Ah, but the idea of that three thousand dollar dress is free. So feel free to keep thinking about owning that dress, buy magazines about how great it is to own that dress, and dream about impressing all your friends with the three thousand dollar dress. We'll be here when you crack!
Complaining that CBS chose to "insert" the word into the title makes them look like the people who were horrified that New Line Cinema decided to use an obvious 9/11 reference in the sequel to "Fellowship of the Ring"..."The Two Towers."
I know! It makes no sense to blame New Line when it's obviously Tolkien who made that crass and innappropriate 9/11 reference!
Which funnily enough is the concept behind the Mars Science Laboratory. A much bigger rover with a nice big RTG for power and heating. But we're only sending one.:)
Oh speaking of rovers, Spirit and Opportunity do have radioisotope heaters on them, but they wouldn't be enough to keep one alive through winter. I doubt they would have saved Phoenix if it was buried under that much ice.
Only in the broadest most general sense, and not one relating to how the rover itself was speced.
There's a huge difference between predicting that a part will only last so long before failing, versus predicting that too much sand will build up for a perfectly functioning part to do its job. There's a difference between saying that a solar panel will fail vs that there won't be enough light for solar panels. There's a difference between saying sensors will only last so long before they break versus saying sensors will only last until they don't have power. Or wheels, or processors, or antennae, or whatever.
The difference is made clear by what happened when the environmental prediction didn't come true: suddenly all talk about time limits ended. There was no talk about how some component designed to only last for a 90-day mission might fail and anything beyond that was bonus. Not the wheels, not the electronics, not the radioisotope heaters, not even the solar panels themselves. Because none of them were guaranteed only for 90 days.
90 days never about anything more than the scientists' expectation of dust accumulation, and never had anything to do with the engineering behind the rover except for the decision to go with solar panels to begin with. It's a pleasant surprise the rovers have lasted this long but completely in line with how they were engineered, and this was never presented differently and so there was no Scotty-esque sandbagging. That's the point. Hope it's clear now.
I cannot think of any time anyone would use the word ice (alone without adjectives) to mean anything else, save for completely unrelated slang. Educate me....
I can't think of any situation on Earth where "ice" would be used to mean anything but water ice, since everything else requires such otherworldly conditions. NASA scientists are a bunch of space cadets. Speak English not Martian!
Hintedy hint.:)
But seriously, it's not like they didn't specify at any point in the article that they meant CO2 ice. If you've ever heard the term "Martian icecaps", then you've heard ice used to mean not-water ice (even though there is some there, but we didn't always know that).
Because you can come up with a question that is not explicitly answered by the article does not necessarily imply either a bad experiment or bad reporting.
Well I can't say his work ever particularly appealed to me like some art does, but I will say that is a very bleak and depressing outlook on art you have. Why should anyone's feelings be considered "invalid"?
I couldn't possibly imagine crafting a more ludicrous statement than "Vincent van Gogh was an ass, therefore feelings invoked by his art are invalid -- science proves it!" to indicate that I was satirizing the opinion that Twain's family skills meant he's not one of the coolest guys ever. I couldn't be less subtle than that and still keep what little remains of my self-respect.
BTW do you feel the same way about Twain as van Gogh? Cus he never used sarcasm tags.:)
There are plenty of good husbands and good fathers in this world. There are very few writers of his calibre however.
And these sets seem to have less overlap than simply statistics would suggest. Genius, and devotion to the pursuit of where that genius leads them, often result in someone who has many problems in other areas of life. Hell, just artists and writers in general whether genius or not tend to have these kinds of problems.
In other news, while Vincent Van Gogh may appear to have been a brilliant artist, did you know that in reality he was basically a raving lunatic not to mention quite an asshole? Yep, it's true. All those emotions you felt looking at Starry Night were actually invalid. Who knew? Science did, that's who.
Haha, yeah you're so right, except for how you're totally wrong.
90 days never had anything to do with how long the rover's parts would last. Not a single damned thing. No engineer ever said "I can only guarantee this part will last for 90 days" or anything like it.
