If the ammount communicated differs from the ammount paid (which is almost always the case in these situations, regarding of the company) then Microsoft has little chances of losing it in court. They also have few chances of having to go to court in the first place, as you wouldn't want to have that in your background when looking for a new job, especially considering that Microsoft is likely the next employer for many of these employees, given that it's the biggest employer in the Seattle area and the two other large companies in the area (Starbucks and Boeing) are looking in worse shape at the time.
Repairing the Hubble makes absolutely no sense.
The cost of building a telescope can be divided in the following way:
1) research
2) design
3) construction
4) launch
5) management and maintenance
6) training and facility construction
If a new, identical hubble was built and launched to replace the existing one, 1, 2, 5 and 6 would be effecively zero.
4 would be much cheaper than the current repair mission, since it can be launched with an unmanned mission at much lower cost than a shuttle mission.
As for 3, actual manufacturing cost of a second telescope is quite minor compared to the rest of the Hubble project. Yes, the mirror is expensive, but the mirror in the Hubble is already flawled and despite is fixes the results have been somewhat worse than they would have been with a perfect main mirror. In fact, if there was the option of building a new mirror at the same cost as the original, and swapping it at low cost, it would have been done without much consideration. So the mirror manufacturing cost could be dismissed as part of a reasonable upgrade.
Building the rest of the telescope would be relatively inexpensive, I'm pretty sure it would be much minor than the difference between an unmanned launch and a shuttle repair mission. It is actually designing the parts and building the manufacturing machinery that's expensive an that's already built. In fact, most parts are already in stock. Building the original telescope was enormously expensive, but a second identical scope would cost just a minor fraction.
Minor enhancements could be done that do not affect the general design but reduce cost and weight and increase reliability.
Instead, we opt for sending astronauts in an extremely dangerous mission to partially fix a telescope that's aging beyond hope. COst will be definitely higher, risk is significant (including risk to human life) and results will be definitely worse. Doesn't anyone see what's wrong with this plan?
I hope the debris issue finally kills this mission and the money is better spent in a new telescope (though so much money has already been spent in this mission that I find it unlikely).
What puzzles me is the comment in the article:
> This form of authentication is considered more convenient than fingerprint scans and more secure than traditional passwords
Considered by whom? Their dog? No one that has three working neurons can think that how your face looks is a stronger secret than some word you have in your mind.
When they announced this "security mechanism" every security specialist I know said it was worse than nothing, it didn't even qualify as weak security, and it would be abandoned within months.
It is sad when security features of computers are designed in the marketing department.
An dyou think reducing R&D spending could make its stock go up? If Microsoft had low margins (like most companies have), that might make sense. But even halving R&D would not make such a large dent in their bottom line. THey get 20B out of 60B in sales. Reducing 4B out of R&D (which would be impossible, as that would not even cover maintaining existing products) would bring revenue to 22 or 23B (the difference due to taxes). Do you think that new situation, with 3B extra cash but without a future whatsoever would make the stock go up or down?
When Steve Ballmer took the reins, he said "this is a different market, there are not as many opportunities for growth so we have to be more cost conscious". Since then, Google blasted off, Apple created the iPod and the iPhone, companies like Facebook sprouted out of nowhere and mobility became a market bigger than computing.
Investing in R&D is what Microsoft has to do. Despite all the babble about marketing, every time they did a bad product (take Vista) they did bad, but when they created products people actually liked, they did great. It's that simple.
Don't cut R&D. Cut marketing.
The PS3 is not a flop. It's objective was to push Blu Ray ahead. It succeeded: HD DVD is now dead. Now the PS3 has achieved its goal, and can be left to die. Sony, a company that is bleeding money and has stopped growing, can't afford to waste on the PS3 double what Microsoft, a company that's making 18 billion clean each year (out of 60B in sales) and that's beating Sony in that market, is said it can not.
So they now own the market (their market, which is different from the Wiis market), they are growing fast, and they are even making money, and it is the time to shut down? Huh?
If you think Bill Gates is the problem, you have not been watching the numbers. Bill led the company 100% until about year 2000. Ballmer took the lead since then. A short time later Microsoft switched from 50% annual growth to 20% annual growth, a change directly related in the view of many to the new policies being introduced by Ballmer.
Still, Microsoft earns more money in a week than most Fortune 500 companies get in a year. It is still making more money than all it's competitors together, and up until last year, it was growing more than all of them salve two.
So if you are going to get rid of someone, get rid of Ballmer. He's just not effective.
