Don't forget that there is insurance that banks buy for this as well. Of-course from POV of insurance companies it would be a good thing for banks to do, to minimize any sort of vector of attack, so if banks wanted to pay less insurance premiums, they could invest, but likely it would be much more than just a few hundred million dollars.
Think about this: a tiny project in a bank costs maybe around 250K. That's small time peanuts, and that's software only.
Now think about this: there are thousands of systems in operation in banks. Every system will have to be at the very minimum reviewed for potential impact of such a gigantic paradigm shift. So say it takes 100K to review a project on average. So that's 100K X thousands of projects for to be reviewed.
Hundreds of millions, if not billions will be spent on reviews. Then there will be a huge architectural undertaking. Then the hardware, links, software will have to be actually built. Then there will be a transition period, with small steps taken, some parts of systems will be transitions (while the old systems will all be running exactly as they were). There will be doubling of the impacted systems.
I guarantee that most systems that are impacted will have to be doubled. The old will continue operating and the new will come on line to start transitioning with a tiny test.
This is not going to be 365Million. We are literally talking about tens of billions. And when you take into account that there are multiple centers, not all banks are connected into the same systems, it's going to be in hundreds of billions.
No, you didn't get my point. The data comes flooding into the center, it will lock all of the record that are updated (hopefully just records and not entire tables.) There will be not a single moment in time that there will be no updates coming into the banks, unless there is some form of absolute synchronization (possible), but even then, if you synchronize with the center say every 1 hour, that means that once an hour every bank, every buffer that there is out there will send data into the center.
IF (that's a big if) the center is only used to collect data and for nothing else, that may be OK. If (and that's the case) the data in the center is constantly used for various transactions, not just printing and check clearing (like what we did in Symcor), but for all sorts of transactions, then those transactions may be blocked by the incoming data.
If you ask me what kinds of transactions do centers like that handle? I'll tell you exactly, because I was an architect on a number of projects like that. You can download your check images, statements on line, this data is not sitting in every bank! This data is requested from the center (again, I am talking about Symcor) and it is then served to the requester through a number of proxies. The data may not be immediately available (not even sitting on a hard drive,) but there are pretty cool robot storage facilities, with robotic hands spinning around on vertical poles, going up and down, grabbing disks or other types of storage (tape) and bringing them to readers and plugging them in and moving them around, all based on near-real-time requests, this depends on the SLA. Though I worked on it 2001-2004, maybe it's different today, but even if it is different, data needs to be synchronized across multiple storage systems, some are on line, some are not, etc., and it's because some are used for real time or near real time requests.
It is just not a simple problem, it really is entire infrastructures and ecologies of systems that were built around the principle mainframes, and in many systems (all?) it is assumed, that data comes in at night.
The expense to switch from that to a more real time system will be horrendous.
Oh, definitely. It will be in hundreds of millions, possibly more. Just the hardware upgrades will be in billions probably. The problem is that banks normally close at night, so synchronization does not really have to take into account that there are multiple live transactions going at the same time, so for example it's possible to lock an entire table to do updates (and it's mostly done that way). Imagine having to figure out all of the problems related to frequent synchronization and thus insane performance degradation if they even just switch from table to record locks. That's not going to be enough, they'll have to do much more than that, they'll have to redesign the way transactions work altogether. It's going to be fun, I had to do this for a retail system that I build to do frequent synchronization between all the sale points and center while serving all sorts of reports and requests. But banks are a much bigger problem than just a small store chain.
I used to do some work for Symcor, AFAIK that's how Canadian banks work.
It's crazy, I am building my own retail systems right now, the data exchange between the office systems and the stores are batched (because the Internet connection can and does go down sometimes), but when the networks are up, the data is synchronized a few times an hour, we can safely synchronize every 10 minutes. Of-course that's only 15 stores right now, but the difficulties are somewhat similar - while you are synchronizing, you have to lock the records that are being updated/deleted/inserted and you still have to have enough performance to serve multiple simultaneous reports to office workers and to suppliers and to store directors. It's a hard problem really, not as easy as it seems, even in 2011, but it's doable. Of-course banks just don't do it that way and when they decide to go ahead and try, they'll go through similar set of issues that I had to deal with (record or table locks via multiple running requests, data consistency, etc.)
