For a headsup, the bonch account and Overly Critical Guy accounts are sockpuppets operated by the same organization. See this post and a previous post I've made here for evidence that these user accounts are used to push the same script, sometimes even copy/paste versions of it.
You are confused. The only time I've bothered pointing out that the bonch account and Overly Critical Guy accounts are sockpuppet accounts was in this comment, after I read this comment blowing your cover. And since then I've also stumbled on this comment, which provides further evidence. Are you also going to claim that I am chrb?
And rest assure. I have some time to spare about now which I will waste replying to bonch/overly critical guy posts with messages pointing out that they are sockpuppet accounts. You can thank your personal attacks for this one.
For a headsup, the bonch account and Overly Critical Guy accounts are sockpuppets operated by the same organization. See this post and a previous post I've made here for evidence that these user accounts are used to push the same script, sometimes even copy/paste versions of it.
It has already been repeatedly demonstrated that Overly Critical Guy and bonch accounts are operated by same invididual/organization, to the point that the same script is shared between accounts. The organization behind the bonch and Overly Critical Guy accounts is invested in a massive astroturfing campaign which produces such a high volume of crap pushing a pro-Microsoft point of view that you don't even bother tweaking the official script, as was demonstrated by chrb in this post, and as I've pointed out before in this post.
So, you can cut your deceitful comments now that your cover has been blown.
You should go easy on the conspiracy theories. I've posted this post as a copy/paste of this post I've made earlier, which in turn I read from this comment. If I was going around posting this as a AC I wouldn't had bothered even logging in to do that, would I?
And by the way, if you invest your time searching slashdot you will notice that there are posts blowing the connection between the bonch user account and other sockpuppet accounts, such as the Overly Critical Guy account you've used, that precede my registration.
But keep wasting your modpoints modbombing me if you'd like. The more you waste, the less you abuse by inflating the karma of the other sockpuppet accounts that you've created, which you inadvertently blown their cover through your mass foe-ing.
No, but posting the same astroturfing propaganda based on the same script sure does. See this post from Overly Critical Guy [slashdot.org] and compare it to this post by bonch [slashdot.org].
And bonch and Overly Critical Guy are only a couple of user accounts. Slashdot is packed with dozens of professional shills tryint go sway public opinion to a more favourable position towards their employers.
Bonch and Over Critical Guy are two known MS shills who even post messages based on the same script. See this post from Overly Critical Guy and compare it to this post by bonch. Notice any similiarities?
No one's "falling to grief". We're discussing ways to deal with a problem.
The only problem I see is some user's inability to act like grown ups and thus let petty comments rile them enough that they go off advocating ways to punish people just for acting in a way that they don't approve. Do you approve AC comments? I don't. Therefore I don't waste my time reading them and thinking of ways I could punish them for saying stuff I don't like.
And don't come here with that righteous "social pressure" bullshit, with that "teach him to be more civil" load of bullshit. To see how this is such a good idea, remember that in the 60s this very same sort of argument was used in the US to justify attacking and assassinating people for not "knowing their place" and acting "uppity", with a blatant disregard for that time's social order.
This "social pressure" bullshit is just an excuse for authoritarian folks to bully people into submission and force them to be subjugated to your own views on every given subject. It's thanks to this bullshit that, even in this day and age, we get teenagers being stalked and receiving death threats for not caving to "social pressure" and be fervently aligned with a religion. And this is supposed to be a good thing'
So, the problem isn't any AC spewing crap to a forum. The problem is you, and others like you, who are urged to inflict punishment on others as a form of revenge just because someone dares to do or say something you approve, and who doesn't cave to your "social pressure". The real problem is that you, and others like you, are intolerant bigots who believe that it's ok to use force and violence to shape society into your preconceived notion of what is supposed to be. The real problem is you, and your inability to just ignore irrelevant stuff, such as bullshit comments, and instead opt to react violently to punish those behind them. You are a worse influence in society than anyone posting distasteful comments on any message board, and your self-righteous attitude does not benefit an society in any way.
So, if you don't like distasteful comments then stop browsing at -1 and go on with your life. Don't waste your time pretending that you know what's good for society, because you don't. If you don't like it then consider this your recipe of "social pressure", and see how you like it.
Because it would be research which the US would not need to fund, and therefore free funds to invest in other projects, and which could be used to help plan what to research next.
