And, this is precisely why I started to play with Linux, c. 0.94.
O.K., sorry for all the shouting, but it was a real pain to not have an FTP server on my MSDOS box at work with which to share files. Telnetting in from another PC to run a C program I was working on was pure Nirvana, as well. In those dim, dark, almost forgotten days, Linux provided a stepwise improvement in access to my PC.
I've stuck with it since, happily accepting shortcomings in convenience in other areas.
And, lest people believe that "well, they'd never do *that*," here are some things that the big corporations are already doing:
It's even worse than this.
People think that even if "they" do do that, it will not be to *them*, but to someone who "deserves" it. The problem here is that people accept the law as a blunt instrument to be wielded when an appropriately fine one is not available (because the particular circumstance was excempt under the more specific law) -- can't have criminals going free on technicalities, can we?
I suspect that a more effective, though certainly more radical, campaign, would be to ask, "If you don't think they would do this, but do think it would be wrong if they tried to do it to you or me, would you think it wrong if I used whatever force is necessary, including killing them, to stop them?"
Place it in concrete terms: "Do you think it's acceptable, if regrettable, to kill someone who refuses to stop stealing your stuff, if they're armed and threatening? Is a copy you made for later viewing, yours, or not? If someone tried to kidnap you for simply making the copy would you not resist with all your might?"
Clearly, if someone thinks that a law is absurd, unconstitutional, and would not be applied in practice, they should not reject the notion of fighting it if it is applied (yeah, we know it is "when" and not "if"). Anyone who objects over illegal resistance (and let's be clear: we're talking about killing police who try to arrest you for telling someone how to timeshift a movie -- this either gets you "off", for defending your constitutional rights, or fried in the electric chair), should be pointed to the Constitution (in the U.S.A., anyway): you are acting legally -- they are the criminals here.
I suspect that most people accept blunt law because it allows the "legal" arrest of miscreants that would otherwise skate on the thin edge of legality and still do stuff most would disaprove of. "They" know this... that's why they file charges against "hackers", but back off when dealing with "respectible" university professors (i.e. Felten).
The danger of threating deadly force, even in defense, is that it makes one appear unstable, and more in the catagory of "undesirable". And I am not advocating that one do this unless they are quite prepared to live with the consequences. Many would advocate a passive approach, but I am not one to martyr myself (timeshift the movie and willingly let myself be arrested). At some point, if you're not willing to use force to defend your rights, others will use force to take them away.
I suspect that a two-pronged approach, with numbers of passive "victims" mounting and the odd sensational skirmish is what it will take to reverse this frightning trend.
Of course, any such forceful approach, without the backing of law or decree means that you are interpreting the law yourself: you are a vigilante. How that is perceived depends largly on timing: with large numbers of martyred time-shifters rotting in jail, this might be an acceptable tactic. I raise the possibility now, and not when we are seeing widespread arrests because, like any forceful tactic, it has to be thought out very carefully in advance so as to have the greatest liklihood of apparent legitimacy when it is employed.
I've drooled at the idea of tablet PCs. They would fit right in with my idea of a networked home.
Readers here will know that I want to stream media (uncompressed audio and at least MP@ML MPEG2 video) from a central server a the headend to entertainment devices throught the home with quiet (i.e. fanless, diskless) set top-box style client boxes. The issue becomes: how to control everything.
The Web browser has become a rather useful and ubiquitous interface, espescially with the advent of MIME and plug-in technology. You just go the the appropriate site and get what you want. One can imagine controlling home entertainment devices and requesting streamed content this way. But, where do you put the browser display?
On the TV? It's of klunky to have to turn on the TV to stream some music. Do you really want a browser window on the same screen on which you're watching a movie? O.K., so we add another screen, say an LCD panel, nice and flat, for that display. Great, now you have to squint across the room at your browser. Spend the bucks on a big enough plasma display and once again, you've integrated the control display with the content display. Double plus uncool. What you (well, I) want is a high-resolution (compared to broadcast TV, 800x600 is fine, but 1024x768 would be better), separate display, that is unobtrusive. A tablet PC on the coffee table fits the bill nicely.
There are some technical issues to work out: when you stream content you probably want it to go to the big-ass TV screen and big honkin' Dolby Digital 5.1 speaker system, and not the small display and speaker in the tablet PC (though that should be an option, for previews, or quiet viewing). But, that doesn't strike me as something that can't be handled with some kind of selective proxy in a room (that splits off the right kind of content for local processing rather than send it to the tablet PC).
