Since when was 25mpg reasonably efficient for a car?
25 MPG is completely reasonable when compared to the current average (not CAFE -- but average of cars on the road right now). Furthermore, I'm not sure that it's competely reasonable to expect all cars to get better gas mileage with time. In many cases, the opposite is true. It's not as much a matter of technology as it is a matter of what the market demands. We knew what we had to do to make cars more efficient 20 years ago. Problem was (and still is) that most folks would rather drive a heavier car with a larger, more powerful motor than a lighter car with a smaller, less powerful motor. Aerodynamics also play a huge factor in efficency at high speed (this is something that we've improved on over the years).
In order to make a lighter car (which is absolutely necessary for fuel economy), you need to make use of strong, lightweight materials in the construction of the vehicle (aluminum, carbon fiber, kevlar, titanium). Problem is, these materials are all far more expensive than their alternatives. The average car buyer still has to be able to afford their vehicle. Will the average soccer mom buy a 2600 LB minivan with a 135 HP 1.8L Turbodiesel I4 for $89,000? Hell no (even if it gets 45 MPG). She wants the 4200 Lb. behemoth with the 3.6L V6 for $36,000 (loaded) to "protect" her kids.
Now -- back to my point of fuel economy getting worse over the years. There have been two major regulatory fronts for car makers to overcome in the past few decades. Safety and emmissions. Together, these items add a significant amount of weight to a vehicle...as much as 700 pounds. Combine this with the fact that emmissions equipment robs a car of its power and you've got slow cars that nobody will buy. As the regulations (and subsquent weight) grew and the relative power shrunk, the only solution was to start using larger motors again or move to forced induction (turbo/superchargers), neither of which do much for fuel economy.
While the 4-stroke internal combusion engine can operate more efficiently than it could in years past, cars are simply gaining weight at a greater rate than engines are gaining fuel efficency. At the same time, consumers demand greater performance (looking at the power/weight ratio as being the the most critical element of vehicular acceleration) -- well, with weight increasing, there's only one thing to do...even more power (less economy). The point is that fuel economy is not necessarily an upward trend. That being said, there are new economical cars on the market today (Hybrids), partly because of regulation, partly because the market has demanded it. Funny thing: they're still not as economical (fuelwise) as some of the straight-up diesel econoboxes from 20 years ago.
What's the solution? Some would say "more regulation" -- people should be made to drive smaller, lighter, more efficient cars...regardless of the cost. Others would say "screw cars" -- the idea of personal transporrtation is selfish and not compatible with our future. People should be using public transportation -- maybe we should have some tax incentive for people to use PT and a penalty or car-drivers. And there's the people in the "why regulate" camp who say that if people want stuff like airbags, they'll buy them. The people who don't can save 40 pounds and $1500 on their car. The same goes for efficent cars -- if the public wants it, someone will provide it (for a profit). I'm not sure that there's a "right" solution. I tend to lean towards the side of letting the people buy whatever they want...fuel isn't subsidized -- I pay for that out of pocket. So if I want a 6000 Lb Super Sport Ute with a 440 ci supercharged V10 that gets 6 MPG -- it's my business. I'm the guy footing the bill for gas...eventually, fuel will become expensive enough so that I can't afford to operate my beast...and I'll either have to use another vehicle, or another source of fuel. Finally, both Americans an
You can probably see 120 FPS pretty easily, though you might not conciously notice a difference. To test that you would need to have an image flashed at you at 1/120th of a second.
I can notice a difference between a 60 and 120Hz refresh rate on a monitor -- but this is mostly the "flashiness" they produce out of the corner of my eye. I think that if the refresh rate is set properly, it will be hard to notice (although I can see what you mean by higher framerates being registering unconciously). However, there has to be some kind of threshold where you really can't notice. I'll dig around for published studies...I'm sure they're out there.
FWIW, I have a friend who is a coder for Bungie -- he's been into realtime 3D coding for years and he swears by the 60 FPH benchmark for 3D gaming. He says that there's not much reason to have any more (or any less).
No problems here. I don't think that I can differentiate between 60 FPS and 120 FPS...although I'm no expert.