The thing is, allied forces weren't operating on a shoestring budget and this project isn't that important to preserve sovereignty to warrant bankrupting the nation.
First of all, this Intel Medfield thing is, at this point, nothing more than a publicity stunt, specially its power consumption. To put it in perspective, Intel's only official statement with vaguely objective numbers puts Intel Medfield with a power usage of over 2W. This isn't particularly bad when compared to Intel's previous offering.
Yet, once you compare it with today's ARM-based products, it still can't compete. Let me explain.
If you put it in perspective with today's real world ARM-based systems, you will see that they all have a less than 1W power usage. You can check link which you provided to AnandTech's article on Intel Medfield to learn that. So, this might not appear much, but it demonstrates that Intel Medfield is a power hog that drains at idle at best over 2x the power required by ARM systems at peak demand. Intel's official figures puts Intel Medfield with a idle power usage at around 2.3 Watts. With ARM-based systems, the idle power is at worse around 40mW. That is, according to Intel's marketing department, Intel Medfield uses 60x the power that ARM-based systems use at idle. Is that what you describe as shooting a claim "out of the water"?
Then you go on boasting Intel Medfield's performance. Yet, what you don't understand is that synthetic benchmarks don't matter in the real world. All that matters is that a computer is able to perform some task with an acceptable level of performance. So, a user may not notice any performance difference between two systems whose WhateverMark is over 200% apart. Why would it matters if a system is able to play three or five concurrent HD video streams if a lower-spec system is quite able to play only one HD video stream? After a certain point, performance is irrelevant, as Intel's Atom line demonstrates.
So, knowing that Intel Medfield's computational power is irrelevant and knowing that Intel Medfield's future best-case propaganda power requirements are huge when compared with today's ARM products, why exactly are you claiming that Intel's tomorrow showcase product even competes with yesterday's ARM systems?
...or, you know, sell a separate battery and a stationary solar powered battery charger. That would avoid the size constraints on the solar panel and the exposure problem.
The only problem with that obvious approach is that such a charger couldn't be used to sell expensive phones under the pretext of Nokia being environmentally-friendly and all the associated fraudulent propaganda....and so the project is scrapped.
So, what kind of profession should he have in order for him to be taken seriously? A doctor? An accountant? A street sweeper? A politician?
Forget that, I am missing the big picture here. I, instead, should have started by asking what you do for a living. It's important to know that to be able to tell if anyone should take your comment seriously or not. Because that's what matters the most......or, you know, we should simply understand that ad hominem attacks are stupid, and do absolutely nothing to refute a message.
The article is poorly thought out, as it is based on a false dichotomy between so called "libertarians" and "technocrats". While a libertarian advocates the idea that free will should be the founding rule of a society, which brings us concepts such as the state doing absolutely nothing to affect society, technocracy represents a system of government which is ruled by technical experts. This means that, unless this hypothetical state is a anarchist utopia, the state requires leadership, and if a state requires leadership then that leadership can very well be exerted by technical experts. Hence, you can have a libertarian technocrats, and libertarian states run by a technocratic government.
Because if carrier lock down is not permitted for subsidized phones then that market will end very quickly.
Please do explain how not permitting phones to be locked will lead phone companies to stop selling them. After all, not only are phone companies selling unlocked phones as it is but they also require that people actually have phones in order to sell their contracts to provide a service. You know, the whole reason why a phone company exists to begin with.
This is not true. Centralized planning is still fundamental to building efficient systems and infrastructure. For example, the logistic system of a country must be planned with the needs of the entire country under consideration, in order to provide the most efficient infrastructure with the lowest operating cost. This means that road systems, railway, airports and even sea ports greatly benefit from central planning, mainly because if there is no central planning then it is impossible to put in place cheap, working Intermodal freight transport transport hubs.
Another example are public utilities. You need centralized planning to effectively organize the design of sanitation networks, water supply, water treatment plants, not to mention the generation and transmission of electricity, telecommunication networks and even the supply of gas. Central planning is required because these services must follow urban planning and take into account localized restrictions and limitations.
Regarding centralization in production, although it isn't particularly important, there are considerable benefits in mass-producing goods and services, mainly due to economics of scale. There is a reason why society relies on a car industry that uses huge, fully automated plants to produce cheap cars instead of relying on some blokes in a shed putting together a car with their own bare hands.
