Interesting when I took astronomy in University I had the same hypothesis that the Universe itself is a black hole.
One of the unintuitive properties of a black hole is that as mass increases the average density inside the Schwarschild radius decreases... even though the radius itself increases. Anyways as Mass goes to infinity, Density inside the Schwarschild radius goes to Zero and of course the Radius goes to infinity.
The radius of the known Universe along with the mass that is hypothesized almost satisfy the Schwarschild radius equation and is only off by a factor of 2 or 3.(Which isn't much in Astronomy)
OK... so Dell.ca has a very decently spec'ed computer for about $100 more... (I'm sure there are similar deals in USD... it's $399 CDN... just did a quick conversion on XE.com
* AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4000+
* Windows XP Professional
* 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 2 DIMMs
* 160GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
* 16x DVD+/-RW Drive
* Microsoft Works 8
* Integrated 7.1 Audio, Video
* Dell USB Keyboard, Optical USB Mouse
* 1 Year Next Business Day Onsite/In Home Service and Tech Support
I think it's worth it for $100 more... even with possible crapware... XP Pro itself is worth like $150 OEM. (I'd still rather of XP than Vista at the moment)
The original Korean Cyworld is a huge success... and they charge for every little thing. I think it's a similar idea and it's proven that it can work in certain markets.
Each version of the VM needs to be licensed as well... so you're basically adding at least the cost of an XP Pro license for each VM... for each version of QuickBooks... plus you still need the license for quick books for each of the VM's. I don't think you can just say that you just need 5 seats, because in essence you are installing it on all the machines still...
If you wanted to make it only 5 seats... you would probably set up a terminal server with the software installed, but only allow 5 people at a time to log in (restrict it by seat). That way you can be sure that only 5 people are using the application at a time. You can even set up an RDP Session to just open up that specific program by setting the "Program" portion of the RDP session.
If you wanted to go really crazy you could even setup one server with multiple Virtual Server 2005 VM's... that were each Terminal Servers... each hosting one application =) And the cool part about using Virtual Server is that you can license your OS by Processor and then virtualize as many servers you want and still be in the legal right.
So in essence you can have as many virtual servers as you want and only have to pay one time for the OS! (Unlike virtualizing Windows XP Pro where you'll have to pay for each VM)
So one server... multiple Virtual Servers... each hosting one version of your quickbooks... and able to limit to 5 seats per version of the software automatically... and using Terminal Server...
It is still using virtualization I guess... but it's at least not on the desktop level... and instead on the server level where you can centralize it.
Though I'm still wondering why your clients need so many versions of Quickbooks? Can they not standardize on one version? Should they start thinking about switching to something more enterprise like? (Perhaps AccPac?) Just a thought.
We use Terminal Server on Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition... 3 Servers Network load balanced... handles over 100 users... We've also locked down the terminal server following these guidelines from Microsoft
Haven't had many problems at all... I definitely recommend it for users that only need stuff like Basic Office Suite... Email, Internet Browsing, and a few standard apps. (I work for a gov't agency so most of our employees just require MS Word, Excel and Outlook... on top of certain proprietary apps)
I still think from what was given in the summary a thin client solution is what he's describing... for the most part anyways... unless we hear something different.
- Single Button Logon (main advantage) Much smaller than XPe (loads faster) XPe is actually much harder to lockdown to just a kiosk and an RDP connection (as I've found out)
If you scroll down in the article you get the press release which tells you that and I quote "the world's first PCs embedded with a 32-Gigabyte (GB) NAND flash-based solid state disk (SSD)"... Just have to scroll past the Korean lady's picture...
Interesting that the school setup 3 IP's instead of just one Virtual Server with network load balancing and session directory to handle it all...
With a network load balanced cluster you just setup one virtual IP say 192.168.1.100... and then the session directory would automatically assign an RDP connection to each of the three servers based on network load... for example 192.168.1.101, 192.168.1.102, 192.168.1.103... one note though... all the terminal servers must be on the same subnet in order to be in the same network load balanced cluster... so perhaps the IP Addresses on those thin clients are on different subnets?
Background: I work for a Health Authority in Canada and support around 300 users. We currently have ~100 thin clients deployed in our organization. They connect to 2 Network Load Balanced Terminal Servers running on Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition. We're not using Citrix (too expensive for our little shop)
Server Specs: IBM xSeries 345, Model: 8670-L1X, 2 x 2.8 Ghz Xeon, 4 GB RAM, RAID-1 of 2 x 36.4 GB for paging file, RAID 1-0 4 x 73.6 GB for OS.
