Since you're in Australia and I'm in the US, who's in a better position to state whether or not the US has a good healthcare system? I've seen both the good side and the bad and I know that making it public is a move in the wrong direction and would only make costs go higher. Here's a question for you: Do you generally get better service in situations where you have a choice in who provides the service or when you have no choice?
I don't even need the "hardly" I said nothing of the sort, nor do I believe anything like that.
Yes you did. You called the guy a moron because he thought there was one sided moderation on politics. I call one sided moderation unfair. It makes no difference if it's one sided with respect to politics, science, computers, etc. An example of one sided moderation is if you happened to say anything good about Microsoft, you might be modded down unfairly. It's possible that you had done some research and found something that Microsoft did well and you commented on it. Your comment might actually be insightful or informative, but some stupid people would just mod you down because they don't like Microsoft. The same could be true for Republicans, Democrats, or any other groups or even people who support a particular issue. I think this is unfair moderation.
Your statement is inherently contradictory. If "most" people have experienced it then it isn't one sided. Do you get it now?!?
No, my statement was not contradictory. I said that most people who comment regularly experience unfair moderation. For instance, I made the following post:
"I like the idea of Skype charging for voice mail. Everyone uses voice mail and if people seriously start using Skype, they will pay for voice mail. Also, calling out to cell and land lines is charged for. I think these are very good starting points actually and I think this alone could be a profitable business model. Not to mention advertising that they could do as well as various other services they could provide to their HUGE customer base."
This was unfairly moderated to flamebait. I really don't get it actually. The only reason that I can think that someone would mod this to flamebait is that they just don't like Skype and anyone that thinks Skype has a good business model should be unfairly moded down.
When I said "most" I wasn't talking exclusively about politics, I believe most people are in the minority on SOME issue. Right? Most people aren't total lemmings are they?
He said that right wing whackos were *silenced*.
That is a lie, it is idiotic, and the fact that you come to back it up makes you look like an idiot. Nice job.
Come on man, just read the politics section and count how many pro-republican posts get modded up. It's pretty rare. pro-democratic posts tend to be upgraded more often. Just like Microsoft posts generally get downgraded and Linux posts get upgraded. Like it or not, there's bias here and everywhere else in the world, it's just human nature. I would just hope that the average Slashdot moderator is a little smarter than the average bear. They should be willing to upgrade posts they don't agree with because their interesting or insightful. For instance, if someone analyzed Skype and said that they had a bad business model, if their reasoning was good, I might upgrade them even though I happen to disagree with them on that point.
I would hardly have called him a moron because he thinks that there is unfair moderation on this site. I agree with him on that point and I think most people who comment regularly have experienced unfair moderation. Anther tactic to get modded up is to say anything negative about the Bush adminstration so it seems you're guilty of being a karma whore as well.
First of all, your premise is incorrect. The US has a very good health care system. That is why people from foreign countries that are sick travel here to have surguries performed. You can see countless documenteries on this. Most of the top drug research is done in the US also and the best medical schools in the world are in the US. Major companies include Pfizer, Merck, Wyeth, etc are all based in the US. Other countries benefit from this drug research even though the expense is incurred in the US. If you have insurance in the US, you can get the best care in the world. When organizations like the World Health Organization bash the US, they are almost entirely slanting their studies to favor countries that have socialized health care. The ironic part is that in a sense the US has socialized health care. For one thing, any Emergency Room in the country MUST serve anyone even if they have no insurance, no money, or are illegal immigrants. Many people visit the ER just to get medicine for a cold or cough because they no they will get free service. This is one of the reasons American health care is so expensive. There is an enormous cost assosiated with this socialized health care. Since Americans are compassionate people, we accept the fact that this is an increased cost that we are willing to pay.
