>>How about the hours that go into training one or many users in a company on using that new OS? Compatibility problems? Setting up specialized software?
Still probably cheaper than having your entire network (and all corporate data, financial plans, product designs, confidential data, HR information, payroll, etc.) owned by a botnet and copied to who-knows-where.
What is wrong is that doesn't tell the whole story because it fails to measure real-world performance except for one rare edge-case -- Max CPU duration.
It would be like automobile MPG being estimated based on full-throttle driving on a race track -- it doesn't mirror how the product is actually used. Instead we have city/highway ratings which attempt to mimic two use cases.
The difficulty with automobile engines is that they must operate efficiently across a variety of RPM ranges and trade-offs must be made to strike the best balance. If EPA tests were only at full throttle we'd soon see products tweaked for the test -- very, very efficient engines at high RPMs which are nearly unusable at lower speeds.
Unless they're in a server farm, PCs typically aren't run @ 100% except in short bursts. Most of the time, they're idling while the user reads a webpage or waits for an IM. Gaming is a bit of an exception in that it's more demanding. The idling of a CPU is an immensely important part of the power efficiency profile for a PC since it takes advantage of (frequent) opportunities to conserve, but your recommendation would ignore it.
This is a bit different from a breakfast cereal saying "now even tastier" or a soap promising "more suds!" The first is subjective (personal preference) but the second is objective -- it can be quantified and proven/disproven.
In this case with batteries, rather than taking an actual measurement of performance, the industry is building an estimate from a combination of measured behavior + a calculation based on a performance variable. It's no different than the automobile industry stating "EPA Estimated MPG city/highway" which is not based on a dynamometer test or actual performance measurement but instead is calculated based on the amount of CO2 which exits the exhaust pipe of the car! Is it any wonder, then, that hybrid cars which shut off their gasoline engine when stopped and at low speed/light acceleration, would give grossly inflated figures? Well, they did (and do), which explains why real-world MPG is often far less than this calculated (not even simulated) performance. In short, they're both lying and it's obvious. Yet companies wonder why consumers are so cynical and therefore difficult to reach with advertising.
What is needed is real-world testing -- dynamometer ("rolling test track") testing for autos where the wind resistance, temperature, barometric pressure, etc. can all be carefully controlled. Similarly with computers, a pure performance-based measurement is needed which should account for idle time, network activity, etc. Just as an automobile is not tested at full-throttle for 3 hours, neither should a PC, but instead a variety of benchmarks (gaming, web browsing, spreadsheet, word processing, ???) could show performance figures for various activities.
In short, manufacturers, we want real numbers free of hype.
Uh, no, unless it includes a telepathy feature, because NOBODY is going to hold a 10" tablet computer up to their ear to talk. Regardless, the laughter from onlookers would drown out the conversation.
In this age of compact electronics with organic forms, an iPhone Pro based on the platform in discussion would simply be iPhone's take on a 1985 bag phone.
Infrared photograph of everyone in the theatre. Mark my words, this is coming. For "security" reasons, to fight terrorism, etc.
Just like the outrageous crap in most EULAs, this will be posted somewhere on a wall, saying "by entering these premises, you are consenting to be photographed"
Even if that doesn't happen -- IMO, the amount of energy being poured into technology such as this seat tracking software would be better spent creating films worth watching. Between the smug know-it-all antics of the Hollywood crowd and the deep-as-a-puddle content of most dialog and storylines, there's just no compelling reason to attend.
LOTR was the most recent film I saw in a theatre. At the rate things are going, it may be the last film I see in any theatre.
Getting framed sucks... but what if it's all part of a setup?
Wasn't there some discussion about Obama wanting a new helicopter but "for the good of the nation" "considering today's economy" (nudge nudge, wink wink*) he decided against buying new helicopters.
But now that the security been breached, well, he just *has* to have a shiny new one, right?
(*What's a few hundred million dollars for a helicopter when we're committing to spending more money than the entire world's GDP, as computed using GAAP standards?)
Regardless of what you do as far as utilizing the servers, call your insurance agent straightaway and make sure that equipment is insured! Business property is very unlikely to be covered by your homeowner's policy so theft/fire/whatever could leave you financially exposed (or even liable, should the investors choose to come after you for reparations).
The electoral college was put in place so that there would be a check on the power of the uneducated masses...
And we've all seen how well THAT worked out. To wit: http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=194983 (Howard Stern Interviews Obama "Policy" Voters) Sure, it happens on both sides, but that was the most striking example that comes to mind when I think of uneducated voters.
OTOH, if you're running low on fuel/power, just cruise up onto the sidewalk and mow down a few unsuspecting pedestrians. *KaThumpKaThump* *KaThumpKaThump* Presto! Enough juice to make it home (after a quick run through the carwash, of course). Thanks, MIT!!
