Your criticism of the study I mentioned is reasonable, but in the domain of cancer treatment, a hazard ratio for death (a hard endpoint) of 0.67 is good and, in that sense, if you require much stronger evidence and even better trials you may deprive patients of a useful drug in the meantime. The FDA wants to strike a balance between getting an effective drug to patients as soon as possible and not letting pass ineffective treatments. So, as with most things in life, the kind of evidence I cited is often considered "good enough" even though imperfect.
The evidence for the impact of point mutations can be found in several domains, but the simplest observations comes from hereditary syndromes like Li-Fraumeni. A single change in a nucleotide of the TP53 gene and cancer risk increases to almost 100% in affected individuals. This has been repeatedly observed in many different famliies and also in different syndromes (say, retinoblastoma and RB1 gene). Anyway, the evidence for what is called the "somatic mutation theory" is overwhelming and, despite thoughtful criticism, it is probably accepted as the most plausible theory of carcinogenesis (for the moment!). That's why projects like "Cancer Genome Atlas" get massive funding.
So, yes, point mutations are extremely important. Aneuploidy is also important, but in contrast with a well-described mutation, like the BRAF V600E in melanoma, it does not present an immediate, specific target. As I said, people are working on aneuploidy and maybe something new will come from that, but I don't think it's a "low-hanging fruit".
PS Note that somatic mutations do not exclude aneuploidy and vice versa...
"Nevertheless, having a targeted treatment is often better than no treatment at all."
Perhaps, but I doubt there is any good evidence for this. Weak effects and noisy data don't mix well, we are probably taught all sorts of incorrect things based on spurious results. I would suggest getting away from these targeted treatments of at most limited benefit and work on figuring out how to turn aneuploidy as a drug target.
FDA approval typically requires randomized controlled trials, so when a treatment is available it has been tested at least against placebo (if that was the best available treatment at the moment of approval). That's why I say "better than no treatment". A drug that is not better than placebo usually does not make it past the approval stage (and if it does, approval can be quickly revoked, for example bevacizumab in breast cancer: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11...)
What sort of evidence would you expect? For example, the study which established the targeted agent trastuzumab is available online: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1.... Bias and noise are unavoidable, but with my knowledge of statistics the result seems reasonably clear.
Anyway, with respect to your other comment, aneuploidy is not an obvious target but people are working on it and on drugs that interact with the mitotic machinery. Let's hope they will be successful.
Well, if the cancer cells are aneuploid (like the vast majority apparently are) and thus genetically unstable we shouldn't expect a targeted treatment like this to be effective for long.
Many targeted treatments have been disappointing in actual practice and very few are effective in the long term (imatinib is a good example). Nevertheless, having a targeted treatment is often better than no treatment at all. Furthermore, due to different, non-overlapping toxicites, these treatments are often feasible in patients who have received chemotherapy in the past or together with chemotherapy (trastuzumab, for example).
In the end, cancer is entropy. That's why it's hard.
2) Consider the annual sales and profits of Big Pharma. Then the same for Big Food. IF there's a simple cure using natural food and basic ingredients that big pharma cannot patent, what's Coca Cola, Pepsico and other similarly large companies waiting for to steal big pharma's lunch?
Actually, if a cure was "known" Big Pharma "A" would want to produce it first and charge $$$$$, before Big Pharma "B" does it. It's not like Big Pharma works as a single organism. Multiple companies, competition and all that. Furthermore, don't forget "little pharma". The drug mentioned in the article comes from a little drug company, Agios, not some multi-billion behemoth.Several new drugs have been created by start-ups and were later sold. In fact, Big Pharma mostly does the last part of the pipeline (human trials, FDA accreditations and marketing) but the first part of the drug-discovery process often comes from little inventors who are not afraid to take risks.
I happen to know two people who are in the drug "startup" business and would be quite happy to make $$$$$ selling a cure for cancer to Big Pharma. These are the people that actually do in vitro/in vivo experiments and, trust me, if compound ZZZ were very effective they would be very happy to test it immediately, even if it meant loss of billions for other companies.
Let me give you a brief summary of TFA: - Some cancers have IDH1, IDH2 mutations that change cellular metabolism - This drug is the first targeting the IDH2 enzyme that has been tested in humans - 6 out of 7 patients whose disease (leucemia) had the specific IDH2 mutations had "objective response" to the drug, ie the disease burden was reduced. Note, this does not mean cure.
