Of course you could lighten the shuttle's load a bit by removing the big tank, but it's a long ways between 4.3 million pounds and 273,400 pounds. As someone else has pointed out, towing might be a better option.
That said, I doubt the shuttle's airframe, especially wings, are designed to handle much more than the maximum landing weight in atmospheric flight (where the weight vector is perpindicular to the wings). I am now imagining a space shuttle blasting down a runway, and the wings take off but the fuselage stays on the ground.
Getting your monitor to power down in X is different than getting it to power down at the text console. To get X to power down the monitor, include the "dpms" argument on the command line to X. For instance, if starting X with "startx" or "xinit", use "startx -- dpms" instead.
If that doesn't help, well, I'm out of ideas.
-Paul Komarek
Thanks for the input from your experience. I agree, the problem is seperating good spending from abusive spending. However, I do take issue with your suggestion to ditch the Nat'l Endowment for the Arts. Ever since Gingrich, it's been horribly underfunded. Think of the NEA as the artist's version of the NSF.
As someone considering NASA after their Ph.D., I find your comment offensive and ill-informed. Government wages for scientists at NASA are decent, easily enough for comfortable living. But there is also job security, an above-average vacation policy (for the USA), and exposure to a wonderful variety of people and technologies.
Not to mention that some people might actually like helping their country, despite the fact that folks like you diss all public servants as "also-rans". Because US taxpayers have a screwed-up sense of what public servants deserve, there are some fairly draconian policies in place in various government institutions:
* All cups of coffee must be accounted for, and paid for individually
* No Christmas parties, even if financed by
discretionary money
* Spouses not allowed to ride in government
vehicles, even when travelling together
Obviously, I don't like your attitude. That said, it's quite possible you were making a joke -- an inappropriate joke, in my opinion. How would you like it if your company couldn't hold a Christmas party, despite a year of record performance?
Your comment is certainly not "informed". Consider the following data, all found via Google at
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/HR-Education/workfor ce/endofy99.html:
* 74% of NASA's workforce have a Bachelor's
degree or higher.
* 34% have a Master's or higher
* 10% have a Doctorate
For an agency with 17,000 employees, that's not bad. How does your company stack up, Mr. Fancy Pants? Here's some more info:
* Average salary across all NASA's scientific
and engineering employees: $79,000
* Average salary across all NASA's employees,
regardless of job: $69,000
* Average salary of scientist or engineer at
NASA's headquarters: $103,000
* Average for same at Ames Research Center:
$86,000
* At all of NASA's centers, scientists and
engineers have higer average earnings than
professional administrators -- music to my
ears!
Remember that these are averages, not maximum salaries. Also, consider that NASA has 17,000 employees, though I don't know how many are scientists or engineers. Given that 35% percent have an advanced degree, this is likely to be a large number. At any rate, these numbers are just fine, if you're not a mercenary.
It is very interesting to look at the top ten reasons people remain federal employees. You can see this list here.
I've seen a few posts saying that water cooling doesn't really reduce the noise enough to make it worthwhile, partially because of hard drive noise among other things. One advantage of water cooling over aircooling is that you can use the water to move the heat away from the computer itself (within reason).
Imagine, then, acoustically insulating your case using foam, cardboard, carpeted wood, or whatever. With an air cooled case, you have just screwed up your air cooling because of too many holes in the acoustic insulation. With water cooling, you only need to allow the water cooling hoses out of the acoustic insulation, and they can go to a big radiator *outside* of the acoustic insulation.
Of course, you will want a way to access the CD, floppy, and power switch.;-) I would think that making the front of the acoustic enclosure into a door would work.
I think it would be much easier to go directly from the software models in Quake to an immersive display, rather than to go from PanQuake's rasterized 2-dimensional output to an immersive display.
Re:Everybody's not above average!
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 2
This is a great place to discuss the difference between median and average. A perfect driving record is definitely above average, but I expect it's not that far from the median driving record. That means, as a driver, you can be replaced despite your above-average driving record.
