Maybe, but once it moves from "Linux desktop computer that you can do anything with" to "Linux appliance that you can't make any unapproved changes to", the difference becomes academic.
In fairness, everyone likes to compare Intel's GPU that has to fit into the CPU die and use perhaps 15W of power against an AMD or nVidia GPU that can use 150W or more of power. There is just no comparison. Give Intel 150W of power to play with and I'm sure they could do something interesting with it.
Since Linux is about 2% of the total installed OS market and since the percentage of THAT market that plays games is limited, I doubt that Intel and AMD care very much about it. Linux on the desktop is a fantasy, I recall hearing "year of the Linux desktop" back in 1994, still hasn't happened...
While I never want to say "never", it will be awhile. The fact is that rendering life-like graphics in real time at 60fps across 8+ million pixels takes a ton of processing power, far more than you can fit onto a small 84W CPU+GPU.
Maybe, but that is comparing low power notebook chips. Try comparing it in desktops and the picture changes by quite a bit. Of course, it is also worth considering that a modern Haswell CPU uses 84W of power while a modern AMD GPU uses 300W of power. If you gave Intel 300W of power to work with, I'm sure they could come up with something impressive.
You assume that your own experience translates to anyone else. We have a pair of 50 gallon natural gas hot water heaters. They cost about $30/month to run for the pair of them. Our monthly average utility bill is about $300. So 10% of our bill is making hot water. I could make it "free" and it would only cut our bill by 10%. Not everyone has the same energy use that you do.
So true, but people are funny emotional creatures... guns kill far fewer people than cars, but many people think they are evil. Same problem. Training can solve both problems (guns and cars), but heaven forbid we take a bad driver's car away.
You must not have AC, if only half of your roof is covered in solar and it makes more power than you need.
.
I priced solar about 2 years ago, had my roof measured and power needs compared to what could be provided. My entire roof (I live in Texas) can provide about 1/3 of my house's power needs, at an out of pocket cost after tax credits of $37K.
That is a bad deal which is why solar isn't on my house, or any other house around here. If solar made so much sense, we'd all install it.
So true... Also, has anyone considered what the environmental effects of covering millions of square miles of our planet with solar panels is? They complain about the effects of a single pipeline, yet they could care less about any possible effects of millions, if not billions of solar panels.
Turning out the lights at night isn't going to save us, the problem is larger than that. Even if we cut energy use in half in America and Europe, we'll be overwhelmed by the billions of people who currently use very little power who are going to start using a lot more. The population also continues to grow, in 50 years it may well double again, so we'd be back to the same point. We need the ability to generate huge amounts of power cleanly and cheaply, not to turn off some lights and call it fixed.
There is a small flaw in your numbers... You say that a sub-$10K solar installation can power a house, that is not true. I've looked into it, if I could spend $10K and power even 1/3 of my house, I'd do it in 5 seconds. In truth, it would take $60K worth of solar to power 1/3 of my house's annual electrical needs, that is just not reasonable, even with the tax credits and rebates that are out there. My out of pocket cost on that install was $37K, and to cut my power bill by 1/3 for $37K out of pocket makes no sense.
Yes, it is, assuming that Exxon doesn't change behavior when you start trying to take their money. The problem is, they will change... to avoid giving it to you.
.
And it still won't matter, because they are still burning fossil fuels, which needs to stop, or it makes no difference what any of us does.
Or do you think we can release 100 million years worth of carbon in just a few hundred years and do no damage?
The problem with the idea of cutting your energy consumption in half is that it actually doesn't matter. As long as your energy comes from carbon sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas, it makes no difference.
.
We can burn it all in 50 years, 250 years, or 500 years, it makes no difference, burn it all we will, releasing 100 million years of carbon in a very short period of time. From Earth's point of view, there is no difference between 50 years and 500 years, the climate doesn't work on that small of a time scale.
The only solution is to stop burning it outright, leave it in the ground where it belongs.
The only way to do that is with nuclear, there is no where near enough solar, wind, and water energy on Earth to power everything that we do, it just isn't even close.
Sorry, but you're a bit off there... The point of a 30" monitor on your desk is that it fills your vision. Since we see wider than we see tall, I have 3 of them next to each other, makes for a much nicer experience.
.
If I pushed the screen further away, it would just have to be bigger. My TV in the living room is a 60" Sharp 1080P LCD, and I can see the pixels on that as well from 10 feet away.