It seems like this will fix the issue addressed in the post, and it may mess with some benchmarks that will use Doom III (anandtech, tomshardware, etc)...however, I'll bet that you will be able to turn the rate-limiting off for benchmarking purposes. Otherwise, there will most likely be no noticable effect.
Can anyone explain why a fresh OS install is preferable to an update OS install?
Because the update scripts can't always plan for the havoc that a personal computer user has wreaked on the OS. They can't test to see what every little poorly coded application changed, and how it is affected by the update (and more importantly, how it affects the update).
This doesn't just go for Apple. Given the choice between a fresh install of an OS and a dist upgrade, I'll always take the fresh install (when it's really an option). Why not eliminate the variables? Regardless of the elegance of the OS, PC OS'es are usually made pretty ugly once an end user gets through with it.
No need for sarcasm from me. I wonder if it's possible to do what you suggested at the OS level (Darwin)? Then again, you're probably right -- this sounds like something that someone would have already coded. If I spent that kind of money on a laptop, I'd have "fixed" it by now.
On a side note, I did sent the Planetary Society some money since they support SETI rather well. Boy was that a mistake - they've been telemarketing the shit out of me every other night for the past couple weeks. They're non-profit so they don't have the DNCL restrictions. At least I've recognized their callerID #, so I don't pick up anymore. Guess who won't be getting any more money from me. Same thing goes for the NRA, they're even more vicious. Now I know why these NPO's get so many anonymous donations.
You can make a non-anonymous donation, but withhold your contact information. Or, if you like, you can make the donation with the stipulation that they never contact you...for any reason, ever. If they fail to follow this rule, screw 'em. It's your money after all.
Clearly, this is a heated topic, and I'll go into this one carefully to avoid coming off as trollish. While I agree with you on almost all of your points, there are just a couple I have to respectfully disagree with. I'd buy an Apple laptop if it weren't for two things.
I don't buy their whole ergonomics and usability thing. The reason? The 1-button mouse. I can overlook it on a desktop system, because I can just buy another mouse and set it up to right-click for context menus. However, the pointing device is built into their laptop -- an external mouse shouldn't be necessary. If the 2-button mouse wasn't necessary, why is Apple still putting context menus everywhere? I guess that it's part of the OS war/marketing rhetoric -- but I don't think that I'll ever get over this point.
Secondarily (and to a much lesser extent) I can't justify their price premium. Maybe you're getting more for your dollar...but I don't need that extra stuff.
As far as weight -- the 12" Powerbooks are actually a little on the heavy side -- compare it to a Dell X200/X300, which come out lighter. One of my corporate officers here recently bought a 12" Powerbook. I got an X200 for our marketing guy. They were on a business trip together, and the officer started comparing his Apple with the Dell. Two days later, I was ordering him a Dell (however, this purchase was only based on the weight -- the Apple is a more powerful macine in this case)...but other than this, I totally agree with you -- the OS it a big whopper that's hard for most people to get over.
Oh well -- I hope that this was a friendly enough message to keep the fanboys and trolls away.
To add to your list of places to go, check out rennlist.org
It's primarily a Porsche site. Some of these guys are unfriendly Porsche snobs, but the vast majority of them are quite friendly and helpful. You'll also find a fair amount of engineering-types and track junkies who really know their stuff. You should be able to find all of your Porsche dismantlers/junkyards here too, so you can afford an old Porsche on a budget. Furthermore, the guy who runs the site, John Dunkle is one of the nicest guys I've ever met. If I still drove old Porsches, I'd still be reading that list regularly.
Geek N.: A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.
As far as overlap between car and computer geeks go, I can see alot of it. I've got a number of friends in my "circle" who are car geeks as well as computer geeks.
Depending on your definition of the term "geek" -- I'd consider myself a quasi car-geek, only because I don't fix everything on my car. I do stuff like suspension work, brake work (pads, rotors, adjustments, etc), and routine maintenance, but generally avoid any internal engine work (or, for that matter, anything that would involve dropping the engine or transmission).
