Not just military service, but front line military service concurrent with the political tour of duty, to be served every other six months. Fight for six months, come back (or don't, and your 1st assistant steps into your loafers and your army boots) and then you can vote on miltary issues.
No age limit, either. As a relatively old fart myself (50+) I can tell you that I can shoot a rifle pretty damned well and in defense of my own butt, would be well motivated to do so. Besides, the slower and creaker the politician, the less inclined they will be to create situations where bullets are flying about their heads and assnecks.:)
What? Should it all be voluntary financial support for each policy?
Yes, it should. Definitely. Otherwise you're forcing me into slavery, making me work for your gain, for projects that I in no wise support. I don't mind being taxed at the same level as you are (say, a flat tax of 33%) but I *definitely* should be able to say "But none of my money goes towards making war on Iraq, rebuilding Iraq, bombing Columbia's cocaine fields, or supporting any other external adventurism in any form." Instead, my money would go towards domestic needs, building and maintaining infrastructure, providing medical care, disaster relief, research and scientific infrastructure, education... you get the idea. You want to pay for Invading Iraq? Fine. You do that. Let's just see how much funding it'd get at this point in time under a FAIR system, one where we got to say where our money could not be spent.
The constitution is long dead anyway. Might as well start over.
You'd think that Microsoft wrote the government processes.
No, not Microsoft, Commodore. Back in the Amiga days, we used to say to one another (as Amiga owners) that if Commodore had the Kentucky Fried Chicken francise, they'd advertise it as "lukewarm dead bird."
There are signs that bringing things up will become considerably less expensive in the (relatively) near term. That will cause some fairly profound alterations in the economics of all this, should it come to pass (and personally, I have almost no doubt it will.)
As I understand it, dealers still have plenty of the G4 units, it's just that you can't get them from the Apple store.
Back when I was designing graphics hardware (a couple of decades, now) there was "dual ported ram" that actually had two access ports which ran asynchronously. This allowed the display hardware to get at the ram without ever abusing the CPU's ability to do so, as the CPU used another bus.
Seems like that'd be the correct solution here, make the lower 64 megs (or whatever the graphics might need) with a dual port design, and the rest out of your usual run of the mill stick of RAM. Then a shared RAM design changes from a liability to an asset because everything runs at full speed, all the time.
Of course, that stuff was expensive then, and if it's even available now, it's probably still expensive.
One more thing -- some graphics hardware can use alpha as the last byte of 32 bits, and can use region overlay and positioning (as in windows, sprites, and cursors) so there is another reason to use four bytes instead of three. And of course if you're feeding the thing GPU instructions or chains of XY co-ordinates, four bytes might be just the ticket there as well.
Generally, the reason that shared ram between main memory and graphics hardware is an issue is because when the memory is talking to the graphics hardware, the CPU can't get at it, and vice-versa. The higher the display resolution, the more often the graphics hardware MUST get at the RAM, and so the CPU has to wait. This means that the effective, overall speed of such a system drops according to how much RAM is being used for display, and how fast the display refresh rate is (because this controls how soon the graphics adaptor must read the memory again.)
Some memory designs are built so that all memory access is shared, and so even if, say, the graphics adaptor is only using 128 MB of memory, the CPU is still blocked from getting at ANY of the system RAM when the graphics adaptor is accessing.
Now, there are other ways to design RAM systems, and I am not privvy to how the Intel Mac Mini is designed, but I can tell you that the above is why people are nervous about a shared design; there have been many cases where such a shared design meant that the only way to eke decent performance out of a computer is to use low resolution 8-bit gfx. I own a machine like this; it is a Dell server, came with no OS and I put Linux on it. If you set Linux for 24-bit desktop, the machine just pigs down to a crawl, doesn't matter if it's trying to get at the display memoy or not, the amount of access to RAM that is available is just about zero. But put it in 800x600 with 256 colors, and it just flies along (it's a 3 GHz machine, it should!)
As far as I am concerned, it's an unknown until we get some benchies done. Big ol RAM-bound sort with the display in hires, same job with the display in blind-old-man mode, then see what, if any, are the execution time differences. That'll tell the most important tale right there.
I take the humor, but what you're really arguing here is that opt-out is, by its nature, a bad thing. That's not always the case. Consider the following hypothetical:
Imagine you are with a friend, and he drags you into a room of a fair number of other people you have never seen before, that you did not expect to be in, and...
...just as you walk in, someone up on stage begins to give $1000 to each of the people in the room. Unless you have opted-out. It's too late to opt-out. Or...
...just as you walk in, someone up on stage begins to give $1000 to each of the people in the room. Only people in the room who have opted-in will receive the money. It's too late to opt-in.
The situation is that you have not opted in or out. You just arrived, and you just barely came to the understanding that money is being given away.
So: Which room would you rather have arrived in?
My point is that opt-out is evil only when it is the only way to get out of something you consider to be evil in and of itself, SPAM being the obvious poster-child for inherently evil crap no one in their right mind would ever opt-in for. The question here, in regard to opt-out and google's book indexing program, is, do you consider what google is doing to be harmful?
