Surely one has high entropy and the other has low entropy - yet they're identical!
The entropy is the same. It doesn't matter how they got in that state. Deliberately placing stones (or molecules) in a disorded state is still a disordered, and thus high entropy, state.
One useful way to think of the entropy of a system is in terms of information. The amount of information needed to describe a system represents its entropy (in a real and quantifiable way according to QM and Information Theory). A smooth rock wall requires less information to describe than randomly scattered rocks. A crystalline solid requires less information to describe than a plasma. A.png of random noise requires a lot more information to describe than a.png of a solid color -- as can be seen by how well the two compress.
It doesn't matter how you create the.png of random noise, the result will still compress badly due to its high entropy. Though in practice humans are bad at generating random numbers so the hand-placed "random".png will have less entropy than one created from a truly random process. If we assume the result is the same, though, then so will be the entropy.
You're drawing a line where none exists, and in the wrong place to boot.
Engineers develop useful, practical things. Things that serve a particular need, that can be made economically, etc.
Scientists develop things, too, but they aren't as often concerned with the direct utility or practicality of what they develop. For instance what these scientists developed is an ingenious proof-of-concept that could eventually be developed into a practical procedure for replicating materials, possibly by a chemical engineer.
However scientists also frequently develop practical, useful things. The PCR process you have seen mentioned in this thread is incredibly useful and practical, and was developed by a chemist.
Sometimes the line gets really blurry, like in the development of a new technology for silicon IC fabrication. The material science and the material engineering are closely coupled and it's hard to say specifically which is which in a given case, outside of edge cases.
And as I said, I agree completely on the purpose and validation of these systems. Now, how about taking a look at some statistical analysis both before and after the top500.org website was established, and validate that overall spending on these massive supercomputers, as well as average upgrade timelines, is NOT somehow tied to the "king of the hill" theory.
So what if it the keeping of a Top 500 list of supercomputers spurs governments and other organizations to compete to produce the most powerful computers? The problems these supercomputers are solving are problems where you can always throw more computational power at them to get better answers. You agree that this purpose is worth while.
I go back to what I said before. This is a tiny portion of the budget, a tiny portion of our debt problem. It's something that pays dividends. It's part of our spending that makes no sense to cut. Not because we're competing over who can produce the most data-crunching, the most science, the most dividends. This is a good thing.
Might as well complain that runners compete for the top spot rather than simply trying to achieve the fastest times. Or complain about spending on the Apollo programs because the space race was a political pissing match between superpowers, after agreeing that the Apollo missions were worth it!
Fair enough. That's true, but they modified it a lot, creating a structure that as far as we know doesn't exist in nature. It replicates without any of the normal cellular chemistry that makes it happen naturally including enzymes, which separates this from the Polymerase Chain Reaction technique for DNA amplification someone mentioned below. It also allows them to replicate structures other than proteins composed of amino acids defined by the normal base pairs.
They even fabricated the DNA they used, so it's technically artificial. In a more meaningful sense, maybe it's not completely artificial. Not to the extent of things we might make in the future. Still, I don't think it's complete hyperbole for a headline about a significant step.
No, it's like saying that it will be partly cloudy with a 20% chance of rain with a high of 70 degrees, and then you dismissing that by saying "Well of course there's some kind of weather today."
And it could be the case that the birds they used didn't evolve from t-rex, but rather some other (possibly completely unrelated) species of bird, which would skew the results.
The common ancestor of birds is not T-Rex, so yeah. The most likely ancestor is one of the raptor family of dinosaurs -- aside from having a generally a more bird-like skeleton, a main key is in the structure of their wrists which can be seen evolving increasing degrees of flexibility in the raptor line to be more and more like the structure of a modern bird's wrists.
That said, a modern bird is still going to be the closest living relative to T-Rex. They're probably closer to T-Rex than crocodiles are.
Of course the end result is still a huge estimate -- i.e. guess. But informed guesswork can still be science.
