What happens when these kids get out into the workforce and their boss expects them to do the job even when they aren't being entertained and stimulated.
Are we going to have to turn every job into a video game in order to keep the workforce of the future working?
Even the Saturn V was only 364 ft tall, leaving just over 100 ft of clearance through the door. From the article:
"The larger of the vehicles, for lifting heavy cargoes but not people, would be some 350 feet tall, rivaling the Saturn 5 rockets that sent astronauts to the Moon. The smaller one, for carrying people, would still dwarf the shuttle, which stands 184 feet high with its attached rockets and fuel tank.
Looks like there's plenty of room for the new cargo lifter. I'm sure the size of the VAB was a factor in the design.
However, I'm not sure how the 350 ft cargo lifter "rivals" the 364 ft Saturn V or how the 184 ft manned launcher "dwarfs" the current 182 ft shuttle.
When you consider that pretty much any new machine sold in the last three years has had WinXP on it, the XP-only stigma might not be as bad as you think. Sure, grandma might have an eight-year-old PC, but most people don't, and most people get a new OS when they get a new PC.
Many companies buy new PCs with XP on them (because that's all they can get) only to reinstall them with W2K because W2K is the company standard. As far as MS is concerned those PCs count as an XP install and therefore inflate the XP stats. MS counts what's sold as opposed to what's running.
FYI, the company laptop I'm using to write this has a "Designed for Windows XP" sticker but I'm running W2K.
Re:Something borrowed, nothing new
on
IE7 Bugs and Reviews
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
You're absolutely right. In the absence of any real functional difference people will simply use the browser already installed (ie. IE).
The only real disadvantage IE 7 has is that it will only be available for XP SP2. And IE 7 is not a big enough carrot to get people to upgrade when they can get the same functionality with Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape for free.
How? It wasn't the radio stations that were breaking the law, it was Sony. Unfortunately, there's nothing illegal about taking bribes to play songs...only offering bribes to play songs.
I think that's the point the parent and grandparent posts were trying to make. It should also be illegal to take the bribe. It's illegal to bribe a politician and it's also illegal for a politician to take a bribe (at least in Canada it is).
If there are consequences for both sides than the crime is less likely to happen again. Especially when the radio stations are much smaller and have more to lose (i.e. their broadcast license).
The alternative is to have a flat rate per server pricing structure so everyone pays the same amount, right? In that case the software company will likely increase the cost to maintain their income.
Let's say the average server has 4 processors with a cost of $10,000 per CPU. In a flat rate pricing structure they would now have to charge $40,000 for the same software to maintain their income. So the small company that has a single processor machine now has to pay $40,000 instead of the $10,000 they used to pay.
A flat rate pricing model discriminates against the user at the lower end.
A performance based licensing scheme, per CPU licensing being an example, lets anyone at any performance level afford the software. The difficulty is that per CPU pricing is no longer accurate and a new performance measurement needs to be developed.
First of all, if you had read the post I was responding to you would see that I did not pick the car analogy so it is not my analogy. Next time you may want to read the entire conversation before you jump in.
Secondly, your addition to the analogy is flawed. The price of gas is the same for all vehicles, bigger vehicles just need more.
Current per CPU licensing works the same way. The unit price is the same for all users although bigger machines need to purchase more units just like the F350 needs more gas.
In any case, there are a whole lot of things that mainframe vendors have been doing for years that aren't a particularly good idea, but every time they want to change anything qualitative or remove something, their customers pummel them with suitcases full of $100 bills until they agree to leave things exactly how they've been for a decade or two.
I didn't mention mainframe vendors in order to suggest that they are doing it better. I merely meant to suggest that they are already doing MIP based pricing so it's an approach that has a fair amount of history and practice.
I've been working in a mainframe shop for almost 20 years now and I've never seen a situation like the one you've described. Quite the opposite, in that time I've seen it evolve dramatically into a super server that can do anything that a regular server can do (email/groupware, web services, enterprise Java, DBMS, transaction processing, Linux in a VM) but with a stability and scalability that few platforms can match.
Sure there are products that reach their end of life and the vendor drops support but that's life in IT no matter what the platform. You do what you have to do and move on.
You're saying it's fair that running a car costs less than running an SUV. I'm saying it's fair that running a single processor server costs less than an 8-way server. So we agree.
There is no change to the price/gallon as you put it. The unit costs per gallon/litre for the car and SUV are the same. The SUV just needs more of it. Similarly, the unit costs per CPU are the same. The 8-way processor server just needs more of them.
Thank you. Your analogy illustrates my point very nicely.
I agree totally. I don't think it'll be too long before we have performance based licensing. Likely the day after the first customer realizes that he has to buy 16 licences for the shiny new 8-way Pentium-D server they just bought and threatens to go to a different vendor.
