I see what you meant, but I have to point out that certainly you didn't actuallly meant "closed source". You can only freely access a copy of a software package without paying anyone anything if the license explicitly states that you are free to do it.
For that, the right to access the software's source code is irrelevant, as you are granted such a right by using either freeware, which doesn't necessarily provide the source code, or free software, which does.
This is one of those cases where clearly open source software != free software, and the difference between those licensing terms, particularly in this case, are extremelly important.
Average people DO have a use for the "supercomputers" under their desks. Otherwise, everyone would still be buying sub-gigahertz semprons. But software continues to get more bloated, and "managed code" imposes even more of an overhead.
For sub-gigahertz semprons? Maybe.
Yet, if we do a realistic comparison and consider, for example, an AMD Athlon X2 (which is the cheapest CPU that was available at a local hardware store) then exactly what do people actually get by purchasing a beefier CPU? Do they get a better user experience exchanging emails, browsing facebook and seeing youtube clips? They don't.
After a certain threshold, it's irrelevant if you get to run your computer games any faster, and you can't possibly justify spending twice as much on a piece of hardware if the only thing that gets you is the ability to run a computer game at 200fps instead of 150fps. Sure, it might look good in a marketing blurb to claim that your product is 33% faster than the competitor's, but the practical result of that is perfectly irrelevant for any user.
It makes the assumption - always wrong - that people don't want more cpu. People ALWAYS want more cpu.
Your assertion is dissociated from reality. It completely ignores the netbook phenomenon, not to mention the inception of smartphones and tablet computers.
People don't buy these devices because they "want more CPU". After a certain level, the "CPU" amount is irrelevant and its practical effects are completely unnoticeable. There is a good reason why hardware companies rely on artificial benchmarks designed to push the hardware in completely unrealistic, useless and impractical scenarios to be able to compare their hardware against the competitor's offering, and therefore justify a higher asking price.
To drive the point home, I can tell you my personal case. My last two hardware purchases were a netbook and a smartphone, which, by today's standards, are considerably lacking o the "CPU" department. Yet, they are by far the two pieces of hardware which I use the most. I also have a desktop and a laptop which I've purchased a few years ago, and I actually use them for serious stuff which actually require real CPUs to crunch real numbers. I'm talking about structural analysis and CAD work. In spite of actually having to use a computer to actually do some serious number crunching to actually get a meaningful result, unlike calculating pi to the nth digit after the decimal point, the fact is that both my archaic desktop and laptop are more than capable of handling heavy workloads required for practical engineering work.
And this without even relying on OpenCL to take advantage of the hardware which is already present in the system and basically never leaves the idle state.
So, in short, contraty to what you said, people actually "don't want more cpu". People actaully know that they can't notice it after a certain point, which was actually passed about half a dozen years ago, and people are also aware that the inflated price tag associated with having "more cpu" actually doesn't justify the diminishing returns they get with that purchase. What they want is cheaper stuff that is actually good enough to get the job done, and if the job in mind is checking email, facebook and any other mundane tasks then people do know that the price tag of a supercomputer is completely unjustified, when they can easily get away with it by purchasing a glorified cellphone, with or without an embedded keyboard.
The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place.
That isn't totally correct.
I've spent about 5 years not listening to any music, but a while ago I decided to check out what the bands I knew and liked have been up to in all these years. Some ended, which made me die a bit inside, others kept going without releasing any new album but others actually put out a couple of them.
So, I've decided to check these new albums.
One of these bands was The Atomic Bitchwax. The band recorded a couple albums since I stopped listening to music, and so I set forth to download them. I did that, and on the.rar file which packed the latest album was a small text file which mentioned that the band's entire discography was being sold via download through the band's site. I've checked them out and lo and behold, they were selling a pack with their first 6 albums for 5 dollars. They were also selling the latest album for 5 dollars as well.
So, I've spent 10 dollars and purchased both of them. Quite nice.
