That's about 3100 feet by my math. I think the need for so many "washing-machine sized boxes" may make the economics of this somewhat prohibitive in truly rural areas or even McMansion-style suburbs where you may only have 2-3 people within a 3100' radius.
Anyone know what the topology requirements are like for CATV+Cablemodem schemes? I'd presume more restrictive than vanilla analog with periodic amplifiers, but is it as tough as a 3100' radius?
Even the most poverty-stricken regions are not dying off en masse due to lack of resources. In fact, these areas are showing phenomenal population increase.
That doesn't take into account the effect of outside influences on poverty-stricken regions. At a bare minimum a lot of poor regions import much of their food and food technology. If they had to stand or fall based on their own internal resources there would be massive famine, like what happens in a place like Somalia when military conflict keeps out aid workers.
The world as a whole may not be overpopulated, but many regions are probably past the point of being self-sustaining entities and they rely on less-populated areas agricultural overproduction relative to the less populated regions demands in order to meet their needs.
It would not seem wise, at least to me, for the industries to err on the side of greater control, and away from the potential for greater sales. Penny wise and dollar foolish, they say...
You're right in suggesting that they want enhanced control. But remember, when you listen to your friend's MP3, decide you like and go out and buy it you're making a purchasing decision about whether or not you like the music based upon your friend's opinion and your personal preferences.
You're not making it based upon the music industry's marketing campaign. The industry pushes select artists that they have an investment in and want to succeed, and they would rather that you made your decisions on what to buy based upon they're selling, not upon what your friends like or what you find appealing.
The record companies, as subsidieries of media conglomerates, already have influence over TV, magazines, record stores, and radio stations (through direct ownership or payola). What they don't control is whether your friend tells you about a new disc he got and the music on it.
I'd agree that it may hurt sales, since a lot of records that have become popular have become popular because of word-of-mouth but I think more and more people are such slaves of the media anyway (radio in shower, in the car, in the office, MTV at home, etc) that many people by and large have lost their ability to generate an opinion of their own anyway.
A 45U rack will hold 45 1U dual-CPU systems. Even more of the server-blade type systems (280 of the Compaq in a 42U rack).
The only way to rackmount a G4 that I can find is at Marathon Computer. A set of replacements for the "handles" for $225 or a whole new case which is 4U but is $550. Given a 45U square-hole 19" rack, you could squeeze in 11 dual CPU G4s.
I don't care what your performance fantasies are about the G4 systems, they're not more than 4x faster than dual x86 systems.
Instead of wasting valuable resources making fake fraud sites, why not invest those resources into vigorous prosecution of securities fraud? I mean start locking lots of guys up in maximum security facilities for a long time and strip them and their families of their assets. And start with Fortune 500 companies playing footsie with the rules. Rules not tough enough? Use some of the money to lobby congress for increased criminal penalties and jail time for securities fraud.
If the enforcement resources are wasted on BS education efforts and the penalties are soft (fines, probation, country club minimum security "jails"), people are going to keep doing it.
Pretending to steal my money and calling it fighting theft instead of actually finding and punishing people who steal is stupid, plain and simple.
Domain names in the.com,.net, and.org domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
No match for "MARATHONCOMPUTING.COM".
>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 05:21:04 EST
The Registry database contains ONLY.COM,.NET,.ORG,.EDU domains and
Registrars.
Of all the shit they built at that airport and the parking/construction hell it created, this is the least they could do for those of us with nothing else to do while we're grabbing our ankles for NWA.
How physically scalable is a G4 renderfarm if you're using Apple non-rackmount systems? It can't be practical even if you use one of the rackmount conversion kits, my Mac looks to be about 3U, which is way too much for even a 2 CPU system (since that's *6* SMP 1U x86 systems, or even more density in some of the new serverblade systems).
Linus doesn't see microsoft as a compepetitor, hes said that numerous times. Linux is for linus thats it. He does't care who uses it, he isn't make a system to rival microsoft... hes making a system that he likes
I find this statement hard to believe. I believe it was true up to maybe kernel 2.0.x, when generally used workstation features and functionality were being added. At its current state, there's so much in the kernel that Linus doesn't need or can't use its hard for me to believe that he's doing it to make something he personally likes (which implies personally uses/needs). And this is just kernel features. Development effort and coordination (see today's other story on Linus scalability) has got to be a major timesink as well, way beyond the "for me personally" stage.
I can only conclude that further development and complexity in the kernel must serve some other need -- it may not be direct competition with MS, but it certainly can't just be because Linus personally likes it. It makes for a high-minded "ars gratia artis" kind of statement, but it also is kind of hard to swallow.
