Personally, for the moment I don't care if the OpenHardware people can't improve. Right now I'm hoping for them to start catching up, and this simplification of the hardware helps that along. That of course presumes that OpenGL can still use the simplified hardware, or get an extension to use it.
You're right about the API thing. The DXOpenGL comparison is so frequent that I make the mistake, too.
But isn't SDL pretty complete, once you let it wrap OpenGL? Is there much penalty for letting SDL wrap OpenGL?
From what you know, is there a compelling reason why DX10 couldn't be done on XP? Has the driver model changed that much? MS is gambling a LOT on this stand, but ATI, nVidia, and the game developers are putting up the money.
I was thinking more in terms of hardware rearchitecting, not software. From what I've learned, including the DX9->DX10 from TFM, it looks to me as if DX9 and earlier graphics cards shaders used to be implemented like a pipeline, whereas DX10 is implemented more like a multi-issue. That's using CPU terms, but that may not be inappropriate. It appears that in graphics, the elemental unit is the shader, where in a regular cpu there are various execution units. But it's the issue-time equality that's the key. Assuming the multi-issue logic can be contained, the DX10 architecture looks much more regular than DX9 and earlier.
Assuming OpenGL can take advantage of this too, this could be a boost for the OpenHardware folks.
I was also wondering this. Given that OpenGL has always held it's value in being cross-platform, not performance, I'm going to guess that it has overhead issues. Not the least reason would be that OpenGL runs in userspace, where I've been under the impression that DirectX has been in the kernel. Actually, I thought graphics were getting kicked out of the kernel for Vista, so I wonder how that affects this pitch.
Beyond that, I see something interesting happening in graphics hardware. There's a saying that machines go through 3 phases: 1. Simple, but not truly useful. (Got the base concept, but that's about it.) 2. Horribly complex, but useful. (Tacked on fixes until it's usable, but now it's a mess.) 3. Simple and usable. (Really understand what we're doing, finally.)
It seems to me that "DirectX 10 hardware" may finally be approaching a phase-3 machine. Along with that thought, it seems to me that a gross rearchitecture might do better yet, because they may still be carrying too much baggage along with them. This would be an opportunity for Open Source / Open Hardware. Starting from the oft-mentioned open graphics card that's trying to get off the ground, imagine experimenting with the unified-shader as well as other architectural simplifications. To begin, it obviously wouldn't perform, but it could deliver scaling information to tell what would be possible with higher clock rates and more shaders. Even at some level of scaling, while not adequate for newest games, it could well deliver eye-candy desktops, and adequate performance for older games.
Besides, how much *gameplay* improvement has the fps seen since the old Doom engine. (Doom, Doom2, Heretic, Hexen, Strife) Most of the work has been in graphical detail, though I'll agree that multiplayer and physics have seen significant advances. As for graphical detail, many of the source ports, like Doomsday, add some of that in.
1.5.0.3 just finished compiling, thank you. Gentoo user, obviously.
But as others in this subthread have also said, binary patching is practically useless for Linux. Even if most non-Gentoo users don't compile their own packages, the binaries are usually built by the distribution, not simply accepted from Mozilla.
So as a f'rinstance,/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox contains firefox-bin, 10.so's, and a whole raft of other components. WIBNI the build process itself could be incremental, kind of like 'make' has been for years. Then I wouldn't have to build/replace the whole blamed thing, but maybe just a few pieces.
You've obviously got the details better than I, but even your references use "penumbras" and "bolstered". It's the "core right" status that is highly questioned. ISTR that aspect being used in a case about "bedroom toys" in the past few years, and the privacy argument was not upheld.
Yet some even the Supremes believe that "There is no Constitutional guarantee to a right to privacy." As far as I can tell, some of them think all of our rights to privacy are misconstrued from the 4th ammendment, about not having to quartering soldiers.
Yes, there are obviously more C, C++, etc tools available. But you said you were interested in learning Ada, if you ever found the time. All you need is at least 1 toolset in order to play, and that exists.
I heard once that Turbo-Modula2, which was released for Z80, eventually became JPI Modula2 on X86. I did my stuff with the latter.
When they say 3e6 shipped, do they mean shipped to customers, or shipped to retailers. A common ploy of a powerful supplier is to "stuff the channel" with units, so that you can claim "shipped" on your revenue/marketing goals. If the units don't sell well, it also means that your retailers are holding the bag, and it also doesn't bode well for the next quarter.
