may i ask about details on how vista benefits the support infrastructure?
Off the top of my head:
* Better deployment tools
* Lots more GPOs
* UAC
* Improvements to Folder Redirection
* Improvements to Remote Assistance
* Improvements to Offline Files
* Improvements to diagnostics and error reporting
* Improvements to Task Scheduler
I really do not see the benefit of upgrading from XP to Vista for most business users - who, lets face it, are doing web, email, word and excel.
The benefits of upgrading to Vista (much like those from upgrading to XP) are not for the end users, they are for the IT departments that have to support them.
And it is this supporting infrastructure that is often the reason why Linux, OS X, et al, are not options.
Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs, is also having trouble with Vista, with even firms like Intel noting XP would remain the dominant OS within the company for the foreseeable future.
Bollocks. Big businesses (like, say, Intel) run a 3-5 year upgrade cycle (closer to 5 these days), based around both hardware cycles (typically due to leasing arrangements) and software certification. The _earliest_ any intelligent person would expect Vista to start appearing in big business IT (outside of pilot programs, testing and CxO laptops) is the beginning of 2009, and more likely around the beginning of 2010.
What's really important about this is not so much that Vista is manifestly such a dog, but that the myth of upgrade inevitability has been destroyed. Companies have realised that they do have a choice â" that they can simply say âoenoâ. From there, it's but a small step to realising that they can also walk away from Windows completely, provided the alternatives offer sufficient data compatibility to make that move realistic.
Bollocks. Those staying with XP are doing so because it is a known quantity. If they're not prepared to move to the mostly-known-quantity of Vista, they sure as hell aren't going to step into the complete unknowns of OS X or Linux.
That may not have been the case before, but the similar poor uptake of Microsoft's OOXML, taken together with the generally good compatibility of OpenOffice.org with the original Microsoft Office file formats, implies that we may well be near the tipping point for migrations to free software on the desktop..
So 2009 will be the year of the Linux desktop ? Just like 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000 and 1999 were going to be ?
I'm obviously not the only one thinking along these lines. Last weekend, Dell was advertising its new Inspiron Mini 9 in at least one national newspaper. This would have been unthinkable even a year ago, when the company's fear of upsetting the mighty Microsoft by mentioning the âoeLâ word would have been too great, and is further evidence that GNU/Linux is indeed becoming a mainstream option.
Bollocks. Dell have been selling servers, workstations and desktops with Linux installed for *years*.
In summary, the writer is a clueless fool, although that should had been obvious as soon as the phrase "quotes an earlier Inquirer piece [...]" appeared.
If electric cars (or ethanol, or any other possible replacement for gasoline-powered vehicles) makes sense, it won't take tax money to get it into widespread use.
So you would agree that Windows dominates the market due to its merits, then ?
That's just economically wrong. I'm paid based on supply and demand (macroeconomically speaking, of course on an individual basis, it's not based on perfect knowledge). I'm not paid based on "what the boss has left".
Yes, you are. Your boss cannot pay you money he does not have. Furthermore, when he and all his buddies all agree that they should be getting paid more, that's less they have to pay you (at the "market rates" that they dictate, because they're the ones with all the money, and you're the one that has to eat).
While, on a "macro" scale you can change jobs to someone who pays you more, this academic concept does not translate anywhere near as easily to the real world, where changing jobs is nowhere near as simple as your economics textbook would have you think.
And as a self-employed individual, I have no intrinsic limit on how much I can earn.
Yes, you do. It's dictated by how much the people who have all the money are prepared to pay you.
Wealth is a completely artificial concept. It literally is made up out "thin air". If I take a $10 piece of canvas and $50 worth of paints, and produce a painting deemed worth $500K, then I have created wealth.
Only if someone has $500k worth of "wealth" to pay you with - and, eventually, only if they have $500k of *real* "wealth" to pay you with.
Now, there are hard assets such as real estate which are supply limited (I can't create more of it, for the most part), but the value of it is still an artificial concept.
Eventually, it always comes down to "hard assets" (the path may be convoluted, but the destination does not change).
Almost no one, over the long term, loses money when you invest in a conservative, diversified portfolio.
However, a portfolio like that is lucky to keep pace with inflation, which was my first point.
You seem to think that the current economic issues have never happened before, or that it somehow "proves" that investing is a complete waste of time. That's just short-term ignorant thinking.
