EXACTLY! I am constantly amazed at this supposed desire for a "closer shave". Shaving too closely can promote ingrown hairs...and Jesus, are we not men? Is a five O'clock shadow not acceptable at 5 O-friggin-clock?
I will admit that a two-blade Gillette Sensor razor delivers a superior shave to that provided by my old Bic disposables...and one that is less likely to cause nicks and facial aggravation, but damn...five blades? Give me a break. What are the first three supposed to do...scare the whiskers?
"Sweet! Three blades have passed boys! We're safe! Everybody come back out! DAMN! TWO MORE BLADES! RUN!!!!!"
I studied this topic for work this year and learned that the current data center rule of thumb is that for every watt that you spend powering a server, you must spend another watt on air conditioning...and it gets worse.
Now, with servers getting smaller (e.g., blades) and CPUs evolving to multi-core, heat and power usage density is increasing dramatically within the same floor space...and cooling it effectively ranges between difficult and nearly impossible...without ripping everything out and starting over...which few can afford to do. Effective cooling now requires knowledge of interior meteorology (to butcher a term). Data centers now end up with weather patterns...with cold zones, hot zones, wind, plague, pestilence...and it gets worse every day.
According to a study conducted last year by AFCOM (http://www.afcom.com ), a leading association for data center professionals, data center managers reported a 10% or more increase in power requirements during the previous year, with most expecting that number to continue to rise at a similar rate for the foreseeable future. As a result, 41% of those surveyed stated that the will be forced to upgrade their power and cooling systems within the next 36 months.
What to do? Well...first off, exploit the hardware that you have. Google VMware...and start using those spare cycles for more virtual platforms. Secondly, stop cramming everything into small spaces...learn to expand gracefully. Otherwise, that rule of thumb is going to fail...and we'll end up spending two-thirds of our power dollar on A/C...and still end up frying hardware. Lastly, how about demanding power usage metrics from vendors when specing out servers? Power supplies installed in many servers frequently run at 65% efficiency. The result is an enormous amount of excess power used that simply generates heat, which must then be removed. Unfortunately, the industry has not yet established benchmarks for performance-per-watt expended. Start demanding that info. You'll get blank stares and cryptic answers, but let them know that it matters, That electricity doesn't come out of the wall folks...it comes from burning coal, fossil fuels, hydro, and nuclear power. We either need to get over our fear of nuclear power and our distaste for dams...or start demanding better performance.
I may be in the minority here, but I do not own an iPod...nor do I buy music online. In fact, this entire DRM movement (and associated legal wrangling) have soured me to purchasing music of any sort.
I have a pile of MP3s ripped from CDs that I currently own, but find that I no longer even purchase CDs. I was formerly a HUGE fan of taking my music on the go...and am quite a tech gadget guy...but the RIAA and DRM in general have driven me away. I find that I just listen to the radio more now. Perhaps I am in the minority. I not only do not feel compelled to buy an iPod, their popularity and supposed status turns me off. I have an old SanDisk MP3 player that takes AAA batteries that I use in the gym...and it is often tuned to an FM station.
This intellectual property fight and the corresponding limitations imposed on hardware for audio and video (crippled HDTV anyone?) have motivated me to spend my discretionary dollars elsewhere. My apologies to U2 and Metallica. They'll just have to settle for one less solid gold toilet.
Bold claim...and vague since you say that it "benefits the economy", but you do not qualify that statement with whose economy it benefits.
How about Oracle, Microsoft, and a legion of other US-based commercial product vendors who are losing sales due to OSS? The net effect may be positive for the world, but are you positive that the net effect is also positive for the US? How about vastly reducing the cost for folks around the world (private citizens and corporations) to enter and compete in the software development field. Does that increased competition benefit the US? Clearly, there are other factors at play that also motivate globalization, but you make a pretty bold claim with no supporting facts.
I do not see how anyone can make a snap judgment on this one either way. It's not unlike the internet. Does it benefit society? Sure...in numerous ways. Does it harm it? Well, perhaps, with increasing estimates of online addiction, porn addiction, and estimates of American office workers spending 20% of their work day (1.86 hours) surfing the web for non-work-related functions.
