Just this weekend I came to a realization... Microsoft just recently bought Virtual PC, and I couldn't figure out why. Now, they are offering a PowerPC-based gaming console with backward compatibility to it's x86 system.
I figure three PowerPC processors @ 3.2Ghz should be able to emulate an Xbox without troule.
Fat binaries are great for the transition phase, but don't do anything for old apps. If I just started my DTP company and plunked down $7500 for various software packages, I would not be happy to hear that none of it will run on the next Mac I buy. Just as they emulated the 680x0 on the PowerPC - which is still available under Classic - they would need to emulate the PowerPC under the x86.
This could be the same tactic Dell uses with Intel... "We could go with AMD, but about those prices..."
Cheaper because of Intel? I doubt it. Even if Apple does start using x86 - or more likely x86-64 - they would still likely use their own controller chips (Note that Apple uses a single, integrated controller rather than a north/southbridge approach) and custom boards.
It's not impossible that Apple will switch to Intel processors. We already know they keep a copy of the OS up to date on Intel hardware, and even released Darwin x86. The problems come from all the things they would leave behind:
Compatibility - The PowerPC architecture emulates x86 better than the other way 'round. To keep from eliminating all old software with one fell swoop, they would need to emulate PowerPC. This would cause old software to run like death.
VMX - Much of Apple's current power comes from the AltiVec/VMX/Velocity Engine available on the G4 & G5 processors. It is what offers Apple serious performance benefits in certain applications, and makes possible many of the near/realtime capbilities in programs like iPhoto, iMovie, and even Final Cut Pro. Unless Intel tacks on a VMX unit, I don't see Apple switching.
Maybe a dual-processor system: one PowerPC and one Intel? Not likely, I grant you.
Reducing medical spending by increasing research spending is not a guarantee of overall reduction, nor does it guarantee an increase in taxes. It could improve the situation, but I would need to see some data to see if there would be an offset. There are far too many factors for a quick analysis. Here are a few of the issues off the top of my head:
How much is spent annually on US-based drug research? What tax changes (sales, income, targeted product taxes...) will need to be made to fund drug research? How much branded drugs are produced domestically? How many generic drugs are not? What is the reduction in healthcare costs brought by eliminating branded drug costs? What is the decrease in the mortality rate? What socio-economic sectors are most affected? What passthrough benefits will the business sector see from this (employee absenteeism, productivity, healthcare costs)? What monetary benefits will the public see?
These are only scratching the surface, I'm sure.
I don't disagree that making the populous healthier is a Good Thing (TM). This can be accomplished through many actions and behaviors, many of which are less expensive to implement than widespread government-funded drug research. Preventative healthcare is something that fell by the wayside as health care became less common, and is making its way back thanks to HMOs (one of the few benefits of them) because it reduces thier costs).
The government should - and does - work for us. However the balancing act is a very tricky game. "Us" includes the individual, the companies in all there iterations, and the public at large.
For a person who is suffering with a disease, it is best to get them medicine immediately, regardless of cost (see Universal Health Care*). For the drug companies, it is best to protect their research - their 'property' - for a period of time that allows them to recoup their costs, thus enabling them to continue to flourish as a business. For other businesses, it is best to keep reduce their healthcare costs and their tax burden, providing them more money to (hopefully) spread around. For the public, the best is to reduce tax burden, improve health, and ensure there is a place for them to work.
We have to compare all of the issues for all of the people to make the choice. Some things are better served by different levels of government control/interaction. Not everything can be based solely on direct benefits. Note that there are also the philosophical/ethical issues... We fancy ourselves a primarily capitalist society, so how do these plans fit into that view?
While the government can and does fund research, it would cost you and me much more to have it work that way.
If the government sinks 200 million into the creation of a new drug and then release that information, they get no return. Yes, the "betterment of mankind" and all that, but there is no compensation to the government (i.e. you and me) for footing the bill for research. Unless you decide the government can charge companies for using their research... which sounds suspiciously like licensing out patented information.
