I know this post is redundant, but I can't let some innocent young person read what you wrote without the chance to hear a second voice.
Shakespeare et al were pretty good for their time, but they're outdated and superseded now.
That's one for the quotes file. Elements of Shakespeare, such as the jokes, have suffered over time. However, it's hard to see how the major histories and tradgedies are less than brilliant even by modern standards.
An analogy would be to compare primitive Mesopotamian clay sculptures to more modern artwork...
I struggle to think of a less valid analogy. Shakespeare's work was conceived and treated as art. His work is less than 500 years old. It builds directly on 1000 years of continuous development of literature, and indirectly on thousands more years of development of language. Ancient Venus tokens are 20,000 years old and are the very first steps in art, building on nothing at all. They were probably no more treated or thought of as art by their creators than the cheap gold crucifix that hangs round a million necks today. The analogy is entirely invalid.
And in defense of science fiction, it's one of the only genres which allows themes to be explored that go beyond the mundane and boring details of current human existence
I'm sorry the human condition is so dull for you. Personally I find love, hope, faith, unfairness, treachery, sacrifice and so on pretty interesting. As did Shakespeare, and as do many SF authors.
It is true that there has been some great science fiction (some, not much IMHO). It is true that SF has got a bad reputation amongst the intelligensia, and that it has been unfairly criticised for a long time. But it is not true that what came before is rubbish.
Of course people will be able to create better works than Shakespeare. Perhaps they already have - I certainly don't regard Shakespeare as literary God. But to say that something is bad just because other new things exist is foolish.
Wodehouse is very widely read. I would be amazed if this year's global sales of Terry Pratchet came anywhere near the global sales of Wodehouse.
The issue of relevance to times past is interesting. Dickens, who in his day was extremely contemporary and made great reference to the zeitgeist of the time, has not aged badly at all.
In main this is because Dickens was a very good writer. But it is also because the public awareness of Victorian Britain is still very strong. Most people have a rough idea of what a poorhouse was, or what debtors prison was, what kind of technology was available, and so on.
In some respects this is self sustaining - much of people's knowledge of Victorian times comes from Dickens, either directly or through televised versions of his work, or the great body of work inspired by him.
It would be interesting to see which if any living authors will be able to represent our age in the way someone like Dickens represented his.
I heard on the BBC just now that they are dropping the food after the bombs, in the hope that the burning wreckage will help cook the food.
They are also dropping leaflets that say "America is your friend. We are only bombing those oppresive Taliban people. However, to avoid inconvenience, and help prevent CNN showing pictures of you being killed, please form an orderly 250 mile queue on the Iranian border. Have a nice day."
A British MOD scientist has reportedly developed an anti-personel cluster bomb that has flechettes coated in anaesthetic to help speed up treatment of the people who get hit accidentaly.
Awwww... you mean NO people are targets? That's kind of spooky.
"Our war is not with the Afghan people. Nor is it with the Taliban regine. Nor is it with the soldiers that are under orders from the Taliban regime. Our war is only with military hardware. The concrete bunkers. The command centers. The miles of telephone wire and the acres of concrete runway. Let me tell you plainly - if you are an inanimate object that either is a terrorist, or supports terrorist action - you _will_ feel the wrath of America. God bless America."
WILL NOT STOP until EVERY American and American ally is DEAD. No pausing to reflect, no thoughts on peaceful resolution, EVERYONE DEAD.
That is correct. Osama Bin Laden is the terminator, crossed with the energizer bunny.
What is more, the Taliban are not actually people, instead they are fanatical monsters who will not stop until every American is dead. Come to think of it all of America's enemies are like that.
Take the Japanese. During WWII they killed innocent American civilians by suicidally crashing planes into their boats. America had to respond then with target nuclear strikes against their terror bases in the remote Nagasaki and Hiroshima regions of Japan. Those fanatical people would not stop until every American was dead. That is why even today Japanese people are constantly try to kill Americans. It just goes to show these evil men of hate will never change.
What is currently unclear though, is that when the US has military bases in Kabul, the marines will prefer gang raping little Afghan girls in their yashmaks more than those cute Japanese girls in their white socks. It's a tough one but I'm sure the US military is thinking hard about it.
Let's say a man in Texas shoots dead a tourist who walked onto his front lawn late a night hoping someone was in who he could ask direction from (true case). Well, the jury of his peers agreed that a man had the right to defend his property by lethal force from trespass by a stranger late a night. The texan was innocent.
Even ignoring the gun laws, in the UK the man would be doing 10-15 for manslaughter. No jury in the UK would acquit someone for that.
