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

On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:34:17 +0200, Eivind Kjorstad <eivindorama@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>Chuk Goodin skreiv:
>> Saying computers are faster (subjectively) now, except for the
Microsoft 
>> stuff, is kind of like saying movies are way better now, except for the

>> Hollywood ones.
>
>Which would be a perfectly valid statement to make for the vast majority 
>of human beings on this planet. Perhaps a quarter of the movies I see 
>are Hollywood-made, so if the general quality of movies improved, except 
>for those from Hollywood, that'd be fine with me.

Hmm...I'd need to see some stats on that before I'd accept "vast 
majority". I guess I should limit it to the people who actually watch 
movies of any kind, I don't know what ****tion of the Earth's population 
that is, actually, -- with the amount of foreign sales + pirated DVDs and 
downloads, I'd be surprised if "the vast majority" (call that 80% or more)

of movie watchers don't watch a lot of Hollywood movies. That said, I know

other countries do make (and distribute internationally) more total movies

than Hollywood (and not all US movies are from Hollywood, obviously). 
Maybe I could broaden it to "mainstream Western movies"...not sure if that

would help my analogy.

>> Theoretical improvements or improvements in some small areas are not
better.
>
>True. So if the vast majority of the worlds computers ran Microsoft 
>Windows, these improvements would be irrelevant. But in the real world 
>90% or more of the worlds computers do NOT run Microsoft Windows.

Computers, no. Desktop PCs, it's probably still around 90%, isn't it? 
Maybe 85%?

>Even if you limit it to the computers in posession of an average 
>American family, MS-Windows will be a small minority. The Playstation, 
>car, wireless-router, printer, nintendo-ds, pvr, digital-cameras, 
>mp3-players, and assorted mobile-phones are likely not to run 
>MS-windows. (though some of them may be, for example windows-based 
>mobile-phones exist)

One game console used to run Windows, too, the late lamented 
Sega Dreamcast. And game consoles seem to be getting bloated now, too -- 
the Wii takes a heck of a lot longer to start than the Gamecube, which 
took longer than the Super Nintendo (we skipped N64).

>> One thing I wonder about is if there's some kind of limit to this. As 
>> computers keep on getting faster and more powerful, will software bloat

>> continue to rise at the same pace? Or will one or the other hit a 
>> wall? It'd be nice if computers got so fast they could run any
human-coded 
>> software "fast enough".
>
>There's no limit. Software runs as fast (or as slow) as it does because 
>what is tolerable to humans is frequently also the arbiter of what gets 
>included and/or where more resources are spent on optimization.

[snip some examples including the camera one]
We went through that with a camera,too -- our old one even took like 2 
seconds to take a picture. It was like going back to the 1800s or 
something: "Okay, everyone hold still...keep holding still...okay, don't 
move..." And forget trying to catch your kid sliding into home plate or 
jumping off the diving board.

Maybe the commoditization of processing cycles will come about -- software

will just keep getting a tiny bit faster, and a tiny bit faster. Once it's

a mature technology and all.


-- 
chuk