Currently have 40 users on one of the servers, CPU goes between 0 and 25%, RAM usage at 1.66 GB. So not exactly taxed.
My Experience is that Thin clients are much easier to support. Thin clients out of the box can be configured and setup in about 10 minutes (We use Windows CE thin clients from HP, and you just setup one thin client exactly how you like then export the settings to a file, using the file you quickly setup all other thin clients). Plus the ability to remote control a users desktop from the Terminal Server manager is great for helping with various little problems and saves a lot of time. (You do everything from your workstation)
If you're on a Windows Domain you can create an OU to place your Terminal Servers in, you can then create an extremely locked down Group Policy that applies just to those servers. Disable control panel, limit start menu, even logging off users who leave a connection idle for more than a specified amount of time. Of course how locked down you want to be will have to be tailored for each individual organization (for instance we allow our users to add their own printers)
I don't recall having any network performance issues as even Windows Terminal Server is "thin" enough for a decent LAN/WAN environment... we have clinics connected to us all around our little town... I connect to our servers at home via VPN and RDP and don't notice a large lag... even when I'm travelling out of town. We have Gigabit switches connecting our servers and 100Mbit connections throughout though... with fibre connecting the clinics.
The issue of "if your network goes down so does your terminal server" is true... but then again... without network we don't have ability to print, access our file server, or authenticate. Plus anything you were working on when the network goes out isn't gone... your session is just in a disconnected state, when you logon again your session is revived with all your work intact.
Thing is Thin Clients AREN'T for every user though... most users I've spoken to love the fact that the thin clients boot up so quickly and they can get to their work faster. But thin clients are really ideal for lots of users with a very standard set of application needs... Office 2003, Scheduling application, etc... there are some applications (like a few ERP and accounting applications) that aren't built too well for thin client use and if put on to a terminal server will chew through your server resources. If you have users who need to play with GIS data, or do AutoCAD, or graphic intensive things... then you're better off keeping with workstations for those users... but for users that use basic office productivity apps (I'm guessing like campus computer labs for students) then a thin client environment might be ideal.
You don't have to go all or nothing right? Pick the tool best for the job;)
You also have a choice on the windows side of whether to go Windows CE or Windows XP embedded... having tried the two out... I would strongly recommend Windows CE... it's a much smaller OS which boots up quicker and the ability to lock it down is phenomenal... I setup our CE machines to be single button logon which just connects to an RDP session... nothing else... unless you need to install and share out printers from a thin client (then I would recommend XPe)... or need to register your assets into the domain?
I find that I hardly ever have to do support calls for the Thin Clients, meanwhile for desktops/laptops they usually come up with quirky issues that take up a majority of my time. When I do have to support thin clients it can usually be centrally managed via the terminal server manager.
"If you're buying a Picasso," he continued, "you can't just buy the upper right-hand corner."
This is a weird analogy... if I buy a single song... that's not like buying the upper right hand corner of a Picasso (though with some of Picasso's work I might enjoy it more). It's just like buying a single painting... you select the one you prefer and purchase it. You don't need to buy the whole body of work that an artist produces to appreciate the artist... a song I would equate to a single painting... meanwhile an album is just multiple paintings by the same artist.
At a buck a download... wouldn't they make more off of the album than at the 8 dollars they are selling the thing at Target for? How much does it cost to produce and distribute these CD's to each of the retail chains? How many of those CD's that are produced are in fact sold? So how many just sit on the shelves forever? Or... if you don't produce enough to meet demand... how much money have you lost opportunity costs?
Digital just seems so much more efficient... and this robbing peter to pay paul is silly... yes if you only sell a track in a single medium... of course the volume will rise for that medium... but in the end are you making more money or less? (Say you sold 300,000 tracks on iTunes... cost/benefit?)
Digital uptake is just ramping... if they start doing silly things like this to make it harder for consumers to get their content... either they'll go back to piracy... or it'll stop the whole legal digital distribution before it's even had a chance to become mainstream.
Yellowknife is considered a city because it's a capital... though we only have like ~20,000 people... a company called SSI Micro has basically blanketed the city with WiFi...