Bill Gates, the "charlatan" built the most successful and profitable company ever. If he's a charlatan, I want to be one.
This article does not deserve to be in/. Claiming that a company must pay for the upgrade of hardware sold by other companies because THEY claimed the hardware was able to run its products is absurd. There's no legal or logical basis for it.
If Microsoft is found guilty of deceiving customers, it might be asked to pay for some restitution, return the license money or something around that. IF it is found guilty, as all these machines were able to run Vista, they were simply not able to use some features that depended on hardware not available in the devices. But calculating settlement costs as the hardware upgrade price is simply ridiculous. They are bluffing in order to get a more substantial settlement. Nothing more than that.
There's a biiiig fallacy here.
When you are producing physical goods, that might be true.
When you are producing intangible goods (such as software) the more companies there are working in producing the same goods, the less efficient the market is. If ten companies spend one million dollars each in producing a document editor, you end up with worse results than if two companies spend five millions each.
It is true that if a single company produces the software, then there's no incentive in spending even one million. But if that is the case, and there's business to be made, a company spending one billion should be able to displace that company, and that's precisely the reason why Microsoft's R&D budget is over ten billion dollars. They want large amounts of money because that's what their product are worth in the view of the market. If the product wasn't willing to pay $200 a pop for an office suite, they wouldn't be selling any.
Open source changes that in that there's no "budget" as companies are sharing the load of building the product, but as there's no profit from developing the product either (and no, developing the product is not related in any way to supporting it, so if you live from support, development is still 100% sunk cost), the incentive to invest effort for companies is even lower.
Metric is arbitrary? The whole basis of the metric system is NOT being arbitrary. Three or four units are based on arbitrary amounts (and they must, in any possible unit system as there are no absolutes in the universe) but all the rest, and all the sub units are based on uniform, easy to convert and very rational transformations. Not so with SI, in which EVERY SINGLE UNIT, SUB UNIT and CONVERSION is arbitrary.
SI is only convenient if something is already measured in SI. But if you are defining some measurement based on SI you don't belong to this century.
A much better (and closer) alternative: Argentina. It is reasonably safe, top universities are free (yes, free as in beer) and highly regarded internationally, and cost of living is pretty low compared to the US.
If you are able to spend a few hundred bucks, there are some top notch private universities (ITBA, for example, has a very good CS degree) that will save some of the hassle of state universities and have a level competitive with good US universities.
And of course, Spanish is the spoken language in the country, though English is widely understood in major cities.
As a plus, you can escape winter and spend some time in some nice, warm weather while all your friends at home freeze.
One benefit for the environment: a battery's life is inversely proportional to the number of times it was completely discharged. If you tend not to charge your phone every day, you are likely to let it run dry evey once in a while. That means the battery is not going to last much more than a year, and after that the battery goes to the dump, and you need a new one.
Both the battery in the trash and the need to manufacture a new one would be saved if you charged your phone every day. And that's much easier to guarantee when charging your phone only requires putting it on your desk.
Given the (low) amount of energy a phone uses over its full life, this means probably a net gain for the environment.
They fake their performance numbers, I don't know what they might do with their pricing.
A single Cell processor tops at less than 10GFlops double precision. A low end supercomputer runs at 100TFlops. So you need at least ten thousand PS3 to have something worthy of the name of a supercomputer under theoretical conditions. In real conditions, with the best interconnect available, you probably need a few hundred thousand consoles.
Yet, these folks are claimingfor comparison that the BlueGene supercomputer (from 2005, by the way) tops at 280GFlops, when in reality it runs at more than 280TFlops.
I have a difficult time believing Sony didn't notice the math error.
Absolutely! I think these folks are reading the numbers wrong.
The slowest BlueGene ever built is 280 TFlops (not 280 GFlops as it is listed in some web sites). A single SPE in a Cell ranks at about one GFlop in double precision (14 GFlops in single, but that doesn't count for these rankings). Eight consoles with seven SPEs would then yield, in the most optimistic calculation possible (very far from reality) 56GFlops, or two orders of magnitude short for being considered a (very low end) supercomputer.
A console is a console, even a fast one is a few orders of magnitude short of anything that could be considered in the ballpark of a supercomputer.
Yu are responding to the wrong article.
This one is about Microsoft knowing that the XBox would scratch disks IF MOVED WHILE THE DISKS WERE SPINNING. There's nothing here on Microsoft knowing that the disks would scratch even if not moved.
