You obviously don't know the first thing about corporations. The initial IPO doesn't mean jack... Noone buys the stock "originally". That is done by an investment banker -- usually a firm that has set up the value of the company and takes a cut of the price before they RESELL it to investors. There is no human being on the planet that has stock that came directly from a company -- that would be illegal. The company gets its original funding from the investment banker -- period. After that, the stock is OWNERSHIP in the company -- that's what the whole purpose of stock. It isn't a LOAN -- it's trading money for ownership. It may be cut up into millions of percentages, but the stock holders are the owners of the company. The board members work for them. That is how it works. Shareholders with voting rights vote for board members who then pick officers to run the company. Shareholders ARE the company & if they want higher stock prices or higher dividends (those with a combined 51% or so), that is their decision to make -- not the board or the CEO or anyone else. Of course, you don't have to take the word of a business major who owns stock. You could do a little research and look it up yourself.
geez... Coward. Fair Use allows copying... period. Who hears or views that copy -- whether they are in my house or not, could be distributing, but until they can scan our brains for evidence, they won't be able to enforce it. I don't respect laws that the people don't agree with. (Most Americans don't support the monopolistic RIAA and MPAA and their crummy laws they shove down our throats by bribing politicians). The constitution allows for copyright for owners for a "limited time" , not life + 70 years as it is today & I think it's criminal to even suggest that's fair. As for hell, it only exists in your mind... just like all the other fairytales you've been brainwashed into believing
Ah, I stand corrected... However, there is a law which allows distributing, not sure which -- not a lawyer.. lol. Aimster's law it hid behind was a sharing clause which allowed people to copy and share tapes and other music among friends and families. As for the TV shows, recording is allowed, but perhaps not redistrobution... however, the argument that I can record it off of the TV, yet can't download it is still valid, but then again, it's really the uploader who is in violation for sending it to possibly unauthorized people w/ out permission of the copyright holder.
I believe you're correct, however, I've seen legal arguments about the legality of downloading files that you know are copywrited and haven't been paid for. This would fall under the same areas of law as buying stolen CD's and such that you know are stolen -- I forget if it's an accessory to a crime or if there's another legal term for knowingly participating in an illegal activitythat they can get you for... hmm... brain doesn't work well at 1:00 AM.. lol
hmm... you're probably right on that. It would allow for a wider diversity of GPU and CPU's to communicate without serious redesigns -- great for marketing different products for different consumer bases. It would mean that you wouldn't have to redo a whole fab plant for CPU's if you came out with a better GPU to work with it, or vice-versa -- cutting the cost of shifting product lines. Also, if it's found that a CPU and a GPU don't need the same clock speed or can ramp up or lower their clock speed with usage(highly likely), it'd be easier to impliment the speed-stepping individually if the two were on seperate chips. Of course, that's all implying that there will be lots of innovation in the processor and graphics chip areas 10 years from now... but, I think that's a safe bet to take.
According to the Home Recording Act, I can record any signal I can pick up in my home from the radio or TV AND let any of my friends or family borrow or record from my recording.
So, it's not illegal for me to get a radio tuner for my PC and encode songs to MP3 -- yet, it is illegal to download those exact same songs in mp3 format or to post them to the web, but it is legal for me to give my radio-encoded mp3's to any of my friends. Also, the same is true for any TV shows. I can record The Sopranos, burn it to a DVD, and give it to a friend, yet I can't download the episode of the Sopranos I missed last week even though I pay for HBO!!
Anyone else think this is stupid? I can listen to any music on MP3 whenever I want -- so long as the original source was from either a CD I baught, the radio, or a friend or family member who gave it to me as long as they got it from the radio or TV -- but NOT from a stranger online... mmmkayyy. But, if I met a stranger online in person, and we were friends... they could give me a copy & that'd be legal.. so long as their source was from a the radio or TV.
I fear that laws will change to where noone can copy anything (goodbye fair use), but I'd prefer that they'd change so that noone can enforce a copyright longer than 7 years. (after 2 years, most music and movies have made their serious dough anyway -- 'cept TV shows b/c they get their major money in sindication (sp). I think a fair compromise would be -- you can't copy anything for other than personal use, parody, news media, or some other variant of free speech/fair use... unless it's 7 years old:-) (in other words, no sharing of an exact copy of a full work with anyone unless it's 7 years old)
I see things as going the other way. You're talking about today's technology and today's costs, where as I'm talking about 10 years down the road. I see things as going towards integration instead of modularization. 10 years from now, the die size for processors will be smaller than 1/16th the size of todays -- making it easy for today's processor core to sit on the same die as a GPU and many other devices.
Once key components are defined and standardized, they don't need to be seperate from the CPU other than an interface for devices. Every time the die size of a processor shrinks, more circuits can be laid on the same surface area -- it would make sense to put standard components onto the die size when that happens. I would bet that Nvidia would merge with either intel or AMD to create system-on-a-chip CPU's. Such systems would be low power, standard, and cheap compared to todays systems & fiber optics could connect the CPU to any storage devices or peripherals that aren't wireless by that time. I wouldn't be surprised to see Intel merging with ATI and AMD merging with Nvidia.
