Unfortunately history has shown, that while these things do occasionally come to light, it typically takes forever, goes to court takes even longer, and then typically ends in a token settlement.
What it amounts to is market collusion, which is not only hard to prove, but takes a lot of time. As mentioned the Hard Drive industry went through it. Before that it was the LCD monitor market. Before that it was Memory.
The underlying problem being that at certain points when the market was fragmented the competition keeps companies in check more less. However more and more you see companies consolidating until there are only a handful of players in the market. Once that happens the temptation and opportunity become rife. Another commonality seems to be that typically it starts innocently enough due to some unforeseen circumstance, be it a flood, or a scarcity of some raw material, or in this case unusual demand due to a hereto unforeseen use for video cards... Then at some point it just becomes profiteering, more less because they can. Perhaps in 10 years or so it will eventually end up in court and a settlement for a couple hundred million. However that is a drop in the bucket when over that time they were able to make billions more, and none of that will help you or me as most of that money will go to lawyers, government, and maybe a few poor souls who somehow managed to keep a receipt for a video card or other proof of purchase for over a decade to enable them to collect 40$.
I refuse to play that game. Video cards have been ridiculous for awhile now. Even with this dip, it is hardly reasonable. This reminds me of the HD (hard drive) scandal years ago. There was that flood, that jacked prices up. Then prices stayed up for a couple years beyond the flood as the highly consolidated HD market decided to artificially keep it that way for fun and profit. Sound familiar? There is basically two companies, AMD and nVidia, and a bunch of re-brands. Screw that.
I mean I got an MSI Radeon HD 7850 2GB that came with two free games (which admittedly I never really played) in 2013 (so 5 years ago!) for 190$. Not only cannot I not buy a card that good for 190 bucks now, but I would pay more now and get a card with less performance. After 5 years of technological advancement...
On top of that it had a 40$ MIR (Mail In Rebate), so it really cost me 150$... (though as per usually I think it took months to actually get the MIR).
Anyway it's brutal and I refuse to play these stupid corporate games. If they want to start selling video cards again at reasonable prices then sure, I just wouldn't hold my breath anytime soon as no doubt they will milk this for all it is worth. I just hope my 'ol 7850 is up the the task of Fallout 76 when it comes available...
Yes, and D&D was a problem, and before that rock and roll...
Though I will say, that some parts of video games have some addiction issues. But that has nothing to do with "Video Games" but rather gambling, and gambling addiction is already a thing. A lot of smart people have built into games various things now like "loot boxes" which is really just gambling for kids. The same way that you might call a video slots a video game. They got tricky about it linking it indirectly to other insidious things like micro-transactions rather than a direct, here is my money, now roll those dice!
So it isn't a video game issue, but there are certain video games that have gambling elements that might be addictive enough to cause concern.
I liken The Hobbit to that adage of When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail...
The problem I think was budget and corporate greed. In that after the success of the LOTR movies Jackson got a boatload of money to make The Hobbit. The reason they gave him a boatload of money, is so they could make a boatload of money. They do that by making the movie into a blockbuster, then making it span three long movies. I mean this made sense for LOTR, as it was 3 actual books and each book was like 500 pages, a total of 1500 pages of material. The hobbit was less than 150 pages TOTAL. What they did was drag it out for profits, you can only do that so much with original material before you just have to start making stuff up. Anyway bottom line is Jackson got paid, and the movies made tons of money, so that is why the Hobbit became what it was in the movies. I think as a director, he was more less "directed" to do that, or was specifically hired under the assumption that he would.
If Jackson had a smaller budget, only made one movie, I think we obviously would have saw something much different, and perhaps better.
On a somewhat unrelated side note the much maligned Battlefield Earth is an example of the opposite side of that same coin, when you take a book of 1200 pages or so of materials and make it into a 1.5h movie, a lot of stuff is going to get lost in translation (bad acting etc aside just saying it was doomed to start)...
We apologise for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked.
We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
The directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked. The credits have been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.
Sadly much/most of the companies that made quality things that last went out of business because they couldn't compete with the cheap crap. So now everything is crap. Worse is that no matter where you buy now, it all comes from the same place, is all made by the same people, it is just re-branded six ways from Sunday. It is pretty obvious to look around and find the exact same widget or bobbet and apart from some logo or whatnot is the exact same item being sold from china. Buying from a "quality" store you just pay for the brand and a massive markup.
That said, I lived in Lindsay for a year many years ago. Perhaps one of the reasons it got selected is that I did notice it probably had one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy (and resulting single mothers) of probably just about anywhere. UBI might help quite a bit in that specific subset of individuals, but then again the proposed child care services that the politicians were all blustering about last election would probably as well, but in a more direct way.
For those that might be unaware, the Ontario government is in the process of changing from the Liberal previous one to a new Conservative one. I am not sure what kind of fiscal guarantees are on this program, but I would expect it to be axed ASAP by the new incoming government if they are able to. So I'd be surprised if it lasts after a year and wouldn't be surprised if it was canned before it even really got started.
That said, while UBI might help, the problem isn't a simple one and that simple mechanism isn't going to solve it. If you look at the groups of people that this is going to impact, and how it because pretty obvious...
Broken into general groups (and I know that some folks may fall into several categories):: 1) People who want to work, but can't find work. 2) People who have work, but are underemployed. 3) People who want to work, but cannot due to disability. 4) People who don't want to work. 5) People with serious addiction issues. 6) People with serious mental health issues.
In fact you could probably group 1-4 all together in terms of 5 and 6, but for the purpose of UBI, we'll separate them out. UBI might help the first two groups of people, but that is about it. As for 3 and 4, at best it might break even with the overhead for maintaining the other types of programs and services already offered. It isn't going to significantly help 5 or 6, and may actually have a net negative impact on 5 given they may just have more resources to spend on whatever addictions they are struggling with.
