Indeed. But this is the sort of stuff that you can expect from the popular press. Hey, if the number is twice as big, it must be twice as fast. Right?
At any rate, the reporting for this article is shoddy at best. For example: While I would absolutely love to believe this has been verified by a source at IBM, the reporting is a little suspect and I would suppose that this is based upon rumor and nothing else. For instance, this rumor has been making the rounds for some time and if you look at the other big rumor the author is speculating on Yet, help may be on the way. Quark is signaling that it might soon release an OS X version. No guarantees and no dates, to be sure. You will find that Quark has hidden nothing about this. In fact, in the latest Macworld there is a whole expose on Quark coming to OS X.
Just as SGI was faster in the absolute high-end, so is Sun. The E15k is a monster. For some very specialized applications, this may be the only way to go. But for the very large majority of systems being purchased, a simple x86 server will do, especially if you can cluster it. This is where Sun is loosing the grip. Earlier you had to have a SPARC machine for advanced enterprise computing. These days are over, just as you had to have a SGI to run 3D software.
Actually, I am seeing a number of folks either 1) migrate to or 2) seriously consider Apple's Xserve for purposes sort of in-between. The Xserve runs UNIX, it is absurdly easy to manage, they are cheap, and give pretty good performance especially when code is optimized for Altivec. Add to that the power consumption (or rather lack thereof), and for large numbers of servers, the Xserve becomes even more attractive in terms of lower electricity and cooling costs.
The beautiful thing about the Apple computer experience is that everything simply works seamlessly providing a productive work environment. Sure, you could get OS X running on a different platform, but it would take time. Especially when you consider that Microsofts development expenditure for Windows is an order of magnatude greater than Apple's for OS X. Apple has a small, highly focused team and when all is said, the PowerPC is a pretty nice platform for many things. e.g. How many Athalon powered laptops do you see kicking around? For a while, Apple was/is using the same chip in both the desktop and laptop arenas with good performance. This will change shortly and the performance delta for desktop systems is closing making OS X even more attractive.
Does gaming reduce productivity? Hell yes it does. I remember those Marathon (bungie) matches before exams as an undergrad. I remember what Deus Ex did to my productivity as a graduate student as well. Come on, be honest here. My most productive hours are usually in the evening and if I am playing games at those hours, I am not writing my dissertation or grants or papers.
From the article: On this G3 600 Mhz, it would take 1-2 seconds for a MacOSX button to respond after pressing it.
I don't know about anyone else, but I use my Macs to get work done, not to be waiting 1-2 seconds for clicks to respond. Therefore, I think I will keep using boxes made by Apple.
You should take a look at Marcus Meister's work using Salamander retina's on MEAs.
MEA's........I assume you mean multi electrode arrays?
Very interesting work to understand what processing occurs at the level of the retina.
We are RC members of ARVO. Retinal circuitry and function is what we do normally. However, in the last two years, we have been working in retinal degeneration and exploring what happens to the neural retina.
Your right, however, that the vision prosthetics are a long way off..
Perhaps 40 years. However, progress is being made using biological approaches that will prove more successful than current non-biological ideological approaches.
What the hell do these people target rats that much ? don't mice do the trick too ?
Rats have much larger brains and visual pathways than do mice, so surgery and implants of bionic and biological devices is spatially easier. The advantage that mice have right now is the genetic resources and databases that currently are not available to the same extent as for rats.
If you could create a multi-laminar structure, this setup might be ideal for an artificial retina. Currently, the bionic retinas being used are nowhere near as sensitive as they need to be to create any useful phototransduction, even if the neural retinal substrate underneath remained intact (which it does not). A multilaminar device could sandwich photosensitive elements combined with neural substrates that would function as the neural interface to the output of the retina, the remaining ganglion cells.
It makes learning some things difficult, but it can also make learning other things easier via association. For example, certain numbers have always had an associated color with me, (and no, they don't correlate with the little plastic refridgerator magnets we all had as kids). Learning those numbers was easy for me, but I remember that basic math came easy while more advanced math was confusing at first because the results did not always correlate with the "right" color.
