Especially AM broadcast! While it has a far reach and is really simple to operate about 98% of the energy needed is used to heat air. AM radio is a colossal energy waster...and who the frack listens to these whacked out talk hosts (RL comes to mind) anyway?
Many writers and actors now rather opt for a lower lump sum payment in exchange for a cut on the box office revenue. Many earn much more that way than they ever could before. It is also a better deal for the movie studios because the up front cost is lower and the risk is shared. If a movie flops they all get less.
That was the outcome of the payola agreements. Radio stations used to pay royalties, but then record labels started paying radio stations to play their artists exclusively pushing them into the public's ears. That was deemed illegal and in return the radio station owners pushed through that with payola ending they will be generally exempt from royalty payments. Why do you think why big corps like Clearchannel still operate thousands of radio stations? They play the bulk of their programming mainly for free, give the hosts some crumbs, and otherwise cash in on endorsements and ad sales. For profit radio is a big money maker because it is relatively cheap to operate in comparison to the money that can be made with it, especially with large scale operations that easily can lower production costs even more with syndicated programming. Even the artists and their iHeartRadio organization are cashing in on this big time. Yes, they stoop to a level too low for them and thank their fans and blah blah, but in the end it is nothing but an act to keep their business running.
This is not a rule from a socialist country, but from a dog eat dog purely capitalistic profits over everything country like the US in most parts is still today.
Religious and talk radio stations can cough up the 100$ as easily or as difficult as non-profits,so why exclude them? I do agree that ARTISTS should be compensated for their work, but the royalties go to the rights owners which in most cases are either rich individuals or corporations or the publishing record labels. The system is broken because most of money does not end up with the artists, but with others. Yes, they do on occasion shoulder the risk and make upfront payments for production and distribution, but they charge those expenses back to the artists. This is why many rather turn to YouTube, give their recordings away for free, and focus more on live performances and touring where the artists get a much bigger cut than by selling CDs. Especially now that more and more distribution occurs digitally reducing the production and distribution expenses significantly the money left over for record labels, managements, and rights owners is getting much bigger (something they now realize after going ballistic on Napster years back instead of embracing the new channel).
Further, the copyright law needs fixing. Royalties are to be paid to the original artists until their death (record labels and others can sign contracts with them securing their cut) and after that 30 years (one generation) to the rights holder. After that the work is royalty free, but not public domain, means it can only be used by giving proper credit.
If politicians want to fix the system, they should put the artists in control and end the business of cashing in on music generations later. Having folks collect the money even 70 years after the artist died or in some cases even longer is just plain wrong! The term limit should go back to the 1790s act which is much more along the American spirit where every generation has to earn its own wealth, not live off some work others did. For same reason inheritances need to be taxed heavily if they are above a specific limit (don't tax gramma's old house, but tax grampa's global corp)....but that is a different discussion.
No true. AMDs biggest contribution was making a 64 bit x86 processor that could run existing 32 bit code, something that Intel's Itanium could not do. Eventually, Intel ditched Itanium and even long before that followed AMD on the 32/64 bit combo. AMD is still hampered by the reputation of being a clone shop, as clearly shown in your post. Nobody gets fired for buying Intel and even for OEMs Intel has a much bigger pull on consumers than AMD has, yet AMD is across the board more affordable providing the same processing power.
I do agree that AMD should have done more with the ATI acquisition, but shedding the chip making side of business was the right thing to do. An AMD owned fab would be hard pressed to find additional business from what might be competitors. Spinning this business off into Global Foundries was the right thing to do. The Middle Eastern investors are also a logical partner, right now they have a lot of cash available from their oil based economy, but they know that once the wells run dry they can't live off the desert. Investing the money in a diversity of industries is their plan for the future. Global Foundries signed production contracts with many companies and they operate factories in the US (upstate NY) and Europe (Dresden, Germany). Especially Dresden is a good choice as it was the leading center of microelectronics design and research even as far back as the 70s and 80s in East Germany.
AMD's biggest challenge is the undeserved bad rap they continue to get. If I had money I would buy AMD shares...and Intel, and Broadcom, and and and and....
