... ... ... that response is plain and straightforward. Nowhere did you attempt to relate a sense of irony or use sarcasm to express smug indifference. "I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul."

Yeah that would be the natural response to the hypothetical Angry Boss.

I would say something along the lines of "I thought the OS was going to do that. Somebody should have told me that people were installing an OS on 8 cores that wasn't ready to automatically hand out work to all 8 cores."

What I can't stand about the core trend is ... well, two things:

1) One core is slower than the computer I bought second hand in 1998. This does not instill me with a great deal of confidence in the motherboard's ultimate ability to get "R" done.

2) Manufacturers and retailers no longer care if you know how fast your computer really is or really can be. "It's an i5".

"How fast is that?"

"... ... uh ... ... uhhhh ... it's faster than the i3."

"Where did i4 go?"

"MANAGER!!! ... you can talk to my manager. I have to help another customer. SECURITY!!! ... don't worry that's not about you. ... um, see ya."

At any rate, when Pentti wasn't gaining popularity, he just figured that he was scaring too many people. After all would you agree with a plan to save the world if it involved your slaughter?

So he increased the number of people (probably Finlanders) he would need to include in the great plan of green fascism, and then by ratio increased the number of "large mammals of this size which the planet can safely sustain".

So now Pentti is a fan of 500 million instead of only 2 million people. That itself is a pretty major indictment against most of his math and his planning. But his planning for green fascism isn't interesting. What's interesting is his insight into things such as the state of mind and the spiritual torture of a person who actually cares about the planet and the ecology foremost before concerns about civilization and progress.

I disagree that parent should have been modded as a troll.

To me, Linkola's numbers don't make sense. Why would he write in 1992 that the planet can sustain only 2 million human beings, and now 20 years later his claim is that the Earth can sustain 500 million? The answer is simple: Linkola isn't actually calculating for the whole planet.

Linkola is only interested in Finland and the future of the possibility of a lifestyle of doing nothing but fishing for a living, plain and simple. He is a firm believer in a traditional lifestyle that he sees disappearing. To him, there is no person who doesn't fish for a living that is important. You should read his words on the deaths of Polish children in World War 2, "do we need endless copies of little pig-tailed Polish children? What have we actually lost in World War 2?" And so on.

So what Linkola obviously did (obvious, to me) is to judge for himself how many Finnish fisherman can exist in Finland with complete and total autonomy and some sufficient number of women as concubines or whatever. And then he multiplied the number by the number of Finland-size units of land could be found around the planet and called it a day.

Of course his ideas were unpopular, he was labeled a kook and wasn't listened to by anyone but two types:

1) Die-hard "Green" activists
2) People who see the subtle truths he's expressing

The fact is, the world *won't* sustain so many people for very long. Already a growing number of people are living drier and drier lifestyles with less and less water to drink and the forests are quickly receding. Pentti isn't making that up, nor is he making up the horror of overfishing and the world's decimated fish and ocean mammal populations. Pentti isn't making up pollution.

And, too, Pentti isn't making up egotism and the basic fundamental fact that, no, there is no justification for being alive on Earth. He skips the part that you don't need justification to be here and to be happy, but he does make it clear that he doesn't care either way. As far as he's concerned, the life of the planet is more important than the human will to seek comforts and experiences that will destroy the planet's life.

I think you would be quite challenged, frankly, to prove that civilization is *not* for naught.

Prove somehow that civilization isn't just a fancy form of insanity, or that it has some kind of intrinsic value.

Prove that civilization isn't just one form of rust existing on top of another "form of rust".

I have a few quotes to share about that.

"Not for the first time I felt myself confronted by the dizzying possibility that an entire episode in the story of mankind might have been forgotten." -- Graham Hancock

"In short, we appear to be approaching the end of the line. We cannot expand; we seem unable to intensify production without wreaking further havoc, and the planet is fast becoming a wasteland." -- James Serpell, In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships

"Evolution has developed (or the Creator created, as you will) millions of species of organisms on the globe. They all have their own culture, business life, love life, joys and sorrows. The swelling mountain, at this moment already of three hundred billion kilos of human flesh, is suffocating all these sisters and brothers underneath it - and choking itself only among the last. What is the ratio of matters and meanings, what is the ratio of mishaps?

Yet a little detail: what is the part of someone who is a friend of nature? Does he first suffer the tragedy of his own species in his mind, and then a tragedy a million times larger?" -- Pentti Linkiola, The World's End Knows No Mercy

âoeThe coming years will prove increasingly cynical and cruel. People will definitely not slip into oblivion while hugging each other. The final stages in the life of humanity will be marked by the monstrous war of all against all: the amount of suffering will be maximal.â â Pentti Linkola, Can Life Prevail?

