Now, given that it is safer from a commercial perspective to build such a project, you are forced to ask yourself what is *wrong* with the people who want to compete with Microsoft. Are they bad business people? Do they not understand that doing business on this level costs billions of dollars? Do they not understand that when you threaten a multi-billion dollar business, that business spends billions to stop you?
Exactly the point I was trying to get at, but which you much more eloquently stated. I want to know the motivations of the people behind this lawsuit. All the press coverage is aimed at the allegations made by the EU, and at downplaying Microsoft's response. That is not to create an informed opinion on anything!
Here is a fact that many people don't realize: Microsoft itself doesn't always know exactly how things work. Developers get shifted in departments, fired, quit, etc, and as with any software firm, documentation is not of great concern until it's too late. I worked on a project looking into Word Documents, and even with contacts within the word development team itself, we couldn't always get answers as to what some fields and values were for.
Why jump to the conclusion asserted in this BBC aricle -- that Microsoft isn't doing enough? How do you know that? Do you work there? Or is it your jaded expectations that cause you to want to believe the worst. For those who work in the software field -- is it that hard to believe that documenting something as extensive as windows takes time?
Admittedly, Microsoft is probably draggings its feet, trying to find ways out of this mess, but who wouldn't?
Based on the length of this investigation and ruling, I don't understand how you are coming to the conclusion the EU commission is jumping to conclusions. From what I have read to date on this, the EU commission didn't just sit down one day and say, "Sub-par performance of third party applications on Microsoft server software? FINE MICROSOFT!"
I'm talking about people posting here making armchair lawyer decisions without knowing all the facts. The Slashdot community tends to make knee-jerk reactions, especially when Microsoft is concerned.
From TA:
The US group was then fined 497m euros ($613m; £344m) and ordered it to change how it sells its Media Player software. Brussels also ordered Microsoft to provide rivals with enough information to develop software that could run as smoothly as its own on servers running Microsoft's Windows operating system.
I think this makes it pretty obvious that performance was a major factor. Windows is a complex system and properly taking advantage of it requires a lot of experience. The people developing for Microsoft either have that experience, or have easy access to it. I'm not debating Microsoft's business ethics, and I agree with the ruling regarding Media Player. What I am arguing is that we should be careful about letting our feelings guide our reactions.
...but isn't it possible that the real problem is piss-poor programmers among the competition? One main argument given in the article is sub-par performance of third party applications on Microsoft server software. I'm not in the 'defend M$ at all costs' camp, but come on, let's not jump to conclusions here.
Does no one else here see the glaring hole in this person's argument? There is no such thing as a beneficial virus, worm, or trojan, period, end of story, thank you, have a nice day. Information Security is commonly accepted as a three-part problem: Confidentiality, Integrity, Avalability. Even seemingly innocuous viruses carry huge costs, mostly in the form of hindering Availability. Further, as a System Administrator, how can you ever be completely sure a virus that compromised a system was 'benign?' Answer: You can't. The only safe bet is to restore the system from the last safe backup.
The problem is akin to the broken window problem in economics. Sure, exploiting security holes leads to more fixes, but you have to take into account the costs. Further, this does not mean Information Security itself is improving, it simply means virus, trojan, and worm writers have to become more creative.
In short -- if this is what Harvard is producing these days, maybe it's time we re-asses the "Ivy League."
So in essence, it takes about.2 teraflops per atom... And that was only after spending a lot of time condensing the algorithms. This makes me wonder two things. First, what do these equations look like such that it takes 200 gigaflops just to model one atom. Second, over what timeframe does this simulation take place? Are we talking real-time, calculating for 50 years, what?
Regardless, as a computer scientist, I say way to go to these guys, this is damn impressive.
Import starving people from third world nations to eat the toads. It could get messy when the toad problem is solved, but there's suddenly a large starving people problem...
Yes, consoles draw power. In fact, the XBox 360 uses a whopping 130 kWh yearly according to their estimates! However, let's look at facts:
- ~6 million XBox 360s are expected to be sold by June 2006 [Sales Estimate]
- Total power consumption yearly according to their estimates is 780 million kWh [6 million * 130 kWh]
- Modern nuclear reactors produce 600-1200 MWe [Nuclear Power]
- A 1,000 MWe reactor at 80% capacity generates roughly 7 billion kWh yearly [Nuclear Power Facts]
All the XBox 360s in the world can be powered for a year from just over 11% of the power generated in a year from one nuclear reactor.
