Manmade diamonds are superior in quality (freedom from lattice flaws) compared to natural diamonds. This should be the selling point to a woman who thinks she needs a flawless diamond.
Indeed. Also, did you see the part where they (de Beers) were using a specific FTIR peak to discern the fakies from the mined diamonds? I think they're going off of impurities in the real diamond to tell the difference. I think the next round of camouflage for the manufacturers is going to be incorporating specific, intentional chemical (not structural) flaws to make it tougher to tell the mined from made diamonds.
The new artificial diamond labs are only in the gem selling game for as long as it takes to fund their semiconductor work until they can fab diamonds large enough to be used as semiconductor wafers.
That was certainly the initial intent, but (and yes, IDRTFA!) the guy seemed to really enjoy tweaking de Beers on this. And if this turns out to be profitable (it would have to be for them to use it to finance their semiconductor goals), I can't see them mothballing a successful, running plant that's churning out cash. If it works, I see them staying in the business.
It's in the Wired article which is a very interesting read.
You're playing right into the de Beers bullshit by referring to the synthetic diamonds as 'fake.'
I'm a chemist, I know what they are, but "fake" is four letters and "synthetic" is 9. I give the average slashdotter credit for the intelligence to discern the difference, though perhaps that's overstating things.
On the day when 'authentic' diamond merchants are frantically shipping their stones with a crappy little scrap of paper with a hologram on it, like an Franklin Mint ripoff item, life will be better for common sense people.
They already laser-inscribe the more valuable ones with a serial number. The easy bit for the manufacturers of fake diamonds is going for the small-diamond market. As the article says, anything under 1/5 carat isn't worth verifying. And you can make a $10,000 diamond-encrusted bracelet with a bunch of diamonds that are, individually, not worth enough to check. And that will be a nightmare for de Beers to control.
What the "diamond manufacturers" (yow, think about that) should be doing at this point is grinding out a relatively small number of high-margin stones like the yellows mentioned in the Wired article (make 'em for $5, sell 'em for $10K) to fund the facilities build-up, then start cranking out in bulk for the semiconductor industry, where the REAL money would be had.
That's what the article said.
They shut DeBeers up by threatening to flood the market with the headlight-sized rocks at $20 if they get shirty about it.
That might work, but it's not the best way to go about it. If they do that, de Beers will saturation bomb with the commercials and such. They might just convince women they don't want fake crap. Second, they can strong arm their distribution channels and tell them that the minute they sell a manufactured diamond, they'll never sell another real diamond. de Beers can do that, and if I were a retailer, I don't know that I'd have the guts to hitch my wagon to a startup company. Reputable sellers wouldn't sell the fakes, and fakes would therefore get a really bad name.
Therefore, I think it remains to be seen whether these guys have the ability to pull such strong-arm tactics. I think it's better for everyone in the business to try to maintain the market and divvie it up evenly.
DeBeers dosn't have a total monopoly on diamonds now
They don't need it. They control more of the diamond market than OPEC does oil, but look what OPEC is able to do. To control a market, you need three things:
1. You are the largest player in the market, with a high total market share,
2. You have a large oversupply of the product,
3. You have the ability to crash prices by releasing your oversupply.
So what happens if someone mining diamonds were to challenge de Beers? de Beers would make sure that their network of retailers don't do business with that producer. They'd also release some of their capacity to temporarily drop prices. That would put that producer out of business.
The artificial boys are different, because they can make stuff cheaper even than de Beers can get it out if they dropped their prices as much as possible, probably.
What will probably happen is that lab-grown diamonds will still be very scarce. The people making them are being very secretive about their processes and even their identities. They could sell their diamonds for $6 or $6,000, what do you think they'll do?
That's true. Both have a vested interest in keeping prices high. What *should* happen is they should get a deal together where they divide the pie, with neither side stepping over it. Kind of like OPEC. If they did it in the US, it would be collusion, but they don't have to do that. We'll see.
Blocking messages like this results in missed personal communication. This could possibly result in lawsuits from consumers themselves.
Not being an AOL luser, I wouldn't know, but I'd be shocked if the contract didn't have language that nixed consequential damages (ie, I lost a business deal because by email got blocked).
