I agree completely. I think the clock skew is the big (enormous?) incentive to go async, and I'm surprised that no one mentioned this until Comment 59.
And do you know WHY we are having to shrink die sizes? It's because the increasingly short clock signal can't propagate to all of the gates if they are physically too distant. In a clockless design, this hard limit on die size does not exist. It may not be important now, but in 6 years when we are using 24GHz computers on 8mm dies it is going to be a huge problem.
There are structures in your brain that basically function as a 24 hour clock, and some people can use them so effectively that they can tell time. This "clock" is not distributed to every functional component though. Ditto in your hearing example.
Asyncronous computers will have a timing clock, just not a clock signal that controls the gates on each functional component. This is the difference between attaching a few thousand parts to the clock and attaching 37 million+.
I've read for years that there were viable reusable designs that would be significantly cheaper to run than the shuttle if implemented. The reason for not using them has always been high initial cost--as is cited in the current cancellation. To me, this seems shortsighted--everything points to more and more space flights, which means volume savings will be even greater.
Law professor Pamela Samuelson of the University of California, Berkeley, charges that the PTO "simply can't be competent in issuing [business-method] patents" because of examiners' insufficient training and "woefully inadequate prior art"--
I think that the "lazy genes" argument is a possibility, but the real question is "does this even matter?"
In our modern 1st world society mental attributes tend to be the most important factor as far as determining quality of life. There is some basis for argument that individuals base mate selection on these mental factors, so one would expect to see some reinforcement of the genes behind them.
However, consider the fact that most of the population growth on this planet is occurring in the 2nd and 3rd world countries, where many individuals are existing at a subsistence level. The kind of adaptations bred from such conditions are very different from those in the 1st world.
I'd posit therefore that this is a case of "do as I say, not as I do." Although most of our selection is for non-mental traits, we would in general hope for better mental functioning (among other things) This will demand an active role in our evolution.
Whether or not you think the preceding rambling paragraphs had any value, I think it is hard deny that self-directed "evolution" will be the greatest determining factor for our species in the next millenia. We are at the cusp of the ability to advance our "evolution" at a staggering pace, and to include many features that would never have been evolved naturally--such as unlimited life spans.
That kind of power is difficult to wield, and there are unanswered questions about many of the "features" that would seem desirable to possess. (such as overcrowding in the previous example) Nonetheless this technology/will/ be used at some point, because the potential benefits are too large to ignore.
(provided some man made catastrophe doesn't wipe us out before the technology exists)
Have you ever considered what the average life span was up until several thousand years ago? If you don't live past 30 your cartilage won't wear out...so there is no evolutionary pressure to waste resources on repair mechanisms.
They will lower the cost because they won't make money at the $600 price point.
$600 is really cheap for a professional card...but it is damn expensive for the much broader consumer market. So Nvidia makes a few bucks off of the prosumer market, creates a buzz surrounding the product, then sells cheaper versions. (making up the lower cost in volume)
That could be part of the problem though-it's expensive to maintain those huge databases and serve all of the content. If Google doesn't see a benefit they might just keep the bulk of the archives offline.
I think you need to be careful about what you are saying. The very notion of 'proof' implies that the contradiction of it is impossible. We can prove lots of things indiputably in the domain of Euclidean spaces, etc.
As for evolution, there is the fact that it occurs and the theory that evolution created life as we know it. The theory will ALWAYS remain a theory (unless we develop time travel)--because there is always the possibility that evolution was faked by God or another entity. However, like other theories (gravity for one) we can (potentially) show that it holds over broad domains without any sign of a contradiction.
Well, the/. comments are poorly written. If you read the actual article the "open source" bent is more towards allowing open source access to both the archive and the old Deja code that mined it.
That is, open source the database access so others can write front ends, and give out the old code to be publicly worked on.
As storage becomes cheaper it will only become more important to have accessible usenet archives. Text messages aren't getting any bigger, but our capacity to store them is greatly increasing.
Being able to search through years of discussions is a powerful tool--hopefully it will remain a free one.
Any kind of governamental license would be so bogged down in lesiglation that it would likely be years before it goes into effect. Corporate lobbies would delay the vote and argue incessantly over the details of who would get what share of this government-mandated pie.
