I'm guessing only front-facing web servers get constantly regular security patches. The rest might not get rebooted or patched at all if they replace the servers frequently enough (2-3 years). We are talking Linux servers here.
With that many servers, I'd tie the naming scheme to rack location. IP addressing would go in order along those racks.
In addition to this, Google runs DC power supplies, with a low-voltage on board battery as opposed to large rack UPS. I've heard they have some innovative tricks for server room cooling as well, but I've never seen confirmation of exactly what they're doing. But Google goes to great lengths to cut down data center power usage.
Except in the areas that putting data together enables humans to do more with the data.
And Google has been pretty good about trying to make data more accessible to everyone on the planet. Again, not very evil.
Unless you refer only to your private data, and again Google is one of the rare companies that doesn't have private data out to anyone. AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. do hand your private data out to other people. When Google makes inroads into their markets, they're actually taking market share away from companies who do try to lock you into proprietary systems and sell your data.
You say the benefits only go one way, but aren't the users receiving more and more free services?
If you don't like the trade-off of seeing ads for those free services, you don't use them. How is this arrangement deceptive or evil? Just because they're big doesn't mean they're some nasty conspiracy.
So you should refuse to donate money to Child's Play and the EFF because people who are still actively trying to sell games didn't end up giving away their games 100% for free to everyone?
Indie developers need to eat. And never was it promised they'd give away their games for free. A few of the developers have said they'd open source their code, and they honored that promise.
They sued Tom Tom for merely using a Linux kernel that included FAT32 support. So basically, everything on the planet that ships with Linux could be sued for the same criteria. Someone needs to stand up to these lawsuits.
I haven't used it personally since Ubuntu 9.04, but with every single release I see complaints of major components broken on release. The 8.04 LTS release was especially bad.
Sound was broken on release, it shipped with a buggy beta build of Firefox as the default, and a kernel bug could brick Intel gigabit NICs due to bad firmware.
I'm also a KDE user, and I've seen more KDE bugs filed because of completely broken Kubuntu packages than anything else.
Ubuntu loves to push bleeding edge packages, and often has exceedingly broken packages and yet it is universally pushed as the best solution for new users.
Dealing with broken packages is not the best experience for new users. And putting any new user in front of Unity or Gnome 3 might make for a difficult transition.
Given that KDE is derided for being too Windows like, wouldn't it also stand to reason that a KDE distro would actually make for an easier transition for someone who only knows Windows?
I'd also look for a distro that ships codecs and video drivers rather than forcing a new user to fight with drivers. Linux Mint KDE perhaps?
The sad thing is that for people who love Mario and Zelda games, actually Nintendo fails in this regard.
Mario 64 was the killer launch title of N64. They promised a sequel that generation and it never happened. They promised a proper sequel during the Gamecube era, and it never happened.
The Gamecube version of Zelda became the Wii version of Zelda, because they pretty much missed the Gamecube lifespan.
Nintendo is pretty good about having a few good first-party titles at launch. The rest of the console's lifespan is another story.
My N64 gathered dust. My Gamecube gathered dust. My Wii gathered dust. Why repeat the process?
Oracle actually stands to potentially lose a lot of money here. They make money licensing Java JVMs for mobile devices, BluRay players, etc.
Let's say that Oracle wins on one claim on one patent, and they want a piece of every Android device sold to date. The judge can rule that it wouldn't be the full licensing fee for the Oracle JVM, since they're using Davlik. It is a question of damages based on that one patent infringement.
Google pays a one-time fee, and then Davlik is coded around that one patent claim with a new implementation, but the entire world sees that you can use a different JVM and not pay Oracle a single penny to license Java on any devices.
Instead of starting an expensive legal battle, Oracle should have negotiated with Google, asked them to use the first-party Oracle JVM, and licensed it at a friendly rate.
Oracle also bought Sun to get Java to piss off IBM, a major competitor of theirs.
But Oracle has damn near brought Sun to a point where it will fork and become considerably less valuable.
Oracle also got SPARC (which it has talked about killing), Solaris (which it is killing), MySQL (which it wants to bury for competing with Oracle DB), and OpenOffice (which it is killing/handing over to Apache).
Whoever pushed for the acquisition of Sun should be promptly fired over at Oracle. All they've received for their billions is the right to sink a bunch of money in a legal case they are losing so far.
It has been a while since I first read up on the suit, but I believe you can use Java on PCs for free without problem. But Oracle (and Sun before them) made money licensing JVMs on other platforms, such as mobile phones, BluRay players, etc.
