I strongly believe that there is very little distinction between a TRUE corporate facism and a state facism.
Frankly, without antitrust laws and regulations, a single corporation is likely, at some point, to control the majority of the output of a nation... Picture AT&T growing unhindered without being broken up. They hit a roadblock and can't grow so they aquire other industries. As the only telecom, they would likely have acquired a business like AOL in its infancy. Then they would perhaps want in to software so they acquire Borland and a host of others. Eventually they acquire microsoft, or do some sort of merger. IBM then decides its in their best interest to buy into the monopoly and another merger happens.
At this point, they want their connectivity in appliances so they acquire General Electric and Kenmoore and Maytag... and they would be big enough to do so. Then they figure since they make the appliances, why not make the parts too, so they acquire a host of manufacturing companies. They realize they're not making most automobile components as well so they go ahead and acquire General Motors and since Ford is at a huge disadvantage, buying parts from a competitor, they agree to merge as well.
Hell, lets globalize it and have them buy out Toyota and Fuji (Subaru, Mitsubishi) and Audi/Volkswagon while they're at it.
Other smaller competitors go under in the face of the corporate might of "General MicroT&TFord" which is now a $75 trillion company and far outpaces the gross revenue of the United States Government.
What stops them from buying Lockheed? And Boeing? And Airbus? And Haliburton? And Dow Chemical? And every other manufacturer. They now own the military. They can refuse to sell to the military if their political needs are not met. Now what?
Because raping a 17 year old is also a "sex offense" and so is a 16 year old snapping a picture of herself on the cell phone.
Absurd?
OK, we agree.
A 15 year old?
Abusrd?
A 14 year old?
Absurd? Questionable?
a 12 year old? EXECUTE THE FUCKER!
wait... what about a really big 12 year old.
What about a really stupid 17 year old?
Execute the fucker.
Wait, I have an idea, lets take an extreme case (a 2 year old) and then use it to justify an entire argument.
But wait... how many sex crimes are actually perpetrated against 2 year olds? 75% of "child sex crimes" are perpetrated against teenagers.
Execute them?
I'm confused.
Mark Foley? Surely he's a schmuck. But.... execute the fucker?
OK fine, but what about my best friend. He was 12 when he banged his friend's mom. He still talks about it like it's the freaking icing on the cake of his life and he's almost 30. Should she be executed?
Where do you get off thinking there is some icon of "evil" and some glowing halo of "not evil" and you can automatically decide one gets death and the other gets a medal?
Oh wait... your reaction was based on irrational, emotive impulse, not logic. I forgot.
I just had to bite and scratch to get 640k/3MB ADSL to our office at a cost of almost $100 per month. I offered to pay more to get a faster speed and was told it did not exist and that DSL was not capable of doing faster than 3MB (?!? ignorant moron salesman ?!?)
Granted, we're in a poor location for DSL. But we're right in the center of a large business district, so that seems sort of silly when you look at from an outside perspective.
Right. So what you have there seems really quite nice.
I am a libertarian, when it comes to the INDIVIDUAL in society. Internet filters? Fuck 'em. Parents are the best Internet filter. Seatbelt laws? Shit. seriously?
But I believe that corporations are NOT individuals, nor should they ever be treated as such. That's a huge mistake.
Regulate the hell out of businesses, because business has the potential to trod on the LIBERTARIAN rights of people just as much as government does.
Allowing an unhindered free-market is just as dangerous in the long-term as allowing unhindered government regulation.
Both result in facism, one of the state, the other of the corporation.
Wow, you realize when these FREEDOMS were written into the constitution, the world's superpower (Britain) had stated, publically, that they had every wish and desire to execute a FULL SCALE MILITARY INVASION of our country.
But still, it was more important to the founders that these freedoms be held up than we be safe and cozy away from fear.
I would sooner see occassional bombings on US Soil, than see the US turn into a totalitarian state in order to prevent those bombings.
If my mother was killed in such a bombing, i would not change my opinion.
If my brother was killed in such a bombing, i would not change my opinion.
If half of the damn military was killed in a bombing, i would not change my opinion.
Freedom is paramount. Don't you see how important it is?
This sort of overreaction is exactly what terrorists want. Make no mistake. They hate us not because of what we do but for what we are: rich, free, and happy. To the extent that we give away our freedom in the vain hope that its sacrifice will purchase us a little security, we are playing into their hands. And, as Benjamin Franklin is famously attributed to saying, in making that sacrifice we will in fact wind up with neither freedom nor security.
