We get oil from Iraq, but nowhere near as much as France, Germany, and other industrialized European countries. So if the US controls the Iraq oil supply, the US controls whoever the oil is supplied *to*.
And it appears our illustrious government is willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve it.
Whoa! Damn! This dude is on to something! Wow, he must watch Fox TV or read Newsweek, those bastions of pacifism and respect for international law!
I am humbled by such an acute insight, such pithy observation. I would never have noticed by merely reading or watching "the media." Thank God Anonymous Coward has opened my eyes to the truth!
Hmm, I'm beginning to wonder if our good friends at Slashdot are subtly baiting us for our opinions regarding the impending war.
Interesting, but why not just open a thread entitled "OK, let's cut the crap. What are the arguments for and against invading Iraq," or something to that effect. At very least, I suspect it will get one of the highest post rates in Slashdot history.
As to the Baghdad Batteries, the final quote is excellent:
Let's hope the world manages to resolve its present problems so people can go and see them.
Dr Paul Craddock
I can think of better reasons to avoid war, but what the hell.
Perhaps, maybe, did you even fucking acknowledge the possibility(?), that someone who came from Iraq has more insight into the situation than you do?
But, oh no, listening to someone who actually came from the region and is free to talk about it would go against one of the principles of Cyber-punditry.
Perhaps maybe you might consider whether knowing much at all about Iraq per se informs the discussion. Try substituting "Country X" for "Iraq" and "S. Hussein" in the list I posted, and you might find it to be both more general and more informative about current political dynamics.
As an aside, I lived for a total of almost 20 years in a despotic, corrupt, ruthless, exploitative, feudal, anti-democratic third world country, the country of my ancestors. It is a general problem, my friend, that cuts across culture and geography.
By writing that I did not have time, I assumed it was obvious that I didn't have time to write a longer list, not that I would "fart and leave the room."
First, the point is not simply to disarm S. Hussein and Iraq, it is to wipe him and his regime off the face of the planet. It is to humilitate him utterly and dissuade anyone else from attempting to emulate him. The Mussolini treatment would not be inappropriate in the least. It is to put a functioning free government in place that will scare the crap out of neighboring despots. "Disarmament" comes as a corollary.
Well, well, as luck would have it you appear to be a faithful believer in many of the extant themes of the Invasion of Iraq morality play. While it is believable that the Hussein regime will be largely removed, it is childish and short-sighted to believe that it is possible to "wipe him and his regime off the face of the planet." He and many of the highest-echelon members of his regime will most likely be eliminated, but from a certain level downwards, current members of the Iraqi government, armed forces, and civil service will remain. Why? Because American forces are stupid? Because they are in collusion with them? No, because it is the easiest and most practical way for the banal drudgery of government to continue after an invasion. I suspect you will be rather disappointed when that occurs.
If you think part of the point is to humilitate him utterly and dissuade anyone else from attempting to emulate him. The Mussolini treatment would not be inappropriate in the least, then you evidently believe those sorts of things actually do dissuade tyrants. My personal view is that you are mistaken, and I wonder whether you can adduce any credible evidence to support those beliefs, but I will not debate it further.
It is to put a functioning free government in place that will scare the crap out of neighboring despots. "Disarmament" comes as a corollary.
This, tragically enough, is your most important mistake. I wish as much as you or anyone else that this were a likely outcome. It is not, and the second half of the last century is littered with false hopes, broken dreams, poverty, misery, and arbitrarily tortured and disappeared individuals in many countries. I suspect the best we can hope for is for the new Iraqi regime to be significantly less savage than the current one. I don't think we can realistically expect much more. As to scaring the crap out of neighboring despots, I can only hope you are not referring to the monarchies we suppoert in the area to control Persian Gulf oil production. It is precisely that system of client management that the war is meant to support and defend.
