The CGI looks only slightly better than the original films because these are prequels. After the entire nine movie series is finished, they're intended to be viewed in order. You can't have good looking CGI in 1-3, models in 4-6, and really good CGI in 7-9. They're specifically matching the visuals in 4-6. If they ever get around to making 7-9 they'll probably ramp up the tech then.
Platforms are much longer than 4 year cycles. In articles I read about Autonomy, they've been described as 20 year investments. I think that GM has been unbelievably lucky and has a potential revolutionary winner on its hands. The Autonomy team also seems to be lucky in that one of the leaders of it seems to know how to roll the internal GM political situation and go outside the company so that GM can't kill it without looking especially bad.
Seriously, all labor saving devices are used only when people are more expensive than the TCO of the device. Human labor, when it gets cheap enough, will replace machines. Slave labor can easily fit into this economic reality. How a slave gets expensive droid parts, puts them together into a functioning more valuable droid, and doesn't have the fruit of his work taken by his master for his own profit is much more problematic. It's still a plot hole, just a bit more refined.
Re:What it means to have the highest perspective
on
Politicizing Science
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Oh yeah, a guy that would put Powell, Rumsfeld, and Mineta into his cabinet is a guy that has no interest in diverse opinions.
Do you even look at reality?
I think that Clinton stacked the deck one way because the left ideology is inherently more comfortable with govt. than the right (in the US at least) and it was a cheap way to pay off some political favors. Bush is shifting things but is he shifting things back to balance or tilting them out of whack a different way. What we hear are the stuck pig squeels from the liberals who are getting bounced. That tells us something is happening, not whether the resulting advice will be better or worse.
Sorry, it's absolutely supported. The left has a developed habit of lying about science from what the evidence actually is (Bellsiles controversy) to what it actually means (IPCC report). The right, when it catches a fake advocating on its side turns on the fraud and dissociates itself much faster and much more conclusively than the left and that's been apparent to anybody paying attention for years.
Evidence is evidence, lies are lies. Left wing scientists have a moral obligation to bludgeon their own ideological colleagues to not only drum out their own frauds (all ideologies can generate frauds) but do it quickly and decisively in order to safeguard science itself.
Right wing scientists have the identical obligation. They seem to be holding up their end of the bargain with society better.
Maybe academia's free wherever you are but it hasn't been free for a long time here. Try being politically incorrect as a professor or as a student on most campuses and you will find out exactly how little freedom exists.
The idea that Clinton didn't pay off the liberal wing of the party with politically motivated appointments on these advisory commissions is just a tremendous hoot. This is a guy who was willing to sic the FBI on a career bureaucrat just to make room for his cronies (Travelgate) to make some money. Do you seriously think he appointed objective people and not liberal ideologues over the eight years of his administration?
Give me a break. At worst, this is bias replacing bias. At best, there will be a marked increase in objectivity. It's way too early to objectively tell. Stop grinding that axe.
Congratulations, you have just made an airtight argument for $0 science funding, or $$$ federal funding for all other religious movements. We can't establish a church, remember?
I'll leave the subjectivist business charge alone but I can't resist commenting on your charge of conservative hypocricy. Funny you don't see Nancy Reagan and Charlton Heston flip flopping their conservatism and they actually *do* need treatment.
The problem is that the objective reality of bias comes from both sides. A perfect example is in stem cell treatment. Two types are available, adult stem cell treatment (which harvest stem cells from your fat and other plentiful sources) and embryonic stem cell treatment which hooks you for life on anti-rejection drugs as the genetic code is different.
On the left, they FUD people into thinking that stem cells only come from embryos and it's criminal to deny sick people treatment. The right wing wants to ban embryonic based treatments but fully fund adult cell based treatments.
The hidden reason the left has to go all ahead full on embryonic stem cell treatment is that the harvesters of these cells are mainly abortion clinics and if they're legal and a large market, they'll have another commercial success on their hands with which to fund efforts to keep abortion legal.
And people say that having a media dominated 80%+ by Democrats doesn't bias coverage...
You mean like the Greens? Or how about Reform? Then there's always the Libertarians.