What I'm confused by is that Java was licensed under the GPL. The GPL stipulates you can't impose other restrictions. I know that Oracle owns the copyright to Java, and can change the license away from the GPL at any time for future releases. But wouldn't the previous GPL releases mean that any clauses restricting licenses to particular hardware platforms directly contradicted other portions of their license?
My concern is the movie, and not climate change itself.
I'm undecided on how much we impact climate change. We know there are cycles of climate change. And we know we are polluting like mad. Do I feel confident that we understand the full extent of human impact on the climate? Certainly not, especially given how complicated atmospheric science is, and how little we know.
For instance, it has been proposed that global temperature changes in recent recorded history more cleanly correlate to solar activity than to carbon levels, and that ice core samples often show temperatures historically trended down as carbon rose. Yet as a society we've fixed that carbon footprint is the sole deciding factor in climate change.
I believe we should be socially responsible in how we use the resources on Earth, and the pollution we release. However, we also have a responsibility to espouse good science. It is irresponsible to tell people that we know Hurricane Katrina was caused by SUVs.
I agree with you. My point isn't that one party is correct, but rather that I think both parties are for the most part saying the same things. And that the environment isn't as much of a partisan issue that it is made out to be.
Claiming that Gore was exceedingly brave in tackling a politically incorrect issue is absurd. Anytime you claim to champion the environment, it is a politically positive message.
Politically incorrect is questioning anyone who claims to champion the environment.
My best friend is a Liberal Democrat and exceedingly pro-environment. He is also the only guy I know that I would call an actual genius without reservation. He is finishing his doctorate in atmosphere science. So when he rips the terrible science the movie, I trust him. And he isn't the only one.
Take two seconds and Google up "Inconvenient Truth rebuttal" or "Inconvenient Truth lies" and note how many scientists and universities are ripping that movie.
As for political correctness, Gore and Clinton promised while campaigning for the White House, they'd make the environment a big issue. They promised Clean Water and Clean Air acts. Eight years in the White House, it never happened.
Bush took office, and within 100 days passed Clean Air and Clean Water acts. He passed penalties on auto manufacturers that didn't have hybrids. He passed a tax break for hybrid owners. He passed a new solar energy tax credit. And he passed a law demanding that utilities credit and buy back energy from people who produce their own. He also pushed federal funding into fuel cell research. He also passed a penalty of auto manufacturers based on fuel economy, and called for even stronger standards (Obama actually endorsed Bush on these tough standards before a Democratic Congress passed a much weaker version that doesn't kick in for 14 years). All the while, the spin was that Bush hated the environment and was all pro-oil, despite publicly stating he wanted the United States to get rid of their oil dependency.
All the while it was pushed as a partisan issue. It was VERY politically correct to bring up the environment, so long as you were doing it as a means to rip the other party. In reality, both parties have been irresponsible on environmental issues over the years at times, and passed good legislation for the environment at times over the years.
But I've never known it to be politically incorrect to say that you support the environment. Who doesn't claim to support the environment?
Gore gets all the credit in the world for bringing up an issue that has been widely discussed for the entirety of my lifetime, even though Gore is one of the most visible hypocrites on the issue and his science is terrible.
Calling Gore out however is politically incorrect, because it makes you appear to hate the environment.
Their only bias is attempting to be funny. They make fun of both sides equally. They may be the only major American news source that doesn't lean left or right. Isn't that worth a Pulitzer?
The financial statements only show iOS division, which lumps together App Store purchases and hardware. There aren't hard numbers published on that.
I made a case above for why I think App Store/iTunes accounts for more than the hardware side. You have fewer devices at a lower profit margin, and yet more revenue. And revenue skyrocketed for the company overall when they introduced App Store purchases. This isn't rocket surgery.
Steve Jobs has said publicly that is where the majority of their revenue comes from, which somewhat ends the discussion.
The last demonstration they did with Wolfenstein was 4 servers to produce the video stream for one client. Perhaps they're down to one server now. But even one server with a 32-core chip producing the video stream for a single client doesn't make financial sense yet.
Constant high def video streaming doesn't work well in the new age of data caps. Input latency depends how much overall WAN latency you have between each client and the servers. That will vary for person to person, but hardcore gamers do care about split-second timing. Adding input latency is counter-intuitive for gaming.
And since we have Unreal Engine running on iPhones, multi-core mobile processors are getting cheaper, etc. I think you'll find by the time they can get the ray tracing processors cheap enough to make their streaming service work, most mobile devices will already have very fast/powerful processors.
iOS devices are sold more frequently today, so iOS devices may in time overtake OS X devices. But you often don't replace your laptop as often as your phone. And there have been years and years of OS X device sales before iOS came around.
