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has confused everyone from Lawrence Lessig to the EFF

No surprise that Lessig is unhappy with the approach. While lauded on Slashdot, Lessig only wants to restore copyright to the original length instead of abolishing it completely so that our music and film downloading habits are not threatened. I picked up Lessig's latest book Remix because I thought he was going to sock it to The Man, only to be aghast that he really just wants to replace a fairly monolithic Man with a bunch of smaller Men, and stifle the enormous benefit of filesharing.

http://www.amazon.com/ROYAL-NAVY-VERSUS-SLAVE-TRADERS/dp/1844156338/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238674338&sr=8-12 The book is a deeper analysis of the issue.

Who knows, with isolation like this, there may be something to be gained given the right kind of people.

http://www.amazon.com/Master-Cat-David-Garnett/dp/0333178378/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238611553&sr=8-5

Ok, but how about the books?
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Destiny-Star-Diane-Carey/dp/0671795880
The best star trek book ever written. Tells about his father and kirk, and an experiance they had together that shaped kirk's entire life. Has a number of moving scenes of self sacrifice on the part of both kirk and his dad (after kirk starts to get over his teenage issues with his dad).
It would be a TRUELY great star trek movie if they used that book. Unfortunately, the movie seems to be going in a totally differant direction (from watching the trailers).

It's a mistake to think of languages like biological organisms, belonging to strict lineages, and forming a taxonomic tree. The reality is more like an interconnected lattice than a tree.

English is a hybrid of both germanic and romance (i.e., french and latin) ancestry with a generous dash of greek and a smattering of many other world languages. The very basic grammatical form is germanic as is the most rudimentary vocabulary, especially that relating to country activities (field, cow, hound, water, milk, butter, grass, plow, swine off the top of my head). The courtly vocabulary is from French (majesty, court, count, duke, council, chamber, etc.) Much of the technical and scientific vocabulary comes straight from latin and greek (science, technology, biology, geology, physics, transmit, vibrate, orbit, etc.)

Interestingly, much of the slang, especially 20th c. american slang, is from Irish-Gaelic (lunch, booze, dude, and even our beloved geek)

I tried it as a parent because I was raised that way. I stopped when I realized that if I kept doing it, I would likely end up being one of those people we read about in the paper who abuse their kids. I'll let you know in about 20 years whether the non-violent approach of counting her "out" we have been using works, but if I had it to do again, I'd never lay a hand on my kid, and I'll never advise anyone to do so. Spanking or using physical pain means the parent has lost control.

By the way, EC2 + Database? Does it work?

Really depends on what you're doing. You're on network storage, so random reads carry a large cost. On the other hand, your storage is behind a large, durable write cache, so writes are comparatively low-cost. Turns some I/O analysis on its ear, no? ;)

And, yes, EBS disk IO is metered, but the cost will be less than you think due to application caching, OS caching, and your OS's IO scheduler coalescing smaller requests into larger ones. See Projecting Costs here.

All that said, I think that the vast majority of applications that have databases in EC2 do because the rest of the application is also in EC2. For a heavy IO database centric application, I've found that there really isn't any substitute for being close to the bare metal.

I suppose if your working dataset would fit into the 15GB of memory of an extra large EC2 instance, you could be less limited by the latency of EBS reads. MySQL cluster is designed this way (to have most of your data in memory), so obviously your cluster would survive the loss of a node despite the data being in RAM.

I suppose the EC2 architecture really favors MySQL over Postgres because of that. Well, and also I am under the impression that Postgres can answer fewer types of queries (such as count(*)) from the index due to MVCC. Having to go out to the data means that IO penalty hurts Postgres more.

I'll admit to liking the warm fuzzy of knowing I can always throw more hardware at a problem. Hardware is cheap. In many cases, really really cheap.

The fact that I can't get a reasonable pgsql cluster at any price is a big turn-off for me. Anyhow, I'm sure it has plenty of quirks as well that you're just used to by now. I even see the venerated Oracle come up with some really .. um.. "creative" query execution plans every once in a while. Yes, still.

A reference for the practical application of Excel

As I said up-thread... It's ugly, it shouldn't be done but sometimes it's all you have to work with.

