Memorization is easy, especially if you start young. And that's exactly what this plan is about.
Memorization isn't that bad either, but Western education simultaneously loves and hates memorization and have forgotten how to teach memorization, but still assess students based on what amounts to memorization.
It's interesting to note that English in the US used to be largely taught based on memorization. The relatively recent change to learning based on phonics or phonetic rules and patterns is a shift from memorization that has arguably helped more people to read English. In my opinion, learning English has some similarities to learning chemistry rules, i.e., there are lots of patterns and rules mixed with a lot of exceptions. There are enough exceptions that that learning rules is not enough without memorization. However, a lack of rules makes learning new words challenging.
Very well presented and an exhaustive explanation of why Mandarin is the rarest language on the planet.
As a secondary language of choice, absolutely. The adoption of a native, first language isn't affected by the ease of learning a language because the children have no choice.
The first step of many towards English losing it's place as the premier language in the world and the world's "second language". More countries will switch as China replaces US as biggest economic power.
It may be possible that China becomes the dominant economic power in the world. A path towards that possibility is entirely reasonable.
However, Chinese will never become a linga franca of choice. It's too hard to learn due to the lack of an in-band phonetic representation. To learn Chinese requires memorization of characters and a separate memorization of pronunciation. Furthermore, looking up words in a dictionary without a camera and optical character recognition is so frustrating that it's not practical for people learning Chinese as a second language. Learning English as one of the few non/loosely phonetic languages is already difficult, but Chinese is much, much harder.
Of course, this assumes that reading is important. If Chinese is used solely as a simple conversational language, it might not be so bad.
Yes, tape can break. However, only those few bits at the break are potentially lost, and only if the ECC is overwhelmed. The rest can be recovered. This is in contrast to HDDs and SSDs where the entire device is lost. Being able to completely separate the media and the head is huge. This will likely never be possible for HDDs. Maybe someone smart will find a way to do it for SSDs.
I agree it will keep large-capacity HDDs afloat, but the question is how many people will need that capacity at that point. I consider myself a relatively heavy storage user for a consumer, likely in the top 5%.
Think data centers, like what Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. have. The number of HDDs that these companies buy each year is staggering.
BTW, cloning full 100 TB HDDs is not trivial. Assuming a theoretical max transfer speed of 200 MB/s, it would take almost 6 days to copy the data, and that theoretical speed will likely be hard to achieve.
Well, considering there are only 14TB drives today with 10TB being common - that means a 100TB "drive" is actually a raided drive, and will push an average of roughly 1000MB/s, provided you have the proper controllers in play. But that's probably unfair. I would hope the next iteration of drives do better than up the average transfer by less than 50%. My current external 8TB HDDs are pushing over 120MB/s on copies between them. And that's through a common USB controller (USB 3, so no where near max) with the receiving HDD being the bottleneck. They're pretty cheap drives with slower spindle speeds, hence the slower write transfers.
Even reading a 14 TB HDD at max theoretical speeds will take a day, and no aged drive is going to be anywhere close to those speeds. If you're getting 120MB/s then you're probably archiving a lot of large files.
Even though flash prices have been dropping rapidly, they still have not gotten close to HDD prices.
A quick search through Amazon for the not cheap Samsung 860 EVOs show's a roughly $160 / TB price. WD Red prices are roughly $30/TB. Still a 5X difference for these specific drives, but the prices are far lower than indicated. And note that other lines or brands of drives are even cheaper. I saw a 2TB AData drive on sale a few weeks ago for roughly $80 / TB. Not that I'd want one in my system but the prices can get much lower for SSDs today.
Yes, the numbers I originally quoted were average prices. Shopping around will yield lower prices. For example, Backblaze was paying about $20/TB two years ago. The ~5x difference has surprisingly held steady for many years.
My main point is that HAMR/MAMR aren't going to save hard drives in the next couple of years if history is any indication. In fact, this may mark the switchover for spinning HDDs from main storage to mass storage, replacing tape except where true longevity is needed. And even that may change, because it's rather trivial to clone 100TB from HDD to HDD. With tape - I hope it's better than it used to be, as it was easier to just rotate backups than clone a tape.
Well, it depends on what "saving" means. HAMR/MAMR are still unproven in a commercial setting. They have been working in the lab for many years, but storage devices have very stringent reliability requirements, so it remains to be seen what the actual reliability of the eventual release products will be. However, the more immediate way that HAMR/MAMR will "save" HDDs is that they will significantly decrease the cost per TB. That will maintain the significant price difference relative to flash, and that price difference is what will keep large-capacity HDDs afloat for the next few years.
Meanwhile, tape will always persist. In contrast to HDDs and SSDs, tape is impervious to device crashes. The tape can always be extracted and read in another device. That recoverability advantage will keep tape around for a long time.
BTW, cloning full 100 TB HDDs is not trivial. Assuming a theoretical max transfer speed of 200 MB/s, it would take almost 6 days to copy the data, and that theoretical speed will likely be hard to achieve.
Maybe. But shouldn't a business be able to make that decision for itself?