You are right that US health care is extremely expensive, but that is largely because the of the huge administrative costs that I mentioned in the initial post I made. These administrative costs are basically incurred due to the fact that the consumer is not paying his own medical bills. The solution is NOT to socialize healthcare as you imply. The real solution is to make consumers more aware of the amount paid. My proposal is to have individuals pay 25% of healthcare costs as opposed to having employers pay 100% of healthcare costs. This will make consumers more price sensative. I have first hand experience with this. I recently had to have a surgury performed. I didn't even see the price of this until after the surgury was performed. I really didn't care what it cost because I knew my health insurance would be paying the tab. I only had to pay a small co-pay no matter what the total was. It turned out that the total was over $9000. Even though the surgeon only spent about 30 - 60 minutes, there was a charge for thousands for his time. I know he's not making all of this money directly because if so his hourly salry would be well in the thousands. The person that pushed the wheelchair cost several hundred dollars. I'm sure the guy that pushed the wheelchair wasn't making all that since it only took him a few minutes. There were many other line items on this bill that made no sense. In short, due to the fact that consumers don't care what their healthcare costs are, the hospitals can charge whatever they want. The insurance company gets the bill and is not really in a position to negotiate since for all they know that guy that pushed the wheelchair was really working for hours and hours. Socializing healthcare would have an even worse effect. I probably wouldn't get to see the line items if we did have socialized medical. Government just isn't equiped to manage these costs.
They kept telling me, you need to read more you need to write more. Now that kids are doing what we've told them (to read and write), because they're doing it on their own terms (with instant messanging, email, text messages, blogs, etc), this guy is trying to say it's bad thing because he wants to be a grammar nazi. Ok, whatever. Oh by the way, the "comic book generation" is a little bit out dated. I mean come on, comic books have been popoular since the 50's and even earlier. I think it would be better to call this generation "the instant messanger generation", but hey I'm a member of this illiterate group of idiots, so what do I know?
Having companies pay their employee's health benefits is far from ideal
I agree with you here. This is why health care costs are so high and rising. The company pays no matter what happens. There's no accountability for the consumer. If I go into the hospital for a surgury I don't even ask how much it's going to cost because I know my medical insurance will pay 100% minus a small copay. A better solution would be to have medical insurance companies pay for say 75% of the cost and the consumer responsible for 25%. This would instantly make people price sensative when it comes to medical costs. The prices would come down to something reasonable instantly.
it would be better to have the government recognize health care as the fundamental human right
Here's where we disagree. Making health care, the responsibility of the Government would make matters even worse. The Government is basically an inept organization when it comes to this type of thing. Imagine the same guys that ran FEMA and the huricane Katrina debacle running your healthcare plan. No thanks! Health care really is best done in the private sector.
but $2,276 seems like a lot for a computer these days. If money is not an issue, sure go for it and get this system, but you can save on a lot of these areas. Like case for $120. That's a lot. $300+ for the cpu also seems too much. You can get a very nice CPU for $150 and under. I think you can even get a lowend dual core for that price if that's your thing. I'd stick with the 2 gB of RAM, because RAM is the most useful thing these days in my opinion. You don't need that hardrive though. You can get one for about $150 that has a similar capacity that you will probably NEVER fill. The sound card for over $100 is outragous. I use the one that came with my mother board and it sounds great. A $75 microsoft keyboard is redicoulas. You can get a wireless mouse/keyboard combo for less than that price. I want even get into the $125 for the OS. Just my $0.02.
that there's a company with this as their goal. But, the robot climber is not the hard part at all. The hard part is the carbon nanotube tensile strength issue. Even having a robot climb a mile (or as some have said 1500 feet) is nothing special. We have the technology to do this already. A 1 mile cable is also nothing, bridges have this already. They're talking about a 62000 mile cable. I'd be more impressed if they told me that they had a 1 meter nanotube cable that has the tensile strength of 60 gPA. That would at least be the building block for being able to build the space elevator. But, this gets headlines even though it's meaningless.
