Whoosh! Read my other replies to become enlightened.
Glad to know you either can't comprehend what you read or you seriously believe the US is the "world stage."
Basically you're arguing the Vette is a better car because US tariffs effectively price its competition out of the water. But outside the US, when faced with its competition, the Vette is a cheap, plastic car. That's entirely the point. US buyers perceive the Vette to be the best bang for the buck because they are US buyers. Outside the US, where the car has to stand on its own merits, it typically goes the bottom of everyone's list - and not based on price alone - which is the exact opposite of what Vette owners say prevents other cars from being comparable. That's called hypocrisy.
Please read my other replies for a more complete answer.
What other car, exactly, CAN you buy for less money with the performance specs of the Corvette?
The field is wide open. But your exact choices will vary from country to country depending on their tariffs and taxes and if the competition is made in-country and what type of non-tariff agreements are in place. Much of the vette's bang/buck advantage for US buyers is the fact that its a US car.
As an example, I friend of mine just priced a Camaro in a foriegn country for $90,000. The European cars had very little in the way of tariffs. So for a Vette, in that country, I'm assuming you're comparing the Vette against other cars in the $120k-$150k range. Once you're in that price range, the field is wide open - and the Vette begins to look fairly cheap.
PS. Don't knock the Corvette - it's a very competent racer.
Actually I didn't. I stated a larger world view to which many American's, and in particular, American Corvette owners, took offense.
I like vettes. They are fun, powerful cars. But once you get outside the US, at the same price point, it quickly falls to the bottom of a most people's lists. The reason being, once you add in tariffs and taxes, the vette is suddenly overwhelmed with the rest of the world's competition. And here's a hint - they are not plastic, generally ride/drive much better with comparable performance, generally with more features, and frequently have much more prestige.
This element generally sets the stage for which manufacturers are shopped and which models are test driven. So basically, you likely saw it, you just didn't realize it.
The Corvette example merely represents equally illogical anti-American sentiment.
Doubtful. Your position seems to represent an illogical pro-American sentiment. You seem believe the US is the world stage and in doing so, forget that tariffs apply to US luxury imports.
The primary reason why the Corvette is such a bargin in the US is because is has no tariffs attached but its competition has huge tariffs. This is the exact opposite in much of the rest of the world. Once that price point shifts, suddenly the Corvette looks dramatically less attractive.
I own a Corvette and I challenge you to find me a car that performs like a Corvette for the money.
Let me guess, you live in the US. You basically proved you didn't understand what you read. Are you actually arguing that the US is, "the world stage?"
I agree with your sentiment, but you used a couple bad examples.
Couple? I'll grant you my vet example is controversial but the Harley example absolutely is not. The raw facts on it are absolutely clear. Harleys are completely pieces of shit largely purchased by ignorant owners who do so for the sole purpose of owning a label on which they feel they can brag.
You're also forgetting that in the US, you pay very high tariffs on imports and no tariffs on a vet. The inverse is true in other countries. Case in point, I just spoke to a buddy, who is currently out of the country, where you too can own a Camero for only ~$90,000USD. I didn't even ask about the price of a vet and frankly, I doubt he even checked after that eye opener. As I originally stated, ON THE WORLD STAGE, the vet is widely considered a cheap, plastic car.
For whatever reason, Americans believe they are the world stage. In all the replies, save one, it seems pretty clear that's their belief. Which doesn't really invalidate my position in the least.
Personally known two owners of C6's who had to have their cars repainted because the plastic flexed so much, the paint spidered.
And none of that changes that on the world stage, the world largely considers the Vet to be a cheap, plastic car.
Ya, sorry this offends some sensibilities. I like vetts, but in a global market (the US is not the world) they are not the cat's meow as vett owners would have you believe.
For most consumers, they would rather buy a label, regardless of quality or price.
Many people find it hard to believe, but for the majority of Americans, purchasing a car is an impulse purchase. Accordingly, most Americans purchase a vehicle because of envy status (label).
As an example, let's look at Corvettes and Harleys. On the world stage, the Corvette is generally considered a crap, plastic car. It sells well in the US because of its American heritage and perceived prestige. The reality is, a much, much better car can be had for the money.