Its such an easy-to-adapt to difference from earlier WIMP-style interfaces that I can't understand why so many people on Slashdot are enraged by it. Every non-technical user I've found who has used a similar interface (either the actual Ubuntu one or the Win7 one looks and behaves similarly) prefers it to its predecessors.
I sure hope that experience carries over to me and my non-technical friend.
I personally was able to "adapt" to Unity quite quickly, but after giving it two months of daily use to really give it a chance, I decided I just didn't like it. There are unnecessary steps between me and launching an application that isn't one of my most-frequently used, launcher buttons don't work how I want, and the menu placement is a disaster when used with mouse focus (which is essential to the way I use multiple windows). Back to Ubuntu Classic for me. If Unity is my only choice, then fine.
My friend, who lacks the years of experience using various GUIS that I have that lets me adapt to anything easily, I'm worried about. I can already guess a lot of the things that will annoy him. Like the task bar hiding behavior, the way taskbar buttons behave differently the first and second time you push them, the little 'see additional' tab in the applications menu he'll have to hit to see the app he's looking for. Oh and good lord the scroll bars that pop in and out of existence based on your mouse not actually being over where they are supposed to be.
In the end it'll be a good experience for him to have to adapt, but in the short term it'll just be intensely frustrating. And in the long term I'm still not convinced it's the best interface for him (or anyone) to be using.
Maybe I'm wrong and he'll take to it immediately. I really hope so. I still won't like it, and that's not because I'm against change.
Right. There is currently no legal decision about non-state actors taking things from space, but the sanest legal theory appears to be the 'international water' rules, which essentially say that 'As long as someone does not appear to be control of it, it is fair game.'
That's really a gross simplification, especially when talking about government property. The government retains their claims on many things which they are definitively not in control of because it's a sunken wreck on the bottom of the ocean. Unless the U.S. government specifically released their claim to the moon rovers and their contents (which they didn't), or this astronaut's claim that he was given the camera as a gift is true, then it's a pretty clear-cut case that the camera is government property that he misappropriated.
The jurisdiction-on-the-moon issue is a red herring in this case. It would only be relevant if the astronaut was living on the moon and the U.S. wanted to sue him according to U.S. laws. Then jurisdiction would determine if they were able to do so. Taking government property outside of government jurisdiction does not render it not-government-property, nor does stealing government property while it is outside government jurisdiction render it not-theft. Not under the law of the government in question.
So for the limits of U.S. jurisdiction to help him now, he'd have to move someplace where the U.S. does not have jurisdiction so they couldn't sue him for breaking the U.S.' laws. Also it'd have to be a place that did not recognize the U.S. government's ownership of the rover parts, so that it would not be a crime under their laws, either.
But as long as he's in the U.S., then he's under U.S. jurisdiction, and what he allegedly did was illegal according to U.S. law.
Granted, I have not listened to this call, but this just lends further weight to my thought that there is some kind of (misplaced?) animosity between these "superheroes" and the police & dispatchers. If I call in an ongoing crime, I wouldn't normally expect the 911 operator to inquire on my current dress.
The dispatcher didn't know the caller was a costumed crime fighter, or at least maybe not until they mentioned the rubber suit. They probably asked about clothing so that when the police arrive they can find the person who called.
Following your dipshit logic, everything everywhere in the US is a piece of US history so nothing should be sold, ever.
No, that's you following your own dipshit logic that everything anywhere in the U.S. is a piece of U.S. history, probably using the literalist-dipshit interpretation of 'piece' as 'any component of' and 'history' as 'the past', deliberately ignoring that this is not what the phrase "piece of history" means in the majority of contexts. Like a dipshit.
Oh yeah, and you also ignored the part where the piece of history in question was not properly owned by the person selling it, thus making your attempt to "follow the logic" even more wrong and stupid.
They already know that "just" because you steal something a long time ago that doesn't make it yours.
In the case of stealing a continent, it also takes a lengthy campaign of conquest, and/or genocide of varying degrees of deliberateness.