I had the opposite experience with Amazon.ca I bought two DVD's during the last Christmas Season... I contacted Amazon via their webform with the order number when the items had not arrived after a month past the expected arrival date and they sent me a second set of DVD's.
I was so impressed that I've done much more of my shopping on Amazon lately.
Re:With the money they are generating WHY
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World of Queuecraft
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Just like the Mythical Man Month... not all problems can be fixed by just throwing more resources at it.
Being the biggest MMORPG of all time, I'm sure they're facing issues with concurrent loads that haven't really been dealt on this scale anywhere else before... so there is no best practice in place and in a way they're flying by the seat of their pants... so they are trying things like capping servers, or queues or anything else really that might help to ease the load while maintaining a decent playing experience (except maybe in Lagforge). There just might not be an easy way yet to just make the queues and lag go away... especially if people tend to migrate to the full servers because their friends are there...
1 million concurrent users, all clicking happily away, sending and recieving packets on several hundred servers continuously... just adding more servers and bandwidth might not actually solve the problems.
So yes they're getting $3 million a day... but even if they threw all that into the problem... there's a possibility that the solution just doesn't exist... or that it will still take time to purchase the hardware, configure, and roll out... or if it's a bandwidth issue... even if they dropped their own fibre and setup a Internet3... it'd still take time to do no matter what the resources you throw at it.
Couldn't they do what many organizations do when implementing a new system and run them both in parallel until they're sure the new system is working as it's supposed to?
I mean since this thing generates a verifiable paper ballot... then have humans count the ballots for a few elections and see if it matches the computer generated total... if they do match (or come really close... like within 0.001% or something) then you have verified that the system is working and that you can trust it for further elections without requiring a human count.
I don't believe they should trust the system totally right out of the box... and with a human count for the first few elections it'll help transition in the technology and allow people to become comfortable with it. You may still want to do random human counts on various ridings to see if the computer is still producing accurate results after the full human count phase. But reducing the human portion of an election helps to produce more accurate and efficient results. (And ultimately the costs required to hold each election...)
Well in most console games I play you can hit the "start" or "Pause" button and still go back to the game... though I admit there is some nostalgia in the text only games... and during the early 90's everyone was clamoring more about graphics than storyline, but I find these days the blending of text and storylines in games such as Fable, Final Fantasy and really most RPG's these days is rather more enjoyable (for myself at least) than sitting at a command line "look"'ing at every little thing.
I've been sniped on auctions of high priced cameras for 5 cents... There really should be a minimum bid increment that they have the surpass instead of just having the luck of outbidding your maximum bid by pennies for items worth thousands... (In fact their maximum should have to be at least one bid increment higher than my maximum for them to get it... )
Erm... why would you have a table for each type of inventory item? Unless you know you will only be selling tables, lamps, chairs... or some finite number of inventory types... wouldn't you have an inventory type table? and perhaps some othre tables to save the specific attributes of the lamps, tables etc.?... so a inventory type table linked to a inventory attributes table via an intermediate table (inventoryAttrType?)... and then maybe have an inventoryDetails table to capture the attribute values themselves...
so with 5 tables you get the flexibility of having as many different inventory types and get only the details you need... then again... if you only sell tables and lamps I guess you get to have 2 less tables... but I always like to design with flexibility in mind... and still can't really see a place where I would use inheritance versus normal database design...
I'm confused... the review score is 8/10... but at the end of the whole spiel he gives it a 10/10 saying it's one of the best offerings for the PS2 this year... which is it?
Hmm... while we may be more clustered... why are your own clusters of population not similarly enriched with broadband... yes the average american might be more rural... but I can't see why places like California (which has a bigger population than all of Canada) with cities like LA, and SF that do not have as affordable a broadband connection as a city like Edmonton, Alberta(about 1 million people) which is like $30 CDN (about $25 US) for a 1.5Mbps connection?
Of course even while I'm living here in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (pop. ~ 20,000) I can get a 1.5Mbps connection... (about 1500 km north of Edmonton, Alberta) so I'm unsure why it would be that difficult to wire most of rural America... maybe there's just no incentive to... where there's a will there's a way... and telcos in US seem to have no will as there is no competition based on the fact they do not need to allow "Open Access" to their networks at wholesale prices... as stated in the article.
I really feel the population density excuse... while somewhat valid... is used too much as a crutch and excuse for why the 75% of Americans living in Urban areas (http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/h iscendata.html) are not given competitive rates for broadband. I think the article has some great ideas as to why that may be...
