more credits per semester than males. Still, I don't see that changing anytime soon. There are opportunities for female CS students, as one I know has attracted quite a reasonable amount of attention, though she's a good programmer in her own right.
But all in all... its a male dominated field, and I'd be surprised if that changes anytime soon. There tends to be a far greater chance that a male will be somewhat anti-social, and given that there's a fairly strong desire to fill the void with something, sometimes fooling around with random engineering bits, others playing copious amounts of games.
Anyone ever consider that they're doing this in part because they desperately want to be world leaders (more so)? Its a position they will no doubt share (or occupy) in the future, but in order to reach it, they need to be more and more productive. I imagine as income rises, more and more children will play video games (look at the rest of the region), and having half a billion or more people hours a day going into WoW or some other MMORPG - not very productive. It'd be much better to have them studying, working, or even sleeping than having them play a MMORPG for 10 hours a day.
And while it may be true that the under 18 crowd doesn't contribute a substantial portion to the economy, it sets up a habit which will likely continue past age 18 (which is the goal of limits on smoking or drinking - stop addiction). The time that they'd spend playing video games is also important in that it means less time will be spent studying, which has an impact on acceptance into competitive colleges and thus the rest of life...
Slashdot Mirror
Was that south park, or the simpsons?
L ovejoy
Upon a little research, I think the simpsons started it; Reverend Lovejoy's wife, Helen, says it in multiple episodes, most likely predating south park by several years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lovejoy#Helen_
To assume my puns are unintentional would be to assume that I do not get your sarcasm.
I doubt I'd do anything more than pencil this in for somewhere 5 years... no make that 7 years... no, we've really almost perfected it this time...
Yea, I'd be pretty sure the effective price did drop, but the point was that since 2000 the effective price has plummeted. The above poster is partially correct in saying the reason why we have great computers well under 2000$ and acceptable computers under 1000$ is because CPUs were fast enough and RAM was big enough (for the average user). Hardware has actually beaten programmer's inefficiencies, but I have little doubt that some new 'killer' app (insert mandatory vista bashing) will come out and solve this 'problem' and be twice as slow as before. See table top computing, games, AI, etc.
/. can handle my pointless rants.
You've also got to look at economics. As the number of units sold increases dramatically (because cost is down, demand is up), economies of scale apply, and they apply more heavily to the computing industry than any other industry (save IP based industries).
In short? Have I made a point? Probably not. But thanks to moore's law
Just as long as you don't call them liquid state...
Is it too late to say "We're number 1! We're number !" oh wait...
1. Cost - You're wrong, at least at the price points consumers care about. Gaming 'laptops' can be very expensive, but only because they try to cram 4-8 gb of ram, a massive video card, a dual or quad core, 200 gb hd....into a laptop. Realistically for a core 2, if you sacrifice for the mobile core 2 and accept 2gb of ram, you can come out within 200$ for most models.
2. Upgrades - Beaten to death, but most users don't care enough to upgrade. This will be especially true as laptops (and computers in general) continue their price descent.
3. Vendor lockin - number 2.
4. Heat - Are you seriously contending that desktop processors generate LESS heat per performance measurement than a laptop? Heat is wasted electricity, and people like battery life. Laptops lead the way in this front, which is why core 2 is descended from the centrino line rather than the monsters that the P4 was. Yes, they're a bit slower, have lower FSB, and slightly smaller cache. I'll explain later why this is irrelevant.
5. Displays/space (since you can't count) For both these, add external displays to the list. You can't travel with the display anyways, so you'd need one at any location you want a large screen. You're saying that re-purchasing the computer attached to the monitor is an economically valid reason why? Also external hard drives are good enough for the data you typically need to store beyond 100-200 gb, which is....data. Your programs will fit fine on a 160 gb hard drive.