There are plenty of political parties. The US has a two party system but parties decay and are replaced by one of the minor parties. If you don't like either the Republicans or Democrats (I'm a Libertarian myself) join and support the party of your choice. On the local level, these people even win elections every once in awhile. Given the right experienced candidates, it's inevitable that they'll start getting Congressional representation as their pool of experienced local officials goes up.
This is factually wrong. Congress actually did pass legislation with a life exception but health exceptions include mental health and that's a loophole that would gut the provision. It's easy to get a statement that a particularly pregnancy is mentally stressing and would endanger mental health. That's the line over which the late term abortion battles were fought.
Your entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
The majority does not believe that women should have absolute control over their own body. The real facts are that there are absolutists on both sides of the debate and they're both minorities. In terms of opinion polls, the pro-choice absolutist faction is larger, in terms of votes, the pro-life absolutists are larger. The squishy middle is the true majority.
Now that we've got that lie out of the way, the idea of dismissing a study just because it has uncomfortable consequences for a political opinion is base and immoral. A woman is not free to choose if the truth, whatever that might be, is kept from her. Irrespective of our opinions, the people making life and death decisions need the real facts.
Sugarcoating the consequences of abortion isn't pro-choice (respecting the woman's right to choose as an adult moral agent), it's pro-death and harkens back to the pro-eugenics leanings of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
You get your hubcaps stolen because they're an easy target and still valuable. Between the superstructure and the skateboard, the skateboard is higher value and easier to steal. That's going to make for a more compelling value proposition, IMO.
Actually, the usual figure is 8-10 years which is why it's worth mentioning, because it's unusually close and the hype machine will likely not have died down by the time decision point comes around. This smacks more to me of a group inside GM gearing up the hype so that they'll be able to point to public support in their battle to get *their* project approved and not the ICE old-line group that they're competing with. The people in the Autonomy group, if they get it rolling for real, are destined for much higher jobs including board memberships for several of them. Don't kid yourself that it's to save the world but don't be too sour faced to see the real dynamics of job and power competition that could make this a reality.
Community does not pay the bills in software, but hardware is different because there is a tangible, profitmaking sale attached to entering and participating in the community. You can be a java programmer without paying Sun but most Darwin community participants do pay Apple.
An Autonomy based community would largely be made up of Autonomy skateboard owners. The neat things they could do with their cars will prompt more people togive GM money.
Actually, what got Gallileo in real hot water that his church supporters (what, you didn't know he had those?) couldn't get him out of was when he started dabbling in biblical interpretation and claiming the Bible supported his claims. The priestly class was generally not amused and Gallileo, generally being described as an irritating SOB, had his goose cooked. It was not the Church's finest moment (JP II ended up issuing an apology and embarked on a small penance for the affair) but it was also not the unadulterated forces of light and right v. the forces of reactionary evil that many portray it to have been.
The decision point for deploying the Autonomy is 3-4 years down the road. They're talking about 2005-2006 on deciding whether the Autonomy will form the basis of their next 20 year platform bet. They need to replace a V6 platform (don't know the name) that's just about at the end of its life.
The problem with Autonomy is only range. If they can get that licked, they're home free.
That encryption's likely to be broken very quickly. Every GM authorized mechanic with geek children will be a potential leak point. Remember, any encrypted device that you physically control is not secure from you. Beyond that, they have to provide diagnostic tools that can deal with the encryption program to 100s of thousands of garages all over the world.
No, they'd do much better to grow the platform and do some sort of java-like community setup where they get to have major input into the standard and a vibrant community that enhances that standard.
They spend a billion on every platform redesign (mostly more than one model to a platform). In 3-4 years they're going to be due for a new platform to run for the next 20. The Autonomy is a contender for that new platform design. If it makes financial sense, I think GM will do it. If not, it'll get buried and the patents used defensively to hinder competitors from blowing GM out of the water just as you speculate.
But it *is* a speculation, not a certainty that it'll all get buried. If Saddam Hussein decides to nuke the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti oil fields, you can bet the Autonomy's going to get built because we'll be stuck at the oil price ceiling of $35 a barrel, extracting oil from the tar sands of Canada to make up the volume. That's $3-$4 oil here, $5-$7 in Europe. That makes hydrogen much, much more attractive.