While I'm being pedantic, let's consider another example. There is an annual nationwide exam for math students called the Putnam exam. Despite the fact that the average score is some positive number greater than zero (out of 120 points possible, IIRC), at least half of the test-takers receive a score of exactly zero (all scores are non-negative). That means you can turn the test in blank, and still have 50% of the test-takers do no better.
Here's another good example. If you are a math major at an ivy league school, your best career move is to drop out in your second year of studies -- people in this group have an incredibly high average wealth! Of course, Bill Gates is in this group. What you really want to know, for security's sake, is what the median income is.
You may be above average, but that doesn't mean you can't be replaced.
-Paul Komarek
Re:IT Unions not all bad
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 2
I guess you missed a previous slashdot discussion about the virtual impossibility of changing intellectual property rights assigned in employment contracts. There are lots of differences with unions, and I'm sure you realize that your post oversimplifies reality. Unions do reduce individualism, but nobody suggested that unions were meant to increase individualism. Unions don't appear out of thin air -- they appear when a bunch (multiple hundreds at least, I would guess from history) of people get really pissed off about how they're being treated.
Depending on your particular class and university, you could always consider talking to your professor and/or teaching assistant. And I don't mean to direct this at you personally, but thinking longer and harder is also an option in many cases.
If you start the assignment the night before it is due, and don't have time to ask the professor for help, or have time to think longer and harder, there is no reason you should get a good grade. The purpose of the grade is to estimate your _demonstrated_ ability at solving a particular problem within the given _constraints_.
That said, grades are still bogus because of what they don't include.
Though I don't remember the details, I'm reminded of the RoboTuna project (MIT?). We're really inefficient with underwater propulsion, compared to fish. IIRC, our propellers are as efficient as they're going to get. To be more efficient, some people have tried to model fish propulsion.
However, fish are much more nimble than our cable-driven robots, and are better able to adapt their stroke to vortices produced by their tail fins. It seems like a morphing, feeling material would make artificial fish propulsion much easier.
Now, imagine a submarine, enclosed inside a giant fish-shaped, flopping hull...
Interesting to see a geek at work in a different field. I'm assuming, of course, that Mr. Kevern told the reported the model number of the self-loading boom off the top of his head.
Somewhat conversely, I suspect that calculus students would most often not be able to spot the mean value theorem if presented with a highly detailed proof of it.
"Actually, often the best way to understand a language is to look at the assembly." I'm sure you're aware that this is only useful if you have knowledge of computer architcture at some level.
Consider your electronics analogy. Are capacitors and resistors really the fundamental parts? Or is the drift speed of electrons through ceramic materials a better place? With respect to this article, the real question is where to draw the line for mathematics. I think that most practicing mathematicians or mathematicall-oriented science professionals would suggest that Metamath appears to draw the line at the "electrons in ceramics" level, rather than at the capacitor and resistor level.
I think you're bordering on a simple, clear point. However, you didn't spend enough time simplifying your post to make it clear. Since I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, I'll put some words into your mouth and hope we're talking about the same thing.
"Mathematics without effective communication of mathematics is useless."
Finding a succinct statement like that requires a lot of work for me, but saves a lot of people a lot of time. Just like what you're complaining about in your post.
Effective communication of mathematics is extremely hard. In fact, it may be reasonable to argue that mankind's primary progress in mathematics has been the codification of some basic mathematical tools likes limits and sets. The communication of mathematics has been helped by things like the printing press, LaTeX, and now the ability to easily share PostScript via the internet. But I think it is reasonable to argue that finding useful codifications of mathematical ideas is a fine way to describe the work of mathematicians.
If we start with Egyption fractions in 3000BC, humans have spent 5000 years of work to arrive at the point that we realized extreme formality may have occasional uses. Deciding when formality is needed, and how much formality is needed, depends upon the assessment of your target audience. After deciding this, you still have to convert your ideas into language for your audience. This can take a lot of time, and affects your productivity in other areas. It's a difficult trade-off to make.
