Over-internet clouds (like Google's) constitute a threat to Intel's business model. Cloud computing says you don't need to buy your own powerful CPU; someone will buy just enough CPU's to support the average load, and you'll rent them when you need them. And you can have your computing finished sooner because of parallelism in the cloud.
Intel seems to be intentionally muddying the terminology to defend their business model. "Here's a cloud on your desk" says you can have parallelism while owning (and buying) your own CPU.
As an aside, Intel is right and Google is wrong, IMHO. Most of the money in a CPU is in the development, not in the hardware. And chip manufacturing benefits greatly from scale. If Google makes it so that people don't buy their own CPUs, it will only save money in the short run. The more people rely on Google's Clouds, the more Google will have to pay for each CPU. Meanwhile Intel can sell cheap versions of what Google needs to the consumer. Cut out networking overhead, get a workstation . . . I mean a Cloud on your desk!
We've seen this pendulum swing before, and it always comes back. Those who want computing have to pay for the development of computers somehow. In a world in which the incremental cost is low to own your personal copy of Intel's (or AMD's or whoever's) Intellectual Property in silicon, the workstation will always win out.
Until silicon is replaced with something much more expensive.
So leave NYC.:-) I know the poster you replied to said "even in NY", so I'm off topic. And it's easier said than done, I know. People have friends, family, all that. And I guess some people just love the big city. But if staying in my city meant choosing between a crazy loan on a house I can't really afford, or 4 hours commuting every day -- wow, when can you enjoy your friends and family? Move to a smaller city, take a small pay cut with a big cost-of-living cut, and it's REALLY easy to slash that commute. Mine is 10 minutes each way, which is entirely luck, but it's really easy to gain 2 or more hours a day over your commute, probably much more, in a smaller fun town.
Just don't come to Austin, because we're getting too many new people already.:-)
I don't mean to throw a "big gray blanket of mistrust" over anything. (Nice phrase, btw.:-) ) I am challenging the poster's position that (in my words, not his or hers) scientific facts are, to the public, distinct from belief, in terms of how we answer the question, "how do we know that is true?" I refer to the sentence, "Otherwise it is just another type of belief to them." To the public, Millican's conclusion is believed to be true, and further, believed based on the say-so of other people. This is qualitatively the same. The science advocate needs to do the hard work of convincing people of the quantity aspect you mention. Science advocates trying to make an end-run around quantity with qualitative appeals to the scientific method leads to skepticism in the public eye, and rightly so.
Don't speak Latin. Worked for us Protestants.:-)
Regarding "another type of belief" -- unless you personally do all the experiments for yourself, and review all the conclusions, it is belief. For example, I believe electrons are real and quantized, and I never did Milliken's oil drop experiment. Other people say they have done the experiment, and I believe them. But it is "just another type of belief." I believe the copy of the periodic table I have in my drawer at home. But I certainly have not verified all the little numbers experimentally, personally. That is quite obviously belief. Have you?
Re:For me, this story crossed a line. ATI excellen
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
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· Score: 1
No. "AMD stock is falling" is old, old news. Actually I'm disappointed because there's really nothing timely here.
AMD processors are great. AMD buying ATI was probably a good move in a lot of ways, too. It makes it easier for them to tap the laptop market, where they need to be able to say, here's a CPU/chipset combo that's ready to go. Graphics is probably not what they're after.
But they bought ATI mostly for cash, i.e. ATI stockholders received mostly cash for their shares, rather than mostly AMD stock. This turned out to be horrible timing, because Intel released Core 2 Duo at about the same time. So beforehand, AMD had demonstrated for 2 years or so that it had the top technology -- not just the most cost effective -- for PC CPU's. Dell and others were starting to see that they needed to field AMD solutions. They were flush with cash and they needed a way to keep growing. Buying a chipset maker, who would then always have a ready chipset, was the way to get more system integrators on board.
But when Core 2 Duo came out, it really blew AMD out of the water on the high end. And squeezed them in the midrange. Everyone knew it was coming, but I don't think anyone outside Intel knew what an improvement Core 2 Duo would be.
That said, while all this was going on, I put my system together using AMD's AM2 socket, with an nVidia chipset. And I don't regret it. The cheapest Athlon x2 was cheaper than the cheapest Core2Duo, and either was plenty powerful. AMD still makes good chips.