Likewise, look at Harleys. They consistently have extremely poor reliability ratings; especially when compared against the biggest six motorcycle competitors on the world stage. Yet Harleys not only sell very well, but frequently demand a premium price.
Both of the above examples are good indicators of how willing the American public is to pay a premium for an inferior product. So ultimately, regardless of actual quality, its all about label perception.
Of course, this is the same reason pirates damage the economy in other sectors too. For whatever reason, pirates just assume that only multi-billion dollar mega-corporations are affected by piracy and they are fighting the good fight; which in of itself doesn't even make sense. In reality, they are destroying small and medium sized businesses and contrary to their completely illogical logic, pirating isn't helping the company.
Linux's primary obstacle to becoming a viable commercial gaming platform are pirates. Period.
And how high is the additional cost of porting to linux?
There is no single dollar amount. The price can be all over the board too. And even beyond a port, support and testing is frequently a large portion of any porting effort. Pirates frequently add to the support burden but not the pay off, so its a another area where pirates hurt both the ecosystem and the economy.
You also need to keep in mind, games are so large and complex these days, more often than not, third party packages are used for various tidbits. In some cases these packages are simply not available for Linux. Or, when they are available, it requires yet another contract, purchase, and royalty structure. When its not available, you're now looking at writing code from scratch. In either case, many times this is simply a deal killer. You need to keep in mind, on a per third party basis, this might mean an extra $20,000-$100,000 out of pocket, plus royalties.
ofcourse it also becomes a lot easier if you already have ports for similar platforms such as osx.
This is very true. If designers plan on creating a cross platform title up front, it can dramatically decrease their costs and time to market. In most cases, planning to support OSX means 90%-95% of the world is already in place to support Linux. Of course the inverse is also true. Just the same, that doesn't necessarily address testing, support, and third party libraries issues (costs+royalties).
Also, piracy doesn't just happen on linux, there are many more pirates using windows than there are on linux.
You're right, but that's not the whole picture. While Windows has a large number of pirates, they also have massive users willing to purchase. So even at 50% piracy rates, you're still looking at a potential of tens of millions of users. Whereas on Linux, you have massive piracy rates which pales the other platforms. So with something like 80+% piracy and and pool of only a couple million potential users, the numbers don't typically work out so well. This basically means the support costs are higher on a per unit basis and the ROI on a per unit basis are very low. OSX users, on the other hand, tend to be very loyal and the platform as a whole experiences some of the industry's lowest piracy rates. This combined with higher desktop numbers means OSX is a much more attractive commercial platform for developers. So for OSX, despite having a fairly small user base, it can still easily make nice with the bottom line.
Lastly, let's look at support a little more. Linux has many different distributions. Some don't even support LSB, despite being fairly popular. This in turn means support burden is likely to be very disproportionate for its user base. This in turn further complicates the ROI picture while further increasing costs. The fact that AMD[ATI] typically has buggy OpenGL drivers only makes the experience even more frustrating.
And all the above completely ignores the testing matrix which is further complicated by the Linux distribution numbers.
As you can see, when developers do provide a set of Linux binaries, its not hard to understand why its frequently on an unsupported basis and completely at this whim.
Everything the other commenter said is, however, true. The fact is, small airports frequently drive business into smaller towns. For example, my local airport drives $6m-$10m into my small city every year, and that's not including the flight school.
The majority of private pilots in the US make less than $40k/yr. The majority or light GA plane owners make less than $80k/yr. Its factually false to assert planes are only owned and operated by the rich elite.
One thing for sure, lawyers have helped ruin a sizable chunk of our economy. The rule of thumb is, aviation can easily be 50% of its current costs. And many estimates say it can be as little as 25% of its current costs. To achieve that, we need only burn the lawyers and implement some FAA reform and modernization.
Not completely accurate. According to somewhat vague statements made by various game companies over the years, the raw numbers for Linux are absolutely there. The real problem is, far too many people would rather pirate than pay. As a result, pirates essentially prevent Linux from becoming a viable commercial gaming platform. The only solutions left to game companies are to dramatically increase the per unit costs (to cover the massive per unit burden imposed by pirates) or simply not support the platform. As the first option means pricing themselves out of the market while creating additional development and support costs, they're left with one choice.
