What is most incredible to me is that Darl McBride and company will be able to walk away from this... humbled and humiliated publicly, but nonetheless able to walk away and try to do the same all over again. Everyone knows what they did was socially and economically unethical, and yet the corporate Old Boys' Network simply views what they did with a knowing wink and a nod. In the back social rooms, McBride will laugh and joke and reminisce with other CEOs about his stunt, and perhaps even be offered a few sage tips how he can improve his chances the next time. For people like this, there's always a next time because they never pay the full consequences of their actions.
... but rather a big win for locally installed and controlled "personal software", as well as - HOPEFULLY - another loss for the evil forces of greed trying to indoctrinate users to the concept of a software subscription model.
Selling software as a subscription is the REAL reason why companies like Microsoft, Google, and so many others are experimenting with Web apps. It's their latest attempt to re-brand software as "content" and convince people to pay for it every month, just like they do cable TV. If they succeed, software publishers will be making far more profit than they do now, and their accountants will be boastful about how regular and predictable the cashflow is.
Just say no to Web apps and every other attempt to sell software as subscriptions.
It's a community hand-me-down system, in effect. People in the local freecycle groups (me among them) give away and receive computers and parts all the time.
I can attest to the veracity of this Black Hat session: I've been randomly doing this to phishers for at least two years, identifying the site with the script, grabbing it and inspecting it, figuring out the target for the script data, and grabbing the data files themselves. I was doing it to gather evidence in the act of preparing complaints against them.
I believe I first saw this air-purifying concrete mentioned over two years ago, at a time when it was already seeing first applications. Somebody isn't paying attention.
Yeah, but each place is only good for one visit, period! Do the whole main drag in a single day, and what pays for the beer the rest of the semester? 8-o
I laughed when, once again, the most important number in the specs was ignored in this article: the disk-to-buffer tranfer rate. The interface bandwidth, upon which the article wasted the second column of that first table, is immaterial because it's the SAME for all drives of the same class; in fact, there's really been no real-world benefit from SATA II *yet*, because no drive has been able to fully utilize even SATA I (has any?). It's the actual rate that the drive can yank data off the drive - the disk-to-buffer transfer rate - that really counts. This drive seems to do better than my aging 250GB Hitatchi SATA II drives, which have a DTB rate of about 72MB/s. According to the article, it might not be able to keep up with the 750GB WD SE16 I just bought (and for only $194.99 total, BTW). I always discount the value of the cache, because it's just never big enough to really matter... they'd have to be orders of magnitude larger to have a pronounced effect (a true "hybrid" drive, not like Acomdata's so-named toy).
However, the real value of this drive isn't speed; Hitachi has merely used PR to make its speed competitive. The real value of this drive is as an upgrade for low-end RAID arrays built on single HBAs with a fixed number of ports: this drive means such arrays can be upgraded without having to buy another HBA with more ports, etc. Even if such an array of, say, four drives in RAID 5 used 750MB drives now, replacing those drives with these terabyte drives would be a significant increase in array capacity.
It seemed pretty clear to me that the purpose of these drives was just such scenarios, not to be entered into hard disk drag races. Hitachi managed to keep the DTR on par with the Joneses while offering a 33% boost in single-egg capacity... and it's a useful mass-market demonstration of perpendicular recording, too.
You're quibbling over trivial crap and missing the Big Picture: we wouldn't now be having huge battles over 'Net neutrality if disparate pieces of the infrastructure weren't privately owned. The same goes for cable companies: we wouldn't have had to endure channel "bundling" and other evil tactics if we hadn't allowed them little monopolistic fiefdoms of privately owned infrastructure.
Back to the Big Telecoms, need I remind you that cities and counties can't even manage to create their own publicly owned wireless infrastructure, because every single time they try they get sued by the local telecom, claiming "anti-competitive practices"?
Big Telecom wants to keep the infrastructure private, because that is their means of control of their fiefdoms, in the same way that drug and genetics patents enable Big Pharma to maintain control of their fiefdoms. That right there is the strongest argument in favor of making all such public infrastructures publicly owned.
My blog was visited by wallwhale-pub.fda.gov earlier this year, shortly after I first started it and began making "dissident" remarks. I learned soon after that I wasn't the only one.
