It's about removing the threat of green energy from possible competitors.
Large companies will fund research for the purpose of patenting every possible, useful implementation of whatever threatens their business model - whether it is alternative energy (oil companies) or VOIP (Verizon). This way, their business model is sound, and competition is eliminated.
In the case of the oil companies, they know that alternative energy sources lack the infrastructure to become established, but that this could/will be overcome by changes in the political winds (no pun intended). As neither party, (or, as I should say, THE PARTY) is not interested in patent reform, patenting alternative energy puts them in the position of being able to profit from green technologies, without actually having to incur the risk of bringing them to market.
You didn't think you could stick it to the man by going green, did you?
And this is just off the top of my head. But sadly, this isn't receiving the outrage it should, and I suspect the reason is because Americans have always been largely apathetic to things which didn't directly affect them.
We needn't worry about things like democratic process and the right to vote; if we ignore the problems long enough, we won't have to worry about election fairness, because there won't be any elections. This is how it starts, folks. For that reason alone, these guys should be charged with crimes.
Or it could be that in suffering they find themselves identifying with the suffering Christ underwent on the cross.
Or perhaps they believe their suffering has been brought to them for some higher purpose. They view whatever fate God has assigned them as a test of their faith.
Or perhaps they believe there is something noble about never giving up. Some of those dying of cancer today were of the same generation that stormed the beaches of Normandy...
If I really believe that God created me, then for me to have a passive attitude toward death is hippocritical; how could I expect God to care about my life if I didn't?
Even though both IT and engineering require the ability to program computers, the two are NOT the same when viewed from the perspective of corporate management:
IT is viewed as a cost center; as if it were some kind of corporate parasite preying on the profitable activities of the company. It is tolerated, but not celebrated.
Engineering is viewed as the place where the "next big thing" comes from. While R&D can be a hard sell at times, engineers are not treated like parasites, nor are they expected to be on call 24/7.
Because engineering produces the IP and Trade Secrets vital to a company's success, companies are more reluctant to outsource engineering jobs than IT jobs. For example, a company may be able to outsource the grunt work of engineering, i.e., the coding of system modules, but the product design has to be done in house, as it confers a proprietary advantage for it to remain secret. OTOH, all of IT can be outsourced with the exception of those jobs which require a physical presence: i.e. the guy who physically mounts tapes and reboots servers. One of these jobs requires considerable analytical skills and the other does not. Guess which one pays more, and which one is viewed as grunt work that any simpleton could do.
Generally speaking, programmers seldom spend more than 10 years in their career field. They either move into management positions, or leave the field entirely. Contrast this with engineers, where retirement from a senior engineering position is relatively common.
Engineers are usually better treated and more highly paid than IT workers. That same computer science degree will get an engineer a better salary than an IT tech.
If I had to give just one piece of advice to a CS major it would be this: Pick your first job carefully. Once you have become known as an IT person, programmer, or engineer, the title will tend to stick. It is much easier to get hired as an engineer straight out of college than to convince a potential employer that your IT experience is relevant to engineering.
since you can't ignore Windows in the data center...
I couldn't agree more - ignoring Windows in the data center, i.e., forgetting to patch it, leaving it alone for too long, connected to a network, etc... is a recipe for disaster.
Oh, wait, did someone mean they can't ignore the prospect of using Windows in a data center? Did someone just imply that those of us who have been using IBM mainframes and Sun servers and Linux boxes can't do without Windows in our data centers?
Please. Many a pristine uptime has been ruined by putting Windows in the data center, and while I'll admit they have made strides in improving their OS, it is still nowhere near the reliability of UNIX servers, let alone mainframes. A few years ago, the London Stock Exchange suffered an outage after deciding to go with Windows instead of Linux. Even if there are no future outages, they won't return to 5 nines of uptime until well into the next century.
I sincerely doubt you are more than 160 times more productive than an average developer...
Perhaps he's not managed by the *average* large-corporation manager. Trust me, I've seen changes that would have taken me a day to complete end up stretched over six months because management is clueless and obstructive. You can take my personal experience with a grain of salt if you'd like, but there's probably a 10 to 1 ratio of performance between coders in the same organization. Combine this with the fact that management can obstruct or enable productivity by two orders of magnitude (again, personal experience), and it is easy to see how some developers are 1,000 times more productive than others. For the GP to be 160 times more productive than average, he needs be nothing more than a lower 20% coder in a company with good management practices.
