To some extent, it's a fire that feeds itself. A company starts doing well, starts attracting more and more talent. The talent wants a decent life, so they buy up houses close to work. Company continues to do well, more talent wants to live there. Nobody is building new houses, and no way in hell the people already there want more traffic, denser housing, etc. So the cost of living goes up. But also, the area starts going upscale since you have all this well paid talent in the area. After some time, you end up with this vast concentration of built up talent that has zero interest in moving because they like their life. So if you want to start a new venture, it makes a lot of sense to locate it where the talent is, as you can hire the people you want and they don't need to relocate.
Case in point: me. I started with the company I work with a long time ago. I bought a house in the area. Had kids. Kids are now in local schools. Company still doing well. I like my job. My job has a lot of in demand skills. When recruiters call if they can match my pay rate, the next question is about the commute length, third is amount of vacation time, then it's to the actual job description and duties. If I'm not going to make more, there's little point. If I have to double my commute, why bother? If I lose vacation time, why bother? The area I'm in has appreciated in real estate value to the point that moving to certain locations is just out of the question, even if housing were available -- and it's generally not, we are in the "10 offers accepted above asking, 5 are cash with no inspection" part of the stupid real estate market.
First they copied the stupid "headphone jack delete" idea, now this nonsense. Guess I'll just keep putting batteries in my 6P as they wear since they are evidently out of fresh ideas and have started copying bugs made into features.
There already are GPU boards on the market that have no video out port.
These boards come at a considerable cost premium versus the GeForce/Titan ones, and require the chassis to provide cooling, they have no onboard fan. A Titan XP is ~$1500 vs the P100 at ~$4600, a Titan V is ~$3000 vs the V100 at $8400. If you compare the non-Titan GeForce cards your money goes even farther. There are some more advanced features on the Tesla cards (memory, bandwidth, etc), and for the Pascal ones, the P100 does doubles math really well, the Titan V is nearly the same. As I understand it, these extra features don't matter to crypto miners. Why buy one card for $$$$ that can do X amount of processing when you can spend $ for one card end up with 3-4X the processing power for the same money?
From TFA: "Globally, however, Spotify remains in a league of its own, with nearly twice as many paid subscribers as No. 2 Apple, and slightly faster subscriber growth."
I'm a happy Spotify customer. It works on every platform we have in our house, including Linux
My company uses Linux, Windows and Mac across the enterprise. All of our email/calendar/messaging comes from Exchange/Outlook/Skype. Now if MS would release Outlook in this same format I could happily jettison the Windows VM I run Windows/Outlook/Skype on and not have to put up with its endless bullshit. Mac already has a client for all the MS stuff that people use.
It's about 6 steps above my pay grade to do anything about this choice, so the chances of swapping out the company's messaging platform for some open source thing, or switching everyone to Linux isn't going to happen because I open my mouth. Our customer base uses all platforms so it's not like we could drop one platform and stay solvent.
I've never heard of this company via advertising, I've never seen a billboard, I've never heard anyone I know talk about it, I've never heard it mentioned when someone asks about cutting the cable bill, etc. Upon further investigation, they were going after buildings with 10+ units only. That doesn't reflect a lot of the housing stock here. A lot of the housing is composed of 2 or 3 unit dwellings that were originally constructed in the early 20th century, largely centered on public transit stops, and built so someone could afford to own the whole building but rent the other units out (pre condo law). Nowadays, these have a mix of ownership styles, from a live in landlord who rents the other units to being a very small (2-4 unit) condo association. There are, of course, more modern apartment/condo buildings that have more units, but those aren't as common as you might find in other newer cities that had the places to build them. Of course, as you get out from the center of Boston you find more single family homes.
So according to the website, it sounds like the economics of bringing whatever equipment was needed to a triple decker was going to not work out, so that cuts out a huge part of the market for this technology. Given that a large part of renters here are students, who are going to be looking for cheap rent and move yearly, I can't imagine that the landlord is going to do anything beside the bare minimum to rent the units -- so if they are wired for a cable provider already, what's the incentive for the landlord? If they raise their rent they are likely to not be as attractive to the very price-driven college market.
Kindle works as a Kindle (as in the device) and Kindle (as in the app). The app works on pretty every much platform I have around the house... our Android phones, the Apple devices we have around (iPod, iPhone, iPad), and our (convertible) Windows laptops. I also believe I can read my book on a plain old browser if I log into my Amazon account. We have a family Amazon account so we can share books that way, and my library works with the Overdrive app, which happily lets me check out ebooks from the library and send them to my "Kindle" to read.
