Have you looked at tuition and book costs these days? At EMU, grad-level classes are about $1K apiece between tuition, fees, and books. Subtract $300 for undergrad classes. Figure $4K-$5K per full time semester. Whatever job you get will make a dent in that but won't cover it, especially if you have living expenses. The UofM a few miles down the road charges double what EMU does, for the priviledge of being taught by TAs (Teaching Assistants) who generally don't speak English very well.
Now, if EMU hadn't torched $5 MILLION on the new President's McMansion, maybe tuition would be slightly lower. They claim it'll help with fundraising. Personally, if I was a donor and I saw that palace, I'd assume that EMU had more money than they knew what to do with, but I'm not in the plutocrat set so maybe I just don't understand these things. Not that plutocrats would be slumming at EMU...
Anyhow, these days you may well be better off burning through classes as quickly as possible and racking up debt. Definitely do the Spring/Summer semester classes. Do co-op, by all means, since that directly helps your career (best thing I did as an undergrad). Other than that, minimize your expenses and study, study, study.
Many dual-cpu boards tie all the memory to one cpu, slowing down the other one.
Many don't, and in either case you have lower latency than Intel's solution.
Various versions of the AMD64 architecture are unreasonably expensive.
<cough>Itanium</cough>.
I've heard rumors of Linux incompatibility with various boards and bioses.
Ooooh, rumors!
AMD is also in the act of outsourcing it's IT staff to India. While Intel undoubtedly does the same...
AMD, Intel, world + dog. I don't like it either but they'll figure out it's a bad idea soon enough.
AMD's planning with Microsoft Win64 release was also obviously lackluster if Intel was able to delay it.
Assuming that rumor is true. The excuse that Microsoft is waiting on WinXP SP2 with its security fixes, including support for security features in the AMD64 series (buffer overrun protection), is a good one. Securing WinXP has got to be a bitch.
Meanwhile, you can buy an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU for barely over $200, and an ASUS K8V Deluxe board for a bit over $130. And you'll drop power consumption by enabling AMD's Cool & Quiet. Why bother with Intel's power-wasting, inefficient P4?
Iran had/has lots of gear we sold them before the Shah fell. F-4's even, though I doubt many are airworthy at this point. That Iranian soldiers had M-14 rifles really doesn't surprise me.
Iraq received their chemical/biological gear and training by bureaucratic f---up rather than policy. The Commerce Department bureaucrats should never have authorized shipments (to "Baghdad University", etc), the universities (here and in Europe) shouldn't have allowed Iraqi scientists into militarily sensitive programs (but to deny them would be discrimination, horrors!). The Pentagon was seriously pissed that it happened but there was nothing that they could do and, like I said, letting Iran win wasn't an option.
The minimal help we gave Saddam within the limited goal of preventing Iraq from being overrun pales in comparison to the greed of the French, Germans, and Russians in lining their pockets with Iraqi oil money. "Heavily financed"? Have you looked at who's screaming about getting their Saddam-era debts repaid? Any wonder why they're so anxious about America helping make Iraq into a proper democracy?
National security takes precedent over the "invisible hand".
A big,,!,, to the leftists who keep modding down my posts. Your Orwellian definition of "freedom of speech" never ceases to amaze me.
France have every right to hold their own opinions, does America think that just because they caught Saddam they now have the moral superiority of everyone?
Yes, France has the right to hold their own opinions, and America has a right to tell France to go take a flying leap.
Does liberating a nation ruled by a dictator who murdered hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen make America morally superior to the French who actively supported that dictator? You betcha. (Yes, we supported him during the Iran-Iraq war, just enough to keep Iraq from losing but not enough to win. Nearly all his weaponry has always been from France and Russia though. I assume no one is foolish enough to think that an Iranian victory would have been a good thing?)
The site should be chosen on scientific suitability and somewhere where it wont be at risk of sabotage or control by any one government
As another poster noted, France sells their technology to anyone with the necessary cash. They sold Iraq their first nuclear reactor (that the Israelis presciently destroyed). Setting up a state-of-the-art nuclear technology project with (partly) American money in a country as amoral as France would be stupid beyond words. And, quite frankly, when someone says "state-of-the-art technology" I think Japan far sooner than I think France.
Execution protection prevents code execution from data pages such as the default heap, various stacks, and memory pools. Protection can be applied in both user and kernel-mode. As execution protection prevents data execution from the stack, the specific exploit leveraged by the recent MSBlaster worm would have resulted in a memory access violation and termination of the process. On a system with execution protection, MSBlaster would have been limited to a Denial-of-Service (DOS) attack, but would not have had the ability to replicate and spread to other systems. This would have significantly limited the scope and impact of the worm. And although MSBlaster in its original form may have been less malicious, it should be noted that execution protection is by no means a comprehensive defense against all viruses, worms, and other malicious code.
The actual hardware implementation of execution protection and marking of the virtual memory page varies by processor architecture. However, processors supporting execution protection are capable of raising an exception when code is executed from a page marked with the appropriate attribute set. The 32-bit version of Windows currently leverages the NX processor feature, as defined by the AMD64 Architecture Programmer's Manual. This processor feature requires the processor run in Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode.
