..'cause Gmail works perfectly for me, and has been working just fine the whole day. Does the fact that I am in Finland have anything to do with Gmail not going down?
Considering the BS Apple gets away with, I think stuff is much more impervious to the reality distortion field than we thought. I think the units you should use are ExaJobs.
There is no reason why the current UK govt. wouldn't do this - after all, it's apologizing for something that a completely different set of leaders is guilty of. They will do it for no other reason but because it makes sheer political sense. No, not because it's the right thing to do.
Likewise, the Lockerbie bomber wasn't released because it's the right thing to do, but because Gaddafi all but publicly promised natural gas and oil at favourable prices, in return.
I am sure Google made the right decision. I am also sure, however, that an 8-way MP computer with loads of contiguous RAM will excel at some tasks where a cluster will not. A cluster is not always a direct replacement for a Sun M8000. Each has its uses and its rightful place in IT.
In one of the links I found this very intelligently written post, which kinda kills your buzz (I guess):
It's funny because people keep thinking these chip revisions are going to make the hardware more stable and they're not. Their sole purpose is to save Microsoft money in production costs. Smaller chipsets=fewer materials=more $$$ is MS's pocket.
The amount of heat the CPU and GPU produce are the least of your troubles folks, there many more issues with the 360's design and they're all far more severe. Let's start with the thermal paste. For those unfamiliar, thermal paste is what's used to transfer heat between the GPU and CPU to their respective heatsinks. The thermal paste that MS uses in the 360 is cheap crap that bakes into cement after a few hundred hours of use. This issue could be easily fixed if MS would just use a more effective paste like Arctic Silver 5 but that would drive production costs up ever so slightly and we can't have that.
Next problem: They mounted the disc drive on the GPU heatsink. Seriously MS? What the hell? That is the worst design idea ever, the heatsink's purpose is to pull heat off the GPU so a fan can blow air over it which will whisk it away out of the system. The worst thing you could do there is mount one of the hottest running components in the system directly on top of that. You're just asking to create a hotspot.
Problem 3: Air flow. Worst designed system for airflow ever. There are two primary intake fans on the 360. One is covered up by the harddrive. The other can't pull air in if the system is standing vertically. If you don't lay the system flat it has to rely on the incredibly tiny vents on the side of the system to pull all the air into the system. Beyond that the interior of the system does not allow for optimal airflow. It's awful. Compare the guts of a PS3 and a 360 if you ever get the chance (Google). The PS3's innards look like they were well planned out and intelligently placed. The 360 is a clusterfuck that looks like MS just schlepped all the components in and called it good.
Final problem, and by far the worst: The X-Clamps. Why these are still present I don't know. Essentially for those who don't know the X-Clamps are two X shaped clamps on the bottom of the motherboard that hold the heatsinks in place. Their fatal flaw? They warp under intense heat. That warping bends the motherboard. That bending breaks solder connections. The breaking produces the RRoD. These clamps could easily be replaced with screws, washers, and nuts. In fact many console modders have done just that and found in combination with an application of Artic Silver 5 to the CPU and GPU it fixed a red ringed console. So why these are still in use I don't know. What I do know is they are the 360's main problem
I hope one day people will realize that most executives (in publicly-traded companies) DON'T have the companies', the investors' or the employees' interests at heart. Most of these executives gained their position due to crafty manipulation and NOT by actually, really improving a product or product line, increasing profitability or market share. But they were and will be always great at presenting their (short or very short term) results in the best light possible, and excellent at knowing and manipulating the right people.
This breed of executives will outsource to poor countries (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins), lower salaries and/or fire employees at home (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins) and eliminate R&D and products/services (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins) - which will look good for a short while. Long enough to get a new promotion or a job at another company, after cashing in.
Please do yourself a favor and have a glance at this book.
Science does not go hand-in-hand with majority opinion - neither does science require consensus, nor does consensus imply any connection to reality.
Right. There's also a pretty solid consensus in the scientific community about the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. And yet, a few "scientists" seem to invent the perpetuum mobile every now and then.