If this astronaut had killed off enough of the U.S. government that what remained couldn't marshal a significant effort to prosecute him for the theft, then he'd get away with it scott free.:P
I would be willing to agree with you 110% here on your justification model here, save for one tiny little thing. We also happen to hold the #1 spot in the world regarding debt, which tends to question the overall benefit of building systems that cost "hundreds of millions to build and operate", regardless of the use.
Yeah! I'm hugely in debt because I over-bought on my summer home, so I'd better stop paying for the bus tokens I use to get to work! That'll really help my situation!
Hundreds of millions is nothing compared to the debt problem at issue, super-computer purchasing is not a significant contributor to that issue, however scientific advances that can only be achieved via such computers can provide returns far above what was spent and do orders of magnitude more to resolve our debt issues than it is contributing to them.
Being in debt doesn't mean you stop spending money. It means you have to spend money wiser -- on things that can provide dividends. This is a perfect example of the kind of spending that should not be stopped exactly because of the debt problem.
so what if he's trying to sell it? Some how it lessens the fact that it's his?
The only thing it lessens are the impetus for the government to ignore the fact that it isn't his, and my sympathy for him not getting to keep it.
If the government was suing to take back the memento on his mantle piece, I'd think that was pretty cold-hearted. But in this case the coldness started when he decided to auction off the "memento" for cold hard cash.
Please state a testable hypothesis given by intelligent design.
"People who believe ID is a scientific hypothesis on average have a poor or selectively blind understanding of science and what it means to be testable."
Or does that not count? I guess it's more a hypothesis about Intelligent Design.
Holy shit, what is wrong with the reading comprehension on slashdot these days? At no point do I say that the spraying was justified, all that I said was that of the tools he could misuse that was the least harmful.
Yeah, you just played down the severity of macing innocent people in the face by saying that at least he didn't shoot them or break their neck. Because apparently that was on the table?
Why don't you come over here and let me mace you in the face, and see if you don't "go nuts about the severity of the macing" because I didn't use my pocket knife to stab you for no reason instead.
Here's a free clue for you: The reason the officer didn't shoot the girls or beat them with his truncheon or throw them down on the curb is because mace does have the least harmful effect and thus the least oversight. It's why tasers are used so much more often than guns (in the absence of taser availability), because the post-facto justifications needed for doing so are vastly less. Which is why arguments of the form "better the taser than the gun", like you're making here, are utterly retarded.
Jesus Christ, now I remember why I don't come here anymore.
Where is it that "Hey, let's not get riled up over the cop macing innocent girls in the face, he could have killed them instead you know" plays well, so I can make sure to never ever visit?
Of course not! No card carrying libertarian needs some goverment-like HOA to organize their protection. The home owners should be doing this themselves, not being forced into doing it by a clause tied to the deed of their land. I mean, can the home owner choose not to pay protection money, and get different service? If they can't, it's not rabid libertarianism.
There's nothing un-libertarian about a contract requiring someone purchasing a home in a development to have to abide by certain rules, including clauses requiring exclusive use of a particular police service (or jus primae noctis for that matter). If the home buyer doesn't like the terms of the contract, they can simply purchase a home somewhere else! To disallow this kind of contract would be to restrict the land developer's right to dispense with their property in any way they see fit.
In Rabid Libertarianism, the only law is property and contract law, and there are no restrictions on contract law because that's unnatural regulation. The escape from situations like the above is always simply "You can choose to live somewhere else" or "You can work somewhere else". As I said in the other post, this only makes sense if you see yourself as always being in the position to do so, or even better see yourself as being the one in the advantageous position in any contract negotiations.
Well, wait a minute. Obviously it turned out to be a misstep, but what reason do you have for thinking they knew that going in and were just being disingenuous?
They didn't know. They (the engineers) thought they were just pursuing the next logical step in the path marketing had decided on with the original P4, selling on high frequency. There was very convincing data they showed that they could extend the P4 architecture up to well above 10GHz and get good performance. Nobody in industry called them on it, because they too didn't see the problem that was just around the corner.
