Getting a professional education does not in and of itself insure anything. So what happens if 99% of the population gets a professional education? Wages for professionals go down b/c there is a greater supply of 'professionals'. The real answer, at least in our economy is to be unique. The more unique your skills, the more likely you are to get a higher paying job.
Education in this country is limited mostly along class lines -- most rich kids + the token brilliant poor kids. By limiting the availability of education, a college degree still "means" something.
If you disagree with me, consider the high school diploma. Once, it was a sign of some level of education. Now, it is considered a given that anyone should have a high school diploma--you can't even join the army without one. The cost of a high school graduate, though, is minimum wage--as low as possible. A college degree once meant you were a professional, but now B.A.'s etc. are so common that post graduate studies (M.B.A, M.F.A., etc.) are considered the signifier of the professional.
It's not the just the learning of education that creates the well paid professional -- it's the uneven (and othen unequitable) distribution of that education.
and if you lookup www.microsoft.com, you'll see that they're running NT 3.0. Not exactly a resounding endorsement of their own faith in the maturity of their own OS.
The GNU project releases the GNU Privacy Guard. It is freely available, and runs on multiple platforms:
HPUX v9.x and v10.x with HPPA CPU, IRIX v6.3 with MIPS R10000 CPU, OSF1 V4.0 with Alpha CPU, OS/2 version 2. SCO UnixWare/7.1.0. SunOS, Solaris on Sparc and x86, USL Unixware v1.1.2, Windows 95 and WNT with x86 CPUs. (quoted from the above link)
To me, this executive order looks like a chance to score some political points now that they can no longer count on keeping a legal easily available encryption product out of the rest of the world.
I've never moderated, but it seems like you get an equal number of points to moderate comments up and down.
I think one should be able to moderate more comments up than down. Scores may go up a bit, but there still will be a spread of comments. It will also reduce the risk of "somebody thought this post about bsd was flamebait when I was being serious."
You could make a -1 change equal to a +2 change, or something.
We should celebrate when we see something we agree with, and ignore that which annoys us. To make sure this happens, the moderation system should be tweaked to encourage postive moderation.
I would have a much easier time trusting these guy's intentions, but some of the most violent images piped into the media are the direct result of American policies abroad.
Remember the Gulf War, when American troops firebombed caravan of retreating Iraqis until they where all carbonized? Or perhaps Yugoslavia would be a better example for our children? Oh, then there's the cruise missle strike Clinton ordered on Sudan, remember that? Videogames aren't the only things which teach children to solve their problems with violence.
Maybe this law could have a dual purpose -- if you can't show violence through the media, then you can't show the truth about US Policy actions. A bit conspiracy theory, but entirely plausable.
well... an easy reply is that if you get oem pricing for nt while buying all that hardware you can get it for around $100... plus, ars technica lists a dual processor Tyan S1832 Tiger 100 for $157. throw those two options together and you've saved about $300, which goes a long way (256Mbytes of memory is one option...)
Alright, I concede. However, to get that high end server I'm sure you will be paying through the nose. And quite certainly you will be paying more than you would with an open architecture. I'm sure for 3000+ you could get a dual Zeon, matching peripherals, etc.
I don't have experience with servers, so I have to admit that you may have me here. I am a graphic designer. When I was shopping for a home graphics workstation some time back, I got a Cyrix with 256MB of RAM, zip, a scanner, and a large Wacom Tablet for the same cost as a G3 box. These are significant upgrades for Apple's targeted niche of designers. I doubt if Apple's price line plateaus as you reach the top end.
I don't think that the G4 hardware wouldn't make a good (and overpriced) server, I just don't think that the OS's available for the mac seem to be suitable. I'll trust mac os x when I see major servers running it. Where I work, we used to be a mac (including servers) house, and now we run a combination of nt, linux, and irix for our servers and most of the desktops, with macs being used by the designer.
I don't think that a line of above average performance computers that starts at $300 more than a computer with comparable performance as giving away gold.
