As clearly stated in the article, there is a linux mode. After you type in "linux" is does things from the/linux partition and runs in Linux mode, including binary emulation. It can run and develop full Linux applications within the session.
The effects were cool and all, but I thought that the story line was incredibly weak, and the characters annoying. Anytime I'm watching a movie and I'm happy that the "good guys" die because they irritate me, I'm disappointed.
Tomb Raider was similar. Cool effects, and it would have been a good movie if it had, say, a script.
I'm not really looking foward to this one.
BTW: I think that SW:Ep1 gets a bad rap for no reason. After watching it a second and third time, I felt like it was one of the best movies in the trilogy. I felt that there were subtle references to plots and the universe as a whole that was ignored in the trilogy.
The rips on Jar-Jar are kinda rediculous. He isn't ANY worse than C-3PO. We just like 'threepio because we grew up with him. My sig. other just watched A New Hope for the first time last weekend. She spoke to be afterwards and was like, "Am I the only one that finds C-3PO really annoying?"
Jar-Jar was no worse than C-3PO, we just all thought C-3PO was cool because he was a robot of sorts, and we were little kids.
To suggest that Menace was a bad film and Matrix was one of the greatest really shows an interesting point of view.
It reads like a high school debate topicality arguement (college debate is slightly more detailed, but T-violations always suck).
It's a detailled, line-by-line arguement about how the court shouldn't be considering this motion.
The only thing that it says is that the court should throw out this motion because the RIAA never sued and this case has no grounds.
I agree with some of the earlier posters, the RIAA is maintaining that the DMCA is a tool to intimidate, not rule on.
Interestingly, pulling the paper was apparently voluntary, and the RIAA argues that this case is about fishing for good publicity and a ruling on the DMCA.
IANAL, but I think that they may be right... we shall see.
You've been unhelpful, thank you. Neither BeOS or Linux are RT OSes. I wanted to let the Admin staff's Windows boxes double as phones instead of getting phones. It failled, miserably.
We were just going over Ethernet, the same ethernet as the physical phones, so there was no latency issue.
It could be the OS, it could be the scheduling, but it sucked. I don't care that someone will whine about how other OSes that don't have the software. A non-Win32 version of this is kinda silly.
There just isn't a market for software that needs to be on a tuned Linux box. A tuned Linux box is no more useful than a physical phone, because I need to tune it for a special purpose. Once I do that, I'll buy the phones.
It is VERY clear in the article that your PC doesn't need to be on. The phone grabs an IP from DHCP and uses your account with them. This succeeds in being less awkward that computerized systems.
At my office, we have the 3com NBX system. Once you leave the LAN, we use normal long distance, but internally it is over ethernet.
The quality is fine.
However, once you use the software based phones, the lag is horrible, and generally worthless. Dedicated hardware is much faster than software over generic hardware.
Alex
We use OO-style in scripts all the time
on
Why not Ruby?
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· Score: 4
If you are writing simple scripts, by all means, OO is a disaster. If you are building a large scale system with components, OO helps you get there. It all depends on what you are doing.
If you are doing sysadmining, you may or may not want OO. Perhaps you have some conceptual objects, perhaps you don't. For the most part, I'd suggest that you don't.
I found for web applications, the database handles so much of your processing, that many of your public display components are simple are simple procedural displays.
However, if you are building an infrastructure, real OO style approachs can help you build up your concepts. I've found that we can often take advantage of OO design, even if not implementation.
We try to do, as you call it, text-book OO. It helps as the project scales. We have tremendous code-reuse for our client projects. This lets us stay in business despite being smaller than our competitors, because we can reuse so much of our code base. It also lets us undercut the big-boys, because we've maximized code reuse, not just taken what we've got.
I realize that since most can't code, many of the Slashdot Hive mind seem to think that the business men that run their businesses are morons.
Ya know something, not everybody can code, but I bet you they understand accounting and corporate strategy better than you.
With a separate managerial ranking instead of promoting within the company, we do have the unfortunate scenario where front-line managers don't knows what their subordinates are doing. This eliminated the Peter Principle, but created a management vs. employee mess.
However, they are not dumb. Most of them use the features of the Office suite that supplies their productivity.
Guess what, your deal-maker CEO may not know much beyond e-mail and word, but I bet that your CFO crunches out spreadsheets with a degree of complexity that you don't understand. Maybe your administrative assistances can't code, but they problem use Outlook's Exchange support to administer their bosses schedule. As everyone is pressed for time, freeing up 2-3 hours of scheduling and planning is a lifesaver to 80-hour a week managers.
Your analysts may not be able to run a Linux box, but they can problem use the Access databases that they had IT whip up for their data entry personel to enter information in, and export it into Excel for detailed analysis.
If you are a small firm, whoever does your accounting probably finds Quickbooks (Win32 only) a life saver.
These programs are extremely powerful with acceptable UIs.
Sure, your random family with a PC and no real need for one (a bit of web surfing, e-mail, and the kid's school reports) may not need Office, but a corporate environment can really take advantage of it.
Until spreadsheet designers actually TALK to the people that use them, they won't understand what is necessary. Merely trying to clone Microsoft's means that you won't overtake them. You may become good enough for home markets, but you offer no compelling reason to switch. If I am using version X of a program, and X+1 comes out, I'll decide if it is worth it. If your Free version is as good as X-1, no way I'll switch. It it is as good as X, no way I'll switch. If you are better than X+1, I'll likely switch. If you come between X and X+1, well, I'll have to decide if I want the new features.
Guys, the costs of MS software aren't that significant per employee. Given the cost of an employee (office space, salary, perks, payroll taxes, etc.), the cost of equipment (computer equipment, furniture, etc), the $1000-$2000 in software to get them productive is rather small. Sure saving $500/employee for 1000 employees is real money., it's half a million. But if it reduces my employee's productivity a fraction, I will likely lose FAR more money in lost productivity.
For company's with 10,000+ employees, sure MS costs a lot. But what is their revenue/employee. What reduction in productivity is necessary to wipe out the licensing gains?
The real interesting thing here is that IT staffs know that as users upgrade on their own, they get a disaster. They also know that MS has them in a bind. If they don't upgrade, it'll happen anyway as a disaster. If they do upgrade, they'll likely benefit, but corporate accounting isn't that simple. Their department has a budget, a large change is problematic.
The problem is NOT that it is not worthwhile to upgrade, these company's WANT to upgrade. The problem is that the budget process has made now a very bad time.
Look, I love my BSD boxes. I also love my OS X workstation. I also like my Win32 laptop that lets me run my Win32 only applications.
However, the sooner the community stops patting itself on the back and starts solving problems, the sooner Free Software will make a difference.
