I'm anti-subsidy for luxury car manufacturers. Starting at $49,900 -- bah! How about spending a fraction of this to rip out the engine of a Chevy Aveo and put in an electric motor? How about an electric car people can actually buy? Innovation not required!
There is a bit more to the Tesla cars than just ripping out the ICE and putting in a regular electric motor. There is very advanced liquid-cooled Lithium Ion battery technology, a next-gen 3-phase/4 pole motor, etc. It performs at par or better than other cars in its price point, and is also practical (can carry 5 passengers and their luggage comfortably). It is easily 200 to 300 percent more energy efficient than a typical hybrid as well. Luxury or not, getting such a vehicle to market is very worthwhile. Remember the Prius was the favourite toy of green-wannabe celebrities and rich folk in its early adoption phase, and this is a much better alternative.
Given the nature of the technology this is the ONLY way to bring it forward. I think GM's approach (with bringing out a less exotic Chevy Volt) or yours (an even more austere Aveo) is backwards. Say it costs $5000 to $10000 to implement the advanced battery and drivetrain at this point in development. This means the cost of an electric Aveo would be 50+ percent higher than for a gas one, which is "cheap enough" to run in the first place. NOBODY who is willing to be an "early adopter" would buy an electric aveo at a profitable price point, because green and innovative as the drivetrain would be, the rest of the car is actually rather crappy.
OTOH, The Tesla S is probably no more tha 10 or 20% more expensive than a comparable car that runs on petroleum fuel. Early adopters tend to be more affluent as well, and when you get to that less-than-20% premium for something cool and new. This car has a realistic chance of making a profit, or at least paying back its loans. The Volt or an electric Aveo would be a guaranteed money loser.
Remember, that Tesla got its loans specifically because it has committed to re-investing profits from early, more exotic/expensive models into more practical, affordable models. Even in its early stages on the market it has established a track record: It followed up an exotic, very expensive roadster with a luxury sedan that is actually very practical and within the price range of upper-middle class households (the ones who buy Escalades, BMW 5 or 7 series, etc). Ensuring the success of the S means the much more likely possibility of an under $30K vehicle that competes right in the mainstream sedan market.
If the US is going to get all socialist on us, I'm glad it isn't following the tired old thinking that to support innovation it must have this fixation on immediately addressing the needs of the "masses" or "working poor" or that crap, when it isn't realistic from a business perspective. Certainly better than taking a controlling interest in a loser bankrupt GM or gifting Chrysler to the unions--doing both with massive loans backing the moves (if taxpayers weren't forced to accept such nonsense, thay'd never in their right mind invest in such shaky enterprises). GM in particular has been the ABSOLUTE LEAST INNOVATIVE auto company on the entire planet for decades--even its best products are dependable but very boring and un-innovative, and they've invested the least into new technologies in their plants out of EVERY SINGLE company that builds cars in N America.
If my gov't is going to throw boatloads of cash around on speculative enterprises, I'd MUCH rather it go do something bold, new, exciting and innovative like Tesla than something tired, old and nothing to show for in terms of innovation than words and vague plans crafted for the purpose of begging for alms from the gov't. as GM and Chrysler have done in the last year.
Historically, the Liberal party started out as a classically liberal party, but it has been many decades since it has behafved even REMOTELY liberal.
The LPC does what is politically expedient, and has no principles AT ALL. Policy and philosophy are shaped solely by opinion polls and the direction of the leader of the day. It is for that reason that I don't hold much promise at all that switching parties would help further the cause of net neutrality. How trustworthy are the Liberals, and can you believe everything Ignatieff says? The track record (of the party OR the leader) is not promising. The past two Liberal PMs made countless pre-election promises only to do nothing, or the exact opposite, when in office. Cretien promised to get rid of the GST because it was a "stupid" regressive tax that was forced onto Canadians--and in his many years and terms in gov't left it intact. Today the Liberals hew and cry over employment insurance being inadequate and not accessible enough, when it was the Liberal party that instituted the very policies they complain about now (when "UI" became "EI" and changed were made to reduce costs when Cretien was PM and another former PM, Martin, was finance minister).
Policies also change with new leaders. Cretien was slightly "left-leaning" but would abandon his principles out of expediency (such as putting Martin in as long-term finance minister, making them one of the more fiscally conservative Liberal gov'ts). Martin shifted the Liberals as far right as the Harper Tory gov't is behaving today. Dion swung the party towards a socialist policy stance so close to that of the NDP the Liberals more than once formally approached the NDP about a coalition strategy--the result of which was electoral disaster (they got the second lowest percentage of seats and lowest popular vote in the party's history). Now Ignatieff is leader, and history shows that the Liberals policy is shaped by the leader. The problem is that Ignatieff has not clearly defined his stance yet so what he says about particular policies cannot be fully trusted.
Ignatieff was the child of aristocratic Russian diplomats, born in Canada but raised much of his life overseas. As a pre-teen he was sent to an Ontario boarding school, then attended Harvard in the US and spent over 20 years in the UK before moving to the US for over 5. As a student he volunteered in Trudeau's election campaign, and because of those distant ties was enticed back to Canada to enter politics by friends who thought he'd be an eventual Liberal leadership contender (in part because his ties with the party WERE NOT that strong and the hope was that voters would see him as a fresh start). Many make the argument that it is closed-minded to discount a candidate because they aren't "Canadian enough" (more "snobby" Canadians point to the US presidency requirements as how "backwards" such thinking is), but let's be reasonable--not only did this man who would lead Canada spend over half of his life in other countries--it was the LATTER HALF of that life that he spent away. I'd have no problem if a 60 year old from overseas that moved here 20 or 30 years ago wanted to be PM but Ignatieff lived not a single day in Canada from the 1970s until mere WEEKS before he ran for office! How can he profess to know what Canada of TODAY is about when all he knows first-hand is the Canada of the 1960s and 1970s? He has been off the political radar in this country for ages--what does he stand for? Nobody knows exactly, and more than any other party in Canada what the leader thinks matters most for the Liberals. A lot of what he has said in the past completely counters what the Liberals stood for in the recent past--he is strongly supportive of military action in Afghanistan and even Iraq. Though his motives might have differed from Bush, Ignatieff was a SUPPORTER of the GW Bush gov'ts "troop surge" for example, and there is speculation he would support military deployment of troops to Afghanistan indefinitely. He says little about what he beli
The concept you describe is implemented in some data centres--the rack contains not only shared cooling smaller number of much larger sized fans) but also the power supply, where AC goes in and the DC goes out to all the machines in the rack.
On a smaller scale I've done this at home: At the telephone demarc point where the electrical panel is I mount my DSL modem, a switch and an old FlexATX board to perform router/firewall functions. Instead of a PC power supply and multiple "wall warts" there is one power supply to feed single-rail 12V power to all the devices, thus only requiring one power outlet for the whole works. The whole thing will run off one 12V sealed lead-acid battery as well, for about an hour on the old battery I tried I'd estimate, but I've yet to incorporate it into the setup permanently. The old mainboard uses a CF card plugged into the first IDE connector (CF cards have an IDE-mode operation--the adapters are for the most part just re-arranging the physical connector for the same signals), and to accomodate single-rail power I use the "Pico PSU" that takes in unregulated 12V on 2 wires and puts out all the ATX power required. It plugs into the ATX power socket and isn't all that much bigger than a typical ATX power connector inside your PC, except not attached to all those wires.
If you're starting with new hardware, you can forego the PicoPSU and use MiniITX boards with single-rail power. VIA offers some models that take simple 12VDC which are tailored to mobile and industrial markets (an elegant choice for Automotive PCs).
In a larger application requiring multiple hosts I envisioned a setup that would forego proprietary blade setups or expensive racks and a significant amount of sheet metal:
* very simple metal frame to allow a completely standard ATX board to be mounted vertically into "slide in" tracks of a mini-chassis * mini-chassis would have a 500W or higher normal ATX power supply and a couple of larger-sized fans to pull air from bottom to top, with room for drive bays, KVMs or whatever along the bottom. * Such a mini-chassis could be made to fit in 8U of space in a 19" rack and could house 5 standard ATX boards with enough room to allow for low-profile PCI cards to be installed. The depth would be less than 1/2 standard rack depth (perhaps about 30cm) such that two of these units could fit in the same 8U space, for a density of 10 boards per 8U space. Not the most density but still better than one system per rack unit. Many more boards could fit if room for PCI cards is not required. Of course, the chassis need not be rack mounted--it could just sit on a desk. * boards would be mounted with the "back panel" facing front, and "internal connections" routed out the back--perhaps with connectors mounted for HDD and power fixed to the mini-chassis so that the frames with boards mounted can be simply "plugged in" * A second mini-chassis could share PSU with the first to make more efficient use of power.
Not rocket science but that sort of "mini-rack" case would use common ATX hardware without proprietary form factors involved, and no more than one PSU per 5 PC boards. This isn't a new concept--it isn't that much different from the SGI Origin systems with multi-node bricks mentioned in another post--the only fundamental difference is that it is based on standard form factors.
While I agree with you on America's messed up copyright laws, the problem apparently is that a lot of commercially bootlegged products make it into the US through Canada.
So, it is the job of Canada and other foreign nations to enforce the laws of the US? If Canada were to, for example, ask *US Customs agents* to seize firearms that are legally owned and possessed by visiting Americans but restricted in Canada then the US would tell us to stuff it--get Canadian agents to do their job!
Shouldn't that be the case here? If someone is entering the US from Canada with goods that are legal in Canada but US has a problem with them because they are imitations, then perhaps US agents should do their f*cking jobs and seize their own goods.
I'm not saying Canadian law needs some work in this area, as some IP violations are public safety concerns (knockoff toys from China contaminated with lead, counterfeit food items tainted with melamine or ethylene glycol, fake viagra that induces heart attack and so on). Canada in this case should tell US to stuff it, because Canadian resources should be used to concentrate on the IMPORTATION of counterfeit goods INTO Canada that violate health and safety laws, NOT to seize bootleg DVDs and fake Prada fashion accessories going OUT of Canada.
Whenever RIAA or MPAA try to enlist the government's assistance in chasing down copyrigt violators everyone gets up in arms about it, saying that by law copyright and trademark holders have to take reasonable responsibility to enforce their IP rights or they risk losing them. It seems in this case they've abdicated their rights in the US. Aside from movie and music sharing, there is very clear evidence that the rate of IP theft in Canada is much LOWER than that of the US. If you compare the easiest places to find knockoff products in Canada (Vancouver and Toronto) with American cities like New York and LA, it is completely obvious that enforcement is FAR from uniform--Hollywood has its dirty little paws in DC and a powerful cartel out there shaking down little girls and college students, thus media piracy is relatively contained. Electronics and fashion items, however, get no such special treatment and their manufacturers do little to take advantage of what are supposedly the toughest IP laws in the world.