Does NASA have it in their budget for more than two satellites a year to launch?
Considering the announced cuts to 300 engineers at JPL... how much does a launch cost?
I guess having 5 satellites fail consecutively in a short enough span of time so that replacements don't get put up might be a bit far fetched then again... just hopefully they keep up those launches =)
Still I wouldn't mind another GPS alternative like Galileo up there...
I currently use Newzbin.com to search for episodes... then I download using Xnews... if you have a decent newsserver you should be able to get the episodes rather quickly and for a lengthy period of time. (I actually pay for alibis.com and so I think they have like a 3 month retention policy)
Since in my area of the world we are restricted to 10GB upload and download BT just isn't feasible for me... but I actually prefer newsgroups anyways as it downloads quite fast and I'm sure it's there when I see it.
erm... I think you're missing the point of the person you're replying to...
I believe he was trying to compare people in jail for life terms to embryos. He was trying to show that if there is an ethical problem with treating prisoners like they're dispensable there would be similar ethical problems using embryos from fertility clinics in such a dispensable fashion. Which was in response to some other guy asking what is wrong with using embryos if they will be thrown away anyways...
In my opinion this is really comparing two different things... and the arguments for one cannot easily to be transferred to another... it's the basic "apples and oranges". It's very debatable whether an embryonic cell has the same consciousness and feelings that a full fledged prisoner... but you'll get into the pro-choice/pro-life debate if you go into that... my own opinion of the subject is that test tube embryos that are really only just a few cells large which would be used to fertilize a want to be mother are not yet human... they are just stem cells which are ready to transform and divide into all the cells that are required for humanity... just like a grain of sand is not yet a bottle or a monitor screen or a table until it is molded into the form it takes... these stem cells have not yet specialized and I don't believe are concious... or at least are about as concious as say the e-coli bacteria living on your kitchen counter (and we don't seem to have problems spraying our counters with anti-bacterial washing agents... think of the children!)
just my clarification and two cents
I am part of a team that runs a network with around 250 employees... currently about half of the organization is running on thin clients... the time spent administrating these clients is much less than the ones with regular desktops and laptops...
Yes when you say $200 thin client plus CAL would probably equal an XP machine... but... we have thin clients that are around 6 or 7 years old now from compaq that are still being used... how long do desktops or laptops last?
how long does it take you to install a new desktop for a user versus a thin client where you just drop and go? I understand you can just "ghost" a machine... but unless you're very diligent in keeping your ghost image up to date you still have to patch the darn thing...and any software that has been implemented since... as well as any special software specific to the person. Whereas when I do have to patch my servers... it's done once for the 100+ users...
I think the savings in your time alone would outweigh the cost of that XP box.
I also find helping end users with problems is so much easier... I just hop in on their session to show them what to do... almost everything can be diagnosed over the phone! (Yes you can also do that with other software like PC Anywhere, Dameware or even XP's own "Remote Assistance"... but sometimes getting that stuff to work is more pain than it's worth... whereas with this if you can get on the server you can remote control the user) I've even worked from home a few days =) (VPN and Cable modem are great together)
Granted there are still certain things that require a PC... some applications just don't play well with Terminal Server... we've had some major problems with some of the older Access 97 applications that people have developed and which are no longer supported by Microsoft. Palm pilot users can't sync (that I know of) on a terminal server... and you can't share out printers from thin clients... like our label printers which are difficult to network. And then there are those people who are travellers and require their laptops and data with them... so thin client isn't for everyone... but I'm sure it's good enough for most...
For the people who we've switched to thin clients... people seem to like it... it "boots up" faster... and most people really don't know the difference... everything is stored on the server so we can backup everything on our tapes... which you can't really do with 100+ desktops...
The single point of failure is a relevant argument for some... but if you create a cluster of terminal servers for redundancy you reduce that possibility of one server crash breaking all your eggs =) If you have all your eggs in one basket you can watch them carefully... versus having hundreds of eggs in hundreds of baskets being attended infrequently.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting when I took astronomy in University I had the same hypothesis that the Universe itself is a black hole.
One of the unintuitive properties of a black hole is that as mass increases the average density inside the Schwarschild radius decreases... even though the radius itself increases. Anyways as Mass goes to infinity, Density inside the Schwarschild radius goes to Zero and of course the Radius goes to infinity.
