Today, supercomputers are not solely the purvue of RISC chips (which could also use this technology with proper patent-licensing fees paid), but also often made of commodity hardware, such as that coming from Intel. See: Google. With the sheer volume of data to mine that we have today, and the accelerated growth of data warehouses and other VLDBs (not just multi-TB, but multi-PB), faster everything is important in order to turn that data into value (sorry - that's already too buzzwordy). Yes, network speeds and hard disk speeds are important here. But not only does Intel not do that (well, they do some network, but that's not the biggest bottleneck anyway in this environment), but you can always fake disk speed by spreading your data over more disks until SSD or other technology displaces hard disks in server environments.
It's not like Intel backing off on this will entice software companies to produce quality software. That suggestion is moot. The server market is huge. Intel wants to make more money by helping its customers do what they need to do with their data faster. I see nothing to complain about here.
Besides, when we get chipsize down, we also get more powerful (and usually more energy-efficient) mobile devices in smaller footprints. A remote control for your home theatre system that can display a second channel on a minidisplay so you know what you're going to before you get there. A phone that you can capture video with and edit it right there before uploading to YouTube('s replacement)... before the cops get there to confiscate it;-) These don't just drive value/revenue for big corps in their backrooms, these come out and hit us as consumers. Interestingly, the big corps who fund this type of thing through purchase of ever-faster top-end equipment end up making it profitable enough to enter the consumer landscape, meaning they are in effect subsidising the rest of us. That video-editing phone probably wouldn't be profitable enough on its own to drive this development pace, but once the development is paid for by big corps, it's available to the rest of us some time later.
Which sells more cars? The latest and most bleeding edge engine, or the curves and colours of the body? The accuracy of the speedometer, or the layout of the dashboard? The effectiveness of the airbags, or the fact the seats are heated? The range on a single tank of gas, or the ipod interface to the radio?
The fact is that though we really *should* care more about the former, society generally seems to care more about the latter. We assume the former works, so all advancement is assumed in the latter. We assume the basics (e.g., hardware) are all covered and are perfect, and it's only software that has the problems (or, in the car analogy above, the niceties and extras that are optional and thus distinguishing between vehicles).
What Apple showed was that our old cell phone hardware could be shown as drastically out of date. What they're getting hurt by is the apps: everyone is just assuming their hardware now. Its value has been commoditised, even if the price tag hasn't been. Google, RIM, and any other competitors in this space are out to show that the hardware really is commodity. Google just has an interesting take on that tactic: by providing a user-interface that is phone-independant, they really are making the hardware commodity.
I'm not sure they're seeing this through. They can take the cash with a contractual obligation for net neutrality (which may be renegotiated with lower-level bureaucrats later). Or they can gamble, lose, and have net neutrality enshrined in law later, where no lawmaker will touch it again, and forever lose the ability to "[manage] traffic on their networks in the way they want" never to regain it.
I dunno - free cash and a negotiation away from what one wants in a year or two vs no money and a crap-shoot on losing what one wants irretrievably. Seems like a simple choice to me. Perhaps the C*Os that came up with this plan can't see past their out-stretched arms.
I have a question about these numbers. What is the net profit on MMO games vs movies (especially the movies that are related to MMOs where there are comparisons to be made)? I realise that TFS is talking about gross, which is completely different, but I'm just wondering if net profits (not counting the Hollywood Accounting that claims that box office smashes lose money) are showing MMOs to be quickly catching up if not surpassing movies. The challenge here, though, is to get some meaningful lifetime numbers for a given title. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi is still selling (albeit slowly). Early MMOs probably have been shut down (I don't know - I don't play these games). No MMO is as long in the tooth as RotJ, so comparing the long tail is impossible - we need to make predictions about the long tail of MMOs - I expect that once players dwindle to a certain point, the MMO goes offline as profitability does go to zero.
We're talking about the DNS search, not actual routing. First you check the internet and then you search the VPN DNS. This is so that if $work is doing the same type of redirection (which is fine - it's their resources that they're serving, so if they don't want you going to playboy.com, that's their business) you can still reach the external network without using $work's resources. There's no reason why your employer's computer-use policies should interact with your home use, even when connected to the office over VPN.