And you're claim that iOS accounted for 67% of all revenue in January matches up with the 75% I saw as of May.
You're only reaffirming my statements. OS X devices have a higher profit margin on their hardware, yet that division doesn't generate the most revenue.
Revenue and market cap went through the roof with iTunes and App Store purchases entered the equation. And Steve Jobs has said publicly that is where the majority of their revenue comes from.
But if you really believe you know Apple better than Steve Jobs, please continue to argue otherwise.
Intel's PR department keeps releasing press statements and journalists keep eating it up.
Input latency is a real issue. I'm not impressed that Intel can take a bank of servers to produce content for one client. The business model for that just frankly doesn't work yet, and even when the business model for that does work, input latency will remain.
I don't want to repeat the same answer over again. Look at my above answers. I have looked at their financial statements, and Apple's direct statements.
The vast majority of their revenue is tied to iOS.
There are three times as many OS X devices as iOS devices. The OS X devices have a higher profit margin. With more hardware sold, and a higher profit margin, that *should* be where the majority of their revenue comes from, if hardware drove their revenue.
The fact that 75% of their revenue comes from the iOS division with a third of the hardware, and a lower profit margin, demonstrates clearly that the majority of their revenue comes from iTunes/App Store sales.
There are three times as many OS X devices out there as there iOS devices. OS X devices (like Macbooks) are more expensive and have a higher profit margin. And yet the OS X division only accounts for 20% of Apple's revenue.
The iOS division accounts for 75% of the Apple's revenue.
The spike started in 2005 with music sales, which is exactly my point. Apple takes 30% of the top of other people's content, and that is where most of their revenue comes from. They don't need a huge staff to make money off other people's products.
It grew at an even faster pace after the launch of iOS because they started taking a cut of Apps and Books as well as music and movies. And movie/TV sales went up after the launch of the iPad.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing only front-facing web servers get constantly regular security patches. The rest might not get rebooted or patched at all if they replace the servers frequently enough (2-3 years). We are talking Linux servers here.
With that many servers, I'd tie the naming scheme to rack location. IP addressing would go in order along those racks.
In addition to this, Google runs DC power supplies, with a low-voltage on board battery as opposed to large rack UPS. I've heard they have some innovative tricks for server room cooling as well, but I've never seen confirmation of exactly what they're doing. But Google goes to great lengths to cut down data center power usage.
Except in the areas that putting data together enables humans to do more with the data.
And Google has been pretty good about trying to make data more accessible to everyone on the planet. Again, not very evil.
Unless you refer only to your private data, and again Google is one of the rare companies that doesn't have private data out to anyone. AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. do hand your private data out to other people. When Google makes inroads into their markets, they're actually taking market share away from companies who do try to lock you into proprietary systems and sell your data.
You say the benefits only go one way, but aren't the users receiving more and more free services?
If you don't like the trade-off of seeing ads for those free services, you don't use them. How is this arrangement deceptive or evil? Just because they're big doesn't mean they're some nasty conspiracy.
So you should refuse to donate money to Child's Play and the EFF because people who are still actively trying to sell games didn't end up giving away their games 100% for free to everyone?
Indie developers need to eat. And never was it promised they'd give away their games for free. A few of the developers have said they'd open source their code, and they honored that promise.
They sued Tom Tom for merely using a Linux kernel that included FAT32 support. So basically, everything on the planet that ships with Linux could be sued for the same criteria. Someone needs to stand up to these lawsuits.
I haven't used it personally since Ubuntu 9.04, but with every single release I see complaints of major components broken on release. The 8.04 LTS release was especially bad.
Sound was broken on release, it shipped with a buggy beta build of Firefox as the default, and a kernel bug could brick Intel gigabit NICs due to bad firmware.
I'm also a KDE user, and I've seen more KDE bugs filed because of completely broken Kubuntu packages than anything else.
Ubuntu loves to push bleeding edge packages, and often has exceedingly broken packages and yet it is universally pushed as the best solution for new users.
Dealing with broken packages is not the best experience for new users. And putting any new user in front of Unity or Gnome 3 might make for a difficult transition.
Given that KDE is derided for being too Windows like, wouldn't it also stand to reason that a KDE distro would actually make for an easier transition for someone who only knows Windows?
I'd also look for a distro that ships codecs and video drivers rather than forcing a new user to fight with drivers. Linux Mint KDE perhaps?
The sad thing is that for people who love Mario and Zelda games, actually Nintendo fails in this regard.
