Eventually, we are all going to be driving cars that run on something other than gasoline.
The state will simply move the taxation to a different point.
If your car runs on hydrogen, they will tax hydrogen.
If your car runs on electricity, they will tax the electricity. Perhaps we will all have special power meters for plugging in our cars at night.
If it becomes too difficult to tax the fuel source, they will simply issue an annual tax based on your odometer reading. Perhaps you will be allowed to pay it in installments over the course of the year.
Government greed for your tax dollars aside, the roads and infrastructure/do/ need to be paid for, and today, they are in no small part paid for through gasoline taxes. If that revenue goes away, it's going to have to come from somewhere else.
>Example: lots of people I know have Linksys (WRT54G[L]) wireless routers _because_ they know they can >tinker with it, that there are lots of new, interesting uses to it with the alternate verstions of the software, etc.
I'm not in the software industry, and I don't know much about GPL.
But I do know that if my sole/product/ was software, I, too, would be leary about giving away the code for free.
In your Linksys example, there is a hardware component that is not easy to replicate - there is a barrier to duplication. So in that case it is a great benefit to create and sell the hardware, but leave the software open so that the world can improve the functionality and attractiveness of the hardware you are selling.
But I don't understand how this works with a pure software product. If you give it away to the world, then someone else is just going to take the code and make a derivative product from it that does the same thing but is free. The way I see it, the only thing authors of free software can sell is support./I/ wouldn't invest in a new product where I couldn't make any money selling the actual product but only support for it. What if everyone wants your product but no one needs or wants support? You've just invented the perfect software - but it's worthless to you.
I guess I just still don't understand the free software movement as a business.
>Yeah, all those people at Starbucks with laptops 'seeking out anonymity by piggybacking on their WiFi ' are scary. >Our University also provides open wireless access to the local community.
You will note I said:
"People seeking out anonymity by piggybacking on/my/ WiFi is scarier to me than your average drive."
Emphasis on "my" added.
I, and the GP are not talking about intentionally open WiFi hotspots like you are.
We are talking about people hooking into home WiFi networks.
The only people likely to be using these are ignorant nearby neighbors or people up to no good.
>You drive down the street with a complete strangers approaching with a closing speed of over >110 mph, but you wont leave your internet connection open?!
The difference is, everyone drives, so chances are, the stranger approaching you on the street is likely just an average joe like you. They probably aren't up to anything nefarious.
I don't think I would put the percentage of likelyhood for being benign as high for people surfing on open WiFi connections.
People seeking out anonymity by piggybacking on my WiFi is scarier to me than your average drive.
And, since I can do something about the former for next to no cost, and there is next to nothing I can do about the later, that's really an apples to oranges comparison.
So I went to Best Buy's web site, and decided to do a little digging around, say I wanted to try and figure out what the different hardware configurations were all about.
Just on this one page, there are 16 different processor choices.
Then you click on one.
You get lots of technical mumbo-jumbo. Architecture (65nm? Is that good?). Cache (more is usually better). Clock Speed (Is faster better? These days not always...). Front Side Bus (As opposed to the short bus?). Quad-core? Dual Core? Intel VT? Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology? Execute Disable Bit?
Come on. You expect people to make sense of any of this?
Look I'd/love/ to sit down like I did in the old days and ponder all this stuff and figure out all the whoosits and whatsits and trick up the ultimate custom system my pocketbook will allow. But it's just too damn complicated. I've got too many other things to worry about. It is easier and generally accurate to simply shop on price. The more expensive it is, the more likely it is to be better than the less expensive ones.
>The "gamer" who benefits from Dual video cards is NOT the gamer who keeps the PC for 5 years. >Only the hard core gamer could properly appreciate dual or Quad SLI cards, and those guys >ONLY keep the PC for a Year, and a couple I know don't even keep it that long.
I don't know why "Dual video cards" keeps coming up in this thread. I've never had that kind of setup, and I don't think I've ever seen a PC on the shelf at Best Buy configured that way.
>And thanks for confirming that you have plenty of money (an extra thousand is not a big deal), >unfortuneately most people out there are not in your situation so it is still important for them to get a >good deal on what they need.
No doubt. But my purchasing methodology works just as well - they just stop at a different price point than I do. My point is not that you have to buy the _most_expensive_ PC, just that you won't go far off the mark buying the most expensive PC _that_you_can_afford_. You just walk down the isle going, "$1000...no, $799...no, $599...OK".
Now if you really, really want to bargain shop and possibly build your own machine even, yes, you can spend the time to figure out the difference between an Intel and an AMD, a Pentium M vs. a Pentium D, or an Operton vs. an Itanium, or whatever. But there is _no_way_ever that a user like my mother is _ever_ going to do something like that. Not ever.
They are going to walk into Walmart, or BestBuy, or whatever, and shop on price. Why? Because, like I originally said, it is very difficult to figure out the technical details of what makes one product superior to another. Most user do not have a clue, and some, like myself who do, no longer care to be bothered figuring it out and fortunately have the financial wherewithal to enjoy that luxury.
>If he does not "Game" the most expensive E-machines PC (or whatever) is not likely any better than the one two price points lower
I do "game". And while it/is/ possible that I might be able to get away with buying a machine one or two price points lower, why bother? Why bother checking out all the exacting details to save maybe $500 for a PC I'm going to keep for 5 years or more?
>If he found a good site, or had a good friend the appropriate questions would be asked. >(Is this ever going to be used for games, are photos going to be stored or videos going to be ripped,is >it a media center...etc.)
Or....just buy the baddest machine available and be relatively assured that you can do anything you want to.