Both those last groups, which make up a fair portion of the impacted individuals really need real directed focused help, services and people, not just a check. Anyway one of the proponents of the UBI is that it might do away with all the rest of the government services making it more fiscally viable. However the truth is our current social services for those last two are already woefully insufficient, and I don't think it is reasonable to think that UBI, or simply a bit of money is going to solve all our poverty issues.
Well I've watch all the Star Trek, so I'm looking forward to a continuation of the Discovery series. As to the rest I guess we'll see.
A couple comments:
On the STTYG (Star Trek The Younger Generation) the first thing I thought of was that parody episode that Stargate did by replacing all the actors with sexy young counterparts where everything turned into sexy young angst and romantic relationships... Which when I watch the modern equivalents that have come out in the years since, really were not that far off the mark. Heck go young enough and you get a Hogworts spinoff! Though as soon as I heard Patrick Stewart's involvement while I hoped it might be a limited reprisal role in the main series (Discovery), many point out that he would be perfect headmaster materiel for Starfleet Academy... The producers could just save themselves a bunch of money and just make edits to the X-Men movies and have enough footage to last forever. They might have to find an excuse to put him in a wheel chair (Pike anyone?), and give him mind powers, but heck stranger things have happened in the Star Trek universe...
I would hope that the "animated" series would be Akira level of badassery, and not ProStars type level of consumption, but I would bet on the later than the former unfortunately... Animation directed at young kids, not to adults. For bonus points, if they are going to have inter-dimensional travel like the rest, PLEASE do a single Rick and Morty cross-over, as that would be *hilarious*!
The confidential plot looks intriguing... There was plenty of that on DS9 which were some of their better ideas... I'd no doubt give it a decent shot at least. Favorite quote from the article's comments: "To boldly skulk behind the scenes like no one has skulked before." lol nice!
As for the whole Khan idea... that seems a bad move. Come up with a new idea rather than beating that dead horse. It has been done numerous times already, even so much as to blame them for the changing Klingon looks over the years which is up there on the miticlorian level...
Finally only because there is the usual bashing of Discovery and their fungus warp, I get it... it is a bit silly. However it does have an "out" in that if the entire network is destroyed it would explain away why a technology in the prequel isn't around in later series, also it being top secret it wouldn't really be common canon.
This is my thought over any kind of industrial sabotage.
The sabotage doesn't even have to be all that successful, nor hurt the long term viability. It just has to be public, and during a critical phase (i.e. ramping up production). The idea is that it gets into the media, and spooks some investors to sell.
When we're talking BILLIONS shorted that little bump could may you break even, or at least prevent you from losing your shirt.
Then again, it could just be a screw you from an employee slighted. Considering by the sounds of it he got caught and confessed, unless he's getting paid to get caught and protect his backers... Not sure what the penalty would be, but the paycheck would have to be pretty good to go to jail for it.
That said, the one thing that sort of made an eyebrow rise is that he apparently changed codes using "fake" accounts... Not sure what sort of crappy security they have built into their system, but that seems awfully unlikely unless he is some sort of system admin with access, but it doesn't really say.
As I said I have a portable workstation, and do use it *occasionally* for process intensive type work. All I am saying is that the amount of RAM included on this thing isn't the amount you need for occasionally doing some slightly intensive work. I've got 8GB in mine which is a couple years old now.
What is 128GB being used for in a portable workstation? Well the answer is: probably nothing. The same reason someone buy a corvette, bragging rights and little else.
Perhaps there is some small niche it might be useful. However even in my work, while I have a nice discrete workstation type GPU, much of the work done now is less GPU intensive than it is CPU really which has changed over the years.
Yeah I've had the conversation before with little effect. Sometimes you can catch it early, and can say, we can build this thing for you, however it ain't gonna solve all your problems. The problems being the business rules, lack thereof, or inability or unwillingness to enforce business rule compliance.
You can typically built in exceptions to your system, even exceptions to exceptions etc, however eventually it is just a mess and unmaintainable. Alternatively you can build in what is typically oft referred to positively as "flexibility", but what it really means is the rules are so lacking that it is just the wild west so do whatever you like. Then the business will make changes to whatever rules they have every couple years to compound both the issues above...
Bottom line by definition a "system" is simply a set of rules... Remove the rules, and it isn't so much of a system anymore. Particularly when the business is trying to "automate", and you have to tell them that you need actual rules in order to automate anything. Anyway we always seem to end of being reactive to change rather than the other way around which is part of the problem...
Anyway having been around long enough I realize the other point of view also. While sometimes the rules are a mess just due to time and change, in many cases there is a reason for why that is the case, and why it hasn't ever changed, and to do so would be a "very big deal"... In such cases you really need a management group that is willing to take risks, but many are adverse to do so. Most would rather pay for the broken system, say productivity has increased by X percent, get their bonus, shake some hands and congratulate everyone on a mission accomplished, then jump ship and be long gone by the time the proverbial hits the fan as time goes on and things start shaking apart... Then the cycle starts anew... Keeps you busy and employed, but makes it tough on front line staff who have to use the system and get frustrating trying to just get stuff done... Don't know how many times I've said, well that is the way it was designed to work... To which the response is usually "that's stupid", and in many cases I couldn't really disagree...
As someone (several) pointed out, you don't do that kind of work on a laptop, certainly not the the type that will use 128GB of RAM. You have a stationary workstation, or a server off someplace else that does that kind of crunching.
