If every possible "particle position combination" is exhausted, then everything that can possibly exist does exist. So, somewhere in the infinite universe, there must be a giant bomb capable of destroying the entire universe. In fact, there are many of them. In fact, there are an infinite number of them, in all different shapes and sizes. More importantly, they all have different trigger mechanisms. Some have buttons... Some have timers... and since there are an infinite number of them, some of these timers should have already expired. But the universe still exists. ?
I think the flaw in the logic here is that just because there is an infinite amount of space, there must be an infinite amount of "stuff" in that space. Maybe it's just empty, or nearly empty, or whatever. In terms of your "boolean" analogy, maybe everything past a certain point is a "zero" (nothing there).
I can't even begin to tell you how right you are. Welcome to my "friends" list.:)
S3 is too big! Go 3dfx!
Wait, now 3dfx is too big! Go NVidia!
Wait, now NVidia is too big! Go ATI!
Wait...
And all the while, no one even mentions the one company that really is a big, fat, bloated monopoly, hell bent on taking over the world: Intel. Soon they will just force their crappy integrated graphics down everyone's throat, and everyone who was complaining about NVidia being too big and monopolistic (even though they have about 1K employees, total) will learn what a monopoly really is.
Competition in the graphics business has been awesome. Faster and faster chips, cheaper and cheaper prices, new technologies... it really is a "race." This means that the customer wins.
Add Intel to the mix, and everything changes. If they win, it will be simply because they are Intel. Not because they crank out an awesome new technology every six months, like the graphics companies, but because they can do whatever they want and people will buy it.
They aren't getting rid of BIOS, they are just making it bigger (and more bloated). Claiming that they are "getting rid of" the BIOS is just their way of hyping their new, lucky-special BIOS.
I write BIOS code for a living [shudder] and I've seen EFI. A better name for it would be "C-BIOS" or something like that, because that's what it is: a BIOS written in C. They've packed a lot of things into it, which may or may not be useful, like networking and a GUI.
They've been pushing EFI for a long time, and I don't think they've had much success. I guess that they'll just force it down everyone's throat by putting it on all of their own chipsets and hope everyone else will follow suit.
Personally, as a BIOS d00d, I hope that they have about as much success with this as they did with Rambus.:)
The most interesting thing about Moore's Law, to me, is that it implies that technology advances at an exponential rate. If that's true, then there are some obvious, serious consequences ahead.
IBM announced recently that they will be producing a computer with roughly the same computing power as the human brain, possibly by 2005. That's a pretty significant milestone, if you think about it. Following through with Moore's Law, we should have a computer that is 1000 times more powerful than the human brain as soon as 2020... and a computer that is a million times more powerful than the human brain by 2035.
A million times more powerful than the human brain! What will we do with a computer that powerful? Or, maybe a better question is: What will a computer that powerful do with us?
Kurzweil has a lot of great articles on this sort of thing.
I read 0wnz0red last week -- someone here on/. had a link to it in their sig. One of the great things about Doctorow's sci-fi is the "feasibility" of it. In particular, I wonder how close we really are to the microcontroller that interfaces directly to the human nervous system. Ten years? Twenty? Surely it will happen within our lifetimes (?). When it does, let's just hope that the API is open-source.:)
The thing that sucks is that now I have to go and delete my terabytes of MP3s, since we've all been informed that the MP3 format is dead. Wow, I really didn't see this coming.
Good thing I read/.
What I've always wondered...
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 1
Has anyone ever considered that the Earth, the Solar System, and the Milky Way are all moving?
If someone travelled back in time, even just a single day, wouldn't the Earth be in a different place? Why would the time traveller just assume that their position in space would just magically change as they go back in time so that it matches the position of the Earth?
Slashdot Mirror
(Score:11 Genius)
Very nice work.
If every possible "particle position combination" is exhausted, then everything that can possibly exist does exist. So, somewhere in the infinite universe, there must be a giant bomb capable of destroying the entire universe. In fact, there are many of them. In fact, there are an infinite number of them, in all different shapes and sizes. More importantly, they all have different trigger mechanisms. Some have buttons... Some have timers... and since there are an infinite number of them, some of these timers should have already expired. But the universe still exists. ?
I think the flaw in the logic here is that just because there is an infinite amount of space, there must be an infinite amount of "stuff" in that space. Maybe it's just empty, or nearly empty, or whatever. In terms of your "boolean" analogy, maybe everything past a certain point is a "zero" (nothing there).
I heard he smoked a fool over 20 bucks!
I can't even begin to tell you how right you are. Welcome to my "friends" list. :)
S3 is too big! Go 3dfx!
Wait, now 3dfx is too big! Go NVidia!
Wait, now NVidia is too big! Go ATI!
Wait...
And all the while, no one even mentions the one company that really is a big, fat, bloated monopoly, hell bent on taking over the world: Intel. Soon they will just force their crappy integrated graphics down everyone's throat, and everyone who was complaining about NVidia being too big and monopolistic (even though they have about 1K employees, total) will learn what a monopoly really is.
Competition in the graphics business has been awesome. Faster and faster chips, cheaper and cheaper prices, new technologies... it really is a "race." This means that the customer wins.
Add Intel to the mix, and everything changes. If they win, it will be simply because they are Intel. Not because they crank out an awesome new technology every six months, like the graphics companies, but because they can do whatever they want and people will buy it.
sigh.
They aren't getting rid of BIOS, they are just making it bigger (and more bloated). Claiming that they are "getting rid of" the BIOS is just their way of hyping their new, lucky-special BIOS. I write BIOS code for a living [shudder] and I've seen EFI. A better name for it would be "C-BIOS" or something like that, because that's what it is: a BIOS written in C. They've packed a lot of things into it, which may or may not be useful, like networking and a GUI. They've been pushing EFI for a long time, and I don't think they've had much success. I guess that they'll just force it down everyone's throat by putting it on all of their own chipsets and hope everyone else will follow suit. Personally, as a BIOS d00d, I hope that they have about as much success with this as they did with Rambus. :)
The most interesting thing about Moore's Law, to me, is that it implies that technology advances at an exponential rate. If that's true, then there are some obvious, serious consequences ahead.
IBM announced recently that they will be producing a computer with roughly the same computing power as the human brain, possibly by 2005. That's a pretty significant milestone, if you think about it. Following through with Moore's Law, we should have a computer that is 1000 times more powerful than the human brain as soon as 2020... and a computer that is a million times more powerful than the human brain by 2035.
A million times more powerful than the human brain! What will we do with a computer that powerful? Or, maybe a better question is: What will a computer that powerful do with us?
Kurzweil has a lot of great articles on this sort of thing.
I submitted this story to /. a week ago, and it was rejected. "Kinda cool." Right. Kinda eat me, slashdot.
I read 0wnz0red last week -- someone here on /. had a link to it in their sig. One of the great things about Doctorow's sci-fi is the "feasibility" of it. In particular, I wonder how close we really are to the microcontroller that interfaces directly to the human nervous system. Ten years? Twenty? Surely it will happen within our lifetimes (?). When it does, let's just hope that the API is open-source. :)
Well, I'm convinced.
/.
The thing that sucks is that now I have to go and delete my terabytes of MP3s, since we've all been informed that the MP3 format is dead. Wow, I really didn't see this coming.
Good thing I read
Has anyone ever considered that the Earth, the Solar System, and the Milky Way are all moving? If someone travelled back in time, even just a single day, wouldn't the Earth be in a different place? Why would the time traveller just assume that their position in space would just magically change as they go back in time so that it matches the position of the Earth?