And have to say that it is rather well balanced. But it also reminds me of something: I've been using Linux for more than a decade, and things to which I'm accustomed - like using the command line - are not at all intuitive to the Windows user.
There is this tendency among Linux evangelists to try to "fix" a neophyte's problems rather than listening to what he's saying. While Linux has made large inroads in the desktop arena, at its heart it is UNIX, not Windows. One of the larger issues of Linux adoption is that Windows users have a mental model of computers which is Windows-specific:
Typing is for documents, not the command line.
Reading is for web pages, not system configuration.
Configuration is about making choices, not thinking, and certainly not about knowing what hardware is installed in the machine.
If it can't be installed with a few mouse clicks, it doesn't work. End of story.
Making Linux ubiquitous on the desktop will be a matter of coming up with a simpler, more accessible mental model of a computer for the end user. It will not come about by fixing a particular problem with a particular distribution.
The average computer user is an expert in something *other* than computers. They're not interested in learning the vagaries of hardware configuration or knowing about kernel dumps and command lines. They use a computer as a tool to *do something other than programming*. They want something easy to use, secure, and reliable. Windows comes through on the first part. Linux on the latter parts. However, security and reliability are a moot point if you can't use the computer in the first place. Hence, Windows gets chosen time and again, in spite of its flaws.
It's really a Moron instead. A few years ago a very important discovery was made:
Research has led to the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a second, to take from four days to four years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years. It does not decay, but undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes, not to mention multiple oxymorons.
This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. That hypothetical quantity might normally be called 'critical mass' but, in this unique case it is known as 'critical mess'.
When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (Am), another just-discovered element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.
But prior to the invention of technology which allowed widespread distribution of music and dramatic performances, the best an artist could hope for would be a kingly sponsorship. A musician couldn't make a living without actually performing, nor could an actor make a living without constantly acting.
There's nothing today preventing artists from making their money the old fashioned way. They could simply tour to bring in revenue, if they so chose. But they want to continue to make money on performances long after they've put their instruments away. And this is what the likes of RIAA-member companies promise them. Are they getting exploited? Perhaps in a few cases, yes. Are they exploiting the public at large? Yes, every time. The creative arts are the only discipline in which the workers and those who exploit them expect to make profit long after the work is done.
If you're not paying for live performances, you're contributing to this condition. Buying CDs, music/movie downloads (legal or not) - these all contribute to the notion that an artist deserves to be compensated multiple times for work they've done only once. But then again, when you buy that CD, you get to enjoy content indefinitely without paying the artist any further royalties.
If you don't like the copyright model, then do something about it. I suspect, however, that most people would rather put up with copyright than live in a society without it. Without copyright, every artist would simply resort to live performances, and we'd have a situation where hearing our favorite music was a matter of being in the right place at the right time and paying a hefty cover charge, *every time*.
That "supposedly critical but practically useless mandatory project requirement" is the result of experience. Inexperienced engineers often make the mistake of assuming that if they can't understand why the requirement exists, it must be arbitrary.
Perhaps this is apocryphal, but during the Cold War, submarines would routinely get stuck under polar ice floes. Having a missile which would work when fired from underneath the polar ice was probably a very large concern for the system designers. Had the engineers pointed out the impossibility of this requirement, it is possible that military doctrine would have been changed to reflect the limitations of the technology. If you are correct about the difference between requirements, design, and actual manufacture, then the actions of these engineers (or perhaps bureaucrats) put the entire United States at risk of nuclear holocaust. Had the Soviets known this during the Cold War, they might have been more willing to risk a nuclear confrontation.
Windows hardly got the security model right, at any level.
In the first place, UNIX has a very limited API set for which the security implications are well understood. Windows, OTOH, grows its API by thousands of functions with each iteration, and the security implications are often not understood until well after release. Microsoft has so reliably failed to get security right that malware is now offered as a service.
Windows, though, has other problems, one of them being the need to support backward compatibility with older software which doesn't use the current security model. It's not security if adherence is optional. For example, even on XP, an MSDOS program can take full control of the monitor and write directly to graphics memory. I could, if I really wanted, mimic a Windows XP logon screen merely by pasting a bitmap to video memory. As long as my executable format is COM, XP allows me complete control over video, and will gladly assist me in capturing mouse and keystrokes with the BIOS.
But if Microsoft isn't going to do this, then they're in effect (back to) designing an insecure OS, because that's what people want.
