Not to take anything away from ARM, who doesn't build and sell chips but rather sells/licenses IP, all of those devices use Nvidia's Tegra platform which combines an ARM core with an Nvidia GPU on the same die.
The whole computer fits onto a module around the same size as a ram stick. All you need is a board to add the connectors, and you're set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6ZDgvXsYDM
Actually, those devices use the Tegra chip from Nvidia which combines an ARM cpu with Nvidia graphics and multimedia processor on the same die. ARM doesn't make hardware. They just sell/license their IP.
The common one you get from people is either they get into the water and damager wild life, or they don't bio-degrade.
correct.
If its damage, then if you take care to dispose, how is it an issue?
if they're not biodegradable, then how do you dispose of the millions of bags that are thrown in the trash every day? where do you put them?
If its bio-degrade, I dont get that either. They arent the largest things around. Is it a significant issue?
you under-estimate the number of plastic bags thrown away each day. They aren't only used in supermarkets for your groceries. Practically every store uses them (clothing, electronics, books, everything). There is also plastic packaging.
Plastic bags ARE a HUGE problem.
the only use would be physics accelerated games Really? That's a very near-sighted conclusion.
Any program that would use accurate physics in Linux already uses the CPU to calculate it. And you can also do graphics on the CPU. Once you start working with any sizable amounts of data, then this becomes quickly inefficient.
Carmack is correct, and so is Intel. Intel is talking about the long-term issue of the continued success of Intel, and Carmack is talking about what can sensibly be achieved in the near future. Correct. Again, Intel's discrete product won't be ready for at least 1-2 more years. I would be surprised if Nvidia isn't working hard to combat that threat. IMHO, Intel's foray into discrete graphics is to challenge Nvidia's CUDA which can easily undermine Intel's sales in the high-profit high-end computation market. That's why Nvidia is pushing CUDA hard, to make it THE standard before Intel even enters the market.
The point of the conference with financial analysts is that Nvidia is facing real competition that didn't exist before. Intel's competition in the high-end graphics did not exist before, but others have challenged Nvidia in that space, like ATI, 3Dfx, Matrox, etc. Nvidia succeeded in coming from behind and beating all of them by smooth execution (barring the GeForceFX fiasco).
Also, the integrated graphics business is a multi-million dollar business. Intel has been kicking Nvidia's ass in that space, mainly because Nvidia had been concentrating on AMD platforms which had a much smaller market share (this only changed when AMD bought ATI).
But, for the first time, Nvidia will have much greater competition for the mid- and low-range GPUs from Intel I think you meant high-range GPUs, since that's what Intel is going after with Larrabee.
Like when Bill Gates said no one would need more than 640kb memory? You chose the wrong example because Bill Gates never said this.
too much faith in authority Perhaps you're right, but the post I replied to claimed that "Ray tracing is certainly the future for games". If John Carmack himself has his doubts, then I don't see how the poster can be so certain.
Of course, Intel's offerring is at least 1-2 years away. Who know what Nvidia will have by then. They have been releasing a new architecture every year for the past few years. It will be interesting for sure.
The entire issue is that Intel+Larabee and AMD+ATI will make Nvidia irrelevant for most users. The GPU will be on the motherboard. Nvidia will sell only to gamers who are willing to pay extra, a lot extra. AMD acquired ATI almost two years ago. How did this make Nvidia irrelevant? GPUs are ALREADY on motherboards, and have been for years. Plus, the cost of embedding CPU+GPU is not much cheaper than the discrete solutions since yield will be much lower. Moreover, CPU+GPU on one die has its risks. What if the GPU part fails? What if the CPU fails? You'll need to replace both.
Ray tracing is certainly the future for games, there is no question about that. I beg to differ. Many questions surround this. Would you know more than John Carmack?
Before, every desktop computer needed a video adapter, which came from a company different than the CPU maker, a company like Nvidia. Now, the video adapters will be mostly supplied by CPU makers Ok. You are showing your ignorance of the history of the graphics industry. Since many years ago, Intel has been the major supplier of graphics hardware. Look it up. It's been all crappy integrated graphics so far, but they have sold more graphics chips that anybody else.
