I've personally done the economics and found that they don't make sense for me. Of course, I'm also in a non-optimal zone for photovoltiacs, though I do have a suitable roof facing.
1. I live just south of the Canadian border. This means that even in summer my maximum solar concentration is quite a bit less than say, california. I only recieve 60-75% of the light they do. So I'd need around a third more solar panels for a given amount of power, increasing cost. 2. I pay very close to the lowest rates in the country for electricity, and have historically. I only pay ~$.10/kwh. This translates to less savings for any cutting of my bill. 3. Part of living as far north as I am, I don't even have AC, yet I have a very capable heating system, including several backup heating devices, some of which requires no electricity. My energy demands are the highest during dead of winter, not summer.
Basically, when it makes straight economic sense to install solar panels in California(IE payback from savings of 3-5 years), it'll still be a tough decision for me.
I'm still at the point where for the anticipated cost of installing the solar, I'd be able to buy the electricity from the power company for less than the expected interest from an account making 5%.
All decisions are economic in nature, since economics is about maximizing value with the resources available.
I think that this is one of those places where we actually agree with each other - just have different flavorings. Our views only differ in nuances.
Price is only one data point in a much more complex decision process.
Duh.
In the other post, maximizing the investment over the expected life of the vehicle includes more things than point cost and present need, such as avoiding the cost of changing vehicles.
That would be part of a good cost/benefit analysis. What I was talking about was people buying a vehicle with more engine than they need, or even anticipate needing, because it's 'faster' or 'cooler'. That's what I'm talking about by decisions not being purely economic. One can do an economic analysis of the cost benefit and nutrition levels between apples and oranges, but putting down a value for 'taste' is highly individualistic, and not an economic one. It ends up being a fudge factor worked into the equations.
Also there is perceived value in the "status" derived from such a purchase, and the value of "feel good" has supported many causes.
Thus my comment about sexy cars. Heck, there are areas where you can rent rims for your vehicle by the week - that's not exactly economic, but apparently worth it to a segment of the population. A segment that needs to go back to school for economics, budgeting, and fiscal management as far as I'm concerned, but it's there.
10k hours, figuring 8 hours a day, 365 days a year would be 3.4 years for raw payback on the panels. If you're not that optimum, it'd stretch to 4-5 easily.
Figure in the cost of the inverter and installation, and it jumps to 12-15 years easily, before any cost of capital expectations.
They not only have to make the solar panels cheaper and better, they also need to work in the install costs and make inverters a lot cheaper. Or start producing DC appliances. Though you should heat water mostly with a solar water heater, much cheaper and more efficient if you only need to heat water, not produce electricity.
If it wasn't already at the break-even point for some people, the industry wouldn't exist.
Doesn't have to be break-even. Most people don't buy the most efficient vehicle that will meet their needs, they go larger. Decisions are not always purely economic.
Of course, how much value an individual puts into being green or grid-independent varies, so it's tough to calculate. Solar panels, perhaps unfortunately, aren't as sexy as hot cars.
Still, solar has made sense in a number of remote locations for years now, where it's just too expensive to run a power line out into the boonies.
I was thinking of a DVD duplicator. You load it up sometime before the computers arrive and let it go. The image should already be created, the parent mentioned that they have a corporate XP image.
The real cost in time would be uncrating all the computers and getting them hooked up enough to boot from the DVD and start the process.
It might be quicker/cheaper to have Dell or whoever install your image instead of their default.
And what's the result - a positive correlation between CCTV and low clear up rates... and slashdot's libertarian whack job tendency screaming "CCTV doesn't work". Because, don't forget, if a correlation (or lack of correlation) supports your beliefs, then its as good as proof.
There's plenty of analysis left to be done, but one problem might be that, for whatever reason, the cameras are ineffective in identifying criminals - either they're too easy to avoid, not enough resolution, nobody monitors the camera tapes properly(so the crime remains unseen), etc...
Or they could say 'Yep, that's X, but we don't have the resources to track down what shack he's living out of right now to toss him into jail yet again'.
