From the following, it sounds like 1 Teraflop - not theoretical, but on Linpack -
Is available on a desktop, now or very soon:
Intel has been working hard on its many-integrated core (MIC), which it describes as a 50+ core capable of one teraflops real-world performance. Intel revealed its strategy and product branding at the International SuperÂcomputing Conference held last June in Hamburg. It showed the Xeon Phi as an AIB that fits into one PCIe slot. The system had two Xeon E5 processors and a Knights Corner co-processor running the Linpack benchmark and hitting the magic one teraflops number.
August 31, 2012
That would be the fastest supercomputer in the world until early 1997.
There was not one prediction here, but several. For example Rasmussen missed 6 of 9 swing-state predictions, whereas Silverman and a few others nailed them all.
So, while you're technically correct, the odds of this occurring purely by chance are quite small.
This time I watched Avatar it was over the course of 4 evenings (about an hour per night with one break) and I enjoyed it that way. The plot is preachy, sure. But a movie (especially a largely CGI movie) has extremely small environmental impact, for wealth (GDP) it produces. It's almost pure value added.
You know, for all the old nostalgia about old movies and all the crap we give new ones, I think this is a golden age. Even 5 or 10 years ago I never had access to so many unique films from around the globe. There are more people making smarter, better-acted movies than ever.
And since we're on James Bond, I'll even speak up for today's blockbusters; the huge sums spent on making films today *does* create a bigger stage. I re-watched Avatar the other night. I know the plot bothers people but, man, I just think the visual spectacle, and the detail in the world they created for that film is amazing. It was never possible before. I sit through a Bond film and think, "yeah, I can tell they spent $1 million per minute on this."
The above quote from Bezos is what he said during the launch of the Kindle Fire HD, which amazon sees primarily as an outlet for their services. In this Amazon is aping Apple which is making great profits selling devices that do an intentionally limited set of things (services) seamlessly. Yes in each case there is an associated gadget but open-ended computing is not only not emphasized, it is precluded.
Or as stated by Jeff Bezos (founder and CEO of amazon.com): "People want services, not gadgets."
Frankly I think Richard Stallman looks more and more like a prophet every year. (And I doubt Jesus or Moses' personal hygene was especially good, either).
I'm pretty sure a CEO of a company worth getting bought out by Facebook would probably be a little more prudent with his money than some trailer trash who blows a quarter of his $200 weekly paycheck on lotto tickets.
That's the crux of this article. The "lottery mentality" we mock in inner-city kids neglecting school in hopes of the NBA, is it so different than the college kid who drops out to start the "next Facebook"? I don't think it's possible to be a 1 in a million success without taking foolish risks. It's an interesting paradox I think.
The low-ed Surface has 32 GB whereas the low-end iPad has only 16. So write off the entire 16 GB used by preinstalled apps, and it's still ahead.
That said, I just read Farhad Manjoo's review of the Surface, and I don't think the amount of memory matters for other reasons... namely that the Surface is a sluggish, buggy faux-pc that also isn't any better for "real work" than the iPad. In particular, MS Office on the Surface sux. Pity.
During the day it's not all that unlikely to be home without using any extra electricity. Nor is likely to not be using electricity when you're not there - it could be anything from a water heater, a fridge, a pot farm, a PVR, or cordless weedwacker recharging.
I'm sure there are clues about whether people are home from electricity usage, but if they're not all that reliable, then they're not that useful for analyzing a large number of homes in a short period of time to find a particularly vulnerable one.
For that matter I doubt that homes with relatively obvious signs of absence (like a trash can left at the curb for 2 days) are in short supply.
We are talking about AT MOST an issue of $10 on a $699 product here. (I say "at most" because there's no way the Surface could use 0 MB of built-in storage for its OS and applications.) So how does caring about this make any sense? It's like complaining that a new digital camera can only hold 3 pictures in its built-in storage.
In practice you're being sold a 16GB tablet when you think you're buying a 32GB one.
