For those who cry out that the government can't possibly do anything right, it's necessary to point out that the internet itself began as a government project. Go back to the 1980's and we had CompuServe, AOL, GEnie, TheSource, and a whole pile of small players, all wanting to be THE BIG PLAYER in computer networking and connectivity. On the more technical side, we also had NetWare, NetBIOS, AppleTalk, and a whole pile of small players, all wanting to be THE BIG PLAYER in computer networking and connectivity. In the US, private enterprise was failing to do the job, primarily because they were unable to get together and create a big pie.
Then the internet escaped from the laboratories and defense installations.
Because it was non-owned, and that is the single most important aspect of the internet, everyone was able to connect to it. That non-ownership is the single most important aspect, the single reason for the explosive growth. Unfortunately, business in the USA *still doesn't get it*, because too many big players are still focused on owing the whole pie. They just don't understand that participating properly the make the pie so darned big that their share of that pie will be bigger than any pie they could possibly own.
Personally, I'd like to see internet connectivity given true legal common-carrier status. Then we can start talking about what is permitted to perform good traffic management, but first those packets need the same protection as my electricity, gas, roads, and phone conversations. There are acceptable management policies for all of those things, but there are fundamentals, too.
The city of Burlington, Vermont is currently embroiled in a battle over local telecommunications. As in the parent post, when the commercial outfits wouldn't do the desired job, Burlington Telecom was formed, and rolled out fiber for reasonable prices. Unfortunately, somewhere in the process a secret $16 million loan was taken out, which was recently discovered, and now the hunt is on for heads to send rolling.
I don't live in the city, so I can't have the service and can't comment on it. A friend has it, and was extremely happy after getting it, and the right router that could handle the fact that they sent out TV over multicast. Later he commented on administrative problems, perhaps related to the current mess, but I haven't heard him complain about the technical service.
I would say that unfortunately the Republicans have succeeded in redefining political language in the US. From what I can tell in the media, "liberal" has become an epithet and a badge of shame for anyone and everyone. The late Ted Kennedy was the last person able to proudly hold the label, "liberal." Beyond that, in political discourse it has also become impossible to be too conservative. The general public starts getting uncomfortable when certain conservative issues start going too far, but in general discourse "more conservative" is not a bad label, and there is no sense of too far, when applied to a person.
Going one step further, there is still hue and cry against "the liberal media" when most of the media is under pretty tight conservative control. There is network with flaming-left presence, MSNBC, and a few hard-to-find flaming-left radio shows, but the likes of Rush Limbaugh are ubiquitous.
Replacing a "linux gaming partition" is a pretty low bar.
You read like a pretty dedicated Windows user. That's not meant as a criticism, merely that you've stuck with it over the long haul - even Windows 98 original, WindowsME and Vista. That you even had a Linux partition on any of your machines also speaks well of you, being sufficiently interested to even try it out. I'm curious why you "replaced the linux partition" on your gaming machine, though. Don't you already have Windows on that machine, on another partition? Were you running out of space, or did you want multiple Windows installs on it?
On the other hand, in VLSI engineering, it's just really nice to have a native Unix-family desktop, X windows, and the like, to run the software and peer with the other similar machines.
No, they should recognize him as a "friendly" critic, and examine his criticisms. That doesn't meant that they should take them as marching orders, but it means they should consider them, along with other criticisms.
"Business myopia" is a terrible disease, especially in an industry dominator. It's when businesses become preoccupied with their own internal plans and desires, and kind of forget about what the customers need and want, and what gets customers ticked off. Business myopia brought us things like Vista, Pentium4, IA64, etc.
Speaking of fine-grained locking, how much of the BKL is left in Linux? I know they've been getting rid of it for a long time, and it's mostly gone. But I thought there were a few paths that used the BKL, and ioctl was one. For instance...
Among other things, I manage CAD for my design group. We use Linux workstations with nVidia graphics cards, and one our of primary tools is the predominate vendor VLSI CAD package.
These systems tend to be a bit crashy, a bit brittle. I've seen the vendor CAD package do odd things before, and I routinely see odd things pass by in the tool logfiles. It leaves me with the distinct impression that the software is far from clean. The things I've gone through getting this CAD package to run on a non-corporate-standard Linux distribution further that impression.