Uhhh, does anyone have any idea why this was mod flamebait? I just don't get it. What could possibly be considered flamebait about this. All I'm saying is that Skype has a good business model IMHO. If you disagree, fine, but how is this flamebait?
By the way, is Deuterium and Tritium - and the substances they're extracted from, such as lithium - renewable, or what is their abundance?
Good question and that's the best part. There is enough Tritium that can be extracted to supply the earth with current consumption of energy for the next 1000 years. The Deuterium is even more abundant. With a hotter form of Fusion reaction, we wouldn't even need Tritium. The deuterium supply (which you can get from sea water) on earth is enough to supply us for the next million or so years at current consumption levels. Imagine literally powering the city of Los Angeles for 1 year on a bucket of sea water. That's what we can do if we can create a sustainable Deuterium fusion reaction.
I like the idea of Skype charging for voice mail. Everyone uses voice mail and if people seriously start using Skype, they will pay for voice mail. Also, calling out to cell and land lines is charged for. I think these are very good starting points actually and I think this alone could be a profitable business model. Not to mention advertising that they could do as well as various other services they could provide to their HUGE customer base.
We're talking about a device in the not-so-distant future that can create a solution with tempratures up to a hundred thousand degrees kelvin that runs off two, maybe four AA batteries. And you're telling me they'res no way to draw from this power?
Not sure where you got the hundred thousand degrees kelvin from, but if what you say can happen, then yes, this would be extermely intereresting. Unfortunatly, it is probably on the order of requiring two AA batteries to output the power of 1 microwatt. The fraction of output energy to input energy is called the Q factor. This device has an extremely small Q factor. So far, we've only been able to create hot fusion nuclear reactors that have a Q factor of about 1.2 or so. That means you put in 1 watt of energy and get out 1.2 watts. This means there was a net output of energy. The only problem with these is that the net energy output only lasts for a fraction of a second. The multibillion international project ITER is to make hot fusion reactor that will have a positive Q factor or about 5 in the steady state. This means it would continously generate energy. It's not the size of a table top though. It's more like the size of a huge appartment complex. If ITER is successful, it will be a huge step forward, but it's a long ways off. Then, after ITER is completed, we need to figure out how to build more ITERs for a reasonable price. This whole thing will play out over the next 50 years, so if we don't come up with some cheap way to do Solar by then, ITER will be pretty nice because you essentially put a bucket of Deuterium in a reactor with Tritium (obtained from Lithium) and you get a HUGE supply of energy for free. The only cost is the Deuterium and Tritium (super cheap) and the cost of the facility plus maintence, etc.
Just because you don't see the obvious money making schemes that Google could try does not mean they aren't there.
This is my point exactly. Of course I know that Google is one of the most profitable internet companies around. My point in saying "You mean like Google?" is to say that Skype doesn't have to sell VOIP to be the most profitable player in the VOIP market. Just as Google doesn't have to sell search to be number one in the search market. The GGP implied that unless Skype starts charging for Skype, they will go out of business, I'm merely pointing out that it's not true. You can finance a free service through other means as you've correctly described with Google.
You are right that free is not a good business model, as we learned in the late 90's, but the idea is to charge people to use the service in a way that they don't notice. For Google, that means through advertising that's very nonintrusive. For Skype, they offer free internet to internet phone service, but if you want to call a land line or cell they charge. Also, if you want to get voicemail (and who wouldn't if they seriously used this service?) they charge. There's so many other services they can charge for as well. The options are limitless.
Well, the big difference is that Napster was doing something ILLEGAL or making it easy for others to do so. Skype isn't breaking a single law. Basically, they are just allowing people to do this free when others have charged an arm and a leg to do so. The people charging the arm and the leg are PISSED. But that's life. I think a better comparison is to Craigslist. Craigslist offers free classifieds and get you better results than newspapars. Are newspapers pissed? YES. But, basically, there's nothing they can do about it because there's no law against doing online classifieds. That is why Craigslist is still very relevant. Skype will not be the next Napster just by doing things cheaper than their competition.
