The statement "utility is what motivates you to make decisions in your own self interest" is not the economic definition of utility. According to _Intermediate_Microeconomics:_A_Modern_Approach_ by H. R. Varian the notion of utility as a measure of happiness (which makes it a motivator) comes from Victorian ideas and is not the current economic view of utility.
Instead it states: "utility is seen only as a way to describe [consumer] preferences". So basically utility is a measure of what people actually choose to do. So Jordan's statement is correct except that utility is actually a measure of what happens. It is not an intrinsic absolute measure of happiness, but rather a relative one used to compare a persons possible choices and predict what that person will choose.
Disclaimer: I'm a EE not an econ major. My econ experience only includes a few courses.
(note: I'm not necessarily advising the book I mentioned. It just happened to be the first one I picked up)
Iridium is 66 satellites plus a couple of spares. Managing that is hardly insignificant. Not to mention within five years the network would be useless unless you launch more satellites or if you don't mind losing coverage of part of the world. The GPS network which is using ideas developed in the '70's consists of 24 satellites plus some spares but has it's own facility dedicated to it (in Colorado I think). Iridium's 70 satellite's would be more complex to maintain.
Actually here (Cornell) the ratio in CS is much better than in EE. My EE classes with well over a hundred people usually have less than ten women. And upper level classes seem to be even worse (no women in a class of 35???). CS on the other hand has, well enough so that I've never bothered to count. Probably 20ish in the 100+ sized classes. I'm not too familiar with the ratios in upper CS classes though.
They made up their own benchmarks. That's the only reason the Crusoe comes anywhere near a PIII. If you read through to the end of the 'Tom's Hardware' article from above you'll see that he mentions this as well.
You're right this is a first generation processor, but so far it hasn't been released and hasn't been run through any "real" benchmarks (SPEC for example). We just don't have any information on the chip which hasn't been filtered by Transmeta first.
Crusoe has some impressive possibilities in the portable market, but right now all they are is possibilities. It is way too early to talk about Transmeta and the desktop.
The Crusoe cannot compete with desktop CPUs and is not meant to. Transmeta's best chip runs at 500 MHz which puts it significantly slower than current desktop CPUs. Furthermore Crusoe runs all its x86 decoding in software which further reduces the amount of actual work the Crusoe can get done.
This is why Transmeta made up their own benchmarks (red flag) rather than using the conventional ones. I imagine that if they used the actual SPEC benchmarks that they'd look pretty bad in comparison to a Pentium running at the same speed.
Now their technology is extremely cool, and decoding x86 in software is a great way to conserve power and reduce die size. But it is not a catch-all solution for computing. If speed is what matters (desktop CPUs) then you aren't going to want a Crusoe. If you want low power and reduced cost from smaller batteries then the Crusoe is perfect. But you will get a performace loss.
As for fan noise. It could probably be alleviated by getting a liquid cooling system of some kind. I think kryotech (www.kryotech.com) uses a refrigeration system to cool their 1GHz Athlons. They probably aren't as loud if you weren't overclocking. Personally I enjoy the constant hum of my computer. Very relaxing.
-Uh-oh. I just took a shot at Transmeta. Here come the flames.
Slashdot Mirror
The statement "utility is what motivates you to make decisions in your own self interest" is not the economic definition of utility. According to _Intermediate_Microeconomics:_A_Modern_Approach_ by H. R. Varian the notion of utility as a measure of happiness (which makes it a motivator) comes from Victorian ideas and is not the current economic view of utility.
Instead it states: "utility is seen only as a way to describe [consumer] preferences". So basically utility is a measure of what people actually choose to do. So Jordan's statement is correct except that utility is actually a measure of what happens. It is not an intrinsic absolute measure of happiness, but rather a relative one used to compare a persons possible choices and predict what that person will choose.
Disclaimer: I'm a EE not an econ major. My econ experience only includes a few courses.
(note: I'm not necessarily advising the book I mentioned. It just happened to be the first one I picked up)
Iridium is 66 satellites plus a couple of spares. Managing that is hardly insignificant. Not to mention within five years the network would be useless unless you launch more satellites or if you don't mind losing coverage of part of the world. The GPS network which is using ideas developed in the '70's consists of 24 satellites plus some spares but has it's own facility dedicated to it (in Colorado I think). Iridium's 70 satellite's would be more complex to maintain.
Actually here (Cornell) the ratio in CS is much better than in EE. My EE classes with well over a hundred people usually have less than ten women. And upper level classes seem to be even worse (no women in a class of 35???). CS on the other hand has, well enough so that I've never bothered to count. Probably 20ish in the 100+ sized classes. I'm not too familiar with the ratios in upper CS classes though.
Benchmarks???
They made up their own benchmarks. That's the only reason the Crusoe comes anywhere near a PIII. If you read through to the end of the 'Tom's Hardware' article from above you'll see that he mentions this as well.
You're right this is a first generation processor, but so far it hasn't been released and hasn't been run through any "real" benchmarks (SPEC for example). We just don't have any information on the chip which hasn't been filtered by Transmeta first.
Crusoe has some impressive possibilities in the portable market, but right now all they are is possibilities. It is way too early to talk about Transmeta and the desktop.
The Crusoe cannot compete with desktop CPUs and is not meant to. Transmeta's best chip runs at 500 MHz which puts it significantly slower than current desktop CPUs. Furthermore Crusoe runs all its x86 decoding in software which further reduces the amount of actual work the Crusoe can get done.
This is why Transmeta made up their own benchmarks (red flag) rather than using the conventional ones. I imagine that if they used the actual SPEC benchmarks that they'd look pretty bad in comparison to a Pentium running at the same speed.
Now their technology is extremely cool, and decoding x86 in software is a great way to conserve power and reduce die size. But it is not a catch-all solution for computing. If speed is what matters (desktop CPUs) then you aren't going to want a Crusoe. If you want low power and reduced cost from smaller batteries then the Crusoe is perfect. But you will get a performace loss.
As for fan noise. It could probably be alleviated by getting a liquid cooling system of some kind. I think kryotech (www.kryotech.com) uses a refrigeration system to cool their 1GHz Athlons. They probably aren't as loud if you weren't overclocking. Personally I enjoy the constant hum of my computer. Very relaxing.
-Uh-oh. I just took a shot at Transmeta. Here come the flames.