Re:Intel working on silicon laser to link cores
on
AMD Quad Cores, Oh My
·
· Score: 1
Intel does have rights to that SOI tech, they've just got their own process. AMD and Intel have a complete patent cross-license. So if Intel patents this technology, AMD can use it.
The Cell's SPEs aren't really general purpose. They're limited to a 256KB local storage. In order to utilize main memory, they have to use explicit DMA operations. That drastically limits their usefulness for code that isn't explicitly written for Cell.
Wow. Somebody missed the boat. The rumors are all dead --- Apple is moving to x86, their new developers kits are x86 and the developer documentation is for x86.
I'll agree that these protestors look like a bunch of kooks.
Which is fine and dandy, but I don't think I said anything to that effect.
Given the hazards of airborne asbestos fibers and carbon nanotubes, I'd argue that it's a good idea to study possible health effects of nanoscale teflon fibers.
True. But that's something to be debated properly by scientists, not morons who don't know the first thing about the technology. And if you're stripping naked in front of a store, you're a moron, and even if you might have a point, it's of the "throw enough shit and some of it will stick" variety and its not prudent in general to listen to people like that.
So if you've decided all environmentalists are kooks, are you also in the global warming isn't real camp?
I never said all environmentalists are kooks, though I'm convinced most of them are. Further, I'm not going to say global warming isn't real, but I'm also not convinced that it exists. At this point, I consider them to be something like string theory --- experimental indications suggest it may be true, but a complete and solid body of scientific evidence does not exist to validate its assertions.
How about reducing pollutants from cars and trucks or power plants?
I'm all for that. That's why I favor nuclear power, because its a way of getting coal and fossil burning plants out of our country. I'm not dumb enough to believe that something magically better than nuclear power will come around in the near future, at least not in time to prevent the irreparable damaged being caused by coal and oil power every minute we delay in implementing alternatives.
So far we've done a pretty bad job of doing it properly, though.
And the evidence to support your conclusion would be?
Hint - Is it REALLY smart to take a basic design type optimized for compact power in a military application, and scale it up for civillian power?
You could say the same thing about jet engines or GPS. That doesn't really mean anything.
Well, that's fine and dandy, but that's not what you said. Nothing in your post talked about perception vs. reality, your statement now is completely different from your statement before.
Scientists do not peddle "truths" or "falsehoods". Conclusions are not "true" or "false", because nothing is provable through emperical means, and nothing unprovable can be "true" or "false". Social analysis is no different. Conducted properly and systematically, it will yield only a theory, a theory that is not true or false, but adequate or inadequate. "Good" theories offer the power to explain and organize emperical observations. "Bad" theories offer no such power. That's all theories, scientific or social, can aspire to.
The number and quality of citations thus play two roles. They demonstrate the research used to arrive at a conclusion, establishing its credibility, and they give examples of the emperical observations that the theory can explain or categorize. A conclusion with inadequate supporting evidence is worthless, just like an untested hypothesis. The richer the set of emperical observations that are used to justify a conclusion, the more the conclusion is useful in analyzing the real world.
Noam Chomsky is an intellectual and a talented man. Most talented folks have skills far beyond their particular profession. Indeed, the high degree of specialization that has become common in today's world (turning highly-skilled people into idiot-savants capable only in a single narrowly defined field), is a rather recent phenomenon. It didn't exist in the days when Leonhard Euler made contributions in everything from mathematics to fluid dynamics. To suggest that someone is unqualified to comment on a subject, just because it is outside of their "official" field of expertise is silly. Given his decades of study into these matters, Chomskey is certainly more qualified to comment on these subjets than you or me.
That said, I agree that the number if citations doesn't necessarily imply a well-supported argument. But that wasn't my implication. My point was that a well-supported argument necessarily has extensive references. A lot of activist arguments are not well referenced. Now, with regards to Chomsky's specifically, his references are generally of high quality, if you're not too lazy to actually check them out yourself.
The "science" environmentalists generally use is as much a true science as astrology or spectrology. See Richard Feynman's rant on "junk science" at the end of his autobiography.
Scientists, in general, don't depend on a moral justification for their behavior. While some scientists are concerned about human welfare, it is only tangentially related to science as a field. Science is merely concerned with the furthering of the state of knowledge. And yes, the vast majority of scientists are able to live up to this credo, if only because the goal itself is so modest.
