I recently stumbled across a very interesting yet very understated fact about the future of computing. It’s a concept that I have a great difficulty understanding, and it makes me wish I paid more attention in physics and chemistry. You may have heard of a principle called Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law is a prediction by Gordon E. Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel, concerning the trend in the gradual increase in computing power since the 1960s. Moore predicted, based on pre-existing data, that the processing power of computers doubles every two years. This comes as a result of the amount of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit. The more transistors, the more powerful the computer. This prediction has been extremely accurate and has been more or less correct for the last fifty years, however there is a problem with this law. The processing power of a computer relies primarily on the amount of transistors that can be squeezed on to circuit, which is not indefinite. Eventually, the processing power of silicon-based computers will be halted by the limitation of miniaturisation. In other words, the transistors can’t keep getting smaller, there is always a barrier as you cannot get smaller than an atom.
This poses a problem for the Digital Age. Computers have steadily been getting more and more powerful as time has gone by, and we are facing the end of this progression. At the current rate of doubling every two years, the wall will be hit between 2013 and 2018. So to clarify, in four to nine years silicon-based computers will have reached the limit of their potential. Making the only way to progress is to go back to the drawing board. Many have suggested ways of prolonging the inevitable limit of processing power, such as theories concerning layering or expanding the size of chips, however each of these merely delay silicon’s shortcomings. However another concept is a lot more interesting.
A quantum computer is an entirely different approach to computing. It is essentially starting all over again with a different theory and with different technology. Quantum computers process data using what is called ‘Quantum Mechanics’, the set of principles governing the atomic level of matter. This is our understanding of how atoms are structured, and how everything exists. Whilst silicon computers process data through simple binary switches, on and off, 1 and 0, quantum computers use the quantum states of atoms to process data at an unbelievable rate. This seems to far in to the realms of science fiction, however rudimentary quantum computers have been built and are proven to work. The world record for quantum computing calculation is a computer that was able to calculate that 5 + 3 = 15. A simple and seemingly remarkable feet, yet this calculation was performed on seven atoms. This processor was composed of just seven atoms.
The use of quantum states rather than binary code gives quantum processing a massive advantage over silicon processing. Multi-tasking. Or parallel processing. Whilst a single core of a desktop processor carries out one instruction at a time, a quantum computer carries out millions. This parallelism endows a quantum computer with amazing speed, as 300,000 calculations would take the same amount of time as 1, or even 3,000,000. Time is no longer a factor.
Google recently announced its interest in using quantum computers to replace its massive amounts of servers. Just this month a single-atom quantum transistor was created, showing great promise for the future. The field of quantum research is ever expanding and the reality of quantum computing draws nearer. Quantum computing theory appears to be correct, hindered only by what is called quantum decoherance, vibrations from external sources that interfere with the atoms. Scientists seem optimistic that a way of shielding the atoms will be invented, which would trigger a completely new start for all computers.
Renegade
And as soon as we finally return, we leave you again. Yes, I am referring to you, our last regular visitor. We once again travel to the farthest reaches of the Australian outback in search of rest, bananas that taste of cheese and emus that lay golden chocolate eggs. We shall return victorious, and when we do we shall blog! We shall blog so hard that some of you may experience nausea due to the gratuitous amounts of opinions, hate for Apple and of course, Yak noises.
On our travels we shall play Moonwalker on the Sega Megadrive in homage to the late Michael Jackson, play Tap Tap Revenge compulsively all through the nights, and possibly sell our souls to the devil in exchange for internet connectivity.
Until we return
Renegade
I have finally managed to get my web browser to a semi-usable state, of which I am now releasing for feedback. This project of mine has been in the works for about five years, of which I have restarted about three times. This version was started in 2007 and as of now is still very very unfinished, however usable. Building this software has taught me many things, one of which is that you should always plan out your programs. Always! I have had to delete reams of code due to this simple arrogant mistake. However I’ve also learnt that I refuse to learn from mistakes. I have never planned a single module of Skout, and I probably never will. That’s called laziness, and that is my middle name (along with awesome).
Skout is a web browser that I have been developing. Whilst packed with features, it retains a lightweight customisable interface to prevent the bloated look and feel of many web browsers today. It could be thought as feel of Chrome with the functionality of Firefox, or at least will be. At the moment it is unfinished, yet I’m releasing it as a pre-alpha version to gain feedback on the current features and to use the general public to get a comprehensive list of bugs.
You can download the MSI installer file through one of the following mirrors. Once downloaded and opened, the file will self-extract and install the browser on your computer. Please use this at your own risk. While the risk to your computer is minimal, you should be made aware that I will not take responsibility for any damages this software may cause. This is unsupported and unfinished, do not expect a fully-functioning replacement to your default browser.
