And to think, with all the advancements that Hubble is making, they still want to decommission the thing.
Maybe they are suggesting decommisioning the Hubble for the same reason that schools often cut extracurricular sports first when budgets get tight. If it is something people care about, they will cough up the money. Hubble is fantastic but expensive to operate and they might have to cut dozens of smaller programs to equal the savings from mothballing it. Joe Sixpack certainly wouldn't agree to pay for all those other programs but he might be willing to pay for just one especially since he gets cool wallpapers for his desktop from it.
According to
this article
Hubble has cost about 2B plus about 2B more in operating costs while its replacement will supposedly cost a total of about 1.2 B. Of course, when is the last time something came in under budget? But even a savings of just a couple billion adds up to a lot of science that can be done elsewhere. 2B or not 2B? That is the question. (couldn't resist)
Sun doesn't have to tank. They have the resouces to change their business model, but they will have to either create a new market or carve out a new niche in an existing market. They won't be able to make it going head to head against Dell and HP selling Wintel PC's.
In short, they ought to do like Netscape did, and I'm sure even McNealy would rather do that than any other alternative...
A couple years ago I might have argued against you but now I think you are right. Back then MS was not yet set on their.Net Java imitator strategy. But now that they are, there is much less chance that they would spend the necessary resources to "embrace and extend" Java. Netscape was in just the same situation when they open sourced their browser.
Right now, Java has a bigger developer base. Java runs on a plethora of processors and OS's while.Net is stuck on Ms Windows. But MS still has a monopoly on the desktop and that can be used to leverage their way into control over middleware just as they've done in the past.
Sun is making some money on Star Office (and notice that is at the expense of MS Office.) That income will grow faster if the Linux desktop grows. They are making some money on Java too but that will end if they open source it, but it would help the Linux desktop to grow faster.
So McNealy is in the difficult position of deciding whether to completely cut off a source of income right away or watch it slowly peter out as MS uses the desktop to "cut off their air supply." And he has to make this decision at the same time that Unix sales are decreasing.
And that was found by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional... Because, you see, that was a violation of the privacy of a person in his house.
I just looked it up. The decision was Kyllo vs. US 99-8508. I am happy to read the broad language in the majority opinion discouraging infringements such as this in the future. Contrary to your statements this decision affirms that my concept of fourth amendments rights are correct.
Being in a house is only relevant to the extent that the interior of a home is 'the prototypical and hence most commonly litigated area of protected privacy' as stated by Justice Scalia in the afformentioned opinion. Notice he did not say the home interior is the only consitutionally protected area of privacy! He was just pointing out that it is SO obviously a protected area that there was no need to question it.
Similarly, your other attempts at reductios (the tent and the bathroom) also run into the plain meaning of the Fourth Amendment -- good ol' "effects" and "persons", respectively.
If you go back and actually read my post which you replied to, you will find that the tent and bathroom examples were being used to point out the absurdity of spycraft-fu's comments. So despite your adverserial tone you are actually supporting my argument.
So, small towns in rural areas are police states? Public semi-anonymity is an artifact of high-density population centers. Outside of them, it does not and never has existed
This is completely false. In the very small town that I moved to only a handful of people know me. And even if all small towns were exactly like Mayberry RFD you have neglected the every other type of community in the country which all abide by the same constitutional law. So it is you who attempted a "reductio".
My original post dealt with the changes in civil rights caused by a continual assault on the very meaning of the words in the law. I never challenged the constitutionality of performing unwarranted computerized searches on citizens driving innocently through town, by using superhuman sensory equipment, but if you want to look at that, then let's.
uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment search, and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.
Thus,
obtaining by senseenhancing technology any information regarding the home s interior that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical intrusion into a constitutionally protected area, Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505, 512, constitutes a search at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use. This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted. Pp. 6 7.
Take special note of that statement, 'This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.' This is the pith of my argument and Scalia understands too that we must not let our civil rights be eroded!
The Court rejects the Government s argument that the thermal imaging must be upheld because it detected only heat radiating from the home s external surface. Such a mechanical interpretation of the Fourth Amendment was rejected in Katz, where the eavesdropping device in question picked up only sound waves that reached the exterior of the phone booth to which it was attached. Reversing that approach would leave the homeowner
I talked about how the government is chipping away at "reasonable expectations of privacy" and how they are going about it. There is a difference which you obviously aren't aware of, of between being off your own property and being in public. If what you say is true then when I camp in a national forest any government employee may enter my tent to observe me, if I take a shit in a federal building then the fbi may raise a periscope up my ass and secretly give me a colonoscopy.