Re:Great - Another Example of "Progressives"
on
Nanotech Protests Begin
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Most environmentalists are progressives. However, most progressives are not environmentalists. We're not "happy to have" the environmentalists, indeed, by now, we suspect most of them have pretty much gone over to something like the Green party anyway (which is of course, more reactionary than progressive).
Most progressives do embrace technological advancements, again, because most progressives are not environmentalists. If you look at protestors on college campuses and say "oh, those are progressives", you can get the idea that progressives are enviro-nuts. If you actually look at the statistics, you'll realize that those college campus protestors have no power in the progressive movement because they are a numerically small group that doesn't vote anyway.
As for "socialist", that's a pretty funny comment. First, there are few true socialists in America. American progressives are more populist than socialist. But then again, American conservatives are pretty damn populist as well. Certainly, Presidents like George W. Bush have abandoned conservative economic principles in favor of populist ones (give the people whatever they want).
In short, the ideological battle that is actually being waged is very different from the one you have in your head. It's not "socialist progressives vs capitalist conservatives", but rather "populist progressives vs. populist conservatives". And, statistically, neither side could care less about the environment.
Hmm. I can't stand 'em. They don't breathe nearly as well as real cotton. Though, that fault is probably more noticible down here in "the climate resembles hot sweaty balls" Georgia.
LOL. Young people in general give social activism a bad name, for precisely the reason you outlined above. Unfortunately, the mainstream takes that impression of activism and applies it to all activists, which really isn't fair. For example, a lot of people give Noam Chomsky a lot of heat for being a "crazy activist/conspiracy theorist". If you read any of his books, however, you'll see that he approaches issues systematically and scientifically, and extensively references his sourcse. In "Manufacturing Consent", for example, there are 300 pages of text (with numerous in-text citations), 30 pages of appendices, and over 60 pages of notes and bibliographical references. You might disagree with his conclusions, but you'd just be lying if you said that his conclusions were not properly researched and supported.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people cannot deal with this level of analytic rigor. The activists do not have the discipline to check all their sources and rationally justify their conclusions, and the opposition doesn't bother to actually check somebody's sources before denouncing them as a quack.
I take it you're not in science or technology? If you are: pick a random person off the street. Try and explain to them the intricacies of the project you're working on currently. Watch their eyes glaze over.
Yes, the "most people are stupid" attitude is elitist. That doesn't mean its not justifiable.
I wonder what the balance is on cancers prevented by the removal of asbestos versus cancers caused by the non-use of nuclear power. Environmentalists have caused far more damage to the environment by effectively stopping the use of nuclear power than has been prevented by any of their legitimate achievements.
Re:Great - Another Example of "Progressives"
on
Nanotech Protests Begin
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Hey, there is no point in lumping environmentalists in with progressives in general. It's a common misconception, but it isn't true. There are tens of millions of "progressives" in this country. In comparison, the membership of Greenpeace (the largest environmental organization in the country) has declined from 1 million in 1992 to a mere 300,000 in 2000.
Environmentalists are a marginal part of the overall progressive movement. Heck, there are more Mormons in the conservative movement than there are environmentalists in the progressive movement. I suppose conservatives would love it if we characterized them all as Mormons...
So, will the benefits outweight the potential risks?
You've hit the nail right on the head. That's the fundemental thing most environmentalists refuse to understand. Everything has risks --- the question is, what risks are we better-off taking? It's the same thing with energy policy. Environmentalists don't realize that by opposing nuclear power (meltdown), wind power (birds), water power (aquatic ecology), and solar power (land usage), they are effectively coming out in support of oil and coal power (cancer, war, pollution, etc). In doing that, they are effectively in league with the big energy companies!
No mode of human-nature interaction will be completely noninvasive. The only rational goal is to make the interaction as non-invasive as practical. By arguing against change, people are effectively arguing for the preservation of the status quo, a status quo which will lead to environmental destruction more surely and quickly than any of the proposed alternatives.
I dunno if the comparison is accurate, though. Will Hunting and Steve Urkel were both actually smart. The former at mathematics (and he was well read, something most geeks nor nerds are), and the latter at science.
