Yeah and when life was the most abundant on earth, it was between 4-7C warmer and the CO2 was in the 20 times as much as today.
Agreed, life will adapt. Even we can probably adjust to hotter climates in a few hundred thousand years if the cull rate is high enough (but of course not too high.) Of course, there's a limit to how hot mammals can tolerate and still produce viable sperm but evolution has done wonders in the past.
Scientific epistemology doesn't, at root, deal with "certainty." It doesn't deal with capital-T "Truth" either.
It does deal with "how confident are we that ______ can be used as a reliable model of reality?" On which point we have Bayes' Theorem and various less-than-precise fuzzy analogues such as the rubric we call "the scientific method."
So for those philosophers who worry about some sort of Ultimate Certainty Regarding Truth, I sometimes play the game but am not, in the end, worrying about whether it is Really True that my hands are typing on black keys with white lettering right now -- which is about the level you have to go to before "witch doctor truth" gets competitive with "quantum physics truth" for my attention.
One thing not mentioned in the article or summary is whether or not this technology reduces standby power consumption in DRAM.
POD by itself doesn't reduce power consumption in standby, since both POD and SSTL turn off the bus drivers then. The older POD technologies from the GDDR families use Thevenin termination, though, so the terminators draw a lot of unnecessary current when they're enabled (as distinct from the result with a dedicated termination supply.)
If you really want to know how this all works, JEDEC has the DDR4 standard available for free download. Follow the "free standards" link.
In a classical open-drain connection, the active device pulls down and the bus termination pulls up. For a pure transmission line, this works just fine -- the current wave from the turn-off of the driver is effectively identical to the current wave from the turn on. In practice, open-drain uses more static current than a push-pull driver against a center termination and since the line isn't a pure transmission line (lumped capacitances, stubs) the rising edge is slower than the falling edge.
POD addresses this by actively pulling up at the beginning of a rising edge, then releasing the pullup to avoid a bus contention later. This reduces the termination current (at some cost in impedance mismatch, but it's already a sloppy line) and improved switching symmetry.
I'll be intrested when they have something like a DIMM form factor that is actually better than existing memory.
I'll be happy enough when it's up to competing with rotating memory, which is a lot more likely.
Serial memory is serial memory, and promising to replace Random Access Memory in latency-critical
applications like main memory is just nonsense. Either the people putting out these claims are stupid or they
think we are.
Few things could more hearten those who worry about the coming Chinese domination of the world than the news that they are taking their cue from the French obsession with the purity of their language (presumably Mandarin and not any of the others, I suspect.)
Give me a break. Microsoft hasn't been dependent on first-mover advantage since the 80s.
If they don't get traction with 7, they can do 8. Or buy Nokia or RIM out of couch-cushion change. Or several dozen other ways to buy into the market that I haven't thought of but I'm sure someone in Redmond has, singly or in combination.
This is America, damnit! We set the standards. None of this foreign stuff for us like GSM, the metric system, or any of that other crap that will never make it in the market.
And for the next twenty years, we'll be seeing this study cited as fact in Government position papers, other MPAA/RIAA/BSA "studies," Congressional testimony, treaty discussions, etc.
And of course we know that in the unlikely event that Apple survives the irresistible force that is WP7, Microsoft will acknowledge that the rumors of the iPhone's death might have been somewhat exaggerated.
Snowfall above 3000 meters in greenland is increasing as predicted by climate models. This has nothing to do with the gulf stream (which is not significantly slowing down), it's due to increased water vapour which in turn is due to a positive feedback from global warming. Overall the extra snowfall at high altitudes does not make up for the extra loss at low altitudes, the extra snowfall may even speed up the loss of glaciers by making them top heavy.
And: the increased precipitation, snow and rain, is further diluting the surface salinity in the North Atlantic. When it gets low enough, the Gulf Stream stops its current pattern of flowing north evaporating as it goes until it's salty enough to dive to the bottom and return deep. Much change occurs worldwide, but most immediately Europe gets colder and dryer.
That's going to be very hard to ignore, and IMHO will most likely be the turning point in public and policy-making consciousness of climate change. The question is, when?
Looks like I can reset my clock on the anticipated shutdown of the Atlantic Conveyor.
Less fresh water in the North Atlantic means the thermohaline convection effect will be keeping Europe warm and wet for a while longer. In the short term, that's good. In another sense, though, I suspect it's not so good: it's going to take something dramatic to move climate change out of the "we'll worry about that when we don't have anything more important" category.
just about every administration since Grover Cleveland. A while ago I looked up how many states of emergency were currently active and ISTR some had been ongoing since before the Korean War.
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Yeah and when life was the most abundant on earth, it was between 4-7C warmer and the CO2 was in the 20 times as much as today.