These equations are complex...and judging their net effect is not trivial. On the other hand, judging their affect for company X is far easier to determine...especially if company X sells an application server or an RDBMS.;-)
I'm not sure that I agree. OSS has certainly changed the economic landscape...at least for developers...and, by extension, the people that we serve.
Many commercial products (and frameworks) have gone belly up in the face of OSS competition...while others have lost market share...and the future continues to look rough for folks who make their living selling development tools, libraries, and frameworks. It's tough to compete with legions of altruistic neckbeards.
Hey...how many folks here still use JBuilder, Cafe, PowerJ, CodeWarrior or one of the many other Java IDEs that dominated 5 or 6 years ago? I fight an uphill battle to buy IntelliJ for each one of my projects...and Eclipse makes it tougher everyday. My last project is currently undergoing a migration from WebLogic to JBoss...and my current project is just now adopting OSS Jasper Reports...unlike my last project, which paid over 20k for licenses for a reporting framework. Yes, Oracle may serve most large sites, but Postgres, MySQL, and others are most likely affecting their bottom line. We are certainly using them whenever we can.
It's not clear to me how the OSS movement affects the economy. It certainly does, I'm just not sure what the net effect is. It certainly hurts some people while befitting others...but, as a developer, I find it hard to believe that legions of folks giving away their labor helps enhance my bottom line. It may, but it is a very complex equation. That said, I find that writing custom software for enterprises is a heck of a lot safer than working for a software product company...and OSS has a lot to do with that situation in my opinion...and I liked working for product companies.
Here, allow me to help. Get a pad and write this down:
To Do List:
- Strive not to measure self worth by my supposed contribution to an anonymous online forum
- Go outside and meet an actual person (remember to wear sunscreen!)
- Kiss an actual (non-inflatable) girl
That last one might be setting the bar too high, but it's nice to have goals.
Seriously sparky, this is an informal exchange of ideas and views...not a contest. Unresolved anger issues?
Wow...I realize that we are on the slippery slope of losing any semblance of privacy, but I did not realize that gamers were headed toward a cliff.
Spyware to monitor your non-gaming behavior to better target advertising? Can you imagine the other uses for this information? The secondary market for this information may yield a revenue stream that eclipses their software license revenue...especially since this spyware will be, in some perverted sense, legitimate.
Count me out EA. This is one frog that is jumping out of the pot of water.
I would respond with a clever retort, but I need to head out of the office early so I can stop by the bank on the way home. I need a little extra time since I frequently have difficult with my ATM machine. I can never remember my dang PIN number. Friggin financial AIS systems! Grrrr.
I also started with BASIC...on a TRS-80 model 1 with a cassette tape drive. That first experience got my excited about programming...and I am still writing code (professionally) nearly 25 years later. That said, I think that the horse first left the barn when Apple stopped shipping HyperCard on Macs. BASIC? Sure, that was exciting when the computer's UI was also text-based, but once rich GUIs surfaced, you needed a GUI-based RAD environment to infuse the uninitiated with enthusiasm for programming.
Shipping HyperCard on every Mac was an inspiring and altruistic choice. The environment allowed nearly anyone who possessed at least a natural curiosity (including non-techie teachers) to develop a rich GUI-based application quickly. Sure, it was "card"-based and required a runtime engine, but the framework was essentially an early incarnation of Visual Basic...and shipped free on every Mac. Perhaps MS could have countered by including a low-end version of VB with Windows, but they did not...and now the cost of entry to develop a rich GUI-based application is either an extremely expensive toolset or mastery of a wide range of complex MVC-based frameworks and APIs.
How exactly are kids supposed to get excited about programming when any development that they can achieve practically seems not at all relevant to the software that they use day-to-day? The kids have seen the city - rich client-side GUIs, 3D first person shooters, rich web-based applications using Flash, AJAX, etc. - so how exactly are we going to get them to accept country mouse development tools...even if they were included in the OS? And seriously, I did not just read another poster's comment that suggested that PERL is the answer. Have any of you PERL guys ever even seen a woman...let alone kissed one?
