Well, the database I work on is on an 8 CPU Xeon but the management of the thing has several layers, none of which involve me monitoring the actual CPU load versus IO. There's someone in charge of the physical care of the servers and someone else in charge of making sure the DB is up and running properly. I talk to them from time to time but all I know is that the thing performs decently right now. As soon as we get more users and more data (coming by mid-year) it might not keep up so well. It'd be nice on the budget to have it upgraded to dual cores without buying a whole new 16 way. Anyone wanting to donate a spare Superdome, please let me know.
What makes you think the database is CPU-bound instead of I/O-bound?
CPU load versus disk queue length versus memory page accesses. But no worries about my off the cuff example being the only case; a very popular move these days is to run VMware (or similar) on an 8 or 16 way machine in order to provide 20, 30, or more "servers" doing light to modest loads so introducing dual core CPUs will allow even more virtual servers hosted on a single physical box. The cost saving potential is TREMENDOUS.
And what makes you think the manufacturer of the two machines will allow this software patch
It only takes one manufacturer to advertise "Buy our 8 way single core now and upgrade to dual core on the cheap later!". You can buy an 8-way now with only 2 CPUs and add later; there's no reason why you won't be able to buy 8-way dual core capable with only a few single cores and upgrade/add CPUs for years. Big corporate servers costing serious money are upgraded and/or assigned to different roles for a long time compared to desktop PCs. It's a whole different world. One company *finally* decommissioned a quad PPro server and donated to a nonprofit I know. That's been in service 24/7 for what, 14 years? It was probably over $50K when new and they have to get their money's worth out of it. Anyway, the manufacturers know that most IT budgets are not unlimited and customers always like less expensive alternatives.
they don't offer much of any performance benefit in most apps (particularly games)
Ah, rejoice irresponsible youth! Right now a $25,000 8 CPU machine that can no longer keep up with a decent sized corporate database needs to be replaced with a $60,000 16-CPU machine. After dual core hits the market, it can be upgraded for the price of 8 new dual-core CPUs and a BIOS flash. Less money for hardware == more money for bonuses... W00T! W00T!
I live in South Korea... my monthly tax bill is $200.
That's your *direct* tax bill. Corporations in SK pay a flat 7.5% on income as an 'inhabitant tax' to the locale in which they are located, plus either 20% or 30% income tax (two brackets), plus a 10% VAT. All of which adds up to make living in Seoul the same as Los Angeles in terms of cost of living according to the Economist. Because, in case you never thought of it, corporations don't pay their own taxes; their customers do.
nearly $11 billion program... I pay $30 myself... twice the speed of my $50-a-month service back home in the United States.'"
Let's see here; he's crowing about how it "costs less" at $30 per month yet ignores the taxes collected to create the $11B system. Sorry people, it ain't cheaper; the costs are just hidden in the Koreans' taxes.
He probably bought some generic made-in-god-knows-where card
Look, *all* the PC cards are made in the same giant sized factory called "Taiwan". I ran into a problem with an HP Netserver that HP blamed on my Crucial branded memory by saying only HP branded memory was good enough. Of course the solution ended up not involving the memory. Heck, HP doesn't own a memory fab; they just slap their sticker on whatever they get the best bulk rates on. In the article about the mini-PCI card, HP has no legitimate way to claim only thier PCI cards have to be used or the dang thing won't even boot. It's one thing to say 'we don't support it because you installed a third party peice' and it's completely different to actively prevent even trying.
I'd rather journalists stuck to the facts... Spinning people's comments on unrelated matters as if they're facts that support your own unrelated opinion isn't responsible reporting
If you think this is a problem in science articles, try reading the political news.