Why should we win? It's morally better to let people help their neighbors. If I have software, giving a copy to a friend to help him out is the RIGHT thing to do. We want to win NOT to beat MS. We want to win because it will make the world a better place.
In South Florida, there was a gaming store that had HUGE tables everywhere. After Magic, there was more money in it, and it expanded the store. Instead of one big table (where the owner or the other guy that worked there could play) there were two tables in the back. However, without the owner's personal involvement in games (as Magic grew), it became easier to spend money buying products online and playing there. Definitely hurt them.
However, Magic eliminated other games. When I started hanging there, it was trying to get into a good RPG. A friend played there for years. However, I never saw anything but Magic (except the occaisional wargaming league games). It was simply easier to play Magic for hours where people could pop in and sit down, then try to coordinate an RPG. Hell, even the RPG group I played with would rarely play a session, because Magic was easier to play with no need to plan out an adventure.
Unfortunately, WotC needed constant infusions of cash, so they ruinned Magic with bad expansions and attempts to remove the dominance of the older players. Eventually CCGs started to die off.
Unfortunately, when the CCGs slowed, there wasn't anywhere for people to go. RPGs need to be restarted with a young crew. Existing groups died off. Also, I loved the place in my life for RPGs, but I've never been able to reestablish them. It's easier to spend my few spare hours computer gaming than getting a group together.
I'm one of the lucky ones, my girlfriend would play in a game that I ran. If you have someone in your life and they aren't into gaming... good luck.
Honey, I don't want to go hit a local hot spot, I want to throw some odd-shaped dice around...
I agree, I think that a fight over Word would be interesting, given the WordStar and WordPerfect issue. Additionally, renaming that is trivial, add something after word. KWordPro would work, if there was a fight. Illustrator however is a fight you'll lose, and SHOULD lose.
You'd probably win a fight over draw. Just like Apple's MacPaint and Mouse Paint (Apple//) could be copied as MS Paint. If you have an obvious name, it isn't a problem. Corel Draw can't claim the name Draw for a drawing program. They own Corel Draw however.
However, KDrawing would work, etc.
A Knive Company is NOT in the same category as Computer Software.
Fine... Hell, KDraw would probably be clearer. KVector would be fine. Hell, KVDraw would be okay.
The rest of the world extends effort on branding. They spend a fortune. The Open Source "community" can spend a 15 minute brainstorming session instead of just ripping off the name of an existing product.
Adobe Illustrator is NOT descriptive. It is a vector based drawing program. Word is a Word Processor. Word is used descriptively. Word is a WEAKER trademark in this regards than Illustrator.
However, ask yourself why the KDE team named their vector based drawing program KIllustrator and their word processor KWord? It is INTENDED to capitalize on the good will of Adobe and Microsoft.
Can any of you HONESTLY say that KIllustrator isn't similar to Illustrator. It is designed AS a knock-off product with a similar name. It is INTENDED for a user to think, wow, this will be similar to the Illustrator that I know.
Why does the Free Software "community" do stuff like this? The rest of the world is comfortable competing (with a few monopolies excluded) fairly. Why does the "community" feel that they can appropriate the names of their competitors.
Linux is NOT just a play toy any more. Severally publically traded companies use it as a basis for business. Many more privately held companies use it as well.
If the whole point of "open source" was to make Free Software viewed favorably in the business community, maybe it is time to grow up.
Referring to Microsoft as M$, MacroHard, etc., does't help you.
If you DON'T care about the business world, than just ignore them and do your own thing. But if your goal is to get your software used, why don't we try acting like adults.
Companies are NOT going to adopt Linux and other "community" projects if its proponents INSIST on acting like 15 year olds.
Act like adults. You're playing with the big boys now, which is quite an accomplishment. But childishness, appropriating trademarks, etc., isn't getting you anywhere.
Declaring everything generic, obvious, and not worthy of protection isn't getting you anywhere. Microsoft is going to succeed in banning government funding of GPL'd work if they are able to paint their opponents as 15 year old intend on undermining the cause of productivity increases of the past 15 years.
The GPL turns copyright on its head. It allows cooperative based development. However, it undermines IT development companies.
First step of winning this public relations war is to act like adults. The NEXT step is to start respectfully competing. And copying everything from everyone else, including names, isn't going to convince the public that you are innovating and improving the economy. It makes you look like children.
My business is based upon various Open Source programs. The "community" earns my company and others a bad rap.
I go through the Globe looking all the time. We're small, and anything we can get cheaper lets us stretch our equipment budget. I ended up picking up a slightly used machine or two up on Ebay because you can't find these auctions listed anywhere.
It's a shame too, because as a startup in this climate, getting real hardware cheaply would be a Godsend...
If the company doesn't want to build its business on a dead company's business, they may not need to buy it. He may license the software to them (could even be in a BSD or more liberal license, a worldwide use license), then license to another firm, who knows. It's IP, not real property.
Nice of you to call someone a slimeball because of his profession. People extended credit to these companies that went under. He tries to get them their money, and gets paid for his service.
Remember than Chicago/Windows 4.0/Win93/Win95 was designed to create a transition OS to get the code to Win32 faster. Also, NT was build as a cross platform OS because MS didn't want to be dependant on Intel. Remember, everyone thought that x86 was nearly dead at that point.
I assumed that the idea of J++ was for MS to have their own Java. That would give them tremendous platform independance. You would write "cross platform" Win32 code, meaning it would run natively on any MS OS. I had always expected that this was why MS bought into Java. An MS version would work on MIPS/PPC/Alpha/x86.
Given that their RISC compilers were always a gen back, this never materialized. However, shipping a semi-compiled mode would have let them become truly cross-processor. I mean, think of it as Install Shield on crack... or a BSD port...
The "skills" from an MBA are pretty trivial. You could pick them up from about two dozen books in less than the two years for an MBA program. A non top-tier MBA program will also teach these. You can go to the local university and learn these skills. If you want to go into business for yourself, learning accounting, etc., will be helpful.
Now, an MBA from a top program is a different animal. At those programs, you will be in the program with career executives needing the MBA for the next level, people changing careers after a reasonable degree of success, and people coming from well-known companies out of a pre-MBA job (the grunts in consulting firms, investment banking, etc).
Can you learn this all from business by paying attention? Probably not. Say you spend 5 years in business, you have your experiences. At an MBA program, you are involved with other people with DIFFERENT experiences. You exchange knowledge and learn as a result.
MBA programs aren't like engineering schools. Sleeping through classes and reading the book (my approach, sadly, as an undergrad) won't help you get anything out of the program. If you want the "degree" this may be all you need, but you won't have benefited from it.
