It seems as though one day armies (at least the US') will be composed of robots killing humans. I'm not going to trot out the usual OMG SKYNET!! sentiment, though. What concerns me is that there'll be at least one nation that will be out there making war without suffering much in the way of human loss: where will be the incentive to stop?
Take a lesson from one of your own:
It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow too fond of it. - Lee, December 1862
When I think that after ten millennia of so-called civilisation we as a species still resort to murder to solve our differences I despair, I truly do.
... I don't see why you would be interested in a PS3, with all the rampant "shove it up your ass" anti-modding updates sony has been going on for the last year or so, or the fact that you'd have to re-encode your MKV's to watch on the damn thing.
You mean I can watch MKVs on my XBox now? Cool! Next you'll be telling me there aren't any odd restrictions on MP4s.
Hell, if things carry on like this I'll be able to swap my HFS+ external disk for an NTFS one and watch the stuff I have on that!*
*It never ceases to amuse me that a mac-formatted disk is readable but an NTFS one is not...
Again, the ability to access more than x bytes of storage isn't the issue. What I asked - and what you've yet to answer - is how the more widespread adoption of 64-bit processors is going to mean we can do the "cool" stuff you mention*
*I should point out that you still haven't defined what, for example, a one-time-use application is supposed to be, because frankly it sounds like just another meaningless marketing term. After that perhaps you might explain why it needs 64-bits' worth of address space to pull off?
RAM is still expensive, and storage is still cheap. The number of addresses you can, well, address is irrelevant to the problems of making RAM cheaper or storage faster.
You say that you can address a gajillion bytes with a 64-bit CPU. So what? That won't make the spindles spin any faster, or multiply the RAM cells you have and magically do away with NUMA.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a narrow address bus isn't the reason memory and storage are separate. Even if they are, what's so special about moving from 32 to 64 bits (which we've already done in servers, desktops and portables alike) that makes it a more game-changing improvement than the move from 16 to 32?
You can't map a complete 2TB disk into a 32-bit address space.
That I can understand.
...putting entire applications to sleep and instantly getting them back, distributing one-time-use applications that are already running, sharing a running app with another person and syncing the whole instance (not just a data file) over the Internet...
Don't you count laptops as portable? I realise that you were talking about smartphones but I'm skeptical that having wider use of 64-bit processors will bring about all the cool future stuff you name.
Having decayed into a near-layman when it comes to CS I'm also curious as to why we need those extra bits for said stuff in the first place. It seems that there ought to be a reason why fast and slow storage is separated logically, and I would also say that - on first glance - there's no reason why needing to boot and have FS partitions has anything to do with having a 32/64-bit CPU.
Do please enlighten me, and if you'd be so kind to do it without just listing vague but cool-sounding concepts I'd be ever so grateful.
Surely being different is a good thing? I'd be pretty annoyed if a suit was won without my involvement, which prevented me from seeking recompense for myself and resulted in a judgement whereby most of the award ended up in the hands of those who weren't actually injured, viz. the blood-sucking lawyers.
I think it will be more than a few years. RP as it is now is pretty much limited to low melting point plastics and some niche applications with metals/ceramics where you have to machine the finished parts afterwards: basically the surface finish is terrible and the precision is middling.
If you're talking about edged weapons then it's far easier to just make them by hand. If you mean guns, lots of guns, you'll probably need a CNC milling machine. The trouble is if you can afford one of those you can a) just use it to machine the parts from blanks, or b) just use the big wad of cash you have to go and buy a gun on the black market - assuming you can't buy one legally.
As for your point on DRM I agree: even if people are incapable of designing the simplest of guns (probably generally true), someone may release a design without DRM just for lulz or simply strip the DRM from an existing design for even more lulz.
To throw in my two penneth, 3D scanners go hand-in-hand with RP machines (they're a lot better though) and unlike copying a bank note there would be nothing to stop one filing off any marks that would prevent digitising. Given an adequate 3D printer, a decent 3D scanner and a gun you could probably roll off as many as you want, assuming no-one came knocking to ask what you needed all those bags of metal powder for.
As an aside, when I looked at RP machines I realised that precision would improve with time as a matter of course, I was more interested in finding a machine that didn't require proprietary feedstock. That and being able to get around the problem of casting ceramics - I was quite enamoured of the Toyota(?) adiabatic-ish diesel engine at the time.
Yes, Star Trek brought to us a vision of the future wherein no matter where one roams in the universe, 1) Everybody looks human, 2) Everybody speaks perfect English, despite never having been contacted before by humans, and 3) Sex with alien species is considered perfectly natural. All I can say is... Ewwwwwwwww!
And Stargate (SG1 anyway) was different how?
Trek:
1)They sort of handwaved this with The Chase, but in most cases it was just hat/nose of the week.
2)U.T., though that doesn't excuse it working right away.
3)Why not?
Stargate:
1)Frankly panspermia seems more likely than humans evolving independently twice.
