a number of additional technology issues will still need to be worked out for OLED's to get widespread application usage...
"Cheap" is a cure-all for a lot of applications. If I can swap in a new screen for $25 and 5 minutes (like a toner cartridge), then 10K hours isn't so low.
Besides, there are well-known processing paradigms matching this description: data flow (e.g. unix pipelining, probably the easiest known way to do parallel programming) and production systems (based on pattern matching, which is easily made parallel - but you can often get the same speedup with indexing tricks that aren't!)
But even gentoo is bottlenecked by sequential package installation. And within a single package, many of the steps are single-threaded and sequential: downloading,./configure, make install. And even within compilation, separate compilation directories are handled sequentially, and linking is single-threaded.
It's a good example of a time-consuming job an end-user might actually want to run, yet it's bumping up against Amdahl's law already.
It does seem like an awful lot of money. At $1/track they'd have to sell more than one track to every man, woman, and child in the US to recoup it. Are the boomers really buying that much music online?
Good grief, I didn't realize the exchange rate had gotten that bad, but you're right. I think I'm going to have to quit my research position here in the US and get a job in the UK picking strawberries to send money home to my family.
If we ever do get to a point where raytracing -- done on a CPU -- beats out rasterization, done on a GPU, then nVidia's business model falls apart, whereas Intel suddenly becomes much more relevant (as their GPUs tend to suck).
I don't see why ray tracing would necessarily tip things in Intel's favor. Ray tracing is lots of parallel, repetitive floating-point calculations, not so unlike vertex shading. When polygonal 3d graphics started to catch on, I'm sure Intel assumed their CPUs would grow to encompass that task, too, but they didn't, so maybe nVidia should simply get cracking on ray tracing instead of plugging their ears and shouting "neener neener!"
Like the parent poster said, because so many Americans don't want that. If a presidential candidate suggested your idea, they'd be labeled "pro-terrorist" and their poll numbers would drop immediately. Despite years of illegal wiretaps and the administration failing to ever explain why the fisa provisions are insufficient, a great many people are still against requiring warrants for wiretaps. They don't listen, they don't think. You push their "terrorist" fear button and they say immediately say "yes" to anything.
The central thesis appears towards the end of the article. The idea is that something like Excel represents a different coding paradigm that hasn't been seriously considered, where you basically lay out what your stuff is supposed to do, i.e. declare it instead of coding it sequentially.
I'd say it has been seriously considered. (If there's anything the Internet has taught us, it's that having an original thought is incredibly difficult). It's on the Wikipedia entry for Spreadsheets, for one thing (which cites Alan Kay, so the idea goes back quite a ways):
There are no 'side effects' to calculating a formula: the only output is to display the calculated result inside its occupying cell. There is no natural mechanism for permanently modifying the contents of a cell unless the user manually modifies the cell's contents. In the context of programming languages, this yields a limited form of first-order functional programming.
I recall a quote to the effect that COBOL and BASIC were supposed to bring programming to the masses but failed; what finally succeeded was the spreadsheet. I can't find the exact quote but here is a rather large study on the topic from 1990:
This paper describes the properties of the spreadsheet interface and the ways in which spreadsheets support users with little or no formal training in programming... The usefulness of spreadsheets derives from two properties of their design:
Computational techniques that match users' tasks and that shield users from the low-level details of traditional programming, and
A table-oriented interface that serves as a model for users' applications.
Obama has already stated that he wants to stop development of future combat systems as well as unilaterally eliminate nukes.
You are lying. What those links say is that Obama would use diplomatic means in an effort to eliminate nuclear weapons everywhere, and that we would reduce our own stockpiles. Nothing you cited says he would unilaterally eliminate our stockpile. He never said any such thing.
Widescreen displays? Pretty much every manufacturer in 2007 (including Lenovo, for that matter), and a large few in 2003-2006, and as far back as 2001 for Apple
Plus, widescreens are inferior (unless your main task is watching DVDs). They should instead be called "shortscreens." They have less surface area than a normal aspect screen with the same diagonal measurement. Ask yourself this question, do you do more vertical scrolling or horizontal scrolling?
On my '98 Jetta GLX (made proudly in Mexico), virtually all the electronics have failed, repeatedly. Now I've almost given up and get by with 1 remaining power window, no power locks, no CD changer. And I just had to replace the ignition switch. And I can't say I love mine so much any more.
"On a trip" is when hybrids gain their least advantage. It's stop-and-go driving where they shine. This is important since most miles driven in the US are now stop and go.
...swap out all 'good' electronics for cheap replacements.
Maybe not even that; cutting out the American overlords means fat profits even if you don't change the specs at all. I heard of a case where some shoe maker, maybe Addidas but I forget, dumped their old Chinese manufacturer for a new one. But the old one just kept making the same product, just exporting it through different channels (which is obviously illegal since they were no longer authorized to use the trademark).
Oh my gosh. Have you ever actually had a job doing manual labor? I have. (Including washing cars and hand-planting gladiola bulbs, among others). I don't know which is worse, the agonizing boredom that makes an hour seem like a day, the physical discomfort, or the poor treatment from supervisors. The fact that I make 10x more now (and I am not exaggerating, I just figured it out) for sitting on my butt, doing email, going to meetings, and occasionally checking slashdot is surely proof that something is wrong with the universe.
They wouldn't be such bad jobs if we didn't permit illegal immigration to mess with the labor supply to drive down wages. For whatever reason, a lot of people have it in their minds that hard physical work "just must be" worthless because it doesn't take much training. But if it came down to it, I'm betting they'd much rather do their desk jobs than pick strawberries even for the very same pay.