This was one of my first thoughts in fact -- all that computing power, but with regionalized operations, the different centers will inevitably have periods of underuse. Will they make that computing time available to researchers? Or perhaps rent it to industry for complex modelling and simulations? How many SETI@Home data units can Google process in an hour?
One thing in the article that caught my eye was mention of the high speed fiber backbone connecting their various centers. Surely this would also act in the favor of researchers as the work-load can be shifted as different parts of their global network start their periods of high usage.
The Energy Density of a Lithium ion Battery is.54-.72 MJ/kg. Compare that to methanol, which is 22.61 MJ/kg. In layman's terms, you get vastly more energy out of an equal size amount of methanol fuel. Now, you still have to factor in the size of the fuel cell, but carrying around 1 fuel cell with a tank of methanol is still preferable to carrying around 10 batteries!
Also note that I'm not talking about field bases with generators available.
This was my first thought as well. Hopefully there is some option for detaching the fuel cell battery and popping in a traditional lithium battery for travel purposes. The main use I can see for this technology anyway is military in nature. If this delivers the duration they claim, it would be perfect for units in the field.
If RFIDs become as ubiquitous as people suggest, how about the simpler scenarios?
Let's say a store begins tracking its inventory through RFID usage. One could potentially build transmitters that make it look like someone is pushing the equivalent of a tractor trailer full of goods around in their shopping cart. If these RFIDs are used to check items as someone is going out the door, how hard would it be to dump them on someone else to disguise your own act of shoplifting?
These are rather tame examples, but I see RFID spoofing as the biggest immediate threat.
I, for one, am horrified at what they are doing to these poor little mice! Injecting them with cancerous cells, just to see if new white blood cells will fight the cancer? When does it stop! Think about the poor little things, squeaking, squeaking, flailing their little limbs, their cute little whiskers all a-quiver. And then they get stuck with *another* needle, in their stomach! I can tell you from experience, that ain't comfortable!
[/sarcasm]
At the end of the day, until we all stop using the same operating system, we're doomed to a continual barrage of large-scale infections (remember the Irish potato famine?)
Actually, Dr. Ford, a professor at Florida Institute of Technology, did some research into this. In order to have enough diversity to make a dent in it, we would need some ungodly number of different operating systems. You can read about it in the December 2003 issue of Virus Bulletin. It's in PDF format, and you have to do a free registration, but you can find the article in the archives.
Also note that Windows is a primary target because of its large install base. If we all switched to Linux, or MacOS, we'd still have problems, it would just be targeted at our new OS. As someone else mentioned, it all comes down to the user wanting to do what they want to do with their own machine.
These regulations exist because every time polluters get the choice between profit or pollution, they choose profit every single time, the move to the Maquiladoras being just the most recent example. This is the side of the 'free market' that free market advocates don't want anyone to see.
You are correct that polluters will choose profit over the environment, I won't dispute that. The problem comes when regualtions go beyond the commonsense boundary. By this I mean things like the scare over Dioxin, where it was discovered that a single serving of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream has roughly 2,285 times the level of dioxin as an 8 oz serving of the waste water from a San Francisco Gas refinery. The EPA was attempting to force this refinery to further reduce the levels, because Dioxin is a nasty evil deadly chemical(TM). There are many such examples of over-regulation where the scientific benefit is nonexistant, but fear-mongering propels it forward anyway.
You are spot on. Whether you believe we are inducing unnatural global warming or not, the proper answer is not to overreact trying to fix it! What this article tells me is there is much of the equation that we still do not fully understand.
We've seen time and again that messing with the environment can have devastating repurcussions. A smaller scale example of this is the attempt by the US Army Corps of Engineers to drain the Everglades. Now huge amounts of money are being invested trying to fix what was done. And this is minor compared to the implications of trying to modify, one way or the other, the global climate.
It's good to clean up our environment and be good stewards of it, but at the same time, we can't halt industrial progress, nor should we. What happens if, a hundred years down the road, we discover global warming really was only a natural cycle of the Earth's climate? Now, what happens if current industrialized nations have strangled the ability of their economies to produce goods in an attempt to divert a coming 'disaster' that never materialized?
Already, punitive regulations and taxes are in place on industry making it very hard to profitably do business in the United States. This is a primary factor behind the outsourcing that people wring their hands over. As I said, behaving responsibly toward the environment is good, but we have to also balance the needs of being an industrialized society and not overreact against a threat we don't really undesrand.
