> Everything is supposed to be easier now adays, but it just seems like overkill to me. You can't just sit down with a C compiler and pump out a program.
Sure you can. But if you want to develop a web application using only a C compiler, you're in for big learning curve and you'll be writing a whole bunch of code! You'll have to write your own webserver and DB for starters. (Well, I guess if you add ftp to your toolbox you can get apache and mysql, but something tells me you'll need more than that to build those systems!)
Your comment makes me think of all of the people who compain about "code bloat nowadays", and arguments like them. I started programming on a 4k Vic 20, and yes I could do a whole lot of stuff in 4k. (I still program on PIC processors from time to time, and you can do a lot in those in 128 bytes!)
On the other hand, people's expectations of what software is supposed to do has changed dramatically. They want it to be easy to use, pretty, GUIed, webified, internationalized, etc. "Back in the day" no software could do all of that!
> Am I alone in thinking that all of this just makes it even harder as a programmer?
If you really want to answer that question, try the experiment. A blog is a good toy application, try building a blog in various frameworks and technologies and see what works for you and what doesn't.
As far as not having time to learn good coding practices or algorithms, I don't agree with you there. I know a fair number of excellent developers, and they are always learning and applying best practices. It's what separates the good developers from the others if you ask me, not how many frameworks they know. Another important attribute is knowing how to select the right tool for the right job... There are a lot of choices out there so you really have to do the research and talk to other developers who have walked the walk...
This month's meeting at my local Java user's group there was an impressive demo on Ruby on Rails. The presenter built a blogging application live in front of the group, literally in 10 minutes or so. Prior to this demo I had pretty much written Ruby off "just another alternative to perl or python" but I have to say that Rails looks really impressive, enough so that I'm taking a closer look at Ruby.
One of the guys in our user's group, Chris Nelson, is building a similar framework for Java - called Trails. He also built a blogging application live during the meeting. It took him a bit longer - perhaps 15-20 minutes. It was impressive as well, although I will say that for Trails you need to know a fair amount about Hibernate and Tapestry. Realize that he's been working on this only for a few months and suddenly you see that this work is very impressive too.
Anyone interested in developing web apps might want to check these projects out - very impressive stuff!
> If you figure out the correct OPN for exactly the part you want, searching for that can sometimes yield results.
The OPN is AMD2800BQX4AX. Froogle only lists one place that still shows it for sale: http://www.hoct.com/amd2800bqx4ax.html
It's a terrible price compared to what newegg used to list it for. (Last time I searched by OPN newegg's listing was still in google's cache - it was around $140.) That's why I was wondering if it had been pulled from the market or what the story was...
Here's how that was supposed to read: There are multiple versions of the Athlon 64 mobile, so you have to be very careful to pick the right one, but... There is a 2800+ 1.2V part, that has a total power dissipation (TPD) of 35W. With AMD's ratings, that means that fully utilized (saying running something compute-bound like SETI @home), this part has a power consumption of 35W. (I believe Intel publishes average numbers, not max, although this is something I've read and not researched myself.) Will "Cool and Quiet" turned on the power consumption at low speed is supposedly 15W. And there is supposedly a Sempron mobile coming out with a TPD of 25W.
Having said all of that, finding any retailers that carry the low power parts has been difficult. (Finding the higher power DTR parts has not - newegg carries those, for example.) Have they been pulled from the market, or are they not for the retail channel, or what? Anyone know what gives?
There are multiple versions of the Athlon 64 mobile, so you have to be very careful to pick the right one, but... There is a 2800+ part, 1.2V part, that has a total power dissipation (TPD) of 35W. With AMD's ratings, that means that fully utilized (saying running something compute-bound like SETI @home), this part has a power consumption of 35W. (I believe Intel publishes average numbers, not max, although this is something I've read and not researched myself.) Will "Cool and Quiet" turned on the power consumption at low speed is supposedly any retailers that carry them has been difficult. Have they been pulled from the market, or are they not for the retail channel, or what? Anyone know what gives?
