ZFS requires an absurd amount of RAM dedicated to managing storage.
And ZFS needs ECC RAM, errors must be detected because with ZFS there can be a write to the hard drive to fix a mismatched "checksum" when the software is requesting a read. Bad RAM is a much bigger problem with ZFS than other file systems. Its really not a good idea for consumer hardware.
But in terms of your data, ZFS doesn't magically make disk operations any more risky due to the use of non-ECC RAM than any other filesystem.
No, a read operation can cause data on disk to change. That does not happen in other file systems. This change to data has good intentions, it is to correct what is believed to be corrupted data but if the corruption is in RAM and not on-disk bit rot or something then good data on disk was erroneously changed. ECC RAM prevents this.
Going to Unix was a business decision to use a Freely available OS and just tweak it with a New UI.
No. Going NeXTSTEP was the business decision to get a modern operating system. NeXTSTEP just happened to be built upon Unix. NeXTSTEP contained many software elements beyond Unix. And NeXTSTEP would bring Steve Jobs with it.
Unix was a useful afterthought. Something useful to attract some scientists, engineers and other high end users to the Mac platform. People who were migrating from traditional Unix workstations and weren't sure about PC-based Linux.
ZFS requires an absurd amount of RAM dedicated to managing storage.
And ZFS needs ECC RAM, errors must be detected because with ZFS there can be a write to the hard drive to fix a mismatched "checksum" when the software is requesting a read. Bad RAM is a much bigger problem with ZFS than other file systems. Its really not a good idea for consumer hardware.
A trademark is a very different type of intellectual property than a copyright. Its fair use may be limited to reviews, not something functional/operation like an API. To me copyright fair use seems to make this analogy weaker not stronger.
And yet "a jury of your peers" must surely demand some understanding of the domain of expertise and the issues being tried.
Absolutely not. The use of "facts" not presented as evidence is considered "bad" by the court system, there was no debate, no cross examination of the "expert" who provided the "fact" to the juror. Plus there is the technical problem that many "facts" are in fact "opinions", dearly loved and deeply held opinions that the holder can not imagine not being true.
I don't think the phrase originally meant "a bunch of perfectly average 'normals' too dumb or lacking in initiative to get out of jury service".
The original phrase had more to do with social class, a peasant having a jury of peasants not a jury of lords, and little to nothing to do with technical expertise, for example a blacksmith having a jury of blacksmiths. At best there was being of a sound mind and unbiased disposition. Perhaps unbiased implies not having a bunch of dearly held opinions in a relevant subject matter?
API is a silhouette, a contour, an outline of an object, but it is not an object itaelf, it is a promise that the object will provide functionality that the contour is hinting about.
To copyright a contour while maybe possible should not penalize those, who want to provide their version of an object that is projecting the same contour. A contour of a woman's body is clearly recognizable but it does not say anything more than 'it is a woman'.
That's not true. A contour can be far more specific than a general "woman". With a sufficient description it can be trademarked. While not a woman, what if your female contour resembled Minnie Mouse? Expect a call from Disney attorneys.
I'd argue that an API is not a general contour but a very specific recognizable one. So this analogy is not a good one. I hate to say this, but the car user interface analogy is a good one. Accelerator on the right, brake to its left, etc.
Sad but I think true. The burst in technological, medical and scientific discovery during huge conflicts has been pretty remarkable. Humans, we are a strange beast.
Don't forget the Cold War. Its why we had a space program.
It's not fair to compare a 100 year period to a 46 year period.
No problem, we can compare a 50 year period. My grandfather would express a similar sentiment but he would use a starting point of the WW1 era airplanes he saw as a child that were little more than "kites with engines", made of wood and cloth, to the Apollo 11 moon landing as an endpoint. So if you want 46 years then we can go to a little past WW1, 1923. I think the aircraft nearly all people would see in the sky would still be the wood and cloth type, although I think a metal skinned monoplane first flew near the end of WW1.
