at the end user level it is a natural monopoly. Few houses or even factories have more than one incoming
power cable, so whoever owns that or the equipment upstream has to be regulated in some way
This is a commonly held belief, but it is quite simply not true. Stringing wires is expensive, yes. But in no way is it more expensive than dealing with a monopoly, be it privately owned or (effectively) publicly controlled (private or not in name).
Consider a quote from this:
If a natural monopoly is understood as a condition in which a single efficient seller (or in this case, distributor) can serve the entire
relevant market at a lower average cost than can multiple sellers, it would appear that we have a testable proposition. Yet as
economist Walter Primeaux has discovered, electricity rates were lower in municipalities that had vigorous competition and
multiple distribution grids at the advent of monopoly regulation than in municipalities with little or no competition and a single
distribution grid. In fact consumers in several dozen municipalities today, such as Lubbock, Texas and Clyde, Ohio, have a choice of
electricity providers, each with their own separate transmission and distribution facilities; yet, these customers purchase power at
rates below the regional average. This simply should not happen under any reading of the natural monopoly model.
Moreover, if this economic diagnosis of the electricity industry were correct, one should expect to find evidence of natural
monopoly-that is, evidence that a single competitor achieved economies of scale sufficient to drive out competitors and capture the
market-in the hazy mists of history prior to utility regulation. But investigations by Bradley and other experts have yielded no such
examples of natural monopoly.
Although it is popular for analysts to speak of the electricity industry as a natural monopoly, even a brief review of the
development of the industry will lead to the opposite conclusion. Industry historian Robert L. Bradley, Jr., president of the
Houston-based Institute for Energy Research, has noted, "The opening era of the electric industry was characterized by competing
franchises and `regulation by competition.'" In other words, rivalry, not regulation, protected consumers. In fact, as economist
Burton N. Behling noted in 1938, "There is scarcely a city in the country that has not experienced competition in one or more of the
utility industries." Behling noted that six electrical companies were organized in 1887 to serve New York City and five companies
vied for customer loyalty in Chicago in 1907. Smaller cities also saw competitors rise up to serve their citizens. Duluth, Minnesota,
was served by five electrical companies in 1895, and Scranton, Pennsylvania, was served by four firms in 1906.
The result of this free market experience, which lasted from 1882 to 1907, was, in Bradley's words, "very positive for
consumers.... [T]he quantity [of electricity] supplied was rapidly increasing from technological advances and expanding
affordability, and prices were falling from declining costs and open competition." This era also saw a staggering increase in
generation capacity and overall production capability. As Bradley aptly noted, "This expansion rate, which would not be
subsequently equaled, hardly suggests the 'monopolistic' practice of restricting output to maintain or increase prices."
This evidence strongly suggests that the electric industry was never a natural monopoly.
The natural monopoly case has been the classic argument for public ownership. As indicated in the previous topic the understanding
of the nature of natural monopoly has been enhanced, and at the same time changes in technology have eliminated the natural
monopoly situation especially in electricity generation.
Don't be fooled by the politicians, the electric companies, or their lackeys. Competition is the solution; they are terrified.
Furthermore, I would add this: if this decision disturbs you, then perhaps you need to reconsider what you think the state should be doing.
In democracy, the voters determine what is to be done by the state, including its terms of employment. So, if you really think that some action that voters disapprove of is vital to the performance of an organization, that is a good argument that that organization should not be run by the state!
In this case, if you think that doctors, or teachers, or any particular employee of the state of VA needs to look at porn, then that is a good argument that medicine, or teaching, need to be privately run businesses, not state concerns. Then they will be free of the will of the voters, and can be run in the "right" manner.
Instead, too many people simply wring their hands about how stupid the voters are. They aren't; and even if they were, then what are you doing about it? Better to simply remove things from their grasp, than whine about how they are violating your rights, especially when they aren't.
The public wanted both public transit and the private
automobile, and had these giants of the road and rail been free to
duke it out in a knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out fight, a healthy
balance would have resulted.
But the competition between the automobile and the railed vehicles
was anything but healthy. While the auto companies paid nothing for
the government's massive roadbuilding program, transit companies
not only had to build their own roads but also to pay governments for
the privilege. While auto companies had the freedom to price their
products to suit the marketplace, transit companies were stuck with
regulators who told them how much to charge, where they could
travel and how many employees to hire per streetcar (two - a
conductor and a motorman).
I agree with a lot of the sentiments others have expressed here: the Worm was great! And I have no problem in making the ornithopters into airplanes; that is a technical detail. And the acting was not that great, in general, with Bill Hurt in particular stinking up the screen. Who would have thought that men would love a leader that can barely rise to a monotone?
What I did not like is the liberal way in which the screenplay was adapted from the original. Now there are a number of good reasons to cut dialog and scenes out when adapting books for movies. For instance, you cut dialog because the format is too short. Or you add dialog which explains what is going on.
But what I am to make of scenes where they altered the perfectly usable original dialog, for no good reason at all?
As an example, consider the scene where the Rev. Mum administers the Gom Jabbar to Paul. The Gom Jabbar scene in the show last night was just confusing, unless you had read the book. Practically all the dialog from the book was cut, but it cannot be for time since they spent plenty of time visualizing the burning hand. In the book, the dialog which they engage in while she holds the needle at his throat, explains: the test itself, the reason for it, and the reason Paul does not cry for help. Go reread the beginning of the book; you will see what I mean. In fact, this scene struck me upon rereading it last night -- it was written as if for TV, with what the characters were saying making plain everything the reader needed to know to understand.
Actually, the modern federal government is rather like running a Word Perfect port in a Mac emulator on a Linux box running Motif. It's bloated and ugly, because it is doing all kinds of stuff that it doesn't need to do. And in fact, since most of what it is doing is unconstitutional anyway, to blame modern government disfunction on the constitution is entirely unfair.
I just looked at the page you linked, and (despite the initial thought that it was just a hoax, because of the URL), it appears legit. Then I noticed this:
intel-p6microcode-22June2000.txt.bz2
My celerons were bought a year ago, and presumably have older microcode.
So someone else mentioned that "steppings" were just microcode changes. Is that true? If I get the linux microcode update utility and hack my system to use it, what do I get?
Slightly high system stability?
Slightly higher system speed?
Anyone have any information on this? Is it worth doing for any reason other than the cool factor?
Does anyone think in 200 years time we will still be living in a capitalist society (serious question)?
Most certainly. Socialists think that "capitalism" means "a system of control by the rich". But it is not that. It is the private ownership of the means of production. Look it up.
I don't think anyone will disagree that the future will be as free or freer than the present, as the world gets rich and war fades away. The drug war will end, in time, and be looked back on with mortal embarrassment, as we now look back on, say, segregation. Diversity will continue to bedevil states until they let people be free. Taxes and militaries will decline.
Well, combine private property and freedom, and you have capitalism. It is a very, very stable system; it took decades for socialists in this country to effect the changes they did, and that with the full compliance of every politician, and almost every intellectual of any note in the society, including almost all the economists.
In the future, things will be different.
Even now, almost any reputable economist will tell you: capitalism/freedom is good. Public ownership of almost everything is bad. They don't put in such simple terms, but there it is.
In the future, this concensus will become more and more obvious, spreading out from economists into the social sciences, and to the people, and then, finally, to the politicians.
Learning a second language is not just a "network effect" thing, where you might learn any language as a lingua franca simply because so many other people speak it. This is a good reason why English might win, but it seems almost as compelling for Chinese, say, or Spanish.
The point that the author of the piece seems to miss, is that people learn second languages for a second good reason: to communicate with those who speak those languages better. Historically, there are three main ways that communication is advantageous: in politics, in trade, and in cultural ideas.
In politics, the idea is that you learn the langauge used by the state that is occupying your nation. This allows you to get on better with the occupation forces, to prevent you from being one of those they coerce. So, for instance, many Poles know Russian. English itself is strongly influence by French, dating from the Norman conquest. And in the 19th and early 20th century, French was the language of diplomacy based not on any aspect of French, but rather, Napoleon and the political and legal systems exported forcibly from revolutionary France.
Note that, nobody learns a second language of a weak nation for political reasons. They only learn the language of strong nations, because those are the only nations likely to occupy other nations for long.
The second reason to learn a second language is to trade goods with people who speak the second language better -- crassly, to make money faster.
But note that nobody is going to bother to learn the language of poor people; you want to trade with the people with the money.
Finally, it is useful to know parts of a second language if there is important technical or cultural innovation going on amongst it speakers, since this gives you an edge in using those innovations yourself, among your own language group. This is why, for instance, so many italian words still are used for musical instruments and notation -- because the renaissance started in Italy.