At least in my case, I've only shelved 10 dollars on music, my only music purchase in the last 5 years, because I've downloaded some mp3 albums and stumbled on a good deal. I may not represent a lot of people, but as I happen to exist then it certainly must mean something. At least now, when I see someone claiming that people who download mp3 don't purchase music, or that music downloads hurt business, I know enough to call it like it is: a load of bullshit.
They removed the kidney from her brother because they believed it was already broken. So, they instead transplanted it to the desperate 67 year old guy who prefered getting a diseased kidney, hoping it could extend his life for a little bit, instead of passing it to a perfecly healthy person, which might put her life in jeopardy.
"Large scale" does not mean what you want it to mean.
I don't know what imaginative definition for "large scale" you are using, but if you wish to claim that Portugal's energy production doesn't fit your definition of large scale then, by your own definition, the energy needs of at least 145 out of 192 countries in the world also don't fit your definition of large scale.
Also, it also wouldn't matter to you that the energy produced in Portugal from renewable sources alone would be more than enough to fulfill all the energy needs of 128 countries in the world.
Japan has just finished turning off all nuclear power over a "disaster" that proved just how safe modern nuclear can be. Wind, hydro, tide.. these are all bullshit: they will never matter in the big picture, they'll feelgood measures that's don't actually accomplish anything large scale, just like most green initiatives.
This was already solved by a portuguese in 2009
on
Pioneer Anomaly Solved
·
· Score: 4, Informative
A portuguese aeronautics engineering student from Instituto Superior Técnico already figured this out way back in 2009 in his masters thesis, available here.
How about we hold people liable when we discover they actually violate a particular copyright, rather than trying to extent tort coverage to criminal concepts like "aiding and abetting". Seriously.
Because in some jurisdictions, which at least until a few years ago consist of the entire world except the US and a hand full of puppet states, distributing a copyrighted work for personal use without the copyright holder's authorization is perfectly legal, and it is so very legal to the point that it is even explicitly authorized in the copyright code. So, these copyright trolls can't touch the people covered by those jurisdictions, and hence they are free to distribute any copyrighted work as they see fit.
yet, in some cases the distribution channels are still covered by a jurisdiction which they can corrupt. So, as they can't touch the end user, they do try to eliminate the distribution channel. It's cheaper that way, more cost-effective in terms of legal costs and, more importantly, they eliminate any potential competitor that may enter the media distribution business. If there is any doubt in that then just look how the US thugs are handling the megaupload fiasco, and notice how they only managed to pull that mafia-inspired racketeering stunt once kim dotcom was investing in a media distribution business backed-up by a string of A-list artists.
It appears that one of the previous job held by Paramount's worldwide VP of content protection and outreach was working for Saddam's information ministry, where he provided Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf with material to use in all those insightful broadcasts. Do you know the "there are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" quote? It must have been this guy who was behind it.
Then I guess that every Facebook executive, along with each and every lawyer at Facebook's service, won't mind placing their testicles in a vice operated by me. After all, just like they claim their intentions to be regarding CISPA, I also have absolutely no intention to abuse the vise in any way. So they can trust me, honest.
But but will they wilfully agree to that? I doubt they will, because they know very well that it is a risk which is simply not acceptable by any standard.
I've heard of Guile in the past, but I never managed to come across any application that actually uses it. Guile's own project list is rather meek, and whenever people talk about embedding a programming language, the talk appears to always shift to Lua. Does anyone know why no one picks Guile for any task? It would be great if it was possible to hear from anyone who actually gave Guile a try in any project.
"In my experience Go is probably 5-10x faster than C or C++. I estimate that programs that take me half an hour to write in Go would take me about 2½ hours in C and 5 hours in C++."
It is supposed to be a systems language like C, but better.
