Although the Aurora will be out on the 18th and 19th, it's not going to be anything fantastic. Don't expect too much south of Anchorage.
The sort of 'storm' we're going to see in the next few days is more of a 'once a month' thing than a 'once every few years' thing. Nothing to get too excited about.
I'm not sure that's a perfectly fair comparison, given the context.
Dell pioneered the "direct" sales channel in the PC industry, especially for the consumer market. There's absolutely no doubt about that whatsoever.
For a fledgling company in the 90s, it was also an easy way to break into a market dominated by giants like IBM, HP, Compaq, and DEC. If you wanted to buy a computer in the 90s, you went to a retail outlet, and paid their markup on top of whatever the machine cost.
Dell's way revolutionized things, because they were able to offer their machines cheaper to consumers, whilst also keeping larger-than-normal margins for themselves. They also had the advantage of being in control from start to finish (which is something Apple brags about these days). They also got to keep their reputation up by not being associated with shady retailers (*cough*CompUSA*cough*). Dell really did get it both ways until they started facing serious price competition.
Eventually, everyone else caught on, and began offering direct sales as well, and Dell's advantage started to diminish. Once that happened, it became time for Dell to re-evaluate its strategy, and look in new directions to expand. Retail sales made sense for that, especially with retailers like Costco, who have a decent reputation for offering low prices and humane treatment of their customers.
I also wouldn't really blame HP for anything. HP was always a huge company, made even bigger by the mergers and absorptions of several other companies (Compaq, DEC, etc...). Dell was able to eat up some of HP's marketshare while Carly Fiorina drove the company into the ground. Once she was gone, and the company was able to get back on its feet, I don't think it actually surprised anybody when they retook the market.
It'll be interesting to see where the market goes in the next few years, as customers seem to be somewhat wary of purchasing Lenovo machines...
I'm kind of interested in hearing what's caused the turnaround for Dell over the past year or two.
Dell has more or less had a reputation of being deep in the pockets of Microsoft and Intel. It was no secret that Intel was giving Dell huge perks for not selling systems with AMD chips, and I'd be surprised if Microsoft wasn't offering similar perks for keeping Linux off of consumer desktops.
Now, we're seeing dell open up a lot more options to consumers.
So what happened? Did the payola from Intel and Microsoft stop? Was there a management shakeup? Are they trying to re-focus their image as a serious business vendor to step into the void left by IBM? Or are they just emphasizing "choice" to avoid losing any more ground to Apple (this theory strongly lends itself to their decision to distance themselves from MS because of the Vista backlash)
Or maybe they're finally waking up to the fact that "nerd cred" seriously does sell computers. I would credit OS X's acceptance within the community as being instrumental to the sort of success Apple's been seeing over the past few years -- OS 7,8, and 9 left them with a pretty bad reputation that they needed to shed themselves of. When the guy who's fixed your PC multiple times recommends getting a mac, it lends some serious credibility to the brand. Given that Dell's a pretty generic brand, I doubt that anyone has serious qualms about buying from them, but it's a whole lot better than having a negative brand-reputation, or being badmouthed by everyone in the industry. (See also: Article yesterday about AOL losing $100 billion)
Yes, but the US pricing structure also doesn't distinguish between the cost of making and receiving a call.
By your logic, receiving a call should be at least marginally less expensive.
I also don't like having to pay for the "privilege" of paying for my boss to call me while I'm at home. If you want to get in touch with me, you should pay for it!
Free as in "I know exactly how much I'm going to have to pay, and don't have to worry about it if I find myself unemployed or underinsured"
The benefits of having a healthy, educated populace far outweigh the costs. I'd happily pay a bit more in taxes to have the assurance that I and my family will be cared for in any sort of medical emergency.
Nationalized healthcare will happen in the US in our lifetime. Maybe not for another 10 years, but I'm confident that it'll eventually happen. There are a number of sweeping reforms that need to be made in order to prevent the mistakes past 7 years from ever occurring again, and to halt the development of a rigid social class system (if you don't believe already it's happening, take a look at the Higher Education system).
