According to http://ip6.nl/#!slashdot.org it scores 1/5 stars, and calmly states that "slashdot.org isn't quite ready for IPv6 yet."

You are forgetting the basic laws of conservation of energy and mass. There is a reason by replicators are a science fiction tech.

Creating mass out of energy/electricity would require m/(c^2) Joules or energy. With the current speed of light and price of electricity, I would hate to see the power bill for replicating a glass of water.

Even if you are not creating stuff out of energy, but just printing it from some base material, that base stuff needs to be produced, with the relevant chemical/material properties. That is not exactly for free either.

So don't worry, the traditional economy isn't going anywhere just yet.

>I actually was interested in getting a Wikileaks mug, but all they had is stuff that you had to wear in public.

My mug arrived a few days ago, check it out here : http://officialwikileakseu.spreadshirt.net/p6

But that is only true if you assume 100% conversion of gas to electricity which is obviously not correct. A really high end gas powered power plant may convert 40 % of that into electricity. Which, transported and used for heating even further reduces the efficiency. So lets say, overall, this gas I used corresponds to 3000 kWh of actual electricity. I am still under the apartment category :(

- 2500-5000 kWh I live in an apartment

wow, you americans...

Those ranges are a scary. As a family of 4, in a semi detached house in north-western europe we use 3000 kWh of electricity and 1000 m3 of gas a year! According to your numbers I would use more than 3 times more if I was in the US.

No wonder that people say that if the whole world would like like Americans,we would need two to three planets to support us...

Can you elaborate please, it seems like a quite nice machine for some basic note typing/calendar/web/ssh stuff.

Obligatory genious from "The Parking Lot is Full" :
http://plif.courageunfettered.com/archive/wc263.gif

Thanks for the comment!

running a variety of fluid dynamics codes.
 

This is indeed the key. Our models are Java/semantic web type of things, with many, many threads and inter agent communication. almost no math. I guess in that case it would not make too much sense to move to these architectures.

San somebody who has actually worked with such machines enlighten me about its performance on tasks that are not floating point intensive? Our simulations mainly push many,many objects around, with relatively little, or no floating point math in them.

Do such machines still make sense, or are we better off with a bunch of general purpose CPUs clustered together? How do they compare to Suns Niagara cpus that have umpteen hardware threads in them ?

Yeah, you are right. Except that you can not choose not to play in this one...

Of course, you mean *when* not if...

That has been tried a number of times, and each time ended in a epic fail. For a case study, talk to any Aussie about Rabbits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia or about the cane toad see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toad

If it is that resilient and fast growing, you will not be able to control it anyhow. Many, many examples of invasive species throughout the world show this. So, just learn how to harvest it and make biodiesel/biogas/electricity out of it. No intensive agriculture, ferilizers or herbicides needed. Plus, this might piss off the corn/ethanol lobby enough to actually start taking action against the grass. Ether way, we win. Oh yeah, biodiversity losses, but that is shafted anyway...