Re: How to make money fast (in science fiction)

On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:26:37 -0500, Tim Little 
<tim@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>Yes, I expect so.  The degree of bloat and sluggishness is dictated by
>user tolerance levels.
>
>
>> It'd be nice if computers got so fast they could run any human-coded
>> software "fast enough".
>
>Impossible.  For any amount of processing power there are tasks that
>will require more.  I have certainly thought up simple algorithms that
>would be useful if only I had a machine that could process on the
>order of 10^200 instructions per second (give or take a factor of a
>quadrillion or so).

Yeah, there are always going to be things that take a lot of number 
crunching -- most stuff that we currently use supercomputers for is 
probably never going to run on your phone (although maybe a massively 
parallel version could run on everyone's phone at once...wasn't that in 
_Halting State_?) But regular user software (office apps, games, internet 
stuff -- consumer level applications) might hit that wall, someday...
-- 
chuk