God forbid it happens, but it's certainly not impossible.
So, WU-BLAST runs faster than Apple BLAST? Ok, you're the expert, so I'll take your word for it but why didn't you try WU-BLAST on OS X instead of just comparing it to Apple BLAST? It is a supported platform after all.
"Under MacOS X, WU BLAST is the only BLAST that uses multiple G4 processors to run faster. Other BLAST implementations, including Apple's own, either don't use multiple G4 processors or actually run slower when two processors are requested. Unlike the others, WU BLAST won't crash or hang your system when the use of multiple CPUs is attempted and it yields the most accurate results. WU BLAST also does not utilize any G4-specific instructions for peak performance, so while Apple might appreciate your doing this, you don't have to scrap your old G3 and buy a new G4 in order to run the fastest BLAST. WU BLAST runs on the same hardware that MacOS X runs on, although it will run faster on a G4 and again up to twice as fast on a dual G4."
It sounds like the WU-BLAST team has a greater appreciation of the platform than you do.
You're licensed, right, and not just using the 2.0a19 preview because your cheap? In that case you should have access to a Mac OS X binary.
Oh, and if you get much improved performance using WU-BLAST, can you imagine what it's going to be like when they actually tune it for Altivec?
I'd give it another whirl when IBM let's those 8 way superscalar G-5 PPC chips out the door.
Actually the mac innards were ruggedized in a different case to make it more survivable for some heavy duty traveling use (concert tour? who knows) and the fellow doing this ended up with a useless case on his hands which he donated for the project. No macs were actually harmed in the making of this flamenco dancer case. B-)
I took one look at the color scheme and immediately thought flamenco dancer (and not the male half of the traditional duo). It doesn't look bad but really, what's with the sexual insecurity bit? After all, traditional beige isn't really a very manly color while silver or other metallics are not normally considered feminine. It strikes me as pretty desperate.
The only thing these guys want is an easy to open case with integrated handles and small interior lights that go on when you open it up. And with all the case manufacturers out there making cases to the ATX standard the closest they could find was a non-ATX case. What a damning indictment for the whole sector.
You're not paying attention, I'm not saying that the Dell 1650 sucks, I'm saying that Apple's 1st 1U server offering is credible and for *some* configurations is worth getting.
People want to compare Apple to white box, that's stupid because it isn't the market Apple is going after.
People want to compare Apple to name brands with warranty voiding 3rd party hardware, that's almost as stupid because the only reason to go name brand is service and warranty.
Apple's got a halfway decent 1u unit that frankly is going to go to mac shops, mixed windows/mac shops, and some windows only shops with a unix loving advocate in IT with Unix hating bosses. That's the market, that's what Apple is after, and the Xserve, in those terms, doesn't suck.
You're correct on ECC. It is a mistake I expect they'll fix.
Actually, SCSI is an option on the XServe so you're not quite right there.
Xserve RAID is software based and with each bay having its own IDE controller, throughput is enough to be worthwhile. In my comparison, I didn't put in the hardware RAID card options on the 1650 which would have made the Dell more expensive (that's part of what I was hinting at by saying I was fair).
I can't say that I like the way you set up your servers. If you're buying name brand, you do it for the warranty and service plans. Buying retail CPUs and memory voids all that so when a service tech comes out and finds it you're SOL. That's a hell of a way to treat your employer/client.
Don't you get it? The hardware is peanuts compared to the cost of voiding your warranty and facing an extra day or two of down time because you decided to get 3rd party chips in your name brand server.
It's clear that, once again, you're a white box penny pincher and not somebody that Xserve is aimed at. So why are you even posting?
Oh yeah, you just enjoy calling people pricks and idiots and saying shit a lot and accusing *others* of zealotry.
FreeBSD is a nice operating system, no slam there but can't you get it through your thick bigoted head that you aren't everybody and what's appropriate for some second rate operation doesn't fly in the market the Xserve is aimed at?
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That would be burned out abandoned car tops with no wheels littering the highway. But yeah, that's kind of the picture.
