How much is the price of high end mass-market chips actually determined by supply limitations these days?
A lot of it actually. When a new chip is manufactured it takes time to optimize the line to produce more high speed chips. You're going to produce more 2Ghz chips then you do 2.4Ghz because its so much more difficult to manufacture die that can function at high speeds. The amount of 2Ghz chips you produce vs 2.4Ghz chips is called sort yield and it determines your average selling price. To compete in the semiconductor industry your high end sort yields must be continuously increasing on pace with Moores law. Since the P4 die is so much larger then that of the P3 Intel had to upgrade its older 200mm wafer fabs to 300mm (hence the factory investments the article talks about) to keep pace. This increase in wafer size allowed them to increase the amount of die per wafer, which increases their yields. Higher sort yields allow them to lower their ASP while still maintaining the same level of profit. This also puts pressure on AMD who must now cut prices to in order to maintain its market share.
Rinse and repeat. This is nothing new and not unexpected. It's how the semi industry has always worked and will continue till we stop manufacturing ICs on silicon wafers. A textbox case of supply and demand.
10 days with 30 minutes a day = 5 hours. 7 days, if used with music and screen off = 3.5 hours. Ok, do the maths. This thing will less than 2 continuous hours with music and screen on.
I happen to own a PEG-760C and I routinely use it to listen to MP3s at work all day. I used up ~20% of the battery a day, and this was before I figured out how to turn the screen off. Now I hardly use 5% of the battery/day. This also includes time spent using its more traditional PDA functions.
MP3: I've given before. DRM means special app on windows to convert your MP3 to Sony homebrew format with copy protection. So it's not really MP3. First you need another OS to do the conversion with their crappy app (Jukebox if I remember correctly), next you can't transfer more than once and in one direction
Bullshit. I can mount the memory stick as a USB device, and copy MP3 directly to it. No DRM, no extra software. Have you even used a Clie before?
- Memory Stick: Ok: Sony still doesn't get it. The most expensive format per MB. I still refuse to go this route. What is the point of adopting this format over other proven and more economic ones?
I'll partially agree with you on this. We don't need one more memory standard, but it's only marginally more expensive. There still is no standard for memory expansion in the electronics market anyway, so there is no dominate solution as far as portability goes. Each standard has its set of supported products.
Special keyboard rotation and cool design: Here too, I've given in this trap already. If I need a keyboad, I get a laptop. Graffiti doesn't cut it for me. Cool factor: I already have an iBook and an iPaq. I'll still with that.
Good for you. I'm glad your happy with your laptop, but some of us would still like the basic features of a PalmOS plus a little extra in a smaller foot print. I personally can write in Graffiti much faster then I can type on those keyboards, but I don't assume everyone can. Sony is try to appeal to a larger market then just you and I.
First off is the issue of collusion. In many countries this kind of thing may be seen as illegal (except when the gov't is doing it, of course).
It might be considered illegal in a few countries, but I'm talking in the context of the US market. Since the US is the largest market, this is where they would want to do this the most, and they could remove the tax from countries where it would be considered illegal.
Second, there may be marketing issues... if, say, Sony introduced said tax, who's to say some no-name CDR company would have to do the same? Hence Sony could (potentially) lose market share... not incredibly likely, but possible, and could result in second thoughts.
Agreed, which is why I'm much more in favor of company imposed "taxing" then governemnt regulation. Sony could also move this price increase over to another one of their industries, say consumer electronics (CR-RW and MP3 players specifically). When you have a company in so many markets, it gets difficult to find where they are hiding the costs.
If I want this kind of government intervention in my computer media, I'll move to Canada.
The depressing part is large media companies doen't need the tax laws. Take Sony for instance. They produce blank media along with being a member of the music industry. They can legally impose their own form of "music tax" on their media production division. I wouldn't be shocked if many large multi-industry corporations did similar price fixing.
There are hidden services fees embeded all throughout our society. To use Cringely's example; I don't ride the subway or the bus, yet I'm still paying for the service. It's going to be a fact of modern day life.
Being an open-source developer myself, I would personally never release any of my code under the GPL. And I encourage all the coders I talk with to do the same. And once they see the reasoning behind why, most will switch. They honestly want to give their code away for others to use as they see fit. You are not giving your code away if you are requiring something back.
I see where you are going with this, and if this is your belief then great. I'm not here to stop you, but I'd like to take a minute and explain some of reasons why people use the GPL.