I agree MIPs based licensing isn't perfect either but I think you'll agree it's better than CPU based. A 1 Ghz P3 is nowhere near as powerful as a 3 Ghz P4 but under the current scheme a license would cost the same.
I agree that servers with identical CPUs from two different venders can have slightly different performance but they won't deviate too far from each other. An industry standard CPU spec should allow vendors to compare the relative performace of different CPUs and price their software accordingly. Mainframe vendors have been doing it for years.
User based licensing could work as well but it adds to the complexity of the code potentially increasing the number of bugs and creates an administrative hassle for the customer.
In the past, per CPU licensing worked because as a measure of the work a given machine was capable of it was a crude but relatively accurate measure. Now with hyper-threading and multi-core CPUs it's not as accurate.
I don't think software companies will switch to a flat rate licensing but I do think performance based licensing isn't too far off. In your example, using a performance based licensing the two companes would pay the same.
So you agree that it's OK for the seller to charge different amounts to different users based on a negotiation.
Well, performance based licensing allows companies to do just that without having to go through the negotiation. The price is stated up front rather than hidden behind closed doors.
Also, performance based licensing allows even the smallest mom and pop shop, who likely can't afford a professional negotiator, to use the same software as multi-billion companies.
Using your car analogy, people pay more for higher performance vehicles. If you want to haul a 30 foot trailer you buy a truck. But if all you need is to drive to the local grocery store then all you may need is a Honda Civic. In the real world you can't turn that Honda Civic into a Ford F-350. In the virtual world you can, hence performance based pricing.
Servers come in configurations of single up to 8 or even 16-way processors. Is it fair that a company with a server that has a single processor serving 100 users pays the same as a company that has a server with an 8-way processor serving 1000 users.
Per CPU licensing was a simple metric that allowed software companies to scale their pricing so that it was fair to both the entry level and high end customers.
As the article points out multi core processors are the processor companies' way of increasing performance without having to increase the clock speed and therefore keep temperatures down. Since software companies didn't care about the performance of a given processor, just how many you had, they shouldn't arbitrarily change the licensing model.
At the company I work for I know that because of the per CPU model we intentionally bought servers with fewer faster processors. Even though in most cases those servers were more expensive than machines with more processors the amount we saved on licensing costs more than made up for the additional hardware costs.
I suspect that in the end they'll end up with more of a performance based model similar to the MIP based licensing model on mainframes.
I believe the grandparent post used the term "acronym" correctly.
An acronym can be made up of initial characters (eg. FBI) of major parts of a compound term (eg. radar). An initialism is only made up of initial charatcters making it a subset of acronyms.
Although the discussion started around ATM, an acronym but more precisely an initialism, I believe the usage you responded to was a general comment referring to all acronyms not just initialisms.
The anonymous grandparent post referred to the great-grandparent as a moron when the great-grandparent was in fact correct. I corrected the grand parent and threw their use of moron back at them yet I get modded as flamebait.
Oh well, I guess the mods don't appreciate sarcasm.:)
More countries than the U.S. call it aluminum. And by the way, "Molybdenum" is the correct spelling, at least according to the International Molybdenum Association headquartered in the U.K.
If you take a look at the three remaining elements you mentioned and the words they were derived from you'll see there is no reason to expect that any of the element names should use the common -ium suffix used to name elements.
Aluminum/Aluminium <-- from Latin alumina
Titanium <-- from Greek Titan
Vanadium <-- from Old Norse Vanadis
Have you not noticed that there are a lot of other elements that don't end in -ium. Why don't you complain that it's not called zincium or ironium or hydrogenium.
Here's a few more that end in -um for you to complain about:
Lanthanum <-- from Greek lanthanein to escape notice
Platinum <-- from Spanish platina
Tantalum <-- from Latin Tantalus
I think you're confusing relevance with visibility. IBM may not be a visible as they once were but they are relevant. There are a lot of things IBM does and services they offer that companies depend on for their day to day survival.
For example, IBM is one of the largest IT outsourcers and if they fell off the face of the planet there are a lot of companies that would have little or no IT area to speak of. Try getting a bank balance when the mainframe your account data sits on no longer exists. That's what I call relevant.
Look at the little Anonymous Coward get angry. That's so cute.
The point is not that someone without the nerve to post under his/her real name reads/. every day. The point is that the editors should be reading/. every day.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you create this some sort of Mad Lib for rambling fanatics by plugging in "NASA" for "people I don't like today"?
What happens when these kids get out into the workforce and their boss expects them to do the job even when they aren't being entertained and stimulated.
Are we going to have to turn every job into a video game in order to keep the workforce of the future working?