So while there may be other things making the machines brittle, having a CAD package talking to a closed-source binary blob for X certainly gives that package a route right into the kernel. I can't say that this is THE problem, but it is certainly A possiblity.
Above and beyond that, nVidia taints my kernel, so other than gathering statistics, my kerneloops dumps don't do squat.
Sometimes I think it's because fixes accrete in layers. Sometimes I think it would be better to just rip some garbage out, maybe even to compatibly reimplement. For instance, consolidate 2 or 3 separate layers into 1. Maybe even wait for the deadline scheduler to go mainline, then fold both JACK and Pulseaudio functions and APIs into ALSA. With a little luck massive amounts of code could be thrown out, function would be preserved, and all would get better.
But this is one of those places where they really are better. Semiconductor amplifiers tend to run right into the rails and clip hard, generating piles of harmonics. Vacuum tube amplifiers tend to clip more softly/slowly, and therefore don't generate as much higher-frequency harmonic content. That's just saying something, just like "vacuum tube amplifiers sound better", so to try and put a little technical spin behind it, I'd have to give a conjecture for softer clipping: Vacuum tubes run off of higher voltage, lower current power supplies - in other words, higher impedence. When running from a higher impedence power supply, as you approach maximum output, the local supply starts to droop, adding its own limiting action to the output. So the "clipping" is less like "abruptly clipping" and more like "gradually running out of steam."
Your dumb ol' SET tube amp has unilaterally decided to limit or prevent clipping.
And no doubt his sister and brother will post such insightful stuff on the Internet that whole nations will turn over their reins of governance to them.
Of course you'll have to cover up the murders the kid unknowingly commits, just so you can keep him playing your computer games.
Read it, but there was so much chaos at the bowling alley scene that I didn't catch that the friendly alien was the ball. And I guess what's-her-name (Miranda?) must have called Seeth a skunk, at some point.
But you're right, another example of pleasant absurdity.
It also goes further in my "Theorem of niche science fiction" - "No niche is so small that it doesn't have at least 2 stories crammed into it."
My favorite example is the vacuum stat, false vacuums, etc. By Joe Haldeman there's "The Forever Peace" and by Greg Egan is "Schild's Ladder". As for frogs and amphibians changing sex under environmental pressure, there's "Jurassic Park" and Niven (and Pournelle?) "The Legacy of Herot". So we now have 2 stories with bowling-ball aliens.
Heck, if you really want to shock the parents with Heinlein, try "Job: A Comedy of Justice". My wife and I were reading it with each other through part of the labor of our second child. I think the monitoring nurse was either religious or a bit fundamentalist - at any rate she was awfully quiet, moreso than other nurses, or even she was before we began reading.
Given time, it would be a real hoot to read Heinlein's "Starship Troopers," followed by Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War." Very similar in some ways, but Heinlein was a WWII vet, whereas Haldeman is a Viet Nam vet. The difference comes out quite starkly in the two books, despite many parallel aspects. The pair are kind of a two-sided mirror view of US society in the two eras.
For a "science fiction course" this would take too much of a bite of time.
But I like the multi-author story arc, anyway.
Begin with Arthur C Clarke's "Childhood's End" - a story about the next stage in man's evolution, guided by alien "midwives." Most of the focus is on those who were left behind, since those who moved ahead were incomprehensible.
Next up is Robert Charles Wilson's "The Harvest" - a story about the next stage in man's evolution, guided by alien "midwives." But this time, instead of that next step being mystical psionic demi-godhood, it's uploading into a nanotech future. Again most of the story focus is on those who *elected* to stay behind.
The two stories are stunningly parallel from a simple plot summary, but utterly different in their flavor.
Finally, there is Greg Bear's "Blood Music" - a story about the next stage in man's evolution, being uploaded into a nanotech future. Except that this time it's all an accident, and a much bumpier ride than the other two.
The latter two stories now somewhat parallel, but again very different. But the 3 books really work well together.
I always liked Simak - I once heard him referred to as "science fiction's pastoral author."
Many good stories, but as long as you're talking of Simak's absurd, "They Walked Like Men". Where else can you have aliens who look like bowling balls and freak out in exstasy over skunk scent?
Roger Zelazny's "Doorways in the Sand" was another good title for the absurd.
