That comic was totally lame. It was like the Emperor's New Clothes, a guy who can't draw and who isn't funny, but it's put together in a way that sends the message "hey this is so countercultural, you'll be cool if you pretend it's funny." It's like one big in-joke, except nobody's in on the joke except the cartoonist. I'm sick of this "ironic appreciation" hipster crap, can't we have something that is actually funny, rather than "so unfunny it's funny"...? There are plenty of excellent cartoonists who deserve space on the comics page, now that he's out of the way, maybe we'll see the next Calvin and Hobbes.
There you go. The ISP pricing model is based on the assumption that most customers will use far less bandwidth than they are paying for, so they averaged things out and priced on what would be profitable for an average user. In a sense, granny's once a week email account is subsidizing the video sharing users. If everyone used high amounts of bandwith, they'd just price things higher. Even in the days of dialup, resource hogs were a problem. I remember battling with my university's online service provider back in the early dialup days, when a couple of users had scripts to reconnect every time they got disconnected from a timeout, monopolizing a few lines in the scarce dialup modem pool.
This is just the latest shot in the war to raise prices. And prices WILL go up. Have you ever seen a service like this, that lowered prices over time?
I want the Democratic Party to spend its money defeating McCain. I do not want the Democratic party wasting its money on a partisan Operating System war by supporting a fringe OS that has less than 1% share of the desktop.
You haven't been reading the news. Iowa was recently devastated by floods, the damage to the University of Iowa campus alone is estimated at over $230 million. Massive repair projects will take a decade to complete. This is not a time when Iowans can afford to give Corporate Welfare to Bill Gates.
I just checked my bill, I'm paying about a 15% tax rate on electricity and about 13% on natural gas. I'm using the same gas & electric company that the new server farm will. That is one hell of a tax break, considering it is going to be the single largest operating expense once the server farm is built. My utilities taxes pay for Microsoft's corporate welfare.
Computers, cooling systems, electric power wiring, backup power systems (including fuel to run them), electricity (!!!!!), cabling and racks, and batteries. And there's a weasely clause "..including but not limited to.." that seems to give them a blanket waiver on just about anything they can bury in the budget.
In return, MSFT agrees to make $200mil in investments in the site within 6 years.
This is definitely corporate welfare. I want an exemption on MY electricity for MY computers!
You might be overestimating the construction jobs, since Microsoft is experimenting with server farms in shipping containers, like those Sun Modular Datacenters. Des Moines already has massive IT infrastructure since it's the world's biggest centers for insurance data processing. They're going to use infrastructure that is already there. No, I don't see many local jobs coming out of this. I see more strain on our local infrastructure. I see more power consumption and more pollution from coal-fired power plants.
No, Iowa is mostly rural co-op electric companies, the co-ops even own 30% of the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant. And its operating license is set to expire in 2014.
Yeah, well the project is going to bring only 75 jobs to Iowa. I suspect most of the employees will be transferred in from out of state. If BillG had his way, they'd all be hired from India on H-1B visas for $15k per year.
Oh it's too bad they don't make the old PCjr infrared keyboards anymore. They had an upgraded model that improved on the notorious "chiclet" keyboard, I used to have one, it worked decently. The reason I say it would be perfect for you is that you can now buy "IR extenders" that are designed to carry IR remote control signals into AV equipment inside cabinets. The IR hits a receiver via line of sight, it's converted and sent down a wire, and is retransmitted by an IR LED at the other end of the wire. You could run the extender's wire as far as you like, and still have a wireless keyboard. Maybe there are other IR keyboards around, but I'm not aware of any. They had a few bugs. For example, if I struck a BIC cigarette lighter near my PCjr, the spark would emit a little IR and the CPU would beep, indicating an unknown IR transmission error.
I don't consider Wired's specific details on how to fake the right illness to get a prescription for a specific drum, or to buy it online from dodgy pharmacies, to be anything resembling "balanced information."
You skipped over the part about "Triggers the release of dopamine. Can increase concentration and creative output." I note that this description comes BEFORE the downside.
Wired is wrong to promote drug use, especially stuff like meth. I work with recovering addicts and believe me, some gullible young kids ARE swayed by this sort of stupid publicity by those self-appointed arbiters of coolness. Even the allegedly "innocent" prescription drugs like Adderal do lead to addiction. If even one weak person was swayed to a life of addiction by Wired's advice to "do the right drugs," Conde Nast has done evil.
I have always admired the Jacquard loom, there's a nice little miniature one I saw on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. I used to live near the Garment District in downtown LA, on my street there were a bunch of Jacquard loom shops that made labels for clothing.