Eliminating drug patents would likely destroy the private drug-producing industry. Imagine sinking 1.5 billion dollars into a product, the research, the testing, the FDA approval, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, only to release it and have cheap generics available two weeks later. Brand-name drugs are costly because they have to pay for the expensive research behind them. Generics take someone else's finished product and duplicate it.
While I don't like the price difference and the waiting period that these patents produce, I understand that drug companies might simply stop researching new medicines without them; it would not be cost effective.
Patents were made to protect the company, because without those protections, the companies might not exist to provide products and services to the customer. Disadvantageous? In one sense. In another they are crucial.
Check out Section 102, which allows the Secretary of Homeland Security "the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary's sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section." It also prevents any oversight or judicial review of those actions.
I always wanted to be above the law. Now, to become Secretary of Homeland Security...
Wouldn't it be more productive to attempt to persuade the President to use his much-neglected Line-Item Veto than to attempt to stop a military spending bill for one of its riders?
The difference is Celera was able to patent gene sequences as they pieced them together using their own data and that from the NIH. After they patent a sequence, the NIH has to pay royalties to work with it, regardless of the fact that they provided part of the research.
Celera's "exremely efficient" method only worked because the NIH's freely available genome data was available. Without it Celera's "shotgun" fragments would have been just that - fragments. It took a base of comparison to complete the map.
Celera relied on the "free research" of the NIH. They extended that research with their own technique, and then patented the result of the joint data.
Yes, a "graylist" would be essentially the same as a blacklist. The term "black" used in this sense means dishonerable or discreditable. Blacklist can be synonymous with blackball, boycott, or exclude. Those portray a very specific meaning.
Indeed a "graylist" could be subsumed into a blacklist by using a length of time on the list. Default settings could give a blacklisted entity one week (replace with temporal_value_of_choice) before refusing incoming requests. Alternate settings might increase the spam threshold when the "gray" period expired, or perhaps take no alternative action. In this use, "graylist" is a verb rather than a noun.
There could be many optional or potential inputs that choose between gray and black. Reported spam percentage or S:N is another possibility.
Many people currently use what I have called graylists based on blacklists. That's fine. The problem is a blacklist (noun) sometimes means a blacklist or a graylist action.
Yes, it adds complexity to say, "So-and-so has been added to the gray/blacklist with a 22.4% S:N and has remained on for six days," rather than, "AOL IS BLACKLISTED!" It is also difficult because, just as now, the result depends upon the individual implementation of a blacklist. If the terms graylist and blacklist were differentiated and - I know this is a big "and" - some rough consensus was reached about delineating gray from black, I think it would provide better understanding of the consequences. Hopefully, it would also lessen the potential for negative impact that blacklists can have.
Now that I'm thinking on it, it could be beneficial for companies to make known their spam filtering methods - particularly black/gray/whitelisting. This could lead to short-term spam increases (by knowing how to circumvent a specific system), but if a company can determine their major customers will stop receiving mail from them in six days, they can make correcting the issues a priority. Not sure that this one would at all fly, though.
I am not proposing whitelists as an end-all be-all solution, just as I said that blacklists are not, either.
If you use spam-filtering software that could "mark down" blacklisted addresses and "mark up" whitelisted ones, it is not detrimental to the gray/blacklist intentions, it just helps reduce false positives.
With the amount amount and variety of information available to us, I wouldn't use either a black or white list as my only defense.
I'm not saying the graylist should always have AOL or Hotmail on it... just that there would be a mechanism to place spammy hosts under heavier scrutiny without outright blocking them.
That's the intent. Sites that have spam issues should be scrutinized. And there should be graylists that keep you from having to specify them manually.
My issue isn't with the intent or the motivating factor, it's that we use such Draconian measures when better solutions could be used.
While blacklists certainly have a place, that motivation could - and I stress could - result in serious financial consequences. Can you imagine if Yahoo! was blacklisted, and the thousands upon thousands of Yahoo! Stores could no longer send e-mail to large segments of their customers?