2)No excuse at all, but it could be argued that subject races would probably speak the Goa'uld tongue.
3)Most of the aliens are either non-humanoid or genderless so this doesn't really apply.
They're both TV shows with limited budgets (makeup), sex sells and watching a bunch of people learn each other's language wouldn't make good TV.
You don't need to have a glued-together piece of kit to have planned obsolescence. All you need to do is discontinue the parts or make them so expensive as to make repair impractical.
Why? I learnt far more about English while I was studying German than I did in English classes. Granted, the same would have resulted from learning Latin but I'd have been left with something far less useful. I also learnt a lot about maths, chemistry, physics and thermodynamics by reading engineering so don't tell me that vocational learning can't give you abstract knowledge.
It seems to me that physics is about the creation of models of reality and as was once said "all models are wrong, some are useful." Take newtonian gravity, for example.
A physicist might model a solenoid as having zero thickness when calculating one thing or another, but it's obvious that such a thing cannot exist.
Perhaps the difference between mechanics and 'purer' physics is a fuzzily defined one and it all boils down to semantics in the end but the OP was still wrong: water is compressible, just not very much.
I disagree with the OP but to play Devil's advocate: buses can use them because there's room for large gearboxes with enough gears to handle a large engine (like a lorry), taxis (I expect) use them for cost/range reasons.
If you're driving 300km at 100 km/h I don't see how the 0-100 time is relevant when you'll be at that speed for well over an hour. If it's 20 or 30 seconds as opposed to 5 or 10, so what?
Could it have something to do with the fact your nicad-powered monster only had a screen ~1 sq. inch, coupled with the fact that it was (probably) some kind of impact-resistant plastic?
iPhones - how I hate typing that - and newer phones have, big glass screens. Toughened or not it's a lot easier to crack a piece of glass than it is plastic that's 1/10th the size.
For my two-penneth I'd say it's because we're used to them now; the novelty has worn off and we just aren't taking as much care of them as we used to.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems as though one day armies (at least the US') will be composed of robots killing humans. I'm not going to trot out the usual OMG SKYNET!! sentiment, though. What concerns me is that there'll be at least one nation that will be out there making war without suffering much in the way of human loss: where will be the incentive to stop?
Take a lesson from one of your own:
It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow too fond of it. - Lee, December 1862
When I think that after ten millennia of so-called civilisation we as a species still resort to murder to solve our differences I despair, I truly do.
... I don't see why you would be interested in a PS3, with all the rampant "shove it up your ass" anti-modding updates sony has been going on for the last year or so, or the fact that you'd have to re-encode your MKV's to watch on the damn thing.
You mean I can watch MKVs on my XBox now? Cool! Next you'll be telling me there aren't any odd restrictions on MP4s.
Hell, if things carry on like this I'll be able to swap my HFS+ external disk for an NTFS one and watch the stuff I have on that!*
*It never ceases to amuse me that a mac-formatted disk is readable but an NTFS one is not...
Again, the ability to access more than x bytes of storage isn't the issue. What I asked - and what you've yet to answer - is how the more widespread adoption of 64-bit processors is going to mean we can do the "cool" stuff you mention*
*I should point out that you still haven't defined what, for example, a one-time-use application is supposed to be, because frankly it sounds like just another meaningless marketing term. After that perhaps you might explain why it needs 64-bits' worth of address space to pull off?
RAM is still expensive, and storage is still cheap. The number of addresses you can, well, address is irrelevant to the problems of making RAM cheaper or storage faster.
You say that you can address a gajillion bytes with a 64-bit CPU. So what? That won't make the spindles spin any faster, or multiply the RAM cells you have and magically do away with NUMA.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a narrow address bus isn't the reason memory and storage are separate. Even if they are, what's so special about moving from 32 to 64 bits (which we've already done in servers, desktops and portables alike) that makes it a more game-changing improvement than the move from 16 to 32?
You can't map a complete 2TB disk into a 32-bit address space.
That I can understand.
...putting entire applications to sleep and instantly getting them back, distributing one-time-use applications that are already running, sharing a running app with another person and syncing the whole instance (not just a data file) over the Internet...
This stuff, however, defies comprehension.
Don't you count laptops as portable? I realise that you were talking about smartphones but I'm skeptical that having wider use of 64-bit processors will bring about all the cool future stuff you name.
Having decayed into a near-layman when it comes to CS I'm also curious as to why we need those extra bits for said stuff in the first place. It seems that there ought to be a reason why fast and slow storage is separated logically, and I would also say that - on first glance - there's no reason why needing to boot and have FS partitions has anything to do with having a 32/64-bit CPU.
Do please enlighten me, and if you'd be so kind to do it without just listing vague but cool-sounding concepts I'd be ever so grateful.
Surely being different is a good thing? I'd be pretty annoyed if a suit was won without my involvement, which prevented me from seeking recompense for myself and resulted in a judgement whereby most of the award ended up in the hands of those who weren't actually injured, viz. the blood-sucking lawyers.
