I also remember when the main character in my favorite video games was just a big block, and there were only 1 or 2 colors on the screen. We didn't mind back then, but try selling a game like that now and see what happens.
"But it's souped up with extras: a microprocessor as powerful as a supercomputer and ports for hooking up cable TV, keyboard, mouse, digital-video camera and modem card. The possibilities are huge. "
From just looking at a simple top-level diagram of the Cell architecture, it is clearly shown that the Cell is much more powerful than any other processors currently available.
LOL. You can tell what the real-world performance of an unreleased chip is going to be, just by looking at a simple top-level diagram?
I can guarantee that the Cell is much more powerful than any AMD and Intel processors.
Hahaha. You can guarantee, huh? So the chip in a game system marketed towards gamers is going to deliver more power than high end CPU's that cost many times what the entire game system will cost?
I don't know what you're talking from, but you're not talking out of your mouth.
I remember before the PS2 came out, they said it was going to have the power of a "supercomputer" and it would render lifelike images in real time. Looking at its graphics would be like watching a movie they said.
They even showed screenshots and videos which showed highly detailed images that looked fantastic. Everyone wanted to buy one.
Yet when the PS2 came out, those fantastic videos turned out to be nothing more than pre-rendered scenes that the PS2 was playing like a DVD player. It wasn't rendering those scenes in realtime. We were all tricked by clever marketers. The actual gameplay that the system was processing in realtime was ok, but nothing out of the ordinary. The PS2 turned out to be just another video game system surrounded by a lot of senseless hype.
I'm not holding my breath for the PS3 and it's Cell processor. It will not have the power of xxx high end computer processors, and it won't be revolutionary. It will just be another evolutionary step in videogames with improvements- but not groundbreaking improvements- in gameplay and graphics.
Let's quit the senseless hype and keep things in perspective.
My God how easy is it to turn a buck in the new USA? Lie through your teeth with a straight face, and people will pay you good money. The civilised world laughs out loud as it watches you slide into oblivion.
If you want a good idea of what the US is like now, imagine this: The citizens are like passengers on a bus, and the president is the crazed driver of that bus, listening to the voices in his head, believing he's on a mission from God- driving towards the light.
Under the new policy, HP plans to set prices in a way that maximizes their profits. If market conditions change, HP will change their policy to a new one which maximizes their profits. They will also region code printer cartriges to prevent the consumer from buying from the market which gives them the best prices.
He openly solicits what odds are are insider info, and odds are those are covered by NDAs, and tells the world, and in California that's a crime.
Good thing he doesn't live in California.
Pumping your own gas is illegal where I live in New Jersey, yet I pump it all the time near work in Pennsylvania. If the incident did not happen in the state in which it is a crime, then it isn't a crime, and you're not held accountable for it in that state.
I don't mean open source as in "we develop, they get the profit", I mean open source as in "we develop, we get to use for free". More like a hobby sort of thing that people do for the fun of it- which infuriates companies by offering a similar product for free.
It seems to be much more prevalent with the ladies. Women feel the need to look good to find a mate, then once they're "locked in" they let themselves go.
Gates isn't an idiot. He's seeing the ever increasing upgrade cycle. Let's face the facts, Office 2003 offers very few new useful features to your typical Office user than was there in Office 2000. Some would argue that all the way back to Office 98. He would love to get users into a subscription model. If you don't pay the yearly tax, your cut off, just like that.
Yup. It used to be that you had to innovate if you wanted customers to trade in the old one and buy a new one. But that's too much work. I'm sure companies would like to do nothing else but sit there and get paid, and by adopting these new strategies, they can do just that. There will be no more using Office 2000 for 5 years because it's good enough. Now you'll have to give them your money every year, whether you want the new features or not.
I'm sure other companies will join the new model, and you won't be able to actually "own" anything anymore. Open source throws a wrench into those plans though. (so it must be outlawed!)
It seems they're either like an octopus, with multiple limbs randomly flailing around, or they're like giant insects, which have no other purpose in life but to creep around in vents and behind walls and freak people out. Yet all the while they were somehow able to conquer space travel and find us before we found them.
I'm fine with a little scientific license, but why would the bad guys make their lives more complicated? Just for the sake of having a few million bees with frickin' laser beams on their foreheads?
And suddenly it became so clear to me. I remembered what really matters in life and what doesn't. Do you really need to question an opportunity to have a million kick-ass bees with frickin' awesome laser beams on their foreheads? I think not!!
If you're looking to shoehorn the RTG in the existing Huygens probe that they made, then you may be right, the RTG might not have worked in it.
But I'm talking about if they intended to use an RTG from the beginning, and they designed the probe completely differently, around the RTG. In that case they would have simply designed the probe differently than they made the Huygens probe, which was made to run on batteries.
