Wow. What an incredibly weak argument. Surely someone could have suggested to separate the (legitimate) concern of Oracle's burgeoning database monopoly from Stallman's (irrelevant) interest in pushing all GPL2 software to GPL3.
I mean, I couldn't begin to guess what the EC might be inclined to do, but anti-trust regulations usually exist in order to prevent anti-competitive monopolies, not to make all software meet an extremely narrow definition of free (libre). If there is a succinct method of connecting the two, nothing linked to in the summary managed to accomplish it.
Apparently neither you nor the mods can read. Try again.
This scheme will likely end up with *lower* processor utilization than they have currently. Processors are cheap. That's the reason Google has hundreds of thousands of them already.
The article just says that the bus itself is cheaper than a lithium-ion battery powered bus. It doesn't sound like they are accounting for the entire charging system. I can see how ultracapacitors would be useful for this case, since a bus is extremely heavy and basically stops every half mile. Regenerative braking would wear out a lithium ion battery pack fairly quickly and wouldn't be as efficient.
Otherwise, I'm fairly skeptical that ultracapacitors are really that price-competitive with batteries. Anyone want to try to convince me?
Since this is a task that benefits from some optimization, there are so many different combinations of file servers/clients out there, and so many use cases to choose from, there are lots of different solutions but not many good ones that will do exactly what you want out of the box.
So, in order to narrow it down, you need to decide exactly what you're looking for. What server are you using? What clients do you need to support? Are you wanting to just search file names, or contents, ownership and modification times as well? Do you need the index to be completely up-to-date, or not? How long can you stand to wait for results?
If you think about it, to be economically effective cloud computing (in the big picture) has to be about saving money by increasing average server utilization (averaged over all users).
In a perfect world, perhaps. In this one, all they have to do is offer a new ability to monopolize data processing, and the market will respond. Failing that, they can simply sell their services to government, which has already monopolized money-printing and has no problem using force to extract resources from others to pay it's contractors.
It could easily be cheaper and more efficient to in-house something that is not your "business". Go ahead and take electricity for example. The cheapest way for many businesses to get electricity is not to purchase it from the electric company. The most efficient office buildings and universities co-generate using natural gas engines that provide heating, cooling, and electricity all cheaper and more efficiently than the electric company does. Larger industries do the same thing, only in large industrial parks sited next to coal-fired power plants. The waste heat is used to run their processes, and the electricity is much cheaper than getting it "from the grid".
Booz Allen Hamilton is the consulting wing of the military-industrial-complex. Look at their members: Bushes, CIA/NSA directors, etc. This is the wing of the Republican party whose only problem with the size and scope of government is that it still has some semblance of democratic accountability, rather than having been farmed out to some shadow corporate control. The agenda is to centralize, nationalize, and privatize key US assets wherever possible. Information technology is becoming a crucial means of political control in the digital age. And clouds represent the perfect way to outsource and obfuscate that control, outside the reach of pesky freedom of information laws, of course losing any disparaging information in the process.
As an anecdote: Google opened a new datacenter near here recently. It has twice as many armed guards as IT staff. I would hate to be the one to have to serve a warrant on that place. Do you think that might be a convenient place to store your medical records, government or corporate e-mails, mortgage records for well-connected politicians, illegal spying programs, etc? What happens when the information you're looking for can't be tied to any one physical machine, or geographic location even?
Conforming to or avoiding certain behaviors simply because they are or are not practiced by the majority is a logical fallacy. Programming requires logical, critical thinking ability. Ergo, those who succeed at programming may tend to engage in behavior that seems strange to the majority of people.
“For a vaccine to reduce mortality by 50 percent and up to 90 percent in some studies means it has to prevent deaths not just from influenza, but also from falls, fires, heart disease, strokes, and car accidents. That’s not a vaccine, that’s a miracle.”
They're not talking about reducing mortality "from the flu" by 50%. They're talking about reducing overall mortality by 50%. It seems like the study's authors took your concerns into account. In fact it sounds like you are arguing the same thing and that would raise the burden required to prove the flu vaccine is effective.
To test their thesis, Jackson and her colleagues combed through eight years of medical data on more than 72,000 people 65 and older.
Is that statistically significant?