Download Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?gyyrtiozzdm (7.18MB) Updated
System Requirements:
CPU: 1GHz
RAM: 512MB
OS: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista SP1 or Windows 7
Storage Space: >30MB
Prerequisites:
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 pre-installed (click here to download)
Please visit http://skoutbrowser.blogspot.com/ for regular updates for Skout and development news.
(And thanks to Sandmonkey for his contributions to the Verco theme, logo and search page)
Renegade
I recently received my invite in to the Google Wave Preview Program and I’ve been looking around to see what all the buzz is about.
Google Wave is what Google calls the successor to email. It is a web-based application that combines email, instant messaging, social networking and group collaboration techniques. Rather than emails, you send ‘waves’, which sort of make emails look like telegraphs. Waves are interactive, real-time and have a whole range of functions. You can use them to organise events, share photos real-time, brainstorm ideas, collaborate on reports or notes, or even just send a message. If you enable the function, recipients can edit your waves, and you can later on. Its great for when you send that message you really didn’t mean to send, you can just click delete even though its already been sent, or just edit that spelling mistake.
The application is quite customisable, with all the functions nicely grouped together in arrangable panels. Whilst the primary function of Google Wave is to communicate with others who use Google Wave, there is a sort of ‘backwards compatibility’ option to send messages to email addresses, and likewise receive emails through a username@googlewave.com email address. This will probably boost the early adoption, seeing as the program wouldn’t be much use without this feature as there will only be a small amount of initial users.
Social networking, whilst present, is limited to just a half-hearted user profile and a sort of creative use of Waves. Its good for communicating socially with friends and such with the integration of email, IM and gadgets, however not so good on the actual networking aspect due to the lack of ways to find new friends. The incorporation of gadgets in to Waves is quite clever. For example if you want to send a Wave invitation to a bunch of friends to your party, you can add a weather gadget for the day. Why? Well mainly because you can.
I think that Google Wave would be brilliant if there was one more thing. Ubiquitous use. Google Wave will need to be a universal email replacement rather than an geeky alternative in order for it to live to its full potential. Otherwise it’ll just be used as a regular email client as only a handful of people will have the capabilities to receive and use a Wave. My opinions of Wave are purely speculation as I have hardly been able to actually use it due to my mediocre friends list, and due to the general computer illiteracy we are surrounded by, it may just stay that way. I think Google really does overestimate the general public with all its ‘revolutionary’ apps.
And the bit you’ve been waiting for. I have 25 Google Wave invitations up for grabs. To win them, all you have to do is write in the comments why you think you deserve one. If I deem you worthy, I’ll send you an invite. So you’ll want to post the comment with your Google Account, or write your email address if you don’t mind being picked up by a spambot.
Renegade
Saying “If you like Call of Duty 4, then you’ll love Modern Warfare 2” is a little redundant. In fact saying anything about Modern Warfare 2 is fairly redundant seeing as it is probably the most talked about game at the moment. Rather than jump on the bandwagon of a straight review, I’ll talk more about the specifics, if you want a more general review then head over to somewhere like Gamespot where people are paid to spend hours glued to the screen.
First up I’d like to talk about Special Ops. Special Ops adds a whole new dimension to the game. If there was anything wrong with Call of Duty 4 then it would have to be the unbelievably short campaign, and Modern Warfare 2 continues this trend. That said, the campaign is anything but bad. I would guess that the reason for the length would be the amount of time they took up paying attention to each detail because just like CoD4, each level is brilliantly crafted and designed to be immersive. The voice acting is great, the dialogue isn’t cheesy, the story is engaging and it retains that filmlike quality. But it eventually ends, which is where Special Ops comes in. Whilst Special Ops was considered more an extra, I see it as where the game really is. Special Ops contains a load of extra missions for you to complete on your own or with a friend and it really adds to the replayability factor of the game, making it less of a game played only for its multiplayer value.
Within Special Ops there are a variety of game modes. One of which stretches the whole FPS genre slightly with a race. Racing snowmobiles to be exact, which is a lot more fun than it sounds. It is by no means a polished competitor to specialised racing games, rather it is a simple matter of accelerate, brake and reverse. It is more akin to go-kart racing that racing racing. Which in my opinion where the fun really is. Other modes involve the simple task of releasing that murderer we all have within us and just killing wave after wave of enemies. Or sneaking past enemy lines without being detected. And of course the dreaded escort missions. Why any developer thinks escort missions are a good idea is completely beyond me, they are freaking irritating.
