However, throw in the possibility of voxels (as this hypothetical future person is likely to want to do) and once again you are way behind in storage space. Once we move from 2d to true 3d I don't think you'll ever really find an upper limit. From there it really becomes what size of a space and resolution are we allowing, and for that there is always going to be some need to limit.
This is the reason that I've chosen to never reuse the original MiniDV tapes. If the final mastering of the DVD ever becomes corrupt (along with any other copies in existance) I'll have the option of returning to the source. I guess that works in this case because the end product (the DVD) is less valuable than the original footage.
I need to find a way, however, to back up the tapes, since they are the higher res. They may not be as vulnerable to corruption of optical medium, but they would still be vulnerable to disaster, and it'd be nice to have an offsite copy.
Actually, that may not be quite true. Yes, noone wants DRM per say. What Microsoft most likely looks at is how to make content available to their customer. Since they do not create content they have to figure out how to make others make their content available.
Unfortunately, that leads to DRM. But it isn't a matter of thinking "What can we give them that they least want?" and more a matter of "How can we give them what they do want?"
There is a lot of misinformation about this case, and as with most things in life it is not so cut and dry.
Lets try this order:
1) NTP is in the wireless communication business early. I think a decade before Blackberry and its derivatives come into existence. 2) NTP creates said patents. Whether they should have passed the novelty or prior art threshholds I don't know. 3) NTP fails in its attempts to market the technology and ultimately folds. Patents are placed in a dusty drawer. 4) RIM creates blackberry. 5) RIM creates various patents, and threatens to use them. 6) The remnants of NTP hear of this, decide to enforce their own patents. 7)... etc.
The rest seems fairly accurate. In either case, not so clean cut as a classic patent troll. Still, it points out why patents, by and large, are evil. It shows that a successful and/or popular product is not just the idea and denies others the use of countless ideas... many of which could have happened easily without patent protection.
While trademark is still very much in the vein of "intellectual property" it does serve a very important function. It ensures that I can identify a given product as genuine. I know as an individual, if someone were to perform work claiming to be me, they could cause serious harm to my reputation for quality work.
Maybe a company could still be allowed to protect itself by scaling back trademark to include only the company's name. "The Coca-Cola Company" then could remain and identifying a product as coming from such when it does not could remain illegal.
Certainly I'd agree that the current use of trademarks is overly broad, and in a world without patents or copyrights the full spectrum of uses would need to be curtailed. (Note, I am not convinced that totally abolishing any of the three systems is in fact appropriate, but thats for a different thread.)
>> however there are diminishing returns past 48 processors due to communications latency
For any given problem there will be diminishing returns if you limit the size of your data set while increasing the number of processors. If you want to make use of a larger number of processors and maintain efficiency (useful computation vs communication overhead) then you need larger data sets. This won't of course help you if you need to get something done faster, it will usually help you get a more detailed answer.
So instead of building in a place prone to natural disaster, you live in a place fairly inhospitable to life, also known as a desert. It'll be interesting to see what happens to Phoenix when the aquifer it sits on is empty.
So how much essence is an artificial heart going to take?:) And how long until I can get a datajack, wired reflexes... a cranial deck might not be a bad idea either.
You're right, I didn't factor in the freelance aspect of it all and assumed a full schedule which brings the salary expectations into a more normal realm. I was mostly taking offense at the remark that he wasn't making even the $40k starting salary. He obviously is if he can keep even a little busy with freelance work at those rates.
You still have to ask yourself: In a discipline where any problem becomes more expensive to fix the longer it goes uncaught... does the reduced accuracy cause more problems than it solves. Yes, given an extra 10 hours you will accomplish something... but if you introduce 2 problems for every 1 you solve you cannot claim that that is progress.
I'd be interested to see studies on the errors introduced based on fatigue and correlate that with the cost anticipated to fix those errors. On the other hand, errors might not be all that big of a deal in the video game industry... I don't know.
Well, conventional TV (not HD) currently can go through VDSL. 3 different streams provided simultaneously is standard, and more is possible. Anyone have an idea how much more bandwidth HDTV requires?
As does a IP Packet, really... at any given time the packet must exist as electricity or photons both of which have mass. On the other hand, the information is independent of its mass.
As has been said before, but bears repeating: Most companies do not require contracts. Most companies have contracts available if you want that snazzy phone they give you for a drastic rebate.
The following are the business models that you tend to see with services: a) Those services where the customer is assumed to have the equipment. (Such as phone, dialup internet etc.) b) Those services with propriatary standards that require special equipment. (Such as digital cable, satelite, etc.)
For better or worse, cell phones fit into category b. While you may disagree with the fact that a cell phone isn't a comodity and has to be specially adapted for each network, that is the way the cell companies have chosen to have it.
