That depends on who your boss is, what the company's policy on employee privacy is, and lots of other legal, moral, and situational variables. If it's a privately owned company, the "boss" was the owner, there are no legal requirements in your jurisdiction saying otherwise, and the boss' stated policy on privacy is "it's my shit, I can look at anything you do", then yes you're correct. If it's a large company, with a defined privacy policy, and the "boss" is the night shift IT supervisor grabbing his jollies from people's e-mails... not so much. Just because your boss told you to do it doesn't make make it legally or ethically acceptable, though sometimes it does.
Well, I mean I could be an idiot here ( I'm definitely no doctor and my knowledge here is quite limited), but doesn't that make the surgery much more complex and invasive? I mean, with wireless you're basically implanting one or two radio receiver/transmitters (One in the case of a robotic limb which will have it own r/t technically "outside" the body, two if they're trying to bypass nerve damage). That's pretty straightforward work. One incision, install the r/t, sew it up. With implanted wires you're going to have to make long, fairly deep, incisions all down the path between the two wired r/t devices, no? That's a lot of extra pain for the patient, a lot of additional sites for infection, a lot longer surgery, etc. Plus what do you do if the cable breaks? Rip it all out and start over? You can usually repair cable, but at least outside the body it's rarely as strong as it was originally.
SEO=Search Engine Optimized. So it's like this. Your Flash Player is a month out of date and has a secuity hole. You search for a popular term. Maybe something game related, or porn, or whatever. Bad guy has a carefully crafted page that has been SEOed to appeared fairly high in the rankings for your popular search. The exploit is in the Flash on the page. You don't have to do anything except click the link (which seems perfectly legitimate).
Of course if you've got No-script or Ad Block, you're probably fine, but most people don't use stuff like that. See above for "People expect their computers to be tools" rant. What they did might have been mildly stupid: They should upgrade their plugins, they should read links more carefully, they should use some kind of script blocker, but it falls well within what most normal users would consider reasonable. Still infected though.
well the city is providing the service of trash hauling. they can pretty much choose not to haul away organic matter. You don't have to compost, but they won't pick up that trash (or trash with organic matter unsorted inside of it). You may feel free to contract someone to haul away your unsorted trash. There. your rights are no longer being violated.
Again, it's how you phrase the question. Apple is winning in phone market. They sell more phones and make more money that anyone else in that market. they aren't winning on the platform "war" such as it is. It's not clear that it matters to them as long as they are selling stupid numbers of phones nad making more money than they can spend.
It depends on how you phrase the question. Apple is "winning in the phone market" (the claim made in the original post people are arguing with) because they sell more product and make more money than any of their competitors in the phone market. At least the smartphone market, which is what we're talking about here. They outsell Samsung, HTC, Nokia, even RIM I think, in the phone market, because those are their competition in that market. They are not beating Google in the phone OS market, but it's not clear that they care. The phone OS "market" is somewhat nebulous and unprofitable anyway. other than Microsoft (who sell licenses to their OS) no one is making money in that market. Google provides a royalty free OS to various vendors, and everyone else sells a phone/OS marriage (everyone else being pretty much Apple and RIM at this point, though their may still be a few Palm devices floating around int the channel somewhere).
It's not cheating, but it's (non-deliberately) deceptive when it comes to the measures that matter to companies. "Android" is not a model of phone any more than "Windows" is a model of computer. Even with only 5-7% of the computer market, Apple has been one of the more profitable computer manufacturers for the last decade or so. Compare Windows to OSX and Apple is clearly "losing". Compare Mac sales to Dell sales or HP sales and Apple is doing almost phenomenally well. Similarly with phones. iOS is "losing" to Android by a lot of measures, but Apple is doing better than any other vendor of smartphones. Apple is "winning in the phone market" because they consistently make and sell more phones than any one other vendor (and probably make more money per phone to boot). They aren't necessarily winning in the phone OS market, but that's OK.
