Could someone with hardware insight comment on the feasability of phasing in PPCs inplace of MIPS. Does the MIPS architecture have a justifiable reason to exist, or is it around just for legacy reasons?
The whole argument is called the tragedy of the commons, and is as old as the field itself. The whole point isn't really to give the government money -- the best case would be if the ecotaxes were put in a fund that invested in ecofriendly research, or just sat on the money or something. The point is that you want to hike up the prices of unenvironmental goods so that the consumer can factor that into their utility functions.
As it is now, the concept of environmental impact is very abstract; many adults can't grasp it. However, if you have the choice between paying $30000 for a gasoline car or $15000 for a hybrid, then it becomes more concrete.
This applies doubly to coorporations, some of which are legal obliged to take the lowest price availible for a good, regardless of its economic impact. And this gives them incentive to move to cleaner (perhaps even more expensive processes), if the end price is lower.
The challenge is to set the right taxes for various pollutants. This is of course hard, and the government will get it wrong. But I believe wrong price is better than free.
1)
In the extreme case, there would have to be an unincentive to harm your own property, if you owned enough of it to cause macroscopic damage. While few people would argue that a grove or two of trees is anyone's business other than the owner of the land, if you own a sizeable chunk of the natural forest of the country, then it does become a public concern.
Just throwing out an idea, it might be better to view land ownership (all natural resources perhaps) as a right-to-lease (the property taxes might be seen as the rent). Leased property cannot be unduly damaged (so whilst you could run a forestry business, you couldn't clear cut, which causes erosion). There are probably better ideas. That's the first that sprung to mind.
This has been a bit of a pet peeve with me for some time; I don't see why the government lets companies get away with ignoring external costs to their products.
As it is, only production costs are taken into acocunt by the market, as the good mr. Smith defined it. It makes perfect sense to let the market also factor in environmental costs; however, the only way the market will do this is by having these costs imposed on the goods that create them.
Hence, higher gas taxes to reflect greenhouse effects. Monitors would reflect the negative effects of lead, and CFCs would be really expensive. This might seem horrible, (how can I be advocating higher gas prices at a time like this!) but we're all paying these costs anyway; we might as well make it explicit. And the higher prices would incite (is incent a word?) a move to better methods.
c.f. personal power generation being cleaner per KWh, due to lack of transmission fees. I want to see this reflected in pricing of natural gas and electricity.
Retrofitting old computers is expensive; the shoeleather cost in making them work is considerable. Given that they are heavy (c.f. lead in monitors) I can well understand how shipping them isn't cost effective.
Basically, old computers are so cheap and bulky that if you have to "process" (ship, configure, fix) them in any way, they are no longer worth the measly performance they deliver.
This is why road paving makes sense; it is a uniform (==cheap) process to melt and extract the gold from PCBs, and the resulting slag is at least a bit more compact than before.
Tho I don't know if I want my road's paved with lead. I perfer good intentions. Where does that road go, again?
I had rather thought that seti relied on the fact that there were alot of stars, at differnt distances. So it's not like we're scanning for anybody alive now in the whole universe, but rather that the universe is split into various sets (determined by distance from us). The assumption being that each set is big enough to contain at least a few of the presumed civilsations alive at that time. The older sets are obviously bigger, but also fainter.
It's not annoy's place to gauge the correctness of the court order. If the police got the court order (I'm still not sure whether they did or not) and anny then refused, that would be uncool. If the police didn't get the order, and still tried to sue for the info, then it would be cool that annoy stood up to them.
Didn't the enoch root thing come about from cryptonomicron? Where was it in snow crash?
Mind you, I can't reconcile your user number (in the same range as mine) with cryptonomicon's publication date, so I guess I'm mistaken. I just can't recall that from snow crash. Hiro protagonist, yes. YT, yes. And rat thing, but no enoch. Help me out?
The PDP 11? Didn't that have a 2x32 KB memory layout? I recall one of my old professors (Hi Prof Vermuelen!) telling us about the weird architecture of one of his early machines. I think it was the PDP 11, which I think was one of the original target platforms for unix.