Look people, this is not 1985 any more. The bean counters that had control of the company back then are no longer in control, (one has to ask who put them in control in the first place back then...).
- that's right! Different bean counters are in control. They have black jack and hookers.
So all those times I've said to girls: "I am giving you that star over there, shining in the sky as a gift", I was actually giving them the biggest diamonds of all times. They should have been thanking me for that, not running away.
Above in this very thread there was somebody else answering the question, but I asked the follow right back at them - why would anybody buy things for money they have to work for (after all, we are not spirits just yet, we need food and shelter and medications and clothing and vacations and other things), after all, many people are not even willing to buy books or music or video games or movies, they just want to copy. But in this case they are renting "properties" in virtual world and paying actual money for that? What does that mean?
Why can't one building be copied infinite number of times? Why can't an island be copied infinite number of times? Why can't a piece of avatar clothing be copied infinite number of times?
My question was - if these things are somehow successfully copy protected to the point that a player can interact with his avatar and with other people through their avatars, so he can see the things like clothing of other avatars, but he can't copy those things.... then is the value of the game in generating envy? In a virtual environment, where cost of copying is near 0?
Interesting concept.
Now, when we have something that you can download your thoughts into and run around in a computer space, I can absolutely see how you would have to pay 'rent', because your mind would occupy actual computer memory and take up CPU cycles.
If rent is paid for actual things - memory, energy, work, depreciation of equipment, back ups, administration, all that jazz, I can definitely see the value.
Paying real money that you have to work for to buy a virtual piece of clothing so you would look different so you could show off this piece to somebody in a virtual world.... Hmmm. You know, drugs also cost money, so does booze and going out and to vacations. That's all I am saying.
For somebody to pay for a product (especially for a not IRL product), it has to be scarce. People don't even like paying for music, movies, games, they copy them. So what makes people want to spend actual IRL money inside a computer game to buy clothing for avatar?
I don't fully comprehend something: different people have different avatars and they can meet in the game and people see the avatars interacting? They can see the clothing on the other avatar but they can't have a copy?
Basically Is the value of the game in generating envy?
It would be good to be able to get those products even after they are pulled off the shelves so to speak, get them at a discount if possible. Yes, it is better to have quick turn over because this means more products are created and more things are tried. If something is not selling well, then maybe it's not exactly the product that people are looking for and maybe another product is needed that is similar and yet different, better in some way.
The lame filters, the lack of Unicode support, the whole thing with trying to limit postings by time delays and numbers of comments that can be left from a single account with a 'non-excellent karma', attempts to lock out IP blocks (worthless attempts), you must recognize all of this was just a terrible mistake. When you write your memoirs, admit it, you should have done that differently.
Clearly CmdrTaco is moving his financial capital out of US dollar denominated assets, which is a smart move, but this shows government work in progress - the inflation and income taxation, as well as business regulations are destroying businesses and driving businessmen out of US economy.
What should be done here is all the wars, SS and other government spending programs eliminated and departments shut down, so that more money can be spent by non-government private businesses.
OK, it's a stretch:)
Taco, finally you will find out what it's like to try and get a story posted on this site in an honest way and not through magic powers of account #1.
A word of advice: beware of moderator flash mobs, they are a force to be reckoned with.
I don't understand any of this, can anybody explain it to me in terms that are easy to understand please? I literally do not understand what any of this is. Like in a few sentences: what the hell?
I mean I commend them for making money and building businesses with this stuff, I just don't understand why anybody pays real money for this, what does it do for them and how does this translate into real life (except for the customers becoming poorer of-course)?
Basically I now find myself at this point in life when I can legitimately say about something that I am looking at: I am too old for this shit.
You don't dig anything, drop it somewhere and let the wild life take care of it. Just burn the clothes and remove any piercings/jewelry first (and do something about those teeth, just in case.)
I guess they figured out a way to suck more oil/tax money out of the system and spread the wealth around. Not too far around, at this scale it's going to be 5-6 thousand people sucking on this cash pipe.
