I don't know about the American cell phones, but my phone always displays who is calling or, if they have set up their phone to prevent their number being disclosed, says "Private Number". If I give out my number to someone I have typically received their number in return and they are filed away in my address book, so when they call their name comes up instead of a number.
My point is, if you are really that concerned about getting phone spam then maybe you should treat your mobile like your e-mail account: if you don't recognise it, don't answer it! And if you do answer it doesn't cost you anything to hang up the phone. Really guys, there are bigger things to worry about than whether someone is going to ask your opinion about your favorite brand of milk.
I can't wait for this to become reality! Soon they'll jail everyone who pirates music, and lump them in with all those software traders too. Good thing we taught poor students a lesson about trying to get free versions of $500 pieces of software. Those cassette recording punks are rotting in there somewhere too! Good thing that evil Satanic practice was stopped before everyone starting doing it!
Even if they start randomly jailing 0.1% of all offenders you have to make room for tens of thousands of "criminals" in your already overcrowded jails, and the net result is that 99.9% of people will get away with it, scot-free.
I think they SHOULD enforce it, and make the record companies pay for the prosecution and the new jails that will be needed to house millions of young adults. Sure, schools will be pretty empty for a while and they might cause long-term economic damage, but at least kids will no longer be sharing files and can get back to smoking weed and drinking & driving!
Go Texas! Can't trade files but you can pistol-whip that black piece of shit who offered to wash the windows of your truck.
Dark Helmet: "How the hell are you going to find the operating system? We haven't even finished making the platform yet!"
Sanders: "There has been a breakthrough in home computing technology. Instant OS: the operating systems are released even before the platform is finished!"
A recent report in Britain showed that a growing number of children entering school for the first time don't know nursery rhymes, cannot follow verbal instructions from teachers and in some cases do not respond to their names.
While this is not a new idea, the reason I have brought it up here is that this is really the first bit of research I have seen that doesn't spew the same old " neglectful parents that are obsessed with money" rhetoric, but rather sees it as a misguided attempt to reconcile careers with family life.
They know they can't spend lots of time with their children so they buy them TVs and computers, thinking that they will be exposed to the language. Unfortunately they don't SPEAK the language so they quickly become socially-impaired computer geniuses, which sounds quite familiar.
So it may be that we are already seeing the emergence of this socially-isolated population predicted by Simak.
Right now there is federal regulation on radio frequencies...why is this any different than light? Radio waves are just a really lengthy version of light waves, but this hasn't stopped governments as far as I can tell! Just because we see light every day doesn't mean the government won't restrict technological applications of this tiny sliver of the EM spectrum. After all, radio waves are produced naturally just as light is.
If they can profit they will restrict the equipment that uses this technology (assuming it progresses to the point that a game of spotlight won't crash your server)
I got such a kick out of Brazil's approach to anti-HIV therapy last year (or the year before?), where they decided to start producing their own drugs and to ignore the patents. Naturally the patent-holders had a fit, but the Brazilian government didn't really care...what were they going to do, sue Brazil?
As absurd as that sounds they probably did just that...does anyone know what came of all this?
I don't blame doctors for overprescribing antibiotics, I blame patients for brow-beating doctors until they give them drugs but then ignoring the doctor's advice that they take the full course of medication, thereby rendering the treatment useless.
Anti-terror operative: This same message is being passed between these two users, over and over...LUVU LOL ROTFL CYAL8R WB XOXOX
Tech: Yeah, you're right! I wonder what it is?
ATO: Obviously secret code, perhaps communication between terrorist cells? I can't figure out what it says; it must be in code. And these names...they must have religious meanings. Pikachu_roxxz, Iluv_Leo... Where are they all coming from?
T: Little Rock...a private school for junior high girls.
Some time ago I saw a sports drink that claimed that it's amazing restorative powers were due to the fact that the drink "harnessed the awesome power of zero point energy". No kidding. I guess the ability to cure thirst has nothing to do with hydration and everything to do with halting all motion.