Probably not immigration laws. At any rate they don't have ICE agents at every port checking the immigration status of people boarding US flagged vessels. I don't believe that immigration status applies until you step foot on US soil, like, real ground. IANAL of course and certainly not an international maritime lawyer. At any rate, I don't see why the US government would care. They aren't planning to dodge visas. They plan to get B-1s for the people on the boat, and the ship will provide a small but always worthwhile bump in the SF bay economy. It'll need food, fuel, etc.
Really? The fact that the Australian and various EU Parliaments passed laws that are favorable to international companies is a violation of US jurisdiction? Yes those laws were often sponsored by US based companies. Yes the US government no doubt expressed a desire that those laws be passed. No, that is not a violation of any sort of jurisdictional law. When governments support laws in other countries it's called "diplomacy" and it happens all the time. There are plenty of US laws passed because someone in a European, Asian, or even Australian government supported it and offered concessions in return. When companies support laws, it's called "lobbying" (or bribery depending on the circumstances) and they usually argue that it's in the best interest of the country in question (true or not). In no case does "jurisdiction" fall into it at all.
No, but if I have a directory on my webserver called www.mysite.com/disney, Disney has no say in what I put there. If I start putting their trademark stuff in my directory and sharing it to the world, then they can do something about it... just having the directory doesn't mean anything. Maybe it's my tirade about how much I hate Disney. Now if two companies both own the trademark Disney (which is perfectly legal if they're in different fields or different jurisdictions as is the case here), I can freely rent that space to either Disney and the other one can't do anything about it. This is not me putting up a billboard on my property to advertise myself using the Disney name, this is another company, who also own the trademark to the name, renting the space with that name on my property to advertise themselves.
There are two Mercks. Both have an equal right to use the Trademark. Facebook is well within their rights deciding who gets to have the word in their namespace.
It's neither wrong nor patronizing and if you'd read everything he said you'd understand that. No one is saying that only people with degrees are capable of setting long term goals and achieving them, but getting a degree is some evidence of having that ability. He even lists other ways that you might go about proving the same thing. Like it or not thing like degrees and certification are intangible benefits to those who have them. It doesn't mean you can't get a job without, it doesn't mean that you're going to get every job just because you've got a piece of paper or two, but for many (not all, but many) hiring managers a degree is a plus. In many cases, for good or ill, HR won't even consider people for some positions unless they have a degree.
Call it unfair if you wish. It doesn't change the facts. You can also go about it the way you have. You can market yourself relentlessly, make contacts, get your foot in the door by taking shit jobs and doing well at them. It's possible, but ironically takes a lot more effort and self discipline than just getting a degree, and in the end you're probably no better off. Maybe a bit worse.
Meh, yes and no. Luke never "completed the training", but it was more like he took all the classes and never showed up for the final. He was pretty much lost and very amateur until he got the initial guidance and training from Yoda. Like a lot of the very best and smartest people he was able to take what he learned run with it, to improve on his own once he had the basics; but he never could have faced Vadar at the end of Empire, let alone become the Jedi Knight of Return without the training he received.
Formal education isn't a panacea, a person who shows up to class everyday and manages the bare minimum comprehension to pass is not going to be better than a really talented and motivated self taught person; but it is usually a big help. Nine times out of ten a person of reasonably equal talent and motivation with an education is going to be better than that same person without. It provides structure, gives you a firm basis on which to build your knowledge. People who haven't studied something formally often have holes in their knowledge, they have pieces that just weren't interesting to them so they never learned.
Very occasionally a truly exceptional person can become a true expert in a field with no formal education, but those people have typically worked much harder than they would have had to otherwise. To some it may seem like a mark of pride to spend twice as long to achieve the same result, but it seems inefficient to me.
As someone who's done some hiring, and who's competed against others in being hired, I'd say it depends. If you went to a third tier school and I went to a fifth tier school, it probably doesn't matter once we both have five years or so under our belts. If you went to MIT or Stanford... That's a whole other ballgame. Names like that matter well into your career, possibly for your entire career. In the end a guy from MIT might not always get the job: interviews matter, experience matters, even advanced degrees might matter, but there's definitely a little wow factor added to your resume with that degree even 10 or 15 years down the line (might definitely make a difference in making the cut to get that interview).