We are not yet to the resolution of our eyes, that is why Apple calls their newer displays "retina" displays, it is meant to be as sharp as our eyes can see (but they aren't there yet either, I can still see the pixels on my iPad). The resolution needs to double again and it will be close to true retina resolution.
Granted, not everyone has 20/20 vision, some people even claim that Blu-Ray is really not any better than DVD, these people either have crappy TVs or terrible vision, because the difference is night and day. So if you don't think there is room for improvement, I assure you the issue is not your monitor, it is you. I see plenty of room for improvement.
One final point... If you really think distance is the perfect solution, then we hit perfection 20 years ago. Your old 25" CRT SDTV was "perfect", you just had to move it further away, like perhaps into the next house, then you would have no further room for improvement in resolution.
Yes, your distance comment was really that stupid.:)
This has got to be one of the dumber posts I've seen on SlashDot recently, who approved this nonsense?
First, 1080p is nice from 12 feet away watching a movie, but sucks when 2 feet away on a 24" monitor.
I game using a trio of Dell 30" panels connected to an AMD 7970HD card, and frankly with 12 million pixels being pushed, it still needs MSAA to not look like crap to me. I can see the pixels, they stick out perfectly fine to my eyes.
4K panels can't get here fast enough, and frankly it will take 8K panels to really close the gap with our eyes. The amount of GPU power required to drive 3x panels at that resolution (24 million pixels) is impressive and we aren't there yet.
Second, even if resolution wasn't going up, there are "pixels" and then there are "pixels". Do you want to play DOOM at 1080P? Great, any 5 year old card can do that. Do you want to play CoD Ghosts at 1080P? A 5 year old card might well have a struggle with that.
The PS3 could do 1080P out of the box, if that was "good enough", then why does the PS4 have FAR better graphics at the same resolution?
Eh, you think 4K is more resolution than the eye can discern?
You have a strange standard... I game with an AMD 7970HD hooked up to 3x Dell 30" panels running a total of about 12 million pixels. You know what?
I can see them (the pixels). Turning on MSAA helps, but kills framerates (I really need a second GPU but AMD has had horrible issues with frame pacing in Crossfire, might do it with a pair of 290X cards if those issues are worked out)
I would love to have 3x 4K 32" panels, but frankly, I'll take 8K panels thank you very much. Then we won't need MSAA, but it will take 8K to get there.
If you paid for WinXP on an annual subscription basis, then MS would probably be happy to support it forever. The problem is that they have long booked the sales and now you want MS to support it forever for free. Explain how that makes any sense.
Why? They ended Win95 and Win98 support when they said they would and didn't touch them since. They have supported WinXP for 12 years, what is with this idea that somehow they'll just support it forever? MS has made such a point of April 2014, if they break it, they'll end up supporting it for 20 years, for free. They'd be fools to do that.
Or perhaps it will force the bosses to pull out their wallets and upgrade all those machines quickly to Windows 7. Frankly, an office with 24 machines shouldn't take all that long to upgrade and test, it is the thousand machine installs that are so hard to do quickly, but 24 isn't that hard.
Then open Medicare the way the NHS in the UK is done, have it covered by taxes and make it free at the point of service.
Don't sell it, just have everyone covered without conditions.
The police dept doesn't require that you "sign up" before they'll respond to a 911 call, the fire dept doesn't require forms filled out before they'll respond to a fire, why do we require this for health care?
The right to self-determination overrides the state's desire to have total control over public health.
Period, full stop. Anything else is just oppression and a human rights violation.
I completely understand the debate, but it is a moot point. I have no desire to inject such things into my children, and I have not. But I also don't have much to do with "western medicine" either, preferring a more natural holistic health care plan. Frankly, that is my right as a human being who is also a father to my children, and the state has no ride to override me, for any reason whatsoever.
While those points are all fair, there are indeed dealers who do it differently. I purchased my GMC Yukon XL from a dealership on the edge of town that is hungry for the business. First price offered? Dealer invoice with nothing added. Extended warranty? Half of list price (turned it down, they didn't push). 0% financing of course. Trade value? $2K over good condition KBB.
Frankly, I didn't even have to argue with them, I knew my numbers, did my Edmunds research, asked for $200 more off the price just to feel like I won something, they said sure, and off we went. Whole thing took 2 hours start to finish, including F&I paperwork.
I have no complaints. Yes, I understand that is probably the exception.
What keeps me hopeful is what is happening in Germany where a conservative government is working on an energy transition effort to renewables. Their stated goals are:
1) Greenhouse gas reductions: 80â"95% reduction by 2050
2) Renewable energy targets: 60% share by 2050 (renewables broadly defined as hydro, solar and wind power)
3) Energy efficiency: electricity efficiency up by 50% by 2050
4) An associated research and development drive
Yea, that all sounds nice, but it is a fantasy being fed to an uneducated public.
