His math skills are perfectly sound. You seem to have missed the point of his post ( stated explicitly in the first sentence)
It is the math skills and gullibility factor of those who have accpeted the $26 billion price tag as the price the system will actually be delivered for that is in question.
Well, actually *not* in question. We're pretty damned sure about it actually.
Believe it or not, geeks can add. Why, they can not only balance their own checkbooks but even perform complex statistical and financial calculations far beyond the reach of most bank managers.
Some of them have even proven quite successful in founding and managing complex multinational corporations while amassing millions, yea, even billions, in personal wealth.
Who would have thought that of independent intelligent people good with abstract concepts, math and technology.
Lord, we all expected the football players with D averages to to rule the business world by now.
Oh, wait, those were the venture capitalists the smart people raped of their fortunes.
Go figure.
I'm familiar with concept of using profits to fund expansion. I've even successfully applied it myself.
Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places but I've certainly seen no evidence of this in Amazon.
What I have seen is a man who has, repeatedly, gone to the venture capitalists and stockholders and said, "Sure, we're losing money, but if we had more capital to expand eventually we'll be the big boy on the block and profit."
A vast improvement, since most of their business is based on a model of working at a negative margin and making it up in volume. You can believe it or not, but I'm not making that up. The orginal idea was to take large losses over a period of years but make it up in volume later on when you had become the biggest player in the field. It's not an umcommon stratagy, and sometimes it even works, but when it doesn't. ..
That's why they keep adding products to their line, To offset the losses the previous line racked up.
So a line with *any* profit margin at all will be a valuable thing to have come the next stockholder's meeting.
Let's say you're poor. Not quite living in a box poor, but below middle class poor. You have a job, it sucks, but pays just barely enough to keep the phone on, basic cable TV running the rent on your studio apartment payed and food on the table.
But you can't afford a car so you have to bus or walk to work. You buy your clothes at K-Mart, but only when they're on sale. It hurts when you have to eat at a Burger King because one meal there costs as much as three days food prepared at home.
Now lets look at this from the perspective of how technology can make us rich.
Your studio apartment came with wall to wall carpeting. So much the very symbol of opulent wealth 100 years ago that they can still get away with calling roach infested dry wall shit boxes "luxury" apartments just because of this one feature. You have a TV, which only cost you one weeks pay. A VCR that only cost you 1/2 a weeks pay. A flush toilet. Safe hot and cold running water with a bathtub right in *your own apartment.* A phone. A host of other small items that not too long ago would have been wonders of the world that kings would have gone to war just to possess.
For the working poor at least technology has made them wealthier than the wildest dreams of their ancestors, they just don't have the perspective to what they *have,* instead of what they don't have.
Money is nice to have, in some ways a lot of money is nicer to have, but anyone making anything above minimum wage simply isn't as poor, defined by lacking necessities, as they think they are.
Now don't get me wrong. This isn't some upper middle class rant about how the poor should just shut up, go to work, and be happy, while I'm sitting by the pool waiting for Juanita to bring my Scotch. I'm stating simple observable fact.
Fact that if you take to heart you can use as a tool in manipulating your *own* life into forms you yourself might just find more enjoyable. Especially if you are *not* poor.
Journalists are not licensed professionals. They're just people like you and me. Even the one's that own TV networks. Journalistic ethics are a *guideline,* not a law.
When a journalist speaks they have the same legal rights to lie and cheat and bend reality that you do. Journalism is simply an expression of first ammendment rights, no more, no less.
But what happens if someone lies to you? You don't sue them, unless there was legally definable fraud involved. What you do is *never believe another word they say.*
Certainly not as many as there used to be. Once upon a time, back in the day, designing and building your own electronics devices, particularly radios and stereo equipment, was a major mainstream hobby. Back then you'd find these shops brightly lit right on Main Street.
Nowadays, in most cities, you can tell you're on Main Street because the density of winos and crack hos suddenly shoots up.
These shops no longer have the sort of clientel that allows them to exist in a mall, which is why you'll find them down alleys where the rent is cheap, but they're there, and they do decent business. There are still quite a few people who, either for enjoyment or for professional reasons, rely on them. No neon signs though, because they don't rely on "attracting" business. You might have been walking right by one in your town without even realizing it. They know that anyone who needs what they've got will find them and actually like to discourage "gawkers" who don't know what they want, come in, buy it, and get the hell out.