IMHO, if it isn't standardized, opened up and backed up by an international standard then it will never be better than C. For all problems that may or may not affect C and for all problems involved in the development and update of a standard for each version of the C programming language, these multiple versions of the C programming language are effectively set in stone. This means that the language is future-proof, as multiple implementations may be developed and, by targetting the standard, they can interoperate without any major consequence.
If Go isn't standardized and if Google intends to control the language then it would be a terrible decision to adopt Go instead of a time-tested, well established tool which is future-proof and resistent to bit-rot. We all have Oracle and Java as a good warning.
[an investment manager] took several classes, including some in HTML, the basic language of the Web, and WordPress. (...) She paid around $200 and saw it as an investment in her future.
This sort of courses are a form of scam that preys on gullible people, who have heard some news how some guy put up a website that he later sold for millions and now they want a piece of that pie. Yet, the hard truth is that those courses are in themselves useless and a waste of money. Sure, learning something is way better than not learning anything at all. Yet, who exactly believes that those gullible clients, like an investment banker with a course in HTML and WordPress, have all the technical know-how needed to put together a new facebook or twitter? They don't. They can't even put up a hello world app together, because they aren't even taught any programming language. These courses are good enough to put up a site on geocities, complete with an animated GIF informing that the site is "under construction", and to register a blog in WordPress.org. Yet, you think you are learning to program? Sorry to dissapoint you, but you aren't.
The second part though, the idea that someone would go to all the trouble to use something like this to track down a bunch of gays is absurd. Why bother doing that when if your a nutter you just go to your local gay bar instead? You know the one that advertises to attract all of those gays?
I believe you missed the point. It's not a question of being possible to simply go to your local gay bar and track down a bunch of gays. The fundamental issue is that, with this, the nutters don't need to go to your local gay bar at all, because someone else happened to put a system in place that is able to generate a comprehensive list of all self-declared gays anywhere in the world. So, these nutters can easily get their hands on a list of potential targets which is much more extensive and thorough than any list they would otherwise be able to compile.
And, suffice to say, this is a recipee for disaster. And not just for gays. Imagine, for example, if Facebook existed in the 1950s and up until then there was absolutely no problem in being a member of the communist party, let alone being simply supportive of that organization or even a friend of any member of the communist party. What would happened if J. Edgar Hoover had access to the names, addresses and social network of anyone who ever joined a communist interest group in facebook, or anyone who ever clicked on the like button remotely related to any site which was pro-communism?
So, the ramifications are deeper than simply having alternative methods to gather information, and much more serioius at that.
It sounds like sarcasm to me. After all, Java is, in any measure, a successful language and platform. A considerable number of respectable higher education institutions have adopted java as the programming language for both OO courses and intro to programming, and any job search returns a high number of jobs which explicitly require proficiency in java programming.
If that wasn't enough, there's android developing. Nowadays, if you want to develop software for a smartphone you are basically forced to write it in either java or objective-C.
So, it sounds like sarcasm to me. Either that or someone has been hidden in bunker for the past 20 years.
Indeed. Just imagine the computer guy going around to the astrobiology people claiming they were all incompetent and that they could learn why by watching a DVD and subscribing to his newsletter.
And another thing that may justify NASA firing his ass all in itself: some guy going around refering to himself as a NASA team leader and, under that authority, making all sorts of bold claims regarding intelligent design.
In other words, the people behind that claim are desperately trying to put some pressure on politicians to get their hands on more money for their pet project, and shift the blame to politicians for not succeeding at their objective.
For the now-closed Tevatron, a demonstration of sensitivity to the Higgs can be seen as a kind of moral victory, says theorist Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In 2011, researchers at Fermilab argued for an extension to the machine's run, on the grounds that they might be able to obtain evidence for the Higgs if they had more time, but their proposal was turned down by the US Department of Energy. This proves they could have found the Higgs themselves, if they'd had full funding,” says Kane.
And, yeah, it also sounds like they want to take the credit for LHC's future discoveries. Not nice.