You should try one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-NC10-11PBK-10-2-Inch-Netbook-Processor/dp/B001RIYOL0/ref=tag_stp_st_edpp_url

At nearly 10 hours of battery life while lightly browsing, it'll even get you through a multi-hour delay in the terminal. The biggest win for me is that it's small enough to spread out on your tray table without the screen getting stuck on the seat back in front of you. Oh and it's fast enough to play 480p video (720p is a stretch) and has enough battery to play two full movies in flight. /shameless advertisement

JL421

Amazon? A quick search in google pulled up tons of cables.

Parent is not flamebait as the Huffington Post actively works to censor comments it doesn't like and then outright bans the user.

So yes, the Huffington Post does appear to be be a shill site and this attempt at investigative journalism should not be taken seriously.

Explaining to your child WHY they have to wear a helmet and refusing to let them out without it is not dominating either.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. That's all I have to say. You'll understand when you have kids.

Understanding what the child needs and resolving the conflict together, possibly by offering alternatives (another place to run, buying a helmet together etc.), is also a possibility.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. That's all I have to say. You'll understand when you have kids.

Unfortunately for most of us who grew up in violence

Ok, sounds like you're doing the right thing by researching better parenting techniques than the ones you grew up with. That is commendable. So you don't get frustrated and revert to beating the living snot out of your kids, I recommend you add another book to your reading list: here.

Your kid is not a mini-adult. Forget this at your peril.

the troll has 1 relevant thing to say here:

instead of getting your shit together.

Now, I don't care so much about gnome v kde, but I do wish there was more consistency for all Linux GUIs. If everyone had a common standard to work to (eg the Windows Style Guidelines) then the Linux desktop would become a better place to work. MS did wonders for themselves with this, and until recently kept with it - unfortunately, now they've replaced the menu bar with a round button thing, no-one can find the print option anymore - which only goes to show how important and powerful the guidelines were.

Linux has the opportunity to be great (we all know that, even the MS trolls), but isn't necessarily following up on its potential. Gnome v KDE is probably the biggest factor stopping this from happening.

1) Research shows an MBA is probably useless, unless you are someone who is excellent at hob-knobbing and you go to one of the top schools and effectively hob-knob with all your classmates and make good connections. Otherwise, read the 10 Day MBA.

2) Project management skills, especially for someone who can combine a good technical knowledge with them, are in high demand. Consider one a Master's degree in Project Management. Increasingly, Americans are going to be coding less and doing more analysis - requirements, planning, testing, etc. Foreigners will be increasingly handed requirements and doing the coding.

3) Or if you feel you've got to specialize in something (like user interface design, etc.) just go get a CS Ph.D. looking at that particular field. The Ph.D. is definitely worth it, but be careful that you get through it fast enough.

"... Niven's interest in the paranormal, peculiar for a writer usually lauded for the believable science of his stories."

Not that peculiar, since there is in fact a large body of believable science supporting the existence of paranormal effects, which you may well be unaware of if you've only ever read CSICOP or James Randi material. See, for instance:

http://www.parapsychologyandtheskeptics.com/
http://www.deanradin.com/NewWeb/EMindex.html
http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553803352
http://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Mind-hard-find-contemporary/dp/0742547922

"... Niven's interest in the paranormal, peculiar for a writer usually lauded for the believable science of his stories."

Not that peculiar, since there is in fact a large body of believable science supporting the existence of paranormal effects, which you may well be unaware of if you've only ever read CSICOP or James Randi material. See, for instance:

http://www.parapsychologyandtheskeptics.com/
http://www.deanradin.com/NewWeb/EMindex.html
http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553803352
http://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Mind-hard-find-contemporary/dp/0742547922

In Larry Niven's Gil "The Arm" Hamilton stories (collected in Flatlander ), the protagonist lost his arm in an accident, but found that without the physical arm he had developed telekinesis with the remaining phantom hand feeling. This persisted after he got a new arm transplanted, so he had in effect three arms. Now, one can discount Niven's interest in the paranormal, peculiar for a writer usually lauded for the believable science of his stories. But I'd be interested to know if in reality the feeling of a phantom limb would persist even after a new prosthetic or even human transplant were added.

"Personal printers are horribly unreliable and very expensive to maintain."

According to who? If these are kids living on campus then why not have a personal laser printer in their dorm room? Amazon has several laser printers under $100 each. Toner refills are about $5 to $10 each. I own two of these under $100 laser printers, a samsung and a lexmark, and they've worked great for the past several years. Sure if you're printing 100,000+ pages a robust $1,000 office laser printer might be cheaper in the long run, but for the average student printing off a couple hundred pages a month a $100 laser printer is plenty.