In which case it might have been better to hire more officers over placing the cameras - might take a little more work to identify X, but at least you'd be able to send an officer over to pick him up for breaking the law.
But that's expensive. You need to pay an officer, provide benefits, provide court services for the crooks apprehended by the officer, pay for the jail to house the criminal in, etc...
One thing you could also look at would be how often camera footage is used in evidence. Presumably if the camera helped to solve a crime it'd be used during the trial.
This report reminded me of ballistic databases. Maryland and NY have them, yet Maryland's police wants to stop the program in favor of diverting the funds to 'proven crime-fighting techniques.'
The recent report says the system has produced just six "hits" -- instances where crime-scene evidence matched ballistics data in the system. None of those has been used in a criminal trial, the report says.
That's six hits in five years. For 2.6 million dollars. $500k/year, for which you could have put ~5-10 more officers on the street. I'm sure they'd of solved a bit more than six cases...
I've also read that the number of cases needing manual review tends to rise geometrically as the number of cases in the database increase. Plus, they tended to find that a new gun of the same make and model had more simularities for a given shell case than the actual gun that fired it had after a few years wear and tear. A gun's shell casings wouldn't even match given different ammunition brands, or after having a few thousand rounds fired through it.
Anyways, back on topic: The way I see it, even if they get a full facial on the criminal, if he isn't in the database you're not going to find him based solely off of the video camera evidence. It can work for high profile cases like murders because there aren't enough of them and people pay attention. But the average corner robbery, purse-snatching, or shoplifting? Not enough human resources to track them down.
If you do create a database of human information to track them down - you still have the problem of false positives and negatives. It tends to work better if you can limit the database to 'known criminals', but where is the criminal in question staying now? One of the problems I've heard is that they don't have the manpower available to run down known criminals with known haunts because the criminal isn't there much.
That's kinda what I was picturing. A series of electric motors/generators hooked to the cable, able to pull it back in, push it out, or act as a generator to slow it down. All controlled by a computer.
The only real 'winch' would be at the back, to ensure that the cable feeds in/out properly.
Options vary, but I could see them having a bootable DVD that installs a custom image on the computer. If they did it right it'll even run the resetSID next time the computer boots.
You can get DVD-R's cheap enough for it to not matter.
I initially missed the fact that they proposed using a winch. Still, a winch is known technology, and they could have multiple ones for backup purposes.
Design them so they fail open, and the computer simply tightens the remaining ones as necessary to compensate.
Heck, use the initial accelleration phase of the chute to provide power by 'regenerative braking' to provide power to the ship, IE you're making use of the energy differential between the speed of the chute and the ship. You then spend some of it in the reeling in of the chute back to it's original position.
detonating the explosives in front of the parachute
Actually, from looking at the site, it detonates the explosive behind the 'parachute', between the ship and the chute.
It doesn't make sense any other way.
Still, you are indeed free to have miles and miles of cable, at which point the radiation striking the craft would be minimized, and at those lengths the cable doesn't need much stretch at all to give the necessary flex.
(I'm old enough to remember when seeing people with their heads under the hoods of their cars was commonplace. "Give me half an hour and I'll have her running again! We can still get there before dark!" Is that the kind of 'reliability' we want to hold on to?)
I kinda remember this as well. I'll note that the only time I've been under the hood of my current car has been to add washer fluid and change the oil - which I do in increments ~50% longer than what used to be recommended, and is still within manufacturer's recommendations(change it whenever the light comes on). I still have another year before I have to worry about changing the radiator fluid or flushing the brake lines.
The battery is currently at 166% percent of the 'recommended' replacement period and still tests good. The engine still operates like new, and I wouldn't hesitate to drive it cross country.
In retrospect, anyone younger than 30 could have figured out that a typewriter would not have made the kinds of characters (in a different type size) that were visible in the document that was used to show GWB's apparent absences from the National Guard. Problem is, big media companies tend to not hire people over 30 to produce.
