Predictions of the future

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
George William Herbert wrote:

That's why cache design and size are such a big deal.


Indeed, it's starting to seriously affect software design as well. It's
now worth spending many CPU cycles to avoid a cache miss, and that changes
algorithms.


With Sun, you also have the issue that their cache is not what it
should be and they have to have to do a lot of cache checking.
They made a design decision that cache errors will halt the Solaris
OS rather than propagate out possibly corrupt cache data.

The cache checking really affects performance.

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:

"Derek Lyons" wrote:
"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:
Not entirely. Compare Star Trek's computers with today's, for
example. Or even just their satellite phones.

Neither of which were predictions.

Sure they were. They were supposed to be some 300 years in
the future were they not?

And? Not all science fiction is predictive. Thats emphatically the
case with science fiction designed for mass consumption and media
rather than aimed at a more thoughtful audience. (Sadly almost all SF
today falls into the former category.)

And they were a fairly important part of the show, so you can't just
write it off as something they passed over without serious thought.

I never did or said any such thing. Don't confuse plot devices with
serious prediction. (And almost all treknology is in the form of plot
devices. The Great Bird was interested in people and society, not
hardware.)

D.
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(Derek Lyons) wrote in
:

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:

And they were a fairly important part of the show, so you can't just
write it off as something they passed over without serious thought.

I never did or said any such thing. Don't confuse plot devices with
serious prediction. (And almost all treknology is in the form of plot
devices....

Prime example being the transporter. Originally the "away team" was to fly
down to each planet on the Galileo shuttle, but TV budget constraints on
the number of outer-space model shots forced the scriptwriters to
improvise.


--
JRF

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