If next week 50% of the people driving started to bike, then there would be a bike jam on the roads and bikeways.
I can fit at least five or six bikes in the roadspace required by an Chevy Suburban. I could park 10-20 bikes in the space required by an average automobile.
I assure you that if more people rode bikes instead of driving cars, we would have far lower road repair costs, lower dependance on foreign oil, lower incidence of diabetes and other weight related maladies, lower health care costs, lower costs to businesses to build and maintain parking for their employees and customers, fewer traffic jams etc...etc...etc...
From an automobile perspective, lets say instead of driving Hummers or Suburbans to haul one lonely ass around, folks purchased smaller more fuel efficient autos. One could probably fit two, perhaps three Smart cars in the space required by one Suburban making many of the arguments outlined above also valid.
traffic jams -> scarcity of alternative transportation
Bogus. If more people would get off their asses and onto a bicycle or even walk we would have far fewer traffic problems. Instead, we want large hulking SUV's to haul us back and forth from work and the store.
Try a little experiement. On your drive/ride/walk home, pay attention to the number of people in automobiles. You will find that the fast number of folks are purchasing large SUV's and large automobiles just to haul their lonesome ass around, when they could be buying smaller Smart cars and such. Or like I said before, choosing a bicycle.
it says that tie-ins to proprietary software effectively eliminate competition for government procurement and are inherently bad.
Well, I might say that if one were considering government procurement only, they might be inherently bad. But there absolutely *is* good software out there that is proprietary that is good, and better than anything available open source. This is not to say I am not in favor of open source. Quite the contrary, I believe in an open source foundation, but companies should be allowed to bid on contracts for their proprietary products as long as those products are either based on open source, or support open source formats and alternatives.
Ahhh yes, another person who's hiding himself away in school and has no clue what the real world is like spouting feel-good nonsense.
Sorry.....ah, spronk. I spent my time outside of academia, started a company doing molecular structure activity relationships, had fun, sold it off, ran a sleep lab for a while and then went back to graduate school. I know what life is like outside of academia, I just choose to continue to learn rather than let my brains rot out of my skull. The cool thing about it is that I even get paid to learn. Like I said to another poster.....Not a bad deal.
Dude, everyone hates there job and if they claim they don't there lying so drop the boardroom bullshit.
Sorry dude. I actually enjoy my job, and it has nothing to do with boardroom bullshit. Get this.....I get paid to learn. Not bad eh? I get paid to learn new things and discover other things nobody knew before. I think its pretty darned cool.
He hasn't been bought off and he doesn't have an agenda. His only goal is to warn new hires about the various landmines that exist, buried under the polite exterior of the corporate landscape. You may not like what he has to say, but no one ever said that software engineering was a pretty job. If they did, they were telling you a lie.
Ahhh, yes. Another treatise on how The Man is tapdancing on our heads.
Alternatively, we could read books on how to help create environments that are mutually advantageous, supportive positive experiences rather than focusing on heading off to another dreary color washed existence where we hate our bosses and hate our jobs.
This is why certain aspects of business will always cause privacy problems such as this. The goal of many businesses is not to provide the best possible service or the best possible products. Rather it is simply to make money. This is why HMO's never made sense to me and why they were a con foisted upon the American public. They have not made the practice of medicine any cheaper, rather they have simply moved profits from the physicians, nurses and technicians and moved it to a new middle layer of management who makes decisions such as exporting transcription overseas to markets with no concern for privacy.
You keep saying that, but that just doesn't stand up to scrutiny if VT paid regular educational pricing on the G5's.
????!???!? Scrutiny of what?
Dual rack-mounted Opteron 240's start at around $2600 with 1G of RAM, and they are still faster (according to SPEC) than than the 2GHz dual G5s with only 512M of RAM and educational pricing of $2700.
O.K., now add on an OS to the Opteron, and add on Gigabit ethernet, now add in support for setting up the Opteron whereas the G5's required little preparation, now look at resale value of the G5's when the cluster is dissassembled, etc...etc...etc...
