I suspect it would still be cheaper to design the satellites for a shorter life span and keep launching them into different orbits.
Consider the advantage of maneuverability in a hostile (as in being shot at) environment, or in a situation where the geographical points of interest keep changing, or changing the time required to orbit so that someone on the ground can not predict an overflight very easily. The X-37 may carry more fuel, or have engines offering greater delta-v, than a satellite.
Maybe but this is the failed argument which killed the space shuttle at birth. It was cheaper to use disposable vehicles. Maybe thats changing now that launchers are getting cheaper, but I don't think USAF launch costs are going down yet.
I don't see how your argument applies here. I don't recall the shuttle being billed as a reconnaissance vehicle. It may have been billed as an alternative method to deliver a recon satellite to orbit but that is not really relevant. I'm referring to the satellite being able to maneuver once it reaches orbit. How it got to that orbit, rocket or shuttle is irrelevant. What is relevant here is the maneuvering capability of a satellite in orbit versus the X-37 in orbit. The X-37 is not delivering a satellite, it is a recon vehicle itself - a recon pod being carried in its 7x4 foot cargo bay. This is similar to fighter aircraft being reconfigured to carry cameras.
I suspect it would still be cheaper to design the satellites for a shorter life span and keep launching them into different orbits.
Consider the advantage of maneuverability in a hostile (as in being shot at) environment, or in a situation where the geographical points of interest keep changing, or changing the time required to orbit so that someone on the ground can not predict an overflight very easily. The X-37 may carry more fuel, or have engines offering greater delta-v, than a satellite.
Hedge Funds, Analysts, etc have been analyzing satellite images for years to keep an eye on retail. While interesting, this is by no means anything new.
Yes and no. Its difficult and expensive to get a satellite to image a specific place on a specific date. Most of this sort of work is done by sending up a local flight instructor (they are relatively inexpensive per hour and instrument rated in case of weather) with a photographer as a passenger.
... being social and interacting with others is the new measure of smart...
Actually social is the old smart. They've found that the part of the brain used for reading is also the part of the brain that recognizes faces, facial expressions and body language. We have new skills with respect to reading, math and science but the same old brain. Devoting brain cells to these new activities has to take brain cells away from something else. Maybe the socially challenged nerd stereotype has a basis in science.;-)
Compared to their wolf ancestors, dogs are orders of magnitude more sociable.
If by sociable you really mean submissive then I agree, otherwise I have to disagree.
I grew up around German Shepherds bred for working attributes, outstanding dogs with respect to temper and intelligence. I've also read a couple of books about wolves written by wildlife biologists and I had the opportunity to spend a few years around a human raised wolf. Within its pack, and the pack was a "family unit" of humans, dogs and even cats that it grew up with, it was highly social. At least as social as the dogs I was used to. However you have to understand wolf behavior versus dog behavior to evaluate social behavior; regardless of who it grows up with and how it is raised a wolf is a wolf and *never* a dog. Go up to your adult dog and start pushing it around by the head and neck and it may gently and playfully "bite" at your hand. Try that with your adult wolf and it will roll over on its back, bare its neck and remain motionless. A forceful hand on the neck or head can trigger a submission ritual response. Assuming of course the person doing this is a higher ranking adult. If a lower ranking adult tries this they may be knocked down and held down for a few seconds to remind them of their lower rank. Children are shown some latitude and tolerance. These examples do not indicate an unwillingness to play or anti-social behavior, they indicate a different social behavior with respect to "forceful" touching. Touch in an affectionate manner and affection will be returned. Offer play without "forceful" touching and you'll find a quite enthusiastic and playful wolf regardless of your rank... throw a ball or stick, offer a rope or rag to play tug of war, etc. Wolves can chase, catch and return frisbees really well but they wear out the frisbee a little faster than dogs, they don't seem to do the soft bite/hold very well.:-)
Also keep in mind that wolves are born with a range of personalities, often dominant, occasionally submissive. The wolf I knew and described above had a more dominant personality. A wolf with a more submissive personality would probably accept any family member or welcome guest as higher ranking. I'd wager we domesticated dogs from these more submissive wolves, far less drama.
When you attempt to train a dog, conditioning comes into play. The dog knows it will get rewarded if it does what it's told, and as such becomes trained. You train a dog similar to how you train a human, through a reward system.