That's what this article is about. Getting into one of those 5 or 10 schools where having the name on your resume matters, and will likely continue to matter for a while.
I haven't used the tablet yet, so no opinion there per se; but my wife has a classic and I have a Color. I've used both pretty extensively. Long story short, the classic and simple are e-ink. They're going to better for reading e-books, assuming you plan to do so in normal reading conditions (well lit). They're less good for magazines, textbooks, computer manuals... anything with a fair number of pictures, especially color pictures. The Color and Tablet are (obviously) color and better for low light conditions besides. I tend to read for a while after my wife has already gone to sleep. Not needing a second light source is nice. Some people find reading straight text on the LCD screens uncomfortable, it doesn't bother me.
Of course the Color and Tablet are also both limited function tablet devices. You can get e-mail, surf the web, play some games, and use a limited selection of apps. You don't have access to the full Android Market by default (you can either root the device or boot to a Micro-SD to get it, but the default UI is rather nice for the stated purpose of "e-book reader"), but the store isn't empty either. The Color is, in my opinion, not the greatest tablet. It wasn't meant to be. It can be used as one, and isn't complete crap like a lot of the really cheap Android devices out there, but it's definitely no iPad or GalaxyTab even with stock Android installed. The Tablet is a lot more powerful though, so it may well be a closer match to that use case.
The article mentions this, and has a link to it. Replicating the device is not the achievement, doing so it such a small package is. They also threw in a few extra gears so it can tell time in addition to everything else.
Also, don't the batteries weigh like hundreds of pounds? I mean, I wouldn't want to be slinging around the little 12 volt "start my car and power stuff when it's turned off" battery in my gas powered car... let alone enough batteries to run the whole car. You'd need some sort of massive freight moving system on every station.
Still, the main use case they are touting in the summary is cars. Faster charging, higher storage density batteries are a huge deal in that space. One of the big complaints with electric cars is that they take much longer to charge than a gas powered car takes to fill up, so faster charging is a big deal. More power density means either a) you can store the same amount of power in fewer batteries (thus theoretically reducing the weight and cost) or b) can get much farther on the same sized battery.
Right now electric cars are right on the cusp of being really commercially viable. If they become a hair cheaper, a hair longer range, a hair quicker to charge... it could put them over the top. This has the potential to do all three, and if the research is accurate increase all of them by more than a hair.
Plus, you know, I wouldn't complain if my iPhone went 3 days without a charge.
Oh, I'm not bitter. I didn't mean to sound like I was. I'm pretty happy with my choices in life. I was just responding to the idea that Minecraft made money "up front". It did, in a way, in the sense that Notch made money well before the game was "finished". There was still a non-trivial period of time in which he was working and not making any money though. Most people, unless they're just doing the code as a hobby, can't afford to have that period.
I don't know all the details, but I suspect that the $50 million didn't start rolling in till after the game was substantially feature complete and people were playing the beta. There was a substantial period (I don't know how long, but I can't imagine it was less than several months) where he was working "for free" and had no idea if anyone would give him anything for his work. If you're a kid fresh out of college living with your parents, or in a similar situation you can afford to do that. If you've got kids and a mortgage you generally can't. There are exceptions, some people are wealthy from birth, others scrimp and save enough to allow them to take that kind of sabbatical, but in general people beyond a certain level of age/responsibility can't easily work on something for few months or half a year without pay or knowing whether there will ever be pay.
For a young guy, doing something like this is a win/win. He'll either make a game people like, it will catch on and he'll make money (which is what happened); or he'll have a Hell of a project to show as code samples when someone is interviewing him.
Cray has had Supercomputers on the top ten list (and even in the number one spot) again for years now. Ever since they spun off from SGI they've had one of the more interesting architectures in HPC. I was interviewing at ORNL when they were installing Jaguar, and I got a pretty in depth description of the hows and the whys. It's no longer the most powerful computer in the world, but it's still a very impressive piece of machinery. Sigh. I really need to get back into HPC.
