Of course not. There is no point to measuring how big the difference is, when we know that downloading is by far the best way to go. If something were to come within an order of magnitude, then precise measurement might not be a total waste of time.
There's no point in measuring the fundamental energy cost per-bit of the Internet? It seems like a terribly valid concern.
Okay, but there are other factors. Consider the power used by the PC during the download. A 4 gigabyte image is going to take hours to download. Had the data been distributed on DVD instead, the computer, at least in principle, could have been powered off during that time.
That is not a correct calculation. It does not take into account the power radiated by the water and container as it heats up. So in fact the time needed is longer than what is calculated here.
Sure about that? What's to stop them from using man in the middle attacks to decrypt the communications? Are we going to have a certificate registry for pirated material? Not very likely.
Why is it unlikely? Could I go to jail for running a CA catering to "shadier" uses? After all, all I'm doing is issuing certificates. Anybody can be a CA. You just declare "I'm a CA," and start issuing certs.
First of all I don't think you realize how few people even know what the term "open source" means, which I think is one of the points of the article. Secondly, yes, we are all fully aware about you conservative types, because you're a very loud minority who has spent the past few years on slashdot and other IT sites trying to convince everyone that true geeks are conservative. Look at what that fruitcake ESR did to the Jargon File, for example.
So, I take it that "true geeks" don't place much value in the concepts of "honesty, individualism, no spying, and a real community?" What exactly in this person's post do you object to, aside from the fact he stated he was a Republican? Hell, he could have stated he was a member of the Amish and it would have made just as much sense in the context of his other points.
The OP made a post which, to me, seemed to be about how to REMOVE political factors from the argument in order to convince people of a more conservative mindset. Then you respond with some condescending remark about loud minorities and fruitcakes. He's trying to remove politics, you're injecting it.
Everything else is free too, if you are willing to ignore the law, which a lot of people are. I don't think it's a terribly strong argument. In fact, it may even work against you by causing the person to think "Hell, this software sucks so bad they can't even charge for it."
If a younger person wants, say, $60K for an entry level job and has negotiation power (i.e. another company that pays it), then that is the entry-level payment and it means that you're paying less than what they deserve to your existing employees.
So you're expecting your manager to give you $60k just because you said "Look, that other company XYZ is offering $60k?" What the hell do they care if you could make more money elsewhere? If that's the case, then go there. They can find another applicant.
One young coworker of mine made this mistake, big time, last year. He was a fairly critical part of our sales team, a person who, if he disappeared, would certainly leave ripples in the water for the rest of us to deal with. He was unsatisfied with several things, and told management that he'd stay on and continue working hard if they'd give him XXX dollars. He even told them he had an offer elsewhere for the same amount. Management's reponse? "Yawn. See ya later then." He offered two weeks notice before leaving. They declined. His ass was gone the same day.
What other companies are doing is irrelevant. You have to convince your manager that you are worth that much to HIM.
except that many hops farmers have switched from farming hops on their premium farm land, to farming inefficient corn, thus driving up the price of beer.
Mass produced domestic beer IS going up in price, but this is not really because of the hop shortage. The hop shortage is severely affecting the homebrew and microbrew markets, but the big brewers don't use much hops, if any, in their brews. Instead they use isomerized alpha acid, a synthetic version of one of the major hop bittering compounds. Sam Adams is the only mass brewer I know of who actually uses real hops exclusively.
Beer prices are spiking mostly due to rising grain prices. However, the hop situation does suck. I've seen hops triple in price in the last year. And since I typically brew IPAs, I use a lot of hops and this hurts bad. I have my own plants but the output is nowhere near what I need for a year's worth of brewing. It is sad to see the fields getting ripped up and replanted with corn, which after all is only profitable because of government subsidy.
Unfortunately, due to its moisture content, it cannot be stored for very long or transported very far, so a lot of it goes to waste.
And you don't want to be within 10 miles of a pile of rotting grain. That stuff stinks like a corpse, no kidding.
In addition to using it as a feed, spent grain is also a decent substrate for growing certain kinds of mushrooms. In this context, the moisture content is actually a benefit, not a drawback. Everything has a use, we just need to be less lazy about it.
I believe in God and I also believe that we were created by a supreme being. Anyone can mod me down or even state how stupid I am for not following the scientific wave of the support of evolution.