Then theres the issue of beyond visual range engagements, which is where most of the action happens these days...
No. "They" have been saying that since the 1960s and it never works out that way. Pilots nearly always end up being told to get visual IDs. One major exception during an Arab/Israeli conflict (1970s), massive friendly fire incidents. Shooting down your own aircraft returning from a strike, mistaking them for an inbound enemy strike.
This long range missile engagement idea is why they had the early F-4 models with no guns. What a mistake. One that is not being repeated with the F22 and F35. Lasers might offer better range than guns some day, guns are far less than visual range with complex projectile trajectories.
This is probably safer than a lot of other uses of bitcoin. Not sure it's smart to give more power to the bitcoin folk though.
What power to bitcoin (BTC) folks? Billing is still calculated in Swiss Francs (SF), a real-time exchange rate of SF to BTC is determined at the time of payment, the current BTC required for payment specified, payment made, BTC converted to SF (or Euro if that is more convenient).
In other words bitcoin is used only as a transaction method. Its not used as a currency, prices/rates are not denominated in it, the power company is not holding bitcoin, etc. Bitcoin holds no "power" over the power company.
Yes, lots of work is still to be done on the bacteria side. Again, I argue that for a ten year window additional electrical power generation needs are likely to include dirty fossil fuels to meet demand.
But in the long term bacteria is still an option, its not a dead end. Internal combustion and jet engines are not a dead end. Battery powered aircraft are probably even less farther along than bacterial biofuels. That is my point, not that we'll be switching to bacteria any time soon.
Also the US Navy program is not going the burn the rainforest and/or heavily fertilize and devote farmland/farmcrops to biofuel. I believe they are using a grass (weed?) that naturally grows in austere conditions in land not traditionally used for farming.
Though Bio fuels still have their uses for niche application...
A niche, like aviation. Aviation fuel is a very small portion of fossil fuels.
The US Navy and US Air Force are aggressively pursuing a switch to biofuels. Supply line concerns outweigh initial cost issues, these military programs jump starting the research and infrastructure needed for civilian use.
Nonsense. Power generation by coal is quickly going away. Natural gas is far cleaner than gasoline, kerosene, or bio equivalents.
Actually, that is the nonsense. Nat Gas is still introducing sequestered carbon. Bio is not.
Your description of bio was BS. Cutting down the rain forest is not necessary. Massive fertilization is not necessary. Biofuel can be generated by bacteria. Ex: Intestinal bacterium producing propane. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2...
"The authors isolated bacteria that make high concentrations of alcohols including ethanol and 1-butanol, and other strains that make hydrocarbons, like hexane and octane. These compounds are similar to components already found in gasoline.
Although the Department of Energy and many investors have invested millions of dollars trying to genetically engineer organisms like these, the scientists from Maryland led by UM professor Rick Korn say that such organisms are already common in nature." http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/...
Existing bio fuels are every bit as dirty as fossil fuels... requiring clearing (by burning down) big sections of rain forest, or extensive use of petroleum based fertilizers, and more. The EU was on a big biofuel kick until they saw the damage caused by their feel-good policy.
Liquid fuels have incredible energy density.
And yet electric cars are on their way to overtaking internal combustion cars in the next decade.
The logic you applied to biofuels being "dirty" also applies to electric power generation. And if demand for electricity is significantly increased due to the adoption of electric vehicles then "dirty" electric power generation will likely still be required in the next decade.
Synthetic fuels may be easy but fossil fuels are so cheap that they can't compete. A carbon tax would level the playing field.
So would passing peak petroleum production, which we may have already done.
So would national security concerns about foreign petroleum supply lines. Note the military has had jets flying on biofuels since 2010. They can justify the higher cost with more secure supply lines. Satisfying the military's need for jet fuel, or a large part of it, can jump start the biofuel generation infrastructure and bring costs down.
