Dude... Where have you been...? Everyone does this. Had strange nearly random issues with a pair of laptops used here at work, and one company after another blamed issues on 'the other guy'. "Oh no, our parts couldn't possibly cause an issue like that, only X can do that." The OEM blamed external device companies, they blamed the equipment manufacturer (of the device they link to), who in turn blamed the OEM...
Few companies ever want to take the blame for messes caused by their own products...
AMD is already building a new fab because they have an increase in demand, but even without that they already outsource the low end of their CPU line to other companies with fab facilities... Their is almost no reason they couldn't increase production by simply offloading more of their low end CPU's to other fab companies...
We can also look at things differently and see that Apple is 5% of the total PC market & AMD makes between 20-30% of the chips for said market... HP and Dell both have larger portions of the total PC market than Apple and both are supplied chips by AMD these days. AMD's current production far outstrips Apples demand for CPU's. AMD could probably pick up all production of CPU's and get away with it while only hurting output to the DIY market (which btw is rumored to be 3-5% of the total market similar to Apples share).
First let me describe the conditions were I work (so you can compare your conditions to mine): K-8 Elementary/Middle School ~500 students ~60 staff 1 20 computer, computer lab (that space doesn't allow for more systems) 1 fifth grade combined computer lab (as opposed to having PC's in each class), with 12 PC's A minimum of 3 PC's per class (& as many as 8) 12 general teacher use laptops 1 Mobile Lab (power and wireless routing with 25 student laptops) 6 roaming smartboards 3 mobile presentation systems (projector, PC, & overhead in a cart) 50 network printers (HP 1300 series primarily) 1 per room 1 server for file storage (we have a contracted remote hosting for PDC/SDC, don't ask why) which will become 2 servers this summer (the spiffy new Proliant ML350 is already sitting in my office) Roughly 300 systems in total
My school employees me and only me to maintain this mess... It all became spaghetti systems/networks/cables over the last 5 years as they have changed technology plans constantly during that time. Their new plan involves converting the entire building to wireless over the next couple of years. Stuff breaks every day. This morning has been repeated instances of our dedicated fiber connect dropping us (& killing our link to that remote PDC/SDC for our domain as well as internet and email).
If your school is anything like the one I work for. I'd suggest doing what I am to try to get an assistant here. I start by explaining that nothing on the existing network conforms to any modern standards. Software is out of date, considerably, to the point of no longer being supported (such as win 98, old versions of Accelerated Reader, & Compass Learning). I also factored in how much time is spent handling old tasks as opposed to implementing new concepts the school had decided to go with.
So far I've had mixed success. It's likely I'll get help from interns at a local technical college for right now. And they have allowed my plan of phasing out the win 98 boxen for edubuntu linux boxen (runs on the same hardware, but is way more modern than win 98)...
Some schools do understand the need and will pay for it... I make ~50k/year as a network admin at a school... Which in my area ~50k/year is damn good...
Also the 100k figure the guy above quoted is cost to the school including benefits and federal compensation (figuring they are required there to pay into SS and unemployment funds). I probably cost my school close to 100k/year when it's all taken into account...
This key effects both HD-DVD & BlueRay... So were done unless they aren't completely stupid and manage to use another hex key... Then we start from scratch and get a new hex key, repeating the cycle ad infinitum.
Having worked for them at one point, I can give you something of an insiders perspective on why they have failed and continue to fail...
Multiple stores in the same area, that couldn't support the excess.
They choose to mimic Best Buy and Walmart (the two main companies they consider their rivals), rather than going their own path.
They often refused to buy into new technologies until someone else made that area profitable...
Complete and utter lack of coherent management... Policy changed from manager to manager... Even within the same store.
Deciding to 'empower' sales associates to help customers and then deciding randomly who had actually been able to use their new 'power' to help customers... So to placate a customer in one case we would repair an item and they would tell us we had done well. A similiar case within the next few days would get us reamed for being dumb...
Lastly a constant change of policy that was cyclical... Having worked for them over 5 years (while going to college) I saw policies go and then come back again... Some came back through 3 times within 5 years... It's awfully hard at a certain point to say that we did 'X' in response to 'Y', when in a week, a month, a quarter... Whatever, it would change back to how it was earlier...