Reminds me of a fun trick with google. Google's calculator knows all kinds of constants - "c", "pi", "e", etc. (Just put those in the standard search box and hit search and you'll see what I mean. Now you can use them in equations - "2*pi+7" or whatever.)
Anyways, it knows this constant too: "the answer to life the universe and everything"
> Ignorance breeds ignorance. Pick up a newspaper. Go online to each of their websites. Listen to NPR.
Ummm, if you're speaking to me (you did reply to my post), you're preaching to the choir. I do all of those things, thank you very much. (Did you notice I said I have voted in every election since 1988 - that was the year I turned 18.)
I can't believe that I have to say the common sense thing here, but given the replies, I guess I do. Here it is: The best option is to be an informed voter.
Barring that, if you're not going to be informed, if you're going to simply watch ads on MTV and not probe a little deeper then perhaps you shouldn't vote. (And you should take it more seriously, but whatever.) On issues that you're not familiar with, I would not encourage you to vote on those issues in an uninformed way. What are going to do, pick people whose names look nice on the ballot?! Vote for an issue because "42" is your favorite number? If you are uninformed, how are you going pick?!
> Whether you like it or not, that is everyone's job. Not just a few "elite" people who know the issues. I find it incredibly sad that anyone would think this way.
I find it sad to encourage uniformed people to make random choices on a ballot. I didn't say anything about elitism so I don't know where that comment came from. More power to anyone feels "informed enough", I encourage them to vote! It's a simple statement.
Here's the context that gad zuki! left out: [snip] Stone: And the whole voting thing. All we ever said was that we thought that uninformed people should not vote -- on either side of the political spectrum. It doesn't matter who you're gonna vote for. If you really don't know who you're gonna vote for, or are uninformed, or haven't really thought about it? Just stay home. Don't let people fucking shame you into going to the polls.
Parker: If you have absolutely no idea, fuck it.
Stone: If you really don't know or you're just going to vote for George Bush because he's already in office, or you're gonna vote for John Kerry because he's on the cover of Rolling Stone, don't do that. That's lame. Just stay home. That's all we ever said. [/snip]
I've heard some talk on NPR about this, about how MTV is running ads about voting like they are shaving cream commercials. I'm all for "get out the vote" campaigns, but I personally feel like being educated on the candidates and issues is important too.
Do we really want people who don't feel like learning about the candidates and issues voting on these things? I've voted in every election since 1988, and when I hit something on a ballot that I don't know anything about (usually local races that I have not followed), I don't vote. I don't think this is such a heinous idea - that you should only cast informed votes...
On my kids' computer, this includes "Reader Rabbit Baby and Toddler". (Must write directly into video memory or something.) I thought that was pretty neat.
I will look into RunAs, PsExec, SUD, etc. Thanks for the tip.
> I'm sorry, but comparing music to starving does not help your arguement. > What if your friend wanted heroin? Would it be moral for you to give it to him?
Do I have an infinite supply of free heroin? Will my friend benefit from me giving him some, or will it be detrimental to him?
> Music is not a necessity. It is a luxory that no one every "needs".
So at what point am I a jerk for depriving my friend something that comes at no cost to me and no tangible cost to anyone else? If my friend wants to borrow a hammer should I say "no, go buy one so the hammer manufacturers get their royalty"?
How about if he wants to borrow the CD? Is it morally better because I am deprived of it while he has it?
Simple, the artists receives no royalties from used CD sales. If I buy a CD for $0.99 from ebay, explain to me how the author benefitted? How about if I decide I don't like the CD and resell it myself? They don't benefit from that sale either.
> You're friend already heard the song and asked you for it. How did he hear of it?
Perhaps I said "I know your musical tastes and I think you'll like this?"
> What did the artist do for your buddy?
Ummm, wrote and recorded a song, perhaps one he likes a lot.
The point of my post was simple. When something costs nothing to reproduce, market forces will make that something hard to sell... If you're right that the labels add value then they will remain in business.
Moral arguments are hard to make because there is no actual "victim" when the copying occurs - nothing was physically taken from someone so there was no theft. (Talk about potential loss from sales all you want, it's not the same as stealing. Competition steals potential sales from companies all of the time - should it be illegal? Talk about copyright violation all you want. Yes it's illegal, no it's not theft.)