You're not supposed to look at any of those; you're only supposed to use the information given to you in court.
My understanding is that's not correct. You are only supposed to use the facts of the case as presented in court. Learning about terminology and/or phraseology used in the court, AFAIK, shouldn't cause a mistrial.
As someone else pointed out, Wikipedia is well known for incorrect information but I'm not really sure how that differs from someone walking about with an already incorrect and/or incomplete and/or complete ignorance of the definition/phrase/terminology.
But ultimately, judges are emperors of their own kingdom so they frequently get latitude to create their own rules. I have no idea of this is one of those situations or not.
That's a well thought out and subtle distinction I had not previously considered.
Just the same, along those lines, it still means sacrificing for further an ideology. In all fairness to NVIDIA, they have provided top notch support for Linux while ATI literally laughed at them. Now that NVIDIA has literally created the 3D market on Linux, suddenly AMD [ATI] wants a piece of the action.
So really, supporting NVIDIA literally means supporting Linux; whereas supporting AMD means supporting a business plan and additional revenue without much else to show.
Based on comments provided elsewhere, it seems I'm not the only one who seems to smell questionable spending is at the root of their cash crunch.
I just looked. I'm not sure where you got your number, but they spent 13% on bandwidth. They spent 49% of their budget on management, finance, legal, and fund raising. Equipment, staff and bandwidth is 45% of their budget; of which bandwidth is only 13%.
A breakout says they're hosting (I assuming that's colo and bandwidth) works out to be $822,000. Salaries and wages are $2.3m. So basically, assuming all employees are actually required, which seems highly doubtful, are bare nut is roughly $3m/yr. Hell, even without question, their total expenses are $5m. So as I said, the $4m-$6m seems more than ample to allow for various overhead and expansion. Which begs the question, how the fuck is $10m considered critical and unless he needs a new jet and sports car?
Based on their own numbers, it sounds like at the $10m mark, unless they've been extremely abusive of their funds, they have more than enough for the next two years without raising another dime. Critical? My ass.
I going to make some assumptions about your DB workloads, but one of the things you said made me think of this.
One of the reasons why MySQL is frequently very fast for simple, read-only workloads, is because it can frequently satisfy queries by only consulting its indexes. PostgreSQL can't do that, but is an upcoming feature.
While that sounds great for MySQL, and for some workloads it is, what many users don't realize is that as their needs grow, suddenly pure index scans are no longer possible and MySQL's less than optimal query optimizer results in lackluster performance. This stands in stark contrast to PostgreSQL's implementation which has a very optimized query optimizer and optimized fast paths for non-indexed table access.
This are but only a few reasons why MySQL seems fast for single user and simple queries but quickly stalls and ultimately fails to perform and scale for most real world applications when compared to other databases such as PostgreSQL and Oracle.
Any idea how the $10m looks in relation to years past?
$10m is a lot of bucks with seemingly a need for a handful of people. When I read they have 30 on staff I have trouble comprehending that number. Seems like a dozen would be more than ample to address day to day operations, plus spurious subject matter experts to help prune here and there from time to time.
Does anyone have any idea how and on what they are spending their money? Perhaps I'm being nieve, but it would seem like something in the neighborhood of $4m-6m/yr would cover quit a bit (salaries, facilities, bandwidth, infrastructure, and expansion), including some okay, but not great, executive salaries on the top. And now at the $10m mark things are getting critical?
Seriously, anyone have any idea what their accounting looks like?
Slashdot Mirror
Whoosh! Read my other replies to become enlightened.
Glad to know you either can't comprehend what you read or you seriously believe the US is the "world stage."
Basically you're arguing the Vette is a better car because US tariffs effectively price its competition out of the water. But outside the US, when faced with its competition, the Vette is a cheap, plastic car. That's entirely the point. US buyers perceive the Vette to be the best bang for the buck because they are US buyers. Outside the US, where the car has to stand on its own merits, it typically goes the bottom of everyone's list - and not based on price alone - which is the exact opposite of what Vette owners say prevents other cars from being comparable. That's called hypocrisy.
