It's not illegal to lie to the police, murder investigation or otherwise; however, lying may be construed as an "obstruction of justice," thus the penalty (if any) varies. It is illegal to lie in court (perjury), but then that's part of the reason we have the 5th Amendment (the right not to incriminate oneself). The nuances of the American legal system are great.
"Because if you do, then you support limits to freedom of expression. And if you don't, you're just a crackpot."
Perhaps I am a crackpot. However, waving your hand and dismissing my argument as such does not make it any less valid.
"Guess what: freedom of expression has NEVER been an absolute right in the US, or anywhere else."
Freedom of speech is, pardon, was an absolute right; however, as an absolute right, it requires the people who formulated and supported that right to continue to support and defend it, even and especially in times of confusion / adversity. It is comparable to the idea of private property, where your rights to your body and your belongings may be guaranteed only so long as others agree that you have any rights to them. Once people begin to have the idea that your property is their property, and that they can decide what you can / will do with your body...it becomes excessively difficult to defend them, to the point that a generation may pass without ever knowing that they were once absolute.
"There are dozens and dozens of limits placed on freedom of expression in the name of "the public interest.""
And not one of them is valid / not in conflict with the supreme law of this land. You might as well argue that because I stole your bike, thievery has placed limits on your rights to your property. That my friends and I agree that your rights to your bike are superseded by thievery does not mean that your rights are non-absolute.
"And your attempt to link any action ever taken in the public interest to the fucking Holocaust is incredibly weak."
Prove it. Prove that the link is weak. Any disenfranchisement of the whole for the sake of a minority or a majority will inevitably lead to a dictatorship. There is no time limit of the effects of horrible laws, and they continue to ripple throughout our society without contest.
Hmm. On one hand, the radio technology used in Wifi should not be creating any health-related issues (the engineers would have let that slip by now if they thought it was an issue; as the saying goes, it's mathematically possible, but highly unlikely). On the other hand, I hate Wifi, and love wired connections (wired is always faster, guaranteed if you can get a link light, isn't shared like wireless, and less insane provided there are enough ports / the network uses switches and not hubs).
So, the right idea with the wrong reasons. I was going to recommend going straight to fiber, but the price premium may not be worth it (I can't seem to find any commercial / business grade rack-mountable fiber gigabit switches with 48 ports -> closest was a NetGear with 12 fiber ports for ~$600) and the fiber NICs on NewEgg are carrying a hefty price premium for even stuff in the 10/100 range (the technology which is how old now?).
Hmm, even though it's fiber, those 10/100 workstation NICs should have been dirt-cheap by now...
And I'm vaguely curious how that happens. Does Marketing just call up Engineering, as say "We need a proprietary connector on your new product" or do the engineers think of it themselves ("I've made an improvement on the standard USB connector!")?
Which reminds me. I was looking (just looking) at laptops the other day, and spent some time checking out the Vaio. As a programmer, I like memory, but couldn't get it to configure for more than 8 GB (for a new laptop, that's deal-breaker). Do they make a laptop that accepts 16-32 GB of ram?
Mavis Beacon? But yes, like you, I am noting the time discrepancy.
On the other hand, perhaps because he is such a prolific poster, he's spending time on the Firehose, found an article that he both wanted to promote and comment on. That would give him some time to put together a response.
Sadly, I find myself in agreement with you. I browse Reddit as often as Slashdot, and while I am not subscribed to the subreddit in question, posts from it do occasionally find their way to my front page (popularity / cross-posting, I guess?). Needless to say my eyebrows were raised the first time I ran across it, however, upon closer inspection, there does not appear to be any illegal / illicit content; perhaps there is some illegal content, but none that I am aware of (as a mod (albeit for a different subreddit), I'm fairly certain any user posting that kind of stuff would be nuked off the site immediately -> instant banning / vaping).
The problem, of course, is that once someone uses the sword / accusation / mention of CP, everyone dives out of the way to avoid being seen as anything other than "100% totally against, tear everything down, no appeals, no trials." Loads of fear around it, more so than being accused of murder, rape, or (since this is/.) copyright infringement; and to be honest, that fear is justified -> the mere accusation of sexual misconduct in today's society will end someone's career and have them shunned / shot at / killed, even if the charges are proven fraudulent (the townspeople didn't catch that newscast saying that the charges were dismissed? Too bad, they'll wake you up at 3 AM, to the smell of your house burning down, with you in it). And yes, I believe it does qualify as censorship (it's in the same territory as thought crimes): having done nothing illegal, there is no crime. We are dealing with a situation in which someone wants something outlawed because of what other people "might be doing in their own minds." And last I checked, your mind is a private, sacred place, where no one may intrude.
