In other words: we're all going to die, one day. In fact the sun continues to add energy to the planet daily, not to mention our existing reserve of stored energy. I don't argue that "one day" we're going to run out of juice, but it need not be soon. Our sun has a few billion years left, and there's no reason we couldn't be long gone from here by then buying us a bit more time. But sure, one day, it's all over. Everything dies eventually.
The more relevant concern is how to be less dependent of those forms of energy that are becoming in short supply, in favor of more readily available energy with fewer unwanted side effects. That will prevent us from fouling our planet, give us our "crutch" (you know, the one that separates us from the monkeys) and allow us happy lives. Why is that so bad? Nature only threatens those who don't understand it.
Anyhow, given no option but to throw my hands in the air and accept no further technological development, I wouldn't want to argue that our children are better off with more generations by living like primitives in the jungle than burning out sooner by continuing the existance we have now.
It's probably impossible to get people to change their habits unless it's easy and obvious (like recycling...easy, just do it). Similarly, elevating energy costs to compel people to use it more wisely will only sort of work. People will ration it out as their finances dictate, but to the generation companies they'll just see lower usage (more capacity), but higher margins. There is no incentive for R&D in that sort of market. They'll still burn coal and gas or split atoms, whatever maximizes profit. That's where the pollution is, my incandescents alone pollute nothing.
His straw man argument is the extreme case of what some of the more rabid "pro-environment" crowd advocate. The more mainstream of that crowd is hung up on "back to nature" when in fact, common sense indicates that we built all this technology to ESCAPE nature. Stuff dies in nature for no good reason. It's not fair, it's not controllable, and it's dirty with lots of nasty bugs. Life expectancy in nature alone is poor, and a low carb versus low fat dieter would starve, as the reigning diet is "whatever I can catch, that doesn't catch me first, whether I feel sick or not". Nature sucks now that you get down to it, I like it only when viewed through a window.
There are some realities which those who wish to make environmentalism their cause must accept if they really wish to be part of a solution. We're going to keep our SUVs, air conditioning/heating habits or choice of transport. Don't insult it, that only alienates people and gets them mad, often turning off their receivers in the process. We don't care about the technology which makes them work. The natural solution here is to look for better ways of generating power, and more efficient equipment. There's got to be a better way, there's nothing fundamental about gas or uranium that make them great sources of energy. They were convenient, that's all.
Your mom is level 37, so she's not in an uberguild. There are lots of women in the "family guild" type scene, many mothers, many girlfriends or sisters...all sorts. It's one of the few good reasons for wanting to be in a family type guild: low stress friendlier people.
Uberguilds tend to be teenagers (the only demographic that has the time to commit). They pride themselves on their "skillz" in the same way that a football team does, and assume girls wouldn't be able to keep up, because let's face it, what hot girl would be locked up in a dark room 24/7? I guess the answer is that there are actually a few.
That there are girls in uberguilds I personally don't find shocking, although I admit most keep it quiet as they often get treated as second class citizens...that she's attractive is a first for me. Hence I speculate about the intention of this article. Was it "wow girls can game too" or "wow they're not all ugly". If the second, who cares, the last thing uberguilds need is more bitching, esp. from people trying to impress potential hotties.
I think it's part of the usual slashdot social foundation: we won't review really popular games that everyone already knows about, we won't review games so awful we'd be embarassed to admit to having bought/pirated it. It should be something somewhat offbeat, probably underrated or from a small unknown game shop. Hence almost everything is 8/10.
Who ever insinuated that/. is unbiased? It's "news for nerds, stuff that matters". Doesn't that already indicate some degree of bias? Slashdot does not report on news, it just reports on news articles that it links to, usually with some paragraph long editorial explaining to us, the readers why it's relevant. Usually with bad spelling and punctuation. Our "editors" are not much more than moderators, ensuring that only "stuff that matters" gets through.
On the other hand, show me some news sources that aren't biased or reliant on some groupthink.
So the last EXCUSE as to why outlook was being mandated by IT was calendar. But I have this strong feeling that even if the implementation of the calendar feature is perfect, that IT will find another reason to stick with MS.
Again, guessing, I think using their mask data they can get accurate timing (from the connectivity), get logic from the bitstream, and can guarantee that the end result ASIC matches the Altera FPGA. They probably feel this isn't illegal because they have to do so much new work (floorplanning and qualifying a new ASIC basically) and are only using Altera's mask as a reference.
