While each SPU has local memory, it is not multi-access. Nothing externally is allowed to read directly from it. The DMA engine is incorporated into the SPU and has the ability to externally communicate but all access to the local memory is... well... local. The memory is single-ported and DMA shares bandwith on the single internal bus to local memory with SPU IFetch and Data Accesses.
I belive black would turn down the power usage on a CRT, but LCD running white (no voltage applied to the cells, so no dimming) uses less energy... Or am I wrong?
Most current LCD's have a flourescent backlight that is always on regardless of whether you have a black or white background. Most projection displays use the same power for black/white too (it takes too long to dim the big lamp and cycling brightness would burn out the lamp quicker anyhow). However there are newer multiple-LED-backlit LCDs in development that can save energy on black backgrounds. In addition to CRTs, plasma displays, SED displays and upcoming OEL (Organic-Electro-Luminescent or OLED) displays will all use more energy on white than black backgrounds. Of course, it should be noted that some of these upcoming technologies will use less power on an all white screen than current tech uses on all black screens anyhow.
Basically, it all depends on the way technology is heading and what type of display you choose.
Ok, so the exact number is 2,997,961,386.257345. Perhaps they should have added roughly 3,000,000,000 esu. --Cantus
No, that wouldn't be correct. By convention, every digit you give for a constant is presumed to be accurate, unless you indicate otherwise. So, "approximately 3 billion" would be right, "approximately 3x10^9" would be right, and "approximately 3.000x10^9" would be right.
If by convention, every digit you give for a constant is presumed to be accurate, then "approximately 3.000x10^9" is an incorrect representation of 2,997,961,386.257345 using 4 digits of accuracy -- the correction should read, "approximately 2.998x10^9" assuming that by "accurate digit" we are rounding to the nearest value rather than using truncation or other common rounding methodologies.
I think your theoretical girlfriend would be able to tell the difference between diamond and cubic zirconium even if the submitter thinks they're the same thing.
that said, I've never understood why so many men insist on peeing standing up, when it's cleaner, more comfortable and doesn't cost more time to sit down.
Woman, you're wrong on all three counts of cleanliness, comfortability, and time. Let me explain to you a little about the world of men.
1) It's not cleaner for *US* to sit down on a dirty toilet and make contact between the toilet and our ass.
- Regarding number one - you've obviously never seen the toilets in a mens public bathroom. If you were a man using one, you'd probably have to find one that was flushed or flush it yourself, then touch the lid to put it down, then spend a couple minutes wiping the lid down (from the guys who missed the bowl previously), then you'd want to put a paper seat cover down (if they had one. It's not hygenic for the person going to the bathroom and it's an involved process if you want it to be remotely non-disgusting.
2) Another note about men's bathrooms: there's often stuff missing -- the stalls often don't have doors so you feel more "exposed" pissing sitting down than standing up, the toilets sometimes are missing lids so sitting down isn't even always an option, and toilet paper seems to have a 50%+ chance of being non-existant.
- Another note, even though "stuff" is missing, *SHIT* isn't missing. Sometimes you can have 10 toilets and all of them are clogged with shit and toilet paper and none will flush without overflowing!
3) It's a lot faster. Have you ever noticed how about 250 guys can pee out their beers in a stadium (they have piss troughs) in the same time that about 15 women can get through the ladies line.
On the more serious side, a couple weeks ago Best Buy had a promotion where if you bought one of several Sony 1080P TVs (like their nice $2,000 42" LCD) and a couple PS3 games with a PS3, they knocked $600 off the package price, effectively giving you a PS3 for free. If I didn't already have a PS3 and a LCD TV, I would have considered dropping the dough.
I didn't say Bush did anything illegal. I just said he broke a promise. For example, GW Sr. did nothing illegal by raising taxes after saying "Read My Lips -- No New Taxes!". However, one might argue that breaking a promise -- especially one granted to restore the trust of American People in their gov't -- is *MORALLY* wrong.
I remember when the CIA Leak first happened, Bush said (A) he had no idea who was reponsible and that (B) he would prosecute and punish to the full extent of the law anyone responsible.
I guess as far as (A) goes, there's a small chance he wasn't lying if he didn't ask Cheney (or Cheney lied to Bush) but (B) is just another promise that he's failed to keep.
Apple estimates 300-400 full charges before your battery needs to be replaced. If you use your iPhone heavily and recharge daily, you could need a new battery in as little as one year. Oh, and you do get locked into that pesky little 2 year contract for the device -- really the battery should either outlast your contract or be user replaceable.