Or I can go get a book through godawful iTunes and then not be able to read it, and I'm locked into the platform, and as far as I can tell, no integration with my local library so I need to pay for the book. Yay, where do I sign up?
My town has a municipal ISP, run by our municipal power company. Our power rates are lower than the neighboring towns, which are served by commercial operators who have been asking for double-digit percent increases in power rates every year. In contrast, our power company gave everyone in town $20 off a bill last year because they had too much money in their operating fund. The service people live in town, and are very responsive to outages, we often have power back before other towns served by commercial operators.
On the ISP side, rates are pretty reasonable, and there's not the aggressive bundling that you see with Comcast, et. al. If you just want Internet you can get that, if you want Internet+Cable+Phone, you can get that, too. We have had speed upgrades but not cost upgrades. The service department only operates business hours, but we've not had an outage in 10+ years of living here, so I can't complain about reliability. When we did need service, they came at the appointed time, did their work, and were polite. So no complaints there.
The big downside is the common one for a lot of America, meaning that there is no competition. So if I wanted to get FIOS/XFinity/Comcast, or they could offer service at a lower cost, etc. I can't get it. So I'm locked in with no choice. But at least I am locked into a service that's provided for a reasonable cost, run by by neighbors, and delivered with high reliability.
People leave the country and abandon the car. This is common enough at airports that there's a process for declaring the car abandoned and auctioning it off. I'd imagine something similar happened here, or maybe someone died and their car was in the garage. Shouldn't be major news or hard to track down though, there is a number plate and a VIN on the car... see who owns it, send them all required letters/notice, then send to auction if they don't respond. The car dealer can cut a new key with the VIN and correct legal documents.
2) Is also difficult because you might need to re-architect and refactor parts of your code base. So if you can find a qualified person to work on the security issues found as part of a code audit, it can result in API changes, critical functionality changing behavior, and other such issues. We have people on staff at my company who do this kind of work, but it's not something you bang out in an afternoon and call it done.
In other news, Microsoft finds that adopting Windows will work best for your company, Monsanto funds a study to say their crops are the sure way to make money as a farmer, Ford funds a study that says they make the best cars and trucks, Coca-Cola funds a study that finds their products are the most liked, etc.
I don't disagree that security is a problem, I just have a fair bit of skepticism that a study funded by Computer Associates, takeover-and-neglect artists of the software world, is really going to get to the root issues that make integrating security into software development processes without a fair helping of "we can send an army of consultants to help you for a fee, in addition to licensing some software we acquired and will resell/license to you at a pretty large markup".
Y2K didn't become a disaster because the problem was recognized and a shitload of work happened to verify that it wasn't a problem, and where it would be a problem, mitigation strategies, software patches and other work happened. I don't know where this guy was or if he's got a shitty memory, but we certainly devoted a pile of time and resources to it, both for our internal systems (applying patches to all systems, checking/updating critical software) as well as the software we ship.
I'm also all for rational discussion, rational plans, rational regulations and a rational free market. The broadband market in the US lags the rest of the world. Why does it do that? What could we learn from other developed countries? Why are people in rural areas underserved? Why in the world's largest capitalist economy do about half the people have no choice when it comes to their ISP? Why can't cities and municipalities build out not-for-profit networks? Why so much secrecy with comment data, fake comments and the like? Why are you ignoring what is probably the most commented upon FCC rules change ever? These are all facts and rational questions, but the response from Ajit Pai isn't one that shows vision, clear thinking, respect for the facts or any kind of leadership whatsoever. It can best be described as putting his fingers in his ears and shouting LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU like a three year old who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. That's why there's no rational discussion -- you can only talk to a blank wall for so long without being frustrated.
Exactly. We had it in the plans to acquire some V100 servers as part of an upgrade this year, as well as update some of our Dev/QE desktops to the very dearly priced GP100. Management had seen the numbers for that and were kind of holding their noses while saying "yes" because 1) they had real-live business reasons for us to do it and 2) those business reasons are considered a high priority but 3) the plan was expensive, no two ways about it. Now that this is an option, the numbers look considerably better. I wonder if nVidia wasn't getting a lot of traction on the V100 cards. Compared to the prices that P100, K40/80/20, C* and the original Tesla cards debuted at, the V100 seemed like quite the step-function, especially when you have the GTX equivalents that are doing fantastic single performance stuff at price scales set for the consumer market. Our management understands there's a "server markup", but when "markup" starts to sound more like "gouging", smart people figure out ways around the problem.