I should add an epilogue to the story. I moved to the UK, and gave my phone to a family member who's using it until the contract runs out.
I'm quite amused by the fact that my new provider's primary business is selling groceries (Tesco), and that they're better than AT&T and Verizon by a long shot. Prepay is absolutely the way to go, especially when their rates rival the big US carriers' monthly rates. (My per-minute rates are a bit higher than what I was paying Verizon before until you consider that I'm no longer paying for incoming calls, I'm only paying for what I use each month, not locked into a contract, and the dismal value of the US dollar, making all goods in Britain appear horrendously expensive)
I'm sure their customer support is absolutely abysmal, but so far I haven't had to use it for anything, nor do I see myself doing so due to the dead-on simplicity of the prepay scheme. If I actually do have a big enough problem to warrant switching to a new carrier, I buy a new SIM from another provider (usually free if you top it up right away), have my number ported, and that's it. You can also top up at most grocery stores, most ATMs, and over the phone with a Credit card.
Sorry America. Europe definitely got this one right.
Their machines are built better, and last longer. But whenever they have a problem that affects a small fraction of a percent of their customers, there's suddenly a huge controversy.
Ask any IT manager, and they'll be able to identify a certain series of machines that were extremely prone to failure (motherboards and power supplies being the usual culprits). You NEVER hear about this sort of thing in the PC world, even though it happens all the time. Maybe it's just because Dell and HP have rather diverse product lines, but anyone who's managed large numbers of machines knows that you occasionally get a bad batch. (The trend also usually doesn't become apparent until at least a year in, unless you've got a truly dismal series of machines).
That's not to say that Apple hasn't done this -- many of the original colored iMacs had a tendency to fail after 3 or 4 years, and weren't worth repairing. On the flipside, their more expensive machines tend to keep chugging right on to the end of their lifecycle (which is typically a lot longer than for PCs -- plenty of 450mhz G4s from 1999 are still being used today for everyday tasks. However, you rarely see a Pentium II sitting on someone's desk anymore)
I know that MS is cheap for schools. I used to work in a K-12 district and do agree that they get a very good deal.
However, it's still a lot of money when you add it up. Even if they're only paying $20 per seat, it still adds up when you're fitting out an entire lab or upgrading to a new version across the district.
Likewise, Exchange server is expensive no matter which way you spin it.
Better yet. Stop trying to copy PowerPoint. It sucks.
Seriously. It's downright awful. For that matter, OOo should stop trying to be Office 97 altogether. They need a ground-up innovative approach. Or maybe they should just consider stealing Apple's ideas instead.
Keynote (Apple's presentation app) absolutely trumps PowerPoint in virtually every respect. Powerpoint 2007 got a lot better (probably the biggest improvement of the Office apps in 2007), but it still carries a ton of bloat and cruft.
Apple's other new product, Numbers (their Excel replacement) is also one of my favorite pieces of software to come along in a long time. The UI is fantastically elegant, and actually presents you with the sort of options you'd want in front of you when managing a spreadsheet. In Excel, I find myself doing "Format -> Cell -> Select a tab -> Change an option -> Ok -> Repeat" all the time, because half of the program's most commonly-used functions are hidden behind tabs in a dialog box accessed via a menu item! Numbers puts the most commonly used spreadsheet options on the toolbar (gasp!). I'll rarely add a PivotTable or WordArt (blegh) more than once per spreadsheet (if that). However, apart from data entry itself, I most often adjust alignment, font, merging, wrapping, and borders when I'm working with a spreadsheet. The fact that Office doesn't present these options prominently boggles the mind.
I feel like an "Exchange-Killer" would be better suited to a different project (of which there are already many).
We really just need one unified set of standards for doing all of the things Exchange does, and we all need to agree upon it. Then we can move forward in replacing it. (Also, the idea of an enterprise-grade mail server written in Java scares the pants off of me)
Even a sharepoint-killer would ideally be a separate project with some sort of standard in place to allow it to communicate equally-well with all applications. This hypothetically already exists in the form of WebDAV, and just needs a nice interface.