If you want to push a policy of major trade sanctions against them, let's talk about it, but don't nickel-and-dime them by witholding Internet search engines. That's just petty and stupid.
Most people seem to think this move is directed at China. It's possible that the Government didn't like Google making trade policy. Sergey Brin came out just the other day saying something like "We weighed the pluses and minuses and decided to go into China". From the begining, I thought that it wasn't Google's place to decide who the US should trade with. I think as a corporation, they are responsible for doing business where it makes sense for them financially. It's the government's role to say if this is ok or not. I'm glad to see the govt. has spoken even though, like you, I don't agree with their decision. I would have prefered Google's decision to allow surfers to access Google for the sites that the Chinese allow even though idealy we'd like to avoid this blatent censorship.
The researchers found that some of the rats thought more about the maze than others. Here's
a picture of two mice. The one on the left thought much more about his performance than the one on the right.
This is all correct. The perfect "N-core" application is a webserver. That's why I think this multicore stuff really lends it self to the server market more than than the desktop market. The desktop market is being eaten at both ends. One end is the laptop market, the other is the server market. I'd imagine that in 10 years, most computers that consumers buy will resemble laptops more than desktops. These laptops will be measured on other metrics, like battery life, graphics display capabilities, user input devices, etc. The servers that the laptops connect to will be where most of the actual processing takes place.
Slashdot Mirror
Since you're in Australia and I'm in the US, who's in a better position to state whether or not the US has a good healthcare system? I've seen both the good side and the bad and I know that making it public is a move in the wrong direction and would only make costs go higher. Here's a question for you: Do you generally get better service in situations where you have a choice in who provides the service or when you have no choice?
I don't even need the "hardly" I said nothing of the sort, nor do I believe anything like that.
Yes you did. You called the guy a moron because he thought there was one sided moderation on politics. I call one sided moderation unfair. It makes no difference if it's one sided with respect to politics, science, computers, etc. An example of one sided moderation is if you happened to say anything good about Microsoft, you might be modded down unfairly. It's possible that you had done some research and found something that Microsoft did well and you commented on it. Your comment might actually be insightful or informative, but some stupid people would just mod you down because they don't like Microsoft. The same could be true for Republicans, Democrats, or any other groups or even people who support a particular issue. I think this is unfair moderation.
Your statement is inherently contradictory. If "most" people have experienced it then it isn't one sided. Do you get it now?!?
No, my statement was not contradictory. I said that most people who comment regularly experience unfair moderation. For instance, I made the following post:
"I like the idea of Skype charging for voice mail. Everyone uses voice mail and if people seriously start using Skype, they will pay for voice mail. Also, calling out to cell and land lines is charged for. I think these are very good starting points actually and I think this alone could be a profitable business model. Not to mention advertising that they could do as well as various other services they could provide to their HUGE customer base."
This was unfairly moderated to flamebait. I really don't get it actually. The only reason that I can think that someone would mod this to flamebait is that they just don't like Skype and anyone that thinks Skype has a good business model should be unfairly moded down. When I said "most" I wasn't talking exclusively about politics, I believe most people are in the minority on SOME issue. Right? Most people aren't total lemmings are they?
He said that right wing whackos were *silenced*. That is a lie, it is idiotic, and the fact that you come to back it up makes you look like an idiot. Nice job.
Come on man, just read the politics section and count how many pro-republican posts get modded up. It's pretty rare. pro-democratic posts tend to be upgraded more often. Just like Microsoft posts generally get downgraded and Linux posts get upgraded. Like it or not, there's bias here and everywhere else in the world, it's just human nature. I would just hope that the average Slashdot moderator is a little smarter than the average bear. They should be willing to upgrade posts they don't agree with because their interesting or insightful. For instance, if someone analyzed Skype and said that they had a bad business model, if their reasoning was good, I might upgrade them even though I happen to disagree with them on that point.