It goes a bit beyond that. The main "flavour" of socialism which is put in practice nowadays is social democracy. In short, this version of socialism embraces the free market and the right to private property (i.e., capitalism), but also advocates economic redistribution and the implementation of social programs.
This flavour of socialism does not require a centralized economy and the entire nationalization of each and every means of production, which tends to be used as a ploy to scare americans away from this evil socialism. What it does require is that taxes are spent on public programmes, such as education, healthcare and, in some states, even a minimum guaranteed income, in order to improve the quality of life to all citizens and guarantee access to services and opportunities which otherwise would be limited by a person's personal income.
This tends to work quite well, as it is responsible for the highest quality of life and development that humanity has managed to attain. The odd thing is that, unlike neoliberalism, this type of economic system does a much better job in managing an economy. The main reason for this is that neoliberalism, as an ideology, focuses on capital as the be all, end all factor of an economy. This is a deeply flawed idea, mainly due to the gross error of ignoring the existence of externalities. On the other hand, social democracy acknowledges that externalities do exist, and that some costs and benefits cannot be effectively represented as capital flow. For example, the benefit that a society gets from social programs such as putting in place a national healthcare system fully financed by taxes and entirely managed by the state are considerably high, although this represents a considerable volume of spending and is not operated to generate profits. The ability to provide academic and job training to every citizen, independent of how much he earns or is willing to pay, also provides a considerable benefit to a state, although it costs the state a considerable volume of public funds.
So, there is more to socialism than a couple of blurry photos of Stalin, and it's a shame that the population of country such as the US of A is routinely fooled by this bogeyman story on how socialism is supposed to be very bad, because... socialism? The world, and particularly the US, would be far better than it is right now if this propaganda ceased and implementing extensive social programs would cease to be a political quagmire.
You are confused. The fact that corporations do write legislation tailored to their needs is an obvious sign that the government is corrupt. Yet, having corporations react to the legislation that corrupt representatives are forcing onto a country is hardly any reason to worry about. You may complain that these companies are actively engaged in the democratic process, but this is the very definition of activism, which is supposed to be one of those inalienable rights which, when expressed, represent what a democratic system is all about.
So, why exactly do you believe that activism is somehow worse than having corrupt politicians act as the lap dog of other corporations and special interest groups?
There's nothing legal or technical preventing someone from buying a handful chips from any of a half-dozen ARM licensees and fabricating the rest of a system around it, either for personal or commercial use.
There is also nothing legal and technical preventing someone from buying a hung of steel and spare parts and build his own car/truck. Yet, this is a task so technically demanding and requiring a high degree of know-how that it is practically impossible for any random person to invest his time and money on that adventure. It becomes a niche activity of some hard-core engineering aficionados to delve into that. If the point of building his own car/truck is to get a general-purpose vehicle that has a practical use then how would that help anyone? The exact same case applies to general-purpose computers. We lose the fight for general-purpose computers once we start to see them as a niche toy only used by hard-core engineering afficionados. This is the whole point of this discussion.
And before you claim that there is nothing legal preventing someone from doing this, in my home country the state has made it illegal for us commoners to even replace a car's engine on our own. Do you actually believe that putting that sort of requirement on computers is far-fetched?
Admittedly, with the consumer electronics end of things, in many cases someone had to figure out how to root the device.
That's the whole point of this talk. There is a continuous pressure to force general-purpose computers to become mere consumer appliances by limiting what the user can do with the tool. Systems are being locked-down through technical and legal means, and we are being routinely forced to resort to increasingly more convoluted practices to regain at least some part of the general-purpose nature of these general-purpose computers.
You mentioned software projects targeted at devices which are tightly locked-down, but you failed to mention that the only reason it is possible to install them is if someone finds a way to side-step all these technical locks put in place by the manufacturer, and if the user intentionally ignores the existing legal locks. And to drive the point home, these technical locks are side-stepped because some clever bloke discovered ways to circumvent them, which are officially referred to as... security vulnerabilities. That is, the only way we are able to retake the general-computing aspect of a general-purpose computer is if the system is found to be, as they say, vulnerable, and the people who engage on this are considered security threats. For wanting to use a general-purpose computer as a general-purpose computer.
No, I'm quite sure Core2 CPUs are not being used in many embedded applications. That space is dominated by ARM chips, and there's no general-purpose PCs made with ARM CPUs.