But the company itself is hurting, because they used all their cash to buy ATI. Again, it was a good buy, but they needed to use stock. Maybe ATI exec's saw the writing on the wall and didn't want AMD stock? I don't know.
Hope they make a comeback. Maybe a company with lots of cash will come buy them. AMD with cash would be in a great position. [Question from a/. newbie: why aren't my paragraph breaks showing? I used return to make blank lines, but they're gone.]
It seems to me that one fairly simple way to cripple botnets of home computers would be to have computers which startup quickly. (And not wake on LAN.) Then people could turn their computers off at night, and when they are not using them. Botnets would have less compute time to work with, and since computers would be being used when they are on, users would be more likely to notice something was wrong if a botnet was running.
Automatic updates would be made more difficult. So you tell your computer to turn on at a certain time at 0-dark-thirty and do its thing, and turn off again. And stay off. Auto updates are the only reason I leave my computer on.
To pre-empt: yes. If everyone knew their computers inside-out they could install linux and do other cool stuff. But a lot of people never will, and their computers can be used as bots. And yes, I'm not as cool as many of y'all, so I don't know the ins-and-outs of a lot of what you are saying. Just proposing a partial solution that could work for the masses.
Because really, everyone understands the concept of turning machines off. It'd save on power too.
Sweet, good luck! Math is fascinating. I think an essential component of teaching yourself math will be to find people who will help. A book can't help you when you're confused, and it's just not possible to write a book that will be clear to everyone all the time. So I think you'll need to find people who will answer questions when they come up.
Don't start by hiring a tutor. Lots of people will give free advice (which is what you're getting here.) Go to parties where there are math, physics, and engineering graduate students. Some will talk about math for fun. Listen interestedly. Let on that you're trying to teach yourself math, and some of them will get excited. Ask questions about what you're reading in the books and resources other people have recommended. I bet you'll find a few people who will enjoy helping you work through things, and who communicate well to you.
Now if you're willing to pay, you might be able to get someone who has shown themselves to be capable to help you further. They're grad students, so some of them could likely use the money. Say that you're learning well from them, and you'd like to learn faster, but that you respect that their time is valuable. If they could meet with you weekly for an hour and a half, you could pay them (I'm not sure what a reasonable rate would be).
If you don't want to pay, or if you find that you can get enough free help without frustrating these people, that's great!
Slashdot Mirror
Intel seems to be intentionally muddying the terminology to defend their business model. "Here's a cloud on your desk" says you can have parallelism while owning (and buying) your own CPU.
As an aside, Intel is right and Google is wrong, IMHO. Most of the money in a CPU is in the development, not in the hardware. And chip manufacturing benefits greatly from scale. If Google makes it so that people don't buy their own CPUs, it will only save money in the short run. The more people rely on Google's Clouds, the more Google will have to pay for each CPU. Meanwhile Intel can sell cheap versions of what Google needs to the consumer. Cut out networking overhead, get a workstation . . . I mean a Cloud on your desk!
We've seen this pendulum swing before, and it always comes back. Those who want computing have to pay for the development of computers somehow. In a world in which the incremental cost is low to own your personal copy of Intel's (or AMD's or whoever's) Intellectual Property in silicon, the workstation will always win out.
Until silicon is replaced with something much more expensive.
So leave NYC. :-) I know the poster you replied to said "even in NY", so I'm off topic. And it's easier said than done, I know. People have friends, family, all that. And I guess some people just love the big city. But if staying in my city meant choosing between a crazy loan on a house I can't really afford, or 4 hours commuting every day -- wow, when can you enjoy your friends and family? Move to a smaller city, take a small pay cut with a big cost-of-living cut, and it's REALLY easy to slash that commute. Mine is 10 minutes each way, which is entirely luck, but it's really easy to gain 2 or more hours a day over your commute, probably much more, in a smaller fun town.
Just don't come to Austin, because we're getting too many new people already. :-)
I don't mean to throw a "big gray blanket of mistrust" over anything. (Nice phrase, btw. :-) ) I am challenging the poster's position that (in my words, not his or hers) scientific facts are, to the public, distinct from belief, in terms of how we answer the question, "how do we know that is true?" I refer to the sentence, "Otherwise it is just another type of belief to them." To the public, Millican's conclusion is believed to be true, and further, believed based on the say-so of other people. This is qualitatively the same. The science advocate needs to do the hard work of convincing people of the quantity aspect you mention. Science advocates trying to make an end-run around quantity with qualitative appeals to the scientific method leads to skepticism in the public eye, and rightly so.