You're correct that changing either the cpu or gpu would require consultation with the other design team, but not if you only have one design team to begin with. As for design costs, Intel spent big bucks designing the Itanium line of processors that is likely to tank. I think it'd be a worthwhile investment to work with companies that create chipsets, video cards, and other standard components to improve the processor any way we can. We've added MMX instructions and other multimedia extensions to the processor... it only makes sense to put the whole gpu on there with it once it's economically viable. AGP may be fast by today's standards, but when we have processors running at 48 Gigahertz, I think we'll have a noticable benefit having a GPU of the future talking directly to the CPU. We added math coprocessors to processors a long time ago, I think we'll add graphics coprocessors as well (we are headed that way w/ all the multimedia extensions as it is). In order to keep up with competition, the graphics cards of the future will either have to have a much wider interface to support a huge cooling system anyway -- may as well be on the processor and share the heat sink. A large reason the GPU's aren't running at 3 Ghz is due to heat and power constraints which wouldn't be as much of a problem if they were integrated with the CPU b/c they could use the same power source and cooling system. Also, the main bottleneck for graphics cards is RAM these days... they're the main people pushing for faster RAM so they can keep pumping out ever-faster cards with cheap memory, but when we can fit more on ever-smaller silicon wafers, they'll be using an onboard cache for their GPUs as well. So... you'll have a CPU with a large onboard cache... and a GPU with a smaller, yet still adequate onboard cache... why not combine the two and share the same cache? Why have a CPU with 3 gigs of onboard cache sitting 6 inches away from a GPU with only 1 gig of cache... instead of a CPU/GPU chip with 3 gigs shared (assuming that the cpu never uses the full 3 gigs and the GPU can steal at least 1 gig when it needs it... or hell, put more cache on the combined chip). Sure, larger chips give lower yeilds, but I think that makes some sense... lol... I'm rambling and it's 1:00 AM -- got class in the mornin'.
I think your idea is interesting, but your main argument against my idea is cost, which goes down exponentially over time in the computer industry. I don't think there will be very many players in the computer industry either as it moves towards maturity... so, companies will buy each other out and combine technologies, things will become more integrated and very very tiny. I wouldn't be surprised 10 years from now to buy a computer the size of my alarm click that plugged into the back of my plasma screen monitor and wirelessly connected to a my HDTV, stereo, a keyboard, mouse, RAID drive in the basement, and a microphone
All I got was the big hype about "the sequel to one of the best strategy games ever -- Moo2." If it were going to be so fundamentally different, I wish they would have downplayed the whole "sequel to moo2" thing and said it was an expansion of the moo universe or "a different take on the world of Moo." I'm sure they posted info on thier website somewhere about the gameplay being radically different -- somewhere in the many logs, but I didn't see it when I visited. I honestly can't see how you can get into the game. I played up to 144 turns before getting fed up with it. I'd heard from beta testers and early-release people that it had gotten mixed reviews and I just kinda figured that they must not have played the original moo and moo2 games if they couldn't appreciate it, but I was wrong. Oh well... I'm glad you like it at least. I'd hate to see Moo2-style gaming end because of Moo3 flopping in the marketplace. Maybe the mixed reviews will encourage them to make a Moo4 which will make everyone happy. I've heard good things about Galactic Civ and Space Empires, but never played them. I did like playing Ascendency, which is similar in space-combat to Moo2, but the planetary building is a bit of a joke compared to Moo2's flexibility in assigning workers and terraforming. I guess I'll hunt down a demo of galactic civ and space empires or a friend's copy and see if they're worthwhile. Lata:->
I'm in the same boat you are & I think I've come to the same conclusion. I figure... if I go out and buy only what I NEED right now (which isn't much), then I could buy a system fairly cheap. Later, I could buy an Opteron system when they've matured & Serial ATA is more commonplace (I want a RAID w/ Serial ATA drives:-)
It's going to take a while for everyone to release x86-64 compiled versions of software anyway, so the real benefits of having an Opteron system won't show up for a while -- especially considering that the price for performance of any new processor is always sky-high. It may take 6 to 12 months after its realease for it to drop to a reasonable price for most consumers, and I don't want to wait nearly 2 years before buying a new system.
Once the price goes down on the Opterons, there is x86-64 code for them, and it makes sense to upgrade, I'll do that. (and maybe I'll give my old system to my nephew when I buy an Opteron, so everyone will be happy.. lol)
yes, but most AMD processors have integrated DDR memory controllers that can't run at 400. If you have a Barton core AMD processor, the DDR 400 mhz memory and run the system at 400, you should , in theory, be able to run them synchronously... but, most people don't have the barton core AMD processors & when they run the RAM at 400, the AMD memory controller is still running at 333, so the asynchronous operation actually hurts performance in some areas. (we're talking fraction of a percent here, but still... it doesn't boost performance like a barton core would).
I've been frustrated with this as well. I remember when PC133 ram was always backwards compatable with PC100 and PC66, but now memory makers are making PC133(only) chips... making it difficult to upgrade older systems at a reasonable cost (the PC133 chips are on sale for about 1/3 the price (with rebates)of the PC100's b/c there is a limited supply of PC100's)
BUT, as long as motherboard dimensions continue to shrink, chips become more integrated, and prices continue to fall, I don't see this as being a bad thing for the computer industry. Sooner or later, I think we'll have a small motherboard with a processor and connections for some standard I/O ports (possibly fiber optics) and a power supply connection. I think eventually, RAM, networking hardware, and video will all be on the processor die. (to me, this makes sense as connections need to become faster in order to increase performance of the system)It'll be simple to pull the motherboard and processor out and replace them with newer ones for a relatively low price b/c they are one unit. (processors could become integrated into the motherboard -- no need for a socket if they'll never be swapped out)
Granted, I'm thinking 10 years into the future... but, think. We're already putting 8 megs of cache on processors (I remember when I had only 8 megs of ram in my computer), Intel is putting wireless technology into CPU's, Modem and Networking hardware has been built into CPU's in the past, and now AMD is putting memory controllers into the CPU. I don't think it will be long before Nvidia partners with one of the CPU makers and integrates their GPU with someone's CPU. Graphics cards require ever-faster connections to the CPU. Changing BUS speeds and graphics card slot designs are great, but the graphics cards need increasing amounts of power and are suffering from overheating -- my solution would be to put the GPU and CPU together, let one heat sink work for both & let them share RAM and possibly even each other's registers as needed.