My reason for responding to you wasn't to debate the merits of the P4 vs the G4/G5, but rather to point out that the processor used in the system has a very noticible experience on the overall user experience.
Shuttle mini's also use old P4s. It's unfair to compare old P4s with modern Athlons. Sure, you can trade-off performance for noise, but that impacts the user experience too.
I've got a 2GHz P4 laptop. The chip makes for a horrible user experience. It requires a lot of cooling, which necessitates two small, very loud, 8000RPM fans. Even then, it gets extremely hot (I can feel it through my desk!), which means I always need to keep a book under it when using it on my lap. A different CPU would make for a much better user experience.
2. Being attracted to a "geek" is logical - being attracted to a "stud" is emotional - guess which side rules women more strongly?
Guess which sides rules men more strongly? You can't tell me that the average guy is any more attacted to the "geeky girl" than to the "hot girl".
A friend of my and I both left the same company, some months apart. (She's a gal, I'm a guy). We were in a general discussion about dating, and I asked her who her fellow gals in Marketing were attracted to (I was fishing). The guys they all wanted were big, stocky, masculine "macho" types.
Ask the guys in your company the same things. For god's sake. I'm a guy, and I know lots of other guys. If we're checking out women, never do we say "you know, she looks like she has a nice personality!"
WTF is the difference again? This came up yesterday when we saw "Beauty and the Geek" on TV yesterday, but wouldn't bother explaning the concept to me.
Heck, you don't even need special equipment. You can easily tell because the current Intel CPUs require better (and louder) cooling. There is a reason that silent PC folks tend to use AMD gear. So between noise, cost, and speed, I'd say that's a plenty big impact on your "experience".
NTFS is a whole lot more complex than any driver. An order of magnitude more complex, or more.
As for the "many drivers" thing, it doesn't fly. It's not cost-effective for Apple to develop custom chipsets for everything. They'll use standard Intel chipsets, which means the IDE driver and audio driver can be generic AHCI and AC97 stuff. No way Intel is going to develop custom chips for such a small product line. Further, I doubt that third-parties like ATI and NVIDIA will check for "is it a real Mac" in their own drivers. I mean, they certainly don't help Microsoft enforce their software-based XP workstation/XP server distinction! So the standard drivers will work for audio and video.
Slashdot Mirror
Intel does have rights to that SOI tech, they've just got their own process. AMD and Intel have a complete patent cross-license. So if Intel patents this technology, AMD can use it.
The Cell's SPEs aren't really general purpose. They're limited to a 256KB local storage. In order to utilize main memory, they have to use explicit DMA operations. That drastically limits their usefulness for code that isn't explicitly written for Cell.
Wow. Somebody missed the boat. The rumors are all dead --- Apple is moving to x86, their new developers kits are x86 and the developer documentation is for x86.
I'll agree that these protestors look like a bunch of kooks.
Which is fine and dandy, but I don't think I said anything to that effect.
Given the hazards of airborne asbestos fibers and carbon nanotubes, I'd argue that it's a good idea to study possible health effects of nanoscale teflon fibers.
True. But that's something to be debated properly by scientists, not morons who don't know the first thing about the technology. And if you're stripping naked in front of a store, you're a moron, and even if you might have a point, it's of the "throw enough shit and some of it will stick" variety and its not prudent in general to listen to people like that.
So if you've decided all environmentalists are kooks, are you also in the global warming isn't real camp?
I never said all environmentalists are kooks, though I'm convinced most of them are. Further, I'm not going to say global warming isn't real, but I'm also not convinced that it exists. At this point, I consider them to be something like string theory --- experimental indications suggest it may be true, but a complete and solid body of scientific evidence does not exist to validate its assertions.
How about reducing pollutants from cars and trucks or power plants?
I'm all for that. That's why I favor nuclear power, because its a way of getting coal and fossil burning plants out of our country. I'm not dumb enough to believe that something magically better than nuclear power will come around in the near future, at least not in time to prevent the irreparable damaged being caused by coal and oil power every minute we delay in implementing alternatives.
So far we've done a pretty bad job of doing it properly, though.
And the evidence to support your conclusion would be?
Hint - Is it REALLY smart to take a basic design type optimized for compact power in a military application, and scale it up for civillian power?
You could say the same thing about jet engines or GPS. That doesn't really mean anything.