Hmm let's see - an anonymous coward uses a subject line of "Me too" to provide a brief anecdote about noticing an unspecified decrease in spam received during an approximated timeframe, then speculates on attributing this to an untested hypothesis, and gets moderated "+4, Informative".
Seems to me the guy was clearly joking. Come on, unsubscribing from mailing lists? It's just unfortunate that the moderators are retarded and gave him the +4, informative instead of the +4, funny he deserved. And before you ask, no, it wasn't my post.;)
I think it's clearly about time that computers move into the liquid cooled stage. Look at what it did for automobiles.
Yeah, but I don't park my car in the living room for one. Second, in a car, the water is kept well away from the electronics, typically. Third, I don't want to worry about replacing liquid, maintaining levels, etc. Fourth, it'll always be more expensive than a cheap case fan.
Admittedly, there's a trememdous upside as well, but I don't think there's any reason to belittle concerns with claims of insecurity. It's one thing to do for your hobby, but I can see why the guy isn't willing to bank the business on it.
That doesn't make IBM a Linux company. IBM is a solution company.
You can play semantics all you want, perception (right or wrong) is what matters.
Them being responsible for getting Linux installed in businesses doesn't make them responsible for Linux itself. It is a small distinction, and probably not worth arguing about.
I never claimed they were responsible for linux itself, it's indeed irrelevant, and if you aren't arguing it no one is.
Sure, I'll take the counter position - without a Linux distribution such as RedHat or SuSE, IBM puts Linux on zero machines in the US.
Again, you think they couldn't? It's cheaper to do it that way. Look at it this way. SuSE existed, in a near vacuum, before IBM. Only with IBM is linux on computers. No, IBM didn't make linux. They got it on machines. And, I might add, an OS *not* on machines is prettty pointless.
The original point was that SuSE and RedHat were said to be the two biggest names in Linux, and someone argued that they forgot about IBM.
Yeah, me.
It doesn't matter what people in the business world think,
Tell that to whoever's paying your salary, assuming you're employed and out of college.
IBM is not a big player in the Linux world.
Perhaps Stallman's linux world, if only because they haven't renamed the company GNU/IBM. They're damned big when it comes to translating linux into cash, which, I might add, none of the "big players" you're fond of have been able to do.
This is true, but obvious and irrelevant. Simply being a company who makes linux does not get it on desktops or servers. Regarding his quote where he suggested that half of corporate linux is because of SuSE...that's laughable. It's because of IBM.
If you ask people who makes "Linux", you'll get various answers - and I'll bet none of them are IBM.
How much money, and do I get to pick the people? If you mean slashdot users, you're right. If you're talking corporate America, people outside the IT department never heard of SuSE, and probably not Redhat either. They've heard of IBM. So when the IT guy goes to the CEO and says "We want to go with linux instead of Microsoft," the CEO says "What the hell is linux?" At this point, the IT guy has two options. He can say, "An OS made by this obscure company in Germany," or he can say "A great OS made by IBM." Guess one gets linux on machines at that company.
Until IBM rolls their own distro, they aren't a big name in Linux.
Absolute horseshit. IBM is directly responsible for most of the linux installs running in the corporate world. Period. That may not make them a big name in the slashdot crowd, but around normal humans, and in business, it does.
. But SuSE is one of the largest distros, and even IBM recognizes that - otherwise they wouldn't have chosen to partner with them.
True, but their impact is still miniscule. Let's look at it this way - I bet SuSE puts linux on more machines in the US *with* IBM than *without.* You want the counter position?
Ummm, are you forgetting about the fact that SuSE and IBM signed the Munich deal? I doubt that SuSE is unaware of IBM. But IBM doesn't have a Linux distro, which is why they teamed up with SuSE.
You missed that part where I conceded that SuSE is known in Deutschland (which, incidentally, is where Munich is located).
Bottom line is, who is responsible for getting linux on corporate servers? The answer is a big I-B-M. SuSE can puff up all they want, but IBM could go with any linux distro, practically. They could roll their own, if they wanted or needed to. Ask any CEO who makes linux and they'll say IBM. As such, I maintain that what the SuSE suit was saying was a tad deceptive, or at least way overly self-important.
Yes, it's expensive for some, but it doesn't have to be expensive for the student as much as for the state. My education, had I not been on scholarship, would have been $3000 for year. From this, I am now in a top 5 graduate school. I graduated from undergrad in the black.