I think it must really piss off ID people that between the four choices -- intelligent design, stupid design, intelligent accident and stupid accident -- science has found the most evidence for life being created by "stupid accident".
presenting the most common ideas as theories and letting the student choose what they want to believe
Because professors teach in fields in which they are experts. For example, a geology professor teaches earth sciences and a mathematics expert teaches the differential equations class. To get a professor for Intelligent Design to come in to teach the class, we'd probably have to bring in someone knowledgeable on the creation of life in the universe by an intelligent designer and there really aren't that many experts in the field of Flying Spaghetti Monster Studies who take their expertise seriously enough to teach a class in it.
Would you rather live in a magical world full of fairies or dry reality?
I love magical tales of fictitious lands. I read fantasy and science fiction with a passion. I truly wish some of the wonders of these imaginary magics guided my everyday life. But when I close the book, I know I've enjoyed the story and I am able to get along with a fair amount of happiness in my thoroughly non-magical life.
My problem with religion is people forcing others to follow their beliefs which are just as silly and fictional (although probably as wonderfully appealing to them) as the wizard and dragon novels I read from Public Library. I know where my enjoyment of fiction ends and my participation in reality begins.
the reasonable arguments [for ID] don't actually argue for a "God"
Every single Intelligent Design proposal I have seen, even your so-called "reasonable ones", argues that there is a force that can be called the "Intelligent Designer" and that it is His/Hers/Its Actions/Will that result in the Creation of Life in this Universe as we know it. If that's not a God, what is?
Personally, I don't see any conflict between the world being created by some God, even in 7 days, and its being formed over billions of years by natural processes.
True, just like there is no conflict between a child believing a magical fairy has given them a coin to replace the tooth they placed under their pillow and their parent believing that tricking that child by trading a coin for a bunch of tears is an easy way to pacify their child over a lost tooth.
It's just two alternate ways to experience the same reality. For some people it's nice to get the "coin" and for others, it's more important to try to know what is really happening.
God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith. If you see something that you think is proof of God's existence, you're wrong. He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out.
That postulate leaves the existence of God vulnerable to a Babel Fish Argument -- i.e. were someone to experience a true miracle, it would disprove the existance of such a God.
Nope. ZFS WAS going to be the file system until Sun's CEO leaked it before Jobs could announce it. No one knows what it will actually be NOW. Jobs would rather use FAT32 than let someone leak info about one of his announcements.
Re:It's here! Web 2.0 is HERE!!!
on
Photosynth Demo
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I could never understand why we use raster-imaging for computer games because it's a squillion times quicker than ray-tracing, but nobody had applied the same idea to other applications.
I don't think that basic rasterizing engines are the limit. The limit is that the source data for all these pictures are tens or hundreds of gigabytes (and in the future, conceivably terabytes). Somewhere in the assembly and cross-correlation of all this data, they have to be generating LOD's (levels of detail) and dynamically loading / managing MIP-maps to keep the loaded dataset to a reasonable level. This is the hard part since "reasonable level" for loaded imageset size is probably currently a couple hundred megabytes or much less. You can probably load more data into RAM but try maintaining a 60FPS refresh with a gigabyte of textures - especially on a laptop or basic computer.
Once you've done this you can use a variety of display techniques... the main reason to use basic texture-mapping / flat rasterization is that sources are photos which are basically a pre-lit "flat" textures.
However, if you can generate a 3-D model and can separate lighting / color information (perhaps using combinations of day and night pictures or varying lighting from different photographs), it would be then possible to perform simple ray-tracing or other hybrid renderers -- think how cool it would look to have a dynamic artist's sketchpad with these images "penciled" in realtime. There are already high-frame-rate (near-realtime) ray tracing demos already out there for CELL and X86 that render moving images at a lower-res for higher-interactive frame rates and then when not-moving, render high-quality image stills that are quite impressive.
#1) Lower volume sales translate to higher costs. Linux sales will be much lower than windows so having a separate production process (even if it's just an install on a HD) costs more.
#2) Training and implementing new techhnical support for Linux for users costs money.
#3) Lack of kickbacks from crap-ware. Dell gets paid money to install those trial programs and AOL/internet icons. You can get a windows PC without them as well if you pay extra too.
Because of these costs, the Linux machines actually cost more for Dell than a Windows PC. #1 and #2 costs should decrease overtime but #3 won't (unless they figure out how to make money adding Linux compatible crap-ware which doesn't seem likely). When you're buying a user-targetted Linux machine from Dell, you're basically buying a "Special Edition" version of their PC. They're not just gouging you on the price -- they're passing on their additional costs.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I'm dying to know: what sport at your high school is so unspeakably vulgar that you have to censor the name?
I don't know but it obviously involves getting a bunch of guys together and playing with their balls.
While each SPU has local memory, it is not multi-access. Nothing externally is allowed to read directly from it. The DMA engine is incorporated into the SPU and has the ability to externally communicate but all access to the local memory is... well... local. The memory is single-ported and DMA shares bandwith on the single internal bus to local memory with SPU IFetch and Data Accesses.
