Lots of things eliminate weeds better than herbicides. Any sufficiently impermeable material used as mulch eliminates weeds better than herbicides. Most gardeners are familiar with the concept of a weed barrier.
I used to use sheep manure over newspaper both as a source of nitrogen (and other minerals) and as a weed barrier. It was nearly 100% effective. Given the labor involved, however, I'm sure herbicide would have been more cost-effective at preventing weed growth.
The question is whether applying a barrier against weeds is more cost-effective than herbicides, and I don't know the answer to that, especially considering the environmental impact of herbicides. Just looking at effectiveness of the material doesn't tell us much.
One other note -- sure it's inexpensive now, since there is an incredible amount of wasted human hair. But if this were ever deployed widely, I think we'd see prices of shorn hair go up, and I question whether there'd be enough to meet demand until it cost the same as other methods.
It doesn't matter. At the individual transaction level, you are still making a wager on a probabilistic event. Hence it is gambling.
Whether it is a game of skill or chance (or both, to varying degrees), it is gambling.
It's like gambling on the horses... a good judge of horseflesh who does his research well CAN win in the long run, just as with poker. That does not make the wagers he places something other than gambling.
What you're getting at is not about whether or not it is gambling... the long-standing argument relates to whether poker constitutes a game of chance, since many states have laws prohibiting gambling on games of chance. Basically it's a perspective issue, since chance is most definitely an element of poker.
As you point out, the impact of Chance is minimized in the long run*, but that does not mean that chance is not a good portion of the game. As the outcome of almost every wager is dependent on chance, it's hard to make the case that skill constitutes a larger portion of the game (although, like most poker players, I know this is true).
* I suspect the reason Chance doesn't matter in the long run is because he's a quarter horse.
Not that I will ever purchase a phone that doesn't have actual physical buttons on it for when (not if, WHEN) the touchscreen breaks down. I'm just saying.
And I'm never purchasing a phone that doesn't have a touchscreen on it for when the physical buttons break down.
Yes, touchscreens have durability issues to be worked out, but I still firmly believe that in the long run, fewer moving parts == better.
But any of us with good fashion sense would prefer the Protocol for Authenticating Identification Systems with Latent Encryption Yobs over the original PLAID anyway.
I think I have answered that question, and nothing you said refuted it, so your point doesn't seem to valid to me...
Yet you haven't refuted my original point. You just claimed that GPUs will be used for different things, thus the market for better GPUs will not decline. That didn't answer my question -- that addressed an ancillary topic, which is whether there will be a market for other dedicated-use processors.
At what point does a GPU that is used for other things cease being a GPU, but instead become some other kind of coprocessor?
Using a GPU for things other than graphics makes it no longer a dedicated GPU, which is what the *original* topic was about.
Brian, I've noticed from your posts recently that you're pretty much a Mises/Randroid, so I'll understand if we can never find common ground. Just please understand that your arguments have been heard before, and addressed before, a dozen times.
A trust is not inherently bad. [...] customers should be free to switch to alternatives, and other individuals/companies should be free to create and offer those alternatives.
Yet barriers to entry, whether regulatory or otherwise, prevent entry into the market for a small competitor (and therefore there is no place for organic growth into a large competitor). Since we cannot ever have an ideal free market (in the economic sense), we will always have barriers to entry, even if all regulatory barriers were dropped.
Therefore, by default, a trust is bad, because it limits the potential for competition.
I'd like to point out to you that even the Austrian school of economic thought recognizes that corrections must be made for monopolies -- because even if they do not "abuse" their status (which they will, according to most all economic theory), they do limit competition by the very nature of the market. Trusts and monopolies ARE inherently bad, because they limit the ability of the economy to efficiently allocate resources.
Game physics on the GPU is still in the early stages, and game AI on the GPU is almost non-existent so far.
At which point it's not just a GPU anymore, is it?
If you're going to extrapolate requirements based on other uses of the GPU, you might as well go ahead and say that, at some point, we will require multiple-processor systems in order to get great games... oh wait... that's already the case (multi-core chips, multi-chip machines like modern consoles).
I guess my main point is that the returns on ever-increasing graphics capability diminish over time, because the graphics capabilities become less important to the end-user. For games, gameplay and/or characters and/or story become more important. For video, story and characters become more important.
Do I think we have far to go before there isn't positive return on better dedicated graphics chips? Yes.
Do I acknowledge that there are likely major developments that could forestall the diminishing returns? Yes (and 3D is likely one of those things).