The answer in this specific case is unclear. Some members of the literary community (e.g. author Cory Doctorow) are all for the process, thinking it may help sell more books, and other members (e.g., literary agency owner, me) are against it because it gives up a right that the author did not exclusively release (indexing), which is not how publishing contracts work: All rights that are not specifically contracted to the buyer are withheld by the author. This is the basis for any number of new channels for income to authors. In my opinion, book publishing is in enough trouble without further weakening forces being applied, but of course, my opinion is not definitive, nor is Mr. Doctorow's: That's where the courts step in.
The courts really need to rule on this; it is not a given either way, and I consider it entirely a good thing that the AG has sued and that there will be a definitive decision rendered (eventually.)
This is a typical case of new technology not being well anticipated by old law. So we need new law, or at least, new interpretation of old law.
Sorry, Sparky, you're barking entirely up the wrong tree. (a) I'm not complaining about taxes, I'm just pointing out YOU have no control over how they are used. (b) I'm not complaining about how the system works, I'm just pointing out what YOUR experience is going to be, regardless of your dearly held preconceptions, and (c) you can "participate" all you want and you *still* won't get anything done, not because of my opinion, but because the system is *designed* to not let you get anything done. It is, on the contrary, designed to make you think you're getting something done by "getting involved" in the political selection process for federal representatives — a process that is no more than a mask for maintaining the status quo. Such activity has been tailored to ensure that you, as a citizen, have absolutely zero access to the making, approval, implementation and follow through for any federal legislation that might crop up. You can work to elect whomever, but once they're in there, they will do what the party wants them to do or they'll be disenfrancised before they even know what hit them. Your interest in change, whatever they might be, cease to matter the moment the candidate becomes an elected official. The only changes that will occur will be controlled by the corporate citizens of this country, with a minor underlying theme that the religious factions dictate. If your interests coincide with those groups, then you may see your desires come true, but this is in no way the same as you being a causative factor. You're just a sympathetic onlooker.
The history of broken promises permeates the system. Starting at the top, Clinton was going to support the gays, so they backed him. He failed to do what he said he would do. Bush was going to implement his "read my lips, no more taxes" and so they backed him. He failed to do what he said he would do. Moving lower in the heirarchy, the feds were going to never, ever use our social security numbers for anything by our retirement plans. Lies. You could never be held without access to a lawyer. Lies. They were never going to tap our phones. Lies. The feds were never going to back a religion. Lies. I'm not making this stuff up, I'm just reciting history for you. Democrats, republicans, the story is the same no matter where you look: Try to make changes, you'll get involved in all manner of hand waving and placard writing and marching and whatever, and in the end, there will be no change. For a while, like most US citizens, you'll keep on trying, muttering "Next time!" gamely, but as the next times come and go, eventually you'll realize that you've been had. Or you won't, and you'll gamely keep your nose against the grindstone until you die. At no time will you effect any political change by participating the political process, regardless.
If you get active within your party, you will make a difference.
What, me? See, there you go. Speaking from complete ignorance. The fact is, I have no party — there is no party that represents even the barest fraction of my outlook anywhere in the USA, and it is unlikely that there ever will be. There is no country on this planet whose system even remotely resembles what I would advocate if I thought there was even a fraction of a chance of accomplishing it.
Further, your underlying presumption, that wresting control of patents and similar issues may be accomplished by "activity within [a] party", has not been found to be the case in the last 50 years or so. Its in the books and on the net, just research it. You can't escape the facts. You are, of course, encouraged to participate by the system in precisely the way they want you to. That's how they keep you from becoming interested in really changing the system, a goal that cannot be accomplished by politics in this country.
If you like, you can certainly blame the unchangingness of the system on me and those like me. You'd be completely wrong, but whatever makes you feel better is fine w
What your problem is, is that you don't understand how the US works.
Citizens have no input to the patent process. At any level.
See, the patent system is based entirely upon federal law. This means that you, who live in state [whatever], once a citizen, can write to your congresscritter and/or senator, who are the sum total of your connection to federal activity of every kind. These distinguished individuals will not read your letter. However, an aide will almost certainly read your letter, at which point said aide will determine it is advising a course of action that would reduce the contribution of PACs and corporations to the current and future fiscal and political welfare of said senator and/or congresscritter, and subsequently drop your passionate screed decrying the current patent system into the burn bag.