My last point is indeed false, as you point out. The sort of threat represented by the likes of Al Qaeda is not one that we can neutralize militarily. As you point out, it must be done on many fronts. And that is why I pointed out this fallacy. As you say, not many people believe it (or so I hope) yet we are concentrating a lot of money on the military solution. That, as it happens, is an important clue about what the wizard is doing behind the curtain. That brings me to the final point I will make (I am at work, and I am not paid to write rants on slashdot).
...the point is not simply to disarm S. Hussein and Iraq
The disarming of Iraq is but an incidental purpose. If you follow the money, you will find the more compelling ones.
Unfortunately, Mr. Awtrey and his Iraqi wife have fallen prey to the several fallacies, rhetorical tricks, and straw man arguments in common circulation:
The point is to disarm S. Hussein and Iraq
We need to "keep the oil flowing"
If you are against the invasion, you support S. Hussein
If you support the UN, you do not have the will, courage, strength, etc. to confront S. Hussein
We are doing it to stop the proliferation of WMD
We are going to liberate the people of Iraq
We are going to bring democracy to Iraq
We have no "territorial ambitions," as G. Bush has claimed
We are committed to fighting evil
We are by definition fundamentally good, and thus most suited to decide on our own what regimes should be confronted and how to do it
An overwhelmingly strong military and demonstrable willingness to use it are the best guarantors of peace
The best way to dissuade authoritarian regimes from developing deterrent WMD arsenals is to threaten them with full-scale military invasion
We will defeat asynchronous, decentralized, distributed religious fundamentalist terrorists with full-scale military confrontation
I could go on, but I don't have time. If you believe in the above points, then may the gods have mercy on all of us.
I am as upset about idiotic patents as the next guy, but I agree with the several posts that point out that there are some novel elements to the patent that are built upon prior art. You can use as much prior art in your patent as you like. What you are patenting, and can defend in court, are the novel aspects not found in the prior art and which are not obvious to skilled practitioners.
At some point, someone needs to make a few bucks on an invention in order for there to be incentives to generate new technology.
The historically interesting aspect of licenses such as the GPL lies in the possibility that some people would forego the monetary profits for the greater good of both the inventor and the community. If you want to make a buck, fine. If you want to share with and among others, fine too.
Unfortunately, the USPTO is becoming less able to function as the arbiter of the rules, and this is what causes the system to degrade. In fairness to those poor schmucks, it is not realistic to expect young, underpaid, undertrained, inexperienced patent examiners (or even not so old or inexperienced) to be able to consistently and without errors or omissions spot all issues relating to obviousness and prior art. The volume of patent submissions also thwarts the system, at least as it pertains to high tech patents.
I think most people are entirely unaware of the technical issues surrounding spam, and many are unaware of its uncouthness as a marketing tool. I am thinking primarily of small businesses, especially of one-person operations such as people who sell nutritional supplements, cosmetics, real estate, etc. Do you think that it is inevitable that there will always be a segment of the small business community that considers massive, blind emailing of publicity to be a perfectly legitimate and cost-effective marketing tool?
Hacking into systems to steal credit card numbers and the like is theft, and should be punished as such. Yet I'm sure we can come up with dozens of examples where the precise punishemnt is either too severe or too lenient in hacking- or cracking-related crimes, as well as the vast diversity of other sorts of law breaking.
However, these are small-time crooks, by and large. The real money is in the white-collar big time. It is now our historic privilege to be witnessing the greatest example of legalized embezzlement in the history of mankind.
This year's Defense Department budget ~370 billion
Additional funding for ABM system ~70 billion, probably much more
Additional expenses from invading Iraq ~200 billion
That's in the vicinity of 2/3 of a trillion dollars legally funneled into a secretive, tightly-knit group of industries with only the most perfunctory public analysis.
Even Enron, WorldCom, and the several other high-profile frauds are dwarfed by these numbers. Nobody is going to jail though, far from it. The perpetrators are hailed in the news media as brave patriots struggling to defend freedom, liberty, democracy, etc.
Depends on the monkey, depends on the fifth grader.
