The most pixels you could fit into a square screen, and the less in a screen of zero height. Those 16:9 and 16:10 screen ratios are because typical field of view is more "wide" than the 4:3 used typically. 4:3 was used because it was easier to make CRTs that way.
Some people even use a 2.24:1 screen for viewing movies (instead of the 1.78:1 of the 16:9 monitors)
No it wasn't a copy of the US shuttle - it didn't had thruster engines, only manoeuvre engines (thruster engines where on the Energia launch vehicle, which was a real launch vehicle unlike the US shuttle's fuel tank).
The cost to bring them to orbit in the first place, and then to de-orbit them (in order to allow them to fall on target) is pretty high. Also, this isn't a "surgical strike" capability as the weapon can not "see" the target or communicate too well while falling at multiple times the sound speed.
There are places when one more display is a good solution - like in the old Autocad days, with one large display for the model and one smaller display with all the menus, options and so on. On the other side, there are places (see very wide Excel sheets) when one wiiiiide display is much better than two.
Remember the difference between dot printer graphical output and laser printer output? Improving the DPI does that. Also, some of the first laser printers had only 300 dpi, and the difference between those prints and the native 600dpi is visible if you look closely enough.
Just remember that no more than 2 years ago, panels with "A" quality could had one in a million pixels bad (and more than one subpixels). Doubling the DPI would allow four times as much bad pixels.
It's the same thing to X-Ray machines - the level of radiation for the patient is important, but negligible over its life time, while the doctors/nurses that tend to the installation are much well protected, yet the level of radiation over their life time might be signifiant.
And every second you play gives you an opportunity to move ahead of the ones around you. And it soon starts to aggregate and to need more and more time. Building one village is easy, building 10 villages at the same time is also easy, but once you have armies, targets and so on it starts to be a time sink
If your sound card blows, you could replace it. If your mainboard blows, you could replace it. Why replace everything when one goes kaput? Just as discrete CDROM controllers (ISA) went the way of the dodo, just like IDE controller boards did the same, just like the network cards got integrated...
i5-661 (with the fastest on-package graphics) is performance-competitive with AMD's latest integrated graphics. The slower on-package GPU from Intel are behind, but not by much. Nothing Intel can't solve in its next processor (especially as AMD did not increase its IGP performance)
RISC typically needs more RAM than CISC (and it seems less than 10% of the die area is devoted to x86 instruction decoding, at least in high-performance processors), so you'll trade the space for more cache for the need for more main memory.
I can't dedicate much attention span to anything else while I drive. As such, keeping a child entertained during even a couple of hours drive is very difficult for me. My solution? Drive at night, when the kid sleeps
"They got the jump on Intel with the 64-bit architecture, they did it right"
AMD was better than Intel starting with the K7 processors (the Slot A ones), continued with the 1GHz point (and Intel's 1GHz fiasco), with Athlon MP processors, and it was at the top one way or another until the Conroe (Core 2 Duo) (Pentium 4 Northwood was a nice contender, but I still think AMD was on top then). Unfortunately, production capacity and other issues stopped them from financial success, and AMD is back to selling the slower processors for less money.
It's close to the difference between making an aircraft wing out of aluminium versus composite. You need different everything for it, and research and development time is only surpassed by time lost waiting for wafers (months and months between an order and delivery).
"I'm only vaguely familiar with the amount that a company like TSMC would charge"
The blueprints/masks/whatever for 65 nm processors made at AMD's fabs (now Global Foundries) can NOT be used in Intel's 65nm facilities, TSMC 65 nm facilities or whatever other 65nm facilities you could find (due to differences large and small, but almost all of them critical).
Yes, make blueprint for a new 3-core processor based on the 4-core working one. Debug that blueprint. Wait a couple of weeks for the masks. Order test wafers. Wait a couple of months. Debug test wafers. If all is perfect, start production. If all is almost well, use a very expensive machine to repair cores. If not, build a new mask, order test wafers, and go again. It will usually take 3 to 6 months until production is in full swing, and some of that time you need to have a team of engineers taken away from the development of the next processor core. We're talking about AMD, not "three full development teams" Intel here.
