Open source only seems to work if it's backed by a major contributor, like Firefox and seaMonkey by Google. Otherwise it tends to be buggy and non-user-friendly.
And I have yet to find an open-source OS that can run everything I want. (Of course the same is true with Mac OS - can't run a lot of Windows software on OSX.) Just yesterday I asked a guy how to copy a.img file to a floppy and this was his response: "sudo dd if=/path_to_image.img of=/dev/fd0" which I tried and of course did not work. So then I searched the web and found a nice easy-to-use WinNT program that worked flawlessly.
I wish the ReactOS would get off the ground, so we could have a Windows-compatible alternative without having to support Microsoft. Just as we had IBM PC clones, we need to have MS Windows clones.
"This configuration was distinctly suboptimal for any productive use..... if any networking or similar components were installed the system would refuse to boot with 4 megabytes of RAM. To achieve optimal performance, Microsoft recommends an Intel 80486 or compatible microprocessor with at least 8 MB of RAM."
Apparently even back then Microsoft was taking the ACTUAL requirements, and dividing them in half, like when they claimed Vista would work on 1/2 gig of RAM when it clearly could not.
>>>"Democracy is the pathetic belief in the wisdom of collective ignorance." -- H.L. Mencken
Actually studies have found that when you take a mob of people, and have them make guesses, they often come-up with the right answer. For example, ask an audience to guess how many jellybeans are in a jar, average their answers, and you'll have the correct answer +/- 1 jellybean.
BACK TO TOPIC:
What good is an 8 gigabyte RAM card? You can't even run Windows 95 on that?
Or just play it on a Commodore 64 or Commodore Amiga emulator. Not only will you have better graphics and better sound, but it will play at the correct speed since these computers, like consoles, had fixed specs.
>>>The industry as a whole (not real-time OS's or some portable / embedded device programming -- most of them still "get it") has adopted the view that programmer time is expensive and hardware is cheap. >>>
They are probably right. When you can buy a brand new PC with 2 gigabytes and 2 gigahertz, and it only costs $300, there's no need to waste programmer time/labor expense trying to optimize the software to fit inside 0.01 GB or 0.01 GHz. In 1990 it was necessary to devote that labor time/cost . Today it isn't.
>>>"general welfare" (you know, the one from U.S. Constitution)
GENERAL is the key word. An army is something everyone benefits from because everyone's home is protected. Ditto a navy. What you are endorsing is SPECIFIC welfare that only benefits the sick, not the general populace. --- Healthy people don't get anything out of it. For example my grandmother was never sick until age 68, and then she had a heart attack and died. She paid paid 10s of thousands of dollars into Medicare and Social Security, and gained nothing from it. That's not general welfare (benefits for all) but specific welfare that only benefits a few.
If you still have doubts just ask the AUTHOR of that document. He knows better than anyone what he meant when he wrote it:
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character, which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - James Madison
AND: "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one,possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one." [A government without limits is a tyranny, or on the edge of tyranny.]
AND: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45
>>>Obviously those in favor of this health insurance reform bill don't think it is morally wrong and, thus, we obviously don't think it is theft. >>>
Taking someone else's money, at gunpoint, is theft. It doesn't matter if you do it yourself, hire the gangster Mr. Soprano, or the government..... it's still depriving a person of their money & the fruit of their labor.
You are takiing from that person, not for that person's benefit, but for your own benefit to pay your doctors' bills (or buy FCC-installed 100 Mbit internet, or a new hybrid, or whatever). It's old-fashioned theft of another man's property.
>>The problem is that medical insurance has become an essential, and I don't mean by law, so to treat it like any other business is foolish.
I disagree. I don't have medical insurance and I seem to be making out okay. "It's an essential" is a lie that is repeated-and-repeated, but doesn't have an ounce of truth to it. (Along with other lies like highspeed internet is essential, or a cellphone is essential.)
And if I get sick & the bills cost too much? Then I die. So what?
We ALL die eventually, even in places that have "free" taxpayer-supported healthcare. Even in places where the healthcare is limitless, death still happens. The end is always the same.
>>>simple democracy. It sucks, but I haven't seen any form of large-scale government that doesn't suck more.
A Republic (rule of law) that protects you from tyranny of the majority to rape your wallet (or steal stuff from your home/land, or imprison you, or dictate what you can or can not say)..... is superior to a Democracy.
>>>Provision of health care is an important function of a modern state.
Only if you think it's okay to steal money from your neighbors to make them pay for your Doctors' bills (or internet bills, or hybrid car purchase, or whatever). I personally think that's wrong. If you want to buy something then *earn the money yourself*. Don't steal it from your neighbors.
And I don't mind the concept of a safety net, but only as a last resort. - We already have that safety net - any poor person can walk into any Corporate ER and get free care. Everybody else should pay their own bills with their own money.
>>>Otherwise, having used the healthcare in England, I had really hoped that a single payer system could have been gotten through
I feel sorry for your ill health, and sincerely hope you find an insurance company to take you, and that the "no customer can be denied" provision passes.