So if Microsoft is actually guilty of the later thing and that is demonstrated during the trial, bummer for them, great for the victims. But that's a completely different discussion.
If Microsoft "knew" the XBox would scratch disks only if moved (as this article and the new discoveries indicate), then throwing in the warning and leaving the machine as it is would be the right thing to do, as the machine is NOT intended to be moved while playing, and anyone with half a brain would know that.
This type of absolutism sickens me.
It has NOT been demonstrated that talking on the pone is as dangerous as DUI. The studies afterword's claim that it CAN be as dangerous, which equals nothing.
If you look at the studies and the numbers, driving while talking is about as dangerous as driving at the highest levels of "intoxication" that are legal (bordering the levels that are declared illegal). Those levels are pretty strict, as you know if you ever drank a small beer and were tested by the police afterwards. It is considered that driving at those "legal" levels is SAFE. So what has been demonstrated is that talking on the phone while driving is more dangerous than NOT talking on the phone while driving, but not dangerous enough, for normal drivers, to be illegal. Exactly the opposite of what's being claimed to have been demonstrated. Maybe you do not agree with that conclusion. Neither do I. But the fact is that this is what the studies "demonstrated", if you believe them, despite claiming the contrary.
The same thing happens when comparing talking with a hands free device vs. a handheld phone. Reporters claimed it has been demonstrated that they are equal, or even that hands free is worse. I have yet to see any serious study (and I mean serious based on their methodology, not on their results) that concludes that. They all conclude that "talking on hands free is dangerous" but on a different level than talking on a handheld device. But somehow reporters manage to confuse the conclusions and claim that talking on a hands free device is equal to having a phone in your hand. It's not. And given that people are NOT going to stop talking (even if it becomes illegal), telling them it's the same is irresponsible, even criminal. If they convince just a small percentage of the people (that's going to be talking while driving) of NOT using a hands free device, they probably have a few innocent deaths in their hands.
Still, the "tax" concept is due for a rationalization and overhaul. Even the word for tax in many languages (such as "Impuesto" in Spanish) indicates it is equal to abuse. Taxes are currently charged "because they can". And used without strings attached fro whatever they need to.
A much more efficient system would be devoid of "taxes" and comprised of three types of state charges:
- Service fees. Including "security and administration fees" on durable goods (replacing VAT) and similar charges for the services the state gives each citizen. To a reasonable level of approximation, those fees should be directly related to the services provided by the state as related to the action or object being taxed. An example would be a tax on cigarettes, which is an advanced charge of a presumed (but reasonably calculated) health cost to society.
- Regulatory charges. When there's a pattern or trend that would be in the best interest of the whole society (such as reducing polluting emissions) a tax on any action that counters that trend (such as polluting from the tailpipe) is granted, even when there's nothing the state can do to compensate for that action, in order to reduce its occurrence.
- Social contributions. Some will argue these are theft, some will say they are necessary. In any case if they are going to be there, they should be clearly stamped as such. Put the income tax equivalent under this if you will. But do not camouflage as something else.
Under such a rational taxation system the total tax on an individual might or might not be lower than under the current system, but at least it would be fairer, and much better accepted by the taxpayers, as you can correlate the services being delivered to the amount being paid. And that is in itself probably the reason why we will never see such a system in action.
I read the Communist Manifesto a few years ago. I did it with a set of highlightersd at hand. I highlighted in one color all passages that were contradictions or fallacies. In other color all that was simply ranting, lies or unsubstantiated claims. In another color all that were no longer valid due to the way the world had evolved since its writing.
After that the book was all covered in ink, there was not a single page that wasn't highlighted at more than 50%. I recommend anyone with doubts about socialism (in that old sense, not the modern european adaptation that has almost nothing to do with it) to do the same experiment.
Do you really think that counting threads and memory footprint will give you any sort of indication of a systems performance? So, whatever those threads are really doing is not useful information?
By design Windows uses as much memory is available, as unused memory is of no value. A performance indication would be to measure how much actual pagin is there when physical memory is exhausted by running process. Counting used memory is worthless.
And counting threads and processes? Come on! What sort of analysis is this? Even if it were based on the final product (instead of a pre beta version), this analysis doesn't tell absolutely nothing.
Not that I would expect that Win7 uses fewer resources that Vista. It would be a great thing if, coming a few years later, it used the same level of resources (meaning it should be able to run in machines over five years old) but expecting it to consume fewer resources is delusional. Performance today has much less to do with resource usage than with responsiveness and proactivity anyway.