"it could be that you can't send messages back any earlier than the time the message was created, effectively only slowing time down so it take less time for the message to arrive. Less time could be no time at all so the message arrives when it's sent."
Err.. this doesn't make sense. In the future, whatever happened now is history, and is readily available. Irrespective of when I create and send a message, it will always be available "now" from that point on. So this "technology" is really useless.
Robotics is a very tough field that either encompasses or is directly related to many other complex disciplines like AI, computer vision and control theory, each of which encompasses many sub disciplines. The fact that we still don't have any robots operating in the real world is a testament to how hard these discipline are.
Some people might argue that we already have robots in the form of assembly lines, remote-controlled vehicles and other machinery. For some definition of robotics, this is true, and sure, you can buy a hobbyist kit, and build your own remote-controlled "robot", but that is a very far cry from what science fiction writers have dreamed of for decades.
Robotics as a science started ~50 years ago at MIT, and then Stanford. Now, there are hundreds of labs around the world, both in academia and industry, spending billions of dollars on related research. Progress has been really slow, due to the extremely difficult problems associated with building a robot. Some of these problems:
Stability: It's very hard to make a biped robot. You either have to give it huge, duck-like feet (which increases its area of contact with the ground, but reduces maneuverability), or you have to rely on multiple (>= 3) feet or wheels (which limits the kind of terrain it can operate on).
Intelligence: AI is really tough. That is why most robots in operation today are dumb machines that have very specific tasks, and that completely fail if any of the multiple assumptions it has is violated.
Vision: Computer vision started as a summer project at MIT in the sixties, and so far, it has not been cracked. It is extremely hard to design something as versatile and efficient as the human eye, so most robots employ infrared sensors and, more recently, GPS technology. Even then, the task of detecting an object within an image is an extremely difficult one, which is why most robots today are employed inside very controlled environments where specific colors can be associated with specific objects.
Natural language processing: Due to the difficulty of NLP, we have to communicate with robots through "non-natural" channels, like a programming language or a remote-controller, which severely limits the way we interact with them.
Of course, depending on your application you might not need to tackle all of the above problems (and I suggest you don't try to tackle all of them at once), but I just wanted to show you some of the problems that robot designers have to deal with.
In conclusion, if your goal is to learn more about robotics by building simple, remote-controlled robots, then a hobbyist kit will do. Otherwise, nothing short of a PhD in either CS, Electrical Engineering and/or Mechanical Engineering, along with a lot of hard work, will do.
there's about 10 non-Jews for every Jew in that area, why can't they figure out how to run their own economies and supply food and shelter?
you've never been there, have you? The Gaza strip isn't that large, and Israel controls its every entry/exit point. Nothing goes in, not even ambulance cars. Furthermore, Israel and the US have stopped all form of foreign aid to the Palestinian government, so no wages have been paid for the past 6 months. There is no Palestinian economy because they don't have control over their own borders.
If you believe I'm a whiner, then please go and visit the area and see for yourself.
They gave back all of the Gaza and the West Bank, and withdrew all their settlements.
What are you talking about? They withdrew from Gaza, yes, but since then have blocked anything and anyone from entering or leaving. There is no economy, no money flow, no medicine flow, nothing going into Gaza. Yes, Israelis left, but they completely choked it up.
As for the West Bank, when did Israel withdraw from there? Most of the West Bank is currently occupied by huge Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land (as per the Oslo accords). There are also the ultra-orthdox Jewish settlers who create new "settlements" on Palestinian farmland by terrorizing its owners then erecting makeshift homes and shoot anybody who comes close. The Israeli government is trying to dismantle those, but at the same time expanding their other "legal" settlements by annexing more Palestinian land. Not to mention the completely illegal wall that is eating up even more Palestinian farm land.
They gave the terrorists everything they asked for and complied with every request the UN made.
Really? They definitely did not give back Jerusalem. They definitely did not allow UN peace inspectors into Gaza and the West Bank, and thanks to the US, they do not have any binding UN sanctions against them because of the American veto.
Stop pretending that Israel is the perfect peace loving nation. Israel does not want peace, because peace is not in its favour.
You need to bear in mind that the GPU is the critical component in most systems, but makes almost no money for the vendor and has a relatively low volume... On the other hand, CPUs are high volume, high profit...