I haven't been on campus in awhile, is everyone dragging laptops everywhere now? Seems to me it might have been easier ten years ago since every 100 feet there was another computer lab you could run in and check your mail within a minute. If they close the labs you'll have to whip out your laptop, wait a few minutes for it to boot, find a connection, and finally get your mail.

I can understand campuses closing labs if they saw a large drop in usage in recent years, but I can't imagine college without a computer lab. Most of the time I was in college was spent in the 24/7 computer labs. Many times I'd be working on a project the last minute and a classmate would walk-in and we could compare notes. Very useful indeed. I guess now they can keep the library open 24/7 and have one floor just for laptop users to go to when they need to get away from the dorms to study.

"Personal printers are horribly unreliable and very expensive to maintain."

According to who? If these are kids living on campus then why not have a personal laser printer in their dorm room? Amazon has several laser printers under $100 each. Toner refills are about $5 to $10 each. I own two of these under $100 laser printers, a samsung and a lexmark, and they've worked great for the past several years. Sure if you're printing 100,000+ pages a robust $1,000 office laser printer might be cheaper in the long run, but for the average student printing off a couple hundred pages a month a $100 laser printer is plenty.

I haven't been on campus in awhile, is everyone dragging laptops everywhere now? Seems to me it might have been easier ten years ago since every 100 feet there was another computer lab you could run in and check your mail within a minute. If they close the labs you'll have to whip out your laptop, wait a few minutes for it to boot, find a connection, and finally get your mail.

I can understand campuses closing labs if they saw a large drop in usage in recent years, but I can't imagine college without a computer lab. Most of the time I was in college was spent in the 24/7 computer labs. Many times I'd be working on a project the last minute and a classmate would walk-in and we could compare notes. Very useful indeed. I guess now they can keep the library open 24/7 and have one floor just for laptop users to go to when they need to get away from the dorms to study.

"Personal printers are horribly unreliable and very expensive to maintain."

According to who? If these are kids living on campus then why not have a personal laser printer in their dorm room? Amazon has several laser printers under $100 each. Toner refills are about $5 to $10 each. I own two of these under $100 laser printers, a samsung and a lexmark, and they've worked great for the past several years. Sure if you're printing 100,000+ pages a robust $1,000 office laser printer might be cheaper in the long run, but for the average student printing off a couple hundred pages a month a $100 laser printer is plenty.

I haven't been on campus in awhile, is everyone dragging laptops everywhere now? Seems to me it might have been easier ten years ago since every 100 feet there was another computer lab you could run in and check your mail within a minute. If they close the labs you'll have to whip out your laptop, wait a few minutes for it to boot, find a connection, and finally get your mail.

I can understand campuses closing labs if they saw a large drop in usage in recent years, but I can't imagine college without a computer lab. Most of the time I was in college was spent in the 24/7 computer labs. Many times I'd be working on a project the last minute and a classmate would walk-in and we could compare notes. Very useful indeed. I guess now they can keep the library open 24/7 and have one floor just for laptop users to go to when they need to get away from the dorms to study.

"the best way to illustrate openness and customer flexibility is by what you actually provide and deliver for them."

Well, I'm sure hoping that it's because it's late and I could really do with some shuteye but I can't figure out what the heck that means.

I read it as "talk is cheap." Amazon delivers working web-services and APIs to same. It's not necessarily in their interest to have different APIs imposed on them by some blue-sky proposal not grounded in working software.

It's not like you can't spin up an EC2 instance running whatever x86 or x86_64 OS you want (Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, etc) on your own system images you built, etc. Amazon web services are basically content and usage agnostic - they'll care if you're trying to run a botnet in EC2 or sling child porn in S3, but Amazon won't boot you or charge you more if you want to use EC2 to run a bookstore or use S3 to distribute or sell (non-pirated) ebooks.

What further openness is demanded here? Amazon's service APIs are all published. Is the demand that Amazon disclose its backend software and architecture? Because that's stupid - even the GPL doesn't demand companies that use GPL software publish how they use that software internally, or publish modifications made to that software that aren't distributed outside the company. (As an aside, yes, Amazon does publish source for the GPL software on the Linux-based Kindle.)