But anyway.. more relevant to this question, sure Jacquard looms can run the oldest code, but are there any looms still in production running the old codes? I wonder what the woven patterns looked like coming off the first looms, way back when. I bet your friend is running relatively modern decks on his carpet loom.
I'm not a statistician, but I recall hearing the problem described as this: Suppose you you could design an anti-ballistic missile shield that was only 80% efficient. There are two design options. In one case, 20% of the missiles will always penetrate. And in the other case, 20% of the time, all missiles will penetrate. These options were asserted to be equal risks, statistically. Maybe someone else could explain this reasoning, but I've long forgotten the details.
Thanks. I read your comment and got to thinking about it a bit more. I vaguely recall that in those olden days, MTBF was not an estimate, it was calculated from the service reports of failed parts. The calculations were released in monthly reports so we could increase our spares inventory to cover parts that were proving to be less reliable than estimated. But then, those were the days when every installed CPU was serviced by authorized agents, so data gathering was 100% accurate.
I remember back in the mid 1980s when I received a service management manual from DEC, it had some information that really opened my eyes about what MTBF was really intended for. It had a calculation (I have long since forgotten the details) that allowed you to estimate how many service spares you would need to keep in stock to service any installed base of hardware, based on MTBF. This was intended for internal use in calculating spares inventory level for DEC service agents. High MTBF products needed fewer replacement parts in inventory, low MTBF parts needed lots of parts in stock. Presumably internal MTBF ratings were more accurate than those released to end users.
So anyway.. MTBF is not intended as an indicator of a specific unit's reliability. It is a statistical measurement to calculate how many spares are needed to keep a large population of machines working. It cannot be applied to a single unit in the way it can be applied to a large population of units.
Perhaps the classical example is about the old tube-based computers like ENIAC, if a single tube has an MTBF of 1 year, but the computer has 10,000 tubes, you'd be changing tubes (on average) more than once an hour, you'd rarely even get an hour of uptime. (I hope I got that calculation vaguely correct)
Slashdot Mirror
That comic was totally lame. It was like the Emperor's New Clothes, a guy who can't draw and who isn't funny, but it's put together in a way that sends the message "hey this is so countercultural, you'll be cool if you pretend it's funny." It's like one big in-joke, except nobody's in on the joke except the cartoonist. I'm sick of this "ironic appreciation" hipster crap, can't we have something that is actually funny, rather than "so unfunny it's funny"...?
There are plenty of excellent cartoonists who deserve space on the comics page, now that he's out of the way, maybe we'll see the next Calvin and Hobbes.
On an emate300.
Post a link to your server on Slashdot. I guarantee you'll get a fast and furious lesson in server optimization and security.
There you go. The ISP pricing model is based on the assumption that most customers will use far less bandwidth than they are paying for, so they averaged things out and priced on what would be profitable for an average user. In a sense, granny's once a week email account is subsidizing the video sharing users. If everyone used high amounts of bandwith, they'd just price things higher.
Even in the days of dialup, resource hogs were a problem. I remember battling with my university's online service provider back in the early dialup days, when a couple of users had scripts to reconnect every time they got disconnected from a timeout, monopolizing a few lines in the scarce dialup modem pool.
This is just the latest shot in the war to raise prices. And prices WILL go up. Have you ever seen a service like this, that lowered prices over time?
Riiight..
Microsoft is subsidizing Silverlight installs to build market share. It seems that you CAN compete with Free.
Bravo Democrats.
I want the Democratic Party to spend its money defeating McCain.
I do not want the Democratic party wasting its money on a partisan Operating System war by supporting a fringe OS that has less than 1% share of the desktop.
You haven't been reading the news. Iowa was recently devastated by floods, the damage to the University of Iowa campus alone is estimated at over $230 million. Massive repair projects will take a decade to complete. This is not a time when Iowans can afford to give Corporate Welfare to Bill Gates.
I just checked my bill, I'm paying about a 15% tax rate on electricity and about 13% on natural gas. I'm using the same gas & electric company that the new server farm will. That is one hell of a tax break, considering it is going to be the single largest operating expense once the server farm is built. My utilities taxes pay for Microsoft's corporate welfare.
I found the exact description of the tax exemptions Microsoft is getting. They pay no taxes on:
Computers, cooling systems, electric power wiring, backup power systems (including fuel to run them), electricity (!!!!!), cabling and racks, and batteries. And there's a weasely clause "..including but not limited to.." that seems to give them a blanket waiver on just about anything they can bury in the budget.
In return, MSFT agrees to make $200mil in investments in the site within 6 years.
This is definitely corporate welfare. I want an exemption on MY electricity for MY computers!
You might be overestimating the construction jobs, since Microsoft is experimenting with server farms in shipping containers, like those Sun Modular Datacenters. Des Moines already has massive IT infrastructure since it's the world's biggest centers for insurance data processing. They're going to use infrastructure that is already there.
