It may well be redundant. The servers we use a lot of in our datacenter have "1500 watts" of power supply, divided in to two 750 watt units. They could be upgraded to 1100 watt units, 2200 watts total, if we needed. However, if you do actual load testing on the system, you find peak draw with the configuration we have to be about 600 watts, well under the limit (remember 750 is output, not input, and there's some loss in conversion). So what's the deal?
Reliability. The power is fully redundant. Even if heavily loaded, if one PSU fails the system will not need to throttle. It has WAY more PSU than it needs for that reason. That's also why the 1100s are available. We are running dual 8 core CPUs and 256GB of RAM. If we stepped up to something heavier hitting, 2 12s and 768GB for example, we'd have a peak load over what 1 PSU could handle and need to upgrade or lose full redundancy.
However that doesn't mean it is power hungry if it doesn't need to be. It'll draw around 120ish watts at idle, mostly due to the RAID array since that is magnetic and doesn't get spun down.
Of course I'd think most of this would be known to the kid of person who buys an enterprise workstation or server. That the Mac fans who like the pro don't tells me something.
Apple fans love to demand an "equal for equal" spec for comparisons, but that's silly. Party of the reason Macs often cost so much is you have to get a ton of shit you don't need. Ya, dual video cards cost a lot. Guess what? Next to nobody needs them. If you don't, they are wasted money. In a Dell, you just don't order one. With Apple? You get what you get and fuck you otherwise.
So they often lose out on pricing bigtime when you compare actual task needs. Like let's say I need a system with a fast CPU and reasonable bit of RAM. I want to run some Cadence (ok you can't do that on a Mac, but whatever). A fast quad core and 32-64GB of RAM. The Mac Pro is good there. However video needs are minimal, integrated graphics is fine, as is a $50 GPU. Oh, well there I'm screwed. While the dual GPUs won't hurt, they won't buy me anything either. So I'm paying for them and can't make use of them.
That is a problem, if money matters at least. You want to spend it on the useful things, and save it on the shit you don't need.
You don't need a Mac for AV work. Most stuff is cross platform, particularly the heavy hitting stuff. All the Avid stuff (Media Composer/Pro Tools) is either, Cubase is either, Studio One is either, Digital Performer is either, all the Adobe software is either, etc, etc. It is pretty much just the Apple products that are Mac only I the pro A/V arena.
I personally Use Cakewalk Sonar, which is PC only, and there have been a steady trickle of Mac people on the forums that are either wavering, or going PC for pro audio. Some are doing bootcamp and running Sonar, some are buying PCs because they find the cost to just be too much on an advantage.
They days of media being an "Apple thing" are long past. There's a lot of inertia in that area, after all if you've a setup and it works why change, but there isn't a technical hurdle. Unless you use FCP or Logic, you can most likely keep your exact same workflow, programs, plugins and all, and switch to Windows.
Also you are straight fucked if you have dedicated hardware that isn't USB/FW/thunderbolt. Have a Nitris DX? So sorry, nowhere to hook that up in the new Mac. Also no thunderbolt option (PCIe only for now) so you can't even rebuy it if you wanted to drop another $5000.
If all Apple keeps targeting are the people who want aesthetics, that may happen. After all, if you are doing music and a $1500 PC would meet your needs as well as a $3000 Mac, despite being less powerful, then maybe you decide that extra money would better go to some nice samples or the like.
Since they aren't upgradable. The thing is video cards get obsolete quicker than the rest of a system. This looks like it may be starting to change, but so far, they are the component that benefits from the most frequent updates. You want to buy less video card more often for optimal performance. This is true for gaming, 3D visualization, CUDA, whatever.
Well here you've two high end cards, which would imply high end tasks... and no way to replace them when the time comes. That is not a good situation. I mean I suppose you can replace the whole system, but that is rather wasteful. It is also predicated on a new replacement being available and Apple has shown a lack of interest in keeping the Mac Pro line up to date.
To me, this looks more like a shiny toy that people want to show off. "Oh look, I have the most powerful system EVAR! It is amazing!" rather than any consideration of usefulness for a workset, which is what a workstation should be.
Also what the people who are playing the price comparison minuta game miss is that yes, it isn't a bad price provided you need precisely what it is providing, but as the parent pointed out that is rare. The idea with an expensive workstation should be you get the components you need, not the ones you don't. Two GPUs might be great for videogames, they are useless for 3D EM simulation. Conversely 64GB is more than you can use for any game, but is entry level for 3D EM work, you could use 256GB or more for many simulations.
When you are spending multi-thousands on a workstation, it really should be custom to order. The money should go where it is useful to your application set. Trying to have an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach and then saying everyone should meet that is silly.
You have to price out all the details. The question isn't what the server costs to buy. It is what it costs to buy, what support on it costs, both in terms of a warranty and sysadmin time, what physical space costs, or is available, what power and cooling cost, and what kind of reliability you need.
A "cheap" server can end up being not so cheap in many cases. A cheap server is great right up until the point where it fails, and then there is no way to fix it or restore it in a reasonable amount of time.
You can see what it costs for more realistically reliable things by looking at what VMs cost on the open market. For example Pair, who provides top notch reliability and support, wants about $1500/year for a server with 3GB RAM/80GB disk. Linode, which is much lower end particularly with regards to management, but still solid, wants about $500/year for 2GB RAM/96GB disk. These are for virtual servers, not physical systems. That gives you some idea what a server might actually cost in terms of all the things like power, cooling, bandwidth, maintenance, management, hardware refresh, backup, and so on.
That aside, if the program is for a very specific task, ok then development cost can be looked at fairly straight to server cost 1:1, if it is for resale/use elsewhere, then not so much. You can't very well try and foist off the development cost to each customer or argue they should be willing to buy a lot of hardware to support it.
I'm not saying programmers should spend man-years optimizing for every little fractional ounce of improvement (though in some cases it is worth it, read up on some of the stuff Michael Abrash has done) but that optimization does matter.
