While it is unfortunate, a game really needs to be designed to minimize the impact of the 0.1% of the assholes that will play it.
No not really, just have scripts to make automatic fix ups, and announce that the economy&ecology while is algorithm based and stable and that you can screw it to the limits, it has realistic fixes that those who manage to hit those limits will not like. It might screw up the balance In soviet MUD the ecology and economy screws YOU!
Of course this argument falls down with graphics processing. While it is true that today's CPUs could probably process the graphics engine from games 5-7 years old,
Not really. Quake3 and tux racer are few examples which the software based approach isn't cutting it. And thats with athlon64 3000 with integrated graphics. There is either very bad quality of graphics compared to dedicated card or slideshow.
It's a type of problem that generic CPUs can't keep up with. Physics may be a similar type of problem, one that can be performed far more efficiently than a current CPU can handle. That said, there has to be a large market for such a device to fund the R&D for future revisions or the generic CPU will catch up again.
The special purpose hardware is practicly always faster than more general purpose given same die area and power constraints, the R&D required for beating the generic CPU isn't large. Think about P4 it has 40+ million logic transistors. You can do 32bit adder in less than 1000 transistors. So doing 40 000 parallel additions per cycle running Ghz range could be done on P4 transistor and power budgets and clockspeeds, but doing it in ASIC design instead of custom logic probably makes it run under 500mhz for reduced design costs. Its amazing how inefficient the general purpose computer actually is. The special purpose isn't that effectice since you need to have some book keeping logic, and data paths moving data etc... but there again, CPU needs to do same things in software. And "if then else" done in hardwired transistors is almost order of magnitude more efficient addition we talked about, while on CPU its over order of magnitude slower. Then again there is hint that agea hardware is programmable instead of completely hardwired, so it isn't really asic VS truly general purpose, but something in between.
AGEIA's hardware is implemented in 0.13u process, its TWO process generations behind intel CPUs. Which could mean for it 4x more parallel operations, for given power budget compared to current implementation. We could expect it to get 1 generation behind CPU:s if it gets enough sales. So yes its clear that if ageia could fund its R&D it is going to beat CPU:s big time in physics calculations. Also its clear that ageias R&D costs are not huge, as its funding isn't that large. If it makes 10$ per ppu and sells 1 million per year it could stay ahead of CPU:s forever. However they make right now probably a lot more than that per PPU and inorder to keep game makers supporting their hardware they would need to be atleast in 10% of the sold PC:s after a while, and at that point they probably make in every year atleast twice as much gross profit to pay their R&D than their entire funding for last 4 years.
The cost of a television show could be as low as a dollar.
Thats something I could be willing to pay, provided it runs on my computer. Advertisement free Television programs that I can watch anytime I wan't and without owning a TV nor paying monthly fees. With only costs is small fee on per item basis. Now if they would support linux and downloads would be fast enough for me and interface to get it would be convenient enough I'd definitely like this.
Also the article doesn't state that featured films cost EXACLY same as DVD but close to DVD pricing. So it could be couple of bucks cheaper than DVD and I'd probably *NOT* buy it except for very specific reasons like wanting to enjoy a specific movie with guests and I'm too busy for searching the physical DVD.
Still if it doesn't run on x86-64 linux or is limited to US only offer, I'm not able to use this service.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that microkernels--long discarded as unacceptable because of their lower performance compared with monolithic kernels--might be making a comeback due to their potentially higher reliability, which many people now regard as more important than performance.
No single person understands everything about how an aircraft carrier works either, but the subsystems on an aircraft carrier are well isolated. A problem with a clogged toilet cannot affect the missile-launching subsystem.
Not quite so, if clogged toiled prevents it's proper use it might cause a service man leak in wrong place and some electronics getting fried. Or simply clogged toiled might simply prevent missile operator using the facility for a while and that can lead missile operator malfunction.
Make a nice story that says something came from the sky and people died in diseases because of it. Make a nice cartoon of it and people burying the cause of the disease and those who died from diseases to the cave. Then mumify most malformed dead for display and after that have millions of peoples bones in the cave after that. I mean after they see the amount of bones in the caves they are probably not going to continue their path of searching what killed them.