The history of flu vaccination suggests other reasons to doubt claims that it dramatically reduces mortality. In 2004, for example, vaccine production fell behind, causing a 40 percent drop in immunization rates. Yet mortality did not rise. In addition, vaccine “mismatches” occurred in 1968 and 1997: in both years, the vaccine that had been produced in the summer protected against one set of viruses, but come winter, a different set was circulating. In effect, nobody was vaccinated. Yet death rates from all causes, including flu and the various illnesses it can exacerbate, did not budge.
This seems like fairly concrete evidence that passes the test of statistical significance. How would you explain them exactly? Are you arguing that the flu vaccine is more effective on those less likely to die from the flu? That fewer people are getting sick, but the same number are dying?
One feature that I think would be really useful, for biking especially, is to be able to find the "flattest" route between two points. Around here, they have been converting old railroad rights of way into bicycle paths, which is nice because they are extremely well-graded. But I'm not even sure where many of them are. I would probably bike more places if I knew I would only have to contend with as few hills as necessary to get there.
Does the tricycle (or the street view car) collect altitude data as well as latitude and longitude? Would it even be theoretically possible to add this in the future?
It's not all Americans who get gouged by the telco monopolies. It's primarily those living in major cities, especially older ones. American cities are falling behind newer, growing rural and suburban areas. And the primary reason is exactly the type of governmental incompetence that allows telco monopolies to exist in the 21st century.
Personally, I pay $25/mo for the cheapest broadband available, 768/384, which is perfectly fine for 99% of uses. And I'd expect a large portion of Slashdotters, the ones who aren't gamers at least, to opt for the low speed plans. Knowing more about technology and how the internet works means knowing that the best option isn't necessarily the most expensive one.
It's the same reason people who know about cars tend to opt for manual transmissions. Cost/benefit is rarely as obvious as the marketers make it seem. Profits are earned by selling less for more, or by buying more for less.
As such, even though your existence is imposing on me,
I doubt you can make a convincing chain of argument as to the manner in which his existence is actually imposing on you. Just saying.
Just making a point that a mere existence can impose on someone else.
Congratulations, you have discovered that humans are self-replicating independent resource-consuming entities in a finite universe, the fundamental limit to the concept of human rights. Goedel would be proud.
In fact, there was a famous man not too long ago who thought that Jews were imposing on him and got into a position of power where he could do something about it.
So, what is your argument here? That the forces that created someone like Hitler should be ignored and minimized? Or encouraged?
Hitler was absolutely, 100% correct in this regard. The allied powers *were* imposing on him and most Germans after WWI. The Weimar Republic destroyed the German economy for the benefit of foreign powers. Jewish members of the banking and finance industries participated in this destruction. The German government simultaneously devalued the Germany currency and destroyed it's economy for the benefit of the foreign victors of WWI, while empowering a merchant class of Jewish immigrants who benefited from this destruction. This precipitated Hitler's rise to power. It is completely undeniable.
I'm not really sure how you can minimize the concept of human rights, and simultaneously complain about Hitler. Don't think that you can Godwin your own argument and expect to win.
Yeah, this is why I said that you misunderstand the concept of force. You don't have to *force* anyone to *recognize* your rights. They simply are. If others fail to recognize them, who cares? If they violate them, then that constitutes force and you should defend them. But simply having rights does not constitute force and you don't ever have to force anyone to recognize them. That's the fundamental definition of rights, and of force for that matter.
Furthermore, if you have a problem with the concept of money or you think it somehow doesn't constitute legitimate property or something, you don't have to use it. You can barter instead. The result is the same. Just forget that money even exists, because there's nothing special about it.
As for my second point, you may be entitled to some things, or you may not. I'm not going to delve into that. But to argue that you are entitled to something as a result of "work" just muddies your argument.
Well, yes I've been deprived of what I could have spent the money on. But that assumes that I had a right to demand those goods and services in the first place.
Um, no, it doesn't. It means you have a right to the money you earned. And it means you have a right to exchange that money for whatever you can get for it, depending on how much someone else values that money. Spending money is not equivalent to "demanding goods and services". It is a voluntary transaction.
By what fundamental process can we establish exactly what I *am* entitled to?
By voluntary exchange. You are not "entitled" to anything for your work, beyond what someone else is willing to give you for it.
