Yes, if by "stability" you mean "the price will never drop again." That kind of stability is good for those couple of companies, but bad for everyone else.
if they become even a little more efficient at this, their costs will quickly drop because they will be the less expensive option
So basically what you're saying is that if they can find some way to decrease their costs, their costs will drop quickly because they will cost less? Okay...
Oh boy, another thread where Beowolf cluster comments aren't totally offtopic! Maybe if their rocket controllers were running Linux, the 30 rockets could be controlled as if they were just one big rocket 30x the size.
I briefly had this distro installed on one of my computers, that the family uses, and had it set up to look as much like Windows as possible. I had Office running through Wine (it just worked *shrug*), and I wanted to see if it would trick the family. Long story short, the major difference they noticed was the fact that the interface was incredibly slow. Click on the "Go" button, and you wait two or three seconds to bring it up, even on a 1.7GHz P4.
Windows flies, KDE drags. Linux won't win on the desktop until the interface can actually compete with Windows, for every user.
Nobody's gonna pay for the kind of homogenised drivel satradio will becomeHave you ever been to the suburbs? Or, perhaps, watched MTV? There seem to be a whole lot of people that don't mind paying for mindless drivel that doesn't mean anything to them and that they have no way in hell of connecting with. Especially if they can pay even more money to make it appear to other people that they do connect with it. If Sirius and XM market this to suburbia rather than... anywhere else, they have a reasonable chance at survival.
Just look for one of those places where people have paid out their ass to live in a house that is identical to hundreds of neighbors, and that is who would be willing to pay money for worthless and unnecessary things. Like satellite radio and satellite television.
If anyone doubts that in several years we'll have handhelds that have capabilities current devices cannot dream of at prices that you wouldn't imagine, I would point them to an excellent source of information: recent history. (Well, as recent as thirty years ago.) Computers were the size of a building and costed millions of dollars. If someone had told people that in a few decades there would be computers that could fit on your desk and would be hundreds of times as powerful as all of the computers on the planet at the time and be affordable for most Americans to own at least one... you wouldn't have believed him.
What evidence do we have to suggest that the rate of advancement (which is exponential), will not do the same again? We reached the limit of vacuum tubes, and we discovered the integrated circuit. Why should it be impossible to discover another breakthrough of that same magnitude?
Almost makes me want to get back to the arcade and set some high scores on all the machines. Maybe in fifteen years or so I'll be honored too... hopefully not posthumously, though.
And how long did it take him to score that many points in Asteroids?
This is interesting, but would it have worked at all if the scientists did not know the answer already? I mean, they set up all the variables, and then they set up all the possible answers, and the DNA just matched up with the one that they already knew to be correct. What if they didn't know which one was correct? What if there were a billion possible answers? Would they have to program them all in? At what point is it actually faster to use a computationally inefficient conventional PC instead because the compiler does the brunt work for you? Is this DNA method ever faster?
Obviously, there are a lot of questions to be asked about this, but it will be very interesting to see what happens when somebody develops some kind of compiler for the DNA computer, and you can just input an equation and some parameters and in several minutes you have the answer... But until then, this doesn't seem all that useful. On the other hand, it is fascinating research, and by all means, they should continue research on it.
It is true that electric motors are very efficient, but this ultra-strong magnet technology does not profess to increase the efficiency, but the power output. If you have a motor with 90% efficiency, you need to find a way to raise the gross output, not the efficiency. In internal combustion engines, which are anywhere between 10% and 25% efficient, raised efficiency is a huge bonus, but not in electric motors.
Stronger magnets will yield stronger electric motors, which may be able to finally bring them into the popular consumer automobile market. The powerful electric motor is the key to electric cars, because battery technology appears to have run its course (seen in a recent/. article).
Now we all just have to wait until someone invents the one-direction magnet. It has to exist (according to Einstein), but no one has been able to even conceive of a way to do it yet. Perhaps this stable singlet diradical substance is just a step or two below uni-directional magnetism.