Your example of copying credit card numbers is different - once that information is used, you have taken something tangible from its rightful owner. That would be the definition of theft.
> in my town, the old horse & cart transports have died out too. Is this because of high-speed road > access and a youth culture that uses some of the most sophisticated automobiles available?
Of course, everyone says "but it's illegal to download music" and it's not illegal to drive a car. This is true and it's even a valid point...
On the other hand, market dynamics can't be ignored here, and there is something fundamentally new here that needs to be recognized. The internet makes it possible to publish all kinds of information for free.
In the past this was not possible - for printed words, you needed a printing press. To publish music, you needed the equipment to make records or CDs. When cassettes became popular it became possible to make cheap copies, but cheap != free, and there was also degradation on every copy so it wasn't quite the same.
You don't have to think about it for too long to realize that the artificial scarcity imposed by copyright laws is not going to be very compelling to people. If my buddy is interested in hearing a song and I can send it to him for free, it's human nature to want to be nice to my friend and it costs me "nothing" to do it - why would I not oblige?!
If you want to argue about the morality of the issue, think about it this way... If my buddy was dying of hunger and I had a way to give him free food, would it be moral or immoral to give him the food? How much more abstract is it to fulfill the desire for a song? I don't think it's that abstract. Stallman argues the same thing one of his philosophy articles. Is it radical to want to please your friends, or is it simply human nature?
Lets say that you want to argue the morality issue directly.... "But you're depriving the author of their income." First off, I did not take anything from the author. The most that you can argue is that I have deprived them of potential income. We don't know if my friend would have purchased with a non-zero cost. In fact there is probably no way to know.
Secondly, lets say my buddy goes out and buys the used CD which is totally legal. The author does not benefit from this transaction either, yet somehow it's a morally "better" solution? That seems strange to me.
Thirdly, as a fan of someone's music, what action can I take that is better for an artist than to expose others to their art? It's hard to sell concert tickets, CDs, website memberships, or whatever without exposure. Up until recently exposure meant radio and MTV but technology is changing that. The question is how can the artist benefit from the change, not how to preserve the status quo?
Lastly, also from a moral standpoint, what did the publisher or record company do for my buddy? Nothing that he can put his finger on. Yet if he goes and buys the CD, they get most of the cash?! How many artists would be better off with a paypal button on their website that people could use to donate money directly to them if they like their music? I have no clue, perhaps most would be better off, perhaps they would die of starvation. I don't know how you answer that one.
In my mind, thinking all of this through, you come to a conclusion. The conclusion is that people who traditionally have made money publishing content are suddenly not producing products any more, they are providing a service. Think about the business models for open source and you see this. Apply the same logic to musicians (since their "product" can now be published at zero cost as well) and suddenly you see the new business model that works.
Musicians can derive their income from ticket sales. They could also provide some kind of value in memberships to their websites. (Disc
> Contrary to your sig, Bush never claimed Saddam was linked to 9/11.
No, they have only claimed that there was a relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. See this if you somehow don't know what I'm talking about.
Is there an important distinction you'd like to make? Dick's "proof by emphatic assertion" has really not held up unless the 9/11 commission is outright lying. Is that your premise for this disconnect? Or is there secret evidence that is too dangerous to share with the American public?
Ummm, I wasn't joking. There is are ecologies in deserts that can be wrecked. Here is an alternate definition for "desert", FWIW.
I'm not huge environmentalist myself, but I can see how changing the face of a desert would be politically difficult at best. Any time you take a pristine area and build on it there will be some outcry.
And if you look in a place like Phoenix where irrigation has increased the daytime humidity, you can see that there can be profound human impact on these areas. Whether it's worth it or not has to be decided on a case by case basis in my mind.
But why do it if you don't have to? That was my point. Plus you get the added bonus of reducing transmission line losses and "free" electricity if it's on your house...
> You have those no matter that kind of plant you use.
Right, my point is that distributed generation gets rid of the losses. If I generate my own electricity at my house then transmission line losses become a non-issue. (Especially if I can store excess energy during the day to use through the night.)