Look, the deal is done. You are arguing against fact. Opterons were looked at. For this deal with VT, Apple had the best bid and VT chose that solution. What are you arguing? The point is that the Apple G5's provided the best bang for the buck and the project coordinators decided on that solution.
I was directly answering your statement "what matters is total bang for total buck, at the prices at which regular folks can get these machines (no special "we need a showcase" kind of deals).".
There were no special showcase deals here. A proposal was made, a number of companies bid on it, and Apple won the proposal based upon total performance/dollar.
If Apple had donated those machines, would the "bang for the buck" of G5's increase even further?
Sure it would have, but Apple is a business, and they did not donate or give any special pricing beyond what an educational institution can get.
Again, what matters is what regular organizations can get these things for, not one-of-a-kind deals.
You pony up the cash and Apple will sell you one just like it. In fact, the UV folks are putting together "kits" whereby if others want exactly what they have, they will consult and help provide all the tools/code/assistance in building one.
And, yes, Dell's are way, way overpriced for compute clusters--even if Apple beats them, that's not saying much.
Ahhh, but Apple did not just beat Dell. They beat all other bidders including Linux distro companies. The process was blind and each proposer did not know which companies were bidding or what their bid amounts were.
A related issue is the permissions technology called Information Rights Management, which may shut out Mac users.
So, I have been hearing this concern raised a number of times, and I have to wonder....Why has Microsoft not taken the time or made the effort to answer the question? Their Mac business unit is one of the most profitable divisions, so one would think that this concern would have made it up the corporate ladder.
Besides, performance per CPU doesn't matter much in these benchmarks, what matters is total bang for total buck, at the prices at which regular folks can get these machines (no special "we need a showcase" kind of deals). I suspect the 2.4GHz-based clusters are still a better deal than either the G5 or a 3.2GHz cluster, more CPUs or not.
Actually, if you read back a little bit, you will find that the contract was awarded to Apple because they gave the best bang for the buck and it turns out that Dell optioned clusters would have been more expensive.
Big Mac -> Rmax: 8164 Processors: 1936
Cray X1 -> Rmax: 2932.9 Processors: 252
I did say It still bests all other Intel hardware... Commodity clusters are entirely different beasts than dedicated supercomputers and this is exactly why I chose the terminology "clusters" rather than supercomputers. Also, check out the architecture of real "supercomputers". Most of the real costs are in CPU interconnectivity.
While these numbers will no doubt come as a disappointment for Mac zealots who wanted to blow away all the Intel machines, it should still be noted that this is the best price/performance ratio ever achieved on a supercomputer.
It still bests all other Intel hardware with only the Alpha hardware on top. And given the CPU count, even the Alpha hardware does not match it. Look at the numbers.....The Linux based 2.4Ghz cluster has almost 200 more CPU's on board with a 217 Gflop/sec difference. The Alpha clusters are running anywhere from 1,984 to 6,048 more CPU's.
It's not just the U.S. For instance in New Zealand, there is a 12% tax on books. (or at least that is what I was told when considering purchasing them here or there)
Is there anything from WWII that is still classified?
Yes, there are documents still classified because certain individuals are still alive or certain policies or relationships are still in effect. A couple of years ago, my Grandmother recieved a visit after the death of my Grandfather asking if there were any "documents" or photographs that he may have had in his possession. (He was in the OSS).
In my limited experience in this arena, oftentimes documents, media etc... are classified for a number of reasons including: 1) That media may contain information that was collected using technologies that may not be disclosed. 2) Alternatively, the "collector" of that media may have been in a place at a time that they should not have been or 3) Often the media may document relationships that are intended to be known as "unrelated" for intelligence, military or political purposes.
I'd be willing to bet... you deal with 5x as many Wintel boxes as you do apples..
No. It's the other way around. More Macs than Wintel, especially now that we are switching most of our systems from Wintel to OS X.
Maybe you just don't know what you are talking about..