So what's the solution? The web, of course...and it has been for years. Every PC and Mac DOES ship with development tools. They are called notepad and simpletext...and they are frequently the first tools that someone uses to create a simple website...and THAT experience is often good enough to motivate them to start the journey toward Friday nights alone. Sure, they're not exactly IntelliJ or Eclipse, but they may just be exactly what a beginner needs - absolute simplicity.
Okay, it's Friday evening...so I am off to write some code.
I love my TiVo. The software and data feed is amazing and blows the doors off of the cable DVRs that I have used. That said, I stopped recommending them to friends and family over a year ago. The continual erosion of flexibility and empowerment coupled with them pushing folks away from the lifetime subscription option and forcing folks to have a recurring subscription expense just sours my taste for their product. I dread the day when they remove my cherished "30 second skip ahead" function...but I bet it is coming.
I now tell non-techie folks to get a (nearly free) cable DVR and tell my tech geek friends to build a MythTV box. TiVo will never see another dime from me...which is too bad, because the cable card HDTV TiVo looked nice...but not if I am going to have pay a fortune to have the privilege of being an advertiser's bitch.
Man, the media has a love affair with Apple. First, Apple doesn't even represent this product as a convergence device. They make the UI large and legible from a distance and give you a toy 6 button remote, but don't even come close to saying that it is a media PC alternative...which it is not. It cannot display, record, or timeshift a TV signal. Wow...pics on my TV. My consumer DVD player plays DVDs, WMAs, MP3s, and displays a range of images for slideshows. My TiVo is a timeshifting PVR that networks wirelessly to my PC for MP3 audio, image slideshows, and other TiVo-enabled applications, which I can develop myself in Java.
An Apple low-end pseudo-media PC! Woot! Forgive me for feigning enthusiasm. Bash MS, but they have stepped to the plate with a media PC solution...or I can just build my own...or use the range of other consumer devices that I have mentioned above. Please, let's tone down the love fest until Apple actually starts to innovate in an area other than cute packaging. Until then...yawn.
Ahhh...MythTV...the dream. Alas, I must settle for reality - an actual working TiVo.
I wasn't sure if my TiVo's season pass was in place for BSG from last year so I just fired up a web browser and connected to it from my office to ensure that it will record, which is nice because I will be out this evening. BTW, for those who complained that BSG is broadcast on an evening on which people go out, I have two responses:
2) Non-geeks have TiVo....and we find those of you who watch television shows in a predetermined order to be cute.
I had lunch with three friends the other day and one of them mentioned a television program with which the rest of us were not familiar...and they responded, "you know, it's on after." We all looked at each other for a moment with apparent confusion until we realized that this tard still believed that television shows occur in a particular order. Yes, we laughed hard...and spent the rest of lunch making fun of him. Guess I fall into category (1) above after all.:-)
Many arguments here are compelling to stick with PCs: Open hardware, hardware mod flexibility, superior screen, blah, blah, blah...but, for me, it's the mouse.
I play FPS games only...and they ALL suck on consoles. For decent game play, you need a mouse for free look, a keyboard, and a desk. When consoles work that out, I may try again.
BTW, don't underestimate the value of a PC's flexibility for hardcore gamers. I play CoD on the PC and it has no headset support. No problem, I just run TeamSpeak or Vent in the background and I am set. Try doing that with a console. If a console game doesn't have headset support then you are done. That's it. End of story.
Many arguments here are compelling to stick with PCs: Open hardware, hardware mod flexibility, superior screen, blah, blah, blah...but, for me, it's the mouse.
I play FPS games only...and they ALL suck on consoles. For decent game play, you need a mouse for free look, a keyboard, and a desk. When consoles work that out, I may try again.
BTW, don't underestimate the value of a PC's flexibility for hardcore gamers. I play CoD on the PC and it has no headset support. No problem, I just run TeamSpeak or Vent in the background and I am set. Try doing that with a console. If a console game doesn't have headset support then you are done. That's it. End of story.
Slashdot Mirror
Gosh...I wonder why PS2 sales are down? Hmmm...let's see:
- dated technology...inferior to other available consoles...and latest PCs
- the company that sells it has been hyping its replacement for the last two years
I may need to consult NSA to decode this puzzle.
