I have done "real" engineering. I write
(well, wrote) firmware, working very closely
with EEs, and such tasks required quite a
lot of careful planning. I "know" what "real"
engineers do, and have done such in my own
coding (though *only* as a requirement
of ISO9000, which I consider useful primarily
as six linear feet of kindling in case a major
snowstorm traps me at work with no heat).
That said...
"Real" enineering, as applied to writing code,
wastes time. A bunch of BS with no purpose
other than to make management think they have
a better grasp of how long it will take to
finish a particular project. Every coding
"paradigm" I've ever seen has the same
purpose.
Note that nowhere above there did I say
that such methods actually *do* lend any
stability or outcome predictability to a
coding project. They provide a perception,
nothing more, and a false one at that.
I have written a LOT of code in my life. And
I can say, quite honestly, that the "best"
code I've written has felt more like writing
poetry than any task of "engineering". Coding
involves a creative, not analytic, effort.
Anyone who claims otherwise may "get the job
done" but will *NEVER* produce anything
truly elegant.
Now, don't get me wrong, programming involves
a lot of math, and a lot of careful forethought.
But to code well, people need to have the math
they use so totally ingrained that it flows
without thought. From the idea to the
implementation, without any (explicit)
intermediate steps (except perhaps a nice
detailed spec, which you either already
have as the goal to code to, or have to
create, in which case it flows as a natural
consequence of the task at hand). If a
programmer can't do that, they will take
too long to produce too little, and the
result will feel very underwhelming.
To make an analogy to actual literature, any two-bit hack can carefully follow the rules of
grammar to string a series of words together
and re-tell one of the classic plots. *Not*
every writer can create the third age of
Middle Earth and have the readers
*believe* it.
When one is building a circuit, or a
bridge, one can't simply make quick changes.
Any changes are ltime consuming, expensive,
and painful. Thus, REAL engineers actually
plan stuff.
Complete and utter BS. When building a
bridge, you use (as someone else pointed
out) the 4000 years of "prototypes"
available to decide what will work best.
When building a circuit, you test it in
any of a number of nice circuit analysis
programs before building it, *then* build
a few generations of proto boards, and
only then commit to a release design. In
the 10 years I worked closely with EEs,
not once did I see any non-trivial board
come out right on the first spin. They
go through the same trial and error as
programmers. "Oops, this line has too
much noise on it, need a slightly
lower-valued resistor" differs very
little from "Oops, I forgot to check
that call for failure since it should
never fail anyway".
Yes, "real" engineering involves careful
forethought. As does "real" programming.
but the implementation (in *BOTH* realms)
very much counts as an art. I get so sick
of people trying to say we need to follow
such-and-such a proceedure to produce
"good" results. I used to know one guy
who did a lot of analog circuit design.
He'd do very little while actually at
work, then go home, get REALLY high, and
produce some of the best designs you've ever
seen. Tell me "real" engineering makes any
mention of *that* as a design strategy.
Coding, at its lowest level, involves nothing
more than theorem proving. When you can
propose a (terminating!) concrete algorithmic
method for even something as "simple" as
proving (or disproving) Fermat's last, then
this discussion has some merit. Until then,
we may as well argue about C++ vs Java, or
tea vs coffee, or Shakespeare vs Spencer.
Never make it to the US
on
239 MPG Car
·
· Score: 2
I would *LOVE* to own such a car. Small, fuel
efficient (to an extreme, in this case), stylish.
Everything you could ask for in a car for
commuting, cross-country touring, or just
a toy for the typical DINK family.
However, I have *VERY* serious doubts that it
will ever make it to the US in its current
form.
*Perhaps* a version modified to seat 4. With
an extra 300lbs of "safety" features that
arguably cause more injuries than they prevent.
And after all the wonderful emmissions control
features (that don't apply to things like SUVs
and pickups because they apparently don't make
pollution at 10mpg), perhaps a "really good
but not amazing" efficiency of 60-70mpg.
Hell, if I could have gotten one in the US,
for my last car I would have bought a Mini.
Good luck finding and registering one,
though.
This doesn't require new hardware. You
could do it simply by sending a regularly
timed sequence of packets to port 7, then
linearly interpolating between the
packet return times to get a smooth
waveform at a frequency having some relation
to the round-trip time. By each side adding
its own timestamp to the packet (and using
a slightly more sophisticate server than
"echo"), each side could also find out the
one-way trip time each way.
While "neat", this doesn't seem particularly
radical, or even hard to implement. I could
probably come up with a crude working version
within an hour.
I don't, however, put much stock in the
claims about making telesurgery safer. The
information obtained by this only gives a
more fine-grained, modally-unusual form of
information about the link's *current* state.
It has no long-term predictive power
whatsoever.