I think the upgrade of motherboards, cpus, and ram as seperate entities will go away, but the upgrade of a machine will become cheaper and simpler. Just pop out the motherboard with integrated cpu,gpu,ram,network card, and chipset and pop in a new one and connect to peripherals by some standard serial I/O ports.
yep... had to play it to make sure it wasn't something that had to grow on me. I'd hoped that maybe everything would start to make sense and I'd get some enjoyment out of the game, but no, it didn't happen.
The only thing that I thought was cool was how they'd display the environment of the planet in relation to what it was before terriforming began. I quit playing before there was a single spaceship battle, so I don't know how cool that is to watch, but considering they gave the freakin' AI total control over how ships play, I'm betting it's like the rest of the game... sit back and watch... click "turn", sit back and watch some more... rinse, lather, repeat.
I totally agree. I've uninstalled MOO3 from my system. I had to give it a week to try it out & give it a fair chance, but I feel like I'm there just to click the "Turn" button. The AI does everything, and you can only queue 3 planetary and 3 military projects per planet. I was hoping for more queues than were given in MOO2 b/c I could tell you exactly how I wanted each planet to build depending on where it was defensively and what was needed in my empire. I would have loved a queue with 20 slots *druel* Moo2 only gives what? 7? Seven's not bad, but more is better:-) 3 is worthless -- especially when you can't specify whether you want a planetary or military project to be worked on first b/c the military and planetary queues are mutually exclusive. Sure, you can manipulate funds, but you'd have to do that for every turn to get things completed in the order you wanted. That's another peeve I have. You can save up funds, but you can't BUY anything. You have to delegate who gets more money or let the AI automatically distribute the cash how it thinks is best. When I want something built, I'd rather click a button to buy it than change all the planet's slider bars around to get the cash to flow where it needs to in order to complete it as fast as possible. grrrr... MOO3 sucks! I wish they'd just released an expansion pack to MOO2!!!
I was bored to tears with Moo3. It's almost nothing like Moo2. I was hoping for a larger queue for each planetary construction list, more technology to play with, and maybe even a technology tree that was almost like what they gave us, but this whole dealing with the Galactic Senate thing is boring (gee... a game for politicians! ugh!) and with only so much able to fit in the queue at a time (3 for planet, 3 for military), you almost have to put everything on Auto. The game plays itself & you end up fighting with the AI for what you want to do. In Moo2, I could go through a few hundred turns w/ out looking at it, just click a button, and it would tell me 30 turns later when my colony ship finally was built. Moo3 requires you to take each and every turn & you reeeeeally feel those 30 turns go by. (I even forget I tried to build one!) and if you want it to go to another system... another 12-30 turns & man... that takes forever, too!
I'll stick to Moo2. I don't know WHAT they were thinking when they made Moo3. It's a huge disappointment
>> The United States of America is a sovereign nation and is
>> not bound by the terms of any international body.
>The USA acted as a sovereign nation when it wrote much of the UN Charter and when >Congress approved it. Now it is the law of the land, and we are bound by the >Constitution to abide by it:
>"... all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, >shall be the supreme Law of the Land;..."
>US Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2
Any treaty, by definition, is a contract between nations. Any treaty made by the USA can be amended or discarded at will by an act of Congress. Thus, my point being if the USA wanted to, it could scrap the treaty and move ahead with whatever agenda it pleases without any regard to any international body.
>> All contracts are negotiable & the USA reserves the right
>> to change its mind anytime it pleases.
> This is not a contract, this is the "supreme Law of the Land", and we are obliged to >abide by it. To break a treaty for the US is to break a law and violate the Constitution. >Any president which breaks a treaty has therefore broken his oath to uphold the >Constitution, the oath that makes him president. I know presidents past and present who >have broken treaties, that does not make it right or legal for them to have broken them.
As I said, a treaty is a contract between nations... they are changed all the time. Again, the USA (by act of Congress) can change it on a whim & don't think they won't if there is any money in colonizing or mining the moon or any strategic value in putting weapons there.
>> Now, the US may lose credibility with other nations in the
>> future if it regularly breaks treaties and reverses
>> decisions,
>Credibility? More like loose our honor as a nation, assuming we have any left.
Honor is less important than credibility in my book. If the US says they are going to do something and they have credibility, you believe them regardless of whether or not they have any honor. I think honor is more of a personal trait than a collective trait of a nation, but I suppose it can be.
>> but I think reversing a decision made nearly 40 years
>> ago wouldn't be out of the ordinary for any nation.