Or anything running in a VM
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I get pissed when you hear programmers say "Oh memory is cheap, we don't need to optimize!" Yes you do. In the server world these days we don't run things on physical hardware usually, we run it in a VM. The less resources a given VM uses, the more VMs we can pack on a system. So if you have some crap code that gobbles up tons of memory that is memory that can't go to other things.
It is seriously like some programmers can't think out of the confines of their own system/setup. They have 16GB of RAM on their desktop so they write some sprawling mess that uses 4GB. They don't think this is an issue after all "16GB was super cheap!" Heck, they'll look at a server and see 256GB in it and say "Why are you worried!" I'm worried because your code doesn't get its own 256GB server, it gets to share that with 100, 200, or even more other things. I want to pack in services as efficient as possible.
The less CPU, memory, disk, etc a given program uses, the more a system can do. Conversely, the less powerful a system needs to be. In terms of a single user system, like maybe an end user computer, well it would always be nice is we could make them less powerful because that means less power hungry. If we could make everything run 1.5 times as fast, what that would really mean is we could cut CPU power by that amount and not affect the user experience. That means longer battery life, less heat, less waste, smaller devices, etc, etc.
If you look at AV Comparitives, who seem to do pretty good testing, MSE is about 90%. That's quite low (though there are commercial apps that are worse) but the tradeoff is zero false positives on essentially every test.
It's certainly not what you get if you want highest security, but it does a reasonably good job, and doesn't generate false positives, which can piss off newbie users and make them want the AV scanner off. It also updates definitions via Windows Update, if its internal updater has an issue, which is nice for people who won't mind after their AV software.
It's not what I use, but it isn't a bad baseline. I'd sure as hell use it rather than Norton:P.
He's often "technically correct". What I mean is that OpenBSD is really secure in its default setup... because it doesn't do fuck-all. Security via turning off everything isn't really that impressive. When something is supposedly so much superior on a security front, yet seems to get very little usage, well, there's a reason.
Also, even if you are right, you shouldn't be a dick about it. Perception matters in the world and if you want to persuade people to your position, you need some empathy. If you act like a jerk all the time, it puts people off and makes them dislike you, and thus not consider the content of your claims.
There no connection to SteamOS with Ohm Studio. It is, as with most pro audio stuff, Windows and Mac only. It is just on Steam because Valve is now selling regular software, as well as games, on Steam. Cakewalk started selling Music Creator, their home version of their Sonar software, on Steam a couple months ago.
"Over 300" isn't an impressive amount. The Windows Steam client has "over 9000" games (well, items which can be DLC, expansions, etc).
For that matter quantity is never the issue, quality is. Right now Steam for Linux lacks in the big name games. It has a few, and some popular indies like Starbound, but you find that you miss out on the majority of new games, particularly AAA games for it.
I've had something like this happen twice. The first time a company shipped me something I ordered, and then a few days later something I didn't. I let them know, and they sent me a prepaid return sticker, and scheduled for UPS to come pick it up, they told me to just leave it on my porch.
No problem there, I was happy to get them their stuff back because it wasn't any issue for me. I didn't have to expend any real time and effort fixing their mistake. A quick e-mail to them, and then slap a label on it (they actually mailed me one) and drop the box on my porch.
Another time an eBay seller fucked up an order bad. They shipped some fairly cheap headphones I had purchased to a guy, and instead shipped me two McIntosh monoblock tube amplifiers worth about $10,000 each that he had purchased. I was a little perplexed by these massive 100 pound each boxes when I expected headphones
Well they were annoyed at me that I didn't refuse the delivery "like I should have" (I wasn't there, the apartment manager accepted packages for us) and wanted me to take them to UPS and ship them to the other buyer. They said they'd refund the shipping charge when he got the amps. I told them to fuck off, they could send me shipping labels and have them picked up, or go away. The were butthurt about that, but finally agreed.
So depends on how the company has acted. If they truly are making it no hassle on the part of the customer: As in willing to send them a shipping label (and if necessary a box) and schedule a pickup, then ok. However if they expect the customer to go out of their way to fix the fuckup, then no. Sometimes what they mean by "no inconvenience" is really "We want you to deal with the hassle of a return, then we'll refund you the money for shipping later, maybe."
When they are the ones that fuck up, it is their duty to make it right, with as little impact on you as possible.
It would also make sense such communication was done via private channels (all games have private messaging). So the way one would monitor that would be via their normal intelligence hoovering methods, not via playing the game.
Like every year, a number of people die getting hit by freight trains. These things are massive, make a lot of noise and oh ya, can only travel along well defined paths. Still, some people seem to get snuck up on by 3000 ton trains and killed.
They teach too, but research has always been a part of it. Now if you don't want them getting patents and such on research that's fine, but then you need to increase funding. Part of the issue is that states have continually cut funding to universities. If that money isn't being paid in by the state, it needs to come from other sources, either higher tuition, or more research dollars.
Tablets tend to suck for creation. There are limited exceptions, but for the most part a mouse n' keyboard, and a screen without your fingers in the way, are what you want for creating things. This includes software, of course, but also more mundane business things like financial spreadsheets, e-mails, and so on. It applies to other creative pursuits such as writing, video editing, and so on.
Basically tablets are reasonably good if you want to consume content. You can read a book, surf the web, etc with ease on a tablet. However when you start to talk creation, they are not as good. They can do in a pinch, but much better to have a real keyboard and larger screen.
What we are actually seeing is not desktops and laptops "dying" but rather maturing. The market is more or less done growing. However that doesn't mean it is going away. The two states are not "growth" and "death". Rather it can be stable.
We've already seen this in things like mainframes. Desktops didn't kill off mainframes. You can still buy them, and people do. There are more of them now then when there were only mainframes. However it is a mature market. There aren't many organizations that want one, and you don't replace them that often. So there's no growth, but it isn't dead by any means.