Certainly the value of FPGAs as ASIC prototyping tools is high. Bridging that gap in a suit friendly way is worth some money. However by using their mask one can argue they are using the IP of a competitor to help themselves.
If I took the gerbers from a board at the company I work for, and started a new company that built a competing product cheaper, using only the timing & loss characteristics of the existing gerbers, someone would probably call foul. Now if I went and took apart their PCBs layer by later and measured each trace, that'd probably be ok.
I finally RTFA but it's not any more clear now. On one hand there was something about reversing the bitstream, on the other hand there was this mask issue. I'd be annoyed if reversing the bitstream is actually what the courts objected to, it seems like using the mask is really the problem, but even then given sloppy tech journalism I'm not sure what "using the mask" really meant.
I'm guessing taking FPGA code and producing a dedicated ASIC.
Imagine someone buying one Altera eval board (given away if your company is big enough), designing code, getting the timing all worked out, putting it in a board and then going through all the testing. Voila, working product. Only problem? That FPGA is expensive.
So, enter clear logic, they'll copy Altera's mask and subtract all the bits that aren't needed. They'll guarantee identical timing, just lower cost and power. Altera is thus shafted out of a sales they need.
I didn't RTFA, I could be wrong. I only read the comments to see if someone on the inside was posting;)
Speakeasy is really great. Unfortunately as you say, they just rebundle the physical layer service that the local bell sells, if they can. They'll always be more expensive, but their value has always been in having "the right" IP features (static IPs, shell accounts, fileshack etc.), whereas the local bells usually has the cheap piece of crap plan with minimal IP service, and then the expensive "business plan" which is more similar to speakeasy.
Worse, companies like speakeasy cannot deliver to locations fed by remote access DSLAMs, quite common in new developments. SBC has me locked in, no choices except cable (not really a choice).
Before long there will only be Bell left, I wonder if they'll call it AT&T.
I think people are doing that, however given that news & other push media are owned by the same companies behind the RIAA/MPAA, it doesn't seem that way. The internet is a useless wall of squirrel noises, people don't know what to think of what they read there. The news & newspapers are still old reliable, and contain stories about evil child hackers downloading music and porn and getting their parents arrested.
You know you have a problem when companies are suing 12 year old girls en masse. No amount of lawsuits are going to fix that, nor anything Microsoft writes, nor secret agreements between Sony, Philips & anyone else. People don't believe a CD is worth $20, but aren't willing to suffer for it. Right or wrong, it doesn't matter.
The only thing not being done effectively are the victims of these incidents fighting back, together. Each one evalutes his personal financial state and decides whether it's cheaper to fight or flee. For most, it's cheaper to pay the protection money. If there was a central group of lawyers who knew how to make these cases expensive for the RIAA/MPAA etc., and could advise victims (cheaply), this sort of thing would go away. It's really, really hard to prove someone in your house is stealing music/movies/etc. but the average guy doesn't know that. Have a wireless router? Forget it, they can't prove a thing without doing more than a casual grep of some log.
It all comes down to fear of high attorney fees versus a somewhat stiff but apparently lower fine. Someone who can solve that problem, profitably, will cause real change.
There's those that don't like change, they're usually screwed. Then there's not liking the direction of the change. In the past five years, many of the larger tech companies have turned into real shits to work for.
Re:Exactly what *is* the Dell aversion to AMD?
on
Dell Dumping Itanium
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· Score: 1
It's really easy, contrary to popular opinion Dell is not only a system integrator, but a HW mfg, and works pretty closely with Intel on building the latest and greatest boxes. Usually when Intel announces a new chip, Dell announces a new machine using it. That same relationship does not exist with AMD and would cost money to develop. Why would Dell develop it? Only if there is a considerable demand for AMD devices such that Dell lost enough sales to warrant it.
So far, that is not happening. I for one would like to see Dell sell AMD, but John Q. public doesn't care much (hence www.dell.com PCs won't have em), and enterprise level purchasers don't seem to care. Maybe that will change as word gets out but for Dell to change I think it almost has to already be happening.
I don't buy the quality of innovation argument, it sounds elitist in addition to being wrong. Computers innovation enabled biotech research. The reearch could have been done, but it would be very hard to do given the sheer mass of data involved.