They aren't as friendly and helpful as they were 30 years ago either, which is a damned shame.
I used to be able to go in these places and say, "I'm building a data aquisition device for my PC and I was wondering if anyone makes a photoresistor with such and such a property," and they'd either tell me or recommend a superiour part. Then the next time I came in they'd want to chat for a bit about my project.
Nowadays it's, "Look buddy, you tell me the part number, I get it for you, you give me money, ok?"
Like I said, it's a Brave New World.
But still a world where people scratch build their own electronics gear, for one reason or another.
KFG
Re:It's all about the pictures
on
Snowflake Photos
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
And how is it that he got interested in the physics of snowflakes in the first place?
Bet'cha he saw some pretty pictures somewhere.
The advisor I was assigned to do my senior physics research project under had just written the book on the physics of boomerangs. Why? Because he thought boomerangs were fun, cool, and when he went to look up how they worked found out no one really knew.
My research project was on the dynamics of two wheeled vehicles. Why? Because I adored bicycles, and there were some issues with understanding just how they really worked.
Some people might be surprised at how much real science begins with the simple joy of tossing a boomerang about, or coasting down a curvey road, or some young mind thinking:
Ok. let me clarify for you and the others then. I sometimes forget what a Brave New World it is, so bear with me.
Whan I say assemble I mean what a poster says I mean by build. You can go into Best Buy and purchase a HD, a motherboard, a case, memory, etc. and then you put it all togeher, kit wise. No biggy. If'in I'm under the gun I can do that in under 15 minutes these days from the starting gun to popping in the OS install CD. I know people who can do it in under 10, but I'm not as driven to impress as they are. That is not building a computer. That is assembling one, and Best Buy will not sell you a raw laptop display screen because that isn't something assemblers buy.
No, by build I don't mean buying gold and raw silicon, but I do mean buying *individual* memory chips, a blank board, acid etching your own traces, soldering the chips to the board. . . and then putting it aside, because you haven't built your motherboard in similar fashion yet.
Yes, there are people who do things this way. Who *build* their own board, of their own design. Purchasing the individual chips and discrete componants and then soldering them together. Usually to make a special purpose computer or sound device, or a PC expansion card that performs some nonstandard function.
This is how the first Apple computers were *built.* This is how Sinclair worked in the design phase. This is how many expansion card manufacturers first got a handle on the business while making neat things in the garage.
And there are stores that cater to these people. Radio Shack used to be one of these stores. Now they sell little plactic helmets with swirling lights on top and model Trans Ams that tumble across the floor.
But in many a fair sized town, tucked down some back alley, there is a little shop that most people don't know about, and if you go in their front door you wont see a little plastic helmet anywhere.
You WILL see a display of oscillicopes to the ceiling. Soldering stations. Raw, unetched general purpose circuit boards and PC expansion cards. Thousands of individual chips. Wire of all possible description. Resistors. Capacitors. Trasistors.Breadboards. Etc.
All that stuff that can be used to *make* something, rather than just assemble it by plugging pre made things together.
This sort of shop will also sell you a display for a laptop. They're used for things other than laptops.
Like the display on a custom programable audio synthesizer.
Yes, people still hand craft those too.
Some people are funny and don't just go to K-Mart for everything.
Go figure.
I build most of my own furniture, rather than purchasing premade or *assembling* the stuff that comes out of the box from Home Depot or BJ's. Usually that means a trip to the lumber yard, but yes, *sometimes* that even means going out to my wood lot and cutting down a tree and making my own boards.
Try it. It's fun as all hell. You can buy an attachment for your chainsaw that lets you rough cut your own boards without an expensive mill. After seasoning you run them through your power planer, or even maybe scrape them by hand, depending on what you're building.
But I'm not so pedantic as to imply that to "build" a computer you need a chem lab to make your own raw expoxy from chemicals you extracted from sea water and scraped off your forehead.
