Where I work (www.ornl.gov) we run weather models, nuclear stuff (explosions, fallout tracking, power plants, nuclear medical materials simulations), genome projects, particle flow analisys, a bunch of stuff (though unfortunatly for Mr. Dyslexic here no speel checker for slashdot:) ). Oil companies process seismic data to try and map what's underground, medical companies help develope medicines and gene therapy.
Some of the projects (human genome most currently) may run for weeks over 10-20 terabytes of data. The algorithms used are pretty mundane - you just need to do them A LOT. Some of the particle flow stuff may model individual molecules in a furnace for example (not rendering the frames, but modelling the interactions and how to create a more effecient jet engine).
Yes, it does matter. I want best case (optimised for processor), worst case (no optimisation), and "average" case (normal apps).
If processors A's best case is 1500 (units - I don't care what they mean), worst case is 1450 and average is 1475 that may be a better choice than worst case 500, best 2000, and and average 1500 if you can not get optimised code for that specific processor and are going to run lots of differently optimised code over a long run.
Especially when running on an architecture that they code may be written in such a way that processor optimisation is hard worse case can be VERY valid, though less so for normal desktop users.
Correct in the sense that he wasn't necessarily being unfair. I don't think Apple was raelly cooking the books here. OTOH benchamarking is quite difficult.
No, it would not be fair to compare intel compilers to gcc compilers. But what about, say, another non-hardware tied compiler? Look at it this way - 3dmark scores on graphics cards. Theoretically it should give a good impression on thier relative hardware - but we all know that it doesn't necessarily. It may do something bad on one system, great on another, one system may cheat and have special code to work better with that particular test.
Same here. Ideally you would find many benchmarks, not just gcc, but both with all optimizations on, with all off, both with the best compilers, worst compilers, and middle of the road. You also need memory intensive, processor intensive, grpahics intensive, floating point, integer, and many others to get the full idea and compare it to what you need to do with the computer. For many of the crowd that worries over this stuff overclocking can become an issue also.
This is why benchmarking is as much art as science. I care about all those numbers - I have code compiled specifically for my athlon-mp's, some generic, and some optimized for p4's for the consumer tasks. On our computation cluster we use specialised compilers. I care how it runs on all of it for real world use. But no hardware manufacturer does those extensive of a tests - they pick the best of the ones they can claim "fair" on usually.
And lastly, in the end, who cares? Unless you are regularly running 4 hour jobs from a console it is irrelevent. It is more important that you are productive with the interface and that is personal choice. Few consumer tasks (and even programming tasks) require that power - and the stuff that does is generally handled by specialised hardware. Then if they have the fastests today they won't tomorrow.
Dude, I used my special tinfoil hat that allows me to read thoughts I scarfed from an alien crash, I know that he meant there was an alien spaceraft there.
I mean, come on, do you really believe that there is a logical explanaition out there better than space aliens that are capable of travelling the stars are trying to get in touch with us but are so inept that the US govt is able to thwart them except for a few crop circles?
Or maybe they are trying not to be seen and thier alien spacecraft, after flying a few billion miles through space enters our atmosphere and they can't take it so they break up and crash every few years.
This is probably going to hurt my karma to dare say so, but one cannot help but notice the parralel with most religious beleif systems.
Both yes and no. It depends on the conspiracy theory and religion you are comparing. Most religions do not consider lack of proof to mean anything. There are valid reasons to believe in a religion - but no proof.
Some conspiracy theories have the same thing, just because they are conspiracy theories doesn't make them untrue (look at the original Illuminati several hundred years ago). But they look at coincidences and draw conclusions - usually they are not totally correct but can come close. That is "lack of hard proof" has nothing to do with it - just a series of stuff that doesn't add up and no contrary evidence to the theory. One can easily belive some of that.
The strong form of the alien crowd not only says that no proof constitutes proof, but that evidence to the contrary is proof they exists as this is only a diversion. That is quite different from religion and a few of the conspiracu theories. It is completely blinding yourself to the evidence if it doesn't agree with you.