You have completely missed the point. The only reason a computer with an ARM chip isn't a general-purpose computer is because it has been locked down to the point it becomes a single-purpose computer. These little ARM processors are still general-purpose processors, quite capable of performing general-purpose computations and run any software we throw at it. They may not do it as fast as Intel's newest offering, but they are still quite capable of being used as personal computers. I've used general-purpose computers which packed a 33MHz 386 chip, and I did all sorts of stuff with them. Computers such as the ZX Spectrum and commodore 64 were a lot slower than these ARM chips, and they were general-purpose, too. If those systems were general-purpose computers, how come a 300MHz Arm system with 128MB of RAM isn't?
I had mod points, and I was planning on use them all on this discussion, but as no one said what I wish to say, I'll spend them elsewhere. Here it goes.
You claim that the Raspberry Pi proves Doctorow wrong. Well, tablet computers prove him right. And smartphones, too. These are the two personal computer forms which dominate today's market, and will continue to dominate in the future. The market for laptops is shrinking while the market for tablets has increased 42%, according to some estimates Apple is becoming the world's dominant computer platform, with the dominant product being a closed, locked-down, walled garden of a personal computer.
And what about your home router? It's also a general purpose computer, which has been locked down hard to force you to not fiddle with it. The same applies to NAS and even some external HDs.
If that isn't enough, take a look at every chinese trinket toy which is sold on ebay. I'm referring to stuff such as MP3 players, media players, tablets, video game consoles and all of the sort. You can't fiddle with their software, you can't tweak their OS, you can only use them until it gets bricked. I personally have purchased a cheap, 20 dollar MP3 player with a neat color display which, at the time, put my cellphone to shame, and the damned thing could only be used to display song names and play tetris. And it was a full blown computer, which had a SD card reader.
My media player is also a general purpose computer, which has been castrated by my cable provider. My TV is also a general purpose computer, complete with HDMI input plugs, SD card reader and USB plug. It runs linux, too. But I can't do shit with it. It's from Sony, which also sells other personal computers, such as the Playstation line, playstation portable and playstation vita. And you can't do shit with them, either.
This is what Doctorow is warning about. And you said he has been proven wrong? How?
So no, Raspberry Pi does not prove him wrong. No matter how cool it is or how open it has been designed, it is a very specific product for a very specific market. There is a risk it will be put in the same category as a multitester, oscilloscopes and pulse generators: technical tools which only the technically literate are interested in using. That is, true general purpose computers are being relegated to something that only the fools at the local modern incantation of the homebrew computer club are even interested with, and this is very dangerous.
This artificial limitation already plagues the software development world, where compilers are seen as scary stuff which only technical people care to have. I've seen police reports where they claimed that the target of the raid was somehow a hacker and a pirate because he had linux on his computer, as a dual boot. People already accept these absurd views on computers. They perceive locked down computers as something which is desirable and here to stay, and the hardware vendors are already taking advantage of that ignorance and lack of insight.
The path to a computing world where all computers are tight-down walled gardens is already set, and if we don't acknowledge it and do something prevent this disaster to happen then it will happen. And it will happen in the near future.
The benchmarks provided by Phoronix focus on computational power, which is a relevant criteria. Yet, ARM-based systems aren't targeted at the high performance computing field. In their domain of application, criteria such as power usage and price tends to be much more relevant than how fast it compresses files, encodes MP3s or runs synthetic benchmarks. In fact, if it is fast enough to play media then it's fast enough to do anything at all.
So, how about comparing them where they need to be compared: power output and price?
You appear to be confused. If you take the time to check the stores and compare AMD's offering to Intel's in terms of processing power and cost, you will learn that AMD's offerings are constantly the best ones in the market. More precisely, you will learn that:
AMD's processors, for the same price, pack more processing power per core than Intel's
AMD's processors, for the same processing power, are cheaper than Intel's
AMD's processors, for the same price, pack more cores than Intel's
Then, once we factor additional costs such as motherboards, RAM and whatnot, you will realize that Intel's price tag is far higher than AMD, and this for a product which is inferior.
Granted, Intel does produce the fastest chips out there. Yet, in this day and age where real-world performance (i.e., games, media work and the like) is dictated by the GPU and not the CPU, even today's mid to low-end processor can play the most demanding games. So, in practice no one actually has the need to purchase Intel's top of the line CPU, besides e-penis boasting. And to do that you have to shovel over 1k euros for the processor alone, in a day and age where 400 euros already purchase an entire desktop computer.