From an electronics jobber. Where you'll also find everything you need to design, build and test everything from an old fasihoned crystal radio set to a mainframe computer.
You need only supply your own money and intelligence.
These days the answer to "Where do I get. .." is almost always, " At the store."
You want a small particle accelerator? People sell them over the counter, or all the parts to build your own.
The only trick is to find the store. Trust me, it's there.
"Only being allowed to you Lexmark approved paper in your printer?"
Well, yes actually. *If* they find a way to embed a secret digital code in each sheet of paper which the printer reads and authenticates before it well print.
This is a DMCA case. While it does set a nasty precedent that says you can code anything, even things in the public domain, and claim copyright to them, it does at least only apply to those things that *have* been so coded.
And it's not like that's getting easier and easier to do, every day. Is it?
This idea was precisely the point of traditional American copyright law which required a renewal to avail yourself of the full possible copyright term.
Copyright, on the one hand, was intended to give the holder exclusive rights on a work for a limited period (usually used to make a profit by selling copies, but not necessarily limited to this), but on the *other* hand was explicitly formulated to move works into the public domain as quickly as possible.
If an author took the trouble to renew ( the filling of a simple one page form that any literate 6 year old could fill out) and the payment of a processing fee ( About $10 in adjusted for inflation money) then the term of his copyright was extended. He was obviously still interested in asserting his right and presumably was still making money from it.
If he did *not* file the form he was assumed to have no further interest in the work, it was assumed that it had no more commercial value, and it was moved into the public domain where it might well have immearsurable *social* value.
It is a key concept to understand that traditional American copyright law didn't just protect the author but served the interest of the *public* as well by having as a core philosophy moving all works abandoned by their authors into the public domain * as quickly as possible.*
Yes, that's exactly the sense I used it in. Not today. The great thing is, it's always today and tomorrow never comes.
However, it's true I didn't use it in the overt sense of "Yeah, like *that* well ever happen" or the equivelant English phrases "When pigs fly" or "When hell freezes over."
Well, his advice during Desert Storm that parents advise their children they would always be safe stired up the child psychologist set. There were a few other such incidents.
And sometimes just being a sweety is enough to be controversial in itself.
They've assasinated a distressing number of people just for saying "be excellent to each other."
People were prone to making rude comments when passing by his house. (My brother went to Carnegie-Mellon and Mr. Rogers house was just outside the campus. He got to see a lot of this first hand)
I have to toss out the motherboard pretty much every time I buy a cpu, which makes the "quick change" feature of this unit rather moot.
If they're going to hold the basic architecture steady for at least a few years this is going to be quite handy, but if each iteration is going to require a general upgrade to properly utilize the new speed and features anyway. ..big deal.
The motherboard manufacturers like to see a steady upgrade cycle too you know and it almost always comes down to "gut the case" and hope a few cards are still usable.
Got two lovely aluminum Pickett's right here. One full size in a leather holster, and one pocket sized. ..in a leather holster. Now *that's* geek chic.
Someone wandered off with my K&E bamboo rule though. The bastard.
The batteries never wear out. You can use them by candlight in a power outage. You can fully douse them with water. They even keep working when your space capsule blows a gasket and you to figure out how to get home with the air you've got left.
Plus they keep on your toes with regards to the concept of of significant digits.
Slashdot Mirror
Because they know a good thing when they see it. It really is as simple as that.
KFG
His math skills are perfectly sound. You seem to have missed the point of his post ( stated explicitly in the first sentence)
It is the math skills and gullibility factor of those who have accpeted the $26 billion price tag as the price the system will actually be delivered for that is in question.
Well, actually *not* in question. We're pretty damned sure about it actually.
KFG
Believe it or not, geeks can add. Why, they can not only balance their own checkbooks but even perform complex statistical and financial calculations far beyond the reach of most bank managers.
Some of them have even proven quite successful in founding and managing complex multinational corporations while amassing millions, yea, even billions, in personal wealth.
Who would have thought that of independent intelligent people good with abstract concepts, math and technology.
Lord, we all expected the football players with D averages to to rule the business world by now.
Oh, wait, those were the venture capitalists the smart people raped of their fortunes.
Go figure.
