2005 ? Even earlier... I had a 15.4" Inspiron in early 2003 with 1920x1200. It was a really nice display. Fast-forward 8 years, the 17" Macbook Pro has that same res, but the 15" is only 1440x900. Survey says: WTF!? Even Dell's 15" laptops are still on 1366x768, unless you go for the top-of-the-line XPS and pay extra to upgrade to a 1080p panel, by which point you're looking at a $2000 "desktop replacement" laptop with less than 2 hours of battery life.
Laptops have stagnated because, like everything good in this industry, non-geeks have crowded the market with their unrefined tastes and wants, squeezing us elitists out of the equation. We are now the minority, and have little if any influence on product segmentation anymore. It simply isn't profitable for the big guys to cater to out exotic needs, when they can make 100 times greater profits by selling cheap junk to the everyman.
The root of all these problems is that any idiot with a text editor can call themselves a "web developer" these days. The barrier to entry is extremely low, and the result is a very large group of people who have no forethought about what they're actually doing. They take the most naïve path from start to finish and end up creating all these security and privacy holes real programmers have long since learned to avoid.
Case in point: people still store passwords and credit card info in plaintext, typically behind sloppy PHP or Ruby scripts that are vulnerable to SQL injection. Feed that stolen data into a simple script that tests the passwords against a handful of popular services like GMail, Facebook, Hotmail, Paypal etc. Within minutes, you have a few dozen accounts ready to be abused all over the web without the user's knowledge - all because of one idiot who didn't know how to protect his users' info.
All this talk of securing the cloud is futile. It's like putting a dozen deadbolts on your front door, then leaving a spare set of keys under your neighbour's welcome mat.
I have such a several-thousand media system, and yet I am perfectly happy with standard-def movies and TV shows. On my NAS, less than 10% of the content we have is in HD, even though all our media players and TVs support at least 720p, and we have ample bandwidth and disk space to download and store tons of 1080p content.
The benefit simply is not there. Off the top of my head, I can think of only a handful of effects-laden titles where HD actually enhances the experience, mostly animated features. As an example, I watch Californication in HD. I love the damn show, but does the increased resolution have any impact on the quality of the writing and storytelling ? No. I don't even notice the picture quality, even in SD it would be more than good enough to convey the message. I'll even watch SD content on my fancy 1440p media workstation, where the scaling is painfully obvious - I mean obLIvious.
I also don't buy into the whole 5.1 / 7.1 craze. I have two ears, I need two speakers - two really good ones, with a properly treated and tuned listening environment, or a really good pair of headphones. I get more thrills from hearing "surround" sounds out of a stereo pair than dedicated satellites all around the room. For one, the separates sound disjointed, even in really good setups the front-to-rear panning seems exaggerated, though that could be the way the audio was mastered: for maximum gimmickry.
That's just my stance. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm weird for valuing substance over presentation. Maybe my eyesight sucks. Maybe I'm subconsciously ignoring visual defects in exchange for convenience. Maybe I'm arbitrarily resisting whatever the media cartels try to sell me. I honestly don't know. I just know that unless I'm playing a game or sketching a web site, resolution doesn't matter to me.
The physical disc is just a delivery medium. Instead of streaming, how about buying the movie as a file you can keep ? This is the method that's sorely missing in the industry today. Streaming is a half-step. Even though I have plentiful, uncapped bandwidth, streaming doesn't interest me much. I find it far more convenient to download the entire video to my media box, where I can fast-forward and rewind at will without annoying pauses, or have other people in the house consuming different content without bogging down the pipe for more time-sensitive uses like VoIP and gaming.
The other part of this equation is that we all know the retail system is inefficient. My artists make more money selling an album download online for $9.99, than a CD in the store at $14.99, and the same is true of DVD and Blu-Ray sales. When we're paying $20 for a disc at Fail-Mart, over half of that sticker price goes to the various steps in the supply chain - duplicators, distributors, freight, and of course the retailer's markup. The absence of these middlemen should be reflected in the price of the file version, to encourage users to make the leap while still netting the studio greater profits. It's a win-win but they refuse to even consider it. Even software companies are hip to this. Dinosaurs like Adobe and Microsoft prefer to sell you a download, with a physical package available for a nominal surcharge. Why bother with retail at all anymore ?