Crap like this kind of reminds me of The Matrix, where Morpheus explains how the devious robots are powered by humans. Oh, and that little "form of fusion" that he alludes to, too.:-)
Unfortunately there is just about no way to reverse it. The first comment out of the mouth of (insert company here)'s president will be something along the lines of "We can do what ever we want. What are you going to do, stop buying HDs?" And he is 100% correct. If all the companies are playing ball then it is just a matter of choosing the lesser of several evils. The number of discerning customers is probably roughly matched or exceeded by the number of oblivious customers, so the status quo stays to the detriment of us all.
Better, more reliable construction? Why would manufacturers do that? I guarantee they have the ability to build drives that will last 5X as long for a nominal price increase, but they will lose all their business at this rate. HD manufacturers are already seeing a decline in sales relative to the number of PC's out there because people who buy 120GB HD's are often quite content with this and don't go buy another.
It's just like the car industry: they used to build cars that, given a little TLC, could operate for decades - hence antique auto shows - but now they die much sooner than that. How many Toyota Tercels are you going to see at antique car shows 50 years from now? Zero, because (other than the fact that they are ugly and they suck:-)) to quote every single person who's generation has given way to a new & improved version, "they don't make 'em like they used to". Cars are not built to last, they are built with a short usable life in mind so that consumers will keep buying new cars.
Same thing with HDs. Most reasonable people back up their important information in one form or another so these companies have no qualms about making a limited-use product. Sometimes they do this so well that the HD dies on shipment or shortly thereafter so they recall them, tweak the design, claim there was an oversight that has now been resolved, and return their slightly-less accident-prone product to the market. Perhaps some companies are a little less insistent on screwing their customers, but I suspect they all do it in one form or another, and I suspect that they target home PC users (with much less individual buying power) than companies (with large server farms and big contracts).
If I were out to make as much money as possible that is pretty much how I would do it: rapid turnover of product.
So you are proposing a per-use fee for e-mailing? The reason e-mail is so popular is largely because it allows world-wide communication for almost nothing. I scarcely telephone home anymore because it costs me 10p/min to use my phone plus a 2p/min charge on my calling card. Besides, people already pay for their e-mail because they pay monthly internet connection fees.
I don't think too many people will support additional e-mail surcharges on top of the existing connection fee, because it is like paying a fee to use your phone and to hear the lovely things other people and automated answering machines have to say, but then having to pay _extra_ to talk into it.
These particles could be travelling at a relative speed of 20,000mph, and you propose the technical equivalent of a guy with a fridge magnet trying to stop Mack trucks from driving past his house.:-)
You would need a strong field to effect any changes, and I would not want anything strong enough to stop particles from crashing into a docking space shuttle anywhere near me. The effects on electronics could be significant enough to cause problems, and you need enough power to keep said beacon charged.
Never mind the fact that as soon as that beacon starts attracting debris travelling towards it at 20,000mph, it could actually _accelerate_ this debris before collision. Unless you build this beacon out of Admantium:-) it probably won't last for very long.
I think it might be fairly tricky to do this, considering that you have to get the speed and trajectory right to keep the gravel from falling to earth or spinning off into space. As well, the EArth's orbit really is fairly large area relative to the area of a bag of gravel, or even a rocket full of gravel.
Of course all you need is one piece of space rock to hole your craft, but the odds of (a) getting the rocks up there, (b) putting them into a steady orbit and (c) ensuring that they spread out over the surface of the Earth rather than clump together seems a little low to me. Now if they threw up a bunch of junk into geosynchronous orbit with the US it would be a little more interesting from the N.Korea pissing off the US viewpoint, but I'm not too worried about that right now.
Hey, thanks! It wasn't until I had written the post that I realised just how much I know or think I know about transport here.
Another interesting point is that while everyone in London is screaming for Ken's head over this congestion charge, it apparently was part of his platform when he was voted into office in 2000. In fact, I will go so far as to say that the majority of those who are crying about this didn't bother to vote in the first place, and since they didn't bother to follow the candidate's platforms this really is news to them!
On another note, the mass panic and hysteria that was predicted on COngestion Charge Day was just that: over-blown hysteria. I got to work faster today than I have in weeks.
For many people the Tube is more expensive than a bus pass, but due to congestion the buses are impractical. By charging drivers and adding buses you kill two birds with one tax (pollution and congestion). Many of the buses need replacement/repair too. Unfortunately they are not exempting mail service or on-call nurses, so Ken needs a shot in the head and a strong dose of reality. Eventually this should be expanded, but the bus network needs an upgrade first...it can barely handle the current traffic.
