Basic econ buddy. Markets are great at creating efficiency. But as any good economist (like me) will tell you, they _inherently_ create massive inequality.
Obviously, some people earn more money than others. I'm not sure about the "massive" part. But the idea that the public school system creates equality is laughable. Go to an inner city school sometime. Then go to a suburban school. Then visit a private school. Tell me how much equality you see.
The fact is that the public schools are failing our kids. Test scores keep dropping, and standards drop as well. Many kids who go to the worst schools would be better off not even going, as all they learn about is gangs, drugs, and violence. Yes, markets are not perfect. But government schools have a lot more problems.
That may be acceptable in a normal market, but education isn't a normal market- there are too many externalities and free-rider problems.
I'm not sure what you are talking about here. I can't think of any externalities involved, and the only free-rider problem I can think of is the idea that everyone benefits from an educated populace. That may be true, and if so there is some argument to be made for a means-tested voucher system to ensure minimum education for all people. But there's a big difference between a subsidized but private system and a government-run one.
Not to mention that that inequlity will only further serve to exacerbate the inequality of opportunity in the labor market.
I don't think this is necessarily true. When leftists lament the "gap between the rich and poor," what they fail to mention is that *who* is in those categories changes all the time. A poor family in generation 1 can be a middle class family in generation 2 and a rich one in generation 3. The free market is extremely dynamic. Unlike other social organizations, there are no "classes," because no one is forced to stay in the income level into which he was born. A top-notch education helps, but it's not essential. Equally important is determination on the part of the student and good carreer choices.
Besides, your argument seems to be that if everyone can't go to a really good school, we should drag the rich kids down to the same crappy level as the poor kids. If you have a plan for giving the poor kids a better education, let's hear it. But if the rich parents want to spend extra on their kids' education, why should we object?
Anyway, the view that government has been "throwing money" at schools is absolutely ridiculous. If anything, they've been cutting back again and again. The Right has made a concerted effort to convince people that this isn't true, however.
Got any evidence for that? The (admittedly right-wing) sources I've heard on the subject say that state funding of education (at least in Minnesota) has been going up faster than inflation for about 10 years now. I admittedly don't have the numbers on me right now, but I'd be suprised if you produced numbers showing education funding being cut.
Because most of the shooting is done by criminals, and the criminals aren't likely to turn in their guns.
The police simply do not have the resources to protect you 24 hours a day. If you get robbed, raped, or murdered, they might show up in time to scare the intruder away, but more likely, they'll just pick up the pieces and hope they find the bad guy later. If you're armed, you can stop him on the spot. Just whip out your gun and tell him to back off.
Also, private gun ownership *is* a deterrent to tyrrany. The first actions of many dictators is to round up all the weapons. It's much easier to order people around when they can't fight back. Some of the early battles of the Revolutionary war were touched off by British efforts to confiscate citizens' weapons or ammo.
And if you don't think that this is relevant in a modern world, look at Kosovo. Yugoslavia has had gun control laws for years, and the result is that all those refugees are completely helpless, and forced to go where they are told and do as their told. It's much harder to "ethnically cleanse" a town if every third townsperson tries to put a bullet between your eyes when you come to arrest them.
I don't have a gun, because I don't really need one. But I feel safer knowing that other law-abiding citizens are armed, as it makes it much harder for the goevernment to push people around. And if there were indications of an impending handgun ban, I might be inclined to buy a gun and bury it somewhere, just in case.
So the Libertarian party supports my right to join (or form) a labour union?
Absolutely. Who says we didn't? As long as workers are free *not* to join that union, and as long as the government doesn't give labor or management any special rights, we wholeheartedly support your right to form any type of organization you like, including a labor union.
I read an article about this. I wish I remember where I saw it, as it was pretty convincing. The basic argument is that USB 2.0 is a too little, too late attempt on Intel's part to make sure that they don't lose control of the peripherals storage market. It would be a shame if they succeeded in killing Firewire.
The main reason Firewire is better is that Firewire is here now, and USB 2.0 is set to achieve equivalent speeds a year or more from now. By that time, second-generation firewire will be out, which will boost speeds. In addition, I've read that there are technical issues with USB 2.0, and that Intel's time table and performance goals are optimistic to say the least.
The article also said that USB 2.0 would not have some of the features that Firewire has, and will be hobbled by backwards compitibility with the current USB. Looks to me like FUD on Intel's part to kill a technology that is technologically superior.
Of course, the guy also sounds pretty unintelligent(maybe he's not good on TV).
Nope, he's a moron. As a Minnesota resident, I can tell you that you do *not* want Jesse as president. He's a fraud, a disgrace, and an idiot. Allow me to elaborate.
Fraud Jesse ran on a mildly libertarian platform of less government spending, lower taxes, and generally liberal on social issues. He was pro-concealed carry, said he might consider legalizing pot and prostitution, and was generally an ok guy.
After he got elected, he surrounded himself with moderate Democrats, and did a policy about-face. Now he thinks tax cuts are "irresponsible," he wants to spend more money on light rail and education. He's against school choice. We haven't heard a word about vouchers, pot, or prostitution, and he's generally taken the Democratic side on every issue. We might have voted for the Democratic choice for governor.
If you're a Democrat, that may sound good to you, but the point is that the man broke many of his campaign promises and has no compunctions about lying if he thinks it's necessary. And he hasn't done much of anything towards repealing restrictions on social issues. I wish he would, as that's what he campaigned on. In short, he's a fraud.
Disgrace Jesse seems to delight in shocking people. He published a book which features his sex life and drug use. He refereed at a WWF event. At one point he started yelling at a welfare mother during a press conference. He seems to be more interested in the publicity than anything else. I don't think he ever expected to win, so now that he's won, he probably figures he can milk the system for all he can get.
idiot I really don't think he has any sort of political philosophy. He got into politics to bolster his faltering carreer as a talk show host, and he seems to form his political opinions on the spur of the moment. His campaign adds featured action figures showing him "fighting special interests." (which, by the way, he's been courting as badly as any major-party politician) In short, he's got nothing to offer but a simple freak show. His policies are those of a mundane centrist Democrat.
In summary, please don't vote for him if he runs for President. I'm embarrassed enough that he's our governor. I don't want to put up with his crap for another 4 years.
Only the government can make their ratings carry the force of law, and only the government is completely immune to market pressures. If an independent rating system started taking bribes, people would find out, they'd get pissed, and they'd switch to a different service. If the government starts taking bribes, there might be an investigation, but if they are clever about it, nothing is likely to come of it. The kicker, though, is that you are forced to pay for their ratings (and likely they will enact laws around those ratings) whether you like it or not. No private organization can force you to use its services. That's why private organizations don't need constitutions. If they mistreat you, you can go elsewhere.
The second amendment is not treated more highly than the first. In fact, the First Amendment is the only amendment that most journalists and politicians really pay any attention to. The Second Amendment has been emasculated to the point where it is now all but meaningless. Leftists have reinterpreted it to mean basically that the National Guard needs weapons, and they say it has nothing to do with private citizens having guns. I wouldn't be too suprised if we started seeing more gun bans in the next few years. The NRA keeps giving in, and pretty soon guns will be outlawed.