I don't know how many times people have to keep bashing their heads against this nonsense from ANY vendor and NOT GET IT. No vendor of *commercial* or *consumer grade* software is going to ship a major new release without bugs. Even developers that are held to higher standards, e.g. software systems that could affect human life (think aircraft control systems and so on) also release bugs despite extensive test plans, external audits, high CMM levels and every other relevant quality checking standard and best practice that money can buy. It also extends into other systems, as well, from automobiles to a new Zamboni. Significant redesign means things are hopefully improved, but also open the door for new problems to crop up. You don't want to encounter these problems? Don't run out and buy the latest and greatest $new_shiny_thing when it comes out. Wait a little bit and let the bugs be found and fixed. You want the $new_shiny_thing so bad it hurts? Well, be ready to find a few problems that slipped out.
So, like every other large automaker, they have a worldwide collection of production facilities? In other news, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW, GM, Ford, Chrysler/Fiat, Mazda, Subaru, etc. have been making cars outside their "home country" for decades. They even sometimes use each other's suppliers for parts, and sometimes they assemble major components in one place and do final assembly elsewhere. Shocking, I know. But look under the hood and at the names on electrical components and OEM parts, you might be surprised.
On fast charging, Chevy claims 90 miles added in 30 minutes.
https://www.chevyevlife.com/bo...
FWIW, I have a Volt. The battery covers my general commute needs, and the gas engine is used for occasional longer trips. I filled up recently and my "MPG" was over 300. The "fast charging" on the Volt involves putting about 8 gallons of gas in it, and you can drive in hybrid mode as long as you can find gas stations, about 300 miles between fill-ups, getting 40 MPG on the highway.
Yes, indeed -- the whole effort of getting a complex product out the door is a huge undertaking. Doesn't matter if it's an automobile, blender, smartphone, etc. Especially at the scale and reach that Apple has. Getting all those phones made, shipped, on display, people trained, part numbers entered, prices decided (worldwide!). I have no plans to buy any Apple product anytime soon, but they certainly have a hugely talented bunch of people who can get these things figured out. It's not by accident that they are such a successful business. People don't hand over thousands of dollars over and over again if you make a crap product, they will move to an alternative vendor -- of which there are plenty in the smartphone/electronics space.
Engineering and writing software are also negligible costs. The stores also operate rent-free because the mall landlords offer free rent for the prestige of having an Apple store, and there are no appreciable costs for sales/marketing, health benefits, salaries, testing hardware/software, etc. Apple employees work for free!
Apple is a company that wants to make money. They also need to do things like, you know, pay people, rent/own/lease buildings/stores, pay for electricity, pay for marketing, bandwidth, servers, turn a profit, that sort of thing. It's almost as if they are selling phones in a capitalist society where they can set a price and people can choose to buy it or not. Gasp, they are selling their top of the line phone for significantly more than the parts required to make it cost!
I work at a software company. We don't even sell a physical thing, people just pay us for some bits they download. We must be doing an OK job because people keep paying us, it's like our software provides value for them to do work.
> I really don't understand why LoTR is appreciated so much.
LOTR was published in 1954. Tolkein didn't have the benefit of half a century of people re-writing his stories to make it better. Look at Golden Age sci-fi. You have some standouts who wrote some good stuff in the 50's and 60's, but they also wrote a lot of crap in those days, too. If you've read recent fantasy, you are reading people who grew up on refined versions of Tolkein, so yeah, a lot of today's fantasy (and scifi) is going to be better written. But that can happen with any genre. Read old mysteries and then something by a good mystery writer today and there's decades of improvement.
As for JK Rowling, she's a beneficiary of Tolkien, too. I won't lie and say I didn't enjoy Harry Potter, it was an entertaining series. But you can trace familiar elements of her story right back to what Tolkien did when he wrote LOTR. I don't think Tolkien was the best author, either -- but it's easy to criticize, hard to actually DO.
