I've crimped over 1000 cables for an HPC installation that required some pretty tight tolerances for performance. I had four or five bad ones in the whole lot. It's not that hard, and as the tags for this article show, "Your Boss Is An Idiot!" If you have a bad cable, you'll know almost instantly. If you have a cable that's not great, you'll still notice instantly as the performance on the cable will be degraded enough that you'll be able to tell in minutes of testing. Oh, and if there is a problem, first inspect and replace the ends. If that doesn't work, replace the cable. This is at most a day's worth of work (probably less) including testing. People do this ALL THE TIME! If your boss is still worried, email me and *I'll* come and install the cables for you and accept full liability for their performance. That good enough?:-)
You have a unconstitutionally elected president doing what liberal fascists have always done... take away our rights to further their power and control over the people.
You OBVIOUSLY know nothing about fascism (or here). First of all, you have to be right wing to be a fascist, BY DEFINITION!
Please stop using words without knowing what they mean! Just because you say it means one thing doesn't make it so!!!
Oh, and the Constitution doesn't elect the President, it gives the power to the people to do so... and we did! You really should read more, a lot more!
Oh for crying out loud, they just *DON'T* get it, do they? People want their content from the internet, Hulu provides it, and now their trying to muck around with the delivery of the content so it can only be through channels that they have complete control over?!?! W...T...F!!! It is becoming clear that they are truly going to die. Their business model and greed is going to cause them to collapse just like the financial markets. They are becoming too arrogant (not that they haven't been since the founding of the studios in LA) and power hungry in an age where someone with less than $250,000 can produce a high-quality episodic show that is successful.
Hollywood:
Wake up before you are supplanted!
Better yet, stay stupid so I have time to get my ideas off the ground and SUPPLANT YOU!
Do you know, for a fact not a presumption, that your hardware is 100% compatible with Vista64?
Do you know, for a fact not a presumption, that the Ubuntu version you are using supports ECC?
What manufacturer of RAM are you using?
What is the configuration of your RAM, GB per stick?
Being one who has maintained an 1100 node cluster with 8800 pieces of ECC RAM I can tell you we chase bad RAM sticks ALL THE TIME! It's not necessarily due to cosmic activity, the RAM just exhibits bad behavior as the circuits get older and things start to separate and break down due to thermal load over time. Even a small defect that would let the RAM pass the manufacturers tests will eventually lead to a DIMM failure down the road. Most average human beings will never determine why their machine crashes every few days if it is a RAM issue. Some power users will even overlook it because they have too much faith in RAM that *was* good when they bought it, but now that it's two or three years old...
I wouldn't trust a single app to verify your RAM. Run a couple different tests and see if you can nail down the problem. I can look and see how we're tracking that and get back to you.
First of all, the dig AGAINST states rights and the "Junior Senator from Illionois" were totally ridiculous. We don't live in a totalitarian regime, no matter what it may have looked like the last eight years. The states have the right to tell the Federal Government to fuck-off and make their own, more restrictive rules. So do counties, municipalities and townships when it comes to the states themselves. More restrictive is "ok" in the eyes of the Fed, but things like the decriminalization of marijuana is a shakier issue and why there's been such a ruckus over the lifting of Federal restrictions when dealing with state's rights to govern their own populous. This has been an issue for MORE than 200 years and it ain't going away any time soon no matter how pissy you as an individual feel about it. Don't like a state's laws relative to Federal law, then don't live there. It's a free country.
Now, back to the actual topic of the thread. One word: RIDICULOUS! Car paint?!?! Seriously?!?! We're talking about a miniscule amount of additional heat gain from a dark EXTERIOR car color. I agree that interior colors have a lot more to do with interior temperatures in vehicles that sit in the sun during high temperature days. However, the external color of the car has little to do with the interior temperature. Most cars are still made of metal and the the thermodynamics involved with heat dissipation are almost the same.
Having said all that, the Mythbusters should take this on... PRONTO!
Now, the torque and power loss, thereby causing inefficiency in an engine due to the use of air conditioning is known to be outrageous. Heck, the run-of-the-mill engine these days is still only about 40% efficient from the get go. Most of the energy produced by the combustion of fossil fuels is lost to heat. Tack on the air conditioner, water pump, alternator, power steering assist, and anything else other than the transmission that draws power from the engine and you're not putting more than about 25 - 30% of the power being produced by combustion into actually moving the car! It's insane to keep making vehicles that use fossil fuels.. insane and STUPID! We have to let go of petroleum. We're way smarter than that.
