The Itanic failed because it was more expensive than the x86, not faster in "integer" performance and not compatible with the x86 for practical purposes.
Back then (and even now) if you had lots of money to spend, wanted "Itanic" style performance, and didn't need x86 compatibility, you might as well buy an IBM POWER system. At least you know IBM will be happy to keep sucking money out of you for decades;).
The rest of the world was and is better off using x86 systems for their servers. Most of the stuff the Itanic is good at is easily run in parallel, and so can be run on multiple cheaper x86 machines, or nowadays on multiple GPU cores:).
The x86 on the other hand can do the usual web/DB/"misc app" stuff faster than Itanium. The x86 specint scores were better, while the itanium specfp scores were better. The last I checked, stuff like Oracle, Apache, IIS didn't require much floating point performance. If you're willing to dedicate the chip space and power budget, I'm sure it is possible to make x86 floating point performance much faster, but who will pay more for that?
I'm not surprised that a smart kid can do what you do especially now given the vast resources available on the Internet. There's just so much a person can learn online nowadays, the issue is more of what you want to learn and spend your time on.
When you get older you might find you have less energy and time to spend on your interests, and stuff might just not feel as interesting and exciting- you might get a bit jaded. The first time you eat ice cream is often much better than the 100th time, even though the ice cream has not changed.
So before that happens, have fun, stay motivated, keep doing stuff and keep finding cool stuff to do! And you might find you never get old, just older;).
p.s. try not to spend too much time on Slashdot - it can be a big time-sink...
Sure, if you're good in the game, it doesn't mean you'll be good in racing since it takes physical fitness, strength, courage, and also you can't be nearly as heavy as the car;).
BUT if you suck in Grand Turismo even when using a steering wheel controller, though you are good in "real world" driving, you're likely to not be good enough to turn pro (so no point wasting time and resources on that path).
AFAIK the great racers can drive a lot of vehicles well - race cars, normal cars, karts, and virtual cars.
Actually these realistic driving games are good for in some ways for parents. Because it is cheaper to buy these games and find out whether your kid has a chance than to actually fork out many kilobux or more for a "conventional racing career start" (karting, training, racing, equipment, crashes, etc).
If your kid can't even get close to the top racers' game lap times, it's unlikely he/she can beat the real life top racers' lap times either. So the parents can say, "sorry kid, for you it's a hobby and not a career path".
Whereas if your kid does beat and get close to those scores consistently, then your kid might really be racer material (especially if he/she seems to do it "naturally"). In which case good luck and I don't envy you;).
Then as I already said, the buying of governments can also be part of the free market. Willing buyer, willing seller = voluntary transaction. In that case Government interference is also part of the free market.
And in the case where the voters elect a government, it is also part of the free market too. After all using your reasoning, voting is just another transaction. In such a case there would be no point grumbling about Government interference getting in the way of the free market. By your logic, government interference would be part of the free market.
Charity is part of the free market. This is capitalism, which is all about free trade i.e. not having the government interfere in the economic lives of individuals.
With that sort of logic then religion, communism and even Government interference are part of the free market too. The latter especially if the Government is bought or supplied by the Corporations;).
Q) How many free market capitalists does it take to change a lightbulb? A) Free market capitalists don't change lightbulbs. They sit in the darkness writing academic crap[1] and wait for Adam Smith's Invisible Hand[2] to do stuff.
[1] If you're going to say charity is part of the free market then free market theory doesn't help predict much, nor help people better understand things.
Many in the world view the IMF as the European arm[1] of the Western Powers. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis the IMF recommended actions (e.g. allow important/strategic local banks to fail or to be bought up by foreign companies) that the US and other western countries would not take in their own crisis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#IMF_Role
Those actions arguably weakened the countries more than they would have otherwise. One can compare those countries with Malaysia (which declined the IMF's "help" and "advice"). Some later spun the results as Malaysia not recovering as much but if the country doesn't crash as low naturally it doesn't rise back as much;).
And yes, I use the term specifically designed because TFA points out yet another step in the hundreds taken to refine that particular product to make it just about the most powerfully addictive legal product on the planet. And again, those who care turn a blind eye and hold their (greased) palm out.
If you're talking about Facebook: to get information on/from them.
In the process of "friending" them you can choose to put them on a friends list where they can't see anything on you and your relationships that's not already on your public profile, while you can see everything they allow to their facebook friends - e.g. who their friends are, photos of them, wall posts etc.
That way you can do stuff like figure out who the person might be. There are people who put cartoon characters or random pics as their display photos, don't use their real names or their names are not that unique, and then they try to friend you, using this method often helps you figure out who they are without having to ask them first.
After that you can decide whether to unfriend them, or leave them on that list, or move them to a list with more access.