As I see it, it's only a matter of engineering. You know the size, weight, temperature, and power output of the RTG and you design the probe accordingly.
By the way, the since RTG's work by using thermocouples, the colder you can make the "cold" side of the thermocouple, the more efficient they will be. It would generate more electricity.
Political issues probably had more of an influence than engineering issues. NASA got enough heat just for using an RTG on Cassini. If the protesters got word that the probe had an RTG on it, they'd be crying about the risk of the probe crashing into Titan and contaminating it.
Anybody ever notice how companies want to take advantage of the different value of currency for the labor rates (moving jobs to India), yet they want to use region coding to prevent customers from doing the same thing (buying the same product from a place where it's sold cheaper).
That's greed, nothing else.
So they want to lay off US and Euro workers and hire Indian workers to take advantage of the difference in money value (want to lay off rich workers and pay the poor worker price), but they want to prevent you from doing the same thing when it comes to buying products (want to stop rich people from paying the poor people price).
Maybe we should region code workers- "sorry HP, but the region code states that this worker in Bangalore makes $20 an hour when working for you Region 1 American companies... the $2 an hour wage is only when working for a region 3 Indian or Chinese company"
yes they are very nice in releaseing photos we paid for....kind of like it was nice of the car dealer to give me the keys of the car i just baught from him...or how nice it is for grocery stores let me leave with the stuff i buy.
It's better than paying them to buy something you'll never see (oh, it's for national security) or paying them to spy on you (it's for your protection) or paying them to throw you in jail (for your rehabilitation)
There were several pictures posted on that site. The pictures that you are referring to are only one or two of them. The rest are not fictional, they are purely the raw data that the ESA posted, and they stitched those raw photos together to create a montage.
The science involved in these images represents the careers of many people. They had a right to publish first. You took that right away from them. Do not expect raw images of important discoveries any more.
Do you think this really offended the ESA or NASA? Get real. They released the raw info knowing that people were going to look at it and compile it. They did publish it first. They gave the world the raw data.
Okay...next question qould be... how'd they get the pics at the same time or first?
Someone is VERY imbarrassed right now... or scrambling for excuses.;) "Well, yes, sir, but see, our image are of much higher detail because.. er.. we have to do a much higher process...er..algorythm to them!"
NASA and the ESA were nice enough to release the raw images before they had time to process them. That's how these people got the raw images.
Yeah, there are some pictures on that page that are partly artwork because they took the creative liberty to fill in gaps.
But there are other images on that page that are just like what NASA and the ESA will do, which is going through the trouble to stitch together all the raw images, and leave blanks where there is no info. They did a great job of compiling the raw info and sharing with everyone to see.
Writing off all their work as "quick crap" is pretty lame.
Alright, Slashdot as a whole has a highly educated, engaged and interesting population that post on it, however, we are but a fraction of the people in this world, i am asuming that the majority of people here are in the top 5% of the inteligence bracket.
your Rong. I'm the stupidest idiot in the world and my cousin is even stupider!
What I'm thinking about is weight, volume, and the ability to keep the spacecraft warm enough to operate. Cassini's RTG is about the size of a person (don't know the weight, but I have to imagine it weighs a *lot* more than a person) and provides under 900W of power. Without doing any calculation, I don't see 900W (imagine about 9 100W lightbulbs) keeping a VW-sized object warm enough to operate exposed to a 70K environment. In fact, I don't even think the RTG unit could keep its own temperature above freezing.
As far as size and weight go, if they planned on using an RTG on the probe, they would have designed the probe around it. They wouldn't have any problem designing the probe around the RTG and making it fit.
As far as heat goes, the RTG generates loads of heat along with the electricity. That's how it generates the electricity- from the heat. You don't need to use the electricity from the RTG to generate all of the probe's heat, because the RTG is more than hot enough. RTG's aren't that efficient at making electricity from heat- they only convert about 8% of the heat it generates into electricity. Therefore a 900 watt RTG makes produces about 11,000 watts of heat- RTG's have absolutely no problem keeping things hot! In fact they require radiators to keep themselves from overheating.
So temperature on the surface will not be a problem. With the probe insulated and the RTG producing the amount of heat that it does, it would still require a radiator to prevent from overheating.
Slashdot Mirror
I also remember when the main character in my favorite video games was just a big block, and there were only 1 or 2 colors on the screen. We didn't mind back then, but try selling a game like that now and see what happens.
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003May/gee20030 528020156.htm
Sony made all kinds of outrageous claims before the PS2 came out.
? /d urable/1999/03/25/f-p13s2.shtml
0 /j apan.sony.html
http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl
They said it was going to be able to render "Toy Story" like animation in real time.