Cool! That sounds great! Has Adobe released Photoshop for Beowulf yet? Oh, the Gimp, that does CMYK right? Can I edit & composit digital video on it?
Today's lesson is: Use the right tool for the job
umm, maybe a obscure OS named NT might run Photoshop on a dual processor Pentium III?
I know this is/., but Beowolf isn't the only SMP solution. And NT definately not worse buggy than Mac OS, though they both might be bad compared to everyone's favorite zealot trip.
Apple claims that the a 500 Mhz G4 is 2.94 times as fast as a 600Mhz PIII.
What you have to realize is you should compare performance for price, not raw cpu performance. I'm sure a sun workstation could run circles around everybody, but it is obviously in another price range.
The 400Mhz G4 with 64mbytes of RAM costs $1499. Let's assume that it will run Photoshop 3 times as fast as a PentiumIII 500Mhz. For competition, let us look at the Ars Technica Hot Rod, picking the dual overclocked celerons. This system costs $1287, and includes much better peripherals (20gb harddrive, 128mb ram, tnt2 video).
According to Ars's benchmarks, dual processor systems are significantly faster than single processor systems at performing Photoshop tasks. You could make a dual processer PIII 450 for the same price as the 400Mhz G4 (PIII 450 = 2x cost of Celeron 366). That's a bench mark I'd like to see, and one which might reflect the true cost/performance comparisons between a high end mac and a high end x86.
What does this mean? Apple claims that the G4 Velocity engine complete 2-4 times the computation of standard CPUs. But single processor x86 boxes are not the competition for the g4 (except maybe the Athlon, but Apple didn't benchmark that, did they?), since you can easily afford smp systems for the prices that they are charging.
Furthermore, this is hardware optimized for graphics production work only. Apple servers are a long way away. LinuxPPC is probably your best option, but since apple has been stingy about releasing the details of their architecture in the past, you probably wouldn't get a Linux box as optimized for the G4 as the Apple OS is. If you could get similar (and more flexible) performance on another box, why else would you want to deal with the only OS more fubared than MS?
Many posters have objected to the racial basis of this discussion, claiming that the real issue is economics. Maybe even pointing out the economic history of most African Americans in the United States -- that until 30 years ago they have been legally prevented from being full citizens, and are thus many years behind the privledged whites who have had centuries of inheritance and schooling. Others claim that since it is an economic issue, it should be dismissed -- not everyone can have a million dollars, there's nothing to be done.
The fact, IMHO:-), is that it is an economic issue. Poor people have greater difficulties buying computers. Blacks and other "minorities" represent a disproportionate percentage of the poor of the United States. But there is one more issue at play...
Even more so than the rest of capitalism, the computer industry is a winner take all proposition. For those who win the competition, there is a huge reward. For those who lose, there is nothing. One might point to the legions of web developers as evidence of a middle class in computing, but how many print designers have been replaced by web developers? and for that matter, how many legions of designers, type setters, printers, etc. were replaced during the rise of desktop publishing?
The Internet right now has been an amazing oppurtunity. But the Internet is moving towards eliminating that working class -- try getting a job doing HTML / JavaScript coding. They still exist, but it isn't easy. The reason why businesses like products like DreamWeaver or NetObjects is that they eliminate jobs. How many people do you know who hand code PostScript anymore?
If there are a limited number of decently paying jobs available, then there will be a group of poor (who will be mostly black and other "minorites," though there are plenty of poor whites) who aren't going to get them. Whether the Internet will be good for the poor is a question of whether it will create more jobs than it will eliminate.
I got offered an production job at an e-commerce website by a skin-flint business man who had just closed down one of his stores. Same products, same inflated prices, much larger market, one sixth the workforce (and he didn't offer six times minimum wage). This is the future of the Internet.
A lot of people live off of the inefficiencies of dinosaurs such as storefronts and management, and these people are the people who are being put out of work by the Internet.
So the Internet in its current incarnation does not help poor people. It does not help most "minorities." It does help the mostly white rich people who are in a position to reap almost all of economic benefits of the Internet -- solidifing their economic advantage.