As someone that has done this kind of work, 128GB of RAM doesn't generally make you finish your job faster. It just means you can do more in a single job without running out of memory, having a failure and then having to restart the job from scratch again. The type of jobs that might eat up 128GB of ram isn't something you do in minutes, or hours, but days of processing. Which for a mobile laptop makes very little sense in all but a very few very specific situations... i.e. you need to set up a temporary mobile processing center for some natural emergency or something where dragging containers of workstations isn't ideal, and connections to offsite are not feasible...
Though I suppose having a internal battery would be a nice bonus if 2 days into your 3 days of processing the lights go out. Then again those types of systems tend to have their own UPS. Though I guess it could serve as an additional couple hours of backup, backup power source. Still for the likely cost, not worth it, just buy more UPS would be more reasonable.
Anyway in many cases for truly large runs, users will break it down into more manageable chunks, not only in terms for memory usage, but also to mitigate risk of losing the whole job to some other error, or power, or whatever.
Having said all that I do have a laptop workstation, however I only use it for small jobs, at most several hours of processing time. However even it only has 8GB of RAM I think, and if I had larger jobs to do I don't think my preference would be to use my own machine for the work. Multitasking and multiprocessor and whatever, but your computer isn't going to be all that usable while it is crunching, and if you ever unplug the thing you're battery isn't going to last that long either so what's the point?
Also the efficiency loss from storage further makes those numbers less true. Just because you put 100MW into storage doesn't mean you are getting 100MW back out again, and that even assumes you have some kind of storage, which I'm sure most of it does not. A quick google say it's about 70-80%.
So you can only produce for say 7h a day, say 100MW, even with storage, you might only be getting 75MW as a result.
Anyway obviously anyone that is talking about solar/wind and nuclear in the same breath as being the same doesn't know wtf they are talking about.
The other thing to consider with these types of investments is that the lifespan of both Wind and Solar are much lower in terms of assets. They get subsidies to get built and make money, great, but in 20 years when the panels need replacing, or the turbines need replacing, where are those capital costs are going to come from? So it makes sense to "jump on the bandwagon" when they are profitable, however it also makes sense to "jump ship" before all the replacement costs come due. Depending on how things go in the future, if they are not going to be profitable, they are not going to get replaced without incentive. There is a reason why they sign 20 year electricity contracts, because that is about the useful life of the asset. Anyway that is how I see it.
1) OMG, excel, rly? 2) Well at least it is a newer version of excel if it can handle 100,000 records... 3) Why not at the very least Access, I mean at least it is a DB of sorts...
4) OK Summary and Slashdotters, don't get in a twist about how mathematically accurate the RND function is and how truly random it is. They are not using it in a statistically relevant way to derive scientific samples or something. They are simply using it select a bunch of people in an unbiased way not based on immigration criteria. You could do the same thing all sorts of different ways, but this was probably just the easiest thing they could come up with. I have no doubt there are all sorts of lottery type selections that happen on all sorts of things that are likely way less random than even using an excel function. They summary says that using the RND function "MAY" cause some people to have a lower chance, but doesn't really elaborate on exactly how that might occur, nor does the article shed any light on it either. It *MAY* work just fine. You could also use simple changes in process by say assigning a RND number by record, then sorting by that number, then assigning another RND number, then resorting that number to try and eliminate (or mitigate at least) any possible statistical relationship between number creation and order and time etc... Anyway for the primary function of making unbiased selections it is probably a perfectly fine method to use, even if the random calculation isn't a perfect as some other methods.
5) Lastly, while silent on the actual method used specifically other than speculation, I would hope that loser applicants might get a weighted advantage on the next years lottery, say a duplicate record for each loss for example... Anyway just a thought.
While I agree with you 100% I'd say it is noteworthy research to fund. I'd not sure how much headroom there is for battery innovation, but who knows. Advances in this technology could make renewables a lot more relevant in the future. I see this as a long term goal however not something that is going to produce fruit in the short term. Much like the fission experiments that are always 30 years away, it may never bear fruit, but we'll never know unless we try.
Personally the way I see it working is through a distributed storage model rather than centralized battery facilities. When every home has solar, and a battery, and a car that has a battery, etc... all interconnected across the grid, with the right automated coordination could certainly alleviate the need for a lot of the base load type of production we currently need. However all that infrastructure will take a long time to build out, and the technology is only now becoming viable, so even that is several decades off type of solution.
Anyway glad they are looking into it. There are a lot worse things they could be spending their money on... I wish Canada was doing more on the nuclear technology front, creating and refining new designs and building test reactors, particularly of the small scale variety, but politically the nuclear boogie man is a pretty large obstacle to overcome. Perhaps that was the reason for the partial sale of the AECL to private interests as the public opinion has very little interest in it.
Kind of makes me thing in terms of a Project Management analogy. I'm sure just about everyone has heard of PMBOK. While I think just about everyone would agree that following a general set of PM guidelines is a good idea and will help success. However if you tried to make everyone follow every rule from PMBOK verbatim, you get a bureaucratic mess where you spend more time adhering to rules than you do succeeding at whatever it is you are trying to do.
Similarly, looking at the Agile method and the things it tries to promote I think most would agree that there is value there for success. However, should you try and simply blindly follow all the Agile rules because that is what it says to do, I don't think necessarily means it is going to have a positive outcome.
As I mentioned in another post, on attending Agile training for the first time, it assumes a pretty rigid ideal of what "Waterfall" is, in that much or even most of the basic concepts of Agile were something we were already doing for years before we ever heard of anything called Agile. But by all means have daily morning scrum meetings with a scrum master for your two week sprints, success is guaranteed!
