I know the general opinion of the UN is pretty low here, ever since the UN refused to go along with American bullying in Iraq.
But putting that aside for a moment, it is hard to imagine anybody doing worse than ICANN. At least the UN won't get pushed around by corporate interestes.
And if you want to be really pedantic, there aren't 18x18 squares either since they are rectangles. At least under the japanese conventions, each 'square' is 1/8 longer than it is wide. A fun little question is, how many squares are there on a go board?
Someone attempted an unbiased survey about a year ago. Their conclusions were 1) Doing an unbiased survey is nearly impossible and they weren't sure if they'd managed it, and 2) Linux is best on fringe technology while windows is best where you want to reinvent the wheel.
Basically, windows CE came with lots of libraries for doing stuff that had already been done, but linux was more customisable if your product was actually innovative.
Given that and assuming it still holds, then if robots really are the next big thing (tm) then we can expect to see linux slowly lose market share of robotics to windows as they slowly become mainstream.
RedHat has decided that the enterprise is where the cash is. They are continuing to make token efforts for people like you, but if you want anything more than a token effort then Go to a company that is interested in you!
I mean, honestly, there are half a dozen excellent community linux distributions out there depending on exactly what you want. Complaining because the company that you used to like has decided to focus on something else reeks of someone whose lover has run off with someone else, but they constantly pray for her to come back so they can be how they used to be. Learn to move on...
Yeah, I've met a couple. They exist. They're a bit weird though... Actually, on second thought, It is more like they're a bit normal. Still, they'd most certainly be classified as geeks by the general population.
When I looked into coffee roasting a couple years ago, I found that very little technical equipment was needed. Indeed, the principal reason that an ordinary oven was considered unacceptable is it would leave your house uninhabitable for several hours afterwards.
Back then, the use of popcorn machines was fairly common, but all the instructions I read just used unmodified machines with quite precise timing controls.
It looks like this guy has managed to take a simple project and make it extremely complicated. I guess that's kinda cool, but I think I'll stick to just using the gas campfire myself...
For comparison, my favourite chip for this sort of thing (Motorola's G4) uses ~21W and gets 376 MFLOPS/W. That gives roughly twice as much power consumed as your cpu, for four times as much work. Depends on how much processing power you need I guess.
Right, this is pretty much why I only use GPL or release as public domain. It may be that the XPL is more appropriate for what I want, but I understand the GPL, I know I can trust the GPL, and I know people getting the software will know their rights.
... and you really can't stop people from making bad choices.
Since editors are overused as an example, lets try CD burners. There are two that most people will know: k3b and nautilus. Yet a quick search on freshmeat will return literally dozens of CD burners. Why did those authors write a CD burner when excellent ones already existed? Maybe for experience, maybe due to a missing feature... it doesn't matter. The point is they can, so they will.
Choosing an open-source licence is the same: There are a couple basic smart choices, but there is no way you're going to get everybody to agree to only use them. As a random example, one of the programs I use is only free if the kernel of the computer you run it on is open source, weird huh? It is the OSI's job to try and simplify things as much as possible so people can understand what's going on. Sure, they can discourage wacky choices, but they shouldn't be outlawing them from the OSS definition.
PS: A google for licen{s,c}e returns the GPL as the number one hit.
>> "Everyone's a Democrat until they get a little money." - >George Soros doesn't look like he's changing his stripes anytime soon...
This is supposed to be be news for nerds, use your brain. Or, to be more precise:
Let d(x) mean x is a democrat. Let m(x) mean x has money. The grandparent stated that !m(x) -> d(x) To be really pedantic, the grandparent's statement was actully in temporal logic and somewhat more complex, but the simplified version will do for here.
You said d(George Soros), m(George Soros). So, substituting into the statement provided by the grandparent we have:
!m(George Soros) -> d(George Soros)
I.e. if George Soros didn't have money, he would be a democrat. Do you see a contradiction here? No? Neither do I. That makes George Soros a really lousy example of a contradiction. If you want to find a proper example of a contradiction, you'll need to find some poor but vocal republicans. I suggest you try small-town America.
No, that's an awful 'solution'. What about a domain name like http://www.m/#257;ori.co.nz/? I bet that doesn't even render correctly for you since you probably disabled international fonts too. Your stupid solution prevents people from accessing that site.