Do you know how much money road construction costs in Russia? Right now the numbers are anywhere between 190 Million and 8 Billion rubbles per kilometer, depending where construction is taking place (and the closer to the center of Moscow it is, the more expensive it becomes actually. No, really, the 8 Billion / km is in Moscow and 190 Million is some far away region. 30 million rubles is 1 million dollars by the way (roughly speaking).
They are talking about 6000km of rail road of-course, not a highway. But let's look at their numbers. The tunnel is 103km, the rail is 6000km, their estimation is 65 Billion USD.
There is no way that the tunnel per km will be lower cost than asphalt road in Moscow, which is 8Billion rubbles/km.
8Billion divided by 30 is $266,666,667. Multiply by 103km, that's $267,466,667,000 for the tunnel alone.
Now if you even say that the 6000km of rail is going to be only approximately 25% of cost of cheapest road built in Russia, that's 6000km * 50Million rubbles. That's 300,000,000,000 rubbles, or 10,000,000,000 USD.
OK, so maybe if they just build the railroad (which I probably underestimated by a factor of TEN, it's 10 Billion USD. That sounds ridiculously low by Russian standards in terms of costs for such things. But even if I overestimated the cost of the tunnel by the same factor of 10, then let's see, it's then a total of $36,746,666,700.
So with all the guesses based on construction costs in Russia and then dividing the likely costs of tunnel by factor of 10 and leaving the railroad costs to be 25% of cheapest construction costs found in Russia, I get to a number which is only about half of the number given for this project in TFA.
But don't forget that any road built in Russia is built somewhere near a town or a city, and this will have to be built in the wild Siberian forests and the same trick that worked for BAM in the days of Stalin, Kruschev and Brejnev, when they used prisoners to do the work (and it still took over 20 years in total time to do for only 3000km) is not going to work.
The amount of work required was officially underestimated only by a factor of 4 in those times. Of-course today there is much more technology to do this, but will there be the same amount of work force available?
I am likely severely underestimating the costs per km, because none of those roads that are built at those costs are built in conditions that these roads would have to be built. It's not just brutal, it's really deadly conditions, I lived in Yakutia for 6 years, that's way North of this proposed rail, but the difficulty of the work will really have to be compensated in these time not with a prison sentence, but with actual money, and I don't think it's going to be that easy to get people to do this work cheaply.
The important thing to remember, is that those 8,000,000,000 rubles for a km of road in Moscow are not really spent on construction, they are spent lining up bank accounts for all the parties involved.
Maybe if they can hire Chinese and go with the old half joke:
A German and a Chinese company are trying to get a tender to build a structure in Russia, and Germans want 2 Million to build the thing really well and Chinese want 1 Million. So a Russian guy bets on the tender for 3 Million. When asked why is his bet higher than any other, he says: 1 Million is for you, 1 Million is for me and Chinese will build it for 1 Million.
The people of the country have to decide what to do, they have decided. But it's an internal affair of that country, a civil war. What I normally see is that all this help by others is normally done so that something can be had back from the country, with which they are meddling, be it becoming IMF debtor or some special contracts and/or then later affecting the new government in a way, to promote interests of those 'helping' hands, but which are not in the best interests of the people of that country.
They have to sort it out themselves and come to a conclusion that they find appropriate, not something others would want to impose on them.
Geneticists have known since the 1980s that the yeast brewers use to make lager, S. pastorianus, was a hybrid of two yeast species: S. cerevisiae â" used to make ales, wine and bread â" and some other, unidentified organism.'"
- Chuck Norris is not just some unidentified organism, he alone brings the fine essence of power to wines and ales.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that there is insurance that banks buy for this as well. Of-course from POV of insurance companies it would be a good thing for banks to do, to minimize any sort of vector of attack, so if banks wanted to pay less insurance premiums, they could invest, but likely it would be much more than just a few hundred million dollars.
Think about this: a tiny project in a bank costs maybe around 250K. That's small time peanuts, and that's software only.