Yes and no. Dogs are descended from wolves and have an innate desire to be part of a pack. A pack is an extended family unit and is not restricted to other dogs, any household members may be considered family in this context. More importantly a pack is a hierarchical structure. In the wolf setting there are never peers, every pack member has a distinct rank and shows dominance or submission accordingly. In the dog setting things are a bit more relaxed and through unnatural selection dogs have been bred to naturally look to humans for some direction (assuming the human offers any). A dog will do what it is told if it recognizes the human as higher ranking, no immediate reward is necessary. Conditioning is only needed to the extent that a spoken word or gesture correlates to a desired action. Treats and toys are only necessary when the person giving the command is not recognized as higher ranking. IMHO praise or a quick affectionate gesture are better rewards but I tend to use these at the end or a walk, workout or training session. I don't want to create an expectation of immediate reward for obedience.
Now I am not against treats and toys but I am careful to only offer them in play time to avoid associating them with obedience.
My memory may be dim, but I don't think that OS/2 even existed in the Windows 1.0 time frame. It wasn't until much later that OS/2 was even started as a project.
OS/2 1.0 (16-bit text) followed Windows 1.0 by 2 years (less?), a graphical option called Presentation Manager soon followed. Perhaps you are thinking of OS/2 2.0 (32-bit w/ GUI)?
You're right, but OS/2 is worth mentioning anyway. I tried it back in the day, and really liked it. It was a 32 bit os when Windows was still only 16 bit...
OS/2 2.0 was 32 bit but OS/2 1.0 was a 16-bit protected mode text based replacement for DOS. OS/2 1 eventually had a GUI called Presentation Manager, the API was very similar to MS Windows. I think OS/2 1 + PM is the actual first competitor to WIndows, not OS/2 2.
In the early MS Windows 3 era MS told developers that Windows was just a temporary GUI for DOS to satisfy existing installations that will eventually be migrated to OS/2 1 + Presentation Manager. They emphasized how source compatible WIndows and Presentation Manager were and that porting would not be a major issue.
IBM and MS were partners in OS/2. IBM was developing OS/2 2.0 while MS was developing OS/2 NT in parallel. While both were 32-bit and GUI based, OS/2 2 was the more expedient reworking of OS/2 1 and ran only on x86 CPUs. OS/2 NT was to be to the complete rewrite that would run on various CPUs. At some point MS decided to ditch IBM and renamed OS/2 NT to Windows NT. Its interesting to note that Windows NT offered OS/2 1 support.
Okay, I'm sure some high-end consumers would benefit from this, I think the majority of consumers will not.
As a game developer I have to say consumers could benefit. And no I am not necessarily thinking about more graphical eye candy. For example I would like to have hundreds of cores working on AI for computer controlled characters/units.
How about developing a small efficient core, where the performance is interesting? Actually, don't even bother; just reuse the DEC Alpha instruction set that is collecting dust at Intel. There is no point in tying these massively parallel architectures to some ancient ISA.
Technically the cores are not executing x86 instructions. For several architectural generations of Intel chips the x86 instructions have been translated into a small efficient instruction set executed by the cores. Intel refers to these core instructions as micro-operations. An x86 instruction is translated on the fly into some number of micro-ops and these micro-op are reordered and scheduled for execution. So they have kind of done what you ask, the problem is that they don't give us direct access to the micro-op instructions set.
Intel tried to move beyond x86 with the Itanium and the market said no. The market also said no to Alpha and PowerPC, both of which had consumer oriented Windows NT 4 support. Even Apple had to give up on PowerPC and they were part of the PowerPC consortium. There is no Intel x86 conspiracy, they are trapped too.
Am i the only one feeling this is just a foray into multicore chips because they hit a brick wall when it comes to faster single core CPUs?
For many years (at least 5, possibly more) Intel has been telling developers that future performance gains will come from multithreading not faster clock speeds. So no, you are not the only one feeling this way.:-)
Agreed. Laptops only when needed. Do people need to be mobile during the day, moving from place to place taking their computer with them? At a 20 person company having one person visit the office of the person with the computer in question does not seem prohibitive. Taking your computer to meetings and such, vastly overrated and usually a distraction.
If you like the idea of people taking their work home do you accept the increased costs of lost and stolen laptops and the decreased lifespan that frequent travel brings? Is your data secured on an encrypted volume? Even if IT creates an encrypted volume are users actually using it rather than saving files to the unencrypted desktop? Have you planned training to address this sort of issue?
When traveling overseas these lost/stolen concerns magnify. Furthermore is there anything on the laptop that your country does not allow to be exported or anything that the visited country does not allow to be imported? Perhaps even that state-of-the-art encryption software you normally use has export/import issues. Not to mention the "personal" folders where porn was downloaded. Have you planned training to address these issues? Even when a laptop is clean customs may hang on to it for some reason, its fully within their power to do so. Will having a person lose their day-to-day computer be an issue?
