Although I would generally agree that avoiding ATI is a good idea for Linux systems, I think this kind of misses the spirit of the article. Most graphics professionals are using a platform, not just a random mix of computing hardware and software. For these people, it usually winds up being what their software vendor will directly support.
I'd like to add that if this sort of situation is going to come up more often in the future with other projects, it might be a good idea to get agreements in place before beginning serious work. Of course, if it's the only job that pays the bills, that can impair your negotiation ability...:)
I just kinda took the whole thing for a relabeling of the well-known fact that the human mind operates in a highly parallel manner, and is specifically tuned for pattern recognition. Could just be me...
The question is really: Who would benefit from diminishing any country's Internet access during a time of war with that nation? Alternatively, conclusively proving that any nation's primary Internet backbone was destroyed might itself be the spark that ignites a war... who might benefit from that? Things get complicated pretty quickly.
Perhaps in the future systems like this will be linked into your phone to deliver real-time advertisements for nearby stores, restaurants, etc. Of course, using your cell phone while driving will still be illegal...
*** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** Get 2-for-1 pizzas at Papa John's!!!! Turn right ahead.
*** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** Buy lingerie for that special someone at Victoria's Secret!!! Turn left ahead.
*** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** Buy [driver chucks cell phone out window]
*** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** You've violated local littering ordinances. Your account is now being billed the appropriate fine. Have a nice day!
Although your idea sounds nice, I think it's far more likely that we'll see automotive manufacturers paid (or given tax subsidies) to incorporate this technology into automobiles. Sort of an OnStar for the D.O.T. (InTraffic?)
I'm wearing the same type of underwear Mitt wears... Here we have a truly devoted Mitt Romney follower... he's even raided the fellow's home for undergarments. That's true devotion.
It may very well wind up being consumers that decide their new Internet plans don't need to "live." There will always be alternatives. Of course, the alternative companies will probably wind up doing something else nasty to piss off their customers, but that's just the nature of progress.
I wonder if these sort of systems might lead to real-time changes in toll prices some day. Transportation authorities could leverage real-time stats to charge more for passage during peak traffic periods, and this sort of system would accommodate unexpected increases without any additional effort on their part. It could even sense traffic congestion issues in other areas and anticipate upcoming loads. Not that I agree with such practices, just wondering if they'll be implemented. Couple this with highly expanded automatic tolling systems in the future and you've got a recipe for profit (at least for the state).
If this business model appeals to American consumers, it will certainly make it here. Companies like MetroPCS already offer unlimited local and long-distance calling, with unlimited text messages, for around USD $60.00 in several major markets here. It's only a matter of time before things even out.
You're obviously missing the point that technology isn't static, and there will be a better idea that comes along and obsoletes the current telecom environment (which will kinda take text messaging as we know it along with it). It's not all about what YOU want RIGHT NOW. If that's truly the case, please be my guest and either (1) implement the current texting business model yourself in a manner which benefits consumers better on a monetary scale, or (2) be that dude who invents and implements the next wave of easily accessible communications technology. I won't wait up.
I seriously hope your comment was meant in a humorous context. If it was serious, I seriously hope your don't actually work for a telecom, in which case you should be fired immediately on grounds of gross lack of comprehension of your employer's business model and cost structure. Seriously.
Wow. You missed the whole point. By a mile, at least. Email and text messaging carry a common trait of substantial physical and time of response separation from the party you're conversing with. Both afford you the opportunity to avoid real-time communications; although texting may appear to be real-time, it affords you the opportunity to compose your thoughts before sending, and thus is not.
If I understand correctly, here's what you're saying: The original spec included a particular technical feature that wasn't charged for initially. People (subscribers to a network service) found that feature useful. The network provider noticed this and began charging for access to the service. Nobody who didn't subscribe to the service or use it on an as-needed basis died for lack of texting, while those who did opt to use the service were frequently willing to pay the asking price for continued access. Welcome to capitalism.
The Internet as a whole wasn't started with commerical intent, but look at where we are now.
The free market model isn't broken at all. All that's needed it the "next big thing" to come along and make the current business model of selling text messages obsolete. Think a couple of layers outside your current worldview.