But once again, note the correlation with wealth. Innovation, both scientific and cultural, happens in places with the money to afford leisure time in which to innovate.
So, if we look at the world now, we find the English, as spoken by the US, in by far the strongest position of any language in the world.
Although the US does not occupy any foreign nations, per se, we have forces in many other nations and entangling treaties with half the world it seems. As the fools willing to be the world's policemen, everyone wants to talk to us.
But mainly, it is our richness that will make English the world language. We have by far the largest economy in the world, and we have the freedom to innovate both scientifically and culturally, and we do. People will learn english to do business with us, in order to buy our computers, our internet services, and our rock music.
Other societies often hate us for our political pushiness, but they are always going to want our ideas and our money.
"It's like arms control," said a German-based
hacker, who requested anonymity. "Saying you can't
walk around with a loaded gun produces safety. You
can compare an exploit to a fully-loaded weapon.
Making exploits illegal could decrease the number of
hacked boxes."
Just a note. The best statistical analysis analysis we have in the US about "walking around with loaded weapons", reveals that concealed carry is a large benefit to society, and saves lives.
The gun laws in places like Washington DC only disarm the law abiding (aka, "victims"). Meanwhile, the politicians who make these laws have dedicated policemen to guard their workplaces and sometimes even persons. Armed policemen, of course.
If victim disarmament laws really worked, then the police should be disarmed just like anyone else. But of course, they don't, and nobody is so foolish as to advocate disarming the police when the criminals are pulling down billions in their highly regulated economic sphere.
The analogy maps perfectly to computer security. Take away legal possession of hacking tools, and sure enough no reputable people will have them. But the crackers still will, of course, and there will be a brave new world of ignorant sys admins with no ability to defend their systems.
This is a great piece I found the Ars-Technica forums some time ago, by "sabine urfer" (whoever that was). I cannot vouch for it other than that his suggestions seem reasonable, and that I have seen many claims on overclocking boards from people who think that burning in a CPU helped its stability.
begin repost:
If you overclock your cpu, you are basically running it outside its
specification. It may run, but that's not guaranteed. To help it run,
you might try burn-in and some other measures.
How is the cpu basically working?
A cpu functions with just two different signal states: "high" and
"low" (sometimes referred to as "1" and "0" or signal "on" and "off").
To detect the difference between "high" and "low" the cpu uses some
kind of reference voltage. If the voltage of the signal is higher as
the reference voltage, the signal is detected as "high", if it is
lower, it is detected as "low". The time the cpu has to detect the
"high" or "low" states, is limited by the cpu clock. If the clock is
set to higher speed, the time for detection, the "decision cycle",
becomes shorter.
The signal itself is not at all digital. Its analog. Which means, it
doesn't jump from "low" to "high" and back in no time, it gradually
rises from the lower level to the higher and back. This is caused by
parasitic capacitances and resistors. They are called "parasitic",
because you rather would like them not to be there, but given the
current semiconductor manufacturing process, you can't avoid them.
In the design of the cpu, it is attempted to keep the parasitics as
low as possible. Sometimes you run into a quagmire. If you make the
resistance lower (for example wider metal lines have less resistance),
you might increase the capacitance (wider metal lines have more
capacitance). Which means, you will always end up with having the
parasitics in one way or another.
The capacitances "suck" away the rising voltage until the capacitances
are charged, the resistances make matters worse by "resisting" the
current flow which tries to charge the capacitances. Temperature makes
matters also worse, because heat further increases the resistances in
the cpu.
The transistors in the cpu also have some "internal" resistances, if
you look at the transfer characteristics, you will see a non-linear
behaviour of the current versus the voltage. If you (or the signal,
for that matter) increase the voltage, the current will start at zero
and rise exponentially from some point on (the so called subthreshold
swing), at the so called "threshold" it will become (almost) linear
dependent on the voltage and then start to saturate at an certain
current level.
The driving force in the cpu is the supply voltage of the cpu. Setting
it to lower values would result in "slacker" subthreshold swings and
lower saturation current, setting it to higher values would steepen
the subthreshold swing and increase the saturation current, but since
you are dissipating more power, you would also generate more heat in
return.
If the combined parasitic and build-in effects limit the signal to the
point, where in the given "decision cycle" the cpu can't detect the
change from "high" to "low" or vice versa, the cpu will
fail. Sometimes it will fail only once in a while, or at specific
instructions, it can even fail unnoticed, because the internal error
correction will step in. That's what makes figuring out whether the
system is stable or not so difficult.
How to overcome the problem of the failing cpu.
As stated before, the cpu can fail for some of the following reasons:
Clock cycles too short. Temperature too high. Voltage too
low. Transistors switch too slow.
Obviously, switching to a lower clock speed is not so desirable when
trying to squeeze out the last MHz of performance out of your cpu.
For fighting too high temperatures, there are several methods, I don't
want to discuss this in depth here. Just some basic hints: Use the
fattest heatsink, throw sufficient air at it and make sure that
heatsink and cpu have good thermal contact.
The operating voltage was easy to fiddle with in the old days, then
motherboards without any voltage setting became popular with the P-II
machines. Nowadays, there are again some boards with voltage tweaking
capabilities. For increased overclockability, you can, very carefully,
try bumping the corevoltage up in 50...100 mV steps. You have to be
careful, not to exceed the point where it becomes counterproductive
because of the additional heat generation. The power dissipation of a
cpu goes nonlinear up with the supplyvoltage. Which means a 5%
increase of voltage could lead to 10% increase of power dissipation, a
10% increase of voltage could result in 30% more power dissipation. If
the voltage is too high, you can reach the point of brakedown in the
transistors, this would shorten the life of your transistor
significantly, maybe even to zero.
If you are wondering, when the burn-in comes to effect, it is in the
"transistors switch too slow" point.
The transistors can made to switch faster with modifications in the
semiconductor manufacturing process. This would include scaled down
sizes for channel length or gate oxide thickness, optimization in
contacts and wiring etc pp. All of which you have no influence in.
One effect in the actual using of the transistors is the
hot-electron-degradation of the gateoxide. Hot electron degradation
occurs, when electrons are accelerated to energy levels which allow
them to cross the barrier of the gateoxide. The electrons would then
either cross the gateoxide completely or get stuck within the
gateoxide. A stuck electron would incorporate a negative charge into
the gateoxide.
This degradation starts as soon as the transistor is used and will
eventually lead to the failure of it. Usually, the cpus are designed
to last almost forever.
If you can live without that (who wants to use a lame 500 in 20 years
anyway?), you can actually make use of the degradation for your
overclocking.
The fun part of this kind of degradation is, that regarding to speed,
it makes 50% of the transistors in your cpu a bit worse, but the other
50% would get much better.
This is because there are two different flavours of transistors in the
CMOS process, NMOS and the complementary PMOS. If your gateoxide has
incorporated negative charge in it, the NMOS would get a slacker
subthreshold swing, the PMOS swing on the contrary, would become
steeper. Thus, the PMOS usually being the speedlimiting factor, the
cpu at whole, which consists of NMOS and PMOS transistors, would be
able to run faster.
However, the physical effects are not yet understood completely. And
that applies not only to me...
Anyways, you can speed up this degradation process with the burn-in.
During the burn-in you try to get as much hot electrons incorporated
in the gateoxide as possible. The hot-electron effect is sensitive to
voltage and temperature. The higher the voltage, the higher the
effect, the higher the temperature, the lower the effect. Thus, you
would run your cpu at minimum clockrate, maximum voltage and minimum
temperature (remember, voltage and temperature are dependent of each
other). The time needed to incorporate a sufficient number of
electrons varies widely. It depends on the specific cpu and what you
expect out of it. Due to manufacturing variances, some cpus may be
more susceptible to burn-in than others from a different production
run. It may even be different with chips from the same wafer.
What to do during the burn-in
Since not every instruction or data will use the whole cpu, you will
need to stress your cpu with a wide variety of tasks during the
burn-in. If you just let it sit there and idle, only the parts needed
for the halt instruction would be stressed...
You can use several programs to stress your cpu. Usually, a high cpu
usage is desired. Programs that can do that would be prime95, rc5des,
setiathome; loop-demos of 3dmark99, quake, unreal; endless recompiling
of code, etc pp.
Best, use all of them.
How long to burn-in and what's next
After a couple of hours or weeks, depending on what your cpu is
capable of, you could try the machine at the desired overclocked
speed, with lower voltage. When you're lucky, it'll run smooth. You
could test the stability with the same programs you used burning it
in.
If it still hiccups, you may either need further burn-in, or you need
to reevaluate other aspects of your machine (cooling, voltage,
clockspeed etc).
