Agreed, but in real live they didn't pay over $2000 for memory per unit, and they got a standard discount, so even at $1000/node for the interconnect and cooling (I would estimate cooling at ~$150/node judging from what I've seen in the pictures, BTW assuming the space was already succiciently air conditioned) it's still cheaper than the figure I listed.
The fact of the matter is, they paid 7x less than for the dell cluster, and nobody lost any money on the deal. If anybody got special treatment or a "sweetheart deal" in this saga, it was Dell.
That doesn't come close to making up the cost difference.
Let's go full retail here:
$5,120 * 1100 = $5,632,000 for the machines. (That's with the Apple Store $2,350 for the 4GB of memory. These machines would be *way* cheaper in real life.).
It's time to face facts. Apple computers aren't any more expensive than name brand x86 PCs of similar feature sets. In fact they can be *much* cheaper. This has been the case for a long time if you took resale value into account, however these days it's reflected even in the original purchase price. The "Apples are more expensive than PCs" myth should die.
I don't see how you could think I was taking a 'narrow view' when you quote my final point.
Saying you're looking at the big picture does not make it so. You're initial narrow statement was at odds with your later declared philosophy.
The fact remains that there are only three ways to generate electricity that we are presently aware of where we have the capability to manage the downsides. Those are non-photovoltaic solar, wind, and nuclear. Of those three, I would argue that nuclear is the only one that is practical. That's the big picture. Using a botched mining job as sole basis of a decision is not. Presenting a botched mining job as a sole example doesn't promote thinking about the big picture either. It promotes knee jerk reactions.
Where do the toxins go when the mine leaks? Into groundwater. The plants are poisened by this water. Sterile ground is a symptom of a much larger problem. Consider also that the nearby town DRINKS that water!
Uranium mines aren't the only ones that leak toxins. Ever heard of coal tar? Check the percentages of people who develop cancer after exposure to coal tar with the percentages of people who develop cancer after being exposed to uranium ore. You may be in for a bit of a surprise.
Because, like you and like many game developers, he's a total fanboy. He does still have to make money though so he ports his games to successful platforms.
However, it is certainly not a solution and shouldn't simply be used as a way of encouraging Nuclear Power proliferation.
Neither, however, should a narrow view that fails to take into account the big picture be used to discourage anything, much less nuclear power. A mismanaged mine paints a stunning picture on it's own, but so does a city with that dreary feeling from soot encrusted buildings and a general poor public atitiude due to everybody having a family member or two with lung cancer. Better some sterile ground somewhere than harmful particles in my lungs.
To measure the degree of environmental impact of any form of power, you need to measure not just the end product, but everything that happens between it being pulled from the earth until its final end product.
Been to a coal mine lately? Ever met a coal miner? How about a coal miner over the age of 70? Bring on the nukes.
This bothers me as much as people synonymizing Red Hat with linux for x86, and Internet Explorer with the internet; and yes, you sound just as dumb when you jump into a discussion on PowerPC based supercomputers running linux and equate the entire PowerPC world with Yellow Dog as somebody who jumps into a conversation about the internet and equates it with AOL version 7.0.
Just FYI, Red Hat is the only major linux vendor out there that doesn't support PowerPC. Very few people use Yellow Dog when they run Linux on their Mac. Most, in my experience, tend to run Debian or Suse. The proper way to describe Linux that is run on a PPC processor is "Linux", "LinuxPPC", or "PowerPC Linux". Now, armed with this knowledge you can at least pretend to know what you're talking about in this discussion without being ignored.
I don't plan on changing providers neciscarily. I do, however, plan on getting a new phone subsidy and a cheaper plan from my current provider. Specifically, I want the $150 discount on the Treo 600 even though I've been a Sprint customer for 4 years already and will certainly not be having a "new activation". Of course, if they won't buy my loyalty I'll switch....
I expect that service contracts will be more strictly enforced after this goes into effect. I'm glad I'm not bound by any annual agreement.
You make it sound like these convergence devices are all that's out there. This thing is the odd man out. If you want a phone, 98% of the devices out there are built to suit you. Do they *all* have to be exactly what you want? Can't we have a little diversty?
First off the patent was filed in 2002 - very recently. They must have pulled some strings to get it issued so quickly.