If you think your POV is not being seriously considered in THIS environment, perhaps you should reconsider your POV.
Oh come on, Slashdot is hardly an average cross section of the population. Most people aren't as nerdy as we are.
I would hardly have called him a moron because he thinks that there is unfair moderation on this site. I agree with him on that point and I think most people who comment regularly have experienced unfair moderation. Anther tactic to get modded up is to say anything negative about the Bush adminstration so it seems you're guilty of being a karma whore as well.
First of all, your premise is incorrect. The US has a very good health care system. That is why people from foreign countries that are sick travel here to have surguries performed. You can see countless documenteries on this. Most of the top drug research is done in the US also and the best medical schools in the world are in the US. Major companies include Pfizer, Merck, Wyeth, etc are all based in the US. Other countries benefit from this drug research even though the expense is incurred in the US. If you have insurance in the US, you can get the best care in the world. When organizations like the World Health Organization bash the US, they are almost entirely slanting their studies to favor countries that have socialized health care. The ironic part is that in a sense the US has socialized health care. For one thing, any Emergency Room in the country MUST serve anyone even if they have no insurance, no money, or are illegal immigrants. Many people visit the ER just to get medicine for a cold or cough because they no they will get free service. This is one of the reasons American health care is so expensive. There is an enormous cost assosiated with this socialized health care. Since Americans are compassionate people, we accept the fact that this is an increased cost that we are willing to pay.
You are right that US health care is extremely expensive, but that is largely because the of the huge administrative costs that I mentioned in the initial post I made. These administrative costs are basically incurred due to the fact that the consumer is not paying his own medical bills. The solution is NOT to socialize healthcare as you imply. The real solution is to make consumers more aware of the amount paid. My proposal is to have individuals pay 25% of healthcare costs as opposed to having employers pay 100% of healthcare costs. This will make consumers more price sensative. I have first hand experience with this. I recently had to have a surgury performed. I didn't even see the price of this until after the surgury was performed. I really didn't care what it cost because I knew my health insurance would be paying the tab. I only had to pay a small co-pay no matter what the total was. It turned out that the total was over $9000. Even though the surgeon only spent about 30 - 60 minutes, there was a charge for thousands for his time. I know he's not making all of this money directly because if so his hourly salry would be well in the thousands. The person that pushed the wheelchair cost several hundred dollars. I'm sure the guy that pushed the wheelchair wasn't making all that since it only took him a few minutes. There were many other line items on this bill that made no sense. In short, due to the fact that consumers don't care what their healthcare costs are, the hospitals can charge whatever they want. The insurance company gets the bill and is not really in a position to negotiate since for all they know that guy that pushed the wheelchair was really working for hours and hours. Socializing healthcare would have an even worse effect. I probably wouldn't get to see the line items if we did have socialized medical. Government just isn't equiped to manage these costs.
They kept telling me, you need to read more you need to write more. Now that kids are doing what we've told them (to read and write), because they're doing it on their own terms (with instant messanging, email, text messages, blogs, etc), this guy is trying to say it's bad thing because he wants to be a grammar nazi. Ok, whatever. Oh by the way, the "comic book generation" is a little bit out dated. I mean come on, comic books have been popoular since the 50's and even earlier. I think it would be better to call this generation "the instant messanger generation", but hey I'm a member of this illiterate group of idiots, so what do I know?
Having companies pay their employee's health benefits is far from ideal
I agree with you here. This is why health care costs are so high and rising. The company pays no matter what happens. There's no accountability for the consumer. If I go into the hospital for a surgury I don't even ask how much it's going to cost because I know my medical insurance will pay 100% minus a small copay. A better solution would be to have medical insurance companies pay for say 75% of the cost and the consumer responsible for 25%. This would instantly make people price sensative when it comes to medical costs. The prices would come down to something reasonable instantly.
it would be better to have the government recognize health care as the fundamental human right
Here's where we disagree. Making health care, the responsibility of the Government would make matters even worse. The Government is basically an inept organization when it comes to this type of thing. Imagine the same guys that ran FEMA and the huricane Katrina debacle running your healthcare plan. No thanks! Health care really is best done in the private sector.
