Nickelback is what would happen if you took the guys from Creed/Alter Bridge, Staind, and 3 Doors Down... tossed them all in a blender, and poured the viscous heterogenous mixture into a pop-rock mold.
They're catchy, and they're disgustingly self-righteous. They also have only one sound, constantly recycled around different lyrics but it's all the same crap over and over.
It's not that Canada doesn't have good bands, it's that we don't overpromote them as much as the states. We just get stupid shopping mall promos and local TV contests, so many of the good acts never get known outside our borders.
What's irritating is that this levy is artificially inflating the cost of blank media. Logically, if a spindle of 50 blank CDs costs me 15.99, but 10.50 of that is the levy, that means the actual disc would have cost 5.49 without the levy.
In practice, the price hasn't risen that much, it's the quality that has dramatically plummeted as disc manufacturers struggle to protect their sales volume and profits. It doesn't matter where the money goes, if you triple the price of a commodity, people will stop consuming it, so the factories do what they can to keep the retail price within the comfort zone, at the expense of the product's durability and reliability.
I'd like to see the disc manufacturers print information on the package about exactly how much money goes to the CPCC, in the hopes that it will bring attention to the scam and incite some of the more voracious among us to tell our MPs exactly how we feel about the issue. It's not like the levied funds get very far, with the many middlemen involved, each taking a cut for "administrative expenses".
I'm all about helping human beings, but corporations get no sympathy from me. I'd rather buy someone a round at the pub than give even a dollar to these bureaucracy machines.
No kidding... I actually keep on top of trends by watching what flys through the piracy cloud, thanks to release sites like NForce. I don't care to download them, because I have better things to amplify than some rap producer's mono-note and snare, but it's just about the most efficient way I can think of to watch the latest releases.
Online stores are too busy drumming up the hype, passed down to them from the MAFIAA itself. "What's Hot" is rarely an indicator of actual popularity and has far more to do with which product the cartels want to push at that particular point in time. The pirates don't care about these petty capitalist concepts, they just want to download EVERYTHING the very minute it becomes available.
I've lost count of the numerous products I've acquired because I heard about them through the warez vine. Software releases, hard-to-find albums, books, or anything else that's poorly promoted in this ADD-world.
After the Nordiques folded, I wouldn't be surprised if there were more than a few Quebecers rooting for the Leafs. The Canadiens are a bunch of lazy marketroids that can't win a goddamned game when it matters, and the Senators always get to finals or semis and then replace their entire roster with chia pets. In contrast, the Leafs are fairly consistent and typically enjoyable to watch.
The reason bandwidth is "billed-by-the-bit", as you put it, is because it is scarce.
The reason you think huge bandwidth to the home is unfeasible is because you're stuck in the capitalist mentality, the very monster that spawned the MAFIAA and the current US political environment. Plentiful, cheap anything is bad for business, so business steps in and makes sure that cheap thing never materializes. Bandwidth is no exception to this rule.
The telecoms have already laid thousands of miles of wires to handle phone and cable TV to every urban household. I don't see why they couldn't do it again for fiber. The reason they don't want to is because having a hyperfast digital line would make the old stuff obsolete. Why pay a separate bill for phone and cable when you can run the same data over the lone fiber line ? The telecoms are already fighting consumers over VOIP and IPTV-style streams, because they represent a direct threat to their bottom line.
Is it just me, or does this book belong with all the other "great" Java books of 1998 ? I still have a very hard time understanding why people even bother with Java at all, but how many legitimate uses are there for Java graphics in this day and age ? They have widget toolkits that kinda sorta get the job done. I certainly don't want to see any new Java games, that's what Flash is for.
The thing is, computer graphics theory is pretty much universal. Once you learn the algorithms to draw your primitives, you can apply them just about anywhere. Does anyone need a book to draw a line in Visual Basic ? Well they're suckers if they do, because it works more or less the same way as C++, or Delphi, or even Javascript on a Canvas object. Java is in the same boat.
I say let them have their stupid tiered internet. When the common peon realizes that the internet has been downgraded to a TV-like ad marathon with scraps of cliffhanger content occasionally thrown in, maybe then we'll have enough motivation to start a better network, one that doesn't depend on a handful of megacorps laying down cheap wiring all over the continent. I'm thinking a wireless uber mesh. Hell I'd even get dirty and lay my own damned fiber all over the neighborhood.