I think nothing of the sort. Also, this is one of the worst financial crises, "evar", and not recognising that is being a bit short-sighted.
In the end, this means that systems without higher end 3D cards would be able to run Aero. THAT's the point.
Then it's pointless. Bottom-of-the-line 3D cards have been capable of running Aero for years. Any system with enough CPU grunt to emulate DX10, will have a video card in it that can run Aero.
Take the old Soviet Union, or Cuba now for that matter, where the distribution of wealth was much flatter.
Do you have some numbers to support this ? Because I would expect that the majority of the "wealth" in both the old Soviet Union, and current Cuba, is in fact controlled by a very small proportion of people.
I literally could not care less how much someone else makes. Really. I tip my hat to anyone who figures out how to live as well as they can.
That's very noble of you, but it's completely irrelevant to the discussion.
You know why? Because what someone else makes has no bearing on how much I make. The pie is not limited.
Actually, it is. Your employer (even if that is yourself) only makes a certain amount of money, from which he must pay all his employees. That means the more he pays someone else, the less he can pay you. Similarly, your customers only have a finite amount of money with which they can buy your products (despite attempts by banks, and others, at making them feel like they don't).
On a larger scale, the pie is also limited (although that limit is far higher, and nearly impossible to accurately calculate). One would hope the latest little financial meltdown might have driven that home to people like you, but obviously not. You can't just keep making up "wealth" out of thin air. Eventually, someone has to pay the piper.
Of course, given your post, the kool-aid you've drunk makes you think you're poor because someone else is rich. But you're wrong.
I don't think I'm poor. Far from it. I simply recognise that some people are unreasonably, and undeservedly, richer, and that everyone is worse off because of this.
Honestly, I pity people like you. You walk through life thinking that all the "amoral, super-rich sociopaths" are the ones keeping you down.
No, no, I don't.
No luck involved. Open a book on investment sometime. Not "get rich quick" investing, I mean long-term investing. This stuff is not rocket science. But here's another hint for you: Diversification.
Diversification isn't much protection when the whole system starts to fall apart like it has recently. The vast majority of people who haven't lost a lot of money recently are just lucky - although in typical arrogant style they will likely attribute it to skill.
If "good investing" were as remotely easy as your conceit keeps telling you it is, then the people losing money would be in minority. There is a great deal of luck involved in "good investing", largely involving being in the right place at the right time with the right means.
Finally, I'm pretty sure I don't need any investing tips from someone whose reasoning and maths skills are demonstrably bad as yours.
They don't need to skyrocket. Normal dying + aging population less interested in reproduction + the current trend of stable population by 2050 + worldwide urbanization = falling population.
They most certainly need to skyrocket. A "trend of stable population by 2050" means that for every person that dies, another is born. Yet with "medical immortality", all those people who would normally die of old age will continue to live. To put it simply, the birth rate will stay at replacement levels, but the mortality rate will decrease dramatically. Perhaps you can walk me through how that does not equal a (significant) population increase.
Here, I'll put it in simple terms for you: If people stop dying of old age, then for the population to remain stable, they either need to start dying in equal numbers from something else, or only reproduce at a rate sufficient to replace those who don't die of old age (this is, of course, making the rather ridiculous assumption that rates of mortality from other causes remain static, when in reality they would decrease).
Really, you very much need to open up your box and think outside it on occasion.
Holy irony, Batman !
Let me guess: you're a big Chomsky fan, right? If not, you should read him. He's right up your fatalist "woe is me" alley.
I'm not quite sure how you get from a recognition that the gap between rich a poor is unreasonably large, and an ability to perform basic maths, to fatalism. Particularly since I have nothing approaching a "woe is me" attitude to life.
And it matters what someone else makes because...?
Firstly, because you were the one who said:
By the time you retire, you will be one of those rich people you think hoard all the wealth.
Secondly, to highlight just how big the disparity in wealth between "one of those rich people" and the average person actually is, since you obviously have no grasp of it. Hell, you've probably drunk enough of the kool-aid to think that those guys are actually worth their ludicrous salaries.
Well, yeah, if you're a fool and put your money in a mattress. Most people who understand saving are not fools, and they put their money in reasonable, diversified investments.
Which might keep up with actual inflation, if you're lucky. Assuming those amoral, super-rich sociopaths running the world don't fuck you out of it through another one of their debt-fuelled, greed-induced economic crises.