Yeah, this just doesn't seem like a blue tooth application to me. They should have used Wi-fi instead, that would get them more range.
The case is so that it looks pretty and doesn't sound like a jet engine.
I thought I was splurging at $75 for my case, but $120 must be really cool I guess.
The $300+ cpu gets them a dual core cpu (see below).
I think the dual core 2.66 gHz chip is coming out in March for around $200 - $250 range.
but $2,276 seems like a lot for a computer these days. If money is not an issue, sure go for it and get this system, but you can save on a lot of these areas. Like case for $120. That's a lot. $300+ for the cpu also seems too much. You can get a very nice CPU for $150 and under. I think you can even get a lowend dual core for that price if that's your thing. I'd stick with the 2 gB of RAM, because RAM is the most useful thing these days in my opinion. You don't need that hardrive though. You can get one for about $150 that has a similar capacity that you will probably NEVER fill. The sound card for over $100 is outragous. I use the one that came with my mother board and it sounds great. A $75 microsoft keyboard is redicoulas. You can get a wireless mouse/keyboard combo for less than that price. I want even get into the $125 for the OS. Just my $0.02.
Some people don't believe that we actually went to the moon either.
Now I'm waiting for wireless electricity and I'll be set!
Well, you could supply the power through microwaves. The only problem is that you might get fried in the process.
that there's a company with this as their goal. But, the robot climber is not the hard part at all. The hard part is the carbon nanotube tensile strength issue. Even having a robot climb a mile (or as some have said 1500 feet) is nothing special. We have the technology to do this already. A 1 mile cable is also nothing, bridges have this already. They're talking about a 62000 mile cable. I'd be more impressed if they told me that they had a 1 meter nanotube cable that has the tensile strength of 60 gPA. That would at least be the building block for being able to build the space elevator. But, this gets headlines even though it's meaningless.
Uhhh, does anyone have any idea why this was mod flamebait? I just don't get it. What could possibly be considered flamebait about this. All I'm saying is that Skype has a good business model IMHO. If you disagree, fine, but how is this flamebait?
By the way, is Deuterium and Tritium - and the substances they're extracted from, such as lithium - renewable, or what is their abundance?
Good question and that's the best part. There is enough Tritium that can be extracted to supply the earth with current consumption of energy for the next 1000 years. The Deuterium is even more abundant. With a hotter form of Fusion reaction, we wouldn't even need Tritium. The deuterium supply (which you can get from sea water) on earth is enough to supply us for the next million or so years at current consumption levels. Imagine literally powering the city of Los Angeles for 1 year on a bucket of sea water. That's what we can do if we can create a sustainable Deuterium fusion reaction.
I like the idea of Skype charging for voice mail. Everyone uses voice mail and if people seriously start using Skype, they will pay for voice mail. Also, calling out to cell and land lines is charged for. I think these are very good starting points actually and I think this alone could be a profitable business model. Not to mention advertising that they could do as well as various other services they could provide to their HUGE customer base.
We're talking about a device in the not-so-distant future that can create a solution with tempratures up to a hundred thousand degrees kelvin that runs off two, maybe four AA batteries. And you're telling me they'res no way to draw from this power?