Computers get to market fast, biotech takes a long time. 20 years on computer technology is way too long, but as/.'ers have convinced me, for biotech it's not so easy. That's really the only difference, I haven't heard a good solution yet.
What would be funny is a satire of asshat Farmers eating children.
That aside, there is some belief that we should go beyond the law and keep statements honest and constructive. I'm not saying that it's fair, there will always be people who go to the lowest common denominator (i.e. the law), and a corporation with a hoarde of lawyers will figure out how to push it to the limit. However, the good guys should be better than the bad guys, in every way.
Calling them a bunch of scum sucking assholes is not helpful. Similarly a bunch of opinions and misleading information that some people may interpret as fact by not reading carefully is, perhaps legal, but maybe not moral. Now saying Farmers did not deliver on the goods you thought were being delivered, even if they were technically legally in the right...that's perfectly acceptable and things people ought to be aware of. Corporations are often known to hold people to contracts or nit-picky letter-of-the-law statements, and people have a right to push back. If enough object, businesses that want to stay in business change (unless they're a monopoly, but I digress).
The point is by making a size xyzsucks.com, you're already in the grey area of good taste. You're only going to attract bad reviews, and you create an atmosphere where people may be inclined to less constructive criticisms and warnings than they ought. It's only natural that the victims of these sites are going to want them removed, and sue over anything they can find.
Actually one of Dell's exec's made a funny comment in a dev. meeting that someone in marketing just wasted the rest of [Dell's] quarterly ad budget on something that would only be seen by Dell employee's (and whoever happened to be on I-35).
He apparently didn't see the Sun logo, which was very hard to see.
Log in, click on your ID in the upper left corner. Then pick homepage. Then uncheck Zonk.
I too don't want/. to become yet another video game review site. I like knowing what other geeks are playing, and maybe some interesting details in the press...but reviews? There's no shortage of them. Now a journalistic investigation into the ethics behind review sites? Yeah, that I want to read.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words: we're all going to die, one day. In fact the sun continues to add energy to the planet daily, not to mention our existing reserve of stored energy. I don't argue that "one day" we're going to run out of juice, but it need not be soon. Our sun has a few billion years left, and there's no reason we couldn't be long gone from here by then buying us a bit more time. But sure, one day, it's all over. Everything dies eventually.
The more relevant concern is how to be less dependent of those forms of energy that are becoming in short supply, in favor of more readily available energy with fewer unwanted side effects. That will prevent us from fouling our planet, give us our "crutch" (you know, the one that separates us from the monkeys) and allow us happy lives. Why is that so bad? Nature only threatens those who don't understand it.
Anyhow, given no option but to throw my hands in the air and accept no further technological development, I wouldn't want to argue that our children are better off with more generations by living like primitives in the jungle than burning out sooner by continuing the existance we have now.
It's probably impossible to get people to change their habits unless it's easy and obvious (like recycling...easy, just do it). Similarly, elevating energy costs to compel people to use it more wisely will only sort of work. People will ration it out as their finances dictate, but to the generation companies they'll just see lower usage (more capacity), but higher margins. There is no incentive for R&D in that sort of market. They'll still burn coal and gas or split atoms, whatever maximizes profit. That's where the pollution is, my incandescents alone pollute nothing.
His straw man argument is the extreme case of what some of the more rabid "pro-environment" crowd advocate. The more mainstream of that crowd is hung up on "back to nature" when in fact, common sense indicates that we built all this technology to ESCAPE nature. Stuff dies in nature for no good reason. It's not fair, it's not controllable, and it's dirty with lots of nasty bugs. Life expectancy in nature alone is poor, and a low carb versus low fat dieter would starve, as the reigning diet is "whatever I can catch, that doesn't catch me first, whether I feel sick or not". Nature sucks now that you get down to it, I like it only when viewed through a window.
There are some realities which those who wish to make environmentalism their cause must accept if they really wish to be part of a solution. We're going to keep our SUVs, air conditioning/heating habits or choice of transport. Don't insult it, that only alienates people and gets them mad, often turning off their receivers in the process. We don't care about the technology which makes them work. The natural solution here is to look for better ways of generating power, and more efficient equipment. There's got to be a better way, there's nothing fundamental about gas or uranium that make them great sources of energy. They were convenient, that's all.
Your mom is level 37, so she's not in an uberguild. There are lots of women in the "family guild" type scene, many mothers, many girlfriends or sisters...all sorts. It's one of the few good reasons for wanting to be in a family type guild: low stress friendlier people.