"To date, the hunting way of life has been the most successful and persistent adaptation man has ever achieved. Nor does this evaluation exclude the present precarious existence under the threat of nuclear annihilation and the population explosion. It is still an open question whether man will be able to survive the exceedingly complex and unstable ecological conditions he has created for himself. If he fails in this task, interplanetary archaeologists of the future will classify our planet as one in which a very long and stable period of small-scale hunting and gathering was followed by an apparently instantaneous efflorescence of technology and society leading rapidly to extinction." -- Lee and Devore, Man the Hunter

Numerous commentators here have successfully pointed out in numerous ways that there's nothing inherently "dumb" with producing eight-core machines.

Among the mentioned:

* Numerous VMs working together to perform complex network tasks

* Eight lawnmowers getting eight times as much grass cut in the same time -- not competing in car races

I think what's obvious is that the comment made by Qualcomm may have been silly and perhaps even meant to be childish.

Are we really to believe that they held a meeting, shared lunch, ate yogurt, called it a day, relaxed their ties and blouses and said:

"So, after all's said and done, let's just tell Taiwan that eight cores are TOOOOPIIITTTHHH! BUH HUH DUH!!!"

The concept is so utterly ridiculous I have to wonder what the perceived "angle" is, or what possible advantage could be gained by the comment.

Will the average Wal-Mart and Best Buy shoppers somehow get wind of these comments and make well-informed decisions to go with cell phones and computers containing Qualcomm architecture?

"Yo honey don't buy the faggy brand that's all stupid. We like money! Buy the one that's made by the sexy people that call the other people stupid. Stupid, thtupid people!" *spit & drool while talking, etc.*

Will there be some contingency of "nerds" that reads the comments and just latches on with teeth-bared frenzy, bits and clings tenaciously to Chandrasekher's buttocks, frothing at the mouth and screaming (between clenched teeth full of buttock meat), "FFRRKKK MEDIATEK! FRK UUU! HRRRGGGHHH," eventually to develope a symbiotic parasitic relationship with Chandrasekher and become an extension of his buttocks (perhaps to one day be meat between the rabid teeth of some other nerd?)

That also seems highly unlikely. Even a quick perusal of the comments here at Slashdot reveals not only do numerous people conclude that Chandrasekher made asinine statements, but also that those who agree with Chandrasekher are putting thought behind their decisions and also don't resemble lampreys.

But anybody could have predicted that the more mindless masses would never be exposed to Chandrasekher's words and also that those who are exposed will put well-informed thought behind their interpretations of his statements.

Well, "anyone", but possibly except for Chandrasekher.

Hmm... could Chandrasekher just be ... *gulp* ... TOOPID?

Good excuse when you're in the boss's office explaining why the application you coded isn't using all 8 of the customer's cores to operate faster.

Also make sure to tell him it's hard to use two lawnmowers at once, maybe you'll qualify for some kind disability.

Exactly. And to make matters worse, those hours of research are forced on the discriminating user because PC manufacturers no longer advertise processor speeds or relative benchmarks, and massive/chain retailers have no clue what any of that means and typically prefer to hire people who don't care and don't want to hear it, because they want customers who are looking for "that sort of thing" to go elsewhere rather than take up floorspace sounding kooky and making the other customers look up and scratch their heads. ("Huh? Did he say something about numbers? I thought the computer just herp-derp'd the video-nets up to the HD audio Monster fibers.")

You can't just take one thing you're saying, and compare it to what somebody else is saying, and say they're wrong but you're right using entirely different words. Words don't have intrinsic value so you can't prove that you proved the other person wrong. Or are we all just expected to sit here and drool down our chins, and nod anxiously, while you two duke it out?

I spend $25 every three months on four 5-blade razor heads with a lubricating strip. If I spent the same money on disposable, single-blade razors that are a bag of 10 for $1, then I would have 250 single-blade razors every three months.

But in that three months' time, I would not get once single shave anywhere near as smooth and nick-free as I get with my 5-blade heads with the lubricating strip.

And the disposable really isn't worth keeping around for a second or third shave. Yes, I've been there: I've done that. It's a noticeably worse shave each time you re-use a disposable one-use razor. You might disagree with me, there. You might be smug and tree-hugging yourself to death over that one, but read on.

Instead of carrying around a slim, little blue box in my travel pack, I would be carrying around a big hefty bag of fucking two-hundred and fifty disposable razors. They don't "pack" that easily. If somebody wants to throw in a robotic arm that packs their shape for maximum quantum efficiency be my guest -- the razors will not take up the same tiny little space as the four individual 5-blade heads and will not be retrievable to their original dimensions.