Mass media corporations and agencies that can adapt to the changes that we are and will be experiencing, will continue to be in business.
More than likely none of them will exist in any form we recognise today. E-reader devices--even relatively successful ones like the Kindle--are stopgap measures that only serve to prolong an obsolete business model in the face of new technology. They are this generation's version of the electronic typewriter.
Personal computers became practical options for a large-enough market to achieve critical mass in the 1970s, yet typewriter companies soldiered on for near around two decades trying to prop up their obsolete concept of a typewriter by adding the technology of computers without actually admitting defeat and MAKING computers. Thus, the introduction of electronic typewriters, and soon after dedicated word processors, in the face of a rapidly expanding personal computer market.
Such devices were to be the savior of the industry. Word processing was the first "killer app" and these devices fit the bill nicely and were easier to use than general purpose computers. Though computers could be bought at comparable prices, you had to add an expensive letter-quality printer to get the same kind of hard copy. There was no concern about interoperability or open standards because the competing computers lacked much of that as well, and there was no publicly-accessible internet either.
Problem is, the typewriter companies didn't "get" computers, even while at the same time making microprocessor-based, single-purpose computers themselves. PC technology continued apace, and the PC industry consolidated around a small number of interoperable, standard platforms. Spreadsheets and databases became more important as "killer apps" and the internet made networking an essential.
Typewriter companies COULD have evolved their product offerings into open-architecture, general-purpose computers and not only survived, but thrived, but how many big typewriter manufacturers to YOU know of that actually DID that and DID survive? Very few come to my mind: IBM for one, and they only "got it" because they were already a computer company too with their mainframe offerings. Commodore got it as well--Tramiel was a visionary, perhaps too far ahead of his time, when he embraced the PET and pushed for low cost and friendliness with the VIC20 and C64.
However, even those who "got it" didn't fully "get it". Commodore didn't seem to figure out the value of interoperability even within their own product line! They couldn't come up with a proper successor to the C64 on their own and could only hang on by purchasing Amiga--which was again completely incompatible ans again acieved ALL its success because of its technical merits and despite the follies of its marketers. IBM saw massive success with their original 5150, 5160 and 5170 models (aka PC, XT and AT), and even saw fit to maintain compatibility. However like Commodore they lacked a proper successor after the 5170 and were stuck in the habit of proprietary offerings, thus the disastrous foray into the MCA bus architecture in an effort to lock-in customers like in the old mainframe days. As a result, Commodore went extinct completely and IBM doesn't make personal computers at all any more.
It'll be the same with media companies over the next 20 years. If the names survive they'll not be the same companies--News Corp. of 2030 will be no more related to News Corp. of today than Atari of today is related to the Atari of 1989. Same goes for television networks, movie studios, record companies and radio stations. True, they are often all divisions of the same big media conglomerate, but that's the point--they are DIVISIONS. They don't "get" that whether it be in newsprint, on TV, on the radio or in a web page, the content is ALL THE SAME--it all gets made into bits, stuffed into IP packets and pushed into wires or over the air at some point, or it easily can be.
If these come out at $50, come with a library of great books (all free from Gutenberg et al.), and allow you to put whatever you like on them in some open format which the FOSS community can create converters for, why wouldn't it blow the iPOD sales records out of the water?
Just about fell out of my chair when I read that one. Very witty, subtle sense of humour you have there, so much so you've been modded "informative".
I'll laugh almost as hard when newspapers start going into receivership after sinking millions in borrowed funds into the development of an overpriced, single-purpose reader to serve DRM-encumbered, proprietary-formatted content to its readers, followed by more millions on RIAA-style litigation to suppress hacker communities who try to jailbreak the devices.
Despite the fact you've put out a credible way to implement such a solution successfully, you can count on newspaper chains will cock it up so badly that their newspaper readers will make the cue:cat look like a raging success.
Unfortunately that's called embezzlement and it's sort-of highly illegal.
No it isn't. Embezzlement is stealing, and nothing is being stolen. One business is spending money to get getting products and services from another business that receives the money, at a price the market will bear. That is normal commerce.
What it REALLY is called is "conflict of interest" and thought it is highly UNETHICAL depending on the circumstances it can be technically LEGAL. In most cases though, as part of an employment agreement or membership to professional organisations you must divulge conflicts of interest to your employer and any other parties involved.
Usually if someone involved in procurement of products and services owns or otherwise has a vested interest in one of his bidding suppliers they have to divulge that conflict of interest and probably either have that supplier withdrawn or otherwise remove themselves from the selection process. Failure to disclose can result in termination, civil action and potentially criminal fraud charges.
For instance, I have a history of amphetamine abuse. I'm past it, I beat it, I'm feeling much better now, thank you.
And nobody should cast judgment on you pertaining to employment prospects, credit worthiness, medical insurance, how "decent" of a person you are or whatever. Kudos on getting past it--I know people who still battle with that addiction.
That said, strictly speaking from a medical delivery perspective, that such information, as "embarrassing" as it appears to be, could indeed be medically relevant. Seeing as the decisions made by medical professionals can have life-and-death consequences, wouldn't it be best to make sure the information they relied upon to make sure you were healthy and ALIVE be both accurate and COMPLETE?
I do not want a doctor refusing to give me a drug to help me focus because he's afraid I'll relapse. Or not giving a weight loss drug for the same reason.
Doctors are trained professionals. If they are concerned about relapse they are almost universally making an informed, professional judgment. Also, keep in mind that risk of relapse is not the only influence on a doctor's decision in prescribing medication. Past drug use (legitimate or recreational) is a contra-indicator for quite a lot of prescription drugs.
To use exactly your example: A drug called Desoxyn is a treatment option for weight loss treatment. A history of sustained use of a number of amphetamines is linked to resistance to the effects of Desoxyn. Depending on how long ago you beat your addiction the doctor might chose an alternate solution.
Another example is Adderall in the treatment of ADHD. Past meth abuse can cause a permanently increased risk of heart complications, and Adderall has know links to increased heart problems in addition to any addiction concerns there might be.
When a doctor refuses to give you a treatment option he doesn't have to be passing a personal value judgment on you. Doesn't it seem quite possible he's basing his decisions on, say, actual scientific research and clinical data?
I support measures to promote the freedom of movement of medical information within the system, provided it comes with sufficient regulation and oversight. For example:
* Medical insurance companies should be required to get permission from the subject of those records or their guardians directly. Premiums and acceptance screenings cannot be based on any medical history records whatsoever--only on a medical exam of existing condition, and only then with limits.
* Patients should be able to have full access to all records pertaining to them on demand from any medical facility in a timely fashion (in an electronic system, within 1 business day would be charitable), and at no more cost than a nominal administration fee
* Medical record information should include a complete audit trail and by default permanent (for example, if a mistake is corrected, the old infor should be included as "striken and corrected"). Only the patient should be able to strike information completely, and such an action must be signed off by a medically qualified professional.
* medical records cannot be used by anyone outside professional medical practice--it should be illegal to base decisions on credit-worthiness, employment, etc. on past medical history.
If you force open source, you'll quickly bring to the forefront every security issue in the code
You say that like it's a bad thing...why would that be a bad thing? What sort of "HIPAA nightmare" would it be...a nightmare for health care administrators? Hell, that's their JOB they shouldn't whine about it. The whole of corporate America had Sarbanes Oxley foisted upon them and were told to "suck it up". If public companies must scrutinise their operations with a fine-toothed comb I'd expect no less from the medical system.
Medical information management systems perform a vital role involving sensitive information, and I can't think of a better way to make sure application code is thoroughly vetted than to foster the use of open source that can be examined by everyone without the need to pay large sums of money, sign NDAs or jump through other legal and financial hoops.
I don't think the industry is ready to give up all its little proprietary secrets
I can tell you from experience working with some of these kinds of systems that the secret is not some innovative idea that gives them a competitive edge--it is almost universally that the system is of embarrassingly poor quality or obsolete.
Open interchange of information, on the other hand, is a big necessity and has been happening for a long time now.
I'd have to say that I'm not convinced to the degree that you are on the effectiveness of information sharing in the medical system. You still can't walk into a doctor's office and get your own comprehensive, accurate medical history right there.
It's not that there are legal blocks or that medical professionals are not forthcoming, there is still to much physical paper pushing in hospitals, still too may disconnects in the system. At a hospital I did work at I believe they STILL have a functional pneumatic tube system they use to transport reams of multi-part carbon paper forms around.
Technology is marching forward in the field, but it's happening slowly, and that is in large part due to the proprietary nature of the first generations of electronic systems. Open interchange of information is encouraged and fostered by the implementation of open standards and technologies.
Their ad requirements, while irritating, were tame compared to most social sites today.
Not only that, they were next to nonexistent to begin with--merely a small header or footer. Then they added this funny floating GIF thing that would move itself to stay visible when you scrolled and I think they started putting your page in a frame so they could surround it with ads eventually. What I DO remember is that when Yahoo acquired it Geocities REALLY went down hill with all the crapvertisements they forced upon your page.
They provided free web-hosting, with no requirement to use their page builder. CMSs are good in certain contexts, but being forced to use them is bad.
Amen to that. Though based on sophisticated CMS platforms, blogging/social networking sites are a bit of a throwback in terms of flexibility/utility--I consider them to have a bout as much utility as Gopher sites circa 1992. You can drop content in the easily enough but you're working in restricted presentation and navigation frameworks.
Sadly, in this day and age, there is a lot of nervousness about providing free-form HTML space on a large free hosting site, since too many people out there who are interested in such a thing want to exploit that capability for malicious intentions.
Many people were less interested in page hits and more interested in sharing information. This does not seem to be the case as much anymore.
The Internet was a different place. If you were on the internet you were either technically savvy/academic or an enthusiastic early adopter/enthusiast. Even the non-technically-inclined participants were willing to learn basic HTML or muddle through the early HTML editors. Also, there was novelty in being able to disseminate information with so much ease.
Now we have information overload, the novelty has worn off and typical internet users want nothing at all to do with technical development.
Since there is an overabundance of info out there focus has changed from creating quality content to drawing attention to yourself--even if that is annoying. Also as users are less interested in how the technology works it has become easier to put yourself out there. As a consequence, the less effort it takes to publish content the less pride you have in it and the lower the signal:noise ratio.
We are now at a point where that effort is near zero, a great many people have no pride (or shame) in their online image and the signal:noise ratio is a very small fraction of one percent.
