The problem with you question is that it is retarded to begin with. The consumer does not need a computer at all to begin with, it's just convenient to have one.
Yes, if you want to go all Reducto ad Absurdum, there is no point answering the question.
In the real world, of course, there is a whole spectrum of grey between what you need to survive, and what you might dream about having.
Whatever the use case, uncompressed video would be the obvious candidate since the bitrate is high enough to push the boundaries of what's currently available and is likely too high to do real-time compression on anything resembling consumer hardware.
I can guarantee you compression is a more viable solution than disk bandwidth. Particularly with the powerful GPUs systems come with these days.
I can't see many, if any, home users dealing with uncompressed video. The space requirements, even before the performance requirements, are prohibitive.
Obviously you think that consumers only deal with small datasets.
Yep.
Perhaps you are unaware that people play video games, and that the latest video games are many gigabytes (GTA 4 is 14GB), that even single maps sometimes use many gigabytes of data?
Games were about the only likely candidate I could think of as well, but I'm still skeptical there's enough data being loaded from disk at any one time for bandwidth to be a genuinely limiting factor.
I'd be very interested to see some actual numbers. How much data is being loaded at a time ? How often ? Is it exceeding 250+MB/sec reads (or writes) for extended periods of time (2-3+ seconds)?
Not when the premise is along the lines of "thank god, this is just what I've been waiting for".
You may as well ask the purpose of facebook. What do people really *need* it for?
No, not at all. If Facebook disappeared in a puff of smoke, millions of people using would notice. If the 6Gbs SATA connection in the typical desktop PC was replaced by a 100MB/sec ATA connection, hardly anyone would notice.
You seem to be having trouble separating need and desire.
No, I'm pretty sure I've got a good handle on "need". Which is why I say there's bugger all difference between an SSD at 100MB/sec and 600MB/sec for the typical consumer PC.
You are arguing against speeding up of computers with modern technology.
No, I'm questioning the suggestion that there is a genuine need for a disk interface faster than 6Gb SATA in the consumer PC space.
I didn't say anything about there not being a need anywhere.
Just because *you personally* do not have any need for speed doesn't mean other people don't or shouldn't have a desire for speedy computers.
Yet the question remains. Just what are people likely to be doing on consumer PCs that is bandwidth limited ?
I'll take a saturated bus at 6Gb/sec (600MB/sec (with overhead)) over ATA-6 (100MB/sec) any day.
So would I, but that scenario isn't really relevant to this discussion. A sustained 600MB/sec (or even half that) is a phenomenal amount of data for a consumer PC (or, indeed, the vast majority of computers) to be reading or writing to permanent storage.
I might need some clarification, in the form of a scenario.
Do you think it's a valid concept ? Ie: can it be used as a defense ?
For the record, I don't think drugs should be illegal (you should have the right to do whatever you want with your life, it only becomes a problem when you put other people in danger...driving under the influence of drugs should be illegal because of the risks to others), but the above scenario was the best I could come up with.
Now that's rather interesting. How do you reconcile making DUI illegal with your strong belief that only actions which actually cause harm should be illegal ?
Now its mid-2011, and SSD's are effectively saturating SATA 3.0 with sustained 500+MB/sec on both reads and writes, while most consumers still have only SATA 2.0 support.
Outside of benchmarking, what are consumers doing with 500+ MB/sec of sustained transfers from a single drive ? That's a phenomenal amount of of data for a single-user PC.
I am fully in favor of prosecuting only the hired killer, and not the guy who hired him. I know that's not how it works, but I believe it should be. If you couldn't find someone to do the crime, your wife wouldn't be harmed. Unless you did the deed yourself, in which case you're performing the harmful action.
The "lite" thunderbolt chip on the Airs has zero practical consequences: The limitation on external screens ultimately comes from the on-CPU Intel HD Graphics which only support one DisplayPort and a maximum of two displays (including the built-in screen). The 13" MB Pro has the same limitation for the same reason.
Given Intel integrated GPUs in laptops were capable of driving a couple of 27" LCDs over displayport 2-3 years ago, I find that difficult to believe.
The latest Intel graphics cards aren't that bad. They're not great, but I'd imagine that they'd stack up quite well against something that's crippled by the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. Modern GPUs use 16x PCIe cards. Even with PCIe 1, this is 3 times the bandwidth that this device can use. With PCIe 3, it's 12 times as much. A slightly weaker GPU on a fast interface is going to beat a fast one that's spending 90% of its time waiting for data over the bus.
The vast majority of stuff you might want a GPU to do, is not bandwidth-limited. Numerous tech sites have shown that in most cases, the difference in performance between a GPU on a x16 PCIe bus and a x4 PCIe bus is nothing, and even a x1 PCIe bus doesn't suffer much.