The radius of the known Universe along with the mass that is hypothesized almost satisfy the Schwarschild radius equation and is only off by a factor of 2 or 3.(Which isn't much in Astronomy)
OK... so Dell.ca has a very decently spec'ed computer for about $100 more... (I'm sure there are similar deals in USD... it's $399 CDN... just did a quick conversion on XE.com
l s/pop7days/#e26983
http://www.redflagdeals.com/deals/main.php/alldea
* AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4000+
* Windows XP Professional
* 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 2 DIMMs
* 160GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
* 16x DVD+/-RW Drive
* Microsoft Works 8
* Integrated 7.1 Audio, Video
* Dell USB Keyboard, Optical USB Mouse
* 1 Year Next Business Day Onsite/In Home Service and Tech Support
I think it's worth it for $100 more... even with possible crapware... XP Pro itself is worth like $150 OEM. (I'd still rather of XP than Vista at the moment)
The original Korean Cyworld is a huge success... and they charge for every little thing. I think it's a similar idea and it's proven that it can work in certain markets.
Each version of the VM needs to be licensed as well... so you're basically adding at least the cost of an XP Pro license for each VM ... for each version of QuickBooks... plus you still need the license for quick books for each of the VM's. I don't think you can just say that you just need 5 seats, because in essence you are installing it on all the machines still...
t ion/news/bulletins/datacenterhighavail.mspx
f o/overview/lockdown.mspx
If you wanted to make it only 5 seats... you would probably set up a terminal server with the software installed, but only allow 5 people at a time to log in (restrict it by seat). That way you can be sure that only 5 people are using the application at a time. You can even set up an RDP Session to just open up that specific program by setting the "Program" portion of the RDP session.
If you wanted to go really crazy you could even setup one server with multiple Virtual Server 2005 VM's... that were each Terminal Servers... each hosting one application =) And the cool part about using Virtual Server is that you can license your OS by Processor and then virtualize as many servers you want and still be in the legal right.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evalua
So in essence you can have as many virtual servers as you want and only have to pay one time for the OS! (Unlike virtualizing Windows XP Pro where you'll have to pay for each VM)
So one server... multiple Virtual Servers... each hosting one version of your quickbooks... and able to limit to 5 seats per version of the software automatically... and using Terminal Server...
It is still using virtualization I guess... but it's at least not on the desktop level... and instead on the server level where you can centralize it.
Though I'm still wondering why your clients need so many versions of Quickbooks? Can they not standardize on one version? Should they start thinking about switching to something more enterprise like? (Perhaps AccPac?) Just a thought.
We use Terminal Server on Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition... 3 Servers Network load balanced... handles over 100 users... We've also locked down the terminal server following these guidelines from Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techin
Haven't had many problems at all... I definitely recommend it for users that only need stuff like Basic Office Suite... Email, Internet Browsing, and a few standard apps. (I work for a gov't agency so most of our employees just require MS Word, Excel and Outlook... on top of certain proprietary apps)
I still think from what was given in the summary a thin client solution is what he's describing... for the most part anyways... unless we hear something different.
- Single Button Logon (main advantage)
Much smaller than XPe (loads faster)
XPe is actually much harder to lockdown to just a kiosk and an RDP connection (as I've found out)
If you scroll down in the article you get the press release which tells you that and I quote "the world's first PCs embedded with a 32-Gigabyte (GB) NAND flash-based solid state disk (SSD)"... Just have to scroll past the Korean lady's picture...
Interesting that the school setup 3 IP's instead of just one Virtual Server with network load balancing and session directory to handle it all...
With a network load balanced cluster you just setup one virtual IP say 192.168.1.100... and then the session directory would automatically assign an RDP connection to each of the three servers based on network load... for example 192.168.1.101, 192.168.1.102, 192.168.1.103... one note though... all the terminal servers must be on the same subnet in order to be in the same network load balanced cluster... so perhaps the IP Addresses on those thin clients are on different subnets?
Seems strange anyways...
Addbo
Background: I work for a Health Authority in Canada and support around 300 users. We currently have ~100 thin clients deployed in our organization. They connect to 2 Network Load Balanced Terminal Servers running on Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition. We're not using Citrix (too expensive for our little shop)
;)
Server Specs: IBM xSeries 345, Model: 8670-L1X, 2 x 2.8 Ghz Xeon, 4 GB RAM, RAID-1 of 2 x 36.4 GB for paging file, RAID 1-0 4 x 73.6 GB for OS.