It would be fairly easy to implement some extensions that could make IPV4 last much, much longer.
Basically, we have DHCP to make address usage within a range more efficient. With fixed IP we frequently had low usage of IPs within a range, often well below 50%.
With DHCP we have reached nearly 100% allocation rates.
What we need is a new protocol, which I would call Dynamic Subnet Configuration Protocol (DSCP) that would assign subnets on demand to DHCP servers. Once implemented a DHCP server would not be configured for a fixed range, but would be configured to ask for a subnet of a specific size (which could be adjusted dynamically depending on the allocated addresses) to it's (ISP provided) DSCP server. The DSCP server would in turn negotiate ranges with upstream DSCP servers.
That way, companies would only use ranges as large as needed, and no addresses would be wasted. With over three billion addresses to use, even not counting private addresses (which should cover the vast majority of PC addresses) we should have enough for a long time even without IPV6.
Now, DSCP alone (and the adaptation of DHCP servers) would not be enough. We would need also some autoconfiguration tools to insure connectivity during IP range reassignation (including the necessary tools to insure proper routing between the two addresses, maybe temporary routing capabilities could be incorporated into the DHCP service, or autoconfiguration of routers and network equipment could be integrated).
Easy? Definitely not. Doable, hell, yes, a few orders of magnitude easier than deploying IPV6 worldwide. And while it wouldn't have the other advantages of IPV6, compatibility would be a given and no clients would need to be modified.
So who's writing the RFC?
So you seem like an open minded person that in the search for truth found Christ in the way.
May I suggest that you also, with your mind still open and with some patience, also read the brilliant book "God's Delusion" by Richard Dawkins? it is a great book that might make you think (and that can't be bad, ever) and might help you to further advance your search.
I sincerely hope you find it useful. I did.
But if you make the MB submersible, you can cool it via WATER convection. I would bet that a MB that's been covered in resin and submerged in water stays cool even with a tick coating.
There is a big flaw in your logic. It is absolutely, 100% impossible to determine univoally if an athlete is using steroids, at least for some types of steroids. THat is because some are undistinguishable from human hormones. Even if you perfected detection so that you cannot hide hormones not naturally produced by humans (which is unlikely), athletes can just use natural testosterone for doping, and there would be absolutely no way of detecting it's not theirs.
In fact, steroids are not currently banned in practice, the sports organizations just set an upper level for doping. If they find above that level of steroids in your blood, you are banned. Under that level, it's OK.
That's why currently ALL, ABSOLUTELY ALL competitive olympic athletes (in specialities related to strenght or speed) are using drugs. They just use the amounts that are permisible. And the allowed levels are not low, by the way. As there might be some freaks of nature with excessively high natural testosterone levels, and banning them would be unfair, the levels allowed are set quite high.
When one athlete is caught doping, what happened is that the athlete was just caught doping above the permitted level. Nothing more, nothing less.
Which could be replaced with a single, less expensive, more flexible vehicle:
http://www.directlauncher.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIRECT
Of course, IANARS, but the proposal looks quite reasonable, and the objections presented by NASA all look quite addressable. It would look like NASA is reluctant (understandably) to switch architectures mid flight, but as it is starting to look like the Constellation project might end up in disaster I hope they take a serious look at this alternative and make the switch to a simpler model based in proven technologies sooner rather than later.
Wrong there. An ELLIPTICAL orbit would have the characteristics you suggest. An eight shaped orbit (like the one approximated during the apollo missions) can be really close to earth. Now, I don't know if such a trajectory is really stable in the long term, especially considering the three objects would also be orbiting the Sun.
I think that trajectory would be useful: if you want to send astronauts to the moon, you only need to get up to speed a launch capsule big enough for the astronauts to be in it for a few hours. It would save the launch weight of a confortable living environment (which for the moon is not that big).
THe big issue here is fit for purpose: the ISS is orders of magnitude bigger and more complex than needed for a moon mission, so sending that big chunk of metal would be more expensive than sending an adequately sized spaceship. Additionally, it is complex enough to require periodic maintenance. Simplicity is the key to reliability, and sending a ship a hundred times more complex than needed is the recipe for disaster.
Finally, it is unlikely the ship can be accelerated at the rates needed to reach this sort of orbit. It is unlikely to be structurally rigid enough.