That said, my post is now long and rambling. I could go back and edit it, to help people read it. Or I could work on a device driver problem I'm thinking about. Since this is my fourth post on this article (sorry, everyone;-), I think I better cut my time losses and not edit this post.
Alright then, I assume you know the definitions of continuity, limit/cluster points, compactness, and the statement of the Heine-Borel theorem. Prove the Heine-Borel theorem for me without reference to texts. I'll give you a hint -- there's not a great deal of "lateral thinking" involved, just use the stuff I've already mentioned (unless you want to drop down to set theory first...).
Maybe you're so super-smart that you'll get this "easy" proof straight away. It took me two weeks, and was anything but easy. It was gratifying, though. =-)
Reverse engineering math is one thing, but an extreme reductionist approach is another. Suppose that someone said "Physics is easy, just start with waves and particles and the following mathematical models of the four fundamental forces". You're not going to get very far, and what you'll learn is not going to help you synthesize new knowledge.
I agree that different approaches is a good thing. But there's a reason _NOBODY_ studies aximatic set theory (in sufficient detail to describe mainstream mathematics) before studying fractions. Do you really know what a Real number is? However, it's very likely you've gotten along just fine without that knowledge.
While I am familiar with one method of defining Real numbers, I don't think of real numbers in terms of their definition unless absolutely necessary (i.e. only for certain classes I took a while ago). Thinking of Real numbers using Dedikind cuts, thinking of Integers as recursively nested empty sets, rarely does anyone any good. Furthermore, these definitions of types of numbers were created formalize preconceived notions of what Real numbers and Integers were, for the rare cases that demanded such formality. Humans used Integers for a long time ( multiple thousands of years) before creating a formal definition for them.
Oh, and did I mention that the formal definitions of Integers I'm familiar with require Peano arithmetic or similar, which in turn requires a knowledge of certain types of formal logical systems?
Proofs are going to get extremely long if every occurance of Modus Ponens is labled...
If one says "proven" without providing an axiomatic base, a reasonable method of inference, and a consistant argument, I don't think you should believe them. But then, that's I'm studying mathematics.;-)
I'm not sure, but I think we're talking about scientists and non-commercial research here. Nobody gets paid what they're worth, and it's always been that way. In this environment, demanding what you're worth is like telling everyone else that they're only worth the pittance they get paid. Just a cultural thing.
I almost agree with the premise, with some conditions. Computers aren't doing anything near what they were and are hyped to do. Hal is still a long, long ways away. But I don't think that is computer scientists faults -- I think it is Intel and Microsoft's fault.
These companies told the world that computers were ready to make their lives better. They made a lot of laughable statements that were, unfortunately, easy and desireable to believe. Then these companies mass marketed their products and made bundles of money. Imagine vulture, er, venture capitalists in 1910 saying "London to New York in 3 hours via plane!" This is what happened in the computer industry, and there has been a lot of dissapointment as a result.
Consequently, Intel's research budget grew very fast, evidently much faster than they could improve their designs by the look of things. However, the companies that were making real advances in processors have been pushed out of business (next week, we'll discuss whether the "efficiency" of capitalism is really the right economic principle to maximize;-). The same with operating systems. It's very interesting to see that the only successful competition for Windows is a piece of volunteer-built public infrastructure that grew on a schedule largely independent of "market forces".
The term Artificial Intelligence (my research, sort of) is horrible, and has probably contributed to the disappointment. I don't think software techniques have matured much. Hardware and hardware processes have become much better -- memory densities, magnetic storage densities, even CRT manufacturing. But I really don't see any improvement in available software. At least with GNU/Linux, there's an attempt to find the right way to do things even if it takes several tries and isn't popular or financially rewarding.
The best thing that has happened, by my estimation, is the interconnection of computers. Networks have proven far more valuable than so many other technologies like speech recognition and vision. Those technologies are very, very interesting, and it's proper for people to study them. But natural language processing has not had an effect on how we get through each day, yet, despite hype from the market.