Your rights, an Entertaining Interlude:
As a citizen (when you get that far) you do not have the right to structure or construe federal law. You do not have the right to enforce, or prevent enforcement of, any federal law. You do not have the right to arbitrate or otherwise affect consequences of violation of federal law if in fact there are any. You do not have control over how the government spends your tax dollars. You do not have any option to withold your tax dollars. You have no right (or means) to prevent the federal government from trumping whatever newsworthyness your complaints about anything might have (for instance, patent law, as in this example) with totally bogus yet highly appealing to middle americans, such tasty issues as bird flu, the melting ice caps, the "drug war", The Pedophile Threat, flag burning, PorNoGrahPy, wiretaps and so on. Above all, you have no right to interrupt your senator and/or congresscritter while they are enjoying a gourmet dinner with their various corporate and political sponsors. You may, however, should you so desire, stand out in the rain and snow and sun and watch bitterly while your representatives are ushered directly from said restaurant into a plush limo, such action being accomplished without them ever reading one line of your sign(s), should you have had the foresight to bring such a thing along. At this time, you may be taken into custody for unlawful assembly.
The patent system was constructed and is maintained and protected by a power structure that consists of non-elected funding sources that have its roots in the corporate entities that populate the USA, its expression of power in the wholly-owned political system (purchased one representative at a time as well as at the party level) and its immunity from any imaginable act of the citizens in the indirect representative structure of the government.
Now, before you get the idea that you can start some grass-roots movement, and threaten your representative(s) with replacement, you also need to understand that the US is a two party system and that the parties both are completely on the corporate nipple. Should you succeed in dethroning one of our "democratic" princes or princesses, one or the other party will immediately provide a replacement who cleaves to the same agenda. There is no third party; there can be no third party. The reason? That nasty gaussian that describes the IQ distribution. The middle of that curve represents some pretty, er, "basic" intelligence levels. Those are the core voters. They're republicans, and they're democrats, and if you tried to change this in any serious way, they'd probably tar and feather you, because they "belong" to these parties and they're not about to have that sense of belonging dirtied up by some radical who wants to change the patent system. They're concerned about the price of food and gas, when they get that next paycheck, and how long it'll be until they get laid. They like to vote. They like to bask in the shadow of the powerful. They like to have "their candidate" elected. And they will get their candidate elected.
...you left out one final critical fact: Lawyers and judges (who are typically ex-lawyers or still lawyers) control this entire process. The system is rigged. In the most obvious and transparent way. However it is so well rigged that there isn't a hope in hell of changing it.
Your patent infringes on my patent for the process of "breathing."
Each of your claims can be shown to be dependent upon airflow, airflow that arises as a direct consequence of your process subsuming my IP, that is, breathing.
So, not only must you STFU, I demand you immedately stop breathing.
Pssst, Dude: My complaints can't be addressed. If you attempt to solve one, you simply magnify another. These issues form an interlinked, interdependent series of drawbacks.
However, if someone wants to try to address them, I'll be perfectly happy to put a finer point on any particular compromise. Would you like to be first?
If the net is available, but down, you can't work.
If the net is unavailable (train, plane, submarine, cabin in the woods, spacecraft, mountain climbing, cave research, day trip in your car), you can't work.
If the app provider goes away, your documents are trash, because you never had the app. Assuming you weren't foolish enough to allow your documents to be maintained remotely, in which case they aren't trash, they're simply gone.
And of course, for larger documents, the speed of the connection is an issue, not everyone will have a fast connection for a while, and that's going to cause some serious accessability issues for at least the next few years or so.
The inability to run on webless machines means you can no longer decisively secure your documents and data because you must be connected to the web.
The fact that your data will be going back and forth over the net means you just directly handed it to (at the very least) the gummint, and to your competitors as well if they are sufficiently motivated.
We've come to the point where office apps are so poorly written, so inefficiently packaged as executables, in such innapropriate languages, that they somehow manage to operate below human response times even on 3.6 GHz processors with gigs of ram available to them. OO is terribly, terribly slow, not just to start but also to run, and Office, while better, is no speed demon either. Now, the webaps idea proposes that we add network latency to the "feature" that umpty-jillion other users can now share the some of the same CPU and network resources with you. Oh boy. Now, that will be fun.
Hey, while we're at it, let's pretend that all computer systems have access to the same web language. It's not like I see any compatability issues between my various and sundry sets of browsers on each of my various and sundy linux, Mac and PC machines. Not to mention my Palm, my Sony handheld game machine, and my old Amiga. Oh, no. Everything works perfectly everywhere, yeah, you betcha.:/
Yeah, let's all just hop right on this bandwagon. Never mind that it's going downhill towards the boiling tar pits at breakneck speed, its fun to be on board the latest thing!
Webapps for important data: Brought to you by the same people who think suicide is a life-enhancing personal choice.
Not content with having Tapecutter beat me up with superior knowledge of simulations, further cogent argument rears its head from the slashdot intelligentsia, going directly for the topical kill.
I truly admire the way you took the point I was making and using critical thinking, scientific method, and relevant examples, just tore my position apart. No question, a beautiful job. You are such a stud. The "simulate with trash data then treat the results as gospel" crowd is so lucky to have you on their side, sir.
