I was paying bills and it was getting late, and I mixed up a couple of checks. The county got my dental payment (made out to my dentist for, say $80), while my dentist got my taxes, made out to the county for about $1000.
Result: The dentist cashed the check for the face value, and the county cashed the check as if it were for the money owed them. The bank ended up paying out $2000 instead of the $1080. Yes, and I got the overdraft fees. (The dentist refunded the money quickly once they figured out what happened.)
I'm less dismayed that the dentist was able to cash the check made to the county than the fact that the county was able to take an $80 check and cash it for $1000.
I don't know about IBM, but I started working for HP in 1979, and in the Working at HP class they said that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had had experience with government contractors who laid off at the end of the project. They then vowed to avoid layoffs as much as possible. (AFAIK, with success for several decades.)
When HP held a round of VSI [Voluntary Severence Incentives], they used a lot of weaseling to say, "Well, we never guaranteed no layoffs". The first round of these hit about 10 years ago. This was also the time when temps really started getting used heavily.
Actually, the severence package was financially pretty good, as was the case a few years ago when they did it again. I was offered, but declined, and kept my job.
IBM may have had such a policy, but I know that HP had a tradition--not an official policy--when I hired in. Of course, with the new HP, tradition seems to be worth zip. This is in keeping with the trends started one CEO ago, Lew "Why manufacture anything?" Platt.
Agreed with the "Huh?". Before HP split into Agilent-and-HP, the proud boast that HP made "We don't lay off" was getting nibbled at for years. By 1990, the boast had to be modified to "We don't lay off permanent workers--temps don't count."
My division is/was semiconductors, one of the more notoriously cyclical industries around. Not that top management remembered this--we'd build up for the boom, business would crash, and we'd transfer people out. Come the next boom, we'd be unprepared. Again and again.
Eventually, middle management convined the Powers That Be to hire temp workers in the "less skilled" positions. Given a long enough boom, these temps would find permanent positions, either within the company, or would strike out for greener pa$tures.
At a rough guess, we were doing this bigtime starting in 1985. For the long term folks, it meant that come a crash, we didn't get the 4.5 day workweek, but it did mean that we had to spend a lot of time training the 'less skilled' people and providing continuity when someone got fed up and left. Didn't help that HP felt that contractors & temps didn't deserve to attend parties or picnics.
OTOH, Agilent seems a little more fair to temps, and we've had a bit of luck reattracting the alumni, usually to permanent jobs. I don't know the situation in HP anymore.
After seeing Toshiba laying down for Rambus and the floppy drive lawsuit, I'd be wary of having my company's fortune rely on their guts. Much the same with IBM. It might not be a bad idea for Transmeta to strike out on their own. The company I work for has done both sides of the silicon foundry deals, and while it has major pains, the old business model had a lower upside potential. To build their own fab would take a bunch of capital, and there is a bit of stray capacity around the world.
I'm not downplaying the debt, but in a way, selling the old licences and buying them back was an interesting way to get early capital. Now, at least, they get to live or die on their own marketing/design skills. I wish them luck.
Actually, it's not, but Agilent. That's the part HP spun off when they decided to focus strictly on computers. Agilent got to keep a chunk of the fun stuff.
Robert Q. Riley did a book a couple of years ago, _Alternative Vehicles for the 21st Century_. He delves into various alternative fuels as well:
Methanol: All the alcohols don't get as good of milage because of the oxygen in the fuel. In addition, methanol is hell on seals and is a bit rough on ferrous metals. It's also a bit more toxic than gasoline. (Avoid skin contact...) Burns clean, could possibly be used in existing delivery systems.
Ethanol: Similar problems in economy, plus you get the tradeoff: food or fuel. Propane: Filling is a bit of a hassle. Pretty good fuel.
Compressed Natural Gas: "Low pressure" systems run at pressures of a few hundred PSI, while high pressure systems run a couple thousand PSI. Either case, the fuel tank is quite a bit more involved than for gasoline.