Half of the problem comes from the people in the city. Every day I walk 25 minutes from work to get the bus because the road nearby is too crowded, and in doing so I pass a long line of half-filled cars and half-filled buses. If Londoners ever hear of the word car-pooling, 50% of the congestion would vanish instantly, but they are too concerned with driving their fsking Benzes and Porsches to work to notice that they themselves are the problem.
The problem with the Tube is that it needs heavy maintenance right now, but the network is so huge and the city is so reliant on it that it is difficult to undertake any major work. Barring major incidents (such as the derailing of a train on the Central line and the subsequent 2-month closure of the line) all that is carried out is patchwork, and a couple of undercover investigations by local news have shown just how corrupt and lazy the maintenance crews can be.
Considering that there will actually be a ~£200 million difference in the income Ken originally reported and what he will actually get, work on the order of implementing new lines is impossible. Goverment will insist they improve the existing service, and this is where privatization rears its ugly head.
They are about to semi-privatize the Tube, and those that are taking over have ZERO obligation to improve performance. In fact, they can let performance slide by 3-5%, IIRC, without penalty. They will get financial bonuses for improved performance.
Given the sorry state of the recently privatized overland train services we all know that the Underground is going to go down the Tubes shortly;-D The congestion charge is a necessary step for the roads and for our lungs, but I don't know if it will work in it's current incarnation: I think Ken has rushed into this one to create a legacy for himself.
Fortunately, I will be out of London when the excrement _really_ hits the air circulator!
(Warning: 86% of the statistics in this paragraph were made up on the spot)
Hee hee hee
I have used computers for geometry optimization of molecules, and a 20-atom structure can take days on a high enough basis set. Just last summer I was calculating electron density around a moderately-large molecule using HyperChem, a Windows-based PC molecular modeling program, but I ran out of space on my biggest HD partition (10 of 40GB) because it has to stockpile all it's solutions, and I was still only 0.1% finished after 1 day of computation on my Athlon 1.2 with 0.5GB RAM. So yes, I completely agree with you about needing affordable faster/stronger computing.
Unfortunately, except for these applications, there is no need for faster computers in the mass market, but _only_ want. If it was announced tomorrow that we are at the top of the x86 performance mountain, I figure that 8/10 of users would get along just fine with their current processor, and the rest would be able to get a very cheap upgrade to serve the purpose.
So I share your perspective, but I am taking into consideration the way things are in the mass market now and how things should be, ie. the majority of people and businesses should perhaps be more concerned with "How can I get the most out of what I have" rather than "How can I find a way to buy that new CPU".
"More power is almost always better in mathematical modeling- I don't expect we'll ever get to the point where we have as much computational power as we want."
If the automotive industry followed this model we would all be driving LeMans 24-hour cars with V16 engines to get to work in the morning, and despite the fact that your 2001 Porsche Boxster works just fine, every time you take it to the garage the mechanics insist it would be much cheaper to haul the engine out and cram at least a V12 in there.
With the exception of research, 99% of computer users have enough power, or rather could have enough power if it were a little cheaper. "Want" is the key word in the above excerpt; I currently run an Athlon 1.2 and GeForce3, but I WANT a faster processor and a better vid card. The point of the article is that people have trouble distinguishing between the two. Google wisely realised that a number of cheap processors is a much better approach than the latest bleeding-edge technology.
At no point did they suggest that research is wrong and has to be stopped ASAP. Their problem is with the way our resources are being allocated: rather than try to produce our current outstanding technology in a more efficient and accessible way we are fixated on making everything faster and bigger.
No, he altered the definition once transistor density growth slowed a little. Moore's Law v1.1 relates to data density instead, so performance is now a little closer to the truth.
You are missing the point. The original poster asserted that the reason the capacitors are popping is because manufacturers are forced to cut costs to make cheaper products. My point was that the cost of the capacitor fluid has very little influence on the cost of a MB that is targeted for the (for example) $250-300 range.
"You honestly think $300 is expensive for a motherboard?"