So, you see, people are different. Now, people in Afghanistan maybe don't see the crime in killing a few thousand US people. So, chances are they'd acquit someone accused of that.
Funny old world, eh? Still, if you don't like it, don't worry - you can always bomb them!
Shit! Thank God for that. I was pretty sure the CIA must have a satellite that shows who all the really evil ones are, but thanks for confirming it.
As for God punishing those that the US targets, well buddy, don't worry too much about that. You see God is omnipotent, unlike the USA, so we can all be pretty sure he will act justly. But, hey, you gotta wonder why he lets all those innocent people die all the time. I dunno, maybe they aren't so innocent or something. Boy, this whole good/evil thing is a brain-ache. Let's just nuke 'em!!
Yeah. I for one am very concerned that we will bomb all the Nike factories by mistake (because they look like training camps) and my shoes will cost more. That would really suck.
Foreign policy in that part of the world is a very fine balancing act. You have to keep them all poor enough that they will make your shoes and clothes for hardly any money, but rich enough that they can afford Coke and Malboro! It's not as easy as it sounds! Also, if they get too rich they might send money to terrorist organisations, but if they get too poor their lives might start to suck so much they don't mind blowing themselves up in suicide attacks.
It's a very tricky problem, but, on balance I think we are right to bomb them a bit, because they bombed us a bit earlier.
I agree with this. When it comes to killing a whole bunch of people, it's important to make sure everyone can see. That's why civilised countries such as the U.S. allow friends and family to come along and witness executions, while heathen places like Iran have public executions, because they are barbaric and backward.
The other good thing about modern bombs, is that you can film them. Then you give CNN the footage of all the bombs that hit, and throw away the footage of all the bombs that miss and fall on houses and hospitals and stuff. That way, you ensure that all the bombs hit.
Finally, when you have bombed all the stuff in the country you install your own regime. The great thing here is that the new regime awards all the re-buidling contracts to American companies!
No, it's not a waste of money, just like having nice colourful Christmas stamps is not a waste of money, and paying good contemporary artists to design new stamps is not a waste of money. It's something that makes the world nicer and more interesting. I don't want all my stamps to be identical monochrome squares.
Now, what IS is a massive waste of money is rebranding the post office's holding company as 'Consignia' instead of 'post office counters ltd'. That was fucking stupid.
Sure, they owe what the contract promised, no more no less.
Corporations' disregard for their employees is equal to employees' disregard for their employers. Should companies give 3-6 months warning of layoffs? Why the hell should they? How many employees have to give that much notice if they feel like leaving?
Sure, people (including me) can lose a job at short notice. But, we can get a job at short notice. Even 15 years ago, if you left a job voluntarily for no reason better than to have 6 months unpaid chilling out with your family, it would make you unemployable in the eyes of many. Now, you are free to do that kind of thing.
Employees have far more information about the companies they join and work for. They are far more able to determine their employer's health for themselves. They have much better access to their managers. No more big boss on the top floor with the oak desk; most managers, while just as focussed on the bottom line, are far more approachable and forthcoming.
These days, few people would want to go back to the old paternalistic model. The quick hire quick fire culture was spawned as much by tech workers jumping for better pay every 12 months as it was by businesses jiggling their structures every 12 months.
Once the ball is in the socket
There are many ways to rotate the brokit
In these two examples the brokit is locked
Safe in the neighbouring socket slot
Rotating a brik by 90 degrees,
Joining two brokits becomes a breeze.
Join them up, socket to socket,
This is the way to make columns of brokits.
(Hinges will also fit back to back,
To create a double socket stack)
"But people have the right to go to work without buildings falling on them, too. "
No they don't. Where did you get the idea that they did?
The scale of the WTC attack was shocking. But terrorism is not. It's normal. What's odd is that the U.S. never had much of it before (and I personally doubt that they will have much in the future).
You know what we in the mainland UK had to give up as a result of 30 years of sustained (as in monthly / weekly) terrorist attacks?
We had to give up trash cans in train stations, as they make good hiding places for bombs.
We had to give up ignoring unattended luggage.
We had to introduce a dubious rule allowing police to hold a terrorist suspect without charge for 30 days (I think 30...). Not often invoked, as it caused an escalation of violence when it was (IIRC).
We had a laughably stupid rule preventing terrorists from being intervied on the media, which was famously sidestepped by interviewing them privately and having an actor appear on the media speaking their words.
Other things that happened were:
1. Some high profile cases of police illegal action, driven largely by the need to satisfy public revenge-lust after the more harmful bombings.
2. A permanent debate over whether terrorists should be treated as criminals or prisoners of war. No one in the US is talking about this, which worries me.
