If you live anywhere urban the sidewalk is amazing.
I was walking down the street with my gf at the time in Oakland and there were these old 486's and p60's laying around. I busted out the cybertool and started harvesting ethernet cards. People came by with tools who had seen them 15 minutes or so earlier than I did and I started helping them build machines and pick the best parts.
However, you can't just abandon the machines or leave them for the dept of sanitation. The amount of lead and other nasties in computers is environmentally hostile. One thing to do is advertise that you're doing this. I see this on craigslist.org (or any other location based classifieds) a lot. Postings like: "I'm gonna leave this stuff on the corner of this and that at 5pm" are common and get the word out to people who need parts and can't afford them.
After the compu-hyenas have picked the carrion clean you should take responsibility for what's left and decide, based on what's there if you want to recycle or find a place to dump that will do so ethically.
You don't even need special hardware to hunt down signals.
I was in Civil Air Patrol in high school and took the most interest in Search and Rescue operations. Mostly these involved civil aviation plane crashes.
When these planes crash, a beacon called an Emergency Locator Transmitter starts transmiting at 121.5 MHz. A satellite picks up the signal and a search is started.
There are special radio/antenna sets for ground teams to direction find the signal, but sometimes the equipment breaks or you're on the team that doesn't have one.
So what you do is use a technique called "Body Fading". This is when you have a handheld, a compass and back in my day a map (GPS was legendary but unattainable, LORAN has this nasty mid continent gap). You hold the handheld up to your chest and rotate your body until the signal is the weakest. You use the compass to shoot a REVERSE azimuth of the direction you're looking.
At this point you can draw a line from your position on a map, then run down the street or through a field for a kilometer roughtly perpendicular to the direction of the signal from your origin. Repeat, triangulate, recsue.
If you are in an urban area with plenty of reflecting surfaces and maps of dubious utility you may just have to follow the signal to the transmitter. If you do this walking backwards, make sure you have a buddy with you walking forwards and looking out for busses and whatnot. This happens a lot actually. Somebody lands the plane really hard and doesn't know the ELT is going off. They tie it down or put it in their hangar until the next weekend. You still want to track these down just in case there is a crash. And if there isn't, you want to let the owner know they should get new batteries for the thing in case they DO crash.
So that's it. No special equipment other than your standard handheld [your favorite frequency band here] tranciever, a compass and a map.
This may not be easy against a moving target, but you could do it in the amount of time it would take somebody to smoke a cigarrette outside or go potty.
Why not carry your cellphone in a tempest shielded pouch when not in use? It's like a tinfoil hat for your phone.
It can't give it's location to anybody if it's unable to recieve gps info and no RF is leaving the pouch.
This would enable you to have positive control over the balance of availability and privacy regarding your cellphone without limiting the advancement of the technology or passing nasty laws.
And remember, if the message or your location is so sensitive, don't use any electronic communication. Use a dead drop or send a messenger you can trust.
Nobody's going to tell SCO directly that they are strapped for cash (can't afford licenses or lawyers) so they have a couple thousand linux boxen instead. So MS puts out this 'improve windows' survey to do that job. Then they 'publish' the results to 'select partners' , SCO being one of them.
Then SCO knows who will be a pushover for setting precedent. Maybe that or get the 'proof' that IBM is able to refute accepted by another judge in another venue.
In other words, don't fill out this survey unless you've got a few hundred million dollars laying around and the will to spend it on lawyers.
It seems to me that if they're generated each time you start the app, that you'd need to give the keys to any host that requested them and trust that they aren't performing MitM. They're brand new keys, so they aren't signed and aren't part of any web of trust or certified by a trusted third party.
In theory, mute beats the problem of using queries and traffic analysis to see who's sharing what.
However, since we no longer have a way of identifying those we download from and blacklisting malicious hosts, we are more vulnerable to an old problem:
The file you think you're downloading could actually be a trojan that scans your shared directory and reports back to 'mama'. This along with a traceroute report to a known server and whatever it could conjecture are your personal details from productivity software, registration info, web autocomplete etc.
So some form of pseudonymous reputation management system could be built in to mitigate that problem.
OR, there can be an anti-malware app out there tuned to the kinds of nasties you'd find on p2p.
Ideally both should be used, as each results in an arms race.
