Moore's law is already busted
on
Less Is Moore
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· Score: 1
Adding transistors doesn't matter, it's the software that matters.
Multi-CPU machines can only be as efficient as the software that drives them, and right now, the interaction between the hardware and software is complex and poorly understood by engineers (or at least, normal programmers like myself). There's a lot of unnecessary experimentation involved in getting something to utilize the hardware efficiently, because it's very much an exercise left to the reader (though I'd be pleased to be proven wrong with a kickass resource).
Many applications just use one of your 8 cpus. In fact, Moore's law has already been busted, because computers have not gotten faster, they've just gotten more chips.
I expect a huge paradigm shift in programming to take advantage of now ubiquitous multi-CPU systems, but it hasn't happened yet, not even close.
He pays for this shit. You think he doesn't know where it comes from? Dude, check out his UID. You see the asterisk next to it? I think he knows a little more about how the sausage is made than you do. I'm guessing typo.
Also, jump drives will be required to sound like MFM drives, in case you might be recording something. I swear mine used to play the beat from, "The Land Down Under," whenever I opened a text file, so perfect match.
It is not mindlessly partisan to insist on the rule of law in war, and adherence to the constitution always. That is Olbermann's main gig.
Furthermore, Olbermann criticizes Democrats frequently. That also can't possibly be construed as "mindlessly partisan".
The constitution is not a baby to be divided in the middle, and "both sides" given half of it. Calling someone partisan to dismiss everything they say is a lazy, intellectual cop-out.
I could write a treatise documenting Bill O'Reilly's lies, but I would not call him a mindless partisan, either. I call him a loud mouthed bully.
While Bush might not have (directly) aided our foreign enemies, he has aided and abetted enemies of the constitution, and attempted to undermine our entire Democracy. An enemy of the constitution and Democracy itself is by definition an enemy of the United States.
This is not empty rhetoric, in fact he filled the entire government with people who "believe" in so-called unitary executive, which is very much a monarch. While you may have an argument he has not violated the letter of the law, he has indeed violated the spirit, in a treasonous manner.
I only support the death penalty in 2 cases: treason, and war crimes. I disagree with your assessment, and assert that Bush/Cheney committed both, and now that Bush is out of office, I'm a lot less afraid to say so, too.
I'm a devout atheist, I should say, in that I don't believe in a sky god named yahweh or thor, or anything.
The plank distance is a babelfish, as if we needed one.
Physics itself gave up long ago and admitted that all matter is a wave function. On top of that, some of the waves are distributed all over the matrix (pun intended), so that when we observe one, another impossibly changes instantly, even though it can't.
When you see fundamental contradictory results like that, you start to think crazy shit, like, maybe it really is a wave function. Real isn't real.
That's an example of binary thinking, though.
Here's my full theory. I'll give the hypothesis, a couple of falsifications, and some predictions.
Hypothesis: The universe is a sort of fiction, it is actually a mathematical formula, and our perception of it is not reality.
Falsified if: Gravity waves are found. I don't want to turn this into a novel, but this would falsify my theory. Faster than light particles are found. A "solid" object of the size of a tangerine is transported "instantly" through space.
All of these things would falsify my theory, because I think there are rules built in that are not transgressable.
Predictions:
The Planck distance is it, period. We will get no further, except through metaphysics and philosophy. We will find no particles traveling faster than light, as have been theorized. The more closely we observe the smaller things, the more we will see that they are unpredictable energy, and fundamentally unknowable. There will be no unified field theory.
If your creatures tried to find the smallest unit, they'd find a memory register, but they'd have no idea it was a memory register, and indeed would be physically incapable of directly observing it, ever.
Instead, it would appear to them as a wave form whenever they tried to measure the data, and the wave form would behave in rather erratic, energy-like ways (think tiny electrical surges), but at no point would ever seem "real".
Also, they would find themselves up the creek, when they discovered the smallest quantum of energy. How to explain this thing that's a wave, and not a particle, except when it is a particle, and that it has a specific size, except that it's not a particle unless you watch it, so how can it have any kind or size? (And just who is holding the measuring stick, anyway, dictating the size of energy??)