That's what is happening with desktops. Go in to a business, have a look around, they have not tossed all their computers and started playing with tablets and phones. There is a computer on every desk practically. However, as noted, there is a computer on every desk. They've got their computers. They buy for replacement now largely, not to increase the numbers.
The only people who think desktops/laptops are going to "die" are either kids who just play on their smart phone and don't do productive work with a computer, or idiot tech journalists.
Tinnitus is no fun in low noise environments as your ears seem to be awash in it. It seems really loud and overbearing, since it is all you hear. That kind of thing happens when you get your hearing tested and you have it (as I do). When they start doing threshold of hearing tests and the sounds they make are really quiet, the tinnitus seems massive and overpowering. Then you take off the headphones and leave the booth and it vanishes.
In particular because there is no central computer control. The military has always been real big about having humans in the chain, which is why this code isn't a big deal. It still required the two guys in the silos to turn their keys. There isn't any "OMG we hax the missiles!" shit that can go on. At the end of the day, only the operators in the silos can trigger a launch, it isn't on a network.
Same general deal in planes and so on. Like when a modern bombing mission is conducted, all the stuff is uploaded in to the computers beforehand, flight plan, targeting data, all that. The pilot is told on his HUD a countdown to when to release the bombs. Hitting the button doesn't release them either, the plane's computers decide when it is actually best to release. So what does it do? Allows the plane to release. If the pilot doesn't trigger, it can't drop, no matter if it thinks it should. The human is the final deciding factor.
Maybe the military will change their mind some day as automation increases, but for now they are real, real big on having a human have to be the final factor.
Sometimes it is as others have noted: Because you are promoting an internal candidate. So ya, the requirements are tailored to that person. This isn't a pure evil "Oh we want to keep anyone else out," kind of thing but that we already have a guy who is trained and qualified on the stuff we use. So if we are to consider anyone else, they would need to be as well. There is no reason we'd want to hire someone that we didn't know, and that wasn't proficient with our systems when we already have someone who is. However, we'll let people apply, on the off chance there is a more qualified candidate.
The other is as you say, needing someone that can hit the ground running because we don't have a ton of skills overlap. We have few IT people and a lot of systems, so we can't all be good at everything. I'm sure there are some arrogant Slashdoters who've never worked in an enterprise that think they can be all things to all people, but you quickly discover that isn't the case. So when we hire someone, we need, or at least strongly desire, certain skills.
Like our last UNIX guy we hired. They had to be good with Linux, since we've been moving all the UNIX stuff to RHEL. However we still had some old Solaris SPARC shit around back then (gone now thankfully). It was running important things, and we couldn't just turn it off. So we really wanted someone who knew Solaris. Not "Oh I know UNIX and I can learn the differences of versions, given time," but someone who could dig right in when one of those POS's went down and needed to be fixed RIGHT NAO!!! So we wanted, and got, an older guy who had a wide range of UNIX experience, including Solaris, rather than someone who was all Linux, all the time.
While learning is great and is required at any IT position, when you have a small team and are looking for a senior position, you don't have the luxury of bringing someone on who doesn't know the technology you use but wants to learn, since they may well be the guy in charge, and needing to support it all right away.
When we hire a student (I work at a university engineering college), we are looking for brains and ability to learn. Minimal experience is no problem, they can learn and indeed we expect that's part of the reason they want the job. When we hire a UNIX lead, that guy had better have some experience on the stuff we use because he'd going to need to be able to do it from day one.
So she said "This data is faked!" the university looked in to it, they have committees for that kind of thing as I'm sure you know, and said that no, they could find no evidence of wrongdoing. So she got the federal Office of Research Integrity involved, they looked in to it, and said "Nope we see no evidence of wrongdoing here." So she took it to court, and lost the case, appealed it, and lost that case.
This would seem to be a case where she's wrong. She thought she saw misconduct, but she was incorrect, but she's pushing this anyhow.
Remember that just because scientific misconduct happens does not mean all accusations of misconduct are true.
If you propose solutions, if you advocate the need for change, if you cry warnings, that isn't science. Science is the process for knowing about the universe, nothing more. It is the only reliable method we have for separating what is likely correct for what is not.
It does not, however, dictate what we as humans should do, what our politics or policies should be, what we should choose to do.
So, if you produce a video that explains the observed changes in the environment (temperature measurements, atmospheric gas readings, etc), the theory of how those interact, that is science. If you start preaching what needs to be done about it, that is not.
That isn't to say you shouldn't have opinions on it, and that you shouldn't express those, but don't try and pretend that it is science, don't try and pretend that your views are the One True Way(tm) and anyone who disagrees is "anti-science".
One of the big problems with the whole AGW argument is there is multiple levels, but people like you conflate them:
1) The fact of a global temperature change outside of known cycles. This is a measurement, and observation, and isn't really up for any kind of debate unless you can show said measurement is wrong (it is a complex measurement since we are talking long term global average).
2) The theory that the prime or exclusive cause of this increase is an increase in atmospheric CO2, due to human activity. Like any theory, you can argue the conclusions, even if the data is sound, provided you can find a theory that better fits the available data.
3) The conclusion that this is a net negative thing. This is where you start to leave the realm of science. For one, any conclusion like this is a judgement call. Even if you agree on all the data, you can reach a different conclusion as someone else. For example one of my coworkers believes that humanity is a bad thing, and anything that furthers it towards extinction is a good thing. I happen to disagree with that, rather forcefully. Also this judgement is based largely on computer models of what may happen. Fine, but models don't prove anything, they model, and they are only useful is they are accurate. There has been a lot of trouble in this area, since modeling the climate is an amazingly complex problem, the most complex modeling problem we've ever dealt with. So people can very well disagree with the models being used.