Ozone does clean air, it oxidizes impurities, killing germs and removing smells...
Technically this is true. However, there are problems with ozone in that the molecule is one helluva free radical generator and free radicals have been implicated in lots of things that can make you life unpleasant. Things like cancer and other disorders. It makes me wonder about all those Tyco race car sets I used to play with and that lovely smell that filled my bedroom.
Not if Orrin Hatch gets his way. This head of the Senate Judiciary committee wants to make the Patriot Act permanent. Besides, even if it were temporary, it is still in violation of the Constitution. Don't let the concept of temporary abrogation of your rights fool you. This is a big deal.
Five years ago...1998...I don't know about u, but I knew almost noone that had the bandwidth to make this viable 5 years ago.
Hmmmm. Cable modems were rolling out in 1998 I think, and I have personally had high speed internet access since I started my first email account back in 1990 or 1991.......Oh my....Have I been wired for over a decade?......weird. I now have memories of Gopher and Veronica floating through my head.
I love how Apple fans attempt to give credit to the company for just about anything.
I am talking music here, but to keep things on topic, suffice it to say that it has been pointed out in Slashdot ad-nauseum the number of items the PC industry has to thank Apple for.
This shift towards services has been years in the making.
Oh? Then why have recording companies not done anything to date that takes advantages of all of the missed boats as another poster pointed out?
The initiative to license 20 distributors would have taken place long before anyone caught wind of the proposed Apple deal.
I suppose it could be argued that Apple has the cojones to implement things that other companies would love, but either do not have the guts or foresight to. Take for example USB, the CD-ROM, the GUI, the iPod, etc...etc...etc... And by the way, might I point out that the supposed press announcements are only 5 days apart, so if you call that long before, I suppose you might be correct.
Do you think we might have Apple to thank for this? No, seriously. Perhaps they got wind of what Universal was going to hook up and made a press announcement before the 28th.
I mean, this sort of thing should have been embraced five years ago by all of the labels.
So, as a followup to this, from the SPAPHAUS website "90% of all spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe is sent by a hard-core group of only 180+ individuals"
It just goes to show how a few incredibly selfish individuals can bring chaos and ruin to society. It obviously does not take many to bring huge costs to business and government, so why is it so hard to prosecute these few individuals for abuse of the internet and indirect theft from business and government (taxpayer) coffers, especially if they are known?
Now why do you have to act like a jerk and say that?!!?
Thinking you know better then the IT department, and that you have the right to use taxpayer dollars how ever you feel. ( which aside from rules and regulations its personally offensive, being a tax payer )
This is the kind of arrogant tripe that slows progress down. What's next, are you going to say "*I PAY YOUR SALARY!!*". Please, I also am a tax payer. When it comes to our research which is computationally extensive, I think we do know more than IT when it comes to our needs. I myself have been using computers since 1980, our PI since 1982 giving us a combined 44 years of computer experience in programing and administration. That combined with two PhD's in neuroscience gives us the knowledge to use computers to answer our research questions completely without the "assistance" of others.
I work for a governmental agency as well, and here NONE of that would be tolerated here ( especially this concept of 'discretionary purchases' ), due to the reasons in my first post.
I would be interested to find out which agency. Interestingly in my experience with federal and military agencies, those whose work is important enough can specify what tools they want to use. I could certainly do that and requisition whatever means I required to get the job done. I got the job accomplished and that was why I was brought on. Go up the chain a bit more than where you are at and I am sure you will find discretionary purchases. Furthermore, if government granting agencies (NIH, DARPA, DOE, DOD etc...etc...etc...) worked without the possibility for discretionary expenditures, I can assure you things would move much slower.
If you did manage to do that, first of all you wouldn't be on our network. Secondly, once you got audited at the end of the year it wouldn't be pretty, when it came time to be accountable for your actions..