Uberguilds tend to be teenagers (the only demographic that has the time to commit). They pride themselves on their "skillz" in the same way that a football team does, and assume girls wouldn't be able to keep up, because let's face it, what hot girl would be locked up in a dark room 24/7? I guess the answer is that there are actually a few.
That there are girls in uberguilds I personally don't find shocking, although I admit most keep it quiet as they often get treated as second class citizens...that she's attractive is a first for me. Hence I speculate about the intention of this article. Was it "wow girls can game too" or "wow they're not all ugly". If the second, who cares, the last thing uberguilds need is more bitching, esp. from people trying to impress potential hotties.
I think it's part of the usual slashdot social foundation: we won't review really popular games that everyone already knows about, we won't review games so awful we'd be embarassed to admit to having bought/pirated it. It should be something somewhat offbeat, probably underrated or from a small unknown game shop. Hence almost everything is 8/10.
Playing the latest ubar FPS under some windows emulator.
Who ever insinuated that /. is unbiased? It's "news for nerds, stuff that matters". Doesn't that already indicate some degree of bias? Slashdot does not report on news, it just reports on news articles that it links to, usually with some paragraph long editorial explaining to us, the readers why it's relevant. Usually with bad spelling and punctuation. Our "editors" are not much more than moderators, ensuring that only "stuff that matters" gets through.
On the other hand, show me some news sources that aren't biased or reliant on some groupthink.
So the last EXCUSE as to why outlook was being mandated by IT was calendar. But I have this strong feeling that even if the implementation of the calendar feature is perfect, that IT will find another reason to stick with MS.
Here, in the undemocratic republic of corporate bureacracy, that website is blocked as an "anonymizing service".
My +5 Insightful, Interesting, Informative and Funny post are free.
Now the -1 Troll and -1 Flamebait stuff...that I want money for.
Again, guessing, I think using their mask data they can get accurate timing (from the connectivity), get logic from the bitstream, and can guarantee that the end result ASIC matches the Altera FPGA. They probably feel this isn't illegal because they have to do so much new work (floorplanning and qualifying a new ASIC basically) and are only using Altera's mask as a reference.
Certainly the value of FPGAs as ASIC prototyping tools is high. Bridging that gap in a suit friendly way is worth some money. However by using their mask one can argue they are using the IP of a competitor to help themselves.
If I took the gerbers from a board at the company I work for, and started a new company that built a competing product cheaper, using only the timing & loss characteristics of the existing gerbers, someone would probably call foul. Now if I went and took apart their PCBs layer by later and measured each trace, that'd probably be ok.
I finally RTFA but it's not any more clear now. On one hand there was something about reversing the bitstream, on the other hand there was this mask issue. I'd be annoyed if reversing the bitstream is actually what the courts objected to, it seems like using the mask is really the problem, but even then given sloppy tech journalism I'm not sure what "using the mask" really meant.
I'm guessing taking FPGA code and producing a dedicated ASIC.
;)
Imagine someone buying one Altera eval board (given away if your company is big enough), designing code, getting the timing all worked out, putting it in a board and then going through all the testing. Voila, working product. Only problem? That FPGA is expensive.
So, enter clear logic, they'll copy Altera's mask and subtract all the bits that aren't needed. They'll guarantee identical timing, just lower cost and power. Altera is thus shafted out of a sales they need.
I didn't RTFA, I could be wrong. I only read the comments to see if someone on the inside was posting
Speakeasy is really great. Unfortunately as you say, they just rebundle the physical layer service that the local bell sells, if they can. They'll always be more expensive, but their value has always been in having "the right" IP features (static IPs, shell accounts, fileshack etc.), whereas the local bells usually has the cheap piece of crap plan with minimal IP service, and then the expensive "business plan" which is more similar to speakeasy.
Worse, companies like speakeasy cannot deliver to locations fed by remote access DSLAMs, quite common in new developments. SBC has me locked in, no choices except cable (not really a choice).
Before long there will only be Bell left, I wonder if they'll call it AT&T.
Eh I left central jersey for texas, only to find out they're building lots of toll roads here. There's no escape, the trolls are mobile and vicious.
I think people are doing that, however given that news & other push media are owned by the same companies behind the RIAA/MPAA, it doesn't seem that way. The internet is a useless wall of squirrel noises, people don't know what to think of what they read there. The news & newspapers are still old reliable, and contain stories about evil child hackers downloading music and porn and getting their parents arrested.