You'll never get primary power from wind, solar, and hydro. You just won't, it takes about 5 minutes of math to figure that out, but most people never bother, they just want to be fed something that sounds nice.
Nuclear is the only power source that will replace burning carbon, nothing else will do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe, but once it moves from "Linux desktop computer that you can do anything with" to "Linux appliance that you can't make any unapproved changes to", the difference becomes academic.
In fairness, everyone likes to compare Intel's GPU that has to fit into the CPU die and use perhaps 15W of power against an AMD or nVidia GPU that can use 150W or more of power. There is just no comparison. Give Intel 150W of power to play with and I'm sure they could do something interesting with it.
Since Linux is about 2% of the total installed OS market and since the percentage of THAT market that plays games is limited, I doubt that Intel and AMD care very much about it. Linux on the desktop is a fantasy, I recall hearing "year of the Linux desktop" back in 1994, still hasn't happened...
While I never want to say "never", it will be awhile. The fact is that rendering life-like graphics in real time at 60fps across 8+ million pixels takes a ton of processing power, far more than you can fit onto a small 84W CPU+GPU.
Maybe, but that is comparing low power notebook chips. Try comparing it in desktops and the picture changes by quite a bit. Of course, it is also worth considering that a modern Haswell CPU uses 84W of power while a modern AMD GPU uses 300W of power. If you gave Intel 300W of power to work with, I'm sure they could come up with something impressive.
You assume that your own experience translates to anyone else. We have a pair of 50 gallon natural gas hot water heaters. They cost about $30/month to run for the pair of them. Our monthly average utility bill is about $300. So 10% of our bill is making hot water. I could make it "free" and it would only cut our bill by 10%. Not everyone has the same energy use that you do.
So true, but people are funny emotional creatures... guns kill far fewer people than cars, but many people think they are evil. Same problem. Training can solve both problems (guns and cars), but heaven forbid we take a bad driver's car away.
.
I priced solar about 2 years ago, had my roof measured and power needs compared to what could be provided. My entire roof (I live in Texas) can provide about 1/3 of my house's power needs, at an out of pocket cost after tax credits of $37K.
That is a bad deal which is why solar isn't on my house, or any other house around here. If solar made so much sense, we'd all install it.
So true... Also, has anyone considered what the environmental effects of covering millions of square miles of our planet with solar panels is? They complain about the effects of a single pipeline, yet they could care less about any possible effects of millions, if not billions of solar panels.
Turning out the lights at night isn't going to save us, the problem is larger than that. Even if we cut energy use in half in America and Europe, we'll be overwhelmed by the billions of people who currently use very little power who are going to start using a lot more. The population also continues to grow, in 50 years it may well double again, so we'd be back to the same point. We need the ability to generate huge amounts of power cleanly and cheaply, not to turn off some lights and call it fixed.
There is a small flaw in your numbers... You say that a sub-$10K solar installation can power a house, that is not true. I've looked into it, if I could spend $10K and power even 1/3 of my house, I'd do it in 5 seconds. In truth, it would take $60K worth of solar to power 1/3 of my house's annual electrical needs, that is just not reasonable, even with the tax credits and rebates that are out there. My out of pocket cost on that install was $37K, and to cut my power bill by 1/3 for $37K out of pocket makes no sense.
France gets 80% of its power from nuclear, so your "over 50%" number doesn't really ring true.
And it still won't matter, because they are still burning fossil fuels, which needs to stop, or it makes no difference what any of us does.
Or do you think we can release 100 million years worth of carbon in just a few hundred years and do no damage?
.
We can burn it all in 50 years, 250 years, or 500 years, it makes no difference, burn it all we will, releasing 100 million years of carbon in a very short period of time. From Earth's point of view, there is no difference between 50 years and 500 years, the climate doesn't work on that small of a time scale.
The only solution is to stop burning it outright, leave it in the ground where it belongs.
The only way to do that is with nuclear, there is no where near enough solar, wind, and water energy on Earth to power everything that we do, it just isn't even close.
.
If I pushed the screen further away, it would just have to be bigger. My TV in the living room is a 60" Sharp 1080P LCD, and I can see the pixels on that as well from 10 feet away.
We are not yet to the resolution of our eyes, that is why Apple calls their newer displays "retina" displays, it is meant to be as sharp as our eyes can see (but they aren't there yet either, I can still see the pixels on my iPad). The resolution needs to double again and it will be close to true retina resolution.