As for general gameplay, several tweaks have been made to the overall feel of combat. A graphically realistic yet irritating and scientifically unsound watered down blood effect is used when hurt, replacing the old red around the sides look of CoD4 and 5. As Sandmonkey said at the time “Why would you have blood on your eyes?”, a good question, and why does it fade? Personally, I find it very annoying as it distorts your field of view, which makes it very difficult when surrounded on a hard level when your vision is constantly blurred. On a good note, Last Stand has been replaced with Final Stand, which varies from gametype to gametype. In Co-op, you first collapse and you are given a pistol to shoot bad guys whilst crawling around. This lasts until you’re shot again, at which time you lose the pistol and you crawl around very slowly waiting to be revived by your partner. You cannot die in Special Ops unless both participants are in final stand or the one in final stand is left for two minutes to bleed on the ground. In head-to-head game types final stand involves collapsing and crawling as usual, but you can use your primary weapon to fend off attackers, albeit with very slow aiming. If you survive in this state for a certain amount of time, you just get back up and resume fighting rather than dying. I think this is a good upgrade. The addition of crawling and the use of a weapon other than a pistol that you probably didn’t have two seconds ago actually makes the last stand make more sense, at least to me anyway.
If you have a (real) console or a PC then you would be stupid to buy another game over this one. If you are a PC user you should know about the lack of dedicated servers which means you will be the victims of some really really painful connections. Oh and you’re capped at 8 vs 8, which is nice. But still, the rest makes it worth it.
Renegade
Sandmonkey is back! I bet you missed me. Yes you. Anyway, Renegade and I have finished exams now so we should be posting here more regularly.
So I've been staying at friend's place for the last few days and we have been playing co-op Borderlands. I did a preview of this game a few months ago and mentioned that I was a bit disappointed that the developers planned to make it cell shaded. After playing the game I can say that my opinion on it is the same and I think that cell shading looks like a cheap way to get away with being too lazy to actually develop decent graphics. Although I know many people don't mind too much about the quality of graphics and some even like cell shaded graphics. Just not me.
Graphics aside the game is a solid FPS with well implemented RPG elements. And there are very few bugs that we encountered while playing the game. Although there was one point where we were looking for an object to complete the mission, the object turned out to be nowhere near the marking on the map.
After playing the game for a while you are given a vehicle that you can use to get places a lot more quickly. Unfortunately it can be difficult to drive and can get stuck between objects quite easily.
The levelling system is fair and balanced. So there is not too much to comment on here. Killing people = XP = upgrades. Missions = money = new equipment. Pretty simple. The upgrades differ depending on what class you choose to go as (soldier, siren, hunter & berserker). The equipment you buy includes: weapons, ammo & shields. You can also
pick up equipment from dead enemies.
If you finish doing missions and stuff then invite a friend over. The characters can jump so high that playing leapfrog with a friend could be considered an "exclusive additional feature". And if your friend is too n00bish and doesn't want to play leapfrog, you have the ability to challenge your teammate to a duel in which you fight each other one to one. Then you slaughter them and force them to play leapfrog.
Sandmonkey
Good morning, afternoon or evening, peoples of the blogosphere. This article is slightly different to those that have preceded it. Mainly by the fact that it is 3000 words long, complete with graphics and formatting, and is co-authored by both Sandmonkey and myself. This article started out life as a submission to the PC PowerPlay magazine at the request of the Editor, who apparently had read our blog and wanted to see what other tricks we can do. Unfortunately, this all occurred in June and since then our article remained a mere Word document. However, rather than throw a hard few days work in to the recycle bin and pretend it never happened, I’ve formatted it in a semi-magazine style and now we are making it available for you to download for free. Which works out for you lot seeing as you don’t have to pay for a magazine.
To view the article you will need to have Adobe Reader installed on your computer which is available for most platforms.
We would really appreciate any feedback, positive or negative. So please feel free to abuse the comments section below.
I recently stumbled across a very interesting yet very understated fact about the future of computing. It’s a concept that I have a great difficulty understanding, and it makes me wish I paid more attention in physics and chemistry. You may have heard of a principle called Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law is a prediction by Gordon E. Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel, concerning the trend in the gradual increase in computing power since the 1960s. Moore predicted, based on pre-existing data, that the processing power of computers doubles every two years. This comes as a result of the amount of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit. The more transistors, the more powerful the computer. This prediction has been extremely accurate and has been more or less correct for the last fifty years, however there is a problem with this law. The processing power of a computer relies primarily on the amount of transistors that can be squeezed on to circuit, which is not indefinite. Eventually, the processing power of silicon-based computers will be halted by the limitation of miniaturisation. In other words, the transistors can’t keep getting smaller, there is always a barrier as you cannot get smaller than an atom.