Well, one thing I can assure you is that your vote will NOT count in Iowa, should this bill pass into law. The Iowa tally is disregarded in favor of the wishes of voters elsewhere. How could this possibly be seen as a good idea other than freeing national campaigns to drop all pretenses of concern and thoroughly ignore Iowans next time around and merely focus on the "wants" (welfare/handouts/bailouts/bribes/etc) of the big population centers?
Those who rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. This bill provides a neat mechanism for getting Peter's support, too.
I am baffled why anyone other than those in the aforementioned population centers would support it.
Wait a second. What started off as a laptop has devolved into a flash drive with a bluetooth chip & a battery! Another week and it'll be described as a "spiral-bound notebook and a pencil with a string tied to it."
I'd say you need a disk defragment more than a reinstall.
>>when I ran XP I found that it did need a reinstall about ever 8-12 months anyway. That disk crunching gets louder and longer and booting seems slower over time.
Perhaps they are distributing the same five keys to 2.5 million people?
But the more interesting part of this situation is the question "why are they doing this?" I think they originally meant to grant individual keys but their infrastructure (webservers, keygen systems, database, fileservers, ??) couldn't keep up. So they basically started serving a cached set of ten static HTML pages to incoming requests.
Even more troublesome, their engineering/support groups couldn't respond quickly enough to solve the issues so they kept pushing the "release" date/time back further and further before apparently giving up and going with the cached keys.
This is nothing short of a debacle -- a failure in planning and execution and a breakdown in communication, probably internally, but certainly to the userbase.
I wonder how many potential customers they just lost from this experience? How many folks will decide "I'm tired of this nonsense" and go buy a Mac?
I feel bad for the chairs in Steve Balmer's office -- they're in for a beating.
You've gotta hand it to Obama -- the guy's really good! It normally takes a few years to achieve this much scandal but he's not even in office and he has corruption (Blogo's relationship to Chief-of-staff Emmanuael, Bill Richardson, David Rubin), controversial chairmanship appointments (such as this one) AND backpedaling on stated policy (withdraw from Iraq), etc.
That's at least one term's worth of scandal squeezed into a month.
Pass the popcorn, this is going to be entertaining in a can't-look-away-from-the-car-crash sort of way.
>>I'm sure this will do wonders for Obama's standing with his college age voters. Like he cares. The election is over. The voters have served their purpose and now may be safely ignored for at least 20 months.
Then I would suggest this hypothetical person is too emotionally fragile and delicate to live! If the psychological "trauma" of being asked some questions about where you're going, what you've packed, how long you plan to stay, chit-chat about the destination, the weather, etc. leave, as you say, "mental scars" then that person is an emotional basket case already and probably unfit to travel anywhere, by any means.
Your comment is exactly what I meant when I said hyperbole. Emotional scars? Puh-leeze. Your silly hypothetical trivializes those who have endured real trauma.
It can be deeply unpleasant, and for some people it can leave mental scars that take a very long time to heal.
If the circuite powering the antenna was the greatest consumer of power in the device, this would result in a significant improvement to the end-user. However, it's all the other bits in the device which eat thousands of times more power -- the CPU, the display, the speakers, etc.
Interesting discovery, but the real-world savings will be few.
>>...what types of in-game advertising players will and won't be seeing in the near future
Hey, game publishers, let me tell you what types of in-game advertising I'll be seeing in the near future: NONE! Know how I know? because I WON'T BE BUYING YOUR PRODUCTS! Seriously. It's the reason I quit watching television several years ago: it was bad enough that the quality of the shows was weak, but the encroachment of pervasive, obvious product placement and obnoxious on-screen banners thoroughly ruined the experience.
I play games to escape from this garbage, not to endorse it. I'm not interested in your advertising, and as of late I'm barely interested in your cookie-cutter games that are big on cost & hardware requirements and poor for overall entertainment value. You're walking a fine line, already.
What I'm saying is, you need to focus on the basics -- creating games that are fun and deliver good value -- rather than considering my eyeballs some sort of resource that you get to exploit.
Pissing off your customer base is not the road to financial success. But what do I know? I'm only the person who used to buy your products. And I suspect there are many, many more people who share my sentiments.
Slashdot Mirror
>>How about the hours that go into training one or many users in a company on using that new OS? Compatibility problems? Setting up specialized software?
Still probably cheaper than having your entire network (and all corporate data, financial plans, product designs, confidential data, HR information, payroll, etc.) owned by a botnet and copied to who-knows-where.
What is wrong is that doesn't tell the whole story because it fails to measure real-world performance except for one rare edge-case -- Max CPU duration.
