Oh course you have a choice, you can NOT DRIVE for one. You could use alternative transportation, you could use a car that does not use oil. Many people bike, some people use electric cars, some people use horses.
Having said that, I will choose my gas using car over any of those for 90% of my transportation. But it is still a choice to do so.
In the UK, they're paying about ten times as much tax as we do in the US. They have no choice either, their government will use violence against any who dare oppose the dictate, same as here.
They absolutely have a choice. They can replace their representatives. That is the beauty of a Republic. Since they have chosen time and time again to place MP's in Parliament who support gas taxes I would conclude that the majority of citizens (or at least voters) support the gas tax (at least as part of larger issues such as a balanced budget).
The problem that a complaint that "Government" is causing something is that in a Democracy or Republic the entire Government is chosen by the people. The vast majority of laws/policies/taxes have support of the majority of citizens (or voters). That does not guarantee that *you* will like that policy. In fact it almost assures that there will be some policy that *you* hate, but the majority of people support.
*I* for example would be fine with even more gas tax increases if they were used to pay down either State or Federal debt. The majority of my fellow State citizens agreed with this when we voted for an increase in the Stat gas tax on the last ballot. This was a direct ballot initiative where the majority of voters in my state had to vote YES for the tax.
Your only oppressed when you are FORCED to do something. Nothing is forcing us to use foreign oil. We have the ability to use Nuclear, Coal, hydro-electric, domestic oil and other fuel sources for our entire domestic consumption. Next we also have the fact that the Canada is our largest foreign supplier of oil.
We CHOOSE to purchase oil because it is politically and/or economically cheaper than other options. Again I fail to see how "we made a choice" can turn into "we are being oppressed."
That's the problem with conspiracy theories - there is no real way to tell about these until more evidence surfaces or the entire thing is revealed.
I agree, that is why the sensible people who founded the U.S. Federal Government did so in an open manor, subject to outside scrutiny and criticism. My question is why is our government not handling the treaty negotiations in a similar manor? Regardless of what is in the treaty, there is no excuse for not being an open process.
My job used to require me to know everything about some Adobe programs. They paid me to become an Adobe Certified Expert in several. For versions CS, CS2 and CS3 of Adobe Illustrator I could tell you with complete accuracy and certainty what EVERY FEATURE did. You could pick a random item from a random menu and I could tell you what it did and why.
Now, please, tell me exactly which of those items is bloatware? Just because *YOU* don't know what something is for, does not mean it has no reason for being there.
Its never* been a technical limitation. It has always been a time/resource limitation. To add some speed increase for multi-core CPU's you would have to have a developer write and test code. While the developer was doing that, he would not be writing some other code. The result is always a trade off, do you want XZY feature or do you want ABC feature?
My personal preference will always be to add more content or flush out some nifty thing to do in the game rather than make it run faster on some computers.
*By never, I am only referring to times when we have had multi-core hardware.
Simply put, for the typical iPhone to be jailbroken, the typical iPhone user would either need to have a certain level of technical sophistication far in excess of what is reasonably expected for such a mass market product, or have both access to someone with those skills and the desire to have them jailbreak their iPhone.
Your point is that it is hard to jailbreak an iPhone, the average person would have trouble doing so and would need non-existent outside support. The problem with your argument is that it is (or at least has been at several points) ridiculous easy to open the phone and many people offer the service. Not one of your foundational arguments hold up.
There are at least 3 shops in my area that offer jail breaking service for a fee. These are brick and mortar company sights which do standard computer service/repair what have you. You can also find ads for people offering to unlock the phone all over the place. So there is a plethora of technical support even for non-technical people.
As for how complicated it is to jailbreak the phone, in many cases the steps to jailbreak the phone include 1) download a executable file 2) run the file. There is no step 3. It is actually easier to follow those steps than to use the phone.
If membership is compulsory, membership is meaningless.
I always had a problem with this quote. While I agree with its sentiments I always felt that it stated there was no negative or positive value to the "membership". However in many cases there is no positive value for being a member, but there is a negative value for NOT being a member. This would mean that membership is not positive but it does have value or meaning - avoiding the negative.
That is why I always felt that it should be understood to be only half of the saying, the other half being:
If membership is compulsory, non-membership may be life threatening.