Look, it's just not that big a deal to me. I think it comes down to money. When I was a kid I used to pore over Computer Shopper, eaking out all the details and agonizing over how to get the absolute best for the least amount of money. Now a thousand dollars just isn't that big of a deal to me when I go to buy a PC every few years. And the bottom line is, the more expensive it is, usually, the better it is. Since the most expensive PC in Best Buy doesn't strain my pocket book, I don't have to do any work at all to make a good choice.
>If this guy has a BS in Computers and needs Vista performance index to decide what computer to buy I seriously doubt >the quality of a US education. No wonder we need H1Bs to come and run our companies. But seriously I think hes bluffing - >noone with a real CS degree is that stupid. Its this kind of talk which gives US Engineers a bad rep.
No, I am not bluffing - I do, in fact, have a BS - not in "computers" but in "Computer Science". For the uninitiated, Computer Science is mostly about algorithm development and execution - very little about hardware. My sole exposure to hardware in my education was one course of assembler (though this was still programming and so a stretch to say it was "about hardware) using the Motorola 68000 processor, and one class where we built simple hardware logic devices (AND, OR, NOR gates, etc.) using chips on a breadboard.
In my younger days I just happened to be "into" hardware (I used to read the old "Computer Shopper" mag - back when it was a small phone book size - from cover to cover relishing all the comparisons). But my formal education had very little to do with hardware.
>These are not the kind of people who carefully compare specs, hard drive size and RPMs, processor speed >(mostly they still think Macs are slower too), graphics sets, the value of bundled software, service >and repair reputation, etc. They just look at price on a few manufacturers that they've always dealt with.
This is logical and understandable. Look, I've got a BS in Computer Science, and I long ago lost track of the processor race. I used to be a hardware junkie. I could rattle off the 8086, 80286, 80386, 80386SX (no math coprocessor), 486, and 486SX, in all the MHz flavors. But then, rather than keep with a logical way of identifying processors, the manufacturers switched to trademark-able names. Pentium. Itanium. Opteron. Dual Core. Quad Core. Shit even MHz aren't meaningful much anymore. Shopping for a computer has become an exhaustive research project. Most people aren't up for it.
You know how I shop for computers nowadays? About every five years I go into Best Buy and look for the most expensive eMachine on the isle. I buy that one. I don't have the time or inclination to ferret out what makes one PC better than the next - I figure the price tag will tell me that.
But if I'm shopping for a bargain PC (like when I bought one for my Mom who only does email on a dial-up connection), then I go looking for the lowest-priced unit on the shelf, and work up in price until I reach the limit of what I'm willing to spend.
I bought a new notebook computer for my wife a few weekends ago. I was pleased to discover that inside Vista there is a "performance index" or somesuch where the software grades the performance of the computer on a 1-5 (I think) scale. I went down the isle of computers, running the index on each one, and made my decision that way.
The bottom line is, it is very difficult to examine and understand the performance characteristics of computer systems when you are in the market to buy one. I think this has been intensionally obfuscated by the manufacturers to make consumers have more of an ear towards marketing than technical details.
>So your only metric as to determining if something is a good idea or not is if it makes moeny for a business.
No, my point is the only metric _to_a_business_ for determining if something is a good idea or not is if it makes money for the business.
>The Utilitarians in the audience would define good as the gretest good for the greatest number of people. And so on and so on.
Businesses don't invest in new products to set out to create the greatest good.
The whole point of my input in this discussion, which seems to keep getting muddled, is that it should be perfectly ethical for a business to produce a plant that does not reproduce, provided, as I've said, that it doesn't wreak havoc with existing organisms.
The ability to make it so other people can't take the seeds from my billion-dollar-fruit and start selling it out from under me is fine with me.
>The simple things is, if I develop a wheat strain with double the bushel-per-arce yield of the current best and I sya >to the farmers of America, here it is, do you want it? They are going to want it right now, because if they >don't then their neighbour who does take it obliterates them in terms of production.
Exactly so.
>That's my profit, right there. And if it's not enough to cover my research costs, well, I'd have divided my research >into phases and sold the V0.8 wheat that only got an increase of 1.2 times the yield to fund V0.9.
Well let's see. I've invented a neat new product. I can either sell it once, and make X dollars, or I can make it so it can't be reproduced, and I can sell it over and over again, making hundreds or thousands of times more money. Which would you choose? Let's face it, when DRM works, people will use it to preserve their revenue streams.
You're also making the assumption that the product/can/ be staged in ever-improving phases. Not all inventions work that way. You might invent the next great widget, but never again be able to make any improvements to it. No, if I've invented a great think, I should be able to sell it for as long as people want to buy it. And if no one else can reproduce my product, people will continue to buy from me until someone figures out how to reproduce it.
Hell, even the/farmers/ will likely go for it. If their yields/double/, they aren't going to mind paying for seeds every year, assuming, of course, that the cost of buying new seed every year doesn't consume all the new profits, which of course they wouldn't, or the new seeds wouldn't sell.
>The answer is: The same as always. Better crops. It has worked for millenium. It will work now. >If that isn't incentive enough for this "different way", then so be it, that way sucks.
Whatever. No one makes better crops just for the heck of it. You do it to make more money. If someone can make more money by coming up with a way to create superior organisms that don't reproduce, they will do so.
>And again, is it clear that the non-crippled version is a vastly superior plant?
My thesis was that a version was produced that was superior to what could be achieved through "natural" means.
>The self-destructive part is completely unecessary to its functioning, it is there only to enforce the monopoly of the creator.
