A Reynolds number details if a flow of liquid is turbulent or laminar, and is used for a number of other calculations. It can also be aplied (with some modification) to small particles (like grain, or nanomachines), which behave like fluids. What the reynolds number can do in relation to human beings is be used in calculations of the musclefibrils, to see at what speeds they can contract (in combination with other factors, but the Reynolds number would tell you what frictions to subtract, among other things). If I'm correct, that's how Freeman Dyson would have used it, not just some random, easy global calculation...'cos science is never that simple.
Also, one/mayor/ difference is that the cells in a human body are highly differentiated: there's loads of different cells, and only the muscle cells do the moving...in the nanomachine thing, it's all the same little mahcine, no matter what part of the thing you look in. Which does simplify the movement calculations of the latter.
Funny...those technological advances you quote (all of the advances you mention) only apply to the rich 10-20% of the world which live in 'western' societies...one could even argue that the west's standard of living has made lving anywhere else much worse, due to polution and exploitation.
No matter what you think of the unabombers methods (I for one find them appaling, but that's me), you should read the manifesto. It is written unarguably by a smart person and contains quite a bit of truth. Failing that, it contains a lot of material that actually makes you think; pertaining to the quoted bit, being tied to one point (by plumbing, which means you need to have a 'home base':) and telecomunications etc) means you can be located and taxed. One could argue that that gives a governement power over you, and gives them a powerbase because they can take it away. Personally I'd say that that is a direct consequence of the contract you make with society (google for it, it's a widespread idea, that 'contract with society'), but the unabomber manifesto is still a thought provoking bit of work. And you know what? Maybe Ted whatsisname is right: if he hadn't done what he did, I wouldn't of read it...in that respect, he got what he wanted. That makes him smart enough to know how to get what he wanted; not compasionate, but smart. And reading what smart people say can lead to something all powerfull people fear: thinking.
As much as I agree with the last sentence of your statement, the problem is that the US does have the largest chemical and biological weapons labs in the world. Saying "this research is too dangerous and should not be pursued" might sound nobel, but has no bearing in the real world, where the research will be done anyway, maybe by people with less than honourable intentions. Case in point: the experiments of doctor Mengele (nazi scientist)...the experiments where horrible, absolutely disgusting as to what they did to people...but the knowledge that came from them is great, and we wouldn't be as far in the biosciences without them...now, we coulde have gotten that knowledge another way, but does that mean we should just forget the data Mengele already got?
Anyway, the point is this: we will not be safe untill we as humans get to the point where even the most dangerous knowledge is safe in every mans hand...what I'm saying is that unless people are perfect, knowledge will always be dangerous. But that knowledge is still crucial to the furtherment of humanity and the conservation of the earth. Knowing that fertiliser and orange juice can be made inot an explosive is dangerous knowledge...but drinking the juice is good ofr the body, and fertiliser is good for plants...and if someone devises a way of using the aforementioned explosian to make an environmentally and mechanically safe combustion motor, you'll be glad we had the knowledge that thsoe ingredients could be combined to an explosive.
Heh...reminds me of an interview he once gave (or it might be a post on/....dunno) where he said he didn't really do groundbraking work, but just put to use the theoretical tools dreamt up by others.
And he does that so well:) Now if only the 2d artists at id could use any other colour than brown:)
Uh...what do you think hardware T&L does? The T stands for transform...rotation, scaling, limited morphing...a 3d card is in itself nothing more than a matrix processing machine, designed for handeling vectors, vertexes and polyogons...in other words: geometry.
Now, a hardware fractal solution...that/would/ be neat for any natural graphical effect (eddies in fog, dirt on textures, landscapes, clouds, trees and plants...whatever).
Actually, it breaks down more like this: ATI does 96 bit precision, Nvidia can do 32, 64 and 128.
Your example with the truncation is a gross simplification, which goes into ATI's favour, but in reality there's way more precision than just 2 decimals...more like 6 for ATI and 8 for Nvidia...which makes a reasonably big difference in quality.
The numbers above are not entirely spot on (except for Nvidia's 128 bit precision, and I can't be arsed to find the exact other numbers), but the principle remains the same: grandparent had it right; ATI for speed, Nvidia for quality (on a ARB2 path...vendor specific paths lead to different results, but are you really going to play the game in anything other than true OpenGL?
The cell phone thing is a bit us-centric: the rest of the world (or at least western europe, the middle east and asia) don't have that problem...GSM standard, so it'll only be a problem when you go to the US. Me, I'd love a clie/phone combo, for the same reasons you mentioned PDA's became popular in the first place. For me, mp3-player comes secondary, camera doesn't figure at all, but only if they don't add to the size and weight factor. Idealy, that would add up to the following PDA:
-colour, highrez, full size (as in the whole front of the device) screen -intergrated GSM -removable storage -no screwed up tiny qwerty keyboard! (screw you, TungstenW and Treo!)