Fair enough. Please feel free to start you own telecommunications company and offer texting services for less than the going rate. Let me know when your services are available, and I'll subscribe.
And then some new guy comes along with a better mousetrap, and the industry is forced to change whether they like it or not. Rinse, repeat. It's the way of progress.
Why draw a distinction? If Steve Ballmer stands up and says "the sky is blue" he's make an accurate statement, regardless of what this community might think of his other views and actions.
On U.S. Naval installations, the only way to talk on your cellphone is if it has a bluetooth link to your car stereo. Traditional hands-free devices are not allowed. Anything else is a violation of federal law.
Posts like yours are so much better when they (1) aren't posted under AC, and (2) quote sources. This is the Internet... HTML documents are, by nature, supposed to contain hyperlinks.
I just found out that AT&T (A-fee&fee?) is raising their text message pricing. When I first signed up for AT&T 6 or so years ago it cost 10 cents to send an SMS message, and it was free to receive them.
When AT&T switched to Cingular the price of sending a message dropped to 5 cents, but they started charging for incoming texts - also 5 cents. Assuming you send a message for every message you receive, this works out at about the same price as before.
AT&T came back online and phased out the CIngular brand name, and prices were again changed. This time to 15 cents each way.
More changes have taken place that I can't quite remember. At one point text messages were 10 cents either way, and at another point they even included MMS (multimedia messages) at the same price as SMS.
As of March SMS messages on AT&T will cost 20 cents and MMS will cost 30 cents - both to send a receive.
So let's do some math here, and figure out how much this simple transmission is actually costing us.
A standard SMS message contains up to 140 bytes (1120 bits) of data - this takes care of the 160 characters allowed in your text message. This might not make sense at first, until you realize that SMS uses 7 - not 8 - bit characters - leaving you with 128 possible character values instead of the normal 256. So 1120bits/7bits = 160 characters.
So our total message length is about a tenth of a kilobyte (.13671875 Kbytes). In terms that the iPod generation would understand - if you had an iPod with a tenth of a kilobyte you could fit 1/4000th of a song on it. I assume here and for the rest of this article that 1 song = 4 Megabytes.
If you divide 140 (the total number of bytes available to you) by 20 (the cost per message), you find that you are paying 1 cent for every 7 bytes of data. This leaves you with a cost of $1,497.97 for the 1024Kbytes contained in a single megabyte. iPod users: It would cost you $5,991.88 to transfer - not even to buy - a single song via SMS.
By comparison, I pay $50 a month for a soft bandwidth limit of 500 gigabytes through a local ISP. That comes out to 512,000 megabytes or 10,240 megabytes to the dollar. This allows me to transfer 2,560 songs for the same price as a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger off the value menu at Wendy's: $1. I will use this my standard measurement for the rest of this article.
So far I can make the following statements concerning the costs of bandwidth:
Cost to transfer 2560 songs:
From my ISP: $1 Via SMS messaging: $15,339,212.80
But wait, there's more!
When calculating SMS charges, most people don't take into consideration that the message is really being paid for twice! If I send a message to another AT&T user, I am paying to send it AND they're paying to receive it! This should probably be illegal, but that's for another discussion.
So how much does an SMS message actually cost? Not 20 cents - but 40 cents! This doubles all of my numbers above.
Furthermore, my above figures estimate that people actually use all 160 characters available to them. Say people on average actually only used half of that (which is still being generous) - then their price of data has again doubled from the numbers I gave above!
Making adjustments for both of the above statements, we realize that our above number isn't even close to correct! Corrected, the comparison looks more like this:
COSTS OF TRANSFERING 2,560 MP3s:
via my ISP: $1 via SMS: $61,356,851.20
Phew! THAT is premium data! It's no wonder that SMS texting alone is a 100 Billion dollar a year industry!
How big is that? Take all of hollywood movie box office revenues worldwide. Add all of the global music industry revenues. And add all of videogaming revenues around the world. Even all those three together, we don't reach 100 billion.
Let's even go more premium - how much would it cost to hand deliver data?