I'm familiar with concept of using profits to fund expansion. I've even successfully applied it myself.
Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places but I've certainly seen no evidence of this in Amazon.
What I have seen is a man who has, repeatedly, gone to the venture capitalists and stockholders and said, "Sure, we're losing money, but if we had more capital to expand eventually we'll be the big boy on the block and profit."
Rinse and repeat.
KFG
And they wear naughty underware, available here.
"Who moderates the meta-moderators? "
A secret cabal known only as the "Illiterati."
KFG
A vast improvement, since most of their business is based on a model of working at a negative margin and making it up in volume. You can believe it or not, but I'm not making that up. The orginal idea was to take large losses over a period of years but make it up in volume later on when you had become the biggest player in the field. It's not an umcommon stratagy, and sometimes it even works, but when it doesn't. . .
That's why they keep adding products to their line, To offset the losses the previous line racked up.
So a line with *any* profit margin at all will be a valuable thing to have come the next stockholder's meeting.
KFG
Let's say you're poor. Not quite living in a box poor, but below middle class poor. You have a job, it sucks, but pays just barely enough to keep the phone on, basic cable TV running the rent on your studio apartment payed and food on the table.
But you can't afford a car so you have to bus or walk to work. You buy your clothes at K-Mart, but only when they're on sale. It hurts when you have to eat at a Burger King because one meal there costs as much as three days food prepared at home.
Now lets look at this from the perspective of how technology can make us rich.
Your studio apartment came with wall to wall carpeting. So much the very symbol of opulent wealth 100 years ago that they can still get away with calling roach infested dry wall shit boxes "luxury" apartments just because of this one feature. You have a TV, which only cost you one weeks pay. A VCR that only cost you 1/2 a weeks pay. A flush toilet. Safe hot and cold running water with a bathtub right in *your own apartment.* A phone. A host of other small items that not too long ago would have been wonders of the world that kings would have gone to war just to possess.
For the working poor at least technology has made them wealthier than the wildest dreams of their ancestors, they just don't have the perspective to what they *have,* instead of what they don't have.
Money is nice to have, in some ways a lot of money is nicer to have, but anyone making anything above minimum wage simply isn't as poor, defined by lacking necessities, as they think they are.
Now don't get me wrong. This isn't some upper middle class rant about how the poor should just shut up, go to work, and be happy, while I'm sitting by the pool waiting for Juanita to bring my Scotch. I'm stating simple observable fact.
Fact that if you take to heart you can use as a tool in manipulating your *own* life into forms you yourself might just find more enjoyable. Especially if you are *not* poor.
KFG
Journalists are not licensed professionals. They're just people like you and me. Even the one's that own TV networks. Journalistic ethics are a *guideline,* not a law.
When a journalist speaks they have the same legal rights to lie and cheat and bend reality that you do. Journalism is simply an expression of first ammendment rights, no more, no less.
But what happens if someone lies to you? You don't sue them, unless there was legally definable fraud involved. What you do is *never believe another word they say.*
KFG
Well, the solution is simple and obvious. Turn the switch on the war to the "off" position.
There problem solved.
Now I can return my attention to the *real* war striking fear and terror into the hearts of my fellow Americans.
The against remaking bad television as *really* bad television.
Oh the humanity!
KFG
Certainly not as many as there used to be. Once upon a time, back in the day, designing and building your own electronics devices, particularly radios and stereo equipment, was a major mainstream hobby. Back then you'd find these shops brightly lit right on Main Street.
Nowadays, in most cities, you can tell you're on Main Street because the density of winos and crack hos suddenly shoots up.
These shops no longer have the sort of clientel that allows them to exist in a mall, which is why you'll find them down alleys where the rent is cheap, but they're there, and they do decent business. There are still quite a few people who, either for enjoyment or for professional reasons, rely on them. No neon signs though, because they don't rely on "attracting" business. You might have been walking right by one in your town without even realizing it. They know that anyone who needs what they've got will find them and actually like to discourage "gawkers" who don't know what they want, come in, buy it, and get the hell out.
They aren't as friendly and helpful as they were 30 years ago either, which is a damned shame.