The article didn't mention anything about the cost to actually play the game. Surely its not possible for the typical gamer to play the game for free, is it? Even if you crank out your $3/hr, it's costing you more to play the game (Game+ISP at least) than you're making, isn't it?
Its like leftovers, they taste better after they've been in the fridge for a couple of days. The trolls get an opportunity to fine-tune their topic-specific trolls, just like garlic tends to simmer in the food leftovers.
I think by either Marvin or Pella. I've seen promotional materials, and IIRC it was a kind of transparent LCD panel that could be opaqued or made mostly transparent. The downside is that I believe it took power to keep the window transparent, and it was really expensive.
Either way, modern windows, according to my wife who used to work with Andersen Windows, have a higher R factor than a lot of walls -- triple glazing, low emissivity coatings, and krpton/argon filled voids go a long way.
I have Verizon (formerly AirTouch) wireless and its generally really good coverage, and digital messaging generally works wherever I am so long as there is digital coverage.
Does Verizon have a rep for bad coverage? I know they're running these really obnoxious TV spots with the geek in the wilderness.
I'm was an Airtouch customer, and Airtouch was spun off from US West and was the original 800 Mhz wireline carrier where I live, which may account for the quality of signal (loads of towers, existing infrastructure).
Are they bad in areas where they have expanded into and didn't have a good existing tower base or relied on roaming agreements?
Re:Yeah, CDC's NOS/BE could do this 25 years ago
on
UNIX Process Cryogenics?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Why are software techniques shit today compared to yesterday?
Because we're hopeless caught up in trying to reinvent a somewhat limited computing paradigm (unix). No one, except for some CompSci projects that never really go anywhere, have any real interest in making a new operating system that builds on the lessons of all the previous operating systems and includes reasonable features like process checkpointing/suspension.
I'd bet there are patent considertions as well -- maybe many of the good OS features are not reproducable due to existing patents.
We'd been using Groupwise for years because of its ability to do sophisticated calendaring and scheduling. It used to take a secretary several *days* of collecting schedules to schedule a meeting. With Groupwise people were able to schedule meetings without a secretary.
Self-scheduled meetings mean fewer support staff. 3 fewer support staff for one year mean we pay for the cost of the hardware + software in the first years savings. Don't forget the opportunity costs this saves -- we can be more flexible and efficient than we were, giving us greater business opportunities. It's a system that has not only paid for itself but made us money.
Mbox format? Well, we still would have needed GUI clients, more staffing and for what? Better archiving? I think our shareholders would rather get more value and I know I enjoy the pay raises that enhanced profitibility brings more than needless handwringing over standards compliance.
And every penny must be paid off by the artist before he sees a penny of royalties.
Paid back you mean. The front money is paid by the recording company. Studio time, technicians, session musicians, consumables (food, media, office supplies, etc), equipment all costs real money RIGHT NOW, not later on when the album sells a million copies.
It's not unrealistic for a record to cost $1m to make.
That doesn't excuse the profiteering of the record companies, but it does mean that if you want to get cheaper albums you need to cut the costs of making the record in the first place.
Less dope, hookers, and hush money might help.
The technical demands for electronic documents would seem to dictate some of this. For example, we've been converting from Netware/Groupwise/Win9x to Win2k/Exchange/Win2k here. It doesn't change word-type documents, but it does change the email system and the backup system.
Sometime today I plan to decomission the Netware backup system -- derack the equipment and potentially reuse it in some other location as soon as next week. This will make all of our old backup tapes unreadbale, as our Win2k backup system uses not just different software but different physical media -- I can't read DLT7000 on a LTO Ultrium tape drive. I *think* I can read an ArcServe tape on BE 8.6, but the files are backed up as Netware-compressed and can't be restored but to a netware server. Once we decomission our last netware server (within a few months), all of those tapes are worthless without the infrastructure to restore the data.
The email system again is another matter, I need even more infrastructure and software to manage it (presuming I can restore it). Netware administrator, Groupwise installed (client and server), and so on.
Even so, we don't even keep old backup tapes. We have a 5 week rotation (1 full per week with daily incrementals). I used to keep old tapes, but they were unreliable (especially the DATs) and the software isn't always available. We USED to keep them (1 full per month), but I found myself with a shitpile of tapes that needed storing and a big blank media bill.
Eventually word/powerpoint and other apps will obsolete themselves to where the data, even if you can read the media, isn't usable. I know that we purge our email system daily of older > 6 months emails and we chase after users to ditch old documents as server space gets tight.
I can't imagine the tech demands of constant archiving of everything. I'd need to give half of my budget to EMC just to try to stay ahead.