Electricity: Pure battery solutions have a major weight penalty, and the charging situation is spotty. (He didn't mention possible electricity shortages as a downside, but I'm wondering if these could come abgout in some cities, like San Jose. Brownout city...) BTW, San Jose encourages large employers to provide charging stations for electric cars. Right now, one person is using a charger, but the other 3 are unused.
Gasoline/alcohol blends: Mainly a matter of reprogramming/retuning the cars. Still have the seal problem with methanol mixes, and the big agribiz firms are salivating at selling a lot of ethanol. Riley's bet for the future fuel--maybe 15% alcohol to start, working upwards, to a possible max of 85%.
Fuel/electric hybrids: promising. You have an engine that can be optimized for one speed and mild load variations (nirvana for a fuel systems designer). Electrically, it's hairy, but in my experience, they've been tackling this problem since at least 1970. We're making progress.
BTW, Riley proposes a couple of classes of minicars for strictly urban and commuter apps. The commuter cars tend to be faster, but both are small. The urban cars can be electric or gas/electric, while the commuter wants fuel.
Ah, the joys of running Lose98 and Netscape on my only box with a modem--clicked on the "power issues" link and the machine rebooted. At least, it didn't powercycle.
Gotta get me a Linmodem...
Re:Wouldn't Electro-levitation work better
on
Helicopter In Space
·
· Score: 3
Hmm, thought you needed either a bunch of current or high velocity for electro-levitation to work.
OTOH, small helicopter technology is out there. Just visit any hobby shop and be prepared to drop a thou or so if you think it's kewl. Piezoelectric gyros keep the heading straight, you need about 1HP to keep an 8 pound heli flying on earth, and that's with the aerodynamic penalty you get from a small wing.
Not sure if it's NASA or some other group sponsoring the contest, but there's an autonomous helicoptor competition out there. Last I heard, the chopper needed to find a few objects and pick them up. Not too tough to do, though I think some of these are lifting a bare-bones laptop.
Edwards was used for several years when the Shuttle started operations, because the strip at Kennedy wasn't built yet. IIRC, they also had to work on the brakes so that they'd be good for a coplete landing cycle. The early ones tended to crap out in the middle of the rollout.
BTW, Edwards can be nasty in the winter. It is a dry lake bed, but it does rain in the desert--enough to create lakes from time to time.
I suspect part of the problem is the fact that you need a lot more than a bunch of engines to do the job. If you were considering straight engines in an air-breathing 'rocket cluster', I think you'd have problems with the inner engines not being able to get enough air. Also, fuel for the beast would be another problem.
I gather the US has some air-to-space missles, actually an anti-satellite missle launched from an F15. (Never made production, but I don't know how technically feasible they were.) Also, the '50s and '60s X15 tests showed that airboosting a craft can get you to the edges of space.
I suspect an approach like the giant airplane 'first stage' and a smaller craft might work. OTOH, a 747 is a bit hard pressed to carry a shuttle, so something with enough fuel to get to orbit would have to be smaller, or the launch plane would have to be huge.
totally agree, the only question is why did they teach me fortran 77 in school? ( this was 2 years ago)
Methinks it was for the same reason why I had to do a project in Fortran 2 some 28 years ago when Fortran 4 was well established: They had a computer that could only do F2, and time on it was 'free'. (As opposed to having to spend $30/student for the campus IBM; we had this old G20 in the EE building, and it was long since paid for, 1" mag tape and all.)
Besides, after working with Fortran format statements, you grow to appreciate printf.:)
My vote would go to "The Hut on Fowl's Legs" from Mussorgsky's "Pictures At an Exhibition".