I didn't quite get the comments about
modelling the network as a drum rather
than a guitar string - I understand the
need for a multidimensional representation,
but to monitor even a small subnet you get
into numbers of dimensions humans have no
familiar analaog to (and thus, cannot extract
meaningful information from). Unless they
meant that one could plot the "to" times on
one axis and the "from" times on the other,
and model *that* as a 2D surface such as a
drum. That would work, I guess, but would
make it harder to understand the output.
Every up-and-coming physicist and his brother
has a "theory" of quantum gravity.
Note I said "his". What ratio of physisists
do you suppose have two "X" chromosomes?
So why did *this* theory make it to the
increasingly (and disconcertingly politically
correct) Sci-Am?
You already have the answer,
from what I wrote above.
To put it bluntly, this wouldn't have gotten
a second look from someone's dissertation
advisor if "she" had 'nads.
Note that I do NOT mean this to say a female
can't do physics - I only mean to say it only
got published in such a high profile magazine
because of her gender, not on its own merits.
Sad, really. I used to like, Sci-Am, once
upon a time. Long ago, I even switched from
the somewhat flakier "Discover". Looks like
I'll need to go to just plain vanilla "Science",
along with its HUGE pricetag, if I want to
continue getting reasonably unbiased and non
PC-censored news from the world of science.
Heh... By that reasoning, I *HAVE* given
more to the EFF (I think it has expired,
but I joined and got a spiffy hat and a
chance to chat up booth bunny at Linux
World a couple years ago).
So, $50 to EFF, $0 to Microsoft. Yeah!
As for my cable company... When the EFF
offers a 1.5 megabit connection in my
neighborhood (for under $50/mo), You'll
find me one of the first in line. Until
then, I can only hug my knees, rock back
and forth, and keep mumbling unconvincingly
to myself "Ted Turner doesn't own Adelphia
yet".:-)
With a simple $10 PCI IDE card (per additional
4), you could have gotten at *least* 8 drives,
possibly as many as 16, per case. Granted, not
many cases will let you *mount* that many, but
I would expect paying a few bucks extra for the
IDE cards and a better case would save quite a
bit of money (and physical space) by halving
or quartering the number of PCs you need ($100
extra to save $1500 per $2000, not counting
the drives themselves?).
88lf of machines vs 22lf. One requires an
entire room, one would fit on a standard
sized 3-or-4-tier storage rack. Of course,
speaking of racks (of a different sort)...
What on earth made you go with an array of
standard PCs rather than a raid-in-a-rack?
All those things did indeed come about as
byproducts of the US space program (well,
"better" artifical diamonds, I think we
had some variety before NASA)...
But none of those have anything to do with
the vast majority of shuttle missions - namely,
launching satellites for 10x the cost of a
disposable launch vehicle...
Like I said, I TOTALLY support the space
program (although it seems to have gotten
a bit crufty and needs an overhaul). But
use the shuttles to do real science, not
as a military transport or a commercial
cargo-ship.
Does this mean we've gone back to the "sane"
method of launching satellites, and can
stop wasting the shuttles (which cost WAY
more to send up than a "disposable" launch
vehicle) on such mundane tasks?
I hope so. While I totally support "real"
space exploration, the shuttles have, for the
past few decades, scammed the US out of
billions (trillions, yet?) of dollars. We
use them for nothing even remotely interesting,
yet pay a fortune to maintain and occasionally
launch them.
While I agree with one person's comment,
that this level of response won't make
any difference *policy wise*, it strikes
me as an important step that engineers
*in the industry* have started saying
quite blunty, "this won't work".
Having a million random geeks say "we
can break anything you throw at us" carries
little weight - the non-techies coming up
with these crackpot schemes just assure
themselves that *their* idea will make fools
of the collected geeks of the world.
OTOH, having the very geeks PAID to design
and implement these ideas say "uh, well, no,
it really won't work all that well" means
quite a lot more. Obviously, mr. clueless
exec's first response would consist of firing
any naysayers. After the 10th or 20th person
to say "no, really, this won't work, it
doesn't matter if you threaten to fire me",
they *might* start to get the idea that they
have at least a somewhat difficult goal.
This might mark a turning point. Not necessarily
for the better, since I expect the next set
of ideas to involve a lot of annoying-as-hell
hardware-level DRM, but since even that will
unavoidably fail, we have taken a step toward
the road back to sanity.
I hope. The RIAA and MPAA could always
try to get the death penalty for music
pirates.;-)
"Whad'ja do, man?"
"Downloaded an MP3 of Brandenberg Concerto #3"
"Uh, I thought that would have gone PD by now"
"Nah, when Disney discovered a 14th century
precedent for Mickey, they had copyrights
retroactively extended back for a full
millenium."