Civilization is good about teaching some points of history... More so in the versions that support scenarios... Though I remember a great game from 5 or so years ago that was a scaled down version of Civ designed around the civil war that did a great job of showing you what happened in all aspects because it kept you up to date on the political side while making you work the resources (human and mechanical). Enemy moves were even based on historical reality, so if you knew the dates and positions of troops you had a chance to literally recreate the war. The game however would get wise to this eventually and adapt using an approximation of real military commander tactics in that era.
So I think it is possible to teach history with gaming. It's just all about presentation.
Well unfortunately that is a subjective and faulty method of doing more than making educated guesses...
Not that this whole thing is incredibly subjective anyways ('measure' 'intelligence' for me), but you are relying on unscientific methods to conduct your 'survey' and concluding based on these biased methods (that you created) that your results are the only results possible. Evidence otherwise is rejected as 'faulty' or 'exceptions'. Btw something which has 'exceptions' doesn't make 'fact' status .
Skinny or fat has nothing to do with intelligence... Heck for some people no amount of working out will ever make them skinny.
My personal example would be that as a kid I was into gymnastics and swimming. I would have still been considered to have 'childhood obesity' as they 'medically' term it now... Even today I practice martial arts and weight lift (free weights) and I weigh around 300... & before you start I don't eat an abnormal amount of food either...
I was around back then... However I was in high school when Doom came out and while I thought it was good, I never thought it was as incredible as people make it out to be now... Why? Mostly because I had no access to it multi-player and that was key to why so many people loved it...
I'd played Wolfenstein before it and really the games aren't that different (though Doom was 2.5D and Wolf wasn't). Later titles like Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D were much bigger for me than Doom ever was... And Quake is still the first game I can remember trying to play online on the first real ISP (non-AOL, GENIE, Compuserve, etc network) with a 9600 baud modem... All hail the 1000 ms ping time...
While I know I'm awfully late making a reply to this...
I think people have decided they are much to unintelligent when it comes to computers to do either form of editing. Heck boxes with pictures and directions are to hard for them....
I say that from experience... Users on the network I manage can't 'find the internet' if their isn't a big giant 'E' on the desktop for them. They don't understand email, they just 'click on that outlook thingie'. I could go on and on... But frankly they have decided they aren't smart enough to learn anything about a system or even follow (very) simple rules.
Clicking 'start' -> 'all programs' -> 'internet explorer' was to hard, so it had to go to the desktop... How to unpause a printer was to hard, so even though they regularly manage to pause the printer they can't undo it... Some of them were moved to linux (to replace old win 98 installs). Firefox through them for a loop. Most can't figure out how to print (made harder by multiple printers in some rooms admittedly). Average tasks now have them calling me... Every time I show them how to do it they decide they can't remember it... And the cycle continues... A couple wanted to be able to install new software so I showed them Synaptic and they refuse to believe me that they can do it themselves...
They are all really smart people when it comes to things other than computers (though I still think one comes in whacked on drugs of some sort with all the talk about 'spiritual-wholeness' and such).
Actually taking that last part ("the car manufacturer deciding when and where you can drive your car") a bit farther sounds a lot like the RIAA:
Ford (pure example now) decides that their trucks can no longer be used offroad (say they get some bad press for rollovers or something), they enforce it by making their trucks unable to go offroad (limiter that detects something other than 'road material' under the truck). The sales of new Ford trucks plummets after the announcement (some people still buy them because they like Ford's, but anyone else wanting to use their truck as before decides to go elsewhere or use previous ford trucks before the limiter). Ford decides this loss of sales is due to 'evil consumers' who feel newer cars aren't needed and complains to the government that they can't do business anymore if this continues and stresses the lost jobs, money, and (most directly) pay offs (sorry, 'contributions') to campaigns. In turn government passes a law allowing Ford (as well as other companies, because it's easier to give power to every similar group than make it specific) to 'remove' trucks of their own making from the market that are deemed 'unsafe'. Now Ford goes out and 'busts' people by finding them bypassing the limiters and using older trucks and fines them. Once found they are given legal notice of their 'wrong doing' and taken to court by Ford to get the truck back and then to charge the offender with 'damages'. Of course in their efforts to find off-roading Ford owners they accidently get a few Dodge, Chevy, GMC, Nissan, etc owners. But the net effect is considerably more people made into 'examples' every day and even worse public opinion of Ford from past owners.