Man, I love that section! Long time ago, I fell in love with "Pictures", in all versions. Even built up a MIDI rig, primarlily to play with the piece. (Obsessive, me? Naaaahhh!) The thing I like about Baba Yaga's hut is the sheer ability to go crazy with it. In my collection, I have both the Emerson, Lake and Palmer versions, as well as Tomita's. The LHPO would be excellent for the opening bars of "Hut", and used judiciously, might be good in "The Great Gate of Kiev". Other possibilities: The concerto for piano and percussion by Alberto Ginasterna.(spelling?) Beethovan's 9th symphony, particularly the scherzo.:)
The real topic in computing is the Cybersphere and the cyberstructures in it, not the computers we use as telescopes and tuners.
I get some sense of what he's trying to say (badly, IMHO), but his crack about astronomy isn't about telescopes kind of rings false. It's about like saying that carpentry isn't about saws--yeah, the final product doesn't have much to do with saws or telescopes, but try to do the job without one. Just try to surf the web with your mind, bucko...
Until computers are so good, so ignorable, computing *will* be a lot about computers as the means to access the cyberfoo one needs. OTOH, a lot of good carpenters still pay close attention to their saws...
A woman isn't going to apply for a computer science scholorship and be told by the people who handle her applicant, "Oh, dearie -- don't you think a nice course in domestic engineering would be more suitable to a nice young lady like yourself?"
Actually, my SO tells me that this happened to her sister in 1990 or so. She lived in semi-rural California and was told that "women shouldn't be taking computer science". To the extent that she never took a class from the person who told her that, it was true. She still got got her EE degree and is working in the industry, but women at that school were strongly discouraged by at least some of the faculty.
Does anyone else have old examples of the future vision of the net from 1970 or before?
Not exactly sure of the year, but in the early '70s, John Brunner wrote Shockwave Rider. The 'net in question was accessed through video terminals, both fixed and portable. Not a great representation of the net, but the protagonist's means of staying ahead of the (obiligatorily corrupt) feds was to use a 'tapeworm'--a program that would alter his identification on demand. OTOH, it required a federally controlled ID block, and some of these had effectively superuser permissions with the federal computers... Too bad Brunner's game of Fencing never got adopted. Looks like it would be fun to computerize. (Analog to Go, but with triangular areas defining the territory claimed.)
My main concern is whether the engine can work well in the real world. Getting efficiencies in a test cell is easy (I have an acquanitence who designs engines. He has a test engine with variable compression ratio. On a good day, he can keep it running for a while at a compression ratio of 30. It's a *long* way from being roadworthy.) The variation you see on the road is much larger than in a test cell, or in other applications, like aerospace--conditions that a car engine take for granted could raise hob with an airplane engine. F'rinstance, wildly changing loads over a matter of a few seconds.
Still, the GA design methodology sounds interesting. I wasn't clear how they avoided getting stuck on local minima. Is this what the 'mutation' handled?
One thing that a lot of people aren't familiar with is a variant of Caller ID. 800 numbers often have the ability to see what you are calling from (AFAIK, the normal blocking codes don't work on these calls), and thus there's another level of checking.
If you are a repeat customer, they frequently have your account information available as soon as you are connected. One would presume that if you called from one number a lot, then did a huge order from another phone number, they'd want some additional validation.
Er, you don't live in California, do you? Since 1978, property valuations generallygo up when one of two things occur: 1) the house is sold or title is transferred. In this case it goes to market value. 2) yearly, it will be reassesed, but there's a limit of 1% it can go up in value. This isn't a make or break item for most people.
I don't see how a job change could get you from being comfortable at $65K to poor at $110 a year if you live in the same house (assuming no refinancing.) Last I looked, housing was *the* major cost of living issue here. What else changed?
Ok, I bought my house 14 years ago for $170,000. I live alone during the week, while my SO comes over on the weekends, so the house is on a one-person income. Since my mortgage is slightly variable, it will go up with interest rates, but it's still about 4 points below it's 1987 peak.
My taste in transportation is quirky, with commute vehicles being a '73 beetle and an '86 pickup, so aside from the gas prices (we're now running $1.75 to $1.85 for the majors, depending on station location), my transport costs are cheap.
Still, though my house could bring in 3X what I paid for it, I don't notice a huge change in standard of living. Yes, traffic is horrible, but I don't need a Lexus to make it bearable.