That being said, I love cars. I simply think that they're neat machines that are fun to operate. I'm a particular fan of (what I define as) sports cars. My definition is a general adherance to the British (European) sports cars of earlier days. Lightweight (2500 LB or under is a MUST), inexpensive, purpose-built (no/few frills), RWD, and typically low-powered. I track my car (I'm cheap as well, so my "sports car" is both a track car and daily driver), and will tweak it as needed. Part of my car geekiness moves away from mechanical upgrades, and focuses on fixing the driver to make the car go faster...this a bastardization of an old axiom from my autocrossing days. I've now given up autocrossing entirely to persue track driving. I'm only able to do it a handful of times per year, since it can get quite expensive -- but I often will be on-track with my computer geek comrades.
Read the thread before speaking, man. There is nothing "blatantly false" in my comment(s). While I agree with your assessment of desktops Vs. servers Vs. workstations, that has nothing to do with my comment with regard to fanboy quotes (and marketing quotes in print), which I was able to cite. It may not have been from Apple, but I never even eluded to this. As far as what I saw and didn't see -- you are horribly disrespectful and I'm done with you.
So go look at the authoritative sources. Do they say anything different (with regard to specs, costs, etc)? They don't from what I've seen, but if you know different, please let me know.
As far as the/. price/performance comparison to the Dell -- it's total fanboy BS. There's absolutely no refuting this point. First of all, if you check out the UT release, you'll notice that their cost is a total cost for a supercomputing center...not just a supercomputer/supercluster that includes a building to house it (among other things). Furthermore, I didn't see much in the way of technical details about the hardware being used in the Apple cluster (other than the CPU's in the machines and how many). How fast will the cluster be? There's no telling because the type of clustering interconnect was not disclosed. (Unless you think that cluster speed just magically scales as you add processors). They gave FLOPS estimates for how fast the system might be -- but it's meaningless without real testing and cannot even be objectively evaluated without looking into the clustering hardware being used. Absolutely no conclusion can be drawn from the data in the linked article. As far as finding an article to quote that has more authoritative sources -- I don't have it, and I don't care. The point was that the linked article was a fanboy article. I didn't say that Apple is full of shit -- and I didn't say that Apple fanboys are any more full of shit than any others. The point is that fanboys, of any type, are completely subjective. The article linked is, without any question, a fanboy article.
I've even seen claims from that Apple has "The World's first 64-bit processor!".
I'm assuming that's tongue-in-cheek. I don't know anyone who's made such a claim.
The quote in question is not tongue-in-cheek. It's an example of the various fanboy bullshit that flies around. I can't tell you the first place I saw it, but if you open up to page 20 of Volume 121C of the PCMall catalog, that exact quote appears in bold letters...not an ironclad reference, but it's the first one that comes to mind.
It sounds like a fanboy article to me. Apple has been claiming supercomputer power for years. I've even seen claims from that Apple has "The World's first 64-bit processor!". Sure, this system sounds like it's the real deal, but it doesn't change the fact that the article in question is from a less-than-objective source (to say the least). Fanboy stuff is trash -- it doesn't matter which type of fanboy we're talking about (Apple, Linux, Wintel, Amiga, Cray, whatever). If it comes from a fanboy, it's completely subjective...and this stinks of fanboydom.
"A Columbus Day Miracle"? Come on! I think it's clear who that article came from.
The way I see it -- this is sensationlistic journalism. I wrote a letter to the Forbes editor/writer critiquing the article. I didn't really have time to edit it and make it more readable, but I think I got my point across. The letter is something like this:
I'm not sure what the point of the Forbes article is. Is Daniel Lyons just trying to steer folks away from the GPL? Is he trying to capitalize on ignorance of the "rules"?
Copyrights are important for protecting IP, and it's a copyright holder's right to set the terms that that want (regardless if it's a "classic" license, BSD, or GPL). If someone doesn't play by a copyright holder's rules -- the IP owner must go after that person. Failure to do this will result in IP owners' loss of any right to future IP claims. If one spends alot of time/money on a derivative work -- they'd better make "extra" sure that they understand the licensing behind the original work. It's just that simple. It sounds to me like Cisco and Broadcom's legal department didn't do their due diligence here. If a group abused Microsoft's licensing without understanding the model, someone would be held responsible. My question is, how is this situation any different from the one in your article? Is it just beacuse the GPL is different form the classic IP licensing model(s)? Your article seems to me like the classic spread of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). Companies need to to their due diligence before making the leap into any new technology -- period.
