So, I program a virtual world on a computer. In that world things can't "just exist". I have to create them.
That is a universe you defined by saying you created it. By definition the stuff in it was created by you. At the very least, we'd have to imagine a universe you didn't create, perhaps that has always existed.
However, where the "creator" (that's me!) is...well, what do you say?
I'm saying that you yourself aren't bound by the rules of your virtual world. And that would be an error for someone inside your virtual world to think that you were.
So here things can't "just exist" and "somewhere else" (where the "creator" was before his alleged act of creation) they can?
That would be the assumption. I'm not saying I subscribe to a divine creator, but I can observe that the argument that one can't exist because then it would need a creator itself is deeply flawed.
But I'm still waiting to be presented with any sort of rational argument on behalf of the superstitious crowd as to why they are more likely right than the others, since all of their arguments smell of emotional pressure and inability to distance oneself from the problem.
That falls to faith I think. There isn't going to be a rational argument for what we can't know about. And spontaneous creation of the universe isn't really much better than a different kind of superstition.
I suppose its simpler... you just accept on faith that the universe spontaneously created, and you don't have to ponder the existence and motivations of God.
I think the main thing though when evaluating a divine creation argument is to remember that subscribing to the existence of God doesn't mean you have to believe in pregnant virgins, baskets of endless fish, crying statues, or that Jesus appeared in your french toast...
since it requires that the devine creator was created and from nothing.
Not really. Something "outside the universe" cannot be assumed to exist as what we know as "matter" or "energy", nor would it be subject to what we know as "time".
To argue that it would need to be "created from nothing" itself is making all sorts of assumptions.
Its absurd as a Princess Peach saying the Mushroom Kingdom universe must have been spontaneously created from nothing because its 2x as silly to think there is some sort of creator.
The only limitations for x86 virtualization are proprietary cards...
And license dongles. Some work. Some don't. Worst is when they work "sometimes".
VMWare is only limited by the amount of hardware you throw at it just like any other x86 platform...
Consolidating multiple low load servers... say 9 physical low load servers onto 3 virtual hosts, there's tremendous value there. If one of the hosts goes down, you can even run 4/5 on the remaining two while you fix it... the 3 virtual hosts are cheaper than the 9 original servers, etc... win-win.
But high load servers? You can the advantages of virtualization out it... but you aren't saving money at the same time. If you have 3 servers that each run dual xeons at high utilization... if you want consolidate them onto a virtual then that host unit needs 6 xeons... and probably will cost more then the original 3 dual xeon servers combined...
I am pretty sure that if a hardware manufacturer like Dell locks out Linux operating systems
That is not the case AT all.
Its REALLY simple; linux is not being locked out of desktops. x86 hardware shipping with win8 pre installed needs to have: a) secure boot functionality b) windows 8 boot signing keys c) secure boot functionality turned on d) and it must be possible to disable secure boot e) and it must be possible to load additional boot signing keys
So, linux users buying dell pcs (x86) will be able to exercise option d) and disable secure boot.
They can also exercise option e) and install a linux signing key, and leave secure boot enabled.
Linux users are NOT locked out at all.
However, if I want to try Linux for the first time, I'd like stick in a live CD and boot it... I might be intimidated by having to go into bios first to disable secure boot. I'm very likely to be intimidated by having to install a signing key into bios first.
Redhat wants linux to "just work" without the user having to jump through those hoops so the ideal option would be to coordinate with all the oem manufacturers to get a "redhat" or at least "linux" signing key into the bios, so that the linux bootloaders can be signed against that. (The OEMs were fine with this, even enthusiastic... but the cost to do this is extremely high, and there would still likely be several cases where the redhat key was missing, leaving us with an inconsistent and annoying situation.
The other option was to just sign the bootloader with the microsoft key; microsoft is already working with all the OEMs, and already has all the infrastructure in place. Fedora decided to piggy-back on the microsoft key and pay to get the bootloader signed by microsoft.
Is it ideal? No. But in terms of what it does for the users of linux? Its a great thing. Fedora will "just boot" in secure boot mode. Users don't have to disable secure boot to use linux, which is a good thing. Users don't HAVE to manually install a linux key into bios to use secure boot (although they still can if they prefer not to use the microsoft signed version).