Trouble is, the political system is set up in a way that political parties are all but inevitable. Not only are ballot access laws skewed toward the major parties, but the "winner take all" nature of the electoral process encourages people to band around a handful of candidates to avoid splintering their votes, and thereby strengthening the two-party system.
Also, political parties serve as a kind of labeling system for candidates. No one has time to do a detailed study of the positions of each candidate, but if you know you agree with most of the Libertarian (or Democratic, Republican, Reform, Green, etc) Party, then you can safely vote for them because you can assume that they will represent your views.
That's the theory, anyway. It tends not to be true with the Republicrats, since they are often in it more for their own advantage rather than any kind of political principle. And the Reformers are mostly staying in the party because there are millions of dollars in federal money available to their presidential candidate, so everyone is trying to get that money.
Anyhow, I don't despise the members of other political parties, although I think their leaders are pretty despicable. And we're exclusive because we're fighting for a set of ideas, not simply as a sort of political club. We have an agenda for bettering the nation, and therefore we want to ensure that people who join us share our goals.
The issue is: why does the government have to do it, and force its rating on the rest of us?
There are lots of ways that the market already provides parents with information on the contents of music. Walmart, for example, only sells products that meet a certain standard. And manufacturers already put a "warning: explicit lyrics: label on CD's (although this might be government mandated. Movies have a standard rating system, as does TV.
Keep in mind also that once the government has an "official" rating system, the next step is to start regulating access to objectionable content. It never occurs to poiliticians that their ratings could be wrong or that adults should have access to "objectionable" materials. It is therefore a good idea to stop the first encroachment rather than waiting til they screw us over more before we react.
The government keeps throwing more money at the public schools, and standards keep declining. What is needed to improve the schools is not more money, but more competition. Only when parents have a choice as to the schools their children attend (and the ability to take their tuition with them) will schools have the incentive to clean up their acts. Yes, more money would be nice, but schools already get far more money (adjusted for inflation) than they have in the past, and I don't see any improvement. Private schools typically get the same job done with half the funds, and the expensive private schools provide world-class education for about the same price as your average public school.
The Libertarian party is the only American political party that is 100% pro-freedom. We support privacy and free speech in all issues, all the time. We support free crypto and zero government regulation of the net and other media. You're exactly right: there's not much difference between the major parties. But the LP *is* different, and it's a great way to send the message that you're fed up with government encroachment on our freedoms.
In terms of the responsiveness of the interface and the wait time between tasks, absolutely. It's obviously not as efficient at hard core multitasking as a real OS, but it's a big improvement over 7.5.
Perhaps, but it still won't take advantage of most of what the G4 has to offer. It's the equivalent of running win3.1 on a PIII. 128-bit imaging won't mean squat with the bloated 32-bit stuff Apple currently has.
Agreed. 8.6 is not altivec enhanced.
And do you really belive that OS-X will be out in 6 months? I mean, if that's true, why move to next month's "supposed" release of OS9?
Apple is pursuing a parallel OS strategy. OS 9 is aimed at machines that can't do OS X (probably pre-G3 powermacs, although some of the 604 based machines might be supported as well) as well as allowing people to continue with the more mature OS 8 code base. No matter how well it's done, OS X will be a little rocky for the first few months, and so I suspect a lot of fols will want to stick with the tried and true classic Mac OS. Apps that are not "tuned up" for Carbon won't recieve many of the new OS features under X anyway, so if you've got a setup you like, it's better to stick with the classic OS for another year til Apple sorts out the wrinkles.
OS X was originally targeted at late 99, but got pushed back because they wanted to add a new imaging model and put in a new kernal and some other stuff I've forgotten. I think at the latest it will be in time for the World Wide Developers' Conference in May. Jobs should have a complete working version to show off at Macworld SF in January. DP 2 (out before years end) is rumored to have early versions of pretty much the complete feature set, so they just have to put the finishing touches on and then start doing bug fixes.
As for OS-X server, it needs some major work. It's about as confusing as anything I've ever used. I give it an E for effort, but it's not even close to ready for primetime.
Haven't used it, so I won't disagree. Still, with Darwin out, some of the worst elements will likely get fixed by hackers. It's certainly no worse than NT.
You're the med student, so my apologies if some of the specifics here are wrong. But I think the basic ideas here apply to many fields that involve highly skilled and important work.
I don't think having consumers "require credentials" would really help.
The credentials wouldn't be simply a list of the subjects the doctor has studied. It would be a recommendation from a nationally trusted doctor certification firm. Firms would set up testing programs and/or collaborations with schools in order to insure that anyone who is certified by XYZ certification agency has a certain competency. Consumers would then ask to see *those* credentials, which would be simple enough that they could interpret them themselves.
Also, how exactly, then, is the current system unfree? The only real regulation on it (aside from the FDA, which is necessary --- doctors do not have time to evaluate drugs themselves) is the licensing standards, plus laws which prevent physicians from doing evil things.
There's no reason that the FDA has to do the certification of drugs. UL certifies electrical devices. The SAT and ACT certify students. There are lots of private organizations that do certifications, and in the absence of government regulation more would exist. Doctors wouldn't have to evaluate every drug. He'd only have to pick a couple of ceritification agencies he trusts and subscribe to their recommendation service.
The other area of medicine that is unfree is the restrictions on health insurance. There is a long and ever-growing list of things that health companies may not or must do. The result of this is that, combined with the tax credits I mentioned earlier, patients are forced to pay for services they may not want, and are subject to HMO bean-counters to boot. That's why I think we need fee-for-service medicine with insurance only in catastrophic cases. It gives control back to the patients, who can then find a doctor they trust and make their own decisions with his input.
I think it's important to realize that most people don't directly pay for their medical care. They do it via insurance, or Medicaid, or some other program. Such a program is generally not willing to pay anything more than it has to. Thus, premium care will be (as it is now) reserved for those who pay out-of-pocket. A free-market system will heavily favor the wealthy. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just pointing out the implications of your model.
That's a big part of the problem: no one pays for their own care. Scaling back medicare and extending the health care deductions to employees as well as employers would give you more people control over their own care. People *do* pay for their own care now, they just don't have much say in how that money is used.
Personally, I feel that the profession does have that option. The requirements for licensure mainly revolve around the standardized USMLE tests. The tests are designed by committees which consist almost exclusively of doctors. The licensing boards tend to also be composed almost exclusively of doctors. So, it's physicians who say what makes a good physician. Also, consider health-care laws. In general, the AMA tends to get what it wants when it lobbies, because even Congresspeople tend to trust physicians.
That not really the freedom to try new things. The fact that doctors are making the decision does not change the fact that the entire country (or at least each state) has a single solution imposed on it by those doctors. They might be making a good decision, but they also might screw up. And a competent doctor who disagrees with the conventional wisdom can be thrown in jail for practicing medicine differently from his peers.
The point being that *individual* doctors do not have the freedom to try different ways of doing business. They are forced to learn a specific body of medical knowledge, and practice medicine a specific way. For the most part, that probably is fine, but the majority can be wrong, and I don't want the majority stifling the new ideas of a new innovator.