Do I believe either of those things invalidate my point? No.
Simmer down, it's a joke. See, it plays on the two most common sterotypes of adult males who don't have sex, which are basement-dwelling nerds and married men. The 'get a piece' term was used for it's directness, hints of sexual ignorance and/or cavalierness, and mouthflow to enhance the basic premise of the joke.
Obviously, those stereotypes don't always apply (actually, they usally *aren't* applicable, but since there is a tinge of truth to them, they remain good sources for humor). And while 'get a piece' may be offensive to some, that's part of what makes it a useful phrase in crafting humor.
Now that I've needed to explain this in great detail, while a simple *whoosh* may or may not have been sufficient... let me just say this:
Jokesmithing is serious business. I are serious jokester.
American students will not enroll in the computer sciences when the policy of America is simply to ship programming jobs overseas.
And yet that's not the policy of America. That's the policy of *some* American companies.
Mostly because US workers are not worth what they cost to employ.
The solution is not a phobic restriction on offshoring (protectionism), the solution is to bring domestic wages in line with offshore wages. Ideally this is done by increasing the global standard (and cost!) of living, but at some point we might just have to realize that our ridiculous wasteful standard of life is unsustainable if we want to compete economically with the rest of the world.
As long as artists can dream, we will require more and more power from our graphics renderers.
You mean, as long as the market supports ever-increasing poly counts etc?
At some point we hit a point of diminishing returns on better graphics units... the human eye can only distinguish so much.
Eventually we'll hit the point where there's simply not enough benefit to be gotten out of an expensive GPU. For me, that time is long past. For others, it may come in the next few years. For a small portion, the 'dreamers', it'll never come... but why would any company spend millions and millions developing new and better chips for such a small market?
Of course you'll argue that I could do it. But it's not my accusation. So why would I do it?!
Because that's how the scientific method works?
He made a claim where the arguments were linked.
You don't want to believe the claim, so you dismiss it out of hand without reading the supporting for his assertion.
Why is the onus on him, when you are the one who refuses to read what he provided? Honestly, it'd be quicker for you to read the summary and the comments, say at a threshold of +4, than it would for him to prepare what you're asking for.
IIRC, the actual poster of the info at EFF reworded and/or withdrew what he had written because it was so off-base.
But, to sum it up for you, someone in the EFF posted a wildly inaccurate press piece/blog posting about a specific case, where some of the evidence presented for the subpoena seemed laughably technologically inept. Someone at EFF spun a ridiculous tale about how a suspected criminal was being searched because he ran an alternative OS.
This was not what happened at all. Hence the ensuing discussion of how EFF's blurbs are becoming very untrustworthy.
My suggestion to you is to read the summary of the article, read the post at EFF (if it's still up), and then read the actual documents from the case. You'll see the glaring inconsistency of the EFF's position on this immediately.
And if you're too lazy to do that, then don't bother disputing someone else's assertion. And furthermore, we'll all know not to bother wasting our time discussing things with you.
Okay, I know this is going to get me modded down into infinity here, but I'm sorry--those crickets have good taste. Those are the two most overrated bands in rock and roll history.
I'll agree with you on the Stones, but not on Led Zep. Maybe (scratch that -- most likely) there's a personal taste issue in your case, but I don't think Led Zep can be matched for what they brought to the table for rock.
Compare Led Zep to what came before, and it's quite clear that they were pioneers. They took blues, folk, progressive elements, and driving bass lines to a new level. Though they have a very distinct sound that colored everything they performed, I can't think of a single band with a consistent repertoire as wide as theirs.
FWIW, I think the Beatles are very overrated in terms of musicianship, though not in terms of pop sensibility and as drivers of certain style of music.
Playing copyrighted music out in the open like that?! Better hope the RIAA doesn't get wind of this.
If a Led Zeppelin song is broadcasted but there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound^H^H^H^H^Hvalid claim of copyright violation?
Seriously, though, this is why they should play from a radio station broadcast -- then the royalties were already paid. If they play from CD or from mp3, then they could be subject to a public performance complaint... plus then they'd have to deal with the not-so-fun issue of synchronization of a crapload of stereos.
Slashdot Mirror
That didn't sound so bad. Until I thought about stack overflow vulnerabilities.
Lots of things eliminate weeds better than herbicides. Any sufficiently impermeable material used as mulch eliminates weeds better than herbicides. Most gardeners are familiar with the concept of a weed barrier.