Movies are even simpler, they don't require installation, just one file. Forget DRM and piracy concerns, those who don't want to pay, will continue not paying and there is nothing that can be done to stop them. There is, however, a significant market for people who would buy movie files if that option were offered to them at an attractive price. I'm not going to bother traveling to the mall (which I hate), to buy a disc I have to rip anyway in order to consume. That is an even bigger waste of my time than watching the dumb movie. Sell it to me for $5-10 online, and I'll take it. It worked for games with Steam, where I've even bought titles for which I already had cracked versions - why ? Because I could. It was never about the money, it's about what I want vs what is available.
You didn't need to post anonymously. A lot of people do what you do, for the same reasons.
Pretty much every geek I know has been downloading and ripping movies and music for the last 15 years. As far back as 1996, I remember ripping a bunch of my CDs to WAV files - disk space permitting - so I could play them without shuffling discs. Back then, we used things like the ATI All-In-Wonder cards as makeshift DVRs and for their TV-Output capabilities. Today, we all have set-top media players, HTPCs and huge NAS file archives. We knew what we wanted, so we created it with the tools at hand. 12 years on, the entertainment industry still hasn't caught up. Why would the users be to blame for the MPAA's ignorance and stubbornness ?
We've already seen that digital distribution can work if done decently. You need only look at my Steam account for proof. I've bought an absurd number of games on there, many of which I haven't had time to play yet, simply because they make it so easy and convenient. If they did the same with movies and music, ALL OF THEM, just like retail, I'd be all over it. These crooked fucks have enough money to build their own massive CDN with every DVD ever sold, but instead they choose to funnel all those ill-gotten riches to more lawyers and lobbyists to protect an archaic business model and supply chain. Evolve or die, I say.
It's more of a single-person couch than a chair:) Similar to this pic minus the metal stand. I added an extra cushion under the seat, to match the height of a conventional desk chair. It's pretty big, but I'm a big and tall guy so this actually fits me very comfortably. I can sit straight with my knees at an 80-degree bend, while still enjoying good back support. I had to try a few of these before I found the right fit, but it was well worth the effort and expense.
My keyboard "tray" is just an Ikea table with adjustable legs, so I can slide it over the armrests. It's not ideal, as the keyboard sits a few inches too high for me to use the armrests, so I'm hoping to find or build some affordable ergonomic swivel/telescoping arm thing to replace the table, or perhaps just a cantilevered stand that slides under the chair, like some people use for steering wheel controllers.
Obviously, this big chair can't swivel nor roll around, but compared to the aches and cramps I used to get with desk chairs, this thing is like sitting on a cloud.
Another viable option would be a small armless futon chair. Really just a wooden frame with a good cushion. This is what I originally wanted to do, but I couldn't find anything suitable in my area and I'm not exactly the woodworking type.
Dual hosts refer to two separate boards stashed in the same enclosure (or on the same bracket). Some OEMs call these "twin boards". Take your quad socket server, slice it down the middle and that's basically what you get.
It all depends on your application. If you need the largest single host you can get, then sure the quad-socket solution is the way to go. If you're better served by multiple smaller hosts, the dual blades tend to reduce costs and maintenance since they share one power supply stack and are designed with much simplified cabling. One area where they shine is demand-based scaling. You can have a big pile of powered-down blades drawing no power, bringing them up incrementally as needed, and this is all very easily automated. Sure, your quad-socket system can do the same with WOL, but in my experience it is much more challenging to get that working reliable, than it is to tap into a blade enclosure's built-in PDU and KVM, which are often designed with automation in mind. No need for a gazillion ILM cables and associated routing/switching complexities.
Perhaps my greatest curse is that "work mode" is a blurry concept. I'm a geek: when I finish working for pay, I start working for fun. Even right now, I'm looking at my list of tasks and deadlines, and the one thing I actually want to do is write different software for myself. I could totally use a multi-threaded file hasher to deduplicate stuff on my SAN, or a fancy frontend for my MP3 collection.
The fact that I code and tinker for fun makes it practically impossible for non-geeks to tell whether any given activity is interruptible or not. And I'm way too scattered to put up a "fuck off I'm busy" sign - or rather, to take it down when I'm done.
You don't need a payoff. Some people will do it out of misplaced self-righteousness. They will use the same old false argument that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", and its equally flawed corollary "if you have something to hide, you must be a pedophile/murderer/terrorist".