Slashdot Mirror
To some extent, it's a fire that feeds itself. A company starts doing well, starts attracting more and more talent. The talent wants a decent life, so they buy up houses close to work. Company continues to do well, more talent wants to live there. Nobody is building new houses, and no way in hell the people already there want more traffic, denser housing, etc. So the cost of living goes up. But also, the area starts going upscale since you have all this well paid talent in the area. After some time, you end up with this vast concentration of built up talent that has zero interest in moving because they like their life. So if you want to start a new venture, it makes a lot of sense to locate it where the talent is, as you can hire the people you want and they don't need to relocate.
Case in point: me. I started with the company I work with a long time ago. I bought a house in the area. Had kids. Kids are now in local schools. Company still doing well. I like my job. My job has a lot of in demand skills. When recruiters call if they can match my pay rate, the next question is about the commute length, third is amount of vacation time, then it's to the actual job description and duties. If I'm not going to make more, there's little point. If I have to double my commute, why bother? If I lose vacation time, why bother? The area I'm in has appreciated in real estate value to the point that moving to certain locations is just out of the question, even if housing were available -- and it's generally not, we are in the "10 offers accepted above asking, 5 are cash with no inspection" part of the stupid real estate market.
First they copied the stupid "headphone jack delete" idea, now this nonsense. Guess I'll just keep putting batteries in my 6P as they wear since they are evidently out of fresh ideas and have started copying bugs made into features.
There already are GPU boards on the market that have no video out port.
These boards come at a considerable cost premium versus the GeForce/Titan ones, and require the chassis to provide cooling, they have no onboard fan. A Titan XP is ~$1500 vs the P100 at ~$4600, a Titan V is ~$3000 vs the V100 at $8400. If you compare the non-Titan GeForce cards your money goes even farther. There are some more advanced features on the Tesla cards (memory, bandwidth, etc), and for the Pascal ones, the P100 does doubles math really well, the Titan V is nearly the same. As I understand it, these extra features don't matter to crypto miners. Why buy one card for $$$$ that can do X amount of processing when you can spend $ for one card end up with 3-4X the processing power for the same money?
From TFA: "Globally, however, Spotify remains in a league of its own, with nearly twice as many paid subscribers as No. 2 Apple, and slightly faster subscriber growth."
I'm a happy Spotify customer. It works on every platform we have in our house, including Linux
My company uses Linux, Windows and Mac across the enterprise. All of our email/calendar/messaging comes from Exchange/Outlook/Skype. Now if MS would release Outlook in this same format I could happily jettison the Windows VM I run Windows/Outlook/Skype on and not have to put up with its endless bullshit. Mac already has a client for all the MS stuff that people use.
It's about 6 steps above my pay grade to do anything about this choice, so the chances of swapping out the company's messaging platform for some open source thing, or switching everyone to Linux isn't going to happen because I open my mouth. Our customer base uses all platforms so it's not like we could drop one platform and stay solvent.
I've never heard of this company via advertising, I've never seen a billboard, I've never heard anyone I know talk about it, I've never heard it mentioned when someone asks about cutting the cable bill, etc. Upon further investigation, they were going after buildings with 10+ units only. That doesn't reflect a lot of the housing stock here. A lot of the housing is composed of 2 or 3 unit dwellings that were originally constructed in the early 20th century, largely centered on public transit stops, and built so someone could afford to own the whole building but rent the other units out (pre condo law). Nowadays, these have a mix of ownership styles, from a live in landlord who rents the other units to being a very small (2-4 unit) condo association. There are, of course, more modern apartment/condo buildings that have more units, but those aren't as common as you might find in other newer cities that had the places to build them. Of course, as you get out from the center of Boston you find more single family homes.
So according to the website, it sounds like the economics of bringing whatever equipment was needed to a triple decker was going to not work out, so that cuts out a huge part of the market for this technology. Given that a large part of renters here are students, who are going to be looking for cheap rent and move yearly, I can't imagine that the landlord is going to do anything beside the bare minimum to rent the units -- so if they are wired for a cable provider already, what's the incentive for the landlord? If they raise their rent they are likely to not be as attractive to the very price-driven college market.
Kindle works as a Kindle (as in the device) and Kindle (as in the app). The app works on pretty every much platform I have around the house ... our Android phones, the Apple devices we have around (iPod, iPhone, iPad), and our (convertible) Windows laptops. I also believe I can read my book on a plain old browser if I log into my Amazon account. We have a family Amazon account so we can share books that way, and my library works with the Overdrive app, which happily lets me check out ebooks from the library and send them to my "Kindle" to read.
