This was done in Hungary about 25 years ago, using networked traffic lights on "Soroksari Avenue". The lights are all synchronized to create "green waves" and there are digital sign posts indicating the optimal speed to sync up with the next green wave. If the optimal speed was over the speed limit, the signs just display a dot.
I can't tell you how many old stock CPU coolers are sitting in my drawers (they make lousy paper-weights). The first thing I do when I build a system is get a quieter, more efficient CPU cooler. The stock coolers are too noisy and inefficient and it's impossible to get an OEM CPU any more.
Game consoles are light years away from the point where we can say there's little room for improvement. Maybe if hardware speed improved trillion-fold overnight, we could "rest" for a while. I want to do real-time multi-spectral global-illumination rendering with volumetric effects, trillion-triangle scenes at a minimum of 1920 x 1080 60-progressive with 16x anti-aliasing. Current games struggle to hit 1080 60-progressive, even with rasterizing GPUs, no anti-aliasing and are a far cry from anything you can do with ray-tracing. Despite their massive artistic content, even the best-looking games still look way too "video game-y".
As much as I despise Microsoft (I use Linux and Mac exclusively and I won't touch anything Microsoft with a 10 foot pole), I can relate to the workers. For example, I really tried liking Firefox and used it for over a year, but eventually went back to Mozilla because I can't live without the *built-in* email client. The Firefox-Thunderbird combo is just not the same.
The whole concept is a bit silly. As a TV host said (and I paraphrase): Gamers playing World War II over and over again. Get over it already, we've won!
It's physics 101. Capturing a larger cross-section of moving air is more efficient.
The reverse is also true (generating thrust): Turbofan engines are more efficient at lower air-speeds than straight turbojets. Moving a small amount of air at a higher velocity will create more wasteful eddies than moving a larger cross-section of air at a lower speeds.
Helicopters are the extreme case WRT aircraft. You need a lot less power to make a helicopter hover than a ducted-fan or jet VTOL aircraft (like the Harrier or the JSF).
It reminds me of people who are surprised that electric cars / hybrids take up the most energy when they accelerate. Duh, that's when you're actually gaining kinetic energy. In cruise, you're just fighting drag (air) and friction (road).
They could be shooting themselves into the foot by talking about price. Along the same lines, we can say that Windows is another $300 logo. Cost-conscious customers can just use Linux instead and get the same work done. And more and more already are...
Somebody has to buy the first few thousand Volts at a higher cost, but one production ramps up, I'm sure the price will drop. This is nothing new. There are thousands of examples... The first Toyota Priuses (plural: Prii?) cost a lot more than they cost now. In fact, I bought a 2008 Prius (even though I prefer buying used cars) because it was CHEAPER than the 2007 model, which was cheaper than the 2006 models!
I've been using a Patriot Warp V2 64GB SSD for a relatively large project (~400k lines of C code). The "write stutter" is a bit annoying, especially when I do a full "make clean", but it's not too bad.
I'm a developer of some large apps that run on Linux, UNIX and Mac OS.
I've had Mac laptops for a few years and I have ported my apps to Mac OS-X.
Overall, Macs are nice, but I use Linux for my primary development system because:
Mac OS doesn't support "focus follows mouse". Having to click on a window before the keyboard input works in it is completely retarded and it slows me down considerably (you don't "click" on a piece of paper before you can write on it).
Mac OS can't disable "raise on click". To make matters worse, when I click on a window, it raises it to the front. More often than not, I just want to cut/copy from the visible part of a window... On other OS-es, you can configure a key, the window title-bar etc. for "raise".
You can't grab the edges of a window to resize it. Resize only works on the tiny resize button in the bottom-right corner, which is often obscured.
Finder doesn't have an address bar. 99.9% of the time I know exactly what directory I'm going to and want to know what directory I am in. The lack of address bar makes it a frustrating guess work. Oh well, I use the command-line most of the time anyway...
The problem is that Apple seems to design for the "dumbest common denominator" and end up over-simplifying things.
This makes the UI frustratingly inefficient for power-users.
The solution is a lot simpler and quicker than that: You're basically doing a discrete integral of the function: Y=X+1.
In other words, you're calculating the area of a triangle. While a grade-school student may not know about calculus, he should understand the latter. The solution is: 100 * 101 / 2 = 5050 It takes 10 seconds, not 2 minutes.
People really need to realize that: - OpenGL is still the ONLY really cross-platform 3D API - OpenGL is not only for games. It is used heavily from movie production to industrial design - Even within the game industry the PlayStation3 uses OpenGL
DirectX is unlikely to ever appear on Mac, Linux and UNIX systems, so it's completely irrelevant to anyone outside of the (slowly sinking by market-share) Windows/XBox world. Even on Windows, many (most?) workstation apps use OpenGL.