I agree...what AMD should do (and I proposed that numerous times) is build a server chip that combines ARM and x86_64 with seamless switching. Yes, I know it will require OS support, but it would be incredibly flexible to run anything from low end ARM based services and then many of them on a box that in an instant could be switched to high performance x86 based tasks. And not only that, make it so that it can run ARM/x86 side by side in the OS using two cooperating kernels with an option to move task data from an ARM based app to an x86 based app in memory.
Such a processor would have a wide range of applications, from mobile devices that can instantly switch to low power ARM based mode when on battery over desktops that now can run Android and Windows apps natively side by side to servers that can run tasks on ARM and then switch to x86 or run in hybrid as needed. The low power, lower processing speed ARM based cores could take on the tasks during off peak times while still keeping them available and then in high demand times kick over to x86 with more processing power and access to more memory. For data centers it will also be much easier to settle on just one hardware platform to run basically everything.
As far as pure x86 goes, AMD is always giving the better bang for the buck compared to Intel. Intel platforms are just freakishly expensive, not only the processors, but also the boards. Only at the high end Intel has better offerings.
I count this under developer arrogance. There we, the quality and security minded people, hand developers all the information they need to fix a flaw and they outright reject it. The Mojangs could not even be bothered testing their 'fix' just ONCE using the example provided to them!! Sadly, they are not alone. How many times did I report bugs, get the note that it was 'fixed', then find out that absolutely nothing changed (best case) or that it is now worse than before? Way too many times. Dear developers, we, the QA folks, are there to have your back. We are there to keep you from pulling all nighters to fix that important issue that crept up in the release branch. In 90% of the cases we pointed you to that very same flaw during development, but you poo-pooed it as a non-issue and marked it as 'won't fix'. Dear developers, give the QA and security folks more credit. We do know what we are talking about, many of us do this stuff for decades having one ear on the customer's side and one ear on the design and development side. We know what is going to work out for users. Stop ignoring us!
Such systems were in common use up until the 60s in major cities. They used pressured air for propelling containers through a system of pipes. That was mainly used for inner city express mail service, so the pipes way not have a diameter large enough for parcels, but I bet if you turn on the compressors in Vienna or Berlin most of the system will still work fine. This makes the news? This gets government funding? Maybe ten years from now I propose a system using magnetic tape to record audio and video as well as computer programs. I am sure I can get gov't funding for that as well, huh?
The new version of maps is slow, half the time it doesn't work, satellite imagery is decades old, streets are shown that don't exist anymore for eons...and no matter how often you send them feedback on this, nothing changes. Yes, I know it is a free service, but free does not have to be 'sucky'.
GOTO...please do if it solves the problem. It is especially helpful for consolidated error handling where you call a common routine that will generate an error message and then end the program. How would a GOSUB...RETURN or any other construct help here?
"Unless you go for esoteric languages..."....like Plankalkül? At least that is the mother of all programming languages being the first to be invented and implemented.
BASIC on the C 64 was my entry to programming. I find the debate about good or bad programming languages to be utterly pointless. Look at JavaScript/HTML on any web page and validate that against W3C, especially when UI frameworks are used. You get gazillion of errors and warnings reported all pointing to the page code being syntactically and logically flawed...yet stuff still works reliably. There is little incentive to shed bad habits and strictly follow the rules when there is no change to the user in the end.
I worked with VB6 later and found it to be easy to understand and get results quickly. I think this is the key for young uns to stay interested. I started with C and Java and loathed it from the very first second because of all the hoops you have to jump through just to get "Hello World!" printed to the console. I understand why there is so much up front work to do, but it really only matters when doing specialized projects where memory is limited and code needs to be optimized to the whazoo.
I also find PHP very easy to grasp, but it comes with the HTML baggage and potentially CSS and JS plus SQL (although that applies to any programming against a database). Probably too many different languages to learn at the same time.
Scratch is nice, especially when you get your son a 35$ Raspberry Pi as development platform, but I find Scratch to be good only for doing Scratch. I find only very little of the concepts and procedures are transferable to other languages.
When folks claim the federal government passes education legislation it is solely about getting federal funding that has strings attached. States can do whatever they want but might need to do so without tax money from DC. Same applies to Interstate and some Medicare funding.
