Not too many people in the Nort East, but apparently quite a few in the south, use heat-pumps to regulate home and water temperatures in their homes.
The way the system works is this: A sealed water circuit is run from the basement of the home down to several feet under the frost-line. There, there is a cistern that stays at a very constant temperature, somewherein the 50 degree range, year round. The water is circulated to a cooling, or heating unit via a heat-exchanger (sort of like an A/C and radiator). The temp difference provides a good deal of the energy for the system, so there is less need for a power hungry heater/compressor.
Now, my question is this: Since electrical power is used to drive a Peltier type cooler (used for CPU cooling), and since an inverse temperature difference accross a Peltier junction (cooling the hot side, heating the cool side) will cause the device to generate power.. Why not use a large-scale Peltier device, in conjunction with a geothermal heat-pump as described above, to run the CoLo facility?
Seriously, put one in Greenland and Scandinavia, where the temperature difference is more significant than in the temperate zones... They already make heavy use of geothermal out there anyway...
I really don't think that the artists would suffer all that much with the RIAA being gone and the major labels having their wings clipped. Here's why:
Napster has shown that the 'help' that major labels and the RIAA provided to the artist, in terms of distribution and promotion, is just not needed anymore on the net. It used to be a really valuable crutch. A new group could depend on a deep pocket while the word got out and a fan-base was laid down. The initial financing for a massive production of albums was handled. Tours were arranged and promoted. All that took heavy connections but it no longer matters.
Now, a small band can set up a streaming video-audio server for peanuts... The cost of a cheap MIDI keyboard. It's just another instrument they play. Then they make a few posts to a USENET group that follows their musical style, and provide a URL to their site. On the site, they host some samples, bios, pics, rants... Give people the opportunity to actually buy a CD off the site, and save money by only burning those that are ordered and paid for, not a batch of 10k that may not sell. MP3.com is a good resource to tap into as well - but you know that.
It may take a bit more capital to get off the ground than when you have a recording contract, but it's definitely much cheaper than it would have been even a few years ago.
Now, the "manufactured" bands that are created by promoters, simply for the purpose of selling products and lining the pockets of the big labels.. Well, they'd likely be a LOT less popular then they are today. They would not spread as quickly based on their own talent (or lack there of) without the label cramming their hopped-up shows down every pre-pubescent throat in America. That's a separate issue, I think. (I saw a bit of NSYNC at Madison Square Garden on HBO last night. What a hot, steaming, runny pile of shit!) They'd still exist, and infact become the cash-cow of "The Industry", since talented artists would now have an opportunity to be heard without being herded.
Many Artists have often complained about the contracts they were forced to sign when they were getting off the ground. They're in the position where the label owns rights to anything they ever do, and essencially have to produce the kind of music that the label dictates. I'm not a musician, but I can certainly undertand how frustrating this sort of arrangement must be - I've been told to code a certain 'way' before, and have left a job as a result. Prince is a good example of an artist fighting a contract with a label. The whole silly name-change thing is supposed to have been a means of straining the contract he was under, so he could do His music and not Their music..
Anyway, the point is that with the current technology, an Artist has more options for creating, promoting and distributing their work. The recording label makes things a little easier - if they like you, but they are no longer the ONLY way of making it big. I think that MP3.com, and especially Napster, has served to show new artists that they have a chance to make it big without selling their soul. Hopefully many of the big artists will be able to side-step their contracts to take advantage of the new tech as well. I suspect many have not been outspoken on the RIAA issue for fear of 'punishment' by their labels, rather than because they oppose Napster.
There is a perception issue here though. Artists who want to spread their music stand to benefit greatly from the 'new tech' way of doing things. Artists who want to get paid for their music will have to be really good - and sell themselves to fans, not a label. The difference is subtle but significant. Giving the individual fan the choice of paying for music will make it harder for those Artists who 'are in it for the money', but easier for those who are in it for the music. We KNOW that the Internet culture is a meritocracy - regardless of what the big businesses think.
I think that there's a strong lesson in the Grateful Dead, who have been encouraging the bootlegging of their performances as a means of promoting their music. That lesson is that we're all going to Hell in a bucket.:)
DiabloII, as well as many other networkable games of today, provide people who bought (or pirated) the game with the ability to play the game online. Those servers do not cost the end-user anything, but they do cost a lot of money to maintain.
You can argue that the users have already paid for those servers, even if they don't use them, since they've paid the steep mark-up for the game. You'd be right, that's where the money comes from. But, this is the same sort of reasoning that the RIAA and MPAA use all the time. Money not made is not money that's lost. Money that's spent on the game alone is the same amount as that spent on a game you intend to network. The person who networks DiabloII is getting more bang for their buck. Simple.
Now, where's the extra bang for the buck with a CD? As another poster on this thread suggested, a CD is no more expensive to produce then a book, yet a book tends to sell more cheaply (unless you're in college, in which case you're the victim of extorsion, but that's another topic entirely).
There isn't anything really special about a CD. No, not anything more special than a DVD - both are the 'cool thing' in our culture. We provide the suppliers with a ready market. They set the maximum price that most people are willing to, begrudgingly, pay.
If prices dropped, record sales would undoubtedly rise; but not in proportion. Even if they sold the CDs at a buck a piece, I would not buy the same dollar-amount as I do now. There are not 30 albums per month that I would want to acquire.