Seriously, man. Don't you think there could be a problem with a house that is not actually attached to its foundations?
There is absolutely no problem with "a house that is not actually attached to its foundations". In fact, it's one of the main principles behind a set of technologies employed in retrofitting important structures and also in recent structures whose integrity is fundamental to society. I could point you out to wikipedia on this one, but wikipedia's article on this subject is rather poor and useless. But to just give you a headsup, the principle behind this technique is to separate the superstructure (a frame, bridge deck, etc...) from the infrastructure (foundations, piers, frames, etc...) and then, depending on the technology, either prevent the earthquake energy to be transmitted to the superstructure, transfer it through a flexible connection or even transfer it through dynamic dampeners.
By the look of this article, it appears this technology fits in the 2nd category (transfer earthquake energy through a flexible connection). Yet, I really doubt it will go anywhere, as it is much simpler to resort to passive systems which are already widely deployed, tested in the real world and proven to work incredibly well, such as base isolation through neoprene bearings. So, probably this was the first and last time anyone will ever hear of this.
I just logged on to say exactly that. Claiming that Interpol arrested anyone is like claiming that the local police administrative clerk who happened to send/receive cooperation requests from/to any other police force is the one responsible for doing any of the arrests.
So, the question which must be asked is who exactly is behind these arrest warrants? And why did anyone tried to pass the idea that there is an international police body with global jurisdiction that is dedicated to attacking this elusive anonymous group?
The average user isn't the only one who doesn't have the slightest idea of what hardware he really needs to get the job done. If "us geeks" also knew better then any synthetic benchmark would be automatically dismissed as being irrelevant and useless, and the most important property of a computing rig would be its cost/performance ratio, with cost reflecting not only the hardware price, direct and indirect, but also operational cost. After all, it's irrelevant if a certain game runs at 100fps or 10000fps, and for regular use stuff, such as web browsing, office stuff and whatnot, any 6 year old system is overkill.
Yet, geeks salivate with stuff such as cores, MHz, a string of irrelevant benchmark numbers and even statistics on HPC usage, and this for systems which the closest they come to HPC is calculating the n-th digit of pi.
So, cluelessness isn't exclusive of non-geeks. The e-penis factor is always influencing purchasing decisions. The only difference is that some are more knowledgeable about useless numbers and factoids than others.
Slashdot Mirror
I see what you meant, but I have to point out that certainly you didn't actuallly meant "closed source". You can only freely access a copy of a software package without paying anyone anything if the license explicitly states that you are free to do it.
For that, the right to access the software's source code is irrelevant, as you are granted such a right by using either freeware, which doesn't necessarily provide the source code, or free software, which does.
This is one of those cases where clearly open source software != free software, and the difference between those licensing terms, particularly in this case, are extremelly important.
For sub-gigahertz semprons? Maybe.
Yet, if we do a realistic comparison and consider, for example, an AMD Athlon X2 (which is the cheapest CPU that was available at a local hardware store) then exactly what do people actually get by purchasing a beefier CPU? Do they get a better user experience exchanging emails, browsing facebook and seeing youtube clips? They don't.
After a certain threshold, it's irrelevant if you get to run your computer games any faster, and you can't possibly justify spending twice as much on a piece of hardware if the only thing that gets you is the ability to run a computer game at 200fps instead of 150fps. Sure, it might look good in a marketing blurb to claim that your product is 33% faster than the competitor's, but the practical result of that is perfectly irrelevant for any user.
Your assertion is dissociated from reality. It completely ignores the netbook phenomenon, not to mention the inception of smartphones and tablet computers.
People don't buy these devices because they "want more CPU". After a certain level, the "CPU" amount is irrelevant and its practical effects are completely unnoticeable. There is a good reason why hardware companies rely on artificial benchmarks designed to push the hardware in completely unrealistic, useless and impractical scenarios to be able to compare their hardware against the competitor's offering, and therefore justify a higher asking price.