So, exactly where are AMD's products not the best choice in the market? And who exactly is the fanboy here?
They appear to have discovered the World Calendar, a calendar proposed almost a century ago. The only noticeable difference is that they shifter which month had the 31 days.
I don't know how anyone goes about researching something new without first exploring what has been done before. It's not a great show of research prowess on their behalf.
Slashdot Mirror
For a headsup, the bonch account and Overly Critical Guy accounts are sockpuppets operated by the same organization. See this post and a previous post I've made here for evidence that these user accounts are used to push the same script, sometimes even copy/paste versions of it.
You are confused. The only time I've bothered pointing out that the bonch account and Overly Critical Guy accounts are sockpuppet accounts was in this comment, after I read this comment blowing your cover. And since then I've also stumbled on this comment, which provides further evidence. Are you also going to claim that I am chrb?
And rest assure. I have some time to spare about now which I will waste replying to bonch/overly critical guy posts with messages pointing out that they are sockpuppet accounts. You can thank your personal attacks for this one.
For a headsup, the bonch account and Overly Critical Guy accounts are sockpuppets operated by the same organization. See this post and a previous post I've made here for evidence that these user accounts are used to push the same script, sometimes even copy/paste versions of it.
It has already been repeatedly demonstrated that Overly Critical Guy and bonch accounts are operated by same invididual/organization, to the point that the same script is shared between accounts. The organization behind the bonch and Overly Critical Guy accounts is invested in a massive astroturfing campaign which produces such a high volume of crap pushing a pro-Microsoft point of view that you don't even bother tweaking the official script, as was demonstrated by chrb in this post, and as I've pointed out before in this post.
So, you can cut your deceitful comments now that your cover has been blown.
You should go easy on the conspiracy theories. I've posted this post as a copy/paste of this post I've made earlier, which in turn I read from this comment. If I was going around posting this as a AC I wouldn't had bothered even logging in to do that, would I?
And by the way, if you invest your time searching slashdot you will notice that there are posts blowing the connection between the bonch user account and other sockpuppet accounts, such as the Overly Critical Guy account you've used, that precede my registration.
But keep wasting your modpoints modbombing me if you'd like. The more you waste, the less you abuse by inflating the karma of the other sockpuppet accounts that you've created, which you inadvertently blown their cover through your mass foe-ing.
No, but posting the same astroturfing propaganda based on the same script sure does. See this post from Overly Critical Guy [slashdot.org] and compare it to this post by bonch [slashdot.org].
And bonch and Overly Critical Guy are only a couple of user accounts. Slashdot is packed with dozens of professional shills tryint go sway public opinion to a more favourable position towards their employers.
Bonch and Over Critical Guy are two known MS shills who even post messages based on the same script. See this post from Overly Critical Guy and compare it to this post by bonch. Notice any similiarities?
The only problem I see is some user's inability to act like grown ups and thus let petty comments rile them enough that they go off advocating ways to punish people just for acting in a way that they don't approve. Do you approve AC comments? I don't. Therefore I don't waste my time reading them and thinking of ways I could punish them for saying stuff I don't like.
And don't come here with that righteous "social pressure" bullshit, with that "teach him to be more civil" load of bullshit. To see how this is such a good idea, remember that in the 60s this very same sort of argument was used in the US to justify attacking and assassinating people for not "knowing their place" and acting "uppity", with a blatant disregard for that time's social order.
This "social pressure" bullshit is just an excuse for authoritarian folks to bully people into submission and force them to be subjugated to your own views on every given subject. It's thanks to this bullshit that, even in this day and age, we get teenagers being stalked and receiving death threats for not caving to "social pressure" and be fervently aligned with a religion. And this is supposed to be a good thing'
So, the problem isn't any AC spewing crap to a forum. The problem is you, and others like you, who are urged to inflict punishment on others as a form of revenge just because someone dares to do or say something you approve, and who doesn't cave to your "social pressure". The real problem is that you, and others like you, are intolerant bigots who believe that it's ok to use force and violence to shape society into your preconceived notion of what is supposed to be. The real problem is you, and your inability to just ignore irrelevant stuff, such as bullshit comments, and instead opt to react violently to punish those behind them. You are a worse influence in society than anyone posting distasteful comments on any message board, and your self-righteous attitude does not benefit an society in any way.