Or are countries supposed to not allow domain names to use characters from their language now? Chinese who don't speak a word of English are expected to guess an English version for local domains? I bet they'd like it as much as you'd like a new standard that only chinese characters are allowed in domain names since they are unambiguous.
Disabling international domain names is barely acceptable for a workaround. It sure isn't any sort of solution to the problem.
Looks like bars got it from tablets... Galeon probably got it from the folders version (short strap, etc...)
Dear Word Detective: Can you tell me the etymology of "tabs" when used to mean to watch something or someone, as in "to keep tabs on...." I'd also like to know why it is used in plural as above and also in singular "to keep a tab on...." I had imagined that it must have some relationship to the usage of "tab" which refers to the protrusion from a file folder or index card. However, a dictionary I consulted said that the etymology was unknown. -- G.H. Gena.
Oh, please. Dictionary editors always pull that "origin unknown" stuff when it's Friday afternoon and they're in a hurry to tie one on. Most people accept Samuel Johnson's definition of lexicographers as "harmless drudges," but the truth is that the average dictionary office would give Animal House a run for its money. I'll bet the Editor-in-Chief took a big swig of Old Webster's as he tossed the entry for "Tabs" into his out box, shouting "Origin unknown!" as the room collapsed in drunken laughter. Just kidding (although many lexicographers probably wish I weren't). The origin of "tab" in the "file folder" sense is indeed unknown, but the root of "tabs" in the "I'm watching you" sense is more certain.
The sort of "tab" found at the top of file folders is an extension of the root sense of "tab," which is, as those party animals over at the Oxford English Dictionary put it, "A short broad strap, flat loop, or the like, attached by one end to an object, or forming a short projecting part by which a thing can be taken hold of, hung up, fastened, or pulled." This "tab" appeared at the start of the 17th century and may simply be a modification of "tag." To keep "tabs" (or "a tab") on someone, however, is short for "tablet" in the sense of "writing tablet," i.e., an account book or written record. Thus, when Santa Claus is described as "making a list and checking it twice," he is "keeping a tab" (or "tabs") on all those naughty and nice kiddies, much as John Ashcroft does with computers. This use of "tab" is relatively recent, first appearing in the late 19th century. The same sense of "tab" meaning "written account" is found in "tab" meaning "restaurant check."
What you've said is true, but do you think Macrovision will have the slightest effect on those illegal copies? You're talking about a professional organisation with the technical know-how to bypass virtually any copy protection scheme.
Macrovision will only stop individuals giving copies to their friends and other such localised infringement.
Ok, most people here think it is crazy for oracle to change double when you still only have one motherboard. Let me give you a counter story.
We use a product here that was built with allegro. If we want to extend it then we need a license to allegro and they don't come cheap. The nice folks at allegro think that it is crazy to charge two licenses for a single machine and so we went out and bought a SMP box just so we could have multiple developers log in at the same time.
Now, in terms of MIPS/dollar, the SMP box came out quite poorly. But once you factor the license in, it is cheaper for us to buy a 4 way enterprise server than it is to buy four workstations and four licenses.
I think we (legally) swindled the developers of allegro. Of course, at the amount they are charging for once license they deserve to be swindled, but I digress...
Re:Shouldn't Apple put something like this out?
on
MythTV 0.17 Released
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· Score: 1
I heard a clever argument against this yesterday on groklaw, let me know what you think: There are very approximately 10M linux desktops[1]. There were approximately 10M windows desktops in 1994[2]. In 1994, viruses came out more often than once a month, Good News was released in 1994. Spyware was rare, but modem dialers were fairly common.
If the number of viruses and spyware programs were depenent on popularity, then linux would be as heavily attacked as windows was in 1994. That is, anti-virus software would be commonplace and people wouldn't want to leave the computer plugged into the modem when they weren't sitting at it. Actually, more linux attacks would be happening since we're hundreds of times better connected than we were in 1994. Yet, they're not. Why?
1: I just checked on google and that number was exceeded about a year ago, but I couldn't find a more up-to-date figure.