I understand your general reaction, because if my cousins are representative at all of Australian culture, it's far more left-leaning than even parts of Europe--hence your response and agreement with the OP to whom I was replying.
Well, I don't know your cousins, but there's been a significant shift to the right in Australian politics over the last decade or so, and there's no way in hell it's more to the left than anywhere in Europe (with the possible exception of the UK, which has suffered the same right-wing shift that all the Anglo countries have). Ask your cousins who they vote for - if it's anyone else except the Australian Greens, they're not voting left-wing.
The real problem in Australia is that there's no longer a centrist or centre-left party since the Australian Democrats dissolved. The traditional centre-left party, Labor, has (stupidly, because it did not, and never would have, worked) shifted to centre-right in an attempt to win the voters of the right-wing Liberal party. The centre-right Liberal party has moved further right and the only remaining major party is the Greens, who are firmly on the left, tending to far-left (depending on the policy).
In short, it does explain why you cannot see Democrats as the political left in the US: Your own cultural biases are likely such that everyone is to the right of your persuasion. There's nothing wrong with that, except for the implicit declaration that your belief is concrete fact without regard to the opinions and, essentially, the culture of others.
Except this isn't really true. Most of Europe has more left-wing politics than Australia, and the Australian Greens are more left-wing than I'm comfortable with.
I can't see any party in America that's genuinely pushing left-wing politics: gay marriage, worker's rights, heavy market regulation, a liveable minimum wage, liveable welfare, centrally funded universal healthcare, centrally funded education (k-12 *and* University), environmental sustainability, etc, etc. The Democrats sure as hell aren't, and even if they were the last few years have shown they'd fold like tissue paper at the slightest pressure from the Republicans.
This is why I can't do anything except just laugh when I read about Obama being "radical left" or "socialist". He's not even *close* to being on the far left of the political spectrum.
I suspect you're European; not that it matters, but it's important insofar as many Slashdotters who participate in discussions related to US politics who espouse similar beliefs to yours are often unaware of their own bias, which has helpfully been created by their respective domestic media.
I am not the person you responded to, but I will echo their sentiment. I'm Australian, but I spent a couple of years living in the US (and worked for a US company for ~6 years, so dealt with a lot of Americans).
There is no left-wing political force in America. There is the right (Democrats), the far right (Republicans) and the loony right (Tea Party). In no country except America would the Democrats be considered left-wing. This has been graphically demonstrated by Obama's kowtowing to the right's demands throughout his presidency.
Personally if I were what passes for left-wing in the US, I'd be encouraging Michelle Bachmann to run for President and tell everyone to votefor her. The resultant social catastrophe for the 95% of Americans who aren't earning a couple of hundred grand plus per year might just convince them where their best interests lie.
It may be "alright" when you buy it, but after a few years it won't be. Then you get the wonderful repair costs, where it's not uncommon to end up paying more for repairs over a few years than you paid for the initial car.
Rubbish. A second hand car in good condition, properly maintained, will last years and not require significant repairs.
Even if it doesn't, you'll come out no worse of swapping it for a similarly aged vehicle every few years. A ~$6k car every two years gives you probably 12 years worth of $6k cars, to the one car your $30k loan would buy.
Borrowing money at a low interest rate (with inflation factored in, it's a NEGATIVE real-interest rate, meaning that they're LOSING money by you borrowing) to get a higher quality vehicle that will last for a long time and has a warranty to cover repairs is perfectly fine as long as you're not a moron and don't borrow too much (though most people who would borrow too much have also destroyed their credit and cannot qualify for those low interest rates).
Most people don't have access to interest rates that low, not to mention the value of the car halving 2-3 years down the track.
Some people appreciate having something with up to date features, a warranty to avoid unexpected costs and hassles, better fuel economy and performance, and significantly higher resale value when they go to buy their next car.
Indeed, which is why I buy cars 1-2 years old to avoid that first massive depreciation hit while still deriving all the benefits. But that's not really relevant to the point, which is that if you only earn $30k a year, a $30k car loan is one of the dumbest things you could do with your money.
Apparently though you're of the "car is a toaster" mentality where as long as it physically runs, you view them all as "equal" and thus can't see paying more than the absolute minimum for one.
Not in the slightest. Which is why I own a couple of cars and a couple of motorcycles.
I'm curious though, what do you spend your money on? People like you generally have some non-essential hobby or interest that they spend money on and think that you spending your money on X unnecessary thing is OK because you like it, but if someone else spends money on Y unnecessary thing, well that's just foolish.
It's got nothing to do with whether or not something is "unnecessary", it's basic financial intelligence. A $30k loan for a (very quickly) depreciating asset on a $30k income, is irresponsible.
In North America, Australia and Europe, population is already self-correcting, as our governments keep axing welfware and childcare entitlements.