Simply put, if a couple of weeks of burn-in didn't help, a couple of
months probable won't either.
If problems persist, you can either go hardcore and try some funny
stuff like submerging your computer in mineral oil or get a can of
liquid nitrogen to pour over your cpu, or you may have to face the
hard truth of overclocking:
Nothing is guaranteed in overclocking.
For a comprehensive list of overclocking successes and corresponding
voltages, cooling and production dates, visit www.overclockers.com.
They looked at five popular packages and showed that for every ten
appropriately-blocked domain name, there were anywhere from four to forty
domain names just randomly censored.
The packages in question do not block "appropriate" (what's that?) sites, while censoring random ones.
The packages block both types of sites. The action of preventing a URL or whatnot from being seen is "blocking", "stopping", etc. (If you want to claim that "censor" just means "block", then you should have said that the software "censors" both types of sites, good and bad alike.)
I get really fed up sometimes with people to whom "censor" apparently means, "block information I think is OK".
Censorship is about power, about using repression to prevent people other than oneself (or one's wards), from contacting texts. If I choose not to look at, or spend money on, the New York Times, I am not censoring it. Only if I prevent someone else from doing so, am I. Censorship has nothing to do with the information content of what is blocked; it is just as much censorship for the State to forbid the reading of Playboy as the New York Times.
Note, though, that the courts have supported such censorship in many areas of First Amendment jurisprudence, usually in order to prevent children from accessing information. The questions do not revolve around "censorship", then, but "compelling interests" and "least intrusive means", etc.
Blocking software installed on public computers is censorship. But it is the power relationship of the State to the individual that determines that, not the blocking per se. And furthermore, whether or not such software will be emplaced has nothing to do with whether it is "censorship". It has to do with the "compellingness" of the need for it, and what alternatives there are, and how the Supreme Court feels the day it comes before them.
The first article was hardly what I would call a must-link for/. The tone was hectoring and supercilious, since of course, everyone reading it would be a net-savvy insider. Surely there are better pro-liberty articles out there?
However, it did mention something I didn't know, down toward the end. In 1979, The county of Galveston, Texas was allowed to opt out of social security and run its own system! Naturally they are getting higher returns than SS, even though they intentionally use only extremely conservative investments. (One can only imagine how filthy rich they would have been with a few index funds dating from 1981 in the portfolio!)
Why can't my county, or better yet my business follow that model, and opt out? Well, maybe mine is too small; there is strength in numbers and the diversified portfolio they can buy. But many companies are much, much bigger than Galveston. Therefore there is no reason why they could not run a retirement system just as successfully.
And neither is there a reason why a pool of small companies could not run a similar system.
The answer is: you can no longer opt out. In 1983, that "loophole" (allowing local and state governments to opt out) was closed by Congress when Social Security almost folded. Quick: what is the solution to a failing pyramid scheme? That's right! Require everyone to buy in!
He didn't really talk about the profit model on the units. So that may be a problem for them. But it seems to me that any use of the loss-leader model in the world of modern computers is fraught with difficulty.
On the one hand you want to use standardized, cheap parts and interfaces to keep down costs. Well, the winners here are standard PC parts (CPUs, chipsets, SDRAM) and the standardized PC interfaces (PCI, IDE, USB); they have the volume of manufacture. Also, this allows you to sell a machine with add-on parts, which clearly can help keep down costs. In the interview, Gildred says that the modem would be such a part.
But on the other hand, there is an army of geeks standing by with their gimlet eyes, waiting to pick off any sufficiently useful device and convert it to their own use. Recall the fun we had with i-openers.
I guess as long as the only possible display the thing can use is a TV, they are probably OK. The resolution is too low to be interesting for most other uses. But if they leave in the ability to drive a normal monitor at, say, 800x600 or more, I don't think the loss-leader model is viable.
X-box is likely to have the same problem.
Voting for Status with Liberals
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 1
I will be voting for Harry Browne. He is right on just about every single issue. Long ago I vowed to myself to never vote for a candidate out of dislike. Since then I have never voted for a winner. Actually, I have never voted for a winning politician, period, other than possibly a few know-nothing votes when I was 18.
Note that voting, for any candidate, is a terrible waste of time for practically anyone reading this. It will take me at least 10 minutes to vote, and probably more. I could sell that 10 minutes for ~$10 on the open market; probably more. There is no way that my infinitesimal effect on the election will bring me $10 in benefits.
That is not to say that the result of the election will not affect me much more than $10: Bush, for me (and practically everyone reading this) is the "better" candidate. His election would be worth hundreds or thousands to most of us -- assuming that the election of either main candidate would result in the congress doing what the candidate advocates with the "surplus". However, the chance that any one of us will be the deciding vote in the election is practically zero, maybe 1/1000000. Even $10000 in tax relief (more than most of us would get), times 1/1000000 would be a 1 cent estimated value for me in voting for Bush. That's not worth it.
(Actually, living in Maryland my effect on the presidential election will be exactly zero, by anyone's account. But never mind that.)
No, the reason I vote is not self interest per se, but societal standing. It may be irrational or foolish, but many, many people in this society are impressed by voting. Since the cost is low, I choose to actually vote rather than lie about it. This gives me the moral standing to complain. Liberals (meaning socialists, not the old meaning) are impressed when you tell them that you vote every time, and lose every time.
A portable data recording device ("camera") may be linked to a second data recording device (the "host computer") via an intermediate mechanism (the "dock") which facilitates data transfer and services, including development and recharging.
Claims
The dock is powered by the host computer, or may be powered separately, and serves as a battery recharge station for the camera when it is docked.
The dock also contains a data connection to the host computer. When docked, the camera is detected by the host computer, and the contents of its memory compared to a stored database. Any data ("photographs") found on the camera which are not in the host computer's database will be transferred ("uploaded") automatically to the host computer.
The camera may automatically download data from the host computer when docked.
Different protocols may be used to communicate between the host computer and the dock, and between the dock and the camera.
The dock may automatically change the format or encoding of a photograph ("development") when transferring it from the camera to the host computer.
The combination of claims (1), (2), (3), (4), and (5), for any portable device comprising a battery power source and memory mechanism capable of data storage.
Is the State going away? Not a chance in hell. The State as we find it rests on a simple premise: anyone that the State's agents can physically hurt, is owned by the State, and must pay up.
How is that likely to change based on any conceivable information revolution?
Well, if you happen to be a person whose living is in creating or processing information, info revolution is probably good news. You can hide your income from the State, perhaps, and escape (some) taxes.
And if you are a consumer of information, it is also good news since info will be cheap, and the State is likely to lose control over the information you consume. This makes little difference for Americans (our State is not much in this business), but for citizens of places without first amendments, it may well be a big deal. At least, it means they will be getting virtual first amendments.
But to the extent that you are a part of the world of physical goods, you will not escape. So this is not going to change anything for all those businesses that make real things. And for that matter, all those people that need physical things to live -- like, say, food -- will also remain subjects. They may be freer. But they will never be free.
You write as if freedom is zero sum; as if by working hard in the US to write a free driver for a video card, a hacker causes some beautiful young woman with great teeth to be imprisoned wrongfully in the Sudan. It just isn't so. I am always surprised at the arrogance of those in the West who think that they have control over the fates of the subjects of other states. They may have influence, yes, but no control. (And as far as I can tell, precious little influence, in fact.)
Software is not "just software". It is a form of wealth, like any other useful human endeavor. Unlike the old forms of wealth, it is a form that can be replicated endlessly practically for free. Far from being a minor sideline in the struggle to bring justice to the world, software -- information wealth -- is an important player. For it is clear that wealth is a problem in poor countries; yes, they have bad governments (which need to be changed before anything else), but they are also poor. History has not shown any huge tendancies for individuals or societies to give physical wealth away. Individuals do give some; societies never do anything except transfers within. So how are we going to raise the standards of living of 5 billion people to match our own? Well, we can and will, at least in software wealth. And as information wealth becomes a larger fraction of total wealth, the better off the third world will be (potentially). But clearly, they will be better off without having that wealth sold to them at top-dollar rates by information owners. They are best off in an information commons, created largely by "us" (the rich west), but drawn upon by everyone.
As for voting vs software, I would happily trade my vote for access to the source of all the software I use. My vote, nifty though it is, has never done a damn bit of good (or bad) in the world, since no matter how often I exercise it, I always vote for losers. I have, however, written source 5, even 10 years ago that is still out there in the world, somewhere, doing a small little bit of good for somebody. A grand gesture that is useless, or a small piece of code that is useful? You make the call.
It is appalling to me that after 100+ responses, nobody has addressed the flawed political criticism underlying this criticism.
So I will.