"Uhm? July 12, 1955? I have no idea, probably out playing poker with friends, since it was a Tuesday."
He asks:
"Can your friends corroborate this?"
You say:
"Uhm. Bob died 22 years ago, Bill is in a hospital with altzimers and Dan is almost 100 years old."
He says:
"aha! The victim's psychologist said that she recalled (after repeated hypnotherapy sessions) that you molested her that evening at 8pm. You have no alibi! Do you want a plea bargain? Otherwise your ass will rot in jail!! You sick kiddy fiddler! Muhahaha! Have you stopped molesting children, yes or no? ANSWER ME!! DONT AVOID THE QUESTION!!! YES OR NO!!!"
Seriously, the statute of limitations was 5-10 years on most crimes for a REASON. Since 1992, the statute of limitations on most felonies has increased from a half a decade to a lifetime, and sometimes indefinitely. A recent study showed that 25% of jury trials resulted in wrongful conviction and 37% of judge trials resulted in the same. On the other hand, according to the study, only 12% of guilty persons were acquitted.
There are an awful lot of "that doesn't work" sort of replies, but I'd beg to differ.
The jobs are MUCH harder to find than specialized jobs, because you'll be working for a small firm- a startup, or some other limited size organization. They wont' be the ones posting on monster.com - craigslist, maybe, but not the big job sites.
If you don't find anything by casually looking around, you might want to get creative and inventive. I landed a job once by directly approaching the owner of a company who was growing 300% per year and selling the idea of "do it right from the start" sort of IT approach. Actually, it was a 6 month contract with the option to hire me at the end (which I refused, even though he wanted me). I set up Active Directory, established policies and procedures, built up their infrastructure, data storage, accounting and upgraded their workstations. I built their website into something useful instead of boring and empty and I built a helpdesk that could help manage the company as it grew bigger.
I'm currently "IT Director" for a small company. I only have one person working for me, but I'm paid alright. I think folks are right when they say that generalists have a salary cieling. It's a unfortunate truth that unless I'm willing to go into corporate middle-management where I could potentially make a ton of money, but be busy in board meetings and very rarely get my hands dirty, I'm stuck with a 5-figure salary. High 5-figures, but still stuck. However, within a startup, you can position yourself as a driver of ideas and perhaps end up in upper management as the company grows. There are additional benefits such as stock options, profit sharing and such, that are not available to your average specialized techie within the corporate world.
The stock options from my previous employer are starting to look very tantalizing as there are rumors of a buyout or IPO circulating. Suddenly, 10,000 shares begins to look like $500,000 and my time stuck behind a $70k salary quickly begins to morph into an actual paycheck of more than $200k per year, but on the other hand, a poor startup can end up costing you money as you find yourself working without pay now and then when money is tight, only to see the company fold just as you are expecting a Christmas bonus.
Fortunately, my recent experience has set me up as a bit of a security specialist and I've begun to do some contract work for a large security company, deploying firewalls, security appliances and such. This job, if i were to take it full time, would definitely be a 6-figure opportunity and would lead to potential future contracts with customers that often pay 6-figures for 6 months of work doing highly specialized security deployment and management.
Another example may be the retroactive increases to the statute of limitations.
There was a man tried and convicted due to recorded confessions he made AFTER the statute of limitations had run out. Because of his confessions, the legislator moved to increase the statute of limitations RETROACTIVELY, and therefore, he was arrested, and convicted of the crime he admitted to having committed.
I heard a number of people cheering this action, but I couldn't help but see yet another erosion in the freedoms that made the US an example to the world.
France has different reasons for avoiding RIM Blackberries.
Specifically, all email data transferred to/from a Blackberry goes through RIM's "blackberry.net" service, which resides in the US. Therefore, it is a virtual guarantee that all Blackberry emails transit US wires... Very specific US wires and it would be trivially easy to sniff ALL Blackberry.net traffic with a few properly placed protocol analyzers.
The fact that one can install software on a modern microprocessor based telephone-slash-computer that can *gasp* RECORD what the telephone-slash-computer happens to be doing shouldn't come as any sort of surprise to anyone at all.
In fact, this particular bit if news is a bit 'ho-hum', though I'm sure a few tech-stupid executives will gasp and throw their "Crackberry" out the window.
Perhaps this article was written by Microsoft or Apple to bolster the sales of their respective Blackberry competitors?:-)
The whole "exceed the speed of light" thing is just an apparent effect.