4) The policy or politics of what to do about it. This is not science at all this is, well, politics and policy. Even if you agree on what is likely to happen, you can disagree on what to do about it. One person can say that the correct approach is to drastically reduce human CO2 output, another can say the correct approach is a massive geoengineering effort, and yet another can say the correct approach is not to try and stop the change, but simply to prepare ourselves to deal with it. None of these are "right" in any objective, scientific, sense.
The problem is that you seem to be one of the many out there who thinks that it is all science. So that if you accept the data on warming, you them MUST accept the policy of what to do about it or you are anti-science, a denialist, etc, etc. You conflate the issues, and shout at people who disagree.
It is not an easy thing to get people interested in technical fields if they aren't already. Particularly since they are challenging compared to some of the "soft" fields like the humanities. It isn't like a teacher can just "try harder" and make it happen.
A somewhat related example: I work at an engineering college at a university. One of our (very few) female electrical engineering professors taught an honors intro to engineering section for women. All girls, all academically motivated enough to be in the honors college. She was excited since being one of the few girls in the boys club, she wants to see more women in engineering.
The result? Extremely low retention, just like every other intro engineering class. Very, very few of the women decided they wanted to go on studying engineering. Here they had a role model in a very real way: A very successful woman, a full professor, who loved the material, and who hadn't had to trade off her personal goals or anything (she's married and has a family), yet it didn't really make a difference. They just weren't that interested by and large.
So should she be penalized when she teaches normal engineering classes, which are like 90%+ male? What should she do? She's just about as good an example/role model as you can ask for, she cares about more women being in engineering. Short of discriminating against male students, there's little she can, yet no difference is to be made.
It is also quite obviously in the middle of a massive bubble. If you look at the movement of the price, the shape of the curve, it is moving just like any other commodity that is being thinly traded and having massive speculation. That sort of thing might be good if you like to play the market and try to make a quick buck, but it's really really bad for anything trying to be a currency. It also is almost inevitably followed by a crash. Hence why bubbles are called that because they pop.
I suppose it is there radically possible that Bitcoin is some kind of exception and its value will continue to rise forever, but it would be the first time that is been true for anything that moved like this. Massive, volatile price changes are not the sort of thing that signal real growth, but rather a speculation bubble that is doomed to collapse sooner or later.
Even if you have a place you own, like a condo, that doesn't mean it's simple to add electrical outlet. If you own a house, that has a garage and everything, then share the only issue is money. So long as you can afford to have the outlet hooked up, and possibly more power to your house run, you are good. However there are many situations where that isn't what you have, even when you own property.
I live in a condo, it's mine I am an owner have a mortgage all that kind of stuff. However it is an attached unit so there is a common area that I am a partial owner of that I have a "undivided interest" in. In that area, is my parking space. Well, I can't just go and make modifications to that. That has to be approved by the Board of Directors, and for something like this probably a full vote of owners. I can bring it up, I can try to get people to vote on it, but it's not something as simple as me just doing it.
Even were I to, there's the issue that all are parking spaces are out in the open and so is it really a good idea to have a bunch of electrical outlets there.
So anyone that rents as an issue, and more than a few people that own have issues. It isn't a situation where just anyone that wants to can install plug and go. I would really like an electric car, where I live it would work really well. However it really isn't that easy for me to get a charging station set up. I think it would be a very hard sell to have them installed.
The thing is at the moment the US has a pretty irresistibly superior military. If Pakistan tried to send a drone in to the US to strike something, it would almost certainly get splashed before it was over land. The PAVE PAWS radar system watches for inbound craft from basically anywhere for a thousand miles or more. The US then has the USAF and ANG which have lots of modern planes to intercept and destroy it. Further it has carrier battle groups capable of swift and powerful retaliation.
So no, a country like Pakistan will not be sending drones in to the US.
You might note that even the US with its military power is pretty selective about drone use. Drones are basically only used in countries that have no ability to do anything about it. You don't see the US doing drone strikes in Europe or Russia because even if the countries affected couldn't militarily threaten the US, but they could do so economically and diplomatically. So it happens in places like Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, places that have little world influence, and are more or less failed states.
Also this kind of shit has happened for a long time, just not with drones. Do some research on missile strikes, special operations, that kind of things. More powerful nations have a history of going after those they wish dealt with in less powerful nations. Not just the US, the EU members have done plenty of it. Drones are new tech but the mission of "kill someone we don't like" isn't.
Also if people of the world see an American's, and American, life as worthless because of the policy and action of some in the government, the problem is with those people, and their lack of morals and ethics, not the Americans. This is the same as hating all Muslims because some terrorists belong to that religion and use it as a justification for their actions, and some Imams preach violence in its name. This would be the same as hating all Pakistanis because some in their military and intelligence community worked to shield Bin Laden in their country.
So if you really feel that way, that American lives are worthless because of this, the problem is you, not America. Your moral system is seriously underdeveloped and in need of reevaluation.
I mean if some random shit "security blog" posts a trumped up story to try and get traffic, it is Slashdot's DUTY to repeat it here, with no checking or verification! After all, better everyone is scared of their own shadow than informed about security.
Seriously this is just pathetic. As I said: This is some random ass site that is trying to get people to come and read, and it worked. By making a scare story about how Netlfix users on Windows are vulnerable they managed to get some Linux fanboy to submit the story to Slashdot. The editors then did what they do, which is to say NOT EDIT and just posted it. Great success for shit site, they now got a bunch of undeserved traffic.
What is sadder is how uninformed this makes all involved look. the statement of "You'd think something like Silverlight would automatically upgrade itself." Yes, it DOES you fucking moron. One thing you have to give MS is that Windows update will patch all their stuff for you. Let it do its thing and you get security updates, as they are released. You don't need to pay attention or anything, it'll just happen. This includes things not installed by default like Silverlight, or older versions of the.NET runtimes.
This is just a massive pile of fail. It is not news, not even really old news. There was a bug, they patched it. This would be "how shit works", or at least how it should.