The standards are at their current level because a whole bunch of doctors believe they ought to be there. I've never heard a physician argue that they should be lowered. Admittedly, they might just want to make me suffer the same way they did, but if your goal is to let the medical profession experiment with educational techniques, you're already there.
"The medical profession" is not a monolithic body, and a cartel of doctors is no more desireable than a cartel in any other industry. Individual doctors or medical institutions do not have the freedom to try new curricula or new procedures without the approval of the FDA and various other regulatory bodies.
The new G4s kick butt from a hardware perspective, but they still have the old emulated MacOS that will bog it down to a pace as bad as Winblows.
There's very little emulation left. They've rewriteen almost every component toi be PPC native. 8.6 is a pretty snappy OS.
And before the race to say "wait until OSX" save it folks..that old arguement about the next big OS from Apple is well over 5 years old and without any results.
But this time they actually do have a product on the way. OS X server is already out. You can buy that and you've got a complete (albeit non-optimised) Unix system. And OS X client Developer Preview 2 is due out within weeks. Unless there are major hangups, OS X client will be out within 6 months.
You're right; it's hard to become a practicing physician, and this probably does raise the cost of care. On the other hand, would you really want it another way? As it is, there's some damn incompetent docs out there. If they got through, imagine what the ones who got screened out were like.
But this is why we need more competition in the field of medical certification. It may be that the standard set of requirements is testing and teaching the wrong things. Perhaps some of the things in the standard medical curriculum are better left to specialists. Perhaps there needs to be an ongoing rating system whereby doctors are rated for their performance every year. Perhaps there's no way to keep doctors from being incompetent, and the regulations are just driving up prices. I don't know, but that's the point: we need competition and freedom of choice so we can see what types of training works best. As soon as the government extablishes a set of standards, that process is short-circuited, and you're stuck with whatever they give you. That's a bad thing.
As for the amount of work necessary to become a medical student, that would likely continue to be true in a free market. A doctor who gets his patient killed isn't going to stay in business, and consumers will likely start demanding credentials up front. So you still won't be able to come right out of high school and make money as a physician. But the fact that becoming a competent doctor is difficult does not mean that it needs to be as difficult as the current requirements make it, nor that every doctor should go through the same course. The hardships you've endured to become a med student may not not have all been necessary to make you a good doctor. And if not, it's wrong to force you to go through them.
And in a free market, doctors would still get paid well, no doubt about that. And in fact, the really good doctors might even get paid more, as patients would be willing to pay a premium for their services.
So don't confuse government requirements with medical requirements. The fact that the government says that all doctors must do X, Y, and Z does not mean that that's what it requires to become a competent doctor. It may be that med school could be shortened and simplified without hurting the quality of care. If so, the medical profession should have the freedom to try it and find out.
Consider the simple example of breaking your leg. You will see an emergency physician, most likely, and be treated primarily by an emergency medicine resident. The X-ray may be taken by, or will be taken under the supervision of, a radiologist. If it requires surgery (like severe breaks do), you'll be operated upon by a surgeon and watched over by an anaesthesiologist. Finally, your general physician will supervise your recovery. That's a half dozen doctors. You may not even meet half of them (the surgeon, anaesthesiologist, and radiologist), much less establish a relationship.
There are ways for the free market to handle these problems, however. One example would be that hospitals would have brand names and each brand would set certain standards for all their doctors. You could then specify that you want your medical care coming from XYZ hospital chain, and you'd be guarunteed a certain level of care.
There are other methods as well. One would be that groups like the AMA would doubtless still provide ceritification, and you could refuse to go to any doctor who wasn't AMA certified.
The "high price" of medicine is a function, quite honestly, of the free market in medical services. Doctors, given a monopoly on their profession, charge as much as they can.
But how is this different from any other profession? All industries want to chage as umuch as possible, yet most products' prices stay relatively flat. Why are doctors different? The major reason that medical costs have spiraled out of control is precisely that we *don'(* have a free market in health care. let me elaborate:
Doctors certification. As you said, doctors like to charge monopoly prices. This helps them do it. By setting very high standards, they exclude as many doctors as possible and thereby put themselves in demand.
Other regulations. The government also controls, bans, regulates, and generally screws up many other aspects of medicine. For example, the FDA causes years worth of delays before a medicine can be introduced, and adds billions of dollars in testing costs. True, some of these tests would need to be done anyway, but a lot of it is just beaurocracy
Medicare. This is probably the biggie. The government now pays more than a third of medical bills. This lead to doctors over-charging patients, since the bill was being paid by the government.
Health Care restrictions. The government has an ever-widening list of things that all health insurance plans must fund. Many of these are things that patients would choose to do without if they were paying for them directly, but instead they are forced to pay for them indirectly
Employer-financed health care. The tax code is structured so that employers get a tax break if they pay for their employees health care but the employees cannot get the same tax break if they buy it themselves. This is why so many employers are providing health care for their employees, which if you think about it doesn't make any sense. In a free market, most employees would simply get a paycheck, and they could purchase "fringe benefits" with the extra pay. This is also the cause of employees losing their health care coverage when they change jobs.
As for the "private" certification boards in the US, the fact remains that their certifications have the force of law, so they are de facto government agencies.
It strikes me that people here are often, maybe even usually, rude. Your post is an excellent example. You even go so far as to blame it on OTHER people for being 'thin-skinned'.
I reread my post, and for the most part it didn't strike me as rude. My apologies if it was out of line. But I *do* think that people are too sensitive about being offended on the 'net. Words are just words. They can't hurt you. Part of free speech is taking the good with the bad. So I don't think the occasional flame is that big of a deal. I don't like it, but it's not going to keep me up nights.
As for hostility towards Katz, his articles indicate that he is a gasbag with very little of value to say. That's not to say that he shouldn't be allowed to write his articles, but when what he writes is crap, I'm going to say so. I think this was crap.
And he's right about the industry abusing its customers. Microsoft is our favorite example. They write code to make money: security and stability be dammed.
This is a false alternative. In some markets, security and stability are very important, and Microsoft is getting their asses handed to them by Solaris, Linux, *BSD and others in those domains. In other areas, however, features are more important that stability and security, and so They are doing pretty well. A home PC is not the same as a production server. Engineering is about tradeoffs. Microsoft has written software that is buggy, bloated, but is also backwards compatible and has a lot of features. Is it what people want? The market will decide. Ultimately, writing good software and making money *do* go hand in hand. The market is changing so fast, however, that it is not yet clear what people really want.
It strikes me that one of the fundamental points of computer ethics is to write software that is secure. Almost nobody I know of does this with their programs. OpenBSD is *the only* operating system I know that has stressed security and code correctness from the beginning. (Netware may be another; it is quite secure, but I do not know what Novell's internal practices are like. )
There's a reason for this. Writing software as secure as OpenBSD takes time and money, and limits the things you can do with the OS. Home users running Mac OS or Windows simply don't have the same priorities as a sysadmin. Security is simply one tradeoff, and by no means does it automatically trump other considerations.
