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  1. Re: Possibly the best post I've read in here for y on Companies That Don't Understand Engineers Don't Respect Engineers · · Score: 1

    Mmmm hmmm...don't bitch when the suits take advantage of you then.

  2. Re:Possibly the best post I've read in here for ye on Companies That Don't Understand Engineers Don't Respect Engineers · · Score: 1

    See, if you were smarter you would talk more and work less and get paid more (I've been telling myself this for years. I think my line of bullshit is finally getting to corporate grade).

  3. Re:It's reciprocal on Companies That Don't Understand Engineers Don't Respect Engineers · · Score: 2

    Yes, the business guys are often fond of telling everybody just what geniuses they are. I like to point out that when we were in college, we never talked about how smart the business majors were.

  4. Those aren't business decisions on Companies That Don't Understand Engineers Don't Respect Engineers · · Score: 2

    I'm an engineer who runs a business. I know the tradeoff between technology and costs. And figuring out how and where something should be validated is not a "business decision". It might be a business process decision, but unless it affect the bottom line (for example, the validation costs $50 so we only do it when a customer is just about to purchase) it's not a business decision.

    There's a real problem with engineers not understanding business just as much as there's a problem with business types not understanding engineering. I had one of my engineers say to me once "I don't understand why we have sales people" (hint for those of you nodding along with him - it's so we get income so the engineers and everyone else can get paid). I've seen companies where engineering gold-plated the systems architecture to the point where the company couldn't make money with the deployed hardware.

    Business isn't all that complicated and anyone competent as an engineer should be able to understand it (you may not like it but that's another issue entirely). Figuring out how the costs of a system affect the business, how the features in a product affect its salability, these are things that a good engineer will understand, and will probably wind up explaining to the business people.

  5. Re:Go vertical! on Processors and the Limits of Physics · · Score: 1

    Think different!

    Maybe instead of stacking the chips, you put one on the bottom and have it double as a backplane and then mount additional dies to it vertically (like itty bitty expansion cards). Then you can get some airflow or other coolant flow in between those vertically mounted dies.

    These kinds of funky solutions will only show up when they're cost-effective (that is, absolutely needed). The reason we stick with flat dies (and single die packages) is because it's cheaper to make/mount a single die in a package. However, when the performance is really needed we'll start seeing some innovative solutions.

  6. Go vertical! on Processors and the Limits of Physics · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Stacking dies or some other form of going from flat to vertical will get you around some of the signaling limits. If you look back at old supercomputer designs there were a lot of neat tricks played with the physical architecture to work around performance problems (for example, having a curved backplane lets you have a shorter bus but more space between boards for cooling). Heat is probably the major problem, but we still haven't gone to active cooling for chips yet (e.g. running cooling tubes through the processor rather than trying to take the heat off the top).

  7. Re:Japan is still pretty backwards in some ways on Telegram Not Dead STOP Alive, Evolving In Japan STOP · · Score: 1

    No, it does not double as the national bank. The Postal Savings Bank IS one of the largest (if not the largest) bank but it is NOT the national/central bank. The Bank of Japan is the equivalent of the US Federal Reserve and issues the money and is the lender of last resort.

  8. The last one we received... on Telegram Not Dead STOP Alive, Evolving In Japan STOP · · Score: 1

    It's been a while since we received a telegram in Japan, but the last one we got came with a WInnie the Pooh stuffed animal. The message was in the honey pot.

  9. Re:Japan is still pretty backwards in some ways on Telegram Not Dead STOP Alive, Evolving In Japan STOP · · Score: 1

    Sorry, "furikome" or bank transfer is the common way to pay people. Checks don't really exist, so if someone doesn't have a bank account they would need to get paid in cash.

  10. Just like C then? on Oracle Hasn't Killed Java -- But There's Still Time · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, how much language "innovation" do we need? The platform is huge and there's more than enough third-party libraries to satisfy any needs.

  11. Re:So.. what? on TEPCO: Nearly All Nuclear Fuel Melted At Fukushima No. 3 Reactor · · Score: 1

    Well, if we could get a majority of people to start talking about risks and costs rationally it would be wonderful. As it is, you've got people criticizing solar plants because a few birds got fried. Never mind whatever problems the solar plant replaced. I think the risk/rewards on nuclear are acceptable but trying to get people to talk about nuclear in a rational way is difficult.

  12. Re:Two things I'm certain of... on Ex-Autonomy CFO: HP Trying To Hide Truth · · Score: 2

    Facebook stock trades at 94x earnings. HP trades at 14x. Facebook stock is quite a bit more risky than HP stock because it has so much forward growth built into it already. Zuckerman treats Facebook stock like Monopoly money because it pretty much is.

  13. Re:This is really egg on HP's face on Ex-Autonomy CFO: HP Trying To Hide Truth · · Score: 1

    I heard rumors from people working at Autonomy that they were shady long before the acquisition started. I kept hearing things like "If this were a US company the top management would be in jail" This kind of thing, where they were cooking the revenue numbers, involved a lot of people.

  14. Re:This is really egg on HP's face on Ex-Autonomy CFO: HP Trying To Hide Truth · · Score: 1

    Yes, right on the money. This was Apotheker's deal to save the company and transform HP into a software company. He was doing everything he could to ramrod it through, I'm sure.

  15. Re:This is really egg on HP's face on Ex-Autonomy CFO: HP Trying To Hide Truth · · Score: 2

    Interesting - apparently they were suing Deloitte and KPMG but have now dropped them from the lawsuit. It seems odd that they'd let the auditors off the hook.

  16. This is really egg on HP's face on Ex-Autonomy CFO: HP Trying To Hide Truth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    HP is a multi-billion dollar corporation. In other words, they get to wear the big boy pants. Due diligence is part of the acquisition process and it's a breach of the HP board's fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders to have gotten rooked so badly. I know people who worked at Autonomy prior to the acquisition and there were plenty of rumors going around about Autonomy's accounting shenanigans.