I recall first going to Agile training, the definitions of "Waterfall" and "Agile", and thinking that well I guess I've never really done true Waterfall, and that a great deal of the stuff in Agile we do as a matter of course anyway.
I don't think I've ever collected requirements, and then not gone back to the users to further refine them. I also don't think we've ever developed something without a lot of back and forth until we got something right. We also routinely prioritize requirements, and do phased deployments... But again all of that was well before I heard anything about Agile. We'd have regular meetings with PM, Devs, and staff, but again not daily scrums and sprints, and all that nonsense. Anyway I think far too many people get wrapped up in the Agile buzz and methodology without really understanding the purpose of it all, thinking if they blindly follow a bunch of rules that they will have better outcomes...
From my own perspective it sort of goes something like this:
There is a requirement. You do the requirement, however on testing you discover a problem. The problem isn't a technical one. The thing you designed does exactly what it is designed to do. However there is an issue with the data that is related to how it is collected or entered, or inconsistent business practices. The ability to correct any of those 3 things (other than to point it out) is usually about zero. The net result being however is that the piece you just designed, while it works how you design it to, delivers results that are less than optimal. You can't drop it because it is something the business wants. You then alter the design to at least make it work a bit better given the limitations, but it will always function imperfectly. Over time as the data gets worse, so does the design until eventually it is broken to the point that no one uses it anymore. At which point they'll ask you to "fix" it...
I once had someone tell me from the business "you work for me, not the other way around", the gist being you make changes to your systems to accommodate our business process, we don't change our business processes to accommodate your systems. It is that attitude, not Agile or anything else that causes problems. It today's technological world if you want to modernize your business properly it really is a two way street. Doing one without thought of the other will only give you a system with fundamental problems that while it might be OK in the short term, will eventually catch up to you and cost you more in the long run.
I agree. I think what they really need to look at are countries that have nuclear ability, but posses no current nuclear weapons. Could they make some? Sure, but it would take a bit of time. I think that is not only a deterrent, but also a nice safety, in that it offers a "cooling down" period in that it would take a little bit of time to produce any. Look at who those countries are, and why they are the way they are, and what can be done to make NK more like that. Certainly peace with SK and withdrawal of US troops would be a good first step I think obviously.
Unlike places like Iran ruled by religious nutjobs, NK is a bit more straight forward. Kim would likely like more wealth, power, influence, and at the same time ensure that his domestic position is secure. A lot of those things can be done pretty symbolically without much effort. Peace with SK, lift sanctions, give him a seat at the big boy table politically. That would also help modernize NK a bit, keep people fed, increase wealth (to which I'm sure he and his cronies can amass the lions share), all of which are positives for him as his forced domestic popularity would probably become real. If the cost of that is his small largely ineffective nuclear arsenal, I think he'd do it, he just needs a number of concessions, the singular probably most important being zero threat to his rule, and for largely the legitimatizing of it.
Not new, but never as overt, which is where the insulting component comes in.
Take softwood lumber. The US has charged tariffs on Canadian lumber almost since the inception of so called "free trade" under the auspices that Canada subsidies it's industry. This is at least the 3rd US president that has done this. It has gone to an independent tribunal at least twice before, and Canada "won" both times, though with little actual result because the US continues to do whatever it wants anyway because of their strong trading position. I expect this to more less continue.
So while this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and Trump is merely the latest, at least the previous instances they at least had the good graces to do it on the down low, or give some meaningless token win for the PM to use politically. Trump is just publicly throwing BS into the faces of trading partners who know full well it is BS, who are rightly calling it insulting because it is. It remains to be scene if any of the US trading partners have the spine to stand up to it, but it is pretty difficult to do when the US has such a strong trading position because they are so dependent on US trade.
You sound right, but you're not. You are assuming that the facts being fed to you are correct. In reality the US has always used it's position of strength in trading power to screw over almost all of it's partners, with possibly the exception of China. You'll note in the news, there has been lots of talk about trade imbalances with other smaller trading partners, but while China is mentioned Trump has gone out of his way to also appease them.
Case in point softwood lumber and Canada. It has been a sore point since the start of NAFTA. The US has maintained that Canada subsidies it's lumber industry, and dumps cheap lumber on the US which hurts US interests. This is BS. It has been said by at least the last 3 presidents. It has gone to an independent tribunal twice already, and both times Canada has won because there is no substance to the claims. The claims are purely political to the US forest industry, who themselves know that this is BS. but do not care so long as their political leaders make them more money. In both instances there were levies attached to Canadian lumber in the middle of so called free trade to the tune of 5 or 6 Billion each time (which the US government gets, not producers, they just get to be more falsely competitive). In both times after "winning" the trade dispute do you think Canada ever saw any of that? Nope, because the US would basically just ignore it because due to their strong trading position they can. This is why when Trudeau calls out Trumps accusations as being insulting, they are, because they are baseless and made up, and is just an excuse to push around trading partners. As much as Trump has said NAFTA has hurt the US the opposite is true, as on the Canadian side of things (as you pointed out), it has ended up making Canada *much* more dependent on the US for trade where before it was more diversified. The end result is that the US is in an even more stronger trading position than ever before, allowing it to more less dictate terms. While this has always happened really, the extent to which Trump is dealing with it is insulting. At least the previous US governments might at least buy you dinner first before screwing you.
Anyway we'll see what happens, but it would be good for Canada long term to disentangle itself at least a little bit and diversify their trade so as not to be so beholden to our US masters. No doubt if only because of geography it will probably always be our largest trading partner, but if Canada ever wants to have a chance at an even trade partnership it needs to become less reliant on US trade.
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Unfortunately history has shown, that while these things do occasionally come to light, it typically takes forever, goes to court takes even longer, and then typically ends in a token settlement.