This is a terrible argument. Society cares not one whit for your physical paper money. It cares for the work you did to earn that money, and the goods you would consume when you exchange it. That is what you have been deprived of. That is how you have been forced to help others.
Furthermore, you either misunderstand or mischaracterize the GP's argument, and the concept of positive force.
The right to vote is a "civil" right, meaning it obtains to those who live in cities, voluntarily. The right to vote derives from the right to leave a city, and deprive it of the benefit of one's residence. It is not a privilege. It is not granted by government. It depends upon no law.
Free citizens may demand their say, or representation, otherwise leave the polity if it is not honored. By leaving, one regains a complete majority vote in one's affairs. Those who live in cities by necessity rather than by choice, who are not residents, have no such recourse, and no such right. They have abrogated it to the whim of the government.
You really understand a "right" to "adequate healthcare"? What might be the limit to this "right"? I mean, does a 100 year old person have as much of a "right" to some organ replacement surgery or expensive cancer drugs as a 6 year old? What constitutes "adequate" care? Is there any "right" to quality of life or freedom or recreation, or just a "right" to life itself and working for it's perpetual extension?
I mean, I understand exactly where negative rights end. The right to freedom of speech, to religion, liberty, to self-defense and travel. They all have the same, very reasonable limit. And if by right to "healthcare", you mean the right to ingest whatever poisons you think will enhance or extend your life, great. Go for it. But somehow I don't think that's what you mean. I think you mean you'd like the "right" to force others to provide you with healthcare, the positive "right" to healthcare.
So I'll tell you what the limit is: there is no limit. It's simply retarded, and ill-thought-out. A "right" to healthcare would just ensure that 90% of people are drafted into working to provide each other with infinite lifespans. We all spend our time working to fill the world with the elderly and infirm. It's absolutely not an endeavour in which I will willingly participate. It's a dystopia of weak, short-sighted, selfish fools imposing their stupidity on each other.
So if you truly value your health, don't even think of imposing your vision of health on me. I am already healthier than the vast majority of the proponents of a "right" to healthcare ever will be.
These states, full of right-wingers who decry 'wealth redistribution' rely on Federal Tax Money to exist.
Hardly. Those states would still exist. They just wouldn't be filled with welfare queens, immigrants, and the aforementioned cannon fodder, all on the federal rolls.
Has it never occurred to you that perhaps the red states complain because the effects of that "Federal Money" are so bad that they'd be better off without it? States don't get to decide what 90% of the money is spent on. The Feds just hand it directly to the dumbest citizens and encourage them to reproduce.
Don't pretend that Federal spending is redistributing money from wealthy states to poor ones. It's redistributing money from wealthy people in all states to poor people in all states. The states where those poor people tend to migrate are the ones getting shafted on the deal, not rewarded.
So pretend for a minute that you're in charge of a giant, multi-player video game. And your goal is to get as many people as possible to play the game.
In a normal game without handicapping, the good players would win quickly, get bored easily, and simply quit. The poor players would get crushed, lose, and also quit. You would not achieve your goal.
But what if, instead, you take things (items, resources, points, whatever) from the good players, and give things to the poor players. Everyone who enjoys playing the game, for fun, would keep playing. You maximize the number of people playing the game, and achieve your goal.
Now pretend that instead of running a video game, you're running the US economy.
Do you enjoy working, just for fun? Or do you work in order to create and earn things by doing so? Does "maximizing the number of players" help you, as a worker (or player)? Who does it help?
Um, how is that a false dichotomy exactly? Both options can be viewed in terms of raw materials (silicon, copper, steel, energy, etc) and labor, each of which has a certain cost relative to each other. If the object is to minimize cost, or resource usage, or labor, then it should be obvious that putting fewer panels in an area with more sunshine could be cheaper and easier than installing more panels in a place with less sunshine, depending on the relative costs of the labor and materials required.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. What an incredibly weak argument. Surely someone could have suggested to separate the (legitimate) concern of Oracle's burgeoning database monopoly from Stallman's (irrelevant) interest in pushing all GPL2 software to GPL3.