Save fuel? Buy a hybrid or electric vehicle. California should start mandating that all manufacturers sell only hybrids or all electric vehicles. Grandfather in vehicles purchased before a certain date and start weening the populous off of petroleum while forcing automakers to make better, less harmful, more efficient (energy wise) vehicles. Period.
P.S. What the hell were you trying to say with this: "At typical RPMs you use not driving aggressively, car engines can only make well under 100hp." ??? Gibberese to me and patently absurd.
Posting anything to the web is considered "publishing". This distinction was made and upheld in the courts in the 1990s in the U.S.
Posting to the general public is not considered "fair use". The auspices of fair use are based on a limited distribution of a sample of copyrighted information. Posting it to an open, public forum will not qualify for fair use in a court. Put it behind a free registration mechanism and you're covered.
I worked for a major research university doing digital content development and distribution for almost two decades. I know where the lines are and you crossed one and that's why you got the notice. Fair use will NOT protect you in this instance because you posted it in a non-regulated way. Again, fair use depends on limited distribution/use as well as a less than whole citation of work. Make some lawyer friends, too.:-)
From the comments on the article that's linked from the OP:
By rox0r on Mar 17, 2009
I'm confused. Does anyone remember what the percentage of solid state the drive was?
I can't remember if they said it was 90% or 100% solid state drive. Because i'm not getting it if it is under 75% solid state.
I mean, SRSLY, why go to all the work machining the aluminum if the drive is going to be anything less than 100% solid state?
LOL! What does a 90% solid state drive look like anyway? I hope it was a joke post because it sure did make snot fly out my nose when I read it and laughed!
RTFM! You don't have to reach in your pocket if you use the included headphones you can switch tracks by double pinching the mic/button assembly. Single pinching starts and stops play, and triple pinching sends it back a track.
Am I the only one very, very disturbed by this type of analysis? To reduce a human being down to a statistical average and use that in hiring and termination practices is just utterly ridiculous. A person is worth more than the sum of their quantifiable parts! I agree that there are far too many people that are either deadwood within an organization or have no business being managers of areas that they have little to no background within, but there are people out there that excel at areas they have no background in (mostly because their thought processes function differently than others, i.e. thinking outside the box) and have the ability to cut across quantifiable boundaries and contribute to an organization's goals in immeasurably positive ways.
This is a horrible idea and will backfire on those that implement it. Mark my words, the first person to be wrongly terminated because of this practice is going to ream the hell out the company that does it. You cannot quantify the human element in an equation. They will ALWAYS surprise you!
Yeah, but its not really -that- much money to throw a new roof on a house, and that's actually only for the midrange houses. And, if you want to pay for it, you can get much, much longer lasting roofs if you want to pay for the upfront costs of it.
Ummm, wrong again. A new roof for a home will cost anywhere between 10% and 20% of the assessed value of a home depending on the extent of decay/damage and the type of roof being put in place.
And, the thing is, there's a lot of 100 year old houses in America, and quite a few houses in the 70 year range and up.
Have you ever been to Japan?!?!?! There are structures there thousands of years old! You REALLY need to stop typing now.
Wow, it's just bigot-on-bigot action here! As a trained architect I can tell you that all of the size and amenity differences you pointed out as being better in American homes are all based in Western cultural norms. The data you used for housing longevity differences is also incorrect. In the U.S. homes are built to last 30 to 40 years (the average lifetime of a roof in a temperate climate).
You're just batting a thousand on this topic tjstork. I think it would be best for you to stop typing now.
Ok, you are not grasping reality here. So, those bytes contained in a file are not content? That's what you just said. You said the bytes are converted to content, but that makes no sense. What is correct is that the byte content of the file is interpreted as text, audio, video, etc. by the hardware AND software. It's still CONTENT. It starts as analog content, gets encoded as digital bits (that form bytes) and becomes digital content. The file in digital form contains the same content as the analog original encoded as digital bits that are contained in said file. Still content!
This guy has it right, along with the reverse lookup comment for a phone number there was no violation of criminal law or established procedures for enforcement with what was done. Now, the ISP may have violated their privacy agreement, but privacy agreements usually contain verbiage that denies privacy if you are suspected of a crime, depending on the nature of information being divulged.
Data that was traveling over the wire to and from the IP address was not obtained and would require a warrant to view, but simple subscriber information will-9 times out of 10-be given to law enforcement upon request. Now, if that information was somehow "unlisted at the user's request", like an unlisted phone number, then a warrant would be needed to obtain the information. I do not know of an ISP that provides "unlisted" Internet service.
