... and maybe the printers should run on non-standard electricity. And they could require some special atmosphere for the ink to properly dry. And then the ballots could be coated with some sort of toxic substance that, when handled, kills the person touching it in seconds. Only the specially powered printers operating in the specially formulated atmosphere can properly remove the toxic coating so that the ballots can be safely handled.
Seriously, the point of this idea is to save money. Inventing custom ink wouldn't seem to fit that mold.
I bought my wife one of these machines (HP, $449, Vista Home Premium, AMD TK-53, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 120GB HD, Dual Layer DVD Writer, 802.11g, firewire, modem, 100baseT lan, 5-in-1 media readers, 15.4" wide screen "brightview" display, a remote for controlling the media player) and it is certainly not slower than dirt. It actually even plays (2 years or older) games very well. And it is *certainly* plenty fast for web surfing, writing documents, etc. FWIW, the Vista rating is 2.7 on this machine; mostly it falls down on the graphics performance.
Stop spreading FUD. You can get a very nice laptop, with Vista Home Premium pre-installed, for $449. It will have a dual core CPU, 1GB of memory, 120GB or larger HD, and a 15" widescreen LCD, and a DVD dual layer burner. Your silly "Vista Basic itself costs $199" is deliberately misleading, and you know it. OEMs pay *significantly* less than that for Vista Home Premium. The so-called "Microsoft tax" is in reality well south of $50 (proof: see laptop price above).
... what aliens, observing the electromagnetic patterns emitting from earth, would make of the odd modulo-7 component that derives from our 7 day week. It wouldn't seem to make much sense to them given that 7 does not divide evenly into a single orbit of the planet around the sun. Of course the 24 hour pattern the would also detect would align with the planet's rotation (pretty closely), so that would make the modulo-7 thing even more odd to them.
Sure. Clamping down on internet access by their citizens (while forcing companies like Yahoo! to pay for it and take some of the blame) is not at all what the Chinese government wants. If you believe that, I have a firewall I'd like to sell you cheap that blocks all objectionable content (and you get to define objectionable).
There is no way in hell I wan't to run 15 complete virtualizations of the same hardware/OS if it isn't strictly necessary
You didn't read my comment very closely. I specifically said "custom" OS. Essentially this means several things. First, there is no reason to bind full-blown Windows to every application if that application only uses a subset of Windows. Further, since the OS is delivered with the application, you likely would have 15 different virtualizations running, not 15 copies of the same one. And each would be sized appropriately. Imagine a game that came with an OS which was highly tuned for gaming with heavily optimized graphics calls, incredible sound APIs, and rich internetworking APIs for head-to-head. This same OS, though, would not have IE, or XML parsing, or even, perhaps, much of a file system. In essence, the distinction between the OS and the application itself would blur. In some ways this is like returning to the roots of software development before OSs, when the one and only application starts up and owns the machine - of course in this case it owns a virtual machine, but the principal is the same. No more DLL hell. No more installation incompatibilities. No more driver issues (well, to be fair, the drivers reside between the VM and the underlying OS and hardware, which is a much better controlled environment than today's hardware-to-OS interface).
please tell me, why would anyone want to run each application instance in its own VM?. I mean talk about overhead
Why do computations in floating point when you can do them in integer? Do you know how many gates an FPU consumes?
Why would anyone want to run more than one application at a time? That means virtual memory, swapping, overhead!
Why would anyone want two or more applications on the screen at the same time! Why, you'd need a 20" monitor, or bigger, to make that useful!
Why would anyone back up their data by making a bit-for-bit image of an entire hard drive? Why burn gigabytes to back up megabytes worth of data?
The history of computers is filled with examples whereby convenience trumps efficiency as soon as technology makes the convenience affordable and/or practical. How long does it take to install a good-sized application? 15 minutes? Half an hour? Even 5 minutes is much too long when you can simply run the VM-app immediately without having to do any install, without having to answer any bizarre or meaningless (to you) questions. If your only argument against my prediction is one of cost and efficiency, you essentially have no argument.