Although the only currently shipping processor families with Windows-compatible hardware support for execution protection are the AMD K8 and the Intel Itanium Processor Family, it is expected that future 32 and 64-bit processors will provide execution protection. Microsoft is preparing for and encouraging this trend by supporting execution protection in its flagship Windows operating systems.
This kills a whole class of worm attacks. So when your boss asks you why you want a shiny new Athlon 64 to replace your current piece of crap, you can say "See? This gear would have protected us from last month's worm infestation if it had been available. It's not that expensive and we should upgrade anyhow. Don't let Purchasing give you any static about switching to a vendor that sells AMD based machines. Unreal Tournament 2004? I know not of what you speak, sir..."
I'm looking forward to a full Intel^3 (cpu/chipset/board) solution for ultimate stability.
Yeah, and you should go with Microsoft Windows XP for the ultimate security.
Seriously, get an ASUS K8V Deluxe and Athlon 64 3000+ like Loki said. My last several boards have been ASUS and they've all been great. I haven't installed Linux on my K8V yet though, waiting on SATA RAID support in 64-bit (Mandrake 9.2 for x86-64 might get it first?). There's no point in spending over $200 for a 32-bit-only CPU anymore. AMD's Cool and Quiet feature will trim your electric bill a bit too. I recommend the Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu heatsink/fan kit, and Arctic Silver thermal compound natch.
Personally, I wondered why Hong Kong banks didn't get together and go buy a small South American country, like Peru.
That only works when the people in the country you're buying land in have a VERY solid concept and implementation of property rights. South American governments tend to be a bit shaky about that. Even if you did buy up the land successfully, sent over enough citizens to be the majority, declared it "New Taiwan" or such, you'd still have to defend it from a bunch of neighbors who probably won't like you any more than your old neighbors did. There's nothing like success to piss people off.
Taiwan is pretty defensable, what with being an island and all. China would take heavy casualties trying to invade, its several hundred ballistic missiles pointed at Taiwan notwithstanding, and given China's brutal one-child policy I doubt the Chinese people would put up with their "little emperors" getting KIA'd for the greater glory of the Communist Party. That doesn't mean the ChiCom's won't try it though.
Israel, OTOH, is in an awful position geographically. They've stayed alive because they know how to build their own tanks and Arab dictatorships don't fight worth a damn. Yes, it'd make more sense to just buy up a chunk of land in the middle of America, kinda like the Mormons did with Utah, but at the time setting up Israel probably seemed like a good idea. Oops. Best bet is to hope that the newly liberated Iraq develops a functioning democracy, that Iraq's neighbors copy them, and the rule that democracies don't make war with other democracies holds. It's a longshot, but what else are you going to do?
Chipzilla bungs IBM $18 million to keep Intel Inside
The awesome power of marketing coop funds
By Eva Glass: Friday 05 December 2003, 08:33 NAOMI SAYS that IBM's attitude towards AMD and its pesky Opteron chips is lackluster, at best.
Just like in the old days when different divisions of Big Blue used to compete with each other to sell RS systems, AS/400s, big tin and PCs, Sam Palmisano doesn't have a corporate wide policy towards AMD she says.
So every marketing manager gets to have her or his say in what goes down. Take, for instance the x325. IBM engineers, she says, did little more than to do the metalwork, while a Taiwanese company made the living giblets at the heart of the machine. MSI she murmured, MSI.
She also says that the small server division kindly accepted something like $18 million from Intel's capacious marketing funds to stop whingeing about Opteron chips and get with the Xeon game.
If you're expecting 2U or 4U Opteron boxes in the next three months or so, said Naomi, think again. The 1U system won't go in a 2U box easily because the mechanicals are all wrong.
And Fortuna 500 folk think there's not enough management features for these machines anyway.
Sheesh!
OTOH, the Tier 1 vendors keep losing market share to the white box makers. Golly, wonder why.
Anyone try one of these yet? (Bottom of the page, Super Silencer retail box.pdf) Seasonic is claiming significantly greater efficiency than your average PC power supply. I've got one on order (less waste heat ==> less fan noise, and I want QUIET, dammit!), I'll see if it makes a difference on my UPS's load meter. Anyone already have one?
LCD monitors. If you have the money (yeah, big if) and don't have a really good excuse for running a CRT, buy one. 19" panels are the best bang/buck. Samsung is my favorite brand at the moment. Get a TV tuner card (or one of those ViewSonic N5 convertor boxes so you can shut the PC off) and ditch the separate TV.
Athlon 64. AMD's Cool & Quiet works very well, I think it was enabled by default in the ASUS K8V BIOS. It drops to 800MHz when you're not doing much and the power consumption goes way down. Even under full load it burns much less power than high-end P4s (65W vs. 100W?). AMD has made substantial progress on transistor leakage, Intel hasn't. The upcoming Intel Prescott "Blast Furnace Edition" (over 100W) ought to be banned from dorms.