And yes, the "public interest / policy" can go visit r/spacedicks, for the one of two reasons, whichever one you think is more sound / pleasing: 1.) the US Constitution (that old rag of a document, that supposedly has some sort of inalienable rights etched onto it...freedom of speech / freedom of the press, all that jazz), or 2.) because in faraway but similar land, a certain group of people sewed yellow stars on their garments as it was in the "public interest" of the people, of that time, to identify and rid themselves of a less desirable group. - That has your set-in-stone supreme law of the land / living document open to repeated reinterpretation argument wrapped up cleanly.
On a final note, what is truly bothering to me, is how easy it is for everyone to support / defend popular speech, but how lacking that support / the defense is for unpopular speech. We're all like "Rah rah rah! Freedom of Speech! Greatest country on earth!" but when it comes time to test that belief, we're all like "Blasphemy! Burn the witch!"
Fair enough. But let's be honest -> the new idea mill at Facebook has long since run dry; when I say that, I mean they're resorting to sales and marketing gimmicks, chasing nickels and quarters. The people invested in the company are cashing out. That's not 'good,' for the longevity of the platform.
And on a slightly related topic, Google Plus, which was off to a decent start (trying to avoid making the same mistakes as Facebook) needs an identical amount of TLC. The two firms are just copying one another, at this point, and the new features they're promoting are a giant turn-off.
Which reminds me: Google, fix your search engine. For the love of Bob, include a checkbox or something to nuke blogs / SEO link farms / commerce sites. I know you're working on it right now, so perhaps you can just pop those features into it.
Ask them questions that require an application of working knowledge / theory, as opposed to vocab / rote memorization style questions.
A little less "What does HTTP stand for?" a little more "I need to do some task using HTTP, show me how to make it do what I want it to do." That'll nuke using Google for an easy look up (for an answer), and potentially make anyone who copies off of another (via texting, emailing, cellphone, whatever) liable to fail the class (plagiarism ho!). See, by making it a non-trivial answer, you destroy the use of search engines for an easy answer, and by requiring some creativity (or even a fair amount), you can more accurately gauge a student's understanding, while also ensuring (via creativity) that no two student's answers should be identical. Of course, there are potential problems here, but it does, with a little tweaking, should help you identify the group-thinkers or no-thinkers with some ease. Plus, job security, as a teacher / professor, as you get to grade everyone's exams manually (the techs know you fear the machines, you need not be shy about it); just be sure to announce at the beginning of class that your style is that of the Athenians (Greek philosophers, focusing on thinking, etc.), or something to that effect.
The key here, to berate the point, is to ensure each answer is unique. Since simple answers cannot be unique, it's impossible to ensure that cheating has not occurred. Whereas with the greater increase in complexity (but not necessarily difficulty, mind you) of the answer, the more unlikely it is that two answers can be the same without one person copying another. When complexity increases enough, you have the effect of the Mona Lisa, where if 5 people turn the same or similar enough picture in, you have an extremely good idea that they were in communication with one another. It's not mathematically impossible, of course, that they should all create the same Mona Lisa, only hideously unlikely. Hell, if the solutions are unique enough, you might even learn something from them.
Indeed. And God help you if you're walking the family dog, and happen to wander into one of those places. The LEOs seems to get a hard-on whenever they see one, or so the various news reports would have us believe (they shoot the dog, any dog, as long as it's nearby; even if it's a Dachshund (that's a wiener dog)).
When you're conducting a battle / war / merger / acquisition / etc., you don't want the guys on your side to be captured / killed, you want the opposing side's constituents to be captured / killed. No General / Admiral will say that they need more of their own men to die, because they aren't putting on the airs of self-sacrifice / martyrdom. They might ask for someone to take on a risky or suicidal mission (within the context of war, which is already risky to being with), but on the whole, the idea is to do more damage to the other side than your own (of this I am fairly certain).