I hope you realize that the Ada situation has changed. Look for 'gnat'.
I've wanted to try Ada, but have never had the time. I was quite profficient with Modula-2, even to the point of writing a TSR/ISR with it, back in the DOS days. IMHO many, though far from all, of today's securty problems would never exist with decent type checking.
>I don't remember, maybe it was Einstein who said the definition of insanity was to >repeatedly do something and expect a different result. Is the RIAA insane?
They're not insane. We are. The ??AA are succeeding, to the detriment of the consumer, the nation, and ultimately, themselves. You're simply measuring success in the wrong terms. Someone else has hit it, in that the ??AA is trying to preserve their monopoly on distribution. By hook, crook, intimidation, and most importantly, legislation, they are doing so. It doesn't matter that they annoy you, me, or anyone else, because at this rate, at the end of the day, there will be NO other way to get music, movies, etc. We all have to go back to being sheep, getting our media fix in the way that the ??AA wants to give it to us.
I no longer listen to much music or watch many movies. I'm more annoyed by the collateral damage. Bit by bit, bill by bill, country by country, the Internet as we have known it is going away. Same for the possibility of alternative distribution models - competitors to the ??AA. It's not even just Stallman's "Right to Read", it's turning possession of an unlicensed DAC into a felony, and similar anti-technology measures, all in the name of preserving the ??AA distribution monopoly.
In the long run, it means that the economic potential of the Internet is capped. There may be a bit more innovation, but it's clearly going to be steered and limited so it's no longer disruptive. In the long run, it's going to make sure that technological innovation occurs outside the US, where you won't have to be so concerned about felony infringement by building the wrong widget. In the long run, it's going to make sure that media innovation occurs outside the US, where you can experiment, do disruptive development, and try low-cost stuff because everything in the US will be encumbered to the hilt, to make sure the ??AA maintains its distribution monopoly.
We're insane for letting it happen. I've written to my legislators several times. But one of my Senators is Leahy, D, VT, also one of the worst offenders. I suppose I have to write again, this time to focus on how the ??AA is shafting the artists, and the bills he supports hurt most artists, but I also expect it to do no good.
From the point of view of the incoming administration, Microsoft has been very successful, and was being punished for their success. They simply stopped what they thought was a wrong.
The logic is at least partially self-consistent. The best and brightest people are those who have succeeded at the American Way - ie, the richest and most powerful. It's not right to punish success, success should be rewarded. View the Bush Administration's domestic actions in this perspective, and it all makes sense. It also makes a kind of sense on the morality front. Jesus Christ wasn't so hot on the wealthy, so the rich and powerful have to take a moral stand, and what easier moral stand is there to take than against the marginalized.
This of course presumes you agree with this perspective. Others of us have no problem with success, as long as you get there fairly. Some of us also believe that having been raised on the parent's silver spoon says nothing at all about your superior skills and wit - it just says you handed a better shot at success. Then again, read the 4 Gospels, and see the group who attracted the greatest contempt from Jesus Christ - the rich and powerful who look down on others' sins.
I would wish that with the current "desktop standards" push now going on, that standardizing middleware layers like this would be a key item. My other fear is that non-KDE, non-GNOME desktops are getting completely ignored.
These huge monolithic desktops are an annoying departure from The Unix Way. What makes it more annoying is that it doesn't need to be as bad as it is. These middleware layers could be separated, standardized, and made generally available.
It all sounds really neat, but IMHO it should be a middleware layer, or something like that. It should lie *under* KDE, not be part of KDE. For that matter, it should optionally like under GNOME, or under my current non-KDE, non-GNOME icewm or xfce desktops.
The linkage to KDE for this software layer seems inappropriate to me.
I know this is all satire, humor, etc. I'm not THAT impaired. But sometimes the reality makes it a little less funny.
But a week or so back, I saw a show (on the History Channel?) about Carnegie and his right-hand man, and about how they squashed a steel strike in Pittsburgh in the late 1800's and destroyed the union there. They painted a pretty grim picture of life in Pittsburgh at that time for ordinary working people.
Please tell me what about our nation's current legislative direction doesn't appear to hold that condition as a desirable end.