The day common people learn to think of themselves as a tiny part of a greater whole, is the day we'll stop coming up with new ways to single each other out for exclusion.
I was under the (informed) impression that case modding died years ago, once everyone and their mother got plexi windows on their prefab cases.
People just don't care anymore. They want something that works and blends in with their home decor. The more discreet, the better. That's why I've been selling lots of very sedate-looking systems - lots of black anodized finishes and brushed aluminum "home theater style" fascia.
"The latency drop will mainly benefit algorithmic stock market traders"
In other words, these cables will help machines ruin the global economy.
A part of me is kind-of glad they're speeding this up. We all know the system is destined to break, so the sooner that happens, the sooner people will wake the fuck up and demand change.
Well, part of that reason is that phone/tablet apps are very limited subsets of their desktop analogs. It's a toy platform, you can't expect people to spend professional-level money on its software. I'm not going to drop $45 on a photoshop clone when all I can realistically do with it is finger-painting and morphing people's faces into goofy caricatures. The few apps that are truly valuable tend to come with the base OS: web browser, email, notepad. I could maybe use a simple spreadsheet, but Google web apps already cover that.
The day I can use a tablet as my main work computer, is the day I'll start investing real money in its software.
I don't have kids, but this is also the #1 reason why the guys I used to work with would refuse to work from home.
Solution #1: hire a sitter. I shit you not. You're working, the sitter's sitting. You're making $40/hr, she's costing you $10. You cannot do meaningful work AND care for your kids simultaneously. If you try, your income will drop to $0/hr because those little shit factories won't give you enough time to open a single file.
Solution #2: swing space. It's cheaper than you think. Downside: hipsters either drooling over your mac, or berating you because you don't have one.
Solution #3: informal swing space (coffee shop / bar / resto). It's not as cheap, but it gets you out of the house, and you can move around when you get bored. Plus, being waited on means you're not spending time cooking or cleaning. Still cheaper than renting an actual office. Fuck office space.
Solution #4: co-working. Find a childless buddy who also works from home, and go work at his home. Then you can have office-like banter and bounce ideas, all while escaping the wife and kids. Take turns making/buying lunch and cleaning (or hire someone).
I have it easy. We're both lazy, useless slobs around the house. We hire someone to do the cleaning, and we take turns cooking / ordering take-out.
But yes, the one day where my wife is off work, it can be difficult to get much work done. For me, it's all about unhinging my brain so it can solve the puzzles. Having her there, even though she mostly sticks to the TV or tablet, is a nuisance because she is a human being and expects attention. For example, I might be stuck on a problem, so I'll "juggle" it in my head, walking around, maybe throwing on some music to feed in some entropy, fixing a drink, or going for a bike ride. It's all very spontaneous and rainman-ish, doing mindless stuff to help me focus. Any sort of interruption will snap me out of that trance state, even if it's wifey asking me where I'm going as I step out the door. It's all about maintaining that mental bubble.
I can't speak for the Mac guy, but there are some of us who actually spend our own money on nice equipment. I don't have Thunderbolt displays per se, but I do have the exact same high-end panels in my Dell monitors and they weren't cheap. I didn't buy them with "company money", I bought them because they're kickass LCDs and I wanted them. Then I bought a calibration puck and tweaked them to perfection. The funniest bit ? I don't do any precision graphics work, I'm a coder/sysadmin. But boy, do these things look nice, and they're brighter than a thousand suns so glare is a non-issue (my retinas, they burn!)
Some of us, especially when working from home, feel the need to invest in higher quality equipment. It's a comfort thing. I spend 16 hours a day in front of this thing, I want it to be the most pleasant experience it can be. Nice screens, nice speakers, a fancy mouse and a very comfy club chair make my working hours enjoyable. I don't know about your career, but if it helps me log those billable hours without losing my marbles, that's a couple thousand dollars well spent.
The most difficult thing for me is focus. Without that frustrating ritual of getting up early, commuting to/from work, and physically walking into a different space, it can be difficult to snap into "work mode". The temptation to slack off can be quite strong, especially if what used to be your play environment is now your work environment.
What works for me is a combination of half-steps. For one, I have a separate little area, away from all my tech toys and other household distractions, where I can sit with a laptop and stare out the window. When I'm having trouble starting a new project, that's where I go to clear my mind and be inspired.