Now think about this: there are thousands of systems in operation in banks. Every system will have to be at the very minimum reviewed for potential impact of such a gigantic paradigm shift. So say it takes 100K to review a project on average. So that's 100K X thousands of projects for to be reviewed.
Hundreds of millions, if not billions will be spent on reviews. Then there will be a huge architectural undertaking. Then the hardware, links, software will have to be actually built. Then there will be a transition period, with small steps taken, some parts of systems will be transitions (while the old systems will all be running exactly as they were). There will be doubling of the impacted systems.
I guarantee that most systems that are impacted will have to be doubled. The old will continue operating and the new will come on line to start transitioning with a tiny test.
This is not going to be 365Million. We are literally talking about tens of billions. And when you take into account that there are multiple centers, not all banks are connected into the same systems, it's going to be in hundreds of billions.
No, you didn't get my point. The data comes flooding into the center, it will lock all of the record that are updated (hopefully just records and not entire tables.) There will be not a single moment in time that there will be no updates coming into the banks, unless there is some form of absolute synchronization (possible), but even then, if you synchronize with the center say every 1 hour, that means that once an hour every bank, every buffer that there is out there will send data into the center.
IF (that's a big if) the center is only used to collect data and for nothing else, that may be OK. If (and that's the case) the data in the center is constantly used for various transactions, not just printing and check clearing (like what we did in Symcor), but for all sorts of transactions, then those transactions may be blocked by the incoming data.
If you ask me what kinds of transactions do centers like that handle? I'll tell you exactly, because I was an architect on a number of projects like that. You can download your check images, statements on line, this data is not sitting in every bank! This data is requested from the center (again, I am talking about Symcor) and it is then served to the requester through a number of proxies. The data may not be immediately available (not even sitting on a hard drive,) but there are pretty cool robot storage facilities, with robotic hands spinning around on vertical poles, going up and down, grabbing disks or other types of storage (tape) and bringing them to readers and plugging them in and moving them around, all based on near-real-time requests, this depends on the SLA. Though I worked on it 2001-2004, maybe it's different today, but even if it is different, data needs to be synchronized across multiple storage systems, some are on line, some are not, etc., and it's because some are used for real time or near real time requests.
It is just not a simple problem, it really is entire infrastructures and ecologies of systems that were built around the principle mainframes, and in many systems (all?) it is assumed, that data comes in at night.
The expense to switch from that to a more real time system will be horrendous.
Oh, definitely. It will be in hundreds of millions, possibly more. Just the hardware upgrades will be in billions probably. The problem is that banks normally close at night, so synchronization does not really have to take into account that there are multiple live transactions going at the same time, so for example it's possible to lock an entire table to do updates (and it's mostly done that way). Imagine having to figure out all of the problems related to frequent synchronization and thus insane performance degradation if they even just switch from table to record locks. That's not going to be enough, they'll have to do much more than that, they'll have to redesign the way transactions work altogether. It's going to be fun, I had to do this for a retail system that I build to do frequent synchronization between all the sale points and center while serving all sorts of reports and requests. But banks are a much bigger problem than just a small store chain.
I used to do some work for Symcor, AFAIK that's how Canadian banks work.
It's crazy, I am building my own retail systems right now, the data exchange between the office systems and the stores are batched (because the Internet connection can and does go down sometimes), but when the networks are up, the data is synchronized a few times an hour, we can safely synchronize every 10 minutes. Of-course that's only 15 stores right now, but the difficulties are somewhat similar - while you are synchronizing, you have to lock the records that are being updated/deleted/inserted and you still have to have enough performance to serve multiple simultaneous reports to office workers and to suppliers and to store directors. It's a hard problem really, not as easy as it seems, even in 2011, but it's doable. Of-course banks just don't do it that way and when they decide to go ahead and try, they'll go through similar set of issues that I had to deal with (record or table locks via multiple running requests, data consistency, etc.)
Look people, this is not 1985 any more. The bean counters that had control of the company back then are no longer in control, (one has to ask who put them in control in the first place back then...).
- that's right! Different bean counters are in control. They have black jack and hookers.