I didn't say that, but you somehow read it from my post...anyways, I am sure you can get much more expensive boards than that but, again, that isn't the point.
Re:What happens when it wont read the card?
on
The Future of Money
·
· Score: 1
Here in England it takes a week to replace your debit card. I have had replacement _credit cards_ issued to me faster than that back in Canada!
I will definitely resist switching to fully plastic transactions as long as possible. There is just something nice about having physical money in your pocket. It is easier to remember how much of it you have, too. (instead of hunting down a bank machine to get a transaction slip because you want a large sundae instead of a small) And I think that business/government knows enough about me as it is, so I have a vested interest in keeping what I can away from them for as long as possible.
I hardly call $250-300 ASUS motherboards "pushed-cheaper" "componentry"(?). I'll go out on a limb and say that cheap capacitor fluid doesn't drop the price by a significant amount. If the boards start being pressed on stale Melba toast and shipped in Tupperware containers, then I will really get worried:-)
Commercialism isn't the problem, it is unscrupulous business practice. Ethical and commercial are not mutually exclusive, believe it or not. It is just getting harder to separate the two...
Happily running an A7V266 with my fingers, toes and eyes crossed.
I think his point is that most of the world does not use Imperial measurements, and the scientific community definitely does not (with some exceptions, of course), so why is it still around?
The Celcius scale is more straightforward than the Farenheit scale, while the Kelvin scale is more tedious to work with. If you need a really stable scale that won't change appreciably in different environments then Kelvin is the scale of choice.
Hence, for accurate measurements & calculations we use Kelvin but for everyday work, ie. "reflux solution at 120degC", we use Celcius. Another reason no one in science uses pounds/ounces or feet/yards because it is easier to work with units that follow a base 10 system.
And what is the problem with having a system of measures designed by committee? That doesn't mean that there isn't good reasoning behind most of the choices!
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about the American cell phones, but my phone always displays who is calling or, if they have set up their phone to prevent their number being disclosed, says "Private Number". If I give out my number to someone I have typically received their number in return and they are filed away in my address book, so when they call their name comes up instead of a number.
My point is, if you are really that concerned about getting phone spam then maybe you should treat your mobile like your e-mail account: if you don't recognise it, don't answer it! And if you do answer it doesn't cost you anything to hang up the phone. Really guys, there are bigger things to worry about than whether someone is going to ask your opinion about your favorite brand of milk.
My 2 cents
I can't wait for this to become reality! Soon they'll jail everyone who pirates music, and lump them in with all those software traders too. Good thing we taught poor students a lesson about trying to get free versions of $500 pieces of software. Those cassette recording punks are rotting in there somewhere too! Good thing that evil Satanic practice was stopped before everyone starting doing it!
Even if they start randomly jailing 0.1% of all offenders you have to make room for tens of thousands of "criminals" in your already overcrowded jails, and the net result is that 99.9% of people will get away with it, scot-free.
I think they SHOULD enforce it, and make the record companies pay for the prosecution and the new jails that will be needed to house millions of young adults. Sure, schools will be pretty empty for a while and they might cause long-term economic damage, but at least kids will no longer be sharing files and can get back to smoking weed and drinking & driving!
Go Texas! Can't trade files but you can pistol-whip that black piece of shit who offered to wash the windows of your truck.
No you idiot. December 2nd, 2003 :-)
This reminds me of a Spaceballs bit:
Dark Helmet: "How the hell are you going to find the operating system? We haven't even finished making the platform yet!"
Sanders: "There has been a breakthrough in home computing technology. Instant OS: the operating systems are released even before the platform is finished!"
Dark Helmet: "Naaahhhhh...."
Asshole: "Here it is sir! Mandrake 9.0!"
A recent report in Britain showed that a growing number of children entering school for the first time don't know nursery rhymes, cannot follow verbal instructions from teachers and in some cases do not respond to their names.
While this is not a new idea, the reason I have brought it up here is that this is really the first bit of research I have seen that doesn't spew the same old " neglectful parents that are obsessed with money" rhetoric, but rather sees it as a misguided attempt to reconcile careers with family life.