Ok, so I guess it's pointless to argue the point of "Why encrypt 'everything'?" There are options out there, but I think you're going to be creating an incredible hit on productivity in the institution and a massive support nightmare depending on the size of your site. Also, keep in mind that you will need to establish a tiered encryption system and master keys that will open everything in every department and agency at the highest administrative level of the organization. There will also have to be new physical security practices to make sure the keys don't get into the wild, as well as a rotating scheme for replacing all the keys on a regular basis and updating all masters.
Look, I have been on both sides of this argument and know that there are things that you haven't even thought about from the business practices and risk management angles that will have a tremendous set of REAL costs that are beyond the performance overhead on the computing side of things. This is a horribly bad idea! The Pentagon, CIA and DHS don't encrypt everything for a good reason!
Really? So, all those video frames are just appearing out of nowhere?
I would agree with you if you were correct, but you're not. "Content" is not a buzzword. The use of the word to describe "the things that are held or included in something" (OED definition) has been accepted for centuries. Books contain a "Table of Contents". Ingredients used in foods, materials, or other conglomerated items are called contents.
So, yes, something is contained within the digital file that is being shared, whether that is text, audio, video, etc. So it is CONTENT!
If you have never seen (or heard) something before, whether it be a TV series, short or feature film (or music track), are you going to buy the DVD, CD or digital version?
NO!
Why? Because you have no reference or metric to judge it against other than the words and opinions of others (word of mouth). The radio is dying as the iPod takes over. Broadcast TV shows and theaters are next folks. HDTV, surround sound, video projectors, Blu-ray, etc. are all providing us with cinematic experiences in the home. TiVo is already killing broadcast advertising that provides the revenues for 99% of what is on TV. I could go on for hours on this, but the bottom line is that people aren't going to see advertisements for shows and films for much longer. They will have Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. accounts and will hear about things from friends or get bored and start searching resources like YouTube for things they haven't seen before. Gee, I wonder if they will go out and buy stuff if they like what they see on a free video (or music site)? The data is saying yes, very clearly.
Oh, not to mention the positive effects that bootlegging has had on sales. People get a movie or two, a track or two from an artist or studio, like it, and then go find out what else has been done and often buy; very often! Looking at raw sales numbers in a downturning economy to defend anti-piracy is disingenuous at best.
More data is needed to find the root causes, but I assure you it's not piracy taking the lion share. My guess (as I am in the midst of gathering said data for a venture of my own) is that people are buying less new stuff due to the quality of the work, the fact that they are enjoying titles and albums that they already have, and are getting less exposed to new titles and artists due to the use of iPod and TiVo. But, that's all for the "new" stuff. Older titles don't get the exposure through mainstream media so free previews on YouTube are a good marketing tool.
Talk to the department head or chair of the department as well as to the administrators in charge of academic affairs, both at the upper administration level and the college level. They know this is illegal and even if it's not they know how bad the publicity of this will look
Call local TV and newspapers to get this in the open ASAP!
Defend your rights against illegal search and seizure as well as your rights to intellectual property! I would have had a physical altercation with this prof if they tried to go in my bag without a warrant, regardless of the impending assault (and battery) charges.
Having worked as an administrator and professor for more than a decade I can tell you of the wild and crazy things that professors think they have the power to do in their classroom. Granted, there is a great deal of leeway when it comes to grading and course evaluation, but they cannot violate your rights. You are not in high school anymore and you are no longer a minor. People can't take things from you without permission! Regardless of their position. Those notes are invaluable and may serve you many years from now. It's usually a poor teacher that resorts to this kind of nonsense because they are lazy and don't want to create new tests every year. With information technology it is really not that hard to circumvent this type of cheating. The math department at my institution created a database of questions more than 10,000 strong that they use to test and quiz students. The likelihood of a student in successive years using someone else's notes to pass a test is near impossible. You either know it or you don't!
But shouldn't we require better assurance than that?
NO! There are no assurances in life, period. There are some things that, within the narrow realm of our understanding of the universe and how space-time works, are 99.99999% probable, but we should not stop investigating something because we are unsure of an outcome. There is little, if any, real evidence to suggest that the LHC could cause a black hole that would swallow the Earth and the rest of our solar system. There is a probability that the energies being created by smashing particles in the LHC could create momentary or even (while the particle streams are still focused and colliding) sustained event horizons, but as soon as the energy is taken away the system would return to equilibrium; thermodynamics teaches us this. Black holes sustain themselves because their mass accelerates matter toward them eventually reaching velocities near the speed of light. In order to create a self-sustaining black hole you would need to feed it a lot of matter traveling at high velocities for a long time (eons with a lowly particle accelerator).