As with most laws for 'education' this is nothing more than another attempt to divert millions of tax dollars to big corporations. Not only that, it totally misses the talent shortage problem the US (supposedly) faces. Want more folks to enter the CS field? Drop college tuition to zero! That will cost way less then these new rules and will be more effective. At the same time the government should actively work against the actual or perceived issue of H1-B and other work visa programs that hit especially the CS area of the job market. Doing computers in high school is all fine, but if there is no future in that field it is wasted effort. At the same time I doubt it is wise investment for schools to spend substantial amounts of cash on technology that is outdated within a few years. I know it from own experience, I learned programming on an Apple ][ even when MS-DOS was _the_ platform. On top of that, my school banked on Logo as language to teach...it is a neat idea, but in my opinion the most useless programming language to master. Teaching us assembler on the Z80 would have been much better, a skill I could use even today decades later!
I would have guessed the amount to be much higher. A responsible Congress will take these numbers and cut future funding by that amount. My guess is that the current trigger happy Republican dominated Congress will more likely up the funding for DoD by that amount.
Japan was willing to accept total surrender weeks before the nuclear bombs were dropped. It was the US that intentionally dragged out the process because the nukes weren't ready yet. And dropping not just one but two was not meant to cut the war with Japan short, it was meant to demonstrate to the Soviets that the US has weapons of mass destruction paired with a very low inhibition to kill ten thousands of civilians just to make a point. If anything, it is testament to the endless insanity of the Truman administration.
I think in any company two things are essential for a good workplace environment:
- immediate acknowledgement of a job well done
- letting everyone know what is going on
Especially the second point is important because it goes way beyond the scope of the current project, it needs to include information about business decisions, financial performance, and personnel issues as far as it is allowed to share this.
With this everyone knows where they are at and where they are going.
....and now complain they cannot get it back in. What the NSA is majorly lacking is being trustworthy and be seen as operating legally. In order to get back to safer waters the NSA needs to end all illegal programs, stop mass surveillance, and above all demonstrate that they produce results. So far the NSA blew billions of tax Dollars, ignored constitutional rights, and has absolutely nothing to show for. Even the bridge to nowhere would have accomplished more!
....have him give detailed status of his work and then end his active employment. Cancel all his access and tell him to have a great extra paid vacation.
If this concern is a recurring one find out why people quit. Although unattainable seek a turnover rate of 0.
While I agree, reality is different. Making sites entirely W3C compliant not only precludes developers from using any kind of open-source or commercial framework (unless someone can name one suitable UI framework that passes), it will potentially also lead to some sites not working in some browsers. Sites that do not pass the validations are formally broken, from from a user's perspective are perfectly fine. The goal is to provide a functional site that works well on a variety of browsers and does not hinge on proprietary functions of one browser / version. After that is achieved there is little value in spending considerable amount of development time on fixing formalities that generate no additional value.
Because the registry change does not fully secure getting all security updates, they may get some. I further think that a government as anyone else should think twice before employing a hack that essentially steals services.
Why tax increase? Divert money away from the NSA. In comparison, the FTC generates results while the NSA has nothing to show for other than utter ignorance of laws.
I had the exact same thought, but you worded it much better.
The only option the FTC has is to publish reports of its findings without initiating legal action. It might be sufficient to publicly shame companies and generate enough backlash. In the end companies do not cave to lawsuits, they cave when the money stops coming in.
Not sure if it is legal, but the FTC cold outsource litigation to private lawyers who if they win the case get a cut from the settlement. I am sure there are plenty of greedy lawyers who would jump at that opportunity.
Voting should remain a right, not a requirement. What the US needs more is a change in political culture away from a two party system. I strongly suggest splitting up the Republican and Democratic parties along their bloc lines as well as having voters support other parties more. Keeping a two party system will ensure that Congress remains utterly dysfunctional unless one party has 2/3rd majority in both houses and a president from its own party to rubber stamp anything. A two party system is only marginally better than a one party system. Plus, term limits are direly needed, extend terms to five years and after that you are out for at least two term on both federal and state level in any position. Same needs to apply to Supreme Court judges, there are way too many old geezers on that panel who lost total contact to reality.