What it amounts to is market collusion, which is not only hard to prove, but takes a lot of time. As mentioned the Hard Drive industry went through it. Before that it was the LCD monitor market. Before that it was Memory.
The underlying problem being that at certain points when the market was fragmented the competition keeps companies in check more less. However more and more you see companies consolidating until there are only a handful of players in the market. Once that happens the temptation and opportunity become rife. Another commonality seems to be that typically it starts innocently enough due to some unforeseen circumstance, be it a flood, or a scarcity of some raw material, or in this case unusual demand due to a hereto unforeseen use for video cards... Then at some point it just becomes profiteering, more less because they can. Perhaps in 10 years or so it will eventually end up in court and a settlement for a couple hundred million. However that is a drop in the bucket when over that time they were able to make billions more, and none of that will help you or me as most of that money will go to lawyers, government, and maybe a few poor souls who somehow managed to keep a receipt for a video card or other proof of purchase for over a decade to enable them to collect 40$.
I refuse to play that game. Video cards have been ridiculous for awhile now. Even with this dip, it is hardly reasonable. This reminds me of the HD (hard drive) scandal years ago. There was that flood, that jacked prices up. Then prices stayed up for a couple years beyond the flood as the highly consolidated HD market decided to artificially keep it that way for fun and profit. Sound familiar? There is basically two companies, AMD and nVidia, and a bunch of re-brands. Screw that.
I mean I got an MSI Radeon HD 7850 2GB that came with two free games (which admittedly I never really played) in 2013 (so 5 years ago!) for 190$. Not only cannot I not buy a card that good for 190 bucks now, but I would pay more now and get a card with less performance. After 5 years of technological advancement...
On top of that it had a 40$ MIR (Mail In Rebate), so it really cost me 150$... (though as per usually I think it took months to actually get the MIR).
Anyway it's brutal and I refuse to play these stupid corporate games. If they want to start selling video cards again at reasonable prices then sure, I just wouldn't hold my breath anytime soon as no doubt they will milk this for all it is worth. I just hope my 'ol 7850 is up the the task of Fallout 76 when it comes available...
Yes, and D&D was a problem, and before that rock and roll...
Though I will say, that some parts of video games have some addiction issues. But that has nothing to do with "Video Games" but rather gambling, and gambling addiction is already a thing. A lot of smart people have built into games various things now like "loot boxes" which is really just gambling for kids. The same way that you might call a video slots a video game. They got tricky about it linking it indirectly to other insidious things like micro-transactions rather than a direct, here is my money, now roll those dice!
So it isn't a video game issue, but there are certain video games that have gambling elements that might be addictive enough to cause concern.
I liken The Hobbit to that adage of When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail...
The problem I think was budget and corporate greed. In that after the success of the LOTR movies Jackson got a boatload of money to make The Hobbit. The reason they gave him a boatload of money, is so they could make a boatload of money. They do that by making the movie into a blockbuster, then making it span three long movies. I mean this made sense for LOTR, as it was 3 actual books and each book was like 500 pages, a total of 1500 pages of material. The hobbit was less than 150 pages TOTAL. What they did was drag it out for profits, you can only do that so much with original material before you just have to start making stuff up. Anyway bottom line is Jackson got paid, and the movies made tons of money, so that is why the Hobbit became what it was in the movies. I think as a director, he was more less "directed" to do that, or was specifically hired under the assumption that he would.
If Jackson had a smaller budget, only made one movie, I think we obviously would have saw something much different, and perhaps better.
On a somewhat unrelated side note the much maligned Battlefield Earth is an example of the opposite side of that same coin, when you take a book of 1200 pages or so of materials and make it into a 1.5h movie, a lot of stuff is going to get lost in translation (bad acting etc aside just saying it was doomed to start)...
We apologise for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked.
We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
The directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked. The credits have been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.
Sadly much/most of the companies that made quality things that last went out of business because they couldn't compete with the cheap crap. So now everything is crap. Worse is that no matter where you buy now, it all comes from the same place, is all made by the same people, it is just re-branded six ways from Sunday. It is pretty obvious to look around and find the exact same widget or bobbet and apart from some logo or whatnot is the exact same item being sold from china. Buying from a "quality" store you just pay for the brand and a massive markup.
That said, I lived in Lindsay for a year many years ago. Perhaps one of the reasons it got selected is that I did notice it probably had one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy (and resulting single mothers) of probably just about anywhere. UBI might help quite a bit in that specific subset of individuals, but then again the proposed child care services that the politicians were all blustering about last election would probably as well, but in a more direct way.
For those that might be unaware, the Ontario government is in the process of changing from the Liberal previous one to a new Conservative one. I am not sure what kind of fiscal guarantees are on this program, but I would expect it to be axed ASAP by the new incoming government if they are able to. So I'd be surprised if it lasts after a year and wouldn't be surprised if it was canned before it even really got started.
That said, while UBI might help, the problem isn't a simple one and that simple mechanism isn't going to solve it. If you look at the groups of people that this is going to impact, and how it because pretty obvious...
Broken into general groups (and I know that some folks may fall into several categories)::
1) People who want to work, but can't find work.
2) People who have work, but are underemployed.
3) People who want to work, but cannot due to disability.
4) People who don't want to work.
5) People with serious addiction issues.
6) People with serious mental health issues.
In fact you could probably group 1-4 all together in terms of 5 and 6, but for the purpose of UBI, we'll separate them out.
UBI might help the first two groups of people, but that is about it. As for 3 and 4, at best it might break even with the overhead for maintaining the other types of programs and services already offered. It isn't going to significantly help 5 or 6, and may actually have a net negative impact on 5 given they may just have more resources to spend on whatever addictions they are struggling with.