At 60nm, the leakage current of transistors blew up. What was previously a minor problem was now a large percentage of the total power consumed by a chip, I've heard in some cases as much as 50%. This was a big surprise to basically the entire industry -- everyone still thought parasitic cap at the smaller nodes was going to be the big issue. Intel's high-frequency design got screwed more than most, but everywhere there was upheaval as they tried to take it into account.
One could question the wisdom of pursuing a high-frequency design in the first place. I know I did. But the reason it ended up being unwise was something I didn't predict and virtually nobody else did either.
Of course -- the frothing ones, at least. They're all about having the 'freedom' to corrupt everything with money, because they all have or assume they will have the money so it will work out in their favor. They don't consider the ramifications of having the "freedom" to be at the mercy of criminals because they can't afford police protection -- that won't be them, so they don't care. Even though it will affect them, in their walled-off and policed enclaves. Just like the lawlessness in northern Mexico affects us here.
I wish that movie had stayed with the tone established in the first half by scenes like that one, instead of turning into a Matrix-y kung-fu movie with the appearance of Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Good characters, but really ruined the promise the movie had up to that point. But I guess you can't go the semi-realistic hero-gets-beaten-to-shit route once you involve a 10 year old hero... which is why they shouldn't have...
With these real-life costumed vigilantes, I understand where they're coming from, but I don't really agree with where they go to. They put on costumes to protect their identity, but it also grants anonymity (up until they get arrested) and a sense of being separate and special. So they're more likely to intervene in cases where they really shouldn't. Like, perhaps, this one.
By the way, I heard on the news the 911 call Phoenix Jones made to report the fight. The dispatcher asked "What are you wearing?", and the awkward pause before he answered "A yellow and black rubber suit" was precious.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one disturbed that the word "freedom" apparently has negative connotations?
Would "FreeOffice" be better because people would be free (libre) to assume it means free (gratis) if that makes them more comfortable?
Surely one has high entropy and the other has low entropy - yet they're identical!
The entropy is the same. It doesn't matter how they got in that state. Deliberately placing stones (or molecules) in a disorded state is still a disordered, and thus high entropy, state.
One useful way to think of the entropy of a system is in terms of information. The amount of information needed to describe a system represents its entropy (in a real and quantifiable way according to QM and Information Theory). A smooth rock wall requires less information to describe than randomly scattered rocks. A crystalline solid requires less information to describe than a plasma. A .png of random noise requires a lot more information to describe than a .png of a solid color -- as can be seen by how well the two compress.
It doesn't matter how you create the .png of random noise, the result will still compress badly due to its high entropy. Though in practice humans are bad at generating random numbers so the hand-placed "random" .png will have less entropy than one created from a truly random process. If we assume the result is the same, though, then so will be the entropy.
You're drawing a line where none exists, and in the wrong place to boot.
Engineers develop useful, practical things. Things that serve a particular need, that can be made economically, etc.
Scientists develop things, too, but they aren't as often concerned with the direct utility or practicality of what they develop. For instance what these scientists developed is an ingenious proof-of-concept that could eventually be developed into a practical procedure for replicating materials, possibly by a chemical engineer.
However scientists also frequently develop practical, useful things. The PCR process you have seen mentioned in this thread is incredibly useful and practical, and was developed by a chemist.
Sometimes the line gets really blurry, like in the development of a new technology for silicon IC fabrication. The material science and the material engineering are closely coupled and it's hard to say specifically which is which in a given case, outside of edge cases.
Well if you're going to be pedantic, oblate spheroids are round. So are eggs. Spheres are round, too, but spheres are not the only round object.
The world is oblate spheroid-ish, and thus round.
s/parent/planet/;
So what you view as "self-replicating" or not depends on the scale at which you examine it.
Yeah, at the scale at which the self-replication is occurring, it's self-replicating. :P
These molecules are self-replicating. The parent they are present on is not. This is not exactly a deep insight.
And as I said, I agree completely on the purpose and validation of these systems. Now, how about taking a look at some statistical analysis both before and after the top500.org website was established, and validate that overall spending on these massive supercomputers, as well as average upgrade timelines, is NOT somehow tied to the "king of the hill" theory.
