By the way, your definition of "expert" is very strange. From your attitudes towards groups like IT, I assume you use it to pretend that "experts" really aren't and that you can therefore safely ignore them?
A true expert is one thing, but the vast majority of IT people with whom I've had the misfortune of dealing are simply concerned about enforcing the latest corporate policies. That means you will be on the company domain, you will live with any group policies that requires, you will run all required applications, even if said apps cause issues. The reason for that is clear: if anything goes wrong, their asses are covered because they just followed procedure.
There's a reason that any company with half a collective brain will have an engineering network (where all process control and data acquisitions systems reside) and a business network. The two should never meet, except under very controlled conditions, and the engineering network should not, ideally, be at any point connected to the public Internet.
Unfortunately, I've seen too many problems occur because of IT departments insisting on doing things their way, simply because it a. makes their lives easier and b. keeps them from ever having to take any heat when something goes wrong.
Maybe in your world IT is always open-minded and willing to look at the big picture, but in mine that's frequently NOT been the case. Now, that's primarily because IT is oriented towards computing from a business perspective. That's fine, they're in a legitimate supporting role there. But real-time systems operating under an entirely different set of constraints, and if an IT department cannot accept and work with that, they're not only useless but can be downright dangerous.
Odd, I consider none of those as a big issue. I switched to ssd to get rid of the noise and for the speed.
I haven't switched because I don't care about any of the above. The only reason I would switch, I suppose, might be because of reliability, at least on my servers. But the price will have to get a Hell of a lot better.
Local storage is a lot cheaper and faster for most people in the USA, which is all I can speak of. Maybe over in Utopialand where everyone has 100 gig speed connections and hosting is pennies a day for terrabytes the "cloud" might be cheaper and better. Our domestic broadband speeds and prices are not even close to keeping up with increased local storage density and lowering prices for same. Saying the "cloud" will do everything is sorta naive, we have all the major ISPs talking about limits and caps now. This is 100% the WRONG time to be shifting to far away "cloud" storage for most people.
I know I'll be keeping my movies and files handy right here, thanks. I just can't see storing multiple gig sized movies way over there someplace when it would cost me two cents to store it here and have it playback at fast streaming speeds for the cost of the electricity.
Having to go pay yet again to watch your movie or access your own file..nope. The "cloud" is a marketing buzzword for companies that want to charge you serious coin for access to *your own files*.
Well, I agree, however if cloud storage of large files becomes something that the bulk of ISP customers need and want, that would tend to drive infrastructure improvements in order to keep their business. Right now there just isn't such a driving need for gigabit connections that the ISPs see any business case for it (other than marketing hype.) We need that "killer app" that everyone just absolutely has to have, and that requires ungodly bandwidth.
They'll wake you up from cryo when they're done just to taunt you: "Oh, we're having a few billion years between the nodes now, but it fits the curve, just as i told you."
I can't wait. If anybody can keep Moore's law going for five billion years then good luck to them.
I'm not sure I'd want to meet a computer that was the result of five billion year's worth of Moore's Law. Of course, if the Universe is cyclic then so far as we know, a race that existed in some previous incarnation of the Big U might have built a machine that kept evolving itself long after its creators were dust. Hell, it might even have become God, or something so close that we'd never be able to tell the difference.
The wall or plateu or whatever you prefer to call it of electronics progress is similar to the recurring doomsday predictions. It's always right around the corner, but it never happens.
I guess we could liken it to fusion, strong AI, the second coming of Jesus and whatever else that generally is put in the belive it when see it folder.
A more logical comparison would be the repeated assertions that hard drives would be reaching their "theoretical maximum" capacities we've all heard for the past couple decades. Now the things are beyond a terabyte and still increasing. Heck, I remember back in the 70's when I was playing around with some 1 kilobit RAM devices that some scientists were predicting that memories wouldn't get much denser than that.
The problem is that it doesn't make sense from the common sense point of view.
This may come down to economies of scale. If you only have to manufacture one processor, and simply deactivate parts of it, rather than tooling up for multiple chips, there might be a significant savings there. In fact, I'm rather inclined to think that that's all there is to it.
What if Intel had a cpu that only booted windows but for $50 you can unlock any os?