Secondly, there is no reason to implement the feature they describe the way they describe it. If keystrokes are being sent across the network, the destination machine can tell when the source stopped recieving input just as easily without a special notification. I.E. this wasn't in talk because it was unnecissary, not because it was non-obvious.
Even though I think this patent doesn't matter in the least, I don't think anything that can essentially be boiled down to "a message is passed when a particular event occurs" should be patentable. That's 2nd semester computer science, not innovation, and I think that's true regardless of what the event is, and what the notification is used for.
Patents cover implementations. The only thing microsoft has a right to here is the implementation described in the patent. The patent specifically describes a signal or packet being sent telling the remote host that a user has stopped typing. Unix talk didn't do that. In fact I don't know that anybody has ever done that because it's a dumb idea. This patent is irrelevant, and a waste of Microsoft's money.
Dude, you must have beat the shit out of that thing. I carried my lombard around for 3 years, and it still looks like new. The little rubber feet did fall off after the third DVD I played, but other than that it was a quality machine. It's not a TiBook, but it was an excelent machine compared to the others on the market at the time. I still use mine every day, but I find it's too heavy to carry around without serious justification.
Don't sell RMS short. He many not write code anymore, but he used to. Many people seem to forget his past technical contributions because of his current in-your-face political commentary.
I agree theat he's not currently technically influential though.
Slashdot isn't populated by 400,000 clones of Richard Stallman. Many of us are sane people. It is quite possible for people to read slashdot and write closed source code. I personally, for example, feel that there is a place for open code, and a place for closed code. Neither option is the correct choice for all situations.
I am surprised, however, that none of the security gurus that post here on a regular basis have commented on the fact that had the game been written correctly and securely, even to source wouldn't have assisted cheaters, and this delay could have been avoided. That is, of course, if you believe the leak was really the cause of the delay and not just an excuse to mask that they're not really done yet.
One last thing:
And are they not going to charge the public money to buy a license for said game?
The game engine itself is worthless to the average game consumer. They make their money on retail licenses of the data. The reason they have a closed source game engine is so they can license it to other developers. If they were only aiming for retail revenue, an open source engine would have been a perfectly valid option.
While there are very few people/governments that can accomplish recovery to this extent (no, we're not one of them... And no, we can't tell you who they are) the possibility DOES exist.
Heh. Sure.
Theoretically possible? Perhaps, but if you do manage to convince me that somebody actually has managed to do this on a drive bigger than a few hundred megabytes per platter, you'd still not be able to convince me that said person would admit it, and that you'd be able to contract such a service.
These guys can't tell you who the people who can do this are because they don't know.
If your disk breaks into two pieces, you are going to need to call these people.
If your disk breaks in two pieces you better have a backup or go crying home to mommy. I will bet large sums of money that disks with any significant amounts of physical damage aren't going to be recovered by those clowns, nor any other commercial data recovery service. That means warps, scratches, cracks... If you can't spin it with a head within the original calibrated distance from the surface, those guys and their competitors aren't getting anything off the disk. All those stories they tell about the fires and the flooding never mention what condition the disk platters are in when they start the recovery...
Say what you will, but the execs at the RIAA are not stupid people. They know damn well that they can't possibly intimidate enough people to reduce unauthorized copying enough to be worth the effort. For starters, they're fully aware that only the filesharers inside the US will take notice.
So, what are these lawsuits about then? Legislation. Without some form of new legislation that protects the content distribution industry, the RIAA realizes that it's members will eventually become irrelevant. If they can convince lawmakers that their falling revenue is due to unauthorized copying rather than a lack of demand for large scale physical distribution and marketing agencies, they have a chance at prolonging their existance through mandatory fees on media and taxes on digital communications to subsidize their bottom line.
Unauthorized copying or no, the service provided by the RIAA's members is not going to be required soon. No amount of anything can change that. The only plausible explanation is that these lawsuits and subpoenas are a publicity stunt. Indirect lobbying and nothing more.
The "interviewee" seems to have a different definitions for some common english words and phrases that we use every day. Please use this comment as a guide when you read the article.
any company that gives a success rate is lying.
Lying: making statments that make ACR look bad.