Now, from what I've gathered, Anonymous is not doing anything that constitutes a battle / war (except in the 'War on Drugs / War on Terrorism' fashion, which sadly, the US appears to be losing (economically speaking); a little less a giant tsunami, a little more some waves in a teacup). And the majority of the things they've played with qualify themselves as Script Kiddies (they download pre-made programs, like LOIC, or pre-made scripts, join an IRC channel, and pretend they're 31337 h@x0r$). In the technology world, that ranks about the real-world level of a high-school prank (throwing a cherry-bomb in the girl's toilets, playing with the PA system, etc.). You deal with that by calling their school / university, and having them held back a year.
Ask yourself this: do you think any real techs are in the upper levels of those companies? Do you think the guys in marketing / sales actually know what products techs will want before they are shipping? And the intelligence here of trying to soak the kind of people who won't buy a phone that can't be tethered to their laptop...if there's a lower price, they'll find it.
If you want to run a tech store, it's important to stock the odd-ball, low margin things. That's what draws them in, duh (because if they need that hex-nut screwdriver that only works for one model of Nokia phones, they need it now). Someone walks in to get a solder iron, sees that you have hard drives for prices comparable to those online, and they buy one or several of them.
Arguably, it's one of the things that MicroCenter does do right: they do keep a large stock of oddball parts around. And when their sales guys cut you a deal, it tends to be a decent deal, especially compared to the sh*t which passes for good deals these days (why yes, Dominos, I can use a coupon for two cheezy breads for $6.99 each...which is the same price without using the coupon...).
So yes, with the tech crowd, you don't want to soak the customer. You want to build, of all things, loyalty, by actually having the part they need in stock, no matter how exotic. And yes, that does cross-over into other, overlapping markets, as I found out recently (the electrical / industrial / lighting / manufacturing guys for some of the bigger forms of equipment out there apparently share a few components with the smaller form-factor tech guys.
Finally, once you have a formula that works, don't ruin it. If you want to experiment, open a new store under a different name. It's cheaper, and it doesn't damage your brand image. I'm looking at you, B&N. Going to make it a life goal to get those toy aisles evicted from the bookstore (just open a new store, called B&N Toys, and leave what limited shelf space you have for the people who actually buy books). Or add a few new floors to your stores.
So...random guess here...Steve Jobs had been mind-fucked at some point (typically necessary for the creation of that level of a distortion field -> it's a defensive measure), and the people in power couldn't find any dirt on him (unrelated, standard political maneuvering, though possibly a waste / misuse of agency resources).
So, can you explain to me the benefits of Nvidia's CUDA over OpenCL? I am genuinely interested. I have a project that will be using OpenCL in the near future, but a lot of the CS types seem to prefer working with CUDA. I've heard it's more programmable, but not much more.
Six-core for the past several months, with an eight-core sitting on my desk, quietly waiting for the return of the Corsair H70 coolant system to keep it slightly cooler than a thermonuclear reactor.
Many of my friends are CS / IT people, and yeah, they all want a little more. Even the people I know who are not CS / IT want more, for photo-editing / video-editing / audio-editing / games / media / etc. Take forever to list all the applications for a little more power.
And yes, while a game *might* use 2 or 3 cores, a lot of people like to run bit torrent / virus scanners / videos / etc. in the background. And you don't really want bit torrent sharing a cpu core with your game.
Applications may not scale to that many cores, for now, which is fine. That's why you use different cores for different programs. Game might be using 3 cores, a virtual machine 2 cores, and you can keep the main OS happy with one.
Yes, anecdotes. Stories from the field. The people I have in mind are the majority of computer users out there, not the exceptions who would be fine with a Commodore 64. You''ll always find some people who are happy with one car for the next three decades, but the national average is a new car every 3 or so years.
And there are lots of people who never use Windows outside of work. There must be a point in there, somewhere. In the overwhelming cases I have dealt with, it always comes down to Office or Exchange.
And the mark of good advice is the foresight to remove obstacles from one's path, even before they appear. Part of that involves understanding whatever field it is you are pulling from, part of that is understanding human beings. Realizing that someone who is not a tech does not understand their needs nor wants, and cannot adequately plan for their future is part of that -> that's why they came to you, a knowledgeable person, for some advice, in the first place. When considering a computer, it's important to remember that the relationship between a typical human being and a typical computer could be summed up as that of a sword and its sheath, or a hermit crab and its shell. At the very least, the computer must be slightly more powerful than what the user has in mind, and still have enough room for the user to grow. Since an inadequate machine will, at best, be a costly mistake, and at worst, turn the user off from technology in general, it's a good idea to spec in a little more oomph.