The point that something came from the sky might need alteration but basic idea of needing to carry thousands of tons worth of human bones out of cave migh make someone understand what the cartoon was about.
But there is alternative solution to that problem. Other solution is having enough range, stop for 1 hour for every 5 hours of driving. There are plenty of battery technologies capable of recharging in 1hour.
Gasoline has energy density of 9.7kWh/l Many cars get about 4-6l/100km in highway driving. The cars energy that goes from wheels, is 15% of used energy in fuel... So we can assume about 1l/100km on electric engine/battery efficiencies. Thats 9.7Kw/h per 100km of range. Thats far less than most daily commuting around here at least. Also in Finland the minimum standard for home electricity delivery is 17.5kW If you could spread the 10Kw/h need across about 10 nighthours. Its 1Kw each night hour for per car. Entire Finlands car usage could be handled with single 2000MW power station. But just to be safe Finland has already begun building a its 6th nuclear reactor which has 1600MW output. And the 100km is too big number for Finnish people as it would end up 35Mm/year. When the more typical number is 20Mm/year. To apply this for americas by simply multiplying with population you would need 70 nuclear reactors to handle 140 million cars.
And we don't care about fastest possible load time, nor maximum amount each car could be loaded if used maximum length. What we really care is maximum daily average use, and the hours that the car recharge is spread. If some individual wants to recharge is car during long car trip quickly, and pays extra for it, it doesn't mean that there is too many cars at outlets at exacly same time. Unless everyone decides to recharge at maximum speed at exacly same time.
When a car pollutes less than half per kilometer, and there is less driving around there is difference.
Also while the britain has its own polluting plants. Well I don't know about britains industry enough to exacly say how they pollute but they probably have european level pollution controls as its big disadvantage for european markets to be viewed as polluter.
Lets make a comparison. There was American Exchange student who said that they had intolerable air pollution 20km from factory. My sister couldn't believe her explanation so she exclaimed but its pulp factory. Right now I live withing km of pulpfactory and its not a problematic polluter. There is cities build around pulp factories in Finland. The attitudes and pollution controls in america are somewhat different than europeans...
Its not cancer its more like. Preventice health care, and curing versus dealing with complications and symptoms. Later is more profitable constant income stream and previous is loss leader. Which one patient prefers and which one for-profit hospital prefers?
These are mentioned in article but not enough to explain it entirely. Obesity. Unhealthy food. Lack of exercise. Stress.
These are not mentioned in the article...
Air pollution from cars and power plants. Chemicals that can cause health problems, dumped to environment getting to people.
Look at the cancer rate its double in US, so there must be something that causes that problem. And its probably the attitude towards environment biting back. When nobody cares if they pollute their neighbours habitat the result is that all get pollution in their environment. And in the end just like wild animals we humans get affected by the pollution we put in our environment, and we all get some health problems because of that.
How long before improved compatibility with more mainstream x86 platform makes apple more of a target for viruses? The x86 assembler could be used on both windows & mac plaforms so there can be more codereuse. The Windows vs OSX border still works against more viruses for mac but still more you share between two plaforms and closer they become with each other lower the barrier of creating software for both instead of just one platform. And by software I mean all softare both malware and applications.
Actually that problem people are trying to solve. Its improving batteries, and reducing rotational and air friction as much as possible. Right now getting most weight efficient batteries is large numbers is prohibitely expensive. But after technology matures to a point where 7+ hours of constant driving at high speed it shouldn't be a problem. Spending 2 hours on stops gives 14 hours of driving then assuming batteries are full at the beginning of every 16hour period and you probably want to stop every 16 hours for complete recharge anyway;)
No that won't crash its FLOATING POINT memory fetch, addition and multiplication loop! Then we need to unroll the loop enough to hide the floatingpoint unit latency. So that it stays active.