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It may well be redundant. The servers we use a lot of in our datacenter have "1500 watts" of power supply, divided in to two 750 watt units. They could be upgraded to 1100 watt units, 2200 watts total, if we needed. However, if you do actual load testing on the system, you find peak draw with the configuration we have to be about 600 watts, well under the limit (remember 750 is output, not input, and there's some loss in conversion). So what's the deal?
Reliability. The power is fully redundant. Even if heavily loaded, if one PSU fails the system will not need to throttle. It has WAY more PSU than it needs for that reason. That's also why the 1100s are available. We are running dual 8 core CPUs and 256GB of RAM. If we stepped up to something heavier hitting, 2 12s and 768GB for example, we'd have a peak load over what 1 PSU could handle and need to upgrade or lose full redundancy.
However that doesn't mean it is power hungry if it doesn't need to be. It'll draw around 120ish watts at idle, mostly due to the RAID array since that is magnetic and doesn't get spun down.
Of course I'd think most of this would be known to the kid of person who buys an enterprise workstation or server. That the Mac fans who like the pro don't tells me something.
Apple fans love to demand an "equal for equal" spec for comparisons, but that's silly. Party of the reason Macs often cost so much is you have to get a ton of shit you don't need. Ya, dual video cards cost a lot. Guess what? Next to nobody needs them. If you don't, they are wasted money. In a Dell, you just don't order one. With Apple? You get what you get and fuck you otherwise.
So they often lose out on pricing bigtime when you compare actual task needs. Like let's say I need a system with a fast CPU and reasonable bit of RAM. I want to run some Cadence (ok you can't do that on a Mac, but whatever). A fast quad core and 32-64GB of RAM. The Mac Pro is good there. However video needs are minimal, integrated graphics is fine, as is a $50 GPU. Oh, well there I'm screwed. While the dual GPUs won't hurt, they won't buy me anything either. So I'm paying for them and can't make use of them.
That is a problem, if money matters at least. You want to spend it on the useful things, and save it on the shit you don't need.
You don't need a Mac for AV work. Most stuff is cross platform, particularly the heavy hitting stuff. All the Avid stuff (Media Composer/Pro Tools) is either, Cubase is either, Studio One is either, Digital Performer is either, all the Adobe software is either, etc, etc. It is pretty much just the Apple products that are Mac only I the pro A/V arena.
I personally Use Cakewalk Sonar, which is PC only, and there have been a steady trickle of Mac people on the forums that are either wavering, or going PC for pro audio. Some are doing bootcamp and running Sonar, some are buying PCs because they find the cost to just be too much on an advantage.
They days of media being an "Apple thing" are long past. There's a lot of inertia in that area, after all if you've a setup and it works why change, but there isn't a technical hurdle. Unless you use FCP or Logic, you can most likely keep your exact same workflow, programs, plugins and all, and switch to Windows.
Also you are straight fucked if you have dedicated hardware that isn't USB/FW/thunderbolt. Have a Nitris DX? So sorry, nowhere to hook that up in the new Mac. Also no thunderbolt option (PCIe only for now) so you can't even rebuy it if you wanted to drop another $5000.
If all Apple keeps targeting are the people who want aesthetics, that may happen. After all, if you are doing music and a $1500 PC would meet your needs as well as a $3000 Mac, despite being less powerful, then maybe you decide that extra money would better go to some nice samples or the like.
Since they aren't upgradable. The thing is video cards get obsolete quicker than the rest of a system. This looks like it may be starting to change, but so far, they are the component that benefits from the most frequent updates. You want to buy less video card more often for optimal performance. This is true for gaming, 3D visualization, CUDA, whatever.
Well here you've two high end cards, which would imply high end tasks... and no way to replace them when the time comes. That is not a good situation. I mean I suppose you can replace the whole system, but that is rather wasteful. It is also predicated on a new replacement being available and Apple has shown a lack of interest in keeping the Mac Pro line up to date.
To me, this looks more like a shiny toy that people want to show off. "Oh look, I have the most powerful system EVAR! It is amazing!" rather than any consideration of usefulness for a workset, which is what a workstation should be.
Also what the people who are playing the price comparison minuta game miss is that yes, it isn't a bad price provided you need precisely what it is providing, but as the parent pointed out that is rare. The idea with an expensive workstation should be you get the components you need, not the ones you don't. Two GPUs might be great for videogames, they are useless for 3D EM simulation. Conversely 64GB is more than you can use for any game, but is entry level for 3D EM work, you could use 256GB or more for many simulations.
When you are spending multi-thousands on a workstation, it really should be custom to order. The money should go where it is useful to your application set. Trying to have an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach and then saying everyone should meet that is silly.
You have to price out all the details. The question isn't what the server costs to buy. It is what it costs to buy, what support on it costs, both in terms of a warranty and sysadmin time, what physical space costs, or is available, what power and cooling cost, and what kind of reliability you need.
A "cheap" server can end up being not so cheap in many cases. A cheap server is great right up until the point where it fails, and then there is no way to fix it or restore it in a reasonable amount of time.
You can see what it costs for more realistically reliable things by looking at what VMs cost on the open market. For example Pair, who provides top notch reliability and support, wants about $1500/year for a server with 3GB RAM/80GB disk. Linode, which is much lower end particularly with regards to management, but still solid, wants about $500/year for 2GB RAM/96GB disk. These are for virtual servers, not physical systems. That gives you some idea what a server might actually cost in terms of all the things like power, cooling, bandwidth, maintenance, management, hardware refresh, backup, and so on.
That aside, if the program is for a very specific task, ok then development cost can be looked at fairly straight to server cost 1:1, if it is for resale/use elsewhere, then not so much. You can't very well try and foist off the development cost to each customer or argue they should be willing to buy a lot of hardware to support it.
I'm not saying programmers should spend man-years optimizing for every little fractional ounce of improvement (though in some cases it is worth it, read up on some of the stuff Michael Abrash has done) but that optimization does matter.