> The thing I can't help but wonder, is why if these are so effecient, is why there isn't one under the hood?
Well, you still need heat to run it. Internal combustion engines have become very clean and the issues with manufacturing them are very well understood, too. And to the best of my knowledge, noone has ever built stirling engines of significant size at production quantities. Even if you made it gasoline powered (using the same infrastructure we currently have) you'd have to prove it was reliable to get any consumer buy-in. It would take some serious resources for an existing, successful company to do it.
It looks like the company that was talking about this has backed off of the technology for now, although it does say they're still working on the idea.
I like the idea of distributed solar power generation for a variety of reasons. I think it's one of the only ways that (once installed) has minimal environmental impact, assuming that you're going to build a house in "that spot" either way. To build fields of solar arrays or mirrors in the desert wrecks the desert, and then you have to deal with transmission line losses which are significant. Same problems with wind, geothermal, hydro, and tidal power - you wreck the environment you install them in to some degree and then you pay transmission line inefficiencies.
And often in these articles they don't talk about the cost of photovoltaics, either. They are semiconductors, which take larges amounts of energy to produce, and require some really nasty chemicals to process as well. So for every house you build with a photovoltaic roof, you've got to deal with those issues, which means it's going to take some time before you net any power or positive environmental impact.
There was an article in Discover Magazine last year about a company who was making a solar power generator based on a Stirling engine and they were claiming some impressive efficiencies. Manufacturing these was an issue of machining which can be made pretty clean - I thought that this was a cool idea. (I'd link to it but I'm in lynx right now and don't feel like googling it - sorry!)
Also you've got the issue of what to do at night. Of course hooking to the grid takes care of that right now but it means that you're relying on "dirty" power at night, and once enough people switch to this model then that would be all the dirty power was there for. Of course, it's sunny somewhere all of the time but then you've got transmission line issues. Putting batteries in your basement is an option, but most of those technologies are nasty too - lots of heavy metals to deal with. "My" solution for that - flywheel storage... I don't know if anyone is seriously working on that one though.
Can someone show me benchmarks that real programs are really faster on the same hardware than some other distro? I've seen benchmarks that say the opposite, but I've never seen any that support this common claim.
I do realize that optimizing for the "correct" CPU should provide improved performance, but I wonder how much improvement you really see with gcc in this case.
FWIW, I'm 34 and we had tubes in our TV and stereo when I was little. I believe the TV was a HeathKit. It was color and it t had an FM wireless remote, too! When you changed the channel with the remote it would actually turn the channel knob.
We also had a reel-to-reel tape recorder with tubes in it. (I've still got that, it still worked last time I tried it.) We would rock out to "Godspell" and Elton John and stuff like that. My dad had built two mono amps (for stereo) from kits and you could see the tubes pulsate when you really cranked it up.
I remember talking about "a tube being out" and going to the drug store to use the tube tester to check them out. (The tube testers rocked - they had a whole bunch of knobs on them, and looked very cool to me at 5 years old...) Eventually my dad got his own tube tester so he could check stuff out himself. By about 1980 or so I don't think we had anything in active use that had tubes in it.
I guess the moral of the story is that it was probably the early to mid 70s when solid state started making a big appearence. By 1980 I imagine that tubes were hard to find.
> Then no idealogues on either side would be affirmed.
I have no issue with idealogues being on the supreme court on either side of the aisle. On the other hand, I don't want a court full of them who only represent one viewpoint...
Having a bunch of moderate judges doesn't seem like a good idea to me - you might as well have a "supreme judge" instead of a "supreme court" in that case, if they're all of the same mindset anyways.
(I wish I could insert a solution here, but alas, I don't have one.)
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone know how much they cost? Anyone driven one?
Coke is seeking to ban drinking fountains, as their business plan seeks to sell more Dasani bottled water...
[snip]
> Everything is supposed to be easier now adays, but it just seems like overkill to me. You can't just sit down with a C compiler and pump out a program.