Web 2.0 has shown common folk the value of the internet as a democratic medium. It won't be so easy for the big guys to take it away anymore.
I have several boxes running Linux, but I wouldn't describe myself as a Linux user. I'm still a Windows he-bitch on the desktop, but I'm 110% Linux on the server (or at worst, BSD). I still hate Xorg and everything that links to it, so I don't expect to set my default boot to Linux anytime soon. Seriously, begone with the legacy client-server model, it's filth!
Why the hell is this modded -1 Troll ? Jolt used to be the drink of choice, until they started flooding the market with overpriced "energy" drinks like Red Bull.
This focuses on the good wonders, but what about the bad wonders ? Like in the sentence "I wonder how we could have let that happen".
1. Letting Diebold get away with rigging the elections right in everyone's face! 2. Destroying the US economy by funneling most of the country's cash into credit firms and war efforts 3. Spending man-years in court fighting over flexible definitions of common English terms 4. Making huge violent fusses over our imaginary friends in the sky 5. Being more interested in building the highest, most expensive hotel on the globe, than diverting 1% of that money to help improve local conditions and health. 6. Having a solution to nuclear war that's called "mutually assured destruction" 7. Being so obsessed with other people's money that we have to fight over who gets included in some bullshit tourist list.
VB is in a rough spot. It is relatively easy to learn and will tolerate lots of "bad" code. It's okay to dumb something down for a particular purpose, but you have to add lots of "padding". A beginners programming language should be the computer equivalent to bumper cars: no matter how hard you try, it's pretty hard to hurt anyone if you stay within the confines of the car. Bumper cars don't go very fast at all, just enough to give you cheap thrills.
VB is a bumper car for computers. You sit a techno-weenie in front of VB and they can write all sorts of crap (excluding kinky DLL calling stuff) and they will still end up with code that doesn't really have nasty leaks. It might not do what was intended, but that same monkey could do a whole lot worse in C.
Point #2: Computing is hard. But does it have to be that way ? We're still writing code the same way we were twenty years ago, and we're still dealing with the same problems and challenges, we've just added more shiny graphics to it all. We've got scripting languages that are trying to become operating systems, and operating systems that are trying to become gravitational singularities.
Why are we not using all that power and wisdom to simplify the computer ? Just like robotics have revolutionized the manufacturing industry, we should have software robots that do the grunt work for us. I don't feel like writing yet another ten-page-long exception handler, it's the same old exceptions as every other GUI program, so why couldn't some form of "intelligent" macro do it for me ? Much like manufacturing lines, if a task can be done by the dumbest developer on the planet, then it should also be doable by a specialized AI. Forget code reuse and copy/paste, I want something that looks at the actual code and produces something appropriate.
Better yet: generalize current systems, APIs and network protocols. Make it so they're all more or less compatible (at the command level), so that a tool that can fetch email can also fetch Usenet articles, or handle instant messaging. Instead of code that goes "Here's how you do Function X()", we should be seeing "I want to get mail. Go get my mail". The large majority of developers should be like middle managers: they bark out high-level orders and the drones (computer) carry them out. A business app's source could be just a few dozen lines of code that concisely defines what it's supposed to do.
Once we free ourselves from the current repetitive nature of software development, it will free up huge resources (time, money) to focus on writing more innovative and productive applications.
I have a really hard time justifying the price of the latest consoles. They're kind of like Hummer vehicles: big, powerful, and they don't do anything a normal car can't do (except let everyone know you have a small dick).
The PS3 has awesome specs, but like the PS2 before it, it's going to take years before the developers learn to use its power to the fullest potential. What's worse, you can build a gaming PC for about the same price, that will play the latest games quite nicely, and won't (necessarily) bog you down with with cumbersome DRM or lock you in to a particular vendor for your software.
499$ for a console still feels far too expensive to me. I could buy one hell of a nice graphics card, or a huge LCD for my PC, and have just as much fun while getting extra use of the general-purpose nature of the computer.
Ditto. Sure, there's something kinda wrong about camcording a movie, but I wouldn't ever want to watch a cam copy anyway. I can wait a few months and down^H^H^H^Hrent the DVD.