And, whether you use them for 1 use or scrounge and save and use them for 10 uses and then tie them into your beetle-inhabited dreadlocks once they've split their last hair, the fact of the matter is you will still, eventually, no matter how you cut it, have to dispose of all 250 disposable razors.

And I, for the same amount of money, experienced much more joy with a much closer shave, heads that lasted much much longer, and threw away only four heads.

Now let's make an analogy to the processors.

Your suggestion is that for the cost of one quad-core computer, I might as well have spent my money on two hundred and fifty thermistors.

Or something like that. I really can't pay attention to the processor side of the argument because I'm too smug about my choice of razor heads.

Yeah but how many other people were doing searches for small scale explosives and posting pictures that impressed them... ... THIS MONTH CALLED "JULY" HMM?

Okay, yeah, but come on: during this whole "great recession", how much did entertainment really suffer? Shit, even the em-effing auto industries blew up and sunk. And look who was still kicking: apple, nintendo, sony, microsoft, anybody who was making digital entertainment devices, media, games, or social networks. We might have been in the great recession but how many of us were hauling a cart through the streets chanting "rags, clothes, bottles" ["Lies My Father Told Me", Film]? Even the word "ghetto" suffered none of its hyper-realized territory and instead gained momentum in becoming a stratified excellent word for one's chosen living pad, far distant from a place where you might be forced to live shortly before you're due to be executed.

In this "great recession", entertainment stayed strong. EVERYBODY had money for more entertainment and NOW LOOK AT THINGS! =^)

The depression had, what was it again?

* Chasing a tire with a stick
* Throwing shoes over lamp posts
* Hitting a fence with a stick

Hmm... forgot a few:

* Gambling and getting killed
* Drinking and going to prison for life
* Being lucky to find a cubby hole to sleep in that might be outside of the apartment window of someone who is still lucky enough to own and play in the middle of the night a recorded musical device

Okay, let's look at those last three because the first three are boring as shit:

* Gambling? Why worry about getting knifed, you have DLC. Will you have fun or will it suck balls? Who knows! DLC!!!!

* America's peak of alcohol consumption is ever-increasing. Right after it became apparent we were about to have shitty financial problems, suddenly all kinds of old prohibitions went down in flames. Alcohol came back on television. Eating horses became legal again. Sacre bleu!

* Who needs a Victrola when MP3 players are $13 and earbuds are $7? For a $20 you have something that will entertain you whenever you want and it's small enough that guarding it with your life probably means you'll be dead before anybody's interested in touching you in the places where you're likely to have hidden it.

So who's being distracted from what?

COME ON PEOPLE! HAVE SOME SENSE OF CONTEXT!

Oh, that's cool. Thanks. Though it is inconvenient that they place this behind an option.

Well. I'm sure it's plenty convenient for their federal information-sharing contract.

It's "hip" to call these people heroes. Even somebody who's flailing and obviously over-blowing the relevance and true informational content of his "whistle-blown" revelations, like Snowden, is unique enough to get branded with the laziest sort of term, "hero".

Remember when Steve Jobs died? Raise your hand, anybody:

* who had friends that you KNEW had no idea who Jobs was until they read his Obit

* and who suddenly (after mysteriously disappearing in their room and heavy internet use for a few hours) waxed eloquent about how Jobs was a masterful genius and true humanitarian ...

* In Exactly The Same Words As Hundreds of Thousands Of Others Blogging At That Same Moment About Jobs' Passing

* ... who were also totally unaware of the man's real personality, lifestyle, or legacy ...

* BUT who all (Your friend and all the bloggers they were emulating) shared one trait: if they had to lose their iPhone or half of their head, they would keep the iPhone.

Jobs was their surrogate teat-mother. The iPhone is a digital Breast. "Mommy" died is about as complex as all those blogs sending up soliloquy and elegy in flowery language rather resembling a lot of weepy William Gibson clones (who they would have avoided sounding like if they had ever read him, out of like, uniqueness.)

Did these people composing funerary fugues about Jobs really know the person? Would they have lifted a finger in memorium if they had been treated like the Foxconn worker who put actual hands on the actual components of the beloved, sacred iPhone the innards of which they did never and will never lay eyes on let alone have a single molecule of interest in?

As I said before, Jobs' legacy has one last bullet-point: completely destroy the common sense of what a tragic loss really is, of what the death of a loved one really feels like, of what a great human being is really composed of, of what genius truly amounts to.

Well, what you mention about hero-calling works the same way.