No, people don't want an *insecure* OS; they want an *easy to use OS* that is also secure. UNIX, Linux, BSD, and Apple got the security model right; Microsoft didn't. That's why in Windows, security and usability is a zero sum game. Had Microsoft gotten the security model right in the first place, UAC wouldn't be an issue.
At this point, backward compatibility and familiarity are the only things keeping Microsoft in the game. If they abandon their broken security model, they'll be obsoleted by Ubuntu or Apple. They really don't have much of a choice except to continue with their broken architecture.
Which just this week recently declared Pluto a planet, I'm somewhat relieved that Oklahoma has decided to one-up us in the "Most Asinine Law" contest. At least now I won't have to hear about how stupid and corrupt our politicians are... for a week or so.
Look, I've got about 10 H1-B's working for me, and I'm saving a good half a million over hiring American workers. How am I supposed to afford a second house in the Bahamas? Honestly, you whiners are killing me here.
And my daughter wants a Lexus when she turns 16. Hmm, I've got an open position, and I can hire an American or H1-B... Tell me, honestly, that you'd tell your daughter she'll have to drive a 2 year old Camry because Daddy hired an American!
You people, such whiners. I tell you, these guys could teach you a lesson or two. Work less than 60 hours a week? Sure, FOR SOMEONE ELSE! Go ahead and try to leave - I can replace you in a week.
It's sad, but some of you reading this probably don't realize its satire. Hopefully I'm not bringing up bad memories of past employers for any of you.
that the egg produced, than merely an abstract cure, which *might* come about in the future.
Barack Obama was a prime candidate for abortion: his single mother didn't have the means to raise him. Think about where we would be today if his mother had aborted him.
I'm inclined to think that those who push for increased surveillance *really would not mind* if their entire lives were subject to public scrutiny. They're of the mindset that people shouldn't be able to get away with misdeeds simply by hiding behind some pesky rights...
The most likely result of subjecting politicians to this kind of treatment will be that they will subject *everyone* to the same draconian surveillance; "If I can do it, so can you..." Of course, there are people who, while doing nothing illegal, hold unpopular opinions, find themselves in ambiguous circumstances, or have "problems" the rest of society are loathe to understand. Those who shape their lives according to the model of popular conformity so as to get elected are the least able to understand the negative consequences of constant surveillance. Politicians live their entire lives under public scrutiny and constant surveillance, and as such may have a difficult time understanding the value of privacy to free societies.
Re:This too was foreseen
on
Designer Babies
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Freedom means putting up with shit you don't like.
Which is exactly what this clinic is promising to do away with. Come to them, and you won't have to deal with anything you wouldn't like to see in your children.
I'm wondering how many of those who flock to this clinic are asking for a homosexual child.
I'm wondering how many are seeking children of a certain ethnicity or skin color.
I'm wondering how many are seeking children of a certain sex.
The list goes on, but basically what this whole thing is about is reintroducing the racist, sexist, homophobic tendencies of society under the guise of progress. The Nazis tried this in the 1930's with their eugenics programs, and it ultimately led to someone concluding that Jews weren't fit to live. We all know how well that worked out, and I think this is even more sinister. The problem with "designer babies" is that by removing the perceived imperfections from a majority of the society, as a society, we never learn what it feels like to be marginalized, oppressed, disadvantaged, etc... The grand consequence of this is a general loss of compassion and inability to empathize with the less fortunate. Which in turns leads to a greater separation between the haves and have nots, and paves the way for tyranny.
Who thinks we'll see a Microsoft Linux distro in the future?
I mean, think about it - to continue with Windows, Microsoft must:
Write drivers for practically every piece of hardware in existence, or risk getting blamed for system instability caused by the hw vendor's outsourced drivers...
Continue to patch numerous holes in the operating system on an ongoing basis.
Continue to push for proprietary and closed standards in order to increase its market share.
Microsoft isn't good at any of these, yet they continue to pour money into Windows, in spite of the fact that it has very little value as a platform. People buy Windows for the familiar user interface (which MS actually got right), not for its security or stability. Why wouldn't Microsoft put its interface and API on top of a Linux kernel? They can still do the proprietary Windows thing, but let the Linux folks get the device drivers and system stability right.
