No, if the satellite is small you can put in orbit a lot of them with a single launch. Google 'cubesat' for an extreme version of this idea.
Well, yes, but the problem you will have is the limited orbital variations you can get from a single launch of multiple satellites. There is a trade off here between launch weight and fuel and the initial orbits of everything. The last thing you really want is 10 small satellites that are all in the same orbit.
That is part of the reason that these 'looser pays' rules make me nervous. Truly bad actors like patent trolls have lots of ways around actually paying out, but small shops or inventors generally do not, so all it does is increase the risk associated with taking on companies with more resources.
When filing a lawsuit you generally only have to consider spending what you can afford, but having to consider what the other party can afford changes the equation dramatically.
Good point. But looser pays has good aspects too. How about we modify it by requiring an escrow account where the filer is required to either put up a percentage of expected legal fees, or allow leans on the personal property of the principles of any corporation that files? Claims on personal property would require court action to prove who the person or persons who made the decision to sue was, but this would put a huge damper on marginal lawsuits.
They do this kind of thing in other countries, so Looser Pays is not without it's good points too.
Wait, you're taking the NSA's word on anything that has to do with this? Ahahahahahahaha oh god.
And you take Snowden's word?
The NSA activities have been fully reviewed and vetted by the administration and congress. You may not agree with their analysis, but they are NOT lying about what they do. What they do is a matter of record, some of that record is classified, but not disclosing stuff doesn't mean they are lying. Remember that they are subject to both congressional and administration oversight.
Snowden, on the other hand, most likely has made up stuff (i.e. is lying) about things. Being a "trained spy"? Please... There are any number of things Snowden could have done to make his point that didn't involve leaking classified documents to the press.... Who's lying here?
I won't disagree with you, but the men who formed our country tried to deal with the issues within the system first, and only after exhausting the legal options did they decide to rebel. Also, they fully understood and accepted that they would likely die in the attempt to secure their independence. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence where captured and killed. But the two points here are 1. They did everything they legally could first, and 2. Acknowledged and accepted the punishment for their crimes should their bid for independence failed.
Snowden didn't exhaust the legal options he had, but went straight into violating the law by disclosing classified documents in an act of treason, in a vain attempt to preserve his freedom and life. There is no comparison.
IF he was trained (which I doubt) He's even more responsible for the crime he committed. This guy is a traitor, plain and simple. But he wasn't trained as a spy by the NSA, he's making stuff up. But it's not the first time he's made stuff up.
Folks may think Snowden is some good actor, but he is not. He's lying about a lot of his story and trying to wrap himself in patriotism in an effort to sway public opinion. At best, he's really really lucky to have his escape work so well, at worst, he's working for somebody who is using him who planned and is funding this whole side show.
My guess is that he is just a pawn being used in a game he doesn't possibly understand. He is self important and feels entitled, and somehow thought that he didn't have to really exhaust the reporting options he had and that "going public" would overshadow his crimes. How he's into the deep end of the hot water pool and doesn't know how to swim. As soon as Putin grows tired of Snowden or he becomes a liability for Russia, they will throw him out on his ear and poor Snowden will have nothing. The only question is how long does Snowden have? I'm guessing, until January 20th of 2017...
The only place he'd ever get repatriated to is Leavenworth (if they're being generous) or Gitmo (if they aren't).
I'd bet it's Leavenworth, assuming they let him live. The guy is now claiming "He was a spy" which means he is admitting to espionage. To me, that makes him no-longer a whistle-blower, but something quite different. He's admitting to being a traitor, which entitles him to a trial on charges that can carry some serious penalties, including death. I'd be surprised if they went for death, given he's still alive. Being in Russia is only an inconvenience to the US, if they wanted him dead, he'd be dead by now.
My guess is that they want him for the information he has about what he took and where he stashed all the documents. Which means they want to get their hands on him for trial. Further, I'd bet he could cut a deal with them, given the public perceptions of him, especially if he can get them information that stops further documentation from going public.
Seriously, Who's surprised that Wikipedia has errors in the medical information it contains? Who is surprised that there are doctors that still use it? We all act like this is somehow a serious problem, or that it's dangerous. Dangerous compared to what? Wikipedia is an excellent place to *start* an investigation, but before you start making life and death choices, you really need to check some other sources. Doctor's are generally NOT stupid enough to just go with something they find on the internet.
If you suspect your Doctor is out running a Google search on "Lower abdominal pain with fever" just because they don't know better, I suggest you get another doctor, one who actually has some training. And if you see some website that tries to tell you that you have malaria because you are running a fever you are stupid if you don't consult a doctor before being treated for it.