I used to be able to go in these places and say, "I'm building a data aquisition device for my PC and I was wondering if anyone makes a photoresistor with such and such a property," and they'd either tell me or recommend a superiour part. Then the next time I came in they'd want to chat for a bit about my project.
Nowadays it's, "Look buddy, you tell me the part number, I get it for you, you give me money, ok?"
Like I said, it's a Brave New World.
But still a world where people scratch build their own electronics gear, for one reason or another.
KFG
And how is it that he got interested in the physics of snowflakes in the first place?
Bet'cha he saw some pretty pictures somewhere.
The advisor I was assigned to do my senior physics research project under had just written the book on the physics of boomerangs. Why? Because he thought boomerangs were fun, cool, and when he went to look up how they worked found out no one really knew.
My research project was on the dynamics of two wheeled vehicles. Why? Because I adored bicycles, and there were some issues with understanding just how they really worked.
Some people might be surprised at how much real science begins with the simple joy of tossing a boomerang about, or coasting down a curvey road, or some young mind thinking:
"Ooooooooooo, pretty. Me want touch."
KFG
Ok. let me clarify for you and the others then. I sometimes forget what a Brave New World it is, so bear with me.
Whan I say assemble I mean what a poster says I mean by build. You can go into Best Buy and purchase a HD, a motherboard, a case, memory, etc. and then you put it all togeher, kit wise. No biggy. If'in I'm under the gun I can do that in under 15 minutes these days from the starting gun to popping in the OS install CD. I know people who can do it in under 10, but I'm not as driven to impress as they are. That is not building a computer. That is assembling one, and Best Buy will not sell you a raw laptop display screen because that isn't something assemblers buy.
No, by build I don't mean buying gold and raw silicon, but I do mean buying *individual* memory chips, a blank board, acid etching your own traces, soldering the chips to the board. . . and then putting it aside, because you haven't built your motherboard in similar fashion yet.
Yes, there are people who do things this way. Who *build* their own board, of their own design. Purchasing the individual chips and discrete componants and then soldering them together. Usually to make a special purpose computer or sound device, or a PC expansion card that performs some nonstandard function.
This is how the first Apple computers were *built.* This is how Sinclair worked in the design phase. This is how many expansion card manufacturers first got a handle on the business while making neat things in the garage.
And there are stores that cater to these people. Radio Shack used to be one of these stores. Now they sell little plactic helmets with swirling lights on top and model Trans Ams that tumble across the floor.
But in many a fair sized town, tucked down some back alley, there is a little shop that most people don't know about, and if you go in their front door you wont see a little plastic helmet anywhere.
You WILL see a display of oscillicopes to the ceiling. Soldering stations. Raw, unetched general purpose circuit boards and PC expansion cards. Thousands of individual chips. Wire of all possible description. Resistors. Capacitors. Trasistors.Breadboards. Etc.
All that stuff that can be used to *make* something, rather than just assemble it by plugging pre made things together.
This sort of shop will also sell you a display for a laptop. They're used for things other than laptops.
Like the display on a custom programable audio synthesizer.
Yes, people still hand craft those too.
Some people are funny and don't just go to K-Mart for everything.
Go figure.
I build most of my own furniture, rather than purchasing premade or *assembling* the stuff that comes out of the box from Home Depot or BJ's. Usually that means a trip to the lumber yard, but yes, *sometimes* that even means going out to my wood lot and cutting down a tree and making my own boards.
Try it. It's fun as all hell. You can buy an attachment for your chainsaw that lets you rough cut your own boards without an expensive mill. After seasoning you run them through your power planer, or even maybe scrape them by hand, depending on what you're building.
But I'm not so pedantic as to imply that to "build" a computer you need a chem lab to make your own raw expoxy from chemicals you extracted from sea water and scraped off your forehead.
That would be silly.
KFG
If you think it looks like that now, just wait until you get divorced.
You ain't seen *nothin'* yet.
KFG
You are used to shopping in stores that cater to people who *assemble* computers, and only stock those things that those people buy.
In the stores that cater to people who *build* computers you'll find everything you need.
KFG
From an electronics jobber. Where you'll also find everything you need to design, build and test everything from an old fasihoned crystal radio set to a mainframe computer.
