By the time you get all the components that provide the processing and I/O throughput of those high-end boxes, the x86/64 commodity hardware cost advantage has evaporated
I think the potential savings comes not so much from the hardware as from not having to redesign/re-write your low-availability (tm) software from scratch in order to make it highly-available. Instead you just slap your existing software in to the new Remus VM environment, connect the backup machine, and call it done.
(Whether or not that method actually works in real life remains to be seen, of course, but that's the idea)
Or an ordinary, every day run of the mill 'off the shelf' plain jane beige UPS. or a Ghetto one, if you'd like.
Sure, but power failure isn't the only thing that can stop your server from running -- it's just the easiest one to reproduce without permanently damaging anything. If you'd like a better example, yank the CPU out of your web server's motherboard instead. Your UPS won't save you then!:^)
I have never seen anyone refute what Glenn Beck is actually saying.
That's the his entire M.O., is it not? First, Beck accuses you of beating your wife (or some similar calumny). Then he tries to get you to deny it. If you rise to the bait and do deny it, he now has video of you denying it, and can use that video to imply that whether you beat your wife or not is a legitimate question. If you refuse to dignify him with a response, he can go ahead and claim that because you refused to deny it, there must be something to the accusation. Either way, he wins.
If you could explain your logic behind "why now?" and "why this instead of reducing the debt?" in more detail, I'd be very grateful.
The answer to "why now?" is "if not now, when?".
No matter how good or how bad the nation's finances are, there will always be people making the argument that "we can't afford it right now, let's wait until things get better and then see what's what in a few years"... right up until they switch over to "things are going so well right now, why rock the boat?" That's why these problems have been allowed to fester and steadily get worse for the past four decades. But at some point, the problems become intolerable, and waiting is simply no longer an acceptable option.
As for why we should do it the way it's being done, and not some other way, I'm partially with you there -- I think there definitely are better and more cost effective ways to go about reforming health care than what is proposed in the current legislation. However, at this point our choices are pass the legislation mostly as-is, or lose all political momentum and end up doing essentially nothing for yet another decade. Going back to the drawing board is the same as giving up, because there won't be the political will to have the whole debate all over again. As is often the case in politics, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the proposed legislature is good enough to be worth passing, and it can be tweaked over time to address its shortcomings.
I fervently believe that it is irresponsible to take on more spending when the debt service is so high. Reduce it now, balance the books, and then come talk to us about more social programs.
There is a school of economic thought that says when the economy is bad, the best thing for the government to do is spend money to stimulate the economy. The Great Depression lasted for as long as it did in part because the US government did the "responsible thing" and refused to incur debt until the economy improved -- which it didn't do until World War II forced the US government to begin spending on materiel, which had the side effect of stimulating the economy. Economics at the national level are different from economics at the individual level, in often counterintuitive ways. (Note that I'm not saying that there's no risk in the US getting itself deeper into debt, just that the risk isn't necessarily as great as it would intuitively seem)
You'll note that the deficit turned into a surplus during the Clinton years, not because Clinton cut spending back drastically, but rather because the economy was good. When the economy is doing well, government revenues increase and it's easier to balance the budget and pay down debt (or spend more, if you're so inclined). So I'd say that paying down the debt is the luxury that can be deferred until better times.
I mean, let's take it to the other extreme. Assume that our debt was 100 times what it is now. The interest alone would be able to cover what will be spent via this plan. Would it make sense then to try to reduce the debt in order to be able to afford programs such as this? If not, why not? At what point do you prioritize the debt over more social programs?
Yes, at some point the national debt load would become a big enough problem that we would have to prioritize it over other things. But I don't agree that we've reached that point yet, and I don't agree that health care should be the priority that loses out in that scenario.
But that was good old fashioned conquest fair and square.
What made it fair? Did the settlers make sure that the Indians had an equal number of guns and soldiers before starting each battle?
By your definition of "fair and square", illegal immigration is also "fair and square", as long as the immigrants can get away with it. Which, frankly, they can, because the majority of the US population doesn't have the stomach for the sort of draconian measures that would be necessary to remove them.
So wouldn't it be logical to remove the illegals, and hand those jobs to actual citizens?