...and California, much as it likes to think it's a country unto itself, has NO jurisdiction over the NSA, over their methods, even over their agents (when acting in an official capacity and all those other qualifiers)
If it makes the CA legislature feel good about themselves to do this, great! But it means about as much as the lot of them threatening to hold their breath till the NSA stops spying...
Hey, Elections are coming up. Politicians need positive stuff to put in their campaign ads so they pass a pointless law so they can act like they care. This law makes for a good sound bite, so you vote for it, even if it's stupid, pointless and a total waste of time.
The DOJ will simply take the State of California to court. CA will lose.
Nope... There is no need to do anything because the law is pointless.
The NSA already gets warrants..... Of course, from a secret court, but they are warrants none the less.
What can a State do? Require one of THEIR state judges sign the federal warrant? Yea, like that's going to happen.
Now what MIGHT happen, is the Attorney General of the state might sue the federal government in a vain attempt to enforce their law. I'm pretty sure the case would fail just past the doorway in federal court in short order.
Hardware costs money, IP addresses cost money, buildings cost money, billing customers costs money, bandwidth costs money, employees cost money and electrical power costs money. Personally, I think having somebody do all this for me for the little some charge is a great deal.
So, if you don't want to make payments to somebody for your hosting, you are free to buy the hardware, an IP address and bandwidth and pay the power company and do it yourself. Good Luck.
If I want to host my own, I get VMware in my own datacenter.
If I want to host in the cloud, I buy storage+compute from AWS.
I see no reason to deploy OpenStack at a small to medium sized business. Am I just looking to get myself fired for insisting on a solution that is not VMware?
And I would agree with you. OpenStak has the PROMISE of being a good thing for your average user, but it is FAR from being a turn-key solution. Getting OpenStack to actually do what you want it to is not something most smaller operators have time to figure out but requires someone who knows a lot about the specific VM product you want to use and the tools needed to make adjustments to your created machines.
But that really isn't a problem with OpenStack points to the purpose of OpenStack. This tool is designed to help you Create, run, edit, and move virtual machines in mass quantities. If you are not creating hundreds of nearly identical VM's, don't bother with OpenStack.
Any engineer who follows GM's edict should be flogged.
How about we just put them in stocks in the town square. You do realize that if you ignore this order, you can kiss your job goodbye. For some, that's a serious problem because you don't want your wife and kids ending up homeless.
Now, if I worked for GM and this came out, I'd be seriously looking for another job, but while they write my paycheck I live with their rules best I can. Unless they are asking something illegal, in which case I'd be asking for instructions in writing, getting a lawyer, reporting it to every ethics hotline I could find and contacting law enforcement though my lawyer while I refused to comply. But what they are asking here is not illegal. It might look bad, but it's not illegal.
Saying that is like handing signed blank checks to a host of personal injury lawyers. Especially for a company like GM which is seen as HUGE money pit. So the corporate lawyer reviewing the public statement is going to have kittens if the PR department tried something like this.
at least they actually acknowledge their faults these days.
Only because the government is in the process of issuing fines to GM and a host of lawsuits are soon to hit for all the untimely deaths caused by the various design issues they have been forced to recall.
Everybody needs to understand exactly WHAT this is. This is a lawyer sitting in his office who realizes that as soon as he gets hit by a discovery notice, he's going to have to turn over electronic copies of E-mails, documents and such that might have something to do with a lawsuit. He's trying to make the real evidence hard to find, hard to explain and avoid the appearance of having a "smoking gun" E-mail or document that can be easily found using a text search. This is all about obfuscation.
But GM is FAR from the only company that does this.. I've worked at a few companies that had some interesting rules about stuff like this. I worked at one place where the document retention policy was *obviously* geared towards the company getting sued. Keeping something for more than a quarter required manager approvals and justification. It was just plain stupid and hard to work with so we generally ignored it. I found out why though at a later date. Apparently the CFO was doing some "shady" (or outright illegal by SEC standards) practices and was trying to cover his tracks.
Right and there was not american to american phone calls from the Bahamas.
This doesn't matter, or so the courts say. You step off sovereign US territory and the legal assumption that you are a US citizen no longer applies. So, where they cannot TARGET you knowing you are a citizen (without a warrant), they can intercept your phone calls in their quest for intelligence information when you are on foreign soil. The rules are literally different OUTSIDE the country, and you need to get used to that because it's been this way for decades.