The answer depends on whose interests are important: short-term vs. long-term, corporate vs. societal/national interests . The actual decisions of a company in the absence of governmental interference are based on short-term stock price appreciation, even if such decisions eventually lead to the demise of the company. For example, if a US company partners with a Chinese company and is forced to share trade secrets, the executives and stockholders of that US company benefit based on increased revenue and stock price appreciation. However, eventually that company will face increased competition from that Chinese company and see decreased revenue in the long-term.
Unfortunately, the compensation structure of almost all US companies incentivizes short-term performance over long-term performance. Because the health of US companies greatly influences societal and national interests in the US, the US government steps in to prevent actions these short-sighted actions. Perhaps what the US government should do instead is to mandate that corporate executive compensation be geared towards compensation based on long-term performance. If executive bonus weren't paid until ten years in the future, short-term cannibalistic decisions to share IP with Chinese companies, to off-shore work to India, to replace US workers with cheaper foreign workers, etc. might be rethought.
I am 100% sure that there are use cases today for Cheap Dense Slow Storage. Mostly for long term/archival storage. Anything that needs access to a processor will want / require Solid State.
Systems and applications that require really fast storage will require DRAM. Flash is way too slow compared to DRAM. On the other hand, many data centers are extremely cost sensitive. These data centers account for many tens (hundred?) of millions of annual HDD unit sales. Many large internet companies require massive cold storage, i.e., data that is needed maybe a few times a year or less but which need to be retrieved in a few seconds when needed (e.g., think about the tail end of the distribution for Facebook browsing or Google search queries). For cold storage, flash is too expensive, and tape is too slow.
Even though flash prices have been dropping rapidly, they still have not gotten close to HDD prices. As a point of comparison, take a look at average price charts for various capacities of HDDs and SSD. Based on this webpage, the average large-capacity SSD price is around $250/TB, while the average large-capacity HDD price is around $40/TB. This roughly 5x price difference has held steady for many years. More importantly, HDDs have held this price advantage in the last decade without the usual historical once-per-decade technology disruptor. PMR was the last mini-disruptor ten years ago. HAMR/MAMR/bit-pattern has been promised for a very long time, and the price difference relative to flash will only increase when these new disruptors are commercially ready.
If they are cheating, they'll be prosecuted and fined. They're doing what they can to lower their tax bills; I assume you take every deduction you're legally allowed to take? Why shouldn't someone else get the same grace you expect?
If they're cheating they likely will not be prosecuted or fined. The overwhelming amount of violations of laws (tax, traffic, securities, etc.) are never prosecuted, let alone punished. Punishment requires the will and means to indict, prosecute, convict, and execute judgment. A lack in any of part of the chain precludes punishment. The big companies recognize the weakness of the punishment chain, especially in the global context where no single legal authority exists and where individual national interests can be played off each other. Furthermore, in the worst case, a financial punishment of a one-time fine regardless of the amount has no impact on executive bonuses based on future stock appreciation. The only way to curb these abuses is to make the punishment prison time for executives. Then, the risk-to-reward function changes.
I take some of the deductions that I'm entitled to. I specifically avoid deductions that I think will raise a red flag with the IRS. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this. Then again, if I were to push the limit with deductions, I might get back a few extra hundred or low thousands of dollars. That's not a good risk-to-reward ratio. Now, if I the benefit were in the 10 to 11-figure range, then I might be tempted to push the envelope, like the big companies.
The ISP's have many reasons to _host_, if not actively foster false traffic. They are paid on the basis of traffic, and more traffic enhances _their_ market value.
Inefficiency or fraud, it doesn't matter. It's not like extra money is paid to an incinerator. Someone is making money. In this case, the biggest beneficiary is Google. Their stock would crash if fake traffic were completely eliminated. Google not only doesn't have an incentive to eliminate fake traffic. They have a huge (i.e., stock bonuses for executives that make the decisions) motivation to at least preserve and potentially enlarge the fake traffic.
IS there any alternative to nitrates/ites? My understanding is the alternative to nitrates is botulism.
From Wikipedia: "While meat-preservation processes like curing were mainly developed in order to prevent disease and to increase food security, the advent of modern preservation methods mean that in most developed countries today curing is instead mainly practised for its cultural value and desirable impact on the texture and taste of food. For lesser-developed countries, curing remains a key process in the production, transport and availability of meat."
Curing in the developed world is not needed for safe food. It is used purely for taste and aesthetics. Of course, this is obvious. The same cuts of meat are commonly eaten in non-cured forms (either with artificial nitrate of celery-based nitrate) with no fears of botulism or other illnesses.
The big question is whether people are willing to eat gray hot dogs. Maybe we can swap out the nitrates with red food coloring...
There exists is a disturbing pattern of Google conduct. Google went out of their way to placate a human-rights violating, totalitarian regime in order to preserve the ability to increase revenues. Google could have simply added disclaimers about disputed territories, unrecognized claims, or fictional maps. But they chose the path of greatest revenue.
Are we still talking about Kurdistan or did we just move on to China?
We moved on from China to Turkey to establish a pattern of trading revenue for granting the wishes of human-rights violating, totalitarian regimes.