This is exactly what I argued at the CPUC hearings for the AT&T-SBC merger. I started off by saying that a mistake was made thirty years ago, when AT&T was forced to divide itself King-Solomon-like. What should have happened, instead, is that AT&T should been forced to become a nonprofit corporation or pseudo-governmental agency, similar to the Postal Service.
Our postal network and roads and highways are generally recognized as common shared infrastructure; we don't allow the construction companies that build and maintain them to OWN the sections upon which they work, do we? Given that telecom and data networks are every bit as much shared public infrastructure, why then have we allowed the corporations that built those to own the pieces?
We fucked up many decades ago, perhaps as far back as the first telegraph lines, when we failed to recognize that the components that make up electronic (and now digital) public networks are common infrastructure, of the same sort as highways, and thus infrastructure which should be publicly owned. This is one instance where MORE socialism, not less, would be an enormously good thing.
You need look no further than your own nose to see who's self-obsessed in this room, buddy... it's called homo-centrism. Or perhaps in your case, even xenophobia.
THE POINT of my criticism WAS NOT the poor spelling, it was that this person seemed to demonstrate a remarkable lack of self-resourcefulness that characterizes the average Slashdot reader. You ignored the relevant context and chose to obsessively focus on the spelling comment. We have just a wee emotional overreaction to poor-spelling references, do we? Check your emotional baggage at the door, please.
I'm sure the mouse feels terribly proud to be born with a fucked-up liver just so it can be repeatedly operated upon during its short but oh-so-meaningful life to provide alien cells to possibly save the lives of a few humans taking overpriced drugs from profit-obsessed corporations, to deal with conditions likely caused by their own overconsumption and excesses.
Yeah, if I were one of those crippled mice I'd be terribly proud. I know that as a member of the species responsible for engineering these Jem'Hadar-like mice dependent upon this ketracel-white-like NTBC, I'm also terribly proud.
All they have found here is evidence of very early archaeology: an H. erectus unearthed the fascinating bones of a young H. habilis ancestor, but got caught off guard by the sabretooth and never got to report his shocking discovery. Archaeology was set back a million years by a sabretooth!
Ummm... the tense here is off by a billion years. This merger is already a done deal, if it actually happened at all. We're watching the Tivo-ized version of the event.
Common sense might be the recognition that this will all come to naught when all of our non-mission-critical computers - and streetlights - will see their final power cycling when the full effects of Peak Oil are felt. Electricity to power them will become a luxury most of us can't afford. There's no free-as-in-beer energy. Even solar has substantial limits. All the attempts to sustainably duplicate petroleum as a stored form of energy are laughable, because they require more energy to create than they release when "burned".
Once the petrol dwindles enough, it may very well be back to horse-and-buggy days for most of us, and discussions like this will become moot. There's your common sense, dude. I'm not trying to hijack my own subthread with a tangent, I'm just sayin'... one man's "common sense" is another man's non sequitur.
After that, I spent a lot of time and money upgrading my computer to be as silent as possible.
Why in the hell would I want to quiet or cancel out the pink noise from my computer, only to become more aware of the barking dogs, boombox cars, screaming brats, and fighting cats, which I can't cancel out except with the barrel of a gun and a vacation to another very unquiet and unpeaceful place? [Well, excepting Solitary Confinement, which it seems might be ideal for you.]
Methinks you've merely discovered one expression of the diagnosis Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
What this smells like is innovation for the preservation of a certain price point and profit margin. Might be a good time to vote with dollars and simply say, "No thanks."
Can the impending disaster of Peak Oil be solved, and widespread adoption encouraged, by a feeding frenzy of expensive research, patents, and the overpriced result?
As has been said SO many times before, for 90% of the applications neither size nor efficiency are really the issue... cost per Watt generated is the issue. There's no shortage of roof space for solar arrays. The reason more people don't install even the "low" efficiency varieties available now is COST.
Perhaps instead of obsessing over improving the efficiency of the cells, that obsession should be refocused on the efficiency of the production process and making the "low" efficiency cells we have now less expensive to manufacture?