There are already cases such as police using infrared video cameras to find houses giving off a lot of heat and using that as probable cause that marijuana is being grown there under sun lamps. If things like this are allowed to pass then soon they won't use infrared, they could view terahertz frequencies to literally look right through your walls but not people since you are made of water. We don't need Officer Wiggams watching free peep shows or anything that might go on in a private residence by using superhuman sensory equipment. If he can smell marijuana smoke from the sidewalk that is fine, but using an all-knowing, all-seeing computer aided magic-eye is something all together different.
Your way of thinking is shortsighted and doesn't take into account that it is new technology that is allowing these abuses. Government has never had these opportunities before and that is why the issues are not yet resolved. Whatever your reason is for wanting the public to lose its (what I will call) public semi-anonymity, I urge you to consider the other side of the coin because your children and grandchildren will have to live in the police state that you seem to hope for.
at least [they say] they're not going to be storing all this info in perpetuity.
Of course not. Why should they do that when the Office of Fatherland Security can store it for them much more efficiently including redundant backups?
Seriously though, one of the ways that the fourth amendment is being attacked is by convincing the public that the word "reasonable" means something to the effect of "not objectionable to most people" (as in 'Come on into Crazy Eddies, I've got the most reasonable prices around!') Then telling the public we have a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' and continually reducing that expectation bit by bit over the years.
But the Founders wrote the Constitution using legal definitions not colloquialisms. A reading of the amendment specifically mentions oaths, affirmation, and specificity of any search to be performed. The concept of reasonableness as it is used in the Constitution is more along the lines of "able to be reasoned (deduced) from actual evidence or charges made by accountable persons". If we don't object to this hijacking of the original intent of the document then we are surrendering our freedom without a fight. Stand up and be counted. Study the 4th amendment then write your congressman and let him know that you understand what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote it and you want him to uphold our highest law as it was written.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
These words are simple to understand. They were written by eloquent men, who didn't have cell phones, instant messaging, or voicemail. They wrote letters to communicate. They were good at writing what they meant. We shouldn't let ourselves be confused by replacing exacting legal definitions with informal, modern usages.
- With small bombardments of various charged particles at assorted energies (in case some component of bacground or cosmic radiation is a trigger of a short chain-reaction).
I wondered about this myself. I suppose another test would be to perform the experiment in a deep mine which might be preferable since we wouldn't have to guess which component of cosmic rays and which associated energies to bombard with. Of course then we look for the absence of repeatable results.
resulting in lots of potential for interactions that would not be observed in the disordered environment of a plasma or liquid.
That sounds similar to things I have read about chemical reactions being induced inside buckyballs, sort of an atomic "cage match".:)
His idea is that the deuterium nuclei exchange vibrational energy, or "phonons," with the surrounding palladium atoms. That exchange could enhance nuclear interactions that would otherwise be vanishingly small, so that the reactions can occur at the rates implied by cold fusion experiments.
In this quote from the article it says that Hagelstein's theory has to do with vibrational energy which sounds very interesting. I thought of it as the deuterium atoms jostling about yet being locked in place kind of like a slab of gelatin. And what if longitudinal waves were caused to propagate through the deuterium in the lattice? Might under certain circumstances the hydrogen atoms be vibrated at some certain natural frequency so that adjacent deuterium atoms are slammed into one another like a microscopic atom smasher? The wavelength of this frequency wouldn't even need to be as small as the cells of the lattice. It may be that the reaction only takes place at the nodes of the harmonic, similar to your suggestion that it might take place only at crystal boundaries.
"Even a simplten with a mere IQ of 210 will be able to understand these drawings, no need to document"
I saw somewhere that DaVinci purposely put flaws into his drawings as a type of copy protection. Only another genius would be able to see the flaw and build the device correctly. This would come in handy if his plans were stolen or captured since many of his designs were commissioned for siege craft.
Actually I was thinking of all the projects that haven't even made it to 1.0 yet. Just go to Sourceforge and browse through the lists. Even the active projects often don't have much in the way of documentation.
While I agree with much of what the author says I think she needs to take into account the reasons behind some of these truths.
1. User interface design
I see bad interface design not just in the open source world but in the commercial world too. I have seen absolutely horrible interfaces in Medical, Legal, Law Enforcement, ERP, and CRM packages that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cause is not the development philosophy. The cause is inexperience in designing a good GUI. If you haven't been forced to do it a few times and internalized the lessons you learned, then you won't build a good interface on your next project, and it doesn't matter whether you are working for CA, EMC, or just for the good of all mankind.