The BBC sensationalism was pointless and misleading
True, but we need something to galvanize action. The sooner we get off this dirtball deathtrap of a planet the better; there's all kinds of stuff that can kill off all larger life forms. Just as a dinosaur.
how can you justify opposition to the inheritance tax
Umm, you pay income tax your whole life and build up capital to pass on and then that gets taxed YET AGAIN. It's a terrible form of double taxation. How can you argue that taxing again and again the same income is good unless you're the most dedicated of socialists? Remember, anything that makes it to the next generation after that is taxed as well. So it's potentially never-ending taxation. My mother was taxed on her inherited capital (not that much but enough to make it over the minimum) and if she invests it wisely and pays capital gains tax then not only will I have to pay on the base amount but on the gains that have already been taxed. Then my child will have to pay tax on what she gets after *I* invest it wisely and pay capital gains taxes. WHEN DO THE TAXES END ON THE SAME ^%$# CAPITAL???
You didn't address corporate tax but I will clarify that for anyone who hasn't figured it out on their own: Corporations don't pay a red cent in taxes; their customers do. Taxes are an expense and are calculated into profit margin and therefore the pricing model. Any tax higher up the supply chain than the endmost user is paid by that endmost user. In a consumer driven economy, the citizenry pay corporate taxes. A low income person with a Sony TV helped pay Sony's income tax because a misguided but well intentioned politician thought it would be nicer if the low income person paid no income tax but the big bad faceless corporation with loads of money did. Yeah.
Property tax, on the other hand, is not some newfangled invention like income and capital gains taxes and has had a good long time to mature into a sensible system. It actually isn't that bad as far as taxes go. Mainly because it's a fairly 'flat' tax for a given tax area (a mansion with a huge yard valued at 100 times a modest home down the street pays roughly 100 times more tax). There are different scales in some places so don't jump on me for variances in your locale. It's not exact and is more complicated than that but you get the idea. While we're on that subject, flat tax rates, whether on real property or income are by nature fair to everyone rather than the nasty scaled system or all the wacky miscellany taxes like inheritance.
You can try to call it a use tax but really it's a 'sin tax'. Sin taxes are the second dumbest tax method after corporate income tax and on the same tax-stupidity level with inheritance tax. All three ought to be abolished.
i don't think the journalists should be required to divulge their sources
There's nowhere in 'freedom of the press' that says no one has to say where or how they got the information they pressed. Journalists claim that keeping sources secret is needed to get ahold of some information in the first place but we should all remember that journalists and their sources are fallable people with personal biases. It's way too often (especially recently) used to promote the journalist's personal agenda to make an indignant show of "protecting" sources. As if how dare anyone question a journalist! Well, if you can't reveal the source so its validity can be confirmed then it's an unsubstantiated rumor; journalists who say 'someone told me x but I can't tell you who so you can have a way to verify my story' should be laughed out of town.
You never saw heatsinks on CPUs until the mid 1990s
The heck you say; my 386-20 in 1989 had to have a 2 inch tall heatsink and fan on it in order to run stably at 33Mhz.
And who claims overclocking kills? I used that rig in a variety of roles til the motherboard went out just a few of years ago. It just wasn't cost effective to buy a 386 motherboard in 2002...
Yes, they do. The criminal in question was out on bail when committing this robbery and had 13 priors. For this, he gets all of 11 months? WTF, that's a pansy slap on the wrist for such a serial criminal.
the location that development takes place has nothing to do with patent validity
But location DOES have a lot of legal implications. Just look at the case of the Russian programmer arrested when visiting the USA for writing in Russia software legal in Russia.
as people need to be continuously educated on what needs to be done when a tsunami hit
How hard is it to remember 'RUN AWAY!'?
After possibly a couple of false alarms
The Hawaiian system has yet to go off falsely. And what to do when it ever does go off is part of the public school curriculum through all 12 grades as well as what happened to cause it to be needed in the first place. Hardly forgettable, go to lunch material.
What the heck kind of business model is this? True, they're getting panned in 99% of the comments here, but isn't it a better idea to say "we are looking at an initial run of however many orders we get in the next three weeks" or similar? Talk about slack; it's obvious they're college students whose lives are being subsidized.
SQL addicts who insist that almost everything about an application should be coded in SQL
If it's written in ANSI SQL then it *can* move from one DB to another without much pain. The upside to using all SQL is that in most cases (not always, I admit) it is MUCH faster and more efficient overall to let the RDBMS manage the data instead of shuffling it off to an app to do the work.