When a person takes work home are they on the clock? Do you live in a jurisdiction where unpaid overtime is becoming more and more of an issue even with salaried people? You may be setting your company up for an unpaid overtime lawsuit once someone becomes unhappy and quits. I've seen it happen. I've seen companies in California switch all their engineers and lower level of management from salary to hourly due to this sort of thing.
The list goes on...
Laptops can be great and they can be required while traveling. Perhaps have a few than can be checked out on rare occasions when people *must* work at home or travel. Have them copy only what they need for that day or trip, and wipe the laptop when returned.
It sounds like you discuss this with people you otherwise have a lengthy conversation (or, in most examples, have an ongoing relationship with). I chose to find an organization that claims libertarianism and report what those self-described libertarians claim. Sure, they may be a skewed population. But you are speaking like you think yours is somehow less skewed.
My population is less skewed. It is a somewhat random sampling (over time and wide geography) of the millions of self proclaimed libertarians. Your population represents the 50-100K more zealous political activists who showed up on a given day at a given place to vote for a party platform. Democrat, republican or libertarian, the official party platform is a poor representation of what philosophical dems, repubs or libs on the street believe.
... Google would not have had to post 200+ positions on a weekly basis for Dublin and consistently _FAIL_ to fill them. The situation with a lot of other emloyers in Ireland is not much different. They all continue to have a long list of positions for qualified labour open...
That may not indicate that Ireland inherently lacks skilled labor and is somehow behind other EU countries. It *may* be that too many tech companies have located there and outstripped the local resources. Ireland has a population of 6M and Germany 80M, Dublin 500K and Munich (München) 1300K (*). All other things being equal, a lower tax rate that disproportionately drives companies to Dublin would lead to the situation we see today, a labor shortage starting with Dublin.
I worked once worked for a US company that had a tech support center in Ireland to support our EU customers and our parent company also operated an office that localized (translated) our products, manuals and web pages into the EU languages. The general opinion we had in the US was that our Irish counterparts were knowledgable and skilled. This was 2000 to 2003 'ish, I do not know how that era's labor market compares to today's.
(*) I'm just aribtrarily picking a German city that is somewhat of a tech hub.
If you do not contribute to the economy of your host country...
Isn't creating jobs(*) a contribution? Here in the US we often hear of states, cities or towns that offer tax breaks to companies to incentivize them to locate in their area. These areas feel that the jobs and associated economic activity and individual payroll taxes more than compensate for the lost corporate tax. *If* Ireland were a region of low employment then their tax breaks may have increased overall contributions. Economic activity is often a very complicated web of companies and individuals, think of all goods and services that a company purchases locally and that employed people buy that the unemployed do not. Focusing solely on one company in that web, even the company driving the local activity, can be misleading. This issue is not as simple as you seem to be portraying it.
(*) I'm not claiming Google created many jobs, this is a general question.
There is no useful definition of libertarian, so using the one the Libertarian Party (or its official publicly endorsed memebers) uses is expedient, convenient,...
I'm not trying to pick a fight, but isn't that intellectually lazy?
The members of the Libertarian National Committee who get to vote on party positions number about 100K. So 50-100K get to "define" the party on paper. About 200K are registered members of the party. About 500K voted their "conscience" and or registered their "protest" in 2008 and voted for the Libertarian presidential candidate. Countless more who consider themselves Libertarian voted for the dem or repub candidate they thought was viable and would do less harm. To coopt Nixon's "silent majority" moniker for these last two groups, do you really think its reasonable to act as if this silent majority of philosophical libertarians buy everything the party leadership puts on paper? It seems silly to act as if they do, and its also a tactic of those who wish to discredit libertarian philosophy. I just can not accept letting the fringe zealots of any party define what the members of that party stand for, dem, repub or lib.
... and certainly more valid than some random schmuck on the Internet who prefers to use some other definition for his personal definition
Now I've not spent much time with residents of decommissioned missile silos or those who prefer Ted "unabomber" Kazinsky style "rustic cabins", but the majority of self described libertarians that I've met over the last 30 years on the west and east coasts, friends, colleagues, classmates, coworkers and folks I've had a conversation with who consider themselves libertarian tend to be of the more moderate type that I have described. Its not a personal definition, its a long term series of observations. Perhaps a slashdot poll would be insightful? I'm not entirely comfortable with the word "insightful" in this context but you get the point.