Which is it, under 30 or over 30 to detect it? I'd tend to say the older people should be more likely to detect that particular forgery - they're much likelier to have familiarity with typewriters, for one thing. The identification that the memo was likely typed in a default word install would be something for somebody younger to say.
Personally, I never believed the memo because I'm in the air force - the 'memo' didn't follow USAF conventions and used terms that an officer wouldn't use. While only around 30 - I've seen plenty of MFR's from that time period, and they were done in very specific fashions.
If the engineer has credible concerns, what's the worst thing that can happen? That more testing is done on the Dreamliner?
Are we qualified to determine whether his concerns are credible?
The problem, as I see it, is that the plane could end up delayed for hearings, testimony, and additional testing, allowing Airbus to grab sales. Costing Boeing and the US economy money that wasn't necessary because sufficient tests had been done.
While it's almost certain that issues will crop up with the new materials, it remains to be seen how it'll play out in the market. Still, I don't see Boeing staking it's future and reputation on the plane unless they felt it was ready for mainstream, and that includes safety and maintenance requirements.
Yes, it takes time for manufacturing to spin up. Still, you might be suprised at just how quickly we could set up factories if the economic market called for it.
As for oil - same deal. Like canada and their oil sands, we have oil shale, the extraction of oil is about the same. Let the pain get high enough we'll shut the greenies up and start exploiting it.
Personally, I'd be building a nuclear plant there right now to hopefully take advantage of heat colocation and power generation for extraction processes.
What American products? Do we still make anything here?
Food products, we're still the worlds #1 exporter. Farm equipment, manufacturing equipment in general*, entertainment, vehicles to include cars and planes, chemicals, medical drugs, etc...
As do the imported components and raw materials used to build the few 'American made' products left.
But at a certain point it becomes cheaper to build those components and produce raw materials here rather than elsewhere. For example, we do have a number of steel plants in the USA, it's just that they're not very competitive against plants in other countries that don't have to deal with minimum wage laws, unions, EPA, OSHA, and such.
*a lot of the equipment used to make the goods imported into the USA were made in the USA
Is that "good" in the same way as being forced to sell something cheap is good?
Good for the consumer, at least.
It's good in the sense that the US made Gizmo A costs about the same* in USD as it did before the international value of the dollar dropped. The Asian made equivalent of Gizmo A, which used to cost 95% of the US version, now costs 105%. Before, the US made Gizmo A wasn't really competitive, costing more than the asian version. Now, it's cheaper. Since people tend to buy the cheaper product, people in the USA start buying the US version. This reduces a bit of the trade deficit, results in more jobs in the USA(the factory for the gizmo has to increase production), more tax monies, etc...
The foreign company ends up either finding other markets for their product or reduces/eliminates production. If the switch is bad enough, their company might end up buying the US made gizmo, which is now being exported by the USA.
*It gets complicated if it uses foreign made components or resources.
The Federal minimum wage in the USA was $5.15/hour for years.
However, FICA/Social Security taxes are 7.65% of an employee's income, so $.39/hour goes to the.gov, leaving $4.76 for the employee.
However, the whole 'sneaking' part implies illegal labor, working 'under the table'(IE for cash each day), so violating minimum wage laws wouldn't exactly be a concern of the employer. Include the payroll taxes, a minimum wage employee costs the employer at least $5.55/hour.
Take a chunck off to make operating illegally worth it - $4/hour is doable for an immigrant used to longer hours for even lower pay, with a limited quality of life. IE living 9-12 people to a 3 bedroom house isn't considered a hardship for them. Especially if they commit welfare fraud at the same time.
Canadian organizations are using the high dollar as an opportunity to purchase equipment from the states to make themselves more competitive.
I'd like to use this to make a point - The USA has had a trade deficit for a long period of time. We've been importing more goods than we've been exporting. This couldn't be sustained forever. Then there was the outsourcing trend - the loss of US jobs to foreign competition.
The weakening of the dollar is a natural consequence, and has the positive impact of making US labor and goods less expensive in the global market, which will have the effect of increasing our exports, decreasing our imports(foreign goods are now more expensive compared to natively produced goods), and otherwise promoting native industry.