One possible use for the segway is for a terrorist suicide bomber to enter a crowded office building with explosives strapped to himself. Its novelty will cause everyone to watch in fascination as he calmly approaches the appropriate spot to blow himself up.
I'm having difficulty thinking of anything else. I can't imagine the elderly, with stiff joints, weak muscles, and poor reaction times being able to get on or off one of those without falling off right away.
Here is the abstract of a patent I have received that covers cinema, photography, print media, computers, TV, VCRs, radio, PDAs, and a variety of other things:
Method and apparatus for storing, manipulating, retrieving, and displaying logical representations of arbitrary entities
Abstract
A method and apparatus for providing a means for representing arbitrary entities is described. The method comprises the steps of receiving a representation of any entity, conversion to a convenient format, including but not limited to a numeric or alpha-numeric format susceptible to electronic or mechanical storage, and subsequent storage, manipulation, retrieval, and display of the representation.
I am still consulting my attorneys, but I believe it is general enough to cover everything else. That is to say, everything else.
Lots of people here are missing the point. This article doesn't argue that Moore's law is no longer valid, nor that Google isn't taking advantage of it. It's arguing that the IT industry (especially Intel) has built a business model around the notion that the business world will consume computing resources as quickly as Moore's law provides them.
I think most of us did get that that was the point. Many of the posts are questioning whether it's really true. The Google example has proven to be quite a distraction for those that believe that Eric Schmidt is stating a truth that will invariably come to pass. I don't think he is lying, but he is definitely saying something that usually goes with disclaimers along the lines of
This statement contains forward-looking statements regarding financial and contractual commitments that are subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements. The reader is cautioned not to rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which are not a guarantee of future or current performance. Such risks and uncertainties include long-term program commitments, the performance of third parties, the sustained performance of current and futures products, financing risks, the ability to integrate and support a complex technology solution involving multiple providers and users, and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's most recent SEC reports, including its reports on From 10-K and Form 10-Q.(boilerplate disclaimer from sgi.com)
In other words, if he gets a good deal on Itaniums or Athlon64s, or if Google decides to keep huge parts of their databases in-memory and therefore could use the larger address space, or if they have to compete head-to-head with someone who only uses 64-bit CPUs, or whatever other reason, they will start buying them immediately.
What has changed is that business no longer has a need to buy the latest and greatest it has to offer, because the uptake of technology has reached the point of diminishing returns. This means that business no longer cares for the most powerful hardware, it no longer gives them a competitive edge in their industry.
Again, only if you believe it. I don't know about you, but my employer (a well-known biotech frim) sucks in as much processing power as it can reasonably get a hold of. Our needs are getting bigger by the day. I am writing this on a dual-CPU Dell desktop with 1 Gb of RAM, and I often am frustrated that I can't load XML files larger than a mere 30 or 40 Mb into memory, or that my 900 Mb log files slow everything to a crawl when I load them into Textpad. My kids play games that are just not as fun unless you have one or more 1.5+ MHz CPUs and at least a GEForce3.
Michael S. Malone's article in Red Herring was just that, a red herring.
But think of what computers could be if the software guys improved their work at even half the rate the hardware guys do...
What makes you think that isn't occurring? How do you know software isn't being improved at a vastly greater rate than hardware? Do you have a metric, or any credible evidence either way? Surely you're not just hopping on some banal blah blah blah bandwagon?
Look around you and tell me it could all have been designed, manufactured, traded, transported, resold, deployed, powered, and used by the average Joe with software from 10 years ago.
Honestly, remind me what I pay you people for
Dr. Evil
There are on the order of 10^15 synapses in the human brain. Let's pretend for a moment that there is a rough equivalence between a logic gate or a memory location in a computer and a synapse in the human brain. Let's further pretend that someone may have the intention of constructing a computer with roughly the computing power of a human brain
We may continue this reckless pretending (orgy of pretense?) by supposing that such a person might want that computer to be of a reasonable size, perhaps even capable of sitting on a desktop. Other people, unsatisfied with any and everything, might insist that the machine be even more powerful than a human brain. Much more.
