Yes, the changes could be implemented by the auto manufacturers - and with the economy of scale, it wouldn't be that much difference in cost compared to the price of the vehicle.
If a company sells 20 million SUVs, and the cost of each one is increased by $100 through the use of titanium exhaust, and other more expensive components, They're not going to be keen on putting out an extra $2 billion dollars up front to make the switch. Even though it's an insignificant cost per vehicle, it's less money they have to use for financing, and it's definatly not earning interest when the vehicles are waiting to be sold on the lot. The manufacturing scale actualy works against the improvement in this case. (Hmm, 4-5 more miles per gallon, or claim a savings of $2 billion dollars, and everyone gets bonuses....)
The money doesn't end up in our pocket actually. Nuf nuf employers expect you work 10 hour days to deliver "on time, on budget". Just look as all the people who post on here bragging that they aren't paid by the hour, but rather "to do a job".
In the case of those employees, there is no cost then, right?
Most employees are laborors, and punch a clock every morning to be paid hourly.
Employees. No, really. You get paid for the time wasted using buggy software. The money from your salary ends up in your pocket either way. It's profit for you. That number isn't the true cost anyway. Everybody knows that in a given week we only do about 15 minutes of actual work.:) It's likely that the software bugs are interrupting officeplace recreation at least 75% of the time.
Instead of putting out a 300 page study on this crap, they should go do something useful. Put the same type of number on what speed traps cost the US economy, perhaps. Or stay home and stop charging us for rediculously obvious data.
That's too bad. It would have been a great ending for the second movie to think that Frodo had been killed, just as it was a great ending from the second book. I guess that since I know how it turns out already it's not that big a deal to me though.
I wonder if they're going to keep the format similar to the book, which was originally supposed to be two seperate volumes. Will they tell one group's story in the first half of the movie, and then ditch those characters for the rest of the film and concentrate on Frodo and Sam? Or will they they and cut back and forth between the two plot lines?
I hope they keep like the book, but I can understand how some of the bigger name acting in the film might be upset to know they're only in the first half of the movie.
I recently purchased both a Radeon 8500 and a GeForce4 Ti4200 (I went for the radeon first, but had compatibility issues with my motherborad and had to give it to my girlfriend). I've noticed one thing in comparing the two cards. The FSAA on the GeForce4 looks like total crap when compared to the Radeon 8500. The difference is remarkable. The Radeon made things look amazing with 2x AA, and the GeForce4 at 2x makes you check to see if you even turned the AA on after seeing the Radeon. At 4x, things don't improve for the Nvidia card, things just get blurier.
Since the Geforce 4 actually works correctly in my machine, I'll take it over the 8500 any day, but Nvidia has to take some lessons from ATI in the anti-aliasing department.
What do I need that runs on any other platform that does not have a substitute on Linux?
That's not what I mean. I mean that you go and get a linux based platform when there is software for linux that you can't get anywhere else. A question I hear probably once a week is "You're stuff looks great, does it run on Solaris?" When I say that it doesn't, probably 25% of the time they'll come back and say "Ok, so what do I have to do to get Linux?"
I'm not clear on what you mean by "full price", or "third party support".
It's very simple. They don't write the software, so they are a third party. Full price is what you'd expect to pay to a first party OS vendor like Sun or Microsoft.
I don't know where you get that figure from, but I don't find it plausible
I sit at my desk every day, answer the phone when it rings and have personal contact with the people buying our software. I sometimes do instalation support, and per client customization. The number comes from hands on experience with real people paying real cash for a linux application. I don't know if other companies have similar experiences. I can only speek the calls we receive where I work. (Which is no big secret)
First, Coke has no engineering or development costs for their primary product anymore. Zero. So of course their expense budget is mostly marketing. They are not a good example of costs in a development cycle would be. Caldera would never have been able to fund both their marketing, and the development. Therefore he is greatly understating the value to him of the code he was basically given for free.