Well, that's fine and dandy, but that's not what you said. Nothing in your post talked about perception vs. reality, your statement now is completely different from your statement before.
Scientists do not peddle "truths" or "falsehoods". Conclusions are not "true" or "false", because nothing is provable through emperical means, and nothing unprovable can be "true" or "false". Social analysis is no different. Conducted properly and systematically, it will yield only a theory, a theory that is not true or false, but adequate or inadequate. "Good" theories offer the power to explain and organize emperical observations. "Bad" theories offer no such power. That's all theories, scientific or social, can aspire to.
The number and quality of citations thus play two roles. They demonstrate the research used to arrive at a conclusion, establishing its credibility, and they give examples of the emperical observations that the theory can explain or categorize. A conclusion with inadequate supporting evidence is worthless, just like an untested hypothesis. The richer the set of emperical observations that are used to justify a conclusion, the more the conclusion is useful in analyzing the real world.
Noam Chomsky is an intellectual and a talented man. Most talented folks have skills far beyond their particular profession. Indeed, the high degree of specialization that has become common in today's world (turning highly-skilled people into idiot-savants capable only in a single narrowly defined field), is a rather recent phenomenon. It didn't exist in the days when Leonhard Euler made contributions in everything from mathematics to fluid dynamics. To suggest that someone is unqualified to comment on a subject, just because it is outside of their "official" field of expertise is silly. Given his decades of study into these matters, Chomskey is certainly more qualified to comment on these subjets than you or me.
That said, I agree that the number if citations doesn't necessarily imply a well-supported argument. But that wasn't my implication. My point was that a well-supported argument necessarily has extensive references. A lot of activist arguments are not well referenced. Now, with regards to Chomsky's specifically, his references are generally of high quality, if you're not too lazy to actually check them out yourself.
The "science" environmentalists generally use is as much a true science as astrology or spectrology. See Richard Feynman's rant on "junk science" at the end of his autobiography.
Scientists, in general, don't depend on a moral justification for their behavior. While some scientists are concerned about human welfare, it is only tangentially related to science as a field. Science is merely concerned with the furthering of the state of knowledge. And yes, the vast majority of scientists are able to live up to this credo, if only because the goal itself is so modest.
Most environmentalists are progressives. However, most progressives are not environmentalists. We're not "happy to have" the environmentalists, indeed, by now, we suspect most of them have pretty much gone over to something like the Green party anyway (which is of course, more reactionary than progressive).
Most progressives do embrace technological advancements, again, because most progressives are not environmentalists. If you look at protestors on college campuses and say "oh, those are progressives", you can get the idea that progressives are enviro-nuts. If you actually look at the statistics, you'll realize that those college campus protestors have no power in the progressive movement because they are a numerically small group that doesn't vote anyway.
As for "socialist", that's a pretty funny comment. First, there are few true socialists in America. American progressives are more populist than socialist. But then again, American conservatives are pretty damn populist as well. Certainly, Presidents like George W. Bush have abandoned conservative economic principles in favor of populist ones (give the people whatever they want).
In short, the ideological battle that is actually being waged is very different from the one you have in your head. It's not "socialist progressives vs capitalist conservatives", but rather "populist progressives vs. populist conservatives". And, statistically, neither side could care less about the environment.
Hmm. I can't stand 'em. They don't breathe nearly as well as real cotton. Though, that fault is probably more noticible down here in "the climate resembles hot sweaty balls" Georgia.
Dude! You got Jewed!
LOL. Young people in general give social activism a bad name, for precisely the reason you outlined above. Unfortunately, the mainstream takes that impression of activism and applies it to all activists, which really isn't fair. For example, a lot of people give Noam Chomsky a lot of heat for being a "crazy activist/conspiracy theorist". If you read any of his books, however, you'll see that he approaches issues systematically and scientifically, and extensively references his sourcse. In "Manufacturing Consent", for example, there are 300 pages of text (with numerous in-text citations), 30 pages of appendices, and over 60 pages of notes and bibliographical references. You might disagree with his conclusions, but you'd just be lying if you said that his conclusions were not properly researched and supported.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people cannot deal with this level of analytic rigor. The activists do not have the discipline to check all their sources and rationally justify their conclusions, and the opposition doesn't bother to actually check somebody's sources before denouncing them as a quack.
