I'd say "no" and "yes". When we say "linux" we're talking about a particular distribution. In this case Ubuntu. The kernel is obviously capable of supporting a distribution that could serve the masses. However, in my opinion, no distribution yet measures up. I say this as someone who uses XP at home, OSX at work, and has to develop on Linux.
As a "bit player" in the end-user desktop market, linux needs to lower the barrier-to-entry as much as possible. That includes the user interface. To that end, I would like to see Ubuntu allow the user to choose one of three "Desktop Modes" during installation. "Classic" (i.e. what it is now), "Windows" and "Mac". "Windows" would have a start menu (with similar layout and systems utilities, i.e. a control panel), a task bar, a quick start section on the task bar, etc. "OSX" would have a relocatable dock, etc.
I'd also like to see more effort devoted to coming up with a better "minimal desktop user" set of packages to insall, so the user doesn't have to figure out what he needs and doesn't need. This would mostly mimic what you get with a basic Windows or Mac install. So, no OpenOffice, no Gimp, no gcc, no Apache, etc. Don't configure telnetd or sshd to start automatically. This doesn't have to do with packages, but the novice user also shouldn't have to make any decisions regarding how to partition his drive.
This isn't entirely true. As a new graduate, employers probably will look at your class rank to some degree. Just not at a very granular level. If I see a guy with a GPA below 3.0, that raises some big red flags. Likewise, if I see a guy with close to a 4.0 then I might mentally give him a few extra points. Everything in between those two extremes is roughly equivalent, though.
I'd say you're wrong on both accounts. At least, based on the relative difficulty of the two programs at my university. All the engineering degrees involved lab classes. The engineering program was also a competitive degree, meaning they kicked some people out of the program after sophomore year. Not so for the CS department. Engineering degrees also have as a prerequisite some higher math courses that weren't required for CS.
As for employability in the IT/Software industry, while a BSCS isn't any better than, say, a degree in Electrical or Computer engineering, it's not any worse. And it's certainly more useful (for the purposes of acquiring a position in the IT/Software industry) than a completely non-technical degree.
If you're the sort of person who, while still in high school, is asking how employable he's going to be in four years based on the relative "street cred" of two prospective universities which he has already established are approximately equally selective...well, then you probably belong in the tech school.
Reading between the lines, in issuing the subpoena, Shoemaker seems to be trying to determine whether Seidl is, in fact, being compensated by Bayer to act as an agent for their propaganda.
If she's just an innocent blogger then yeah, this sounds like gigantic invasion of privacy. But if she's really just a shill for Big Pharma...well, then it's a little harder to muster up sympathy.
Speaking of someone who failed statistics, ever hear of the whole "correlation is not causation" thing? Is it that a liberal arts education somehow retards one's ability to be successful, or is it that the super-driven, super-talented folks self-select out of these programs and opt for something else? Or, possibly, is it that a disproportionate number of un-driven and un-talented students self-select into these programs, thus depressing the percentage of students who eventually become "successful"? Bottom line: if you're driven and talented, your odds of getting a "good job" with a liberal arts degree are probably "about the same" as your odds of getting a "good job" with a math/science/engineering degree.
WTF does polling have to do with expunging cache data? I doubt they use polling, but even if they did, how many times a second do you plan on expunging cache data?
If they implemented their time-based policy naively then they might, for example, wake up every 30 seconds and check a priority queue of items in order to expire whatever is past due. "Waking up every 30 seconds" is the bad part. Hopefully this isn't the case, but given the amount of OSS projects that *did* exhibit behavior like this (including Thunderbird, I think), it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Can't remember where I read it, but I recently read a description of how they achieved some of this efficiency. Much of it has to do with using a different memory allocator which avoids fragmentation. That's good. However, a lot of it also comes from "expiring" cached data according to some time-based policy. That's probably a good idea too, but it's not a memory savings that can be considered "for free". You're actually expunging cached data from memory, which means you may have to reload it again later, and you're spending CPU cycles to enforce that policy. It probably requires minimal CPU to do that, but if they implement it via polling it could screw up the processor's ability to sleep, which in turn jacks up battery usage on laptops. Witness the recent effort on linux to get various apps to "fix" the way they behave in order to play better on laptops. This could end up being a regression in that area.