Hint: just because you stop aging, doesn't mean you stop dying.
And your justification for believing that all those other forms of mortality are going to skyrocket (in direct contradiction of historical reality), would be...?
Really ? You think the majority of people in America are well-insured ? All those burger flippers and house cleaners on minimum wage ?
So, the average American is better off than citizens of countries with nationalized healthcare.
Not according to all the studies I've ever seen.
So, 16% of the population had no healthcare in 2005 (the last year for Gov' data). Unfortunate, but not worth wreaking our healthcare system over.
This is called begging the question.
I am aware of many of the national healthcare systems out there.
Which have you experienced first hand ?
Most of them have huge problems and involve rationing, wait lists, and generally sub-standard care in a system that provides no incentive for the doctors and nurses to provide quality care.
It's kind of cute you think this doesn't happen in the US.
The same care you get at the DMV, you can expect from nationalized care.
All the people I've known who have actually experienced "nationalised healthcare" - including myself - in Australia, Canada and the UK, have come away more than happy with the service they've gotten.
Let me tell you the easiest way to become wealthy: SAVE. That simple. Don't be a typical consumer idiot. Save 25% of your income. By the time you retire, you will be one of those rich people you think hoard all the wealth.
By the time you retire, you might just have as much as an average CEO makes in one year today. Only inflation will mean it's probably only worth a tenth of what it would be today.
What makes you think immortality leads to population increases?
Maybe something to do with the inherent implication that population can only increase if people aren't dying ?
Actually, I think it's far more likely that it will lead to a decreasing population. I doubt that immortal people will continue to crank out kids decade after decade.
They don't need to. All they need to do is have two kids (fairly average in a first-world country) and not die. ~80 years down the track, there are now around twice as many people as there would otherwise be.
It's hard to take anyone seriously who lacks the basic logic and mathematics to grasp the point that if people stop dying, the population will increase.
What kills healthcare is (a) lawsuits, a necessary evil, and (b) nationalized medicine (e.g., where Canada's Supreme Court has ruled that "a right to healthcare" means only a right to be on a waiting list.
Bullshit.
You do realise that more countries in the world than Canada have "nationalised healthcare", right ? And that most of them have better $/result efficiencies, and healthier populations, than the US ?
About the only times I can think of where it would be preferable - from a healthcare perspective - to be in the US instead of a country with "nationalised healthcare", is if you're well-insured (which in the US implies being employed in a decent job), rich, or suffering from some incredibly rare disease where the only treatment available is there (and even that last one is borderline).
For the vast majority of people, and society as a whole, a system of "nationalised healthcare" is a vastly superior choice.
What little information [fairfield.edu] we have on the subject of wealth distribution states that infinitesimal percentage (5%) owns over 71% of all wealth in the country.
It's worth pointing out that this is almost certainly the most generous distribution of wealth in tens of thousands of years.
And neither one is as reliable or has the IOPS of three standard SATA drives that cost 50% of the price for 10x the storage.
Don't move the goalposts. You were originally criticising SAS because you thought "standard SATA drives" needing three times as much space and about twice as much power were a better deal.
[...] and the SAS interface is no advantage [...]
Actually it is, because SAS devices nearly always support multipath IO as standard. On the SATA side, however, *very* few SATA backplanes support multiple controllers (and even fewer drives - off-the-shelf drives will pretty much always need a multiplexer).
Price per GB is comparable with high-end SAS.
A 73G, 15k RPM SAS drive costs about US$140. The 32G SSD from TFA costs about US$720. Per GB, it's an order of magnitude more expensive.
When we talk about the increased performance of rotational speed, why do we ignore the benefits of areal density? Why? A 1.5 TB drive has something like 25x the data flying under its head at 7200 RPM as a 72GB 15kRPM SAS drive does. Why in the world is this factor not important?
Firstly, because the difference is not that high. High-performance SAS (and SATA, for that matter) drives do not have full-size platters. Secondly, because areal density has a relatively low impact on IOPS, which is the number most people looking at high-performance disk are interested in.
Yes, if you want loads of disk space, or high streaming performance, a high-density SATA disk is a reasonable solution. However, when most people want "performance", they want high IOPS with random access patterns, which is something "standard SATA drives" don't deliver without significantly higher spindle counts. SSD does, but the per GB costs are vastly higher than 10k or 15k SAS drives.
The overriding point here is that all the different storage technologies have their place, depending on your requirements.
