It's funny that Facebook bought Blake Ross's startup since Blake Ross went to high school (and was in the same class) as one of Facebook's original developers and main financier. Not a bad class of '99...
What they don't tell you is that the PlayStation 3 is expected to have the power of TWO of these babies. Also, it will model the weather in your neighborhood down to the atomic molecule scale, WHILE putting out fifteenteen HD video streams. Sony PS3 department was heard to say "We are not competing against that new supercomputer. It is too slow."
There is no big deal here. The scarcity of copper is nothing to worry about because it will take care of itself. When the price of copper hits a certain limit (which would indicate its rarity), people will find it economically feasible to use other materials instead of copper, thereby sidestepping the whole copper scarcity problem. It's the exact same situation with the petroleum in the tar sands in Canada. It was very expensive to get the oil out when it was at $30 a barrel, but now that it is hitting almost $70 a barrel people consider tar sands economically feasible (I think the price at which they become profitable is around $45-55).
Sure we have a lot of copper laid out, but when the time comes for someone to do the plumbing of their new home and copper is really expensive, they will choose PVC or other materials that are cheaper than copper at the new price.
No big deal, and certainly not useful to go worrying about this instead of other important things.
This is exciting stuff. The PS3 is *supposed* to go at 2 teraflops, but without a useful OS you can't really link up PS3s together to work in tandem. If you can run Linux on the PS3 however, you suddenly have a large library of apps to run, and I'm sure theres a couple that take advantage/distribute work amogst a system with many linked processors. Which all adds up to the ability to make a 100teraflop supercomputer for around $20,000. (I believe the fastest supercomputer today runs at around 30-40 teraflops). Not bad if you ask me...
The point is moot. Google is only going to offer those works that are out of copyright (70 years after the death of the author I *think*) so no one should be making money off them in the first place.
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It's funny that Facebook bought Blake Ross's startup since Blake Ross went to high school (and was in the same class) as one of Facebook's original developers and main financier. Not a bad class of '99...
I think the site is down - can't seem to load it. Saw it blogged here after some searching though. (http://lifewithoutfries.blogspot.com/)
What they don't tell you is that the PlayStation 3 is expected to have the power of TWO of these babies. Also, it will model the weather in your neighborhood down to the atomic molecule scale, WHILE putting out fifteenteen HD video streams. Sony PS3 department was heard to say "We are not competing against that new supercomputer. It is too slow."
I actually read about this yesterday through a friend's blog. Although the main link has been ./ he posted a nice summary.
http://lifewithoutfries.blogspot.com/here.
Yes, there are ads, but I couldn't find a summary of the story anywhere else and the main site is down.
There is no big deal here. The scarcity of copper is nothing to worry about because it will take care of itself. When the price of copper hits a certain limit (which would indicate its rarity), people will find it economically feasible to use other materials instead of copper, thereby sidestepping the whole copper scarcity problem. It's the exact same situation with the petroleum in the tar sands in Canada. It was very expensive to get the oil out when it was at $30 a barrel, but now that it is hitting almost $70 a barrel people consider tar sands economically feasible (I think the price at which they become profitable is around $45-55).
Sure we have a lot of copper laid out, but when the time comes for someone to do the plumbing of their new home and copper is really expensive, they will choose PVC or other materials that are cheaper than copper at the new price.
No big deal, and certainly not useful to go worrying about this instead of other important things.
This is exciting stuff. The PS3 is *supposed* to go at 2 teraflops, but without a useful OS you can't really link up PS3s together to work in tandem. If you can run Linux on the PS3 however, you suddenly have a large library of apps to run, and I'm sure theres a couple that take advantage/distribute work amogst a system with many linked processors. Which all adds up to the ability to make a 100teraflop supercomputer for around $20,000. (I believe the fastest supercomputer today runs at around 30-40 teraflops). Not bad if you ask me...
The point is moot. Google is only going to offer those works that are out of copyright (70 years after the death of the author I *think*) so no one should be making money off them in the first place.