I think you are confusing those who run for office under the libertarian banner with the typical libertarian. Those willing to engage in a purely symbolic and bound for defeat campaign will tend to be the more extreme zealots. Most libertarians don't support libertarian candidates and are often embarrassed by them.
The mythical libertarian doesn't exist. If there isn't someone or something that takes responsibility, like a political party, then there's no practical definition. A "libertarian" is one thing on Monday, and another on Thursdays. I can't keep track.
People associated with a political party are not necessarily in agreement. If you talk to a bunch of different democrats you can get a wide variety of opinions. You can have "far left" leadership and spokespeople on TV all the time yet many (most) of those who consider themselves democrats have more in common with the more conservative "blue dog" democrats. The same is true for libertarians. Some running for office as a libertarian may haven different views than people who consider them libertarians.
Everyone is against overregulation. They just disagree about what the right amount is.
I have to disagree. You have a point with respect to regulations that create a level playing field or ensure safe products and services. However some embrace regulation to make social change that goes beyond safety and fairness, regulations to promote a political ideology or agenda. And of course there are also regulations that are political paybacks to supporters.
Most libertarians do believe in government, regulations, police, fire departments etc. Their complaint regarding government is often that the wrong level is addressing an issue, that state or local levels should be handling a particular issue rather than the federal (national) level
I'm sorry, but that's BS. Libertarianism is about minarchy on all levels of the government, not about decentralization. From your definition it follows that a libertarian would not necessarily oppose e.g. welfare programs, if they are implemented on local levels rather than federal ones...
Keep in mind that a local safety net does not necessarily have to be 100% government based. Private charities could also be involved. The converse has also been true, as the federal government assumed more of a social safety net role the local private charities suffered.
A common libertarian perspective is that when things are done locally there is more opportunity to experiment and leverage local conditions to find more optimal results. For instance at the federal level setting up a system for hunters and fisherman to donate their catch would be a non-starter due to political considerations, a lost opportunity. However in many local communities there would be no controversy at all. Is this "the answer", of course not, but various local private efforts can reduce the degree that government intervention is necessary.
The average libertarian does not oppose a social safety net, they just don't think that a federal system is necessarily the wisest and most efficient way to go about it. To use your "minimalist" characterization of libertarians, many would include augmenting the local safety net as needed to be part of that minimum. The darwinist fringe is about as representative of libertarians as the molotov cocktail throwing WTO protester is of democrats.
"Really, how did that intervention to increase home ownership and decrease renting work out?"
The first home buyers grant has worked out pretty well here in Oz, it helped me get my first house and did the same for both my adult children. OTOH here in Oz in addition to the first homeowners grant you also need a sizable deposit from personal savings and a regular income to get a home loan...
The problem with the US government intervention was that it lead to reducing deposit and income requirements. In addition to the expected risk associated with buyers who would not normally qualify there was also the unexpected risk from buyers who would normally qualify and used the reduced standards to buy larger and more expensive homes than they normally would have.
... Moderate assistance to get people (who want to) in their own home and/or protect them from interest rate gouging helps to keep the economy ticking over, piling them up in trailer parks does not...
Trailer parks were not the typical alternative. Renting a nice place or buying a smaller place were.
... Worst of all is providing dodgy loans to people who have neither a deposit nor the means to meet the repayments, that is a recipie for the housing industry disaster the US is currently struggling with.
However this is what resulted in part due to well meaning government intervention and unintended consequence and unanticipated "gaming" of the system by banks *and* consumers.
No, it was a leveling of the playing field and preventing one person from harming another. That's very different than deciding benign outcome A (ownership) is better than benign outcome B (renting) and enacting regulation to promote A.
Outcome A = blacks being able to live and eat lunch where they please, outcome B = blacks banned from home ownership and service in white areas. I'm failing to see the difference.
Then ponder any one or all of the following:
1. a leveling of the playing field
2. preventing one person from harming another
3. note use of "benign" - not threatening to life or health or well being
But the Civil Rights legislation was as good an example of the hated social engineering as you will ever see...
No, it was a leveling of the playing field and preventing one person from harming another. That's very different than deciding benign outcome A (ownership) is better than benign outcome B (renting) and enacting regulation to promote A.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple openly acknowledges that the iPhone is cannibalizing its iPods — and they don't seem to care
Should they care or should they celebrate? The iPhone offers a superset of iPod functionality and the iPhone generates greater profits.
Actually... the ability to land on the ground is utterly useless in a space war...
Not at all. The vehicle can be refueled, reconfigured or repaired. Well, at least until we get the needed infrastructure in orbit.
