[ale] RHEL-6.1 system with 4 CPU sockets and 1TB of memory

[david w. millians]

On 1/12/2012 12:34 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 11:15 AM, david w. millians <millia at panix.com
> <mailto:millia at panix.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 1/11/2012 1:32 PM, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
>      >> She's a geologist and knows the true value of diamonds (nearly
>     as common as
>      >> sand) so I'm off the hook for that :-)
>      > No joke.  If it wasn't for some crazy monopolies (DeBeers) diamonds
>      > would be about $5 a caret.
>     Citation? I've heard this, but can't find any documentation for it. I do
>     know that modern manufacturing methods mean that large carat stones
>     *are* rare, and that stones like the Koh-i-noor will never happen again.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/
> http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/02/19/296863/index.htm
> http://are.berkeley.edu/~sberto/DeBeersDiamondIndustry.pdf

Right, I know DeBeers is evil. I understood that already. I was 
referring that actual $5 a carat figure. I know their prices are driven 
up, but I also know that, as in the Atlantic article, investment-grade 
diamonds of great clarity and color are truly rare. And I knew that 
man-made diamonds, including the new yellow ones, are indistinguishable 
from the natural ones, and that would depress prices. But I can't find 
any economic analysis that says that were the monopoly to disappear that 
we'd be able to buy a 5 carat brilliant cut for $25.

This is one of those 'facts' that pops up every now and then that raises 
my taurocoprometer, and Snopes and 15 mins. of googling last month 
didn't show me anything about it. Of course, knowing Google and irony, 
when I look this evening, I have no doubt it'll pop right up.

Oh, and 1tb of memory is a pretty amazing thing. Yowza. :)