Now for the cost of production - and here we get to see the actual price-fixing at work: Say an album costs the aforementioned $100k to record, another $100k to distribute and yet another $100k to promote (though most promotion is in radio play - paid for by advertisers, and in performance tours which are paid for at the gate). So, we have $300,000 in investment. Let's add $200k for the artists and another WHOPPING $500k for all others involved.
Now, we've got a cool Million to work with (funny how that worked out). Say an album sells a million copies... That's a dollar per copy. We pay what?? $20 a piece?
Even if an album sells (ONLY) 100,000 copies (pitiful), that's still $10 a pop to break even - remember the bills are paid now. Where's that extra money going? Britney Spears next boob-job? New 'Stangs for NSYNC? Bail for Snoop Doggy Dog?
Well, not for those making money on it, but still.. In a greater, moral sense, Napster has served it's purpose.
It was in the wrong, and we all know it - but by allowing individuals to rip off the Record Companies, it has prompted the bears to charge. They're now out of the cave, and everyone knows they're a bunch of greedy hypocrites.
Two wrongs do not make a right, but apparently, doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons will sometimes bring to light another wrong, which has been swept under the rug in the hope that no one notices. It's about damn time.
But, I just hope that this is not a sign of things to come. The FTC/DOJ/Fed seem encouraged by their 'victory' over Micro$oft. Are they now starting to chase down other monopolists? In the case of the RIAA, it may not be a bad thing. But I hope that it doesn't turn into another witch-hunt. We've seen over-zealous government agents cause a lot of harm in the name of doing good.
If you review the current article on/., as well as the press releases, you will find that ACTUAL chips were used to gather data. They are simply not MASS PRODUCED for the consumer market yet - since that requires a heavy-duty fab facility, which Transmeta does not have.
Making prototype chips is much easier than mass production. In fact, the NSF will produce up to 5 prototype chips given a schematic design by a college student. This is a great way to do a proof of concept, and to obtain a piece of hardware for testing. Once there, data is gathered, and if the design holds true, you make arrangements to mass-produce the chip.
Special purpose chips are simpler to mass produce, since they are not competing with those made by the companies that actually own fabs. Now you see the problem Transmeta is facing. They are making a direct competitor to the chips made by the fab owners.
Yes, they should 'put out a few chips'. But, you see, producing prototypes - if you are not a brilliant student but rather a business, is extremely expensive. It only gets cheap, if you can produce them by the millions, in a fab. The chips Transmeta had prototyped, most likely went to the R&D labs of various device manufacturers, so they could start designing hardware to use these chips.
Now that the hardware is 'in the pipeline' (as they say), Transmeta must obtain a steady supplier of the chips at a reasonable cost; before anything can be placed in the consumer market.
I'm very surprised that this post got moderated up at all. No offense, but it doesn't provide any information, or ask any question that hasn't been asked and answered before.
The Transmeta website, cleverly located at www.transmeta.com provides temperature differences, performance numbers, technical background on the chip (It's not RISC, quite the opposite)... Further, there are white-papers for those seeking enlightenment.
If that is not enough, ars-technica (www.arstechnica.com) has done a phenomenal review of Crusoe's underlying technology.
Really, rather than rehashing all of this, once again, why not just go to the authoritative source, Transmeta, and get answers to the questions. Or did I just swallow a big fat piece of bait?
Accidental garbage collection is near impossible in a Win32-based system. In UNIX, rm -rf/* CAN actually happen by accident. In Win32, you can't get rid of the whole GARBAGE OS without meaning to do so. I mean, the damn thing asks you three or four times, if you're really, REALLY sure about it.
Yeah, actually, I was born and raised in Eastern Europe. There are actually more cell phones than land lines there, just becayuse of the reason I sited.
I guess we all sometimes forget that the world revolves around Western Europe, right?
There were rodents on Earth during the time of the Dinosaurs, and we can trace ourselves back to them, so no - it's not our fault.
However, much, much earlier in Earth's history, it was subject to a much more massive collision. It involved a planet-sized (Mars sized) body termed Morpheus (IIRC) and resulted in the formation of the Moon.
There is speculation that there was already some primitive life on Earth at that point, but there was scarecely any dry land. The collision effectively terminated EVERYTHING that was there before - since the entire planet deformed and resolidified. We could be whatever little bits of protoplasm survived a brief orbital trip - or maybe we rode in on Morpheus.
My source for this is "What if we had no Moon", a recent show on the Discovery Channel.
As one of the highest-rated posters already implied, the article is full of self-contradiction and buzzwords. A modularized language that does away with interfaces and header files? Do tell..
I'll reserve absolute judgement until I play with it, but, here's a thought:
Whenever M$ gets backed into a corner by a competing technology that they either can not buy, or can't catch up to early, they release a vaporous competitor. This 'alternative' is intended to
1) bring in a cash infusion from the 'early adopters' of all things Microsoft (Usually clueless managers who mandate to unwilling IT staffs),
2) get FUD and fluff from magazine article writers from Ziff-Davis who are so deep in M$'s hip pocket they eat lint,
3) engineer public opinion that M$ has something better than the competition, 'just waiting in the wings'.