Respect and tolerance are two more points I think should be taken up by a great many more/.'ers
Respect and tolerance for people is a good thing. I'm not sure that mindless tolerance for ideas is, however. Many of the things that Katz writes are wrong, and I see no reason to beat around the bush about it. If I met Katz in person I would not be rude to him. I am not attacking him personally, but only the ideas he espouses. I think those ideas are not just wrong, but if put into practice would be destructive of the enourmous benefits of technology.
The hate that is so often spewed here will break up the open source movement before it ever really gets started. Each time you post something that blasts another person, you do a bit more damage to the community as a whole. Sometimes it's necessary, but there is absolutely no reason to blast Katz. It does no good, and causes harm to the overall community.
I don't think so. I didn't "blast Katz." I blasted his nonsensical ideas and mediocre writing. A healthy community requires disagreement and debate. My objections were not ad hominum attacks or mindless flaming. I gave specific objections and reasons for those opinions. Perhaps I should have been more civil, but I did not "spew hate." I spewed disagreement.
Strikes me that most of the people doing it are falling prey to the exact same pettiness they almost universally loathe and despise in others, at school and in other RL places. 'Get out, you don't belong here, you're Not One Of Us'... implying that the person who is saying it IS.
Where do you get that? I don't think I ever said that or anything like it. My annoyance with Katz is not his non-geekness, but his long-winded leftist puff pieces. That has nothing to withhim personally or his status as a non-geek. It has to do with him writing bad essays. That's all I mean.
$200 is still way outside the budget of the vast proportion of the world's population, many of whom don't even have a telephone yet.
That's true, but it has little to do with the actions of the computer industry. Third World countries are poor for a number of reasons, I think most importantly that their governments have screwed up their economies with socialistic meddling. But whatever the reason, I don't see what we can do about it. Sure, we can send some of our 486's to other coutries, but many of them don't even have electricity.
Insisting on ethical manufacturing processes - e.g ensuring that 'Made in Taiwan' Reeboks have been produced by a factory that treats and pays it's workers fairly.
I disagree. You have to remember that (unless they are actual slaves, which of course is bad) people take these jobs because it is better than their alternatives. If we boycott Reebok for giving people in Taiwan jobs, they will decide it's not worth the hassle and move their manufacturing to richer countries. Part of the reason why wages are so low in those countries is that it is expensive for companies to go there. There is little infrastructure for manufacturing, governments occasionally nationalize factories, the workers are unskilled, etc. Demanding that these companies raise their wages might help some, but it will also lead to some companies just moving their factories to countries with more skilled workers, stabler governments, and better infrastructure.
If you want to make sure that your doctor is competent, go to one with a good reputation. There's no reason to force every doctor to go through the same cookie-cutter liscencing process. It's largely a means of restricting the supply of doctors so their pay is higher. There are a lot of tasks that could be handled by a doctor with less training than is currently given (like routine checkups.) Liscencing of doctors is bad, just like liscencing of software. If people want assurances that a doctor will do a good job, private firms can provide testing and certification. But having the government do it is a bad thing.
One person's "bloat" is another's "feature." Yes Windows is bloated, and they're getting their asses handed to them in the server market, where bloat is not acceptable. But for most home users, Windows is still a better choice than any of the non-bloated OS's.
winmodems
This may be news to you, but not everyone has an unlimited supply of money. Winmodems are cheap. Yes they are also cheap hacks, but they get the job done.
two meg video cards
WTF? How is it unethical to sell this? Again, not everyone has unlimited money, and a 2 meg video card is better than a 1 meg video card.
14 inch monitors
So now it's a crime against humanity if you are forced to look at anything smaller than 17 inches? I'm looking at a 15-inch monitor right now, and I don't feel explointed.
This essay on "computer ethics" reminds me of "bioethicists." Bioethicists are typically techno-phobic wet blankets who go out of their way to scare people with obscure horror stories and far-fetched scenarios. The incredible values that biotechnology can bring are often ignored, and instead bioethicists engage in phony posturing about the impending doom of humanity if X new biotech breakthrough isn't controlled.
Katz is doing the exact same thing. His concern for "computer ethics" does not seem to be so much concern for specific problems but a simple desire to pontificate on the evils of computers in general. A few specific issues:
"hacking versus cracking:" I'm not sure what definition of "hacking" he's using, but the standard one on/. is simply clever and/or quick-and-dirty programming. I don't see how that's ever bad.
He mentions the piracy issue and then has nothing of value to say about it. Yes it's a problem. So what?
He trots out the "gap between the rich and poor" argument, which has been standard leftist fare with any new innovation for decades. But the simple fact is that computing for the masses is here. You can get a decent PC for under $1000. You can get a 486 for a couple hundred dollars. And those numbers will continue to drop.
He then proceeds to attack the industry for "abusing" its customers. This is also nonsense. The computer industry has been improving its product faster than any other industry in the history of the universe. So technologically, this is certainly not true. And yes, some companies have lousy tech support. So what? Other companies have pretty good tech support, and if people really want better tech support someone will figure that out and offer it. This is simply an inconvenience, not an industry-wide crisis.
The final "preoblem" he trots out is "incivility." This is just baloney. Apperantly some people have thin skins, and so therefore we need to tone down our discusions to avoid offending anyone. I say if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. There are a lots of moderated forums where you don't have to deal with any "incivil" people.
I don't think Rob ever posted an explanation of this. I think I've read the relevant moderation info, although I may have missed it. I also know someone with permanent moderation status. He's not a friend of Rob's or anything. Anyone know how one gets that?
will it run linuxppc? because, no matter how fast os8 or 9 are, the real processing power won't be accessible until osX or linux are pumping it for all it's got.
It almost certainly will. The LinuxPPC folks typically get new machines running in a matter of weeks. It might take a little longer to get decent AltiVec support, but even without that, these machines can hold their own against x86 boxen. And OS X server is out NOW, and I'd guess that Apple's already got it running on these machines. Again, altiVec support might not be ready quite yet, but it will come.
2: will the/. apple icon have to change? now that the systems are 'graphite' instead of blueberry...
They use a variety of colors. The iMac is five different flavors, the iBook have two of the same flavors, and the Powerbooks have white Apple logos. I say stick with blue.
Integer performance is likely about the same, as that was the big strength of the G3's. The FP, performance, however has been substantially improved. I saw a description of this on Apple's web page, which I can't find now, but this is interesting...
The secret of the G4's revolutionary performance is its aptly named Velocity Engine. It's the heart of a supercomputer miniaturized onto a sliver of silicon. The Velocity Engine can process data in 128-bit chunks, instead of the smaller 32-bit or 64-bit chunks used in traditional processors (it's the 128-bit vector processing technology used in scientific supercomputers--except that we've added 162 new instructions to speed up computations). In addition, it can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle--two to four times faster than traditional processors.
Aside from the stupid name change (the "Velocity Engine" is Altivec) That sounds very impressive.
Keep in mind that Apple is re-writing OpenGL, Quickdraw, Quicktime, and other OS components to take advantage of Altivec. So once that code gets out (probably with OS X if not sooner) it will provide dramatic speed-ups of all apps that do intensive graphics operations.
And the non-Alitvec FP unit has also been improved, although I don't remember offhand what was changed.