"Bummer"
"Yeah. But at least I only *downloaded* a
copy, I just get flogged plus the standard
20 year sentence. A buddy of mine made
Mozart's 19th string quartet available
on a file sharing network. Poor bastard,
they dragged his wife and kids out into
the street and shot them all, then at the
actual hearing sentenced him to death by
impalement in front of RIAA HQ."
Re:There's nothing wrong with this bill
on
Congress Passes SWSA
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Umm... Have you looked at the business
model of a conventional broadcast radio
station, lately?
They do *exactly* what you say seems so
"wrong" for webcasters.
And, to add insult to injury, the RIAA
actually *PAYS* "normal" radio stations
to play that copyrighted music.
For one thing, the RIAA's slice of the
pie still comes from *gross* revenue,
meaning that stations operating with
only a tiny profit margin will get very
very screwed.
Another poster already mentioned the
$500 minimum, but that I see as less
of a problem, only affecting the smallest
of webcasters. The percentage of the
gross take, on the other hand, doesn't
go away regardless of scale.
I have to admit I don't quite get the
part about non-profit webcasting (the
text of the bill HEAVILY references
its predecessor, making it read almost
exactly like a diff file). It sounds
like they just have more time to decide
to fold, but don't actually get significantly
better terms. But don't quote me on that
one.
Most of what I suggested counts as a one-time
buy (the helium tank needs refilling on occasion,
but one fill costs just a tad more than one
normal DVD, so...). And, depending on what
sort of reaction they use in the disks
(probably simple oxidation), a person
could probably use much cheaper nitrogen,
rather than helium.
Personally, I agree, finding a way to keep
the DVD from "expiring" seems like a waste of
time. Except for non-mainstream content (ie,
anime, anything imported, etc), most DVDs don't
cost all that much - The HDD space needed for
them costs only a bit less, and involves quite
a lot of CPU time to rip and encode.
However, I think you might have overlooked
one of the biggest concerns about the
availability of expiring DVDs - If they
manage to catch on to any significant
degree, we stand a very real chance of
having "permanent" DVDs (and CDs, no doubt)
no longer available for *any* price. If
that happens, would you still say that
ripping them seems "wrong" somehow?
Personally, I buy 99% of what I rip and
store (and the remainder, what you
could reasonably consider "stolen", only
because I cannot find it anywhere, but I
would buy if I could get it). But I like
having the music and movies I enjoy available
at a moments notice, and not subject to
the MPAA/RIAA deciding they want something
off the market, making it totally
unavailable.
To me, this doesn't involve money. They
provide goods/services, and I pay for it.
Fair 'nuff. But if they stop offering the
goods I want, instead giving me a far inferior
product (in this case, in terms of convenience,
not short-term quality) where does that leave
me? I need to resort to criminal activity
just to have the ability to watch a non-Disney
version of Mononoke Hime (A good example,
you *already* can't get something by that
title in the US, only the dubbed "Princess
Mononoke").
I believe the MPAA has the right to offer
me what they want to offer. But I also
believe I should have the right to modify
it (or at least try) to make it a "better"
product for my needs.
Heh... Oops. I only know the names
of Mick and Keith, and somehow I got
the impression they meant an editor
at RS magazine. My bad.
Time to go flagellate as pennance.
Nah, even worse, I'll listen to a few
hours of the last couple of Rolling Stones
albums (I like their old stuff, but rock
greats should OD young to save themselves
the inevitable "resurgence" or "reunion"
tour).:-)
Nope. Get a 10 gallon aquarium (they cost
like $10-$20), and a tank of helium (the
party-balloon filling small tanks, they cost
as high as $40 but half that you get back
when you return the tank, and one full tank
lasts almost forever).
Put the wrapped DVD in the aquarium. Take two
rubber gloves and some saran-wrap to effectively
seal the top of the aquarium (make sure to use
enough that putting on the gloves won't break the
seal).
Tip the aquarium on its side, and peel away a
small hole in one top and the opposite bottom
corner.
Light a votive candle and place it in front
of the lower hole.
Add helium, via the PVC tube that almost
certainly came with the aquarium (if not,
pay the $0.15/foot for a few feet), to
the upper hole. Add it slowly, and when
the candle goes out, keep adding for a few
more seconds.
Voila! You now have a home-made, inert-gas,
anhydrous glove box! Put your hands in the
gloves, unwrap the DVD, and apply the clear
nail polish to the edge. Oops, you *did*
remember to put the nail polish in the
aquarium before sealing it, right?;-)
Considering the name change and the
dates involved, this one just *BEGS*
for the "real" owner of the name to
countersue and demand the other change
his name back (or to something else).
Damn, though, *this* one takes balls.