But then, I'm also the kind of guy who doesn't like bootleg audio recordings, unless they're tapped from the mixing deck, and even then I tend to prefer a professionally mastered recording over an unmixed dub.
I don't agree with the MAFIAA's practices, nor do I think it's acceptable to fine and jail people for camcording (just throw them out, it's a private establishment). Still, I wish the warez kiddies would quit flooding the pipes with horrible cammed movies; there are far more interesting things to download than a fuzzy shaky tinny blur.
I'd like to remind everyone that AMD started out selling cheap slow CPUs in the upgrade market. Remember that K6 400mhz your uncle used to have ? Well that K6 cost a whole lot less than any Intel processor at the time, and it breathed new life into old boards one or two generations behind. Then one day AMD released the Athlon, took the performance crown and didn't really know how to play their role. Their marketing was shit, and their pricing wasn't so good anymore. They had tons of experience being the underdog, but zero skill as a leader.
Now Intel has come back on top, but AMD doesn't want to go back to being #2. Instead of putting their efforts toward a new, faster architecture like Intel did, AMD is resting on their laurels, releasing outdated underwhelming puke way too late in the game. I'm sitting here with an AMD x2, I've had it for about two years and I've been running it slightly overclocked since I got it. Well my 2 year old chip is still faster than their fastest CPU today. I would love to buy a new CPU that's 30-40% faster, but they don't make one. Even my buddy's brand new Intel E6600 is faster than what I have, and he didn't pay all that much for it. That's why I'm getting an Intel Q6600 in a few weeks, when the prices drop again. AMD still won't be anywhere near releasing their first quad core processor.
AMD needs to shut up and take their place. They're really good at selling slower, inexpensive processors for the everyman. They need to stop lying to themselves and accept the fact that they just can't cut the mustard when it comes to high-end, which is fine because the big money is in the OEM market, where every dollar counts. If AMD can produce a decently fast and affordable chip, and hire a goddamned business director to get some partnerships going, they could make a ton of money. Just don't pretend the Athlon is a performance king, because we all know it's a lie and the only fool is AMD.
Clearly you've never worked on a mainframe. Sure, the hardware is something else, but the OS on those is also a direct contributor to the power and reliability of the system. Perhaps also the fact that mainframe code isn't typically written by a bunch of teenagers might have something to do with it.
PCs are built cheap, and designed to be replaced every few years. They're cheap, but they require frequent attention to keep things running, and every few years you have to chuck them out and replace them (or put up with degraded performance and the growing threat of component failure). PC software is written by trained monkeys on Ritalin and the hardware is designed by a bunch of hopped up Asians working for low wages. Yes, I'm exaggerating (a little) but the fundamental difference between PC and mainframes is the PC is built cheap from head to toe, hardware and software, so that the average jobless twit will buy one and put animated gifs on his MySpace page, but more importantly he will buy another whole PC every few years. The mainframe is built for serious workloads, handling important data and transactions in a reliable and efficient manner. The fact that we don't hear about crashed mainframes every day on TV is proof that they're doing their job. You also don't call the Honda-driving "freelancing" on-call Dork-on-wheels when your big iron bursts a pimple... you call the guy who sold you the machine and he sends his engineers.
What you're doing is like comparing a Ford Escort to a Jet liner. Just because the average Joe doesn't own and operate a Jet, doesn't mean jets are a dumb idea. I'm sure the serious airlines that own them are quite happy to not be trying to catapult a bunch of cheap American cars over the Atlantic, but in the world of computing it often seems like "crafty" admins are trying to do just that with their cheap hardware. Just because Google does it, doesn't mean the typical card-carrying MCSE twit can.
The thing is, the UK already has a pretty decent health infrastructure, but how can you help the mentally ill if they don't come out ?
This law proposal is poorly framed, but when you have someone with an illness so taboo, perhaps their only outlet is the "anonymous" internet. I may be a notable exception because I just don't give a damn (and I'm usually joking), but I don't see many people discussing their violent sex fetishes over dinner with their friends and relatives.
"-So, dad, what did you do today ?
- Well I fantasized about knocking your mother unconscious during sex, then jerked off on the balcony.
Correction: Canada has a more stable cost of living. You don't need to earn 150k/year to live well up here, and nationwide health-care is an oft-quoted perk of being Canadian.