I suspect it would still be cheaper to design the satellites for a shorter life span and keep launching them into different orbits.
Consider the advantage of maneuverability in a hostile (as in being shot at) environment, or in a situation where the geographical points of interest keep changing, or changing the time required to orbit so that someone on the ground can not predict an overflight very easily. The X-37 may carry more fuel, or have engines offering greater delta-v, than a satellite.
Maybe but this is the failed argument which killed the space shuttle at birth. It was cheaper to use disposable vehicles. Maybe thats changing now that launchers are getting cheaper, but I don't think USAF launch costs are going down yet.
I don't see how your argument applies here. I don't recall the shuttle being billed as a reconnaissance vehicle. It may have been billed as an alternative method to deliver a recon satellite to orbit but that is not really relevant. I'm referring to the satellite being able to maneuver once it reaches orbit. How it got to that orbit, rocket or shuttle is irrelevant. What is relevant here is the maneuvering capability of a satellite in orbit versus the X-37 in orbit. The X-37 is not delivering a satellite, it is a recon vehicle itself - a recon pod being carried in its 7x4 foot cargo bay. This is similar to fighter aircraft being reconfigured to carry cameras.
I suspect it would still be cheaper to design the satellites for a shorter life span and keep launching them into different orbits.
Consider the advantage of maneuverability in a hostile (as in being shot at) environment, or in a situation where the geographical points of interest keep changing, or changing the time required to orbit so that someone on the ground can not predict an overflight very easily. The X-37 may carry more fuel, or have engines offering greater delta-v, than a satellite.
Hedge Funds, Analysts, etc have been analyzing satellite images for years to keep an eye on retail. While interesting, this is by no means anything new.
Yes and no. Its difficult and expensive to get a satellite to image a specific place on a specific date. Most of this sort of work is done by sending up a local flight instructor (they are relatively inexpensive per hour and instrument rated in case of weather) with a photographer as a passenger.
... being social and interacting with others is the new measure of smart ...
Actually social is the old smart. They've found that the part of the brain used for reading is also the part of the brain that recognizes faces, facial expressions and body language. We have new skills with respect to reading, math and science but the same old brain. Devoting brain cells to these new activities has to take brain cells away from something else. Maybe the socially challenged nerd stereotype has a basis in science. ;-)
Compared to their wolf ancestors, dogs are orders of magnitude more sociable.
If by sociable you really mean submissive then I agree, otherwise I have to disagree.
... throw a ball or stick, offer a rope or rag to play tug of war, etc. Wolves can chase, catch and return frisbees really well but they wear out the frisbee a little faster than dogs, they don't seem to do the soft bite/hold very well. :-)
I grew up around German Shepherds bred for working attributes, outstanding dogs with respect to temper and intelligence. I've also read a couple of books about wolves written by wildlife biologists and I had the opportunity to spend a few years around a human raised wolf. Within its pack, and the pack was a "family unit" of humans, dogs and even cats that it grew up with, it was highly social. At least as social as the dogs I was used to. However you have to understand wolf behavior versus dog behavior to evaluate social behavior; regardless of who it grows up with and how it is raised a wolf is a wolf and *never* a dog. Go up to your adult dog and start pushing it around by the head and neck and it may gently and playfully "bite" at your hand. Try that with your adult wolf and it will roll over on its back, bare its neck and remain motionless. A forceful hand on the neck or head can trigger a submission ritual response. Assuming of course the person doing this is a higher ranking adult. If a lower ranking adult tries this they may be knocked down and held down for a few seconds to remind them of their lower rank. Children are shown some latitude and tolerance. These examples do not indicate an unwillingness to play or anti-social behavior, they indicate a different social behavior with respect to "forceful" touching. Touch in an affectionate manner and affection will be returned. Offer play without "forceful" touching and you'll find a quite enthusiastic and playful wolf regardless of your rank
Also keep in mind that wolves are born with a range of personalities, often dominant, occasionally submissive. The wolf I knew and described above had a more dominant personality. A wolf with a more submissive personality would probably accept any family member or welcome guest as higher ranking. I'd wager we domesticated dogs from these more submissive wolves, far less drama.
When you attempt to train a dog, conditioning comes into play. The dog knows it will get rewarded if it does what it's told, and as such becomes trained. You train a dog similar to how you train a human, through a reward system.