So what if it the keeping of a Top 500 list of supercomputers spurs governments and other organizations to compete to produce the most powerful computers? The problems these supercomputers are solving are problems where you can always throw more computational power at them to get better answers. You agree that this purpose is worth while.
I go back to what I said before. This is a tiny portion of the budget, a tiny portion of our debt problem. It's something that pays dividends. It's part of our spending that makes no sense to cut. Not because we're competing over who can produce the most data-crunching, the most science, the most dividends. This is a good thing.
Might as well complain that runners compete for the top spot rather than simply trying to achieve the fastest times. Or complain about spending on the Apollo programs because the space race was a political pissing match between superpowers, after agreeing that the Apollo missions were worth it!
Fair enough. That's true, but they modified it a lot, creating a structure that as far as we know doesn't exist in nature. It replicates without any of the normal cellular chemistry that makes it happen naturally including enzymes, which separates this from the Polymerase Chain Reaction technique for DNA amplification someone mentioned below. It also allows them to replicate structures other than proteins composed of amino acids defined by the normal base pairs.
They even fabricated the DNA they used, so it's technically artificial. In a more meaningful sense, maybe it's not completely artificial. Not to the extent of things we might make in the future. Still, I don't think it's complete hyperbole for a headline about a significant step.
Rather like saying "There will be weather today."
No, it's like saying that it will be partly cloudy with a 20% chance of rain with a high of 70 degrees, and then you dismissing that by saying "Well of course there's some kind of weather today."
And it could be the case that the birds they used didn't evolve from t-rex, but rather some other (possibly completely unrelated) species of bird, which would skew the results.
The common ancestor of birds is not T-Rex, so yeah. The most likely ancestor is one of the raptor family of dinosaurs -- aside from having a generally a more bird-like skeleton, a main key is in the structure of their wrists which can be seen evolving increasing degrees of flexibility in the raptor line to be more and more like the structure of a modern bird's wrists.
That said, a modern bird is still going to be the closest living relative to T-Rex. They're probably closer to T-Rex than crocodiles are.
Of course the end result is still a huge estimate -- i.e. guess. But informed guesswork can still be science.
Its such an easy-to-adapt to difference from earlier WIMP-style interfaces that I can't understand why so many people on Slashdot are enraged by it. Every non-technical user I've found who has used a similar interface (either the actual Ubuntu one or the Win7 one looks and behaves similarly) prefers it to its predecessors.
I sure hope that experience carries over to me and my non-technical friend.
I personally was able to "adapt" to Unity quite quickly, but after giving it two months of daily use to really give it a chance, I decided I just didn't like it. There are unnecessary steps between me and launching an application that isn't one of my most-frequently used, launcher buttons don't work how I want, and the menu placement is a disaster when used with mouse focus (which is essential to the way I use multiple windows). Back to Ubuntu Classic for me. If Unity is my only choice, then fine.
My friend, who lacks the years of experience using various GUIS that I have that lets me adapt to anything easily, I'm worried about. I can already guess a lot of the things that will annoy him. Like the task bar hiding behavior, the way taskbar buttons behave differently the first and second time you push them, the little 'see additional' tab in the applications menu he'll have to hit to see the app he's looking for. Oh and good lord the scroll bars that pop in and out of existence based on your mouse not actually being over where they are supposed to be.
In the end it'll be a good experience for him to have to adapt, but in the short term it'll just be intensely frustrating. And in the long term I'm still not convinced it's the best interface for him (or anyone) to be using.
Maybe I'm wrong and he'll take to it immediately. I really hope so. I still won't like it, and that's not because I'm against change.
Right. There is currently no legal decision about non-state actors taking things from space, but the sanest legal theory appears to be the 'international water' rules, which essentially say that 'As long as someone does not appear to be control of it, it is fair game.'
That's really a gross simplification, especially when talking about government property. The government retains their claims on many things which they are definitively not in control of because it's a sunken wreck on the bottom of the ocean. Unless the U.S. government specifically released their claim to the moon rovers and their contents (which they didn't), or this astronaut's claim that he was given the camera as a gift is true, then it's a pretty clear-cut case that the camera is government property that he misappropriated.