If OO wanted to do some serious damage, they'd target the education market. I imagine that they're very eager to move away from Microsoft, given their budgets.
At the university level, OoO would be an instant blockbuster if it were "good enough". If you also haven't noticed, college students and professors aren't the most financially-robust demographics....
I've always found it at least mildly disturbing that Verizon makes AT&T look good. I mean... this is Death-star-logo-sells-your-conversations-to-the-NSA AT&T we're talking about.
I was actually on with AT&T Wireless before they were Cingular, and they actually were *very* nice to us. Even once they were Cingular, their customer service was great even though they did sort of alienate their former AT&T customers. A few of the price plans that the old AT&T had right before being absorbed into Cingular were far better then anything Cingular or Verizon have ever offered. If you wanted to modify your plan, however, you had to switch to a Cingular plan which would inevitably cost you more money. There were a few tricks for getting new phones out of the deal as well, although it got a lot harder over time. Still.... you have to give them major props for honoring the plan -- I held onto it for a few years after the merger. You also didn't have to pay for incoming text messages on any plan, something that no other US carrier does to my knowledge (most European countries have legislation which forces the caller to pay for both sides of the conversation, making incoming calls and SMS free)
However, as time went on, Verizon improved its coverage in my area, while there were no improvements in GSM service. Frustrated by not being able to get a signal at home, I switched to Verizon. A year and a half down the road, and I'm fed up to the point where I'm switching back the day my contract runs out. I've been overbilled, had my service disconnected, had my plan changed without my consent, and Verizon gave my old number to somebody else after they "lost" it while porting. And of course, in order to resolve any of this, you either have to call them and wait on hold for hours on end, or visit one of their stores -- which are more and more resembling the DMV these days (I've seen actual fights break out on more than one occasion).
The parent makes some excellent points, and I'll even concede most of my point to his well-reasoned argument.
My biggest gripe, however is that the political reaction to the ad was mostly "How Rude!" instead of "Well, the ad misrepresents Gen. Petraeus because...". The legislature's reaction to the ad definitely suggested some sort of guilt on their part, especially since they've been unable to provide concrete evidence that the troop surge is doing anything apart from increasing civilian casualties.
I know this is slightly OT, but I'd like to see some sort of reasoned debate over it here...
What exactly was so offensive about MoveOn.org's ad campaign in the first place?
Petraeus has handled the Iraq war poorly, and in several cases lied outright to the American people. MoveOn.org called him out on it. Isn't that how democratic politics and free speech are supposed to work?
It's no secret that many Americans feel that the government misled the general public in order to bolster support for their war, and the ad was a simple reflection of this reality. It wasn't even a baseless personal attack -- they provide quotations, and even cite their sources.
Perhaps the most troubling part of the whole saga is that the house passed a resolution condemning the advert 341-79, and the senate 71-29 (With all 49 republicans, and 22 democrats voting in favor). The president even got in on the action.
This Time editorial seems to have the best summation of the whole situation.
Is this all the legislative branch is good for these days? Sternly wagging their fingers at political action groups, and listening to baseball testimony?
I should probably point out that not all Scots talk like the characters in Trainspotting.
The accents on the east coast (eg. Edinburgh (pronounced Edin-burra!) and Fife) are much more understandable to people from England or America. As you go west and up into the highlands, the accent gets quite a bit thicker. But even then, it isn't that difficult, save for a few words ("cow" comes to mind -- it gets pronounced "coo")
Before I answer your question, I'll add some context from ESR's original article (emphasis is mine):
The first part of my answer is "I'll do nothing, until next June". Because I'm a VA board member, under SEC regulations there's a six-month lockout on the shares (a regulation designed to keep people from floating bogus offerings, cashing out, and skipping to Argentina before the share price crashes). So it's not strictly true that I'm wealthy right now. I will be wealthy in six months, unless VA or the U.S. economy craters before then. I'll bet on VA; I'm not so sure about the U.S. economy:-).
Pause for laughter......... Done? Let's move on....