At certain concentrations, CO2 becomes a pollutant: that is, when the CO2 dissolved in sea water causes it to become too acidic to support plankton life - plankton is the #1 oxygen "factory", and too high CO2 will disrupt it. And there is evidence that plankton population is decreasing, and so are coral reefs, another victim of increased water acidity.
(There are many other negative consequences of high CO2 concentration, but why overdo it - I've proven my point)
Hydrazine is downright evil. It's extremely toxic, but also hallucinogen so you get disoriented before you're killed off, at low concentrations. At even lower concentrations it is "just" carcinogen.
Oh, and did I mention that it's explosive? It explodes if you look at it wrong.
Both THC and psylocibin are known to NOT cause addiction. Also, users of these drugs do NOT show aggressive behavior (unlike with other drugs, especially alcohol (yep, that's right, that's one of the worst)). In light of this, I think it's high time to completely legalize the production, sale and consumption of these drugs. If that happened, I would expect that the consumption of the "harder" drugs would decrease as well, for two reasons:
1) Some people won't need the harder drugs, if they can access these other two aplenty. 2) By legalizing these drugs, of which marijuana is a very popular one, we reduce the contact between users and illegal dealers, who have a vested interest in encouraging the use of harder drugs such as cocaine, heroine etc.
I was quite depressed a couple of years ago, and the psychiatrist wanted to prescribe me an anti-depressant. Instead of using the prescription, I decided to educate myself on anti-depressants, and what I found was, well, depressing: not a single anti-depressant on sale is safe to use. They all have side effects that are either nasty or very nasty. But psylocibin and THC are both excellent anti-depressants (practically the most effective ones), and have NO side effects. This is when I started to become a supporter of legalization of these drugs.
The truth is, nowadays more than ever, getting a top management position is due to effectively manipulating other people - and who is more effective at manipulating than corporate psychopaths, especially in the chaotic world of publicly traded corporations?
This is why
1) executives rarely care for the long-term viability of the company they lead, opting instead for a short-term uptick where they can cash in and then leave. 2) these people can always find another executive position, once they leave their previous company, regardless of how dire the state they caused their company to get into - they can manipulate people so well that they will find an accepting armchair immediately. 3) BODs are filled with people who just move from company to company, from one executive position to the other. 4) golf is so damn important for them - that's where they network and prepare their parachutes.
The children of the Somali immigrants have their parents as role model, and that is: procreate and don't work. The next generation will be exactly the same.
Yes, there are a few people here and there who travel on state money. In Finland, every student gets a monthly allowance from the state, and I know a few people who travel, but as they return to Finland twice a year to take book exams, they are hardly misusing the money.
I wasn't talking about students getting a state stipend. I was talking about a Swedish couple that receives social benefits, who are not students and their status isn't and won't change. And yes, neither these are representative of the youth in Sweden, but there are more of them (there is, of course, a grey area of those who have a hybrid lifestyle, too) who take more advantage of the system, as that's what they learn to be a good thing to do.
And my main point stands, strikingly so in fact: this is very well explained by game theory whereupon the one individual that decides to game the system at the detriment of everybody else, will have the largest gains, and when you introduce that one player willing to do it, the others will soon follow suit. You can kick and scream against it, but it's just game theory in action, here.
The combined experience of the Nordic countries for half a century now should stand as proof that, even if everything in life is provided for you, the vast, vast majority of people still go out and work for a living.
That's changing. Yes, you are right, the vast majority of people used to go out looking for a job - out of a feeling of honor/shame. Shame to do anything to game the system is deeply ingrained in the mentality of the Nordic people. That's why the system worked so well to the advantage of everybody: because there were very few who would game the system (this is basic game theory, actually).