Let's stop worrying about what might happen and see what doors we can unlock. Heck, the Manhattan Project folks were worried that the Trinity bomb might ignite the atmosphere and turn the planet into a charred cinder. It was possible based on what they understood about the universe at the time. Didn't happen, though.
This adds fuel to the debate over whether the RIAA has finally seen the light or is still sneaking around in the dark.
Does it? Really? Or, does it point to them just not having the money in this downward spiraling economy to continue these frivolous lawsuits while they, in parallel, scramble to redesign their digital content schemes?
I have a feeling that this is going to be a lull for a few years while they regroup, retask and come at the file sharers again, or seek legislation to aid their fight; the latter being less likely under the incoming administration. The RIAA (and MPAA) are not going down without one hell of a fight. This type of battle may be ending, but evil never sleeps and is constantly trying to devise new ways to overcome good. These idiots are just confused and don't see the good in what file sharing does for their (still growing) sales.
To quote Frank Herbert, "This is all far from over..."
Apparently a decent beta can succeed where $300 million and Jerry Seinfeld failed.
Umm, no kidding. You mean if your product doesn't suck you won't have to spend lots of money lying to people why it might not suck? Who would have guessed that a quality product might actually be more successful than a half-assed one. Amazing!
Still not buying it unless it really has some value beyond XP's functionality that I can't live without. Wait, I can live without it anyway. Who am I kidding.
Federal court will take one look at that and declare it. Violates the First Amendment. The First Amendment does not say that your speech has to clear of vulgarities. Who do these idiots think the Founding Fathers were, Puritans?!?! Please! Those guys cursed like sailors, and is why Congressmen (and I do believe Senators) cannot be held liable for anything said on the floor. If I'm in Congress and on the floor in session and I call you a pig fucker, then that's what goes into the record and there ain't a damn thing anyone can do about it! Well, they can have it stricken, but that takes a lot. I suppose if you go all Ted Stevens and physically wig out, they can remove you from the floor, but it all gets recorded for posterity. JOY! The point is you cannot be civilly or criminally punished for spouting any kind of language in Congress, so why would South Carolina be different? Oh yeah, they're not! Unconstitutional.
Here's something else to think about. With all the quality home recording gear available (I know cuz I have some and have created an album for a friend over the last year) who's to say that the songs being shared are actually infringing copyright? I send MP3s of my friend's songs to people all the time, either as email attachments or via some sort of file sharing scheme. Is the RIAA going to start cutting off my means of distribution so they can keep the monopoly on theirs? Am I going to get fined for sending a music file, that I have the rights to, to a friend via the Internet? This seems to be what they are driving toward. They want to keep their power base and MAKE the rest of us use them in order to record and distribute content.
Well eff that! They can kiss my fuzzy, lilly white ass! I am not sharing my profits from recordings with them! No need to. WIth social networking sites, YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/flyhaf), blogging and a host of other free promotional and distribution channels on the web, what do we need them for?... Oh yeah, we don't!
Why is this article labeled as hardware? Sure they talk about different procs being... well, different. Duh! The article is about the software Tom and others developed to run processes more efficiently in a multi-core (an possibly heterogenous) environment. Big energy savings as well as performance boost. Green computing. HELLO! Did you read page two?
Ok, I actually RTFA because the stub made no sense whatsoever and found out the article is no better. Seriously folks, how many "problems" in computing can be solved by legacy software running on faster hardware? Answer: Very few. Here's a for instance:
I have a piece of code that was written in 1983. It still does everything I need it to do, but I am taking on larger problem sizes with that code and it's starting to run slower than I'd like.
Without updating the code to take advantage of modern hardware, i.e., multi-core, throwing bigger and faster hardware at the code will not yield the same performance enhancements that throwing an intern, grad student, or other development resource with parallel programming experience at the code. A majority of code written before and even since 1993 is not parallelized and will not gain much from bigger, faster hardware.