Or I can go get a book through godawful iTunes and then not be able to read it, and I'm locked into the platform, and as far as I can tell, no integration with my local library so I need to pay for the book. Yay, where do I sign up?
My town has a municipal ISP, run by our municipal power company. Our power rates are lower than the neighboring towns, which are served by commercial operators who have been asking for double-digit percent increases in power rates every year. In contrast, our power company gave everyone in town $20 off a bill last year because they had too much money in their operating fund. The service people live in town, and are very responsive to outages, we often have power back before other towns served by commercial operators.
On the ISP side, rates are pretty reasonable, and there's not the aggressive bundling that you see with Comcast, et. al. If you just want Internet you can get that, if you want Internet+Cable+Phone, you can get that, too. We have had speed upgrades but not cost upgrades. The service department only operates business hours, but we've not had an outage in 10+ years of living here, so I can't complain about reliability. When we did need service, they came at the appointed time, did their work, and were polite. So no complaints there.
The big downside is the common one for a lot of America, meaning that there is no competition. So if I wanted to get FIOS/XFinity/Comcast, or they could offer service at a lower cost, etc. I can't get it. So I'm locked in with no choice. But at least I am locked into a service that's provided for a reasonable cost, run by by neighbors, and delivered with high reliability.
People leave the country and abandon the car. This is common enough at airports that there's a process for declaring the car abandoned and auctioning it off. I'd imagine something similar happened here, or maybe someone died and their car was in the garage. Shouldn't be major news or hard to track down though, there is a number plate and a VIN on the car ... see who owns it, send them all required letters/notice, then send to auction if they don't respond. The car dealer can cut a new key with the VIN and correct legal documents.
2) Is also difficult because you might need to re-architect and refactor parts of your code base. So if you can find a qualified person to work on the security issues found as part of a code audit, it can result in API changes, critical functionality changing behavior, and other such issues. We have people on staff at my company who do this kind of work, but it's not something you bang out in an afternoon and call it done.
In other news, Microsoft finds that adopting Windows will work best for your company, Monsanto funds a study to say their crops are the sure way to make money as a farmer, Ford funds a study that says they make the best cars and trucks, Coca-Cola funds a study that finds their products are the most liked, etc.
I don't disagree that security is a problem, I just have a fair bit of skepticism that a study funded by Computer Associates, takeover-and-neglect artists of the software world, is really going to get to the root issues that make integrating security into software development processes without a fair helping of "we can send an army of consultants to help you for a fee, in addition to licensing some software we acquired and will resell/license to you at a pretty large markup".
Y2K didn't become a disaster because the problem was recognized and a shitload of work happened to verify that it wasn't a problem, and where it would be a problem, mitigation strategies, software patches and other work happened. I don't know where this guy was or if he's got a shitty memory, but we certainly devoted a pile of time and resources to it, both for our internal systems (applying patches to all systems, checking/updating critical software) as well as the software we ship.
I'm also all for rational discussion, rational plans, rational regulations and a rational free market. The broadband market in the US lags the rest of the world. Why does it do that? What could we learn from other developed countries? Why are people in rural areas underserved? Why in the world's largest capitalist economy do about half the people have no choice when it comes to their ISP? Why can't cities and municipalities build out not-for-profit networks? Why so much secrecy with comment data, fake comments and the like? Why are you ignoring what is probably the most commented upon FCC rules change ever? These are all facts and rational questions, but the response from Ajit Pai isn't one that shows vision, clear thinking, respect for the facts or any kind of leadership whatsoever. It can best be described as putting his fingers in his ears and shouting LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU like a three year old who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. That's why there's no rational discussion -- you can only talk to a blank wall for so long without being frustrated.
Exactly. We had it in the plans to acquire some V100 servers as part of an upgrade this year, as well as update some of our Dev/QE desktops to the very dearly priced GP100. Management had seen the numbers for that and were kind of holding their noses while saying "yes" because 1) they had real-live business reasons for us to do it and 2) those business reasons are considered a high priority but 3) the plan was expensive, no two ways about it. Now that this is an option, the numbers look considerably better. I wonder if nVidia wasn't getting a lot of traction on the V100 cards. Compared to the prices that P100, K40/80/20, C* and the original Tesla cards debuted at, the V100 seemed like quite the step-function, especially when you have the GTX equivalents that are doing fantastic single performance stuff at price scales set for the consumer market. Our management understands there's a "server markup", but when "markup" starts to sound more like "gouging", smart people figure out ways around the problem.