2. Documentation
Open source project teams are often nothing but programmers. Open source projects change quickly so keeping documentation for end users in tune with the code would be a waste of time and motivation. End users trying to use version 0.62 of Project XYZ shouldn't expect a finished product. This would be like trying to use the Windows NT 5.0 beta in a production environment and then complaining that it doesn't work worth a damn and that the documentation was written for Windows NT 4.
3. Feature-centric
This is a valid concern, I believe. It is a fact of human nature to want to do the fun, cool, high profile stuff and leave the dull tedious bits for later, and to top it off many OSS projects are being written by college age kids who expect instant gratification or they lose interest. Code monkeys on commercial projects ultimately have to answer to management. This tends to keep them more disciplined. OSS developers must have the self discipline to run their project the way they would if their career depended on it.
4. Programming for the self
This seems mostly a rehash of her User Interface arguments and my comments are similar to what I said above. I really like the way she spoke of a 'target audience' though because building a user interface really is rather like writing a paper or giving a speech. How well it is received depends on how the audience perceives it, not how the speaker or writer conceives it.
5. Religious Blindness
I completely agree with the author here. I have never seen an "innovation" in Windows that I didn't first see somewhere else. Why should OSS projects turn up their noses at the Windows interface when much of it was taken in bits and pieces from Linux/Unix/Mac/OS2/whathaveyou in the first place. Emulate the interface that 95% of all computer users are familiar with now. We can get jiggy with it later.
Sun had $5B in the bank before this deal. They won't be out of business that soon. The reason why Sun isn't two worried about it's low stock price is that they still have large cash reserves and can stay afloat for a while.
I would never have guessed that they had 5B in reserves since the article states that 'For Sun, whose credit rating was cut to junk last month by Standard & Poor's, it is most welcome.' It is difficult for me to believe that S&P would cut someone's rating to junk status if they had that kind of money lying around.
I think that is the plan actually. Linux is Xplatform so the bigger Linux gets the bigger the pie the hardware makers can split since businesses will happily pay a premium for good solid hardware and support. You would have the same comfortable kernel running all the same software, but recompiled for each different platform, of course. Linux will someday fulfill the dream of a unified Unix.
For the last decade there has been absolutely no difference between various brands of PC's. They are all designed and built by the same overseas companies with an OEM's name plastered on the front. But if Linux was the biggest OS around then hardware would matter when it came to setting the price. They can argue that Sparc or PowerPC or PA-Risc or Itanium or whatever is better but they don't have to cut their price just because Peckered-Hell is selling the exact same hardware for $50 less.
MS tried this with NT4 on several different chips but it didn't work out. I wonder what lessons can be learned from their failure.
Buried under the headlines about the love-in with Microsoft on April 2nd was Sun's announcement that the latest quarter's losses are likely to be $750m-810m--worse than expected
At that rate the 1.6 to 2B USD will be gone in just a few quarters. And I'm sorry Mr. Schwartz but selling cheap commodity hardware at razor thin margins will not help much. The only way that strategy will work is if Linux becomes the de facto standard and Sun distinguishes itself with its Sparc hardware. But that will take years and 2B doesn't seem like enough to bankroll it. Can Sun hold out long enough? Unix sales are collapsing fast. What are they going to do for money in the meantime? And will they break rank like SCO and try to preserve short term revenue at the cost of their long term viability?
I just can't help myself. Look at that handshake in the picture. McNealy looks like Steve Irwin,
the Crocodile Hunter, cautious not to get any body parts too close to the mouth. Crikey!
now to a techie following a recipie, this is a piece of cake. However, it is quite beyond the capabilities of your avg windows user.
Installing a printer driver or a new app is beyond the capabilities of your average windows user. This article seems to be written as an introduction for the next wave of people who will be dealing with Linux, average sysadmins who can do some things in Windows but are not experts. If things are done right, average windows users won't have to worry about any of this stuff for at least a few more years. By then they may be more comfortable with it from using it at work and KDE and Gnome will have become almost idiot proof.
Our strategory is to maintain the new world order with our nucular capableness while simultanically hunting down criminables like Osama Bin Laden to stop their terroristic practicings.
The 5x and 2.2x numbers do give some answers, but they seem to only be looking at those who were exposed to high levels of radiation right after the meltdown and who then moved out of the poisoned area. I am curious about those who were never exposed to the highest levels and have been living with moderate levels of radiation for years now.