Its messed up that 25 years ago they made a car that got a mileage that most cars can't hit today.
No, it's expected. Vehicles today are much heavier because of extra safety (and other) features and therefore need more powerful engines to have the same relatively performance.
The Golf Mk 2 weighs (according to Wikipedia) between 900 and 1200kg. The current Mk5 Golf weighs between 1300 and 1600kg.
From a bit of googling, it looks like the 1.9L diesel Golf average about 45-50mpg. Considering it's producing about 50% more power andpushing a vehicle around 40% heavier, that's pretty impressive. Stick that modern engine into your old Golf and the fuel economy (and performance) would be significantly better.
Isn't that in firefox 3.x without an extension? It's in Opera too... Are there really browsers still in use that *don't* do that?
Haven't used Opera in years, but FireFox's built-in one is crap compared to Session Manager (which will store multiple windows and tabs in each session, and multiple sessions, amongst many other features).
I can quite honestly say that Session Manager is the only reason I use Firefox over any of the other current browsers. I haven't seen similar capabilities in any of the other browsers, either builtin or via plugin.
Throw 300GB 10K disks for bulk storage fronted by a couple GB of write cache and these drives for things like transaction logs and you are looking at a real winning combination.
One of our biggest surprises is that our Lotus Notes servers are almost as rough on the SAN as the DB servers, huge numbers of IOPS and almost as much storage.
Sounds like your Lotus servers might need some more RAM ?
Most people I've ever asked "exactly what Firefox extensions do you use", give me a list of features that are either in safari or easily available through plugins.
But seriously there are a lot of ways that the E.U. is less free than America. Particularly in the area of self-defense against criminals (you cannot).
You can, but it must be proportional. Knocking someone who attacks you to the ground is OK, f'r instance, but you can't shoot someone just because they're trespassing.
There are just as many ways Europe is "freer" than the US, as vice versa. For example, drinking in public is typically both legal, and quite acceptable.
Tell that to the multitudes that don't know what it is or that they should turn it off. It is an insecure feature and, IMHO, indicative of the insecurity of Windows.
It's a convenience feature, and like most of them, involves a security tradeoff.
Well, that certainly is *an* opinion, not mine nor the opinion of other experts. The Windows API is full of calls that require system level access to do things that, on UNIX or Linux, only require group membership.
For example ?
Yup and that would be bad, but it certainly couldn't travel like on Windows because it would be unable to propagate for the aforementioned lack of permission.
Why do you think elevated privileges are necessary for propogation ?
Also, "I could get a virus on my linux box" was a fairly hypothetical piece of conjecture. It would be pretty damn hard to create a user level Linux virus that could function in the wild. I'm sure it is theoretically possible, but we have not yet seen one. Older PHP systems were vulnerable to a SQL injection, but only when the web environment was set up poorly, and again, only on the service level.
All you need is a sufficient population of ignorant users and something malicious for them to execute. It is the former Linux lacks, not the latter.
Yes, of course, how many Solaris or Linux viruses are there?
About as many as there are Solaris or Linux users who would be silly enough to execute them.
If a 12 year old script kiddie can exploit a windows system easily, but it takes a 20 year software security expert to exploit a UNIX system, I'd call that different.
Exploiting a Windows system requires convincing an ignorant end user to run something so they can look at boobies. Exploiting a Linux system requires convincing a jaded and sceptical sysadmin to run a binary he's never seen before.
Why? Why would those devices be a security breach unless a brain-dead operating system looked for "autorun.exe?"
It's kinda hard to take someone harping on about a trivially disabled UI feature as if it's fatal OS architectural flaw, seriously.
No, it is because Windows starts out insecure and UNIX starts out secure. There is a fundimental limit you reach with Windows and security. It gets to the point where you can't even use it. With Linux or BSD a use can use the system as an untrusted user.
This has nothing to do with the OS and everything to do with badly written applications.
I could get a virus on my Linux box, but it couldn't install itself or destroy system areas.
So, just the most important data on the machine then ?
Slashdot Mirror
may i ask about details on how vista benefits the support infrastructure?
Off the top of my head:
* Better deployment tools
* Lots more GPOs
* UAC
* Improvements to Folder Redirection
* Improvements to Remote Assistance
* Improvements to Offline Files
* Improvements to diagnostics and error reporting
* Improvements to Task Scheduler
I really do not see the benefit of upgrading from XP to Vista for most business users - who, lets face it, are doing web, email, word and excel.