Yes, you could go with a notebook, but they're just not the same...
Anyhow, since an awful lot of students have a lot more money than I did as an undergrad (WTF is with all the cell phones?!), maybe some of this is useful?
Yes, normally you'd be right, but Iran is getting awfully close to building nuclear bombs, so doing ANYTHING that could aid that effort is frowned upon. Sometimes you have to sacrifice long-term projects when the short-term can get people killed. Whether IEEE participation has any effect on the Iranian theocracy's nuclear program would be a much better question.
China is already a nuclear power and moving in the right direction, plus with the possible exception of that one jet fighter pilot (whom the ChiCom government *swears* was outmaneuvered by the 40-year-old propeller driven American cargo plane fully loaded with crew and equipment) they're not suicidal. We can take more chances with them. If the Iranian theocrats aren't suicidal themselves they have a reasonably large suicide cult at their disposal, so I'd rather they not get ahold of anything remotely related to NBC technology if at all possible.
Why is the AMD64 version of RHEL WS 3.0 so expensive? With a disproportionate number of x86-64 owners likely to be Linux users, the rapid growth of x86-64 sales, and given that the engineering effort to port to x86-64 had to have been a helluva lot less than what it took to port to the niche-market Intel Itanium, I don't understand Red Hat's pricing decision, especially given the much more modest 64-bit premiums charged by other Linux vendors. Since Microsoft has dropped the ball on x86-64 support in Windows (release version at some ambiguous date well into 2004), why isn't Red Hat using this as an opportunity to rack up sales?
For personal use, I'm anxiously awaiting the first beta.iso set of Fedora for x86-64. Obviously I want to recommend RHEL to business users though.
Agreed, but in addition, it's interesting how GDP growth was the best it's been in 19 years. 19 years ago was about 2 years after Reagan's tax cuts had taken effect, and now we're 2 years into the Bush tax cuts. The marginal rate cuts have a BIG impact on small businesses (most of which are "pass-through entities", sole proprietorships and whatnot, which are taxed at the individual and not the corporate level), and the accelerated capital equipment deductions help too.
From the Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice:
Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; passed in 1978) court to issue orders for business records in international-terrorism or espionage cases -- just as federal grand juries have long been able to obtain the same records through subpoenas in ordinary criminal cases. Records can be obtained under section 215 only through a court order (not, as Mr. Lynch states, through a "subpoena"), and only if the court determines that the FBI is legally entitled to them (the FBI has no authority to issue such orders unilaterally).
Section 215 of the Patriot Act does not make it "a crime for anyone who has been served with a subpoena to speak to anyone about the matter." However, Section 215's confidentiality rule is necessary to protect our national security, and is based on nondisclosure orders that courts always have been able to enter in ordinary criminal cases. For example, the judge in the Kobe Bryant case may order the news media to refrain from divulging information about the alleged victim's personal life, in order to protect her privacy. In the same way, if we were to serve a court order on a flight-training school to find out if a Mohammed Atta is taking flight lessons, we obviously would not want the school to tell Atta, who might then accelerate his terrorist plot. As with any court order, the FISA-court can consider sanction, but the Patriot Act does not make such violations criminal offenses.
We do enthusiastically welcome debate about the Patriot Act and invite all Americans to learn the facts about this important legislation by logging on to www.lifeandliberty.gov. Our new website includes an overview of the Patriot Act, its entire text, statements from Members of Congress explaining the law, factual information dispelling some of the major myths perpetuated about the act, as well as other information.
Read the whole article here, which is in response to another article on the same website.
If Google needs to raise capital to buy capital equipment (more server farms, etc) they otherwise wouldn't be able to pay for, OK. If they need the money to hire people they don't currently have the cash to hire, OK. But it sure sounds like they're just cashing out.
Ideally, Google should stay private and either implement a profit-sharing plan or give employees equity in the company and pay dividends. Of course, dividends are still double-taxed (taxed at the corporate level and taxed again when received by the stockholder), severely limiting what would otherwise be a VERY useful talent recruitment/retention tool. Tax-wise profit sharing probably makes more sense.
If they're still thinking of going public, they should go read Sarbanes-Oxley, listen to Elliot Spitzer (New York's attorney general), or listen to the numerous trial lawyers who will shake them down every time their share price drops. Especially while the American legal environment is so fscked up (accounting malpractice insurance is getting to be as expensive as it is for doctors), if you don't have to go public, DON'T DO IT!
Not to get all tin-foil-hat here, but might Intel's equity investment in Red Hat a while back have something to do with RH's AMD64 pricing? RH has to have a x86-64 offering, it'd be suicidal not to, but setting the price equal to the Itanic version might keep Intel happy, even though there's no way the x86-64 version could require anywhere near the resources to develop or support as the Itanic version, not to mention the fact that the x86-64 platform has already well outsold the Itanic (bigger customer base to spread the costs over).
Part of AMDs point with x86-64 is that you "get 64 bit for free". Someone should clue in Red Hat.
I've researched their business strategies fervently...and these people know what they are doing with open source software.