To my knowledge there has been no hard scientific study of iPhone usage. My experiences could be typical, there is no reliable data to prove one way or the other.
Therefor you are partially correct, it could suggest that everyone I have met has not been a typical iPhone user.
It could also suggest that the typical iPhone user does jail break their phones.
Every person I know who has a iPhone has had it jail broken. The most often reason is that they wanted to install a program that was available but not through the Apple store (mainly open source, emulation programs or VoIP) the second most common reason was to restore the external hard drive abilities that Apple devices used to offer. This is obviously not a statistically relevant group (only about 15-25 persons) but since I have yet to meet someone who has not had their iPhone jail broken it does seem suggestive.
Yes you can emulate X with Y, but it is hugely less efficient.
You can use your 128 base 2 register but it will require more energy and run slower than a 64 base 3 register. This is due to the fact that the circuit is BIGGER (twice the bits means twice the size on circuit and twice the energy to processes those bits). Energy on a circuit moves at near the speed of light. If you have a larger circuit (register) then you have to travel longer distances, this causes higher latency.
If we talk about a 32 bit base 8 system we would need a 1,048,576 bit base 2 system to equal the "processing power". This would require that each time you used the register you power 1,048,544 more bits for the base 2 system.
Try thinking of a graph. X is bits, Y is base (X^Y in our case. You CAN increase either one to increase max processing size. By increasing either one you definitely increase the max processing size. However you are not EFFICIENTLY increasing processing size by increasing X.
If you want to argue your point why don't you try an argument where you can actually get some traction. Try arguing that it would be hard to write software for non-base 2 systems. You might get a point there.
My statement is that 64 bits base 2 is a LOT less than 64 bits base 3. As we increase the base it gets ridiculous (exponential one might say).
And again, *ALL COMPUTERS ARE BASE TWO (2). NOT 32, NOT 64, NOT SOME RANDOM NUMBER. They are based on BOOLEAN logic. Boolean is BASE TWO (2) mathematics.
*There do exist non-boolean computers, but chances are, you will never find or even hear about one in use.
For at least the District of Arizona the natural physical action of running a program is distribution under copyright law. If you would like to find any reasonable or unreasonable situation I am sure we can find two opposing rulings in Federal law, both having equal weight.
Ray's point was that you are using YOUR definition of the word distribution. THE WORD IS NOT DEFINED. I have been trying to find a concrete legal definition for the word for ten years. (I write software for a living and have an intrinsic interest in what defines "distribution" of my copyrighted software.)
In the US there is no single definition. It is VAUGE to say the least and varies greatly on jurisdiction. Some places require a physical copy to be transferred (bits on a hard drive may or may not count) AND its use. Other jurisdictions require that the recipient be aware of the transfer, others do not. Some jurisdictions require that parties understand that the transfer is taking place (think being handed a mix tape but you don't know about the 5th track). Currently in at least one jurisdiction distribution includes a computer transferring a programs executable data into ram. There is no single definition of distribution. Without that, how can you say that the defendant did or did not do something. It is undefined!
Just read the commentary on the GPLv2 and GPLv3. They changed the wording to avoid using the word distribution because it was undefined.
In the new trial they can only win at most the verdict of THIS trial. They can also lose or get awarded LESS money.
In the summary it was suggested that they might be hoping for an error during the new trial that would help during the appeal process.
I think another possible reason is to increase the cost of the case until the defendant agrees to a settlement. A sort of moving-the-goal-post-and-declare-victory move. I doubt they will settle. The longer this goes on the better for anti-RIAA proponents.
So your basic point is that you can use a register twice the size to get the effect of just increasing the efficiency of each bit? You are correct, larger things do meet the same goal as more efficient things. That does sum up the quality vrs quantity argument.
Back to our original discussion though. (Again I am not for or against this idea, I don't have enough knowledge on the subject) The stated premise is that the human brain works at 100 Trillion^N basic logical computations per second. What this means is that the larger the value of N the exponentially larger the computing power of the human brain.
For example if the value of N was 100 it would be a value of 100 Trillion^100 logic units per second. I think the sheer insanity of how LARGE this number is, is self evident. The max value of N would be in this thesis, how many meaning full states a neuron can have. The brain is analog (with a possible infinite value for N), however there is the physical limitation of how minor a change can be detected. It is nearly impossible for the human ear to tell the difference between 1.1 and 1.09 decibels for example.