Mario 64 was the killer launch title of N64. They promised a sequel that generation and it never happened. They promised a proper sequel during the Gamecube era, and it never happened.
The Gamecube version of Zelda became the Wii version of Zelda, because they pretty much missed the Gamecube lifespan.
Nintendo is pretty good about having a few good first-party titles at launch. The rest of the console's lifespan is another story.
My N64 gathered dust. My Gamecube gathered dust. My Wii gathered dust. Why repeat the process?
Oracle actually stands to potentially lose a lot of money here. They make money licensing Java JVMs for mobile devices, BluRay players, etc.
Let's say that Oracle wins on one claim on one patent, and they want a piece of every Android device sold to date. The judge can rule that it wouldn't be the full licensing fee for the Oracle JVM, since they're using Davlik. It is a question of damages based on that one patent infringement.
Google pays a one-time fee, and then Davlik is coded around that one patent claim with a new implementation, but the entire world sees that you can use a different JVM and not pay Oracle a single penny to license Java on any devices.
Instead of starting an expensive legal battle, Oracle should have negotiated with Google, asked them to use the first-party Oracle JVM, and licensed it at a friendly rate.
Oracle also bought Sun to get Java to piss off IBM, a major competitor of theirs.
But Oracle has damn near brought Sun to a point where it will fork and become considerably less valuable.
Oracle also got SPARC (which it has talked about killing), Solaris (which it is killing), MySQL (which it wants to bury for competing with Oracle DB), and OpenOffice (which it is killing/handing over to Apache).
Whoever pushed for the acquisition of Sun should be promptly fired over at Oracle. All they've received for their billions is the right to sink a bunch of money in a legal case they are losing so far.
It has been a while since I first read up on the suit, but I believe you can use Java on PCs for free without problem. But Oracle (and Sun before them) made money licensing JVMs on other platforms, such as mobile phones, BluRay players, etc.
What I'm confused by is that Java was licensed under the GPL. The GPL stipulates you can't impose other restrictions. I know that Oracle owns the copyright to Java, and can change the license away from the GPL at any time for future releases. But wouldn't the previous GPL releases mean that any clauses restricting licenses to particular hardware platforms directly contradicted other portions of their license?
My concern is the movie, and not climate change itself.
I'm undecided on how much we impact climate change. We know there are cycles of climate change. And we know we are polluting like mad. Do I feel confident that we understand the full extent of human impact on the climate? Certainly not, especially given how complicated atmospheric science is, and how little we know.
For instance, it has been proposed that global temperature changes in recent recorded history more cleanly correlate to solar activity than to carbon levels, and that ice core samples often show temperatures historically trended down as carbon rose. Yet as a society we've fixed that carbon footprint is the sole deciding factor in climate change.
I believe we should be socially responsible in how we use the resources on Earth, and the pollution we release. However, we also have a responsibility to espouse good science. It is irresponsible to tell people that we know Hurricane Katrina was caused by SUVs.
I agree with you. My point isn't that one party is correct, but rather that I think both parties are for the most part saying the same things. And that the environment isn't as much of a partisan issue that it is made out to be.
Claiming that Gore was exceedingly brave in tackling a politically incorrect issue is absurd. Anytime you claim to champion the environment, it is a politically positive message.
Politically incorrect is questioning anyone who claims to champion the environment.
My best friend is a Liberal Democrat and exceedingly pro-environment. He is also the only guy I know that I would call an actual genius without reservation. He is finishing his doctorate in atmosphere science. So when he rips the terrible science the movie, I trust him. And he isn't the only one.
Take two seconds and Google up "Inconvenient Truth rebuttal" or "Inconvenient Truth lies" and note how many scientists and universities are ripping that movie.
Here is a good rebuttal.
http://www.ecoworld.com/animals/birds/rebuttal-to-al-gores-inconvenient-truth-one-sided-misleading-exaggerated-speculative-wrong.html
As for political correctness, Gore and Clinton promised while campaigning for the White House, they'd make the environment a big issue. They promised Clean Water and Clean Air acts. Eight years in the White House, it never happened.
Bush took office, and within 100 days passed Clean Air and Clean Water acts. He passed penalties on auto manufacturers that didn't have hybrids. He passed a tax break for hybrid owners. He passed a new solar energy tax credit. And he passed a law demanding that utilities credit and buy back energy from people who produce their own. He also pushed federal funding into fuel cell research. He also passed a penalty of auto manufacturers based on fuel economy, and called for even stronger standards (Obama actually endorsed Bush on these tough standards before a Democratic Congress passed a much weaker version that doesn't kick in for 14 years). All the while, the spin was that Bush hated the environment and was all pro-oil, despite publicly stating he wanted the United States to get rid of their oil dependency.