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/2000/032
"But it's souped up with extras: a microprocessor as powerful as a supercomputer and ports for hooking up cable TV, keyboard, mouse, digital-video camera and modem card. The possibilities are huge. "
From just looking at a simple top-level diagram of the Cell architecture, it is clearly shown that the Cell is much more powerful than any other processors currently available.
LOL. You can tell what the real-world performance of an unreleased chip is going to be, just by looking at a simple top-level diagram?
I can guarantee that the Cell is much more powerful than any AMD and Intel processors.
Hahaha. You can guarantee, huh? So the chip in a game system marketed towards gamers is going to deliver more power than high end CPU's that cost many times what the entire game system will cost?
I don't know what you're talking from, but you're not talking out of your mouth.
I remember before the PS2 came out, they said it was going to have the power of a "supercomputer" and it would render lifelike images in real time. Looking at its graphics would be like watching a movie they said.
They even showed screenshots and videos which showed highly detailed images that looked fantastic. Everyone wanted to buy one.
Yet when the PS2 came out, those fantastic videos turned out to be nothing more than pre-rendered scenes that the PS2 was playing like a DVD player. It wasn't rendering those scenes in realtime. We were all tricked by clever marketers. The actual gameplay that the system was processing in realtime was ok, but nothing out of the ordinary. The PS2 turned out to be just another video game system surrounded by a lot of senseless hype.
I'm not holding my breath for the PS3 and it's Cell processor. It will not have the power of xxx high end computer processors, and it won't be revolutionary. It will just be another evolutionary step in videogames with improvements- but not groundbreaking improvements- in gameplay and graphics.
Let's quit the senseless hype and keep things in perspective.
No one really cares about Skeeter McGeek and his homemade linux machine.
Who are you and how the hell do you know my name?
My God how easy is it to turn a buck in the new USA? Lie through your teeth with a straight face, and people will pay you good money. The civilised world laughs out loud as it watches you slide into oblivion.
If you want a good idea of what the US is like now, imagine this: The citizens are like passengers on a bus, and the president is the crazed driver of that bus, listening to the voices in his head, believing he's on a mission from God- driving towards the light.
I don't buy their line of bullshit at all.
I think a more accurate assumption would be:
Under the new policy, HP plans to set prices in a way that maximizes their profits. If market conditions change, HP will change their policy to a new one which maximizes their profits. They will also region code printer cartriges to prevent the consumer from buying from the market which gives them the best prices.
He openly solicits what odds are are insider info, and odds are those are covered by NDAs, and tells the world, and in California that's a crime.
Good thing he doesn't live in California.
Pumping your own gas is illegal where I live in New Jersey, yet I pump it all the time near work in Pennsylvania. If the incident did not happen in the state in which it is a crime, then it isn't a crime, and you're not held accountable for it in that state.
I don't mean open source as in "we develop, they get the profit", I mean open source as in "we develop, we get to use for free". More like a hobby sort of thing that people do for the fun of it- which infuriates companies by offering a similar product for free.
It seems to be much more prevalent with the ladies. Women feel the need to look good to find a mate, then once they're "locked in" they let themselves go.
Please spare me the PC nonsense.
Gates isn't an idiot. He's seeing the ever increasing upgrade cycle. Let's face the facts, Office 2003 offers very few new useful features to your typical Office user than was there in Office 2000. Some would argue that all the way back to Office 98. He would love to get users into a subscription model. If you don't pay the yearly tax, your cut off, just like that.
Yup. It used to be that you had to innovate if you wanted customers to trade in the old one and buy a new one. But that's too much work. I'm sure companies would like to do nothing else but sit there and get paid, and by adopting these new strategies, they can do just that. There will be no more using Office 2000 for 5 years because it's good enough. Now you'll have to give them your money every year, whether you want the new features or not.
I'm sure other companies will join the new model, and you won't be able to actually "own" anything anymore. Open source throws a wrench into those plans though. (so it must be outlawed!)
Eventually all their products will be run as a service, and be subscription based.
I can't wait for the day when we as consumers can no longer buy things, we must rent them- and be bound to their EULA's.
What a great way to harvest citizens. "They aren't free thinking individuals- they're a cash crop, owned by corporations!"
It seems they're either like an octopus, with multiple limbs randomly flailing around, or they're like giant insects, which have no other purpose in life but to creep around in vents and behind walls and freak people out. Yet all the while they were somehow able to conquer space travel and find us before we found them.
I'm fine with a little scientific license, but why would the bad guys make their lives more complicated? Just for the sake of having a few million bees with frickin' laser beams on their foreheads?
And suddenly it became so clear to me. I remembered what really matters in life and what doesn't. Do you really need to question an opportunity to have a million kick-ass bees with frickin' awesome laser beams on their foreheads? I think not!!