The benefits of upgrading to Vista (much like those from upgrading to XP) are not for the end users, they are for the IT departments that have to support them.
And it is this supporting infrastructure that is often the reason why Linux, OS X, et al, are not options.
Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs, is also having trouble with Vista, with even firms like Intel noting XP would remain the dominant OS within the company for the foreseeable future.
Bollocks. Big businesses (like, say, Intel) run a 3-5 year upgrade cycle (closer to 5 these days), based around both hardware cycles (typically due to leasing arrangements) and software certification. The _earliest_ any intelligent person would expect Vista to start appearing in big business IT (outside of pilot programs, testing and CxO laptops) is the beginning of 2009, and more likely around the beginning of 2010.
What's really important about this is not so much that Vista is manifestly such a dog, but that the myth of upgrade inevitability has been destroyed. Companies have realised that they do have a choice â" that they can simply say âoenoâ. From there, it's but a small step to realising that they can also walk away from Windows completely, provided the alternatives offer sufficient data compatibility to make that move realistic.
Bollocks. Those staying with XP are doing so because it is a known quantity. If they're not prepared to move to the mostly-known-quantity of Vista, they sure as hell aren't going to step into the complete unknowns of OS X or Linux.
That may not have been the case before, but the similar poor uptake of Microsoft's OOXML, taken together with the generally good compatibility of OpenOffice.org with the original Microsoft Office file formats, implies that we may well be near the tipping point for migrations to free software on the desktop..
So 2009 will be the year of the Linux desktop ? Just like 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000 and 1999 were going to be ?
I'm obviously not the only one thinking along these lines. Last weekend, Dell was advertising its new Inspiron Mini 9 in at least one national newspaper. This would have been unthinkable even a year ago, when the company's fear of upsetting the mighty Microsoft by mentioning the âoeLâ word would have been too great, and is further evidence that GNU/Linux is indeed becoming a mainstream option.
Bollocks. Dell have been selling servers, workstations and desktops with Linux installed for *years*.
In summary, the writer is a clueless fool, although that should had been obvious as soon as the phrase "quotes an earlier Inquirer piece [...]" appeared.
If electric cars (or ethanol, or any other possible replacement for gasoline-powered vehicles) makes sense, it won't take tax money to get it into widespread use.
So you would agree that Windows dominates the market due to its merits, then ?
That's just economically wrong. I'm paid based on supply and demand (macroeconomically speaking, of course on an individual basis, it's not based on perfect knowledge). I'm not paid based on "what the boss has left".
Yes, you are. Your boss cannot pay you money he does not have. Furthermore, when he and all his buddies all agree that they should be getting paid more, that's less they have to pay you (at the "market rates" that they dictate, because they're the ones with all the money, and you're the one that has to eat).
While, on a "macro" scale you can change jobs to someone who pays you more, this academic concept does not translate anywhere near as easily to the real world, where changing jobs is nowhere near as simple as your economics textbook would have you think.
And as a self-employed individual, I have no intrinsic limit on how much I can earn.
Yes, you do. It's dictated by how much the people who have all the money are prepared to pay you.
Wealth is a completely artificial concept. It literally is made up out "thin air". If I take a $10 piece of canvas and $50 worth of paints, and produce a painting deemed worth $500K, then I have created wealth.
Only if someone has $500k worth of "wealth" to pay you with - and, eventually, only if they have $500k of *real* "wealth" to pay you with.
Now, there are hard assets such as real estate which are supply limited (I can't create more of it, for the most part), but the value of it is still an artificial concept.
Eventually, it always comes down to "hard assets" (the path may be convoluted, but the destination does not change).
Almost no one, over the long term, loses money when you invest in a conservative, diversified portfolio.
However, a portfolio like that is lucky to keep pace with inflation, which was my first point.
You seem to think that the current economic issues have never happened before, or that it somehow "proves" that investing is a complete waste of time. That's just short-term ignorant thinking.
I think nothing of the sort. Also, this is one of the worst financial crises, "evar", and not recognising that is being a bit short-sighted.
In the end, this means that systems without higher end 3D cards would be able to run Aero. THAT's the point.
Then it's pointless. Bottom-of-the-line 3D cards have been capable of running Aero for years. Any system with enough CPU grunt to emulate DX10, will have a video card in it that can run Aero.