Wal-Mart makes labels censor their artists works in able to be sold at wal-mart. This is wrong. If you believe in free speech and free expression please don't give a dime to wal-mart.
Remember, friday after IBM spanked them in court some mysterious stranger bought a crapload of SCO shares to keep the price up.
Monday comes up and the stock starts sinking. Then SCO postpones it's financial report at the last minute as Royal Bank of Canada decides it doesn't want it's investment in SCO going to Boise.
That's a whole lot of bad news. Then Motley Fool and TheStreet.com both come out with articles calling SCO a bunch of shysters.
SCO needed to do something because the only case they have is in the press and their defeat in court less than a week ago was spilling over into the mainstream financial press. If you're running a pump and dump scheme, that can't stand.
So stage a fake DDoS and call the feds! Send out a press release. Blame some non-existent hackers and make yourself look like the victim again.
Now let me ask you this: How did the press release get out to the online wires in a copy and paste form if their web and email access was down?
Yeah. As soon as I read the line that claimed that an external DDoS took down their intranet I knew this was a stone cold lie. What company worth billions has only 1 web server that services both the public website and the intranet? What company that hosts both doesn't use internal and external DNS combinations?
Any knucklehead nowadays knows basic network topology techniques to keep the intranet going if the border nodes are hit by a DDoS. Certainly a company that's made internet server software for years with billions in the bank to hire competent tech consultants with does.
I really do hope they're "cooperating" with the feds. I hope Darl is talking to them directly, because lying to an FBI agent can land you in jail, and I'd like it to be of record that his next "Open Letter" was written from federal pound me in the ass prison. I'd like it to be the reason he's not in court on Jan 24. That's the kind of PR I'd like to see them get from this stunt.
well, the drivers are there but UMAX USB scanners make use of USB fork. Under 10.2.x USB fork was broken so even though the driver support was there under SANE the bus support wasn't.
I haven't tried this under panther yet. I've been scrounging for information regarding USB fork in panther to no avail.
Grounding. Right now I'm in an apartment where the only path to gound is through the cable tv/internet coax. So ground is reversed in the cable modem. If I unplug the cable I have no ground on my other devices. Sometimes the grounding light on my surge protector(s) "pulses".
I'd gladly trade some of my outlets for properly grounded power.
My variety of getting out there is to go to local rock shows in small venues. They cost less than a movie, you get to meet all kinds of people into the same kind of music and the setting is different than any kind of home or office.
Another thing to do is WALK to a friends house. Part of the problem of working at home is not being able to focus your eyes on anything farther than a few meters away. I have friends who live 2 or 3 miles away that I walk to all the time so my eyes can focus on something far and I can breathe outdoor air for a while.
I just had a thought. Seems to me that with IBM courtroom showdown so far away and by the looks of it SCO's going to lose, perhaps these little suits have nothing to do with collecting fees.
Maybe what they're trying to do is win against paople who can't defend themselves adequately against Boise and Co to set precedent, then meet IBM in court with that.
So maybe the thing to do, once these things come out is to try to get a stay until the end of the IBM/Red Hat mess or file a joint counterclaim with other defendants to pool resources and compell discovery. I think the stay might be prudent because that one case will definitely test the legitimacy of SCO's claim AND will have more capable and better informed council on both sides.
The longshoremen thing gets to me. I think these are some of the people I least want to be easily bribed. I'd rather they take home $120,000/year than be hurting for cash to the extent that somebody could slip them $20,000 to let a nuke slip through their port.
Plus making that much cash keeps them from stealing half the stuff coming off the boat. If I were running a business that depends on import/export I would be glad that the salary prevents mass shrink before the product hits shelves.
I think the salary is entirely appropriate. I think this article is a bunch of wankery.
I saw them at the SF Eagle the night Wil Wheaton was fighting Barney for EFF around the corner at DNA Lounge. I was supposed to leave for the EFF beatdown but I was mesmerized by C!BR and stayed.
Truth be told it is mostly covers. I think the appeal for me is the theatrics. From a performace art perspective it's pretty cool with some old rockin' tunes in there too. More like a one man musical with robots.
I saw them again at Bottom of the Hill when they were shooting the DVD. I should be the guy who takes a knee at one point. What really dissapointed me at that show was the meatheads who decided it was time to mosh. Not because I'm scared to be in the pit, but because they made me spill my beer!!! My precious beer!!!