I belive black would turn down the power usage on a CRT, but LCD running white (no voltage applied to the cells, so no dimming) uses less energy... Or am I wrong?
Most current LCD's have a flourescent backlight that is always on regardless of whether you have a black or white background. Most projection displays use the same power for black/white too (it takes too long to dim the big lamp and cycling brightness would burn out the lamp quicker anyhow). However there are newer multiple-LED-backlit LCDs in development that can save energy on black backgrounds. In addition to CRTs, plasma displays, SED displays and upcoming OEL (Organic-Electro-Luminescent or OLED) displays will all use more energy on white than black backgrounds. Of course, it should be noted that some of these upcoming technologies will use less power on an all white screen than current tech uses on all black screens anyhow.
Basically, it all depends on the way technology is heading and what type of display you choose.
Ok, so the exact number is 2,997,961,386.257345. Perhaps they should have added roughly 3,000,000,000 esu. --Cantus
No, that wouldn't be correct. By convention, every digit you give for a constant is presumed to be accurate, unless you indicate otherwise. So, "approximately 3 billion" would be right, "approximately 3x10^9" would be right, and "approximately 3.000x10^9" would be right.
If by convention, every digit you give for a constant is presumed to be accurate, then "approximately 3.000x10^9" is an incorrect representation of 2,997,961,386.257345 using 4 digits of accuracy -- the correction should read, "approximately 2.998x10^9" assuming that by "accurate digit" we are rounding to the nearest value rather than using truncation or other common rounding methodologies.
Does this look like an iPhone killer to you?
/. will proclaim it to be an iPhone Killer.
If you can get it to run Linux half of
I think your theoretical girlfriend would be able to tell the difference between diamond and cubic zirconium even if the submitter thinks they're the same thing.
that said, I've never understood why so many men insist on peeing standing up, when it's cleaner, more comfortable and doesn't cost more time to sit down.
Woman, you're wrong on all three counts of cleanliness, comfortability, and time. Let me explain to you a little about the world of men.
1) It's not cleaner for *US* to sit down on a dirty toilet and make contact between the toilet and our ass.
- Regarding number one - you've obviously never seen the toilets in a mens public bathroom. If you were a man using one, you'd probably have to find one that was flushed or flush it yourself, then touch the lid to put it down, then spend a couple minutes wiping the lid down (from the guys who missed the bowl previously), then you'd want to put a paper seat cover down (if they had one. It's not hygenic for the person going to the bathroom and it's an involved process if you want it to be remotely non-disgusting.
2) Another note about men's bathrooms: there's often stuff missing -- the stalls often don't have doors so you feel more "exposed" pissing sitting down than standing up, the toilets sometimes are missing lids so sitting down isn't even always an option, and toilet paper seems to have a 50%+ chance of being non-existant.
- Another note, even though "stuff" is missing, *SHIT* isn't missing. Sometimes you can have 10 toilets and all of them are clogged with shit and toilet paper and none will flush without overflowing!
3) It's a lot faster. Have you ever noticed how about 250 guys can pee out their beers in a stadium (they have piss troughs) in the same time that about 15 women can get through the ladies line.
On the more serious side, a couple weeks ago Best Buy had a promotion where if you bought one of several Sony 1080P TVs (like their nice $2,000 42" LCD) and a couple PS3 games with a PS3, they knocked $600 off the package price, effectively giving you a PS3 for free. If I didn't already have a PS3 and a LCD TV, I would have considered dropping the dough.
Cause I can't see a single lie
You can imply a lot of things that are completely untrue without saying a single lie.
I didn't say Bush did anything illegal. I just said he broke a promise. For example, GW Sr. did nothing illegal by raising taxes after saying "Read My Lips -- No New Taxes!". However, one might argue that breaking a promise -- especially one granted to restore the trust of American People in their gov't -- is *MORALLY* wrong.
I remember when the CIA Leak first happened, Bush said (A) he had no idea who was reponsible and that (B) he would prosecute and punish to the full extent of the law anyone responsible.
I guess as far as (A) goes, there's a small chance he wasn't lying if he didn't ask Cheney (or Cheney lied to Bush) but (B) is just another promise that he's failed to keep.
Apple estimates 300-400 full charges before your battery needs to be replaced. If you use your iPhone heavily and recharge daily, you could need a new battery in as little as one year. Oh, and you do get locked into that pesky little 2 year contract for the device -- really the battery should either outlast your contract or be user replaceable.