I'm sure they'll try something like that as soon as they can figure out how to get away with it. The problems would be more legal than technical, but as anyone knows a liberal application of funds to the proper politician can resolve such issues very cost effectively.
IBM's been doing that sort of thing for years. They ship you a mainframe with more processors than you ordered or a disk array with more disk than you ordered, and you can pay them to turn it on. Some companies only turn on their extra processors for a short time each year (Like end-of-year transaction processing) and if you decide you need some more space in your disk array, it's much more convenient than having to have more disks installed or buy a new disk array.
True. My father used to work on a Hewlett-Packard mainframe back in the seventies, and he ordered some extra hard disk space. The HP tech came out, opened the casing of each drive (big freestanding units), reached in the back and flipped a DIP switch. Voila!, extra space. He even showed Dad how to turn on the entire drive if he wanted... apparently HP didn't care (it wasn't a contract violation or anything) but wouldn't provide any support if you did.
Except, I'm not sure how that really applies to hardware. Can you license hardware? Remember, modding consoles is illegal because you start fiddling with licensed software as well, not just the hardware you own.
Actually, I think it's more basic than that. You are using the bits of information stored in a particular media (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, CPU microcode store, whatever) in a manner not authorized by the vendor.
I've been accused of lying on my resume outright in an interview (I didn't lie). Sad thing was that these were developers interviewing me.
And you want to know why? Odds are (unless they just didn't like your looks) your resume made them nervous. My guess is the programmers that were interviewing you were concerned that you might make them look bad. If that was the case, it's probably best you didn't get hired (assuming you didn't.)
The way I look at other technical people is this: if they're better than me, that's great because I now have an opportunity to learn something.
Ahhh the Apple Fanbots strike again, trying to censor posts via moderation. I don't agree with you (Jobs isn't the only cheap CEO), but neither do I think you should have your Karma damaged or post made invisible. All ideas should be welcome.
On the other hand... he may well be right. I wouldn't put any of this past any of these people, even Brin, Page, and Schmidt. Nothing pisses off a CEO more than to have a key individual lured away by a rival, especially if trade secrets are involved. Well, okay, maybe having somebody snip the ripcord off his golden parachute, or take away his bonuses.
The salaries these guys earn are a pittance compared to the value of their knowledge of their respective companies internal operations. Yeah, they've all signed non-disclosure, non-compete agreements and all that, but still. Would you want the guy responsible for technologies critical to the survival of your corporation working for the enemy?
Well if you WANT to see American engineers and factory workers' wages drop to $5/hour and $1/hour respectively (in order to compete with cheap Indian and Asian labor), that's cool. You're free to hold any viewpoint you want.
I just don't happen to agree with that position. We should be forcing these other countries to have basic workers' rights, rather than smashing them underfoot like cattle in a slaughterhouse. (See the 100+ suicides/murders at Foxconn.)
The problem is, engineering is not like slapping burgers, in terms of value to society. You need engineers and technical people of all stripes in order to keep a function high-tech civilization going. You just do. And it takes some talent and effort and time to become useful in those fields. If you take away all the financial incentive that keeps a bright young person in the technical world, makes him or her willing to take on a load of school debt, well, you just shot yourself in the foot.
And don't anyone here give me any crap about how someone who loves what he does for a living will do it for free. That's true only in relatively few instances: the rest have bills to pay, mouths to feed, and if engineering is simply not a viable way to make a living, those of us will brains will simply find some other way to do it.
So why don't YOU apply for any of those $15-20/hour jobs? Are they not preferable to being unemployed?
Hell, those companies are gonna chose you just to save some rupees off visa fees.
Yes and no. There are consequences to taking a salary hit. The influx of cheap labor that doesn't expect any health benefits is also causing problems for domestic workers.
They are not cheap in the place where they work. Do you know how to do comparison?
Do you? They certainly are cheaper, if it's a U.S.-based company that is footing their bills. Do you think the rise of outsourcing was a matter of quality, or just because American companies like the way Indian workers last names sound? Come on, dude, it's about money. Period. End of statement.
Reverse the process. Why would an Indian corporation hire American workers, when they'd have to pay substantially more than they pay their domestic workers? This isn't rocket science, it's about profit regardless of the human cost.