If not, I can show you how a single holiday sale will do some damage to those numbers. And yes, you can choose to install and uninstall various games, but...
Try it on family and friends. See if you can get them off the phone with that response.
These are the kinds of people who take out personal vendettas against you because you won't stop by their house to fix their printer (it's out of ink). It's cruel that life demands so much of you, with your time and attention, and so little of their time or attention, so that they can create conspiracy theories about how 'you changed their default browser so you could generate more business later.'
The only people who work IT who are not aware of this problem are those who have just finished their degree. It's endemic.
And just try charging them...see where that gets you...
Baby, if you think these conversations are techs looking down on people, you haven't worked IT long enough.
1.) I typically do not get paid for bad or good advice. I could dispense bad advice to people all day long, and it wouldn't negatively impact my paycheck. As it stands, it would probably improve it. 2.) I give out good advice only so I don't need to hear about a problem in the near future, as I have work that already pays. 3.) Do not ask for my advice if you're just looking for a reason to justify the decision you already made. There are people for that, they're called 'yes men,' and they get paid more than I or you ever will.
You're not my customer, nor my client, and I doubt you could afford my professional services. Most people can't, but then most people are not doctors, nor lawyers, nor are they cars. My job in life is not one of subservience; I am no one's servant. I am, however, friendly, provided you do not treat me as some poor servant. And yes, my time is worth more than yours. When you confuse my kindness of spending several moments listening to your problems, and dispensing a solution, with me somehow being your personal assistant (for no pay), you've created a wonderous relationship, only in your mind.
And yes, IT people get walked on all the time, and are told it's their lot in life. F*ck that noise.
Science fiction encapsulates a variety of areas. And while the specifics of the implementations of technologies found in science-fiction stories may not match reality-based implementations, the underlying ideas are used as a basis for many breakthroughs for scientists / engineers at a later time.
If science-fiction were used only to detail relationships, many of the advancements we have today would never have occurred.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not illegal to lie to the police, murder investigation or otherwise; however, lying may be construed as an "obstruction of justice," thus the penalty (if any) varies. It is illegal to lie in court (perjury), but then that's part of the reason we have the 5th Amendment (the right not to incriminate oneself). The nuances of the American legal system are great.
"Because if you do, then you support limits to freedom of expression. And if you don't, you're just a crackpot."
Perhaps I am a crackpot. However, waving your hand and dismissing my argument as such does not make it any less valid.
"Guess what: freedom of expression has NEVER been an absolute right in the US, or anywhere else."
Freedom of speech is, pardon, was an absolute right; however, as an absolute right, it requires the people who formulated and supported that right to continue to support and defend it, even and especially in times of confusion / adversity. It is comparable to the idea of private property, where your rights to your body and your belongings may be guaranteed only so long as others agree that you have any rights to them. Once people begin to have the idea that your property is their property, and that they can decide what you can / will do with your body...it becomes excessively difficult to defend them, to the point that a generation may pass without ever knowing that they were once absolute.
"There are dozens and dozens of limits placed on freedom of expression in the name of "the public interest.""
And not one of them is valid / not in conflict with the supreme law of this land. You might as well argue that because I stole your bike, thievery has placed limits on your rights to your property. That my friends and I agree that your rights to your bike are superseded by thievery does not mean that your rights are non-absolute.
"And your attempt to link any action ever taken in the public interest to the fucking Holocaust is incredibly weak."
Prove it. Prove that the link is weak. Any disenfranchisement of the whole for the sake of a minority or a majority will inevitably lead to a dictatorship. There is no time limit of the effects of horrible laws, and they continue to ripple throughout our society without contest.
Hmm. On one hand, the radio technology used in Wifi should not be creating any health-related issues (the engineers would have let that slip by now if they thought it was an issue; as the saying goes, it's mathematically possible, but highly unlikely). On the other hand, I hate Wifi, and love wired connections (wired is always faster, guaranteed if you can get a link light, isn't shared like wireless, and less insane provided there are enough ports / the network uses switches and not hubs).
So, the right idea with the wrong reasons. I was going to recommend going straight to fiber, but the price premium may not be worth it (I can't seem to find any commercial / business grade rack-mountable fiber gigabit switches with 48 ports -> closest was a NetGear with 12 fiber ports for ~$600) and the fiber NICs on NewEgg are carrying a hefty price premium for even stuff in the 10/100 range (the technology which is how old now?).