Of course, the tablet PC now doubles as a convenient Web Pad, letting you surf the net without having to tie up the entertainment devices, perhaps even while watching a movie, or listening to music (perhaps you want to order more pizza). The unit is going to be expensive no matter what, so it should be functional. And this leads to a weakness in all such devices.
You really, really, do want some convenient means for data entry, like the ability to fire off a short email, or response. It doesn't have to be designed for hours of continuous use, but it should not be so difficult as to make one want to leave the room to send that two line email, or order that pizza, using a "real" computer instead. A slide down or even an unfolding keyboard would be nice, but not a clamshell design: you want to lay the thing flat on a coffee table and still be able to glance at the display and pick it up and use it "like a remote" on a moment's notice -- no fumbling to open a clamshell just to see a display or hit a few buttons on the touch-screen.
So, such a unit needs two things: (a) easy (though not for long periods of time) keyboard data entry, and (b) a fast enough data link to support content-rich browsing in it's own right.
I think it is useful to restrict the word "capitalist" and related words to the financial sphere.
But that is not the same as "one who invests capital".
I would suggest that it is perfectly reasonable to define capital as "that which can be invested, leveraged, or traded for a more desirable thing, whether tangible or intagible"; capitalist as "one who so invests"; and capitalism as "a prevelent system where individuals are free to operate as capitalists".
Note that by this definition, kings, nobles, serfs, slaves and slave-masters, wage-earners, employers, and hunter-gatherers are all capitalist.
Not quite: serfs and slaves, in particular are often restricted by force from engaging in such transactions because they are not recognized as owning any source of capital, not even their own labour.
Microsoft is selling to the PHBs that control the $$$. Since they are so often clueless about the actual tech, giving them a warm and fuzzy feeling that tech decisions don't have to be made with the M$ solution is part of the sales strategy: PHB thinks "Ooh, this is easy! I understand all the tech stuff is done. If I understand, my developers will understand all that much more. This is the solution for us."
Of course, this lets you build what M$ thinks you should build, and not necessarily what you want to build.
The best position to be in is to be a loyal customer and then make a stink when they do something stupid like this.
The guy who spends thou$ands a year will damn well get his defective $15 CD refunded, almost certainly.
Re:Why not just make cooler running chips?
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Yeah, I looked at that. The noise and form factor turned me off. It's kind of tight in there, airflow-wise, but you're right about using a Via C3 to mitigate the CPU fan requirement. If the case fan was quiet, it would be much more desirable.
As for disk drives, I think we had a diskless client set top box in mind, with content streamed from a server elsewhere.
The GCT Allwell VIP3030n is really nice, though the processor may be a bit underpowered for rendering comples web pages as it uses an NS Geode. Still, for a/v streaming, it's probably fine.
Re:Why not just make cooler running chips?
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Sigh.
I've been looking for something similar.
Basically: ethernet in, audio/video out (Dolby Digital 5.1 audio and progresive scan component video would be nice), from a streamed MPEG2 source.
The problem is the "oomph" required to do MPEG2 decoding -- this usually dictates a CPU with enough horsepower to need active cooling. However, if you look at the RealMagic Netstream 2000 by Sigma Designs, you'll find a PCI MP@ML MPEG2 TS and ES decoder card that does not require active cooling and works with a lowly P133.
One can imagine a settop box based on this combination that would fit the bill. It gets better... there is such a beast, and it runs on Linux: The VIP30306n. This little puppy uses the Sigma Designs em8400 MPEG2 chip... the same one as in the RealMagic Netstream2000.
The downside is price: the Netstream2000 runs around US$220, and I'd expect that the GCT Allwell box would be US$500 or so.
Re:Mod Points! My Karma for Mod Points!
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LOL!
I guess I got what I asked for: an exchange of Karma in order that the parent get modded up, but that wasn't what I really meant.:-)
Mod Points! My Karma for Mod Points!
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Sigh, I guess not.
Seriously, this should be rated Insightful and Interesting.
My understanding of the word is that the mechanism is only "capitalist" if there is a financial exchange involved.