Try taking a version of Mozilla that is a year and a half old and use the latest standards to try to do something, because that's what you're doing to Opera 5.12. Obviously, you might run into some problems. I am running Opera 6.0 (that's what I've been talking about), and it is completely standards compliant (almost, I don't know about Flash, as I refuse to put it on my computer in any form). I recommend trying out Opera 6.0, if you have problems with an older version. And don't forget how many people had problems with older versions of Mozilla, but now say it is usable: things change when developers are given time to change them.
And I don't know about the speed of Mozilla currently, but Opera 6.0 is much faster than Mozilla 0.97, which was the latest Mozilla I have used.
Does it strike anyone else here that everything good that everyone has said here concerning Mozilla is already available in a web browser? Of course I'm talking about Opera, which I've been using for a few months now, and am extremely impressed with it. Tabbed windows, ultra fast page renders, fast startup time, can be controlled completely by either the keyboard or the mouse (really innovative and awesome).
Mozilla is open source and free, which is good, and Opera is one of the few browsers that is not free, but the penalty for not paying is a little banner ad that sits on your browser all the time while you browse. It isn't particularly annoying, but the Opera browser is totally worth the price. I absolutely recommend that everyone try it out, especially if you like the features of Mozilla or are unsatisfied by IEXPLORE.
Just thought I'd point this out, as Opera is a very viable alternative to other browsers, and it absolutely rocks.
If Red Hat manages to develop a really good implementation of their AltiVec libraries, it could have rather far-reaching effects in the advancement of Linux onto the desktop. For example, in the current Macintosh community, a staple of the software collection is Adobe Photoshop. There is a good relationship between Mac users and the program, as well as what seems to be a good relationship between Adobe and Apple. This relationship can be seen when one takes into consideration the fact that Photoshop always runs faster on Mac hardware than on PC (that's why the Apple demos are always focused around Photoshop), and the new versions always come out for Mac first.
If Red Hat can build a version of Linux specifically designed to run on a G4-powered AltiVec machine, and do at least as good a job of it as Apple has done with OS X, Adobe may well port Photoshop to that version of Linux. And if the users can get their Photoshop needs fulfilled, they may not necessarily care what OS they are running, and (let's presume that they are at work), if they can get Photoshop to run faster with this newfangled thing called "Red Hat," they may just give it a shot. This will lead to people learning Linux and possibly use it at home.
And, if Adobe does port Photoshop to AltiVec Red Hat, that is just a couple of steps away from porting it to Linux in general, which would of course be a bonus to the community as a whole. The Gimp may be acceptable, it may even be good, but it is no Photoshop.
Of course, this is only one example, and many other good things may well come of this.
I don't know if I would necessarily call this a nail in the Xbox's coffin, after all, no one has said or implied that it will be exclusively for the GameCube, and in fact the very post was so bold as to say that Final Fantasy XI would be playable on every console as well as the PC. It seems to me that the Xbox fits somewhere into that categorization.
Rather than putting a nail in Xbox's coffin, this is probably closer to taking one or two out of the GameCube's. After all, for a MMORPG to span all consoles+PC, the consoles need access to the internet, and as it stands that is only available to the Xbox, which may actually help the Xbox as much as the release of FFXI itself will help the GameCube.
You may have missed it, in your haste to attack me blindly rather than approach the argument on the calm terms I have been attempting to establish, but the attempted potent imagery which displayed your impotence and the first two lines which you refused to critique were and are one and the same. Of course, your hypocrisy has been established and I should not have been surprised that you would ignore your own mistakes in favor of attempting to attack me, again blindly. If the first to lines of your preceding post were not an attempt at potent imagery, then you are not an aspiring prose producer, but only a haughty spout of heavy words, mixed with a plentiful dose of inanity. You continue to try to make the point that I will continue to be wrong until I admit my mistakes, yet you do the same at every turn. In fact, you appear to be mistaking your mistakes for mine, and attacking me on your own faults.
Address your hypocrisy before you attempt to address me again, you self-proclaimed master of the english language, who is showing definite signs of schizophrenia.
Your pride is surpassed only by its lack of merit.
Nothing could possibly be worth the painful exasperation induced by your repeated posts.
Do not miss the forest for the trees, nor the trees for the forest.
It's too bad that in their circumnavigation of the globe they did not bother to venture north to Europe on the way. Had they done this, the Chinese guy who pulled it off would be in the history books instead of Magellan, and the West and the East would have been more closely linked (and in closer competition) when it comes to seafaring. Who knows what effect this might have had on the development of the world.