Anyway, if you like robots, music and crazy theatrics, I reccomend you check C!BR out.
And an earlier poster is right. If you want the spectacle more than anything else, you can't beat Extreme Elvis rubbing up against you in an SF dive.
The drive the author of the post cites IS one of the effected drives.
I did a lot of research the other night because I have panther and a western digital firewire 400 80gb. Turns out if your firewire drive is from western digital AND it's a combo USB/Firewire then you're using oxford 922. The drives that are just firewire 400 and no USB are oxford 911.
So don't plug that drive of yours into your mac until we see the WD patch.
Over at macfixit.com there are reports that it's not just the firewire 800 people that are being bit either. Turns out they've seen the same thing on firewire 400 drives too.
So even thought I'm on an oxford 911 drive, I'm not plugging the thing in until I get confirmation that I'm safe.
...the real advantage to using Linux as opposed to Windows in this instance is the ability to strip the OS down to the bare essentials required to accomplish the mission.
Windows is the kind of OS where cramming in as many features as possible is more important than many other things. Hence, this system running Windows is likely hogging up cycles and draining battery performing tasks that aren't needed or even wanted in a battlefield.
But with Linux you can strip it down so that every cycle is a neccessary one. Plus the NSA has plenty of experience hardening the kernel per it's whimsy.
The Military has experience fielding unix in ground combat systems. It's been proven time and again in combat. A Linux solution (or an embedded linux solution) allows the Army to customize even the very low levels of the software in addition to the legendary reliability it enjoys in other systems.
Windows has neither of those things and frankly is not suited to an environment where taking time to patch the OS or troubleshoot could cost you your life.
I did the store thing twice to get my numbers. Second time I for got to replace the superdrive with the combo. That accounts for the automatic discount. Unit price is 5,120 on that config * 110 is 563200 which is spit out in the cart.
Sorry folks. I'll sheepishly retreat into the corner now
the article suggests that maybe va tech got a big discount from apple because of the huge cost difference from other sooperputers so I went to the apple online store.
I pulled the modem out of the default dual 2ghz g5 mac and upped the ram to 4gigs, as I vaguely remember the big mac node config being from some other article somewhere. Cost 5,320. Tried to up the quatity to 1100 in my cart but the web form would only allow 3 digits, so I did 110. Got 563,200. That looks like a volume discout because my calculator spits out 585200 for simple multiplication. So if we go to 1100 the apple online store may automatically give a steaper discount still.
And remember: these are joe blow prices. they probably paid educational prices. AND my figures use apple's expensive ram, not third party prices.
So it looks like they did get a discount, but not anything special. Looks like the kind of deal any school would get if they pieced one together online today.
The only special treatment they probably got was the shipping priority.
The p4 isn't capable of SMP configurations. So comparing them means only talking about single processor machines.
Thing is, people who are hungry for performance aren't going to go for the single processor g5, they're going to buy the dual. People who aren't so concearned about the most horsepower they can get, but want a new bus and 64 bits for apps that come out 5 years from now (mac users keep them that long) aren't going to get that from the p4.
So really, the p4 benchmarks seem of dubious utility against the g5. Anybody considering a g5 mac probably has needs that a p4 equipped machine won't satisfy.
The relavent comaprison are Xeons and 64 bit SMP processors from intel and AMD. The P4 doesn't fit here.
If you lived in California, you never would have asked that question.
A market where companies (Enron, Dynergy et al.) can conspire to create an artificial power crisis while their buddy runs interference for them at FERC (after they fly him around in their jet during his political campaign) causes blackouts.
The fact is that privatized energy concerns are not beholden to the people/groups that depend on that energy. They are beholden to their bottom line. And they require more money to operate because breaking even isn't good enough any more.
For utilities that are fundamental to the health of a society/economy (water/power) it is simply irresponsible to trust people who don't have to care about the people who depend on it. I'm not saying all utilities should be nationalized, that's oversimplifying. However, back when power in California was a regulated monopoly, the people and government in this state could dictate terms to PG & E. We can't do that now. When the power goes out, we have to just deal with it.
That might not be so big a deal, some think. "It would be healthy to tell stories by candlelight periodically". Those people don't have parents hooked up to electrically powered oxygen generators.