Absurdity has its place, including science fiction. It would probably be good to at least touch on it with even a short story. There's no shortage of absurd short story collections, such as Clarke's "Tales of the White Hart", the "Calahan's Crosstime Saloon" series, etc.
I agree that the world would be better if copyrights just expired. But I also know that's not going to happen, not as long as Disney has enough money to buy legislators. So I'm after the next best thing - let most copyrights expire, and sadly expect that a little garbage like "Steamboat Willie" is going to happen.
When was the copyright restored on "It's a Wonderful Life"? To whom?
If it makes money, it can't be bad. It's absolutely got to proven bad, in a court of law, with a corpse of the right social class and clear undeniable evidence. And then *maybe* we can do something about it - with voluntary compliance and self-policing, of course.
(I suppose the sarcasm-impaired might need an alert about this post. But if they're THAT thick, no warning I could give would suffice. Isn't it amazing that "conservation" shares its root with "conservative"?) Thanks for the references of Jeremy Jackson and David Jablonski, though there were several useless hits on both.
Better than their money - their access to the copyrights.
Unfortunately, copyrights will extend indefinitely as long as Disney is around and "Steamboat Willie" needs extensions.
Therefore, I wish for some way to make copyright extension, at least after a certain point, non-automatic and perhaps require a fee on a per-work basis. That way, Disney could keep "Steamboat Willie" copyrighted forever - 1 day, and a LOT of other copyrights would just expire, and enrichen the public domain.
You're right, as far as you went, but you missed the real problem.
We - the purchasing public - need to understand that we're paying for design, R&D, etc, and we need to be willing to pay for that. We need to Know the Truth, and we need to be able to handle the truth. That requires an education process, and so far nobody is stepping up to it that way.
The mafiAA is still in the business of "selling things", and embarked on the campaign of "I.P. as thing," to justify that stake. I'm not saying that I.P. has no value, but I'm suggesting more that I.P. is a process instead of a thing - as you say, design, R&D, etc. We should be willing to pay for it. But by the same token I'm involved in I.P. development, and that development is embodied in things - in this case, chips. We reckon that the costs of a chip include development and both fixed and variable manufacturing costs, as well as hopefully, some profit. But implicit in that statement is that over time the cost of that chip decreases, for two reasons. First, manufacturing processes improve and yield goes up. Since a large share of the costs are per-wafer, the more good chips per wafer, the lower the cost per chip. Other costs, like packaging and final test, are per-chip, and that's a factor, too. Second, at some point the development costs are paid off, so that element of cost drops out.
That latter factor, recognizing that development costs are a fixed amount that can be recouped, and that that should be factored into the final cost of the product, is the key difference between ordinary development efforts and what the mafiAA is doing. The ultimate costs should be duplication, distribution, and royalties. But they want to keep the development costs in there forever. Part of this is "paying it forward," in that they are always funding development of new material, and today's revenue funds tomorrow's development. I can accept that, but what I can't accept is that it has removed the pressure for operating efficiently. They're incredibly fat organizations, and their revenue model depends on that fatness.
The real problem is that by not exposing a sensible cost model, and by trying to turn their I.P. into fixed-cost "things," they're also failing to instill public favor for the very concept of funding development. If they were up-front about it, even if they admitted how much of today's revenue was fuding tomorrow's music, the public might be more willing to accept that. But they would have to slim down, and they'd have to have some schedule to allow "development costs" of some music to be paid off.
Oh, and as they're "funding development" of new stuff, they'd need a little better discrimination than a lot of the drek that they're funding now.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who cry out that the government can't possibly do anything right, it's necessary to point out that the internet itself began as a government project. Go back to the 1980's and we had CompuServe, AOL, GEnie, TheSource, and a whole pile of small players, all wanting to be THE BIG PLAYER in computer networking and connectivity. On the more technical side, we also had NetWare, NetBIOS, AppleTalk, and a whole pile of small players, all wanting to be THE BIG PLAYER in computer networking and connectivity. In the US, private enterprise was failing to do the job, primarily because they were unable to get together and create a big pie.
Then the internet escaped from the laboratories and defense installations.
