*raises hand* Actually, support is just -one- of the many factors that are taken into consideration when vetting vendors for a large computer systems purchase. Others include availability of -specific- parts, performance of offered systems, pricing, timeliness, configuration flexibility, etc.
Dell doesn't have the part I want (Opty), they have stated time and time again that they have no intention of stocking the part (sucking Intel's teat all the way, they are), and they're expensive. When I've got a half dozen different vendors that can supply for a pretty well stacked 128-node (+3TB storage and 2 I/O nodes) for $400k or -less-, -and- offer support similar to that of Dell's (I need -strictly- hardware support), the big boys price themselves out:)
But that's lost on folks that don't actually have to make purchasing decision and deal with vendors.;)
And you think the Judicial System doesn't have larger than life egos and people who would rather apply their politics to rulings, and -do-. See Roe v. Wade. Unless explicitly granted via the amendment process, the powers of federal government are limited to what is explicitly stated in the constitution...too much of the constitution has been effectivily nullified by pea-brained decisions made by the USSC...like the 9th and 10th amendments, for staters.
That isn't what he's saying. In developing software (or really, building -anything-), you can get it done in a variety of ways: faster cheaper better
Now, if you want it done well, quickly, you're -going- to pay out the nose, even outsourcing. Quality developers aren't cheap, even globally.
If you want it done well, for cheap, expect it to take a while, because you'll have fewer developers to work on it (remember, cheap), and they're probably splitting time with other projects.
etc.
Faster, better, cheaper, pick two is most definately -not- fallacious. I've seen it happen in real life too many times in the last 5 years to even contemplate dissing it.
This is actually incorrect at this point. Apparently Boies and Company have already received a 7 figure payment in addition to an equity stake in SCO. IMHO, this whole mess is starting to smell of collusion between Boies law firm, SCO, Canopy, and possibly other unnamed companies.
It's not actually the speed that matters, here. It's how well the applications are parallelized. Things like protein folding, most population modelling simulations, graphics rendering, etc are -highly- parallel in nature, and run beautifully on clusters and large SMP machines (by large we're talking >32 way). A really good example is the genomic search tool BLAST. The "stock" version from NIH isn't natively parallel, however due to it being available in source form, it's been modified to run in parallel....and it's -much- faster that way.
Basically, if your problem set can be broken into chunks and -then- worked on, you can make good use of any sort of parallel system. Clusters are really the "poor man's" way of parallelizing computation...they're also becoming the most prevalent -because- you get a lot of bang for your buck...think about it: Earth Simulator cost 8 figures to build, IIRC, to get 17 TFlops. Earth Simulatr is a more tradition vektor system, so it's -really- freaking good at certain operations...but it's also freakishly expensive to design and build.
That was my first thought. My second real tech job (systems admin and programmer) was with one of the largest insurance companies in the world (they're dutch, to give a hint) at their US HQ. We had -millions- of policies stored in a DB2 database on a Hitachi-built mainframe, and we "massaged" some of that data on a couple of RS6k's nightly. Most of the data processing was handled on the mainframes, though (and yes, there were multiple mainframes). Process failure was -not- acceptable. Period. When you're dealing with billions of dollars every night, you want to ensure that the entire process runs smooth as silk, with no chance of failure at any point.
A Windows machine running on a 4-way Dell rig (especially one that cost only 40k) isn't going to get even -remotely- close to the kind of reliability expected from a mainframe. Ever.
God forbid that the folks making 90k+ a year are already paying 65% of the current tax load should have to pay -MORE- of the tax load (and those making 55k+ are paying almost 83%).
Last time I checked, the US -encouraged- people to go out and try to be successful. Oppressive tax regimes -PUNISH- success. Is it any wonder that we have had more FIRST GENERATION millionaires in the last 15 years than ever in US history? They aren't having to give all of their income to the feds, and so are able to do things to generate wealth...like founding new companies and investing in existing ones, purchasing property, etc.
Oh, I agree that we should do good things for our fellow man...on an individual basis. I shouldn't be forced (via taxes) to support and fund organizations that I believe are more -harmful- than they are good.
The fact that some believe that we should be forced to pay into a system that DOES NOT WORK (essentially government mandated and controlled "charity" *snort*) and those that don't punished tells me a lot about themselves.