What's changed though is the *sharing* of intelligence information gathered by the NSA with law enforcement.... But that's not what this article is about..
Anyone at NSA who is participating in this is committing an act of war against a sovereign nation without any declaration of war.
-jcr
Slow down cowboy and holster that side arm... The Article is a bit conflicting on this.. It says EVERY cell call, *then* it clarifies that it's only international calls, which is certainly NOT every cell call. So, this might not be what you suspect and before you start a shooting war we need to think about this.
Seems this is NOT an act of war, it's simply monitoring traffic coming over international trunks and that they simply have the ability to intercept the signaling, and both sides of the conversation. This requires no *in country* equipment or invasion of territory to do. This is NOT new information, we've know about this for years, even before Snowden did his document dump. Now if they set this tap up IN the Bahamas, you *might* have an argument, but I don't think that's what happened here.
Now, if they really are monitoring ALL cell calls, then it would be necessary to have assets in country and you MIGHT have your "act of war" but then again, you might not. At any rate, even if the NSA invaded the Bahamas to do this, I seriously doubt they'd be incensed enough to do much more than protest. What you going to do? Throw out all the rich American tourists or start a shooting war and watch them run? I don't think so.
I'm just going to have a heart attack and DIE from that surprise..
This is SO STUPID. If you cannot get your hands on the hackers to arrest them, then why bother with saying anything? Just keep the honey pot in place and keep tracing where the attacks are coming from. Then, when you can get your hands on them it's special rendition time. This tell the public what happened only serves to notify everybody that you got hacked and then trying to take legal action to punish the hackers which has no hope of doing anything says you are inept and clueless too.
You knew I would drink from the glass in front of me, so you switched the glasses so the one in front of me has the poison... BUT, you knew I would think that so CLEARLY the glass in front of you has the poison.... etc.. We are right at the "Never get in a land war in Asia.. " Line being spoken by this administration, only they are not wearing the mask.
You mean first to x86-64. Intel had a 64-bit processor before that (Itanium). 13 years later, Itanium is dead and x86 is holding us back, so much that servers are turning towards ARMv8 (inferior design to Itanium, but tons of momentum from mobile/embedded).
You do realize that this run towards ARM is not a full stampede, and is driven by price and operating costs and only useful for Unix/Linux systems as windows server isn't really interested in supporting ARM yet. This is more like a trickle of some large specialized systems off onto Red Hat (or similar) systems where one can afford to just change processors and recompile everything in an effort to same a bit of operating power and hardware costs. But you have to be looking at enough servers to make this worth the labor cost.
So, where I don't care for the X86 family and would love everybody to switch to ARM, I know it's not going to happen in my career without there being that "killer" app that pushes everybody off of Windows. Right now, with "Office" being the "killer got to have" application of all time, and that generally only running on Windows, guess what? X86 is here to stay.
Yes, and Itanium is dead. Alpha is gone. And I don't even know what IBM did. Meanwhile, x86-64 is here to stay.
And we are all better off? Um, NOPE!
The ONLY thing that kept the X86-64 going was that it ran X86 instructions. As a processor the X86 family is really horrid both from the electrical and programming sides. Lucky for the motherboard makers most of the sticky "design" is abstracted away by the chip-sets, but for the programmer, the architecture was not designed to be expandable, certainly didn't port well into 64 bits.
If you ask me, Alpha and other processors where of better design. My personal favorite was the Motorola 68000 (aka power PC) stuff. That was an engineer's dream to work with both from the hardware and software sides of things. Certainly the instruction set and programing model was a whole lot better than what we generally see today...
So why did the X86 win out? You can think both IBM and Bill Gates for that. (I suppose you could blame Motorola for not accepting the license terms too.) It is the processor in the PC, which have been sold by the millions, making production costs lower.. Apple Mac stuff was initially Motorola CPU's but finally even Apple had to ditch them for cost. X86 is in use for business and historical reasons, not because it was the right choice technically.
Slashdot Mirror
No, if the satellite is small you can put in orbit a lot of them with a single launch. Google 'cubesat' for an extreme version of this idea.
Well, yes, but the problem you will have is the limited orbital variations you can get from a single launch of multiple satellites. There is a trade off here between launch weight and fuel and the initial orbits of everything. The last thing you really want is 10 small satellites that are all in the same orbit.
Oh they will be relevant... They hold the spectrum space your satellite's are going to need....