OS X server is already out, and OS X client will be out within 6 months. Preemptive multitasking, fast modern memory management, SMP... with all the advantages of the current Mac OS GUI and API's. By early 2000, we can expect multi-processor boxen running 600 MHz+ G4's, running OS X. They're gonna be the fastest desktops on the planet. If I had some money to invest, I'd buy Apple stock.
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Basic econ buddy. Markets are great at creating efficiency. But as any good economist (like me) will tell you, they _inherently_ create massive inequality.
Obviously, some people earn more money than others. I'm not sure about the "massive" part. But the idea that the public school system creates equality is laughable. Go to an inner city school sometime. Then go to a suburban school. Then visit a private school. Tell me how much equality you see.
The fact is that the public schools are failing our kids. Test scores keep dropping, and standards drop as well. Many kids who go to the worst schools would be better off not even going, as all they learn about is gangs, drugs, and violence. Yes, markets are not perfect. But government schools have a lot more problems.
That may be acceptable in a normal market, but education isn't a normal market- there are too many externalities and free-rider problems.
I'm not sure what you are talking about here. I can't think of any externalities involved, and the only free-rider problem I can think of is the idea that everyone benefits from an educated populace. That may be true, and if so there is some argument to be made for a means-tested voucher system to ensure minimum education for all people. But there's a big difference between a subsidized but private system and a government-run one.
Not to mention that that inequlity will only further serve to exacerbate the inequality of opportunity in the labor market.
I don't think this is necessarily true. When leftists lament the "gap between the rich and poor," what they fail to mention is that *who* is in those categories changes all the time. A poor family in generation 1 can be a middle class family in generation 2 and a rich one in generation 3. The free market is extremely dynamic. Unlike other social organizations, there are no "classes," because no one is forced to stay in the income level into which he was born. A top-notch education helps, but it's not essential. Equally important is determination on the part of the student and good carreer choices.
Besides, your argument seems to be that if everyone can't go to a really good school, we should drag the rich kids down to the same crappy level as the poor kids. If you have a plan for giving the poor kids a better education, let's hear it. But if the rich parents want to spend extra on their kids' education, why should we object?
Anyway, the view that government has been "throwing money" at schools is absolutely ridiculous. If anything, they've been cutting back again and again. The Right has made a concerted effort to convince people that this isn't true, however.
Got any evidence for that? The (admittedly right-wing) sources I've heard on the subject say that state funding of education (at least in Minnesota) has been going up faster than inflation for about 10 years now. I admittedly don't have the numbers on me right now, but I'd be suprised if you produced numbers showing education funding being cut.
Because most of the shooting is done by criminals, and the criminals aren't likely to turn in their guns.
The police simply do not have the resources to protect you 24 hours a day. If you get robbed, raped, or murdered, they might show up in time to scare the intruder away, but more likely, they'll just pick up the pieces and hope they find the bad guy later. If you're armed, you can stop him on the spot. Just whip out your gun and tell him to back off.
Also, private gun ownership *is* a deterrent to tyrrany. The first actions of many dictators is to round up all the weapons. It's much easier to order people around when they can't fight back. Some of the early battles of the Revolutionary war were touched off by British efforts to confiscate citizens' weapons or ammo.
And if you don't think that this is relevant in a modern world, look at Kosovo. Yugoslavia has had gun control laws for years, and the result is that all those refugees are completely helpless, and forced to go where they are told and do as their told. It's much harder to "ethnically cleanse" a town if every third townsperson tries to put a bullet between your eyes when you come to arrest them.
I don't have a gun, because I don't really need one. But I feel safer knowing that other law-abiding citizens are armed, as it makes it much harder for the goevernment to push people around. And if there were indications of an impending handgun ban, I might be inclined to buy a gun and bury it somewhere, just in case.
So the Libertarian party supports my right to join (or form) a labour union?
Absolutely. Who says we didn't? As long as workers are free *not* to join that union, and as long as the government doesn't give labor or management any special rights, we wholeheartedly support your right to form any type of organization you like, including a labor union.
I read an article about this. I wish I remember where I saw it, as it was pretty convincing. The basic argument is that USB 2.0 is a too little, too late attempt on Intel's part to make sure that they don't lose control of the peripherals storage market. It would be a shame if they succeeded in killing Firewire.
The main reason Firewire is better is that Firewire is here now, and USB 2.0 is set to achieve equivalent speeds a year or more from now. By that time, second-generation firewire will be out, which will boost speeds. In addition, I've read that there are technical issues with USB 2.0, and that Intel's time table and performance goals are optimistic to say the least.
The article also said that USB 2.0 would not have some of the features that Firewire has, and will be hobbled by backwards compitibility with the current USB. Looks to me like FUD on Intel's part to kill a technology that is technologically superior.
Anybody know more about the two technologies?
Of course, the guy also sounds pretty unintelligent(maybe he's not good on TV).
Nope, he's a moron. As a Minnesota resident, I can tell you that you do *not* want Jesse as president. He's a fraud, a disgrace, and an idiot. Allow me to elaborate.
Fraud Jesse ran on a mildly libertarian platform of less government spending, lower taxes, and generally liberal on social issues. He was pro-concealed carry, said he might consider legalizing pot and prostitution, and was generally an ok guy.
After he got elected, he surrounded himself with moderate Democrats, and did a policy about-face. Now he thinks tax cuts are "irresponsible," he wants to spend more money on light rail and education. He's against school choice. We haven't heard a word about vouchers, pot, or prostitution, and he's generally taken the Democratic side on every issue. We might have voted for the Democratic choice for governor.
If you're a Democrat, that may sound good to you, but the point is that the man broke many of his campaign promises and has no compunctions about lying if he thinks it's necessary. And he hasn't done much of anything towards repealing restrictions on social issues. I wish he would, as that's what he campaigned on. In short, he's a fraud.
Disgrace Jesse seems to delight in shocking people. He published a book which features his sex life and drug use. He refereed at a WWF event. At one point he started yelling at a welfare mother during a press conference. He seems to be more interested in the publicity than anything else. I don't think he ever expected to win, so now that he's won, he probably figures he can milk the system for all he can get.
idiot I really don't think he has any sort of political philosophy. He got into politics to bolster his faltering carreer as a talk show host, and he seems to form his political opinions on the spur of the moment. His campaign adds featured action figures showing him "fighting special interests." (which, by the way, he's been courting as badly as any major-party politician) In short, he's got nothing to offer but a simple freak show. His policies are those of a mundane centrist Democrat.
In summary, please don't vote for him if he runs for President. I'm embarrassed enough that he's our governor. I don't want to put up with his crap for another 4 years.
If you want a real alternative, check out the Libertarian Party
Only the government can make their ratings carry the force of law, and only the government is completely immune to market pressures. If an independent rating system started taking bribes, people would find out, they'd get pissed, and they'd switch to a different service. If the government starts taking bribes, there might be an investigation, but if they are clever about it, nothing is likely to come of it. The kicker, though, is that you are forced to pay for their ratings (and likely they will enact laws around those ratings) whether you like it or not. No private organization can force you to use its services. That's why private organizations don't need constitutions. If they mistreat you, you can go elsewhere.