*shakes head sadly* Y'know, people gave more money to charity before taxation became so fscking oppressive in this country. Maybe, -just maybe- we oughta cut broken government programs, decreasing spending, before even considering hiking taxes back up? Ya think?
How about this, for those who think Shrub's tax cut isn't doing what it's supposed to: Government tax receipts are expected to be -up- this year. It's been ~2 years since the first cut. For those of you who haven't paid attention to history, it was roughly two years between Reagan's big tax cuts and when tax receipts increased. What's that I hear? Crickets?
You mean there -is- something about him that I can like?
Amazing. After the campaign literature I saw Tuesday, I figured there was nothing about him I could force myself to like. Guess I was wrong.
That said: I will not, under -any- circumstances, vote for a candidate who wants to raise my taxes. I'm barely making ends meet now, I really can't afford a hike the likes that these socialist assholes seem to think I should be paying.
*refrains from making comments about people's ability to be a parent*
As a parent, as well, I abhor this, and if it were to ever occur at a school that one of my children were at, I'd remove them from that school immediately.
What's so wrong with having a car -strictly- as a means of transportation? Sure, I'd love to have your 911, but when almost all of my driving is to the train station, grocery store, vet, or the 'rents/in-laws....see where I'm going?
And for the record: you mention a -number- of excellent vehicles, but if they aren't selling more than two to five thousand of them a year, there's no point in making them (especially when you have models that sell 50-100k a year).
If you're talking about Goldwater conservatives, yeah. Hell, if you're talking about -Reagan- conservatives, yeah. I'm not so sure on "Bush conservatives", though. They seem to like spending money almost as much as the Democrats...only on different things.
*shrug* The people who'd likely be most in favor of it are the libertarians....and even then they'd probably be able to find something evil about it *heh*
Hey, we replaced my wife's (wait, a slashdotter with a -wife-...and -kids-!?!) cavvy with an '03 Prius, so like, yeah, people will buy Green cars. we were actually looking at replacing it with an '04 Prius, but got jacked by a car accident *shrug*
FWIU, the '04's have -much- better performance (not that I'm complaining about the '03...we routinely get it up over 80...although it -does- seem to prefer between 65 and 70 when on the highways)
You're right, they don't. But then, most people don't understand how to properly take care of a vehicle, or simply don't care enough to properly take care of their vehicle. However, take a look at the vehicles the -truly- wealthy drive (I'm not talking about the folks making 6 figures a year and spending all of it: they're not accumulating any wealth). I'm talking about the mom-and-pop business owners who have a couple million socked away for retirement (and there's a couple million of these people, BTW). They're driving detroit steel, they take care of the vehicles, and they keep them for 10+ years. Hell, we'd still have my wife's '97 Chevy Cavalier if it hadn't been totaled this past spring, and I'm still driving my 95 Corolla that we purchased in early '99 (and it's paid off).
Take a look at it like this: is it better to spend a grand a year (or so) in maintenance on a car, or to be spending 3500+ a year in car payments -plus- maintenance? It's one thing to do it if you have to (ie. the car is totalled in an accident), or need to. It's something completely different if you're doing it just because you need to keep up with the Joneses.
You -do- realize, of course, that a significant portion of what you pay at the pump is already taxes, right? The US national average in 2002 was $.42 per gallon in taxes. So that 1.50-1.89 you're paying right now is -already- 1/3 to 1/4 taxes, and that's not including that portion of the sale that ends up going to the Feds as income taxes.
So, no, actually, increasing taxes on gasoline may irritate people, but you're not going to see Americans driving less...might see more hyrid-civics and prius' on the road, but that's about it.
Re:What about supporting hardware?
on
Athlon 64 Debuts
·
· Score: 2, Informative
There's boards out from MSI, Gigabyte, Shuttle... *shakes head*
And? It's still at an absolutely unaffordable price point. If Intel can provide me the highest end I2 in a dualy config with 4G of RAM (like I can get from Penguin) for under 4300 per system (TOTAL), you might have a point.
I've got a budget, and I need to get the best bang for my buck out of it. Guess what -doesn't-? I2. Hands down.
I get 12 sick days, 22 vacation days, 2 floating holidays plus 11 regular holidays. I had 15 personal days plus 9 holidays at my last job (and yes, that -is- part of why i left it).