Except for their limiting x86-64 support to their enterprise version and not including it in the-version-that-follows-9 (codenamed Severn), which has me (a paid-up RHN subscriber) looking at SuSE 9. Yeah, because Linux geeks just aren't going to be interested in playing with shiny new toys like the Athlon 64 or multiprocessor Opteron machines...
(No, I don't have one. Yet. Been busy with classes. Trying to hold out for a semi-affordable Athlon 64 notebook. This one is exceptionally nice, but not quite within my budget, sigh.)
Then again, that still puts RH well ahead of Microsoft. Hey Bill, thanks for the encouragement to switch over to Linux full-time!
I got another automated call today from "Jeffrey Caldwell at the National Consumer Council" today. You probably know the message. The FTC has heard of them. They're a "nonprofit" front for a couple of commercial companies.
I filed a complaint, though that "nonprofit" bit might shield the bastards. Other than those folks, I don't think I've received a telemarketing call in the past few days. Good riddance!
1) The tax code. It's too expensive to comply with the tens of thousands of pages of federal tax regs. Copy the Russians and pass a flat income tax. This does wonders for compliance too: it's just not worth dodging the lower rate, especially when the government is now able to do a helluva lot more audits. Cuts corruption big-time as well.
2) Lawyers. We're feeding trial lawyers when we should be feeding engineers. Everything from the SCO idiocy to suing McDonald's because some maroon burned themself spilling hot coffee on their lap. We're running doctors out of business with ridiculous lawsuits. Not sure precisely what to do here, but capping "pain and suffering" damages would be a good start. "Loser pays" is worth considering, at least in a limited way (it's too easy to shake down small businesses with the threat of litigation expenses right now).
3) Education. School choice. The thousands of Detroit government school teachers who marched on Lansing, shutting down the Detroit Public School System for that day in the process, are a clear-cut argument in favor of school choice. Let parents find the best schools for their kids. It's clear that the top-down approach we've been using at what laughably passes for "education reform" isn't working.
4) Pass a federal law banning the granting of telecommunications (telephone, cable TV, Internet) monopolies. Yes, this is pulling rank and keeping the takings clause from kicking in will get interesting, but it'd go a long way towards bringing competitors into the high-speed Internet market. I want my fiber-to-the-home 100Mbps Ethernet and HDTV over multicast IP, dammit!
That's a good start. From there, we'll have to ride things out until India and China get closer to our standard of living (halfway would be good enough), if their governments can manage not to screw that up. That's a big if, but at least China has Taiwan and Hong Kong to teach them. On the bright side for us, a hefty chunk of the brightest Indians and Chinese live over here:-).
Seriously. The telcos and cable companies shouldn't have to share their hardware. However, local governments need to make it as easy as possible for competitors to get approval to build new networks. Fiber-to-the-home, anyone? HDTV over IP multicast? The "monopolies" are vulnerable if anyone wants to give it a shot.
If the "monopolies" started doing dumb things like blocking Internet traffic between their subscribers and Mom & Pop Internet Co., then you'd have a case for regulation, assuming the free market didn't smack them for such foolishness first. But making companies share their plant to the point that the "competitor" is just a marketeer slapping their name on the same service is silly. Powell is right.
This is not a zero-sum game. If Global Warming destroys China, Brazil etc it will also destroy the US.
You're still assuming that humans are responsible for global climate change. I say that charge is a ruse designed to hobble America. Global temps will rise and fall regardless of what we do.
Go and study the subject and you will discover the Europeans are taking serious steps to cut back on CO2 emissions.
Which is easier for them with their much higher population densities and less productive economies, but even then they still aren't making the grade.
I'm all in favor of replacing coal-fired power plants with nuclear, THAT would do wonders for reducing air polution in general, but the enviros will never allow it.
And a big,,!,, to whoever modded down my last post. Damn leftist censors.
When China, India, Brazil, and other such "developing" countries are held to the same standards that America and other "developed" coutries are supposed to be held to by the Kyoto Treaty, when the pretentious Europeans actually meet those standards themselves, and when the environmentalists figure out that nuclear power would do wonders for reducing CO2 emissions (not to mention sulfer, etc), then maybe I'll believe that the climate change activists are serious and not just out to throw a millstone around America's neck. Meanwhile, I'll note that climate change has been happening for all of recorded history and will continue to happen regardless of anything humans do.
Wake me up when they come up with a mathematical model that you can feed data up to 30 years old to and have it predict what temperatures actually are today and the past few years. AFAIK no one has ever been able to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you looked at tuition and book costs these days? At EMU, grad-level classes are about $1K apiece between tuition, fees, and books. Subtract $300 for undergrad classes. Figure $4K-$5K per full time semester. Whatever job you get will make a dent in that but won't cover it, especially if you have living expenses. The UofM a few miles down the road charges double what EMU does, for the priviledge of being taught by TAs (Teaching Assistants) who generally don't speak English very well.
