Despite this, there have been complaints from the PC industry that Vista isn't enough of a resource hog to force people to buy new hardware.
Now I understand where Linux failed all the time: It's not ressource hungry enough! We only have to make it eat memory and processor time like mad, and it will come preinstalled on about every computer!
Back in the days of DOS, you could do with a 2 megabyte program and 1 mb ram, what today takes a 200mb program and 50 megs of ram. THIS IS NOT PROGRESS.
But back in the days of DOS, you didn't get a nice blue screen when the computer crashed! THIS IS PROGRESS!
Moore's Law cannot be a crappy measurement, because it isn't a measurement at all. It is not even a measure (such as GHz or lines of code). It's an observation, and an extrapolation from that observation. The observation is simply true. One might argue its relevance, but that's it. The extrapolation is questionable, but seems to have worked up to now. It probably will stop working at some time in the future.
but we have no basis for thinking it would be true anywhere else in the universe or that it will continue to hold true in the future.
Even more, we have basis for thinking it will not continue to hold true at some time in the future. That's because it's quite unlikely that we will ever have several transistors per atom.
"Superman hails from a long-dead planet, the planet Krypton. Krypton's Jupiter-like size and red sun kept the Kryptonian race weak, while on Earth Krypton's last son is the mightiest of all!"-Action Comics no.14
Ok, the red sun already fits. But the Jupiter-size planet?
There are many more options for a planet to look like than being rocky or ocean-covered, and most planets found up to now, especially all other extrasolar ones, were neither rocky, nor ocean covered.
Moore's Law is about the transistor density on the chip. A new processor design may help getting more performance from the same transistor density, but it certainly doesn't anything to increase the transistor density.
Since there's a finite atom density on a chip, the transistor density will inevitably stop to grow eventually.
If the EU is hostile enough to international business the problem will self correct.
The EU isn't hostile to international business. It's just hostile to monopolies and cartels abusing their marketing power. In other words, to those who break the law.
Once the only plane you can fly is an Airbus for 1500 EURO because they forced out the competition.
I guess if Airbus ever manages to make an airplane which costs not more than 1500 Euro, it will get the complete market anyway:-) But otherwise, I don't see what you want to get at here. There are to my knowledge absolutely no anti-Boeing regulations in the EU.
Everyone can just trash their computers and buy from Apple...
... or keep their computers and install Linux. BTW, the already installed base wouldn't at all be affected. Only new licenses wouldn't be sold.
and then Apple with have the monopoly.
I doubt it. But if so, it's likely they won't abuse their monopoly. Not because of goodwill (I don't trust Apple any more than MS), but because they wouldn't be so silly to lose their biggest market (and the EU would be their biggest market, because it would be the only market without MS competition). And because their monopoly would likely only be in the EU; and the market forces from outside the EU would keep them somewhat honest.
Well, that's dependent on the interpretation. The point is, there's no way to distinguish a collapsed wave function where you don't know which of the alternatives it collapsed into from a non-collapsed wavefunction entangled with a third, inaccessible system. It that were not so, you could use entangled systems as superluminal communication device: One party measures his part of the system in order to collapse the wave function, and the other one measures his part in order to determine if the wave function has collapsed.
I'm guessing you've never heard of a SQuID (super-conducting quantum interference device) then? It relies on quantum-mechanical effects for its operation. No research into QM, no nifty little medical imaging device.
An even better example: There would be no way to build a current CPU (or even an old 8-bit 8080) without QM. The only existing computers would still be room-sized energy-hungry monsters which could be beaten by our pocket calculators. There would be no PC, no mobile phone, no mp3 player, no CD or DVD player. There would be no GPS (atomic clocks need QM, too!), no LCD screens and no LEDs.
Well, the splitting in the many-worlds interpretation isn't really a creation of new universes. It's more like having two separate views on the same universe, and the results of measurements depend on the view we have of the universe. When doing a quantum experiment, it's basically that view which splits.
Maybe as a rough analog one could use a fork call on Unix. Say, we have a 32-bit machine with 4GB virtual address space. After the fork, both child processes have a separate 4GB virtual address space. But your computer's memory clearly has not doubled.
Well, they performed the experiment. They calculated what quantum mechanics says, and they calculated what their model of reality demanded. They not only found out that those two are incompatible, but that the measurement results followed the predictions of quantum mechanics, violating their "reality condition". This disproves that the "real world" is real in the way they define reality.
However one can question if their definition of reality is "right" in the sense that everything not fulfilling the conditions could not reasonably be considered "real". This is I think what Alain Aspect meant when he said "the team's philosophical conclusions are subjective."
