No, the bitrates are in fact equal. There is in fact the same amount of data (at least approximately). The reason why MP3 sounds 'worse' is because some of the data is 'wasted' so to speak because less was understood about human perception of sound when MP3 was written compared to newer codecs. In other words, the newer generation of codecs (OGG, AAC, WMA) manage to make those bits more meaningful to the human ear than MP3 does. (Note, that an important part of this is the human ear; not a microphone or spectral analyzer.) A spectral analisis may actually show that something that sounds 'worse' to humans is in fact closer to the original signal. It's usually not so much the actual accuracy of the compressed audio to the original as it is the understanding of what the human ear will perceive, and to maximize what the ear will perceive.
The consequences of this for the technical community serve as an excellent argument for why smart people maybe shouldn't try to escape jury duty...
Precicely. Don't try to 'be smart enough' and weasel out of a civic duty and then complain when those who actually take their citizenship seriously make a decision that you don't like. Then you're just letting stupid people make the rules. This is often exactly what a lawyer wants -- a 'stupid' jury that is incapable of seeing through the bullshit in his/her argument, or of using one's brain and resoning to make a decision.
Smart people 'escaping' jury duty is as absurd as complaining about a particular politician in office when you didn't even bother to vote.
You use your franchise (vote) to make your voice heard in selecting your leaders.
You use the privilege of being on a jury to make your voice heard in the courts. A single Juror can have more power than the Judge and all the lawyers on a case.
One thing that SCO is obviously ignoring is one rather simple fact: You have to be absolutely, completely, utterly INSANE to sue a university; for any reason. I have yet to see anyone do it successfully. AT&T couldn't do it 9 years ago, so what makes SCO think they can do it now? AT&T had a MUCH better table to stand on.
There are plenty of examples of stupidity in suing a university.
How 'bout the 'copy-protection' that could be foiled by holding down the 'shift' key? (Sued a student of Princeton University; charges dropped after the University stepped in on the student's behalf)
There are THOUSANDS of cases a year where people sue medical students; just about every one ends up in the student's favor, because the university steps in. You can't get new doctors if you can't train new students; and part of the learning process is making mistakes.
And BSD is still techinically property of the Regents of the University of California.
Go ahead; sue them. Nobody looks kindly on a mad Chihuahua biting everyone that won't give it the world. Espescially when it starts nipping at schools. SCO has once again proven that they have nothing.
I have MMJB, and its iPod plugin. I've seen better software in a 1st semester Visual Basic course. MMJB is so horrid, I cannot imagine anyone ever wanting to use it to begin with (whether to play/orgaze MP3's on your computer, or just for syncing with the iPod. I originally used MM to sync with my iPod. It was a miserable experience to say the least. It froze more often than it worked.
So, I got XPlay. XPlay was wonderful; but to no suprise, it didn't play well with MM. Espescially if you mac-formatted your iPod and used it that way. But even if it was Fat32 formatted, it was still a bad experience BECAUSE of MM if I tried to use both. Either wanted to sync the iPod to its internal database of MP3's and playlists, which to no suprise, aren't always the same. And neither were capable of noticing that 99% of the songs were the exact same. Nooo. They had to transfer each an every MP3, even if it already existed on the ipod, if you switched between MMJB and XPlay (or ephpod, etc).
So, along comes iTunes, which frankly blows all the other iPod/Windows softawre out of the water. Syncing is faster than any other suite I've used, and overall more painless.
I don't care that I can't use 'competing' music stores with iTunes, because iTunes was meant for use with the iPod. I get far more freedom with the purchased music than I do with any of the competitors, and it costs less too. I've tried the competition before-- and hated all of them. I actually like the iTunes Music Store.
I don't care what Microsoft's marketing division says: WMA is not the standard format. There is only one company that makes a WMA encoder, and one company that makes a decoder, and it's Microsoft. The format and method of compression used are not published. It's closed in every possible way. There is no "free" or even "open" WMA encoders or decoders. (You can play WMA on Linux -- but it is using the same WMA.dll (closed binary) that Windows uses; there is no native implementation, no open or free implementation of WMA to be had.)
AAC, on the other hand, is an open format. Don't mistake this with a 'Free' format, as the Cult of Stallman is so happy to point out. But it is Open -- in the same way OpenGL is. AAC is well documented, and there are many encoders and decoders available from many different companies, as well as many different implementations of AAC by itself. There are patent fees-- but this doesn't change the fact that the codec is published. The unprotected AAC files generated by iTunes (when ripping from CD's) is of the exact same format. I'm sure the protected ones use the same audio encoding as the AAC standard, but has added DRM. It still uses AAC encoding.
For an example of how protected AAC differs from 'normal' AAC: There is even a project to make a DRM extension of Ogg Vorbis. It still uses the Vorbis encoding format, but it's got DRM. There is just no story about Apple's AAC being 'closed'.
Disabling the other methods of updating the iPod was in my opinion a good idea, as it instantly removed the problems involved with using multiple sync problems. Making these little annoyances go away seems to be "The Apple Way," and it's not lost on me.
iTunes is meant for users who have the iPod. If you don't have an iPod, then you're not Apple's target audience for iTunes, although they certainly won't stop you from trying things 'The Apple Way', which in my opinion, is considerably better in the case of iTunes than any other way to play music on Windows. Maybe it'll convince some customers to get an iPod. Apple is interested in supporting its OWN hardware, not other companies hardware. MusicMatch failed so miserably in its iPod support that I don't blame Apple for cutting them off. That's an instant 90% reduction in tech support to Windows iPod owners. A 'no-brainer' from a business perspective.
That also costs power because now the processor must actually do something
Yes; but it is at least actually doing something with that power, although some would argue the merits of the work being done. (I don't know enough about folding@home to really comment)
One reason: Modern desktop computers use a rather large amount of electricity. I'll admit I have a lot of hardware inside my computer, but it still consumes a few hundred Watts. My 19" monitor alone uses more juice than every component of my first system combined. (LCD's are still too expensive, and can't refresh the contents of the screen fast enough; I hate the 'ghosting' I see in LCD's)
Like it or not, people are beginning to view computers as an appliance -- like a toaster, an oven, a TV, a stereo, or a gaming console. And, at least in my experience, the mantra pounded into us by our parents is "Turn it off when you're not using it! It's a waste of power!", which is probably one of the most universally sound things our parents have taught us. Engineers are not ignorant of this fact, and current hardware is much better able to withstand the punishment of frequent startup & shutdown (mainly in the case of disk drives, whether Hard Disks or CD/DVD's). The resulting waste of power a computer consumes while idle is a bad practice in any event; it has both environmental and social impacts (social, as in not enough power to go around, and nobody is willing to allow power plants to be built within 100 miles of their homes).
Sure, you can run seti@home, or folding@home, etc. But most people don't. It's an awfully big waste of power (both computational and electrical) to just have your computer churning out numbers for your spiffy 3D screensaver.
What desktop users need is a 'hibernate' feature in Linux, similar to that provided by OS X and Win32.
Of course, too many people reguard desktop Linux as heresy, and I usually tell them to go home to Redmond.
Honest query: make allows me to handle all build dependancies, and is able to parallelize its operations to make efficient use of an SMP system. (ie perform multiple build operations @ the same time)
So, it can handle dependancies, ensuring a necessary daemon loads before its dependant does, and can also dispatch commands to start operations that do NOT have a load dependancy.
My only 'issue' with init is that you can't specify that daemon A requires daemon B to be loaded first. Sure, it does have a load order, but there's nothing to stop you from being stupid and changing the order (guilty), and no way to really know if the way the init is ordered is necessary, or simply arbitrary.
A simple makefile can at least provide a language to show dependancies, clearing things up.
At least reading the basic makefile syntax, this shouldn't be overly difficult...
There are actual definitions of what constitutes an actual infringement of copyright. 200 lines of code, unless in a single block, don't apply.
If such a small segment (out of the whole) was allowed to be prosecutable under copyright law, it would be feasable to copyright the use of single words, such as 'a' and 'the' -- or even letters for that matter.
Then they have to prove that the code was in fact directly copied.
This is not the same as showing they read the same.
They have to have prove that a guy at SGI did this -- such as video footage, etc. There is a light-years difference in leagal terms, between knowing something, and PROVING it.
SCO is honestly setting themselves for the bitch-slap of the century (and it's just 3 years into it!!!).
