... would it be possible for Apple to realize who their customers are and restore the ability to do two-way copying of MP3 (non-AAC, really) songs in iTunes? That got yanked a while ago, and it's an irritating functionality loss. Therearealternatives (hat tip: MacWorld), but Apple's customer control tactics are almost as bad as the record companies'.
I wonder how this will affect AMD's GPU offerings
on
NVIDIA To Buy AGEIA
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't pay close attention to the GPU market in general, though lately I've been interested in a few numerical modeling projects that could benefit from high-performance computing. The AMD Firestream 9170 is supposed to be released in the first quarter of this year, with a peak speed of 500 GFLOPS, most likely single-precision, but the beauty part is that it should also support double-precision, the numeric standard for most computational modeling. NVidia's option in this space is the Tesla C870; I wonder whether this move to purchase another GPU line will divert resources away from their number-crunching-first GPUs.
However, MS is headquartered in Washington, uses plenty of Washington's scarce natural resources, but has opted to not pay full value for this. I fail to understand why anyone (outside of those who stand to gain financially from transactions like this) would believe this type of behavior is desirable.
Which "scarce natural resources" in particular are we talking about?
Pro-government, pro-taxation arguments that put government needs first inevitably devolve onto government as a religion, and high taxes as its catechism. The end game of that approach is to simply take everything from anybody earning any income or making any kind of transaction; this, of course, is what we used to call feudalism, and chasing that off was one of the side effects of the Enlightenment. The idealists who claim, with a straight face, that this is not so will never tell you just where their plans should end or how much is "fair", just more than is currently being collected. So grows the State, and their mad plans for running things on somebody else's nickel, coin they didn't have to earn.
Salon had a very similar piece today in its "How The World Works" column by Andrew Leonard. Leonard can be a very dogmatic statist when it comes to economic policy, but I think he pretty much nailed the tenor of this deal:
Except that this Microsoft bid, made at the late date of February 2008, even if it can't be considered a move made out of desperation, is at the very least a move generated by massive frustration. Try as it might, Microsoft cannot gain ground on Google -- the company that currently claims ownership of the soul of Silicon Valley (as in -- we can have fun and make a bazillion dollars). So where once a Microsoft bid for Yahoo would have been seen as presaging the long-awaited total triumph of Gates and Co. over the freewheeling Valley, now all it does is prove that winning every battle it fights is no longer a Microsoft birthright. Microsoft is playing catch-up from further behind than ever. The future requires a major beachhead on the Web. Microsoft, after at least a decade of Herculean effort, still doesn't have one. So it wants to buy the biggest one it can find.
I wonder what effect a Microsoft buyout of Yahoo would have on various open-source initiatives Yahoo is involved in. Microsoft wouldn't be so dumb as to kill them off immediately -- that would be bad press, and possibly invite retaliation from the next Attorney General -- but their history at Hotmail indicates a revulsion to all things open source.
I remember reading about some fracas with some congressman wanting to install sodium-cooled nuclear reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers. Hyman Rickover, who was running the Navy's nuclear-powered fleet at the time, got hauled in front of a congressional panel; he dropped a small chunk of metallic sodium into some water and asked, following the ensuing fire and explosion, whether there were any questions.
The Navy commissioned one sub with a sodium-cooled reactor (the U.S.S. Seawolf), but it was the only one.
Beethoven was a prime example -- in fact, the first -- of a composer who did not need aristocratic patronage. He paved the way for a self-sustaining business by publishing, selling subscription concerts, and acquiring commissions from wealthy patrons. He did not live or die by a single royal finger, though he did accept individual commissions from them.
Though the proffered reason this is happening is because of FCC pressure, I wonder that the real reason for this isn't advertiser interest in seeing an end to electronic babel. With every major cable system using (effectively) proprietary hardware, detailed viewing habit data acquisition is difficult or at least complex. I would be very interested to see what kind of information will be shipped back to the provider end, and when. For instance, if you watch a time-delayed show on your DVR does it rat on you when you fast-forward past the commercials? That has to be valuable to advertisers by itself, and getting it in a uniform format regardless of provider would be helpful, too.
Hauling vast quantities of cargo around the world simply to exploit cheaper labor elsewhere, while consuming vast quantities of nonrenewable resources, is not sustainable.
This is straight-up BS. Trade is going to pull the world's poor out of poverty, nothing else. Proof enough of that can be seen in the huge drains on world commodity supplies lately; the former undeveloped world is developing, fast, and they've got the money to do it. That didn't come through some five-year plan from the fever dream of a Comintern big shot, but because they finally figured out how to take advantage of the one thing the Chinese (and Indians, etc.) had in spades: cheap labor.
What we really need is cheap energy (ultimately, fusion), and while we're waiting for that, ways to stretch what we've got so we're more efficient. Shutting down global trade is just not going to happen.
Glenn Greenwald had a good report on this today; incredibly, only 10 senators voted against this bill. Reid allowed the bill to proceed despite Dodd's hold (the only one Reid has disallowed). You'd think Reid was bought and paid for by AT&T or something.
Glenn Reynolds has been one of the president's principle cheerleaders for years, rah-rah-rahing for the gutted FISA amendment that basically allowed the government to do whatever it damn well wanted. Now he's publicly worried about state accountability? What a jackass and a hypocrite.
His hyperventilation amounts to ignoring SCO's inflated claims of ownership to everything, failure to prove they owned what they claimed -- which, by the way, they were never able to show in court what it was that they claimed they owned! This is legal wankery at its lowest, folks. Nothing to see here. Move on.