Being one of those people, with a parents life directly dependent on the power grid, I'm strongly opposed to privatized power. And like my Dad, our economy and security is just as dependent on power. These companies can just up and decide to practice blackout-extortion with us now, dictating terms to our country, when it clearly should be the other way around.
We've already seen what happens when these private power companies decide to ply a megawatt extortion racket on the worlds fifth largest economy (California). It's only a matter of time before they decide to do this on a national scale.
And I haven't even gotten into reliability, like in the Northeast or Italy. I've only talked about when these companies have deliberately decided to turn the power off, motivated by greed and politics. I'll let other people talk about reliability.
I've seen a bazillion people post that it is fact that since the rights holder has the authority to grant a license to make unlimited copies, and the gpl does this, that fair use and backups are irrelevant.
This is true.
However, the fallacy in the argument is that the people who hold the copyrights to linux and released it under gpl are the rights holder in question.
By saying 'the gpl is irrelevant' what they could be saying is that they never released their copyrighted works under the gpl, and the distributors of linux only have the right to make one copy under fair use.
The argument and the test here is NOT if the gpl can authorize people to make more than one copy. I don't think they dispute that.
I think what they're trying to pull is convincing people that they never released the source under gpl in the first place, and therefore whether or not the gpl grants rights to make unlimited copies doesn't apply.
So we can't just assume that what they're saying is that the GPL isn't a contract or isn't binding: that we can laugh at them. We need to put our thinking caps on and find definitive proof and arguments on why the disputed code was released by SCO under the terms of the GPL. That is the issue here. Not whether gpl is enforceable, but if SCO ever did release code under the GPL. We can't just say so. We have to prove it.
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If you live anywhere urban the sidewalk is amazing.
I was walking down the street with my gf at the time in Oakland and there were these old 486's and p60's laying around. I busted out the cybertool and started harvesting ethernet cards. People came by with tools who had seen them 15 minutes or so earlier than I did and I started helping them build machines and pick the best parts.
However, you can't just abandon the machines or leave them for the dept of sanitation. The amount of lead and other nasties in computers is environmentally hostile. One thing to do is advertise that you're doing this. I see this on craigslist.org (or any other location based classifieds) a lot. Postings like: "I'm gonna leave this stuff on the corner of this and that at 5pm" are common and get the word out to people who need parts and can't afford them.
After the compu-hyenas have picked the carrion clean you should take responsibility for what's left and decide, based on what's there if you want to recycle or find a place to dump that will do so ethically.
I think cellphones demonstrate that people will put up with with crappy, unreliable service. Hell, they'll even pay MORE for it.
Personally, I'd take a hit on availability if it meant I could tunnel my voice calls over ssh -2.
You don't even need special hardware to hunt down signals.
I was in Civil Air Patrol in high school and took the most interest in Search and Rescue operations. Mostly these involved civil aviation plane crashes.
When these planes crash, a beacon called an Emergency Locator Transmitter starts transmiting at 121.5 MHz. A satellite picks up the signal and a search is started.
There are special radio/antenna sets for ground teams to direction find the signal, but sometimes the equipment breaks or you're on the team that doesn't have one.
So what you do is use a technique called "Body Fading". This is when you have a handheld, a compass and back in my day a map (GPS was legendary but unattainable, LORAN has this nasty mid continent gap). You hold the handheld up to your chest and rotate your body until the signal is the weakest. You use the compass to shoot a REVERSE azimuth of the direction you're looking.
At this point you can draw a line from your position on a map, then run down the street or through a field for a kilometer roughtly perpendicular to the direction of the signal from your origin. Repeat, triangulate, recsue.
If you are in an urban area with plenty of reflecting surfaces and maps of dubious utility you may just have to follow the signal to the transmitter. If you do this walking backwards, make sure you have a buddy with you walking forwards and looking out for busses and whatnot. This happens a lot actually. Somebody lands the plane really hard and doesn't know the ELT is going off. They tie it down or put it in their hangar until the next weekend. You still want to track these down just in case there is a crash. And if there isn't, you want to let the owner know they should get new batteries for the thing in case they DO crash.
So that's it. No special equipment other than your standard handheld [your favorite frequency band here] tranciever, a compass and a map.