And well they should, because it is dangerous for the government to be sticking its fingers into such a large pie--it is important to make sure the free trade isn't stifled. (as ironic as that may seem due to current CD price fixing)
That being said though I think it is a clever threat to the industry to get its act together and move into the current millenium. It's somewhat refreshing to see Congress taking such a strong stance toward insuring the prevelance of digital media (DTV, digital music, etc).
I think you are taking generalizations too far. Each maintained connection uses a measurable amount of bandwidth, say c. If your total capacity is B, then you will be able to maintain roughly B/c connections. Of course, you need to have enough bandwidth left over to actually do useful work, so your actual bandwidth will be decreased by some arbitrary constant of your choosing. B`=(B-)
Now, perhaps a T1 is a wide enough pipe for, say, 100,000 users. Maybe at some point the network will scale beyond this, and you'll need a T3, etc etc. The point is not to search the entire network, but to search a large enough segment of it to find what you are looking for.
If you are searching for something extremely rare (or nonexistant) and your bandwidth is small with respect to the scope of the network you may be required to cycle your connections many times until you acheive hits. As intended, the network allows you to search at the maximum speed allowed by your bandwidth--but gives you the option of doing a long (but exhaustive) search regardless of whether you have a 14.4 or a gigabit connection.
I think the overall structure of breakwater could be considered "self healing" although in a different sense than the article. Just because the constituent pieces are macro- rather than micro-size doesn't mean that some interesting (and strengthening) adjustment isn't taking place.
In many cases this isn't possible. Most materials balance strength/flexibility/hardness. Anything that flexes will result in stress failures over time. If you can create a substance that has the same physical properties as your current polymer, but lasts longer, that is a notable achievement.
Sometimes it just isn't possible (or desirable) to make something firmer. ("put something stronger...") Doing so will just lead to an earlier failure in many applications.
Although this is definitely a neat technique and has a lot of promise for low-resolution use (yes, broadcast television is low res) it isn't going to live up to the needs of filmmakers.
What is more interesting to me is the possibility of using this system to lower the cost of motion capture: even if you don't use the footage in your movie it could be very useful for generating and compositing special effects.
While it is true that something like 50 million polys/s would be the upper limit for the number of renderable polys on a screen of that size, you are forgetting about all of the hidden polygons necessary to build a realistic scene.
I've seen estimates that figure it would take about 50-200 million polygons to render a modest scene in photo-realism. Now multiply that by 60 frames/s. You are already talking about 3-12 billion polys/s here, and we haven't even started talking about extremely complex surfaces like hair/fur/grass/leaves.
I think we will be building chips for some time before we reach the same clarity with 3d that motion video currently does in 2d.
You are right on the money with this. I've looked at a number of datasheets and they have all included on-chip decoding. Generally there is also no option at all to force CGMS off in consumer-destined ICs. If you can find an IC intended for professional use you could probably build an HDTV CGMS stripper, but with the complexity of these systems it is likely to be much more expensive (and difficult to build) than the current SPDIF strippers.
While the coop is officially closed to new members, I'd encourage anyone interested to go to the above link and email Slach. There's a very good chance that at least some units will be available on standby because there have been signs of people backing out already. It's very important to do this ASAP though.
Even your spin-around idea has problems. Even though you can't get work out of a symmetric field, you'll still develop a force from it. If you rotate the magnet around you will likely be getting a force component in the wrong direction for a significant portion of the rotation, potentially negating the (small) gains from the field on turn on/off.
Just for the sake of argument, you could implement the spin-around technique fairly simply by rotating the superconductor at high speeds (with good tolerances) and making your switch time equal to 0.5 the frequency. The problem is that you'll be looking at rotational frequencies of 800,000+, which are rather hard to achieve!
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CSS encryption is allowed for, but not required by the DVD standard. Provision was made for those who either did not need encryption or who wished to explicity allow copying.
The quality of 2nd and 3rd generation Betamax VCRs is well in excess of VHS VCRs made 15 years later. It isn't just the better resolution, it's also the far superior sound reproduction (VHS sounds like $&!@ if you hadn't noticed) and better color bandwidth.
Believe me, if I hook up a decent quality 15 year old Betamax up side by side with a modern VHS VCR, the quality difference will be clearly visible. If you look at a really good Betamax it will approach SVHS quality.
The failure of Beta was part technical (lack of long tapes) and part marketing. Don't be fooled by "myths" about it's quality though--there is a good reason that Betamax VCRs still sell in the hundreds of dollars on Ebay.