"The only other thing to consider is that they have a product that needs to meet sales volumes"
Remember when AMD was to be found only retail or in "white boxes", generic computers? Then Dell started to sell computers with AMD processors, and they really really have a desire to sell cheap computers. So, they might want more 3-core CPUs than AMD is getting (due to all the processors being working 4-cores).
This happens also for TigerDirect and others - some of the lower-end processors might be so successful that they request more. AMD being limited in every way (capacity, manpower,...), they find it cheaper in the short run to just sell perfectly good 4-cores as 2-cores than to make a new silicon for a 2-core processor. Not to mention that you could make 2-cores processors out of 4-cores silicon in weeks, while building a new, cheap, native 2-core silicon might take you a month's work and three months wait
Usually trading DirectX performance for OpenGL performance (due to the drivers, but anyway). And you didn't make a low-end nvidia card appear to be a quadro, but you'd make a similar grade (same graphic chip) GeForce card appear as a Quadro.
You mean piston-engined planes, as there are planes (and helicopters) powered by "jet-like" engines.
However, piston-engined planes went out of fashion sometime around 1960, as they are much more maintenance-intensive. And the world's air fleet is having maybe a 10% excess, and most of it is in old jet-powered planes (some of those might be forbidden to fly in passenger service in Europe and USA). And unlike words (which you can utter at a moment's notice), planes take a while to build.
However, coming back to your original question: I don't think piston-engined planes are much better flying in an ash cloud that can suffocate a jet engine, as their piston/cilinder arrangements are even more sensitive to dust buildup
Return after landing on an asteroid is simpler (less energy to burn to escape the gravity well). However, getting there might be more dangerous (planets have the habit to clear the space around them of debris).
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The most pixels you could fit into a square screen, and the less in a screen of zero height. Those 16:9 and 16:10 screen ratios are because typical field of view is more "wide" than the 4:3 used typically. 4:3 was used because it was easier to make CRTs that way.
Some people even use a 2.24:1 screen for viewing movies (instead of the 1.78:1 of the 16:9 monitors)
No it wasn't a copy of the US shuttle - it didn't had thruster engines, only manoeuvre engines (thruster engines where on the Energia launch vehicle, which was a real launch vehicle unlike the US shuttle's fuel tank).
The cost to bring them to orbit in the first place, and then to de-orbit them (in order to allow them to fall on target) is pretty high. Also, this isn't a "surgical strike" capability as the weapon can not "see" the target or communicate too well while falling at multiple times the sound speed.
There are places when one more display is a good solution - like in the old Autocad days, with one large display for the model and one smaller display with all the menus, options and so on. On the other side, there are places (see very wide Excel sheets) when one wiiiiide display is much better than two.
Remember the difference between dot printer graphical output and laser printer output? Improving the DPI does that. Also, some of the first laser printers had only 300 dpi, and the difference between those prints and the native 600dpi is visible if you look closely enough.
Just remember that no more than 2 years ago, panels with "A" quality could had one in a million pixels bad (and more than one subpixels). Doubling the DPI would allow four times as much bad pixels.
It's the same thing to X-Ray machines - the level of radiation for the patient is important, but negligible over its life time, while the doctors/nurses that tend to the installation are much well protected, yet the level of radiation over their life time might be signifiant.
Not all applications benefit from more cache - some benefit from faster cache, and more cache and faster cache are usually exclusive.
And every second you play gives you an opportunity to move ahead of the ones around you. And it soon starts to aggregate and to need more and more time. Building one village is easy, building 10 villages at the same time is also easy, but once you have armies, targets and so on it starts to be a time sink
If your sound card blows, you could replace it. If your mainboard blows, you could replace it. Why replace everything when one goes kaput?
