Have a look here: http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/image.htm for Google Earth based dashboards showing WLCG live grid sites, links, data transfer and job activity.

Correct. Tier 3 is local batch farm facilities, etc., which aren't really part of the project as such.

*sigh* Don't be such a tool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_pricing

Read the first two sentences. Then shut up.

That was referring to ticketed events, where demand exceeds supply.

I don't think anyone's selling tickets for you to sit in your underwear watching cat videos somehow.

I was arguing against the notion that letting demand of entertainment determine pricing is some kind of cultural evil... it isn't.

Isn't it? As opposed to other approaches, it effectively and consistently excludes particular groups from particular events, biasing attendance towards other groups. It's hard to see how that could be a good thing, culturally...

Leaving aside points about merchandise sales, diversity of attendance, size of fan base, and the difference between specific and generic entertainment, look at it this way.

Say an artist wants to sell tickets to his gigs at a fixed price he considers fair, that the majority of his fans would be able to afford. Bear in mind this is about who actually attends the gig as much as it is anything else.

Why exactly should he not be allowed to do that? How is it fair, to the artist, to circumvent his intentions and require demand-set pricing (whether directly, or indirectly by allowing scalping)?

Well, I'm not real sure that someone who can afford to attend a concert for $100 a seat would be priced out by tickets that were $150 (or $20 and $30, you get the idea).

That basically boils down to, "if someone has $100, they must have $150". You can see the problem with that, right?

As for luck being more 'virtuous' than $50, it's not really about virtue, it depends what you're aiming for. If you want diversity in terms of attendance - and there are good reasons for that - then yes, luck is going to be a better system than 'most money wins'.

And in terms of cheaper tickets becoming available, I don't think that's really likely to be the case to any significant extent. If tickets sold out previously, they're unlikely to become cheaper, and if they weren't selling out previously it's often the case that they would have been available cheaply on the door or through promotions towards the date of the event anyway.

Yes, in this context, it is.

In that case it would make sense for the promoter to sell tickets off cheap (an unsold ticket gets you nothing); that'd be a saving for the customer compared to fixed pricing.

Fixed pricing doesn't preclude the promoter dropping that price if the tickets haven't sold. That already happens.

You are making an awful lot of assumptions (the biggest one being that every single show will sell well enough that people that can afford fixed prices will be priced out).

Not really, no. I think you're confusing 'reasoned conclusion' with 'assumption' there.

With a demand-based pricing system, prices would inevitably rise for any popular event where demand exceeds supply. A rise in prices will price out some people who could have afforded the lower fixed prices, inherently so (the exact degree to which that is true will depend on the extent of the rise which will in turn depend on the particular supply/demand siutation of a particular event, but it will be true to some degree for any popular event).

There are of course events where demand doesn't exceed supply, but those aren't really relevant in this context I think. Getting tickets to unpopular not-sold-out shows isn't usually a problem...

Artifical scarcity? Get a grip. It's actual scarcity. There are only so many tickets available. It is impossible for everyone to be able to attend every event they want.

Demand-based pricing wouldn't change that ('make things better for everyone?' Are you nuts?) except for the richest. But instead of ability to attend being based on timing and luck, essentially, it biases attendance towards wealth. This would make it worse for many. Further, it would reduce the diversity of those attending. That would be bad, both culturally, and for the artists/teams/etc., if you think about it. It is not a good idea.

And just FYI, front row seats are often held back from the initial sale for friends and family of the artist, etc. In those cases, they go on sale later if and when they're not taken up.

So then how do you distribute tickets, other than having a mad, random rush to sell them in the first few seconds they are on sale?

Registries of interest. Membership sales and similar schemes. Lotteries. Pre-sales. Phased sales. You know, any of the many ways that are already used.

There isn't a perfect solution where everyone who wants to go to an event where demand exceeds capacity can go. But pricing according to demand is probably, culturally speaking, just about the worst solution you could come up with.

Sellers could cut them out by raising their prices so that demand matches supply.

And wouldn't that be great? Instead of the venue, artists, promoters, ticketing agencies, etc., all covering their costs and making a healthy profit, they could... make a bigger profit. Woohoo!

Of course, for the millions of people attending events, they'd be spending a lot more than they were, or able to attend fewer events, especially if they want to sit in anything remotely resembling a good seat. And front row seats would only be affordable by billionaires and the five richest kings of Europe. But hey, people who were already making a healthy profit would make even more! Hurrah!

Or, maybe, just maybe, in the interests of culture, fixed price ticketing is actually a good thing...

No, they don't. Lossy rips are simply not bit-for-bit identical, and you're being completely disingenuous (no shock, based on the remainder of your reply) if you claim that they are. We're not talking FLAC here.

No. Lossy rips may not be bit-for-bit identical, and if they're encoded differently they certainly won't be. But if they're ripped with decent software/hardware (so you get identical wavs) and encoded with the same software and the same settings they will be identical. I have identical mp3s right here (identical md5sums) that were ripped at different times on different PCs but encoded with the same software and settings.

I'm not really clear on why you think lossy rips would be 'simply not bit-for-bit identical'. If you take an identical source and apply an algorithm to it, unless there's some random or other variable element to the algorithm, you're going to get the same result every time. The only variation here is going to come from errors reading the source CD (resulting in different wavs) and the use of different encoders. That's still a lot of potentially identical MP3s though.

I hadn't seen the page with that image ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch-prototype/ ).

Prototype C is the actual model they're using for demos, but you're right, that 'near-final industrial design' does appear to have a higher res. 1680x1050 at a guess which would fit with your estimates as well.

Getting a screen of that resolution on something like this isn't outside the realms of probability. But if they can do that within a $300 price range, that'd be impressive. I'd certainly consider getting one with that resolution.