Sure. It's virtually impossible for anybody besides those two to get in the game. This professor's point, though, was that if you took away the subsidies from both companies, one of them would necessarily fail, since the total amount of money to be spent on commercial airplanes worldwide is not enough to offset the development and production costs for *two* producers. Even if each claimed exactly half of the market, they would both end up losing money.
I'm sure government regulation plays a part in the cost, but I highly doubt it makes up a majority, or even a significant minority. Designing a modern jet airplane is just an immensely complicated and expensive technological undertaking.
Basically, the argument was that the R&D costs involved in producing a new model of airplane are so incredibly high that they exceed half the global market for new planes. So if you have two producers, both of whom have to foot that same huge R&D bill, it's impossible for either of them to turn a profit.
This reminds me of an economics lecture I attended once, which dealt with the topic of government subsidies. In general, the professor was extremely against subsidies, since they pervert free market dynamics and generally leads to lower overall efficiency, higher prices, etc. However, the one situation where he supported them was for industries where the cost of doing business is so high that the world market can only support a monopoly. In that case, he argued that subsidies were vital in that they enable the existence of two entities in a given space, thus creating competition and spurring innovation.
His main example was the commercial aviation industry, where the two big players are Boeing and Airbus. According to him, without large subsidies from the U.S. and E.U., one of those two would "win" and the other would cease to exist, leaving us with a single global manufacturer of commercial airplanes. I wonder if this argument now applies to Intel?
Interesting. Doesn't change my point, though. The last-mile equipment needs to be upgraded/replaced due to an increase in users with extraordinary rates of data consumption.
What they're trying to do, see, is charge *YOU* more for less service. By villainizing heavy users as people who are damaging your experience, despite that they bought the same unlimited service, advertised for the purposes of broadband video and other multimedia - and are using it exactly how it was intended.
Nothing I've seen of what's been discussed would result in me paying more for my service. It might result in me getting a more restrictive usage agreement for the same price, but then again, I'm not one of the 5%. I freely admit that heavy users are within the terms of the "unlimited" usage agreements they signed, and don't believe I ever claimed otherwise. Once those contracts expire, though, the point is moot. Time Warner can then impose whatever new pricing scheme it chooses, without violating anyone's usage agreement. I might even expect my cost to drop, considering that I'm currently subsidizing the heavy users.
Get the regular Joe to hate those geeks! Downloading movies from netflix or vongo? How dare they - it's practically terrorism!
Spare me the histrionics. I don't support this move because I think downloading movies is terrorism; I support it because the new pricing scheme more accurately aligns "price" with "resources consumed".
These days everybody is downloading movies to their Xbox, Tivo or PS3. They're buying games on Steam, they're watching YouTube. This idea that 95% of users merely check their email and use less than 5 gigs a month? Maybe in 1996.
Time Warner's numbers seem to contradict you on this one. Are they just lying? It may well be the case that the percentage of users who consume less than 5GB/mo is not 95%. Maybe you have to bump that figure up to 8GB/mo to get 95%...or 10GB/mo. The fact remains that the top echelon of users is consuming bandwidth at a rate that vastly outstrips that of the "average" user.
I'd think there's enough competition to prevent really bad behavior on Time Warner's part, barring collusion between them and the other major players. If I don't like Time Warner's pricing then I can hop over to my local DSL provider. If SBC thinks it can gain an advantage by *not* charging per-usage, then they'll do so.
Another point is that they're not targeting iTunes directly; they're just charging for bandwidth. I don't have access to Time Warner's market research, but screwing all your residential data customers in a bid to get them to start using your digital cable "Movies on Demand" service would be a pretty dumb move. I'm much more inclined to believe that the issue is cost-related. As the guy said, 5% of the users use 50% of the bandwidth. Their flat-rate pricing doesn't match up with their customers' usage.
Seriously. As one of the 95% who use comparatively little bandwidth, it's nice to see the other 5% finally pay their fair share.
In reality, though, the bandwidth is only "expensive" to Time Warner if it leaves their network. It seems like Apple could cut a deal where it places an iTunes mirror inside Time Warner's corner of the internet, with all TW users being directed to that server instead of the normal one. Seems like this is one of the problems Akamai was supposed to solve- distributed media delivery.