>While most people at this site are Linux fanboy's (By the way, there's not apostrophe needed there.)
So you sound like a Microsoft fanboy.
So I either need to look for more reasonable opinions, or balance your opinion against the Linux fanboys. I'm sure the truth is not at either endpoint.
One of my favorite demi-quotes... "In your victory are the seeds of your defeat." Microsoft marketed and competed their way to the top. But once they got there, it appears that they began relying more on muscle and on their dominant position than on their early strengths. At some point, corporate forgetfullness can set in. I wonder how well Microsoft could market or compete now, without a position of dominance.
Personally, I don't think Microsoft is going away. But I do think that they're in for a harrowing experience like IBM had. I would fear that they don't have the tangibles that IBM did, and may have a rougher time for that. But let's face it, their stellar revenues have been based on driving EVERY part of computing EXCEPT their part into commodity status, and keeping their part at the highest possible prices. IMHO this model is non-sustainable, over the long run.
1: I'll have to check my connectors and specs to see exactly what I've got. In a way it's not terribly important, since I'm more interested in directing future purchases. It's a cinch that there will never be anything other than crippled Linux drivers for a card with HDMI output. Or put another way, I doubt there will ever be Linux HDCP capability.
But that really doesn't bother me, as long as I can take MY sources, non-HDCP crippled, and display them fully. That's what this is really ALL about.
2: See previous sentence.
3: I misspoke. I'm really taking about an HD tuner card. Apparently there are now 4 decent Linux candidates, the good old PCHDTV-3000, the Air2PC, now renamed to (mumble)-5000, and 2 Fusion cards, Gold and Lite. I'm still deferring, because I have only 4 HD channels available and no other HD-capable hardware. But I want to buy before the broadcase flag legislation renders it illegal. Again, does anyone know the status?
As someone else said, your post is probably rhetorical satire. But I'll give you a one-word rebuttal.
Sustainability
How long do you want your lifestyle to be available? Do you want your kids to have your lifestyle? How about your grandchildren?
What make you so qualified that you KNOW that there is NO value to dolphins, redwood forests, baby seals, or the Amazon basin? When they're gone, they're gone, and it's a little too late to discover that they were valuable after all.
What's most amazing is that people with this mindset call themselves CONSERVATIVE, which shares a root word with CONSERVATION. IMHO all they really want to CONSERVE is their own lifestyle, and apparently about the only thing they want to pass on to their kids and grandkids is money and personally-owned property.
As forests disappear, the marketplace will increase their value, and that increased value will lead to the preservation of what's left. As clean water disappears, its value will increase, etc.
Yeah, right. I see 3 problems with this stance:
1: Marketplace arguments presume that everything is fungible and flexible. I won't say absolutely that forests aren't, but I have this hunch that they're not. It's kind of like the line between quantum and classical mechanics. How small can you make a forest until it's just a bunch of trees, and not really a forest? Or more to the point, how small can you make a forest until it can't really sustain itself or its local ecosystem?
2: Marketplace arguments also presume that if an opportunity exists, someone will step up to fill it. But let's say that after the forest is gone, we decide we really wanted it after all. Someone can try to step up to the plate and rebuild a forest, but I suspect we really don't know enough to rebuild the local ecosystem. Even if we did, there's the question of whether the "base components" still exist, whether they can be transplanted. We might still only be able to rebuild a clump of trees, not a true forest. Beyond that, and assuming we can hurdle all of those challenges, there is the element of TIME. Nature works on many time scales, and some of them just aren't human.
3: People often do just plain stupid things, driven by the marketplace. Let's say that forests dwindle and become scarce. For some that will drive their value up, and drive the urge to preserve. OTOH, others have been making their living exploiting the forests, and while they *should* be motivated to preserve their livelihood for the long haul, it's far more likely that they'll just be more motivated to continue their current business plans on what little's left. Then no doubt after having fought government regulatory "interference" that would have preserved the forests, they'll cry for a government handout when it's all gone. By the way, guess who is in the position to do what they want, the fastest - the people already exploiting the forests, or the people who newly value and want to move to preserve them? (I'm discounting those who currently value and want to preserve forests, obviously.)
As for the endangered species act, isn't that the thing that there's all sorts of court action going on now, in order to gut/limit it? This so that landowners can do what THEY want with THEIR land.