I have to admit, paranoid as I can seem,
I didn't see it getting to the point
where using one's one name in normal
daily activities would count as
infringment.
Ah well, too bad I don't read Rolling
Stone, I can't cancel my subscription
in protest.;-)
Did anyone think in terms of *real*
solutions, rather than just pricing
out parts and assuming this guy could
magically make them work together?
Anyway, at least one solution to this
request appeared on Slashdot just a
few days ago:
The solid-state RocketDrive.
Perhaps not the ideal solution (I honestly
can't say if OEM solid-state storage exists
on a much bigger scale), but something that
you can concretely say "this would work".
Proof-of-concept, if nothing else.
Granted, for the size you want, at $5k/4G,
This would cost USD $1.3 billion just for the
storage itself (not counting the array of 32k+
PCI slots you'd need to hold all these and the
hellacious network to RAID them), but this
sounds like a gub'mint project anyway, so
cost presumeably forms the *last* of your
concerns. If cost *does* matter, you can
get the unpopulated controller boards for
$800 each, and certainly a *much* better
bulk deal on RAM then what Cenatek offers
(basically they charge $1k/1G? Perhaps 10
years ago!).
Checking Pricewatch, the average
non-volume-buyer can get 1G of PC133 for
around $100). That would lower the
storage-only cost to only USD $315 million,
before considering volume discounts.
Someone feel free to correct me if I
err, but BECs count as a "really neat"
concept due to the superposition of the
constituent particles - they basically
stop existing as distinct objects and
form a quantum blur, with all kinds
of interesting quantum properties not
normally seen on such a relatively enormous
scale.
Fermions cannot exist in such a state,
so this seems more like cooling off an
"ideal" gas - just an optimal packing
problem, no more "neat" than the fact
that, say, silicon below a certain
temperature exists as a crystaline
solid. Except they used fermions
rather than silion atoms.
Bitstream Dream
Britta Phillips (Formely the voice of "Jem")
Ghost in the Machine
Jonne Valtonen (formerly of Future Crew)
OS1
Red Delicious
I don't know if/which these groups have
"real" recording deals, but you can at
least download their music, legally, to
listen to. Those particular artists I
listed have at least a song or two that
has made it to my default playlist.
The biggest problem with finding good
indie groups, you have to listen to a
lot of them to find something you like.
Let's face it - A lot of them suck.
However...
You can listen to as many of them as
you want, for free, before you commit
to sending THEM (not their label) money
for a CD. If you only kinda like them
(or really like them but for some sick
reason want them to fail), you can settle
for their MP3s available, legally, on-line.
And...
I have yet to receive a copy-protected
CD from an indie artist.;-)
I, for one, cannot understand how paypal
is allowed to get away with all this.
I'll second that...
I've read through the various links people
have posted about why PayPal doesn't count
as a bank, and regardless of that, I still
don't get one part of all this - Why don't
they have some liability in terms of failing
to provide the service people pay them for?
Okay, they don't accept "deposits". But they
act as a 3rd party transaction processor, so
presumeably they have a responsibility to make
sure *BOTH* halves of the transaction work out
like they should.
To make an analogy, if I ship something via
FedEx and they drop it off at the wrong house,
they owe me for *their* mistake. I pay them
to send a package to house X, it doesn't get
there, they owe me the value of that package,
end of story.
In Paypal's situation, the "package" only
exists virtually, but it still has a real
and clearly defined monetary value, no?
WTF? Hey, I totally support police finding "alternative" methods of funding (as opposed
to milking the taxpayers, or confiscating
anything they lay their eyes on thanks to
the WO(s)D, ala a witchfinder general), but
really...
With all that we have going on in the world,
these folks have nothing better to do than
bicker over who owns a damned box? Oh, sorry,
the *IMAGE* of the box. My bad. That makes
it so much more serious.
Well, I suppose this seems "interesting" at
first glance, but I doubt it really counts
as such. An asteroid, in a similar orbit to
Earths. Whoop-de-do.
Of course, the part I don't get, *why* can't
it hit the Earth? In roughly the same orbit
around the sun, a much smaller mass has to
travel MUCH slower than the Earth to maintain
that orbit. So okay, I suppose *we* should
hit *it*, rather than the other way around,
but still...
It moved a whole 2-hour drive away (and I
doubt most attendees would drive anyway),
and they pull a prima-donna hissy fit?
Damn.
Apple - Grow up. You have an immensely
loyal user base, yet treat them like dirt.
You abuse the community that gives you free
development, you actively squash fan-motivated
derivative works, you charge 2-3x as much as for
comparable intel-based hardware, you engage in disgusting political maneuverings to squash (or obviate) bad press and speculation... Basically,
you act just like Micro$oft, except lack the
monopoly to pull it off.
