This is an interesting point of view. I completely agree that computers are tools. But we have to face the fact that most people just don't have the ability to program things themselves. Or, if they have the ability, they're in the kind of job where they need to use the tools, not produce them. Plus, if everyone produced their own tools we'd have a lot of wasted skills all over the place. No, computers are tools, but you need to be able to buy flashy computers with better tools so that you can a) create a good image and win the business (say) and b) work faster.
This is quite true. But it is possible, using quantum computers, to encode a message in such a way that it is actually impossible to break the encryption, even with another quantum computer.
Without going into great detail, the method depends on the essentially random nature of quantum processes. You have to exchange two messages with your correspondent; the first sets up the cryptographic key, and the second is the actual message.
I completely agree with Erik's comments. Having said that, where do I want the speed increase?
The vast majority of my computer use deals with the most banal and everyday things. Word processing, email, figures. When I do more complicated things like video editing or playing games, I'm almost willing to accept a performance hit. But I don't like waiting 30 seconds for the machine to boot up, and eight seconds for Word to load. That's where the improvements need to be made - and that's all about I/O and bus speed. There's certainly a case to be made for multiplying cheaper components and working in parallel, but we have to get the computer architecture right first.
That's why things like the EV1 bus are a good step forward; they impose little performance hit on parallelism. (Or, doubling the number of processors nearly doubles the CPU performance.)
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Take a look at Philipp Reisner's DRBD . It does more or less what you're after, although it doesn't do it using journalling filesystems.
You might best describe it as a sort of network RAID 1
Nonsense. His logic was perfectly correct, using Leibnitz's Law (transitivity of identity).
Yours is also correct, but is of a different logical form.
This is an interesting point of view. I completely agree that computers are tools. But we have to face the fact that most people just don't have the ability to program things themselves. Or, if they have the ability, they're in the kind of job where they need to use the tools, not produce them. Plus, if everyone produced their own tools we'd have a lot of wasted skills all over the place. No, computers are tools, but you need to be able to buy flashy computers with better tools so that you can a) create a good image and win the business (say) and b) work faster.
Just my tuppence worth.
Jack
This is quite true. But it is possible, using quantum computers, to encode a message in such a way that it is actually impossible to break the encryption, even with another quantum computer.
Without going into great detail, the method depends on the essentially random nature of quantum processes. You have to exchange two messages with your correspondent; the first sets up the cryptographic key, and the second is the actual message.
Jack
I completely agree with Erik's comments. Having said that, where do I want the speed increase?
The vast majority of my computer use deals with the most banal and everyday things. Word processing, email, figures. When I do more complicated things like video editing or playing games, I'm almost willing to accept a performance hit. But I don't like waiting 30 seconds for the machine to boot up, and eight seconds for Word to load. That's where the improvements need to be made - and that's all about I/O and bus speed. There's certainly a case to be made for multiplying cheaper components and working in parallel, but we have to get the computer architecture right first.
That's why things like the EV1 bus are a good step forward; they impose little performance hit on parallelism. (Or, doubling the number of processors nearly doubles the CPU performance.)
Jack