Second, Coke is playing a dangerous game in the current market. The current market demands growth, and the premium cola beverage market is saturated. The only way they can show growth (and keep their stock from tanking) is to heavily market to their competitors customers, and play tricks with the books. Eventually there won't be anywhere for them to grow. Because paying dividends isn't enough to keep the stock value high right now, they'll have to get into other businesses to show growth and keep their company viable in the public market. In fact, judging from their net income for the last two quarters, and the trend over the last several years, they'll be starting to do just that very soon... Then again, maybe they'll be okay, since conservative investing seems to be coming back into style these days.
Either way, marketing software is different then marketing a food product, as you go about marketing to the general public differently then you should marketing to corporations.
Packaging a distribution is not "free", it takes time and effort, which has to be paid for (commercial distros) or donated by volunteers (Debian).
Yes, but that cost is a small fraction of what they would have payed had they developed the software themselves. Yet they still expect to command the same fees as someone like Microsoft. Why do they think they can charge premium support fees for software they only packaged? Customers don't want 3rd party support for full price.
...paying linux software customers that run Debian
What, it's up to 1 already ? (-; Seriously, what is it ?
I can't pull the numbers together quickly enough to give you an exact figure, but on new purchases it's around 50%. It's also used by every OEM that integrates our products (by their choice).
(The previous comment is in no way an endorsement by my employer of any particular distribution)
Where does it say that UnitedLinux is going to be sold to the "bunch of geeks" out there? UnitedLinux is not targeted at geeks! Isn't this a glaringly obvious point yet?
This will be a recurring theme in the rest of this post: It's not what he says, it's what actually happens that counts.
I understand what their target market is, and if they truly believe that, then they shouldn't spend a dime at LinuxWorld or the likes. That's not where the uninitiated corporate types are. They are wasting their money there.
Where does it say that developers owe UnitedLinux anything?
He doesn't say it, he implys it. He talks like we should be grateful or something. The only thing Love's corporation has done for me (I'm a for hire linux developer) is give me headaches. I've got one right now.
If anything, UnitedLinux is looking to entice those who haven't looked at Linux in the past. That in and of itself would make me happier as a developer!
Bullshit. They're only looking to line their pockets and salvage something from the wreckage. They're using this "united" crap to wrangle as much control of the platform away from the developers as possible so that they can have a stable business model.
And UnitedLinux looks to bring the corporate application developers on board who wouldn't even consider Linux before. Sounds like you're actually in agreement on this one!
I've talked to Love on the phone when I worked for Lotus Development. (Why they wouldn't let me talk to an engineer that could have then known about and fixed the problem, and instead put me on the phone with the CEO is beyond me.) He's great at making promises to bring initial support on board, but he doesn't deliver. He almost single-handedly turned IBM off to a Domino port to linux, even though all the code was already written. (He's also the one that talked them into it in the first place if I recall.) If I had to choose someone to attract corporate developers to Linux, it certainly would not be him. I wouldn't get your rally flag out.
2. Supported retail Win2k costs $200. Unsupported OEM Win2k costs $85. You do the math.
The bill still says that you have to pay by the hour when you call them up. The extra $115 reflects the lack of a 50% bulk discount (practically industry standard), and printed documentation.
1. Microsoft spends tens of millions on Windows Update, support websites and documentation,
Really? Show me where Microsoft spends 10s of millions on Windows Update. They're smarter then that. Besides, I hardly consider security updates "support", and I hardly consider $10s of millions a significant percentage of their overhead. It's less then their monthly engineering payroll.
The single largest category of software is custom/customized business-automation apps. Getting Linux into businesses, and making them believe it is a valid enterprise platform, creates jobs for Linux developers.
I've interviewed for, bid on, consulted on, or written code for almost 100 seperate custom software projects using linux in the last three years. Guess which percentage of them cared which distribution we were supporting. Only about 10% (None requested Caldera). Guess who the biggest promoters of custom linux development jobs are. Microsoft and Wind River. Nobody wants to pay their licensing fees anymore. They also don't want to rely on another company for support. Caldera hasen't, and UL will not promote many engineering positions for linux developers.