I don't think blast charges oxidize with the atmosphere do they? Doesn't seem like that would mix fast enough. Torpedoes don't seem to have any trouble. As for regolith, "Portable antitank weapons have become more powerful, more reliable, and more available worldwide since the early 1980s. Many of these weapons are capable of penetrating 20 to 40 inches of armor plate steel" (cite). For that matter, anything that gets all the way from the earth to the moon is going to arrive with plenty of momentum. Maybe they could just drop a DU rod out of the probe before initiating deceleration for the landing?
What consumers are increasingly going to want is a comprehensive telecom service: phone+TV+internet.
All I want is the internet - super fast and super cheap. After that, services like usenet, telephone, WWW, and TV are just different ways to access it. In particular, there is no real reason we have to pay for telephone service these days. Heck, telephone doesn't even require special servers to store and forward data like email does.
What sounds interesting to me is wave (or wind) plus solar. I would imagine when the sea is at dead calm, it is usually sunny. And when the sun isn't out, it's normally windy and wavy.
It's not just regenerative braking. Internal combustion engines are very inefficient/nonfunctional outside a certain range of RPMs. There are a couple problems with this. First, we have to lug around these complex mechanical things called "clutches" and "transmissions," and second, we still aren't running our internal combustion engines at peak efficiency most of the time. For this reason, powering an electric motor indirectly from an internal combustion engine might make sense (I'm not sure).
That said, I think we're making too much of this "make hydrogen while driving" remark. Efficient energy storage/retrieval is definitely a very useful thing, whether or not we end up with vehicles that do so as they drive.
Don't say it's "just" a battery technology, because that's enormous. What do nay-sayers have against wind and solar? They're not ubiquitous. But if something like an efficient hydrogen "battery" lets you store and transport energy, problem solved. (In fact, as a resident of New Mexico, I'm pretty sure we could become a "net exporter" and make a lot of $$$).
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, there are well-known processing paradigms matching this description: data flow (e.g. unix pipelining, probably the easiest known way to do parallel programming) and production systems (based on pattern matching, which is easily made parallel - but you can often get the same speedup with indexing tricks that aren't!)
It's a good example of a time-consuming job an end-user might actually want to run, yet it's bumping up against Amdahl's law already.
I've had good luck with half.com, and shipping is only $3 per CD.
It does seem like an awful lot of money. At $1/track they'd have to sell more than one track to every man, woman, and child in the US to recoup it. Are the boomers really buying that much music online?
Like the parent poster said, because so many Americans don't want that. If a presidential candidate suggested your idea, they'd be labeled "pro-terrorist" and their poll numbers would drop immediately. Despite years of illegal wiretaps and the administration failing to ever explain why the fisa provisions are insufficient, a great many people are still against requiring warrants for wiretaps. They don't listen, they don't think. You push their "terrorist" fear button and they say immediately say "yes" to anything.
Engine braking isn't really any better.
On my '98 Jetta GLX (made proudly in Mexico), virtually all the electronics have failed, repeatedly. Now I've almost given up and get by with 1 remaining power window, no power locks, no CD changer. And I just had to replace the ignition switch. And I can't say I love mine so much any more.
"On a trip" is when hybrids gain their least advantage. It's stop-and-go driving where they shine. This is important since most miles driven in the US are now stop and go.
Oh my gosh. Have you ever actually had a job doing manual labor? I have. (Including washing cars and hand-planting gladiola bulbs, among others). I don't know which is worse, the agonizing boredom that makes an hour seem like a day, the physical discomfort, or the poor treatment from supervisors. The fact that I make 10x more now (and I am not exaggerating, I just figured it out) for sitting on my butt, doing email, going to meetings, and occasionally checking slashdot is surely proof that something is wrong with the universe.
Everything you said is true not only of the govt but private enterprise as well. A great percentage of large-scale IT projects, in particular, fail.
They wouldn't be such bad jobs if we didn't permit illegal immigration to mess with the labor supply to drive down wages. For whatever reason, a lot of people have it in their minds that hard physical work "just must be" worthless because it doesn't take much training. But if it came down to it, I'm betting they'd much rather do their desk jobs than pick strawberries even for the very same pay.
I don't think blast charges oxidize with the atmosphere do they? Doesn't seem like that would mix fast enough. Torpedoes don't seem to have any trouble. As for regolith, "Portable antitank weapons have become more powerful, more reliable, and more available worldwide since the early 1980s. Many of these weapons are capable of penetrating 20 to 40 inches of armor plate steel" (cite). For that matter, anything that gets all the way from the earth to the moon is going to arrive with plenty of momentum. Maybe they could just drop a DU rod out of the probe before initiating deceleration for the landing?
What sounds interesting to me is wave (or wind) plus solar. I would imagine when the sea is at dead calm, it is usually sunny. And when the sun isn't out, it's normally windy and wavy.
Bring on the dynamite!
That said, I think we're making too much of this "make hydrogen while driving" remark. Efficient energy storage/retrieval is definitely a very useful thing, whether or not we end up with vehicles that do so as they drive.
Don't say it's "just" a battery technology, because that's enormous. What do nay-sayers have against wind and solar? They're not ubiquitous. But if something like an efficient hydrogen "battery" lets you store and transport energy, problem solved. (In fact, as a resident of New Mexico, I'm pretty sure we could become a "net exporter" and make a lot of $$$).