Hmm, even though it's fiber, those 10/100 workstation NICs should have been dirt-cheap by now...
And I'm vaguely curious how that happens. Does Marketing just call up Engineering, as say "We need a proprietary connector on your new product" or do the engineers think of it themselves ("I've made an improvement on the standard USB connector!")?
Which reminds me. I was looking (just looking) at laptops the other day, and spent some time checking out the Vaio. As a programmer, I like memory, but couldn't get it to configure for more than 8 GB (for a new laptop, that's deal-breaker). Do they make a laptop that accepts 16-32 GB of ram?
Mavis Beacon? But yes, like you, I am noting the time discrepancy.
On the other hand, perhaps because he is such a prolific poster, he's spending time on the Firehose, found an article that he both wanted to promote and comment on. That would give him some time to put together a response.
Sadly, I find myself in agreement with you. I browse Reddit as often as Slashdot, and while I am not subscribed to the subreddit in question, posts from it do occasionally find their way to my front page (popularity / cross-posting, I guess?). Needless to say my eyebrows were raised the first time I ran across it, however, upon closer inspection, there does not appear to be any illegal / illicit content; perhaps there is some illegal content, but none that I am aware of (as a mod (albeit for a different subreddit), I'm fairly certain any user posting that kind of stuff would be nuked off the site immediately -> instant banning / vaping).
The problem, of course, is that once someone uses the sword / accusation / mention of CP, everyone dives out of the way to avoid being seen as anything other than "100% totally against, tear everything down, no appeals, no trials." Loads of fear around it, more so than being accused of murder, rape, or (since this is /.) copyright infringement; and to be honest, that fear is justified -> the mere accusation of sexual misconduct in today's society will end someone's career and have them shunned / shot at / killed, even if the charges are proven fraudulent (the townspeople didn't catch that newscast saying that the charges were dismissed? Too bad, they'll wake you up at 3 AM, to the smell of your house burning down, with you in it). And yes, I believe it does qualify as censorship (it's in the same territory as thought crimes): having done nothing illegal, there is no crime. We are dealing with a situation in which someone wants something outlawed because of what other people "might be doing in their own minds." And last I checked, your mind is a private, sacred place, where no one may intrude.
And yes, the "public interest / policy" can go visit r/spacedicks, for the one of two reasons, whichever one you think is more sound / pleasing: 1.) the US Constitution (that old rag of a document, that supposedly has some sort of inalienable rights etched onto it...freedom of speech / freedom of the press, all that jazz), or 2.) because in faraway but similar land, a certain group of people sewed yellow stars on their garments as it was in the "public interest" of the people, of that time, to identify and rid themselves of a less desirable group. - That has your set-in-stone supreme law of the land / living document open to repeated reinterpretation argument wrapped up cleanly.
On a final note, what is truly bothering to me, is how easy it is for everyone to support / defend popular speech, but how lacking that support / the defense is for unpopular speech. We're all like "Rah rah rah! Freedom of Speech! Greatest country on earth!" but when it comes time to test that belief, we're all like "Blasphemy! Burn the witch!"
TLDR; This place is silly.
Fair enough. But let's be honest -> the new idea mill at Facebook has long since run dry; when I say that, I mean they're resorting to sales and marketing gimmicks, chasing nickels and quarters. The people invested in the company are cashing out. That's not 'good,' for the longevity of the platform.
And on a slightly related topic, Google Plus, which was off to a decent start (trying to avoid making the same mistakes as Facebook) needs an identical amount of TLC. The two firms are just copying one another, at this point, and the new features they're promoting are a giant turn-off.
Which reminds me: Google, fix your search engine. For the love of Bob, include a checkbox or something to nuke blogs / SEO link farms / commerce sites. I know you're working on it right now, so perhaps you can just pop those features into it.
Ask them questions that require an application of working knowledge / theory, as opposed to vocab / rote memorization style questions.
A little less "What does HTTP stand for?" a little more "I need to do some task using HTTP, show me how to make it do what I want it to do." That'll nuke using Google for an easy look up (for an answer), and potentially make anyone who copies off of another (via texting, emailing, cellphone, whatever) liable to fail the class (plagiarism ho!). See, by making it a non-trivial answer, you destroy the use of search engines for an easy answer, and by requiring some creativity (or even a fair amount), you can more accurately gauge a student's understanding, while also ensuring (via creativity) that no two student's answers should be identical. Of course, there are potential problems here, but it does, with a little tweaking, should help you identify the group-thinkers or no-thinkers with some ease. Plus, job security, as a teacher / professor, as you get to grade everyone's exams manually (the techs know you fear the machines, you need not be shy about it); just be sure to announce at the beginning of class that your style is that of the Athenians (Greek philosophers, focusing on thinking, etc.), or something to that effect.