It's worth noting that the "new Cray", while they obviously don't make the old vector processor systems that they did originally, makes a really nifty hybrid cluster/SSI (single system image) supercomputer that is notably different than most of what's on the market. Man, seeing articles like this makes me want to get back into HPC stuff. I'm making a bit more doing this corporate crap, but I really miss getting to play with the cutting edge stuff.
One suspects that the primary use case for this application is not, "Hey, we need to measure this, let's go get two iPhones!" It's "Hey we need to measure this and happen to have two iPhones, but no tape measure." Most people carry their phones around with them all the time, but unless they're contractors don't carry tape measures. The point of near ubiquitous mobile computers is that you can use them for lots of things. This is a cute and clever thing that you can now use them for.
It's kind of sad that I'm really impressed by what seems like such an obvious and easy to implement feature... but I am. That's an awesome idea. If I wasn't living in an apartment right now, it might almost be enough to get me to switch by itself. Satellite in an apartment is a pain though.
Yes duel booting is easy if the other guy isn't moving too fast. Personally I like to hamstring him with my rapier, then I can boot him all I want... oh... wait.. Dual booting. Yes, that's easy too. Pain in the ass though. You have to shut the whole computer down every time you want to switch OSes. Granted I can remember when loading Pool of Radiance off of 5 floppy disks took longer than booting and logging into my computer does now, but that doesn't mean I really want to reboot my system every time I decide I want to play a game.
Besides, what's the point? Windows runs everything I need to use on a regular basis. The reasons I use Linux on my servers involved stability and security mostly... if I'm constantly having to reboot into Windows, I get neither advantage. Dual booting was a great idea for getting your feet wet in learning about Linux ten years ago. Now I just have a Linux VM on my Windows or Mac machine if I really need to do something Linux specific. Honestly with Cygwin and Macports, there's rarely any need for it.
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That depends on who your boss is, what the company's policy on employee privacy is, and lots of other legal, moral, and situational variables. If it's a privately owned company, the "boss" was the owner, there are no legal requirements in your jurisdiction saying otherwise, and the boss' stated policy on privacy is "it's my shit, I can look at anything you do", then yes you're correct. If it's a large company, with a defined privacy policy, and the "boss" is the night shift IT supervisor grabbing his jollies from people's e-mails... not so much. Just because your boss told you to do it doesn't make make it legally or ethically acceptable, though sometimes it does.
Well, I mean I could be an idiot here ( I'm definitely no doctor and my knowledge here is quite limited), but doesn't that make the surgery much more complex and invasive? I mean, with wireless you're basically implanting one or two radio receiver/transmitters (One in the case of a robotic limb which will have it own r/t technically "outside" the body, two if they're trying to bypass nerve damage). That's pretty straightforward work. One incision, install the r/t, sew it up. With implanted wires you're going to have to make long, fairly deep, incisions all down the path between the two wired r/t devices, no? That's a lot of extra pain for the patient, a lot of additional sites for infection, a lot longer surgery, etc. Plus what do you do if the cable breaks? Rip it all out and start over? You can usually repair cable, but at least outside the body it's rarely as strong as it was originally.
SEO=Search Engine Optimized. So it's like this. Your Flash Player is a month out of date and has a secuity hole. You search for a popular term. Maybe something game related, or porn, or whatever. Bad guy has a carefully crafted page that has been SEOed to appeared fairly high in the rankings for your popular search. The exploit is in the Flash on the page. You don't have to do anything except click the link (which seems perfectly legitimate).
Of course if you've got No-script or Ad Block, you're probably fine, but most people don't use stuff like that. See above for "People expect their computers to be tools" rant. What they did might have been mildly stupid: They should upgrade their plugins, they should read links more carefully, they should use some kind of script blocker, but it falls well within what most normal users would consider reasonable. Still infected though.
well the city is providing the service of trash hauling. they can pretty much choose not to haul away organic matter. You don't have to compost, but they won't pick up that trash (or trash with organic matter unsorted inside of it). You may feel free to contract someone to haul away your unsorted trash. There. your rights are no longer being violated.