Beyond the standard bullshit i disagree with on your post, you bring up something that annoys me in just about all internet conversation...
In order to not be racist when talking about members of another race, everyone seems to feel that its necessary to inform everyone that they have a stash of hip black friends standing behind them patting them on the back for being so PC.
I'm not racist, but don't think i've had a black friend for years. And I don't feel a loss. It wasn't a conscious decision, it just worked out that way, and i don't feel the need to run out and befriend a bunch of people because my social life is melatonin challenged.
Balls.
Well, that's just because some people don't want to be thought of as racist, even when they are. Or maybe I should say, especially when they are. That's because, when you get right down to it, they're hypocrites. Personally, I prefer an honest bigot, because you know where he stands, you can deal with him on that basis. The closet bigots are the ones that irritate me.
FWIW they claim keeping wages low wasn't the intent of the agreement:
If you believe that, then I have some prime real estate and a bridge to sell to you.
These are not companies struggling to pay their staff, more likely what thye were trying to do is prevent the highly disruptive process of key staff being poached in the middle of billion dollar projects, their pay is piddly compared to the damage that stealing key staff does to deliverable timelines. having said that it would also have a side affect of supressing staff wages, but I seriously doubt that was the intent.
I agree. Wages are not the issue, or certainly not the most important one. Disruption and loss of confidential information is far more likely to be of a concern. I notice that Microsoft wasn't mentioned in the summary (didn't RTFA yet) but if they weren't, that's interesting, since Microsoft has lost people to Google (a certain "I'm going to fucking kill Google" chair-throwing tirade coming to mind.) Not that I would believe Microsoft incapable of such practices, but they may have figured the liability was too great. Or maybe there are some people they'd like to poach themselves.
but if it does, it's a big opportunity for AMD. Of course, odds are it'll get cracked at some point and we'll be able to grab an "Intel Upgrade Service Crack" torrent.
Presumably Intel will be using the CPU serial number to keep track of legitimate users and so forth. But here it comes: have we bought a central processing unit which has now become our property because we paid for it, or are we simply buying a "license" to use Intel's "intellectual property"? If I go out and buy a penknife, I don't expect to have to pay more money if I want to be able to use the built-in compass. Will the BSA (or some similar organization) come down on companies that unlock their processors without paying Intel's upgrade fee? This has the potential to get ugly.
Small wonder that so many people out there consider government's doings to be little more than "legalized" theft.
Perhaps not in the abstract, but as is frequently said, there's a difference between theory and practice...
Closer to extortion, really... if a thug comes into your house, points a gun at your head and says, "gimme your dough!", or a cop comes in and says, "You didn't pay your property taxes so we're taking your home" well, either way you've had your assets taken away from you by force. One is legal, one isn't, but that's small comfort to the victim.
Part of the problem is that building software on Windows is monstrously difficult.
Well... I think a better way to put that would be: "building Windows applications using development tools which are primarily used in non-Windows environments is monstrously difficult." Round hole, square peg and all that.
It's a small gift (usually miniature plastic toys of one kind or another) frequently found in boxes of children's breakfast cereal. That's been pretty common since I was a kid in the 1960's, if not longer. I got all kinds of things: wish I still had them, they'd probably be very collectible today. I remember a glow-in-the-dark compass (that actually worked!), a whistle that had spinning fan blades that made an awesome siren sound, tiny figures of soldiers, superheroes, plastic cars, boats, tanks, all kinds of stuff. Once I even found a miniature flashlight. I only used it a couple of times before it broke, but it was fun while it lasted. Anyway, I think the idea was to encourage the kid to work his way through the box of sugary crunchy starch as quickly as possible so his parents would have to go buy more. Cap'n Crunch and Apple Jacks were my two favorites.
Not sure what they put in kid's cereal nowadays, but I'll bet it's not half as much fun.
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, your definition of "expert" is very strange. From your attitudes towards groups like IT, I assume you use it to pretend that "experts" really aren't and that you can therefore safely ignore them?