That is part of the reason that these 'looser pays' rules make me nervous. Truly bad actors like patent trolls have lots of ways around actually paying out, but small shops or inventors generally do not, so all it does is increase the risk associated with taking on companies with more resources. When filing a lawsuit you generally only have to consider spending what you can afford, but having to consider what the other party can afford changes the equation dramatically.
Good point. But looser pays has good aspects too. How about we modify it by requiring an escrow account where the filer is required to either put up a percentage of expected legal fees, or allow leans on the personal property of the principles of any corporation that files? Claims on personal property would require court action to prove who the person or persons who made the decision to sue was, but this would put a huge damper on marginal lawsuits.
They do this kind of thing in other countries, so Looser Pays is not without it's good points too.
Silly lawsuits are the American way! It's well known all around the world.
I suggest we fix it... One simple rule change will do it. If you file suit and loose, you pay both sides' legal fees.
This would make it less likely for folks to file marginal lawsuits .
Wait, you're taking the NSA's word on anything that has to do with this? Ahahahahahahaha oh god.
And you take Snowden's word?
The NSA activities have been fully reviewed and vetted by the administration and congress. You may not agree with their analysis, but they are NOT lying about what they do. What they do is a matter of record, some of that record is classified, but not disclosing stuff doesn't mean they are lying. Remember that they are subject to both congressional and administration oversight.
Snowden, on the other hand, most likely has made up stuff (i.e. is lying) about things. Being a "trained spy"? Please... There are any number of things Snowden could have done to make his point that didn't involve leaking classified documents to the press.... Who's lying here?
I won't disagree with you, but the men who formed our country tried to deal with the issues within the system first, and only after exhausting the legal options did they decide to rebel. Also, they fully understood and accepted that they would likely die in the attempt to secure their independence. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence where captured and killed. But the two points here are 1. They did everything they legally could first, and 2. Acknowledged and accepted the punishment for their crimes should their bid for independence failed.
Snowden didn't exhaust the legal options he had, but went straight into violating the law by disclosing classified documents in an act of treason, in a vain attempt to preserve his freedom and life. There is no comparison.
So.. Did you have a mass shooting too?
OK. OK... Yep I missed that part, but...
IF he was trained (which I doubt) He's even more responsible for the crime he committed. This guy is a traitor, plain and simple. But he wasn't trained as a spy by the NSA, he's making stuff up. But it's not the first time he's made stuff up.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/nsa-releases-snowden-email-nbc-truth/story?id=23918598
Folks may think Snowden is some good actor, but he is not. He's lying about a lot of his story and trying to wrap himself in patriotism in an effort to sway public opinion. At best, he's really really lucky to have his escape work so well, at worst, he's working for somebody who is using him who planned and is funding this whole side show.
My guess is that he is just a pawn being used in a game he doesn't possibly understand. He is self important and feels entitled, and somehow thought that he didn't have to really exhaust the reporting options he had and that "going public" would overshadow his crimes. How he's into the deep end of the hot water pool and doesn't know how to swim. As soon as Putin grows tired of Snowden or he becomes a liability for Russia, they will throw him out on his ear and poor Snowden will have nothing. The only question is how long does Snowden have? I'm guessing, until January 20th of 2017...
The only place he'd ever get repatriated to is Leavenworth (if they're being generous) or Gitmo (if they aren't).
I'd bet it's Leavenworth, assuming they let him live. The guy is now claiming "He was a spy" which means he is admitting to espionage. To me, that makes him no-longer a whistle-blower, but something quite different. He's admitting to being a traitor, which entitles him to a trial on charges that can carry some serious penalties, including death. I'd be surprised if they went for death, given he's still alive. Being in Russia is only an inconvenience to the US, if they wanted him dead, he'd be dead by now.
My guess is that they want him for the information he has about what he took and where he stashed all the documents. Which means they want to get their hands on him for trial. Further, I'd bet he could cut a deal with them, given the public perceptions of him, especially if he can get them information that stops further documentation from going public.
You mean like what happened in Fort Marcy Park? There is nothing new under the sun...
Since I got my tube black and white, I've needed nothing else! (Except for some foil on the rabbit ears.)
Color? Yuck.. HD? Are you serious? this is TV it's supposed to be fuzzy...
I laugh at you young whipper snappers with your new fangled LCD wide screens....
Now.... GET OFF MY LAWN!
I saw it on the internet.