Now, if EMU hadn't torched $5 MILLION on the new President's McMansion, maybe tuition would be slightly lower. They claim it'll help with fundraising. Personally, if I was a donor and I saw that palace, I'd assume that EMU had more money than they knew what to do with, but I'm not in the plutocrat set so maybe I just don't understand these things. Not that plutocrats would be slumming at EMU...
Anyhow, these days you may well be better off burning through classes as quickly as possible and racking up debt. Definitely do the Spring/Summer semester classes. Do co-op, by all means, since that directly helps your career (best thing I did as an undergrad). Other than that, minimize your expenses and study, study, study.
Many dual-cpu boards tie all the memory to one cpu, slowing down the other one.
Many don't, and in either case you have lower latency than Intel's solution.
Various versions of the AMD64 architecture are unreasonably expensive.
<cough>Itanium</cough>.
I've heard rumors of Linux incompatibility with various boards and bioses.
Ooooh, rumors!
AMD is also in the act of outsourcing it's IT staff to India. While Intel undoubtedly does the same...
AMD, Intel, world + dog. I don't like it either but they'll figure out it's a bad idea soon enough.
AMD's planning with Microsoft Win64 release was also obviously lackluster if Intel was able to delay it.
Assuming that rumor is true. The excuse that Microsoft is waiting on WinXP SP2 with its security fixes, including support for security features in the AMD64 series (buffer overrun protection), is a good one. Securing WinXP has got to be a bitch.
Meanwhile, you can buy an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU for barely over $200, and an ASUS K8V Deluxe board for a bit over $130. And you'll drop power consumption by enabling AMD's Cool & Quiet. Why bother with Intel's power-wasting, inefficient P4?
Iran had/has lots of gear we sold them before the Shah fell. F-4's even, though I doubt many are airworthy at this point. That Iranian soldiers had M-14 rifles really doesn't surprise me.
,,!,, to the leftists who keep modding down my posts. Your Orwellian definition of "freedom of speech" never ceases to amaze me.
Iraq received their chemical/biological gear and training by bureaucratic f---up rather than policy. The Commerce Department bureaucrats should never have authorized shipments (to "Baghdad University", etc), the universities (here and in Europe) shouldn't have allowed Iraqi scientists into militarily sensitive programs (but to deny them would be discrimination, horrors!). The Pentagon was seriously pissed that it happened but there was nothing that they could do and, like I said, letting Iran win wasn't an option.
The minimal help we gave Saddam within the limited goal of preventing Iraq from being overrun pales in comparison to the greed of the French, Germans, and Russians in lining their pockets with Iraqi oil money. "Heavily financed"? Have you looked at who's screaming about getting their Saddam-era debts repaid? Any wonder why they're so anxious about America helping make Iraq into a proper democracy?
National security takes precedent over the "invisible hand".
A big
France have every right to hold their own opinions, does America think that just because they caught Saddam they now have the moral superiority of everyone?
Yes, France has the right to hold their own opinions, and America has a right to tell France to go take a flying leap.
Does liberating a nation ruled by a dictator who murdered hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen make America morally superior to the French who actively supported that dictator? You betcha. (Yes, we supported him during the Iran-Iraq war, just enough to keep Iraq from losing but not enough to win. Nearly all his weaponry has always been from France and Russia though. I assume no one is foolish enough to think that an Iranian victory would have been a good thing?)
The site should be chosen on scientific suitability and somewhere where it wont be at risk of sabotage or control by any one government
As another poster noted, France sells their technology to anyone with the necessary cash. They sold Iraq their first nuclear reactor (that the Israelis presciently destroyed). Setting up a state-of-the-art nuclear technology project with (partly) American money in a country as amoral as France would be stupid beyond words. And, quite frankly, when someone says "state-of-the-art technology" I think Japan far sooner than I think France.
MSDN talks about this too:
Execution protection prevents code execution from data pages such as the default heap, various stacks, and memory pools. Protection can be applied in both user and kernel-mode. As execution protection prevents data execution from the stack, the specific exploit leveraged by the recent MSBlaster worm would have resulted in a memory access violation and termination of the process. On a system with execution protection, MSBlaster would have been limited to a Denial-of-Service (DOS) attack, but would not have had the ability to replicate and spread to other systems. This would have significantly limited the scope and impact of the worm. And although MSBlaster in its original form may have been less malicious, it should be noted that execution protection is by no means a comprehensive defense against all viruses, worms, and other malicious code.
The actual hardware implementation of execution protection and marking of the virtual memory page varies by processor architecture. However, processors supporting execution protection are capable of raising an exception when code is executed from a page marked with the appropriate attribute set. The 32-bit version of Windows currently leverages the NX processor feature, as defined by the AMD64 Architecture Programmer's Manual. This processor feature requires the processor run in Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode.
Although the only currently shipping processor families with Windows-compatible hardware support for execution protection are the AMD K8 and the Intel Itanium Processor Family, it is expected that future 32 and 64-bit processors will provide execution protection. Microsoft is preparing for and encouraging this trend by supporting execution protection in its flagship Windows operating systems.