I beg to differ. GPUs have higher volumes than CPUs, assuming you count GPUs embedded in chipsets, along with the discrete GPUs. Just think about how often people upgrade their CPUs as opposed to their GPUs.
As for profit margins, then you have a point there, although for the wrong reasons, I think. Both ATi and Nvidia are fabless companies, which means that they have to pay some middleman (TSMC, UMC, IBM, etc..) for the service of fabricating the chips. This cuts a little piece of the profit pie. Conversely, both AMD and Intel have their own fabs, so they cut out the middleman, and end up with much higher margins on their CPUs.
Surprisingly, it is still called "terrorism" when a suicide bomber detonates him/herself amidst Israeli soldiers. Those are not civilians, and being in a state of war, they are "legitimate" targets. (Note: I'm not advocating war or killing in any way, I'm just responding to your comments using the same logic).
The US intends to kill a military target.
And this makes it ok to kill a couple dozen innocent civilians in the process?? Using the same logic, is it ok to put you in jail for a murder crime your neighbour committed?
It's also true that these "civilians" that are killed aren't all that innocent.
Now you're just being ridiculous. How would somebody dining at the same restaurant as some wanted person be harboring him? Go away.
If Ageia's solution proves to be a few times faster than a $600 SLI setup, than that would be a better alternative as the physics card will probably debut at closer to $200 MSRP.
Actually those numbers are a bit misleading. You need at least one GPU that will be common to both setups. So this takes away ~$300 from your SLI setup cost, which means that both solutions will be very comparable in terms of price. I would even imagine that Nvidia will be the more competitive one since they already have a foothold in the market and a strong brand name, so they can absorb a little hit to gain more market share.
But, in essence, you're point is the same as mine. It will ultimately boil down to performance, and game support.
Because, to me at least, a physics card is very limited. Assuming similar (or very close) performance, I'd rather buy two GPUs instead of a GPU and a PPU, since I will be able to make more use of the SLI setup. This is the reason I believe Ageia will flunk. Their hardware might be sexy, but without supporting killer apps (read games) that same hardware will be useless. The main reason GPU-making is such a big market is that games make extensive use of them, thus creating the killer app. Other task-specific PUs will not necessarily fly.
I believe this to be a very smart move from Nvidia. We'll just have to wait and see.
So the nVidia card wins because they used 3 games that are designed to work better with nVidia boards than ATI boards?
What are you talking about? While Quake 4 has always run better on Nvidia hardware, Half-Life 2 has always performed better on ATI hardware, to the extent that ATI hardware came bundled with Half-Life 2. You have to give it to Nvidia for designing a card that would beat ATI's flagship at their own game (pun intended), and this alone deserves to declare them the winner of this comparison.
Their fab process and Q&A suck
Again, you show that you don't know what you're talking about. Their "fab process"?? Both Nvidia and ATI used TSMC to fab both of those chips. No difference between the two. As for Q&A, then you have to talk to the specific board manufacturer. Nvidia doesn't design the graphics boards, only the chips. Other vendors like Asustek and eVGA design the boards, and sell them to you. So they are responsible for any Q&A.
they cannot be bothered to properly follow the farking API specs for dx9 or openGL
Again you're spreading FUD. The NV3x (GeForce FX) had issues, which NVidia were the first to acknowlege. The tables have completely turned with the Geforce 6x and 7x series. Can you point the parts of the spec that those cards don't implement properly?
I've see far too many of their cards TOAST from being OC'ed by their own drivers.
The drivers don't just OC the cards. You have to do it. You know that this voids the warranty, don't you?
It's just about a book with fancy colours illustrating inventions from parts of the world where Islam is the main religion now.
I'm not a Muslim, but let's be honest. Islam's role in spreading knowledge is very under-rated, and is just as important as creating knowledge. What's the use of a theory that can generate power from dust, if no body knows about it? The fact of the matter is that Muslim rulers until the 1800s AD valued education, and set up huge libraries to translate every bit of knowledge from around the world into Arabic. The world's major "high-tech" cities at that time were Baghdad and Alexandria, and people from all over the planet flocked to them. It is a very well-known secret that Newton, Fermat and other luminaries from the Middle Ages travelled to Alexandria and Andalusia (modern day Spain) to study math, physics and astronomy. Still, Arabs did invent many things in math, astronomy and medicince. Some inventions that come to my mind, and that I haven't seen in TFA are the book (before that, people used to roll parchments of paper), and medical stitching. Many of Euler's and Fermat's conjectures had been known to Arab mathematicians before, but history before the Middle Ages kind of falls in murky waters, and history after it was written by Europeans.