Nazi fonts, Nazi fonts, Nazi fonts, fuck off!
I don't know how many times people have to keep bashing their heads against this nonsense from ANY vendor and NOT GET IT. No vendor of *commercial* or *consumer grade* software is going to ship a major new release without bugs. Even developers that are held to higher standards, e.g. software systems that could affect human life (think aircraft control systems and so on) also release bugs despite extensive test plans, external audits, high CMM levels and every other relevant quality checking standard and best practice that money can buy. It also extends into other systems, as well, from automobiles to a new Zamboni. Significant redesign means things are hopefully improved, but also open the door for new problems to crop up. You don't want to encounter these problems? Don't run out and buy the latest and greatest $new_shiny_thing when it comes out. Wait a little bit and let the bugs be found and fixed. You want the $new_shiny_thing so bad it hurts? Well, be ready to find a few problems that slipped out.
So, like every other large automaker, they have a worldwide collection of production facilities? In other news, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW, GM, Ford, Chrysler/Fiat, Mazda, Subaru, etc. have been making cars outside their "home country" for decades. They even sometimes use each other's suppliers for parts, and sometimes they assemble major components in one place and do final assembly elsewhere. Shocking, I know. But look under the hood and at the names on electrical components and OEM parts, you might be surprised.
On fast charging, Chevy claims 90 miles added in 30 minutes. https://www.chevyevlife.com/bo... FWIW, I have a Volt. The battery covers my general commute needs, and the gas engine is used for occasional longer trips. I filled up recently and my "MPG" was over 300. The "fast charging" on the Volt involves putting about 8 gallons of gas in it, and you can drive in hybrid mode as long as you can find gas stations, about 300 miles between fill-ups, getting 40 MPG on the highway.
Did you miss the part where the costs of the recall / remediation were more than $30B or more? http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/2...
Yes, indeed -- the whole effort of getting a complex product out the door is a huge undertaking. Doesn't matter if it's an automobile, blender, smartphone, etc. Especially at the scale and reach that Apple has. Getting all those phones made, shipped, on display, people trained, part numbers entered, prices decided (worldwide!). I have no plans to buy any Apple product anytime soon, but they certainly have a hugely talented bunch of people who can get these things figured out. It's not by accident that they are such a successful business. People don't hand over thousands of dollars over and over again if you make a crap product, they will move to an alternative vendor -- of which there are plenty in the smartphone/electronics space.
Engineering and writing software are also negligible costs. The stores also operate rent-free because the mall landlords offer free rent for the prestige of having an Apple store, and there are no appreciable costs for sales/marketing, health benefits, salaries, testing hardware/software, etc. Apple employees work for free!
Nope. Privately held firm.
Apple is a company that wants to make money. They also need to do things like, you know, pay people, rent/own/lease buildings/stores, pay for electricity, pay for marketing, bandwidth, servers, turn a profit, that sort of thing. It's almost as if they are selling phones in a capitalist society where they can set a price and people can choose to buy it or not. Gasp, they are selling their top of the line phone for significantly more than the parts required to make it cost!
I work at a software company. We don't even sell a physical thing, people just pay us for some bits they download. We must be doing an OK job because people keep paying us, it's like our software provides value for them to do work.
Or Abercrombie's "First Law" series. As a bonus, it's already complete!
LOTR was published in 1954. Tolkein didn't have the benefit of half a century of people re-writing his stories to make it better. Look at Golden Age sci-fi. You have some standouts who wrote some good stuff in the 50's and 60's, but they also wrote a lot of crap in those days, too. If you've read recent fantasy, you are reading people who grew up on refined versions of Tolkein, so yeah, a lot of today's fantasy (and scifi) is going to be better written. But that can happen with any genre. Read old mysteries and then something by a good mystery writer today and there's decades of improvement.
As for JK Rowling, she's a beneficiary of Tolkien, too. I won't lie and say I didn't enjoy Harry Potter, it was an entertaining series. But you can trace familiar elements of her story right back to what Tolkien did when he wrote LOTR. I don't think Tolkien was the best author, either -- but it's easy to criticize, hard to actually DO.
You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum...a monster that ate all their money and delivered a flop.