Forbes is ususally pretty good about responding to stuff like this. Hopefully, I'll see something soon.
I've got a bunch of old hardware that still works, although I don't really use it much, except to fire up old games that won't work with emulators.
My most recent old computer is an old Amiga 1200 with a 50 MHz 68030 card installed. I'd probably use it more, but the PCMCIA ethernet card is faulty (it will eventually hang the machine). I've also got a bunch of Commodore 64's kicking around. They work, but I don't have a working 1541 floppy drive.
I've got too much crap. It's kind of upsetting to even think about how much stuff I've acquired over the years.
With this in mind, I've given away all of my VHS tapes, permanantly loaned out my VCR, etc. I went out and bought an iPod, and started ripping all of my CD's and throwing out the jewel boxes. I also back up my data onto DVD+R's. Now I'm stuck with tons of CD-type media. I recommend getting a bunch of great big CD wallets that will fit nicely into just about any bookshelf. It might not be a particularly innovative solution, but it works for me.
That beig said, there are three important questions you'll have to answer for yourself before you can really proceed. If you go after these people, what do you want out of it? How much time do you want to invest in this? Finally, how much are you willing to spend to get there?
The most important thing to consider before moving forward with this is: How much are you willing to spend in order to feel vindicated (or accomplish whatever it is that you've set out to do)? This company probably has significantly greater resources than you to fight this, and in the end, you'll be lucky to get a settlement that will cover your legal fees. I'm not sure how these things work as far as a lawyer taking cases on a contingency -- but I'd be willing to bet that stuff like that tends to happen with the more lucrative personal injury cases. Work out a strict budget -- maybe this whole thing can be settled by paying $100 for a lawyer to write a cease-and-desist letter. Maybe you'll need to subpeona the companies they sent your name to and contact them. Maybe you want an apology, and the employees responsible for submitting your trashed application fired, as well as some cash for your trouble.
The reasoning here is that you can draw up a pretty direct correlation between what you want, the amount of money you'll have to invest, and the amount of time you'll have to spend on this.
Good luck -- I suggest that you go after them. If not for your own gains (which will likely be nil when all is said and done), do it to stop this from happenning to the next person.
...I've never understood the reasoning behind the CEO or other major department heads getting unrestricted access to everything.
I completely agree with your analysis of how it should be. However, when the President, CEO, COO, or CFO wants something from an employee (or a group in their organization) -- you'd better believe that they're going to get it. These are the folks that hired you and/or your boss -- they sign your paychecks, and they can really easily fire your ass and hire someone else who will comply with their requests. You can write all the policy you want, but there's not all that much that they have to do to trump that.
That being said, I'm not sure that the default policy for most companies is to give senior managers total access. Now, in a smaller business environment, it makes complete sense to give higher levels of access to senior/executive level managers because they need to be more hands-on -- and most small tech startups seem to have executives with backgrounds that are more tech-oriented than management (completely subjective obersvation). How large of an operation is Valve? (I really don't know -- that wasn't rhetorical). I'm guessing that they can't be more than 30 or so people. It might make sense for them to grant access rights to their CEO.
I don't really know -- but the point is that each orginazation is different, and I'm not sure that there is "the way". Just different ideas on how to balance security with usability. I guess that the folks at Valve will need to re-evaluate this.
Now will someone tell me why a code leak sets them back 4 months? Why do they have to re-code that? It's not like their CVS tree was corrupted. I've gotta be missing something obvious here.
SqWebMail is minimalistic webmail client. It is fast and can be used to check your email when you are out of office, but it does not have features, that make good email program. pgp and low footprint are the only advantages.
SqWebMail is not necessarily full-featured, but does not have to rely on IMAP (or POP3) to work. It's integrated nicely into the Inter7 suite (vpopmail, courier-imap, etc) and they're a pretty reputable company (as far as commercial support goes). It also supports GPG/PGP and LDAP authenticaiton/address books right out of the box.