Bingo! Thus insuring profitability.
>So your incentive has created a great plant with a terrible, unecessary weakness.
Unless you are in the business of making money off of your new product, and then it has a great strength.
>I'd say something about this model is broken. Millions of AIDS sufferers in Africa who can't afford patented drugs say something about this model is broken.
Business is not in business to help people. It is in business to make money. Businesses don't invest in new products just to give them away to people who can't afford them.
>They aren't struggling to recoup their investment, they're making ludicrous amounts of profit with margins that few industries outside of oil can enjoy.
And there is nothing wrong with this. There is no such thing as a "ludicrous profit". The idea of making a profit is to make as much profit as you can. The higher the margin the better. The more exclusivity you have as a supplier and the more unlimited the demand the more profit you can make. This is the whole point of business. Be the only guy making the widget that everyone wants and you can charge whatever you want.
Like I said, the market will decide. If Monsanto or Santa Claus comes up with a genetically engineered product that the market decides is superior, they will buy it. If the trade-off of not being able to get seeds out of it is too great, people won't buy it.
>Humans have been creating better crops for millenia...
None of what you state is any reason why not to come up with a different way to create better crops.
>Monsanto get to destroy his incentive, just because their method is "more modern"?
As I said, no one should be able to do this (create an organism that contaminates other organisms). I agree with you on this point.
>Sure. But they also should not get any special incentives in the form of patents either.
Why not? Just like the developer of any new and novel product, they should have a reasonable amount of time to have exclusivity to their invention, to have the opportunity to recoup their investment?
But all this is moot. I'm not debating whether or not patents are ethical. I'm debating whether or not it is ethical to make a plant that self-terminates. Once could argue that with a self-terminating organism, you don't need a patent, so long as you can keep the way you made the organism a secret.
>If they can't profit under those circumstances, then we don't need them.
Then people won't buy it.
>Besides, any plant that cannot reproduce is so inherently not better than a plant that can that >I fail to see how incentivizing them to make more self-destructing plants is beneficial.
Wow, I can think of an easy example. Let's say I develop a genetically altered corn plant that produces corn that can cure cancer. Since I spent a few billion dollars developing it, I don't want to give it away for free, I would like to recoup my investment and make some profit off of it, too. Rather than risk someone stealing some of my seeds and starting a new crop for free off of my investment, and then undercutting my sales, I'll also genetically alter it so that it can't reproduce.
This is an extreme example, but the benefit doesn't need to be so drastic. In any case, the market will decide if the benefit is worth the cost.
>Human beings have been "innovating" by breeding and grafting crops to produce better crops for millenia. >Domesticated plants are completely different from their wild cousins, in the case of crops like corn so >different that it took us a long time to determine for sure what their ancestors were. We've >spent thousands and thousands of years developing better crops, and why? > >For the purpose of having superior crops! That's all the incentive humanity has ever needed!
So what's wrong with the incentive of having superior crops, only doing it in less time? Instead of taking millenia, perhaps something much better could be made in a few years?
I'm not debating the effectiveness of selective breeding and such that has happened in the past. But this is no reason to disallow more modern means of doing the same thing.
Don't get me wrong, it should be wrong and illegal to produce self-terminating plants that contaminate "natural" strains of plants. You shouldn't be able to make a thing that wipes out the natural fauna.
But there shouldn't be anything wrong with someone who produces a self-terminating plant. If it does something special, and people want to buy it, they will. If not, they won't.
Let's say I spend a billion dollars and come up with a new wonder plant. Resistant to pests, frost, whatever. Packs in 10 times the nutritional density. Is 10 times better for use in producing ethanol than sugar. Whatever.
I've spent a billion bucks to make a new super plant that everyone wants.
How do I get my money back if one guy buys a batch of seeds and the next thing you know everyone has the seeds?
I don't like the situation either (genetically built-in DRM) but who's going to bother developing these nice genetically superior products if you can't sell them?
>Of course not - The computer savvy youth is much better than the old man at finding awesome pron
My parents used to say, "You can't get away with anything because we've done it all already".
The difference, when I say it to my kids, is that it will actually be true.:)
This old man has a BS in Computer Science. Not to say that my kids won't be smarter and more savvy than me when they get into the computer, but the old man will be able to give them a run for their money, I think.
>Since you are monitoring the use, there obviously are unacceptable ways to use the computer; why else would you bother monitoring ?
Correct.
>Since there are unacceptable ways to use the computer, your first claim was a lie. Since you told a lie, you are a liar and can't be trusted.
No, I didn't lie. My children/will/ use the computer in any manner they like. I did/not/ say there would not be consequences for using it in manners I don't find appropriate, and that's fairly obvious by my saying I would be monitoring everything they do with it. Obviously the implicit meaning here is that if I see you using the computer in a manner I do not approve of there will be consequences; why else would I bother monitoring?
My children/will/ use the computer in any manner they like. When deciding in what manner they would like to use it, however, they will have to make a value judgement over just how they will use the computer based on the knowledge that Mom and Dad are watching. The knowledge that Mom and Dad are watching should be sufficient, I hope, to act in a manner that they know Mom and Dad would approve of. I know as a child/I/ certainly didn't misbehave if I knew my Mom and Dad would find out about it. The only time I misbehaved was when I thought I could get away with it. I think most children are this way.
>"There are rules which I won't tell you, and if you break any of them, there will be consequences which I also am not telling you."