EXACTLY! I am constantly amazed at this supposed desire for a "closer shave". Shaving too closely can promote ingrown hairs...and Jesus, are we not men? Is a five O'clock shadow not acceptable at 5 O-friggin-clock?
I will admit that a two-blade Gillette Sensor razor delivers a superior shave to that provided by my old Bic disposables...and one that is less likely to cause nicks and facial aggravation, but damn...five blades? Give me a break. What are the first three supposed to do...scare the whiskers?
"Sweet! Three blades have passed boys! We're safe! Everybody come back out! DAMN! TWO MORE BLADES! RUN!!!!!"
I studied this topic for work this year and learned that the current data center rule of thumb is that for every watt that you spend powering a server, you must spend another watt on air conditioning...and it gets worse.
Now, with servers getting smaller (e.g., blades) and CPUs evolving to multi-core, heat and power usage density is increasing dramatically within the same floor space...and cooling it effectively ranges between difficult and nearly impossible...without ripping everything out and starting over...which few can afford to do. Effective cooling now requires knowledge of interior meteorology (to butcher a term). Data centers now end up with weather patterns...with cold zones, hot zones, wind, plague, pestilence...and it gets worse every day.
According to a study conducted last year by AFCOM (http://www.afcom.com ), a leading association for data center professionals, data center managers reported a 10% or more increase in power requirements during the previous year, with most expecting that number to continue to rise at a similar rate for the foreseeable future. As a result, 41% of those surveyed stated that the will be forced to upgrade their power and cooling systems within the next 36 months.
What to do? Well...first off, exploit the hardware that you have. Google VMware...and start using those spare cycles for more virtual platforms. Secondly, stop cramming everything into small spaces...learn to expand gracefully. Otherwise, that rule of thumb is going to fail...and we'll end up spending two-thirds of our power dollar on A/C...and still end up frying hardware. Lastly, how about demanding power usage metrics from vendors when specing out servers? Power supplies installed in many servers frequently run at 65% efficiency. The result is an enormous amount of excess power used that simply generates heat, which must then be removed. Unfortunately, the industry has not yet established benchmarks for performance-per-watt expended. Start demanding that info. You'll get blank stares and cryptic answers, but let them know that it matters, That electricity doesn't come out of the wall folks...it comes from burning coal, fossil fuels, hydro, and nuclear power. We either need to get over our fear of nuclear power and our distaste for dams...or start demanding better performance.
$0.02
I don't know how you listen to the radio. The commercials really grate at my nerves
:-)
24 presets...with 2 NPR stations & CSpan radio. Commercial airs and I am gone...
I may be in the minority here, but I do not own an iPod...nor do I buy music online. In fact, this entire DRM movement (and associated legal wrangling) have soured me to purchasing music of any sort.
I have a pile of MP3s ripped from CDs that I currently own, but find that I no longer even purchase CDs. I was formerly a HUGE fan of taking my music on the go...and am quite a tech gadget guy...but the RIAA and DRM in general have driven me away. I find that I just listen to the radio more now. Perhaps I am in the minority. I not only do not feel compelled to buy an iPod, their popularity and supposed status turns me off. I have an old SanDisk MP3 player that takes AAA batteries that I use in the gym...and it is often tuned to an FM station.
This intellectual property fight and the corresponding limitations imposed on hardware for audio and video (crippled HDTV anyone?) have motivated me to spend my discretionary dollars elsewhere. My apologies to U2 and Metallica. They'll just have to settle for one less solid gold toilet.
Bold claim...and vague since you say that it "benefits the economy", but you do not qualify that statement with whose economy it benefits.
;-)
How about Oracle, Microsoft, and a legion of other US-based commercial product vendors who are losing sales due to OSS? The net effect may be positive for the world, but are you positive that the net effect is also positive for the US? How about vastly reducing the cost for folks around the world (private citizens and corporations) to enter and compete in the software development field. Does that increased competition benefit the US? Clearly, there are other factors at play that also motivate globalization, but you make a pretty bold claim with no supporting facts.
I do not see how anyone can make a snap judgment on this one either way. It's not unlike the internet. Does it benefit society? Sure...in numerous ways. Does it harm it? Well, perhaps, with increasing estimates of online addiction, porn addiction, and estimates of American office workers spending 20% of their work day (1.86 hours) surfing the web for non-work-related functions.