The key here, to berate the point, is to ensure each answer is unique. Since simple answers cannot be unique, it's impossible to ensure that cheating has not occurred. Whereas with the greater increase in complexity (but not necessarily difficulty, mind you) of the answer, the more unlikely it is that two answers can be the same without one person copying another. When complexity increases enough, you have the effect of the Mona Lisa, where if 5 people turn the same or similar enough picture in, you have an extremely good idea that they were in communication with one another. It's not mathematically impossible, of course, that they should all create the same Mona Lisa, only hideously unlikely. Hell, if the solutions are unique enough, you might even learn something from them.
Indeed. And God help you if you're walking the family dog, and happen to wander into one of those places. The LEOs seems to get a hard-on whenever they see one, or so the various news reports would have us believe (they shoot the dog, any dog, as long as it's nearby; even if it's a Dachshund (that's a wiener dog)).
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say...why?
When you're conducting a battle / war / merger / acquisition / etc., you don't want the guys on your side to be captured / killed, you want the opposing side's constituents to be captured / killed. No General / Admiral will say that they need more of their own men to die, because they aren't putting on the airs of self-sacrifice / martyrdom. They might ask for someone to take on a risky or suicidal mission (within the context of war, which is already risky to being with), but on the whole, the idea is to do more damage to the other side than your own (of this I am fairly certain).
Now, from what I've gathered, Anonymous is not doing anything that constitutes a battle / war (except in the 'War on Drugs / War on Terrorism' fashion, which sadly, the US appears to be losing (economically speaking); a little less a giant tsunami, a little more some waves in a teacup). And the majority of the things they've played with qualify themselves as Script Kiddies (they download pre-made programs, like LOIC, or pre-made scripts, join an IRC channel, and pretend they're 31337 h@x0r$). In the technology world, that ranks about the real-world level of a high-school prank (throwing a cherry-bomb in the girl's toilets, playing with the PA system, etc.). You deal with that by calling their school / university, and having them held back a year.
Monitor cables (VGA, DVI). Spare mice and keyboards.
Ask yourself this: do you think any real techs are in the upper levels of those companies? Do you think the guys in marketing / sales actually know what products techs will want before they are shipping? And the intelligence here of trying to soak the kind of people who won't buy a phone that can't be tethered to their laptop...if there's a lower price, they'll find it.
If you want to run a tech store, it's important to stock the odd-ball, low margin things. That's what draws them in, duh (because if they need that hex-nut screwdriver that only works for one model of Nokia phones, they need it now). Someone walks in to get a solder iron, sees that you have hard drives for prices comparable to those online, and they buy one or several of them.
Arguably, it's one of the things that MicroCenter does do right: they do keep a large stock of oddball parts around. And when their sales guys cut you a deal, it tends to be a decent deal, especially compared to the sh*t which passes for good deals these days (why yes, Dominos, I can use a coupon for two cheezy breads for $6.99 each...which is the same price without using the coupon...).
So yes, with the tech crowd, you don't want to soak the customer. You want to build, of all things, loyalty, by actually having the part they need in stock, no matter how exotic. And yes, that does cross-over into other, overlapping markets, as I found out recently (the electrical / industrial / lighting / manufacturing guys for some of the bigger forms of equipment out there apparently share a few components with the smaller form-factor tech guys.
Finally, once you have a formula that works, don't ruin it. If you want to experiment, open a new store under a different name. It's cheaper, and it doesn't damage your brand image. I'm looking at you, B&N. Going to make it a life goal to get those toy aisles evicted from the bookstore (just open a new store, called B&N Toys, and leave what limited shelf space you have for the people who actually buy books). Or add a few new floors to your stores.
Perhaps, but you could never let them know they were doing it.
So...random guess here...Steve Jobs had been mind-fucked at some point (typically necessary for the creation of that level of a distortion field -> it's a defensive measure), and the people in power couldn't find any dirt on him (unrelated, standard political maneuvering, though possibly a waste / misuse of agency resources).
Finally, an Nvidia fan boy.