The biggest reason there are so many laws on the books are because most laws do not have a stated lifespan/expiry, and there is no "de-legislative" body dedicated to removing/repealing laws they think should not be there:),
The legislature has the power to repeal laws, but they are usually too busy making laws...
From a nerd hacker point of view, I've wondered if you could rig your car up with a electromagnetic loop or more to trigger or confuse the detectors that use induction loops: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_loop
One solution is to: 1) make it illegal to have yellow lights that are too short.Then have a regulator fine the people/organizations setting yellow lights that are too short, and actually make it known to the public that "yellow lights have to be X seconds long, if they aren't they are illegal and please call this number to report them". 2) Make it law that if a traffic light is run by more than one car, the LAST car gets the fine. The ones in front don't. This part is important. 3) Rear number plates would have to be mandatory - otherwise 2) doesn't work so easily:).
Then the red lights will work better since: 1) People know that if they run a red light they will get fined. 2) But people will also know that legal yellow lights will be at least X seconds long, so fewer people would slam on the brakes on yellow lights. 3) Fewer people would also slam on the brakes if a car is too close and too fast behind them to stop in time, because they can now go through and let the tailgater get the fine.
1) Many airlines let you carry 1 litre of vodka onto their plane. That's definitely more dangerous than 1 litre of water:). 2) There is usually no penalty if they catch you, you're allowed to chuck the item into a bin. They assume it won't blow up the bin;).
It's all "feel safe" crap that isn't making the passengers feel safe.
There's another alternative to the "balancing act" of Unions vs Management:: Cooperatives ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative ). Cooperatives in general tend to do less evil to workers, customers and countries than Corporations.
The trouble with Cooperatives is the bunch who start them take more risk for less gain. Whereas with Corporations - the founders are more able to take the "lion's share". There are far fewer altruistic people with the ability and capability to start a cooperative and be not as rich than there are people willing to start a company to be rich.
On average Cooperatives might not be as innovative as Corporations but in many areas you don't really need much innovation (take a look at Bear Stearns et all and ask yourself is that sort of "innovation" really helpful?), you just need stuff to work reasonably efficiently and well, and keep working.
IMO countries should create incentives to form Cooperatives for at least some fields. Not too big an incentive, but enough to offset the start-up costs for the initial organizers. Nor do you want to reward a million failures, so a careful design of the incentive scheme is needed.
Fine, so please tell me how would a home Linux/Windows 7/OS X machine get its DNS settings from the ISP? Or are you claiming that getting stuff like DNS configured is an "odd corner case" that only a few users would ever need?
OK you might say use router advertisements instead of dhcpv6, but those would be even newer and thus support my point about bugs even more (they're probably still writing the RFCs - some are dated Nov 2010 e.g. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6106 ). You going to bet that the implementations won't be full of bugs?
And are there even Windows/OSX/Linux clients that handle those router advertisements? Are they stable and secure? Are there already carrier grade routers that would support them? Nov 2010 isn't that long ago.
So how is IPv6 cheaper and more scalable than IPv4 as the OP claimed?
Currently with IPv4, "good case scenario" - home user plugs laptop to device from the ISP (or selects the device's SSID), and stuff works - DNS, gateways, netmasks, addresses all get set up automatically. Ask yourself what happens with an IPv6-only "good case" scenario? Is all the tech there already?
If it isn't, then all the talk about "the world had 10 years to move" is bullshit.
That's like saying you had 10 years to move in to a house when they were still discussing part of the foundation's design in Nov 2010. Just because they successfully tested the mock up rooms and doors at their own test sites doesn't mean much.
Getting people to move from nothing to a shack is easy. But when they have a house that mostly works and is just a bit short of space, it is stupid to expect them to move to a building with lots of space but not ready.
Slashdot Mirror
The Itanic failed because it was more expensive than the x86, not faster in "integer" performance and not compatible with the x86 for practical purposes.
;).
:).
Back then (and even now) if you had lots of money to spend, wanted "Itanic" style performance, and didn't need x86 compatibility, you might as well buy an IBM POWER system. At least you know IBM will be happy to keep sucking money out of you for decades
The rest of the world was and is better off using x86 systems for their servers. Most of the stuff the Itanic is good at is easily run in parallel, and so can be run on multiple cheaper x86 machines, or nowadays on multiple GPU cores
The x86 on the other hand can do the usual web/DB/"misc app" stuff faster than Itanium. The x86 specint scores were better, while the itanium specfp scores were better. The last I checked, stuff like Oracle, Apache, IIS didn't require much floating point performance. If you're willing to dedicate the chip space and power budget, I'm sure it is possible to make x86 floating point performance much faster, but who will pay more for that?