Then again, had they made the side trip to Europe and revealed their intention, the idiots who were around back then probably would have just sunk their ships and killed the heathens. So maybe keeping quiet was a smart move...
According to the article, they took the colors from 200000 galaxies and averaged them to find beige. However, this does not take into account all of the empty space in between, which is an integral part of defining the universe. Perhaps they should go back to the simulation again, and add in an amount of black proportional to the volume of space in the universe not taken up by celestial bodies. Then we would know whether or not the human eye can really even see the universe, or if will just appear as nothing from a sufficiently large distance.
Uhhh, we made another mistake. After having reviewed our software yet another time, and fixing the error, we have determined that the universe is indeed invisible. Sorry to all of you attempting to paint your houses the color of the universe...
Peradventure I did, as you say, fail to lick a single crumb of what you held out, and it was, as you admit, your fault. After all, the reason I failed to grasp it was because of its incoherence, or its ridiculousness, or its ludicrous nature. The first step to improving your skills in any particular venture is to admit your lack at the start, and you have finally shown signs of being able to do this. Congratulations, stubborn sir, soon you may well become a normal member of society, able to communicate with others without agitating them or yourself.
Of course I read your entire definition, as I was able to point out its flaws to you, to which you have still as yet not responded. In your eternal incompetence, you have continued to ignore the better part of your own definition, and yet you practically call for your mother when I overlook (for the purpose of making a point, the information was already readily available to you, as you had posted it) part of your post in order to show you the parts you should have overlooked. While you consider your next bout of quasi-lucid attacks on my literary aptitude, you should go about actually reading your own definition, as you have not yet proved, or even hinted, that you have read the dashed thing in its entirety. Due to your evident ignorance of your own definition, it is probable that it is in fact you, not I, who lacks a proper grasp of the definition put before us by your ever-diminishing wisdom.
And in your efforts to pack your sentences with potent imagery, you have only managed to display your own impotence. Review your first two sentences and tell me what is wrong with them. Until you are able to do so, do not bother responding, as my time is too valuable to waste on ignoramuses such as you.
I realize this, of course, but the differences between some animal species are small but still enough to warrant their own species name. If these animals were capable of knowing about our classification and of communicating their feelings to us, what would be their opinions on such classifications? Would they object to being classified a different species from their neighbor?
Obviously this is pie-in-the-sky speculation, but it certainly should be considered food for thought.
I have always had questions about classifying animals into so many species. If you can classify certain bugs and birds so specifically based on their appearance, can you then do the same for humans? Would the birds and the bugs resent that as much as we would? If these scientists successfully classify every species, but leave Homo Sapiens intact, what does that say about the objectivity of science? But if they split humanity into many parts, they risk alienating everyone and dooming their work to obscurity.
How does everyone else feel about the possible classification of humanity into separate species distinctions? I, personally, am against it, but are there any other arguments, for or against?
You continue to demonstrate your own feeble grasp of reason and reality, perhaps distracted by your rather unfortunate inferiority complex. You have run back to your citation, with your tail between your legs, to point out a brief quote which I overlooked in my response, in turn ignoring the rest of your post, and mine which pointed out to you some of the parts of your argument that specifically and effectively undermined your position. You ignored them when you posted, you ignored them when I pointed them out to you, you ignore them now. How young is the day when you post so late in the evening? Would not then the night be young... or are you attempting to establish yourself as a humorist, to which status you evidently aspire?
Speaking of which, I shall speak once again on "thusly." It was created in the 19th century by humorists to be used in their jokes in order to mimic the heavy-handed speech of orators. These humorists used "thusly" instead of "thus" in imitation to make the imitated seem further removed from the mainstream, and to elicit laughter from the unwashed and the educated alike. Thus you, sir, are nothing but a mimic, and not a particularly humorous one, to say the least.
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Yes, if by "stability" you mean "the price will never drop again." That kind of stability is good for those couple of companies, but bad for everyone else.
if they become even a little more efficient at this, their costs will quickly drop because they will be the less expensive option
So basically what you're saying is that if they can find some way to decrease their costs, their costs will drop quickly because they will cost less? Okay...