Yeah, applications like turnkey mail servers, heavy-duty DBMS clusters, network monitoring appliances, SMB/CIFS-compatible terabyte fileservers. Those are the sort of thing businesses are willing to burn money on, to the tune of billions of dollars. And the great thing is that they hate replacing a working system, so they'd rather come back year after year to keep that box running.
This is exactly why UL is barking up the wrong tree. Write some applications, and forget about your never was distribution. If they're not careful, IBM will be making all the money...
As far as I can tell, the only reason any of these companies package distributions is for control. They're out to make a buck on someone else's labor, and they'd have a hard time selling something that they have no control over. Once guys like Love realized that they couldn't make money selling something that was free, they started this scramble to keep their heads above water instead of slowing down and rethinking their plan. There is money to be made in linux, but they aren't paying attention to where the open wallets are. One thing is for certain, they're not going to get themselves any further by telling their volunteer labor staf that we 'owe them' or something.
It's amazing how high the percentage is of paying linux software customers that run Debian instead of one of the hyped up corporate distributions...
You've discovered the unspoken meaning of that sentence!
Corporate managers and decision makers don't go to LinuxWorld Expo or any such thing. Usually software speciffic conventions and trade shows spring up after software gains a market. At trade shows dedicated to a single software product, people who make 3rd party add-ons and accessories sell their stuff. When you want to sell linux to corporate clients that have never heard of it, you don't spen $100k on a party at LWE, you go to general computing shows, hardware platform shows, you do direct mailing campaigns, you hire a sales team with established contacts. Getting the geeks drunk gets you nowhere. Why am I saying this? Because these linux only events are where these companies are spending their money.
Screw this UnitedLinux crap, write some applications! There's no money to be made selling distributions, and there's no need to sink money into developing one when you can just use Debian. These "big" linux companies won't make any money until they realize that the OS itself won't earn them anything. They certainly won't get something for nothing, which is what it sounds like this Love guy is looking for.
I am a little frustrated by this question as it implies that somehow Caldera or any other Linux company is making millions of dollars off of Linux. Every Linux provider has spent far more on promoting Linux than they have ever received. Not even Red Hat is profitable and a lot of their revenues are generated from non-Linux technologies. Millions of dollars have been spent in recruiting applications, advertising, and tradeshows to promote Linux, not to mention the millions spent in employing engineers as well as the innovations that have been given back to the community. The actual development cost of producing a product is only about 20-30%; marketing, sales and support constitute the majority.
If marketing and sales are that high a percentage of your costs, you're doomed. What he means is that millions of dollars have been wasted promoting linux to the wrong people. As much as I like free beer and booth babes, you don't need to spend millions of dollars selling a free product to a bunch of geeks who already have it, and don't intend to buy support. Furthermore, they should take a lesson from microsoft, and have virtually zero support costs. All support should be billed by the hour. Somebody needs to stop giving this guy money.
The worst of it though is that he feels that we, the developers out here writing the actual code, owe him something because of all this "promotion" that Caldera has done. It's like the guys who used to wash your windshield at the toll booths and then ask for a tip. Did we ask for this "promotion"? No, so go away. At least now we know not to hold our breath when looking for community support from UL.
Linux will be sold the same way all other platforms are sold: by the applications. When there are applications you need that run on linux, you get linux. I see it every day as the purchase orders come in. No distribution provider out there looking to make a buck understands yet.
Now, what helps you most in the long run? Market share.
You mean that MS finally read those business books from 1997? If market share is what really helps you in the long run, explain to me what happened to companies like egghead, and bigstar, and DrKoop, and (Insert your favorite failed.com here)...
"We now hope to find out more about the animal and thus help ensure its survival."
How arrogant are we? This thing successfully hides from us and survives just fine for at least 70 years, and now we're going to help it? How? Let's just leave it alone and let it live in peace.
E-mail is encryptable, telephone wiretaps are covered by federal law (in the USA), and tampering with the mail is also a crime. There is no penalty for snooping traffic that is going through your network hardware. In other words, you have technological or legal recourse when you use e-mail, telephone, or paper mail. You're just plain unprotected if you're doing buisness over Yahoo! IM.