Synthetic fuels and biofuels are easy sustainability solutions
If they were easy sustainability solutions, we'd be using them by now. But they're not:
Bio-fuel powered flight is far farther along than solar powered flight. The US Navy has had some F/A-18 Hornets flying on bio-fuel since 2010. Scaling up bio-fuel generation is quite a bit more practical/doable that batteries that have the energy density of jet fuel.
Yes, and the bias against internal combustion and jets and the bias towards solar are causing people to miss a major piece of that process. The fuel. There is nothing wrong with internal combustion and jets, the problem is only their current petroleum based fuels. Switch to bio fuels that are carbon neutral and we have no problem. Carbon is not the problem if it is taken from and returned to the current environment, as with bio fuels. Carbon is only a problem when we mine ancient sequestered carbon and reintroduce it to the current environment, as with petroleum.
Liquid fuels have incredible energy density. We would probably need a Back-to-the-Future-like "Mr Fusion" reactor, not improved batteries, to make electrically powered fixed/rotary wing aircraft practical.
But with the crash of the Euro, it would be have been less expensive to bring it back and pay the taxes. Only a fool keeps cash in the Eurozone.
No, its less expensive to take the 18% loss in EURO/USD exchange, 1.35'ish to 1.1'ish in the last 10 years. http://www.xe.com/currencychar...
So with a US tax rate of 35% and an Irish tax rate of 12.5%, Apple would owe the US government the difference, 22.5%. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ap...
So they save about 4.5% even with the Euro's devaluation relative to the US dollar.
Consider that Apple has expenses in the Eurozone so that local cash can be used to pay those. Plus any new expenses, new stores, new R&D facilities, any acquired EU based companies, licensing any EU based tech, etc. The point (or problem from the US perspective) is that with all that cash "stuck" in the EU Apple will naturally look at ways to spend that cash in the EU. US tax policy encourages US corporations to expand overseas rather than bring those profits home to the US.
Now consider a 15% tax rate on overseas earnings. Apple would only owe 2.5% to the US government. Fear of currency devaluation would matter. The barrier to bringing those profits home would be negligible. But its not just the money collected by the US government through taxes, now that money can spur economic activity in the US rather then the EU. More R&D in the US, more acquisitions in the US, etc. Those robotic factories that are going to disassemble devices for recycling? Maybe those robots could be used for assembly too and we could have more manufacturing in the US, some low volume Macs are assembled in the US. Money is flowing in the correct (US perspective) direction with respect to foreign trade deficits.
Maybe make that 15% tax rate conditional on re-investment in US based plants, equipment, research, etc?
just about any bill is woefully ignorant to those who are entrenched. the good news is that ignorance is fixable even if it is unwilling.
Its got little to do with being entrenched. Most people do not understand how little their representatives are involved in the drafting of legislation, and on the other side the reading and analysis of legislation in preparation for a vote. Representatives are heavily dependent on staffers for such things. There are few things the representatives have to do themselves, show up for votes, show up for committee meetings, and most importantly spend 3-4 hours a day on the phone asking for money. Other things like drafting and analysis are largely delegated. This is true for the entrenched and the new optimistic enthusiastic determined-to-change/fix-things as-yet-uncorrupted representative.
When legislation is intelligently written it is usually written by lobbyists rather than staff. I'm tempted to say something about bias, but what makes one think staffers are unbiased, or their representative.
And this is why Google, Apple, etc *must* send lobbyists to Washington to get involved. Its regrettable, but its true.
Slashdot Mirror
If any of the listed apps takes up a significant part of 16GB then Apple is doing something wrong.
I happen to have a freshly reformatted phone, all preinstalled files account for less than 700K.
Typo, 700M not K.
ZFS requires an absurd amount of RAM dedicated to managing storage.
And ZFS needs ECC RAM, errors must be detected because with ZFS there can be a write to the hard drive to fix a mismatched "checksum" when the software is requesting a read. Bad RAM is a much bigger problem with ZFS than other file systems. Its really not a good idea for consumer hardware.