It's interesting, therefore to see how Microsoft, Intel, etc. hype the Internet. Watch how they try to spin their products to say that they add "value" to the Internet experience. An Intel P-MCMXXXI doesn't make the Internet any better. The important aspects of the 'net don't depend on Flash or Javascript, and certainly don't depend on Flash or Javascript executing on bajillion-megahurts processors. The Internet, the best thing to happen to come to the public from the tech sector (followed by handhelds, I think =-), is useful with or without Intel's latest and greatest. The internet is even better without Microsoft's latest and greatest Media-Hijacker. =-)
The Internet is valuable for the transmission of information. Computers are valuable for the processing of information in simple ways, really quickly. Neither of these create new information in any meaningful sense--we still need humans or nature or whatever for that. But none of this sounds exciting enough to sell computers, and as a result Microsoft and Intel, etc., created the hype that has led to a large disappointment. They preached the land of milk and honey but delivered a desert (I better watch out for lightning bolts after saying that...).
I like to say that these companies, and the whole PC industry, have been "taxing naive consumers." And now consumers are realizing that these companies have squandered their money. It is ironic, and slightly humorous if you've a strong stomach, that the academics are getting blamed.
Slashdot Mirror
I just did a little looking around for weight specifications.
World record cargo lift by plane: 273,400 pounds
(Antonov 124-100, though a 747-400 is close)
Largest helicopter lift AFAIK: 9100Kg=20000 pounds
Shuttle life-off weight: 4.3 *million* pounds
Shuttle landing weight: 230,000 pounds
Of course you could lighten the shuttle's load a bit by removing the big tank, but it's a long ways between 4.3 million pounds and 273,400 pounds. As someone else has pointed out, towing might be a better option.
That said, I doubt the shuttle's airframe, especially wings, are designed to handle much more than the maximum landing weight in atmospheric flight (where the weight vector is perpindicular to the wings). I am now imagining a space shuttle blasting down a runway, and the wings take off but the fuselage stays on the ground.
-Paul Komarek
Getting your monitor to power down in X is different than getting it to power down at the text console. To get X to power down the monitor, include the "dpms" argument on the command line to X. For instance, if starting X with "startx" or "xinit", use "startx -- dpms" instead.
If that doesn't help, well, I'm out of ideas.
-Paul Komarek
Thanks for the input from your experience. I agree, the problem is seperating good spending from abusive spending. However, I do take issue with your suggestion to ditch the Nat'l Endowment for the Arts. Ever since Gingrich, it's been horribly underfunded. Think of the NEA as the artist's version of the NSF.
-Paul
As someone considering NASA after their Ph.D., I find your comment offensive and ill-informed. Government wages for scientists at NASA are decent, easily enough for comfortable living. But there is also job security, an above-average vacation policy (for the USA), and exposure to a wonderful variety of people and technologies.
r ce/endofy99.html:
Not to mention that some people might actually like helping their country, despite the fact that folks like you diss all public servants as "also-rans". Because US taxpayers have a screwed-up sense of what public servants deserve, there are some fairly draconian policies in place in various government institutions:
* All cups of coffee must be accounted for, and paid for individually
* No Christmas parties, even if financed by
discretionary money
* Spouses not allowed to ride in government
vehicles, even when travelling together
Obviously, I don't like your attitude. That said, it's quite possible you were making a joke -- an inappropriate joke, in my opinion. How would you like it if your company couldn't hold a Christmas party, despite a year of record performance?
Your comment is certainly not "informed". Consider the following data, all found via Google at
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/HR-Education/workfo
* 74% of NASA's workforce have a Bachelor's
degree or higher.