Why do you think that evolution is somehow incompatible with God? Imagine this. You're driving in the country in the autumn. All of the leaves are neatly pushed off to either side of the road. Why is this? The explanation is simply that the leaves which sit in the roadway get blown around by passing cars, until they eventually end up on the side of the road and stay put. You don't have to call on God to explain this. This is really all that evolution is -- life states moving into configurations where they can continue to exist. To dispute evolution is to dispute all sorts of perfectly mundane everyday occurrences.
The question that I would like to ask those who do not believe in a higher power though is: If I'm wrong and their is no heaven and their is no hell. Then so what. I lose nothing. But what if your wrong?
So basically, the only reason you bother believing is out of fear of burning in Hell? That doesn't sound like a very legitimate reason to believe in God. Sounds like you feel like God is a threat to your eternal soul and you therefore pay protection money to Him to stay out of Hell. This makes you a tool, not a worshipper.
A true believer would continue to worship God even if it was 100% guaranteed that you'd wind up in Hell. This is called "devotion." You seem to lack it.
Not everybody has a drivers license. What happens to people who have
lost theirs (for getting too many tickets), are under age, or just
never WANTED to get a driver's license (some people are scared of driving).
What kind of ID will these people get?
I think the real question here should be what business does the government have in determining who can fill a job and who can not?
I know! I mean, the idea of needing governmental approval to become a judge, what insanity. Anybody should be able to walk into a courtroom and be judge for a day. EVERYBODY IS HEREBY SENTENCED TO DEATH! Also, anybody should be allowed to act as a public defender. If you ever end up as a defendent, I offer to defend you pro bono. I have some very... "interesting" legal strategies I'd like to try out. Or, I could be on the other side, supplying electronic evidence against you which I collected completely illegally (I just won't mention the details).
(Oh, and if you are ever in an accident, I offer to supply my professional medical services to you free of charge! I'm just a nice guy like that.)
Sarcasm aside, sometimes it pisses me off too. The idea of needing a specialized permit just to install cat-5 cabling in my house is pretty upsetting. But if you think we don't need government oversight of the fundamental workings of the justice system you must be an anarchist. The government was created to solve a very specific, limited set of problems and this is one of those problems. Just because government has ballooned over time doesn't make this one part of it perfectly right.
What the fuck are you talking about? Nothing about what you do has anything to do with forensic evidence in the legal sense. Unless you're presenting before a court this has nothing to do with you. And if you are presenting before a court, I sure as hell want you to have a license.
Maybe the people with even numbers of eyelashes lost, and those with odd numbers of eyelashes won. That's about as likely as there being any association with game politics.
So does anybody know Obama's exact eyelash count? I think I might be on to something.
Developing world, third world, who cares. Why should we subsidize the incompetence of governments? Giving food, water, and medicine is humanitarian. Giving laptops is moronic.
The losers are the idiots who thought a system like this could actually WORK in the United States. And I hardly see "the children" losing anything. How about we start getting them some clean food, water, and clothing, and I don't know, maybe SCHOOLS, before we start throwing laptops at them?
OLPC is the height of Western arrogance. Just spend a certain amount of money and build a technological device and all the problems of the third world will just dissolve.
but currently a whole lot of tech is ending up in userland where it doesn't belong
*Cough*. Um... Whoa. Did you just say that?
I know that kernels seem "cool" to people starting out in computer science and programming but what you don't seem to understand is that the entire point of the kernel is to give us this Eden-like environment we like to call "user space" where we can safely do anything we want to without fear of causing galaxies to explode. The kernel is merely a pesky inconvenience, however necessary, along the way toward creating this nirvana called "user space."
Unfortunately, we sometimes bump against the inconveniences of hardware (funny -- these computer things are actual physical objects!) and mathematical truths which make it completely infeasible to do something in user space, but that doesn't mean we don't wish we COULD do it in user space.
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Of course not. There is no point to measuring how big the difference is, when we know that downloading is by far the best way to go. If something were to come within an order of magnitude, then precise measurement might not be a total waste of time.
There's no point in measuring the fundamental energy cost per-bit of the Internet? It seems like a terribly valid concern.
Okay, but there are other factors. Consider the power used by the PC during the download. A 4 gigabyte image is going to take hours to download. Had the data been distributed on DVD instead, the computer, at least in principle, could have been powered off during that time.