You might want to check out a new book called "Burning the Ships: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft" by Marshall Phelps and David Kline. I haven't read it yet but I'm sure it has some revelations.

As a member and avid listener, NPR is balanced in news that is NOT politically sensitive. The have many great info pieces, local station pieces, and human rights stories. But during last years primaries and elections, their bias was completely obvious. On more than one occasion I had to change the channel because the reporter was about to orgasm talking about Obama. Based on the tones of their voices, you could tell who was thrilled and giddy (the Obama reporter) and who was hesitant and annoyed (the McCain reporter).

It is also biased with the current economic crisis. The only show on many NPR stations that provides real coverage of it is APM's Marketplace, and even then, that's their news beat. Where's the investigative journalism into this mess? And I don't mean a generic "Blame the Bush Administration" because honestly, that's not the whole truth. Why aren't they calling for Fannie & Freddie execs to give back their multi-million dollar bonuses? Why aren't they calling for the resignation of a number of Congress critters? Why not investigate the largest deficits ever projected by the CBO?

My political bias is libertarian and economic bias is capitalist, just fyi. And to further confirm my bias, Mark Levin's new book Liberty and Tyranny is absolutely brilliant.

Mod Parent up!! This is the area of one's "ability" that so often gets overlooked in the various "studies" that seem to come out periodically (probably because it's so difficult to quantify). Too often, people focus on specific and often technical skills in their particular field, and completely disregard the "people skills". For those interested, I must recommend this book.

I use one of these Cherry mechanical switch compact keyboards. It's not really pretty, but it's done wonders for my typing accuracy. Wish my laptop keyboard was half as good.

That's it. We should ban all video games because farmers are being taught bad habits.

Whether you use WebSphere from IBM or Sharepoint from Microsoft, you have the ability to leverage an API and develop a custom solution around something that has a few things.

1. A community.
2. Documentation
3. Support

Now I am all for open source in an environment that deems it important, but having an SLA for a solution that is now going to become your intra/extranet is important -- and Drupal doesn't provide that. Sharepoint does, and so does Websphere.

All these things are available for open source solutions as well. If you don't think the Drupal community is adequate, there are companies that provide managed Drupal solutions and support. If you need an SLA, you can get one. If you need design or implementation services, they are available from a growing list of consulting firms. Drupal's code is open and documented, and if you can't read code, there are plenty of books. We handle our own Drupal projects internally, but not because we have to. There are many options.

I think the book was called Wyrm . The quote was from the main character's mentor.

The smallest iPod you can get is 80 gigs.

I am pretty sure that 1 GB is a fair bit smaller than 80 GB.

These backwards magical-thinking buffoons have no evidence, no tests, nothing to point to a different theory; they have a book. A book they believe trumps the evidence of our own eyes and our most advanced scientific methods.

Evolutionary theory has no tests either. You have a book too: Origin of Species. You have no evidence of your own eyes because your life span is less than 100 years and the lifespan of human existence is easily less than 10,000 years. Your only "evidence" says that because Animal A has feathers and Animal B has feathers and Animal A lived a long time ago then Animal A must be related to B. How do you explain that leap of logic? That's what I call magical thinking. That is no evidence at all.

YES! YES! I agree!!!

Evolution is just theory and science is just a bunch of theories!

I also want public funds to be spent teaching the gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

We also have a book!

I say all three theories (evolution, ID, F.S.M.ism) should be presented with equal time and children should be left to decide on their own!!

Cloud computing as a whole is vaporware

Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure beg to differ.

I read Sun in a Bottle a summary of the history both hot and cold fusion research. The describes four cold fusion setups, two which have been reliably reproduced by others, and to which havent. The unsuccessful ones are the Pons & Fleishman fusion batteies and sonoluminescent bubbles. The successful one include a Telsa coil (has become a science fair staple) and one using solid state electronic materials. Unfortunately these only output a tiny fraction of energy compared to the import, so arent power sources. On the other other hand these may be safe neutron source for medical therapies, material science imaging anddrillhole rock evaluation because these neutrons can be turned on and off. Conventional source use radioactive sources which are occasionally lost or stolen and require high-security licenses from the feds.

Hot fusion has it share of scams too according this book. The first was an Argentine entrepeneur who claimed hot fusion success and fleeced General Peron's treasury in the early 1950s.