So all those times I've said to girls: "I am giving you that star over there, shining in the sky as a gift", I was actually giving them the biggest diamonds of all times. They should have been thanking me for that, not running away.
Above in this very thread there was somebody else answering the question, but I asked the follow right back at them - why would anybody buy things for money they have to work for (after all, we are not spirits just yet, we need food and shelter and medications and clothing and vacations and other things), after all, many people are not even willing to buy books or music or video games or movies, they just want to copy. But in this case they are renting "properties" in virtual world and paying actual money for that? What does that mean?
Why can't one building be copied infinite number of times? Why can't an island be copied infinite number of times? Why can't a piece of avatar clothing be copied infinite number of times?
My question was - if these things are somehow successfully copy protected to the point that a player can interact with his avatar and with other people through their avatars, so he can see the things like clothing of other avatars, but he can't copy those things.... then is the value of the game in generating envy? In a virtual environment, where cost of copying is near 0?
Interesting concept.
Now, when we have something that you can download your thoughts into and run around in a computer space, I can absolutely see how you would have to pay 'rent', because your mind would occupy actual computer memory and take up CPU cycles.
If rent is paid for actual things - memory, energy, work, depreciation of equipment, back ups, administration, all that jazz, I can definitely see the value.
Paying real money that you have to work for to buy a virtual piece of clothing so you would look different so you could show off this piece to somebody in a virtual world.... Hmmm. You know, drugs also cost money, so does booze and going out and to vacations. That's all I am saying.
For somebody to pay for a product (especially for a not IRL product), it has to be scarce. People don't even like paying for music, movies, games, they copy them. So what makes people want to spend actual IRL money inside a computer game to buy clothing for avatar?
I don't fully comprehend something: different people have different avatars and they can meet in the game and people see the avatars interacting? They can see the clothing on the other avatar but they can't have a copy?
Basically Is the value of the game in generating envy?
It would be good to be able to get those products even after they are pulled off the shelves so to speak, get them at a discount if possible. Yes, it is better to have quick turn over because this means more products are created and more things are tried. If something is not selling well, then maybe it's not exactly the product that people are looking for and maybe another product is needed that is similar and yet different, better in some way.
PS.
The lame filters, the lack of Unicode support, the whole thing with trying to limit postings by time delays and numbers of comments that can be left from a single account with a 'non-excellent karma', attempts to lock out IP blocks (worthless attempts), you must recognize all of this was just a terrible mistake. When you write your memoirs, admit it, you should have done that differently.
Clearly CmdrTaco is moving his financial capital out of US dollar denominated assets, which is a smart move, but this shows government work in progress - the inflation and income taxation, as well as business regulations are destroying businesses and driving businessmen out of US economy.
What should be done here is all the wars, SS and other government spending programs eliminated and departments shut down, so that more money can be spent by non-government private businesses.
OK, it's a stretch :)
Taco, finally you will find out what it's like to try and get a story posted on this site in an honest way and not through magic powers of account #1.
A word of advice: beware of moderator flash mobs, they are a force to be reckoned with.
Cheers.
I don't understand any of this, can anybody explain it to me in terms that are easy to understand please? I literally do not understand what any of this is. Like in a few sentences: what the hell?
I mean I commend them for making money and building businesses with this stuff, I just don't understand why anybody pays real money for this, what does it do for them and how does this translate into real life (except for the customers becoming poorer of-course)?
Basically I now find myself at this point in life when I can legitimately say about something that I am looking at: I am too old for this shit.
Glass?
It'll be a Higgs Boson field. No mere glass container can take that role.
I guess he knows he can't continue working much longer, and he is the only one who knows how much time he has left.
Tis well.
Or as if one of them actually theorized the entire rocketry field into existence. You go ahead, tell them.
you've changed my life.
If you ever become interested in Siberia and need a guide, leave a comment in my journal.
You don't dig anything, drop it somewhere and let the wild life take care of it. Just burn the clothes and remove any piercings/jewelry first (and do something about those teeth, just in case.)
So Russia approves this, ha?
I guess they figured out a way to suck more oil/tax money out of the system and spread the wealth around. Not too far around, at this scale it's going to be 5-6 thousand people sucking on this cash pipe.