>The United States of America is not some tin plated dictatorship! Whatever happened to >the nation "with liberty and justice for all"? If we cannot even try to uphold our ideals, if >we dishonorably break faith with other nations, then our "liberty" and "justice" are just >empty hypocrisy and our word as a sovereign nation means nothing.
Never heard of the "big stick" theory? The USA has always done what it wants, when it wants, at the peril of other nations that get in its way. I'm not saying that's "right", just that it's unusual to hear someone calling the USA some angel that cares about other countries that don't have some economic or strategic value to them. "Liberty and Justice for all" was just shorthand for "liberty and justice for all male white land owners"... I think now it mostly is shorthand for liberty and justice for all corporate conglomerates (because they pay the bills in congress... our own Senator Fritz Hollings of SC is known as the "Senator from Disney"... he hardly does anything for SC in the Senate.)
I'm getting off-topic... lol... Basically, Treaties change every day between nations. It's no big deal to break one that's nearly half a century old in most cases. I think if the USA declared the treaty void, they'd at least share the moon w/ other nations, but b/c of USA's technological and financial resources, I'd be willing to bet the USA's part would be larger and more profitable or strategic in some way.
>> I wouldn't be surprised if the US decided in the next 100
>> years to divide the moon up among the nations, giving
>> itself the largest chunk & putting a McDonalds and a
>> Disneyland on it.
>Assuming, of course, that in the next 100 years the US succeeds in Bush's dreams of >world domination, and wins another world war or three, putting it in the position to dole >out the moon. As it is now, the US only has 50 states and a few islands to dole out, and >they are all taken.
What is it with you and President Bush? lol. I never even mentioned him, but this is the second time you've brought him up. (I'm guessing you have some loyalty to that backstabbing UN that's becoming increasingly pointless.) A lot can change in 100 years. The whole USA has only been here for a couple hundred. It makes sense that people will eventually colonize the moon, then Mars, and so on & the nations of earth are going to want to get some benefit for funding those expeditions. Most likely, they'll declare land as colonies of their nations, just as they did when people found North and South America.
The United States of America is a sovereign nation and is not bound by the terms of any international body.
Simply because it made a gesture of good faith at one time when mining the moon was implausible does not mean it is forever bound to it. All contracts are negotiable & the USA reserves the right to change its mind anytime it pleases. Now, the US may lose credibility with other nations in the future if it regularly breaks treaties and reverses decisions, but I think reversing a decision made nearly 40 years ago wouldn't be out of the ordinary for any nation. I imagine that agreement will last another 50 to 100 years, though. Times change, laws change, and to say that it "can't happen" because elected officials who are likely all in their graves now once signed a piece of paper restricting something deemed nearly impossible at the time is a bit naive, I think.
I wouldn't be surprised if the US decided in the next 100 years to divide the moon up among the nations, giving itself the largest chunk & putting a McDonalds and a Disneyland on it.
Yeah, I'd say this comparison isn't even as good as apples to oranges... more like apples to pasta.
In order to benchmark performance, as many variables as possible need to be the SAME other than the one you're testing. A better test would be:
Windows XP running the game
vs.
Windows XP (coded and compiled for 64 bit for Athlon 64) running a non-beta 64 bit version of the game
I'd like to at least see benchmarks comparing the game under SUSE Linux to the 64 bit game under SUSE 64 for Athlon 64 so I can judge for myself rather than taking the reader's word that the frame rates aren't "good".
Modems will be around, unfortunately, for another decade at least due to the slow growth of broadband services and wireless.
Wired keyboards and mice will likely never go away. Nomatter how "secure" people think the wireless ones are, it is still another point of attack for hackers to use if they are anywhere in the broadcast radius or use an amplifier. There's too much cross-talk between them today to even consider using them in a dorm or apartment environment, but even if they were encrypted and varied frequencies, there would always be a possibility for intentional attacks. Not to mention the fact that I would never, ever need a wireless keyboard or care to have one which required a battery replacement & I don't have any need for a wireless mouse either... most people keep them on their desk with their computer & don't mind the wire. Now... I do think optical mice will replace those with balls inside, but that's another story;-)
CD's are just now becoming mainstream in the RW department. CDs will likely replace floppies as the major file transfer and boot-disk medium since CD-RW drives are in nearly all PC's sold today & most PC manufacturers are considering getting rid of the floppy. I would prefer USB pen drives, however they are much more expensive and even machines without USB support can read a CD usually.
if, by Analog Displays you mean CRT monitors, I hope you are right, but I have yet to see anything that compares to the quality and price of a CRT monitor.
Perhaps by "not much longer" you mean "only another 20 to 50 years"
Outer tracks have more surface area to hold data. The tracks are concentric circles, and the first track is the outer track (b/c it reads faster) Since the circle is larger, it has more surface area to hold more data than the inner circles. When spinning the disk, the outer tracks cover more data per revolution than inner tracks, so the speed is faster for reading outer tracks.
You must be living near Princeton or Yale, then. Most students are dirt poor and surviving off college loans, scholarships, credit cards, and a part time job to pay the bills. I am a college student & I transferred from a major college town (Columbia, SC -- heart of USC) to another college & in both situations, it was rare to find a student who wasn't in debt up to his ears and moaning about how he can't afford to go out to eat much or buy a new computer, etc.
I'd say out of 4000 students, he was lucky to find one or two that actually had credit left on thier Visa cards & he maxed those out... lol. We are talking about students here... not their rich parents. Even the rich kids usually have to call daddy for cash every 2-4 weeks b/c they blow it all so fast. It's actually funny, b/c the rich kids are usually the ones w/ out anything at all in savings and little to none in checking except for that breif period when it's deposited by their parents and spent by them on their new toy.