Great; now I'm feeling nostalgic. Does anyone remember canyon.mid? Man, I used to listen to that all the time. Of course, then I discovered Impulse Tracker, and realized that MIDI was crap (except perhaps as a control language for devices.)
Do I remember canyon.mid? Do I ever! The interesting part? The first time I actually HEARD it was on my Atari 520ST playing it through my synth keyboard!
At the time I first bought Windows 3.1, we had a 386DX33 computer freshly upgraded to 4MB system RAM and a Trident 8800-based SVGA card fully populated with 512KB and wanted to take advantage of the added horsepower, however we did NOT yet have a sound card or speakers.
The Atari ST I had owned prior to having any sort of PC remained in regular use because it had way better graphics and sound than our PC, and I could use it with my keyboard synth to create, save, play and edit.mid song files. It was also convenient that The Atari ST used the same exact 720K 3.5 inch floppies as the IBM.
So, when I encountered canyon.mid on my new Win3.1 install the first thing I did was copy it onto a floppy, then take that floppy down to my Atari and play it on my synth. Quite amusing I thought and it make me want to get a sound card.
I can't believe I'm defending him, but judges are also citizens. He should have the right to be a member of most any organization he chooses.
Freedom of association doesn't mean freedom from consequences of that association. Judges are not prohibited from being a part of any group as citizens--but they certainly cannot sit as judges or preside over certain trials at the same time.
I'm sure the judge in this case worked properly within current law, though his interpretation of that law is likely done to the strictest limits. However legal it may be though, it seems to me that presiding over a copyright trial when also being an active member of a "copyright maximalist" lobby group that influences the legislative process compromises both impartiality (as a member of such a lobby group he would personally dismiss any notion of leniency) AND judicial independence (as a judge he is to interpret law, and as a member of a poilitical lobby group he is playing a role in CREATING the law he is supposed to interpret and is thus not truly capable of acting as an independent interpreter of law in this case).
In some defense, if he is a member of the organization not in a capacity of financial beneficiary of copyright, then it isn't quite so clear cut.
Not clear cut, but certainly it is justification for scrutiny. In Canada and the US, when it is a trial by jury, the selection process certainly takes that into account. If a jury candidate is an active member of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and the trial involves DUI you can surely bet that defense lawyers would make a case about it. Even though that jury candidate would certainly NOT personally benefit from delivering a guilty sentence it would be seen by the defense as an indication of prejudice. If Jurors are scrutinised to that extent, why not judges?
Judges here are prohibited from performing a number of political activities such as running election campaigns for those running for parliament, or from running for parliament themselves (they are only allowed to do either if they take a leave of absence). This is to preserve independence between the legislature and the judiciary, not because it is always a conflict of interest.
If involvement in certain political activity is regulated for active judges already, shouldn't judges' memberships in lobby groups be regulated as well? The purpose of political lobby groups is to advise LEGISLATORS on the concerns of special interest groups IN THE CREATION OF NEW LAW. To me, this violates judicial independence just like it would if judge presided over trials whilst running for office or sitting in parliament.
I'm not sure about how Swedish judiciary works, ans I'm not a lawyer, but it sure seems to me that a judge being a member in good standing of a COPYRIGHT lobby group, hearing a COPYRIGHT LAW case, is a very serious compromise of judicial independence, even when it doesn't represent a personal conflict of interest, and such a situation should not be permitted.
Three apps at once...guess that seems all well and good, but what counts as an application?
I presume opening explorer windows would not, as that is part of the GUI shell, but what about Internet Explorer? Would each window be an app, or each tab? I would consider that unreasonable, as a lot of even basic users could commonly have 3 tabs or windows open. But, if they did not limit the number of IE windows or tabs open, that would give AJAX-based apps a leg up right? I mean, open as many Google docs of any type up as you want in IE vs. being limited with Office.
What about software that runs as a service, and offers interactive users a GUI through the "system tray"? Would my anti-virus use up one of my 3 applications? Our company makes an application that can run as a service, or run as an application. Does it not count as an app if it is in "service mode"? What about instant messaging? Like anti-virus it is really a "service" more than a full on app, and users would really demand that it be able to run in the background without overly limiting usability. Do these services become apps as soon as they open GUI windows? How nasty would it be if you couldn't read an IM until you closed your browser because you had 3 windows open?
A lot of these oddities/complexities in today's PC environment could be used to get around the spirit of the 3-app-at-once imposed limit on Starter Edition. However, if MSFT cracked down on developers for skirting their newest DRM offering would that not unreasonably hamper usability of the product in addition to alienating developers?
Also, has it occurred to MSFT yet that their business model is uncomfortably similar to organised crime? I'm seriously not trying to make a joke.
First off, MSFT conducts licensing audits of businesses--and even non-profits and school boards and such, invariably finding some degree of non-compliance because of what can be confusing EULAs for naive employees/teachers/volunteers/students. MSFT offers amnesty in the form of payment without litigation--even special rates on "software assurance" contracts. Does this not sound like a mobster coming into a store, having his goons trash a display of merchandise and saying "nice store--it'd be a shame if something happened to it..."?
Then MSFT starts flexing it's patent portfolio, and starts shaking down competitors, either by signing a "cross-licensing" agreement (a la Novell) or throwing lawsuits at them (Tom Tom). For a matter of a "small" amount of money MSFT will not cause further stress or anguish and the products offered by the victims will be allowed on the marketplace. Sounds like more "protection money"
Now we have this further promotion of crippleware--targeted at entry-level users, primarily in developing nations no less. Just when you thought MSFT had stooped as low as it could by behaving like Mafia men, it now acts like the gangster punk selling crack to street people--get them hooked on something cheap and hope they form a dependency on your goods to the point they "need more" to get by. When I think about how increasingly disruptive a 3-app limit would become as users became more sophisticated I can see the parallels.
I know that the seriousness of the REAL organised crime problems around the world are many orders of magnitude larger and more important than the marketing tactics on MSFT. I hope nobody is offended by my comparison thinking i'm trivialising the crime problem, however I think it is important to point out how the tactics used in such criminal activity parallel MSFT's business model. I would hope that MSFT would see this, because though what MSFT is doing is perfectly legal, they are still engaging in exploitive tactics with their customers. If customers feel like their being exploited to much, for too long, competitors who treat them better will inevitably take their place.
But there's a limit to how small you can make a single item in a cluster before you're duplicating effort without much benefit.
The thing is, there is vast room for improvement in the cluster concept with more current technology. If you used an ARMv7-based node you'd have better capabilities in each node than the Geode, at about $100 per node (making it cost the same as your suggestion) and a PEAK power consumption of around 30 or 35 watts (your system peaks at 100 watts, still significantly higher than the 85 watt peak of the Geode-based cluster).
Also, slapping an SSD into a regular PC doesn't make it even close to comparable apart from overall capacity. You still have the massive "memory wall" problem. For highly dynamic, componentised network apps like Facebook and Amazon you are relying tremendously on disk-based data retrieval and caching that would massively hit the SSD. To fix that "memory wall" problem in your system you'd probably have to have on the order of 64G of ram, not the paltry 4G you specify. With the cluster you have the equivalent of up to 20 times the bandwidth to your cache. Also, you have 21 500MHz processors at your disposal. Even if having an OS on each node caused a massive 50% overhead you could get more than the equivalent of a 2.5GHz dual-core processor.
Your sugestion might produce a high-performance machine, but it doesn't solve the problem the FAWN cluster set out to accomplish.
Or to put it simply: pulling a "finished" object from memcached will almost always be faster then having a machine create/render/whatever you do to create the object.
I don't think the idea is to dump the concept of cache. The idea is to drop the added complexity and expense of "memcached". Instead of retrieving data from slow power-hungry hard drives, processing it and caching it in very expensive SDRAM you employ more traditional filesystem-based caching to much cheaper flash drives. That would still be less resource-intensive than re-rendering data, even though it is slower than memcached on power-hungry systems.
If you want to pull large amounts of data from RAM buy a 1U server that takes 64 gigabytes of ram for $5000 (so about $78 per gig of ram, and much faster than a compact flash card in a super cheap laptop).
More importantly than "is it fast" is would it be "fast enough", because the bottleneck is internet connectivity. A cluster of inexpensive nodes like this is also cost competitive with single large servers for initial purchase. Why spend $5k on one beast machine with gobs of pricey SDRAM when you can spend the SAME OR LESS amount of money on a cluster of, say, 32 low-power nodes with 256MB or 512MB of RAM and 4GB of flash? That gives you ample SDRAM to execute code and TWICE AS MUCH MEMORY for caching than your suggestion! Yes, flash is slower but it's GOOD ENOUGH--it only has to be pushed out as fast as the 'net connection can take it, which is a LOT slower than SDRAM!
Not only do you get more cache of more-than-adequate performance wit the cluster, you get SIGNIFICANTLY better performance-per-watt numbers too, so not only is the initial investment no more expensive, long-term operating costs are MUCH LOWER.
Now if we're talking about building a render farm for whatever
It is clear from the article that this was most certainly NOT the intended application for such a cluster. Running a site like facebook and rendering the next Pixar movie are VASTLY different requirements. That said, there is merit in abandoning the "buy skookum Xeon boxes with gobs of RAM" concept for that too. Using GPUs from NVidia and AMD/ATI for computation is MUCH more efficient and powerful than relying on traditional CPUs. They take this cluster concept down to the die level: instead of 2, 4, or 8 massive power-hungry cores they contain HUNDREDS of very simple cores (shaders or vector processors) and exploit massive parallelism.
What interests me is the ease of building a many node cluster and learning how to administer and write software for something with 20+ nodes.
The compelling advantages make this challenge worthwhile. Optimising apps to work optimally on new architectures such as this FAWN cluster or to a 960-core NVidia Tesla system is indeed a challenge. But it doesn't look terribly difficult to physically build it, and tools to manage clusters are quite mature already.
Of course you could just buy computer time from amazon.com EC2 for $0.10 per hour per node and practice there
Of course, some people might have misgivings about putting their data in other people's hands, but for practicing that would work. But, who's to say Amazon wouldn't employ such clusters (or aren't already going there)?
You can beat this with an array of Pogoplugs at $99 each
Beagleboards might be more expensive and lower capacity per node, but they have more processing horsepower (OMAP3x platform with DSP chipset capable of rendering 3-D and HD video) and draw half the power. They are powered by 5v DC power that could share one power supply whereas each Pogoplug has its own transformer/rectifier power supply. Might get more horsepower per watt for less work from a beagleboard.
Only drawback: need to supply an interconnection solution to match the GbE supplied by the plugs...but there are solutions that would work...
Yes, but which distribution? Why was it easier and what store did you walk into to buy it?
