What are you talking about? Pretty much the only thing everyone knows about modern electronics is that they are near impossible to fix, in anyway. Even if you do know a lot about them, it's either economically unfeasible to fix them or outright impossible altogether.
It's the Windows UAC curse. It didn't teach them that there are certain things where you should think before you act, all it taught them is that you have to click "yes" or it doesn't work.
The difference is mostly that I don't have to front the money, and that studying isn't really a risky undertaking.
I pay for it now that I can comfortably do so. I couldn't possibly pay that amount of money when I was still a student, but I can very easily pay it now.
But the real advantage is that there isn't an inherent risk involved. If you cannot finish your studies for whatever reason, you're not left with a huge bill and no way to cover it. That in turn means that more people dare to enter college and you end up with more people (and especially people from lower income families) with degrees. It also increases competition, for our professors can more easily fail students without having to fear their department would close. We have dropout rates that would be considered insane in some countries (in some areas they're close to 90%), simply because there are enough students that they can literally throw away what isn't the "top percent" of the brightest minds available.
That means that yes, getting a degree can be VERY tough, because nobody is holding your hand and you're challenged to the limit, but our economy knows the value of those degrees. If you have one, you're one of the top minds around and you have shown that you are very capable of working on your own, you have displayed problem solving skills outside your area of expertise and you have even shown that you can deal with completely fucked up bureaucracy (and believe me, in big companies this is a key skill for any C-Level position).
In all seriousness, this is probably way more competitive than any "capitalist" college might be. Because there, the challenge is outside the college, and not even yours. With most, the challenge is on your parents: Finding a way to scrape together enough money for your kids' education.
Ah. Ok, I can understand your point now. Doesn't apply to me, though. Medical insurance is mandatory and 100% where I live, so I will continue living the way I do (provided medicine can provide that). I also have a mandatory retirement plan (it's a bit more complicated than the US version, basically I pay the current pensions and whoever works when I'll retire will pay mine).
Money down here in Europe is really just stuff you have to spend on stuff you like, no need to worry about anything, you're covered.
Ever heard the phrase "size doesn't matter, it's knowing how to use it"? Same for raw CPU speed.
First of all, branch prediction and pipelining has become way better in those past 10 years. Pipelines are much shorter today, and coupled with near perfect branch prediction, this alone speeds up the CPU by a factor 2 to 3. The reason for this is simply that a branch (a conditional jump, to be exact) used to mean that the CPU had to dump everything it had in its instruction pipeline and start anew from where the jump lead to. Worst case that were 30-40 cycles wasted. Per jump. I think I needn't explain how this can slow a CPU down, e.g. in tight loops where you have a handful of instructions that should (and now do) take a handful of cycles but took like 10 times as long to complete.
That is, by the way, one of the reasons why encryption algorithms are so much faster on contemporary CPUs than they were on older models and why key sizes have quadrupled at least since 2005 to still be considered "secure".
And of course, as many have pointed out already, the CPU isn't really the bottleneck in the current PCs. Applications we use today of course need calculations, but they are heavily dependent on periphery, if nothing else, RAM. And that is already dead slow compared to CPUs. Let's not even think about mass storage where access speeds are still measured in milliseconds. Ponder for a moment: You have a CPU running at 3 GHz, at 3 BILLION instructions per second. And you have a hard drive with an access time of 3ms (which is... let's say faster than anything I've seen in a HDD). The CPU would have to wait for over 9000 cycles before the HD could even start to answer its request. We haven't even read anything yet, we have just waited for the HDD to spin to the point where we could start thinking about reading something from it.
So no, the CPU isn't really the bottleneck in a contemporary PC. If you want to speed it up, get the rest of the box in gear.
If it's brown people abroad, the USA, if it's brown domestic people the Republicans cutting down social security and ensuring gangs have all the guns they need and for the rest, daytime TV should do.
Residential customers get a discount because not everyone is using the internet at the same time [...]
That's bullshit, and everyone who has to "share" his bandwidth knows it. Over here you can get "up to" bandwidths, which means that you're clinging to some cable that you share with others. What this essentially means is that you take the maximum bandwidth the cable allows, divide by the number of subscribers you share it with and that's what you can reasonably expect from your cable.
And no, we're not talking about people leeching bittorrent dry. We're talking about Mom and Pop Randomsurfer. With webpages bloating from more and more bandwidth-swallowing ads and everyone and their dog watching videos on YouTube and using Netflix instead of TV, everyone is using as much bandwidth as they possibly can.