Yes -- just like the logical answer to the the problem of illegal drugs would be to remove the illegal drugs, so that people won't buy them anymore. And you can see how well that's worked out.
Unfortunately, the logical answer isn't always practical, or even possible.
A better health care system, same as everyone else, despite their paranoid bleating?
What did those who value freedom get?
The ability to keep their existing health care plans if they prefer them, despite the fact that single payer would have been vastly simpler and more efficient?
The last I heard is that everyone would be forced to buy in, or be fined or face jail time. Some option that is.
It beats having you skip buying insurance, then get in a car wreck and expect the rest of us to pay for your care out of our pockets. Anyone who can afford health insurance and chooses not to buy it is freeloading by making the rest of the country shoulder their share of the risk.
(And no, you don't have the option of simply promising to forego medical care if you get badly hurt -- when the accident came, you'd change your mind, and even if you didn't it would be unethical to leave you untreated)
To provide equivalent care, and in the absence of other changes, simply changing who cuts the check doesn't change the actual cost of the care.
True, but it does cut the cost of insuring the care. The whole point of insurance is to spread the risk among as large a pool of customers as possible. The larger the pool, the more economies of scale you receive, and the lower the chances are of financial insolvency due to too many customers making claims at the same time.
And the US Federal Government can cobble together a pretty damn big risk pool, if it's so inclined.
Your argument works against you. Today, any business who "makes decisions based on cost" can simply reduce or eliminate health care coverage for their employees, and the employees are completely screwed. With the health care reforms in effect, businesses will no longer be able to do that -- the "worst" that they can do is change do a cheaper/lesser plan that still meets the minimum requirements. So the reforms are a net improvement.
(Of course, in real life most businesses factor in other things, like employee retention, into their decisions anyway)
The second you force everyone to get health insurance it is almost like a monopoly. They jump the prices up on everyone because they can not because they have to.
Hence the importance of having a public option. As long as people have at least one reasonable alternative, the private companies cannot raise their rates too high (or otherwise mess people around too much) or people will jump ship.
This monstrosity costs $1 trillion over a period of time, and will increase from there.
Have you calculated how much it would cost to let the nation's health care issues continue to go unaddressed?
We can't afford it now, and the money that will be used will be in the form of higher taxes, more borrowing, and/or inflation (because, that's the only place the government can get money: from you, from other countries, and/or printing it).
Perhaps, and perhaps that is the lesser of two evils.
But this is like having a massive credit card bill and, instead of paying it off, deciding you really need digital cable.
Here's where you've really gone off the rails. Adequate health care is not a luxury item like digital cable and magazine subscriptions. It's a matter of life and death for tens of thousands of Americans. In the balance between saving their lives and lowering your taxes (or the national debt), they win.
There's something about fresh fish that makes for a better meal in whatever you tend to use it in. It's considerably more noticeable in Sushi.
Agreed. The way things are going, however, that problem will solve itself, since 70 years from now nobody living will remember what a wild-caught fish tasted like.
They distribute [kiddy porn] not for profit, but for the simple reason that they want to share.
You're no doubt right in some cases. I suspect, however, that the main reason they don't try to sell the kiddy porn is that selling it would leave a trail of financial transaction records that would make it much easier for law enforcement to catch them.
People with foot fetishes are willing to pay money for pictures of sexy feet, and there exist other people who are willing to create those pictures and sell them to the foot fetishists.
People who like naked lactating pregnant women are willing to pay money for pictures of them, and there exist other people who are willing to create those pictures and cater to that market.
If child pornography was practical to sell without being thrown in jail, what makes you think things would be any different in that case?
Extortion. Infect 10,000 computers with your kiddy-porn-installer-script, then start sending emails to each victim in turn, demonstrating to him that there is kiddy-porn installed on his machine, and that unless you receive $1,000 you will send an anonymous tip to the police...
I think the financial incentive there could be significant.
So it will make no difference if they pick one of us at random, because he is one of the 99.99% with child porn on the computer. Or because he is one of the 99.99% with $OTHER_CATCH22_CRIMINAL_OFFENSE.