I originally got Ubuntu in the Relay store a the airport when I was waiting for a flight. It came on a CD taped to the cover of a magazine for a few dollars.
Installation was very easy. I didn't even have to type that hard-to-read product key gibberish in, and I didn't need to bother with that pesky product activation either. When the OS was done installing I had a GUI, sound and networking and it even found and installed by Lexmark laser printer without me telling it to (in Windows I had to run this wizard thingy). Not only that, I could get my office software--for free no less--by making a few clicks and not typing one command or rebooting.
I've also seen Mandriva in the local computer shop on the same shelf as Windows XP just down the aisle for $19.95, but I didn't buy that one. I already had Ubuntu.
I'm a burger flipper, a tire guy, a mechanic, a professional, or a housewife and I just want the stuff to work.
The thing is, with proprietary software there is an increasing trend to deliberately make things NOT work. Nothing frustrates "a housewife" more than to find that her iPod is synced to one instance of iTunes on one computer at a time, and that de-syncing wipes out all the songs on the device requiring a sometimes lengthy re-load should she ever want to sync with a different computer. In my job, literally 2/3 of the support issues for many of the closed products I deal with (operators in an industrial setting) are product-activation related (ie. a "feature" that does nothing useful at all for the end user--it exists solely to protect an antiquated business model). Product X cannot talk to product Y because they are from different vendors. Vendors extort licensing fees for critical bug fixes (lucky Windows Update doesn't work like that---yet).
Those "freedoms" that "whiny developers" carp about would truly be missed by "normal" users would they, or the Free software that offers them, were to disappear, as the competition they offer drags closed shops like MSFT kicking to grudgingly participate in everything from standards committees to full on open source projects.
If you have any memory of what personal computing was like in the 1980s you'd have a greater appreciation for what a lack of freedoms and openness means. It was an exciting time but it was truly the dark ages as UNIX vendors pulled in the reigns at the corporate and academic levels and S100 bus systems went extinct whilst a multitude of personal computer vendors duked it out on the "home front" with completely proprietary, non-compatible platforms. You could get an Apple ][ or a Commodore PET so your kids would have what school had, or you could get an Atari 800 or a Tandy CoCo that was cheaper and more colourful but lacked the software the kids used at school, or you could spend boatloads of money and get an IBM Model 5150 (the offical name of the original PC) that would run productivity software for you but was no fun for the kids.
The Apple ][ and the IBM PC were "open architecture" in that they could be opened and cards added to extend functionality, but when clone-makers initially tried making copycats they were dragged into court. It wasn't until the PC was "clean-room" reverse-engineered and a computer platform was TRULY opened up. It was "openness and freedom" on the hardware front that led to a renaissance in personal computing, not because "stuff works", because the oddball orphaned platforms DID "just work" as often as they didn't.
I don't want to have to make a stupid decision about which distribution I should download and I don't want to have to answer nine billion technical questions just to get it installed.
Why not? It's pretty clear people WANT to have the ability to make "a stupid decision" when it comes to choosing HARDWARE, so why not the same with software? Why else would Dell alone give you hundreds of choices of hardware of people didn't want to make decisions?
I don't want to have to answer nine billion technical questions just to get it installed
That is your choice, and you don't have to if you don't want to. If you've never gotten that from Linux then you've not even tried to look, because overall it is seriously NO HARDER to install many Linux OSes as it is to install Vista, and nobody says YOU have to do the installation at all. You can already buy PCs with an easy-to-use Linux-based OS on it.
I want to have that feeling that there is a company that I can blame
I thought people wanted "stuff to work". How does having a company to blame make stuff work? Sometimes it does because they have good tech support. Other times it doesn't because you are talking to a clueless outsourced call-centre drone who is reading from a canned troubleshootin
Except that they are beholden to different masters.
US politics is a funny thing--just like soviet-era "democracy" all the "legitimate" contenders are fundamentally the same--the only difference in the US is that they have different masters, indicated by the party name. By and large, Republicans represent the slaves of big oil and defense, whilst the Democrats represent the slaves of big unions and Hollywood.
Comfortable as their lives are made by their masters, it doesn't change the fact that they are slaves beholden to certain special interests, and that being in the position of running government enables them to remove freedoms just the same.
I'm not sure why this is surprising or disappointing to anyone. Sure, Obama is an extremely skilled orator and ran a masterful campaign, promising hope and change, but hope for who, and change to what? He emerged on the federal scene as a senator from an area heavily influenced by union-dominated heavy manufacturing (especially automotive manufacturing), and was endorsed heartily and heavily by Hollywood superstars and media giants. He overtly hinted at what his administration's attitude would be re. "intellectual property" in his selection of Biden as a running-mate and it was even dismissed here by many/.ers because he was "only the VP" and surely Obama would believe in preserving freedom of information.
Now Obama's administration is returning the favours to his masters as you would fully expect in the system as it exists. It is just exactly the same as GW Bush--people voted for a Texas governor and his running-mate with evident ties to big oil and defense contractors, then they were angry and upset when, after deposing the Al Qaida terrorists from Afghanistan with very obvious justification, went on to chase down Saddam in Iraq based on tenuous justifications.
Both Bush and Obama promised to do things very differently in their first campaigns and, well, both very much have delivered on that promise. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
Microsoft has you covered on the lightweight front as well. Don't you worry.
Not very well covered. Direct3D Mobile is, well, Total Crap. It is poorly supported by device vendors' drivers and performs poorly against OpenGL ES over Linux on the same hardware. WinCE/winMobile is Yesterday's Operating System.
But I'm not worried, because Linux can step in to cover me. It performs much better on the latest generation of ARM platforms, has an enthusiastic developer community and superior support from multiple vendors.
If you see an ARM netbook it'll probably be Windows CE.
It'll just as likely to be Android, Angstrom or some other Linux-based OS, or Symbian or iPhone OS or RIM blackberry OS or Palm's new web OS, because though Atom netbooks evolved (devolved?) from desktop PC heritage it looks to me like ARM based netbooks are evolving upward from a mobile phone heritage, where MSFT is far from dominant and consumers are less aware or concerned with what the operating system does and care more about what can be done with the device.
What makes you think that it will take off with Linux and not Windows?
* The dated WinCE/Windows Mobile is the ONLY edition of windows MSFT offers for the ARM platform
* Accelerated multimedia support for Windows Mobile on ARM is far behind, perhaps by YEARS, on latest ARM platforms compared with Linux.
* MSFT's ARM build of WinCE/Mobile is targeted/optimised for ARM4 and ARM5 as is their compiler itself, in a world where ARM7 and ARM8 are contemporary. That is like building everything to work on a 386 even though everyone's running Core Duo Pentiums--it'll run fast but ignore so much potential capabilities of the hardware.
* MSFT is non-committal about porting Windows 7 to ARM due to the expense in correcting the point above, so they'll not have a "desktop class" offering to compete with against Linux in the forseeable future.
It doesn't HAVE to be cheaper--it can be the same hardware, at the same price, and when you put a Linux on it and show it against a WinCE doing the same thing it'll make the MSFT look like a joke.
Let me know when I can watch badly encoded Anime on an ARM and I'll buy one.
Always Innovating is taking pre-orders for it's convertible tablet/netbook PC powered by the ARM-based OMAP3 processor platform from Texas Instruments. It is capable of processing full-motion 720p MPEG4 compressed video. Something tells me that it could handle even the most terribly encoded lo-def anime (anime is shot on 2s and 3s--ie. 8 to 12 fps on film, 10 to 15 fps on video--you'd not notice most of the dropped frames, if any were dropped at all!)
The AI Touchbook is scheduled to ship in a matter of weeks.
Another alternative based on the same hardware is at openpandora.org and has also taken pre-orders for release in the same timeframe (hardware design is complete and being released to manufacture--distribution is pending FCC approval). Smaller form factor but same multimedia capabilities. Both devices should offer in excess of 10 hours of battery life during normal use.
Though not in netbook form factor and not running Linux, the Palm Pre smartphone is even closer to release and is also an OMAP3 device. I doubt is comes with a video-out port, but it'll have the horsepower to play your media files too.
A regular single core laptop can have problems doing this let alone a Atom or ARM.
You're assuming that you have to use your CPU to do all the decoding. Why does the CPU matter when the graphics chipsets generally do all the work of video decoding? Your Atom netbooks and single-core notebooks are equipped with relatively anaemic integrated video acceleration chipsets. The TI OMAP3 platform incorporates video acceleration technology that can match or surpass the performance of the graphics systems in low-end Intel machines.
Also keep in mind the bloated, inefficient Windows platform on certain netbooks (Yes I consider XP to be bloated). You could go with Windows Mobile to address this but multimedia support/performance in the mobile edition of Windows is inferior to what Linux has to offer.
Not only linux versions are hard or impossible to find but because of the licensing agreements with M$ (for XP) the hardware specs are crippled to 1GB RAM and 160GB hdd
I saw Linux netbooks in stock at Future Shop--nice to see that they are still holing on with competition from XP, but what is sad are the clueless commissioned sales-monkeys at those stores. In an effort to squeeze a bit more commission out of the sale he was arguing that I would be disappointed with the Linux model and that I should spend the extra $50 to get an WinXP model. Apparently I'd "really miss" the hard drive space and that it was "harder to use because it wasn't compatible".
Not only did I mention the lack of support for expandability you cited (if I want to use hard drive storage with my Linux netbook I can find my own solution, thany you)--I also mentioned the hidden costs and shortcomings of the SOFTWARE.
You pay $50 more to get extra hard drive on an XP netbook--loaded with CRAPWARE: 30-day demo of MS Word, demo of Excel, demo of antivirus, etc. And the UI consisted of a 3rd rate "app launcher" executing from the startup folder of an otherwise stock XP Home desktop. Once 30 days is up I have to buy hunderds of dollars more software, or waste my time downloading and installing free alternatives.
The Linux netbook, on the other hand, had an up-to-date, custom-tuned GNOME desktop tailored to the small netbook display, along with a FULLY FUNCTIONAL OpenOffice pre-installed. For $50 LESS, I get MORE actual functionality--out of the box ready to surf, email, play media, write documents and so on--and it WON'T shut down after 30 days trying to extort more money from me!
If the uninitiated customer were actually TOLD this by a clued-in future shop salesperson (much harder to find than an in-stock Linux netbook to be sure) then the 3:1 ratio of XP:Linux netbook sales would certainly be reversed.
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I'm anti-subsidy for luxury car manufacturers. Starting at $49,900 -- bah! How about spending a fraction of this to rip out the engine of a Chevy Aveo and put in an electric motor? How about an electric car people can actually buy? Innovation not required!
