Every government department should be closed for six months every five years or so. If nothing really bad happens, it stays closed and the people get to look for a real job.
You just wouldn't believe how much money is wasted on running useless government departments. Since the beginning of time governments have always got bigger, never smaller. Follow the logic: There IS a tipping point where the taxpayers can't get enough money together to pay for all this. Just before that tipping point they're giving up almost all their money so some government workers can sit on their asses all day pretending to look busy.
The fat needs to be trimmed long before we get to this point. The only problem is that people in power don't have any problem spending other people's money, e.g. the guy who thought every government worker should have a free cell phone.
It's not really hard-wired hardware these days. The graphics chip runs code which is uploaded when the machine boots. Fixing a bug is usually just a driver update.
Last time I checked Visual C++ produces WAY BETTER floating point code than GCC does (easily twice as fast) so unless you're programming in assembly language a single quad-core PC could replace quite a few PS3s. PCs can be had in very small boxes too, with less RAM/disk to save money.
The thing that worries me most about PS3 farms is that you're stuck with the same technology for the next 'N' years. It was worth doing when it was new but the PC world is busy following Moore's law so it soon overtakes it. eg. Six-core chips are now in the price range where the quad-cores were a year ago. With hyperthreading that's nearly as good as a 12-core machine.
If the job fits you can also stick in a cheap-ish graphics card and get massively parallel floating point processing.
PS: I'm just giving you arguments to use on your boss so he'll scrap the PS3s and you get to take one home.
The USA is only a few percent of the world and Earth-Alien diplomacy will be a whole lot easier without the ego of the USA in the way trying to run the show.
(and also without all the cigar-chomping rednecks in fighter planes who'll insist on running 'the security'...)
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Yep. Make sure the handouts are food, not money which can go on cigarettes and beer.
Dunno, but so long as they're on the handouts I know they're not really trying...
Every government department should be closed for six months every five years or so. If nothing really bad happens, it stays closed and the people get to look for a real job.
You just wouldn't believe how much money is wasted on running useless government departments. Since the beginning of time governments have always got bigger, never smaller. Follow the logic: There IS a tipping point where the taxpayers can't get enough money together to pay for all this. Just before that tipping point they're giving up almost all their money so some government workers can sit on their asses all day pretending to look busy.
The fat needs to be trimmed long before we get to this point. The only problem is that people in power don't have any problem spending other people's money, e.g. the guy who thought every government worker should have a free cell phone.
Getting first post trumps reading the article I guess.
It's a staggering amount for a single factory - enough to supply AOL for about three days!
Save the buggy whip makers! They're real craftsmen!
Some *very* boring ones....
Agreed, it's bet to nip this in the bud as early as possible - avoid all the crap we had with GIF.
Um, despite what government propaganda says, cameras aren't the only way to catch speeders.
Yep. If they budgeted for this they must have made more than that from doing it, ergo they'll do it again if they get half a chance.
Logic says they should be fined several times this as a punitive measure.
Come on, it's only a handful of people in the entire world that do this.
When the PS3 cluster project started, it was one of the "sexiest" ways to get your hands on a lot of power for not a lot of money.
Sure, a few years ago the cell processor was way ahead of what PCs were offering and PS3s made a lot of sense.
None of these chips execute 'Direct3D' or 'OpenGL' directly, they remap the functions to an internal 3D API.
OpenGL and Direct3D do mostly the same things so it's not much of a hardship for the driver writers.
The chip's instruction set will be designed around the shading languages used in 3D graphics, it won't be very generic.
It's not really hard-wired hardware these days. The graphics chip runs code which is uploaded when the machine boots. Fixing a bug is usually just a driver update.
Anything with an HDMI output has to support DRM so people can't record the signal.
(We have the master key so, yes, it's a waste of time but Intel is contractually bound to support the DRM if they want to have HDMI output)
Many people already think HTML is 'coding' so that wouldn't change anything much.
Last time I checked Visual C++ produces WAY BETTER floating point code than GCC does (easily twice as fast) so unless you're programming in assembly language a single quad-core PC could replace quite a few PS3s. PCs can be had in very small boxes too, with less RAM/disk to save money.
The thing that worries me most about PS3 farms is that you're stuck with the same technology for the next 'N' years. It was worth doing when it was new but the PC world is busy following Moore's law so it soon overtakes it. eg. Six-core chips are now in the price range where the quad-cores were a year ago. With hyperthreading that's nearly as good as a 12-core machine.
If the job fits you can also stick in a cheap-ish graphics card and get massively parallel floating point processing.
PS: I'm just giving you arguments to use on your boss so he'll scrap the PS3s and you get to take one home.
I would have gone for "HTMLscript" myself...
Somebody actually reading the leaks before forming an opinion about them? Blasphemy!
What's next, a slashdotter reading an article before posting? A Christian reading the bible...?
Yep, any website which requires either Java or Quicktime is asking not to be viewed.
Whoever decided that the browser scripting language should be "Javascript" needs to be taken out back and shot.
Free Range eggs also taste much better than factory eggs. Not just a bit better, MUCH better.
Can't you get a quad core x86 box with far more RAM/disk for about the same money?
I'm pretty sure one would run rings around the PS3 for most computing tasks.
The USA is only a few percent of the world and Earth-Alien diplomacy will be a whole lot easier without the ego of the USA in the way trying to run the show.
(and also without all the cigar-chomping rednecks in fighter planes who'll insist on running 'the security'...)