I know some people here are anti-Microsoft, but if MS hoisted Windows onto Linux, you'd have many, many more drivers written for Linux, and the choice of OS would be practically moot. For the end user, it would come down to the choice between running a free WM such as KDE or GNOME, or paying some extra for the familiar Windows UI. And we could dispense with the incompatibilities with the two systems, and get the best of both worlds: the stability and security of Linux, with the ease of use and familiarity of Windows.
And Xandros works just fine for me. There are a few quirks to getting KDE installed, but as for the rest of the packages, you can't beat apt-get.
The advantage of the Xandros distro is that it already supports the EEE hardware, and whatever else you find lacking can be made up with apt-get. Of course, it didn't ship with KDE, gcc, gThumb, etc..., but finding and installing the software was fairly trivial.
Why is the Linux block subsystem still stuck in the 20MB hard-disk era like this?
As one who had to tune the performance of hard drives at the kernel level, I can say with some authority that the Linux block subsystem is not at all stuck in the 20MB hard-disk era. In fact, everything is logical blocks these days, and it's the filesystem driver and IO schedulers which determine the write sequences. The block layer is largely "dumb" in this regard, and treats every block device as nothing more than a large array of blocks. A properly designed wear-leveling filesystem has no dependencies on the underlying hardware with one exception: block size. But seeing as every Linux filesystem since Ext2 has had the option of creating filesystems with different block sizes, I doubt this is, or ever will be, an issue.
The only real issue with wear-leveling filesystems is that they don't work well with conventional hard disks, largely due to the fact that with flash, the block access time is pretty much constant no matter where on the drive it is located. Hence, there's no need to schedule based on C/H/S values. Because of this disparity, there won't be ONE TRUE FILESYSTEM in Linux. This might actually be a good thing, if you've ever been privy to the debates over Reiserfs and Ext3...
The hardware SSD wear-levelling algorithms used by Intel, et al... are nothing special. Yes, they probably do offer higher performance than a general purpose filesystem, but performance is not their reason for existence. They exist largely because the overwhelming majority of consumer devices still use FAT32, which would destroy an SSD without wear-leveling very quickly. Think of how many flash chips are used in cameras, cellphones, thumb drives, etc... Intel had to do this just to access the non-Linux market.
I understand the sentiments of your post, but I have to disagree with the premise. While the single, middle manager doesn't need a big house and SUV, for most parents, these are not optional extras.
My father was a factory worker, and managed to afford a house and raise four children. As an engineer, I make more money than my father ever did as a factory worker, yet have less than he did when he was my age.
An SUV is not a luxury item anymore. A family with four children cannot legally drive their entire family in one sedan or station wagon. In fact, it's a tight fit for anything shy of a minivan. So they either buy an SUV, or buy two cars and shuttle the kids separately - which presents its own series of logistical problems.
A house is practically a necessity for anyone with more than two children. I grew up having a back yard in which to play, and I'd like my children to have that as well. Sure, I suppose one could raise four children in a three bedroom condo, but it will be quite a squeeze, and rather uncomfortable.
Having small families is not sound policy. If you have two children, you're basically replacing yourselves in the economy, and contributing nothing to the overall picture. People need to have more children to grow the number of consumers in the economy and provide the demand which will create jobs. The reason we need a stimulus package now is because people stopped having large families in the 70's and 80's and there's a shortfall of consumers in the economy now.
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It's about removing the threat of green energy from possible competitors.
Large companies will fund research for the purpose of patenting every possible, useful implementation of whatever threatens their business model - whether it is alternative energy (oil companies) or VOIP (Verizon). This way, their business model is sound, and competition is eliminated.
In the case of the oil companies, they know that alternative energy sources lack the infrastructure to become established, but that this could/will be overcome by changes in the political winds (no pun intended). As neither party, (or, as I should say, THE PARTY) is not interested in patent reform, patenting alternative energy puts them in the position of being able to profit from green technologies, without actually having to incur the risk of bringing them to market.
You didn't think you could stick it to the man by going green, did you?
Ignore your rights and they'll go away
Diebold executives could be charged with:
And this is just off the top of my head. But sadly, this isn't receiving the outrage it should, and I suspect the reason is because Americans have always been largely apathetic to things which didn't directly affect them.
We needn't worry about things like democratic process and the right to vote; if we ignore the problems long enough, we won't have to worry about election fairness, because there won't be any elections. This is how it starts, folks. For that reason alone, these guys should be charged with crimes.
They're grateful for every minute.
Or it could be that in suffering they find themselves identifying with the suffering Christ underwent on the cross.
