Re: AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

On May 27, 5:31 am, Sebastian Kaliszewski
<s.usun...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Robert Myers wrote:
> >> Your constant insisting on comparability of risk estimation in long
term
> >> capital and software only shows your lack of clue.
>
> > Look.
>
> > I didn't go there.
>
> Of course you did. Thats you not me who can't see the obvious
difference.
>
Why did you ever say that the financial institutions you work for know
how to estimate risk?  Manifestly, they don't.  Why should I accept
that they are wizards on risk in a field that is not their specialty
(software) when they screw up so badly in a field that *is* their
specialty (securities)?  The expert on software risk here is *you*,
not the people you work for.


>
>
> > You said the people you work for know what they're doing.
>
> Because it's obvious. They would be nonexistant if they didn't.
>
> Besides I do not work for American financial company, so your nonsense
does
> not apply even if there would be no difference between markets and
> software.
>
The day may come when Eastern Europe drives financial markets.  I
don't think we're their yet.  Your arguments become ever more arcane.
Well, they may not know how to estimate *American* risk, but they know
how to estimate *Polish* risk.

>
> > Look.  You are either so wrapped up in what you're doing that you
> > can't see what's going on around you, or you're playing stupid.  This
> > isn't a security forum, so there's no point in discussing the nearly
> > universal agonizing over security threats due to software
> > vulnerability.
>
> Uh, oh.
>
I can't even imagine what to say to you.  You think it's all funny.

> > Financial software, online or off, is subject to the same kinds of
> > problems that NASA discovered.
>
> Yeah. The finacial software will explode releasing about equivalent of
1kt
> TNT of energy due to failed o-ring.
>
Let's see.  Pulling some numbers about the latest debt obligation
screwup.  Moody's (not S&P, my error) overrated about $4 billion in
debt.  One estimate of loss was about 40%.  I'll use $2 million for
the value of a human life.  The cost of the screwup was about 2000
lives lost.  But, you sputter, no lives were actually lost?  Think
again.  Maybe not 2000 lives right away, but some pretty quickly, as
people discover that a key asset lost 40% of its value practically
overnight.  How many car bombs does it take to kill 2000 people?

>
> > What the shuttle disasters and the World Trade Center attack taught is
> > that there are more ways for things to go wrong than you can think of
>
> So your proposed way of (not) making a software would not help either.
>
I'll stand by my original position.  Less software is, almost by
definition, better software.

> > and that apparently acceptable risks can have enormous consequences.
>
> Risk of loosing shuttle and astronauts was and still is the "acceptable"
> risk for NASA.

You really don't know the history of the shuttle program.  Being a
shuttle crew member has proven to be riskier than being a combat pilot
in World War II.  Had that been understood at the beginning, the
design would have been canned.  As it is, the US will be without
manned space flight capability for several years.  Imagine how heads
would have rolled if that outcome had been foreseen.

> The risk of major terrorist attack was known for long time
> before 9/11. As few soviet atomic suitcases are believed to be missing,
the
> risk of even greater disaster is still non zero.
> But there is also a significant risk of simply getting killed in traffic
> accident, and that risk is much greater than becoming a victim of
terrorist
> attack. But life must go on, we simply must accept that risk. Not
accepting
> them and hiding somewhere is widely regarded as mental disease.

We must accept risk.  That doesn't mean that we must accept what you
propose as reasonable.  The actual damage of the World Trade Center
was nothing compared to the emotional toll it took.  When you build
things like atomic bombs or jumbo jets or globe-spanning financial
networks with hair-trigger mechanisms built in, you're changing the
rules about the kind of risk that humans live with.  To say "it's
always been like this and we have to live this way" just isn't
correct.

Robert.