Even at N=10 the computational value would be 1.e+140. Using your above argument, you could use a base 2 computer which had registers with billions of bits running faster than the speed of light (remember circuitry is running just bellow the speed of light).
Actually I did make a mistake in my math, I did 100 to the x power not 100 base X conversion to base 10. But the values are still substantial. Changing from base 2 to 3 is 1.5 times the value. Here would be a corrected chart:
10 base 2 = 4 base 10 10 base 3 = 9 base 10 10 base 4 = 16 base 10 10 base 5 = 25 base 10
A Pentium 4 processor is a 32 bit processor, so I am not too sure what the hell you are talking about there. It operates on base 4 billion, give or take a bit.
You are incorrect. You are confusing the largest stored value (or range of values) with the base. All standard computers use base 2. A 32 bit processor has several (8 in this case) general purpose registers that can store 1 32 bit value. (roughly 0 to 4.2billion). It operates at base 2. Hence the 1's and 0's.
Base three math would have three base values PER BIT. Aka a single bit could be A, B or C. For a 32 bit processor that uses base 3 math it would have a range 0 to 6.3 billion (assuming an unsigned integer) versus the already stated range of 0 to 4.2 billion.
Next we get into the difference between speed and results. For example a calculation involving checking if a Boolean flag is set or not takes very little processing power, in fact the more complex your machine the less efficient this becomes. On a normal x86 processor more languages will use the full size of a general purpose register, not the single bit required. Now if you have multiple Booleans that you can analyze at once then this is less of an issue.
To really take advantage of the change is the base of a bit you would have to use non-boolean math for most of the calculations. For data storage it would be a simple exponential increase in efficiency. Actually this would also be true when dealing with very precise or very large numbers as you would have larger capacity registers.
You are partially right about the number of calculations a GPU can make. However, those calculations are actually doing the SAME calculations on billions of different values. Example: Cube A is in spot XYZ in a 3D environment. It needs to move to coordinates x+3, Y+ 1, Z. To do this the GPU would preform the same calculations on each "unit" of the cube in parallel. If the actions can not be preformed in parallel then it basically has a huge portion of the GPU sitting idle the entire time. This is also why GPU's are good at breaking encryption keys, they are doing the same calculation X number of times on Y number of values.
So far this is the fastest GPU I could find. It is billed as "the worlds fastest GPU" at least. It runs at 1,476MHz or roughly 1.5 billion theoretical calculations per second:
As for logic operations per second, my video card can easily do trillions of processes per second, and if 100 trillion is the bar, I am sure that NVIDIA or AMD will cross it in well under a decade.
No, no it can't.
A 1Ghz GPU can process at most 1 billion computational actions per second. Most of those actions require many, some times thousands of cycles. To my knowledge there is no 1000Ghz GPU. I could be wrong on the second part, but I doubt it. Keep in mind that a GPU is just a special purpose CPU.
Not really. Something that operate on base 4 is only about twice as power as what we have now. (Just think of groups of two transistors as a single unit, and viola, 4 states.)
100 base 2 = 10000 possible values
100 base 3 = 1000000 possible values
100 base 4 = 100000000 possible values
100 base 5 = 10000000000 possible values.
For each additional base the total possible value is increased by 100. Otherwise known as 2 orders of magnitude more. To ignore any other factors, if we take a Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz processor and make it base 3, it would now be a 300.0Ghz processor, one hundred times "faster".
Just wanted to point out that the math described is not "in the billions". It is whole orders of magnitude above that. It would be on the order of 100 TRILLION "to the Nth power". Note the "Nth" power bit. For every base value you add, you exponentially increase the computational power. Even if the human brain operated at base 3 but at the same processing speed, it would still outperform a computer by a HUGE margin.
Not commenting on the statement of the OP. I was just amazed by your comment. It was sort of like saying hearing person A say "this ship carries 100 people" and you jumping in and saying, "you realize that a life boat can carry ONE person too!"
I wont even get into the fact that transistor count does not equate to logic operations processes per second.
Many citizens who receive porn or drugs in the mail, when they do the honest thing and tell the police, end up arrested for possession. You. Cannot. Trust. Police. Or the government in general. Better to destroy the evidence and pretend you never received anything.