Disputed, to put it mildly.
http://research.cs.wisc.edu/ad...
But in terms of your data, ZFS doesn't magically make disk operations any more risky due to the use of non-ECC RAM than any other filesystem.
No, a read operation can cause data on disk to change. That does not happen in other file systems. This change to data has good intentions, it is to correct what is believed to be corrupted data but if the corruption is in RAM and not on-disk bit rot or something then good data on disk was erroneously changed. ECC RAM prevents this.
If any of the listed apps takes up a significant part of 16GB then Apple is doing something wrong.
I happen to have a freshly reformatted phone, all preinstalled files account for less than 700K.
That said, deleting non-critical apps is a good thing, but yeah, lets not pretend it is some great difference even on a 16GB device.
Going to Unix was a business decision to use a Freely available OS and just tweak it with a New UI.
No. Going NeXTSTEP was the business decision to get a modern operating system. NeXTSTEP just happened to be built upon Unix. NeXTSTEP contained many software elements beyond Unix. And NeXTSTEP would bring Steve Jobs with it.
Unix was a useful afterthought. Something useful to attract some scientists, engineers and other high end users to the Mac platform. People who were migrating from traditional Unix workstations and weren't sure about PC-based Linux.
ZFS requires an absurd amount of RAM dedicated to managing storage.
And ZFS needs ECC RAM, errors must be detected because with ZFS there can be a write to the hard drive to fix a mismatched "checksum" when the software is requesting a read. Bad RAM is a much bigger problem with ZFS than other file systems. Its really not a good idea for consumer hardware.
I'm not a robot, I'm an academic professional, and this process is wasting nontrivial amounts of my time.
Well, obviously. Robots have smaller egos.
Robots can also write more useful papers than many academics and thereby waste less reader's time. :-)
A trademark is a very different type of intellectual property than a copyright. Its fair use may be limited to reviews, not something functional/operation like an API. To me copyright fair use seems to make this analogy weaker not stronger.
And yet "a jury of your peers" must surely demand some understanding of the domain of expertise and the issues being tried.
Absolutely not. The use of "facts" not presented as evidence is considered "bad" by the court system, there was no debate, no cross examination of the "expert" who provided the "fact" to the juror. Plus there is the technical problem that many "facts" are in fact "opinions", dearly loved and deeply held opinions that the holder can not imagine not being true.
I don't think the phrase originally meant "a bunch of perfectly average 'normals' too dumb or lacking in initiative to get out of jury service".
The original phrase had more to do with social class, a peasant having a jury of peasants not a jury of lords, and little to nothing to do with technical expertise, for example a blacksmith having a jury of blacksmiths. At best there was being of a sound mind and unbiased disposition. Perhaps unbiased implies not having a bunch of dearly held opinions in a relevant subject matter?
API is a silhouette, a contour, an outline of an object, but it is not an object itaelf, it is a promise that the object will provide functionality that the contour is hinting about.
To copyright a contour while maybe possible should not penalize those, who want to provide their version of an object that is projecting the same contour. A contour of a woman's body is clearly recognizable but it does not say anything more than 'it is a woman'.
That's not true. A contour can be far more specific than a general "woman". With a sufficient description it can be trademarked. While not a woman, what if your female contour resembled Minnie Mouse? Expect a call from Disney attorneys.
I'd argue that an API is not a general contour but a very specific recognizable one. So this analogy is not a good one. I hate to say this, but the car user interface analogy is a good one. Accelerator on the right, brake to its left, etc.
Sad but I think true. The burst in technological, medical and scientific discovery during huge conflicts has been pretty remarkable. Humans, we are a strange beast.
Don't forget the Cold War. Its why we had a space program.
It's not fair to compare a 100 year period to a 46 year period.