I'd say that most Americans need to put between 5 and 10 years into a position to get to 4 weeks vacation. That's a far cry from 20+ and never reaching it.
Most Americans don't change jobs nearly as often as us tech geeks, either:)
Having cleaned up one hosting providers network (and reputation) I take great umbrage with this statement:
They are pure evil in their methods, and largely ineffective against spam while causing massive inconvenience for ISPs and legitimate users of the network.
These blocklists are very effective in stopping the entry of spam into a user's network. While I also think the guys running SPEWS could use some lessons in public relations, and have an easier way of getting IPs removed, that does -not- mean that they're evil and inneffective.
I also do not believe it is the large ISPs that are behind this. That's almost as laughable as Julian's statement that it's organized crim behind it. It's likely the larger spam groups that are behind it, like Ralsky and his ilk. And I -know- he has no moral compunction to not break the law.
And just a reminder:
Spamming is ILLEGAL in a not insignificant number of states, and several of them explicitly allow for blocking of offending IPs if the ISPs involved are unresponsive.
Collateral damage, as much as I detest it and is why I do all blocks locally as opposed to using a "published" DNSBL, -works-. If an ISP has 5000 customers and 3/4 of them are unable to email family at AOL or Yahoo because they're being blocked due to ISP having a spammer or two, the spammers tend to get dropped. There are exceptions to this, but by and large, collateral damage works.
Newisys for those, as well.
I think you can also get them from Boxxtech, servers from IBM, etc.
So yeah, you can get fully equipped systems with Optys in them.
AMD beat Apple to market by about 3 months on this one, mate. 'sides, I know of a handful of them that have been ordered that -haven't- shown up (G5s). I played with Opty's months ago.:)
Slashdot Mirror
*raises hand*
:)
;)
Actually, support is just -one- of the many factors that are taken into consideration when vetting vendors for a large computer systems purchase.
Others include availability of -specific- parts, performance of offered systems, pricing, timeliness, configuration flexibility, etc.
Dell doesn't have the part I want (Opty), they have stated time and time again that they have no intention of stocking the part (sucking Intel's teat all the way, they are), and they're expensive. When I've got a half dozen different vendors that can supply for a pretty well stacked 128-node (+3TB storage and 2 I/O nodes) for $400k or -less-, -and- offer support similar to that of Dell's (I need -strictly- hardware support), the big boys price themselves out
But that's lost on folks that don't actually have to make purchasing decision and deal with vendors.
And you think the Judicial System doesn't have larger than life egos and people who would rather apply their politics to rulings, and -do-. See Roe v. Wade. Unless explicitly granted via the amendment process, the powers of federal government are limited to what is explicitly stated in the constitution...too much of the constitution has been effectivily nullified by pea-brained decisions made by the USSC...like the 9th and 10th amendments, for staters.
*fumes*
That isn't what he's saying.
In developing software (or really, building -anything-), you can get it done in a variety of ways:
faster
cheaper
better
Now, if you want it done well, quickly, you're -going- to pay out the nose, even outsourcing. Quality developers aren't cheap, even globally.
If you want it done well, for cheap, expect it to take a while, because you'll have fewer developers to work on it (remember, cheap), and they're probably splitting time with other projects.
etc.
Faster, better, cheaper, pick two is most definately -not- fallacious. I've seen it happen in real life too many times in the last 5 years to even contemplate dissing it.
This is actually incorrect at this point.
Apparently Boies and Company have already received a 7 figure payment in addition to an equity stake in SCO.
IMHO, this whole mess is starting to smell of collusion between Boies law firm, SCO, Canopy, and possibly other unnamed companies.
-
J
It's not actually the speed that matters, here. It's how well the applications are parallelized. Things like protein folding, most population modelling simulations, graphics rendering, etc are -highly- parallel in nature, and run beautifully on clusters and large SMP machines (by large we're talking >32 way).
A really good example is the genomic search tool BLAST. The "stock" version from NIH isn't natively parallel, however due to it being available in source form, it's been modified to run in parallel....and it's -much- faster that way.
