We've benchmarked the 10-core 2.0GHz E7 Xeons against the 8-core 2.0GHz Opteron 6128. The Opteron CPUs deliver about 70% of the performance on our workload for about 12% of the price.
The AMD motherboards are much cheaper too.
Bulldozer is underwhelming on the desktop, but it could still deliver great price/performance in the server market. We'll soon see.
You're welcome to become an expert in distributed systems optimisation. I don't want to work 80 hours a week. If you start studying now, you'll be ready to take on my job sometime around 2036.
No. It expects people to be able to act rationally and in their long-term best interest. That's still not how people work.
Nonsense.
Capitalism might work best if people acted rationally and in their long-term best interest (or then again, it might not...) But all it expects is for people to be people.
So someone who makes $20 an hour now competes with someone in China who makes $20 a day. What is the solution? Bring down the standard of living in the west to that of the Chinese? Or bring the standard of living of the Chinese closer to their western equivalent? Which solution involves less violence?
Why should either solution involve any violence?
Anyway, the answer is that Chinese productivity and wages will increase (as has been happening for years), promoting greater demand for goods and services; unskilled jobs will move to other countries (the shirt I'm wearing was made not in China, but Bangladesh), and in the long run everyone wins, so long as no-one tries anything stupid like communism.
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
An economic system that only works if every person acts ideally at all times is a recipe for mass graves.
Capitalism, for all its imperfections, is built on self-interest. It expects people to be people, not ants. So it works.
It's been tried dozens of times. It just fails, invariably, rapidly, and completely.
Apart from the obvious problem of simple human nature, there's a computationally intractable scaling problem involved. J. B. S. Haldane pointed this out in his famous paper, On Being the Right Size (primarily on biological scaling) back in 1928. And Haldane was himself a communist.
I've rung and asked them why the difference - and got some bulls**t about there being annual price adjustments based on the current currency conversion. The only problem is the last time that AU$ was low enough for that was back in the 1980's.
18 March 2009, actually. (Last time the exchange rate was greater than 1.5:1.)
> 2. I'm expensive. I have 30 years of experience in the 'biz and a masters degree in CS. I'm not cheap. You could hire two 25 year olds for what I'm asking. So: Are you twice as productive as two average 25 year olds?
bye, Paul.
Obviously I can't say how productive Number6.2 is, but my answer would be very likely.
The 25-year-old will work an 80-hour week and churn out a couple of thousand lines of code... Which you'll need to replace twice in six months due to unforseen performance issues.
The 55-year-old - if he's good - will stare off into space for a few minutes while he compares the current problem with past projects, and then come up with a 200 line solution that doesn't have those unforseen performance issues because he's seen it before.
In terms of LOC, the 25-year-old is going to be "better". In terms of building systems that work, I'll take the 55-year-old any day.
The point about the assumption of growth is an important one. The world's financial systems are built on that assumption i.e. anyone who lends money expects to make a profit on the loan, after inflation if applicable
The two statements are not connected. It is entirely possible for every loan to be profitable in an economy that is not growing at all.
Do you believe this because the atoms are bouncing around in your head a certain way or because it is true?
The atoms in my head, for the most part, stay pretty much where they are, relative to one another. Not sure what it's like inside your skull. So I guess I believe it because of the vast body of supporting evidence.
Evolution most certainly doesn't care about truth. It cares about passing on genes.
You're not paying attention, are you?
But even if I take your argument as something that can be assumed, it would only apply to staying alive and reproducing.
Yeeees. That's what evolution is mostly about, y'know.
We would also have discount all the species that survive based on sheer numbers.
Which involves staying alive and reproducing, and not believing in falsehoods. If a cockroach decides that it no longer needs to eat, it's not going to pass on its genes any more than that primitive man with a fondness for tiger sandwiches. Unlike people, most cockroaches are smarter than that.
The point overall is that a reductionist philosophy like materialism undermines the preconditions for assuming rationality.
So, don't assume rationality. Verify it.
It would be a little better if evolution predicted something about survival. It doesn't. It ends up being a tautology. Survivors survive.