Seriously, Who's surprised that Wikipedia has errors in the medical information it contains? Who is surprised that there are doctors that still use it? We all act like this is somehow a serious problem, or that it's dangerous. Dangerous compared to what? Wikipedia is an excellent place to *start* an investigation, but before you start making life and death choices, you really need to check some other sources. Doctor's are generally NOT stupid enough to just go with something they find on the internet.
If you suspect your Doctor is out running a Google search on "Lower abdominal pain with fever" just because they don't know better, I suggest you get another doctor, one who actually has some training. And if you see some website that tries to tell you that you have malaria because you are running a fever you are stupid if you don't consult a doctor before being treated for it.
...and California, much as it likes to think it's a country unto itself, has NO jurisdiction over the NSA, over their methods, even over their agents (when acting in an official capacity and all those other qualifiers)
If it makes the CA legislature feel good about themselves to do this, great! But it means about as much as the lot of them threatening to hold their breath till the NSA stops spying...
Hey, Elections are coming up. Politicians need positive stuff to put in their campaign ads so they pass a pointless law so they can act like they care. This law makes for a good sound bite, so you vote for it, even if it's stupid, pointless and a total waste of time.
The DOJ will simply take the State of California to court. CA will lose.
Nope... There is no need to do anything because the law is pointless.
The NSA already gets warrants..... Of course, from a secret court, but they are warrants none the less.
What can a State do? Require one of THEIR state judges sign the federal warrant? Yea, like that's going to happen.
Now what MIGHT happen, is the Attorney General of the state might sue the federal government in a vain attempt to enforce their law. I'm pretty sure the case would fail just past the doorway in federal court in short order.
Linux IS still free... HOWEVER..
Hardware costs money, IP addresses cost money, buildings cost money, billing customers costs money, bandwidth costs money, employees cost money and electrical power costs money. Personally, I think having somebody do all this for me for the little some charge is a great deal.
So, if you don't want to make payments to somebody for your hosting, you are free to buy the hardware, an IP address and bandwidth and pay the power company and do it yourself. Good Luck.
If I want to host my own, I get VMware in my own datacenter. If I want to host in the cloud, I buy storage+compute from AWS. I see no reason to deploy OpenStack at a small to medium sized business. Am I just looking to get myself fired for insisting on a solution that is not VMware?
And I would agree with you. OpenStak has the PROMISE of being a good thing for your average user, but it is FAR from being a turn-key solution. Getting OpenStack to actually do what you want it to is not something most smaller operators have time to figure out but requires someone who knows a lot about the specific VM product you want to use and the tools needed to make adjustments to your created machines.
But that really isn't a problem with OpenStack points to the purpose of OpenStack. This tool is designed to help you Create, run, edit, and move virtual machines in mass quantities. If you are not creating hundreds of nearly identical VM's, don't bother with OpenStack.
Any engineer who follows GM's edict should be flogged.
How about we just put them in stocks in the town square. You do realize that if you ignore this order, you can kiss your job goodbye. For some, that's a serious problem because you don't want your wife and kids ending up homeless.
Now, if I worked for GM and this came out, I'd be seriously looking for another job, but while they write my paycheck I live with their rules best I can. Unless they are asking something illegal, in which case I'd be asking for instructions in writing, getting a lawyer, reporting it to every ethics hotline I could find and contacting law enforcement though my lawyer while I refused to comply. But what they are asking here is not illegal. It might look bad, but it's not illegal.
Two more words, "We're Sorry."
Saying that is like handing signed blank checks to a host of personal injury lawyers. Especially for a company like GM which is seen as HUGE money pit. So the corporate lawyer reviewing the public statement is going to have kittens if the PR department tried something like this.
at least they actually acknowledge their faults these days.
Only because the government is in the process of issuing fines to GM and a host of lawsuits are soon to hit for all the untimely deaths caused by the various design issues they have been forced to recall.
Everybody needs to understand exactly WHAT this is. This is a lawyer sitting in his office who realizes that as soon as he gets hit by a discovery notice, he's going to have to turn over electronic copies of E-mails, documents and such that might have something to do with a lawsuit. He's trying to make the real evidence hard to find, hard to explain and avoid the appearance of having a "smoking gun" E-mail or document that can be easily found using a text search. This is all about obfuscation.
But GM is FAR from the only company that does this.. I've worked at a few companies that had some interesting rules about stuff like this. I worked at one place where the document retention policy was *obviously* geared towards the company getting sued. Keeping something for more than a quarter required manager approvals and justification. It was just plain stupid and hard to work with so we generally ignored it. I found out why though at a later date. Apparently the CFO was doing some "shady" (or outright illegal by SEC standards) practices and was trying to cover his tracks.
