I don't think I'm missing the point completely... The way I see it, it's the same as...
1. the intent of the GPL is to keep software free by forcing derivative software to also be free.
2. he downloads a public domain piece of SW that (illegally) incorporates GPL code. The code is open source, but professes to be public domain unencumbered by the GPL. He still follows the GPL rules for this piece of software (distributes source, sends the copyleft notice), but others do not.
3. therefore, even though the software is in violation of the GPL (because it professes not to be restricted by the GPL), he has no problem with using it since in other circumstances he has the right to use the same subroutines in the software...
A very simple argument, and quite sound. A perfect framework to look the other way when the GPL is being violated... Is this what we call moral these days?
So I guess what you are saying if someone "reverse engineered" a piece of code, and put it into some software even though the original author of the code probably didn't want anyone to do that, you feel no moral obligation to not use this "reverse engineered" piece of code even though it has been "co-opted" for use against the wishes of the original author...
Well, that's a interesting interpretation of how a person might go about stealing GPL code and put it into the public domain (which might be distributed against the GPL license) and still sleep at night...
Gee I could have downloaded the GPL code anyways for free so I guess I have the right to do whatever I want with it... I don't feel bad at all... Just because I use the package and I don't violate the GPL then just because this package exists and many other people to violate the GPL that's not -my- problem... I find it convenient so I'm not gonna stop using it...
You may find this a "minor" moral transgression in the scheme of things (which is ok in my book), but to say it's completely moral doesn't seem to be entirely honest. This is a bit extreme, but this moral dillema is not too different from using immoral nazi medical research. The only thing different is degree and if you think violating the CSS group's rights is moral. Or that somehow the FSF/GPL rights are somehow more sacred than the CSS group's rights or rights or nazi prisoners...
You might counter that nobody got hurt, but would you change your mind if the company who's private key got compromized to make DeCSS gets slapped for a $1M fine, lays off all their employees and goes bankrupt? I'm not saying this will happen, but it could...
I'd like to see proof of this "reverse engineering" before this gets release under the GPL...
Suppose person A held up a bank and stole $1000. Suppose person A dropped $15 while running away. Suppose you picked it up and donated it to charity
Just because you do something "good", "right", or "moral" with the $15 doesn't make it "moral"...
So why would it be moral to use something (the DVD decoder) that was obtained in a possibly immoral (violated patent/licensing rules) fashion?
Case #2
To be more clear, suppose there is a piece of code (say regexp library) that is BSD licenced (old style). Suppose you have BSD unix so you are "kosher" for using the code. However, you have a piece of non-compliant GPL code that wrongfully stole the code and embedded it in an application (but slightly modified). Is it moral for you to use this non-compliant package even though you sort-of have a licence to use the code (because you are running BSD-unix)? Or by supporting this "immoral" application, you are committing an immoral act by using it? What if you didn't know where the code came from? What if you suspected the code came from an illegal source?
I'd be interested to see people's answer to this one... at least be honest and say it's not as simple a dillema as some people make it out to be...
For those unfamiliar with the SAT methodology, you take several mini-tests of which some contribute to your score and others are "experimental" which are used to compare test takers from past and future years (they do this so they don't reuse tests which could lead to cheating)
There have been many theories on why the "average" student would score lower today than in past years. The best explanation I've heard so far was that many years ago, only the top "college" bound people took the tests and today, more people are attending college in the US so the average was bound to fall... people are probably not getting dumber, well at least not 10% dumber...;-)
This theory was backed-up by examining the entering scores of many universities noting that the average entering scores had not fallen off as much as the average for all test takers.
There's also quite a bit of noise about cultural bias in the SAT, however, as another person already pointed out, the only statistic that has been reliably correlated to SAT scores is parental income. I don't know what that says about the test, but it doesn't seem to be a good thing...
The results of the SAT are used widely by many public universities as as pseudo "entrance" exam which makes it no different than the tests used by many universities in europe and other parts of the world (the tests taken after high-school)...
Many public universities in various states around the US are required to accept people who score higher than a certain score (usually around 550 where 500 is the median), and that recieve a certain grade point average (usually 3.0/4.0), and a certain class ranking (usually upper 30%), and who make residence in the state. Other people who do not make these criteria are admitted on other criteria or as space allows. This seems like a pretty reasonable way to allocate a scare resource.
Tuition prices for state universities are quite reasonable as mentioned by other posters and within reach of the working class (with either loans or scholarships which are quite plentiful).
For private universities, there are several types with various admit criterias, but I'm not aware of any that strictly admit on SAT scores or GPA alone.
Rule #1: The first thing to remember with VC first is that they have no interest in technology, per se.
The biggest mistake that most people make is that they think "wiz-bang" is the way to sell to VCs. VCs are more interested in the "business plan" or how a company can take your wiz-bang device and make a jillion dollars from it in the shortest amount of time. Remember VCs fund businesses, they do not fund technology (so called "incubator" companies have been started to fund technology)...
If you can't answer how you are going to make money, they are usually not interested (although they might appear to be intersted in the wiz-bang nature of your technology, no VC wallets or checks will come out based on a wiz-bang invention).
So, if you're not business inclined and can't write a business plan what should you do? Well the best thing to do is find someone you know that is and get them to sign an NDA, create a plan together. VCs like it when the tech and the biz parts come in the same package and they don't have to put it together.
If you don't want to do that, at least have a rough idea of how your device will change the world without (I repeat without) going into technical details. If you have to say something technical to get your point across, there is very little chance it will change the world. VC firms rarely do small deals under $10mil that don't have $1000mil potential.
Chances are you won't get an audience with a VC w/o a business plan. But, if by stroke of luck you get in, it is quite likely that the VC has seen 100's of business plans for a wiz-bang device just like yours (otherwize they won't call you at all). Although you might think your idea is original, chances are it isn't.
But all is not lost, if they are interested but you don't have a track record, they will want to either hook you up with some other people that they are trying to get off the ground or who can at least evaluate your technology relative to the 100s of other people who are doing similar things. Getting to this stage is a good thing.
Rule #2: Before you go to a VC firm, do your homework!
Although VCs are necessarily technical, most have probably seen all sorts of inventions that you have not seen (and you probably thought were impossible or impractical). Although you might have some technical expertise on your side, they have the empirical evidence. Don't underestimate the value of empirical evidence over technical savvy. You aren't the smartest fish in the sea...
I've heard lots of stories about people who think their stuff was better than sliced bread only to have a VC tell them that they've seen something better for 1/2 the cost and, oh yeah, we funded it last year and it'll be on the market next week. What did you say your name was again? We'll be in touch...
However, VC funding is not impossible, but be prepared to answer a lot of business oriented questions because that's all they are interested in. Sometimes VC can hook you up with people to figure this stuff out, but more commonly, they would rather such companies be funded by what are called "incubator" companies until the business stuff is sorted out.