They're an entertaining diversion that, while not inherently destructive, can be damaging when eaten to excess or in place of other foods. I'm giving games the benefit of the doubt and assuming we're talking about age-appropriate titles and not GTA. Some games have puzzles, but it's nothing compared to, say, playing a strategy board game, doing a crossword puzzle, playing chess, etc. And games do little to enhance verbal ability, unlike reading. If you want to develop fine motor skills, why not take up billiards, foosball, table tennis, golf, etc.
Just like eating one serving of fries isn't going to kill you, neither will playing a moderate amount of games rot a kid's brain. But if he eats fries five times a day and consequently skips the vegetables and fruit...there will be consequences. Also, just like fries (and other unhealthy foods) games can be quite addictive.
If wireless solutions are able to deliver on their promises of high speeds with no usage limits...
Ultimately every connection is a shared connection, since all customers of a given provider are sharing the same gateway to external sites. That's why unlimited usage is an issue. Providers will advertise their endpoint bandwidths, not what's available to external sites, which is what actually matters. Customers will gladly pay a premium for a 20Mbit pipe, then wonder why they still can't transfer anything from an external site at that speed.
I'm all for unlimited bandwidth plans, so long as they include a per-unit data charge. Those who use more pay more.
I will add that if a student considers himself "very interested" in post-graduate education, and feels like he has the chops to "perform" academically regardless of the undergrad institution he attends, that it's almost certainly a better investment to attend an upper-tier state school if that's possible without paying tuition comparable to Stanford's. For instance, if the student's home state is Mississippi then he's going to have to pay out-of-state tuition to attend a Michigan, Illinois, Texas, Berkeley, Maryland, etc., and some of those schools' out-of-state tuition approaches Stanford levels. Assuming a post-graduate degree is in the student's future, the institution awarding *that* degree is the only thing that's going to matter long-term.
You clearly have a mammoth-sized chip on your shoulder against Stanford. Having attended an upper-tier state school, I can say that most of the complaints you level at Stanford faculty are pervasive among the better research universities. I'll also add that I don't think it's as bad as you describe, at least with regard to the education one receives. When it comes to Stanford in particular, the price premium isn't due to the quality of instruction, it's charged because attending Stanford affords one the opportunity to hobnob with faculty who are eminent in their fields and students who, compared to a random sampling of upper-tier state school students, are more likely to do something "impressive" after they graduate. Also because having the Stanford "brand" one one's diploma, for better or worse, means more to some people than "random upper-tier state school".
Those three were all prominent in the mid-20th century. It may be as simple as the fact that America wasn't an economic force during the time when much of the "foundational" (Euler, etc.) type work was being done.
I'm not trying to be rude, but all you've really done is re-state what I said. American students value other things over academic achievement. That's not coming from the schools per se, it's coming from the students themselves. As to why that's the case, it's hard to say. I'll add that I don't think it's a new thing. Historically, the U.S. hasn't exactly been a hub of scientific and mathematical innovation. You've got the inventor types like Franklin and Edison, but most of the heavy hitters come from Europe. England, Germany, France, Switzerland and Russia. It could be that there's some sort of latent anti-intellectualism permeating U.S. culture that students in other countries don't have to deal with? Or not; that's just a theory.
If you look back fifty years, though, it seems like all your points would still apply. Only, back then the U.S. wasn't so far behind everyone else. At least, that's what statisticians would have us believe. Conjure up an image in your mind of the stereotypical "50s" high school. It's all about football, cheerleaders, who's "going steady" with whom, etc. Just like today. It's not as if chess club members were revered as heroes 50 years ago; no, they were mocked just as they are today. So I'm not sure what's changed.
U.S. students don't underperform their international peers because the school system sucks (although, it does suck). They underperform for two reasons. One is demographics. The U.S. has a much larger lower class than do most other nations to which it is compared. Kids who grow up in poverty with terrible home situations will, surprise surprise, not shine when it comes to academic performance. The second reasons is cultural. If you look at kids not from this underclass, a disproportionate number lack the desire to acquire math/science skills, or, really, the desire to excel academically in any field. One possible contributor to this is that students in the U.S. needn't pass an exit exam in order to graduate high school and enter college. The other is general cultural malaise, but it's harder to define that in any exact sense. There is a "culture of achievement" present in some countries (Japan and Germany come to mind) that is simply lacking in the United States.