Linux is FAR, FAR from dead. Even if you believe SCO's line (which they have yet to give ONE SHRED of proof-- EVERYTHING they have used as 'proof' has been discredited so far.). BUT even if you believe SCO's line, it only applies to LARGE, ENTERPRISE-LEVEL features of Linux, which is only used by a tiny fraction of computers. SMP, NUMA, RCS, JFS & XFS? Well, frankly, SMP existed in linux since 2.0 -- well before what SCO claims rights to. NUMA doesn't exist on 99.9999999999% of the world's computers (I may be off by a decimal place or two, but if I err, it is on the side favoring SCO), JFS & XFS don't really offer much in the way of performance over EXT3 or Reiser4...
So WHAT THE @!#$ does SCO make claims to that actually matters for all but the most obscure of cases?
And, having released "Ancient UNIX" under BSD, it's easy to argue that a reasonably competent peanut could have used that code, and adapted it to modern usage -- and was not actually copied.
I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry; the fact that I know exactly what you're talking about is disquieting. I remember spending hours talking about the virtues QEMM/Memmaker/386MAX; and why OS/2 was gonna beat them all. I'm startin to feel really old. There's some really snazzy new-fangled things a comin these days, ain't there? Then I hear 'bout this new-fangled penguin thing made by a bunch of young whipper-snappers... who are older than I am...
Maybe I'm spending too much time talking to the old folks...
On the other hand, they whine a lot less than my parents' generation...
Solidworks is certainly not a no-name program; I'm not even a mechanical engineer (its primary market), and I've known what solidworks is for quite a long time...
Actually the smoke was from the Mayor's handlers trying to spin the fire story so as not to cause panic.....
Which goes to show that there are cases where facts can actually be more harmful than concealment or lies. There are people out there who already are panicing over this-- in spite of there being absolutely nothing that they could do but wait. No need to make things even worse; allowing mass panic gets people killed (accidents at concerts, fires in crowded theatres, soldiers shooting machine guns into crowds of protesters-- are great examples). A poorly-conceived (and at least somewhat transparent) lie gives only a black eye. It's not like we are suprised when any government lies. But it does help to keep cool heads on the ill or poorly educated-- who would believe it because they simply don't know better.
I think it would have been better for the Mayor's minister of dis-information to have done this on television with a flaming transformer in the background.
Flaming... No. Not the right effect. How about begins to smolder, then bursts into flame during the announcement?
Or perhaps an explosion?
Or, my personal favorite -- an impromptu electrical arc re-styling (and perhaps coloring) of a news-anchor's hair. But skin and clothing must remain unscathed.
Historical points aside, there is one phenomenon that is being overlooked:
Webster's American Dictionary (Shamelessly ripped from their site)
"In 1806 Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first truly American dictionary. Immediately thereafter he went to work on his magnum opus, An American Dictionary of the English Language, for which he learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in order to research the origins of his own country's tongue. This book, published in 1828, embodied a new standard of lexicography; it was a dictionary with 70,000 entries that was felt by many to have surpassed Samuel Johnson's 1755 British masterpiece not only in scope but in authority as well.
Noah Webster is, to my reckoning, the first American to write a dictionary. And, one of the major features of this dictionary is that he removed 'archaic' spellings of words, and chose spellings that were more clear and concise.
Keep in mind, this was done not long after the American revolution in 1776, and the framing of its constitution in 1787. A lot was done in those days to be different from the british; whether out of the desire to be different or spite...
For instance, we still race horses in the opposite direction as the English (counter-clockwise vs. Britain's clockwise), and made our numbering conventions to more closely match that of the French (who were allied with the US during that brief moment in history, although I wouldn't say it was so because of political agreement).
Interestingly enough, as the feelings of emnity did a 180, we chose to maintain the British system of weights and measures, forgoing the French metric system for day-to-day use. (eg. everyone uses the metric system for anything electrical, and for most things related to chemistry or physics -- not counting cooking, of course.)
We like the cultural mess we live in. Who else would put curry and ice cream together?
Actually, the framers of the US constitution were much more careful than many people seem to believe.
First, the general consensus was that Democracy=rule of the mob. The United States is NOT a democracy; it is a republic.
If I felt so inclined, I could put up a few quotes to this extent (that the framers of the constitution avoided democracy because it is the rule of the mob.) Such individuals as Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin (those guys on US currency) -- even if they were not physically present, they sent letters and were a apart of the process; they all firmly believed that democracy was clearly not the way to go, as it would rapidly erode into the rule of the mob.
Before certain amendments were passed, the Electoral College was chosen by the state legislature; the senate was chosen by the state legislature. We have moved towards a 'real' democracy when the Electoral College was re-defined to be the state representatives in the fed government, and are required (by law) to vote as the people vote, no matter what they feel. The mob was given even more control when the selection of senate canidates was given to a direct vote of the people.
Education (i.e. hiring more teachers, reducing class sizes, etc.) is the most effiecient way to employ people via government spending.
This, of course, depends on how you wish to define efficiency. I'm not sure how well you remember high school, but most of the kids there don't want to learn anything. More teachers won't change that.
Paying the teachers more (or to be more precice, paying more to get good teachers) will have a more significant impact. The problem is that a teacher's salary isn't high enough to feed a family anymore. Frankly, there are a lot of people in educaton who really shouldn't be there at all; they are awful teachers, horrible role models, despicable people, and worse, unionized.
Nothing like a system so corrupt that the worst teachers have their position protected by a union. So much for putting the kids first. I have, in my entire life, only seen one educator that could inspire kids who really didn't want to even be in school, to actually like learning. One, out of several hundred. On the other hand, I've seen 30-40 'teachers' who are such filth, that they actively discourage students from learning. Wanna guess which got fired, and which the union protected? The inspirational teacher bucked the status quo; students loved him and learned from him. And the teacher's union didn't like the 'disharmony' among the faculty that he was supposely responsible for; which is a lousy way of saying "he's making us look bad." So he got his walking papers.
For example, according to the National Priorities Project [natprior.org] website, for the cost of our little excursion into Iraq, we could have hired 1,541,037 Elementary School Teachers.
For how long? One year? Such a nice temporary solution. No long-term thinking involved, a 'solution' for the sound-byte crowd.
It certainly isn't a permanent solution-- the economy can't support it indefinately; the war lasted less than 30 days-- it could not have been supported economically indefinately either. Millions of 'military-industrial' workers-- engineers, technicians, factory workers, and more-- at Mc Donnell-Douglass, Boeing, Lockheed, and Raytheon will be employed for quite some time to come. There was a massive expenditure; but it ends up in the pockets of these people -- not the CEO's of these companies as you accuse.
These companies make more money in civilian jobs than in military ones -- Boeing is the world's largest maker of commercial jets; but McDonnell-Douglas and Lockheed also make commercial jets. All three make sattelite-lifting rockets. Raytheon is also one of the countries experts in microwave technology (they even make microwave ovens!), and radars -- keeping commercial jets from crashing into each other, and cooking your food. The CEO's of these companies make less than those of American Airlines, for crying out loud!!! You can't say that the money that goes into military is lost; it's not, and it rapidly finds its way to civilian use, helping everyone.
You could hire 1,541,037 teachers for a year -- temporary.
However removing Saddam has made a permanent difference in the lives of some-odd 54 million people, one which most of those 54 million consider a good thing. (They would just like the U.S. to leave ASAP, so they can forge their own future, for good or for bad).
More teachers isn't the answer. Better teachers is. I would rather have a classroom size of 200, with an excellent teacher, than a class size of 10 with a bad teacher. But the economics just doesn't support it yet; the people who would make the best teachers are already in other industries, like the newspaper business, or at an engineering firm; because there is no economic incentive to teach. (rather the opposite, in fact).
Of course, if we did that, then we would have to fire a few hundred thousand k-12 educators, and the unions wouldn't have it. They're more interested in protecting the job security of rotten teachers than they are of the student's welfare.
I call bullshit. Facts about welfare [cossa.org]. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you have sincere compassion for the disadvantaged. Why then would you make outlandish claims which are clearly not the mean of the people on welfare? I'd argue, though without anything to back it up with at this moment, that people like that are at least 2 standard deviations out from the mean.
I've done all kinds of social work in the projects, in different cities, for years. It is not a case of isolated incidents. Their homes were nicer than mine by a long shot... at least on the inside, behind double-steel doors and caged-windows. Frankly, I often don't blame them for never wanting to leave their homes; the inside of their apartment is nice... but the 'public' areas are, of course, dried-up sewers (with the same smell and a large number of rats and other predators). They're usually cleaned by hosing everything off-- nothing more. Which is OK, since the corridors are bare concrete anyway... no attempt was even made to build them with materials that actually could be cleaned off.