I've seen this argument a thousand times where I worked in academia. Researchers would buy bigger, faster desktop machines to make their code go faster and hit a plateau in performance because the code would not be able to take advantage of this hot new machine. They would then back away from taking on bigger projects with bigger funding because they were unwilling to update their applications. We would then suggest to those that came to us to sit down with a group we setup that would help them rewrite their code so it would work better on modern hardware. It's an arduous and relatively unsupported process, but it needs to be done. Old code and faster hardware will only take you so far, and the sooner you adapt the code the better off you are going to be. Just throwing hardware at a problem is far more wasteful (from a productivity and ROI stand point) than writing better code and being more productive with that hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
I've crimped over 1000 cables for an HPC installation that required some pretty tight tolerances for performance. I had four or five bad ones in the whole lot. It's not that hard, and as the tags for this article show, "Your Boss Is An Idiot!" If you have a bad cable, you'll know almost instantly. If you have a cable that's not great, you'll still notice instantly as the performance on the cable will be degraded enough that you'll be able to tell in minutes of testing. Oh, and if there is a problem, first inspect and replace the ends. If that doesn't work, replace the cable. This is at most a day's worth of work (probably less) including testing. People do this ALL THE TIME! If your boss is still worried, email me and *I'll* come and install the cables for you and accept full liability for their performance. That good enough? :-)
You have a unconstitutionally elected president doing what liberal fascists have always done ... take away our rights to further their power and control over the people.
You OBVIOUSLY know nothing about fascism (or here). First of all, you have to be right wing to be a fascist, BY DEFINITION!
Please stop using words without knowing what they mean! Just because you say it means one thing doesn't make it so!!!
Oh, and the Constitution doesn't elect the President, it gives the power to the people to do so ... and we did! You really should read more, a lot more!
Oh for crying out loud, they just *DON'T* get it, do they? People want their content from the internet, Hulu provides it, and now their trying to muck around with the delivery of the content so it can only be through channels that they have complete control over?!?! W...T...F!!! It is becoming clear that they are truly going to die. Their business model and greed is going to cause them to collapse just like the financial markets. They are becoming too arrogant (not that they haven't been since the founding of the studios in LA) and power hungry in an age where someone with less than $250,000 can produce a high-quality episodic show that is successful.
Hollywood:
Wake up before you are supplanted!
Better yet, stay stupid so I have time to get my ideas off the ground and SUPPLANT YOU!
The clock is ticking boys...
Some simple tests:
Being one who has maintained an 1100 node cluster with 8800 pieces of ECC RAM I can tell you we chase bad RAM sticks ALL THE TIME! It's not necessarily due to cosmic activity, the RAM just exhibits bad behavior as the circuits get older and things start to separate and break down due to thermal load over time. Even a small defect that would let the RAM pass the manufacturers tests will eventually lead to a DIMM failure down the road. Most average human beings will never determine why their machine crashes every few days if it is a RAM issue. Some power users will even overlook it because they have too much faith in RAM that *was* good when they bought it, but now that it's two or three years old ...
I wouldn't trust a single app to verify your RAM. Run a couple different tests and see if you can nail down the problem. I can look and see how we're tracking that and get back to you.
First of all, the dig AGAINST states rights and the "Junior Senator from Illionois" were totally ridiculous. We don't live in a totalitarian regime, no matter what it may have looked like the last eight years. The states have the right to tell the Federal Government to fuck-off and make their own, more restrictive rules. So do counties, municipalities and townships when it comes to the states themselves. More restrictive is "ok" in the eyes of the Fed, but things like the decriminalization of marijuana is a shakier issue and why there's been such a ruckus over the lifting of Federal restrictions when dealing with state's rights to govern their own populous. This has been an issue for MORE than 200 years and it ain't going away any time soon no matter how pissy you as an individual feel about it. Don't like a state's laws relative to Federal law, then don't live there. It's a free country.
Now, back to the actual topic of the thread. One word: RIDICULOUS! Car paint?!?! Seriously?!?! We're talking about a miniscule amount of additional heat gain from a dark EXTERIOR car color. I agree that interior colors have a lot more to do with interior temperatures in vehicles that sit in the sun during high temperature days. However, the external color of the car has little to do with the interior temperature. Most cars are still made of metal and the the thermodynamics involved with heat dissipation are almost the same.
Having said all that, the Mythbusters should take this on ... PRONTO!
Now, the torque and power loss, thereby causing inefficiency in an engine due to the use of air conditioning is known to be outrageous. Heck, the run-of-the-mill engine these days is still only about 40% efficient from the get go. Most of the energy produced by the combustion of fossil fuels is lost to heat. Tack on the air conditioner, water pump, alternator, power steering assist, and anything else other than the transmission that draws power from the engine and you're not putting more than about 25 - 30% of the power being produced by combustion into actually moving the car! It's insane to keep making vehicles that use fossil fuels .. insane and STUPID! We have to let go of petroleum. We're way smarter than that.
