Parallel computing is the forseeable future of computing.
Distributed parallel computing, on the other hand, may be entirely pointless.
It all depends on the relative expense of computation vs bandwidth - not just bandwidth, but bandwidth + all the other hassles, expenses, and technicalities of distributed computing.
So far it's almost always easier (cheaper) to put together the computational resources you need than to put together a network giving you the same capabilities using others' computers.
My concern is that a fucking war is not entertainment.
That's beside the point. Having a clearer picture of what's really going on will not promote war, it will just expose it for what it is.
Look at the Abu-Grave. There were already written accounts of what was going on, so pictures shouldn't have made a difference - but it made all the difference in the world.
I don't see why you think picking up realistic sound should require trickery or bulky equipment - my eyes and ears do fine, all packaged into a bone ball no larger than the size of a normal human skull.
And then there's your concern that a high fidelity, minimal-commentary feed from the battlefield is too.... what? realistic? unrealistic? too much shock and awe, or not enough?
I hope you feel better now.
But since WMA beats AAC even at 128 kpbs, there's little doubt that the MS offering is higher quality than iTunes. Add to that the higher bitrate, and it's a slam dunk over 128 kbps AAC.
Commence critiquing the benchmark, but at least try to find an equally or more credible benchmark that has different findings. From everything I've seen the believe that WMA just must suck is wishful thinking.
As for the MHz "myth," MHz is perfectly fine for comparing within a single architecture (or codec), and about as fair as any other benchmark for comparing between architectures if you knock down the P4 by about 25%. The Pentium-M, AMD 64, and PowerPC are all fairly close in IPC. Most of the bencharks that sharply contradict MHz are on some narrow benchmark, carefully chosen to "prove" a point.
Nothing is free, but this would eliminate the biggest expenses of such a service - advertising and billing.
Cities often spend money to improve their image and attract business, because they think it's a good investment. At least this benefits everybody and contribues to commerce in a reasonably direct way. In short, I'll take citywide WiFi over a tax break for Wal-Mart any day.
The Internet has no real way to identify people. Never did. Big deal. It's no different than payphones - there are lots of ways to get onto the Internet anonymously. Tracking everybody and everything so nobody can put a virus on the 'net is a totally unrealistic pipe dream, and chasing that fantasy will only burden legitimate users in a myriad of ways.
I wonder if somebody could explain why dual-core CPUs are a good idea. If it's a pair of cores on a single piece of silicon, it seems it would take the same silicon as two separate cpus, so where's the benefit? You'd save the cost of an extra socket on the motherboard, but then again yield decreases roughly exponentially with die size, which argues for 2 separate cpus.
...that cooling would be a problem in this form factor, wouldn't you?
I would think a large, thin shape like this would be great for heat dissipation. On the other hand, having the hard drive and fan up close to your head would magnify any noise.
Sure, I know that the chips Apple uses don't run at the blistering, silicon-melting temperatures of the Athlon-XP
This is the G5, so yes it does. That's why there's no G5 powerbook.
I'm sure you're right, these aren't going to sell in huge numbers. As for the utilization issue, though, I don't think it's for programmers. Like the summary says, think animators - nothing is easier to paralellize than rendering frames in an animation.
Personally, I think most of these will still end up as servers for groups of people instead of individual "workstations." But the logistics of a normal 100-workstation cluster are pretty bad - a large server room, enormous air conditioning unit, a massive power supply, and lots of cabling to be done. This new thing can probably share an existing server room with other computers.
Granted, it's probably just a bit smaller and more power efficient than previous "blade" servers, but maybe presenting it as something brand new is a good marketing angle.
Unfortunately there are other, IMHO more disturbing occurrances of this kind lately.
NBC ran a story on how several people have been arrested this year for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts at Bush rallies. They wear something over the shirt (otherwise they couldn't even get in), then reveal the shirt. Then the Secret Service tells the local cops to revoke their "pass" (to public grounds) and arrest them for trespassing. The charges don't stand up in court, but by then of course the false arrest has served its purpose.