Even the Saturn V was only 364 ft tall, leaving just over 100 ft of clearance through the door. From the article:
"The larger of the vehicles, for lifting heavy cargoes but not people, would be some 350 feet tall, rivaling the Saturn 5 rockets that sent astronauts to the Moon. The smaller one, for carrying people, would still dwarf the shuttle, which stands 184 feet high with its attached rockets and fuel tank.
Looks like there's plenty of room for the new cargo lifter. I'm sure the size of the VAB was a factor in the design.
However, I'm not sure how the 350 ft cargo lifter "rivals" the 364 ft Saturn V or how the 184 ft manned launcher "dwarfs" the current 182 ft shuttle.
When you consider that pretty much any new machine sold in the last three years has had WinXP on it, the XP-only stigma might not be as bad as you think. Sure, grandma might have an eight-year-old PC, but most people don't, and most people get a new OS when they get a new PC.
Many companies buy new PCs with XP on them (because that's all they can get) only to reinstall them with W2K because W2K is the company standard. As far as MS is concerned those PCs count as an XP install and therefore inflate the XP stats. MS counts what's sold as opposed to what's running.
FYI, the company laptop I'm using to write this has a "Designed for Windows XP" sticker but I'm running W2K.
You're absolutely right. In the absence of any real functional difference people will simply use the browser already installed (ie. IE).
The only real disadvantage IE 7 has is that it will only be available for XP SP2. And IE 7 is not a big enough carrot to get people to upgrade when they can get the same functionality with Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape for free.
Wait 'til you're on the elevator with him.
How? It wasn't the radio stations that were breaking the law, it was Sony. Unfortunately, there's nothing illegal about taking bribes to play songs...only offering bribes to play songs.
I think that's the point the parent and grandparent posts were trying to make. It should also be illegal to take the bribe. It's illegal to bribe a politician and it's also illegal for a politician to take a bribe (at least in Canada it is).
If there are consequences for both sides than the crime is less likely to happen again. Especially when the radio stations are much smaller and have more to lose (i.e. their broadcast license).
He's saving up for the Russian mail-order father-in-law. One day he hopes to have the whole set.
The alternative is to have a flat rate per server pricing structure so everyone pays the same amount, right? In that case the software company will likely increase the cost to maintain their income.
Let's say the average server has 4 processors with a cost of $10,000 per CPU. In a flat rate pricing structure they would now have to charge $40,000 for the same software to maintain their income. So the small company that has a single processor machine now has to pay $40,000 instead of the $10,000 they used to pay.
A flat rate pricing model discriminates against the user at the lower end.
A performance based licensing scheme, per CPU licensing being an example, lets anyone at any performance level afford the software. The difficulty is that per CPU pricing is no longer accurate and a new performance measurement needs to be developed.
First of all, if you had read the post I was responding to you would see that I did not pick the car analogy so it is not my analogy. Next time you may want to read the entire conversation before you jump in.
Secondly, your addition to the analogy is flawed. The price of gas is the same for all vehicles, bigger vehicles just need more.
Current per CPU licensing works the same way. The unit price is the same for all users although bigger machines need to purchase more units just like the F350 needs more gas.
In any case, there are a whole lot of things that mainframe vendors have been doing for years that aren't a particularly good idea, but every time they want to change anything qualitative or remove something, their customers pummel them with suitcases full of $100 bills until they agree to leave things exactly how they've been for a decade or two.
I didn't mention mainframe vendors in order to suggest that they are doing it better. I merely meant to suggest that they are already doing MIP based pricing so it's an approach that has a fair amount of history and practice.
I've been working in a mainframe shop for almost 20 years now and I've never seen a situation like the one you've described. Quite the opposite, in that time I've seen it evolve dramatically into a super server that can do anything that a regular server can do (email/groupware, web services, enterprise Java, DBMS, transaction processing, Linux in a VM) but with a stability and scalability that few platforms can match.
Sure there are products that reach their end of life and the vendor drops support but that's life in IT no matter what the platform. You do what you have to do and move on.
You're saying it's fair that running a car costs less than running an SUV. I'm saying it's fair that running a single processor server costs less than an 8-way server. So we agree.
There is no change to the price/gallon as you put it. The unit costs per gallon/litre for the car and SUV are the same. The SUV just needs more of it. Similarly, the unit costs per CPU are the same. The 8-way processor server just needs more of them.
Thank you. Your analogy illustrates my point very nicely.
I agree totally. I don't think it'll be too long before we have performance based licensing. Likely the day after the first customer realizes that he has to buy 16 licences for the shiny new 8-way Pentium-D server they just bought and threatens to go to a different vendor.