Of course, the alternative is that no quid pro quo exists and rather that that Google does actually ideologically support Chinese censorship and surveillance and Turkish suppression of the Kurdish.
There exists is a disturbing pattern of Google conduct. Google went out of their way to placate a human-rights violating, totalitarian regime in order to preserve the ability to increase revenues. Google could have simply added disclaimers about disputed territories, unrecognized claims, or fictional maps. But they chose the path of greatest revenue.
There are reasonable arguments that in certain metrics the US is losing to or at least relatively falling behind China due to various reasons. However, is a deficient infrastructure one of the key reasons? Are a lack of transportation, energy availability, water availability, or telecommunications or data connectivity key inhibitors of economic growth? Up until the start of the latest trade war, US economic metrics were humming along at admirable levels. I don't believe any level of US infrastructure expenditure would affect the US-China trade imbalance. The US could create debt-based jobs like the Chinese are doing, but a WPA-like infusion of cash is arguably just a transient drug jolt, especially if the infrastructure-based jobs create unnecessary infrastructure, like the creation of Chinese ghost cities or a multi-billion dollar high-speed train through the California farm country.
US has fallen behind most of the developed (and many developing world) countries on telecommunications and data connectivity- both in % connected to high speed and the actual average speed of the high speed network.
"Education" can be considered an "investment/infrastructure" of sorts and certainly we're falling behind there. (although I think more is needed there than just throwing money at education).
Even public transportation, or lack of, can hinder productivity and movement of workers, and the US is far behind most developed countries on that front (partially due to habitation patterns and size of country).
There are various places where the US could "invest" in the future of the country and possibly grow the country (the way that China does) rather than spending money now on military.
All this can be true and still not be an impediment to economic growth. There are thresholds below which economic growth suffers. For example, India could substantially improve their economy with infrastructure improvements. On the other hand, China and the US have already hit the thresholds. Additional infrastructure mostly boosts economic activity by temporarily creating infrastructure building jobs. Additional infrastructure can improve personal quality of life, but those issues don't directly impact economic activity, e.g., reducing commute times are great for workers, but they're going to work regardless. Are there any companies in the US who call off new projects, jobs, or campuses because there aren't enough highways, trains, electricity, or internet connectivity? The main drivers in the US for economic growth are government regulations and monetary/tax policies and market conditions, not infrastructure.
Jack Ma, is also right, we're losing against China economically because we're not growing our infrastructure.
There are reasonable arguments that in certain metrics the US is losing to or at least relatively falling behind China due to various reasons. However, is a deficient infrastructure one of the key reasons? Are a lack of transportation, energy availability, water availability, or telecommunications or data connectivity key inhibitors of economic growth? Up until the start of the latest trade war, US economic metrics were humming along at admirable levels. I don't believe any level of US infrastructure expenditure would affect the US-China trade imbalance. The US could create debt-based jobs like the Chinese are doing, but a WPA-like infusion of cash is arguably just a transient drug jolt, especially if the infrastructure-based jobs create unnecessary infrastructure, like the creation of Chinese ghost cities or a multi-billion dollar high-speed train through the California farm country.
it does not say that the ISPs must disable Internet access until consumers acknowledge the notification. The law even says that ISPs may make the notification "with a consumer's bill," which shouldn't disable anyone's Internet access.
First, what they did actually complies with Subsection (1)(b)(ii)(A). We may not like their approach, but it does comply with the law. Go read the law, it is a rather sparse 5 pages.
The law says, "A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic communication; (B) with a consumer's bill; or (C) in another conspicuous manner.
So, the CenturyLink's action complied with the terms above. The questionable part is the explanation for their action, i.e., we interrupted your service to show you this ad because the state made us. That statement is not true. I'm not a lawyer, but I wonder if that passes muster for fraud and perhaps opens up CenturyLink to a class action lawsuit.
This type of representation is similar to the legal charging of fees by telecoms that are then followed by an incorrect/illegal explanation that the fees were mandated by the state.
In the USA a person has the freedom to talk online about politics and freedom.
To freedom to petition the Government.
The freedom of the press as a profession. A freedom of religion.
China nominally also has these same rights. Nominally, as in on paper. On paper, China is the world's largest democracy. However, in the western world, that honor belongs to India because no western country recognizes China as a democracy.
The defining right of free speech that exists in the western world that is completely absent in China is the right to directly, openly, and repeatedly criticize the existing government leaders and to call for their removal. That right is the essence of the American First Amendment. It will never exist in China.
Uber wanted control of the arbitration process so they could cheat, so they offered to pay all costs.
"While arbitrating parties are responsible for paying for their own attorneys, the terms state that 'in all cases where required by law, [Uber] will pay the Arbitrator's and arbitration fees'." So, Uber didn't so much offer to pay arbitration costs as they simply acknowledged limitations imposed upon them by state law. In California, employers are required to pay arbitration fees, which at $1500/case comes out to over $18 million.