10 I = 10.1 20 K = I 21 K2 =I 22 K3= I 23 K4= I 30 K = K + 2.1 40 K = K * 2.1 50 K2 = K2 + 2.1 60 K2 = K2 * 2.1 70 K3 = K3 + 2.1 80 K3 = K3 * 2.1 90 K4 = K4 + 2.1 100 K4 = K4 * 2.1 50 GOTO 20
There is plenty of trade offs to be made on hard-drives.
Size, weight, power consumption, price, capacity, rotation speed, platter density, and ruggedness.
For mobile harddrives, the number of platterns is verylimited by size, and platter size itself is limited. So they never get anywhere near the capacity of its desktop equivalent. However, less and smaller platters means also less power consumption so its still another point why its so in mobile computers. The platter density helps capacity, and bandwith and thats what harddrive manufacturers are trying to improve. Rotational speed costs more weight, power and in some cases hurts platter density.
The improvement of bandwith, can be done either improving density or rotation speed. Improving seek times can be done either by using more power for faster seek head, or using smaller platters. Or better electronics.
In overall, if you would allow desktop powerconsumption size and weight for your harddrive you would get desktop capacity and performance out of your laptop harddrive. However if you sacrifice some capacity and performance you can cut down both the active and idle power consumption by order of magnitude which is more important than having desktop performance and capacities for most laptop users.
Putting the infrastructure isn't that expensive. Actually you could probably put it in *all* parking lots inside big cities. And recharge time of 2 hours for complete recharge could be done simply during work.
Well with 800miles range if using best possible battery technology. Also with batteries there is nice notion. Howfast fastest battery you know recharges, don't care about size as you can use lots of them and still get exacly same rechargetime. The weakness of recharge is that household electric circuit cannot deliver the charge.
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While it is unfortunate, a game really needs to be designed to minimize the impact of the 0.1% of the assholes that will play it.
No not really, just have scripts to make automatic fix ups, and announce that the economy&ecology while is algorithm based and stable and that you can screw it to the limits, it has realistic fixes that those who manage to hit those limits will not like. It might screw up the balance
In soviet MUD the ecology and economy screws YOU!
But there is problem with export regulations of exporting such high tech equipment to Iran...
Of course this argument falls down with graphics processing. While it is true that today's CPUs could probably process the graphics engine from games 5-7 years old,
Not really. Quake3 and tux racer are few examples which the software based approach isn't cutting it.
And thats with athlon64 3000 with integrated graphics. There is either very bad quality of graphics compared to dedicated card or slideshow.
It's a type of problem that generic CPUs can't keep up with. Physics may be a similar type of problem, one that can be performed far more efficiently than a current CPU can handle. That said, there has to be a large market for such a device to fund the R&D for future revisions or the generic CPU will catch up again.
The special purpose hardware is practicly always faster than more general purpose given same die area and power constraints, the R&D required for beating the generic CPU isn't large. Think about P4 it has 40+ million logic transistors. You can do 32bit adder in less than 1000 transistors. So doing 40 000 parallel additions per cycle running Ghz range could be done on P4 transistor and power budgets and clockspeeds, but doing it in ASIC design instead of custom logic probably makes it run under 500mhz for reduced design costs. Its amazing how inefficient the general purpose computer actually is. The special purpose isn't that effectice since you need to have some book keeping logic, and data paths moving data etc... but there again, CPU needs to do same things in software. And "if then else" done in hardwired transistors is almost order of magnitude more efficient addition we talked about, while on CPU its over order of magnitude slower. Then again there is hint that agea hardware is programmable instead of completely hardwired, so it isn't really asic VS truly general purpose, but something in between.
AGEIA's hardware is implemented in 0.13u process, its TWO process generations behind intel CPUs. Which could mean for it 4x more parallel operations, for given power budget compared to current implementation. We could expect it to get 1 generation behind CPU:s if it gets enough sales.
So yes its clear that if ageia could fund its R&D it is going to beat CPU:s big time in physics calculations. Also its clear that ageias R&D costs are not huge, as its funding isn't that large. If it makes 10$ per ppu and sells 1 million per year it could stay ahead of CPU:s forever. However they make right now probably a lot more than that per PPU and inorder to keep game makers supporting their hardware they would need to be atleast in 10% of the sold PC:s after a while, and at that point they probably make in every year atleast twice as much gross profit to pay their R&D than their entire funding for last 4 years.