I guarantee you that if I was pulled off of the network back then for petty reasons that got in the way of my job, there would be hell to pay and a simple phone call would unleash it. In fact now, since a good portion of our grant goes to university support costs (to cover infrastructure and salaries of IT folks), pulling me off of the network for arbitrary reasons like not wanting my Macintosh on the network would result in someone getting dressed down and my immediate reinstatment on the network. I never had to do this as I like to surround myself with people who are competent and can accomplish their jobs without being assholes. Everyone I work with is 1) smart 2) works hard 3) respects others for who they are and their abilities 4) knows how to get the job done 5) follows the law. I would like to give others the respect and recognition they deserve, but if someone came to me with crap like you just spouted off, they would no longer be working for me.
ts not your personal money to purchase as you please. It was taxpayers funds that were awarded to your agency ( or department ).
Actually, in this case, it was *my* grant awarded to me by a private foundation, not taxpayer funded. However, even if it was NIH funding, (something we primarily get), those funds would be available to us to use at our discretion during the course of our investigation on the grant. We decide how to spend the money to best accomplish the goals of the grant and we do not have to "get approval" to purchase things like computers.
Furthermore, by not going with the standard in that department ( what ever standard it is ) you will drastically increase the support costs for your pompous ass.
We have a rule in our lab. NOBODY touches our computers except us. Not our Wintel computers, nor our SGI's nor our Macintosh systems. Every single time in the past when IT did come in, they screwed up and cost us big time in lost productivity. In fact, because the Macintosh, particularly OS X, works so well, I have never had to call tech support for anything more than having the campus servers redirect pointers to our websites.
Consistency saves money in the support arena for IT. Having to support 'non-standard' devices or software does increase the cost.
It could be argued that "standardization" can increase cost. When we were looking at costs involved with maintenance on complete SGI environments, we were looking at support costs of about $300k/year. When we looked at hiring someone to support a single user Wintel environment, we were at about $100k/year. Deciding to purchase the best tool for the job (OS X which is replacing SGI's IRIX and even a few Wintel machines) and doing the support ourselves runs about $50k/year and does not impact our productivity.
However, I do agree in principle that the entire department should be open-minded when appropriate and look into all options, but in your case it doesn't seem to be that case.
What the hell do you know about my case? Are you my department head? Do you sign the checks or administer the funding here? The fact is that we are performing research into retinal function and pathologies related to vision loss and the implications on bionic implants and biological transplants. If you were interested, I would be happy to walk you through the lab and show you how the use of the right tool for the right job actually saves the taxpayer money and makes us more productive, hopefully impacting vision research and enabling the feasible rescue of vision loss for those with disorders ranging from retinitis pigmentosa to macular degeneration.
The consideration for open source should already be included in the basic law that all state departments should spend taxpayer resources in a way that would benefit the taxpayer most.
I don't want to see any law enacted that dictates any tools with which to perform a job. The best tool for the job should be decided upon by the individual(s) performing the work or defining the work. For instance, several years ago, the IT department attempted to tell me that I could not use a Macintosh to perform my work and that furthermore, I had to purchase a Windows machine. I informed them that there was no way that some IT knucklehead (no offence to Slashdot IT folks) was going to dicate to me the tools with which to perform my job and that I in fact was going to purchase a Macintosh from my grant.
I would however be in favor of laws (and I suspect they already exist) that indicate government contracts have to be bid out and decided upon by 1) The best solution and 2) the lowest bid.
Slashdot Mirror
Argh! Head... going... to... explode...
Indeed. But this is the sort of stuff that you can expect from the popular press. Hey, if the number is twice as big, it must be twice as fast. Right?
At any rate, the reporting for this article is shoddy at best. For example: While I would absolutely love to believe this has been verified by a source at IBM, the reporting is a little suspect and I would suppose that this is based upon rumor and nothing else. For instance, this rumor has been making the rounds for some time and if you look at the other big rumor the author is speculating on Yet, help may be on the way. Quark is signaling that it might soon release an OS X version. No guarantees and no dates, to be sure. You will find that Quark has hidden nothing about this. In fact, in the latest Macworld there is a whole expose on Quark coming to OS X.