2: Actually, I think 1994 was too late and we'd have to include linux servers if we wanted as many machines as windows had in 1994. From an annual report:
To be sure, the PC has yet to evolve to the point where its appeal is universal. Only 13 percent of the world's office workers use PCs. And a mere four percent of the world's households own PCs. In the U.S. alone, more than 60 million homes remain PC-less.
I realise I've essentially ignored your 'dumb users' argument. Partially this is because I don't think it is true: I just put my mother-in-law on linux (linspire) because I didn't trust her with windows. It is also partially because I wanted to see how you'd react to the different argument:)
Notice how the code snippet you pasted is inside #if? That means the preprocessor will strip it out at compile time, not run time... got that? Next you note that htons performs the same check. That would be the htons function right? There's this thing about functions... Every time you call them you have to push your state onto the stack, wasting cycles. That means your version will waste a processor cycles every single time it is called, but the linux one won't. We call this optimisation.
What's that? Cycles don't matter? How frequently do you think the function above is called? Can you be certain it won't be called when performance is key? Lets be clear, there is some ugly code in the linux kernel, most of it is stuff written years ago that could be refactored if anybody bothered. But pointing to an optimisation and saying: look, that's redundant! is just foolish.
Yeah yeah, when they first came out they were mainly used by rich people with laptops doing cheesy sales pitches. But nowadays I expect everywhere I present to have a projecter already set up, so I don't care about size, weight or running of batteries. Why is it that I'm forced to pay for features I don't want?
I suppose there are a few people who do sales pitches to people who don't have a projector to use, or who carry one around just so it is one less thing to rely on, but what about the majority of us who care about price, bulb price/hour, brightness, and resolution?
It seems the manufacturers haven't got it into their head that lower costs means they are selling to a different market.
A related complaint, I wanted an alarm clock radio that could play MP3s. Sounds easy? It isn't. I found a total of one product under $500 that can play MP3s and has an alarm. Why? Because they only make tiny little MP3 players that run off batteries, not ones the size of an alarm clock with a display I can read across the room.
For every good, repeat customer I had, I had to deal with 3 other know-nothings
I don't intend to sound patronising, especially since it sounds like you've got yourself to somewhere you're happy with now. But, there are a number of techniques to running a business and having a good life. Some of them run directly contrary to the techniques for running a good business but I guess that's obvious since the goal is balance.
Anyway, my second rule of running a business and having a life: Get rid of the customers you don't like. If they're rude/don't do what you tell them/you just don't get on/whatever. Get rid of them. If you are accepting money from them then you are obliged to provide them with service, but you are not required to serve everyone who rings up (just don't discriminate on the grounds of age, sex, race, etc.) End result, you get fewer customers but you actually like seeing them. You've already noted that a lower income but an easier life is an improvement. Sure, it may seem crazy to not grow your business and double your income, but your sanity is worth more than double the income.
Rule 2b: If you have to see the people you don't like, because they're twisting your arm or whatever, then charge them an arm and a leg and then some. Oh and warn them beforehand -- if you're lucky they'll change their mind. As an example, my wife absolutely cannot stand working outside 9-5. Personally I find it a bit odd, but it is her rule, and I have rules she finds odd. So, if she has to work outside those hours then she charges double plus a callout fee. Short term result, we got a lot of money for a while but she wasn't that happy even with the extra money for treats. Long term result, the people found someone less desperate and she doesn't get called. See? Everyone wins.
The latest 3D shooter was really pushing the limits of technology, frequently slowing to a crawl on an ordinary PC when there were lots of monsters in sight. What year was this? Well, it could be last month with halo 2. Five years ago with Quake 2, ten years ago with doom, or fifteen years ago with Wolfenstein. Yes, in the last 15 years, first person shooters haven't got any faster. Of course, my memory of dates is a little rusty, but I recall Wolf3d running just fine most of the time on my flash 386DX/40, though it didn't cope with more than 6 enemies at once. We've gone forward fifteen _years_ and now doom 3 runs just find on my XP 2600+ but doesn't cope with more than 6 enemies at once.
Now, nobody is trying to claim wolf dprd is much as doom is doing, but the guy sitting there with the stopwatch could easily say things haven't got any faster in fifteen years. Similarly, load times have barely improved in fifteen years -- you try loading an old version of excel on a 486 with plenty of ram. Now do it on a brand new box with plenty of ram. The new box is about twice as fast. So in ten years, we've just managed to double real speed.