This requires that your DNS is resolved via the internet before VPN. And requires that the internet DNS behaves properly.
The ROI is measured in only 3-4 digits (as a percentage). (e.g., 5-10 times the cost, for most "good" movies.)
The room for others to profit off your work without a license is kept to a minimum (can never be zero): e.g., to pirate a movie takes some work on the part of the user, but if they could download the movie with no more work than going to the store to buy a copy, and the cost would be so minor as to make most people who would otherwise pirate conclude it was cheaper to actually buy the movie legitly than to pirate it, the amount of piracy would be reduced to near-zero. Pirating a $2 movie isn't worth the risk, but pirating a $45 blu-ray movie is in another ballpark altogether.
I'm sure there could be more points to consider in deciding if a profit level is ethical, but this should provide a starting-point.
Ok, so $40B minus, say, $100M. That's, oh, roughly now... $40B. The OP's point is that at this economy of scale, the production cost is nearly zero, especially when making $5 per copy sold. If you were to charge $0, then the production cost is significant. But even at these current prices, we all know that the profit levels are so stupidly high as to be laughable.
I think the reason is far less nefarious: the reason there are so many black inmates is because a) "disadvantaged" (aka poor) people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, b) violent crime is less often thought through and thus are caught more often than "white-collar" or "rich" crime, plus get harsher sentences, c) blacks are disproportionately poor (at least in the US).
If there were a simple way to look at someone and know that they are rich or poor, that'd provide much more reliable profiling. Instead, what we're stuck with is an indicator (race) of an indicator (wealth) of an indicator (likelihood to commit crime). It does mean that those who use the profiles can find their perp more often than those who do not, but it also feeds on itself.
I might be missing something, too, but I've seen a vocal minority of Obama supporters assuming that if you disagree with Obama, you must be racist against blacks. Some of us prefer disagreeing with Obama for his actual statements, policies, and actions, without regard to race, but some people think that Obama is so infallible that they think the only reason to disagree with him is because he's black. See "Undercover Brother". These people I refer to think this is a documentary, not a parody.
Nope. And it's really quite simple to understand why.
Microsoft, according to the EU findings (so whether we agree or not is moot), is a monopoly. That means they get to play by different rules to ensure that the free market continues to exist despite the monopoly. In the past, the US has forced companies to break up to break the monopoly, so forcing a browser choice seems relatively minor.
Further, as a deterrent to further illegal actions (which, again, are only illegal because they're a monopoly - different rules and all that), there must be some sort of punishment. To be honest, forcing this seems like a hand-slap more than a punishment: the horse has already left the barn, why are they locking it now?
Should Apple or Ubuntu ever manage to get an effective monopoly, then the same rules would apply to them. In the meantime, these rules only apply to Microsoft.
That may not work. You might have to ramp it up over time. Start with hamsters, sure. Work your way up through cats, dogs, and eventually you can work your way up to seals.
Personally, I'm going to eat another steak every time they issue a press release. Not sure how effective it'll be, but it's sure tasty.
I didn't say the alternatives were cost-free. In fact, I'm advocating exactly the opposite: get all the costs on the table for all options so we can properly judge them in context. Right now, most people I talk to think that wind power is the way to the land of magical ponies. This type of information helps frame it properly. It's not consequence-free. It may still be worth the effort, but at least let's get all the cards on the table so we can make rational, informed decisions. And that goes for coal, gas, oil, nuclear, hydro, solar, and any other energy source we may have or dream up, too. We can't make good decisions about our future with only the lobbyists' pamphlets.
This type of story strikes me as particularly stupid: "big objects hard to move around" doesn't equate to "wind power worse than other types of power" as the summary seems to imply.
Maybe you're reading a different summary than I did. Maybe you're reading the summary differently. What I read was simply that wind power was not all sweetness and light like some in the eco movement would have us believe. Those that slam on minute amounts of radioactive waste from a nuclear power plant don't bat an eye on the primary (making the thing) or secondary (transporting) or even tertiary (road damage requiring massive amounts of oil to repair) costs of wind power. Heck, these aren't mentioned at all, as if turbines appear out of nothingness in their desired positions, with all the required power-grid infrastructure also magically appearing. I didn't read it to say this is worse than other forms of generating energy, merely that we need this information to have a factual, objective discussion about energy production on this planet.