So what I learned is this: the best value is either one of the best schools in the country, or a good public school in your state. On the other hand, $25,000 for a fourth-tier private school isn't a good idea, financially.
I don't know where you're at, so that's not meant pointedly
It's my view that the industry has decided there is one main operating system competitor to Microsoft, and that is Linux. Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else. There will be no third distribution that will be supported by the large IT vendors.
All he's saying is that in the corporate market most of the support is related to these two companies.
Personally I think he's wrong, but he's not trying to deny the existance of other distros or anything.
If you look at this, it's wrong no matter how you interpret it. Literally, he left out a damned big company - IBM. Yes, they use Red Hat's stuff, but to say "Linux means two companies - Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else" is just flat wrong on that basis.
If you want to be assume he meant distros, then obviously he left out like 50.
You would have to interpret that as "companies who release their own distros under their own name" for that to make any sense, but by that time, it's irrelevant. The major players aren't the companies making the distros, it's those like IBM getting it on machines. Among companies with distros, only Red Hat (not SuSE!) has had any real impact doing that. SuSE's penetration is far less, especially outside Deutschland.
So, to me, the only sense in which his statement is true is that in which it's barely relevant. Sorry to SuSE, but they have nowhere near the impact of Red Hat or IBM.
Ultimately, he's trying to sound as if SuSE is half of the non-MS world, and that's nowhere near the case
mao is actually the far superior troll in this circumstance. A brief study of recent posts confirms this. You are, sadly, rather ammatuer, and mao would do well to avoid your suggestions (as they are obviously far beneath his stupendous status in the annuls of troll lore).
Nice try mao. See, it would have been really funny for you to burn me here, acting as if you were a master troll. But you didn't know where to stop, so it was too obvious. That's your problem. You need to be a little less obvious.
I'm sorry, but first, you lack any talent. No one is mad at you. You aren't generating discussion. You don't have a million freaks. These are all requirements of an excellent troll.
You make two mistakes mao. First, many "freaks" is the sign of a poor troll because everyone saw through it. Second, you assume I post through my regular username. Idiot.
P.S.: trying to troll a troll? strike three, yeeeeeeer out of there!!
First, I'm not trolling you, I just don't want to see such amateur attempts as it's insulting to the craft. Second, it's quite easy to troll the trolls. I'll show you sometime.
The presumed assumption is that in 2005, it will be common to be set up with resolutions higher than 1024x768. Also, the GUI will be scalable (like vectors), so you can just make everything smaller if you want.
If they can scale it, and they know the resolution, then it should intelligently pick a default bar size (in cm, not pixels). And I guarantee that in 3 years, people will still be using 640x480. They are now, even with monitors that support 1600x1200.
Come on, guys, don't be so damned critical. This thing won't be out for another two years.
I'm not trying to be an ass (really! I swear!), so to make things fair apply my comments to XP as well, to which they apply equally. If anything, I was willing to give MS the benefit of possibly having learned from the pastel debacle. Obviously not.
While musing with a programmer here who just moved her daughter into college, we brought up an interesting thought: Hundreds of thousands of college kids are moving back into dorms with huge fat pipes and Outlook style email clients on computers that haven't been patched since April or May. Yikes!
Of what year?;) Seriously, most people in my dorm back in the day couldn't even keep from throwing the circuit breakers when using 15 appliances at once, let alone figure out how to use antivirus. I'd say may is your best case scenario.
It took two days of querying tech support at my ISP before they'd admit that procmail would work, and a quickie recipe dumps all the infected files. Yay. I should have just done it without checking tech support, for all they helped.
You don't quite understand Microsoft. They don't care about long-term usability. What they care about is that little "click" that happens in people's minds when they see shiney things.
I got that part down, actually....which is why...
It's called making a first impression to make a sale, and leaving the marks to discover the rats under the hood long after they've left the lot.
...I still can't understand how they sell this. Are there truly people who don't think that's garish the second they see it? I'm with the part where MS doesn't care - I can't see someone not running screaming from that color scheme.
I don't know if you work where "normal" people work, but EVERYONE that I deal with daily has 19" LCDs running at 800x600. They come to my computer and go "how do you deal with things so small?"