These programs focus on networking and shared experiences. When you go out for drinks with your classmates at HBS (Harvard Business School), Sloan (MIT's b-school), Wharton (Penn's), etc., you are also meeting people with a wide range of connections. If you do a good job of keeping in touch (which is a prerequisite for business in general) you have a varied group of people to contact.
Someone that codes all day in the company they joined at 15 and dropped out of high school for won't have these advantages. I know plenty of people that can code circles around MIT CS grads that don't have a high school degree. However, if they need to find someone that knows about the steel industry for a proposal for a contract job, they don't have their friend in Pittsburgh that is a VP at a large Steel company to pick their brains.
An MBA is very different from more traditional educational experiences. If you want it, you should know what you are investing time in. If you want to take accounting and finance classes, go take four classes locally and save a fortune.
For me, the killer app is Apache, PostgreSQL 7.1.2, and PHP. They all run quite well on my G4-Cube running OS-X.
Blah blah blah, run Linux, blah, blah, blah... No.
I use this device to develop software for web deployment on our BSD servers. I also access NT shares (Sharity), use a GREAT HTML/PHP/Text editor (BBEdit), have a wonderful web browser (Omniweb). As a bonus, I have great compatibility because of MS Office and IE. IE Specific pages run fine on the Mac.
Apple has a win because:
A) Aqua is gorgeous
B) MANY software systems
C) Mac hardware rocks
Apple's hardware seems reliable and it is supported. I have always built my PCs, but the aggravation finally hit me. If I get another PC it will be a Compaq professional desktop. I'd pay a bit for less aggravation.
Apple's hardware all works for MacOS X. Their hardware is also gorgeous. the Tibook is wonderful, but a bit big. The iBook is impressive as well.
OS X has some killer apps. The old killer Apps are Photoshop, etc. iTunes is SLICK as whale shit. It supports Unix applications for those that need them.
Sharity is a decent app, just a little weird. v2.4 and v2.5b2 both have different sets of quirks, but it is getting there.
Xtools is good.
BBEdit is nice.
Apple has LOTS of great applications for professionals in the $50-$200 space, which is great.
Why would AOL buy a browser? As a result of Microsoft "cutting off their air supply" the browser has been free for years. When did it become free, late '97? I remember because the place I work was in the process of a software audit to register the shareware applications, etc., floating around the office, when Netscape went free for businesses too.
Netscape users are STILL 15%-20% of the market, maybe more. You'd be shocked how many are around, and that's will Netscape 4.x. Mozilla will bring more if Fizzilla (the Carbon Mac OS X one) and the core system improve AND Mac and Linux both gain marketshare... both reasonable assumptions.
Mozilla helps Netscape IF Netscape ships a branded Mozilla (which they STILL will). Mozilla users => web logs indicated Netscape 5 or 6 or whatever users. If 30% of my traffic is Mozilla based, I can't ignore the browser. This let's Netscape stay competitive by their browser being supported.
Remember why AOL bought Netscape. They wanted to reach more Internet users. ICQ users and Netscape users are a VERY different kind of user than their AIM/AOL users. Most of my friends at school were using AIM, so I slowly moved in that direction, but it's telling who is still on my ICQ list and hasn't moved over.
AOL wants to sell their stuff everywhere! They have a LOT to sell.
Netscape remains valuable because users with Netscape.com as their home page ARE NOT users that normally use AOL products. They would have no easy way to reach them on the Internet. Netcenter (or whatever they call it THIS week) changes that.
I have this feeling that it was "magic" because it was new. It was fun to explore around. However, there is FAR more available on the net as a whole now.
I think that the biggest problem right now isn't the lack of hobby sites, it is the lack of linking. The reason that the search engines are having trouble in part is that people don't get link.
I've been interviewed in eWeek a few times, and my company's name is mentioned. However, it isn't linked. Obviously an interested reader can figure out our domain name, but it is still inappropriate to not provide that linking. Without linking, search engines can't figure out what is going on.
Get the linking back, and the Internet becomes infinitely more useful for information again.
I'm 22. Getting a modem when I was 14 meant calling BBSes. That required that we knew to get a modem, and knew to find things. The people I meant online were similarly intelligent, because their was a learning curve.
When I was 17, the people coming onto my favorite multiline BBS were the more general public. Their parents had bought a new computer, and a modem happened to be in the machine. They got the number from a friend, and never ventured. At one point I called 10-15 boards, by the end I was down to 2 or 3. They never called more than 1.
Now, my girlfriend's kid sister (15) is online. Her family uses AOL because it's easy. She spends ALL her time in AOL things and Yahoo. She plays Yahoo games, hangs out in Yahoo chats, etc.
She isn't stupid, but Yahoo and AOL satisfy her needs. She doesn't feel the need to venture out. If she is interested in a piece of information (which the web is good for), she can search for it. But random cult sites aren't getting found anymore.
Hell, my personal viewing has dropped from HOURS surfing around following links 4 years ago to 6 or 7 news websites. I don't good off on the Net (outside of Slashdot).
Quite frankly, with the money that was in the Internet for a few years, people built up. Also, if you are an executive at Yahoo and saw something on a hobby site that you thought was cool, wouldn't you have your staff build it in a few weeks. If the page owner was a killer hacker and knocked it off in 2 days, wouldn't it be likely that Yahoo could reimplement it in 2 weeks or 2 months?
There is LESS compelling reasons to venture around on the Internet. You used to need to go to random places for things. Those of us that used Yahoo by '96 (when I did briefly) found a need to go elsewhere... The old-timers from earlier USED Yahoo to go elsewhere. Now, Yahoo provides lots of resources, instead of just information about what else is there.
I'm not convinced that younger people will change this. They may go out and explore, but there is less and less compelling outside the big boys. There used to be neat games that could only be found elsewhere, but they were all bought up by big sites.
For information, people will still do searches. However, the Web as a leisure activity will likely outnumber the web as a research tool for a LONG time.
Look at the rates for banner ads for Slashdot/OSDN? They are 5-10 TIMES the current average for normal sites.
Technical people make lots of decisions about spending for computer companies. Those company's all use to Internet heavily.
We matter, we just matter differently. If you are selling servers, you'll pay a premium to hit us.
General people don't matter as much. Only large companies competing in LARGE oligopoly markets try to hit generic users. That's why events like the olympics and the superbowl (which hit everyone) get lots of ads from companies like Coke and Pepsi, McDonalds and Burger King, etc.
If you don't have a generic market, you want to hit your target. Targetted advertising is more difficult, and you pay a premium.
Microsoft may have more viewers, and that helps them sell ads to generic companies. However, I guarantee that Compaq is willing to pay a premium to put ads for its high end boxes in front of computer people above and beyond what Coke and Wendy's are willing to pay Microsoft.