Then you wonder why, with what I think most
people would agree counts as a far superior
OS to Windows, you have such a pitiful share
of the desktop market.
Free clue - reward loyaly, ignore bad press
(unless it deals with security issues, one
of MS's bigger mistakes), and don't throw
a tantrum whenever things don't go 100%
your way. Oh, and try selling your hardware
for reasonably competitive prices.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not real engineering.
I have done "real" engineering. I write (well, wrote) firmware, working very closely with EEs, and such tasks required quite a lot of careful planning. I "know" what "real" engineers do, and have done such in my own coding (though *only* as a requirement of ISO9000, which I consider useful primarily as six linear feet of kindling in case a major snowstorm traps me at work with no heat).
That said...
"Real" enineering, as applied to writing code, wastes time. A bunch of BS with no purpose other than to make management think they have a better grasp of how long it will take to finish a particular project. Every coding "paradigm" I've ever seen has the same purpose.
Note that nowhere above there did I say that such methods actually *do* lend any stability or outcome predictability to a coding project. They provide a perception, nothing more, and a false one at that.
I have written a LOT of code in my life. And I can say, quite honestly, that the "best" code I've written has felt more like writing poetry than any task of "engineering". Coding involves a creative, not analytic, effort. Anyone who claims otherwise may "get the job done" but will *NEVER* produce anything truly elegant.
Now, don't get me wrong, programming involves a lot of math, and a lot of careful forethought. But to code well, people need to have the math they use so totally ingrained that it flows without thought. From the idea to the implementation, without any (explicit) intermediate steps (except perhaps a nice detailed spec, which you either already have as the goal to code to, or have to create, in which case it flows as a natural consequence of the task at hand). If a programmer can't do that, they will take too long to produce too little, and the result will feel very underwhelming.
To make an analogy to actual literature, any two-bit hack can carefully follow the rules of grammar to string a series of words together and re-tell one of the classic plots. *Not* every writer can create the third age of Middle Earth and have the readers *believe* it.
When one is building a circuit, or a bridge, one can't simply make quick changes. Any changes are ltime consuming, expensive, and painful. Thus, REAL engineers actually plan stuff.
Complete and utter BS. When building a bridge, you use (as someone else pointed out) the 4000 years of "prototypes" available to decide what will work best. When building a circuit, you test it in any of a number of nice circuit analysis programs before building it, *then* build a few generations of proto boards, and only then commit to a release design. In the 10 years I worked closely with EEs, not once did I see any non-trivial board come out right on the first spin. They go through the same trial and error as programmers. "Oops, this line has too much noise on it, need a slightly lower-valued resistor" differs very little from "Oops, I forgot to check that call for failure since it should never fail anyway".
Yes, "real" engineering involves careful forethought. As does "real" programming. but the implementation (in *BOTH* realms) very much counts as an art. I get so sick of people trying to say we need to follow such-and-such a proceedure to produce "good" results. I used to know one guy who did a lot of analog circuit design. He'd do very little while actually at work, then go home, get REALLY high, and produce some of the best designs you've ever seen. Tell me "real" engineering makes any mention of *that* as a design strategy.
Coding, at its lowest level, involves nothing more than theorem proving. When you can propose a (terminating!) concrete algorithmic method for even something as "simple" as proving (or disproving) Fermat's last, then this discussion has some merit. Until then, we may as well argue about C++ vs Java, or tea vs coffee, or Shakespeare vs Spencer.
I would *LOVE* to own such a car. Small, fuel efficient (to an extreme, in this case), stylish. Everything you could ask for in a car for commuting, cross-country touring, or just a toy for the typical DINK family.
However, I have *VERY* serious doubts that it will ever make it to the US in its current form.
*Perhaps* a version modified to seat 4. With an extra 300lbs of "safety" features that arguably cause more injuries than they prevent. And after all the wonderful emmissions control features (that don't apply to things like SUVs and pickups because they apparently don't make pollution at 10mpg), perhaps a "really good but not amazing" efficiency of 60-70mpg.
Hell, if I could have gotten one in the US, for my last car I would have bought a Mini. Good luck finding and registering one, though.
First the Onion, now Slashdot?
Have the collective editors of online content decided to play "lets see who really pays attention" this week?
C'mon. Enough.
This doesn't require new hardware. You could do it simply by sending a regularly timed sequence of packets to port 7, then linearly interpolating between the packet return times to get a smooth waveform at a frequency having some relation to the round-trip time. By each side adding its own timestamp to the packet (and using a slightly more sophisticate server than "echo"), each side could also find out the one-way trip time each way.
While "neat", this doesn't seem particularly radical, or even hard to implement. I could probably come up with a crude working version within an hour.
