by cost-effective computer I meant cluster! Also, I would like to add I had high hopes for the bulldozer, so it was disappointing it was all marketing hype.

When you can save 8000 per server then invest it in something else it becomes a different issue. I am not trying to say AMD processors are superior, I am just saying factoring in all costs including power and and the lifespan of the unit, AMD wins a lot of the time. Every computer cluster at every University I have ever had access to used AMD processors (with the exception of some NVidia units), and this was for their CS departments. I suspect part of the issue is its easier to justify power budgets and not as easy to justify 8000 more per server to upper admins. Figuring you could buy 1.5 AMD servers for the price of 1 Intel server you end up with a more cost effective computer as far as total CPU performance and RAM capacity goes. Power consumption is not one of AMD's strong suits, and I remember one of our server admins told me the power bill once for the main cluster, it was sickening. I vaguely remember it being in the hundreds of thousands per year. It saddens me that AMD is in this situation, but I seem to remember a time where Intel was pulling some pretty anti-competitive moves, though AMD should have capitalized on its successes in the past. I seem to remember, at least for the desktop environment, the Athlon XP's had better gaming performance. I suppose thats a small market, however even that was an opportunity that could have been exploited better.

Fair enough. Yes, "The more comments the better" is a bad thing to say. "The more strategic comments the better" perhaps. I only meant that code should have appropriate commenting, not have absolutely no comments at all. It doesn't have to explain basic math or logic operations, but a sufficiently long math equation should have some explanation of what it is doing. For example, in matlab (x'Ax)/(x'x) should probably be commented as "Rayleigh Quotient" or something. At work I use C# for a trading platform and we hardly ever do any math statements that are complicated enough to need comments, but it does come up every once in awhile. Usually we just comment pretty much like you said.

AMD servers are way cheaper, and there are no performance issues most admins can't handle. What do you mean by performance? If you mean slower, then yes, but if you mean reliability than they are about the same. Why else do Universities almost exclusively use AMD processors in their clusters for cutting edge research? I can see your point if you are only buying 1-3 servers but you start saving shitloads of money when its a server farm.

Agreed. I am a PhD mathematics student and I can attest its extremely difficult to understand equations without context and written explanation. Im also a programmer (for my job) and I write my code to be very readable with proper formatting and self-explanatory variables/classes (as much as they can be), however even when I look at my OWN code from the distant past I need comments to sort out the macro-structure of it as well as to explain a complicated line quickly. If you don't remember what some class or function does, its easier to comment that line to briefly explain it rather than have to go look through everything and find it then logically deconstruct it to figure out what it does. Its just bad practice to not comment your code. The more comments the better, and also the more readable it is to other people that may have to use your code in the future. I have had too many times where I get code that takes twice as long to understand what it is doing just because the author didn't comment.

You assume thats what every person wants to do. Some people wanted to use their home equity for retirement. This is not that unreasonable nor irresponsible. Sell you home, downgrade to a cheap condo or rent an apt. use the rest as part of retirement. I met a lady on a cruise before the housing bubble burst that sold her home, used that with her retirement fund (which she said wasn't a lot) to finance an all expense paid cruise for the remaining 10 years of her life. Or what about people that require a nursing home? They could sell their house and retire to a good one, now they are stuck with free or cheap options. Ever been to a cheap nursing home? Nice come-back though.

A musician does not always make money off concerts. I for example work with people over the internet and compose music. I am not selling a song for .02, that is ludicrous, especially since both of you ignore the fact that a portion of this goes to the distributor. Its more than fair to pay .50 cents to a 1 dollar a song if it has no DRM. 0.02 per song is wishful thinking by freeloaders.

Because the big 3 cell phone companies want to monopolize the market. Anyone that isn't an idiot would see that the US government is in cahoots with large corporations such as these, and is actively trying to secure their profits with legislation at the expense of the people. These Wallstreet occupiers are a bunch of idiots, as the problem isn't that its wrong to work on Wallstreet, or its wrong to be a banker, or its wrong to be rich. What is wrong is that the laws allow corporations and a few bad apple wealthy people to legally bribe politicians into doing what they want rather than what the people wants. This is why we have draconian copyright laws, as well as legalized monopolies all over the place. Corporations should be completely banned from being able to contribute to political campaigns at all, even through secondary non-profit organizations or PAC's. Corporations should NOT be considered people and should have no rights as such. There also should be laws against big media from promoting any one candidate or black-listing them like they do Ron Paul (not that hes a great candidate, its just stupid that media can silence someone at a whim to promote the status quo).

Apparently people who are 'responsible' in your book also have the ability to tell the future. Give me a break. This wiped out so many people that were responsible you have absolutely no idea. There are college graduates that can't get work who will be permanently financially stunted because of this recession, and will never be able to do what your parents did. There are people who owned 75 percent of their home, only to see their homes drop 50 percent in value to where even if they wanted to sell it, they wouldn't even get remotely close to what they paid into it.

Agreed. Whenever I get a phone advertisement I actively make a choice to never buy their product since only fuck-bags call you at home. Whenever I get a TV advertisement its almost the same unless its for products I already have been using. People think advertising works on everyone, but it doesn't. I don't choose to buy any product based on an advertisement. I either research something online or go look at it in a store and get a feel for it. The only argument you could say about advertisements affecting me is that I maybe am aware of a handful of products because of them, which is not the same thing as what advertisement's goal is, i.e. convince you to buy it.

You may want to consider selling the gold at some point. It has been exponential growth ever since it has been sold on the market. Nothing can maintain this level of growth unless you expect it to be 2500 within two years. It will most likely collapse and maintain some lower level than where its at.

I was too when I worked at an RA in computer vision. 14 an hour I believe, but they wouldn't pay me for more than 20 hours even though they demanded about 40 so it was much less.

My original idea was that you can only extend copyrights for yourself to some maximum, otherwise the copyright expires after a short period of time. That way, it still allows the rights to acquire copyrights, and the rights to sell them but the buyer will not be able to keep it very long in comparison to the creator. Say a copyright has 5 years to start, and is renewable up to 3-4 times for another 5 years only if it is held by the original creator. The only issue with this is with bands that share the copyright for their music, you would need to probably transfer ownership to the remaining members that renewed if one of them sold of their stake once it expired or let it expire. Anyway, I would also support your idea since its infinitely better than the current system.

Yes, I agree with this. There is no reason an unskilled factory worker should make more than 20 an hour. Once you get your skill set built up, I don't see a problem with more. Keep in mind 20 an hour is common for most entry level skilled tech support jobs.

2.50 for a movie? .50 an episode? 0.02 a song? Do you have any idea how many songs you would have to sell to make a living as a musician at that rate especially with people gouging your music sales? Assuming you make all the profits from your songs, you would need to sell :

40,000 dollars per year / 0.02 dollars per song = 2,000,000 songs / year

That seems ridiculous to me. A dollar a song is plenty cheap, and albums usually are packaged cheaper. I can see maybe .50 for an episode since most TV shows have a large audience, but even then maybe up to about 2.50 for an episode. Then, movies should be priced at some fraction of a movie ticket up to 1:1.