3. A permanent debate over whether the counter-terrorists shoul behave like soldiers (shoot to kill policy, etc) or police. Again, not much talk of this in the US.
The situation in Northern Ireland itself was very different, but to be honest the situation in the US is entirely dissimilar to NI, and much more similar to mainland UK, with sporadic bombings and attacks.
The way we avoided these attacks was not with the introduction of ID cards, mass phone tapping, or anything else.
We infiltrated the IRA heavily with agents. This is something that the CIA seem quite incapable of doing with Middle East terror groups. We collected and efficiently processed massive amounts of intelligence. The ability to do this is more important then draconian new laws to get the data in the first place. We worked hard to prevent the supply of weapons and money from abroad. The US did not make this easier.
This looks likes SOAP that's been embraced and extended. Am I missing something? And why is the language support so limited? The great benefit of SOAP is that it allows and encourages language independence.
I'm not sure what the benefit of this is, beyond writing your own SOAP stuff, which doesn't seem to be that hard to me.
Your post makes it sound as though hatred and intolerance have no place in any discussion. So is it wrong of me to say "I hate the people who put bombs in my home town!"?
Is it wrong to say "I will not tolerate those who resort to violence for the political ends?"
Some believe that freedom is a luxury, rather like art galleries and museums - a sign of culture and civilisation, but one that can, and should, be given second place in the face of some great evils. Perhaps you feel like this.
I, and others, feel that freedom is the solution to the great evils. Nothing is gained by removing it. In the words of John Stuart Mill "The truth will out". Let people speak freely, and there will be hate and intolerances and lies and sophistry, but out of that truth and wisdom and the good will rise up and be seen to be what they are.
The 'threat of world terrorism' is not born out of freedom. Curtailing freedom will prevent a bomb here, stop a hijack there. Maybe it will stop all the bombs and hijacks. But it won't stop terrorism. It won't stop people hating each other.
And you cannot strangle terrorism. It feeds on starvation and want. It feeds on ignorance and hopelessness and civil war and oppression, and it offers its recruits the chance to do anything, ANYTHING other than work themselves to death to raise a family and watch their children step on landmines, starve and die.
The Romans lived in constant fear that their civilized way of life would make them soft and vulnerable, and cause them to lose the fighting prowess that had won them such security. That is why they painted their walls with scenes of slaughter, and encouraged their people to watch endless, real, violent deaths played out day after day.
I do not think we need to be like them. We do not need to watch our brave cruise missiles blowing up the evil terrorist threat live on CNN 4 times a year, just to remind us that outside the palisade, the gaunt and treacherous natives are waiting in their caves with plastic knives and rusting guns.
It is is not us who need less freedom, but they who need more. If it is the only way, we should bring those 'states that harbour terrorism' the Pax Romana of the modern world, something that we have thus far failed to do.
But, please, let us make it more Pax, and less Romana.
Yah. Thing is, the little amazon tribe, in between helping each other, is out killing the tribe next door, so that they can enslave the men and capture the women to help dilute their own gene pool and prevent in-breeding.
Also, you are completely wrong about resources. To the extent that there is any peace and tranquility in some small Amazon community, it is because they are living in a place that requires little clothing or artificial heating, and has enormous quantities of wood and animal life to use, and fertile soil that can be cleared for farming. And there's not exactly an overcrowding problem. There is no point in being selfish, because everyone has so much already.
Compare that to places that are cold, lack water, lack building materials, or are otherwise hard to live in. Such places reward those who hoard and manage resources. In a land where you have to farm cattle through hard work, trying hard to feed them in the winter and protect them from illness and predation, you become very posessive of your cattle. In a land where there are tens of thousands of the things wandering across the plains each year, well, who cares?
Well, it's pretty bad news if you are a manager in a company and fought for using BSD.
Boss - "So, are we on schedule to start rolling out the 4-way file servers in July next year?"
Me - "Um, no, that will have to wait until, maybe, Jan 2003".
Boss - "Errr, why's that? You said to me last quarter that the new SMP stuff would be ready by the end of this year? Surely 6 months is plenty of safety margin?"
Me - "Actually, the release date slipped by 12 months. I just found out now. I think it was due to most of the developers leaving the project."
Boss - "What?!?!?!! They fired 14 kernel developers?! I thought you said this organisation wouldn't be affected by the economy, on account of not being an evil capitalist outfit that only cares about their quarterly results!"
Me - "Yeah, well, no-one got fired, it's more like, they, uh, just kind of stopped doing any work. I guess maybe they got bored."