The business questions that you should be prepared to answer are: What is the total available market? Who are the competitors? How will you beat them? How will you make money if new competition emerges? If you haven't researched the answers to these questions, hang it up, they will eat you alive. They don't call them vulture capitalist for nothing...;-)
That's why VCs have a pretty good track record over people starting their own businesses and the so called "angels" (wealthy people who privatly fund start-up companies). They may not know what it takes to make a business succeed, but they sure know how they fail and they try to avoid businesses that will probably fail.
If you are one of the lucky few that gets funded, you aren't off the hook. The biggest mistake that most people make is undercapitalizing their companies. In an underfund situation, you have spent all the money the VCs give you and are only "a few months" away from being a sucess. Now the VCs have you over a barrel, if you get any more money from them they will take a big percentage of the company.
Don't ask for too little money! The good VCs will just know that you asked for too little and just think you don't know what you are doing. The slightly less reputable ones might just go along and screw you later...
There are really only three differences between RISC and CISC architectures.
1. Accumulator model vs separate destination. 2. Variable length instructions. 3. Memory addressing complexity.
Since most "CISC" compliers and chips have all but abandoned the highly complex addressing modes (relagated to slow operation), there really isn't much difference between the architectures today except for #1 and #2.
The main advantage of #1 is to allow the compilers better control of register renaming strategies. The main disadvantage of #1 is that the extra operand chews up bits in the instruction word. This indirectly increases the instruction cache bandwidth (a bad thing in today's world). In fact, if you look at the compressed 16-bit RISC instruction sets (MIPS16, THUMB), they went to an 8 register accumulator model (hmm, sound familiar)...
However since today's superscalar processors can execute instructions so fast, the copying operands to a temporary accumulator isn't a big deal compared to missing the instruction cache. In today's world, #1 and #2 are really tied closely together. In some sense, the variable length instruction decode logic can be seen as "cache efficiency" enhancing logic.
Some may argue that memory addressing modes for the arithmetic functions is slowing things down. Although that's true in some cases, in the most common case (stack access in the data cache), today's highly pipelined "CISC" implementation is only slightly more complex than reading from a scoreboarded register file or a reorder/retire buffer.
So although they've mostly converged to each other, the 2 operand 1 destination model is still useful for the next processing paradigm to come down the track - dataflow processors. You can see some of this now in EPIC (IA-64) and the TI-C600 where operation register dependancies are encoded in the instruction in increasingly simpiler ways.
Several instruction set generations from now, registers will probably go away completely and simply the instruction dependancies will be encoded. The internals of most super-scalar/ out-of-order processors already look like this. The register numbers are just references to data dependancies and really are just place holders. In this context, separating the operands and the destination still makes good sense.
Although I'm arguing that the above metioned article is or isn't valid science, I don't think that being a physicist has any very much to do with the ability to judge "newsworthiness" of scientific blurbs that occur in mainstream press articles that have no details provided, unless, of course, if he/she is involved with that research.
A particularly astute visionary, Richard Feynman (who by the way was also a physicist) observed that often what passes as scientific judgement is often a thinly diguised religion.
As evidence, he observed the written record of the discovery of a "new" particles in the literature. Basically, looking back he discovered that early experimental results that could have indicated the existance of such particles were routinely dismissed as experimental error. After more "support" for the particle existed, the experimental error started to be tracked and eventually a "new" paradigm emerged.
Feynman surmised that there would have been even more historical reasearch to support the "new" paradigm earlier, but noted that some researcher often "threw-out" experiments that didn't verify their theories or fit their agenda. So much for the integrity of scientific judgement.
That's not to say that scientists (or physicists) are alone in this type of behaviour, it's human. It's only natural to have such a filter. Since there is only a finite amount of time in a day, people often build up "BS" filters that help to keep them from wasting time in probablistically non-productive pursuits.
On the other hand people with journalism training tend to recognize this type of bias and tend to be better prepared to compensate for it. So IMNSHO, I think a person with a background in journalism who also happens to know a bit about science is much more qualified to be a science editor.
(BTW, that's not me...)
I'm not saying that having a physics background isn't useful, but I seriously doubt that physics background alone make anyone more qualified to be an editor than your typical techno-geek that watches the discovery channel on a regular basis and is a sceptic and has good BS detector.
(and that's not me either...)
However, having said that, techno-geeks that watch the discovery channel aren't necessarily qualified to be editors (or physicist) either, it's just that neither is a very good indicator of being a good editor.
But people who can critically read and comment on things that they vehmenantly disagree with, well, that's a good start... However, the ability to take criticism because you know that not everyone will agree with your decision to run with an article, that's probably the #1 criteria...
From what I've seen so far most of the/. editors can pass this #1 criteria... (having edited a newspaper before, I can definitly sympathize with the/. editors on this point)
-slew
(oh yeah, I studied physics too, but not volunteering for any jobs...)
Didn't the 68K have address registers and data registers as separate things (A0, A1, D0, D1,...)? I think you mean general purpose registers like "RISC" registers...
BTW, the IA64 has *lots* general purpose registers.... and a funky register offset address mode (ala 29K processor), but better... Hopefully the compilers can take advantage...
Unfortunatly, this looks more and more like another i432 chip from intel...
1. 64 Bit Memory and IO IA32 has 64 bit memory bus and instruction that can access with 1 atomic operation. However, there's no 64-bit single cycle arithmetic... (unless you count CMPXCHG8B, CDQ, FILD, FISTP, MOVQ, SHLD, SHRD, and MMX packed bit instructions)
2. Virtual/Real memory access. With IA32, you can access more memory than 2^32 *bytes* of memory (up to 2^36 *bytes* just not linearly), but not as much 2^64 *bytes*...
However, for the most part, those are the main differences between 32bit and 64bit architectures.
There is a tax home (defined by the IRS and state law) There is a legal residence (in the US this is a combo of US and state laws) There is an effective location (defined by both for sales and property tax and breaking laws)
These don't have to be the same place (or even only one place)... And usually, it's not to your advantage... They've got you coming and going...
There is actually a formula for determining market price depending on the spectrum of active bids and asks
Unlike options trades, there is a certain matching requirement for bids. The reason it's not allowed is because if you sell at 50% of market, you are not allowed to say who buys the shares. To be fair you have to match your ask with someones bid which is probably not the bid of the person who you were trying to sell to.
Think of it this way. If you ask $10 and someone else asks $40, the top bid is $50 and the next bid is $30, what is the fair way to do this? Do you sell all of your $10 shares to the $50 guy? Or do you sell your shares to the $50 guy for $50? Or should the $30 guy get to buy some shares if you agree to split the difference?
What keeps a middle man from bidding $51, getting your shares for $10 and selling it to the old top bidder for $50 and pocketing the difference? Not so simple huh? And these are simple problems compared to having 1000s of bid and 1000s of ask and limit orders etc, etc...
Non-market trading of public companies is highly regulated because the of the fraud potential. When the difference is 1/4 point, millions of dollars can be made or lost by the way you select how the orders match up. The market makers are accused on a daily basis that they manipulate things by placing a whole bunch of strategically priced orders on the books.