They know they can't spend lots of time with their children so they buy them TVs and computers, thinking that they will be exposed to the language. Unfortunately they don't SPEAK the language so they quickly become socially-impaired computer geniuses, which sounds quite familiar.
So it may be that we are already seeing the emergence of this socially-isolated population predicted by Simak.
That comment made by the poster is pretty stupid.
Right now there is federal regulation on radio frequencies...why is this any different than light? Radio waves are just a really lengthy version of light waves, but this hasn't stopped governments as far as I can tell! Just because we see light every day doesn't mean the government won't restrict technological applications of this tiny sliver of the EM spectrum. After all, radio waves are produced naturally just as light is.
If they can profit they will restrict the equipment that uses this technology (assuming it progresses to the point that a game of spotlight won't crash your server)
I got such a kick out of Brazil's approach to anti-HIV therapy last year (or the year before?), where they decided to start producing their own drugs and to ignore the patents. Naturally the patent-holders had a fit, but the Brazilian government didn't really care...what were they going to do, sue Brazil?
As absurd as that sounds they probably did just that...does anyone know what came of all this?
I don't blame doctors for overprescribing antibiotics, I blame patients for brow-beating doctors until they give them drugs but then ignoring the doctor's advice that they take the full course of medication, thereby rendering the treatment useless.
"Adolescent mush" Heh heh...
Anti-terror operative: This same message is being passed between these two users, over and over...LUVU LOL ROTFL CYAL8R WB XOXOX
Tech: Yeah, you're right! I wonder what it is?
ATO: Obviously secret code, perhaps communication between terrorist cells? I can't figure out what it says; it must be in code. And these names...they must have religious meanings. Pikachu_roxxz, Iluv_Leo... Where are they all coming from?
T: Little Rock...a private school for junior high girls.
ATO: They're using innocent girls? Bastards!
Some time ago I saw a sports drink that claimed that it's amazing restorative powers were due to the fact that the drink "harnessed the awesome power of zero point energy". No kidding. I guess the ability to cure thirst has nothing to do with hydration and everything to do with halting all motion.
:-)
Crap like this kind of reminds me of The Matrix, where Morpheus explains how the devious robots are powered by humans. Oh, and that little "form of fusion" that he alludes to, too.
Unfortunately there is just about no way to reverse it. The first comment out of the mouth of (insert company here)'s president will be something along the lines of "We can do what ever we want. What are you going to do, stop buying HDs?" And he is 100% correct. If all the companies are playing ball then it is just a matter of choosing the lesser of several evils. The number of discerning customers is probably roughly matched or exceeded by the number of oblivious customers, so the status quo stays to the detriment of us all.
(Begin pessimistic rant)
:-)) to quote every single person who's generation has given way to a new & improved version, "they don't make 'em like they used to". Cars are not built to last, they are built with a short usable life in mind so that consumers will keep buying new cars.
Better, more reliable construction? Why would manufacturers do that? I guarantee they have the ability to build drives that will last 5X as long for a nominal price increase, but they will lose all their business at this rate. HD manufacturers are already seeing a decline in sales relative to the number of PC's out there because people who buy 120GB HD's are often quite content with this and don't go buy another.
It's just like the car industry: they used to build cars that, given a little TLC, could operate for decades - hence antique auto shows - but now they die much sooner than that. How many Toyota Tercels are you going to see at antique car shows 50 years from now? Zero, because (other than the fact that they are ugly and they suck
Same thing with HDs. Most reasonable people back up their important information in one form or another so these companies have no qualms about making a limited-use product. Sometimes they do this so well that the HD dies on shipment or shortly thereafter so they recall them, tweak the design, claim there was an oversight that has now been resolved, and return their slightly-less accident-prone product to the market. Perhaps some companies are a little less insistent on screwing their customers, but I suspect they all do it in one form or another, and I suspect that they target home PC users (with much less individual buying power) than companies (with large server farms and big contracts).
If I were out to make as much money as possible that is pretty much how I would do it: rapid turnover of product.
(end pessimistic rant)
So you are proposing a per-use fee for e-mailing? The reason e-mail is so popular is largely because it allows world-wide communication for almost nothing. I scarcely telephone home anymore because it costs me 10p/min to use my phone plus a 2p/min charge on my calling card. Besides, people already pay for their e-mail because they pay monthly internet connection fees.