So, if you don't like distasteful comments then stop browsing at -1 and go on with your life. Don't waste your time pretending that you know what's good for society, because you don't. If you don't like it then consider this your recipe of "social pressure", and see how you like it.
Because it would be research which the US would not need to fund, and therefore free funds to invest in other projects, and which could be used to help plan what to research next.
For example.
The thing is, allied forces weren't operating on a shoestring budget and this project isn't that important to preserve sovereignty to warrant bankrupting the nation.
First of all, this Intel Medfield thing is, at this point, nothing more than a publicity stunt, specially its power consumption. To put it in perspective, Intel's only official statement with vaguely objective numbers puts Intel Medfield with a power usage of over 2W. This isn't particularly bad when compared to Intel's previous offering.
Yet, once you compare it with today's ARM-based products, it still can't compete. Let me explain.
If you put it in perspective with today's real world ARM-based systems, you will see that they all have a less than 1W power usage. You can check link which you provided to AnandTech's article on Intel Medfield to learn that. So, this might not appear much, but it demonstrates that Intel Medfield is a power hog that drains at idle at best over 2x the power required by ARM systems at peak demand. Intel's official figures puts Intel Medfield with a idle power usage at around 2.3 Watts. With ARM-based systems, the idle power is at worse around 40mW. That is, according to Intel's marketing department, Intel Medfield uses 60x the power that ARM-based systems use at idle. Is that what you describe as shooting a claim "out of the water"?
Then you go on boasting Intel Medfield's performance. Yet, what you don't understand is that synthetic benchmarks don't matter in the real world. All that matters is that a computer is able to perform some task with an acceptable level of performance. So, a user may not notice any performance difference between two systems whose WhateverMark is over 200% apart. Why would it matters if a system is able to play three or five concurrent HD video streams if a lower-spec system is quite able to play only one HD video stream? After a certain point, performance is irrelevant, as Intel's Atom line demonstrates.
So, knowing that Intel Medfield's computational power is irrelevant and knowing that Intel Medfield's future best-case propaganda power requirements are huge when compared with today's ARM products, why exactly are you claiming that Intel's tomorrow showcase product even competes with yesterday's ARM systems?
...or, you know, sell a separate battery and a stationary solar powered battery charger. That would avoid the size constraints on the solar panel and the exposure problem.
The only problem with that obvious approach is that such a charger couldn't be used to sell expensive phones under the pretext of Nokia being environmentally-friendly and all the associated fraudulent propaganda. ...and so the project is scrapped.
So, what kind of profession should he have in order for him to be taken seriously? A doctor? An accountant? A street sweeper? A politician?
Forget that, I am missing the big picture here. I, instead, should have started by asking what you do for a living. It's important to know that to be able to tell if anyone should take your comment seriously or not. Because that's what matters the most... ...or, you know, we should simply understand that ad hominem attacks are stupid, and do absolutely nothing to refute a message.
The article is poorly thought out, as it is based on a false dichotomy between so called "libertarians" and "technocrats". While a libertarian advocates the idea that free will should be the founding rule of a society, which brings us concepts such as the state doing absolutely nothing to affect society, technocracy represents a system of government which is ruled by technical experts. This means that, unless this hypothetical state is a anarchist utopia, the state requires leadership, and if a state requires leadership then that leadership can very well be exerted by technical experts. Hence, you can have a libertarian technocrats, and libertarian states run by a technocratic government.
Please do explain how not permitting phones to be locked will lead phone companies to stop selling them. After all, not only are phone companies selling unlocked phones as it is but they also require that people actually have phones in order to sell their contracts to provide a service. You know, the whole reason why a phone company exists to begin with.
This is not true. Centralized planning is still fundamental to building efficient systems and infrastructure. For example, the logistic system of a country must be planned with the needs of the entire country under consideration, in order to provide the most efficient infrastructure with the lowest operating cost. This means that road systems, railway, airports and even sea ports greatly benefit from central planning, mainly because if there is no central planning then it is impossible to put in place cheap, working Intermodal freight transport transport hubs.
Another example are public utilities. You need centralized planning to effectively organize the design of sanitation networks, water supply, water treatment plants, not to mention the generation and transmission of electricity, telecommunication networks and even the supply of gas. Central planning is required because these services must follow urban planning and take into account localized restrictions and limitations.