Just think if you made an ask 50 points below market or a buy 50 points above market... Who gets to benefit from that transaction? Things could get really complicated...
Now if you have a private company, you can pretty much do whatever you want... no need to be fair...
Not everyone can sell their stock at any price to the public (otherwize I can think up lots of ways to scam the public).
There are many securities laws on the books that require stock transactions to be recorded at fair market value, so even if someone bought it at 14 and sold it to you at 15, the seller would have to pay taxes as if they sold it to you at 70... Then if you turned around and sold it to someone at 20, you would have to pay taxes on the $5 gain and still wouldn't be able to write off the $50 difference (although there are some exceptions for gifts)...
Alas, stocks aren't as simple as dollars and cents...
More likely RH is taking advantage of securities laws that allow up to 3 days to close the IPO and are taking these share from the overallotment reserve that usually comes with each IPO registration. Normally these shares are used to cover "rounding-errors" created when trying to match stock lots between large institutional investors to percentages from the allocation formula. Often the left overs are just distributed to the broker/partners of the large institutional investors.
So in this case the small guy is making out instead of the wall street suits... yea!
I can imagine in a very distant future world (10,000 years), that there will be a great debate about the origins of Linux. What will be taught in computer science history classes? Did Linux evolve from Unix or was it created?
The creationist will point to crufty old documents that prove that Linus created Linux for his own PC in his spare time. The evolutionists will point out that this is highly unlikly and point to the similarities between Unix and Linux and postulate a missing-link/release that will prove their point, but not find one.
Look how BSD and S5R4 have a clear evolutionary tree from Unix, they will cry. Why should be believe Linux didn't do the same, they will question. Why believe in creation when evolution is much more plausible.
The creationist will stand firm, these FAQ documents tell all the fact. No-one should question them.
Strange how these arguments can always be used in the same way. You may laugh about it now, but this is exactly how all these kind of debates get started...
If all those complaining about RH up-ing their share price would have studied up (oops, studying is a bad word), then you would have realized that almost all hot IPOs become effective above their initial range.
The reason for this is that if RH would have priced at $12, they would have gotten less money out of the IPO (and more would have gone to the suits on wall street). Why shouldn't RH take advantage of the hype and raise a few more bucks on this round of financing?
Who was supposed to be primary beneficiary of this IPO, the company or some hackers who were too lazy to study up and research the process? RH the company benefits from up-ing the IPO price and it's in their best interests (and probably in the best interests of most of their true "friends") that they were able to raise more money in this round of financing to help them support more Open Source projects.
Complaining just because you don't have a few more bucks in your pocket is whining. You lost out because you were too lazy to study up, plain and simple. You are the same type of people who sue others because you are unable to accept blame for your own stupidity.
The OS movement benefits more by having RH having more money to spend on OS projects than you having more money to spend on yourself.
Having said all that, often directed share programs take up to 1 day to clear, so if you get off your butt and call E*trade, you might just find that all you have to do is throw in a few more bucks to get your shares. But from what I understand, it probably went to a lottery anyhow so odds are that you just have to blame the dice or the Random number generator.
Wouldn't it be ironic if E*trade used an open source RNG (since most of them are) to pick the lottery winners. Sweet justice... whiners blame open source for failure to get RHAT IPO shares.
I'm not so sure this is a good idea. There are two agencies that have tried this type of thing before: USPS (US postal service) and Amtrak (US passenger train service).
I think that after this happened, innovation died. USPS worried so much about competition, they basically spent it trying to kill UPS and FedEx instead of innovating and eventually got out innovated by UPS and FedEx. Amtrak basically used the extra money to subsidize their ticket prices and as a result killed other passenger rail startups.
If there is truly a self supporting way to explore space, I'm sure that some enterprising people will find a way to do it. If there is such a business plan, I'm pretty sure it would happen with or without the US government's interference.
Big companies do basic research all the time IBM, Dow, Boeing, even (gasp) Microsoft. I see no reason why space exploration would stop it there was a profit-neutral way to do it. I suspect, however, that the lack of such a company means that nobody has figured it out yet. In the worst case, space exploration could be funded just like the olympics, with sponsors. I'm sure no sponsoring company would want their products to fail in a space launch, and it would pretty much be just part of their advertizing/promotional budget.
This mean that feeding back some of the money to NASA would just be a money subsidy to NASA to help it sabotage other upstart space company (like USPS and Amtrak did to their competitors). This doesn't sound like a good idea for allocating dollars to me...
What strikes me as odd about all this rumbling about IPO shares, RH, E-trade, SEC, etc is the attitude of many of the posters that somehow they are entitled to some preferential treatement.
Frankly I am appalled that./-ers are exhibiting the same mob mentality that allows fans to get crushed at concerts and soccer games. It's not any different. People at the back push and push because by some happenstance, they are caught in the back of the bus. There's a lot of bad karma that comes with this kind of selfishness.
Why should anyone be allowed to invest money in RH if they don't want you too? Quite frankly, if RH wanted to, it could allow people to purchase stock in the company before any of this IPO thing happened. I didn't see too many people clamoring for shares at RH's door. Now at the end of the rainbow, the masses come a-knocking? Or was it that it was too risky to invest before?
Why didn't they do this before the announced IPO? Although I don't know the reason, I would speculate that they didn't want to dilute the shares for their current investors and employees. These investors and employees took the risk, and now are seeing if the market will reward them. However, had they allowed small, unaffiliated investors into the company before (and I'm sure they have), with SEC rules regarding unregistered securities, they would have to pass a similar investor test that E-trade is giving now. There is really no difference.
The best way to think of un-affiliated IPO shares is like a sweepstakes where the prize is unknown. Some people get the chance to buy, some people don't. It's just the hand you are dealt.
For those who say they believe in the company, just buy some market shares about 2-months after the IPO when the price dips. Chances are you'll get the same result w/o all the heartache.
To those that want to make a quick buck, start your own company. Don't try and ride the coat-tails. What you say that's too hard? Well that's part of the risk-reward equation.
Entitlement culture is just a manifestation of the emotion of envy. Do you envy your next-door neighbor because they have a new K7-600MHz PC? Do you envy people who get food stamps because they don't have to earn their food? Do you envy a winner of a scholarship? Perhaps you will be one of the rich people someday who will insist that the US govt should pay you social security benefits because you are entitled to it even though you know the poor widow/widower down the street could use the money more than you.
Or maybe you envy Linus and the attention that he gets for Linux even though there are many people who work on it? What ever happened to long term thinking? If the RH IPO succeeds, then the chances are better for everyone else that follows. In fact, the companies who dominate the industry rarely are the first ones. Most of the time the leaders just end up with lots of arrows in the back.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure you can't sue the govt unless they give you permission to sue them. However, in this case the SEC is not preventing you from making the trade. E-trade is.
However you are also not likely to be able to win a lawsuit against them either. They are most likely operating under what is know as a 'safe-harbor'.