Ignore the haters. They're jealous and/or stupid.
;).
I'm not surprised that a smart kid can do what you do especially now given the vast resources available on the Internet. There's just so much a person can learn online nowadays, the issue is more of what you want to learn and spend your time on.
When you get older you might find you have less energy and time to spend on your interests, and stuff might just not feel as interesting and exciting- you might get a bit jaded. The first time you eat ice cream is often much better than the 100th time, even though the ice cream has not changed.
So before that happens, have fun, stay motivated, keep doing stuff and keep finding cool stuff to do! And you might find you never get old, just older
p.s. try not to spend too much time on Slashdot - it can be a big time-sink...
Sure, if you're good in the game, it doesn't mean you'll be good in racing since it takes physical fitness, strength, courage, and also you can't be nearly as heavy as the car ;).
BUT if you suck in Grand Turismo even when using a steering wheel controller, though you are good in "real world" driving, you're likely to not be good enough to turn pro (so no point wasting time and resources on that path).
AFAIK the great racers can drive a lot of vehicles well - race cars, normal cars, karts, and virtual cars.
Actually these realistic driving games are good for in some ways for parents. Because it is cheaper to buy these games and find out whether your kid has a chance than to actually fork out many kilobux or more for a "conventional racing career start" (karting, training, racing, equipment, crashes, etc).
;).
If your kid can't even get close to the top racers' game lap times, it's unlikely he/she can beat the real life top racers' lap times either. So the parents can say, "sorry kid, for you it's a hobby and not a career path".
Whereas if your kid does beat and get close to those scores consistently, then your kid might really be racer material (especially if he/she seems to do it "naturally"). In which case good luck and I don't envy you
Yep, they use metric for every 2.54cm of the car.
IMO the problem is not quantity. It's quality.
OK, now that we've eliminated that one case. How about the other case where the government isn't elected, but bought instead.
The entities consensually doing the transaction may negatively affect those who are not directly involved in the transaction.
Would that that mean it is not a free market transaction as long the transaction has negative effects/impact on others?
Or is that transaction still a "free market" transaction (willing buyer, willing seller), but the subsequent acts by the Government might not be?
Then as I already said, the buying of governments can also be part of the free market. Willing buyer, willing seller = voluntary transaction. In that case Government interference is also part of the free market.
And in the case where the voters elect a government, it is also part of the free market too. After all using your reasoning, voting is just another transaction. In such a case there would be no point grumbling about Government interference getting in the way of the free market. By your logic, government interference would be part of the free market.
QED.
Charity is part of the free market. This is capitalism, which is all about free trade i.e. not having the government interfere in the economic lives of individuals.
With that sort of logic then religion, communism and even Government interference are part of the free market too. The latter especially if the Government is bought or supplied by the Corporations ;).
Q) How many free market capitalists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) Free market capitalists don't change lightbulbs. They sit in the darkness writing academic crap[1] and wait for Adam Smith's Invisible Hand[2] to do stuff.
[1] If you're going to say charity is part of the free market then free market theory doesn't help predict much, nor help people better understand things.
[2] aka Other People.
Choked or throttled too :).
That said, you might be able to make a convincing argument to a lawmaker with one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M72_LAW
Many in the world view the IMF as the European arm[1] of the Western Powers. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis the IMF recommended actions (e.g. allow important/strategic local banks to fail or to be bought up by foreign companies) that the US and other western countries would not take in their own crisis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#IMF_Role
Those actions arguably weakened the countries more than they would have otherwise. One can compare those countries with Malaysia (which declined the IMF's "help" and "advice"). Some later spun the results as Malaysia not recovering as much but if the country doesn't crash as low naturally it doesn't rise back as much ;).
[1] With the World Bank being the US arm...
They might be on drugs too ;).
And yes, I use the term specifically designed because TFA points out yet another step in the hundreds taken to refine that particular product to make it just about the most powerfully addictive legal product on the planet. And again, those who care turn a blind eye and hold their (greased) palm out.
I'm wondering what the likes of Philip Morris, BAT, etc would do to marijuana or cocaine if it were legalized. They already free-base tobacco: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/freebase-nicotine--why-some-some-cigarettes-may-be-more-addictive-588248.html
I don't find pipe tobacco smoke that offensive, some of it actually smells quite nice, so they've definitely made a difference to the product.
It's all still legal of course ;).
Udder corruption sickens many.
Sorry, just milking it for what it's worth.
If you're talking about Facebook: to get information on/from them.
In the process of "friending" them you can choose to put them on a friends list where they can't see anything on you and your relationships that's not already on your public profile, while you can see everything they allow to their facebook friends - e.g. who their friends are, photos of them, wall posts etc.