... so will the OS. This is because virtualization will render which OS is "underneath" moot. Applications will be delivered with a fully customized OS tightly coupled to it. Big, binary blobs of code+hostOS will be delivered and stored locally in multi-terabyte drives. Data will remain locally stored because nobody will trust having their data flying around the internet for anyone to see or steal. And applications (in the form of pre-installed VMs) will be stored locally so they can be used even when no internet connectivity is available. This, IMHO, is the next wave, and will take 5 to 10 years to play out. Once wireless connectivity is ubiquitous and can provide sufficient bandwidth (gigabit or more), *MAYBE* web-based applications will become more viable, though there still remains the security issue.
If this prediction is true, then Microsoft is still in the driver's seat relative to Google. They are a player in the virtualization market, and they have applications that people will want, albeit in a slightly different form, so they can be run on their Macs, Linux boxes or Windows boxes.
That's really interesting. That is a mutation rate of 100x the normal mutation rate (which is, per the article, 1 in 10e6). Now, 20 years have passed since Chernobyl. That is an equivalent time of 2000 years in "evolutionary" terms. Voles live, on average, 3 to 6 months (Wikipedia), so we are talking about 4000 generations, give or take. Surely there must have evolved some new species by now.
I personally will miss CompUSA. In our area they are in the same shopping center as Best Buy, and it was very common for me to park midway between them and get prices from both stores before buying. And contrary to most folks' comments, our local CompUSA was always very well-stocked. If both Best Buy and CompUSA had a good sale, we would be almost guaranteed of getting it at CompUSA, and almost guaranteed of NOT getting it at Best Buy. Of course you had to pick-and-choose what you bought there, like any store. Their cable prices were ridiculous (I buy all my cables from newegg), but they often had really good deals on hard drives, memory, video boards, keyboards, mice and such. And they always had a much broader selection of computer stuff than Best Buy.
Anyhow, where I think they went wrong was getting into consumer electronics like big screen TVs. Their prices were outrageous and their store displays were woeful. And the thing that drove me the most crazy was they never even bothered to properly set up the TVs. They would always be running noisy content with maladjusted displays in the wrong aspect ratio, in a bright environment. I was actually embarrassed for them. In all my years of going there I never, ever saw anyone in a checkout line or leaving their store with a TV in their cart, as contrasted with Best Buy, where it was commonplace.
I don't really feel like letting Microsoft get away with that kind of practice
Duh. So you would rather give Apple big profits? That's odd, because around \., I thought profit was a dirty word. Oh wait, I get it. It's OK for the "good guys" to make a profit (even a BIG profit by gouging), but the "evil ones" must never make a penny. Hey, here's a thought. Maybe we could all put Microsoft out of business by buying their loss-leaders. Maybe we should all buy Zunes and XBoxes, and tell our friends to do the same. We should give them as gifts. And buy a spare or too. Every purchase hurts them. And since Microsoft's Office-Windows profits aren't infinite, we could push them towards bankruptcy. Why isn't that a good idea? Hmmmm, what's a zealot to do?
If you look closer at the page you linked you will notice the list is updated hourly. Now, the article was dated 11/19, which is two weeks ago. The article also talks about sub $150 pricing, whereas the current price listed for Zunes is back up to $180. The story may be old, but you have presented no evidence that it is bunk. What this tells me is that, if Microsoft was willing to cut margins to the bone (or possibly sell at a loss) they could gain substantial marketshare. I strongly suspect those ultra-low prices on Zune 30GB were just to clear out room on retail shelves for the new models, but it is interesting how much that increased demand, proving that Apple is vulnerable.
3) Stop hiding the cost of Windows in the price of the PC. The PC hardware should be offered at $X and the purchaser then offered a selection of OS and support options to choose from.
Of your 4 suggestions, this one (#3) seems the most intriguing. And BTW, it implies #2. #1 and #4, in my opinion, are both ridiculous and reflective of centralized government control of markets, which rarely works as intended and usually leads to stagnation.