Now, this is obviously good news, in the same spirit as previous targeted agents like vemurafenib, erlotinib, trastuzumab, crizotinib, especially since it concerns a new aspect of cellular functioning (metabolism). It's too early to say whether the drug will have long lasting impact, but we'll know more after phase II/III trials. It does seem promising.
For patients with AML or MDS and documented IDH2 mutation, the study (NCT01915498) is still recruiting in several centers around the US and in Paris/France (Institut Gustave-Russy). More information can be found in clinicaltrials.gov (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=NCT01915498&Search=Search).
In other news, learning is hard. What did you expect, that people would magically learn the hardest of subjects simply because it is on t3h internetz? I have done MOOCs and I think it's great. I got the chance to hear some famous professors, read some good textbooks. I never expected it to be simple and I had to abandon some courses, but the final result is a net positive: I finished 2-3 courses I would never have had otherwise. So what if I didn't do the other 3 or 4?
Too much hype leads to disillusionment, as usual, but MOOCs have their place.
Apple has absolute control of the software ecosystem and can probably gain significant performance from appropriate optimizations. The android landscape is much more heterogeneous and probably less optimized for each individual device. Think consoles vs PC.
Raw benchmarks like this one may not properly reflect user's perception of performance when different ecosystems are compared. In the end, I expect the iPhone 6 to feel at least as fast as the fastest Android devices in real use cases.
I think there is a subtle difference between being right (in the usual sense of providing a model that happens to accurately represent measurable stuff) and the process of scientific discussion. Consensus is just an outcome of a process, ie collaboration. That process is extremely important but does not guarantee being right.
In the end, without resorting to unnecessary complicated terms, if a bunch of people who are supposed to know what they are saying all agree on something that is not immediately testable (say, long-term human impact on the climate), odds are they are more likely to be right than some random wacko or idiot reporter because they spent some time discussing together and have highlighted potential errors.
In the absence of definitive hard data, which will only be available in retrospect, we have to pick sides. Consensus seems a safer bet than the probability that some random guy is the new Galileo or Einstein.
There was a company back in 1997 that had a fantastic (series of) cards that did all this 3d transformation, reflection, deflection and occlusion of audio in hardware.
AMD TrueAudio on Kaveri processors and newer GPUs supposedly does just that. I haven't seen any game supporting it, though. Would be a nice feature I think.
I have tried some modest consumer-level equipment with disappointing results so I was thinking of either going high-end consumer or even pro. In the end, I'm probably going to take the plunge. As you say, I don't want to change equipment every year...
This is an expensive solution, but I am tempted. Is it better than the equivalent top-end consumer grade products like the Netgear R7000 or the Asus RT68? Specifically, I was thinking of the combination Ubiquiti EdgeRouter PoE + Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC which is almost $700 of gear. Is it worth it for a gigabit home network with a 300MBps fiber connection?
Any other experiences with the Nighthawk AC1900? The hardware seems quite good. I don't mind the price, up to about $250, but I plan on getting 300MBps fiber so I need a router that can reliably route that plus handle my gigabit home network.
A classical article on the subject, quite old now, has concluded that approximately 80% of diagnoses can be made from the history (ie a structured interview) with a further maybe 10% from physical examination and maybe 5% from additional investigations (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1673456/). Obviously, the requirements for modern medicine and the available means are a bit different. Nevertheless, any serious doctor will tell you that the history taking and the physical examination are the most important parts of an encounter with a patient.
This is a direct result of Bayes theorem: the interview and physical define the "prior" probability for any diagnosis and any further investigations will only serve to modify it by a certain degree (confirm or exclude). With the exception of some quite aggressive diagnostic methods, like a biopsy or laparoscopy, which will never be recommended upfront, most investigations are generally not sufficiently sensitive or specific enough to give a conclusive diagnosis.
Finally, the physical (which cannot be done via Skype) is also a very important component of the physician and patient relationship. An encounter without physical examination seems, in my humble opinion, quite superficial. Patients are generally more satisfied if you take the time to carefully examine them.
That being said, Skype can be a decent solution for people living in remote areas where transportation can be a real problem. Skype for people living in major cities is a bit silly, I think.
PS. I am physician, but I am curious to hear what you think about the value of physical examination.