There is a bit more to the Tesla cars than just ripping out the ICE and putting in a regular electric motor. There is very advanced liquid-cooled Lithium Ion battery technology, a next-gen 3-phase/4 pole motor, etc. It performs at par or better than other cars in its price point, and is also practical (can carry 5 passengers and their luggage comfortably). It is easily 200 to 300 percent more energy efficient than a typical hybrid as well. Luxury or not, getting such a vehicle to market is very worthwhile. Remember the Prius was the favourite toy of green-wannabe celebrities and rich folk in its early adoption phase, and this is a much better alternative.
Given the nature of the technology this is the ONLY way to bring it forward. I think GM's approach (with bringing out a less exotic Chevy Volt) or yours (an even more austere Aveo) is backwards. Say it costs $5000 to $10000 to implement the advanced battery and drivetrain at this point in development. This means the cost of an electric Aveo would be 50+ percent higher than for a gas one, which is "cheap enough" to run in the first place. NOBODY who is willing to be an "early adopter" would buy an electric aveo at a profitable price point, because green and innovative as the drivetrain would be, the rest of the car is actually rather crappy.
OTOH, The Tesla S is probably no more tha 10 or 20% more expensive than a comparable car that runs on petroleum fuel. Early adopters tend to be more affluent as well, and when you get to that less-than-20% premium for something cool and new. This car has a realistic chance of making a profit, or at least paying back its loans. The Volt or an electric Aveo would be a guaranteed money loser.
Remember, that Tesla got its loans specifically because it has committed to re-investing profits from early, more exotic/expensive models into more practical, affordable models. Even in its early stages on the market it has established a track record: It followed up an exotic, very expensive roadster with a luxury sedan that is actually very practical and within the price range of upper-middle class households (the ones who buy Escalades, BMW 5 or 7 series, etc). Ensuring the success of the S means the much more likely possibility of an under $30K vehicle that competes right in the mainstream sedan market.
If the US is going to get all socialist on us, I'm glad it isn't following the tired old thinking that to support innovation it must have this fixation on immediately addressing the needs of the "masses" or "working poor" or that crap, when it isn't realistic from a business perspective. Certainly better than taking a controlling interest in a loser bankrupt GM or gifting Chrysler to the unions--doing both with massive loans backing the moves (if taxpayers weren't forced to accept such nonsense, thay'd never in their right mind invest in such shaky enterprises). GM in particular has been the ABSOLUTE LEAST INNOVATIVE auto company on the entire planet for decades--even its best products are dependable but very boring and un-innovative, and they've invested the least into new technologies in their plants out of EVERY SINGLE company that builds cars in N America.
If my gov't is going to throw boatloads of cash around on speculative enterprises, I'd MUCH rather it go do something bold, new, exciting and innovative like Tesla than something tired, old and nothing to show for in terms of innovation than words and vague plans crafted for the purpose of begging for alms from the gov't. as GM and Chrysler have done in the last year.
Historically, the Liberal party started out as a classically liberal party, but it has been many decades since it has behafved even REMOTELY liberal.
The LPC does what is politically expedient, and has no principles AT ALL. Policy and philosophy are shaped solely by opinion polls and the direction of the leader of the day. It is for that reason that I don't hold much promise at all that switching parties would help further the cause of net neutrality. How trustworthy are the Liberals, and can you believe everything Ignatieff says? The track record (of the party OR the leader) is not promising. The past two Liberal PMs made countless pre-election promises only to do nothing, or the exact opposite, when in office. Cretien promised to get rid of the GST because it was a "stupid" regressive tax that was forced onto Canadians--and in his many years and terms in gov't left it intact. Today the Liberals hew and cry over employment insurance being inadequate and not accessible enough, when it was the Liberal party that instituted the very policies they complain about now (when "UI" became "EI" and changed were made to reduce costs when Cretien was PM and another former PM, Martin, was finance minister).
Policies also change with new leaders. Cretien was slightly "left-leaning" but would abandon his principles out of expediency (such as putting Martin in as long-term finance minister, making them one of the more fiscally conservative Liberal gov'ts). Martin shifted the Liberals as far right as the Harper Tory gov't is behaving today. Dion swung the party towards a socialist policy stance so close to that of the NDP the Liberals more than once formally approached the NDP about a coalition strategy--the result of which was electoral disaster (they got the second lowest percentage of seats and lowest popular vote in the party's history). Now Ignatieff is leader, and history shows that the Liberals policy is shaped by the leader. The problem is that Ignatieff has not clearly defined his stance yet so what he says about particular policies cannot be fully trusted.
Ignatieff was the child of aristocratic Russian diplomats, born in Canada but raised much of his life overseas. As a pre-teen he was sent to an Ontario boarding school, then attended Harvard in the US and spent over 20 years in the UK before moving to the US for over 5. As a student he volunteered in Trudeau's election campaign, and because of those distant ties was enticed back to Canada to enter politics by friends who thought he'd be an eventual Liberal leadership contender (in part because his ties with the party WERE NOT that strong and the hope was that voters would see him as a fresh start). Many make the argument that it is closed-minded to discount a candidate because they aren't "Canadian enough" (more "snobby" Canadians point to the US presidency requirements as how "backwards" such thinking is), but let's be reasonable--not only did this man who would lead Canada spend over half of his life in other countries--it was the LATTER HALF of that life that he spent away. I'd have no problem if a 60 year old from overseas that moved here 20 or 30 years ago wanted to be PM but Ignatieff lived not a single day in Canada from the 1970s until mere WEEKS before he ran for office! How can he profess to know what Canada of TODAY is about when all he knows first-hand is the Canada of the 1960s and 1970s? He has been off the political radar in this country for ages--what does he stand for? Nobody knows exactly, and more than any other party in Canada what the leader thinks matters most for the Liberals. A lot of what he has said in the past completely counters what the Liberals stood for in the recent past--he is strongly supportive of military action in Afghanistan and even Iraq. Though his motives might have differed from Bush, Ignatieff was a SUPPORTER of the GW Bush gov'ts "troop surge" for example, and there is speculation he would support military deployment of troops to Afghanistan indefinitely. He says little about what he beli
The concept you describe is implemented in some data centres--the rack contains not only shared cooling smaller number of much larger sized fans) but also the power supply, where AC goes in and the DC goes out to all the machines in the rack.
On a smaller scale I've done this at home: At the telephone demarc point where the electrical panel is I mount my DSL modem, a switch and an old FlexATX board to perform router/firewall functions. Instead of a PC power supply and multiple "wall warts" there is one power supply to feed single-rail 12V power to all the devices, thus only requiring one power outlet for the whole works. The whole thing will run off one 12V sealed lead-acid battery as well, for about an hour on the old battery I tried I'd estimate, but I've yet to incorporate it into the setup permanently. The old mainboard uses a CF card plugged into the first IDE connector (CF cards have an IDE-mode operation--the adapters are for the most part just re-arranging the physical connector for the same signals), and to accomodate single-rail power I use the "Pico PSU" that takes in unregulated 12V on 2 wires and puts out all the ATX power required. It plugs into the ATX power socket and isn't all that much bigger than a typical ATX power connector inside your PC, except not attached to all those wires.
If you're starting with new hardware, you can forego the PicoPSU and use MiniITX boards with single-rail power. VIA offers some models that take simple 12VDC which are tailored to mobile and industrial markets (an elegant choice for Automotive PCs).
In a larger application requiring multiple hosts I envisioned a setup that would forego proprietary blade setups or expensive racks and a significant amount of sheet metal:
* very simple metal frame to allow a completely standard ATX board to be mounted vertically into "slide in" tracks of a mini-chassis
* mini-chassis would have a 500W or higher normal ATX power supply and a couple of larger-sized fans to pull air from bottom to top, with room for drive bays, KVMs or whatever along the bottom.
* Such a mini-chassis could be made to fit in 8U of space in a 19" rack and could house 5 standard ATX boards with enough room to allow for low-profile PCI cards to be installed. The depth would be less than 1/2 standard rack depth (perhaps about 30cm) such that two of these units could fit in the same 8U space, for a density of 10 boards per 8U space. Not the most density but still better than one system per rack unit. Many more boards could fit if room for PCI cards is not required. Of course, the chassis need not be rack mounted--it could just sit on a desk.
* boards would be mounted with the "back panel" facing front, and "internal connections" routed out the back--perhaps with connectors mounted for HDD and power fixed to the mini-chassis so that the frames with boards mounted can be simply "plugged in"
* A second mini-chassis could share PSU with the first to make more efficient use of power.
Not rocket science but that sort of "mini-rack" case would use common ATX hardware without proprietary form factors involved, and no more than one PSU per 5 PC boards. This isn't a new concept--it isn't that much different from the SGI Origin systems with multi-node bricks mentioned in another post--the only fundamental difference is that it is based on standard form factors.
While I agree with you on America's messed up copyright laws, the problem apparently is that a lot of commercially bootlegged products make it into the US through Canada.
So, it is the job of Canada and other foreign nations to enforce the laws of the US? If Canada were to, for example, ask *US Customs agents* to seize firearms that are legally owned and possessed by visiting Americans but restricted in Canada then the US would tell us to stuff it--get Canadian agents to do their job!
Shouldn't that be the case here? If someone is entering the US from Canada with goods that are legal in Canada but US has a problem with them because they are imitations, then perhaps US agents should do their f*cking jobs and seize their own goods.
I'm not saying Canadian law needs some work in this area, as some IP violations are public safety concerns (knockoff toys from China contaminated with lead, counterfeit food items tainted with melamine or ethylene glycol, fake viagra that induces heart attack and so on). Canada in this case should tell US to stuff it, because Canadian resources should be used to concentrate on the IMPORTATION of counterfeit goods INTO Canada that violate health and safety laws, NOT to seize bootleg DVDs and fake Prada fashion accessories going OUT of Canada.
Whenever RIAA or MPAA try to enlist the government's assistance in chasing down copyrigt violators everyone gets up in arms about it, saying that by law copyright and trademark holders have to take reasonable responsibility to enforce their IP rights or they risk losing them. It seems in this case they've abdicated their rights in the US. Aside from movie and music sharing, there is very clear evidence that the rate of IP theft in Canada is much LOWER than that of the US. If you compare the easiest places to find knockoff products in Canada (Vancouver and Toronto) with American cities like New York and LA, it is completely obvious that enforcement is FAR from uniform--Hollywood has its dirty little paws in DC and a powerful cartel out there shaking down little girls and college students, thus media piracy is relatively contained. Electronics and fashion items, however, get no such special treatment and their manufacturers do little to take advantage of what are supposedly the toughest IP laws in the world.
Mass media corporations and agencies that can adapt to the changes that we are and will be experiencing, will continue to be in business.