Maybe you think that's a big deal because a 16 GB iPad costs $100 more than a 32GB one, versus $9.99 to add 16GB to the Surface. And in fact, the add-in card is better, because you easily swap out different cards with different contents. I have a MicroSD with my entire music collection for my Sansa Clip+, and might want to pop it into a tablet without waiting for a 20GB file copy.
It accepts a MicroSD, so who cares?
Contrary to the market-segmentation-via-soldered-in-SSD strategy of certain other companies, the fact is, the stuff is very cheap - $1 per gigabyte.
Why not use the existing infrastructure instead? You're talking about investing billions into something that needs to be researched, manufactured and maintained. Then updated every few decades.
What? No. I'm talking about having some of these ready for deployment. They're currently used at football games and such.
Even that's ambitious; it's probably more reasonable in an emergency to have a much smaller tower and require people to come closer to it.
I think hardening requirements for cellular infrastructure may be a good idea, but it can still be wiped out by a disaster.
Maybe portable cell towers (with recharging docks for the phones?) would be better. Or for that matter, a kiosk where a Red Cross worker lets people use a satellite phone for 3 minutes per turn. The problem with fixed emergency infrastructure like phone boxes is they may get wiped out, and they're sitting unused almost always.
One other fact that usually gets tossed into this discussion is that military aircraft have been pushing the envelope in using composites for decades. (Whether comparable in application or duty cycle I do not know).
Define "easily." The people we're using them against now certainly haven't had very much success in stopping us. Yes, there was that one that crash landed in Iran, maybe their doing, but I don't think that's terribly significant long-term. We're still using them in the region.
When and if there's another total war between major powers, I agree that unless there are some really sneaky defenses that aren't publicly known, satellites are awfully vulnerable. One could imagine a mesh network of UAVs relaying each other's comms. But again, that requires air dominance, which requires an aircraft carrier nearby, which practically requires nuclear capability... and so on.
Without more detail I am skeptical of the accusations that he was "too aggressive" with this stuff or that it was a serious dereliction of his job.
There was more detail - he got a trial to air his side of the story. And he lost. And I am glad there are such trials, and approve of paying taxes to support them, because I agree there is a big potential for unfair bias in employment.
Although I think it usually cuts the other way. For example, there is a de-facto Christianity test for the Presidency of the United States.
I would guess that issue is much more muddled at JPL because they're working on government projects using government money.
The private religious university I attended has a strict rule about accepting public funds because above some threshold, determined by law, you are subject to a lot of federal non-discrimination laws that would preclude things like firing a professor for his religious views.
Slashdot Mirror
Under MS, yes. The true predecessor to the modern tablet is the Palm Pilot. It was a tablet by any reasonable definition.
.
From the following, it sounds like 1 Teraflop - not theoretical, but on Linpack - Is available on a desktop, now or very soon:
August 31, 2012
That would be the fastest supercomputer in the world until early 1997.
There was not one prediction here, but several. For example Rasmussen missed 6 of 9 swing-state predictions, whereas Silverman and a few others nailed them all. So, while you're technically correct, the odds of this occurring purely by chance are quite small.
This time I watched Avatar it was over the course of 4 evenings (about an hour per night with one break) and I enjoyed it that way. The plot is preachy, sure. But a movie (especially a largely CGI movie) has extremely small environmental impact, for wealth (GDP) it produces. It's almost pure value added.
I guess Kodak is still selling $5 disposable cameras after all.
And since we're on James Bond, I'll even speak up for today's blockbusters; the huge sums spent on making films today *does* create a bigger stage. I re-watched Avatar the other night. I know the plot bothers people but, man, I just think the visual spectacle, and the detail in the world they created for that film is amazing. It was never possible before. I sit through a Bond film and think, "yeah, I can tell they spent $1 million per minute on this."