I had no trouble and I've never read the Declaration.
I think it will be more than a few years. RP as it is now is pretty much limited to low melting point plastics and some niche applications with metals/ceramics where you have to machine the finished parts afterwards: basically the surface finish is terrible and the precision is middling.
If you're talking about edged weapons then it's far easier to just make them by hand. If you mean guns, lots of guns, you'll probably need a CNC milling machine. The trouble is if you can afford one of those you can a) just use it to machine the parts from blanks, or b) just use the big wad of cash you have to go and buy a gun on the black market - assuming you can't buy one legally.
As for your point on DRM I agree: even if people are incapable of designing the simplest of guns (probably generally true), someone may release a design without DRM just for lulz or simply strip the DRM from an existing design for even more lulz.
To throw in my two penneth, 3D scanners go hand-in-hand with RP machines (they're a lot better though) and unlike copying a bank note there would be nothing to stop one filing off any marks that would prevent digitising. Given an adequate 3D printer, a decent 3D scanner and a gun you could probably roll off as many as you want, assuming no-one came knocking to ask what you needed all those bags of metal powder for.
As an aside, when I looked at RP machines I realised that precision would improve with time as a matter of course, I was more interested in finding a machine that didn't require proprietary feedstock. That and being able to get around the problem of casting ceramics - I was quite enamoured of the Toyota(?) adiabatic-ish diesel engine at the time.
Yes, Star Trek brought to us a vision of the future wherein no matter where one roams in the universe, 1) Everybody looks human, 2) Everybody speaks perfect English, despite never having been contacted before by humans, and 3) Sex with alien species is considered perfectly natural. All I can say is... Ewwwwwwwww!
And Stargate (SG1 anyway) was different how?
Trek:
1)They sort of handwaved this with The Chase, but in most cases it was just hat/nose of the week.
2)U.T., though that doesn't excuse it working right away.
3)Why not?
Stargate:
1)Frankly panspermia seems more likely than humans evolving independently twice.
2)No excuse at all, but it could be argued that subject races would probably speak the Goa'uld tongue.
3)Most of the aliens are either non-humanoid or genderless so this doesn't really apply.
They're both TV shows with limited budgets (makeup), sex sells and watching a bunch of people learn each other's language wouldn't make good TV.
You don't need to have a glued-together piece of kit to have planned obsolescence. All you need to do is discontinue the parts or make them so expensive as to make repair impractical.
There is enough violence to keep the cops busy.
Don't forget all those damn kids and their "wacky baccy"!!!
Hear, hear! Taking a module in set theory was one of the most useful things I ever did I university.
Why? I learnt far more about English while I was studying German than I did in English classes. Granted, the same would have resulted from learning Latin but I'd have been left with something far less useful. I also learnt a lot about maths, chemistry, physics and thermodynamics by reading engineering so don't tell me that vocational learning can't give you abstract knowledge.
I remember being reprimanded in an English class during a lesson on Shakespeare...
So, what do you think Shakespeare was really saying in this line here?
Miss, maybe he was just a writer who saw the value of sex and violence in putting bums on seats?
That didn't go down well at all...
But then the casinos would all collapse...
And nothing of value was lost.
Clearly you don't expect people to do hexadecimal floaing point calculations in their head?!
No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to 0xD1E!
That's a matter of opinion.
It seems to me that physics is about the creation of models of reality and as was once said "all models are wrong, some are useful." Take newtonian gravity, for example.
A physicist might model a solenoid as having zero thickness when calculating one thing or another, but it's obvious that such a thing cannot exist.
Perhaps the difference between mechanics and 'purer' physics is a fuzzily defined one and it all boils down to semantics in the end but the OP was still wrong: water is compressible, just not very much.
You might snort, but in my view the Metro has better science coverage than any of the non-free papers on the stands.
Remember that huge star discovered a month or two back? Double page spread, baby!
He was an IT guy. As if he wouldn't have known.
Who needs debuggers when you have a bunch of bananas?
I disagree with the OP but to play Devil's advocate: buses can use them because there's room for large gearboxes with enough gears to handle a large engine (like a lorry), taxis (I expect) use them for cost/range reasons.
If you're driving 300km at 100 km/h I don't see how the 0-100 time is relevant when you'll be at that speed for well over an hour. If it's 20 or 30 seconds as opposed to 5 or 10, so what?
If he really did molest anyone I'd think Sweden would want him there. For the trial, what?
Could it have something to do with the fact your nicad-powered monster only had a screen ~1 sq. inch, coupled with the fact that it was (probably) some kind of impact-resistant plastic?
iPhones - how I hate typing that - and newer phones have, big glass screens. Toughened or not it's a lot easier to crack a piece of glass than it is plastic that's 1/10th the size.
For my two-penneth I'd say it's because we're used to them now; the novelty has worn off and we just aren't taking as much care of them as we used to.