No problem, we can compare a 50 year period. My grandfather would express a similar sentiment but he would use a starting point of the WW1 era airplanes he saw as a child that were little more than "kites with engines", made of wood and cloth, to the Apollo 11 moon landing as an endpoint. So if you want 46 years then we can go to a little past WW1, 1923. I think the aircraft nearly all people would see in the sky would still be the wood and cloth type, although I think a metal skinned monoplane first flew near the end of WW1.
What's Catch-21?
An inferior catch that catch-22 improved upon. :-)
Then theres the issue of beyond visual range engagements, which is where most of the action happens these days ...
No. "They" have been saying that since the 1960s and it never works out that way. Pilots nearly always end up being told to get visual IDs. One major exception during an Arab/Israeli conflict (1970s), massive friendly fire incidents. Shooting down your own aircraft returning from a strike, mistaking them for an inbound enemy strike.
This long range missile engagement idea is why they had the early F-4 models with no guns. What a mistake. One that is not being repeated with the F22 and F35. Lasers might offer better range than guns some day, guns are far less than visual range with complex projectile trajectories.
This is probably safer than a lot of other uses of bitcoin. Not sure it's smart to give more power to the bitcoin folk though.
What power to bitcoin (BTC) folks? Billing is still calculated in Swiss Francs (SF), a real-time exchange rate of SF to BTC is determined at the time of payment, the current BTC required for payment specified, payment made, BTC converted to SF (or Euro if that is more convenient).
In other words bitcoin is used only as a transaction method. Its not used as a currency, prices/rates are not denominated in it, the power company is not holding bitcoin, etc. Bitcoin holds no "power" over the power company.
Yes, lots of work is still to be done on the bacteria side. Again, I argue that for a ten year window additional electrical power generation needs are likely to include dirty fossil fuels to meet demand.
But in the long term bacteria is still an option, its not a dead end. Internal combustion and jet engines are not a dead end. Battery powered aircraft are probably even less farther along than bacterial biofuels. That is my point, not that we'll be switching to bacteria any time soon.
Also the US Navy program is not going the burn the rainforest and/or heavily fertilize and devote farmland/farmcrops to biofuel. I believe they are using a grass (weed?) that naturally grows in austere conditions in land not traditionally used for farming.
The vast majority of US foreign petroleum supplies come from Canada. Not exactly an unsecure supply
US political policies could see Canadian exports shift from the US to China.
Though Bio fuels still have their uses for niche application ...
A niche, like aviation. Aviation fuel is a very small portion of fossil fuels.
The US Navy and US Air Force are aggressively pursuing a switch to biofuels. Supply line concerns outweigh initial cost issues, these military programs jump starting the research and infrastructure needed for civilian use.
Nonsense. Power generation by coal is quickly going away. Natural gas is far cleaner than gasoline, kerosene, or bio equivalents.
Actually, that is the nonsense. Nat Gas is still introducing sequestered carbon. Bio is not.
Your description of bio was BS. Cutting down the rain forest is not necessary. Massive fertilization is not necessary. Biofuel can be generated by bacteria. Ex: Intestinal bacterium producing propane.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2...
"The authors isolated bacteria that make high concentrations of alcohols including ethanol and 1-butanol, and other strains that make hydrocarbons, like hexane and octane. These compounds are similar to components already found in gasoline. Although the Department of Energy and many investors have invested millions of dollars trying to genetically engineer organisms like these, the scientists from Maryland led by UM professor Rick Korn say that such organisms are already common in nature."
http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/...
Existing bio fuels are every bit as dirty as fossil fuels... requiring clearing (by burning down) big sections of rain forest, or extensive use of petroleum based fertilizers, and more. The EU was on a big biofuel kick until they saw the damage caused by their feel-good policy.
And yet electric cars are on their way to overtaking internal combustion cars in the next decade.
The logic you applied to biofuels being "dirty" also applies to electric power generation. And if demand for electricity is significantly increased due to the adoption of electric vehicles then "dirty" electric power generation will likely still be required in the next decade.