A 'safe-harbor' is a way that companies protect themselves from silly lawsuits. Basically what this means is a regulatory agency (like the SEC) say you should operate in a certain way. If the company does it that way, the company has a built-in defense in saying "hey we didn't cause intentional harm", which means any chance of big lawsuits is out.
Part of the SEC 'safe-harbor' provisions for IPOs are that the IPO share must be distributed to both large and small investors, and that investors don't bet too much of their net worth on the IPO, and that the investors know what they are getting into (hence the experience factor).
E-trade is probably complying with these 'safe-harbor' provisions, so any lawsuit is unlikely to succeed (since you would have to prove they directly discriminated against you instead of it just being a consequence of their actions).
Keep in mind, there are only so many shares to sell. In any "fair" scheme, many people will get left out in the cold.
Well it probably isn't the best idea, but historically in the US there have been some federal agencies that have been spun out (at least partially)...
- Fannie Mae (used to be Federal National Morgage Association, now a publicly traded company) - RAND (used to be part of the US air force, now a non-profit corporation)
There are other agencies have turned into corporations, but are still owned by the government:
- USPS (US post office, delivers junk^H^H^H^Hsnail-mail) - FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, insures money in the bank) - Ginnie Mae (used to be Government National Morgage Association, government backed morgages) - TVA (Tennesee Valley Authority, a power company)
One downside to privatization of an agency is the loss of regulatory authority. But since NASA never had any authority, this doesn't matter.
The other downside is that as a separate corporation, you can't lose money (well at least not too much), NASA probably wouldn't be able to cut it as a corporation.
But maybe NASA could be restructured into a non-profit model like RAND. RAND sells the reports they generate for $$$, and they have a huge endowment (get income form the interest), and lots of companies and the govt donate them money to direct their research. However, the NASA that exists today is too bloated and non-economically motivated, they are negative-profit.
All it takes is an act from congress and a John Hancock from the president and poof, NASC (National Aeronautics and Space Corporation) could be born... However, as I said, this probably isn't the best idea...
People who have programmed FPGA realize that the claim FPGAs run at a faster clock rate are missing the point.
Creating a chip architecture/micro-architecture is a function of 4 fundamental tradeoffs: Cycle time, Work per cycle, Area, and Time to market.
FPGA have chosen low work per cycle. In the past, CPUs chose high work per cycle. Now, they are going in the direction of lower work per cycle (deeper pipelines, more latency). Just a question of what you want.
Clock rate is just one choice of many, and has little to do with some magic FPGA architecture. In fact with today's fpga, 200MHz is fast, compare that to your 450MHz pentium III...
The main architectural advantage of FPGAs is that a block of logic only needs to exist when you are using it. This is simply a form of caching. Instead of having all the HW there (but slower), you have only the subset you need (so it's faster). However, if you factor in the "misses" (the time where logic has to be reprogrammed), it's a much more complicated problem which doesn't have such an "obvious" solution...
Just like there are data sets that blow a CPU cache, there are probably algorithms that make re-programmability a liability.
On the issue of efficiency, FPGA just have underused programmability and routing logic instead of underused HW functional units in other architectures. Depends on the problem you are trying to solve...
GS only has to buy it if it is a secure underwriting. Most IPOs contracts are structured as a "best efforts" underwriting, where all GS has to do is offer the shares and if they don't make their subscription, they're not on the hook to buy all the shares...
In a secure underwriting, the underwriter buys all the shares and then sells them. In a "best efforts" underwriting, the underwriter only buys the shares that they have orders for (although partners can put in their own orders so this is ususally not a problem)...
However, I have no doubt that RH will be over subscribed 10-20x and they will have no trouble selling any shares they offer (including over-allotment shares) regardless if it's a "best efforts" or a secure underwriting.
FYI, the reserve or directed shares are a great deal since IPO shares are subject to allotment. The IPO shares are sold by allotment to brokers which depends on how many they ask for.
For a hot IPO like RH, it'll be way oversubscribed so a broker will ask for say 10mil shares and only get say 1mil which the broker is free to divy-up however they want (usually to their best customers first, or just by percentage like I bid for 1000 and get to buy 100). The only rule is that they have to be spread out between small and large buyers in a fair fashion (so if you put in a small order, you could get lucky, or nothing).
With directed shares, the pool is separated from the riff-raff and most people can get what they bid for.
BTW: all the IPO shares are sold to every one at the exact same price (nobody gets special price treatment). You either get to buy them or not. If not, you have to wait for them to be traded. That's why everyone wants the IPO shares. But after they are in the market, orders sit around, until they are filled, and if you put in a market price bid, you may end up paying a lot of money...
Actually VERY large buildings like the boeing assembly plant actually have their own weather inside (fog, etc). I wonder if that means it won't work worth crap there either;-)
Optical isn't too different from microwave when it comes to weather problems (just ask anyone who owns a DSS system) and they seem to be pretty successful in an outdoor situation...
Do you mean DVD+RW or DVD-RW?
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I don't suppose you realize these are two different standards with similar names...
DVD-R : write-once version of DVD-ROM... DVD-RAM : low capacity, older format DVD+RW : HP/Philips/Sony (most similar to DVD-ROM) DVD-RW : Pioneer (fading fast)
These days, all bets seem to be leaning to DVD+RW... (probably because '+' is better than '-')
DRAM doesn't fit this definition...
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Under this definition, DRAM is not RAM since DRAM cannot be accessed randomly at the same speed as linearly (linear is much faster, random access requires row precharge time).
I think you'd better update your definition, or maybe not tend to trust FOLDOC... or maybe we all need to concede that 640K of ram (being larger than most caches) hasn't even made it to the mainstream yet... or maybe not;-)
Actually a lot of the charm about/. is that there are AC postings.
IMNSHO, AC postings make the conversation more diverse. On other sites, people just make up names all the time and/or the conversation is just dominated by a few people (boring!)... The moderation policy, as it exists, mirrors the real world quite well (if you ignore childish behavior, it usually goes away). Likewize if poor posts are moderated down so nobody sees them... Editorial control of dissussions is minimum and group controlled (just like real life)...
I suspect the very same people who deride AC posters, have self-importance issues, controlling tendencies or simply have desires to dominate all discussion that they are involved with (a sign of a low tolerance threshold...) Really, a 6 months? Isn't that a -bit- extreme?
On/. I just read AC postings in a different mind-set (ready to forget it at any instant and move on)... And from time-to-time I also glance at the Score to see what other people think...
As for the other things, filters for posters might be a good addition for those people who don't want to acknowledge the existance of people that they don't ever want to be seen agreeing with...
Slashdot Mirror
no, I just hope people would be more moral than that... sigh...
I don't think I'm missing the point completely... The way I see it, it's the same as...
1. the intent of the GPL is to keep software free by forcing derivative software to also be free.
2. he downloads a public domain piece of SW that (illegally) incorporates GPL code. The code
is open source, but professes to be public domain unencumbered by the GPL. He still follows the GPL
rules for this piece of software (distributes source, sends the copyleft notice), but others do not.