Wow. Square-mm pixels. Tasty!;)
People think that 640x480 and 800x600 are what computers should run at. Higher resolutions are apparently reserved for those of us w/a clue.
Agreed - which is even scarier, as I assume those shots weren't taken at such a low res (maybe they were). Otherwise, those bars will take half the screen at 640x480!
Regardless, I agree - "big ugly icons" and "Microsoft" seem synonymous.
Does anyone else find this new interface Microsoft is leaning towards as being a eye sore? God the huge buttons and bright colors.. I thought XP had some ugly colors and fonts.
I know they have really shitty design interface people, but would someone, for the love of god, tell them that pastels are really bad for eys strain over significant time intervals (or with that ugly shit, 10 seconds)? Please, ditch the pastels. I'm NOT a machead, but Apple's done a good job of picking colors with slightly lower saturation levels, with the result being a very pleasing interface. WinXP (and evidently this crap) make me want to slit my wrists.
Also, what's with the 800 pixel menu bars? Were these screenshots taken from a computer for the legally blind or will those using windows really have to look at that shit?
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Also, did you see the part where they (de Beers) were using a specific FTIR peak to discern the fakies from the mined diamonds? I think they're going off of impurities in the real diamond to tell the difference. I think the next round of camouflage for the manufacturers is going to be incorporating specific, intentional chemical (not structural) flaws to make it tougher to tell the mined from made diamonds.
That was certainly the initial intent, but (and yes, IDRTFA!) the guy seemed to really enjoy tweaking de Beers on this. And if this turns out to be profitable (it would have to be for them to use it to finance their semiconductor goals), I can't see them mothballing a successful, running plant that's churning out cash. If it works, I see them staying in the business.
It's in the Wired article which is a very interesting read.
I agree. ;)
I'm a chemist, I know what they are, but "fake" is four letters and "synthetic" is 9. I give the average slashdotter credit for the intelligence to discern the difference, though perhaps that's overstating things.
On the day when 'authentic' diamond merchants are frantically shipping their stones with a crappy little scrap of paper with a hologram on it, like an Franklin Mint ripoff item, life will be better for common sense people.
They already laser-inscribe the more valuable ones with a serial number. The easy bit for the manufacturers of fake diamonds is going for the small-diamond market. As the article says, anything under 1/5 carat isn't worth verifying. And you can make a $10,000 diamond-encrusted bracelet with a bunch of diamonds that are, individually, not worth enough to check. And that will be a nightmare for de Beers to control.
That's what the article said.
They shut DeBeers up by threatening to flood the market with the headlight-sized rocks at $20 if they get shirty about it.
That might work, but it's not the best way to go about it. If they do that, de Beers will saturation bomb with the commercials and such. They might just convince women they don't want fake crap. Second, they can strong arm their distribution channels and tell them that the minute they sell a manufactured diamond, they'll never sell another real diamond. de Beers can do that, and if I were a retailer, I don't know that I'd have the guts to hitch my wagon to a startup company. Reputable sellers wouldn't sell the fakes, and fakes would therefore get a really bad name.
Therefore, I think it remains to be seen whether these guys have the ability to pull such strong-arm tactics. I think it's better for everyone in the business to try to maintain the market and divvie it up evenly.
They don't need it. They control more of the diamond market than OPEC does oil, but look what OPEC is able to do. To control a market, you need three things:
1. You are the largest player in the market, with a high total market share,
2. You have a large oversupply of the product,
3. You have the ability to crash prices by releasing your oversupply.
So what happens if someone mining diamonds were to challenge de Beers? de Beers would make sure that their network of retailers don't do business with that producer. They'd also release some of their capacity to temporarily drop prices. That would put that producer out of business.
The artificial boys are different, because they can make stuff cheaper even than de Beers can get it out if they dropped their prices as much as possible, probably.
What will probably happen is that lab-grown diamonds will still be very scarce. The people making them are being very secretive about their processes and even their identities. They could sell their diamonds for $6 or $6,000, what do you think they'll do?
That's true. Both have a vested interest in keeping prices high. What *should* happen is they should get a deal together where they divide the pie, with neither side stepping over it. Kind of like OPEC. If they did it in the US, it would be collusion, but they don't have to do that. We'll see.