Notice how much of the above I thought rather than knew, and add salt to taste.
while we're being nasty, it is fully possible that ronnie was telling the truth about not recalling. He was getting a little fuzzy in the cognitive department towards the end.
Now the fact that people knew this and were happy with him as a president... not _that_ speaks volumes.
Not that I ever liked their music much, but Hootie and the Blowfish had a great idea: They incorporated. So they got to deal with record companies on a b2b level, rather than as individuals. I'd imagine that this gave them much more leverage at the bargaining table than three guys in ripped T's would get.
They also get tax benefits; I know their company got them health insurance...
No, there is a concept that implies fitness for use; cars are sold with the understood assumption that they are fit for their main purpose: driving.
If I bought a Ford and decided that it would make a great fishtank, then I would be doing so on my own responsability, because that is not its primary purpose.
Likewise, I am justified (from a can-take-you-to-court point of view) to assume that the aforementioned spoon isn't laced with arsenic. I am not justified in assuming it sterile enough to perform bypass surgery with.
surely we can't expect parent's to be responsible for their children's upbringing?! The government has a duty to create a system where all children can be brought up by coorporate powers safely.
I'm thinking that 1984 and Brave New World don't look so funny anymore. Me, I'm buying a hounddog, a truck, a gun (typed it gnu first time around... muscle memory), and some land up in montana.
Watermarking of music is pretty damn hard. (ie, I can't figure out how to do it well, and I must have given it several minute's thought). You have to modify a sensitive signal in a robust and non-intrusive manner.
However, it is do able to fingerprint it; perhaps not as advanced as what was proposed here a while ago, but something with a +50% success rate (I am being precise here; statistically 50.001% would be ok). So now they'll have your player store fingerprints of every song it has played. Whenever it is connected to a network or network-nearer device, the fingerprints are forwarded (along with your uid, of course).
If this were implemented, the industry would get exactly what they wanted, and more. They could prosecute you for illegally playing a song (note the false positive allowance above -- they would have to amass a preponderance of evidence before they could persue you). They get super-valuable demographics info. They could sell you monthly or yearly subscriptions (buy all sony music for a year!). Popular consumers get rebates ('We've identified you as someone who "spreads the word" to youtr friends about great music! Come check out Columbia's newest pop sensation The Chiterlings!'), or even credit for word of mouth marketing.
They won't even have to verify every song, the system works like taxes -- they might audit you, so you are honest.
Ok, some details are hazy, but all that is needed is accuarateish tracking of individual's listening habits.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. The above is an evil scheme, but I'm fascinated enough by the implications to almost go along and implement it. I gotta admit, I may dislike big companies, but I am buyable. I'm just not cheap.
I remember an article hereabouts about dynamically inserting products into programs. I know sports have been doing this for a while; replacing the ads around the soccer pitch with localised ones. In sports, all you need is a tricked out blue-screen system.
The system I'm refering to is a bit more advanced, and I guess would overlay the props with real products. So instead of al bundy drinking "beer" brand, he drinks a "bud".
The risk here is that it is becoming harder and harder to discriminate what is an advertisement.
I mention this because one of my favorite studies showed that a youngish age-group trusted advertisers more than adults because the kids knew and understood that the advertisers had an agenda. That will be lost should we move to an "integrated" marketing model.
the funniest part is how your side is all we get; not that I'm doubting your side, but rather remarking that for a "community" website, those in charge don't seem to participate much in discussion.
if your karma actually is changing this much, that's even funnier, as they apparently _can_ be bothered to fiddle with the back end, when I'm sure a simple request to not sell would have sufficed. (?)
I'd stop coming back if this place wasn't so funny.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting.
Could someone with hardware insight comment on the feasability of phasing in PPCs inplace of MIPS. Does the MIPS architecture have a justifiable reason to exist, or is it around just for legacy reasons?
I'll take 'em backwards:
2)
The whole argument is called the tragedy of the commons, and is as old as the field itself. The whole point isn't really to give the government money -- the best case would be if the ecotaxes were put in a fund that invested in ecofriendly research, or just sat on the money or something. The point is that you want to hike up the prices of unenvironmental goods so that the consumer can factor that into their utility functions.