And that's it...that's what'll get me to upgrade my IIIc and IrDA cellphone.
But doesn't that only make sense if Linux is perfect to begin with? And if it's not, then doesn't it make sense to update and upgrade the software?
True, it makes more sense to update/grade as is (ie whenever you happen to come up with large-ish improvements) instead of doing it at predefined times, but even so, I'd say that linux is far from perfect at the moment.
Hey, you too? Three companies which have bought ALL the add time throughout the whole blooming game...and they/were/ crap adds, nearly worse than feminine hygiene products adds.
Even so, I must admit I enjoyed the game...and mind you, I'm more of a rugby man myself, so that's saying something (I think:) ).
I dunno...it could show an understanding of history you don't grasp: the twin towers as the Reichstag, the arabs/whole middle east except the isreali as jews/homosexuals/gypsies et al, the whole nuclear and chemical weapons thing as lebensraum (ie any old excuse as justification) and the hiding of oil as the actual cause as the hiding of the extermination camps. Or he could be a troll, of course.
But what this has to do with the Superbowl is beyond me...especially as it's just a pale immitation of rugby:)
Call me simple, but it's a real question: first you say the fastest LCD pixels have a refresh of 62.5 times a second, then you say that the best LCD's have a refresh of 40 times a second. Maybe it's the way I'm reading the paragraph, but either you're saying there's been a tremendous advance in LCD technology the past two or three months, or you're contradicting yourself. I was subtly asking for clarification...which should have been selfevident looking at the part of your post I quoted.
...in the Netherlands, that would be part of what they call a "pretpakket": basically something like a university degree in macrame. It's stupidly silly.
I heard education in the US sucked, but it's another thing to see it confirmed.
True, but the human eye is exceptionally good at distinguishing contrast. Thus the extra colours do make a huge the difference: they offer a larger contrast.
"A pixel can change its color value on average 1000/16 = 62.5 times per second for the fastest LCDs available. For the best as of a couple months ago that rate is roughly 1000/25 = 40 times a second"
That is the only problem with trinitrons...but you'll only notice that on a white background, like when webbrowsing, and only when you first use the monitor...after about 5 days, it's a nonissue. And lets be serious: who needs a trinitron for webbrowsing?
Another plus for trinitron, appart from the !sharp! picture, is it's colour. Very important if you work in print, dtp, video, 3d or anywhere else where colour is important.
Looking purely at your example...if directly priced at $8, D and E would buy it, since they'd know the price wasn't going to drop...which makes $35...still less than $38, but on the other hand, they would capture a bigger marketshare. And I'd be happier with my next big shiny thing.
You can play those games (except Sin, which was a steammy bugridden pile of crap anyway), if you know what to do in regard to emulation, cpu slowdown and the like. You can't play the games because you don't put in the small amout of time it takes to track down how to play them. Damn, I can even play all my dos games.
And don't forget Homeworld, Grand Theft Auto (started as a pc title), Marathon, Masters of Orion, Project Nomad, Neverwinter Nights, Lemmings, Morrowwind.
Altho I agree with your pricepoint rant (just not to the extent you think it runs), that's not the main point grandparent is making.
He's ranting on the fact that the art of real programming is being lost. Look at what the dev's sqeeze out of the PSOne now. They can do amazing stuff, actually on a par with what the launch titles where for PS2 (very nearly). Or look at the fact that only now, years after they got intorduced, there are finally games coming out which support T&L...which was introduced in the Geforce 1!
Thing is, all this "bigger better faster" hardware is allowing programmers to get dumber and dumber. Instead of developing smart programming techniques (compression, faster logic etc), they can use simpler ones and use the hardware to offset the speed decrease.
Not only that, but because the hardware is not understood fully and/or correctly, energy is focussed on aquainting (sp?) the team with the hardware instead of innovative gameplay.
All the grandparent is saying really is that consoles could benefit gameplay wise and monetarily from a longer time between generations. As would the actual art of programming, which is always enhanced by working against constraints.
Not only that, but just a couple of months ago, Nintendo had to pay a fine of +-140 million euro's for anticompetitive practices in Europe...which had earned them over +-450 million euro's: a net profit of 300 million for doing illegal things.
Slashdot Mirror
A Reynolds number details if a flow of liquid is turbulent or laminar, and is used for a number of other calculations. It can also be aplied (with some modification) to small particles (like grain, or nanomachines), which behave like fluids. What the reynolds number can do in relation to human beings is be used in calculations of the musclefibrils, to see at what speeds they can contract (in combination with other factors, but the Reynolds number would tell you what frictions to subtract, among other things). If I'm correct, that's how Freeman Dyson would have used it, not just some random, easy global calculation...'cos science is never that simple.