Just as discrete CDROM controllers (ISA) went the way of the dodo, just like IDE controller boards did the same, just like the network cards got integrated...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2972/the-rest-of-clarkdale-intel-s-pentium-g6950-core-i5-650-660-670-reviewed/2
i5-661 (with the fastest on-package graphics) is performance-competitive with AMD's latest integrated graphics. The slower on-package GPU from Intel are behind, but not by much. Nothing Intel can't solve in its next processor (especially as AMD did not increase its IGP performance)
RISC typically needs more RAM than CISC (and it seems less than 10% of the die area is devoted to x86 instruction decoding, at least in high-performance processors), so you'll trade the space for more cache for the need for more main memory.
If it's the graphic chip from the i5-661, then it's competitive with the AMD's IGP (AMD might have better drivers though)
I don't know if the common air filters are made to retain the volcanic ash particles (they are much smaller than sand).
I can't dedicate much attention span to anything else while I drive. As such, keeping a child entertained during even a couple of hours drive is very difficult for me. My solution? Drive at night, when the kid sleeps
Many other browser-based MMO do this (and Lord of Ultima already have four servers - but maybe only for geographical reasons).
This was true in other similar games (and there were point whores that had no troops to speak of).
"They got the jump on Intel with the 64-bit architecture, they did it right"
AMD was better than Intel starting with the K7 processors (the Slot A ones), continued with the 1GHz point (and Intel's 1GHz fiasco), with Athlon MP processors, and it was at the top one way or another until the Conroe (Core 2 Duo) (Pentium 4 Northwood was a nice contender, but I still think AMD was on top then). Unfortunately, production capacity and other issues stopped them from financial success, and AMD is back to selling the slower processors for less money.
It's close to the difference between making an aircraft wing out of aluminium versus composite. You need different everything for it, and research and development time is only surpassed by time lost waiting for wafers (months and months between an order and delivery).
"I'm only vaguely familiar with the amount that a company like TSMC would charge"
The blueprints/masks/whatever for 65 nm processors made at AMD's fabs (now Global Foundries) can NOT be used in Intel's 65nm facilities, TSMC 65 nm facilities or whatever other 65nm facilities you could find (due to differences large and small, but almost all of them critical).
Yes, make blueprint for a new 3-core processor based on the 4-core working one. Debug that blueprint. Wait a couple of weeks for the masks. Order test wafers. Wait a couple of months. Debug test wafers. If all is perfect, start production. If all is almost well, use a very expensive machine to repair cores. If not, build a new mask, order test wafers, and go again. It will usually take 3 to 6 months until production is in full swing, and some of that time you need to have a team of engineers taken away from the development of the next processor core. We're talking about AMD, not "three full development teams" Intel here.
"The only other thing to consider is that they have a product that needs to meet sales volumes"
Remember when AMD was to be found only retail or in "white boxes", generic computers? Then Dell started to sell computers with AMD processors, and they really really have a desire to sell cheap computers. So, they might want more 3-core CPUs than AMD is getting (due to all the processors being working 4-cores). ...), they find it cheaper in the short run to just sell perfectly good 4-cores as 2-cores than to make a new silicon for a 2-core processor. Not to mention that you could make 2-cores processors out of 4-cores silicon in weeks, while building a new, cheap, native 2-core silicon might take you a month's work and three months wait
This happens also for TigerDirect and others - some of the lower-end processors might be so successful that they request more. AMD being limited in every way (capacity, manpower,
Usually trading DirectX performance for OpenGL performance (due to the drivers, but anyway). And you didn't make a low-end nvidia card appear to be a quadro, but you'd make a similar grade (same graphic chip) GeForce card appear as a Quadro.
You mean piston-engined planes, as there are planes (and helicopters) powered by "jet-like" engines.
However, piston-engined planes went out of fashion sometime around 1960, as they are much more maintenance-intensive. And the world's air fleet is having maybe a 10% excess, and most of it is in old jet-powered planes (some of those might be forbidden to fly in passenger service in Europe and USA). And unlike words (which you can utter at a moment's notice), planes take a while to build.
However, coming back to your original question:
I don't think piston-engined planes are much better flying in an ash cloud that can suffocate a jet engine, as their piston/cilinder arrangements are even more sensitive to dust buildup
Return after landing on an asteroid is simpler (less energy to burn to escape the gravity well). However, getting there might be more dangerous (planets have the habit to clear the space around them of debris).