This kills a whole class of worm attacks. So when your boss asks you why you want a shiny new Athlon 64 to replace your current piece of crap, you can say "See? This gear would have protected us from last month's worm infestation if it had been available. It's not that expensive and we should upgrade anyhow. Don't let Purchasing give you any static about switching to a vendor that sells AMD based machines. Unreal Tournament 2004? I know not of what you speak, sir..."
I'm looking forward to a full Intel^3 (cpu/chipset/board) solution for ultimate stability.
Yeah, and you should go with Microsoft Windows XP for the ultimate security.
Seriously, get an ASUS K8V Deluxe and Athlon 64 3000+ like Loki said. My last several boards have been ASUS and they've all been great. I haven't installed Linux on my K8V yet though, waiting on SATA RAID support in 64-bit (Mandrake 9.2 for x86-64 might get it first?). There's no point in spending over $200 for a 32-bit-only CPU anymore. AMD's Cool and Quiet feature will trim your electric bill a bit too. I recommend the Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu heatsink/fan kit, and Arctic Silver thermal compound natch.
Personally, I wondered why Hong Kong banks didn't get together and go buy a small South American country, like Peru.
That only works when the people in the country you're buying land in have a VERY solid concept and implementation of property rights. South American governments tend to be a bit shaky about that. Even if you did buy up the land successfully, sent over enough citizens to be the majority, declared it "New Taiwan" or such, you'd still have to defend it from a bunch of neighbors who probably won't like you any more than your old neighbors did. There's nothing like success to piss people off.
Taiwan is pretty defensable, what with being an island and all. China would take heavy casualties trying to invade, its several hundred ballistic missiles pointed at Taiwan notwithstanding, and given China's brutal one-child policy I doubt the Chinese people would put up with their "little emperors" getting KIA'd for the greater glory of the Communist Party. That doesn't mean the ChiCom's won't try it though.
Israel, OTOH, is in an awful position geographically. They've stayed alive because they know how to build their own tanks and Arab dictatorships don't fight worth a damn. Yes, it'd make more sense to just buy up a chunk of land in the middle of America, kinda like the Mormons did with Utah, but at the time setting up Israel probably seemed like a good idea. Oops. Best bet is to hope that the newly liberated Iraq develops a functioning democracy, that Iraq's neighbors copy them, and the rule that democracies don't make war with other democracies holds. It's a longshot, but what else are you going to do?
Is Intel so intreched that their value doesn't even matter any more?
Sadly, yes. From today's Inquirer:
Chipzilla bungs IBM $18 million to keep Intel Inside
The awesome power of marketing coop funds
By Eva Glass: Friday 05 December 2003, 08:33
NAOMI SAYS that IBM's attitude towards AMD and its pesky Opteron chips is lackluster, at best.
Just like in the old days when different divisions of Big Blue used to compete with each other to sell RS systems, AS/400s, big tin and PCs, Sam Palmisano doesn't have a corporate wide policy towards AMD she says.
So every marketing manager gets to have her or his say in what goes down. Take, for instance the x325. IBM engineers, she says, did little more than to do the metalwork, while a Taiwanese company made the living giblets at the heart of the machine. MSI she murmured, MSI.
She also says that the small server division kindly accepted something like $18 million from Intel's capacious marketing funds to stop whingeing about Opteron chips and get with the Xeon game.
If you're expecting 2U or 4U Opteron boxes in the next three months or so, said Naomi, think again. The 1U system won't go in a 2U box easily because the mechanicals are all wrong.
And Fortuna 500 folk think there's not enough management features for these machines anyway.
Sheesh!
OTOH, the Tier 1 vendors keep losing market share to the white box makers. Golly, wonder why.
Anyone try one of these yet? (Bottom of the page, Super Silencer retail box .pdf) Seasonic is claiming significantly greater efficiency than your average PC power supply. I've got one on order (less waste heat ==> less fan noise, and I want QUIET, dammit!), I'll see if it makes a difference on my UPS's load meter. Anyone already have one?
LCD monitors. If you have the money (yeah, big if) and don't have a really good excuse for running a CRT, buy one. 19" panels are the best bang/buck. Samsung is my favorite brand at the moment. Get a TV tuner card (or one of those ViewSonic N5 convertor boxes so you can shut the PC off) and ditch the separate TV.
Athlon 64. AMD's Cool & Quiet works very well, I think it was enabled by default in the ASUS K8V BIOS. It drops to 800MHz when you're not doing much and the power consumption goes way down. Even under full load it burns much less power than high-end P4s (65W vs. 100W?). AMD has made substantial progress on transistor leakage, Intel hasn't. The upcoming Intel Prescott "Blast Furnace Edition" (over 100W) ought to be banned from dorms.
Yes, you could go with a notebook, but they're just not the same...
Anyhow, since an awful lot of students have a lot more money than I did as an undergrad (WTF is with all the cell phones?!), maybe some of this is useful?
Norwegian 9 year old sentenced to 140 years in prison in Guantanamo.
No, not Guantanamo, but the MPAA lawyers will threaten to get him sentenced to Neverland Ranch...
