OK, so the entire process is not open source, but I think it is overall more open than stock CPUs
I think stock CPUs are just as (or more) open, but they operate at a different level. The FPGA itself is usually not specified in such detail as the CPU. For instance, the bitfile format is proprietary and undocumented, as well as the exact properties of the FPGA fabric. You still need to buy the actual FPGAs from the vendor, and there's not a lot of choice between them, and then you need to get the synthesis tools from the same vendor.
With CPUs, you're limited to what the vendor put in the package, but that's usually pretty well documented, so you can generate your own binary files that will run on it, with your own tools. GCC supports many of those embedded CPUs.
The only difference is that FPGAs offer the flexibility to change stuff at a lower level, which can be fun and useful. On the other hand, CPUs are often easier to work with, faster, and offer integrated features that aren't available in the FPGA.
Probably not nearly as much as other useless endeavors, such as playing computer games, updating facebook status, or watching super bowl. And reading slashdot, of course.
Imagine a small island, with a shipwrecked crew, all men. They survive on the island, and build their own small civilization where they use a form of money, let's say some pretty sea shell. Now, they can't get any kids, and they are slowly getting older. So, the men get together, and decide to save their "pension" by putting some sea shells in a big box. Every day, they put one sea shell in the box.
Can you see the problem ? When they are old and weak, the box of sea shells is worthless. Money is useful as a way to keep track of obligations between people and businesses. A good way is to assume money is nothing more than a standardized "IOU". I could buy a loaf of bread, for instance, and give the baker some money/IOU in return. The money means that, at some later point, the baker can come to me, give me back the money/IOU, and in return I'll paint his house. By standardizing money instead of using personal IOUs, we can easily trade them, so that's an advantage.
What happens if the baker doesn't come back to me, but decides to save the money in his mattress? 30 years later, the baker is retired, and his house needs painting, so he comes to me with the money, and asks me to paint his house. Too bad. I'm also retired.
He could try taking the money, and asking some young painter, but what value does this money have ? The young painter won't be able to return the money to the retired baker for a loaf of bread anymore. The whole concept that money is an IOU breaks down when save it for a long period of time, and you can no longer fulfill your part of the transaction.
In the end, the working generation needs to take care of the retired generation by doing real work. If the working generation is smaller, and the retired generation is bigger, the working generation needs to work harder and/or the retired generation needs to cut back in what they get. This is the basic principle, and it won't change a bit by the amount of money there is stored in a box. The more money the retirees have saved, the higher the wages of the workers will become.
That's about one per billion years, and the solar system now has fewer big rocks wandering around. Also, humans have a better chance of surviving an impact than dinosaurs, at least some humans. We can build shelters, for instance, and keep food in storage for a long time. We're also much smaller, so we don't need so much food, and we're much more adaptable and creative.
And if you don't trust people with our nuclear/biological weaponry, why would you trust them to keep a colony running on another planet ? They'll fuck that up too.
The foundation of this prosperity was planted by their hard-working ancestors
More likely, the foundation of this prosperity was a new and plentiful source of energy, oil. The prosperity of human civilization has always been very closely tied to the availability of energy, and for a while oil has been extremely cheap, and basically unlimited.
Now, as the era of (cheap) oil is over, the prosperity will go back to the norm, except that we now have a lot more expectations and a lot more people to feed.
Not quite. Oil production, for instance, has been basically flat for years, while the prices are still around record high levels. Most oil fields in the world are past their peak, and are facing declining production, some quite rapidly.
In the mean time, demand from Asia is rising rapidly, as well as internal consumption from OPEC countries. The monetary problems the western world is facing are just a symptom.
Considering Earth's history, we ought to be taking Extinction Level Events more seriously. This ought to be humanity's main priority
No way. Complete human extinction events are so incredibly unlikely that we should not be spending insane amounts of resources to prevent that.
Also, even if we tried, the effort would be wasted anyway. Suppose this extinction event would happen 100,000 years from now. What is the chance that anything we build or do right now will survive the next 100,000 years ? It's practically zero.
It's also a lot easier to get a soil sample back from Mars. If you find any kind of life form with remote instruments, the next step will be to bring some back to Earth for proper examination.
Of course, analog film also uses 3 different pigments, that don't perfectly match the colors of your cones, so it can't be 100% accurate either. At least with digital, it's much easier to improve the gamut, since you don't need messy chemicals, just a bunch of color filters.
What kind of insider information would be relevant to the shape of the device ? Everything is visible for everyone.
The problem is that the ability to patent a design is just stupid. Patents should be reserved for things that are difficult to reverse engineer, not for things that are obvious.
One things for sure, if we don't move beyond Earth soon we are going to have serious problems with feeding, and houseing our ever growing population.
Space travel isn't going to solve that. 3rd world mothers can pop out babies out faster than you can put them in rockets, and shoot them across the galaxy.
And you can not get an accurate estimate of an oil field without actually drilling into and extracting oil from that field. So we have very little idea of how much oil is actually there in the US.
Most likely, it isn't a whole lot, and whatever there is will be hard to exploit, so production rates will be low.
Better education for instance. As an individual it is important to keep investing in improving yourself.
Of course, none of these things are permanent. It's a constant race, and you can't get out. It's also easier to catch up than it is to stay ahead. It is important to realize that attempts to stop the process by artificial means such as anti-outsourcing legislation or trade barriers aren't going to help if you aren't competitive enough.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think you looked at the graph.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/56197000/gif/_56197115_climate_change_624gr.gif
I think stock CPUs are just as (or more) open, but they operate at a different level. The FPGA itself is usually not specified in such detail as the CPU. For instance, the bitfile format is proprietary and undocumented, as well as the exact properties of the FPGA fabric. You still need to buy the actual FPGAs from the vendor, and there's not a lot of choice between them, and then you need to get the synthesis tools from the same vendor.