I take it you're not in science or technology? If you are: pick a random person off the street. Try and explain to them the intricacies of the project you're working on currently. Watch their eyes glaze over.
Yes, the "most people are stupid" attitude is elitist. That doesn't mean its not justifiable.
I wonder what the balance is on cancers prevented by the removal of asbestos versus cancers caused by the non-use of nuclear power. Environmentalists have caused far more damage to the environment by effectively stopping the use of nuclear power than has been prevented by any of their legitimate achievements.
Hey, there is no point in lumping environmentalists in with progressives in general. It's a common misconception, but it isn't true. There are tens of millions of "progressives" in this country. In comparison, the membership of Greenpeace (the largest environmental organization in the country) has declined from 1 million in 1992 to a mere 300,000 in 2000.
Environmentalists are a marginal part of the overall progressive movement. Heck, there are more Mormons in the conservative movement than there are environmentalists in the progressive movement. I suppose conservatives would love it if we characterized them all as Mormons...
So, will the benefits outweight the potential risks?
You've hit the nail right on the head. That's the fundemental thing most environmentalists refuse to understand. Everything has risks --- the question is, what risks are we better-off taking? It's the same thing with energy policy. Environmentalists don't realize that by opposing nuclear power (meltdown), wind power (birds), water power (aquatic ecology), and solar power (land usage), they are effectively coming out in support of oil and coal power (cancer, war, pollution, etc). In doing that, they are effectively in league with the big energy companies!
No mode of human-nature interaction will be completely noninvasive. The only rational goal is to make the interaction as non-invasive as practical. By arguing against change, people are effectively arguing for the preservation of the status quo, a status quo which will lead to environmental destruction more surely and quickly than any of the proposed alternatives.
I dunno if the comparison is accurate, though. Will Hunting and Steve Urkel were both actually smart. The former at mathematics (and he was well read, something most geeks nor nerds are), and the latter at science.
My reason for responding to you wasn't to debate the merits of the P4 vs the G4/G5, but rather to point out that the processor used in the system has a very noticible experience on the overall user experience.
Shuttle mini's also use old P4s. It's unfair to compare old P4s with modern Athlons. Sure, you can trade-off performance for noise, but that impacts the user experience too.
I've got a 2GHz P4 laptop. The chip makes for a horrible user experience. It requires a lot of cooling, which necessitates two small, very loud, 8000RPM fans. Even then, it gets extremely hot (I can feel it through my desk!), which means I always need to keep a book under it when using it on my lap. A different CPU would make for a much better user experience.
2. Being attracted to a "geek" is logical - being attracted to a "stud" is emotional - guess which side rules women more strongly?
Guess which sides rules men more strongly? You can't tell me that the average guy is any more attacted to the "geeky girl" than to the "hot girl".
A friend of my and I both left the same company, some months apart. (She's a gal, I'm a guy). We were in a general discussion about dating, and I asked her who her fellow gals in Marketing were attracted to (I was fishing).
The guys they all wanted were big, stocky, masculine "macho" types.
Ask the guys in your company the same things. For god's sake. I'm a guy, and I know lots of other guys. If we're checking out women, never do we say "you know, she looks like she has a nice personality!"
WTF is the difference again? This came up yesterday when we saw "Beauty and the Geek" on TV yesterday, but wouldn't bother explaning the concept to me.
shouldn't the best couples be nerd-on-nerd?
Ewww. Hot nerd-on-nerd action...
Heck, you don't even need special equipment. You can easily tell because the current Intel CPUs require better (and louder) cooling. There is a reason that silent PC folks tend to use AMD gear. So between noise, cost, and speed, I'd say that's a plenty big impact on your "experience".
NTFS is a whole lot more complex than any driver. An order of magnitude more complex, or more.
As for the "many drivers" thing, it doesn't fly. It's not cost-effective for Apple to develop custom chipsets for everything. They'll use standard Intel chipsets, which means the IDE driver and audio driver can be generic AHCI and AC97 stuff. No way Intel is going to develop custom chips for such a small product line. Further, I doubt that third-parties like ATI and NVIDIA will check for "is it a real Mac" in their own drivers. I mean, they certainly don't help Microsoft enforce their software-based XP workstation/XP server distinction! So the standard drivers will work for audio and video.