Acting in shareholder interests is. If the board takes actions to hurt the company, they can get hit by a shareholder lawsuit. However, the shareholders can adopt whatever goals they want. If there was a shareholder vote, and they voted to give 20% of the profits to charity, the board would comply.
This notion that the law requires corporations to rape and pillage is taken as fact on Slashdot, but is absurd.
1) Most corporations are NOT publically traded. This issue, maximizing profits to run up stock prices, is only true for publically traded companies, a SMALL portion of corporations.
2) The board of directors acts on behalf of the shareholders. When the CEO and other bigshots hold large portions of the voting stock, than the board and management become one in the same. If you are uncomfortable with being the small owner with no say, don't invest in these companies. It isn't hard to find out the share of the company controlled by management. Note that most investors WANT their management to have a STRONG interest in owning the stock, normally having ownership requirements.
We have less freedom, because the government has asserted power. We have brainwashing, because our school system has stopped teaching anything. People think less because we put our kids in front of the television instead of books.
The unwashed masses were always undereducated and swung by demagaugery. It is only now that the television has put them in charge of the country. When we got direct election of senators and the primary system, we wanted to take control from the power brokers that ran the country. Terrific, we took power from professionals and gave it to amateurs, and assumed that nobody would figure out how to control the amateurs?
Those pushing for more democracy should consider replacing medical accreditation with a thumbs up/thumbs down vote at the local pub... That dumbs down the country.
Most intellectual property (copyright) companies would like to see Gnutella die... most companies couldn't give a rats ass about Gnutella. Even companies that deal in intellectual property don't give a damn.
Software companies have had easy piracy to deal with for years, Gnutella and ilk aren't their problem.
Movie producers are probably okay. They survived without money from video rentals before and will again if need be. As long as they can provide a compelling experience in the theater, they will be fine. The VCR gave them additional revenue. If they lose it, they'll come up with another one. Bitch all you want about the MPAA, they're much better behaved than the RIAA. The DVD region encoding annoys me (I still haven't bought a DVD player), but it isn't as bad as the RIAA's actions towards artists.
However, I don't understand when Slashdot went communist. I've only been a user for about two years, but this has really gotten weird over the past 6-12 months. Corporations aren't evil. Some of the large companies, where the shareholders and boards are too separated and management isn't overseen, may have done some bad things. But you guys treat all corporations as these evil entities. If you want to criticize multinationals, pick some out and go, many are disgusting. But lashing out at all corporations are childish. This article is attacking the top 50-200 companies... They aren't even hitting the Fortune 500/Global 2000 range. What about us small companies? Are we all evil too? The 5 person Linux consulting shop, are they doing the devil's work? Lash out at irresponsible multinations, not all corporations.
Now, the comparison of corporations to countries (sales vs. GDP) isn't fair. GDP measures value added. Sales measures value. Value added isn't necessarily profit, but it is the gross margin of sorts. If I buy lumber for $100, and turn it into $200 desks, I contribute $100 to the GDP, but $200 to my sales. This disparity helps get their "scary" figure of 51 corporations being larger than the countries... I'd guess that with fair numbers, the number of companies drops to 20 or so in the top 100. With less than 200 (last I checked) nations recognized by the UN, large multinationals participating isn't so strange.
Additional example of how to lie with statistics... 6. Between 1983 and 1999, the profits of the Top 200 firms grew 362.4 percent, while the number of people they employ grew by only 14.4 percent.
Well, that is a useless statistic, how many companies were in the top 200 both times?
Think about it, darwinian selection allows us to pick the top 200 companies now and compare it to the top 200 from 20 years ago. The companies that make more money per man-hour rise up, those that make less sink. Obviously the top 200 will be more efficient than 20 years ago. Compare the same companies. Also, IT reduces layers of management, so companies are flatter now. The top 200 companies are smaller for the same amount of productivity. That's been the goal, reduce costs. Those people get redeployed through the economy. We create more widgets/person, and consumers benefit. Our unemployment number is less than 5%, that isn't massive people thrown out of work. Those losing jobs are finding new ones.
Also, it doesn't mention if 362.4% is in real dollars or not? Given that this is a anti-multinational piece, I would assume not. Keep in mind that if we assumed NO increased efficiency and no substitution of more effective, the firms would have increased about 250% just because of inflation. Factoring in the 14.4% employment increase that they refer to, and we are up to 285% increase. Given productivity of 1%/year (we've been at 2% for the past few years), we're over 300%.
So, based on raw size and productivity gains, we expected the top 200 firms to increase in the 300% to 305% range. When you consider the timing of these years, 1983 a recession year to 1999 a boom year, we also get more warped numbers. Profits would be way down in a recession depressed economy. You took a valley and a peak and measured the change. Let's put another 30% into the profit numbers to compensate... assuming 15% lower in recession or 15% higher in boom (in reality, I'd put the swing higher than that), we're up to a 335% increase.
I think that our ability to subsitute and pick and choose the top 200 firms explains the remaining 27.4%, in fact, I would suggest it explains more than that.
There are REAL problems with some of the multinationals. The ability of governments to interfere in the economy gives companies an incentive to lobby. There is a mess. However, let's not use bogus statistics to invent this nonsense. Let's be a little more reasonable.
The persuit of wealth is NOT evil. Being a bad person is evil. Do not confuse the two.
I hammered off a quick slashdot post on a threat discussing the kernel and other stuff.
However, don't be an asshole.
I didn't mean what it sounded like.
The buffer cache is set too low. I realize that the page cache grows, but the buffer cache at a higher level does a tremendous affect on performance. I don't know why exactly, but I know that each server has a sweetspot, and you want to get a decent chunk of your RAM reserved for this process.
The default is too low for a machine with moderate memory amounts. The O'Reilly book covered this.
Personal attacks whenever you catch someone in a brain fart isn't really polite, is it?
You haven't ever compiled an OpenBSD kernel, have you? To get tweaks, you need to change some settings. Some of these are in the options file you edit, some are not. The ones that are not require you to learn about them from obscure postings to mailling lists or in random performance tuning sites for various packages.
Compiling an OpenBSD kernel isn't fun, but is necessary. For example, OpenBSD only uses 5% of memory for cacheing the drive. Now if you have obscene amounts of RAM, this is adequate. If you have little RAM, this is important so you have memory for your applications.
IF you have a moderate amount, say 256MB or 512MB, you probably want to have more space for disk caching, so you need to recompile your kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
As clearly stated in the article, there is a linux mode. After you type in "linux" is does things from the /linux partition and runs in Linux mode, including binary emulation. It can run and develop full Linux applications within the session.