This may not be easy against a moving target, but you could do it in the amount of time it would take somebody to smoke a cigarrette outside or go potty.
Why not carry your cellphone in a tempest shielded pouch when not in use? It's like a tinfoil hat for your phone.
It can't give it's location to anybody if it's unable to recieve gps info and no RF is leaving the pouch.
This would enable you to have positive control over the balance of availability and privacy regarding your cellphone without limiting the advancement of the technology or passing nasty laws.
And remember, if the message or your location is so sensitive, don't use any electronic communication. Use a dead drop or send a messenger you can trust.
Is this how SCO is going to find out who to sue?
Nobody's going to tell SCO directly that they are strapped for cash (can't afford licenses or lawyers) so they have a couple thousand linux boxen instead. So MS puts out this 'improve windows' survey to do that job. Then they 'publish' the results to 'select partners' , SCO being one of them.
Then SCO knows who will be a pushover for setting precedent. Maybe that or get the 'proof' that IBM is able to refute accepted by another judge in another venue.
In other words, don't fill out this survey unless you've got a few hundred million dollars laying around and the will to spend it on lawyers.
how are these RSA pubkeys distributed?
It seems to me that if they're generated each time you start the app, that you'd need to give the keys to any host that requested them and trust that they aren't performing MitM. They're brand new keys, so they aren't signed and aren't part of any web of trust or certified by a trusted third party.
Key crypto is wankery without key security.
In theory, mute beats the problem of using queries and traffic analysis to see who's sharing what.
However, since we no longer have a way of identifying those we download from and blacklisting malicious hosts, we are more vulnerable to an old problem:
The file you think you're downloading could actually be a trojan that scans your shared directory and reports back to 'mama'. This along with a traceroute report to a known server and whatever it could conjecture are your personal details from productivity software, registration info, web autocomplete etc.
So some form of pseudonymous reputation management system could be built in to mitigate that problem.
OR, there can be an anti-malware app out there tuned to the kinds of nasties you'd find on p2p.
Ideally both should be used, as each results in an arms race.
Do not assume the RIAA is technically incompetent. Even if they are, they have plenty of money with which to buy expertise.
slightly less than half of the ITMS tracks were labeled "explicit"
WMMS - three albums and one compilation hit, all labeled "edited", none "explicit"
That right there is the only reason you need to stay away from WMMS. They censor all this stuff.
Wal-Mart makes labels censor their artists works in able to be sold at wal-mart. This is wrong. If you believe in free speech and free expression please don't give a dime to wal-mart.
Remember, friday after IBM spanked them in court some mysterious stranger bought a crapload of SCO shares to keep the price up.
Monday comes up and the stock starts sinking. Then SCO postpones it's financial report at the last minute as Royal Bank of Canada decides it doesn't want it's investment in SCO going to Boise.
That's a whole lot of bad news. Then Motley Fool and TheStreet.com both come out with articles calling SCO a bunch of shysters.
SCO needed to do something because the only case they have is in the press and their defeat in court less than a week ago was spilling over into the mainstream financial press. If you're running a pump and dump scheme, that can't stand.
So stage a fake DDoS and call the feds! Send out a press release. Blame some non-existent hackers and make yourself look like the victim again.
Now let me ask you this: How did the press release get out to the online wires in a copy and paste form if their web and email access was down?
Yeah. As soon as I read the line that claimed that an external DDoS took down their intranet I knew this was a stone cold lie. What company worth billions has only 1 web server that services both the public website and the intranet? What company that hosts both doesn't use internal and external DNS combinations?
Any knucklehead nowadays knows basic network topology techniques to keep the intranet going if the border nodes are hit by a DDoS. Certainly a company that's made internet server software for years with billions in the bank to hire competent tech consultants with does.
I really do hope they're "cooperating" with the feds. I hope Darl is talking to them directly, because lying to an FBI agent can land you in jail, and I'd like it to be of record that his next "Open Letter" was written from federal pound me in the ass prison. I'd like it to be the reason he's not in court on Jan 24. That's the kind of PR I'd like to see them get from this stunt.
well, the drivers are there but UMAX USB scanners make use of USB fork. Under 10.2.x USB fork was broken so even though the driver support was there under SANE the bus support wasn't.