Read: "AMD is just as good as Intel when they aren't doing anything" What a pathetic piece of shilling that is. Really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find ANY redeeming quality in AMD CPUs, eh?
Well, if "not doing anything" is what your PC does a long part of the day, idle power consumption can be of some importance. That does not necessarily redeem AMD cpus, but it is worth mentioning in my opinion. Obviously, you seem to think that all discussion should be limited to "AMD sucks". Even if true, this does not make for a very interesting read.
I'll believe it when I see it. AMD CPUs always run hotter and used more energy in real life tests.
Well, in idle, which is what most processors do in typical user workloads, the 7800 is comparable to intel processors. Total energy to accomplish a task obviously varies, but the 7800 uses 30-50% more energy than intel processors for the same task. However, the 7 series APUs are clearly more efficient than the 6 series Richland APUs that they replace. Peak power consumption is around 100W for a complete system with 7800, which is not a huge thermal load.
In the end, what I'm saying is that AMD improved power efficiency way more than absolute performance, something that is more important in the portable space. You're looking at maybe 10% faster than Richland at the CPU side but with 20% less energy. Obviously, they could have chosen different power/performance tradeoffs, if they wanted to compete on the desktop.
For some numbers, you can have a look at Techreport or Anandtech (http://techreport.com/review/26845/amd-a10-7800-processor-reviewed/3). I am not aware of any tests concerning the laptop variants, but they should appear soon.
Yeah, set it for 45w max and you end up with the CPU side of it constantly getting throttled and the performance sliding even further into the dirt. But you're right about GPU dependant loads. But if that was my usage case, I'd probably wait for Isis Pro to trickle down to Intel's low-end.
Benchmarks from the smaller 7600 only show a modest performance hit from going to 45W, approximately 10%. Isis Pro is a brute force solution to the problem (huge on-chip RAM) and is likely to stay quite expensive for a while because of die-size and limited production. A discrete GPU is probably the better option at that price point (ie replace the cheapest $450 Iris pro with $450 cpu + GPU), unless if low power consumption is an absolute priority.
Affordable on-chip graphics RAM may become standard in future AMD and intel processors but I wouldn't hold my breath...
They will probably make some version for the server market, but it will certainly be on another socket. The socket AM3+ does support ECC (if you choose the right motherboard, ASUS usually do...) but the upgrade path is probably stuck forever at the FX8350. It isn't a bad chip, actually quite good for multithreaded loads, but it's getting old... If you want ECC for cheap you could buy a lower-end socket AM3+ processor like the FX4350, otherwise Xeon is clearly the better choice.
What most people don't realize is that the desktop version is basically an afterthought. The chip has been optimized for laptops, where it does make some sense (adding a discrete GPU is not an option after purchase and laptops with discrete GPUs are quite more expensive, so the comparative advantage is more important). AMD knows they can't win on the desktop, which is why they didn't bother with extreme caches, 4-module (8-core) versions and cherry-picked chips with crazy TDPs. Personally, I'm much more excited with the laptop version of Kaveri, such as the 7350B in the HP EliteBook 745 G2.
Anyway, for the price it makes a really great casual gaming PC, especially for people who are price sensitive and can't afford a +$100 discrete GPU (in some places this is a decent chunk of a month's salary...).
I don't really see the need for gaming on the go, and if such a need exists, isn't it sufficiently covered by existing gadgets (smartphone or non-gaming tablet)? Furthermore, are the current tablet games worth buying hardware specifically for the job? What would be the point of Angry Birds at 120fps?
Anyway, the hardware looks cool, but the fact that no other manufacturer bothered to use the nvidia hardware is a bit disconcerting. If it were the best thing since sliced bread, many designs would have flooded the market.
Although a definite cure would be nice, simply improving the quality of glycemic control would be a revolution. Optimal glycemic control can be very complicated, especially for patients who do not have the courage to follow strict dietary and healthstyle recommendations. Being able to treat a complicated disease with a single daily injection sounds nice. I know it would simplify my job as an MD...
I am not a great cook but I do enjoy cooking and I can't think of a texture that you can't achieve with good materials and decent cooking technique. Healthy food really doesn't have to have a bad texture I think. Maybe an investment in a few cooking books and some classes would help you?
But not "stable", "consistent" or "smooth". This is still a major issue with the core of all AMD cards which hasnt been fixed. You get what you pay for. Nvidia might be the "expensive" of the bunch, just wish i forked out a little more instead of getting my HD7770.
