The Growth of the World and Its Technology

[Thrilla]

Some food for thought, and quite interesting...makes me want to drink copius amounts of bourbon.  What's it gonna be like 50 years from now?

[Snaggletiger]

That is some wild shipth.  It kind of validates some of the things I've been thinking about the advances in technology over the past few years.  Amazing how far we've come.  Too fast???

[Thrilla]

That is some wild shipth.  It kind of validates some of the things I've been thinking about the advances in technology over the past few years.  Amazing how far we've come.  Too fast???

When the world implodes upon itself...that's when it's become too fast.

[AUTiger1]

I was going to make a comment about drinking copious amounts of bourbon, but I can see why that makes you want to.  To me it was amazing to see, but also kinda of freaky and scary all at the same time.  I was one of the two that has been with my employer for 5 years. 

side note:  We(the company I work for, a team of 10 sys admins) built a SuperComputer/Cluster in 04, when we got our numbers in we would have been the 3rd fastest one in the world at 17 teraflops.  We didn't release for reasons I can't go into until the following year and it placed us at 15th. 5 years later and I don't even know if we are even at 250 anymore.  Our system does 17 trillion fucking calculations a second (floating point operations) and we are considered slow but the HPC community.  Shit does basically double every 2 or 3 years.   There is now a system at Los Almos that does 1. something petaflops or one quadrillion floating point operations per second. 

[Thrilla]

side note:  We(the company I work for, a team of 10 sys admins) built a SuperComputer/Cluster in 04, when we got our numbers in we would have been the 3rd fastest one in the world at 17 teraflops.  We didn't release for reasons I can't go into until the following year and it placed us at 15th. 5 years later and I don't even know if we are even at 250 anymore.  Our system does 17 trillion fucking calculations a second (floating point operations) and we are considered slow but the HPC community.  Shit does basically double every 2 or 3 years.   There is now a system at Los Almos that does 1. something petaflops or one quadrillion floating point operations per second. 

Did you just go into Geek Speak, or am I that out of it?  What the fuck is a floating point operation?

[Snaggletiger]

Did you just go into Geek Speak, or am I that out of it?  What the fuck is a floating point operation?

He had me at teraflop

[AUTiger1]

Did you just go into Geek Speak, or am I that out of it?  What the fuck is a floating point operation?

Sorry, yeah that was geek speek. 

Think of it like this.  The number 2.0 is a floating-point number because it has a decimal in it. The number 2 (without a decimal point) is a binary integer.  A floating point operation is a computation involving fractional numbers, which takes longer to process than the one involving only whole numbers (integers).  Kinda like computer shorthand for scientific notation.

or better yet, it's any operation that involve fractional numbers where the decimal point floats (there is no fixed number of digits before and after the decimal point) and they take longer to compute than operations that involve whole numbers (integers, which most non-scientific apps use).

Make better sense now?

[Thrilla]

Sorry, yeah that was geek speek. 

Think of it like this.  The number 2.0 is a floating-point number because it has a decimal in it. The number 2 (without a decimal point) is a binary integer.  A floating point operation is a computation involving fractional numbers, which takes longer to process than the one involving only whole numbers (integers).  Kinda like computer shorthand for scientific notation.

or better yet, it's any operation that involve fractional numbers where the decimal point floats (there is no fixed number of digits before and after the decimal point) and they take longer to compute than operations that involve whole numbers (integers, which most non-scientific apps use).

Make better sense now?

Yes, I understand the term better now.

Not sure how it applies to what computers do nowadays.  I do know that computers process information, and I'm assuming all the information comes in the form of either fractional or whole numbers.  It will be beyond my abilities to translate how that information shows me what I see on a computer screen, or how that makes the internet or any other application work. 

[AUTiger1]

Yes, I understand the term better now.

Not sure how it applies to what computers do nowadays.  I do know that computers process information, and I'm assuming all the information comes in the form of either fractional or whole numbers.  It will be beyond my abilities to translate how that information shows me what I see on a computer screen, or how that makes the internet or any other application work. 

Glad that helped....I guess the point of that rant was the fact that 5 years ago our system could do 17 trillion calculations in one second and now we aren't shit b/c there are machines that can do 1 quadrillion calculations a  second and that technology grows exponentially every couple of years.

[AWK]

Glad that helped....I guess the point of that rant was the fact that 5 years ago our system could do 17 trillion calculations in one second and now we aren't shit b/c there are machines that can do 1 quadrillion calculations a  second and that technology grows exponentially every couple of years.

I was promised flying cars circa back to the future 2.  That has yet to come to fruition...Fuck you Doc Brown, what a total let down.

[Thrilla]

I was promised flying cars circa back to the future 2.  That has yet to come to fruition...Fuck you Doc Brown, what a total let down.

You need to just make like a tree....and get outta here.

[wesfau2]

You need to just make like a tree....and get outta here.

Two coats, Biff?

[boartitz]

My grandfather's lifespan went from before the automobile to the moon landing.

[AUTiger1]

Another thought about technology moving too fast, this morning as I pulled into the service station, I got gas, a biscuit and cup of coffee for the ride in.  I get to the counter to pay it wouldn't accept my debit.  I had to use my credit card, which I detest, but it's for situations like that.  I remembered that my debit card is about to expire and that I got a new one, so I call the bank to ask them why they shut my card down before expiration date and they explain that the new card is b/c the account may have been compromised.  I head home get the new one and activate it.

Now this makes 3 times in 2 years that I have received new cards, 2 from the bank and 1 from my credit card company......I never even thought about accounts being compromised or identity thief until about 2 or 3 years ago.  I have asked my parents before and they said they used to never worry about anything like that until recently.  Just a thought.