The jurisdiction-on-the-moon issue is a red herring in this case. It would only be relevant if the astronaut was living on the moon and the U.S. wanted to sue him according to U.S. laws. Then jurisdiction would determine if they were able to do so. Taking government property outside of government jurisdiction does not render it not-government-property, nor does stealing government property while it is outside government jurisdiction render it not-theft. Not under the law of the government in question.
So for the limits of U.S. jurisdiction to help him now, he'd have to move someplace where the U.S. does not have jurisdiction so they couldn't sue him for breaking the U.S.' laws. Also it'd have to be a place that did not recognize the U.S. government's ownership of the rover parts, so that it would not be a crime under their laws, either.
But as long as he's in the U.S., then he's under U.S. jurisdiction, and what he allegedly did was illegal according to U.S. law.
Granted, I have not listened to this call, but this just lends further weight to my thought that there is some kind of (misplaced?) animosity between these "superheroes" and the police & dispatchers. If I call in an ongoing crime, I wouldn't normally expect the 911 operator to inquire on my current dress.
The dispatcher didn't know the caller was a costumed crime fighter, or at least maybe not until they mentioned the rubber suit. They probably asked about clothing so that when the police arrive they can find the person who called.
Following your dipshit logic, everything everywhere in the US is a piece of US history so nothing should be sold, ever.
No, that's you following your own dipshit logic that everything anywhere in the U.S. is a piece of U.S. history, probably using the literalist-dipshit interpretation of 'piece' as 'any component of' and 'history' as 'the past', deliberately ignoring that this is not what the phrase "piece of history" means in the majority of contexts. Like a dipshit.
Oh yeah, and you also ignored the part where the piece of history in question was not properly owned by the person selling it, thus making your attempt to "follow the logic" even more wrong and stupid.
Tell that to the Native Americans
They already know that "just" because you steal something a long time ago that doesn't make it yours.
In the case of stealing a continent, it also takes a lengthy campaign of conquest, and/or genocide of varying degrees of deliberateness.
If this astronaut had killed off enough of the U.S. government that what remained couldn't marshal a significant effort to prosecute him for the theft, then he'd get away with it scott free. :P
Care to elaborate on that part?
"Such people" was referring to "random passerby" from the previous sentence.
I would be willing to agree with you 110% here on your justification model here, save for one tiny little thing. We also happen to hold the #1 spot in the world regarding debt, which tends to question the overall benefit of building systems that cost "hundreds of millions to build and operate", regardless of the use.
Yeah! I'm hugely in debt because I over-bought on my summer home, so I'd better stop paying for the bus tokens I use to get to work! That'll really help my situation!
Hundreds of millions is nothing compared to the debt problem at issue, super-computer purchasing is not a significant contributor to that issue, however scientific advances that can only be achieved via such computers can provide returns far above what was spent and do orders of magnitude more to resolve our debt issues than it is contributing to them.
Being in debt doesn't mean you stop spending money. It means you have to spend money wiser -- on things that can provide dividends. This is a perfect example of the kind of spending that should not be stopped exactly because of the debt problem.
so what if he's trying to sell it? Some how it lessens the fact that it's his?
The only thing it lessens are the impetus for the government to ignore the fact that it isn't his, and my sympathy for him not getting to keep it.
If the government was suing to take back the memento on his mantle piece, I'd think that was pretty cold-hearted. But in this case the coldness started when he decided to auction off the "memento" for cold hard cash.
Please state a testable hypothesis given by intelligent design.
"People who believe ID is a scientific hypothesis on average have a poor or selectively blind understanding of science and what it means to be testable."
Or does that not count? I guess it's more a hypothesis about Intelligent Design.
Holy shit, what is wrong with the reading comprehension on slashdot these days? At no point do I say that the spraying was justified, all that I said was that of the tools he could misuse that was the least harmful.
Yeah, you just played down the severity of macing innocent people in the face by saying that at least he didn't shoot them or break their neck. Because apparently that was on the table?