Seems so familiar it's like a dream, doesn't it? Or am I just mad?
Here's a simple thought experiment. It isn't proof of anything, but it's interesting.
Let's say that we wanted to simulate the universe on a supercomputer.
The laws of physics and information theory seem to dictate that it's impossible to store that much information on a supercomputer, because you would need as much information as contained in the entire universe to do it accurately.
But what if you just simulated it roughly, unless you detected intelligence (decreased entropy) in your model? Whenever the intelligent things tried to study your model, you'd give them better and better information as they looked at smaller, and farther away things.
Eventually, though, you'd run out of information to give them, and you'd basically have to turn your pockets inside out.
For example, if they figured out how to change a texture in their world, they would notice that textures changed all over the place, seemingly randomly, because you're reusing them all over the place.
That the universe is a figment of someone's (or some THING's) imagination, to me, seems the simplest theory, not at all far out.
I've always (naturally) assumed that Osama has an army of zero-handed clones, who look so similar, it's literally impossible to tell them apart from photos, and that they all have valid passports. Finally, proof! This law will definitely hit Al-Qaeda where it hurts!
Okay, that was totally shameless, especially considering that I need something exactly like that but didn't even realize it until just now, and you're therefore probably going to get at least one commercial sale as a result of it. No promises, I have to play around with the demo first. You bastard.
Well, actually we know for sure that the water level was 300 feet lower, and that around 11600 years ago the temperature rose rapidly, up to 10-12 degrees within a few years.
We also have global myths of a worldwide flood dating to prehistory.
So yeah, it's completely nuts to think that an island might have appeared to sink around that time. Totally bonkers. Nuts, I tell you.
Oh, one more thing. God seems kind of useless. Plenty of very religious people get killed in horrible ways, mass exterminated, and so forth. Plenty of evil people ascend to power, wealth, and fame, and live to ripe old ages.
So also, can you explain what's in it for me, exactly? Try to give me a benefit that doesn't involve something after I die. I'm trying to avoid death entirely, so that's a pretty inconvenient prerequisite.
Personally, I have seen far more stark examples of this in so-called science than in so-called religion. It's the failure to stop and listen to the other side, and to try to think objectively, which prevents you from see where you are falling into the same trap of anti-critical thinking.
What exactly is it in the religious person's arsenal of beliefs that qualifies as "objective"?
It's precisely the lack of any objective reasoning on the part of religionists that causes all supernatural claims to be thrown out of the scientific window.
Look, you can have your philosophy, and we don't mind. We mind when you start saying we're the ones who lack objectivity. Given the shameful history of violent church suppression of inconvenient scientific facts, methinks the lady doth protest too much. How many religious people have been killed or tortured by Atheists because they said God exists? Can you give a single example?
The fact is that even if we found Jesus's corpse in a tomb, complete with a crown of thorns, and an official, contemporaneous certificate of death from Pontius Pilate, it wouldn't stop Christians from saying he arose bodily from the dead and ascended to heaven, merely on the basis of stuff written long after his death. That's what a lack of objectivity looks like.
As for me, if you can offer any evidence whatsoever for your claims, I'll examine it. If the facts warrant, I'll even start praying to Yahweh. First, you need to provide some evidence that Yahweh exists. Next, show me some evidence that An, Anu, Anat, Aphrodite, Appollo, Artemis, Athena, and Atlas, to name just a few of the A's, do not exist, because I want to be sure not to anger them, if I'm praying to Yahweh.
Go ahead and get started on that and get back to me.
It's not proven yet, of course, but I hypothesized a comet hitting NA some time back. It would explain the sudden rise in temperature, and sea levels, and the flood myths around the entire world, and why Atlantis "sank".
I've been waiting for this for a while now.
I'll make another prediction: I bet we eventually find some very interesting anomalous stuff, like pottery and advanced architecture, around the mid-atlantic ridge.