Yes, "big objects: hard to move around" is obvious when you stop and think about it. The problem is, too many people don't stop and think about the repercussions of their ideology. We all need to, both eco-whackos and global-warming-deniers, and everyone in between, if we're going to have a chance at survival on this planet.
There are two basic problems with your code. First, there are unbalanced parenthesis. Second, this is a thread about C++. Not Perl. Next time, be more careful. Thanks.
Oddly, trying to use ClearQuest on Firefox manages to be unusable for me, but if I convince Konqueror to pretend to be Firefox, then CQWeb works fine there...
"Do you believe in (a) god(s)?" implies that you have formed a basis for a belief one way or the other. For some, the only way to answer it accurately is to address the underlying assumption. The fact that you don't see that implication shows only that you've formed a basis for belief, rather than maintain a scientific level of scepticism toward belief.
I'm not agnostic. But that doesn't mean that I won't defend their rationalisation as valid. Because it is (as much as any other belief that has not been proven beyond a doubt to the rest of the world). It's entirely consistent, unpresumptuous, and tolerant. I do find it interesting, in a sociological way, that most of those that attack agnosticism as a valid point of view are generally the atheists, as if even leaving the question of the supernatural open is an attack on their very being. Of the theists that would be most prone to attacking agnostics, the undereducated are also the most likely to be confused by them, so, though I do see the odd theist who is willing to go toe-to-toe with an agnostic, I just don't have as much experience witnessing it as I do with atheists. The way atheists go after agnostics remind me of the way Mormons go after Catholics: as a way to convert, not tolerate.
I would expect most distributions to take the fix from.31 and apply it to.30. Most distributions are pretty good at watching for CVEs and other high-importance bug reports and backfitting them. For example, I would expect the fix to show up in the ebuild for Gentoo Real Soon Now.
Hmmm. And here I thought that the US merely forbid US-based credit card companies from paying to on-line casinos. That'd be entirely legal (even if the effect, or even the desired effect, is of dubious value). Not quite the same thing as fining foreign casinos, or even outlawing them (per se).
Slashdot Mirror
+1, Car Analogy.
a) tell the jury that
b) how often does "but I didn't mean to steal it!" work in real-world (as opposed to academic or TV) court?
Um, for those building supercomputers?
Today, supercomputers are not solely the purvue of RISC chips (which could also use this technology with proper patent-licensing fees paid), but also often made of commodity hardware, such as that coming from Intel. See: Google. With the sheer volume of data to mine that we have today, and the accelerated growth of data warehouses and other VLDBs (not just multi-TB, but multi-PB), faster everything is important in order to turn that data into value (sorry - that's already too buzzwordy). Yes, network speeds and hard disk speeds are important here. But not only does Intel not do that (well, they do some network, but that's not the biggest bottleneck anyway in this environment), but you can always fake disk speed by spreading your data over more disks until SSD or other technology displaces hard disks in server environments.
It's not like Intel backing off on this will entice software companies to produce quality software. That suggestion is moot. The server market is huge. Intel wants to make more money by helping its customers do what they need to do with their data faster. I see nothing to complain about here.
Besides, when we get chipsize down, we also get more powerful (and usually more energy-efficient) mobile devices in smaller footprints. A remote control for your home theatre system that can display a second channel on a minidisplay so you know what you're going to before you get there. A phone that you can capture video with and edit it right there before uploading to YouTube('s replacement) ... before the cops get there to confiscate it ;-) These don't just drive value/revenue for big corps in their backrooms, these come out and hit us as consumers. Interestingly, the big corps who fund this type of thing through purchase of ever-faster top-end equipment end up making it profitable enough to enter the consumer landscape, meaning they are in effect subsidising the rest of us. That video-editing phone probably wouldn't be profitable enough on its own to drive this development pace, but once the development is paid for by big corps, it's available to the rest of us some time later.
Right track, wrong analogy.
Which sells more cars? The latest and most bleeding edge engine, or the curves and colours of the body? The accuracy of the speedometer, or the layout of the dashboard? The effectiveness of the airbags, or the fact the seats are heated? The range on a single tank of gas, or the ipod interface to the radio?