Because it was non-owned, and that is the single most important aspect of the internet, everyone was able to connect to it. That non-ownership is the single most important aspect, the single reason for the explosive growth. Unfortunately, business in the USA *still doesn't get it*, because too many big players are still focused on owing the whole pie. They just don't understand that participating properly the make the pie so darned big that their share of that pie will be bigger than any pie they could possibly own.
Personally, I'd like to see internet connectivity given true legal common-carrier status. Then we can start talking about what is permitted to perform good traffic management, but first those packets need the same protection as my electricity, gas, roads, and phone conversations. There are acceptable management policies for all of those things, but there are fundamentals, too.
The city of Burlington, Vermont is currently embroiled in a battle over local telecommunications. As in the parent post, when the commercial outfits wouldn't do the desired job, Burlington Telecom was formed, and rolled out fiber for reasonable prices. Unfortunately, somewhere in the process a secret $16 million loan was taken out, which was recently discovered, and now the hunt is on for heads to send rolling.
I don't live in the city, so I can't have the service and can't comment on it. A friend has it, and was extremely happy after getting it, and the right router that could handle the fact that they sent out TV over multicast. Later he commented on administrative problems, perhaps related to the current mess, but I haven't heard him complain about the technical service.
I would say that unfortunately the Republicans have succeeded in redefining political language in the US. From what I can tell in the media, "liberal" has become an epithet and a badge of shame for anyone and everyone. The late Ted Kennedy was the last person able to proudly hold the label, "liberal." Beyond that, in political discourse it has also become impossible to be too conservative. The general public starts getting uncomfortable when certain conservative issues start going too far, but in general discourse "more conservative" is not a bad label, and there is no sense of too far, when applied to a person.
Going one step further, there is still hue and cry against "the liberal media" when most of the media is under pretty tight conservative control. There is network with flaming-left presence, MSNBC, and a few hard-to-find flaming-left radio shows, but the likes of Rush Limbaugh are ubiquitous.
Replacing a "linux gaming partition" is a pretty low bar.
You read like a pretty dedicated Windows user. That's not meant as a criticism, merely that you've stuck with it over the long haul - even Windows 98 original, WindowsME and Vista. That you even had a Linux partition on any of your machines also speaks well of you, being sufficiently interested to even try it out. I'm curious why you "replaced the linux partition" on your gaming machine, though. Don't you already have Windows on that machine, on another partition? Were you running out of space, or did you want multiple Windows installs on it?
On the other hand, in VLSI engineering, it's just really nice to have a native Unix-family desktop, X windows, and the like, to run the software and peer with the other similar machines.
> Dvorak...why should MS give you special access?
No, they should recognize him as a "friendly" critic, and examine his criticisms. That doesn't meant that they should take them as marching orders, but it means they should consider them, along with other criticisms.
"Business myopia" is a terrible disease, especially in an industry dominator. It's when businesses become preoccupied with their own internal plans and desires, and kind of forget about what the customers need and want, and what gets customers ticked off. Business myopia brought us things like Vista, Pentium4, IA64, etc.
Speaking of fine-grained locking, how much of the BKL is left in Linux? I know they've been getting rid of it for a long time, and it's mostly gone. But I thought there were a few paths that used the BKL, and ioctl was one. For instance...
On May 15, 2008, the BKL was returned to non-preemptible. http://kerneltrap.org/BKL
On Oct 10, 2009, the BKL was removed from soundcore_open. http://groups.google.com/group/linux.kernel/browse_thread/thread/d4d323a4781f1c05
On Oct 15, 2009, the BKL was removed from the realtime clock on the 68000 arch. http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/1142631?page=last
In 2008 there were 1300+ uses of BKL, and it looks as if they've been chipping away. Any idea what's left?
No Stallmanism in this reply.
Among other things, I manage CAD for my design group. We use Linux workstations with nVidia graphics cards, and one our of primary tools is the predominate vendor VLSI CAD package.
These systems tend to be a bit crashy, a bit brittle. I've seen the vendor CAD package do odd things before, and I routinely see odd things pass by in the tool logfiles. It leaves me with the distinct impression that the software is far from clean. The things I've gone through getting this CAD package to run on a non-corporate-standard Linux distribution further that impression.
So while there may be other things making the machines brittle, having a CAD package talking to a closed-source binary blob for X certainly gives that package a route right into the kernel. I can't say that this is THE problem, but it is certainly A possiblity.