Considering our knowledge of the universe is expanding exponentially, I'd be willing to bet computers will still see an exponential growth in speed until we hit the nanotech level, then as we learn new methods of organizing structures at taht level and develop new methods of programming, we'll continue to move along at a steady rate of increased usefulness.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously don't know the first thing about corporations. The initial IPO doesn't mean jack... Noone buys the stock "originally". That is done by an investment banker -- usually a firm that has set up the value of the company and takes a cut of the price before they RESELL it to investors. There is no human being on the planet that has stock that came directly from a company -- that would be illegal. The company gets its original funding from the investment banker -- period. After that, the stock is OWNERSHIP in the company -- that's what the whole purpose of stock. It isn't a LOAN -- it's trading money for ownership. It may be cut up into millions of percentages, but the stock holders are the owners of the company. The board members work for them. That is how it works. Shareholders with voting rights vote for board members who then pick officers to run the company. Shareholders ARE the company & if they want higher stock prices or higher dividends (those with a combined 51% or so), that is their decision to make -- not the board or the CEO or anyone else. Of course, you don't have to take the word of a business major who owns stock. You could do a little research and look it up yourself.
geez... Coward. Fair Use allows copying... period. Who hears or views that copy -- whether they are in my house or not, could be distributing, but until they can scan our brains for evidence, they won't be able to enforce it. I don't respect laws that the people don't agree with. (Most Americans don't support the monopolistic RIAA and MPAA and their crummy laws they shove down our throats by bribing politicians). The constitution allows for copyright for owners for a "limited time" , not life + 70 years as it is today & I think it's criminal to even suggest that's fair. As for hell, it only exists in your mind... just like all the other fairytales you've been brainwashed into believing
Ah, I stand corrected... However, there is a law which allows distributing, not sure which -- not a lawyer.. lol. Aimster's law it hid behind was a sharing clause which allowed people to copy and share tapes and other music among friends and families. As for the TV shows, recording is allowed, but perhaps not redistrobution... however, the argument that I can record it off of the TV, yet can't download it is still valid, but then again, it's really the uploader who is in violation for sending it to possibly unauthorized people w/ out permission of the copyright holder.
I believe you're correct, however, I've seen legal arguments about the legality of downloading files that you know are copywrited and haven't been paid for. This would fall under the same areas of law as buying stolen CD's and such that you know are stolen -- I forget if it's an accessory to a crime or if there's another legal term for knowingly participating in an illegal activitythat they can get you for... hmm... brain doesn't work well at 1:00 AM.. lol
hmm... you're probably right on that. It would allow for a wider diversity of GPU and CPU's to communicate without serious redesigns -- great for marketing different products for different consumer bases. It would mean that you wouldn't have to redo a whole fab plant for CPU's if you came out with a better GPU to work with it, or vice-versa -- cutting the cost of shifting product lines. Also, if it's found that a CPU and a GPU don't need the same clock speed or can ramp up or lower their clock speed with usage(highly likely), it'd be easier to impliment the speed-stepping individually if the two were on seperate chips. Of course, that's all implying that there will be lots of innovation in the processor and graphics chip areas 10 years from now... but, I think that's a safe bet to take.
According to the Home Recording Act, I can record any signal I can pick up in my home from the radio or TV AND let any of my friends or family borrow or record from my recording.
So, it's not illegal for me to get a radio tuner for my PC and encode songs to MP3 -- yet, it is illegal to download those exact same songs in mp3 format or to post them to the web, but it is legal for me to give my radio-encoded mp3's to any of my friends. Also, the same is true for any TV shows. I can record The Sopranos, burn it to a DVD, and give it to a friend, yet I can't download the episode of the Sopranos I missed last week even though I pay for HBO!!
Anyone else think this is stupid? I can listen to any music on MP3 whenever I want -- so long as the original source was from either a CD I baught, the radio, or a friend or family member who gave it to me as long as they got it from the radio or TV -- but NOT from a stranger online... mmmkayyy. But, if I met a stranger online in person, and we were friends... they could give me a copy & that'd be legal.. so long as their source was from a the radio or TV.
I fear that laws will change to where noone can copy anything (goodbye fair use), but I'd prefer that they'd change so that noone can enforce a copyright longer than 7 years. (after 2 years, most music and movies have made their serious dough anyway -- 'cept TV shows b/c they get their major money in sindication (sp). I think a fair compromise would be -- you can't copy anything for other than personal use, parody, news media, or some other variant of free speech/fair use ... unless it's 7 years old :-) (in other words, no sharing of an exact copy of a full work with anyone unless it's 7 years old)
Once key components are defined and standardized, they don't need to be seperate from the CPU other than an interface for devices. Every time the die size of a processor shrinks, more circuits can be laid on the same surface area -- it would make sense to put standard components onto the die size when that happens. I would bet that Nvidia would merge with either intel or AMD to create system-on-a-chip CPU's. Such systems would be low power, standard, and cheap compared to todays systems & fiber optics could connect the CPU to any storage devices or peripherals that aren't wireless by that time. I wouldn't be surprised to see Intel merging with ATI and AMD merging with Nvidia.