Now get back to work, and stop chatting with your D&D buddies.
I don't know how seriously you were taking yourself, but be scared. Some drug companies have already produced gene therepy based durgs, but haven't released them because they want to find a way to turn off the genes after a short while. They want to force users to take a pill every day like they do with current drugs so that they can maintain their current revenue model, so they're trying to make a permanant solution more temporary. Similar techniques are being used to 'obfucate' the drug in order to make it more difficult for other companies to copy.
And you thought doctors and scientists cared for peoples well being...
if you're compiling something,.. if you're running productivity software, it is simply not the bottleneck.
Somebody here has never used a computer with a fast hard drive. If you're compiling anything significant, your hard drive is a bottleneck on a modern machine. I don't care how fast it is, there's no single disk that is not a bottleneck these days. Lots of productivity software gains huge performance boosts from faster disks. Anything that uses databases (e-mail apps, financial software), and any graphics or media applications benifit from a faster disk.
30% you say? A good 10000 RPM SCSI disk will probably give you a 500% increase in load and search times when opening a mailbox with 1000 messages in it, and could cut compiling time in half for a large program.
You don't have to sacrifice speed to get a quiet machine. Just put it in a closet. Also, you'll find that commercially built machines are quieter then home built models. I have yet to see a home modded quiet case that compares with what you can just go out and buy from Apple or Dell. If quiet is what you want, it's worth the money. They don't cost much more then home built machines anymore. Really.
The difference comes when you go to sell the machine in a few years because you want a newer one. Value of your $700 home built machine three years from now? Probably around $100. Value of the $1199 Mac? Somewhere in the $600+ range. Sure, the up front costs for PCs may be lower, but you're not getting as much for your money as it would seem.
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Yes, the changes could be implemented by the auto manufacturers - and with the economy of scale, it wouldn't be that much difference in cost compared to the price of the vehicle.
If a company sells 20 million SUVs, and the cost of each one is increased by $100 through the use of titanium exhaust, and other more expensive components, They're not going to be keen on putting out an extra $2 billion dollars up front to make the switch. Even though it's an insignificant cost per vehicle, it's less money they have to use for financing, and it's definatly not earning interest when the vehicles are waiting to be sold on the lot. The manufacturing scale actualy works against the improvement in this case. (Hmm, 4-5 more miles per gallon, or claim a savings of $2 billion dollars, and everyone gets bonuses....)
The money doesn't end up in our pocket actually. Nuf nuf employers expect you work 10 hour days to deliver "on time, on budget". Just look as all the people who post on here bragging that they aren't paid by the hour, but rather "to do a job".
In the case of those employees, there is no cost then, right?
Most employees are laborors, and punch a clock every morning to be paid hourly.
Employees. No, really. You get paid for the time wasted using buggy software. The money from your salary ends up in your pocket either way. It's profit for you. That number isn't the true cost anyway. Everybody knows that in a given week we only do about 15 minutes of actual work. :) It's likely that the software bugs are interrupting officeplace recreation at least 75% of the time.
Instead of putting out a 300 page study on this crap, they should go do something useful. Put the same type of number on what speed traps cost the US economy, perhaps. Or stay home and stop charging us for rediculously obvious data.
How did they find such tiny cracks? It's amazing that they can pick that kind of thing out considering how many parts there are in the shuttle.
That's too bad. It would have been a great ending for the second movie to think that Frodo had been killed, just as it was a great ending from the second book. I guess that since I know how it turns out already it's not that big a deal to me though.
I wonder if they're going to keep the format similar to the book, which was originally supposed to be two seperate volumes. Will they tell one group's story in the first half of the movie, and then ditch those characters for the rest of the film and concentrate on Frodo and Sam? Or will they they and cut back and forth between the two plot lines?
I hope they keep like the book, but I can understand how some of the bigger name acting in the film might be upset to know they're only in the first half of the movie.