Re:I'm gonna go way out on a limb here, folks, but
on
FFXII's Japanese Release
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Give me some other compelling goal for a fantasy oriented game... Hell, for any game really. I will buy and play this game for the unique 'Final Fantasy' elements I know will be present which I have come to love.
This is spot on. While it is nice to envision a society where weapons are not a necessity, we also need to keep reality in mind. The reality is that by not developing space-based weapons technology now, we are leaving ourselves open to a potentially devastating avenue of attack in the future.
I am not saying we should put nukes in orbit, but we need to be prepare to respond should another country do just that. This is why programs such as this one are so vital. And I would put money on a bettet option being currently available if this program is, in fact, scrapped.
Basically, we have two options, which one is more appealing to you?
- Develop the capability now to launch and defend against space-based weapons.
- Wait until some future enemy has this attack capability and try to cobble together a defense against it.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is a fact that many people don't realize: Microsoft itself doesn't always know exactly how things work. Developers get shifted in departments, fired, quit, etc, and as with any software firm, documentation is not of great concern until it's too late. I worked on a project looking into Word Documents, and even with contacts within the word development team itself, we couldn't always get answers as to what some fields and values were for.
Why jump to the conclusion asserted in this BBC aricle -- that Microsoft isn't doing enough? How do you know that? Do you work there? Or is it your jaded expectations that cause you to want to believe the worst. For those who work in the software field -- is it that hard to believe that documenting something as extensive as windows takes time?
Admittedly, Microsoft is probably draggings its feet, trying to find ways out of this mess, but who wouldn't?
From TA: I think this makes it pretty obvious that performance was a major factor. Windows is a complex system and properly taking advantage of it requires a lot of experience. The people developing for Microsoft either have that experience, or have easy access to it. I'm not debating Microsoft's business ethics, and I agree with the ruling regarding Media Player. What I am arguing is that we should be careful about letting our feelings guide our reactions.
...but isn't it possible that the real problem is piss-poor programmers among the competition? One main argument given in the article is sub-par performance of third party applications on Microsoft server software. I'm not in the 'defend M$ at all costs' camp, but come on, let's not jump to conclusions here.
Does no one else here see the glaring hole in this person's argument? There is no such thing as a beneficial virus, worm, or trojan, period, end of story, thank you, have a nice day. Information Security is commonly accepted as a three-part problem: Confidentiality, Integrity, Avalability. Even seemingly innocuous viruses carry huge costs, mostly in the form of hindering Availability. Further, as a System Administrator, how can you ever be completely sure a virus that compromised a system was 'benign?' Answer: You can't. The only safe bet is to restore the system from the last safe backup.
The problem is akin to the broken window problem in economics. Sure, exploiting security holes leads to more fixes, but you have to take into account the costs. Further, this does not mean Information Security itself is improving, it simply means virus, trojan, and worm writers have to become more creative.
In short -- if this is what Harvard is producing these days, maybe it's time we re-asses the "Ivy League."
So in essence, it takes about .2 teraflops per atom... And that was only after spending a lot of time condensing the algorithms. This makes me wonder two things. First, what do these equations look like such that it takes 200 gigaflops just to model one atom. Second, over what timeframe does this simulation take place? Are we talking real-time, calculating for 50 years, what?
Regardless, as a computer scientist, I say way to go to these guys, this is damn impressive.
Import starving people from third world nations to eat the toads. It could get messy when the toad problem is solved, but there's suddenly a large starving people problem...
Yes, consoles draw power. In fact, the XBox 360 uses a whopping 130 kWh yearly according to their estimates! However, let's look at facts:
- ~6 million XBox 360s are expected to be sold by June 2006 [Sales Estimate]
- Total power consumption yearly according to their estimates is 780 million kWh [6 million * 130 kWh]
- Modern nuclear reactors produce 600-1200 MWe [Nuclear Power]
- A 1,000 MWe reactor at 80% capacity generates roughly 7 billion kWh yearly [Nuclear Power Facts]
All the XBox 360s in the world can be powered for a year from just over 11% of the power generated in a year from one nuclear reactor.
This was one of my first thoughts in fact -- all that computing power, but with regionalized operations, the different centers will inevitably have periods of underuse. Will they make that computing time available to researchers? Or perhaps rent it to industry for complex modelling and simulations? How many SETI@Home data units can Google process in an hour?
One thing in the article that caught my eye was mention of the high speed fiber backbone connecting their various centers. Surely this would also act in the favor of researchers as the work-load can be shifted as different parts of their global network start their periods of high usage.