Second are these "protest zones." (I'm aware BOTH parties are guilty of this, so don't point that out as if it nullifies the issue somehow). This is America; we do not have "free speech zones."
Nobody ever said Democracy wasn't a little inconvenient or expensive at times. We don't seem to mind sending our soldiers to die for our rights, or spending billions on nation building, yet somehow can supress those same rights at home by citing the fear of crumpling the grass in a public park.
Since you're only using the keys from a single keyboard for your fridge magnets, a question arises: what's the longest english word that only uses each letter once? How about the longest sentence?
Going against basic instincts can eventually cause insanity or at least mental instability.
Oh good grief, welcome to the 60's.
You don't have to do something just because you "feel like it." If you're so interested in the evolution of impulse, stop and think why we (humans) also evolved the ability to override those impulses, and how it separates us from the (other) animals.
I don't see how the study proves anything at all. Anything that elicits an emotion must stimulate the corresponding brain region; otherwise you wouldn't feel the emotion.
If you play Beethoven for a classical music lover, it will stimulate their pleasure center; if you force them to hear the same Beethoven number 50 times in a row while giving them a painful electric shock, I predict that the 51st playing (without the shock) will now stimulate the "displeasure" center. So what does that prove about a biological basis for Beethoven?
Why not save money and buy a Mac laptop, then, and install Linux? You get the same benefits on a Linux box, and you save money
Well, Macs are not the best for me.
I did have a TiBook. The hardware was OK, but missing some features I wanted, like a swappable drive bay, and a three-button trackpoint [ducks!]. And IMHO the Pentium-M is clearly the best mobile processor out there right now - both faster and longer run-time than the competition.
Also, I will grudgingly admit the ability to multiboot to WinXP is a benefit to me. On my Thinkpad I can usually do that under VMware without exiting Linux. Or at worst, reboot to Windows for real and feel the burn:/
I also tried YellowDog on the TiBook. It was good, as far as it went, but there aren't enough Linux users on the Mac to get much synergy. It seems like a lot of non-YellowDog apps had trouble. And the free-ness of Linux is something I'm really attached to. The ability to reach into the source and make those little tweaks when you need to is addictive. Perhaps equally, I love the generally Spam-free nature of OSS. I feel my computer is working only for me.
For people who want many of the same benefits on a linux box, I suggest IBM Thinkpads. They are a little more expensive than some laptops that seem comparable "by the numbers," but I find the quality to be good. They offer a 3-year extended warranty for a reasonable price, so that says something. Linux compatibility is quite good also. (This from somebody who puts a lot of hard miles on his laptops).
Again, my point is that it doesn't matter if the downloaded version is cracked. If the game were only officially available on CD/DVD, it would still be cracked and distributed online. The only difference is whether to save on distribution costs for paying customers.
Valve's distribution idea is interesting, but I hope for their sake that the security's very strong, requiring all sorts of authorizations and whatnots.
Aren't cracked versions of all games available via p2p anyways, for people willing to go that route? If this game is somehow "uncrackable," it would be a first. Even if the game is cracked, limiting official distribution to CD or DVD wouldn't change a thing.
Slashdot Mirror
It all depends on the relative expense of computation vs bandwidth - not just bandwidth, but bandwidth + all the other hassles, expenses, and technicalities of distributed computing.
So far it's almost always easier (cheaper) to put together the computational resources you need than to put together a network giving you the same capabilities using others' computers.
Wow, I've never been so tempted to join the NRA.
Look at the Abu-Grave. There were already written accounts of what was going on, so pictures shouldn't have made a difference - but it made all the difference in the world.
And then there's your concern that a high fidelity, minimal-commentary feed from the battlefield is too.... what? realistic? unrealistic? too much shock and awe, or not enough?
Commence critiquing the benchmark, but at least try to find an equally or more credible benchmark that has different findings. From everything I've seen the believe that WMA just must suck is wishful thinking.
As for the MHz "myth," MHz is perfectly fine for comparing within a single architecture (or codec), and about as fair as any other benchmark for comparing between architectures if you knock down the P4 by about 25%. The Pentium-M, AMD 64, and PowerPC are all fairly close in IPC. Most of the bencharks that sharply contradict MHz are on some narrow benchmark, carefully chosen to "prove" a point.