Indeed, in the article, there's the following:
assumtion (1) requires that an individual measurement outcome [...] is predetermined by some set of hidden variables lambda, and a three-dimensional vector u, as well as by some set of other possibly non-local parameters eta
If I read that correctly, this assumes a deterministic dependence of the measurement results from the state before measurement. While this certainly is in line with Einstein's thinking ("god does not play dice"), I don't think it is a necessary condition for reality. So this experiment IMHO only disproves the combination of realism and "measurement determinism".
What you complained about is absolutely unrelated to the BASIC implementation of the Spectrum. It's the Spectrum's input method you had problems with.
To highlight just one point where ZX BASIC is clearly superior than C64 BASIC:
How hard was it to write a program which let you input an arbitrary function (which used only built-in BASIC commands), and plot its graph on the screen? Well, you'd have to write your own expression parser, despite the fact that a parser for BASIC expression was already built into the computer!
OTOH, with the ZX Spectrum, the parsing could be done with a simple VAL. That is, input your formula into some string variable (say, f$), and then evaluate it at any time with VAL f$. The only BASIC I've seen to have that capability was ZX BASIC. I don't understand why, after all those were all interpreters, and thus had to have the parsing code in memory anyway. All that was missing was a way to call it on your strings.
The same text again in German, in case you didn't understand the English above -- Derselbe Text nochmal auf Deutsch, für den Fall, daß Du das Englisch oben nicht verstanden hast.
Worüber Du Dich beschwert hast, hat überhaupt nichts mit der BASIC-Implementierung des Spectrum zu tun. Es ist die Eingabemethode, mit der Du Probleme hattest.
Um nur einen Punkt hervorzuheben, in dem das ZX-BASIC dem C64-Basic überlegen war:
Wie schwierig war es, auf dem C64 ein Programm zu schreiben, das es erlaubte, eine beliebige Funktion einzugeben und dann ihren Graphen auf dem Bildschirm zu zeichnen? Nun, Du hättest einen eigenen Parser für Ausdrücke schreiben müssen, obwohl ein Parser für BASIC-Ausdrücke bereits in den Computer "eingebaut" war!
Andererseits konnte mit dem ZX Spectrum das Parsen mit einem einfachen VAL erledigt werden. Also, gib Deine Formel in eine Stringvariable (z.B. f$) ein, und werte sie jederzeit mit VAL f$ aus. Das einzige BASIC mit dieser Möglichkeit, das mit untergekommen ist, ist ZX-BASIC. Ich verstehe nicht, warum, denn letztlich waren sie alle Interpreter, und mussten also den Paser-Code ohnehin im Speicher haben. Alles, was fehlte, war eine Möglichkeit, ihn auf eigenen Strings auszuführen.
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Now I understand where Linux failed all the time: It's not ressource hungry enough! We only have to make it eat memory and processor time like mad, and it will come preinstalled on about every computer!
But back in the days of DOS, you didn't get a nice blue screen when the computer crashed! THIS IS PROGRESS!
Moore's Law cannot be a crappy measurement, because it isn't a measurement at all. It is not even a measure (such as GHz or lines of code). It's an observation, and an extrapolation from that observation. The observation is simply true. One might argue its relevance, but that's it. The extrapolation is questionable, but seems to have worked up to now. It probably will stop working at some time in the future.
Well, Billion starts with Bill, as in Gates, while billion starts with bill, as in restaurant. Now guess which is more money. :-)
Does Godwin's Law help or hinder discussions? :-)
Even more, we have basis for thinking it will not continue to hold true at some time in the future. That's because it's quite unlikely that we will ever have several transistors per atom.
I would never buy a computer which can't disable the A20 address line through the keyboard controller! :-)
From here:
"Superman hails from a long-dead planet, the planet Krypton. Krypton's Jupiter-like size and red sun kept the Kryptonian race weak, while on Earth Krypton's last son is the mightiest of all!"-Action Comics no.14
Ok, the red sun already fits. But the Jupiter-size planet?
There are many more options for a planet to look like than being rocky or ocean-covered, and most planets found up to now, especially all other extrasolar ones, were neither rocky, nor ocean covered.
Exactly. As is explicitly stated in the PDF linked from this comment by volsung, TRIPS is an implementation of EDGE.
Moore's Law is about the transistor density on the chip. A new processor design may help getting more performance from the same transistor density, but it certainly doesn't anything to increase the transistor density.
Since there's a finite atom density on a chip, the transistor density will inevitably stop to grow eventually.
That's the color that turns superman into a metro-sexual. You mean, he will be secually attracted by metros?
Isn't it illegal to nullify a license you sold if the owner of that license did nothing wrong?