Now I ask you, will such a machine be made of 32-bit CPUs, or even of 64-bit CPUs? Will it even be made of CPUs, or even have any silicon in it at all? Can it be built if we stop the "runaway train, roaring down a path to disaster, picking up speed at every turn, and we are now going faster than human beings can endure?" I'll save you the trouble of activating a few billion synapses: no, it will not. Far from it.
Moore's Law (or Moore's Ex-Recto Conjecture, as one poster implied), will go on as long as people can make a few bucks making it go on. And of course, its path will be littered with jewels, chaos, marvels, disaster, fetid waste, and vast new possibilities we can only dream of.
This, as usual, in spite of loud, hypey articles in "lifestyle" magazines.
There are two things that are truly frightening here:
How little we are aware of the true cost of things
How easy it is to be conned into believing everything is OK
Here's another good example that is little more than an attempt to grab government pork: Ethanol fuel for internal combustion engines. Here's a quote from a good link. You can easily find more:
The cost of producing ethanol varies with the cost of the feedstock used and the scale of production. Approximately 85 percent of ethanol production capacity in the United States relies on corn feedstock. The cost of producing ethanol from corn is estimated to be about $1.10 per gallon. Although there is currently no commercial production of ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks such as agricultural wastes, grasses and wood, the estimated production cost using these feedstocks is $1.15 to $1.43 per gallon.
So it costs more to use ethanol than gasoline? Of course, you will find different numbers for different methods, you should compare with other possible fuels, you should not look just at cost but also at the overall energy balance, you should take into account whether it is renewable or not, you should see what might occur if large scale production and consumption were to be set up, you should compare combustion emissions, and so on.
But he was born in the US and raised by American monkeys.
Actually, I think he proves the old rumor that Texas cowboys used to fuck their horses. In Texas, of course, and therefore the offspring are eligible to run for president.
You guys must be kidding! Insightful? The guy thinks Dubya is up there doing "leadership"?
No doubt we're going to invade Iraq to free their people and bring them democracy, right? And clamping the international price of petroleum forever has nothing to do with it, right? And funneling several hundred billion dollars through the defense industry while ignoring the growing crowds of unemployed has nothing to do with it, right? And giving the top 5% income bracket lots of new tax breaks and only giving the rest of us a few hundred bucks has nothing to do with it, right? And imposing the Christian version of the Taliban on us has nothing to do with it, right? And suspending our rights to privacy and due process so we don't get in their way has nothing to do with it, right? And, and...
The said the same thing about the Stanley Steamer and all of the other first cars. "They're a menace for the horses! We could be killed if one were to go out of control!"
So, any cool new invention has to be good, and its detractors automatically the same sort of old farts you mention? Here are some data on transportation fatalities: Transportation Fatalities by Mode. Guess what mode of transportation is most dangerous. Contemplating the accumulated environmental effects of motor vehicle manufacture, use, maintenance, and disposal is left as an exercise for the reader.
I bet you still harbor the illusion that we will eventually all be using flying cars, like they predicted back in the '60s. Just a wild guess.
Sure enough, he was on a { segway | bicycle | electric scooter | gas powered scooter | powered wheelchair | moped } . He wasn't wearing a uniform, and he wasn't stopping to talk, he was just going somewhere. He had absolutely no trouble navigating a crowd. A child ran out in front of him, and he { had absolutely no trouble stopping in time | bumped into the child as he swerved to an abrupt stop, but the child was unhurt | suddenly swerved and { stopped | hit other bystanders | crashed into a { wall | car | window } }.
So, I think a lot of people are worried about { nothing | something | having to get out of the path of yet another asshole on a wheeled vehicle | nitwits without any regard for the law or its underlying purpose }. It's the regular fear of the unknown. If a segway mowing you down is your greatest fear in life, { I envy you | too fucking bad | you must be a goddamn pedestrian | you live in some shitty-ass country where most people don't own cars | you are elderly | you are a small child }.