6. Defects - The average user doesn't replace the graphics card in their desktop, so this isn't a good point either.
My counter
A lot of this depends on trends in computing, but even running vista and doing any amount of day-day routines (to the point of light graphics/home video editing), but lacking some new, killer app, there isn't a oft used piece of software that the consumer is going "I need more power!" What, does word take another quarter second to open? Firefox can only handle 30 tabs open at once? Seriously, name a commonly used application that a mobile user can't run at sufficient speed. Beyond games released 1+ years after the laptop, there aren't any that i can see. And any number of gamers play console games anyways, so the market for a desktop is really the hard core people who need bleeding edge speed, or who want to be able to tweak their parts. As computing is accepted by more and more people, this will make up a decreasing percentage of the market.
And we're talking about time travel. Negative speed in general makes no sense, but then again, a negative second doesn't really make sense either - but we do indeed have one if we go back in time, don't we?
I'm probably wrong here, but if the speed of light is a constant, and something travels faster than it, wouldn't any object compared to it be traveling at negative speed? Also, if I'm traveling FTL, and speed is measured in distance/time, and the time is negative (flowing backwards), doesn't that imply that i'm going a negative speed? Hmmm. I should probably lie down now.
Because this is Slashdot. Everyone knows open source transcended hardware ages ago. Also it cannot affect OS X systems, as Apple is never to blame for anything going wrong with their computers. That leaves Windows as the only logical choice. You like logic, don't you?
What you're describing is relativity. It is possible for one to speed up or slow down the perception of time for the outsider, based on relativistic speeds. In that sense, you could time travel into the future (assuming we somehow accelerate you to .xxxxxx C instantly, ignore the fact that your pinky outweighs the universe, and while we're at it, find a way to decelerate you instantly back to the standard speed (something like zero)) You will not have aged, and the place you're at will have experienced X years. In that sense, you can time travel forward, but not backward. (Because you can't travel at negative speed, if HS physics was right)
Time travel in the alternate universe sense implies that you can skip all that and simply pop in somewhere. This implies numerous things, but for starters implies that the universe has an infinite memory for everywhere it's been (and consequently, where it will be), and that this memory is not limited to the atom, particle or anything else, since it has to be remembered even if the atom/particle was destroyed or converted to energy.
Somehow this gets to that the universe has infinite memory (not just mindnumbingly huge) - it has to store continuous data of the coordinates of everything as well as the probability that any given atom decides to just disappear, etc.
Of course this all gets closer to the concept of God than probably anything else... and the idea that this universe may just be particle/atom in another, larger world...
So is time travel possible? Probably not within our current understanding of physics, certainly not anything that could be truely useful (unless we find a way to send data backwards, and particularly forward backwards - thus forming the ultimate computing system. "I computed Pi to a quadrillion places in -12.43 seconds")
Its actually very close to a webcomic i stumbled upon... http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/01/ The premise is that the US is fighting a different kind of war, by dropping supplies everywhere, along with robotic spiders controlled by civilians all over the world. They have a camera and voice box and form sort of a social network/game. Millions of these cheap drones, too inexpensive and plentiful to kill them all... At the very least it's an interesting re-imagining of the Afghanistan war.
Yes and no. Most prototypes (and almost all concept drawings) do, because the engineering and technology wasn't there to support the futuristic look. That having been said if I could instantly get one of those devices as envisioned, it'd usually be quite cool. (LCD keyboard, concept cars, some concept designs for cell phones, etc.) By time its been waved in the public's face for 5+ years, and comes out with half the functionality it was supposed to have, 3 years later than planned, yea, it looks bad. And concepts for most things 15+ years down the road look downright horrible in hindsight, mostly because technology X & Y never happened, technology Z did, and the zeitgeist changed.
Personally I like the black brushed aluminum quite a lot, at least on the nano. I don't think the brushed metal look would work well with the iMac... Apples have looked new and clean for a while. I'd say doing something similar to Sony's Vaio/iMac-esq computer would be a good change. Incorporate some clear areas on the computer, and make it look clean and futuristic, not just new/different. Also more than one color/material could do wonders. Of course I've got a beige box next to me, so...
If this service gets big, I'm going to take a guess that any number of products will come around that will cut out the ads. This probably will prevent the service from getting big.