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Especially AM broadcast! While it has a far reach and is really simple to operate about 98% of the energy needed is used to heat air. AM radio is a colossal energy waster...and who the frack listens to these whacked out talk hosts (RL comes to mind) anyway?
You can also go to Greece. As soon as you build a chapel on your property you can file for tax exemption. Why do you think Greece is out of cash?
Many writers and actors now rather opt for a lower lump sum payment in exchange for a cut on the box office revenue. Many earn much more that way than they ever could before. It is also a better deal for the movie studios because the up front cost is lower and the risk is shared. If a movie flops they all get less.
That was the outcome of the payola agreements. Radio stations used to pay royalties, but then record labels started paying radio stations to play their artists exclusively pushing them into the public's ears. That was deemed illegal and in return the radio station owners pushed through that with payola ending they will be generally exempt from royalty payments. Why do you think why big corps like Clearchannel still operate thousands of radio stations? They play the bulk of their programming mainly for free, give the hosts some crumbs, and otherwise cash in on endorsements and ad sales. For profit radio is a big money maker because it is relatively cheap to operate in comparison to the money that can be made with it, especially with large scale operations that easily can lower production costs even more with syndicated programming. Even the artists and their iHeartRadio organization are cashing in on this big time. Yes, they stoop to a level too low for them and thank their fans and blah blah, but in the end it is nothing but an act to keep their business running. This is not a rule from a socialist country, but from a dog eat dog purely capitalistic profits over everything country like the US in most parts is still today.
Religious and talk radio stations can cough up the 100$ as easily or as difficult as non-profits ,so why exclude them? I do agree that ARTISTS should be compensated for their work, but the royalties go to the rights owners which in most cases are either rich individuals or corporations or the publishing record labels. The system is broken because most of money does not end up with the artists, but with others. Yes, they do on occasion shoulder the risk and make upfront payments for production and distribution, but they charge those expenses back to the artists. This is why many rather turn to YouTube, give their recordings away for free, and focus more on live performances and touring where the artists get a much bigger cut than by selling CDs. Especially now that more and more distribution occurs digitally reducing the production and distribution expenses significantly the money left over for record labels, managements, and rights owners is getting much bigger (something they now realize after going ballistic on Napster years back instead of embracing the new channel).
Further, the copyright law needs fixing. Royalties are to be paid to the original artists until their death (record labels and others can sign contracts with them securing their cut) and after that 30 years (one generation) to the rights holder. After that the work is royalty free, but not public domain, means it can only be used by giving proper credit.
If politicians want to fix the system, they should put the artists in control and end the business of cashing in on music generations later. Having folks collect the money even 70 years after the artist died or in some cases even longer is just plain wrong! The term limit should go back to the 1790s act which is much more along the American spirit where every generation has to earn its own wealth, not live off some work others did. For same reason inheritances need to be taxed heavily if they are above a specific limit (don't tax gramma's old house, but tax grampa's global corp)....but that is a different discussion.
No true. AMDs biggest contribution was making a 64 bit x86 processor that could run existing 32 bit code, something that Intel's Itanium could not do. Eventually, Intel ditched Itanium and even long before that followed AMD on the 32/64 bit combo. AMD is still hampered by the reputation of being a clone shop, as clearly shown in your post. Nobody gets fired for buying Intel and even for OEMs Intel has a much bigger pull on consumers than AMD has, yet AMD is across the board more affordable providing the same processing power. I do agree that AMD should have done more with the ATI acquisition, but shedding the chip making side of business was the right thing to do. An AMD owned fab would be hard pressed to find additional business from what might be competitors. Spinning this business off into Global Foundries was the right thing to do. The Middle Eastern investors are also a logical partner, right now they have a lot of cash available from their oil based economy, but they know that once the wells run dry they can't live off the desert. Investing the money in a diversity of industries is their plan for the future. Global Foundries signed production contracts with many companies and they operate factories in the US (upstate NY) and Europe (Dresden, Germany). Especially Dresden is a good choice as it was the leading center of microelectronics design and research even as far back as the 70s and 80s in East Germany. AMD's biggest challenge is the undeserved bad rap they continue to get. If I had money I would buy AMD shares...and Intel, and Broadcom, and and and and....