I prefer a more mature approach to using the computer. Rather than micromanaging my child's use of the computer with an exhaustive list of dos and don'ts along with penalties for infractions (which I would have to monitor anyway), I will simply say, as I already said: You can use this computer any way you want to. But I will be watching you use it. I could just as easily say they could not use it unless I was physically sitting next to them. But this gives them a level of freedom beyond that, so that they can use the computer according to their own schedule, and not mine. But I'm still watching. I'm expecting my child to behave on the computer as they would were I physically standing beside them.
And it's not like I intend one day to simply drop a computer on their desk with a connection to the internet and just let them cluelessly go forth using it without any instructions or discussions about what might be good or bad things to do with it.
>Not a nice position to put anyone in, but a great way to teach slave mentality: "Will whoever has authority over me approve of this action I wish to commit ?"
Your summation is/exactly/ the mindset I wish to instill:
"Will _my_parents_ approve of this action I wish to commit?"
My children, by the time they reach computer-using age, will be easily able to answer that question without ambiguity in most situations they come across. And if it is clear that they encountered something online that/was/ ambiguous, I will handle it appropriately as best I can at that time.
I assumed this is why you were promoting a "top down" approach - that you needed a clean electric grid first in order to promote electric cars. I guess I misunderstood. It seems that you don't think that green power plants will help promote electric cars. You just want an all-or-nothing solution to the problem.
You do agree, do you not, that both parts of the infrastructure need to be made green, yes?
You seem to be bent on an all-or-nothing approach to the problem, which I don't understand. Why not go after the low-hanging fruit part of the problem now, since the cars/are/ part of the problem and will have to be changed anyway?
The way I see it, if everyone drove electric cars, you'd at least have a/shot/ at doing something with the centralized electricity generation facilities. But until you do something about the cars, not only will there be less focus on doing anything about the electricity generation facilities, it won't matter anyway because half the problem still exists and can't take advantage of anything you/do/ manage to do to the electrical generation facilities.
>Ahh, I see, you don't get the point. The idea is that the consumers actually paying for the true costs that >you cite will a) be used to fund treatment for health conditions, cleaning up the environment, and so forth, >and b) encourage the use of renewables, with which the non-renewables unfairly compete, as their >prices don't properly reflect their true costs.
All of us, consumers and non-consumers alike, already pay these costs - they are just not directly attached to the price of the good produced.
I have to pay for my health care, including health problems caused by pollution. It just isn't embedded in the price of the widget I buy at Walmart.
I have to pay for cleaning up the environment, in the form of taxes levied against me. Sometimes this/is/ embedded in products (like recycling fees when you buy new tires), but this is by government intervention - taxation, not free market.
And as you note, the only way renewables tend to be competitive is when the non-renewables are taxed - again not a free market.
>In short, what I want is for the free market to be allowed to choose the best solution. The only way this works >is if the prices presented to consumers truly reflect the cost of the product >(again, see that wikipedia page if this isn't clear), and right now, that's not the case.
The only way you can get what you want is if technological breakthroughs make the greener alternatives more financially appealing.
Otherwise you must rely on the government to tax less-green alternatives, which is hardly a free market. The free market is not interested in ecology.
>This needs to be top down. Increasing eletric demand (using electric cars) will simple increase >electrical production through current methods (fossil fuels). It's cheaper to burn more coal than to build new facilities.
>You equate driving an electric car with demand for clean grid.
And you are equating a clean grid with demand for electric cars. You are equally wrong.
The fact is, both parts of the infrastructure need to change.
At least when the clean grid comes around, I'll be ahead of the game with a clean car.
It's just a question of which one do you want to wait to be fixed before you fix the other one. You want me to wait to get an electric car until the grid is green. I'm going to go ahead and fix my part of the problem now, so that if and when the clean grid comes around, I'm ready to take advantage of it.
But like I said - I don't really care if the grid is green or not. I just want cheap.
So that if they are using the internet for things I think are not appropriate I can discuss it with them.
>Will there be acceptable behaviour lines that they won't know about until they cross them?
My logic goes like this: If you think your Mom and Dad wouldn't approve of you looking at this, then you probably shouldn't be looking at it. The acceptable behavior lines that shouldn't be crossed will have been well established well before reaching computer-using age, but of course we learn acceptable behavior all our lives. One way we learn is by people's reactions to our behavior. In this case my children should have a very good idea of what is acceptable and what is not before they ever start using a computer, but if I observe online behaviors that have not been relevant prior to being online I will address them - by being aware of them through monitoring.
>Will you talk to your children about what is acceptable first?
All of life is about learning what is acceptable or not. Even now at 18 months old my child is learning what is acceptable or not. The particulars of what may or may not be on the internet in 10 years that I may find objectionable are not important. What is important is that my child understands that she has no anonymity in her doings on her computer. It is my firm belief that most people innately know what is right and wrong and when they believe they are being watched they tend to to the right thing. The feeling of anonymity is what leads a lot of folks to do the wrong thing.
>Will you let them use the Internet before you trust them to behave themselves?
Of course. And I will be monitoring their use in case they don't behave themselves, so I can correct the behavior. I strongly suspect, however, that the knowledge that Mom and Dad are watching what they do on the internet will strongly encourage good behavior all by itself.
Obviously eventually all children grow up and as they do they require less and less supervision. My network, however, will always continue to be monitored, and I will monitor the use of all access to it, regardless of the age of those who wish to use it.
Slashdot Mirror
Eventually, we are all going to be driving cars that run on something other than gasoline.
/do/ need to be paid for, and today, they are in no small part paid for through gasoline taxes. If that revenue goes away, it's going to have to come from somewhere else.
The state will simply move the taxation to a different point.
If your car runs on hydrogen, they will tax hydrogen.