Note that I'm not postulating alien technology or super Atlanteans or anything, just that the island kingdom did exist, and that it wasn't in the middle of the Mediterranean.
After reading TFA, and as a multithreaded software application writer, I don't really care for the word supercomputer to describe this setup.
Sure, it's a supercomputer, if you write a bunch of sophisticated software to use the Cell model of parallelism. I admit ignorance about the Cell model, but I do know that parallelism doesn't come completely free, no matter what the architecture.
I was hoping for a build-it-yourself machine with a whole bunch of cores and a fast bus between them, like a PC, so that you could just write your own threads, and have them assigned by the operating system.
Hell, you could daisy chain Amigas together 20 years ago, and make a render farm with them. Render farms are fairly easily subdivided, because you can just give each node a part of the frame to render. In other words, the task is easily subdivided.
What if you want to beat Kasparov at chess, though? How do you subdivide chess in a way that helps, more than it hurts, if the machines are terribly slow at sharing memory?
The solution is non-obvious, if you spend a bit of time thinking about it, and definitely non trivial.
Universities will have plenty of grad students that can make something like this work, but a hobbyist would be bound to come away disappointed, if they thought this would solve all of their problems on the road to world domination.
Hell, we have supercomputers on our desks now. More CPUs won't make them faster, unless we software writers take advantage of the multiple cpus most of us already have!
Didn't wanna get your hackles up, I'm not saying everyone with a degree is an idiot, or that every college is brain-dead.
I'm just saying that a degree is not particularly predictive of hirability, in my experience. Then again, I don't see all the resumes, I just interview the ones who make it in the door.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time you try to grab a doorknob, there is a finite probability that your hand will pass through it, instead.
How many times has it happened?
Hey, look up there... uh, what the hell?
Whoosh!
Adding transistors doesn't matter, it's the software that matters.
Multi-CPU machines can only be as efficient as the software that drives them, and right now, the interaction between the hardware and software is complex and poorly understood by engineers (or at least, normal programmers like myself). There's a lot of unnecessary experimentation involved in getting something to utilize the hardware efficiently, because it's very much an exercise left to the reader (though I'd be pleased to be proven wrong with a kickass resource).
Many applications just use one of your 8 cpus. In fact, Moore's law has already been busted, because computers have not gotten faster, they've just gotten more chips.
I expect a huge paradigm shift in programming to take advantage of now ubiquitous multi-CPU systems, but it hasn't happened yet, not even close.
Except it wasn't. It was written on parchment. Sheep parchment (and survives to this day in an airless crypt).
What are we arguing about, again? I totally spaced.
Wow, that's some conspiracy you've got there! Maybe there is a worldwide shortage of graph paper.
I can think of a bunch of ways to attack it.
Hybrid algae or bacteria that eats its weight in carbon dioxide and spits out oxygen.
Mirrors in space to reflect just enough sunlight to counter the warming.
Huge air filtering machines
Saying there's nothing we can do doesn't help. It didn't help us get to the moon, either. It won't be easy, but it's possible if we start right now.
Hrm. At first, I thought, this society is so secret, the web page is blank.
I wonder how many people thought you were joking. The reality is even funnier.
Here is the link
He pays for this shit. You think he doesn't know where it comes from? Dude, check out his UID. You see the asterisk next to it? I think he knows a little more about how the sausage is made than you do. I'm guessing typo.
Also, jump drives will be required to sound like MFM drives, in case you might be recording something. I swear mine used to play the beat from, "The Land Down Under," whenever I opened a text file, so perfect match.
Nonsense.
It is not mindlessly partisan to insist on the rule of law in war, and adherence to the constitution always. That is Olbermann's main gig.
Furthermore, Olbermann criticizes Democrats frequently. That also can't possibly be construed as "mindlessly partisan".
The constitution is not a baby to be divided in the middle, and "both sides" given half of it. Calling someone partisan to dismiss everything they say is a lazy, intellectual cop-out.
I could write a treatise documenting Bill O'Reilly's lies, but I would not call him a mindless partisan, either. I call him a loud mouthed bully.