Regarding centralization in production, although it isn't particularly important, there are considerable benefits in mass-producing goods and services, mainly due to economics of scale. There is a reason why society relies on a car industry that uses huge, fully automated plants to produce cheap cars instead of relying on some blokes in a shed putting together a car with their own bare hands.
It goes a bit beyond that. The main "flavour" of socialism which is put in practice nowadays is social democracy. In short, this version of socialism embraces the free market and the right to private property (i.e., capitalism), but also advocates economic redistribution and the implementation of social programs.
This flavour of socialism does not require a centralized economy and the entire nationalization of each and every means of production, which tends to be used as a ploy to scare americans away from this evil socialism. What it does require is that taxes are spent on public programmes, such as education, healthcare and, in some states, even a minimum guaranteed income, in order to improve the quality of life to all citizens and guarantee access to services and opportunities which otherwise would be limited by a person's personal income.
This tends to work quite well, as it is responsible for the highest quality of life and development that humanity has managed to attain. The odd thing is that, unlike neoliberalism, this type of economic system does a much better job in managing an economy. The main reason for this is that neoliberalism, as an ideology, focuses on capital as the be all, end all factor of an economy. This is a deeply flawed idea, mainly due to the gross error of ignoring the existence of externalities. On the other hand, social democracy acknowledges that externalities do exist, and that some costs and benefits cannot be effectively represented as capital flow. For example, the benefit that a society gets from social programs such as putting in place a national healthcare system fully financed by taxes and entirely managed by the state are considerably high, although this represents a considerable volume of spending and is not operated to generate profits. The ability to provide academic and job training to every citizen, independent of how much he earns or is willing to pay, also provides a considerable benefit to a state, although it costs the state a considerable volume of public funds.
So, there is more to socialism than a couple of blurry photos of Stalin, and it's a shame that the population of country such as the US of A is routinely fooled by this bogeyman story on how socialism is supposed to be very bad, because... socialism? The world, and particularly the US, would be far better than it is right now if this propaganda ceased and implementing extensive social programs would cease to be a political quagmire.
You are confused. The fact that corporations do write legislation tailored to their needs is an obvious sign that the government is corrupt. Yet, having corporations react to the legislation that corrupt representatives are forcing onto a country is hardly any reason to worry about. You may complain that these companies are actively engaged in the democratic process, but this is the very definition of activism, which is supposed to be one of those inalienable rights which, when expressed, represent what a democratic system is all about.
So, why exactly do you believe that activism is somehow worse than having corrupt politicians act as the lap dog of other corporations and special interest groups?
There is also nothing legal and technical preventing someone from buying a hung of steel and spare parts and build his own car/truck. Yet, this is a task so technically demanding and requiring a high degree of know-how that it is practically impossible for any random person to invest his time and money on that adventure. It becomes a niche activity of some hard-core engineering aficionados to delve into that. If the point of building his own car/truck is to get a general-purpose vehicle that has a practical use then how would that help anyone? The exact same case applies to general-purpose computers. We lose the fight for general-purpose computers once we start to see them as a niche toy only used by hard-core engineering afficionados. This is the whole point of this discussion.
And before you claim that there is nothing legal preventing someone from doing this, in my home country the state has made it illegal for us commoners to even replace a car's engine on our own. Do you actually believe that putting that sort of requirement on computers is far-fetched?
That's the whole point of this talk. There is a continuous pressure to force general-purpose computers to become mere consumer appliances by limiting what the user can do with the tool. Systems are being locked-down through technical and legal means, and we are being routinely forced to resort to increasingly more convoluted practices to regain at least some part of the general-purpose nature of these general-purpose computers.
You mentioned software projects targeted at devices which are tightly locked-down, but you failed to mention that the only reason it is possible to install them is if someone finds a way to side-step all these technical locks put in place by the manufacturer, and if the user intentionally ignores the existing legal locks. And to drive the point home, these technical locks are side-stepped because some clever bloke discovered ways to circumvent them, which are officially referred to as... security vulnerabilities. That is, the only way we are able to retake the general-computing aspect of a general-purpose computer is if the system is found to be, as they say, vulnerable, and the people who engage on this are considered security threats. For wanting to use a general-purpose computer as a general-purpose computer.