90 days was how long they thought it would be until the solar panels were too coved in dust for the rover to function. When the Martian wind turned out to be strong enough to clear the panels, NASA issued a press release and said "We were wrong; yay!" and the mission continued.
And not knowing what the environment on Mars was like is exactly why there was never any Scotty-esque sandbagging, and instead the rovers were simply designed as robustly as possible, with a hypothetical lifespan of many years, simply to ensure they worked at all.
That's right, it doesn't change the nature of the ethics
Not taking every reasonable action to prevent disaster is unethical. Not acknowledging warnings that your negligence is going to cause disaster is unethical.
That doesn't change with scale.
However how unethical your lack of responsibility is does scale directly with the size of disaster you are tasked with preventing.
More importantly, how readily we forgive ethical lapses does and should scale with the consequences of that lack!
Your argument basically boils down to: Because we are likely to forgive someone who accidentally dents our rear bumper due to neglecting their brake problem, we should be equally likely to forgive someone for accidentally destroying the planet earth because they neglected to check that they weren't pushing an asteroid directly into it!
That's either the most retarded "ethics" argument I've ever heard for being essentially "all ethical decisions should be considered trivial", or the most Randian corporate-apologist argument I've ever heard. But I repeat myself.
If you don't consider the scale of outcomes when judging your own ethical performance, then I say you lack ethics to begin with.
Not once do they acknowledge that (a) this is an unprecidented engineering failure,
Is that what you call removing mud from the pipe before cementing it? All the engineers seem to agree that the exothermic reaction of concrete may have been responsible for the explosion which is why they normally stuff the pipe with mud before capping it. Halliburton says removing the mud isn't that unusual, but also makes sure to say it was BP who told them to do it. Is it an "unprecedented engineering failure" when you do the opposite of what engineers think is best? And what do you call ignoring warning signs of increased pressure shortly before the accident?
This is like calling the Challenger disaster an "unprecedented engineering failure". Oh sure, engineering faults were involved, but it was ultimately management ignoring the engineers warning them of the faults that was responsible.
(b) there were multiple safeguards
Yeah, and one of the final safeguards, a shear ram that's supposed to cut through and seal off the pipe if there is a blowout, was repurposed as a tester for the blowout prevent. So there goes the failsafe for the blowout preventer.
Oh, and the rig had failed pressure tests shortly before the accident, and the blowout preventer itself had several problems like leaking hydraulics.
So the first failsafe was known to be malfunctioning, and the second failsafe for when the first one failed was deliberately disabled.
Oh but you're so right, there were "multiple safeguards" which proves it's nobody's fault but Murphy's!
(c) it's an economic necessity that we drill for oil,
To the extent that this is true, then it's also a necessity that we hold those drilling to the highest standards possible.
BP is doing everything possible to fix the problem,
No shit! They're entire future and an incredible amount of mega-bucks are riding on their response to this spill. Obviously they want it stopped as quickly as possible, lest people get it into their heads that drilling in mile-deep ocean is too dangerous to allow it to continue. I see no reason to give them an ounce of credit for doing nothing more than what is in their own financial interest.
Oh but what's also in their own interest is downplaying the severity of the spill and any of their own mistakes that may have led to it. So when they claim to be siphoning off 5,000 bbl a day, which is also how much they say the spill is, but their own video shows that the siphon is not even capable of stopping the major breach, then gee, maybe they've been worried about PR as much as the spill itself?
I don't think that's really fair -- if we get into a car accident, we're quick to shrug it off as just that: an accident. Nobody's fault. We pick up the pieces and move on.
What?! If somebody can be shown to be at fault, particularly if they were violating relevant laws and regulations, then they get hit with fines and in some cases, depending on the accident, criminal charges! And the bigger the accident, the more closely it would be scrutinized as only makes rational sense. I guarantee you that if you caused a car accident that killed 11 people, nobody would just be blowing it off and not worrying about whether you were at fault.