Using computers since 1983, with most brands and just about all OS's including IRIX, Solaris, Windows of all flavors, DOS, Linux, and MacOS from the first through OS X. I have been a power user for years performing image processing on some of the first image processing workstations (the ones with hardware accelerated functions), and now I perform most of my science on Macs. In all of those systems, the hard drives are critically important and I have purchased and used many, many, many types and speced hard drives. So, yeah I know what I am talking about.
Apple uses the same exact Western Digital and Maxtor hard drives that dell, gateway, sony, ibm, compaq, whitebox uses. They come from the same factory, from the same companies, and are tested the same by the MFG.
Ahhh, but there are different levels of testing that are performed and computer manufacturers can specify what level of testing they require. Of course it costs more, but you get what you pay for.
And your maximum of 2 SATA drives per G5 system is a huge limitation.
Actually no, it is not a limitation as most of my high performance computing is done on RAID arrays that are external. Right now I am looking at getting an XRAID with 14 hard drives that will live externally anyway.
The thing is a $3,000 workstation for crying out loud.
Actually, as I ordered it, its closer to $4520, and I am adding more RAM. The interesting thing is that I also considered and speced out a Dell box when I had to order a new workstation, and the Dell, when similarly configured was $4511 without Firewire 800, without digital audio in and out, without built in wireless networking, without built in Bluetooth, without gigabit ethernet, etc...etc...etc... The dual G5 made a pretty good argument there. Its a great system at the high end and is very price competitive with the Wintel world. Oh, and did I mention how quiet it is?:-)
it's physically larger than any Dell systems...
Yeah, and its also quieter, and faster.
And only 2 HDD slots MAXIMUM.
See the above comment.
In the end, you used the hard drive performance discussion to spout off idiotic fanboy comments about the mac that don't show anything beneficial for the platform.
O.K., how about OS X makes me much more productive than does Wintel allowing me to get grants, perform good science, present my data effectively, collaborate with others all while enabling science to move forward. On the other side, I also consult with a couple companies and OS X's ability to let me accomplish work without getting in my way makes me more valuable there too. The dual G4 I used before this replaced a Wintel box and an SGI and an older Macintosh making for a less cluttered work environment and allowing me to run all of my *NIX code on the Mac and allowing me to consolidate software libraries saving me time and money. Oh, and the Macs simply work. That is not something I can say about other platforms, especially the IRIX and Solaris boxes I used in the past.
Besides the speed advantage, SCSI drives also typically last two to three times longer than their IDE counterparts, and generally go through more rigorous testing.
This is absolutely true. Apple used to ship all SCSI drives in their machines and I still have twelve year old Macs that have never had a hard drive failure. The new IDE drives however are a different story. That said, Apple appears to do more quality testing on their hard drives in that since Apple started shipping Macs with IDE drives, I have had two failures. Compare this with Wintel boxes like Dells where I have had close to ten IDE drive failures.
The other issue that folks should know is that if you are doing any work that is truly disc intensive (like photoshop or scientific computing) then SCSI has historically been the protocol of choice with much faster speeds possible with SCSI. For instance, I have insisted on 10-15k RPM drives for my work and they are much faster than even the fastest IDE devices. This is starting to change with fast SATA drives however and I am looking forward to some new options with the G5.
FIFA Soccer - Uh hello, in the US Madden on PS2 outsells like every crappy soccer game ever made for any system COMBINED. This is a clear example of anti-US bias.
Do do realize however, that soccer (Futbol, football etc...) is the single most popular sport in the world in terms of fans, televised audiences and participants. Guess what? NFL is not even second here. That honor would go to Formula One racing. NFL football, like Nascar racing is a uniquely American phenomenon that most of the rest of the world simply does not follow.
Re:Poseiden rocks
on
Watching You
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Hrmmm. Thanks for the info. Good Slashdot reporting dictates I should have placed a link to the company in the posting of the story item. Here it is.
(This will not get modded up because I'm far too late to the discussion)
No, but people will still read it.:-)
At any rate, I agree completely with your ideas and would say that the current level of science education in the general public is truly worrysome. The only problem is that there is a relatively small segment of society that might be interested in this stuff and I would worry that it would have to be "sexed up" in order to appeal to a wide enough base to be profitable.