Yesterday there was a report on NPR, about the collapse of the Atlantic marine ecosystem. It turns out that the biggest problem isn't even the fish we think about, but a small fish near the bottom of the food chain. Turns out that there is a company harvesting this (nameforgotten) fish practically out of existence, for uses that are completely replacable by other more sustainable means. In the process they're destroying the ability of the Atlantic marine ecosystem to sustain other industries. Inertia.
I was checking the Sunday advertising fliers this morning, and see that many of the new TVs are advertising HDMI as well as PC connections. Can someone please explain my limitations?
1: Can I hook up my current VGA or DVI to one of these, and display the content I can currently display?
2: Is the only limitation/constraint the new HD/BlueRay DVDs with "double-plus-good super-duper copy-protection, put there to protect me AND the children"?
3: Related to both, assume I have MythTV running with an HD capture card. (I don't yet, but plan to, before they become illegal. What's the latest status?) Can I run my captured content out through one of these new displays?
>I used to really worry about China owning so much of the US debt, and how they had us by the balls until I realized we >have them in nearly the same situation. If China were to dump all it's US debt and force our interest rates to sky rocket, >basically crushing the US economy, it hurts them just as much. They are killing one of their biggest customers at that >point. I guess they could just say screw it and do something like that anyways and play the odds that they come out ahead >at the end of the day.
Except things are changing. US corporations are not just looking to China as a source of cheap labor any more, they're starting to look at them as the next big market. As their level of economic development rises, China will become its own biggest customer, and at that point they could well afford to jettison their US debt and crush our economny.
I remember hearing once that China could absorb EVERY job in the US, and still have an unemployment problem. It's a simple matter of numbers - they have over 4X the population of the US. Assuming they manage to modernize their country, and we appear to be doing about all we can to help them, they WILL have the largest economy in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, for the moment I don't care if the OpenHardware people can't improve. Right now I'm hoping for them to start catching up, and this simplification of the hardware helps that along. That of course presumes that OpenGL can still use the simplified hardware, or get an extension to use it.
You're right about the API thing. The DXOpenGL comparison is so frequent that I make the mistake, too.
But isn't SDL pretty complete, once you let it wrap OpenGL?
Is there much penalty for letting SDL wrap OpenGL?
From what you know, is there a compelling reason why DX10 couldn't be done on XP? Has the driver model changed that much? MS is gambling a LOT on this stand, but ATI, nVidia, and the game developers are putting up the money.
I was thinking more in terms of hardware rearchitecting, not software. From what I've learned, including the DX9->DX10 from TFM, it looks to me as if DX9 and earlier graphics cards shaders used to be implemented like a pipeline, whereas DX10 is implemented more like a multi-issue. That's using CPU terms, but that may not be inappropriate. It appears that in graphics, the elemental unit is the shader, where in a regular cpu there are various execution units. But it's the issue-time equality that's the key. Assuming the multi-issue logic can be contained, the DX10 architecture looks much more regular than DX9 and earlier.
Assuming OpenGL can take advantage of this too, this could be a boost for the OpenHardware folks.
>Are you proposing then that only ISPs write laws?
Isn't that pretty much what we have today? Baby Bells and Cable companies lobbyists give "suggestions" to legislators, along with campaign funding.
I was also wondering this. Given that OpenGL has always held it's value in being cross-platform, not performance, I'm going to guess that it has overhead issues. Not the least reason would be that OpenGL runs in userspace, where I've been under the impression that DirectX has been in the kernel. Actually, I thought graphics were getting kicked out of the kernel for Vista, so I wonder how that affects this pitch.
Beyond that, I see something interesting happening in graphics hardware. There's a saying that machines go through 3 phases:
1. Simple, but not truly useful. (Got the base concept, but that's about it.)
2. Horribly complex, but useful. (Tacked on fixes until it's usable, but now it's a mess.)
3. Simple and usable. (Really understand what we're doing, finally.)
It seems to me that "DirectX 10 hardware" may finally be approaching a phase-3 machine. Along with that thought, it seems to me that a gross rearchitecture might do better yet, because they may still be carrying too much baggage along with them. This would be an opportunity for Open Source / Open Hardware. Starting from the oft-mentioned open graphics card that's trying to get off the ground, imagine experimenting with the unified-shader as well as other architectural simplifications. To begin, it obviously wouldn't perform, but it could deliver scaling information to tell what would be possible with higher clock rates and more shaders. Even at some level of scaling, while not adequate for newest games, it could well deliver eye-candy desktops, and adequate performance for older games.