You can create a harmonic wave using lower frequency "true" waves that appear to propigate faster than the speed of light, but they are essentially like the thought experiment of the laser beam that is waved around in the air. The beam of the laser shined on a distant planet may appear to move faster than C, but there is not actually anything that is actually exceeding C. There is only the appearance.
Either it's an extremely efficient transaction or whatever pushed on it was traveling faster.
Or, it's a star collapsing into a black hole ahem rtfa, that's super massive AND releasing a ton of energy. Remember, the closer you get to C, the energy required to get there grows exponentially.
But then again, the energy emanating from the event horizon at the moment of formation of a black hole is just about as intense as anything anywhere in the universe that we know of.
And btw, ALL performance is ALU. Where else should it come from. No need to use big words (or acronyms) in show how intelligent you are. You are not going to fool anybody anyway.
Uhm... perhaps it would come from the cache? Or the FPU? Or from the memory controller? Or from the bus speed?
The ALU is the "Arithmetic Logic Unit" which performs some of the basic integer mathematics and some parts of memory addressing and simple comparisons, but very little else.
There is plenty that goes on, such as branch prediction, cache associativity, memory latency, etc - that would likely have a much stronger impact on performance than raw ALU performance.
However, i guess it does seem a bit silly to claim a poorly performing ALU from the limited number of benchmarks i've seen on that core. it does seem a little slow, but it's likely because it's not a very aggressive CPU in terms of design, utilizing things such as speculative execution, out of order execution, advanced branch prediction (AMD claims 99%, where via claims like 93% accuracy), etc. There are lots of other reasons... than just ALU that could cause a CPU to suck.
It seems to me that these design tradeoffs were pretty smart, given the state of the art and what is required to make a low power processor. The C7 does not "suck" by any means. It might not beat a Core Duo in any benchmarks, but it does what it was designed to do quite well.
1) The C7 core runs a full speed in-order ALU and FPU. Unlike the C3, where design constraints required a half-speed FPU, this one has it at full speed. The ALU has a full 24 cycles to complete simply 32 bit operations (should only require 4 cycles, at best). Let's not even mention the 64KB 4-way associative L1 cache with only 3 cycle latency. Even at 1Ghz, this would indicate to me that the clock speed is not, in fact, ALU bound, but more likely FPU or L1 cache bound. Where did you get your ALU claim? It sounds made up to me.
2) The C7 core benchmarks show it to be about 40% slower, clock-for-clock than the new Celeron M. Presumably the ULV version may be a hair slower, leaving it at half the performance clock-for-clock. Considering that today's Celeron M is far better per clock than the original K8, it would lead me to believe that this chip would be roughly equivalent to a 500Mhz K8 processor, but using only about 1/10th of power.
This chip uses a 90nm SOI process, and VIA's process is up there with the best in the world. I'm not exactly sure what the basis for your gripe is...... except it sounds hollow.
Also, the (as you put it) "P4 escapades" are only one of many examples where clockspeed != performance. Take the old Intel 386SX or the AMD 486DX4-120 or the old AMD K6-2, which were all total dogs "per clock" compared to the much more efficient (at the time) 386DX, Pentium and Pentium 2.
One of the issues is likely the uniqueness of it all.
it would be simply silly for a developer to seed some in-game item so that one guild on ONE shard could have some advantage.
The simple fact that the game is full of truely "unique" items, concepts, areas, etc.... that's what makes it prone to this. It has nothing to do with the developers or whatever.
If some dev on WoW sees the "Magical Uuber Magic Sword" for his buddy, who notices? After all, didn't you hear about that guy on server #422 who had a "Double Magicaly Uuuber Magic Sword"? What about that one guy on server #721 who once got sucked into his computer screen? So what if you saw a guy with the "rare crystal of boobville". You know there are at least two on every server, which means there are 900 of them. Even if it a developer "testing" things by spawning rare items, it hardly matters.
Nope, there are items that are truly unique and truly rare. Even the developers don't really have a place they can have a "real" battles and industry with "real" items. If someone has a T2 ship BPO, that's fairly unique, isn't it? I would wager that the larger organizations have a pretty good idea of where ALL the T2 ship BPOs are and who owns them. IIRC, there were exactly 7 in game, of each. Given some time, you could have a pretty good idea where they are and where they are produced and who does the work. If another source suddenly appeared, wouldn't that really throw off your intelligence?
I think the new 'invention' features are good because it removes that artificial monopoly, but there are plenty of other monopolies, such as those on space and complexes, etc. CCP has done a good job to spread those around as well with new regions and exploration, etc, but seriously, the nature of the game as a single, monolithic, shard really changes the political dynamic, and the psychological pressures associated with being a safekeeper of that.