Basically, if your problem set can be broken into chunks and -then- worked on, you can make good use of any sort of parallel system. Clusters are really the "poor man's" way of parallelizing computation...they're also becoming the most prevalent -because- you get a lot of bang for your buck...think about it: Earth Simulator cost 8 figures to build, IIRC, to get 17 TFlops. Earth Simulatr is a more tradition vektor system, so it's -really- freaking good at certain operations...but it's also freakishly expensive to design and build.
Nope.
Besides, the Yamhill extensions are supposedly AMD64 compatible...even Intel doesn't want to piss of the Beast of Redmond.
That was my first thought.
My second real tech job (systems admin and programmer) was with one of the largest insurance companies in the world (they're dutch, to give a hint) at their US HQ. We had -millions- of policies stored in a DB2 database on a Hitachi-built mainframe, and we "massaged" some of that data on a couple of RS6k's nightly. Most of the data processing was handled on the mainframes, though (and yes, there were multiple mainframes).
Process failure was -not- acceptable. Period. When you're dealing with billions of dollars every night, you want to ensure that the entire process runs smooth as silk, with no chance of failure at any point.
A Windows machine running on a 4-way Dell rig (especially one that cost only 40k) isn't going to get even -remotely- close to the kind of reliability expected from a mainframe. Ever.
God forbid that the folks making 90k+ a year are already paying 65% of the current tax load should have to pay -MORE- of the tax load (and those making 55k+ are paying almost 83%).
Last time I checked, the US -encouraged- people to go out and try to be successful. Oppressive tax regimes -PUNISH- success. Is it any wonder that we have had more FIRST GENERATION millionaires in the last 15 years than ever in US history? They aren't having to give all of their income to the feds, and so are able to do things to generate wealth...like founding new companies and investing in existing ones, purchasing property, etc.
Oh, I agree that we should do good things for our fellow man...on an individual basis.
I shouldn't be forced (via taxes) to support and fund organizations that I believe are more -harmful- than they are good.
The fact that some believe that we should be forced to pay into a system that DOES NOT WORK (essentially government mandated and controlled "charity" *snort*) and those that don't punished tells me a lot about themselves.
*shakes head sadly* Y'know, people gave more money to charity before taxation became so fscking oppressive in this country. Maybe, -just maybe- we oughta cut broken government programs, decreasing spending, before even considering hiking taxes back up? Ya think?
How about this, for those who think Shrub's tax cut isn't doing what it's supposed to: Government tax receipts are expected to be -up- this year. It's been ~2 years since the first cut. For those of you who haven't paid attention to history, it was roughly two years between Reagan's big tax cuts and when tax receipts increased.
What's that I hear? Crickets?
You mean there -is- something about him that I can like?
Amazing. After the campaign literature I saw Tuesday, I figured there was nothing about him I could force myself to like. Guess I was wrong.
That said: I will not, under -any- circumstances, vote for a candidate who wants to raise my taxes. I'm barely making ends meet now, I really can't afford a hike the likes that these socialist assholes seem to think I should be paying.
*refrains from making comments about people's ability to be a parent*
As a parent, as well, I abhor this, and if it were to ever occur at a school that one of my children were at, I'd remove them from that school immediately.
This is intolerable.
No, we were in an accident in a Cavalier, and bought the Prius to replace it.
Nyah.
I'm not complaining though. The wife's gas-consumption has been cut in half. Considering the length of her commute, that's a beatutiful thing.
What's so wrong with having a car -strictly- as a means of transportation?
Sure, I'd love to have your 911, but when almost all of my driving is to the train station, grocery store, vet, or the 'rents/in-laws....see where I'm going?
And for the record: you mention a -number- of excellent vehicles, but if they aren't selling more than two to five thousand of them a year, there's no point in making them (especially when you have models that sell 50-100k a year).
If you're talking about Goldwater conservatives, yeah. Hell, if you're talking about -Reagan- conservatives, yeah. I'm not so sure on "Bush conservatives", though. They seem to like spending money almost as much as the Democrats...only on different things.
*shrug*
The people who'd likely be most in favor of it are the libertarians....and even then they'd probably be able to find something evil about it *heh*
Hey, we replaced my wife's (wait, a slashdotter with a -wife-...and -kids-!?!) cavvy with an '03 Prius, so like, yeah, people will buy Green cars. we were actually looking at replacing it with an '04 Prius, but got jacked by a car accident *shrug*
FWIU, the '04's have -much- better performance (not that I'm complaining about the '03...we routinely get it up over 80...although it -does- seem to prefer between 65 and 70 when on the highways)
Amen.