A developer earning 50-60k up here is considered middle-upper class. He can afford a house on his own, along with all the latest tech toys. Try that in Redmond... yeah right!
Then throw in the pervasive anti-American sentiment that continues to grow all around the world, and well, we Canadians don't look so bad anymore. We're far from perfect, we still have dirty dirty politicians and high tax rates, but to many people we're seen as a much lesser evil than our southern neighbors. I'm going to get flamed for this, but you guys need to start working to clear your name. Maybe a decade ago, the USA was a land of riches, I even contemplated relocating for a development job... then Dubya showed up and changed everything around. Not since Truman has there been a worse hated US president around the world. People are afraid of the USA. We see how badly their own citizens are treated, I can't even imagine how bad it is for immigrants.
You overshoot a bit, but yes, opening up to the WTO means that in short time, the American super retailers will swamp the economy and undermine local businesses. The Wal-Mart effect is already quite damaging to the USA, but it is absolute doom for the less wealthy nations. Then everyone else gets to watch as your country spirals down into US-Serfdom.
Typically, big companies are run by large numbers of sorta dumb people; people who just go through the motions but have mostly lost the ability to think for themselves, because of the anally prepackaged nature of big business. They're capable of dealing with routine scenarios, but when something comes along they've never seen before (like a politically charged blogger), the company will look at their list of policies, find the one that most closely resembles the issue and start executing the pre-written procedure to "deal with it".
When it comes to internet issues, very few companies are "mentally prepared" to deal with it, because the policy writers do not necessarily understand the situations. After all, they're typically failed law students who have been trapped in the corporate mind-frame for so long, they too have become mere machines of repetition.
Sure you can make cheap chips, but if you hadn't noticed, this company is named "Cryptography Research". That's like touching two Triple-points squares in scrabble. Then add the ego inflation factor of California-based tech ventures and you have a "solution" that will either double the cost(not retail price) of the cartridge, or more likely they will sell it to some of the bigger "ink pirates" (arrrrr!) because after all, businesses don't exist for the greater good, they exist to make MONEY.
Or they might just have their 15 seconds on fame in the tech outlets and vanish into bankruptcy like 9 out of 10 California tech shops.
In the end, we'll just gradually see more people switch to (refillable) laser.
So Dell is going to offer water cooling, ok great! Why call it "Liebert XD" ? What, it's not water ? Oh ok then. I don't care if you pump it full of $400/gallon fluorinert and have plastic fishies floating through it, it's still just liquid cooling, something that existed in the server room long before Michael Dell ever sold a single server machine.
Working prototype drives should be available within a decade
Just in time for the bargain bin at Best Buy.
Seriously, in the world of computing, if you have a working prototype, you need to haul serious ass and get the product out ASAP because things move so quickly. In a decade, we'll have bigger and faster magnetic drives. They used to say we'd run into the density barrier, then someone tried perpendicular recording and breathed a little more life into the technology in a timely manner.
The other issue is: what kind of bus can handle those speeds ? If they're not shitting us with their 100x claim, that makes this hard drive faster than most RAM in use today. What the hell ? This is either completely revolutionary or a crock of shit. Call me cynical, but I'm leaning toward #2.
You and I may be clever and technically-inclined, but we are not thieves. The petty thief is no smarter than the average inbred. If they had any brains they'd be putting their efforts into the far more profitable field of white-collar crime. Why risk a criminal record and possible jail time for a small electronic gadget that's hardly worth anything in the used market ? Used phones have little value because they're crappy little taiwanese gadgets that simply aren't built to last.
I consider myself lucky if I can manage to sell off my used phone for 25 bucks, because in most cases the phone was "free" to me in the first place, as in "I bitched at the company and they comped me a free phone". It would be different if telecoms gave you a discount for using your own phone, but they don't. It costs the same thing whether you take the new free phone or not.
Damn straight! A very kind letter of encouragement to Ms Lindor is in the mail. I invite everyone to show their appreciation, as the aftermath of these litigious times will affect more than just the music industry. The precedents set here will leave a lasting mark on the legal landscape in the U.S.