I understand that the difference is probably great. I am wondering whether somebody has ever bothered measuring it as precisely as possible.
Because the Internet doesn't use any electrical power?
I agree that it's probably more efficient to download data instead of burning it on DVD and distributing it that way, but by how much?
pushing 12watts down a little sata cable sounds like it would cause interference.
It's DC. How could that cause interference?
That is not a correct calculation. It does not take into account the power radiated by the water and container as it heats up. So in fact the time needed is longer than what is calculated here.
Sure about that? What's to stop them from using man in the middle attacks to decrypt the communications? Are we going to have a certificate registry for pirated material? Not very likely.
Why is it unlikely? Could I go to jail for running a CA catering to "shadier" uses? After all, all I'm doing is issuing certificates. Anybody can be a CA. You just declare "I'm a CA," and start issuing certs.
The workaround? Slap a number on the car. Viola! Instant race car
Does the license plate count as a number?
(I prefer saying "Cello," myself)
First of all I don't think you realize how few people even know what the term "open source" means, which I think is one of the points of the article. Secondly, yes, we are all fully aware about you conservative types, because you're a very loud minority who has spent the past few years on slashdot and other IT sites trying to convince everyone that true geeks are conservative. Look at what that fruitcake ESR did to the Jargon File, for example.
So, I take it that "true geeks" don't place much value in the concepts of "honesty, individualism, no spying, and a real community?" What exactly in this person's post do you object to, aside from the fact he stated he was a Republican? Hell, he could have stated he was a member of the Amish and it would have made just as much sense in the context of his other points.
The OP made a post which, to me, seemed to be about how to REMOVE political factors from the argument in order to convince people of a more conservative mindset. Then you respond with some condescending remark about loud minorities and fruitcakes. He's trying to remove politics, you're injecting it.
Agreed. It's only subtly different than saying "It's free" but it makes a much stronger point.
Everything else is free too, if you are willing to ignore the law, which a lot of people are. I don't think it's a terribly strong argument. In fact, it may even work against you by causing the person to think "Hell, this software sucks so bad they can't even charge for it."
If a younger person wants, say, $60K for an entry level job and has negotiation power (i.e. another company that pays it), then that is the entry-level payment and it means that you're paying less than what they deserve to your existing employees.
So you're expecting your manager to give you $60k just because you said "Look, that other company XYZ is offering $60k?" What the hell do they care if you could make more money elsewhere? If that's the case, then go there. They can find another applicant.
One young coworker of mine made this mistake, big time, last year. He was a fairly critical part of our sales team, a person who, if he disappeared, would certainly leave ripples in the water for the rest of us to deal with. He was unsatisfied with several things, and told management that he'd stay on and continue working hard if they'd give him XXX dollars. He even told them he had an offer elsewhere for the same amount. Management's reponse? "Yawn. See ya later then." He offered two weeks notice before leaving. They declined. His ass was gone the same day.
What other companies are doing is irrelevant. You have to convince your manager that you are worth that much to HIM.
Then drink on my fellow P-towner. It's painful, huh? When I first turned 21 I could get a pint for $3.00... Even that seemed expensive.
except that many hops farmers have switched from farming hops on their premium farm land, to farming inefficient corn, thus driving up the price of beer.
Mass produced domestic beer IS going up in price, but this is not really because of the hop shortage. The hop shortage is severely affecting the homebrew and microbrew markets, but the big brewers don't use much hops, if any, in their brews. Instead they use isomerized alpha acid, a synthetic version of one of the major hop bittering compounds. Sam Adams is the only mass brewer I know of who actually uses real hops exclusively.
Beer prices are spiking mostly due to rising grain prices. However, the hop situation does suck. I've seen hops triple in price in the last year. And since I typically brew IPAs, I use a lot of hops and this hurts bad. I have my own plants but the output is nowhere near what I need for a year's worth of brewing. It is sad to see the fields getting ripped up and replanted with corn, which after all is only profitable because of government subsidy.
Unfortunately, due to its moisture content, it cannot be stored for very long or transported very far, so a lot of it goes to waste.
And you don't want to be within 10 miles of a pile of rotting grain. That stuff stinks like a corpse, no kidding.
In addition to using it as a feed, spent grain is also a decent substrate for growing certain kinds of mushrooms. In this context, the moisture content is actually a benefit, not a drawback. Everything has a use, we just need to be less lazy about it.