Um, I find your ideas fascinating and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Create a detailed plan designed to teach your children to be critical thinkers. Don't expose them to any religious influence until they can demonstrate the ability to see through assertions that have no basis in objective reality. Don't tell them fairy tales while allowing any underlying assumption of "truth" to poison their view of reality; by all means entertain them, just make sure at every step that they understand it is entertainment, presented with love for their amusement, not lies given to lull and/or manipulate them into a false sense of what the world is about. Make certain they understand that both adults and children will lie to them as well as pass along incorrect information every day, for many reasons.
In this way, not only will you produce competent human beings who have every legitimate reason to love and trust you, you will also contribute to raising the human race a little further from the tide of ignorance much of the population still wallows in.
Technology... is essentially a set of tools. The best tool users are, IMHO, critical thinkers. When the time comes, bright, incisive and curious children will have the best chance to make the best possible use of the tools available to them. Whatever those might be... all I am certain of is that they'll be different from those available today. The one technological constant is change.
Wow that is one huge essay, pity you still miss the point that you cannot in any reasonable prediction insist on perfect input and assumptions.
Pardon me, my mistake. I thought, since you were attacking my knowledge of simulation with such gusto, that you actually knew how simulations worked. Now that you have shown you don't, I won't worry about your opinion any longer.
No, I didn't misunderstand you at all. I was simply pointing out (with some amusement, I admit) that your reasoning applies to the problem, once you realize that the inputs to climate simulation contain science fiction — specifically innaccurate technology information. I realize you have an emotional stake in this and can't look at it dispassionately, but that doesn't make the point invalid. You're feeding the simulation garbage; you're going to get garbage results back. That is the science you are missing. Simulations can only work as well as the data set they have to work with allows them to.
You have also missunderstood the term "climate". ie: The long term statistics of weather. You cannot predict where an idividual steam bubble will form in a pot of simmering water but you can certainly predict when the pot will boil.
Here, you are attempting to compare a situation where only a few inputs (the material being heated, it's volume, atmospheric pressure, heat applied, heat lost through radiation and evaporation) allows prediction, and a situation where we do not have the data needed to make a prediction, specifically, climate.
Details? Sure: Technology will affect climate. It's a given. The current proponents of human-caused climate change spend the vast majority of their time pointing the finger at what? At technology. It ought to seem pretty silly to you that you are willing to discount technology as a factor in any climate simulation, when technology is the primary villian in your scenario, indeed, the very reason that these simulations have been launched.
Climate is not a simple thing to predict. Particularly now. You're not going to predict it using simulations that leave out critical data. Neither is anyone else, no matter how impressive their reputations or sponsorship might seem to be. Comparing it to a boiling pot of water is invalid.
If, as proponents of human caused climate change assert, technology is such an important factor that it is affecting climate (and I agree that it is), then to attempt to simulate future climate change without being able to account for technology within the operation of the simulation is downright absurd.
Going back to your pot of boiling water example, we know all of the factors that affect this. We know what factors will not (e.g., your vehicle's tires have a specific coefficient of friction which may vary enormously, but no matter what that value is, we know it does not affect water boiling on your home stove.) That's what makes it easy to predict how a pot of water will behave in this situation. The problem is a simple one with entirely known inputs.
With regard to climate, we know how climate has behaved in the past to a reasonable degree of certainty, but we cannot apply that experience to today and/or the future, because there are new factors that are known to be affecting climate that have arisen and because those factors consist in and of themselves of a series of changing inputs — technology-centric energy production, energy storage, and energy use.
No such factors exist that would affect your pot of water. We can safely predict that your pot of water will boil 1000 years from now just as it will today, affected in the very same way by the very same factors. We cannot make such a prediction for climate behavior because unlike your teapot, the surrounding conditions are not simple, not independent of external influences, and bluntly, completely uncertain at the point we would most wish to evaluate the outcome.
It's as if you said, ok, lets predict the boiling time of the teapot, but we'll take the air pressure to be a random number. If you do that, you're going to get nonsense results. Well, if you attempt to predict climate but feed in some imaginary trash as to energy production, storage and use, you're going to get a similar
Making predictions with non-existant technology is called science fiction, it's more comforting and definitely more readable, but it's still fiction.
Yes, that's exactly my point. The predictions made by these long-term climate simulations are almost certainly nonsense (barring luck) because they are presuming a particular infrastructure, and that presumption is, just as you say, science fiction.
Your outlook, the presumption that since you don't know something (the actual state of technology during the simulation), you can ignore it and use what you presume to be the case... that is utter nonsense.
Even small changes affect complex systems. Weather prediction has shown us that very, very clearly. We can't even predict temperature even 24 hours in advance without a significant margin of error. Climate is a far more complex system.
If you leave major effects out of any long term simulation of climate, you might as well be having a beer instead for all the good your simulation will do for you.
Utter nonsense. First of all, you have no idea what I am able to understand. You don't know me. Secondly, you assume I don't have a clue, but that is because you choose to hurl imprecations rather than address the point I raise (of course, you probably can't address the point I raised, no one seems to be abel to, and that is my point.)
