Offtopic, I know.. but it's a good thing that all of those things you list would be a drop in the bucket compared to the $40 Billion that the US spends annually on fighting the drug war.
Sorry, it's just that your complaints about what would happen if drugs were legal make no sense.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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Assault Weapons Ban
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Just when I was about to stop reading Slashdot due to the uninformed, opinionated, egotistical slop that gets posted in the comments (of all stories, but politcs and YRO especially) I read this post.
I entered this thread expecting to see the typical same-old, same-old of "you don't know anything, I'm right"... "No, you're an idiot, I'm right" arguments. Entertaining on a base level, sure, but not much in the way of insight. I certainly wasn't disappointed.. total crap, the entire lot of it.
Your post, however, was interesting, insightful, and put into concise words what the thoughts I've been having about the whole gun ownership debate. Thanks for your post.
This has been done for quite some time, but in software. It was supposed to be something done once when the chip came out of manufacturing, and forgotten about, but the "fuses" kept growing back after time and causing errors. A map of these was kept associated with each chip (and since this applies mainly to Processors, a eeprom containing this data is shipped with each processor) and software handled the routing.
Without this ability, the chips would be extremely more expensive, and probably not even viable to produce. So this is just another incremental step forward, not some amazingly new tech.
Yeah, lotteries are a scam, we all know that. But to answer your question about the bigger jackpot rollovers now.... The lotteries have been lowering the odds for winners in the past couple of years. They have been adding numbers to the possible winners and, less frequently, adding an additional number. (ie, before you had to match 5 numbers with ranges from 1-40, now you have to match 6 numbers with ranges from 1-45).
They've determined that more people will play when the jackpots are in the $100s of millions, even though the odds are much lower.
It really is just like the AC that replied to you states it. Its a matter of creating denser and denser integrated products. The Chip-chip intereconnects number somewhere around 5500 on a Power4 MCM, if you attempted to route this out of each chip, into a PCB, you would not get near the interconnectspeed of the as if you contained it all in an MCM. MCM-MCM interconnect speed drops by a factor of 3 compared with chip-chip in an MCM.
Chips are tested before they are put into MCMs. So, not really a problem..As far as supply, your downtime would measure in the hours, if you had the cash to buy a big system like these.
IBM has a strong commitment to SLES and Redhat. Actually, there is a stronger bond with SLES among the developers and testers. Suse is much quicker to respond to defect/bugzilla reports than Redhat.
hehe - go aheand and play with your 'big iron' xeon and athlon toys... Call me when you have 3-4 Million to drop on an IBM p690 with 210 PCI slots, each one an individual bus.
They are switching to FLAC. The problem is that there are a ton of shows out there in the SHN format. I would imagine that in the next year or so, the transition will be made to FLAC.
I agree, I also work for a very large tech company, and we have an army of lawyers to go over patent applications and make sure that it is good enough to make it through the process.
Most of the applications that get sent to the lawyers are returned with a "publish, not patent" stamp on them.
That being said, patent licensing is a big chunk of revenue for my company. We have been leading the pack in patents for the last 10 years, and they say we have gotten about 10 billion dollars from them.
You are correct. "Faster" is better, but for different reasons. For CRTs, you're looking at eliminating the flickering and for LCDs, you want to eliminate the "ghosting".
Sorry if I didn't make that clear in my above post.
Refresh rates don't make sense on an LCD... The parameter you need to look at is the Rise/Fall time of the pixels (also known as response time). The pixels don't change unless they need to, whereas for CRTs, every pixel on the screen is being redrawn (60 times a second at 60Hz, obviously)
The response times are getting faster and cheaper, but still leave a bit to be desired.
The total response time of a pixel can be (typically) anywhere from 15ms to 40ms for an LCD monitor. Most are between 25 and 35. 30ms response time is pretty much average. If the whole screen is changing quickly (think fast FPS gaming), you would only be getting the equivalant of 33Hz or so. At 15ms (for considerably more $$), you are looking at an analogous 66Hz refresh.
Most of the hardcore gamers I know don't like less than 85Hz on their CRTs, so still lots of room for improvement on the LCDs.
I think one of the reasons that companies like going with one of the "big names" in linux is because Red Hat and SuSE have something that the debians and gentoos don't have.... Lawyers.
Linux is an IP headache for companies w/ a history of licensing and patent. You have to tiptoe around the GPL and what you can or can't do, while incorporating your proprietary software, usually with cross-liscensing agreements and NDAs out the wazoo.
IBM really does want to get to an open standard (Never thought I'd say that...), but it is going to be slow going because nobody wants to make a mistake and end up getting sued for millions. (It has already happened w/ SCO and IBM, and there weren't any obvious breaches in that case)
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Offtopic, I know.. but it's a good thing that all of those things you list would be a drop in the bucket compared to the $40 Billion that the US spends annually on fighting the drug war.
Sorry, it's just that your complaints about what would happen if drugs were legal make no sense.
Just when I was about to stop reading Slashdot due to the uninformed, opinionated, egotistical slop that gets posted in the comments (of all stories, but politcs and YRO especially) I read this post.
I entered this thread expecting to see the typical same-old, same-old of "you don't know anything, I'm right"... "No, you're an idiot, I'm right" arguments. Entertaining on a base level, sure, but not much in the way of insight. I certainly wasn't disappointed.. total crap, the entire lot of it.
Your post, however, was interesting, insightful, and put into concise words what the thoughts I've been having about the whole gun ownership debate. Thanks for your post.