I don't think that production and distribution of CDs is the big expense that the recording industry bears, I think its the costs involved in recording and production that are so expensive.
Think of what studio time must cost to have a five-man band and all the people involved. Its not just the band, a recording engineer and a producer. There's loads of other engineers to mic everything, a couple of guys on the console, producer, roadies, catering, not to mention the time to rent the studio equipment. Then there's the guys involved in the mixdown (producer, engineers) and the equipment time. Mastering, etc etc. All expensive, equipment and people intensive.
Production and distribution, as has been stated elsewhere, is a buck or two per disc.
Because of the small size of the virtual economy any attempt to give yourself money would probably have the same impact as conterfeiting would have in a small cash economy -- you would likely introduce inflationary pressures that would devalue the currency.
This is the usual thing that happens when central banks or governments try to print money to solve its financial problems -- at best its inflationary, at worst its runaway inflation that leads to wheelbarrows of money being required to buy a loaf of bread.
It's been a while since I took economics, but I think the reason that printing money is inflationary is that it only increases demand but not supply, which pushes prices higher.
The best way to cheat would probably be creating both money and goods at the same time to keep inflation in balance somewhat, but that may lead to deflation as you're oversatisfying demands.
Of course the best way to cheat would be to steal or corner the market on a needed commodity.
I wonder how long before practical applications of this research become available... five years? Ten?
If the economy keeps tanking and health care costs keep going up, I'm guessing that the practical applications will be unavailable to anyone with less than a 7 figure income.
I think he's talking about that NSI was given.com,.net and.org to administer originally by NSF or DARPA when they got sick of doing it themselves. They then started charging for the domain names, even though they had been given no mandate to do so. Once they figured out it was a really profitable business, they fought tooth and nail to keep out other registrars. IIRC, they still have some monopoly control over the domain database until 2010 or the ICANN people decide they want a bigger slice.
It's just another example of a vague, unspecified government giveaway that turns into a free money monopoly for big business.
Slashdot Mirror
That's about 3100 feet by my math. I think the need for so many "washing-machine sized boxes" may make the economics of this somewhat prohibitive in truly rural areas or even McMansion-style suburbs where you may only have 2-3 people within a 3100' radius.
Anyone know what the topology requirements are like for CATV+Cablemodem schemes? I'd presume more restrictive than vanilla analog with periodic amplifiers, but is it as tough as a 3100' radius?
Even the most poverty-stricken regions are not dying off en masse due to lack of resources. In fact, these areas are showing phenomenal population increase.
That doesn't take into account the effect of outside influences on poverty-stricken regions. At a bare minimum a lot of poor regions import much of their food and food technology. If they had to stand or fall based on their own internal resources there would be massive famine, like what happens in a place like Somalia when military conflict keeps out aid workers.
The world as a whole may not be overpopulated, but many regions are probably past the point of being self-sustaining entities and they rely on less-populated areas agricultural overproduction relative to the less populated regions demands in order to meet their needs.
It would not seem wise, at least to me, for the industries to err on the side of greater control, and away from the potential for greater sales. Penny wise and dollar foolish, they say...
You're right in suggesting that they want enhanced control. But remember, when you listen to your friend's MP3, decide you like and go out and buy it you're making a purchasing decision about whether or not you like the music based upon your friend's opinion and your personal preferences.
You're not making it based upon the music industry's marketing campaign. The industry pushes select artists that they have an investment in and want to succeed, and they would rather that you made your decisions on what to buy based upon they're selling, not upon what your friends like or what you find appealing.
The record companies, as subsidieries of media conglomerates, already have influence over TV, magazines, record stores, and radio stations (through direct ownership or payola). What they don't control is whether your friend tells you about a new disc he got and the music on it.
I'd agree that it may hurt sales, since a lot of records that have become popular have become popular because of word-of-mouth but I think more and more people are such slaves of the media anyway (radio in shower, in the car, in the office, MTV at home, etc) that many people by and large have lost their ability to generate an opinion of their own anyway.
Your price and performance arguments are BS straw-man arguments, since dual athlon MP1900+ systems in 1U of space are available for under $3500.
Face it, since OS X macs have been better than anything that runs on Intel for any application.
And I believe that when I start seeing real business data centers with garage-racked Macs running in them. Until then its only in your mind.
The size is what really kills them.
A 45U rack will hold 45 1U dual-CPU systems. Even more of the server-blade type systems (280 of the Compaq in a 42U rack).
The only way to rackmount a G4 that I can find is at Marathon Computer. A set of replacements for the "handles" for $225 or a whole new case which is 4U but is $550. Given a 45U square-hole 19" rack, you could squeeze in 11 dual CPU G4s.