You had me right up to here
on
Google Goes Green
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· Score: 0, Troll
So, yes, we need breeder reactors, desperately. We don't need Las Vegas. We don't need Phoenix. We don't need LA or Bakersfield. And we don't need to hold on to that embarrassing meme about Uranium in sea water.
Yet all those cities you mention would have higher-than-average insolation. What was your point about diversity of energy sources, again?
By the way, I just have to say it: everyone living in those places really appreciates your commie-with-a-five-year-plan attitude toward their house. That's just stupid and dictator-like, and who appointed you to be in charge, anyway?
While the average reader here has never been to such a site, porn has been a driving force in the economics and technology of the Net.
Cmdr Taco: I am the owner of the site SlashdotReaders: And a right good owner, too.
Cmdr Taco: It's very, very good,
and be it understood,
Cowboy Neal keeps the site afloat.
Readers: It's very, very good,
and be it understood,
He keeps the site afloat.
Cmdr Taco: Though some think it may be queer,
On this site I have to steer
The conversation away from porn
I don't look at sites
With girlflesh so white
And I never peek at holes of corn...
Readers: What, never?
Cmdr Taco: No, never!
Readers: What, never?
Cmdr Taco: Hardly ever!
I'll take Verizon and their set of anti-customer policies in a second. AT&T actively ignored my complaints about dead cells and dropped calls right up to the time I stopped using their service.
Slashdot Mirror
Tell that to my wife, who got furious when I updated her iTunes to a more recent version that omitted that functionality.
... would it be possible for Apple to realize who their customers are and restore the ability to do two-way copying of MP3 (non-AAC, really) songs in iTunes? That got yanked a while ago, and it's an irritating functionality loss. There are alternatives (hat tip: MacWorld), but Apple's customer control tactics are almost as bad as the record companies'.
I don't pay close attention to the GPU market in general, though lately I've been interested in a few numerical modeling projects that could benefit from high-performance computing. The AMD Firestream 9170 is supposed to be released in the first quarter of this year, with a peak speed of 500 GFLOPS, most likely single-precision, but the beauty part is that it should also support double-precision, the numeric standard for most computational modeling. NVidia's option in this space is the Tesla C870; I wonder whether this move to purchase another GPU line will divert resources away from their number-crunching-first GPUs.
Pro-government, pro-taxation arguments that put government needs first inevitably devolve onto government as a religion, and high taxes as its catechism. The end game of that approach is to simply take everything from anybody earning any income or making any kind of transaction; this, of course, is what we used to call feudalism, and chasing that off was one of the side effects of the Enlightenment. The idealists who claim, with a straight face, that this is not so will never tell you just where their plans should end or how much is "fair", just more than is currently being collected. So grows the State, and their mad plans for running things on somebody else's nickel, coin they didn't have to earn.
It's not funny and it's not useful.
I remember reading about some fracas with some congressman wanting to install sodium-cooled nuclear reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers. Hyman Rickover, who was running the Navy's nuclear-powered fleet at the time, got hauled in front of a congressional panel; he dropped a small chunk of metallic sodium into some water and asked, following the ensuing fire and explosion, whether there were any questions. The Navy commissioned one sub with a sodium-cooled reactor (the U.S.S. Seawolf), but it was the only one.
Beethoven was a prime example -- in fact, the first -- of a composer who did not need aristocratic patronage. He paved the way for a self-sustaining business by publishing, selling subscription concerts, and acquiring commissions from wealthy patrons. He did not live or die by a single royal finger, though he did accept individual commissions from them.
Though the proffered reason this is happening is because of FCC pressure, I wonder that the real reason for this isn't advertiser interest in seeing an end to electronic babel. With every major cable system using (effectively) proprietary hardware, detailed viewing habit data acquisition is difficult or at least complex. I would be very interested to see what kind of information will be shipped back to the provider end, and when. For instance, if you watch a time-delayed show on your DVR does it rat on you when you fast-forward past the commercials? That has to be valuable to advertisers by itself, and getting it in a uniform format regardless of provider would be helpful, too.
Glenn Greenwald had a good report on this today; incredibly, only 10 senators voted against this bill. Reid allowed the bill to proceed despite Dodd's hold (the only one Reid has disallowed). You'd think Reid was bought and paid for by AT&T or something.
Glenn Reynolds has been one of the president's principle cheerleaders for years, rah-rah-rahing for the gutted FISA amendment that basically allowed the government to do whatever it damn well wanted. Now he's publicly worried about state accountability? What a jackass and a hypocrite.
Penis enlargement, the hard way, i.e., using a come-along.
His hyperventilation amounts to ignoring SCO's inflated claims of ownership to everything, failure to prove they owned what they claimed -- which, by the way, they were never able to show in court what it was that they claimed they owned! This is legal wankery at its lowest, folks. Nothing to see here. Move on.
What does this word mean? Do you mean, "banned"?
The Hollywood Video near us just closed up. Brick-and-mortar retail video rental is a dead letter.
what a catalyst is. The aluminum in that reaction is oxidized. The platinum in this reaction is unchanged by it.
You mean, lithium-ion, right?
Bonus points if they can kill/intimidate civilians indiscriminately without Congress finding out.
Absolutely. On the other hand, with the dollar collapsing as it has, this may blunt an awful lot of the move to offshore this kind of work.
I'll take Verizon and their set of anti-customer policies in a second. AT&T actively ignored my complaints about dead cells and dropped calls right up to the time I stopped using their service.
I got one of those letters several weeks ago, and immediately called the 800-333-9956 number listed to opt out.