The x86 ecosystem remains truly open (in that users can manage boot signing keys themselves if they wish), and trying out linux is remains easy because it will boot with the default installed microsoft keys.
Overall its a good compromise.
Note that on arm tablets the situation is entirely different. option d and e are not available, and fedora isn't getting the software signed for that platform... if you buy a windows 8 arm device you'll have to crack it to put linux on it.
How can a threat to bomb an airport be considered as a joke?
Isn't there some meme here about "nuking things from orbit just to be sure"...
If we can routinely make posts advocating total annihilation by nuclear weapons and that can achieve meme status and no one here is even put off by it then I'm pretty sure a twitter threat to bomb an airport could be both sent and understood as a joke by a lot of people.
Now the actual context:
The message Chambers sent to his 600 followers in the early hours of 6 January said: "Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week... otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"
Now I don't use twitter but I could easily see myself saying something like that to my friends in jest.
If I say I want to kill somebody, it's a threat, and should not be considered as "free speech" anymore.
Because people should be criminalized for saying something like
"I'm going to kill the neighbors kid next time she lets their dog shit on our driveway..."
Lots of people say things like that all the time. Its not a threat. Its not serious. Everybody but a few uptight twats know there is no weight behind it.
We won't forget it it's your arm, hell, you put your flag all over it.
Really, I wouldn't bring flag waving up with american's in the room. If ever there was a country utterly obsessed with putting their flag on pretty much everything its the USA.
That's great! So it can work just like electric metering where I pay less for off-peak electricity. Awesome.
I could easily time and packet shape my traffic to the point where it's cheaper for the ISP to handle 10TB of data than it is 10GB of data. In other words, I could manage a heavy BitTorrent seed in such a way that it costs less than your mom updating her FB status and watching a few funny cat videos on Youtube.
Yes, you could, but why would you? Unless the carrier gave you an incentive... like charging one rate during peak hours, and another rate for off peak data usage? (Hell it could even end up just like cell phones...where its metered during the peak hours... but most of us have unlimited evenings and weekends...)
Much noise has been made about Xbox 360 and PS3 games' multiplayer modes going online-only as opposed to split- or otherwise shared-screen. But PC games are even less likely than Xbox 360 games to support even two players on one machine.
I fail see the issue. If people wanted shared/split screen gaming they were pretty much already using the Wii. The xbox import ban and the availability of the PC as a substitute really doesn't bear much on that.
I guess you could argue that a Wii import ban leaves consumers with no alternatives in a very real sense... but the Wii isn't facing an import ban... today.
Because they believed and trusted people who had every reason to lie to them
These people may have had every reason to lie, but they were legally required not to. Fraud is illegal. Perhaps the people responsible for lying out to be held responsible for that? No? Why not?
Actually, in some cultures, that's exactly what happens.
And in star trek they can just replicate a new one.... what is your point?
For example, if you park your car somewhere and leave valuables in plain sight, you have no one to blame but yourself when you come back and find your shit gone.
Really, the guy who took it bears no responsibility for you know... taking it? How is it that you can be a champion of personal responsibility and in the same breath tell me that someone who steals something has no personal responsibility for their actions... it was all the other guys fault.
That some pretty contorted logic you've got going on.
Sorting on many disks does become harder but hey they had less disks than the last record holder so they actually had it easie
They sorted 3 times as much data. Hard drives didn't get 3x faster since 2009. And how many hard drives were involved is nearly irrelevant.
If they invented interconnects then they broke the rules of the competition because its supposed to be 100% off the shelf hardware so its all about the algorithm
They used off the shelf hardware to build the network, but they connected and used it an innovative way. No one else has ever done a sort like this.
Do me a favor and look at the previous record holder in close detail and tell me that microsoft actually did anything other than buy the record...
Microsoft actually did something other than buy the record.
im just disgusted at microsoft buying the top then everyone is like wow they are doing something when in realty they are doing very little.
Sorting at that scale is fundamentally an i/o bound problem; and distributed sorting is bound by communications between the nodes. Scaling the problem up to more computers makes the problem HARDER, precisely because of intercommunication requirements.
You said it yourself - Microsoft had "Crazy interconnects" You can't just buy those. They had to invent them.
I may have undervalued myself - but that's MY fault. I shouldn't complain to others about my own inadequacies.