Destroying the offending material is also reasonable. Barring safty issues of course. (Burning meth to destroy it for example, is probably not a smart thing to do.)
The reason I suggested reporting it and delivering it to the police is that, in the case mentioned the package was sent to entrap the recipient. In that case the sender had records of sending it and could prove that it arrived. They would have a compelling argument to be granted a warrant to search for such illicit material. I doubt it would have been hard for the "postal inspector" convey this evidence without informing the judge that they had sent the package themselves. I am making some assumptions on that but I think they are reasonable.
You are absolutely right on the no warrant, no searches bit.
After reading your attached link, my only thought is that this guy, "Robert" is an idiot. At every point this guy is presented with opportunities to not be an idiot, instead he gives away his protection from searches, admits he received and then held onto real child porn, and failed to challenge numerous [dubiously legal] actions by various entities and persons.
A few little tips if you are ever in this situation.
1) If you opened up such a package (or your wife did), immediately notify the police. Then drive the package to the nearest police office and leave it there.
2) NEVER GIVE UP YOUR RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN ANY OF ITS FORMS! If someone asks "hey, would you please sign this form allowing me to search your home. The answer is NO. There is no exception.
3) If you are ever in this situation and someone sends a illegal package. File charges against the person who sent you the package! In this instance the "postal inspector" violated multiple laws, both Federal and State, in possessing the contents of the package and then sending the package.
As for how the 11th Circuit case that this/. article is covering will turn out in the end? My 2cents is that this case will almost certainly get overturned. But either way, I don't live in 11th circuit jurisdiction so yay for me.
Best Buy lost a class action lawsuit in California around 2000 for doing this in person.
A customer would make a live purchase with a credit card and the cashier would as them if they wanted a magazine for free. If the customer said yes, they were given a three month trial that would then auto bill the customers credit card until the customer canceled the account. (Some times the customer said no or was not asked and they were still signed up.)
Slashdot Mirror
Having said that, I will choose my gas using car over any of those for 90% of my transportation. But it is still a choice to do so.
In the UK, they're paying about ten times as much tax as we do in the US. They have no choice either, their government will use violence against any who dare oppose the dictate, same as here.
They absolutely have a choice. They can replace their representatives. That is the beauty of a Republic. Since they have chosen time and time again to place MP's in Parliament who support gas taxes I would conclude that the majority of citizens (or at least voters) support the gas tax (at least as part of larger issues such as a balanced budget).
The problem that a complaint that "Government" is causing something is that in a Democracy or Republic the entire Government is chosen by the people. The vast majority of laws/policies/taxes have support of the majority of citizens (or voters). That does not guarantee that *you* will like that policy. In fact it almost assures that there will be some policy that *you* hate, but the majority of people support.
*I* for example would be fine with even more gas tax increases if they were used to pay down either State or Federal debt. The majority of my fellow State citizens agreed with this when we voted for an increase in the Stat gas tax on the last ballot. This was a direct ballot initiative where the majority of voters in my state had to vote YES for the tax.
Your only oppressed when you are FORCED to do something. Nothing is forcing us to use foreign oil. We have the ability to use Nuclear, Coal, hydro-electric, domestic oil and other fuel sources for our entire domestic consumption. Next we also have the fact that the Canada is our largest foreign supplier of oil.
We CHOOSE to purchase oil because it is politically and/or economically cheaper than other options. Again I fail to see how "we made a choice" can turn into "we are being oppressed."
That's the problem with conspiracy theories - there is no real way to tell about these until more evidence surfaces or the entire thing is revealed.
I agree, that is why the sensible people who founded the U.S. Federal Government did so in an open manor, subject to outside scrutiny and criticism. My question is why is our government not handling the treaty negotiations in a similar manor? Regardless of what is in the treaty, there is no excuse for not being an open process.
My job used to require me to know everything about some Adobe programs. They paid me to become an Adobe Certified Expert in several. For versions CS, CS2 and CS3 of Adobe Illustrator I could tell you with complete accuracy and certainty what EVERY FEATURE did. You could pick a random item from a random menu and I could tell you what it did and why.
Now, please, tell me exactly which of those items is bloatware? Just because *YOU* don't know what something is for, does not mean it has no reason for being there.
oops, your right. I misread your post. =P
This is the only time on /. where I think tl;dr is an appropriate response...