I don't care what your performance fantasies are about the G4 systems, they're not more than 4x faster than dual x86 systems.
Instead of wasting valuable resources making fake fraud sites, why not invest those resources into vigorous prosecution of securities fraud? I mean start locking lots of guys up in maximum security facilities for a long time and strip them and their families of their assets. And start with Fortune 500 companies playing footsie with the rules. Rules not tough enough? Use some of the money to lobby congress for increased criminal penalties and jail time for securities fraud.
If the enforcement resources are wasted on BS education efforts and the penalties are soft (fines, probation, country club minimum security "jails"), people are going to keep doing it.
Pretending to steal my money and calling it fighting theft instead of actually finding and punishing people who steal is stupid, plain and simple.
People that serve MP3s and SETI don't make multi-million dollar server purchasing or admin decisions, or at least not for long.
Wow, great company.
.com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
.COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU domains and
$ whois marathoncomputing.com
Whois Server Version 1.3
Domain names in the
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
No match for "MARATHONCOMPUTING.COM".
>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 05:21:04 EST
The Registry database contains ONLY
Registrars.
Of all the shit they built at that airport and the parking/construction hell it created, this is the least they could do for those of us with nothing else to do while we're grabbing our ankles for NWA.
How physically scalable is a G4 renderfarm if you're using Apple non-rackmount systems? It can't be practical even if you use one of the rackmount conversion kits, my Mac looks to be about 3U, which is way too much for even a 2 CPU system (since that's *6* SMP 1U x86 systems, or even more density in some of the new serverblade systems).
Linus doesn't see microsoft as a compepetitor, hes said that numerous times. Linux is for linus thats it. He does't care who uses it, he isn't make a system to rival microsoft... hes making a system that he likes
I find this statement hard to believe. I believe it was true up to maybe kernel 2.0.x, when generally used workstation features and functionality were being added. At its current state, there's so much in the kernel that Linus doesn't need or can't use its hard for me to believe that he's doing it to make something he personally likes (which implies personally uses/needs). And this is just kernel features. Development effort and coordination (see today's other story on Linus scalability) has got to be a major timesink as well, way beyond the "for me personally" stage.
I can only conclude that further development and complexity in the kernel must serve some other need -- it may not be direct competition with MS, but it certainly can't just be because Linus personally likes it. It makes for a high-minded "ars gratia artis" kind of statement, but it also is kind of hard to swallow.
The article didn't mention anything about the cost to actually play the game. Surely its not possible for the typical gamer to play the game for free, is it? Even if you crank out your $3/hr, it's costing you more to play the game (Game+ISP at least) than you're making, isn't it?
Its like leftovers, they taste better after they've been in the fridge for a couple of days. The trolls get an opportunity to fine-tune their topic-specific trolls, just like garlic tends to simmer in the food leftovers.
I'll admit I didn't read more than the Slashdot headlines, but didn't MS just buy a bunch of OpenGL stuff from SGI?
If they decide not to license or to restrict the use of the technology, wouldn't that begin to cripple the use of OpenGL as a development environment?
I can't believe they would, but then again this IS MS we're talking about.
I think by either Marvin or Pella. I've seen promotional materials, and IIRC it was a kind of transparent LCD panel that could be opaqued or made mostly transparent. The downside is that I believe it took power to keep the window transparent, and it was really expensive.
Either way, modern windows, according to my wife who used to work with Andersen Windows, have a higher R factor than a lot of walls -- triple glazing, low emissivity coatings, and krpton/argon filled voids go a long way.
I have Verizon (formerly AirTouch) wireless and its generally really good coverage, and digital messaging generally works wherever I am so long as there is digital coverage.
Does Verizon have a rep for bad coverage? I know they're running these really obnoxious TV spots with the geek in the wilderness.
I'm was an Airtouch customer, and Airtouch was spun off from US West and was the original 800 Mhz wireline carrier where I live, which may account for the quality of signal (loads of towers, existing infrastructure).
Are they bad in areas where they have expanded into and didn't have a good existing tower base or relied on roaming agreements?
Why are software techniques shit today compared to yesterday?
Because we're hopeless caught up in trying to reinvent a somewhat limited computing paradigm (unix). No one, except for some CompSci projects that never really go anywhere, have any real interest in making a new operating system that builds on the lessons of all the previous operating systems and includes reasonable features like process checkpointing/suspension.
I'd bet there are patent considertions as well -- maybe many of the good OS features are not reproducable due to existing patents.