Personally, I think it would be very interesting to see what would happen if #3 came to pass. I strongly suspect Microsoft's market share would barely be affected. I am certain that virtually everyone would opt for Windows (for the $40-$80 OEM price) over Linux (for "free"). There might be a momentary blip as people got suckered by the $100 savings, but it would fade quickly once reality set it. At least if this choice was available, maybe the Linux zealots would finally stop whining that "it isn't fair, please big government come and protect me from those big nasty corporations".
I bought one of these about a year ago. I populated it with two 500GB SATA drives. I chose to stripe for speed, not redundancy. I am very satisfied with this box. It just runs 24x7, takes up very little room, and is fairly quiet (there is a fan). Another bonus which was a big deal for me was that it has a GigE connection. And best of all, you'll only spend about $450 to build a fairly fast 1TB NAS.
The only downside I have found is that the DNS-323 does not correctly implement the Windows Archive attribute in the file system. I have some simple batch files that I use to back up my data by coping all files with their archive bit set from the drive to another external USB drive, and then clearing the archive bit on those copied files. But it seems the DNS-323 for some reason does not persist the state of the archive flag, and so every time I run the script it copies all the files on the volume.
even a 50% tax on the ultra rich won't solve the nation's debt problems
You are probably right, since the ultra-rich are already in a 35% tax bracket, so you can't squeeze much more out of that source. Plus, if you add in state and local taxes, social security, medicare, sales and property/excise taxes, the total tax bite probably blows right past 50% for many. BTW, did you know that the top 5% (by income) pay >54% of the federal taxes? http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0923085.html
First off, I owe you an apology. When I accused you of sanctioning what happened on 9/11, I stepped over the line. Your reaction to my accusation was completely justified and I accept your criticism. I offer in my defense only the meager observation that I am so accustomed to dealing with rampant and rabid anti-Americanism on this forum that sometimes I see it where I shouldn't. You never said anything that would suggest you thought the US deserved 9/11. All you said was that US policies have contributed to an increased number of terrorists. I don't agree with that assessment, but your statement is far from a justification of terrorism against the US.
Car accidents kill more people than terrorism ever has.
There you go again. This whole discussion started with my observation that it's the trend that matters. I stated that deaths due to car accidents are not on the increase (per capita), but that deaths due to terrorism are increasing dramatically. This is a true statement that cannot be refuted. I stated that terrorist organizations are significantly more sophisticated and capable now than they were 30 years ago. Again, the facts support my argument. Lastly I postulated that, at the current rate of expansion, left alone, the terrorists would likely gain the ability to kill 10s or 100s of thousands of people in one attack. This is a simple extrapolation of an undeniable trend. Because of this, I believe that we need to be vigilant and proactive to prevent such a catastrophe from occurring. Clearly the threat is on a completely different level from car accidents and to compare it with deaths due to car accidents is disingenuous and, frankly, irrelevant.
You raise some valid points as regards Iraq. Clearly the expense in lives and dollars is not commensurate with the risk. However, your characterization of US troops as decoys is, I believe, misguided. The purpose of the military is two-fold. First, the reason we have a military is to prevent "the bad guys" from attacking the homeland. Second, we have a military to defend the homeland from attackers. Your statement implies that anytime the military is used in a proactive, preventative way, the troops are decoys. This, I think, is a gross over-simplification, and is frankly insulting to those who serve to protect and defend.
If the terrorists had the "capability" for decades as you claim, they would no doubt have used it. 9/11 was not a simple plane hijacking. It was planned years in advance. The hijackers were enrolled in flight school to learn to fly large jets. All the while a government, the Taliban, protected and supported them. This is a long way from some nut-job whipping out a gun or a bomb and hijacking a plane. Do you honestly believe a pilot would ram his jet into a skyscraper on the orders of a hijacker? No, the hijackers had to be able to fly the jet. This required years of advanced planning and lots of money, and a well-oiled organization. This represents a quantum leap in capabilities for these terrorist groups. I know you wish this wasn't the case as do I, but we cannot simply bury our heads in the sand and pretend it isn't so.