...its popularity has challenged and will continue to cause
new problems for municipalities nationwide, who must find ways to retrofit existing
urban infrastructure for these new transportation devices.
You're joking, of course. There is no way the general public is going to pay for this. Perhaps a tax on the sale of Segways could go to a fund?
These elegant transportation devices
seem to have been designed for a more civilized people than ourselves. In my humble
opinion, the Segway HT scooter, despite its undeniable benefits, will go the way of the
hula-hoop, the punch card, and the eight track cassette. Dean Kamen underestimated the
Detroit, Big Oil, and their cronies' desire to shut him and his wonderful company down.
My fellow Segway riders and I hope that his vision of a simpler, safer approach to human
transport may remain a viable alternative to expensive, noisy, polluting cars.
How so? You didn't make that part clear. How are they safer or more civilized than bicycles? What undeniable benefits? Surely you're not referring to your newfound practice of paying less attention to the road, or the possession of something that will cause you to get robbed at knifepoint. That sounds much more like an imminent danger.
Don't blame Detroit and Big Oil for everything. Segway aficionados seem convinced that they have some futuristic, revolutionary device in their hands, and the same old farts that said man would never fly want to stop them. Don't kid yourself. The last thing humanity needs is a device for systematically eliminating all physical exercise. It is an appalling waste of wealth and resources to boot. Go back to your bicycle. It's far healthier for you and for the World Community in general.
Slashdot Mirror
And it appears our illustrious government is willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve it.
Whoa! Damn! This dude is on to something! Wow, he must watch Fox TV or read Newsweek, those bastions of pacifism and respect for international law!
I am humbled by such an acute insight, such pithy observation. I would never have noticed by merely reading or watching "the media." Thank God Anonymous Coward has opened my eyes to the truth!
Interesting, but why not just open a thread entitled "OK, let's cut the crap. What are the arguments for and against invading Iraq," or something to that effect. At very least, I suspect it will get one of the highest post rates in Slashdot history.
As to the Baghdad Batteries, the final quote is excellent:
Let's hope the world manages to resolve its present problems so people can go and see them.
Dr Paul Craddock
I can think of better reasons to avoid war, but what the hell.
Sorry, my previous replies were somehow attached one level too low. My mistake, I think.
Perhaps maybe you might consider whether knowing much at all about Iraq per se informs the discussion. Try substituting "Country X" for "Iraq" and "S. Hussein" in the list I posted, and you might find it to be both more general and more informative about current political dynamics.
As an aside, I lived for a total of almost 20 years in a despotic, corrupt, ruthless, exploitative, feudal, anti-democratic third world country, the country of my ancestors. It is a general problem, my friend, that cuts across culture and geography.
First, the point is not simply to disarm S. Hussein and Iraq, it is to wipe him and his regime off the face of the planet. It is to humilitate him utterly and dissuade anyone else from attempting to emulate him. The Mussolini treatment would not be inappropriate in the least. It is to put a functioning free government in place that will scare the crap out of neighboring despots. "Disarmament" comes as a corollary.
Well, well, as luck would have it you appear to be a faithful believer in many of the extant themes of the Invasion of Iraq morality play. While it is believable that the Hussein regime will be largely removed, it is childish and short-sighted to believe that it is possible to "wipe him and his regime off the face of the planet." He and many of the highest-echelon members of his regime will most likely be eliminated, but from a certain level downwards, current members of the Iraqi government, armed forces, and civil service will remain. Why? Because American forces are stupid? Because they are in collusion with them? No, because it is the easiest and most practical way for the banal drudgery of government to continue after an invasion. I suspect you will be rather disappointed when that occurs.
If you think part of the point is to humilitate him utterly and dissuade anyone else from attempting to emulate him. The Mussolini treatment would not be inappropriate in the least, then you evidently believe those sorts of things actually do dissuade tyrants. My personal view is that you are mistaken, and I wonder whether you can adduce any credible evidence to support those beliefs, but I will not debate it further.