The day ESR's rant was written, VA opened at $266 a share. Pretty impressive, no? By the end of the day, it was worth $218. For his claimed 150,000 shares, that's just shy of $40 million. In just a few hours, he'd "lost" $7.2 million.
Assuming he cashed out his entire portfolio out the first day possible (which I doubt he did), he would have made a "paltry" $5.1 million.
Continuing the trend, you soon discover that you'd actually need a logarithmic plot to properly visualize the rate of VA's demise from a high-end server manufacturer into a company that makes a halfway-decent frontend for CVS (and Slashdot). To give an idea of how much of a disaster it was, I should point out that logarithmic plots aren't typically used in the financial industry.
Assuming he never cashed out at all, today he'd have just shy of $400,000 in VA stock.
Although the concept of using LIDAR to create an extremely detailed topographical map is certainly a neat (and useful) thing to do -- military and non-military applications alike, I question exactly how the AI engine is going to come into play.
This sort of system would make sense if you were scanning for subs and stealth aircraft from space -- the sort of thing that has a regular shape. But as to our current military situation, how the heck are you going to correctly deduce the presence if an IED? An IED is exactly that -- improvised. There's no standard model that can easily be spotted in a photograph. It doesn't even need to be particularly large or conspicuous to cause some serious harm.
Couldn't you also fool the system by simply throwing a tarp over whatever it is you're trying to hide? If you wanted to hide some sort of armored vehicle, couldn't the system be easily defeated by covering it in camo-netting? It'd look like a shrubbery when viewed vertically.
The way we fight wars is completely different than 60 years ago. Any power with a large, modern, and organized military able to fight a "conventional" war already has nukes. Likewise, as our progress in Iraq is currently demonstrating, a conventional military performs miserably against guerilla tactics (throwback to the American Revolution?). Mind you, there were all sorts of other mistakes made with Iraq that could have potentially prevented this sort of warfare from erupting (the Powell Doctrine comes to mind), but the fact is that we're now forced to deal with it, and when the people you're trying to protect are also the ones trying to kill you, your entire military strategy is utterly useless.
All in all, this sounds like a very expensive solution looking for a problem. I appreciate the research done by DARPA, but this is a waste of their time.
We have no idea of the accuracy of either measurement (specifically because we don't actually know how far away it is).
What we do know is that the new measurement is more precise. It's probably also safe to assume that the new one's at least slightly more accurate.
The troubling bit is that the median of the new measurement is considerably lower than the original, and lies outside of the error bars of the original estimate. This suggests that there's a good chance that one of the estimates is fundamentally flawed.
Is there really a perceptible difference in the rate of failure from one manufacturer to another?
Sure, if you've got a company that specializes in dirt-cheap OEM drives, it's not going to fare well next to one that specializes in uber-expensive Server drives...
I remember there was a post a few years back, where IT managers basically swore off every single brand of drive because "they fail more often than the rest". Apart from single models with awful manufacturing defects (ie. the IBM DeathStars), I wouldn't be so quick to call out any single manufacturer.
Even then.... I've had remarkably good luck with desktop drives over the past few years (knock on wood...), to the point where I don't see drive failure as being a particularly big issue. These days, hard drives don't seem to fail any more often than motherboards or power supplies. Sure, it's still a good idea to keep backups, but I swear that I just don't see nearly as many drives failing these days. (Laptops are another story, but then again, they're also subject to far more abuse)
HP is a shadow of its former self. Their success in the server space is simply a result of IBM's departure, and the fact that they *did* manage to hold on to a scrap of their prior expertise with building enterprise-grade hardware. (Mind you, a small scrap.)
Sure, it's nice to sell lots of PCs and Printers. Dell does that too.
HP was always first and foremost a research company. That's gone today. There is very little innovation going on there. Any kid can assemble a PC from parts.
Slashdot Mirror
Although the Aurora will be out on the 18th and 19th, it's not going to be anything fantastic. Don't expect too much south of Anchorage.
The sort of 'storm' we're going to see in the next few days is more of a 'once a month' thing than a 'once every few years' thing. Nothing to get too excited about.