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Although I would generally agree that avoiding ATI is a good idea for Linux systems, I think this kind of misses the spirit of the article. Most graphics professionals are using a platform, not just a random mix of computing hardware and software. For these people, it usually winds up being what their software vendor will directly support.
I'd like to add that if this sort of situation is going to come up more often in the future with other projects, it might be a good idea to get agreements in place before beginning serious work. Of course, if it's the only job that pays the bills, that can impair your negotiation ability... :)
I just kinda took the whole thing for a relabeling of the well-known fact that the human mind operates in a highly parallel manner, and is specifically tuned for pattern recognition. Could just be me...
I'd hazard a guess that by "workstation" they might just mean people who make a living with graphics ;).
The question is really: Who would benefit from diminishing any country's Internet access during a time of war with that nation? Alternatively, conclusively proving that any nation's primary Internet backbone was destroyed might itself be the spark that ignites a war... who might benefit from that? Things get complicated pretty quickly.
Perhaps in the future systems like this will be linked into your phone to deliver real-time advertisements for nearby stores, restaurants, etc. Of course, using your cell phone while driving will still be illegal...
*** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** Get 2-for-1 pizzas at Papa John's!!!! Turn right ahead.
*** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** Buy lingerie for that special someone at Victoria's Secret!!! Turn left ahead.
*** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** Buy [driver chucks cell phone out window]
*** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** You've violated local littering ordinances. Your account is now being billed the appropriate fine. Have a nice day!
Although your idea sounds nice, I think it's far more likely that we'll see automotive manufacturers paid (or given tax subsidies) to incorporate this technology into automobiles. Sort of an OnStar for the D.O.T. (InTraffic?)
It may very well wind up being consumers that decide their new Internet plans don't need to "live." There will always be alternatives. Of course, the alternative companies will probably wind up doing something else nasty to piss off their customers, but that's just the nature of progress.
I wonder if these sort of systems might lead to real-time changes in toll prices some day. Transportation authorities could leverage real-time stats to charge more for passage during peak traffic periods, and this sort of system would accommodate unexpected increases without any additional effort on their part. It could even sense traffic congestion issues in other areas and anticipate upcoming loads. Not that I agree with such practices, just wondering if they'll be implemented. Couple this with highly expanded automatic tolling systems in the future and you've got a recipe for profit (at least for the state).
So go buy one. I bought one for my wife, and I assure you they're not vaporware. Nice little machines, in fact.
If this business model appeals to American consumers, it will certainly make it here. Companies like MetroPCS already offer unlimited local and long-distance calling, with unlimited text messages, for around USD $60.00 in several major markets here. It's only a matter of time before things even out.
You're obviously missing the point that technology isn't static, and there will be a better idea that comes along and obsoletes the current telecom environment (which will kinda take text messaging as we know it along with it). It's not all about what YOU want RIGHT NOW. If that's truly the case, please be my guest and either (1) implement the current texting business model yourself in a manner which benefits consumers better on a monetary scale, or (2) be that dude who invents and implements the next wave of easily accessible communications technology. I won't wait up.
I seriously hope your comment was meant in a humorous context. If it was serious, I seriously hope your don't actually work for a telecom, in which case you should be fired immediately on grounds of gross lack of comprehension of your employer's business model and cost structure. Seriously.
Wow. You missed the whole point. By a mile, at least. Email and text messaging carry a common trait of substantial physical and time of response separation from the party you're conversing with. Both afford you the opportunity to avoid real-time communications; although texting may appear to be real-time, it affords you the opportunity to compose your thoughts before sending, and thus is not.
If I understand correctly, here's what you're saying: The original spec included a particular technical feature that wasn't charged for initially. People (subscribers to a network service) found that feature useful. The network provider noticed this and began charging for access to the service. Nobody who didn't subscribe to the service or use it on an as-needed basis died for lack of texting, while those who did opt to use the service were frequently willing to pay the asking price for continued access. Welcome to capitalism.
The Internet as a whole wasn't started with commerical intent, but look at where we are now.
The free market model isn't broken at all. All that's needed it the "next big thing" to come along and make the current business model of selling text messages obsolete. Think a couple of layers outside your current worldview.