The author doesn't seem to understand the concept of sunken cost. It doesn't matter how much you already spent on something, the only thing that matters is how much the different alternatives to get your objectives accomplished will cost FROM NOW ON. Reusing an expensive craft makes no sense if in the end you would end up spending more money than otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
If the ammount communicated differs from the ammount paid (which is almost always the case in these situations, regarding of the company) then Microsoft has little chances of losing it in court. They also have few chances of having to go to court in the first place, as you wouldn't want to have that in your background when looking for a new job, especially considering that Microsoft is likely the next employer for many of these employees, given that it's the biggest employer in the Seattle area and the two other large companies in the area (Starbucks and Boeing) are looking in worse shape at the time.
Repairing the Hubble makes absolutely no sense. The cost of building a telescope can be divided in the following way: 1) research 2) design 3) construction 4) launch 5) management and maintenance 6) training and facility construction If a new, identical hubble was built and launched to replace the existing one, 1, 2, 5 and 6 would be effecively zero. 4 would be much cheaper than the current repair mission, since it can be launched with an unmanned mission at much lower cost than a shuttle mission. As for 3, actual manufacturing cost of a second telescope is quite minor compared to the rest of the Hubble project. Yes, the mirror is expensive, but the mirror in the Hubble is already flawled and despite is fixes the results have been somewhat worse than they would have been with a perfect main mirror. In fact, if there was the option of building a new mirror at the same cost as the original, and swapping it at low cost, it would have been done without much consideration. So the mirror manufacturing cost could be dismissed as part of a reasonable upgrade. Building the rest of the telescope would be relatively inexpensive, I'm pretty sure it would be much minor than the difference between an unmanned launch and a shuttle repair mission. It is actually designing the parts and building the manufacturing machinery that's expensive an that's already built. In fact, most parts are already in stock. Building the original telescope was enormously expensive, but a second identical scope would cost just a minor fraction. Minor enhancements could be done that do not affect the general design but reduce cost and weight and increase reliability. Instead, we opt for sending astronauts in an extremely dangerous mission to partially fix a telescope that's aging beyond hope. COst will be definitely higher, risk is significant (including risk to human life) and results will be definitely worse. Doesn't anyone see what's wrong with this plan? I hope the debris issue finally kills this mission and the money is better spent in a new telescope (though so much money has already been spent in this mission that I find it unlikely).
What puzzles me is the comment in the article: > This form of authentication is considered more convenient than fingerprint scans and more secure than traditional passwords Considered by whom? Their dog? No one that has three working neurons can think that how your face looks is a stronger secret than some word you have in your mind. When they announced this "security mechanism" every security specialist I know said it was worse than nothing, it didn't even qualify as weak security, and it would be abandoned within months. It is sad when security features of computers are designed in the marketing department.
An dyou think reducing R&D spending could make its stock go up? If Microsoft had low margins (like most companies have), that might make sense. But even halving R&D would not make such a large dent in their bottom line. THey get 20B out of 60B in sales. Reducing 4B out of R&D (which would be impossible, as that would not even cover maintaining existing products) would bring revenue to 22 or 23B (the difference due to taxes). Do you think that new situation, with 3B extra cash but without a future whatsoever would make the stock go up or down? When Steve Ballmer took the reins, he said "this is a different market, there are not as many opportunities for growth so we have to be more cost conscious". Since then, Google blasted off, Apple created the iPod and the iPhone, companies like Facebook sprouted out of nowhere and mobility became a market bigger than computing. Investing in R&D is what Microsoft has to do. Despite all the babble about marketing, every time they did a bad product (take Vista) they did bad, but when they created products people actually liked, they did great. It's that simple. Don't cut R&D. Cut marketing.
The PS3 is not a flop. It's objective was to push Blu Ray ahead. It succeeded: HD DVD is now dead. Now the PS3 has achieved its goal, and can be left to die. Sony, a company that is bleeding money and has stopped growing, can't afford to waste on the PS3 double what Microsoft, a company that's making 18 billion clean each year (out of 60B in sales) and that's beating Sony in that market, is said it can not.
So they now own the market (their market, which is different from the Wiis market), they are growing fast, and they are even making money, and it is the time to shut down? Huh?
If you think Bill Gates is the problem, you have not been watching the numbers. Bill led the company 100% until about year 2000. Ballmer took the lead since then. A short time later Microsoft switched from 50% annual growth to 20% annual growth, a change directly related in the view of many to the new policies being introduced by Ballmer. Still, Microsoft earns more money in a week than most Fortune 500 companies get in a year. It is still making more money than all it's competitors together, and up until last year, it was growing more than all of them salve two. So if you are going to get rid of someone, get rid of Ballmer. He's just not effective. Bill Gates, the "charlatan" built the most successful and profitable company ever. If he's a charlatan, I want to be one.