Why don't you come over here and let me mace you in the face, and see if you don't "go nuts about the severity of the macing" because I didn't use my pocket knife to stab you for no reason instead.
Here's a free clue for you: The reason the officer didn't shoot the girls or beat them with his truncheon or throw them down on the curb is because mace does have the least harmful effect and thus the least oversight. It's why tasers are used so much more often than guns (in the absence of taser availability), because the post-facto justifications needed for doing so are vastly less. Which is why arguments of the form "better the taser than the gun", like you're making here, are utterly retarded.
Jesus Christ, now I remember why I don't come here anymore.
Where is it that "Hey, let's not get riled up over the cop macing innocent girls in the face, he could have killed them instead you know" plays well, so I can make sure to never ever visit?
Of course not! No card carrying libertarian needs some goverment-like HOA to organize their protection. The home owners should be doing this themselves, not being forced into doing it by a clause tied to the deed of their land. I mean, can the home owner choose not to pay protection money, and get different service? If they can't, it's not rabid libertarianism.
There's nothing un-libertarian about a contract requiring someone purchasing a home in a development to have to abide by certain rules, including clauses requiring exclusive use of a particular police service (or jus primae noctis for that matter). If the home buyer doesn't like the terms of the contract, they can simply purchase a home somewhere else! To disallow this kind of contract would be to restrict the land developer's right to dispense with their property in any way they see fit.
In Rabid Libertarianism, the only law is property and contract law, and there are no restrictions on contract law because that's unnatural regulation. The escape from situations like the above is always simply "You can choose to live somewhere else" or "You can work somewhere else". As I said in the other post, this only makes sense if you see yourself as always being in the position to do so, or even better see yourself as being the one in the advantageous position in any contract negotiations.
Well, wait a minute. Obviously it turned out to be a misstep, but what reason do you have for thinking they knew that going in and were just being disingenuous?
They didn't know. They (the engineers) thought they were just pursuing the next logical step in the path marketing had decided on with the original P4, selling on high frequency. There was very convincing data they showed that they could extend the P4 architecture up to well above 10GHz and get good performance. Nobody in industry called them on it, because they too didn't see the problem that was just around the corner.
At 60nm, the leakage current of transistors blew up. What was previously a minor problem was now a large percentage of the total power consumed by a chip, I've heard in some cases as much as 50%. This was a big surprise to basically the entire industry -- everyone still thought parasitic cap at the smaller nodes was going to be the big issue. Intel's high-frequency design got screwed more than most, but everywhere there was upheaval as they tried to take it into account.
One could question the wisdom of pursuing a high-frequency design in the first place. I know I did. But the reason it ended up being unwise was something I didn't predict and virtually nobody else did either.
Of course -- the frothing ones, at least. They're all about having the 'freedom' to corrupt everything with money, because they all have or assume they will have the money so it will work out in their favor. They don't consider the ramifications of having the "freedom" to be at the mercy of criminals because they can't afford police protection -- that won't be them, so they don't care. Even though it will affect them, in their walled-off and policed enclaves. Just like the lawlessness in northern Mexico affects us here.
I wish that movie had stayed with the tone established in the first half by scenes like that one, instead of turning into a Matrix-y kung-fu movie with the appearance of Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Good characters, but really ruined the promise the movie had up to that point. But I guess you can't go the semi-realistic hero-gets-beaten-to-shit route once you involve a 10 year old hero... which is why they shouldn't have...
With these real-life costumed vigilantes, I understand where they're coming from, but I don't really agree with where they go to. They put on costumes to protect their identity, but it also grants anonymity (up until they get arrested) and a sense of being separate and special. So they're more likely to intervene in cases where they really shouldn't. Like, perhaps, this one.
By the way, I heard on the news the 911 call Phoenix Jones made to report the fight. The dispatcher asked "What are you wearing?", and the awkward pause before he answered "A yellow and black rubber suit" was precious. :)
What are you on about? Frigging Walmart sells model rockets and engines.
Yeah well I wouldn't use what Willing ALlah's MARTyrs sells as an example of something safe!