Take the old Soviet Union, or Cuba now for that matter, where the distribution of wealth was much flatter.
Do you have some numbers to support this ? Because I would expect that the majority of the "wealth" in both the old Soviet Union, and current Cuba, is in fact controlled by a very small proportion of people.
I literally could not care less how much someone else makes. Really. I tip my hat to anyone who figures out how to live as well as they can.
That's very noble of you, but it's completely irrelevant to the discussion.
You know why? Because what someone else makes has no bearing on how much I make. The pie is not limited.
Actually, it is. Your employer (even if that is yourself) only makes a certain amount of money, from which he must pay all his employees. That means the more he pays someone else, the less he can pay you. Similarly, your customers only have a finite amount of money with which they can buy your products (despite attempts by banks, and others, at making them feel like they don't).
On a larger scale, the pie is also limited (although that limit is far higher, and nearly impossible to accurately calculate). One would hope the latest little financial meltdown might have driven that home to people like you, but obviously not. You can't just keep making up "wealth" out of thin air. Eventually, someone has to pay the piper.
Of course, given your post, the kool-aid you've drunk makes you think you're poor because someone else is rich. But you're wrong.
I don't think I'm poor. Far from it. I simply recognise that some people are unreasonably, and undeservedly, richer, and that everyone is worse off because of this.
Honestly, I pity people like you. You walk through life thinking that all the "amoral, super-rich sociopaths" are the ones keeping you down.
No, no, I don't.
No luck involved. Open a book on investment sometime. Not "get rich quick" investing, I mean long-term investing. This stuff is not rocket science. But here's another hint for you: Diversification.
Diversification isn't much protection when the whole system starts to fall apart like it has recently. The vast majority of people who haven't lost a lot of money recently are just lucky - although in typical arrogant style they will likely attribute it to skill.
If "good investing" were as remotely easy as your conceit keeps telling you it is, then the people losing money would be in minority. There is a great deal of luck involved in "good investing", largely involving being in the right place at the right time with the right means.
Finally, I'm pretty sure I don't need any investing tips from someone whose reasoning and maths skills are demonstrably bad as yours.
They don't need to skyrocket. Normal dying + aging population less interested in reproduction + the current trend of stable population by 2050 + worldwide urbanization = falling population.
They most certainly need to skyrocket. A "trend of stable population by 2050" means that for every person that dies, another is born. Yet with "medical immortality", all those people who would normally die of old age will continue to live. To put it simply, the birth rate will stay at replacement levels, but the mortality rate will decrease dramatically. Perhaps you can walk me through how that does not equal a (significant) population increase.
Here, I'll put it in simple terms for you: If people stop dying of old age, then for the population to remain stable, they either need to start dying in equal numbers from something else, or only reproduce at a rate sufficient to replace those who don't die of old age (this is, of course, making the rather ridiculous assumption that rates of mortality from other causes remain static, when in reality they would decrease).
Really, you very much need to open up your box and think outside it on occasion.
Holy irony, Batman !
Let me guess: you're a big Chomsky fan, right? If not, you should read him. He's right up your fatalist "woe is me" alley.
I'm not quite sure how you get from a recognition that the gap between rich a poor is unreasonably large, and an ability to perform basic maths, to fatalism. Particularly since I have nothing approaching a "woe is me" attitude to life.
And it matters what someone else makes because...?
Firstly, because you were the one who said:
By the time you retire, you will be one of those rich people you think hoard all the wealth.
Secondly, to highlight just how big the disparity in wealth between "one of those rich people" and the average person actually is, since you obviously have no grasp of it. Hell, you've probably drunk enough of the kool-aid to think that those guys are actually worth their ludicrous salaries.
Well, yeah, if you're a fool and put your money in a mattress. Most people who understand saving are not fools, and they put their money in reasonable, diversified investments.
Which might keep up with actual inflation, if you're lucky. Assuming those amoral, super-rich sociopaths running the world don't fuck you out of it through another one of their debt-fuelled, greed-induced economic crises.
Hint: just because you stop aging, doesn't mean you stop dying.
And your justification for believing that all those other forms of mortality are going to skyrocket (in direct contradiction of historical reality), would be...?
Which would be the majority of people.
Really ? You think the majority of people in America are well-insured ? All those burger flippers and house cleaners on minimum wage ?
So, the average American is better off than citizens of countries with nationalized healthcare.