Heck, I heard of an Indian company exporting some programming work to the USA.
In a way, a weaker dollar can help produce a USA not as reliant on foreign imports.
For that matter, how often do you actually end up paying MSRP for books? Personally, I haven't for years. Generally I get them for at least 30% off.
When I considered it, I often figured that the extra 30% price for canadian had at least some to do with taxes/import duties/canadian distribution company costs.
unless basically every core (or the part that distributes jobs to the individual cores) is damaged.
There's only a certain range of chips that are useful at any given period of time. If we ever get to the point that an 8 core processor is considered mainline(and 16 is 'performance'), I don't see much of a market for chips with less than 4 cores.
If price levels are similar to today, you'd practically have a hard time giving them away.
The real solution to keep chip companies from intentionally crippling their products is competition - they don't dare, because their competitor will be able to undercut or outperform them. They end up cutting prices on their premier product to sell it.
Watch some dumb criminal shows sometime. They've actually had cases where the crook attempts to steal a security camera - setting up a ladder, climbing up and presenting a nice closeup shot of his face as you see his hands move past the viewpoint of the camera, holding a screwdriver...
People really think they're going to track down a laptop based on an IP address?
It's happened. One dude managed to track down his computer because he had SETI running on it, so he tracked down the location from the IP address the progress packets were coming from.
Repeat after me: Most criminals are DUMB.
ESPECIALLY if you call the ISP that owns the IP block it falls into and tell them something along the lines of "Well, i created a cron job to pull a private txt file from a server i control once a minute just in case the machine gets stolen. This is the IP address showing up in my logs, please give me some names and phone numbers"
Depends on how convincing you are on the phone.;). Software reports such as this are probably good enough to get a warrent, if you're working with police.
Why hasn't somebody just bought one of These and had a cron job that throws the coordinates at a server once an hour/minute/second/whatever. THAT would be more effective. It would also open the possibility for a full scale ninja attack on their house.
Now that's a nice solution. Of course, I also advocate the hiring of hitmen to target spammers. The only problem I see with this solution is that Ninja are expensive. You're probably better off hiring only one, that way you make sure the job gets done(inverse ninja law).
With disabled cores, you are creating lower cost parts. Therefore you need to start balancing all the costs, it doesn't make sense to use the same expensive piece parts to support a lower selling price CPU. You will want to use a simpler (and cheaper) substrate, use less capacitors for power delivery, cheaper heat spreader (since there will be less heat to disipate), and with such design changes most likely test program changes will also be needed.
Thing is, we're not talking about cores that are just disabled. We're talking about disabling cores that are flawed/nonoperational from the manufacturing process. You have to reach a certain manufacturing point before you can even tell this, so like the celeron chips that still had the cache(just disabled), the components are still there. You might be able to get away with a different heat spreader for the really low line chips, but remember the supply chain - offering more products does indeed present more costs, but so doesn't handling more supply components and materials. A slightly less capable but cheaper heat spreader might not be cheaper enough to be worth the hassle of stocking it, just stick the better one on all chips.
Besides, we're talking more about a salvage operation here.
Again it depends on your yields. If you have good yields (in terms of cores) at the high end, it makes more sense to sell different 64-core speeds, than to canibalize those good 64-core parts and sell tham as 56-core to meet demand.
Oh, agreed. I was just giving examples. If you're getting good yields, depending on architecture it might make more sense to rate them by speed differences, discarding chips with failed cores.
When you are talking about the volumes involved, it's not about just a couple guys in a warehouse. It takes a lot of work and planning to properly manage parts. Everytime you add more parts to the list it becomes more difficult to properly plan what to build. Will the customer want the high-speed 56 core or the low-speed 64-core? Most planning has to be done months ahead.
When you talk about the volumes involved, having 30 parts would be nothing. There are companies that market tens of thousands of different parts. Look at a company like Bosch for their electric motors alone. When I said Legacy, I meant stuff like the people still selling 386/486 chips today for special purposes.
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I've personally done the economics and found that they don't make sense for me. Of course, I'm also in a non-optimal zone for photovoltiacs, though I do have a suitable roof facing.