But, I agree that attributing inventions like the zero to Arabs is wrong, but you have to give the credit of spreading this invention. It made calculations so easy that anybody could do it. It is also sad that the modern Middle East is in such a state of chaos. The fact of the matter is that Islam is in its Middle Ages right now, where fundamentalism is prevailing over common sense. There are many reasons for that, but if history is any indication, then we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But the path won't be devoid of bloodshed.
But it was mostly Arabs that were funding, and to a large extent running, the Taliban.
That is not true. While some of the funding came from wealthy Arabs like Osama Bin Laden, most of the Taliban's funding came from Russia, Iran and Pakistan, all three of which are NOT Arabic countries.
They were a very out-of-town crowd, to be sure. And to the extent that they've moved south a bit into Pakistan, they're still an influence, and still very Arab.
I'm not sure I follow. Who are "they"? If you mean the Taliban, then I don't understand how their moving into Pakistan makes them Arab.
One thing to keep in mind is that most Arabs are not filthy rich, and I would guess that 99% of them never supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Let's not forget that until recently, Afghanistan was being run by the (mostly foreigner-managed) Taliban, who would pubicly murder women for working at all, never mind how they commuted.
The only Arabic country where women aren't allowed to drive is Saudi Arabia, and currently there is a big movement to abolish this unnecessary restriction. Most other Arabic countries are very open. I have seen topless women (Russians mostly) sunbathing on Dubai's beaches. But, other cities in the UAE are much more conservative, although not as closed-minded as the Saudis.
You can't really generalize one stereotype over all Arabs. It's like saying that all Americans are overweight.
Actually, the vast majority of Muslims denounced this violence, and called for peaceful demonstrations and boycotts.
I'm not sure of the reason.
Because they are pissed at many things (the US-led war in the middle east, the Israeli/Arab conflict, their own governments), and the cartoon fiasco is one way that they can vent off their anger in a manner that will not result in their governments shoving them into prison. Radicalism seems to be the only reflex to the given situation.
Paying $2200 for a PVR is just crazy. You certainly don't need a 64bit Athlon CPU or 2GB RAM, since everything is done by the graphics card anyway. And how many TV tuners do you need? Do you really need to watch/record 4 programs at once? And $75 for a keyboard and mouse that you will never use (remote desktop or VNC work just fine). This is crazy.
Last month, I built my own PVR. Here's my cost:
ECS motherboard + Pentium 4CPU combo from Fry's: $110
512MB (2 x 256MB) of Kingston RAM: $50
Zalman CPU fan (stock is just too noisy): $45
Antec TruePower 2.0 380W power supply: $60
GeforceFX 5200 (no fan == so silent): $40
MS media center remote: $35 (yes, you really need this)
Items reused: OS, mouse & keyboard (for initial setup, then don't need them anymore), dual-tuner Tv tuner card, and PC case. Total cost for me was $340. If I had to buy the items I reused, then I could have very easily stayed under $500.
The machine is hidden behind my TV stand (I have a CRT 30" HDTV Sony Tv, 16:9 aspect ratio), is almost completely silent, and delivers a nice, crisp, HD signal to my TV (DVI port of my graphics card plugs in to the HDMI port of my TV). I keep it on all the time, and manage it via VNC. It has been running for almost a month with no hiccups, and I saved $1700 in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to take anything away from ARM, who doesn't build and sell chips but rather sells/licenses IP, all of those devices use Nvidia's Tegra platform which combines an ARM core with an Nvidia GPU on the same die. The whole computer fits onto a module around the same size as a ram stick. All you need is a board to add the connectors, and you're set. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6ZDgvXsYDM
Actually, those devices use the Tegra chip from Nvidia which combines an ARM cpu with Nvidia graphics and multimedia processor on the same die. ARM doesn't make hardware. They just sell/license their IP.
The common one you get from people is either they get into the water and damager wild life, or they don't bio-degrade.
correct.