Slashdot Mirror
Nickelback is what would happen if you took the guys from Creed/Alter Bridge, Staind, and 3 Doors Down... tossed them all in a blender, and poured the viscous heterogenous mixture into a pop-rock mold.
They're catchy, and they're disgustingly self-righteous. They also have only one sound, constantly recycled around different lyrics but it's all the same crap over and over.
It's not that Canada doesn't have good bands, it's that we don't overpromote them as much as the states. We just get stupid shopping mall promos and local TV contests, so many of the good acts never get known outside our borders.
What's irritating is that this levy is artificially inflating the cost of blank media. Logically, if a spindle of 50 blank CDs costs me 15.99, but 10.50 of that is the levy, that means the actual disc would have cost 5.49 without the levy.
In practice, the price hasn't risen that much, it's the quality that has dramatically plummeted as disc manufacturers struggle to protect their sales volume and profits. It doesn't matter where the money goes, if you triple the price of a commodity, people will stop consuming it, so the factories do what they can to keep the retail price within the comfort zone, at the expense of the product's durability and reliability.
I'd like to see the disc manufacturers print information on the package about exactly how much money goes to the CPCC, in the hopes that it will bring attention to the scam and incite some of the more voracious among us to tell our MPs exactly how we feel about the issue. It's not like the levied funds get very far, with the many middlemen involved, each taking a cut for "administrative expenses".
I'm all about helping human beings, but corporations get no sympathy from me. I'd rather buy someone a round at the pub than give even a dollar to these bureaucracy machines.
No kidding... I actually keep on top of trends by watching what flys through the piracy cloud, thanks to release sites like NForce. I don't care to download them, because I have better things to amplify than some rap producer's mono-note and snare, but it's just about the most efficient way I can think of to watch the latest releases.
Online stores are too busy drumming up the hype, passed down to them from the MAFIAA itself. "What's Hot" is rarely an indicator of actual popularity and has far more to do with which product the cartels want to push at that particular point in time. The pirates don't care about these petty capitalist concepts, they just want to download EVERYTHING the very minute it becomes available.
I've lost count of the numerous products I've acquired because I heard about them through the warez vine. Software releases, hard-to-find albums, books, or anything else that's poorly promoted in this ADD-world.
Our bits go up to 11!
After the Nordiques folded, I wouldn't be surprised if there were more than a few Quebecers rooting for the Leafs. The Canadiens are a bunch of lazy marketroids that can't win a goddamned game when it matters, and the Senators always get to finals or semis and then replace their entire roster with chia pets. In contrast, the Leafs are fairly consistent and typically enjoyable to watch.
The reason bandwidth is "billed-by-the-bit", as you put it, is because it is scarce.
The reason you think huge bandwidth to the home is unfeasible is because you're stuck in the capitalist mentality, the very monster that spawned the MAFIAA and the current US political environment. Plentiful, cheap anything is bad for business, so business steps in and makes sure that cheap thing never materializes. Bandwidth is no exception to this rule.
The telecoms have already laid thousands of miles of wires to handle phone and cable TV to every urban household. I don't see why they couldn't do it again for fiber. The reason they don't want to is because having a hyperfast digital line would make the old stuff obsolete. Why pay a separate bill for phone and cable when you can run the same data over the lone fiber line ? The telecoms are already fighting consumers over VOIP and IPTV-style streams, because they represent a direct threat to their bottom line.
Is it just me, or does this book belong with all the other "great" Java books of 1998 ? I still have a very hard time understanding why people even bother with Java at all, but how many legitimate uses are there for Java graphics in this day and age ? They have widget toolkits that kinda sorta get the job done. I certainly don't want to see any new Java games, that's what Flash is for.
The thing is, computer graphics theory is pretty much universal. Once you learn the algorithms to draw your primitives, you can apply them just about anywhere. Does anyone need a book to draw a line in Visual Basic ? Well they're suckers if they do, because it works more or less the same way as C++, or Delphi, or even Javascript on a Canvas object. Java is in the same boat.
I say let them have their stupid tiered internet. When the common peon realizes that the internet has been downgraded to a TV-like ad marathon with scraps of cliffhanger content occasionally thrown in, maybe then we'll have enough motivation to start a better network, one that doesn't depend on a handful of megacorps laying down cheap wiring all over the continent. I'm thinking a wireless uber mesh. Hell I'd even get dirty and lay my own damned fiber all over the neighborhood.