Binary though our technology may be, the world in which we use it is not. The answers need not be all or nothing.
What we need is an Ad Campaign for graylists! Go Gray
AOL is not "special" in that circumstance. The short response timeframe is a little harsh, but I don't keep up on my blacklist policies, so I can't compare it to others.
I don't disagree with you. AOL shouldn't get preferential treatment because they are big, but blacklisting major ISPs comes with the very real possibility of hurting many other businesses by association. Yes, the same is true of the little guys, but the potential loss rate is likely much lower.
That's why I suggest the gray/black list combo. If you could graylist someone immediately, and use that as a means for stricter spam control - combine it with Known Good Senders, whitelists, better heuristics or tougher Bayesian filtering - while mitigating the potential for lost business by not outright blocking all messages, I think that is an amicable solution. Blacklisting then becomes the consequence for not resolving your spam problem, not for simply having one.
Overzealous RBL admins screw everyone. If they think everyone is going to sit back and not mind that major ISPs like AOL have been blacklisted, they are (hopefully) if for a rude awakening.
How does someone seriously justify this? Isn't this like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face?
Maybe it's time to come up with a hybrid system? How about a combinations of black and "gray" lists, where the gray lists are subjected to greater scrutiny or harsher limits by spam filtering software?
I'll bet it looks really cool and impresses people, though.
Indeed. The most functional use that a pair of 30" screens connected to the same computer might find is some sort of demo or panel-style display program. Product showcases or somesuch.
A related question to tax your financial limits...
If you used one of the newer motherboards capable of supporting two PCI-X cards (not in SLI mode), could you get four 30" Apple Cinema Displays out of it?
Slashdot Mirror
Since when does reality have anything to do with videogames?
Just this weekend I came to a realization... Microsoft just recently bought Virtual PC, and I couldn't figure out why. Now, they are offering a PowerPC-based gaming console with backward compatibility to it's x86 system.
I figure three PowerPC processors @ 3.2Ghz should be able to emulate an Xbox without troule.
Fat binaries are great for the transition phase, but don't do anything for old apps. If I just started my DTP company and plunked down $7500 for various software packages, I would not be happy to hear that none of it will run on the next Mac I buy. Just as they emulated the 680x0 on the PowerPC - which is still available under Classic - they would need to emulate the PowerPC under the x86.
This could be the same tactic Dell uses with Intel... "We could go with AMD, but about those prices..."
Cheaper because of Intel? I doubt it. Even if Apple does start using x86 - or more likely x86-64 - they would still likely use their own controller chips (Note that Apple uses a single, integrated controller rather than a north/southbridge approach) and custom boards.
It's not impossible that Apple will switch to Intel processors. We already know they keep a copy of the OS up to date on Intel hardware, and even released Darwin x86. The problems come from all the things they would leave behind:
Compatibility - The PowerPC architecture emulates x86 better than the other way 'round. To keep from eliminating all old software with one fell swoop, they would need to emulate PowerPC. This would cause old software to run like death.
VMX - Much of Apple's current power comes from the AltiVec/VMX/Velocity Engine available on the G4 & G5 processors. It is what offers Apple serious performance benefits in certain applications, and makes possible many of the near/realtime capbilities in programs like iPhoto, iMovie, and even Final Cut Pro. Unless Intel tacks on a VMX unit, I don't see Apple switching.
Maybe a dual-processor system: one PowerPC and one Intel? Not likely, I grant you.
Reducing medical spending by increasing research spending is not a guarantee of overall reduction, nor does it guarantee an increase in taxes. It could improve the situation, but I would need to see some data to see if there would be an offset. There are far too many factors for a quick analysis. Here are a few of the issues off the top of my head:
How much is spent annually on US-based drug research?
What tax changes (sales, income, targeted product taxes...) will need to be made to fund drug research?
How much branded drugs are produced domestically?