Sure you can. But if you want to develop a web application using only a C compiler, you're in for big learning curve and you'll be writing a whole bunch of code! You'll have to write your own webserver and DB for starters. (Well, I guess if you add ftp to your toolbox you can get apache and mysql, but something tells me you'll need more than that to build those systems!)
Your comment makes me think of all of the people who compain about "code bloat nowadays", and arguments like them. I started programming on a 4k Vic 20, and yes I could do a whole lot of stuff in 4k. (I still program on PIC processors from time to time, and you can do a lot in those in 128 bytes!)
On the other hand, people's expectations of what software is supposed to do has changed dramatically. They want it to be easy to use, pretty, GUIed, webified, internationalized, etc. "Back in the day" no software could do all of that!
> Am I alone in thinking that all of this just makes it even harder as a programmer?
If you really want to answer that question, try the experiment. A blog is a good toy application, try building a blog in various frameworks and technologies and see what works for you and what doesn't.
As far as not having time to learn good coding practices or algorithms, I don't agree with you there. I know a fair number of excellent developers, and they are always learning and applying best practices. It's what separates the good developers from the others if you ask me, not how many frameworks they know. Another important attribute is knowing how to select the right tool for the right job... There are a lot of choices out there so you really have to do the research and talk to other developers who have walked the walk...
This month's meeting at my local Java user's group there was an impressive demo on Ruby on Rails. The presenter built a blogging application live in front of the group, literally in 10 minutes or so. Prior to this demo I had pretty much written Ruby off "just another alternative to perl or python" but I have to say that Rails looks really impressive, enough so that I'm taking a closer look at Ruby.
One of the guys in our user's group, Chris Nelson, is building a similar framework for Java - called Trails. He also built a blogging application live during the meeting. It took him a bit longer - perhaps 15-20 minutes. It was impressive as well, although I will say that for Trails you need to know a fair amount about Hibernate and Tapestry. Realize that he's been working on this only for a few months and suddenly you see that this work is very impressive too.
Anyone interested in developing web apps might want to check these projects out - very impressive stuff!
> If you figure out the correct OPN for exactly the part you want, searching for that can sometimes yield results.
The OPN is AMD2800BQX4AX. Froogle only lists one place that still shows it for sale:
http://www.hoct.com/amd2800bqx4ax.html
It's a terrible price compared to what newegg used to list it for. (Last time I searched by OPN newegg's listing was still in google's cache - it was around $140.) That's why I was wondering if it had been pulled from the market or what the story was...
Here's how that was supposed to read:
There are multiple versions of the Athlon 64 mobile, so you have to be very careful to pick the right one, but... There is a 2800+ 1.2V part, that has a total power dissipation (TPD) of 35W. With AMD's ratings, that means that fully utilized (saying running something compute-bound like SETI @home), this part has a power consumption of 35W. (I believe Intel publishes average numbers, not max, although this is something I've read and not researched myself.) Will "Cool and Quiet" turned on the power consumption at low speed is supposedly 15W. And there is supposedly a Sempron mobile coming out with a TPD of 25W.
Having said all of that, finding any retailers that carry the low power parts has been difficult. (Finding the higher power DTR parts has not - newegg carries those, for example.) Have they been pulled from the market, or are they not for the retail channel, or what? Anyone know what gives?
There are multiple versions of the Athlon 64 mobile, so you have to be very careful to pick the right one, but... There is a 2800+ part, 1.2V part, that has a total power dissipation (TPD) of 35W. With AMD's ratings, that means that fully utilized (saying running something compute-bound like SETI @home), this part has a power consumption of 35W. (I believe Intel publishes average numbers, not max, although this is something I've read and not researched myself.) Will "Cool and Quiet" turned on the power consumption at low speed is supposedly any retailers that carry them has been difficult. Have they been pulled from the market, or are they not for the retail channel, or what? Anyone know what gives?
Is it possible to make a bunk bed into any kind of a "pimp bed"?!
> Who needs math when you've got Jesus?
Even Jesus needed math - he was a carpenter until he was 30 or so - I bet he was pretty good at fractions!