I grew up in Westchester, had relatives in NJ, and went to ethnic events in Queens. I saw a lot of I-95 in the Bronx during the 70s.
The CGI looks only slightly better than the original films because these are prequels. After the entire nine movie series is finished, they're intended to be viewed in order. You can't have good looking CGI in 1-3, models in 4-6, and really good CGI in 7-9. They're specifically matching the visuals in 4-6. If they ever get around to making 7-9 they'll probably ramp up the tech then.
Platforms are much longer than 4 year cycles. In articles I read about Autonomy, they've been described as 20 year investments. I think that GM has been unbelievably lucky and has a potential revolutionary winner on its hands. The Autonomy team also seems to be lucky in that one of the leaders of it seems to know how to roll the internal GM political situation and go outside the company so that GM can't kill it without looking especially bad.
Seriously, all labor saving devices are used only when people are more expensive than the TCO of the device. Human labor, when it gets cheap enough, will replace machines. Slave labor can easily fit into this economic reality. How a slave gets expensive droid parts, puts them together into a functioning more valuable droid, and doesn't have the fruit of his work taken by his master for his own profit is much more problematic. It's still a plot hole, just a bit more refined.
Oh yeah, a guy that would put Powell, Rumsfeld, and Mineta into his cabinet is a guy that has no interest in diverse opinions.
Do you even look at reality?
I think that Clinton stacked the deck one way because the left ideology is inherently more comfortable with govt. than the right (in the US at least) and it was a cheap way to pay off some political favors. Bush is shifting things but is he shifting things back to balance or tilting them out of whack a different way. What we hear are the stuck pig squeels from the liberals who are getting bounced. That tells us something is happening, not whether the resulting advice will be better or worse.
Sorry, it's absolutely supported. The left has a developed habit of lying about science from what the evidence actually is (Bellsiles controversy) to what it actually means (IPCC report). The right, when it catches a fake advocating on its side turns on the fraud and dissociates itself much faster and much more conclusively than the left and that's been apparent to anybody paying attention for years.
Evidence is evidence, lies are lies. Left wing scientists have a moral obligation to bludgeon their own ideological colleagues to not only drum out their own frauds (all ideologies can generate frauds) but do it quickly and decisively in order to safeguard science itself.
Right wing scientists have the identical obligation. They seem to be holding up their end of the bargain with society better.
Maybe academia's free wherever you are but it hasn't been free for a long time here. Try being politically incorrect as a professor or as a student on most campuses and you will find out exactly how little freedom exists.
The idea that Clinton didn't pay off the liberal wing of the party with politically motivated appointments on these advisory commissions is just a tremendous hoot. This is a guy who was willing to sic the FBI on a career bureaucrat just to make room for his cronies (Travelgate) to make some money. Do you seriously think he appointed objective people and not liberal ideologues over the eight years of his administration?
Give me a break. At worst, this is bias replacing bias. At best, there will be a marked increase in objectivity. It's way too early to objectively tell. Stop grinding that axe.
Congratulations, you have just made an airtight argument for $0 science funding, or $$$ federal funding for all other religious movements. We can't establish a church, remember?
I'll leave the subjectivist business charge alone but I can't resist commenting on your charge of conservative hypocricy. Funny you don't see Nancy Reagan and Charlton Heston flip flopping their conservatism and they actually *do* need treatment.
The problem is that the objective reality of bias comes from both sides. A perfect example is in stem cell treatment. Two types are available, adult stem cell treatment (which harvest stem cells from your fat and other plentiful sources) and embryonic stem cell treatment which hooks you for life on anti-rejection drugs as the genetic code is different.
On the left, they FUD people into thinking that stem cells only come from embryos and it's criminal to deny sick people treatment. The right wing wants to ban embryonic based treatments but fully fund adult cell based treatments.
The hidden reason the left has to go all ahead full on embryonic stem cell treatment is that the harvesters of these cells are mainly abortion clinics and if they're legal and a large market, they'll have another commercial success on their hands with which to fund efforts to keep abortion legal.
And people say that having a media dominated 80%+ by Democrats doesn't bias coverage...
You mean like the Greens? Or how about Reform? Then there's always the Libertarians.