My service is fine. However, I would expect my bill to decrease if the largest consumers were suddenly forced to pay more. My provider might also be able to offer higher levels of peak bandwidth if their network-wide usage suddenly dropped by 50%.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say "no" and "yes". When we say "linux" we're talking about a particular distribution. In this case Ubuntu. The kernel is obviously capable of supporting a distribution that could serve the masses. However, in my opinion, no distribution yet measures up. I say this as someone who uses XP at home, OSX at work, and has to develop on Linux.
As a "bit player" in the end-user desktop market, linux needs to lower the barrier-to-entry as much as possible. That includes the user interface. To that end, I would like to see Ubuntu allow the user to choose one of three "Desktop Modes" during installation. "Classic" (i.e. what it is now), "Windows" and "Mac". "Windows" would have a start menu (with similar layout and systems utilities, i.e. a control panel), a task bar, a quick start section on the task bar, etc. "OSX" would have a relocatable dock, etc.
I'd also like to see more effort devoted to coming up with a better "minimal desktop user" set of packages to insall, so the user doesn't have to figure out what he needs and doesn't need. This would mostly mimic what you get with a basic Windows or Mac install. So, no OpenOffice, no Gimp, no gcc, no Apache, etc. Don't configure telnetd or sshd to start automatically. This doesn't have to do with packages, but the novice user also shouldn't have to make any decisions regarding how to partition his drive.
This isn't entirely true. As a new graduate, employers probably will look at your class rank to some degree. Just not at a very granular level. If I see a guy with a GPA below 3.0, that raises some big red flags. Likewise, if I see a guy with close to a 4.0 then I might mentally give him a few extra points. Everything in between those two extremes is roughly equivalent, though.
I'd say you're wrong on both accounts. At least, based on the relative difficulty of the two programs at my university. All the engineering degrees involved lab classes. The engineering program was also a competitive degree, meaning they kicked some people out of the program after sophomore year. Not so for the CS department. Engineering degrees also have as a prerequisite some higher math courses that weren't required for CS.
As for employability in the IT/Software industry, while a BSCS isn't any better than, say, a degree in Electrical or Computer engineering, it's not any worse. And it's certainly more useful (for the purposes of acquiring a position in the IT/Software industry) than a completely non-technical degree.
If you're the sort of person who, while still in high school, is asking how employable he's going to be in four years based on the relative "street cred" of two prospective universities which he has already established are approximately equally selective...well, then you probably belong in the tech school.
Reading between the lines, in issuing the subpoena, Shoemaker seems to be trying to determine whether Seidl is, in fact, being compensated by Bayer to act as an agent for their propaganda.
If she's just an innocent blogger then yeah, this sounds like gigantic invasion of privacy. But if she's really just a shill for Big Pharma...well, then it's a little harder to muster up sympathy.
Speaking of someone who failed statistics, ever hear of the whole "correlation is not causation" thing? Is it that a liberal arts education somehow retards one's ability to be successful, or is it that the super-driven, super-talented folks self-select out of these programs and opt for something else? Or, possibly, is it that a disproportionate number of un-driven and un-talented students self-select into these programs, thus depressing the percentage of students who eventually become "successful"? Bottom line: if you're driven and talented, your odds of getting a "good job" with a liberal arts degree are probably "about the same" as your odds of getting a "good job" with a math/science/engineering degree.
WTF does polling have to do with expunging cache data? I doubt they use polling, but even if they did, how many times a second do you plan on expunging cache data?
If they implemented their time-based policy naively then they might, for example, wake up every 30 seconds and check a priority queue of items in order to expire whatever is past due. "Waking up every 30 seconds" is the bad part. Hopefully this isn't the case, but given the amount of OSS projects that *did* exhibit behavior like this (including Thunderbird, I think), it certainly wouldn't surprise me.Can't remember where I read it, but I recently read a description of how they achieved some of this efficiency. Much of it has to do with using a different memory allocator which avoids fragmentation. That's good. However, a lot of it also comes from "expiring" cached data according to some time-based policy. That's probably a good idea too, but it's not a memory savings that can be considered "for free". You're actually expunging cached data from memory, which means you may have to reload it again later, and you're spending CPU cycles to enforce that policy. It probably requires minimal CPU to do that, but if they implement it via polling it could screw up the processor's ability to sleep, which in turn jacks up battery usage on laptops. Witness the recent effort on linux to get various apps to "fix" the way they behave in order to play better on laptops. This could end up being a regression in that area.