A true expert is one thing, but the vast majority of IT people with whom I've had the misfortune of dealing are simply concerned about enforcing the latest corporate policies. That means you will be on the company domain, you will live with any group policies that requires, you will run all required applications, even if said apps cause issues. The reason for that is clear: if anything goes wrong, their asses are covered because they just followed procedure.
There's a reason that any company with half a collective brain will have an engineering network (where all process control and data acquisitions systems reside) and a business network. The two should never meet, except under very controlled conditions, and the engineering network should not, ideally, be at any point connected to the public Internet.
Unfortunately, I've seen too many problems occur because of IT departments insisting on doing things their way, simply because it a. makes their lives easier and b. keeps them from ever having to take any heat when something goes wrong.
Maybe in your world IT is always open-minded and willing to look at the big picture, but in mine that's frequently NOT been the case. Now, that's primarily because IT is oriented towards computing from a business perspective. That's fine, they're in a legitimate supporting role there. But real-time systems operating under an entirely different set of constraints, and if an IT department cannot accept and work with that, they're not only useless but can be downright dangerous.
How did you get an all cap post past the filter?
It was so loud it overloaded the preamp.
Well, we've already hit a wall with CPU clock speed, haven't we?
Yes, but not a wall in terms of CPU performance which is all we really care about. And that clock speed limit may yet be broken.
Odd, I consider none of those as a big issue. I switched to ssd to get rid of the noise and for the speed.
I haven't switched because I don't care about any of the above. The only reason I would switch, I suppose, might be because of reliability, at least on my servers. But the price will have to get a Hell of a lot better.
Local storage is a lot cheaper and faster for most people in the USA, which is all I can speak of. Maybe over in Utopialand where everyone has 100 gig speed connections and hosting is pennies a day for terrabytes the "cloud" might be cheaper and better. Our domestic broadband speeds and prices are not even close to keeping up with increased local storage density and lowering prices for same. Saying the "cloud" will do everything is sorta naive, we have all the major ISPs talking about limits and caps now. This is 100% the WRONG time to be shifting to far away "cloud" storage for most people.
I know I'll be keeping my movies and files handy right here, thanks. I just can't see storing multiple gig sized movies way over there someplace when it would cost me two cents to store it here and have it playback at fast streaming speeds for the cost of the electricity.
Having to go pay yet again to watch your movie or access your own file..nope. The "cloud" is a marketing buzzword for companies that want to charge you serious coin for access to *your own files*.
Well, I agree, however if cloud storage of large files becomes something that the bulk of ISP customers need and want, that would tend to drive infrastructure improvements in order to keep their business. Right now there just isn't such a driving need for gigabit connections that the ISPs see any business case for it (other than marketing hype.) We need that "killer app" that everyone just absolutely has to have, and that requires ungodly bandwidth.
Uh, dumbass? Those are insulators and wires. Of course the fucking transistors are made of silicon, doofus.
Politeness is a virtue, shithead.
They'll wake you up from cryo when they're done just to taunt you: "Oh, we're having a few billion years between the nodes now, but it fits the curve, just as i told you."
I can't wait. If anybody can keep Moore's law going for five billion years then good luck to them.
I'm not sure I'd want to meet a computer that was the result of five billion year's worth of Moore's Law. Of course, if the Universe is cyclic then so far as we know, a race that existed in some previous incarnation of the Big U might have built a machine that kept evolving itself long after its creators were dust. Hell, it might even have become God, or something so close that we'd never be able to tell the difference.
The wall or plateu or whatever you prefer to call it of electronics progress is similar to the recurring doomsday predictions. It's always right around the corner, but it never happens. I guess we could liken it to fusion, strong AI, the second coming of Jesus and whatever else that generally is put in the belive it when see it folder.
A more logical comparison would be the repeated assertions that hard drives would be reaching their "theoretical maximum" capacities we've all heard for the past couple decades. Now the things are beyond a terabyte and still increasing. Heck, I remember back in the 70's when I was playing around with some 1 kilobit RAM devices that some scientists were predicting that memories wouldn't get much denser than that.
The problem is that it doesn't make sense from the common sense point of view.
This may come down to economies of scale. If you only have to manufacture one processor, and simply deactivate parts of it, rather than tooling up for multiple chips, there might be a significant savings there. In fact, I'm rather inclined to think that that's all there is to it.