My understanding is that this is true, albeit misrepresented. Yes, people can often make more money on welfare than they can by working, but they are not often happy about it.
There's a difference between having no intention to get off welfare, and liking it. Of course they don't like it; but they're not stupid either. If they can't feed their families by working, but can by living on welfare, then they do what is best for their family. You don't have to be on welfare to make life decisions that are the best for your family, not for your dignity. In their place, I would do no different; and like them, I wouldn't like it either. As one gentleman (who was clinically insane) told me in one of his more lucid moments: 'I know it sounds bad... [that] I don't want to get a job; but if I do, then I lose my home and food. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid.'
I honestly think that welfare should help people who have meager jobs a lot more than is currently done. I'm not sure raising the minimum wage is the best idea; however I am finding myself liking the idea of a 'maximum wage' for a CEO and/or management. I'm not saying that a CEO shouldn't be able to make enough money to be filthy stinkin' rich. But there's a big difference between being wealthy, and being so wealthy that you're just keeping score. It would also have a stabilizing influence on companies, who wouldn't have to offer their executives fat bonuses to keep them from jumping ship, because they couldn't make more by working for another company.
By having a maximum wage, it kind of implys a minimum wage; take even one million a year off the top exec's salary, and you can employ 30 more people for a full year at the GDP per capita rate. Take several million from each exec's salary, and there is a lot more money available to either build the company, or pay more employees (or pay current employees more), which then makes it possible for the company to grow even more.
In my head (I'm an Engineer, not an economist), the economy would grow rapidly with this kind of arrangement.
there is a warranty for broken/melted cores because sometimes fans fail to cool, even during normal use. Trust me, if your proc ever dies, you'll be glad for that warranty
I'd like to second this; there is also another reason why I will never buy an OEM CPU again: From three different places, I recieved OEM CPU's that were 'raised', meaning that they had the original speed removed, and a higher speed stamped on.
I never overclock; but these CPU's were behaving horribly! One even (no kidding) overheated enough to melt (and seize) the heatsink fan into the heatsink... making things get even hotter. By the time I noticed anything was wrong (weird smell...), my motherboard was hot enough for several components came unsoldered and fell out when I removed the cover from the case! (Being quick of reflexes, but frequently slow of wits, I reached out to grab these scalding hot components...) Upon closer analysis, this CPU was found to have been 'raised'. To make matters worse, the place wouldn't refund/replace anything because "We don't warranty OEM CPU's for more than 7 days past the date of purchase" -- and what do you know-- it took 8 days after I purchased it for them to even ship it. (Thank you pricewatch!) Better Business Beaureau? Ha! They coudn't have cared less. And I didn't have money for a lawyer.
So you can imagine that I am actually pleased to hear that AMD is going to use anti-overclocking tech; I had no intention of ever overclocking, and yet because some shmuck broke a few laws and sold me a raised CPU, I had a horribly unstable PC that eventually melted itself.
I've long since decided that I will gladly pay the extra lettuce for the warranty, and to buy the CPU from a more expensive, but well-known retailer. I've offered to pay the price difference for friends who wanted to go with a cheaper OEM CPU (since I end up repairing it and/or taking the blame anyway...) There's also the fact that the 'retail' CPU's are packaged entirely differently, and at least the Athlon XP's I've looked at, have a different color to the die when compared with the OEM CPU's (greenish vs. brownish); I can go to CompUSA or even Amazon and feel confident that I am getting the CPU I paid for, and not some clock-raised fire hazard fraud from Skeeter's PC hut.
In fact, I'm much more confident of AMD honoring the warranty on a retail CPU that has thermal grease and a custom heatsink than I am of any PC builder honoring the non-existent warranty on an OEM CPU. And, considering my past experiences with OEM CPU's (I have three Athlon 1.4's that are utterly toasted; worth a pretty penny 18 months ago...) with them, I'm also much more confident that the OEM CPU will fail first. This is reasonable, as I have been through four OEM Athlon 1.4's, on three different motherboards; the longest one lasted was 6 months. But the Retail CPU has been ticking for several times longer than that, and still has given me no problems.
In fact my favored local system builder, who actually uses retail CPU's rather than the OEM's in their computers, still uses custom heat-sinks and thermal paste.
And seriously -- I have a quiet power supply; Enermax is known for this, and I paid for the silence...
And yet the enermax PSU still covers up AMD's heatsink fan completely; button up the case and the only thing you're hearing is the PSU and 2 Enermax intake fans.
Bzzzzzzzzzzt. This is the state of California's deficit; not the US defecit. California doesn't fund its national guard; the federal government does.
And there's more than double the amount of money spent on welfare programs that don't work than there is on the military; not to mention that the military spending keeps millions of americans on the payroll: Engineers, scientists, skilled laborers, and all the supporting middlemen.
And much of this spending (and research) quickly filters down to civilian applications (and the 'greater good'). There's a difference between a guy working for a living, and a guy who sits on welfare, eats prime rib everyday, drives a BMW, and has a big-screen TV. I've seen these kinds of abuse firsthand, in several cities, over several years. In fact, I've met many who state flat out that they have no intention but to live on welfare; they get more money from welfare than they could earn.
The point isn't that welfare is a bad thing; but that its' broken. The people are more than willing to work; but they're also smart enough to know a free ride when they see it.
The real problem is that they can't get a job that pays well enough; either they are unskilled or, more often, have employers who don't pay them what they are worth.
It's interesting, really... it's a form of Adam Smith's 'invisible hand': The employer is unwilling to pay their workers enough, so people have to depend on welfare; because people depend on welfare, the employer (either company, or personally) ends up paying the difference in taxes. The difference is that administration costs, etc. involved with welfare eat up money to keep this badly hobbled system going...
No, it's California's debt alone. To make things worse for them, because they lied, cheated, dumped fresh water into sewers, etc. they obtained a large 'water rights' deal, meaning that for decades California recieved a few hundred billion gallons of water annually that they leagally shouldn't have recieved. The surrounding states (that border California, as well as pretty much every other state with the Colorado river running through it) recently won a large case, in which they won back the rights to the water that California stole. They lost the water as of Jan 1, 2003. And if California takes more water that doesn't belong to them, it is coming out of Mexico's allotment, which then violates a whole series international treaties with one of the US's most important trade partners.
What's the deal with the WATER?
Well, remember that the whole area is desert; water makes it possible to even support a large population, and a larger economy (fruits & vegetebales, which are among California's cash cows, require plenty of water.)
So now California has $30 billion in debt, as well as a massive water shortage-- they don't have enough water to feed thier population, let alone their crops. So a big chunk of California's tax income (from farmers) is going to shrink even further.
All it has to do is send a poorly-filtered power spike (extremely easy for this to happen with a remote starter circuit; lots of current, a little inductance or capacitance, and you've got a sudden transient of a few thousand volts. Goodbyte computer!
And it isn't the fault of the manufacturer -- as designed into the car, nothing would have gone wrong. A poorly designed remote starter can easily cause this kind of problem.
Re:I think Linus Missed the Point....
on
Linus on DRM
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Making the Kernel Compliant so that it will refuse to let certain media types run because the OS/System doesn't have the secret key to that media type...NOT OK...
But you have to remember that this is a two-edged sword. Just because the ??AA uses it in an attempt to reduce copyright infringement doesn't make it evil. It can be used to protect corporate documents, reducing corporate espionage, or to protect your bank account's information so it can't be transferred to another computer.
Frankly, while I find the ??AA's use of DRM distasteful and choice-limiting (I can't play leagally-downloaded and purchased songs from Pressplay or some other 100% above the table downloading service onto my iPod-- yet), the fact of the matter is that there is rather widespread copyright infringement, and they feel it necessary to protect their revenue stream. Whether this is the right decision isn't the point; the point is that it gives them a choice on how they wish to distribute their product, which is something they do have every right to control, whether you like it or not.
With few exceptions, you still go to the supermarket to buy groceries; this does not mean that they are trying to control the distribution of their product. Buying a bottle that is labeled as 'Coca-Cola' is a good indication that you are in fact buying the product on the label, and that it comes from a 'real' source; that the laborers from the Coca-Cola company are getting paid for their work as a result of your purchase. While the ??AA is large, and its revenue probably isn't distributed properly, there still are a large number of 'little people' from recording/mixing engineers to assembly-line workers whom actually create the CD's and DVD's that depend on the revenue of record sales to make a living. The music industry isn't just about the artists and their executive workmasters; there are other extremely talented people who get little or no credit for their work.