While your reply about Black Leaders (applied to Al Sharpton) may be more or less on target, forget about the example of Asians.
Because of the immigration laws, most Asians immigrants in the US were professionals, i.e. doctors, lawyers, management, etc. Most blacks emmigrated as slaves. That's why Asians are better off economically.
"treatment of severe depression" means frying mental patients until they are appropriately docile.
Electoshock therapy is one of a regimen of "treatments" (lobotomy, etc.) that brutally destroyed whatever was left of the poor mental inmate/patient. Read "One flew over the cuckoos nest" if you have any questions.
H1-B visas are a classic trick of employers-- align one group of laborers against another. First, they find a legal (and by legal I mean through the legal system with no connotations of justice) way to reduce the wages of one group of laborers (in this case foreign tech), and replace the higher paid laborers with new cheaper. In the past, the workers have been too caught up with being angry at the new workers to attack the legal system through which this entire process is maintained.
So, Re: H1-B visas. The issue isn't whether foreign workers are qualified to do the work. There are brilliant people everywhere. The only real difference is the language barrier, but everybody else in the world knows which country is taking all the money and therefor which language it would be useful to know (even if it's just cause you're stuck in some dumb tourism job).
The H1-B visas should be modified to increase the foreign workers fluidity between jobs. Limiting the number if visas is bad b/c it doesn't change the exploitave (sp?) conditions of the visa. Limiting numbers also prevents qualified foreign workers from being employed in their American-dominated field. The best solution is to give those workers as many options as thier American counter-parts.
And in the long run, we had better wake up. As computers become commodities, geeks will become more and more like every other employee. This means that we will see more and more labor tactics used against us. Remember the other articles about older programmers looking for work in Silicon Valley? It may be a meritocracy, but there is little doubt that employers are not going to stick to just those rules when it comes time to cut costs.
So wake up. Realize that we have to group together, not just to create a great OS or a great application, but to ensure that we can continue to be employed on our terms, not the employers.
And while we're at it, let's start looking at ways of helping all employees to be employed on their own terms, not that of the companies which profit off of what we build.
...unlike RMS, you can call me a Communist all you want. Not accurate, but not to far from the truth either.
I'm an artist, and it's my experience that copywrite is something that big businesses use to restrict one's ability to produce new work.
example--an artist tried to purchase ad space for a mural at Penn Station, NY. The mural featured a Coors beercan streaking towards a village in Central America, with the text "Coor's Light--Is it the Right's Beer Now?" Amtrak denied the artist the adspace, claiming that the work was political. But also, Coors threatened with a suit, claiming that the beercan was a trademark of the brewery. (example culled from "Commodify Your Dissent," a collection of essays from "The Baffler," a magazine.)
Even though this should fall under the heading of fair use (it's equivalent to quoting a source in an academic paper), what is important is that the artist was in no position fianancially to argue his case before a court. Unless he could find a good IP lawyer with a lot of free time willing to work pro-bono, he was SOL.
If individuals want to be able to control the content of their enviroment through more than choosing between Coke or Pepsi, big company A or big company B, then all monopolistic publishing/manufacturing rights should be abolished. There are other ways for companies to make money besides selling a product. (like creating a product, or even supporting a product would be nice...)
The biggest problem with these systems is that they force all competitors to work with the same flawed system. Many companies copywrite/patent simply to avoid having their research stolen by a rival who beat them to the copywrite/patent. They aren't worried about their competitors imitating them--they're worried about the monopolies of copywrite/trademark/patent being used as a hammer to cudgel them out of the market. They seeking protection from the system itself. And the situation now is, the companies large enough to afford to protect themselves and take advantage of others are the ones benefiting.
let's not hear anymore odes to the lonesome programmer/writer/business, desperate in his/her need for legal protection. Copywrite protects publishers, not authors. Patent protects manufacturers, not inventors.
Slashdot Mirror
Getting a professional education does not in and of itself insure anything. So what happens if 99% of the population gets a professional education? Wages for professionals go down b/c there is a greater supply of 'professionals'. The real answer, at least in our economy is to be unique. The more unique your skills, the more likely you are to get a higher paying job.