I get pissed when you hear programmers say "Oh memory is cheap, we don't need to optimize!" Yes you do. In the server world these days we don't run things on physical hardware usually, we run it in a VM. The less resources a given VM uses, the more VMs we can pack on a system. So if you have some crap code that gobbles up tons of memory that is memory that can't go to other things.
It is seriously like some programmers can't think out of the confines of their own system/setup. They have 16GB of RAM on their desktop so they write some sprawling mess that uses 4GB. They don't think this is an issue after all "16GB was super cheap!" Heck, they'll look at a server and see 256GB in it and say "Why are you worried!" I'm worried because your code doesn't get its own 256GB server, it gets to share that with 100, 200, or even more other things. I want to pack in services as efficient as possible.
The less CPU, memory, disk, etc a given program uses, the more a system can do. Conversely, the less powerful a system needs to be. In terms of a single user system, like maybe an end user computer, well it would always be nice is we could make them less powerful because that means less power hungry. If we could make everything run 1.5 times as fast, what that would really mean is we could cut CPU power by that amount and not affect the user experience. That means longer battery life, less heat, less waste, smaller devices, etc, etc.
If you look at AV Comparitives, who seem to do pretty good testing, MSE is about 90%. That's quite low (though there are commercial apps that are worse) but the tradeoff is zero false positives on essentially every test.
It's certainly not what you get if you want highest security, but it does a reasonably good job, and doesn't generate false positives, which can piss off newbie users and make them want the AV scanner off. It also updates definitions via Windows Update, if its internal updater has an issue, which is nice for people who won't mind after their AV software.
It's not what I use, but it isn't a bad baseline. I'd sure as hell use it rather than Norton :P.
He's often "technically correct". What I mean is that OpenBSD is really secure in its default setup... because it doesn't do fuck-all. Security via turning off everything isn't really that impressive. When something is supposedly so much superior on a security front, yet seems to get very little usage, well, there's a reason.
Also, even if you are right, you shouldn't be a dick about it. Perception matters in the world and if you want to persuade people to your position, you need some empathy. If you act like a jerk all the time, it puts people off and makes them dislike you, and thus not consider the content of your claims.
There no connection to SteamOS with Ohm Studio. It is, as with most pro audio stuff, Windows and Mac only. It is just on Steam because Valve is now selling regular software, as well as games, on Steam. Cakewalk started selling Music Creator, their home version of their Sonar software, on Steam a couple months ago.
"Over 300" isn't an impressive amount. The Windows Steam client has "over 9000" games (well, items which can be DLC, expansions, etc).
For that matter quantity is never the issue, quality is. Right now Steam for Linux lacks in the big name games. It has a few, and some popular indies like Starbound, but you find that you miss out on the majority of new games, particularly AAA games for it.
I've had something like this happen twice. The first time a company shipped me something I ordered, and then a few days later something I didn't. I let them know, and they sent me a prepaid return sticker, and scheduled for UPS to come pick it up, they told me to just leave it on my porch.
No problem there, I was happy to get them their stuff back because it wasn't any issue for me. I didn't have to expend any real time and effort fixing their mistake. A quick e-mail to them, and then slap a label on it (they actually mailed me one) and drop the box on my porch.
Another time an eBay seller fucked up an order bad. They shipped some fairly cheap headphones I had purchased to a guy, and instead shipped me two McIntosh monoblock tube amplifiers worth about $10,000 each that he had purchased. I was a little perplexed by these massive 100 pound each boxes when I expected headphones
Well they were annoyed at me that I didn't refuse the delivery "like I should have" (I wasn't there, the apartment manager accepted packages for us) and wanted me to take them to UPS and ship them to the other buyer. They said they'd refund the shipping charge when he got the amps. I told them to fuck off, they could send me shipping labels and have them picked up, or go away. The were butthurt about that, but finally agreed.
So depends on how the company has acted. If they truly are making it no hassle on the part of the customer: As in willing to send them a shipping label (and if necessary a box) and schedule a pickup, then ok. However if they expect the customer to go out of their way to fix the fuckup, then no. Sometimes what they mean by "no inconvenience" is really "We want you to deal with the hassle of a return, then we'll refund you the money for shipping later, maybe."
When they are the ones that fuck up, it is their duty to make it right, with as little impact on you as possible.
It would also make sense such communication was done via private channels (all games have private messaging). So the way one would monitor that would be via their normal intelligence hoovering methods, not via playing the game.
Like every year, a number of people die getting hit by freight trains. These things are massive, make a lot of noise and oh ya, can only travel along well defined paths. Still, some people seem to get snuck up on by 3000 ton trains and killed.
It really is a case of natural selection.
They teach too, but research has always been a part of it. Now if you don't want them getting patents and such on research that's fine, but then you need to increase funding. Part of the issue is that states have continually cut funding to universities. If that money isn't being paid in by the state, it needs to come from other sources, either higher tuition, or more research dollars.
Tablets tend to suck for creation. There are limited exceptions, but for the most part a mouse n' keyboard, and a screen without your fingers in the way, are what you want for creating things. This includes software, of course, but also more mundane business things like financial spreadsheets, e-mails, and so on. It applies to other creative pursuits such as writing, video editing, and so on.
Basically tablets are reasonably good if you want to consume content. You can read a book, surf the web, etc with ease on a tablet. However when you start to talk creation, they are not as good. They can do in a pinch, but much better to have a real keyboard and larger screen.
What we are actually seeing is not desktops and laptops "dying" but rather maturing. The market is more or less done growing. However that doesn't mean it is going away. The two states are not "growth" and "death". Rather it can be stable.
We've already seen this in things like mainframes. Desktops didn't kill off mainframes. You can still buy them, and people do. There are more of them now then when there were only mainframes. However it is a mature market. There aren't many organizations that want one, and you don't replace them that often. So there's no growth, but it isn't dead by any means.