..and also I don't see myself spending 100's to 1000's of dollars to aquire the right to make binaries that run on my own computer....which is really where this discussion ultimately heads...
Proving that you apparently are more interested in gratis software than libre software. This is already the case; even on Linux. Ever hear of Maya or Shake? They cost a few thousand each. Matlab, Mathmatica, Maple? Quite expensive. The programmers that made these products still need to eat and feed their families. They are already heavily DRM'd, although I'm not sure if they require a hardware dongle at this point in time.
Before the internet became as widespread and common as it is today, if you wanted a copy of the GNU utilities, you had to plunk down a few hundred to get a copy, directly from the FSF. As Stallman is widely noted as saying -- there's a difference between libre and gratis. He has no qualms making money selling people free/libre software; this is how the FSF stayed afloat during the 80's and early-90's, where you typically had to pay a few hundred for Free Software.
1.) This will probably never happen anyway; the state of Darwin on x86 strenghens this belief. 2-3.) OS X will probably barf on you right here. Just because Darwin and Mach is the basis for OSX, it does not by any means imply that OSX will boot from a self-compiled 'Darwin/mach' kernel; I've seen people try. There are still some closed-source bits to the Mach kernel OSX uses, which differs from Darwin's. Just because it's 99.9% the same, doesn't mean it's exactly the same. Most of the 'Darwin' that is open-source are things such as the GNU tools-- which are Free anyway. 4-6.) There would be far, far more differences than just unlocking code-- there's a lot of hardware that OSX supports that Darwin doesn't; you would break far more than you could possibly solve.
And finally, there are plenty of examples where people have tried to get OS X working on a non-apple PPC -- they all fail until they actually get Apple hardware. And Apple isn't above making a 'new' version that is incompatible with the older hardware -- they did exactly that when they killed mac clones. The clone makers tried (and failed) to work around the problem.
The most effective copyright-protect technology is still the hardware dongle -- still found for exotic and expensive software (such as PCBoard Layout programs). This kind of protection easily defeats the software 'work-arounds' you propose; such software is marketed to engineers who can design a computer from scratch-- decompiling and breaking software locks is a piece of cake. So is monitoring the input/output from the port which the dongle is attatched. But breaking the hardware lock is a far, far more difficult thing to do-- so much so that nobody bothers trying.
I'd also like to add that just because it has an x86 chip and an AGP/PCI bus, it by no means equates to being 'x86' compatible. 'x86' compatible hardware still has an ISA bus inside (even if it is wholly contained in the chipset). An apple-built x86 can easily use a different (and wholly incompatible) interrupt structure than a PC uses. A PC uses/or has the equivalent of two 8259 interrupt controllers, with one master, and the slave cascading its interrupts down. This provides 16 hardware interrupts, IRQ 0-15. These are hard-wired quite specifically; even if you did somehow software-map around them, it would be *dog slow* compared to 'real' hardware. There are plenty of other examples.
Apple can easily put an x86 chip in a motherboard, and still have an architecture so different from a PC that it's just not worth it to try to work around it in software. All an Apple/x86 would have to do is use a different interrupt controller, with say 32 interrupts, and suddenly a PC somehow hacked to run OS X would run poorly enough you would rather just buy the Apple hardware; requiring a 2:1 mapping for each interrupt, many of which cannot be remapped - so some interrupts will have a 1:1 relationship, while others have a 10:1 mapping. Then things get *really ugly* inside the kernel. Apple can change the addressing model used for the system busses and components; it would work fine on Apple hardware, but requires even more costly re-maps to make it work on a generic PC.
Ever run a virtualization suite such as VirtualPC? VirtualPC is very, very slow compared to pure hardware. (I say VirtualPC instead of VMware because VMware doesn't do as much re-mapping as VirtualPC, which is one of the reasons why there is no VMware for PPC hardware; but even VMware is dog slow, taking 3-4 minutes to boot WinXP when a 'real' boot of WinXP takes 30 seconds.)
Meaning that while it may be possible to work around it, that doesn't mean that it would be worth it.
I quite like how the parent immediately started with the assumption that people are forced into (or discouraged from) various roles; it's just an assumption that is supposedly 'common sense', which is frequently incorrect anyway...
I can't count the number of (exceptionally) intelligent girls I know whose parents, friends, teachers, etc. tried to push them into the role of engineering -- a rather stereotypical white-male dominated profession. The thing is that these girls chose not to take engineering; it has nothing to do with 'peer pressure' or the mythos of societal pressure -- everyone around them (including their adoring male classmates) encouraged them as much as they could; the fact is these girls simply didn't find it interesting. They cleanly outscored 90% of their male classmates as well -- it wasn't performance. It was a choice; they simply weren't into engineering.
It had nothing to do with being pigeonholed into a 'role' -- they rejected the 'role' that their significant relationships tried to push them into (engineering) to choose something that they found interesting (teaching math, accounting, chemists, biologists...).
This may be ancedotal evidence, but it is typical of my experience (and hence, in the world I experience). To say that I have 'blinders' on is to make a judgement on my past experiences, of which you know nothing about, althought they will undoubtably include accusations of affluence and privilege; none of which is true. Telling others what they should think is wrong; to teach people to believe in correlation without causality is wrong. To tell others what they are 'really' thinking and feeling is lunacy. I reject the notion of societal 'roles' because I have seen that belief to be false, with my own eyes and my own experiences, over a wide geo/economical/political area -- not because of what a professor, parent, or reporter has told me.
I find false assumptions with reguard to civilization and how we percieve it to be found in any vein of political thought -- the only difference is what assumption is made. Neither have any proof behind them, so people arrogantly believe that her/his own opinion must be the correct one. I typically find liberal dogmas such as the poster's to be as unpalatable as the conservative dogmas that they oppose; both sides are full of it.
The fact of the matter is that humanity is still rather ignorant in about every way imaginable; there is far too much
This is true; of course, this is a generalization which is not always the case, but on average, men navigate by spatial orientation; a 'feel' of where they are that can be best described by a spherical coordinate system; they know they moved this far in this direction, or that they need to go this far in this direction. Women navigate by waypoints, or landmarks.
This is also why men don't ask for directions: Most directions are in the form of landmarks, which are fairly meaningless to the way men navigate. They just 'feel' that they're in the right area.
Why is the coordinate system advantageous? Things don't look the same on the way 'home' from a long-distance trip as they do on the way 'out', which is advantageous for a hunter traveling long distances. Gathering on the other hand, works well either spatially or via landmarks.
Does this really have any far-reaching implications? Not really; but it does irritate those who want to believe that the only difference between men and women is our genitals, which is not the case.
Of course, that argument is in and of itself bogus.
If you can't discredit the science (such as spatial mapping being sex-linked), then attack the person promoting it. Brilliant! That's one of the oldest dirty tricks in the book. Moreover, your argument is based on *learning* being non-hereditable. That is even an arguable point, as most biologists know (I have three brothers who are biologists).
Spatial mapping has nothing to do with learning; not in the scope mentioned. It has to do with the *fact* that a woman's brain is 'wired differently' than a man's brain. Some areas are larger in a man's, while smaller in a woman's, and vice versa. Learning is in no way accounted for. Just as a man's body is, on average, more suited to some tasks than an average woman's body (and the opposite is true), that in no way means that anything is 'locked in.'
The fact of the matter is: Men and women are different, biologically, and neurologically. There are inherint advantages and disadvantages to each (not counting societal 'norms', which is another matter entirely).
Ignoring the facts won't make them go away; just because it doesn't fit into the dogma of 'everyone has equal potential', doesn't make it false. It makes it unpopular-- but no less factual.
Women have significantly better linguistic abilities; this doesn't mean that men can't communicate ideas (Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Chaucer) are examples of men with superior linguistic abilities. The concept of 'societal pressure' discouraging women from traditionally male-oriented professions (such as engineering in particular) doesn't tell the whole story; there are actual neurological reasons why some professions are dominated by men, and others by women. They don't tell the whole story either. To reject either one is to reject the truth; the difference is that one is more socially acceptable, and the other angers most pseudo-intellectuals.