The second amendment is not treated more highly than the first. In fact, the First Amendment is the only amendment that most journalists and politicians really pay any attention to. The Second Amendment has been emasculated to the point where it is now all but meaningless. Leftists have reinterpreted it to mean basically that the National Guard needs weapons, and they say it has nothing to do with private citizens having guns. I wouldn't be too suprised if we started seeing more gun bans in the next few years. The NRA keeps giving in, and pretty soon guns will be outlawed.
It's scary.
Trouble is, the political system is set up in a way that political parties are all but inevitable. Not only are ballot access laws skewed toward the major parties, but the "winner take all" nature of the electoral process encourages people to band around a handful of candidates to avoid splintering their votes, and thereby strengthening the two-party system.
Also, political parties serve as a kind of labeling system for candidates. No one has time to do a detailed study of the positions of each candidate, but if you know you agree with most of the Libertarian (or Democratic, Republican, Reform, Green, etc) Party, then you can safely vote for them because you can assume that they will represent your views.
That's the theory, anyway. It tends not to be true with the Republicrats, since they are often in it more for their own advantage rather than any kind of political principle. And the Reformers are mostly staying in the party because there are millions of dollars in federal money available to their presidential candidate, so everyone is trying to get that money.
Anyhow, I don't despise the members of other political parties, although I think their leaders are pretty despicable. And we're exclusive because we're fighting for a set of ideas, not simply as a sort of political club. We have an agenda for bettering the nation, and therefore we want to ensure that people who join us share our goals.
The issue is: why does the government have to do it, and force its rating on the rest of us?
There are lots of ways that the market already provides parents with information on the contents of music. Walmart, for example, only sells products that meet a certain standard. And manufacturers already put a "warning: explicit lyrics: label on CD's (although this might be government mandated. Movies have a standard rating system, as does TV.
Keep in mind also that once the government has an "official" rating system, the next step is to start regulating access to objectionable content. It never occurs to poiliticians that their ratings could be wrong or that adults should have access to "objectionable" materials. It is therefore a good idea to stop the first encroachment rather than waiting til they screw us over more before we react.
The government keeps throwing more money at the public schools, and standards keep declining. What is needed to improve the schools is not more money, but more competition. Only when parents have a choice as to the schools their children attend (and the ability to take their tuition with them) will schools have the incentive to clean up their acts. Yes, more money would be nice, but schools already get far more money (adjusted for inflation) than they have in the past, and I don't see any improvement. Private schools typically get the same job done with half the funds, and the expensive private schools provide world-class education for about the same price as your average public school.
The Libertarian party is the only American political party that is 100% pro-freedom. We support privacy and free speech in all issues, all the time. We support free crypto and zero government regulation of the net and other media. You're exactly right: there's not much difference between the major parties. But the LP *is* different, and it's a great way to send the message that you're fed up with government encroachment on our freedoms.
8.6 snappy?
In terms of the responsiveness of the interface and the wait time between tasks, absolutely. It's obviously not as efficient at hard core multitasking as a real OS, but it's a big improvement over 7.5.
Perhaps, but it still won't take advantage of most of what the G4 has to offer. It's the equivalent of running win3.1 on a PIII. 128-bit imaging won't mean squat with the bloated 32-bit stuff Apple currently has.
Agreed. 8.6 is not altivec enhanced.
And do you really belive that OS-X will be out in 6 months? I mean, if that's true, why move to next month's "supposed" release of OS9?
Apple is pursuing a parallel OS strategy. OS 9 is aimed at machines that can't do OS X (probably pre-G3 powermacs, although some of the 604 based machines might be supported as well) as well as allowing people to continue with the more mature OS 8 code base. No matter how well it's done, OS X will be a little rocky for the first few months, and so I suspect a lot of fols will want to stick with the tried and true classic Mac OS. Apps that are not "tuned up" for Carbon won't recieve many of the new OS features under X anyway, so if you've got a setup you like, it's better to stick with the classic OS for another year til Apple sorts out the wrinkles.
OS X was originally targeted at late 99, but got pushed back because they wanted to add a new imaging model and put in a new kernal and some other stuff I've forgotten. I think at the latest it will be in time for the World Wide Developers' Conference in May. Jobs should have a complete working version to show off at Macworld SF in January. DP 2 (out before years end) is rumored to have early versions of pretty much the complete feature set, so they just have to put the finishing touches on and then start doing bug fixes.
As for OS-X server, it needs some major work. It's about as confusing as anything I've ever used. I give it an E for effort, but it's not even close to ready for primetime.
Haven't used it, so I won't disagree. Still, with Darwin out, some of the worst elements will likely get fixed by hackers. It's certainly no worse than NT.
You're the med student, so my apologies if some of the specifics here are wrong. But I think the basic ideas here apply to many fields that involve highly skilled and important work.
I don't think having consumers "require credentials" would really help.
The credentials wouldn't be simply a list of the subjects the doctor has studied. It would be a recommendation from a nationally trusted doctor certification firm. Firms would set up testing programs and/or collaborations with schools in order to insure that anyone who is certified by XYZ certification agency has a certain competency. Consumers would then ask to see *those* credentials, which would be simple enough that they could interpret them themselves.
Also, how exactly, then, is the current system unfree? The only real regulation on it (aside from the FDA, which is necessary --- doctors do not have time to evaluate drugs themselves) is the licensing standards, plus laws which prevent physicians from doing evil things.
There's no reason that the FDA has to do the certification of drugs. UL certifies electrical devices. The SAT and ACT certify students. There are lots of private organizations that do certifications, and in the absence of government regulation more would exist. Doctors wouldn't have to evaluate every drug. He'd only have to pick a couple of ceritification agencies he trusts and subscribe to their recommendation service.
The other area of medicine that is unfree is the restrictions on health insurance. There is a long and ever-growing list of things that health companies may not or must do. The result of this is that, combined with the tax credits I mentioned earlier, patients are forced to pay for services they may not want, and are subject to HMO bean-counters to boot. That's why I think we need fee-for-service medicine with insurance only in catastrophic cases. It gives control back to the patients, who can then find a doctor they trust and make their own decisions with his input.
I think it's important to realize that most people don't directly pay for their medical care. They do it via insurance, or Medicaid, or some other program. Such a program is generally not willing to pay anything more than it has to. Thus, premium care will be (as it is now) reserved for those who pay out-of-pocket. A free-market system will heavily favor the wealthy. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just pointing out the implications of your model.
That's a big part of the problem: no one pays for their own care. Scaling back medicare and extending the health care deductions to employees as well as employers would give you more people control over their own care. People *do* pay for their own care now, they just don't have much say in how that money is used.
Personally, I feel that the profession does have that option. The requirements for licensure mainly revolve around the standardized USMLE tests. The tests are designed by committees which consist almost exclusively of doctors. The licensing boards tend to also be composed almost exclusively of doctors. So, it's physicians who say what makes a good physician. Also, consider health-care laws. In general, the AMA tends to get what it wants when it lobbies, because even Congresspeople tend to trust physicians.