And the competition gets far, far more bleak for the vette once you move outside US markets.
So, maybe a better question is...why would anyone in the US particularly CARE what the world view of sports cars are?
And people wonder why the rest of the world hates us....
Please read my other replies for a more complete answer.
What other car, exactly, CAN you buy for less money with the performance specs of the Corvette?
The field is wide open. But your exact choices will vary from country to country depending on their tariffs and taxes and if the competition is made in-country and what type of non-tariff agreements are in place. Much of the vette's bang/buck advantage for US buyers is the fact that its a US car.
As an example, I friend of mine just priced a Camaro in a foriegn country for $90,000. The European cars had very little in the way of tariffs. So for a Vette, in that country, I'm assuming you're comparing the Vette against other cars in the $120k-$150k range. Once you're in that price range, the field is wide open - and the Vette begins to look fairly cheap.
the medic handed me 4 motrins.
"Good 'ol vitamin-M", as my soldier friends would say.
3200mg of ibuprofen does wonders.
Ya...on your kidneys. Most studies suggest high likelihood of kidney damage from such large doses.
PS. Don't knock the Corvette - it's a very competent racer.
Actually I didn't. I stated a larger world view to which many American's, and in particular, American Corvette owners, took offense.
I like vettes. They are fun, powerful cars. But once you get outside the US, at the same price point, it quickly falls to the bottom of a most people's lists. The reason being, once you add in tariffs and taxes, the vette is suddenly overwhelmed with the rest of the world's competition. And here's a hint - they are not plastic, generally ride/drive much better with comparable performance, generally with more features, and frequently have much more prestige.
You're confusing the "rule" with the "exception".
"envy purchase"
This element generally sets the stage for which manufacturers are shopped and which models are test driven. So basically, you likely saw it, you just didn't realize it.
The Corvette example merely represents equally illogical anti-American sentiment.
Doubtful. Your position seems to represent an illogical pro-American sentiment. You seem believe the US is the world stage and in doing so, forget that tariffs apply to US luxury imports.
The primary reason why the Corvette is such a bargin in the US is because is has no tariffs attached but its competition has huge tariffs. This is the exact opposite in much of the rest of the world. Once that price point shifts, suddenly the Corvette looks dramatically less attractive.
I own a Corvette and I challenge you to find me a car that performs like a Corvette for the money.
Let me guess, you live in the US. You basically proved you didn't understand what you read. Are you actually arguing that the US is, "the world stage?"
I agree with your sentiment, but you used a couple bad examples.
Couple? I'll grant you my vet example is controversial but the Harley example absolutely is not. The raw facts on it are absolutely clear. Harleys are completely pieces of shit largely purchased by ignorant owners who do so for the sole purpose of owning a label on which they feel they can brag.
You're also forgetting that in the US, you pay very high tariffs on imports and no tariffs on a vet. The inverse is true in other countries. Case in point, I just spoke to a buddy, who is currently out of the country, where you too can own a Camero for only ~$90,000USD. I didn't even ask about the price of a vet and frankly, I doubt he even checked after that eye opener. As I originally stated, ON THE WORLD STAGE, the vet is widely considered a cheap, plastic car.
For whatever reason, Americans believe they are the world stage. In all the replies, save one, it seems pretty clear that's their belief. Which doesn't really invalidate my position in the least.
You sound like me! I couldn't agree more with everything you said!
C6 yes it was a plastic piece of shit.
Personally known two owners of C6's who had to have their cars repainted because the plastic flexed so much, the paint spidered.
And none of that changes that on the world stage, the world largely considers the Vet to be a cheap, plastic car.
Ya, sorry this offends some sensibilities. I like vetts, but in a global market (the US is not the world) they are not the cat's meow as vett owners would have you believe.
You're the exception, rather than the rule.
For most consumers, they would rather buy a label, regardless of quality or price.
Many people find it hard to believe, but for the majority of Americans, purchasing a car is an impulse purchase. Accordingly, most Americans purchase a vehicle because of envy status (label).