I'm not sure that's a perfectly fair comparison, given the context.
Dell pioneered the "direct" sales channel in the PC industry, especially for the consumer market. There's absolutely no doubt about that whatsoever.
For a fledgling company in the 90s, it was also an easy way to break into a market dominated by giants like IBM, HP, Compaq, and DEC. If you wanted to buy a computer in the 90s, you went to a retail outlet, and paid their markup on top of whatever the machine cost.
Dell's way revolutionized things, because they were able to offer their machines cheaper to consumers, whilst also keeping larger-than-normal margins for themselves. They also had the advantage of being in control from start to finish (which is something Apple brags about these days). They also got to keep their reputation up by not being associated with shady retailers (*cough*CompUSA*cough*). Dell really did get it both ways until they started facing serious price competition.
Eventually, everyone else caught on, and began offering direct sales as well, and Dell's advantage started to diminish. Once that happened, it became time for Dell to re-evaluate its strategy, and look in new directions to expand. Retail sales made sense for that, especially with retailers like Costco, who have a decent reputation for offering low prices and humane treatment of their customers.
I also wouldn't really blame HP for anything. HP was always a huge company, made even bigger by the mergers and absorptions of several other companies (Compaq, DEC, etc...). Dell was able to eat up some of HP's marketshare while Carly Fiorina drove the company into the ground. Once she was gone, and the company was able to get back on its feet, I don't think it actually surprised anybody when they retook the market.
It'll be interesting to see where the market goes in the next few years, as customers seem to be somewhat wary of purchasing Lenovo machines...
I'm kind of interested in hearing what's caused the turnaround for Dell over the past year or two.
Dell has more or less had a reputation of being deep in the pockets of Microsoft and Intel. It was no secret that Intel was giving Dell huge perks for not selling systems with AMD chips, and I'd be surprised if Microsoft wasn't offering similar perks for keeping Linux off of consumer desktops.
Now, we're seeing dell open up a lot more options to consumers.
So what happened? Did the payola from Intel and Microsoft stop? Was there a management shakeup? Are they trying to re-focus their image as a serious business vendor to step into the void left by IBM? Or are they just emphasizing "choice" to avoid losing any more ground to Apple (this theory strongly lends itself to their decision to distance themselves from MS because of the Vista backlash)
Or maybe they're finally waking up to the fact that "nerd cred" seriously does sell computers. I would credit OS X's acceptance within the community as being instrumental to the sort of success Apple's been seeing over the past few years -- OS 7,8, and 9 left them with a pretty bad reputation that they needed to shed themselves of. When the guy who's fixed your PC multiple times recommends getting a mac, it lends some serious credibility to the brand. Given that Dell's a pretty generic brand, I doubt that anyone has serious qualms about buying from them, but it's a whole lot better than having a negative brand-reputation, or being badmouthed by everyone in the industry. (See also: Article yesterday about AOL losing $100 billion)
Yes, but the US pricing structure also doesn't distinguish between the cost of making and receiving a call.
By your logic, receiving a call should be at least marginally less expensive.
I also don't like having to pay for the "privilege" of paying for my boss to call me while I'm at home. If you want to get in touch with me, you should pay for it!
In Soviet Russia, document redacts YOU!
Free as in "I know exactly how much I'm going to have to pay, and don't have to worry about it if I find myself unemployed or underinsured"
The benefits of having a healthy, educated populace far outweigh the costs. I'd happily pay a bit more in taxes to have the assurance that I and my family will be cared for in any sort of medical emergency.
Nationalized healthcare will happen in the US in our lifetime. Maybe not for another 10 years, but I'm confident that it'll eventually happen. There are a number of sweeping reforms that need to be made in order to prevent the mistakes past 7 years from ever occurring again, and to halt the development of a rigid social class system (if you don't believe already it's happening, take a look at the Higher Education system).
Which makes "spam texts" even more enjoyable.
I should add an epilogue to the story. I moved to the UK, and gave my phone to a family member who's using it until the contract runs out.