ATI has been offloading codec work (for at least certain codecs) to the graphics card since the 9XXX series. H.264, for instance, is offered through a codec interface that is 'accelerated' by the card on X19XX series cards... I'd assume it's not done with dedicated hardware, but by offloading the work of processing to the cards GPU.
Because of a project to introduce linux boxes to replace old windows 98 boxes where I work I've invested quite a bit of time into research of seamless virtualization (basically what you talk about with parallels 'Coherence' feature) under linux. It actually works really well and makes a great visual presentation to non-tech people.
One of my friends has a wife who is Chinese and she will complain (if you let her) on how deplorable children are becoming in China because the government has made it easier on them...
I'd argue that where you want to be is in a nation between 'modern' and 'pre-industrial', somewhere in there is the sweet spot for child-parent relations...
You have obviously never meet my parents... My mom can't manage to use a remote to save her life and both think that cartoons are for kids... Not anyone who has to deal with the 'real world'...
As a GURPS fan myself I'll agree with most of that... I'd also love to see more point based rather than level based CRPG's... Why do game designers only seem to use D&D as a model...? I can think of a few rare examples of CRPG's that don't follow the D&D model, but most have had little or no marketing and never made a dent in the general CRPG population.
The same point based system even works in MMO's, my favorite MUX of all time used a point based development system to make a world of choices for players and facilitate actual role playing/story telling...
I did have a good idea once for a game where you start out having just learned of your 'special abilities' (think 'super powers' or even 'the force' if you want), So you can do cool things.... However your a bit player in a much larger much more complex world and even your new powers may not be enough to keep you from falling to the 'bad guys' who may not even really be so 'bad'... It used a point system to let you invest in new skills or ways of using your abilities to customize your character, but you never really became 'more powerful'... You started out being a badass and you end being a badass power-wise, it's the character who truly develops during the game...
Some schools do understand how to use computers. I know as I am the Network Admin for a charter school. Their are some wonderful things that can help kids learn and assist in educating kids that can only be done with a PC.
Did you read the story yesterday on Slashdot about NASA's former World Wind project that is now Open Source? It would be incredibly useful in teaching kids about weather, geography, and topology. And I mentioned it to the technology director (who is also the head of middle school curriculum) and he's interested in using it.
That's not alone, we run software to help teach kids comprehensive reading and math skills. Yet more software to assist kids in learning a huge variety of topics. Internet access to provide kids other learning options, such as every day's morning announcements include a trivia question about a person, place, or thing of importance the kids can search for information on which teaches kids how to find their own answers. Then we add in 'rich media experiences' including interactive white boards to make kids more interested in the lessons being taught, video of important events and subjects from just about any source, Music arrangement and learning software, and just about anything else that falls under that label.
Very little time is spent teaching kids word... In fact I can't think of any teacher here who actually teachers how to use word, and I know they don't teach power point. Even if Power Point reminds me of my own experiences in school learning hypercard in high school. With office work and retail becoming the big 2 job areas locally the more computer skills you have the better.
I'd love to have some for a project I'm working on for the charter school I work at. A lot of the kids I deal with can be just as poor as people in Africa (only eat because they get free meals at school, no running water at home, no heat in their houses during winter, their house itself is barely more than a shack as it doesn't even have insulation and is falling apart, etc). This is in the 4th largest city in Pennsylvania, not a village in Africa... Yet conditions are hardly better than places these would go. However the skills the kids could learn with these have the ability to make their futures better... Who wouldn't hire an smart inner city coder for the same cost as an Indian coder? However from my email I sent to the project they say they have no interest in bettering or own youth, so I doubt that would ever happen...
However it is a good comparison in some cases. Mostly when averaged and compared with quality of service between areas.
Btw I'd take 10 Mbit for ~40 euros in US dollars... I pay $50 US for 5 Mbit right now and the second option here is 2 Mbit for $30, which isn't any better.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude... Where have you been...? Everyone does this. Had strange nearly random issues with a pair of laptops used here at work, and one company after another blamed issues on 'the other guy'. "Oh no, our parts couldn't possibly cause an issue like that, only X can do that." The OEM blamed external device companies, they blamed the equipment manufacturer (of the device they link to), who in turn blamed the OEM...