Education in this country is limited mostly along class lines -- most rich kids + the token brilliant poor kids. By limiting the availability of education, a college degree still "means" something.
If you disagree with me, consider the high school diploma. Once, it was a sign of some level of education. Now, it is considered a given that anyone should have a high school diploma--you can't even join the army without one. The cost of a high school graduate, though, is minimum wage--as low as possible. A college degree once meant you were a professional, but now B.A.'s etc. are so common that post graduate studies (M.B.A, M.F.A., etc.) are considered the signifier of the professional.
It's not the just the learning of education that creates the well paid professional -- it's the uneven (and othen unequitable) distribution of that education.
and if you lookup www.microsoft.com, you'll see that they're running NT 3.0. Not exactly a resounding endorsement of their own faith in the maturity of their own OS.
The GNU project releases the GNU Privacy Guard. It is freely available, and runs on multiple platforms:
HPUX v9.x and v10.x with HPPA CPU,
IRIX v6.3 with MIPS R10000 CPU,
OSF1 V4.0 with Alpha CPU,
OS/2 version 2.
SCO UnixWare/7.1.0.
SunOS, Solaris on Sparc and x86,
USL Unixware v1.1.2,
Windows 95 and WNT with x86 CPUs.
(quoted from the above link)
To me, this executive order looks like a chance to score some political points now that they can no longer count on keeping a legal easily available encryption product out of the rest of the world.
I've never moderated, but it seems like you get an equal number of points to moderate comments up and down.
I think one should be able to moderate more comments up than down. Scores may go up a bit, but there still will be a spread of comments. It will also reduce the risk of "somebody thought this post about bsd was flamebait when I was being serious."
You could make a -1 change equal to a +2 change, or something.
We should celebrate when we see something we agree with, and ignore that which annoys us. To make sure this happens, the moderation system should be tweaked to encourage postive moderation.
I would have a much easier time trusting these guy's intentions, but some of the most violent images piped into the media are the direct result of American policies abroad.
Remember the Gulf War, when American troops firebombed caravan of retreating Iraqis until they where all carbonized? Or perhaps Yugoslavia would be a better example for our children? Oh, then there's the cruise missle strike Clinton ordered on Sudan, remember that? Videogames aren't the only things which teach children to solve their problems with violence.
Maybe this law could have a dual purpose -- if you can't show violence through the media, then you can't show the truth about US Policy actions. A bit conspiracy theory, but entirely plausable.
The parent posting is absolutely correct, and here's the legal docs from the U.S. Copyright Office.
This should give you plenty of material to include in your nasty and threatening email to the CEO...
well... an easy reply is that if you get oem pricing for nt while buying all that hardware you can get it for around $100... plus, ars technica lists a dual processor Tyan S1832 Tiger 100 for $157. throw those two options together and you've saved about $300, which goes a long way (256Mbytes of memory is one option...)
Alright, I concede. However, to get that high end server I'm sure you will be paying through the nose. And quite certainly you will be paying more than you would with an open architecture. I'm sure for 3000+ you could get a dual Zeon, matching peripherals, etc.
I don't have experience with servers, so I have to admit that you may have me here. I am a graphic designer. When I was shopping for a home graphics workstation some time back, I got a Cyrix with 256MB of RAM, zip, a scanner, and a large Wacom Tablet for the same cost as a G3 box. These are significant upgrades for Apple's targeted niche of designers. I doubt if Apple's price line plateaus as you reach the top end.
I don't think that the G4 hardware wouldn't make a good (and overpriced) server, I just don't think that the OS's available for the mac seem to be suitable. I'll trust mac os x when I see major servers running it. Where I work, we used to be a mac (including servers) house, and now we run a combination of nt, linux, and irix for our servers and most of the desktops, with macs being used by the designer.
I don't think that a line of above average performance computers that starts at $300 more than a computer with comparable performance as giving away gold.