There are plenty of political parties. The US has a two party system but parties decay and are replaced by one of the minor parties. If you don't like either the Republicans or Democrats (I'm a Libertarian myself) join and support the party of your choice. On the local level, these people even win elections every once in awhile. Given the right experienced candidates, it's inevitable that they'll start getting Congressional representation as their pool of experienced local officials goes up.
This is factually wrong. Congress actually did pass legislation with a life exception but health exceptions include mental health and that's a loophole that would gut the provision. It's easy to get a statement that a particularly pregnancy is mentally stressing and would endanger mental health. That's the line over which the late term abortion battles were fought.
Your entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
The majority does not believe that women should have absolute control over their own body. The real facts are that there are absolutists on both sides of the debate and they're both minorities. In terms of opinion polls, the pro-choice absolutist faction is larger, in terms of votes, the pro-life absolutists are larger. The squishy middle is the true majority.
Now that we've got that lie out of the way, the idea of dismissing a study just because it has uncomfortable consequences for a political opinion is base and immoral. A woman is not free to choose if the truth, whatever that might be, is kept from her. Irrespective of our opinions, the people making life and death decisions need the real facts.
Sugarcoating the consequences of abortion isn't pro-choice (respecting the woman's right to choose as an adult moral agent), it's pro-death and harkens back to the pro-eugenics leanings of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
You get your hubcaps stolen because they're an easy target and still valuable. Between the superstructure and the skateboard, the skateboard is higher value and easier to steal. That's going to make for a more compelling value proposition, IMO.
Actually, the usual figure is 8-10 years which is why it's worth mentioning, because it's unusually close and the hype machine will likely not have died down by the time decision point comes around. This smacks more to me of a group inside GM gearing up the hype so that they'll be able to point to public support in their battle to get *their* project approved and not the ICE old-line group that they're competing with. The people in the Autonomy group, if they get it rolling for real, are destined for much higher jobs including board memberships for several of them. Don't kid yourself that it's to save the world but don't be too sour faced to see the real dynamics of job and power competition that could make this a reality.
Community does not pay the bills in software, but hardware is different because there is a tangible, profitmaking sale attached to entering and participating in the community. You can be a java programmer without paying Sun but most Darwin community participants do pay Apple.
An Autonomy based community would largely be made up of Autonomy skateboard owners. The neat things they could do with their cars will prompt more people togive GM money.
Actually, what got Gallileo in real hot water that his church supporters (what, you didn't know he had those?) couldn't get him out of was when he started dabbling in biblical interpretation and claiming the Bible supported his claims. The priestly class was generally not amused and Gallileo, generally being described as an irritating SOB, had his goose cooked. It was not the Church's finest moment (JP II ended up issuing an apology and embarked on a small penance for the affair) but it was also not the unadulterated forces of light and right v. the forces of reactionary evil that many portray it to have been.
I would have thought that the skateboard was the expensive (and thus likely to be missing) part.
The decision point for deploying the Autonomy is 3-4 years down the road. They're talking about 2005-2006 on deciding whether the Autonomy will form the basis of their next 20 year platform bet. They need to replace a V6 platform (don't know the name) that's just about at the end of its life.
The problem with Autonomy is only range. If they can get that licked, they're home free.
That encryption's likely to be broken very quickly. Every GM authorized mechanic with geek children will be a potential leak point. Remember, any encrypted device that you physically control is not secure from you. Beyond that, they have to provide diagnostic tools that can deal with the encryption program to 100s of thousands of garages all over the world.
No, they'd do much better to grow the platform and do some sort of java-like community setup where they get to have major input into the standard and a vibrant community that enhances that standard.
They spend a billion on every platform redesign (mostly more than one model to a platform). In 3-4 years they're going to be due for a new platform to run for the next 20. The Autonomy is a contender for that new platform design. If it makes financial sense, I think GM will do it. If not, it'll get buried and the patents used defensively to hinder competitors from blowing GM out of the water just as you speculate.