What ? In Australia, at least, the Government has been paying people cold, hard cash for the better part of a decade to have babies. That's not even counting all the (often non-means-tested) handouts and taxation benefits children deliver.
So, Dr., do you follow your own advice and drive around a 10+ year old rust bucket?
Firstly, you can buy a workable car in the US for six grand (or at least you could a year ago when I left, because that's what I sold mine for). Sure, it'll probably be ~10 years old, but it needn't have anything mechanically wrong with it.
Secondly, my annual income is substantially more than $30k. However, the car I own is worth roughly the same in proportionate terms (ie: about 1/5th of it) and, yes, I bought it with cash.
Borrowing money to buy a depreciating asset like a car is usually a bad idea (unless you're in a position to be able to tax-deduct the borrowing costs). Borrowing _lots_ of money to buy a car is just flat-out stupid.
Seriously, if you make $30,000/year, you may be able to buy a $30,000 car.
You *may* be able to do that, but you *should* be buying a $6,000 car.
With cash.
There's one thing wrong in the assumption in TFA. Earth is not a closed system. Heat is continuously vented to space and in 300 years we may create technology to dump excess heat elsewhere (i.e. laser propulsion/beamed power using thermopiles and/or steam turbines as an energy source). The poles serve this purpose right now, especially Antarctica.
Actually he explicitly accounted for this. Indeed, it was one of the main points.
They should make ISPs advertise minimum speeds, and not 'up to' speeds. So if you buy a 5mbit plan, you will definately get 5mbit at all times, if not more.
What if the limiting factor is something outside of the ISP's control ? Like, say, distance from the exchange or quality of internal wiring for ADSL ?
Depends on where you are. NYC and its suburbs can be damn expensive places to live. $100k for a family is definitely not near the upper end of middle class in some places.
There are very few places in the US where that is true. The highest median income in NY is $66k. Even in those localities, a household income of $100k would still put you solidly into "middle class".
$100k in the US is a pretty good income, and if you can't live comfortably off it, you're either very unlucky (eg: racked up some huge medical debt), or doing something seriously wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, if you want to go all Reducto ad Absurdum, there is no point answering the question.
In the real world, of course, there is a whole spectrum of grey between what you need to survive, and what you might dream about having.
I can guarantee you compression is a more viable solution than disk bandwidth. Particularly with the powerful GPUs systems come with these days.
I can't see many, if any, home users dealing with uncompressed video. The space requirements, even before the performance requirements, are prohibitive.
Yep.
Games were about the only likely candidate I could think of as well, but I'm still skeptical there's enough data being loaded from disk at any one time for bandwidth to be a genuinely limiting factor.
I'd be very interested to see some actual numbers. How much data is being loaded at a time ? How often ? Is it exceeding 250+MB/sec reads (or writes) for extended periods of time (2-3+ seconds)?
Unlikely. Swapping tends to be short bursts of random reads and writes.
Not when the premise is along the lines of "thank god, this is just what I've been waiting for".
No, not at all. If Facebook disappeared in a puff of smoke, millions of people using would notice. If the 6Gbs SATA connection in the typical desktop PC was replaced by a 100MB/sec ATA connection, hardly anyone would notice.
No, I'm pretty sure I've got a good handle on "need". Which is why I say there's bugger all difference between an SSD at 100MB/sec and 600MB/sec for the typical consumer PC.
No, I'm questioning the suggestion that there is a genuine need for a disk interface faster than 6Gb SATA in the consumer PC space.
I didn't say anything about there not being a need anywhere.
Yet the question remains. Just what are people likely to be doing on consumer PCs that is bandwidth limited ?
So would I, but that scenario isn't really relevant to this discussion. A sustained 600MB/sec (or even half that) is a phenomenal amount of data for a consumer PC (or, indeed, the vast majority of computers) to be reading or writing to permanent storage.
Nope.
Which means nothing if you never need more than 100MB/sec of bandwidth.
What do you think you're doing on an ordinary PC that's likely to be bandwidth limited ?
I already know, but that's got nothing to do with bandwidth, it's all latency.
An ordinary PC with an SSD on 6Gb SATA would be indistinguishable from an ordinary PC with an identical SSD on 100MB ATA (if such a thing existed).
Do you think it's a valid concept ? Ie: can it be used as a defense ?
Now that's rather interesting. How do you reconcile making DUI illegal with your strong belief that only actions which actually cause harm should be illegal ?
Outside of benchmarking, what are consumers doing with 500+ MB/sec of sustained transfers from a single drive ? That's a phenomenal amount of of data for a single-user PC.
How do you feel about entrapment ?
Heck, many of them struggle with the difference between "accused" and "arrested"...
Given Intel integrated GPUs in laptops were capable of driving a couple of 27" LCDs over displayport 2-3 years ago, I find that difficult to believe.