Thus, you must obtain a new cell phone if you want to do business with a carrier.
Now in general only 3 business models make sense in this case: a) Rent cell phones to everyone. This doesn't make sense for cell phone companies since standards change too often, and the phone itself tends to get a lot of wear and tear. b) Sell the cell phone. c) Give the cell phone away, but require a contract to allow them to recoup some of the cost of giving the phone away.
As it turns out, the companies have chosen somewhere between b and c. Customer who don't want a contract (for most carriers) are free to purchase the phone outright and avoid the contract. Those who need the phone for cheap, are free to sign the contract and get the phone for a substantial discount (usually > $100 discount)
So, if you want cellphone companies to "stop this bullshit" then be prepared to spend a lot more on the cell phone. If you want a bottom of the line cell phone without all the "bullcrap color-game-camera-sexual prealusr device gee-wiz" stuff, pay the $50 to buy a basic model. The point is, there is a choice. And I disagree with you if you think this is the primary place that cell-phone companies need to improve.
I think he meant the traditional "Serial Port" of most modern PC's. Very few things use them due to their speed or lack thereof, at least on the consumer side of things. (Now that says nothing about their use in scientific or other communities where custom hardware is more common...)
Which is exactly where the onus should be. Copyright law will not be overturned no matter what judge you have. The important thing is that its not the responsibility of the service to monitor you. The time honoured methods of identifying the responsible party and prosecuting them for their own actions holds.
The only situation where perhaps the service provider should be liable is if there is no non-infringing uses at all. I admit, Napster may have been in this category. But a generic file sharing service has many potential non-infringing uses.
It might be that tape drives aren't really hugely cheaper than hard-drives. Lets go for the 20Gb Internal Travan from seagate. $180 for the physical drive and one tape. Compared, Western Digital 20 GB, $63.
So lets assume that the cost portion wasn't stacks 3 to 1 in the favour of the hard-drive. We also have the performance factor. I've supported these beasties. They are slow, especially if you even think about using them like a hard-drive for random access storage (which regretably HP did at one point)... the benefit comes in easily storable and removable media. It might be cheaper to buy 5 hard drives to do your rotation on, but its much more bulky and more labor intensive to do. Thus the 3 to 1 price tradeoff for using the slower tape for archival purposes outweighs the cost problems for some people.
Now, lets assume that this solid state is meant to do exactly the same as a hard-drive (which by the description of the article, it is.) We're looking at a 100 to 1 price tradeoff. The only way that kind of increase in price becomes worth is if your doing some highly critical things which absolutely must be done faster. The average game of Quake doesn't need it.
Thus, hard drives, could they be better? Yes. But if the next alternative is that much more pricey, chances are they are good enough.
Hmmm, I know of one or two people who are unable or unwilling to learn to drive. These people can and do lead productive lives. So you _can_ live without a driver's lisence.
You know, look at Iraq if you truley want to see lack of freedom.
Yes, we are having our freedoms eroded all around us in the name of security, but by no means does this mean that we don't see any.
If you want proof go look at all the war protestors. Compare to what would happen if something similar had happened prior to Iraq invading Kuwait. You'll see little in the way of censorship or even overactive crackdowns on it. There you'd see people murdered, tortured, or just disappear.
You see people, in this forum and others talk openly and plainly against government policies and laws.
Now, while I do get worried about the government protecting IP to the point where you aren't allowed to look at what makes your world works, I don't think it rises yet to the level of remoting all traces of freedom. It doesn't seem like these are policies that foster a well informed populous, but its a long jump from that to getting a visit from MIB for disparaging the president.
Packet writing isn't too bad so long as you can use the same program on both systems to do it. Theoretically they all right the same file system, but in practice your milage may vary. Still, from laptop to desktop, if both installed w/ a CDRW, should not be hard.
As for the PS2 mouse... there are USB to PS2 converters.
Not quite sure what company your going with digital cable with, but in the 3 areas I have experience w/ (2 doing support for the product and 1 being the owner of a product) just adding a digital box + some digital content costs an addition $5-$10 above standard cable. This can easily be called the cost of renting the digital box. When rental of the box is no longer required (due to standardization of the digital signal so that you could purchase one) then the price between digital and analog should be fairly small. Just basic digital cable for $70? That's crazy. $80 will usually buy you all the stations on the cable feed. (including premiums, but not including sports feeds or PPV)
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Truley, a mol of storage would be great. :)
However, throw in the possibility of voxels (as this hypothetical future person is likely to want to do) and once again you are way behind in storage space. Once we move from 2d to true 3d I don't think you'll ever really find an upper limit. From there it really becomes what size of a space and resolution are we allowing, and for that there is always going to be some need to limit.