BTW, if one wonders why housing is so expensive, take a look at the various no-growth initiatives and the hillside building bans. I feel they do help the quality of life, some, but limit a supply and increase demand, and guess what happens to the price....
In the valley, certain companies are/were notorious for hiring fresh out of school, burning them out, and going for more. My first employer, (name deleted) Semiconductor, was doing this in the mid-70s, and at last report is targetting employees over 50 for layoffs, regardless of skill. At times, the criteria is how much it costs to terminate an employee.
My SO was unemployeed last year, and at one place (name deleted because I forgot) the HR idiot said "we don't want people over 50, because they'd only retire in 20 years."
In my experience, a company will use layoffs as a golden opportunity to get rid of the people with the 'worst' cost-benefit ratio. This sometimes means that the people with certain key skills are let go. This leads to situations where key systems go down and the laid-off employee has the opportunity to make a killing as a consultant, or to exact revenge by refusing.
It *is* harder to get older employees to work absurd hours. One of my co-workers, aged 23 or so, will routinely work 10 hour days at a minimum, and has been found coding at 2AM. I have a life, pets and an SO, and prefer to get home at quasi-rational hours. I know this costs me money, but screw it; it's my life and career.
I wish they actually disclosed the name of the retailer. Such retailers hurt customers AND AMD, and their names should be widely known and disclosed.
Note that they didn't say the retailer would not be disclosed, but *not yet*. IIRC, the last scam I heard about, it was either the wholesaler who did the trick, or someone who sold some 'surplus' chips to the wholesaler.
Also, don't forget that AMD is most likely intensely interested in this. I worked for a semi company some years back and discovered some counterfeiting of parts. Our legal department had some fun....
An On-line method of providing illumination on demand. This method, comprising of a Java Servelet that responds to specific user-defined input by displaying a pre-specified color and intensity of light..."
Careful you don't infringe on MS's patented BSOD illumination server.
This is 0.07um OXIDE THICKNESS, which is NOT the same as the gate length.
I strongly recommend reading the @#$%^ article. They *are* talking about 70um gate length, with 15 Angstrom gate thickness. This information is mentioned in the first paragraph....
Slashdot Mirror
This happened to me a few years ago:
I was paying bills and it was getting late, and I mixed up a couple of checks. The county got my dental payment (made out to my dentist for, say $80), while my dentist got my taxes, made out to the county for about $1000.
Result: The dentist cashed the check for the face value, and the county cashed the check as if it were for the money owed them. The bank ended up paying out $2000 instead of the $1080. Yes, and I got the overdraft fees. (The dentist refunded the money quickly once they figured out what happened.)
I'm less dismayed that the dentist was able to cash the check made to the county than the fact that the county was able to take an $80 check and cash it for $1000.
I don't know about IBM, but I started working for HP in 1979, and in the Working at HP class they said that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had had experience with government contractors who laid off at the end of the project. They then vowed to avoid layoffs as much as possible. (AFAIK, with success for several decades.)
When HP held a round of VSI [Voluntary Severence Incentives], they used a lot of weaseling to say, "Well, we never guaranteed no layoffs". The first round of these hit about 10 years ago. This was also the time when temps really started getting used heavily.
Actually, the severence package was financially pretty good, as was the case a few years ago when they did it again. I was offered, but declined, and kept my job.
IBM may have had such a policy, but I know that HP had a tradition--not an official policy--when I hired in. Of course, with the new HP, tradition seems to be worth zip. This is in keeping with the trends started one CEO ago, Lew "Why manufacture anything?" Platt.
Agreed with the "Huh?". Before HP split into Agilent-and-HP, the proud boast that HP made "We don't lay off" was getting nibbled at for years. By 1990, the boast had to be modified to "We don't lay off permanent workers--temps don't count."
My division is/was semiconductors, one of the more notoriously cyclical industries around. Not that top management remembered this--we'd build up for the boom, business would crash, and we'd transfer people out. Come the next boom, we'd be unprepared. Again and again.