To drive the point home, I can tell you my personal case. My last two hardware purchases were a netbook and a smartphone, which, by today's standards, are considerably lacking o the "CPU" department. Yet, they are by far the two pieces of hardware which I use the most. I also have a desktop and a laptop which I've purchased a few years ago, and I actually use them for serious stuff which actually require real CPUs to crunch real numbers. I'm talking about structural analysis and CAD work. In spite of actually having to use a computer to actually do some serious number crunching to actually get a meaningful result, unlike calculating pi to the nth digit after the decimal point, the fact is that both my archaic desktop and laptop are more than capable of handling heavy workloads required for practical engineering work.
And this without even relying on OpenCL to take advantage of the hardware which is already present in the system and basically never leaves the idle state.
So, in short, contraty to what you said, people actually "don't want more cpu". People actaully know that they can't notice it after a certain point, which was actually passed about half a dozen years ago, and people are also aware that the inflated price tag associated with having "more cpu" actually doesn't justify the diminishing returns they get with that purchase. What they want is cheaper stuff that is actually good enough to get the job done, and if the job in mind is checking email, facebook and any other mundane tasks then people do know that the price tag of a supercomputer is completely unjustified, when they can easily get away with it by purchasing a glorified cellphone, with or without an embedded keyboard.
That isn't totally correct.
I've spent about 5 years not listening to any music, but a while ago I decided to check out what the bands I knew and liked have been up to in all these years. Some ended, which made me die a bit inside, others kept going without releasing any new album but others actually put out a couple of them.
So, I've decided to check these new albums.
One of these bands was The Atomic Bitchwax. The band recorded a couple albums since I stopped listening to music, and so I set forth to download them. I did that, and on the .rar file which packed the latest album was a small text file which mentioned that the band's entire discography was being sold via download through the band's site. I've checked them out and lo and behold, they were selling a pack with their first 6 albums for 5 dollars. They were also selling the latest album for 5 dollars as well.
So, I've spent 10 dollars and purchased both of them. Quite nice.
At least in my case, I've only shelved 10 dollars on music, my only music purchase in the last 5 years, because I've downloaded some mp3 albums and stumbled on a good deal. I may not represent a lot of people, but as I happen to exist then it certainly must mean something. At least now, when I see someone claiming that people who download mp3 don't purchase music, or that music downloads hurt business, I know enough to call it like it is: a load of bullshit.
They removed the kidney from her brother because they believed it was already broken. So, they instead transplanted it to the desperate 67 year old guy who prefered getting a diseased kidney, hoping it could extend his life for a little bit, instead of passing it to a perfecly healthy person, which might put her life in jeopardy.
Or so I believe.
I don't know what imaginative definition for "large scale" you are using, but if you wish to claim that Portugal's energy production doesn't fit your definition of large scale then, by your own definition, the energy needs of at least 145 out of 192 countries in the world also don't fit your definition of large scale.
Also, it also wouldn't matter to you that the energy produced in Portugal from renewable sources alone would be more than enough to fulfill all the energy needs of 128 countries in the world.
And, finally, Germany generates around 17% of it's energy needs from renewable sources. Maybe the 7th largest energy producer in the world also doesn't fit your definition of "large scale".
Or, possibly, you are desperately trying to move the goal post to avoid looking like a fool with your bullshit assertions.
According to wikipedia, Portugal produces 52% of its energy from renewable sources, with a combination of hydro, solar, wind and geothermal. Do you see 52% of the energy produced in a country with a population of 11 million as "all bullshit" and a failure to "actually accomplish anything large scale"?
A portuguese aeronautics engineering student from Instituto Superior Técnico already figured this out way back in 2009 in his masters thesis, available here.