M$ most recently did this with WinCE, as a response to the PalmPilot. They had no real alternative to PalmOS, so they just threw something together and hoped it would stick enough to eat away at Palm. Now that they've had a few years to look at the problem, they release PocketPC - not an improvement IMHO; but I digress.
C# looks like round 2 of the Java war. Period. It's not INNOVATIVE in the least. It's a different way of doing things. It rolls together some previous ideas (comment markup, components, C syntax, M$-specific VM to run the bytecode) to see what will stick.
As with all things M$, it's probably a good idea to wait until Version 3.1, to see what it has to offer BESIDES an alternative to solid technology.
I'm not getting into the political flame-war that is sure to erupt here, but...
there are still many places in USia that don't even have electricity yet!
Like where, the Ozarks and the Grand Canyon?? Las Vegas, fer crissakes, is in the middle of the freaking desert, and is the biggest single consumer of electric power in the world.
Ok, look here. It may not be worthwhile to pull electric cables to every nook and cranny of the US, but I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that there are many more residential areas in Europe than in the US that are still short on power, plumbing and pavement. But they do have Cellular coverage. Here's why.
The wired-telephone infrastructure is so pitifully BAD in many areas of Europe, that putting in a Cell tower is much more cost effective. In the US, the post-WWII boom in the economy enabled running phone-lines to everywhere; while in Europe, whatever money was available was spent on rebuilding HOUSES.
Hell, these same criteria are almost certain to result in the invention of the teleporter in either Asia or Africa; not because their scientists are more brilliant than the US or European ones, but simply because they do not have a good road system out that way, and so would get more bang for the buck out of the technology. Necessity is the mother of invention; not Socialism.
100% yes. People are people, not machines. I've never said that everyone must play by the book - in fact, that's exactly what I objected to. If my sense of humour does'nt mesh, I'm out the door?? That's even more drastic than requiring me to wear a 3 piece suit.
You hiring?:)
Beware, I may not share your sense of humour, but I'll shoot pool with you over lunch, and stay late to make that deadline. Hell, I'll spring for the pizza.
The point of the previous post(s) was that excluding somone from the hiring pool specifically because they didn't immediately 'click' with the local culture, is short-sighted.
The reason you have a pool-room and a manager respectful of your family life is exactly because an 'outsider' got into the 'old way' of doing things, and turned it on it's ear. Hiring cookie-cutter non-conformists makes for a uniformly non-conformist crew. Where's the variety?
I agree with what you're saying, but the bit about keeping someone (who is old enough) from looking at it is STILL WRONG is problematic.
Of course we can all agree that there is likely a definite "too young" for some materials, and that there is a definite "old enough" for those materials. But this is a very fuzzy issue.
'Old enough' is a slippery concept in and of itself. The appropriate age in OUR society is variable, depending on the materials to which the person is exposed. 16 is 'old enough' to drive, 18 is 'old enough' to vote, and 21 is 'old enough' to drink - and there are localized exceptions to each of these... And nevermind the fact that individuals mature at different ages..
How old is 'old enough' for hardcore porn? Should a law be passed saying that 16 is the magic number? How about 21? How about for soft porn? Or a steamy love-scene at a movie theater? It's rated R, but if you're under 17, you can come in with a guardian (pretty effective, that one is). If it's NC-17, you get carded at the door. Well, no need to tell anoyone that high-school kids have been side-stepping the ID check at the local packie for years...
To me the issue is unenforcible by the gummint. It's not their issue at all. It's a family matter - but then again, I must be privileged to think that a single mother can police her two teen boys 24/7...
I guess that the point is that an argitrary age at which something becomes "OK" is just that. Arbitrary. If enough people want the number to change, it does. Censorship, like most other violations of civil liberty (uh-oh...) should not be legislated; it (personal opinion about the desirability and value of information) should be educated into people, not outlawed.
If after being well informed about the nature of porn, a person still chooses to indulge in it, so be it. If a child shows curiosity, they should be educated, not suspended from school for bringing in Daddy's Playboy - isn't it the Father's fault that the kid found it? There is the obvious meta-issue here: Who defines the standards of 'properly educated'. If one parent doesn't share the view of another, there is a conflict. We always walk a fine line between tyranny and anarchy.
Kids will always be curious about things they do not know. They will always "play doctor", and watch "dirty movies" on Cinemax when the parents are away. This is the way they learn about the world - and keeping them ignorant is doing them a dis-service. It's hurting them in the long-run. It's making them repressed and causing them to feel guilty about being a human being once they become adults.
Sex is not a dirty thing from which kids must be protected at all costs. It is an integral part of life about which they must be educated, so that they could make their own, informed decisions. And we also have to remember to be respectful of children's curiosity. After all, many of us can relate to being punished for our curiosity - right you geeky hacker nerds?
The meta-issue returns though, and eventhough the average standard of society may be acceptablen to most - it will not be to some. There will always be extremes from which the standard derives. Teaching respect for others' lifestyles, modes of conduct and belief systems is crucial to a civil and tolerant society.
Oh, gee, I feel terrible. I guess I'll go back to my humorless job where miscommunication is to be avoided because people can get hurt of killed.
Sorry for not sharing the sense of humour so prevalent in the Boston area. (Then again, having The Dig down the street must make life really amusing) The jobs with which I've had experience have not catered to dot-com attitudes. I'm used to tight schedules, precise numbers and huge sums of money. Precision and clarity are paramount in some fields, and there, if you do something to make the interviewer laugh, you're not going to be offered a job.