Do you realize that in the graph you linked no card dips below 50fps at any time? In fact, if you count the occasional peaks crossing the (ridiculously low) 15ms/66fps threshold, the Titan Z shows 6 frames slower than 15ms and the 295X2 shows 4 frames at more than 15ms (if I count correctly). You really can't argue that the Titan Z is smoother. All cards are extremely smooth.
I would just like to point out that the 295X2 has superior absolute gaming performance and superior fp32 performance but, just like most gaming NVidia products, the fp64 is crippled at 1/8 fp32 rate at configuration in order to create a profit margin for the costlier "pro" products. The hardware itself is capable of 1/2 fp64 rate and should be superior to the Titan Z if AMD decides to offer "pro-level support".
As proof, consider the fp64 rate of the single-chip AMD W9100, sold at ~$4000, which is 2.6 TFlops (http://www.amd.com/Documents/FirePro_W9100_Data_Sheet.pdf), versus the 2.7 TFlops of the Titan Z (1/3 fp32 rate, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...). AMD could unlock the 295X2 at its full potential 5.2 double precision TFlops and release it any day if they want, crushing the Titan Z.
Honestly, instead of the Titan Z, I'd rather buy the AMD W9100 for $4000 and get equivalent double precision compute rate, better perf/W and, most importanty, certification for pro applications and ECC memory. That is certainly worth the extra $1000 in this product segment.
The adoption of measures protecting privacy depends on user demand. Online commerce has been considered safe enough for years yet exchanging an email or having any online activity is completely unprotected. I was always surprised by lack of interest from users. Maybe the younger users, if they are not yet addicted to making all their life public on facebook et al would put some pressure for simple technical solutions that guarantee a basic level of privacy. Obviously, I don't expect complete protection against three-letter agencies; that's not the point. In that sense, this looks like a step in a desireable direction, even if it is done for the wrong reasons. As a potential customer, I appreciate this effort.
Slashdot Mirror
Your criticism of the study I mentioned is reasonable, but in the domain of cancer treatment, a hazard ratio for death (a hard endpoint) of 0.67 is good and, in that sense, if you require much stronger evidence and even better trials you may deprive patients of a useful drug in the meantime. The FDA wants to strike a balance between getting an effective drug to patients as soon as possible and not letting pass ineffective treatments. So, as with most things in life, the kind of evidence I cited is often considered "good enough" even though imperfect.
The evidence for the impact of point mutations can be found in several domains, but the simplest observations comes from hereditary syndromes like Li-Fraumeni. A single change in a nucleotide of the TP53 gene and cancer risk increases to almost 100% in affected individuals. This has been repeatedly observed in many different famliies and also in different syndromes (say, retinoblastoma and RB1 gene). Anyway, the evidence for what is called the "somatic mutation theory" is overwhelming and, despite thoughtful criticism, it is probably accepted as the most plausible theory of carcinogenesis (for the moment!). That's why projects like "Cancer Genome Atlas" get massive funding.
So, yes, point mutations are extremely important. Aneuploidy is also important, but in contrast with a well-described mutation, like the BRAF V600E in melanoma, it does not present an immediate, specific target. As I said, people are working on aneuploidy and maybe something new will come from that, but I don't think it's a "low-hanging fruit".
PS Note that somatic mutations do not exclude aneuploidy and vice versa...
"Nevertheless, having a targeted treatment is often better than no treatment at all."
Perhaps, but I doubt there is any good evidence for this. Weak effects and noisy data don't mix well, we are probably taught all sorts of incorrect things based on spurious results. I would suggest getting away from these targeted treatments of at most limited benefit and work on figuring out how to turn aneuploidy as a drug target.
FDA approval typically requires randomized controlled trials, so when a treatment is available it has been tested at least against placebo (if that was the best available treatment at the moment of approval). That's why I say "better than no treatment". A drug that is not better than placebo usually does not make it past the approval stage (and if it does, approval can be quickly revoked, for example bevacizumab in breast cancer: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11...)
What sort of evidence would you expect? For example, the study which established the targeted agent trastuzumab is available online: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1.... Bias and noise are unavoidable, but with my knowledge of statistics the result seems reasonably clear.