Currently have 40 users on one of the servers, CPU goes between 0 and 25%, RAM usage at 1.66 GB. So not exactly taxed.
My Experience is that Thin clients are much easier to support. Thin clients out of the box can be configured and setup in about 10 minutes (We use Windows CE thin clients from HP, and you just setup one thin client exactly how you like then export the settings to a file, using the file you quickly setup all other thin clients). Plus the ability to remote control a users desktop from the Terminal Server manager is great for helping with various little problems and saves a lot of time. (You do everything from your workstation)
If you're on a Windows Domain you can create an OU to place your Terminal Servers in, you can then create an extremely locked down Group Policy that applies just to those servers. Disable control panel, limit start menu, even logging off users who leave a connection idle for more than a specified amount of time. Of course how locked down you want to be will have to be tailored for each individual organization (for instance we allow our users to add their own printers)
I don't recall having any network performance issues as even Windows Terminal Server is "thin" enough for a decent LAN/WAN environment... we have clinics connected to us all around our little town... I connect to our servers at home via VPN and RDP and don't notice a large lag... even when I'm travelling out of town. We have Gigabit switches connecting our servers and 100Mbit connections throughout though... with fibre connecting the clinics.
The issue of "if your network goes down so does your terminal server" is true... but then again... without network we don't have ability to print, access our file server, or authenticate. Plus anything you were working on when the network goes out isn't gone... your session is just in a disconnected state, when you logon again your session is revived with all your work intact.
Thing is Thin Clients AREN'T for every user though... most users I've spoken to love the fact that the thin clients boot up so quickly and they can get to their work faster. But thin clients are really ideal for lots of users with a very standard set of application needs... Office 2003, Scheduling application, etc... there are some applications (like a few ERP and accounting applications) that aren't built too well for thin client use and if put on to a terminal server will chew through your server resources. If you have users who need to play with GIS data, or do AutoCAD, or graphic intensive things... then you're better off keeping with workstations for those users... but for users that use basic office productivity apps (I'm guessing like campus computer labs for students) then a thin client environment might be ideal.
You don't have to go all or nothing right? Pick the tool best for the job
You also have a choice on the windows side of whether to go Windows CE or Windows XP embedded... having tried the two out... I would strongly recommend Windows CE... it's a much smaller OS which boots up quicker and the ability to lock it down is phenomenal... I setup our CE machines to be single button logon which just connects to an RDP session... nothing else... unless you need to install and share out printers from a thin client (then I would recommend XPe)... or need to register your assets into the domain?
I find that I hardly ever have to do support calls for the Thin Clients, meanwhile for desktops/laptops they usually come up with quirky issues that take up a majority of my time. When I do have to support thin clients it can usually be centrally managed via the terminal server manager.
Anyways that's my two cents.
Addbo
"If you're buying a Picasso," he continued, "you can't just buy the upper right-hand corner."
This is a weird analogy... if I buy a single song... that's not like buying the upper right hand corner of a Picasso (though with some of Picasso's work I might enjoy it more). It's just like buying a single painting... you select the one you prefer and purchase it. You don't need to buy the whole body of work that an artist produces to appreciate the artist... a song I would equate to a single painting... meanwhile an album is just multiple paintings by the same artist.
At a buck a download... wouldn't they make more off of the album than at the 8 dollars they are selling the thing at Target for? How much does it cost to produce and distribute these CD's to each of the retail chains? How many of those CD's that are produced are in fact sold? So how many just sit on the shelves forever? Or... if you don't produce enough to meet demand... how much money have you lost opportunity costs?
Digital just seems so much more efficient... and this robbing peter to pay paul is silly... yes if you only sell a track in a single medium... of course the volume will rise for that medium... but in the end are you making more money or less? (Say you sold 300,000 tracks on iTunes... cost/benefit?)
Digital uptake is just ramping... if they start doing silly things like this to make it harder for consumers to get their content... either they'll go back to piracy... or it'll stop the whole legal digital distribution before it's even had a chance to become mainstream.
Yellowknife is considered a city because it's a capital ... though we only have like ~20,000 people... a company called SSI Micro has basically blanketed the city with WiFi...
http://www.ssimicro.com/
Yay we're on the bleeding edge North of 60!
Well in Yellowknife we have a wireless WiMax network provided by SSI Micro.
http://www.ssimicro.com/article20040324.php
I know... not WiFi... but it is wireless, and it does blanket the whole city.