So, can you explain to me the benefits of Nvidia's CUDA over OpenCL? I am genuinely interested. I have a project that will be using OpenCL in the near future, but a lot of the CS types seem to prefer working with CUDA. I've heard it's more programmable, but not much more.
I loved that video.
The same way your comment isn't.
Six-core for the past several months, with an eight-core sitting on my desk, quietly waiting for the return of the Corsair H70 coolant system to keep it slightly cooler than a thermonuclear reactor.
Many of my friends are CS / IT people, and yeah, they all want a little more. Even the people I know who are not CS / IT want more, for photo-editing / video-editing / audio-editing / games / media / etc. Take forever to list all the applications for a little more power.
And yes, while a game *might* use 2 or 3 cores, a lot of people like to run bit torrent / virus scanners / videos / etc. in the background. And you don't really want bit torrent sharing a cpu core with your game.
Applications may not scale to that many cores, for now, which is fine. That's why you use different cores for different programs. Game might be using 3 cores, a virtual machine 2 cores, and you can keep the main OS happy with one.
Yes, anecdotes. Stories from the field. The people I have in mind are the majority of computer users out there, not the exceptions who would be fine with a Commodore 64. You''ll always find some people who are happy with one car for the next three decades, but the national average is a new car every 3 or so years.
And there are lots of people who never use Windows outside of work. There must be a point in there, somewhere. In the overwhelming cases I have dealt with, it always comes down to Office or Exchange.
And the mark of good advice is the foresight to remove obstacles from one's path, even before they appear. Part of that involves understanding whatever field it is you are pulling from, part of that is understanding human beings. Realizing that someone who is not a tech does not understand their needs nor wants, and cannot adequately plan for their future is part of that -> that's why they came to you, a knowledgeable person, for some advice, in the first place. When considering a computer, it's important to remember that the relationship between a typical human being and a typical computer could be summed up as that of a sword and its sheath, or a hermit crab and its shell. At the very least, the computer must be slightly more powerful than what the user has in mind, and still have enough room for the user to grow. Since an inadequate machine will, at best, be a costly mistake, and at worst, turn the user off from technology in general, it's a good idea to spec in a little more oomph.
Have you been introduced to Steam yet?
If not, I can show you how a single holiday sale will do some damage to those numbers. And yes, you can choose to install and uninstall various games, but...
Still need to know if you've passed the six month mark yet. ^_^
And how is the OpenCL support on those GPUs?
Try it on family and friends. See if you can get them off the phone with that response.
These are the kinds of people who take out personal vendettas against you because you won't stop by their house to fix their printer (it's out of ink). It's cruel that life demands so much of you, with your time and attention, and so little of their time or attention, so that they can create conspiracy theories about how 'you changed their default browser so you could generate more business later.'
The only people who work IT who are not aware of this problem are those who have just finished their degree. It's endemic.
And just try charging them...see where that gets you...
Baby, if you think these conversations are techs looking down on people, you haven't worked IT long enough.
1.) I typically do not get paid for bad or good advice. I could dispense bad advice to people all day long, and it wouldn't negatively impact my paycheck. As it stands, it would probably improve it.
2.) I give out good advice only so I don't need to hear about a problem in the near future, as I have work that already pays.
3.) Do not ask for my advice if you're just looking for a reason to justify the decision you already made. There are people for that, they're called 'yes men,' and they get paid more than I or you ever will.
You're not my customer, nor my client, and I doubt you could afford my professional services. Most people can't, but then most people are not doctors, nor lawyers, nor are they cars. My job in life is not one of subservience; I am no one's servant. I am, however, friendly, provided you do not treat me as some poor servant. And yes, my time is worth more than yours. When you confuse my kindness of spending several moments listening to your problems, and dispensing a solution, with me somehow being your personal assistant (for no pay), you've created a wonderous relationship, only in your mind.
And yes, IT people get walked on all the time, and are told it's their lot in life. F*ck that noise.
Not if the item is question is a laptop, with a built-in video-card.
Science fiction encapsulates a variety of areas. And while the specifics of the implementations of technologies found in science-fiction stories may not match reality-based implementations, the underlying ideas are used as a basis for many breakthroughs for scientists / engineers at a later time.
If science-fiction were used only to detail relationships, many of the advancements we have today would never have occurred.
Yes, like getting shot down over enemy territory, with a map that will only last 9 hours. 300 kilometers, 9 hours, yeah, that's doable.