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I agree completely. I think the clock skew is the big (enormous?) incentive to go async, and I'm surprised that no one mentioned this until Comment 59.
And do you know WHY we are having to shrink die sizes? It's because the increasingly short clock signal can't propagate to all of the gates if they are physically too distant. In a clockless design, this hard limit on die size does not exist. It may not be important now, but in 6 years when we are using 24GHz computers on 8mm dies it is going to be a huge problem.
There are structures in your brain that basically function as a 24 hour clock, and some people can use them so effectively that they can tell time. This "clock" is not distributed to every functional component though. Ditto in your hearing example.
Asyncronous computers will have a timing clock, just not a clock signal that controls the gates on each functional component. This is the difference between attaching a few thousand parts to the clock and attaching 37 million+.
I've read for years that there were viable reusable designs that would be significantly cheaper to run than the shuttle if implemented. The reason for not using them has always been high initial cost--as is cited in the current cancellation. To me, this seems shortsighted--everything points to more and more space flights, which means volume savings will be even greater.
I think that the "lazy genes" argument is a possibility, but the real question is "does this even matter?"
/will/ be used at some point, because the potential benefits are too large to ignore.
In our modern 1st world society mental attributes tend to be the most important factor as far as determining quality of life. There is some basis for argument that individuals base mate selection on these mental factors, so one would expect to see some reinforcement of the genes behind them.
However, consider the fact that most of the population growth on this planet is occurring in the 2nd and 3rd world countries, where many individuals are existing at a subsistence level. The kind of adaptations bred from such conditions are very different from those in the 1st world.
I'd posit therefore that this is a case of "do as I say, not as I do." Although most of our selection is for non-mental traits, we would in general hope for better mental functioning (among other things) This will demand an active role in our evolution.
Whether or not you think the preceding rambling paragraphs had any value, I think it is hard deny that self-directed "evolution" will be the greatest determining factor for our species in the next millenia. We are at the cusp of the ability to advance our "evolution" at a staggering pace, and to include many features that would never have been evolved naturally--such as unlimited life spans.
That kind of power is difficult to wield, and there are unanswered questions about many of the "features" that would seem desirable to possess. (such as overcrowding in the previous example) Nonetheless this technology
(provided some man made catastrophe doesn't wipe us out before the technology exists)
Have you ever considered what the average life span was up until several thousand years ago? If you don't live past 30 your cartilage won't wear out...so there is no evolutionary pressure to waste resources on repair mechanisms.
They will lower the cost because they won't make money at the $600 price point.
$600 is really cheap for a professional card...but it is damn expensive for the much broader consumer market. So Nvidia makes a few bucks off of the prosumer market, creates a buzz surrounding the product, then sells cheaper versions. (making up the lower cost in volume)
That could be part of the problem though-it's expensive to maintain those huge databases and serve all of the content. If Google doesn't see a benefit they might just keep the bulk of the archives offline.
I think you need to be careful about what you are saying. The very notion of 'proof' implies that the contradiction of it is impossible. We can prove lots of things indiputably in the domain of Euclidean spaces, etc.
As for evolution, there is the fact that it occurs and the theory that evolution created life as we know it. The theory will ALWAYS remain a theory (unless we develop time travel)--because there is always the possibility that evolution was faked by God or another entity. However, like other theories (gravity for one) we can (potentially) show that it holds over broad domains without any sign of a contradiction.
Well, the /. comments are poorly written. If you read the actual article the "open source" bent is more towards allowing open source access to both the archive and the old Deja code that mined it.
That is, open source the database access so others can write front ends, and give out the old code to be publicly worked on.
As storage becomes cheaper it will only become more important to have accessible usenet archives. Text messages aren't getting any bigger, but our capacity to store them is greatly increasing.
Being able to search through years of discussions is a powerful tool--hopefully it will remain a free one.
Any kind of governamental license would be so bogged down in lesiglation that it would likely be years before it goes into effect. Corporate lobbies would delay the vote and argue incessantly over the details of who would get what share of this government-mandated pie.
And well they should, because it is dangerous for the government to be sticking its fingers into such a large pie--it is important to make sure the free trade isn't stifled. (as ironic as that may seem due to current CD price fixing)
That being said though I think it is a clever threat to the industry to get its act together and move into the current millenium. It's somewhat refreshing to see Congress taking such a strong stance toward insuring the prevelance of digital media (DTV, digital music, etc).