1. I live just south of the Canadian border. This means that even in summer my maximum solar concentration is quite a bit less than say, california. I only recieve 60-75% of the light they do. So I'd need around a third more solar panels for a given amount of power, increasing cost.
2. I pay very close to the lowest rates in the country for electricity, and have historically. I only pay ~$.10/kwh. This translates to less savings for any cutting of my bill.
3. Part of living as far north as I am, I don't even have AC, yet I have a very capable heating system, including several backup heating devices, some of which requires no electricity. My energy demands are the highest during dead of winter, not summer.
Basically, when it makes straight economic sense to install solar panels in California(IE payback from savings of 3-5 years), it'll still be a tough decision for me.
I'm still at the point where for the anticipated cost of installing the solar, I'd be able to buy the electricity from the power company for less than the expected interest from an account making 5%.
All decisions are economic in nature, since economics is about maximizing value with the resources available.
I think that this is one of those places where we actually agree with each other - just have different flavorings. Our views only differ in nuances.
Price is only one data point in a much more complex decision process.
Duh.
In the other post, maximizing the investment over the expected life of the vehicle includes more things than point cost and present need, such as avoiding the cost of changing vehicles.
That would be part of a good cost/benefit analysis. What I was talking about was people buying a vehicle with more engine than they need, or even anticipate needing, because it's 'faster' or 'cooler'. That's what I'm talking about by decisions not being purely economic. One can do an economic analysis of the cost benefit and nutrition levels between apples and oranges, but putting down a value for 'taste' is highly individualistic, and not an economic one. It ends up being a fudge factor worked into the equations.
Also there is perceived value in the "status" derived from such a purchase, and the value of "feel good" has supported many causes.
Thus my comment about sexy cars. Heck, there are areas where you can rent rims for your vehicle by the week - that's not exactly economic, but apparently worth it to a segment of the population. A segment that needs to go back to school for economics, budgeting, and fiscal management as far as I'm concerned, but it's there.
Starts looking a little worse once you figure install costs - another $1-1.50/watt, generally speaking
Add another $.50-1/watt for the inverter and miscellaneous, and you're up to $3/watt of capacity.
10k hours, figuring 8 hours a day, 365 days a year would be 3.4 years for raw payback on the panels. If you're not that optimum, it'd stretch to 4-5 easily.
Figure in the cost of the inverter and installation, and it jumps to 12-15 years easily, before any cost of capital expectations.
They not only have to make the solar panels cheaper and better, they also need to work in the install costs and make inverters a lot cheaper. Or start producing DC appliances. Though you should heat water mostly with a solar water heater, much cheaper and more efficient if you only need to heat water, not produce electricity.
If it wasn't already at the break-even point for some people, the industry wouldn't exist.
Doesn't have to be break-even. Most people don't buy the most efficient vehicle that will meet their needs, they go larger. Decisions are not always purely economic.
Of course, how much value an individual puts into being green or grid-independent varies, so it's tough to calculate. Solar panels, perhaps unfortunately, aren't as sexy as hot cars.
Still, solar has made sense in a number of remote locations for years now, where it's just too expensive to run a power line out into the boonies.
I was thinking of a DVD duplicator. You load it up sometime before the computers arrive and let it go. The image should already be created, the parent mentioned that they have a corporate XP image.
The real cost in time would be uncrating all the computers and getting them hooked up enough to boot from the DVD and start the process.
It might be quicker/cheaper to have Dell or whoever install your image instead of their default.
And what's the result - a positive correlation between CCTV and low clear up rates ... and slashdot's libertarian whack job tendency screaming "CCTV doesn't work". Because, don't forget, if a correlation (or lack of correlation) supports your beliefs, then its as good as proof.
There's plenty of analysis left to be done, but one problem might be that, for whatever reason, the cameras are ineffective in identifying criminals - either they're too easy to avoid, not enough resolution, nobody monitors the camera tapes properly(so the crime remains unseen), etc...