How many generic drugs are not?
What is the reduction in healthcare costs brought by eliminating branded drug costs?
What is the decrease in the mortality rate?
What socio-economic sectors are most affected?
What passthrough benefits will the business sector see from this (employee absenteeism, productivity, healthcare costs)?
What monetary benefits will the public see?
These are only scratching the surface, I'm sure.
I don't disagree that making the populous healthier is a Good Thing (TM). This can be accomplished through many actions and behaviors, many of which are less expensive to implement than widespread government-funded drug research. Preventative healthcare is something that fell by the wayside as health care became less common, and is making its way back thanks to HMOs (one of the few benefits of them) because it reduces thier costs).
The government should - and does - work for us. However the balancing act is a very tricky game. "Us" includes the individual, the companies in all there iterations, and the public at large.
For a person who is suffering with a disease, it is best to get them medicine immediately, regardless of cost (see Universal Health Care*). For the drug companies, it is best to protect their research - their 'property' - for a period of time that allows them to recoup their costs, thus enabling them to continue to flourish as a business.
For other businesses, it is best to keep reduce their healthcare costs and their tax burden, providing them more money to (hopefully) spread around.
For the public, the best is to reduce tax burden, improve health, and ensure there is a place for them to work.
We have to compare all of the issues for all of the people to make the choice. Some things are better served by different levels of government control/interaction. Not everything can be based solely on direct benefits. Note that there are also the philosophical/ethical issues... We fancy ourselves a primarily capitalist society, so how do these plans fit into that view?
While the government can and does fund research, it would cost you and me much more to have it work that way.
If the government sinks 200 million into the creation of a new drug and then release that information, they get no return. Yes, the "betterment of mankind" and all that, but there is no compensation to the government (i.e. you and me) for footing the bill for research. Unless you decide the government can charge companies for using their research... which sounds suspiciously like licensing out patented information.
Well offtopic here, but...
Eliminating drug patents would likely destroy the private drug-producing industry. Imagine sinking 1.5 billion dollars into a product, the research, the testing, the FDA approval, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, only to release it and have cheap generics available two weeks later. Brand-name drugs are costly because they have to pay for the expensive research behind them. Generics take someone else's finished product and duplicate it.
While I don't like the price difference and the waiting period that these patents produce, I understand that drug companies might simply stop researching new medicines without them; it would not be cost effective.
Patents were made to protect the company, because without those protections, the companies might not exist to provide products and services to the customer. Disadvantageous? In one sense. In another they are crucial.
Check out Section 102, which allows the Secretary of Homeland Security "the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary's sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section." It also prevents any oversight or judicial review of those actions.
I always wanted to be above the law. Now, to become Secretary of Homeland Security...
Wouldn't it be more productive to attempt to persuade the President to use his much-neglected Line-Item Veto than to attempt to stop a military spending bill for one of its riders?
The difference is Celera was able to patent gene sequences as they pieced them together using their own data and that from the NIH. After they patent a sequence, the NIH has to pay royalties to work with it, regardless of the fact that they provided part of the research.
Celera's "exremely efficient" method only worked because the NIH's freely available genome data was available. Without it Celera's "shotgun" fragments would have been just that - fragments. It took a base of comparison to complete the map.
Celera relied on the "free research" of the NIH. They extended that research with their own technique, and then patented the result of the joint data.
Clearly you missed that Russell Crowe has a new solo album out, and there was a prereleased track on the iTMS.
Yes, a "graylist" would be essentially the same as a blacklist. The term "black" used in this sense means dishonerable or discreditable. Blacklist can be synonymous with blackball, boycott, or exclude. Those portray a very specific meaning.
Indeed a "graylist" could be subsumed into a blacklist by using a length of time on the list. Default settings could give a blacklisted entity one week (replace with temporal_value_of_choice) before refusing incoming requests. Alternate settings might increase the spam threshold when the "gray" period expired, or perhaps take no alternative action. In this use, "graylist" is a verb rather than a noun.