So what should you do about it? Sit around and feel good about it?
Or maybe you should actually do something productive about it, like quit your job and attempt to renegotiate a salary closer to your market value?
Wait, but that's what happening here... these lawsuits against facebook aren't idle complaints are they?... they are actually doing something about it. So when they realized they were wrong about the value they placed on FB shares... they asked "why was a I wrong" and they realized at least in part they were wrong because they were being intentionally misled about the value by people who have all sorts of regulatory obligations not to intentionally mislead them, and so they are looking to recoup some of those losses from the people who not only helped cause them, but who also profited from them.
Personal responsibility only goes so far: if a theif steals your stuff you don't shrug it off and say "my fault for not having better security."
I shouldn't complain. I'm still getting what I agreed to, and what I agreed was a fair price.
Why not? You were evidently wrong, and you have likely re-evaluated what you think it is worth, and now realize that you have colossally under valued yourself.
Bottom line - lots of people are just bitching because they didn't get rich quick, for doing nothing, like they thought they would. Too bad for them.
Yes, EAs shit is worse, but it's a long way from the evilness of everything you're describing, and not truly worth the enormous amount of attention it garnered.
Fair enough. But EA's shit is -worse- so it does deserve more pushback. Backing it up to steams level owuld be an improvement... but that's a level where I still have a mountain of complaints... (what do you mean my son isn't allowed to play my copy of Magicka... and it goes on from there...)
but Windows Update maintained a hardware fingerprint, and a list of all installed applications and their usage frequency as reported in appwiz.cpl, running applications, and a freakin' GUID; all of which was transferred to MS every time the update service checked for new updates.
Nowhere do they assert they can collect and send everything that is on your computer to microsoft, and they don't do this.
Yes, they do send a hardware fingerprint... windows udpate provides hardware driver updates.
But, and this is the important part, you don't have to use windows update. And that doesn't even leave you with an out of date system. You can update your computer manually by downloading all drivers, servicepacks, and hotfixes yourself if you really want to.
Its truly hard to be angry about them sending hardware information when they distribute driver updates for that hardware, and even harder to be angry when its entirely optional
As for the other internet-based services; again I see the claim that they can share the information they collect, but I see it in context of what they collect, which in most cases is minimal.
3. You seem to be confusing the issue I'm raising here. You're saying MS/et al. Require X to use service, but ask for Y to use other things, so if you only provide X you only get access to the features that X buys. Origin is requiring X to use service, and has no other things to offer. So, you don't want to give them X, you don't get to use the services that X buys.
Whoah, not at all.
Microsoft legitimately needs to know what edition of windows I'm running to know what updates it needs. Given that they distribute drivers via windows update its legitimate to say they need to know what hardware I have. And again... i don't have to use windows udpate to update my PC. I can turn it off, and I lose nothing.
Origin says that to play gameX I have to give them application usage and inventory information for my PC. Those are not even remotely conencted. You cannot possibly make a case that EA needs to know whether I use Microsoft Office or Open Office in order for Syndicate to run.
If the man page is 20 pages long and the setting is rarely adjusted I can guarantee you that the setting is not available in the GUI. One of the reasons people like the command prompt is the greater power.
Your thinking of "rarely adjusted" as "obscure". A good example is simply changing the screen resolution. That's something I rarely explicitly do. But occasionally it comes up... I'll deliberately set my screen to 800x600 for a usability test or to run some ancient piece of software that was designed for that. System->Prefs->Screen resolution...
Your right if I wanted to apply some custom matrix transform to the display output then I'd need to drop to the command line.. but that's truly obscure, not merely "rarely adjusted".
I personally use the command prompt for listening to music.
Whereas I like having gui for luxuries like pause and skip track, and selecting the songs I want played.
but if I want to do something complicated or quickly then it's straight to the command line.
So you've got a folder zoopics of 68 picture files you took at the zoo today with your cousin, you want to send him the 6 you took at the monkey exhibit and the one of him next to the elephant...go!
gui click to open folder, thumbnail view, click on first monkey pic, shift-click on last monkey pic, ctrl-click the one by the elephant... right click on the selection, send to mail recipient, mail client opens, with new message, and the 7 picture attachments. type a few letters of your cousins name for the contact to auto pop his email address, press tab to get to the sujbect line... type "Zoo pics", tab to get to the message... type enjoy!! and press send.