I would really like you to explain just what "cyber terrorism" means. I claim there is no such thing, in any meaningful sense.
Cities often spend money to improve their image and attract business, because they think it's a good investment. At least this benefits everybody and contribues to commerce in a reasonably direct way. In short, I'll take citywide WiFi over a tax break for Wal-Mart any day.
The Internet has no real way to identify people. Never did. Big deal. It's no different than payphones - there are lots of ways to get onto the Internet anonymously. Tracking everybody and everything so nobody can put a virus on the 'net is a totally unrealistic pipe dream, and chasing that fantasy will only burden legitimate users in a myriad of ways.
I wonder if somebody could explain why dual-core CPUs are a good idea. If it's a pair of cores on a single piece of silicon, it seems it would take the same silicon as two separate cpus, so where's the benefit? You'd save the cost of an extra socket on the motherboard, but then again yield decreases roughly exponentially with die size, which argues for 2 separate cpus.
Personally, I think most of these will still end up as servers for groups of people instead of individual "workstations." But the logistics of a normal 100-workstation cluster are pretty bad - a large server room, enormous air conditioning unit, a massive power supply, and lots of cabling to be done. This new thing can probably share an existing server room with other computers.
Granted, it's probably just a bit smaller and more power efficient than previous "blade" servers, but maybe presenting it as something brand new is a good marketing angle.
NBC ran a story on how several people have been arrested this year for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts at Bush rallies. They wear something over the shirt (otherwise they couldn't even get in), then reveal the shirt. Then the Secret Service tells the local cops to revoke their "pass" (to public grounds) and arrest them for trespassing. The charges don't stand up in court, but by then of course the false arrest has served its purpose.
Second are these "protest zones." (I'm aware BOTH parties are guilty of this, so don't point that out as if it nullifies the issue somehow). This is America; we do not have "free speech zones."
Nobody ever said Democracy wasn't a little inconvenient or expensive at times. We don't seem to mind sending our soldiers to die for our rights, or spending billions on nation building, yet somehow can supress those same rights at home by citing the fear of crumpling the grass in a public park.
Since you're only using the keys from a single keyboard for your fridge magnets, a question arises: what's the longest english word that only uses each letter once? How about the longest sentence?
You don't have to do something just because you "feel like it." If you're so interested in the evolution of impulse, stop and think why we (humans) also evolved the ability to override those impulses, and how it separates us from the (other) animals.
If you play Beethoven for a classical music lover, it will stimulate their pleasure center; if you force them to hear the same Beethoven number 50 times in a row while giving them a painful electric shock, I predict that the 51st playing (without the shock) will now stimulate the "displeasure" center. So what does that prove about a biological basis for Beethoven?
It's rarely so simple. You probably have to lose receiver power just as you're accepting noise from bad reception, or somesuch.
The official state vehicle is a '79 Blazer.
Also, I will grudgingly admit the ability to multiboot to WinXP is a benefit to me. On my Thinkpad I can usually do that under VMware without exiting Linux. Or at worst, reboot to Windows for real and feel the burn :/
I also tried YellowDog on the TiBook. It was good, as far as it went, but there aren't enough Linux users on the Mac to get much synergy. It seems like a lot of non-YellowDog apps had trouble. And the free-ness of Linux is something I'm really attached to. The ability to reach into the source and make those little tweaks when you need to is addictive. Perhaps equally, I love the generally Spam-free nature of OSS. I feel my computer is working only for me.
For people who want many of the same benefits on a linux box, I suggest IBM Thinkpads. They are a little more expensive than some laptops that seem comparable "by the numbers," but I find the quality to be good. They offer a 3-year extended warranty for a reasonable price, so that says something. Linux compatibility is quite good also. (This from somebody who puts a lot of hard miles on his laptops).
Again, my point is that it doesn't matter if the downloaded version is cracked. If the game were only officially available on CD/DVD, it would still be cracked and distributed online. The only difference is whether to save on distribution costs for paying customers.