This has been done for quite some time, but in software. It was supposed to be something done once when the chip came out of manufacturing, and forgotten about, but the "fuses" kept growing back after time and causing errors. A map of these was kept associated with each chip (and since this applies mainly to Processors, a eeprom containing this data is shipped with each processor) and software handled the routing.
Without this ability, the chips would be extremely more expensive, and probably not even viable to produce. So this is just another incremental step forward, not some amazingly new tech.
The PowerPC-based Blades servers from IBM run either SUSE or Turbolinux. See more details here.
True, but either way, I'll bet 100 bucks that you won't win the lottery :)
Yeah, lotteries are a scam, we all know that. But to answer your question about the bigger jackpot rollovers now.... The lotteries have been lowering the odds for winners in the past couple of years. They have been adding numbers to the possible winners and, less frequently, adding an additional number. (ie, before you had to match 5 numbers with ranges from 1-40, now you have to match 6 numbers with ranges from 1-45).
They've determined that more people will play when the jackpots are in the $100s of millions, even though the odds are much lower.
It really is just like the AC that replied to you states it. Its a matter of creating denser and denser integrated products. The Chip-chip intereconnects number somewhere around 5500 on a Power4 MCM, if you attempted to route this out of each chip, into a PCB, you would not get near the interconnectspeed of the as if you contained it all in an MCM. MCM-MCM interconnect speed drops by a factor of 3 compared with chip-chip in an MCM.
Chips are tested before they are put into MCMs. So, not really a problem..As far as supply, your downtime would measure in the hours, if you had the cash to buy a big system like these.
Reliability is pretty impressive on these designs, considering the complexity. At least on the Power4 (similar design), MTBFs are measured in decades.
My cable speed has jumped considerably in the past year. From about 250KB/s to 400KB/s peak. Anytime, day or night.
IBM has a strong commitment to SLES and Redhat. Actually, there is a stronger bond with SLES among the developers and testers. Suse is much quicker to respond to defect/bugzilla reports than Redhat.
Troy is a beautiful place to live. Plenty of ways to get into trouble, cheap living in 100 year old buildings, and endless troylets to entertain you.
Great times...
hehe - go aheand and play with your 'big iron' xeon and athlon toys... Call me when you have 3-4 Million to drop on an IBM p690 with 210 PCI slots, each one an individual bus.
Power4 ASCI will be delivered by end of the year. Will be most impressive, as are all of the ASCI systems.
Real servers have each individual PCI slot on their own bus. This is done for multiple reasons, error isolation and recovery, bandwidth, etc.
They are switching to FLAC. The problem is that there are a ton of shows out there in the SHN format. I would imagine that in the next year or so, the transition will be made to FLAC.
Here is the page that etree has on it...
Eco's books are amazing. Also check out Focualt's Pendulum, and his best known The Name of the Rose.
It is very rare to find a challenging read that gives such a reward as his books do.
I agree, I also work for a very large tech company, and we have an army of lawyers to go over patent applications and make sure that it is good enough to make it through the process.
Most of the applications that get sent to the lawyers are returned with a "publish, not patent" stamp on them.
That being said, patent licensing is a big chunk of revenue for my company. We have been leading the pack in patents for the last 10 years, and they say we have gotten about 10 billion dollars from them.
You are correct. "Faster" is better, but for different reasons. For CRTs, you're looking at eliminating the flickering and for LCDs, you want to eliminate the "ghosting".
Sorry if I didn't make that clear in my above post.
Refresh rates don't make sense on an LCD... The parameter you need to look at is the Rise/Fall time of the pixels (also known as response time). The pixels don't change unless they need to, whereas for CRTs, every pixel on the screen is being redrawn (60 times a second at 60Hz, obviously)
The response times are getting faster and cheaper, but still leave a bit to be desired.
The total response time of a pixel can be (typically) anywhere from 15ms to 40ms for an LCD monitor. Most are between 25 and 35. 30ms response time is pretty much average. If the whole screen is changing quickly (think fast FPS gaming), you would only be getting the equivalant of 33Hz or so. At 15ms (for considerably more $$), you are looking at an analogous 66Hz refresh.
Most of the hardcore gamers I know don't like less than 85Hz on their CRTs, so still lots of room for improvement on the LCDs.
I think one of the reasons that companies like going with one of the "big names" in linux is because Red Hat and SuSE have something that the debians and gentoos don't have.... Lawyers.
Linux is an IP headache for companies w/ a history of licensing and patent. You have to tiptoe around the GPL and what you can or can't do, while incorporating your proprietary software, usually with cross-liscensing agreements and NDAs out the wazoo.
IBM really does want to get to an open standard (Never thought I'd say that...), but it is going to be slow going because nobody wants to make a mistake and end up getting sued for millions. (It has already happened w/ SCO and IBM, and there weren't any obvious breaches in that case)
That's not AIX.. That's the system firmare and hardware. You can load any OS that is supported onto a partition (which means Linux and AIX).
I have systems running 4 logical partitions of Linux on POWER4+ hardware right now. Has nothing to do with AIX.
They have so many pins because it is not a single cpu. It is an MCM (multi-chip-module). Each Processor "Brick" contains up to 8 CPU cores.
Current draw is around 250-300A for an MCM. Alot? Hell yeah, but your average athlon XP pulls about 35A. 8 x 35 = 280.
So, not so big a difference.
For a pretty accurate representation, except for the actual jobs they are doing and the hijinx they get into, I would have to go with ... Half Baked.
At least around here, most of those in software are pretty much sandal wearin' potheads. Makes for a laid back work environment.
GPUL the stupidest name for a processor? What were they thinking?
GigaProcessorUltraLite. GP was their first gigahertz processor and the internal name for the POWER4.