The weak form (of which I subscribe) just says there is life out there - just because the universe seems large enough that it is difficult to think that we are the only existence. Nothing about it size, it frequency, or it's ability to travel. Like religion, there is no contrary evidence. Lack of proof has no bearing on this beliefe. Should you require undeniable proof before you believe then that is OK also.
I have a few spare Radio Control car electric motors that have TONS or torque. I bet I can get the CD to spin at nearly thier top speed which is somewhere between 25k-40k depending on the motor. I've broken wooden airplane propellers on them trying to build thing before.
You can get some of them pretty cheap (25-40 dollars for the motor, 15-25 for a mechanical speed control). Lots of uses for a high torque, high RPM, motor.
If I disagree with everyone, who the FSCK should I vote for? The lesser of several evils?
Yes, exactly. It may not be instant gratification but if each election the lesser evil is elected it will slowly go back to being good. We seem to be moving to where each election the worse evil is elected because of apathy.
I want to see advances - I don't care if the US or Afghanastan does the advances - let them happen and share them. If the US can't deliver, then let the Europeans, if they can't then let the US or any other country.
This is just US bashing at it finest, just as if you swap the US and Europe it would be Europe bashing.
NASA has done a pretty good job of sharing info in the past, so has Europe as a whole. Lets all be for the advancement of science, not some sort of jingoistic look at the world.
we are mostly linux. We do some windows because we choose too (for varying reasons, most of us really like Open Source but are relativly OS agnostic).
Besides our CS work we run things such as the human genome project, nuclear fallout modelling, vis applications, process data from some of the colliders, basically govt researchy type stuff.
So yes, it is VERY possible to run a research lab under linux, unix, or windows, though there will generally be some mix. Here, compute power is usually linux/unix, developer platforms are generally linux/unix, office work is usually windows - though sometimes windows has some software that is really kick ass.
Not only that but the Vis market is also turning towards small clusters for rendering and driving the hardware. (to note, I don't work on the following project - I just get to hear them complain about stuff)The people here are purchasing 5 dual athlon systems with tons of ram per box and nvidia quadro cards. One central point and four rendering machines - I think (though I am not sure on this point) that the quadro's are off the rendering machines to drive the CAVE system. In any even the cluster is capable of driving the hardware
This will spell the death knell for a large chunk of SGI. The contract costs on the origin machines is more per year than they are spending on the whole render farm - and you get no upgrades. They can, cheaper then just maintenance, upgrade thier machines once a year if they choose to. SGI will have to shrink based on this. They still provide some kick ass hardware in the actual CAVE system, but I don't really know if they can survive on it - though I think a company surely can - just not as large as they are now.
I think you loose alot (and I am sure you will quickly ignore my posts).
The poster may not be a native english speaker.
The poster may have my problem (dyslexia, learning disability, etc) and still be quite competant in what they are trying to express.
So, I can't spell. I have a physical problem (dyslexic - actuall medical diagnosis), I also don't have time to spend putting every post through a spell checker. It still doesn't change the fact of the content of my posts being correct or incorrect. Then again - it is only damaging to you to ignore any wisdom given by someone who doesn't speak english well or has a disability.
More interesting (but, unfortunatly outlawed at our local range - only wood frame sanctioned targets now - twra has gotten the lease on our range and only hunting applicable targets are allowed) is a gallon milk jug full of water. Shot with a very hot.223 nozzler balistic tip out of a thompson contender (hottest load allowed) there is literally nothing but shreds left. It does better than the 30 short magnum my father recently bought (granted, we havn't reloaded any balistic tips in it for comparison).
The other really cool target for any centerfire ammunition is spray paint cans. You may be able to talk any local paint store in to either giving, or selling dirt cheap, defective spray paint cans to you - when we were allowed to shoot them some of the local paint shops gave them to us or sold them for 15 cents a peice. Nothing like a bright orange cloud of paint floating up after a solid hit with any high powered firearm.
As others have said, works fine under 7.11 for me.
Plus there is a certain amount of neatness setting the browser id to MSIE and OS is linux:)
Re:This is what people need to be reading
on
Inside SAIC
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I used to think the same thing. I've been working at a national lab for about three years now. I have seen at least two tinfoil hat stories about projects that the people I know are working on and have found them to be wild fancies. Does the govt do some shady tings? sure. But it's not that prevalent or extensive.