Reminds me of a fun trick with google. Google's calculator knows all kinds of constants - "c", "pi", "e", etc. (Just put those in the standard search box and hit search and you'll see what I mean. Now you can use them in equations - "2*pi+7" or whatever.)
Anyways, it knows this constant too:
"the answer to life the universe and everything"
Made me chuckle the first time I saw it...
> Ignorance breeds ignorance. Pick up a newspaper. Go online to each of their websites. Listen to NPR.
Ummm, if you're speaking to me (you did reply to my post), you're preaching to the choir. I do all of those things, thank you very much. (Did you notice I said I have voted in every election since 1988 - that was the year I turned 18.)
I can't believe that I have to say the common sense thing here, but given the replies, I guess I do. Here it is: The best option is to be an informed voter.
Barring that, if you're not going to be informed, if you're going to simply watch ads on MTV and not probe a little deeper then perhaps you shouldn't vote. (And you should take it more seriously, but whatever.) On issues that you're not familiar with, I would not encourage you to vote on those issues in an uninformed way. What are going to do, pick people whose names look nice on the ballot?! Vote for an issue because "42" is your favorite number? If you are uninformed, how are you going pick?!
> Whether you like it or not, that is everyone's job. Not just a few "elite" people who know the issues. I find it incredibly sad that anyone would think this way.
I find it sad to encourage uniformed people to make random choices on a ballot. I didn't say anything about elitism so I don't know where that comment came from. More power to anyone feels "informed enough", I encourage them to vote! It's a simple statement.
Here's the context that gad zuki! left out:
[snip]
Stone: And the whole voting thing. All we ever said was that we thought that uninformed people should not vote -- on either side of the political spectrum. It doesn't matter who you're gonna vote for. If you really don't know who you're gonna vote for, or are uninformed, or haven't really thought about it? Just stay home. Don't let people fucking shame you into going to the polls.
Parker: If you have absolutely no idea, fuck it.
Stone: If you really don't know or you're just going to vote for George Bush because he's already in office, or you're gonna vote for John Kerry because he's on the cover of Rolling Stone, don't do that. That's lame. Just stay home. That's all we ever said.
[/snip]
I've heard some talk on NPR about this, about how MTV is running ads about voting like they are shaving cream commercials. I'm all for "get out the vote" campaigns, but I personally feel like being educated on the candidates and issues is important too.
Do we really want people who don't feel like learning about the candidates and issues voting on these things? I've voted in every election since 1988, and when I hit something on a ballot that I don't know anything about (usually local races that I have not followed), I don't vote. I don't think this is such a heinous idea - that you should only cast informed votes...
> So run only those programs as admin.
On my kids' computer, this includes "Reader Rabbit Baby and Toddler". (Must write directly into video memory or something.) I thought that was pretty neat.
I will look into RunAs, PsExec, SUD, etc. Thanks for the tip.
> I'm sorry, but comparing music to starving does not help your arguement.
> What if your friend wanted heroin? Would it be moral for you to give it to him?
Do I have an infinite supply of free heroin? Will my friend benefit from me giving him some, or will it be detrimental to him?
> Music is not a necessity. It is a luxory that no one every "needs".
So at what point am I a jerk for depriving my friend something that comes at no cost to me and no tangible cost to anyone else? If my friend wants to borrow a hammer should I say "no, go buy one so the hammer manufacturers get their royalty"?
How about if he wants to borrow the CD? Is it morally better because I am deprived of it while he has it?
> Please explain how the author doesn't benefit.
Simple, the artists receives no royalties from used CD sales. If I buy a CD for $0.99 from ebay, explain to me how the author benefitted? How about if I decide I don't like the CD and resell it myself? They don't benefit from that sale either.
> You're friend already heard the song and asked you for it. How did he hear of it?
Perhaps I said "I know your musical tastes and I think you'll like this?"
> What did the artist do for your buddy?
Ummm, wrote and recorded a song, perhaps one he likes a lot.
The point of my post was simple. When something costs nothing to reproduce, market forces will make that something hard to sell... If you're right that the labels add value then they will remain in business.