But nowadays you have a huge number of immigrants who don't share the same mentality, and are more than happy to game the system - just look at Malmö (Sweden), or the Somali immigrants in Finland. 1/4 of Malmö is populated by immigrants who don't have a job and live off social services. When I say "don't have a job" I don't mean that only a few have a job. I mean NOBODY has one (the situation is not quite as dire in Finland with the Somali immigrants, but basically, they have an incentive to procreate and not get a job). Only the Swedes work. Until some are fed up, that is. I have met a couple of young swedes that decided it's easier to just get social services money and use it to travel around the work while economizing. Well, I give them props because at least they make the best possible use of that money by being penny-pinching with accommodation and travel expenses. Apparently, more and more people of their generation are just saying "why the fuck should I work when these guys aren't".
If by miracle my post is not drowned down into depths of oblivion, note that Dubya was depicted tens of times with very unflattering altered photos, and so was Cheney, while the W. administration was in power - and nobody complained. See this or this, for example.
Also, while Mc Cain was campaigning, this rather shocking picture was publicized by The Atlantic - who later recanted and apologized - but the point is, nobody in the McCain camp complained, let alone did you have public and officers making a fuss about it.
But with Obama, the thought police is up in arms bigtime.
And they are right to be: Obama is sacred and he farts rainbows, and his words are words of wisdom, and he poops gold nuggets. And Obama won't speak up: it is the Will of the People that is against any criticism of the Beloved President.
I think publishers would be nothing short of deranged to not want to have their books on Google Books. I have bought all my textbooks based on what I saw on Google Books, since it appeared. That's right, all of them. We're talking (sadly) expensive textbooks on nanotechnology, microfulidics and silicon microtechnology (as well as some materials science). Google Books is by far the BEST marketing tool that a publisher could imagine.
Yup, same experience here for scientific article publishing. The university that I was at in 2002 had to cancel their subscription to some journals with them because they were charging the library > $10k a year for the subscription. This was something like five times the average price (and the journals weren't all that great either). Secondly, the majority of journals they publish seem to have one staff member handling all the manuscripts, this makes them slow, slow, slow. I try not to send any manuscripts to any journals owned by them.
I wish those were the only problems I had with Elsevier journals. But I can't avoid publishing in then, because (sadly!) those bastards have some of the highest impact journals in my field, and I must, by policy of my institution, try to have my articles published in the highest impact journals first.
I think the people who were already living there would have probably objected..
In fact, he was just a 'Discovery Troll', who, having 'discovered' the lands, 'claimed' them for His imperial majesty.
They were then systematically despoiled while the people who had merely been living off the land for generations were treated as if they did not exist, or called degenerates and criminals if they objected to their new rich and violent overlords.
Seems familiar?
This is what political correctness ran amok looks like.
Incidently, how do you rate the navigation and cartography skills involved in Cook's achievements?
All these comparisons, including yours, miss one property - one that I find crucial: software activation. With WinXP it was getting a bit annoying if you had WGA installed (I wisely avoided that roadmine), but Vista went overboard with that. And Win7 is the same in that regard. With either Vista or Win7 you never really own the product.
There's companies out there like that? Every one I've ever worked at has been find the problem, pass the buck, blame others, pass again, hire an outside consultant too much to fix the problem, let him do a half assed job, declare success, give the manager in charge a bonus. Private is no better than government, government just has more due to scale and gets more publicity on their problems.
What you described is the typical publicly traded corporation, not a private company. Private companies are managed in a much tighter way, and mid-managers get away with much, much less crap than the chaotic world of publicly traded corporations where executives only pretend that they have the shareholders' interest at heart, while all they want is a very-short-term semblance of improvement, and then cash in and leave, and then join another such company.
Slashdot Mirror
..'cause Gmail works perfectly for me, and has been working just fine the whole day. Does the fact that I am in Finland have anything to do with Gmail not going down?
Considering the BS Apple gets away with, I think stuff is much more impervious to the reality distortion field than we thought. I think the units you should use are ExaJobs.
There is no reason why the current UK govt. wouldn't do this - after all, it's apologizing for something that a completely different set of leaders is guilty of. They will do it for no other reason but because it makes sheer political sense. No, not because it's the right thing to do.