The problem arises when the 'SQL addicts' in question are using platform dependent bonus commands which would certainly cause a problem. Just like all those annoying business website that require MS Explorer because they use special MS extensions.
A comprehensive tsunami warning system needs to be maintained
True, it needs to be maintained. But see this link describing the total cost of a *worldwide* system as $30 million. Even if you have to replace the thing every 50 years (and you don't, the Hawaiian system is that old and still working with minor maintenance) it's DIRT CHEAP compared to the $1B the USA Federal government is sending in disaster relief.
Depends on what you mean by "sucks". The GINI index for the USA isn't that bad at 40. Sort this table by Gini. Higher numbers are less equal distribution of wealth. You'll see the USA ranking in the middle. What's more interesting is sorting by human development shows that with an average GINI index, the USA is #7. So unequal distribution of wealth does not have to equal a lousy country. Compare to say, China with an almost identical GINI rating and yet #104 in human developments.
Well then perhaps nothing at all would be just as well. Since when is a 'donation' a requirmed amount or even a requirement in the first place? Maybe that makes you feel proud, but it makes me feel sick.
It makes me sick that a comprehensive tsunami warning system for that entire region of the world costs for a tiny fraction of $950 million. But rather than spend money to better their citizens the corrupt governments line their own pockets and now come crying to us for donations. It also makes me sick that barely a year ago a maylay terrorist blew up almost 300 westerners in a night club. Now we send them whopping loads of money for a natural disaster that some of the mullahs there claim is punishment for them not killing more of us. And people like you want to send more to them?!?
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If he's hosting his database on an 8-way server
Well, the database I work on is on an 8 CPU Xeon but the management of the thing has several layers, none of which involve me monitoring the actual CPU load versus IO. There's someone in charge of the physical care of the servers and someone else in charge of making sure the DB is up and running properly. I talk to them from time to time but all I know is that the thing performs decently right now. As soon as we get more users and more data (coming by mid-year) it might not keep up so well. It'd be nice on the budget to have it upgraded to dual cores without buying a whole new 16 way. Anyone wanting to donate a spare Superdome, please let me know.
What makes you think the database is CPU-bound instead of I/O-bound?
CPU load versus disk queue length versus memory page accesses. But no worries about my off the cuff example being the only case; a very popular move these days is to run VMware (or similar) on an 8 or 16 way machine in order to provide 20, 30, or more "servers" doing light to modest loads so introducing dual core CPUs will allow even more virtual servers hosted on a single physical box. The cost saving potential is TREMENDOUS.
And what makes you think the manufacturer of the two machines will allow this software patch
It only takes one manufacturer to advertise "Buy our 8 way single core now and upgrade to dual core on the cheap later!". You can buy an 8-way now with only 2 CPUs and add later; there's no reason why you won't be able to buy 8-way dual core capable with only a few single cores and upgrade/add CPUs for years. Big corporate servers costing serious money are upgraded and/or assigned to different roles for a long time compared to desktop PCs. It's a whole different world. One company *finally* decommissioned a quad PPro server and donated to a nonprofit I know. That's been in service 24/7 for what, 14 years? It was probably over $50K when new and they have to get their money's worth out of it. Anyway, the manufacturers know that most IT budgets are not unlimited and customers always like less expensive alternatives.
they don't offer much of any performance benefit in most apps (particularly games)
Ah, rejoice irresponsible youth! Right now a $25,000 8 CPU machine that can no longer keep up with a decent sized corporate database needs to be replaced with a $60,000 16-CPU machine. After dual core hits the market, it can be upgraded for the price of 8 new dual-core CPUs and a BIOS flash. Less money for hardware == more money for bonuses... W00T! W00T!
I live in South Korea ... my monthly tax bill is $200.
