The opteron chips out there now support MP, and they're relatively inexpensive for a chip that's been out a few days ($300 for the chip, $400 for a board which has some pretty sweet features).
Not to mention they kick the stuffing out of Intel's stuff at almost everything.
If there's a reason, the state will forward money to the feds. Say.... the feds have a better deal for asphalt, then maybe the states can take advantage of it. If not, then the states negotiate their own deals.
A lesser cure, and probably one that'd be easier to implement, would be to restore the power of the state. The more local the election, the more likely the populace will be accurately represented by the people. IE a city council chairman is far more accessable than any US congressional senator will ever be, but the city council has almost no say in what goes on, relatively.
One step towards this, in the US, would be to change how income taxes are paid. Have the states collect it, and then forward a reasonable amount up to the feds. This could have the effect of taking the interstate funding out of the hands of the feds, which has been used countless times as a strong-arm measure to prevent states from asserting their currently-slim rights.
Hardcover books are crazy expensive, but you can still pick up a lot of soft-cover books (and I guess I should have qualified it saying 'fiction', along the lines of entertainment) for 5 or 6 bucks. When you look at it $dollar/hour, I think books have the best ratio, with games coming in second.
DVD sales add on to box office sales for a movie, however music sales are almost strictly CD purchases.
Still, I agree, it is amazing that CDs cost so much more (relatively) than DVDs and books and computer games (I'm assuming it doesn't take 1-2 years to make a music CD like it does to make a game).
Of course terrorist organizations will ignore the laws. That's why we need more enforcement. Let's double the Homeland Security Department's budget, and add some more thousands of FBI and local police.
Then we could turn around and sue the US Govt for funding/supplying so many countries which have ended up doing some very bad things, eh? This could work in the world's favor!
'course, maybe it'd be easier to sue GE/Hughes/etc for supplying the US Govt with weapons and tools primarily designed to kill.
Sue the CDROM manufacturers that enabled music reading/playing for computers. Seriously. They could argue that the CDROM manufacturers should have only created them to read data CDs.
Maybe sound card manufacturers for having good quality line-in/mic jacks - they should have limited them to 22khz or something suitable for voice.
It probably won't go as far as suing the retailers for selling CDs to "pirates", however.
Supposedly, at least from what I read once, the Segway lobbyists didn't end up contributing money to campaigns. They themselves were very highly paid, but that's it. Anyone can do that sort of thing with proper organization.
However, in the same article (I don't recall its URL), some politicians were suggesting that part of the reason the Segway is not becoming legal everywhere quickly is precisely because they did not contribute money to the campaigns.
I bought my TiVo wanting to hack it, to upgrade it, put in a NIC, etc. I ended up doing none of that and I still use it regularly - it's truly changed TV watching for me.
I may end up hacking it in the future, but for now I am quite content to let it sit and do what it does.
Accountability would be great. What we have now is a system which allows for anonymous voting by the representatives. Without removing that, there is no hope of us having a good system.
The article stated (as others have pointed out) that something like 85% of folks actually fill out the forms. That's more than vote, in the US. That's significant.
They'd be better off working out a deal with Visa/Mastercard where they let someone check a box and sign a thing to let them postal-spam them with offers in exchange for a $10 rebate - rather than have people mail photocopies of this and cutouts of that.
And for those who say "so what? they say what it is in the papers" is say: it's still a scam. Just because it's spelled out doesn't magically make it legitimate - I don't care if it's Best Buy or Bob's Basement of Bountiful Botanicals, it's still a scam - something designed to get more out of a deal than is initially apparent.
They're buying your personal information so they can either use it to fill your mailbox with their junk or everyone's junk. There's no other reason for them not to do rebates at the POS/cash register.
Regarding computer-related rebates, they are even worse. I bought some CDR media that was "$2 after $10 rebate". I had a weak moment and figured it was worth the $10. The Best Buy receipt offered a way to file your rebate request online. I thought, great! Mailing rebate requests is sure lame!
So I go to punch in the rebate information and am presented with a page that I can print and USPS mail in.
Completely worthless, except now some additinoal "rebate processor" company also has my information.
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Holy cow. These people need therapy!
The opteron chips out there now support MP, and they're relatively inexpensive for a chip that's been out a few days ($300 for the chip, $400 for a board which has some pretty sweet features).
Not to mention they kick the stuffing out of Intel's stuff at almost everything.
Maybe not. Dunno.
If there's a reason, the state will forward money to the feds. Say.... the feds have a better deal for asphalt, then maybe the states can take advantage of it. If not, then the states negotiate their own deals.
I don't see the harm in that.
A lesser cure, and probably one that'd be easier to implement, would be to restore the power of the state. The more local the election, the more likely the populace will be accurately represented by the people. IE a city council chairman is far more accessable than any US congressional senator will ever be, but the city council has almost no say in what goes on, relatively.