Moral arguments are hard to make because there is no actual "victim" when the copying occurs - nothing was physically taken from someone so there was no theft. (Talk about potential loss from sales all you want, it's not the same as stealing. Competition steals potential sales from companies all of the time - should it be illegal? Talk about copyright violation all you want. Yes it's illegal, no it's not theft.)
Your example of copying credit card numbers is different - once that information is used, you have taken something tangible from its rightful owner. That would be the definition of theft.
> in my town, the old horse & cart transports have died out too. Is this because of high-speed road
> access and a youth culture that uses some of the most sophisticated automobiles available?
And don't forget this parallel, covered here on slashdot.
Of course, everyone says "but it's illegal to download music" and it's not illegal to drive a car. This is true and it's even a valid point...
On the other hand, market dynamics can't be ignored here, and there is something fundamentally new here that needs to be recognized. The internet makes it possible to publish all kinds of information for free.
In the past this was not possible - for printed words, you needed a printing press. To publish music, you needed the equipment to make records or CDs. When cassettes became popular it became possible to make cheap copies, but cheap != free, and there was also degradation on every copy so it wasn't quite the same.
You don't have to think about it for too long to realize that the artificial scarcity imposed by copyright laws is not going to be very compelling to people. If my buddy is interested in hearing a song and I can send it to him for free, it's human nature to want to be nice to my friend and it costs me "nothing" to do it - why would I not oblige?!
If you want to argue about the morality of the issue, think about it this way... If my buddy was dying of hunger and I had a way to give him free food, would it be moral or immoral to give him the food? How much more abstract is it to fulfill the desire for a song? I don't think it's that abstract. Stallman argues the same thing one of his philosophy articles. Is it radical to want to please your friends, or is it simply human nature?
Lets say that you want to argue the morality issue directly.... "But you're depriving the author of their income." First off, I did not take anything from the author. The most that you can argue is that I have deprived them of potential income. We don't know if my friend would have purchased with a non-zero cost. In fact there is probably no way to know.
Secondly, lets say my buddy goes out and buys the used CD which is totally legal. The author does not benefit from this transaction either, yet somehow it's a morally "better" solution? That seems strange to me.
Thirdly, as a fan of someone's music, what action can I take that is better for an artist than to expose others to their art? It's hard to sell concert tickets, CDs, website memberships, or whatever without exposure. Up until recently exposure meant radio and MTV but technology is changing that. The question is how can the artist benefit from the change, not how to preserve the status quo?
Lastly, also from a moral standpoint, what did the publisher or record company do for my buddy? Nothing that he can put his finger on. Yet if he goes and buys the CD, they get most of the cash?! How many artists would be better off with a paypal button on their website that people could use to donate money directly to them if they like their music? I have no clue, perhaps most would be better off, perhaps they would die of starvation. I don't know how you answer that one.
In my mind, thinking all of this through, you come to a conclusion. The conclusion is that people who traditionally have made money publishing content are suddenly not producing products any more, they are providing a service. Think about the business models for open source and you see this. Apply the same logic to musicians (since their "product" can now be published at zero cost as well) and suddenly you see the new business model that works.
Musicians can derive their income from ticket sales. They could also provide some kind of value in memberships to their websites. (Disc
> Contrary to your sig, Bush never claimed Saddam was linked to 9/11.
No, they have only claimed that there was a relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. See this if you somehow don't know what I'm talking about.
Is there an important distinction you'd like to make? Dick's "proof by emphatic assertion" has really not held up unless the 9/11 commission is outright lying. Is that your premise for this disconnect? Or is there secret evidence that is too dangerous to share with the American public?
> You're joking, right?
Ummm, I wasn't joking. There is are ecologies in deserts that can be wrecked. Here is an alternate definition for "desert", FWIW.
I'm not huge environmentalist myself, but I can see how changing the face of a desert would be politically difficult at best. Any time you take a pristine area and build on it there will be some outcry.
And if you look in a place like Phoenix where irrigation has increased the daytime humidity, you can see that there can be profound human impact on these areas. Whether it's worth it or not has to be decided on a case by case basis in my mind.