Not being an AOL luser, I wouldn't know, but I'd be shocked if the contract didn't have language that nixed consequential damages (ie, I lost a business deal because by email got blocked).
Seems to me the guy was clearly joking. Come on, unsubscribing from mailing lists? It's just unfortunate that the moderators are retarded and gave him the +4, informative instead of the +4, funny he deserved. And before you ask, no, it wasn't my post. ;)
Yeah, but I don't park my car in the living room for one. Second, in a car, the water is kept well away from the electronics, typically. Third, I don't want to worry about replacing liquid, maintaining levels, etc. Fourth, it'll always be more expensive than a cheap case fan.
Admittedly, there's a trememdous upside as well, but I don't think there's any reason to belittle concerns with claims of insecurity. It's one thing to do for your hobby, but I can see why the guy isn't willing to bank the business on it.
You can play semantics all you want, perception (right or wrong) is what matters.
Them being responsible for getting Linux installed in businesses doesn't make them responsible for Linux itself. It is a small distinction, and probably not worth arguing about.
I never claimed they were responsible for linux itself, it's indeed irrelevant, and if you aren't arguing it no one is.
Sure, I'll take the counter position - without a Linux distribution such as RedHat or SuSE, IBM puts Linux on zero machines in the US.
Again, you think they couldn't? It's cheaper to do it that way. Look at it this way. SuSE existed, in a near vacuum, before IBM. Only with IBM is linux on computers. No, IBM didn't make linux. They got it on machines. And, I might add, an OS *not* on machines is prettty pointless.
The original point was that SuSE and RedHat were said to be the two biggest names in Linux, and someone argued that they forgot about IBM.
Yeah, me.
It doesn't matter what people in the business world think,
Tell that to whoever's paying your salary, assuming you're employed and out of college.
IBM is not a big player in the Linux world.
Perhaps Stallman's linux world, if only because they haven't renamed the company GNU/IBM. They're damned big when it comes to translating linux into cash, which, I might add, none of the "big players" you're fond of have been able to do.
This is true, but obvious and irrelevant. Simply being a company who makes linux does not get it on desktops or servers. Regarding his quote where he suggested that half of corporate linux is because of SuSE...that's laughable. It's because of IBM.
If you ask people who makes "Linux", you'll get various answers - and I'll bet none of them are IBM.
How much money, and do I get to pick the people? If you mean slashdot users, you're right. If you're talking corporate America, people outside the IT department never heard of SuSE, and probably not Redhat either. They've heard of IBM. So when the IT guy goes to the CEO and says "We want to go with linux instead of Microsoft," the CEO says "What the hell is linux?" At this point, the IT guy has two options. He can say, "An OS made by this obscure company in Germany," or he can say "A great OS made by IBM." Guess one gets linux on machines at that company.
Until IBM rolls their own distro, they aren't a big name in Linux.
Absolute horseshit. IBM is directly responsible for most of the linux installs running in the corporate world. Period. That may not make them a big name in the slashdot crowd, but around normal humans, and in business, it does.
. But SuSE is one of the largest distros, and even IBM recognizes that - otherwise they wouldn't have chosen to partner with them.
True, but their impact is still miniscule. Let's look at it this way - I bet SuSE puts linux on more machines in the US *with* IBM than *without.* You want the counter position?
You missed that part where I conceded that SuSE is known in Deutschland (which, incidentally, is where Munich is located).
Bottom line is, who is responsible for getting linux on corporate servers? The answer is a big I-B-M. SuSE can puff up all they want, but IBM could go with any linux distro, practically. They could roll their own, if they wanted or needed to. Ask any CEO who makes linux and they'll say IBM. As such, I maintain that what the SuSE suit was saying was a tad deceptive, or at least way overly self-important.
Or any linux server anywhere used as a mail server. There aren't any of those are there?
Nope. Not true, troll. But reducing the saturation (or alpha, too) makes them less glaring.
Yes, it's expensive for some, but it doesn't have to be expensive for the student as much as for the state. My education, had I not been on scholarship, would have been $3000 for year. From this, I am now in a top 5 graduate school. I graduated from undergrad in the black.
So what I learned is this: the best value is either one of the best schools in the country, or a good public school in your state. On the other hand, $25,000 for a fourth-tier private school isn't a good idea, financially.
