"It seems that the upper edge of PC power had hit a plateau a couple years ago. I remember 3GHz chips in Summer 2002, a year and a half later, it's now 3.4GHz / 3400+, not the 6000 range that it might have been had the "law" held true."
Astute observation. Although I find my shiny new Athlon64 3000 to be much, much faster at almost all things, in comparison to my good friends' 18-month-old 3.0GHz P4. (all other variables being almost equal. very similar systems.)
Does, or perhaps should, the mythical Moore's law take into account advances in processor design, as well as advances in Hz and Nanometers?
Silicon and current fab techniques ARE closing in on some very real and insumountable barriers. The Ghz race has halted on account of rain.
But Sweet Fancy Moses is this 64-bit baby I've got here ever bloody fast! Progress indeed marches on.
... yes, yes, you're an intelligent, thoughtful, and caring man, James Cameron, you have interests outside of directing Hollywood blockbusters, you have a hand in some very important work... etc, ad infinitum, and so on...
Now PLEASE PLEASE! make us a great big shiny, blow-your-socks-OFF, good old-fashioned Hollywood blockbuster...!
You can even set it in space, or underwater if you'd like... just make it shiny.
Hi, I'm the original poster, by the way... did an accidental AC...
I just re-read my post, and I must apologize... been up for 36 hours, and my explanation was a tad too simplistic...
Not to cop out, but I'm half-asleep. The following is a link to the oft-mentioned PBS series:The Elegant Universe:
Watch part entitled "Newton's Embarassing Secret"... never seen it explained better...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.htm l
Remember, EVERYTHING is made of something, especially empty space. Dark Matter. Dark Energy. The emptiness inside an atom, or throughout space, is just an illusion based upon our limited skills of perception. Everything is made of something, and Everything is truly connected, fiber-like, to Everything else.
Not meaning to go all metawhacko on you, but it's true, and it's how things are...
I absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent agree with your comments regarding doping in American racing... rampant. Always has been. The only horse of the twentieth-century who can even be mentioned in the same breath with Secretariat is Man-O-War, who is widely regarded as one of the most doped horses of all time.
However, EVERYTHING I've ever read or studied about Secretariat, has consistently remarked upon just how clean an animal he was. He was not doped. I encourage you to read further about this, he really was the exception to an otherwise agreed upon status quo...
I would also argue that American racing is no more corrupt from a doping standpoint than any other organized body. To think otherwise is niave, in my opinion.
Secretariat was sired from two amazing bloodlines, whose individual strengths were complimentary to the extreme...
Secretariat was a genetic accident. He was simply superior. The record he set in the Belmont, which is getting on to being a two-mile race, still has never been approached. No other horse has come within TWO seconds of that record in the last thirty years... not one. It truly, truly may never be broken.
Red Rum is quite a horse though, I agree with you there.
The greatest mammalian athlete of the last thousand years... the best there ever was, the best there ever will be... to borrow a quote attributed to another once-in-a-lifetime athlete...
Look it up. The horse was preternatural... with a heart more than DOUBLE the size of a typical champion thoroughbred...
When he won the Kentucky Derby in '73, Secretariat ran each successive quarter-mile FASTER than the previous one... this is simply unheard of in horse-racing...
1. Practical Immortality (it's right around the corner, hell, we could do it now if not for those damned ethics... that's a joke, son...)
2. Sustainable Fusion (again, right around the corner. ITER WILL work, and unlimited, non-polluting energy is here... think what that means...)
3. The Ion Drive (already proven, power being ramped up monthly by orders of magnitude, will open up solar system for exploration, mineral harvesting, golden age begun...)
Dozens more... it's a great, great time to be alive... although many people would have you believe different.
"You know what irritates me? Pres Kennedy said we're going to the moon, and 8 years later we did it. We landed Humans on the moon, we walked around, planted a flag, parked a hoopty, took some snapshots........ and then.... We. Never. Went. Back.
WTF? Thirty friggin years later and no one has ever gone back? Instead we're pouring money into a useless space station for political feel good points.
There are enough metals, water, and WEALTH orbiting just past Mars to make every living Human a trillionaire, and we're still fighting wars over oil, diamonds and pieces of land measuring a few hundred square miles in size.
All the eggs are still in the same basket. It's only a matter of time before a great big rock flies into it and breaks every damned one of them."