Synthetic fuels may be easy but fossil fuels are so cheap that they can't compete. A carbon tax would level the playing field.
So would passing peak petroleum production, which we may have already done.
So would national security concerns about foreign petroleum supply lines. Note the military has had jets flying on biofuels since 2010. They can justify the higher cost with more secure supply lines. Satisfying the military's need for jet fuel, or a large part of it, can jump start the biofuel generation infrastructure and bring costs down.
Synthetic fuels and biofuels are easy sustainability solutions
If they were easy sustainability solutions, we'd be using them by now. But they're not:
Bio-fuel powered flight is far farther along than solar powered flight. The US Navy has had some F/A-18 Hornets flying on bio-fuel since 2010. Scaling up bio-fuel generation is quite a bit more practical/doable that batteries that have the energy density of jet fuel.
... progress is made by refining the process ...
Yes, and the bias against internal combustion and jets and the bias towards solar are causing people to miss a major piece of that process. The fuel. There is nothing wrong with internal combustion and jets, the problem is only their current petroleum based fuels. Switch to bio fuels that are carbon neutral and we have no problem. Carbon is not the problem if it is taken from and returned to the current environment, as with bio fuels. Carbon is only a problem when we mine ancient sequestered carbon and reintroduce it to the current environment, as with petroleum.
Liquid fuels have incredible energy density. We would probably need a Back-to-the-Future-like "Mr Fusion" reactor, not improved batteries, to make electrically powered fixed/rotary wing aircraft practical.
But with the crash of the Euro, it would be have been less expensive to bring it back and pay the taxes. Only a fool keeps cash in the Eurozone.
No, its less expensive to take the 18% loss in EURO/USD exchange, 1.35'ish to 1.1'ish in the last 10 years.
http://www.xe.com/currencychar...
So with a US tax rate of 35% and an Irish tax rate of 12.5%, Apple would owe the US government the difference, 22.5%.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ap...
So they save about 4.5% even with the Euro's devaluation relative to the US dollar.
Consider that Apple has expenses in the Eurozone so that local cash can be used to pay those. Plus any new expenses, new stores, new R&D facilities, any acquired EU based companies, licensing any EU based tech, etc. The point (or problem from the US perspective) is that with all that cash "stuck" in the EU Apple will naturally look at ways to spend that cash in the EU. US tax policy encourages US corporations to expand overseas rather than bring those profits home to the US.
Now consider a 15% tax rate on overseas earnings. Apple would only owe 2.5% to the US government. Fear of currency devaluation would matter. The barrier to bringing those profits home would be negligible. But its not just the money collected by the US government through taxes, now that money can spur economic activity in the US rather then the EU. More R&D in the US, more acquisitions in the US, etc. Those robotic factories that are going to disassemble devices for recycling? Maybe those robots could be used for assembly too and we could have more manufacturing in the US, some low volume Macs are assembled in the US. Money is flowing in the correct (US perspective) direction with respect to foreign trade deficits.
Maybe make that 15% tax rate conditional on re-investment in US based plants, equipment, research, etc?
just about any bill is woefully ignorant to those who are entrenched. the good news is that ignorance is fixable even if it is unwilling.
Its got little to do with being entrenched. Most people do not understand how little their representatives are involved in the drafting of legislation, and on the other side the reading and analysis of legislation in preparation for a vote. Representatives are heavily dependent on staffers for such things. There are few things the representatives have to do themselves, show up for votes, show up for committee meetings, and most importantly spend 3-4 hours a day on the phone asking for money. Other things like drafting and analysis are largely delegated. This is true for the entrenched and the new optimistic enthusiastic determined-to-change/fix-things as-yet-uncorrupted representative.
When legislation is intelligently written it is usually written by lobbyists rather than staff. I'm tempted to say something about bias, but what makes one think staffers are unbiased, or their representative.
And this is why Google, Apple, etc *must* send lobbyists to Washington to get involved. Its regrettable, but its true.