Finally, covering a "range" of factors means that the output of the simulation covers a *range* of outputs, but it still does not mean that the simulation predicts what technologies will be in use. "A range" does not equal actuality. It's just a subset of possibilities, not a one of which can be assured to come to pass and where the entire set is no more likely to contain the actual set of circumsstances than anything made up by an 11-year old Trekkie.
The bottom line is that you can posit as complex a simulation as you like, but if you leave out major influences, you're just hand-waving. And there can be no question that major influences are being left out.
Why? Because there is a huge range of new possibilities and paths opened up by every new energy technology, every new measurement technology, every new transportation technology, every new waste disposal technology, every new recycling technology, every new genetic advance, every additional level of understanding gained in chemistry and physics, the sudden appearance of AI could change *everything* from who is working to how work is done... the list here is literally endless and any of it will knock these models not just askew, but completely out of any possible realm of applicability. And not just because of the individual changes, but because these change interact. They do so in ways that cannot be simulated or predicted; For instance an unanticipated advance in recycling energy may affect power production in a major way. Or not. Likewise energy storage efficiency. An unanticipated advance in genetics may change how livestock passes gas. An unanticipated change in public sentiment towards genetic manipulation may cause such an advance to have no effect.
Now, I fully expect you to come back with another "YOU'RE AN IDIOT" but if by chance you elect to engage your brain instead of your innate sense of disdain when someone says something you aren't happy with, I'll be happy to address any real points you might have buried inside your preconceptions.
Otherwise, have a nice day, and enjoy your delusions.
Broadcast spectrum is an artificially and governmentally mandated "scarce" resource. It's not really scarce, they just won't let you use it
Correct. And "they" couldn't stop broad civil disobedience in this regard, either, no matter how much annoyance it caused.
High speed connections can be made with lasers, if you have stable platforms and line of sight. They make good (relatively) short distance, extremely low cost, extremely high bandwidth, pipes.
You may have faired better had you bothered to find out how the model currently caters for the things that you are complianing about
So, Sparky, you think the BBC and its co-modelers know what technological changes are coming. What energy sources will be in use. When this will happen. When the next change comes. Etc. And you are assuming all of this is plugged into the model, apparently. You think I should check to see if the modelers have "properly" predicted the future of all energy technologies and incorporated that information before I dare put forward any critique of the lordly and all-knowing, future-predicting, BBC's master plan for ten thousand plus computers.
You're actually right on one thing. I should never have said anything. There's rarely any point in bringing sensible commentary to a discussion that is dominated by hysteria and ignorance — as you clearly demonstrate.
I'm not the least bit concerned with the moderation as the implied comment the moderator made with it; that wasn't flamebait, it was bloody fact is what it was. You cannot, repeat CANNOT, predict climate in any even vaguely accurate manner without those inputs. Clearly, the moderator who marked that post flamebait doesn't understand simulation OR science. Not to mention was too much of a know-nothing to try and contest the actual point I was making.
Anyone who thinks you can create a predictive simulation without critical data that is KNOWN to modify the situation needs their head examined.
Well, it boils down to, can Apple control the base hardware configuration if they're not actually manufacturing the machines? I think the answer is clearly, yes, they can if they choose to do so.
They can say, "in order to run our OS, you must pass the following certification steps" and then enforce that. The results will be a small set of hardware ecosystems, a large number of OSX users, and a great deal of income for Apple.
OTOH, as long as OSX has the quality and ease of use lead over Windows that it maintains today, I think Apple can keep making the same hardware. My original point was only that I could see this happening, saying that they could if they wanted to and still remain viable (or gain market share and profitability) whereas I could not see them dropping OSX.
Slashdot Mirror
No age limit, either. As a relatively old fart myself (50+) I can tell you that I can shoot a rifle pretty damned well and in defense of my own butt, would be well motivated to do so. Besides, the slower and creaker the politician, the less inclined they will be to create situations where bullets are flying about their heads and assnecks. :)
Yes, it should. Definitely. Otherwise you're forcing me into slavery, making me work for your gain, for projects that I in no wise support. I don't mind being taxed at the same level as you are (say, a flat tax of 33%) but I *definitely* should be able to say "But none of my money goes towards making war on Iraq, rebuilding Iraq, bombing Columbia's cocaine fields, or supporting any other external adventurism in any form." Instead, my money would go towards domestic needs, building and maintaining infrastructure, providing medical care, disaster relief, research and scientific infrastructure, education... you get the idea. You want to pay for Invading Iraq? Fine. You do that. Let's just see how much funding it'd get at this point in time under a FAIR system, one where we got to say where our money could not be spent.
The constitution is long dead anyway. Might as well start over.
No, not Microsoft, Commodore. Back in the Amiga days, we used to say to one another (as Amiga owners) that if Commodore had the Kentucky Fried Chicken francise, they'd advertise it as "lukewarm dead bird."
Now that reminds me of my government. :)
There are signs that bringing things up will become considerably less expensive in the (relatively) near term. That will cause some fairly profound alterations in the economics of all this, should it come to pass (and personally, I have almost no doubt it will.)