I would never release anything under the BSD license. Why? Because it goes against my beliefs on what the OS movement is about. If I write a piece of code, I share it with the world for the benefit of the software world. If others improve upon the code, I would want them to do the same in gratitude for what I have helped create. This is what has made the OS movement so great, sharing our work for the benefit of the community. For this to work, my rights have to be protected by the license, and the GPL does just that. It gives me the right to share my code with others as long as they respect the idea that they must share their improvements in the same spirit. I agree there is less freedom in the GPL then the BSD license, but that's not important to me. I don't believe it benefits the community at all for someone to make improvements (notice I did not say changes) for the use of a privileged few. If someone feels restricted by my choice of license, then they can go write a similar program and use whatever license they want. I will wish him/her luck, and those who agree with said person can contribute to their hearts content.
Real freedom in software does not lie in any license, but the ability to chose the one you agree with the most. That's why I don't try to evangelize either, just inform those who are curious.
The case with your teacher is rather disturbing since he is forcing your choice of a original license. If you really want to prove your point you could rewrite his code and license it under the BSD, giving students in the class the same choices programmers have today.
That's because they were paid by advertisers. With spam, nobody is paid to carry the ad, thus nothing is funded by the advertiser.
Its actually worse then that. Spammers use the resources of others (bandwidth, storage space) at no cost to themselves. They actually force the cost of their "advertising" on the users who never requested this junk in the first place. This is the exact opposite of the model used in printed media today, and is what makes spam so undesirable for a consumer and so appealing for a marketer.
Newer DVD players can play VCDs. I know mine does. Its much more comfortable to watch a movie while laying on the couch then it is sitting at my computer desk.
One of the best (and most objectionable) parts of this movie is the amount of effort put into the backstory. After I saw the movie I checked out the web page to see what else was there. On the site have the a timeline describing the Blair Witch legend from its supposed beginning in the late 18th century. A lot of the gaps from the movie are filled in by the site. The amount of effort put into it is staggering, including faked interviews with the child-killing hermit, police evidence film of the "found" tapes, and interviews with one of the mothers.
My biggest problem with the movie was that none of this material was included in the film. The site has footage of the hermit talking about the 'voices' that made him kill the children and his description of what sounds like the Blair Witch. This could have easily been included without loosing the documentary feel of the film (have Heather mention it, or show it to one of the guys). The house at the end of the movie is supposed to be his. The last scene of the movie takes place in the same cellar where the children were killed. Most people who I've talked to who saw the movie didn't get the significance of Matt standing in the corner till I told them. Any mention of this earlier in the movie would have made it twice as scary.
If you haven't seen the site yet, do so now. To put it simply: after I saw the movie I was scared, after I saw the website I was terrified.
Slashdot Mirror
How much is the price of high end mass-market chips actually determined by supply limitations these days?
A lot of it actually. When a new chip is manufactured it takes time to optimize the line to produce more high speed chips. You're going to produce more 2Ghz chips then you do 2.4Ghz because its so much more difficult to manufacture die that can function at high speeds. The amount of 2Ghz chips you produce vs 2.4Ghz chips is called sort yield and it determines your average selling price. To compete in the semiconductor industry your high end sort yields must be continuously increasing on pace with Moores law. Since the P4 die is so much larger then that of the P3 Intel had to upgrade its older 200mm wafer fabs to 300mm (hence the factory investments the article talks about) to keep pace. This increase in wafer size allowed them to increase the amount of die per wafer, which increases their yields. Higher sort yields allow them to lower their ASP while still maintaining the same level of profit. This also puts pressure on AMD who must now cut prices to in order to maintain its market share.
Rinse and repeat. This is nothing new and not unexpected. It's how the semi industry has always worked and will continue till we stop manufacturing ICs on silicon wafers. A textbox case of supply and demand.
10 days with 30 minutes a day = 5 hours. 7 days, if used with music and screen off = 3.5 hours. Ok, do the maths. This thing will less than 2 continuous hours with music and screen on.
I happen to own a PEG-760C and I routinely use it to listen to MP3s at work all day. I used up ~20% of the battery a day, and this was before I figured out how to turn the screen off. Now I hardly use 5% of the battery/day. This also includes time spent using its more traditional PDA functions.
MP3: I've given before. DRM means special app on windows to convert your MP3 to Sony homebrew format with copy protection. So it's not really MP3. First you need another OS to do the conversion with their crappy app (Jukebox if I remember correctly), next you can't transfer more than once and in one direction
Bullshit. I can mount the memory stick as a USB device, and copy MP3 directly to it. No DRM, no extra software. Have you even used a Clie before?
- Memory Stick: Ok: Sony still doesn't get it. The most expensive format per MB. I still refuse to go this route. What is the point of adopting this format over other proven and more economic ones?
I'll partially agree with you on this. We don't need one more memory standard, but it's only marginally more expensive. There still is no standard for memory expansion in the electronics market anyway, so there is no dominate solution as far as portability goes. Each standard has its set of supported products.
Special keyboard rotation and cool design: Here too, I've given in this trap already. If I need a keyboad, I get a laptop. Graffiti doesn't cut it for me. Cool factor: I already have an iBook and an iPaq. I'll still with that.