It is to put a functioning free government in place that will scare the crap out of neighboring despots. "Disarmament" comes as a corollary.
This, tragically enough, is your most important mistake. I wish as much as you or anyone else that this were a likely outcome. It is not, and the second half of the last century is littered with false hopes, broken dreams, poverty, misery, and arbitrarily tortured and disappeared individuals in many countries. I suspect the best we can hope for is for the new Iraqi regime to be significantly less savage than the current one. I don't think we can realistically expect much more. As to scaring the crap out of neighboring despots, I can only hope you are not referring to the monarchies we suppoert in the area to control Persian Gulf oil production. It is precisely that system of client management that the war is meant to support and defend.
My last point is indeed false, as you point out. The sort of threat represented by the likes of Al Qaeda is not one that we can neutralize militarily. As you point out, it must be done on many fronts. And that is why I pointed out this fallacy. As you say, not many people believe it (or so I hope) yet we are concentrating a lot of money on the military solution. That, as it happens, is an important clue about what the wizard is doing behind the curtain. That brings me to the final point I will make (I am at work, and I am not paid to write rants on slashdot).
The disarming of Iraq is but an incidental purpose. If you follow the money, you will find the more compelling ones.
- The point is to disarm S. Hussein and Iraq
- We need to "keep the oil flowing"
- If you are against the invasion, you support S. Hussein
- If you support the UN, you do not have the will, courage, strength, etc. to confront S. Hussein
- We are doing it to stop the proliferation of WMD
- We are going to liberate the people of Iraq
- We are going to bring democracy to Iraq
- We have no "territorial ambitions," as G. Bush has claimed
- We are committed to fighting evil
- We are by definition fundamentally good, and thus most suited to decide on our own what regimes should be confronted and how to do it
- An overwhelmingly strong military and demonstrable willingness to use it are the best guarantors of peace
- The best way to dissuade authoritarian regimes from developing deterrent WMD arsenals is to threaten them with full-scale military invasion
- We will defeat asynchronous, decentralized, distributed religious fundamentalist terrorists with full-scale military confrontation
I could go on, but I don't have time. If you believe in the above points, then may the gods have mercy on all of us.The historically interesting aspect of licenses such as the GPL lies in the possibility that some people would forego the monetary profits for the greater good of both the inventor and the community. If you want to make a buck, fine. If you want to share with and among others, fine too.
Unfortunately, the USPTO is becoming less able to function as the arbiter of the rules, and this is what causes the system to degrade. In fairness to those poor schmucks, it is not realistic to expect young, underpaid, undertrained, inexperienced patent examiners (or even not so old or inexperienced) to be able to consistently and without errors or omissions spot all issues relating to obviousness and prior art. The volume of patent submissions also thwarts the system, at least as it pertains to high tech patents.
I think most people are entirely unaware of the technical issues surrounding spam, and many are unaware of its uncouthness as a marketing tool. I am thinking primarily of small businesses, especially of one-person operations such as people who sell nutritional supplements, cosmetics, real estate, etc. Do you think that it is inevitable that there will always be a segment of the small business community that considers massive, blind emailing of publicity to be a perfectly legitimate and cost-effective marketing tool?
However, these are small-time crooks, by and large. The real money is in the white-collar big time. It is now our historic privilege to be witnessing the greatest example of legalized embezzlement in the history of mankind.
- This year's Defense Department budget ~370 billion
- Additional funding for ABM system ~70 billion, probably much more
- Additional expenses from invading Iraq ~200 billion
That's in the vicinity of 2/3 of a trillion dollars legally funneled into a secretive, tightly-knit group of industries with only the most perfunctory public analysis. Even Enron, WorldCom, and the several other high-profile frauds are dwarfed by these numbers. Nobody is going to jail though, far from it. The perpetrators are hailed in the news media as brave patriots struggling to defend freedom, liberty, democracy, etc.Again with Moore's ex recto Conjecture?