So please spare us that "but we can oversell because customers don't use that much in reality" bullshit. Yes, you oversell like crazy, but actually your bandwidth is well saturated outside the 1 to 6am time slot when everyone's sleeping.
But you need to even it out, find out what RT and Al Jazeera have to say about the subject.
News is dead. What you can get is opinion. Try to get opinion from both sides and you might end up with something that could allow you to make up your mind. It's not exactly an informed decision you'd be making, but at least one that you're making yourself.
My point is that being berated about the importance of money is futile until you show why money is important. Because it isn't to me. If I need more, I earn more. I choose not to, because I do think my time is too valuable to be wasted on money.
Is there any Windows 10 user left that doesn't feel enough like a Beta tester already from having the updates crammed down his throat that he'd really want to install something that's most likely even more prone to "interesting behaviour"?
Wake me when Win10 becomes usable. Until then you can leak it all you want, nobody who didn't already drink the KoolAid will care.
You still failed to explain why I'd want to be a self-made millionaire.
The whole shit reminds me of the story of the fisher who was sitting on the pier in the sun when an investment banker came around asking him what he's doing here. "Well, sitting here, enjoying the afternoon, relaxing." "But couldn't you go out and catch some fish?" "Sure, but why for, I have caught enough for today" "Yes, but if you catch more, you could buy a bigger ship!" "To do what?" "To catch more fish, so you can build your own packing factory" "What good would that do?" "That way you could make even more money and retire early" "And why would I wanna do that?" "So you can enjoy your time, not having to work and relax" "Well, that's what I'm doing right now, so what's your point?"
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I didn't, I was just expanding on the joke. I know, Poe's Law is getting harder and harder to avoid these days.
What are you talking about? Pretty much the only thing everyone knows about modern electronics is that they are near impossible to fix, in anyway. Even if you do know a lot about them, it's either economically unfeasible to fix them or outright impossible altogether.
For what chip do you need one?
Yes, I most likely have one. Try me.
And the average 70" flat screen fits easily under your seat in economy.
It's the Windows UAC curse. It didn't teach them that there are certain things where you should think before you act, all it taught them is that you have to click "yes" or it doesn't work.
The difference is that from that price difference I can buy another device and throw the infected away, and still come out ahead.
That one guy who used to be named Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou.
Sorry, I have trouble correctly pronouncing those complicated foreign names.
The difference is mostly that I don't have to front the money, and that studying isn't really a risky undertaking.
I pay for it now that I can comfortably do so. I couldn't possibly pay that amount of money when I was still a student, but I can very easily pay it now.
But the real advantage is that there isn't an inherent risk involved. If you cannot finish your studies for whatever reason, you're not left with a huge bill and no way to cover it. That in turn means that more people dare to enter college and you end up with more people (and especially people from lower income families) with degrees. It also increases competition, for our professors can more easily fail students without having to fear their department would close. We have dropout rates that would be considered insane in some countries (in some areas they're close to 90%), simply because there are enough students that they can literally throw away what isn't the "top percent" of the brightest minds available.
That means that yes, getting a degree can be VERY tough, because nobody is holding your hand and you're challenged to the limit, but our economy knows the value of those degrees. If you have one, you're one of the top minds around and you have shown that you are very capable of working on your own, you have displayed problem solving skills outside your area of expertise and you have even shown that you can deal with completely fucked up bureaucracy (and believe me, in big companies this is a key skill for any C-Level position).
In all seriousness, this is probably way more competitive than any "capitalist" college might be. Because there, the challenge is outside the college, and not even yours. With most, the challenge is on your parents: Finding a way to scrape together enough money for your kids' education.
"I'll go to a hospital, drop my insurance card on the table and they'll take care of the rest"
Welcome to socialist heaven where you HAVE medical insurance, no matter what.
Ah. Ok, I can understand your point now. Doesn't apply to me, though. Medical insurance is mandatory and 100% where I live, so I will continue living the way I do (provided medicine can provide that). I also have a mandatory retirement plan (it's a bit more complicated than the US version, basically I pay the current pensions and whoever works when I'll retire will pay mine).
Money down here in Europe is really just stuff you have to spend on stuff you like, no need to worry about anything, you're covered.
Ever heard the phrase "size doesn't matter, it's knowing how to use it"? Same for raw CPU speed.