I haven't tried this under panther yet. I've been scrounging for information regarding USB fork in panther to no avail.
Grounding. Right now I'm in an apartment where the only path to gound is through the cable tv/internet coax. So ground is reversed in the cable modem. If I unplug the cable I have no ground on my other devices. Sometimes the grounding light on my surge protector(s) "pulses".
I'd gladly trade some of my outlets for properly grounded power.
My variety of getting out there is to go to local rock shows in small venues. They cost less than a movie, you get to meet all kinds of people into the same kind of music and the setting is different than any kind of home or office.
Another thing to do is WALK to a friends house. Part of the problem of working at home is not being able to focus your eyes on anything farther than a few meters away. I have friends who live 2 or 3 miles away that I walk to all the time so my eyes can focus on something far and I can breathe outdoor air for a while.
I just had a thought. Seems to me that with IBM courtroom showdown so far away and by the looks of it SCO's going to lose, perhaps these little suits have nothing to do with collecting fees.
Maybe what they're trying to do is win against paople who can't defend themselves adequately against Boise and Co to set precedent, then meet IBM in court with that.
So maybe the thing to do, once these things come out is to try to get a stay until the end of the IBM/Red Hat mess or file a joint counterclaim with other defendants to pool resources and compell discovery. I think the stay might be prudent because that one case will definitely test the legitimacy of SCO's claim AND will have more capable and better informed council on both sides.
The longshoremen thing gets to me. I think these are some of the people I least want to be easily bribed. I'd rather they take home $120,000/year than be hurting for cash to the extent that somebody could slip them $20,000 to let a nuke slip through their port.
Plus making that much cash keeps them from stealing half the stuff coming off the boat. If I were running a business that depends on import/export I would be glad that the salary prevents mass shrink before the product hits shelves.
I think the salary is entirely appropriate. I think this article is a bunch of wankery.
I saw them at the SF Eagle the night Wil Wheaton was fighting Barney for EFF around the corner at DNA Lounge. I was supposed to leave for the EFF beatdown but I was mesmerized by C!BR and stayed.
Truth be told it is mostly covers. I think the appeal for me is the theatrics. From a performace art perspective it's pretty cool with some old rockin' tunes in there too. More like a one man musical with robots.
I saw them again at Bottom of the Hill when they were shooting the DVD. I should be the guy who takes a knee at one point. What really dissapointed me at that show was the meatheads who decided it was time to mosh. Not because I'm scared to be in the pit, but because they made me spill my beer!!! My precious beer!!!
Anyway, if you like robots, music and crazy theatrics, I reccomend you check C!BR out.
And an earlier poster is right. If you want the spectacle more than anything else, you can't beat Extreme Elvis rubbing up against you in an SF dive.
The drive the author of the post cites IS one of the effected drives.
I did a lot of research the other night because I have panther and a western digital firewire 400 80gb. Turns out if your firewire drive is from western digital AND it's a combo USB/Firewire then you're using oxford 922. The drives that are just firewire 400 and no USB are oxford 911.
So don't plug that drive of yours into your mac until we see the WD patch.
Over at macfixit.com there are reports that it's not just the firewire 800 people that are being bit either. Turns out they've seen the same thing on firewire 400 drives too.
So even thought I'm on an oxford 911 drive, I'm not plugging the thing in until I get confirmation that I'm safe.
...the real advantage to using Linux as opposed to Windows in this instance is the ability to strip the OS down to the bare essentials required to accomplish the mission.
Windows is the kind of OS where cramming in as many features as possible is more important than many other things. Hence, this system running Windows is likely hogging up cycles and draining battery performing tasks that aren't needed or even wanted in a battlefield.
But with Linux you can strip it down so that every cycle is a neccessary one. Plus the NSA has plenty of experience hardening the kernel per it's whimsy.
The Military has experience fielding unix in ground combat systems. It's been proven time and again in combat. A Linux solution (or an embedded linux solution) allows the Army to customize even the very low levels of the software in addition to the legendary reliability it enjoys in other systems.
Windows has neither of those things and frankly is not suited to an environment where taking time to patch the OS or troubleshoot could cost you your life.
Seeing as how the NSA just licensed ECC Public Key crypto from a canadian firm, I think the answer is no.