It sounds quite impressive.
The effects were cool and all, but I thought that the story line was incredibly weak, and the characters annoying. Anytime I'm watching a movie and I'm happy that the "good guys" die because they irritate me, I'm disappointed.
Tomb Raider was similar. Cool effects, and it would have been a good movie if it had, say, a script.
I'm not really looking foward to this one.
BTW: I think that SW:Ep1 gets a bad rap for no reason. After watching it a second and third time, I felt like it was one of the best movies in the trilogy. I felt that there were subtle references to plots and the universe as a whole that was ignored in the trilogy.
The rips on Jar-Jar are kinda rediculous. He isn't ANY worse than C-3PO. We just like 'threepio because we grew up with him. My sig. other just watched A New Hope for the first time last weekend. She spoke to be afterwards and was like, "Am I the only one that finds C-3PO really annoying?"
Jar-Jar was no worse than C-3PO, we just all thought C-3PO was cool because he was a robot of sorts, and we were little kids.
To suggest that Menace was a bad film and Matrix was one of the greatest really shows an interesting point of view.
It reads like a high school debate topicality arguement (college debate is slightly more detailed, but T-violations always suck).
It's a detailled, line-by-line arguement about how the court shouldn't be considering this motion.
The only thing that it says is that the court should throw out this motion because the RIAA never sued and this case has no grounds.
I agree with some of the earlier posters, the RIAA is maintaining that the DMCA is a tool to intimidate, not rule on.
Interestingly, pulling the paper was apparently voluntary, and the RIAA argues that this case is about fishing for good publicity and a ruling on the DMCA.
IANAL, but I think that they may be right... we shall see.
Alex
You've been unhelpful, thank you. Neither BeOS or Linux are RT OSes. I wanted to let the Admin staff's Windows boxes double as phones instead of getting phones. It failled, miserably.
We were just going over Ethernet, the same ethernet as the physical phones, so there was no latency issue.
It could be the OS, it could be the scheduling, but it sucked. I don't care that someone will whine about how other OSes that don't have the software. A non-Win32 version of this is kinda silly.
There just isn't a market for software that needs to be on a tuned Linux box. A tuned Linux box is no more useful than a physical phone, because I need to tune it for a special purpose. Once I do that, I'll buy the phones.
Alex
It is VERY clear in the article that your PC doesn't need to be on. The phone grabs an IP from DHCP and uses your account with them. This succeeds in being less awkward that computerized systems.
At my office, we have the 3com NBX system. Once you leave the LAN, we use normal long distance, but internally it is over ethernet.
The quality is fine.
However, once you use the software based phones, the lag is horrible, and generally worthless. Dedicated hardware is much faster than software over generic hardware.
Alex
If you are writing simple scripts, by all means, OO is a disaster. If you are building a large scale system with components, OO helps you get there. It all depends on what you are doing.
If you are doing sysadmining, you may or may not want OO. Perhaps you have some conceptual objects, perhaps you don't. For the most part, I'd suggest that you don't.
I found for web applications, the database handles so much of your processing, that many of your public display components are simple are simple procedural displays.
However, if you are building an infrastructure, real OO style approachs can help you build up your concepts. I've found that we can often take advantage of OO design, even if not implementation.
We try to do, as you call it, text-book OO. It helps as the project scales. We have tremendous code-reuse for our client projects. This lets us stay in business despite being smaller than our competitors, because we can reuse so much of our code base. It also lets us undercut the big-boys, because we've maximized code reuse, not just taken what we've got.
Alex
I realize that since most can't code, many of the Slashdot Hive mind seem to think that the business men that run their businesses are morons.
Ya know something, not everybody can code, but I bet you they understand accounting and corporate strategy better than you.
With a separate managerial ranking instead of promoting within the company, we do have the unfortunate scenario where front-line managers don't knows what their subordinates are doing. This eliminated the Peter Principle, but created a management vs. employee mess.
However, they are not dumb. Most of them use the features of the Office suite that supplies their productivity.
Guess what, your deal-maker CEO may not know much beyond e-mail and word, but I bet that your CFO crunches out spreadsheets with a degree of complexity that you don't understand. Maybe your administrative assistances can't code, but they problem use Outlook's Exchange support to administer their bosses schedule. As everyone is pressed for time, freeing up 2-3 hours of scheduling and planning is a lifesaver to 80-hour a week managers.
Your analysts may not be able to run a Linux box, but they can problem use the Access databases that they had IT whip up for their data entry personel to enter information in, and export it into Excel for detailed analysis.
If you are a small firm, whoever does your accounting probably finds Quickbooks (Win32 only) a life saver.
These programs are extremely powerful with acceptable UIs.
Sure, your random family with a PC and no real need for one (a bit of web surfing, e-mail, and the kid's school reports) may not need Office, but a corporate environment can really take advantage of it.
Until spreadsheet designers actually TALK to the people that use them, they won't understand what is necessary. Merely trying to clone Microsoft's means that you won't overtake them. You may become good enough for home markets, but you offer no compelling reason to switch. If I am using version X of a program, and X+1 comes out, I'll decide if it is worth it. If your Free version is as good as X-1, no way I'll switch. It it is as good as X, no way I'll switch. If you are better than X+1, I'll likely switch. If you come between X and X+1, well, I'll have to decide if I want the new features.
Guys, the costs of MS software aren't that significant per employee. Given the cost of an employee (office space, salary, perks, payroll taxes, etc.), the cost of equipment (computer equipment, furniture, etc), the $1000-$2000 in software to get them productive is rather small. Sure saving $500/employee for 1000 employees is real money., it's half a million. But if it reduces my employee's productivity a fraction, I will likely lose FAR more money in lost productivity.
For company's with 10,000+ employees, sure MS costs a lot. But what is their revenue/employee. What reduction in productivity is necessary to wipe out the licensing gains?
The real interesting thing here is that IT staffs know that as users upgrade on their own, they get a disaster. They also know that MS has them in a bind. If they don't upgrade, it'll happen anyway as a disaster. If they do upgrade, they'll likely benefit, but corporate accounting isn't that simple. Their department has a budget, a large change is problematic.
The problem is NOT that it is not worthwhile to upgrade, these company's WANT to upgrade. The problem is that the budget process has made now a very bad time.
Look, I love my BSD boxes. I also love my OS X workstation. I also like my Win32 laptop that lets me run my Win32 only applications.
However, the sooner the community stops patting itself on the back and starts solving problems, the sooner Free Software will make a difference.
Why should we win? It's morally better to let people help their neighbors. If I have software, giving a copy to a friend to help him out is the RIGHT thing to do. We want to win NOT to beat MS. We want to win because it will make the world a better place.