Most major corporations don't hire coders with funny bones, long hair or torn jeans. They test for drugs and many have metal detectors and security gates. You are expected to leave your joccular implants at home. Maybe I'll have to reread the original post after 5pm.
Must be nice to expect to work in an office full of Nerf toys, free soda, 24 hour flex time... Try not too hit too hard when you land.
So you have an essoteric sense of humour which requires some sort of inside understanding. Disqualifying a candidate because they didn't trigger on some cultural icon, whether a joke or some other local staple, makes the shop elitist. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, it makes for a well jelled team much of the time, but it does put outsiders on a defensive unnecessarily.
Would you try the same approach with a client? If he doesn't 'get the joke', he's too ignorant to bother with?
Employer-employee relations are built on respect first, ability second and personality third; much like client-contractor relationships. Except when long-term is not a priority.
Getting a job is a serious matter, and many people CARE about the interview process. Many are uptight about it, and while the ability to take the stress in stride is a bonus, it shouldn't be a requirement. Unless the shop image is such that taking the job seriously is not important.
So you're prejudiced against out-of-towners, and want to run a shop with a very uniform culture. Interesting. I, personally, would go out of my way to infuse variety of experience into my shop. I would seek out bredth of experience, as well as technical depth. This way, the team could benefit from the variety of experience of each individual - rather than suffer from the same pre-conceived notions of how the world works. But hey, to each his own.
Heavens no!! It can't be. It mustn't be. The 486 was the last 'non-disposable' chip Intel made. They didn't really get onto the Microsoft 'upgrade spiral' marketting model until the Pentium - when they put more effort into backwards compatibility than into progress.
Motorola's 68000 is still out there. Not in Macs but in Sega Genesis machines. It's in A/C's and stereos and all sorts of household electronics. The Zilog Z80 (remember that one?) is still produced. In fact, one is probably looking over your ABS and airbag controls right now... Now, I don't know if I'd trust an Intel CPU (non-embedded that is; their embedded chips are fine) with life or limb, but there's plenty of room for it. Consumer electronics. A dedicated compression processor for digital telephony, HDTV, or a dedicated firewall box to go with your cable modem.
What's astounding about this piece isn't RMS's eccentricity and character at all. Once someone like RMS becomes someone like RMS, enlightenment is long overdue, and a taste for fine teas and personality quirks are par for the course.
What's applaudable is Tetradyne's own enlightenment and consulting, inviting and so well hosting RMS. I certainly hope that it's a sign of things to come. This move not only let Tetradyne keep it's GNU ducks in a row, but also educated it's staff on the merits and philosophy (albeit lightly, by admission) behind Free Software. Further, by exposing the encounter on/., Tetradyne grew a few inches in the eyes of the OSS community. Further still, it set a precedent that more companies will likely follow in the future.
Now that companies are instituting a Chief Privacy Officer (for whatever REAL reason they do so), it is high time that they also appoint a Chief Free Software Officer to help companies derive benefit from the great work available, while making sure that they do so fairly, and give something back to the Comunity in the process.
The issue is different. Gnome and KDE are direct competitors while the RH/Ericsson deal could affect the OS on the kernel level - putting greater strain on the Torvalds-Cox axis. Market pressure was always moderraded by the kernel people, but now a fork might develop more easily.
This is not necessarily a Bad Thing. A splintered Linux would eventually mutate into disjoint OSes - so what, as long as they're compatible with each other. The problem is when they're not compatible, and we're back to M$ issues.
1. This is great news. Linux needs Bluetooth and other micro-pico networking, wireless and embedded technologies. The market needs more intelligent devices, and M$ had already shown that they are NOT up to the challenge (WinCE was a stop-gap and PocketPC just crashed during a demo, sorry no link)
2. This is bad news if they're not released in source form. A strategic partnership with a hardware company may swing both ways. Either Ericsson won't care about the availability of source code, since hardware butters their bread; or more likely they'll try to go with a more 'proven' model of propretary, binary only (or ROM) distribution.
3. This is bad news if it's a partnership with Red Hat and not a full-on support of Linux by Ericsson. Red Hat is just another distro, but with all the 'partnerships' it's been forming lately, intercompatibility of anything non-Free with other distributions may soon become a problem.
4. This is bad news for the Linux purist. Linus/Transmeta is working on a portable kernel as it is. While 'portable' and 'embedded' are certainly not the same, they're closer than 'embedded' and 'easy to use desktop' - the later being the core of RH's business. It's early in the game still, but there may be a conflict of interest brewing between Red Hat+Ericsson and Transmeta.
It is clearly implied that The Mafia has created the hypothetical pizza parlor in the first place.
The question then becomes: Can/should all Mafia-sponsored pizza parlors be shut down due to their lineage, or only if they are themselves culprit in illegal activity?
Much like the ski-lodge context of young women looking for husbands and husbands looking for young women, the situation is not at symmetric as it first appears.
Slashdot Mirror
Not too many people in the Nort East, but apparently quite a few in the south, use heat-pumps to regulate home and water temperatures in their homes.
