Yeah, imagine a production line hooked up directly to a web-based storefront where people are buying things to build. We're not far from it, and when this happens it probably won't be in China.
_The former is much faster and provides the same functionality. Why is not all RAM in a machine SRAM? The answer is, as one might expect, cost._
But since the density of transistors is pushing the cost of everything down how expensive is expensive? Does it make sense to product a SRAM-based laptop with 512MB of fast memory?
Well, part of the faster-than-DRAM is because the cache is limited in size. Addressing 512 MB (and keeping it close enough to the CPU) would require a lot more address lines/multiplexing and CPU die real estate [1] that it would be prohibitively expensive and not as fast.
It'll still be faster than DRAM so you still have a point.
[1] In this die-shot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Barcelona_die.jpg) of AMD's Barcelona (4 core) all the regular grid like pattern is the cache (total is about 4MB + 512KB or so.) That takes about half the chip's real estate.
SRAM uses 6x times more transistors to store the same amount of information, so do your math for a hypothetical "512MB laptop". On the other hand maybe they do exist, did you look?
FTA: It takes more transistors and the packaging of DRAM is more regular. Even if you are willing to pay 6x as much for the needed transistors, you would also need to have your memory chips be much large physically, which, I assume, scales up the cost quite a bit.
In addition to being larger and harder to read data out of, as well as having far far lower yields, it uses easily several times more power to keep on than DRAM does.
Especially if you run it at speeds that would make it comparable to cache.
Don't you think they should be showing comments from "gold" users differently? Kind of like what PG did a while ago using different colors highlight distinguished users...
That would segment Reddit immediately into at least four communities among the gold/ungold and supports-highlighting/opposes-highlighting axes, and I suspect many members of those communities are going to be violently passionate that only their position is acceptable for True Reddit Supporters and that the heretics must burn.
Judging from the comment thread[1], it looks like that's already happening.
The top rated comment starts, "As someone who donated..."
And from the second highest comment, 'I will not be "donating" money to a corporation which has shown no real initiative in growing the site.'
That said, I think any drama would just be background noise for the vast majority of users. People go to reddit for entertaining links and funny or interesting comments. Drama doesn't threaten that.
Maybe being able to buy virtual swag might be a better way to go for Reddit, in a similar fashion to Dungeons & Dragons Online.
Tiny [icons] of narwhal tusks, lolcats or rashers of bacon that could appear next to your name could prove quite popular with the community. Similarly, being able to not only upvote, downvote, but also put a 'hex' on a comment I could see as being an amusing pastime. Not to mention, they already have the beginnings of an achievement system in place with the awards panel. I could see them greatly expanding that with quest style achievements; "posted 5 links", say, to earn /reddit/credits.
I'm not sure how it would affect the community, but the revenue possibilities are endless.
Depends on which section you read. I introduced my fiancee to /r/IAmA and she thinks reddit is mostly about child molesting drug-dealers who fly fighter-jets and rescue endangered species, because they were raised in a polygamist cult family living in the Everest base camp.
To me it's mostly proggit, hastily scanned once every 1-2 days.
/. has had editing problems, but the comment quality has not, to my experience, dipped that low. It's not as high as HN, but it hasn't dipped that low, either.
HN and /. are on opposite ends of a spectrum--HN is what happens before the trolls arrive, given you seed the community well, and /. is what happens after the trolls leave.
I always though the biggest problem with slashdot was that the moderation somehow lead to an extremely insular community. There was a prevailing "slashdot" opinion and that was pretty much the only opinion expressed in highly moderated comments. I was a reader for years and that's pretty much why I left.
What's strange is that slashdot moderation isn't that different from any other site, but for whatever reason, I think it hurt slashdot far more than any other site. Maybe, it's just that by default not that many comments are displayed as opposed to reddit or hn, so it's all the more noticeable when the top 20 or so comments all are basically the same.
I usually found a lot of highly moderated comments opposing the "Slashdot groupthink", particularly ones that criticized the "Slashdot groupthink" by name. But there were a lot of shared cultural assumptions there as well.
There is a 'lounge' subreddit that only donators can get into. I don't think they should treat people differently on the main part of reddit, it'll cause too many issues/arguments.