." is almost always, " At the store."
You need only supply your own money and intelligence.
These days the answer to "Where do I get. .
You want a small particle accelerator? People sell them over the counter, or all the parts to build your own.
The only trick is to find the store. Trust me, it's there.
KFG
you can't expect people to treat with you on a civilized level just because you're an Ubercoder if you *also* are a maloderous trogolodyte.
Correcting the argument while leaving out the conclusion is just as deceptive as missinterpreting the argument.
KFG
It's quite cheap and doesn't cost the company anything, the costs are passed on to the consumer.
Just like with the ink cartridges.
KFG
The technology currently exists to embed a simple logic circuit, complete with battery to power it, in a sheet of paper.
The last sentence in my previous post was very, VERY facetious.
KFG
"Only being allowed to you Lexmark approved paper in your printer?"
Well, yes actually. *If* they find a way to embed a secret digital code in each sheet of paper which the printer reads and authenticates before it well print.
This is a DMCA case. While it does set a nasty precedent that says you can code anything, even things in the public domain, and claim copyright to them, it does at least only apply to those things that *have* been so coded.
And it's not like that's getting easier and easier to do, every day. Is it?
KFG
This idea was precisely the point of traditional American copyright law which required a renewal to avail yourself of the full possible copyright term.
Copyright, on the one hand, was intended to give the holder exclusive rights on a work for a limited period (usually used to make a profit by selling copies, but not necessarily limited to this), but on the *other* hand was explicitly formulated to move works into the public domain as quickly as possible.
If an author took the trouble to renew ( the filling of a simple one page form that any literate 6 year old could fill out) and the payment of a processing fee ( About $10 in adjusted for inflation money) then the term of his copyright was extended. He was obviously still interested in asserting his right and presumably was still making money from it.
If he did *not* file the form he was assumed to have no further interest in the work, it was assumed that it had no more commercial value, and it was moved into the public domain where it might well have immearsurable *social* value.
It is a key concept to understand that traditional American copyright law didn't just protect the author but served the interest of the *public* as well by having as a core philosophy moving all works abandoned by their authors into the public domain * as quickly as possible.*
KFG
Yes, that's exactly the sense I used it in. Not today. The great thing is, it's always today and tomorrow never comes.
However, it's true I didn't use it in the overt sense of "Yeah, like *that* well ever happen" or the equivelant English phrases "When pigs fly" or "When hell freezes over."
KFG
Well, his advice during Desert Storm that parents advise their children they would always be safe stired up the child psychologist set. There were a few other such incidents.
And sometimes just being a sweety is enough to be controversial in itself.
They've assasinated a distressing number of people just for saying "be excellent to each other."
People were prone to making rude comments when passing by his house. (My brother went to Carnegie-Mellon and Mr. Rogers house was just outside the campus. He got to see a lot of this first hand)
KFG
Manana mi amigo, manana.
KFG
Exactly. That's why I retired the 4mhz 8088 Compaq transportable that handled the core functions of my business a couple years ago.
Well, no, actually, now that I think of it I retired it because I couldn't find spare parts. It still did "real work" just fine.
Go figure.
Not that I don't like the box I replaced it with. That one runs *games* much better.
KFG
I have to toss out the motherboard pretty much every time I buy a cpu, which makes the "quick change" feature of this unit rather moot.
.big deal.
If they're going to hold the basic architecture steady for at least a few years this is going to be quite handy, but if each iteration is going to require a general upgrade to properly utilize the new speed and features anyway. .
The motherboard manufacturers like to see a steady upgrade cycle too you know and it almost always comes down to "gut the case" and hope a few cards are still usable.
KFG
Got two lovely aluminum Pickett's right here. One full size in a leather holster, and one pocket sized. . .in a leather holster. Now *that's* geek chic.
Someone wandered off with my K&E bamboo rule though. The bastard.
The batteries never wear out. You can use them by candlight in a power outage. You can fully douse them with water. They even keep working when your space capsule blows a gasket and you to figure out how to get home with the air you've got left.
Plus they keep on your toes with regards to the concept of of significant digits.
Quake runs a bit slow though.
KFG