Oh, good grief. Not that tired old tripe. It's probabilities, not absolutes. You can be the best fitted individual in your entire ecological niche and still catch a cold and die. Fitness can be established by examining the creatures and their environment; survival is the outcome, and is only statistically predictable.
If you assume that there is no teleology, no higher design, in evolutionary processes, you are left with a blind process building up the human mind. Furthermore, you have to reduce everything to physics and chemistry. Why do you believe anything is true? The atoms are bouncing around in your head a certain way. Why does evolution proceed the way it does? It is neutral about truth so the only answer that can be given is to pass on genes.
Evolution is most certainly not neutral about truth. If you regularly believe in falsehoods - such as the idea that tigers make a very good meal for primitive humans (as opposed to of primitive humans) - your genes will exit the pool tout suite.
Your brain is an inference engine, tuned by evolution to model the physical world and make you something other than a predator's brunch. It's quite good at this, as witness the seven billion other human brains inhabiting this world.
I also read both Hoftstadter and Dennett. The former made a similar mistake to the one you accuse Penrose of making: attaching almost mystical properties to the concept of recursion and the emergence of complexity.
Except that he doesn't. He shows precisely how recursion and self-reference form a basis for the emergence of complexity.
Dennett has similar problems, but more than that he has mistaken a model of cognition for a model of conscious experience. He side steps the explanatory gap by simply denying it exists, just as Hoftstadter denies it by promoting the idea that it is simply an emergent property, without being about to explain exactly what the nature of that property actually is.
Wrong again. Dennett demonstrates that there is no explanatory gap. Chalmers and his ilk are left with no ground to stand on.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps we'll die...
We've benchmarked the 10-core 2.0GHz E7 Xeons against the 8-core 2.0GHz Opteron 6128. The Opteron CPUs deliver about 70% of the performance on our workload for about 12% of the price.
The AMD motherboards are much cheaper too.
Bulldozer is underwhelming on the desktop, but it could still deliver great price/performance in the server market. We'll soon see.
You're welcome to become an expert in distributed systems optimisation. I don't want to work 80 hours a week. If you start studying now, you'll be ready to take on my job sometime around 2036.
It expects people to be people, not ants.
No. It expects people to be able to act rationally and in their long-term best interest. That's still not how people work.
Nonsense.
Capitalism might work best if people acted rationally and in their long-term best interest (or then again, it might not...) But all it expects is for people to be people.
So someone who makes $20 an hour now competes with someone in China who makes $20 a day. What is the solution? Bring down the standard of living in the west to that of the Chinese? Or bring the standard of living of the Chinese closer to their western equivalent? Which solution involves less violence?
Why should either solution involve any violence?
Anyway, the answer is that Chinese productivity and wages will increase (as has been happening for years), promoting greater demand for goods and services; unskilled jobs will move to other countries (the shirt I'm wearing was made not in China, but Bangladesh), and in the long run everyone wins, so long as no-one tries anything stupid like communism.
So get a diploma in robot maintenance. Then you'll be set.
Isn't that the description of capitalism? Exploitation of the working class?
No, that would be exploitation-of-the-working-classism.
The description of capitalism is private ownership of the means of production, and the sale of goods and services for profit.
I wish I could mod you up right now...
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
An economic system that only works if every person acts ideally at all times is a recipe for mass graves.
Capitalism, for all its imperfections, is built on self-interest. It expects people to be people, not ants. So it works.
Communism doesn't; never has, never will.
It's been tried dozens of times. It just fails, invariably, rapidly, and completely.
Apart from the obvious problem of simple human nature, there's a computationally intractable scaling problem involved. J. B. S. Haldane pointed this out in his famous paper, On Being the Right Size (primarily on biological scaling) back in 1928. And Haldane was himself a communist.
I've rung and asked them why the difference - and got some bulls**t about there being annual price adjustments based on the current currency conversion. The only problem is the last time that AU$ was low enough for that was back in the 1980's.
18 March 2009, actually. (Last time the exchange rate was greater than 1.5:1.)
> 2. I'm expensive. I have 30 years of experience in the 'biz and a masters degree in CS. I'm not cheap. You could hire two 25 year olds for what I'm asking.
So: Are you twice as productive as two average 25 year olds?
bye, Paul.