I don't have much experience with SquirrelMail, but that was part of why I asked -- the original poster seemed pretty sure it was the best out there without really offering much to back it up. When I originally looked at SquirrelMail, I was evaluating a number of other mail systems, and didn't take into account all of the plugins, which would probably allow me to do everything I wanted with sqWebMail, and have a pretty interface taboot.
First, try to figure out what you absolutely need to have in your pockets/belt (try maybe pocketing/belting the cell phone and the pda). The rest can be put in a handy case -- made specifically for hauling your shit to and from work. These cases, typically designed to handle briefs (not your underwear), can handle these devices with ease (hence the name briefcase). They're usually priced at $25 and up. Click here to get started (no affiliation...just a google search).
The pisser here is that if bnetd had not been shut down, folks would be able to run their own servers and write/employ mods for their servers like UT's CSHP to detect and prevent cheating (is there a website for this? I couldn't find one that I can link to). Unfortunately, this is a case where bad copyright law stifles innovation and usability. I hate to say it, but if this severly hurts Blizzard, I wouldn't shed any tears.
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25 MPG is completely reasonable when compared to the current average (not CAFE -- but average of cars on the road right now). Furthermore, I'm not sure that it's competely reasonable to expect all cars to get better gas mileage with time. In many cases, the opposite is true. It's not as much a matter of technology as it is a matter of what the market demands. We knew what we had to do to make cars more efficient 20 years ago. Problem was (and still is) that most folks would rather drive a heavier car with a larger, more powerful motor than a lighter car with a smaller, less powerful motor. Aerodynamics also play a huge factor in efficency at high speed (this is something that we've improved on over the years).
In order to make a lighter car (which is absolutely necessary for fuel economy), you need to make use of strong, lightweight materials in the construction of the vehicle (aluminum, carbon fiber, kevlar, titanium). Problem is, these materials are all far more expensive than their alternatives. The average car buyer still has to be able to afford their vehicle. Will the average soccer mom buy a 2600 LB minivan with a 135 HP 1.8L Turbodiesel I4 for $89,000? Hell no (even if it gets 45 MPG). She wants the 4200 Lb. behemoth with the 3.6L V6 for $36,000 (loaded) to "protect" her kids.
Now -- back to my point of fuel economy getting worse over the years. There have been two major regulatory fronts for car makers to overcome in the past few decades. Safety and emmissions. Together, these items add a significant amount of weight to a vehicle...as much as 700 pounds. Combine this with the fact that emmissions equipment robs a car of its power and you've got slow cars that nobody will buy. As the regulations (and subsquent weight) grew and the relative power shrunk, the only solution was to start using larger motors again or move to forced induction (turbo/superchargers), neither of which do much for fuel economy.
While the 4-stroke internal combusion engine can operate more efficiently than it could in years past, cars are simply gaining weight at a greater rate than engines are gaining fuel efficency. At the same time, consumers demand greater performance (looking at the power/weight ratio as being the the most critical element of vehicular acceleration) -- well, with weight increasing, there's only one thing to do...even more power (less economy). The point is that fuel economy is not necessarily an upward trend. That being said, there are new economical cars on the market today (Hybrids), partly because of regulation, partly because the market has demanded it. Funny thing: they're still not as economical (fuelwise) as some of the straight-up diesel econoboxes from 20 years ago.
What's the solution? Some would say "more regulation" -- people should be made to drive smaller, lighter, more efficient cars...regardless of the cost. Others would say "screw cars" -- the idea of personal transporrtation is selfish and not compatible with our future. People should be using public transportation -- maybe we should have some tax incentive for people to use PT and a penalty or car-drivers. And there's the people in the "why regulate" camp who say that if people want stuff like airbags, they'll buy them. The people who don't can save 40 pounds and $1500 on their car. The same goes for efficent cars -- if the public wants it, someone will provide it (for a profit). I'm not sure that there's a "right" solution. I tend to lean towards the side of letting the people buy whatever they want...fuel isn't subsidized -- I pay for that out of pocket. So if I want a 6000 Lb Super Sport Ute with a 440 ci supercharged V10 that gets 6 MPG -- it's my business. I'm the guy footing the bill for gas...eventually, fuel will become expensive enough so that I can't afford to operate my beast...and I'll either have to use another vehicle, or another source of fuel. Finally, both Americans an
I can notice a difference between a 60 and 120Hz refresh rate on a monitor -- but this is mostly the "flashiness" they produce out of the corner of my eye. I think that if the refresh rate is set properly, it will be hard to notice (although I can see what you mean by higher framerates being registering unconciously). However, there has to be some kind of threshold where you really can't notice. I'll dig around for published studies...I'm sure they're out there.