The site claims:
Spending money to influence
voters is protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment of the
U.S. constitution. Recent Supreme Court decisions have equated freedom
of spending money with the freedom of speech.
What the Supreme Court has found (in Buckley vs Valeo), is that that restrictions on
political contributions and expenditures "necessarily reduce[d] the
quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the
depth of the exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is
because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass
society requires the expenditure of money."
This is not controversial. It takes money to get airtime, buy ads in newspapers, etc. On these grounds, much of the law was invalidated which was being challenged (the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), as amended in
1974, and the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Act).
The Court also found
that restrictions on political speech could only be justified by an
overriding governmental interest, and that the "appearance of impropriety" in elections was one such interest. And on that basis (badly decided IMO, but WHATever), we have the campaign finance restrictions of today.
The selling of any vote, or even the appearance of selling a vote, would almost certainly pass muster as the reality or appearance of impropriety. And therefore the government has a compelling interest to stop it, which is the interest embodied in the current laws against selling votes.
So, this site and anything like it will never be able to hide behind first amendment considerations, rightfully so. And thus the equation made on the site between buying votes and spending on campaigns is fundamentally flawed; as a critique of our society it is juvenile.
I wrote this three years ago, in response to reading the eponymous article upon which the book was based. Having not read the book (yet, I suspect it will appear in my vicinity eventually), I offer it for what it is worth. I have the strong suspicion that Ms Borsook is still trying to interpret libertarianism via her worldview.
Borsook wrote:
... I know that without the government, there would be no Internet
(majorly funded by the government until recently).
Further, there would be no microprocessor industry, the fount of
Silicon Valley's prosperity... There would also be no major research
universities cranking out qualified tech workers...
But libertarianism thrives in high-tech, nonetheless.
[Anecdote about a technolibertarian]
Of course, I was also thinking about the fine system of interstate
highways that made his trip from Silicon Valley to the Sierra a
breeze; the sewage and water-treatment facilities that allowed his
toddlers to drink safely out of the tap in his kitchen; the fabric
contents-and-care labels on the sheets and towels freshly laundered
for each new houseguest; and the environmental regulations that keep
Tahoe the uniquely blue, gorgeous, and safe refuge it is -- precisely
the lateral, invisible, benign effects of the government he constantly
railed against.
It is clear from this passage that Ms. Borsook considers these
benefits of the state as rationalizing its existence and power.
Presumably, (Borsook never spells it out) the argument goes as
follows: the state paid (or pays) for X (a Good thing); "without the
government, there would be no" X; thus, there must be state rule if
you value X. Hence, to oppose the state is to oppose X. And if X is
truly Good, then every opponent of the state is, at best, not Good.
Or worse: for a person who has *benefitted* from X to oppose the state
is either disgusting I-got-mine hypocrisy (if X is a past benefit
received, like the internet, an education, or an interstate highway),
or worse, idiotically self-destructive (if X is an ongoing benefit
from the state, like labels on linens and environmental regulation).
This is the origin of the two negative characterizations that frame
the piece: the teenager and the know-nothing.
This chain of reasoning is flawed. The state is NOT the only means of
providing X for almost *every* X. Every one of the goods and services
Borsook mentions -- the internet, microprocessors, research
universities and their graduates, limited access superhighways, clean
water, labels on linens, environmental quality -- could plausibly be
provided mostly via private means. (That "mostly" is a caveat meant
to acknowledge the role of the state in providing law enforcement,
needed for the market to function.) Indeed, many similar goods and
services *are* created outside of the state.
Of course, the market has a logic quite different from the state
sector; without state interference these goods and services almost
certainly would not have come about in the way they did. For
instance, it seems very plausible that, absent state subsidy, the net
would not have come about as quickly, nor in the particular form we
now find it. We might be ten or twenty years "behind" where we are
now. However, I find this scenario perfectly acceptable for two
reasons: first, I don't buy the myth of progress. The net is
"progress" -- but the benefits accrue mostly to those who can afford
to access it. Second, the money paying for this subsidy, "the
greatest government subsidy of technology and expansion in technical
education the planet has ever seen", did not just magically appear.
It was taken, in taxes (or alternatively, in reduced services), from
those who need it more than "we" do. In other words, like so many
other state programs, this subsidy was *regressive*. I wonder if,
given the choice, Ms. Borsook would have supported this policy? Does
the actual outcome, which evidently rankles, shake her faith at all in
the planned economy?
Ms. Borsook can certainly take issue with the logic of the market and
try to convince people that it would not do X in a way they would
like. And libertarians can say, "would too", and she, "would not",
repeatedly.
That sort of political argument is interesting, but it moves away from
my point. Libertarians have much the same political goal as everyone
else: to live peacefully in a prosperous, happy society of liberty and
justice. This obviously requires certain goods (and services) to be
provided -- somehow. Unlike the mainstream, libertarians believe that
most goods and services can (and should) be provided via private
means. We may be wrong in this belief, but to *assume* the opposite
is true in order to demonstrate that our ideology is internally
inconsistent (and that the technologists among us are thus ungrateful
idiots) is logically unsound. You must refute our beliefs, not assume
they are wrong.
I wrote this three years ago, in response to reading the eponymous article upon which the book was based. Having not read the book (yet, I suspect it will appear in my vicinity eventually), I offer it for what it is worth. I have the strong suspicion that Ms Borsook is still trying to interpret libertarianism via her worldview.
Borsook wrote:
... I know that without the government, there would be no Internet (majorly funded by the government until recently).
Further, there would be no microprocessor industry, the fount of Silicon Valley's prosperity... There would also be no major research universities cranking out qualified tech workers...
But libertarianism thrives in high-tech, nonetheless.
[Anecdote about a technolibertarian]
Of course, I was also thinking about the fine system of interstate highways that made his trip from Silicon Valley to the Sierra a breeze; the sewage and water-treatment facilities that allowed his toddlers to drink safely out of the tap in his kitchen; the fabric contents-and-care labels on the sheets and towels freshly laundered for each new houseguest; and the environmental regulations that keep Tahoe the uniquely blue, gorgeous, and safe refuge it is -- precisely the lateral, invisible, benign effects of the government he constantly railed against.
It is clear from this passage that Ms. Borsook considers these benefits of the state as rationalizing its existence and power. Presumably, (Borsook never spells it out) the argument goes as follows: the state paid (or pays) for X (a Good thing); "without the government, there would be no" X; thus, there must be state rule if you value X. Hence, to oppose the state is to oppose X. And if X is truly Good, then every opponent of the state is, at best, not Good.
Or worse: for a person who has *benefitted* from X to oppose the state is either disgusting I-got-mine hypocrisy (if X is a past benefit received, like the internet, an education, or an interstate highway), or worse, idiotically self-destructive (if X is an ongoing benefit from the state, like labels on linens and environmental regulation). This is the origin of the two negative characterizations that frame the piece: the teenager and the know-nothing.
This chain of reasoning is flawed. The state is NOT the only means of providing X for almost *every* X. Every one of the goods and services Borsook mentions -- the internet, microprocessors, research universities and their graduates, limited access superhighways, clean water, labels on linens, environmental quality -- could plausibly be provided mostly via private means. (That "mostly" is a caveat meant to acknowledge the role of the state in providing law enforcement, needed for the market to function.) Indeed, many similar goods and services *are* created outside of the state.
Of course, the market has a logic quite different from the state sector; without state interference these goods and services almost certainly would not have come about in the way they did. For instance, it seems very plausible that, absent state subsidy, the net would not have come about as quickly, nor in the particular form we now find it. We might be ten or twenty years "behind" where we are now. However, I find this scenario perfectly acceptable for two reasons: first, I don't buy the myth of progress. The net is "progress" -- but the benefits accrue mostly to those who can afford to access it. Second, the money paying for this subsidy, "the greatest government subsidy of technology and expansion in technical education the planet has ever seen", did not just magically appear. It was taken, in taxes (or alternatively, in reduced services), from those who need it more than "we" do. In other words, like so many other state programs, this subsidy was *regressive*. I wonder if, given the choice, Ms. Borsook would have supported this policy? Does the actual outcome, which evidently rankles, shake her faith at all in the planned economy?
Ms. Borsook can certainly take issue with the logic of the market and try to convince people that it would not do X in a way they would like. And libertarians can say, "would too", and she, "would not", repeatedly.
That sort of political argument is interesting, but it moves away from my point. Libertarians have much the same political goal as everyone else: to live peacefully in a prosperous, happy society of liberty and justice. This obviously requires certain goods (and services) to be provided -- somehow. Unlike the mainstream, libertarians believe that most goods and services can (and should) be provided via private means. We may be wrong in this belief, but to *assume* the opposite is true in order to demonstrate that our ideology is internally inconsistent (and that the technologists among us are thus ungrateful idiots) is logically unsound. You must refute our beliefs, not assume they are wrong.