It reminds me of seeing in one of the old building from the Manhattan Project a large red button with "magic" written on it in a halway with nothing else. We had all sorts of theories about what it did (the building does nuke power stuff, we occasionally had meetings in there). Turns out it was simply the building emergency power shunt.
As for saic, they supply our Q clearence office workers (not the secretaries). These are the guys that print out checks, manage our administrative machines, networking contractors, and that sort of thing. A lot of thier involvement with secret stuff is in supplying that manpower. Of course they also have thier own research staff in other places (much like lockheed-martin or other defense contractors).
The underground tunnels are empty. The Q clearence "secret" stuff is usually mundane. Usually if it really is something secret you are not going to know something about it (take the f117 or sr-71 projects for example). If you do, it is so remote and little that you are going to be wrong or just a very lucky guesser.
I think this is a large problem for Americans, we don't really realize how good we have
This is also true for CS people in general. We still have one of the most desirable jobs.
Take for instance one of my friends: master in english - 3.9 gpa. 250 resume's later still no job (only a handfull of "we'll keep you on file"). He's not asking for anything large (in fact it will be difficult for him to repay his loans).
That's a crappy job market. Ours just sucks compared to the dotcom bubble - which was insanely high. The jobs have basically came down (though a little lower) than what they should have been all along.
I do agree with your second paragraph also. Give it time to adjust - at the small state school I went to there were about 10-12 CS, 20-30 IS, and over 100 IT. That is really out of proportion. Nearly all the IT (and a few of the IS) was because it was easier and made good money, once it is certain it will not make the fortune they wanted, they will move on.
I work at a US national lab in High Permformance Computing - plenty of geeks. In the older crowd (30+ to 35+) not really that relevant. Most know nothing about it or think "cartoon == kids" 30- tends to like cartoons in general.
The current group I am in I am the next to youngest (28) and am obsesed with it. The youngest has (24 I think) has never weighed in. The others (29, early 30's, 40's) think it is sorta wierd but have never really watched any (other than the wierd stuff I have explicitly showed them - though to be fair they don't watch much of anything, either tv or movies).
As far as students go. The first year - one against (again in the 30's), three indiferent. They thought some stories good, some bad. Treated it as any other movie.
Next year, one indifferent, one obsessed, one generally liked it.
the last group I never polled about it.
So, I would say it definatly has a large enough crowd to justify being on slashdot, that it is not just "Taco like Anime". Though it is not universal. It is almost a correlation of 1 of likes anime and likes video games. That, in and of it self, lends me to think it is valid.
Now the decision for animefu as the anime widget is more of a question...
A cheaper solution
on
T-Shirt Cannon
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
If someone is interested in a cheaper solution (or to make thier own) see here
The also have some really cool stuff with machined aluminum potato cannons using propane and oxygen!
Everyone will be using that my company is writing today - it will be a billion dollar market. Please give me some money now so you can be in at the ground floor.
(my expansion)If they are not reformed why release them? If you know that they are going to repeat thier crime then they should not be released.
If they are released then they have served their time and should no longer be a burden on society. Hence they should have full rights.
Other wise you are saying that while they are harmfull enough to society to remove for a few years, they are not harmfull enough to keep them from doing it again (so then, why try and keep them from doing it again if it is not harmfull?). either reformed and no more retaliation, or not reformed so remove from society. Holds true for any jail sentance.
You have a single point for the software. Maintaining software on several hundred machines is a pain. Even when dealing with homogeneous systems it is a pain. Here, they want to upgrade to the next version - just redo one point.
This seems targeted for the corporate environment.
You are confusing total output with net output. That is, yea we put out 1.4 billion tons of c02 (or whatever the number), more than anyone else. How much did we absorb? if we absorbed.2 tons then that's bad, if we absorbed 2 billion tons then we are a net sink. Looking through the web I could find data showing both states are true - depending on the model used for our carbon sinks (though all agreed that north america has the largest sink in the world).
although they alone probably cause more global warming than any 0.00005/year change in solar output.