FWIW, I have a friend who is a coder for Bungie -- he's been into realtime 3D coding for years and he swears by the 60 FPH benchmark for 3D gaming. He says that there's not much reason to have any more (or any less).
No problems here. I don't think that I can differentiate between 60 FPS and 120 FPS...although I'm no expert.
It seems like this will fix the issue addressed in the post, and it may mess with some benchmarks that will use Doom III (anandtech, tomshardware, etc)...however, I'll bet that you will be able to turn the rate-limiting off for benchmarking purposes. Otherwise, there will most likely be no noticable effect.
Because the update scripts can't always plan for the havoc that a personal computer user has wreaked on the OS. They can't test to see what every little poorly coded application changed, and how it is affected by the update (and more importantly, how it affects the update).
This doesn't just go for Apple. Given the choice between a fresh install of an OS and a dist upgrade, I'll always take the fresh install (when it's really an option). Why not eliminate the variables? Regardless of the elegance of the OS, PC OS'es are usually made pretty ugly once an end user gets through with it.
No need for sarcasm from me. I wonder if it's possible to do what you suggested at the OS level (Darwin)? Then again, you're probably right -- this sounds like something that someone would have already coded. If I spent that kind of money on a laptop, I'd have "fixed" it by now.
Can this be set up to do context menus?
You can make a non-anonymous donation, but withhold your contact information. Or, if you like, you can make the donation with the stipulation that they never contact you...for any reason, ever. If they fail to follow this rule, screw 'em. It's your money after all.
Clearly, this is a heated topic, and I'll go into this one carefully to avoid coming off as trollish. While I agree with you on almost all of your points, there are just a couple I have to respectfully disagree with. I'd buy an Apple laptop if it weren't for two things.
As far as weight -- the 12" Powerbooks are actually a little on the heavy side -- compare it to a Dell X200/X300, which come out lighter. One of my corporate officers here recently bought a 12" Powerbook. I got an X200 for our marketing guy. They were on a business trip together, and the officer started comparing his Apple with the Dell. Two days later, I was ordering him a Dell (however, this purchase was only based on the weight -- the Apple is a more powerful macine in this case)...but other than this, I totally agree with you -- the OS it a big whopper that's hard for most people to get over.
Oh well -- I hope that this was a friendly enough message to keep the fanboys and trolls away.
To add to your list of places to go, check out rennlist.org
It's primarily a Porsche site. Some of these guys are unfriendly Porsche snobs, but the vast majority of them are quite friendly and helpful. You'll also find a fair amount of engineering-types and track junkies who really know their stuff. You should be able to find all of your Porsche dismantlers/junkyards here too, so you can afford an old Porsche on a budget. Furthermore, the guy who runs the site, John Dunkle is one of the nicest guys I've ever met. If I still drove old Porsches, I'd still be reading that list regularly.
As far as overlap between car and computer geeks go, I can see alot of it. I've got a number of friends in my "circle" who are car geeks as well as computer geeks.
Depending on your definition of the term "geek" -- I'd consider myself a quasi car-geek, only because I don't fix everything on my car. I do stuff like suspension work, brake work (pads, rotors, adjustments, etc), and routine maintenance, but generally avoid any internal engine work (or, for that matter, anything that would involve dropping the engine or transmission).