Because in some jurisdictions, which at least until a few years ago consist of the entire world except the US and a hand full of puppet states, distributing a copyrighted work for personal use without the copyright holder's authorization is perfectly legal, and it is so very legal to the point that it is even explicitly authorized in the copyright code. So, these copyright trolls can't touch the people covered by those jurisdictions, and hence they are free to distribute any copyrighted work as they see fit.
yet, in some cases the distribution channels are still covered by a jurisdiction which they can corrupt. So, as they can't touch the end user, they do try to eliminate the distribution channel. It's cheaper that way, more cost-effective in terms of legal costs and, more importantly, they eliminate any potential competitor that may enter the media distribution business. If there is any doubt in that then just look how the US thugs are handling the megaupload fiasco, and notice how they only managed to pull that mafia-inspired racketeering stunt once kim dotcom was investing in a media distribution business backed-up by a string of A-list artists.
It appears that one of the previous job held by Paramount's worldwide VP of content protection and outreach was working for Saddam's information ministry, where he provided Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf with material to use in all those insightful broadcasts. Do you know the "there are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" quote? It must have been this guy who was behind it.
This is a well known paradox which is often called Theseus' paradox.
Then I guess that every Facebook executive, along with each and every lawyer at Facebook's service, won't mind placing their testicles in a vice operated by me. After all, just like they claim their intentions to be regarding CISPA, I also have absolutely no intention to abuse the vise in any way. So they can trust me, honest.
But but will they wilfully agree to that? I doubt they will, because they know very well that it is a risk which is simply not acceptable by any standard.
I've heard of Guile in the past, but I never managed to come across any application that actually uses it. Guile's own project list is rather meek, and whenever people talk about embedding a programming language, the talk appears to always shift to Lua. Does anyone know why no one picks Guile for any task? It would be great if it was possible to hear from anyone who actually gave Guile a try in any project.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And the evidence that is out there states that the claim Go is 5-10x faster than C or C++ is bullshit. In fact, it's slower.
Notice the benchmark where Go took 30x the time the C program did to finish the benchmark?
It is supposed to be a systems language like C, but better.
IMHO, if it isn't standardized, opened up and backed up by an international standard then it will never be better than C. For all problems that may or may not affect C and for all problems involved in the development and update of a standard for each version of the C programming language, these multiple versions of the C programming language are effectively set in stone. This means that the language is future-proof, as multiple implementations may be developed and, by targetting the standard, they can interoperate without any major consequence.
If Go isn't standardized and if Google intends to control the language then it would be a terrible decision to adopt Go instead of a time-tested, well established tool which is future-proof and resistent to bit-rot. We all have Oracle and Java as a good warning.
From the article:
[an investment manager] took several classes, including some in HTML, the basic language of the Web, and WordPress. (...) She paid around $200 and saw it as an investment in her future.
This sort of courses are a form of scam that preys on gullible people, who have heard some news how some guy put up a website that he later sold for millions and now they want a piece of that pie. Yet, the hard truth is that those courses are in themselves useless and a waste of money. Sure, learning something is way better than not learning anything at all. Yet, who exactly believes that those gullible clients, like an investment banker with a course in HTML and WordPress, have all the technical know-how needed to put together a new facebook or twitter? They don't. They can't even put up a hello world app together, because they aren't even taught any programming language. These courses are good enough to put up a site on geocities, complete with an animated GIF informing that the site is "under construction", and to register a blog in WordPress.org. Yet, you think you are learning to program? Sorry to dissapoint you, but you aren't.
I believe you missed the point. It's not a question of being possible to simply go to your local gay bar and track down a bunch of gays. The fundamental issue is that, with this, the nutters don't need to go to your local gay bar at all, because someone else happened to put a system in place that is able to generate a comprehensive list of all self-declared gays anywhere in the world. So, these nutters can easily get their hands on a list of potential targets which is much more extensive and thorough than any list they would otherwise be able to compile.