I believe in God and I also believe that we were created by a supreme being. Anyone can mod me down or even state how stupid I am for not following the scientific wave of the support of evolution.
Why do you think that evolution is somehow incompatible with God? Imagine this. You're driving in the country in the autumn. All of the leaves are neatly pushed off to either side of the road. Why is this? The explanation is simply that the leaves which sit in the roadway get blown around by passing cars, until they eventually end up on the side of the road and stay put. You don't have to call on God to explain this. This is really all that evolution is -- life states moving into configurations where they can continue to exist. To dispute evolution is to dispute all sorts of perfectly mundane everyday occurrences.
The question that I would like to ask those who do not believe in a higher power though is: If I'm wrong and their is no heaven and their is no hell. Then so what. I lose nothing. But what if your wrong?
So basically, the only reason you bother believing is out of fear of burning in Hell? That doesn't sound like a very legitimate reason to believe in God. Sounds like you feel like God is a threat to your eternal soul and you therefore pay protection money to Him to stay out of Hell. This makes you a tool, not a worshipper.
A true believer would continue to worship God even if it was 100% guaranteed that you'd wind up in Hell. This is called "devotion." You seem to lack it.
Not everybody has a drivers license. What happens to people who have lost theirs (for getting too many tickets), are under age, or just never WANTED to get a driver's license (some people are scared of driving). What kind of ID will these people get?
Perhaps a code number tattooed on the forearm?
A black hole has an event horizon. This horizon has a very well-defined size.
While you conspiracy-theorize over there in the corner, the rest of us are nodding our heads, having actually used such keyboards. Off-with-ye now.
I think the real question here should be what business does the government have in determining who can fill a job and who can not?
I know! I mean, the idea of needing governmental approval to become a judge, what insanity. Anybody should be able to walk into a courtroom and be judge for a day. EVERYBODY IS HEREBY SENTENCED TO DEATH! Also, anybody should be allowed to act as a public defender. If you ever end up as a defendent, I offer to defend you pro bono. I have some very... "interesting" legal strategies I'd like to try out. Or, I could be on the other side, supplying electronic evidence against you which I collected completely illegally (I just won't mention the details).
(Oh, and if you are ever in an accident, I offer to supply my professional medical services to you free of charge! I'm just a nice guy like that.)
Sarcasm aside, sometimes it pisses me off too. The idea of needing a specialized permit just to install cat-5 cabling in my house is pretty upsetting. But if you think we don't need government oversight of the fundamental workings of the justice system you must be an anarchist. The government was created to solve a very specific, limited set of problems and this is one of those problems. Just because government has ballooned over time doesn't make this one part of it perfectly right.
What the fuck are you talking about? Nothing about what you do has anything to do with forensic evidence in the legal sense. Unless you're presenting before a court this has nothing to do with you. And if you are presenting before a court, I sure as hell want you to have a license.
Maybe the people with even numbers of eyelashes lost, and those with odd numbers of eyelashes won. That's about as likely as there being any association with game politics.
So does anybody know Obama's exact eyelash count? I think I might be on to something.
Developing world, third world, who cares. Why should we subsidize the incompetence of governments? Giving food, water, and medicine is humanitarian. Giving laptops is moronic.
The losers are the idiots who thought a system like this could actually WORK in the United States. And I hardly see "the children" losing anything. How about we start getting them some clean food, water, and clothing, and I don't know, maybe SCHOOLS, before we start throwing laptops at them?
OLPC is the height of Western arrogance. Just spend a certain amount of money and build a technological device and all the problems of the third world will just dissolve.
but currently a whole lot of tech is ending up in userland where it doesn't belong
*Cough*. Um... Whoa. Did you just say that?
I know that kernels seem "cool" to people starting out in computer science and programming but what you don't seem to understand is that the entire point of the kernel is to give us this Eden-like environment we like to call "user space" where we can safely do anything we want to without fear of causing galaxies to explode. The kernel is merely a pesky inconvenience, however necessary, along the way toward creating this nirvana called "user space."
Unfortunately, we sometimes bump against the inconveniences of hardware (funny -- these computer things are actual physical objects!) and mathematical truths which make it completely infeasible to do something in user space, but that doesn't mean we don't wish we COULD do it in user space.
Kernel space is a necessary evil, nothing more.