That's your *direct* tax bill. Corporations in SK pay a flat 7.5% on income as an 'inhabitant tax' to the locale in which they are located, plus either 20% or 30% income tax (two brackets), plus a 10% VAT. All of which adds up to make living in Seoul the same as Los Angeles in terms of cost of living according to the Economist. Because, in case you never thought of it, corporations don't pay their own taxes; their customers do.
nearly $11 billion program ... I pay $30 myself ... twice the speed of my $50-a-month service back home in the United States.'"
Let's see here; he's crowing about how it "costs less" at $30 per month yet ignores the taxes collected to create the $11B system. Sorry people, it ain't cheaper; the costs are just hidden in the Koreans' taxes.
He probably bought some generic made-in-god-knows-where card
Look, *all* the PC cards are made in the same giant sized factory called "Taiwan". I ran into a problem with an HP Netserver that HP blamed on my Crucial branded memory by saying only HP branded memory was good enough. Of course the solution ended up not involving the memory. Heck, HP doesn't own a memory fab; they just slap their sticker on whatever they get the best bulk rates on. In the article about the mini-PCI card, HP has no legitimate way to claim only thier PCI cards have to be used or the dang thing won't even boot. It's one thing to say 'we don't support it because you installed a third party peice' and it's completely different to actively prevent even trying.
I'd rather journalists stuck to the facts ... Spinning people's comments on unrelated matters as if they're facts that support your own unrelated opinion isn't responsible reporting
If you think this is a problem in science articles, try reading the political news.
The BBC sensationalism was pointless and misleading
True, but we need something to galvanize action. The sooner we get off this dirtball deathtrap of a planet the better; there's all kinds of stuff that can kill off all larger life forms. Just as a dinosaur.
how can you justify opposition to the inheritance tax
Umm, you pay income tax your whole life and build up capital to pass on and then that gets taxed YET AGAIN. It's a terrible form of double taxation. How can you argue that taxing again and again the same income is good unless you're the most dedicated of socialists? Remember, anything that makes it to the next generation after that is taxed as well. So it's potentially never-ending taxation. My mother was taxed on her inherited capital (not that much but enough to make it over the minimum) and if she invests it wisely and pays capital gains tax then not only will I have to pay on the base amount but on the gains that have already been taxed. Then my child will have to pay tax on what she gets after *I* invest it wisely and pay capital gains taxes. WHEN DO THE TAXES END ON THE SAME ^%$# CAPITAL???
You didn't address corporate tax but I will clarify that for anyone who hasn't figured it out on their own: Corporations don't pay a red cent in taxes; their customers do. Taxes are an expense and are calculated into profit margin and therefore the pricing model. Any tax higher up the supply chain than the endmost user is paid by that endmost user. In a consumer driven economy, the citizenry pay corporate taxes. A low income person with a Sony TV helped pay Sony's income tax because a misguided but well intentioned politician thought it would be nicer if the low income person paid no income tax but the big bad faceless corporation with loads of money did. Yeah.
Property tax, on the other hand, is not some newfangled invention like income and capital gains taxes and has had a good long time to mature into a sensible system. It actually isn't that bad as far as taxes go. Mainly because it's a fairly 'flat' tax for a given tax area (a mansion with a huge yard valued at 100 times a modest home down the street pays roughly 100 times more tax). There are different scales in some places so don't jump on me for variances in your locale. It's not exact and is more complicated than that but you get the idea. While we're on that subject, flat tax rates, whether on real property or income are by nature fair to everyone rather than the nasty scaled system or all the wacky miscellany taxes like inheritance.
It isn't a 'sales tax' it's a 'use tax'
You can try to call it a use tax but really it's a 'sin tax'. Sin taxes are the second dumbest tax method after corporate income tax and on the same tax-stupidity level with inheritance tax. All three ought to be abolished.
i don't think the journalists should be required to divulge their sources
There's nowhere in 'freedom of the press' that says no one has to say where or how they got the information they pressed. Journalists claim that keeping sources secret is needed to get ahold of some information in the first place but we should all remember that journalists and their sources are fallable people with personal biases. It's way too often (especially recently) used to promote the journalist's personal agenda to make an indignant show of "protecting" sources. As if how dare anyone question a journalist! Well, if you can't reveal the source so its validity can be confirmed then it's an unsubstantiated rumor; journalists who say 'someone told me x but I can't tell you who so you can have a way to verify my story' should be laughed out of town.
