Don't compare Chernobyl to a modern nuclear facility. Chernobyl was an ancient piece of crap designed with electronic safeguards subject to failure, rather than physical safeguards that will only fail if the laws of physics were to suddenly change. It is a fairly simple engineering problem to make a nuclear reactor safe. Here are a couple ways I have heard of.
The catastrophic failure mode of a nuclear reactor is a meltdown. Which is when the reactor gets so hot everything melts together into a mass of metal and radioactive material, vaporizing some radioactive material and releasing that into the surrounding environment.
So, how is this prevented. Well, one method was described in another post where if things get too hot the heavy water moderator boils away shutting down the reactor because the neutrons are moving too fast to sustain a fission reaction.
Another methods I have heard about is to suspend boron (i think?) a neutron absorber over the reactor with supports that melt well below the meltdown point of the reactor. When it gets too hot the supports melt dumping the boron into the reactor and shutting down the reaction.
And, I read about these almost 10 years ago. I am sure there are even better ways now. The key is not to rely on sophisticated monitoring equipment and mechnical devices but instead design for fundamental effects like gravity, melting, evaporation, neutron absorption, etc. to prevent catastrophic failure.
And, is it any better goign around burying "nuclear waste" in a salt dome in Nevada. Because of government paranoia about plutonium, it is defined as waste. And, is being buried for 10000 years, rather than being used as fuel. What about all the other so called waste destined for that facility. How much of it could have medical uses, or also be used as fuel and do some good, rather than being put in the ground where in a couple hundred years it is going to be found causing problems somewhere sometime.
Here is the thing. Patent something. Wait for some else to figure out how to make that thing useful, but ignores the patent. Wait for everyone to adopt that useful thing. Now sue everyone because they are infringing your patent that you couldn't do anythign with...
If you reverse engineer a trade secret you cannot patent it because whatever you reverse engineered would be prior art.
Oops... Correction these days you probably could patent it because the patent office can't seem to do its homework on prior art. but, your patent wouldn't hold up to challenge.
That seems logical since the AMD processors is faster so you would want to run the slow software on the fast box and the fast software on the slow box to end up with equally fast computer.:-)
With books and games the trick is trying to figure out what to throw out and what to keep. While still being faithful to the original story.
Book adaptations have had more success for two reasons.
1) A lot more practice.
2) Some books are written with a movie in mind.
With FRP games the volume of information is huge, and generally disorganized. Deciding what to keep and what to throw out, while still being true to the game is difficult, and there are few if any good examples to work from.
Probably the best thing for the D&D movie would have been to take one of the many books and adapt that story to film. First their would be a story, and well developed characters. Second, many of the books would not require excessive special effects scenes, so the money could have been spent to make the few that were required, really good.
Finally, I think comic books are a little easier than both books and games. Mainly expectations are lower, and I think it is easier to write a comic book style story than to try and write more lengthy and serious piece of work. I think it is also easier to write a story from scratch based on characters and scenery, than to try and adapt a novel to film. How many comic book movies try to take an exact storyline from the comic book?
Actually, the inside of a sonic boom is probably rather comfortable, since pressure wave is moving away from you, and you are basically falling with a nice cushion of compressed air below you.
Also, not to bring movie references in, but if you recall "The Right Stuff", things smooth out nicely once the speed of soudn is passed. Whether that was movie mumbo jumbo or real is a different matter.
Well, that $135 also covers the cost of bad memory that normally gts thrown out. So, since the bad memory is essentially already paid for, you could consider selling a bad piece of memory all profit.
They do make good RAM. Something like 99.99% of SDRAM chips are good. But, when you are talking 100s of millions of units per year. That is still 10,000 bad chips/100,000,000. And, that is just chip production. some get damaged during packaging, others will get damaged during soldering onto a board. Others during shipping. More will be after market return from people who have killed their RAM for one reason or another.
The real problem is that it is totally unsupportable and impossible to prove. Taking your statement to the extreme. I coudl say:
The universe was created exactly one second ago in the exact precise state where all evidence points to it being older. Including your memories, my memories, and the position of every particle and quanta of energy.