I don't really get where you're coming from. "Oh, it's so unfair that we are more concerned about huge disasters than tiny ones. Why can't we treat eleven deaths and millions of barrels of spilled oil like we would when someone steps on your toes on the dance floor and just let it slide?"
ECC is a probability function - the probability of a bit error going undetected is significantly reduced compared to, say, just sending the data and hoping for the best. But reduced does not mean eliminated. Not all errors can be detected and only a small portion of those can be corrected. But that still leaves room for an error that goes uncorrected, undetected and ends up in RAM without anyone noticing until they do a full bit-by-bit check - the same as your 25+ years newer technology harddrive, Ethernet connection, computer bus, etc.
Wait, what do you mean? Mathematically, ECC provides guaranteed error correction for single bit errors and guaranteed detection for two bit errors (or more if you spend more bits). It's not really a probability function, it's a hash. That means collisions are possible, and it is useful to calculate the odds of a collision probabilistically, but it's not random and there are algorithms where flipping only a small number of bits can never result in a collision.
That only works if the flipped bit is in the channel or memory that is ECC protected, not the error detection circuitry itself. so if by "all errors" you meant other failure modes like the "ECC okay" signal getting flipped by a cosmic ray or slowly developing a stuck-at fault, that would make sense. Or just a multi-bit memory error of sufficient size for that matter. I guess I was assuming that this was a single bit error, since it seems really unlikely that there'd be a multi-bit error that was partially corrected to a single-bit. When the ECC gets off, it gets way off.
Somewhere in the Middle East, there is a group of Al Qaeda operatives sitting around smoking hookah under a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished"
And in the corner is one lone jihadi, the one who went to the notoriously liberal University of Tehran and who everyone says thinks too much, muttering "But this is but one small victory in a long and costly war! That banner and its declaration are completely inappropriate and premature!"
You are correct, because DDR uses the same patented techniques that RDRAM did, it was just as fast.
What? Are you insane? Same techniques? Just as fast?!
The only thing DDR and RDRAM have is that they transfer data on both edges of the clock signal like a thousand other technologies that already existed at the time, on chips and on PCBs. Rambus did not invent double pumping data busses; it was already a standard technique for reducing signal integrity issues on the clock signal. See a variety of FSBs that were out at the time.
Other than that, the two memories couldn't be more different. RDRAM is a serial, in-line, packet-based, wave-pipelined memory technology with differential signaling and resistor termination. DDR is a parallel, multi-drop, bus-mastering, logically pipelined, non-terminated and non-differential technology.
They two memories are nothing alike except in the most superficial way, and unsurprisingly to those with a clue have completely different performance characteristics. RDRAM had higher clock rates and higher sustained memory bandwidth despite having a much narrower interface, but had substantially higher latency especially as you increased capacity. DDR on the other had much better latency, but due to the multi-drop nature of the bus had issues with increasing the clock speed and so was bandwidth limited. Nevertheless, DDR outperformed RDRAM in most applications, even in architectures like the Pentium 4 which were designed around high latency and high bandwidth.
The PS3's use of RDRAM that you mention in another post is an interesting case. RDRAM works here because it gets relatively high performance for a small number of motherboard traces, and fewer traces translates into a cheaper motherboard, which is a good tradeoff for a home console.
Ask yourself why if these companies colluded to fix prices as they have admitted to doing why did they decide to fix prices so low?
That's obvious. They did it to ensure that despite the huge push by Intel, RDRAM would fail to become the dominant memory type. It wasn't enough that DDR performed better, it had to cost customers less otherwise they'd just go along with what Intel said. They did this to avoid having to pay Rambus royalties on RDRAM.
If you've actually been following the case, then you know that the patented technologies the DRAM makers have been accused of violating are not technologies implemented in RDRAM. They are patents that specifically cover DDR (and not RDRAM) filed by Rambus and specifically modified while JEDEC meetings were going on to cover what JEDEC was discussing for their new, supposedly patent-free memory standard. Rambus did not disclose these patents despite the JEDEC rules requiring it. Rambus deliberately created a patent minefield in the DDR spec that had nothing to do with RDRAM.