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No, the bitrates are in fact equal. There is in fact the same amount of data (at least approximately). The reason why MP3 sounds 'worse' is because some of the data is 'wasted' so to speak because less was understood about human perception of sound when MP3 was written compared to newer codecs. In other words, the newer generation of codecs (OGG, AAC, WMA) manage to make those bits more meaningful to the human ear than MP3 does. (Note, that an important part of this is the human ear; not a microphone or spectral analyzer.) A spectral analisis may actually show that something that sounds 'worse' to humans is in fact closer to the original signal. It's usually not so much the actual accuracy of the compressed audio to the original as it is the understanding of what the human ear will perceive, and to maximize what the ear will perceive.
The consequences of this for the technical community serve as an excellent argument for why smart people maybe shouldn't try to escape jury duty...
Precicely. Don't try to 'be smart enough' and weasel out of a civic duty and then complain when those who actually take their citizenship seriously make a decision that you don't like. Then you're just letting stupid people make the rules. This is often exactly what a lawyer wants -- a 'stupid' jury that is incapable of seeing through the bullshit in his/her argument, or of using one's brain and resoning to make a decision.
Smart people 'escaping' jury duty is as absurd as complaining about a particular politician in office when you didn't even bother to vote.
You use your franchise (vote) to make your voice heard in selecting your leaders.
You use the privilege of being on a jury to make your voice heard in the courts. A single Juror can have more power than the Judge and all the lawyers on a case.
One thing that SCO is obviously ignoring is one rather simple fact: You have to be absolutely, completely, utterly INSANE to sue a university; for any reason. I have yet to see anyone do it successfully. AT&T couldn't do it 9 years ago, so what makes SCO think they can do it now? AT&T had a MUCH better table to stand on.
There are plenty of examples of stupidity in suing a university.
How 'bout the 'copy-protection' that could be foiled by holding down the 'shift' key? (Sued a student of Princeton University; charges dropped after the University stepped in on the student's behalf)
There are THOUSANDS of cases a year where people sue medical students; just about every one ends up in the student's favor, because the university steps in. You can't get new doctors if you can't train new students; and part of the learning process is making mistakes.
And BSD is still techinically property of the Regents of the University of California.
Go ahead; sue them. Nobody looks kindly on a mad Chihuahua biting everyone that won't give it the world. Espescially when it starts nipping at schools. SCO has once again proven that they have nothing.
Has it gone beyond everyone that Apple keeps a record of what music you have downloaded, and you can just re-download them (free?)
Love to tell you this...
.dll (closed binary) that Windows uses; there is no native implementation, no open or free implementation of WMA to be had.)
I have an iPod, love the thing.
I have MMJB, and its iPod plugin. I've seen better software in a 1st semester Visual Basic course. MMJB is so horrid, I cannot imagine anyone ever wanting to use it to begin with (whether to play/orgaze MP3's on your computer, or just for syncing with the iPod. I originally used MM to sync with my iPod. It was a miserable experience to say the least. It froze more often than it worked.
So, I got XPlay. XPlay was wonderful; but to no suprise, it didn't play well with MM. Espescially if you mac-formatted your iPod and used it that way. But even if it was Fat32 formatted, it was still a bad experience BECAUSE of MM if I tried to use both. Either wanted to sync the iPod to its internal database of MP3's and playlists, which to no suprise, aren't always the same. And neither were capable of noticing that 99% of the songs were the exact same. Nooo. They had to transfer each an every MP3, even if it already existed on the ipod, if you switched between MMJB and XPlay (or ephpod, etc).
So, along comes iTunes, which frankly blows all the other iPod/Windows softawre out of the water. Syncing is faster than any other suite I've used, and overall more painless.
I don't care that I can't use 'competing' music stores with iTunes, because iTunes was meant for use with the iPod. I get far more freedom with the purchased music than I do with any of the competitors, and it costs less too. I've tried the competition before-- and hated all of them. I actually like the iTunes Music Store.
I don't care what Microsoft's marketing division says: WMA is not the standard format. There is only one company that makes a WMA encoder, and one company that makes a decoder, and it's Microsoft. The format and method of compression used are not published. It's closed in every possible way. There is no "free" or even "open" WMA encoders or decoders. (You can play WMA on Linux -- but it is using the same WMA
AAC, on the other hand, is an open format. Don't mistake this with a 'Free' format, as the Cult of Stallman is so happy to point out. But it is Open -- in the same way OpenGL is. AAC is well documented, and there are many encoders and decoders available from many different companies, as well as many different implementations of AAC by itself. There are patent fees-- but this doesn't change the fact that the codec is published. The unprotected AAC files generated by iTunes (when ripping from CD's) is of the exact same format. I'm sure the protected ones use the same audio encoding as the AAC standard, but has added DRM. It still uses AAC encoding.
For an example of how protected AAC differs from 'normal' AAC: There is even a project to make a DRM extension of Ogg Vorbis. It still uses the Vorbis encoding format, but it's got DRM. There is just no story about Apple's AAC being 'closed'.
Disabling the other methods of updating the iPod was in my opinion a good idea, as it instantly removed the problems involved with using multiple sync problems. Making these little annoyances go away seems to be "The Apple Way," and it's not lost on me.
iTunes is meant for users who have the iPod. If you don't have an iPod, then you're not Apple's target audience for iTunes, although they certainly won't stop you from trying things 'The Apple Way', which in my opinion, is considerably better in the case of iTunes than any other way to play music on Windows. Maybe it'll convince some customers to get an iPod. Apple is interested in supporting its OWN hardware, not other companies hardware. MusicMatch failed so miserably in its iPod support that I don't blame Apple for cutting them off. That's an instant 90% reduction in tech support to Windows iPod owners. A 'no-brainer' from a business perspective.
Besides, the
That also costs power because now the processor must actually do something
Yes; but it is at least actually doing something with that power, although some would argue the merits of the work being done. (I don't know enough about folding@home to really comment)
One reason: Modern desktop computers use a rather large amount of electricity. I'll admit I have a lot of hardware inside my computer, but it still consumes a few hundred Watts. My 19" monitor alone uses more juice than every component of my first system combined. (LCD's are still too expensive, and can't refresh the contents of the screen fast enough; I hate the 'ghosting' I see in LCD's)
Like it or not, people are beginning to view computers as an appliance -- like a toaster, an oven, a TV, a stereo, or a gaming console. And, at least in my experience, the mantra pounded into us by our parents is "Turn it off when you're not using it! It's a waste of power!", which is probably one of the most universally sound things our parents have taught us. Engineers are not ignorant of this fact, and current hardware is much better able to withstand the punishment of frequent startup & shutdown (mainly in the case of disk drives, whether Hard Disks or CD/DVD's). The resulting waste of power a computer consumes while idle is a bad practice in any event; it has both environmental and social impacts (social, as in not enough power to go around, and nobody is willing to allow power plants to be built within 100 miles of their homes).
Sure, you can run seti@home, or folding@home, etc. But most people don't. It's an awfully big waste of power (both computational and electrical) to just have your computer churning out numbers for your spiffy 3D screensaver.
What desktop users need is a 'hibernate' feature in Linux, similar to that provided by OS X and Win32.
Of course, too many people reguard desktop Linux as heresy, and I usually tell them to go home to Redmond.
Honest query: make allows me to handle all build dependancies, and is able to parallelize its operations to make efficient use of an SMP system. (ie perform multiple build operations @ the same time)
So, it can handle dependancies, ensuring a necessary daemon loads before its dependant does, and can also dispatch commands to start operations that do NOT have a load dependancy.
My only 'issue' with init is that you can't specify that daemon A requires daemon B to be loaded first. Sure, it does have a load order, but there's nothing to stop you from being stupid and changing the order (guilty), and no way to really know if the way the init is ordered is necessary, or simply arbitrary.
A simple makefile can at least provide a language to show dependancies, clearing things up.
At least reading the basic makefile syntax, this shouldn't be overly difficult...
How clueless is this argument?
There are actual definitions of what constitutes an actual infringement of copyright. 200 lines of code, unless in a single block, don't apply.
If such a small segment (out of the whole) was allowed to be prosecutable under copyright law, it would be feasable to copyright the use of single words, such as 'a' and 'the' -- or even letters for that matter.
Then they have to prove that the code was in fact directly copied.
This is not the same as showing they read the same.
They have to have prove that a guy at SGI did this -- such as video footage, etc. There is a light-years difference in leagal terms, between knowing something, and PROVING it.
SCO is honestly setting themselves for the bitch-slap of the century (and it's just 3 years into it!!!).