Eve is simply too complex to be as simple as "good dev" or "bad dev".
People, by simple human nature, are irrationally judgemental.
Given omniscience, most people will seek to place themselves above the people they observe, on a moral scale and will seek out faults with their behavior.
Given that the total lack of privacy is associated with all sorts of serious psychological and developmental problems, it seems a profoundly bad idea.
Lack of crime is not indicative of a healthy society. It may be one small metric, but personal happiness is better obtained through liberty, freedom and privacy at the expense of saftey. I think the ideal is a balance point in the middle.
I think our culture is already swaying too far into the 'nanny state' and the UK has gone even further, to the point that most people fear the police on instinct and mistrust their neighbors in a way that would have seemed absurd 50 years ago.
On the other hand, the utter anonymity of a huge city does cause people to grow antisocial.
So here are the two hands.
1) A totally anonymous person has no reason other than internal fortitude, to have any morals. Having a sense of responsibility for oneself is a stabilizing force.
2) A person totally lacking privacy and anonymity has no individualism, other than that which is granted to him by the watchers, which leads to all sorts of crazy dissociative personality disorders, etc.
Why not hire a professional team of assessment professionals to look at your stuff?
I'm not talking a lame corporate-compliance team, but a highly experienced team of world-class hackers, who are employed by an extremely reputable company and managed by an experienced staff capable of communicating problems quickly and completely.
Try this one: www.accuvant.com
Then you don't have any of these issues.
Of course, that wouldn't necessarily be as cheap. I think $10,000 would definitely be on the extreme low end of a simple job.
You mean.... if you give a bunch of middle schoolers free computers with ubiquitous Internet access and instructions on connecting to the Internet..... they might download porn?
But I thought children were sexless, innocent cherubs.
Most guys don't have full custody because: They don't want it.
oh bull effing crap.
I've seen kids handed over to alcoholic mothers who CAUSED the divorce by cheating on the man, multiple times. She got the kids because she cried on the stand and the female judge felt bad for her. The father was absolutely devastated and has spend his entire retirement savings trying to get the kids out of the mothers house where they're left home alone most evenings and have been forced to quit their sports leagues and music lessons because of her absent nature.
Total and utter bull fucking crap.
Just one case, yeah sure. But.... we made a list of important things for kids... stable home, emotional support, financially secure, home during evenings, involved in the community, etc. The dad had the checkmark on every side.
Know what the woman had?
1) female 2) cried in court
Summary judgement in favor of mom, case dismissed.
I felt powerless and hurt when that mean ogre killed my noble mage.
In fact, it really pissed me off that he took so much joy in slaughtering my noble soldier.
Can I prosecute him for assault? Please? That sounds absurd, doesn't it? Absolutely silly.
Wait. Did someone say sex was involved? OMG!!! I don't care if it's virtual, lock the fucker up!!!
This should illustrate, very cleanly, the ridiculous view 'western' society has adopted regarding sex.
Our view of sex is positively demented. It is a natural thing. OMFG someone gave me an unwanted back scratch!! Scarred for life!!!!!!!!!! GAAHHH NOOOOOO!!! No wonder there are so many weird sex related problems out there.
If someone is violently raped, sure it's a crime. If someone is violently forced to eat chicken, it's also a crime.
In a game, you open yourself to the rules of the game.
If the rules of the game allow merciless slaughter. You will likely be mercilessly slaughtered.
If the rules of the game allow.... non-consentual avatar-sex, then you will likely be subject to that.
This is silly. Why hasn't anyone claimed murder or theft? Because it's a frigging game. Sex isn't somehow magical either. Get over it. sheesh.
Stewing Squirrel
Re:Makes a little bit of sense. . .
on
Treating the Dead
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Uhm... no.
It came from research that shows that compressions are what get oxygen to the blood and the breathing was merely interrupting the far more important compressions.
The goal there is still to get oxygen to cells more rapidly.
Slashdot Mirror
While it was a simple and snide remark, that was incredibly insightful and thought-provoking.
Thanks,
Stew
This thread is long gone, but i wanted to reply.
I strongly believe that there is very little distinction between a TRUE corporate facism and a state facism.
Frankly, without antitrust laws and regulations, a single corporation is likely, at some point, to control the majority of the output of a nation... Picture AT&T growing unhindered without being broken up. They hit a roadblock and can't grow so they aquire other industries. As the only telecom, they would likely have acquired a business like AOL in its infancy. Then they would perhaps want in to software so they acquire Borland and a host of others. Eventually they acquire microsoft, or do some sort of merger. IBM then decides its in their best interest to buy into the monopoly and another merger happens.