That's what is happening with desktops. Go in to a business, have a look around, they have not tossed all their computers and started playing with tablets and phones. There is a computer on every desk practically. However, as noted, there is a computer on every desk. They've got their computers. They buy for replacement now largely, not to increase the numbers.
The only people who think desktops/laptops are going to "die" are either kids who just play on their smart phone and don't do productive work with a computer, or idiot tech journalists.
Tinnitus is no fun in low noise environments as your ears seem to be awash in it. It seems really loud and overbearing, since it is all you hear. That kind of thing happens when you get your hearing tested and you have it (as I do). When they start doing threshold of hearing tests and the sounds they make are really quiet, the tinnitus seems massive and overpowering. Then you take off the headphones and leave the booth and it vanishes.
In particular because there is no central computer control. The military has always been real big about having humans in the chain, which is why this code isn't a big deal. It still required the two guys in the silos to turn their keys. There isn't any "OMG we hax the missiles!" shit that can go on. At the end of the day, only the operators in the silos can trigger a launch, it isn't on a network.
Same general deal in planes and so on. Like when a modern bombing mission is conducted, all the stuff is uploaded in to the computers beforehand, flight plan, targeting data, all that. The pilot is told on his HUD a countdown to when to release the bombs. Hitting the button doesn't release them either, the plane's computers decide when it is actually best to release. So what does it do? Allows the plane to release. If the pilot doesn't trigger, it can't drop, no matter if it thinks it should. The human is the final deciding factor.
Maybe the military will change their mind some day as automation increases, but for now they are real, real big on having a human have to be the final factor.
Sometimes it is as others have noted: Because you are promoting an internal candidate. So ya, the requirements are tailored to that person. This isn't a pure evil "Oh we want to keep anyone else out," kind of thing but that we already have a guy who is trained and qualified on the stuff we use. So if we are to consider anyone else, they would need to be as well. There is no reason we'd want to hire someone that we didn't know, and that wasn't proficient with our systems when we already have someone who is. However, we'll let people apply, on the off chance there is a more qualified candidate.
The other is as you say, needing someone that can hit the ground running because we don't have a ton of skills overlap. We have few IT people and a lot of systems, so we can't all be good at everything. I'm sure there are some arrogant Slashdoters who've never worked in an enterprise that think they can be all things to all people, but you quickly discover that isn't the case. So when we hire someone, we need, or at least strongly desire, certain skills.
Like our last UNIX guy we hired. They had to be good with Linux, since we've been moving all the UNIX stuff to RHEL. However we still had some old Solaris SPARC shit around back then (gone now thankfully). It was running important things, and we couldn't just turn it off. So we really wanted someone who knew Solaris. Not "Oh I know UNIX and I can learn the differences of versions, given time," but someone who could dig right in when one of those POS's went down and needed to be fixed RIGHT NAO!!! So we wanted, and got, an older guy who had a wide range of UNIX experience, including Solaris, rather than someone who was all Linux, all the time.
While learning is great and is required at any IT position, when you have a small team and are looking for a senior position, you don't have the luxury of bringing someone on who doesn't know the technology you use but wants to learn, since they may well be the guy in charge, and needing to support it all right away.
When we hire a student (I work at a university engineering college), we are looking for brains and ability to learn. Minimal experience is no problem, they can learn and indeed we expect that's part of the reason they want the job. When we hire a UNIX lead, that guy had better have some experience on the stuff we use because he'd going to need to be able to do it from day one.
So she said "This data is faked!" the university looked in to it, they have committees for that kind of thing as I'm sure you know, and said that no, they could find no evidence of wrongdoing. So she got the federal Office of Research Integrity involved, they looked in to it, and said "Nope we see no evidence of wrongdoing here." So she took it to court, and lost the case, appealed it, and lost that case.
This would seem to be a case where she's wrong. She thought she saw misconduct, but she was incorrect, but she's pushing this anyhow.
Remember that just because scientific misconduct happens does not mean all accusations of misconduct are true.
When will you get that?
If you propose solutions, if you advocate the need for change, if you cry warnings, that isn't science. Science is the process for knowing about the universe, nothing more. It is the only reliable method we have for separating what is likely correct for what is not.
It does not, however, dictate what we as humans should do, what our politics or policies should be, what we should choose to do.
So, if you produce a video that explains the observed changes in the environment (temperature measurements, atmospheric gas readings, etc), the theory of how those interact, that is science. If you start preaching what needs to be done about it, that is not.
That isn't to say you shouldn't have opinions on it, and that you shouldn't express those, but don't try and pretend that it is science, don't try and pretend that your views are the One True Way(tm) and anyone who disagrees is "anti-science".
One of the big problems with the whole AGW argument is there is multiple levels, but people like you conflate them:
1) The fact of a global temperature change outside of known cycles. This is a measurement, and observation, and isn't really up for any kind of debate unless you can show said measurement is wrong (it is a complex measurement since we are talking long term global average).
2) The theory that the prime or exclusive cause of this increase is an increase in atmospheric CO2, due to human activity. Like any theory, you can argue the conclusions, even if the data is sound, provided you can find a theory that better fits the available data.
3) The conclusion that this is a net negative thing. This is where you start to leave the realm of science. For one, any conclusion like this is a judgement call. Even if you agree on all the data, you can reach a different conclusion as someone else. For example one of my coworkers believes that humanity is a bad thing, and anything that furthers it towards extinction is a good thing. I happen to disagree with that, rather forcefully. Also this judgement is based largely on computer models of what may happen. Fine, but models don't prove anything, they model, and they are only useful is they are accurate. There has been a lot of trouble in this area, since modeling the climate is an amazingly complex problem, the most complex modeling problem we've ever dealt with. So people can very well disagree with the models being used.