I don't think too many people will support additional e-mail surcharges on top of the existing connection fee, because it is like paying a fee to use your phone and to hear the lovely things other people and automated answering machines have to say, but then having to pay _extra_ to talk into it.
These particles could be travelling at a relative speed of 20,000mph, and you propose the technical equivalent of a guy with a fridge magnet trying to stop Mack trucks from driving past his house. :-)
:-) it probably won't last for very long.
You would need a strong field to effect any changes, and I would not want anything strong enough to stop particles from crashing into a docking space shuttle anywhere near me. The effects on electronics could be significant enough to cause problems, and you need enough power to keep said beacon charged.
Never mind the fact that as soon as that beacon starts attracting debris travelling towards it at 20,000mph, it could actually _accelerate_ this debris before collision. Unless you build this beacon out of Admantium
I think it might be fairly tricky to do this, considering that you have to get the speed and trajectory right to keep the gravel from falling to earth or spinning off into space. As well, the EArth's orbit really is fairly large area relative to the area of a bag of gravel, or even a rocket full of gravel.
Of course all you need is one piece of space rock to hole your craft, but the odds of (a) getting the rocks up there, (b) putting them into a steady orbit and (c) ensuring that they spread out over the surface of the Earth rather than clump together seems a little low to me. Now if they threw up a bunch of junk into geosynchronous orbit with the US it would be a little more interesting from the N.Korea pissing off the US viewpoint, but I'm not too worried about that right now.
Hey, thanks!
It wasn't until I had written the post that I realised just how much I know or think I know about transport here.
Another interesting point is that while everyone in London is screaming for Ken's head over this congestion charge, it apparently was part of his platform when he was voted into office in 2000. In fact, I will go so far as to say that the majority of those who are crying about this didn't bother to vote in the first place, and since they didn't bother to follow the candidate's platforms this really is news to them!
On another note, the mass panic and hysteria that was predicted on COngestion Charge Day was just that: over-blown hysteria. I got to work faster today than I have in weeks.
...if /. keeps recycling articles the back button will become obsolete because the forward content will mirror the backward content.
For many people the Tube is more expensive than a bus pass, but due to congestion the buses are impractical. By charging drivers and adding buses you kill two birds with one tax (pollution and congestion). Many of the buses need replacement/repair too. Unfortunately they are not exempting mail service or on-call nurses, so Ken needs a shot in the head and a strong dose of reality. Eventually this should be expanded, but the bus network needs an upgrade first...it can barely handle the current traffic.
;-D The congestion charge is a necessary step for the roads and for our lungs, but I don't know if it will work in it's current incarnation: I think Ken has rushed into this one to create a legacy for himself.
Half of the problem comes from the people in the city. Every day I walk 25 minutes from work to get the bus because the road nearby is too crowded, and in doing so I pass a long line of half-filled cars and half-filled buses. If Londoners ever hear of the word car-pooling, 50% of the congestion would vanish instantly, but they are too concerned with driving their fsking Benzes and Porsches to work to notice that they themselves are the problem.
The problem with the Tube is that it needs heavy maintenance right now, but the network is so huge and the city is so reliant on it that it is difficult to undertake any major work. Barring major incidents (such as the derailing of a train on the Central line and the subsequent 2-month closure of the line) all that is carried out is patchwork, and a couple of undercover investigations by local news have shown just how corrupt and lazy the maintenance crews can be.
Considering that there will actually be a ~£200 million difference in the income Ken originally reported and what he will actually get, work on the order of implementing new lines is impossible.
Goverment will insist they improve the existing service, and this is where privatization rears its ugly head.
They are about to semi-privatize the Tube, and those that are taking over have ZERO obligation to improve performance. In fact, they can let performance slide by 3-5%, IIRC, without penalty. They will get financial bonuses for improved performance.
Given the sorry state of the recently privatized overland train services we all know that the Underground is going to go down the Tubes shortly
Fortunately, I will be out of London when the excrement _really_ hits the air circulator!