Likewise, the Lockerbie bomber wasn't released because it's the right thing to do, but because Gaddafi all but publicly promised natural gas and oil at favourable prices, in return.
In other words: fuck it all.
I am sure Google made the right decision. I am also sure, however, that an 8-way MP computer with loads of contiguous RAM will excel at some tasks where a cluster will not. A cluster is not always a direct replacement for a Sun M8000. Each has its uses and its rightful place in IT.
In one of the links I found this very intelligently written post, which kinda kills your buzz (I guess):
It's funny because people keep thinking these chip revisions are going to make the hardware more stable and they're not. Their sole purpose is to save Microsoft money in production costs. Smaller chipsets=fewer materials=more $$$ is MS's pocket.
The amount of heat the CPU and GPU produce are the least of your troubles folks, there many more issues with the 360's design and they're all far more severe. Let's start with the thermal paste. For those unfamiliar, thermal paste is what's used to transfer heat between the GPU and CPU to their respective heatsinks. The thermal paste that MS uses in the 360 is cheap crap that bakes into cement after a few hundred hours of use. This issue could be easily fixed if MS would just use a more effective paste like Arctic Silver 5 but that would drive production costs up ever so slightly and we can't have that.
Next problem: They mounted the disc drive on the GPU heatsink. Seriously MS? What the hell? That is the worst design idea ever, the heatsink's purpose is to pull heat off the GPU so a fan can blow air over it which will whisk it away out of the system. The worst thing you could do there is mount one of the hottest running components in the system directly on top of that. You're just asking to create a hotspot.
Problem 3: Air flow. Worst designed system for airflow ever. There are two primary intake fans on the 360. One is covered up by the harddrive. The other can't pull air in if the system is standing vertically. If you don't lay the system flat it has to rely on the incredibly tiny vents on the side of the system to pull all the air into the system. Beyond that the interior of the system does not allow for optimal airflow. It's awful. Compare the guts of a PS3 and a 360 if you ever get the chance (Google). The PS3's innards look like they were well planned out and intelligently placed. The 360 is a clusterfuck that looks like MS just schlepped all the components in and called it good.
Final problem, and by far the worst: The X-Clamps. Why these are still present I don't know. Essentially for those who don't know the X-Clamps are two X shaped clamps on the bottom of the motherboard that hold the heatsinks in place. Their fatal flaw? They warp under intense heat. That warping bends the motherboard. That bending breaks solder connections. The breaking produces the RRoD. These clamps could easily be replaced with screws, washers, and nuts. In fact many console modders have done just that and found in combination with an application of Artic Silver 5 to the CPU and GPU it fixed a red ringed console. So why these are still in use I don't know. What I do know is they are the 360's main problem
Thanks, I stand corrected. Also, I stand in Finland, so yes, 3G plans are cheap here - but I have nobody to invite me to Spotify :o(
What's significant is that this makes the iPhone a mobile streaming device
But how mobile it really is, if it only supports wlan?
...won't even compensate for the DVDs that it will destroy during the Xbox 360's lifetime.
I hope one day people will realize that most executives (in publicly-traded companies) DON'T have the companies', the investors' or the employees' interests at heart. Most of these executives gained their position due to crafty manipulation and NOT by actually, really improving a product or product line, increasing profitability or market share. But they were and will be always great at presenting their (short or very short term) results in the best light possible, and excellent at knowing and manipulating the right people.
This breed of executives will outsource to poor countries (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins), lower salaries and/or fire employees at home (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins) and eliminate R&D and products/services (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins) - which will look good for a short while. Long enough to get a new promotion or a job at another company, after cashing in.
Please do yourself a favor and have a glance at this book.
Science does not go hand-in-hand with majority opinion - neither does science require consensus, nor does consensus imply any connection to reality.
Right. There's also a pretty solid consensus in the scientific community about the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. And yet, a few "scientists" seem to invent the perpetuum mobile every now and then.