Again, it's how you phrase the question. Apple is winning in phone market. They sell more phones and make more money that anyone else in that market. they aren't winning on the platform "war" such as it is. It's not clear that it matters to them as long as they are selling stupid numbers of phones nad making more money than they can spend.
It depends on how you phrase the question. Apple is "winning in the phone market" (the claim made in the original post people are arguing with) because they sell more product and make more money than any of their competitors in the phone market. At least the smartphone market, which is what we're talking about here. They outsell Samsung, HTC, Nokia, even RIM I think, in the phone market, because those are their competition in that market. They are not beating Google in the phone OS market, but it's not clear that they care. The phone OS "market" is somewhat nebulous and unprofitable anyway. other than Microsoft (who sell licenses to their OS) no one is making money in that market. Google provides a royalty free OS to various vendors, and everyone else sells a phone/OS marriage (everyone else being pretty much Apple and RIM at this point, though their may still be a few Palm devices floating around int the channel somewhere).
It's not cheating, but it's (non-deliberately) deceptive when it comes to the measures that matter to companies. "Android" is not a model of phone any more than "Windows" is a model of computer. Even with only 5-7% of the computer market, Apple has been one of the more profitable computer manufacturers for the last decade or so. Compare Windows to OSX and Apple is clearly "losing". Compare Mac sales to Dell sales or HP sales and Apple is doing almost phenomenally well. Similarly with phones. iOS is "losing" to Android by a lot of measures, but Apple is doing better than any other vendor of smartphones. Apple is "winning in the phone market" because they consistently make and sell more phones than any one other vendor (and probably make more money per phone to boot). They aren't necessarily winning in the phone OS market, but that's OK.
Probably not immigration laws. At any rate they don't have ICE agents at every port checking the immigration status of people boarding US flagged vessels. I don't believe that immigration status applies until you step foot on US soil, like, real ground. IANAL of course and certainly not an international maritime lawyer. At any rate, I don't see why the US government would care. They aren't planning to dodge visas. They plan to get B-1s for the people on the boat, and the ship will provide a small but always worthwhile bump in the SF bay economy. It'll need food, fuel, etc.
Really? The fact that the Australian and various EU Parliaments passed laws that are favorable to international companies is a violation of US jurisdiction? Yes those laws were often sponsored by US based companies. Yes the US government no doubt expressed a desire that those laws be passed. No, that is not a violation of any sort of jurisdictional law. When governments support laws in other countries it's called "diplomacy" and it happens all the time. There are plenty of US laws passed because someone in a European, Asian, or even Australian government supported it and offered concessions in return. When companies support laws, it's called "lobbying" (or bribery depending on the circumstances) and they usually argue that it's in the best interest of the country in question (true or not). In no case does "jurisdiction" fall into it at all.
No, but if I have a directory on my webserver called www.mysite.com/disney, Disney has no say in what I put there. If I start putting their trademark stuff in my directory and sharing it to the world, then they can do something about it... just having the directory doesn't mean anything. Maybe it's my tirade about how much I hate Disney. Now if two companies both own the trademark Disney (which is perfectly legal if they're in different fields or different jurisdictions as is the case here), I can freely rent that space to either Disney and the other one can't do anything about it. This is not me putting up a billboard on my property to advertise myself using the Disney name, this is another company, who also own the trademark to the name, renting the space with that name on my property to advertise themselves.
There are two Mercks. Both have an equal right to use the Trademark. Facebook is well within their rights deciding who gets to have the word in their namespace.
It's neither wrong nor patronizing and if you'd read everything he said you'd understand that. No one is saying that only people with degrees are capable of setting long term goals and achieving them, but getting a degree is some evidence of having that ability. He even lists other ways that you might go about proving the same thing. Like it or not thing like degrees and certification are intangible benefits to those who have them. It doesn't mean you can't get a job without, it doesn't mean that you're going to get every job just because you've got a piece of paper or two, but for many (not all, but many) hiring managers a degree is a plus. In many cases, for good or ill, HR won't even consider people for some positions unless they have a degree.