I recently purchased both a Radeon 8500 and a GeForce4 Ti4200 (I went for the radeon first, but had compatibility issues with my motherborad and had to give it to my girlfriend). I've noticed one thing in comparing the two cards. The FSAA on the GeForce4 looks like total crap when compared to the Radeon 8500. The difference is remarkable. The Radeon made things look amazing with 2x AA, and the GeForce4 at 2x makes you check to see if you even turned the AA on after seeing the Radeon. At 4x, things don't improve for the Nvidia card, things just get blurier.
Since the Geforce 4 actually works correctly in my machine, I'll take it over the 8500 any day, but Nvidia has to take some lessons from ATI in the anti-aliasing department.
What do I need that runs on any other platform that does not have a substitute on Linux?
That's not what I mean. I mean that you go and get a linux based platform when there is software for linux that you can't get anywhere else. A question I hear probably once a week is "You're stuff looks great, does it run on Solaris?" When I say that it doesn't, probably 25% of the time they'll come back and say "Ok, so what do I have to do to get Linux?"
I'm not clear on what you mean by "full price", or "third party support".
It's very simple. They don't write the software, so they are a third party. Full price is what you'd expect to pay to a first party OS vendor like Sun or Microsoft.
I don't know where you get that figure from, but I don't find it plausible
I sit at my desk every day, answer the phone when it rings and have personal contact with the people buying our software. I sometimes do instalation support, and per client customization. The number comes from hands on experience with real people paying real cash for a linux application. I don't know if other companies have similar experiences. I can only speek the calls we receive where I work. (Which is no big secret)
Two things:
First, Coke has no engineering or development costs for their primary product anymore. Zero. So of course their expense budget is mostly marketing. They are not a good example of costs in a development cycle would be. Caldera would never have been able to fund both their marketing, and the development. Therefore he is greatly understating the value to him of the code he was basically given for free.
Second, Coke is playing a dangerous game in the current market. The current market demands growth, and the premium cola beverage market is saturated. The only way they can show growth (and keep their stock from tanking) is to heavily market to their competitors customers, and play tricks with the books. Eventually there won't be anywhere for them to grow. Because paying dividends isn't enough to keep the stock value high right now, they'll have to get into other businesses to show growth and keep their company viable in the public market. In fact, judging from their net income for the last two quarters, and the trend over the last several years, they'll be starting to do just that very soon... Then again, maybe they'll be okay, since conservative investing seems to be coming back into style these days.
Either way, marketing software is different then marketing a food product, as you go about marketing to the general public differently then you should marketing to corporations.
Packaging a distribution is not "free", it takes time and effort, which has to be paid for (commercial distros) or donated by volunteers (Debian).
...paying linux software customers that run Debian
Yes, but that cost is a small fraction of what they would have payed had they developed the software themselves. Yet they still expect to command the same fees as someone like Microsoft. Why do they think they can charge premium support fees for software they only packaged? Customers don't want 3rd party support for full price.
What, it's up to 1 already ? (-; Seriously, what is it ?
I can't pull the numbers together quickly enough to give you an exact figure, but on new purchases it's around 50%. It's also used by every OEM that integrates our products (by their choice).
(The previous comment is in no way an endorsement by my employer of any particular distribution)
Where does it say that UnitedLinux is going to be sold to the "bunch of geeks" out there? UnitedLinux is not targeted at geeks! Isn't this a glaringly obvious point yet?
This will be a recurring theme in the rest of this post: It's not what he says, it's what actually happens that counts.
I understand what their target market is, and if they truly believe that, then they shouldn't spend a dime at LinuxWorld or the likes. That's not where the uninitiated corporate types are. They are wasting their money there.
Where does it say that developers owe UnitedLinux anything?
He doesn't say it, he implys it. He talks like we should be grateful or something. The only thing Love's corporation has done for me (I'm a for hire linux developer) is give me headaches. I've got one right now.
If anything, UnitedLinux is looking to entice those who haven't looked at Linux in the past. That in and of itself would make me happier as a developer!
Bullshit. They're only looking to line their pockets and salvage something from the wreckage. They're using this "united" crap to wrangle as much control of the platform away from the developers as possible so that they can have a stable business model.