You're correct that changing either the cpu or gpu would require consultation with the other design team, but not if you only have one design team to begin with. As for design costs, Intel spent big bucks designing the Itanium line of processors that is likely to tank. I think it'd be a worthwhile investment to work with companies that create chipsets, video cards, and other standard components to improve the processor any way we can. We've added MMX instructions and other multimedia extensions to the processor... it only makes sense to put the whole gpu on there with it once it's economically viable. AGP may be fast by today's standards, but when we have processors running at 48 Gigahertz, I think we'll have a noticable benefit having a GPU of the future talking directly to the CPU. We added math coprocessors to processors a long time ago, I think we'll add graphics coprocessors as well (we are headed that way w/ all the multimedia extensions as it is). In order to keep up with competition, the graphics cards of the future will either have to have a much wider interface to support a huge cooling system anyway -- may as well be on the processor and share the heat sink. A large reason the GPU's aren't running at 3 Ghz is due to heat and power constraints which wouldn't be as much of a problem if they were integrated with the CPU b/c they could use the same power source and cooling system. Also, the main bottleneck for graphics cards is RAM these days... they're the main people pushing for faster RAM so they can keep pumping out ever-faster cards with cheap memory, but when we can fit more on ever-smaller silicon wafers, they'll be using an onboard cache for their GPUs as well. So... you'll have a CPU with a large onboard cache... and a GPU with a smaller, yet still adequate onboard cache... why not combine the two and share the same cache? Why have a CPU with 3 gigs of onboard cache sitting 6 inches away from a GPU with only 1 gig of cache... instead of a CPU/GPU chip with 3 gigs shared (assuming that the cpu never uses the full 3 gigs and the GPU can steal at least 1 gig when it needs it... or hell, put more cache on the combined chip). Sure, larger chips give lower yeilds, but I think that makes some sense... lol... I'm rambling and it's 1:00 AM -- got class in the mornin'.
I think your idea is interesting, but your main argument against my idea is cost, which goes down exponentially over time in the computer industry. I don't think there will be very many players in the computer industry either as it moves towards maturity... so, companies will buy each other out and combine technologies, things will become more integrated and very very tiny. I wouldn't be surprised 10 years from now to buy a computer the size of my alarm click that plugged into the back of my plasma screen monitor and wirelessly connected to a my HDTV, stereo, a keyboard, mouse, RAID drive in the basement, and a microphone
All I got was the big hype about "the sequel to one of the best strategy games ever -- Moo2." If it were going to be so fundamentally different, I wish they would have downplayed the whole "sequel to moo2" thing and said it was an expansion of the moo universe or "a different take on the world of Moo." I'm sure they posted info on thier website somewhere about the gameplay being radically different -- somewhere in the many logs, but I didn't see it when I visited. I honestly can't see how you can get into the game. I played up to 144 turns before getting fed up with it. I'd heard from beta testers and early-release people that it had gotten mixed reviews and I just kinda figured that they must not have played the original moo and moo2 games if they couldn't appreciate it, but I was wrong. Oh well... I'm glad you like it at least. I'd hate to see Moo2-style gaming end because of Moo3 flopping in the marketplace. Maybe the mixed reviews will encourage them to make a Moo4 which will make everyone happy. I've heard good things about Galactic Civ and Space Empires, but never played them. I did like playing Ascendency, which is similar in space-combat to Moo2, but the planetary building is a bit of a joke compared to Moo2's flexibility in assigning workers and terraforming. I guess I'll hunt down a demo of galactic civ and space empires or a friend's copy and see if they're worthwhile. Lata :->
yep... never got that memo. I was extremely disappointed.
It's going to take a while for everyone to release x86-64 compiled versions of software anyway, so the real benefits of having an Opteron system won't show up for a while -- especially considering that the price for performance of any new processor is always sky-high. It may take 6 to 12 months after its realease for it to drop to a reasonable price for most consumers, and I don't want to wait nearly 2 years before buying a new system.
Once the price goes down on the Opterons, there is x86-64 code for them, and it makes sense to upgrade, I'll do that. (and maybe I'll give my old system to my nephew when I buy an Opteron, so everyone will be happy.. lol)
yes, but most AMD processors have integrated DDR memory controllers that can't run at 400. If you have a Barton core AMD processor, the DDR 400 mhz memory and run the system at 400, you should , in theory, be able to run them synchronously... but, most people don't have the barton core AMD processors & when they run the RAM at 400, the AMD memory controller is still running at 333, so the asynchronous operation actually hurts performance in some areas. (we're talking fraction of a percent here, but still... it doesn't boost performance like a barton core would).
BUT, as long as motherboard dimensions continue to shrink, chips become more integrated, and prices continue to fall, I don't see this as being a bad thing for the computer industry. Sooner or later, I think we'll have a small motherboard with a processor and connections for some standard I/O ports (possibly fiber optics) and a power supply connection. I think eventually, RAM, networking hardware, and video will all be on the processor die. (to me, this makes sense as connections need to become faster in order to increase performance of the system)It'll be simple to pull the motherboard and processor out and replace them with newer ones for a relatively low price b/c they are one unit. (processors could become integrated into the motherboard -- no need for a socket if they'll never be swapped out)
Granted, I'm thinking 10 years into the future... but, think. We're already putting 8 megs of cache on processors (I remember when I had only 8 megs of ram in my computer), Intel is putting wireless technology into CPU's, Modem and Networking hardware has been built into CPU's in the past, and now AMD is putting memory controllers into the CPU. I don't think it will be long before Nvidia partners with one of the CPU makers and integrates their GPU with someone's CPU. Graphics cards require ever-faster connections to the CPU. Changing BUS speeds and graphics card slot designs are great, but the graphics cards need increasing amounts of power and are suffering from overheating -- my solution would be to put the GPU and CPU together, let one heat sink work for both & let them share RAM and possibly even each other's registers as needed.