I say again, Amen.
The problem is finding quality 5yo cars at a quality dealership. Yeah, you can always do person-to-person sales, but....
You're right, they don't. But then, most people don't understand how to properly take care of a vehicle, or simply don't care enough to properly take care of their vehicle.
However, take a look at the vehicles the -truly- wealthy drive (I'm not talking about the folks making 6 figures a year and spending all of it: they're not accumulating any wealth).
I'm talking about the mom-and-pop business owners who have a couple million socked away for retirement (and there's a couple million of these people, BTW). They're driving detroit steel, they take care of the vehicles, and they keep them for 10+ years.
Hell, we'd still have my wife's '97 Chevy Cavalier if it hadn't been totaled this past spring, and I'm still driving my 95 Corolla that we purchased in early '99 (and it's paid off).
Take a look at it like this: is it better to spend a grand a year (or so) in maintenance on a car, or to be spending 3500+ a year in car payments -plus- maintenance? It's one thing to do it if you have to (ie. the car is totalled in an accident), or need to. It's something completely different if you're doing it just because you need to keep up with the Joneses.
Bah. This is lost on most of you anyways.
You -do- realize, of course, that a significant portion of what you pay at the pump is already taxes, right? The US national average in 2002 was $.42 per gallon in taxes. So that 1.50-1.89 you're paying right now is -already- 1/3 to 1/4 taxes, and that's not including that portion of the sale that ends up going to the Feds as income taxes.
So, no, actually, increasing taxes on gasoline may irritate people, but you're not going to see Americans driving less...might see more hyrid-civics and prius' on the road, but that's about it.
There's boards out from MSI, Gigabyte, Shuttle...
*shakes head*
And? It's still at an absolutely unaffordable price point.
If Intel can provide me the highest end I2 in a dualy config with 4G of RAM (like I can get from Penguin) for under 4300 per system (TOTAL), you might have a point.
I've got a budget, and I need to get the best bang for my buck out of it. Guess what -doesn't-? I2.
Hands down.
I get 12 sick days, 22 vacation days, 2 floating holidays plus 11 regular holidays.
:)
I had 15 personal days plus 9 holidays at my last job (and yes, that -is- part of why i left it).
I'd say that most Americans need to put between 5 and 10 years into a position to get to 4 weeks vacation. That's a far cry from 20+ and never reaching it.
Most Americans don't change jobs nearly as often as us tech geeks, either
You, sir, are a know-nothing dumbass .
Have you -ever- worked in network security?
Have you -ever- worked an abuse desk?
Having cleaned up one hosting providers network (and reputation) I take great umbrage with this statement:
They are pure evil in their methods, and largely ineffective against spam while causing massive inconvenience for ISPs and legitimate users of the network.
These blocklists are very effective in stopping the entry of spam into a user's network. While I also think the guys running SPEWS could use some lessons in public relations, and have an easier way of getting IPs removed, that does -not- mean that they're evil and inneffective.
I also do not believe it is the large ISPs that are behind this. That's almost as laughable as Julian's statement that it's organized crim behind it. It's likely the larger spam groups that are behind it, like Ralsky and his ilk. And I -know- he has no moral compunction to not break the law.
And just a reminder:
Spamming is ILLEGAL in a not insignificant number of states, and several of them explicitly allow for blocking of offending IPs if the ISPs involved are unresponsive.
Collateral damage, as much as I detest it and is why I do all blocks locally as opposed to using a "published" DNSBL, -works-.
If an ISP has 5000 customers and 3/4 of them are unable to email family at AOL or Yahoo because they're being blocked due to ISP having a spammer or two, the spammers tend to get dropped.
There are exceptions to this, but by and large, collateral damage works.
And like I said, I think it's piss poor policy.
Newisys for those, as well.
I think you can also get them from Boxxtech, servers from IBM, etc.
So yeah, you can get fully equipped systems with Optys in them.
AMD beat Apple to market by about 3 months on this one, mate. 'sides, I know of a handful of them that have been ordered that -haven't- shown up (G5s). :)
I played with Opty's months ago.