Other times, I actually pack up and head to a not-too-busy restaurant or bar. I find the background noise actually helps to isolate me from distractions, and being waited on certainly helps me stay on-task. Obviously this won't work for everyone, but it's all about comfort.
Perhaps the biggest piece, and the one most likely to screw you up, is the fact that you're at home. You have a million things to do at home, and often times the people you live with may expect different things of you. You must set proper boundaries, which is harder than it sounds because you might not work 9 to 5. How do you communicate to your S.O. or kids that you're trying to work and they need to avoid disturbing you ? If you have a big enough house, dedicate a room as an office and make sure everyone understands it is off-limits.
Conversely, don't overwork. You need be able to switch out of work mode too! Try to set a goal for the day and stop once you reach it. You must be able to walk away and be satisfied with your day's efforts. That goal might be a set number of billable hours, or a project milestone. The important thing is that once you attain it, you can take a break and not think about it until the next day. Just as you must not let your home life encroach on your work, you must also leave work "at work", even though that place is now a logical construct rather than physical. When I'm watching TV, or cooking, or playing video games, my mind is blank. I don't worry about bosses, clients and deadlines. I just kick back and enjoy myself. It took some time to achieve that distinction, but it is the one thing that keeps me sharp and revs me up for the next day of challenges.
Blades are all about density. If I can squeeze 10 dual-host blades in a 7U enclosure, that's 13U saved vs 20 1U servers. Add the fact that many modern blade enclosures integrate modular switches, and you can squeeze 120 hosts per rack, instead of just 38-40. The hardware cost difference is negligible, since you're buying one set of redundant power supplies to power all 10 blades. The enclosure itself is costly, but the blades aren't much pricier than a comparable server board.
If you're deploying lots of them like Blizzard, choosing blades means you only need 1/3rd of the floor space, 1/3rd the shipping cost, 1/3rd the installation labour, which represents a huge chunk of change when you're colocating at top-tier datacenters all around the world.
Blades may not make sense for everyone, but don't write them off just because your needs are satisfied by simpler solutions. Virtualization is a great tool that offers tremendous flexibility and reduced costs, but it is not a magic bullet to solve every problem. It excels at handling small jobs, and fails hard with large ones. For example, virtualization struggles with I/O heavy workloads, which are becoming increasingly important with the meteoric rise of data warehousing and distributed computing. Processors are the easiest part of the equation.
As an app developer and heartless cynic, I'd say if the ads make up 3/4 of the power budget, that sounds like a really stupid and useless app. If it's not busy presenting content, calculating something, or entertaining the user, then it's a total waste of CPU not even worth the ad pennies.
There are so many moronic apps out there, designed with the sole purpose of duping the user and profiting the developer. Humanity is wasting countless man-millenia defrauding each other via these gadgets, thanks to undiscerning advertisers and the plague that is in-app purchasing. If you want to save energy, start by raising the standards for mobile apps a little higher than "paid the developer signup fee".
And when you've gotten booted off of every single ISP, they will use that data to lobby for even worse Big Brother legislation to monitor every single communication. The antitrust label is very apt here, because the copyright lobby is basically arguing that their profits are more important than human rights and freedoms, so important that the whole world must bow to their demands.
All I want to say is "Or else WHAT?"
It is truly shameful that what we consider a democratic political system is so nearsighted that it can be trivially manipulated by valueless profiteers. They don't even have an actual product, they're only selling contrived litigation.
I have, and it's great. That soundtrack got my mind buzzing with ideas for epic electronic tunes. It's just nowhere near the top of my list in terms of "best dynamic range".
"lame -V0" is a VBR mode, a pretty high-quality one at that. You can tweak it further with -q0, trading encoding time for accuracy, and that's exactly what I use as my "archival" preset. The result usually lands around 200-250kbps averaged out, which is still 1/5th the size of the original WAV, so an album winds up around 100-120 MB. Small enough to sync a decent selection to my phone. And I whole-heartedly agree, a high quality VBR encode beats 256 CBR hands down.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, I also tend to favour FLAC rips if I'm downloading albums - not because they sound better, but because I can then reencode them with my preferred settings. It beats having to deal with a sub-standard WMP rip.