The cost of a television show could be as low as a dollar.
Thats something I could be willing to pay, provided it runs on my computer.
Advertisement free Television programs that I can watch anytime I wan't and without owning a TV nor paying monthly fees. With only costs is small fee on per item basis. Now if they would support linux and downloads would be fast enough for me and interface to get it would be convenient enough I'd definitely like this.
Also the article doesn't state that featured films cost EXACLY same as DVD but close to DVD pricing. So it could be couple of bucks cheaper than DVD and I'd probably *NOT* buy it except for very specific reasons like wanting to enjoy a specific movie with guests and I'm too busy for searching the physical DVD.
Still if it doesn't run on x86-64 linux or is limited to US only offer, I'm not able to use this service.
Compare that to a modern microkernel which can do same thing on itanium2 in 36 cycles, with warmed up caches.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that microkernels--long discarded as unacceptable because of their lower performance compared with monolithic kernels--might be making a comeback due to their potentially higher reliability, which many people now regard as more important than performance.
From TFA.
No single person understands everything about how an aircraft carrier works either, but the subsystems on an aircraft carrier are well isolated. A problem with a clogged toilet cannot affect the missile-launching subsystem.
Not quite so, if clogged toiled prevents it's proper use it might cause a service man leak in wrong place and some electronics getting fried. Or simply clogged toiled might simply prevent missile operator using the facility for a while and that can lead missile operator malfunction.
Make a nice story that says something came from the sky and people died in diseases because of it. Make a nice cartoon of it and people burying the cause of the disease and those who died from diseases to the cave. Then mumify most malformed dead for display and after that have millions of peoples bones in the cave after that. I mean after they see the amount of bones in the caves they are probably not going to continue their path of searching what killed them.
The point that something came from the sky might need alteration but basic idea of needing to carry thousands of tons worth of human bones out of cave migh make someone understand what the cartoon was about.
Accidents do happen and things are forgotten.
You can recharge a battery in 1 minute to 80% of its capacity.
http://www.physorg.com/news3539.html
But there is alternative solution to that problem. Other solution is having enough range, stop for 1 hour for every 5 hours of driving. There are plenty of battery technologies capable of recharging in 1hour.
Lets do the calculations again ;-)
Gasoline has energy density of 9.7kWh/l
Many cars get about 4-6l/100km in highway driving.
The cars energy that goes from wheels, is 15% of used energy in fuel...
So we can assume about 1l/100km on electric engine/battery efficiencies.
Thats 9.7Kw/h per 100km of range. Thats far less than most daily commuting around here at least.
Also in Finland the minimum standard for home electricity delivery is 17.5kW
If you could spread the 10Kw/h need across about 10 nighthours. Its 1Kw each night hour for per car.
Entire Finlands car usage could be handled with single 2000MW power station. But just to be safe Finland has already begun building a its 6th nuclear reactor which has 1600MW output.
And the 100km is too big number for Finnish people as it would end up 35Mm/year. When the more typical number is 20Mm/year.
To apply this for americas by simply multiplying with population you would need 70 nuclear reactors to handle 140 million cars.
And we don't care about fastest possible load time, nor maximum amount each car could be loaded if used maximum length. What we really care is maximum daily average use, and the hours that the car recharge is spread. If some individual wants to recharge is car during long car trip quickly, and pays extra for it, it doesn't mean that there is too many cars at outlets at exacly same time. Unless everyone decides to recharge at maximum speed at exacly same time.
When a car pollutes less than half per kilometer, and there is less driving around there is difference.
Also while the britain has its own polluting plants. Well I don't know about britains industry enough to exacly say how they pollute but they probably have european level pollution controls as its big disadvantage for european markets to be viewed as polluter.
Lets make a comparison.
There was American Exchange student who said that they had intolerable air pollution 20km from factory. My sister couldn't believe her explanation so she exclaimed but its pulp factory. Right now I live withing km of pulpfactory and its not a problematic polluter. There is cities build around pulp factories in Finland. The attitudes and pollution controls in america are somewhat different than europeans...