Linux is FAR, FAR from dead. Even if you believe SCO's line (which they have yet to give ONE SHRED of proof-- EVERYTHING they have used as 'proof' has been discredited so far.). BUT even if you believe SCO's line, it only applies to LARGE, ENTERPRISE-LEVEL features of Linux, which is only used by a tiny fraction of computers. SMP, NUMA, RCS, JFS & XFS? Well, frankly, SMP existed in linux since 2.0 -- well before what SCO claims rights to. NUMA doesn't exist on 99.9999999999% of the world's computers (I may be off by a decimal place or two, but if I err, it is on the side favoring SCO), JFS & XFS don't really offer much in the way of performance over EXT3 or Reiser4...
So WHAT THE @!#$ does SCO make claims to that actually matters for all but the most obscure of cases?
And, having released "Ancient UNIX" under BSD, it's easy to argue that a reasonably competent peanut could have used that code, and adapted it to modern usage -- and was not actually copied.
I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry; the fact that I know exactly what you're talking about is disquieting. I remember spending hours talking about the virtues QEMM/Memmaker/386MAX; and why OS/2 was gonna beat them all. I'm startin to feel really old. There's some really snazzy new-fangled things a comin these days, ain't there? Then I hear 'bout this new-fangled penguin thing made by a bunch of young whipper-snappers... who are older than I am...
Maybe I'm spending too much time talking to the old folks...
On the other hand, they whine a lot less than my parents' generation...
Solidworks is certainly not a no-name program; I'm not even a mechanical engineer (its primary market), and I've known what solidworks is for quite a long time...
Actually the smoke was from the Mayor's handlers trying to spin the fire story so as not to cause panic.....
Which goes to show that there are cases where facts can actually be more harmful than concealment or lies. There are people out there who already are panicing over this-- in spite of there being absolutely nothing that they could do but wait. No need to make things even worse; allowing mass panic gets people killed (accidents at concerts, fires in crowded theatres, soldiers shooting machine guns into crowds of protesters-- are great examples). A poorly-conceived (and at least somewhat transparent) lie gives only a black eye. It's not like we are suprised when any government lies. But it does help to keep cool heads on the ill or poorly educated-- who would believe it because they simply don't know better.
I think it would have been better for the Mayor's minister of dis-information to have done this on television with a flaming transformer in the background.
Flaming... No. Not the right effect. How about begins to smolder, then bursts into flame during the announcement?
Or perhaps an explosion?
Or, my personal favorite -- an impromptu electrical arc re-styling (and perhaps coloring) of a news-anchor's hair. But skin and clothing must remain unscathed.
Historical points aside, there is one phenomenon that is being overlooked:
Webster's American Dictionary (Shamelessly ripped from their site)
"In 1806 Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first truly American dictionary. Immediately thereafter he went to work on his magnum opus, An American Dictionary of the English Language, for which he learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in order to research the origins of his own country's tongue. This book, published in 1828, embodied a new standard of lexicography; it was a dictionary with 70,000 entries that was felt by many to have surpassed Samuel Johnson's 1755 British masterpiece not only in scope but in authority as well.
Noah Webster is, to my reckoning, the first American to write a dictionary. And, one of the major features of this dictionary is that he removed 'archaic' spellings of words, and chose spellings that were more clear and concise.
Keep in mind, this was done not long after the American revolution in 1776, and the framing of its constitution in 1787. A lot was done in those days to be different from the british; whether out of the desire to be different or spite...
For instance, we still race horses in the opposite direction as the English (counter-clockwise vs. Britain's clockwise), and made our numbering conventions to more closely match that of the French (who were allied with the US during that brief moment in history, although I wouldn't say it was so because of political agreement).
Interestingly enough, as the feelings of emnity did a 180, we chose to maintain the British system of weights and measures, forgoing the French metric system for day-to-day use. (eg. everyone uses the metric system for anything electrical, and for most things related to chemistry or physics -- not counting cooking, of course.)
We like the cultural mess we live in. Who else would put curry and ice cream together?
Actually, the framers of the US constitution were much more careful than many people seem to believe.
First, the general consensus was that Democracy=rule of the mob. The United States is NOT a democracy; it is a republic.
If I felt so inclined, I could put up a few quotes to this extent (that the framers of the constitution avoided democracy because it is the rule of the mob.) Such individuals as Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin (those guys on US currency) -- even if they were not physically present, they sent letters and were a apart of the process; they all firmly believed that democracy was clearly not the way to go, as it would rapidly erode into the rule of the mob.
Before certain amendments were passed, the Electoral College was chosen by the state legislature; the senate was chosen by the state legislature. We have moved towards a 'real' democracy when the Electoral College was re-defined to be the state representatives in the fed government, and are required (by law) to vote as the people vote, no matter what they feel. The mob was given even more control when the selection of senate canidates was given to a direct vote of the people.
Education (i.e. hiring more teachers, reducing class sizes, etc.) is the most effiecient way to employ people via government spending.
This, of course, depends on how you wish to define efficiency. I'm not sure how well you remember high school, but most of the kids there don't want to learn anything. More teachers won't change that.
Paying the teachers more (or to be more precice, paying more to get good teachers) will have a more significant impact. The problem is that a teacher's salary isn't high enough to feed a family anymore. Frankly, there are a lot of people in educaton who really shouldn't be there at all; they are awful teachers, horrible role models, despicable people, and worse, unionized.
Nothing like a system so corrupt that the worst teachers have their position protected by a union. So much for putting the kids first. I have, in my entire life, only seen one educator that could inspire kids who really didn't want to even be in school, to actually like learning. One, out of several hundred. On the other hand, I've seen 30-40 'teachers' who are such filth, that they actively discourage students from learning. Wanna guess which got fired, and which the union protected? The inspirational teacher bucked the status quo; students loved him and learned from him. And the teacher's union didn't like the 'disharmony' among the faculty that he was supposely responsible for; which is a lousy way of saying "he's making us look bad." So he got his walking papers.
For example, according to the National Priorities Project [natprior.org] website, for the cost of our little excursion into Iraq, we could have hired 1,541,037 Elementary School Teachers.
For how long? One year? Such a nice temporary solution. No long-term thinking involved, a 'solution' for the sound-byte crowd.
It certainly isn't a permanent solution-- the economy can't support it indefinately; the war lasted less than 30 days-- it could not have been supported economically indefinately either. Millions of 'military-industrial' workers-- engineers, technicians, factory workers, and more-- at Mc Donnell-Douglass, Boeing, Lockheed, and Raytheon will be employed for quite some time to come. There was a massive expenditure; but it ends up in the pockets of these people -- not the CEO's of these companies as you accuse.
These companies make more money in civilian jobs than in military ones -- Boeing is the world's largest maker of commercial jets; but McDonnell-Douglas and Lockheed also make commercial jets. All three make sattelite-lifting rockets. Raytheon is also one of the countries experts in microwave technology (they even make microwave ovens!), and radars -- keeping commercial jets from crashing into each other, and cooking your food. The CEO's of these companies make less than those of American Airlines, for crying out loud!!! You can't say that the money that goes into military is lost; it's not, and it rapidly finds its way to civilian use, helping everyone.
You could hire 1,541,037 teachers for a year -- temporary.
However removing Saddam has made a permanent difference in the lives of some-odd 54 million people, one which most of those 54 million consider a good thing. (They would just like the U.S. to leave ASAP, so they can forge their own future, for good or for bad).
More teachers isn't the answer. Better teachers is. I would rather have a classroom size of 200, with an excellent teacher, than a class size of 10 with a bad teacher. But the economics just doesn't support it yet; the people who would make the best teachers are already in other industries, like the newspaper business, or at an engineering firm; because there is no economic incentive to teach. (rather the opposite, in fact).
Of course, if we did that, then we would have to fire a few hundred thousand k-12 educators, and the unions wouldn't have it. They're more interested in protecting the job security of rotten teachers than they are of the student's welfare.
I call bullshit. Facts about welfare [cossa.org]. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you have sincere compassion for the disadvantaged. Why then would you make outlandish claims which are clearly not the mean of the people on welfare? I'd argue, though without anything to back it up with at this moment, that people like that are at least 2 standard deviations out from the mean.