It's also interesting to note that lawyer fees are separate from arbitration fees, so the Uber employees still need to pay for their own lawyers. I wonder how much Larson O’Brien, the Uber employees' lawyer, is getting from this, or even where the money is coming from.
So, the Chinese government has laid out punishments to be meted out by the Chinese government. However, the real meat of the any punishment depends on who gets to determine guilt and mete out punishment. I assume that the Chinese government would reserve that right for themselves, as would any sovereign nation. If so, can we expect any change from the current situation? If the US government determines that Huawei is guilty of stealing IP, would the Chinese government even bother to consider any punishments, or would they bog down any investigation in bureaucratic maneuvering or assign blame to individual scapegoats instead of the accused Chinese companies.
That depends entirely on how poor your math skills are: are you comparing that figure to the number of PC gamers in China or the number of people??
According to this article, there are around 300 million PC gamers in China. So, the 30 million is still a small portion of gamers. However, many Chinese gamers play in internet cafes, and those are the gamers that Steam wants to access.
You cannot question that he is an effective leader -- just look at the success he has at his rallies. I'm not saying you have to like the guy or his methods, but you have to at least acknowledge that he is successful at inspiring people to follow him. And he does it by being chaotic.
I do question many aspects of his effectiveness as a leader. There are some things and policies that I think he's doing right and others that I think are wrong. His rallies only show that the Republican base enthusiastically supports him. However, that base represents less than a majority of Americans. Trump has energized Democrats in a way that not even Obama could do. Trump has failed miserably in getting citizens and political leaders outside of his base (i.e., the majority) to follow him. This is the true measure of leadership, and in this regard, he has failed miserably.
DRAM soft error rates leveled off a couple generations ago. SRAM soft error rates are a couple orders of magnitude higher and have remained so for integrated SRAM caches. A discussion of the difference and why it exists would be interesting.
DRAM per Mbit error rates have not dropped as precipitously as SRAM error rates. Over the last decade, SRAM error rates have dropped by a few orders of magnitude, faster than the increase in the total number of SRAM bits on a chip due to scaling and chip area increase. Ten years ago, the SRAM error rate was quite a bit higher than the DRAM error rate, by about an order of magnitude. Especially with the introduction of FinFET/tri-gate, SRAM error rates have plummeted and are now somewhat lower than that for DRAM. Furthermore, SRAM error rates continue to drop with each process node.
Other than some odd exceptions, integrated SRAM caches have been protected by ECC or parity almost since they were first used.
This is true for users that care and still not true for low-cost users. Xeons have ECC and consumer processors don't. GPUs in supercomputers have ECC, and GPUs in gaming systems don't.
The PRC might try to finish off the ROC before we can get a carrier there
Taiwan already has WAY more airpower than a single American carrier, and islands don't sink.
The main purpose of the carrier would be to act as a tripwire, ensuring American involvement if it is attacked.
A sea or airborne invasion of Taiwan is far beyond the current capability of the PLA.
Why would China care about occupying Taiwan? They could simply bomb it out of existence without risking their troops. There are no defense systems that could prevent the military annihilation of Taiwan, and the US military also cannot do anything to prevent this.
However, there are three things that currently protect the military status of Taiwan:
First, Taiwan doesn't have anything that China doesn't already have much more of. Perhaps China doesn't have a TSMC, but a Chinese takeover of TSMC would kill the company as no client company in their right mind would hand over important IP to a Chinese-controlled fab.
Second, China has already effectively taken over Taiwan in many ways. Taiwan is economically dependent on Taiwan. Taiwan's official international relations and sovereign pride have effectively been destroyed. Most nations already recognize a Chinese takeover of Taiwan, at least nominally. China already exerts influence over Taiwanese elections directly through the 1 million Taiwanese businessmen who live in China and care less about Taiwanese sovereignty than their pocketbooks. Furthermore, the folks who remain in Taiwan realize that the Taiwanese economy will only continue to be more and more dependent on Chinese business ties.
Third, straight from 1984, Taiwan as a purported renegade traitor, an eternal enemy to hate more than the in-power totalitarian regime, is of infinitely more value to the PRC than as a station for military troops.
Check out the sales for the month around the Chinese new year, and come back to us, smartypants.
As you wish, Buttercup. One estimate of the week-long Chinese New Year is around 840 billion yuan ($140 billion) in the retail and catering industries for 2017.
Of course, this is not a beauty contest. Rather this reflects cultural behavior. Christmas in the US has culturally become a buying season. That's good for the economy and potentially bad for overstretched family budgets buying things that aren't needed. Chinese New Year is about family, eating, sweeping out the old, ushering in the new, and red envelopes. It's starting to move in the commercial, non-family direction of American Christmas observance, which is arguably also not a great thing.
Yes, but those are the sales for the one-day Singles Day. US holiday shopping is spread out over an entire month. If all Christmas sales were all compressed to a single day, then the total would be much higher for that one day. As a comparison, total 2017 US Christmas sales were over $700 billion, of which $123 billion was online.
China is quickly becoming a consumer economy, but it still has a ways to catch up to the US for now.
Slashdot Mirror
Memorization is easy, especially if you start young. And that's exactly what this plan is about.