I do beleive the math is a bit off..05/10 year is.005/year - assuming that the rate is constant. So you are off by a factor of 1000.
The extent is very easy to quantify,
Really, gosh - I'll be sure to tell the weather modelling people that work on the floor above me this so they can spend thier time on something better since it is apparently easy and, by implication, well known. You may have saved them from embarrasment in running models trying to predict and study the environment.
Re:How long will it take for hard drives to catch
on
8.6 GB Internet?
·
· Score: 1
Why would anybody want to watch an entire movie in 5 seconds
First off, microsoft employees tend to be quite happy so that is moot.
Secondly there are several different types of monopolies, not all of which are bad. Take wal-mart - they have a near monopoly. They got there, and maintain it, by offering services very cheap for what you get. Large grocery stores ran out small busineses by offering the same food much cheaper. No one raelly complains about them (some do) because they use thier near monoply to offer cheap good and do not really abuse thier position. If a competitor is in the area wal-mart outsells them - not hire all thier help away, try to make it illegal for them to operate by draconian liscenses, and other such non-competitive practices. The good monoplies actually benefit consumers by providing sevices that could not easily be rendered otherwise while still allowing innovation.
OTOH Microsoft employes all these and more. They do not maintain market dominance by provideing a superior product, they sue, hire away workers, try bad liscenses (take stacker and beos for instance) to maintain market dominance. In other words, thier monopoly is only perpetuated by thier monopoly, not through producing a product so wizbang or cheap no one else can compete. This is bad for the market as a whole. Though Microsoft is not as bad as some of the steel/oil monopolies during our industrial revolution.
What will/does cisco do? well right now they still produce a very nice product, a larger corperation/money base allows them to be more experimental than a small company - they can afford the loss. It does impose standards - which is a good thing - but (I think) they are relativly open and dont follow the "embrace extend extenguish" approach. Of course they do not have the monoply that microsoft does either. Only time will tell.
Slashdot Mirror
Where I work (www.ornl.gov) we run weather models, nuclear stuff (explosions, fallout tracking, power plants, nuclear medical materials simulations), genome projects, particle flow analisys, a bunch of stuff (though unfortunatly for Mr. Dyslexic here no speel checker for slashdot :) ). Oil companies process seismic data to try and map what's underground, medical companies help develope medicines and gene therapy.
Some of the projects (human genome most currently) may run for weeks over 10-20 terabytes of data. The algorithms used are pretty mundane - you just need to do them A LOT. Some of the particle flow stuff may model individual molecules in a furnace for example (not rendering the frames, but modelling the interactions and how to create a more effecient jet engine).
Yes, it does matter. I want best case (optimised for processor), worst case (no optimisation), and "average" case (normal apps).
If processors A's best case is 1500 (units - I don't care what they mean), worst case is 1450 and average is 1475 that may be a better choice than worst case 500, best 2000, and and average 1500 if you can not get optimised code for that specific processor and are going to run lots of differently optimised code over a long run.
Especially when running on an architecture that they code may be written in such a way that processor optimisation is hard worse case can be VERY valid, though less so for normal desktop users.
The Apple guy is both correct and wrong.
Correct in the sense that he wasn't necessarily being unfair. I don't think Apple was raelly cooking the books here. OTOH benchamarking is quite difficult.
No, it would not be fair to compare intel compilers to gcc compilers. But what about, say, another non-hardware tied compiler? Look at it this way - 3dmark scores on graphics cards. Theoretically it should give a good impression on thier relative hardware - but we all know that it doesn't necessarily. It may do something bad on one system, great on another, one system may cheat and have special code to work better with that particular test.
Same here. Ideally you would find many benchmarks, not just gcc, but both with all optimizations on, with all off, both with the best compilers, worst compilers, and middle of the road. You also need memory intensive, processor intensive, grpahics intensive, floating point, integer, and many others to get the full idea and compare it to what you need to do with the computer. For many of the crowd that worries over this stuff overclocking can become an issue also.