I've done all kinds of social work in the projects, in different cities, for years. It is not a case of isolated incidents. Their homes were nicer than mine by a long shot... at least on the inside, behind double-steel doors and caged-windows. Frankly, I often don't blame them for never wanting to leave their homes; the inside of their apartment is nice... but the 'public' areas are, of course, dried-up sewers (with the same smell and a large number of rats and other predators). They're usually cleaned by hosing everything off-- nothing more. Which is OK, since the corridors are bare concrete anyway... no attempt was even made to build them with materials that actually could be cleaned off.
My understanding is that this is true, albeit misrepresented. Yes, people can often make more money on welfare than they can by working, but they are not often happy about it.
There's a difference between having no intention to get off welfare, and liking it. Of course they don't like it; but they're not stupid either. If they can't feed their families by working, but can by living on welfare, then they do what is best for their family. You don't have to be on welfare to make life decisions that are the best for your family, not for your dignity. In their place, I would do no different; and like them, I wouldn't like it either. As one gentleman (who was clinically insane) told me in one of his more lucid moments: 'I know it sounds bad... [that] I don't want to get a job; but if I do, then I lose my home and food. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid.'
I honestly think that welfare should help people who have meager jobs a lot more than is currently done. I'm not sure raising the minimum wage is the best idea; however I am finding myself liking the idea of a 'maximum wage' for a CEO and/or management. I'm not saying that a CEO shouldn't be able to make enough money to be filthy stinkin' rich. But there's a big difference between being wealthy, and being so wealthy that you're just keeping score. It would also have a stabilizing influence on companies, who wouldn't have to offer their executives fat bonuses to keep them from jumping ship, because they couldn't make more by working for another company.
By having a maximum wage, it kind of implys a minimum wage; take even one million a year off the top exec's salary, and you can employ 30 more people for a full year at the GDP per capita rate. Take several million from each exec's salary, and there is a lot more money available to either build the company, or pay more employees (or pay current employees more), which then makes it possible for the company to grow even more.
In my head (I'm an Engineer, not an economist), the economy would grow rapidly with this kind of arrangement.
there is a warranty for broken/melted cores because sometimes fans fail to cool, even during normal use. Trust me, if your proc ever dies, you'll be glad for that warranty
I'd like to second this; there is also another reason why I will never buy an OEM CPU again: From three different places, I recieved OEM CPU's that were 'raised', meaning that they had the original speed removed, and a higher speed stamped on.
I never overclock; but these CPU's were behaving horribly! One even (no kidding) overheated enough to melt (and seize) the heatsink fan into the heatsink... making things get even hotter. By the time I noticed anything was wrong (weird smell...), my motherboard was hot enough for several components came unsoldered and fell out when I removed the cover from the case! (Being quick of reflexes, but frequently slow of wits, I reached out to grab these scalding hot components...) Upon closer analysis, this CPU was found to have been 'raised'. To make matters worse, the place wouldn't refund/replace anything because "We don't warranty OEM CPU's for more than 7 days past the date of purchase" -- and what do you know-- it took 8 days after I purchased it for them to even ship it. (Thank you pricewatch!) Better Business Beaureau? Ha! They coudn't have cared less. And I didn't have money for a lawyer.
So you can imagine that I am actually pleased to hear that AMD is going to use anti-overclocking tech; I had no intention of ever overclocking, and yet because some shmuck broke a few laws and sold me a raised CPU, I had a horribly unstable PC that eventually melted itself.
I've long since decided that I will gladly pay the extra lettuce for the warranty, and to buy the CPU from a more expensive, but well-known retailer. I've offered to pay the price difference for friends who wanted to go with a cheaper OEM CPU (since I end up repairing it and/or taking the blame anyway...) There's also the fact that the 'retail' CPU's are packaged entirely differently, and at least the Athlon XP's I've looked at, have a different color to the die when compared with the OEM CPU's (greenish vs. brownish); I can go to CompUSA or even Amazon and feel confident that I am getting the CPU I paid for, and not some clock-raised fire hazard fraud from Skeeter's PC hut.
In fact, I'm much more confident of AMD honoring the warranty on a retail CPU that has thermal grease and a custom heatsink than I am of any PC builder honoring the non-existent warranty on an OEM CPU. And, considering my past experiences with OEM CPU's (I have three Athlon 1.4's that are utterly toasted; worth a pretty penny 18 months ago...) with them, I'm also much more confident that the OEM CPU will fail first. This is reasonable, as I have been through four OEM Athlon 1.4's, on three different motherboards; the longest one lasted was 6 months. But the Retail CPU has been ticking for several times longer than that, and still has given me no problems.
In fact my favored local system builder, who actually uses retail CPU's rather than the OEM's in their computers, still uses custom heat-sinks and thermal paste.
And seriously -- I have a quiet power supply; Enermax is known for this, and I paid for the silence...
And yet the enermax PSU still covers up AMD's heatsink fan completely; button up the case and the only thing you're hearing is the PSU and 2 Enermax intake fans.
Bzzzzzzzzzzt. This is the state of California's deficit; not the US defecit. California doesn't fund its national guard; the federal government does.
And there's more than double the amount of money spent on welfare programs that don't work than there is on the military; not to mention that the military spending keeps millions of americans on the payroll: Engineers, scientists, skilled laborers, and all the supporting middlemen.
And much of this spending (and research) quickly filters down to civilian applications (and the 'greater good'). There's a difference between a guy working for a living, and a guy who sits on welfare, eats prime rib everyday, drives a BMW, and has a big-screen TV. I've seen these kinds of abuse firsthand, in several cities, over several years. In fact, I've met many who state flat out that they have no intention but to live on welfare; they get more money from welfare than they could earn.
The point isn't that welfare is a bad thing; but that its' broken. The people are more than willing to work; but they're also smart enough to know a free ride when they see it.
The real problem is that they can't get a job that pays well enough; either they are unskilled or, more often, have employers who don't pay them what they are worth.
It's interesting, really... it's a form of Adam Smith's 'invisible hand': The employer is unwilling to pay their workers enough, so people have to depend on welfare; because people depend on welfare, the employer (either company, or personally) ends up paying the difference in taxes. The difference is that administration costs, etc. involved with welfare eat up money to keep this badly hobbled system going...
No, it's California's debt alone. To make things worse for them, because they lied, cheated, dumped fresh water into sewers, etc. they obtained a large 'water rights' deal, meaning that for decades California recieved a few hundred billion gallons of water annually that they leagally shouldn't have recieved. The surrounding states (that border California, as well as pretty much every other state with the Colorado river running through it) recently won a large case, in which they won back the rights to the water that California stole. They lost the water as of Jan 1, 2003. And if California takes more water that doesn't belong to them, it is coming out of Mexico's allotment, which then violates a whole series international treaties with one of the US's most important trade partners.
What's the deal with the WATER?
Well, remember that the whole area is desert; water makes it possible to even support a large population, and a larger economy (fruits & vegetebales, which are among California's cash cows, require plenty of water.)
So now California has $30 billion in debt, as well as a massive water shortage-- they don't have enough water to feed thier population, let alone their crops. So a big chunk of California's tax income (from farmers) is going to shrink even further.
It ain't the starter that is the problem.
All it has to do is send a poorly-filtered power spike (extremely easy for this to happen with a remote starter circuit; lots of current, a little inductance or capacitance, and you've got a sudden transient of a few thousand volts. Goodbyte computer!
And it isn't the fault of the manufacturer -- as designed into the car, nothing would have gone wrong. A poorly designed remote starter can easily cause this kind of problem.
Making the Kernel Compliant so that it will refuse to let certain media types run because the OS/System doesn't have the secret key to that media type...NOT OK...
..and also I don't see myself spending 100's to 1000's of dollars to aquire the right to make binaries that run on my own computer....which is really where this discussion ultimately heads...
But you have to remember that this is a two-edged sword. Just because the ??AA uses it in an attempt to reduce copyright infringement doesn't make it evil. It can be used to protect corporate documents, reducing corporate espionage, or to protect your bank account's information so it can't be transferred to another computer.
Frankly, while I find the ??AA's use of DRM distasteful and choice-limiting (I can't play leagally-downloaded and purchased songs from Pressplay or some other 100% above the table downloading service onto my iPod-- yet), the fact of the matter is that there is rather widespread copyright infringement, and they feel it necessary to protect their revenue stream. Whether this is the right decision isn't the point; the point is that it gives them a choice on how they wish to distribute their product, which is something they do have every right to control, whether you like it or not.