Memorization isn't that bad either, but Western education simultaneously loves and hates memorization and have forgotten how to teach memorization, but still assess students based on what amounts to memorization.
It's interesting to note that English in the US used to be largely taught based on memorization. The relatively recent change to learning based on phonics or phonetic rules and patterns is a shift from memorization that has arguably helped more people to read English. In my opinion, learning English has some similarities to learning chemistry rules, i.e., there are lots of patterns and rules mixed with a lot of exceptions. There are enough exceptions that that learning rules is not enough without memorization. However, a lack of rules makes learning new words challenging.
Very well presented and an exhaustive explanation of why Mandarin is the rarest language on the planet.
As a secondary language of choice, absolutely. The adoption of a native, first language isn't affected by the ease of learning a language because the children have no choice.
The first step of many towards English losing it's place as the premier language in the world and the world's "second language". More countries will switch as China replaces US as biggest economic power.
It may be possible that China becomes the dominant economic power in the world. A path towards that possibility is entirely reasonable.
However, Chinese will never become a linga franca of choice. It's too hard to learn due to the lack of an in-band phonetic representation. To learn Chinese requires memorization of characters and a separate memorization of pronunciation. Furthermore, looking up words in a dictionary without a camera and optical character recognition is so frustrating that it's not practical for people learning Chinese as a second language. Learning English as one of the few non/loosely phonetic languages is already difficult, but Chinese is much, much harder.
Of course, this assumes that reading is important. If Chinese is used solely as a simple conversational language, it might not be so bad.
Tape stretches
Yes, tape can break. However, only those few bits at the break are potentially lost, and only if the ECC is overwhelmed. The rest can be recovered. This is in contrast to HDDs and SSDs where the entire device is lost. Being able to completely separate the media and the head is huge. This will likely never be possible for HDDs. Maybe someone smart will find a way to do it for SSDs.
I agree it will keep large-capacity HDDs afloat, but the question is how many people will need that capacity at that point. I consider myself a relatively heavy storage user for a consumer, likely in the top 5%.
Think data centers, like what Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. have. The number of HDDs that these companies buy each year is staggering.
BTW, cloning full 100 TB HDDs is not trivial. Assuming a theoretical max transfer speed of 200 MB/s, it would take almost 6 days to copy the data, and that theoretical speed will likely be hard to achieve.
Well, considering there are only 14TB drives today with 10TB being common - that means a 100TB "drive" is actually a raided drive, and will push an average of roughly 1000MB/s, provided you have the proper controllers in play. But that's probably unfair. I would hope the next iteration of drives do better than up the average transfer by less than 50%. My current external 8TB HDDs are pushing over 120MB/s on copies between them. And that's through a common USB controller (USB 3, so no where near max) with the receiving HDD being the bottleneck. They're pretty cheap drives with slower spindle speeds, hence the slower write transfers.
Even reading a 14 TB HDD at max theoretical speeds will take a day, and no aged drive is going to be anywhere close to those speeds. If you're getting 120MB/s then you're probably archiving a lot of large files.
Even though flash prices have been dropping rapidly, they still have not gotten close to HDD prices.
A quick search through Amazon for the not cheap Samsung 860 EVOs show's a roughly $160 / TB price. WD Red prices are roughly $30/TB. Still a 5X difference for these specific drives, but the prices are far lower than indicated. And note that other lines or brands of drives are even cheaper. I saw a 2TB AData drive on sale a few weeks ago for roughly $80 / TB. Not that I'd want one in my system but the prices can get much lower for SSDs today.
Yes, the numbers I originally quoted were average prices. Shopping around will yield lower prices. For example, Backblaze was paying about $20/TB two years ago. The ~5x difference has surprisingly held steady for many years.
My main point is that HAMR/MAMR aren't going to save hard drives in the next couple of years if history is any indication. In fact, this may mark the switchover for spinning HDDs from main storage to mass storage, replacing tape except where true longevity is needed. And even that may change, because it's rather trivial to clone 100TB from HDD to HDD. With tape - I hope it's better than it used to be, as it was easier to just rotate backups than clone a tape.
Well, it depends on what "saving" means. HAMR/MAMR are still unproven in a commercial setting. They have been working in the lab for many years, but storage devices have very stringent reliability requirements, so it remains to be seen what the actual reliability of the eventual release products will be. However, the more immediate way that HAMR/MAMR will "save" HDDs is that they will significantly decrease the cost per TB. That will maintain the significant price difference relative to flash, and that price difference is what will keep large-capacity HDDs afloat for the next few years.
Meanwhile, tape will always persist. In contrast to HDDs and SSDs, tape is impervious to device crashes. The tape can always be extracted and read in another device. That recoverability advantage will keep tape around for a long time.
BTW, cloning full 100 TB HDDs is not trivial. Assuming a theoretical max transfer speed of 200 MB/s, it would take almost 6 days to copy the data, and that theoretical speed will likely be hard to achieve.
Maybe. But shouldn't a business be able to make that decision for itself?