The fact is that though we really *should* care more about the former, society generally seems to care more about the latter. We assume the former works, so all advancement is assumed in the latter. We assume the basics (e.g., hardware) are all covered and are perfect, and it's only software that has the problems (or, in the car analogy above, the niceties and extras that are optional and thus distinguishing between vehicles).
What Apple showed was that our old cell phone hardware could be shown as drastically out of date. What they're getting hurt by is the apps: everyone is just assuming their hardware now. Its value has been commoditised, even if the price tag hasn't been. Google, RIM, and any other competitors in this space are out to show that the hardware really is commodity. Google just has an interesting take on that tactic: by providing a user-interface that is phone-independant, they really are making the hardware commodity.
I'm not sure they're seeing this through. They can take the cash with a contractual obligation for net neutrality (which may be renegotiated with lower-level bureaucrats later). Or they can gamble, lose, and have net neutrality enshrined in law later, where no lawmaker will touch it again, and forever lose the ability to "[manage] traffic on their networks in the way they want" never to regain it.
I dunno - free cash and a negotiation away from what one wants in a year or two vs no money and a crap-shoot on losing what one wants irretrievably. Seems like a simple choice to me. Perhaps the C*Os that came up with this plan can't see past their out-stretched arms.
In your case? I think the second word is "*WHOOSH*".
Strike out the phrase "in Silicon Valley" and you lose no accuracy.
I have a question about these numbers. What is the net profit on MMO games vs movies (especially the movies that are related to MMOs where there are comparisons to be made)? I realise that TFS is talking about gross, which is completely different, but I'm just wondering if net profits (not counting the Hollywood Accounting that claims that box office smashes lose money) are showing MMOs to be quickly catching up if not surpassing movies. The challenge here, though, is to get some meaningful lifetime numbers for a given title. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi is still selling (albeit slowly). Early MMOs probably have been shut down (I don't know - I don't play these games). No MMO is as long in the tooth as RotJ, so comparing the long tail is impossible - we need to make predictions about the long tail of MMOs - I expect that once players dwindle to a certain point, the MMO goes offline as profitability does go to zero.
We're talking about the DNS search, not actual routing. First you check the internet and then you search the VPN DNS. This is so that if $work is doing the same type of redirection (which is fine - it's their resources that they're serving, so if they don't want you going to playboy.com, that's their business) you can still reach the external network without using $work's resources. There's no reason why your employer's computer-use policies should interact with your home use, even when connected to the office over VPN.
This requires that your DNS is resolved via the internet before VPN. And requires that the internet DNS behaves properly.
Alexis? Is that you?
A non-stupidly high profit level is one whereby:
I'm sure there could be more points to consider in deciding if a profit level is ethical, but this should provide a starting-point.
Ok, so $40B minus, say, $100M. That's, oh, roughly now ... $40B. The OP's point is that at this economy of scale, the production cost is nearly zero, especially when making $5 per copy sold. If you were to charge $0, then the production cost is significant. But even at these current prices, we all know that the profit levels are so stupidly high as to be laughable.
I think the reason is far less nefarious: the reason there are so many black inmates is because a) "disadvantaged" (aka poor) people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, b) violent crime is less often thought through and thus are caught more often than "white-collar" or "rich" crime, plus get harsher sentences, c) blacks are disproportionately poor (at least in the US).
If there were a simple way to look at someone and know that they are rich or poor, that'd provide much more reliable profiling. Instead, what we're stuck with is an indicator (race) of an indicator (wealth) of an indicator (likelihood to commit crime). It does mean that those who use the profiles can find their perp more often than those who do not, but it also feeds on itself.
I might be missing something, too, but I've seen a vocal minority of Obama supporters assuming that if you disagree with Obama, you must be racist against blacks. Some of us prefer disagreeing with Obama for his actual statements, policies, and actions, without regard to race, but some people think that Obama is so infallible that they think the only reason to disagree with him is because he's black. See "Undercover Brother". These people I refer to think this is a documentary, not a parody.
Nope. And it's really quite simple to understand why.
Microsoft, according to the EU findings (so whether we agree or not is moot), is a monopoly. That means they get to play by different rules to ensure that the free market continues to exist despite the monopoly. In the past, the US has forced companies to break up to break the monopoly, so forcing a browser choice seems relatively minor.