One possible use for the segway is for a terrorist suicide bomber to enter a crowded office building with explosives strapped to himself. Its novelty will cause everyone to watch in fascination as he calmly approaches the appropriate spot to blow himself up.
I'm having difficulty thinking of anything else. I can't imagine the elderly, with stiff joints, weak muscles, and poor reaction times being able to get on or off one of those without falling off right away.
I confess!
I'm sorry!
Please forgive me!
It's at NetFlix.
Method and apparatus for storing, manipulating, retrieving, and displaying logical representations of arbitrary entities
Abstract
A method and apparatus for providing a means for representing arbitrary entities is described. The method comprises the steps of receiving a representation of any entity, conversion to a convenient format, including but not limited to a numeric or alpha-numeric format susceptible to electronic or mechanical storage, and subsequent storage, manipulation, retrieval, and display of the representation.
I am still consulting my attorneys, but I believe it is general enough to cover everything else. That is to say, everything else.
I think most of us did get that that was the point. Many of the posts are questioning whether it's really true. The Google example has proven to be quite a distraction for those that believe that Eric Schmidt is stating a truth that will invariably come to pass. I don't think he is lying, but he is definitely saying something that usually goes with disclaimers along the lines of
This statement contains forward-looking statements regarding financial and contractual commitments that are subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements. The reader is cautioned not to rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which are not a guarantee of future or current performance. Such risks and uncertainties include long-term program commitments, the performance of third parties, the sustained performance of current and futures products, financing risks, the ability to integrate and support a complex technology solution involving multiple providers and users, and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's most recent SEC reports, including its reports on From 10-K and Form 10-Q.(boilerplate disclaimer from sgi.com)
In other words, if he gets a good deal on Itaniums or Athlon64s, or if Google decides to keep huge parts of their databases in-memory and therefore could use the larger address space, or if they have to compete head-to-head with someone who only uses 64-bit CPUs, or whatever other reason, they will start buying them immediately.
What has changed is that business no longer has a need to buy the latest and greatest it has to offer, because the uptake of technology has reached the point of diminishing returns. This means that business no longer cares for the most powerful hardware, it no longer gives them a competitive edge in their industry.
Again, only if you believe it. I don't know about you, but my employer (a well-known biotech frim) sucks in as much processing power as it can reasonably get a hold of. Our needs are getting bigger by the day. I am writing this on a dual-CPU Dell desktop with 1 Gb of RAM, and I often am frustrated that I can't load XML files larger than a mere 30 or 40 Mb into memory, or that my 900 Mb log files slow everything to a crawl when I load them into Textpad. My kids play games that are just not as fun unless you have one or more 1.5+ MHz CPUs and at least a GEForce3.
Michael S. Malone's article in Red Herring was just that, a red herring.
What makes you think that isn't occurring? How do you know software isn't being improved at a vastly greater rate than hardware? Do you have a metric, or any credible evidence either way? Surely you're not just hopping on some banal blah blah blah bandwagon?
Look around you and tell me it could all have been designed, manufactured, traded, transported, resold, deployed, powered, and used by the average Joe with software from 10 years ago.
Honestly, remind me what I pay you people for
Dr. Evil
We may continue this reckless pretending (orgy of pretense?) by supposing that such a person might want that computer to be of a reasonable size, perhaps even capable of sitting on a desktop. Other people, unsatisfied with any and everything, might insist that the machine be even more powerful than a human brain. Much more.
Now I ask you, will such a machine be made of 32-bit CPUs, or even of 64-bit CPUs? Will it even be made of CPUs, or even have any silicon in it at all? Can it be built if we stop the "runaway train, roaring down a path to disaster, picking up speed at every turn, and we are now going faster than human beings can endure?" I'll save you the trouble of activating a few billion synapses: no, it will not. Far from it.
Moore's Law (or Moore's Ex-Recto Conjecture, as one poster implied), will go on as long as people can make a few bucks making it go on. And of course, its path will be littered with jewels, chaos, marvels, disaster, fetid waste, and vast new possibilities we can only dream of.