I think the upgrade of motherboards, cpus, and ram as seperate entities will go away, but the upgrade of a machine will become cheaper and simpler. Just pop out the motherboard with integrated cpu,gpu,ram,network card, and chipset and pop in a new one and connect to peripherals by some standard serial I/O ports.
The only thing that I thought was cool was how they'd display the environment of the planet in relation to what it was before terriforming began. I quit playing before there was a single spaceship battle, so I don't know how cool that is to watch, but considering they gave the freakin' AI total control over how ships play, I'm betting it's like the rest of the game... sit back and watch... click "turn", sit back and watch some more... rinse, lather, repeat.
I totally agree. I've uninstalled MOO3 from my system. I had to give it a week to try it out & give it a fair chance, but I feel like I'm there just to click the "Turn" button. The AI does everything, and you can only queue 3 planetary and 3 military projects per planet. I was hoping for more queues than were given in MOO2 b/c I could tell you exactly how I wanted each planet to build depending on where it was defensively and what was needed in my empire. I would have loved a queue with 20 slots *druel* Moo2 only gives what? 7? Seven's not bad, but more is better :-) 3 is worthless -- especially when you can't specify whether you want a planetary or military project to be worked on first b/c the military and planetary queues are mutually exclusive. Sure, you can manipulate funds, but you'd have to do that for every turn to get things completed in the order you wanted. That's another peeve I have. You can save up funds, but you can't BUY anything. You have to delegate who gets more money or let the AI automatically distribute the cash how it thinks is best. When I want something built, I'd rather click a button to buy it than change all the planet's slider bars around to get the cash to flow where it needs to in order to complete it as fast as possible. grrrr... MOO3 sucks! I wish they'd just released an expansion pack to MOO2!!!
I was bored to tears with Moo3. It's almost nothing like Moo2. I was hoping for a larger queue for each planetary construction list, more technology to play with, and maybe even a technology tree that was almost like what they gave us, but this whole dealing with the Galactic Senate thing is boring (gee... a game for politicians! ugh!) and with only so much able to fit in the queue at a time (3 for planet, 3 for military), you almost have to put everything on Auto. The game plays itself & you end up fighting with the AI for what you want to do. In Moo2, I could go through a few hundred turns w/ out looking at it, just click a button, and it would tell me 30 turns later when my colony ship finally was built. Moo3 requires you to take each and every turn & you reeeeeally feel those 30 turns go by. (I even forget I tried to build one!) and if you want it to go to another system... another 12-30 turns & man... that takes forever, too! I'll stick to Moo2. I don't know WHAT they were thinking when they made Moo3. It's a huge disappointment
We can't walk a whole 4 blocks to get to one! That would be considered exercise! Gotta have one on every corner, man ;-)
LOL. Glad to see someone has a sense of humor.. hehehe...
>> not bound by the terms of any international body.
>The USA acted as a sovereign nation when it wrote much of the UN Charter and when
>Congress approved it. Now it is the law of the land, and we are bound by the
>Constitution to abide by it:
>"... all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, ..."
>shall be the supreme Law of the Land;
>US Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2
Any treaty, by definition, is a contract between nations. Any treaty made by the USA can be amended or discarded at will by an act of Congress. Thus, my point being if the USA wanted to, it could scrap the treaty and move ahead with whatever agenda it pleases without any regard to any international body.
>> All contracts are negotiable & the USA reserves the right
>> to change its mind anytime it pleases.
> This is not a contract, this is the "supreme Law of the Land", and we are obliged to
>abide by it. To break a treaty for the US is to break a law and violate the Constitution.
>Any president which breaks a treaty has therefore broken his oath to uphold the
>Constitution, the oath that makes him president. I know presidents past and present who
>have broken treaties, that does not make it right or legal for them to have broken them.
As I said, a treaty is a contract between nations... they are changed all the time. Again, the USA (by act of Congress) can change it on a whim & don't think they won't if there is any money in colonizing or mining the moon or any strategic value in putting weapons there.
>> Now, the US may lose credibility with other nations in the
>> future if it regularly breaks treaties and reverses
>> decisions,
>Credibility? More like loose our honor as a nation, assuming we have any left.
Honor is less important than credibility in my book. If the US says they are going to do something and they have credibility, you believe them regardless of whether or not they have any honor. I think honor is more of a personal trait than a collective trait of a nation, but I suppose it can be.
>> but I think reversing a decision made nearly 40 years
>> ago wouldn't be out of the ordinary for any nation.
>The United States of America is not some tin plated dictatorship! Whatever happened to
>the nation "with liberty and justice for all"? If we cannot even try to uphold our ideals, if
>we dishonorably break faith with other nations, then our "liberty" and "justice" are just
>empty hypocrisy and our word as a sovereign nation means nothing.