While I see your point, I have to disagree. Being sent to prison as a "convicted pedophile" for N years is significantly worse than being sent to prison for N years for just about any other crime.
Don't forget that the people who in the prison with you have the same prejudices as the general population, and much less subtle ways of expressing their disapproval.
Possession laws in general are dubious to start with, but at least with, for example, drugs, people [don't] just wander by and stick five kilos of cocaine under the seat of their car.
Except, of course, when they do. "Planting" drugs on a suspect is a classic police tactic when they want to arrest/convict someone but don't have a legitimate reason to do so. Of course anyone with access to illegal drugs can do it, not just police officers...
Now I know how to get rid of Madam Pelosi. Just load a few images of naked boys sucking other boys onto her office PCs. Even if she manages to salvage her political career, she'll never again by Speaker.
Yup. It should work even better on Madame Palin, or Glenn Beck, or pretty much any other public personality you care to frame.
By the time people realize what's going on and put down their torches and ropes, there won't be a single politician left standing in either party... except of course for John McCain, who doesn't know how to use a computer. That'll teach the whippersnappers a thing or two!
I am surprised that the malware did not erase itself after about populating the files with stuff. What sort of idiot would not think of adding that feature it its repertoire?
It could be that it did delete itself, but neglected to overwrite the disk blocks that it had occupied, and therefore those disk blocks were still readable by forensic tools later on. Plenty of idiots forget that when you "delete" a file in most modern file systems, the data it contains isn't necessarily erased.
God there sooo clever those boffins - even basic air comm has a mesh to cover the vents. So are we to trust the engineers / brains that built this device?
In the engineers' defense, it was a one in a million shot. That air vent isn't much larger than a womp rat.
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By the time you get all the components that provide the processing and I/O throughput of those high-end boxes, the x86/64 commodity hardware cost advantage has evaporated
I think the potential savings comes not so much from the hardware as from not having to redesign/re-write your low-availability (tm) software from scratch in order to make it highly-available. Instead you just slap your existing software in to the new Remus VM environment, connect the backup machine, and call it done.
(Whether or not that method actually works in real life remains to be seen, of course, but that's the idea)
Or an ordinary, every day run of the mill 'off the shelf' plain jane beige UPS. or a Ghetto one, if you'd like.
Sure, but power failure isn't the only thing that can stop your server from running -- it's just the easiest one to reproduce without permanently damaging anything. If you'd like a better example, yank the CPU out of your web server's motherboard instead. Your UPS won't save you then! :^)
I love Beck's stuff. He cracks me up and makes me think.
[Thinking is] what a great many people think they are doing when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ~William James
I have never seen anyone refute what Glenn Beck is actually saying.
That's the his entire M.O., is it not? First, Beck accuses you of beating your wife (or some similar calumny). Then he tries to get you to deny it. If you rise to the bait and do deny it, he now has video of you denying it, and can use that video to imply that whether you beat your wife or not is a legitimate question. If you refuse to dignify him with a response, he can go ahead and claim that because you refused to deny it, there must be something to the accusation. Either way, he wins.
If you could explain your logic behind "why now?" and "why this instead of reducing the debt?" in more detail, I'd be very grateful.
The answer to "why now?" is "if not now, when?".
No matter how good or how bad the nation's finances are, there will always be people making the argument that "we can't afford it right now, let's wait until things get better and then see what's what in a few years"... right up until they switch over to "things are going so well right now, why rock the boat?" That's why these problems have been allowed to fester and steadily get worse for the past four decades. But at some point, the problems become intolerable, and waiting is simply no longer an acceptable option.
As for why we should do it the way it's being done, and not some other way, I'm partially with you there -- I think there definitely are better and more cost effective ways to go about reforming health care than what is proposed in the current legislation. However, at this point our choices are pass the legislation mostly as-is, or lose all political momentum and end up doing essentially nothing for yet another decade. Going back to the drawing board is the same as giving up, because there won't be the political will to have the whole debate all over again. As is often the case in politics, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the proposed legislature is good enough to be worth passing, and it can be tweaked over time to address its shortcomings.
I fervently believe that it is irresponsible to take on more spending when the debt service is so high. Reduce it now, balance the books, and then come talk to us about more social programs.