Call it unfair if you wish. It doesn't change the facts. You can also go about it the way you have. You can market yourself relentlessly, make contacts, get your foot in the door by taking shit jobs and doing well at them. It's possible, but ironically takes a lot more effort and self discipline than just getting a degree, and in the end you're probably no better off. Maybe a bit worse.
Meh, yes and no. Luke never "completed the training", but it was more like he took all the classes and never showed up for the final. He was pretty much lost and very amateur until he got the initial guidance and training from Yoda. Like a lot of the very best and smartest people he was able to take what he learned run with it, to improve on his own once he had the basics; but he never could have faced Vadar at the end of Empire, let alone become the Jedi Knight of Return without the training he received.
Formal education isn't a panacea, a person who shows up to class everyday and manages the bare minimum comprehension to pass is not going to be better than a really talented and motivated self taught person; but it is usually a big help. Nine times out of ten a person of reasonably equal talent and motivation with an education is going to be better than that same person without. It provides structure, gives you a firm basis on which to build your knowledge. People who haven't studied something formally often have holes in their knowledge, they have pieces that just weren't interesting to them so they never learned.
Very occasionally a truly exceptional person can become a true expert in a field with no formal education, but those people have typically worked much harder than they would have had to otherwise. To some it may seem like a mark of pride to spend twice as long to achieve the same result, but it seems inefficient to me.
As someone who's done some hiring, and who's competed against others in being hired, I'd say it depends. If you went to a third tier school and I went to a fifth tier school, it probably doesn't matter once we both have five years or so under our belts. If you went to MIT or Stanford... That's a whole other ballgame. Names like that matter well into your career, possibly for your entire career. In the end a guy from MIT might not always get the job: interviews matter, experience matters, even advanced degrees might matter, but there's definitely a little wow factor added to your resume with that degree even 10 or 15 years down the line (might definitely make a difference in making the cut to get that interview).
That's what this article is about. Getting into one of those 5 or 10 schools where having the name on your resume matters, and will likely continue to matter for a while.
I haven't used the tablet yet, so no opinion there per se; but my wife has a classic and I have a Color. I've used both pretty extensively. Long story short, the classic and simple are e-ink. They're going to better for reading e-books, assuming you plan to do so in normal reading conditions (well lit). They're less good for magazines, textbooks, computer manuals... anything with a fair number of pictures, especially color pictures. The Color and Tablet are (obviously) color and better for low light conditions besides. I tend to read for a while after my wife has already gone to sleep. Not needing a second light source is nice. Some people find reading straight text on the LCD screens uncomfortable, it doesn't bother me.
Of course the Color and Tablet are also both limited function tablet devices. You can get e-mail, surf the web, play some games, and use a limited selection of apps. You don't have access to the full Android Market by default (you can either root the device or boot to a Micro-SD to get it, but the default UI is rather nice for the stated purpose of "e-book reader"), but the store isn't empty either. The Color is, in my opinion, not the greatest tablet. It wasn't meant to be. It can be used as one, and isn't complete crap like a lot of the really cheap Android devices out there, but it's definitely no iPad or GalaxyTab even with stock Android installed. The Tablet is a lot more powerful though, so it may well be a closer match to that use case.
You know that's great, but what are you going to do about zombies?
The article mentions this, and has a link to it. Replicating the device is not the achievement, doing so it such a small package is. They also threw in a few extra gears so it can tell time in addition to everything else.
Also, don't the batteries weigh like hundreds of pounds? I mean, I wouldn't want to be slinging around the little 12 volt "start my car and power stuff when it's turned off" battery in my gas powered car... let alone enough batteries to run the whole car. You'd need some sort of massive freight moving system on every station.