Sure. It's virtually impossible for anybody besides those two to get in the game. This professor's point, though, was that if you took away the subsidies from both companies, one of them would necessarily fail, since the total amount of money to be spent on commercial airplanes worldwide is not enough to offset the development and production costs for *two* producers. Even if each claimed exactly half of the market, they would both end up losing money.
I'm sure government regulation plays a part in the cost, but I highly doubt it makes up a majority, or even a significant minority. Designing a modern jet airplane is just an immensely complicated and expensive technological undertaking.
Basically, the argument was that the R&D costs involved in producing a new model of airplane are so incredibly high that they exceed half the global market for new planes. So if you have two producers, both of whom have to foot that same huge R&D bill, it's impossible for either of them to turn a profit.
This reminds me of an economics lecture I attended once, which dealt with the topic of government subsidies. In general, the professor was extremely against subsidies, since they pervert free market dynamics and generally leads to lower overall efficiency, higher prices, etc. However, the one situation where he supported them was for industries where the cost of doing business is so high that the world market can only support a monopoly. In that case, he argued that subsidies were vital in that they enable the existence of two entities in a given space, thus creating competition and spurring innovation.
His main example was the commercial aviation industry, where the two big players are Boeing and Airbus. According to him, without large subsidies from the U.S. and E.U., one of those two would "win" and the other would cease to exist, leaving us with a single global manufacturer of commercial airplanes. I wonder if this argument now applies to Intel?
There may be a lot of investors kicking themselves 5 years from now.
Interesting. Doesn't change my point, though. The last-mile equipment needs to be upgraded/replaced due to an increase in users with extraordinary rates of data consumption.
Nothing I've seen of what's been discussed would result in me paying more for my service. It might result in me getting a more restrictive usage agreement for the same price, but then again, I'm not one of the 5%. I freely admit that heavy users are within the terms of the "unlimited" usage agreements they signed, and don't believe I ever claimed otherwise. Once those contracts expire, though, the point is moot. Time Warner can then impose whatever new pricing scheme it chooses, without violating anyone's usage agreement. I might even expect my cost to drop, considering that I'm currently subsidizing the heavy users.
Spare me the histrionics. I don't support this move because I think downloading movies is terrorism; I support it because the new pricing scheme more accurately aligns "price" with "resources consumed".
Time Warner's numbers seem to contradict you on this one. Are they just lying? It may well be the case that the percentage of users who consume less than 5GB/mo is not 95%. Maybe you have to bump that figure up to 8GB/mo to get 95%...or 10GB/mo. The fact remains that the top echelon of users is consuming bandwidth at a rate that vastly outstrips that of the "average" user.I'd think there's enough competition to prevent really bad behavior on Time Warner's part, barring collusion between them and the other major players. If I don't like Time Warner's pricing then I can hop over to my local DSL provider. If SBC thinks it can gain an advantage by *not* charging per-usage, then they'll do so.
Another point is that they're not targeting iTunes directly; they're just charging for bandwidth. I don't have access to Time Warner's market research, but screwing all your residential data customers in a bid to get them to start using your digital cable "Movies on Demand" service would be a pretty dumb move. I'm much more inclined to believe that the issue is cost-related. As the guy said, 5% of the users use 50% of the bandwidth. Their flat-rate pricing doesn't match up with their customers' usage.
Seriously. As one of the 95% who use comparatively little bandwidth, it's nice to see the other 5% finally pay their fair share.
In reality, though, the bandwidth is only "expensive" to Time Warner if it leaves their network. It seems like Apple could cut a deal where it places an iTunes mirror inside Time Warner's corner of the internet, with all TW users being directed to that server instead of the normal one. Seems like this is one of the problems Akamai was supposed to solve- distributed media delivery.
They're an entertaining diversion that, while not inherently destructive, can be damaging when eaten to excess or in place of other foods. I'm giving games the benefit of the doubt and assuming we're talking about age-appropriate titles and not GTA. Some games have puzzles, but it's nothing compared to, say, playing a strategy board game, doing a crossword puzzle, playing chess, etc. And games do little to enhance verbal ability, unlike reading. If you want to develop fine motor skills, why not take up billiards, foosball, table tennis, golf, etc.