...which implies a common notion of things financial, or money. I think that is rather limiting, as there are different sources of value, money being simply a vehicle for the exchange of same. It is precisely because different people place different personal values on different things, that free markets are useful.
What makes it capitalist is the deployment of "capital" which is money or at least sufficiently liquid to be able to be deployed in a number of activities, so that there's an element of choice involved for the capitalist ("where will I deploy my capital today?"), and that the capital is deployed in order to produce something which will then be sold to recoup more capital.
Well, the choice could just as easily be what kind of capital do I deploy? A person with bread and fish has two kinds of "capital" if you will, but might only find a single person interested in either. Now, I disagree that capital need be invested to reap yet more capital, ad infinitum. This presumes that there is no value to be derived from consumption. Certainly there is value to be derived from continued living which requires that we eat (and I think it silly to consider our symbiotic relationship with the bacteria that break down our bodily wastes investment on our part).
Something which is produced to be given away free may be part of a capitalist process if that giveaway contributes to sales of something else, of course.
Well, yes, but it need not be.
I suspect that our fundemental differences lie in the fact that I consider the pursuit of individual hapiness, subject to not interfering with others' similar pursuits, an acceptable driving force for human endevour, whereas you seek to justify the process of exchange as that driving force. I do not consider the individual subordinate to the group.
Yes, because you can't take that "sheer joy" and use it to do something else; the "sheer joy" is an end in itself, something directly consumed and not a valuable input into some other economic enterprise.
And, since I value the individual over the group, I consider this perfectly acceptable -- nothing is lost if one does things in pursuit of happiness. Such activities are legitimately valuable investments of one's capital, and ultimately the desired goal of all investment.
I don't think I understand this statement - could you explain?
I believe that the motivating force behind all economic activity is individual desire, and group benefit is merely an aggregate side effect when individuals do not harm others to benefit themselves. Thus, an economic view centered on the individual serves this model better than one centered on the "needs" or "morals" of a group.
In short, I am a libertarian, and you strike me as a "socialist".
This presumes that a majority can best direct the efforts of all. I disagree with that premise. I much prefer a free market system.
What I wonder though, is if the instability caused by perpetual artificial scarcity can be damped by removing some of the positive feedback elements: viz. overbroad patents. Would that be sufficient?
My example with domestic cookery is the same in a way - though domestic cookery is not a capitalist enterprise, it is not incompatible with a capitalist system, and can actually play a subordinate role for capital, without being capitalist itself. I think "voluntary" domestic labour has a similar relation to capitalist enterprise as capitalist enterprise does to collaborative open source software development.
I'm starting to see why we differ (I think).
I view capitalist, as any mechanism for leveraging a resource for a perceived gain, but it appears that you (and the article's author) recognize this as capitalist only when such a trade would be generally recognised as beneficial.
So, highly personal activities, which might be viewed by the participant as beneficial if only for the sheer joy of doing them, are capitalist in my book, but probably not in yours. I happen to prefer my definition because the greater leverage or productivity arises out of such personal tradeoffs in a greater free market.
I suppose this only shows that reasonable people can disagree.
Because the public doesn't have the home infrastructure for it yet.
The problem with a "media server" is just how do you serve media? Until some form of home networking is ubiquitious (wireless, or ethernet), the media server will have to be a media client as well: quiet (i.e. fanless), spiffy case and display, come with a remote, and probably TV out for display. That kind of contradicts, "have mondo disk space for audio and video".
A media server is little more than a glorified file server, perhaps with the ability to read local CDs and/or DVDs, and download content from the internet. Like a furnace, or water heater, it doesn't have to look nice or be particularly quiet. Of course, as long as it's going to be network connected, it may as well be a caching news server, non-relaying mail server, and the ntp gateway for the house. It might even firewall for you, but I prefer a dedicated router/firewall for that.
Unfortunately the value that such a device provides only becomes apparent when you have (a) an always-on internet connection, and (b) a networked home: after all why bother loading all your CDs in a box in your entertainment centre, when they would be located in your entertainment centre anyway? Is it worth that much to not have to get up and change a disk? Even then, CD changers have gotten cheap. All the other functions that such a server can perform (oh, yeah, add answering machine), just can't happen without network connectivity.
The real value of a media server is that it sits out of sight, and can have more storage added as necessary, with media clients scattered around the house. CDs and DVDs can be archived out of site as well. DVR functionality belongs here too.