Still, the main use case they are touting in the summary is cars. Faster charging, higher storage density batteries are a huge deal in that space. One of the big complaints with electric cars is that they take much longer to charge than a gas powered car takes to fill up, so faster charging is a big deal. More power density means either a) you can store the same amount of power in fewer batteries (thus theoretically reducing the weight and cost) or b) can get much farther on the same sized battery.
Right now electric cars are right on the cusp of being really commercially viable. If they become a hair cheaper, a hair longer range, a hair quicker to charge... it could put them over the top. This has the potential to do all three, and if the research is accurate increase all of them by more than a hair.
Plus, you know, I wouldn't complain if my iPhone went 3 days without a charge.
Oh, I'm not bitter. I didn't mean to sound like I was. I'm pretty happy with my choices in life. I was just responding to the idea that Minecraft made money "up front". It did, in a way, in the sense that Notch made money well before the game was "finished". There was still a non-trivial period of time in which he was working and not making any money though. Most people, unless they're just doing the code as a hobby, can't afford to have that period.
I don't know all the details, but I suspect that the $50 million didn't start rolling in till after the game was substantially feature complete and people were playing the beta. There was a substantial period (I don't know how long, but I can't imagine it was less than several months) where he was working "for free" and had no idea if anyone would give him anything for his work. If you're a kid fresh out of college living with your parents, or in a similar situation you can afford to do that. If you've got kids and a mortgage you generally can't. There are exceptions, some people are wealthy from birth, others scrimp and save enough to allow them to take that kind of sabbatical, but in general people beyond a certain level of age/responsibility can't easily work on something for few months or half a year without pay or knowing whether there will ever be pay.
For a young guy, doing something like this is a win/win. He'll either make a game people like, it will catch on and he'll make money (which is what happened); or he'll have a Hell of a project to show as code samples when someone is interviewing him.
Cray has had Supercomputers on the top ten list (and even in the number one spot) again for years now. Ever since they spun off from SGI they've had one of the more interesting architectures in HPC. I was interviewing at ORNL when they were installing Jaguar, and I got a pretty in depth description of the hows and the whys. It's no longer the most powerful computer in the world, but it's still a very impressive piece of machinery. Sigh. I really need to get back into HPC.
It's worth noting that the "new Cray", while they obviously don't make the old vector processor systems that they did originally, makes a really nifty hybrid cluster/SSI (single system image) supercomputer that is notably different than most of what's on the market. Man, seeing articles like this makes me want to get back into HPC stuff. I'm making a bit more doing this corporate crap, but I really miss getting to play with the cutting edge stuff.
One suspects that the primary use case for this application is not, "Hey, we need to measure this, let's go get two iPhones!" It's "Hey we need to measure this and happen to have two iPhones, but no tape measure." Most people carry their phones around with them all the time, but unless they're contractors don't carry tape measures. The point of near ubiquitous mobile computers is that you can use them for lots of things. This is a cute and clever thing that you can now use them for.
It's kind of sad that I'm really impressed by what seems like such an obvious and easy to implement feature... but I am. That's an awesome idea. If I wasn't living in an apartment right now, it might almost be enough to get me to switch by itself. Satellite in an apartment is a pain though.
Yes duel booting is easy if the other guy isn't moving too fast. Personally I like to hamstring him with my rapier, then I can boot him all I want... oh... wait.. Dual booting. Yes, that's easy too. Pain in the ass though. You have to shut the whole computer down every time you want to switch OSes. Granted I can remember when loading Pool of Radiance off of 5 floppy disks took longer than booting and logging into my computer does now, but that doesn't mean I really want to reboot my system every time I decide I want to play a game.
Besides, what's the point? Windows runs everything I need to use on a regular basis. The reasons I use Linux on my servers involved stability and security mostly... if I'm constantly having to reboot into Windows, I get neither advantage. Dual booting was a great idea for getting your feet wet in learning about Linux ten years ago. Now I just have a Linux VM on my Windows or Mac machine if I really need to do something Linux specific. Honestly with Cygwin and Macports, there's rarely any need for it.