All the while it was pushed as a partisan issue. It was VERY politically correct to bring up the environment, so long as you were doing it as a means to rip the other party. In reality, both parties have been irresponsible on environmental issues over the years at times, and passed good legislation for the environment at times over the years.
But I've never known it to be politically incorrect to say that you support the environment. Who doesn't claim to support the environment?
Gore gets all the credit in the world for bringing up an issue that has been widely discussed for the entirety of my lifetime, even though Gore is one of the most visible hypocrites on the issue and his science is terrible.
Calling Gore out however is politically incorrect, because it makes you appear to hate the environment.
Nevermind that scientists ripped it for being terrible science. But if it pushes the agenda you want to hear, so be it.
Either way, creating a movie about environmental awareness while flying everywhere on a private jet apparently gets you a prize dedicated to Peace.
Their only bias is attempting to be funny. They make fun of both sides equally. They may be the only major American news source that doesn't lean left or right. Isn't that worth a Pulitzer?
The financial statements only show iOS division, which lumps together App Store purchases and hardware. There aren't hard numbers published on that.
I made a case above for why I think App Store/iTunes accounts for more than the hardware side. You have fewer devices at a lower profit margin, and yet more revenue. And revenue skyrocketed for the company overall when they introduced App Store purchases. This isn't rocket surgery.
Steve Jobs has said publicly that is where the majority of their revenue comes from, which somewhat ends the discussion.
The last demonstration they did with Wolfenstein was 4 servers to produce the video stream for one client. Perhaps they're down to one server now. But even one server with a 32-core chip producing the video stream for a single client doesn't make financial sense yet.
Constant high def video streaming doesn't work well in the new age of data caps. Input latency depends how much overall WAN latency you have between each client and the servers. That will vary for person to person, but hardcore gamers do care about split-second timing. Adding input latency is counter-intuitive for gaming.
And since we have Unreal Engine running on iPhones, multi-core mobile processors are getting cheaper, etc. I think you'll find by the time they can get the ray tracing processors cheap enough to make their streaming service work, most mobile devices will already have very fast/powerful processors.
As of May 2011, there are three times as many Mac OS X devices out there as there are iOS devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
iOS devices are sold more frequently today, so iOS devices may in time overtake OS X devices. But you often don't replace your laptop as often as your phone. And there have been years and years of OS X device sales before iOS came around.
And you're claim that iOS accounted for 67% of all revenue in January matches up with the 75% I saw as of May.
You're only reaffirming my statements. OS X devices have a higher profit margin on their hardware, yet that division doesn't generate the most revenue.
Revenue and market cap went through the roof with iTunes and App Store purchases entered the equation. And Steve Jobs has said publicly that is where the majority of their revenue comes from.
But if you really believe you know Apple better than Steve Jobs, please continue to argue otherwise.
When did vulns become a word?
And is it really a new story that many companies don't patch immediately for every vulnerability out there?
Intel's PR department keeps releasing press statements and journalists keep eating it up.
Input latency is a real issue. I'm not impressed that Intel can take a bank of servers to produce content for one client. The business model for that just frankly doesn't work yet, and even when the business model for that does work, input latency will remain.
Write a story when they solve input latency.
I don't want to repeat the same answer over again. Look at my above answers. I have looked at their financial statements, and Apple's direct statements.
The vast majority of their revenue is tied to iOS.
There are three times as many OS X devices as iOS devices. The OS X devices have a higher profit margin. With more hardware sold, and a higher profit margin, that *should* be where the majority of their revenue comes from, if hardware drove their revenue.
The fact that 75% of their revenue comes from the iOS division with a third of the hardware, and a lower profit margin, demonstrates clearly that the majority of their revenue comes from iTunes/App Store sales.
Steve Jobs has even stated this in interviews.
There are three times as many OS X devices out there as there iOS devices. OS X devices (like Macbooks) are more expensive and have a higher profit margin. And yet the OS X division only accounts for 20% of Apple's revenue.
The iOS division accounts for 75% of the Apple's revenue.
The spike started in 2005 with music sales, which is exactly my point. Apple takes 30% of the top of other people's content, and that is where most of their revenue comes from. They don't need a huge staff to make money off other people's products.
It grew at an even faster pace after the launch of iOS because they started taking a cut of Apps and Books as well as music and movies. And movie/TV sales went up after the launch of the iPad.