This article does not deserve to be in /. Claiming that a company must pay for the upgrade of hardware sold by other companies because THEY claimed the hardware was able to run its products is absurd. There's no legal or logical basis for it.
If Microsoft is found guilty of deceiving customers, it might be asked to pay for some restitution, return the license money or something around that. IF it is found guilty, as all these machines were able to run Vista, they were simply not able to use some features that depended on hardware not available in the devices. But calculating settlement costs as the hardware upgrade price is simply ridiculous. They are bluffing in order to get a more substantial settlement. Nothing more than that.
There's a biiiig fallacy here. When you are producing physical goods, that might be true. When you are producing intangible goods (such as software) the more companies there are working in producing the same goods, the less efficient the market is. If ten companies spend one million dollars each in producing a document editor, you end up with worse results than if two companies spend five millions each. It is true that if a single company produces the software, then there's no incentive in spending even one million. But if that is the case, and there's business to be made, a company spending one billion should be able to displace that company, and that's precisely the reason why Microsoft's R&D budget is over ten billion dollars. They want large amounts of money because that's what their product are worth in the view of the market. If the product wasn't willing to pay $200 a pop for an office suite, they wouldn't be selling any. Open source changes that in that there's no "budget" as companies are sharing the load of building the product, but as there's no profit from developing the product either (and no, developing the product is not related in any way to supporting it, so if you live from support, development is still 100% sunk cost), the incentive to invest effort for companies is even lower.
Metric is arbitrary? The whole basis of the metric system is NOT being arbitrary. Three or four units are based on arbitrary amounts (and they must, in any possible unit system as there are no absolutes in the universe) but all the rest, and all the sub units are based on uniform, easy to convert and very rational transformations. Not so with SI, in which EVERY SINGLE UNIT, SUB UNIT and CONVERSION is arbitrary. SI is only convenient if something is already measured in SI. But if you are defining some measurement based on SI you don't belong to this century.
A much better (and closer) alternative: Argentina. It is reasonably safe, top universities are free (yes, free as in beer) and highly regarded internationally, and cost of living is pretty low compared to the US. If you are able to spend a few hundred bucks, there are some top notch private universities (ITBA, for example, has a very good CS degree) that will save some of the hassle of state universities and have a level competitive with good US universities. And of course, Spanish is the spoken language in the country, though English is widely understood in major cities. As a plus, you can escape winter and spend some time in some nice, warm weather while all your friends at home freeze.
One benefit for the environment: a battery's life is inversely proportional to the number of times it was completely discharged. If you tend not to charge your phone every day, you are likely to let it run dry evey once in a while. That means the battery is not going to last much more than a year, and after that the battery goes to the dump, and you need a new one. Both the battery in the trash and the need to manufacture a new one would be saved if you charged your phone every day. And that's much easier to guarantee when charging your phone only requires putting it on your desk. Given the (low) amount of energy a phone uses over its full life, this means probably a net gain for the environment.
They fake their performance numbers, I don't know what they might do with their pricing. A single Cell processor tops at less than 10GFlops double precision. A low end supercomputer runs at 100TFlops. So you need at least ten thousand PS3 to have something worthy of the name of a supercomputer under theoretical conditions. In real conditions, with the best interconnect available, you probably need a few hundred thousand consoles. Yet, these folks are claimingfor comparison that the BlueGene supercomputer (from 2005, by the way) tops at 280GFlops, when in reality it runs at more than 280TFlops. I have a difficult time believing Sony didn't notice the math error.
Absolutely! I think these folks are reading the numbers wrong. The slowest BlueGene ever built is 280 TFlops (not 280 GFlops as it is listed in some web sites). A single SPE in a Cell ranks at about one GFlop in double precision (14 GFlops in single, but that doesn't count for these rankings). Eight consoles with seven SPEs would then yield, in the most optimistic calculation possible (very far from reality) 56GFlops, or two orders of magnitude short for being considered a (very low end) supercomputer. A console is a console, even a fast one is a few orders of magnitude short of anything that could be considered in the ballpark of a supercomputer.