Besides, how much *gameplay* improvement has the fps seen since the old Doom engine. (Doom, Doom2, Heretic, Hexen, Strife) Most of the work has been in graphical detail, though I'll agree that multiplayer and physics have seen significant advances. As for graphical detail, many of the source ports, like Doomsday, add some of that in.
Interesting responses to your post, between the (-1: Flamebait) and the post.
Also interesting in light of the amount (none) of vitriol and inflammatory language in your post.
1.5.0.3 just finished compiling, thank you. Gentoo user, obviously.
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox contains firefox-bin, 10 .so's, and a whole raft of other components. WIBNI the build process itself could be incremental, kind of like 'make' has been for years. Then I wouldn't have to build/replace the whole blamed thing, but maybe just a few pieces.
But as others in this subthread have also said, binary patching is practically useless for Linux. Even if most non-Gentoo users don't compile their own packages, the binaries are usually built by the distribution, not simply accepted from Mozilla.
So as a f'rinstance,
You've obviously got the details better than I, but even your references use "penumbras" and "bolstered". It's the "core right" status that is highly questioned. ISTR that aspect being used in a case about "bedroom toys" in the past few years, and the privacy argument was not upheld.
Yet some even the Supremes believe that "There is no Constitutional guarantee to a right to privacy." As far as I can tell, some of them think all of our rights to privacy are misconstrued from the 4th ammendment, about not having to quartering soldiers.
Yes, there are obviously more C, C++, etc tools available. But you said you were interested in learning Ada, if you ever found the time. All you need is at least 1 toolset in order to play, and that exists.
I heard once that Turbo-Modula2, which was released for Z80, eventually became JPI Modula2 on X86. I did my stuff with the latter.
When they say 3e6 shipped, do they mean shipped to customers, or shipped to retailers. A common ploy of a powerful supplier is to "stuff the channel" with units, so that you can claim "shipped" on your revenue/marketing goals. If the units don't sell well, it also means that your retailers are holding the bag, and it also doesn't bode well for the next quarter.
I hope you realize that the Ada situation has changed. Look for 'gnat'.
I've wanted to try Ada, but have never had the time.
I was quite profficient with Modula-2, even to the point of writing a TSR/ISR with it, back in the DOS days.
IMHO many, though far from all, of today's securty problems would never exist with decent type checking.
>I don't remember, maybe it was Einstein who said the definition of insanity was to
>repeatedly do something and expect a different result. Is the RIAA insane?
They're not insane. We are. The ??AA are succeeding, to the detriment of the consumer, the nation, and ultimately, themselves. You're simply measuring success in the wrong terms. Someone else has hit it, in that the ??AA is trying to preserve their monopoly on distribution. By hook, crook, intimidation, and most importantly, legislation, they are doing so. It doesn't matter that they annoy you, me, or anyone else, because at this rate, at the end of the day, there will be NO other way to get music, movies, etc. We all have to go back to being sheep, getting our media fix in the way that the ??AA wants to give it to us.
I no longer listen to much music or watch many movies. I'm more annoyed by the collateral damage. Bit by bit, bill by bill, country by country, the Internet as we have known it is going away. Same for the possibility of alternative distribution models - competitors to the ??AA. It's not even just Stallman's "Right to Read", it's turning possession of an unlicensed DAC into a felony, and similar anti-technology measures, all in the name of preserving the ??AA distribution monopoly.
In the long run, it means that the economic potential of the Internet is capped. There may be a bit more innovation, but it's clearly going to be steered and limited so it's no longer disruptive.
In the long run, it's going to make sure that technological innovation occurs outside the US, where you won't have to be so concerned about felony infringement by building the wrong widget.
In the long run, it's going to make sure that media innovation occurs outside the US, where you can experiment, do disruptive development, and try low-cost stuff because everything in the US will be encumbered to the hilt, to make sure the ??AA maintains its distribution monopoly.
We're insane for letting it happen.