Time from start to finish 30 seconds.
cli: cd ~home/pics/zoopics... uh... Time from start to finish... uh...
The CLI has its place. But that example is a pretty straightforward request of something a completely normal person would want to do and for which the command line is almost completely unsuitable.
So while your "Mass file renaming" example is playing right into the CLI wheelhouse, mine plays right into a GUIs. The point remains that neither is inherently better... they are good at different things.
I'm probably missing something here, but honestly I can't really think of anything I would consider abusive based on their collecting the information and not selling it.
I can. Blacklisting people based on 3rd party software you have installed or running. Having the information harvested by the DHS or equivalent in some future scenario where tor or torrent clients or unregistered debuggers are illegal terrorist and pedophile tools. Turning the data over to the BSA. Crazy stalkers... I'm sure I could godwin the thread by finding some information for Nazi abuse... oh wait I already mentioned the DHS.:p
Actually, the entire Internet-Based Services portion of the Windows EULA says that Microsoft will take all sorts of information and send it back to Microsoft,
What are you referring to specifically? You appear to be mistaken. I didn't see anything in the Windows 7 EULA remotely approaching what we have from EA. Virtually all instances of reporting of hardware and software information can be turned off without losing access to anything at all, nevermind losing the ability to use windows at all. It is certainly not a requirement to use the operating system.
Activation and occasional validation checks scan your hardware and scan for software and transmit that information to Microsoft.
Yes and it is well documented what is collected, and sent to microsoft. And it is not the entire inventory of your PC, along with how much you use each program. Only information about the windows software itself. Much of the information is hashed before its sent... so while it reads your hardware serial number, it is hashed before it is sent to Microsoft.
The software they are collecting information about is narrowly defined as the Microsoft Windows software itself and a targeted list of known activation exploits, . The 3rd parties they talk about sharing aggregate data with is OEMs and system builders in relation to their OEM license keys.
So while the validation may scan what is running, and it will see that you have openoffice 3.3 and tor and gimp and firefox running, that information is not sent to microsoft... not even in a hashed form.
If EA's origin has precisely the game goals as windows activation -- that is: licensing validation enforcment then it can surely be just as narrowly defined as Microsoft's is.
Then you're probably not reading the EULAs of all the software you're installing
I certainly agree there are a large number of people who have latched onto the EA story, who do not read their EULA's. I however, actually do read the vast majority of them, and EA's is spectacularly worse. Other companies, such as microsoft, would like to collect everything but only require the absolutely minimum; you can opt out of nearly everything and still have essentially full use of your software. EA wants absolutely everything as a precondition to even getting started.
And lets be honest here, Windows 7 doesn't need to be online or connected to the internet to use the software, nor does it require you to register an account with them. On top of everything Origin collects, it also requires you to be online and registered to an account... you really don't even need host based DRM when everything is tied into an online account anyway.
Not even 1/8 as powerful, slow, and painful. Not to mention I have to check listings to see if the change actually took hold. Now what used to take 5 minutes can take the whole day.
Your complaint is more orthogonal to them switching to a gui than an issue with guis themselves.
I mean, they could have redone the new version with a botched implementation of CLI too, so that it was 1/8th as powerful, slow, and painful, and where you couldn't trust it enough to know that changes you'd submitted had actually been committed.
The problem isn't that its a gui, the problem is that its a lousy gui.
Slashdot Mirror
So, I program a virtual world on a computer. In that world things can't "just exist". I have to create them.
That is a universe you defined by saying you created it. By definition the stuff in it was created by you. At the very least, we'd have to imagine a universe you didn't create, perhaps that has always existed.
However, where the "creator" (that's me!) is...well, what do you say?
I'm saying that you yourself aren't bound by the rules of your virtual world. And that would be an error for someone inside your virtual world to think that you were.
So here things can't "just exist" and "somewhere else" (where the "creator" was before his alleged act of creation) they can?
That would be the assumption. I'm not saying I subscribe to a divine creator, but I can observe that the argument that one can't exist because then it would need a creator itself is deeply flawed.
But I'm still waiting to be presented with any sort of rational argument on behalf of the superstitious crowd as to why they are more likely right than the others, since all of their arguments smell of emotional pressure and inability to distance oneself from the problem.