Fair enough. Please feel free to start you own telecommunications company and offer texting services for less than the going rate. Let me know when your services are available, and I'll subscribe.
And then some new guy comes along with a better mousetrap, and the industry is forced to change whether they like it or not. Rinse, repeat. It's the way of progress.
Why draw a distinction? If Steve Ballmer stands up and says "the sky is blue" he's make an accurate statement, regardless of what this community might think of his other views and actions.
On U.S. Naval installations, the only way to talk on your cellphone is if it has a bluetooth link to your car stereo. Traditional hands-free devices are not allowed. Anything else is a violation of federal law.
If the parent post is true, it's an almost heartbreakingly beautiful example of turning a profit from a relatively miniscule investment. Wow.
Posts like yours are so much better when they (1) aren't posted under AC, and (2) quote sources. This is the Internet... HTML documents are, by nature, supposed to contain hyperlinks.
I just found out that AT&T (A-fee&fee?) is raising their text message pricing. When I first signed up for AT&T 6 or so years ago it cost 10 cents to send an SMS message, and it was free to receive them.
When AT&T switched to Cingular the price of sending a message dropped to 5 cents, but they started charging for incoming texts - also 5 cents. Assuming you send a message for every message you receive, this works out at about the same price as before.
AT&T came back online and phased out the CIngular brand name, and prices were again changed. This time to 15 cents each way.
More changes have taken place that I can't quite remember. At one point text messages were 10 cents either way, and at another point they even included MMS (multimedia messages) at the same price as SMS.
As of March SMS messages on AT&T will cost 20 cents and MMS will cost 30 cents - both to send a receive.
So let's do some math here, and figure out how much this simple transmission is actually costing us.
A standard SMS message contains up to 140 bytes (1120 bits) of data - this takes care of the 160 characters allowed in your text message. This might not make sense at first, until you realize that SMS uses 7 - not 8 - bit characters - leaving you with 128 possible character values instead of the normal 256. So 1120bits/7bits = 160 characters.
So our total message length is about a tenth of a kilobyte (.13671875 Kbytes). In terms that the iPod generation would understand - if you had an iPod with a tenth of a kilobyte you could fit 1/4000th of a song on it. I assume here and for the rest of this article that 1 song = 4 Megabytes.
If you divide 140 (the total number of bytes available to you) by 20 (the cost per message), you find that you are paying 1 cent for every 7 bytes of data. This leaves you with a cost of $1,497.97 for the 1024Kbytes contained in a single megabyte. iPod users: It would cost you $5,991.88 to transfer - not even to buy - a single song via SMS.
By comparison, I pay $50 a month for a soft bandwidth limit of 500 gigabytes through a local ISP. That comes out to 512,000 megabytes or 10,240 megabytes to the dollar. This allows me to transfer 2,560 songs for the same price as a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger off the value menu at Wendy's: $1. I will use this my standard measurement for the rest of this article.
So far I can make the following statements concerning the costs of bandwidth:
Cost to transfer 2560 songs:
From my ISP: $1
Via SMS messaging: $15,339,212.80
But wait, there's more!
When calculating SMS charges, most people don't take into consideration that the message is really being paid for twice! If I send a message to another AT&T user, I am paying to send it AND they're paying to receive it! This should probably be illegal, but that's for another discussion.
So how much does an SMS message actually cost? Not 20 cents - but 40 cents! This doubles all of my numbers above.
Furthermore, my above figures estimate that people actually use all 160 characters available to them. Say people on average actually only used half of that (which is still being generous) - then their price of data has again doubled from the numbers I gave above!
Making adjustments for both of the above statements, we realize that our above number isn't even close to correct! Corrected, the comparison looks more like this:
COSTS OF TRANSFERING 2,560 MP3s:
via my ISP: $1
via SMS: $61,356,851.20
Phew! THAT is premium data! It's no wonder that SMS texting alone is a 100 Billion dollar a year industry!
How big is that? Take all of hollywood movie box office revenues worldwide. Add all of the global music industry revenues. And add all of videogaming revenues around the world. Even all those three together, we don't reach 100 billion.
Let's even go more premium - how much would it cost to hand deliver data?
The U.S. Postal service is currently cha