If your car runs on electricity, they will tax the electricity. Perhaps we will all have special power meters for plugging in our cars at night.
If it becomes too difficult to tax the fuel source, they will simply issue an annual tax based on your odometer reading. Perhaps you will be allowed to pay it in installments over the course of the year.
Government greed for your tax dollars aside, the roads and infrastructure
>It's called "making people reimburse society for the damage they do".
I wonder if the additional income does anything to reimburse society for the damage done.
>Example: lots of people I know have Linksys (WRT54G[L]) wireless routers _because_ they know they can
/product/ was software, I, too, would be leary about giving away the code for free.
/I/ wouldn't invest in a new product where I couldn't make any money selling the actual product but only support for it. What if everyone wants your product but no one needs or wants support? You've just invented the perfect software - but it's worthless to you.
>tinker with it, that there are lots of new, interesting uses to it with the alternate verstions of the software, etc.
I'm not in the software industry, and I don't know much about GPL.
But I do know that if my sole
In your Linksys example, there is a hardware component that is not easy to replicate - there is a barrier to duplication. So in that case it is a great benefit to create and sell the hardware, but leave the software open so that the world can improve the functionality and attractiveness of the hardware you are selling.
But I don't understand how this works with a pure software product. If you give it away to the world, then someone else is just going to take the code and make a derivative product from it that does the same thing but is free. The way I see it, the only thing authors of free software can sell is support.
I guess I just still don't understand the free software movement as a business.
>Yeah, all those people at Starbucks with laptops 'seeking out anonymity by piggybacking on their WiFi ' are scary.
/my/ WiFi is scarier to me than your average drive."
>Our University also provides open wireless access to the local community.
You will note I said:
"People seeking out anonymity by piggybacking on
Emphasis on "my" added.
I, and the GP are not talking about intentionally open WiFi hotspots like you are.
We are talking about people hooking into home WiFi networks.
The only people likely to be using these are ignorant nearby neighbors or people up to no good.
>You drive down the street with a complete strangers approaching with a closing speed of over
>110 mph, but you wont leave your internet connection open?!
The difference is, everyone drives, so chances are, the stranger approaching you on the street is likely just an average joe like you. They probably aren't up to anything nefarious.
I don't think I would put the percentage of likelyhood for being benign as high for people surfing on open WiFi connections.
People seeking out anonymity by piggybacking on my WiFi is scarier to me than your average drive.
And, since I can do something about the former for next to no cost, and there is next to nothing I can do about the later, that's really an apples to oranges comparison.
So I went to Best Buy's web site, and decided to do a little digging around, say I wanted to try and figure out what the different hardware configurations were all about.
p up/index.htm
/love/ to sit down like I did in the old days and ponder all this stuff and figure out all the whoosits and whatsits and trick up the ultimate custom system my pocketbook will allow. But it's just too damn complicated. I've got too many other things to worry about. It is easier and generally accurate to simply shop on price. The more expensive it is, the more likely it is to be better than the less expensive ones.
So I found this little gem:
http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/po
It lets you compare processors.
Just on this one page, there are 16 different processor choices.
Then you click on one.
You get lots of technical mumbo-jumbo. Architecture (65nm? Is that good?). Cache (more is usually better). Clock Speed (Is faster better? These days not always...). Front Side Bus (As opposed to the short bus?). Quad-core? Dual Core? Intel VT? Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology? Execute Disable Bit?
Come on. You expect people to make sense of any of this?
Look I'd
>The "gamer" who benefits from Dual video cards is NOT the gamer who keeps the PC for 5 years.
>Only the hard core gamer could properly appreciate dual or Quad SLI cards, and those guys
>ONLY keep the PC for a Year, and a couple I know don't even keep it that long.
I don't know why "Dual video cards" keeps coming up in this thread. I've never had that kind of setup, and I don't think I've ever seen a PC on the shelf at Best Buy configured that way.
>And thanks for confirming that you have plenty of money (an extra thousand is not a big deal),
>unfortuneately most people out there are not in your situation so it is still important for them to get a
>good deal on what they need.
No doubt. But my purchasing methodology works just as well - they just stop at a different price point than I do. My point is not that you have to buy the _most_expensive_ PC, just that you won't go far off the mark buying the most expensive PC _that_you_can_afford_. You just walk down the isle going, "$1000...no, $799...no, $599...OK".
Now if you really, really want to bargain shop and possibly build your own machine even, yes, you can spend the time to figure out the difference between an Intel and an AMD, a Pentium M vs. a Pentium D, or an Operton vs. an Itanium, or whatever. But there is _no_way_ever that a user like my mother is _ever_ going to do something like that. Not ever.
They are going to walk into Walmart, or BestBuy, or whatever, and shop on price. Why? Because, like I originally said, it is very difficult to figure out the technical details of what makes one product superior to another. Most user do not have a clue, and some, like myself who do, no longer care to be bothered figuring it out and fortunately have the financial wherewithal to enjoy that luxury.
>If he does not "Game" the most expensive E-machines PC (or whatever) is not likely any better than the one two price points lower
/is/ possible that I might be able to get away with buying a machine one or two price points lower, why bother? Why bother checking out all the exacting details to save maybe $500 for a PC I'm going to keep for 5 years or more?
I do "game". And while it
>If he found a good site, or had a good friend the appropriate questions would be asked.
>(Is this ever going to be used for games, are photos going to be stored or videos going to be ripped,is
>it a media center...etc.)
Or....just buy the baddest machine available and be relatively assured that you can do anything you want to.