Returning to your calculation, if you had that G5 a few years ago, I bet you'd have calcuated something more complex. The time things take bears much more resemblence to what we'll put up with than to anything else. I've had the most weird experience of this on my current project. It was started in 1998 and while most of the code has been replaced over the years, there is still a fair amount of code in use that was written in '99. Now, back in '99, the computer I was using was slower than my current one and so I wrote progress bars and the like. If I run the system now, you see those progress bars zip across in minutes. Then you come to the bits of code that were written in 2001 and the progress bars go across fairly swiftly. Then you come to the bits written in 2004 and the progress bar takes a day (almost as bad as the 1999 bar did in 1999).
So, have I forgotten how to code like I did in '99? No, just my expectations of what I can do have increased and the latter stages of the program are far more ambitious. Similarly, the people working on Excel 2005 will be concentrating on making it that much easier to use, and just like every generation before them, they'll measure CPU performance in seconds rather than in clock cycles. A better usability rating in the twice time is unacceptable, but a better rating in twice the clock cycles is a huge win (two years apart, naturally).
It would be a small win to the opteron. I did some informal benchmarking a few months ago of the G5 and the opteron, and found that clock-for-clock, the opteron got slightly more done. So I'd be very surprised if a 2.6GHz opteron didn't do more than a 2.5GHz G5. Of course, the G5 would be dual processor, so we'd have to go with dual opteron as well to compare prices.
Apple clocks in at $2999 for the base configuration. Taking that same configuration to newegg is required quite a few substitutions: I went for kensington wireless keyboard and mouse, XP pro, LiLian case and PSU, 2.4GHz opteron (no 2.6 in stock), and a sony DVD burner 16x. The total was $3124. I would put the price at a draw. I.e. go with whichever you prefer the OS of.
Naturally, if you're going to be running linux, that puts the opteron a fraction cheaper.
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I don't have an especially high view of the UN, but as I said above, it would be hard pressed to be worse.
I know the general opinion of the UN is pretty low here, ever since the UN refused to go along with American bullying in Iraq.
But putting that aside for a moment, it is hard to imagine anybody doing worse than ICANN. At least the UN won't get pushed around by corporate interestes.
Sounds right. I might have got the ratio wrong, but obviously the technique is the same
And if you want to be really pedantic, there aren't 18x18 squares either since they are rectangles. At least under the japanese conventions, each 'square' is 1/8 longer than it is wide. A fun little question is, how many squares are there on a go board?
Someone attempted an unbiased survey about a year ago. Their conclusions were 1) Doing an unbiased survey is nearly impossible and they weren't sure if they'd managed it, and 2) Linux is best on fringe technology while windows is best where you want to reinvent the wheel.
Basically, windows CE came with lots of libraries for doing stuff that had already been done, but linux was more customisable if your product was actually innovative.
Given that and assuming it still holds, then if robots really are the next big thing (tm) then we can expect to see linux slowly lose market share of robotics to windows as they slowly become mainstream.
Give Ubuntu a whirl. They're trying to get the people who feel disfranchised by the RH -> fedora shift by giving them what they want.
Personally I've swapped to straight debian testing, but that's because I decided I liked continuous upgrades rather than peridoic upgrades.
RedHat has decided that the enterprise is where the cash is. They are continuing to make token efforts for people like you, but if you want anything more than a token effort then Go to a company that is interested in you!
I mean, honestly, there are half a dozen excellent community linux distributions out there depending on exactly what you want. Complaining because the company that you used to like has decided to focus on something else reeks of someone whose lover has run off with someone else, but they constantly pray for her to come back so they can be how they used to be. Learn to move on...
Yeah, I've met a couple. They exist. They're a bit weird though... Actually, on second thought, It is more like they're a bit normal. Still, they'd most certainly be classified as geeks by the general population.
*shrug* It takes all sorts.
When I looked into coffee roasting a couple years ago, I found that very little technical equipment was needed. Indeed, the principal reason that an ordinary oven was considered unacceptable is it would leave your house uninhabitable for several hours afterwards.