I've written to my legislators several times. But one of my Senators is Leahy, D, VT, also one of the worst offenders. I suppose I have to write again, this time to focus on how the ??AA is shafting the artists, and the bills he supports hurt most artists, but I also expect it to do no good.
From the point of view of the incoming administration, Microsoft has been very successful, and was being punished for their success. They simply stopped what they thought was a wrong.
The logic is at least partially self-consistent. The best and brightest people are those who have succeeded at the American Way - ie, the richest and most powerful. It's not right to punish success, success should be rewarded. View the Bush Administration's domestic actions in this perspective, and it all makes sense. It also makes a kind of sense on the morality front. Jesus Christ wasn't so hot on the wealthy, so the rich and powerful have to take a moral stand, and what easier moral stand is there to take than against the marginalized.
This of course presumes you agree with this perspective. Others of us have no problem with success, as long as you get there fairly. Some of us also believe that having been raised on the parent's silver spoon says nothing at all about your superior skills and wit - it just says you handed a better shot at success. Then again, read the 4 Gospels, and see the group who attracted the greatest contempt from Jesus Christ - the rich and powerful who look down on others' sins.
I would wish that with the current "desktop standards" push now going on, that standardizing middleware layers like this would be a key item. My other fear is that non-KDE, non-GNOME desktops are getting completely ignored.
These huge monolithic desktops are an annoying departure from The Unix Way. What makes it more annoying is that it doesn't need to be as bad as it is. These middleware layers could be separated, standardized, and made generally available.
Have they been faking paying you?
It all sounds really neat, but IMHO it should be a middleware layer, or something like that. It should lie *under* KDE, not be part of KDE. For that matter, it should optionally like under GNOME, or under my current non-KDE, non-GNOME icewm or xfce desktops.
The linkage to KDE for this software layer seems inappropriate to me.
I know this is all satire, humor, etc. I'm not THAT impaired. But sometimes the reality makes it a little less funny.
But a week or so back, I saw a show (on the History Channel?) about Carnegie and his right-hand man, and about how they squashed a steel strike in Pittsburgh in the late 1800's and destroyed the union there. They painted a pretty grim picture of life in Pittsburgh at that time for ordinary working people.
Please tell me what about our nation's current legislative direction doesn't appear to hold that condition as a desirable end.
>While most people at this site are Linux fanboy's (By the way, there's not apostrophe needed there.)
So you sound like a Microsoft fanboy.
So I either need to look for more reasonable opinions, or balance your opinion against the Linux fanboys. I'm sure the truth is not at either endpoint.
One of my favorite demi-quotes... "In your victory are the seeds of your defeat." Microsoft marketed and competed their way to the top. But once they got there, it appears that they began relying more on muscle and on their dominant position than on their early strengths. At some point, corporate forgetfullness can set in. I wonder how well Microsoft could market or compete now, without a position of dominance.
Personally, I don't think Microsoft is going away. But I do think that they're in for a harrowing experience like IBM had. I would fear that they don't have the tangibles that IBM did, and may have a rougher time for that. But let's face it, their stellar revenues have been based on driving EVERY part of computing EXCEPT their part into commodity status, and keeping their part at the highest possible prices. IMHO this model is non-sustainable, over the long run.
1: I'll have to check my connectors and specs to see exactly what I've got. In a way it's not terribly important, since I'm more interested in directing future purchases. It's a cinch that there will never be anything other than crippled Linux drivers for a card with HDMI output. Or put another way, I doubt there will ever be Linux HDCP capability.
But that really doesn't bother me, as long as I can take MY sources, non-HDCP crippled, and display them fully. That's what this is really ALL about.
2: See previous sentence.
3: I misspoke. I'm really taking about an HD tuner card. Apparently there are now 4 decent Linux candidates, the good old PCHDTV-3000, the Air2PC, now renamed to (mumble)-5000, and 2 Fusion cards, Gold and Lite. I'm still deferring, because I have only 4 HD channels available and no other HD-capable hardware. But I want to buy before the broadcase flag legislation renders it illegal. Again, does anyone know the status?
As someone else said, your post is probably rhetorical satire. But I'll give you a one-word rebuttal.
Sustainability
How long do you want your lifestyle to be available?
Do you want your kids to have your lifestyle?
How about your grandchildren?
What make you so qualified that you KNOW that there is NO value to dolphins, redwood forests, baby seals, or the Amazon basin?