I did the store thing twice to get my numbers. Second time I for got to replace the superdrive with the combo. That accounts for the automatic discount. Unit price is 5,120 on that config * 110 is 563200 which is spit out in the cart.
Sorry folks. I'll sheepishly retreat into the corner now
the article suggests that maybe va tech got a big discount from apple because of the huge cost difference from other sooperputers so I went to the apple online store.
I pulled the modem out of the default dual 2ghz g5 mac and upped the ram to 4gigs, as I vaguely remember the big mac node config being from some other article somewhere. Cost 5,320. Tried to up the quatity to 1100 in my cart but the web form would only allow 3 digits, so I did 110. Got 563,200. That looks like a volume discout because my calculator spits out 585200 for simple multiplication. So if we go to 1100 the apple online store may automatically give a steaper discount still.
And remember: these are joe blow prices. they probably paid educational prices. AND my figures use apple's expensive ram, not third party prices.
So it looks like they did get a discount, but not anything special. Looks like the kind of deal any school would get if they pieced one together online today.
The only special treatment they probably got was the shipping priority.
why are people comparing these two?
The p4 isn't capable of SMP configurations. So comparing them means only talking about single processor machines.
Thing is, people who are hungry for performance aren't going to go for the single processor g5, they're going to buy the dual. People who aren't so concearned about the most horsepower they can get, but want a new bus and 64 bits for apps that come out 5 years from now (mac users keep them that long) aren't going to get that from the p4.
So really, the p4 benchmarks seem of dubious utility against the g5. Anybody considering a g5 mac probably has needs that a p4 equipped machine won't satisfy.
The relavent comaprison are Xeons and 64 bit SMP processors from intel and AMD. The P4 doesn't fit here.
Free markets cause power blackouts?
If you lived in California, you never would have asked that question.
A market where companies (Enron, Dynergy et al.) can conspire to create an artificial power crisis while their buddy runs interference for them at FERC (after they fly him around in their jet during his political campaign) causes blackouts.
The fact is that privatized energy concerns are not beholden to the people/groups that depend on that energy. They are beholden to their bottom line. And they require more money to operate because breaking even isn't good enough any more.
For utilities that are fundamental to the health of a society/economy (water/power) it is simply irresponsible to trust people who don't have to care about the people who depend on it. I'm not saying all utilities should be nationalized, that's oversimplifying. However, back when power in California was a regulated monopoly, the people and government in this state could dictate terms to PG & E. We can't do that now. When the power goes out, we have to just deal with it.
That might not be so big a deal, some think. "It would be healthy to tell stories by candlelight periodically". Those people don't have parents hooked up to electrically powered oxygen generators.
Being one of those people, with a parents life directly dependent on the power grid, I'm strongly opposed to privatized power. And like my Dad, our economy and security is just as dependent on power. These companies can just up and decide to practice blackout-extortion with us now, dictating terms to our country, when it clearly should be the other way around.
We've already seen what happens when these private power companies decide to ply a megawatt extortion racket on the worlds fifth largest economy (California). It's only a matter of time before they decide to do this on a national scale.
And I haven't even gotten into reliability, like in the Northeast or Italy. I've only talked about when these companies have deliberately decided to turn the power off, motivated by greed and politics. I'll let other people talk about reliability.
I've seen a bazillion people post that it is fact that since the rights holder has the authority to grant a license to make unlimited copies, and the gpl does this, that fair use and backups are irrelevant.
This is true.
However, the fallacy in the argument is that the people who hold the copyrights to linux and released it under gpl are the rights holder in question.
By saying 'the gpl is irrelevant' what they could be saying is that they never released their copyrighted works under the gpl, and the distributors of linux only have the right to make one copy under fair use.
The argument and the test here is NOT if the gpl can authorize people to make more than one copy. I don't think they dispute that.
I think what they're trying to pull is convincing people that they never released the source under gpl in the first place, and therefore whether or not the gpl grants rights to make unlimited copies doesn't apply.
So we can't just assume that what they're saying is that the GPL isn't a contract or isn't binding: that we can laugh at them. We need to put our thinking caps on and find definitive proof and arguments on why the disputed code was released by SCO under the terms of the GPL. That is the issue here. Not whether gpl is enforceable, but if SCO ever did release code under the GPL. We can't just say so. We have to prove it.