Just like eating one serving of fries isn't going to kill you, neither will playing a moderate amount of games rot a kid's brain. But if he eats fries five times a day and consequently skips the vegetables and fruit...there will be consequences. Also, just like fries (and other unhealthy foods) games can be quite addictive.
Ultimately every connection is a shared connection, since all customers of a given provider are sharing the same gateway to external sites. That's why unlimited usage is an issue. Providers will advertise their endpoint bandwidths, not what's available to external sites, which is what actually matters. Customers will gladly pay a premium for a 20Mbit pipe, then wonder why they still can't transfer anything from an external site at that speed.
I'm all for unlimited bandwidth plans, so long as they include a per-unit data charge. Those who use more pay more.
I will add that if a student considers himself "very interested" in post-graduate education, and feels like he has the chops to "perform" academically regardless of the undergrad institution he attends, that it's almost certainly a better investment to attend an upper-tier state school if that's possible without paying tuition comparable to Stanford's. For instance, if the student's home state is Mississippi then he's going to have to pay out-of-state tuition to attend a Michigan, Illinois, Texas, Berkeley, Maryland, etc., and some of those schools' out-of-state tuition approaches Stanford levels. Assuming a post-graduate degree is in the student's future, the institution awarding *that* degree is the only thing that's going to matter long-term.
You clearly have a mammoth-sized chip on your shoulder against Stanford. Having attended an upper-tier state school, I can say that most of the complaints you level at Stanford faculty are pervasive among the better research universities. I'll also add that I don't think it's as bad as you describe, at least with regard to the education one receives. When it comes to Stanford in particular, the price premium isn't due to the quality of instruction, it's charged because attending Stanford affords one the opportunity to hobnob with faculty who are eminent in their fields and students who, compared to a random sampling of upper-tier state school students, are more likely to do something "impressive" after they graduate. Also because having the Stanford "brand" one one's diploma, for better or worse, means more to some people than "random upper-tier state school".
It is, however, worse in the U.S. than in places like Western Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan.
Those three were all prominent in the mid-20th century. It may be as simple as the fact that America wasn't an economic force during the time when much of the "foundational" (Euler, etc.) type work was being done.
I'm not trying to be rude, but all you've really done is re-state what I said. American students value other things over academic achievement. That's not coming from the schools per se, it's coming from the students themselves. As to why that's the case, it's hard to say. I'll add that I don't think it's a new thing. Historically, the U.S. hasn't exactly been a hub of scientific and mathematical innovation. You've got the inventor types like Franklin and Edison, but most of the heavy hitters come from Europe. England, Germany, France, Switzerland and Russia. It could be that there's some sort of latent anti-intellectualism permeating U.S. culture that students in other countries don't have to deal with? Or not; that's just a theory.
If you look back fifty years, though, it seems like all your points would still apply. Only, back then the U.S. wasn't so far behind everyone else. At least, that's what statisticians would have us believe. Conjure up an image in your mind of the stereotypical "50s" high school. It's all about football, cheerleaders, who's "going steady" with whom, etc. Just like today. It's not as if chess club members were revered as heroes 50 years ago; no, they were mocked just as they are today. So I'm not sure what's changed.
U.S. students don't underperform their international peers because the school system sucks (although, it does suck). They underperform for two reasons. One is demographics. The U.S. has a much larger lower class than do most other nations to which it is compared. Kids who grow up in poverty with terrible home situations will, surprise surprise, not shine when it comes to academic performance. The second reasons is cultural. If you look at kids not from this underclass, a disproportionate number lack the desire to acquire math/science skills, or, really, the desire to excel academically in any field. One possible contributor to this is that students in the U.S. needn't pass an exit exam in order to graduate high school and enter college. The other is general cultural malaise, but it's harder to define that in any exact sense. There is a "culture of achievement" present in some countries (Japan and Germany come to mind) that is simply lacking in the United States.
My service is fine. However, I would expect my bill to decrease if the largest consumers were suddenly forced to pay more. My provider might also be able to offer higher levels of peak bandwidth if their network-wide usage suddenly dropped by 50%.