This is the reason that I've chosen to never reuse the original MiniDV tapes. If the final mastering of the DVD ever becomes corrupt (along with any other copies in existance) I'll have the option of returning to the source. I guess that works in this case because the end product (the DVD) is less valuable than the original footage.
I need to find a way, however, to back up the tapes, since they are the higher res. They may not be as vulnerable to corruption of optical medium, but they would still be vulnerable to disaster, and it'd be nice to have an offsite copy.
Actually, that may not be quite true. Yes, noone wants DRM per say. What Microsoft most likely looks at is how to make content available to their customer. Since they do not create content they have to figure out how to make others make their content available.
Unfortunately, that leads to DRM. But it isn't a matter of thinking "What can we give them that they least want?" and more a matter of "How can we give them what they do want?"
There is a lot of misinformation about this case, and as with most things in life it is not so cut and dry.
... etc.
Lets try this order:
1) NTP is in the wireless communication business early. I think a decade before Blackberry and its derivatives come into existence.
2) NTP creates said patents. Whether they should have passed the novelty or prior art threshholds I don't know.
3) NTP fails in its attempts to market the technology and ultimately folds. Patents are placed in a dusty drawer.
4) RIM creates blackberry.
5) RIM creates various patents, and threatens to use them.
6) The remnants of NTP hear of this, decide to enforce their own patents.
7)
The rest seems fairly accurate. In either case, not so clean cut as a classic patent troll. Still, it points out why patents, by and large, are evil. It shows that a successful and/or popular product is not just the idea and denies others the use of countless ideas... many of which could have happened easily without patent protection.
While trademark is still very much in the vein of "intellectual property" it does serve a very important function. It ensures that I can identify a given product as genuine. I know as an individual, if someone were to perform work claiming to be me, they could cause serious harm to my reputation for quality work.
Maybe a company could still be allowed to protect itself by scaling back trademark to include only the company's name. "The Coca-Cola Company" then could remain and identifying a product as coming from such when it does not could remain illegal.
Certainly I'd agree that the current use of trademarks is overly broad, and in a world without patents or copyrights the full spectrum of uses would need to be curtailed. (Note, I am not convinced that totally abolishing any of the three systems is in fact appropriate, but thats for a different thread.)
Well, he's just counting in unary. (1 = 1, 11 = 2, 111 = 3, etc.)
>> however there are diminishing returns past 48 processors due to communications latency
For any given problem there will be diminishing returns if you limit the size of your data set while increasing the number of processors. If you want to make use of a larger number of processors and maintain efficiency (useful computation vs communication overhead) then you need larger data sets. This won't of course help you if you need to get something done faster, it will usually help you get a more detailed answer.
So instead of building in a place prone to natural disaster, you live in a place fairly inhospitable to life, also known as a desert. It'll be interesting to see what happens to Phoenix when the aquifer it sits on is empty.
So how much essence is an artificial heart going to take? :) And how long until I can get a datajack, wired reflexes... a cranial deck might not be a bad idea either.
You're right, I didn't factor in the freelance aspect of it all and assumed a full schedule which brings the salary expectations into a more normal realm. I was mostly taking offense at the remark that he wasn't making even the $40k starting salary. He obviously is if he can keep even a little busy with freelance work at those rates.
Your math is lacking.
Assume a full days billing is $600. (he claims to make more).
$600 dollars per day * 5 days per week * 52 weeks per year is $235000 dollars/year.
I question whether he actually makes a quarter million dollars a year, but if taken at face value its more than $40k/year.
That's gibibyte.
The funny thing is that a gigabyte label on a hard drive probably meant neither 10^9 bytes nor 2^30 bytes.
You still have to ask yourself: In a discipline where any problem becomes more expensive to fix the longer it goes uncaught... does the reduced accuracy cause more problems than it solves. Yes, given an extra 10 hours you will accomplish something... but if you introduce 2 problems for every 1 you solve you cannot claim that that is progress.
I'd be interested to see studies on the errors introduced based on fatigue and correlate that with the cost anticipated to fix those errors.
On the other hand, errors might not be all that big of a deal in the video game industry... I don't know.
Well, conventional TV (not HD) currently can go through VDSL. 3 different streams provided simultaneously is standard, and more is possible. Anyone have an idea how much more bandwidth HDTV requires?
As does a IP Packet, really... at any given time the packet must exist as electricity or photons both of which have mass. On the other hand, the information is independent of its mass.
As has been said before, but bears repeating:
Most companies do not require contracts.
Most companies have contracts available if you want that snazzy phone they give you for a drastic rebate.
The following are the business models that you tend to see with services:
a) Those services where the customer is assumed to have the equipment. (Such as phone, dialup internet etc.)
b) Those services with propriatary standards that require special equipment. (Such as digital cable, satelite, etc.)