The courts have repeatedly found that this is what happened, that Rambus violated the JEDEC rules and operated in bad faith. The only question has been whether the JEDEC rules are legally binding, and whether their actions constituted legally actionable "bad faith", which the appeals court ruled they did not.
The DRAM makers price fixing, however, is certainly actionable, and I'm certainly glad they were fined for it. They're giant assholes too. But they did not steal Rambus technology. Rambus stole from JEDEC and manipulated the system so they came out with ownership of the technology that had nothing to do with what they had actually invented.
That's why aftermarket tunes that lean out the mixture get more power AND better fuel economy.
Um, yeah. Everyone knows catalytic converters aren't there to improve your fuel economy or performance. They're there to make your exhaust less shitty.
I know this is an article about CO2 emissions, but we can't ignore the other shit that comes out of your tailpipe. Vehicle fuel economy is important for dealing with greenhouse gases and lots of other reasons, but when you're looking for ways to improve emissions you don't disable the thing that prevents you from emitting even worse emissions. That's just stupid. Ask any long-time Los Angeler about the stinking brown cloud that hovers over and in their city and see if they don't tell you how much worse it was in the 70s and 80s.
Hehe. Oh come on, why is this not modded funny? See, "climate change" is bad, so we shouldn't let it change, even from how it was when humans couldn't survive, so let's make the climate like it was then, but if we did that would itself be a change, and would kill us all, so climate change is bad. Get it?
Okay maybe it's just me that thinks the parent was being doubly sarcastic.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, I thought Captain Cyborg was from the University of Writing, or possible Aithmetic.
Ah, but the idea of that three thousand dollar dress is free. So feel free to keep thinking about owning that dress, buy magazines about how great it is to own that dress, and dream about impressing all your friends with the three thousand dollar dress. We'll be here when you crack!
The cars were the Autobots.
Huh?
- Michael Bay
There must be some strange use of the word "largest" that I don't understand
That's okay, lots of people don't understand context.
Some even think not considering context is the only valid way to (mis-)understand things! So it could be worse.
Complaining that CBS chose to "insert" the word into the title makes them look like the people who were horrified that New Line Cinema decided to use an obvious 9/11 reference in the sequel to "Fellowship of the Ring"..."The Two Towers."
I know! It makes no sense to blame New Line when it's obviously Tolkien who made that crass and innappropriate 9/11 reference!
Sounds like you have limited experience with sarcasm. ;)
Which funnily enough is the concept behind the Mars Science Laboratory. A much bigger rover with a nice big RTG for power and heating. But we're only sending one. :)
Oh speaking of rovers, Spirit and Opportunity do have radioisotope heaters on them, but they wouldn't be enough to keep one alive through winter. I doubt they would have saved Phoenix if it was buried under that much ice.
SAME THING. That is "how long it will last"
Only in the broadest most general sense, and not one relating to how the rover itself was speced.
There's a huge difference between predicting that a part will only last so long before failing, versus predicting that too much sand will build up for a perfectly functioning part to do its job. There's a difference between saying that a solar panel will fail vs that there won't be enough light for solar panels. There's a difference between saying sensors will only last so long before they break versus saying sensors will only last until they don't have power. Or wheels, or processors, or antennae, or whatever.
The difference is made clear by what happened when the environmental prediction didn't come true: suddenly all talk about time limits ended. There was no talk about how some component designed to only last for a 90-day mission might fail and anything beyond that was bonus. Not the wheels, not the electronics, not the radioisotope heaters, not even the solar panels themselves. Because none of them were guaranteed only for 90 days.
90 days never about anything more than the scientists' expectation of dust accumulation, and never had anything to do with the engineering behind the rover except for the decision to go with solar panels to begin with. It's a pleasant surprise the rovers have lasted this long but completely in line with how they were engineered, and this was never presented differently and so there was no Scotty-esque sandbagging. That's the point. Hope it's clear now.