Hero worship has been dumbed down and emotionally deadened to a form of entertainment. Are we just going to be "nerds" and so engulfed in our selectively chosen media apparatus that we forget, America is on the world's most twisted hay-ride, ever, and it includes the ghosts of MTV and every other mainstream channel-rich junk-heap.

I highly doubt the people who chant "hero" really feel the weight of the word or really think about it. It's a mis-used word. Totally fictitious characters are extremely popular heroes, and by all reckoning, how messed up is *that*? They aren't even real!

I can already hear the comic book nerds creeping up to give me castration by pincher-bot. "Hooww daaare yooou! There's a hero for everybody in the rich pages which I can only afford because I was born in the one place in the world where even if you're homeless you're still relatively more wealthy than 85% of the rest of the entire planet blah blah blaaahhhh! Time for Robot to pinch off your balls!"

How can you expect a bunch of people to "do" something about it when their level of interest and truly their level of participation is about on par with a teeny-bopper at a glam fest?

Google NSA's "Echelon" and CARNIVORE. Not too many years ago the NSA were already world wide web levels of notorious for claims that they were monitoring every single cell phone and internet communication, of domestic and unsuspicious Americans, and that those communications were being converted into text by computer, and that the text was being scanned for keywords.

The process involved searching texts or textualized conversions of voice data, for National Security-sensitive keywords like "bomb", "assassinate", "president", and so on. Then these texts were made all lower-case except for the keywords being upper-case (or something like that, who cares) and they were stored and the keywords were tagged onto the files.

Based on how "weighty" the communication appeared to be -- which was calculated using some telemetrics involving the parties involved, the subjects involved, the timing, and the number of keyword phrases included -- the text might be "flagged" and this might get a person watched by the NSA.

So, there was this huge backlash that used the internet to spread the word about Echelon and CARNIVORE and to create support for a movement against it.

The idea was that people would post an overload of messages with keywords in them like "BOMB", "ASSASSINATE", and "PRESIDENT", for the purpose of creating needless and indeed (given that the authors had no motive of making a bomb, or assassinating anyone, let alone the President) senseless work for the CARNIVORE system to churn through.

I can't remember what such buzzword-loaded messages were called. Carnivore Bombs? Something like that?

Anyways, WHERE THE FUCK is all of that historical context when Slashdot authors post new shit or comment on shit about the NSA?

Where your head at?

I'm not upset that this isn't "NEWS". In the strictest sense, the NSA watching *everything you say* isn't news unless you count things that were apparent over ten years ago. But that's not what's upsetting me, right now. Not slashdot's tendency to feature content not quite "news"-worthy, at all.

Instead, I'm upset that the people who submit and comment either have some kind of inability to connect historical events together and keep a relatively sane sense of the importance and relevance and other things that are really REALLY freaking important when you're critically analyzing a situation, or, they're all simply too young.

Too bad there's not a way to realistically age-filter submissions and comments because frankly anything anybody under 25 has to tell me about the NSA is "cool-talk" that has more to do with posturing and meeting some weirded-out hipster status-quo than anything to do with speculation on directions our country is headed, privacy, etc.

It's like the people who, twenty years ago, were still angrily shouting down and taunting anybody who mentioned the "NSA" as paranoid, crazy, schio, etc. ... are today just keeping a low profile and towing the "hip talk" line. Even if not the same individuals, the same personality profile.

They really secretly are like "this is bullshit, this doesn't exist, people who think like this should be zombified and marched into a large oven", but because it's "hip" subject material, they don't really put any thought behind it but hit the "submit" button and are like "hope nobody notices I think they're all batshit crazy."

It's not any good. Google doesn't even have a truly working syntax, any more. You can try and force specific phrase searches all you want and the "AI" or whatever they're using goes out and grabs "similar" terms anyways, to add unnecessary things to your results. You can exclude certain phrases or words all you want BUT if they are one of the "similar" terms to something else you're searching for, they will still show up. Google is totally broken with all of its "smart"-ness!

Meanwhile, this "smart" searching is backed by loads and loads of monitoring. There's I guess what we could call "passive" monitoring, where complete search phrases are stored and used to create some kind of "likelihood" for the sake of "quick searching", where search results are provided for you in a drop-down menu below the text input control on the search page.

But that "quick searching" means there's what we could call an "active" monitoring, where every keypress you enter is being sent to the server that responds with likely search terms based on that database.

So not only is it kind of broken, but it's also kind of Orwellian.

And I thought Google was already on the list of evil corporations that are stealing our privacy and handing it to whatever despots make a demand. So why don't news articles continue that rhetoric instead of sounding so aghast that this company that has been mined for data by the feds in the past is potentially creepy?