I dont however think that this is absolute in that great programming is broadcast on PBS, TLC, Discovery, BBC, etc...etc...etc... Some of it apparently is right up the description that you have proposed (only sexed up a bit). For instance, I saw a teaser for a program called Mythbusters on one of the cable channels geared I thought primarily to the teen audience the other night.
What I would like to see is a hybrid of CNN news hours, documentaries, science education, with some small portion of learning via traditional academic classes taught by some of the best teachers around. Think about how that might place value on instructors and educators much more than is currently done. For example in many larger basic science institutions, teaching is perceived as an annoyance rather than something that should be respected as a duty.
Love Apple. The activation procedure is specific to the Windows version only:
Now, this is why you have got to love Slashdot. In-between all the noise, there are little gems like this that are loaded with concise information that is quite helpful.
Please mod parent up and support consumer choice for activation free software by switching to OS X.
"This is a follow-up to an earlier story on slashdot about Adobe releasing their Creative Suite package.
Follow up? What follow up? I don't see any new information, rather, all I see is an editorial ranting about big ol bad Adobe. Also what the anonymous reader who submitted this apparently does not know is that Intuit apologized and removed activation from their products.
Now, for some real questions: Does anyone know if Adobe is going to require activation for large corporations or educational users? I myself am not a big fan of activation, but the thing I want to know is, why do not companies producing high dollar software not simply use hardware interlocks? They are quite effective, do not add significantly to the price of the software and with USB, they are simple as can be.
A Diebold contractor tells a worrysome tale of how close to a third of the machines were crashing or locking up and how his tests showed the machines producing errors up to 25%.
As I recall, these voting machines are running Windows. Are we surprised? Perhaps these things should be running a dedicated embedded OS, or a trusted Linux, even OS X, but not Windows. Especially with all of the security concerns.
Slashdot Mirror
If next week 50% of the people driving started to bike, then there would be a bike jam on the roads and bikeways.
I can fit at least five or six bikes in the roadspace required by an Chevy Suburban. I could park 10-20 bikes in the space required by an average automobile.
I assure you that if more people rode bikes instead of driving cars, we would have far lower road repair costs, lower dependance on foreign oil, lower incidence of diabetes and other weight related maladies, lower health care costs, lower costs to businesses to build and maintain parking for their employees and customers, fewer traffic jams etc...etc...etc...
From an automobile perspective, lets say instead of driving Hummers or Suburbans to haul one lonely ass around, folks purchased smaller more fuel efficient autos. One could probably fit two, perhaps three Smart cars in the space required by one Suburban making many of the arguments outlined above also valid.
traffic jams -> scarcity of alternative transportation
Bogus. If more people would get off their asses and onto a bicycle or even walk we would have far fewer traffic problems. Instead, we want large hulking SUV's to haul us back and forth from work and the store.
Try a little experiement. On your drive/ride/walk home, pay attention to the number of people in automobiles. You will find that the fast number of folks are purchasing large SUV's and large automobiles just to haul their lonesome ass around, when they could be buying smaller Smart cars and such. Or like I said before, choosing a bicycle.
it says that tie-ins to proprietary software effectively eliminate competition for government procurement and are inherently bad.
Well, I might say that if one were considering government procurement only, they might be inherently bad. But there absolutely *is* good software out there that is proprietary that is good, and better than anything available open source. This is not to say I am not in favor of open source. Quite the contrary, I believe in an open source foundation, but companies should be allowed to bid on contracts for their proprietary products as long as those products are either based on open source, or support open source formats and alternatives.
Or what about......The dog ate my ID. Or I forgot mine today. Come on now, these are kids we are talking about. Let's be realistic.
Ahhh yes, another person who's hiding himself away in school and has no clue what the real world is like spouting feel-good nonsense.