I'm quite amused by the fact that my new provider's primary business is selling groceries (Tesco), and that they're better than AT&T and Verizon by a long shot. Prepay is absolutely the way to go, especially when their rates rival the big US carriers' monthly rates. (My per-minute rates are a bit higher than what I was paying Verizon before until you consider that I'm no longer paying for incoming calls, I'm only paying for what I use each month, not locked into a contract, and the dismal value of the US dollar, making all goods in Britain appear horrendously expensive)
I'm sure their customer support is absolutely abysmal, but so far I haven't had to use it for anything, nor do I see myself doing so due to the dead-on simplicity of the prepay scheme. If I actually do have a big enough problem to warrant switching to a new carrier, I buy a new SIM from another provider (usually free if you top it up right away), have my number ported, and that's it. You can also top up at most grocery stores, most ATMs, and over the phone with a Credit card.
Sorry America. Europe definitely got this one right.
It's the Apple paradox.
Their machines are built better, and last longer. But whenever they have a problem that affects a small fraction of a percent of their customers, there's suddenly a huge controversy.
Ask any IT manager, and they'll be able to identify a certain series of machines that were extremely prone to failure (motherboards and power supplies being the usual culprits). You NEVER hear about this sort of thing in the PC world, even though it happens all the time. Maybe it's just because Dell and HP have rather diverse product lines, but anyone who's managed large numbers of machines knows that you occasionally get a bad batch. (The trend also usually doesn't become apparent until at least a year in, unless you've got a truly dismal series of machines).
That's not to say that Apple hasn't done this -- many of the original colored iMacs had a tendency to fail after 3 or 4 years, and weren't worth repairing. On the flipside, their more expensive machines tend to keep chugging right on to the end of their lifecycle (which is typically a lot longer than for PCs -- plenty of 450mhz G4s from 1999 are still being used today for everyday tasks. However, you rarely see a Pentium II sitting on someone's desk anymore)
I know that MS is cheap for schools. I used to work in a K-12 district and do agree that they get a very good deal.
However, it's still a lot of money when you add it up. Even if they're only paying $20 per seat, it still adds up when you're fitting out an entire lab or upgrading to a new version across the district.
Likewise, Exchange server is expensive no matter which way you spin it.
Better yet. Stop trying to copy PowerPoint. It sucks.
Seriously. It's downright awful. For that matter, OOo should stop trying to be Office 97 altogether. They need a ground-up innovative approach. Or maybe they should just consider stealing Apple's ideas instead.
Keynote (Apple's presentation app) absolutely trumps PowerPoint in virtually every respect. Powerpoint 2007 got a lot better (probably the biggest improvement of the Office apps in 2007), but it still carries a ton of bloat and cruft.
Apple's other new product, Numbers (their Excel replacement) is also one of my favorite pieces of software to come along in a long time. The UI is fantastically elegant, and actually presents you with the sort of options you'd want in front of you when managing a spreadsheet. In Excel, I find myself doing "Format -> Cell -> Select a tab -> Change an option -> Ok -> Repeat" all the time, because half of the program's most commonly-used functions are hidden behind tabs in a dialog box accessed via a menu item! Numbers puts the most commonly used spreadsheet options on the toolbar (gasp!). I'll rarely add a PivotTable or WordArt (blegh) more than once per spreadsheet (if that). However, apart from data entry itself, I most often adjust alignment, font, merging, wrapping, and borders when I'm working with a spreadsheet. The fact that Office doesn't present these options prominently boggles the mind.
I feel like an "Exchange-Killer" would be better suited to a different project (of which there are already many).
We really just need one unified set of standards for doing all of the things Exchange does, and we all need to agree upon it. Then we can move forward in replacing it. (Also, the idea of an enterprise-grade mail server written in Java scares the pants off of me)
Even a sharepoint-killer would ideally be a separate project with some sort of standard in place to allow it to communicate equally-well with all applications. This hypothetically already exists in the form of WebDAV, and just needs a nice interface.
If OO wanted to do some serious damage, they'd target the education market. I imagine that they're very eager to move away from Microsoft, given their budgets.