Its never* been a technical limitation. It has always been a time/resource limitation. To add some speed increase for multi-core CPU's you would have to have a developer write and test code. While the developer was doing that, he would not be writing some other code. The result is always a trade off, do you want XZY feature or do you want ABC feature?
My personal preference will always be to add more content or flush out some nifty thing to do in the game rather than make it run faster on some computers.
*By never, I am only referring to times when we have had multi-core hardware.
Simply put, for the typical iPhone to be jailbroken, the typical iPhone user would either need to have a certain level of technical sophistication far in excess of what is reasonably expected for such a mass market product, or have both access to someone with those skills and the desire to have them jailbreak their iPhone.
Your point is that it is hard to jailbreak an iPhone, the average person would have trouble doing so and would need non-existent outside support. The problem with your argument is that it is (or at least has been at several points) ridiculous easy to open the phone and many people offer the service. Not one of your foundational arguments hold up.
There are at least 3 shops in my area that offer jail breaking service for a fee. These are brick and mortar company sights which do standard computer service/repair what have you. You can also find ads for people offering to unlock the phone all over the place. So there is a plethora of technical support even for non-technical people.
As for how complicated it is to jailbreak the phone, in many cases the steps to jailbreak the phone include 1) download a executable file 2) run the file. There is no step 3. It is actually easier to follow those steps than to use the phone.
If membership is compulsory, membership is meaningless.
I always had a problem with this quote. While I agree with its sentiments I always felt that it stated there was no negative or positive value to the "membership". However in many cases there is no positive value for being a member, but there is a negative value for NOT being a member. This would mean that membership is not positive but it does have value or meaning - avoiding the negative.
That is why I always felt that it should be understood to be only half of the saying, the other half being:
If membership is compulsory, non-membership may be life threatening.
To my knowledge there has been no hard scientific study of iPhone usage. My experiences could be typical, there is no reliable data to prove one way or the other.
Therefor you are partially correct, it could suggest that everyone I have met has not been a typical iPhone user.
It could also suggest that the typical iPhone user does jail break their phones.
Every person I know who has a iPhone has had it jail broken. The most often reason is that they wanted to install a program that was available but not through the Apple store (mainly open source, emulation programs or VoIP) the second most common reason was to restore the external hard drive abilities that Apple devices used to offer. This is obviously not a statistically relevant group (only about 15-25 persons) but since I have yet to meet someone who has not had their iPhone jail broken it does seem suggestive.
Yes you can emulate X with Y, but it is hugely less efficient.
You can use your 128 base 2 register but it will require more energy and run slower than a 64 base 3 register. This is due to the fact that the circuit is BIGGER (twice the bits means twice the size on circuit and twice the energy to processes those bits). Energy on a circuit moves at near the speed of light. If you have a larger circuit (register) then you have to travel longer distances, this causes higher latency.
If we talk about a 32 bit base 8 system we would need a 1,048,576 bit base 2 system to equal the "processing power". This would require that each time you used the register you power 1,048,544 more bits for the base 2 system.
Try thinking of a graph. X is bits, Y is base (X^Y in our case. You CAN increase either one to increase max processing size. By increasing either one you definitely increase the max processing size. However you are not EFFICIENTLY increasing processing size by increasing X.
If you want to argue your point why don't you try an argument where you can actually get some traction. Try arguing that it would be hard to write software for non-base 2 systems. You might get a point there.
My statement is that 64 bits base 2 is a LOT less than 64 bits base 3. As we increase the base it gets ridiculous (exponential one might say).
And again, *ALL COMPUTERS ARE BASE TWO (2). NOT 32, NOT 64, NOT SOME RANDOM NUMBER. They are based on BOOLEAN logic. Boolean is BASE TWO (2) mathematics.
*There do exist non-boolean computers, but chances are, you will never find or even hear about one in use.
Sorry to break the news to you but no relevant change has happened. I would refer you to MDY Industries LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Indus._LLC_v._Blizzard_Entm't,_Inc.
For at least the District of Arizona the natural physical action of running a program is distribution under copyright law. If you would like to find any reasonable or unreasonable situation I am sure we can find two opposing rulings in Federal law, both having equal weight.
The situation is on the whole, absurd.