This simplifies what the media clients have to do... they basically become web browsers with audio and video outputs, and that's it. Some might have the ability to accept local media, but without local hard disk storage. Others might be fully integrated "receivers" with audio amplifier sections. Still others might be "televisions" with ethernet ports. But the common theme is to get the content stored elsewhere, whether streamed remotely, or cached on a media server in the home.
Its a great dream, and one that I've had for a while -- I'm only now slowly starting to set up an uncompressed audio server, and will likely DivX encode my VHS tapes. But, for most homes, I suspect it won't become a reality until always-on network connections are the norm (so the other services can be provided), and traditional legacy devices start to be network aware (whether wired or wireless).
Actually, this wasn't planned as a server room, but rather as a wiring headend. I chose it because it is not a high traffic area, and has light and power available, as well as HVAC for heating and cooling. My guess is that you're planning to locate the wiring headed in the same room as your servers, right?
I use Leviton 24"x14" metal wallmount panels for the wiring headend and brought all the telco and ethernet (both on Cat5e, natch.) into one, and the COAX for terrestrial and satellite TV into the other. That cleans up the wiring a lot.
Now to the relevance of this to the need for a server room: once you've got most of the wiring squirled away, what's left that you need fancy racks, with multiple servers that will be serious heat daemons? Are you really going to stuff a beowolf in there?
My guess is that you'll have one server for incoming email, and if you use an appropriate router/firewall, you can have it on the inside of your firewall, serving double duty for NIS, NTP, news caching, DNS caching, and all those other services that you want to distribute and perhaps connect to externally (i.e. NTP).
You can use the same or another server for local data/media storage for distribution through the house. Add a UPS and your done. This is what I plan. My only mistake was not wiring an home run to the headend in the same room as the headend.
The only way I can see you needing more servers there is if you want to set up a compute farm. I'd be half-tempted to either (a) consider a different location for a server-farm co-located with the headend, or (b) use another room/closet.
The problem stems from the fact that consent can be implied... she never even suggested to stop, but never explicitly said, "yes" (just smiled and beconed to the bedroom).
The context in which this becomes a problem is a situation where expectations of a subsequent relationship weren't clear: he wanted a one night stand, and she thought this was the start of something. Since her expectations were not met, it must have been rape, no? [obviously, I think no]. So the problem reduces to what "default" expectations are supposed to be. Since individual morals and community standards vary, one would think that the burden would be on the prosecution, but feminazis in Canada have seen fit to try to push the burden on the defense, with some success.
Another example of this kind of feminazi pressure is, in custody disputes, the fact that a woman's accusations of abuse need not be substantiated by fact, but a man's do (this was a real problem in BC c. 1995-1996). The justification is that the woman is "scared of retribution" and will testify only reluctantly, so the scantiest evidence must be true.
Finally, statistics (from the same period) in Ontario reveal that 98% of recorded domestic violence cases involve men striking women... not surprising once you consider that police are required to record such forms of battery, but not the reverse. This distorted statistic helps feminazis to lobby for more preferential treatment under the law.
As I said, under such circumstances, it is not surprising that there is hatred toward feminazis that gets misdirected toward women in general.
However, the game player who has sex with and kills a virtual woman in a game may be playing out a fantasy where he "gets even" with such a feminazi and not an arbitrary woman. In such a legal environment, I would not consider this irrational.
Still, is it any wonder that injustice breeds violence as a potential response?
In the United States of America, the dollar sign comes before the numeric amount.
In most parts of Canada (part of the North American continent, and thus America), the same is true.
In Quebec (by law), and possibly other predominantly French parts of Canada, the dollar sign comes after the numeric amount (the period is replaced with a comma, and the thousands separator is a space -- go figure).
So, please, do not say "fucking Canadians" (though, we do do that from time to time). Please say, "fucking Quebec government".
Yeah, if the datacenter folks won't support you, and you are afraid to support yourself, and "running Windows" is mandatory, I suppose VMware would be a social hack to make this "acceptable".
However...
Realize that you still have the Linux support problems which likely make you fear it in the first place, plus the need to support vmware as well.