Yes, normally you'd be right, but Iran is getting awfully close to building nuclear bombs, so doing ANYTHING that could aid that effort is frowned upon. Sometimes you have to sacrifice long-term projects when the short-term can get people killed. Whether IEEE participation has any effect on the Iranian theocracy's nuclear program would be a much better question.
China is already a nuclear power and moving in the right direction, plus with the possible exception of that one jet fighter pilot (whom the ChiCom government *swears* was outmaneuvered by the 40-year-old propeller driven American cargo plane fully loaded with crew and equipment) they're not suicidal. We can take more chances with them. If the Iranian theocrats aren't suicidal themselves they have a reasonably large suicide cult at their disposal, so I'd rather they not get ahold of anything remotely related to NBC technology if at all possible.
Why is the AMD64 version of RHEL WS 3.0 so expensive? With a disproportionate number of x86-64 owners likely to be Linux users, the rapid growth of x86-64 sales, and given that the engineering effort to port to x86-64 had to have been a helluva lot less than what it took to port to the niche-market Intel Itanium, I don't understand Red Hat's pricing decision, especially given the much more modest 64-bit premiums charged by other Linux vendors. Since Microsoft has dropped the ball on x86-64 support in Windows (release version at some ambiguous date well into 2004), why isn't Red Hat using this as an opportunity to rack up sales?
.iso set of Fedora for x86-64. Obviously I want to recommend RHEL to business users though.
For personal use, I'm anxiously awaiting the first beta
Agreed, but in addition, it's interesting how GDP growth was the best it's been in 19 years. 19 years ago was about 2 years after Reagan's tax cuts had taken effect, and now we're 2 years into the Bush tax cuts. The marginal rate cuts have a BIG impact on small businesses (most of which are "pass-through entities", sole proprietorships and whatnot, which are taxed at the individual and not the corporate level), and the accelerated capital equipment deductions help too.
From the Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice:
Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; passed in 1978) court to issue orders for business records in international-terrorism or espionage cases -- just as federal grand juries have long been able to obtain the same records through subpoenas in ordinary criminal cases. Records can be obtained under section 215 only through a court order (not, as Mr. Lynch states, through a "subpoena"), and only if the court determines that the FBI is legally entitled to them (the FBI has no authority to issue such orders unilaterally).
Section 215 of the Patriot Act does not make it "a crime for anyone who has been served with a subpoena to speak to anyone about the matter." However, Section 215's confidentiality rule is necessary to protect our national security, and is based on nondisclosure orders that courts always have been able to enter in ordinary criminal cases. For example, the judge in the Kobe Bryant case may order the news media to refrain from divulging information about the alleged victim's personal life, in order to protect her privacy. In the same way, if we were to serve a court order on a flight-training school to find out if a Mohammed Atta is taking flight lessons, we obviously would not want the school to tell Atta, who might then accelerate his terrorist plot. As with any court order, the FISA-court can consider sanction, but the Patriot Act does not make such violations criminal offenses.
We do enthusiastically welcome debate about the Patriot Act and invite all Americans to learn the facts about this important legislation by logging on to www.lifeandliberty.gov. Our new website includes an overview of the Patriot Act, its entire text, statements from Members of Congress explaining the law, factual information dispelling some of the major myths perpetuated about the act, as well as other information.
Read the whole article here, which is in response to another article on the same website.
Another Patriot Act article.
and SuSE isn't.
C'mon, charging Itanic prices for Red Hat Enterprise for x86-64 and having NO x86-64 support in Fedora Core? What is Red Hat thinking?
SuSE, OTOH, supports the x86-64 chips (AMD Opteron, Athlon 64) much more broadly. As does Mandrake.
Maybe when Red Hat sees users jumping ship to other Linux distros they'll get in gear.
If Google needs to raise capital to buy capital equipment (more server farms, etc) they otherwise wouldn't be able to pay for, OK. If they need the money to hire people they don't currently have the cash to hire, OK. But it sure sounds like they're just cashing out.
Ideally, Google should stay private and either implement a profit-sharing plan or give employees equity in the company and pay dividends. Of course, dividends are still double-taxed (taxed at the corporate level and taxed again when received by the stockholder), severely limiting what would otherwise be a VERY useful talent recruitment/retention tool. Tax-wise profit sharing probably makes more sense.
If they're still thinking of going public, they should go read Sarbanes-Oxley, listen to Elliot Spitzer (New York's attorney general), or listen to the numerous trial lawyers who will shake them down every time their share price drops. Especially while the American legal environment is so fscked up (accounting malpractice insurance is getting to be as expensive as it is for doctors), if you don't have to go public, DON'T DO IT!
Not to get all tin-foil-hat here, but might Intel's equity investment in Red Hat a while back have something to do with RH's AMD64 pricing? RH has to have a x86-64 offering, it'd be suicidal not to, but setting the price equal to the Itanic version might keep Intel happy, even though there's no way the x86-64 version could require anywhere near the resources to develop or support as the Itanic version, not to mention the fact that the x86-64 platform has already well outsold the Itanic (bigger customer base to spread the costs over).