I agree MIPs based licensing isn't perfect either but I think you'll agree it's better than CPU based. A 1 Ghz P3 is nowhere near as powerful as a 3 Ghz P4 but under the current scheme a license would cost the same.
I agree that servers with identical CPUs from two different venders can have slightly different performance but they won't deviate too far from each other. An industry standard CPU spec should allow vendors to compare the relative performace of different CPUs and price their software accordingly. Mainframe vendors have been doing it for years.
User based licensing could work as well but it adds to the complexity of the code potentially increasing the number of bugs and creates an administrative hassle for the customer.
In the past, per CPU licensing worked because as a measure of the work a given machine was capable of it was a crude but relatively accurate measure. Now with hyper-threading and multi-core CPUs it's not as accurate.
I don't think software companies will switch to a flat rate licensing but I do think performance based licensing isn't too far off. In your example, using a performance based licensing the two companes would pay the same.
So you agree that it's OK for the seller to charge different amounts to different users based on a negotiation.
Well, performance based licensing allows companies to do just that without having to go through the negotiation. The price is stated up front rather than hidden behind closed doors.
Also, performance based licensing allows even the smallest mom and pop shop, who likely can't afford a professional negotiator, to use the same software as multi-billion companies.
Using your car analogy, people pay more for higher performance vehicles. If you want to haul a 30 foot trailer you buy a truck. But if all you need is to drive to the local grocery store then all you may need is a Honda Civic. In the real world you can't turn that Honda Civic into a Ford F-350. In the virtual world you can, hence performance based pricing.
Servers come in configurations of single up to 8 or even 16-way processors. Is it fair that a company with a server that has a single processor serving 100 users pays the same as a company that has a server with an 8-way processor serving 1000 users.
Per CPU licensing was a simple metric that allowed software companies to scale their pricing so that it was fair to both the entry level and high end customers.
As the article points out multi core processors are the processor companies' way of increasing performance without having to increase the clock speed and therefore keep temperatures down. Since software companies didn't care about the performance of a given processor, just how many you had, they shouldn't arbitrarily change the licensing model.
At the company I work for I know that because of the per CPU model we intentionally bought servers with fewer faster processors. Even though in most cases those servers were more expensive than machines with more processors the amount we saved on licensing costs more than made up for the additional hardware costs.
I suspect that in the end they'll end up with more of a performance based model similar to the MIP based licensing model on mainframes.
I believe the grandparent post used the term "acronym" correctly.
An acronym can be made up of initial characters (eg. FBI) of major parts of a compound term (eg. radar). An initialism is only made up of initial charatcters making it a subset of acronyms.
Although the discussion started around ATM, an acronym but more precisely an initialism, I believe the usage you responded to was a general comment referring to all acronyms not just initialisms.
The anonymous grandparent post referred to the great-grandparent as a moron when the great-grandparent was in fact correct. I corrected the grand parent and threw their use of moron back at them yet I get modded as flamebait.
:)
Oh well, I guess the mods don't appreciate sarcasm.
Because these few points in space are very strategic. It's akin to the significance of Midway Island during WWII.
France's space capability is as part of the ESA and by definition not independent. It is dependent on the other memebers of the ESA.
I guess that makes you an Anonymous Moron.
The mineral form (or ore) of aluminum/aluminium is composed of aluminum oxides/hydroxides and is called bauxite.
More countries than the U.S. call it aluminum. And by the way, "Molybdenum" is the correct spelling, at least according to the International Molybdenum Association headquartered in the U.K.
If you take a look at the three remaining elements you mentioned and the words they were derived from you'll see there is no reason to expect that any of the element names should use the common -ium suffix used to name elements.
Aluminum/Aluminium <-- from Latin alumina
Titanium <-- from Greek Titan
Vanadium <-- from Old Norse Vanadis
Have you not noticed that there are a lot of other elements that don't end in -ium. Why don't you complain that it's not called zincium or ironium or hydrogenium.
Here's a few more that end in -um for you to complain about:
Lanthanum <-- from Greek lanthanein to escape notice
Platinum <-- from Spanish platina
Tantalum <-- from Latin Tantalus
I think you're confusing relevance with visibility. IBM may not be a visible as they once were but they are relevant. There are a lot of things IBM does and services they offer that companies depend on for their day to day survival.
For example, IBM is one of the largest IT outsourcers and if they fell off the face of the planet there are a lot of companies that would have little or no IT area to speak of. Try getting a bank balance when the mainframe your account data sits on no longer exists. That's what I call relevant.
Look at the little Anonymous Coward get angry. That's so cute.
/. every day. The point is that the editors should be reading /. every day.
The point is not that someone without the nerve to post under his/her real name reads
If you don't read it, how can you edit it.