I used to use sheep manure over newspaper both as a source of nitrogen (and other minerals) and as a weed barrier. It was nearly 100% effective. Given the labor involved, however, I'm sure herbicide would have been more cost-effective at preventing weed growth.
The question is whether applying a barrier against weeds is more cost-effective than herbicides, and I don't know the answer to that, especially considering the environmental impact of herbicides. Just looking at effectiveness of the material doesn't tell us much.
One other note -- sure it's inexpensive now, since there is an incredible amount of wasted human hair. But if this were ever deployed widely, I think we'd see prices of shorn hair go up, and I question whether there'd be enough to meet demand until it cost the same as other methods.
It doesn't matter. At the individual transaction level, you are still making a wager on a probabilistic event. Hence it is gambling.
Whether it is a game of skill or chance (or both, to varying degrees), it is gambling.
It's like gambling on the horses... a good judge of horseflesh who does his research well CAN win in the long run, just as with poker. That does not make the wagers he places something other than gambling.
What you're getting at is not about whether or not it is gambling... the long-standing argument relates to whether poker constitutes a game of chance, since many states have laws prohibiting gambling on games of chance. Basically it's a perspective issue, since chance is most definitely an element of poker.
As you point out, the impact of Chance is minimized in the long run*, but that does not mean that chance is not a good portion of the game. As the outcome of almost every wager is dependent on chance, it's hard to make the case that skill constitutes a larger portion of the game (although, like most poker players, I know this is true).
* I suspect the reason Chance doesn't matter in the long run is because he's a quarter horse.
Get it?
Yes, but how heavy were the parachute, parachute deployment system, and parachute shielding system that they were able to remove?
Remember, the expletive was in Russian.
Obviously, the expletive would be written using the Cyrillic alphabet, which, due to lack of UTF-8 support, is unprintable on slashdot.
Also, in Soviet Russia, unknown expletive cannot print you.
Sweet! The government owes me taxes if I live by barter?
Protip: "You are due taxes" means someone owes taxes to you.
Joking aside, this is true in the US as well, for states that have sales tax. The tax is due regardless of the means of payment.
And I'm never purchasing a phone that doesn't have a touchscreen on it for when the physical buttons break down.
Yes, touchscreens have durability issues to be worked out, but I still firmly believe that in the long run, fewer moving parts == better.
Perhaps some mobile slime under the touch-surface membrane?
If they could ever get it fast enough.
But any of us with good fashion sense would prefer the Protocol for Authenticating Identification Systems with Latent Encryption Yobs over the original PLAID anyway.
Yet you haven't refuted my original point. You just claimed that GPUs will be used for different things, thus the market for better GPUs will not decline. That didn't answer my question -- that addressed an ancillary topic, which is whether there will be a market for other dedicated-use processors.
At what point does a GPU that is used for other things cease being a GPU, but instead become some other kind of coprocessor?
Using a GPU for things other than graphics makes it no longer a dedicated GPU, which is what the *original* topic was about.
Yet barriers to entry, whether regulatory or otherwise, prevent entry into the market for a small competitor (and therefore there is no place for organic growth into a large competitor). Since we cannot ever have an ideal free market (in the economic sense), we will always have barriers to entry, even if all regulatory barriers were dropped.
Therefore, by default, a trust is bad, because it limits the potential for competition.
I'd like to point out to you that even the Austrian school of economic thought recognizes that corrections must be made for monopolies -- because even if they do not "abuse" their status (which they will, according to most all economic theory), they do limit competition by the very nature of the market. Trusts and monopolies ARE inherently bad, because they limit the ability of the economy to efficiently allocate resources.
At which point it's not just a GPU anymore, is it?
If you're going to extrapolate requirements based on other uses of the GPU, you might as well go ahead and say that, at some point, we will require multiple-processor systems in order to get great games... oh wait... that's already the case (multi-core chips, multi-chip machines like modern consoles).
I guess my main point is that the returns on ever-increasing graphics capability diminish over time, because the graphics capabilities become less important to the end-user. For games, gameplay and/or characters and/or story become more important. For video, story and characters become more important.
Do I think we have far to go before there isn't positive return on better dedicated graphics chips? Yes.
Do I acknowledge that there are likely major developments that could forestall the diminishing returns? Yes (and 3D is likely one of those things).
Do I believe either of those things invalidate my point? No.
You think that's a bad one to get out of your head?
It's log, it's log,
It's big, it's heavy, it's wood!