...for THE next breakthrough, that is going to revolutionize the world in a million different ways... this is it.
To produce diamonds in the way described, has to be equated with something as momentous as the invention of the laser......been following this tech for over a decade now, from the first rumors out of the Soviet Union in the eighties... talk of depositing layers of pure, perfect diamond on everything from razor blades to car doors... can 'grown' spacecraft hulls be far behind?
And, of course, the implications for the semiconductor industry boggle the mind... this will have an infinitely larger impact on computing than all but the most miraculous breakthrough in photolithography...
Breaking DeBeers and their monopoly is a nice bonus too...
If I was one of them fancy "dot-com" rich fellas..
on
X Prize Race Heats Up
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
... I'd be spending my moolah on propulsion technology research, as opposed to the more high-profile Drive For The X-Prize.
Dense and compact energy sources... hell, fund fusion research for a start... more powerful and efficent ion engines... I don't happen to be a rocket scientist, but you get the idea.
To me, the one who revolutionizes propulsion, will be the first trillionaire in history. Not to mention a true hero to future generations.
The name's Cochrane... Zefram Cochrane... it could be you...
I would like some interplanetary travel (at least!) before I pass from this place. Someone help me out...
When I was a boy, we did our rendering calculations by hand. A pencil, lots of paper, and we liked it! These kids today and their fancy calculating machines.... bah, humbug.
Slashdot Mirror
Chocolate Covered Nanos...
... It appears that Google is offering an upgrade to their User Interface!
This is Incredible! I've never seen anything like it! How are they doing this!? It's seems so convincing and life-like!!
(walking head-first into large, heavy object)
Oops! Sorry. It seems to be a real tree.
"It seems that the upper edge of PC power had hit a plateau a couple years ago. I remember 3GHz chips in Summer 2002, a year and a half later, it's now 3.4GHz / 3400+, not the 6000 range that it might have been had the "law" held true."
Astute observation. Although I find my shiny new Athlon64 3000 to be much, much faster at almost all things, in comparison to my good friends' 18-month-old 3.0GHz P4. (all other variables being almost equal. very similar systems.)
Does, or perhaps should, the mythical Moore's law take into account advances in processor design, as well as advances in Hz and Nanometers?
Silicon and current fab techniques ARE closing in on some very real and insumountable barriers. The Ghz race has halted on account of rain.
But Sweet Fancy Moses is this 64-bit baby I've got here ever bloody fast! Progress indeed marches on.
Peace
Weird. I haven't done any calculations, and I arrived at the EXACT same number in my conclusions... I blame the space vampires.
"Show me a sentient raccoon and I'll show you someone who deserves the same consideration I do."
You're just looking in the wrong places...
... yes, yes, you're an intelligent, thoughtful, and caring man, James Cameron, you have interests outside of directing Hollywood blockbusters, you have a hand in some very important work... etc, ad infinitum, and so on...
Now PLEASE PLEASE! make us a great big shiny, blow-your-socks-OFF, good old-fashioned Hollywood blockbuster...!
You can even set it in space, or underwater if you'd like... just make it shiny.
That's all we're asking dude...
Peace
Hi, I'm the original poster, by the way... did an accidental AC...
:The Elegant Universe:
m l
I just re-read my post, and I must apologize... been up for 36 hours, and my explanation was a tad too simplistic...
Not to cop out, but I'm half-asleep. The following is a link to the oft-mentioned PBS series
Watch part entitled "Newton's Embarassing Secret"... never seen it explained better...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.ht
Remember, EVERYTHING is made of something, especially empty space. Dark Matter. Dark Energy. The emptiness inside an atom, or throughout space, is just an illusion based upon our limited skills of perception. Everything is made of something, and Everything is truly connected, fiber-like, to Everything else.
Not meaning to go all metawhacko on you, but it's true, and it's how things are...
Peace
I'm a Canadian, and one who agrees with your sentiment wholeheartedly... (Kyoto is a terribly flawed thing, by the way...)
Go America!
... you guessed it!
Frank Stallone.
I absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent agree with your comments regarding doping in American racing... rampant. Always has been. The only horse of the twentieth-century who can even be mentioned in the same breath with Secretariat is Man-O-War, who is widely regarded as one of the most doped horses of all time.
However, EVERYTHING I've ever read or studied about Secretariat, has consistently remarked upon just how clean an animal he was. He was not doped. I encourage you to read further about this, he really was the exception to an otherwise agreed upon status quo...