Both those last groups, which make up a fair portion of the impacted individuals really need real directed focused help, services and people, not just a check. Anyway one of the proponents of the UBI is that it might do away with all the rest of the government services making it more fiscally viable. However the truth is our current social services for those last two are already woefully insufficient, and I don't think it is reasonable to think that UBI, or simply a bit of money is going to solve all our poverty issues.
Well I've watch all the Star Trek, so I'm looking forward to a continuation of the Discovery series. As to the rest I guess we'll see.
A couple comments:
On the STTYG (Star Trek The Younger Generation) the first thing I thought of was that parody episode that Stargate did by replacing all the actors with sexy young counterparts where everything turned into sexy young angst and romantic relationships... Which when I watch the modern equivalents that have come out in the years since, really were not that far off the mark. Heck go young enough and you get a Hogworts spinoff! Though as soon as I heard Patrick Stewart's involvement while I hoped it might be a limited reprisal role in the main series (Discovery), many point out that he would be perfect headmaster materiel for Starfleet Academy... The producers could just save themselves a bunch of money and just make edits to the X-Men movies and have enough footage to last forever. They might have to find an excuse to put him in a wheel chair (Pike anyone?), and give him mind powers, but heck stranger things have happened in the Star Trek universe...
I would hope that the "animated" series would be Akira level of badassery, and not ProStars type level of consumption, but I would bet on the later than the former unfortunately... Animation directed at young kids, not to adults. For bonus points, if they are going to have inter-dimensional travel like the rest, PLEASE do a single Rick and Morty cross-over, as that would be *hilarious*!
The confidential plot looks intriguing... There was plenty of that on DS9 which were some of their better ideas... I'd no doubt give it a decent shot at least. Favorite quote from the article's comments: "To boldly skulk behind the scenes like no one has skulked before." lol nice!
As for the whole Khan idea... that seems a bad move. Come up with a new idea rather than beating that dead horse. It has been done numerous times already, even so much as to blame them for the changing Klingon looks over the years which is up there on the miticlorian level...
Finally only because there is the usual bashing of Discovery and their fungus warp, I get it... it is a bit silly. However it does have an "out" in that if the entire network is destroyed it would explain away why a technology in the prequel isn't around in later series, also it being top secret it wouldn't really be common canon.
This is my thought over any kind of industrial sabotage.
The sabotage doesn't even have to be all that successful, nor hurt the long term viability. It just has to be public, and during a critical phase (i.e. ramping up production). The idea is that it gets into the media, and spooks some investors to sell.
When we're talking BILLIONS shorted that little bump could may you break even, or at least prevent you from losing your shirt.
Then again, it could just be a screw you from an employee slighted. Considering by the sounds of it he got caught and confessed, unless he's getting paid to get caught and protect his backers... Not sure what the penalty would be, but the paycheck would have to be pretty good to go to jail for it.
That said, the one thing that sort of made an eyebrow rise is that he apparently changed codes using "fake" accounts... Not sure what sort of crappy security they have built into their system, but that seems awfully unlikely unless he is some sort of system admin with access, but it doesn't really say.
As I said I have a portable workstation, and do use it *occasionally* for process intensive type work. All I am saying is that the amount of RAM included on this thing isn't the amount you need for occasionally doing some slightly intensive work. I've got 8GB in mine which is a couple years old now.
What is 128GB being used for in a portable workstation? Well the answer is: probably nothing. The same reason someone buy a corvette, bragging rights and little else.
Perhaps there is some small niche it might be useful. However even in my work, while I have a nice discrete workstation type GPU, much of the work done now is less GPU intensive than it is CPU really which has changed over the years.
Yeah I've had the conversation before with little effect. Sometimes you can catch it early, and can say, we can build this thing for you, however it ain't gonna solve all your problems. The problems being the business rules, lack thereof, or inability or unwillingness to enforce business rule compliance.
You can typically built in exceptions to your system, even exceptions to exceptions etc, however eventually it is just a mess and unmaintainable. Alternatively you can build in what is typically oft referred to positively as "flexibility", but what it really means is the rules are so lacking that it is just the wild west so do whatever you like. Then the business will make changes to whatever rules they have every couple years to compound both the issues above...
Bottom line by definition a "system" is simply a set of rules... Remove the rules, and it isn't so much of a system anymore. Particularly when the business is trying to "automate", and you have to tell them that you need actual rules in order to automate anything. Anyway we always seem to end of being reactive to change rather than the other way around which is part of the problem...
Anyway having been around long enough I realize the other point of view also. While sometimes the rules are a mess just due to time and change, in many cases there is a reason for why that is the case, and why it hasn't ever changed, and to do so would be a "very big deal"... In such cases you really need a management group that is willing to take risks, but many are adverse to do so. Most would rather pay for the broken system, say productivity has increased by X percent, get their bonus, shake some hands and congratulate everyone on a mission accomplished, then jump ship and be long gone by the time the proverbial hits the fan as time goes on and things start shaking apart... Then the cycle starts anew... Keeps you busy and employed, but makes it tough on front line staff who have to use the system and get frustrating trying to just get stuff done... Don't know how many times I've said, well that is the way it was designed to work... To which the response is usually "that's stupid", and in many cases I couldn't really disagree...
Maybe that is the answer to the mystery of why whales beach themselves... Too much cat DNA, they hate the water...
You had concepts? We had to make do with metaphors of darmok and geland at tanagra
As someone (several) pointed out, you don't do that kind of work on a laptop, certainly not the the type that will use 128GB of RAM. You have a stationary workstation, or a server off someplace else that does that kind of crunching.