The vast majority of stuff you might want a GPU to do, is not bandwidth-limited. Numerous tech sites have shown that in most cases, the difference in performance between a GPU on a x16 PCIe bus and a x4 PCIe bus is nothing, and even a x1 PCIe bus doesn't suffer much.
Thunderbolt is a PCIe bus on a cable. USB isn't even playing the same game, let alone in the same league.
Well, I don't know your cousins, but there's been a significant shift to the right in Australian politics over the last decade or so, and there's no way in hell it's more to the left than anywhere in Europe (with the possible exception of the UK, which has suffered the same right-wing shift that all the Anglo countries have). Ask your cousins who they vote for - if it's anyone else except the Australian Greens, they're not voting left-wing.
The real problem in Australia is that there's no longer a centrist or centre-left party since the Australian Democrats dissolved. The traditional centre-left party, Labor, has (stupidly, because it did not, and never would have, worked) shifted to centre-right in an attempt to win the voters of the right-wing Liberal party. The centre-right Liberal party has moved further right and the only remaining major party is the Greens, who are firmly on the left, tending to far-left (depending on the policy).
Except this isn't really true. Most of Europe has more left-wing politics than Australia, and the Australian Greens are more left-wing than I'm comfortable with.
I can't see any party in America that's genuinely pushing left-wing politics: gay marriage, worker's rights, heavy market regulation, a liveable minimum wage, liveable welfare, centrally funded universal healthcare, centrally funded education (k-12 *and* University), environmental sustainability, etc, etc. The Democrats sure as hell aren't, and even if they were the last few years have shown they'd fold like tissue paper at the slightest pressure from the Republicans.
This is why I can't do anything except just laugh when I read about Obama being "radical left" or "socialist". He's not even *close* to being on the far left of the political spectrum.
Y'all ? :)
I am not the person you responded to, but I will echo their sentiment. I'm Australian, but I spent a couple of years living in the US (and worked for a US company for ~6 years, so dealt with a lot of Americans).
There is no left-wing political force in America. There is the right (Democrats), the far right (Republicans) and the loony right (Tea Party). In no country except America would the Democrats be considered left-wing. This has been graphically demonstrated by Obama's kowtowing to the right's demands throughout his presidency.
Personally if I were what passes for left-wing in the US, I'd be encouraging Michelle Bachmann to run for President and tell everyone to votefor her. The resultant social catastrophe for the 95% of Americans who aren't earning a couple of hundred grand plus per year might just convince them where their best interests lie.
Rubbish. A second hand car in good condition, properly maintained, will last years and not require significant repairs.
Even if it doesn't, you'll come out no worse of swapping it for a similarly aged vehicle every few years. A ~$6k car every two years gives you probably 12 years worth of $6k cars, to the one car your $30k loan would buy.
Most people don't have access to interest rates that low, not to mention the value of the car halving 2-3 years down the track.
Indeed, which is why I buy cars 1-2 years old to avoid that first massive depreciation hit while still deriving all the benefits. But that's not really relevant to the point, which is that if you only earn $30k a year, a $30k car loan is one of the dumbest things you could do with your money.
Not in the slightest. Which is why I own a couple of cars and a couple of motorcycles.
It's got nothing to do with whether or not something is "unnecessary", it's basic financial intelligence. A $30k loan for a (very quickly) depreciating asset on a $30k income, is irresponsible.
What ? In Australia, at least, the Government has been paying people cold, hard cash for the better part of a decade to have babies. That's not even counting all the (often non-means-tested) handouts and taxation benefits children deliver.
Firstly, you can buy a workable car in the US for six grand (or at least you could a year ago when I left, because that's what I sold mine for). Sure, it'll probably be ~10 years old, but it needn't have anything mechanically wrong with it.
Secondly, my annual income is substantially more than $30k. However, the car I own is worth roughly the same in proportionate terms (ie: about 1/5th of it) and, yes, I bought it with cash.
Borrowing money to buy a depreciating asset like a car is usually a bad idea (unless you're in a position to be able to tax-deduct the borrowing costs). Borrowing _lots_ of money to buy a car is just flat-out stupid.
You *may* be able to do that, but you *should* be buying a $6,000 car.
With cash.
Actually he explicitly accounted for this. Indeed, it was one of the main points.
Indeed. As are fuel consumption figures for cars with the throttle anything less than wide open.
What if the limiting factor is something outside of the ISP's control ? Like, say, distance from the exchange or quality of internal wiring for ADSL ?
There are very few places in the US where that is true. The highest median income in NY is $66k. Even in those localities, a household income of $100k would still put you solidly into "middle class".
$100k in the US is a pretty good income, and if you can't live comfortably off it, you're either very unlucky (eg: racked up some huge medical debt), or doing something seriously wrong.