What if Intel had a cpu that only booted windows but for $50 you can unlock any os?
I'm sure they'll try something like that as soon as they can figure out how to get away with it. The problems would be more legal than technical, but as anyone knows a liberal application of funds to the proper politician can resolve such issues very cost effectively.
IBM's been doing that sort of thing for years. They ship you a mainframe with more processors than you ordered or a disk array with more disk than you ordered, and you can pay them to turn it on. Some companies only turn on their extra processors for a short time each year (Like end-of-year transaction processing) and if you decide you need some more space in your disk array, it's much more convenient than having to have more disks installed or buy a new disk array.
True. My father used to work on a Hewlett-Packard mainframe back in the seventies, and he ordered some extra hard disk space. The HP tech came out, opened the casing of each drive (big freestanding units), reached in the back and flipped a DIP switch. Voila!, extra space. He even showed Dad how to turn on the entire drive if he wanted ... apparently HP didn't care (it wasn't a contract violation or anything) but wouldn't provide any support if you did.
Except, I'm not sure how that really applies to hardware. Can you license hardware? Remember, modding consoles is illegal because you start fiddling with licensed software as well, not just the hardware you own.
Actually, I think it's more basic than that. You are using the bits of information stored in a particular media (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, CPU microcode store, whatever) in a manner not authorized by the vendor.
I've been accused of lying on my resume outright in an interview (I didn't lie). Sad thing was that these were developers interviewing me.
And you want to know why? Odds are (unless they just didn't like your looks) your resume made them nervous. My guess is the programmers that were interviewing you were concerned that you might make them look bad. If that was the case, it's probably best you didn't get hired (assuming you didn't.)
The way I look at other technical people is this: if they're better than me, that's great because I now have an opportunity to learn something.
Name names.
Why should he? I wouldn't, even if I was posting A.C. Shit can come back to haunt you.
Ahhh the Apple Fanbots strike again, trying to censor posts via moderation. I don't agree with you (Jobs isn't the only cheap CEO), but neither do I think you should have your Karma damaged or post made invisible. All ideas should be welcome .
On the other hand ... he may well be right. I wouldn't put any of this past any of these people, even Brin, Page, and Schmidt. Nothing pisses off a CEO more than to have a key individual lured away by a rival, especially if trade secrets are involved. Well, okay, maybe having somebody snip the ripcord off his golden parachute, or take away his bonuses.
The salaries these guys earn are a pittance compared to the value of their knowledge of their respective companies internal operations. Yeah, they've all signed non-disclosure, non-compete agreements and all that, but still. Would you want the guy responsible for technologies critical to the survival of your corporation working for the enemy?
Well if you WANT to see American engineers and factory workers' wages drop to $5/hour and $1/hour respectively (in order to compete with cheap Indian and Asian labor), that's cool. You're free to hold any viewpoint you want.
I just don't happen to agree with that position. We should be forcing these other countries to have basic workers' rights, rather than smashing them underfoot like cattle in a slaughterhouse. (See the 100+ suicides/murders at Foxconn.)
The problem is, engineering is not like slapping burgers, in terms of value to society. You need engineers and technical people of all stripes in order to keep a function high-tech civilization going. You just do. And it takes some talent and effort and time to become useful in those fields. If you take away all the financial incentive that keeps a bright young person in the technical world, makes him or her willing to take on a load of school debt, well, you just shot yourself in the foot.
And don't anyone here give me any crap about how someone who loves what he does for a living will do it for free. That's true only in relatively few instances: the rest have bills to pay, mouths to feed, and if engineering is simply not a viable way to make a living, those of us will brains will simply find some other way to do it.
So why don't YOU apply for any of those $15-20/hour jobs? Are they not preferable to being unemployed?
Hell, those companies are gonna chose you just to save some rupees off visa fees.
Yes and no. There are consequences to taking a salary hit. The influx of cheap labor that doesn't expect any health benefits is also causing problems for domestic workers.
They are not cheap in the place where they work. Do you know how to do comparison?
Do you? They certainly are cheaper, if it's a U.S.-based company that is footing their bills. Do you think the rise of outsourcing was a matter of quality, or just because American companies like the way Indian workers last names sound? Come on, dude, it's about money. Period. End of statement.