Sadly, it is you who is politically motivated. I am merely pointing out that which should be obvious to anybody who has been paying attention these last 30 years. You are no doubt among those who believe the US "had it coming" (you suggest as much in your comment). And it upsets you that the US is trying to do something about the problem. So you and your ilk make silly statements like "what about car accidents?" I have seen this pathetic attempt at misdirection many times here on \., which is why I chimed in on this thread.
One last comment. You state that terrorists are not any more of a threat than they were before 9/11. On this I think we agree, though the reason why that is true would probably not be something we can agree upon. I see a steady and deliberate progression of terrorists capabilities starting in the 70s which has been stalled, and perhaps even reversed by the actions taken by the West since 9/11. Nations that formerly supported terrorists are now under new leadership, or are backing away from those positions. Many training bases have been dismantled. Many terrorist leaders have been captured or killed. Had we simply shrugged and turned our attention to adding side airbags to our cars after 9/11, leaving the Taliban (and countless others) alone, do you really believe they would not have used that time to inflict further damage on the West? Based on the evidence that is a preposterously naive position.
Apparently the fact that the capabilities of terrorist organizations to kill has been demonstrably increasing in the past 3 decades is lost on you, and many here on \. Of course it is no accident that their ability to kill on a large scale is increasing. There are nation-states sponsoring and harboring them; they actively recruit; they have well-funded training camps. Theirs has been a deliberate and steady progression from a ragtag group that could do little more than threaten a few Olympic athletes, to an entity that can bring down two massive skyscrapers and kill thousands in one act. Please forgive me for pointing all of that out. Let's just ignore them and focus on car accidents then, like the OP suggested.
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If you can just go to Staples to buy them, what makes them secure?
... and maybe the printers should run on non-standard electricity. And they could require some special atmosphere for the ink to properly dry. And then the ballots could be coated with some sort of toxic substance that, when handled, kills the person touching it in seconds. Only the specially powered printers operating in the specially formulated atmosphere can properly remove the toxic coating so that the ballots can be safely handled.
Seriously, the point of this idea is to save money. Inventing custom ink wouldn't seem to fit that mold.
... and if you are in the military, they will be printed with disappearing ink.
I bought my wife one of these machines (HP, $449, Vista Home Premium, AMD TK-53, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 120GB HD, Dual Layer DVD Writer, 802.11g, firewire, modem, 100baseT lan, 5-in-1 media readers, 15.4" wide screen "brightview" display, a remote for controlling the media player) and it is certainly not slower than dirt. It actually even plays (2 years or older) games very well. And it is *certainly* plenty fast for web surfing, writing documents, etc. FWIW, the Vista rating is 2.7 on this machine; mostly it falls down on the graphics performance.
Stop spreading FUD. You can get a very nice laptop, with Vista Home Premium pre-installed, for $449. It will have a dual core CPU, 1GB of memory, 120GB or larger HD, and a 15" widescreen LCD, and a DVD dual layer burner. Your silly "Vista Basic itself costs $199" is deliberately misleading, and you know it. OEMs pay *significantly* less than that for Vista Home Premium. The so-called "Microsoft tax" is in reality well south of $50 (proof: see laptop price above).
... what aliens, observing the electromagnetic patterns emitting from earth, would make of the odd modulo-7 component that derives from our 7 day week. It wouldn't seem to make much sense to them given that 7 does not divide evenly into a single orbit of the planet around the sun. Of course the 24 hour pattern the would also detect would align with the planet's rotation (pretty closely), so that would make the modulo-7 thing even more odd to them.
I like the fact that your \. ID is in the 640Ks
... who said MFC was dead!
Sure. Clamping down on internet access by their citizens (while forcing companies like Yahoo! to pay for it and take some of the blame) is not at all what the Chinese government wants. If you believe that, I have a firewall I'd like to sell you cheap that blocks all objectionable content (and you get to define objectionable).
Why would anyone want to run more than one application at a time? That means virtual memory, swapping, overhead!
Why would anyone want two or more applications on the screen at the same time! Why, you'd need a 20" monitor, or bigger, to make that useful!
Why would anyone back up their data by making a bit-for-bit image of an entire hard drive? Why burn gigabytes to back up megabytes worth of data?