And, there is absolultely no way to prove I am right or wrong. That si why creationists are idiots. They posit explanations that while they migh tbe possible are unsupportable and impossible to design an experiment to disprove. We have to work with the senses and brains we are given and the evidence presented to us. And, develop our understanding of the universe from that.
Not to mention a God that would have all of Creation lie is no God, and can KMA.
Even with RDRAM, I think they got the idea right, but they got burned as early adopters of an immature technology from a
juvenile company. The technology really is a superior solution that is just not ready to be used yet, and eventually, perhaps under
some more compotent hands, it will get there.
Actually, this is probably going to happen. Try to find some of the reports for DDRII and beyond. Some of it looks like taking the good lessons from Rambus and SDRAM and combining them. Too bad, Rambus will probably be out of business or have expired or overturned patents by then. (not that I am crying)
The problem is cost cost to benefit. If costs came down it might become superior in a dual or quad channel implementation. But, until that happens Rambus gets killed by a cost benefit analysis of spending money of RDRAM or 50% more SDRAM or an additional processor or a faster processor or a wider RAID array or Fibre Channel...
I ahve to agree to an extent on the implementation thing attaching 1.6GB/s RDRAM to a 1 GB/s bus is pretty pointless. Although i840 tests suggest otherwise due to the increased performance of the dual channel implementation. THe ideal benchmark would be DRDRAM to Athlon vs DDR-DRAM to Athlon. But, that won't happen unless DRDRAM costs come way down.
As for servers and workstations the cost issue cripples DRDRAM. When adding you are talking 4GB of memory a %50 cost premium for memory is not really beneficial and the money can be spent elsewhere for greater benefit such as 6GB of SDRAM, or an additional processor, FibreChannel, etc. etc.
It will be interesting to see how EV-7 works out. I still think cost issues would be crippling to sales st this point. I also wonder what their contingency might be. The market will end up choosing the best solution in the end and right now I doubt it will be Rambus.
You would be right except Intel dumped its Micron shares in Q2 so it could meet estimates in Q2. At that time they made mor ethan double what they paid for it.
Dastardky
Quick fix, no income under 20K per year will be taxed, above that there will be a 15% flat tax for everyone. If you still think that unfairly taxes poor families then do it this way.
1 Person, 20K = No Taxes
2 Person, 25K = No Taxes
3 Person, 30K = No Taxes
4+ Person, 35K = No Taxes
And, what you have is a two tiered progressive tax system. Thank you for agreeing with me.
The advantage of a flat tax isn't that it is fair. The advantage is that it is simpler and more eficient to administer. Personally, I don't have much problem with the plan you propose, it performs both functions.
I suggested a national sales tax that exempted food and clothing up to $200/item might be more effective than an income tax at targeting taxes at income that doesn't go to food, clothing, or shelter. The only problem is that our economy is based on consumer spending and a sales tax woul dprobably have a chilling effect on consumer spending and the economy in general. But, maybe it would be less chilling than the income tax is. No one can really say.
Basically, fairness would mean no taxes whatsoever. Of course the government has to run, (unless you are an anarchist in which case the discussion is pointless.) so taxes exist.
So, it is fair to take $4500 out of the mouths of 10 families children of making 30K/year. But, not fair to take an extra $15,000 to put $1500 of food back on those families table in exchange for near 0 impact on the quality of life of the family making $300,000. This is the difference from charging everyone 15% to charing 10% for the 30K and 20% for the 300K.
Let me put it this way fairness is bull. Life isn't fair. Get over it. But, morally I will not support a tax plan that takes food from the mouths of children which a flat tax does. The annoying part to most people is why does the governement get to decide when it goes form taxing food to taxing luxuries.
Maybe a national sales tax that exempts food and up to $200/item of clothing would perform this function better. But a flat tax is regressive and punishes the people least able to pay.