The answer depends on whose interests are important: short-term vs. long-term, corporate vs. societal/national interests . The actual decisions of a company in the absence of governmental interference are based on short-term stock price appreciation, even if such decisions eventually lead to the demise of the company. For example, if a US company partners with a Chinese company and is forced to share trade secrets, the executives and stockholders of that US company benefit based on increased revenue and stock price appreciation. However, eventually that company will face increased competition from that Chinese company and see decreased revenue in the long-term.
Unfortunately, the compensation structure of almost all US companies incentivizes short-term performance over long-term performance. Because the health of US companies greatly influences societal and national interests in the US, the US government steps in to prevent actions these short-sighted actions. Perhaps what the US government should do instead is to mandate that corporate executive compensation be geared towards compensation based on long-term performance. If executive bonus weren't paid until ten years in the future, short-term cannibalistic decisions to share IP with Chinese companies, to off-shore work to India, to replace US workers with cheaper foreign workers, etc. might be rethought.
I am 100% sure that there are use cases today for Cheap Dense Slow Storage. Mostly for long term /archival storage. Anything that needs access to a processor will want / require Solid State.
Systems and applications that require really fast storage will require DRAM. Flash is way too slow compared to DRAM. On the other hand, many data centers are extremely cost sensitive. These data centers account for many tens (hundred?) of millions of annual HDD unit sales. Many large internet companies require massive cold storage, i.e., data that is needed maybe a few times a year or less but which need to be retrieved in a few seconds when needed (e.g., think about the tail end of the distribution for Facebook browsing or Google search queries). For cold storage, flash is too expensive, and tape is too slow.
Even though flash prices have been dropping rapidly, they still have not gotten close to HDD prices. As a point of comparison, take a look at average price charts for various capacities of HDDs and SSD. Based on this webpage, the average large-capacity SSD price is around $250/TB, while the average large-capacity HDD price is around $40/TB. This roughly 5x price difference has held steady for many years. More importantly, HDDs have held this price advantage in the last decade without the usual historical once-per-decade technology disruptor. PMR was the last mini-disruptor ten years ago. HAMR/MAMR/bit-pattern has been promised for a very long time, and the price difference relative to flash will only increase when these new disruptors are commercially ready.
If they are cheating, they'll be prosecuted and fined. They're doing what they can to lower their tax bills; I assume you take every deduction you're legally allowed to take? Why shouldn't someone else get the same grace you expect?
If they're cheating they likely will not be prosecuted or fined. The overwhelming amount of violations of laws (tax, traffic, securities, etc.) are never prosecuted, let alone punished. Punishment requires the will and means to indict, prosecute, convict, and execute judgment. A lack in any of part of the chain precludes punishment. The big companies recognize the weakness of the punishment chain, especially in the global context where no single legal authority exists and where individual national interests can be played off each other. Furthermore, in the worst case, a financial punishment of a one-time fine regardless of the amount has no impact on executive bonuses based on future stock appreciation. The only way to curb these abuses is to make the punishment prison time for executives. Then, the risk-to-reward function changes.
I take some of the deductions that I'm entitled to. I specifically avoid deductions that I think will raise a red flag with the IRS. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this. Then again, if I were to push the limit with deductions, I might get back a few extra hundred or low thousands of dollars. That's not a good risk-to-reward ratio. Now, if I the benefit were in the 10 to 11-figure range, then I might be tempted to push the envelope, like the big companies.
The ISP's have many reasons to _host_, if not actively foster false traffic. They are paid on the basis of traffic, and more traffic enhances _their_ market value.
Inefficiency or fraud, it doesn't matter. It's not like extra money is paid to an incinerator. Someone is making money. In this case, the biggest beneficiary is Google. Their stock would crash if fake traffic were completely eliminated. Google not only doesn't have an incentive to eliminate fake traffic. They have a huge (i.e., stock bonuses for executives that make the decisions) motivation to at least preserve and potentially enlarge the fake traffic.
IS there any alternative to nitrates/ites? My understanding is the alternative to nitrates is botulism.
From Wikipedia: "While meat-preservation processes like curing were mainly developed in order to prevent disease and to increase food security, the advent of modern preservation methods mean that in most developed countries today curing is instead mainly practised for its cultural value and desirable impact on the texture and taste of food. For lesser-developed countries, curing remains a key process in the production, transport and availability of meat."
Curing in the developed world is not needed for safe food. It is used purely for taste and aesthetics. Of course, this is obvious. The same cuts of meat are commonly eaten in non-cured forms (either with artificial nitrate of celery-based nitrate) with no fears of botulism or other illnesses.
The big question is whether people are willing to eat gray hot dogs. Maybe we can swap out the nitrates with red food coloring ...
There exists is a disturbing pattern of Google conduct. Google went out of their way to placate a human-rights violating, totalitarian regime in order to preserve the ability to increase revenues. Google could have simply added disclaimers about disputed territories, unrecognized claims, or fictional maps. But they chose the path of greatest revenue.
Are we still talking about Kurdistan or did we just move on to China?
We moved on from China to Turkey to establish a pattern of trading revenue for granting the wishes of human-rights violating, totalitarian regimes.