And, suffice to say, this is a recipee for disaster. And not just for gays. Imagine, for example, if Facebook existed in the 1950s and up until then there was absolutely no problem in being a member of the communist party, let alone being simply supportive of that organization or even a friend of any member of the communist party. What would happened if J. Edgar Hoover had access to the names, addresses and social network of anyone who ever joined a communist interest group in facebook, or anyone who ever clicked on the like button remotely related to any site which was pro-communism?
So, the ramifications are deeper than simply having alternative methods to gather information, and much more serioius at that.
It sounds like sarcasm to me. After all, Java is, in any measure, a successful language and platform. A considerable number of respectable higher education institutions have adopted java as the programming language for both OO courses and intro to programming, and any job search returns a high number of jobs which explicitly require proficiency in java programming.
If that wasn't enough, there's android developing. Nowadays, if you want to develop software for a smartphone you are basically forced to write it in either java or objective-C.
So, it sounds like sarcasm to me. Either that or someone has been hidden in bunker for the past 20 years.
Indeed. Just imagine the computer guy going around to the astrobiology people claiming they were all incompetent and that they could learn why by watching a DVD and subscribing to his newsletter.
And another thing that may justify NASA firing his ass all in itself: some guy going around refering to himself as a NASA team leader and, under that authority, making all sorts of bold claims regarding intelligent design.
In other words, the people behind that claim are desperately trying to put some pressure on politicians to get their hands on more money for their pet project, and shift the blame to politicians for not succeeding at their objective.
And, yeah, it also sounds like they want to take the credit for LHC's future discoveries. Not nice.
Yeah, but in both cases there are certain odds that you will get fucked in the ass and all shaken up when you least expect it.
There is absolutely no problem with "a house that is not actually attached to its foundations". In fact, it's one of the main principles behind a set of technologies employed in retrofitting important structures and also in recent structures whose integrity is fundamental to society. I could point you out to wikipedia on this one, but wikipedia's article on this subject is rather poor and useless. But to just give you a headsup, the principle behind this technique is to separate the superstructure (a frame, bridge deck, etc...) from the infrastructure (foundations, piers, frames, etc...) and then, depending on the technology, either prevent the earthquake energy to be transmitted to the superstructure, transfer it through a flexible connection or even transfer it through dynamic dampeners.
By the look of this article, it appears this technology fits in the 2nd category (transfer earthquake energy through a flexible connection). Yet, I really doubt it will go anywhere, as it is much simpler to resort to passive systems which are already widely deployed, tested in the real world and proven to work incredibly well, such as base isolation through neoprene bearings. So, probably this was the first and last time anyone will ever hear of this.
\\me is a structural engineer
I just logged on to say exactly that. Claiming that Interpol arrested anyone is like claiming that the local police administrative clerk who happened to send/receive cooperation requests from/to any other police force is the one responsible for doing any of the arrests.
So, the question which must be asked is who exactly is behind these arrest warrants? And why did anyone tried to pass the idea that there is an international police body with global jurisdiction that is dedicated to attacking this elusive anonymous group?
The average user isn't the only one who doesn't have the slightest idea of what hardware he really needs to get the job done. If "us geeks" also knew better then any synthetic benchmark would be automatically dismissed as being irrelevant and useless, and the most important property of a computing rig would be its cost/performance ratio, with cost reflecting not only the hardware price, direct and indirect, but also operational cost. After all, it's irrelevant if a certain game runs at 100fps or 10000fps, and for regular use stuff, such as web browsing, office stuff and whatnot, any 6 year old system is overkill.
Yet, geeks salivate with stuff such as cores, MHz, a string of irrelevant benchmark numbers and even statistics on HPC usage, and this for systems which the closest they come to HPC is calculating the n-th digit of pi.
So, cluelessness isn't exclusive of non-geeks. The e-penis factor is always influencing purchasing decisions. The only difference is that some are more knowledgeable about useless numbers and factoids than others.
If you compare some carjacker punk with a Bernard Madoff, who is the biggest thief?