And UnitedLinux looks to bring the corporate application developers on board who wouldn't even consider Linux before. Sounds like you're actually in agreement on this one!
I've talked to Love on the phone when I worked for Lotus Development. (Why they wouldn't let me talk to an engineer that could have then known about and fixed the problem, and instead put me on the phone with the CEO is beyond me.) He's great at making promises to bring initial support on board, but he doesn't deliver. He almost single-handedly turned IBM off to a Domino port to linux, even though all the code was already written. (He's also the one that talked them into it in the first place if I recall.) If I had to choose someone to attract corporate developers to Linux, it certainly would not be him. I wouldn't get your rally flag out.
2. Supported retail Win2k costs $200. Unsupported OEM Win2k costs $85. You do the math.
The bill still says that you have to pay by the hour when you call them up. The extra $115 reflects the lack of a 50% bulk discount (practically industry standard), and printed documentation.
1. Microsoft spends tens of millions on Windows Update, support websites and documentation,
Really? Show me where Microsoft spends 10s of millions on Windows Update. They're smarter then that. Besides, I hardly consider security updates "support", and I hardly consider $10s of millions a significant percentage of their overhead. It's less then their monthly engineering payroll.
The single largest category of software is custom/customized business-automation apps. Getting Linux into businesses, and making them believe it is a valid enterprise platform, creates jobs for Linux developers.
I've interviewed for, bid on, consulted on, or written code for almost 100 seperate custom software projects using linux in the last three years. Guess which percentage of them cared which distribution we were supporting. Only about 10% (None requested Caldera). Guess who the biggest promoters of custom linux development jobs are. Microsoft and Wind River. Nobody wants to pay their licensing fees anymore. They also don't want to rely on another company for support. Caldera hasen't, and UL will not promote many engineering positions for linux developers.
Yeah, applications like turnkey mail servers, heavy-duty DBMS clusters, network monitoring appliances, SMB/CIFS-compatible terabyte fileservers. Those are the sort of thing businesses are willing to burn money on, to the tune of billions of dollars. And the great thing is that they hate replacing a working system, so they'd rather come back year after year to keep that box running.
This is exactly why UL is barking up the wrong tree. Write some applications, and forget about your never was distribution. If they're not careful, IBM will be making all the money...
As far as I can tell, the only reason any of these companies package distributions is for control. They're out to make a buck on someone else's labor, and they'd have a hard time selling something that they have no control over. Once guys like Love realized that they couldn't make money selling something that was free, they started this scramble to keep their heads above water instead of slowing down and rethinking their plan. There is money to be made in linux, but they aren't paying attention to where the open wallets are. One thing is for certain, they're not going to get themselves any further by telling their volunteer labor staf that we 'owe them' or something.
It's amazing how high the percentage is of paying linux software customers that run Debian instead of one of the hyped up corporate distributions...
You've discovered the unspoken meaning of that sentence!
Corporate managers and decision makers don't go to LinuxWorld Expo or any such thing. Usually software speciffic conventions and trade shows spring up after software gains a market. At trade shows dedicated to a single software product, people who make 3rd party add-ons and accessories sell their stuff. When you want to sell linux to corporate clients that have never heard of it, you don't spen $100k on a party at LWE, you go to general computing shows, hardware platform shows, you do direct mailing campaigns, you hire a sales team with established contacts. Getting the geeks drunk gets you nowhere. Why am I saying this? Because these linux only events are where these companies are spending their money.
Screw this UnitedLinux crap, write some applications! There's no money to be made selling distributions, and there's no need to sink money into developing one when you can just use Debian. These "big" linux companies won't make any money until they realize that the OS itself won't earn them anything. They certainly won't get something for nothing, which is what it sounds like this Love guy is looking for.
I am a little frustrated by this question as it implies that somehow Caldera or any other Linux company is making millions of dollars off of Linux. Every Linux provider has spent far more on promoting Linux than they have ever received. Not even Red Hat is profitable and a lot of their revenues are generated from non-Linux technologies. Millions of dollars have been spent in recruiting applications, advertising, and tradeshows to promote Linux, not to mention the millions spent in employing engineers as well as the innovations that have been given back to the community. The actual development cost of producing a product is only about 20-30%; marketing, sales and support constitute the majority.