3. therefore, even though the software is in violation of the GPL (because it professes not to
be restricted by the GPL), he has no problem with using it since in other circumstances he has the
right to use the same subroutines in the software...
A very simple argument, and quite sound. A perfect framework to look the other way when the
GPL is being violated... Is this what we call moral these days?
So I guess what you are saying if someone "reverse engineered" a piece of code, and put it into some
software even though the original author of the code probably didn't want anyone to do that, you
feel no moral obligation to not use this "reverse engineered" piece of code even though it has been
"co-opted" for use against the wishes of the original author...
Well, that's a interesting interpretation of how a person might go about stealing GPL code and put it
into the public domain (which might be distributed against the GPL license) and still sleep at
night...
Gee I could have downloaded the GPL code anyways for free so I guess I have the right to do
whatever I want with it... I don't feel bad at all... Just because I use the package and I don't
violate the GPL then just because this package exists and many other people to violate the GPL
that's not -my- problem... I find it convenient so I'm not gonna stop using it...
You may find this a "minor" moral transgression in the scheme of things (which is ok in my book), but
to say it's completely moral doesn't seem to be entirely honest. This is a bit extreme, but this
moral dillema is not too different from using immoral nazi medical research. The only thing
different is degree and if you think violating the CSS group's rights is moral. Or that somehow the
FSF/GPL rights are somehow more sacred than the CSS group's rights or rights or nazi prisoners...
You might counter that nobody got hurt, but would you change your mind if the company who's private
key got compromized to make DeCSS gets slapped for a $1M fine, lays off all their employees and goes
bankrupt? I'm not saying this will happen, but it could...
I'd like to see proof of this "reverse engineering" before this gets release under the GPL...
Let me see...
Case #1
Suppose person A held up a bank and stole $1000.
Suppose person A dropped $15 while running away.
Suppose you picked it up and donated it to charity
Just because you do something "good", "right", or "moral" with the $15 doesn't make it "moral"...
So why would it be moral to use something (the DVD decoder) that was obtained in a possibly immoral
(violated patent/licensing rules) fashion?
Case #2
To be more clear, suppose there is a piece of code (say regexp library) that is BSD licenced (old
style). Suppose you have BSD unix so you are "kosher" for using the code. However, you have a
piece of non-compliant GPL code that wrongfully stole the code and embedded it in an application
(but slightly modified). Is it moral for you to use this non-compliant package even though you
sort-of have a licence to use the code (because you are running BSD-unix)? Or by supporting this
"immoral" application, you are committing an immoral act by using it? What if you didn't know
where the code came from? What if you suspected the code came from an illegal source?
I'd be interested to see people's answer to this one... at least be honest and say it's not as
simple a dillema as some people make it out to be...
For those unfamiliar with the SAT methodology, you take several mini-tests of which some contribute
;-)
to your score and others are "experimental" which are used to compare test takers from past and
future years (they do this so they don't reuse tests which could lead to cheating)
There have been many theories on why the "average" student would score lower today than in past
years. The best explanation I've heard so far was that many years ago, only the top "college" bound
people took the tests and today, more people are attending college in the US so the average was
bound to fall... people are probably not getting dumber, well at least not 10% dumber...
This theory was backed-up by examining the entering scores of many universities noting that
the average entering scores had not fallen off as much as the average for all test takers.
There's also quite a bit of noise about cultural bias in the SAT, however, as another person
already pointed out, the only statistic that has been reliably correlated to SAT scores is parental
income. I don't know what that says about the test, but it doesn't seem to be a good thing...
The results of the SAT are used widely by many public universities as as pseudo "entrance" exam
which makes it no different than the tests used by many universities in europe and other parts of the
world (the tests taken after high-school)...
Many public universities in various states around the US are required to accept people who score
higher than a certain score (usually around 550 where 500 is the median), and that recieve a
certain grade point average (usually 3.0/4.0), and a certain class ranking (usually upper 30%), and
who make residence in the state. Other people who do not make these criteria are admitted on other
criteria or as space allows. This seems like a pretty reasonable way to allocate a scare resource.
Tuition prices for state universities are quite reasonable as mentioned by other posters and
within reach of the working class (with either loans or scholarships which are quite plentiful).
For private universities, there are several types with various admit criterias, but I'm not aware
of any that strictly admit on SAT scores or GPA alone.
Rule #1: The first thing to remember with VC first is that they have no interest in technology, per se.
;-)
The biggest mistake that most people make is that they think "wiz-bang" is the way to sell to VCs.
VCs are more interested in the "business plan" or how a company can take your wiz-bang device and
make a jillion dollars from it in the shortest amount of time. Remember VCs fund businesses,
they do not fund technology (so called "incubator" companies have been started to fund technology)...
If you can't answer how you are going to make money, they are usually not interested (although
they might appear to be intersted in the wiz-bang nature of your technology, no VC wallets or checks
will come out based on a wiz-bang invention).
So, if you're not business inclined and can't write a business plan what should you do? Well
the best thing to do is find someone you know that is and get them to sign an NDA, create a plan
together. VCs like it when the tech and the biz parts come in the same package and they don't have
to put it together.
If you don't want to do that, at least have a rough idea of how your device will change the
world without (I repeat without) going into technical details. If you have to say something
technical to get your point across, there is very little chance it will change the world. VC firms
rarely do small deals under $10mil that don't have $1000mil potential.
Chances are you won't get an audience with a VC w/o a business plan. But, if by stroke of luck you
get in, it is quite likely that the VC has seen 100's of business plans for a wiz-bang device just
like yours (otherwize they won't call you at all). Although you might think your idea is original,
chances are it isn't.
But all is not lost, if they are interested but you don't have a track record, they will want to
either hook you up with some other people that they are trying to get off the ground or who can
at least evaluate your technology relative to the 100s of other people who are doing similar things.
Getting to this stage is a good thing.
Rule #2: Before you go to a VC firm, do your homework!
Although VCs are necessarily technical, most have probably seen all sorts of inventions that you
have not seen (and you probably thought were impossible or impractical). Although you might
have some technical expertise on your side, they have the empirical evidence. Don't underestimate
the value of empirical evidence over technical savvy. You aren't the smartest fish in the sea...
I've heard lots of stories about people who think their stuff was better than sliced bread only to
have a VC tell them that they've seen something better for 1/2 the cost and, oh yeah, we funded
it last year and it'll be on the market next week. What did you say your name was again?
We'll be in touch...
However, VC funding is not impossible, but be prepared to answer a lot of business oriented
questions because that's all they are interested in. Sometimes VC can hook you up with people
to figure this stuff out, but more commonly, they would rather such companies be funded by what are
called "incubator" companies until the business stuff is sorted out.
The business questions that you should be prepared to answer are: What is the total available market?
Who are the competitors? How will you beat them? How will you make money if new competition emerges?
If you haven't researched the answers to these questions, hang it up, they will eat you alive.
They don't call them vulture capitalist for nothing...