Well I am ignorant of Sprite, so I am just going on what it seems to be from Ian's description. But I have used AFS for years, and adminned it for a while.
The problem with AFS is that it is bolted onto UFS. So, at a particular local machine you can see some files that other machines in the cell see, but not others. That causes one sort of administrative problem, where semi-savvy users don't understand the difference. But it can also be a problem when you are trying to distribute everything out from the central servers to the clients. They have their own OS, executables, etc on the local system and you want to update them. It is not as easy as just changing one file. You have to have a system whereby the client machines examine the central server, and update themselves. Not that that is any great shucks, but it is a lot more complex than just "put the file there, and it's there". Which is what this Linux NOW and Sprite sound like. Furthermore, it was relatively easy to have something go wrong in the update scripts, leaving the machine in a bad state where it would not boot or where something was not updated correctly, etc. So we ended up doing a lot of "telnet to the user's machine and poke around" sort of administration.
Another problem with AFS is that it tends to underuse the disk that is really available, since the local disk(s) on most machines cannot be accessed readily. For a system like I administered, that was not a problem. They had beaucoup cash. But for my home system, I don't want to see even a tiny little modern disk, like say, 13 GB, languishing semi-or-unused. 10 years ago disk was expensive and centralizing it made more sense that it does now, IMO.
Finally, I think it is annoying (and somewhat hard on users) to have two different protection models for files depending on where they are. I liked ACLs, and really wouldn't mind even more flexibility of control. But try to explain to a secretary why this file has mode bits, this one ACLs, and what the difference is -- and why.
I propose a simple definition of distribution: a computer program has been distributed to a machine if the program, or portions of it, are stored on that machine. Stored means, resident in memory, located on disk, in CPU cache, etc -- anywhere a copy may be identified.
Now combine that with the (true) observation that others have already made here: that the distribution requirement of the GPL is not, and has never been, about distribution to the "public". It is merely, and simply, that if you distribute a copy to some (specific) individual, that you must also provide source to that someone. Not other folks, just that person. (Practically speaking, this does tend to end up as anon ftp to the world, but that is not there in the GPL.)
There, I solved your problems.
The company that want to charge for a xhosted session of moddied emacs? It's not a distribution. End of story.
The company that want to rent you a copy of moddied emacs? It is a distribution, so they have to provide source.
Note the important difference here: it is not in the functionality that is provided; that is the same. It is in who owns the place where the software runs. Why should ownership of physical things make a difference? Well, give me all your salary for this year if you think it does not.:)
Given that courts are likely to come to an understanding of "distribution" like mine above, in order to change it you would have to change the GPL, which (a) only the FSF can do, and (b) would risk forking GPLed code. I don't think the "problem" is that big.
And then there's the phaser. Yeah.. right.. let's remember why people use guns - to KILL people.
Not generally. Yes, guns are used for murder, but so are many other things. But most uses of guns are defensive -- something on the order of millions of uses every year, in this country. The vast majority of which are never reported.
The point of a gun is to threaten. The point of a threat is to force people to act differently, to constrain their freedom.
Naturally, it is hard to communicate a threat without anything to back it up. Hence the killing power of guns. But at least for many uses, one does not need to be able to hurt or kill to communicate a threat that is sufficient to change people's behavior. It depends on what people fear.
The taser is not used much not because of its inability to threaten, but its general unreliability and inutility for a lot of situations that people worry about. 12 cops standing around Rodney King are safe enough to be able to taze. One guy in a subway confronted by a gang is not realistically protected without the ability to either stun *all* of them, or threaten real bodily harm.
Freedom of contract: good
on
Copyrant
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· Score: 1
I can't believe all of the people here evidently thinking that because a company does something that you don't like, it should be regulated into the ground, forced by the gummint to change, or whatnot.
Microsoft offers value to millions of people. Evidence? They buy the software. Revealed preference. Most people never reinstall their software. They don't know how. Why should such users care?
If Microsoft wants to rent them the software instead of selling it, more power to them.
If you don't want to rent software from MS, well, (and I can't emphasize this enough): DON'T!!!
But stop treating me as if you speak for me, agitating to interfere with reasonable (although maybe stupid) uses of property rights. We don't assign people (or corporations) rights based on intelligence; rather, based on existence as a person, real or fictitious. Like it or not, stupid people have just as many rights as you do. And you want to take away those rights for the stupid, you endanger everyone's rights.
If, by changing their revenue model MS reduce the value of the product, then they will find out the hard way. The market will function just fine.
There is absolutely no market failure in sight here, to justify interfering with freedom of contract. If people want to rent software under terms that you don't understand, let 'em. Perhaps they know their needs better than you do.
Slashdot Mirror
Or this:
Or even this:
Don't be fooled by the politicians, the electric companies, or their lackeys. Competition is the solution; they are terrified.
Furthermore, I would add this: if this decision disturbs you, then perhaps you need to reconsider what you think the state should be doing.
In democracy, the voters determine what is to be done by the state, including its terms of employment. So, if you really think that some action that voters disapprove of is vital to the performance of an organization, that is a good argument that that organization should not be run by the state!
In this case, if you think that doctors, or teachers, or any particular employee of the state of VA needs to look at porn, then that is a good argument that medicine, or teaching, need to be privately run businesses, not state concerns. Then they will be free of the will of the voters, and can be run in the "right" manner.
Instead, too many people simply wring their hands about how stupid the voters are. They aren't; and even if they were, then what are you doing about it? Better to simply remove things from their grasp, than whine about how they are violating your rights, especially when they aren't.
A small excerpt:
What I did not like is the liberal way in which the screenplay was adapted from the original. Now there are a number of good reasons to cut dialog and scenes out when adapting books for movies. For instance, you cut dialog because the format is too short. Or you add dialog which explains what is going on.
But what I am to make of scenes where they altered the perfectly usable original dialog, for no good reason at all?
As an example, consider the scene where the Rev. Mum administers the Gom Jabbar to Paul. The Gom Jabbar scene in the show last night was just confusing, unless you had read the book. Practically all the dialog from the book was cut, but it cannot be for time since they spent plenty of time visualizing the burning hand. In the book, the dialog which they engage in while she holds the needle at his throat, explains: the test itself, the reason for it, and the reason Paul does not cry for help. Go reread the beginning of the book; you will see what I mean. In fact, this scene struck me upon rereading it last night -- it was written as if for TV, with what the characters were saying making plain everything the reader needed to know to understand.
This sort of thing bodes ill for this series.
Actually, the modern federal government is rather like running a Word Perfect port in a Mac emulator on a Linux box running Motif. It's bloated and ugly, because it is doing all kinds of stuff that it doesn't need to do. And in fact, since most of what it is doing is unconstitutional anyway, to blame modern government disfunction on the constitution is entirely unfair.
My celerons were bought a year ago, and presumably have older microcode.
So someone else mentioned that "steppings" were just microcode changes. Is that true? If I get the linux microcode update utility and hack my system to use it, what do I get?
Slightly high system stability?
Slightly higher system speed?
Anyone have any information on this? Is it worth doing for any reason other than the cool factor?
I don't think anyone will disagree that the future will be as free or freer than the present, as the world gets rich and war fades away. The drug war will end, in time, and be looked back on with mortal embarrassment, as we now look back on, say, segregation. Diversity will continue to bedevil states until they let people be free. Taxes and militaries will decline.
Well, combine private property and freedom, and you have capitalism. It is a very, very stable system; it took decades for socialists in this country to effect the changes they did, and that with the full compliance of every politician, and almost every intellectual of any note in the society, including almost all the economists.
In the future, things will be different.
Even now, almost any reputable economist will tell you: capitalism/freedom is good. Public ownership of almost everything is bad. They don't put in such simple terms, but there it is.
In the future, this concensus will become more and more obvious, spreading out from economists into the social sciences, and to the people, and then, finally, to the politicians.
The point that the author of the piece seems to miss, is that people learn second languages for a second good reason: to communicate with those who speak those languages better. Historically, there are three main ways that communication is advantageous: in politics, in trade, and in cultural ideas.
In politics, the idea is that you learn the langauge used by the state that is occupying your nation. This allows you to get on better with the occupation forces, to prevent you from being one of those they coerce. So, for instance, many Poles know Russian. English itself is strongly influence by French, dating from the Norman conquest. And in the 19th and early 20th century, French was the language of diplomacy based not on any aspect of French, but rather, Napoleon and the political and legal systems exported forcibly from revolutionary France.