Anyway, with respect to your other comment, aneuploidy is not an obvious target but people are working on it and on drugs that interact with the mitotic machinery. Let's hope they will be successful.
Well, if the cancer cells are aneuploid (like the vast majority apparently are) and thus genetically unstable we shouldn't expect a targeted treatment like this to be effective for long.
Many targeted treatments have been disappointing in actual practice and very few are effective in the long term (imatinib is a good example). Nevertheless, having a targeted treatment is often better than no treatment at all. Furthermore, due to different, non-overlapping toxicites, these treatments are often feasible in patients who have received chemotherapy in the past or together with chemotherapy (trastuzumab, for example).
In the end, cancer is entropy. That's why it's hard.
2) Consider the annual sales and profits of Big Pharma. Then the same for Big Food. IF there's a simple cure using natural food and basic ingredients that big pharma cannot patent, what's Coca Cola, Pepsico and other similarly large companies waiting for to steal big pharma's lunch?
Actually, if a cure was "known" Big Pharma "A" would want to produce it first and charge $$$$$, before Big Pharma "B" does it. It's not like Big Pharma works as a single organism. Multiple companies, competition and all that. Furthermore, don't forget "little pharma". The drug mentioned in the article comes from a little drug company, Agios, not some multi-billion behemoth.Several new drugs have been created by start-ups and were later sold. In fact, Big Pharma mostly does the last part of the pipeline (human trials, FDA accreditations and marketing) but the first part of the drug-discovery process often comes from little inventors who are not afraid to take risks.
I happen to know two people who are in the drug "startup" business and would be quite happy to make $$$$$ selling a cure for cancer to Big Pharma. These are the people that actually do in vitro/in vivo experiments and, trust me, if compound ZZZ were very effective they would be very happy to test it immediately, even if it meant loss of billions for other companies.
Let me give you a brief summary of TFA:
- Some cancers have IDH1, IDH2 mutations that change cellular metabolism
- This drug is the first targeting the IDH2 enzyme that has been tested in humans
- 6 out of 7 patients whose disease (leucemia) had the specific IDH2 mutations had "objective response" to the drug, ie the disease burden was reduced. Note, this does not mean cure.
Now, this is obviously good news, in the same spirit as previous targeted agents like vemurafenib, erlotinib, trastuzumab, crizotinib, especially since it concerns a new aspect of cellular functioning (metabolism). It's too early to say whether the drug will have long lasting impact, but we'll know more after phase II/III trials. It does seem promising.
For patients with AML or MDS and documented IDH2 mutation, the study (NCT01915498) is still recruiting in several centers around the US and in Paris/France (Institut Gustave-Russy). More information can be found in clinicaltrials.gov (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=NCT01915498&Search=Search).
In other news, learning is hard. What did you expect, that people would magically learn the hardest of subjects simply because it is on t3h internetz? I have done MOOCs and I think it's great. I got the chance to hear some famous professors, read some good textbooks. I never expected it to be simple and I had to abandon some courses, but the final result is a net positive: I finished 2-3 courses I would never have had otherwise. So what if I didn't do the other 3 or 4?
Too much hype leads to disillusionment, as usual, but MOOCs have their place.
Apple has absolute control of the software ecosystem and can probably gain significant performance from appropriate optimizations. The android landscape is much more heterogeneous and probably less optimized for each individual device. Think consoles vs PC.
Raw benchmarks like this one may not properly reflect user's perception of performance when different ecosystems are compared. In the end, I expect the iPhone 6 to feel at least as fast as the fastest Android devices in real use cases.
I think there is a subtle difference between being right (in the usual sense of providing a model that happens to accurately represent measurable stuff) and the process of scientific discussion. Consensus is just an outcome of a process, ie collaboration. That process is extremely important but does not guarantee being right.
In the end, without resorting to unnecessary complicated terms, if a bunch of people who are supposed to know what they are saying all agree on something that is not immediately testable (say, long-term human impact on the climate), odds are they are more likely to be right than some random wacko or idiot reporter because they spent some time discussing together and have highlighted potential errors.
In the absence of definitive hard data, which will only be available in retrospect, we have to pick sides. Consensus seems a safer bet than the probability that some random guy is the new Galileo or Einstein.
There was a company back in 1997 that had a fantastic (series of) cards that did all this 3d transformation, reflection, deflection and occlusion of audio in hardware.