As an example, let's look at Corvettes and Harleys. On the world stage, the Corvette is generally considered a crap, plastic car. It sells well in the US because of its American heritage and perceived prestige. The reality is, a much, much better car can be had for the money.
Likewise, look at Harleys. They consistently have extremely poor reliability ratings; especially when compared against the biggest six motorcycle competitors on the world stage. Yet Harleys not only sell very well, but frequently demand a premium price.
Both of the above examples are good indicators of how willing the American public is to pay a premium for an inferior product. So ultimately, regardless of actual quality, its all about label perception.
What if some group of companies decided it was good lateral strategy to shake up the status quo
What possible incentive do they have to do that?
Ignoring the slow growth grind of a potential emerging platform (Linux), even getting pirates to stop destroying the economy and ecosystem, there are still other problems which must be addressed which are particular to Linux.
Of course, this is the same reason pirates damage the economy in other sectors too. For whatever reason, pirates just assume that only multi-billion dollar mega-corporations are affected by piracy and they are fighting the good fight; which in of itself doesn't even make sense. In reality, they are destroying small and medium sized businesses and contrary to their completely illogical logic, pirating isn't helping the company.
Linux's primary obstacle to becoming a viable commercial gaming platform are pirates. Period.
And how high is the additional cost of porting to linux?
There is no single dollar amount. The price can be all over the board too. And even beyond a port, support and testing is frequently a large portion of any porting effort. Pirates frequently add to the support burden but not the pay off, so its a another area where pirates hurt both the ecosystem and the economy.
You also need to keep in mind, games are so large and complex these days, more often than not, third party packages are used for various tidbits. In some cases these packages are simply not available for Linux. Or, when they are available, it requires yet another contract, purchase, and royalty structure. When its not available, you're now looking at writing code from scratch. In either case, many times this is simply a deal killer. You need to keep in mind, on a per third party basis, this might mean an extra $20,000-$100,000 out of pocket, plus royalties.
ofcourse it also becomes a lot easier if you already have ports for similar platforms such as osx.
This is very true. If designers plan on creating a cross platform title up front, it can dramatically decrease their costs and time to market. In most cases, planning to support OSX means 90%-95% of the world is already in place to support Linux. Of course the inverse is also true. Just the same, that doesn't necessarily address testing, support, and third party libraries issues (costs+royalties).
Also, piracy doesn't just happen on linux, there are many more pirates using windows than there are on linux.
You're right, but that's not the whole picture. While Windows has a large number of pirates, they also have massive users willing to purchase. So even at 50% piracy rates, you're still looking at a potential of tens of millions of users. Whereas on Linux, you have massive piracy rates which pales the other platforms. So with something like 80+% piracy and and pool of only a couple million potential users, the numbers don't typically work out so well. This basically means the support costs are higher on a per unit basis and the ROI on a per unit basis are very low. OSX users, on the other hand, tend to be very loyal and the platform as a whole experiences some of the industry's lowest piracy rates. This combined with higher desktop numbers means OSX is a much more attractive commercial platform for developers. So for OSX, despite having a fairly small user base, it can still easily make nice with the bottom line.
Lastly, let's look at support a little more. Linux has many different distributions. Some don't even support LSB, despite being fairly popular. This in turn means support burden is likely to be very disproportionate for its user base. This in turn further complicates the ROI picture while further increasing costs. The fact that AMD[ATI] typically has buggy OpenGL drivers only makes the experience even more frustrating.
And all the above completely ignores the testing matrix which is further complicated by the Linux distribution numbers.
As you can see, when developers do provide a set of Linux binaries, its not hard to understand why its frequently on an unsupported basis and completely at this whim.
This is completely untrue.
Everything the other commenter said is, however, true. The fact is, small airports frequently drive business into smaller towns. For example, my local airport drives $6m-$10m into my small city every year, and that's not including the flight school.
The majority of private pilots in the US make less than $40k/yr. The majority or light GA plane owners make less than $80k/yr. Its factually false to assert planes are only owned and operated by the rich elite.
One thing for sure, lawyers have helped ruin a sizable chunk of our economy. The rule of thumb is, aviation can easily be 50% of its current costs. And many estimates say it can be as little as 25% of its current costs. To achieve that, we need only burn the lawyers and implement some FAA reform and modernization.