I mean, I couldn't begin to guess what the EC might be inclined to do, but anti-trust regulations usually exist in order to prevent anti-competitive monopolies, not to make all software meet an extremely narrow definition of free (libre). If there is a succinct method of connecting the two, nothing linked to in the summary managed to accomplish it.
Odd that "healthy" has now become the antonym of "sick".
It helps the unhealthy to conflate poor lifestyle choices with random maladies, and to propose insurance as a viable solution to the former.
Apparently neither you nor the mods can read. Try again.
This scheme will likely end up with *lower* processor utilization than they have currently. Processors are cheap. That's the reason Google has hundreds of thousands of them already.
Hopefully this puts to rest the delusion that there is some economic benefit of higher processor utilization in cloud computing schemes.
The article just says that the bus itself is cheaper than a lithium-ion battery powered bus. It doesn't sound like they are accounting for the entire charging system. I can see how ultracapacitors would be useful for this case, since a bus is extremely heavy and basically stops every half mile. Regenerative braking would wear out a lithium ion battery pack fairly quickly and wouldn't be as efficient.
Otherwise, I'm fairly skeptical that ultracapacitors are really that price-competitive with batteries. Anyone want to try to convince me?
Since this is a task that benefits from some optimization, there are so many different combinations of file servers/clients out there, and so many use cases to choose from, there are lots of different solutions but not many good ones that will do exactly what you want out of the box.
So, in order to narrow it down, you need to decide exactly what you're looking for. What server are you using? What clients do you need to support? Are you wanting to just search file names, or contents, ownership and modification times as well? Do you need the index to be completely up-to-date, or not? How long can you stand to wait for results?
If you think about it, to be economically effective cloud computing (in the big picture) has to be about saving money by increasing average server utilization (averaged over all users).
In a perfect world, perhaps. In this one, all they have to do is offer a new ability to monopolize data processing, and the market will respond. Failing that, they can simply sell their services to government, which has already monopolized money-printing and has no problem using force to extract resources from others to pay it's contractors.
It could easily be cheaper and more efficient to in-house something that is not your "business". Go ahead and take electricity for example. The cheapest way for many businesses to get electricity is not to purchase it from the electric company. The most efficient office buildings and universities co-generate using natural gas engines that provide heating, cooling, and electricity all cheaper and more efficiently than the electric company does. Larger industries do the same thing, only in large industrial parks sited next to coal-fired power plants. The waste heat is used to run their processes, and the electricity is much cheaper than getting it "from the grid".
I would rather pay the government extra so it could go to a better cause
And, would that be new SUVs for the hood rats, granite countertops on some subprime borrower's million-dollar home, or killing more brown people?
Booz Allen Hamilton is the consulting wing of the military-industrial-complex. Look at their members: Bushes, CIA/NSA directors, etc. This is the wing of the Republican party whose only problem with the size and scope of government is that it still has some semblance of democratic accountability, rather than having been farmed out to some shadow corporate control. The agenda is to centralize, nationalize, and privatize key US assets wherever possible. Information technology is becoming a crucial means of political control in the digital age. And clouds represent the perfect way to outsource and obfuscate that control, outside the reach of pesky freedom of information laws, of course losing any disparaging information in the process.
As an anecdote: Google opened a new datacenter near here recently. It has twice as many armed guards as IT staff. I would hate to be the one to have to serve a warrant on that place. Do you think that might be a convenient place to store your medical records, government or corporate e-mails, mortgage records for well-connected politicians, illegal spying programs, etc? What happens when the information you're looking for can't be tied to any one physical machine, or geographic location even?
Conforming to or avoiding certain behaviors simply because they are or are not practiced by the majority is a logical fallacy. Programming requires logical, critical thinking ability. Ergo, those who succeed at programming may tend to engage in behavior that seems strange to the majority of people.
“For a vaccine to reduce mortality by 50 percent and up to 90 percent in some studies means it has to prevent deaths not just from influenza, but also from falls, fires, heart disease, strokes, and car accidents. That’s not a vaccine, that’s a miracle.”
They're not talking about reducing mortality "from the flu" by 50%. They're talking about reducing overall mortality by 50%. It seems like the study's authors took your concerns into account. In fact it sounds like you are arguing the same thing and that would raise the burden required to prove the flu vaccine is effective.