Eventually, middle management convined the Powers That Be to hire temp workers in the "less skilled" positions. Given a long enough boom, these temps would find permanent positions, either within the company, or would strike out for greener pa$tures.
At a rough guess, we were doing this bigtime starting in 1985. For the long term folks, it meant that come a crash, we didn't get the 4.5 day workweek, but it did mean that we had to spend a lot of time training the 'less skilled' people and providing continuity when someone got fed up and left. Didn't help that HP felt that contractors & temps didn't deserve to attend parties or picnics.
OTOH, Agilent seems a little more fair to temps, and we've had a bit of luck reattracting the alumni, usually to permanent jobs. I don't know the situation in HP anymore.
After seeing Toshiba laying down for Rambus and the floppy drive lawsuit, I'd be wary of having my company's fortune rely on their guts. Much the same with IBM. It might not be a bad idea for Transmeta to strike out on their own. The company I work for has done both sides of the silicon foundry deals, and while it has major pains, the old business model had a lower upside potential. To build their own fab would take a bunch of capital, and there is a bit of stray capacity around the world.
I'm not downplaying the debt, but in a way, selling the old licences and buying them back was an interesting way to get early capital. Now, at least, they get to live or die on their own marketing/design skills. I wish them luck.
Actually, it's not, but Agilent. That's the part HP spun off when they decided to focus strictly on computers. Agilent got to keep a chunk of the fun stuff.
Hell yes, I'm biased.
Robert Q. Riley did a book a couple of years ago, _Alternative Vehicles for the 21st Century_. He delves into various alternative fuels as well:
Methanol: All the alcohols don't get as good of milage because of the oxygen in the fuel. In addition, methanol is hell on seals and is a bit rough on ferrous metals. It's also a bit more toxic than gasoline. (Avoid skin contact...) Burns clean, could possibly be used in existing delivery systems.
Ethanol: Similar problems in economy, plus you get the tradeoff: food or fuel.
Propane: Filling is a bit of a hassle. Pretty good fuel.
Compressed Natural Gas: "Low pressure" systems run at pressures of a few hundred PSI, while high pressure systems run a couple thousand PSI. Either case, the fuel tank is quite a bit more involved than for gasoline.
Electricity: Pure battery solutions have a major weight penalty, and the charging situation is spotty. (He didn't mention possible electricity shortages as a downside, but I'm wondering if these could come abgout in some cities, like San Jose. Brownout city...) BTW, San Jose encourages large employers to provide charging stations for electric cars. Right now, one person is using a charger, but the other 3 are unused.
Gasoline/alcohol blends: Mainly a matter of reprogramming/retuning the cars. Still have the seal problem with methanol mixes, and the big agribiz firms are salivating at selling a lot of ethanol. Riley's bet for the future fuel--maybe 15% alcohol to start, working upwards, to a possible max of 85%.
Fuel/electric hybrids: promising. You have an engine that can be optimized for one speed and mild load variations (nirvana for a fuel systems designer). Electrically, it's hairy, but in my experience, they've been tackling this problem since at least 1970. We're making progress.
BTW, Riley proposes a couple of classes of minicars for strictly urban and commuter apps. The commuter cars tend to be faster, but both are small. The urban cars can be electric or gas/electric, while the commuter wants fuel.
Ah, the joys of running Lose98 and Netscape on my only box with a modem--clicked on the "power issues" link and the machine rebooted. At least, it didn't powercycle.
Gotta get me a Linmodem...
Hmm, thought you needed either a bunch of current or high velocity for electro-levitation to work.
OTOH, small helicopter technology is out there. Just visit any hobby shop and be prepared to drop a thou or so if you think it's kewl. Piezoelectric gyros keep the heading straight, you need about 1HP to keep an 8 pound heli flying on earth, and that's with the aerodynamic penalty you get from a small wing.