* 34% have a Master's or higher
* 10% have a Doctorate
For an agency with 17,000 employees, that's not bad. How does your company stack up, Mr. Fancy Pants? Here's some more info:
* Average salary across all NASA's scientific
and engineering employees: $79,000
* Average salary across all NASA's employees,
regardless of job: $69,000
* Average salary of scientist or engineer at
NASA's headquarters: $103,000
* Average for same at Ames Research Center:
$86,000
* At all of NASA's centers, scientists and
engineers have higer average earnings than
professional administrators -- music to my
ears!
Remember that these are averages, not maximum salaries. Also, consider that NASA has 17,000 employees, though I don't know how many are scientists or engineers. Given that 35% percent have an advanced degree, this is likely to be a large number. At any rate, these numbers are just fine, if you're not a mercenary.
It is very interesting to look at the top ten reasons people remain federal employees. You can see this list here.
-Paul Komarek
I've seen a few posts saying that water cooling doesn't really reduce the noise enough to make it worthwhile, partially because of hard drive noise among other things. One advantage of water cooling over aircooling is that you can use the water to move the heat away from the computer itself (within reason).
;-) I would think that making the front of the acoustic enclosure into a door would work.
Imagine, then, acoustically insulating your case using foam, cardboard, carpeted wood, or whatever. With an air cooled case, you have just screwed up your air cooling because of too many holes in the acoustic insulation. With water cooling, you only need to allow the water cooling hoses out of the acoustic insulation, and they can go to a big radiator *outside* of the acoustic insulation.
Of course, you will want a way to access the CD, floppy, and power switch.
-Paul Komarek
I think it would be much easier to go directly from the software models in Quake to an immersive display, rather than to go from PanQuake's rasterized 2-dimensional output to an immersive display.
-Paul Komarek
Be careful about using the term "we" so loosely. In effect, you are stereotyping your readers as images of yourself.
-Paul Komarek
This is the single best post on this story.
-Paul Komarek
This is a great place to discuss the difference between median and average. A perfect driving record is definitely above average, but I expect it's not that far from the median driving record. That means, as a driver, you can be replaced despite your above-average driving record.
While I'm being pedantic, let's consider another example. There is an annual nationwide exam for math students called the Putnam exam. Despite the fact that the average score is some positive number greater than zero (out of 120 points possible, IIRC), at least half of the test-takers receive a score of exactly zero (all scores are non-negative). That means you can turn the test in blank, and still have 50% of the test-takers do no better.
Here's another good example. If you are a math major at an ivy league school, your best career move is to drop out in your second year of studies -- people in this group have an incredibly high average wealth! Of course, Bill Gates is in this group. What you really want to know, for security's sake, is what the median income is.
You may be above average, but that doesn't mean you can't be replaced.
-Paul Komarek
I guess you missed a previous slashdot discussion about the virtual impossibility of changing intellectual property rights assigned in employment contracts. There are lots of differences with unions, and I'm sure you realize that your post oversimplifies reality. Unions do reduce individualism, but nobody suggested that unions were meant to increase individualism. Unions don't appear out of thin air -- they appear when a bunch (multiple hundreds at least, I would guess from history) of people get really pissed off about how they're being treated.
-Paul Komarek
If Escher played Quake, he'd play PanQuake.
-Paul Komarek
Depending on your particular class and university, you could always consider talking to your professor and/or teaching assistant. And I don't mean to direct this at you personally, but thinking longer and harder is also an option in many cases.
If you start the assignment the night before it is due, and don't have time to ask the professor for help, or have time to think longer and harder, there is no reason you should get a good grade. The purpose of the grade is to estimate your _demonstrated_ ability at solving a particular problem within the given _constraints_.
That said, grades are still bogus because of what they don't include.
-Paul Komarek
I think Linux should migrate to using Donald Knuth's METAFONT for all its font needs. ;-)
-Paul Komarek
Though I don't remember the details, I'm reminded of the RoboTuna project (MIT?). We're really inefficient with underwater propulsion, compared to fish. IIRC, our propellers are as efficient as they're going to get. To be more efficient, some people have tried to model fish propulsion.