To test their thesis, Jackson and her colleagues combed through eight years of medical data on more than 72,000 people 65 and older.
Is that statistically significant?
The history of flu vaccination suggests other reasons to doubt claims that it dramatically reduces mortality. In 2004, for example, vaccine production fell behind, causing a 40 percent drop in immunization rates. Yet mortality did not rise. In addition, vaccine “mismatches” occurred in 1968 and 1997: in both years, the vaccine that had been produced in the summer protected against one set of viruses, but come winter, a different set was circulating. In effect, nobody was vaccinated. Yet death rates from all causes, including flu and the various illnesses it can exacerbate, did not budge.
This seems like fairly concrete evidence that passes the test of statistical significance. How would you explain them exactly? Are you arguing that the flu vaccine is more effective on those less likely to die from the flu? That fewer people are getting sick, but the same number are dying?
One feature that I think would be really useful, for biking especially, is to be able to find the "flattest" route between two points. Around here, they have been converting old railroad rights of way into bicycle paths, which is nice because they are extremely well-graded. But I'm not even sure where many of them are. I would probably bike more places if I knew I would only have to contend with as few hills as necessary to get there.
Does the tricycle (or the street view car) collect altitude data as well as latitude and longitude? Would it even be theoretically possible to add this in the future?
It's not all Americans who get gouged by the telco monopolies. It's primarily those living in major cities, especially older ones. American cities are falling behind newer, growing rural and suburban areas. And the primary reason is exactly the type of governmental incompetence that allows telco monopolies to exist in the 21st century.
Personally, I pay $25/mo for the cheapest broadband available, 768/384, which is perfectly fine for 99% of uses. And I'd expect a large portion of Slashdotters, the ones who aren't gamers at least, to opt for the low speed plans. Knowing more about technology and how the internet works means knowing that the best option isn't necessarily the most expensive one.
It's the same reason people who know about cars tend to opt for manual transmissions. Cost/benefit is rarely as obvious as the marketers make it seem. Profits are earned by selling less for more, or by buying more for less.
When the welfare state created a permanent, self-replicating underclass of worthless moochers. When do you think?
Why is it that those with the poorest reading comprehension subscribe to the most neanderthal concepts of government and morals?
As such, even though your existence is imposing on me,
I doubt you can make a convincing chain of argument as to the manner in which his existence is actually imposing on you. Just saying.
Just making a point that a mere existence can impose on someone else.
Congratulations, you have discovered that humans are self-replicating independent resource-consuming entities in a finite universe, the fundamental limit to the concept of human rights. Goedel would be proud.
In fact, there was a famous man not too long ago who thought that Jews were imposing on him and got into a position of power where he could do something about it.
So, what is your argument here? That the forces that created someone like Hitler should be ignored and minimized? Or encouraged?
Hitler was absolutely, 100% correct in this regard. The allied powers *were* imposing on him and most Germans after WWI. The Weimar Republic destroyed the German economy for the benefit of foreign powers. Jewish members of the banking and finance industries participated in this destruction. The German government simultaneously devalued the Germany currency and destroyed it's economy for the benefit of the foreign victors of WWI, while empowering a merchant class of Jewish immigrants who benefited from this destruction. This precipitated Hitler's rise to power. It is completely undeniable.
I'm not really sure how you can minimize the concept of human rights, and simultaneously complain about Hitler. Don't think that you can Godwin your own argument and expect to win.
Yeah, this is why I said that you misunderstand the concept of force. You don't have to *force* anyone to *recognize* your rights. They simply are. If others fail to recognize them, who cares? If they violate them, then that constitutes force and you should defend them. But simply having rights does not constitute force and you don't ever have to force anyone to recognize them. That's the fundamental definition of rights, and of force for that matter.
Furthermore, if you have a problem with the concept of money or you think it somehow doesn't constitute legitimate property or something, you don't have to use it. You can barter instead. The result is the same. Just forget that money even exists, because there's nothing special about it.
As for my second point, you may be entitled to some things, or you may not. I'm not going to delve into that. But to argue that you are entitled to something as a result of "work" just muddies your argument.
Well, yes I've been deprived of what I could have spent the money on. But that assumes that I had a right to demand those goods and services in the first place.