This is why benchmarking is as much art as science. I care about all those numbers - I have code compiled specifically for my athlon-mp's, some generic, and some optimized for p4's for the consumer tasks. On our computation cluster we use specialised compilers. I care how it runs on all of it for real world use. But no hardware manufacturer does those extensive of a tests - they pick the best of the ones they can claim "fair" on usually.
And lastly, in the end, who cares? Unless you are regularly running 4 hour jobs from a console it is irrelevent. It is more important that you are productive with the interface and that is personal choice. Few consumer tasks (and even programming tasks) require that power - and the stuff that does is generally handled by specialised hardware. Then if they have the fastests today they won't tomorrow.
Dude, I used my special tinfoil hat that allows me to read thoughts I scarfed from an alien crash, I know that he meant there was an alien spaceraft there.
I mean, come on, do you really believe that there is a logical explanaition out there better than space aliens that are capable of travelling the stars are trying to get in touch with us but are so inept that the US govt is able to thwart them except for a few crop circles?
Or maybe they are trying not to be seen and thier alien spacecraft, after flying a few billion miles through space enters our atmosphere and they can't take it so they break up and crash every few years.
I know one of those is true.....
This is probably going to hurt my karma to dare say so, but one cannot help but notice the parralel with most religious beleif systems.
Both yes and no. It depends on the conspiracy theory and religion you are comparing. Most religions do not consider lack of proof to mean anything. There are valid reasons to believe in a religion - but no proof.
Some conspiracy theories have the same thing, just because they are conspiracy theories doesn't make them untrue (look at the original Illuminati several hundred years ago). But they look at coincidences and draw conclusions - usually they are not totally correct but can come close. That is "lack of hard proof" has nothing to do with it - just a series of stuff that doesn't add up and no contrary evidence to the theory. One can easily belive some of that.
The strong form of the alien crowd not only says that no proof constitutes proof, but that evidence to the contrary is proof they exists as this is only a diversion. That is quite different from religion and a few of the conspiracu theories. It is completely blinding yourself to the evidence if it doesn't agree with you.
The weak form (of which I subscribe) just says there is life out there - just because the universe seems large enough that it is difficult to think that we are the only existence. Nothing about it size, it frequency, or it's ability to travel. Like religion, there is no contrary evidence. Lack of proof has no bearing on this beliefe. Should you require undeniable proof before you believe then that is OK also.
Agreed on the dremel.
I have a few spare Radio Control car electric motors that have TONS or torque. I bet I can get the CD to spin at nearly thier top speed which is somewhere between 25k-40k depending on the motor. I've broken wooden airplane propellers on them trying to build thing before.
You can get some of them pretty cheap (25-40 dollars for the motor, 15-25 for a mechanical speed control). Lots of uses for a high torque, high RPM, motor.
If I disagree with everyone, who the FSCK should I vote for? The lesser of several evils?
Yes, exactly. It may not be instant gratification but if each election the lesser evil is elected it will slowly go back to being good. We seem to be moving to where each election the worse evil is elected because of apathy.
This is modded interesting?
Who give a flying fuck!
I want to see advances - I don't care if the US or Afghanastan does the advances - let them happen and share them. If the US can't deliver, then let the Europeans, if they can't then let the US or any other country.
This is just US bashing at it finest, just as if you swap the US and Europe it would be Europe bashing.
NASA has done a pretty good job of sharing info in the past, so has Europe as a whole. Lets all be for the advancement of science, not some sort of jingoistic look at the world.
Depends on the research I guess:
o v/torc/
http://www.csm.ornl.gov/
http://www.csm.ornl.g
we are mostly linux. We do some windows because we choose too (for varying reasons, most of us really like Open Source but are relativly OS agnostic).
Besides our CS work we run things such as the human genome project, nuclear fallout modelling, vis applications, process data from some of the colliders, basically govt researchy type stuff.
So yes, it is VERY possible to run a research lab under linux, unix, or windows, though there will generally be some mix. Here, compute power is usually linux/unix, developer platforms are generally linux/unix, office work is usually windows - though sometimes windows has some software that is really kick ass.