If its damage, then if you take care to dispose, how is it an issue?
if they're not biodegradable, then how do you dispose of the millions of bags that are thrown in the trash every day? where do you put them?
If its bio-degrade, I dont get that either. They arent the largest things around. Is it a significant issue?
you under-estimate the number of plastic bags thrown away each day. They aren't only used in supermarkets for your groceries. Practically every store uses them (clothing, electronics, books, everything). There is also plastic packaging. Plastic bags ARE a HUGE problem.
"it could be that you can't send messages back any earlier than the time the message was created, effectively only slowing time down so it take less time for the message to arrive. Less time could be no time at all so the message arrives when it's sent."
.. this doesn't make sense. In the future, whatever happened now is history, and is readily available. Irrespective of when I create and send a message, it will always be available "now" from that point on. So this "technology" is really useless.
Err
Some people might argue that we already have robots in the form of assembly lines, remote-controlled vehicles and other machinery. For some definition of robotics, this is true, and sure, you can buy a hobbyist kit, and build your own remote-controlled "robot", but that is a very far cry from what science fiction writers have dreamed of for decades.
Robotics as a science started ~50 years ago at MIT, and then Stanford. Now, there are hundreds of labs around the world, both in academia and industry, spending billions of dollars on related research. Progress has been really slow, due to the extremely difficult problems associated with building a robot. Some of these problems:
- Stability: It's very hard to make a biped robot. You either have to give it huge, duck-like feet (which increases its area of contact with the ground, but reduces maneuverability), or you have to rely on multiple (>= 3) feet or wheels (which limits the kind of terrain it can operate on).
- Intelligence: AI is really tough. That is why most robots in operation today are dumb machines that have very specific tasks, and that completely fail if any of the multiple assumptions it has is violated.
- Vision: Computer vision started as a summer project at MIT in the sixties, and so far, it has not been cracked. It is extremely hard to design something as versatile and efficient as the human eye, so most robots employ infrared sensors and, more recently, GPS technology. Even then, the task of detecting an object within an image is an extremely difficult one, which is why most robots today are employed inside very controlled environments where specific colors can be associated with specific objects.
- Natural language processing: Due to the difficulty of NLP, we have to communicate with robots through "non-natural" channels, like a programming language or a remote-controller, which severely limits the way we interact with them.
Of course, depending on your application you might not need to tackle all of the above problems (and I suggest you don't try to tackle all of them at once), but I just wanted to show you some of the problems that robot designers have to deal with.In conclusion, if your goal is to learn more about robotics by building simple, remote-controlled robots, then a hobbyist kit will do. Otherwise, nothing short of a PhD in either CS, Electrical Engineering and/or Mechanical Engineering, along with a lot of hard work, will do.
Hope I haven't discouraged you though
Binding UN sanctions? What are those?
Read about it on wikipedia.
Also, here is an outdated list of UN resolutions against Israel, that were struck down by American veto.
there's about 10 non-Jews for every Jew in that area, why can't they figure out how to run their own economies and supply food and shelter?
you've never been there, have you? The Gaza strip isn't that large, and Israel controls its every entry/exit point. Nothing goes in, not even ambulance cars. Furthermore, Israel and the US have stopped all form of foreign aid to the Palestinian government, so no wages have been paid for the past 6 months. There is no Palestinian economy because they don't have control over their own borders.
If you believe I'm a whiner, then please go and visit the area and see for yourself.
They gave back all of the Gaza and the West Bank, and withdrew all their settlements.
What are you talking about? They withdrew from Gaza, yes, but since then have blocked anything and anyone from entering or leaving. There is no economy, no money flow, no medicine flow, nothing going into Gaza. Yes, Israelis left, but they completely choked it up.
As for the West Bank, when did Israel withdraw from there? Most of the West Bank is currently occupied by huge Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land (as per the Oslo accords). There are also the ultra-orthdox Jewish settlers who create new "settlements" on Palestinian farmland by terrorizing its owners then erecting makeshift homes and shoot anybody who comes close. The Israeli government is trying to dismantle those, but at the same time expanding their other "legal" settlements by annexing more Palestinian land. Not to mention the completely illegal wall that is eating up even more Palestinian farm land.