It would be like automobile MPG being estimated based on full-throttle driving on a race track -- it doesn't mirror how the product is actually used. Instead we have city/highway ratings which attempt to mimic two use cases.
The difficulty with automobile engines is that they must operate efficiently across a variety of RPM ranges and trade-offs must be made to strike the best balance. If EPA tests were only at full throttle we'd soon see products tweaked for the test -- very, very efficient engines at high RPMs which are nearly unusable at lower speeds.
Unless they're in a server farm, PCs typically aren't run @ 100% except in short bursts. Most of the time, they're idling while the user reads a webpage or waits for an IM. Gaming is a bit of an exception in that it's more demanding. The idling of a CPU is an immensely important part of the power efficiency profile for a PC since it takes advantage of (frequent) opportunities to conserve, but your recommendation would ignore it.
>>This happens in every industry
This is a bit different from a breakfast cereal saying "now even tastier" or a soap promising "more suds!" The first is subjective (personal preference) but the second is objective -- it can be quantified and proven/disproven.
In this case with batteries, rather than taking an actual measurement of performance, the industry is building an estimate from a combination of measured behavior + a calculation based on a performance variable. It's no different than the automobile industry stating "EPA Estimated MPG city/highway" which is not based on a dynamometer test or actual performance measurement but instead is calculated based on the amount of CO2 which exits the exhaust pipe of the car! Is it any wonder, then, that hybrid cars which shut off their gasoline engine when stopped and at low speed/light acceleration, would give grossly inflated figures? Well, they did (and do), which explains why real-world MPG is often far less than this calculated (not even simulated) performance.
In short, they're both lying and it's obvious. Yet companies wonder why consumers are so cynical and therefore difficult to reach with advertising.
What is needed is real-world testing -- dynamometer ("rolling test track") testing for autos where the wind resistance, temperature, barometric pressure, etc. can all be carefully controlled. Similarly with computers, a pure performance-based measurement is needed which should account for idle time, network activity, etc. Just as an automobile is not tested at full-throttle for 3 hours, neither should a PC, but instead a variety of benchmarks (gaming, web browsing, spreadsheet, word processing, ???) could show performance figures for various activities.
In short, manufacturers, we want real numbers free of hype.
>>The other possibility is "iPhone Pro".
Uh, no, unless it includes a telepathy feature, because NOBODY is going to hold a 10" tablet computer up to their ear to talk. Regardless, the laughter from onlookers would drown out the conversation.
In this age of compact electronics with organic forms, an iPhone Pro based on the platform in discussion would simply be iPhone's take on a 1985 bag phone.
Infrared photograph of everyone in the theatre. Mark my words, this is coming. For "security" reasons, to fight terrorism, etc.
Just like the outrageous crap in most EULAs, this will be posted somewhere on a wall, saying "by entering these premises, you are consenting to be photographed"
Even if that doesn't happen -- IMO, the amount of energy being poured into technology such as this seat tracking software would be better spent creating films worth watching. Between the smug know-it-all antics of the Hollywood crowd and the deep-as-a-puddle content of most dialog and storylines, there's just no compelling reason to attend.
LOTR was the most recent film I saw in a theatre. At the rate things are going, it may be the last film I see in any theatre.
Getting framed sucks... but what if it's all part of a setup?
Wasn't there some discussion about Obama wanting a new helicopter but "for the good of the nation" "considering today's economy" (nudge nudge, wink wink*) he decided against buying new helicopters.
But now that the security been breached, well, he just *has* to have a shiny new one, right?
(*What's a few hundred million dollars for a helicopter when we're committing to spending more money than the entire world's GDP, as computed using GAAP standards?)
And then they ask for a refund.
Ruthless!
Regardless of what you do as far as utilizing the servers, call your insurance agent straightaway and make sure that equipment is insured! Business property is very unlikely to be covered by your homeowner's policy so theft/fire/whatever could leave you financially exposed (or even liable, should the investors choose to come after you for reparations).
And we've all seen how well THAT worked out.
To wit: http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=194983 (Howard Stern Interviews Obama "Policy" Voters)
Sure, it happens on both sides, but that was the most striking example that comes to mind when I think of uneducated voters.
OTOH, if you're running low on fuel/power, just cruise up onto the sidewalk and mow down a few unsuspecting pedestrians. *KaThumpKaThump* *KaThumpKaThump* Presto! Enough juice to make it home (after a quick run through the carwash, of course). Thanks, MIT!!
Well, one thing I can assure you is that your vote will NOT count in Iowa, should this bill pass into law. The Iowa tally is disregarded in favor of the wishes of voters elsewhere. How could this possibly be seen as a good idea other than freeing national campaigns to drop all pretenses of concern and thoroughly ignore Iowans next time around and merely focus on the "wants" (welfare/handouts/bailouts/bribes/etc) of the big population centers?