Web 2.0 has shown common folk the value of the internet as a democratic medium. It won't be so easy for the big guys to take it away anymore.
I have several boxes running Linux, but I wouldn't describe myself as a Linux user. I'm still a Windows he-bitch on the desktop, but I'm 110% Linux on the server (or at worst, BSD). I still hate Xorg and everything that links to it, so I don't expect to set my default boot to Linux anytime soon. Seriously, begone with the legacy client-server model, it's filth!
Why the hell is this modded -1 Troll ? Jolt used to be the drink of choice, until they started flooding the market with overpriced "energy" drinks like Red Bull.
Damn you kids, get off my lawn!
This focuses on the good wonders, but what about the bad wonders ? Like in the sentence "I wonder how we could have let that happen".
1. Letting Diebold get away with rigging the elections right in everyone's face!
2. Destroying the US economy by funneling most of the country's cash into credit firms and war efforts
3. Spending man-years in court fighting over flexible definitions of common English terms
4. Making huge violent fusses over our imaginary friends in the sky
5. Being more interested in building the highest, most expensive hotel on the globe, than diverting 1% of that money to help improve local conditions and health.
6. Having a solution to nuclear war that's called "mutually assured destruction"
7. Being so obsessed with other people's money that we have to fight over who gets included in some bullshit tourist list.
(from a far-above-average-in-math dropout)
VB is in a rough spot. It is relatively easy to learn and will tolerate lots of "bad" code. It's okay to dumb something down for a particular purpose, but you have to add lots of "padding". A beginners programming language should be the computer equivalent to bumper cars: no matter how hard you try, it's pretty hard to hurt anyone if you stay within the confines of the car. Bumper cars don't go very fast at all, just enough to give you cheap thrills.
VB is a bumper car for computers. You sit a techno-weenie in front of VB and they can write all sorts of crap (excluding kinky DLL calling stuff) and they will still end up with code that doesn't really have nasty leaks. It might not do what was intended, but that same monkey could do a whole lot worse in C.
Point #2: Computing is hard. But does it have to be that way ? We're still writing code the same way we were twenty years ago, and we're still dealing with the same problems and challenges, we've just added more shiny graphics to it all. We've got scripting languages that are trying to become operating systems, and operating systems that are trying to become gravitational singularities.
Why are we not using all that power and wisdom to simplify the computer ? Just like robotics have revolutionized the manufacturing industry, we should have software robots that do the grunt work for us. I don't feel like writing yet another ten-page-long exception handler, it's the same old exceptions as every other GUI program, so why couldn't some form of "intelligent" macro do it for me ? Much like manufacturing lines, if a task can be done by the dumbest developer on the planet, then it should also be doable by a specialized AI. Forget code reuse and copy/paste, I want something that looks at the actual code and produces something appropriate.
Better yet: generalize current systems, APIs and network protocols. Make it so they're all more or less compatible (at the command level), so that a tool that can fetch email can also fetch Usenet articles, or handle instant messaging. Instead of code that goes "Here's how you do Function X()", we should be seeing "I want to get mail. Go get my mail". The large majority of developers should be like middle managers: they bark out high-level orders and the drones (computer) carry them out. A business app's source could be just a few dozen lines of code that concisely defines what it's supposed to do.
Once we free ourselves from the current repetitive nature of software development, it will free up huge resources (time, money) to focus on writing more innovative and productive applications.
I have a really hard time justifying the price of the latest consoles. They're kind of like Hummer vehicles: big, powerful, and they don't do anything a normal car can't do (except let everyone know you have a small dick).
The PS3 has awesome specs, but like the PS2 before it, it's going to take years before the developers learn to use its power to the fullest potential. What's worse, you can build a gaming PC for about the same price, that will play the latest games quite nicely, and won't (necessarily) bog you down with with cumbersome DRM or lock you in to a particular vendor for your software.
499$ for a console still feels far too expensive to me. I could buy one hell of a nice graphics card, or a huge LCD for my PC, and have just as much fun while getting extra use of the general-purpose nature of the computer.
Ditto. Sure, there's something kinda wrong about camcording a movie, but I wouldn't ever want to watch a cam copy anyway. I can wait a few months and down^H^H^H^Hrent the DVD.