The above quote from Bezos is what he said during the launch of the Kindle Fire HD, which amazon sees primarily as an outlet for their services. In this Amazon is aping Apple which is making great profits selling devices that do an intentionally limited set of things (services) seamlessly. Yes in each case there is an associated gadget but open-ended computing is not only not emphasized, it is precluded.
No fair, my post used actual numbers and yours are complete baloney.
Here's a specific difference: 2 trillion dollars in additional defense spending. (That is equal to 4,000 times Soylindra). Good idea or bad idea?
Frankly I think Richard Stallman looks more and more like a prophet every year. (And I doubt Jesus or Moses' personal hygene was especially good, either).
That's the crux of this article. The "lottery mentality" we mock in inner-city kids neglecting school in hopes of the NBA, is it so different than the college kid who drops out to start the "next Facebook"? I don't think it's possible to be a 1 in a million success without taking foolish risks. It's an interesting paradox I think.
That said, I just read Farhad Manjoo's review of the Surface, and I don't think the amount of memory matters for other reasons... namely that the Surface is a sluggish, buggy faux-pc that also isn't any better for "real work" than the iPad. In particular, MS Office on the Surface sux. Pity.
I'm sure there are clues about whether people are home from electricity usage, but if they're not all that reliable, then they're not that useful for analyzing a large number of homes in a short period of time to find a particularly vulnerable one.
For that matter I doubt that homes with relatively obvious signs of absence (like a trash can left at the curb for 2 days) are in short supply.
"Pretty sure"? Is this any more reliable than just looking to see if the home is dark? (If so, how?)
We are talking about AT MOST an issue of $10 on a $699 product here. (I say "at most" because there's no way the Surface could use 0 MB of built-in storage for its OS and applications.) So how does caring about this make any sense? It's like complaining that a new digital camera can only hold 3 pictures in its built-in storage.
Maybe you think that's a big deal because a 16 GB iPad costs $100 more than a 32GB one, versus $9.99 to add 16GB to the Surface. And in fact, the add-in card is better, because you easily swap out different cards with different contents. I have a MicroSD with my entire music collection for my Sansa Clip+, and might want to pop it into a tablet without waiting for a 20GB file copy.
It accepts a MicroSD, so who cares? Contrary to the market-segmentation-via-soldered-in-SSD strategy of certain other companies, the fact is, the stuff is very cheap - $1 per gigabyte.
What? No. I'm talking about having some of these ready for deployment. They're currently used at football games and such.
Even that's ambitious; it's probably more reasonable in an emergency to have a much smaller tower and require people to come closer to it.
I think hardening requirements for cellular infrastructure may be a good idea, but it can still be wiped out by a disaster.
I'm afraid there's no way to hide one of these inside an iPhone. Not yet anyways.
Maybe portable cell towers (with recharging docks for the phones?) would be better. Or for that matter, a kiosk where a Red Cross worker lets people use a satellite phone for 3 minutes per turn. The problem with fixed emergency infrastructure like phone boxes is they may get wiped out, and they're sitting unused almost always.
One other fact that usually gets tossed into this discussion is that military aircraft have been pushing the envelope in using composites for decades. (Whether comparable in application or duty cycle I do not know).
When and if there's another total war between major powers, I agree that unless there are some really sneaky defenses that aren't publicly known, satellites are awfully vulnerable. One could imagine a mesh network of UAVs relaying each other's comms. But again, that requires air dominance, which requires an aircraft carrier nearby, which practically requires nuclear capability... and so on.
They're like cellphones - for all the end-user attention lavished on handsets, what really enabled them is the infrastructure.
There was more detail - he got a trial to air his side of the story. And he lost. And I am glad there are such trials, and approve of paying taxes to support them, because I agree there is a big potential for unfair bias in employment.
Although I think it usually cuts the other way. For example, there is a de-facto Christianity test for the Presidency of the United States.
The private religious university I attended has a strict rule about accepting public funds because above some threshold, determined by law, you are subject to a lot of federal non-discrimination laws that would preclude things like firing a professor for his religious views.