Do you know how much money road construction costs in Russia? Right now the numbers are anywhere between 190 Million and 8 Billion rubbles per kilometer, depending where construction is taking place (and the closer to the center of Moscow it is, the more expensive it becomes actually. No, really, the 8 Billion / km is in Moscow and 190 Million is some far away region. 30 million rubles is 1 million dollars by the way (roughly speaking).
They are talking about 6000km of rail road of-course, not a highway. But let's look at their numbers. The tunnel is 103km, the rail is 6000km, their estimation is 65 Billion USD.
There is no way that the tunnel per km will be lower cost than asphalt road in Moscow, which is 8Billion rubbles/km.
8Billion divided by 30 is $266,666,667. Multiply by 103km, that's $267,466,667,000 for the tunnel alone.
Now if you even say that the 6000km of rail is going to be only approximately 25% of cost of cheapest road built in Russia, that's 6000km * 50Million rubbles. That's 300,000,000,000 rubbles, or 10,000,000,000 USD.
OK, so maybe if they just build the railroad (which I probably underestimated by a factor of TEN, it's 10 Billion USD. That sounds ridiculously low by Russian standards in terms of costs for such things. But even if I overestimated the cost of the tunnel by the same factor of 10, then let's see, it's then a total of $36,746,666,700.
So with all the guesses based on construction costs in Russia and then dividing the likely costs of tunnel by factor of 10 and leaving the railroad costs to be 25% of cheapest construction costs found in Russia, I get to a number which is only about half of the number given for this project in TFA.
But don't forget that any road built in Russia is built somewhere near a town or a city, and this will have to be built in the wild Siberian forests and the same trick that worked for BAM in the days of Stalin, Kruschev and Brejnev, when they used prisoners to do the work (and it still took over 20 years in total time to do for only 3000km) is not going to work.
The amount of work required was officially underestimated only by a factor of 4 in those times. Of-course today there is much more technology to do this, but will there be the same amount of work force available?
I am likely severely underestimating the costs per km, because none of those roads that are built at those costs are built in conditions that these roads would have to be built. It's not just brutal, it's really deadly conditions, I lived in Yakutia for 6 years, that's way North of this proposed rail, but the difficulty of the work will really have to be compensated in these time not with a prison sentence, but with actual money, and I don't think it's going to be that easy to get people to do this work cheaply.
The important thing to remember, is that those 8,000,000,000 rubles for a km of road in Moscow are not really spent on construction, they are spent lining up bank accounts for all the parties involved.
Maybe if they can hire Chinese and go with the old half joke:
A German and a Chinese company are trying to get a tender to build a structure in Russia, and Germans want 2 Million to build the thing really well and Chinese want 1 Million. So a Russian guy bets on the tender for 3 Million. When asked why is his bet higher than any other, he says: 1 Million is for you, 1 Million is for me and Chinese will build it for 1 Million.
The people of the country have to decide what to do, they have decided. But it's an internal affair of that country, a civil war. What I normally see is that all this help by others is normally done so that something can be had back from the country, with which they are meddling, be it becoming IMF debtor or some special contracts and/or then later affecting the new government in a way, to promote interests of those 'helping' hands, but which are not in the best interests of the people of that country.
They have to sort it out themselves and come to a conclusion that they find appropriate, not something others would want to impose on them.
well, this is just a cheap toy, but what's so smart about meddling with other people's affairs? Who made you world's police?
America, fuck yeah?
It's good for the rebels, bad for the regime. Are we supposed to be cheerleaders? Is this story about technology or about the Libyan civil war?
Great tool by the way.
Does anybody think it's a good idea to meddle with internal conflicts of other nations?
are you almost alright?
Geneticists have known since the 1980s that the yeast brewers use to make lager, S. pastorianus, was a hybrid of two yeast species: S. cerevisiae â" used to make ales, wine and bread â" and some other, unidentified organism.'"
- Chuck Norris is not just some unidentified organism, he alone brings the fine essence of power to wines and ales.
don't nobody ever ask me to touch your iPads or any other pads ever again. Crap!