One step towards this, in the US, would be to change how income taxes are paid. Have the states collect it, and then forward a reasonable amount up to the feds. This could have the effect of taking the interstate funding out of the hands of the feds, which has been used countless times as a strong-arm measure to prevent states from asserting their currently-slim rights.
Hypertransport - good point. They could be using that. Why you didn't mention it in the post is beyond me though.
AMD doesn't run incredibly hot any more - check out the Barton and Opteron chips some time.
Hardcover books are crazy expensive, but you can still pick up a lot of soft-cover books (and I guess I should have qualified it saying 'fiction', along the lines of entertainment) for 5 or 6 bucks. When you look at it $dollar/hour, I think books have the best ratio, with games coming in second.
DVD sales add on to box office sales for a movie, however music sales are almost strictly CD purchases.
Still, I agree, it is amazing that CDs cost so much more (relatively) than DVDs and books and computer games (I'm assuming it doesn't take 1-2 years to make a music CD like it does to make a game).
I wonder how much it'd cost per month to have an ethernet card in my TiVo and printer.
So by Mac OSX, do they mean the BSD part, or the Mac part?
;)
Of course, if all else fails we can just create a new one from 4.4BSDLite2!
The MPAA/RIAA ties go deep. Excuse me while I go buy the latest soundtrack to
I'd expect that in cases where DARPA was actually hiring programmers with a contract, and buying their silence and exclusive access to the code.
Grants are a different story - the grants, in this sort of case, are usually designed to spur innovation for the betterment of the "industry".
Of course terrorist organizations will ignore the laws. That's why we need more enforcement. Let's double the Homeland Security Department's budget, and add some more thousands of FBI and local police.
At least functions that call that stuff could produce a warning to stderr, like other functions are known to do.
Would be pretty neat.
Then we could turn around and sue the US Govt for funding/supplying so many countries which have ended up doing some very bad things, eh? This could work in the world's favor!
'course, maybe it'd be easier to sue GE/Hughes/etc for supplying the US Govt with weapons and tools primarily designed to kill.
(sarcasm.)
Sue the CDROM manufacturers that enabled music reading/playing for computers. Seriously. They could argue that the CDROM manufacturers should have only created them to read data CDs.
Maybe sound card manufacturers for having good quality line-in/mic jacks - they should have limited them to 22khz or something suitable for voice.
It probably won't go as far as suing the retailers for selling CDs to "pirates", however.
I didn't mean to suggest that it was *right*, but it is possible that is how the politicians are looking at it.
It may not be too far off, too. Better to have employed people paying taxes than companies closing down, people on unemployment/welfare, etc.
The *AA have more than just US congressional lobbyists. :)
Supposedly, at least from what I read once, the Segway lobbyists didn't end up contributing money to campaigns. They themselves were very highly paid, but that's it. Anyone can do that sort of thing with proper organization.
However, in the same article (I don't recall its URL), some politicians were suggesting that part of the reason the Segway is not becoming legal everywhere quickly is precisely because they did not contribute money to the campaigns.
It's also that the RIAA/MPAA represent companies with a lot of employees. Not as many as some industries, but more than a handful.
Anyways, how do you suggest we stop it? Short of a revolution, that is...
I wonder if it's anywhere near Clearwater. ;)
How many LoCs of data does the 8 football fields of dishes generate, and what's the BogoMIPS rating on their obligatory Beowulf cluster?
I bought my TiVo wanting to hack it, to upgrade it, put in a NIC, etc. I ended up doing none of that and I still use it regularly - it's truly changed TV watching for me.
I may end up hacking it in the future, but for now I am quite content to let it sit and do what it does.
Accountability would be great. What we have now is a system which allows for anonymous voting by the representatives. Without removing that, there is no hope of us having a good system.
The article stated (as others have pointed out) that something like 85% of folks actually fill out the forms. That's more than vote, in the US. That's significant.
They'd be better off working out a deal with Visa/Mastercard where they let someone check a box and sign a thing to let them postal-spam them with offers in exchange for a $10 rebate - rather than have people mail photocopies of this and cutouts of that.
And for those who say "so what? they say what it is in the papers" is say: it's still a scam. Just because it's spelled out doesn't magically make it legitimate - I don't care if it's Best Buy or Bob's Basement of Bountiful Botanicals, it's still a scam - something designed to get more out of a deal than is initially apparent.
They're buying your personal information so they can either use it to fill your mailbox with their junk or everyone's junk. There's no other reason for them not to do rebates at the POS/cash register.
Regarding computer-related rebates, they are even worse. I bought some CDR media that was "$2 after $10 rebate". I had a weak moment and figured it was worth the $10. The Best Buy receipt offered a way to file your rebate request online. I thought, great! Mailing rebate requests is sure lame!
So I go to punch in the rebate information and am presented with a page that I can print and USPS mail in.
Completely worthless, except now some additinoal "rebate processor" company also has my information.