The way the system works is this: A sealed water circuit is run from the basement of the home down to several feet under the frost-line. There, there is a cistern that stays at a very constant temperature, somewherein the 50 degree range, year round. The water is circulated to a cooling, or heating unit via a heat-exchanger (sort of like an A/C and radiator). The temp difference provides a good deal of the energy for the system, so there is less need for a power hungry heater/compressor.
Now, my question is this: Since electrical power is used to drive a Peltier type cooler (used for CPU cooling), and since an inverse temperature difference accross a Peltier junction (cooling the hot side, heating the cool side) will cause the device to generate power.. Why not use a large-scale Peltier device, in conjunction with a geothermal heat-pump as described above, to run the CoLo facility?
Seriously, put one in Greenland and Scandinavia, where the temperature difference is more significant than in the temperate zones... They already make heavy use of geothermal out there anyway...
I really don't think that the artists would suffer all that much with the RIAA being gone and the major labels having their wings clipped. Here's why:
:)
Napster has shown that the 'help' that major labels and the RIAA provided to the artist, in terms of distribution and promotion, is just not needed anymore on the net. It used to be a really valuable crutch. A new group could depend on a deep pocket while the word got out and a fan-base was laid down. The initial financing for a massive production of albums was handled. Tours were arranged and promoted. All that took heavy connections but it no longer matters.
Now, a small band can set up a streaming video-audio server for peanuts... The cost of a cheap MIDI keyboard. It's just another instrument they play. Then they make a few posts to a USENET group that follows their musical style, and provide a URL to their site. On the site, they host some samples, bios, pics, rants... Give people the opportunity to actually buy a CD off the site, and save money by only burning those that are ordered and paid for, not a batch of 10k that may not sell. MP3.com is a good resource to tap into as well - but you know that.
It may take a bit more capital to get off the ground than when you have a recording contract, but it's definitely much cheaper than it would have been even a few years ago.
Now, the "manufactured" bands that are created by promoters, simply for the purpose of selling products and lining the pockets of the big labels.. Well, they'd likely be a LOT less popular then they are today. They would not spread as quickly based on their own talent (or lack there of) without the label cramming their hopped-up shows down every pre-pubescent throat in America. That's a separate issue, I think. (I saw a bit of NSYNC at Madison Square Garden on HBO last night. What a hot, steaming, runny pile of shit!) They'd still exist, and infact become the cash-cow of "The Industry", since talented artists would now have an opportunity to be heard without being herded.
Many Artists have often complained about the contracts they were forced to sign when they were getting off the ground. They're in the position where the label owns rights to anything they ever do, and essencially have to produce the kind of music that the label dictates. I'm not a musician, but I can certainly undertand how frustrating this sort of arrangement must be - I've been told to code a certain 'way' before, and have left a job as a result. Prince is a good example of an artist fighting a contract with a label. The whole silly name-change thing is supposed to have been a means of straining the contract he was under, so he could do His music and not Their music..
Anyway, the point is that with the current technology, an Artist has more options for creating, promoting and distributing their work. The recording label makes things a little easier - if they like you, but they are no longer the ONLY way of making it big. I think that MP3.com, and especially Napster, has served to show new artists that they have a chance to make it big without selling their soul. Hopefully many of the big artists will be able to side-step their contracts to take advantage of the new tech as well. I suspect many have not been outspoken on the RIAA issue for fear of 'punishment' by their labels, rather than because they oppose Napster.
There is a perception issue here though. Artists who want to spread their music stand to benefit greatly from the 'new tech' way of doing things. Artists who want to get paid for their music will have to be really good - and sell themselves to fans, not a label. The difference is subtle but significant. Giving the individual fan the choice of paying for music will make it harder for those Artists who 'are in it for the money', but easier for those who are in it for the music. We KNOW that the Internet culture is a meritocracy - regardless of what the big businesses think.
I think that there's a strong lesson in the Grateful Dead, who have been encouraging the bootlegging of their performances as a means of promoting their music. That lesson is that we're all going to Hell in a bucket.
DiabloII, as well as many other networkable games of today, provide people who bought (or pirated) the game with the ability to play the game online. Those servers do not cost the end-user anything, but they do cost a lot of money to maintain.
You can argue that the users have already paid for those servers, even if they don't use them, since they've paid the steep mark-up for the game. You'd be right, that's where the money comes from. But, this is the same sort of reasoning that the RIAA and MPAA use all the time. Money not made is not money that's lost. Money that's spent on the game alone is the same amount as that spent on a game you intend to network. The person who networks DiabloII is getting more bang for their buck. Simple.
Now, where's the extra bang for the buck with a CD? As another poster on this thread suggested, a CD is no more expensive to produce then a book, yet a book tends to sell more cheaply (unless you're in college, in which case you're the victim of extorsion, but that's another topic entirely).
There isn't anything really special about a CD. No, not anything more special than a DVD - both are the 'cool thing' in our culture. We provide the suppliers with a ready market. They set the maximum price that most people are willing to, begrudgingly, pay.
If prices dropped, record sales would undoubtedly rise; but not in proportion. Even if they sold the CDs at a buck a piece, I would not buy the same dollar-amount as I do now. There are not 30 albums per month that I would want to acquire.
Now for the cost of production - and here we get to see the actual price-fixing at work: Say an album costs the aforementioned $100k to record, another $100k to distribute and yet another $100k to promote (though most promotion is in radio play - paid for by advertisers, and in performance tours which are paid for at the gate). So, we have $300,000 in investment. Let's add $200k for the artists and another WHOPPING $500k for all others involved.