As someone that has done this kind of work, 128GB of RAM doesn't generally make you finish your job faster. It just means you can do more in a single job without running out of memory, having a failure and then having to restart the job from scratch again. The type of jobs that might eat up 128GB of ram isn't something you do in minutes, or hours, but days of processing. Which for a mobile laptop makes very little sense in all but a very few very specific situations... i.e. you need to set up a temporary mobile processing center for some natural emergency or something where dragging containers of workstations isn't ideal, and connections to offsite are not feasible...
Though I suppose having a internal battery would be a nice bonus if 2 days into your 3 days of processing the lights go out. Then again those types of systems tend to have their own UPS. Though I guess it could serve as an additional couple hours of backup, backup power source. Still for the likely cost, not worth it, just buy more UPS would be more reasonable.
Anyway in many cases for truly large runs, users will break it down into more manageable chunks, not only in terms for memory usage, but also to mitigate risk of losing the whole job to some other error, or power, or whatever.
Having said all that I do have a laptop workstation, however I only use it for small jobs, at most several hours of processing time. However even it only has 8GB of RAM I think, and if I had larger jobs to do I don't think my preference would be to use my own machine for the work. Multitasking and multiprocessor and whatever, but your computer isn't going to be all that usable while it is crunching, and if you ever unplug the thing you're battery isn't going to last that long either so what's the point?
Also the efficiency loss from storage further makes those numbers less true. Just because you put 100MW into storage doesn't mean you are getting 100MW back out again, and that even assumes you have some kind of storage, which I'm sure most of it does not. A quick google say it's about 70-80%.
So you can only produce for say 7h a day, say 100MW, even with storage, you might only be getting 75MW as a result.
Anyway obviously anyone that is talking about solar/wind and nuclear in the same breath as being the same doesn't know wtf they are talking about.
The other thing to consider with these types of investments is that the lifespan of both Wind and Solar are much lower in terms of assets. They get subsidies to get built and make money, great, but in 20 years when the panels need replacing, or the turbines need replacing, where are those capital costs are going to come from? So it makes sense to "jump on the bandwagon" when they are profitable, however it also makes sense to "jump ship" before all the replacement costs come due. Depending on how things go in the future, if they are not going to be profitable, they are not going to get replaced without incentive. There is a reason why they sign 20 year electricity contracts, because that is about the useful life of the asset. Anyway that is how I see it.
1) OMG, excel, rly?
2) Well at least it is a newer version of excel if it can handle 100,000 records...
3) Why not at the very least Access, I mean at least it is a DB of sorts...
4) OK Summary and Slashdotters, don't get in a twist about how mathematically accurate the RND function is and how truly random it is. They are not using it in a statistically relevant way to derive scientific samples or something. They are simply using it select a bunch of people in an unbiased way not based on immigration criteria. You could do the same thing all sorts of different ways, but this was probably just the easiest thing they could come up with. I have no doubt there are all sorts of lottery type selections that happen on all sorts of things that are likely way less random than even using an excel function. They summary says that using the RND function "MAY" cause some people to have a lower chance, but doesn't really elaborate on exactly how that might occur, nor does the article shed any light on it either. It *MAY* work just fine. You could also use simple changes in process by say assigning a RND number by record, then sorting by that number, then assigning another RND number, then resorting that number to try and eliminate (or mitigate at least) any possible statistical relationship between number creation and order and time etc... Anyway for the primary function of making unbiased selections it is probably a perfectly fine method to use, even if the random calculation isn't a perfect as some other methods.
5) Lastly, while silent on the actual method used specifically other than speculation, I would hope that loser applicants might get a weighted advantage on the next years lottery, say a duplicate record for each loss for example... Anyway just a thought.
While I agree with you 100% I'd say it is noteworthy research to fund. I'd not sure how much headroom there is for battery innovation, but who knows. Advances in this technology could make renewables a lot more relevant in the future. I see this as a long term goal however not something that is going to produce fruit in the short term. Much like the fission experiments that are always 30 years away, it may never bear fruit, but we'll never know unless we try.
Personally the way I see it working is through a distributed storage model rather than centralized battery facilities. When every home has solar, and a battery, and a car that has a battery, etc... all interconnected across the grid, with the right automated coordination could certainly alleviate the need for a lot of the base load type of production we currently need. However all that infrastructure will take a long time to build out, and the technology is only now becoming viable, so even that is several decades off type of solution.
Anyway glad they are looking into it. There are a lot worse things they could be spending their money on... I wish Canada was doing more on the nuclear technology front, creating and refining new designs and building test reactors, particularly of the small scale variety, but politically the nuclear boogie man is a pretty large obstacle to overcome. Perhaps that was the reason for the partial sale of the AECL to private interests as the public opinion has very little interest in it.
Kind of makes me thing in terms of a Project Management analogy. I'm sure just about everyone has heard of PMBOK. While I think just about everyone would agree that following a general set of PM guidelines is a good idea and will help success. However if you tried to make everyone follow every rule from PMBOK verbatim, you get a bureaucratic mess where you spend more time adhering to rules than you do succeeding at whatever it is you are trying to do.
Similarly, looking at the Agile method and the things it tries to promote I think most would agree that there is value there for success. However, should you try and simply blindly follow all the Agile rules because that is what it says to do, I don't think necessarily means it is going to have a positive outcome.
As I mentioned in another post, on attending Agile training for the first time, it assumes a pretty rigid ideal of what "Waterfall" is, in that much or even most of the basic concepts of Agile were something we were already doing for years before we ever heard of anything called Agile. But by all means have daily morning scrum meetings with a scrum master for your two week sprints, success is guaranteed!