At the university level, OoO would be an instant blockbuster if it were "good enough". If you also haven't noticed, college students and professors aren't the most financially-robust demographics....
Christ..... they've invented the Telescreen.
(They were only 23 years overdue)
I've always found it at least mildly disturbing that Verizon makes AT&T look good. I mean... this is Death-star-logo-sells-your-conversations-to-the-NSA AT&T we're talking about.
I was actually on with AT&T Wireless before they were Cingular, and they actually were *very* nice to us. Even once they were Cingular, their customer service was great even though they did sort of alienate their former AT&T customers. A few of the price plans that the old AT&T had right before being absorbed into Cingular were far better then anything Cingular or Verizon have ever offered. If you wanted to modify your plan, however, you had to switch to a Cingular plan which would inevitably cost you more money. There were a few tricks for getting new phones out of the deal as well, although it got a lot harder over time. Still.... you have to give them major props for honoring the plan -- I held onto it for a few years after the merger. You also didn't have to pay for incoming text messages on any plan, something that no other US carrier does to my knowledge (most European countries have legislation which forces the caller to pay for both sides of the conversation, making incoming calls and SMS free)
However, as time went on, Verizon improved its coverage in my area, while there were no improvements in GSM service. Frustrated by not being able to get a signal at home, I switched to Verizon. A year and a half down the road, and I'm fed up to the point where I'm switching back the day my contract runs out. I've been overbilled, had my service disconnected, had my plan changed without my consent, and Verizon gave my old number to somebody else after they "lost" it while porting. And of course, in order to resolve any of this, you either have to call them and wait on hold for hours on end, or visit one of their stores -- which are more and more resembling the DMV these days (I've seen actual fights break out on more than one occasion).
Ummm..... we got rid of numerical karma 7 or 8 years ago.
As the original poster, I'll even agree with you.
The parent makes some excellent points, and I'll even concede most of my point to his well-reasoned argument.
My biggest gripe, however is that the political reaction to the ad was mostly "How Rude!" instead of "Well, the ad misrepresents Gen. Petraeus because...". The legislature's reaction to the ad definitely suggested some sort of guilt on their part, especially since they've been unable to provide concrete evidence that the troop surge is doing anything apart from increasing civilian casualties.
I know this is slightly OT, but I'd like to see some sort of reasoned debate over it here...
What exactly was so offensive about MoveOn.org's ad campaign in the first place?
Petraeus has handled the Iraq war poorly, and in several cases lied outright to the American people. MoveOn.org called him out on it. Isn't that how democratic politics and free speech are supposed to work?
It's no secret that many Americans feel that the government misled the general public in order to bolster support for their war, and the ad was a simple reflection of this reality. It wasn't even a baseless personal attack -- they provide quotations, and even cite their sources.
Perhaps the most troubling part of the whole saga is that the house passed a resolution condemning the advert 341-79, and the senate 71-29 (With all 49 republicans, and 22 democrats voting in favor). The president even got in on the action.
This Time editorial seems to have the best summation of the whole situation.
Is this all the legislative branch is good for these days? Sternly wagging their fingers at political action groups, and listening to baseball testimony?
I should probably point out that not all Scots talk like the characters in Trainspotting.
The accents on the east coast (eg. Edinburgh (pronounced Edin-burra!) and Fife) are much more understandable to people from England or America. As you go west and up into the highlands, the accent gets quite a bit thicker. But even then, it isn't that difficult, save for a few words ("cow" comes to mind -- it gets pronounced "coo")
If they're looking for Life on Mars, I'd have the spacecraft look for any David Bowie-shaped objects.
Before I answer your question, I'll add some context from ESR's original article (emphasis is mine):
Pause for laughter......... Done? Let's move on....
The day ESR's rant was written, VA opened at $266 a share. Pretty impressive, no? By the end of the day, it was worth $218. For his claimed 150,000 shares, that's just shy of $40 million. In just a few hours, he'd "lost" $7.2 million.