Oh boy, another thread where Beowolf cluster comments aren't totally offtopic! Maybe if their rocket controllers were running Linux, the 30 rockets could be controlled as if they were just one big rocket 30x the size.
:D
Maybe now they'll upgrade my Compaq to an HP? Wouldn't that be nice?
Anything's an upgrade compared to a Compaq. Maybe that's what Compaq's head honchoes realize: they are upgrading!
I briefly had this distro installed on one of my computers, that the family uses, and had it set up to look as much like Windows as possible. I had Office running through Wine (it just worked *shrug*), and I wanted to see if it would trick the family. Long story short, the major difference they noticed was the fact that the interface was incredibly slow. Click on the "Go" button, and you wait two or three seconds to bring it up, even on a 1.7GHz P4.
Windows flies, KDE drags. Linux won't win on the desktop until the interface can actually compete with Windows, for every user.
Nobody's gonna pay for the kind of homogenised drivel satradio will becomeHave you ever been to the suburbs? Or, perhaps, watched MTV? There seem to be a whole lot of people that don't mind paying for mindless drivel that doesn't mean anything to them and that they have no way in hell of connecting with. Especially if they can pay even more money to make it appear to other people that they do connect with it. If Sirius and XM market this to suburbia rather than... anywhere else, they have a reasonable chance at survival.
Just look for one of those places where people have paid out their ass to live in a house that is identical to hundreds of neighbors, and that is who would be willing to pay money for worthless and unnecessary things. Like satellite radio and satellite television.
If anyone doubts that in several years we'll have handhelds that have capabilities current devices cannot dream of at prices that you wouldn't imagine, I would point them to an excellent source of information: recent history. (Well, as recent as thirty years ago.) Computers were the size of a building and costed millions of dollars. If someone had told people that in a few decades there would be computers that could fit on your desk and would be hundreds of times as powerful as all of the computers on the planet at the time and be affordable for most Americans to own at least one... you wouldn't have believed him.
What evidence do we have to suggest that the rate of advancement (which is exponential), will not do the same again? We reached the limit of vacuum tubes, and we discovered the integrated circuit. Why should it be impossible to discover another breakthrough of that same magnitude?
Almost makes me want to get back to the arcade and set some high scores on all the machines. Maybe in fifteen years or so I'll be honored too... hopefully not posthumously, though.
And how long did it take him to score that many points in Asteroids?
This is interesting, but would it have worked at all if the scientists did not know the answer already? I mean, they set up all the variables, and then they set up all the possible answers, and the DNA just matched up with the one that they already knew to be correct. What if they didn't know which one was correct? What if there were a billion possible answers? Would they have to program them all in? At what point is it actually faster to use a computationally inefficient conventional PC instead because the compiler does the brunt work for you? Is this DNA method ever faster?
Obviously, there are a lot of questions to be asked about this, but it will be very interesting to see what happens when somebody develops some kind of compiler for the DNA computer, and you can just input an equation and some parameters and in several minutes you have the answer... But until then, this doesn't seem all that useful. On the other hand, it is fascinating research, and by all means, they should continue research on it.
It is true that electric motors are very efficient, but this ultra-strong magnet technology does not profess to increase the efficiency, but the power output. If you have a motor with 90% efficiency, you need to find a way to raise the gross output, not the efficiency. In internal combustion engines, which are anywhere between 10% and 25% efficient, raised efficiency is a huge bonus, but not in electric motors.
/. article).
Stronger magnets will yield stronger electric motors, which may be able to finally bring them into the popular consumer automobile market. The powerful electric motor is the key to electric cars, because battery technology appears to have run its course (seen in a recent
Now we all just have to wait until someone invents the one-direction magnet. It has to exist (according to Einstein), but no one has been able to even conceive of a way to do it yet. Perhaps this stable singlet diradical substance is just a step or two below uni-directional magnetism.
Continue magnet research!
I though beer just made the girls who are interested in you appear cute?