Ray's point was that you are using YOUR definition of the word distribution. THE WORD IS NOT DEFINED. I have been trying to find a concrete legal definition for the word for ten years. (I write software for a living and have an intrinsic interest in what defines "distribution" of my copyrighted software.)
In the US there is no single definition. It is VAUGE to say the least and varies greatly on jurisdiction. Some places require a physical copy to be transferred (bits on a hard drive may or may not count) AND its use. Other jurisdictions require that the recipient be aware of the transfer, others do not. Some jurisdictions require that parties understand that the transfer is taking place (think being handed a mix tape but you don't know about the 5th track). Currently in at least one jurisdiction distribution includes a computer transferring a programs executable data into ram. There is no single definition of distribution. Without that, how can you say that the defendant did or did not do something. It is undefined!
Just read the commentary on the GPLv2 and GPLv3. They changed the wording to avoid using the word distribution because it was undefined.
In the new trial they can only win at most the verdict of THIS trial. They can also lose or get awarded LESS money.
In the summary it was suggested that they might be hoping for an error during the new trial that would help during the appeal process.
I think another possible reason is to increase the cost of the case until the defendant agrees to a settlement. A sort of moving-the-goal-post-and-declare-victory move. I doubt they will settle. The longer this goes on the better for anti-RIAA proponents.
well, there's usually only one thing you can do - go through his clothes and look for loose change.
Well that, plus eat it... ahhh tasty horse flesh. Munchmunchmunch
So your basic point is that you can use a register twice the size to get the effect of just increasing the efficiency of each bit? You are correct, larger things do meet the same goal as more efficient things. That does sum up the quality vrs quantity argument.
Back to our original discussion though. (Again I am not for or against this idea, I don't have enough knowledge on the subject) The stated premise is that the human brain works at 100 Trillion^N basic logical computations per second. What this means is that the larger the value of N the exponentially larger the computing power of the human brain.
For example if the value of N was 100 it would be a value of 100 Trillion^100 logic units per second. I think the sheer insanity of how LARGE this number is, is self evident. The max value of N would be in this thesis, how many meaning full states a neuron can have. The brain is analog (with a possible infinite value for N), however there is the physical limitation of how minor a change can be detected. It is nearly impossible for the human ear to tell the difference between 1.1 and 1.09 decibels for example.
Even at N=10 the computational value would be 1.e+140. Using your above argument, you could use a base 2 computer which had registers with billions of bits running faster than the speed of light (remember circuitry is running just bellow the speed of light).
Actually I did make a mistake in my math, I did 100 to the x power not 100 base X conversion to base 10. But the values are still substantial. Changing from base 2 to 3 is 1.5 times the value. Here would be a corrected chart:
10 base 2 = 4 base 10
10 base 3 = 9 base 10
10 base 4 = 16 base 10
10 base 5 = 25 base 10
A Pentium 4 processor is a 32 bit processor, so I am not too sure what the hell you are talking about there. It operates on base 4 billion, give or take a bit.
You are incorrect. You are confusing the largest stored value (or range of values) with the base. All standard computers use base 2. A 32 bit processor has several (8 in this case) general purpose registers that can store 1 32 bit value. (roughly 0 to 4.2billion). It operates at base 2. Hence the 1's and 0's.
Base three math would have three base values PER BIT. Aka a single bit could be A, B or C. For a 32 bit processor that uses base 3 math it would have a range 0 to 6.3 billion (assuming an unsigned integer) versus the already stated range of 0 to 4.2 billion.
Next we get into the difference between speed and results. For example a calculation involving checking if a Boolean flag is set or not takes very little processing power, in fact the more complex your machine the less efficient this becomes. On a normal x86 processor more languages will use the full size of a general purpose register, not the single bit required. Now if you have multiple Booleans that you can analyze at once then this is less of an issue.
To really take advantage of the change is the base of a bit you would have to use non-boolean math for most of the calculations. For data storage it would be a simple exponential increase in efficiency. Actually this would also be true when dealing with very precise or very large numbers as you would have larger capacity registers.
You are partially right about the number of calculations a GPU can make. However, those calculations are actually doing the SAME calculations on billions of different values. Example: Cube A is in spot XYZ in a 3D environment. It needs to move to coordinates x+3, Y+ 1, Z. To do this the GPU would preform the same calculations on each "unit" of the cube in parallel. If the actions can not be preformed in parallel then it basically has a huge portion of the GPU sitting idle the entire time. This is also why GPU's are good at breaking encryption keys, they are doing the same calculation X number of times on Y number of values.