Alex
In South Florida, there was a gaming store that had HUGE tables everywhere. After Magic, there was more money in it, and it expanded the store. Instead of one big table (where the owner or the other guy that worked there could play) there were two tables in the back. However, without the owner's personal involvement in games (as Magic grew), it became easier to spend money buying products online and playing there. Definitely hurt them.
However, Magic eliminated other games. When I started hanging there, it was trying to get into a good RPG. A friend played there for years. However, I never saw anything but Magic (except the occaisional wargaming league games). It was simply easier to play Magic for hours where people could pop in and sit down, then try to coordinate an RPG. Hell, even the RPG group I played with would rarely play a session, because Magic was easier to play with no need to plan out an adventure.
Unfortunately, WotC needed constant infusions of cash, so they ruinned Magic with bad expansions and attempts to remove the dominance of the older players. Eventually CCGs started to die off.
Unfortunately, when the CCGs slowed, there wasn't anywhere for people to go. RPGs need to be restarted with a young crew. Existing groups died off. Also, I loved the place in my life for RPGs, but I've never been able to reestablish them. It's easier to spend my few spare hours computer gaming than getting a group together.
I'm one of the lucky ones, my girlfriend would play in a game that I ran. If you have someone in your life and they aren't into gaming... good luck.
Honey, I don't want to go hit a local hot spot, I want to throw some odd-shaped dice around...
Laugh,
Alex
I agree, I think that a fight over Word would be interesting, given the WordStar and WordPerfect issue. Additionally, renaming that is trivial, add something after word. KWordPro would work, if there was a fight. Illustrator however is a fight you'll lose, and SHOULD lose.
Alex
You'd probably win a fight over draw. Just like Apple's MacPaint and Mouse Paint (Apple //) could be copied as MS Paint. If you have an obvious name, it isn't a problem. Corel Draw can't claim the name Draw for a drawing program. They own Corel Draw however.
However, KDrawing would work, etc.
A Knive Company is NOT in the same category as Computer Software.
Fine... Hell, KDraw would probably be clearer. KVector would be fine. Hell, KVDraw would be okay.
The rest of the world extends effort on branding. They spend a fortune. The Open Source "community" can spend a 15 minute brainstorming session instead of just ripping off the name of an existing product.
Adobe Illustrator is NOT descriptive. It is a vector based drawing program. Word is a Word Processor. Word is used descriptively. Word is a WEAKER trademark in this regards than Illustrator.
However, ask yourself why the KDE team named their vector based drawing program KIllustrator and their word processor KWord? It is INTENDED to capitalize on the good will of Adobe and Microsoft.
Can any of you HONESTLY say that KIllustrator isn't similar to Illustrator. It is designed AS a knock-off product with a similar name. It is INTENDED for a user to think, wow, this will be similar to the Illustrator that I know.
Why does the Free Software "community" do stuff like this? The rest of the world is comfortable competing (with a few monopolies excluded) fairly. Why does the "community" feel that they can appropriate the names of their competitors.
Linux is NOT just a play toy any more. Severally publically traded companies use it as a basis for business. Many more privately held companies use it as well.
If the whole point of "open source" was to make Free Software viewed favorably in the business community, maybe it is time to grow up.
Referring to Microsoft as M$, MacroHard, etc., does't help you.
If you DON'T care about the business world, than just ignore them and do your own thing. But if your goal is to get your software used, why don't we try acting like adults.
Companies are NOT going to adopt Linux and other "community" projects if its proponents INSIST on acting like 15 year olds.
Act like adults. You're playing with the big boys now, which is quite an accomplishment. But childishness, appropriating trademarks, etc., isn't getting you anywhere.
Declaring everything generic, obvious, and not worthy of protection isn't getting you anywhere. Microsoft is going to succeed in banning government funding of GPL'd work if they are able to paint their opponents as 15 year old intend on undermining the cause of productivity increases of the past 15 years.
The GPL turns copyright on its head. It allows cooperative based development. However, it undermines IT development companies.
First step of winning this public relations war is to act like adults. The NEXT step is to start respectfully competing. And copying everything from everyone else, including names, isn't going to convince the public that you are innovating and improving the economy. It makes you look like children.
My business is based upon various Open Source programs. The "community" earns my company and others a bad rap.
Alex
I go through the Globe looking all the time. We're small, and anything we can get cheaper lets us stretch our equipment budget. I ended up picking up a slightly used machine or two up on Ebay because you can't find these auctions listed anywhere.
It's a shame too, because as a startup in this climate, getting real hardware cheaply would be a Godsend...
Alex
If the company doesn't want to build its business on a dead company's business, they may not need to buy it. He may license the software to them (could even be in a BSD or more liberal license, a worldwide use license), then license to another firm, who knows. It's IP, not real property.
Nice of you to call someone a slimeball because of his profession. People extended credit to these companies that went under. He tries to get them their money, and gets paid for his service.
Not a slimeball, everyone comes out ahead.
Alex
Remember than Chicago/Windows 4.0/Win93/Win95 was designed to create a transition OS to get the code to Win32 faster. Also, NT was build as a cross platform OS because MS didn't want to be dependant on Intel. Remember, everyone thought that x86 was nearly dead at that point.
I assumed that the idea of J++ was for MS to have their own Java. That would give them tremendous platform independance. You would write "cross platform" Win32 code, meaning it would run natively on any MS OS. I had always expected that this was why MS bought into Java. An MS version would work on MIPS/PPC/Alpha/x86.
Given that their RISC compilers were always a gen back, this never materialized. However, shipping a semi-compiled mode would have let them become truly cross-processor. I mean, think of it as Install Shield on crack... or a BSD port...
Alex
The "skills" from an MBA are pretty trivial. You could pick them up from about two dozen books in less than the two years for an MBA program. A non top-tier MBA program will also teach these. You can go to the local university and learn these skills. If you want to go into business for yourself, learning accounting, etc., will be helpful.
Now, an MBA from a top program is a different animal. At those programs, you will be in the program with career executives needing the MBA for the next level, people changing careers after a reasonable degree of success, and people coming from well-known companies out of a pre-MBA job (the grunts in consulting firms, investment banking, etc).
Can you learn this all from business by paying attention? Probably not. Say you spend 5 years in business, you have your experiences. At an MBA program, you are involved with other people with DIFFERENT experiences. You exchange knowledge and learn as a result.
MBA programs aren't like engineering schools. Sleeping through classes and reading the book (my approach, sadly, as an undergrad) won't help you get anything out of the program. If you want the "degree" this may be all you need, but you won't have benefited from it.
