What got me thinking about this was this picture:



Accurate or not, it made me look into how long we'd been using hard drives that still functioned on the same basic concept. You don't have to tell me they've changed. I know they have. But it still functions on the same basic concept.

Yes, some technology is relatively new, but it's not like we're using printers that run off steam power. (I mean, why wouldn't we, right? The industrial revolution was only ...)

Maybe I should have just made a thread for flaming current technology, since that's what half of you think I'm on about anyway.

This obviously isn't the case, as I seem to have trouble communicating simple thoughts and ideas in writing. Otherwise we wouldn't have posts that completely miss my original point like this:

I very much agree with this, although I understand the issue is much more complex. This is a huge failure of mankind to this point. Just because something can't be done quickly doesn't mean a movement toward it shouldn't have started a long-ass time ago.

That, and the BCS. Bastards.

QFBCS, BCS, set us back as a species, 2000 years.

As for not yet implementing solid-state drives, I would have to assume that it's a cost issue. With the ability to have up to 8GB (I think) of RAM in a home PC, you virtually guarantee that any of todays programs will run at blazing speeds. I would imagine a 750 GB solid-state hard drive would have to be pretty expensive.

What kind of movement are you talking about? Hybrid cars, hydrogen powered vehicles, electric cars, large gains in fuel efficiency? All of these things are happening.

The problem is people expect to see progress in a narrow way that's been predicted. The reality is lots of things are tried, there are lots of small gains, there are lots of failures, but progress is made.

Compare an average car from 1997 to an average car today. There's a pretty significant difference.

the best ssd's are in the 16gb for 500€ range, so they are definately not cheap enough yet but in 2 years I can see them become affordable.

Verizon G'zOne imo.

I don't know, I think he nailed it.

Technology is driven by economic demands. Todays harddrives are cheap and meet our needs, so why spend way more money on something more expenisve that is overqualified for our needs. The OP is absolutely ******ed to state that these antique harddrives act as bottlenecks when it is obvious that they were not the limiting factor, as innovations in many other componenets were neccessary to make the progress that computers have achieved in the last 50 years while using the same old harddrives.

To the person that commented that cars still travel at the same speed as they did 50 years ago, that's because they are still operated by humans, and under current traffic conditions that is as fast as they can go. If you want to compare performance cars like used in drag racing from today and 50 years ago, you'll see a huge difference.

My point was not so much that cars travel the same speed, but that we are still driving cars, and what we mean by cars is still basically the same as it was 50 years ago. E.g. we are not driving hovercrafts or any other method of transport that would free us from the restrictions of the highway system that was built in the 1950's, designed for traffic loads of the 1950's. And the most fundamental innovations in transportation during that time have not really made any headway in the US (e.g. Concorde jet, bullet trains, Segway).

Also, what I think is remarkable is not we are still generally using the technology of the the past. It is that our technology has advanced so rapidly and substantially on so many fronts, but that transportation, which has been one of the most fundamental and steady dimensions of technological advancement throughout our history, alone seems to have stalled.

I agree whole-heartedly. The transistor was invented over 60 years ago, but we're still using it in EVERYTHING. ridiculous

Ya and how about dogs I mean those have been domesticated for like 15,000 years. Isn't it time we domesticate some animals that can talk?

Let's not forget about women. They've been allowed to vote for like 80 years now. Ridiculous IMO.

Obviously.

Exactly, we've been voting for how long in America, and we still can't quite get it down? I mean, it's only the one essential to our rep. republic, may as well just use ballpark figures from machines with unverifiable results.

This is the same as bringing up solid state hdds. Yes, there's exactly ONE phone that's waterproof. One phone out of how many thousands of different models?

Really, a quad core cpu is necessary somehow? I can see servers making great use of them, but required? Not really.

Anymore, when it comes to pcs, technology is driven by technology. (Unless you're talking about games/gpus) Tell me what the latest, greatest application that needs 4 cores on one processor is and I'll concede this particular point. If the answer is that it hasn't been developed yet, you'll understand that, aside from games, the new trend is to make way more powerful hardware, and then figure out ways to use it that actually .. make use of it.