Or they could say 'Yep, that's X, but we don't have the resources to track down what shack he's living out of right now to toss him into jail yet again'.
In which case it might have been better to hire more officers over placing the cameras - might take a little more work to identify X, but at least you'd be able to send an officer over to pick him up for breaking the law.
But that's expensive. You need to pay an officer, provide benefits, provide court services for the crooks apprehended by the officer, pay for the jail to house the criminal in, etc...
This report reminded me of ballistic databases. Maryland and NY have them, yet Maryland's police wants to stop the program in favor of diverting the funds to 'proven crime-fighting techniques.'
Another report:
That's six hits in five years. For 2.6 million dollars. $500k/year, for which you could have put ~5-10 more officers on the street. I'm sure they'd of solved a bit more than six cases...
I've also read that the number of cases needing manual review tends to rise geometrically as the number of cases in the database increase. Plus, they tended to find that a new gun of the same make and model had more simularities for a given shell case than the actual gun that fired it had after a few years wear and tear. A gun's shell casings wouldn't even match given different ammunition brands, or after having a few thousand rounds fired through it.
Anyways, back on topic:
The way I see it, even if they get a full facial on the criminal, if he isn't in the database you're not going to find him based solely off of the video camera evidence. It can work for high profile cases like murders because there aren't enough of them and people pay attention. But the average corner robbery, purse-snatching, or shoplifting? Not enough human resources to track them down.
If you do create a database of human information to track them down - you still have the problem of false positives and negatives. It tends to work better if you can limit the database to 'known criminals', but where is the criminal in question staying now? One of the problems I've heard is that they don't have the manpower available to run down known criminals with known haunts because the criminal isn't there much.
In such cases, cameras can't help much at all.
That's kinda what I was picturing. A series of electric motors/generators hooked to the cable, able to pull it back in, push it out, or act as a generator to slow it down. All controlled by a computer.
The only real 'winch' would be at the back, to ensure that the cable feeds in/out properly.
Options vary, but I could see them having a bootable DVD that installs a custom image on the computer. If they did it right it'll even run the resetSID next time the computer boots.
You can get DVD-R's cheap enough for it to not matter.
Additional bonus: They don't have to worry about supporting the copy, or the bandwidth keeping it up to date would consume from microsoft's servers.
Why not use springs along the tether?
I initially missed the fact that they proposed using a winch. Still, a winch is known technology, and they could have multiple ones for backup purposes.
Design them so they fail open, and the computer simply tightens the remaining ones as necessary to compensate.
Heck, use the initial accelleration phase of the chute to provide power by 'regenerative braking' to provide power to the ship, IE you're making use of the energy differential between the speed of the chute and the ship. You then spend some of it in the reeling in of the chute back to it's original position.
detonating the explosives in front of the parachute
Actually, from looking at the site, it detonates the explosive behind the 'parachute', between the ship and the chute.
It doesn't make sense any other way.
Still, you are indeed free to have miles and miles of cable, at which point the radiation striking the craft would be minimized, and at those lengths the cable doesn't need much stretch at all to give the necessary flex.
(I'm old enough to remember when seeing people with their heads under the hoods of their cars was commonplace. "Give me half an hour and I'll have her running again! We can still get there before dark!" Is that the kind of 'reliability' we want to hold on to?)
I kinda remember this as well. I'll note that the only time I've been under the hood of my current car has been to add washer fluid and change the oil - which I do in increments ~50% longer than what used to be recommended, and is still within manufacturer's recommendations(change it whenever the light comes on). I still have another year before I have to worry about changing the radiator fluid or flushing the brake lines.
The battery is currently at 166% percent of the 'recommended' replacement period and still tests good. The engine still operates like new, and I wouldn't hesitate to drive it cross country.
In retrospect, anyone younger than 30 could have figured out that a typewriter would not have made the kinds of characters (in a different type size) that were visible in the document that was used to show GWB's apparent absences from the National Guard. Problem is, big media companies tend to not hire people over 30 to produce.