There was an article in Scientific American magazine several months ago which talked about a theory that exposure to higher than normal (but not excessive) radiation and trace chemicals might actually make people live longer due to the body having to repair itself and triage its cells more diligently. This seems like a good opportunity to test that theory.
Also, the area may be a good approximation of the populated areas after a nuclear war. Even though the cold war is over between the US and USSR, we may be closer to seeing millions die from nuclear weapons for example between India and Pakistan or from terrorist bombings in London or New York.
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't realize that it wouldn't be obvious to everyone, but I was talking about K-12.
Maybe they are suggesting decommisioning the Hubble for the same reason that schools often cut extracurricular sports first when budgets get tight. If it is something people care about, they will cough up the money. Hubble is fantastic but expensive to operate and they might have to cut dozens of smaller programs to equal the savings from mothballing it. Joe Sixpack certainly wouldn't agree to pay for all those other programs but he might be willing to pay for just one especially since he gets cool wallpapers for his desktop from it.
According to this article Hubble has cost about 2B plus about 2B more in operating costs while its replacement will supposedly cost a total of about 1.2 B. Of course, when is the last time something came in under budget? But even a savings of just a couple billion adds up to a lot of science that can be done elsewhere. 2B or not 2B? That is the question. (couldn't resist)
Sun doesn't have to tank. They have the resouces to change their business model, but they will have to either create a new market or carve out a new niche in an existing market. They won't be able to make it going head to head against Dell and HP selling Wintel PC's.
In short, they ought to do like Netscape did, and I'm sure even McNealy would rather do that than any other alternative...
A couple years ago I might have argued against you but now I think you are right. Back then MS was not yet set on their .Net Java imitator strategy. But now that they are, there is much less chance that they would spend the necessary resources to "embrace and extend" Java. Netscape was in just the same situation when they open sourced their browser.
Right now, Java has a bigger developer base. Java runs on a plethora of processors and OS's while .Net is stuck on Ms Windows. But MS still has a monopoly on the desktop and that can be used to leverage their way into control over middleware just as they've done in the past.
Sun is making some money on Star Office (and notice that is at the expense of MS Office.) That income will grow faster if the Linux desktop grows. They are making some money on Java too but that will end if they open source it, but it would help the Linux desktop to grow faster.
So McNealy is in the difficult position of deciding whether to completely cut off a source of income right away or watch it slowly peter out as MS uses the desktop to "cut off their air supply." And he has to make this decision at the same time that Unix sales are decreasing.
I just looked it up. The decision was Kyllo vs. US 99-8508. I am happy to read the broad language in the majority opinion discouraging infringements such as this in the future. Contrary to your statements this decision affirms that my concept of fourth amendments rights are correct. Being in a house is only relevant to the extent that the interior of a home is 'the prototypical and hence most commonly litigated area of protected privacy' as stated by Justice Scalia in the afformentioned opinion. Notice he did not say the home interior is the only consitutionally protected area of privacy! He was just pointing out that it is SO obviously a protected area that there was no need to question it.
Similarly, your other attempts at reductios (the tent and the bathroom) also run into the plain meaning of the Fourth Amendment -- good ol' "effects" and "persons", respectively.
If you go back and actually read my post which you replied to, you will find that the tent and bathroom examples were being used to point out the absurdity of spycraft-fu's comments. So despite your adverserial tone you are actually supporting my argument.
So, small towns in rural areas are police states? Public semi-anonymity is an artifact of high-density population centers. Outside of them, it does not and never has existed
This is completely false. In the very small town that I moved to only a handful of people know me. And even if all small towns were exactly like Mayberry RFD you have neglected the every other type of community in the country which all abide by the same constitutional law. So it is you who attempted a "reductio".
My original post dealt with the changes in civil rights caused by a continual assault on the very meaning of the words in the law. I never challenged the constitutionality of performing unwarranted computerized searches on citizens driving innocently through town, by using superhuman sensory equipment, but if you want to look at that, then let's.
From the same Supreme Court decision as above, here are a few choice quotes:
Take special note of that statement, 'This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.' This is the pith of my argument and Scalia understands too that we must not let our civil rights be eroded!
I talked about how the government is chipping away at "reasonable expectations of privacy" and how they are going about it. There is a difference which you obviously aren't aware of, of between being off your own property and being in public. If what you say is true then when I camp in a national forest any government employee may enter my tent to observe me, if I take a shit in a federal building then the fbi may raise a periscope up my ass and secretly give me a colonoscopy.