There are very few "low-level" programmers left worldwide. And from those who program in low-level code like DOS, only a handful can do it at a professional level.
Handful: Tens (perhaps even hundreds) of thousands
Something to note is that the data recovery industry has been around less than two decades. If you look throughout the Internet, most data recovery companies are claiming 20, 30 and even 40 years of data recovery experience. That's bull. These companies are 'chop shops' with a decent website that are luring suckers into data recovery disasters. We get more drives than you can imagine that have been attempted to be recovered by these 'chop shops'. Unfortunately, there is no watchdog for the industry, so be careful who you choose.
More drives than you can imagine: one or two
the companies you would think would be our "competition" are actually our friends
Friends: Liars. See above.
We have recovered drives from the bottom of the ocean, lakes, fires, and the list goes on.
Data Recovery: Finding the physical media that, perhaps, once contained the data by employing divers or firefighters, but not necisarily being able to access it.
Believe it or not, the StereoLink 1200 USB audio adapter actually comes with a significantly above average solid-state headphone amplifier built in. If you're listening to music played through any sort of internal computer sound card, you'll get better sound though one of these than through your Total Airhead amp simply because of the reduced noise source. Of course if you're swimming in cash you could hook your Total Airhead up to the Stereo Link's pre-amp out, and if you're actually using a respectable audio device as your source the entire idea is moot, but more people should know about these things. They're definatly worth the $120.
Until the $99 "price drop", the EB in my area was including any game as part of the bundle. The official bundle included the new Zelda game right when it came out... I don't see why Mario Kart wouldn't be available in the bundle...
I don't know if you're a troll, just trying to be funny, or if you're serious, but there's nothing in linux forcing you to log in every time you boot beyond some simple configuration. It certainly isn't required by init.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, but in real live they didn't pay over $2000 for memory per unit, and they got a standard discount, so even at $1000/node for the interconnect and cooling (I would estimate cooling at ~$150/node judging from what I've seen in the pictures, BTW assuming the space was already succiciently air conditioned) it's still cheaper than the figure I listed.
The fact of the matter is, they paid 7x less than for the dell cluster, and nobody lost any money on the deal. If anybody got special treatment or a "sweetheart deal" in this saga, it was Dell.
$900 x 1100 = $990,000
That doesn't come close to making up the cost difference.
Let's go full retail here:
$5,120 * 1100 = $5,632,000 for the machines. (That's with the Apple Store $2,350 for the 4GB of memory. These machines would be *way* cheaper in real life.).
It's time to face facts. Apple computers aren't any more expensive than name brand x86 PCs of similar feature sets. In fact they can be *much* cheaper. This has been the case for a long time if you took resale value into account, however these days it's reflected even in the original purchase price. The "Apples are more expensive than PCs" myth should die.
I don't see how you could think I was taking a 'narrow view' when you quote my final point.
Saying you're looking at the big picture does not make it so. You're initial narrow statement was at odds with your later declared philosophy.
The fact remains that there are only three ways to generate electricity that we are presently aware of where we have the capability to manage the downsides. Those are non-photovoltaic solar, wind, and nuclear. Of those three, I would argue that nuclear is the only one that is practical. That's the big picture. Using a botched mining job as sole basis of a decision is not. Presenting a botched mining job as a sole example doesn't promote thinking about the big picture either. It promotes knee jerk reactions.
Where do the toxins go when the mine leaks? Into groundwater. The plants are poisened by this water. Sterile ground is a symptom of a much larger problem. Consider also that the nearby town DRINKS that water!
Uranium mines aren't the only ones that leak toxins. Ever heard of coal tar? Check the percentages of people who develop cancer after exposure to coal tar with the percentages of people who develop cancer after being exposed to uranium ore. You may be in for a bit of a surprise.
don't ask why he put both VF4's on it, then
Because, like you and like many game developers, he's a total fanboy. He does still have to make money though so he ports his games to successful platforms.
However, it is certainly not a solution and shouldn't simply be used as a way of encouraging Nuclear Power proliferation.
Neither, however, should a narrow view that fails to take into account the big picture be used to discourage anything, much less nuclear power. A mismanaged mine paints a stunning picture on it's own, but so does a city with that dreary feeling from soot encrusted buildings and a general poor public atitiude due to everybody having a family member or two with lung cancer. Better some sterile ground somewhere than harmful particles in my lungs.