Of course, the alternative is that no quid pro quo exists and rather that that Google does actually ideologically support Chinese censorship and surveillance and Turkish suppression of the Kurdish.
There exists is a disturbing pattern of Google conduct. Google went out of their way to placate a human-rights violating, totalitarian regime in order to preserve the ability to increase revenues. Google could have simply added disclaimers about disputed territories, unrecognized claims, or fictional maps. But they chose the path of greatest revenue.
There are reasonable arguments that in certain metrics the US is losing to or at least relatively falling behind China due to various reasons. However, is a deficient infrastructure one of the key reasons? Are a lack of transportation, energy availability, water availability, or telecommunications or data connectivity key inhibitors of economic growth? Up until the start of the latest trade war, US economic metrics were humming along at admirable levels. I don't believe any level of US infrastructure expenditure would affect the US-China trade imbalance. The US could create debt-based jobs like the Chinese are doing, but a WPA-like infusion of cash is arguably just a transient drug jolt, especially if the infrastructure-based jobs create unnecessary infrastructure, like the creation of Chinese ghost cities or a multi-billion dollar high-speed train through the California farm country.
US has fallen behind most of the developed (and many developing world) countries on telecommunications and data connectivity- both in % connected to high speed and the actual average speed of the high speed network.
"Education" can be considered an "investment/infrastructure" of sorts and certainly we're falling behind there. (although I think more is needed there than just throwing money at education).
Even public transportation, or lack of, can hinder productivity and movement of workers, and the US is far behind most developed countries on that front (partially due to habitation patterns and size of country).
There are various places where the US could "invest" in the future of the country and possibly grow the country (the way that China does) rather than spending money now on military.
All this can be true and still not be an impediment to economic growth. There are thresholds below which economic growth suffers. For example, India could substantially improve their economy with infrastructure improvements. On the other hand, China and the US have already hit the thresholds. Additional infrastructure mostly boosts economic activity by temporarily creating infrastructure building jobs. Additional infrastructure can improve personal quality of life, but those issues don't directly impact economic activity, e.g., reducing commute times are great for workers, but they're going to work regardless. Are there any companies in the US who call off new projects, jobs, or campuses because there aren't enough highways, trains, electricity, or internet connectivity? The main drivers in the US for economic growth are government regulations and monetary/tax policies and market conditions, not infrastructure.
Jack Ma, is also right, we're losing against China economically because we're not growing our infrastructure.
There are reasonable arguments that in certain metrics the US is losing to or at least relatively falling behind China due to various reasons. However, is a deficient infrastructure one of the key reasons? Are a lack of transportation, energy availability, water availability, or telecommunications or data connectivity key inhibitors of economic growth? Up until the start of the latest trade war, US economic metrics were humming along at admirable levels. I don't believe any level of US infrastructure expenditure would affect the US-China trade imbalance. The US could create debt-based jobs like the Chinese are doing, but a WPA-like infusion of cash is arguably just a transient drug jolt, especially if the infrastructure-based jobs create unnecessary infrastructure, like the creation of Chinese ghost cities or a multi-billion dollar high-speed train through the California farm country.
it does not say that the ISPs must disable Internet access until consumers acknowledge the notification. The law even says that ISPs may make the notification "with a consumer's bill," which shouldn't disable anyone's Internet access.
First, what they did actually complies with Subsection (1)(b)(ii)(A). We may not like their approach, but it does comply with the law. Go read the law, it is a rather sparse 5 pages.
The law says, "A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i):
(A) by electronic communication;
(B) with a consumer's bill; or
(C) in another conspicuous manner.
So, the CenturyLink's action complied with the terms above. The questionable part is the explanation for their action, i.e., we interrupted your service to show you this ad because the state made us. That statement is not true. I'm not a lawyer, but I wonder if that passes muster for fraud and perhaps opens up CenturyLink to a class action lawsuit.
This type of representation is similar to the legal charging of fees by telecoms that are then followed by an incorrect/illegal explanation that the fees were mandated by the state.
In the USA a person has the freedom to talk online about politics and freedom.
To freedom to petition the Government.
The freedom of the press as a profession. A freedom of religion.
China nominally also has these same rights. Nominally, as in on paper. On paper, China is the world's largest democracy. However, in the western world, that honor belongs to India because no western country recognizes China as a democracy.
The defining right of free speech that exists in the western world that is completely absent in China is the right to directly, openly, and repeatedly criticize the existing government leaders and to call for their removal. That right is the essence of the American First Amendment. It will never exist in China.
Uber wanted control of the arbitration process so they could cheat, so they offered to pay all costs.
"While arbitrating parties are responsible for paying for their own attorneys, the terms state that 'in all cases where required by law, [Uber] will pay the Arbitrator's and arbitration fees'." So, Uber didn't so much offer to pay arbitration costs as they simply acknowledged limitations imposed upon them by state law. In California, employers are required to pay arbitration fees, which at $1500/case comes out to over $18 million.
It's also interesting to note that lawyer fees are separate from arbitration fees, so the Uber employees still need to pay for their own lawyers. I wonder how much Larson O’Brien, the Uber employees' lawyer, is getting from this, or even where the money is coming from.