Look, it's just not that big a deal to me. I think it comes down to money. When I was a kid I used to pore over Computer Shopper, eaking out all the details and agonizing over how to get the absolute best for the least amount of money. Now a thousand dollars just isn't that big of a deal to me when I go to buy a PC every few years. And the bottom line is, the more expensive it is, usually, the better it is. Since the most expensive PC in Best Buy doesn't strain my pocket book, I don't have to do any work at all to make a good choice.
:nod:
Thanks, CastrTroy, precisely so.
Steve
LOL. I would never do tha....hey waitaminute! :)
>If this guy has a BS in Computers and needs Vista performance index to decide what computer to buy I seriously doubt
>the quality of a US education. No wonder we need H1Bs to come and run our companies. But seriously I think hes bluffing -
>noone with a real CS degree is that stupid. Its this kind of talk which gives US Engineers a bad rep.
No, I am not bluffing - I do, in fact, have a BS - not in "computers" but in "Computer Science". For the uninitiated, Computer Science is mostly about algorithm development and execution - very little about hardware. My sole exposure to hardware in my education was one course of assembler (though this was still programming and so a stretch to say it was "about hardware) using the Motorola 68000 processor, and one class where we built simple hardware logic devices (AND, OR, NOR gates, etc.) using chips on a breadboard.
In my younger days I just happened to be "into" hardware (I used to read the old "Computer Shopper" mag - back when it was a small phone book size - from cover to cover relishing all the comparisons). But my formal education had very little to do with hardware.
Steve
>These are not the kind of people who carefully compare specs, hard drive size and RPMs, processor speed
>(mostly they still think Macs are slower too), graphics sets, the value of bundled software, service
>and repair reputation, etc. They just look at price on a few manufacturers that they've always dealt with.
This is logical and understandable. Look, I've got a BS in Computer Science, and I long ago lost track of the processor race. I used to be a hardware junkie. I could rattle off the 8086, 80286, 80386, 80386SX (no math coprocessor), 486, and 486SX, in all the MHz flavors. But then, rather than keep with a logical way of identifying processors, the manufacturers switched to trademark-able names. Pentium. Itanium. Opteron. Dual Core. Quad Core. Shit even MHz aren't meaningful much anymore. Shopping for a computer has become an exhaustive research project. Most people aren't up for it.
You know how I shop for computers nowadays? About every five years I go into Best Buy and look for the most expensive eMachine on the isle. I buy that one. I don't have the time or inclination to ferret out what makes one PC better than the next - I figure the price tag will tell me that.
But if I'm shopping for a bargain PC (like when I bought one for my Mom who only does email on a dial-up connection), then I go looking for the lowest-priced unit on the shelf, and work up in price until I reach the limit of what I'm willing to spend.
I bought a new notebook computer for my wife a few weekends ago. I was pleased to discover that inside Vista there is a "performance index" or somesuch where the software grades the performance of the computer on a 1-5 (I think) scale. I went down the isle of computers, running the index on each one, and made my decision that way.
The bottom line is, it is very difficult to examine and understand the performance characteristics of computer systems when you are in the market to buy one. I think this has been intensionally obfuscated by the manufacturers to make consumers have more of an ear towards marketing than technical details.
>So your only metric as to determining if something is a good idea or not is if it makes moeny for a business.
/can/ be staged in ever-improving phases. Not all inventions work that way. You might invent the next great widget, but never again be able to make any improvements to it. No, if I've invented a great think, I should be able to sell it for as long as people want to buy it. And if no one else can reproduce my product, people will continue to buy from me until someone figures out how to reproduce it.
/farmers/ will likely go for it. If their yields /double/, they aren't going to mind paying for seeds every year, assuming, of course, that the cost of buying new seed every year doesn't consume all the new profits, which of course they wouldn't, or the new seeds wouldn't sell.
No, my point is the only metric _to_a_business_ for determining if something is a good idea or not is if it makes money for the business.
>The Utilitarians in the audience would define good as the gretest good for the greatest number of people. And so on and so on.
Businesses don't invest in new products to set out to create the greatest good.
The whole point of my input in this discussion, which seems to keep getting muddled, is that it should be perfectly ethical for a business to produce a plant that does not reproduce, provided, as I've said, that it doesn't wreak havoc with existing organisms.
The ability to make it so other people can't take the seeds from my billion-dollar-fruit and start selling it out from under me is fine with me.
>The simple things is, if I develop a wheat strain with double the bushel-per-arce yield of the current best and I sya
>to the farmers of America, here it is, do you want it? They are going to want it right now, because if they
>don't then their neighbour who does take it obliterates them in terms of production.
Exactly so.
>That's my profit, right there. And if it's not enough to cover my research costs, well, I'd have divided my research
>into phases and sold the V0.8 wheat that only got an increase of 1.2 times the yield to fund V0.9.
Well let's see. I've invented a neat new product. I can either sell it once, and make X dollars, or I can make it so it can't be reproduced, and I can sell it over and over again, making hundreds or thousands of times more money. Which would you choose? Let's face it, when DRM works, people will use it to preserve their revenue streams.
You're also making the assumption that the product
Hell, even the
>The answer is: The same as always. Better crops. It has worked for millenium. It will work now.
>If that isn't incentive enough for this "different way", then so be it, that way sucks.
Whatever. No one makes better crops just for the heck of it. You do it to make more money. If someone can make more money by coming up with a way to create superior organisms that don't reproduce, they will do so.
>And again, is it clear that the non-crippled version is a vastly superior plant?
My thesis was that a version was produced that was superior to what could be achieved through "natural" means.