Back when I was designing graphics hardware (a couple of decades, now) there was "dual ported ram" that actually had two access ports which ran asynchronously. This allowed the display hardware to get at the ram without ever abusing the CPU's ability to do so, as the CPU used another bus.
Seems like that'd be the correct solution here, make the lower 64 megs (or whatever the graphics might need) with a dual port design, and the rest out of your usual run of the mill stick of RAM. Then a shared RAM design changes from a liability to an asset because everything runs at full speed, all the time.
Of course, that stuff was expensive then, and if it's even available now, it's probably still expensive.
One more thing -- some graphics hardware can use alpha as the last byte of 32 bits, and can use region overlay and positioning (as in windows, sprites, and cursors) so there is another reason to use four bytes instead of three. And of course if you're feeding the thing GPU instructions or chains of XY co-ordinates, four bytes might be just the ticket there as well.
Some memory designs are built so that all memory access is shared, and so even if, say, the graphics adaptor is only using 128 MB of memory, the CPU is still blocked from getting at ANY of the system RAM when the graphics adaptor is accessing.
Now, there are other ways to design RAM systems, and I am not privvy to how the Intel Mac Mini is designed, but I can tell you that the above is why people are nervous about a shared design; there have been many cases where such a shared design meant that the only way to eke decent performance out of a computer is to use low resolution 8-bit gfx. I own a machine like this; it is a Dell server, came with no OS and I put Linux on it. If you set Linux for 24-bit desktop, the machine just pigs down to a crawl, doesn't matter if it's trying to get at the display memoy or not, the amount of access to RAM that is available is just about zero. But put it in 800x600 with 256 colors, and it just flies along (it's a 3 GHz machine, it should!)
As far as I am concerned, it's an unknown until we get some benchies done. Big ol RAM-bound sort with the display in hires, same job with the display in blind-old-man mode, then see what, if any, are the execution time differences. That'll tell the most important tale right there.
[tips hat]
Imagine you are with a friend, and he drags you into a room of a fair number of other people you have never seen before, that you did not expect to be in, and...
The situation is that you have not opted in or out. You just arrived, and you just barely came to the understanding that money is being given away.
So: Which room would you rather have arrived in?
My point is that opt-out is evil only when it is the only way to get out of something you consider to be evil in and of itself, SPAM being the obvious poster-child for inherently evil crap no one in their right mind would ever opt-in for. The question here, in regard to opt-out and google's book indexing program, is, do you consider what google is doing to be harmful?
The answer in this specific case is unclear. Some members of the literary community (e.g. author Cory Doctorow) are all for the process, thinking it may help sell more books, and other members (e.g., literary agency owner, me) are against it because it gives up a right that the author did not exclusively release (indexing), which is not how publishing contracts work: All rights that are not specifically contracted to the buyer are withheld by the author. This is the basis for any number of new channels for income to authors. In my opinion, book publishing is in enough trouble without further weakening forces being applied, but of course, my opinion is not definitive, nor is Mr. Doctorow's: That's where the courts step in.
The courts really need to rule on this; it is not a given either way, and I consider it entirely a good thing that the AG has sued and that there will be a definitive decision rendered (eventually.)
This is a typical case of new technology not being well anticipated by old law. So we need new law, or at least, new interpretation of old law.
I think "jist" may be that stuff ZZ Top was singing about in "Pearl Necklace."
The history of broken promises permeates the system. Starting at the top, Clinton was going to support the gays, so they backed him. He failed to do what he said he would do. Bush was going to implement his "read my lips, no more taxes" and so they backed him. He failed to do what he said he would do. Moving lower in the heirarchy, the feds were going to never, ever use our social security numbers for anything by our retirement plans. Lies. You could never be held without access to a lawyer. Lies. They were never going to tap our phones. Lies. The feds were never going to back a religion. Lies. I'm not making this stuff up, I'm just reciting history for you. Democrats, republicans, the story is the same no matter where you look: Try to make changes, you'll get involved in all manner of hand waving and placard writing and marching and whatever, and in the end, there will be no change. For a while, like most US citizens, you'll keep on trying, muttering "Next time!" gamely, but as the next times come and go, eventually you'll realize that you've been had. Or you won't, and you'll gamely keep your nose against the grindstone until you die. At no time will you effect any political change by participating the political process, regardless.
What, me? See, there you go. Speaking from complete ignorance. The fact is, I have no party — there is no party that represents even the barest fraction of my outlook anywhere in the USA, and it is unlikely that there ever will be. There is no country on this planet whose system even remotely resembles what I would advocate if I thought there was even a fraction of a chance of accomplishing it.
Further, your underlying presumption, that wresting control of patents and similar issues may be accomplished by "activity within [a] party", has not been found to be the case in the last 50 years or so. Its in the books and on the net, just research it. You can't escape the facts. You are, of course, encouraged to participate by the system in precisely the way they want you to. That's how they keep you from becoming interested in really changing the system, a goal that cannot be accomplished by politics in this country.