Not according to all the studies I've ever seen.
So, 16% of the population had no healthcare in 2005 (the last year for Gov' data). Unfortunate, but not worth wreaking our healthcare system over.
This is called begging the question.
I am aware of many of the national healthcare systems out there.
Which have you experienced first hand ?
Most of them have huge problems and involve rationing, wait lists, and generally sub-standard care in a system that provides no incentive for the doctors and nurses to provide quality care.
It's kind of cute you think this doesn't happen in the US.
The same care you get at the DMV, you can expect from nationalized care.
All the people I've known who have actually experienced "nationalised healthcare" - including myself - in Australia, Canada and the UK, have come away more than happy with the service they've gotten.
Let me tell you the easiest way to become wealthy: SAVE. That simple. Don't be a typical consumer idiot. Save 25% of your income. By the time you retire, you will be one of those rich people you think hoard all the wealth.
By the time you retire, you might just have as much as an average CEO makes in one year today. Only inflation will mean it's probably only worth a tenth of what it would be today.
What makes you think immortality leads to population increases?
Maybe something to do with the inherent implication that population can only increase if people aren't dying ?
Actually, I think it's far more likely that it will lead to a decreasing population. I doubt that immortal people will continue to crank out kids decade after decade.
They don't need to. All they need to do is have two kids (fairly average in a first-world country) and not die. ~80 years down the track, there are now around twice as many people as there would otherwise be.
It's hard to take anyone seriously who lacks the basic logic and mathematics to grasp the point that if people stop dying, the population will increase.
What kills healthcare is (a) lawsuits, a necessary evil, and (b) nationalized medicine (e.g., where Canada's Supreme Court has ruled that "a right to healthcare" means only a right to be on a waiting list.
Bullshit.
You do realise that more countries in the world than Canada have "nationalised healthcare", right ? And that most of them have better $/result efficiencies, and healthier populations, than the US ?
About the only times I can think of where it would be preferable - from a healthcare perspective - to be in the US instead of a country with "nationalised healthcare", is if you're well-insured (which in the US implies being employed in a decent job), rich, or suffering from some incredibly rare disease where the only treatment available is there (and even that last one is borderline).
For the vast majority of people, and society as a whole, a system of "nationalised healthcare" is a vastly superior choice.
What little information [fairfield.edu] we have on the subject of wealth distribution states that infinitesimal percentage (5%) owns over 71% of all wealth in the country.
It's worth pointing out that this is almost certainly the most generous distribution of wealth in tens of thousands of years.
Yes, I know an SSD is technically not a "drive". If that's where you were headed don't bother. It would be tedious and pedantic.
I'm "headed" that way because your original comment was:
And neither one is as reliable or has the IOPS of three standard SATA drives that cost 50% of the price for 10x the storage.
Don't move the goalposts. You were originally criticising SAS because you thought "standard SATA drives" needing three times as much space and about twice as much power were a better deal.
[...] and the SAS interface is no advantage [...]
Actually it is, because SAS devices nearly always support multipath IO as standard. On the SATA side, however, *very* few SATA backplanes support multiple controllers (and even fewer drives - off-the-shelf drives will pretty much always need a multiplexer).
Price per GB is comparable with high-end SAS.
A 73G, 15k RPM SAS drive costs about US$140. The 32G SSD from TFA costs about US$720. Per GB, it's an order of magnitude more expensive.
When we talk about the increased performance of rotational speed, why do we ignore the benefits of areal density? Why? A 1.5 TB drive has something like 25x the data flying under its head at 7200 RPM as a 72GB 15kRPM SAS drive does. Why in the world is this factor not important?
Firstly, because the difference is not that high. High-performance SAS (and SATA, for that matter) drives do not have full-size platters. Secondly, because areal density has a relatively low impact on IOPS, which is the number most people looking at high-performance disk are interested in.
Yes, if you want loads of disk space, or high streaming performance, a high-density SATA disk is a reasonable solution. However, when most people want "performance", they want high IOPS with random access patterns, which is something "standard SATA drives" don't deliver without significantly higher spindle counts. SSD does, but the per GB costs are vastly higher than 10k or 15k SAS drives.
The overriding point here is that all the different storage technologies have their place, depending on your requirements.
Its messed up that 25 years ago they made a car that got a mileage that most cars can't hit today.
No, it's expected. Vehicles today are much heavier because of extra safety (and other) features and therefore need more powerful engines to have the same relatively performance.