These equations are complex...and judging their net effect is not trivial. On the other hand, judging their affect for company X is far easier to determine...especially if company X sells an application server or an RDBMS.
I'm not sure that I agree. OSS has certainly changed the economic landscape...at least for developers...and, by extension, the people that we serve.
Many commercial products (and frameworks) have gone belly up in the face of OSS competition...while others have lost market share...and the future continues to look rough for folks who make their living selling development tools, libraries, and frameworks. It's tough to compete with legions of altruistic neckbeards.
Hey...how many folks here still use JBuilder, Cafe, PowerJ, CodeWarrior or one of the many other Java IDEs that dominated 5 or 6 years ago? I fight an uphill battle to buy IntelliJ for each one of my projects...and Eclipse makes it tougher everyday. My last project is currently undergoing a migration from WebLogic to JBoss...and my current project is just now adopting OSS Jasper Reports...unlike my last project, which paid over 20k for licenses for a reporting framework. Yes, Oracle may serve most large sites, but Postgres, MySQL, and others are most likely affecting their bottom line. We are certainly using them whenever we can.
It's not clear to me how the OSS movement affects the economy. It certainly does, I'm just not sure what the net effect is. It certainly hurts some people while befitting others...but, as a developer, I find it hard to believe that legions of folks giving away their labor helps enhance my bottom line. It may, but it is a very complex equation. That said, I find that writing custom software for enterprises is a heck of a lot safer than working for a software product company...and OSS has a lot to do with that situation in my opinion...and I liked working for product companies.
Here, allow me to help. Get a pad and write this down:
That last one might be setting the bar too high, but it's nice to have goals.
Seriously sparky, this is an informal exchange of ideas and views...not a contest. Unresolved anger issues?
Wow...I realize that we are on the slippery slope of losing any semblance of privacy, but I did not realize that gamers were headed toward a cliff.
Spyware to monitor your non-gaming behavior to better target advertising? Can you imagine the other uses for this information? The secondary market for this information may yield a revenue stream that eclipses their software license revenue...especially since this spyware will be, in some perverted sense, legitimate.
Count me out EA. This is one frog that is jumping out of the pot of water.
"The virus of Troy wooden horse type"
Thank god. I had feared that it might be a "subterranean tree water absorption tendril type kit." Whew.
I suspect that someone was potty trained with a cattle prod.
I would respond with a clever retort, but I need to head out of the office early so I can stop by the bank on the way home. I need a little extra time since I frequently have difficult with my ATM machine. I can never remember my dang PIN number. Friggin financial AIS systems! Grrrr.
I also started with BASIC...on a TRS-80 model 1 with a cassette tape drive. That first experience got my excited about programming...and I am still writing code (professionally) nearly 25 years later. That said, I think that the horse first left the barn when Apple stopped shipping HyperCard on Macs. BASIC? Sure, that was exciting when the computer's UI was also text-based, but once rich GUIs surfaced, you needed a GUI-based RAD environment to infuse the uninitiated with enthusiasm for programming.
Shipping HyperCard on every Mac was an inspiring and altruistic choice. The environment allowed nearly anyone who possessed at least a natural curiosity (including non-techie teachers) to develop a rich GUI-based application quickly. Sure, it was "card"-based and required a runtime engine, but the framework was essentially an early incarnation of Visual Basic...and shipped free on every Mac. Perhaps MS could have countered by including a low-end version of VB with Windows, but they did not...and now the cost of entry to develop a rich GUI-based application is either an extremely expensive toolset or mastery of a wide range of complex MVC-based frameworks and APIs.
How exactly are kids supposed to get excited about programming when any development that they can achieve practically seems not at all relevant to the software that they use day-to-day? The kids have seen the city - rich client-side GUIs, 3D first person shooters, rich web-based applications using Flash, AJAX, etc. - so how exactly are we going to get them to accept country mouse development tools...even if they were included in the OS? And seriously, I did not just read another poster's comment that suggested that PERL is the answer. Have any of you PERL guys ever even seen a woman...let alone kissed one?