I cannot think of any time anyone would use the word ice (alone without adjectives) to mean anything else, save for completely unrelated slang. Educate me....
I can't think of any situation on Earth where "ice" would be used to mean anything but water ice, since everything else requires such otherworldly conditions. NASA scientists are a bunch of space cadets. Speak English not Martian!
Hintedy hint. :)
But seriously, it's not like they didn't specify at any point in the article that they meant CO2 ice. If you've ever heard the term "Martian icecaps", then you've heard ice used to mean not-water ice (even though there is some there, but we didn't always know that).
That would just make him more impressionistic, ala Monet and Renoir, rather than expressionistic. Less creative? Ha!
Because you can come up with a question that is not explicitly answered by the article does not necessarily imply either a bad experiment or bad reporting.
It means you probably want to read the paper.
Exactly.
Well I can't say his work ever particularly appealed to me like some art does, but I will say that is a very bleak and depressing outlook on art you have. Why should anyone's feelings be considered "invalid"?
I couldn't possibly imagine crafting a more ludicrous statement than "Vincent van Gogh was an ass, therefore feelings invoked by his art are invalid -- science proves it!" to indicate that I was satirizing the opinion that Twain's family skills meant he's not one of the coolest guys ever. I couldn't be less subtle than that and still keep what little remains of my self-respect.
BTW do you feel the same way about Twain as van Gogh? Cus he never used sarcasm tags. :)
There are plenty of good husbands and good fathers in this world. There are very few writers of his calibre however.
And these sets seem to have less overlap than simply statistics would suggest. Genius, and devotion to the pursuit of where that genius leads them, often result in someone who has many problems in other areas of life. Hell, just artists and writers in general whether genius or not tend to have these kinds of problems.
In other news, while Vincent Van Gogh may appear to have been a brilliant artist, did you know that in reality he was basically a raving lunatic not to mention quite an asshole? Yep, it's true. All those emotions you felt looking at Starry Night were actually invalid. Who knew? Science did, that's who.
Haha, yeah you're so right, except for how you're totally wrong.
90 days never had anything to do with how long the rover's parts would last. Not a single damned thing. No engineer ever said "I can only guarantee this part will last for 90 days" or anything like it.
90 days was how long they thought it would be until the solar panels were too coved in dust for the rover to function. When the Martian wind turned out to be strong enough to clear the panels, NASA issued a press release and said "We were wrong; yay!" and the mission continued.
And not knowing what the environment on Mars was like is exactly why there was never any Scotty-esque sandbagging, and instead the rovers were simply designed as robustly as possible, with a hypothetical lifespan of many years, simply to ensure they worked at all.
A change of scale doesn't change the ethics.
That's right, it doesn't change the nature of the ethics
Not taking every reasonable action to prevent disaster is unethical. Not acknowledging warnings that your negligence is going to cause disaster is unethical.
That doesn't change with scale.
However how unethical your lack of responsibility is does scale directly with the size of disaster you are tasked with preventing.
More importantly, how readily we forgive ethical lapses does and should scale with the consequences of that lack!
Your argument basically boils down to: Because we are likely to forgive someone who accidentally dents our rear bumper due to neglecting their brake problem, we should be equally likely to forgive someone for accidentally destroying the planet earth because they neglected to check that they weren't pushing an asteroid directly into it!
That's either the most retarded "ethics" argument I've ever heard for being essentially "all ethical decisions should be considered trivial", or the most Randian corporate-apologist argument I've ever heard. But I repeat myself.
If you don't consider the scale of outcomes when judging your own ethical performance, then I say you lack ethics to begin with.
Not once do they acknowledge that (a) this is an unprecidented engineering failure,
Is that what you call removing mud from the pipe before cementing it? All the engineers seem to agree that the exothermic reaction of concrete may have been responsible for the explosion which is why they normally stuff the pipe with mud before capping it. Halliburton says removing the mud isn't that unusual, but also makes sure to say it was BP who told them to do it. Is it an "unprecedented engineering failure" when you do the opposite of what engineers think is best? And what do you call ignoring warning signs of increased pressure shortly before the accident?