The Energy Density of a Lithium ion Battery is .54-.72 MJ/kg. Compare that to methanol, which is 22.61 MJ/kg. In layman's terms, you get vastly more energy out of an equal size amount of methanol fuel. Now, you still have to factor in the size of the fuel cell, but carrying around 1 fuel cell with a tank of methanol is still preferable to carrying around 10 batteries!
Also note that I'm not talking about field bases with generators available.
This was my first thought as well. Hopefully there is some option for detaching the fuel cell battery and popping in a traditional lithium battery for travel purposes. The main use I can see for this technology anyway is military in nature. If this delivers the duration they claim, it would be perfect for units in the field.
So what it comes down to is prehistoric man decided not to make an omelette out of the first egg, and now we have chickens?
If RFIDs become as ubiquitous as people suggest, how about the simpler scenarios?
Let's say a store begins tracking its inventory through RFID usage. One could potentially build transmitters that make it look like someone is pushing the equivalent of a tractor trailer full of goods around in their shopping cart. If these RFIDs are used to check items as someone is going out the door, how hard would it be to dump them on someone else to disguise your own act of shoplifting?
These are rather tame examples, but I see RFID spoofing as the biggest immediate threat.
I, for one, am horrified at what they are doing to these poor little mice! Injecting them with cancerous cells, just to see if new white blood cells will fight the cancer? When does it stop! Think about the poor little things, squeaking, squeaking, flailing their little limbs, their cute little whiskers all a-quiver. And then they get stuck with *another* needle, in their stomach! I can tell you from experience, that ain't comfortable! [/sarcasm]
Also note that Windows is a primary target because of its large install base. If we all switched to Linux, or MacOS, we'd still have problems, it would just be targeted at our new OS. As someone else mentioned, it all comes down to the user wanting to do what they want to do with their own machine.
Dioxin Article
Study Information and References
You are spot on. Whether you believe we are inducing unnatural global warming or not, the proper answer is not to overreact trying to fix it! What this article tells me is there is much of the equation that we still do not fully understand.
We've seen time and again that messing with the environment can have devastating repurcussions. A smaller scale example of this is the attempt by the US Army Corps of Engineers to drain the Everglades. Now huge amounts of money are being invested trying to fix what was done. And this is minor compared to the implications of trying to modify, one way or the other, the global climate.
It's good to clean up our environment and be good stewards of it, but at the same time, we can't halt industrial progress, nor should we. What happens if, a hundred years down the road, we discover global warming really was only a natural cycle of the Earth's climate? Now, what happens if current industrialized nations have strangled the ability of their economies to produce goods in an attempt to divert a coming 'disaster' that never materialized?
Already, punitive regulations and taxes are in place on industry making it very hard to profitably do business in the United States. This is a primary factor behind the outsourcing that people wring their hands over. As I said, behaving responsibly toward the environment is good, but we have to also balance the needs of being an industrialized society and not overreact against a threat we don't really undesrand.
But... But... think of the poor kid's self esteem! It must be completely shot!
When in doubt, sue!
So can I have my liver surgically split so I grow a second one as a backup?
And all along, we were watching Mars as the source of attack...
It doesn't help that a lot of the information in this article is false... >.>
I was one of the lucky thousand or so attendees there. It was pretty exhilerating seeing the future plans for this game. I uploaded all my pictures in a zipped file to my FileFront account:i p/;4887263;;/fileinfo.html
d =1141871674105963075;num=524;page=1
http://files.filefront.com/Fan_Festival_Picturesz
You can also browse some pictures uploaded to my xs.to account:
http://xs.to/albums/114206161816073712224927.html
Finally, I have a commentary I was updating semi-live on Allakhazam:
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=10;mi
Give me some other compelling goal for a fantasy oriented game... Hell, for any game really. I will buy and play this game for the unique 'Final Fantasy' elements I know will be present which I have come to love.
This is spot on. While it is nice to envision a society where weapons are not a necessity, we also need to keep reality in mind. The reality is that by not developing space-based weapons technology now, we are leaving ourselves open to a potentially devastating avenue of attack in the future.
I am not saying we should put nukes in orbit, but we need to be prepare to respond should another country do just that. This is why programs such as this one are so vital. And I would put money on a bettet option being currently available if this program is, in fact, scrapped.
Basically, we have two options, which one is more appealing to you?
- Develop the capability now to launch and defend against space-based weapons.
- Wait until some future enemy has this attack capability and try to cobble together a defense against it.
I know which option I would choose!
But can it crank out 1.21 gigawatts?