That being said, I love cars. I simply think that they're neat machines that are fun to operate. I'm a particular fan of (what I define as) sports cars. My definition is a general adherance to the British (European) sports cars of earlier days. Lightweight (2500 LB or under is a MUST), inexpensive, purpose-built (no/few frills), RWD, and typically low-powered. I track my car (I'm cheap as well, so my "sports car" is both a track car and daily driver), and will tweak it as needed. Part of my car geekiness moves away from mechanical upgrades, and focuses on fixing the driver to make the car go faster...this a bastardization of an old axiom from my autocrossing days. I've now given up autocrossing entirely to persue track driving. I'm only able to do it a handful of times per year, since it can get quite expensive -- but I often will be on-track with my computer geek comrades.
Read the thread before speaking, man. There is nothing "blatantly false" in my comment(s). While I agree with your assessment of desktops Vs. servers Vs. workstations, that has nothing to do with my comment with regard to fanboy quotes (and marketing quotes in print), which I was able to cite. It may not have been from Apple, but I never even eluded to this. As far as what I saw and didn't see -- you are horribly disrespectful and I'm done with you.
As far as the /. price/performance comparison to the Dell -- it's total fanboy BS. There's absolutely no refuting this point. First of all, if you check out the UT release, you'll notice that their cost is a total cost for a supercomputing center...not just a supercomputer/supercluster that includes a building to house it (among other things). Furthermore, I didn't see much in the way of technical details about the hardware being used in the Apple cluster (other than the CPU's in the machines and how many). How fast will the cluster be? There's no telling because the type of clustering interconnect was not disclosed. (Unless you think that cluster speed just magically scales as you add processors). They gave FLOPS estimates for how fast the system might be -- but it's meaningless without real testing and cannot even be objectively evaluated without looking into the clustering hardware being used. Absolutely no conclusion can be drawn from the data in the linked article. As far as finding an article to quote that has more authoritative sources -- I don't have it, and I don't care. The point was that the linked article was a fanboy article. I didn't say that Apple is full of shit -- and I didn't say that Apple fanboys are any more full of shit than any others. The point is that fanboys, of any type, are completely subjective. The article linked is, without any question, a fanboy article.
The quote in question is not tongue-in-cheek. It's an example of the various fanboy bullshit that flies around. I can't tell you the first place I saw it, but if you open up to page 20 of Volume 121C of the PCMall catalog, that exact quote appears in bold letters...not an ironclad reference, but it's the first one that comes to mind.
1. That's not the quote I read.
2. Whoever said anything about me being an Intel proponent?
sheeeeeesh.
It sounds like a fanboy article to me. Apple has been claiming supercomputer power for years. I've even seen claims from that Apple has "The World's first 64-bit processor!". Sure, this system sounds like it's the real deal, but it doesn't change the fact that the article in question is from a less-than-objective source (to say the least). Fanboy stuff is trash -- it doesn't matter which type of fanboy we're talking about (Apple, Linux, Wintel, Amiga, Cray, whatever). If it comes from a fanboy, it's completely subjective...and this stinks of fanboydom.
"A Columbus Day Miracle"? Come on! I think it's clear who that article came from.
The way I see it -- this is sensationlistic journalism. I wrote a letter to the Forbes editor/writer critiquing the article. I didn't really have time to edit it and make it more readable, but I think I got my point across. The letter is something like this:
Forbes is ususally pretty good about responding to stuff like this. Hopefully, I'll see something soon.
I've got a bunch of old hardware that still works, although I don't really use it much, except to fire up old games that won't work with emulators.
My most recent old computer is an old Amiga 1200 with a 50 MHz 68030 card installed. I'd probably use it more, but the PCMCIA ethernet card is faulty (it will eventually hang the machine). I've also got a bunch of Commodore 64's kicking around. They work, but I don't have a working 1541 floppy drive.
I've got too much crap. It's kind of upsetting to even think about how much stuff I've acquired over the years.
With this in mind, I've given away all of my VHS tapes, permanantly loaned out my VCR, etc. I went out and bought an iPod, and started ripping all of my CD's and throwing out the jewel boxes. I also back up my data onto DVD+R's. Now I'm stuck with tons of CD-type media. I recommend getting a bunch of great big CD wallets that will fit nicely into just about any bookshelf. It might not be a particularly innovative solution, but it works for me.