These programs focus on networking and shared experiences. When you go out for drinks with your classmates at HBS (Harvard Business School), Sloan (MIT's b-school), Wharton (Penn's), etc., you are also meeting people with a wide range of connections. If you do a good job of keeping in touch (which is a prerequisite for business in general) you have a varied group of people to contact.
Someone that codes all day in the company they joined at 15 and dropped out of high school for won't have these advantages. I know plenty of people that can code circles around MIT CS grads that don't have a high school degree. However, if they need to find someone that knows about the steel industry for a proposal for a contract job, they don't have their friend in Pittsburgh that is a VP at a large Steel company to pick their brains.
An MBA is very different from more traditional educational experiences. If you want it, you should know what you are investing time in. If you want to take accounting and finance classes, go take four classes locally and save a fortune.
Regards,
Alex
For me, the killer app is Apache, PostgreSQL 7.1.2, and PHP. They all run quite well on my G4-Cube running OS-X.
Blah blah blah, run Linux, blah, blah, blah... No.
I use this device to develop software for web deployment on our BSD servers. I also access NT shares (Sharity), use a GREAT HTML/PHP/Text editor (BBEdit), have a wonderful web browser (Omniweb). As a bonus, I have great compatibility because of MS Office and IE. IE Specific pages run fine on the Mac.
Apple has a win because:
A) Aqua is gorgeous
B) MANY software systems
C) Mac hardware rocks
Apple's hardware seems reliable and it is supported. I have always built my PCs, but the aggravation finally hit me. If I get another PC it will be a Compaq professional desktop. I'd pay a bit for less aggravation.
Apple's hardware all works for MacOS X. Their hardware is also gorgeous. the Tibook is wonderful, but a bit big. The iBook is impressive as well.
OS X has some killer apps. The old killer Apps are Photoshop, etc. iTunes is SLICK as whale shit. It supports Unix applications for those that need them.
Sharity is a decent app, just a little weird. v2.4 and v2.5b2 both have different sets of quirks, but it is getting there.
Xtools is good.
BBEdit is nice.
Apple has LOTS of great applications for professionals in the $50-$200 space, which is great.
Alex
Why would AOL buy a browser? As a result of Microsoft "cutting off their air supply" the browser has been free for years. When did it become free, late '97? I remember because the place I work was in the process of a software audit to register the shareware applications, etc., floating around the office, when Netscape went free for businesses too.
Netscape users are STILL 15%-20% of the market, maybe more. You'd be shocked how many are around, and that's will Netscape 4.x. Mozilla will bring more if Fizzilla (the Carbon Mac OS X one) and the core system improve AND Mac and Linux both gain marketshare... both reasonable assumptions.
Mozilla helps Netscape IF Netscape ships a branded Mozilla (which they STILL will). Mozilla users => web logs indicated Netscape 5 or 6 or whatever users. If 30% of my traffic is Mozilla based, I can't ignore the browser. This let's Netscape stay competitive by their browser being supported.
Remember why AOL bought Netscape. They wanted to reach more Internet users. ICQ users and Netscape users are a VERY different kind of user than their AIM/AOL users. Most of my friends at school were using AIM, so I slowly moved in that direction, but it's telling who is still on my ICQ list and hasn't moved over.
AOL wants to sell their stuff everywhere! They have a LOT to sell.
Netscape remains valuable because users with Netscape.com as their home page ARE NOT users that normally use AOL products. They would have no easy way to reach them on the Internet. Netcenter (or whatever they call it THIS week) changes that.
Alex
I have this feeling that it was "magic" because it was new. It was fun to explore around. However, there is FAR more available on the net as a whole now.
I think that the biggest problem right now isn't the lack of hobby sites, it is the lack of linking. The reason that the search engines are having trouble in part is that people don't get link.
I've been interviewed in eWeek a few times, and my company's name is mentioned. However, it isn't linked. Obviously an interested reader can figure out our domain name, but it is still inappropriate to not provide that linking. Without linking, search engines can't figure out what is going on.
Get the linking back, and the Internet becomes infinitely more useful for information again.
Alex
I'm 22. Getting a modem when I was 14 meant calling BBSes. That required that we knew to get a modem, and knew to find things. The people I meant online were similarly intelligent, because their was a learning curve.
When I was 17, the people coming onto my favorite multiline BBS were the more general public. Their parents had bought a new computer, and a modem happened to be in the machine. They got the number from a friend, and never ventured. At one point I called 10-15 boards, by the end I was down to 2 or 3. They never called more than 1.
Now, my girlfriend's kid sister (15) is online. Her family uses AOL because it's easy. She spends ALL her time in AOL things and Yahoo. She plays Yahoo games, hangs out in Yahoo chats, etc.
She isn't stupid, but Yahoo and AOL satisfy her needs. She doesn't feel the need to venture out. If she is interested in a piece of information (which the web is good for), she can search for it. But random cult sites aren't getting found anymore.
Hell, my personal viewing has dropped from HOURS surfing around following links 4 years ago to 6 or 7 news websites. I don't good off on the Net (outside of Slashdot).
Quite frankly, with the money that was in the Internet for a few years, people built up. Also, if you are an executive at Yahoo and saw something on a hobby site that you thought was cool, wouldn't you have your staff build it in a few weeks. If the page owner was a killer hacker and knocked it off in 2 days, wouldn't it be likely that Yahoo could reimplement it in 2 weeks or 2 months?
There is LESS compelling reasons to venture around on the Internet. You used to need to go to random places for things. Those of us that used Yahoo by '96 (when I did briefly) found a need to go elsewhere... The old-timers from earlier USED Yahoo to go elsewhere. Now, Yahoo provides lots of resources, instead of just information about what else is there.
I'm not convinced that younger people will change this. They may go out and explore, but there is less and less compelling outside the big boys. There used to be neat games that could only be found elsewhere, but they were all bought up by big sites.
For information, people will still do searches. However, the Web as a leisure activity will likely outnumber the web as a research tool for a LONG time.
Alex
Look at the rates for banner ads for Slashdot/OSDN? They are 5-10 TIMES the current average for normal sites.
Technical people make lots of decisions about spending for computer companies. Those company's all use to Internet heavily.
We matter, we just matter differently. If you are selling servers, you'll pay a premium to hit us.
General people don't matter as much. Only large companies competing in LARGE oligopoly markets try to hit generic users. That's why events like the olympics and the superbowl (which hit everyone) get lots of ads from companies like Coke and Pepsi, McDonalds and Burger King, etc.
If you don't have a generic market, you want to hit your target. Targetted advertising is more difficult, and you pay a premium.