As it is now, the concept of environmental impact is very abstract; many adults can't grasp it. However, if you have the choice between paying $30000 for a gasoline car or $15000 for a hybrid, then it becomes more concrete.
This applies doubly to coorporations, some of which are legal obliged to take the lowest price availible for a good, regardless of its economic impact. And this gives them incentive to move to cleaner (perhaps even more expensive processes), if the end price is lower.
The challenge is to set the right taxes for various pollutants. This is of course hard, and the government will get it wrong. But I believe wrong price is better than free.
1)
In the extreme case, there would have to be an unincentive to harm your own property, if you owned enough of it to cause macroscopic damage. While few people would argue that a grove or two of trees is anyone's business other than the owner of the land, if you own a sizeable chunk of the natural forest of the country, then it does become a public concern.
Just throwing out an idea, it might be better to view land ownership (all natural resources perhaps) as a right-to-lease (the property taxes might be seen as the rent). Leased property cannot be unduly damaged (so whilst you could run a forestry business, you couldn't clear cut, which causes erosion). There are probably better ideas. That's the first that sprung to mind.
Flamebait?
I'm confused
This has been a bit of a pet peeve with me for some time; I don't see why the government lets companies get away with ignoring external costs to their products.
As it is, only production costs are taken into acocunt by the market, as the good mr. Smith defined it. It makes perfect sense to let the market also factor in environmental costs; however, the only way the market will do this is by having these costs imposed on the goods that create them.
Hence, higher gas taxes to reflect greenhouse effects. Monitors would reflect the negative effects of lead, and CFCs would be really expensive. This might seem horrible, (how can I be advocating higher gas prices at a time like this!) but we're all paying these costs anyway; we might as well make it explicit. And the higher prices would incite (is incent a word?) a move to better methods.
c.f. personal power generation being cleaner per KWh, due to lack of transmission fees. I want to see this reflected in pricing of natural gas and electricity.
grr. grammar (getting alot of this lately)
s/road's/roads/
Cost, cost.
Retrofitting old computers is expensive; the shoeleather cost in making them work is considerable. Given that they are heavy (c.f. lead in monitors) I can well understand how shipping them isn't cost effective.
Basically, old computers are so cheap and bulky that if you have to "process" (ship, configure, fix) them in any way, they are no longer worth the measly performance they deliver.
This is why road paving makes sense; it is a uniform (==cheap) process to melt and extract the gold from PCBs, and the resulting slag is at least a bit more compact than before.
Tho I don't know if I want my road's paved with lead. I perfer good intentions. Where does that road go, again?
I had rather thought that seti relied on the fact that there were alot of stars, at differnt distances. So it's not like we're scanning for anybody alive now in the whole universe, but rather that the universe is split into various sets (determined by distance from us). The assumption being that each set is big enough to contain at least a few of the presumed civilsations alive at that time. The older sets are obviously bigger, but also fainter.
It's not annoy's place to gauge the correctness of the court order. If the police got the court order (I'm still not sure whether they did or not) and anny then refused, that would be uncool. If the police didn't get the order, and still tried to sue for the info, then it would be cool that annoy stood up to them.
Refresh my memory. They were let off, then tried again by what argument?
hrm.
Didn't the enoch root thing come about from cryptonomicron? Where was it in snow crash?
Mind you, I can't reconcile your user number (in the same range as mine) with cryptonomicon's publication date, so I guess I'm mistaken. I just can't recall that from snow crash. Hiro protagonist, yes. YT, yes. And rat thing, but no enoch. Help me out?
The PDP 11? Didn't that have a 2x32 KB memory layout? I recall one of my old professors (Hi Prof Vermuelen!) telling us about the weird architecture of one of his early machines. I think it was the PDP 11, which I think was one of the original target platforms for unix.
Notice how much of the above I thought rather than knew, and add salt to taste.
Johan
well, I sharpen it first. Only a hardy fool would try something as foolhardy as bypass surgery with a dull spoon, even if sterile.
while we're being nasty, it is fully possible that ronnie was telling the truth about not recalling. He was getting a little fuzzy in the cognitive department towards the end.