I guess I should have put the emphasis on STUPID, not rich. I intend to be rich.I just don't intend to be stupid and amoral. My $2000 in luxury spending, or savings is less important than $200 a piece for 10 families to spend on food and necessities. This is why a flat tax is regressive it imposes a greater burden on those who are poorer because it is taking money from necessities, while the rich pay the same percentage, but that money comes form luxuries. A prograssive tax like we have now is fairer because the poorer person gets more money for the necessities while the rich person has to get the 20' boat instead of the 25' boat.
Back to regressive taxing schemes. You are like that idiot rich bitch on Hardball talking to John McCain who couldn't understand why Daddy has to pay a higher percentage of taxes than the other people she goes to college with whose parents both work and make a total of $40,000 combined.
She doesn't understand that that the extra $200 taken from the poorer family is food money, while the $2000 taken from her dad means she has to drive a Honda instead of the cherry red BMW convertible. OF COURSE her cherry red BMW convertible is more important than $200 in food for 10 families.
I hope I understand your problem. Your question is whether an exclusive L2 cache can really be considered L2 cache vs being considered a non-uniform L1 cache. I think the key here is what data is contained in the two caches. The L1 fast cache contains the most recently used data. The slower L2 cache contains data that was used less recently and booted out of L1, from this perspective I think you can consider the exlusive L2 as an L2 cache.
Dastardly
Creationism has lost in Kansas. There are 5 seats up on the school board. Of them the primaries have eliminated creationist incumbents from 3 and a fourth had no creationist running, and the fifth has the writer of the current guidelines. The guidleines were voted is 6-4. So, the vote now change to a minimum of 7-3 and maybe even 8-2. depending on who the non-running incumbent is in the 4th slot.
Back to that proof thing again. Proofs can only be done in mathematics. Scientific theories have evidence that either supports or disproves the theory. There is quite a bit of evidence for this in the fossil record in the relatively small variation in DNA of different species, etc. etc. There is little or no evidence that is contrary to evolution in a broad sense. And, current evolutionary theory has a lot of eveidence in support of it. And, so far none that has been back breaking, it is entirely possible that there is some evidence that hasn't been incorporated, but that isn't damning as theories are midified constantly to acocunt for new evidence. Just look at the Standard Model and Big Bang Theory over the last 50 years or so.
The key hear is that you cannot prove that the rock will fall every single time. We have come up with a theory that fits every observation to date, but if just one rock fails to fall we will have to figure out why, and possibly revise the theory.
In a way this is happening right now because of eveidence that suggests there may be a universal repulsive force that is counteracting gravitaional contraction.
No! Evolution is a hypothesis that has graduated to Theory due to the large volumes of evidence available to support it. An interesting aspect of science is that in order for a hypothesis to become a theory it requires reams and reams of supporting evidence. On the other hand it takes just one contradictory piece of eveidence to throw an entire theory/hypothesis back to the drawing board. Although a lot of the time only a minor tweak is required in order to include the new evidence into the old theory to create a new theory. This has been happening with the Standard Model and Big Bang Theory for the last 50 years. While the basic premise has held up pretty well, the details have been reqworked over and over and over.
Intelligent design is relegated to being a crackpot idea because of the zero evidence to support it. And, the requirement of an external force for which there is no independent evidence other than some one saying, "This is too complex to have been anything, but intelligently designed." Plus, what is the experiment that coudl disprove ineligent design.
Also, this is a very serious problem for religion because once you make the statement that this is so complex that it proves intelligent design (aka GOD) you are screwed!!! If I show that the complexity you are pointing to does not require intelligent design, then the foundation of your faith is shaken because part of that foundation was laid upon the fact that some complex natural system requires intelligent design when in fact it does not.
Your faith is your faith, don't start trying to mix it up with science, you will just get in trouble. Base your science on physical evidence, base your faith on your faith.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't compare Chernobyl to a modern nuclear facility. Chernobyl was an ancient piece of crap designed with electronic safeguards subject to failure, rather than physical safeguards that will only fail if the laws of physics were to suddenly change. It is a fairly simple engineering problem to make a nuclear reactor safe. Here are a couple ways I have heard of.