That falls to faith I think. There isn't going to be a rational argument for what we can't know about. And spontaneous creation of the universe isn't really much better than a different kind of superstition.
I suppose its simpler... you just accept on faith that the universe spontaneously created, and you don't have to ponder the existence and motivations of God.
I think the main thing though when evaluating a divine creation argument is to remember that subscribing to the existence of God doesn't mean you have to believe in pregnant virgins, baskets of endless fish, crying statues, or that Jesus appeared in your french toast...
Plus the time to copy it to the new hardware, vs just starting the VM from your VM datastore.
You mean pointing the new hardware to the appropriate logical disk on the SAN ?
since it requires that the devine creator was created and from nothing.
Not really. Something "outside the universe" cannot be assumed to exist as what we know as "matter" or "energy", nor would it be subject to what we know as "time".
To argue that it would need to be "created from nothing" itself is making all sorts of assumptions.
Its absurd as a Princess Peach saying the Mushroom Kingdom universe must have been spontaneously created from nothing because its 2x as silly to think there is some sort of creator.
The only limitations for x86 virtualization are proprietary cards...
And license dongles. Some work. Some don't. Worst is when they work "sometimes".
VMWare is only limited by the amount of hardware you throw at it just like any other x86 platform...
Consolidating multiple low load servers ... say 9 physical low load servers onto 3 virtual hosts, there's tremendous value there. If one of the hosts goes down, you can even run 4/5 on the remaining two while you fix it... the 3 virtual hosts are cheaper than the 9 original servers, etc... win-win.
But high load servers? You can the advantages of virtualization out it... but you aren't saving money at the same time. If you have 3 servers that each run dual xeons at high utilization... if you want consolidate them onto a virtual then that host unit needs 6 xeons... and probably will cost more then the original 3 dual xeon servers combined...
I am pretty sure that if a hardware manufacturer like Dell locks out Linux operating systems
That is not the case AT all.
Its REALLY simple; linux is not being locked out of desktops.
x86 hardware shipping with win8 pre installed needs to have:
a) secure boot functionality
b) windows 8 boot signing keys
c) secure boot functionality turned on
d) and it must be possible to disable secure boot
e) and it must be possible to load additional boot signing keys
So, linux users buying dell pcs (x86) will be able to exercise option d) and disable secure boot.
They can also exercise option e) and install a linux signing key, and leave secure boot enabled.
Linux users are NOT locked out at all.
However, if I want to try Linux for the first time, I'd like stick in a live CD and boot it... I might be intimidated by having to go into bios first to disable secure boot. I'm very likely to be intimidated by having to install a signing key into bios first.
Redhat wants linux to "just work" without the user having to jump through those hoops so the ideal option would be to coordinate with all the oem manufacturers to get a "redhat" or at least "linux" signing key into the bios, so that the linux bootloaders can be signed against that. (The OEMs were fine with this, even enthusiastic... but the cost to do this is extremely high, and there would still likely be several cases where the redhat key was missing, leaving us with an inconsistent and annoying situation.
The other option was to just sign the bootloader with the microsoft key; microsoft is already working with all the OEMs, and already has all the infrastructure in place. Fedora decided to piggy-back on the microsoft key and pay to get the bootloader signed by microsoft.
Is it ideal? No. But in terms of what it does for the users of linux? Its a great thing. Fedora will "just boot" in secure boot mode. Users don't have to disable secure boot to use linux, which is a good thing. Users don't HAVE to manually install a linux key into bios to use secure boot (although they still can if they prefer not to use the microsoft signed version).
The x86 ecosystem remains truly open (in that users can manage boot signing keys themselves if they wish), and trying out linux is remains easy because it will boot with the default installed microsoft keys.
Overall its a good compromise.
Note that on arm tablets the situation is entirely different. option d and e are not available, and fedora isn't getting the software signed for that platform... if you buy a windows 8 arm device you'll have to crack it to put linux on it.
RTFA. Then comment.
How can a threat to bomb an airport be considered as a joke?
Isn't there some meme here about "nuking things from orbit just to be sure"...