On one hand he's referring to their already strained resources, and on the other hand, he supports porting Sugar to Windows. The latter would take significant resources. I'm developing a large application and porting it between Linux, Mac OS and SGI was no big deal, but a Windows version would be a significant effort. I think, OLPC should focus on making Sugar high quality on one OS (Linux), rather than spreading themselves thin and producing crap that runs on multiple platforms.
No, you are getting a much better quality. Analog has no macro-blocking and banding problems. A clean NTSC signal is orders of magnitude better than a Comcast digital SD channel.
Otherwise, what kind of business discontinues a product that sells out?
Business question for 3rd graders: You run a lemonade stand. Your pink lemonade sells out every day. You: A) Make more pink lemonade B) Stop making pink lemonade
Not to defend Apple, but the situation is quite different for the iPhone than for Microsoft: - Apple makes a complete, integrated product: hardware + software. - They have an image of "style" and "high quality" to maintain. - They are worried about "diluting" that image with potentially crappy 3rd party apps. - With Apple, people expect a self-contained product that "just works", so the tech support calls would end up going to Apple. - This is even more critical with a cell phone than a home PC. It can't crash when you need to make a 911 call!
On the other hand: - Microsoft makes only the software and for cheap, commodity hardware. They don't make the whole product. - Many things come to mind for people when the name Microsoft is mentioned, but style and high quality are not among them. - 3rd party software vendors for Microsoft platforms are responsible for their own tech support.
I can only speak for myself, but being a *NIX nerd, it may be somewhat typical:
I simply find that life is to short to spend it on playing video games. I've been developing software as a hobby since I was 12 and have other hobbies as well. Between "life", work and those, there's simply no time left for games.
But most importantly: If I spent hours on a video game, I'd have no value to take away at the end, other than maybe "bragging rights" for completing level X. It leaves me with an "empty" feeling.
If, on the other hand, I spend the same time on my 3D software, I'll have a new cool feature that makes my, and my users' life easier. The latter is many orders of magnitude more rewarding, especially when happy users thank you for it!
I beg to differ. Amigas had a full multitasking OS with windowing GUI in 512kB of RAM (in fact, the first one, the Amiga 1000 had only 256kB).
With a 7MHz CPU (M68k), they were comparable in speed to XP running on a 500 MHz Intel CPU with a basic graphics card and 128MB of RAM (256 times more).
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This was done in Hungary about 25 years ago, using networked traffic lights on "Soroksari Avenue". The lights are all synchronized to create "green waves" and there are digital sign posts indicating the optimal speed to sync up with the next green wave.
If the optimal speed was over the speed limit, the signs just display a dot.
I can't tell you how many old stock CPU coolers are sitting in my drawers (they make lousy paper-weights). The first thing I do when I build a system is get a quieter, more efficient CPU cooler.
The stock coolers are too noisy and inefficient and it's impossible to get an OEM CPU any more.
- You know that a politician is lying, if his lips are moving. :P
- You know you have a botnet zombie if you're using Windows.
Game consoles are light years away from the point where we can say there's little room for improvement.
Maybe if hardware speed improved trillion-fold overnight, we could "rest" for a while.
I want to do real-time multi-spectral global-illumination rendering with volumetric effects, trillion-triangle scenes at a minimum of 1920 x 1080 60-progressive with 16x anti-aliasing.
Current games struggle to hit 1080 60-progressive, even with rasterizing GPUs, no anti-aliasing and are a far cry from anything you can do with ray-tracing.
Despite their massive artistic content, even the best-looking games still look way too "video game-y".
As much as I despise Microsoft (I use Linux and Mac exclusively and I won't touch anything Microsoft with a 10 foot pole),
I can relate to the workers.
For example, I really tried liking Firefox and used it for over a year, but eventually went back to Mozilla because I can't live without the *built-in* email client.
The Firefox-Thunderbird combo is just not the same.
The whole concept is a bit silly.
As a TV host said (and I paraphrase):
Gamers playing World War II over and over again.
Get over it already, we've won!
"Pay us money, or we'll abuse your trademark".
It's physics 101.
Capturing a larger cross-section of moving air is more efficient.
The reverse is also true (generating thrust):
Turbofan engines are more efficient at lower air-speeds than straight turbojets.
Moving a small amount of air at a higher velocity will create more wasteful eddies than moving a larger cross-section of air at a lower speeds.
Helicopters are the extreme case WRT aircraft.
You need a lot less power to make a helicopter hover than a ducted-fan or jet VTOL aircraft (like the Harrier or the JSF).
It reminds me of people who are surprised that electric cars / hybrids take up the most energy when they accelerate.