Obviously I can't say how productive Number6.2 is, but my answer would be very likely.
The 25-year-old will work an 80-hour week and churn out a couple of thousand lines of code... Which you'll need to replace twice in six months due to unforseen performance issues.
The 55-year-old - if he's good - will stare off into space for a few minutes while he compares the current problem with past projects, and then come up with a 200 line solution that doesn't have those unforseen performance issues because he's seen it before.
In terms of LOC, the 25-year-old is going to be "better". In terms of building systems that work, I'll take the 55-year-old any day.
The point about the assumption of growth is an important one. The world's financial systems are built on that assumption i.e. anyone who lends money expects to make a profit on the loan, after inflation if applicable
The two statements are not connected. It is entirely possible for every loan to be profitable in an economy that is not growing at all.
Guess what happened when I first tried to register?
Anonminus would have been more appropriate.
There is no Dragon Age 2.
This spider only has seven legs!
Wish I had mod points right now.
YES. If you look for clusters of any condition among enough people, you will find them.
Right, because all illegal immigrants commit crimes.
Ahem.
Do you believe this because the atoms are bouncing around in your head a certain way or because it is true?
The atoms in my head, for the most part, stay pretty much where they are, relative to one another. Not sure what it's like inside your skull. So I guess I believe it because of the vast body of supporting evidence.
Evolution most certainly doesn't care about truth. It cares about passing on genes.
You're not paying attention, are you?
But even if I take your argument as something that can be assumed, it would only apply to staying alive and reproducing.
Yeeees. That's what evolution is mostly about, y'know.
We would also have discount all the species that survive based on sheer numbers.
Which involves staying alive and reproducing, and not believing in falsehoods. If a cockroach decides that it no longer needs to eat, it's not going to pass on its genes any more than that primitive man with a fondness for tiger sandwiches. Unlike people, most cockroaches are smarter than that.
The point overall is that a reductionist philosophy like materialism undermines the preconditions for assuming rationality.
So, don't assume rationality. Verify it.
It would be a little better if evolution predicted something about survival. It doesn't. It ends up being a tautology. Survivors survive.
Oh, good grief. Not that tired old tripe. It's probabilities, not absolutes. You can be the best fitted individual in your entire ecological niche and still catch a cold and die. Fitness can be established by examining the creatures and their environment; survival is the outcome, and is only statistically predictable.
If you assume that there is no teleology, no higher design, in evolutionary processes, you are left with a blind process building up the human mind. Furthermore, you have to reduce everything to physics and chemistry. Why do you believe anything is true? The atoms are bouncing around in your head a certain way. Why does evolution proceed the way it does? It is neutral about truth so the only answer that can be given is to pass on genes.
Evolution is most certainly not neutral about truth. If you regularly believe in falsehoods - such as the idea that tigers make a very good meal for primitive humans (as opposed to of primitive humans) - your genes will exit the pool tout suite.
Your brain is an inference engine, tuned by evolution to model the physical world and make you something other than a predator's brunch. It's quite good at this, as witness the seven billion other human brains inhabiting this world.
You need to sit down and have a talk with your Logical Side.
If you like Fate then apart from the sequels (I think they're up to #4 now) Torchlight is the perfect next step.
Titan Quest (as others have suggested) is a brilliant game, but likely a bit much for a 10-year-old.
I see no gap here.
I also read both Hoftstadter and Dennett. The former made a similar mistake to the one you accuse Penrose of making: attaching almost mystical properties to the concept of recursion and the emergence of complexity.
Except that he doesn't. He shows precisely how recursion and self-reference form a basis for the emergence of complexity.
Dennett has similar problems, but more than that he has mistaken a model of cognition for a model of conscious experience. He side steps the explanatory gap by simply denying it exists, just as Hoftstadter denies it by promoting the idea that it is simply an emergent property, without being about to explain exactly what the nature of that property actually is.
Wrong again. Dennett demonstrates that there is no explanatory gap. Chalmers and his ilk are left with no ground to stand on.
It's how conspiracy theories have always worked.
If they deny it, you must be on to something.
If they don't deny it, it must be true.
If they prove you wrong, it's a coverup.