Those who rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. This bill provides a neat mechanism for getting Peter's support, too.
I am baffled why anyone other than those in the aforementioned population centers would support it.
Wait a second. What started off as a laptop has devolved into a flash drive with a bluetooth chip & a battery! Another week and it'll be described as a "spiral-bound notebook and a pencil with a string tied to it."
$1 for a chalkboard and $9 to hire a group of people to follow you around and do whatever you write.
I'd say you need a disk defragment more than a reinstall.
>>when I ran XP I found that it did need a reinstall about ever 8-12 months anyway. That disk crunching gets louder and longer and booting seems slower over time.
Perhaps they are distributing the same five keys to 2.5 million people?
But the more interesting part of this situation is the question "why are they doing this?" I think they originally meant to grant individual keys but their infrastructure (webservers, keygen systems, database, fileservers, ??) couldn't keep up. So they basically started serving a cached set of ten static HTML pages to incoming requests.
Even more troublesome, their engineering/support groups couldn't respond quickly enough to solve the issues so they kept pushing the "release" date/time back further and further before apparently giving up and going with the cached keys.
This is nothing short of a debacle -- a failure in planning and execution and a breakdown in communication, probably internally, but certainly to the userbase.
I wonder how many potential customers they just lost from this experience? How many folks will decide "I'm tired of this nonsense" and go buy a Mac?
I feel bad for the chairs in Steve Balmer's office -- they're in for a beating.
You've gotta hand it to Obama -- the guy's really good! It normally takes a few years to achieve this much scandal but he's not even in office and he has corruption (Blogo's relationship to Chief-of-staff Emmanuael, Bill Richardson, David Rubin), controversial chairmanship appointments (such as this one) AND backpedaling on stated policy (withdraw from Iraq), etc.
That's at least one term's worth of scandal squeezed into a month.
Pass the popcorn, this is going to be entertaining in a can't-look-away-from-the-car-crash sort of way.
>>I'm sure this will do wonders for Obama's standing with his college age voters.
Like he cares. The election is over. The voters have served their purpose and now may be safely ignored for at least 20 months.
Then I would suggest this hypothetical person is too emotionally fragile and delicate to live! If the psychological "trauma" of being asked some questions about where you're going, what you've packed, how long you plan to stay, chit-chat about the destination, the weather, etc. leave, as you say, "mental scars" then that person is an emotional basket case already and probably unfit to travel anywhere, by any means.
Your comment is exactly what I meant when I said hyperbole. Emotional scars? Puh-leeze. Your silly hypothetical trivializes those who have endured real trauma.
Then you'll be questioned and/or searched, deemed to not be a threat and sent on your way. And I suppose you'll learn to go wee before the flight.
>>Suppose I have to go to the bathroom and look nervous like I won't make it time?
Yeah, she heard that you killed the first one off after less than a year and thought "I'd better perform or he'll do me in, too!"
Maybe she was just a bad actor?
If the circuite powering the antenna was the greatest consumer of power in the device, this would result in a significant improvement to the end-user. However, it's all the other bits in the device which eat thousands of times more power -- the CPU, the display, the speakers, etc.
Interesting discovery, but the real-world savings will be few.
>>...what types of in-game advertising players will and won't be seeing in the near future
Hey, game publishers, let me tell you what types of in-game advertising I'll be seeing in the near future: NONE! Know how I know? because I WON'T BE BUYING YOUR PRODUCTS! Seriously. It's the reason I quit watching television several years ago: it was bad enough that the quality of the shows was weak, but the encroachment of pervasive, obvious product placement and obnoxious on-screen banners thoroughly ruined the experience.
I play games to escape from this garbage, not to endorse it. I'm not interested in your advertising, and as of late I'm barely interested in your cookie-cutter games that are big on cost & hardware requirements and poor for overall entertainment value. You're walking a fine line, already.
What I'm saying is, you need to focus on the basics -- creating games that are fun and deliver good value -- rather than considering my eyeballs some sort of resource that you get to exploit.
Pissing off your customer base is not the road to financial success. But what do I know? I'm only the person who used to buy your products. And I suspect there are many, many more people who share my sentiments.
I am confident there will be no problems. Ship it.
Signed,
Bill "Shakey" Bradson
Lead Engineer, Tacoma Narrows project
Need to choose words more carefully, editor. Just because something is common, doesn't mean it's popular (which implies something is liked, admired.)
Spam and phishing is very common, but it's not popular. And it frequently comes from .cn domains.
Unless this is the Local Mime Club's Pint Night, I'd have to rate this one "+5, Sad".