Slashdot Mirror
What is most incredible to me is that Darl McBride and company will be able to walk away from this... humbled and humiliated publicly, but nonetheless able to walk away and try to do the same all over again. Everyone knows what they did was socially and economically unethical, and yet the corporate Old Boys' Network simply views what they did with a knowing wink and a nod. In the back social rooms, McBride will laugh and joke and reminisce with other CEOs about his stunt, and perhaps even be offered a few sage tips how he can improve his chances the next time. For people like this, there's always a next time because they never pay the full consequences of their actions.
... but rather a big win for locally installed and controlled "personal software", as well as - HOPEFULLY - another loss for the evil forces of greed trying to indoctrinate users to the concept of a software subscription model.
Selling software as a subscription is the REAL reason why companies like Microsoft, Google, and so many others are experimenting with Web apps. It's their latest attempt to re-brand software as "content" and convince people to pay for it every month, just like they do cable TV. If they succeed, software publishers will be making far more profit than they do now, and their accountants will be boastful about how regular and predictable the cashflow is.
Just say no to Web apps and every other attempt to sell software as subscriptions.
Apparently you were also destined to misspell the subject of your comment as well? See, I can prove that you were predestined to do that.
I have a question: was this study perhaps funded by the same industry that gave us the "Beef: It's What's For Dinner" ad campaign...?
One word (site): freecycle.org
It's a community hand-me-down system, in effect. People in the local freecycle groups (me among them) give away and receive computers and parts all the time.
I can attest to the veracity of this Black Hat session: I've been randomly doing this to phishers for at least two years, identifying the site with the script, grabbing it and inspecting it, figuring out the target for the script data, and grabbing the data files themselves. I was doing it to gather evidence in the act of preparing complaints against them.
I believe I first saw this air-purifying concrete mentioned over two years ago, at a time when it was already seeing first applications. Somebody isn't paying attention.
Yeah, but each place is only good for one visit, period! Do the whole main drag in a single day, and what pays for the beer the rest of the semester? 8-o
Hey, I resemble that remark! What are you implying?
I laughed when, once again, the most important number in the specs was ignored in this article: the disk-to-buffer tranfer rate. The interface bandwidth, upon which the article wasted the second column of that first table, is immaterial because it's the SAME for all drives of the same class; in fact, there's really been no real-world benefit from SATA II *yet*, because no drive has been able to fully utilize even SATA I (has any?). It's the actual rate that the drive can yank data off the drive - the disk-to-buffer transfer rate - that really counts. This drive seems to do better than my aging 250GB Hitatchi SATA II drives, which have a DTB rate of about 72MB/s. According to the article, it might not be able to keep up with the 750GB WD SE16 I just bought (and for only $194.99 total, BTW). I always discount the value of the cache, because it's just never big enough to really matter... they'd have to be orders of magnitude larger to have a pronounced effect (a true "hybrid" drive, not like Acomdata's so-named toy).
However, the real value of this drive isn't speed; Hitachi has merely used PR to make its speed competitive. The real value of this drive is as an upgrade for low-end RAID arrays built on single HBAs with a fixed number of ports: this drive means such arrays can be upgraded without having to buy another HBA with more ports, etc. Even if such an array of, say, four drives in RAID 5 used 750MB drives now, replacing those drives with these terabyte drives would be a significant increase in array capacity.
It seemed pretty clear to me that the purpose of these drives was just such scenarios, not to be entered into hard disk drag races. Hitachi managed to keep the DTR on par with the Joneses while offering a 33% boost in single-egg capacity... and it's a useful mass-market demonstration of perpendicular recording, too.
You're quibbling over trivial crap and missing the Big Picture: we wouldn't now be having huge battles over 'Net neutrality if disparate pieces of the infrastructure weren't privately owned. The same goes for cable companies: we wouldn't have had to endure channel "bundling" and other evil tactics if we hadn't allowed them little monopolistic fiefdoms of privately owned infrastructure.
Back to the Big Telecoms, need I remind you that cities and counties can't even manage to create their own publicly owned wireless infrastructure, because every single time they try they get sued by the local telecom, claiming "anti-competitive practices"?
Big Telecom wants to keep the infrastructure private, because that is their means of control of their fiefdoms, in the same way that drug and genetics patents enable Big Pharma to maintain control of their fiefdoms. That right there is the strongest argument in favor of making all such public infrastructures publicly owned.