Yu are responding to the wrong article. This one is about Microsoft knowing that the XBox would scratch disks IF MOVED WHILE THE DISKS WERE SPINNING. There's nothing here on Microsoft knowing that the disks would scratch even if not moved. So if Microsoft is actually guilty of the later thing and that is demonstrated during the trial, bummer for them, great for the victims. But that's a completely different discussion. If Microsoft "knew" the XBox would scratch disks only if moved (as this article and the new discoveries indicate), then throwing in the warning and leaving the machine as it is would be the right thing to do, as the machine is NOT intended to be moved while playing, and anyone with half a brain would know that.
This type of absolutism sickens me. It has NOT been demonstrated that talking on the pone is as dangerous as DUI. The studies afterword's claim that it CAN be as dangerous, which equals nothing. If you look at the studies and the numbers, driving while talking is about as dangerous as driving at the highest levels of "intoxication" that are legal (bordering the levels that are declared illegal). Those levels are pretty strict, as you know if you ever drank a small beer and were tested by the police afterwards. It is considered that driving at those "legal" levels is SAFE. So what has been demonstrated is that talking on the phone while driving is more dangerous than NOT talking on the phone while driving, but not dangerous enough, for normal drivers, to be illegal. Exactly the opposite of what's being claimed to have been demonstrated. Maybe you do not agree with that conclusion. Neither do I. But the fact is that this is what the studies "demonstrated", if you believe them, despite claiming the contrary. The same thing happens when comparing talking with a hands free device vs. a handheld phone. Reporters claimed it has been demonstrated that they are equal, or even that hands free is worse. I have yet to see any serious study (and I mean serious based on their methodology, not on their results) that concludes that. They all conclude that "talking on hands free is dangerous" but on a different level than talking on a handheld device. But somehow reporters manage to confuse the conclusions and claim that talking on a hands free device is equal to having a phone in your hand. It's not. And given that people are NOT going to stop talking (even if it becomes illegal), telling them it's the same is irresponsible, even criminal. If they convince just a small percentage of the people (that's going to be talking while driving) of NOT using a hands free device, they probably have a few innocent deaths in their hands.
Still, the "tax" concept is due for a rationalization and overhaul. Even the word for tax in many languages (such as "Impuesto" in Spanish) indicates it is equal to abuse. Taxes are currently charged "because they can". And used without strings attached fro whatever they need to. A much more efficient system would be devoid of "taxes" and comprised of three types of state charges: - Service fees. Including "security and administration fees" on durable goods (replacing VAT) and similar charges for the services the state gives each citizen. To a reasonable level of approximation, those fees should be directly related to the services provided by the state as related to the action or object being taxed. An example would be a tax on cigarettes, which is an advanced charge of a presumed (but reasonably calculated) health cost to society. - Regulatory charges. When there's a pattern or trend that would be in the best interest of the whole society (such as reducing polluting emissions) a tax on any action that counters that trend (such as polluting from the tailpipe) is granted, even when there's nothing the state can do to compensate for that action, in order to reduce its occurrence. - Social contributions. Some will argue these are theft, some will say they are necessary. In any case if they are going to be there, they should be clearly stamped as such. Put the income tax equivalent under this if you will. But do not camouflage as something else. Under such a rational taxation system the total tax on an individual might or might not be lower than under the current system, but at least it would be fairer, and much better accepted by the taxpayers, as you can correlate the services being delivered to the amount being paid. And that is in itself probably the reason why we will never see such a system in action.
I read the Communist Manifesto a few years ago. I did it with a set of highlightersd at hand. I highlighted in one color all passages that were contradictions or fallacies. In other color all that was simply ranting, lies or unsubstantiated claims. In another color all that were no longer valid due to the way the world had evolved since its writing. After that the book was all covered in ink, there was not a single page that wasn't highlighted at more than 50%. I recommend anyone with doubts about socialism (in that old sense, not the modern european adaptation that has almost nothing to do with it) to do the same experiment.
Do you really think that counting threads and memory footprint will give you any sort of indication of a systems performance? So, whatever those threads are really doing is not useful information? By design Windows uses as much memory is available, as unused memory is of no value. A performance indication would be to measure how much actual pagin is there when physical memory is exhausted by running process. Counting used memory is worthless. And counting threads and processes? Come on! What sort of analysis is this? Even if it were based on the final product (instead of a pre beta version), this analysis doesn't tell absolutely nothing. Not that I would expect that Win7 uses fewer resources that Vista. It would be a great thing if, coming a few years later, it used the same level of resources (meaning it should be able to run in machines over five years old) but expecting it to consume fewer resources is delusional. Performance today has much less to do with resource usage than with responsiveness and proactivity anyway.