Not completely accurate. According to somewhat vague statements made by various game companies over the years, the raw numbers for Linux are absolutely there. The real problem is, far too many people would rather pirate than pay. As a result, pirates essentially prevent Linux from becoming a viable commercial gaming platform. The only solutions left to game companies are to dramatically increase the per unit costs (to cover the massive per unit burden imposed by pirates) or simply not support the platform. As the first option means pricing themselves out of the market while creating additional development and support costs, they're left with one choice.
You're not supposed to look at any of those; you're only supposed to use the information given to you in court.
My understanding is that's not correct. You are only supposed to use the facts of the case as presented in court. Learning about terminology and/or phraseology used in the court, AFAIK, shouldn't cause a mistrial.
As someone else pointed out, Wikipedia is well known for incorrect information but I'm not really sure how that differs from someone walking about with an already incorrect and/or incomplete and/or complete ignorance of the definition/phrase/terminology.
But ultimately, judges are emperors of their own kingdom so they frequently get latitude to create their own rules. I have no idea of this is one of those situations or not.
Naming the exceptions, which I specifically stated existed, validates everything I said. On what crack-planet do you believe validation, invalidates?
That's a well thought out and subtle distinction I had not previously considered.
Just the same, along those lines, it still means sacrificing for further an ideology. In all fairness to NVIDIA, they have provided top notch support for Linux while ATI literally laughed at them. Now that NVIDIA has literally created the 3D market on Linux, suddenly AMD [ATI] wants a piece of the action.
So really, supporting NVIDIA literally means supporting Linux; whereas supporting AMD means supporting a business plan and additional revenue without much else to show.
Thanks.
Based on comments provided elsewhere, it seems I'm not the only one who seems to smell questionable spending is at the root of their cash crunch.
I just looked. I'm not sure where you got your number, but they spent 13% on bandwidth. They spent 49% of their budget on management, finance, legal, and fund raising. Equipment, staff and bandwidth is 45% of their budget; of which bandwidth is only 13%.
A breakout says they're hosting (I assuming that's colo and bandwidth) works out to be $822,000. Salaries and wages are $2.3m. So basically, assuming all employees are actually required, which seems highly doubtful, are bare nut is roughly $3m/yr. Hell, even without question, their total expenses are $5m. So as I said, the $4m-$6m seems more than ample to allow for various overhead and expansion. Which begs the question, how the fuck is $10m considered critical and unless he needs a new jet and sports car?
Based on their own numbers, it sounds like at the $10m mark, unless they've been extremely abusive of their funds, they have more than enough for the next two years without raising another dime. Critical? My ass.
I going to make some assumptions about your DB workloads, but one of the things you said made me think of this.
One of the reasons why MySQL is frequently very fast for simple, read-only workloads, is because it can frequently satisfy queries by only consulting its indexes. PostgreSQL can't do that, but is an upcoming feature.
While that sounds great for MySQL, and for some workloads it is, what many users don't realize is that as their needs grow, suddenly pure index scans are no longer possible and MySQL's less than optimal query optimizer results in lackluster performance. This stands in stark contrast to PostgreSQL's implementation which has a very optimized query optimizer and optimized fast paths for non-indexed table access.
This are but only a few reasons why MySQL seems fast for single user and simple queries but quickly stalls and ultimately fails to perform and scale for most real world applications when compared to other databases such as PostgreSQL and Oracle.
Any idea how the $10m looks in relation to years past?
$10m is a lot of bucks with seemingly a need for a handful of people. When I read they have 30 on staff I have trouble comprehending that number. Seems like a dozen would be more than ample to address day to day operations, plus spurious subject matter experts to help prune here and there from time to time.
Does anyone have any idea how and on what they are spending their money? Perhaps I'm being nieve, but it would seem like something in the neighborhood of $4m-6m/yr would cover quit a bit (salaries, facilities, bandwidth, infrastructure, and expansion), including some okay, but not great, executive salaries on the top. And now at the $10m mark things are getting critical?
Seriously, anyone have any idea what their accounting looks like?
Actually, I have used the express edition.