Don't speak Latin. Worked for us Protestants. :-)
Regarding "another type of belief" -- unless you personally do all the experiments for yourself, and review all the conclusions, it is belief. For example, I believe electrons are real and quantized, and I never did Milliken's oil drop experiment. Other people say they have done the experiment, and I believe them. But it is "just another type of belief." I believe the copy of the periodic table I have in my drawer at home. But I certainly have not verified all the little numbers experimentally, personally. That is quite obviously belief. Have you?
No. "AMD stock is falling" is old, old news. Actually I'm disappointed because there's really nothing timely here. AMD processors are great. AMD buying ATI was probably a good move in a lot of ways, too. It makes it easier for them to tap the laptop market, where they need to be able to say, here's a CPU/chipset combo that's ready to go. Graphics is probably not what they're after. But they bought ATI mostly for cash, i.e. ATI stockholders received mostly cash for their shares, rather than mostly AMD stock. This turned out to be horrible timing, because Intel released Core 2 Duo at about the same time. So beforehand, AMD had demonstrated for 2 years or so that it had the top technology -- not just the most cost effective -- for PC CPU's. Dell and others were starting to see that they needed to field AMD solutions. They were flush with cash and they needed a way to keep growing. Buying a chipset maker, who would then always have a ready chipset, was the way to get more system integrators on board. But when Core 2 Duo came out, it really blew AMD out of the water on the high end. And squeezed them in the midrange. Everyone knew it was coming, but I don't think anyone outside Intel knew what an improvement Core 2 Duo would be. That said, while all this was going on, I put my system together using AMD's AM2 socket, with an nVidia chipset. And I don't regret it. The cheapest Athlon x2 was cheaper than the cheapest Core2Duo, and either was plenty powerful. AMD still makes good chips. But the company itself is hurting, because they used all their cash to buy ATI. Again, it was a good buy, but they needed to use stock. Maybe ATI exec's saw the writing on the wall and didn't want AMD stock? I don't know. Hope they make a comeback. Maybe a company with lots of cash will come buy them. AMD with cash would be in a great position. [Question from a /. newbie: why aren't my paragraph breaks showing? I used return to make blank lines, but they're gone.]
It seems to me that one fairly simple way to cripple botnets of home computers would be to have computers which startup quickly. (And not wake on LAN.) Then people could turn their computers off at night, and when they are not using them. Botnets would have less compute time to work with, and since computers would be being used when they are on, users would be more likely to notice something was wrong if a botnet was running.
Automatic updates would be made more difficult. So you tell your computer to turn on at a certain time at 0-dark-thirty and do its thing, and turn off again. And stay off. Auto updates are the only reason I leave my computer on.
To pre-empt: yes. If everyone knew their computers inside-out they could install linux and do other cool stuff. But a lot of people never will, and their computers can be used as bots. And yes, I'm not as cool as many of y'all, so I don't know the ins-and-outs of a lot of what you are saying. Just proposing a partial solution that could work for the masses.
Because really, everyone understands the concept of turning machines off. It'd save on power too.
Sweet, good luck! Math is fascinating. I think an essential component of teaching yourself math will be to find people who will help. A book can't help you when you're confused, and it's just not possible to write a book that will be clear to everyone all the time. So I think you'll need to find people who will answer questions when they come up. Don't start by hiring a tutor. Lots of people will give free advice (which is what you're getting here.) Go to parties where there are math, physics, and engineering graduate students. Some will talk about math for fun. Listen interestedly. Let on that you're trying to teach yourself math, and some of them will get excited. Ask questions about what you're reading in the books and resources other people have recommended. I bet you'll find a few people who will enjoy helping you work through things, and who communicate well to you. Now if you're willing to pay, you might be able to get someone who has shown themselves to be capable to help you further. They're grad students, so some of them could likely use the money. Say that you're learning well from them, and you'd like to learn faster, but that you respect that their time is valuable. If they could meet with you weekly for an hour and a half, you could pay them (I'm not sure what a reasonable rate would be). If you don't want to pay, or if you find that you can get enough free help without frustrating these people, that's great!