It's log, it;s log, it's better than bad, it's good!
What rolls down stairs and over the chairs and into your neighbor's dog?
It fits on your back, It's good for a snack, Everyone knows it's log!
How do you like me now, Mr-I'm-gonna-get-a-bad-song-stuck-in-your-head?
Simmer down, it's a joke. See, it plays on the two most common sterotypes of adult males who don't have sex, which are basement-dwelling nerds and married men. The 'get a piece' term was used for it's directness, hints of sexual ignorance and/or cavalierness, and mouthflow to enhance the basic premise of the joke.
Obviously, those stereotypes don't always apply (actually, they usally *aren't* applicable, but since there is a tinge of truth to them, they remain good sources for humor). And while 'get a piece' may be offensive to some, that's part of what makes it a useful phrase in crafting humor.
Now that I've needed to explain this in great detail, while a simple *whoosh* may or may not have been sufficient... let me just say this:
Jokesmithing is serious business. I are serious jokester.
And yet that's not the policy of America. That's the policy of *some* American companies.
Mostly because US workers are not worth what they cost to employ.
The solution is not a phobic restriction on offshoring (protectionism), the solution is to bring domestic wages in line with offshore wages. Ideally this is done by increasing the global standard (and cost!) of living, but at some point we might just have to realize that our ridiculous wasteful standard of life is unsustainable if we want to compete economically with the rest of the world.
Liar.
You're a slashdotter. The slashdotter relationship function is a binary function.
Either you have no hope of getting a piece, which makes you a liar, or you're married, which also makes you a liar.
Reminds me of another quote...
-Schopenhauer
Meh. I still like Oregon Trail, it's a great game and runs great on reasonably modern kitchen appliances. Though hooking up a UI can be difficult.
You mean, as long as the market supports ever-increasing poly counts etc?
At some point we hit a point of diminishing returns on better graphics units... the human eye can only distinguish so much.
Eventually we'll hit the point where there's simply not enough benefit to be gotten out of an expensive GPU. For me, that time is long past. For others, it may come in the next few years. For a small portion, the 'dreamers', it'll never come... but why would any company spend millions and millions developing new and better chips for such a small market?
Yes, but turning japanese can save you child support payments. I really think so.
Oh... I see... you accidentally the whole thing.
Because that's how the scientific method works?
He made a claim where the arguments were linked.
You don't want to believe the claim, so you dismiss it out of hand without reading the supporting for his assertion.
Why is the onus on him, when you are the one who refuses to read what he provided? Honestly, it'd be quicker for you to read the summary and the comments, say at a threshold of +4, than it would for him to prepare what you're asking for.
IIRC, the actual poster of the info at EFF reworded and/or withdrew what he had written because it was so off-base.
But, to sum it up for you, someone in the EFF posted a wildly inaccurate press piece/blog posting about a specific case, where some of the evidence presented for the subpoena seemed laughably technologically inept. Someone at EFF spun a ridiculous tale about how a suspected criminal was being searched because he ran an alternative OS.
This was not what happened at all. Hence the ensuing discussion of how EFF's blurbs are becoming very untrustworthy.
My suggestion to you is to read the summary of the article, read the post at EFF (if it's still up), and then read the actual documents from the case. You'll see the glaring inconsistency of the EFF's position on this immediately.
And if you're too lazy to do that, then don't bother disputing someone else's assertion. And furthermore, we'll all know not to bother wasting our time discussing things with you.
I'll agree with you on the Stones, but not on Led Zep. Maybe (scratch that -- most likely) there's a personal taste issue in your case, but I don't think Led Zep can be matched for what they brought to the table for rock.
Compare Led Zep to what came before, and it's quite clear that they were pioneers. They took blues, folk, progressive elements, and driving bass lines to a new level. Though they have a very distinct sound that colored everything they performed, I can't think of a single band with a consistent repertoire as wide as theirs.
FWIW, I think the Beatles are very overrated in terms of musicianship, though not in terms of pop sensibility and as drivers of certain style of music.
Stand where the vectors intersect. There's no reason you have to stand on/near the arc itself.
And "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp"
If a Led Zeppelin song is broadcasted but there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound^H^H^H^H^Hvalid claim of copyright violation?
Seriously, though, this is why they should play from a radio station broadcast -- then the royalties were already paid. If they play from CD or from mp3, then they could be subject to a public performance complaint... plus then they'd have to deal with the not-so-fun issue of synchronization of a crapload of stereos.