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2005 ? Even earlier... I had a 15.4" Inspiron in early 2003 with 1920x1200. It was a really nice display. Fast-forward 8 years, the 17" Macbook Pro has that same res, but the 15" is only 1440x900. Survey says: WTF!? Even Dell's 15" laptops are still on 1366x768, unless you go for the top-of-the-line XPS and pay extra to upgrade to a 1080p panel, by which point you're looking at a $2000 "desktop replacement" laptop with less than 2 hours of battery life.
Laptops have stagnated because, like everything good in this industry, non-geeks have crowded the market with their unrefined tastes and wants, squeezing us elitists out of the equation. We are now the minority, and have little if any influence on product segmentation anymore. It simply isn't profitable for the big guys to cater to out exotic needs, when they can make 100 times greater profits by selling cheap junk to the everyman.
The root of all these problems is that any idiot with a text editor can call themselves a "web developer" these days. The barrier to entry is extremely low, and the result is a very large group of people who have no forethought about what they're actually doing. They take the most naïve path from start to finish and end up creating all these security and privacy holes real programmers have long since learned to avoid.
Case in point: people still store passwords and credit card info in plaintext, typically behind sloppy PHP or Ruby scripts that are vulnerable to SQL injection. Feed that stolen data into a simple script that tests the passwords against a handful of popular services like GMail, Facebook, Hotmail, Paypal etc. Within minutes, you have a few dozen accounts ready to be abused all over the web without the user's knowledge - all because of one idiot who didn't know how to protect his users' info.
All this talk of securing the cloud is futile. It's like putting a dozen deadbolts on your front door, then leaving a spare set of keys under your neighbour's welcome mat.
I have such a several-thousand media system, and yet I am perfectly happy with standard-def movies and TV shows. On my NAS, less than 10% of the content we have is in HD, even though all our media players and TVs support at least 720p, and we have ample bandwidth and disk space to download and store tons of 1080p content.
The benefit simply is not there. Off the top of my head, I can think of only a handful of effects-laden titles where HD actually enhances the experience, mostly animated features. As an example, I watch Californication in HD. I love the damn show, but does the increased resolution have any impact on the quality of the writing and storytelling ? No. I don't even notice the picture quality, even in SD it would be more than good enough to convey the message. I'll even watch SD content on my fancy 1440p media workstation, where the scaling is painfully obvious - I mean obLIvious.
I also don't buy into the whole 5.1 / 7.1 craze. I have two ears, I need two speakers - two really good ones, with a properly treated and tuned listening environment, or a really good pair of headphones. I get more thrills from hearing "surround" sounds out of a stereo pair than dedicated satellites all around the room. For one, the separates sound disjointed, even in really good setups the front-to-rear panning seems exaggerated, though that could be the way the audio was mastered: for maximum gimmickry.
That's just my stance. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm weird for valuing substance over presentation. Maybe my eyesight sucks. Maybe I'm subconsciously ignoring visual defects in exchange for convenience. Maybe I'm arbitrarily resisting whatever the media cartels try to sell me. I honestly don't know. I just know that unless I'm playing a game or sketching a web site, resolution doesn't matter to me.
The physical disc is just a delivery medium. Instead of streaming, how about buying the movie as a file you can keep ? This is the method that's sorely missing in the industry today. Streaming is a half-step. Even though I have plentiful, uncapped bandwidth, streaming doesn't interest me much. I find it far more convenient to download the entire video to my media box, where I can fast-forward and rewind at will without annoying pauses, or have other people in the house consuming different content without bogging down the pipe for more time-sensitive uses like VoIP and gaming.
The other part of this equation is that we all know the retail system is inefficient. My artists make more money selling an album download online for $9.99, than a CD in the store at $14.99, and the same is true of DVD and Blu-Ray sales. When we're paying $20 for a disc at Fail-Mart, over half of that sticker price goes to the various steps in the supply chain - duplicators, distributors, freight, and of course the retailer's markup. The absence of these middlemen should be reflected in the price of the file version, to encourage users to make the leap while still netting the studio greater profits. It's a win-win but they refuse to even consider it. Even software companies are hip to this. Dinosaurs like Adobe and Microsoft prefer to sell you a download, with a physical package available for a nominal surcharge. Why bother with retail at all anymore ?