I had the opposite experience with Amazon.ca I bought two DVD's during the last Christmas Season... I contacted Amazon via their webform with the order number when the items had not arrived after a month past the expected arrival date and they sent me a second set of DVD's.
I was so impressed that I've done much more of my shopping on Amazon lately.
Just like the Mythical Man Month... not all problems can be fixed by just throwing more resources at it.
Being the biggest MMORPG of all time, I'm sure they're facing issues with concurrent loads that haven't really been dealt on this scale anywhere else before... so there is no best practice in place and in a way they're flying by the seat of their pants... so they are trying things like capping servers, or queues or anything else really that might help to ease the load while maintaining a decent playing experience (except maybe in Lagforge). There just might not be an easy way yet to just make the queues and lag go away... especially if people tend to migrate to the full servers because their friends are there...
1 million concurrent users, all clicking happily away, sending and recieving packets on several hundred servers continuously... just adding more servers and bandwidth might not actually solve the problems.
So yes they're getting $3 million a day... but even if they threw all that into the problem... there's a possibility that the solution just doesn't exist... or that it will still take time to purchase the hardware, configure, and roll out... or if it's a bandwidth issue... even if they dropped their own fibre and setup a Internet3... it'd still take time to do no matter what the resources you throw at it.
Couldn't they do what many organizations do when implementing a new system and run them both in parallel until they're sure the new system is working as it's supposed to?
I mean since this thing generates a verifiable paper ballot... then have humans count the ballots for a few elections and see if it matches the computer generated total... if they do match (or come really close... like within 0.001% or something) then you have verified that the system is working and that you can trust it for further elections without requiring a human count.
I don't believe they should trust the system totally right out of the box... and with a human count for the first few elections it'll help transition in the technology and allow people to become comfortable with it. You may still want to do random human counts on various ridings to see if the computer is still producing accurate results after the full human count phase. But reducing the human portion of an election helps to produce more accurate and efficient results. (And ultimately the costs required to hold each election...)
Okay I went straight out and registered to see if some special link pops up... but I can't seem to find where to download this PDF?
Can anyone help... or is it not available anymore?
Well in most console games I play you can hit the "start" or "Pause" button and still go back to the game... though I admit there is some nostalgia in the text only games... and during the early 90's everyone was clamoring more about graphics than storyline, but I find these days the blending of text and storylines in games such as Fable, Final Fantasy and really most RPG's these days is rather more enjoyable (for myself at least) than sitting at a command line "look"'ing at every little thing.
Addbo
I've been sniped on auctions of high priced cameras for 5 cents... There really should be a minimum bid increment that they have the surpass instead of just having the luck of outbidding your maximum bid by pennies for items worth thousands... (In fact their maximum should have to be at least one bid increment higher than my maximum for them to get it... )
Addbo
Erm... why would you have a table for each type of inventory item? Unless you know you will only be selling tables, lamps, chairs... or some finite number of inventory types... wouldn't you have an inventory type table? and perhaps some othre tables to save the specific attributes of the lamps, tables etc.?... so a inventory type table linked to a inventory attributes table via an intermediate table (inventoryAttrType?)... and then maybe have an inventoryDetails table to capture the attribute values themselves...
so with 5 tables you get the flexibility of having as many different inventory types and get only the details you need... then again... if you only sell tables and lamps I guess you get to have 2 less tables... but I always like to design with flexibility in mind... and still can't really see a place where I would use inheritance versus normal database design...
Addbo
I'm confused... the review score is 8/10... but at the end of the whole spiel he gives it a 10/10 saying it's one of the best offerings for the PS2 this year... which is it?
So about 5% of their yearly profit will be taken? Hmm... seems significant to me
Hmm... while we may be more clustered... why are your own clusters of population not similarly enriched with broadband... yes the average american might be more rural... but I can't see why places like California (which has a bigger population than all of Canada) with cities like LA, and SF that do not have as affordable a broadband connection as a city like Edmonton, Alberta(about 1 million people) which is like $30 CDN (about $25 US) for a 1.5Mbps connection?
Of course even while I'm living here in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (pop. ~ 20,000) I can get a 1.5Mbps connection... (about 1500 km north of Edmonton, Alberta) so I'm unsure why it would be that difficult to wire most of rural America... maybe there's just no incentive to... where there's a will there's a way... and telcos in US seem to have no will as there is no competition based on the fact they do not need to allow "Open Access" to their networks at wholesale prices... as stated in the article.