Yes and no. Dogs are descended from wolves and have an innate desire to be part of a pack. A pack is an extended family unit and is not restricted to other dogs, any household members may be considered family in this context. More importantly a pack is a hierarchical structure. In the wolf setting there are never peers, every pack member has a distinct rank and shows dominance or submission accordingly. In the dog setting things are a bit more relaxed and through unnatural selection dogs have been bred to naturally look to humans for some direction (assuming the human offers any). A dog will do what it is told if it recognizes the human as higher ranking, no immediate reward is necessary. Conditioning is only needed to the extent that a spoken word or gesture correlates to a desired action. Treats and toys are only necessary when the person giving the command is not recognized as higher ranking. IMHO praise or a quick affectionate gesture are better rewards but I tend to use these at the end or a walk, workout or training session. I don't want to create an expectation of immediate reward for obedience.
Now I am not against treats and toys but I am careful to only offer them in play time to avoid associating them with obedience.
My memory may be dim, but I don't think that OS/2 even existed in the Windows 1.0 time frame. It wasn't until much later that OS/2 was even started as a project.
OS/2 1.0 (16-bit text) followed Windows 1.0 by 2 years (less?), a graphical option called Presentation Manager soon followed. Perhaps you are thinking of OS/2 2.0 (32-bit w/ GUI)?
To avoid a redundant post I'll just offer a link to another response:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1878948&cid=34308386
Now that I think about it I'm not sure whether MS's OS/2 development project was called OS/2 NT or OS/2 3.0.
"I believe Windows 1.0 predates OS/2 by a bit."
You're right, but OS/2 is worth mentioning anyway. I tried it back in the day, and really liked it. It was a 32 bit os when Windows was still only 16 bit ...
OS/2 2.0 was 32 bit but OS/2 1.0 was a 16-bit protected mode text based replacement for DOS. OS/2 1 eventually had a GUI called Presentation Manager, the API was very similar to MS Windows. I think OS/2 1 + PM is the actual first competitor to WIndows, not OS/2 2.
In the early MS Windows 3 era MS told developers that Windows was just a temporary GUI for DOS to satisfy existing installations that will eventually be migrated to OS/2 1 + Presentation Manager. They emphasized how source compatible WIndows and Presentation Manager were and that porting would not be a major issue.
IBM and MS were partners in OS/2. IBM was developing OS/2 2.0 while MS was developing OS/2 NT in parallel. While both were 32-bit and GUI based, OS/2 2 was the more expedient reworking of OS/2 1 and ran only on x86 CPUs. OS/2 NT was to be to the complete rewrite that would run on various CPUs. At some point MS decided to ditch IBM and renamed OS/2 NT to Windows NT. Its interesting to note that Windows NT offered OS/2 1 support.
Okay, I'm sure some high-end consumers would benefit from this, I think the majority of consumers will not.
As a game developer I have to say consumers could benefit. And no I am not necessarily thinking about more graphical eye candy. For example I would like to have hundreds of cores working on AI for computer controlled characters/units.
How about developing a small efficient core, where the performance is interesting? Actually, don't even bother; just reuse the DEC Alpha instruction set that is collecting dust at Intel. There is no point in tying these massively parallel architectures to some ancient ISA.
Technically the cores are not executing x86 instructions. For several architectural generations of Intel chips the x86 instructions have been translated into a small efficient instruction set executed by the cores. Intel refers to these core instructions as micro-operations. An x86 instruction is translated on the fly into some number of micro-ops and these micro-op are reordered and scheduled for execution. So they have kind of done what you ask, the problem is that they don't give us direct access to the micro-op instructions set.
Intel tried to move beyond x86 with the Itanium and the market said no. The market also said no to Alpha and PowerPC, both of which had consumer oriented Windows NT 4 support. Even Apple had to give up on PowerPC and they were part of the PowerPC consortium. There is no Intel x86 conspiracy, they are trapped too.
Am i the only one feeling this is just a foray into multicore chips because they hit a brick wall when it comes to faster single core CPUs?
For many years (at least 5, possibly more) Intel has been telling developers that future performance gains will come from multithreading not faster clock speeds. So no, you are not the only one feeling this way. :-)
Agreed. Laptops only when needed. Do people need to be mobile during the day, moving from place to place taking their computer with them? At a 20 person company having one person visit the office of the person with the computer in question does not seem prohibitive. Taking your computer to meetings and such, vastly overrated and usually a distraction.
...
If you like the idea of people taking their work home do you accept the increased costs of lost and stolen laptops and the decreased lifespan that frequent travel brings? Is your data secured on an encrypted volume? Even if IT creates an encrypted volume are users actually using it rather than saving files to the unencrypted desktop? Have you planned training to address this sort of issue?