Above and beyond that, nVidia taints my kernel, so other than gathering statistics, my kerneloops dumps don't do squat.
I won't argue too heard when you say that governments and unions are corrupt and filthy.
I'll start arguing when you say that businesses are any better.
Whooooosh goes the sound of it flying over the moderator's head.
Broca's Brain?
Sometimes I think it's because fixes accrete in layers.
Sometimes I think it would be better to just rip some garbage out, maybe even to compatibly reimplement. For instance, consolidate 2 or 3 separate layers into 1. Maybe even wait for the deadline scheduler to go mainline, then fold both JACK and Pulseaudio functions and APIs into ALSA. With a little luck massive amounts of code could be thrown out, function would be preserved, and all would get better.
Broken Window Fallacy
(though to be sure, I *can* detect sarcasm, I just had to put the term out there anyway.)
Aaahh, the mystique of vacuum tubes...
But this is one of those places where they really are better. Semiconductor amplifiers tend to run right into the rails and clip hard, generating piles of harmonics. Vacuum tube amplifiers tend to clip more softly/slowly, and therefore don't generate as much higher-frequency harmonic content. That's just saying something, just like "vacuum tube amplifiers sound better", so to try and put a little technical spin behind it, I'd have to give a conjecture for softer clipping: Vacuum tubes run off of higher voltage, lower current power supplies - in other words, higher impedence. When running from a higher impedence power supply, as you approach maximum output, the local supply starts to droop, adding its own limiting action to the output. So the "clipping" is less like "abruptly clipping" and more like "gradually running out of steam."
Your dumb ol' SET tube amp has unilaterally decided to limit or prevent clipping.
Clipping can kill your tweeters. It generates lots of top-end harmonics, and can send more power to them than they can handle safely.
This was particularly a problem with the original Advent loudspeakers.
I certainly hope you caught the fact that it was an "Ender's Game" reference, and chose to add in the 2004 campaign reference for more fun.
And no doubt his sister and brother will post such insightful stuff on the Internet that whole nations will turn over their reins of governance to them.
Of course you'll have to cover up the murders the kid unknowingly commits, just so you can keep him playing your computer games.
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read" by James Tiptree, Jr. (male pen name, a woman in real life)
Story wasn't quite like parent post, but contained elements of it, in a more realistic and less inflammatory way.
Read it, but there was so much chaos at the bowling alley scene that I didn't catch that the friendly alien was the ball. And I guess what's-her-name (Miranda?) must have called Seeth a skunk, at some point.
But you're right, another example of pleasant absurdity.
It also goes further in my "Theorem of niche science fiction" - "No niche is so small that it doesn't have at least 2 stories crammed into it."
My favorite example is the vacuum stat, false vacuums, etc. By Joe Haldeman there's "The Forever Peace" and by Greg Egan is "Schild's Ladder". As for frogs and amphibians changing sex under environmental pressure, there's "Jurassic Park" and Niven (and Pournelle?) "The Legacy of Herot". So we now have 2 stories with bowling-ball aliens.
Heck, if you really want to shock the parents with Heinlein, try "Job: A Comedy of Justice". My wife and I were reading it with each other through part of the labor of our second child. I think the monitoring nurse was either religious or a bit fundamentalist - at any rate she was awfully quiet, moreso than other nurses, or even she was before we began reading.
Given time, it would be a real hoot to read Heinlein's "Starship Troopers," followed by Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War." Very similar in some ways, but Heinlein was a WWII vet, whereas Haldeman is a Viet Nam vet. The difference comes out quite starkly in the two books, despite many parallel aspects. The pair are kind of a two-sided mirror view of US society in the two eras.
For a "science fiction course" this would take too much of a bite of time.
But I like the multi-author story arc, anyway.
Begin with Arthur C Clarke's "Childhood's End" - a story about the next stage in man's evolution, guided by alien "midwives." Most of the focus is on those who were left behind, since those who moved ahead were incomprehensible.
Next up is Robert Charles Wilson's "The Harvest" - a story about the next stage in man's evolution, guided by alien "midwives." But this time, instead of that next step being mystical psionic demi-godhood, it's uploading into a nanotech future. Again most of the story focus is on those who *elected* to stay behind.