The catastrophic failure mode of a nuclear reactor is a meltdown. Which is when the reactor gets so hot everything melts together into a mass of metal and radioactive material, vaporizing some radioactive material and releasing that into the surrounding environment.
So, how is this prevented. Well, one method was described in another post where if things get too hot the heavy water moderator boils away shutting down the reactor because the neutrons are moving too fast to sustain a fission reaction.
Another methods I have heard about is to suspend boron (i think?) a neutron absorber over the reactor with supports that melt well below the meltdown point of the reactor. When it gets too hot the supports melt dumping the boron into the reactor and shutting down the reaction.
And, I read about these almost 10 years ago. I am sure there are even better ways now. The key is not to rely on sophisticated monitoring equipment and mechnical devices but instead design for fundamental effects like gravity, melting, evaporation, neutron absorption, etc. to prevent catastrophic failure.
And, is it any better goign around burying "nuclear waste" in a salt dome in Nevada. Because of government paranoia about plutonium, it is defined as waste. And, is being buried for 10000 years, rather than being used as fuel. What about all the other so called waste destined for that facility. How much of it could have medical uses, or also be used as fuel and do some good, rather than being put in the ground where in a couple hundred years it is going to be found causing problems somewhere sometime.
Dastardly
No, they pour the money into advertising not infrastructure. And, do you really think they can make back that money at $30,000/user?
"concluded that Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, may possess a huge salt-water ocean beneath its crusty surface."
That it may possess a huge slaty ocean beneath its surface doesn't sound very conclusive to me...
Here is the thing. Patent something. Wait for some else to figure out how to make that thing useful, but ignores the patent. Wait for everyone to adopt that useful thing. Now sue everyone because they are infringing your patent that you couldn't do anythign with...
If you reverse engineer a trade secret you cannot patent it because whatever you reverse engineered would be prior art.
Oops... Correction these days you probably could patent it because the patent office can't seem to do its homework on prior art. but, your patent wouldn't hold up to challenge.
That seems logical since the AMD processors is faster so you would want to run the slow software on the fast box and the fast software on the slow box to end up with equally fast computer. :-)
With books and games the trick is trying to figure out what to throw out and what to keep. While still being faithful to the original story.
Book adaptations have had more success for two reasons.
1) A lot more practice.
2) Some books are written with a movie in mind.
With FRP games the volume of information is huge, and generally disorganized. Deciding what to keep and what to throw out, while still being true to the game is difficult, and there are few if any good examples to work from.
Probably the best thing for the D&D movie would have been to take one of the many books and adapt that story to film. First their would be a story, and well developed characters. Second, many of the books would not require excessive special effects scenes, so the money could have been spent to make the few that were required, really good.
Finally, I think comic books are a little easier than both books and games. Mainly expectations are lower, and I think it is easier to write a comic book style story than to try and write more lengthy and serious piece of work. I think it is also easier to write a story from scratch based on characters and scenery, than to try and adapt a novel to film. How many comic book movies try to take an exact storyline from the comic book?
Just my two bits...
Dastardly
Actually, the inside of a sonic boom is probably rather comfortable, since pressure wave is moving away from you, and you are basically falling with a nice cushion of compressed air below you.
Also, not to bring movie references in, but if you recall "The Right Stuff", things smooth out nicely once the speed of soudn is passed. Whether that was movie mumbo jumbo or real is a different matter.
Dastardly
Well, that $135 also covers the cost of bad memory that normally gts thrown out. So, since the bad memory is essentially already paid for, you could consider selling a bad piece of memory all profit.
They do make good RAM. Something like 99.99% of SDRAM chips are good. But, when you are talking 100s of millions of units per year. That is still 10,000 bad chips/100,000,000. And, that is just chip production. some get damaged during packaging, others will get damaged during soldering onto a board. Others during shipping. More will be after market return from people who have killed their RAM for one reason or another.