At this point, they want their connectivity in appliances so they acquire General Electric and Kenmoore and Maytag... and they would be big enough to do so. Then they figure since they make the appliances, why not make the parts too, so they acquire a host of manufacturing companies. They realize they're not making most automobile components as well so they go ahead and acquire General Motors and since Ford is at a huge disadvantage, buying parts from a competitor, they agree to merge as well.
Hell, lets globalize it and have them buy out Toyota and Fuji (Subaru, Mitsubishi) and Audi/Volkswagon while they're at it.
Other smaller competitors go under in the face of the corporate might of "General MicroT&TFord" which is now a $75 trillion company and far outpaces the gross revenue of the United States Government.
What stops them from buying Lockheed? And Boeing? And Airbus? And Haliburton? And Dow Chemical? And every other manufacturer. They now own the military. They can refuse to sell to the military if their political needs are not met. Now what?
Who is the governing body?
Stew
Because raping a 17 year old is also a "sex offense" and so is a 16 year old snapping a picture of herself on the cell phone.
Absurd?
OK, we agree.
A 15 year old?
Abusrd?
A 14 year old?
Absurd? Questionable?
a 12 year old? EXECUTE THE FUCKER!
wait... what about a really big 12 year old.
What about a really stupid 17 year old?
Execute the fucker.
Wait, I have an idea, lets take an extreme case (a 2 year old) and then use it to justify an entire argument.
But wait... how many sex crimes are actually perpetrated against 2 year olds? 75% of "child sex crimes" are perpetrated against teenagers.
Execute them?
I'm confused.
Mark Foley? Surely he's a schmuck. But.... execute the fucker?
OK fine, but what about my best friend. He was 12 when he banged his friend's mom. He still talks about it like it's the freaking icing on the cake of his life and he's almost 30. Should she be executed?
Where do you get off thinking there is some icon of "evil" and some glowing halo of "not evil" and you can automatically decide one gets death and the other gets a medal?
Oh wait... your reaction was based on irrational, emotive impulse, not logic. I forgot.
Stewed
I just had to bite and scratch to get 640k/3MB ADSL to our office at a cost of almost $100 per month. I offered to pay more to get a faster speed and was told it did not exist and that DSL was not capable of doing faster than 3MB (?!? ignorant moron salesman ?!?)
Granted, we're in a poor location for DSL. But we're right in the center of a large business district, so that seems sort of silly when you look at from an outside perspective.
Right. So what you have there seems really quite nice.
Stew
I am a libertarian, when it comes to the INDIVIDUAL in society. Internet filters? Fuck 'em. Parents are the best Internet filter. Seatbelt laws? Shit. seriously?
But I believe that corporations are NOT individuals, nor should they ever be treated as such. That's a huge mistake.
Regulate the hell out of businesses, because business has the potential to trod on the LIBERTARIAN rights of people just as much as government does.
Allowing an unhindered free-market is just as dangerous in the long-term as allowing unhindered government regulation.
Both result in facism, one of the state, the other of the corporation.
Stew
Wow, you realize when these FREEDOMS were written into the constitution, the world's superpower (Britain) had stated, publically, that they had every wish and desire to execute a FULL SCALE MILITARY INVASION of our country.
But still, it was more important to the founders that these freedoms be held up than we be safe and cozy away from fear.
I would sooner see occassional bombings on US Soil, than see the US turn into a totalitarian state in order to prevent those bombings.
If my mother was killed in such a bombing, i would not change my opinion.
If my brother was killed in such a bombing, i would not change my opinion.
If half of the damn military was killed in a bombing, i would not change my opinion.
Freedom is paramount. Don't you see how important it is?
This sort of overreaction is exactly what terrorists want. Make no mistake. They hate us not because of what we do but for what we are: rich, free, and happy. To the extent that we give away our freedom in the vain hope that its sacrifice will purchase us a little security, we are playing into their hands. And, as Benjamin Franklin is famously attributed to saying, in making that sacrifice we will in fact wind up with neither freedom nor security.
Stewed
Papers please.
What, you forgot them?
To jail with you.
'nuff said.
Stew
The prosecutor asks:
"Where were you on the night of July 12?"
You say:
"Uhm? July 12, 1955? I have no idea, probably out playing poker with friends, since it was a Tuesday."
He asks:
"Can your friends corroborate this?"
