PCgameshardware : Bulldozer? Please. Intel Confirms 8 Core SB-E For Q3

[Idontcare]

My beef is not so much with MIPS or gigaflops. It's with the effective slowdown of overall engineering progress. The first flight of the Boeing 707 was in 1957, a full 54 years ago. 54 years earlier was 1903 and that was the year of the first Wright Brothers' flight! The 707 is different from today's jetliners to an infinitesimal degree as compared to what took off from Kitty Hawk! What we see as such great progress since 1957 really isn't that great. We had color tv then, but now we have color tv that's flatter. Whoopdee do. In 1903, Marconi hadn't yet received his patent for radio! I'm sure that if there was a way to graph "overall effective" progress since the Industrial Revolution, the last half century would be a slow droop down on the curve.

To first impression you appear to be intensely focused on critical milestones for "first use" of highlighted technological achievements, and are viewing that past 50yrs with that same critical eye.

In the 20th century what mankind did with the second-50yrs versus the first-50yrs is take the technological feats of the first 50yrs and made them affordable for the masses.

Your Boeing flights of the 1950's were not affordable enough to enable massive volumes of tourists and travel that the world sees today. $200 round-trip tickets in inflation adjusted dollars simply did not exist then.

And your color TV was by no means as reliable and inexpensive to own and operate as the much higher visual product of today.

I'm quite satisfied with the progress and focus on economically viable solutions. We wouldn't have our personal computers if the focus was just on pushing extreme milestones to ever more extreme frontiers.

At any rate your missing milestone highlights for the second half of the 20th century are there but they aren't to be found in electronics...they are in the field of medical science.

Just as the first-half of the 20th century saw a veritable explosion in technological achievements (albeit at unrealistic costs to the end-user) the second-half of the 20th century saw the same in the field of health care and medical science.

I expect the story of the next 50 yrs will be the "consumerization" of currently ridiculously expensive healthcare. We won't see the advent of ever more magnificent milestones such as heart-transplants and face grafts but rather we'll see the costs of currently leading edge medical operations decline and come down to be applicable to the masses and not just the elite who have an employer that gives them "good medical" as a benefit.

As for "what will provide fantastic milestone headlining changes" for the next 50yrs I suspect the answer there lies in the field of theology as our technology enabled globalization of the masses has led to an unavoidable global confliction between the dominant religions of humanity. I won't be around to know if that is how history comes to view the next 50 yrs, but that is my suspicion of how it will come to be viewed in hindsight.

edit: and I just read Martimus' post, it is good stuff and spot on :thumbsup:

 

[Martimus]

edit: and I just read Martimus' post, it is good stuff and spot on :thumbsup:

Thank you, although your post has more useful substance.

I am just trying to show that there is a reason we are the dominant species on this planet, and it isn't because we are "smarter" than the other species. There are plenty of similarly intellegent creatures in the sea that are perfectly happy living their life as is. The fact that they aren't striving to have a better life does not make them inherently flawed. It just means that they aren't likely to sculpt the way the world operates like mankind does.

Our most defining trait is our inherent unhappiness with the status quo, and that is what drives our constant innovations over the years. If we did not have that drive, it would not make us failures, just as porpoises aren't failures for failing to create innovations in their world.

EDIT: This has gotten completely off topic, so I will end my discussion here. If you want to respond, feel free to PM me and we can continue via that route.

 

[Idontcare]

Thank you, although your post has more useful substance.

I am just trying to show that there is a reason we are the dominant species on this planet, and it isn't because we are "smarter" than the other species. There are plenty of similarly intellegent creatures in the sea that are perfectly happy living their life as is. The fact that they aren't striving to have a better life does not make them inherently flawed. It just means that they aren't likely to sculpt the way the world operates like mankind does.

Our most defining trait is our inherent unhappiness with the status quo, and that is what drives our constant innovations over the years. If we did not have that drive, it would not make us failures, just as porpoises aren't failures for failing to create innovations in their world.

LOL, you had me at "Our most defining trait is our inherent unhappiness with..." and you are so right.

I look at my kids and wonder if they will actually be better off in a world filled with smartphones and facebook competing with, and diluting, their ability to focus on anything beyond themselves as pre-adults versus the world I grew up in, or that of my parents as well as theirs, where the actual physical community was the focus and preferred experience of life.

1000 yrs ago if we knew each other it would be because we lived in the same village or tribe and we'd have known each other since childhood and we'd have sat around the same community firepit every night telling stories of the day's hunt and so on. I don't think modern society and culture is much of an improvement on that kind of social interaction.

I'm happy to know you thanks to the technology that makes it possible over hundreds of miles of geography but I'd much rather I knew you through the experience of hunting/drinking/living in the same experience as you. I think this is where the advent of the modern workplace, as well as the military, has come to define one's "community" more so than one's geographic location and proximity to other members of the same community.

Yeesh, afternoon margaritas are getting to me what are we talking about anymore?

 

[JFAMD]

Well, I'm not up for saving humanity, I am in the server business, so you are barking up the wrong tree with me.

As for the beer, I have been enjoying quilmes all week. Ice cold and only about 20 pesos for a 660ML bottle.