/mayor/ difference is that the cells in a human body are highly differentiated: there's loads of different cells, and only the muscle cells do the moving...in the nanomachine thing, it's all the same little mahcine, no matter what part of the thing you look in. Which does simplify the movement calculations of the latter.
Also, one
Funny...those technological advances you quote (all of the advances you mention) only apply to the rich 10-20% of the world which live in 'western' societies...one could even argue that the west's standard of living has made lving anywhere else much worse, due to polution and exploitation.
:) and telecomunications etc) means you can be located and taxed. One could argue that that gives a governement power over you, and gives them a powerbase because they can take it away.
No matter what you think of the unabombers methods (I for one find them appaling, but that's me), you should read the manifesto. It is written unarguably by a smart person and contains quite a bit of truth. Failing that, it contains a lot of material that actually makes you think; pertaining to the quoted bit, being tied to one point (by plumbing, which means you need to have a 'home base'
Personally I'd say that that is a direct consequence of the contract you make with society (google for it, it's a widespread idea, that 'contract with society'), but the unabomber manifesto is still a thought provoking bit of work.
And you know what? Maybe Ted whatsisname is right: if he hadn't done what he did, I wouldn't of read it...in that respect, he got what he wanted. That makes him smart enough to know how to get what he wanted; not compasionate, but smart. And reading what smart people say can lead to something all powerfull people fear: thinking.
As much as I agree with the last sentence of your statement, the problem is that the US does have the largest chemical and biological weapons labs in the world. Saying "this research is too dangerous and should not be pursued" might sound nobel, but has no bearing in the real world, where the research will be done anyway, maybe by people with less than honourable intentions. Case in point: the experiments of doctor Mengele (nazi scientist)...the experiments where horrible, absolutely disgusting as to what they did to people...but the knowledge that came from them is great, and we wouldn't be as far in the biosciences without them...now, we coulde have gotten that knowledge another way, but does that mean we should just forget the data Mengele already got?
Anyway, the point is this: we will not be safe untill we as humans get to the point where even the most dangerous knowledge is safe in every mans hand...what I'm saying is that unless people are perfect, knowledge will always be dangerous. But that knowledge is still crucial to the furtherment of humanity and the conservation of the earth. Knowing that fertiliser and orange juice can be made inot an explosive is dangerous knowledge...but drinking the juice is good ofr the body, and fertiliser is good for plants...and if someone devises a way of using the aforementioned explosian to make an environmentally and mechanically safe combustion motor, you'll be glad we had the knowledge that thsoe ingredients could be combined to an explosive.
Heh...reminds me of an interview he once gave (or it might be a post on /. ...dunno) where he said he didn't really do groundbraking work, but just put to use the theoretical tools dreamt up by others.
:) Now if only the 2d artists at id could use any other colour than brown :)
And he does that so well
Uh...what do you think hardware T&L does? The T stands for transform...rotation, scaling, limited morphing...a 3d card is in itself nothing more than a matrix processing machine, designed for handeling vectors, vertexes and polyogons...in other words: geometry.
/would/ be neat for any natural graphical effect (eddies in fog, dirt on textures, landscapes, clouds, trees and plants...whatever).
Now, a hardware fractal solution...that
Actually, it breaks down more like this: ATI does 96 bit precision, Nvidia can do 32, 64 and 128.
Your example with the truncation is a gross simplification, which goes into ATI's favour, but in reality there's way more precision than just 2 decimals...more like 6 for ATI and 8 for Nvidia...which makes a reasonably big difference in quality.
The numbers above are not entirely spot on (except for Nvidia's 128 bit precision, and I can't be arsed to find the exact other numbers), but the principle remains the same: grandparent had it right; ATI for speed, Nvidia for quality (on a ARB2 path...vendor specific paths lead to different results, but are you really going to play the game in anything other than true OpenGL?
They will...you'll see it on the frontpage again tomorrow or the day after.
Good points, but for a couple of niggles:
The cell phone thing is a bit us-centric: the rest of the world (or at least western europe, the middle east and asia) don't have that problem...GSM standard, so it'll only be a problem when you go to the US. Me, I'd love a clie/phone combo, for the same reasons you mentioned PDA's became popular in the first place. For me, mp3-player comes secondary, camera doesn't figure at all, but only if they don't add to the size and weight factor. Idealy, that would add up to the following PDA:
-colour, highrez, full size (as in the whole front of the device) screen
-intergrated GSM
-removable storage
-no screwed up tiny qwerty keyboard! (screw you, TungstenW and Treo!)
