teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:Also, I can't tell if you're supporting my point or not. Your tone and phrasing suggests that you are arguing against me, but your point - that x86 will die - is similar to my point. So I'm somewhat confused.
Seems pretty clear to me. He's arguing against you. He's saying your prediction was common 2 decades ago. Back then everybody knew that " x86 will die (Intel themselves failed to do that), Apple is doomed, Moore's Law will fail at 100nm" despite all those predictions ending up wrong. You need to read the entire sentence and look at the context to understand that when he said "x86 will die" he's stating it as one of the incorrect predictions of the 90s. He is in no way stating it as a fact. He then goes on to list all the potential competitors to x86 and why they can't/didn't replace it.
teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:I'm just thinking that it would be weird if 100 years from now, all computers ran almost the same way they do today.
They won't. They didn't 36 years ago when x86 was introduced. But like I said you can dramatically change how the machine works at every level and still implement support for the same languages pretty easily in most cases. You just need a bunch of circuits to translate the ISA language into the hardwares own internal machine code language. Which all x86 cpus have had since the 90s. Not only do todays x86 cpus have radically different core architectures but they also have radically different internal machine languages. Which are constantly changed. As long as some form of translator (decoder) remains in place though x86 code is still supported.
teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:I am not assuming that quantum computing WILL inevitably happen no matter what. I am only assuming that for the purpose of the discussion of what will happen IF it does emerge, not to have to litter every sentence with phrases like the one I just quoted. I guess I should have made that clearer.
Stating what will happen if it does emerge is still a series of baseless assumptions though. And you used language multiple times in your post that suggested you were claiming that it is inevitable. While in the very next sentence implying you weren't. Very confusing.
teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:But look at it this way: say you have a 1/1,000,000 chance of winning. The chance of winning for two days in a row is 1/1,000,000,000,000. The chance of winning three days in a row is 1/1*10^-18. And so on. That's an exponential drop.
No it's not. All you've just stated is that as number of days until your death increases the chances of winning decreases exponentially, which is true. But your lifespan isn't infinite. Nor does it keep increasing. Each day you live decreases the number of remaining days and therefore increases your chances of winning on every remaining day. Not the other way around. If you lose well then your chances go straight down to 0% since you've already lost.
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-Ron Swanson
"I shall be a good politician, even if it kills me. Or if it kills anyone else for that matter. "
-Mark Antony