I don't know where you're at, so that's not meant pointedly
All he's saying is that in the corporate market most of the support is related to these two companies. Personally I think he's wrong, but he's not trying to deny the existance of other distros or anything.
If you look at this, it's wrong no matter how you interpret it. Literally, he left out a damned big company - IBM. Yes, they use Red Hat's stuff, but to say "Linux means two companies - Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else" is just flat wrong on that basis.
If you want to be assume he meant distros, then obviously he left out like 50.
You would have to interpret that as "companies who release their own distros under their own name" for that to make any sense, but by that time, it's irrelevant. The major players aren't the companies making the distros, it's those like IBM getting it on machines. Among companies with distros, only Red Hat (not SuSE!) has had any real impact doing that. SuSE's penetration is far less, especially outside Deutschland.
So, to me, the only sense in which his statement is true is that in which it's barely relevant. Sorry to SuSE, but they have nowhere near the impact of Red Hat or IBM.
Ultimately, he's trying to sound as if SuSE is half of the non-MS world, and that's nowhere near the case
Nice try mao. See, it would have been really funny for you to burn me here, acting as if you were a master troll. But you didn't know where to stop, so it was too obvious. That's your problem. You need to be a little less obvious.
I'm sorry, but first, you lack any talent. No one is mad at you. You aren't generating discussion. You don't have a million freaks. These are all requirements of an excellent troll.
You make two mistakes mao. First, many "freaks" is the sign of a poor troll because everyone saw through it. Second, you assume I post through my regular username. Idiot.
P.S.: trying to troll a troll? strike three, yeeeeeeer out of there!!
First, I'm not trolling you, I just don't want to see such amateur attempts as it's insulting to the craft. Second, it's quite easy to troll the trolls. I'll show you sometime.
If they can scale it, and they know the resolution, then it should intelligently pick a default bar size (in cm, not pixels). And I guarantee that in 3 years, people will still be using 640x480. They are now, even with monitors that support 1600x1200.
Come on, guys, don't be so damned critical. This thing won't be out for another two years.
I'm not trying to be an ass (really! I swear!), so to make things fair apply my comments to XP as well, to which they apply equally. If anything, I was willing to give MS the benefit of possibly having learned from the pastel debacle. Obviously not.
Of what year? ;) Seriously, most people in my dorm back in the day couldn't even keep from throwing the circuit breakers when using 15 appliances at once, let alone figure out how to use antivirus. I'd say may is your best case scenario.
Hope you learned your lesson. ;)
I got that part down, actually....which is why...
It's called making a first impression to make a sale, and leaving the marks to discover the rats under the hood long after they've left the lot.
...I still can't understand how they sell this. Are there truly people who don't think that's garish the second they see it? I'm with the part where MS doesn't care - I can't see someone not running screaming from that color scheme.
Wow. Square-mm pixels. Tasty! ;)
People think that 640x480 and 800x600 are what computers should run at. Higher resolutions are apparently reserved for those of us w/a clue.
Agreed - which is even scarier, as I assume those shots weren't taken at such a low res (maybe they were). Otherwise, those bars will take half the screen at 640x480!
Regardless, I agree - "big ugly icons" and "Microsoft" seem synonymous.
Not new enough not to have seen that one a few times. ;)
Christ you are a tool. And a troll. And not even a good troll. So go the fuck away.
The interface seems to be coming along very well, it looks nice.
Oh, and I forgot "Blind as a fucking bat."
I know they have really shitty design interface people, but would someone, for the love of god, tell them that pastels are really bad for eys strain over significant time intervals (or with that ugly shit, 10 seconds)? Please, ditch the pastels. I'm NOT a machead, but Apple's done a good job of picking colors with slightly lower saturation levels, with the result being a very pleasing interface. WinXP (and evidently this crap) make me want to slit my wrists.
Also, what's with the 800 pixel menu bars? Were these screenshots taken from a computer for the legally blind or will those using windows really have to look at that shit?
Its 11:15 EST... Where the heck is our daily SCO story, huh?
There's a story about how Darl had to make the excruciating decision to remove his critically ill child from life-support.
Micheal's going to title it "SCO advocates baby killing."
It'll go really well with yesterday's gem where he accused the MPAA of shutting down text messaging.