To measure the degree of environmental impact of any form of power, you need to measure not just the end product, but everything that happens between it being pulled from the earth until its final end product.
Been to a coal mine lately? Ever met a coal miner? How about a coal miner over the age of 70? Bring on the nukes.
-- as opposed to Yellow Dog
This bothers me as much as people synonymizing Red Hat with linux for x86, and Internet Explorer with the internet; and yes, you sound just as dumb when you jump into a discussion on PowerPC based supercomputers running linux and equate the entire PowerPC world with Yellow Dog as somebody who jumps into a conversation about the internet and equates it with AOL version 7.0.
Just FYI, Red Hat is the only major linux vendor out there that doesn't support PowerPC. Very few people use Yellow Dog when they run Linux on their Mac. Most, in my experience, tend to run Debian or Suse. The proper way to describe Linux that is run on a PPC processor is "Linux", "LinuxPPC", or "PowerPC Linux". Now, armed with this knowledge you can at least pretend to know what you're talking about in this discussion without being ignored.
I don't plan on changing providers neciscarily. I do, however, plan on getting a new phone subsidy and a cheaper plan from my current provider. Specifically, I want the $150 discount on the Treo 600 even though I've been a Sprint customer for 4 years already and will certainly not be having a "new activation". Of course, if they won't buy my loyalty I'll switch....
I expect that service contracts will be more strictly enforced after this goes into effect. I'm glad I'm not bound by any annual agreement.
You make it sound like these convergence devices are all that's out there. This thing is the odd man out. If you want a phone, 98% of the devices out there are built to suit you. Do they *all* have to be exactly what you want? Can't we have a little diversty?
If you haven't used Mozilla since they added the popup blocker, you have no idea what Mozilla is like, much less how it renders pages.
First off the patent was filed in 2002 - very recently. They must have pulled some strings to get it issued so quickly.
Secondly, there is no reason to implement the feature they describe the way they describe it. If keystrokes are being sent across the network, the destination machine can tell when the source stopped recieving input just as easily without a special notification. I.E. this wasn't in talk because it was unnecissary, not because it was non-obvious.
Even though I think this patent doesn't matter in the least, I don't think anything that can essentially be boiled down to "a message is passed when a particular event occurs" should be patentable. That's 2nd semester computer science, not innovation, and I think that's true regardless of what the event is, and what the notification is used for.
Read the patent.
Patents cover implementations. The only thing microsoft has a right to here is the implementation described in the patent. The patent specifically describes a signal or packet being sent telling the remote host that a user has stopped typing. Unix talk didn't do that. In fact I don't know that anybody has ever done that because it's a dumb idea. This patent is irrelevant, and a waste of Microsoft's money.
Dude, you must have beat the shit out of that thing. I carried my lombard around for 3 years, and it still looks like new. The little rubber feet did fall off after the third DVD I played, but other than that it was a quality machine. It's not a TiBook, but it was an excelent machine compared to the others on the market at the time. I still use mine every day, but I find it's too heavy to carry around without serious justification.
Go back and read my comment and tell me how it's about writing software and not about the slashdot posters who wax poetic about security.
Don't sell RMS short. He many not write code anymore, but he used to. Many people seem to forget his past technical contributions because of his current in-your-face political commentary.
I agree theat he's not currently technically influential though.
Slashdot isn't populated by 400,000 clones of Richard Stallman. Many of us are sane people. It is quite possible for people to read slashdot and write closed source code. I personally, for example, feel that there is a place for open code, and a place for closed code. Neither option is the correct choice for all situations.
I am surprised, however, that none of the security gurus that post here on a regular basis have commented on the fact that had the game been written correctly and securely, even to source wouldn't have assisted cheaters, and this delay could have been avoided. That is, of course, if you believe the leak was really the cause of the delay and not just an excuse to mask that they're not really done yet.
One last thing:
And are they not going to charge the public money to buy a license for said game?
The game engine itself is worthless to the average game consumer. They make their money on retail licenses of the data. The reason they have a closed source game engine is so they can license it to other developers. If they were only aiming for retail revenue, an open source engine would have been a perfectly valid option.