That's why VCs have a pretty good track record over people starting their own businesses and
the so called "angels" (wealthy people who privatly fund start-up companies). They may not
know what it takes to make a business succeed, but they sure know how they fail and they try to avoid
businesses that will probably fail.
If you are one of the lucky few that gets funded, you aren't off the hook. The biggest mistake that
most people make is undercapitalizing their companies. In an underfund situation, you have
spent all the money the VCs give you and are only "a few months" away from being a sucess. Now the
VCs have you over a barrel, if you get any more money from them they will take a big percentage
of the company.
Don't ask for too little money! The good VCs will just know that you asked for too little and just
think you don't know what you are doing. The slightly less reputable ones might just go along
and screw you later...
There are really only three differences between RISC and CISC architectures.
1. Accumulator model vs separate destination.
2. Variable length instructions.
3. Memory addressing complexity.
Since most "CISC" compliers and chips have all but abandoned the highly complex addressing modes
(relagated to slow operation), there really isn't much difference between the architectures today
except for #1 and #2.
The main advantage of #1 is to allow the compilers better control of register renaming strategies.
The main disadvantage of #1 is that the extra operand chews up bits in the instruction word.
This indirectly increases the instruction cache bandwidth (a bad thing in today's world). In fact,
if you look at the compressed 16-bit RISC instruction sets (MIPS16, THUMB), they went to an
8 register accumulator model (hmm, sound familiar)...
However since today's superscalar processors can execute instructions so fast, the copying operands
to a temporary accumulator isn't a big deal compared to missing the instruction cache. In
today's world, #1 and #2 are really tied closely together. In some sense, the variable length
instruction decode logic can be seen as "cache efficiency" enhancing logic.
Some may argue that memory addressing modes for the arithmetic functions is slowing things down.
Although that's true in some cases, in the most common case (stack access in the data cache),
today's highly pipelined "CISC" implementation is only slightly more complex than reading from a
scoreboarded register file or a reorder/retire buffer.
So although they've mostly converged to each other, the 2 operand 1 destination model is still
useful for the next processing paradigm to come down the track - dataflow processors. You can
see some of this now in EPIC (IA-64) and the TI-C600 where operation register dependancies are
encoded in the instruction in increasingly simpiler ways.
Several instruction set generations from now, registers will probably go away completely and
simply the instruction dependancies will be encoded. The internals of most super-scalar/
out-of-order processors already look like this. The register numbers are just references to data
dependancies and really are just place holders. In this context, separating the operands and the
destination still makes good sense.
Although I'm arguing that the above metioned article is or isn't valid science, I don't
/. editors can pass this #1 criteria... /. editors on this point)
think that being a physicist has any very much to do with the ability to judge "newsworthiness"
of scientific blurbs that occur in mainstream press articles that have no details provided,
unless, of course, if he/she is involved with that research.
A particularly astute visionary, Richard Feynman (who by the way was also a physicist) observed
that often what passes as scientific judgement is often a thinly diguised religion.
As evidence, he observed the written record of the discovery of a "new" particles in the literature.
Basically, looking back he discovered that early experimental results that could have indicated the
existance of such particles were routinely dismissed as experimental error. After more
"support" for the particle existed, the experimental error started to be tracked and
eventually a "new" paradigm emerged.
Feynman surmised that there would have been even more historical reasearch to support the "new"
paradigm earlier, but noted that some researcher often "threw-out" experiments that didn't verify
their theories or fit their agenda. So much for the integrity of scientific judgement.
That's not to say that scientists (or physicists) are alone in this type of behaviour, it's human.
It's only natural to have such a filter. Since there is only a finite amount of time in a day,
people often build up "BS" filters that help to keep them from wasting time in probablistically
non-productive pursuits.
On the other hand people with journalism training tend to recognize this type of bias and tend to be
better prepared to compensate for it. So IMNSHO, I think a person with a background in journalism
who also happens to know a bit about science is much more qualified to be a science editor.
(BTW, that's not me...)
I'm not saying that having a physics background isn't useful, but I seriously doubt that physics
background alone make anyone more qualified to be an editor than your typical techno-geek that
watches the discovery channel on a regular basis and is a sceptic and has good BS detector.
(and that's not me either...)
However, having said that, techno-geeks that watch the discovery channel aren't necessarily qualified
to be editors (or physicist) either, it's just that neither is a very good indicator of being a
good editor.
But people who can critically read and comment on things that they vehmenantly disagree with,
well, that's a good start... However, the ability to take criticism because you know that not
everyone will agree with your decision to run with an article, that's probably the #1 criteria...
From what I've seen so far most of the
(having edited a newspaper before, I can definitly sympathize with the
-slew
(oh yeah, I studied physics too, but not volunteering for any jobs...)
Didn't the 68K have address registers and data registers as separate things (A0, A1, D0, D1,...)?
I think you mean general purpose registers like "RISC" registers...
BTW, the IA64 has *lots* general purpose registers.... and a funky register offset address
mode (ala 29K processor), but better... Hopefully the compilers can take advantage...
Unfortunatly, this looks more and more like another i432 chip from intel...
-slew
Well, yes and no...
1. 64 Bit Memory and IO
IA32 has 64 bit memory bus and instruction that can access with 1 atomic operation. However,
there's no 64-bit single cycle arithmetic...
(unless you count CMPXCHG8B, CDQ, FILD, FISTP, MOVQ, SHLD, SHRD, and MMX packed bit instructions)
2. Virtual/Real memory access. With IA32, you can access more memory than 2^32 *bytes* of memory
(up to 2^36 *bytes* just not linearly), but not as much 2^64 *bytes*...
However, for the most part, those are the main differences between 32bit and 64bit architectures.
Never-Nt-User
There is a tax home (defined by the IRS and state law)
There is a legal residence (in the US this is a combo of US and state laws)
There is an effective location (defined by both for sales and property tax and breaking laws)
These don't have to be the same place (or even only one place)... And usually, it's not to your
advantage... They've got you coming and going...
There is actually a formula for determining market price depending on the spectrum of active bids
and asks
Unlike options trades, there is a certain matching requirement for bids. The reason it's not allowed
is because if you sell at 50% of market, you are not allowed to say who buys the shares. To be
fair you have to match your ask with someones bid which is probably not the bid of the person who
you were trying to sell to.
Think of it this way. If you ask $10 and someone else asks $40, the top bid is $50 and the next
bid is $30, what is the fair way to do this? Do you sell all of your $10 shares to the $50 guy?
Or do you sell your shares to the $50 guy for $50? Or should the $30 guy get to buy some shares
if you agree to split the difference?
What keeps a middle man from bidding $51, getting your shares for $10 and selling it to the old
top bidder for $50 and pocketing the difference? Not so simple huh? And these are simple problems
compared to having 1000s of bid and 1000s of ask and limit orders etc, etc...
Non-market trading of public companies is highly regulated because the of the fraud potential.