For better or worse, cell phones fit into category b. While you may disagree with the fact that a cell phone isn't a comodity and has to be specially adapted for each network, that is the way the cell companies have chosen to have it.
Thus, you must obtain a new cell phone if you want to do business with a carrier.
Now in general only 3 business models make sense in this case:
a) Rent cell phones to everyone. This doesn't make sense for cell phone companies since standards change too often, and the phone itself tends to get a lot of wear and tear.
b) Sell the cell phone.
c) Give the cell phone away, but require a contract to allow them to recoup some of the cost of giving the phone away.
As it turns out, the companies have chosen somewhere between b and c. Customer who don't want a contract (for most carriers) are free to purchase the phone outright and avoid the contract. Those who need the phone for cheap, are free to sign the contract and get the phone for a substantial discount (usually > $100 discount)
So, if you want cellphone companies to "stop this bullshit" then be prepared to spend a lot more on the cell phone. If you want a bottom of the line cell phone without all the "bullcrap color-game-camera-sexual prealusr device gee-wiz" stuff, pay the $50 to buy a basic model. The point is, there is a choice. And I disagree with you if you think this is the primary place that cell-phone companies need to improve.
I think he meant the traditional "Serial Port" of most modern PC's. Very few things use them due to their speed or lack thereof, at least on the consumer side of things. (Now that says nothing about their use in scientific or other communities where custom hardware is more common...)
Which is exactly where the onus should be. Copyright law will not be overturned no matter what judge you have. The important thing is that its not the responsibility of the service to monitor you. The time honoured methods of identifying the responsible party and prosecuting them for their own actions holds.
The only situation where perhaps the service provider should be liable is if there is no non-infringing uses at all. I admit, Napster may have been in this category. But a generic file sharing service has many potential non-infringing uses.
It might be that tape drives aren't really hugely cheaper than hard-drives. Lets go for the 20Gb Internal Travan from seagate. $180 for the physical drive and one tape. Compared, Western Digital 20 GB, $63.
So lets assume that the cost portion wasn't stacks 3 to 1 in the favour of the hard-drive. We also have the performance factor. I've supported these beasties. They are slow, especially if you even think about using them like a hard-drive for random access storage (which regretably HP did at one point)... the benefit comes in easily storable and removable media. It might be cheaper to buy 5 hard drives to do your rotation on, but its much more bulky and more labor intensive to do. Thus the 3 to 1 price tradeoff for using the slower tape for archival purposes outweighs the cost problems for some people.
Now, lets assume that this solid state is meant to do exactly the same as a hard-drive (which by the description of the article, it is.) We're looking at a 100 to 1 price tradeoff. The only way that kind of increase in price becomes worth is if your doing some highly critical things which absolutely must be done faster. The average game of Quake doesn't need it.
Thus, hard drives, could they be better? Yes. But if the next alternative is that much more
pricey, chances are they are good enough.
Hmmm, I know of one or two people who are unable or unwilling to learn to drive. These people can and do lead productive lives. So you _can_ live without a driver's lisence.
You know, look at Iraq if you truley want to see lack of freedom.
Yes, we are having our freedoms eroded all around us in the name of security, but by no means does this mean that we don't see any.
If you want proof go look at all the war protestors. Compare to what would happen if something similar had happened prior to Iraq invading Kuwait. You'll see little in the way of censorship or even overactive crackdowns on it. There you'd see people murdered, tortured, or just disappear.
You see people, in this forum and others talk openly and plainly against government policies and laws.
Now, while I do get worried about the government protecting IP to the point where you aren't allowed to look at what makes your world works, I don't think it rises yet to the level of remoting all traces of freedom. It doesn't seem like these are policies that foster a well informed populous, but its a long jump from that to getting a visit from MIB for disparaging the president.
Oooo, water cooled computing. Definately the way to go!
If I were to guess, I'd bet they mean coolest for its speed.
Otherwise they'd be competing with chips that have entirely different purposes than to provide processing power. (embedded controllers etc)
Packet writing isn't too bad so long as you can use the same program on both systems to do it. Theoretically they all right the same file system, but in practice your milage may vary. Still, from laptop to desktop, if both installed w/ a CDRW, should not be hard.
As for the PS2 mouse... there are USB to PS2 converters.
Not quite sure what company your going with digital cable with, but in the 3 areas I have experience w/ (2 doing support for the product and 1 being the owner of a product) just adding a digital box + some digital content costs an addition $5-$10 above standard cable. This can easily be called the cost of renting the digital box. When rental of the box is no longer required (due to standardization of the digital signal so that you could purchase one) then the price between digital and analog should be fairly small. Just basic digital cable for $70? That's crazy. $80 will usually buy you all the stations on the cable feed. (including premiums, but not including sports feeds or PPV)