Movies are even simpler, they don't require installation, just one file. Forget DRM and piracy concerns, those who don't want to pay, will continue not paying and there is nothing that can be done to stop them. There is, however, a significant market for people who would buy movie files if that option were offered to them at an attractive price. I'm not going to bother traveling to the mall (which I hate), to buy a disc I have to rip anyway in order to consume. That is an even bigger waste of my time than watching the dumb movie. Sell it to me for $5-10 online, and I'll take it. It worked for games with Steam, where I've even bought titles for which I already had cracked versions - why ? Because I could. It was never about the money, it's about what I want vs what is available.
You didn't need to post anonymously. A lot of people do what you do, for the same reasons.
Pretty much every geek I know has been downloading and ripping movies and music for the last 15 years. As far back as 1996, I remember ripping a bunch of my CDs to WAV files - disk space permitting - so I could play them without shuffling discs. Back then, we used things like the ATI All-In-Wonder cards as makeshift DVRs and for their TV-Output capabilities. Today, we all have set-top media players, HTPCs and huge NAS file archives. We knew what we wanted, so we created it with the tools at hand. 12 years on, the entertainment industry still hasn't caught up. Why would the users be to blame for the MPAA's ignorance and stubbornness ?
We've already seen that digital distribution can work if done decently. You need only look at my Steam account for proof. I've bought an absurd number of games on there, many of which I haven't had time to play yet, simply because they make it so easy and convenient. If they did the same with movies and music, ALL OF THEM, just like retail, I'd be all over it. These crooked fucks have enough money to build their own massive CDN with every DVD ever sold, but instead they choose to funnel all those ill-gotten riches to more lawyers and lobbyists to protect an archaic business model and supply chain. Evolve or die, I say.
Because it's over the "internet", and that scares the living daylights out of the illiterate proto-humanoids we westerners call "senators".
Perhaps K street was feeling threatened.
All fine suggestions, but they all require a level of discipline I simply do not possess ;)
Exhibit A: "Posted by timothy"
The prosecution rests, your honor.
Trivially hack into the data stream and stick it on the web ?
It's more of a single-person couch than a chair :) Similar to this pic minus the metal stand. I added an extra cushion under the seat, to match the height of a conventional desk chair. It's pretty big, but I'm a big and tall guy so this actually fits me very comfortably. I can sit straight with my knees at an 80-degree bend, while still enjoying good back support. I had to try a few of these before I found the right fit, but it was well worth the effort and expense.
My keyboard "tray" is just an Ikea table with adjustable legs, so I can slide it over the armrests. It's not ideal, as the keyboard sits a few inches too high for me to use the armrests, so I'm hoping to find or build some affordable ergonomic swivel/telescoping arm thing to replace the table, or perhaps just a cantilevered stand that slides under the chair, like some people use for steering wheel controllers.
Obviously, this big chair can't swivel nor roll around, but compared to the aches and cramps I used to get with desk chairs, this thing is like sitting on a cloud.
Another viable option would be a small armless futon chair. Really just a wooden frame with a good cushion. This is what I originally wanted to do, but I couldn't find anything suitable in my area and I'm not exactly the woodworking type.
Dual hosts refer to two separate boards stashed in the same enclosure (or on the same bracket). Some OEMs call these "twin boards". Take your quad socket server, slice it down the middle and that's basically what you get.
It all depends on your application. If you need the largest single host you can get, then sure the quad-socket solution is the way to go. If you're better served by multiple smaller hosts, the dual blades tend to reduce costs and maintenance since they share one power supply stack and are designed with much simplified cabling. One area where they shine is demand-based scaling. You can have a big pile of powered-down blades drawing no power, bringing them up incrementally as needed, and this is all very easily automated. Sure, your quad-socket system can do the same with WOL, but in my experience it is much more challenging to get that working reliable, than it is to tap into a blade enclosure's built-in PDU and KVM, which are often designed with automation in mind. No need for a gazillion ILM cables and associated routing/switching complexities.
Perhaps my greatest curse is that "work mode" is a blurry concept. I'm a geek: when I finish working for pay, I start working for fun. Even right now, I'm looking at my list of tasks and deadlines, and the one thing I actually want to do is write different software for myself. I could totally use a multi-threaded file hasher to deduplicate stuff on my SAN, or a fancy frontend for my MP3 collection.
The fact that I code and tinker for fun makes it practically impossible for non-geeks to tell whether any given activity is interruptible or not. And I'm way too scattered to put up a "fuck off I'm busy" sign - or rather, to take it down when I'm done.