I don't, however, put much stock in the claims about making telesurgery safer. The information obtained by this only gives a more fine-grained, modally-unusual form of information about the link's *current* state. It has no long-term predictive power whatsoever.
I didn't quite get the comments about modelling the network as a drum rather than a guitar string - I understand the need for a multidimensional representation, but to monitor even a small subnet you get into numbers of dimensions humans have no familiar analaog to (and thus, cannot extract meaningful information from). Unless they meant that one could plot the "to" times on one axis and the "from" times on the other, and model *that* as a 2D surface such as a drum. That would work, I guess, but would make it harder to understand the output.
Forgive me, oh vengeful modders-down, but...
Every up-and-coming physicist and his brother has a "theory" of quantum gravity.
Note I said "his". What ratio of physisists do you suppose have two "X" chromosomes?
So why did *this* theory make it to the increasingly (and disconcertingly politically correct) Sci-Am?
You already have the answer, from what I wrote above.
To put it bluntly, this wouldn't have gotten a second look from someone's dissertation advisor if "she" had 'nads.
Note that I do NOT mean this to say a female can't do physics - I only mean to say it only got published in such a high profile magazine because of her gender, not on its own merits. Sad, really. I used to like, Sci-Am, once upon a time. Long ago, I even switched from the somewhat flakier "Discover". Looks like I'll need to go to just plain vanilla "Science", along with its HUGE pricetag, if I want to continue getting reasonably unbiased and non PC-censored news from the world of science.
Heh... By that reasoning, I *HAVE* given more to the EFF (I think it has expired, but I joined and got a spiffy hat and a chance to chat up booth bunny at Linux World a couple years ago).
:-)
So, $50 to EFF, $0 to Microsoft. Yeah!
As for my cable company... When the EFF offers a 1.5 megabit connection in my neighborhood (for under $50/mo), You'll find me one of the first in line. Until then, I can only hug my knees, rock back and forth, and keep mumbling unconvincingly to myself "Ted Turner doesn't own Adelphia yet".
Out of curiosity, why only four drives per PC?
With a simple $10 PCI IDE card (per additional 4), you could have gotten at *least* 8 drives, possibly as many as 16, per case. Granted, not many cases will let you *mount* that many, but I would expect paying a few bucks extra for the IDE cards and a better case would save quite a bit of money (and physical space) by halving or quartering the number of PCs you need ($100 extra to save $1500 per $2000, not counting the drives themselves?).
88lf of machines vs 22lf. One requires an entire room, one would fit on a standard sized 3-or-4-tier storage rack. Of course, speaking of racks (of a different sort)... What on earth made you go with an array of standard PCs rather than a raid-in-a-rack?
All those things did indeed come about as byproducts of the US space program (well, "better" artifical diamonds, I think we had some variety before NASA)...
But none of those have anything to do with the vast majority of shuttle missions - namely, launching satellites for 10x the cost of a disposable launch vehicle...
Like I said, I TOTALLY support the space program (although it seems to have gotten a bit crufty and needs an overhaul). But use the shuttles to do real science, not as a military transport or a commercial cargo-ship.
Does this mean we've gone back to the "sane" method of launching satellites, and can stop wasting the shuttles (which cost WAY more to send up than a "disposable" launch vehicle) on such mundane tasks?
I hope so. While I totally support "real" space exploration, the shuttles have, for the past few decades, scammed the US out of billions (trillions, yet?) of dollars. We use them for nothing even remotely interesting, yet pay a fortune to maintain and occasionally launch them.
While I agree with one person's comment, that this level of response won't make any difference *policy wise*, it strikes me as an important step that engineers *in the industry* have started saying quite blunty, "this won't work".
;-)
Having a million random geeks say "we can break anything you throw at us" carries little weight - the non-techies coming up with these crackpot schemes just assure themselves that *their* idea will make fools of the collected geeks of the world.
OTOH, having the very geeks PAID to design and implement these ideas say "uh, well, no, it really won't work all that well" means quite a lot more. Obviously, mr. clueless exec's first response would consist of firing any naysayers. After the 10th or 20th person to say "no, really, this won't work, it doesn't matter if you threaten to fire me", they *might* start to get the idea that they have at least a somewhat difficult goal.
This might mark a turning point. Not necessarily for the better, since I expect the next set of ideas to involve a lot of annoying-as-hell hardware-level DRM, but since even that will unavoidably fail, we have taken a step toward the road back to sanity.
I hope. The RIAA and MPAA could always try to get the death penalty for music pirates.
"Whad'ja do, man?"
"Downloaded an MP3 of Brandenberg Concerto #3"
"Uh, I thought that would have gone PD by now"
"Nah, when Disney discovered a 14th century precedent for Mickey, they had copyrights retroactively extended back for a full millenium."