Note that, nobody learns a second language of a weak nation for political reasons. They only learn the language of strong nations, because those are the only nations likely to occupy other nations for long.
The second reason to learn a second language is to trade goods with people who speak the second language better -- crassly, to make money faster.
But note that nobody is going to bother to learn the language of poor people; you want to trade with the people with the money.
Finally, it is useful to know parts of a second language if there is important technical or cultural innovation going on amongst it speakers, since this gives you an edge in using those innovations yourself, among your own language group. This is why, for instance, so many italian words still are used for musical instruments and notation -- because the renaissance started in Italy.
But once again, note the correlation with wealth. Innovation, both scientific and cultural, happens in places with the money to afford leisure time in which to innovate.
So, if we look at the world now, we find the English, as spoken by the US, in by far the strongest position of any language in the world.
Although the US does not occupy any foreign nations, per se, we have forces in many other nations and entangling treaties with half the world it seems. As the fools willing to be the world's policemen, everyone wants to talk to us.
But mainly, it is our richness that will make English the world language. We have by far the largest economy in the world, and we have the freedom to innovate both scientifically and culturally, and we do. People will learn english to do business with us, in order to buy our computers, our internet services, and our rock music.
Other societies often hate us for our political pushiness, but they are always going to want our ideas and our money.
The gun laws in places like Washington DC only disarm the law abiding (aka, "victims"). Meanwhile, the politicians who make these laws have dedicated policemen to guard their workplaces and sometimes even persons. Armed policemen, of course.
If victim disarmament laws really worked, then the police should be disarmed just like anyone else. But of course, they don't, and nobody is so foolish as to advocate disarming the police when the criminals are pulling down billions in their highly regulated economic sphere.
The analogy maps perfectly to computer security. Take away legal possession of hacking tools, and sure enough no reputable people will have them. But the crackers still will, of course, and there will be a brave new world of ignorant sys admins with no ability to defend their systems.
begin repost:
If you overclock your cpu, you are basically running it outside its specification. It may run, but that's not guaranteed. To help it run, you might try burn-in and some other measures.
How is the cpu basically working?
A cpu functions with just two different signal states: "high" and "low" (sometimes referred to as "1" and "0" or signal "on" and "off").
To detect the difference between "high" and "low" the cpu uses some kind of reference voltage. If the voltage of the signal is higher as the reference voltage, the signal is detected as "high", if it is lower, it is detected as "low". The time the cpu has to detect the "high" or "low" states, is limited by the cpu clock. If the clock is set to higher speed, the time for detection, the "decision cycle", becomes shorter.
The signal itself is not at all digital. Its analog. Which means, it doesn't jump from "low" to "high" and back in no time, it gradually rises from the lower level to the higher and back. This is caused by parasitic capacitances and resistors. They are called "parasitic", because you rather would like them not to be there, but given the current semiconductor manufacturing process, you can't avoid them.
In the design of the cpu, it is attempted to keep the parasitics as low as possible. Sometimes you run into a quagmire. If you make the resistance lower (for example wider metal lines have less resistance), you might increase the capacitance (wider metal lines have more capacitance). Which means, you will always end up with having the parasitics in one way or another.
The capacitances "suck" away the rising voltage until the capacitances are charged, the resistances make matters worse by "resisting" the current flow which tries to charge the capacitances. Temperature makes matters also worse, because heat further increases the resistances in the cpu.
The transistors in the cpu also have some "internal" resistances, if you look at the transfer characteristics, you will see a non-linear behaviour of the current versus the voltage. If you (or the signal, for that matter) increase the voltage, the current will start at zero and rise exponentially from some point on (the so called subthreshold swing), at the so called "threshold" it will become (almost) linear dependent on the voltage and then start to saturate at an certain current level.
The driving force in the cpu is the supply voltage of the cpu. Setting it to lower values would result in "slacker" subthreshold swings and lower saturation current, setting it to higher values would steepen the subthreshold swing and increase the saturation current, but since you are dissipating more power, you would also generate more heat in return.
If the combined parasitic and build-in effects limit the signal to the point, where in the given "decision cycle" the cpu can't detect the change from "high" to "low" or vice versa, the cpu will fail. Sometimes it will fail only once in a while, or at specific instructions, it can even fail unnoticed, because the internal error correction will step in. That's what makes figuring out whether the system is stable or not so difficult.
How to overcome the problem of the failing cpu.
As stated before, the cpu can fail for some of the following reasons:
Clock cycles too short. Temperature too high. Voltage too low. Transistors switch too slow.
Obviously, switching to a lower clock speed is not so desirable when trying to squeeze out the last MHz of performance out of your cpu.
For fighting too high temperatures, there are several methods, I don't want to discuss this in depth here. Just some basic hints: Use the fattest heatsink, throw sufficient air at it and make sure that heatsink and cpu have good thermal contact.
The operating voltage was easy to fiddle with in the old days, then motherboards without any voltage setting became popular with the P-II machines. Nowadays, there are again some boards with voltage tweaking capabilities. For increased overclockability, you can, very carefully, try bumping the corevoltage up in 50...100 mV steps. You have to be careful, not to exceed the point where it becomes counterproductive because of the additional heat generation. The power dissipation of a cpu goes nonlinear up with the supplyvoltage. Which means a 5% increase of voltage could lead to 10% increase of power dissipation, a 10% increase of voltage could result in 30% more power dissipation. If the voltage is too high, you can reach the point of brakedown in the transistors, this would shorten the life of your transistor significantly, maybe even to zero.
If you are wondering, when the burn-in comes to effect, it is in the "transistors switch too slow" point.
The transistors can made to switch faster with modifications in the semiconductor manufacturing process. This would include scaled down sizes for channel length or gate oxide thickness, optimization in contacts and wiring etc pp. All of which you have no influence in.
One effect in the actual using of the transistors is the hot-electron-degradation of the gateoxide. Hot electron degradation occurs, when electrons are accelerated to energy levels which allow them to cross the barrier of the gateoxide. The electrons would then either cross the gateoxide completely or get stuck within the gateoxide. A stuck electron would incorporate a negative charge into the gateoxide.
This degradation starts as soon as the transistor is used and will eventually lead to the failure of it. Usually, the cpus are designed to last almost forever.
If you can live without that (who wants to use a lame 500 in 20 years anyway?), you can actually make use of the degradation for your overclocking.
The fun part of this kind of degradation is, that regarding to speed, it makes 50% of the transistors in your cpu a bit worse, but the other 50% would get much better.
This is because there are two different flavours of transistors in the CMOS process, NMOS and the complementary PMOS. If your gateoxide has incorporated negative charge in it, the NMOS would get a slacker subthreshold swing, the PMOS swing on the contrary, would become steeper. Thus, the PMOS usually being the speedlimiting factor, the cpu at whole, which consists of NMOS and PMOS transistors, would be able to run faster.
However, the physical effects are not yet understood completely. And that applies not only to me...
Anyways, you can speed up this degradation process with the burn-in.
During the burn-in you try to get as much hot electrons incorporated in the gateoxide as possible. The hot-electron effect is sensitive to voltage and temperature. The higher the voltage, the higher the effect, the higher the temperature, the lower the effect. Thus, you would run your cpu at minimum clockrate, maximum voltage and minimum temperature (remember, voltage and temperature are dependent of each other). The time needed to incorporate a sufficient number of electrons varies widely. It depends on the specific cpu and what you expect out of it. Due to manufacturing variances, some cpus may be more susceptible to burn-in than others from a different production run. It may even be different with chips from the same wafer.
What to do during the burn-in
Since not every instruction or data will use the whole cpu, you will need to stress your cpu with a wide variety of tasks during the burn-in. If you just let it sit there and idle, only the parts needed for the halt instruction would be stressed...
You can use several programs to stress your cpu. Usually, a high cpu usage is desired. Programs that can do that would be prime95, rc5des, setiathome; loop-demos of 3dmark99, quake, unreal; endless recompiling of code, etc pp.
Best, use all of them.
How long to burn-in and what's next
After a couple of hours or weeks, depending on what your cpu is capable of, you could try the machine at the desired overclocked speed, with lower voltage. When you're lucky, it'll run smooth. You could test the stability with the same programs you used burning it in.
If it still hiccups, you may either need further burn-in, or you need to reevaluate other aspects of your machine (cooling, voltage, clockspeed etc).
Simply put, if a couple of weeks of burn-in didn't help, a couple of months probable won't either.
If problems persist, you can either go hardcore and try some funny stuff like submerging your computer in mineral oil or get a can of liquid nitrogen to pour over your cpu, or you may have to face the hard truth of overclocking:
Nothing is guaranteed in overclocking.