There are already cases such as police using infrared video cameras to find houses giving off a lot of heat and using that as probable cause that marijuana is being grown there under sun lamps. If things like this are allowed to pass then soon they won't use infrared, they could view terahertz frequencies to literally look right through your walls but not people since you are made of water. We don't need Officer Wiggams watching free peep shows or anything that might go on in a private residence by using superhuman sensory equipment. If he can smell marijuana smoke from the sidewalk that is fine, but using an all-knowing, all-seeing computer aided magic-eye is something all together different.
Your way of thinking is shortsighted and doesn't take into account that it is new technology that is allowing these abuses. Government has never had these opportunities before and that is why the issues are not yet resolved. Whatever your reason is for wanting the public to lose its (what I will call) public semi-anonymity, I urge you to consider the other side of the coin because your children and grandchildren will have to live in the police state that you seem to hope for.
Of course not. Why should they do that when the Office of Fatherland Security can store it for them much more efficiently including redundant backups?
Seriously though, one of the ways that the fourth amendment is being attacked is by convincing the public that the word "reasonable" means something to the effect of "not objectionable to most people" (as in 'Come on into Crazy Eddies, I've got the most reasonable prices around!') Then telling the public we have a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' and continually reducing that expectation bit by bit over the years.
But the Founders wrote the Constitution using legal definitions not colloquialisms. A reading of the amendment specifically mentions oaths, affirmation, and specificity of any search to be performed. The concept of reasonableness as it is used in the Constitution is more along the lines of "able to be reasoned (deduced) from actual evidence or charges made by accountable persons". If we don't object to this hijacking of the original intent of the document then we are surrendering our freedom without a fight. Stand up and be counted. Study the 4th amendment then write your congressman and let him know that you understand what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote it and you want him to uphold our highest law as it was written.
These words are simple to understand. They were written by eloquent men, who didn't have cell phones, instant messaging, or voicemail. They wrote letters to communicate. They were good at writing what they meant. We shouldn't let ourselves be confused by replacing exacting legal definitions with informal, modern usages.I wondered about this myself. I suppose another test would be to perform the experiment in a deep mine which might be preferable since we wouldn't have to guess which component of cosmic rays and which associated energies to bombard with. Of course then we look for the absence of repeatable results.
resulting in lots of potential for interactions that would not be observed in the disordered environment of a plasma or liquid.
That sounds similar to things I have read about chemical reactions being induced inside buckyballs, sort of an atomic "cage match". :)
In this quote from the article it says that Hagelstein's theory has to do with vibrational energy which sounds very interesting. I thought of it as the deuterium atoms jostling about yet being locked in place kind of like a slab of gelatin. And what if longitudinal waves were caused to propagate through the deuterium in the lattice? Might under certain circumstances the hydrogen atoms be vibrated at some certain natural frequency so that adjacent deuterium atoms are slammed into one another like a microscopic atom smasher? The wavelength of this frequency wouldn't even need to be as small as the cells of the lattice. It may be that the reaction only takes place at the nodes of the harmonic, similar to your suggestion that it might take place only at crystal boundaries.I saw somewhere that DaVinci purposely put flaws into his drawings as a type of copy protection. Only another genius would be able to see the flaw and build the device correctly. This would come in handy if his plans were stolen or captured since many of his designs were commissioned for siege craft.
I used to burn ants with a magnifying glass and they think I'm going to stare at the sun with a telescope?
Just when you thought his political career was over...
I didn't even know I wanted it till I found out I couldn't have it.
after Sony releases the new College-ruled version.
That can't be right. My resume says I have 20 years of Perl experience.
Actually I was thinking of all the projects that haven't even made it to 1.0 yet. Just go to Sourceforge and browse through the lists. Even the active projects often don't have much in the way of documentation.
While I agree with much of what the author says I think she needs to take into account the reasons behind some of these truths.
1. User interface design
I see bad interface design not just in the open source world but in the commercial world too. I have seen absolutely horrible interfaces in Medical, Legal, Law Enforcement, ERP, and CRM packages that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cause is not the development philosophy. The cause is inexperience in designing a good GUI. If you haven't been forced to do it a few times and internalized the lessons you learned, then you won't build a good interface on your next project, and it doesn't matter whether you are working for CA, EMC, or just for the good of all mankind.