Part of AMDs point with x86-64 is that you "get 64 bit for free". Someone should clue in Red Hat.
I've researched their business strategies fervently...and these people know what they are doing with open source software.
Except for their limiting x86-64 support to their enterprise version and not including it in the-version-that-follows-9 (codenamed Severn), which has me (a paid-up RHN subscriber) looking at SuSE 9. Yeah, because Linux geeks just aren't going to be interested in playing with shiny new toys like the Athlon 64 or multiprocessor Opteron machines...
(No, I don't have one. Yet. Been busy with classes. Trying to hold out for a semi-affordable Athlon 64 notebook. This one is exceptionally nice, but not quite within my budget, sigh.)
Then again, that still puts RH well ahead of Microsoft. Hey Bill, thanks for the encouragement to switch over to Linux full-time!
I got another automated call today from "Jeffrey Caldwell at the National Consumer Council" today. You probably know the message. The FTC has heard of them. They're a "nonprofit" front for a couple of commercial companies.
I filed a complaint, though that "nonprofit" bit might shield the bastards. Other than those folks, I don't think I've received a telemarketing call in the past few days. Good riddance!
1) The tax code. It's too expensive to comply with the tens of thousands of pages of federal tax regs. Copy the Russians and pass a flat income tax. This does wonders for compliance too: it's just not worth dodging the lower rate, especially when the government is now able to do a helluva lot more audits. Cuts corruption big-time as well.
:-).
2) Lawyers. We're feeding trial lawyers when we should be feeding engineers. Everything from the SCO idiocy to suing McDonald's because some maroon burned themself spilling hot coffee on their lap. We're running doctors out of business with ridiculous lawsuits. Not sure precisely what to do here, but capping "pain and suffering" damages would be a good start. "Loser pays" is worth considering, at least in a limited way (it's too easy to shake down small businesses with the threat of litigation expenses right now).
3) Education. School choice. The thousands of Detroit government school teachers who marched on Lansing, shutting down the Detroit Public School System for that day in the process, are a clear-cut argument in favor of school choice. Let parents find the best schools for their kids. It's clear that the top-down approach we've been using at what laughably passes for "education reform" isn't working.
4) Pass a federal law banning the granting of telecommunications (telephone, cable TV, Internet) monopolies. Yes, this is pulling rank and keeping the takings clause from kicking in will get interesting, but it'd go a long way towards bringing competitors into the high-speed Internet market. I want my fiber-to-the-home 100Mbps Ethernet and HDTV over multicast IP, dammit!
That's a good start. From there, we'll have to ride things out until India and China get closer to our standard of living (halfway would be good enough), if their governments can manage not to screw that up. That's a big if, but at least China has Taiwan and Hong Kong to teach them. On the bright side for us, a hefty chunk of the brightest Indians and Chinese live over here
Seriously. The telcos and cable companies shouldn't have to share their hardware. However, local governments need to make it as easy as possible for competitors to get approval to build new networks. Fiber-to-the-home, anyone? HDTV over IP multicast? The "monopolies" are vulnerable if anyone wants to give it a shot.
If the "monopolies" started doing dumb things like blocking Internet traffic between their subscribers and Mom & Pop Internet Co., then you'd have a case for regulation, assuming the free market didn't smack them for such foolishness first. But making companies share their plant to the point that the "competitor" is just a marketeer slapping their name on the same service is silly. Powell is right.
And Mandrake and Red Hat Enterprise (somewhere).
64-bit Windows beta is available via MSDN if you need Evil Empire compatability.
There's even a bootable CD of 64-bit America's Army. Linux based, of course.
Gametab just put up a torrent here.
This is not a zero-sum game. If Global Warming destroys China, Brazil etc it will also destroy the US.
,,!,, to whoever modded down my last post. Damn leftist censors.
You're still assuming that humans are responsible for global climate change. I say that charge is a ruse designed to hobble America. Global temps will rise and fall regardless of what we do.
Go and study the subject and you will discover the Europeans are taking serious steps to cut back on CO2 emissions.
Which is easier for them with their much higher population densities and less productive economies, but even then they still aren't making the grade.
I'm all in favor of replacing coal-fired power plants with nuclear, THAT would do wonders for reducing air polution in general, but the enviros will never allow it.
And a big
When China, India, Brazil, and other such "developing" countries are held to the same standards that America and other "developed" coutries are supposed to be held to by the Kyoto Treaty, when the pretentious Europeans actually meet those standards themselves, and when the environmentalists figure out that nuclear power would do wonders for reducing CO2 emissions (not to mention sulfer, etc), then maybe I'll believe that the climate change activists are serious and not just out to throw a millstone around America's neck. Meanwhile, I'll note that climate change has been happening for all of recorded history and will continue to happen regardless of anything humans do.
Wake me up when they come up with a mathematical model that you can feed data up to 30 years old to and have it predict what temperatures actually are today and the past few years. AFAIK no one has ever been able to do that.