So what's the solution? The web, of course...and it has been for years. Every PC and Mac DOES ship with development tools. They are called notepad and simpletext...and they are frequently the first tools that someone uses to create a simple website...and THAT experience is often good enough to motivate them to start the journey toward Friday nights alone. Sure, they're not exactly IntelliJ or Eclipse, but they may just be exactly what a beginner needs - absolute simplicity.
Okay, it's Friday evening...so I am off to write some code.
...now...but will hit the stores and then be as hip as that mounted dancing fish.
I love my TiVo. The software and data feed is amazing and blows the doors off of the cable DVRs that I have used. That said, I stopped recommending them to friends and family over a year ago. The continual erosion of flexibility and empowerment coupled with them pushing folks away from the lifetime subscription option and forcing folks to have a recurring subscription expense just sours my taste for their product. I dread the day when they remove my cherished "30 second skip ahead" function...but I bet it is coming.
I now tell non-techie folks to get a (nearly free) cable DVR and tell my tech geek friends to build a MythTV box. TiVo will never see another dime from me...which is too bad, because the cable card HDTV TiVo looked nice...but not if I am going to have pay a fortune to have the privilege of being an advertiser's bitch.
Man, the media has a love affair with Apple. First, Apple doesn't even represent this product as a convergence device. They make the UI large and legible from a distance and give you a toy 6 button remote, but don't even come close to saying that it is a media PC alternative...which it is not. It cannot display, record, or timeshift a TV signal. Wow...pics on my TV. My consumer DVD player plays DVDs, WMAs, MP3s, and displays a range of images for slideshows. My TiVo is a timeshifting PVR that networks wirelessly to my PC for MP3 audio, image slideshows, and other TiVo-enabled applications, which I can develop myself in Java.
An Apple low-end pseudo-media PC! Woot! Forgive me for feigning enthusiasm. Bash MS, but they have stepped to the plate with a media PC solution...or I can just build my own...or use the range of other consumer devices that I have mentioned above. Please, let's tone down the love fest until Apple actually starts to innovate in an area other than cute packaging. Until then...yawn.
LOL
Ahhh...MythTV...the dream. Alas, I must settle for reality - an actual working TiVo.
." We all looked at each other for a moment with apparent confusion until we realized that this tard still believed that television shows occur in a particular order. Yes, we laughed hard...and spent the rest of lunch making fun of him. Guess I fall into category (1) above after all. :-)
I wasn't sure if my TiVo's season pass was in place for BSG from last year so I just fired up a web browser and connected to it from my office to ensure that it will record, which is nice because I will be out this evening. BTW, for those who complained that BSG is broadcast on an evening on which people go out, I have two responses:
1) Please...geeks? Out? Friday night? Puhleeease. You're killin me.
2) Non-geeks have TiVo....and we find those of you who watch television shows in a predetermined order to be cute.
I had lunch with three friends the other day and one of them mentioned a television program with which the rest of us were not familiar...and they responded, "you know, it's on after
Many arguments here are compelling to stick with PCs: Open hardware, hardware mod flexibility, superior screen, blah, blah, blah...but, for me, it's the mouse.
I play FPS games only...and they ALL suck on consoles. For decent game play, you need a mouse for free look, a keyboard, and a desk. When consoles work that out, I may try again.
BTW, don't underestimate the value of a PC's flexibility for hardcore gamers. I play CoD on the PC and it has no headset support. No problem, I just run TeamSpeak or Vent in the background and I am set. Try doing that with a console. If a console game doesn't have headset support then you are done. That's it. End of story.
Many arguments here are compelling to stick with PCs: Open hardware, hardware mod flexibility, superior screen, blah, blah, blah...but, for me, it's the mouse. I play FPS games only...and they ALL suck on consoles. For decent game play, you need a mouse for free look, a keyboard, and a desk. When consoles work that out, I may try again. BTW, don't underestimate the value of a PC's flexibility for hardcore gamers. I play CoD on the PC and it has no headset support. No problem, I just run TeamSpeak or Vent in the background and I am set. Try doing that with a console. If a console game doesn't have headset support then you are done. That's it. End of story.