>The self-destructive part is completely unecessary to its functioning, it is there only to enforce the monopoly of the creator.
Bingo! Thus insuring profitability.
>So your incentive has created a great plant with a terrible, unecessary weakness.
Unless you are in the business of making money off of your new product, and then it has a great strength.
>I'd say something about this model is broken. Millions of AIDS sufferers in Africa who can't afford patented drugs say something about this model is broken.
Business is not in business to help people. It is in business to make money. Businesses don't invest in new products just to give them away to people who can't afford them.
>They aren't struggling to recoup their investment, they're making ludicrous amounts of profit with margins that few industries outside of oil can enjoy.
And there is nothing wrong with this. There is no such thing as a "ludicrous profit". The idea of making a profit is to make as much profit as you can. The higher the margin the better. The more exclusivity you have as a supplier and the more unlimited the demand the more profit you can make. This is the whole point of business. Be the only guy making the widget that everyone wants and you can charge whatever you want.
Like I said, the market will decide. If Monsanto or Santa Claus comes up with a genetically engineered product that the market decides is superior, they will buy it. If the trade-off of not being able to get seeds out of it is too great, people won't buy it.
>Humans have been creating better crops for millenia...
None of what you state is any reason why not to come up with a different way to create better crops.
>Monsanto get to destroy his incentive, just because their method is "more modern"?
As I said, no one should be able to do this (create an organism that contaminates other organisms). I agree with you on this point.
>Sure. But they also should not get any special incentives in the form of patents either.
Why not? Just like the developer of any new and novel product, they should have a reasonable amount of time to have exclusivity to their invention, to have the opportunity to recoup their investment?
But all this is moot. I'm not debating whether or not patents are ethical. I'm debating whether or not it is ethical to make a plant that self-terminates. Once could argue that with a self-terminating organism, you don't need a patent, so long as you can keep the way you made the organism a secret.
>If they can't profit under those circumstances, then we don't need them.
Then people won't buy it.
>Besides, any plant that cannot reproduce is so inherently not better than a plant that can that
>I fail to see how incentivizing them to make more self-destructing plants is beneficial.
Wow, I can think of an easy example. Let's say I develop a genetically altered corn plant that produces corn that can cure cancer. Since I spent a few billion dollars developing it, I don't want to give it away for free, I would like to recoup my investment and make some profit off of it, too. Rather than risk someone stealing some of my seeds and starting a new crop for free off of my investment, and then undercutting my sales, I'll also genetically alter it so that it can't reproduce.
This is an extreme example, but the benefit doesn't need to be so drastic. In any case, the market will decide if the benefit is worth the cost.
>Human beings have been "innovating" by breeding and grafting crops to produce better crops for millenia.
>Domesticated plants are completely different from their wild cousins, in the case of crops like corn so
>different that it took us a long time to determine for sure what their ancestors were. We've
>spent thousands and thousands of years developing better crops, and why?
>
>For the purpose of having superior crops! That's all the incentive humanity has ever needed!
So what's wrong with the incentive of having superior crops, only doing it in less time? Instead of taking millenia, perhaps something much better could be made in a few years?
I'm not debating the effectiveness of selective breeding and such that has happened in the past. But this is no reason to disallow more modern means of doing the same thing.
Don't get me wrong, it should be wrong and illegal to produce self-terminating plants that contaminate "natural" strains of plants. You shouldn't be able to make a thing that wipes out the natural fauna.
But there shouldn't be anything wrong with someone who produces a self-terminating plant. If it does something special, and people want to buy it, they will. If not, they won't.
Let's say I spend a billion dollars and come up with a new wonder plant. Resistant to pests, frost, whatever. Packs in 10 times the nutritional density. Is 10 times better for use in producing ethanol than sugar. Whatever.
I've spent a billion bucks to make a new super plant that everyone wants.
How do I get my money back if one guy buys a batch of seeds and the next thing you know everyone has the seeds?
I don't like the situation either (genetically built-in DRM) but who's going to bother developing these nice genetically superior products if you can't sell them?
>Of course not - The computer savvy youth is much better than the old man at finding awesome pron
:)
My parents used to say, "You can't get away with anything because we've done it all already".
The difference, when I say it to my kids, is that it will actually be true.
This old man has a BS in Computer Science. Not to say that my kids won't be smarter and more savvy than me when they get into the computer, but the old man will be able to give them a run for their money, I think.
>Since you are monitoring the use, there obviously are unacceptable ways to use the computer; why else would you bother monitoring ?
/will/ use the computer in any manner they like. I did /not/ say there would not be consequences for using it in manners I don't find appropriate, and that's fairly obvious by my saying I would be monitoring everything they do with it. Obviously the implicit meaning here is that if I see you using the computer in a manner I do not approve of there will be consequences; why else would I bother monitoring?
/will/ use the computer in any manner they like. When deciding in what manner they would like to use it, however, they will have to make a value judgement over just how they will use the computer based on the knowledge that Mom and Dad are watching. The knowledge that Mom and Dad are watching should be sufficient, I hope, to act in a manner that they know Mom and Dad would approve of. I know as a child /I/ certainly didn't misbehave if I knew my Mom and Dad would find out about it. The only time I misbehaved was when I thought I could get away with it. I think most children are this way.
/exactly/ the mindset I wish to instill:
/was/ ambiguous, I will handle it appropriately as best I can at that time.
Correct.
>Since there are unacceptable ways to use the computer, your first claim was a lie. Since you told a lie, you are a liar and can't be trusted.
No, I didn't lie. My children
My children
>"There are rules which I won't tell you, and if you break any of them, there will be consequences which I also am not telling you."