Now, we've got a cool Million to work with (funny how that worked out). Say an album sells a million copies... That's a dollar per copy. We pay what?? $20 a piece?
Even if an album sells (ONLY) 100,000 copies (pitiful), that's still $10 a pop to break even - remember the bills are paid now. Where's that extra money going? Britney Spears next boob-job? New 'Stangs for NSYNC? Bail for Snoop Doggy Dog?
Well, not for those making money on it, but still.. In a greater, moral sense, Napster has served it's purpose.
It was in the wrong, and we all know it - but by allowing individuals to rip off the Record Companies, it has prompted the bears to charge. They're now out of the cave, and everyone knows they're a bunch of greedy hypocrites.
Two wrongs do not make a right, but apparently, doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons will sometimes bring to light another wrong, which has been swept under the rug in the hope that no one notices. It's about damn time.
But, I just hope that this is not a sign of things to come. The FTC/DOJ/Fed seem encouraged by their 'victory' over Micro$oft. Are they now starting to chase down other monopolists? In the case of the RIAA, it may not be a bad thing. But I hope that it doesn't turn into another witch-hunt. We've seen over-zealous government agents cause a lot of harm in the name of doing good.
If you review the current article on /., as well as the press releases, you will find that ACTUAL chips were used to gather data. They are simply not MASS PRODUCED for the consumer market yet - since that requires a heavy-duty fab facility, which Transmeta does not have.
Making prototype chips is much easier than mass production. In fact, the NSF will produce up to 5 prototype chips given a schematic design by a college student. This is a great way to do a proof of concept, and to obtain a piece of hardware for testing. Once there, data is gathered, and if the design holds true, you make arrangements to mass-produce the chip.
Special purpose chips are simpler to mass produce, since they are not competing with those made by the companies that actually own fabs. Now you see the problem Transmeta is facing. They are making a direct competitor to the chips made by the fab owners.
Yes, they should 'put out a few chips'. But, you see, producing prototypes - if you are not a brilliant student but rather a business, is extremely expensive. It only gets cheap, if you can produce them by the millions, in a fab. The chips Transmeta had prototyped, most likely went to the R&D labs of various device manufacturers, so they could start designing hardware to use these chips.
Now that the hardware is 'in the pipeline' (as they say), Transmeta must obtain a steady supplier of the chips at a reasonable cost; before anything can be placed in the consumer market.
I hope that explains things a bit.
I'm very surprised that this post got moderated up at all. No offense, but it doesn't provide any information, or ask any question that hasn't been asked and answered before.
The Transmeta website, cleverly located at www.transmeta.com provides temperature differences, performance numbers, technical background on the chip (It's not RISC, quite the opposite)... Further, there are white-papers for those seeking enlightenment.
If that is not enough, ars-technica (www.arstechnica.com) has done a phenomenal review of Crusoe's underlying technology.
Really, rather than rehashing all of this, once again, why not just go to the authoritative source, Transmeta, and get answers to the questions. Or did I just swallow a big fat piece of bait?
Accidental garbage collection is near impossible in a Win32-based system. In UNIX, rm -rf /* CAN actually happen by accident. In Win32, you can't get rid of the whole GARBAGE OS without meaning to do so. I mean, the damn thing asks you three or four times, if you're really, REALLY sure about it.
:)
I guess UNIX is just "unstable" that way.
Sorry - I've been drinking again.
Yeah, actually, I was born and raised in Eastern Europe. There are actually more cell phones than land lines there, just becayuse of the reason I sited.
I guess we all sometimes forget that the world revolves around Western Europe, right?
There were rodents on Earth during the time of the Dinosaurs, and we can trace ourselves back to them, so no - it's not our fault.
However, much, much earlier in Earth's history, it was subject to a much more massive collision. It involved a planet-sized (Mars sized) body termed Morpheus (IIRC) and resulted in the formation of the Moon.
There is speculation that there was already some primitive life on Earth at that point, but there was scarecely any dry land. The collision effectively terminated EVERYTHING that was there before - since the entire planet deformed and resolidified. We could be whatever little bits of protoplasm survived a brief orbital trip - or maybe we rode in on Morpheus.
My source for this is "What if we had no Moon", a recent show on the Discovery Channel.
As one of the highest-rated posters already implied, the article is full of self-contradiction and buzzwords. A modularized language that does away with interfaces and header files? Do tell..
I'll reserve absolute judgement until I play with it, but, here's a thought:
Whenever M$ gets backed into a corner by a competing technology that they either can not buy, or can't catch up to early, they release a vaporous competitor. This 'alternative' is intended to
1) bring in a cash infusion from the 'early adopters' of all things Microsoft (Usually clueless managers who mandate to unwilling IT staffs),
2) get FUD and fluff from magazine article writers from Ziff-Davis who are so deep in M$'s hip pocket they eat lint,
3) engineer public opinion that M$ has something better than the competition, 'just waiting in the wings'.
M$ most recently did this with WinCE, as a response to the PalmPilot. They had no real alternative to PalmOS, so they just threw something together and hoped it would stick enough to eat away at Palm. Now that they've had a few years to look at the problem, they release PocketPC - not an improvement IMHO; but I digress.