4) The policy or politics of what to do about it. This is not science at all this is, well, politics and policy. Even if you agree on what is likely to happen, you can disagree on what to do about it. One person can say that the correct approach is to drastically reduce human CO2 output, another can say the correct approach is a massive geoengineering effort, and yet another can say the correct approach is not to try and stop the change, but simply to prepare ourselves to deal with it. None of these are "right" in any objective, scientific, sense.
The problem is that you seem to be one of the many out there who thinks that it is all science. So that if you accept the data on warming, you them MUST accept the policy of what to do about it or you are anti-science, a denialist, etc, etc. You conflate the issues, and shout at people who disagree.
It is not an easy thing to get people interested in technical fields if they aren't already. Particularly since they are challenging compared to some of the "soft" fields like the humanities. It isn't like a teacher can just "try harder" and make it happen.
A somewhat related example: I work at an engineering college at a university. One of our (very few) female electrical engineering professors taught an honors intro to engineering section for women. All girls, all academically motivated enough to be in the honors college. She was excited since being one of the few girls in the boys club, she wants to see more women in engineering.
The result? Extremely low retention, just like every other intro engineering class. Very, very few of the women decided they wanted to go on studying engineering. Here they had a role model in a very real way: A very successful woman, a full professor, who loved the material, and who hadn't had to trade off her personal goals or anything (she's married and has a family), yet it didn't really make a difference. They just weren't that interested by and large.
So should she be penalized when she teaches normal engineering classes, which are like 90%+ male? What should she do? She's just about as good an example/role model as you can ask for, she cares about more women being in engineering. Short of discriminating against male students, there's little she can, yet no difference is to be made.
It is also quite obviously in the middle of a massive bubble. If you look at the movement of the price, the shape of the curve, it is moving just like any other commodity that is being thinly traded and having massive speculation. That sort of thing might be good if you like to play the market and try to make a quick buck, but it's really really bad for anything trying to be a currency. It also is almost inevitably followed by a crash. Hence why bubbles are called that because they pop.
I suppose it is there radically possible that Bitcoin is some kind of exception and its value will continue to rise forever, but it would be the first time that is been true for anything that moved like this. Massive, volatile price changes are not the sort of thing that signal real growth, but rather a speculation bubble that is doomed to collapse sooner or later.
Even if you have a place you own, like a condo, that doesn't mean it's simple to add electrical outlet. If you own a house, that has a garage and everything, then share the only issue is money. So long as you can afford to have the outlet hooked up, and possibly more power to your house run, you are good. However there are many situations where that isn't what you have, even when you own property.
I live in a condo, it's mine I am an owner have a mortgage all that kind of stuff. However it is an attached unit so there is a common area that I am a partial owner of that I have a "undivided interest" in. In that area, is my parking space. Well, I can't just go and make modifications to that. That has to be approved by the Board of Directors, and for something like this probably a full vote of owners. I can bring it up, I can try to get people to vote on it, but it's not something as simple as me just doing it.
Even were I to, there's the issue that all are parking spaces are out in the open and so is it really a good idea to have a bunch of electrical outlets there.
So anyone that rents as an issue, and more than a few people that own have issues. It isn't a situation where just anyone that wants to can install plug and go. I would really like an electric car, where I live it would work really well. However it really isn't that easy for me to get a charging station set up. I think it would be a very hard sell to have them installed.
The thing is at the moment the US has a pretty irresistibly superior military. If Pakistan tried to send a drone in to the US to strike something, it would almost certainly get splashed before it was over land. The PAVE PAWS radar system watches for inbound craft from basically anywhere for a thousand miles or more. The US then has the USAF and ANG which have lots of modern planes to intercept and destroy it. Further it has carrier battle groups capable of swift and powerful retaliation.
So no, a country like Pakistan will not be sending drones in to the US.
You might note that even the US with its military power is pretty selective about drone use. Drones are basically only used in countries that have no ability to do anything about it. You don't see the US doing drone strikes in Europe or Russia because even if the countries affected couldn't militarily threaten the US, but they could do so economically and diplomatically. So it happens in places like Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, places that have little world influence, and are more or less failed states.
Also this kind of shit has happened for a long time, just not with drones. Do some research on missile strikes, special operations, that kind of things. More powerful nations have a history of going after those they wish dealt with in less powerful nations. Not just the US, the EU members have done plenty of it. Drones are new tech but the mission of "kill someone we don't like" isn't.
Also if people of the world see an American's, and American, life as worthless because of the policy and action of some in the government, the problem is with those people, and their lack of morals and ethics, not the Americans. This is the same as hating all Muslims because some terrorists belong to that religion and use it as a justification for their actions, and some Imams preach violence in its name. This would be the same as hating all Pakistanis because some in their military and intelligence community worked to shield Bin Laden in their country.
So if you really feel that way, that American lives are worthless because of this, the problem is you, not America. Your moral system is seriously underdeveloped and in need of reevaluation.
I mean if some random shit "security blog" posts a trumped up story to try and get traffic, it is Slashdot's DUTY to repeat it here, with no checking or verification! After all, better everyone is scared of their own shadow than informed about security.
Seriously this is just pathetic. As I said: This is some random ass site that is trying to get people to come and read, and it worked. By making a scare story about how Netlfix users on Windows are vulnerable they managed to get some Linux fanboy to submit the story to Slashdot. The editors then did what they do, which is to say NOT EDIT and just posted it. Great success for shit site, they now got a bunch of undeserved traffic.
What is sadder is how uninformed this makes all involved look. the statement of "You'd think something like Silverlight would automatically upgrade itself." Yes, it DOES you fucking moron. One thing you have to give MS is that Windows update will patch all their stuff for you. Let it do its thing and you get security updates, as they are released. You don't need to pay attention or anything, it'll just happen. This includes things not installed by default like Silverlight, or older versions of the .NET runtimes.
This is just a massive pile of fail. It is not news, not even really old news. There was a bug, they patched it. This would be "how shit works", or at least how it should.