They gave the terrorists everything they asked for and complied with every request the UN made.
Really? They definitely did not give back Jerusalem. They definitely did not allow UN peace inspectors into Gaza and the West Bank, and thanks to the US, they do not have any binding UN sanctions against them because of the American veto.
Stop pretending that Israel is the perfect peace loving nation. Israel does not want peace, because peace is not in its favour.
You need to bear in mind that the GPU is the critical component in most systems, but makes almost no money for the vendor and has a relatively low volume ... On the other hand, CPUs are high volume, high profit ...
I beg to differ. GPUs have higher volumes than CPUs, assuming you count GPUs embedded in chipsets, along with the discrete GPUs. Just think about how often people upgrade their CPUs as opposed to their GPUs.
As for profit margins, then you have a point there, although for the wrong reasons, I think. Both ATi and Nvidia are fabless companies, which means that they have to pay some middleman (TSMC, UMC, IBM, etc..) for the service of fabricating the chips. This cuts a little piece of the profit pie. Conversely, both AMD and Intel have their own fabs, so they cut out the middleman, and end up with much higher margins on their CPUs.
From the comment above the image:
(Note: This screen is from build 5381, although the application looks identical in Beta 2.)
The suicide bomber intends to kill civilians.
Surprisingly, it is still called "terrorism" when a suicide bomber detonates him/herself amidst Israeli soldiers. Those are not civilians, and being in a state of war, they are "legitimate" targets. (Note: I'm not advocating war or killing in any way, I'm just responding to your comments using the same logic).
The US intends to kill a military target.
And this makes it ok to kill a couple dozen innocent civilians in the process?? Using the same logic, is it ok to put you in jail for a murder crime your neighbour committed?
It's also true that these "civilians" that are killed aren't all that innocent.
Now you're just being ridiculous. How would somebody dining at the same restaurant as some wanted person be harboring him? Go away.
If Ageia's solution proves to be a few times faster than a $600 SLI setup, than that would be a better alternative as the physics card will probably debut at closer to $200 MSRP.
Actually those numbers are a bit misleading. You need at least one GPU that will be common to both setups. So this takes away ~$300 from your SLI setup cost, which means that both solutions will be very comparable in terms of price. I would even imagine that Nvidia will be the more competitive one since they already have a foothold in the market and a strong brand name, so they can absorb a little hit to gain more market share.
But, in essence, you're point is the same as mine. It will ultimately boil down to performance, and game support.
Why not have a complete physics card?
Because, to me at least, a physics card is very limited. Assuming similar (or very close) performance, I'd rather buy two GPUs instead of a GPU and a PPU, since I will be able to make more use of the SLI setup. This is the reason I believe Ageia will flunk. Their hardware might be sexy, but without supporting killer apps (read games) that same hardware will be useless. The main reason GPU-making is such a big market is that games make extensive use of them, thus creating the killer app. Other task-specific PUs will not necessarily fly.
I believe this to be a very smart move from Nvidia. We'll just have to wait and see.
So the nVidia card wins because they used 3 games that are designed to work better with nVidia boards than ATI boards?
What are you talking about? While Quake 4 has always run better on Nvidia hardware, Half-Life 2 has always performed better on ATI hardware, to the extent that ATI hardware came bundled with Half-Life 2. You have to give it to Nvidia for designing a card that would beat ATI's flagship at their own game (pun intended), and this alone deserves to declare them the winner of this comparison.
Their fab process and Q&A suck
Again, you show that you don't know what you're talking about. Their "fab process"?? Both Nvidia and ATI used TSMC to fab both of those chips. No difference between the two. As for Q&A, then you have to talk to the specific board manufacturer. Nvidia doesn't design the graphics boards, only the chips. Other vendors like Asustek and eVGA design the boards, and sell them to you. So they are responsible for any Q&A.
they cannot be bothered to properly follow the farking API specs for dx9 or openGL
Again you're spreading FUD. The NV3x (GeForce FX) had issues, which NVidia were the first to acknowlege. The tables have completely turned with the Geforce 6x and 7x series. Can you point the parts of the spec that those cards don't implement properly?
I've see far too many of their cards TOAST from being OC'ed by their own drivers.
The drivers don't just OC the cards. You have to do it. You know that this voids the warranty, don't you?