You clearly are operating under a policy where you can't get the help you need and don't have confidence in your own skills in the area to be self-sufficient. Neither of these is meant as a disparaging comment on it's own (no one knows everything, after all), but it does mean that your support policies are insufficient to meet your real-world needs. Ignoring these real world needs as "real", in favour of simplifying your data center's support requirements strikes me as rather stupid, or at least nearsighted, though I don't know on who's part.
Really, loopback-mounting the.iso images on a Linux box that serves up SMB shares, using Samba, is probably the easiest way to get this done -- you're not running a changing or complex environment on the Linux box, you're simply serving files, so stability should not be a major problem. You're also in luck, as many, many others have "snuck" Samba on Linux into operational environments when faced with problems such as yours, generally with a positive experience.
So, I stand by my suggestion: install a minimal Linux distribution, with Samba (Red Hat should do fine). Duplicate over another machine if you worry about hardware failures. Experience suggests that this really does result in the lowest TCO -- this isn't bleeding edge Linux stuff.
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O.K., sorry for all the shouting, but it was a real pain to not have an FTP server on my MSDOS box at work with which to share files. Telnetting in from another PC to run a C program I was working on was pure Nirvana, as well. In those dim, dark, almost forgotten days, Linux provided a stepwise improvement in access to my PC.
I've stuck with it since, happily accepting shortcomings in convenience in other areas.
It's even worse than this.
People think that even if "they" do do that, it will not be to *them*, but to someone who "deserves" it. The problem here is that people accept the law as a blunt instrument to be wielded when an appropriately fine one is not available (because the particular circumstance was excempt under the more specific law) -- can't have criminals going free on technicalities, can we?
I suspect that a more effective, though certainly more radical, campaign, would be to ask, "If you don't think they would do this, but do think it would be wrong if they tried to do it to you or me, would you think it wrong if I used whatever force is necessary, including killing them, to stop them?"
Place it in concrete terms: "Do you think it's acceptable, if regrettable, to kill someone who refuses to stop stealing your stuff, if they're armed and threatening? Is a copy you made for later viewing, yours, or not? If someone tried to kidnap you for simply making the copy would you not resist with all your might?"
Clearly, if someone thinks that a law is absurd, unconstitutional, and would not be applied in practice, they should not reject the notion of fighting it if it is applied (yeah, we know it is "when" and not "if"). Anyone who objects over illegal resistance (and let's be clear: we're talking about killing police who try to arrest you for telling someone how to timeshift a movie -- this either gets you "off", for defending your constitutional rights, or fried in the electric chair), should be pointed to the Constitution (in the U.S.A., anyway): you are acting legally -- they are the criminals here.
I suspect that most people accept blunt law because it allows the "legal" arrest of miscreants that would otherwise skate on the thin edge of legality and still do stuff most would disaprove of. "They" know this... that's why they file charges against "hackers", but back off when dealing with "respectible" university professors (i.e. Felten).
The danger of threating deadly force, even in defense, is that it makes one appear unstable, and more in the catagory of "undesirable". And I am not advocating that one do this unless they are quite prepared to live with the consequences. Many would advocate a passive approach, but I am not one to martyr myself (timeshift the movie and willingly let myself be arrested). At some point, if you're not willing to use force to defend your rights, others will use force to take them away.
I suspect that a two-pronged approach, with numbers of passive "victims" mounting and the odd sensational skirmish is what it will take to reverse this frightning trend.
Of course, any such forceful approach, without the backing of law or decree means that you are interpreting the law yourself: you are a vigilante. How that is perceived depends largly on timing: with large numbers of martyred time-shifters rotting in jail, this might be an acceptable tactic. I raise the possibility now, and not when we are seeing widespread arrests because, like any forceful tactic, it has to be thought out very carefully in advance so as to have the greatest liklihood of apparent legitimacy when it is employed.
...only being able to rent your movies, music, thoughts and ideas: welcome to the DMCA.
Destruction of
Media
Convenience for
Americans
Readers here will know that I want to stream media (uncompressed audio and at least MP@ML MPEG2 video) from a central server a the headend to entertainment devices throught the home with quiet (i.e. fanless, diskless) set top-box style client boxes. The issue becomes: how to control everything.
The Web browser has become a rather useful and ubiquitous interface, espescially with the advent of MIME and plug-in technology. You just go the the appropriate site and get what you want. One can imagine controlling home entertainment devices and requesting streamed content this way. But, where do you put the browser display?