    Lynch and Hussain may very well have committed fraud on HP. However, getting taken for $8B brings to mind the old saying about a fool and his money.

  17. Re:How to fix the sorry state of FOSS docs on Ask Slashdot: What To Do About the Sorry State of FOSS Documentation? · · Score: 1

    Yes - I still don't know what the point behind info is other than to be different than man.

  18. The CO2 needs to be sequestered or you're just delaying the problem. So carbonating beverages and growing tomatoes with it is right out. Anything that doesn't put it back into long-term storage is not helping.

    I wonder what standard of safety these carbon storage proposals are being held to? We've gone absolutely nuts on radioactive material storage but the reality is, even if the stuff gets out in 10,000 years it's going to create a fairly localized problem. Whereas if your CO2 storage springs a leak and dumps a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere that could have planet-wide repercussions.

  19. Re:It's not a marketplace.. on Is the App Store Broken? · · Score: 1

    Apple claims developers have made $15B since 2008. That's 6 years. If you divided it out equally, that $2.5B per year. In contrast, Adobe alone takes in $4B a year in revenues. Even if you assume that the market has grown substantially and 2013 developer payouts were half, that's still $7.5 billion.

    The iOS marketplace is still a lot smaller than the general software marketplace in terms of revenue thanks to the ridiculously low prices Apple has pushed on app developers.

  20. Re:I'm confused... on Verizon's Accidental Mea Culpa · · Score: 1

    "That is correct, but you should be able to see that this is an unsustainable model. Let's say Netflix continues growing by leaps and bounds and absolutely dominates as the source of traffic on the Internet, even more so than it already does. L3 gets paid more and more by Netflix for their access bandwidth while Verizon gets absolutely nothing extra but is required to carry more and more load from L3."

    The only reason that L3 would get paid more would be because Netflix was fully using their connection and getting their money's worth and needed to purchase additional bandwidth. Verizon would get paid more if either the number of customers increased OR their customers maxed out their bandwidth and needed faster connections. The reason Verizon would not get paid more is because Verizon is selling an oversubscribed service but likes to pretend that they are not.

    So, what's really happening here is a mismatch between business models. When you buy a "business grade" Internet connection you pay more with the assumption that you are going to pump as much data down it 7x24 as you possibly can. You get what you contracted for.

    When you purchase home internet connectivity, your price/bit/sec is considerably lower because it's on an oversubscribed network. However, the carrier will never say that, merely that your bandwidth isn't guaranteed. If you do try to use it 7x24 they'll try to find some way to wriggle out of the contract they made. And that's exactly what Verizon is doing here, by throttling the bandwidth from Netflix. Suppose all the traffic wasn't coming from Netflix. Would it make any difference? Not really, because as the L3 guy pointed out, the cost of the networknetwork hop is miniscule. Where it does cost is in the haul from the peering point to the house. So anything that increases the amount of traffic from the peering point to the house will cost Verizon money.

    If someone were to come up with a peer-to-peer movie streaming service that ran entirely within Verizon's network but only on home connections they'd have a cow as well. What they really want is to be paid on a per-bit basis but that's not palatable in the consumer marketplace.

  21. Re:Help me understand on Verizon's Accidental Mea Culpa · · Score: 1

    And when you order a product from Amazon and they pay FedEx to deliver it, FedEx doesn't give you another bill when they show up at your doorstep.

    There are different payment models. Home Internet access has been sold for a long time as "x bits/sec" use as much or as little as you like. Internet traffic was traditionally bursty, without long sustained transmissions so ISPs got into the habit of oversubscribing their networks and holding onto as much of the money as they can.

    Netflix pays their ISP (Level 3) quite a bit a of money to provide network access. And Verizon's customers (collectively) pay Verizon quite a bit of money to provide network access. The problem is that the way Internet access is priced it's in the ISP's best interest to discourage you from using the network while promising you more and charging you more.

    Per packet pricing, charged to someone, would be one solution to this problem but it's not very popular with people who have gotten used to "all you can eat". I'd certainly hate having my Internet bills jump up and down on a monthly basis.

  22. Re:I'm confused... on Verizon's Accidental Mea Culpa · · Score: 1

    How is traffic ever going to be balanced between a last mile provider like Verizon and a backbone provider?

    Historically, if my memory serves, ISPs paid backbones for access to the Internet, not the other way around. The cash flowed from ISPs to backbones because ISP customers paid for Internet access and then the ISP paid their upstream provider. Backbones didn't pay each other and set up peering arrangements because they realized it was pretty much a wash.

    The way I see it, Verizon is trying to double dip. Their customers have paid them for bandwidth and a connection to other networks. Netflix has paid L3 for their internet connectivity and L3 has delivered up to the Verizon network. Verizon chooses to not provide adequate access even though their customers are the ones pulling the data from Netflix.

  23. Re:I disagree on Verizon's Accidental Mea Culpa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Level 3 doesn't pay Comcast for bandwidth. Why should they? Comcast customers have already paid Comcast for the links to their house and they're the ones pulling data from Level 3. Level 3's customers pay Level 3 to deliver to the edge of their network. As the Level 3 post points out, the cost for Verizon to add more bandwidth between the Level 3 network and the Verizon network is minimal.

  24. You know, you can write hard to read code in C as well but most C doesn't turn as hard to read as most Perl.

    Unreadable code is unmaintainable code. It may not be buggy but how do you know?

  25. Re:They shouldn't have immunity then on Massachusetts SWAT Teams Claim They're Private Corporations, Immune To Oversight · · Score: 1

    Police officers, however, cannot usually be personally sued for their actions while on the job.