For a comprehensive list of overclocking successes and corresponding voltages, cooling and production dates, visit www.overclockers.com.
The packages in question do not block "appropriate" (what's that?) sites, while censoring random ones.
The packages block both types of sites. The action of preventing a URL or whatnot from being seen is "blocking", "stopping", etc. (If you want to claim that "censor" just means "block", then you should have said that the software "censors" both types of sites, good and bad alike.)
I get really fed up sometimes with people to whom "censor" apparently means, "block information I think is OK".
Censorship is about power, about using repression to prevent people other than oneself (or one's wards), from contacting texts. If I choose not to look at, or spend money on, the New York Times, I am not censoring it. Only if I prevent someone else from doing so, am I. Censorship has nothing to do with the information content of what is blocked; it is just as much censorship for the State to forbid the reading of Playboy as the New York Times.
Note, though, that the courts have supported such censorship in many areas of First Amendment jurisprudence, usually in order to prevent children from accessing information. The questions do not revolve around "censorship", then, but "compelling interests" and "least intrusive means", etc.
Blocking software installed on public computers is censorship. But it is the power relationship of the State to the individual that determines that, not the blocking per se. And furthermore, whether or not such software will be emplaced has nothing to do with whether it is "censorship". It has to do with the "compellingness" of the need for it, and what alternatives there are, and how the Supreme Court feels the day it comes before them.
However, it did mention something I didn't know, down toward the end. In 1979, The county of Galveston, Texas was allowed to opt out of social security and run its own system! Naturally they are getting higher returns than SS, even though they intentionally use only extremely conservative investments. (One can only imagine how filthy rich they would have been with a few index funds dating from 1981 in the portfolio!)
Why can't my county, or better yet my business follow that model, and opt out? Well, maybe mine is too small; there is strength in numbers and the diversified portfolio they can buy. But many companies are much, much bigger than Galveston. Therefore there is no reason why they could not run a retirement system just as successfully.
And neither is there a reason why a pool of small companies could not run a similar system.
The answer is: you can no longer opt out. In 1983, that "loophole" (allowing local and state governments to opt out) was closed by Congress when Social Security almost folded. Quick: what is the solution to a failing pyramid scheme? That's right! Require everyone to buy in!
He didn't really talk about the profit model on the units. So that may be a problem for them. But it seems to me that any use of the loss-leader model in the world of modern computers is fraught with difficulty.
On the one hand you want to use standardized, cheap parts and interfaces to keep down costs. Well, the winners here are standard PC parts (CPUs, chipsets, SDRAM) and the standardized PC interfaces (PCI, IDE, USB); they have the volume of manufacture. Also, this allows you to sell a machine with add-on parts, which clearly can help keep down costs. In the interview, Gildred says that the modem would be such a part.
But on the other hand, there is an army of geeks standing by with their gimlet eyes, waiting to pick off any sufficiently useful device and convert it to their own use. Recall the fun we had with i-openers.
I guess as long as the only possible display the thing can use is a TV, they are probably OK. The resolution is too low to be interesting for most other uses. But if they leave in the ability to drive a normal monitor at, say, 800x600 or more, I don't think the loss-leader model is viable.
X-box is likely to have the same problem.
I will be voting for Harry Browne. He is right on just about every single issue. Long ago I vowed to myself to never vote for a candidate out of dislike. Since then I have never voted for a winner. Actually, I have never voted for a winning politician, period, other than possibly a few know-nothing votes when I was 18.
Note that voting, for any candidate, is a terrible waste of time for practically anyone reading this. It will take me at least 10 minutes to vote, and probably more. I could sell that 10 minutes for ~$10 on the open market; probably more. There is no way that my infinitesimal effect on the election will bring me $10 in benefits.
That is not to say that the result of the election will not affect me much more than $10: Bush, for me (and practically everyone reading this) is the "better" candidate. His election would be worth hundreds or thousands to most of us -- assuming that the election of either main candidate would result in the congress doing what the candidate advocates with the "surplus". However, the chance that any one of us will be the deciding vote in the election is practically zero, maybe 1/1000000. Even $10000 in tax relief (more than most of us would get), times 1/1000000 would be a 1 cent estimated value for me in voting for Bush. That's not worth it.
(Actually, living in Maryland my effect on the presidential election will be exactly zero, by anyone's account. But never mind that.)
No, the reason I vote is not self interest per se, but societal standing. It may be irrational or foolish, but many, many people in this society are impressed by voting. Since the cost is low, I choose to actually vote rather than lie about it. This gives me the moral standing to complain. Liberals (meaning socialists, not the old meaning) are impressed when you tell them that you vote every time, and lose every time.
A portable data recording device ("camera") may be linked to a second data recording device (the "host computer") via an intermediate mechanism (the "dock") which facilitates data transfer and services, including development and recharging.
Claims
How is that likely to change based on any conceivable information revolution?
Well, if you happen to be a person whose living is in creating or processing information, info revolution is probably good news. You can hide your income from the State, perhaps, and escape (some) taxes.
And if you are a consumer of information, it is also good news since info will be cheap, and the State is likely to lose control over the information you consume. This makes little difference for Americans (our State is not much in this business), but for citizens of places without first amendments, it may well be a big deal. At least, it means they will be getting virtual first amendments.
But to the extent that you are a part of the world of physical goods, you will not escape. So this is not going to change anything for all those businesses that make real things. And for that matter, all those people that need physical things to live -- like, say, food -- will also remain subjects. They may be freer. But they will never be free.
Software is not "just software". It is a form of wealth, like any other useful human endeavor. Unlike the old forms of wealth, it is a form that can be replicated endlessly practically for free. Far from being a minor sideline in the struggle to bring justice to the world, software -- information wealth -- is an important player. For it is clear that wealth is a problem in poor countries; yes, they have bad governments (which need to be changed before anything else), but they are also poor. History has not shown any huge tendancies for individuals or societies to give physical wealth away. Individuals do give some; societies never do anything except transfers within. So how are we going to raise the standards of living of 5 billion people to match our own? Well, we can and will, at least in software wealth. And as information wealth becomes a larger fraction of total wealth, the better off the third world will be (potentially). But clearly, they will be better off without having that wealth sold to them at top-dollar rates by information owners. They are best off in an information commons, created largely by "us" (the rich west), but drawn upon by everyone.
As for voting vs software, I would happily trade my vote for access to the source of all the software I use. My vote, nifty though it is, has never done a damn bit of good (or bad) in the world, since no matter how often I exercise it, I always vote for losers. I have, however, written source 5, even 10 years ago that is still out there in the world, somewhere, doing a small little bit of good for somebody. A grand gesture that is useless, or a small piece of code that is useful? You make the call.
So I will.
The site claims:
What the Supreme Court has found (in Buckley vs Valeo), is that that restrictions on political contributions and expenditures "necessarily reduce[d] the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of the exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money."This is not controversial. It takes money to get airtime, buy ads in newspapers, etc. On these grounds, much of the law was invalidated which was being challenged (the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), as amended in 1974, and the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Act).
The Court also found that restrictions on political speech could only be justified by an overriding governmental interest, and that the "appearance of impropriety" in elections was one such interest. And on that basis (badly decided IMO, but WHATever), we have the campaign finance restrictions of today.
The selling of any vote, or even the appearance of selling a vote, would almost certainly pass muster as the reality or appearance of impropriety. And therefore the government has a compelling interest to stop it, which is the interest embodied in the current laws against selling votes.
So, this site and anything like it will never be able to hide behind first amendment considerations, rightfully so. And thus the equation made on the site between buying votes and spending on campaigns is fundamentally flawed; as a critique of our society it is juvenile.
For those who are curious, yes, it does appear that this usage of "ogg" was lifted from the netrek lexicon: http://www.xiph.org/xiphname.html
Borsook wrote:
It is clear from this passage that Ms. Borsook considers these benefits of the state as rationalizing its existence and power. Presumably, (Borsook never spells it out) the argument goes as follows: the state paid (or pays) for X (a Good thing); "without the government, there would be no" X; thus, there must be state rule if you value X. Hence, to oppose the state is to oppose X. And if X is truly Good, then every opponent of the state is, at best, not Good.
Or worse: for a person who has *benefitted* from X to oppose the state is either disgusting I-got-mine hypocrisy (if X is a past benefit received, like the internet, an education, or an interstate highway), or worse, idiotically self-destructive (if X is an ongoing benefit from the state, like labels on linens and environmental regulation). This is the origin of the two negative characterizations that frame the piece: the teenager and the know-nothing.