I prefer a more mature approach to using the computer. Rather than micromanaging my child's use of the computer with an exhaustive list of dos and don'ts along with penalties for infractions (which I would have to monitor anyway), I will simply say, as I already said: You can use this computer any way you want to. But I will be watching you use it. I could just as easily say they could not use it unless I was physically sitting next to them. But this gives them a level of freedom beyond that, so that they can use the computer according to their own schedule, and not mine. But I'm still watching. I'm expecting my child to behave on the computer as they would were I physically standing beside them.
And it's not like I intend one day to simply drop a computer on their desk with a connection to the internet and just let them cluelessly go forth using it without any instructions or discussions about what might be good or bad things to do with it.
>Not a nice position to put anyone in, but a great way to teach slave mentality: "Will whoever has authority over me approve of this action I wish to commit ?"
Your summation is
"Will _my_parents_ approve of this action I wish to commit?"
My children, by the time they reach computer-using age, will be easily able to answer that question without ambiguity in most situations they come across. And if it is clear that they encountered something online that
I'm sorry, I didn't understand that last sentence. Have a nice day.
Just interpreting what you said guy, and that's how it read to me. Have a nice day.
>I never once claimed this. Where do I say this?
/are/ part of the problem and will have to be changed anyway?
/shot/ at doing something with the centralized electricity generation facilities. But until you do something about the cars, not only will there be less focus on doing anything about the electricity generation facilities, it won't matter anyway because half the problem still exists and can't take advantage of anything you /do/ manage to do to the electrical generation facilities.
I assumed this is why you were promoting a "top down" approach - that you needed a clean electric grid first in order to promote electric cars. I guess I misunderstood. It seems that you don't think that green power plants will help promote electric cars. You just want an all-or-nothing solution to the problem.
You do agree, do you not, that both parts of the infrastructure need to be made green, yes?
You seem to be bent on an all-or-nothing approach to the problem, which I don't understand. Why not go after the low-hanging fruit part of the problem now, since the cars
The way I see it, if everyone drove electric cars, you'd at least have a
>Ahh, I see, you don't get the point. The idea is that the consumers actually paying for the true costs that
/is/ embedded in products (like recycling fees when you buy new tires), but this is by government intervention - taxation, not free market.
>you cite will a) be used to fund treatment for health conditions, cleaning up the environment, and so forth,
>and b) encourage the use of renewables, with which the non-renewables unfairly compete, as their
>prices don't properly reflect their true costs.
All of us, consumers and non-consumers alike, already pay these costs - they are just not directly attached to the price of the good produced.
I have to pay for my health care, including health problems caused by pollution. It just isn't embedded in the price of the widget I buy at Walmart.
I have to pay for cleaning up the environment, in the form of taxes levied against me. Sometimes this
And as you note, the only way renewables tend to be competitive is when the non-renewables are taxed - again not a free market.
>In short, what I want is for the free market to be allowed to choose the best solution. The only way this works
>is if the prices presented to consumers truly reflect the cost of the product
>(again, see that wikipedia page if this isn't clear), and right now, that's not the case.
The only way you can get what you want is if technological breakthroughs make the greener alternatives more financially appealing.
Otherwise you must rely on the government to tax less-green alternatives, which is hardly a free market. The free market is not interested in ecology.
>This needs to be top down. Increasing eletric demand (using electric cars) will simple increase
>electrical production through current methods (fossil fuels). It's cheaper to burn more coal than to build new facilities.
>You equate driving an electric car with demand for clean grid.
And you are equating a clean grid with demand for electric cars. You are equally wrong.
The fact is, both parts of the infrastructure need to change.
At least when the clean grid comes around, I'll be ahead of the game with a clean car.
It's just a question of which one do you want to wait to be fixed before you fix the other one. You want me to wait to get an electric car until the grid is green. I'm going to go ahead and fix my part of the problem now, so that if and when the clean grid comes around, I'm ready to take advantage of it.
But like I said - I don't really care if the grid is green or not. I just want cheap.
>Why will you be monitoring it?
So that if they are using the internet for things I think are not appropriate I can discuss it with them.
>Will there be acceptable behaviour lines that they won't know about until they cross them?
My logic goes like this: If you think your Mom and Dad wouldn't approve of you looking at this, then you probably shouldn't be looking at it. The acceptable behavior lines that shouldn't be crossed will have been well established well before reaching computer-using age, but of course we learn acceptable behavior all our lives. One way we learn is by people's reactions to our behavior. In this case my children should have a very good idea of what is acceptable and what is not before they ever start using a computer, but if I observe online behaviors that have not been relevant prior to being online I will address them - by being aware of them through monitoring.
>Will you talk to your children about what is acceptable first?
All of life is about learning what is acceptable or not. Even now at 18 months old my child is learning what is acceptable or not. The particulars of what may or may not be on the internet in 10 years that I may find objectionable are not important. What is important is that my child understands that she has no anonymity in her doings on her computer. It is my firm belief that most people innately know what is right and wrong and when they believe they are being watched they tend to to the right thing. The feeling of anonymity is what leads a lot of folks to do the wrong thing.
>Will you let them use the Internet before you trust them to behave themselves?
Of course. And I will be monitoring their use in case they don't behave themselves, so I can correct the behavior. I strongly suspect, however, that the knowledge that Mom and Dad are watching what they do on the internet will strongly encourage good behavior all by itself.
Obviously eventually all children grow up and as they do they require less and less supervision. My network, however, will always continue to be monitored, and I will monitor the use of all access to it, regardless of the age of those who wish to use it.