Cool! That sounds great! Has Adobe released Photoshop for Beowulf yet? Oh, the Gimp, that does CMYK right? Can I edit & composit digital video on it?
Today's lesson is: Use the right tool for the job
umm, maybe a obscure OS named NT might run Photoshop on a dual processor Pentium III?
I know this is /., but Beowolf isn't the only SMP solution. And NT definately not worse buggy than Mac OS, though they both might be bad compared to everyone's favorite zealot trip.
Apple claims that the a 500 Mhz G4 is 2.94 times as fast as a 600Mhz PIII.
What you have to realize is you should compare performance for price, not raw cpu performance. I'm sure a sun workstation could run circles around everybody, but it is obviously in another price range.
The 400Mhz G4 with 64mbytes of RAM costs $1499. Let's assume that it will run Photoshop 3 times as fast as a PentiumIII 500Mhz. For competition, let us look at the Ars Technica Hot Rod, picking the dual overclocked celerons. This system costs $1287, and includes much better peripherals (20gb harddrive, 128mb ram, tnt2 video).
According to Ars's benchmarks, dual processor systems are significantly faster than single processor systems at performing Photoshop tasks. You could make a dual processer PIII 450 for the same price as the 400Mhz G4 (PIII 450 = 2x cost of Celeron 366). That's a bench mark I'd like to see, and one which might reflect the true cost/performance comparisons between a high end mac and a high end x86.
What does this mean? Apple claims that the G4 Velocity engine complete 2-4 times the computation of standard CPUs. But single processor x86 boxes are not the competition for the g4 (except maybe the Athlon, but Apple didn't benchmark that, did they?), since you can easily afford smp systems for the prices that they are charging.
Furthermore, this is hardware optimized for graphics production work only. Apple servers are a long way away. LinuxPPC is probably your best option, but since apple has been stingy about releasing the details of their architecture in the past, you probably wouldn't get a Linux box as optimized for the G4 as the Apple OS is. If you could get similar (and more flexible) performance on another box, why else would you want to deal with the only OS more fubared than MS?
Many posters have objected to the racial basis of this discussion, claiming that the real issue is economics. Maybe even pointing out the economic history of most African Americans in the United States -- that until 30 years ago they have been legally prevented from being full citizens, and are thus many years behind the privledged whites who have had centuries of inheritance and schooling. Others claim that since it is an economic issue, it should be dismissed -- not everyone can have a million dollars, there's nothing to be done.
:-), is that it is an economic issue. Poor people have greater difficulties buying computers. Blacks and other "minorities" represent a disproportionate percentage of the poor of the United States. But there is one more issue at play...
The fact, IMHO
Even more so than the rest of capitalism, the computer industry is a winner take all proposition. For those who win the competition, there is a huge reward. For those who lose, there is nothing. One might point to the legions of web developers as evidence of a middle class in computing, but how many print designers have been replaced by web developers? and for that matter, how many legions of designers, type setters, printers, etc. were replaced during the rise of desktop publishing?
The Internet right now has been an amazing oppurtunity. But the Internet is moving towards eliminating that working class -- try getting a job doing HTML / JavaScript coding. They still exist, but it isn't easy. The reason why businesses like products like DreamWeaver or NetObjects is that they eliminate jobs. How many people do you know who hand code PostScript anymore?
If there are a limited number of decently paying jobs available, then there will be a group of poor (who will be mostly black and other "minorites," though there are plenty of poor whites) who aren't going to get them. Whether the Internet will be good for the poor is a question of whether it will create more jobs than it will eliminate.
I got offered an production job at an e-commerce website by a skin-flint business man who had just closed down one of his stores. Same products, same inflated prices, much larger market, one sixth the workforce (and he didn't offer six times minimum wage). This is the future of the Internet.
A lot of people live off of the inefficiencies of dinosaurs such as storefronts and management, and these people are the people who are being put out of work by the Internet.
So the Internet in its current incarnation does not help poor people. It does not help most "minorities." It does help the mostly white rich people who are in a position to reap almost all of economic benefits of the Internet -- solidifing their economic advantage.