Never heard of the "big stick" theory? The USA has always done what it wants, when it wants, at the peril of other nations that get in its way. I'm not saying that's "right", just that it's unusual to hear someone calling the USA some angel that cares about other countries that don't have some economic or strategic value to them. "Liberty and Justice for all" was just shorthand for "liberty and justice for all male white land owners"... I think now it mostly is shorthand for liberty and justice for all corporate conglomerates (because they pay the bills in congress... our own Senator Fritz Hollings of SC is known as the "Senator from Disney"... he hardly does anything for SC in the Senate.)
I'm getting off-topic... lol... Basically, Treaties change every day between nations. It's no big deal to break one that's nearly half a century old in most cases. I think if the USA declared the treaty void, they'd at least share the moon w/ other nations, but b/c of USA's technological and financial resources, I'd be willing to bet the USA's part would be larger and more profitable or strategic in some way.
>> I wouldn't be surprised if the US decided in the next 100
>> years to divide the moon up among the nations, giving
>> itself the largest chunk & putting a McDonalds and a
>> Disneyland on it.
>Assuming, of course, that in the next 100 years the US succeeds in Bush's dreams of
>world domination, and wins another world war or three, putting it in the position to dole
>out the moon. As it is now, the US only has 50 states and a few islands to dole out, and >they are all taken.
What is it with you and President Bush? lol. I never even mentioned him, but this is the second time you've brought him up. (I'm guessing you have some loyalty to that backstabbing UN that's becoming increasingly pointless.) A lot can change in 100 years. The whole USA has only been here for a couple hundred. It makes sense that people will eventually colonize the moon, then Mars, and so on & the nations of earth are going to want to get some benefit for funding those expeditions. Most likely, they'll declare land as colonies of their nations, just as they did when people found North and South America.
Simply because it made a gesture of good faith at one time when mining the moon was implausible does not mean it is forever bound to it. All contracts are negotiable & the USA reserves the right to change its mind anytime it pleases.
Now, the US may lose credibility with other nations in the future if it regularly breaks treaties and reverses decisions, but I think reversing a decision made nearly 40 years ago wouldn't be out of the ordinary for any nation. I imagine that agreement will last another 50 to 100 years, though. Times change, laws change, and to say that it "can't happen" because elected officials who are likely all in their graves now once signed a piece of paper restricting something deemed nearly impossible at the time is a bit naive, I think.
I wouldn't be surprised if the US decided in the next 100 years to divide the moon up among the nations, giving itself the largest chunk & putting a McDonalds and a Disneyland on it.
Yeah, I'd say this comparison isn't even as good as apples to oranges... more like apples to pasta. In order to benchmark performance, as many variables as possible need to be the SAME other than the one you're testing. A better test would be: Windows XP running the game vs. Windows XP (coded and compiled for 64 bit for Athlon 64) running a non-beta 64 bit version of the game I'd like to at least see benchmarks comparing the game under SUSE Linux to the 64 bit game under SUSE 64 for Athlon 64 so I can judge for myself rather than taking the reader's word that the frame rates aren't "good".
do'h! I was thinking of Hard Drives... my bad :-)
Modems will be around, unfortunately, for another decade at least due to the slow growth of broadband services and wireless. Wired keyboards and mice will likely never go away. Nomatter how "secure" people think the wireless ones are, it is still another point of attack for hackers to use if they are anywhere in the broadcast radius or use an amplifier. There's too much cross-talk between them today to even consider using them in a dorm or apartment environment, but even if they were encrypted and varied frequencies, there would always be a possibility for intentional attacks. Not to mention the fact that I would never, ever need a wireless keyboard or care to have one which required a battery replacement & I don't have any need for a wireless mouse either... most people keep them on their desk with their computer & don't mind the wire. Now... I do think optical mice will replace those with balls inside, but that's another story ;-)
CD's are just now becoming mainstream in the RW department. CDs will likely replace floppies as the major file transfer and boot-disk medium since CD-RW drives are in nearly all PC's sold today & most PC manufacturers are considering getting rid of the floppy. I would prefer USB pen drives, however they are much more expensive and even machines without USB support can read a CD usually.
if, by Analog Displays you mean CRT monitors, I hope you are right, but I have yet to see anything that compares to the quality and price of a CRT monitor.
Perhaps by "not much longer" you mean "only another 20 to 50 years"
Outer tracks have more surface area to hold data. The tracks are concentric circles, and the first track is the outer track (b/c it reads faster) Since the circle is larger, it has more surface area to hold more data than the inner circles. When spinning the disk, the outer tracks cover more data per revolution than inner tracks, so the speed is faster for reading outer tracks.
You must be living near Princeton or Yale, then. Most students are dirt poor and surviving off college loans, scholarships, credit cards, and a part time job to pay the bills. I am a college student & I transferred from a major college town (Columbia, SC -- heart of USC) to another college & in both situations, it was rare to find a student who wasn't in debt up to his ears and moaning about how he can't afford to go out to eat much or buy a new computer, etc. I'd say out of 4000 students, he was lucky to find one or two that actually had credit left on thier Visa cards & he maxed those out... lol. We are talking about students here... not their rich parents. Even the rich kids usually have to call daddy for cash every 2-4 weeks b/c they blow it all so fast. It's actually funny, b/c the rich kids are usually the ones w/ out anything at all in savings and little to none in checking except for that breif period when it's deposited by their parents and spent by them on their new toy.
Considering our knowledge of the universe is expanding exponentially, I'd be willing to bet computers will still see an exponential growth in speed until we hit the nanotech level, then as we learn new methods of organizing structures at taht level and develop new methods of programming, we'll continue to move along at a steady rate of increased usefulness.