However, fish are much more nimble than our cable-driven robots, and are better able to adapt their stroke to vortices produced by their tail fins. It seems like a morphing, feeling material would make artificial fish propulsion much easier.
Now, imagine a submarine, enclosed inside a giant fish-shaped, flopping hull...
-Paul Komarek
"...Dynamic 601-b self-loading boom..."
Interesting to see a geek at work in a different field. I'm assuming, of course, that Mr. Kevern told the reported the model number of the self-loading boom off the top of his head.
-Paul Komarek
I don't mean to speak for the creators of Metamath, but I think the coolness of their project has little or nothing to do with pedagogy.
-Paul Komarek
"I'm no genius, but was there really any reason to try losing his students when the triangle wasn't the base of his lesson plan?"
I think the professor in your story didn't have a lesson plan. You describe incompetence and laziness, not a problem of high-level abstraction!
-Paul Komarek
Somewhat conversely, I suspect that calculus students would most often not be able to spot the mean value theorem if presented with a highly detailed proof of it.
-Paul Komarek
"Actually, often the best way to understand a language is to look at the assembly." I'm sure you're aware that this is only useful if you have knowledge of computer architcture at some level.
Consider your electronics analogy. Are capacitors and resistors really the fundamental parts? Or is the drift speed of electrons through ceramic materials a better place? With respect to this article, the real question is where to draw the line for mathematics. I think that most practicing mathematicians or mathematicall-oriented science professionals would suggest that Metamath appears to draw the line at the "electrons in ceramics" level, rather than at the capacitor and resistor level.
-Paul Komarek
I think you're bordering on a simple, clear point. However, you didn't spend enough time simplifying your post to make it clear. Since I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, I'll put some words into your mouth and hope we're talking about the same thing.
;-), I think I better cut my time losses and not edit this post.
"Mathematics without effective communication of mathematics is useless."
Finding a succinct statement like that requires a lot of work for me, but saves a lot of people a lot of time. Just like what you're complaining about in your post.
Effective communication of mathematics is extremely hard. In fact, it may be reasonable to argue that mankind's primary progress in mathematics has been the codification of some basic mathematical tools likes limits and sets. The communication of mathematics has been helped by things like the printing press, LaTeX, and now the ability to easily share PostScript via the internet. But I think it is reasonable to argue that finding useful codifications of mathematical ideas is a fine way to describe the work of mathematicians.
If we start with Egyption fractions in 3000BC, humans have spent 5000 years of work to arrive at the point that we realized extreme formality may have occasional uses. Deciding when formality is needed, and how much formality is needed, depends upon the assessment of your target audience. After deciding this, you still have to convert your ideas into language for your audience. This can take a lot of time, and affects your productivity in other areas. It's a difficult trade-off to make.
That said, my post is now long and rambling. I could go back and edit it, to help people read it. Or I could work on a device driver problem I'm thinking about. Since this is my fourth post on this article (sorry, everyone
-Paul Komarek
Alright then, I assume you know the definitions of continuity, limit/cluster points, compactness, and the statement of the Heine-Borel theorem. Prove the Heine-Borel theorem for me without reference to texts. I'll give you a hint -- there's not a great deal of "lateral thinking" involved, just use the stuff I've already mentioned (unless you want to drop down to set theory first...).
Maybe you're so super-smart that you'll get this "easy" proof straight away. It took me two weeks, and was anything but easy. It was gratifying, though. =-)
-Paul Komarek
Reverse engineering math is one thing, but an extreme reductionist approach is another. Suppose that someone said "Physics is easy, just start with waves and particles and the following mathematical models of the four fundamental forces". You're not going to get very far, and what you'll learn is not going to help you synthesize new knowledge.
I agree that different approaches is a good thing. But there's a reason _NOBODY_ studies aximatic set theory (in sufficient detail to describe mainstream mathematics) before studying fractions. Do you really know what a Real number is? However, it's very likely you've gotten along just fine without that knowledge.