When the difference is 1/4 point, millions of dollars can be made or lost by the way you select
how the orders match up. The market makers are accused on a daily basis that they manipulate
things by placing a whole bunch of strategically priced orders on the books.
Just think if you made an ask 50 points below market or a buy 50 points above market...
Who gets to benefit from that transaction? Things could get really complicated...
Now if you have a private company, you can pretty much do whatever you want... no need to be fair...
Not everyone can sell their stock at any price to the public (otherwize I can think up lots of ways
to scam the public).
There are many securities laws on the books that require stock transactions to be recorded at
fair market value, so even if someone bought it at 14 and sold it to you at 15, the seller would
have to pay taxes as if they sold it to you at 70... Then if you turned around and sold it to
someone at 20, you would have to pay taxes on the $5 gain and still wouldn't be able to write off
the $50 difference (although there are some exceptions for gifts)...
Alas, stocks aren't as simple as dollars and cents...
More likely RH is taking advantage of securities laws that allow up to 3 days to close the IPO
and are taking these share from the overallotment reserve that usually comes with each IPO
registration. Normally these shares are used to cover "rounding-errors" created when trying
to match stock lots between large institutional investors to percentages from the allocation
formula. Often the left overs are just distributed to the broker/partners of the large
institutional investors.
So in this case the small guy is making out instead of the wall street suits... yea!
I can imagine in a very distant future world (10,000 years), that there will be a great debate
;-)
about the origins of Linux. What will be taught in computer science history classes? Did Linux
evolve from Unix or was it created?
The creationist will point to crufty old documents that prove that Linus created Linux for his own
PC in his spare time. The evolutionists will point out that this is highly unlikly and point to
the similarities between Unix and Linux and postulate a missing-link/release that will prove
their point, but not find one.
Look how BSD and S5R4 have a clear evolutionary tree from Unix, they will cry. Why should be
believe Linux didn't do the same, they will question. Why believe in creation when evolution
is much more plausible.
The creationist will stand firm, these FAQ documents tell all the fact. No-one should question them.
Strange how these arguments can always be used in the same way. You may laugh about it now,
but this is exactly how all these kind of debates get started...
btw, I believe in evolution
If all those complaining about RH up-ing their share price would have studied up (oops, studying
is a bad word), then you would have realized that almost all hot IPOs become effective above their
initial range.
The reason for this is that if RH would have priced at $12, they would have gotten less money
out of the IPO (and more would have gone to the suits on wall street). Why shouldn't RH take
advantage of the hype and raise a few more bucks on this round of financing?
Who was supposed to be primary beneficiary of this IPO, the company or some hackers who were
too lazy to study up and research the process? RH the company benefits from up-ing the IPO price
and it's in their best interests (and probably in the best interests of most of their true "friends")
that they were able to raise more money in this round of financing to help them support more
Open Source projects.
Complaining just because you don't have a few more bucks in your pocket is whining. You lost out
because you were too lazy to study up, plain and simple. You are the same type of people who sue
others because you are unable to accept blame for your own stupidity.
The OS movement benefits more by having RH having more money to spend on OS projects than
you having more money to spend on yourself.
Having said all that, often directed share programs take up to 1 day to clear, so if you get
off your butt and call E*trade, you might just find that all you have to do is throw in a few
more bucks to get your shares. But from what I understand, it probably went to a lottery anyhow
so odds are that you just have to blame the dice or the Random number generator.
Wouldn't it be ironic if E*trade used an open source RNG (since most of them are) to pick the
lottery winners. Sweet justice... whiners blame open source for failure to get RHAT IPO shares.
I'm not so sure this is a good idea. There are two agencies that have tried this type of thing
before: USPS (US postal service) and Amtrak (US passenger train service).
I think that after this happened, innovation died. USPS worried so much about competition, they
basically spent it trying to kill UPS and FedEx instead of innovating and eventually got out
innovated by UPS and FedEx. Amtrak basically used the extra money to subsidize their ticket
prices and as a result killed other passenger rail startups.
If there is truly a self supporting way to explore space, I'm sure that some enterprising people
will find a way to do it. If there is such a business plan, I'm pretty sure it would happen
with or without the US government's interference.
Big companies do basic research all the time IBM, Dow, Boeing, even (gasp) Microsoft.
I see no reason why space exploration would stop it there was a profit-neutral way to do it.
I suspect, however, that the lack of such a company means that nobody has figured it out yet.
In the worst case, space exploration could be funded just like the olympics, with sponsors.
I'm sure no sponsoring company would want their products to fail in a space launch, and it
would pretty much be just part of their advertizing/promotional budget.
This mean that feeding back some of the money to NASA would just be a money subsidy to
NASA to help it sabotage other upstart space company (like USPS and Amtrak did to their
competitors). This doesn't sound like a good idea for allocating dollars to me...
What strikes me as odd about all this rumbling about IPO shares, RH, E-trade, SEC, etc is the
./-ers are exhibiting the same mob mentality that allows fans to get
attitude of many of the posters that somehow they are entitled to some preferential treatement.
Frankly I am appalled that
crushed at concerts and soccer games. It's not any different. People at the back push and push
because by some happenstance, they are caught in the back of the bus. There's a lot of bad karma
that comes with this kind of selfishness.
Why should anyone be allowed to invest money in RH if they don't want you too? Quite frankly,
if RH wanted to, it could allow people to purchase stock in the company before any of this IPO thing
happened. I didn't see too many people clamoring for shares at RH's door. Now at the end of the
rainbow, the masses come a-knocking? Or was it that it was too risky to invest before?
Why didn't they do this before the announced IPO? Although I don't know the reason, I would
speculate that they didn't want to dilute the shares for their current investors and employees.
These investors and employees took the risk, and now are seeing if the market will reward them.
However, had they allowed small, unaffiliated investors into the company before (and I'm sure
they have), with SEC rules regarding unregistered securities, they would have to pass a similar
investor test that E-trade is giving now. There is really no difference.
The best way to think of un-affiliated IPO shares is like a sweepstakes where the prize is unknown.
Some people get the chance to buy, some people don't. It's just the hand you are dealt.
For those who say they believe in the company, just buy some market shares about 2-months after
the IPO when the price dips. Chances are you'll get the same result w/o all the heartache.
To those that want to make a quick buck, start your own company. Don't try and ride the
coat-tails. What you say that's too hard? Well that's part of the risk-reward equation.
Entitlement culture is just a manifestation of the emotion of envy. Do you envy your next-door
neighbor because they have a new K7-600MHz PC? Do you envy people who get food stamps because
they don't have to earn their food? Do you envy a winner of a scholarship? Perhaps you will be one
of the rich people someday who will insist that the US govt should pay you social security
benefits because you are entitled to it even though you know the poor widow/widower down
the street could use the money more than you.
Or maybe you envy Linus and the attention that he gets for Linux even though there are many people
who work on it? What ever happened to long term thinking? If the RH IPO succeeds, then the
chances are better for everyone else that follows. In fact, the companies who dominate the industry
rarely are the first ones. Most of the time the leaders just end up with lots of arrows in the back.