I think it must really piss off ID people that between the four choices -- intelligent design, stupid design, intelligent accident and stupid accident -- science has found the most evidence for life being created by "stupid accident".
presenting the most common ideas as theories and letting the student choose what they want to believe
Because professors teach in fields in which they are experts. For example, a geology professor teaches earth sciences and a mathematics expert teaches the differential equations class. To get a professor for Intelligent Design to come in to teach the class, we'd probably have to bring in someone knowledgeable on the creation of life in the universe by an intelligent designer and there really aren't that many experts in the field of Flying Spaghetti Monster Studies who take their expertise seriously enough to teach a class in it.
Would you rather live in a magical world full of fairies or dry reality?
I love magical tales of fictitious lands. I read fantasy and science fiction with a passion. I truly wish some of the wonders of these imaginary magics guided my everyday life. But when I close the book, I know I've enjoyed the story and I am able to get along with a fair amount of happiness in my thoroughly non-magical life.
My problem with religion is people forcing others to follow their beliefs which are just as silly and fictional (although probably as wonderfully appealing to them) as the wizard and dragon novels I read from Public Library. I know where my enjoyment of fiction ends and my participation in reality begins.
the reasonable arguments [for ID] don't actually argue for a "God"
Every single Intelligent Design proposal I have seen, even your so-called "reasonable ones", argues that there is a force that can be called the "Intelligent Designer" and that it is His/Hers/Its Actions/Will that result in the Creation of Life in this Universe as we know it. If that's not a God, what is?
Personally, I don't see any conflict between the world being created by some God, even in 7 days, and its being formed over billions of years by natural processes.
True, just like there is no conflict between a child believing a magical fairy has given them a coin to replace the tooth they placed under their pillow and their parent believing that tricking that child by trading a coin for a bunch of tears is an easy way to pacify their child over a lost tooth.
It's just two alternate ways to experience the same reality. For some people it's nice to get the "coin" and for others, it's more important to try to know what is really happening.
God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith. If you see something that you think is proof of God's existence, you're wrong. He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out.
That postulate leaves the existence of God vulnerable to a Babel Fish Argument -- i.e. were someone to experience a true miracle, it would disprove the existance of such a God.
D'Oh... I posted this to the wrong forum... which just proves I've been drinking too much Tukwila at work. (Can you drink an Intel CPU?)
One Tukwila, Two Tukwila, Three Tukwila, Floor!
One Tukwila, Two Tukwila, Three Tukwila, Floor !
I predicted this a week ago:
PREVIOUS POST
Nope. ZFS WAS going to be the file system until Sun's CEO leaked it before Jobs could announce it. No one knows what it will actually be NOW. Jobs would rather use FAT32 than let someone leak info about one of his announcements.
I could never understand why we use raster-imaging for computer games because it's a squillion times quicker than ray-tracing, but nobody had applied the same idea to other applications.
I don't think that basic rasterizing engines are the limit. The limit is that the source data for all these pictures are tens or hundreds of gigabytes (and in the future, conceivably terabytes). Somewhere in the assembly and cross-correlation of all this data, they have to be generating LOD's (levels of detail) and dynamically loading / managing MIP-maps to keep the loaded dataset to a reasonable level. This is the hard part since "reasonable level" for loaded imageset size is probably currently a couple hundred megabytes or much less. You can probably load more data into RAM but try maintaining a 60FPS refresh with a gigabyte of textures - especially on a laptop or basic computer.
Once you've done this you can use a variety of display techniques... the main reason to use basic texture-mapping / flat rasterization is that sources are photos which are basically a pre-lit "flat" textures.
However, if you can generate a 3-D model and can separate lighting / color information (perhaps using combinations of day and night pictures or varying lighting from different photographs), it would be then possible to perform simple ray-tracing or other hybrid renderers -- think how cool it would look to have a dynamic artist's sketchpad with these images "penciled" in realtime. There are already high-frame-rate (near-realtime) ray tracing demos already out there for CELL and X86 that render moving images at a lower-res for higher-interactive frame rates and then when not-moving, render high-quality image stills that are quite impressive.
There are more costs than the OS.
#1) Lower volume sales translate to higher costs. Linux sales will be much lower than windows so having a separate production process (even if it's just an install on a HD) costs more.
#2) Training and implementing new techhnical support for Linux for users costs money.
#3) Lack of kickbacks from crap-ware. Dell gets paid money to install those trial programs and AOL/internet icons. You can get a windows PC without them as well if you pay extra too.
Because of these costs, the Linux machines actually cost more for Dell than a Windows PC. #1 and #2 costs should decrease overtime but #3 won't (unless they figure out how to make money adding Linux compatible crap-ware which doesn't seem likely). When you're buying a user-targetted Linux machine from Dell, you're basically buying a "Special Edition" version of their PC. They're not just gouging you on the price -- they're passing on their additional costs.