Few companies ever want to take the blame for messes caused by their own products...
The name of my cable company is 'Cablevision', but the one I go through is a division of TW Cable...
If I had access to & knowledge of your 'Cablevision' I'd probably think something similar... I'd also probably be much happier...
I'll keep my comment short...
AMD is already building a new fab because they have an increase in demand, but even without that they already outsource the low end of their CPU line to other companies with fab facilities... Their is almost no reason they couldn't increase production by simply offloading more of their low end CPU's to other fab companies...
We can also look at things differently and see that Apple is 5% of the total PC market & AMD makes between 20-30% of the chips for said market... HP and Dell both have larger portions of the total PC market than Apple and both are supplied chips by AMD these days. AMD's current production far outstrips Apples demand for CPU's. AMD could probably pick up all production of CPU's and get away with it while only hurting output to the DIY market (which btw is rumored to be 3-5% of the total market similar to Apples share).
First let me describe the conditions were I work (so you can compare your conditions to mine):
K-8 Elementary/Middle School
~500 students
~60 staff
1 20 computer, computer lab (that space doesn't allow for more systems)
1 fifth grade combined computer lab (as opposed to having PC's in each class), with 12 PC's
A minimum of 3 PC's per class (& as many as 8)
12 general teacher use laptops
1 Mobile Lab (power and wireless routing with 25 student laptops)
6 roaming smartboards
3 mobile presentation systems (projector, PC, & overhead in a cart)
50 network printers (HP 1300 series primarily) 1 per room
1 server for file storage (we have a contracted remote hosting for PDC/SDC, don't ask why) which will become 2 servers this summer (the spiffy new Proliant ML350 is already sitting in my office)
Roughly 300 systems in total
My school employees me and only me to maintain this mess... It all became spaghetti systems/networks/cables over the last 5 years as they have changed technology plans constantly during that time. Their new plan involves converting the entire building to wireless over the next couple of years. Stuff breaks every day. This morning has been repeated instances of our dedicated fiber connect dropping us (& killing our link to that remote PDC/SDC for our domain as well as internet and email).
If your school is anything like the one I work for. I'd suggest doing what I am to try to get an assistant here. I start by explaining that nothing on the existing network conforms to any modern standards. Software is out of date, considerably, to the point of no longer being supported (such as win 98, old versions of Accelerated Reader, & Compass Learning). I also factored in how much time is spent handling old tasks as opposed to implementing new concepts the school had decided to go with.
So far I've had mixed success. It's likely I'll get help from interns at a local technical college for right now. And they have allowed my plan of phasing out the win 98 boxen for edubuntu linux boxen (runs on the same hardware, but is way more modern than win 98)...
Some schools do understand the need and will pay for it... I make ~50k/year as a network admin at a school... Which in my area ~50k/year is damn good...
Also the 100k figure the guy above quoted is cost to the school including benefits and federal compensation (figuring they are required there to pay into SS and unemployment funds). I probably cost my school close to 100k/year when it's all taken into account...
This key effects both HD-DVD & BlueRay... So were done unless they aren't completely stupid and manage to use another hex key... Then we start from scratch and get a new hex key, repeating the cycle ad infinitum.
I don't know about you, but normally my experiences are closer to 50 minutes than 5...
Having worked for them at one point, I can give you something of an insiders perspective on why they have failed and continue to fail...
Multiple stores in the same area, that couldn't support the excess.
They choose to mimic Best Buy and Walmart (the two main companies they consider their rivals), rather than going their own path.
They often refused to buy into new technologies until someone else made that area profitable...
Complete and utter lack of coherent management... Policy changed from manager to manager... Even within the same store.
Deciding to 'empower' sales associates to help customers and then deciding randomly who had actually been able to use their new 'power' to help customers... So to placate a customer in one case we would repair an item and they would tell us we had done well. A similiar case within the next few days would get us reamed for being dumb...
Lastly a constant change of policy that was cyclical... Having worked for them over 5 years (while going to college) I saw policies go and then come back again... Some came back through 3 times within 5 years... It's awfully hard at a certain point to say that we did 'X' in response to 'Y', when in a week, a month, a quarter... Whatever, it would change back to how it was earlier...