Microsoft may have more viewers, and that helps them sell ads to generic companies. However, I guarantee that Compaq is willing to pay a premium to put ads for its high end boxes in front of computer people above and beyond what Coke and Wendy's are willing to pay Microsoft.
Alex
Acting in shareholder interests is. If the board takes actions to hurt the company, they can get hit by a shareholder lawsuit. However, the shareholders can adopt whatever goals they want. If there was a shareholder vote, and they voted to give 20% of the profits to charity, the board would comply.
This notion that the law requires corporations to rape and pillage is taken as fact on Slashdot, but is absurd.
1) Most corporations are NOT publically traded. This issue, maximizing profits to run up stock prices, is only true for publically traded companies, a SMALL portion of corporations.
2) The board of directors acts on behalf of the shareholders. When the CEO and other bigshots hold large portions of the voting stock, than the board and management become one in the same. If you are uncomfortable with being the small owner with no say, don't invest in these companies. It isn't hard to find out the share of the company controlled by management. Note that most investors WANT their management to have a STRONG interest in owning the stock, normally having ownership requirements.
We have less freedom, because the government has asserted power. We have brainwashing, because our school system has stopped teaching anything. People think less because we put our kids in front of the television instead of books.
The unwashed masses were always undereducated and swung by demagaugery. It is only now that the television has put them in charge of the country. When we got direct election of senators and the primary system, we wanted to take control from the power brokers that ran the country. Terrific, we took power from professionals and gave it to amateurs, and assumed that nobody would figure out how to control the amateurs?
Those pushing for more democracy should consider replacing medical accreditation with a thumbs up/thumbs down vote at the local pub... That dumbs down the country.
Most intellectual property (copyright) companies would like to see Gnutella die... most companies couldn't give a rats ass about Gnutella. Even companies that deal in intellectual property don't give a damn.
Software companies have had easy piracy to deal with for years, Gnutella and ilk aren't their problem.
Movie producers are probably okay. They survived without money from video rentals before and will again if need be. As long as they can provide a compelling experience in the theater, they will be fine. The VCR gave them additional revenue. If they lose it, they'll come up with another one. Bitch all you want about the MPAA, they're much better behaved than the RIAA. The DVD region encoding annoys me (I still haven't bought a DVD player), but it isn't as bad as the RIAA's actions towards artists.
However, I don't understand when Slashdot went communist. I've only been a user for about two years, but this has really gotten weird over the past 6-12 months. Corporations aren't evil. Some of the large companies, where the shareholders and boards are too separated and management isn't overseen, may have done some bad things. But you guys treat all corporations as these evil entities. If you want to criticize multinationals, pick some out and go, many are disgusting. But lashing out at all corporations are childish. This article is attacking the top 50-200 companies... They aren't even hitting the Fortune 500/Global 2000 range. What about us small companies? Are we all evil too? The 5 person Linux consulting shop, are they doing the devil's work? Lash out at irresponsible multinations, not all corporations.
Now, the comparison of corporations to countries (sales vs. GDP) isn't fair. GDP measures value added. Sales measures value. Value added isn't necessarily profit, but it is the gross margin of sorts. If I buy lumber for $100, and turn it into $200 desks, I contribute $100 to the GDP, but $200 to my sales. This disparity helps get their "scary" figure of 51 corporations being larger than the countries... I'd guess that with fair numbers, the number of companies drops to 20 or so in the top 100. With less than 200 (last I checked) nations recognized by the UN, large multinationals participating isn't so strange.
Additional example of how to lie with statistics... 6. Between 1983 and 1999, the profits of the Top 200 firms grew 362.4 percent, while the number of people they employ grew by only 14.4 percent.
Well, that is a useless statistic, how many companies were in the top 200 both times?
Think about it, darwinian selection allows us to pick the top 200 companies now and compare it to the top 200 from 20 years ago. The companies that make more money per man-hour rise up, those that make less sink. Obviously the top 200 will be more efficient than 20 years ago. Compare the same companies. Also, IT reduces layers of management, so companies are flatter now. The top 200 companies are smaller for the same amount of productivity. That's been the goal, reduce costs. Those people get redeployed through the economy. We create more widgets/person, and consumers benefit. Our unemployment number is less than 5%, that isn't massive people thrown out of work. Those losing jobs are finding new ones.
Also, it doesn't mention if 362.4% is in real dollars or not? Given that this is a anti-multinational piece, I would assume not. Keep in mind that if we assumed NO increased efficiency and no substitution of more effective, the firms would have increased about 250% just because of inflation. Factoring in the 14.4% employment increase that they refer to, and we are up to 285% increase. Given productivity of 1%/year (we've been at 2% for the past few years), we're over 300%.
So, based on raw size and productivity gains, we expected the top 200 firms to increase in the 300% to 305% range. When you consider the timing of these years, 1983 a recession year to 1999 a boom year, we also get more warped numbers. Profits would be way down in a recession depressed economy. You took a valley and a peak and measured the change. Let's put another 30% into the profit numbers to compensate... assuming 15% lower in recession or 15% higher in boom (in reality, I'd put the swing higher than that), we're up to a 335% increase.
I think that our ability to subsitute and pick and choose the top 200 firms explains the remaining 27.4%, in fact, I would suggest it explains more than that.
There are REAL problems with some of the multinationals. The ability of governments to interfere in the economy gives companies an incentive to lobby. There is a mess. However, let's not use bogus statistics to invent this nonsense. Let's be a little more reasonable.
The persuit of wealth is NOT evil. Being a bad person is evil. Do not confuse the two.
Alex
I hammered off a quick slashdot post on a threat discussing the kernel and other stuff.
However, don't be an asshole.
I didn't mean what it sounded like.
The buffer cache is set too low. I realize that the page cache grows, but the buffer cache at a higher level does a tremendous affect on performance. I don't know why exactly, but I know that each server has a sweetspot, and you want to get a decent chunk of your RAM reserved for this process.
The default is too low for a machine with moderate memory amounts. The O'Reilly book covered this.
Personal attacks whenever you catch someone in a brain fart isn't really polite, is it?
Alex
You haven't ever compiled an OpenBSD kernel, have you? To get tweaks, you need to change some settings. Some of these are in the options file you edit, some are not. The ones that are not require you to learn about them from obscure postings to mailling lists or in random performance tuning sites for various packages.
Compiling an OpenBSD kernel isn't fun, but is necessary. For example, OpenBSD only uses 5% of memory for cacheing the drive. Now if you have obscene amounts of RAM, this is adequate. If you have little RAM, this is important so you have memory for your applications.
IF you have a moderate amount, say 256MB or 512MB, you probably want to have more space for disk caching, so you need to recompile your kernel.
More specific issues requrie more tuning.
Alex