There is a school of economic thought that says when the economy is bad, the best thing for the government to do is spend money to stimulate the economy. The Great Depression lasted for as long as it did in part because the US government did the "responsible thing" and refused to incur debt until the economy improved -- which it didn't do until World War II forced the US government to begin spending on materiel, which had the side effect of stimulating the economy. Economics at the national level are different from economics at the individual level, in often counterintuitive ways. (Note that I'm not saying that there's no risk in the US getting itself deeper into debt, just that the risk isn't necessarily as great as it would intuitively seem)
You'll note that the deficit turned into a surplus during the Clinton years, not because Clinton cut spending back drastically, but rather because the economy was good. When the economy is doing well, government revenues increase and it's easier to balance the budget and pay down debt (or spend more, if you're so inclined). So I'd say that paying down the debt is the luxury that can be deferred until better times.
I mean, let's take it to the other extreme. Assume that our debt was 100 times what it is now. The interest alone would be able to cover what will be spent via this plan. Would it make sense then to try to reduce the debt in order to be able to afford programs such as this? If not, why not? At what point do you prioritize the debt over more social programs?
Yes, at some point the national debt load would become a big enough problem that we would have to prioritize it over other things. But I don't agree that we've reached that point yet, and I don't agree that health care should be the priority that loses out in that scenario.
But that was good old fashioned conquest fair and square.
What made it fair? Did the settlers make sure that the Indians had an equal number of guns and soldiers before starting each battle?
By your definition of "fair and square", illegal immigration is also "fair and square", as long as the immigrants can get away with it. Which, frankly, they can, because the majority of the US population doesn't have the stomach for the sort of draconian measures that would be necessary to remove them.
So wouldn't it be logical to remove the illegals, and hand those jobs to actual citizens?
Yes -- just like the logical answer to the the problem of illegal drugs would be to remove the illegal drugs, so that people won't buy them anymore. And you can see how well that's worked out.
Unfortunately, the logical answer isn't always practical, or even possible.
What did conservative get out of it?
A better health care system, same as everyone else, despite their paranoid bleating?
What did those who value freedom get?
The ability to keep their existing health care plans if they prefer them, despite the fact that single payer would have been vastly simpler and more efficient?
The last I heard is that everyone would be forced to buy in, or be fined or face jail time. Some option that is.
It beats having you skip buying insurance, then get in a car wreck and expect the rest of us to pay for your care out of our pockets. Anyone who can afford health insurance and chooses not to buy it is freeloading by making the rest of the country shoulder their share of the risk.
(And no, you don't have the option of simply promising to forego medical care if you get badly hurt -- when the accident came, you'd change your mind, and even if you didn't it would be unethical to leave you untreated)
To provide equivalent care, and in the absence of other changes, simply changing who cuts the check doesn't change the actual cost of the care.
True, but it does cut the cost of insuring the care. The whole point of insurance is to spread the risk among as large a pool of customers as possible. The larger the pool, the more economies of scale you receive, and the lower the chances are of financial insolvency due to too many customers making claims at the same time.
And the US Federal Government can cobble together a pretty damn big risk pool, if it's so inclined.
The businesses make decisions based on cost.
Your argument works against you. Today, any business who "makes decisions based on cost" can simply reduce or eliminate health care coverage for their employees, and the employees are completely screwed. With the health care reforms in effect, businesses will no longer be able to do that -- the "worst" that they can do is change do a cheaper/lesser plan that still meets the minimum requirements. So the reforms are a net improvement.
(Of course, in real life most businesses factor in other things, like employee retention, into their decisions anyway)
The second you force everyone to get health insurance it is almost like a monopoly. They jump the prices up on everyone because they can not because they have to.
Hence the importance of having a public option. As long as people have at least one reasonable alternative, the private companies cannot raise their rates too high (or otherwise mess people around too much) or people will jump ship.
This monstrosity costs $1 trillion over a period of time, and will increase from there.
Have you calculated how much it would cost to let the nation's health care issues continue to go unaddressed?
We can't afford it now, and the money that will be used will be in the form of higher taxes, more borrowing, and/or inflation (because, that's the only place the government can get money: from you, from other countries, and/or printing it).