C# looks like round 2 of the Java war. Period. It's not INNOVATIVE in the least. It's a different way of doing things. It rolls together some previous ideas (comment markup, components, C syntax, M$-specific VM to run the bytecode) to see what will stick.
As with all things M$, it's probably a good idea to wait until Version 3.1, to see what it has to offer BESIDES an alternative to solid technology.
I'm not getting into the political flame-war that is sure to erupt here, but...
there are still many places in USia that don't even have electricity yet!
Like where, the Ozarks and the Grand Canyon?? Las Vegas, fer crissakes, is in the middle of the freaking desert, and is the biggest single consumer of electric power in the world.
Ok, look here. It may not be worthwhile to pull electric cables to every nook and cranny of the US, but I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that there are many more residential areas in Europe than in the US that are still short on power, plumbing and pavement. But they do have Cellular coverage. Here's why.
The wired-telephone infrastructure is so pitifully BAD in many areas of Europe, that putting in a Cell tower is much more cost effective. In the US, the post-WWII boom in the economy enabled running phone-lines to everywhere; while in Europe, whatever money was available was spent on rebuilding HOUSES.
Hell, these same criteria are almost certain to result in the invention of the teleporter in either Asia or Africa; not because their scientists are more brilliant than the US or European ones, but simply because they do not have a good road system out that way, and so would get more bang for the buck out of the technology. Necessity is the mother of invention; not Socialism.
IIRC B5 is supposed to orbit the 3rd planet in Epsilon Eridani, Epsilon 3.
:)
BTW: All those interested: B5 will be rebroadcast on Sci-Fi starting Sept 25th. 7:30pm, daily, I think.
100% yes. People are people, not machines. I've never said that everyone must play by the book - in fact, that's exactly what I objected to. If my sense of humour does'nt mesh, I'm out the door?? That's even more drastic than requiring me to wear a 3 piece suit.
You hiring? :)
Beware, I may not share your sense of humour, but I'll shoot pool with you over lunch, and stay late to make that deadline. Hell, I'll spring for the pizza.
The point of the previous post(s) was that excluding somone from the hiring pool specifically because they didn't immediately 'click' with the local culture, is short-sighted.
The reason you have a pool-room and a manager respectful of your family life is exactly because an 'outsider' got into the 'old way' of doing things, and turned it on it's ear. Hiring cookie-cutter non-conformists makes for a uniformly non-conformist crew. Where's the variety?
I agree with what you're saying, but the bit about keeping someone (who is old enough) from looking at it is STILL WRONG is problematic.
Of course we can all agree that there is likely a definite "too young" for some materials, and that there is a definite "old enough" for those materials. But this is a very fuzzy issue.
'Old enough' is a slippery concept in and of itself. The appropriate age in OUR society is variable, depending on the materials to which the person is exposed. 16 is 'old enough' to drive, 18 is 'old enough' to vote, and 21 is 'old enough' to drink - and there are localized exceptions to each of these... And nevermind the fact that individuals mature at different ages..
How old is 'old enough' for hardcore porn? Should a law be passed saying that 16 is the magic number? How about 21? How about for soft porn? Or a steamy love-scene at a movie theater? It's rated R, but if you're under 17, you can come in with a guardian (pretty effective, that one is). If it's NC-17, you get carded at the door. Well, no need to tell anoyone that high-school kids have been side-stepping the ID check at the local packie for years...
To me the issue is unenforcible by the gummint. It's not their issue at all. It's a family matter - but then again, I must be privileged to think that a single mother can police her two teen boys 24/7...
I guess that the point is that an argitrary age at which something becomes "OK" is just that. Arbitrary. If enough people want the number to change, it does. Censorship, like most other violations of civil liberty (uh-oh...) should not be legislated; it (personal opinion about the desirability and value of information) should be educated into people, not outlawed.
If after being well informed about the nature of porn, a person still chooses to indulge in it, so be it. If a child shows curiosity, they should be educated, not suspended from school for bringing in Daddy's Playboy - isn't it the Father's fault that the kid found it? There is the obvious meta-issue here: Who defines the standards of 'properly educated'. If one parent doesn't share the view of another, there is a conflict. We always walk a fine line between tyranny and anarchy.
Kids will always be curious about things they do not know. They will always "play doctor", and watch "dirty movies" on Cinemax when the parents are away. This is the way they learn about the world - and keeping them ignorant is doing them a dis-service. It's hurting them in the long-run. It's making them repressed and causing them to feel guilty about being a human being once they become adults.
Sex is not a dirty thing from which kids must be protected at all costs. It is an integral part of life about which they must be educated, so that they could make their own, informed decisions. And we also have to remember to be respectful of children's curiosity. After all, many of us can relate to being punished for our curiosity - right you geeky hacker nerds?
The meta-issue returns though, and eventhough the average standard of society may be acceptablen to most - it will not be to some. There will always be extremes from which the standard derives. Teaching respect for others' lifestyles, modes of conduct and belief systems is crucial to a civil and tolerant society.
Oh, gee, I feel terrible. I guess I'll go back to my humorless job where miscommunication is to be avoided because people can get hurt of killed.