Don't envy, we can be better than that.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure you can't sue the govt unless they give you permission to sue them.
However, in this case the SEC is not preventing you from making the trade. E-trade is.
However you are also not likely to be able to win a lawsuit against them either. They are most
likely operating under what is know as a 'safe-harbor'.
A 'safe-harbor' is a way that companies protect themselves from silly lawsuits. Basically what
this means is a regulatory agency (like the SEC) say you should operate in a certain way. If the
company does it that way, the company has a built-in defense in saying "hey we didn't cause
intentional harm", which means any chance of big lawsuits is out.
Part of the SEC 'safe-harbor' provisions for IPOs are that the IPO share must be distributed to both
large and small investors, and that investors don't bet too much of their net worth on the IPO,
and that the investors know what they are getting into (hence the experience factor).
E-trade is probably complying with these 'safe-harbor' provisions, so any lawsuit is unlikely
to succeed (since you would have to prove they directly discriminated against you instead of
it just being a consequence of their actions).
Keep in mind, there are only so many shares to sell. In any "fair" scheme, many people will get
left out in the cold.
Well it probably isn't the best idea, but historically in the US there have been some
federal agencies that have been spun out (at least partially)...
- Fannie Mae (used to be Federal National Morgage Association, now a publicly traded company)
- RAND (used to be part of the US air force, now a non-profit corporation)
There are other agencies have turned into corporations, but are still owned by the government:
- USPS (US post office, delivers junk^H^H^H^Hsnail-mail)
- FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, insures money in the bank)
- Ginnie Mae (used to be Government National Morgage Association, government backed morgages)
- TVA (Tennesee Valley Authority, a power company)
One downside to privatization of an agency is the loss of regulatory authority. But since NASA
never had any authority, this doesn't matter.
The other downside is that as a separate corporation, you can't lose money (well at least
not too much), NASA probably wouldn't be able to cut it as a corporation.
But maybe NASA could be restructured into a non-profit model like RAND. RAND sells the
reports they generate for $$$, and they have a huge endowment (get income form the interest),
and lots of companies and the govt donate them money to direct their research. However, the NASA
that exists today is too bloated and non-economically motivated, they are negative-profit.
All it takes is an act from congress and a John Hancock from the president and poof, NASC
(National Aeronautics and Space Corporation) could be born... However, as I said, this probably
isn't the best idea...
People who have programmed FPGA realize that the claim FPGAs run at a faster clock rate are
missing the point.
Creating a chip architecture/micro-architecture is a function of 4 fundamental tradeoffs:
Cycle time, Work per cycle, Area, and Time to market.
FPGA have chosen low work per cycle. In the past, CPUs chose high work per cycle.
Now, they are going in the direction of lower work per cycle (deeper pipelines, more latency).
Just a question of what you want.
Clock rate is just one choice of many, and has little to do with some magic FPGA architecture.
In fact with today's fpga, 200MHz is fast, compare that to your 450MHz pentium III...
The main architectural advantage of FPGAs is that a block of logic only needs to exist when you
are using it. This is simply a form of caching. Instead of having all the HW there (but slower),
you have only the subset you need (so it's faster). However, if you factor in the "misses"
(the time where logic has to be reprogrammed), it's a much more complicated problem which
doesn't have such an "obvious" solution...
Just like there are data sets that blow a CPU cache, there are probably algorithms that make
re-programmability a liability.
On the issue of efficiency, FPGA just have underused programmability and routing logic
instead of underused HW functional units in other architectures. Depends on the problem you are
trying to solve...
-slew
GS only has to buy it if it is a secure underwriting. Most IPOs contracts are structured as a
"best efforts" underwriting, where all GS has to do is offer the shares and if they don't make
their subscription, they're not on the hook to buy all the shares...
In a secure underwriting, the underwriter buys all the shares and then sells them. In a "best efforts"
underwriting, the underwriter only buys the shares that they have orders for (although partners can
put in their own orders so this is ususally not a problem)...
However, I have no doubt that RH will be over subscribed 10-20x and they will have no trouble
selling any shares they offer (including over-allotment shares) regardless if it's a "best efforts"
or a secure underwriting.
FYI, the reserve or directed shares are a great deal since IPO shares are subject to allotment.
The IPO shares are sold by allotment to brokers which depends on how many they ask for.
For a hot IPO like RH, it'll be way oversubscribed so a broker will ask for say 10mil shares and
only get say 1mil which the broker is free to divy-up however they want (usually to their best
customers first, or just by percentage like I bid for 1000 and get to buy 100). The only rule is that
they have to be spread out between small and large buyers in a fair fashion (so if you put in a small
order, you could get lucky, or nothing).
With directed shares, the pool is separated from the riff-raff and most people can get what they
bid for.
BTW: all the IPO shares are sold to every one at the exact same price (nobody gets special price
treatment). You either get to buy them or not. If not, you have to wait for them to be traded.
That's why everyone wants the IPO shares. But after they are in the market, orders sit around,
until they are filled, and if you put in a market price bid, you may end up paying a lot of money...
Actually VERY large buildings like the boeing assembly plant actually have their own weather ;-)
inside (fog, etc). I wonder if that means it won't work worth crap there either
Optical isn't too different from microwave when it comes to weather problems (just ask anyone who
owns a DSS system) and they seem to be pretty successful in an outdoor situation...
I don't suppose you realize these are two different standards with similar names...
DVD-R : write-once version of DVD-ROM...
DVD-RAM : low capacity, older format
DVD+RW : HP/Philips/Sony (most similar to DVD-ROM)
DVD-RW : Pioneer (fading fast)
These days, all bets seem to be leaning to DVD+RW... (probably because '+' is better than '-')
Under this definition, DRAM is not RAM since DRAM cannot be accessed randomly at the same speed
;-)
as linearly (linear is much faster, random access requires row precharge time).
I think you'd better update your definition, or maybe not tend to trust FOLDOC... or maybe
we all need to concede that 640K of ram (being larger than most caches) hasn't even made it
to the mainstream yet... or maybe not
Actually a lot of the charm about /. is that there are AC postings.
/. I just read AC postings in a different mind-set (ready to forget it at any instant and
IMNSHO, AC postings make the conversation more diverse. On other sites, people just make up names
all the time and/or the conversation is just dominated by a few people (boring!)...
The moderation policy, as it exists, mirrors the real world quite well (if you ignore childish
behavior, it usually goes away). Likewize if poor posts are moderated down so nobody sees them...
Editorial control of dissussions is minimum and group controlled (just like real life)...
I suspect the very same people who deride AC posters, have self-importance issues, controlling
tendencies or simply have desires to dominate all discussion that they are involved with (a sign of
a low tolerance threshold...) Really, a 6 months? Isn't that a -bit- extreme?
On
move on)... And from time-to-time I also glance at the Score to see what other people think...
As for the other things, filters for posters might be a good addition for those people who don't want
to acknowledge the existance of people that they don't ever want to be seen agreeing with...