Sorry.....ah, spronk. I spent my time outside of academia, started a company doing molecular structure activity relationships, had fun, sold it off, ran a sleep lab for a while and then went back to graduate school. I know what life is like outside of academia, I just choose to continue to learn rather than let my brains rot out of my skull. The cool thing about it is that I even get paid to learn. Like I said to another poster.....Not a bad deal.
Dude, everyone hates there job and if they claim they don't there lying so drop the boardroom bullshit.
Sorry dude. I actually enjoy my job, and it has nothing to do with boardroom bullshit. Get this.....I get paid to learn. Not bad eh? I get paid to learn new things and discover other things nobody knew before. I think its pretty darned cool.
He hasn't been bought off and he doesn't have an agenda. His only goal is to warn new hires about the various landmines that exist, buried under the polite exterior of the corporate landscape. You may not like what he has to say, but no one ever said that software engineering was a pretty job. If they did, they were telling you a lie.
Ahhh, yes. Another treatise on how The Man is tapdancing on our heads.
Alternatively, we could read books on how to help create environments that are mutually advantageous, supportive positive experiences rather than focusing on heading off to another dreary color washed existence where we hate our bosses and hate our jobs.
This is why certain aspects of business will always cause privacy problems such as this. The goal of many businesses is not to provide the best possible service or the best possible products. Rather it is simply to make money. This is why HMO's never made sense to me and why they were a con foisted upon the American public. They have not made the practice of medicine any cheaper, rather they have simply moved profits from the physicians, nurses and technicians and moved it to a new middle layer of management who makes decisions such as exporting transcription overseas to markets with no concern for privacy.
You keep saying that, but that just doesn't stand up to scrutiny if VT paid regular educational pricing on the G5's.
????!???!? Scrutiny of what?
Dual rack-mounted Opteron 240's start at around $2600 with 1G of RAM, and they are still faster (according to SPEC) than than the 2GHz dual G5s with only 512M of RAM and educational pricing of $2700.
O.K., now add on an OS to the Opteron, and add on Gigabit ethernet, now add in support for setting up the Opteron whereas the G5's required little preparation, now look at resale value of the G5's when the cluster is dissassembled, etc...etc...etc...
Look, the deal is done. You are arguing against fact. Opterons were looked at. For this deal with VT, Apple had the best bid and VT chose that solution. What are you arguing? The point is that the Apple G5's provided the best bang for the buck and the project coordinators decided on that solution.
And your point is what?
I was directly answering your statement "what matters is total bang for total buck, at the prices at which regular folks can get these machines (no special "we need a showcase" kind of deals).".
There were no special showcase deals here. A proposal was made, a number of companies bid on it, and Apple won the proposal based upon total performance/dollar.
If Apple had donated those machines, would the "bang for the buck" of G5's increase even further?
Sure it would have, but Apple is a business, and they did not donate or give any special pricing beyond what an educational institution can get.
Again, what matters is what regular organizations can get these things for, not one-of-a-kind deals.
You pony up the cash and Apple will sell you one just like it. In fact, the UV folks are putting together "kits" whereby if others want exactly what they have, they will consult and help provide all the tools/code/assistance in building one.
And, yes, Dell's are way, way overpriced for compute clusters--even if Apple beats them, that's not saying much.
Ahhh, but Apple did not just beat Dell. They beat all other bidders including Linux distro companies. The process was blind and each proposer did not know which companies were bidding or what their bid amounts were.
A related issue is the permissions technology called Information Rights Management, which may shut out Mac users.
So, I have been hearing this concern raised a number of times, and I have to wonder....Why has Microsoft not taken the time or made the effort to answer the question? Their Mac business unit is one of the most profitable divisions, so one would think that this concern would have made it up the corporate ladder.
Besides, performance per CPU doesn't matter much in these benchmarks, what matters is total bang for total buck, at the prices at which regular folks can get these machines (no special "we need a showcase" kind of deals). I suspect the 2.4GHz-based clusters are still a better deal than either the G5 or a 3.2GHz cluster, more CPUs or not.
Actually, if you read back a little bit, you will find that the contract was awarded to Apple because they gave the best bang for the buck and it turns out that Dell optioned clusters would have been more expensive.