Sorry for not sharing the sense of humour so prevalent in the Boston area. (Then again, having The Dig down the street must make life really amusing) The jobs with which I've had experience have not catered to dot-com attitudes. I'm used to tight schedules, precise numbers and huge sums of money. Precision and clarity are paramount in some fields, and there, if you do something to make the interviewer laugh, you're not going to be offered a job.
Most major corporations don't hire coders with funny bones, long hair or torn jeans. They test for drugs and many have metal detectors and security gates. You are expected to leave your joccular implants at home. Maybe I'll have to reread the original post after 5pm.
Must be nice to expect to work in an office full of Nerf toys, free soda, 24 hour flex time... Try not too hit too hard when you land.
So you have an essoteric sense of humour which requires some sort of inside understanding. Disqualifying a candidate because they didn't trigger on some cultural icon, whether a joke or some other local staple, makes the shop elitist. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, it makes for a well jelled team much of the time, but it does put outsiders on a defensive unnecessarily.
Would you try the same approach with a client? If he doesn't 'get the joke', he's too ignorant to bother with?
Employer-employee relations are built on respect first, ability second and personality third; much like client-contractor relationships. Except when long-term is not a priority.
Getting a job is a serious matter, and many people CARE about the interview process. Many are uptight about it, and while the ability to take the stress in stride is a bonus, it shouldn't be a requirement. Unless the shop image is such that taking the job seriously is not important.
So you're prejudiced against out-of-towners, and want to run a shop with a very uniform culture. Interesting. I, personally, would go out of my way to infuse variety of experience into my shop. I would seek out bredth of experience, as well as technical depth. This way, the team could benefit from the variety of experience of each individual - rather than suffer from the same pre-conceived notions of how the world works. But hey, to each his own.
Ask the Headhunter.
This comment is posted from dejavu, emulating Mosaic. Freaky.. What's a few Karma points for a trip down memory lane. :)
Heavens no!! It can't be. It mustn't be. The 486 was the last 'non-disposable' chip Intel made. They didn't really get onto the Microsoft 'upgrade spiral' marketting model until the Pentium - when they put more effort into backwards compatibility than into progress.
Motorola's 68000 is still out there. Not in Macs but in Sega Genesis machines. It's in A/C's and stereos and all sorts of household electronics. The Zilog Z80 (remember that one?) is still produced. In fact, one is probably looking over your ABS and airbag controls right now... Now, I don't know if I'd trust an Intel CPU (non-embedded that is; their embedded chips are fine) with life or limb, but there's plenty of room for it. Consumer electronics. A dedicated compression processor for digital telephony, HDTV, or a dedicated firewall box to go with your cable modem.
What's astounding about this piece isn't RMS's eccentricity and character at all. Once someone like RMS becomes someone like RMS, enlightenment is long overdue, and a taste for fine teas and personality quirks are par for the course.
/., Tetradyne grew a few inches in the eyes of the OSS community. Further still, it set a precedent that more companies will likely follow in the future.
What's applaudable is Tetradyne's own enlightenment and consulting, inviting and so well hosting RMS. I certainly hope that it's a sign of things to come. This move not only let Tetradyne keep it's GNU ducks in a row, but also educated it's staff on the merits and philosophy (albeit lightly, by admission) behind Free Software. Further, by exposing the encounter on
Now that companies are instituting a Chief Privacy Officer (for whatever REAL reason they do so), it is high time that they also appoint a Chief Free Software Officer to help companies derive benefit from the great work available, while making sure that they do so fairly, and give something back to the Comunity in the process.
Well done.
The issue is different.
Gnome and KDE are direct competitors while the RH/Ericsson deal could affect the OS on the kernel level - putting greater strain on the Torvalds-Cox axis. Market pressure was always moderraded by the kernel people, but now a fork might develop more easily.
This is not necessarily a Bad Thing. A splintered Linux would eventually mutate into disjoint OSes - so what, as long as they're compatible with each other. The problem is when they're not compatible, and we're back to M$ issues.
1. This is great news. Linux needs Bluetooth and other micro-pico networking, wireless and embedded technologies. The market needs more intelligent devices, and M$ had already shown that they are NOT up to the challenge (WinCE was a stop-gap and PocketPC just crashed during a demo, sorry no link)
2. This is bad news if they're not released in source form. A strategic partnership with a hardware company may swing both ways. Either Ericsson won't care about the availability of source code, since hardware butters their bread; or more likely they'll try to go with a more 'proven' model of propretary, binary only (or ROM) distribution.
3. This is bad news if it's a partnership with Red Hat and not a full-on support of Linux by Ericsson. Red Hat is just another distro, but with all the 'partnerships' it's been forming lately, intercompatibility of anything non-Free with other distributions may soon become a problem.
4. This is bad news for the Linux purist. Linus/Transmeta is working on a portable kernel as it is. While 'portable' and 'embedded' are certainly not the same, they're closer than 'embedded' and 'easy to use desktop' - the later being the core of RH's business. It's early in the game still, but there may be a conflict of interest brewing between Red Hat+Ericsson and Transmeta.
It is clearly implied that The Mafia has created the hypothetical pizza parlor in the first place.
:)
The question then becomes: Can/should all Mafia-sponsored pizza parlors be shut down due to their lineage, or only if they are themselves culprit in illegal activity?
Much like the ski-lodge context of young women looking for husbands and husbands looking for young women, the situation is not at symmetric as it first appears.
Perhaps you ought to review your links.