I really feel the population density excuse ... while somewhat valid... is used too much as a crutch and excuse for why the 75% of Americans living in Urban areas (http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/h iscendata.html) are not given competitive rates for broadband. I think the article has some great ideas as to why that may be...
Does NASA have it in their budget for more than two satellites a year to launch?
...
Considering the announced cuts to 300 engineers at JPL... how much does a launch cost?
I guess having 5 satellites fail consecutively in a short enough span of time so that replacements don't get put up might be a bit far fetched then again... just hopefully they keep up those launches =)
Still I wouldn't mind another GPS alternative like Galileo up there
Addbo
I currently use Newzbin.com to search for episodes... then I download using Xnews... if you have a decent newsserver you should be able to get the episodes rather quickly and for a lengthy period of time. (I actually pay for alibis.com and so I think they have like a 3 month retention policy)
Since in my area of the world we are restricted to 10GB upload and download BT just isn't feasible for me... but I actually prefer newsgroups anyways as it downloads quite fast and I'm sure it's there when I see it.
Addbo
erm... I think you're missing the point of the person you're replying to... I believe he was trying to compare people in jail for life terms to embryos. He was trying to show that if there is an ethical problem with treating prisoners like they're dispensable there would be similar ethical problems using embryos from fertility clinics in such a dispensable fashion. Which was in response to some other guy asking what is wrong with using embryos if they will be thrown away anyways... In my opinion this is really comparing two different things... and the arguments for one cannot easily to be transferred to another... it's the basic "apples and oranges". It's very debatable whether an embryonic cell has the same consciousness and feelings that a full fledged prisoner... but you'll get into the pro-choice/pro-life debate if you go into that... my own opinion of the subject is that test tube embryos that are really only just a few cells large which would be used to fertilize a want to be mother are not yet human... they are just stem cells which are ready to transform and divide into all the cells that are required for humanity... just like a grain of sand is not yet a bottle or a monitor screen or a table until it is molded into the form it takes... these stem cells have not yet specialized and I don't believe are concious... or at least are about as concious as say the e-coli bacteria living on your kitchen counter (and we don't seem to have problems spraying our counters with anti-bacterial washing agents... think of the children!) just my clarification and two cents
I am part of a team that runs a network with around 250 employees... currently about half of the organization is running on thin clients... the time spent administrating these clients is much less than the ones with regular desktops and laptops...
Yes when you say $200 thin client plus CAL would probably equal an XP machine... but... we have thin clients that are around 6 or 7 years old now from compaq that are still being used... how long do desktops or laptops last?
how long does it take you to install a new desktop for a user versus a thin client where you just drop and go? I understand you can just "ghost" a machine... but unless you're very diligent in keeping your ghost image up to date you still have to patch the darn thing...and any software that has been implemented since... as well as any special software specific to the person. Whereas when I do have to patch my servers... it's done once for the 100+ users...
I think the savings in your time alone would outweigh the cost of that XP box.
I also find helping end users with problems is so much easier... I just hop in on their session to show them what to do... almost everything can be diagnosed over the phone! (Yes you can also do that with other software like PC Anywhere, Dameware or even XP's own "Remote Assistance"... but sometimes getting that stuff to work is more pain than it's worth... whereas with this if you can get on the server you can remote control the user) I've even worked from home a few days =) (VPN and Cable modem are great together)
Granted there are still certain things that require a PC... some applications just don't play well with Terminal Server... we've had some major problems with some of the older Access 97 applications that people have developed and which are no longer supported by Microsoft. Palm pilot users can't sync (that I know of) on a terminal server... and you can't share out printers from thin clients... like our label printers which are difficult to network. And then there are those people who are travellers and require their laptops and data with them... so thin client isn't for everyone... but I'm sure it's good enough for most...
For the people who we've switched to thin clients... people seem to like it... it "boots up" faster... and most people really don't know the difference... everything is stored on the server so we can backup everything on our tapes... which you can't really do with 100+ desktops...
The single point of failure is a relevant argument for some... but if you create a cluster of terminal servers for redundancy you reduce that possibility of one server crash breaking all your eggs =) If you have all your eggs in one basket you can watch them carefully... versus having hundreds of eggs in hundreds of baskets being attended infrequently.