Big Mac -> Rmax: 8164 Processors: 1936
Cray X1 -> Rmax: 2932.9 Processors: 252
I did say It still bests all other Intel hardware... Commodity clusters are entirely different beasts than dedicated supercomputers and this is exactly why I chose the terminology "clusters" rather than supercomputers. Also, check out the architecture of real "supercomputers". Most of the real costs are in CPU interconnectivity.
While these numbers will no doubt come as a disappointment for Mac zealots who wanted to blow away all the Intel machines, it should still be noted that this is the best price/performance ratio ever achieved on a supercomputer.
It still bests all other Intel hardware with only the Alpha hardware on top. And given the CPU count, even the Alpha hardware does not match it. Look at the numbers.....The Linux based 2.4Ghz cluster has almost 200 more CPU's on board with a 217 Gflop/sec difference. The Alpha clusters are running anywhere from 1,984 to 6,048 more CPU's.
It's not just the U.S. For instance in New Zealand, there is a 12% tax on books. (or at least that is what I was told when considering purchasing them here or there)
Is there anything from WWII that is still classified?
Yes, there are documents still classified because certain individuals are still alive or certain policies or relationships are still in effect. A couple of years ago, my Grandmother recieved a visit after the death of my Grandfather asking if there were any "documents" or photographs that he may have had in his possession. (He was in the OSS).
Things are classified for a reason.
In my limited experience in this arena, oftentimes documents, media etc... are classified for a number of reasons including: 1) That media may contain information that was collected using technologies that may not be disclosed. 2) Alternatively, the "collector" of that media may have been in a place at a time that they should not have been or 3) Often the media may document relationships that are intended to be known as "unrelated" for intelligence, military or political purposes.
I'd be willing to bet... you deal with 5x as many Wintel boxes as you do apples..
:-)
No. It's the other way around. More Macs than Wintel, especially now that we are switching most of our systems from Wintel to OS X.
Maybe you just don't know what you are talking about..
Using computers since 1983, with most brands and just about all OS's including IRIX, Solaris, Windows of all flavors, DOS, Linux, and MacOS from the first through OS X. I have been a power user for years performing image processing on some of the first image processing workstations (the ones with hardware accelerated functions), and now I perform most of my science on Macs. In all of those systems, the hard drives are critically important and I have purchased and used many, many, many types and speced hard drives. So, yeah I know what I am talking about.
Apple uses the same exact Western Digital and Maxtor hard drives that dell, gateway, sony, ibm, compaq, whitebox uses. They come from the same factory, from the same companies, and are tested the same by the MFG.
Ahhh, but there are different levels of testing that are performed and computer manufacturers can specify what level of testing they require. Of course it costs more, but you get what you pay for.
And your maximum of 2 SATA drives per G5 system is a huge limitation.
Actually no, it is not a limitation as most of my high performance computing is done on RAID arrays that are external. Right now I am looking at getting an XRAID with 14 hard drives that will live externally anyway.
The thing is a $3,000 workstation for crying out loud.
Actually, as I ordered it, its closer to $4520, and I am adding more RAM. The interesting thing is that I also considered and speced out a Dell box when I had to order a new workstation, and the Dell, when similarly configured was $4511 without Firewire 800, without digital audio in and out, without built in wireless networking, without built in Bluetooth, without gigabit ethernet, etc...etc...etc... The dual G5 made a pretty good argument there. Its a great system at the high end and is very price competitive with the Wintel world. Oh, and did I mention how quiet it is?
it's physically larger than any Dell systems...
Yeah, and its also quieter, and faster.
And only 2 HDD slots MAXIMUM.
See the above comment.
In the end, you used the hard drive performance discussion to spout off idiotic fanboy comments about the mac that don't show anything beneficial for the platform.