Not only that but the Vis market is also turning towards small clusters for rendering and driving the hardware. (to note, I don't work on the following project - I just get to hear them complain about stuff)The people here are purchasing 5 dual athlon systems with tons of ram per box and nvidia quadro cards. One central point and four rendering machines - I think (though I am not sure on this point) that the quadro's are off the rendering machines to drive the CAVE system. In any even the cluster is capable of driving the hardware
This will spell the death knell for a large chunk of SGI. The contract costs on the origin machines is more per year than they are spending on the whole render farm - and you get no upgrades. They can, cheaper then just maintenance, upgrade thier machines once a year if they choose to. SGI will have to shrink based on this. They still provide some kick ass hardware in the actual CAVE system, but I don't really know if they can survive on it - though I think a company surely can - just not as large as they are now.
I think you loose alot (and I am sure you will quickly ignore my posts).
The poster may not be a native english speaker.
The poster may have my problem (dyslexia, learning disability, etc) and still be quite competant in what they are trying to express.
So, I can't spell. I have a physical problem (dyslexic - actuall medical diagnosis), I also don't have time to spend putting every post through a spell checker. It still doesn't change the fact of the content of my posts being correct or incorrect. Then again - it is only damaging to you to ignore any wisdom given by someone who doesn't speak english well or has a disability.
You know, that would be sad if a chicken breast actually should taste like a rare prime rib...
More interesting (but, unfortunatly outlawed at our local range - only wood frame sanctioned targets now - twra has gotten the lease on our range and only hunting applicable targets are allowed) is a gallon milk jug full of water. Shot with a very hot .223 nozzler balistic tip out of a thompson contender (hottest load allowed) there is literally nothing but shreds left. It does better than the 30 short magnum my father recently bought (granted, we havn't reloaded any balistic tips in it for comparison).
The other really cool target for any centerfire ammunition is spray paint cans. You may be able to talk any local paint store in to either giving, or selling dirt cheap, defective spray paint cans to you - when we were allowed to shoot them some of the local paint shops gave them to us or sold them for 15 cents a peice. Nothing like a bright orange cloud of paint floating up after a solid hit with any high powered firearm.
As others have said, works fine under 7.11 for me.
:)
Plus there is a certain amount of neatness setting the browser id to MSIE and OS is linux
I used to think the same thing. I've been working at a national lab for about three years now. I have seen at least two tinfoil hat stories about projects that the people I know are working on and have found them to be wild fancies. Does the govt do some shady tings? sure. But it's not that prevalent or extensive.
It reminds me of seeing in one of the old building from the Manhattan Project a large red button with "magic" written on it in a halway with nothing else. We had all sorts of theories about what it did (the building does nuke power stuff, we occasionally had meetings in there). Turns out it was simply the building emergency power shunt.
As for saic, they supply our Q clearence office workers (not the secretaries). These are the guys that print out checks, manage our administrative machines, networking contractors, and that sort of thing. A lot of thier involvement with secret stuff is in supplying that manpower. Of course they also have thier own research staff in other places (much like lockheed-martin or other defense contractors).
The underground tunnels are empty. The Q clearence "secret" stuff is usually mundane. Usually if it really is something secret you are not going to know something about it (take the f117 or sr-71 projects for example). If you do, it is so remote and little that you are going to be wrong or just a very lucky guesser.
I think this is a large problem for Americans, we don't really realize how good we have
This is also true for CS people in general. We still have one of the most desirable jobs.
Take for instance one of my friends: master in english - 3.9 gpa. 250 resume's later still no job (only a handfull of "we'll keep you on file"). He's not asking for anything large (in fact it will be difficult for him to repay his loans).
That's a crappy job market. Ours just sucks compared to the dotcom bubble - which was insanely high. The jobs have basically came down (though a little lower) than what they should have been all along.
I do agree with your second paragraph also. Give it time to adjust - at the small state school I went to there were about 10-12 CS, 20-30 IS, and over 100 IT. That is really out of proportion. Nearly all the IT (and a few of the IS) was because it was easier and made good money, once it is certain it will not make the fortune they wanted, they will move on.
So, I'll give my experience.
I work at a US national lab in High Permformance Computing - plenty of geeks. In the older crowd (30+ to 35+) not really that relevant. Most know nothing about it or think "cartoon == kids" 30- tends to like cartoons in general.