If you like, you can certainly blame the unchangingness of the system on me and those like me. You'd be completely wrong, but whatever makes you feel better is fine w
Citizens have no input to the patent process. At any level.
See, the patent system is based entirely upon federal law. This means that you, who live in state [whatever], once a citizen, can write to your congresscritter and/or senator, who are the sum total of your connection to federal activity of every kind. These distinguished individuals will not read your letter. However, an aide will almost certainly read your letter, at which point said aide will determine it is advising a course of action that would reduce the contribution of PACs and corporations to the current and future fiscal and political welfare of said senator and/or congresscritter, and subsequently drop your passionate screed decrying the current patent system into the burn bag.
Your rights, an Entertaining Interlude:
The patent system was constructed and is maintained and protected by a power structure that consists of non-elected funding sources that have its roots in the corporate entities that populate the USA, its expression of power in the wholly-owned political system (purchased one representative at a time as well as at the party level) and its immunity from any imaginable act of the citizens in the indirect representative structure of the government.
Now, before you get the idea that you can start some grass-roots movement, and threaten your representative(s) with replacement, you also need to understand that the US is a two party system and that the parties both are completely on the corporate nipple. Should you succeed in dethroning one of our "democratic" princes or princesses, one or the other party will immediately provide a replacement who cleaves to the same agenda. There is no third party; there can be no third party. The reason? That nasty gaussian that describes the IQ distribution. The middle of that curve represents some pretty, er, "basic" intelligence levels. Those are the core voters. They're republicans, and they're democrats, and if you tried to change this in any serious way, they'd probably tar and feather you, because they "belong" to these parties and they're not about to have that sense of belonging dirtied up by some radical who wants to change the patent system. They're concerned about the price of food and gas, when they get that next paycheck, and how long it'll be until they get laid. They like to vote. They like to bask in the shadow of the powerful. They like to have "their candidate" elected. And they will get their candidate elected.
So,
...you left out one final critical fact: Lawyers and judges (who are typically ex-lawyers or still lawyers) control this entire process. The system is rigged. In the most obvious and transparent way. However it is so well rigged that there isn't a hope in hell of changing it.
Each of your claims can be shown to be dependent upon airflow, airflow that arises as a direct consequence of your process subsuming my IP, that is, breathing.
So, not only must you STFU, I demand you immedately stop breathing.
Respectfully yours,
The Legal Department
However, if someone wants to try to address them, I'll be perfectly happy to put a finer point on any particular compromise. Would you like to be first?
Yeah, let's all just hop right on this bandwagon. Never mind that it's going downhill towards the boiling tar pits at breakneck speed, its fun to be on board the latest thing!
Webapps for important data: Brought to you by the same people who think suicide is a life-enhancing personal choice.
I truly admire the way you took the point I was making and using critical thinking, scientific method, and relevant examples, just tore my position apart. No question, a beautiful job. You are such a stud. The "simulate with trash data then treat the results as gospel" crowd is so lucky to have you on their side, sir.
Um, I find your ideas fascinating and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
In this way, not only will you produce competent human beings who have every legitimate reason to love and trust you, you will also contribute to raising the human race a little further from the tide of ignorance much of the population still wallows in.
Technology... is essentially a set of tools. The best tool users are, IMHO, critical thinkers. When the time comes, bright, incisive and curious children will have the best chance to make the best possible use of the tools available to them. Whatever those might be... all I am certain of is that they'll be different from those available today. The one technological constant is change.
Pardon me, my mistake. I thought, since you were attacking my knowledge of simulation with such gusto, that you actually knew how simulations worked. Now that you have shown you don't, I won't worry about your opinion any longer.
You have a good day!
No, I didn't misunderstand you at all. I was simply pointing out (with some amusement, I admit) that your reasoning applies to the problem, once you realize that the inputs to climate simulation contain science fiction — specifically innaccurate technology information. I realize you have an emotional stake in this and can't look at it dispassionately, but that doesn't make the point invalid. You're feeding the simulation garbage; you're going to get garbage results back. That is the science you are missing. Simulations can only work as well as the data set they have to work with allows them to.
Here, you are attempting to compare a situation where only a few inputs (the material being heated, it's volume, atmospheric pressure, heat applied, heat lost through radiation and evaporation) allows prediction, and a situation where we do not have the data needed to make a prediction, specifically, climate.
Details? Sure: Technology will affect climate. It's a given. The current proponents of human-caused climate change spend the vast majority of their time pointing the finger at what? At technology. It ought to seem pretty silly to you that you are willing to discount technology as a factor in any climate simulation, when technology is the primary villian in your scenario, indeed, the very reason that these simulations have been launched.
Climate is not a simple thing to predict. Particularly now. You're not going to predict it using simulations that leave out critical data. Neither is anyone else, no matter how impressive their reputations or sponsorship might seem to be. Comparing it to a boiling pot of water is invalid.