O.K., how about OS X makes me much more productive than does Wintel allowing me to get grants, perform good science, present my data effectively, collaborate with others all while enabling science to move forward. On the other side, I also consult with a couple companies and OS X's ability to let me accomplish work without getting in my way makes me more valuable there too. The dual G4 I used before this replaced a Wintel box and an SGI and an older Macintosh making for a less cluttered work environment and allowing me to run all of my *NIX code on the Mac and allowing me to consolidate software libraries saving me time and money. Oh, and the Macs simply work. That is not something I can say about other platforms, especially the IRIX and Solaris boxes I used in the past.
Try them out. You may be pleasantly surprised.
Besides the speed advantage, SCSI drives also typically last two to three times longer than their IDE counterparts, and generally go through more rigorous testing.
This is absolutely true. Apple used to ship all SCSI drives in their machines and I still have twelve year old Macs that have never had a hard drive failure. The new IDE drives however are a different story. That said, Apple appears to do more quality testing on their hard drives in that since Apple started shipping Macs with IDE drives, I have had two failures. Compare this with Wintel boxes like Dells where I have had close to ten IDE drive failures.
The other issue that folks should know is that if you are doing any work that is truly disc intensive (like photoshop or scientific computing) then SCSI has historically been the protocol of choice with much faster speeds possible with SCSI. For instance, I have insisted on 10-15k RPM drives for my work and they are much faster than even the fastest IDE devices. This is starting to change with fast SATA drives however and I am looking forward to some new options with the G5.
FIFA Soccer - Uh hello, in the US Madden on PS2 outsells like every crappy soccer game ever made for any system COMBINED. This is a clear example of anti-US bias.
Do do realize however, that soccer (Futbol, football etc...) is the single most popular sport in the world in terms of fans, televised audiences and participants. Guess what? NFL is not even second here. That honor would go to Formula One racing. NFL football, like Nascar racing is a uniquely American phenomenon that most of the rest of the world simply does not follow.
Hrmmm. Thanks for the info. Good Slashdot reporting dictates I should have placed a link to the company in the posting of the story item.
Here it is.
(This will not get modded up because I'm far too late to the discussion)
:-)
No, but people will still read it.
At any rate, I agree completely with your ideas and would say that the current level of science education in the general public is truly worrysome. The only problem is that there is a relatively small segment of society that might be interested in this stuff and I would worry that it would have to be "sexed up" in order to appeal to a wide enough base to be profitable.
I dont however think that this is absolute in that great programming is broadcast on PBS, TLC, Discovery, BBC, etc...etc...etc... Some of it apparently is right up the description that you have proposed (only sexed up a bit). For instance, I saw a teaser for a program called Mythbusters on one of the cable channels geared I thought primarily to the teen audience the other night.
What I would like to see is a hybrid of CNN news hours, documentaries, science education, with some small portion of learning via traditional academic classes taught by some of the best teachers around. Think about how that might place value on instructors and educators much more than is currently done. For example in many larger basic science institutions, teaching is perceived as an annoyance rather than something that should be respected as a duty.
Love Apple. The activation procedure is specific to the Windows version only:
Now, this is why you have got to love Slashdot. In-between all the noise, there are little gems like this that are loaded with concise information that is quite helpful.
Please mod parent up and support consumer choice for activation free software by switching to OS X.
"This is a follow-up to an earlier story on slashdot about Adobe releasing their Creative Suite package.
Follow up? What follow up? I don't see any new information, rather, all I see is an editorial ranting about big ol bad Adobe. Also what the anonymous reader who submitted this apparently does not know is that Intuit apologized and removed activation from their products.
Now, for some real questions: Does anyone know if Adobe is going to require activation for large corporations or educational users? I myself am not a big fan of activation, but the thing I want to know is, why do not companies producing high dollar software not simply use hardware interlocks? They are quite effective, do not add significantly to the price of the software and with USB, they are simple as can be.
A Diebold contractor tells a worrysome tale of how close to a third of the machines were crashing or locking up and how his tests showed the machines producing errors up to 25%.
As I recall, these voting machines are running Windows. Are we surprised? Perhaps these things should be running a dedicated embedded OS, or a trusted Linux, even OS X, but not Windows. Especially with all of the security concerns.