Just as SGI was faster in the absolute high-end, so is Sun. The E15k is a monster. For some very specialized applications, this may be the only way to go. But for the very large majority of systems being purchased, a simple x86 server will do, especially if you can cluster it. This is where Sun is loosing the grip. Earlier you had to have a SPARC machine for advanced enterprise computing. These days are over, just as you had to have a SGI to run 3D software.
Actually, I am seeing a number of folks either 1) migrate to or 2) seriously consider Apple's Xserve for purposes sort of in-between. The Xserve runs UNIX, it is absurdly easy to manage, they are cheap, and give pretty good performance especially when code is optimized for Altivec. Add to that the power consumption (or rather lack thereof), and for large numbers of servers, the Xserve becomes even more attractive in terms of lower electricity and cooling costs.
The beautiful thing about the Apple computer experience is that everything simply works seamlessly providing a productive work environment. Sure, you could get OS X running on a different platform, but it would take time. Especially when you consider that Microsofts development expenditure for Windows is an order of magnatude greater than Apple's for OS X. Apple has a small, highly focused team and when all is said, the PowerPC is a pretty nice platform for many things. e.g. How many Athalon powered laptops do you see kicking around? For a while, Apple was/is using the same chip in both the desktop and laptop arenas with good performance. This will change shortly and the performance delta for desktop systems is closing making OS X even more attractive.
I should have added that Slashdot also reduces productivity significantly, but at least then hopefully you are thoughtfully responding to posts. :-)
Does gaming reduce productivity? Hell yes it does. I remember those Marathon (bungie) matches before exams as an undergrad. I remember what Deus Ex did to my productivity as a graduate student as well. Come on, be honest here. My most productive hours are usually in the evening and if I am playing games at those hours, I am not writing my dissertation or grants or papers.
Actually, I have a 600 Mhz G3 iMac running Webvision on OS X and it is plenty fast. Go ahead click around, it can take it.
From the article: On this G3 600 Mhz, it would take 1-2 seconds for a MacOSX button to respond after pressing it.
I don't know about anyone else, but I use my Macs to get work done, not to be waiting 1-2 seconds for clicks to respond. Therefore, I think I will keep using boxes made by Apple.
You should take a look at Marcus Meister's work using Salamander retina's on MEAs.
MEA's........I assume you mean multi electrode arrays?
Very interesting work to understand what processing occurs at the level of the retina.
We are RC members of ARVO. Retinal circuitry and function is what we do normally. However, in the last two years, we have been working in retinal degeneration and exploring what happens to the neural retina.
Your right, however, that the vision prosthetics are a long way off..
Perhaps 40 years. However, progress is being made using biological approaches that will prove more successful than current non-biological ideological approaches.
What the hell do these people target rats that much ? don't mice do the trick too ?
Rats have much larger brains and visual pathways than do mice, so surgery and implants of bionic and biological devices is spatially easier. The advantage that mice have right now is the genetic resources and databases that currently are not available to the same extent as for rats.
If you could create a multi-laminar structure, this setup might be ideal for an artificial retina. Currently, the bionic retinas being used are nowhere near as sensitive as they need to be to create any useful phototransduction, even if the neural retinal substrate underneath remained intact (which it does not). A multilaminar device could sandwich photosensitive elements combined with neural substrates that would function as the neural interface to the output of the retina, the remaining ganglion cells.
It makes learning some things difficult, but it can also make learning other things easier via association. For example, certain numbers have always had an associated color with me, (and no, they don't correlate with the little plastic refridgerator magnets we all had as kids). Learning those numbers was easy for me, but I remember that basic math came easy while more advanced math was confusing at first because the results did not always correlate with the "right" color.