The expression I've heard that makes sense is:
We'd been using Groupwise for years because of its ability to do sophisticated calendaring and scheduling. It used to take a secretary several *days* of collecting schedules to schedule a meeting. With Groupwise people were able to schedule meetings without a secretary.
Self-scheduled meetings mean fewer support staff. 3 fewer support staff for one year mean we pay for the cost of the hardware + software in the first years savings. Don't forget the opportunity costs this saves -- we can be more flexible and efficient than we were, giving us greater business opportunities. It's a system that has not only paid for itself but made us money.
Mbox format? Well, we still would have needed GUI clients, more staffing and for what? Better archiving? I think our shareholders would rather get more value and I know I enjoy the pay raises that enhanced profitibility brings more than needless handwringing over standards compliance.
And every penny must be paid off by the artist before he sees a penny of royalties.
Paid back you mean. The front money is paid by the recording company. Studio time, technicians, session musicians, consumables (food, media, office supplies, etc), equipment all costs real money RIGHT NOW, not later on when the album sells a million copies. It's not unrealistic for a record to cost $1m to make. That doesn't excuse the profiteering of the record companies, but it does mean that if you want to get cheaper albums you need to cut the costs of making the record in the first place. Less dope, hookers, and hush money might help.
The technical demands for electronic documents would seem to dictate some of this. For example, we've been converting from Netware/Groupwise/Win9x to Win2k/Exchange/Win2k here. It doesn't change word-type documents, but it does change the email system and the backup system.
Sometime today I plan to decomission the Netware backup system -- derack the equipment and potentially reuse it in some other location as soon as next week. This will make all of our old backup tapes unreadbale, as our Win2k backup system uses not just different software but different physical media -- I can't read DLT7000 on a LTO Ultrium tape drive. I *think* I can read an ArcServe tape on BE 8.6, but the files are backed up as Netware-compressed and can't be restored but to a netware server. Once we decomission our last netware server (within a few months), all of those tapes are worthless without the infrastructure to restore the data.
The email system again is another matter, I need even more infrastructure and software to manage it (presuming I can restore it). Netware administrator, Groupwise installed (client and server), and so on.
Even so, we don't even keep old backup tapes. We have a 5 week rotation (1 full per week with daily incrementals). I used to keep old tapes, but they were unreliable (especially the DATs) and the software isn't always available. We USED to keep them (1 full per month), but I found myself with a shitpile of tapes that needed storing and a big blank media bill.
Eventually word/powerpoint and other apps will obsolete themselves to where the data, even if you can read the media, isn't usable. I know that we purge our email system daily of older > 6 months emails and we chase after users to ditch old documents as server space gets tight.
I can't imagine the tech demands of constant archiving of everything. I'd need to give half of my budget to EMC just to try to stay ahead.
I don't think that production and distribution of CDs is the big expense that the recording industry bears, I think its the costs involved in recording and production that are so expensive.
Think of what studio time must cost to have a five-man band and all the people involved. Its not just the band, a recording engineer and a producer. There's loads of other engineers to mic everything, a couple of guys on the console, producer, roadies, catering, not to mention the time to rent the studio equipment. Then there's the guys involved in the mixdown (producer, engineers) and the equipment time. Mastering, etc etc. All expensive, equipment and people intensive.
Production and distribution, as has been stated elsewhere, is a buck or two per disc.
Because of the small size of the virtual economy any attempt to give yourself money would probably have the same impact as conterfeiting would have in a small cash economy -- you would likely introduce inflationary pressures that would devalue the currency.
This is the usual thing that happens when central banks or governments try to print money to solve its financial problems -- at best its inflationary, at worst its runaway inflation that leads to wheelbarrows of money being required to buy a loaf of bread.
It's been a while since I took economics, but I think the reason that printing money is inflationary is that it only increases demand but not supply, which pushes prices higher.
The best way to cheat would probably be creating both money and goods at the same time to keep inflation in balance somewhat, but that may lead to deflation as you're oversatisfying demands.
Of course the best way to cheat would be to steal or corner the market on a needed commodity.
I wonder how long before practical applications of this research become available... five years? Ten?
If the economy keeps tanking and health care costs keep going up, I'm guessing that the practical applications will be unavailable to anyone with less than a 7 figure income.
I think he's talking about that NSI was given .com, .net and .org to administer originally by NSF or DARPA when they got sick of doing it themselves. They then started charging for the domain names, even though they had been given no mandate to do so. Once they figured out it was a really profitable business, they fought tooth and nail to keep out other registrars. IIRC, they still have some monopoly control over the domain database until 2010 or the ICANN people decide they want a bigger slice.
It's just another example of a vague, unspecified government giveaway that turns into a free money monopoly for big business.