That not really the freedom to try new things. The fact that doctors are making the decision does not change the fact that the entire country (or at least each state) has a single solution imposed on it by those doctors. They might be making a good decision, but they also might screw up. And a competent doctor who disagrees with the conventional wisdom can be thrown in jail for practicing medicine differently from his peers.
The point being that *individual* doctors do not have the freedom to try different ways of doing business. They are forced to learn a specific body of medical knowledge, and practice medicine a specific way. For the most part, that probably is fine, but the majority can be wrong, and I don't want the majority stifling the new ideas of a new innovator.
The standards are at their current level because a whole bunch of doctors believe they ought to be there. I've never heard a physician argue that they should be lowered. Admittedly, they might just want to make me suffer the same way they did, but if your goal is to let the medical profession experiment with educational techniques, you're already there.
"The medical profession" is not a monolithic body, and a cartel of doctors is no more desireable than a cartel in any other industry. Individual doctors or medical institutions do not have the freedom to try new curricula or new procedures without the approval of the FDA and various other regulatory bodies.
The new G4s kick butt from a hardware perspective, but they still have the old emulated MacOS that will bog it down to a pace as bad as Winblows.
There's very little emulation left. They've rewriteen almost every component toi be PPC native. 8.6 is a pretty snappy OS.
And before the race to say "wait until OSX" save it folks..that old arguement about the next big OS from Apple is well over 5 years old and without any results.
But this time they actually do have a product on the way. OS X server is already out. You can buy that and you've got a complete (albeit non-optimised) Unix system. And OS X client Developer Preview 2 is due out within weeks. Unless there are major hangups, OS X client will be out within 6 months.
You're right; it's hard to become a practicing physician, and this probably does raise the cost of care. On the other hand, would you really want it another way? As it is, there's some damn incompetent docs out there. If they got through, imagine what the ones who got screened out were like.
But this is why we need more competition in the field of medical certification. It may be that the standard set of requirements is testing and teaching the wrong things. Perhaps some of the things in the standard medical curriculum are better left to specialists. Perhaps there needs to be an ongoing rating system whereby doctors are rated for their performance every year. Perhaps there's no way to keep doctors from being incompetent, and the regulations are just driving up prices. I don't know, but that's the point: we need competition and freedom of choice so we can see what types of training works best. As soon as the government extablishes a set of standards, that process is short-circuited, and you're stuck with whatever they give you. That's a bad thing.
As for the amount of work necessary to become a medical student, that would likely continue to be true in a free market. A doctor who gets his patient killed isn't going to stay in business, and consumers will likely start demanding credentials up front. So you still won't be able to come right out of high school and make money as a physician. But the fact that becoming a competent doctor is difficult does not mean that it needs to be as difficult as the current requirements make it, nor that every doctor should go through the same course. The hardships you've endured to become a med student may not not have all been necessary to make you a good doctor. And if not, it's wrong to force you to go through them.
And in a free market, doctors would still get paid well, no doubt about that. And in fact, the really good doctors might even get paid more, as patients would be willing to pay a premium for their services.
So don't confuse government requirements with medical requirements. The fact that the government says that all doctors must do X, Y, and Z does not mean that that's what it requires to become a competent doctor. It may be that med school could be shortened and simplified without hurting the quality of care. If so, the medical profession should have the freedom to try it and find out.
There are ways for the free market to handle these problems, however. One example would be that hospitals would have brand names and each brand would set certain standards for all their doctors. You could then specify that you want your medical care coming from XYZ hospital chain, and you'd be guarunteed a certain level of care.
There are other methods as well. One would be that groups like the AMA would doubtless still provide ceritification, and you could refuse to go to any doctor who wasn't AMA certified.
The "high price" of medicine is a function, quite honestly, of the free market in medical services. Doctors, given a monopoly on their profession, charge as much as they can.
But how is this different from any other profession? All industries want to chage as umuch as possible, yet most products' prices stay relatively flat. Why are doctors different? The major reason that medical costs have spiraled out of control is precisely that we *don'(* have a free market in health care. let me elaborate:
Doctors certification. As you said, doctors like to charge monopoly prices. This helps them do it. By setting very high standards, they exclude as many doctors as possible and thereby put themselves in demand.
Other regulations. The government also controls, bans, regulates, and generally screws up many other aspects of medicine. For example, the FDA causes years worth of delays before a medicine can be introduced, and adds billions of dollars in testing costs. True, some of these tests would need to be done anyway, but a lot of it is just beaurocracy
Medicare. This is probably the biggie. The government now pays more than a third of medical bills. This lead to doctors over-charging patients, since the bill was being paid by the government.
Health Care restrictions. The government has an ever-widening list of things that all health insurance plans must fund. Many of these are things that patients would choose to do without if they were paying for them directly, but instead they are forced to pay for them indirectly
Employer-financed health care. The tax code is structured so that employers get a tax break if they pay for their employees health care but the employees cannot get the same tax break if they buy it themselves. This is why so many employers are providing health care for their employees, which if you think about it doesn't make any sense. In a free market, most employees would simply get a paycheck, and they could purchase "fringe benefits" with the extra pay. This is also the cause of employees losing their health care coverage when they change jobs.
As for the "private" certification boards in the US, the fact remains that their certifications have the force of law, so they are de facto government agencies.
It strikes me that people here are often, maybe even usually, rude. Your post is an excellent example. You even go so far as to blame it on OTHER people for being 'thin-skinned'.
/.'ers
I reread my post, and for the most part it didn't strike me as rude. My apologies if it was out of line. But I *do* think that people are too sensitive about being offended on the 'net. Words are just words. They can't hurt you. Part of free speech is taking the good with the bad. So I don't think the occasional flame is that big of a deal. I don't like it, but it's not going to keep me up nights.
As for hostility towards Katz, his articles indicate that he is a gasbag with very little of value to say. That's not to say that he shouldn't be allowed to write his articles, but when what he writes is crap, I'm going to say so. I think this was crap.
And he's right about the industry abusing its customers. Microsoft is our favorite example. They write code to make money: security and stability be dammed.
This is a false alternative. In some markets, security and stability are very important, and Microsoft is getting their asses handed to them by Solaris, Linux, *BSD and others in those domains. In other areas, however, features are more important that stability and security, and so They are doing pretty well. A home PC is not the same as a production server. Engineering is about tradeoffs. Microsoft has written software that is buggy, bloated, but is also backwards compatible and has a lot of features. Is it what people want? The market will decide. Ultimately, writing good software and making money *do* go hand in hand. The market is changing so fast, however, that it is not yet clear what people really want.
It strikes me that one of the fundamental points of computer ethics is to write software that is secure. Almost nobody I know of does this with their programs. OpenBSD is *the only* operating system I know that has stressed security and code correctness from the beginning. (Netware may be another; it is quite secure, but I do not know what Novell's internal practices are like. )
There's a reason for this. Writing software as secure as OpenBSD takes time and money, and limits the things you can do with the OS. Home users running Mac OS or Windows simply don't have the same priorities as a sysadmin. Security is simply one tradeoff, and by no means does it automatically trump other considerations.