So now I can record 2x the data on a CD-R but I still can't have filenames longer than 64 characters. :)
:-)
Why not? Don't you have a Macintosh?
Ozone does clean air, it oxidizes impurities, killing germs and removing smells...
Technically this is true. However, there are problems with ozone in that the molecule is one helluva free radical generator and free radicals have been implicated in lots of things that can make you life unpleasant. Things like cancer and other disorders. It makes me wonder about all those Tyco race car sets I used to play with and that lovely smell that filled my bedroom.
The Patriot Act expires in 2005.
Chill out.
My god.
Not if Orrin Hatch gets his way. This head of the Senate Judiciary committee wants to make the Patriot Act permanent. Besides, even if it were temporary, it is still in violation of the Constitution. Don't let the concept of temporary abrogation of your rights fool you. This is a big deal.
Five years ago...1998...I don't know about u, but I knew almost noone that had the bandwidth to make this viable 5 years ago.
Hmmmm. Cable modems were rolling out in 1998 I think, and I have personally had high speed internet access since I started my first email account back in 1990 or 1991.......Oh my....Have I been wired for over a decade?......weird. I now have memories of Gopher and Veronica floating through my head.
I love how Apple fans attempt to give credit to the company for just about anything.
I am talking music here, but to keep things on topic, suffice it to say that it has been pointed out in Slashdot ad-nauseum the number of items the PC industry has to thank Apple for.
This shift towards services has been years in the making.
Oh? Then why have recording companies not done anything to date that takes advantages of all of the missed boats as another poster pointed out?
The initiative to license 20 distributors would have taken place long before anyone caught wind of the proposed Apple deal.
I suppose it could be argued that Apple has the cojones to implement things that other companies would love, but either do not have the guts or foresight to. Take for example USB, the CD-ROM, the GUI, the iPod, etc...etc...etc... And by the way, might I point out that the supposed press announcements are only 5 days apart, so if you call that long before, I suppose you might be correct.
Do you think we might have Apple to thank for this? No, seriously. Perhaps they got wind of what Universal was going to hook up and made a press announcement before the 28th.
I mean, this sort of thing should have been embraced five years ago by all of the labels.
So, as a followup to this, from the SPAPHAUS website "90% of all spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe is sent by a hard-core group of only 180+ individuals"
It just goes to show how a few incredibly selfish individuals can bring chaos and ruin to society. It obviously does not take many to bring huge costs to business and government, so why is it so hard to prosecute these few individuals for abuse of the internet and indirect theft from business and government (taxpayer) coffers, especially if they are known?
Damn, and I thought these guys were dirty bastards before!
Pompous ass, as I was suspecting..
Now why do you have to act like a jerk and say that?!!?
Thinking you know better then the IT department, and that you have the right to use taxpayer dollars how ever you feel. ( which aside from rules and regulations its personally offensive, being a tax payer )
This is the kind of arrogant tripe that slows progress down. What's next, are you going to say "*I PAY YOUR SALARY!!*". Please, I also am a tax payer. When it comes to our research which is computationally extensive, I think we do know more than IT when it comes to our needs. I myself have been using computers since 1980, our PI since 1982 giving us a combined 44 years of computer experience in programing and administration. That combined with two PhD's in neuroscience gives us the knowledge to use computers to answer our research questions completely without the "assistance" of others.
I work for a governmental agency as well, and here NONE of that would be tolerated here ( especially this concept of 'discretionary purchases' ), due to the reasons in my first post.
I would be interested to find out which agency. Interestingly in my experience with federal and military agencies, those whose work is important enough can specify what tools they want to use. I could certainly do that and requisition whatever means I required to get the job done. I got the job accomplished and that was why I was brought on. Go up the chain a bit more than where you are at and I am sure you will find discretionary purchases. Furthermore, if government granting agencies (NIH, DARPA, DOE, DOD etc...etc...etc...) worked without the possibility for discretionary expenditures, I can assure you things would move much slower.
