There's no reason why they can't produce this for $500. Consider the following cost saving's they can take advantage of.
1) Everything goes onto one board, probably just a 4-layer board. There's no need for AGP/PCI/PCI-express/RAM sockets. All that stuff is there to make the motherboard flexible, but with an xbox 360 they're all the same, no need to add/remove anything, so it just get's soldiered straight onto the mobo. That massively reduces the system cost.
2) They don't need to have serial ports/firewire/PS2, etc. Backwards compatibility is not an issue.
3) The OS is free:)
4) The whole system, including video, only has 512MB. That's low compared to a gaming PC.
5) Small HD (20GB!!).
6) The power supply can be tailored to their particular needs. Probably right on the mobo as well.
When you add it all up you can see major cost-savings for a console.
I find it hard to see how this is scored as insightful. Let's assume you're an inventor. You're really good and you come up with one good invention per year. And since it's a good invention you might need multiple patents to cover it (for reasons that would be obvious to anyone who knows how patents work). Let's say 3 patents.
Next year you do the same. Now you're over your limit. Now you're not allowed to patent anymore. What are you supposes to do, stop inventing? Are you trying to discourage people from inventing? And telling people they can keep "the best five" is useless. It's extremely difficult to tell which patents are going to be useful and which are not. It can take many years for something to go from patent to market.
Making the system so that you can't get a good copy is all but impossible. There's a couple different reasons.
First off, the encryption will get broken. If you have access to the encrypted source (DVD) and the decrypted output (movie) then breaking the encryption scheme is doable. Even if it's tough, it'll be done. Especially when you consider there will be tons of companies making these chips meaning info about the crypto will get leaked.
Second, a more hardware-oriented solution is always possible. An enterprising company can pop off the encryption chip and scan the die to build up a gate-level netlist. From that they can get the encryption scheme and develop their own chips that might provide a nice decoder.
Third, at some point the data is reduced to an unencrypted format. Even if the encryption is done inside the monitor people will still be able to get to it. And then they can detect the unencrypted data stream and BINGO, you have a perfect copy.
I've helped run many a gaming convention at hotels (mostly LARPs) and I think some of the comments made here are a bit over the top and misleading. Here's my opinion on some questions involving hotels.
Q: Do I need a lawyer to read over my contract with the hotel? A: Unless you're running a GIANT LAN party with thousands of people then no. If your party has 50-200 people then from the point of view of the hotel it's not much more complicated than a wedding or a business meeting. The contract with the hotel is boilerplate. Sure you should read it, but there probably won't be any need to alter the contract.
Q: What kind of break can I get on the cost. A: I varies wildly. If you're running a con at a small, out-of-the-way, not-particularly-nice hotel then if you fill 50 rooms for them over the weekend they might give you a conf room for free. If you're running a con in the Ritz Manhattan then I suspect it'll cost an arm and a leg.
Q: Can we not bring in food or drink? A: Umm, well, I've never been to a con where the con people didn't bring in their own food. Some hotels will even let you use a kitchen for cooking. *shrug*
"Oh, I should mention this while I'm ranting: the US economy's fortunes have very little to do with your brand of aggressive capitalism. If anything, you're doing well despite it. In the first part of the last century, you folks had a lot of oil, which is essential for fuelling an industrial economy and war machine. That's all. Just like England became wealthy with coal, you became wealthy because of oil- just an accident of history, really."
So gee, how did you reach that fascinating conclusion? Long hours of economic research? Nah, it was probably more along the lines of you going to a protest march where one of the speakers told you this "fact" and you just filed it away as revealed truth. Despite the fact that the speaker a) offered no proof whatsover b) the speaker has a BS in Chinese history and their knowledge of oil is limited to knowing that their car runs better on 89 octane.
You've got your ordering of events wrong. It's not Oil is discoverd -> US is rich..
The United States was a wealthy country before the 1st oil well was drilled. By 1900 the United States was a very wealthy country. By 1900 oil was a big business but the world still ran mostly on coal. And of course you're ignoring countries like Mexico and Venezuala where oil was found quite a while ago but didn't necessarily become rich from it.
Look, saying that Communism failed because, "computers happened along the scene and gave the capatalists a huge production increase" is simplistic to the point of being moronic. Do computer's stop working when brought into a Communist country? Was the existance of computers somehow kept secret from communists? How is it that lot's of different countries could all start using computers yet somehow Communist countries couldn't?
Here's a few facts: - The economy of the Soviet Union had stalled by 1970, before computers had a huge impact on the economy. - The Soviet Union knew about computers and *gasp* even used them on occasion. - The Soviet economy had difficulty producing *low* tech items, like food. This had nothing to do with their problems with computers.