IANAL
That beig said, there are three important questions you'll have to answer for yourself before you can really proceed. If you go after these people, what do you want out of it? How much time do you want to invest in this? Finally, how much are you willing to spend to get there?
The most important thing to consider before moving forward with this is: How much are you willing to spend in order to feel vindicated (or accomplish whatever it is that you've set out to do)? This company probably has significantly greater resources than you to fight this, and in the end, you'll be lucky to get a settlement that will cover your legal fees. I'm not sure how these things work as far as a lawyer taking cases on a contingency -- but I'd be willing to bet that stuff like that tends to happen with the more lucrative personal injury cases. Work out a strict budget -- maybe this whole thing can be settled by paying $100 for a lawyer to write a cease-and-desist letter. Maybe you'll need to subpeona the companies they sent your name to and contact them. Maybe you want an apology, and the employees responsible for submitting your trashed application fired, as well as some cash for your trouble.
The reasoning here is that you can draw up a pretty direct correlation between what you want, the amount of money you'll have to invest, and the amount of time you'll have to spend on this.
Good luck -- I suggest that you go after them. If not for your own gains (which will likely be nil when all is said and done), do it to stop this from happenning to the next person.
I completely agree with your analysis of how it should be. However, when the President, CEO, COO, or CFO wants something from an employee (or a group in their organization) -- you'd better believe that they're going to get it. These are the folks that hired you and/or your boss -- they sign your paychecks, and they can really easily fire your ass and hire someone else who will comply with their requests. You can write all the policy you want, but there's not all that much that they have to do to trump that.
That being said, I'm not sure that the default policy for most companies is to give senior managers total access. Now, in a smaller business environment, it makes complete sense to give higher levels of access to senior/executive level managers because they need to be more hands-on -- and most small tech startups seem to have executives with backgrounds that are more tech-oriented than management (completely subjective obersvation). How large of an operation is Valve? (I really don't know -- that wasn't rhetorical). I'm guessing that they can't be more than 30 or so people. It might make sense for them to grant access rights to their CEO.
I don't really know -- but the point is that each orginazation is different, and I'm not sure that there is "the way". Just different ideas on how to balance security with usability. I guess that the folks at Valve will need to re-evaluate this.
Now will someone tell me why a code leak sets them back 4 months? Why do they have to re-code that? It's not like their CVS tree was corrupted. I've gotta be missing something obvious here.
SqWebMail is not necessarily full-featured, but does not have to rely on IMAP (or POP3) to work. It's integrated nicely into the Inter7 suite (vpopmail, courier-imap, etc) and they're a pretty reputable company (as far as commercial support goes). It also supports GPG/PGP and LDAP authenticaiton/address books right out of the box.
I don't have much experience with SquirrelMail, but that was part of why I asked -- the original poster seemed pretty sure it was the best out there without really offering much to back it up. When I originally looked at SquirrelMail, I was evaluating a number of other mail systems, and didn't take into account all of the plugins, which would probably allow me to do everything I wanted with sqWebMail, and have a pretty interface taboot.
Why run Squirrel Mail over any of the other free/free webmail applications out there (sqWebMail, IMP, etc)?
Some of these do work better than others, depending on what other services you're running and how you need them integrated.
First, try to figure out what you absolutely need to have in your pockets/belt (try maybe pocketing/belting the cell phone and the pda). The rest can be put in a handy case -- made specifically for hauling your shit to and from work. These cases, typically designed to handle briefs (not your underwear), can handle these devices with ease (hence the name briefcase). They're usually priced at $25 and up. Click here to get started (no affiliation...just a google search).
Good luck!
The pisser here is that if bnetd had not been shut down, folks would be able to run their own servers and write/employ mods for their servers like UT's CSHP to detect and prevent cheating (is there a website for this? I couldn't find one that I can link to). Unfortunately, this is a case where bad copyright law stifles innovation and usability. I hate to say it, but if this severly hurts Blizzard, I wouldn't shed any tears.
Heh -- it might not go back that far now, but they've managed to revise their history before. What's gonna stop them now?
Agreed. However, neither the article nor the comment that I responded to used the word encoding. They specifically used the word encryption.