The current group I am in I am the next to youngest (28) and am obsesed with it. The youngest has (24 I think) has never weighed in. The others (29, early 30's, 40's) think it is sorta wierd but have never really watched any (other than the wierd stuff I have explicitly showed them - though to be fair they don't watch much of anything, either tv or movies).
As far as students go. The first year - one against (again in the 30's), three indiferent. They thought some stories good, some bad. Treated it as any other movie.
Next year, one indifferent, one obsessed, one generally liked it.
the last group I never polled about it.
So, I would say it definatly has a large enough crowd to justify being on slashdot, that it is not just "Taco like Anime". Though it is not universal. It is almost a correlation of 1 of likes anime and likes video games. That, in and of it self, lends me to think it is valid.
Now the decision for animefu as the anime widget is more of a question...
If someone is interested in a cheaper solution (or to make thier own) see here
The also have some really cool stuff with machined aluminum potato cannons using propane and oxygen!
Everyone will be using that my company is writing today - it will be a billion dollar market. Please give me some money now so you can be in at the ground floor.
Great point.
(my expansion)If they are not reformed why release them? If you know that they are going to repeat thier crime then they should not be released.
If they are released then they have served their time and should no longer be a burden on society. Hence they should have full rights.
Other wise you are saying that while they are harmfull enough to society to remove for a few years, they are not harmfull enough to keep them from doing it again (so then, why try and keep them from doing it again if it is not harmfull?). either reformed and no more retaliation, or not reformed so remove from society. Holds true for any jail sentance.
You have a single point for the software. Maintaining software on several hundred machines is a pain. Even when dealing with homogeneous systems it is a pain. Here, they want to upgrade to the next version - just redo one point.
This seems targeted for the corporate environment.
You are confusing total output with net output. That is, yea we put out 1.4 billion tons of c02 (or whatever the number), more than anyone else. How much did we absorb? if we absorbed .2 tons then that's bad, if we absorbed 2 billion tons then we are a net sink. Looking through the web I could find data showing both states are true - depending on the model used for our carbon sinks (though all agreed that north america has the largest sink in the world).
although they alone probably cause more global warming than any 0.00005/year change in solar output.
.05/10 year is .005/year - assuming that the rate is constant. So you are off by a factor of 1000.
I do beleive the math is a bit off.
The extent is very easy to quantify,
Really, gosh - I'll be sure to tell the weather modelling people that work on the floor above me this so they can spend thier time on something better since it is apparently easy and, by implication, well known. You may have saved them from embarrasment in running models trying to predict and study the environment.
Why would anybody want to watch an entire movie in 5 seconds
Have you watched a movie recently?
First off, microsoft employees tend to be quite happy so that is moot.
Secondly there are several different types of monopolies, not all of which are bad. Take wal-mart - they have a near monopoly. They got there, and maintain it, by offering services very cheap for what you get. Large grocery stores ran out small busineses by offering the same food much cheaper. No one raelly complains about them (some do) because they use thier near monoply to offer cheap good and do not really abuse thier position. If a competitor is in the area wal-mart outsells them - not hire all thier help away, try to make it illegal for them to operate by draconian liscenses, and other such non-competitive practices. The good monoplies actually benefit consumers by providing sevices that could not easily be rendered otherwise while still allowing innovation.
OTOH Microsoft employes all these and more. They do not maintain market dominance by provideing a superior product, they sue, hire away workers, try bad liscenses (take stacker and beos for instance) to maintain market dominance. In other words, thier monopoly is only perpetuated by thier monopoly, not through producing a product so wizbang or cheap no one else can compete. This is bad for the market as a whole. Though Microsoft is not as bad as some of the steel/oil monopolies during our industrial revolution.
What will/does cisco do? well right now they still produce a very nice product, a larger corperation/money base allows them to be more experimental than a small company - they can afford the loss. It does impose standards - which is a good thing - but (I think) they are relativly open and dont follow the "embrace extend extenguish" approach. Of course they do not have the monoply that microsoft does either. Only time will tell.