Back then, the use of popcorn machines was fairly common, but all the instructions I read just used unmodified machines with quite precise timing controls.
It looks like this guy has managed to take a simple project and make it extremely complicated. I guess that's kinda cool, but I think I'll stick to just using the gas campfire myself...
For comparison, my favourite chip for this sort of thing (Motorola's G4) uses ~21W and gets 376 MFLOPS/W. That gives roughly twice as much power consumed as your cpu, for four times as much work. Depends on how much processing power you need I guess.
Right, this is pretty much why I only use GPL or release as public domain. It may be that the XPL is more appropriate for what I want, but I understand the GPL, I know I can trust the GPL, and I know people getting the software will know their rights.
... and you really can't stop people from making bad choices.
Since editors are overused as an example, lets try CD burners. There are two that most people will know: k3b and nautilus. Yet a quick search on freshmeat will return literally dozens of CD burners. Why did those authors write a CD burner when excellent ones already existed? Maybe for experience, maybe due to a missing feature... it doesn't matter. The point is they can, so they will.
Choosing an open-source licence is the same: There are a couple basic smart choices, but there is no way you're going to get everybody to agree to only use them. As a random example, one of the programs I use is only free if the kernel of the computer you run it on is open source, weird huh? It is the OSI's job to try and simplify things as much as possible so people can understand what's going on. Sure, they can discourage wacky choices, but they shouldn't be outlawing them from the OSS definition.
PS: A google for licen{s,c}e returns the GPL as the number one hit.
>> "Everyone's a Democrat until they get a little money." -
>George Soros doesn't look like he's changing his stripes anytime soon...
This is supposed to be be news for nerds, use your brain. Or, to be more precise:
Let d(x) mean x is a democrat.
Let m(x) mean x has money.
The grandparent stated that !m(x) -> d(x)
To be really pedantic, the grandparent's statement was actully in temporal logic and somewhat more complex, but the simplified version will do for here.
You said d(George Soros), m(George Soros). So, substituting into the statement provided by the grandparent we have:
!m(George Soros) -> d(George Soros)
I.e. if George Soros didn't have money, he would be a democrat. Do you see a contradiction here? No? Neither do I. That makes George Soros a really lousy example of a contradiction. If you want to find a proper example of a contradiction, you'll need to find some poor but vocal republicans. I suggest you try small-town America.
No, that's an awful 'solution'. What about a domain name like http://www.m/#257;ori.co.nz/? I bet that doesn't even render correctly for you since you probably disabled international fonts too. Your stupid solution prevents people from accessing that site.
Or are countries supposed to not allow domain names to use characters from their language now? Chinese who don't speak a word of English are expected to guess an English version for local domains? I bet they'd like it as much as you'd like a new standard that only chinese characters are allowed in domain names since they are unambiguous.
Disabling international domain names is barely acceptable for a workaround. It sure isn't any sort of solution to the problem.
Looks like bars got it from tablets... Galeon probably got it from the folders version (short strap, etc...)
...." I'd also like to know why it is used in plural as above and also in singular "to keep a tab on ...." I had imagined that it must have some relationship to the usage of "tab" which refers to the protrusion from a file folder or index card. However, a dictionary I consulted said that the etymology was unknown. -- G.H. Gena.
Dear Word Detective: Can you tell me the etymology of "tabs" when used to mean to watch something or someone, as in "to keep tabs on
Oh, please. Dictionary editors always pull that "origin unknown" stuff when it's Friday afternoon and they're in a hurry to tie one on. Most people accept Samuel Johnson's definition of lexicographers as "harmless drudges," but the truth is that the average dictionary office would give Animal House a run for its money. I'll bet the Editor-in-Chief took a big swig of Old Webster's as he tossed the entry for "Tabs" into his out box, shouting "Origin unknown!" as the room collapsed in drunken laughter.
Just kidding (although many lexicographers probably wish I weren't). The origin of "tab" in the "file folder" sense is indeed unknown, but the root of "tabs" in the "I'm watching you" sense is more certain.
The sort of "tab" found at the top of file folders is an extension of the root sense of "tab," which is, as those party animals over at the Oxford English Dictionary put it, "A short broad strap, flat loop, or the like, attached by one end to an object, or forming a short projecting part by which a thing can be taken hold of, hung up, fastened, or pulled." This "tab" appeared at the start of the 17th century and may simply be a modification of "tag."