In some scientific fields there are positions you can take that will effectively kill your chances at a tenure-track faculty position

Let's level our sights at the main culprit, shall we? String theory.

Lee Smolin's (a theoretical physicist with his Ph.D. from Harvard) book The Trouble with Physics describes how taking a contrarian view of string theory effectively kills your career.

For anyone interested in the book, it's important to point out that it's really got two main thrusts. One is an attack on academic homogeneity (which I agree with and think Smolin argues effectively that theoretical currently suffers from such homogeneity in this area without sufficient experimental results to justify the uniformity). The other is an attack on string theory and quantum physics themselves. This I'm not as concerned about (due to incapacity to comprehend and store for later retrieval), being merely an abstract mathematics student in a former life and currently a law student.

This one is also excellent ...

http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Transmutation-Reality-Cold-Fusion/dp/1892925001

There's a few good books that are English translations of books published in Japan. Research has been continuous in Japan, unlike the US, and Japanese researchers have a much better handle on the science than US researchers.

If you're into this sort of thing and other scientific anomalies check out 13 Things That Don't Make Sense. Looks at a variety of scientific topics that scientists can't explain or are deeply divided on. Good book.

http://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Dont-Make-Sense/dp/0385520689

Peter Hagelstein has an interesting background in hi-visibility technology. In the 1980s he was at the heart of trying to create an X-ray laser pumped by nukes that was to be a key component of the original Reagan Star Wars missile shield. See the writeup in the book Star Warriors.

I've heard of Primus... and that's it.

The band Primus bought a Ozzie comm company? Doubtful they would have volunteered to do anything with the government, unless it was to discredit this (likely).

Or is it the transformers in disquise, Optimus Primus? Which then begs another q, which is the real identity. Optimus Primus is either some buyer on Amazon, or some yank from MySpace with a few hot femme friends?

But this all still doesn't answer the base question; why is Australia still even considering this steaming pile or Wallaby feces?

Fstr, a book by James Gleick (or Chaos fame)
His book is more about making you reflect about the ever increasingly faster society than actually help you speed up, but it's an enlightening read never the less.
http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Acceleration-Just-About-Everything/dp/067977548X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237833148&sr=8-5
^C

You my friend, do not understand how the human mind works concerning politics. I would recommend the book "The Political Mind" by George Lakoff to become more aware of what motivates people. Also, I did vote for Obama rather than any of the alternatives (including Green, Socialist, Lib, etc.) because I did think that he was better than the alternatives. That's the only rationale I need. Others may need more. And with your morally chastising and condescending tone, it's really doubtful that you will reach them. This tone is also common in the more radical parties.

To Faster by Gleick

I built a system rather cheaply that works great with virtualization. Go for a decent quad core (Q9450/Q9550 for example) and a MB that supports DDR2 instead of DDR3 (or both, like this motherboard)

- The Q9450/Q9550 have large caches and overclock (on air) easily and stably to 3.5GHz+ without any hassle.

- Get reasonably fast DDR2 ram (esp. if you are overclocking). You won't reap much/any benefits from going to DDR3 with this setup, so go the cheaper DDR2 route. Get 4GB (or more).

The rest of the parts will be up to you, but this is what I'd recommend at the moment as the core of your system. Make sure that you get a MB with enough internal SATA ports (or eSATA) - the MB I linked to has only 4xinternal SATA and 2xeSATA ports; if you need more, you'll have to look elsewhere.

I built a system rather cheaply that works great with virtualization. Go for a decent quad core (Q9450/Q9550 for example) and a MB that supports DDR2 instead of DDR3 (or both, like this motherboard)

- The Q9450/Q9550 have large caches and overclock (on air) easily and stably to 3.5GHz+ without any hassle.

- Get reasonably fast DDR2 ram (esp. if you are overclocking). You won't reap much/any benefits from going to DDR3 with this setup, so go the cheaper DDR2 route. Get 4GB (or more).

The rest of the parts will be up to you, but this is what I'd recommend at the moment as the core of your system. Make sure that you get a MB with enough internal SATA ports (or eSATA) - the MB I linked to has only 4xinternal SATA and 2xeSATA ports; if you need more, you'll have to look elsewhere.