Or perhaps they believe their suffering has been brought to them for some higher purpose. They view whatever fate God has assigned them as a test of their faith.
Or perhaps they believe there is something noble about never giving up. Some of those dying of cancer today were of the same generation that stormed the beaches of Normandy...
If I really believe that God created me, then for me to have a passive attitude toward death is hippocritical; how could I expect God to care about my life if I didn't?
Even though both IT and engineering require the ability to program computers, the two are NOT the same when viewed from the perspective of corporate management:
If I had to give just one piece of advice to a CS major it would be this: Pick your first job carefully. Once you have become known as an IT person, programmer, or engineer, the title will tend to stick. It is much easier to get hired as an engineer straight out of college than to convince a potential employer that your IT experience is relevant to engineering.
since you can't ignore Windows in the data center...
I couldn't agree more - ignoring Windows in the data center, i.e., forgetting to patch it, leaving it alone for too long, connected to a network, etc... is a recipe for disaster.
Oh, wait, did someone mean they can't ignore the prospect of using Windows in a data center? Did someone just imply that those of us who have been using IBM mainframes and Sun servers and Linux boxes can't do without Windows in our data centers?
Please. Many a pristine uptime has been ruined by putting Windows in the data center, and while I'll admit they have made strides in improving their OS, it is still nowhere near the reliability of UNIX servers, let alone mainframes. A few years ago, the London Stock Exchange suffered an outage after deciding to go with Windows instead of Linux. Even if there are no future outages, they won't return to 5 nines of uptime until well into the next century.
I sincerely doubt you are more than 160 times more productive than an average developer...
Perhaps he's not managed by the *average* large-corporation manager. Trust me, I've seen changes that would have taken me a day to complete end up stretched over six months because management is clueless and obstructive. You can take my personal experience with a grain of salt if you'd like, but there's probably a 10 to 1 ratio of performance between coders in the same organization. Combine this with the fact that management can obstruct or enable productivity by two orders of magnitude (again, personal experience), and it is easy to see how some developers are 1,000 times more productive than others. For the GP to be 160 times more productive than average, he needs be nothing more than a lower 20% coder in a company with good management practices.
And have to say that it is rather well balanced. But it also reminds me of something: I've been using Linux for more than a decade, and things to which I'm accustomed - like using the command line - are not at all intuitive to the Windows user.
There is this tendency among Linux evangelists to try to "fix" a neophyte's problems rather than listening to what he's saying. While Linux has made large inroads in the desktop arena, at its heart it is UNIX, not Windows. One of the larger issues of Linux adoption is that Windows users have a mental model of computers which is Windows-specific:
Making Linux ubiquitous on the desktop will be a matter of coming up with a simpler, more accessible mental model of a computer for the end user. It will not come about by fixing a particular problem with a particular distribution.
The average computer user is an expert in something *other* than computers. They're not interested in learning the vagaries of hardware configuration or knowing about kernel dumps and command lines. They use a computer as a tool to *do something other than programming*. They want something easy to use, secure, and reliable. Windows comes through on the first part. Linux on the latter parts. However, security and reliability are a moot point if you can't use the computer in the first place. Hence, Windows gets chosen time and again, in spite of its flaws.
It's really a Moron instead. A few years ago a very important discovery was made:
Research has led to the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a second, to take from four days to four years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years. It does not decay, but undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes, not to mention multiple oxymorons.
This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. That hypothetical quantity might normally be called 'critical mass' but, in this unique case it is known as 'critical mess'.
When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (Am), another just-discovered element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.
Both Richard and Lucifer cancel their 5 oclock meeting on Friday.
But prior to the invention of technology which allowed widespread distribution of music and dramatic performances, the best an artist could hope for would be a kingly sponsorship. A musician couldn't make a living without actually performing, nor could an actor make a living without constantly acting.
There's nothing today preventing artists from making their money the old fashioned way. They could simply tour to bring in revenue, if they so chose. But they want to continue to make money on performances long after they've put their instruments away. And this is what the likes of RIAA-member companies promise them. Are they getting exploited? Perhaps in a few cases, yes. Are they exploiting the public at large? Yes, every time. The creative arts are the only discipline in which the workers and those who exploit them expect to make profit long after the work is done.