You don't need a payoff. Some people will do it out of misplaced self-righteousness. They will use the same old false argument that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", and its equally flawed corollary "if you have something to hide, you must be a pedophile/murderer/terrorist".
The day common people learn to think of themselves as a tiny part of a greater whole, is the day we'll stop coming up with new ways to single each other out for exclusion.
I was under the (informed) impression that case modding died years ago, once everyone and their mother got plexi windows on their prefab cases.
People just don't care anymore. They want something that works and blends in with their home decor. The more discreet, the better. That's why I've been selling lots of very sedate-looking systems - lots of black anodized finishes and brushed aluminum "home theater style" fascia.
"The latency drop will mainly benefit algorithmic stock market traders"
In other words, these cables will help machines ruin the global economy.
A part of me is kind-of glad they're speeding this up. We all know the system is destined to break, so the sooner that happens, the sooner people will wake the fuck up and demand change.
Well, part of that reason is that phone/tablet apps are very limited subsets of their desktop analogs. It's a toy platform, you can't expect people to spend professional-level money on its software. I'm not going to drop $45 on a photoshop clone when all I can realistically do with it is finger-painting and morphing people's faces into goofy caricatures. The few apps that are truly valuable tend to come with the base OS: web browser, email, notepad. I could maybe use a simple spreadsheet, but Google web apps already cover that.
The day I can use a tablet as my main work computer, is the day I'll start investing real money in its software.
I don't have kids, but this is also the #1 reason why the guys I used to work with would refuse to work from home.
Solution #1: hire a sitter. I shit you not. You're working, the sitter's sitting. You're making $40/hr, she's costing you $10. You cannot do meaningful work AND care for your kids simultaneously. If you try, your income will drop to $0/hr because those little shit factories won't give you enough time to open a single file.
Solution #2: swing space. It's cheaper than you think. Downside: hipsters either drooling over your mac, or berating you because you don't have one.
Solution #3: informal swing space (coffee shop / bar / resto). It's not as cheap, but it gets you out of the house, and you can move around when you get bored. Plus, being waited on means you're not spending time cooking or cleaning. Still cheaper than renting an actual office. Fuck office space.
Solution #4: co-working. Find a childless buddy who also works from home, and go work at his home. Then you can have office-like banter and bounce ideas, all while escaping the wife and kids. Take turns making/buying lunch and cleaning (or hire someone).
I have it easy. We're both lazy, useless slobs around the house. We hire someone to do the cleaning, and we take turns cooking / ordering take-out.
But yes, the one day where my wife is off work, it can be difficult to get much work done. For me, it's all about unhinging my brain so it can solve the puzzles. Having her there, even though she mostly sticks to the TV or tablet, is a nuisance because she is a human being and expects attention. For example, I might be stuck on a problem, so I'll "juggle" it in my head, walking around, maybe throwing on some music to feed in some entropy, fixing a drink, or going for a bike ride. It's all very spontaneous and rainman-ish, doing mindless stuff to help me focus. Any sort of interruption will snap me out of that trance state, even if it's wifey asking me where I'm going as I step out the door. It's all about maintaining that mental bubble.
I can't speak for the Mac guy, but there are some of us who actually spend our own money on nice equipment. I don't have Thunderbolt displays per se, but I do have the exact same high-end panels in my Dell monitors and they weren't cheap. I didn't buy them with "company money", I bought them because they're kickass LCDs and I wanted them. Then I bought a calibration puck and tweaked them to perfection. The funniest bit ? I don't do any precision graphics work, I'm a coder/sysadmin. But boy, do these things look nice, and they're brighter than a thousand suns so glare is a non-issue (my retinas, they burn!)
Some of us, especially when working from home, feel the need to invest in higher quality equipment. It's a comfort thing. I spend 16 hours a day in front of this thing, I want it to be the most pleasant experience it can be. Nice screens, nice speakers, a fancy mouse and a very comfy club chair make my working hours enjoyable. I don't know about your career, but if it helps me log those billable hours without losing my marbles, that's a couple thousand dollars well spent.
The most difficult thing for me is focus. Without that frustrating ritual of getting up early, commuting to/from work, and physically walking into a different space, it can be difficult to snap into "work mode". The temptation to slack off can be quite strong, especially if what used to be your play environment is now your work environment.