The two stories are stunningly parallel from a simple plot summary, but utterly different in their flavor.
Finally, there is Greg Bear's "Blood Music" - a story about the next stage in man's evolution, being uploaded into a nanotech future. Except that this time it's all an accident, and a much bumpier ride than the other two.
The latter two stories now somewhat parallel, but again very different. But the 3 books really work well together.
I always liked Simak - I once heard him referred to as "science fiction's pastoral author."
Many good stories, but as long as you're talking of Simak's absurd, "They Walked Like Men". Where else can you have aliens who look like bowling balls and freak out in exstasy over skunk scent?
Roger Zelazny's "Doorways in the Sand" was another good title for the absurd.
Absurdity has its place, including science fiction. It would probably be good to at least touch on it with even a short story. There's no shortage of absurd short story collections, such as Clarke's "Tales of the White Hart", the "Calahan's Crosstime Saloon" series, etc.
I agree that the world would be better if copyrights just expired. But I also know that's not going to happen, not as long as Disney has enough money to buy legislators. So I'm after the next best thing - let most copyrights expire, and sadly expect that a little garbage like "Steamboat Willie" is going to happen.
When was the copyright restored on "It's a Wonderful Life"? To whom?
Naah, that's all silly liberal crap!
If it makes money, it can't be bad. It's absolutely got to proven bad, in a court of law, with a corpse of the right social class and clear undeniable evidence. And then *maybe* we can do something about it - with voluntary compliance and self-policing, of course.
(I suppose the sarcasm-impaired might need an alert about this post. But if they're THAT thick, no warning I could give would suffice. Isn't it amazing that "conservation" shares its root with "conservative"?)
Thanks for the references of Jeremy Jackson and David Jablonski, though there were several useless hits on both.
Better than their money - their access to the copyrights.
Unfortunately, copyrights will extend indefinitely as long as Disney is around and "Steamboat Willie" needs extensions.
Therefore, I wish for some way to make copyright extension, at least after a certain point, non-automatic and perhaps require a fee on a per-work basis. That way, Disney could keep "Steamboat Willie" copyrighted forever - 1 day, and a LOT of other copyrights would just expire, and enrichen the public domain.
You're right, as far as you went, but you missed the real problem.
We - the purchasing public - need to understand that we're paying for design, R&D, etc, and we need to be willing to pay for that. We need to Know the Truth, and we need to be able to handle the truth. That requires an education process, and so far nobody is stepping up to it that way.
The mafiAA is still in the business of "selling things", and embarked on the campaign of "I.P. as thing," to justify that stake. I'm not saying that I.P. has no value, but I'm suggesting more that I.P. is a process instead of a thing - as you say, design, R&D, etc. We should be willing to pay for it. But by the same token I'm involved in I.P. development, and that development is embodied in things - in this case, chips. We reckon that the costs of a chip include development and both fixed and variable manufacturing costs, as well as hopefully, some profit. But implicit in that statement is that over time the cost of that chip decreases, for two reasons. First, manufacturing processes improve and yield goes up. Since a large share of the costs are per-wafer, the more good chips per wafer, the lower the cost per chip. Other costs, like packaging and final test, are per-chip, and that's a factor, too. Second, at some point the development costs are paid off, so that element of cost drops out.
That latter factor, recognizing that development costs are a fixed amount that can be recouped, and that that should be factored into the final cost of the product, is the key difference between ordinary development efforts and what the mafiAA is doing. The ultimate costs should be duplication, distribution, and royalties. But they want to keep the development costs in there forever. Part of this is "paying it forward," in that they are always funding development of new material, and today's revenue funds tomorrow's development. I can accept that, but what I can't accept is that it has removed the pressure for operating efficiently. They're incredibly fat organizations, and their revenue model depends on that fatness.
The real problem is that by not exposing a sensible cost model, and by trying to turn their I.P. into fixed-cost "things," they're also failing to instill public favor for the very concept of funding development. If they were up-front about it, even if they admitted how much of today's revenue was fuding tomorrow's music, the public might be more willing to accept that. But they would have to slim down, and they'd have to have some schedule to allow "development costs" of some music to be paid off.
Oh, and as they're "funding development" of new stuff, they'd need a little better discrimination than a lot of the drek that they're funding now.