You have completely missed the point. The only reason a computer with an ARM chip isn't a general-purpose computer is because it has been locked down to the point it becomes a single-purpose computer. These little ARM processors are still general-purpose processors, quite capable of performing general-purpose computations and run any software we throw at it. They may not do it as fast as Intel's newest offering, but they are still quite capable of being used as personal computers. I've used general-purpose computers which packed a 33MHz 386 chip, and I did all sorts of stuff with them. Computers such as the ZX Spectrum and commodore 64 were a lot slower than these ARM chips, and they were general-purpose, too. If those systems were general-purpose computers, how come a 300MHz Arm system with 128MB of RAM isn't?
I had mod points, and I was planning on use them all on this discussion, but as no one said what I wish to say, I'll spend them elsewhere. Here it goes.
You claim that the Raspberry Pi proves Doctorow wrong. Well, tablet computers prove him right. And smartphones, too. These are the two personal computer forms which dominate today's market, and will continue to dominate in the future. The market for laptops is shrinking while the market for tablets has increased 42%, according to some estimates Apple is becoming the world's dominant computer platform, with the dominant product being a closed, locked-down, walled garden of a personal computer.
And what about your home router? It's also a general purpose computer, which has been locked down hard to force you to not fiddle with it. The same applies to NAS and even some external HDs.
If that isn't enough, take a look at every chinese trinket toy which is sold on ebay. I'm referring to stuff such as MP3 players, media players, tablets, video game consoles and all of the sort. You can't fiddle with their software, you can't tweak their OS, you can only use them until it gets bricked. I personally have purchased a cheap, 20 dollar MP3 player with a neat color display which, at the time, put my cellphone to shame, and the damned thing could only be used to display song names and play tetris. And it was a full blown computer, which had a SD card reader.
My media player is also a general purpose computer, which has been castrated by my cable provider. My TV is also a general purpose computer, complete with HDMI input plugs, SD card reader and USB plug. It runs linux, too. But I can't do shit with it. It's from Sony, which also sells other personal computers, such as the Playstation line, playstation portable and playstation vita. And you can't do shit with them, either.
This is what Doctorow is warning about. And you said he has been proven wrong? How?
So no, Raspberry Pi does not prove him wrong. No matter how cool it is or how open it has been designed, it is a very specific product for a very specific market. There is a risk it will be put in the same category as a multitester, oscilloscopes and pulse generators: technical tools which only the technically literate are interested in using. That is, true general purpose computers are being relegated to something that only the fools at the local modern incantation of the homebrew computer club are even interested with, and this is very dangerous.
This artificial limitation already plagues the software development world, where compilers are seen as scary stuff which only technical people care to have. I've seen police reports where they claimed that the target of the raid was somehow a hacker and a pirate because he had linux on his computer, as a dual boot. People already accept these absurd views on computers. They perceive locked down computers as something which is desirable and here to stay, and the hardware vendors are already taking advantage of that ignorance and lack of insight.
The path to a computing world where all computers are tight-down walled gardens is already set, and if we don't acknowledge it and do something prevent this disaster to happen then it will happen. And it will happen in the near future.
The benchmarks provided by Phoronix focus on computational power, which is a relevant criteria. Yet, ARM-based systems aren't targeted at the high performance computing field. In their domain of application, criteria such as power usage and price tends to be much more relevant than how fast it compresses files, encodes MP3s or runs synthetic benchmarks. In fact, if it is fast enough to play media then it's fast enough to do anything at all.
So, how about comparing them where they need to be compared: power output and price?
You appear to be confused. If you take the time to check the stores and compare AMD's offering to Intel's in terms of processing power and cost, you will learn that AMD's offerings are constantly the best ones in the market. More precisely, you will learn that:
Then, once we factor additional costs such as motherboards, RAM and whatnot, you will realize that Intel's price tag is far higher than AMD, and this for a product which is inferior.
Granted, Intel does produce the fastest chips out there. Yet, in this day and age where real-world performance (i.e., games, media work and the like) is dictated by the GPU and not the CPU, even today's mid to low-end processor can play the most demanding games. So, in practice no one actually has the need to purchase Intel's top of the line CPU, besides e-penis boasting. And to do that you have to shovel over 1k euros for the processor alone, in a day and age where 400 euros already purchase an entire desktop computer.
So, exactly where are AMD's products not the best choice in the market? And who exactly is the fanboy here?
They appear to have discovered the World Calendar, a calendar proposed almost a century ago. The only noticeable difference is that they shifter which month had the 31 days.
I don't know how anyone goes about researching something new without first exploring what has been done before. It's not a great show of research prowess on their behalf.