Save fuel? Buy a hybrid or electric vehicle. California should start mandating that all manufacturers sell only hybrids or all electric vehicles. Grandfather in vehicles purchased before a certain date and start weening the populous off of petroleum while forcing automakers to make better, less harmful, more efficient (energy wise) vehicles. Period.
P.S. What the hell were you trying to say with this: "At typical RPMs you use not driving aggressively, car engines can only make well under 100hp." ??? Gibberese to me and patently absurd.
I worked for a major research university doing digital content development and distribution for almost two decades. I know where the lines are and you crossed one and that's why you got the notice. Fair use will NOT protect you in this instance because you posted it in a non-regulated way. Again, fair use depends on limited distribution/use as well as a less than whole citation of work. Make some lawyer friends, too. :-)
From the comments on the article that's linked from the OP:
By rox0r on Mar 17, 2009
I'm confused. Does anyone remember what the percentage of solid state the drive was?
I can't remember if they said it was 90% or 100% solid state drive. Because i'm not getting it if it is under 75% solid state.
I mean, SRSLY, why go to all the work machining the aluminum if the drive is going to be anything less than 100% solid state?
LOL! What does a 90% solid state drive look like anyway? I hope it was a joke post because it sure did make snot fly out my nose when I read it and laughed!
RTFM! You don't have to reach in your pocket if you use the included headphones you can switch tracks by double pinching the mic/button assembly. Single pinching starts and stops play, and triple pinching sends it back a track.
I use the Watch Instantly all the time as I do not have cable and have no problems. I'd check with my ISP before blaming Netflix.
OP: Are you doing any P2P stuff with your connection? I think you better check all your activity before you go blaming Netflix.
Am I the only one very, very disturbed by this type of analysis? To reduce a human being down to a statistical average and use that in hiring and termination practices is just utterly ridiculous. A person is worth more than the sum of their quantifiable parts! I agree that there are far too many people that are either deadwood within an organization or have no business being managers of areas that they have little to no background within, but there are people out there that excel at areas they have no background in (mostly because their thought processes function differently than others, i.e. thinking outside the box) and have the ability to cut across quantifiable boundaries and contribute to an organization's goals in immeasurably positive ways.
This is a horrible idea and will backfire on those that implement it. Mark my words, the first person to be wrongly terminated because of this practice is going to ream the hell out the company that does it. You cannot quantify the human element in an equation. They will ALWAYS surprise you!
Yeah, but its not really -that- much money to throw a new roof on a house, and that's actually only for the midrange houses. And, if you want to pay for it, you can get much, much longer lasting roofs if you want to pay for the upfront costs of it.
Ummm, wrong again. A new roof for a home will cost anywhere between 10% and 20% of the assessed value of a home depending on the extent of decay/damage and the type of roof being put in place.
And, the thing is, there's a lot of 100 year old houses in America, and quite a few houses in the 70 year range and up.
Have you ever been to Japan?!?!?! There are structures there thousands of years old! You REALLY need to stop typing now.
Wow, it's just bigot-on-bigot action here! As a trained architect I can tell you that all of the size and amenity differences you pointed out as being better in American homes are all based in Western cultural norms. The data you used for housing longevity differences is also incorrect. In the U.S. homes are built to last 30 to 40 years (the average lifetime of a roof in a temperate climate).
You're just batting a thousand on this topic tjstork. I think it would be best for you to stop typing now.
Ok, you are not grasping reality here. So, those bytes contained in a file are not content? That's what you just said. You said the bytes are converted to content, but that makes no sense. What is correct is that the byte content of the file is interpreted as text, audio, video, etc. by the hardware AND software. It's still CONTENT. It starts as analog content, gets encoded as digital bits (that form bytes) and becomes digital content. The file in digital form contains the same content as the analog original encoded as digital bits that are contained in said file. Still content!
This guy has it right, along with the reverse lookup comment for a phone number there was no violation of criminal law or established procedures for enforcement with what was done. Now, the ISP may have violated their privacy agreement, but privacy agreements usually contain verbiage that denies privacy if you are suspected of a crime, depending on the nature of information being divulged.
Data that was traveling over the wire to and from the IP address was not obtained and would require a warrant to view, but simple subscriber information will-9 times out of 10-be given to law enforcement upon request. Now, if that information was somehow "unlisted at the user's request", like an unlisted phone number, then a warrant would be needed to obtain the information. I do not know of an ISP that provides "unlisted" Internet service.