While Bush might not have (directly) aided our foreign enemies, he has aided and abetted enemies of the constitution, and attempted to undermine our entire Democracy. An enemy of the constitution and Democracy itself is by definition an enemy of the United States.
This is not empty rhetoric, in fact he filled the entire government with people who "believe" in so-called unitary executive, which is very much a monarch. While you may have an argument he has not violated the letter of the law, he has indeed violated the spirit, in a treasonous manner.
I only support the death penalty in 2 cases: treason, and war crimes. I disagree with your assessment, and assert that Bush/Cheney committed both, and now that Bush is out of office, I'm a lot less afraid to say so, too.
Oh please. You're claiming to be familiar enough with vaginas to give advice about them?
Well, do you have a better theory?
I'm a devout atheist, I should say, in that I don't believe in a sky god named yahweh or thor, or anything.
The plank distance is a babelfish, as if we needed one.
Physics itself gave up long ago and admitted that all matter is a wave function. On top of that, some of the waves are distributed all over the matrix (pun intended), so that when we observe one, another impossibly changes instantly, even though it can't.
When you see fundamental contradictory results like that, you start to think crazy shit, like, maybe it really is a wave function. Real isn't real.
That's an example of binary thinking, though.
Here's my full theory. I'll give the hypothesis, a couple of falsifications, and some predictions.
Hypothesis: The universe is a sort of fiction, it is actually a mathematical formula, and our perception of it is not reality.
Falsified if: Gravity waves are found. I don't want to turn this into a novel, but this would falsify my theory. Faster than light particles are found. A "solid" object of the size of a tangerine is transported "instantly" through space.
All of these things would falsify my theory, because I think there are rules built in that are not transgressable.
Predictions:
The Planck distance is it, period. We will get no further, except through metaphysics and philosophy. We will find no particles traveling faster than light, as have been theorized. The more closely we observe the smaller things, the more we will see that they are unpredictable energy, and fundamentally unknowable. There will be no unified field theory.
Oh, and I left out another detail.
If your creatures tried to find the smallest unit, they'd find a memory register, but they'd have no idea it was a memory register, and indeed would be physically incapable of directly observing it, ever.
Instead, it would appear to them as a wave form whenever they tried to measure the data, and the wave form would behave in rather erratic, energy-like ways (think tiny electrical surges), but at no point would ever seem "real".
Also, they would find themselves up the creek, when they discovered the smallest quantum of energy. How to explain this thing that's a wave, and not a particle, except when it is a particle, and that it has a specific size, except that it's not a particle unless you watch it, so how can it have any kind or size? (And just who is holding the measuring stick, anyway, dictating the size of energy??)
Seems so familiar it's like a dream, doesn't it? Or am I just mad?
Here's a simple thought experiment. It isn't proof of anything, but it's interesting.
Let's say that we wanted to simulate the universe on a supercomputer.
The laws of physics and information theory seem to dictate that it's impossible to store that much information on a supercomputer, because you would need as much information as contained in the entire universe to do it accurately.
But what if you just simulated it roughly, unless you detected intelligence (decreased entropy) in your model? Whenever the intelligent things tried to study your model, you'd give them better and better information as they looked at smaller, and farther away things.
Eventually, though, you'd run out of information to give them, and you'd basically have to turn your pockets inside out.
For example, if they figured out how to change a texture in their world, they would notice that textures changed all over the place, seemingly randomly, because you're reusing them all over the place.
That the universe is a figment of someone's (or some THING's) imagination, to me, seems the simplest theory, not at all far out.
I've always (naturally) assumed that Osama has an army of zero-handed clones, who look so similar, it's literally impossible to tell them apart from photos, and that they all have valid passports. Finally, proof! This law will definitely hit Al-Qaeda where it hurts!
Okay, that was totally shameless, especially considering that I need something exactly like that but didn't even realize it until just now, and you're therefore probably going to get at least one commercial sale as a result of it. No promises, I have to play around with the demo first. You bastard.