At certain concentrations, CO2 becomes a pollutant: that is, when the CO2 dissolved in sea water causes it to become too acidic to support plankton life - plankton is the #1 oxygen "factory", and too high CO2 will disrupt it. And there is evidence that plankton population is decreasing, and so are coral reefs, another victim of increased water acidity.
(There are many other negative consequences of high CO2 concentration, but why overdo it - I've proven my point)
Seems like the old stereotypes at work. Hire Asians, they're smart! Don't hire those negores, though; they're lazy and they steal!
Uh, no, it's "the latinos steal". Get your stereotypes right!
Hydrazine is downright evil. It's extremely toxic, but also hallucinogen so you get disoriented before you're killed off, at low concentrations. At even lower concentrations it is "just" carcinogen.
Oh, and did I mention that it's explosive? It explodes if you look at it wrong.
Both THC and psylocibin are known to NOT cause addiction. Also, users of these drugs do NOT show aggressive behavior (unlike with other drugs, especially alcohol (yep, that's right, that's one of the worst)). In light of this, I think it's high time to completely legalize the production, sale and consumption of these drugs. If that happened, I would expect that the consumption of the "harder" drugs would decrease as well, for two reasons:
1) Some people won't need the harder drugs, if they can access these other two aplenty.
2) By legalizing these drugs, of which marijuana is a very popular one, we reduce the contact between users and illegal dealers, who have a vested interest in encouraging the use of harder drugs such as cocaine, heroine etc.
I was quite depressed a couple of years ago, and the psychiatrist wanted to prescribe me an anti-depressant. Instead of using the prescription, I decided to educate myself on anti-depressants, and what I found was, well, depressing: not a single anti-depressant on sale is safe to use. They all have side effects that are either nasty or very nasty. But psylocibin and THC are both excellent anti-depressants (practically the most effective ones), and have NO side effects. This is when I started to become a supporter of legalization of these drugs.
Funny doesn't count for karma. Otherwise, I would have made a joke instead of informing you of this.
However, your attempt at being modded "Informative" instead, has failed - you are modded "Insightful".
And my post can be interpreted both as funny or informative, but "Insightful" wouldn't be too wrong, either.
The truth is, nowadays more than ever, getting a top management position is due to effectively manipulating other people - and who is more effective at manipulating than corporate psychopaths, especially in the chaotic world of publicly traded corporations?
This is why
1) executives rarely care for the long-term viability of the company they lead, opting instead for a short-term uptick where they can cash in and then leave.
2) these people can always find another executive position, once they leave their previous company, regardless of how dire the state they caused their company to get into - they can manipulate people so well that they will find an accepting armchair immediately.
3) BODs are filled with people who just move from company to company, from one executive position to the other.
4) golf is so damn important for them - that's where they network and prepare their parachutes.
I strongly recommend you read this book. It's an eye-opener.
The children of the Somali immigrants have their parents as role model, and that is: procreate and don't work. The next generation will be exactly the same.
Yes, there are a few people here and there who travel on state money. In Finland, every student gets a monthly allowance from the state, and I know a few people who travel, but as they return to Finland twice a year to take book exams, they are hardly misusing the money.
I wasn't talking about students getting a state stipend. I was talking about a Swedish couple that receives social benefits, who are not students and their status isn't and won't change. And yes, neither these are representative of the youth in Sweden, but there are more of them (there is, of course, a grey area of those who have a hybrid lifestyle, too) who take more advantage of the system, as that's what they learn to be a good thing to do.
And my main point stands, strikingly so in fact: this is very well explained by game theory whereupon the one individual that decides to game the system at the detriment of everybody else, will have the largest gains, and when you introduce that one player willing to do it, the others will soon follow suit. You can kick and scream against it, but it's just game theory in action, here.
The combined experience of the Nordic countries for half a century now should stand as proof that, even if everything in life is provided for you, the vast, vast majority of people still go out and work for a living.