To keep "tabs" (or "a tab") on someone, however, is short for "tablet" in the sense of "writing tablet," i.e., an account book or written record. Thus, when Santa Claus is described as "making a list and checking it twice," he is "keeping a tab" (or "tabs") on all those naughty and nice kiddies, much as John Ashcroft does with computers. This use of "tab" is relatively recent, first appearing in the late 19th century. The same sense of "tab" meaning "written account" is found in "tab" meaning "restaurant check."
What you've said is true, but do you think Macrovision will have the slightest effect on those illegal copies? You're talking about a professional organisation with the technical know-how to bypass virtually any copy protection scheme.
Macrovision will only stop individuals giving copies to their friends and other such localised infringement.
OMG! Seems the US is getting more like soviet russia every day!
!!!
Ok, most people here think it is crazy for oracle to change double when you still only have one motherboard. Let me give you a counter story.
We use a product here that was built with allegro. If we want to extend it then we need a license to allegro and they don't come cheap. The nice folks at allegro think that it is crazy to charge two licenses for a single machine and so we went out and bought a SMP box just so we could have multiple developers log in at the same time.
Now, in terms of MIPS/dollar, the SMP box came out quite poorly. But once you factor the license in, it is cheaper for us to buy a 4 way enterprise server than it is to buy four workstations and four licenses.
I think we (legally) swindled the developers of allegro. Of course, at the amount they are charging for once license they deserve to be swindled, but I digress...
lakeland@jaki:~$ sudo apt-get install mythtv
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package mythtv
lakeland@jaki:~$ apt-cache search mythtv
lakeland@jaki:~$
Funny, didn't seem to work for me. You sure that is all you did?
If the number of viruses and spyware programs were depenent on popularity, then linux would be as heavily attacked as windows was in 1994. That is, anti-virus software would be commonplace and people wouldn't want to leave the computer plugged into the modem when they weren't sitting at it. Actually, more linux attacks would be happening since we're hundreds of times better connected than we were in 1994. Yet, they're not. Why?
1: I just checked on google and that number was exceeded about a year ago, but I couldn't find a more up-to-date figure.
2: Actually, I think 1994 was too late and we'd have to include linux servers if we wanted as many machines as windows had in 1994. From an annual report:
I realise I've essentially ignored your 'dumb users' argument. Partially this is because I don't think it is true: I just put my mother-in-law on linux (linspire) because I didn't trust her with windows. It is also partially because I wanted to see how you'd react to the different argumentYeah yeah, YHBT and all that...
Notice how the code snippet you pasted is inside #if? That means the preprocessor will strip it out at compile time, not run time... got that? Next you note that htons performs the same check. That would be the htons function right? There's this thing about functions... Every time you call them you have to push your state onto the stack, wasting cycles. That means your version will waste a processor cycles every single time it is called, but the linux one won't. We call this optimisation.
What's that? Cycles don't matter? How frequently do you think the function above is called? Can you be certain it won't be called when performance is key? Lets be clear, there is some ugly code in the linux kernel, most of it is stuff written years ago that could be refactored if anybody bothered. But pointing to an optimisation and saying: look, that's redundant! is just foolish.
Yeah yeah, when they first came out they were mainly used by rich people with laptops doing cheesy sales pitches. But nowadays I expect everywhere I present to have a projecter already set up, so I don't care about size, weight or running of batteries. Why is it that I'm forced to pay for features I don't want?
I suppose there are a few people who do sales pitches to people who don't have a projector to use, or who carry one around just so it is one less thing to rely on, but what about the majority of us who care about price, bulb price/hour, brightness, and resolution?
It seems the manufacturers haven't got it into their head that lower costs means they are selling to a different market.
A related complaint, I wanted an alarm clock radio that could play MP3s. Sounds easy? It isn't. I found a total of one product under $500 that can play MP3s and has an alarm. Why? Because they only make tiny little MP3 players that run off batteries, not ones the size of an alarm clock with a display I can read across the room.