On the TV? It's of klunky to have to turn on the TV to stream some music. Do you really want a browser window on the same screen on which you're watching a movie? O.K., so we add another screen, say an LCD panel, nice and flat, for that display. Great, now you have to squint across the room at your browser. Spend the bucks on a big enough plasma display and once again, you've integrated the control display with the content display. Double plus uncool. What you (well, I) want is a high-resolution (compared to broadcast TV, 800x600 is fine, but 1024x768 would be better), separate display, that is unobtrusive. A tablet PC on the coffee table fits the bill nicely.
There are some technical issues to work out: when you stream content you probably want it to go to the big-ass TV screen and big honkin' Dolby Digital 5.1 speaker system, and not the small display and speaker in the tablet PC (though that should be an option, for previews, or quiet viewing). But, that doesn't strike me as something that can't be handled with some kind of selective proxy in a room (that splits off the right kind of content for local processing rather than send it to the tablet PC).
Of course, the tablet PC now doubles as a convenient Web Pad, letting you surf the net without having to tie up the entertainment devices, perhaps even while watching a movie, or listening to music (perhaps you want to order more pizza). The unit is going to be expensive no matter what, so it should be functional. And this leads to a weakness in all such devices.
You really, really, do want some convenient means for data entry, like the ability to fire off a short email, or response. It doesn't have to be designed for hours of continuous use, but it should not be so difficult as to make one want to leave the room to send that two line email, or order that pizza, using a "real" computer instead. A slide down or even an unfolding keyboard would be nice, but not a clamshell design: you want to lay the thing flat on a coffee table and still be able to glance at the display and pick it up and use it "like a remote" on a moment's notice -- no fumbling to open a clamshell just to see a display or hit a few buttons on the touch-screen.
So, such a unit needs two things: (a) easy (though not for long periods of time) keyboard data entry, and (b) a fast enough data link to support content-rich browsing in it's own right.
Make that, and I might just spend $1000 for one.
But that is not the same as "one who invests capital".
I would suggest that it is perfectly reasonable to define capital as "that which can be invested, leveraged, or traded for a more desirable thing, whether tangible or intagible"; capitalist as "one who so invests"; and capitalism as "a prevelent system where individuals are free to operate as capitalists".
Note that by this definition, kings, nobles, serfs, slaves and slave-masters, wage-earners, employers, and hunter-gatherers are all capitalist.
Not quite: serfs and slaves, in particular are often restricted by force from engaging in such transactions because they are not recognized as owning any source of capital, not even their own labour.
Either the copy protection is there, in which case it violates the Red Book standard, and the clerk lied...
Or it isn't there, and the packaging that says it is is deceitful.
The best think for the clerk to say, if he/she is clueless is "I don't know", at which point you escalate the issue.
Of course, this lets you build what M$ thinks you should build, and not necessarily what you want to build.
I think is a polite way of saying, "LIES".
One of the most odeous things about the DMCA is that it prohibits commerce in a tool that has legitimate uses.
The guy who spends thou$ands a year will damn well get his defective $15 CD refunded, almost certainly.
As for disk drives, I think we had a diskless client set top box in mind, with content streamed from a server elsewhere.
The GCT Allwell VIP3030n is really nice, though the processor may be a bit underpowered for rendering comples web pages as it uses an NS Geode. Still, for a/v streaming, it's probably fine.
I've been looking for something similar.
Basically: ethernet in, audio/video out (Dolby Digital 5.1 audio and progresive scan component video would be nice), from a streamed MPEG2 source.
The problem is the "oomph" required to do MPEG2 decoding -- this usually dictates a CPU with enough horsepower to need active cooling. However, if you look at the RealMagic Netstream 2000 by Sigma Designs, you'll find a PCI MP@ML MPEG2 TS and ES decoder card that does not require active cooling and works with a lowly P133.
One can imagine a settop box based on this combination that would fit the bill. It gets better... there is such a beast, and it runs on Linux: The VIP30306n. This little puppy uses the Sigma Designs em8400 MPEG2 chip... the same one as in the RealMagic Netstream2000.
The downside is price: the Netstream2000 runs around US$220, and I'd expect that the GCT Allwell box would be US$500 or so.
I guess I got what I asked for: an exchange of Karma in order that the parent get modded up, but that wasn't what I really meant.:-)
Seriously, this should be rated Insightful and Interesting.