Yes, I at least have realized that there's a real problem with a nation's wealth/property increasingly based on IP. There can be no doubt that there is value in the IP, but it suffers the intrinsic flaw that its very very easily reproduced. (hence DRM attempts) I'm not really sure what the answer is though when other countries go 'oops, we stole 100 billion dollars in software and movies'. Deal with it and buy real stuff from us. There's not a whole lot you can do, and if we think going to war for non-existent WMDs was bad, how much worse will it be to go to war for the latest copy of Britney or Vista?
I for one welcome our new supercomputing mice overlords.
With respect to whatever background you might have... could it be possible Microsoft has people who are experts who say this is to be expected?
Or at least marketing people to spin it that way... (critical mass is important in software)
I mean, they had how many people spend how many weeks creating the start menu. I think it was something like 10-20 for 15 weeks or something, full time. I think they could afford a few analysts...
Because at the end of the day they're all Intel COMPATIBLE not the other way around
/ 03/1318201/
Actually, during the heyday of AMD, they made significant architecture advances that Intel had to follow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_64#Intel_64/
Beyond that, yes... AMD has to follow Intel's lead. Furthermore, Intel has to follow Intel's lead. The x86 architecture, like so much else in computing, could be redesigned much more effectively if only legacy problems didn't occur. The Itanium is an attempt at that, and its not seen in consumer applications.
For more info, see the story on the x86 history http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04
Solaris (Sun, more accurately) has several computers based on the AMD opteron models (and perhaps others), including the new workstations in the Unix lab at my school.
Regardless of your feelings on the Intel/AMD processors, I don't think any one of us wants to envision a world with only Intel making x86 processors. Don't get me wrong, they're doing an excellent job, but just how much of this recent surge was a result of the increased competition from AMD?
I believe its been stated that FF XIII isn't going to be PS3 exclusive. The issue is at least open to debate, as mentioned here http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/rpg/finalfantasy13/new s.html?sid=6167864&om_act=convert&om_clk=mostpop&t ag=mostpop;title;1/
I know a lot of people mentioned web-based things. How would this work with browsers (would they then have to memorize exactly how you entered in the password?) As another, probably more relevant issue, does it need to have 90% accuracy or any such measure? Suppose it only has 50% accuracy, isn't this still an improvement (provided it allows the true user in 99-100% of the time). It is afterall in addition to a password, and so adds another level of complexity, similar to adding a new character or possible characters. It also should completely deny programs which guess passwords - or slow them down significantly, as they need to wait at least 1-2 seconds between each password attempt.
I know that for my school, women are drastically in the minority in CS classes http://www.lehigh.edu/~oir/stats/200710/ug200710.h tm/
There are 0/44 in Comp. Eng, and 6/31 in Comp Sci. Not that it lends any credence to the article, there are 11/80 in the Computer Science & business program, which is lower as a percent than CS... (It's also worth noting that a fair number of CSB's drop the program for a business/information systems major)
As a disclaimer, the general campus population is 42% female, 58% male. Oddly enough, the females in those fields tend to take slightly more credits per semester than males. Still, I don't see that changing anytime soon. There are opportunities for female CS students, as one I know has attracted quite a reasonable amount of attention, though she's a good programmer in her own right.
But all in all... its a male dominated field, and I'd be surprised if that changes anytime soon. There tends to be a far greater chance that a male will be somewhat anti-social, and given that there's a fairly strong desire to fill the void with something, sometimes fooling around with random engineering bits, others playing copious amounts of games.
Anyone ever consider that they're doing this in part because they desperately want to be world leaders (more so)? Its a position they will no doubt share (or occupy) in the future, but in order to reach it, they need to be more and more productive. I imagine as income rises, more and more children will play video games (look at the rest of the region), and having half a billion or more people hours a day going into WoW or some other MMORPG - not very productive. It'd be much better to have them studying, working, or even sleeping than having them play a MMORPG for 10 hours a day.
And while it may be true that the under 18 crowd doesn't contribute a substantial portion to the economy, it sets up a habit which will likely continue past age 18 (which is the goal of limits on smoking or drinking - stop addiction). The time that they'd spend playing video games is also important in that it means less time will be spent studying, which has an impact on acceptance into competitive colleges and thus the rest of life...