This is like calling the Challenger disaster an "unprecedented engineering failure". Oh sure, engineering faults were involved, but it was ultimately management ignoring the engineers warning them of the faults that was responsible.
(b) there were multiple safeguards
Yeah, and one of the final safeguards, a shear ram that's supposed to cut through and seal off the pipe if there is a blowout, was repurposed as a tester for the blowout prevent. So there goes the failsafe for the blowout preventer.
Oh, and the rig had failed pressure tests shortly before the accident, and the blowout preventer itself had several problems like leaking hydraulics.
So the first failsafe was known to be malfunctioning, and the second failsafe for when the first one failed was deliberately disabled.
Oh but you're so right, there were "multiple safeguards" which proves it's nobody's fault but Murphy's!
(c) it's an economic necessity that we drill for oil,
To the extent that this is true, then it's also a necessity that we hold those drilling to the highest standards possible.
BP is doing everything possible to fix the problem,
No shit! They're entire future and an incredible amount of mega-bucks are riding on their response to this spill. Obviously they want it stopped as quickly as possible, lest people get it into their heads that drilling in mile-deep ocean is too dangerous to allow it to continue. I see no reason to give them an ounce of credit for doing nothing more than what is in their own financial interest.
Oh but what's also in their own interest is downplaying the severity of the spill and any of their own mistakes that may have led to it. So when they claim to be siphoning off 5,000 bbl a day, which is also how much they say the spill is, but their own video shows that the siphon is not even capable of stopping the major breach, then gee, maybe they've been worried about PR as much as the spill itself?
I don't think that's really fair -- if we get into a car accident, we're quick to shrug it off as just that: an accident. Nobody's fault. We pick up the pieces and move on.
What?! If somebody can be shown to be at fault, particularly if they were violating relevant laws and regulations, then they get hit with fines and in some cases, depending on the accident, criminal charges! And the bigger the accident, the more closely it would be scrutinized as only makes rational sense. I guarantee you that if you caused a car accident that killed 11 people, nobody would just be blowing it off and not worrying about whether you were at fault.
I don't really get where you're coming from. "Oh, it's so unfair that we are more concerned about huge disasters than tiny ones. Why can't we treat eleven deaths and millions of barrels of spilled oil like we would when someone steps on your toes on the dance floor and just let it slide?"
Really?
Really?
I find that rocks work best as problem solvers if you drop them on whoever pointed out the problem.
Evolution is not a clock.
It's a series of screws.
ECC is a probability function - the probability of a bit error going undetected is significantly reduced compared to, say, just sending the data and hoping for the best. But reduced does not mean eliminated. Not all errors can be detected and only a small portion of those can be corrected. But that still leaves room for an error that goes uncorrected, undetected and ends up in RAM without anyone noticing until they do a full bit-by-bit check - the same as your 25+ years newer technology harddrive, Ethernet connection, computer bus, etc.
Wait, what do you mean? Mathematically, ECC provides guaranteed error correction for single bit errors and guaranteed detection for two bit errors (or more if you spend more bits). It's not really a probability function, it's a hash. That means collisions are possible, and it is useful to calculate the odds of a collision probabilistically, but it's not random and there are algorithms where flipping only a small number of bits can never result in a collision.
That only works if the flipped bit is in the channel or memory that is ECC protected, not the error detection circuitry itself. so if by "all errors" you meant other failure modes like the "ECC okay" signal getting flipped by a cosmic ray or slowly developing a stuck-at fault, that would make sense. Or just a multi-bit memory error of sufficient size for that matter. I guess I was assuming that this was a single bit error, since it seems really unlikely that there'd be a multi-bit error that was partially corrected to a single-bit. When the ECC gets off, it gets way off.
Somewhere in the Middle East, there is a group of Al Qaeda operatives sitting around smoking hookah under a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished"
And in the corner is one lone jihadi, the one who went to the notoriously liberal University of Tehran and who everyone says thinks too much, muttering "But this is but one small victory in a long and costly war! That banner and its declaration are completely inappropriate and premature!"