Well, actually we know for sure that the water level was 300 feet lower, and that around 11600 years ago the temperature rose rapidly, up to 10-12 degrees within a few years.
We also have global myths of a worldwide flood dating to prehistory.
So yeah, it's completely nuts to think that an island might have appeared to sink around that time. Totally bonkers. Nuts, I tell you.
Oh, one more thing. God seems kind of useless. Plenty of very religious people get killed in horrible ways, mass exterminated, and so forth. Plenty of evil people ascend to power, wealth, and fame, and live to ripe old ages.
So also, can you explain what's in it for me, exactly? Try to give me a benefit that doesn't involve something after I die. I'm trying to avoid death entirely, so that's a pretty inconvenient prerequisite.
What exactly is it in the religious person's arsenal of beliefs that qualifies as "objective"?
It's precisely the lack of any objective reasoning on the part of religionists that causes all supernatural claims to be thrown out of the scientific window.
Look, you can have your philosophy, and we don't mind. We mind when you start saying we're the ones who lack objectivity. Given the shameful history of violent church suppression of inconvenient scientific facts, methinks the lady doth protest too much. How many religious people have been killed or tortured by Atheists because they said God exists? Can you give a single example?
The fact is that even if we found Jesus's corpse in a tomb, complete with a crown of thorns, and an official, contemporaneous certificate of death from Pontius Pilate, it wouldn't stop Christians from saying he arose bodily from the dead and ascended to heaven, merely on the basis of stuff written long after his death. That's what a lack of objectivity looks like.
As for me, if you can offer any evidence whatsoever for your claims, I'll examine it. If the facts warrant, I'll even start praying to Yahweh. First, you need to provide some evidence that Yahweh exists. Next, show me some evidence that An, Anu, Anat, Aphrodite, Appollo, Artemis, Athena, and Atlas, to name just a few of the A's, do not exist , because I want to be sure not to anger them, if I'm praying to Yahweh.
Go ahead and get started on that and get back to me.
It's not proven yet, of course, but I hypothesized a comet hitting NA some time back. It would explain the sudden rise in temperature, and sea levels, and the flood myths around the entire world, and why Atlantis "sank".
I've been waiting for this for a while now.
I'll make another prediction: I bet we eventually find some very interesting anomalous stuff, like pottery and advanced architecture, around the mid-atlantic ridge.
Note that I'm not postulating alien technology or super Atlanteans or anything, just that the island kingdom did exist, and that it wasn't in the middle of the Mediterranean.
How about a hardcore update of Duke Nukem 3d?
After reading TFA, and as a multithreaded software application writer, I don't really care for the word supercomputer to describe this setup.
Sure, it's a supercomputer, if you write a bunch of sophisticated software to use the Cell model of parallelism. I admit ignorance about the Cell model, but I do know that parallelism doesn't come completely free, no matter what the architecture.
I was hoping for a build-it-yourself machine with a whole bunch of cores and a fast bus between them, like a PC, so that you could just write your own threads, and have them assigned by the operating system.
Hell, you could daisy chain Amigas together 20 years ago, and make a render farm with them. Render farms are fairly easily subdivided, because you can just give each node a part of the frame to render. In other words, the task is easily subdivided.
What if you want to beat Kasparov at chess, though? How do you subdivide chess in a way that helps, more than it hurts, if the machines are terribly slow at sharing memory?
The solution is non-obvious, if you spend a bit of time thinking about it, and definitely non trivial.
Universities will have plenty of grad students that can make something like this work, but a hobbyist would be bound to come away disappointed, if they thought this would solve all of their problems on the road to world domination.
Hell, we have supercomputers on our desks now. More CPUs won't make them faster, unless we software writers take advantage of the multiple cpus most of us already have!
Didn't wanna get your hackles up, I'm not saying everyone with a degree is an idiot, or that every college is brain-dead.
I'm just saying that a degree is not particularly predictive of hirability, in my experience. Then again, I don't see all the resumes, I just interview the ones who make it in the door.