And as far as economic demands, those same servers that can make use of quad core cpus sure as hell have been crying for faster ways to transfer data. That's why you have RAID 0 and SATA.

Anyone who knows anything about computer hardware should be lolling at this statement.

So OP is mad that his OS takes 30 seconds to load via hard drive instead of just a few seconds off a solid state drive? On any modern $1000 computer 99% of applications can be loaded off a hard drive in less than 5 seconds, I don't know why one would be disappointed off of that, even if you consider for a moment that a program like Microsoft Word loads in under 1 seconds and takes up 6MB of memory, that's loading 48,000,000 0's and 1's in the blink of an eye, hardly a disappointment imo

I know you're getting a lot of hate in this thread but I agree and am being serious. How the hell can we have such a staggering advancement in technology in the last twenty or so years and yet they don't make ALL cell phones waterproof? I'm the least conspiracy theorist-ish person I know and yet this just reeks of "our revenue is higher if we let people drown their phones". Which I guess is pretty obvious but not very customer friendly.

its very easy to make cell phones waterproof. its not like there needs to be advances in design, manufacturing or material. just throw a gasket on there and its waterproof.

im not sure why they dont.

phone turnover ldo

Yes they probably are.

The quad core argument is a bit of a strawman as very few desktops have them; dual core is the general standard on those. The benefit of dual core for end users is that they can have a situation where one app is completely pegging the CPU (ripping, encoding, etc) without completely hosing the other apps (browsing, email, etc).

Of course this is fairly moot to the technology driven by technology comment as the multi core technology was developed for servers. So the answer to your question of what app needs quad cores is SQL Server, Oracle, Weblogic, IIS, etc.

SATA is a pretty lol reference as one of these high performance systems would generally use SAS. As is RAID 0 btw in the majority of cases.

Harder to charge? Besides, with the speed that cell phones have evolved, how many people have really wanted to keep their phones more than 2 or 3 years? Not waterproofing might actually make sense cost-wise with such short lifespans.

http://www.wired.com/science/discove..._breakthroughs

Planned obsolescence? If all cell phones were waterproof, think of the money companies would be missing out on for replacement phones. (I know this isn't the optimal example of planned obsolescence, but if it really only takes a gasket or some other small upgrade, then it's kind of along those lines)

Yeah, what's up with that? I thought this would be a light-hearted thread where people point out the seemingly weird incongruencies between things that get upgraded in items that don't need it vs the basic trouble spots getting rare, if any, attention. I'm surprised no one has brought up cell phone call quality. But yes, this thread has turned more into 'flame the guy that we think hates our technology'.

Me no hatey the tech we have. Me likey. I just wish it would all be upgrade in parallel, I guess. Or at least a little bit closer to parallel.

The politics forum is thataway!

Seriously though, I know dual core is standard. I have a dc cpu. It IS great ... for programs/OSs that actually make use of it.

Exactly, just as solid state drives aren't really that available for the home user. People who want quad cores can pay out the butt for them, as can those who demand SSDs. But dual core cpus are cheap and plentiful. And I guess I'm surprised that there's really no inbetween on the hard drive front, again, given that for home users, this has been the single bottleneck that has yet to be dealt with in an effective/affordable manner.

I guess this is me making assumptions again. I assumed most servers making any use of raid would be doing so with scsi interfaces. Obviously very few server situations exist where you wouldn't want some form of redundancy, but I picked the easiest form of raid to identify with speed boosts.

But this is still just addressing the interface itself. A much faster interface infront of those spinning magnetic disks is still essentially the problem I have in the first place.

The reason you are getting hate in the thread is because you sound stupid. You sound like it is a giant conspiracy to slow down technological advances just to piss you off. If they could make a SSHD cheap enough to sell they would, do you think there are a bunch of scientists hole up somewhere using all the cool gadgets instead of selling them?

lol