I agree...what AMD should do (and I proposed that numerous times) is build a server chip that combines ARM and x86_64 with seamless switching. Yes, I know it will require OS support, but it would be incredibly flexible to run anything from low end ARM based services and then many of them on a box that in an instant could be switched to high performance x86 based tasks. And not only that, make it so that it can run ARM/x86 side by side in the OS using two cooperating kernels with an option to move task data from an ARM based app to an x86 based app in memory. Such a processor would have a wide range of applications, from mobile devices that can instantly switch to low power ARM based mode when on battery over desktops that now can run Android and Windows apps natively side by side to servers that can run tasks on ARM and then switch to x86 or run in hybrid as needed. The low power, lower processing speed ARM based cores could take on the tasks during off peak times while still keeping them available and then in high demand times kick over to x86 with more processing power and access to more memory. For data centers it will also be much easier to settle on just one hardware platform to run basically everything. As far as pure x86 goes, AMD is always giving the better bang for the buck compared to Intel. Intel platforms are just freakishly expensive, not only the processors, but also the boards. Only at the high end Intel has better offerings.
I count this under developer arrogance. There we, the quality and security minded people, hand developers all the information they need to fix a flaw and they outright reject it. The Mojangs could not even be bothered testing their 'fix' just ONCE using the example provided to them!! Sadly, they are not alone. How many times did I report bugs, get the note that it was 'fixed', then find out that absolutely nothing changed (best case) or that it is now worse than before? Way too many times. Dear developers, we, the QA folks, are there to have your back. We are there to keep you from pulling all nighters to fix that important issue that crept up in the release branch. In 90% of the cases we pointed you to that very same flaw during development, but you poo-pooed it as a non-issue and marked it as 'won't fix'. Dear developers, give the QA and security folks more credit. We do know what we are talking about, many of us do this stuff for decades having one ear on the customer's side and one ear on the design and development side. We know what is going to work out for users. Stop ignoring us!
Such systems were in common use up until the 60s in major cities. They used pressured air for propelling containers through a system of pipes. That was mainly used for inner city express mail service, so the pipes way not have a diameter large enough for parcels, but I bet if you turn on the compressors in Vienna or Berlin most of the system will still work fine. This makes the news? This gets government funding? Maybe ten years from now I propose a system using magnetic tape to record audio and video as well as computer programs. I am sure I can get gov't funding for that as well, huh?
The new version of maps is slow, half the time it doesn't work, satellite imagery is decades old, streets are shown that don't exist anymore for eons...and no matter how often you send them feedback on this, nothing changes. Yes, I know it is a free service, but free does not have to be 'sucky'.
GOTO...please do if it solves the problem. It is especially helpful for consolidated error handling where you call a common routine that will generate an error message and then end the program. How would a GOSUB...RETURN or any other construct help here?
"Unless you go for esoteric languages..."....like Plankalkül? At least that is the mother of all programming languages being the first to be invented and implemented.
BASIC on the C 64 was my entry to programming. I find the debate about good or bad programming languages to be utterly pointless. Look at JavaScript/HTML on any web page and validate that against W3C, especially when UI frameworks are used. You get gazillion of errors and warnings reported all pointing to the page code being syntactically and logically flawed...yet stuff still works reliably. There is little incentive to shed bad habits and strictly follow the rules when there is no change to the user in the end. I worked with VB6 later and found it to be easy to understand and get results quickly. I think this is the key for young uns to stay interested. I started with C and Java and loathed it from the very first second because of all the hoops you have to jump through just to get "Hello World!" printed to the console. I understand why there is so much up front work to do, but it really only matters when doing specialized projects where memory is limited and code needs to be optimized to the whazoo. I also find PHP very easy to grasp, but it comes with the HTML baggage and potentially CSS and JS plus SQL (although that applies to any programming against a database). Probably too many different languages to learn at the same time. Scratch is nice, especially when you get your son a 35$ Raspberry Pi as development platform, but I find Scratch to be good only for doing Scratch. I find only very little of the concepts and procedures are transferable to other languages.
When folks claim the federal government passes education legislation it is solely about getting federal funding that has strings attached. States can do whatever they want but might need to do so without tax money from DC. Same applies to Interstate and some Medicare funding.