Could it be that you just asked two questions at once, thus breaking the scheme?
Well, that's dependent on the interpretation. The point is, there's no way to distinguish a collapsed wave function where you don't know which of the alternatives it collapsed into from a non-collapsed wavefunction entangled with a third, inaccessible system. It that were not so, you could use entangled systems as superluminal communication device: One party measures his part of the system in order to collapse the wave function, and the other one measures his part in order to determine if the wave function has collapsed.
Do you exist, in an absolute sense?
Or a transistor. Or a laser. Or a LED. Or an atomic clock.
An even better example: There would be no way to build a current CPU (or even an old 8-bit 8080) without QM. The only existing computers would still be room-sized energy-hungry monsters which could be beaten by our pocket calculators. There would be no PC, no mobile phone, no mp3 player, no CD or DVD player. There would be no GPS (atomic clocks need QM, too!), no LCD screens and no LEDs.
Well, the splitting in the many-worlds interpretation isn't really a creation of new universes. It's more like having two separate views on the same universe, and the results of measurements depend on the view we have of the universe. When doing a quantum experiment, it's basically that view which splits.
Maybe as a rough analog one could use a fork call on Unix. Say, we have a 32-bit machine with 4GB virtual address space. After the fork, both child processes have a separate 4GB virtual address space. But your computer's memory clearly has not doubled.
Well, they performed the experiment. They calculated what quantum mechanics says, and they calculated what their model of reality demanded. They not only found out that those two are incompatible, but that the measurement results followed the predictions of quantum mechanics, violating their "reality condition". This disproves that the "real world" is real in the way they define reality.
However one can question if their definition of reality is "right" in the sense that everything not fulfilling the conditions could not reasonably be considered "real". This is I think what Alain Aspect meant when he said "the team's philosophical conclusions are subjective."
Indeed, in the article, there's the following:
assumtion (1) requires that an individual measurement outcome [...] is predetermined by some set of hidden variables lambda, and a three-dimensional vector u, as well as by some set of other possibly non-local parameters eta
If I read that correctly, this assumes a deterministic dependence of the measurement results from the state before measurement. While this certainly is in line with Einstein's thinking ("god does not play dice"), I don't think it is a necessary condition for reality. So this experiment IMHO only disproves the combination of realism and "measurement determinism".
Actually the banner was "© 1982 Sinclair Research, Ltd."
To highlight just one point where ZX BASIC is clearly superior than C64 BASIC:
How hard was it to write a program which let you input an arbitrary function (which used only built-in BASIC commands), and plot its graph on the screen? Well, you'd have to write your own expression parser, despite the fact that a parser for BASIC expression was already built into the computer!
OTOH, with the ZX Spectrum, the parsing could be done with a simple VAL. That is, input your formula into some string variable (say, f$), and then evaluate it at any time with VAL f$. The only BASIC I've seen to have that capability was ZX BASIC. I don't understand why, after all those were all interpreters, and thus had to have the parsing code in memory anyway. All that was missing was a way to call it on your strings.
The same text again in German, in case you didn't understand the English above -- Derselbe Text nochmal auf Deutsch, für den Fall, daß Du das Englisch oben nicht verstanden hast.
Worüber Du Dich beschwert hast, hat überhaupt nichts mit der BASIC-Implementierung des Spectrum zu tun. Es ist die Eingabemethode, mit der Du Probleme hattest.
Um nur einen Punkt hervorzuheben, in dem das ZX-BASIC dem C64-Basic überlegen war:
Wie schwierig war es, auf dem C64 ein Programm zu schreiben, das es erlaubte, eine beliebige Funktion einzugeben und dann ihren Graphen auf dem Bildschirm zu zeichnen? Nun, Du hättest einen eigenen Parser für Ausdrücke schreiben müssen, obwohl ein Parser für BASIC-Ausdrücke bereits in den Computer "eingebaut" war!
Andererseits konnte mit dem ZX Spectrum das Parsen mit einem einfachen VAL erledigt werden. Also, gib Deine Formel in eine Stringvariable (z.B. f$) ein, und werte sie jederzeit mit VAL f$ aus. Das einzige BASIC mit dieser Möglichkeit, das mit untergekommen ist, ist ZX-BASIC. Ich verstehe nicht, warum, denn letztlich waren sie alle Interpreter, und mussten also den Paser-Code ohnehin im Speicher haben. Alles, was fehlte, war eine Möglichkeit, ihn auf eigenen Strings auszuführen.
Here are simple compression/decompression scripts (no error handling etc.):
Compression: Decompression: Don't try it on important files, of course.
Well, maybe it's related to this! :-)