When they're gone, they're gone, and it's a little too late to discover that they were valuable after all.
What's most amazing is that people with this mindset call themselves CONSERVATIVE, which shares a root word with CONSERVATION. IMHO all they really want to CONSERVE is their own lifestyle, and apparently about the only thing they want to pass on to their kids and grandkids is money and personally-owned property.
According to some, let the market decide.
As forests disappear, the marketplace will increase their value, and that increased value will lead to the preservation of what's left.
As clean water disappears, its value will increase, etc.
Yeah, right. I see 3 problems with this stance:
1: Marketplace arguments presume that everything is fungible and flexible. I won't say absolutely that forests aren't, but I have this hunch that they're not. It's kind of like the line between quantum and classical mechanics. How small can you make a forest until it's just a bunch of trees, and not really a forest? Or more to the point, how small can you make a forest until it can't really sustain itself or its local ecosystem?
2: Marketplace arguments also presume that if an opportunity exists, someone will step up to fill it. But let's say that after the forest is gone, we decide we really wanted it after all. Someone can try to step up to the plate and rebuild a forest, but I suspect we really don't know enough to rebuild the local ecosystem. Even if we did, there's the question of whether the "base components" still exist, whether they can be transplanted. We might still only be able to rebuild a clump of trees, not a true forest. Beyond that, and assuming we can hurdle all of those challenges, there is the element of TIME. Nature works on many time scales, and some of them just aren't human.
3: People often do just plain stupid things, driven by the marketplace. Let's say that forests dwindle and become scarce. For some that will drive their value up, and drive the urge to preserve. OTOH, others have been making their living exploiting the forests, and while they *should* be motivated to preserve their livelihood for the long haul, it's far more likely that they'll just be more motivated to continue their current business plans on what little's left. Then no doubt after having fought government regulatory "interference" that would have preserved the forests, they'll cry for a government handout when it's all gone. By the way, guess who is in the position to do what they want, the fastest - the people already exploiting the forests, or the people who newly value and want to move to preserve them? (I'm discounting those who currently value and want to preserve forests, obviously.)
As for the endangered species act, isn't that the thing that there's all sorts of court action going on now, in order to gut/limit it? This so that landowners can do what THEY want with THEIR land.
Yesterday there was a report on NPR, about the collapse of the Atlantic marine ecosystem. It turns out that the biggest problem isn't even the fish we think about, but a small fish near the bottom of the food chain. Turns out that there is a company harvesting this (nameforgotten) fish practically out of existence, for uses that are completely replacable by other more sustainable means. In the process they're destroying the ability of the Atlantic marine ecosystem to sustain other industries. Inertia.
I was checking the Sunday advertising fliers this morning, and see that many of the new TVs are advertising HDMI as well as PC connections. Can someone please explain my limitations?
1: Can I hook up my current VGA or DVI to one of these, and display the content I can currently display?
2: Is the only limitation/constraint the new HD/BlueRay DVDs with "double-plus-good super-duper copy-protection, put there to protect me AND the children"?
3: Related to both, assume I have MythTV running with an HD capture card. (I don't yet, but plan to, before they become illegal. What's the latest status?) Can I run my captured content out through one of these new displays?
>I used to really worry about China owning so much of the US debt, and how they had us by the balls until I realized we
>have them in nearly the same situation. If China were to dump all it's US debt and force our interest rates to sky rocket,
>basically crushing the US economy, it hurts them just as much. They are killing one of their biggest customers at that
>point. I guess they could just say screw it and do something like that anyways and play the odds that they come out ahead
>at the end of the day.
Except things are changing. US corporations are not just looking to China as a source of cheap labor any more, they're starting to look at them as the next big market. As their level of economic development rises, China will become its own biggest customer, and at that point they could well afford to jettison their US debt and crush our economny.
I remember hearing once that China could absorb EVERY job in the US, and still have an unemployment problem. It's a simple matter of numbers - they have over 4X the population of the US. Assuming they manage to modernize their country, and we appear to be doing about all we can to help them, they WILL have the largest economy in the world.
If they're really talking of a Vista rollout, replacing Win2k, that likely means a BUNCH of new hardware capable of running it.
I wonder if it will be possible to see the wheels on the Budget Deficit Counter speed up slightly when it happens.