The Golf Mk 2 weighs (according to Wikipedia) between 900 and 1200kg. The current Mk5 Golf weighs between 1300 and 1600kg.
From a bit of googling, it looks like the 1.9L diesel Golf average about 45-50mpg. Considering it's producing about 50% more power andpushing a vehicle around 40% heavier, that's pretty impressive. Stick that modern engine into your old Golf and the fuel economy (and performance) would be significantly better.
Isn't that in firefox 3.x without an extension? It's in Opera too... Are there really browsers still in use that *don't* do that?
Haven't used Opera in years, but FireFox's built-in one is crap compared to Session Manager (which will store multiple windows and tabs in each session, and multiple sessions, amongst many other features).
I can quite honestly say that Session Manager is the only reason I use Firefox over any of the other current browsers. I haven't seen similar capabilities in any of the other browsers, either builtin or via plugin.
And we're talking about drives that burn under one watt running full out. How many do your SAS 15K RPM drives burn?
Which SATA drives use less than a watt *at all*, let alone "full out" ?
Math. It's a wonderful thing. Use it with your salesman.
Have you used your "math" to figure out how much more tripling rack space requirement and doubling the power consumption will cost ?
Throw 300GB 10K disks for bulk storage fronted by a couple GB of write cache and these drives for things like transaction logs and you are looking at a real winning combination.
Like this ?
One of our biggest surprises is that our Lotus Notes servers are almost as rough on the SAN as the DB servers, huge numbers of IOPS and almost as much storage.
Sounds like your Lotus servers might need some more RAM ?
Most people I've ever asked "exactly what Firefox extensions do you use", give me a list of features that are either in safari or easily available through plugins.
The Session Manager plugin is why I use FireFox.
Instead, they use the much faster (and also more correct) SquirrelFish Extreme engine.
That sounds like some sort of obscene initiation rite...
But seriously there are a lot of ways that the E.U. is less free than America. Particularly in the area of self-defense against criminals (you cannot).
You can, but it must be proportional. Knocking someone who attacks you to the ground is OK, f'r instance, but you can't shoot someone just because they're trespassing.
There are just as many ways Europe is "freer" than the US, as vice versa. For example, drinking in public is typically both legal, and quite acceptable.
Tell that to the multitudes that don't know what it is or that they should turn it off. It is an insecure feature and, IMHO, indicative of the insecurity of Windows.
It's a convenience feature, and like most of them, involves a security tradeoff.
Well, that certainly is *an* opinion, not mine nor the opinion of other experts. The Windows API is full of calls that require system level access to do things that, on UNIX or Linux, only require group membership.
For example ?
Yup and that would be bad, but it certainly couldn't travel like on Windows because it would be unable to propagate for the aforementioned lack of permission.
Why do you think elevated privileges are necessary for propogation ?
Also, "I could get a virus on my linux box" was a fairly hypothetical piece of conjecture. It would be pretty damn hard to create a user level Linux virus that could function in the wild. I'm sure it is theoretically possible, but we have not yet seen one. Older PHP systems were vulnerable to a SQL injection, but only when the web environment was set up poorly, and again, only on the service level.
All you need is a sufficient population of ignorant users and something malicious for them to execute. It is the former Linux lacks, not the latter.
Yes, of course, how many Solaris or Linux viruses are there?
About as many as there are Solaris or Linux users who would be silly enough to execute them.
If a 12 year old script kiddie can exploit a windows system easily, but it takes a 20 year software security expert to exploit a UNIX system, I'd call that different.
Exploiting a Windows system requires convincing an ignorant end user to run something so they can look at boobies. Exploiting a Linux system requires convincing a jaded and sceptical sysadmin to run a binary he's never seen before.
I'd call that "different".
Why? Why would those devices be a security breach unless a brain-dead operating system looked for "autorun.exe?"
It's kinda hard to take someone harping on about a trivially disabled UI feature as if it's fatal OS architectural flaw, seriously.
No, it is because Windows starts out insecure and UNIX starts out secure. There is a fundimental limit you reach with Windows and security. It gets to the point where you can't even use it. With Linux or BSD a use can use the system as an untrusted user.
This has nothing to do with the OS and everything to do with badly written applications.
I could get a virus on my Linux box, but it couldn't install itself or destroy system areas.
So, just the most important data on the machine then ?