It's just about a book with fancy colours illustrating inventions from parts of the world where Islam is the main religion now.
I'm not a Muslim, but let's be honest. Islam's role in spreading knowledge is very under-rated, and is just as important as creating knowledge. What's the use of a theory that can generate power from dust, if no body knows about it? The fact of the matter is that Muslim rulers until the 1800s AD valued education, and set up huge libraries to translate every bit of knowledge from around the world into Arabic. The world's major "high-tech" cities at that time were Baghdad and Alexandria, and people from all over the planet flocked to them. It is a very well-known secret that Newton, Fermat and other luminaries from the Middle Ages travelled to Alexandria and Andalusia (modern day Spain) to study math, physics and astronomy. Still, Arabs did invent many things in math, astronomy and medicince. Some inventions that come to my mind, and that I haven't seen in TFA are the book (before that, people used to roll parchments of paper), and medical stitching. Many of Euler's and Fermat's conjectures had been known to Arab mathematicians before, but history before the Middle Ages kind of falls in murky waters, and history after it was written by Europeans.
But, I agree that attributing inventions like the zero to Arabs is wrong, but you have to give the credit of spreading this invention. It made calculations so easy that anybody could do it. It is also sad that the modern Middle East is in such a state of chaos. The fact of the matter is that Islam is in its Middle Ages right now, where fundamentalism is prevailing over common sense. There are many reasons for that, but if history is any indication, then we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But the path won't be devoid of bloodshed.
But it was mostly Arabs that were funding, and to a large extent running, the Taliban.
That is not true. While some of the funding came from wealthy Arabs like Osama Bin Laden, most of the Taliban's funding came from Russia, Iran and Pakistan, all three of which are NOT Arabic countries.
They were a very out-of-town crowd, to be sure. And to the extent that they've moved south a bit into Pakistan, they're still an influence, and still very Arab.
I'm not sure I follow. Who are "they"? If you mean the Taliban, then I don't understand how their moving into Pakistan makes them Arab.
One thing to keep in mind is that most Arabs are not filthy rich, and I would guess that 99% of them never supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Let's not forget that until recently, Afghanistan was being run by the (mostly foreigner-managed) Taliban, who would pubicly murder women for working at all, never mind how they commuted.
Afghanistan is NOT an Arabic country.
Are women in IT allowed to drive to work?
The only Arabic country where women aren't allowed to drive is Saudi Arabia, and currently there is a big movement to abolish this unnecessary restriction. Most other Arabic countries are very open. I have seen topless women (Russians mostly) sunbathing on Dubai's beaches. But, other cities in the UAE are much more conservative, although not as closed-minded as the Saudis.
You can't really generalize one stereotype over all Arabs. It's like saying that all Americans are overweight.
That doesn't seem to be the case with Islam.
Actually, the vast majority of Muslims denounced this violence, and called for peaceful demonstrations and boycotts.
I'm not sure of the reason.
Because they are pissed at many things (the US-led war in the middle east, the Israeli/Arab conflict, their own governments), and the cartoon fiasco is one way that they can vent off their anger in a manner that will not result in their governments shoving them into prison. Radicalism seems to be the only reflex to the given situation.
RMA it.
Last month, I built my own PVR. Here's my cost:
- ECS motherboard + Pentium 4CPU combo from Fry's: $110
- 512MB (2 x 256MB) of Kingston RAM: $50
- Zalman CPU fan (stock is just too noisy): $45
- Antec TruePower 2.0 380W power supply: $60
- GeforceFX 5200 (no fan == so silent): $40
- MS media center remote: $35 (yes, you really need this)
Items reused: OS, mouse & keyboard (for initial setup, then don't need them anymore), dual-tuner Tv tuner card, and PC case. Total cost for me was $340. If I had to buy the items I reused, then I could have very easily stayed under $500.The machine is hidden behind my TV stand (I have a CRT 30" HDTV Sony Tv, 16:9 aspect ratio), is almost completely silent, and delivers a nice, crisp, HD signal to my TV (DVI port of my graphics card plugs in to the HDMI port of my TV). I keep it on all the time, and manage it via VNC. It has been running for almost a month with no hiccups, and I saved $1700 in the process.