"Bummer"
"Yeah. But at least I only *downloaded* a copy, I just get flogged plus the standard 20 year sentence. A buddy of mine made Mozart's 19th string quartet available on a file sharing network. Poor bastard, they dragged his wife and kids out into the street and shot them all, then at the actual hearing sentenced him to death by impalement in front of RIAA HQ."
Umm... Have you looked at the business model of a conventional broadcast radio station, lately?
They do *exactly* what you say seems so "wrong" for webcasters.
And, to add insult to injury, the RIAA actually *PAYS* "normal" radio stations to play that copyrighted music.
No, not all that great.
For one thing, the RIAA's slice of the pie still comes from *gross* revenue, meaning that stations operating with only a tiny profit margin will get very very screwed.
Another poster already mentioned the $500 minimum, but that I see as less of a problem, only affecting the smallest of webcasters. The percentage of the gross take, on the other hand, doesn't go away regardless of scale.
I have to admit I don't quite get the part about non-profit webcasting (the text of the bill HEAVILY references its predecessor, making it read almost exactly like a diff file). It sounds like they just have more time to decide to fold, but don't actually get significantly better terms. But don't quote me on that one.
Most of what I suggested counts as a one-time buy (the helium tank needs refilling on occasion, but one fill costs just a tad more than one normal DVD, so...). And, depending on what sort of reaction they use in the disks (probably simple oxidation), a person could probably use much cheaper nitrogen, rather than helium.
Personally, I agree, finding a way to keep the DVD from "expiring" seems like a waste of time. Except for non-mainstream content (ie, anime, anything imported, etc), most DVDs don't cost all that much - The HDD space needed for them costs only a bit less, and involves quite a lot of CPU time to rip and encode.
However, I think you might have overlooked one of the biggest concerns about the availability of expiring DVDs - If they manage to catch on to any significant degree, we stand a very real chance of having "permanent" DVDs (and CDs, no doubt) no longer available for *any* price. If that happens, would you still say that ripping them seems "wrong" somehow? Personally, I buy 99% of what I rip and store (and the remainder, what you could reasonably consider "stolen", only because I cannot find it anywhere, but I would buy if I could get it). But I like having the music and movies I enjoy available at a moments notice, and not subject to the MPAA/RIAA deciding they want something off the market, making it totally unavailable.
To me, this doesn't involve money. They provide goods/services, and I pay for it. Fair 'nuff. But if they stop offering the goods I want, instead giving me a far inferior product (in this case, in terms of convenience, not short-term quality) where does that leave me? I need to resort to criminal activity just to have the ability to watch a non-Disney version of Mononoke Hime (A good example, you *already* can't get something by that title in the US, only the dubbed "Princess Mononoke").
I believe the MPAA has the right to offer me what they want to offer. But I also believe I should have the right to modify it (or at least try) to make it a "better" product for my needs.
Heh... Oops. I only know the names of Mick and Keith, and somehow I got the impression they meant an editor at RS magazine. My bad.
:-)
Time to go flagellate as pennance. Nah, even worse, I'll listen to a few hours of the last couple of Rolling Stones albums (I like their old stuff, but rock greats should OD young to save themselves the inevitable "resurgence" or "reunion" tour).
Nope. Get a 10 gallon aquarium (they cost like $10-$20), and a tank of helium (the party-balloon filling small tanks, they cost as high as $40 but half that you get back when you return the tank, and one full tank lasts almost forever).
;-)
Put the wrapped DVD in the aquarium. Take two rubber gloves and some saran-wrap to effectively seal the top of the aquarium (make sure to use enough that putting on the gloves won't break the seal).
Tip the aquarium on its side, and peel away a small hole in one top and the opposite bottom corner.
Light a votive candle and place it in front of the lower hole.
Add helium, via the PVC tube that almost certainly came with the aquarium (if not, pay the $0.15/foot for a few feet), to the upper hole. Add it slowly, and when the candle goes out, keep adding for a few more seconds.
Voila! You now have a home-made, inert-gas, anhydrous glove box! Put your hands in the gloves, unwrap the DVD, and apply the clear nail polish to the edge. Oops, you *did* remember to put the nail polish in the aquarium before sealing it, right?
Considering the name change and the dates involved, this one just *BEGS* for the "real" owner of the name to countersue and demand the other change his name back (or to something else).
;-)
Damn, though, *this* one takes balls. I have to admit, paranoid as I can seem, I didn't see it getting to the point where using one's one name in normal daily activities would count as infringment.
Ah well, too bad I don't read Rolling Stone, I can't cancel my subscription in protest.
Did anyone think in terms of *real* solutions, rather than just pricing out parts and assuming this guy could magically make them work together?