You say:
"Uhm. Bob died 22 years ago, Bill is in a hospital with altzimers and Dan is almost 100 years old."
He says:
"aha! The victim's psychologist said that she recalled (after repeated hypnotherapy sessions) that you molested her that evening at 8pm. You have no alibi! Do you want a plea bargain? Otherwise your ass will rot in jail!! You sick kiddy fiddler! Muhahaha! Have you stopped molesting children, yes or no? ANSWER ME!! DONT AVOID THE QUESTION!!! YES OR NO!!!"
Seriously, the statute of limitations was 5-10 years on most crimes for a REASON. Since 1992, the statute of limitations on most felonies has increased from a half a decade to a lifetime, and sometimes indefinitely. A recent study showed that 25% of jury trials resulted in wrongful conviction and 37% of judge trials resulted in the same. On the other hand, according to the study, only 12% of guilty persons were acquitted.
If that doesn't scare you... shit...
Stewed
There are an awful lot of "that doesn't work" sort of replies, but I'd beg to differ.
The jobs are MUCH harder to find than specialized jobs, because you'll be working for a small firm- a startup, or some other limited size organization. They wont' be the ones posting on monster.com - craigslist, maybe, but not the big job sites.
If you don't find anything by casually looking around, you might want to get creative and inventive. I landed a job once by directly approaching the owner of a company who was growing 300% per year and selling the idea of "do it right from the start" sort of IT approach. Actually, it was a 6 month contract with the option to hire me at the end (which I refused, even though he wanted me). I set up Active Directory, established policies and procedures, built up their infrastructure, data storage, accounting and upgraded their workstations. I built their website into something useful instead of boring and empty and I built a helpdesk that could help manage the company as it grew bigger.
I'm currently "IT Director" for a small company. I only have one person working for me, but I'm paid alright. I think folks are right when they say that generalists have a salary cieling. It's a unfortunate truth that unless I'm willing to go into corporate middle-management where I could potentially make a ton of money, but be busy in board meetings and very rarely get my hands dirty, I'm stuck with a 5-figure salary. High 5-figures, but still stuck. However, within a startup, you can position yourself as a driver of ideas and perhaps end up in upper management as the company grows. There are additional benefits such as stock options, profit sharing and such, that are not available to your average specialized techie within the corporate world.
The stock options from my previous employer are starting to look very tantalizing as there are rumors of a buyout or IPO circulating. Suddenly, 10,000 shares begins to look like $500,000 and my time stuck behind a $70k salary quickly begins to morph into an actual paycheck of more than $200k per year, but on the other hand, a poor startup can end up costing you money as you find yourself working without pay now and then when money is tight, only to see the company fold just as you are expecting a Christmas bonus.
Fortunately, my recent experience has set me up as a bit of a security specialist and I've begun to do some contract work for a large security company, deploying firewalls, security appliances and such. This job, if i were to take it full time, would definitely be a 6-figure opportunity and would lead to potential future contracts with customers that often pay 6-figures for 6 months of work doing highly specialized security deployment and management.
Agreed, wholeheartedly.
Another example may be the retroactive increases to the statute of limitations.
There was a man tried and convicted due to recorded confessions he made AFTER the statute of limitations had run out. Because of his confessions, the legislator moved to increase the statute of limitations RETROACTIVELY, and therefore, he was arrested, and convicted of the crime he admitted to having committed.
I heard a number of people cheering this action, but I couldn't help but see yet another erosion in the freedoms that made the US an example to the world.
Stewed
France has different reasons for avoiding RIM Blackberries.
:-)
Specifically, all email data transferred to/from a Blackberry goes through RIM's "blackberry.net" service, which resides in the US. Therefore, it is a virtual guarantee that all Blackberry emails transit US wires... Very specific US wires and it would be trivially easy to sniff ALL Blackberry.net traffic with a few properly placed protocol analyzers.
The fact that one can install software on a modern microprocessor based telephone-slash-computer that can *gasp* RECORD what the telephone-slash-computer happens to be doing shouldn't come as any sort of surprise to anyone at all.
In fact, this particular bit if news is a bit 'ho-hum', though I'm sure a few tech-stupid executives will gasp and throw their "Crackberry" out the window.
Perhaps this article was written by Microsoft or Apple to bolster the sales of their respective Blackberry competitors?
Stew
uhm no. /me pushes on his co-workers rotund belly
:-)
gee, he got skinnier for a second before he fell over.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm did i violate relativity? Isn't that weird?!?!?!
Stew
The whole "exceed the speed of light" thing is just an apparent effect.