Dastardly
The real problem is that it is totally unsupportable and impossible to prove. Taking your statement to the extreme. I coudl say:
The universe was created exactly one second ago in the exact precise state where all evidence points to it being older. Including your memories, my memories, and the position of every particle and quanta of energy.
And, there is absolultely no way to prove I am right or wrong. That si why creationists are idiots. They posit explanations that while they migh tbe possible are unsupportable and impossible to design an experiment to disprove. We have to work with the senses and brains we are given and the evidence presented to us. And, develop our understanding of the universe from that.
Not to mention a God that would have all of Creation lie is no God, and can KMA.
Dastardly
Down payment only.
Even with RDRAM, I think they got the idea right, but they got burned as early adopters of an immature technology from a
juvenile company. The technology really is a superior solution that is just not ready to be used yet, and eventually, perhaps under
some more compotent hands, it will get there.
Actually, this is probably going to happen. Try to find some of the reports for DDRII and beyond. Some of it looks like taking the good lessons from Rambus and SDRAM and combining them. Too bad, Rambus will probably be out of business or have expired or overturned patents by then. (not that I am crying)
Dastardly
The problem is cost cost to benefit. If costs came down it might become superior in a dual or quad channel implementation. But, until that happens Rambus gets killed by a cost benefit analysis of spending money of RDRAM or 50% more SDRAM or an additional processor or a faster processor or a wider RAID array or Fibre Channel...
Dastardly
I ahve to agree to an extent on the implementation thing attaching 1.6GB/s RDRAM to a 1 GB/s bus is pretty pointless. Although i840 tests suggest otherwise due to the increased performance of the dual channel implementation. THe ideal benchmark would be DRDRAM to Athlon vs DDR-DRAM to Athlon. But, that won't happen unless DRDRAM costs come way down.
As for servers and workstations the cost issue cripples DRDRAM. When adding you are talking 4GB of memory a %50 cost premium for memory is not really beneficial and the money can be spent elsewhere for greater benefit such as 6GB of SDRAM, or an additional processor, FibreChannel, etc. etc.
It will be interesting to see how EV-7 works out. I still think cost issues would be crippling to sales st this point. I also wonder what their contingency might be. The market will end up choosing the best solution in the end and right now I doubt it will be Rambus.
Dastardly
You would be right except Intel dumped its Micron shares in Q2 so it could meet estimates in Q2. At that time they made mor ethan double what they paid for it. Dastardky
Quick fix, no income under 20K per year will be taxed, above that there will be a 15% flat tax for everyone. If you still think that unfairly taxes poor families then do it this way.
1 Person, 20K = No Taxes
2 Person, 25K = No Taxes
3 Person, 30K = No Taxes
4+ Person, 35K = No Taxes
And, what you have is a two tiered progressive tax system. Thank you for agreeing with me.
The advantage of a flat tax isn't that it is fair. The advantage is that it is simpler and more eficient to administer. Personally, I don't have much problem with the plan you propose, it performs both functions.
I suggested a national sales tax that exempted food and clothing up to $200/item might be more effective than an income tax at targeting taxes at income that doesn't go to food, clothing, or shelter. The only problem is that our economy is based on consumer spending and a sales tax woul dprobably have a chilling effect on consumer spending and the economy in general. But, maybe it would be less chilling than the income tax is. No one can really say.
Dastardly
Basically, fairness would mean no taxes whatsoever. Of course the government has to run, (unless you are an anarchist in which case the discussion is pointless.) so taxes exist.
So, it is fair to take $4500 out of the mouths of 10 families children of making 30K/year. But, not fair to take an extra $15,000 to put $1500 of food back on those families table in exchange for near 0 impact on the quality of life of the family making $300,000. This is the difference from charging everyone 15% to charing 10% for the 30K and 20% for the 300K.
Let me put it this way fairness is bull. Life isn't fair. Get over it. But, morally I will not support a tax plan that takes food from the mouths of children which a flat tax does. The annoying part to most people is why does the governement get to decide when it goes form taxing food to taxing luxuries.