If we can routinely make posts advocating total annihilation by nuclear weapons and that can achieve meme status and no one here is even put off by it then I'm pretty sure a twitter threat to bomb an airport could be both sent and understood as a joke by a lot of people.
Now the actual context:
The message Chambers sent to his 600 followers in the early hours of 6 January said: "Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week... otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"
Now I don't use twitter but I could easily see myself saying something like that to my friends in jest.
If I say I want to kill somebody, it's a threat, and should not be considered as "free speech" anymore.
Because people should be criminalized for saying something like
"I'm going to kill the neighbors kid next time she lets their dog shit on our driveway..."
Lots of people say things like that all the time. Its not a threat. Its not serious. Everybody but a few uptight twats know there is no weight behind it.
Zero Tolerance is Maximum Stupid.
he US is pretty flag-happy, but pound for pound, I think Canada's got us beat.
Not until we get one of these:
http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/8190/543948-captainamerica1_super.jpg
or these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Sam
We won't forget it it's your arm, hell, you put your flag all over it.
Really, I wouldn't bring flag waving up with american's in the room. If ever there was a country utterly obsessed with putting their flag on pretty much everything its the USA.
Personally I wouldn't stick a cracked .iso on my machine.
Even if the torrent hash matches the official file from technet?
I was getting dismal download speeds on a 4GB iso the other day, so i hit pirate bay to get it. Same hash, same file, 1.8MB/s instead of 18kb/s...
Except off-peak data transfers are "free".
That's great! So it can work just like electric metering where I pay less for off-peak electricity. Awesome.
I could easily time and packet shape my traffic to the point where it's cheaper for the ISP to handle 10TB of data than it is 10GB of data. In other words, I could manage a heavy BitTorrent seed in such a way that it costs less than your mom updating her FB status and watching a few funny cat videos on Youtube.
Yes, you could, but why would you? Unless the carrier gave you an incentive... like charging one rate during peak hours, and another rate for off peak data usage? (Hell it could even end up just like cell phones...where its metered during the peak hours... but most of us have unlimited evenings and weekends...)
Much noise has been made about Xbox 360 and PS3 games' multiplayer modes going online-only as opposed to split- or otherwise shared-screen. But PC games are even less likely than Xbox 360 games to support even two players on one machine.
I fail see the issue. If people wanted shared/split screen gaming they were pretty much already using the Wii. The xbox import ban and the availability of the PC as a substitute really doesn't bear much on that.
I guess you could argue that a Wii import ban leaves consumers with no alternatives in a very real sense... but the Wii isn't facing an import ban... today.
Because they believed and trusted people who had every reason to lie to them
These people may have had every reason to lie, but they were legally required not to. Fraud is illegal. Perhaps the people responsible for lying out to be held responsible for that? No? Why not?
Actually, in some cultures, that's exactly what happens.
And in star trek they can just replicate a new one.... what is your point?
For example, if you park your car somewhere and leave valuables in plain sight, you have no one to blame but yourself when you come back and find your shit gone.
Really, the guy who took it bears no responsibility for you know... taking it? How is it that you can be a champion of personal responsibility and in the same breath tell me that someone who steals something has no personal responsibility for their actions... it was all the other guys fault.
That some pretty contorted logic you've got going on.
On the other hand, most of the residents won't even really miss being home ... ;)
Sorting on many disks does become harder but hey they had less disks than the last record holder so they actually had it easie
They sorted 3 times as much data. Hard drives didn't get 3x faster since 2009. And how many hard drives were involved is nearly irrelevant.
If they invented interconnects then they broke the rules of the competition because its supposed to be 100% off the shelf hardware so its all about the algorithm
They used off the shelf hardware to build the network, but they connected and used it an innovative way. No one else has ever done a sort like this.
Why exactly are you being such a tool about it?
It's ridiculous.
Yes it certainly is, but Microsoft shot first.
Banning Xbox360 will do serious damage
Car accidents will increase? Patients will go untreated? Soldiers won't get supplies?
Oh... bored 20 and 30-somethings won't get to play supersoldier and pretend to kill aliens, gods, and each other? Serious damage indeed!
If you want to play any current generation AAA games, then your choice is Sony's PS3
Or they could always buy a PC...It could even run Microsoft Windows, and be controlled with an Xbox game controller.
Do me a favor and look at the previous record holder in close detail and tell me that microsoft actually did anything other than buy the record...