If you're not paying for live performances, you're contributing to this condition. Buying CDs, music/movie downloads (legal or not) - these all contribute to the notion that an artist deserves to be compensated multiple times for work they've done only once. But then again, when you buy that CD, you get to enjoy content indefinitely without paying the artist any further royalties.
If you don't like the copyright model, then do something about it. I suspect, however, that most people would rather put up with copyright than live in a society without it. Without copyright, every artist would simply resort to live performances, and we'd have a situation where hearing our favorite music was a matter of being in the right place at the right time and paying a hefty cover charge, *every time*.
That "supposedly critical but practically useless mandatory project requirement" is the result of experience. Inexperienced engineers often make the mistake of assuming that if they can't understand why the requirement exists, it must be arbitrary.
Perhaps this is apocryphal, but during the Cold War, submarines would routinely get stuck under polar ice floes. Having a missile which would work when fired from underneath the polar ice was probably a very large concern for the system designers. Had the engineers pointed out the impossibility of this requirement, it is possible that military doctrine would have been changed to reflect the limitations of the technology. If you are correct about the difference between requirements, design, and actual manufacture, then the actions of these engineers (or perhaps bureaucrats) put the entire United States at risk of nuclear holocaust. Had the Soviets known this during the Cold War, they might have been more willing to risk a nuclear confrontation.
IOW, marbles cut in half. Pyrex cookware is (was?) made from SiO2.
Windows hardly got the security model right, at any level.
In the first place, UNIX has a very limited API set for which the security implications are well understood. Windows, OTOH, grows its API by thousands of functions with each iteration, and the security implications are often not understood until well after release. Microsoft has so reliably failed to get security right that malware is now offered as a service.
Windows, though, has other problems, one of them being the need to support backward compatibility with older software which doesn't use the current security model. It's not security if adherence is optional. For example, even on XP, an MSDOS program can take full control of the monitor and write directly to graphics memory. I could, if I really wanted, mimic a Windows XP logon screen merely by pasting a bitmap to video memory. As long as my executable format is COM, XP allows me complete control over video, and will gladly assist me in capturing mouse and keystrokes with the BIOS.
But if Microsoft isn't going to do this, then they're in effect (back to) designing an insecure OS, because that's what people want.
No, people don't want an *insecure* OS; they want an *easy to use OS* that is also secure. UNIX, Linux, BSD, and Apple got the security model right; Microsoft didn't. That's why in Windows, security and usability is a zero sum game. Had Microsoft gotten the security model right in the first place, UAC wouldn't be an issue.
At this point, backward compatibility and familiarity are the only things keeping Microsoft in the game. If they abandon their broken security model, they'll be obsoleted by Ubuntu or Apple. They really don't have much of a choice except to continue with their broken architecture.
Which just this week recently declared Pluto a planet, I'm somewhat relieved that Oklahoma has decided to one-up us in the "Most Asinine Law" contest. At least now I won't have to hear about how stupid and corrupt our politicians are... for a week or so.
If I have to pay employees enough to buy a house?
Look, I've got about 10 H1-B's working for me, and I'm saving a good half a million over hiring American workers. How am I supposed to afford a second house in the Bahamas? Honestly, you whiners are killing me here.
And my daughter wants a Lexus when she turns 16. Hmm, I've got an open position, and I can hire an American or H1-B... Tell me, honestly, that you'd tell your daughter she'll have to drive a 2 year old Camry because Daddy hired an American!
You people, such whiners. I tell you, these guys could teach you a lesson or two. Work less than 60 hours a week? Sure, FOR SOMEONE ELSE! Go ahead and try to leave - I can replace you in a week.
It's sad, but some of you reading this probably don't realize its satire. Hopefully I'm not bringing up bad memories of past employers for any of you.
that the egg produced, than merely an abstract cure, which *might* come about in the future.
Barack Obama was a prime candidate for abortion: his single mother didn't have the means to raise him. Think about where we would be today if his mother had aborted him.
I'm inclined to think that those who push for increased surveillance *really would not mind* if their entire lives were subject to public scrutiny. They're of the mindset that people shouldn't be able to get away with misdeeds simply by hiding behind some pesky rights...
The most likely result of subjecting politicians to this kind of treatment will be that they will subject *everyone* to the same draconian surveillance; "If I can do it, so can you..." Of course, there are people who, while doing nothing illegal, hold unpopular opinions, find themselves in ambiguous circumstances, or have "problems" the rest of society are loathe to understand. Those who shape their lives according to the model of popular conformity so as to get elected are the least able to understand the negative consequences of constant surveillance. Politicians live their entire lives under public scrutiny and constant surveillance, and as such may have a difficult time understanding the value of privacy to free societies.