Maybe a national sales tax that exempts food and up to $200/item of clothing would perform this function better. But a flat tax is regressive and punishes the people least able to pay.
Dastardly
I guess I should have put the emphasis on STUPID, not rich. I intend to be rich .I just don't intend to be stupid and amoral. My $2000 in luxury spending, or savings is less important than $200 a piece for 10 families to spend on food and necessities. This is why a flat tax is regressive it imposes a greater burden on those who are poorer because it is taking money from necessities, while the rich pay the same percentage, but that money comes form luxuries. A prograssive tax like we have now is fairer because the poorer person gets more money for the necessities while the rich person has to get the 20' boat instead of the 25' boat.
Dastardly
Back to regressive taxing schemes. You are like that idiot rich bitch on Hardball talking to John McCain who couldn't understand why Daddy has to pay a higher percentage of taxes than the other people she goes to college with whose parents both work and make a total of $40,000 combined.
She doesn't understand that that the extra $200 taken from the poorer family is food money, while the $2000 taken from her dad means she has to drive a Honda instead of the cherry red BMW convertible. OF COURSE her cherry red BMW convertible is more important than $200 in food for 10 families.
Dastardly
I hope I understand your problem. Your question is whether an exclusive L2 cache can really be considered L2 cache vs being considered a non-uniform L1 cache. I think the key here is what data is contained in the two caches. The L1 fast cache contains the most recently used data. The slower L2 cache contains data that was used less recently and booted out of L1, from this perspective I think you can consider the exlusive L2 as an L2 cache. Dastardly
Creationism has lost in Kansas. There are 5 seats up on the school board. Of them the primaries have eliminated creationist incumbents from 3 and a fourth had no creationist running, and the fifth has the writer of the current guidelines. The guidleines were voted is 6-4. So, the vote now change to a minimum of 7-3 and maybe even 8-2. depending on who the non-running incumbent is in the 4th slot.
Back to that proof thing again. Proofs can only be done in mathematics. Scientific theories have evidence that either supports or disproves the theory. There is quite a bit of evidence for this in the fossil record in the relatively small variation in DNA of different species, etc. etc. There is little or no evidence that is contrary to evolution in a broad sense. And, current evolutionary theory has a lot of eveidence in support of it. And, so far none that has been back breaking, it is entirely possible that there is some evidence that hasn't been incorporated, but that isn't damning as theories are midified constantly to acocunt for new evidence. Just look at the Standard Model and Big Bang Theory over the last 50 years or so.
The key hear is that you cannot prove that the rock will fall every single time. We have come up with a theory that fits every observation to date, but if just one rock fails to fall we will have to figure out why, and possibly revise the theory.
In a way this is happening right now because of eveidence that suggests there may be a universal repulsive force that is counteracting gravitaional contraction.
No! Evolution is a hypothesis that has graduated to Theory due to the large volumes of evidence available to support it. An interesting aspect of science is that in order for a hypothesis to become a theory it requires reams and reams of supporting evidence. On the other hand it takes just one contradictory piece of eveidence to throw an entire theory/hypothesis back to the drawing board. Although a lot of the time only a minor tweak is required in order to include the new evidence into the old theory to create a new theory. This has been happening with the Standard Model and Big Bang Theory for the last 50 years. While the basic premise has held up pretty well, the details have been reqworked over and over and over.
Intelligent design is relegated to being a crackpot idea because of the zero evidence to support it. And, the requirement of an external force for which there is no independent evidence other than some one saying, "This is too complex to have been anything, but intelligently designed." Plus, what is the experiment that coudl disprove ineligent design.
Also, this is a very serious problem for religion because once you make the statement that this is so complex that it proves intelligent design (aka GOD) you are screwed!!! If I show that the complexity you are pointing to does not require intelligent design, then the foundation of your faith is shaken because part of that foundation was laid upon the fact that some complex natural system requires intelligent design when in fact it does not.
Your faith is your faith, don't start trying to mix it up with science, you will just get in trouble. Base your science on physical evidence, base your faith on your faith.
Dastardly