This.
I recall first going to Agile training, the definitions of "Waterfall" and "Agile", and thinking that well I guess I've never really done true Waterfall, and that a great deal of the stuff in Agile we do as a matter of course anyway.
I don't think I've ever collected requirements, and then not gone back to the users to further refine them. I also don't think we've ever developed something without a lot of back and forth until we got something right. We also routinely prioritize requirements, and do phased deployments... But again all of that was well before I heard anything about Agile. We'd have regular meetings with PM, Devs, and staff, but again not daily scrums and sprints, and all that nonsense. Anyway I think far too many people get wrapped up in the Agile buzz and methodology without really understanding the purpose of it all, thinking if they blindly follow a bunch of rules that they will have better outcomes...
From my own perspective it sort of goes something like this:
There is a requirement. You do the requirement, however on testing you discover a problem. The problem isn't a technical one. The thing you designed does exactly what it is designed to do. However there is an issue with the data that is related to how it is collected or entered, or inconsistent business practices. The ability to correct any of those 3 things (other than to point it out) is usually about zero. The net result being however is that the piece you just designed, while it works how you design it to, delivers results that are less than optimal. You can't drop it because it is something the business wants. You then alter the design to at least make it work a bit better given the limitations, but it will always function imperfectly. Over time as the data gets worse, so does the design until eventually it is broken to the point that no one uses it anymore. At which point they'll ask you to "fix" it...
I once had someone tell me from the business "you work for me, not the other way around", the gist being you make changes to your systems to accommodate our business process, we don't change our business processes to accommodate your systems. It is that attitude, not Agile or anything else that causes problems. It today's technological world if you want to modernize your business properly it really is a two way street. Doing one without thought of the other will only give you a system with fundamental problems that while it might be OK in the short term, will eventually catch up to you and cost you more in the long run.
I agree. I think what they really need to look at are countries that have nuclear ability, but posses no current nuclear weapons. Could they make some? Sure, but it would take a bit of time. I think that is not only a deterrent, but also a nice safety, in that it offers a "cooling down" period in that it would take a little bit of time to produce any. Look at who those countries are, and why they are the way they are, and what can be done to make NK more like that. Certainly peace with SK and withdrawal of US troops would be a good first step I think obviously.
Unlike places like Iran ruled by religious nutjobs, NK is a bit more straight forward. Kim would likely like more wealth, power, influence, and at the same time ensure that his domestic position is secure. A lot of those things can be done pretty symbolically without much effort. Peace with SK, lift sanctions, give him a seat at the big boy table politically. That would also help modernize NK a bit, keep people fed, increase wealth (to which I'm sure he and his cronies can amass the lions share), all of which are positives for him as his forced domestic popularity would probably become real. If the cost of that is his small largely ineffective nuclear arsenal, I think he'd do it, he just needs a number of concessions, the singular probably most important being zero threat to his rule, and for largely the legitimatizing of it.
Not new, but never as overt, which is where the insulting component comes in.
Take softwood lumber. The US has charged tariffs on Canadian lumber almost since the inception of so called "free trade" under the auspices that Canada subsidies it's industry. This is at least the 3rd US president that has done this. It has gone to an independent tribunal at least twice before, and Canada "won" both times, though with little actual result because the US continues to do whatever it wants anyway because of their strong trading position. I expect this to more less continue.
So while this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and Trump is merely the latest, at least the previous instances they at least had the good graces to do it on the down low, or give some meaningless token win for the PM to use politically. Trump is just publicly throwing BS into the faces of trading partners who know full well it is BS, who are rightly calling it insulting because it is. It remains to be scene if any of the US trading partners have the spine to stand up to it, but it is pretty difficult to do when the US has such a strong trading position because they are so dependent on US trade.
You sound right, but you're not. You are assuming that the facts being fed to you are correct. In reality the US has always used it's position of strength in trading power to screw over almost all of it's partners, with possibly the exception of China. You'll note in the news, there has been lots of talk about trade imbalances with other smaller trading partners, but while China is mentioned Trump has gone out of his way to also appease them.
Case in point softwood lumber and Canada. It has been a sore point since the start of NAFTA. The US has maintained that Canada subsidies it's lumber industry, and dumps cheap lumber on the US which hurts US interests. This is BS. It has been said by at least the last 3 presidents. It has gone to an independent tribunal twice already, and both times Canada has won because there is no substance to the claims. The claims are purely political to the US forest industry, who themselves know that this is BS. but do not care so long as their political leaders make them more money. In both instances there were levies attached to Canadian lumber in the middle of so called free trade to the tune of 5 or 6 Billion each time (which the US government gets, not producers, they just get to be more falsely competitive). In both times after "winning" the trade dispute do you think Canada ever saw any of that? Nope, because the US would basically just ignore it because due to their strong trading position they can. This is why when Trudeau calls out Trumps accusations as being insulting, they are, because they are baseless and made up, and is just an excuse to push around trading partners. As much as Trump has said NAFTA has hurt the US the opposite is true, as on the Canadian side of things (as you pointed out), it has ended up making Canada *much* more dependent on the US for trade where before it was more diversified. The end result is that the US is in an even more stronger trading position than ever before, allowing it to more less dictate terms. While this has always happened really, the extent to which Trump is dealing with it is insulting. At least the previous US governments might at least buy you dinner first before screwing you.
Anyway we'll see what happens, but it would be good for Canada long term to disentangle itself at least a little bit and diversify their trade so as not to be so beholden to our US masters. No doubt if only because of geography it will probably always be our largest trading partner, but if Canada ever wants to have a chance at an even trade partnership it needs to become less reliant on US trade.