But it *is* a speculation, not a certainty that it'll all get buried. If Saddam Hussein decides to nuke the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti oil fields, you can bet the Autonomy's going to get built because we'll be stuck at the oil price ceiling of $35 a barrel, extracting oil from the tar sands of Canada to make up the volume. That's $3-$4 oil here, $5-$7 in Europe. That makes hydrogen much, much more attractive.
God forbid it happens, but it's certainly not impossible.
So, WU-BLAST runs faster than Apple BLAST? Ok, you're the expert, so I'll take your word for it but why didn't you try WU-BLAST on OS X instead of just comparing it to Apple BLAST? It is a supported platform after all.
"Under MacOS X, WU BLAST is the only BLAST that uses multiple G4 processors to run faster. Other BLAST implementations, including Apple's own, either don't use multiple G4 processors or actually run slower when two processors are requested. Unlike the others, WU BLAST won't crash or hang your system when the use of multiple CPUs is attempted and it yields the most accurate results. WU BLAST also does not utilize any G4-specific instructions for peak performance, so while Apple might appreciate your doing this, you don't have to scrap your old G3 and buy a new G4 in order to run the fastest BLAST. WU BLAST runs on the same hardware that MacOS X runs on, although it will run faster on a G4 and again up to twice as fast on a dual G4."
It sounds like the WU-BLAST team has a greater appreciation of the platform than you do.
You're licensed, right, and not just using the 2.0a19 preview because your cheap? In that case you should have access to a Mac OS X binary.
Oh, and if you get much improved performance using WU-BLAST, can you imagine what it's going to be like when they actually tune it for Altivec?
I'd give it another whirl when IBM let's those 8 way superscalar G-5 PPC chips out the door.
Actually the mac innards were ruggedized in a different case to make it more survivable for some heavy duty traveling use (concert tour? who knows) and the fellow doing this ended up with a useless case on his hands which he donated for the project. No macs were actually harmed in the making of this flamenco dancer case. B-)
I took one look at the color scheme and immediately thought flamenco dancer (and not the male half of the traditional duo). It doesn't look bad but really, what's with the sexual insecurity bit? After all, traditional beige isn't really a very manly color while silver or other metallics are not normally considered feminine. It strikes me as pretty desperate.
The only thing these guys want is an easy to open case with integrated handles and small interior lights that go on when you open it up. And with all the case manufacturers out there making cases to the ATX standard the closest they could find was a non-ATX case. What a damning indictment for the whole sector.
You're not paying attention, I'm not saying that the Dell 1650 sucks, I'm saying that Apple's 1st 1U server offering is credible and for *some* configurations is worth getting.
People want to compare Apple to white box, that's stupid because it isn't the market Apple is going after.
People want to compare Apple to name brands with warranty voiding 3rd party hardware, that's almost as stupid because the only reason to go name brand is service and warranty.
Apple's got a halfway decent 1u unit that frankly is going to go to mac shops, mixed windows/mac shops, and some windows only shops with a unix loving advocate in IT with Unix hating bosses. That's the market, that's what Apple is after, and the Xserve, in those terms, doesn't suck.
That's my point.
You're correct on ECC. It is a mistake I expect they'll fix.
Actually, SCSI is an option on the XServe so you're not quite right there.
Xserve RAID is software based and with each bay having its own IDE controller, throughput is enough to be worthwhile. In my comparison, I didn't put in the hardware RAID card options on the 1650 which would have made the Dell more expensive (that's part of what I was hinting at by saying I was fair).
I can't say that I like the way you set up your servers. If you're buying name brand, you do it for the warranty and service plans. Buying retail CPUs and memory voids all that so when a service tech comes out and finds it you're SOL. That's a hell of a way to treat your employer/client.
Don't you get it? The hardware is peanuts compared to the cost of voiding your warranty and facing an extra day or two of down time because you decided to get 3rd party chips in your name brand server.
It's clear that, once again, you're a white box penny pincher and not somebody that Xserve is aimed at. So why are you even posting?
Oh yeah, you just enjoy calling people pricks and idiots and saying shit a lot and accusing *others* of zealotry.
FreeBSD is a nice operating system, no slam there but can't you get it through your thick bigoted head that you aren't everybody and what's appropriate for some second rate operation doesn't fly in the market the Xserve is aimed at?