Microsoft actually did something other than buy the record.
im just disgusted at microsoft buying the top then everyone is like wow they are doing something when in realty they are doing very little.
Sorting at that scale is fundamentally an i/o bound problem; and distributed sorting is bound by communications between the nodes. Scaling the problem up to more computers makes the problem HARDER, precisely because of intercommunication requirements.
You said it yourself - Microsoft had "Crazy interconnects"
You can't just buy those. They had to invent them.
Here's a much better link than the full article.
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/197-data-mining/4257-new-minutesort-record-set-by-microsoft-research.html
I may have undervalued myself - but that's MY fault. I shouldn't complain to others about my own inadequacies.
So what should you do about it? Sit around and feel good about it?
Or maybe you should actually do something productive about it, like quit your job and attempt to renegotiate a salary closer to your market value?
Wait, but that's what happening here... these lawsuits against facebook aren't idle complaints are they?... they are actually doing something about it. So when they realized they were wrong about the value they placed on FB shares... they asked "why was a I wrong" and they realized at least in part they were wrong because they were being intentionally misled about the value by people who have all sorts of regulatory obligations not to intentionally mislead them, and so they are looking to recoup some of those losses from the people who not only helped cause them, but who also profited from them.
Personal responsibility only goes so far: if a theif steals your stuff you don't shrug it off and say "my fault for not having better security."
I shouldn't complain. I'm still getting what I agreed to, and what I agreed was a fair price.
Why not? You were evidently wrong, and you have likely re-evaluated what you think it is worth, and now realize that you have colossally under valued yourself.
Bottom line - lots of people are just bitching because they didn't get rich quick, for doing nothing, like they thought they would. Too bad for them.
Well yes. There is that too.
Yes, EAs shit is worse, but it's a long way from the evilness of everything you're describing, and not truly worth the enormous amount of attention it garnered.
Fair enough. But EA's shit is -worse- so it does deserve more pushback. Backing it up to steams level owuld be an improvement... but that's a level where I still have a mountain of complaints... (what do you mean my son isn't allowed to play my copy of Magicka... and it goes on from there...)
but Windows Update maintained a hardware fingerprint, and a list of all installed applications and their usage frequency as reported in appwiz.cpl, running applications, and a freakin' GUID; all of which was transferred to MS every time the update service checked for new updates.
http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/vistaprivacy.aspx?ln=en-us
Nowhere do they assert they can collect and send everything that is on your computer to microsoft, and they don't do this.
Yes, they do send a hardware fingerprint... windows udpate provides hardware driver updates.
But, and this is the important part, you don't have to use windows update. And that doesn't even leave you with an out of date system. You can update your computer manually by downloading all drivers, servicepacks, and hotfixes yourself if you really want to.
Its truly hard to be angry about them sending hardware information when they distribute driver updates for that hardware, and even harder to be angry when its entirely optional
As for the other internet-based services; again I see the claim that they can share the information they collect, but I see it in context of what they collect, which in most cases is minimal.
3. You seem to be confusing the issue I'm raising here. You're saying MS/et al. Require X to use service, but ask for Y to use other things, so if you only provide X you only get access to the features that X buys. Origin is requiring X to use service, and has no other things to offer. So, you don't want to give them X, you don't get to use the services that X buys.
Whoah, not at all.
Microsoft legitimately needs to know what edition of windows I'm running to know what updates it needs. Given that they distribute drivers via windows update its legitimate to say they need to know what hardware I have. And again... i don't have to use windows udpate to update my PC. I can turn it off, and I lose nothing.
Origin says that to play gameX I have to give them application usage and inventory information for my PC. Those are not even remotely conencted. You cannot possibly make a case that EA needs to know whether I use Microsoft Office or Open Office in order for Syndicate to run.
If the man page is 20 pages long and the setting is rarely adjusted I can guarantee you that the setting is not available in the GUI. One of the reasons people like the command prompt is the greater power.
Your thinking of "rarely adjusted" as "obscure". A good example is simply changing the screen resolution. That's something I rarely explicitly do. But occasionally it comes up... I'll deliberately set my screen to 800x600 for a usability test or to run some ancient piece of software that was designed for that. System->Prefs->Screen resolution...