Boss - "OK, that does it. We're going with Solaris x86, I don't care what you say."
http://netserver.hp.com/newsroom/press_room/assu re d/index.htm
As for Intel stuff not being faster:
1. I've never used > 8 CPU boxen, I'm not counting them.
2. I've never, ever, found any sun or hp machine that goes faster (or close to it)than an Intel (usually Compaq or HP) machine that cost the same amount, doing the same thing.
3. The support figures in the last large datacenter I was in show better mean time between failures for Intel hardware than for Sun hardware, but it was a young data center and so possibly not a fair test.
4. I've come across applications ported from 16 CPU suns (old ones, admittedly) to 4 CPU NT boxes (new ones) resulting in increased speed and increased uptime for the application. That says more about how badly a bunch of crap old C programmers can write an application than anything else, but I thought I'd mention it.
Re:It's about time
on
IBM Wants Linux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
They are not selling hardware, or at least not processing power. Intel chips are way ahead of anything from SUN, IBM, whatever. Only Alpha CPUs are better.
Sure, there are marginal improvements in total system performance from things like cache, bus speed and so on. They are marginal.
For anything up to 8 CPU's, Intel hardware will be better most of the time. That covers all small servers, departmental servers, web servers, small/medium database servers and a stack of other stuff. Sure, 8 CPU intel machine's aren't great, but then 4 CPU ones go as fast as 8 CPU Suns.
Look at distributed.net CPU speed tables. The fasted risc CPU of any kind (UltrasparcIII @ 800Mhz) is less than half the speed of a Pentium III doing 1.2Ghz (for RC5 cracking).
And as for those 16, 32 CPU boxes? Some applications do indeed benefit from that, but increasingly few (latest MS SQL server runs distributed on separate machines very well - no need to SMP (MS flames to/dev/null pease)).
No, what Sun et al. provide is not good hardware. They have operating systems marginally better than linux (better disk stuff (filesystems, software raid and volume management etc), better threading, and a few other things). But, what they do provide is support and service. Lots and lots and lots of it. And they provide guarantees.
But, even that isn't what they really provide.
What they _really_ provide, is the only alternative to Microsoft that your boss will consider.
Interesting comment. Tell me, if the person had been male, would you have interpreted the judge's comments as suggesting that he may not have been able to hold down a career, but he'd make it as a househusband?
What if you are an artist and become colour blind?
What if you are a pilot and develop mild epilepsy?
Hell, what if you are a sailor and develop severe sea sickness?
It's bad luck. Life sucks somtimes. You have to get on a deal with it. These days people think the world owes them something, that they have some kind of right to be compensated for really bad things happening.
There is no such right. If I get hit by lightening and paralysed from the waist down, our society will keep me alive. It will give me a home, food, some level of nursing care perhaps. Hopdfully my friends and family will give me something more. But society does not, and should not, give me recompense for my misfortune. It should not pay for me to go on disabled people's skiing holidays just because I could have gone skiing before. It should not require everyone and their dog to bend over backwards to make my life better. It does not give me any moral superiority over anyone at all.
Sometimes, life just sucks. It's nice to know that, unlike most people in the world, when we get blinded, crippled, or otherwise screwed up, we will not have to walk the streets in filthy rags begging, or to stare at the concrete walls of a hospital for the rest of our days.
The dissenter said "the majority's ruling ignores the reality that computers and the ability to type and write are essential skills in the modern world."
But, the person in question _could_ type and write - just not fast and not for extended periods of time. A small minority of jobs require being able to type or write extensively.
Many fat middle aged Americans can't walk or run either fast or for an extended period of time, but they don't get away with disability allowance for that.
Either you can build a business around free software or you can't. If you can, then money needs to change hands, and these sorts of arguments will happen just like they do for every other business.
If, on the other hand, you think money should not be invovled, then don't be surprised when large companies (or any companies, come to that) lose interest in free software.
There's been a lot of talk about how to found a business on free software, but there's not much evidence for it yet.
Boy, the great thing about free software is that you get away from all those legal battles and corporate wrangling that plagues the commercial software world...
Where there is money at stake, there will be legal battles, regardless of wether the money comes from commercial software or free software (or supporting free software or whatever).
I wonder how many of the benefits of free software come more from the free beer nature of it than the free speech nature of it. Both sides seem to discount the 'free beer' aspect as unimportant. The commercial companies point out that it's TCO that matters, not ticket price. The free software people talk about how it's openness and freedom that matters, not the ticket price.
But in reality, it's the free beerness that is much of the benefit, of the root cause of much of the benefit.
More of my spoutings on this available here:
http://www.snowdrift.org/computers/lamp.html
Slashdot Mirror
I know this post is redundant, but I can't let some innocent young person read what you wrote without the chance to hear a second voice.