AMD TrueAudio on Kaveri processors and newer GPUs supposedly does just that. I haven't seen any game supporting it, though. Would be a nice feature I think.
Thanks for the information!
I have tried some modest consumer-level equipment with disappointing results so I was thinking of either going high-end consumer or even pro. In the end, I'm probably going to take the plunge. As you say, I don't want to change equipment every year...
This is an expensive solution, but I am tempted. Is it better than the equivalent top-end consumer grade products like the Netgear R7000 or the Asus RT68? Specifically, I was thinking of the combination Ubiquiti EdgeRouter PoE + Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC which is almost $700 of gear. Is it worth it for a gigabit home network with a 300MBps fiber connection?
Any other experiences with the Nighthawk AC1900? The hardware seems quite good. I don't mind the price, up to about $250, but I plan on getting 300MBps fiber so I need a router that can reliably route that plus handle my gigabit home network.
A classical article on the subject, quite old now, has concluded that approximately 80% of diagnoses can be made from the history (ie a structured interview) with a further maybe 10% from physical examination and maybe 5% from additional investigations (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1673456/). Obviously, the requirements for modern medicine and the available means are a bit different. Nevertheless, any serious doctor will tell you that the history taking and the physical examination are the most important parts of an encounter with a patient.
This is a direct result of Bayes theorem: the interview and physical define the "prior" probability for any diagnosis and any further investigations will only serve to modify it by a certain degree (confirm or exclude). With the exception of some quite aggressive diagnostic methods, like a biopsy or laparoscopy, which will never be recommended upfront, most investigations are generally not sufficiently sensitive or specific enough to give a conclusive diagnosis.
Finally, the physical (which cannot be done via Skype) is also a very important component of the physician and patient relationship. An encounter without physical examination seems, in my humble opinion, quite superficial. Patients are generally more satisfied if you take the time to carefully examine them.
That being said, Skype can be a decent solution for people living in remote areas where transportation can be a real problem. Skype for people living in major cities is a bit silly, I think.
PS. I am physician, but I am curious to hear what you think about the value of physical examination.
Read: "AMD is just as good as Intel when they aren't doing anything"
What a pathetic piece of shilling that is. Really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find ANY redeeming quality in AMD CPUs, eh?
Well, if "not doing anything" is what your PC does a long part of the day, idle power consumption can be of some importance. That does not necessarily redeem AMD cpus, but it is worth mentioning in my opinion. Obviously, you seem to think that all discussion should be limited to "AMD sucks". Even if true, this does not make for a very interesting read.
I'll believe it when I see it. AMD CPUs always run hotter and used more energy in real life tests.
Well, in idle, which is what most processors do in typical user workloads, the 7800 is comparable to intel processors. Total energy to accomplish a task obviously varies, but the 7800 uses 30-50% more energy than intel processors for the same task. However, the 7 series APUs are clearly more efficient than the 6 series Richland APUs that they replace. Peak power consumption is around 100W for a complete system with 7800, which is not a huge thermal load.
In the end, what I'm saying is that AMD improved power efficiency way more than absolute performance, something that is more important in the portable space. You're looking at maybe 10% faster than Richland at the CPU side but with 20% less energy. Obviously, they could have chosen different power/performance tradeoffs, if they wanted to compete on the desktop.
For some numbers, you can have a look at Techreport or Anandtech (http://techreport.com/review/26845/amd-a10-7800-processor-reviewed/3). I am not aware of any tests concerning the laptop variants, but they should appear soon.
Yeah, set it for 45w max and you end up with the CPU side of it constantly getting throttled and the performance sliding even further into the dirt. But you're right about GPU dependant loads. But if that was my usage case, I'd probably wait for Isis Pro to trickle down to Intel's low-end.
Benchmarks from the smaller 7600 only show a modest performance hit from going to 45W, approximately 10%. Isis Pro is a brute force solution to the problem (huge on-chip RAM) and is likely to stay quite expensive for a while because of die-size and limited production. A discrete GPU is probably the better option at that price point (ie replace the cheapest $450 Iris pro with $450 cpu + GPU), unless if low power consumption is an absolute priority.
Affordable on-chip graphics RAM may become standard in future AMD and intel processors but I wouldn't hold my breath...