Which is it, under 30 or over 30 to detect it? I'd tend to say the older people should be more likely to detect that particular forgery - they're much likelier to have familiarity with typewriters, for one thing. The identification that the memo was likely typed in a default word install would be something for somebody younger to say.
Personally, I never believed the memo because I'm in the air force - the 'memo' didn't follow USAF conventions and used terms that an officer wouldn't use. While only around 30 - I've seen plenty of MFR's from that time period, and they were done in very specific fashions.
If the engineer has credible concerns, what's the worst thing that can happen?
That more testing is done on the Dreamliner?
Are we qualified to determine whether his concerns are credible?
The problem, as I see it, is that the plane could end up delayed for hearings, testimony, and additional testing, allowing Airbus to grab sales. Costing Boeing and the US economy money that wasn't necessary because sufficient tests had been done.
While it's almost certain that issues will crop up with the new materials, it remains to be seen how it'll play out in the market. Still, I don't see Boeing staking it's future and reputation on the plane unless they felt it was ready for mainstream, and that includes safety and maintenance requirements.
Yes, it takes time for manufacturing to spin up. Still, you might be suprised at just how quickly we could set up factories if the economic market called for it.
As for oil - same deal. Like canada and their oil sands, we have oil shale, the extraction of oil is about the same. Let the pain get high enough we'll shut the greenies up and start exploiting it.
Personally, I'd be building a nuclear plant there right now to hopefully take advantage of heat colocation and power generation for extraction processes.
What American products? Do we still make anything here?
Food products, we're still the worlds #1 exporter. Farm equipment, manufacturing equipment in general*, entertainment, vehicles to include cars and planes, chemicals, medical drugs, etc...
As do the imported components and raw materials used to build the few 'American made' products left.
But at a certain point it becomes cheaper to build those components and produce raw materials here rather than elsewhere. For example, we do have a number of steel plants in the USA, it's just that they're not very competitive against plants in other countries that don't have to deal with minimum wage laws, unions, EPA, OSHA, and such.
*a lot of the equipment used to make the goods imported into the USA were made in the USA
Is that "good" in the same way as being forced to sell something cheap is good?
Good for the consumer, at least.
It's good in the sense that the US made Gizmo A costs about the same* in USD as it did before the international value of the dollar dropped. The Asian made equivalent of Gizmo A, which used to cost 95% of the US version, now costs 105%. Before, the US made Gizmo A wasn't really competitive, costing more than the asian version. Now, it's cheaper. Since people tend to buy the cheaper product, people in the USA start buying the US version. This reduces a bit of the trade deficit, results in more jobs in the USA(the factory for the gizmo has to increase production), more tax monies, etc...
The foreign company ends up either finding other markets for their product or reduces/eliminates production. If the switch is bad enough, their company might end up buying the US made gizmo, which is now being exported by the USA.
*It gets complicated if it uses foreign made components or resources.
The Federal minimum wage in the USA was $5.15/hour for years.
.gov, leaving $4.76 for the employee.
However, FICA/Social Security taxes are 7.65% of an employee's income, so $.39/hour goes to the
However, the whole 'sneaking' part implies illegal labor, working 'under the table'(IE for cash each day), so violating minimum wage laws wouldn't exactly be a concern of the employer. Include the payroll taxes, a minimum wage employee costs the employer at least $5.55/hour.
Take a chunck off to make operating illegally worth it - $4/hour is doable for an immigrant used to longer hours for even lower pay, with a limited quality of life. IE living 9-12 people to a 3 bedroom house isn't considered a hardship for them. Especially if they commit welfare fraud at the same time.
Canadian organizations are using the high dollar as an opportunity to purchase equipment from the states to make themselves more competitive.
I'd like to use this to make a point - The USA has had a trade deficit for a long period of time. We've been importing more goods than we've been exporting. This couldn't be sustained forever. Then there was the outsourcing trend - the loss of US jobs to foreign competition.
The weakening of the dollar is a natural consequence, and has the positive impact of making US labor and goods less expensive in the global market, which will have the effect of increasing our exports, decreasing our imports(foreign goods are now more expensive compared to natively produced goods), and otherwise promoting native industry.