As any guy knows, marriage miraculously makes women gain 30 lbs.
So her being too thin will not be a problem.
If you're looking to shoehorn the RTG in the existing Huygens probe that they made, then you may be right, the RTG might not have worked in it.
But I'm talking about if they intended to use an RTG from the beginning, and they designed the probe completely differently, around the RTG. In that case they would have simply designed the probe differently than they made the Huygens probe, which was made to run on batteries.
As I see it, it's only a matter of engineering. You know the size, weight, temperature, and power output of the RTG and you design the probe accordingly.
By the way, the since RTG's work by using thermocouples, the colder you can make the "cold" side of the thermocouple, the more efficient they will be. It would generate more electricity.
Political issues probably had more of an influence than engineering issues. NASA got enough heat just for using an RTG on Cassini. If the protesters got word that the probe had an RTG on it, they'd be crying about the risk of the probe crashing into Titan and contaminating it.
Anybody ever notice how companies want to take advantage of the different value of currency for the labor rates (moving jobs to India), yet they want to use region coding to prevent customers from doing the same thing (buying the same product from a place where it's sold cheaper).
That's greed, nothing else.
So they want to lay off US and Euro workers and hire Indian workers to take advantage of the difference in money value (want to lay off rich workers and pay the poor worker price), but they want to prevent you from doing the same thing when it comes to buying products (want to stop rich people from paying the poor people price).
Maybe we should region code workers- "sorry HP, but the region code states that this worker in Bangalore makes $20 an hour when working for you Region 1 American companies... the $2 an hour wage is only when working for a region 3 Indian or Chinese company"
yes they are very nice in releaseing photos we paid for....kind of like it was nice of the car dealer to give me the keys of the car i just baught from him...or how nice it is for grocery stores let me leave with the stuff i buy.
It's better than paying them to buy something you'll never see (oh, it's for national security) or paying them to spy on you (it's for your protection) or paying them to throw you in jail (for your rehabilitation)
But I think the shots weren't taken fast enough for that to be any type of motion picture.
There were several pictures posted on that site. The pictures that you are referring to are only one or two of them. The rest are not fictional, they are purely the raw data that the ESA posted, and they stitched those raw photos together to create a montage.
The science involved in these images represents the careers of many people. They had a right to publish first. You took that right away from them. Do not expect raw images of important discoveries any more.
Do you think this really offended the ESA or NASA? Get real. They released the raw info knowing that people were going to look at it and compile it. They did publish it first. They gave the world the raw data.
Okay...next question qould be... how'd they get the pics at the same time or first?
;) "Well, yes, sir, but see, our image are of much higher detail because.. er.. we have to do a much higher process...er..algorythm to them!"
Someone is VERY imbarrassed right now... or scrambling for excuses.
NASA and the ESA were nice enough to release the raw images before they had time to process them. That's how these people got the raw images.
Yeah, there are some pictures on that page that are partly artwork because they took the creative liberty to fill in gaps.
But there are other images on that page that are just like what NASA and the ESA will do, which is going through the trouble to stitch together all the raw images, and leave blanks where there is no info. They did a great job of compiling the raw info and sharing with everyone to see.
Writing off all their work as "quick crap" is pretty lame.
Alright, Slashdot as a whole has a highly educated, engaged and interesting population that post on it, however, we are but a fraction of the people in this world, i am asuming that the majority of people here are in the top 5% of the inteligence bracket.
your Rong. I'm the stupidest idiot in the world and my cousin is even stupider!
What I'm thinking about is weight, volume, and the ability to keep the spacecraft warm enough to operate. Cassini's RTG is about the size of a person (don't know the weight, but I have to imagine it weighs a *lot* more than a person) and provides under 900W of power. Without doing any calculation, I don't see 900W (imagine about 9 100W lightbulbs) keeping a VW-sized object warm enough to operate exposed to a 70K environment. In fact, I don't even think the RTG unit could keep its own temperature above freezing.
As far as size and weight go, if they planned on using an RTG on the probe, they would have designed the probe around it. They wouldn't have any problem designing the probe around the RTG and making it fit.
As far as heat goes, the RTG generates loads of heat along with the electricity. That's how it generates the electricity- from the heat. You don't need to use the electricity from the RTG to generate all of the probe's heat, because the RTG is more than hot enough. RTG's aren't that efficient at making electricity from heat- they only convert about 8% of the heat it generates into electricity. Therefore a 900 watt RTG makes produces about 11,000 watts of heat- RTG's have absolutely no problem keeping things hot! In fact they require radiators to keep themselves from overheating.
So temperature on the surface will not be a problem. With the probe insulated and the RTG producing the amount of heat that it does, it would still require a radiator to prevent from overheating.