And that's it...that's what'll get me to upgrade my IIIc and IrDA cellphone.
But doesn't that only make sense if Linux is perfect to begin with? And if it's not, then doesn't it make sense to update and upgrade the software?
True, it makes more sense to update/grade as is (ie whenever you happen to come up with large-ish improvements) instead of doing it at predefined times, but even so, I'd say that linux is far from perfect at the moment.
No, but its destruction is being used in exactly the same way.
Hey, you too? Three companies which have bought ALL the add time throughout the whole blooming game...and they /were/ crap adds, nearly worse than feminine hygiene products adds.
:) ).
Even so, I must admit I enjoyed the game...and mind you, I'm more of a rugby man myself, so that's saying something (I think
The networks, cleaning up on commercial fees.
True...but the reason for Bush' stalling is quite obvious...he's trying to get the war as close to re-election time as possible.
I dunno...it could show an understanding of history you don't grasp: the twin towers as the Reichstag, the arabs/whole middle east except the isreali as jews/homosexuals/gypsies et al, the whole nuclear and chemical weapons thing as lebensraum (ie any old excuse as justification) and the hiding of oil as the actual cause as the hiding of the extermination camps. Or he could be a troll, of course.
:)
But what this has to do with the Superbowl is beyond me...especially as it's just a pale immitation of rugby
Call me simple, but it's a real question: first you say the fastest LCD pixels have a refresh of 62.5 times a second, then you say that the best LCD's have a refresh of 40 times a second. Maybe it's the way I'm reading the paragraph, but either you're saying there's been a tremendous advance in LCD technology the past two or three months, or you're contradicting yourself. I was subtly asking for clarification...which should have been selfevident looking at the part of your post I quoted.
...in the Netherlands, that would be part of what they call a "pretpakket": basically something like a university degree in macrame. It's stupidly silly.
I heard education in the US sucked, but it's another thing to see it confirmed.
True, but the human eye is exceptionally good at distinguishing contrast. Thus the extra colours do make a huge the difference: they offer a larger contrast.
"A pixel can change its color value on average 1000/16 = 62.5 times per second for the fastest LCDs available. For the best as of a couple months ago that rate is roughly 1000/25 = 40 times a second"
40 or 63.5...which one is it?
That is the only problem with trinitrons...but you'll only notice that on a white background, like when webbrowsing, and only when you first use the monitor...after about 5 days, it's a nonissue. And lets be serious: who needs a trinitron for webbrowsing?
Another plus for trinitron, appart from the !sharp! picture, is it's colour. Very important if you work in print, dtp, video, 3d or anywhere else where colour is important.
Looking purely at your example...if directly priced at $8, D and E would buy it, since they'd know the price wasn't going to drop...which makes $35...still less than $38, but on the other hand, they would capture a bigger marketshare. And I'd be happier with my next big shiny thing.
Hehe...I saw your sig, and the guy under you is posting with a +3, looks like :) But then, whaddaya expect with an ID in the 9 thousands :)
You can play those games (except Sin, which was a steammy bugridden pile of crap anyway), if you know what to do in regard to emulation, cpu slowdown and the like. You can't play the games because you don't put in the small amout of time it takes to track down how to play them. Damn, I can even play all my dos games.
And don't forget Homeworld, Grand Theft Auto (started as a pc title), Marathon, Masters of Orion, Project Nomad, Neverwinter Nights, Lemmings, Morrowwind.
Hell, you could actually even put HALO there.
Altho I agree with your pricepoint rant (just not to the extent you think it runs), that's not the main point grandparent is making.
He's ranting on the fact that the art of real programming is being lost. Look at what the dev's sqeeze out of the PSOne now. They can do amazing stuff, actually on a par with what the launch titles where for PS2 (very nearly). Or look at the fact that only now, years after they got intorduced, there are finally games coming out which support T&L...which was introduced in the Geforce 1!
Thing is, all this "bigger better faster" hardware is allowing programmers to get dumber and dumber. Instead of developing smart programming techniques (compression, faster logic etc), they can use simpler ones and use the hardware to offset the speed decrease.
Not only that, but because the hardware is not understood fully and/or correctly, energy is focussed on aquainting (sp?) the team with the hardware instead of innovative gameplay.
All the grandparent is saying really is that consoles could benefit gameplay wise and monetarily from a longer time between generations. As would the actual art of programming, which is always enhanced by working against constraints.
Not only that, but just a couple of months ago, Nintendo had to pay a fine of +-140 million euro's for anticompetitive practices in Europe...which had earned them over +-450 million euro's: a net profit of 300 million for doing illegal things.