I built a system rather cheaply that works great with virtualization. Go for a decent quad core (Q9450/Q9550 for example) and a MB that supports DDR2 instead of DDR3 (or both, like this motherboard)

- The Q9450/Q9550 have large caches and overclock (on air) easily and stably to 3.5GHz+ without any hassle.

- Get reasonably fast DDR2 ram (esp. if you are overclocking). You won't reap much/any benefits from going to DDR3 with this setup, so go the cheaper DDR2 route. Get 4GB (or more).

The rest of the parts will be up to you, but this is what I'd recommend at the moment as the core of your system. Make sure that you get a MB with enough internal SATA ports (or eSATA) - the MB I linked to has only 4xinternal SATA and 2xeSATA ports; if you need more, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Fucking Americans...

I guess you aren't worried about the U.S. government killing people because no one in your family has been killed.

I guess you have never seen the photos of George W. Bush kissing a Saudi price.

I guess you have never read the book House of Bush, House of Saud, about how Bush and his friends and family took money to support the Saudis against the best interests of the United States.

In recent years, the U.S. government has carried corruption to levels never seen before: 1) A higher percentage of its people in prison than ever before in the history of the world. 2) More countries invaded or bombed than any other country in the history of the world. (24 since the end of the 2nd world war.) 3) More government debt than any other country in the history of the world. 4) More people killed during undeclared wars than any other country in the history of the world. (11,000,000 killed directly and indirectly in 24 countries.) 5) More money spent on secret surveillance than any country in the history of the world.

But most people don't know about this. Why? Because it's painful to learn, I guess.

I get all my nuke sub info from Tom Clancy novels....

Why do you think I asked if it was fact, rumor or fiction, and that I couldn't remember the source?

Clancy also published a purportedly non-fiction book entitled Submarine, although I don't think it said much about the propulsion section. In fact, I think he specifically said he wasn't allowed there.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a great way to do something like this w/out laying out any money.

As low as 15 cents per hour and ONLY when you are actually using a virtual resource.

Get an AWS account - its free.

Learn how to use their Amazon Machine Instance (AMI) management tool to launch any of the hundreds of publicly available operating system images out there (Windows, Solaris or Linux), 32 bit or 64 bit.

Clone an AMI that you like as a base to make it "yours". Customize it however you like.

Put VMware Workstation on it and you can experiment building Virtual machines all you like.

I've done it with an Ubuntu 64 Bit AMI then after installing VMware on the Ubuntu 64 I have played around with creation of virtual machines of other operating systems and applications such as Ubuntu Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows XP & Vista.

Its basically using the virtual cloud environment that AWS offers to work on developing your own virtual appliances or machines.

Standard AWS Instances

Instances of this family are well suited for most applications.

* Small Instance (Default) 1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform

* Large Instance 7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform

* Extra Large Instance 15 GB of memory, 8 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 1690 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform

High-CPU Instances

Instances of this family have proportionally more CPU resources than memory (RAM) and are well suited for compute-intensive applications.

* High-CPU Medium Instance 1.7 GB of memory, 5 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each), 350 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform

* High-CPU Extra Large Instance 7 GB of memory, 20 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each), 1690 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform

EC2 Compute Unit (ECU) â" One EC2 Compute Unit (ECU) provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor.

first, 'upgrade' was referring to using drivers that reenable the disabled features of the pro card's drivers.

If a pro card is installed but features are disabled that's stupid, and I don't want to be a customer of said business. All this does is increase the cost.

secondly, unless your photography somehow involves high end opengl 3d acceleration needs, then i think you have been misled about what the 'pro' card gives you

Fact is is that while online graphics may not need much it's totally different for print. High res and deep colour depths are important for some things. If you're getting married and higher a photographer you want your photos to be as good as they can be. The same if you're an ad or commercial photographer or a fine art photographer. Pro photographers can go through tyme, hassle, and money to make sure what they see on their monitor matches what they print. An Eizo monitor, even a 24" can cost thousands of dollars. NEC and LaCie are just as expensive. Monitors with an S-IPS/H-IPS type panel can be quite expensive, but of you make your living in photography or other graphics arts you need such a monitor. Once you have a good monitor you then have to use a colorimeter like an Eye-one or Huey to calibrate the monitor. If you're also doing the printing yourself and not having a pro lab do it you also have to calibrate the printer. Going through all this you don't want a cheap graphics card driving your monitor.

Falcon