Perhaps, and perhaps that is the lesser of two evils.
But this is like having a massive credit card bill and, instead of paying it off, deciding you really need digital cable.
Here's where you've really gone off the rails. Adequate health care is not a luxury item like digital cable and magazine subscriptions. It's a matter of life and death for tens of thousands of Americans. In the balance between saving their lives and lowering your taxes (or the national debt), they win.
If they didnt want to be eaten then why would they taste so good. Answer me that.
I've been asking the same question about human babies for years; I've never gotten a good answer.
There's something about fresh fish that makes for a better meal in whatever you tend to use it in. It's considerably more noticeable in Sushi.
Agreed. The way things are going, however, that problem will solve itself, since 70 years from now nobody living will remember what a wild-caught fish tasted like.
True equilibrium is our food source dying, followed by world starvation.
(Insert Inigo Montoya quote about word definitions here)
True equilibrium would be when the rate at which people consume natural resources matches the rate at which those resources respawn.
They distribute [kiddy porn] not for profit, but for the simple reason that they want to share.
You're no doubt right in some cases. I suspect, however, that the main reason they don't try to sell the kiddy porn is that selling it would leave a trail of financial transaction records that would make it much easier for law enforcement to catch them.
People with foot fetishes are willing to pay money for pictures of sexy feet, and there exist other people who are willing to create those pictures and sell them to the foot fetishists.
People who like naked lactating pregnant women are willing to pay money for pictures of them, and there exist other people who are willing to create those pictures and cater to that market.
If child pornography was practical to sell without being thrown in jail, what makes you think things would be any different in that case?
Don't forget possibility #3:
Extortion. Infect 10,000 computers with your kiddy-porn-installer-script, then start sending emails to each victim in turn, demonstrating to him that there is kiddy-porn installed on his machine, and that unless you receive $1,000 you will send an anonymous tip to the police...
I think the financial incentive there could be significant.
So it will make no difference if they pick one of us at random, because he is one of the 99.99% with child porn on the computer. Or because he is one of the 99.99% with $OTHER_CATCH22_CRIMINAL_OFFENSE.
While I see your point, I have to disagree. Being sent to prison as a "convicted pedophile" for N years is significantly worse than being sent to prison for N years for just about any other crime.
Don't forget that the people who in the prison with you have the same prejudices as the general population, and much less subtle ways of expressing their disapproval.
Possession laws in general are dubious to start with, but at least with, for example, drugs, people [don't] just wander by and stick five kilos of cocaine under the seat of their car.
Except, of course, when they do. "Planting" drugs on a suspect is a classic police tactic when they want to arrest/convict someone but don't have a legitimate reason to do so. Of course anyone with access to illegal drugs can do it, not just police officers...
Now I know how to get rid of Madam Pelosi. Just load a few images of naked boys sucking other boys onto her office PCs. Even if she manages to salvage her political career, she'll never again by Speaker.
Yup. It should work even better on Madame Palin, or Glenn Beck, or pretty much any other public personality you care to frame.
By the time people realize what's going on and put down their torches and ropes, there won't be a single politician left standing in either party... except of course for John McCain, who doesn't know how to use a computer. That'll teach the whippersnappers a thing or two!
I am surprised that the malware did not erase itself after about populating the files with stuff. What sort of idiot would not think of adding that feature it its repertoire?
It could be that it did delete itself, but neglected to overwrite the disk blocks that it had occupied, and therefore those disk blocks were still readable by forensic tools later on. Plenty of idiots forget that when you "delete" a file in most modern file systems, the data it contains isn't necessarily erased.
My ninth grade science teacher used to tell us "All error is human error." He was right too
Nah... I've seen animals make mistakes.
God there sooo clever those boffins - even basic air comm has a mesh to cover the vents. So are we to trust the engineers / brains that built this device?
In the engineers' defense, it was a one in a million shot. That air vent isn't much larger than a womp rat.
Since Earth is a type 13 planet, calculating the mass of the Higgs Boson will only squash the planet to the size of a pea.
Will anyone notice when this happens? The main observable result will be that the moon will seem much bigger than it was previously....