This chain of reasoning is flawed. The state is NOT the only means of providing X for almost *every* X. Every one of the goods and services Borsook mentions -- the internet, microprocessors, research universities and their graduates, limited access superhighways, clean water, labels on linens, environmental quality -- could plausibly be provided mostly via private means. (That "mostly" is a caveat meant to acknowledge the role of the state in providing law enforcement, needed for the market to function.) Indeed, many similar goods and services *are* created outside of the state.
Of course, the market has a logic quite different from the state sector; without state interference these goods and services almost certainly would not have come about in the way they did. For instance, it seems very plausible that, absent state subsidy, the net would not have come about as quickly, nor in the particular form we now find it. We might be ten or twenty years "behind" where we are now. However, I find this scenario perfectly acceptable for two reasons: first, I don't buy the myth of progress. The net is "progress" -- but the benefits accrue mostly to those who can afford to access it. Second, the money paying for this subsidy, "the greatest government subsidy of technology and expansion in technical education the planet has ever seen", did not just magically appear. It was taken, in taxes (or alternatively, in reduced services), from those who need it more than "we" do. In other words, like so many other state programs, this subsidy was *regressive*. I wonder if, given the choice, Ms. Borsook would have supported this policy? Does the actual outcome, which evidently rankles, shake her faith at all in the planned economy?
Ms. Borsook can certainly take issue with the logic of the market and try to convince people that it would not do X in a way they would like. And libertarians can say, "would too", and she, "would not", repeatedly.
That sort of political argument is interesting, but it moves away from my point. Libertarians have much the same political goal as everyone else: to live peacefully in a prosperous, happy society of liberty and justice. This obviously requires certain goods (and services) to be provided -- somehow. Unlike the mainstream, libertarians believe that most goods and services can (and should) be provided via private means. We may be wrong in this belief, but to *assume* the opposite is true in order to demonstrate that our ideology is internally inconsistent (and that the technologists among us are thus ungrateful idiots) is logically unsound. You must refute our beliefs, not assume they are wrong.
Borsook wrote:
It is clear from this passage that Ms. Borsook considers these benefits of the state as rationalizing its existence and power. Presumably, (Borsook never spells it out) the argument goes as follows: the state paid (or pays) for X (a Good thing); "without the government, there would be no" X; thus, there must be state rule if you value X. Hence, to oppose the state is to oppose X. And if X is truly Good, then every opponent of the state is, at best, not Good.
Or worse: for a person who has *benefitted* from X to oppose the state is either disgusting I-got-mine hypocrisy (if X is a past benefit received, like the internet, an education, or an interstate highway), or worse, idiotically self-destructive (if X is an ongoing benefit from the state, like labels on linens and environmental regulation). This is the origin of the two negative characterizations that frame the piece: the teenager and the know-nothing.
This chain of reasoning is flawed. The state is NOT the only means of providing X for almost *every* X. Every one of the goods and services Borsook mentions -- the internet, microprocessors, research universities and their graduates, limited access superhighways, clean water, labels on linens, environmental quality -- could plausibly be provided mostly via private means. (That "mostly" is a caveat meant to acknowledge the role of the state in providing law enforcement, needed for the market to function.) Indeed, many similar goods and services *are* created outside of the state.
Of course, the market has a logic quite different from the state sector; without state interference these goods and services almost certainly would not have come about in the way they did. For instance, it seems very plausible that, absent state subsidy, the net would not have come about as quickly, nor in the particular form we now find it. We might be ten or twenty years "behind" where we are now. However, I find this scenario perfectly acceptable for two reasons: first, I don't buy the myth of progress. The net is "progress" -- but the benefits accrue mostly to those who can afford to access it. Second, the money paying for this subsidy, "the greatest government subsidy of technology and expansion in technical education the planet has ever seen", did not just magically appear. It was taken, in taxes (or alternatively, in reduced services), from those who need it more than "we" do. In other words, like so many other state programs, this subsidy was *regressive*. I wonder if, given the choice, Ms. Borsook would have supported this policy? Does the actual outcome, which evidently rankles, shake her faith at all in the planned economy?
Ms. Borsook can certainly take issue with the logic of the market and try to convince people that it would not do X in a way they would like. And libertarians can say, "would too", and she, "would not", repeatedly.
That sort of political argument is interesting, but it moves away from my point. Libertarians have much the same political goal as everyone else: to live peacefully in a prosperous, happy society of liberty and justice. This obviously requires certain goods (and services) to be provided -- somehow. Unlike the mainstream, libertarians believe that most goods and services can (and should) be provided via private means. We may be wrong in this belief, but to *assume* the opposite is true in order to demonstrate that our ideology is internally inconsistent (and that the technologists among us are thus ungrateful idiots) is logically unsound. You must refute our beliefs, not assume they are wrong.
Well I am ignorant of Sprite, so I am just going on what it seems to be from Ian's description. But I have used AFS for years, and adminned it for a while.
The problem with AFS is that it is bolted onto UFS. So, at a particular local machine you can see some files that other machines in the cell see, but not others. That causes one sort of administrative problem, where semi-savvy users don't understand the difference. But it can also be a problem when you are trying to distribute everything out from the central servers to the clients. They have their own OS, executables, etc on the local system and you want to update them. It is not as easy as just changing one file. You have to have a system whereby the client machines examine the central server, and update themselves. Not that that is any great shucks, but it is a lot more complex than just "put the file there, and it's there". Which is what this Linux NOW and Sprite sound like. Furthermore, it was relatively easy to have something go wrong in the update scripts, leaving the machine in a bad state where it would not boot or where something was not updated correctly, etc. So we ended up doing a lot of "telnet to the user's machine and poke around" sort of administration.
Another problem with AFS is that it tends to underuse the disk that is really available, since the local disk(s) on most machines cannot be accessed readily. For a system like I administered, that was not a problem. They had beaucoup cash. But for my home system, I don't want to see even a tiny little modern disk, like say, 13 GB, languishing semi-or-unused. 10 years ago disk was expensive and centralizing it made more sense that it does now, IMO.
Finally, I think it is annoying (and somewhat hard on users) to have two different protection models for files depending on where they are. I liked ACLs, and really wouldn't mind even more flexibility of control. But try to explain to a secretary why this file has mode bits, this one ACLs, and what the difference is -- and why.
Now combine that with the (true) observation that others have already made here: that the distribution requirement of the GPL is not, and has never been, about distribution to the "public". It is merely, and simply, that if you distribute a copy to some (specific) individual, that you must also provide source to that someone. Not other folks, just that person. (Practically speaking, this does tend to end up as anon ftp to the world, but that is not there in the GPL.)
There, I solved your problems.
The company that want to charge for a xhosted session of moddied emacs? It's not a distribution. End of story.
The company that want to rent you a copy of moddied emacs? It is a distribution, so they have to provide source.
Note the important difference here: it is not in the functionality that is provided; that is the same. It is in who owns the place where the software runs. Why should ownership of physical things make a difference? Well, give me all your salary for this year if you think it does not. :)
Given that courts are likely to come to an understanding of "distribution" like mine above, in order to change it you would have to change the GPL, which (a) only the FSF can do, and (b) would risk forking GPLed code. I don't think the "problem" is that big.
Not generally. Yes, guns are used for murder, but so are many other things. But most uses of guns are defensive -- something on the order of millions of uses every year, in this country. The vast majority of which are never reported.
The point of a gun is to threaten. The point of a threat is to force people to act differently, to constrain their freedom.
Naturally, it is hard to communicate a threat without anything to back it up. Hence the killing power of guns. But at least for many uses, one does not need to be able to hurt or kill to communicate a threat that is sufficient to change people's behavior. It depends on what people fear.
The taser is not used much not because of its inability to threaten, but its general unreliability and inutility for a lot of situations that people worry about. 12 cops standing around Rodney King are safe enough to be able to taze. One guy in a subway confronted by a gang is not realistically protected without the ability to either stun *all* of them, or threaten real bodily harm.
Microsoft offers value to millions of people. Evidence? They buy the software. Revealed preference. Most people never reinstall their software. They don't know how. Why should such users care?
If Microsoft wants to rent them the software instead of selling it, more power to them.
If you don't want to rent software from MS, well, (and I can't emphasize this enough): DON'T!!!
But stop treating me as if you speak for me, agitating to interfere with reasonable (although maybe stupid) uses of property rights. We don't assign people (or corporations) rights based on intelligence; rather, based on existence as a person, real or fictitious. Like it or not, stupid people have just as many rights as you do. And you want to take away those rights for the stupid, you endanger everyone's rights.
If, by changing their revenue model MS reduce the value of the product, then they will find out the hard way. The market will function just fine.
There is absolutely no market failure in sight here, to justify interfering with freedom of contract. If people want to rent software under terms that you don't understand, let 'em. Perhaps they know their needs better than you do.