2. Documentation
Open source project teams are often nothing but programmers. Open source projects change quickly so keeping documentation for end users in tune with the code would be a waste of time and motivation. End users trying to use version 0.62 of Project XYZ shouldn't expect a finished product. This would be like trying to use the Windows NT 5.0 beta in a production environment and then complaining that it doesn't work worth a damn and that the documentation was written for Windows NT 4.
3. Feature-centric
This is a valid concern, I believe. It is a fact of human nature to want to do the fun, cool, high profile stuff and leave the dull tedious bits for later, and to top it off many OSS projects are being written by college age kids who expect instant gratification or they lose interest. Code monkeys on commercial projects ultimately have to answer to management. This tends to keep them more disciplined. OSS developers must have the self discipline to run their project the way they would if their career depended on it.
4. Programming for the self
This seems mostly a rehash of her User Interface arguments and my comments are similar to what I said above. I really like the way she spoke of a 'target audience' though because building a user interface really is rather like writing a paper or giving a speech. How well it is received depends on how the audience perceives it, not how the speaker or writer conceives it.
5. Religious Blindness
I completely agree with the author here. I have never seen an "innovation" in Windows that I didn't first see somewhere else. Why should OSS projects turn up their noses at the Windows interface when much of it was taken in bits and pieces from Linux/Unix/Mac/OS2/whathaveyou in the first place. Emulate the interface that 95% of all computer users are familiar with now. We can get jiggy with it later.
I would never have guessed that they had 5B in reserves since the article states that 'For Sun, whose credit rating was cut to junk last month by Standard & Poor's, it is most welcome.' It is difficult for me to believe that S&P would cut someone's rating to junk status if they had that kind of money lying around.
Really, how often do they have Tsunami there?
When it's not being powered by tidal waves it is able to convert natural energy from earthquakes to electricity.
I think that is the plan actually. Linux is Xplatform so the bigger Linux gets the bigger the pie the hardware makers can split since businesses will happily pay a premium for good solid hardware and support. You would have the same comfortable kernel running all the same software, but recompiled for each different platform, of course. Linux will someday fulfill the dream of a unified Unix.
For the last decade there has been absolutely no difference between various brands of PC's. They are all designed and built by the same overseas companies with an OEM's name plastered on the front. But if Linux was the biggest OS around then hardware would matter when it came to setting the price. They can argue that Sparc or PowerPC or PA-Risc or Itanium or whatever is better but they don't have to cut their price just because Peckered-Hell is selling the exact same hardware for $50 less.
MS tried this with NT4 on several different chips but it didn't work out. I wonder what lessons can be learned from their failure.
At that rate the 1.6 to 2B USD will be gone in just a few quarters. And I'm sorry Mr. Schwartz but selling cheap commodity hardware at razor thin margins will not help much. The only way that strategy will work is if Linux becomes the de facto standard and Sun distinguishes itself with its Sparc hardware. But that will take years and 2B doesn't seem like enough to bankroll it. Can Sun hold out long enough? Unix sales are collapsing fast. What are they going to do for money in the meantime? And will they break rank like SCO and try to preserve short term revenue at the cost of their long term viability?
I just can't help myself. Look at that handshake in the picture. McNealy looks like Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, cautious not to get any body parts too close to the mouth. Crikey!
Installing a printer driver or a new app is beyond the capabilities of your average windows user. This article seems to be written as an introduction for the next wave of people who will be dealing with Linux, average sysadmins who can do some things in Windows but are not experts. If things are done right, average windows users won't have to worry about any of this stuff for at least a few more years. By then they may be more comfortable with it from using it at work and KDE and Gnome will have become almost idiot proof.
Our strategory is to maintain the new world order with our nucular capableness while simultanically hunting down criminables like Osama Bin Laden to stop their terroristic practicings.
The 5x and 2.2x numbers do give some answers, but they seem to only be looking at those who were exposed to high levels of radiation right after the meltdown and who then moved out of the poisoned area. I am curious about those who were never exposed to the highest levels and have been living with moderate levels of radiation for years now.
There was an article in Scientific American magazine several months ago which talked about a theory that exposure to higher than normal (but not excessive) radiation and trace chemicals might actually make people live longer due to the body having to repair itself and triage its cells more diligently. This seems like a good opportunity to test that theory.
Also, the area may be a good approximation of the populated areas after a nuclear war. Even though the cold war is over between the US and USSR, we may be closer to seeing millions die from nuclear weapons for example between India and Pakistan or from terrorist bombings in London or New York.
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
'Let's burn down the observatory so this will never happen again!'
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/xtreme/