(Warning: 86% of the statistics in this paragraph were made up on the spot)
Hee hee hee
I have used computers for geometry optimization of molecules, and a 20-atom structure can take days on a high enough basis set. Just last summer I was calculating electron density around a moderately-large molecule using HyperChem, a Windows-based PC molecular modeling program, but I ran out of space on my biggest HD partition (10 of 40GB) because it has to stockpile all it's solutions, and I was still only 0.1% finished after 1 day of computation on my Athlon 1.2 with 0.5GB RAM. So yes, I completely agree with you about needing affordable faster/stronger computing.
Unfortunately, except for these applications, there is no need for faster computers in the mass market, but _only_ want. If it was announced tomorrow that we are at the top of the x86 performance mountain, I figure that 8/10 of users would get along just fine with their current processor, and the rest would be able to get a very cheap upgrade to serve the purpose.
So I share your perspective, but I am taking into consideration the way things are in the mass market now and how things should be, ie. the majority of people and businesses should perhaps be more concerned with "How can I get the most out of what I have" rather than "How can I find a way to buy that new CPU".
"More power is almost always better in mathematical modeling- I don't expect we'll ever get to the point where we have as much computational power as we want."
If the automotive industry followed this model we would all be driving LeMans 24-hour cars with V16 engines to get to work in the morning, and despite the fact that your 2001 Porsche Boxster works just fine, every time you take it to the garage the mechanics insist it would be much cheaper to haul the engine out and cram at least a V12 in there.
With the exception of research, 99% of computer users have enough power, or rather could have enough power if it were a little cheaper. "Want" is the key word in the above excerpt; I currently run an Athlon 1.2 and GeForce3, but I WANT a faster processor and a better vid card. The point of the article is that people have trouble distinguishing between the two. Google wisely realised that a number of cheap processors is a much better approach than the latest bleeding-edge technology.
At no point did they suggest that research is wrong and has to be stopped ASAP. Their problem is with the way our resources are being allocated: rather than try to produce our current outstanding technology in a more efficient and accessible way we are fixated on making everything faster and bigger.
No, he altered the definition once transistor density growth slowed a little. Moore's Law v1.1 relates to data density instead, so performance is now a little closer to the truth.
You are missing the point. The original poster asserted that the reason the capacitors are popping is because manufacturers are forced to cut costs to make cheaper products. My point was that the cost of the capacitor fluid has very little influence on the cost of a MB that is targeted for the (for example) $250-300 range.
"You honestly think $300 is expensive for a motherboard?"
I didn't say that, but you somehow read it from my post...anyways, I am sure you can get much more expensive boards than that but, again, that isn't the point.
Here in England it takes a week to replace your debit card. I have had replacement _credit cards_ issued to me faster than that back in Canada!
;-(
I will definitely resist switching to fully plastic transactions as long as possible. There is just something nice about having physical money in your pocket. It is easier to remember how much of it you have, too. (instead of hunting down a bank machine to get a transaction slip because you want a large sundae instead of a small) And I think that business/government knows enough about me as it is, so I have a vested interest in keeping what I can away from them for as long as possible.
It isn't paranoia if everyone is after you
I hardly call $250-300 ASUS motherboards "pushed-cheaper" "componentry"(?). I'll go out on a limb and say that cheap capacitor fluid doesn't drop the price by a significant amount. If the boards start being pressed on stale Melba toast and shipped in Tupperware containers, then I will really get worried :-)
Commercialism isn't the problem, it is unscrupulous business practice. Ethical and commercial are not mutually exclusive, believe it or not. It is just getting harder to separate the two...
Happily running an A7V266 with my fingers, toes and eyes crossed.
I think his point is that most of the world does not use Imperial measurements, and the scientific community definitely does not (with some exceptions, of course), so why is it still around?
The Celcius scale is more straightforward than the Farenheit scale, while the Kelvin scale is more tedious to work with. If you need a really stable scale that won't change appreciably in different environments then Kelvin is the scale of choice.
Hence, for accurate measurements & calculations we use Kelvin but for everyday work, ie. "reflux solution at 120degC", we use Celcius. Another reason no one in science uses pounds/ounces or feet/yards because it is easier to work with units that follow a base 10 system.
And what is the problem with having a system of measures designed by committee? That doesn't mean that there isn't good reasoning behind most of the choices!
If I had a nickel for everyone who said that today...