But then, I'm also the kind of guy who doesn't like bootleg audio recordings, unless they're tapped from the mixing deck, and even then I tend to prefer a professionally mastered recording over an unmixed dub.
I don't agree with the MAFIAA's practices, nor do I think it's acceptable to fine and jail people for camcording (just throw them out, it's a private establishment). Still, I wish the warez kiddies would quit flooding the pipes with horrible cammed movies; there are far more interesting things to download than a fuzzy shaky tinny blur.
I'd like to remind everyone that AMD started out selling cheap slow CPUs in the upgrade market. Remember that K6 400mhz your uncle used to have ? Well that K6 cost a whole lot less than any Intel processor at the time, and it breathed new life into old boards one or two generations behind. Then one day AMD released the Athlon, took the performance crown and didn't really know how to play their role. Their marketing was shit, and their pricing wasn't so good anymore. They had tons of experience being the underdog, but zero skill as a leader.
Now Intel has come back on top, but AMD doesn't want to go back to being #2. Instead of putting their efforts toward a new, faster architecture like Intel did, AMD is resting on their laurels, releasing outdated underwhelming puke way too late in the game. I'm sitting here with an AMD x2, I've had it for about two years and I've been running it slightly overclocked since I got it. Well my 2 year old chip is still faster than their fastest CPU today. I would love to buy a new CPU that's 30-40% faster, but they don't make one. Even my buddy's brand new Intel E6600 is faster than what I have, and he didn't pay all that much for it. That's why I'm getting an Intel Q6600 in a few weeks, when the prices drop again. AMD still won't be anywhere near releasing their first quad core processor.
AMD needs to shut up and take their place. They're really good at selling slower, inexpensive processors for the everyman. They need to stop lying to themselves and accept the fact that they just can't cut the mustard when it comes to high-end, which is fine because the big money is in the OEM market, where every dollar counts. If AMD can produce a decently fast and affordable chip, and hire a goddamned business director to get some partnerships going, they could make a ton of money. Just don't pretend the Athlon is a performance king, because we all know it's a lie and the only fool is AMD.
Clearly you've never worked on a mainframe. Sure, the hardware is something else, but the OS on those is also a direct contributor to the power and reliability of the system. Perhaps also the fact that mainframe code isn't typically written by a bunch of teenagers might have something to do with it.
PCs are built cheap, and designed to be replaced every few years. They're cheap, but they require frequent attention to keep things running, and every few years you have to chuck them out and replace them (or put up with degraded performance and the growing threat of component failure). PC software is written by trained monkeys on Ritalin and the hardware is designed by a bunch of hopped up Asians working for low wages. Yes, I'm exaggerating (a little) but the fundamental difference between PC and mainframes is the PC is built cheap from head to toe, hardware and software, so that the average jobless twit will buy one and put animated gifs on his MySpace page, but more importantly he will buy another whole PC every few years. The mainframe is built for serious workloads, handling important data and transactions in a reliable and efficient manner. The fact that we don't hear about crashed mainframes every day on TV is proof that they're doing their job. You also don't call the Honda-driving "freelancing" on-call Dork-on-wheels when your big iron bursts a pimple... you call the guy who sold you the machine and he sends his engineers.
What you're doing is like comparing a Ford Escort to a Jet liner. Just because the average Joe doesn't own and operate a Jet, doesn't mean jets are a dumb idea. I'm sure the serious airlines that own them are quite happy to not be trying to catapult a bunch of cheap American cars over the Atlantic, but in the world of computing it often seems like "crafty" admins are trying to do just that with their cheap hardware. Just because Google does it, doesn't mean the typical card-carrying MCSE twit can.
The thing is, the UK already has a pretty decent health infrastructure, but how can you help the mentally ill if they don't come out ?
This law proposal is poorly framed, but when you have someone with an illness so taboo, perhaps their only outlet is the "anonymous" internet. I may be a notable exception because I just don't give a damn (and I'm usually joking), but I don't see many people discussing their violent sex fetishes over dinner with their friends and relatives.
"-So, dad, what did you do today ?
- Well I fantasized about knocking your mother unconscious during sex, then jerked off on the balcony.
- You too ?"