Granted, not everyone has 20/20 vision, some people even claim that Blu-Ray is really not any better than DVD, these people either have crappy TVs or terrible vision, because the difference is night and day. So if you don't think there is room for improvement, I assure you the issue is not your monitor, it is you. I see plenty of room for improvement.
One final point... If you really think distance is the perfect solution, then we hit perfection 20 years ago. Your old 25" CRT SDTV was "perfect", you just had to move it further away, like perhaps into the next house, then you would have no further room for improvement in resolution.
Yes, your distance comment was really that stupid. :)
First, 1080p is nice from 12 feet away watching a movie, but sucks when 2 feet away on a 24" monitor.
I game using a trio of Dell 30" panels connected to an AMD 7970HD card, and frankly with 12 million pixels being pushed, it still needs MSAA to not look like crap to me. I can see the pixels, they stick out perfectly fine to my eyes.
4K panels can't get here fast enough, and frankly it will take 8K panels to really close the gap with our eyes. The amount of GPU power required to drive 3x panels at that resolution (24 million pixels) is impressive and we aren't there yet.
Second, even if resolution wasn't going up, there are "pixels" and then there are "pixels". Do you want to play DOOM at 1080P? Great, any 5 year old card can do that. Do you want to play CoD Ghosts at 1080P? A 5 year old card might well have a struggle with that.
The PS3 could do 1080P out of the box, if that was "good enough", then why does the PS4 have FAR better graphics at the same resolution?
You have a strange standard... I game with an AMD 7970HD hooked up to 3x Dell 30" panels running a total of about 12 million pixels. You know what?
I can see them (the pixels). Turning on MSAA helps, but kills framerates (I really need a second GPU but AMD has had horrible issues with frame pacing in Crossfire, might do it with a pair of 290X cards if those issues are worked out)
I would love to have 3x 4K 32" panels, but frankly, I'll take 8K panels thank you very much. Then we won't need MSAA, but it will take 8K to get there.
If you paid for WinXP on an annual subscription basis, then MS would probably be happy to support it forever. The problem is that they have long booked the sales and now you want MS to support it forever for free. Explain how that makes any sense.
Why? They ended Win95 and Win98 support when they said they would and didn't touch them since. They have supported WinXP for 12 years, what is with this idea that somehow they'll just support it forever? MS has made such a point of April 2014, if they break it, they'll end up supporting it for 20 years, for free. They'd be fools to do that.
Or perhaps it will force the bosses to pull out their wallets and upgrade all those machines quickly to Windows 7. Frankly, an office with 24 machines shouldn't take all that long to upgrade and test, it is the thousand machine installs that are so hard to do quickly, but 24 isn't that hard.
Don't sell it, just have everyone covered without conditions.
The police dept doesn't require that you "sign up" before they'll respond to a 911 call, the fire dept doesn't require forms filled out before they'll respond to a fire, why do we require this for health care?
The right to self-determination overrides the state's desire to have total control over public health.
Period, full stop. Anything else is just oppression and a human rights violation.
I completely understand the debate, but it is a moot point. I have no desire to inject such things into my children, and I have not. But I also don't have much to do with "western medicine" either, preferring a more natural holistic health care plan. Frankly, that is my right as a human being who is also a father to my children, and the state has no ride to override me, for any reason whatsoever.
Frankly, I didn't even have to argue with them, I knew my numbers, did my Edmunds research, asked for $200 more off the price just to feel like I won something, they said sure, and off we went. Whole thing took 2 hours start to finish, including F&I paperwork.
I have no complaints. Yes, I understand that is probably the exception.
What keeps me hopeful is what is happening in Germany where a conservative government is working on an energy transition effort to renewables. Their stated goals are: 1) Greenhouse gas reductions: 80â"95% reduction by 2050 2) Renewable energy targets: 60% share by 2050 (renewables broadly defined as hydro, solar and wind power) 3) Energy efficiency: electricity efficiency up by 50% by 2050 4) An associated research and development drive
Yea, that all sounds nice, but it is a fantasy being fed to an uneducated public.
You'll never get primary power from wind, solar, and hydro. You just won't, it takes about 5 minutes of math to figure that out, but most people never bother, they just want to be fed something that sounds nice.
Nuclear is the only power source that will replace burning carbon, nothing else will do it.
What every Linux fan keeps missing is that there really is no compelling reason to leave Windows and go to... anything else... for most users.