Reverse the process. Why would an Indian corporation hire American workers, when they'd have to pay substantially more than they pay their domestic workers? This isn't rocket science, it's about profit regardless of the human cost.
Beyond the standard bullshit i disagree with on your post, you bring up something that annoys me in just about all internet conversation... In order to not be racist when talking about members of another race, everyone seems to feel that its necessary to inform everyone that they have a stash of hip black friends standing behind them patting them on the back for being so PC. I'm not racist, but don't think i've had a black friend for years. And I don't feel a loss. It wasn't a conscious decision, it just worked out that way, and i don't feel the need to run out and befriend a bunch of people because my social life is melatonin challenged. Balls.
Well, that's just because some people don't want to be thought of as racist, even when they are. Or maybe I should say, especially when they are. That's because, when you get right down to it, they're hypocrites. Personally, I prefer an honest bigot, because you know where he stands, you can deal with him on that basis. The closet bigots are the ones that irritate me.
If you believe that, then I have some prime real estate and a bridge to sell to you.
These are not companies struggling to pay their staff, more likely what thye were trying to do is prevent the highly disruptive process of key staff being poached in the middle of billion dollar projects, their pay is piddly compared to the damage that stealing key staff does to deliverable timelines. having said that it would also have a side affect of supressing staff wages, but I seriously doubt that was the intent.
I agree. Wages are not the issue, or certainly not the most important one. Disruption and loss of confidential information is far more likely to be of a concern. I notice that Microsoft wasn't mentioned in the summary (didn't RTFA yet) but if they weren't, that's interesting, since Microsoft has lost people to Google (a certain "I'm going to fucking kill Google" chair-throwing tirade coming to mind.) Not that I would believe Microsoft incapable of such practices, but they may have figured the liability was too great. Or maybe there are some people they'd like to poach themselves.
but if it does, it's a big opportunity for AMD. Of course, odds are it'll get cracked at some point and we'll be able to grab an "Intel Upgrade Service Crack" torrent.
Presumably Intel will be using the CPU serial number to keep track of legitimate users and so forth. But here it comes: have we bought a central processing unit which has now become our property because we paid for it, or are we simply buying a "license" to use Intel's "intellectual property"? If I go out and buy a penknife, I don't expect to have to pay more money if I want to be able to use the built-in compass. Will the BSA (or some similar organization) come down on companies that unlock their processors without paying Intel's upgrade fee? This has the potential to get ugly.
Small wonder that so many people out there consider government's doings to be little more than "legalized" theft.
Perhaps not in the abstract, but as is frequently said, there's a difference between theory and practice...
Closer to extortion, really ... if a thug comes into your house, points a gun at your head and says, "gimme your dough!", or a cop comes in and says, "You didn't pay your property taxes so we're taking your home" well, either way you've had your assets taken away from you by force. One is legal, one isn't, but that's small comfort to the victim.
He should write in a question to Slashdot on how to propose to her...
Excellent idea. I figure if I take all those suggestions and do the exact opposite I'll do just fine.
Part of the problem is that building software on Windows is monstrously difficult.
Well ... I think a better way to put that would be: "building Windows applications using development tools which are primarily used in non-Windows environments is monstrously difficult." Round hole, square peg and all that.
Im sorry, what is a breakfast cereal prize?
It's a small gift (usually miniature plastic toys of one kind or another) frequently found in boxes of children's breakfast cereal. That's been pretty common since I was a kid in the 1960's, if not longer. I got all kinds of things: wish I still had them, they'd probably be very collectible today. I remember a glow-in-the-dark compass (that actually worked!), a whistle that had spinning fan blades that made an awesome siren sound, tiny figures of soldiers, superheroes, plastic cars, boats, tanks, all kinds of stuff. Once I even found a miniature flashlight. I only used it a couple of times before it broke, but it was fun while it lasted. Anyway, I think the idea was to encourage the kid to work his way through the box of sugary crunchy starch as quickly as possible so his parents would have to go buy more. Cap'n Crunch and Apple Jacks were my two favorites.
Not sure what they put in kid's cereal nowadays, but I'll bet it's not half as much fun.