Civilization is good about teaching some points of history... More so in the versions that support scenarios... Though I remember a great game from 5 or so years ago that was a scaled down version of Civ designed around the civil war that did a great job of showing you what happened in all aspects because it kept you up to date on the political side while making you work the resources (human and mechanical). Enemy moves were even based on historical reality, so if you knew the dates and positions of troops you had a chance to literally recreate the war. The game however would get wise to this eventually and adapt using an approximation of real military commander tactics in that era.
So I think it is possible to teach history with gaming. It's just all about presentation.
Sigh... 'Basic Observation', huh?
Well unfortunately that is a subjective and faulty method of doing more than making educated guesses...
Not that this whole thing is incredibly subjective anyways ('measure' 'intelligence' for me), but you are relying on unscientific methods to conduct your 'survey' and concluding based on these biased methods (that you created) that your results are the only results possible. Evidence otherwise is rejected as 'faulty' or 'exceptions'. Btw something which has 'exceptions' doesn't make 'fact' status .
No but stereotyping is a sure way to end up with more of your stereotype as people will live down to your expectations...
Skinny or fat has nothing to do with intelligence... Heck for some people no amount of working out will ever make them skinny.
My personal example would be that as a kid I was into gymnastics and swimming. I would have still been considered to have 'childhood obesity' as they 'medically' term it now... Even today I practice martial arts and weight lift (free weights) and I weigh around 300... & before you start I don't eat an abnormal amount of food either...
I call BS on 'obesity' = 'dumb'.
I say the same thing about System Shock & System Shock 2...
I was around back then... However I was in high school when Doom came out and while I thought it was good, I never thought it was as incredible as people make it out to be now... Why? Mostly because I had no access to it multi-player and that was key to why so many people loved it...
I'd played Wolfenstein before it and really the games aren't that different (though Doom was 2.5D and Wolf wasn't). Later titles like Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D were much bigger for me than Doom ever was... And Quake is still the first game I can remember trying to play online on the first real ISP (non-AOL, GENIE, Compuserve, etc network) with a 9600 baud modem... All hail the 1000 ms ping time...
While I know I'm awfully late making a reply to this...
I think people have decided they are much to unintelligent when it comes to computers to do either form of editing. Heck boxes with pictures and directions are to hard for them....
I say that from experience... Users on the network I manage can't 'find the internet' if their isn't a big giant 'E' on the desktop for them. They don't understand email, they just 'click on that outlook thingie'. I could go on and on... But frankly they have decided they aren't smart enough to learn anything about a system or even follow (very) simple rules.
Clicking 'start' -> 'all programs' -> 'internet explorer' was to hard, so it had to go to the desktop... How to unpause a printer was to hard, so even though they regularly manage to pause the printer they can't undo it... Some of them were moved to linux (to replace old win 98 installs). Firefox through them for a loop. Most can't figure out how to print (made harder by multiple printers in some rooms admittedly). Average tasks now have them calling me... Every time I show them how to do it they decide they can't remember it... And the cycle continues... A couple wanted to be able to install new software so I showed them Synaptic and they refuse to believe me that they can do it themselves...
They are all really smart people when it comes to things other than computers (though I still think one comes in whacked on drugs of some sort with all the talk about 'spiritual-wholeness' and such).
Neither Nvidia or ATI have open drivers currently, so I don't see your point... Whose graphics cards are you going to use? Intel's?
Actually taking that last part ("the car manufacturer deciding when and where you can drive your car") a bit farther sounds a lot like the RIAA:
Ford (pure example now) decides that their trucks can no longer be used offroad (say they get some bad press for rollovers or something), they enforce it by making their trucks unable to go offroad (limiter that detects something other than 'road material' under the truck). The sales of new Ford trucks plummets after the announcement (some people still buy them because they like Ford's, but anyone else wanting to use their truck as before decides to go elsewhere or use previous ford trucks before the limiter). Ford decides this loss of sales is due to 'evil consumers' who feel newer cars aren't needed and complains to the government that they can't do business anymore if this continues and stresses the lost jobs, money, and (most directly) pay offs (sorry, 'contributions') to campaigns. In turn government passes a law allowing Ford (as well as other companies, because it's easier to give power to every similar group than make it specific) to 'remove' trucks of their own making from the market that are deemed 'unsafe'. Now Ford goes out and 'busts' people by finding them bypassing the limiters and using older trucks and fines them. Once found they are given legal notice of their 'wrong doing' and taken to court by Ford to get the truck back and then to charge the offender with 'damages'. Of course in their efforts to find off-roading Ford owners they accidently get a few Dodge, Chevy, GMC, Nissan, etc owners. But the net effect is considerably more people made into 'examples' every day and even worse public opinion of Ford from past owners.