"They also found, interestingly, that people who came into the debate undecided about GM and not knowing much about the issues became more anti-GM the more they found out, which you could interpret as meaning that a significant number of people are not anti-GM out of ignorance, rather than choice."
Well, that's easy to understand when one realizes the debate about GM tends to be dominated by anti-GM demagogues who are not constrained by such bourgeois concerns like facts or reason. If you read the "popular" press in many countries the arguments tend to run along the lines of "GM FOODS WILL DESTROY THE PLANET AND TURN YOUR CHILDREN INTO HALF-MAN HALF-BUG CREATURES THAT WILL FEAST UPON THE FLESH OF THE INNOCENT!!! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?" After reading such a well-crafted and carefully thought out argument is there any wonder why people become scared? Why don't people hear about things like the new GM Yellow Rice that helps prevent blindness in Asia? Oh, because if you did that then people would realize that GM foods can be used to do really really good things, not just bad things. Then they'd have a nuanced adult view of the subject which is the last thing the keep-em-scared-and-stupid crowd wants. Every time a GM case comes up before the WTO the anti's lose, because despite all the hype they can't show the food is actually dangerous.
The reality is that to provide enough food for the people already here you can either use massive amounts of chemicals to increase crop yields (definitely bad for environment) or GM foods (some possible dangers but hopefully we can control them in a reasonable manner). Saying "everyone should eat organic foods only" means the rich 1st-worlders will be able to eat (at very high prices) and others will go hungry.
dtr21 wrote an excellent article about RISC processor design, but I do have to quibble over one point. Modifying a cpu to go from scalar to super-scalar design (issuing more that one inst per cycle) does take up real estate on the chip, in the form of additional IUs, FPUs, etc. However, the Cruseo doesn't solve that problem. It's a VLIW design and so needs to have additional IUs, FPUs, etc, just as much as a traditional super-scalar design. The logic in a traditional design that looks for contention issues is quite small (relative to the size of the die), that's the only part crusoe can eliminate. The big (potential) payoff in hardware is the elimination of speed paths in the design due to the fact that you don't have as many potential contention issues and the other advantage is the simplification of the design.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no reason why they can't produce this for $500. Consider the following cost saving's they can take advantage of.
:)
1) Everything goes onto one board, probably just a 4-layer board. There's no need for AGP/PCI/PCI-express/RAM sockets. All that stuff is there to make the motherboard flexible, but with an xbox 360 they're all the same, no need to add/remove anything, so it just get's soldiered straight onto the mobo. That massively reduces the system cost.
2) They don't need to have serial ports/firewire/PS2, etc. Backwards compatibility is not an issue.
3) The OS is free
4) The whole system, including video, only has 512MB. That's low compared to a gaming PC.
5) Small HD (20GB!!).
6) The power supply can be tailored to their particular needs. Probably right on the mobo as well.
When you add it all up you can see major cost-savings for a console.
I find it hard to see how this is scored as insightful. Let's assume you're an inventor. You're really good and you come up with one good invention per year. And since it's a good invention you might need multiple patents to cover it (for reasons that would be obvious to anyone who knows how patents work). Let's say 3 patents.
Next year you do the same. Now you're over your limit. Now you're not allowed to patent anymore. What are you supposes to do, stop inventing? Are you trying to discourage people from inventing? And telling people they can keep "the best five" is useless. It's extremely difficult to tell which patents are going to be useful and which are not. It can take many years for something to go from patent to market.
Making the system so that you can't get a good copy is all but impossible. There's a couple different reasons.
First off, the encryption will get broken. If you have access to the encrypted source (DVD) and the decrypted output (movie) then breaking the encryption scheme is doable. Even if it's tough, it'll be done. Especially when you consider there will be tons of companies making these chips meaning info about the crypto will get leaked.
Second, a more hardware-oriented solution is always possible. An enterprising company can pop off the encryption chip and scan the die to build up a gate-level netlist. From that they can get the encryption scheme and develop their own chips that might provide a nice decoder.
Third, at some point the data is reduced to an unencrypted format. Even if the encryption is done inside the monitor people will still be able to get to it. And then they can detect the unencrypted data stream and BINGO, you have a perfect copy.
Back to the Hotel theme...
I've helped run many a gaming convention at hotels (mostly LARPs) and I think some of the comments made here are a bit over the top and misleading. Here's my opinion on some questions involving hotels.
Q: Do I need a lawyer to read over my contract with the hotel?