Correction: Canada has a more stable cost of living. You don't need to earn 150k/year to live well up here, and nationwide health-care is an oft-quoted perk of being Canadian.
A developer earning 50-60k up here is considered middle-upper class. He can afford a house on his own, along with all the latest tech toys. Try that in Redmond... yeah right!
Then throw in the pervasive anti-American sentiment that continues to grow all around the world, and well, we Canadians don't look so bad anymore. We're far from perfect, we still have dirty dirty politicians and high tax rates, but to many people we're seen as a much lesser evil than our southern neighbors. I'm going to get flamed for this, but you guys need to start working to clear your name. Maybe a decade ago, the USA was a land of riches, I even contemplated relocating for a development job... then Dubya showed up and changed everything around. Not since Truman has there been a worse hated US president around the world. People are afraid of the USA. We see how badly their own citizens are treated, I can't even imagine how bad it is for immigrants.
You overshoot a bit, but yes, opening up to the WTO means that in short time, the American super retailers will swamp the economy and undermine local businesses. The Wal-Mart effect is already quite damaging to the USA, but it is absolute doom for the less wealthy nations. Then everyone else gets to watch as your country spirals down into US-Serfdom.
Typically, big companies are run by large numbers of sorta dumb people; people who just go through the motions but have mostly lost the ability to think for themselves, because of the anally prepackaged nature of big business. They're capable of dealing with routine scenarios, but when something comes along they've never seen before (like a politically charged blogger), the company will look at their list of policies, find the one that most closely resembles the issue and start executing the pre-written procedure to "deal with it".
When it comes to internet issues, very few companies are "mentally prepared" to deal with it, because the policy writers do not necessarily understand the situations. After all, they're typically failed law students who have been trapped in the corporate mind-frame for so long, they too have become mere machines of repetition.
Sure you can make cheap chips, but if you hadn't noticed, this company is named "Cryptography Research". That's like touching two Triple-points squares in scrabble. Then add the ego inflation factor of California-based tech ventures and you have a "solution" that will either double the cost(not retail price) of the cartridge, or more likely they will sell it to some of the bigger "ink pirates" (arrrrr!) because after all, businesses don't exist for the greater good, they exist to make MONEY.
Or they might just have their 15 seconds on fame in the tech outlets and vanish into bankruptcy like 9 out of 10 California tech shops.
In the end, we'll just gradually see more people switch to (refillable) laser.
So Dell is going to offer water cooling, ok great! Why call it "Liebert XD" ? What, it's not water ? Oh ok then. I don't care if you pump it full of $400/gallon fluorinert and have plastic fishies floating through it, it's still just liquid cooling, something that existed in the server room long before Michael Dell ever sold a single server machine.
Working prototype drives should be available within a decade
Just in time for the bargain bin at Best Buy.
Seriously, in the world of computing, if you have a working prototype, you need to haul serious ass and get the product out ASAP because things move so quickly. In a decade, we'll have bigger and faster magnetic drives. They used to say we'd run into the density barrier, then someone tried perpendicular recording and breathed a little more life into the technology in a timely manner.
The other issue is: what kind of bus can handle those speeds ? If they're not shitting us with their 100x claim, that makes this hard drive faster than most RAM in use today. What the hell ? This is either completely revolutionary or a crock of shit. Call me cynical, but I'm leaning toward #2.
You and I may be clever and technically-inclined, but we are not thieves. The petty thief is no smarter than the average inbred. If they had any brains they'd be putting their efforts into the far more profitable field of white-collar crime. Why risk a criminal record and possible jail time for a small electronic gadget that's hardly worth anything in the used market ? Used phones have little value because they're crappy little taiwanese gadgets that simply aren't built to last.
I consider myself lucky if I can manage to sell off my used phone for 25 bucks, because in most cases the phone was "free" to me in the first place, as in "I bitched at the company and they comped me a free phone". It would be different if telecoms gave you a discount for using your own phone, but they don't. It costs the same thing whether you take the new free phone or not.
Damn straight! A very kind letter of encouragement to Ms Lindor is in the mail. I invite everyone to show their appreciation, as the aftermath of these litigious times will affect more than just the music industry. The precedents set here will leave a lasting mark on the legal landscape in the U.S.
So, the tally is:
1 American I actually like
300 million to go