Topic: advertising first, product second

[Matthew]

I almost never see adverts for individual Intel CPUs, usually I see them as part of a system (generally a laptop). But then again I don't pay much attention to advertisements in general. I don't buy intel, but that's more of a cost-to-performance issue than anything (Although I personally think hyperthreading is just a buzzword that does little to improve performance in practical situations), not a vendetta against intel for being corrupt or false advertising. And it doesn't stop me from buying NVidia instead of ATI.

[Crash]

Well, I can imagine that happening in a court in Scotland.
That is a first world country (thanks to being funded by England) with the judicial system of a banana republic and this comes from someone who's fought more than one court battle there in the last 3 years. But even when the court rulings (sometimes) and the solicitors (always) there are bent, things in life have a way of working out for you, nomatter how grievous they might seem up-front.
You don't have to be an activist to be sued senseless there, I think you just have to try and be an honest soul.

Hyperthreading really was just a buzzword in the Pentium 4 era because of how the CPU architecture was backed-up by a buffer that stored instructions for later execution (ie. they were stored when the CPU was too busy and they would be executed later when the CPU was idle). That was a really convoluted system and it defeated the HT implementation on the Pentium 4 completely.
With the Core2Duo, they're based on what was then the Xeon architecture and with those, and particularly the i7, the HT makes a good impact apparently.

My difficulty is that I always confuse it with Hypertransport which was the Athlon64 equivalent of the FSB ... ?

[Scyphi]

What if the court ruled that atoms cannot exist, found the tomato guilty and then abolished all laws of physics, and calculus?

Well, first off, the science world at large would object and seek a repeal.

In other news, since you mentioned tomatoes, the US courts once ruled that tomatoes are vegetables and not fruits, a ruling I believe still stands today. Before you complain about how idiotic that seems, they did it to resolve an importing issue, because the prices for importing tomatoes varied on whether or not it was called a fruit or a vegetable, and people were, of course, exploiting it, so the courts had to put an end to it.

[Crash]

Yeah, scientifically that's nonsense because they have the seeds inside. Just shows that legal decisions can be right in some ways while being totally wrong in others.

I guess the court was more interested in what section of the supermarket the tomato ended up in - among vegetables or fruit, rather than what the scientists called it.

I read somewhere that a strawberry isn't a fruit either because it effectively is the seed, rather than containing them.

[Matthew]

I just don't see how splitting 1 core into 2 helps at all. Unless you're running 8 processes that all demand total control of the processor. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't even find enough to do to load up 4 cores, much less 8. Now, if there was a tech that let 2 cores act as 1, I'd buy that in a heartbeat for all the poorly or not-at-all multithreaded applications out there.

[Scyphi]

As I remember, the courts ruled tomatoes to be a vegetable on the prompting of chefs from restaurants. Apparently, in the cooking world, tomatoes are considered vegetables because of how they are used in dishes, which makes sense. They aren't really used like other fruits in many dishes.

Anyway, hearing this made me happy, because I always considered tomatoes as vegetables, partly because I heard enough dispute over it even in the scientific world that I decided that I would just decide for myself.

I know that technically they probably should be a fruit, but they just never seemed...fruity...to me.

Anyway, we're getting off subject.

[Crash]

If someone sent you to the shop for just fruit and you came back with tomatoes ... they'd automatically think you were either a smart-ass or mentally deficient in some way.

[Scyphi]

Concurred. I'd only bring back tomatoes if they specifically asked for them.

[-<WillyP>-]

That gets back to how they are used... like a vegetable. You would not put tomatoes in a fruit salad, would you? Yet, you would put them in a toss salad, with veggies.

[Crash]

So at least they got that one right in practical terms.

What do you guys make of this whole class action against Walmart being dismissed though?

[Kaiaatzl]

Walmart?  Meh...

Zellers FTW.
Now there's a department store that I like.

[TechPro]

What do you guys make of this whole class action against Walmart being dismissed though?

I'm actually not very surprised. Sure, they had like a million (or was it a thousand? oh well) all banded together to try to claim that it was Walmart's policy to discriminate against women in the leadership roles.  However, the high court could not find that their evidence (the evidence was the fact that these women had been apparently passed over) was sufficient to show that it was Walmart's policy.   The only thing the women managed to demonstrate was that a lot of men appeared to have been promoted instead of those women.

There was a significant downside possible whichever way the case came out.  As is, a number of the judges dissented from the final ruling, which goes to show just how divisive the decision was.

If Walmart won the case (and they did) ... Unfortunately, this decision by the high court will probably make it more difficult for future discrimination (tort) cases because there will now be a greater need to show clear evidence.

If the claim against Walmart had succeeded, it probably would have had a reverse effect and made it easier for discrimination (tort) cases in the future, which would of allowed a lot more "sue happy" people to cost the public huge amounts of money supporting the courts dealing with too many fabricated cases.

Personally, I think the court made the right ruling, but failed to send the much needed message to corporate industry that there needs to be stronger effort to avoid discrimination when considering who gets promoted and who does not.

[-<WillyP>-]

Personally, I think Walmart, being a business, not supported by taxpayers, should have a right to set whatever policy it wants, even if it is discriminatory. That is not to say I favor discrimination, far from it. But if a woman is the best suited for a particular job, how would a business benefit by having a blanket policy of not promoting women, or any other group, for that matter?

I suspect, there is not really a policy of discrimination, more like a general perception by the (mostly male, I assume) management at Walmart that women in general don't perform as well as men, or cause other problems. This could be bad business for Walmart, if they lose the benefit of highly capable women. However, I don't see that as an issue for the courts to decide.

[Scyphi]

Be careful with that line of thought WillyP. You might not think it, but I know of a lot of women who would still take quite a LOT of offense to that sort of thinking. 

As for Walmart, this isn't the first time in recent years that they've gotten into legal trouble. In fact, I believe they've been getting in trouble of some sort fairly frequently lately, but that might just be me. For instance, I had heard once they had actually tried to start their own bank, (yes, a bank!) but the federal government didn't like that idea one bit, declared it a monopolistic move, and halted their plans.

Other than that, though, I've got nothing against Walmart. Kmart on the other hand...

[-<WillyP>-]

Actually nothing to do with women, every individual should be treated fairly, by everybody, but if I own a business, and I feel like I don't want, say, left handed red-heads working for me, it should be my right to choose not to hire or promote left handed red heads.

And as far as women being offended by that, so what? There is something wrong in saying everyone should be promoted based on their own merits? Or that I, or Walmart, should have a right to develop a hiring and promotion policy that suits our own interest? The purpose of being in business is to make money. Don't like my opinion of how best to do that? Go work somewhere else.