As with most laws for 'education' this is nothing more than another attempt to divert millions of tax dollars to big corporations. Not only that, it totally misses the talent shortage problem the US (supposedly) faces. Want more folks to enter the CS field? Drop college tuition to zero! That will cost way less then these new rules and will be more effective. At the same time the government should actively work against the actual or perceived issue of H1-B and other work visa programs that hit especially the CS area of the job market. Doing computers in high school is all fine, but if there is no future in that field it is wasted effort. At the same time I doubt it is wise investment for schools to spend substantial amounts of cash on technology that is outdated within a few years. I know it from own experience, I learned programming on an Apple ][ even when MS-DOS was _the_ platform. On top of that, my school banked on Logo as language to teach...it is a neat idea, but in my opinion the most useless programming language to master. Teaching us assembler on the Z80 would have been much better, a skill I could use even today decades later!
I would have guessed the amount to be much higher. A responsible Congress will take these numbers and cut future funding by that amount. My guess is that the current trigger happy Republican dominated Congress will more likely up the funding for DoD by that amount.
Japan was willing to accept total surrender weeks before the nuclear bombs were dropped. It was the US that intentionally dragged out the process because the nukes weren't ready yet. And dropping not just one but two was not meant to cut the war with Japan short, it was meant to demonstrate to the Soviets that the US has weapons of mass destruction paired with a very low inhibition to kill ten thousands of civilians just to make a point. If anything, it is testament to the endless insanity of the Truman administration.
I think in any company two things are essential for a good workplace environment: - immediate acknowledgement of a job well done - letting everyone know what is going on Especially the second point is important because it goes way beyond the scope of the current project, it needs to include information about business decisions, financial performance, and personnel issues as far as it is allowed to share this. With this everyone knows where they are at and where they are going.
....and now complain they cannot get it back in. What the NSA is majorly lacking is being trustworthy and be seen as operating legally. In order to get back to safer waters the NSA needs to end all illegal programs, stop mass surveillance, and above all demonstrate that they produce results. So far the NSA blew billions of tax Dollars, ignored constitutional rights, and has absolutely nothing to show for. Even the bridge to nowhere would have accomplished more!
....have him give detailed status of his work and then end his active employment. Cancel all his access and tell him to have a great extra paid vacation. If this concern is a recurring one find out why people quit. Although unattainable seek a turnover rate of 0.
While I agree, reality is different. Making sites entirely W3C compliant not only precludes developers from using any kind of open-source or commercial framework (unless someone can name one suitable UI framework that passes), it will potentially also lead to some sites not working in some browsers. Sites that do not pass the validations are formally broken, from from a user's perspective are perfectly fine. The goal is to provide a functional site that works well on a variety of browsers and does not hinge on proprietary functions of one browser / version. After that is achieved there is little value in spending considerable amount of development time on fixing formalities that generate no additional value.
Because the registry change does not fully secure getting all security updates, they may get some. I further think that a government as anyone else should think twice before employing a hack that essentially steals services.
Why tax increase? Divert money away from the NSA. In comparison, the FTC generates results while the NSA has nothing to show for other than utter ignorance of laws.
I had the exact same thought, but you worded it much better. The only option the FTC has is to publish reports of its findings without initiating legal action. It might be sufficient to publicly shame companies and generate enough backlash. In the end companies do not cave to lawsuits, they cave when the money stops coming in. Not sure if it is legal, but the FTC cold outsource litigation to private lawyers who if they win the case get a cut from the settlement. I am sure there are plenty of greedy lawyers who would jump at that opportunity.
Voting should remain a right, not a requirement. What the US needs more is a change in political culture away from a two party system. I strongly suggest splitting up the Republican and Democratic parties along their bloc lines as well as having voters support other parties more. Keeping a two party system will ensure that Congress remains utterly dysfunctional unless one party has 2/3rd majority in both houses and a president from its own party to rubber stamp anything. A two party system is only marginally better than a one party system. Plus, term limits are direly needed, extend terms to five years and after that you are out for at least two term on both federal and state level in any position. Same needs to apply to Supreme Court judges, there are way too many old geezers on that panel who lost total contact to reality.