Good for you. I'm glad your happy with your laptop, but some of us would still like the basic features of a PalmOS plus a little extra in a smaller foot print. I personally can write in Graffiti much faster then I can type on those keyboards, but I don't assume everyone can. Sony is try to appeal to a larger market then just you and I.
First off is the issue of collusion. In many countries this kind of thing may be seen as illegal (except when the gov't is doing it, of course).
It might be considered illegal in a few countries, but I'm talking in the context of the US market. Since the US is the largest market, this is where they would want to do this the most, and they could remove the tax from countries where it would be considered illegal.
Second, there may be marketing issues... if, say, Sony introduced said tax, who's to say some no-name CDR company would have to do the same? Hence Sony could (potentially) lose market share... not incredibly likely, but possible, and could result in second thoughts.
Agreed, which is why I'm much more in favor of company imposed "taxing" then governemnt regulation. Sony could also move this price increase over to another one of their industries, say consumer electronics (CR-RW and MP3 players specifically). When you have a company in so many markets, it gets difficult to find where they are hiding the costs.
--
If I want this kind of government intervention in my computer media, I'll move to Canada.
The depressing part is large media companies doen't need the tax laws. Take Sony for instance. They produce blank media along with being a member of the music industry. They can legally impose their own form of "music tax" on their media production division. I wouldn't be shocked if many large multi-industry corporations did similar price fixing.
There are hidden services fees embeded all throughout our society. To use Cringely's example; I don't ride the subway or the bus, yet I'm still paying for the service. It's going to be a fact of modern day life.
--
Being an open-source developer myself, I would personally never release any of my code under the GPL. And I encourage all the coders I talk with to do the same. And once they see the reasoning behind why, most will switch. They honestly want to give their code away for others to use as they see fit. You are not giving your code away if you are requiring something back.
I see where you are going with this, and if this is your belief then great. I'm not here to stop you, but I'd like to take a minute and explain some of reasons why people use the GPL.
I would never release anything under the BSD license. Why? Because it goes against my beliefs on what the OS movement is about. If I write a piece of code, I share it with the world for the benefit of the software world. If others improve upon the code, I would want them to do the same in gratitude for what I have helped create. This is what has made the OS movement so great, sharing our work for the benefit of the community. For this to work, my rights have to be protected by the license, and the GPL does just that. It gives me the right to share my code with others as long as they respect the idea that they must share their improvements in the same spirit. I agree there is less freedom in the GPL then the BSD license, but that's not important to me. I don't believe it benefits the community at all for someone to make improvements (notice I did not say changes) for the use of a privileged few. If someone feels restricted by my choice of license, then they can go write a similar program and use whatever license they want. I will wish him/her luck, and those who agree with said person can contribute to their hearts content.
Real freedom in software does not lie in any license, but the ability to chose the one you agree with the most. That's why I don't try to evangelize either, just inform those who are curious.The case with your teacher is rather disturbing since he is forcing your choice of a original license. If you really want to prove your point you could rewrite his code and license it under the BSD, giving students in the class the same choices programmers have today.
Cheers--
That's because they were paid by advertisers. With spam, nobody is paid to carry the ad, thus nothing is funded by the advertiser.
Its actually worse then that. Spammers use the resources of others (bandwidth, storage space) at no cost to themselves. They actually force the cost of their "advertising" on the users who never requested this junk in the first place. This is the exact opposite of the model used in printed media today, and is what makes spam so undesirable for a consumer and so appealing for a marketer.
--
Newer DVD players can play VCDs. I know mine does. Its much more comfortable to watch a movie while laying on the couch then it is sitting at my computer desk.
*** MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD ***
*** READ AT YOUR OWN RISK ***
One of the best (and most objectionable) parts of this movie is the amount of effort put into the backstory. After I saw the movie I checked out the web page to see what else was there. On the site have the a timeline describing the Blair Witch legend from its supposed beginning in the late 18th century. A lot of the gaps from the movie are filled in by the site. The amount of effort put into it is staggering, including faked interviews with the child-killing hermit, police evidence film of the "found" tapes, and interviews with one of the mothers.
My biggest problem with the movie was that none of this material was included in the film. The site has footage of the hermit talking about the 'voices' that made him kill the children and his description of what sounds like the Blair Witch. This could have easily been included without loosing the documentary feel of the film (have Heather mention it, or show it to one of the guys). The house at the end of the movie is supposed to be his. The last scene of the movie takes place in the same cellar where the children were killed. Most people who I've talked to who saw the movie didn't get the significance of Matt standing in the corner till I told them. Any mention of this earlier in the movie would have made it twice as scary.
If you haven't seen the site yet, do so now. To put it simply: after I saw the movie I was scared, after I saw the website I was terrified.
Neal