You know you have a problem when companies are suing 12 year old girls en masse. No amount of lawsuits are going to fix that, nor anything Microsoft writes, nor secret agreements between Sony, Philips & anyone else. People don't believe a CD is worth $20, but aren't willing to suffer for it. Right or wrong, it doesn't matter.
The only thing not being done effectively are the victims of these incidents fighting back, together. Each one evalutes his personal financial state and decides whether it's cheaper to fight or flee. For most, it's cheaper to pay the protection money. If there was a central group of lawyers who knew how to make these cases expensive for the RIAA/MPAA etc., and could advise victims (cheaply), this sort of thing would go away. It's really, really hard to prove someone in your house is stealing music/movies/etc. but the average guy doesn't know that. Have a wireless router? Forget it, they can't prove a thing without doing more than a casual grep of some log.
It all comes down to fear of high attorney fees versus a somewhat stiff but apparently lower fine. Someone who can solve that problem, profitably, will cause real change.
There's those that don't like change, they're usually screwed. Then there's not liking the direction of the change. In the past five years, many of the larger tech companies have turned into real shits to work for.
It's really easy, contrary to popular opinion Dell is not only a system integrator, but a HW mfg, and works pretty closely with Intel on building the latest and greatest boxes. Usually when Intel announces a new chip, Dell announces a new machine using it. That same relationship does not exist with AMD and would cost money to develop. Why would Dell develop it? Only if there is a considerable demand for AMD devices such that Dell lost enough sales to warrant it.
So far, that is not happening. I for one would like to see Dell sell AMD, but John Q. public doesn't care much (hence www.dell.com PCs won't have em), and enterprise level purchasers don't seem to care. Maybe that will change as word gets out but for Dell to change I think it almost has to already be happening.
It's like "Where's waldo". Can you find the four horsemen? According to this Pestilence and Death are now riding together.
A volkswagon beetle full (in terms of horsepower).
I don't buy the quality of innovation argument, it sounds elitist in addition to being wrong. Computers innovation enabled biotech research. The reearch could have been done, but it would be very hard to do given the sheer mass of data involved.
/.'ers have convinced me, for biotech it's not so easy. That's really the only difference, I haven't heard a good solution yet.
Computers get to market fast, biotech takes a long time. 20 years on computer technology is way too long, but as
and if we let castro play baseball maybe I could vacation in sunny cuba.
use M&M's.
What would be funny is a satire of asshat Farmers eating children.
That aside, there is some belief that we should go beyond the law and keep statements honest and constructive. I'm not saying that it's fair, there will always be people who go to the lowest common denominator (i.e. the law), and a corporation with a hoarde of lawyers will figure out how to push it to the limit. However, the good guys should be better than the bad guys, in every way.
Calling them a bunch of scum sucking assholes is not helpful. Similarly a bunch of opinions and misleading information that some people may interpret as fact by not reading carefully is, perhaps legal, but maybe not moral. Now saying Farmers did not deliver on the goods you thought were being delivered, even if they were technically legally in the right...that's perfectly acceptable and things people ought to be aware of. Corporations are often known to hold people to contracts or nit-picky letter-of-the-law statements, and people have a right to push back. If enough object, businesses that want to stay in business change (unless they're a monopoly, but I digress).
The point is by making a size xyzsucks.com, you're already in the grey area of good taste. You're only going to attract bad reviews, and you create an atmosphere where people may be inclined to less constructive criticisms and warnings than they ought. It's only natural that the victims of these sites are going to want them removed, and sue over anything they can find.
Actually one of Dell's exec's made a funny comment in a dev. meeting that someone in marketing just wasted the rest of [Dell's] quarterly ad budget on something that would only be seen by Dell employee's (and whoever happened to be on I-35).
He apparently didn't see the Sun logo, which was very hard to see.
Log in, click on your ID in the upper left corner. Then pick homepage. Then uncheck Zonk.
/. to become yet another video game review site. I like knowing what other geeks are playing, and maybe some interesting details in the press...but reviews? There's no shortage of them. Now a journalistic investigation into the ethics behind review sites? Yeah, that I want to read.
I too don't want
How about a space telescope that looks in on high rise apartments? Sell time slots, seed a few apartments with hot women that don't believe in blinds.
Porn + Space = $$$