That's changing. Yes, you are right, the vast majority of people used to go out looking for a job - out of a feeling of honor/shame. Shame to do anything to game the system is deeply ingrained in the mentality of the Nordic people. That's why the system worked so well to the advantage of everybody: because there were very few who would game the system (this is basic game theory, actually).
But nowadays you have a huge number of immigrants who don't share the same mentality, and are more than happy to game the system - just look at Malmö (Sweden), or the Somali immigrants in Finland. 1/4 of Malmö is populated by immigrants who don't have a job and live off social services. When I say "don't have a job" I don't mean that only a few have a job. I mean NOBODY has one (the situation is not quite as dire in Finland with the Somali immigrants, but basically, they have an incentive to procreate and not get a job). Only the Swedes work. Until some are fed up, that is. I have met a couple of young swedes that decided it's easier to just get social services money and use it to travel around the work while economizing. Well, I give them props because at least they make the best possible use of that money by being penny-pinching with accommodation and travel expenses. Apparently, more and more people of their generation are just saying "why the fuck should I work when these guys aren't".
Yeah, that sounds like the perfect testimonial for almost any kind of product, including pre-lubed condoms.
If by miracle my post is not drowned down into depths of oblivion, note that Dubya was depicted tens of times with very unflattering altered photos, and so was Cheney, while the W. administration was in power - and nobody complained.
See this or this, for example.
Also, while Mc Cain was campaigning, this rather shocking picture was publicized by The Atlantic - who later recanted and apologized - but the point is, nobody in the McCain camp complained, let alone did you have public and officers making a fuss about it.
But with Obama, the thought police is up in arms bigtime.
And they are right to be: Obama is sacred and he farts rainbows, and his words are words of wisdom, and he poops gold nuggets. And Obama won't speak up: it is the Will of the People that is against any criticism of the Beloved President.
I think publishers would be nothing short of deranged to not want to have their books on Google Books. I have bought all my textbooks based on what I saw on Google Books, since it appeared. That's right, all of them. We're talking (sadly) expensive textbooks on nanotechnology, microfulidics and silicon microtechnology (as well as some materials science). Google Books is by far the BEST marketing tool that a publisher could imagine.
Yup, same experience here for scientific article publishing. The university that I was at in 2002 had to cancel their subscription to some journals with them because they were charging the library > $10k a year for the subscription. This was something like five times the average price (and the journals weren't all that great either). Secondly, the majority of journals they publish seem to have one staff member handling all the manuscripts, this makes them slow, slow, slow. I try not to send any manuscripts to any journals owned by them.
I wish those were the only problems I had with Elsevier journals. But I can't avoid publishing in then, because (sadly!) those bastards have some of the highest impact journals in my field, and I must, by policy of my institution, try to have my articles published in the highest impact journals first.
I think the people who were already living there would have probably objected..
In fact, he was just a 'Discovery Troll', who, having 'discovered' the lands, 'claimed' them for His imperial majesty.
They were then systematically despoiled while the people who had merely been living off the land for generations were treated as if they did not exist, or called degenerates and criminals if they objected to their new rich and violent overlords.
Seems familiar?
This is what political correctness ran amok looks like.
Incidently, how do you rate the navigation and cartography skills involved in Cook's achievements?
All these comparisons, including yours, miss one property - one that I find crucial: software activation. With WinXP it was getting a bit annoying if you had WGA installed (I wisely avoided that roadmine), but Vista went overboard with that. And Win7 is the same in that regard. With either Vista or Win7 you never really own the product.
There's companies out there like that? Every one I've ever worked at has been find the problem, pass the buck, blame others, pass again, hire an outside consultant too much to fix the problem, let him do a half assed job, declare success, give the manager in charge a bonus. Private is no better than government, government just has more due to scale and gets more publicity on their problems.
What you described is the typical publicly traded corporation, not a private company. Private companies are managed in a much tighter way, and mid-managers get away with much, much less crap than the chaotic world of publicly traded corporations where executives only pretend that they have the shareholders' interest at heart, while all they want is a very-short-term semblance of improvement, and then cash in and leave, and then join another such company.