While your reply about Black Leaders (applied to Al Sharpton) may be more or less on target, forget about the example of Asians.
Because of the immigration laws, most Asians immigrants in the US were professionals, i.e. doctors, lawyers, management, etc. Most blacks emmigrated as slaves. That's why Asians are better off economically.
"treatment of severe depression" means frying mental patients until they are appropriately docile.
Electoshock therapy is one of a regimen of "treatments" (lobotomy, etc.) that brutally destroyed whatever was left of the poor mental inmate/patient. Read "One flew over the cuckoos nest" if you have any questions.
Gimme a break, there's a big difference between the root/admin password and an OS security hole.
Remove theloveoftheworld to respond.
H1-B visas are a classic trick of employers-- align one group of laborers against another. First, they find a legal (and by legal I mean through the legal system with no connotations of justice) way to reduce the wages of one group of laborers (in this case foreign tech), and replace the higher paid laborers with new cheaper. In the past, the workers have been too caught up with being angry at the new workers to attack the legal system through which this entire process is maintained.
So, Re: H1-B visas.
The issue isn't whether foreign workers are qualified to do the work. There are brilliant people everywhere. The only real difference is the language barrier, but everybody else in the world knows which country is taking all the money and therefor which language it would be useful to know (even if it's just cause you're stuck in some dumb tourism job).
The H1-B visas should be modified to increase the foreign workers fluidity between jobs. Limiting the number if visas is bad b/c it doesn't change the exploitave (sp?) conditions of the visa. Limiting numbers also prevents qualified foreign workers from being employed in their American-dominated field. The best solution is to give those workers as many options as thier American counter-parts.
And in the long run, we had better wake up. As computers become commodities, geeks will become more and more like every other employee. This means that we will see more and more labor tactics used against us. Remember the other articles about older programmers looking for work in Silicon Valley? It may be a meritocracy, but there is little doubt that employers are not going to stick to just those rules when it comes time to cut costs.
So wake up. Realize that we have to group together, not just to create a great OS or a great application, but to ensure that we can continue to be employed on our terms, not the employers.
And while we're at it, let's start looking at ways of helping all employees to be employed on their own terms, not that of the companies which profit off of what we build.
...unlike RMS, you can call me a Communist all you want. Not accurate, but not to far from the truth either.
I'm an artist, and it's my experience that copywrite is something that big businesses use to restrict one's ability to produce new work.
example--an artist tried to purchase ad space for a mural at Penn Station, NY. The mural featured a Coors beercan streaking towards a village in Central America, with the text "Coor's Light--Is it the Right's Beer Now?" Amtrak denied the artist the adspace, claiming that the work was political. But also, Coors threatened with a suit, claiming that the beercan was a trademark of the brewery.
(example culled from "Commodify Your Dissent," a collection of essays from "The Baffler," a magazine.)
Even though this should fall under the heading of fair use (it's equivalent to quoting a source in an academic paper), what is important is that the artist was in no position fianancially to argue his case before a court. Unless he could find a good IP lawyer with a lot of free time willing to work pro-bono, he was SOL.
If individuals want to be able to control the content of their enviroment through more than choosing between Coke or Pepsi, big company A or big company B, then all monopolistic publishing/manufacturing rights should be abolished. There are other ways for companies to make money besides selling a product. (like creating a product, or even supporting a product would be nice...)
The biggest problem with these systems is that they force all competitors to work with the same flawed system. Many companies copywrite/patent simply to avoid having their research stolen by a rival who beat them to the copywrite/patent. They aren't worried about their competitors imitating them--they're worried about the monopolies of copywrite/trademark/patent being used as a hammer to cudgel them out of the market. They seeking protection from the system itself. And the situation now is, the companies large enough to afford to protect themselves and take advantage of others are the ones benefiting.
let's not hear anymore odes to the lonesome programmer/writer/business, desperate in his/her need for legal protection. Copywrite protects publishers, not authors. Patent protects manufacturers, not inventors.