Fast forward 6 months to the time he was able to legally sell it, and we discover the definition of hubris.
Assuming he cashed out his entire portfolio out the first day possible (which I doubt he did), he would have made a "paltry" $5.1 million.
Continuing the trend, you soon discover that you'd actually need a logarithmic plot to properly visualize the rate of VA's demise from a high-end server manufacturer into a company that makes a halfway-decent frontend for CVS (and Slashdot). To give an idea of how much of a disaster it was, I should point out that logarithmic plots aren't typically used in the financial industry.
Assuming he never cashed out at all, today he'd have just shy of $400,000 in VA stock.
What exactly is the point of all this?
Although the concept of using LIDAR to create an extremely detailed topographical map is certainly a neat (and useful) thing to do -- military and non-military applications alike, I question exactly how the AI engine is going to come into play.
This sort of system would make sense if you were scanning for subs and stealth aircraft from space -- the sort of thing that has a regular shape. But as to our current military situation, how the heck are you going to correctly deduce the presence if an IED? An IED is exactly that -- improvised. There's no standard model that can easily be spotted in a photograph. It doesn't even need to be particularly large or conspicuous to cause some serious harm.
Couldn't you also fool the system by simply throwing a tarp over whatever it is you're trying to hide? If you wanted to hide some sort of armored vehicle, couldn't the system be easily defeated by covering it in camo-netting? It'd look like a shrubbery when viewed vertically.
The way we fight wars is completely different than 60 years ago. Any power with a large, modern, and organized military able to fight a "conventional" war already has nukes. Likewise, as our progress in Iraq is currently demonstrating, a conventional military performs miserably against guerilla tactics (throwback to the American Revolution?). Mind you, there were all sorts of other mistakes made with Iraq that could have potentially prevented this sort of warfare from erupting (the Powell Doctrine comes to mind), but the fact is that we're now forced to deal with it, and when the people you're trying to protect are also the ones trying to kill you, your entire military strategy is utterly useless.
All in all, this sounds like a very expensive solution looking for a problem. I appreciate the research done by DARPA, but this is a waste of their time.
You can't combine statistics like that.
We have no idea of the accuracy of either measurement (specifically because we don't actually know how far away it is).
What we do know is that the new measurement is more precise. It's probably also safe to assume that the new one's at least slightly more accurate.
The troubling bit is that the median of the new measurement is considerably lower than the original, and lies outside of the error bars of the original estimate. This suggests that there's a good chance that one of the estimates is fundamentally flawed.
Is there really a perceptible difference in the rate of failure from one manufacturer to another?
Sure, if you've got a company that specializes in dirt-cheap OEM drives, it's not going to fare well next to one that specializes in uber-expensive Server drives...
I remember there was a post a few years back, where IT managers basically swore off every single brand of drive because "they fail more often than the rest". Apart from single models with awful manufacturing defects (ie. the IBM DeathStars), I wouldn't be so quick to call out any single manufacturer.
Even then.... I've had remarkably good luck with desktop drives over the past few years (knock on wood...), to the point where I don't see drive failure as being a particularly big issue. These days, hard drives don't seem to fail any more often than motherboards or power supplies. Sure, it's still a good idea to keep backups, but I swear that I just don't see nearly as many drives failing these days. (Laptops are another story, but then again, they're also subject to far more abuse)
Is it just me, or are the mods getting more and more pathological these days?
I mean... how exactly does a straightforward post questioning the ethics of murder get moderated as +5 Funny?
When was this?
I honestly don't remember such a time.
Westwood made good games.
Maxis made good games.
EA never made good games. They purchased companies that did, and the quality improved for a year or two until their creativity burned out too....
HP is a shadow of its former self. Their success in the server space is simply a result of IBM's departure, and the fact that they *did* manage to hold on to a scrap of their prior expertise with building enterprise-grade hardware. (Mind you, a small scrap.)
Sure, it's nice to sell lots of PCs and Printers. Dell does that too.
HP was always first and foremost a research company. That's gone today. There is very little innovation going on there. Any kid can assemble a PC from parts.