Shakespeare et al were pretty good for their time, but they're outdated and superseded now.
That's one for the quotes file. Elements of Shakespeare, such as the jokes, have suffered over time. However, it's hard to see how the major histories and tradgedies are less than brilliant even by modern standards.
An analogy would be to compare primitive Mesopotamian clay sculptures to more modern artwork...
I struggle to think of a less valid analogy. Shakespeare's work was conceived and treated as art. His work is less than 500 years old. It builds directly on 1000 years of continuous development of literature, and indirectly on thousands more years of development of language. Ancient Venus tokens are 20,000 years old and are the very first steps in art, building on nothing at all. They were probably no more treated or thought of as art by their creators than the cheap gold crucifix that hangs round a million necks today. The analogy is entirely invalid.
And in defense of science fiction, it's one of the only genres which allows themes to be explored that go beyond the mundane and boring details of current human existence
I'm sorry the human condition is so dull for you. Personally I find love, hope, faith, unfairness, treachery, sacrifice and so on pretty interesting. As did Shakespeare, and as do many SF authors.
It is true that there has been some great science fiction (some, not much IMHO). It is true that SF has got a bad reputation amongst the intelligensia, and that it has been unfairly criticised for a long time. But it is not true that what came before is rubbish.
Of course people will be able to create better works than Shakespeare. Perhaps they already have - I certainly don't regard Shakespeare as literary God. But to say that something is bad just because other new things exist is foolish.
Wodehouse is very widely read. I would be amazed if this year's global sales of Terry Pratchet came anywhere near the global sales of Wodehouse.
The issue of relevance to times past is interesting. Dickens, who in his day was extremely contemporary and made great reference to the zeitgeist of the time, has not aged badly at all.
In main this is because Dickens was a very good writer. But it is also because the public awareness of Victorian Britain is still very strong. Most people have a rough idea of what a poorhouse was, or what debtors prison was, what kind of technology was available, and so on.
In some respects this is self sustaining - much of people's knowledge of Victorian times comes from Dickens, either directly or through televised versions of his work, or the great body of work inspired by him.
It would be interesting to see which if any living authors will be able to represent our age in the way someone like Dickens represented his.
First, realise that there are in fact two separate solutions to this tricky puzzle.
Plan A) Peace
Plan b) Violence
Try plan A for about 3-4 weeks. If no results after than time, use plan B.
I heard on the BBC just now that they are dropping the food after the bombs, in the hope that the burning wreckage will help cook the food.
They are also dropping leaflets that say "America is your friend. We are only bombing those oppresive Taliban people. However, to avoid inconvenience, and help prevent CNN showing pictures of you being killed, please form an orderly 250 mile queue on the Iranian border. Have a nice day."
A British MOD scientist has reportedly developed an anti-personel cluster bomb that has flechettes coated in anaesthetic to help speed up treatment of the people who get hit accidentaly.
Awwww... you mean NO people are targets? That's kind of spooky.
"Our war is not with the Afghan people. Nor is it with the Taliban regine. Nor is it with the soldiers that are under orders from the Taliban regime. Our war is only with military hardware. The concrete bunkers. The command centers. The miles of telephone wire and the acres of concrete runway. Let me tell you plainly - if you are an inanimate object that either is a terrorist, or supports terrorist action - you _will_ feel the wrath of America. God bless America."
That is correct. Osama Bin Laden is the terminator, crossed with the energizer bunny.
What is more, the Taliban are not actually people, instead they are fanatical monsters who will not stop until every American is dead. Come to think of it all of America's enemies are like that.
Take the Japanese. During WWII they killed innocent American civilians by suicidally crashing planes into their boats. America had to respond then with target nuclear strikes against their terror bases in the remote Nagasaki and Hiroshima regions of Japan. Those fanatical people would not stop until every American was dead. That is why even today Japanese people are constantly try to kill Americans. It just goes to show these evil men of hate will never change. What is currently unclear though, is that when the US has military bases in Kabul, the marines will prefer gang raping little Afghan girls in their yashmaks more than those cute Japanese girls in their white socks. It's a tough one but I'm sure the US military is thinking hard about it.
Actually that's exactly what it means.
Let's say a man in Texas shoots dead a tourist who walked onto his front lawn late a night hoping someone was in who he could ask direction from (true case). Well, the jury of his peers agreed that a man had the right to defend his property by lethal force from trespass by a stranger late a night. The texan was innocent.
Even ignoring the gun laws, in the UK the man would be doing 10-15 for manslaughter. No jury in the UK would acquit someone for that.
