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Comment Re:The Cray and the altair had a race.... (Score 1) 105

Yes, the difference between the top and bottom of the barrel at any given moment is significant (perhaps about 2 orders of magnitude, assuming that the points shown are typical), but the difference between the barrel now and the barrel in 10-15 years is about equally significant. That same Cray was 5 times less efficient than the IBM PC (about 5 years later), and about 1 million times less efficient than your typical modern laptop (about 35 years later).

Comment Re:So... (Score 3, Informative) 156

Only after sinking however much money into lawyer's fees, and awards that low are fairly obvious code for "we're required by law to award you something, but you're a real asshat so you get the absolute minimum amount allowed".

From a quick scan of TFA, the final judgment boils down to:

  • The spammers missed several deadlines, then blamed the last one on their lawyer dropping the ball and his partners being tied up on other cases at the time, then got an extension of a few weeks and promptly busted out a dozen-odd witnesses (they'd previously claimed that only the boss knew the relevant info) and upped their claim to about $135M. Even negligence would be grounds enough for them to lose something, and furthermore this history is evidence enough that they're deliberately screwing around and thus grounds enough for them to lose more.
  • The spammers were demanding Spamhaus to disclose irrelevant details about its employees and equipment (it was pointed out that Spamhaus doesn't track who downloads their list, so wouldn't know which ISPs might be using it to block spam).
  • Said boss's back-of-the-envelope estimate (cost of one e-mail multiplied by number of e-mails he thinks were blocked because Spamhaus listed them as an alleged spammer) bounced around so much ($11M to $135M to $122M to $30M) that he was clearly exceeding his reasonable business knowledge, thus the whole idea was thrown out for lack of evidence.
  • The $27K was based on "okay, fine, we'll buy you lost three client contracts a month earlier than you would have otherwise", but $27K was revenue and it was pointed out that they should be looking at profit instead. Said boss claimed it was pure profit because "the e-mails were already sent"; this was questioned generally and specifically, and also thrown out for lack of evidence.

Comment Re:Destroying cancer cells is bad. (Score 2) 98

The AC's link goes to a domain squatted by those "what you need, when you need it" assholes.

Here is the site that I assume the AC meant to link to (one of several near-identical sites, also including cancerfungus.com).

Here is a Wikipedia article mentioning Tullio Simoncini, the guy behind said site:

Other criticisms were directed to Mazzucco after his decision, starting September 2008, to publicize an alternative cancer therapy based on Sodium bicarbonate and proposed by Italian ex-doctor Tullio Simoncini. Said therapy is currently unproven, and Simoncini was expelled from the Italian Medical Association after he was tried and found guilty of fraud and manslaughter, since a patient died, allegedly as result of Simoncini’s treatment.

For bonus points, here is a defense of the idea written by David Icke, infamous "world leaders are really evil reptile aliens in disguise!" conspiracy theorist. And here is another positive mention at cancerfightingstrategies.com, and here is that site's "where to get products" page with a mix of bogus vitamins, bogus berries, and faith healers.

Comment Re:I'm Confused on the Article's "Cathedral" (Score 1) 200

News to me too, but according to that same article, they were more in that direction (but moved in the bazaar direction in response to CatB). Closed-source, meanwhile, is the obvious next step from "source is unavailable except when the cabal releases" to "source is unavailable, full stop"; the original definition of "cathedral" does represent that, if only by presenting a weaker form of it.

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