If, as proponents of human caused climate change assert, technology is such an important factor that it is affecting climate (and I agree that it is), then to attempt to simulate future climate change without being able to account for technology within the operation of the simulation is downright absurd.
Going back to your pot of boiling water example, we know all of the factors that affect this. We know what factors will not (e.g., your vehicle's tires have a specific coefficient of friction which may vary enormously, but no matter what that value is, we know it does not affect water boiling on your home stove.) That's what makes it easy to predict how a pot of water will behave in this situation. The problem is a simple one with entirely known inputs.
With regard to climate, we know how climate has behaved in the past to a reasonable degree of certainty, but we cannot apply that experience to today and/or the future, because there are new factors that are known to be affecting climate that have arisen and because those factors consist in and of themselves of a series of changing inputs — technology-centric energy production, energy storage, and energy use.
No such factors exist that would affect your pot of water. We can safely predict that your pot of water will boil 1000 years from now just as it will today, affected in the very same way by the very same factors. We cannot make such a prediction for climate behavior because unlike your teapot, the surrounding conditions are not simple, not independent of external influences, and bluntly, completely uncertain at the point we would most wish to evaluate the outcome.
It's as if you said, ok, lets predict the boiling time of the teapot, but we'll take the air pressure to be a random number. If you do that, you're going to get nonsense results. Well, if you attempt to predict climate but feed in some imaginary trash as to energy production, storage and use, you're going to get a similar
Yes, that's exactly my point. The predictions made by these long-term climate simulations are almost certainly nonsense (barring luck) because they are presuming a particular infrastructure, and that presumption is, just as you say, science fiction.
Your outlook, the presumption that since you don't know something (the actual state of technology during the simulation), you can ignore it and use what you presume to be the case... that is utter nonsense.
Even small changes affect complex systems. Weather prediction has shown us that very, very clearly. We can't even predict temperature even 24 hours in advance without a significant margin of error. Climate is a far more complex system.
If you leave major effects out of any long term simulation of climate, you might as well be having a beer instead for all the good your simulation will do for you.
I'll leave you with that thought.
Finally, covering a "range" of factors means that the output of the simulation covers a *range* of outputs, but it still does not mean that the simulation predicts what technologies will be in use. "A range" does not equal actuality. It's just a subset of possibilities, not a one of which can be assured to come to pass and where the entire set is no more likely to contain the actual set of circumsstances than anything made up by an 11-year old Trekkie.
The bottom line is that you can posit as complex a simulation as you like, but if you leave out major influences, you're just hand-waving. And there can be no question that major influences are being left out.
Why? Because there is a huge range of new possibilities and paths opened up by every new energy technology, every new measurement technology, every new transportation technology, every new waste disposal technology, every new recycling technology, every new genetic advance, every additional level of understanding gained in chemistry and physics, the sudden appearance of AI could change *everything* from who is working to how work is done... the list here is literally endless and any of it will knock these models not just askew, but completely out of any possible realm of applicability. And not just because of the individual changes, but because these change interact. They do so in ways that cannot be simulated or predicted; For instance an unanticipated advance in recycling energy may affect power production in a major way. Or not. Likewise energy storage efficiency. An unanticipated advance in genetics may change how livestock passes gas. An unanticipated change in public sentiment towards genetic manipulation may cause such an advance to have no effect.
Now, I fully expect you to come back with another "YOU'RE AN IDIOT" but if by chance you elect to engage your brain instead of your innate sense of disdain when someone says something you aren't happy with, I'll be happy to address any real points you might have buried inside your preconceptions.
Otherwise, have a nice day, and enjoy your delusions.
Correct. And "they" couldn't stop broad civil disobedience in this regard, either, no matter how much annoyance it caused.
High speed connections can be made with lasers, if you have stable platforms and line of sight. They make good (relatively) short distance, extremely low cost, extremely high bandwidth, pipes.
So, Sparky, you think the BBC and its co-modelers know what technological changes are coming. What energy sources will be in use. When this will happen. When the next change comes. Etc. And you are assuming all of this is plugged into the model, apparently. You think I should check to see if the modelers have "properly" predicted the future of all energy technologies and incorporated that information before I dare put forward any critique of the lordly and all-knowing, future-predicting, BBC's master plan for ten thousand plus computers.
You're actually right on one thing. I should never have said anything. There's rarely any point in bringing sensible commentary to a discussion that is dominated by hysteria and ignorance — as you clearly demonstrate.
Anyone who thinks you can create a predictive simulation without critical data that is KNOWN to modify the situation needs their head examined.
They can say, "in order to run our OS, you must pass the following certification steps" and then enforce that. The results will be a small set of hardware ecosystems, a large number of OSX users, and a great deal of income for Apple.
OTOH, as long as OSX has the quality and ease of use lead over Windows that it maintains today, I think Apple can keep making the same hardware. My original point was only that I could see this happening, saying that they could if they wanted to and still remain viable (or gain market share and profitability) whereas I could not see them dropping OSX.