There could be many optional or potential inputs that choose between gray and black. Reported spam percentage or S:N is another possibility.
Many people currently use what I have called graylists based on blacklists. That's fine. The problem is a blacklist (noun) sometimes means a blacklist or a graylist action.
Yes, it adds complexity to say, "So-and-so has been added to the gray/blacklist with a 22.4% S:N and has remained on for six days," rather than, "AOL IS BLACKLISTED!" It is also difficult because, just as now, the result depends upon the individual implementation of a blacklist. If the terms graylist and blacklist were differentiated and - I know this is a big "and" - some rough consensus was reached about delineating gray from black, I think it would provide better understanding of the consequences. Hopefully, it would also lessen the potential for negative impact that blacklists can have.
Now that I'm thinking on it, it could be beneficial for companies to make known their spam filtering methods - particularly black/gray/whitelisting. This could lead to short-term spam increases (by knowing how to circumvent a specific system), but if a company can determine their major customers will stop receiving mail from them in six days, they can make correcting the issues a priority. Not sure that this one would at all fly, though.
I am not proposing whitelists as an end-all be-all solution, just as I said that blacklists are not, either.
If you use spam-filtering software that could "mark down" blacklisted addresses and "mark up" whitelisted ones, it is not detrimental to the gray/blacklist intentions, it just helps reduce false positives.
With the amount amount and variety of information available to us, I wouldn't use either a black or white list as my only defense.
Dark graylist? :)
I'm not saying the graylist should always have AOL or Hotmail on it... just that there would be a mechanism to place spammy hosts under heavier scrutiny without outright blocking them.
That's the intent. Sites that have spam issues should be scrutinized. And there should be graylists that keep you from having to specify them manually.
My issue isn't with the intent or the motivating factor, it's that we use such Draconian measures when better solutions could be used.
While blacklists certainly have a place, that motivation could - and I stress could - result in serious financial consequences. Can you imagine if Yahoo! was blacklisted, and the thousands upon thousands of Yahoo! Stores could no longer send e-mail to large segments of their customers?
Binary though our technology may be, the world in which we use it is not. The answers need not be all or nothing.
What we need is an Ad Campaign for graylists! Go Gray
AOL is not "special" in that circumstance. The short response timeframe is a little harsh, but I don't keep up on my blacklist policies, so I can't compare it to others.
I don't disagree with you. AOL shouldn't get preferential treatment because they are big, but blacklisting major ISPs comes with the very real possibility of hurting many other businesses by association. Yes, the same is true of the little guys, but the potential loss rate is likely much lower.
That's why I suggest the gray/black list combo. If you could graylist someone immediately, and use that as a means for stricter spam control - combine it with Known Good Senders, whitelists, better heuristics or tougher Bayesian filtering - while mitigating the potential for lost business by not outright blocking all messages, I think that is an amicable solution. Blacklisting then becomes the consequence for not resolving your spam problem, not for simply having one.
Overzealous RBL admins screw everyone. If they think everyone is going to sit back and not mind that major ISPs like AOL have been blacklisted, they are (hopefully) if for a rude awakening.
How does someone seriously justify this? Isn't this like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face?
Maybe it's time to come up with a hybrid system? How about a combinations of black and "gray" lists, where the gray lists are subjected to greater scrutiny or harsher limits by spam filtering software?
I'll bet it looks really cool and impresses people, though.
Indeed. The most functional use that a pair of 30" screens connected to the same computer might find is some sort of demo or panel-style display program. Product showcases or somesuch.
I was going to recommend someone else's kidneys.
Damn. FireGL 7100 offers only one dual-link DVI port. Maybe something can be done with this biostar motherboard?
ATI offers the FireGL 7000-something in PCI Express with dual, dual-link.
A related question to tax your financial limits...
If you used one of the newer motherboards capable of supporting two PCI-X cards (not in SLI mode), could you get four 30" Apple Cinema Displays out of it?