So, you see, people are different. Now, people in Afghanistan maybe don't see the crime in killing a few thousand US people. So, chances are they'd acquit someone accused of that.
Funny old world, eh? Still, if you don't like it, don't worry - you can always bomb them!
Shit! Thank God for that. I was pretty sure the CIA must have a satellite that shows who all the really evil ones are, but thanks for confirming it.
As for God punishing those that the US targets, well buddy, don't worry too much about that. You see God is omnipotent, unlike the USA, so we can all be pretty sure he will act justly. But, hey, you gotta wonder why he lets all those innocent people die all the time. I dunno, maybe they aren't so innocent or something. Boy, this whole good/evil thing is a brain-ache. Let's just nuke 'em!!
Yeah. I for one am very concerned that we will bomb all the Nike factories by mistake (because they look like training camps) and my shoes will cost more. That would really suck.
Foreign policy in that part of the world is a very fine balancing act. You have to keep them all poor enough that they will make your shoes and clothes for hardly any money, but rich enough that they can afford Coke and Malboro! It's not as easy as it sounds! Also, if they get too rich they might send money to terrorist organisations, but if they get too poor their lives might start to suck so much they don't mind blowing themselves up in suicide attacks.
It's a very tricky problem, but, on balance I think we are right to bomb them a bit, because they bombed us a bit earlier.
I agree with this. When it comes to killing a whole bunch of people, it's important to make sure everyone can see. That's why civilised countries such as the U.S. allow friends and family to come along and witness executions, while heathen places like Iran have public executions, because they are barbaric and backward.
The other good thing about modern bombs, is that you can film them. Then you give CNN the footage of all the bombs that hit, and throw away the footage of all the bombs that miss and fall on houses and hospitals and stuff. That way, you ensure that all the bombs hit.
Finally, when you have bombed all the stuff in the country you install your own regime. The great thing here is that the new regime awards all the re-buidling contracts to American companies!
No, it's not a waste of money, just like having nice colourful Christmas stamps is not a waste of money, and paying good contemporary artists to design new stamps is not a waste of money. It's something that makes the world nicer and more interesting. I don't want all my stamps to be identical monochrome squares.
Now, what IS is a massive waste of money is rebranding the post office's holding company as 'Consignia' instead of 'post office counters ltd'. That was fucking stupid.
I don't see the problem.
"Do they owe anything to the people they dump? "
Sure, they owe what the contract promised, no more no less.
Corporations' disregard for their employees is equal to employees' disregard for their employers. Should companies give 3-6 months warning of layoffs? Why the hell should they? How many employees have to give that much notice if they feel like leaving?
Sure, people (including me) can lose a job at short notice. But, we can get a job at short notice. Even 15 years ago, if you left a job voluntarily for no reason better than to have 6 months unpaid chilling out with your family, it would make you unemployable in the eyes of many. Now, you are free to do that kind of thing.
Employees have far more information about the companies they join and work for. They are far more able to determine their employer's health for themselves. They have much better access to their managers. No more big boss on the top floor with the oak desk; most managers, while just as focussed on the bottom line, are far more approachable and forthcoming.
These days, few people would want to go back to the old paternalistic model. The quick hire quick fire culture was spawned as much by tech workers jumping for better pay every 12 months as it was by businesses jiggling their structures every 12 months.
It's the modern world, deal with it.
Inspired by their web site copy...
Once the ball is in the socket
There are many ways to rotate the brokit
In these two examples the brokit is locked
Safe in the neighbouring socket slot
Rotating a brik by 90 degrees,
Joining two brokits becomes a breeze.
Join them up, socket to socket,
This is the way to make columns of brokits.
(Hinges will also fit back to back,
To create a double socket stack)
"But people have the right to go to work without buildings falling on them, too. "
No they don't. Where did you get the idea that they did?
The scale of the WTC attack was shocking. But terrorism is not. It's normal. What's odd is that the U.S. never had much of it before (and I personally doubt that they will have much in the future).
You know what we in the mainland UK had to give up as a result of 30 years of sustained (as in monthly / weekly) terrorist attacks?
We had to give up trash cans in train stations, as they make good hiding places for bombs.
We had to give up ignoring unattended luggage.
We had to introduce a dubious rule allowing police to hold a terrorist suspect without charge for 30 days (I think 30...). Not often invoked, as it caused an escalation of violence when it was (IIRC).
We had a laughably stupid rule preventing terrorists from being intervied on the media, which was famously sidestepped by interviewing them privately and having an actor appear on the media speaking their words.
Other things that happened were:
1. Some high profile cases of police illegal action, driven largely by the need to satisfy public revenge-lust after the more harmful bombings.