The history of computers is filled with examples whereby convenience trumps efficiency as soon as technology makes the convenience affordable and/or practical. How long does it take to install a good-sized application? 15 minutes? Half an hour? Even 5 minutes is much too long when you can simply run the VM-app immediately without having to do any install, without having to answer any bizarre or meaningless (to you) questions. If your only argument against my prediction is one of cost and efficiency, you essentially have no argument.
... so will the OS. This is because virtualization will render which OS is "underneath" moot. Applications will be delivered with a fully customized OS tightly coupled to it. Big, binary blobs of code+hostOS will be delivered and stored locally in multi-terabyte drives. Data will remain locally stored because nobody will trust having their data flying around the internet for anyone to see or steal. And applications (in the form of pre-installed VMs) will be stored locally so they can be used even when no internet connectivity is available. This, IMHO, is the next wave, and will take 5 to 10 years to play out. Once wireless connectivity is ubiquitous and can provide sufficient bandwidth (gigabit or more), *MAYBE* web-based applications will become more viable, though there still remains the security issue.
If this prediction is true, then Microsoft is still in the driver's seat relative to Google. They are a player in the virtualization market, and they have applications that people will want, albeit in a slightly different form, so they can be run on their Macs, Linux boxes or Windows boxes.
That's really interesting. That is a mutation rate of 100x the normal mutation rate (which is, per the article, 1 in 10e6). Now, 20 years have passed since Chernobyl. That is an equivalent time of 2000 years in "evolutionary" terms. Voles live, on average, 3 to 6 months (Wikipedia), so we are talking about 4000 generations, give or take. Surely there must have evolved some new species by now.
why I keep coming back to Slashdot!
I personally will miss CompUSA. In our area they are in the same shopping center as Best Buy, and it was very common for me to park midway between them and get prices from both stores before buying. And contrary to most folks' comments, our local CompUSA was always very well-stocked. If both Best Buy and CompUSA had a good sale, we would be almost guaranteed of getting it at CompUSA, and almost guaranteed of NOT getting it at Best Buy. Of course you had to pick-and-choose what you bought there, like any store. Their cable prices were ridiculous (I buy all my cables from newegg), but they often had really good deals on hard drives, memory, video boards, keyboards, mice and such. And they always had a much broader selection of computer stuff than Best Buy.
Anyhow, where I think they went wrong was getting into consumer electronics like big screen TVs. Their prices were outrageous and their store displays were woeful. And the thing that drove me the most crazy was they never even bothered to properly set up the TVs. They would always be running noisy content with maladjusted displays in the wrong aspect ratio, in a bright environment. I was actually embarrassed for them. In all my years of going there I never, ever saw anyone in a checkout line or leaving their store with a TV in their cart, as contrasted with Best Buy, where it was commonplace.
If you look closer at the page you linked you will notice the list is updated hourly. Now, the article was dated 11/19, which is two weeks ago. The article also talks about sub $150 pricing, whereas the current price listed for Zunes is back up to $180. The story may be old, but you have presented no evidence that it is bunk. What this tells me is that, if Microsoft was willing to cut margins to the bone (or possibly sell at a loss) they could gain substantial marketshare. I strongly suspect those ultra-low prices on Zune 30GB were just to clear out room on retail shelves for the new models, but it is interesting how much that increased demand, proving that Apple is vulnerable.
Personally, I think it would be very interesting to see what would happen if #3 came to pass. I strongly suspect Microsoft's market share would barely be affected. I am certain that virtually everyone would opt for Windows (for the $40-$80 OEM price) over Linux (for "free"). There might be a momentary blip as people got suckered by the $100 savings, but it would fade quickly once reality set it. At least if this choice was available, maybe the Linux zealots would finally stop whining that "it isn't fair, please big government come and protect me from those big nasty corporations".
I bought one of these about a year ago. I populated it with two 500GB SATA drives. I chose to stripe for speed, not redundancy. I am very satisfied with this box. It just runs 24x7, takes up very little room, and is fairly quiet (there is a fan). Another bonus which was a big deal for me was that it has a GigE connection. And best of all, you'll only spend about $450 to build a fairly fast 1TB NAS.