Agreed, life will adapt. Even we can probably adjust to hotter climates in a few hundred thousand years if the cull rate is high enough (but of course not too high.) Of course, there's a limit to how hot mammals can tolerate and still produce viable sperm but evolution has done wonders in the past.
It does deal with "how confident are we that ______ can be used as a reliable model of reality?" On which point we have Bayes' Theorem and various less-than-precise fuzzy analogues such as the rubric we call "the scientific method."
So for those philosophers who worry about some sort of Ultimate Certainty Regarding Truth, I sometimes play the game but am not, in the end, worrying about whether it is Really True that my hands are typing on black keys with white lettering right now -- which is about the level you have to go to before "witch doctor truth" gets competitive with "quantum physics truth" for my attention.
Guns are fine, so long as the control laws we actually have are enforced and people are educated about gun safety.
In Arizona, it means hitting what you aim at. Lots of bumper stickers around here say so.
POD by itself doesn't reduce power consumption in standby, since both POD and SSTL turn off the bus drivers then. The older POD technologies from the GDDR families use Thevenin termination, though, so the terminators draw a lot of unnecessary current when they're enabled (as distinct from the result with a dedicated termination supply.)
If you really want to know how this all works, JEDEC has the DDR4 standard available for free download. Follow the "free standards" link.
POD addresses this by actively pulling up at the beginning of a rising edge, then releasing the pullup to avoid a bus contention later. This reduces the termination current (at some cost in impedance mismatch, but it's already a sloppy line) and improved switching symmetry.
I'll be happy enough when it's up to competing with rotating memory, which is a lot more likely.
Serial memory is serial memory, and promising to replace Random Access Memory in latency-critical applications like main memory is just nonsense. Either the people putting out these claims are stupid or they think we are.
Put another way, it's all argumentum ad hominem rather than any kind of analysis of the material differences.
Few things could more hearten those who worry about the coming Chinese domination of the world than the news that they are taking their cue from the French obsession with the purity of their language (presumably Mandarin and not any of the others, I suspect.)
Is exim supposed to be difficult? Damn. Maybe I'm better than I thought (unlikely) or you're lamer than you think (ref. Dunning-Kruger Effect.)
Whichever.
Since I'm doubtful that humans will go extrasolar as individuals, there wouldn't be any pre-existing biosphere to deal with.
Always assuming, of course, that intelligence is really the advantage that we like to believe. Current events lend some doubt to that.
If they don't get traction with 7, they can do 8. Or buy Nokia or RIM out of couch-cushion change. Or several dozen other ways to buy into the market that I haven't thought of but I'm sure someone in Redmond has, singly or in combination.
Yes, it's wrong. Those powers should only be used to kidnap American citizens and ship them off to be tortured and killed in secret.
Besides, why not just have Cyber Command hack their domain registration accounts? Much simpler.
This is America, damnit! We set the standards. None of this foreign stuff for us like GSM, the metric system, or any of that other crap that will never make it in the market.
There really is a "stupid gene."
And for the next twenty years, we'll be seeing this study cited as fact in Government position papers, other MPAA/RIAA/BSA "studies," Congressional testimony, treaty discussions, etc.
Nothing new here. First they sue to block competition, and if the law doesn't support them they buy one that does.
At least until the telco and cable monopoliesservices can buyget to enough legislators to block them.
Just what the world needs: a security automaton which drops dead if you get one letter wrong.
Oh, for Cthulu's sake! Of course it generates heat. It's a freaking irreversible chemical reaction happening at room temperature.
Just because it doesn't generate as much heat as a magnesium flare doesn't mean it doesn't generate any heat. Geniuses.
And of course we know that in the unlikely event that Apple survives the irresistible force that is WP7, Microsoft will acknowledge that the rumors of the iPhone's death might have been somewhat exaggerated.
And: the increased precipitation, snow and rain, is further diluting the surface salinity in the North Atlantic. When it gets low enough, the Gulf Stream stops its current pattern of flowing north evaporating as it goes until it's salty enough to dive to the bottom and return deep. Much change occurs worldwide, but most immediately Europe gets colder and dryer.
That's going to be very hard to ignore, and IMHO will most likely be the turning point in public and policy-making consciousness of climate change. The question is, when?
Less fresh water in the North Atlantic means the thermohaline convection effect will be keeping Europe warm and wet for a while longer. In the short term, that's good. In another sense, though, I suspect it's not so good: it's going to take something dramatic to move climate change out of the "we'll worry about that when we don't have anything more important" category.
just about every administration since Grover Cleveland. A while ago I looked up how many states of emergency were currently active and ISTR some had been ongoing since before the Korean War.
It might be the only thing that can stop a DDOS attack!
Get serious. How often does that happen?