No, I don't see many local jobs coming out of this. I see more strain on our local infrastructure. I see more power consumption and more pollution from coal-fired power plants.
No, Iowa is mostly rural co-op electric companies, the co-ops even own 30% of the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant. And its operating license is set to expire in 2014.
Yeah, well the project is going to bring only 75 jobs to Iowa. I suspect most of the employees will be transferred in from out of state. If BillG had his way, they'd all be hired from India on H-1B visas for $15k per year.
n/t
..or until you pull the end through a snarl of cables and the plastic tab breaks off.
Ah, well that figures. Only Microsoft could take one of the most notoriously bad designs in computer history, and try to "improve" on it.
Oh it's too bad they don't make the old PCjr infrared keyboards anymore. They had an upgraded model that improved on the notorious "chiclet" keyboard, I used to have one, it worked decently. The reason I say it would be perfect for you is that you can now buy "IR extenders" that are designed to carry IR remote control signals into AV equipment inside cabinets. The IR hits a receiver via line of sight, it's converted and sent down a wire, and is retransmitted by an IR LED at the other end of the wire. You could run the extender's wire as far as you like, and still have a wireless keyboard.
Maybe there are other IR keyboards around, but I'm not aware of any. They had a few bugs. For example, if I struck a BIC cigarette lighter near my PCjr, the spark would emit a little IR and the CPU would beep, indicating an unknown IR transmission error.
I don't consider Wired's specific details on how to fake the right illness to get a prescription for a specific drum, or to buy it online from dodgy pharmacies, to be anything resembling "balanced information."
You skipped over the part about "Triggers the release of dopamine. Can increase concentration and creative output." I note that this description comes BEFORE the downside.
Come back and tell me that when YOUR kid gets hooked on meth.
BLOGGERS ARE TEH OUTRAGE! WiRED IS L337!!!!1!11
Oh not this crap again.
Wired is wrong to promote drug use, especially stuff like meth. I work with recovering addicts and believe me, some gullible young kids ARE swayed by this sort of stupid publicity by those self-appointed arbiters of coolness. Even the allegedly "innocent" prescription drugs like Adderal do lead to addiction. If even one weak person was swayed to a life of addiction by Wired's advice to "do the right drugs," Conde Nast has done evil.
I am tired of people using teh Interwebs to incite outrage over something on teh Interwebs.
Don't like flamers on Twitter? Don't use it.
I have always admired the Jacquard loom, there's a nice little miniature one I saw on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. I used to live near the Garment District in downtown LA, on my street there were a bunch of Jacquard loom shops that made labels for clothing.
But anyway.. more relevant to this question, sure Jacquard looms can run the oldest code, but are there any looms still in production running the old codes? I wonder what the woven patterns looked like coming off the first looms, way back when. I bet your friend is running relatively modern decks on his carpet loom.
Statistically, those two options are equal.
I'm not a statistician, but I recall hearing the problem described as this: Suppose you you could design an anti-ballistic missile shield that was only 80% efficient. There are two design options. In one case, 20% of the missiles will always penetrate. And in the other case, 20% of the time, all missiles will penetrate. These options were asserted to be equal risks, statistically. Maybe someone else could explain this reasoning, but I've long forgotten the details.
Thanks. I read your comment and got to thinking about it a bit more. I vaguely recall that in those olden days, MTBF was not an estimate, it was calculated from the service reports of failed parts. The calculations were released in monthly reports so we could increase our spares inventory to cover parts that were proving to be less reliable than estimated. But then, those were the days when every installed CPU was serviced by authorized agents, so data gathering was 100% accurate.
I remember back in the mid 1980s when I received a service management manual from DEC, it had some information that really opened my eyes about what MTBF was really intended for. It had a calculation (I have long since forgotten the details) that allowed you to estimate how many service spares you would need to keep in stock to service any installed base of hardware, based on MTBF. This was intended for internal use in calculating spares inventory level for DEC service agents. High MTBF products needed fewer replacement parts in inventory, low MTBF parts needed lots of parts in stock. Presumably internal MTBF ratings were more accurate than those released to end users.
So anyway.. MTBF is not intended as an indicator of a specific unit's reliability. It is a statistical measurement to calculate how many spares are needed to keep a large population of machines working. It cannot be applied to a single unit in the way it can be applied to a large population of units.
Perhaps the classical example is about the old tube-based computers like ENIAC, if a single tube has an MTBF of 1 year, but the computer has 10,000 tubes, you'd be changing tubes (on average) more than once an hour, you'd rarely even get an hour of uptime. (I hope I got that calculation vaguely correct)