So far this is the fastest GPU I could find. It is billed as "the worlds fastest GPU" at least. It runs at 1,476MHz or roughly 1.5 billion theoretical calculations per second:
http://www.techspot.com/news/34959-asus-shows-off-worlds-fastest-gpu-at-computex.html
As for logic operations per second, my video card can easily do trillions of processes per second, and if 100 trillion is the bar, I am sure that NVIDIA or AMD will cross it in well under a decade.
No, no it can't.
A 1Ghz GPU can process at most 1 billion computational actions per second. Most of those actions require many, some times thousands of cycles. To my knowledge there is no 1000Ghz GPU. I could be wrong on the second part, but I doubt it. Keep in mind that a GPU is just a special purpose CPU.
For more information on how a CPU/GPU works I would start by reading the following article:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/microprocessor.htm
Not really. Something that operate on base 4 is only about twice as power as what we have now. (Just think of groups of two transistors as a single unit, and viola, 4 states.)
100 base 2 = 10000 possible values
100 base 3 = 1000000 possible values
100 base 4 = 100000000 possible values
100 base 5 = 10000000000 possible values.
For each additional base the total possible value is increased by 100. Otherwise known as 2 orders of magnitude more. To ignore any other factors, if we take a Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz processor and make it base 3, it would now be a 300.0Ghz processor, one hundred times "faster".
You sir, fail at math.
Just wanted to point out that the math described is not "in the billions". It is whole orders of magnitude above that. It would be on the order of 100 TRILLION "to the Nth power". Note the "Nth" power bit. For every base value you add, you exponentially increase the computational power. Even if the human brain operated at base 3 but at the same processing speed, it would still outperform a computer by a HUGE margin.
Not commenting on the statement of the OP. I was just amazed by your comment. It was sort of like saying hearing person A say "this ship carries 100 people" and you jumping in and saying, "you realize that a life boat can carry ONE person too!"
I wont even get into the fact that transistor count does not equate to logic operations processes per second.
Many citizens who receive porn or drugs in the mail, when they do the honest thing and tell the police, end up arrested for possession. You. Cannot. Trust. Police. Or the government in general. Better to destroy the evidence and pretend you never received anything.
Destroying the offending material is also reasonable. Barring safty issues of course. (Burning meth to destroy it for example, is probably not a smart thing to do.)
The reason I suggested reporting it and delivering it to the police is that, in the case mentioned the package was sent to entrap the recipient. In that case the sender had records of sending it and could prove that it arrived. They would have a compelling argument to be granted a warrant to search for such illicit material. I doubt it would have been hard for the "postal inspector" convey this evidence without informing the judge that they had sent the package themselves. I am making some assumptions on that but I think they are reasonable.
You are absolutely right on the no warrant, no searches bit.
After reading your attached link, my only thought is that this guy, "Robert" is an idiot. At every point this guy is presented with opportunities to not be an idiot, instead he gives away his protection from searches, admits he received and then held onto real child porn, and failed to challenge numerous [dubiously legal] actions by various entities and persons.
A few little tips if you are ever in this situation.
1) If you opened up such a package (or your wife did), immediately notify the police. Then drive the package to the nearest police office and leave it there.
2) NEVER GIVE UP YOUR RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN ANY OF ITS FORMS! If someone asks "hey, would you please sign this form allowing me to search your home. The answer is NO. There is no exception.
3) If you are ever in this situation and someone sends a illegal package. File charges against the person who sent you the package! In this instance the "postal inspector" violated multiple laws, both Federal and State, in possessing the contents of the package and then sending the package.
As for how the 11th Circuit case that this /. article is covering will turn out in the end? My 2cents is that this case will almost certainly get overturned. But either way, I don't live in 11th circuit jurisdiction so yay for me.
Best Buy lost a class action lawsuit in California around 2000 for doing this in person.
A customer would make a live purchase with a credit card and the cashier would as them if they wanted a magazine for free. If the customer said yes, they were given a three month trial that would then auto bill the customers credit card until the customer canceled the account. (Some times the customer said no or was not asked and they were still signed up.)