ATI has been offloading codec work (for at least certain codecs) to the graphics card since the 9XXX series. H.264, for instance, is offered through a codec interface that is 'accelerated' by the card on X19XX series cards... I'd assume it's not done with dedicated hardware, but by offloading the work of processing to the cards GPU.
Because of a project to introduce linux boxes to replace old windows 98 boxes where I work I've invested quite a bit of time into research of seamless virtualization (basically what you talk about with parallels 'Coherence' feature) under linux. It actually works really well and makes a great visual presentation to non-tech people.
One of my friends has a wife who is Chinese and she will complain (if you let her) on how deplorable children are becoming in China because the government has made it easier on them...
I'd argue that where you want to be is in a nation between 'modern' and 'pre-industrial', somewhere in there is the sweet spot for child-parent relations...
You have obviously never meet my parents... My mom can't manage to use a remote to save her life and both think that cartoons are for kids... Not anyone who has to deal with the 'real world'...
As a GURPS fan myself I'll agree with most of that... I'd also love to see more point based rather than level based CRPG's... Why do game designers only seem to use D&D as a model...? I can think of a few rare examples of CRPG's that don't follow the D&D model, but most have had little or no marketing and never made a dent in the general CRPG population.
The same point based system even works in MMO's, my favorite MUX of all time used a point based development system to make a world of choices for players and facilitate actual role playing/story telling...
I did have a good idea once for a game where you start out having just learned of your 'special abilities' (think 'super powers' or even 'the force' if you want), So you can do cool things.... However your a bit player in a much larger much more complex world and even your new powers may not be enough to keep you from falling to the 'bad guys' who may not even really be so 'bad'... It used a point system to let you invest in new skills or ways of using your abilities to customize your character, but you never really became 'more powerful'... You started out being a badass and you end being a badass power-wise, it's the character who truly develops during the game...
Some schools do understand how to use computers. I know as I am the Network Admin for a charter school. Their are some wonderful things that can help kids learn and assist in educating kids that can only be done with a PC.
Did you read the story yesterday on Slashdot about NASA's former World Wind project that is now Open Source? It would be incredibly useful in teaching kids about weather, geography, and topology. And I mentioned it to the technology director (who is also the head of middle school curriculum) and he's interested in using it.
That's not alone, we run software to help teach kids comprehensive reading and math skills. Yet more software to assist kids in learning a huge variety of topics. Internet access to provide kids other learning options, such as every day's morning announcements include a trivia question about a person, place, or thing of importance the kids can search for information on which teaches kids how to find their own answers. Then we add in 'rich media experiences' including interactive white boards to make kids more interested in the lessons being taught, video of important events and subjects from just about any source, Music arrangement and learning software, and just about anything else that falls under that label.
Very little time is spent teaching kids word... In fact I can't think of any teacher here who actually teachers how to use word, and I know they don't teach power point. Even if Power Point reminds me of my own experiences in school learning hypercard in high school. With office work and retail becoming the big 2 job areas locally the more computer skills you have the better.
I'd love to have some for a project I'm working on for the charter school I work at. A lot of the kids I deal with can be just as poor as people in Africa (only eat because they get free meals at school, no running water at home, no heat in their houses during winter, their house itself is barely more than a shack as it doesn't even have insulation and is falling apart, etc). This is in the 4th largest city in Pennsylvania, not a village in Africa... Yet conditions are hardly better than places these would go. However the skills the kids could learn with these have the ability to make their futures better... Who wouldn't hire an smart inner city coder for the same cost as an Indian coder? However from my email I sent to the project they say they have no interest in bettering or own youth, so I doubt that would ever happen...
However it is a good comparison in some cases. Mostly when averaged and compared with quality of service between areas.
Btw I'd take 10 Mbit for ~40 euros in US dollars... I pay $50 US for 5 Mbit right now and the second option here is 2 Mbit for $30, which isn't any better.