While there are very few people/governments that can accomplish recovery to this extent (no, we're not one of them... And no, we can't tell you who they are) the possibility DOES exist.
Heh. Sure.
Theoretically possible? Perhaps, but if you do manage to convince me that somebody actually has managed to do this on a drive bigger than a few hundred megabytes per platter, you'd still not be able to convince me that said person would admit it, and that you'd be able to contract such a service.
These guys can't tell you who the people who can do this are because they don't know.
If your disk breaks into two pieces, you are going to need to call these people.
If your disk breaks in two pieces you better have a backup or go crying home to mommy. I will bet large sums of money that disks with any significant amounts of physical damage aren't going to be recovered by those clowns, nor any other commercial data recovery service. That means warps, scratches, cracks... If you can't spin it with a head within the original calibrated distance from the surface, those guys and their competitors aren't getting anything off the disk. All those stories they tell about the fires and the flooding never mention what condition the disk platters are in when they start the recovery...
This is about intimidation, no more and no less.
Bullshit.
Say what you will, but the execs at the RIAA are not stupid people. They know damn well that they can't possibly intimidate enough people to reduce unauthorized copying enough to be worth the effort. For starters, they're fully aware that only the filesharers inside the US will take notice.
So, what are these lawsuits about then? Legislation. Without some form of new legislation that protects the content distribution industry, the RIAA realizes that it's members will eventually become irrelevant. If they can convince lawmakers that their falling revenue is due to unauthorized copying rather than a lack of demand for large scale physical distribution and marketing agencies, they have a chance at prolonging their existance through mandatory fees on media and taxes on digital communications to subsidize their bottom line.
Unauthorized copying or no, the service provided by the RIAA's members is not going to be required soon. No amount of anything can change that. The only plausible explanation is that these lawsuits and subpoenas are a publicity stunt. Indirect lobbying and nothing more.
The "interviewee" seems to have a different definitions for some common english words and phrases that we use every day. Please use this comment as a guide when you read the article.
any company that gives a success rate is lying.
Lying: making statments that make ACR look bad.
There are very few "low-level" programmers left worldwide. And from those who program in low-level code like DOS, only a handful can do it at a professional level.
Handful: Tens (perhaps even hundreds) of thousands
Something to note is that the data recovery industry has been around less than two decades. If you look throughout the Internet, most data recovery companies are claiming 20, 30 and even 40 years of data recovery experience. That's bull. These companies are 'chop shops' with a decent website that are luring suckers into data recovery disasters. We get more drives than you can imagine that have been attempted to be recovered by these 'chop shops'. Unfortunately, there is no watchdog for the industry, so be careful who you choose.
More drives than you can imagine: one or two
the companies you would think would be our "competition" are actually our friends
Friends: Liars. See above.
We have recovered drives from the bottom of the ocean, lakes, fires, and the list goes on.
Data Recovery: Finding the physical media that, perhaps, once contained the data by employing divers or firefighters, but not necisarily being able to access it.
Believe it or not, the StereoLink 1200 USB audio adapter actually comes with a significantly above average solid-state headphone amplifier built in. If you're listening to music played through any sort of internal computer sound card, you'll get better sound though one of these than through your Total Airhead amp simply because of the reduced noise source. Of course if you're swimming in cash you could hook your Total Airhead up to the Stereo Link's pre-amp out, and if you're actually using a respectable audio device as your source the entire idea is moot, but more people should know about these things. They're definatly worth the $120.
who is going to buy a PS2 these days?
Anybody who can't afford the $1000 that these are likely to cost, perhaps?
Until the $99 "price drop", the EB in my area was including any game as part of the bundle. The official bundle included the new Zelda game right when it came out... I don't see why Mario Kart wouldn't be available in the bundle...
Well, you did mention a brand new, sure to be priced at $49 game in your post. I didn't think I was going too far out on a limb...
I don't know if you're a troll, just trying to be funny, or if you're serious, but there's nothing in linux forcing you to log in every time you boot beyond some simple configuration. It certainly isn't required by init.
I heard of them when pieces of the ceiling started to fall on me when they started construction upstairs. :)
I don't work in that building anymore though.