But why do it if you don't have to? That was my point. Plus you get the added bonus of reducing transmission line losses and "free" electricity if it's on your house...
> You have those no matter that kind of plant you use.
Right, my point is that distributed generation gets rid of the losses. If I generate my own electricity at my house then transmission line losses become a non-issue. (Especially if I can store excess energy during the day to use through the night.)
> The thing I can't help but wonder, is why if these are so effecient, is why there isn't one under the hood?
Well, you still need heat to run it. Internal combustion engines have become very clean and the issues with manufacturing them are very well understood, too. And to the best of my knowledge, noone has ever built stirling engines of significant size at production quantities. Even if you made it gasoline powered (using the same infrastructure we currently have) you'd have to prove it was reliable to get any consumer buy-in. It would take some serious resources for an existing, successful company to do it.
It looks like the company that was talking about this has backed off of the technology for now, although it does say they're still working on the idea.
I like the idea of distributed solar power generation for a variety of reasons. I think it's one of the only ways that (once installed) has minimal environmental impact, assuming that you're going to build a house in "that spot" either way.
To build fields of solar arrays or mirrors in the desert wrecks the desert, and then you have to deal with transmission line losses which are significant. Same problems with wind, geothermal, hydro, and tidal power - you wreck the environment you install them in to some degree and then you pay transmission line inefficiencies.
And often in these articles they don't talk about the cost of photovoltaics, either. They are semiconductors, which take larges amounts of energy to produce, and require some really nasty chemicals to process as well. So for every house you build with a photovoltaic roof, you've got to deal with those issues, which means it's going to take some time before you net any power or positive environmental impact.
There was an article in Discover Magazine last year about a company who was making a solar power generator based on a Stirling engine and they were claiming some impressive efficiencies. Manufacturing these was an issue of machining which can be made pretty clean - I thought that this was a cool idea. (I'd link to it but I'm in lynx right now and don't feel like googling it - sorry!)
Also you've got the issue of what to do at night. Of course hooking to the grid takes care of that right now but it means that you're relying on "dirty" power at night, and once enough people switch to this model then that would be all the dirty power was there for. Of course, it's sunny somewhere all of the time but then you've got transmission line issues. Putting batteries in your basement is an option, but most of those technologies are nasty too - lots of heavy metals to deal with. "My" solution for that - flywheel storage... I don't know if anyone is seriously working on that one though.
Agreed, it won't increase their sales but it might decrease the number of people who buy it, can't play it, and then try to return the game...
Can someone show me benchmarks that real programs are really faster on the same hardware than some other distro? I've seen benchmarks that say the opposite, but I've never seen any that support this common claim.
I do realize that optimizing for the "correct" CPU should provide improved performance, but I wonder how much improvement you really see with gcc in this case.
FWIW, I'm 34 and we had tubes in our TV and stereo when I was little. I believe the TV was a HeathKit. It was color and it t had an FM wireless remote, too! When you changed the channel with the remote it would actually turn the channel knob.
We also had a reel-to-reel tape recorder with tubes in it. (I've still got that, it still worked last time I tried it.) We would rock out to "Godspell" and Elton John and stuff like that. My dad had built two mono amps (for stereo) from kits and you could see the tubes pulsate when you really cranked it up.
I remember talking about "a tube being out" and going to the drug store to use the tube tester to check them out. (The tube testers rocked - they had a whole bunch of knobs on them, and looked very cool to me at 5 years old...) Eventually my dad got his own tube tester so he could check stuff out himself. By about 1980 or so I don't think we had anything in active use that had tubes in it.
I guess the moral of the story is that it was probably the early to mid 70s when solid state started making a big appearence. By 1980 I imagine that tubes were hard to find.
> Then no idealogues on either side would be affirmed.
I have no issue with idealogues being on the supreme court on either side of the aisle. On the other hand, I don't want a court full of them who only represent one viewpoint...
Having a bunch of moderate judges doesn't seem like a good idea to me - you might as well have a "supreme judge" instead of a "supreme court" in that case, if they're all of the same mindset anyways.
(I wish I could insert a solution here, but alas, I don't have one.)