What makes it capitalist is the deployment of "capital" which is money or at least sufficiently liquid to be able to be deployed in a number of activities, so that there's an element of choice involved for the capitalist ("where will I deploy my capital today?"), and that the capital is deployed in order to produce something which will then be sold to recoup more capital.
Well, the choice could just as easily be what kind of capital do I deploy? A person with bread and fish has two kinds of "capital" if you will, but might only find a single person interested in either. Now, I disagree that capital need be invested to reap yet more capital, ad infinitum. This presumes that there is no value to be derived from consumption. Certainly there is value to be derived from continued living which requires that we eat (and I think it silly to consider our symbiotic relationship with the bacteria that break down our bodily wastes investment on our part).
Something which is produced to be given away free may be part of a capitalist process if that giveaway contributes to sales of something else, of course.
Well, yes, but it need not be.
I suspect that our fundemental differences lie in the fact that I consider the pursuit of individual hapiness, subject to not interfering with others' similar pursuits, an acceptable driving force for human endevour, whereas you seek to justify the process of exchange as that driving force. I do not consider the individual subordinate to the group.
Yes, because you can't take that "sheer joy" and use it to do something else; the "sheer joy" is an end in itself, something directly consumed and not a valuable input into some other economic enterprise.
And, since I value the individual over the group, I consider this perfectly acceptable -- nothing is lost if one does things in pursuit of happiness. Such activities are legitimately valuable investments of one's capital, and ultimately the desired goal of all investment.
I don't think I understand this statement - could you explain?
I believe that the motivating force behind all economic activity is individual desire, and group benefit is merely an aggregate side effect when individuals do not harm others to benefit themselves. Thus, an economic view centered on the individual serves this model better than one centered on the "needs" or "morals" of a group.
In short, I am a libertarian, and you strike me as a "socialist".
What I wonder though, is if the instability caused by perpetual artificial scarcity can be damped by removing some of the positive feedback elements: viz. overbroad patents. Would that be sufficient?
I'm starting to see why we differ (I think).
I view capitalist, as any mechanism for leveraging a resource for a perceived gain, but it appears that you (and the article's author) recognize this as capitalist only when such a trade would be generally recognised as beneficial.
So, highly personal activities, which might be viewed by the participant as beneficial if only for the sheer joy of doing them, are capitalist in my book, but probably not in yours. I happen to prefer my definition because the greater leverage or productivity arises out of such personal tradeoffs in a greater free market.
I suppose this only shows that reasonable people can disagree.
The problem with a "media server" is just how do you serve media? Until some form of home networking is ubiquitious (wireless, or ethernet), the media server will have to be a media client as well: quiet (i.e. fanless), spiffy case and display, come with a remote, and probably TV out for display. That kind of contradicts, "have mondo disk space for audio and video".
A media server is little more than a glorified file server, perhaps with the ability to read local CDs and/or DVDs, and download content from the internet. Like a furnace, or water heater, it doesn't have to look nice or be particularly quiet. Of course, as long as it's going to be network connected, it may as well be a caching news server, non-relaying mail server, and the ntp gateway for the house. It might even firewall for you, but I prefer a dedicated router/firewall for that.
Unfortunately the value that such a device provides only becomes apparent when you have (a) an always-on internet connection, and (b) a networked home: after all why bother loading all your CDs in a box in your entertainment centre, when they would be located in your entertainment centre anyway? Is it worth that much to not have to get up and change a disk? Even then, CD changers have gotten cheap. All the other functions that such a server can perform (oh, yeah, add answering machine), just can't happen without network connectivity.
The real value of a media server is that it sits out of sight, and can have more storage added as necessary, with media clients scattered around the house. CDs and DVDs can be archived out of site as well. DVR functionality belongs here too.
This simplifies what the media clients have to do... they basically become web browsers with audio and video outputs, and that's it. Some might have the ability to accept local media, but without local hard disk storage. Others might be fully integrated "receivers" with audio amplifier sections. Still others might be "televisions" with ethernet ports. But the common theme is to get the content stored elsewhere, whether streamed remotely, or cached on a media server in the home.
Its a great dream, and one that I've had for a while -- I'm only now slowly starting to set up an uncompressed audio server, and will likely DivX encode my VHS tapes. But, for most homes, I suspect it won't become a reality until always-on network connections are the norm (so the other services can be provided), and traditional legacy devices start to be network aware (whether wired or wireless).