Now the fact that people knew this and were happy with him as a president... not _that_ speaks volumes.
Not that I ever liked their music much, but Hootie and the Blowfish had a great idea: They incorporated. So they got to deal with record companies on a b2b level, rather than as individuals. I'd imagine that this gave them much more leverage at the bargaining table than three guys in ripped T's would get.
They also get tax benefits; I know their company got them health insurance...
No, there is a concept that implies fitness for use; cars are sold with the understood assumption that they are fit for their main purpose: driving.
If I bought a Ford and decided that it would make a great fishtank, then I would be doing so on my own responsability, because that is not its primary purpose.
Likewise, I am justified (from a can-take-you-to-court point of view) to assume that the aforementioned spoon isn't laced with arsenic. I am not justified in assuming it sterile enough to perform bypass surgery with.
grr. grammar.
s/parent's/parents
surely we can't expect parent's to be responsible for their children's upbringing?! The government has a duty to create a system where all children can be brought up by coorporate powers safely.
I'm thinking that 1984 and Brave New World don't look so funny anymore. Me, I'm buying a hounddog, a truck, a gun (typed it gnu first time around... muscle memory), and some land up in montana.
You know this, of course, but maybe others took it for sarcasm.
XOR is actually patented. In the context of save-unders for mouse pointers. #4,197,590.
grr. grammar.
s/minute's/minutes'/
Dunno.
Watermarking of music is pretty damn hard. (ie, I can't figure out how to do it well, and I must have given it several minute's thought). You have to modify a sensitive signal in a robust and non-intrusive manner.
However, it is do able to fingerprint it; perhaps not as advanced as what was proposed here a while ago, but something with a +50% success rate (I am being precise here; statistically 50.001% would be ok). So now they'll have your player store fingerprints of every song it has played. Whenever it is connected to a network or network-nearer device, the fingerprints are forwarded (along with your uid, of course).
If this were implemented, the industry would get exactly what they wanted, and more. They could prosecute you for illegally playing a song (note the false positive allowance above -- they would have to amass a preponderance of evidence before they could persue you). They get super-valuable demographics info. They could sell you monthly or yearly subscriptions (buy all sony music for a year!). Popular consumers get rebates ('We've identified you as someone who "spreads the word" to youtr friends about great music! Come check out Columbia's newest pop sensation The Chiterlings!'), or even credit for word of mouth marketing.
They won't even have to verify every song, the system works like taxes -- they might audit you, so you are honest.
Ok, some details are hazy, but all that is needed is accuarateish tracking of individual's listening habits.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. The above is an evil scheme, but I'm fascinated enough by the implications to almost go along and implement it. I gotta admit, I may dislike big companies, but I am buyable. I'm just not cheap.
Hrm.
I remember an article hereabouts about dynamically inserting products into programs. I know sports have been doing this for a while; replacing the ads around the soccer pitch with localised ones. In sports, all you need is a tricked out blue-screen system.
The system I'm refering to is a bit more advanced, and I guess would overlay the props with real products. So instead of al bundy drinking "beer" brand, he drinks a "bud".
The risk here is that it is becoming harder and harder to discriminate what is an advertisement.
I mention this because one of my favorite studies showed that a youngish age-group trusted advertisers more than adults because the kids knew and understood that the advertisers had an agenda. That will be lost should we move to an "integrated" marketing model.
"I hate you, Milkman Dan!"
redmeat is hillarious! I'm sad to say that that reference was the most gratifying thing I've seen here for days.
I've always wanted johan, never seen it used, but it was taken when I joined.
Not that i'd pay anything for it. It'd just make one less user name I have to remember
the funniest part is how your side is all we get; not that I'm doubting your side, but rather remarking that for a "community" website, those in charge don't seem to participate much in discussion.
if your karma actually is changing this much, that's even funnier, as they apparently _can_ be bothered to fiddle with the back end, when I'm sure a simple request to not sell would have sufficed. (?)
I'd stop coming back if this place wasn't so funny.
You get the government you deserve. Since I can't vote here, I deserve none. please?