You can create a harmonic wave using lower frequency "true" waves that appear to propigate faster than the speed of light, but they are essentially like the thought experiment of the laser beam that is waved around in the air. The beam of the laser shined on a distant planet may appear to move faster than C, but there is not actually anything that is actually exceeding C. There is only the appearance.
Stew
The structure of diamond is rigid on a micro scale, but on a scale of millions of miles (ie septillions of atoms), yes it would compress.
Stew
Either it's an extremely efficient transaction or whatever pushed on it was traveling faster.
Or, it's a star collapsing into a black hole ahem rtfa, that's super massive AND releasing a ton of energy. Remember, the closer you get to C, the energy required to get there grows exponentially.
But then again, the energy emanating from the event horizon at the moment of formation of a black hole is just about as intense as anything anywhere in the universe that we know of.
Stew
Uhm... perhaps it would come from the cache? Or the FPU? Or from the memory controller? Or from the bus speed?
The ALU is the "Arithmetic Logic Unit" which performs some of the basic integer mathematics and some parts of memory addressing and simple comparisons, but very little else.
There is plenty that goes on, such as branch prediction, cache associativity, memory latency, etc - that would likely have a much stronger impact on performance than raw ALU performance.
However, i guess it does seem a bit silly to claim a poorly performing ALU from the limited number of benchmarks i've seen on that core. it does seem a little slow, but it's likely because it's not a very aggressive CPU in terms of design, utilizing things such as speculative execution, out of order execution, advanced branch prediction (AMD claims 99%, where via claims like 93% accuracy), etc. There are lots of other reasons... than just ALU that could cause a CPU to suck.
It seems to me that these design tradeoffs were pretty smart, given the state of the art and what is required to make a low power processor. The C7 does not "suck" by any means. It might not beat a Core Duo in any benchmarks, but it does what it was designed to do quite well.
Stew
erm... ok well #1, I misread.
seemed to think i read that you claimed the clockspeed was limited because of their ALU and then... meh
still, #2 is worth pointing out. The performance of the chips has stepped up since the core was originally dubbed "C3".
that's all.
OK.... lets look at your claims and your gripes.
1) The C7 core runs a full speed in-order ALU and FPU. Unlike the C3, where design constraints required a half-speed FPU, this one has it at full speed. The ALU has a full 24 cycles to complete simply 32 bit operations (should only require 4 cycles, at best). Let's not even mention the 64KB 4-way associative L1 cache with only 3 cycle latency. Even at 1Ghz, this would indicate to me that the clock speed is not, in fact, ALU bound, but more likely FPU or L1 cache bound. Where did you get your ALU claim? It sounds made up to me.
2) The C7 core benchmarks show it to be about 40% slower, clock-for-clock than the new Celeron M. Presumably the ULV version may be a hair slower, leaving it at half the performance clock-for-clock. Considering that today's Celeron M is far better per clock than the original K8, it would lead me to believe that this chip would be roughly equivalent to a 500Mhz K8 processor, but using only about 1/10th of power.
This chip uses a 90nm SOI process, and VIA's process is up there with the best in the world. I'm not exactly sure what the basis for your gripe is...... except it sounds hollow.
Also, the (as you put it) "P4 escapades" are only one of many examples where clockspeed != performance. Take the old Intel 386SX or the AMD 486DX4-120 or the old AMD K6-2, which were all total dogs "per clock" compared to the much more efficient (at the time) 386DX, Pentium and Pentium 2.
Stew
Meh.
One of the issues is likely the uniqueness of it all.
it would be simply silly for a developer to seed some in-game item so that one guild on ONE shard could have some advantage.
The simple fact that the game is full of truely "unique" items, concepts, areas, etc.... that's what makes it prone to this. It has nothing to do with the developers or whatever.
If some dev on WoW sees the "Magical Uuber Magic Sword" for his buddy, who notices? After all, didn't you hear about that guy on server #422 who had a "Double Magicaly Uuuber Magic Sword"? What about that one guy on server #721 who once got sucked into his computer screen? So what if you saw a guy with the "rare crystal of boobville". You know there are at least two on every server, which means there are 900 of them. Even if it a developer "testing" things by spawning rare items, it hardly matters.
Nope, there are items that are truly unique and truly rare. Even the developers don't really have a place they can have a "real" battles and industry with "real" items. If someone has a T2 ship BPO, that's fairly unique, isn't it? I would wager that the larger organizations have a pretty good idea of where ALL the T2 ship BPOs are and who owns them. IIRC, there were exactly 7 in game, of each. Given some time, you could have a pretty good idea where they are and where they are produced and who does the work. If another source suddenly appeared, wouldn't that really throw off your intelligence?