First of all, branch prediction and pipelining has become way better in those past 10 years. Pipelines are much shorter today, and coupled with near perfect branch prediction, this alone speeds up the CPU by a factor 2 to 3. The reason for this is simply that a branch (a conditional jump, to be exact) used to mean that the CPU had to dump everything it had in its instruction pipeline and start anew from where the jump lead to. Worst case that were 30-40 cycles wasted. Per jump. I think I needn't explain how this can slow a CPU down, e.g. in tight loops where you have a handful of instructions that should (and now do) take a handful of cycles but took like 10 times as long to complete.
That is, by the way, one of the reasons why encryption algorithms are so much faster on contemporary CPUs than they were on older models and why key sizes have quadrupled at least since 2005 to still be considered "secure".
And of course, as many have pointed out already, the CPU isn't really the bottleneck in the current PCs. Applications we use today of course need calculations, but they are heavily dependent on periphery, if nothing else, RAM. And that is already dead slow compared to CPUs. Let's not even think about mass storage where access speeds are still measured in milliseconds. Ponder for a moment: You have a CPU running at 3 GHz, at 3 BILLION instructions per second. And you have a hard drive with an access time of 3ms (which is ... let's say faster than anything I've seen in a HDD). The CPU would have to wait for over 9000 cycles before the HD could even start to answer its request. We haven't even read anything yet, we have just waited for the HDD to spin to the point where we could start thinking about reading something from it.
So no, the CPU isn't really the bottleneck in a contemporary PC. If you want to speed it up, get the rest of the box in gear.
If it's brown people abroad, the USA, if it's brown domestic people the Republicans cutting down social security and ensuring gangs have all the guns they need and for the rest, daytime TV should do.
Residential customers get a discount because not everyone is using the internet at the same time [...]
That's bullshit, and everyone who has to "share" his bandwidth knows it. Over here you can get "up to" bandwidths, which means that you're clinging to some cable that you share with others. What this essentially means is that you take the maximum bandwidth the cable allows, divide by the number of subscribers you share it with and that's what you can reasonably expect from your cable.
And no, we're not talking about people leeching bittorrent dry. We're talking about Mom and Pop Randomsurfer. With webpages bloating from more and more bandwidth-swallowing ads and everyone and their dog watching videos on YouTube and using Netflix instead of TV, everyone is using as much bandwidth as they possibly can.
So please spare us that "but we can oversell because customers don't use that much in reality" bullshit. Yes, you oversell like crazy, but actually your bandwidth is well saturated outside the 1 to 6am time slot when everyone's sleeping.
But you need to even it out, find out what RT and Al Jazeera have to say about the subject.
News is dead. What you can get is opinion. Try to get opinion from both sides and you might end up with something that could allow you to make up your mind. It's not exactly an informed decision you'd be making, but at least one that you're making yourself.
After many, many great artists dying this year, with Lemmy dead, Bowie, Cohen, Michaels... THAT one had to be the fake one.
Fuck this year, I'm done with you, 2016.
That's a lot of words for "We hated Balmer 'cause we didn't deem it possible that someone even shittier could succeed him".
My point is that being berated about the importance of money is futile until you show why money is important. Because it isn't to me. If I need more, I earn more. I choose not to, because I do think my time is too valuable to be wasted on money.
And now you get to explain Linux. And why SCO failed.
But at least it doesn't show so obviously. I can still fake being good, but try that when you can play hacky sack with the implants.
Is there any Windows 10 user left that doesn't feel enough like a Beta tester already from having the updates crammed down his throat that he'd really want to install something that's most likely even more prone to "interesting behaviour"?
Wake me when Win10 becomes usable. Until then you can leak it all you want, nobody who didn't already drink the KoolAid will care.
Ah yes, Christmas. The holiday where people from all creeds and religions come together to worship the birth of Jesus Christ.
Please drop your geek membership card into the shredder provided on your way out. Thank you.
Brains don't start to sag when you get older.
Some Americans think so, especially the geographically challenged, but actually I'm from the exact opposite end of the globe.
You still failed to explain why I'd want to be a self-made millionaire.
The whole shit reminds me of the story of the fisher who was sitting on the pier in the sun when an investment banker came around asking him what he's doing here.
"Well, sitting here, enjoying the afternoon, relaxing."
"But couldn't you go out and catch some fish?"
"Sure, but why for, I have caught enough for today"
"Yes, but if you catch more, you could buy a bigger ship!"
"To do what?"
"To catch more fish, so you can build your own packing factory"
"What good would that do?"
"That way you could make even more money and retire early"
"And why would I wanna do that?"
"So you can enjoy your time, not having to work and relax"
"Well, that's what I'm doing right now, so what's your point?"