For every good, repeat customer I had, I had to deal with 3 other know-nothings
I don't intend to sound patronising, especially since it sounds like you've got yourself to somewhere you're happy with now. But, there are a number of techniques to running a business and having a good life. Some of them run directly contrary to the techniques for running a good business but I guess that's obvious since the goal is balance.
Anyway, my second rule of running a business and having a life: Get rid of the customers you don't like. If they're rude/don't do what you tell them/you just don't get on/whatever. Get rid of them. If you are accepting money from them then you are obliged to provide them with service, but you are not required to serve everyone who rings up (just don't discriminate on the grounds of age, sex, race, etc.) End result, you get fewer customers but you actually like seeing them. You've already noted that a lower income but an easier life is an improvement. Sure, it may seem crazy to not grow your business and double your income, but your sanity is worth more than double the income.
Rule 2b: If you have to see the people you don't like, because they're twisting your arm or whatever, then charge them an arm and a leg and then some. Oh and warn them beforehand -- if you're lucky they'll change their mind. As an example, my wife absolutely cannot stand working outside 9-5. Personally I find it a bit odd, but it is her rule, and I have rules she finds odd. So, if she has to work outside those hours then she charges double plus a callout fee. Short term result, we got a lot of money for a while but she wasn't that happy even with the extra money for treats. Long term result, the people found someone less desperate and she doesn't get called. See? Everyone wins.
You totally missed the point.
The latest 3D shooter was really pushing the limits of technology, frequently slowing to a crawl on an ordinary PC when there were lots of monsters in sight. What year was this? Well, it could be last month with halo 2. Five years ago with Quake 2, ten years ago with doom, or fifteen years ago with Wolfenstein. Yes, in the last 15 years, first person shooters haven't got any faster. Of course, my memory of dates is a little rusty, but I recall Wolf3d running just fine most of the time on my flash 386DX/40, though it didn't cope with more than 6 enemies at once. We've gone forward fifteen _years_ and now doom 3 runs just find on my XP 2600+ but doesn't cope with more than 6 enemies at once.
Now, nobody is trying to claim wolf dprd is much as doom is doing, but the guy sitting there with the stopwatch could easily say things haven't got any faster in fifteen years. Similarly, load times have barely improved in fifteen years -- you try loading an old version of excel on a 486 with plenty of ram. Now do it on a brand new box with plenty of ram. The new box is about twice as fast. So in ten years, we've just managed to double real speed.
Returning to your calculation, if you had that G5 a few years ago, I bet you'd have calcuated something more complex. The time things take bears much more resemblence to what we'll put up with than to anything else. I've had the most weird experience of this on my current project. It was started in 1998 and while most of the code has been replaced over the years, there is still a fair amount of code in use that was written in '99. Now, back in '99, the computer I was using was slower than my current one and so I wrote progress bars and the like. If I run the system now, you see those progress bars zip across in minutes. Then you come to the bits of code that were written in 2001 and the progress bars go across fairly swiftly. Then you come to the bits written in 2004 and the progress bar takes a day (almost as bad as the 1999 bar did in 1999).
So, have I forgotten how to code like I did in '99? No, just my expectations of what I can do have increased and the latter stages of the program are far more ambitious. Similarly, the people working on Excel 2005 will be concentrating on making it that much easier to use, and just like every generation before them, they'll measure CPU performance in seconds rather than in clock cycles. A better usability rating in the twice time is unacceptable, but a better rating in twice the clock cycles is a huge win (two years apart, naturally).
It would be a small win to the opteron. I did some informal benchmarking a few months ago of the G5 and the opteron, and found that clock-for-clock, the opteron got slightly more done. So I'd be very surprised if a 2.6GHz opteron didn't do more than a 2.5GHz G5. Of course, the G5 would be dual processor, so we'd have to go with dual opteron as well to compare prices.
Apple clocks in at $2999 for the base configuration. Taking that same configuration to newegg is required quite a few substitutions: I went for kensington wireless keyboard and mouse, XP pro, LiLian case and PSU, 2.4GHz opteron (no 2.6 in stock), and a sony DVD burner 16x. The total was $3124. I would put the price at a draw. I.e. go with whichever you prefer the OS of.
Naturally, if you're going to be running linux, that puts the opteron a fraction cheaper.