2. A permanent debate over whether terrorists should be treated as criminals or prisoners of war. No one in the US is talking about this, which worries me.
3. A permanent debate over whether the counter-terrorists shoul behave like soldiers (shoot to kill policy, etc) or police. Again, not much talk of this in the US.
The situation in Northern Ireland itself was very different, but to be honest the situation in the US is entirely dissimilar to NI, and much more similar to mainland UK, with sporadic bombings and attacks.
The way we avoided these attacks was not with the introduction of ID cards, mass phone tapping, or anything else.
We infiltrated the IRA heavily with agents. This is something that the CIA seem quite incapable of doing with Middle East terror groups. We collected and efficiently processed massive amounts of intelligence. The ability to do this is more important then draconian new laws to get the data in the first place. We worked hard to prevent the supply of weapons and money from abroad. The US did not make this easier.
This looks likes SOAP that's been embraced and extended. Am I missing something? And why is the language support so limited? The great benefit of SOAP is that it allows and encourages language independence.
I'm not sure what the benefit of this is, beyond writing your own SOAP stuff, which doesn't seem to be that hard to me.
Your post makes it sound as though hatred and intolerance have no place in any discussion. So is it wrong of me to say "I hate the people who put bombs in my home town!"?
Is it wrong to say "I will not tolerate those who resort to violence for the political ends?"
Some believe that freedom is a luxury, rather like art galleries and museums - a sign of culture and civilisation, but one that can, and should, be given second place in the face of some great evils. Perhaps you feel like this.
I, and others, feel that freedom is the solution to the great evils. Nothing is gained by removing it. In the words of John Stuart Mill "The truth will out". Let people speak freely, and there will be hate and intolerances and lies and sophistry, but out of that truth and wisdom and the good will rise up and be seen to be what they are.
The 'threat of world terrorism' is not born out of freedom. Curtailing freedom will prevent a bomb here, stop a hijack there. Maybe it will stop all the bombs and hijacks. But it won't stop terrorism. It won't stop people hating each other.
And you cannot strangle terrorism. It feeds on starvation and want. It feeds on ignorance and hopelessness and civil war and oppression, and it offers its recruits the chance to do anything, ANYTHING other than work themselves to death to raise a family and watch their children step on landmines, starve and die.
The Romans lived in constant fear that their civilized way of life would make them soft and vulnerable, and cause them to lose the fighting prowess that had won them such security. That is why they painted their walls with scenes of slaughter, and encouraged their people to watch endless, real, violent deaths played out day after day.
I do not think we need to be like them. We do not need to watch our brave cruise missiles blowing up the evil terrorist threat live on CNN 4 times a year, just to remind us that outside the palisade, the gaunt and treacherous natives are waiting in their caves with plastic knives and rusting guns.
It is is not us who need less freedom, but they who need more. If it is the only way, we should bring those 'states that harbour terrorism' the Pax Romana of the modern world, something that we have thus far failed to do.
But, please, let us make it more Pax, and less Romana.
Jon
Yah. Thing is, the little amazon tribe, in between helping each other, is out killing the tribe next door, so that they can enslave the men and capture the women to help dilute their own gene pool and prevent in-breeding.
Also, you are completely wrong about resources. To the extent that there is any peace and tranquility in some small Amazon community, it is because they are living in a place that requires little clothing or artificial heating, and has enormous quantities of wood and animal life to use, and fertile soil that can be cleared for farming. And there's not exactly an overcrowding problem. There is no point in being selfish, because everyone has so much already.
Compare that to places that are cold, lack water, lack building materials, or are otherwise hard to live in. Such places reward those who hoard and manage resources. In a land where you have to farm cattle through hard work, trying hard to feed them in the winter and protect them from illness and predation, you become very posessive of your cattle. In a land where there are tens of thousands of the things wandering across the plains each year, well, who cares?
Well, it's pretty bad news if you are a manager in a company and fought for using BSD.
Boss - "So, are we on schedule to start rolling out the 4-way file servers in July next year?"
Me - "Um, no, that will have to wait until, maybe, Jan 2003".
Boss - "Errr, why's that? You said to me last quarter that the new SMP stuff would be ready by the end of this year? Surely 6 months is plenty of safety margin?"
Me - "Actually, the release date slipped by 12 months. I just found out now. I think it was due to most of the developers leaving the project."
Boss - "What?!?!?!! They fired 14 kernel developers?! I thought you said this organisation wouldn't be affected by the economy, on account of not being an evil capitalist outfit that only cares about their quarterly results!"
Me - "Yeah, well, no-one got fired, it's more like, they, uh, just kind of stopped doing any work. I guess maybe they got bored."