So, the Chinese government has laid out punishments to be meted out by the Chinese government. However, the real meat of the any punishment depends on who gets to determine guilt and mete out punishment. I assume that the Chinese government would reserve that right for themselves, as would any sovereign nation. If so, can we expect any change from the current situation? If the US government determines that Huawei is guilty of stealing IP, would the Chinese government even bother to consider any punishments, or would they bog down any investigation in bureaucratic maneuvering or assign blame to individual scapegoats instead of the accused Chinese companies.
For China, 30 million is just a fringe user base.
That depends entirely on how poor your math skills are: are you comparing that figure to the number of PC gamers in China or the number of people??
According to this article, there are around 300 million PC gamers in China. So, the 30 million is still a small portion of gamers. However, many Chinese gamers play in internet cafes, and those are the gamers that Steam wants to access.
You cannot question that he is an effective leader -- just look at the success he has at his rallies. I'm not saying you have to like the guy or his methods, but you have to at least acknowledge that he is successful at inspiring people to follow him. And he does it by being chaotic.
I do question many aspects of his effectiveness as a leader. There are some things and policies that I think he's doing right and others that I think are wrong. His rallies only show that the Republican base enthusiastically supports him. However, that base represents less than a majority of Americans. Trump has energized Democrats in a way that not even Obama could do. Trump has failed miserably in getting citizens and political leaders outside of his base (i.e., the majority) to follow him. This is the true measure of leadership, and in this regard, he has failed miserably.
I think you are confusing SRAM and DRAM.
DRAM soft error rates leveled off a couple generations ago. SRAM soft error rates are a couple orders of magnitude higher and have remained so for integrated SRAM caches. A discussion of the difference and why it exists would be interesting.
DRAM per Mbit error rates have not dropped as precipitously as SRAM error rates. Over the last decade, SRAM error rates have dropped by a few orders of magnitude, faster than the increase in the total number of SRAM bits on a chip due to scaling and chip area increase. Ten years ago, the SRAM error rate was quite a bit higher than the DRAM error rate, by about an order of magnitude. Especially with the introduction of FinFET/tri-gate, SRAM error rates have plummeted and are now somewhat lower than that for DRAM. Furthermore, SRAM error rates continue to drop with each process node.
Other than some odd exceptions, integrated SRAM caches have been protected by ECC or parity almost since they were first used.
This is true for users that care and still not true for low-cost users. Xeons have ECC and consumer processors don't. GPUs in supercomputers have ECC, and GPUs in gaming systems don't.
The PRC might try to finish off the ROC before we can get a carrier there
Taiwan already has WAY more airpower than a single American carrier, and islands don't sink.
The main purpose of the carrier would be to act as a tripwire, ensuring American involvement if it is attacked.
A sea or airborne invasion of Taiwan is far beyond the current capability of the PLA.
Why would China care about occupying Taiwan? They could simply bomb it out of existence without risking their troops. There are no defense systems that could prevent the military annihilation of Taiwan, and the US military also cannot do anything to prevent this.
However, there are three things that currently protect the military status of Taiwan:
First, Taiwan doesn't have anything that China doesn't already have much more of. Perhaps China doesn't have a TSMC, but a Chinese takeover of TSMC would kill the company as no client company in their right mind would hand over important IP to a Chinese-controlled fab.
Second, China has already effectively taken over Taiwan in many ways. Taiwan is economically dependent on Taiwan. Taiwan's official international relations and sovereign pride have effectively been destroyed. Most nations already recognize a Chinese takeover of Taiwan, at least nominally. China already exerts influence over Taiwanese elections directly through the 1 million Taiwanese businessmen who live in China and care less about Taiwanese sovereignty than their pocketbooks. Furthermore, the folks who remain in Taiwan realize that the Taiwanese economy will only continue to be more and more dependent on Chinese business ties.
Third, straight from 1984, Taiwan as a purported renegade traitor, an eternal enemy to hate more than the in-power totalitarian regime, is of infinitely more value to the PRC than as a station for military troops.
Check out the sales for the month around the Chinese new year, and come back to us, smartypants.
As you wish, Buttercup. One estimate of the week-long Chinese New Year is around 840 billion yuan ($140 billion) in the retail and catering industries for 2017.
Of course, this is not a beauty contest. Rather this reflects cultural behavior. Christmas in the US has culturally become a buying season. That's good for the economy and potentially bad for overstretched family budgets buying things that aren't needed. Chinese New Year is about family, eating, sweeping out the old, ushering in the new, and red envelopes. It's starting to move in the commercial, non-family direction of American Christmas observance, which is arguably also not a great thing.
On November 11th, 2018.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/1...
Yes, but those are the sales for the one-day Singles Day. US holiday shopping is spread out over an entire month. If all Christmas sales were all compressed to a single day, then the total would be much higher for that one day. As a comparison, total 2017 US Christmas sales were over $700 billion, of which $123 billion was online.
China is quickly becoming a consumer economy, but it still has a ways to catch up to the US for now.