Duh, that's when you're actually gaining kinetic energy.
In cruise, you're just fighting drag (air) and friction (road).
They could be shooting themselves into the foot by talking about price.
Along the same lines, we can say that Windows is another $300 logo.
Cost-conscious customers can just use Linux instead and get the same work done.
And more and more already are...
Somebody has to buy the first few thousand Volts at a higher cost, but one production ramps up, I'm sure the price will drop.
This is nothing new.
There are thousands of examples...
The first Toyota Priuses (plural: Prii?) cost a lot more than they cost now.
In fact, I bought a 2008 Prius (even though I prefer buying used cars) because it was CHEAPER than the 2007 model, which was cheaper than the 2006 models!
I've been using a Patriot Warp V2 64GB SSD for a relatively large project (~400k lines of C code).
The "write stutter" is a bit annoying, especially when I do a full "make clean", but it's not too bad.
The problem is that Apple seems to design for the "dumbest common denominator" and end up over-simplifying things. This makes the UI frustratingly inefficient for power-users.
The solution is a lot simpler and quicker than that:
You're basically doing a discrete integral of the function: Y=X+1.
In other words, you're calculating the area of a triangle.
While a grade-school student may not know about calculus, he should understand the latter.
The solution is: 100 * 101 / 2 = 5050
It takes 10 seconds, not 2 minutes.
We've heard this countless times.
People really need to realize that:
- OpenGL is still the ONLY really cross-platform 3D API
- OpenGL is not only for games. It is used heavily from movie production to industrial design
- Even within the game industry the PlayStation3 uses OpenGL
DirectX is unlikely to ever appear on Mac, Linux and UNIX systems, so it's completely irrelevant to anyone outside of the (slowly sinking by market-share) Windows/XBox world.
Even on Windows, many (most?) workstation apps use OpenGL.
"we are not sinking" speech from Microsoft, from the bridge of a ship halfway under water.
Nothing to see here, move along.
On one hand he's referring to their already strained resources, and on the other hand, he supports porting Sugar to Windows.
The latter would take significant resources.
I'm developing a large application and porting it between Linux, Mac OS and SGI was no big deal, but a Windows version would be a significant effort.
I think, OLPC should focus on making Sugar high quality on one OS (Linux), rather than spreading themselves thin and producing crap that runs on multiple platforms.
Please check your facts.
The Cell processor *can* do double-precision calculations.
No, you are getting a much better quality.
Analog has no macro-blocking and banding problems.
A clean NTSC signal is orders of magnitude better than a Comcast digital SD channel.
Amen to that.
Since when have cults had any credibility to start with?
"I would really like a Flash, Perl, Python, C++, .NET, Ruby, and Basic free world :-)"
:)
Amen to that.
I bet Microsoft was threatening them.
Otherwise, what kind of business discontinues a product that sells out?
Business question for 3rd graders:
You run a lemonade stand. Your pink lemonade sells out every day. You:
A) Make more pink lemonade
B) Stop making pink lemonade
Explain your answer.
Not to defend Apple, but the situation is quite different for the iPhone than for Microsoft:
- Apple makes a complete, integrated product: hardware + software.
- They have an image of "style" and "high quality" to maintain.
- They are worried about "diluting" that image with potentially crappy 3rd party apps.
- With Apple, people expect a self-contained product that "just works", so the tech support calls would end up going to Apple.
- This is even more critical with a cell phone than a home PC. It can't crash when you need to make a 911 call!
On the other hand:
- Microsoft makes only the software and for cheap, commodity hardware. They don't make the whole product.
- Many things come to mind for people when the name Microsoft is mentioned, but style and high quality are not among them.
- 3rd party software vendors for Microsoft platforms are responsible for their own tech support.
I can only speak for myself, but being a *NIX nerd, it may be somewhat typical:
I simply find that life is to short to spend it on playing video games.
I've been developing software as a hobby since I was 12 and have other hobbies as well.
Between "life", work and those, there's simply no time left for games.
But most importantly:
If I spent hours on a video game, I'd have no value to take away at the end, other than maybe "bragging rights" for completing level X.
It leaves me with an "empty" feeling.
If, on the other hand, I spend the same time on my 3D software, I'll have a new cool feature that makes my, and my users' life easier.
The latter is many orders of magnitude more rewarding, especially when happy users thank you for it!
I beg to differ.
Amigas had a full multitasking OS with windowing GUI in 512kB of RAM (in fact, the first one, the Amiga 1000 had only 256kB).
With a 7MHz CPU (M68k), they were comparable in speed to XP running on a 500 MHz Intel CPU with a basic graphics card and 128MB of RAM (256 times more).