Boss - "OK, that does it. We're going with Solaris x86, I don't care what you say."
As for fault tolerance on Intel:
u re d/index.htm
http://netserver.hp.com/newsroom/press_room/ass
As for Intel stuff not being faster:
1. I've never used > 8 CPU boxen, I'm not counting them.
2. I've never, ever, found any sun or hp machine that goes faster (or close to it)than an Intel (usually Compaq or HP) machine that cost the same amount, doing the same thing.
3. The support figures in the last large datacenter I was in show better mean time between failures for Intel hardware than for Sun hardware, but it was a young data center and so possibly not a fair test.
4. I've come across applications ported from 16 CPU suns (old ones, admittedly) to 4 CPU NT boxes (new ones) resulting in increased speed and increased uptime for the application. That says more about how badly a bunch of crap old C programmers can write an application than anything else, but I thought I'd mention it.
They are not selling hardware, or at least not processing power. Intel chips are way ahead of anything from SUN, IBM, whatever. Only Alpha CPUs are better.
/dev/null pease)).
Sure, there are marginal improvements in total system performance from things like cache, bus speed and so on. They are marginal.
For anything up to 8 CPU's, Intel hardware will be better most of the time. That covers all small servers, departmental servers, web servers, small/medium database servers and a stack of other stuff. Sure, 8 CPU intel machine's aren't great, but then 4 CPU ones go as fast as 8 CPU Suns.
Look at distributed.net CPU speed tables. The fasted risc CPU of any kind (UltrasparcIII @ 800Mhz) is less than half the speed of a Pentium III doing 1.2Ghz (for RC5 cracking).
And as for those 16, 32 CPU boxes? Some applications do indeed benefit from that, but increasingly few (latest MS SQL server runs distributed on separate machines very well - no need to SMP (MS flames to
No, what Sun et al. provide is not good hardware. They have operating systems marginally better than linux (better disk stuff (filesystems, software raid and volume management etc), better threading, and a few other things). But, what they do provide is support and service. Lots and lots and lots of it. And they provide guarantees.
But, even that isn't what they really provide.
What they _really_ provide, is the only alternative to Microsoft that your boss will consider.
Interesting comment. Tell me, if the person had been male, would you have interpreted the judge's comments as suggesting that he may not have been able to hold down a career, but he'd make it as a househusband?
What if you are an artist and become colour blind?
What if you are a pilot and develop mild epilepsy?
Hell, what if you are a sailor and develop severe sea sickness?
It's bad luck. Life sucks somtimes. You have to get on a deal with it. These days people think the world owes them something, that they have some kind of right to be compensated for really bad things happening.
There is no such right. If I get hit by lightening and paralysed from the waist down, our society will keep me alive. It will give me a home, food, some level of nursing care perhaps. Hopdfully my friends and family will give me something more. But society does not, and should not, give me recompense for my misfortune. It should not pay for me to go on disabled people's skiing holidays just because I could have gone skiing before. It should not require everyone and their dog to bend over backwards to make my life better. It does not give me any moral superiority over anyone at all.
Sometimes, life just sucks. It's nice to know that, unlike most people in the world, when we get blinded, crippled, or otherwise screwed up, we will not have to walk the streets in filthy rags begging, or to stare at the concrete walls of a hospital for the rest of our days.
The dissenter said "the majority's ruling ignores the reality that computers and the ability to type and write are essential skills in the modern world."
But, the person in question _could_ type and write - just not fast and not for extended periods of time. A small minority of jobs require being able to type or write extensively.
Many fat middle aged Americans can't walk or run either fast or for an extended period of time, but they don't get away with disability allowance for that.
Either you can build a business around free software or you can't. If you can, then money needs to change hands, and these sorts of arguments will happen just like they do for every other business.
If, on the other hand, you think money should not be invovled, then don't be surprised when large companies (or any companies, come to that) lose interest in free software.
There's been a lot of talk about how to found a business on free software, but there's not much evidence for it yet.
Boy, the great thing about free software is that you get away from all those legal battles and corporate wrangling that plagues the commercial software world...
Where there is money at stake, there will be legal battles, regardless of wether the money comes from commercial software or free software (or supporting free software or whatever).
I wonder how many of the benefits of free software come more from the free beer nature of it than the free speech nature of it. Both sides seem to discount the 'free beer' aspect as unimportant. The commercial companies point out that it's TCO that matters, not ticket price. The free software people talk about how it's openness and freedom that matters, not the ticket price.
But in reality, it's the free beerness that is much of the benefit, of the root cause of much of the benefit.
More of my spoutings on this available here:
http://www.snowdrift.org/computers/lamp.html