They will probably make some version for the server market, but it will certainly be on another socket. The socket AM3+ does support ECC (if you choose the right motherboard, ASUS usually do...) but the upgrade path is probably stuck forever at the FX8350. It isn't a bad chip, actually quite good for multithreaded loads, but it's getting old... If you want ECC for cheap you could buy a lower-end socket AM3+ processor like the FX4350, otherwise Xeon is clearly the better choice.
What most people don't realize is that the desktop version is basically an afterthought. The chip has been optimized for laptops, where it does make some sense (adding a discrete GPU is not an option after purchase and laptops with discrete GPUs are quite more expensive, so the comparative advantage is more important). AMD knows they can't win on the desktop, which is why they didn't bother with extreme caches, 4-module (8-core) versions and cherry-picked chips with crazy TDPs. Personally, I'm much more excited with the laptop version of Kaveri, such as the 7350B in the HP EliteBook 745 G2.
Anyway, for the price it makes a really great casual gaming PC, especially for people who are price sensitive and can't afford a +$100 discrete GPU (in some places this is a decent chunk of a month's salary...).
I don't really see the need for gaming on the go, and if such a need exists, isn't it sufficiently covered by existing gadgets (smartphone or non-gaming tablet)? Furthermore, are the current tablet games worth buying hardware specifically for the job? What would be the point of Angry Birds at 120fps?
Anyway, the hardware looks cool, but the fact that no other manufacturer bothered to use the nvidia hardware is a bit disconcerting. If it were the best thing since sliced bread, many designs would have flooded the market.
Although a definite cure would be nice, simply improving the quality of glycemic control would be a revolution. Optimal glycemic control can be very complicated, especially for patients who do not have the courage to follow strict dietary and healthstyle recommendations. Being able to treat a complicated disease with a single daily injection sounds nice. I know it would simplify my job as an MD...
I am not a great cook but I do enjoy cooking and I can't think of a texture that you can't achieve with good materials and decent cooking technique. Healthy food really doesn't have to have a bad texture I think. Maybe an investment in a few cooking books and some classes would help you?
AMD recently presented HSA-enabled jpeg decoding. That would also be an interesting addition. Make these shaders work a little...
http://developer.amd.com/resou...
the R9 295X2 offered higher and more consistent frame rates
http://cdn.pcper.com/files/ima...
But not "stable", "consistent" or "smooth". This is still a major issue with the core of all AMD cards which hasnt been fixed.
You get what you pay for. Nvidia might be the "expensive" of the bunch, just wish i forked out a little more instead of getting my HD7770.
Do you realize that in the graph you linked no card dips below 50fps at any time? In fact, if you count the occasional peaks crossing the (ridiculously low) 15ms/66fps threshold, the Titan Z shows 6 frames slower than 15ms and the 295X2 shows 4 frames at more than 15ms (if I count correctly). You really can't argue that the Titan Z is smoother. All cards are extremely smooth.
I would just like to point out that the 295X2 has superior absolute gaming performance and superior fp32 performance but, just like most gaming NVidia products, the fp64 is crippled at 1/8 fp32 rate at configuration in order to create a profit margin for the costlier "pro" products. The hardware itself is capable of 1/2 fp64 rate and should be superior to the Titan Z if AMD decides to offer "pro-level support".
As proof, consider the fp64 rate of the single-chip AMD W9100, sold at ~$4000, which is 2.6 TFlops (http://www.amd.com/Documents/FirePro_W9100_Data_Sheet.pdf), versus the 2.7 TFlops of the Titan Z (1/3 fp32 rate, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...). AMD could unlock the 295X2 at its full potential 5.2 double precision TFlops and release it any day if they want, crushing the Titan Z.
Honestly, instead of the Titan Z, I'd rather buy the AMD W9100 for $4000 and get equivalent double precision compute rate, better perf/W and, most importanty, certification for pro applications and ECC memory. That is certainly worth the extra $1000 in this product segment.
The adoption of measures protecting privacy depends on user demand. Online commerce has been considered safe enough for years yet exchanging an email or having any online activity is completely unprotected. I was always surprised by lack of interest from users. Maybe the younger users, if they are not yet addicted to making all their life public on facebook et al would put some pressure for simple technical solutions that guarantee a basic level of privacy. Obviously, I don't expect complete protection against three-letter agencies; that's not the point. In that sense, this looks like a step in a desireable direction, even if it is done for the wrong reasons. As a potential customer, I appreciate this effort.