Try taking a version of Mozilla that is a year and a half old and use the latest standards to try to do something, because that's what you're doing to Opera 5.12. Obviously, you might run into some problems. I am running Opera 6.0 (that's what I've been talking about), and it is completely standards compliant (almost, I don't know about Flash, as I refuse to put it on my computer in any form). I recommend trying out Opera 6.0, if you have problems with an older version. And don't forget how many people had problems with older versions of Mozilla, but now say it is usable: things change when developers are given time to change them.
And I don't know about the speed of Mozilla currently, but Opera 6.0 is much faster than Mozilla 0.97, which was the latest Mozilla I have used.
Does it strike anyone else here that everything good that everyone has said here concerning Mozilla is already available in a web browser? Of course I'm talking about Opera, which I've been using for a few months now, and am extremely impressed with it. Tabbed windows, ultra fast page renders, fast startup time, can be controlled completely by either the keyboard or the mouse (really innovative and awesome).
Mozilla is open source and free, which is good, and Opera is one of the few browsers that is not free, but the penalty for not paying is a little banner ad that sits on your browser all the time while you browse. It isn't particularly annoying, but the Opera browser is totally worth the price. I absolutely recommend that everyone try it out, especially if you like the features of Mozilla or are unsatisfied by IEXPLORE.
Just thought I'd point this out, as Opera is a very viable alternative to other browsers, and it absolutely rocks.
If Red Hat manages to develop a really good implementation of their AltiVec libraries, it could have rather far-reaching effects in the advancement of Linux onto the desktop. For example, in the current Macintosh community, a staple of the software collection is Adobe Photoshop. There is a good relationship between Mac users and the program, as well as what seems to be a good relationship between Adobe and Apple. This relationship can be seen when one takes into consideration the fact that Photoshop always runs faster on Mac hardware than on PC (that's why the Apple demos are always focused around Photoshop), and the new versions always come out for Mac first.
If Red Hat can build a version of Linux specifically designed to run on a G4-powered AltiVec machine, and do at least as good a job of it as Apple has done with OS X, Adobe may well port Photoshop to that version of Linux. And if the users can get their Photoshop needs fulfilled, they may not necessarily care what OS they are running, and (let's presume that they are at work), if they can get Photoshop to run faster with this newfangled thing called "Red Hat," they may just give it a shot. This will lead to people learning Linux and possibly use it at home.
And, if Adobe does port Photoshop to AltiVec Red Hat, that is just a couple of steps away from porting it to Linux in general, which would of course be a bonus to the community as a whole. The Gimp may be acceptable, it may even be good, but it is no Photoshop.
Of course, this is only one example, and many other good things may well come of this.
So how is everyone going to feel when this is available for download on Gnutella within a couple of days?
I don't know if I would necessarily call this a nail in the Xbox's coffin, after all, no one has said or implied that it will be exclusively for the GameCube, and in fact the very post was so bold as to say that Final Fantasy XI would be playable on every console as well as the PC. It seems to me that the Xbox fits somewhere into that categorization.
Rather than putting a nail in Xbox's coffin, this is probably closer to taking one or two out of the GameCube's. After all, for a MMORPG to span all consoles+PC, the consoles need access to the internet, and as it stands that is only available to the Xbox, which may actually help the Xbox as much as the release of FFXI itself will help the GameCube.
You may have missed it, in your haste to attack me blindly rather than approach the argument on the calm terms I have been attempting to establish, but the attempted potent imagery which displayed your impotence and the first two lines which you refused to critique were and are one and the same. Of course, your hypocrisy has been established and I should not have been surprised that you would ignore your own mistakes in favor of attempting to attack me, again blindly. If the first to lines of your preceding post were not an attempt at potent imagery, then you are not an aspiring prose producer, but only a haughty spout of heavy words, mixed with a plentiful dose of inanity. You continue to try to make the point that I will continue to be wrong until I admit my mistakes, yet you do the same at every turn. In fact, you appear to be mistaking your mistakes for mine, and attacking me on your own faults.
Address your hypocrisy before you attempt to address me again, you self-proclaimed master of the english language, who is showing definite signs of schizophrenia.
Your pride is surpassed only by its lack of merit.
Nothing could possibly be worth the painful exasperation induced by your repeated posts.
Do not miss the forest for the trees, nor the trees for the forest.