Not sure where you got the hundred thousand degrees kelvin from, but if what you say can happen, then yes, this would be extermely intereresting. Unfortunatly, it is probably on the order of requiring two AA batteries to output the power of 1 microwatt. The fraction of output energy to input energy is called the Q factor. This device has an extremely small Q factor. So far, we've only been able to create hot fusion nuclear reactors that have a Q factor of about 1.2 or so. That means you put in 1 watt of energy and get out 1.2 watts. This means there was a net output of energy. The only problem with these is that the net energy output only lasts for a fraction of a second. The multibillion international project ITER is to make hot fusion reactor that will have a positive Q factor or about 5 in the steady state. This means it would continously generate energy. It's not the size of a table top though. It's more like the size of a huge appartment complex. If ITER is successful, it will be a huge step forward, but it's a long ways off. Then, after ITER is completed, we need to figure out how to build more ITERs for a reasonable price. This whole thing will play out over the next 50 years, so if we don't come up with some cheap way to do Solar by then, ITER will be pretty nice because you essentially put a bucket of Deuterium in a reactor with Tritium (obtained from Lithium) and you get a HUGE supply of energy for free. The only cost is the Deuterium and Tritium (super cheap) and the cost of the facility plus maintence, etc.
Just because you don't see the obvious money making schemes that Google could try does not mean they aren't there.
This is my point exactly. Of course I know that Google is one of the most profitable internet companies around. My point in saying "You mean like Google?" is to say that Skype doesn't have to sell VOIP to be the most profitable player in the VOIP market. Just as Google doesn't have to sell search to be number one in the search market. The GGP implied that unless Skype starts charging for Skype, they will go out of business, I'm merely pointing out that it's not true. You can finance a free service through other means as you've correctly described with Google.
Yes, but when was the last time you saw an ad in Skype?
Google didn't advertise for the first few years either.
And the last time I checked, Skype didn't directly sell anything like this.
Check out this.
You are right that free is not a good business model, as we learned in the late 90's, but the idea is to charge people to use the service in a way that they don't notice. For Google, that means through advertising that's very nonintrusive. For Skype, they offer free internet to internet phone service, but if you want to call a land line or cell they charge. Also, if you want to get voicemail (and who wouldn't if they seriously used this service?) they charge. There's so many other services they can charge for as well. The options are limitless.
lol... "Is freely giving away our service a sustainable business model?" Where (or better stated, when) have we heard that before?
You mean like Google?
Well, the big difference is that Napster was doing something ILLEGAL or making it easy for others to do so. Skype isn't breaking a single law. Basically, they are just allowing people to do this free when others have charged an arm and a leg to do so. The people charging the arm and the leg are PISSED. But that's life. I think a better comparison is to Craigslist. Craigslist offers free classifieds and get you better results than newspapars. Are newspapers pissed? YES. But, basically, there's nothing they can do about it because there's no law against doing online classifieds. That is why Craigslist is still very relevant. Skype will not be the next Napster just by doing things cheaper than their competition.
If you want to push a policy of major trade sanctions against them, let's talk about it, but don't nickel-and-dime them by witholding Internet search engines. That's just petty and stupid.
Most people seem to think this move is directed at China. It's possible that the Government didn't like Google making trade policy. Sergey Brin came out just the other day saying something like "We weighed the pluses and minuses and decided to go into China". From the begining, I thought that it wasn't Google's place to decide who the US should trade with. I think as a corporation, they are responsible for doing business where it makes sense for them financially. It's the government's role to say if this is ok or not. I'm glad to see the govt. has spoken even though, like you, I don't agree with their decision. I would have prefered Google's decision to allow surfers to access Google for the sites that the Chinese allow even though idealy we'd like to avoid this blatent censorship.
If this idea proves true in people.
I'd be surprised if this proves true in people. Most people can't even remember where they parked their car.
The researchers found that some of the rats thought more about the maze than others. Here's a picture of two mice. The one on the left thought much more about his performance than the one on the right.
This is all correct. The perfect "N-core" application is a webserver. That's why I think this multicore stuff really lends it self to the server market more than than the desktop market. The desktop market is being eaten at both ends. One end is the laptop market, the other is the server market. I'd imagine that in 10 years, most computers that consumers buy will resemble laptops more than desktops. These laptops will be measured on other metrics, like battery life, graphics display capabilities, user input devices, etc. The servers that the laptops connect to will be where most of the actual processing takes place.