Right and there was not american to american phone calls from the Bahamas.
This doesn't matter, or so the courts say. You step off sovereign US territory and the legal assumption that you are a US citizen no longer applies. So, where they cannot TARGET you knowing you are a citizen (without a warrant), they can intercept your phone calls in their quest for intelligence information when you are on foreign soil. The rules are literally different OUTSIDE the country, and you need to get used to that because it's been this way for decades.
What's changed though is the *sharing* of intelligence information gathered by the NSA with law enforcement.... But that's not what this article is about..
Anyone at NSA who is participating in this is committing an act of war against a sovereign nation without any declaration of war.
-jcr
Slow down cowboy and holster that side arm... The Article is a bit conflicting on this.. It says EVERY cell call, *then* it clarifies that it's only international calls, which is certainly NOT every cell call. So, this might not be what you suspect and before you start a shooting war we need to think about this.
Seems this is NOT an act of war, it's simply monitoring traffic coming over international trunks and that they simply have the ability to intercept the signaling, and both sides of the conversation. This requires no *in country* equipment or invasion of territory to do. This is NOT new information, we've know about this for years, even before Snowden did his document dump. Now if they set this tap up IN the Bahamas, you *might* have an argument, but I don't think that's what happened here.
Now, if they really are monitoring ALL cell calls, then it would be necessary to have assets in country and you MIGHT have your "act of war" but then again, you might not. At any rate, even if the NSA invaded the Bahamas to do this, I seriously doubt they'd be incensed enough to do much more than protest. What you going to do? Throw out all the rich American tourists or start a shooting war and watch them run? I don't think so.
I'm just going to have a heart attack and DIE from that surprise..
This is SO STUPID. If you cannot get your hands on the hackers to arrest them, then why bother with saying anything? Just keep the honey pot in place and keep tracing where the attacks are coming from. Then, when you can get your hands on them it's special rendition time. This tell the public what happened only serves to notify everybody that you got hacked and then trying to take legal action to punish the hackers which has no hope of doing anything says you are inept and clueless too.
You knew I would drink from the glass in front of me, so you switched the glasses so the one in front of me has the poison... BUT, you knew I would think that so CLEARLY the glass in front of you has the poison.... etc.. We are right at the "Never get in a land war in Asia.. " Line being spoken by this administration, only they are not wearing the mask.
You mean first to x86-64. Intel had a 64-bit processor before that (Itanium). 13 years later, Itanium is dead and x86 is holding us back, so much that servers are turning towards ARMv8 (inferior design to Itanium, but tons of momentum from mobile/embedded).
You do realize that this run towards ARM is not a full stampede, and is driven by price and operating costs and only useful for Unix/Linux systems as windows server isn't really interested in supporting ARM yet. This is more like a trickle of some large specialized systems off onto Red Hat (or similar) systems where one can afford to just change processors and recompile everything in an effort to same a bit of operating power and hardware costs. But you have to be looking at enough servers to make this worth the labor cost.
So, where I don't care for the X86 family and would love everybody to switch to ARM, I know it's not going to happen in my career without there being that "killer" app that pushes everybody off of Windows. Right now, with "Office" being the "killer got to have" application of all time, and that generally only running on Windows, guess what? X86 is here to stay.
Yes, and Itanium is dead. Alpha is gone. And I don't even know what IBM did. Meanwhile, x86-64 is here to stay.
And we are all better off? Um, NOPE!
The ONLY thing that kept the X86-64 going was that it ran X86 instructions. As a processor the X86 family is really horrid both from the electrical and programming sides. Lucky for the motherboard makers most of the sticky "design" is abstracted away by the chip-sets, but for the programmer, the architecture was not designed to be expandable, certainly didn't port well into 64 bits.
If you ask me, Alpha and other processors where of better design. My personal favorite was the Motorola 68000 (aka power PC) stuff. That was an engineer's dream to work with both from the hardware and software sides of things. Certainly the instruction set and programing model was a whole lot better than what we generally see today...
So why did the X86 win out? You can think both IBM and Bill Gates for that. (I suppose you could blame Motorola for not accepting the license terms too.) It is the processor in the PC, which have been sold by the millions, making production costs lower.. Apple Mac stuff was initially Motorola CPU's but finally even Apple had to ditch them for cost. X86 is in use for business and historical reasons, not because it was the right choice technically.
OH!
Yea, I missed that one.... Whoosh over my head.
Beam me up Scotty, no intelligent life here..