My blog was visited by wallwhale-pub.fda.gov earlier this year, shortly after I first started it and began making "dissident" remarks. I learned soon after that I wasn't the only one.
This is exactly what I argued at the CPUC hearings for the AT&T-SBC merger. I started off by saying that a mistake was made thirty years ago, when AT&T was forced to divide itself King-Solomon-like. What should have happened, instead, is that AT&T should been forced to become a nonprofit corporation or pseudo-governmental agency, similar to the Postal Service.
Our postal network and roads and highways are generally recognized as common shared infrastructure; we don't allow the construction companies that build and maintain them to OWN the sections upon which they work, do we? Given that telecom and data networks are every bit as much shared public infrastructure, why then have we allowed the corporations that built those to own the pieces?
We fucked up many decades ago, perhaps as far back as the first telegraph lines, when we failed to recognize that the components that make up electronic (and now digital) public networks are common infrastructure, of the same sort as highways, and thus infrastructure which should be publicly owned. This is one instance where MORE socialism, not less, would be an enormously good thing.
Maybe this bionic fin should be adapted to help keep the not-quite-extinct Bajii out of trouble?
Charlie Stross already explained in excruciating detail why it ain't gonna happen....
You need look no further than your own nose to see who's self-obsessed in this room, buddy... it's called homo-centrism. Or perhaps in your case, even xenophobia.
THE POINT of my criticism WAS NOT the poor spelling, it was that this person seemed to demonstrate a remarkable lack of self-resourcefulness that characterizes the average Slashdot reader. You ignored the relevant context and chose to obsessively focus on the spelling comment. We have just a wee emotional overreaction to poor-spelling references, do we? Check your emotional baggage at the door, please.
I'm sure the mouse feels terribly proud to be born with a fucked-up liver just so it can be repeatedly operated upon during its short but oh-so-meaningful life to provide alien cells to possibly save the lives of a few humans taking overpriced drugs from profit-obsessed corporations, to deal with conditions likely caused by their own overconsumption and excesses.
Yeah, if I were one of those crippled mice I'd be terribly proud. I know that as a member of the species responsible for engineering these Jem'Hadar-like mice dependent upon this ketracel-white-like NTBC, I'm also terribly proud.
Why are you a Slashdot reader, I wonder? You exhibit the poor spelling trait of a geek, but not much else.
All they have found here is evidence of very early archaeology: an H. erectus unearthed the fascinating bones of a young H. habilis ancestor, but got caught off guard by the sabretooth and never got to report his shocking discovery. Archaeology was set back a million years by a sabretooth!
Ummm... the tense here is off by a billion years. This merger is already a done deal, if it actually happened at all. We're watching the Tivo-ized version of the event.
Common sense might be the recognition that this will all come to naught when all of our non-mission-critical computers - and streetlights - will see their final power cycling when the full effects of Peak Oil are felt. Electricity to power them will become a luxury most of us can't afford. There's no free-as-in-beer energy. Even solar has substantial limits. All the attempts to sustainably duplicate petroleum as a stored form of energy are laughable, because they require more energy to create than they release when "burned".
Once the petrol dwindles enough, it may very well be back to horse-and-buggy days for most of us, and discussions like this will become moot. There's your common sense, dude. I'm not trying to hijack my own subthread with a tangent, I'm just sayin'... one man's "common sense" is another man's non sequitur.
Methinks you've merely discovered one expression of the diagnosis Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
What this smells like is innovation for the preservation of a certain price point and profit margin. Might be a good time to vote with dollars and simply say, "No thanks."
Can the impending disaster of Peak Oil be solved, and widespread adoption encouraged, by a feeding frenzy of expensive research, patents, and the overpriced result?
As has been said SO many times before, for 90% of the applications neither size nor efficiency are really the issue... cost per Watt generated is the issue. There's no shortage of roof space for solar arrays. The reason more people don't install even the "low" efficiency varieties available now is COST.
Perhaps instead of obsessing over improving the efficiency of the cells, that obsession should be refocused on the efficiency of the production process and making the "low" efficiency cells we have now less expensive to manufacture?