With few exceptions, you still go to the supermarket to buy groceries; this does not mean that they are trying to control the distribution of their product. Buying a bottle that is labeled as 'Coca-Cola' is a good indication that you are in fact buying the product on the label, and that it comes from a 'real' source; that the laborers from the Coca-Cola company are getting paid for their work as a result of your purchase. While the ??AA is large, and its revenue probably isn't distributed properly, there still are a large number of 'little people' from recording/mixing engineers to assembly-line workers whom actually create the CD's and DVD's that depend on the revenue of record sales to make a living. The music industry isn't just about the artists and their executive workmasters; there are other extremely talented people who get little or no credit for their work.
Proving that you apparently are more interested in gratis software than libre software. This is already the case; even on Linux. Ever hear of Maya or Shake? They cost a few thousand each. Matlab, Mathmatica, Maple? Quite expensive. The programmers that made these products still need to eat and feed their families. They are already heavily DRM'd, although I'm not sure if they require a hardware dongle at this point in time.
Before the internet became as widespread and common as it is today, if you wanted a copy of the GNU utilities, you had to plunk down a few hundred to get a copy, directly from the FSF. As Stallman is widely noted as saying -- there's a difference between libre and gratis. He has no qualms making money selling people free/libre software; this is how the FSF stayed afloat during the 80's and early-90's, where you typically had to pay a few hundred for Free Software.
Well, I'll start with the arguments
1.) This will probably never happen anyway; the state of Darwin on x86 strenghens this belief.
2-3.) OS X will probably barf on you right here. Just because Darwin and Mach is the basis for OSX, it does not by any means imply that OSX will boot from a self-compiled 'Darwin/mach' kernel; I've seen people try. There are still some closed-source bits to the Mach kernel OSX uses, which differs from Darwin's. Just because it's 99.9% the same, doesn't mean it's exactly the same. Most of the 'Darwin' that is open-source are things such as the GNU tools-- which are Free anyway.
4-6.) There would be far, far more differences than just unlocking code-- there's a lot of hardware that OSX supports that Darwin doesn't; you would break far more than you could possibly solve.
And finally, there are plenty of examples where people have tried to get OS X working on a non-apple PPC -- they all fail until they actually get Apple hardware. And Apple isn't above making a 'new' version that is incompatible with the older hardware -- they did exactly that when they killed mac clones. The clone makers tried (and failed) to work around the problem.
The most effective copyright-protect technology is still the hardware dongle -- still found for exotic and expensive software (such as PCBoard Layout programs). This kind of protection easily defeats the software 'work-arounds' you propose; such software is marketed to engineers who can design a computer from scratch-- decompiling and breaking software locks is a piece of cake. So is monitoring the input/output from the port which the dongle is attatched. But breaking the hardware lock is a far, far more difficult thing to do-- so much so that nobody bothers trying.
I'd also like to add that just because it has an x86 chip and an AGP/PCI bus, it by no means equates to being 'x86' compatible. 'x86' compatible hardware still has an ISA bus inside (even if it is wholly contained in the chipset). An apple-built x86 can easily use a different (and wholly incompatible) interrupt structure than a PC uses. A PC uses/or has the equivalent of two 8259 interrupt controllers, with one master, and the slave cascading its interrupts down. This provides 16 hardware interrupts, IRQ 0-15. These are hard-wired quite specifically; even if you did somehow software-map around them, it would be *dog slow* compared to 'real' hardware. There are plenty of other examples.
Apple can easily put an x86 chip in a motherboard, and still have an architecture so different from a PC that it's just not worth it to try to work around it in software. All an Apple/x86 would have to do is use a different interrupt controller, with say 32 interrupts, and suddenly a PC somehow hacked to run OS X would run poorly enough you would rather just buy the Apple hardware; requiring a 2:1 mapping for each interrupt, many of which cannot be remapped - so some interrupts will have a 1:1 relationship, while others have a 10:1 mapping. Then things get *really ugly* inside the kernel. Apple can change the addressing model used for the system busses and components; it would work fine on Apple hardware, but requires even more costly re-maps to make it work on a generic PC.
Ever run a virtualization suite such as VirtualPC? VirtualPC is very, very slow compared to pure hardware. (I say VirtualPC instead of VMware because VMware doesn't do as much re-mapping as VirtualPC, which is one of the reasons why there is no VMware for PPC hardware; but even VMware is dog slow, taking 3-4 minutes to boot WinXP when a 'real' boot of WinXP takes 30 seconds.)
Meaning that while it may be possible to work around it, that doesn't mean that it would be worth it.
I quite like how the parent immediately started with the assumption that people are forced into (or discouraged from) various roles; it's just an assumption that is supposedly 'common sense', which is frequently incorrect anyway...
I can't count the number of (exceptionally) intelligent girls I know whose parents, friends, teachers, etc. tried to push them into the role of engineering -- a rather stereotypical white-male dominated profession. The thing is that these girls chose not to take engineering; it has nothing to do with 'peer pressure' or the mythos of societal pressure -- everyone around them (including their adoring male classmates) encouraged them as much as they could; the fact is these girls simply didn't find it interesting. They cleanly outscored 90% of their male classmates as well -- it wasn't performance. It was a choice; they simply weren't into engineering.
It had nothing to do with being pigeonholed into a 'role' -- they rejected the 'role' that their significant relationships tried to push them into (engineering) to choose something that they found interesting (teaching math, accounting, chemists, biologists...).
This may be ancedotal evidence, but it is typical of my experience (and hence, in the world I experience). To say that I have 'blinders' on is to make a judgement on my past experiences, of which you know nothing about, althought they will undoubtably include accusations of affluence and privilege; none of which is true. Telling others what they should think is wrong; to teach people to believe in correlation without causality is wrong. To tell others what they are 'really' thinking and feeling is lunacy. I reject the notion of societal 'roles' because I have seen that belief to be false, with my own eyes and my own experiences, over a wide geo/economical/political area -- not because of what a professor, parent, or reporter has told me.
I find false assumptions with reguard to civilization and how we percieve it to be found in any vein of political thought -- the only difference is what assumption is made. Neither have any proof behind them, so people arrogantly believe that her/his own opinion must be the correct one. I typically find liberal dogmas such as the poster's to be as unpalatable as the conservative dogmas that they oppose; both sides are full of it.
The fact of the matter is that humanity is still rather ignorant in about every way imaginable; there is far too much
This is true; of course, this is a generalization which is not always the case, but on average, men navigate by spatial orientation; a 'feel' of where they are that can be best described by a spherical coordinate system; they know they moved this far in this direction, or that they need to go this far in this direction. Women navigate by waypoints, or landmarks.
This is also why men don't ask for directions: Most directions are in the form of landmarks, which are fairly meaningless to the way men navigate. They just 'feel' that they're in the right area.
Why is the coordinate system advantageous? Things don't look the same on the way 'home' from a long-distance trip as they do on the way 'out', which is advantageous for a hunter traveling long distances. Gathering on the other hand, works well either spatially or via landmarks.
Does this really have any far-reaching implications? Not really; but it does irritate those who want to believe that the only difference between men and women is our genitals, which is not the case.
Of course, that argument is in and of itself bogus.
If you can't discredit the science (such as spatial mapping being sex-linked), then attack the person promoting it. Brilliant! That's one of the oldest dirty tricks in the book. Moreover, your argument is based on *learning* being non-hereditable. That is even an arguable point, as most biologists know (I have three brothers who are biologists).
Spatial mapping has nothing to do with learning; not in the scope mentioned. It has to do with the *fact* that a woman's brain is 'wired differently' than a man's brain. Some areas are larger in a man's, while smaller in a woman's, and vice versa. Learning is in no way accounted for. Just as a man's body is, on average, more suited to some tasks than an average woman's body (and the opposite is true), that in no way means that anything is 'locked in.'
The fact of the matter is: Men and women are different, biologically, and neurologically. There are inherint advantages and disadvantages to each (not counting societal 'norms', which is another matter entirely).
Ignoring the facts won't make them go away; just because it doesn't fit into the dogma of 'everyone has equal potential', doesn't make it false. It makes it unpopular-- but no less factual.
Women have significantly better linguistic abilities; this doesn't mean that men can't communicate ideas (Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Chaucer) are examples of men with superior linguistic abilities. The concept of 'societal pressure' discouraging women from traditionally male-oriented professions (such as engineering in particular) doesn't tell the whole story; there are actual neurological reasons why some professions are dominated by men, and others by women. They don't tell the whole story either. To reject either one is to reject the truth; the difference is that one is more socially acceptable, and the other angers most pseudo-intellectuals.