Freedom means putting up with shit you don't like.
Which is exactly what this clinic is promising to do away with. Come to them, and you won't have to deal with anything you wouldn't like to see in your children.
I'm wondering how many of those who flock to this clinic are asking for a homosexual child.
I'm wondering how many are seeking children of a certain ethnicity or skin color.
I'm wondering how many are seeking children of a certain sex.
The list goes on, but basically what this whole thing is about is reintroducing the racist, sexist, homophobic tendencies of society under the guise of progress. The Nazis tried this in the 1930's with their eugenics programs, and it ultimately led to someone concluding that Jews weren't fit to live. We all know how well that worked out, and I think this is even more sinister. The problem with "designer babies" is that by removing the perceived imperfections from a majority of the society, as a society, we never learn what it feels like to be marginalized, oppressed, disadvantaged, etc... The grand consequence of this is a general loss of compassion and inability to empathize with the less fortunate. Which in turns leads to a greater separation between the haves and have nots, and paves the way for tyranny.
Did someone import them from Africa? AFAIK, only *alligators* are native to Florida.
Who thinks we'll see a Microsoft Linux distro in the future?
I mean, think about it - to continue with Windows, Microsoft must:
Microsoft isn't good at any of these, yet they continue to pour money into Windows, in spite of the fact that it has very little value as a platform. People buy Windows for the familiar user interface (which MS actually got right), not for its security or stability. Why wouldn't Microsoft put its interface and API on top of a Linux kernel? They can still do the proprietary Windows thing, but let the Linux folks get the device drivers and system stability right.
I know some people here are anti-Microsoft, but if MS hoisted Windows onto Linux, you'd have many, many more drivers written for Linux, and the choice of OS would be practically moot. For the end user, it would come down to the choice between running a free WM such as KDE or GNOME, or paying some extra for the familiar Windows UI. And we could dispense with the incompatibilities with the two systems, and get the best of both worlds: the stability and security of Linux, with the ease of use and familiarity of Windows.
Since when have geographical boundaries *ever* been an obstacle to the US enforcing its laws wherever it pleases?
And Xandros works just fine for me. There are a few quirks to getting KDE installed, but as for the rest of the packages, you can't beat apt-get.
The advantage of the Xandros distro is that it already supports the EEE hardware, and whatever else you find lacking can be made up with apt-get. Of course, it didn't ship with KDE, gcc, gThumb, etc..., but finding and installing the software was fairly trivial.
Why is the Linux block subsystem still stuck in the 20MB hard-disk era like this?
As one who had to tune the performance of hard drives at the kernel level, I can say with some authority that the Linux block subsystem is not at all stuck in the 20MB hard-disk era. In fact, everything is logical blocks these days, and it's the filesystem driver and IO schedulers which determine the write sequences. The block layer is largely "dumb" in this regard, and treats every block device as nothing more than a large array of blocks. A properly designed wear-leveling filesystem has no dependencies on the underlying hardware with one exception: block size. But seeing as every Linux filesystem since Ext2 has had the option of creating filesystems with different block sizes, I doubt this is, or ever will be, an issue.
The only real issue with wear-leveling filesystems is that they don't work well with conventional hard disks, largely due to the fact that with flash, the block access time is pretty much constant no matter where on the drive it is located. Hence, there's no need to schedule based on C/H/S values. Because of this disparity, there won't be ONE TRUE FILESYSTEM in Linux. This might actually be a good thing, if you've ever been privy to the debates over Reiserfs and Ext3...
The hardware SSD wear-levelling algorithms used by Intel, et al... are nothing special. Yes, they probably do offer higher performance than a general purpose filesystem, but performance is not their reason for existence. They exist largely because the overwhelming majority of consumer devices still use FAT32, which would destroy an SSD without wear-leveling very quickly. Think of how many flash chips are used in cameras, cellphones, thumb drives, etc... Intel had to do this just to access the non-Linux market.
I understand the sentiments of your post, but I have to disagree with the premise. While the single, middle manager doesn't need a big house and SUV, for most parents, these are not optional extras.
My father was a factory worker, and managed to afford a house and raise four children. As an engineer, I make more money than my father ever did as a factory worker, yet have less than he did when he was my age.