Anyway, at least one solution to this request appeared on Slashdot just a few days ago: The solid-state RocketDrive.
Perhaps not the ideal solution (I honestly can't say if OEM solid-state storage exists on a much bigger scale), but something that you can concretely say "this would work". Proof-of-concept, if nothing else.
Granted, for the size you want, at $5k/4G, This would cost USD $1.3 billion just for the storage itself (not counting the array of 32k+ PCI slots you'd need to hold all these and the hellacious network to RAID them), but this sounds like a gub'mint project anyway, so cost presumeably forms the *last* of your concerns. If cost *does* matter, you can get the unpopulated controller boards for $800 each, and certainly a *much* better bulk deal on RAM then what Cenatek offers (basically they charge $1k/1G? Perhaps 10 years ago!).
Checking Pricewatch, the average non-volume-buyer can get 1G of PC133 for around $100). That would lower the storage-only cost to only USD $315 million, before considering volume discounts.
Someone feel free to correct me if I err, but BECs count as a "really neat" concept due to the superposition of the constituent particles - they basically stop existing as distinct objects and form a quantum blur, with all kinds of interesting quantum properties not normally seen on such a relatively enormous scale.
Fermions cannot exist in such a state, so this seems more like cooling off an "ideal" gas - just an optimal packing problem, no more "neat" than the fact that, say, silicon below a certain temperature exists as a crystaline solid. Except they used fermions rather than silion atoms.
Even worse than, for example,
"I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers"?
Or...
"640K ought to be enough for anyone"?
Bitstream Dream
;-)
Britta Phillips (Formely the voice of "Jem")
Ghost in the Machine
Jonne Valtonen (formerly of Future Crew)
OS1
Red Delicious
I don't know if/which these groups have "real" recording deals, but you can at least download their music, legally, to listen to. Those particular artists I listed have at least a song or two that has made it to my default playlist.
The biggest problem with finding good indie groups, you have to listen to a lot of them to find something you like. Let's face it - A lot of them suck.
However...
You can listen to as many of them as you want, for free, before you commit to sending THEM (not their label) money for a CD. If you only kinda like them (or really like them but for some sick reason want them to fail), you can settle for their MP3s available, legally, on-line.
And...
I have yet to receive a copy-protected CD from an indie artist.
I, for one, cannot understand how paypal is allowed to get away with all this.
I'll second that...
I've read through the various links people have posted about why PayPal doesn't count as a bank, and regardless of that, I still don't get one part of all this - Why don't they have some liability in terms of failing to provide the service people pay them for?
Okay, they don't accept "deposits". But they act as a 3rd party transaction processor, so presumeably they have a responsibility to make sure *BOTH* halves of the transaction work out like they should.
To make an analogy, if I ship something via FedEx and they drop it off at the wrong house, they owe me for *their* mistake. I pay them to send a package to house X, it doesn't get there, they owe me the value of that package, end of story.
In Paypal's situation, the "package" only exists virtually, but it still has a real and clearly defined monetary value, no?
WTF? Hey, I totally support police finding "alternative" methods of funding (as opposed to milking the taxpayers, or confiscating anything they lay their eyes on thanks to the WO(s)D, ala a witchfinder general), but really...
With all that we have going on in the world, these folks have nothing better to do than bicker over who owns a damned box? Oh, sorry, the *IMAGE* of the box. My bad. That makes it so much more serious.
Doh!
Okay, call me a moron.
I confused centripetal force and orbital velocity.
Guess I earn an "F" in physics for today.
:-(
Well, I suppose this seems "interesting" at first glance, but I doubt it really counts as such. An asteroid, in a similar orbit to Earths. Whoop-de-do.
Of course, the part I don't get, *why* can't it hit the Earth? In roughly the same orbit around the sun, a much smaller mass has to travel MUCH slower than the Earth to maintain that orbit. So okay, I suppose *we* should hit *it*, rather than the other way around, but still...
It moved a whole 2-hour drive away (and I doubt most attendees would drive anyway), and they pull a prima-donna hissy fit?
Damn.
Apple - Grow up. You have an immensely loyal user base, yet treat them like dirt. You abuse the community that gives you free development, you actively squash fan-motivated derivative works, you charge 2-3x as much as for comparable intel-based hardware, you engage in disgusting political maneuverings to squash (or obviate) bad press and speculation... Basically, you act just like Micro$oft, except lack the monopoly to pull it off.
Then you wonder why, with what I think most people would agree counts as a far superior OS to Windows, you have such a pitiful share of the desktop market.
Free clue - reward loyaly, ignore bad press (unless it deals with security issues, one of MS's bigger mistakes), and don't throw a tantrum whenever things don't go 100% your way. Oh, and try selling your hardware for reasonably competitive prices.