More than likely none of them will exist in any form we recognise today. E-reader devices--even relatively successful ones like the Kindle--are stopgap measures that only serve to prolong an obsolete business model in the face of new technology. They are this generation's version of the electronic typewriter.
Personal computers became practical options for a large-enough market to achieve critical mass in the 1970s, yet typewriter companies soldiered on for near around two decades trying to prop up their obsolete concept of a typewriter by adding the technology of computers without actually admitting defeat and MAKING computers. Thus, the introduction of electronic typewriters, and soon after dedicated word processors, in the face of a rapidly expanding personal computer market.
Such devices were to be the savior of the industry. Word processing was the first "killer app" and these devices fit the bill nicely and were easier to use than general purpose computers. Though computers could be bought at comparable prices, you had to add an expensive letter-quality printer to get the same kind of hard copy. There was no concern about interoperability or open standards because the competing computers lacked much of that as well, and there was no publicly-accessible internet either.
Problem is, the typewriter companies didn't "get" computers, even while at the same time making microprocessor-based, single-purpose computers themselves. PC technology continued apace, and the PC industry consolidated around a small number of interoperable, standard platforms. Spreadsheets and databases became more important as "killer apps" and the internet made networking an essential.
Typewriter companies COULD have evolved their product offerings into open-architecture, general-purpose computers and not only survived, but thrived, but how many big typewriter manufacturers to YOU know of that actually DID that and DID survive? Very few come to my mind: IBM for one, and they only "got it" because they were already a computer company too with their mainframe offerings. Commodore got it as well--Tramiel was a visionary, perhaps too far ahead of his time, when he embraced the PET and pushed for low cost and friendliness with the VIC20 and C64.
However, even those who "got it" didn't fully "get it". Commodore didn't seem to figure out the value of interoperability even within their own product line! They couldn't come up with a proper successor to the C64 on their own and could only hang on by purchasing Amiga--which was again completely incompatible ans again acieved ALL its success because of its technical merits and despite the follies of its marketers. IBM saw massive success with their original 5150, 5160 and 5170 models (aka PC, XT and AT), and even saw fit to maintain compatibility. However like Commodore they lacked a proper successor after the 5170 and were stuck in the habit of proprietary offerings, thus the disastrous foray into the MCA bus architecture in an effort to lock-in customers like in the old mainframe days. As a result, Commodore went extinct completely and IBM doesn't make personal computers at all any more.
It'll be the same with media companies over the next 20 years. If the names survive they'll not be the same companies--News Corp. of 2030 will be no more related to News Corp. of today than Atari of today is related to the Atari of 1989. Same goes for television networks, movie studios, record companies and radio stations. True, they are often all divisions of the same big media conglomerate, but that's the point--they are DIVISIONS. They don't "get" that whether it be in newsprint, on TV, on the radio or in a web page, the content is ALL THE SAME--it all gets made into bits, stuffed into IP packets and pushed into wires or over the air at some point, or it easily can be.
The future means a s
If these come out at $50, come with a library of great books (all free from Gutenberg et al.), and allow you to put whatever you like on them in some open format which the FOSS community can create converters for, why wouldn't it blow the iPOD sales records out of the water?
Just about fell out of my chair when I read that one. Very witty, subtle sense of humour you have there, so much so you've been modded "informative".
I'll laugh almost as hard when newspapers start going into receivership after sinking millions in borrowed funds into the development of an overpriced, single-purpose reader to serve DRM-encumbered, proprietary-formatted content to its readers, followed by more millions on RIAA-style litigation to suppress hacker communities who try to jailbreak the devices.
Despite the fact you've put out a credible way to implement such a solution successfully, you can count on newspaper chains will cock it up so badly that their newspaper readers will make the cue:cat look like a raging success.
Unfortunately that's called embezzlement and it's sort-of highly illegal.
No it isn't. Embezzlement is stealing, and nothing is being stolen. One business is spending money to get getting products and services from another business that receives the money, at a price the market will bear. That is normal commerce.
What it REALLY is called is "conflict of interest" and thought it is highly UNETHICAL depending on the circumstances it can be technically LEGAL. In most cases though, as part of an employment agreement or membership to professional organisations you must divulge conflicts of interest to your employer and any other parties involved.
Usually if someone involved in procurement of products and services owns or otherwise has a vested interest in one of his bidding suppliers they have to divulge that conflict of interest and probably either have that supplier withdrawn or otherwise remove themselves from the selection process. Failure to disclose can result in termination, civil action and potentially criminal fraud charges.
Still bad, but different bad.
For instance, I have a history of amphetamine abuse. I'm past it, I beat it, I'm feeling much better now, thank you.
And nobody should cast judgment on you pertaining to employment prospects, credit worthiness, medical insurance, how "decent" of a person you are or whatever. Kudos on getting past it--I know people who still battle with that addiction.
That said, strictly speaking from a medical delivery perspective, that such information, as "embarrassing" as it appears to be, could indeed be medically relevant. Seeing as the decisions made by medical professionals can have life-and-death consequences, wouldn't it be best to make sure the information they relied upon to make sure you were healthy and ALIVE be both accurate and COMPLETE?
I do not want a doctor refusing to give me a drug to help me focus because he's afraid I'll relapse. Or not giving a weight loss drug for the same reason.
Doctors are trained professionals. If they are concerned about relapse they are almost universally making an informed, professional judgment. Also, keep in mind that risk of relapse is not the only influence on a doctor's decision in prescribing medication. Past drug use (legitimate or recreational) is a contra-indicator for quite a lot of prescription drugs.
To use exactly your example: A drug called Desoxyn is a treatment option for weight loss treatment. A history of sustained use of a number of amphetamines is linked to resistance to the effects of Desoxyn. Depending on how long ago you beat your addiction the doctor might chose an alternate solution.
Another example is Adderall in the treatment of ADHD. Past meth abuse can cause a permanently increased risk of heart complications, and Adderall has know links to increased heart problems in addition to any addiction concerns there might be.
When a doctor refuses to give you a treatment option he doesn't have to be passing a personal value judgment on you. Doesn't it seem quite possible he's basing his decisions on, say, actual scientific research and clinical data?
I support measures to promote the freedom of movement of medical information within the system, provided it comes with sufficient regulation and oversight. For example:
* Medical insurance companies should be required to get permission from the subject of those records or their guardians directly. Premiums and acceptance screenings cannot be based on any medical history records whatsoever--only on a medical exam of existing condition, and only then with limits.
* Patients should be able to have full access to all records pertaining to them on demand from any medical facility in a timely fashion (in an electronic system, within 1 business day would be charitable), and at no more cost than a nominal administration fee
* Medical record information should include a complete audit trail and by default permanent (for example, if a mistake is corrected, the old infor should be included as "striken and corrected"). Only the patient should be able to strike information completely, and such an action must be signed off by a medically qualified professional.
* medical records cannot be used by anyone outside professional medical practice--it should be illegal to base decisions on credit-worthiness, employment, etc. on past medical history.
If you force open source, you'll quickly bring to the forefront every security issue in the code
You say that like it's a bad thing...why would that be a bad thing? What sort of "HIPAA nightmare" would it be...a nightmare for health care administrators? Hell, that's their JOB they shouldn't whine about it. The whole of corporate America had Sarbanes Oxley foisted upon them and were told to "suck it up". If public companies must scrutinise their operations with a fine-toothed comb I'd expect no less from the medical system.
Medical information management systems perform a vital role involving sensitive information, and I can't think of a better way to make sure application code is thoroughly vetted than to foster the use of open source that can be examined by everyone without the need to pay large sums of money, sign NDAs or jump through other legal and financial hoops.
I don't think the industry is ready to give up all its little proprietary secrets
I can tell you from experience working with some of these kinds of systems that the secret is not some innovative idea that gives them a competitive edge--it is almost universally that the system is of embarrassingly poor quality or obsolete.
Open interchange of information, on the other hand, is a big necessity and has been happening for a long time now.
I'd have to say that I'm not convinced to the degree that you are on the effectiveness of information sharing in the medical system. You still can't walk into a doctor's office and get your own comprehensive, accurate medical history right there.
It's not that there are legal blocks or that medical professionals are not forthcoming, there is still to much physical paper pushing in hospitals, still too may disconnects in the system. At a hospital I did work at I believe they STILL have a functional pneumatic tube system they use to transport reams of multi-part carbon paper forms around.
Technology is marching forward in the field, but it's happening slowly, and that is in large part due to the proprietary nature of the first generations of electronic systems. Open interchange of information is encouraged and fostered by the implementation of open standards and technologies.
Their ad requirements, while irritating, were tame compared to most social sites today.
Not only that, they were next to nonexistent to begin with--merely a small header or footer. Then they added this funny floating GIF thing that would move itself to stay visible when you scrolled and I think they started putting your page in a frame so they could surround it with ads eventually. What I DO remember is that when Yahoo acquired it Geocities REALLY went down hill with all the crapvertisements they forced upon your page.
They provided free web-hosting, with no requirement to use their page builder. CMSs are good in certain contexts, but being forced to use them is bad.
Amen to that. Though based on sophisticated CMS platforms, blogging/social networking sites are a bit of a throwback in terms of flexibility/utility--I consider them to have a bout as much utility as Gopher sites circa 1992. You can drop content in the easily enough but you're working in restricted presentation and navigation frameworks.
Sadly, in this day and age, there is a lot of nervousness about providing free-form HTML space on a large free hosting site, since too many people out there who are interested in such a thing want to exploit that capability for malicious intentions.
Many people were less interested in page hits and more interested in sharing information. This does not seem to be the case as much anymore.
The Internet was a different place. If you were on the internet you were either technically savvy/academic or an enthusiastic early adopter/enthusiast. Even the non-technically-inclined participants were willing to learn basic HTML or muddle through the early HTML editors. Also, there was novelty in being able to disseminate information with so much ease.
Now we have information overload, the novelty has worn off and typical internet users want nothing at all to do with technical development.
Since there is an overabundance of info out there focus has changed from creating quality content to drawing attention to yourself--even if that is annoying. Also as users are less interested in how the technology works it has become easier to put yourself out there. As a consequence, the less effort it takes to publish content the less pride you have in it and the lower the signal:noise ratio.
We are now at a point where that effort is near zero, a great many people have no pride (or shame) in their online image and the signal:noise ratio is a very small fraction of one percent.
Great; now I'm feeling nostalgic. Does anyone remember canyon.mid? Man, I used to listen to that all the time. Of course, then I discovered Impulse Tracker, and realized that MIDI was crap (except perhaps as a control language for devices.)
Do I remember canyon.mid? Do I ever! The interesting part? The first time I actually HEARD it was on my Atari 520ST playing it through my synth keyboard!