That way you can do stuff like figure out who the person might be. There are people who put cartoon characters or random pics as their display photos, don't use their real names or their names are not that unique, and then they try to friend you, using this method often helps you figure out who they are without having to ask them first.
After that you can decide whether to unfriend them, or leave them on that list, or move them to a list with more access.
And those tech nerds might also put the spambots on a Facebook friend list where the spambots can't see anything much, or even post anything much.
Facebook might not reliably enforce that for the long term , but most people don't care that much.
The biggest reason there are so many laws on the books are because most laws do not have a stated lifespan/expiry, and there is no "de-legislative" body dedicated to removing/repealing laws they think should not be there :),
The legislature has the power to repeal laws, but they are usually too busy making laws...
From a nerd hacker point of view, I've wondered if you could rig your car up with a electromagnetic loop or more to trigger or confuse the detectors that use induction loops:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_loop
There are many places where they use these.
This mess is just a result of poor regulation.
:).
One solution is to:
1) make it illegal to have yellow lights that are too short.Then have a regulator fine the people/organizations setting yellow lights that are too short, and actually make it known to the public that "yellow lights have to be X seconds long, if they aren't they are illegal and please call this number to report them".
2) Make it law that if a traffic light is run by more than one car, the LAST car gets the fine. The ones in front don't. This part is important.
3) Rear number plates would have to be mandatory - otherwise 2) doesn't work so easily
Then the red lights will work better since:
1) People know that if they run a red light they will get fined.
2) But people will also know that legal yellow lights will be at least X seconds long, so fewer people would slam on the brakes on yellow lights.
3) Fewer people would also slam on the brakes if a car is too close and too fast behind them to stop in time, because they can now go through and let the tailgater get the fine.
1) Many airlines let you carry 1 litre of vodka onto their plane. That's definitely more dangerous than 1 litre of water :). ;).
2) There is usually no penalty if they catch you, you're allowed to chuck the item into a bin. They assume it won't blow up the bin
It's all "feel safe" crap that isn't making the passengers feel safe.
grounding and shielding design rules aren't generally taught as part of undergraduate EE curriculum
If the shielding isn't good enough, the chances of grounding go way up ;).
Africa? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7086777.stm
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-22/china-s-investment-in-africa-to-increase-to-50-billion-by-2015-bank-says.html
Might be funny if Communist China's investment in Africa actually improves Africa more than all that Western aid.
There's another alternative to the "balancing act" of Unions vs Management:: Cooperatives ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative ). Cooperatives in general tend to do less evil to workers, customers and countries than Corporations.
The trouble with Cooperatives is the bunch who start them take more risk for less gain. Whereas with Corporations - the founders are more able to take the "lion's share". There are far fewer altruistic people with the ability and capability to start a cooperative and be not as rich than there are people willing to start a company to be rich.
On average Cooperatives might not be as innovative as Corporations but in many areas you don't really need much innovation (take a look at Bear Stearns et all and ask yourself is that sort of "innovation" really helpful?), you just need stuff to work reasonably efficiently and well, and keep working.
IMO countries should create incentives to form Cooperatives for at least some fields. Not too big an incentive, but enough to offset the start-up costs for the initial organizers. Nor do you want to reward a million failures, so a careful design of the incentive scheme is needed.
Fine, so please tell me how would a home Linux/Windows 7/OS X machine get its DNS settings from the ISP? Or are you claiming that getting stuff like DNS configured is an "odd corner case" that only a few users would ever need?
OK you might say use router advertisements instead of dhcpv6, but those would be even newer and thus support my point about bugs even more (they're probably still writing the RFCs - some are dated Nov 2010 e.g. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6106 ). You going to bet that the implementations won't be full of bugs?
And are there even Windows/OSX/Linux clients that handle those router advertisements? Are they stable and secure? Are there already carrier grade routers that would support them? Nov 2010 isn't that long ago.
So how is IPv6 cheaper and more scalable than IPv4 as the OP claimed?
Currently with IPv4, "good case scenario" - home user plugs laptop to device from the ISP (or selects the device's SSID), and stuff works - DNS, gateways, netmasks, addresses all get set up automatically. Ask yourself what happens with an IPv6-only "good case" scenario? Is all the tech there already?
If it isn't, then all the talk about "the world had 10 years to move" is bullshit.
That's like saying you had 10 years to move in to a house when they were still discussing part of the foundation's design in Nov 2010. Just because they successfully tested the mock up rooms and doors at their own test sites doesn't mean much.
Getting people to move from nothing to a shack is easy. But when they have a house that mostly works and is just a bit short of space, it is stupid to expect them to move to a building with lots of space but not ready.