This, as usual, in spite of loud, hypey articles in "lifestyle" magazines.
- How little we are aware of the true cost of things
- How easy it is to be conned into believing everything is OK
Here's another good example that is little more than an attempt to grab government pork: Ethanol fuel for internal combustion engines. Here's a quote from a good link. You can easily find more:The cost of producing ethanol varies with the cost of the feedstock used and the scale of production. Approximately 85 percent of ethanol production capacity in the United States relies on corn feedstock. The cost of producing ethanol from corn is estimated to be about $1.10 per gallon. Although there is currently no commercial production of ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks such as agricultural wastes, grasses and wood, the estimated production cost using these feedstocks is $1.15 to $1.43 per gallon.
From Biomass Energy's Bottom Line
So it costs more to use ethanol than gasoline? Of course, you will find different numbers for different methods, you should compare with other possible fuels, you should not look just at cost but also at the overall energy balance, you should take into account whether it is renewable or not, you should see what might occur if large scale production and consumption were to be set up, you should compare combustion emissions, and so on.
Makes you want to scratch your head, don't it?
Actually, I think he proves the old rumor that Texas cowboys used to fuck their horses. In Texas, of course, and therefore the offspring are eligible to run for president.
You guys must be kidding! Insightful? The guy thinks Dubya is up there doing "leadership"?
No doubt we're going to invade Iraq to free their people and bring them democracy, right? And clamping the international price of petroleum forever has nothing to do with it, right? And funneling several hundred billion dollars through the defense industry while ignoring the growing crowds of unemployed has nothing to do with it, right? And giving the top 5% income bracket lots of new tax breaks and only giving the rest of us a few hundred bucks has nothing to do with it, right? And imposing the Christian version of the Taliban on us has nothing to do with it, right? And suspending our rights to privacy and due process so we don't get in their way has nothing to do with it, right? And, and...
Dude, pass me the fucking pipe!
So, any cool new invention has to be good, and its detractors automatically the same sort of old farts you mention? Here are some data on transportation fatalities: Transportation Fatalities by Mode. Guess what mode of transportation is most dangerous. Contemplating the accumulated environmental effects of motor vehicle manufacture, use, maintenance, and disposal is left as an exercise for the reader.
I bet you still harbor the illusion that we will eventually all be using flying cars, like they predicted back in the '60s. Just a wild guess.
So, I think a lot of people are worried about { nothing | something | having to get out of the path of yet another asshole on a wheeled vehicle | nitwits without any regard for the law or its underlying purpose }. It's the regular fear of the unknown. If a segway mowing you down is your greatest fear in life, { I envy you | too fucking bad | you must be a goddamn pedestrian | you live in some shitty-ass country where most people don't own cars | you are elderly | you are a small child }.
You're joking, of course. There is no way the general public is going to pay for this. Perhaps a tax on the sale of Segways could go to a fund?
These elegant transportation devices seem to have been designed for a more civilized people than ourselves. In my humble opinion, the Segway HT scooter, despite its undeniable benefits, will go the way of the hula-hoop, the punch card, and the eight track cassette. Dean Kamen underestimated the Detroit, Big Oil, and their cronies' desire to shut him and his wonderful company down. My fellow Segway riders and I hope that his vision of a simpler, safer approach to human transport may remain a viable alternative to expensive, noisy, polluting cars.
How so? You didn't make that part clear. How are they safer or more civilized than bicycles? What undeniable benefits? Surely you're not referring to your newfound practice of paying less attention to the road, or the possession of something that will cause you to get robbed at knifepoint. That sounds much more like an imminent danger.
Don't blame Detroit and Big Oil for everything. Segway aficionados seem convinced that they have some futuristic, revolutionary device in their hands, and the same old farts that said man would never fly want to stop them. Don't kid yourself. The last thing humanity needs is a device for systematically eliminating all physical exercise. It is an appalling waste of wealth and resources to boot. Go back to your bicycle. It's far healthier for you and for the World Community in general.