At the time I first bought Windows 3.1, we had a 386DX33 computer freshly upgraded to 4MB system RAM and a Trident 8800-based SVGA card fully populated with 512KB and wanted to take advantage of the added horsepower, however we did NOT yet have a sound card or speakers.
The Atari ST I had owned prior to having any sort of PC remained in regular use because it had way better graphics and sound than our PC, and I could use it with my keyboard synth to create, save, play and edit .mid song files. It was also convenient that The Atari ST used the same exact 720K 3.5 inch floppies as the IBM.
So, when I encountered canyon.mid on my new Win3.1 install the first thing I did was copy it onto a floppy, then take that floppy down to my Atari and play it on my synth. Quite amusing I thought and it make me want to get a sound card.
The followi
Unfortunately the pain isn't limited to geocities... more pain here.
HOLY crap! JESUS WEPT!
I can't believe I'm defending him, but judges are also citizens. He should have the right to be a member of most any organization he chooses.
Freedom of association doesn't mean freedom from consequences of that association. Judges are not prohibited from being a part of any group as citizens--but they certainly cannot sit as judges or preside over certain trials at the same time.
I'm sure the judge in this case worked properly within current law, though his interpretation of that law is likely done to the strictest limits. However legal it may be though, it seems to me that presiding over a copyright trial when also being an active member of a "copyright maximalist" lobby group that influences the legislative process compromises both impartiality (as a member of such a lobby group he would personally dismiss any notion of leniency) AND judicial independence (as a judge he is to interpret law, and as a member of a poilitical lobby group he is playing a role in CREATING the law he is supposed to interpret and is thus not truly capable of acting as an independent interpreter of law in this case).
In some defense, if he is a member of the organization not in a capacity of financial beneficiary of copyright, then it isn't quite so clear cut.
Not clear cut, but certainly it is justification for scrutiny. In Canada and the US, when it is a trial by jury, the selection process certainly takes that into account. If a jury candidate is an active member of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and the trial involves DUI you can surely bet that defense lawyers would make a case about it. Even though that jury candidate would certainly NOT personally benefit from delivering a guilty sentence it would be seen by the defense as an indication of prejudice. If Jurors are scrutinised to that extent, why not judges?
Judges here are prohibited from performing a number of political activities such as running election campaigns for those running for parliament, or from running for parliament themselves (they are only allowed to do either if they take a leave of absence). This is to preserve independence between the legislature and the judiciary, not because it is always a conflict of interest.
If involvement in certain political activity is regulated for active judges already, shouldn't judges' memberships in lobby groups be regulated as well? The purpose of political lobby groups is to advise LEGISLATORS on the concerns of special interest groups IN THE CREATION OF NEW LAW. To me, this violates judicial independence just like it would if judge presided over trials whilst running for office or sitting in parliament.
I'm not sure about how Swedish judiciary works, ans I'm not a lawyer, but it sure seems to me that a judge being a member in good standing of a COPYRIGHT lobby group, hearing a COPYRIGHT LAW case, is a very serious compromise of judicial independence, even when it doesn't represent a personal conflict of interest, and such a situation should not be permitted.
Three apps at once...guess that seems all well and good, but what counts as an application?
I presume opening explorer windows would not, as that is part of the GUI shell, but what about Internet Explorer? Would each window be an app, or each tab? I would consider that unreasonable, as a lot of even basic users could commonly have 3 tabs or windows open. But, if they did not limit the number of IE windows or tabs open, that would give AJAX-based apps a leg up right? I mean, open as many Google docs of any type up as you want in IE vs. being limited with Office.
What about software that runs as a service, and offers interactive users a GUI through the "system tray"? Would my anti-virus use up one of my 3 applications? Our company makes an application that can run as a service, or run as an application. Does it not count as an app if it is in "service mode"? What about instant messaging? Like anti-virus it is really a "service" more than a full on app, and users would really demand that it be able to run in the background without overly limiting usability. Do these services become apps as soon as they open GUI windows? How nasty would it be if you couldn't read an IM until you closed your browser because you had 3 windows open?
A lot of these oddities/complexities in today's PC environment could be used to get around the spirit of the 3-app-at-once imposed limit on Starter Edition. However, if MSFT cracked down on developers for skirting their newest DRM offering would that not unreasonably hamper usability of the product in addition to alienating developers?
Also, has it occurred to MSFT yet that their business model is uncomfortably similar to organised crime? I'm seriously not trying to make a joke.
First off, MSFT conducts licensing audits of businesses--and even non-profits and school boards and such, invariably finding some degree of non-compliance because of what can be confusing EULAs for naive employees/teachers/volunteers/students. MSFT offers amnesty in the form of payment without litigation--even special rates on "software assurance" contracts. Does this not sound like a mobster coming into a store, having his goons trash a display of merchandise and saying "nice store--it'd be a shame if something happened to it..."?
Then MSFT starts flexing it's patent portfolio, and starts shaking down competitors, either by signing a "cross-licensing" agreement (a la Novell) or throwing lawsuits at them (Tom Tom). For a matter of a "small" amount of money MSFT will not cause further stress or anguish and the products offered by the victims will be allowed on the marketplace. Sounds like more "protection money"
Now we have this further promotion of crippleware--targeted at entry-level users, primarily in developing nations no less. Just when you thought MSFT had stooped as low as it could by behaving like Mafia men, it now acts like the gangster punk selling crack to street people--get them hooked on something cheap and hope they form a dependency on your goods to the point they "need more" to get by. When I think about how increasingly disruptive a 3-app limit would become as users became more sophisticated I can see the parallels.
I know that the seriousness of the REAL organised crime problems around the world are many orders of magnitude larger and more important than the marketing tactics on MSFT. I hope nobody is offended by my comparison thinking i'm trivialising the crime problem, however I think it is important to point out how the tactics used in such criminal activity parallel MSFT's business model. I would hope that MSFT would see this, because though what MSFT is doing is perfectly legal, they are still engaging in exploitive tactics with their customers. If customers feel like their being exploited to much, for too long, competitors who treat them better will inevitably take their place.
But there's a limit to how small you can make a single item in a cluster before you're duplicating effort without much benefit.
The thing is, there is vast room for improvement in the cluster concept with more current technology. If you used an ARMv7-based node you'd have better capabilities in each node than the Geode, at about $100 per node (making it cost the same as your suggestion) and a PEAK power consumption of around 30 or 35 watts (your system peaks at 100 watts, still significantly higher than the 85 watt peak of the Geode-based cluster).
Also, slapping an SSD into a regular PC doesn't make it even close to comparable apart from overall capacity. You still have the massive "memory wall" problem. For highly dynamic, componentised network apps like Facebook and Amazon you are relying tremendously on disk-based data retrieval and caching that would massively hit the SSD. To fix that "memory wall" problem in your system you'd probably have to have on the order of 64G of ram, not the paltry 4G you specify. With the cluster you have the equivalent of up to 20 times the bandwidth to your cache. Also, you have 21 500MHz processors at your disposal. Even if having an OS on each node caused a massive 50% overhead you could get more than the equivalent of a 2.5GHz dual-core processor.
Your sugestion might produce a high-performance machine, but it doesn't solve the problem the FAWN cluster set out to accomplish.
Or to put it simply: pulling a "finished" object from memcached will almost always be faster then having a machine create/render/whatever you do to create the object.
I don't think the idea is to dump the concept of cache. The idea is to drop the added complexity and expense of "memcached". Instead of retrieving data from slow power-hungry hard drives, processing it and caching it in very expensive SDRAM you employ more traditional filesystem-based caching to much cheaper flash drives. That would still be less resource-intensive than re-rendering data, even though it is slower than memcached on power-hungry systems.
If you want to pull large amounts of data from RAM buy a 1U server that takes 64 gigabytes of ram for $5000 (so about $78 per gig of ram, and much faster than a compact flash card in a super cheap laptop).
More importantly than "is it fast" is would it be "fast enough", because the bottleneck is internet connectivity. A cluster of inexpensive nodes like this is also cost competitive with single large servers for initial purchase. Why spend $5k on one beast machine with gobs of pricey SDRAM when you can spend the SAME OR LESS amount of money on a cluster of, say, 32 low-power nodes with 256MB or 512MB of RAM and 4GB of flash? That gives you ample SDRAM to execute code and TWICE AS MUCH MEMORY for caching than your suggestion! Yes, flash is slower but it's GOOD ENOUGH--it only has to be pushed out as fast as the 'net connection can take it, which is a LOT slower than SDRAM!
Not only do you get more cache of more-than-adequate performance wit the cluster, you get SIGNIFICANTLY better performance-per-watt numbers too, so not only is the initial investment no more expensive, long-term operating costs are MUCH LOWER.
Now if we're talking about building a render farm for whatever
It is clear from the article that this was most certainly NOT the intended application for such a cluster. Running a site like facebook and rendering the next Pixar movie are VASTLY different requirements. That said, there is merit in abandoning the "buy skookum Xeon boxes with gobs of RAM" concept for that too. Using GPUs from NVidia and AMD/ATI for computation is MUCH more efficient and powerful than relying on traditional CPUs. They take this cluster concept down to the die level: instead of 2, 4, or 8 massive power-hungry cores they contain HUNDREDS of very simple cores (shaders or vector processors) and exploit massive parallelism.
What interests me is the ease of building a many node cluster and learning how to administer and write software for something with 20+ nodes.
The compelling advantages make this challenge worthwhile. Optimising apps to work optimally on new architectures such as this FAWN cluster or to a 960-core NVidia Tesla system is indeed a challenge. But it doesn't look terribly difficult to physically build it, and tools to manage clusters are quite mature already.
Of course you could just buy computer time from amazon.com EC2 for $0.10 per hour per node and practice there
Of course, some people might have misgivings about putting their data in other people's hands, but for practicing that would work. But, who's to say Amazon wouldn't employ such clusters (or aren't already going there)?
You can beat this with an array of Pogoplugs at $99 each
Beagleboards might be more expensive and lower capacity per node, but they have more processing horsepower (OMAP3x platform with DSP chipset capable of rendering 3-D and HD video) and draw half the power. They are powered by 5v DC power that could share one power supply whereas each Pogoplug has its own transformer/rectifier power supply. Might get more horsepower per watt for less work from a beagleboard.
Only drawback: need to supply an interconnection solution to match the GbE supplied by the plugs...but there are solutions that would work...
Yes, but which distribution? Why was it easier and what store did you walk into to buy it?
I originally got Ubuntu in the Relay store a the airport when I was waiting for a flight. It came on a CD taped to the cover of a magazine for a few dollars.