While I am familiar with one method of defining Real numbers, I don't think of real numbers in terms of their definition unless absolutely necessary (i.e. only for certain classes I took a while ago). Thinking of Real numbers using Dedikind cuts, thinking of Integers as recursively nested empty sets, rarely does anyone any good. Furthermore, these definitions of types of numbers were created formalize preconceived notions of what Real numbers and Integers were, for the rare cases that demanded such formality. Humans used Integers for a long time ( multiple thousands of years) before creating a formal definition for them.
Oh, and did I mention that the formal definitions of Integers I'm familiar with require Peano arithmetic or similar, which in turn requires a knowledge of certain types of formal logical systems?
Proofs are going to get extremely long if every occurance of Modus Ponens is labled...
-Paul Komarek
If one says "proven" without providing an axiomatic base, a reasonable method of inference, and a consistant argument, I don't think you should believe them. But then, that's I'm studying mathematics. ;-)
-Paul Komarek
I'm not sure, but I think we're talking about scientists and non-commercial research here. Nobody gets paid what they're worth, and it's always been that way. In this environment, demanding what you're worth is like telling everyone else that they're only worth the pittance they get paid. Just a cultural thing.
-Paul Komarek
I almost agree with the premise, with some conditions. Computers aren't doing anything near what they were and are hyped to do. Hal is still a long, long ways away. But I don't think that is computer scientists faults -- I think it is Intel and Microsoft's fault.
;-). The same with operating systems. It's very interesting to see that the only successful competition for Windows is a piece of volunteer-built public infrastructure that grew on a schedule largely independent of "market forces".
These companies told the world that computers were ready to make their lives better. They made a lot of laughable statements that were, unfortunately, easy and desireable to believe. Then these companies mass marketed their products and made bundles of money. Imagine vulture, er, venture capitalists in 1910 saying "London to New York in 3 hours via plane!" This is what happened in the computer industry, and there has been a lot of dissapointment as a result.
Consequently, Intel's research budget grew very fast, evidently much faster than they could improve their designs by the look of things. However, the companies that were making real advances in processors have been pushed out of business (next week, we'll discuss whether the "efficiency" of capitalism is really the right economic principle to maximize
The term Artificial Intelligence (my research, sort of) is horrible, and has probably contributed to the disappointment. I don't think software techniques have matured much. Hardware and hardware processes have become much better -- memory densities, magnetic storage densities, even CRT manufacturing. But I really don't see any improvement in available software. At least with GNU/Linux, there's an attempt to find the right way to do things even if it takes several tries and isn't popular or financially rewarding.
The best thing that has happened, by my estimation, is the interconnection of computers. Networks have proven far more valuable than so many other technologies like speech recognition and vision. Those technologies are very, very interesting, and it's proper for people to study them. But natural language processing has not had an effect on how we get through each day, yet, despite hype from the market.
It's interesting, therefore to see how Microsoft, Intel, etc. hype the Internet. Watch how they try to spin their products to say that they add "value" to the Internet experience. An Intel P-MCMXXXI doesn't make the Internet any better. The important aspects of the 'net don't depend on Flash or Javascript, and certainly don't depend on Flash or Javascript executing on bajillion-megahurts processors. The Internet, the best thing to happen to come to the public from the tech sector (followed by handhelds, I think =-), is useful with or without Intel's latest and greatest. The internet is even better without Microsoft's latest and greatest Media-Hijacker. =-)
The Internet is valuable for the transmission of information. Computers are valuable for the processing of information in simple ways, really quickly. Neither of these create new information in any meaningful sense--we still need humans or nature or whatever for that. But none of this sounds exciting enough to sell computers, and as a result Microsoft and Intel, etc., created the hype that has led to a large disappointment. They preached the land of milk and honey but delivered a desert (I better watch out for lightning bolts after saying that...).
I like to say that these companies, and the whole PC industry, have been "taxing naive consumers." And now consumers are realizing that these companies have squandered their money. It is ironic, and slightly humorous if you've a strong stomach, that the academics are getting blamed.
-Paul Komarek