If marketing and sales are that high a percentage of your costs, you're doomed. What he means is that millions of dollars have been wasted promoting linux to the wrong people. As much as I like free beer and booth babes, you don't need to spend millions of dollars selling a free product to a bunch of geeks who already have it, and don't intend to buy support. Furthermore, they should take a lesson from microsoft, and have virtually zero support costs. All support should be billed by the hour. Somebody needs to stop giving this guy money.
The worst of it though is that he feels that we, the developers out here writing the actual code, owe him something because of all this "promotion" that Caldera has done. It's like the guys who used to wash your windshield at the toll booths and then ask for a tip. Did we ask for this "promotion"? No, so go away. At least now we know not to hold our breath when looking for community support from UL.
Linux will be sold the same way all other platforms are sold: by the applications. When there are applications you need that run on linux, you get linux. I see it every day as the purchase orders come in. No distribution provider out there looking to make a buck understands yet.
Now, what helps you most in the long run? Market share.
.com here)...
You mean that MS finally read those business books from 1997? If market share is what really helps you in the long run, explain to me what happened to companies like egghead, and bigstar, and DrKoop, and (Insert your favorite failed
The platform that sells software wins. Period.
(Console software sales statisitcs for Q1 2002)
"We now hope to find out more about the animal and thus help ensure its survival."
How arrogant are we? This thing successfully hides from us and survives just fine for at least 70 years, and now we're going to help it? How? Let's just leave it alone and let it live in peace.
E-mail is encryptable, telephone wiretaps are covered by federal law (in the USA), and tampering with the mail is also a crime. There is no penalty for snooping traffic that is going through your network hardware. In other words, you have technological or legal recourse when you use e-mail, telephone, or paper mail. You're just plain unprotected if you're doing buisness over Yahoo! IM.
Now get back to work, and stop chatting with your D&D buddies.
I don't know how seriously you were taking yourself, but be scared. Some drug companies have already produced gene therepy based durgs, but haven't released them because they want to find a way to turn off the genes after a short while. They want to force users to take a pill every day like they do with current drugs so that they can maintain their current revenue model, so they're trying to make a permanant solution more temporary. Similar techniques are being used to 'obfucate' the drug in order to make it more difficult for other companies to copy.
And you thought doctors and scientists cared for peoples well being...
Isn't that a decision that you should make on your own, perhaps unrelated to the content of this article?
No one can just hand me a disk of the Angel episode I missed last week or something.
If you had a TiVo, you wouldn't have missed it. (Unless you're like me, and you hate that show).
Besides, the owners of the the content don't want you doing that.
if you're compiling something,.. if you're running productivity software, it is simply not the bottleneck.
Somebody here has never used a computer with a fast hard drive. If you're compiling anything significant, your hard drive is a bottleneck on a modern machine. I don't care how fast it is, there's no single disk that is not a bottleneck these days. Lots of productivity software gains huge performance boosts from faster disks. Anything that uses databases (e-mail apps, financial software), and any graphics or media applications benifit from a faster disk.
30% you say? A good 10000 RPM SCSI disk will probably give you a 500% increase in load and search times when opening a mailbox with 1000 messages in it, and could cut compiling time in half for a large program.
You don't have to sacrifice speed to get a quiet machine. Just put it in a closet. Also, you'll find that commercially built machines are quieter then home built models. I have yet to see a home modded quiet case that compares with what you can just go out and buy from Apple or Dell. If quiet is what you want, it's worth the money. They don't cost much more then home built machines anymore. Really.
The difference comes when you go to sell the machine in a few years because you want a newer one. Value of your $700 home built machine three years from now? Probably around $100. Value of the $1199 Mac? Somewhere in the $600+ range. Sure, the up front costs for PCs may be lower, but you're not getting as much for your money as it would seem.
pr0n and electronica... don't ask
You mean for the IP address? Why not?