Ok, so I guess it's pointless to argue the point of "Why encrypt 'everything'?" There are options out there, but I think you're going to be creating an incredible hit on productivity in the institution and a massive support nightmare depending on the size of your site. Also, keep in mind that you will need to establish a tiered encryption system and master keys that will open everything in every department and agency at the highest administrative level of the organization. There will also have to be new physical security practices to make sure the keys don't get into the wild, as well as a rotating scheme for replacing all the keys on a regular basis and updating all masters.
Look, I have been on both sides of this argument and know that there are things that you haven't even thought about from the business practices and risk management angles that will have a tremendous set of REAL costs that are beyond the performance overhead on the computing side of things. This is a horribly bad idea! The Pentagon, CIA and DHS don't encrypt everything for a good reason!
Nothing is being "contained".
Really? So, all those video frames are just appearing out of nowhere?
I would agree with you if you were correct, but you're not. "Content" is not a buzzword. The use of the word to describe "the things that are held or included in something" (OED definition) has been accepted for centuries. Books contain a "Table of Contents". Ingredients used in foods, materials, or other conglomerated items are called contents.
So, yes, something is contained within the digital file that is being shared, whether that is text, audio, video, etc. So it is CONTENT!
Let me explain why.
If you have never seen (or heard) something before, whether it be a TV series, short or feature film (or music track), are you going to buy the DVD, CD or digital version?
NO!
Why? Because you have no reference or metric to judge it against other than the words and opinions of others (word of mouth). The radio is dying as the iPod takes over. Broadcast TV shows and theaters are next folks. HDTV, surround sound, video projectors, Blu-ray, etc. are all providing us with cinematic experiences in the home. TiVo is already killing broadcast advertising that provides the revenues for 99% of what is on TV. I could go on for hours on this, but the bottom line is that people aren't going to see advertisements for shows and films for much longer. They will have Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. accounts and will hear about things from friends or get bored and start searching resources like YouTube for things they haven't seen before. Gee, I wonder if they will go out and buy stuff if they like what they see on a free video (or music site)? The data is saying yes, very clearly.
Oh, not to mention the positive effects that bootlegging has had on sales. People get a movie or two, a track or two from an artist or studio, like it, and then go find out what else has been done and often buy; very often! Looking at raw sales numbers in a downturning economy to defend anti-piracy is disingenuous at best.
More data is needed to find the root causes, but I assure you it's not piracy taking the lion share. My guess (as I am in the midst of gathering said data for a venture of my own) is that people are buying less new stuff due to the quality of the work, the fact that they are enjoying titles and albums that they already have, and are getting less exposed to new titles and artists due to the use of iPod and TiVo. But, that's all for the "new" stuff. Older titles don't get the exposure through mainstream media so free previews on YouTube are a good marketing tool.
Having worked as an administrator and professor for more than a decade I can tell you of the wild and crazy things that professors think they have the power to do in their classroom. Granted, there is a great deal of leeway when it comes to grading and course evaluation, but they cannot violate your rights. You are not in high school anymore and you are no longer a minor. People can't take things from you without permission! Regardless of their position. Those notes are invaluable and may serve you many years from now. It's usually a poor teacher that resorts to this kind of nonsense because they are lazy and don't want to create new tests every year. With information technology it is really not that hard to circumvent this type of cheating. The math department at my institution created a database of questions more than 10,000 strong that they use to test and quiz students. The likelihood of a student in successive years using someone else's notes to pass a test is near impossible. You either know it or you don't!
But shouldn't we require better assurance than that?
NO! There are no assurances in life, period. There are some things that, within the narrow realm of our understanding of the universe and how space-time works, are 99.99999% probable, but we should not stop investigating something because we are unsure of an outcome. There is little, if any, real evidence to suggest that the LHC could cause a black hole that would swallow the Earth and the rest of our solar system. There is a probability that the energies being created by smashing particles in the LHC could create momentary or even (while the particle streams are still focused and colliding) sustained event horizons, but as soon as the energy is taken away the system would return to equilibrium; thermodynamics teaches us this. Black holes sustain themselves because their mass accelerates matter toward them eventually reaching velocities near the speed of light. In order to create a self-sustaining black hole you would need to feed it a lot of matter traveling at high velocities for a long time (eons with a lowly particle accelerator).