What works for me is a combination of half-steps. For one, I have a separate little area, away from all my tech toys and other household distractions, where I can sit with a laptop and stare out the window. When I'm having trouble starting a new project, that's where I go to clear my mind and be inspired.
Other times, I actually pack up and head to a not-too-busy restaurant or bar. I find the background noise actually helps to isolate me from distractions, and being waited on certainly helps me stay on-task. Obviously this won't work for everyone, but it's all about comfort.
Perhaps the biggest piece, and the one most likely to screw you up, is the fact that you're at home. You have a million things to do at home, and often times the people you live with may expect different things of you. You must set proper boundaries, which is harder than it sounds because you might not work 9 to 5. How do you communicate to your S.O. or kids that you're trying to work and they need to avoid disturbing you ? If you have a big enough house, dedicate a room as an office and make sure everyone understands it is off-limits.
Conversely, don't overwork. You need be able to switch out of work mode too! Try to set a goal for the day and stop once you reach it. You must be able to walk away and be satisfied with your day's efforts. That goal might be a set number of billable hours, or a project milestone. The important thing is that once you attain it, you can take a break and not think about it until the next day. Just as you must not let your home life encroach on your work, you must also leave work "at work", even though that place is now a logical construct rather than physical. When I'm watching TV, or cooking, or playing video games, my mind is blank. I don't worry about bosses, clients and deadlines. I just kick back and enjoy myself. It took some time to achieve that distinction, but it is the one thing that keeps me sharp and revs me up for the next day of challenges.
Blades are all about density. If I can squeeze 10 dual-host blades in a 7U enclosure, that's 13U saved vs 20 1U servers. Add the fact that many modern blade enclosures integrate modular switches, and you can squeeze 120 hosts per rack, instead of just 38-40. The hardware cost difference is negligible, since you're buying one set of redundant power supplies to power all 10 blades. The enclosure itself is costly, but the blades aren't much pricier than a comparable server board.
If you're deploying lots of them like Blizzard, choosing blades means you only need 1/3rd of the floor space, 1/3rd the shipping cost, 1/3rd the installation labour, which represents a huge chunk of change when you're colocating at top-tier datacenters all around the world.
Blades may not make sense for everyone, but don't write them off just because your needs are satisfied by simpler solutions. Virtualization is a great tool that offers tremendous flexibility and reduced costs, but it is not a magic bullet to solve every problem. It excels at handling small jobs, and fails hard with large ones. For example, virtualization struggles with I/O heavy workloads, which are becoming increasingly important with the meteoric rise of data warehousing and distributed computing. Processors are the easiest part of the equation.
As an app developer and heartless cynic, I'd say if the ads make up 3/4 of the power budget, that sounds like a really stupid and useless app. If it's not busy presenting content, calculating something, or entertaining the user, then it's a total waste of CPU not even worth the ad pennies.
There are so many moronic apps out there, designed with the sole purpose of duping the user and profiting the developer. Humanity is wasting countless man-millenia defrauding each other via these gadgets, thanks to undiscerning advertisers and the plague that is in-app purchasing. If you want to save energy, start by raising the standards for mobile apps a little higher than "paid the developer signup fee".
And when you've gotten booted off of every single ISP, they will use that data to lobby for even worse Big Brother legislation to monitor every single communication. The antitrust label is very apt here, because the copyright lobby is basically arguing that their profits are more important than human rights and freedoms, so important that the whole world must bow to their demands.
All I want to say is "Or else WHAT?"
It is truly shameful that what we consider a democratic political system is so nearsighted that it can be trivially manipulated by valueless profiteers. They don't even have an actual product, they're only selling contrived litigation.
I have, and it's great. That soundtrack got my mind buzzing with ideas for epic electronic tunes. It's just nowhere near the top of my list in terms of "best dynamic range".
"lame -V0" is a VBR mode, a pretty high-quality one at that. You can tweak it further with -q0, trading encoding time for accuracy, and that's exactly what I use as my "archival" preset. The result usually lands around 200-250kbps averaged out, which is still 1/5th the size of the original WAV, so an album winds up around 100-120 MB. Small enough to sync a decent selection to my phone. And I whole-heartedly agree, a high quality VBR encode beats 256 CBR hands down.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, I also tend to favour FLAC rips if I'm downloading albums - not because they sound better, but because I can then reencode them with my preferred settings. It beats having to deal with a sub-standard WMP rip.