Respect and tolerance are two more points I think should be taken up by a great many more
Respect and tolerance for people is a good thing. I'm not sure that mindless tolerance for ideas is, however. Many of the things that Katz writes are wrong, and I see no reason to beat around the bush about it. If I met Katz in person I would not be rude to him. I am not attacking him personally, but only the ideas he espouses. I think those ideas are not just wrong, but if put into practice would be destructive of the enourmous benefits of technology.
The hate that is so often spewed here will break up the open source movement before it ever really gets started. Each time you post something that blasts another person, you do a bit more damage to the community as a whole. Sometimes it's necessary, but there is absolutely no reason to blast Katz. It does no good, and causes harm to the overall community.
I don't think so. I didn't "blast Katz." I blasted his nonsensical ideas and mediocre writing. A healthy community requires disagreement and debate. My objections were not ad hominum attacks or mindless flaming. I gave specific objections and reasons for those opinions. Perhaps I should have been more civil, but I did not "spew hate." I spewed disagreement.
Strikes me that most of the people doing it are falling prey to the exact same pettiness they almost universally loathe and despise in others, at school and in other RL places. 'Get out, you don't belong here, you're Not One Of Us'... implying that the person who is saying it IS.
Where do you get that? I don't think I ever said that or anything like it. My annoyance with Katz is not his non-geekness, but his long-winded leftist puff pieces. That has nothing to withhim personally or his status as a non-geek. It has to do with him writing bad essays. That's all I mean.
$200 is still way outside the budget of the vast proportion of the world's population, many of whom don't even have a telephone yet.
That's true, but it has little to do with the actions of the computer industry. Third World countries are poor for a number of reasons, I think most importantly that their governments have screwed up their economies with socialistic meddling. But whatever the reason, I don't see what we can do about it. Sure, we can send some of our 486's to other coutries, but many of them don't even have electricity.
Insisting on ethical manufacturing processes - e.g ensuring that 'Made in Taiwan' Reeboks have been produced by a factory that treats and pays it's workers fairly.
I disagree. You have to remember that (unless they are actual slaves, which of course is bad) people take these jobs because it is better than their alternatives. If we boycott Reebok for giving people in Taiwan jobs, they will decide it's not worth the hassle and move their manufacturing to richer countries. Part of the reason why wages are so low in those countries is that it is expensive for companies to go there. There is little infrastructure for manufacturing, governments occasionally nationalize factories, the workers are unskilled, etc. Demanding that these companies raise their wages might help some, but it will also lead to some companies just moving their factories to countries with more skilled workers, stabler governments, and better infrastructure.
If you want to make sure that your doctor is competent, go to one with a good reputation. There's no reason to force every doctor to go through the same cookie-cutter liscencing process. It's largely a means of restricting the supply of doctors so their pay is higher. There are a lot of tasks that could be handled by a doctor with less training than is currently given (like routine checkups.) Liscencing of doctors is bad, just like liscencing of software. If people want assurances that a doctor will do a good job, private firms can provide testing and certification. But having the government do it is a bad thing.
bloated software
One person's "bloat" is another's "feature." Yes Windows is bloated, and they're getting their asses handed to them in the server market, where bloat is not acceptable. But for most home users, Windows is still a better choice than any of the non-bloated OS's.
winmodems
This may be news to you, but not everyone has an unlimited supply of money. Winmodems are cheap. Yes they are also cheap hacks, but they get the job done.
two meg video cards
WTF? How is it unethical to sell this? Again, not everyone has unlimited money, and a 2 meg video card is better than a 1 meg video card.
14 inch monitors
So now it's a crime against humanity if you are forced to look at anything smaller than 17 inches? I'm looking at a 15-inch monitor right now, and I don't feel explointed.
Katz is doing the exact same thing. His concern for "computer ethics" does not seem to be so much concern for specific problems but a simple desire to pontificate on the evils of computers in general. A few specific issues:
"hacking versus cracking:" I'm not sure what definition of "hacking" he's using, but the standard one on /. is simply clever and/or quick-and-dirty programming. I don't see how that's ever bad.
He mentions the piracy issue and then has nothing of value to say about it. Yes it's a problem. So what?
He trots out the "gap between the rich and poor" argument, which has been standard leftist fare with any new innovation for decades. But the simple fact is that computing for the masses is here. You can get a decent PC for under $1000. You can get a 486 for a couple hundred dollars. And those numbers will continue to drop.
He then proceeds to attack the industry for "abusing" its customers. This is also nonsense. The computer industry has been improving its product faster than any other industry in the history of the universe. So technologically, this is certainly not true. And yes, some companies have lousy tech support. So what? Other companies have pretty good tech support, and if people really want better tech support someone will figure that out and offer it. This is simply an inconvenience, not an industry-wide crisis.
The final "preoblem" he trots out is "incivility." This is just baloney. Apperantly some people have thin skins, and so therefore we need to tone down our discusions to avoid offending anyone. I say if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. There are a lots of moderated forums where you don't have to deal with any "incivil" people.
I don't think Rob ever posted an explanation of this. I think I've read the relevant moderation info, although I may have missed it. I also know someone with permanent moderation status. He's not a friend of Rob's or anything. Anyone know how one gets that?
will it run linuxppc? because, no matter how fast os8 or 9 are, the real processing power won't be accessible until osX or linux are pumping it for all it's got.
/. apple icon have to change? now that the systems are 'graphite' instead of blueberry...
It almost certainly will. The LinuxPPC folks typically get new machines running in a matter of weeks. It might take a little longer to get decent AltiVec support, but even without that, these machines can hold their own against x86 boxen. And OS X server is out NOW, and I'd guess that Apple's already got it running on these machines. Again, altiVec support might not be ready quite yet, but it will come.
2: will the
They use a variety of colors. The iMac is five different flavors, the iBook have two of the same flavors, and the Powerbooks have white Apple logos. I say stick with blue.
Integer performance is likely about the same, as that was the big strength of the G3's. The FP, performance, however has been substantially improved. I saw a description of this on Apple's web page, which I can't find now, but this is interesting...
The secret of the G4's revolutionary performance is its aptly named Velocity Engine. It's the heart of a supercomputer miniaturized onto a sliver of silicon. The Velocity Engine can process data in 128-bit chunks, instead of the smaller 32-bit or 64-bit chunks used in traditional processors (it's the 128-bit vector processing technology used in scientific supercomputers--except that we've added 162 new instructions to speed up computations). In addition, it can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle--two to four times faster than traditional processors.
Aside from the stupid name change (the "Velocity Engine" is Altivec) That sounds very impressive.
Keep in mind that Apple is re-writing OpenGL, Quickdraw, Quicktime, and other OS components to take advantage of Altivec. So once that code gets out (probably with OS X if not sooner) it will provide dramatic speed-ups of all apps that do intensive graphics operations.
And the non-Alitvec FP unit has also been improved, although I don't remember offhand what was changed.
Give me a RISC processor any day...
Um... The G4 is RISC.
OS X server is already out, and OS X client will be out within 6 months. Preemptive multitasking, fast modern memory management, SMP... with all the advantages of the current Mac OS GUI and API's. By early 2000, we can expect multi-processor boxen running 600 MHz+ G4's, running OS X. They're gonna be the fastest desktops on the planet. If I had some money to invest, I'd buy Apple stock.