The only downside I have found is that the DNS-323 does not correctly implement the Windows Archive attribute in the file system. I have some simple batch files that I use to back up my data by coping all files with their archive bit set from the drive to another external USB drive, and then clearing the archive bit on those copied files. But it seems the DNS-323 for some reason does not persist the state of the archive flag, and so every time I run the script it copies all the files on the volume.
There you go again. This whole discussion started with my observation that it's the trend that matters. I stated that deaths due to car accidents are not on the increase (per capita), but that deaths due to terrorism are increasing dramatically. This is a true statement that cannot be refuted. I stated that terrorist organizations are significantly more sophisticated and capable now than they were 30 years ago. Again, the facts support my argument. Lastly I postulated that, at the current rate of expansion, left alone, the terrorists would likely gain the ability to kill 10s or 100s of thousands of people in one attack. This is a simple extrapolation of an undeniable trend. Because of this, I believe that we need to be vigilant and proactive to prevent such a catastrophe from occurring. Clearly the threat is on a completely different level from car accidents and to compare it with deaths due to car accidents is disingenuous and, frankly, irrelevant.
You raise some valid points as regards Iraq. Clearly the expense in lives and dollars is not commensurate with the risk. However, your characterization of US troops as decoys is, I believe, misguided. The purpose of the military is two-fold. First, the reason we have a military is to prevent "the bad guys" from attacking the homeland. Second, we have a military to defend the homeland from attackers. Your statement implies that anytime the military is used in a proactive, preventative way, the troops are decoys. This, I think, is a gross over-simplification, and is frankly insulting to those who serve to protect and defend.
If the terrorists had the "capability" for decades as you claim, they would no doubt have used it. 9/11 was not a simple plane hijacking. It was planned years in advance. The hijackers were enrolled in flight school to learn to fly large jets. All the while a government, the Taliban, protected and supported them. This is a long way from some nut-job whipping out a gun or a bomb and hijacking a plane. Do you honestly believe a pilot would ram his jet into a skyscraper on the orders of a hijacker? No, the hijackers had to be able to fly the jet. This required years of advanced planning and lots of money, and a well-oiled organization. This represents a quantum leap in capabilities for these terrorist groups. I know you wish this wasn't the case as do I, but we cannot simply bury our heads in the sand and pretend it isn't so.
Sadly, it is you who is politically motivated. I am merely pointing out that which should be obvious to anybody who has been paying attention these last 30 years. You are no doubt among those who believe the US "had it coming" (you suggest as much in your comment). And it upsets you that the US is trying to do something about the problem. So you and your ilk make silly statements like "what about car accidents?" I have seen this pathetic attempt at misdirection many times here on \., which is why I chimed in on this thread.
One last comment. You state that terrorists are not any more of a threat than they were before 9/11. On this I think we agree, though the reason why that is true would probably not be something we can agree upon. I see a steady and deliberate progression of terrorists capabilities starting in the 70s which has been stalled, and perhaps even reversed by the actions taken by the West since 9/11. Nations that formerly supported terrorists are now under new leadership, or are backing away from those positions. Many training bases have been dismantled. Many terrorist leaders have been captured or killed. Had we simply shrugged and turned our attention to adding side airbags to our cars after 9/11, leaving the Taliban (and countless others) alone, do you really believe they would not have used that time to inflict further damage on the West? Based on the evidence that is a preposterously naive position.
Apparently the fact that the capabilities of terrorist organizations to kill has been demonstrably increasing in the past 3 decades is lost on you, and many here on \. Of course it is no accident that their ability to kill on a large scale is increasing. There are nation-states sponsoring and harboring them; they actively recruit; they have well-funded training camps. Theirs has been a deliberate and steady progression from a ragtag group that could do little more than threaten a few Olympic athletes, to an entity that can bring down two massive skyscrapers and kill thousands in one act. Please forgive me for pointing all of that out. Let's just ignore them and focus on car accidents then, like the OP suggested.