You never saw heatsinks on CPUs until the mid 1990s
The heck you say; my 386-20 in 1989 had to have a 2 inch tall heatsink and fan on it in order to run stably at 33Mhz.
And who claims overclocking kills? I used that rig in a variety of roles til the motherboard went out just a few of years ago. It just wasn't cost effective to buy a 386 motherboard in 2002...
moved next door to a hotspot
Build or buy a high gain antenna and you just need to be able to see the location from however far away.
Given he was 19, most of the priors were presumably when he was legally a child
One also wonders why parents of such children aren't held to much account.
the Brit's don't mess around!
Yes, they do. The criminal in question was out on bail when committing this robbery and had 13 priors. For this, he gets all of 11 months? WTF, that's a pansy slap on the wrist for such a serial criminal.
I'm not sure how you work this out. The library at Alexandria was destroyed by fire
Because there was just one Library but there's scads of computers all over the world.
The president is a ... heavy drinker
Let me guess, you were so much happier back when the president was a pot smoker?
the location that development takes place has nothing to do with patent validity
But location DOES have a lot of legal implications. Just look at the case of the Russian programmer arrested when visiting the USA for writing in Russia software legal in Russia.
as people need to be continuously educated on what needs to be done when a tsunami hit
How hard is it to remember 'RUN AWAY!'?
After possibly a couple of false alarms
The Hawaiian system has yet to go off falsely. And what to do when it ever does go off is part of the public school curriculum through all 12 grades as well as what happened to cause it to be needed in the first place. Hardly forgettable, go to lunch material.
We are looking at an initial run of only 2 cases.
What the heck kind of business model is this? True, they're getting panned in 99% of the comments here, but isn't it a better idea to say "we are looking at an initial run of however many orders we get in the next three weeks" or similar? Talk about slack; it's obvious they're college students whose lives are being subsidized.
SQL addicts who insist that almost everything about an application should be coded in SQL
If it's written in ANSI SQL then it *can* move from one DB to another without much pain. The upside to using all SQL is that in most cases (not always, I admit) it is MUCH faster and more efficient overall to let the RDBMS manage the data instead of shuffling it off to an app to do the work.
The problem arises when the 'SQL addicts' in question are using platform dependent bonus commands which would certainly cause a problem. Just like all those annoying business website that require MS Explorer because they use special MS extensions.
A comprehensive tsunami warning system needs to be maintained
True, it needs to be maintained. But see this link describing the total cost of a *worldwide* system as $30 million. Even if you have to replace the thing every 50 years (and you don't, the Hawaiian system is that old and still working with minor maintenance) it's DIRT CHEAP compared to the $1B the USA Federal government is sending in disaster relief.
The wealth distribution in this country sucks
Depends on what you mean by "sucks". The GINI index for the USA isn't that bad at 40. Sort this table by Gini. Higher numbers are less equal distribution of wealth. You'll see the USA ranking in the middle. What's more interesting is sorting by human development shows that with an average GINI index, the USA is #7. So unequal distribution of wealth does not have to equal a lousy country. Compare to say, China with an almost identical GINI rating and yet #104 in human developments.
You are one sick fuck.
Sounds like somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!
$950 million is a pathetic excuse for a donation
Well then perhaps nothing at all would be just as well. Since when is a 'donation' a requirmed amount or even a requirement in the first place?
Maybe that makes you feel proud, but it makes me feel sick.
It makes me sick that a comprehensive tsunami warning system for that entire region of the world costs for a tiny fraction of $950 million. But rather than spend money to better their citizens the corrupt governments line their own pockets and now come crying to us for donations. It also makes me sick that barely a year ago a maylay terrorist blew up almost 300 westerners in a night club. Now we send them whopping loads of money for a natural disaster that some of the mullahs there claim is punishment for them not killing more of us. And people like you want to send more to them?!?