If you did manage to do that, first of all you wouldn't be on our network. Secondly, once you got audited at the end of the year it wouldn't be pretty, when it came time to be accountable for your actions..
I guarantee you that if I was pulled off of the network back then for petty reasons that got in the way of my job, there would be hell to pay and a simple phone call would unleash it. In fact now, since a good portion of our grant goes to university support costs (to cover infrastructure and salaries of IT folks), pulling me off of the network for arbitrary reasons like not wanting my Macintosh on the network would result in someone getting dressed down and my immediate reinstatment on the network. I never had to do this as I like to surround myself with people who are competent and can accomplish their jobs without being assholes. Everyone I work with is 1) smart 2) works hard 3) respects others for who they are and their abilities 4) knows how to get the job done 5) follows the law. I would like to give others the respect and recognition they deserve, but if someone came to me with crap like you just spouted off, they would no longer be working for me.
ts not your personal money to purchase as you please. It was taxpayers funds that were awarded to your agency ( or department ).
Actually, in this case, it was *my* grant awarded to me by a private foundation, not taxpayer funded. However, even if it was NIH funding, (something we primarily get), those funds would be available to us to use at our discretion during the course of our investigation on the grant. We decide how to spend the money to best accomplish the goals of the grant and we do not have to "get approval" to purchase things like computers.
Furthermore, by not going with the standard in that department ( what ever standard it is ) you will drastically increase the support costs for your pompous ass.
We have a rule in our lab. NOBODY touches our computers except us. Not our Wintel computers, nor our SGI's nor our Macintosh systems. Every single time in the past when IT did come in, they screwed up and cost us big time in lost productivity. In fact, because the Macintosh, particularly OS X, works so well, I have never had to call tech support for anything more than having the campus servers redirect pointers to our websites.
Consistency saves money in the support arena for IT. Having to support 'non-standard' devices or software does increase the cost.
It could be argued that "standardization" can increase cost. When we were looking at costs involved with maintenance on complete SGI environments, we were looking at support costs of about $300k/year. When we looked at hiring someone to support a single user Wintel environment, we were at about $100k/year. Deciding to purchase the best tool for the job (OS X which is replacing SGI's IRIX and even a few Wintel machines) and doing the support ourselves runs about $50k/year and does not impact our productivity.
However, I do agree in principle that the entire department should be open-minded when appropriate and look into all options, but in your case it doesn't seem to be that case.
What the hell do you know about my case? Are you my department head? Do you sign the checks or administer the funding here? The fact is that we are performing research into retinal function and pathologies related to vision loss and the implications on bionic implants and biological transplants. If you were interested, I would be happy to walk you through the lab and show you how the use of the right tool for the right job actually saves the taxpayer money and makes us more productive, hopefully impacting vision research and enabling the feasible rescue of vision loss for those with disorders ranging from retinitis pigmentosa to macular degeneration.
This would likely eliminate OSS in the process.
Not necessarily. After all, someone needs to get paid to implement said system and those funds could be counted into the bid price.
Hrmmmm. Perhaps Apple Computer could show the new way by making it cheaper for artists to record and distribute their music?
It might be more prudent to look at the average bid
Actually, I'd buy that argument as you typically get what you pay for.
The consideration for open source should already be included in the basic law that all state departments should spend taxpayer resources in a way that would benefit the taxpayer most.
I don't want to see any law enacted that dictates any tools with which to perform a job. The best tool for the job should be decided upon by the individual(s) performing the work or defining the work. For instance, several years ago, the IT department attempted to tell me that I could not use a Macintosh to perform my work and that furthermore, I had to purchase a Windows machine. I informed them that there was no way that some IT knucklehead (no offence to Slashdot IT folks) was going to dicate to me the tools with which to perform my job and that I in fact was going to purchase a Macintosh from my grant.
I would however be in favor of laws (and I suspect they already exist) that indicate government contracts have to be bid out and decided upon by 1) The best solution and 2) the lowest bid.