Your right if I wanted to apply some custom matrix transform to the display output then I'd need to drop to the command line.. but that's truly obscure, not merely "rarely adjusted".
I personally use the command prompt for listening to music.
Whereas I like having gui for luxuries like pause and skip track, and selecting the songs I want played.
but if I want to do something complicated or quickly then it's straight to the command line.
So you've got a folder zoopics of 68 picture files you took at the zoo today with your cousin, you want to send him the 6 you took at the monkey exhibit and the one of him next to the elephant...go!
gui
click to open folder, thumbnail view, click on first monkey pic, shift-click on last monkey pic, ctrl-click the one by the elephant... right click on the selection, send to mail recipient, mail client opens, with new message, and the 7 picture attachments. type a few letters of your cousins name for the contact to auto pop his email address, press tab to get to the sujbect line... type "Zoo pics", tab to get to the message... type enjoy!! and press send.
Time from start to finish 30 seconds.
cli: ... uh ...
cd ~home/pics/zoopics
Time from start to finish... uh...
The CLI has its place. But that example is a pretty straightforward request of something a completely normal person would want to do and for which the command line is almost completely unsuitable.
So while your "Mass file renaming" example is playing right into the CLI wheelhouse, mine plays right into a GUIs. The point remains that neither is inherently better... they are good at different things.
I'm probably missing something here, but honestly I can't really think of anything I would consider abusive based on their collecting the information and not selling it.
I can. Blacklisting people based on 3rd party software you have installed or running. Having the information harvested by the DHS or equivalent in some future scenario where tor or torrent clients or unregistered debuggers are illegal terrorist and pedophile tools. Turning the data over to the BSA. Crazy stalkers... I'm sure I could godwin the thread by finding some information for Nazi abuse... oh wait I already mentioned the DHS. :p
Actually, the entire Internet-Based Services portion of the Windows EULA says that Microsoft will take all sorts of information and send it back to Microsoft,
What are you referring to specifically? You appear to be mistaken. I didn't see anything in the Windows 7 EULA remotely approaching what we have from EA. Virtually all instances of reporting of hardware and software information can be turned off without losing access to anything at all, nevermind losing the ability to use windows at all. It is certainly not a requirement to use the operating system.
Activation and occasional validation checks scan your hardware and scan for software and transmit that information to Microsoft.
Yes and it is well documented what is collected, and sent to microsoft. And it is not the entire inventory of your PC, along with how much you use each program. Only information about the windows software itself. Much of the information is hashed before its sent... so while it reads your hardware serial number, it is hashed before it is sent to Microsoft.
The software they are collecting information about is narrowly defined as the Microsoft Windows software itself and a targeted list of known activation exploits, . The 3rd parties they talk about sharing aggregate data with is OEMs and system builders in relation to their OEM license keys.
So while the validation may scan what is running, and it will see that you have openoffice 3.3 and tor and gimp and firefox running, that information is not sent to microsoft... not even in a hashed form.
If EA's origin has precisely the game goals as windows activation -- that is: licensing validation enforcment then it can surely be just as narrowly defined as Microsoft's is.
Then you're probably not reading the EULAs of all the software you're installing
I certainly agree there are a large number of people who have latched onto the EA story, who do not read their EULA's. I however, actually do read the vast majority of them, and EA's is spectacularly worse. Other companies, such as microsoft, would like to collect everything but only require the absolutely minimum; you can opt out of nearly everything and still have essentially full use of your software. EA wants absolutely everything as a precondition to even getting started.
And lets be honest here, Windows 7 doesn't need to be online or connected to the internet to use the software, nor does it require you to register an account with them. On top of everything Origin collects, it also requires you to be online and registered to an account... you really don't even need host based DRM when everything is tied into an online account anyway.
Not even 1/8 as powerful, slow, and painful. Not to mention I have to check listings to see if the change actually took hold. Now what used to take 5 minutes can take the whole day.
Your complaint is more orthogonal to them switching to a gui than an issue with guis themselves.
I mean, they could have redone the new version with a botched implementation of CLI too, so that it was 1/8th as powerful, slow, and painful, and where you couldn't trust it enough to know that changes you'd submitted had actually been committed.
The problem isn't that its a gui, the problem is that its a lousy gui.
lol, good catch, thanks.