Heck, I heard of an Indian company exporting some programming work to the USA.
In a way, a weaker dollar can help produce a USA not as reliant on foreign imports.
For that matter, how often do you actually end up paying MSRP for books? Personally, I haven't for years. Generally I get them for at least 30% off.
When I considered it, I often figured that the extra 30% price for canadian had at least some to do with taxes/import duties/canadian distribution company costs.
unless basically every core (or the part that distributes jobs to the individual cores) is damaged.
There's only a certain range of chips that are useful at any given period of time. If we ever get to the point that an 8 core processor is considered mainline(and 16 is 'performance'), I don't see much of a market for chips with less than 4 cores.
If price levels are similar to today, you'd practically have a hard time giving them away.
The real solution to keep chip companies from intentionally crippling their products is competition - they don't dare, because their competitor will be able to undercut or outperform them. They end up cutting prices on their premier product to sell it.
You think that's hilarious?
Watch some dumb criminal shows sometime. They've actually had cases where the crook attempts to steal a security camera - setting up a ladder, climbing up and presenting a nice closeup shot of his face as you see his hands move past the viewpoint of the camera, holding a screwdriver...
People really think they're going to track down a laptop based on an IP address?
;). Software reports such as this are probably good enough to get a warrent, if you're working with police.
It's happened. One dude managed to track down his computer because he had SETI running on it, so he tracked down the location from the IP address the progress packets were coming from.
Repeat after me: Most criminals are DUMB.
ESPECIALLY if you call the ISP that owns the IP block it falls into and tell them something along the lines of "Well, i created a cron job to pull a private txt file from a server i control once a minute just in case the machine gets stolen. This is the IP address showing up in my logs, please give me some names and phone numbers"
Depends on how convincing you are on the phone.
Why hasn't somebody just bought one of These and had a cron job that throws the coordinates at a server once an hour/minute/second/whatever. THAT would be more effective. It would also open the possibility for a full scale ninja attack on their house.
Now that's a nice solution. Of course, I also advocate the hiring of hitmen to target spammers. The only problem I see with this solution is that Ninja are expensive. You're probably better off hiring only one, that way you make sure the job gets done(inverse ninja law).
With disabled cores, you are creating lower cost parts. Therefore you need to start balancing all the costs, it doesn't make sense to use the same expensive piece parts to support a lower selling price CPU. You will want to use a simpler (and cheaper) substrate, use less capacitors for power delivery, cheaper heat spreader (since there will be less heat to disipate), and with such design changes most likely test program changes will also be needed.
Thing is, we're not talking about cores that are just disabled. We're talking about disabling cores that are flawed/nonoperational from the manufacturing process. You have to reach a certain manufacturing point before you can even tell this, so like the celeron chips that still had the cache(just disabled), the components are still there. You might be able to get away with a different heat spreader for the really low line chips, but remember the supply chain - offering more products does indeed present more costs, but so doesn't handling more supply components and materials. A slightly less capable but cheaper heat spreader might not be cheaper enough to be worth the hassle of stocking it, just stick the better one on all chips.
Besides, we're talking more about a salvage operation here.
Again it depends on your yields. If you have good yields (in terms of cores) at the high end, it makes more sense to sell different 64-core speeds, than to canibalize those good 64-core parts and sell tham as 56-core to meet demand.
Oh, agreed. I was just giving examples. If you're getting good yields, depending on architecture it might make more sense to rate them by speed differences, discarding chips with failed cores.
When you are talking about the volumes involved, it's not about just a couple guys in a warehouse. It takes a lot of work and planning to properly manage parts. Everytime you add more parts to the list it becomes more difficult to properly plan what to build. Will the customer want the high-speed 56 core or the low-speed 64-core? Most planning has to be done months ahead.
When you talk about the volumes involved, having 30 parts would be nothing. There are companies that market tens of thousands of different parts. Look at a company like Bosch for their electric motors alone. When I said Legacy, I meant stuff like the people still selling 386/486 chips today for special purposes.