It's too bad that in their circumnavigation of the globe they did not bother to venture north to Europe on the way. Had they done this, the Chinese guy who pulled it off would be in the history books instead of Magellan, and the West and the East would have been more closely linked (and in closer competition) when it comes to seafaring. Who knows what effect this might have had on the development of the world.
Then again, had they made the side trip to Europe and revealed their intention, the idiots who were around back then probably would have just sunk their ships and killed the heathens. So maybe keeping quiet was a smart move...
According to the article, they took the colors from 200000 galaxies and averaged them to find beige. However, this does not take into account all of the empty space in between, which is an integral part of defining the universe. Perhaps they should go back to the simulation again, and add in an amount of black proportional to the volume of space in the universe not taken up by celestial bodies. Then we would know whether or not the human eye can really even see the universe, or if will just appear as nothing from a sufficiently large distance.
Uhhh, we made another mistake. After having reviewed our software yet another time, and fixing the error, we have determined that the universe is indeed invisible. Sorry to all of you attempting to paint your houses the color of the universe...
Peradventure I did, as you say, fail to lick a single crumb of what you held out, and it was, as you admit, your fault. After all, the reason I failed to grasp it was because of its incoherence, or its ridiculousness, or its ludicrous nature. The first step to improving your skills in any particular venture is to admit your lack at the start, and you have finally shown signs of being able to do this. Congratulations, stubborn sir, soon you may well become a normal member of society, able to communicate with others without agitating them or yourself.
Of course I read your entire definition, as I was able to point out its flaws to you, to which you have still as yet not responded. In your eternal incompetence, you have continued to ignore the better part of your own definition, and yet you practically call for your mother when I overlook (for the purpose of making a point, the information was already readily available to you, as you had posted it) part of your post in order to show you the parts you should have overlooked. While you consider your next bout of quasi-lucid attacks on my literary aptitude, you should go about actually reading your own definition, as you have not yet proved, or even hinted, that you have read the dashed thing in its entirety. Due to your evident ignorance of your own definition, it is probable that it is in fact you, not I, who lacks a proper grasp of the definition put before us by your ever-diminishing wisdom.
And in your efforts to pack your sentences with potent imagery, you have only managed to display your own impotence. Review your first two sentences and tell me what is wrong with them. Until you are able to do so, do not bother responding, as my time is too valuable to waste on ignoramuses such as you.
Punctuate, Frau.
I realize this, of course, but the differences between some animal species are small but still enough to warrant their own species name. If these animals were capable of knowing about our classification and of communicating their feelings to us, what would be their opinions on such classifications? Would they object to being classified a different species from their neighbor?
Obviously this is pie-in-the-sky speculation, but it certainly should be considered food for thought.
I have always had questions about classifying animals into so many species. If you can classify certain bugs and birds so specifically based on their appearance, can you then do the same for humans? Would the birds and the bugs resent that as much as we would? If these scientists successfully classify every species, but leave Homo Sapiens intact, what does that say about the objectivity of science? But if they split humanity into many parts, they risk alienating everyone and dooming their work to obscurity.
How does everyone else feel about the possible classification of humanity into separate species distinctions? I, personally, am against it, but are there any other arguments, for or against?
You continue to demonstrate your own feeble grasp of reason and reality, perhaps distracted by your rather unfortunate inferiority complex. You have run back to your citation, with your tail between your legs, to point out a brief quote which I overlooked in my response, in turn ignoring the rest of your post, and mine which pointed out to you some of the parts of your argument that specifically and effectively undermined your position. You ignored them when you posted, you ignored them when I pointed them out to you, you ignore them now. How young is the day when you post so late in the evening? Would not then the night be young... or are you attempting to establish yourself as a humorist, to which status you evidently aspire?
Speaking of which, I shall speak once again on "thusly." It was created in the 19th century by humorists to be used in their jokes in order to mimic the heavy-handed speech of orators. These humorists used "thusly" instead of "thus" in imitation to make the imitated seem further removed from the mainstream, and to elicit laughter from the unwashed and the educated alike. Thus you, sir, are nothing but a mimic, and not a particularly humorous one, to say the least.
What's new, pussycat?
Jane User: Help us Bill, you're our only hope.
Gates: If you strike me down, I shall only become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Uh-oh. Thanks alot Jane...