With CPUs, you're limited to what the vendor put in the package, but that's usually pretty well documented, so you can generate your own binary files that will run on it, with your own tools. GCC supports many of those embedded CPUs.
The only difference is that FPGAs offer the flexibility to change stuff at a lower level, which can be fun and useful. On the other hand, CPUs are often easier to work with, faster, and offer integrated features that aren't available in the FPGA.
Probably not nearly as much as other useless endeavors, such as playing computer games, updating facebook status, or watching super bowl. And reading slashdot, of course.
Imagine a small island, with a shipwrecked crew, all men. They survive on the island, and build their own small civilization where they use a form of money, let's say some pretty sea shell. Now, they can't get any kids, and they are slowly getting older. So, the men get together, and decide to save their "pension" by putting some sea shells in a big box. Every day, they put one sea shell in the box.
Can you see the problem ? When they are old and weak, the box of sea shells is worthless. Money is useful as a way to keep track of obligations between people and businesses. A good way is to assume money is nothing more than a standardized "IOU". I could buy a loaf of bread, for instance, and give the baker some money/IOU in return. The money means that, at some later point, the baker can come to me, give me back the money/IOU, and in return I'll paint his house. By standardizing money instead of using personal IOUs, we can easily trade them, so that's an advantage.
What happens if the baker doesn't come back to me, but decides to save the money in his mattress? 30 years later, the baker is retired, and his house needs painting, so he comes to me with the money, and asks me to paint his house. Too bad. I'm also retired.
He could try taking the money, and asking some young painter, but what value does this money have ? The young painter won't be able to return the money to the retired baker for a loaf of bread anymore. The whole concept that money is an IOU breaks down when save it for a long period of time, and you can no longer fulfill your part of the transaction.
In the end, the working generation needs to take care of the retired generation by doing real work. If the working generation is smaller, and the retired generation is bigger, the working generation needs to work harder and/or the retired generation needs to cut back in what they get. This is the basic principle, and it won't change a bit by the amount of money there is stored in a box. The more money the retirees have saved, the higher the wages of the workers will become.
That's about one per billion years, and the solar system now has fewer big rocks wandering around. Also, humans have a better chance of surviving an impact than dinosaurs, at least some humans. We can build shelters, for instance, and keep food in storage for a long time. We're also much smaller, so we don't need so much food, and we're much more adaptable and creative.
And if you don't trust people with our nuclear/biological weaponry, why would you trust them to keep a colony running on another planet ? They'll fuck that up too.
More likely, the foundation of this prosperity was a new and plentiful source of energy, oil. The prosperity of human civilization has always been very closely tied to the availability of energy, and for a while oil has been extremely cheap, and basically unlimited.
Now, as the era of (cheap) oil is over, the prosperity will go back to the norm, except that we now have a lot more expectations and a lot more people to feed.
At least we're not afraid of paragraphs.
Not quite. Oil production, for instance, has been basically flat for years, while the prices are still around record high levels. Most oil fields in the world are past their peak, and are facing declining production, some quite rapidly.
In the mean time, demand from Asia is rising rapidly, as well as internal consumption from OPEC countries. The monetary problems the western world is facing are just a symptom.
Doesn't work. The whole idea that we can all store money somewhere, and use it decades later is fundamentally flawed.
There are too many people now, and not enough resources.
No way. Complete human extinction events are so incredibly unlikely that we should not be spending insane amounts of resources to prevent that.
Also, even if we tried, the effort would be wasted anyway. Suppose this extinction event would happen 100,000 years from now. What is the chance that anything we build or do right now will survive the next 100,000 years ? It's practically zero.
A ride home on a microscope ? I'd like to see you do that.
It's also a lot easier to get a soil sample back from Mars. If you find any kind of life form with remote instruments, the next step will be to bring some back to Earth for proper examination.
Not nearly as easy as terraforming the Sahara desert, though, so why don't we start there ?
Of course, analog film also uses 3 different pigments, that don't perfectly match the colors of your cones, so it can't be 100% accurate either. At least with digital, it's much easier to improve the gamut, since you don't need messy chemicals, just a bunch of color filters.
Digital will last forever if archived correctly. The problem is that few people care enough to do that, either for digital or analog.
The good part is that Lucas can always shoot the movies again, and make some improvements while he's doing it.
What kind of insider information would be relevant to the shape of the device ? Everything is visible for everyone.
The problem is that the ability to patent a design is just stupid. Patents should be reserved for things that are difficult to reverse engineer, not for things that are obvious.
Space travel isn't going to solve that. 3rd world mothers can pop out babies out faster than you can put them in rockets, and shoot them across the galaxy.
We don't. Some people do, but their missions are privately funded.
No, Earth is absurdly more hospitable.
No, even if you wanted to pursue the fantasies of interstellar travel, doing it on Earth is much preferred.
It has always been for nothing. Get over it.
Most likely, it isn't a whole lot, and whatever there is will be hard to exploit, so production rates will be low.
Better education for instance. As an individual it is important to keep investing in improving yourself.
Of course, none of these things are permanent. It's a constant race, and you can't get out. It's also easier to catch up than it is to stay ahead. It is important to realize that attempts to stop the process by artificial means such as anti-outsourcing legislation or trade barriers aren't going to help if you aren't competitive enough.
In that case, you'll have to provide more value in return for the higher price you are asking.
If you can't do that, you'll lose. It's as simple as that.
Not off-shoring is also a self-destructive strategy. It's just a matter of time before foreign companies can compete on complete products.
In the end, the only way to survive is to remain competitive with foreign workers.