'Mankind lacks scale and relativity'

Post #302,332 by Ashton 1/14/09 4:36:10 AM Reply	'Mankind lacks scale and relativity' (Wish I'd said that.. Did, but not first.) Life is change. Energy cannot be destroyed or created - only changed to other forms.. at the end, per entropy --> final disorganization == heat death (of the particular ball of wax trying to be 'observed' -- cf. the physicist who tried to get Niels Bohr to see that, via strict QM math: Schrödinger's cat was both alive/dead. In parallel universes.) Bohr was totally enmeshed in the massive construct by which he then defined himself; was unwilling to follow the discussion. That thesis, now revived by young'uns - finally made it onto PBS! recently. Fancy THAT 'small world'.) I'd bet that Rumi could handle the Jain 'problem' with a single Sufi saying -- it is not Jains who order the dairy farmers to peddle veal <==> nor is it 'my fault' if UAV drivers are screwing the planetary ecology via their shallow, unconscious and puerile narcissism. Still.. I Can somewhat compensate for the retarded of my species -- look at all the KWHrs saved over 7+ years by running a 600 MHz P-III instead of some water-cooled 3 GHz screamer ... just to put symbols on some illuminated screen. I be so Good. (I don't eat veal, either.)
Post #302,352 by drook 1/14/09 11:49:25 AM Reply	If your 600MHz P-III is anything like my 500MHz P-III The power savings is completely obliterated by the 30 seconds it takes to render each relatively complex page. -- Drew
Post #302,375 by Ashton 1/14/09 3:07:45 PM Reply	Tragedy defined: a theory killed with a fact :-( Still.. that Screamer model is spinning its (oscillator-)wheels ... at idle. Then there are those near- water-cooled mondo Video cards, 12K RPM HDs etc.
Post #302,382 by drook 1/14/09 3:50:53 PM Reply	You used to work with big fast-spinning things, right? Once a 12k RPM disk drive is spun up, how much more power does it take to keep it at speed, compared to a 7k RPM model? -- Drew
Post #302,385 by Ashton 1/14/09 4:35:31 PM Reply	K.E. = Â½mvÂ²; from there on - I suspect that engr. specs on a heftier motor adds to greater constant-losses - and the discs are not running in vacuum, ergo.. air-friction (as with cars) should go ~ as v³, I wot. Simpler: drag out the FlukeÂ and measure i for each. Now when you also throw-in a RAID ... (or, as in local case, RECC: Reduced Expectations of Crappy Controllers) Then too, all the 'glue-chips', controllers; each one a tiny CPU, follow the usual RF design curve: Faster is lots more Power, as with the new mondo-speed busses - all heading for light-speed .^.. concomitantly: at infinite Power. And so it goes. Speed Kills ergs! Solution: Save that P-III for any regular keyboard web stuff. Ya can't out-type a 1 MHz CPU for that activity (cf. WordStar in 58K / CP/M.) Use the Screamer for creating those new million-color Insanely Great graphics thingies (for fun & profit) while re-doing that dbase and compiling the new Debian, customized to use your special Tazer Seek n'Zap remote-controlled Crowd-Control aircraft ... and like that. If'n ya wants to Save the Planet from Us, that is.. Well, DO YA, PUNK ?!?
Post #302,386 by drook 1/14/09 4:46:56 PM Reply	The eventual plateau IMO When a you've got the bandwidth to download an HD movie in better than real time, and play it at full screen without jittering -- even when something kicks off in the background -- that's the point I think people will finally say "fast enough". You just can't watch more than one full screen image at once. You're right that decades-old hardware can more than handle human scale outputs. Desktop kit can't quite saturate human input capacity yet. -- Drew
Post #302,387 by Ashton 1/14/09 4:50:01 PM Reply	'Fraid you're right on the ... dreamed expectations :-/
Post #302,392 by drook 1/14/09 5:13:49 PM Reply	Why dreamed? It's already possible to make an MP3 player so small you don't want to use it for lack of a human-scale interface. Same for phones. They have more capability than you can access through that tiny screen. And don't get me started on trying to dial or type when you have adult American male-size thumbs. So some devices are already constrained not by what is possible, but what is comfortable. Assuming it were possible to plug your PC directly into your brain, and have fully-immersive sound and video, would that necessarily be the interface we want all the time? As I'm typing this, every now and then I stop to think, and I look away out the window at the snow. I want to be able to look away. Sure, I'd like a bigger TV, but I don't want it to dominate my living room. Connections will keep getting faster, compression better, screens larger, CPU/GPUs faster. Every so often a Jobs needs to remind everyone the difference between more and better. But there will be more, if only so the non-Jobs-es can try to compete. -- Drew
Post #302,403 by static 1/14/09 7:05:25 PM Reply	Absolutely. The second generation iPod Shuffle shows this to good effect. And Korean MP3 makers have released MP3 players not much bigger than suger cubes before. There have been recent discussions in here about smartphone UIs - it's dreadfully easy to put a smartphone OS/UI on a device that is the wrong size, as a number of Windows Mobile devices attest to. Wade
Post #302,406 by Ashton 1/14/09 8:40:41 PM Reply	Thou sayest: - Yeah we could do that. Is it 'worth' the hours, $Bs ... just now, in the course of things? Seems to me that decisions about where to invest resources ought to at least consult some sort of Master Triage list -- and not, just do the familiar -- with no Sense whatsoever, of what is Adequate? VS "other things needing doing." That your scenario is apt to prevail only tells me that -still- ours is a kultur which has yet to grok even partially: what adequacy.. means -- in the setting of priorities that affect everyone, even the Amish -- who never have an upgrade worry. Go for HDTV in a trice? [When that is realized: there will be left No solitude for too-Very many, I wot.] Why not FIX something on that List of a 1000+ criticalities? so easily tuned-out by our 24/7 entertainment? More 'home electronics' today means: Muricans forever remarketing stuff from China and never knowing Ohm's law. Build some clever new windmills? Roll-out and staple-up ne solar cells? 998 to go. ________________________________________ My koan, courtesy of the sage, Ashleigh Brilliant -- (illustrated by flowchart arrows, on my fridge post-card version) In the final analysis --> Everything depends --> <-- on everything Else
Post #302,397 by Another Scott 1/14/09 6:22:21 PM Reply	I think you're thinking too small. Everyone in the home will want to be watching different UberHD movies on wall-size UberHD screens. Think CinemaScope in the home, with the screens on 3 walls (or more). (Digital IMAX is 10000x7000 according to http://en.wikipedia..../Image_resolution ) 40 Gbps (in principle) gets you a HD DVD in 2 seconds - http://www.voodish.c...ection-at-40gbps/ Of course, the rest of the system can't keep up, so it's academic at this point... I think someone will find a way to saturate whatever bandwidth is available, even for one person. Of course, no one will be able to afford it, but that's not the point. ;-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #302,416 by Ashton 1/14/09 11:26:52 PM Reply	'The Veldt' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Veldt Talk about yer prescience: 1951! Same author as, With Cat for Comforter Prescience and versatility? {sigh} A Man's grasp should exceed the throat diameter of the Marketer. ..to coin a phrase, for Veldt-'09
Post #302,418 by Another Scott 1/15/09 12:27:22 AM Reply	Neat. If I ever read that, I've forgotten it. http://www.veddma.com/veddma/Veldt.htm has the text. He and so many of the science fiction writers were amazing in pointing out the issues with new technologies, etc. Are there writers of similar quality in that genre today? Cheers, Scott.

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