You commie bastards don't try to change the spelling again!!!
Its not cancer its more like. Preventice health care, and curing versus dealing with complications and symptoms. Later is more profitable constant income stream and previous is loss leader. Which one patient prefers and which one for-profit hospital prefers?
The combination of following...
These are mentioned in article but not enough to explain it entirely.
Obesity.
Unhealthy food.
Lack of exercise.
Stress.
These are not mentioned in the article...
Air pollution from cars and power plants.
Chemicals that can cause health problems, dumped to environment getting to people.
Look at the cancer rate its double in US, so there must be something that causes that problem. And its probably the attitude towards environment biting back. When nobody cares if they pollute their neighbours habitat the result is that all get pollution in their environment. And in the end just like wild animals we humans get affected by the pollution we put in our environment, and we all get some health problems because of that.
But which has less healthcare costs per kg of bodyweight!!!!
How long before improved compatibility with more mainstream x86 platform makes apple more of a target for viruses?
The x86 assembler could be used on both windows & mac plaforms so there can be more codereuse. The Windows vs OSX border still works against more viruses for mac but still more you share between two plaforms and closer they become with each other lower the barrier of creating software for both instead of just one platform. And by software I mean all softare both malware and applications.
Actually that problem people are trying to solve. ;)
Its improving batteries, and reducing rotational and air friction as much as possible. Right now getting most weight efficient batteries is large numbers is prohibitely expensive.
But after technology matures to a point where 7+ hours of constant driving at high speed it shouldn't be a problem. Spending 2 hours on stops gives 14 hours of driving then assuming batteries are full at the beginning of every 16hour period and you probably want to stop every 16 hours for complete recharge anyway
No that won't crash its FLOATING POINT memory fetch, addition and multiplication loop! Then we need to unroll the loop enough to hide the floatingpoint unit latency. So that it stays active.
10 I = 10.1
20 K = I
21 K2 =I
22 K3= I
23 K4= I
30 K = K + 2.1
40 K = K * 2.1
50 K2 = K2 + 2.1
60 K2 = K2 * 2.1
70 K3 = K3 + 2.1
80 K3 = K3 * 2.1
90 K4 = K4 + 2.1
100 K4 = K4 * 2.1
50 GOTO 20
There is plenty of trade offs to be made on hard-drives.
Size, weight, power consumption, price, capacity, rotation speed, platter density, and ruggedness.
For mobile harddrives, the number of platterns is verylimited by size, and platter size itself is limited.
So they never get anywhere near the capacity of its desktop equivalent. However, less and smaller platters means also less power consumption so its still another point why its so in mobile computers.
The platter density helps capacity, and bandwith and thats what harddrive manufacturers are trying to improve.
Rotational speed costs more weight, power and in some cases hurts platter density.
The improvement of bandwith, can be done either improving density or rotation speed.
Improving seek times can be done either by using more power for faster seek head, or using smaller platters. Or better electronics.
In overall, if you would allow desktop powerconsumption size and weight for your harddrive you would get desktop capacity and performance out of your laptop harddrive. However if you sacrifice some capacity and performance you can cut down both the active and idle power consumption by order of magnitude which is more important than having desktop performance and capacities for most laptop users.
How someone could claim article that begins with...
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) (also known as 'The Great Satan', or 'Satan-Mart')
Isn't neutral! Thats as neutral view of Wal-Mart as possible!
I wouldn't consider plugging any of the politicians enjoyable.
I wasn't consider buying nintendo game console. But just for its great name I may end up buying it.
en wii meee!!!!!!!!!!
Putting the infrastructure isn't that expensive. Actually you could probably put it in *all* parking lots inside big cities. And recharge time of 2 hours for complete recharge could be done simply during work.
Well with 800miles range if using best possible battery technology.
Also with batteries there is nice notion. Howfast fastest battery you know recharges, don't care about size as you can use lots of them and still get exacly same rechargetime. The weakness of recharge is that household electric circuit cannot deliver the charge.