When traveling overseas these lost/stolen concerns magnify. Furthermore is there anything on the laptop that your country does not allow to be exported or anything that the visited country does not allow to be imported? Perhaps even that state-of-the-art encryption software you normally use has export/import issues. Not to mention the "personal" folders where porn was downloaded. Have you planned training to address these issues? Even when a laptop is clean customs may hang on to it for some reason, its fully within their power to do so. Will having a person lose their day-to-day computer be an issue?
When a person takes work home are they on the clock? Do you live in a jurisdiction where unpaid overtime is becoming more and more of an issue even with salaried people? You may be setting your company up for an unpaid overtime lawsuit once someone becomes unhappy and quits. I've seen it happen. I've seen companies in California switch all their engineers and lower level of management from salary to hourly due to this sort of thing.
The list goes on
Laptops can be great and they can be required while traveling. Perhaps have a few than can be checked out on rare occasions when people *must* work at home or travel. Have them copy only what they need for that day or trip, and wipe the laptop when returned.
It sounds like you discuss this with people you otherwise have a lengthy conversation (or, in most examples, have an ongoing relationship with). I chose to find an organization that claims libertarianism and report what those self-described libertarians claim. Sure, they may be a skewed population. But you are speaking like you think yours is somehow less skewed.
My population is less skewed. It is a somewhat random sampling (over time and wide geography) of the millions of self proclaimed libertarians. Your population represents the 50-100K more zealous political activists who showed up on a given day at a given place to vote for a party platform. Democrat, republican or libertarian, the official party platform is a poor representation of what philosophical dems, repubs or libs on the street believe.
... Google would not have had to post 200+ positions on a weekly basis for Dublin and consistently _FAIL_ to fill them. The situation with a lot of other emloyers in Ireland is not much different. They all continue to have a long list of positions for qualified labour open ...
That may not indicate that Ireland inherently lacks skilled labor and is somehow behind other EU countries. It *may* be that too many tech companies have located there and outstripped the local resources. Ireland has a population of 6M and Germany 80M, Dublin 500K and Munich (München) 1300K (*). All other things being equal, a lower tax rate that disproportionately drives companies to Dublin would lead to the situation we see today, a labor shortage starting with Dublin.
I worked once worked for a US company that had a tech support center in Ireland to support our EU customers and our parent company also operated an office that localized (translated) our products, manuals and web pages into the EU languages. The general opinion we had in the US was that our Irish counterparts were knowledgable and skilled. This was 2000 to 2003 'ish, I do not know how that era's labor market compares to today's.
(*) I'm just aribtrarily picking a German city that is somewhat of a tech hub.
If you do not contribute to the economy of your host country ...
Isn't creating jobs(*) a contribution? Here in the US we often hear of states, cities or towns that offer tax breaks to companies to incentivize them to locate in their area. These areas feel that the jobs and associated economic activity and individual payroll taxes more than compensate for the lost corporate tax. *If* Ireland were a region of low employment then their tax breaks may have increased overall contributions. Economic activity is often a very complicated web of companies and individuals, think of all goods and services that a company purchases locally and that employed people buy that the unemployed do not. Focusing solely on one company in that web, even the company driving the local activity, can be misleading. This issue is not as simple as you seem to be portraying it.
(*) I'm not claiming Google created many jobs, this is a general question.
There is no useful definition of libertarian, so using the one the Libertarian Party (or its official publicly endorsed memebers) uses is expedient, convenient, ...
I'm not trying to pick a fight, but isn't that intellectually lazy?
The members of the Libertarian National Committee who get to vote on party positions number about 100K. So 50-100K get to "define" the party on paper. About 200K are registered members of the party. About 500K voted their "conscience" and or registered their "protest" in 2008 and voted for the Libertarian presidential candidate. Countless more who consider themselves Libertarian voted for the dem or repub candidate they thought was viable and would do less harm. To coopt Nixon's "silent majority" moniker for these last two groups, do you really think its reasonable to act as if this silent majority of philosophical libertarians buy everything the party leadership puts on paper? It seems silly to act as if they do, and its also a tactic of those who wish to discredit libertarian philosophy. I just can not accept letting the fringe zealots of any party define what the members of that party stand for, dem, repub or lib.