A: Unless you're running a GIANT LAN party with thousands of people then no. If your party has 50-200 people then from the point of view of the hotel it's not much more complicated than a wedding or a business meeting. The contract with the hotel is boilerplate. Sure you should read it, but there probably won't be any need to alter the contract.
Q: What kind of break can I get on the cost.
A: I varies wildly. If you're running a con at a small, out-of-the-way, not-particularly-nice hotel then if you fill 50 rooms for them over the weekend they might give you a conf room for free. If you're running a con in the Ritz Manhattan then I suspect it'll cost an arm and a leg.
Q: Can we not bring in food or drink?
A: Umm, well, I've never been to a con where the con people didn't bring in their own food. Some hotels will even let you use a kitchen for cooking. *shrug*
"Oh, I should mention this while I'm ranting: the US economy's fortunes have very little to do with your brand of aggressive capitalism. If anything, you're doing well despite it. In the first part of the last century, you folks had a lot of oil, which is essential for fuelling an industrial economy and war machine. That's all. Just like England became wealthy with coal, you became wealthy because of oil- just an accident of history, really."
So gee, how did you reach that fascinating conclusion? Long hours of economic research? Nah, it was probably more along the lines of you going to a protest march where one of the speakers told you this "fact" and you just filed it away as revealed truth. Despite the fact that the speaker a) offered no proof whatsover b) the speaker has a BS in Chinese history and their knowledge of oil is limited to knowing that their car runs better on 89 octane.
You've got your ordering of events wrong. It's not Oil is discoverd -> US is rich..
The United States was a wealthy country before the 1st oil well was drilled. By 1900 the United States was a very wealthy country. By 1900 oil was a big business but the world still ran mostly on coal. And of course you're ignoring countries like Mexico and Venezuala where oil was found quite a while ago but didn't necessarily become rich from it.
Look, saying that Communism failed because,
"computers happened along the scene and gave the capatalists a huge production increase" is simplistic to the point of being moronic. Do computer's stop working when brought into a Communist country? Was the existance of computers somehow kept secret from communists? How is it that lot's of different countries could all start using computers yet somehow Communist countries couldn't?
Here's a few facts:
- The economy of the Soviet Union had stalled by 1970, before computers had a huge impact on the economy.
- The Soviet Union knew about computers and *gasp* even used them on occasion.
- The Soviet economy had difficulty producing *low* tech items, like food. This had nothing to do with their problems with computers.
"They also found, interestingly, that people who came into the debate undecided about GM and not knowing much about the issues became more anti-GM the more they found out, which you could interpret as meaning that a significant number of people are not anti-GM out of ignorance, rather than choice."
Well, that's easy to understand when one realizes the debate about GM tends to be dominated by anti-GM demagogues who are not constrained by such bourgeois concerns like facts or reason. If you read the "popular" press in many countries the arguments tend to run along the lines of "GM FOODS WILL DESTROY THE PLANET AND TURN YOUR CHILDREN INTO HALF-MAN HALF-BUG CREATURES THAT WILL FEAST UPON THE FLESH OF THE INNOCENT!!! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?" After reading such a well-crafted and carefully thought out argument is there any wonder why people become scared? Why don't people hear about things like the new GM Yellow Rice that helps prevent blindness in Asia? Oh, because if you did that then people would realize that GM foods can be used to do really really good things, not just bad things. Then they'd have a nuanced adult view of the subject which is the last thing the keep-em-scared-and-stupid crowd wants. Every time a GM case comes up before the WTO the anti's lose, because despite all the hype they can't show the food is actually dangerous.
The reality is that to provide enough food for the people already here you can either use massive amounts of chemicals to increase crop yields (definitely bad for environment) or GM foods (some possible dangers but hopefully we can control them in a reasonable manner). Saying "everyone should eat organic foods only" means the rich 1st-worlders will be able to eat (at very high prices) and others will go hungry.
dtr21 wrote an excellent article about RISC processor design, but I do have to quibble over one point. Modifying a cpu to go from scalar to super-scalar design (issuing more that one inst per cycle) does take up real estate on the chip, in the form of additional IUs, FPUs, etc. However, the Cruseo doesn't solve that problem. It's a VLIW design and so needs to have additional IUs, FPUs, etc, just as much as a traditional super-scalar design. The logic in a traditional design that looks for contention issues is quite small (relative to the size of the die), that's the only part crusoe can eliminate. The big (potential) payoff in hardware is the elimination of speed paths in the design due to the fact that you don't have as many potential contention issues and the other advantage is the simplification of the design.