Installation was very easy. I didn't even have to type that hard-to-read product key gibberish in, and I didn't need to bother with that pesky product activation either. When the OS was done installing I had a GUI, sound and networking and it even found and installed by Lexmark laser printer without me telling it to (in Windows I had to run this wizard thingy). Not only that, I could get my office software--for free no less--by making a few clicks and not typing one command or rebooting.
I've also seen Mandriva in the local computer shop on the same shelf as Windows XP just down the aisle for $19.95, but I didn't buy that one. I already had Ubuntu.
So yeah, I still don't get your point.
I'm a burger flipper, a tire guy, a mechanic, a professional, or a housewife and I just want the stuff to work.
The thing is, with proprietary software there is an increasing trend to deliberately make things NOT work. Nothing frustrates "a housewife" more than to find that her iPod is synced to one instance of iTunes on one computer at a time, and that de-syncing wipes out all the songs on the device requiring a sometimes lengthy re-load should she ever want to sync with a different computer. In my job, literally 2/3 of the support issues for many of the closed products I deal with (operators in an industrial setting) are product-activation related (ie. a "feature" that does nothing useful at all for the end user--it exists solely to protect an antiquated business model). Product X cannot talk to product Y because they are from different vendors. Vendors extort licensing fees for critical bug fixes (lucky Windows Update doesn't work like that---yet).
Those "freedoms" that "whiny developers" carp about would truly be missed by "normal" users would they, or the Free software that offers them, were to disappear, as the competition they offer drags closed shops like MSFT kicking to grudgingly participate in everything from standards committees to full on open source projects.
If you have any memory of what personal computing was like in the 1980s you'd have a greater appreciation for what a lack of freedoms and openness means. It was an exciting time but it was truly the dark ages as UNIX vendors pulled in the reigns at the corporate and academic levels and S100 bus systems went extinct whilst a multitude of personal computer vendors duked it out on the "home front" with completely proprietary, non-compatible platforms. You could get an Apple ][ or a Commodore PET so your kids would have what school had, or you could get an Atari 800 or a Tandy CoCo that was cheaper and more colourful but lacked the software the kids used at school, or you could spend boatloads of money and get an IBM Model 5150 (the offical name of the original PC) that would run productivity software for you but was no fun for the kids.
The Apple ][ and the IBM PC were "open architecture" in that they could be opened and cards added to extend functionality, but when clone-makers initially tried making copycats they were dragged into court. It wasn't until the PC was "clean-room" reverse-engineered and a computer platform was TRULY opened up. It was "openness and freedom" on the hardware front that led to a renaissance in personal computing, not because "stuff works", because the oddball orphaned platforms DID "just work" as often as they didn't.
I don't want to have to make a stupid decision about which distribution I should download and I don't want to have to answer nine billion technical questions just to get it installed.
Why not? It's pretty clear people WANT to have the ability to make "a stupid decision" when it comes to choosing HARDWARE, so why not the same with software? Why else would Dell alone give you hundreds of choices of hardware of people didn't want to make decisions?
I don't want to have to answer nine billion technical questions just to get it installed
That is your choice, and you don't have to if you don't want to. If you've never gotten that from Linux then you've not even tried to look, because overall it is seriously NO HARDER to install many Linux OSes as it is to install Vista, and nobody says YOU have to do the installation at all. You can already buy PCs with an easy-to-use Linux-based OS on it.
I want to have that feeling that there is a company that I can blame
I thought people wanted "stuff to work". How does having a company to blame make stuff work? Sometimes it does because they have good tech support. Other times it doesn't because you are talking to a clueless outsourced call-centre drone who is reading from a canned troubleshootin
It would be nice to see this question directly asked to Obama in a press conference.
It would be nice, but it's not human nature to directly question, or be critical of, the person who gives you pretty much exactly what you want.
...same as the old slaves...
Except that they are beholden to different masters.
US politics is a funny thing--just like soviet-era "democracy" all the "legitimate" contenders are fundamentally the same--the only difference in the US is that they have different masters, indicated by the party name. By and large, Republicans represent the slaves of big oil and defense, whilst the Democrats represent the slaves of big unions and Hollywood.
Comfortable as their lives are made by their masters, it doesn't change the fact that they are slaves beholden to certain special interests, and that being in the position of running government enables them to remove freedoms just the same.
I'm not sure why this is surprising or disappointing to anyone. Sure, Obama is an extremely skilled orator and ran a masterful campaign, promising hope and change, but hope for who, and change to what? He emerged on the federal scene as a senator from an area heavily influenced by union-dominated heavy manufacturing (especially automotive manufacturing), and was endorsed heartily and heavily by Hollywood superstars and media giants. He overtly hinted at what his administration's attitude would be re. "intellectual property" in his selection of Biden as a running-mate and it was even dismissed here by many /.ers because he was "only the VP" and surely Obama would believe in preserving freedom of information.
Now Obama's administration is returning the favours to his masters as you would fully expect in the system as it exists. It is just exactly the same as GW Bush--people voted for a Texas governor and his running-mate with evident ties to big oil and defense contractors, then they were angry and upset when, after deposing the Al Qaida terrorists from Afghanistan with very obvious justification, went on to chase down Saddam in Iraq based on tenuous justifications.
Both Bush and Obama promised to do things very differently in their first campaigns and, well, both very much have delivered on that promise. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
Two Words: Windows CE.
Two more words: Total Crap
Do you see what all of Nvidia's fancy ARM based MIDs feature? Windows CE.
I see that they feature Google Android also.
Microsoft has you covered on the lightweight front as well. Don't you worry.
Not very well covered. Direct3D Mobile is, well, Total Crap. It is poorly supported by device vendors' drivers and performs poorly against OpenGL ES over Linux on the same hardware. WinCE/winMobile is Yesterday's Operating System.
But I'm not worried, because Linux can step in to cover me. It performs much better on the latest generation of ARM platforms, has an enthusiastic developer community and superior support from multiple vendors.
If you see an ARM netbook it'll probably be Windows CE.
It'll just as likely to be Android, Angstrom or some other Linux-based OS, or Symbian or iPhone OS or RIM blackberry OS or Palm's new web OS, because though Atom netbooks evolved (devolved?) from desktop PC heritage it looks to me like ARM based netbooks are evolving upward from a mobile phone heritage, where MSFT is far from dominant and consumers are less aware or concerned with what the operating system does and care more about what can be done with the device.
What makes you think that it will take off with Linux and not Windows?
* The dated WinCE/Windows Mobile is the ONLY edition of windows MSFT offers for the ARM platform
* Accelerated multimedia support for Windows Mobile on ARM is far behind, perhaps by YEARS, on latest ARM platforms compared with Linux.
* MSFT's ARM build of WinCE/Mobile is targeted/optimised for ARM4 and ARM5 as is their compiler itself, in a world where ARM7 and ARM8 are contemporary. That is like building everything to work on a 386 even though everyone's running Core Duo Pentiums--it'll run fast but ignore so much potential capabilities of the hardware.
* MSFT is non-committal about porting Windows 7 to ARM due to the expense in correcting the point above, so they'll not have a "desktop class" offering to compete with against Linux in the forseeable future.
It doesn't HAVE to be cheaper--it can be the same hardware, at the same price, and when you put a Linux on it and show it against a WinCE doing the same thing it'll make the MSFT look like a joke.
Let me know when I can watch badly encoded Anime on an ARM and I'll buy one.
Always Innovating is taking pre-orders for it's convertible tablet/netbook PC powered by the ARM-based OMAP3 processor platform from Texas Instruments. It is capable of processing full-motion 720p MPEG4 compressed video. Something tells me that it could handle even the most terribly encoded lo-def anime (anime is shot on 2s and 3s--ie. 8 to 12 fps on film, 10 to 15 fps on video--you'd not notice most of the dropped frames, if any were dropped at all!)
The AI Touchbook is scheduled to ship in a matter of weeks.
Another alternative based on the same hardware is at openpandora.org and has also taken pre-orders for release in the same timeframe (hardware design is complete and being released to manufacture--distribution is pending FCC approval). Smaller form factor but same multimedia capabilities. Both devices should offer in excess of 10 hours of battery life during normal use.
Though not in netbook form factor and not running Linux, the Palm Pre smartphone is even closer to release and is also an OMAP3 device. I doubt is comes with a video-out port, but it'll have the horsepower to play your media files too.
A regular single core laptop can have problems doing this let alone a Atom or ARM.
You're assuming that you have to use your CPU to do all the decoding. Why does the CPU matter when the graphics chipsets generally do all the work of video decoding? Your Atom netbooks and single-core notebooks are equipped with relatively anaemic integrated video acceleration chipsets. The TI OMAP3 platform incorporates video acceleration technology that can match or surpass the performance of the graphics systems in low-end Intel machines.
Also keep in mind the bloated, inefficient Windows platform on certain netbooks (Yes I consider XP to be bloated). You could go with Windows Mobile to address this but multimedia support/performance in the mobile edition of Windows is inferior to what Linux has to offer.
Not only linux versions are hard or impossible to find but because of the licensing agreements with M$ (for XP) the hardware specs are crippled to 1GB RAM and 160GB hdd
I saw Linux netbooks in stock at Future Shop--nice to see that they are still holing on with competition from XP, but what is sad are the clueless commissioned sales-monkeys at those stores. In an effort to squeeze a bit more commission out of the sale he was arguing that I would be disappointed with the Linux model and that I should spend the extra $50 to get an WinXP model. Apparently I'd "really miss" the hard drive space and that it was "harder to use because it wasn't compatible".
Not only did I mention the lack of support for expandability you cited (if I want to use hard drive storage with my Linux netbook I can find my own solution, thany you)--I also mentioned the hidden costs and shortcomings of the SOFTWARE.
You pay $50 more to get extra hard drive on an XP netbook--loaded with CRAPWARE: 30-day demo of MS Word, demo of Excel, demo of antivirus, etc. And the UI consisted of a 3rd rate "app launcher" executing from the startup folder of an otherwise stock XP Home desktop. Once 30 days is up I have to buy hunderds of dollars more software, or waste my time downloading and installing free alternatives.
The Linux netbook, on the other hand, had an up-to-date, custom-tuned GNOME desktop tailored to the small netbook display, along with a FULLY FUNCTIONAL OpenOffice pre-installed. For $50 LESS, I get MORE actual functionality--out of the box ready to surf, email, play media, write documents and so on--and it WON'T shut down after 30 days trying to extort more money from me!
If the uninitiated customer were actually TOLD this by a clued-in future shop salesperson (much harder to find than an in-stock Linux netbook to be sure) then the 3:1 ratio of XP:Linux netbook sales would certainly be reversed.