Not sure if it's NASA or some other group sponsoring the contest, but there's an autonomous helicoptor competition out there. Last I heard, the chopper needed to find a few objects and pick them up. Not too tough to do, though I think some of these are lifting a bare-bones laptop.
Edwards was used for several years when the Shuttle started operations, because the strip at Kennedy wasn't built yet. IIRC, they also had to work on the brakes so that they'd be good for a coplete landing cycle. The early ones tended to crap out in the middle of the rollout.
BTW, Edwards can be nasty in the winter. It is a dry lake bed, but it does rain in the desert--enough to create lakes from time to time.
I suspect part of the problem is the fact that you need a lot more than a bunch of engines to do the job. If you were considering straight engines in an air-breathing 'rocket cluster', I think you'd have problems with the inner engines not being able to get enough air. Also, fuel for the beast would be another problem.
I gather the US has some air-to-space missles, actually an anti-satellite missle launched from an F15. (Never made production, but I don't know how technically feasible they were.) Also, the '50s and '60s X15 tests showed that airboosting a craft can get you to the edges of space.
I suspect an approach like the giant airplane 'first stage' and a smaller craft might work. OTOH, a 747 is a bit hard pressed to carry a shuttle, so something with enough fuel to get to orbit would have to be smaller, or the launch plane would have to be huge.
totally agree, the only question is why did they teach me fortran 77 in school? ( this was 2 years ago)
:)
Methinks it was for the same reason why I had to do a project in Fortran 2 some 28 years ago when Fortran 4 was well established: They had a computer that could only do F2, and time on it was 'free'. (As opposed to having to spend $30/student for the campus IBM; we had this old G20 in the EE building, and it was long since paid for, 1" mag tape and all.)
Besides, after working with Fortran format statements, you grow to appreciate printf.
My vote would go to "The Hut on Fowl's Legs" from Mussorgsky's "Pictures At an Exhibition".
Man, I love that section! Long time ago, I fell in love with "Pictures", in all versions. Even built up a MIDI rig, primarlily to play with the piece. (Obsessive, me? Naaaahhh!)
The thing I like about Baba Yaga's hut is the sheer ability to go crazy with it. In my collection, I have both the Emerson, Lake and Palmer versions, as well as Tomita's.
The LHPO would be excellent for the opening bars of "Hut", and used judiciously, might be good in "The Great Gate of Kiev".
Other possibilities:
The concerto for piano and percussion by Alberto Ginasterna.(spelling?)
Beethovan's 9th symphony, particularly the scherzo.:)
IIRC, the Wagner museum is in Bayreuth, where the Ring opera cycle is shown.
I get some sense of what he's trying to say (badly, IMHO), but his crack about astronomy isn't about telescopes kind of rings false. It's about like saying that carpentry isn't about saws--yeah, the final product doesn't have much to do with saws or telescopes, but try to do the job without one. Just try to surf the web with your mind, bucko...
Until computers are so good, so ignorable, computing *will* be a lot about computers as the means to access the cyberfoo one needs. OTOH, a lot of good carpenters still pay close attention to their saws...
Another terrible thought. Is PETA going to picket the guy because the parrot has to deal with a slashdotted web site?
Actually, my SO tells me that this happened to her sister in 1990 or so. She lived in semi-rural California and was told that "women shouldn't be taking computer science". To the extent that she never took a class from the person who told her that, it was true. She still got got her EE degree and is working in the industry, but women at that school were strongly discouraged by at least some of the faculty.
Not exactly sure of the year, but in the early '70s, John Brunner wrote Shockwave Rider. The 'net in question was accessed through video terminals, both fixed and portable. Not a great representation of the net, but the protagonist's means of staying ahead of the (obiligatorily corrupt) feds was to use a 'tapeworm'--a program that would alter his identification on demand. OTOH, it required a federally controlled ID block, and some of these had effectively superuser permissions with the federal computers... Too bad Brunner's game of Fencing never got adopted. Looks like it would be fun to computerize. (Analog to Go, but with triangular areas defining the territory claimed.)