... and certainly more valid than some random schmuck on the Internet who prefers to use some other definition for his personal definition
Now I've not spent much time with residents of decommissioned missile silos or those who prefer Ted "unabomber" Kazinsky style "rustic cabins", but the majority of self described libertarians that I've met over the last 30 years on the west and east coasts, friends, colleagues, classmates, coworkers and folks I've had a conversation with who consider themselves libertarian tend to be of the more moderate type that I have described. Its not a personal definition, its a long term series of observations. Perhaps a slashdot poll would be insightful? I'm not entirely comfortable with the word "insightful" in this context but you get the point.
I think you are confusing those who run for office under the libertarian banner with the typical libertarian. Those willing to engage in a purely symbolic and bound for defeat campaign will tend to be the more extreme zealots. Most libertarians don't support libertarian candidates and are often embarrassed by them.
The mythical libertarian doesn't exist. If there isn't someone or something that takes responsibility, like a political party, then there's no practical definition. A "libertarian" is one thing on Monday, and another on Thursdays. I can't keep track.
People associated with a political party are not necessarily in agreement. If you talk to a bunch of different democrats you can get a wide variety of opinions. You can have "far left" leadership and spokespeople on TV all the time yet many (most) of those who consider themselves democrats have more in common with the more conservative "blue dog" democrats. The same is true for libertarians. Some running for office as a libertarian may haven different views than people who consider them libertarians.
Everyone is against overregulation. They just disagree about what the right amount is.
I have to disagree. You have a point with respect to regulations that create a level playing field or ensure safe products and services. However some embrace regulation to make social change that goes beyond safety and fairness, regulations to promote a political ideology or agenda. And of course there are also regulations that are political paybacks to supporters.
Most libertarians do believe in government, regulations, police, fire departments etc. Their complaint regarding government is often that the wrong level is addressing an issue, that state or local levels should be handling a particular issue rather than the federal (national) level
I'm sorry, but that's BS. Libertarianism is about minarchy on all levels of the government, not about decentralization. From your definition it follows that a libertarian would not necessarily oppose e.g. welfare programs, if they are implemented on local levels rather than federal ones ...
Keep in mind that a local safety net does not necessarily have to be 100% government based. Private charities could also be involved. The converse has also been true, as the federal government assumed more of a social safety net role the local private charities suffered.
A common libertarian perspective is that when things are done locally there is more opportunity to experiment and leverage local conditions to find more optimal results. For instance at the federal level setting up a system for hunters and fisherman to donate their catch would be a non-starter due to political considerations, a lost opportunity. However in many local communities there would be no controversy at all. Is this "the answer", of course not, but various local private efforts can reduce the degree that government intervention is necessary.
The average libertarian does not oppose a social safety net, they just don't think that a federal system is necessarily the wisest and most efficient way to go about it. To use your "minimalist" characterization of libertarians, many would include augmenting the local safety net as needed to be part of that minimum. The darwinist fringe is about as representative of libertarians as the molotov cocktail throwing WTO protester is of democrats.
"Really, how did that intervention to increase home ownership and decrease renting work out?" The first home buyers grant has worked out pretty well here in Oz, it helped me get my first house and did the same for both my adult children. OTOH here in Oz in addition to the first homeowners grant you also need a sizable deposit from personal savings and a regular income to get a home loan ...
The problem with the US government intervention was that it lead to reducing deposit and income requirements. In addition to the expected risk associated with buyers who would not normally qualify there was also the unexpected risk from buyers who would normally qualify and used the reduced standards to buy larger and more expensive homes than they normally would have.
... Moderate assistance to get people (who want to) in their own home and/or protect them from interest rate gouging helps to keep the economy ticking over, piling them up in trailer parks does not ...
Trailer parks were not the typical alternative. Renting a nice place or buying a smaller place were.
... Worst of all is providing dodgy loans to people who have neither a deposit nor the means to meet the repayments, that is a recipie for the housing industry disaster the US is currently struggling with.
However this is what resulted in part due to well meaning government intervention and unintended consequence and unanticipated "gaming" of the system by banks *and* consumers.
No, it was a leveling of the playing field and preventing one person from harming another. That's very different than deciding benign outcome A (ownership) is better than benign outcome B (renting) and enacting regulation to promote A.
Outcome A = blacks being able to live and eat lunch where they please, outcome B = blacks banned from home ownership and service in white areas. I'm failing to see the difference.
Then ponder any one or all of the following:
1. a leveling of the playing field
2. preventing one person from harming another
3. note use of "benign" - not threatening to life or health or well being
But the Civil Rights legislation was as good an example of the hated social engineering as you will ever see ...
No, it was a leveling of the playing field and preventing one person from harming another. That's very different than deciding benign outcome A (ownership) is better than benign outcome B (renting) and enacting regulation to promote A.