It would be fairly easy to implement some extensions that could make IPV4 last much, much longer. Basically, we have DHCP to make address usage within a range more efficient. With fixed IP we frequently had low usage of IPs within a range, often well below 50%. With DHCP we have reached nearly 100% allocation rates. What we need is a new protocol, which I would call Dynamic Subnet Configuration Protocol (DSCP) that would assign subnets on demand to DHCP servers. Once implemented a DHCP server would not be configured for a fixed range, but would be configured to ask for a subnet of a specific size (which could be adjusted dynamically depending on the allocated addresses) to it's (ISP provided) DSCP server. The DSCP server would in turn negotiate ranges with upstream DSCP servers. That way, companies would only use ranges as large as needed, and no addresses would be wasted. With over three billion addresses to use, even not counting private addresses (which should cover the vast majority of PC addresses) we should have enough for a long time even without IPV6. Now, DSCP alone (and the adaptation of DHCP servers) would not be enough. We would need also some autoconfiguration tools to insure connectivity during IP range reassignation (including the necessary tools to insure proper routing between the two addresses, maybe temporary routing capabilities could be incorporated into the DHCP service, or autoconfiguration of routers and network equipment could be integrated). Easy? Definitely not. Doable, hell, yes, a few orders of magnitude easier than deploying IPV6 worldwide. And while it wouldn't have the other advantages of IPV6, compatibility would be a given and no clients would need to be modified. So who's writing the RFC?
So you seem like an open minded person that in the search for truth found Christ in the way. May I suggest that you also, with your mind still open and with some patience, also read the brilliant book "God's Delusion" by Richard Dawkins? it is a great book that might make you think (and that can't be bad, ever) and might help you to further advance your search. I sincerely hope you find it useful. I did.
But if you make the MB submersible, you can cool it via WATER convection. I would bet that a MB that's been covered in resin and submerged in water stays cool even with a tick coating.
There is a big flaw in your logic. It is absolutely, 100% impossible to determine univoally if an athlete is using steroids, at least for some types of steroids. THat is because some are undistinguishable from human hormones. Even if you perfected detection so that you cannot hide hormones not naturally produced by humans (which is unlikely), athletes can just use natural testosterone for doping, and there would be absolutely no way of detecting it's not theirs. In fact, steroids are not currently banned in practice, the sports organizations just set an upper level for doping. If they find above that level of steroids in your blood, you are banned. Under that level, it's OK. That's why currently ALL, ABSOLUTELY ALL competitive olympic athletes (in specialities related to strenght or speed) are using drugs. They just use the amounts that are permisible. And the allowed levels are not low, by the way. As there might be some freaks of nature with excessively high natural testosterone levels, and banning them would be unfair, the levels allowed are set quite high. When one athlete is caught doping, what happened is that the athlete was just caught doping above the permitted level. Nothing more, nothing less.
Which could be replaced with a single, less expensive, more flexible vehicle: http://www.directlauncher.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIRECT Of course, IANARS, but the proposal looks quite reasonable, and the objections presented by NASA all look quite addressable. It would look like NASA is reluctant (understandably) to switch architectures mid flight, but as it is starting to look like the Constellation project might end up in disaster I hope they take a serious look at this alternative and make the switch to a simpler model based in proven technologies sooner rather than later.
Wrong there. An ELLIPTICAL orbit would have the characteristics you suggest. An eight shaped orbit (like the one approximated during the apollo missions) can be really close to earth. Now, I don't know if such a trajectory is really stable in the long term, especially considering the three objects would also be orbiting the Sun. I think that trajectory would be useful: if you want to send astronauts to the moon, you only need to get up to speed a launch capsule big enough for the astronauts to be in it for a few hours. It would save the launch weight of a confortable living environment (which for the moon is not that big). THe big issue here is fit for purpose: the ISS is orders of magnitude bigger and more complex than needed for a moon mission, so sending that big chunk of metal would be more expensive than sending an adequately sized spaceship. Additionally, it is complex enough to require periodic maintenance. Simplicity is the key to reliability, and sending a ship a hundred times more complex than needed is the recipe for disaster. Finally, it is unlikely the ship can be accelerated at the rates needed to reach this sort of orbit. It is unlikely to be structurally rigid enough. The author doesn't seem to understand the concept of sunken cost. It doesn't matter how much you already spent on something, the only thing that matters is how much the different alternatives to get your objectives accomplished will cost FROM NOW ON. Reusing an expensive craft makes no sense if in the end you would end up spending more money than otherwise.