My main concern is whether the engine can work well in the real world. Getting efficiencies in a test cell is easy (I have an acquanitence who designs engines. He has a test engine with variable compression ratio. On a good day, he can keep it running for a while at a compression ratio of 30. It's a *long* way from being roadworthy.) The variation you see on the road is much larger than in a test cell, or in other applications, like aerospace--conditions that a car engine take for granted could raise hob with an airplane engine. F'rinstance, wildly changing loads over a matter of a few seconds.
Still, the GA design methodology sounds interesting. I wasn't clear how they avoided getting stuck on local minima. Is this what the 'mutation' handled?
One thing that a lot of people aren't familiar with is a variant of Caller ID. 800 numbers often have the ability to see what you are calling from (AFAIK, the normal blocking codes don't work on these calls), and thus there's another level of checking.
If you are a repeat customer, they frequently have your account information available as soon as you are connected. One would presume that if you called from one number a lot, then did a huge order from another phone number, they'd want some additional validation.
Er, you don't live in California, do you? Since 1978, property valuations generallygo up when one of two things occur:
1) the house is sold or title is transferred.
In this case it goes to market value.
2) yearly, it will be reassesed, but there's a limit of 1% it can go up in value. This isn't a make or break item for most people.
Pete
I don't see how a job change could get you from being comfortable at $65K to poor at $110 a year if you live in the same house (assuming no refinancing.) Last I looked, housing was *the* major cost of living issue here. What else changed?
Ok, I bought my house 14 years ago for $170,000. I live alone during the week, while my SO comes over on the weekends, so the house is on a one-person income. Since my mortgage is slightly variable, it will go up with interest rates, but it's still about 4 points below it's 1987 peak.
My taste in transportation is quirky, with commute vehicles being a '73 beetle and an '86 pickup, so aside from the gas prices (we're now running $1.75 to $1.85 for the majors, depending on station location), my transport costs are cheap.
Still, though my house could bring in 3X what I paid for it, I don't notice a huge change in standard of living. Yes, traffic is horrible, but I don't need a Lexus to make it bearable.
BTW, if one wonders why housing is so expensive, take a look at the various no-growth initiatives and the hillside building bans. I feel they do help the quality of life, some, but limit a supply and increase demand, and guess what happens to the price....
In the valley, certain companies are/were notorious for hiring fresh out of school, burning them out, and going for more. My first employer, (name deleted) Semiconductor, was doing this in the mid-70s, and at last report is targetting employees over 50 for layoffs, regardless of skill. At times, the criteria is how much it costs to terminate an employee.
My SO was unemployeed last year, and at one place (name deleted because I forgot) the HR idiot said "we don't want people over 50, because they'd only retire in 20 years."
In my experience, a company will use layoffs as a golden opportunity to get rid of the people with the 'worst' cost-benefit ratio. This sometimes means that the people with certain key skills are let go. This leads to situations where key systems go down and the laid-off employee has the opportunity to make a killing as a consultant, or to exact revenge by refusing.
It *is* harder to get older employees to work absurd hours. One of my co-workers, aged 23 or so, will routinely work 10 hour days at a minimum, and has been found coding at 2AM. I have a life, pets and an SO, and prefer to get home at quasi-rational hours. I know this costs me money, but screw it; it's my life and career.
Note that they didn't say the retailer would not be disclosed, but *not yet*. IIRC, the last scam I heard about, it was either the wholesaler who did the trick, or someone who sold some 'surplus' chips to the wholesaler.
Also, don't forget that AMD is most likely intensely interested in this. I worked for a semi company some years back and discovered some counterfeiting of parts. Our legal department had some fun....
Careful you don't infringe on MS's patented BSOD illumination server.
This is 0.07um OXIDE THICKNESS, which is NOT the same as the gate length.
I strongly recommend reading the @#$%^ article. They *are* talking about 70um gate length, with 15 Angstrom gate thickness. This information is mentioned in the first paragraph....