I think you are taking generalizations too far. Each maintained connection uses a measurable amount of bandwidth, say c. If your total capacity is B, then you will be able to maintain roughly B/c connections. Of course, you need to have enough bandwidth left over to actually do useful work, so your actual bandwidth will be decreased by some arbitrary constant of your choosing. B`=(B-)
Now, perhaps a T1 is a wide enough pipe for, say, 100,000 users. Maybe at some point the network will scale beyond this, and you'll need a T3, etc etc. The point is not to search the entire network, but to search a large enough segment of it to find what you are looking for.
If you are searching for something extremely rare (or nonexistant) and your bandwidth is small with respect to the scope of the network you may be required to cycle your connections many times until you acheive hits. As intended, the network allows you to search at the maximum speed allowed by your bandwidth--but gives you the option of doing a long (but exhaustive) search regardless of whether you have a 14.4 or a gigabit connection.
I think the overall structure of breakwater could be considered "self healing" although in a different sense than the article. Just because the constituent pieces are macro- rather than micro-size doesn't mean that some interesting (and strengthening) adjustment isn't taking place.
In many cases this isn't possible. Most materials balance strength/flexibility/hardness. Anything that flexes will result in stress failures over time. If you can create a substance that has the same physical properties as your current polymer, but lasts longer, that is a notable achievement.
Sometimes it just isn't possible (or desirable) to make something firmer. ("put something stronger...") Doing so will just lead to an earlier failure in many applications.
Although this is definitely a neat technique and has a lot of promise for low-resolution use (yes, broadcast television is low res) it isn't going to live up to the needs of filmmakers.
What is more interesting to me is the possibility of using this system to lower the cost of motion capture: even if you don't use the footage in your movie it could be very useful for generating and compositing special effects.
While it is true that something like 50 million polys/s would be the upper limit for the number of renderable polys on a screen of that size, you are forgetting about all of the hidden polygons necessary to build a realistic scene.
I've seen estimates that figure it would take about 50-200 million polygons to render a modest scene in photo-realism. Now multiply that by 60 frames/s. You are already talking about 3-12 billion polys/s here, and we haven't even started talking about extremely complex surfaces like hair/fur/grass/leaves.
I think we will be building chips for some time before we reach the same clarity with 3d that motion video currently does in 2d.
You are right on the money with this. I've looked at a number of datasheets and they have all included on-chip decoding. Generally there is also no option at all to force CGMS off in consumer-destined ICs. If you can find an IC intended for professional use you could probably build an HDTV CGMS stripper, but with the complexity of these systems it is likely to be much more expensive (and difficult to build) than the current SPDIF strippers.
While the coop is officially closed to new members, I'd encourage anyone interested to go to the above link and email Slach. There's a very good chance that at least some units will be available on standby because there have been signs of people backing out already. It's very important to do this ASAP though.
Even your spin-around idea has problems. Even though you can't get work out of a symmetric field, you'll still develop a force from it. If you rotate the magnet around you will likely be getting a force component in the wrong direction for a significant portion of the rotation, potentially negating the (small) gains from the field on turn on/off.
Just for the sake of argument, you could implement the spin-around technique fairly simply by rotating the superconductor at high speeds (with good tolerances) and making your switch time equal to 0.5 the frequency. The problem is that you'll be looking at rotational frequencies of 800,000+, which are rather hard to achieve!
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Domain servers in listed order:
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CSS encryption is allowed for, but not required by the DVD standard. Provision was made for those who either did not need encryption or who wished to explicity allow copying.
The FMD density is 215 times that of a CD. Thus a 12x FMD drive could approach speeds of 387MB/s due to the greater density.
The quality of 2nd and 3rd generation Betamax VCRs is well in excess of VHS VCRs made 15 years later. It isn't just the better resolution, it's also the far superior sound reproduction (VHS sounds like $&!@ if you hadn't noticed) and better color bandwidth.
Believe me, if I hook up a decent quality 15 year old Betamax up side by side with a modern VHS VCR, the quality difference will be clearly visible. If you look at a really good Betamax it will approach SVHS quality.
The failure of Beta was part technical (lack of long tapes) and part marketing. Don't be fooled by "myths" about it's quality though--there is a good reason that Betamax VCRs still sell in the hundreds of dollars on Ebay.