I think the new 'invention' features are good because it removes that artificial monopoly, but there are plenty of other monopolies, such as those on space and complexes, etc. CCP has done a good job to spread those around as well with new regions and exploration, etc, but seriously, the nature of the game as a single, monolithic, shard really changes the political dynamic, and the psychological pressures associated with being a safekeeper of that.
Eve is simply too complex to be as simple as "good dev" or "bad dev".
Stew
oh my god that is so scary!
People, by simple human nature, are irrationally judgemental.
Given omniscience, most people will seek to place themselves above the people they observe, on a moral scale and will seek out faults with their behavior.
Given that the total lack of privacy is associated with all sorts of serious psychological and developmental problems, it seems a profoundly bad idea.
Lack of crime is not indicative of a healthy society. It may be one small metric, but personal happiness is better obtained through liberty, freedom and privacy at the expense of saftey. I think the ideal is a balance point in the middle.
I think our culture is already swaying too far into the 'nanny state' and the UK has gone even further, to the point that most people fear the police on instinct and mistrust their neighbors in a way that would have seemed absurd 50 years ago.
On the other hand, the utter anonymity of a huge city does cause people to grow antisocial.
So here are the two hands.
1) A totally anonymous person has no reason other than internal fortitude, to have any morals. Having a sense of responsibility for oneself is a stabilizing force.
2) A person totally lacking privacy and anonymity has no individualism, other than that which is granted to him by the watchers, which leads to all sorts of crazy dissociative personality disorders, etc.
Surely there is a balance, right?
Panopticon.... sheesh
Stew
I have a better idea.
Why not hire a professional team of assessment professionals to look at your stuff?
I'm not talking a lame corporate-compliance team, but a highly experienced team of world-class hackers, who are employed by an extremely reputable company and managed by an experienced staff capable of communicating problems quickly and completely.
Try this one: www.accuvant.com
Then you don't have any of these issues.
Of course, that wouldn't necessarily be as cheap. I think $10,000 would definitely be on the extreme low end of a simple job.
Stew
Wait....
They downloaded porn on their free laptops?
You mean.... if you give a bunch of middle schoolers free computers with ubiquitous Internet access and instructions on connecting to the Internet..... they might download porn?
But I thought children were sexless, innocent cherubs.
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
Stew
oh bull effing crap.
I've seen kids handed over to alcoholic mothers who CAUSED the divorce by cheating on the man, multiple times. She got the kids because she cried on the stand and the female judge felt bad for her. The father was absolutely devastated and has spend his entire retirement savings trying to get the kids out of the mothers house where they're left home alone most evenings and have been forced to quit their sports leagues and music lessons because of her absent nature.
Total and utter bull fucking crap.
Just one case, yeah sure. But.... we made a list of important things for kids... stable home, emotional support, financially secure, home during evenings, involved in the community, etc. The dad had the checkmark on every side.
Know what the woman had?
1) female
2) cried in court
Summary judgement in favor of mom, case dismissed.
pffft
Stewed
I felt powerless and hurt when that mean ogre killed my noble mage.
In fact, it really pissed me off that he took so much joy in slaughtering my noble soldier.
Can I prosecute him for assault? Please? That sounds absurd, doesn't it? Absolutely silly.
Wait. Did someone say sex was involved? OMG!!! I don't care if it's virtual, lock the fucker up!!!
This should illustrate, very cleanly, the ridiculous view 'western' society has adopted regarding sex.
Our view of sex is positively demented. It is a natural thing. OMFG someone gave me an unwanted back scratch!! Scarred for life!!!!!!!!!! GAAHHH NOOOOOO!!! No wonder there are so many weird sex related problems out there.
If someone is violently raped, sure it's a crime. If someone is violently forced to eat chicken, it's also a crime.
In a game, you open yourself to the rules of the game.
If the rules of the game allow merciless slaughter. You will likely be mercilessly slaughtered.
If the rules of the game allow.... non-consentual avatar-sex, then you will likely be subject to that.
This is silly. Why hasn't anyone claimed murder or theft? Because it's a frigging game. Sex isn't somehow magical either. Get over it. sheesh.
Stewing Squirrel
Uhm... no.
It came from research that shows that compressions are what get oxygen to the blood and the breathing was merely interrupting the far more important compressions.
The goal there is still to get oxygen to cells more rapidly.
Stew