Further, as a deterrent to further illegal actions (which, again, are only illegal because they're a monopoly - different rules and all that), there must be some sort of punishment. To be honest, forcing this seems like a hand-slap more than a punishment: the horse has already left the barn, why are they locking it now?
Should Apple or Ubuntu ever manage to get an effective monopoly, then the same rules would apply to them. In the meantime, these rules only apply to Microsoft.
That may not work. You might have to ramp it up over time. Start with hamsters, sure. Work your way up through cats, dogs, and eventually you can work your way up to seals.
Personally, I'm going to eat another steak every time they issue a press release. Not sure how effective it'll be, but it's sure tasty.
You really shouldn't post off-the-cuff like that. Put some more thought into it, and see if you can't come up with something really nasty.
Strawman.
I didn't say the alternatives were cost-free. In fact, I'm advocating exactly the opposite: get all the costs on the table for all options so we can properly judge them in context. Right now, most people I talk to think that wind power is the way to the land of magical ponies. This type of information helps frame it properly. It's not consequence-free. It may still be worth the effort, but at least let's get all the cards on the table so we can make rational, informed decisions. And that goes for coal, gas, oil, nuclear, hydro, solar, and any other energy source we may have or dream up, too. We can't make good decisions about our future with only the lobbyists' pamphlets.
This type of story strikes me as particularly stupid: "big objects hard to move around" doesn't equate to "wind power worse than other types of power" as the summary seems to imply.
Maybe you're reading a different summary than I did. Maybe you're reading the summary differently. What I read was simply that wind power was not all sweetness and light like some in the eco movement would have us believe. Those that slam on minute amounts of radioactive waste from a nuclear power plant don't bat an eye on the primary (making the thing) or secondary (transporting) or even tertiary (road damage requiring massive amounts of oil to repair) costs of wind power. Heck, these aren't mentioned at all, as if turbines appear out of nothingness in their desired positions, with all the required power-grid infrastructure also magically appearing. I didn't read it to say this is worse than other forms of generating energy, merely that we need this information to have a factual, objective discussion about energy production on this planet.
Yes, "big objects: hard to move around" is obvious when you stop and think about it. The problem is, too many people don't stop and think about the repercussions of their ideology. We all need to, both eco-whackos and global-warming-deniers, and everyone in between, if we're going to have a chance at survival on this planet.
There are two basic problems with your code. First, there are unbalanced parenthesis. Second, this is a thread about C++. Not Perl. Next time, be more careful. Thanks.
Oddly, trying to use ClearQuest on Firefox manages to be unusable for me, but if I convince Konqueror to pretend to be Firefox, then CQWeb works fine there...
"Do you believe in (a) god(s)?" implies that you have formed a basis for a belief one way or the other. For some, the only way to answer it accurately is to address the underlying assumption. The fact that you don't see that implication shows only that you've formed a basis for belief, rather than maintain a scientific level of scepticism toward belief.
I'm not agnostic. But that doesn't mean that I won't defend their rationalisation as valid. Because it is (as much as any other belief that has not been proven beyond a doubt to the rest of the world). It's entirely consistent, unpresumptuous, and tolerant. I do find it interesting, in a sociological way, that most of those that attack agnosticism as a valid point of view are generally the atheists, as if even leaving the question of the supernatural open is an attack on their very being. Of the theists that would be most prone to attacking agnostics, the undereducated are also the most likely to be confused by them, so, though I do see the odd theist who is willing to go toe-to-toe with an agnostic, I just don't have as much experience witnessing it as I do with atheists. The way atheists go after agnostics remind me of the way Mormons go after Catholics: as a way to convert, not tolerate.
The right answer to "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" is not "yes" or "no". The right answer is to answer a question unasked.
I would expect most distributions to take the fix from .31 and apply it to .30. Most distributions are pretty good at watching for CVEs and other high-importance bug reports and backfitting them. For example, I would expect the fix to show up in the ebuild for Gentoo Real Soon Now .
Hmmm. And here I thought that the US merely forbid US-based credit card companies from paying to on-line casinos. That'd be entirely legal (even if the effect, or even the desired effect, is of dubious value). Not quite the same thing as fining foreign casinos, or even outlawing them (per se).