Um, no, it doesn't. It means you have a right to the money you earned. And it means you have a right to exchange that money for whatever you can get for it, depending on how much someone else values that money. Spending money is not equivalent to "demanding goods and services". It is a voluntary transaction.
By what fundamental process can we establish exactly what I *am* entitled to?
By voluntary exchange. You are not "entitled" to anything for your work, beyond what someone else is willing to give you for it.
This is a terrible argument. Society cares not one whit for your physical paper money. It cares for the work you did to earn that money, and the goods you would consume when you exchange it. That is what you have been deprived of. That is how you have been forced to help others.
Furthermore, you either misunderstand or mischaracterize the GP's argument, and the concept of positive force.
The right to vote is a "civil" right, meaning it obtains to those who live in cities, voluntarily. The right to vote derives from the right to leave a city, and deprive it of the benefit of one's residence. It is not a privilege. It is not granted by government. It depends upon no law.
Free citizens may demand their say, or representation, otherwise leave the polity if it is not honored. By leaving, one regains a complete majority vote in one's affairs. Those who live in cities by necessity rather than by choice, who are not residents, have no such recourse, and no such right. They have abrogated it to the whim of the government.
You really understand a "right" to "adequate healthcare"? What might be the limit to this "right"? I mean, does a 100 year old person have as much of a "right" to some organ replacement surgery or expensive cancer drugs as a 6 year old? What constitutes "adequate" care? Is there any "right" to quality of life or freedom or recreation, or just a "right" to life itself and working for it's perpetual extension?
I mean, I understand exactly where negative rights end. The right to freedom of speech, to religion, liberty, to self-defense and travel. They all have the same, very reasonable limit. And if by right to "healthcare", you mean the right to ingest whatever poisons you think will enhance or extend your life, great. Go for it. But somehow I don't think that's what you mean. I think you mean you'd like the "right" to force others to provide you with healthcare, the positive "right" to healthcare.
So I'll tell you what the limit is: there is no limit. It's simply retarded, and ill-thought-out. A "right" to healthcare would just ensure that 90% of people are drafted into working to provide each other with infinite lifespans. We all spend our time working to fill the world with the elderly and infirm. It's absolutely not an endeavour in which I will willingly participate. It's a dystopia of weak, short-sighted, selfish fools imposing their stupidity on each other.
So if you truly value your health, don't even think of imposing your vision of health on me. I am already healthier than the vast majority of the proponents of a "right" to healthcare ever will be.
These states, full of right-wingers who decry 'wealth redistribution' rely on Federal Tax Money to exist.
Hardly. Those states would still exist. They just wouldn't be filled with welfare queens, immigrants, and the aforementioned cannon fodder, all on the federal rolls.
Has it never occurred to you that perhaps the red states complain because the effects of that "Federal Money" are so bad that they'd be better off without it? States don't get to decide what 90% of the money is spent on. The Feds just hand it directly to the dumbest citizens and encourage them to reproduce.
Don't pretend that Federal spending is redistributing money from wealthy states to poor ones. It's redistributing money from wealthy people in all states to poor people in all states. The states where those poor people tend to migrate are the ones getting shafted on the deal, not rewarded.
So pretend for a minute that you're in charge of a giant, multi-player video game. And your goal is to get as many people as possible to play the game.
In a normal game without handicapping, the good players would win quickly, get bored easily, and simply quit. The poor players would get crushed, lose, and also quit. You would not achieve your goal.
But what if, instead, you take things (items, resources, points, whatever) from the good players, and give things to the poor players. Everyone who enjoys playing the game, for fun, would keep playing. You maximize the number of people playing the game, and achieve your goal.
Now pretend that instead of running a video game, you're running the US economy.
Do you enjoy working, just for fun? Or do you work in order to create and earn things by doing so? Does "maximizing the number of players" help you, as a worker (or player)? Who does it help?
Um, how is that a false dichotomy exactly? Both options can be viewed in terms of raw materials (silicon, copper, steel, energy, etc) and labor, each of which has a certain cost relative to each other. If the object is to minimize cost, or resource usage, or labor, then it should be obvious that putting fewer panels in an area with more sunshine could be cheaper and easier than installing more panels in a place with less sunshine, depending on the relative costs of the labor and materials required.