They always include E. Coli. Shit happens, you know.
You are correct, because DDR uses the same patented techniques that RDRAM did, it was just as fast.
What? Are you insane? Same techniques? Just as fast?!
The only thing DDR and RDRAM have is that they transfer data on both edges of the clock signal like a thousand other technologies that already existed at the time, on chips and on PCBs. Rambus did not invent double pumping data busses; it was already a standard technique for reducing signal integrity issues on the clock signal. See a variety of FSBs that were out at the time.
Other than that, the two memories couldn't be more different. RDRAM is a serial, in-line, packet-based, wave-pipelined memory technology with differential signaling and resistor termination. DDR is a parallel, multi-drop, bus-mastering, logically pipelined, non-terminated and non-differential technology.
They two memories are nothing alike except in the most superficial way, and unsurprisingly to those with a clue have completely different performance characteristics. RDRAM had higher clock rates and higher sustained memory bandwidth despite having a much narrower interface, but had substantially higher latency especially as you increased capacity. DDR on the other had much better latency, but due to the multi-drop nature of the bus had issues with increasing the clock speed and so was bandwidth limited. Nevertheless, DDR outperformed RDRAM in most applications, even in architectures like the Pentium 4 which were designed around high latency and high bandwidth.
The PS3's use of RDRAM that you mention in another post is an interesting case. RDRAM works here because it gets relatively high performance for a small number of motherboard traces, and fewer traces translates into a cheaper motherboard, which is a good tradeoff for a home console.
Ask yourself why if these companies colluded to fix prices as they have admitted to doing why did they decide to fix prices so low?
That's obvious. They did it to ensure that despite the huge push by Intel, RDRAM would fail to become the dominant memory type. It wasn't enough that DDR performed better, it had to cost customers less otherwise they'd just go along with what Intel said. They did this to avoid having to pay Rambus royalties on RDRAM.
If you've actually been following the case, then you know that the patented technologies the DRAM makers have been accused of violating are not technologies implemented in RDRAM. They are patents that specifically cover DDR (and not RDRAM) filed by Rambus and specifically modified while JEDEC meetings were going on to cover what JEDEC was discussing for their new, supposedly patent-free memory standard. Rambus did not disclose these patents despite the JEDEC rules requiring it. Rambus deliberately created a patent minefield in the DDR spec that had nothing to do with RDRAM.
The courts have repeatedly found that this is what happened, that Rambus violated the JEDEC rules and operated in bad faith. The only question has been whether the JEDEC rules are legally binding, and whether their actions constituted legally actionable "bad faith", which the appeals court ruled they did not.
The DRAM makers price fixing, however, is certainly actionable, and I'm certainly glad they were fined for it. They're giant assholes too. But they did not steal Rambus technology. Rambus stole from JEDEC and manipulated the system so they came out with ownership of the technology that had nothing to do with what they had actually invented.
That's why aftermarket tunes that lean out the mixture get more power AND better fuel economy.
Um, yeah. Everyone knows catalytic converters aren't there to improve your fuel economy or performance. They're there to make your exhaust less shitty.
I know this is an article about CO2 emissions, but we can't ignore the other shit that comes out of your tailpipe. Vehicle fuel economy is important for dealing with greenhouse gases and lots of other reasons, but when you're looking for ways to improve emissions you don't disable the thing that prevents you from emitting even worse emissions. That's just stupid. Ask any long-time Los Angeler about the stinking brown cloud that hovers over and in their city and see if they don't tell you how much worse it was in the 70s and 80s.
Hehe. Oh come on, why is this not modded funny? See, "climate change" is bad, so we shouldn't let it change, even from how it was when humans couldn't survive, so let's make the climate like it was then, but if we did that would itself be a change, and would kill us all, so climate change is bad. Get it?
Okay maybe it's just me that thinks the parent was being doubly sarcastic.