I would also argue that American racing is no more corrupt from a doping standpoint than any other organized body. To think otherwise is niave, in my opinion.
Secretariat was sired from two amazing bloodlines, whose individual strengths were complimentary to the extreme...
Secretariat was a genetic accident. He was simply superior. The record he set in the Belmont, which is getting on to being a two-mile race, still has never been approached. No other horse has come within TWO seconds of that record in the last thirty years... not one. It truly, truly may never be broken.
Red Rum is quite a horse though, I agree with you there.
But Secretariat was a tremendous machine.
Peace
The greatest mammalian athlete of the last thousand years... the best there ever was, the best there ever will be... to borrow a quote attributed to another once-in-a-lifetime athlete...
Look it up. The horse was preternatural... with a heart more than DOUBLE the size of a typical champion thoroughbred...
When he won the Kentucky Derby in '73, Secretariat ran each successive quarter-mile FASTER than the previous one... this is simply unheard of in horse-racing...
A genetic zenith.
... to conduct my Experiments with Evil!!
Muhahaha... MUHahaHA... Merry Christmas Everybody!!
How the fuck does this get modded +5 Insightful?
What a glossed-over and superficial summation of 70+ years of research and progress...
I bet you wander around feeling all smart-n-stuff, telling people the war in Iraq was just about oil too...
Sorry to flame you, but this was not an Insightful comment in any way...
Fuck dude... I wish I could mod you up to +7 Perfection...
That could not have been said better.
Here, here.
1. Practical Immortality
(it's right around the corner, hell, we could do it now if not for those damned ethics... that's a joke, son...)
2. Sustainable Fusion
(again, right around the corner. ITER WILL work, and unlimited, non-polluting energy is here... think what that means...)
3. The Ion Drive
(already proven, power being ramped up monthly by orders of magnitude, will open up solar system for exploration, mineral harvesting, golden age begun...)
Dozens more... it's a great, great time to be alive... although many people would have you believe different.
the dulcet tones of Chief Wiggum in my head all morning...
"You know what irritates me? Pres Kennedy said we're going to the moon, and 8 years later we did it. We landed Humans on the moon, we walked around, planted a flag, parked a hoopty, took some snapshots ........ and then .... We. Never. Went. Back.
WTF? Thirty friggin years later and no one has ever gone back? Instead we're pouring money into a useless space station for political feel good points.
There are enough metals, water, and WEALTH orbiting just past Mars to make every living Human a trillionaire, and we're still fighting wars over oil, diamonds and pieces of land measuring a few hundred square miles in size.
All the eggs are still in the same basket. It's only a matter of time before a great big rock flies into it and breaks every damned one of them."
Here, here.
I also have a Flying Car.
I'm also President of the Eastern Seaboard.
Now I AM the Eastern Seaboard.
Sigh.
... I heed your Siren call again... Come, let me wallow in your finite love... all at once now...
Congratulations China, welcome to the 1960's!
Now does anybody have a job for me in this supposedly booming industry?
One that I can actually live on?
I'm fluent in over six million forms of cummunication... sigh.
...for THE next breakthrough, that is going to revolutionize the world in a million different ways... this is it.
...been following this tech for over a decade now, from the first rumors out of the Soviet Union in the eighties... talk of depositing layers of pure, perfect diamond on everything from razor blades to car doors... can 'grown' spacecraft hulls be far behind?
To produce diamonds in the way described, has to be equated with something as momentous as the invention of the laser...
And, of course, the implications for the semiconductor industry boggle the mind... this will have an infinitely larger impact on computing than all but the most miraculous breakthrough in photolithography...
Breaking DeBeers and their monopoly is a nice bonus too...
... I'd be spending my moolah on propulsion technology research, as opposed to the more high-profile Drive For The X-Prize.
Dense and compact energy sources... hell, fund fusion research for a start... more powerful and efficent ion engines... I don't happen to be a rocket scientist, but you get the idea.
To me, the one who revolutionizes propulsion, will be the first trillionaire in history. Not to mention a true hero to future generations.
The name's Cochrane... Zefram Cochrane... it could be you...
I would like some interplanetary travel (at least!) before I pass from this place. Someone help me out...
When I was a boy, we did our rendering calculations by hand. A pencil, lots of paper, and we liked it! These kids today and their fancy calculating machines.... bah, humbug.