I use Leviton 24"x14" metal wallmount panels for the wiring headend and brought all the telco and ethernet (both on Cat5e, natch.) into one, and the COAX for terrestrial and satellite TV into the other. That cleans up the wiring a lot.
Now to the relevance of this to the need for a server room: once you've got most of the wiring squirled away, what's left that you need fancy racks, with multiple servers that will be serious heat daemons? Are you really going to stuff a beowolf in there?
My guess is that you'll have one server for incoming email, and if you use an appropriate router/firewall, you can have it on the inside of your firewall, serving double duty for NIS, NTP, news caching, DNS caching, and all those other services that you want to distribute and perhaps connect to externally (i.e. NTP).
You can use the same or another server for local data/media storage for distribution through the house. Add a UPS and your done. This is what I plan. My only mistake was not wiring an home run to the headend in the same room as the headend.
The only way I can see you needing more servers there is if you want to set up a compute farm. I'd be half-tempted to either (a) consider a different location for a server-farm co-located with the headend, or (b) use another room/closet.
Oh, I just suggested a cross-platform format... Use something like Clearcase, CVS, RCS, or PVCS for version control.
cross-platform independent format (dunno if there's a Linux version, though).
The problem stems from the fact that consent can be implied... she never even suggested to stop, but never explicitly said, "yes" (just smiled and beconed to the bedroom).
The context in which this becomes a problem is a situation where expectations of a subsequent relationship weren't clear: he wanted a one night stand, and she thought this was the start of something. Since her expectations were not met, it must have been rape, no? [obviously, I think no]. So the problem reduces to what "default" expectations are supposed to be. Since individual morals and community standards vary, one would think that the burden would be on the prosecution, but feminazis in Canada have seen fit to try to push the burden on the defense, with some success.
Another example of this kind of feminazi pressure is, in custody disputes, the fact that a woman's accusations of abuse need not be substantiated by fact, but a man's do (this was a real problem in BC c. 1995-1996). The justification is that the woman is "scared of retribution" and will testify only reluctantly, so the scantiest evidence must be true.
Finally, statistics (from the same period) in Ontario reveal that 98% of recorded domestic violence cases involve men striking women... not surprising once you consider that police are required to record such forms of battery, but not the reverse. This distorted statistic helps feminazis to lobby for more preferential treatment under the law.
As I said, under such circumstances, it is not surprising that there is hatred toward feminazis that gets misdirected toward women in general.
However, the game player who has sex with and kills a virtual woman in a game may be playing out a fantasy where he "gets even" with such a feminazi and not an arbitrary woman. In such a legal environment, I would not consider this irrational.
Still, is it any wonder that injustice breeds violence as a potential response?
Er, no.
In the United States of America, the dollar sign comes before the numeric amount.
In most parts of Canada (part of the North American continent, and thus America), the same is true.
In Quebec (by law), and possibly other predominantly French parts of Canada, the dollar sign comes after the numeric amount (the period is replaced with a comma, and the thousands separator is a space -- go figure).
So, please, do not say "fucking Canadians" (though, we do do that from time to time). Please say, "fucking Quebec government".
However...
Realize that you still have the Linux support problems which likely make you fear it in the first place, plus the need to support vmware as well.
You clearly are operating under a policy where you can't get the help you need and don't have confidence in your own skills in the area to be self-sufficient. Neither of these is meant as a disparaging comment on it's own (no one knows everything, after all), but it does mean that your support policies are insufficient to meet your real-world needs. Ignoring these real world needs as "real", in favour of simplifying your data center's support requirements strikes me as rather stupid, or at least nearsighted, though I don't know on who's part.
Really, loopback-mounting the .iso images on a Linux box that serves up SMB shares, using Samba, is probably the easiest way to get this done -- you're not running a changing or complex environment on the Linux box, you're simply serving files, so stability should not be a major problem. You're also in luck, as many, many others have "snuck" Samba on Linux into operational environments when faced with problems such as yours, generally with a positive experience.
So, I stand by my suggestion: install a minimal Linux distribution, with Samba (Red Hat should do fine). Duplicate over another machine if you worry about hardware failures. Experience suggests that this really does result in the lowest TCO -- this isn't bleeding edge Linux stuff.