Let's stop worrying about what might happen and see what doors we can unlock. Heck, the Manhattan Project folks were worried that the Trinity bomb might ignite the atmosphere and turn the planet into a charred cinder. It was possible based on what they understood about the universe at the time. Didn't happen, though.
This adds fuel to the debate over whether the RIAA has finally seen the light or is still sneaking around in the dark.
Does it? Really? Or, does it point to them just not having the money in this downward spiraling economy to continue these frivolous lawsuits while they, in parallel, scramble to redesign their digital content schemes?
I have a feeling that this is going to be a lull for a few years while they regroup, retask and come at the file sharers again, or seek legislation to aid their fight; the latter being less likely under the incoming administration. The RIAA (and MPAA) are not going down without one hell of a fight. This type of battle may be ending, but evil never sleeps and is constantly trying to devise new ways to overcome good. These idiots are just confused and don't see the good in what file sharing does for their (still growing) sales.
To quote Frank Herbert, "This is all far from over..."
Apparently a decent beta can succeed where $300 million and Jerry Seinfeld failed.
Umm, no kidding. You mean if your product doesn't suck you won't have to spend lots of money lying to people why it might not suck? Who would have guessed that a quality product might actually be more successful than a half-assed one. Amazing!
Still not buying it unless it really has some value beyond XP's functionality that I can't live without. Wait, I can live without it anyway. Who am I kidding.
Unconstitutional
Federal court will take one look at that and declare it. Violates the First Amendment. The First Amendment does not say that your speech has to clear of vulgarities. Who do these idiots think the Founding Fathers were, Puritans?!?! Please! Those guys cursed like sailors, and is why Congressmen (and I do believe Senators) cannot be held liable for anything said on the floor. If I'm in Congress and on the floor in session and I call you a pig fucker, then that's what goes into the record and there ain't a damn thing anyone can do about it! Well, they can have it stricken, but that takes a lot. I suppose if you go all Ted Stevens and physically wig out, they can remove you from the floor, but it all gets recorded for posterity. JOY! The point is you cannot be civilly or criminally punished for spouting any kind of language in Congress, so why would South Carolina be different? Oh yeah, they're not! Unconstitutional.
Here's something else to think about. With all the quality home recording gear available (I know cuz I have some and have created an album for a friend over the last year) who's to say that the songs being shared are actually infringing copyright? I send MP3s of my friend's songs to people all the time, either as email attachments or via some sort of file sharing scheme. Is the RIAA going to start cutting off my means of distribution so they can keep the monopoly on theirs? Am I going to get fined for sending a music file, that I have the rights to, to a friend via the Internet? This seems to be what they are driving toward. They want to keep their power base and MAKE the rest of us use them in order to record and distribute content.
Well eff that! They can kiss my fuzzy, lilly white ass! I am not sharing my profits from recordings with them! No need to. WIth social networking sites, YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/flyhaf), blogging and a host of other free promotional and distribution channels on the web, what do we need them for? ... Oh yeah, we don't!
Why is this article labeled as hardware? Sure they talk about different procs being ... well, different. Duh! The article is about the software Tom and others developed to run processes more efficiently in a multi-core (an possibly heterogenous) environment. Big energy savings as well as performance boost. Green computing. HELLO! Did you read page two?
Ok, I actually RTFA because the stub made no sense whatsoever and found out the article is no better. Seriously folks, how many "problems" in computing can be solved by legacy software running on faster hardware? Answer: Very few. Here's a for instance:
I have a piece of code that was written in 1983. It still does everything I need it to do, but I am taking on larger problem sizes with that code and it's starting to run slower than I'd like.
Without updating the code to take advantage of modern hardware, i.e., multi-core, throwing bigger and faster hardware at the code will not yield the same performance enhancements that throwing an intern, grad student, or other development resource with parallel programming experience at the code. A majority of code written before and even since 1993 is not parallelized and will not gain much from bigger, faster hardware.
I've seen this argument a thousand times where I worked in academia. Researchers would buy bigger, faster desktop machines to make their code go faster and hit a plateau in performance because the code would not be able to take advantage of this hot new machine. They would then back away from taking on bigger projects with bigger funding because they were unwilling to update their applications. We would then suggest to those that came to us to sit down with a group we setup that would help them rewrite their code so it would work better on modern hardware. It's an arduous and relatively unsupported process, but it needs to be done. Old code and faster hardware will only take you so far, and the sooner you adapt the code the better off you are going to be. Just throwing hardware at a problem is far more wasteful (from a productivity and ROI stand point) than writing better code and being more productive with that hardware.
My $0.02...