But I am NOT under any obligation to heal (or pay for) your doctor bills. Or your internet. Or your car. Or your house. Or any other product you want. Your diabetes condition, if you were truly honest, is likely the result of being overweight. It is not my fault.
Therefore it is not my task (or your neighbors' task) to take on the financial burdens for your poor lifestyle choices.
Ownership confers upon you the right to listen to that song for your whole life. - Perhaps I'm in the minority on this but I still listen to tapes or records that were purchased 30-50 years ago, and every listen costs me nothing.
A long, long time. As long as I have a Bluray player I'll be able to play my CD collection. Maybe sometime after 2020 we'll all have 100 Mbit/s HDTV-capable connections, but not yet.
And if Bluray dies out circa 2030 (replaced by internet streaming), I'll just stock up on BRD units like I did with VCRs, so I can continue using my home movies and/or music.
Nowadays RIAA doesn't sue people for having MP3s. They sue them for uploading the MP3s, so having ownership doesn't matter if they have a record of you ULing the songs.
First off 386s ran at 8 or 16 MHz (typically). Second, the purpose was to play older games that were tied directly to the clock and expecting to see 8 megahertz. So if you didn't enjoy playing Turbo Pacman or Turbo Wing Commander, you could press the button and slow everything to normal speed.
Aside-
I found an old laptop with a 386. I was surprised how responsive the machine was even though it's only ~0.02 GHz and a mere 0.01 gigabytes of RAM. Why is it that we could run Microsoft Word on such low specs back then (pre-1995), but not today? Why have programs grown so bloated.
The 386SX didn't have an FPU. It was actually identical to the 80386, with a 32-bit CPU, but it was seated on a 16-bit bus to save costs. Like a Motorola 68000.
Re:News for nerds. Stuff that matters
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
>>>Americans who have health insurance but can't afford to actually use it because the deductibles and co-pays are too high
I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't belong to an HMO now but when I did the copays were only $10-30 per visit. Hardly excessive.
I guess if they can't afford those, then they truly are "chronically uninsured" and would be the 3% of citizens I said need help (perhaps via Welfare). That requires a TWEAK of the current system, not a wholesale takeover by government.
And finally there's the matter of "freedom of choice". A monopoly by government is no better than a monopoly by Microsoft or Comcast sucking ~$100 out of your wallet every month (even if you use neither product).
If patented or copyrighted it should only be for a limited lifespan, say 14 years, with a possibility for ONE renewal of the copyright by the *original inventor*. If the inventor is dead, then it falls into public domain.
This is how the original Copyright Act of 1790 was written.
"It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, whatever belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.
"It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
"Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Slashdot Mirror
Open source only seems to work if it's backed by a major contributor, like Firefox and seaMonkey by Google. Otherwise it tends to be buggy and non-user-friendly.
And I have yet to find an open-source OS that can run everything I want. (Of course the same is true with Mac OS - can't run a lot of Windows software on OSX.) Just yesterday I asked a guy how to copy a .img file to a floppy and this was his response: "sudo dd if=/path_to_image.img of=/dev/fd0" which I tried and of course did not work. So then I searched the web and found a nice easy-to-use WinNT program that worked flawlessly.
I wish the ReactOS would get off the ground, so we could have a Windows-compatible alternative without having to support Microsoft. Just as we had IBM PC clones, we need to have MS Windows clones.
>>>You don't turn gay immediately after buying a mac, it takes time
My Quadra Mac was my third favorite computer.
Right after my amiga.
"This configuration was distinctly suboptimal for any productive use..... if any networking or similar components were installed the system would refuse to boot with 4 megabytes of RAM. To achieve optimal performance, Microsoft recommends an Intel 80486 or compatible microprocessor with at least 8 MB of RAM."
Apparently even back then Microsoft was taking the ACTUAL requirements, and dividing them in half, like when they claimed Vista would work on 1/2 gig of RAM when it clearly could not.
Glad I use Virgin Mobile!
Like Amiga nobody's ever heard of it... not even virus writers.
>>>"Democracy is the pathetic belief in the wisdom of collective ignorance." -- H.L. Mencken
Actually studies have found that when you take a mob of people, and have them make guesses, they often come-up with the right answer. For example, ask an audience to guess how many jellybeans are in a jar, average their answers, and you'll have the correct answer +/- 1 jellybean.
BACK TO TOPIC:
What good is an 8 gigabyte RAM card? You can't even run Windows 95 on that?
Or just play it on a Commodore 64 or Commodore Amiga emulator. Not only will you have better graphics and better sound, but it will play at the correct speed since these computers, like consoles, had fixed specs.
Mt aforementioned 386 laptop has a turbo button. 16 MHz standard speed and 8 MHz with the turbo switch turned off.
>>>The industry as a whole (not real-time OS's or some portable / embedded device programming -- most of them still "get it") has adopted the view that programmer time is expensive and hardware is cheap.
>>>
They are probably right. When you can buy a brand new PC with 2 gigabytes and 2 gigahertz, and it only costs $300, there's no need to waste programmer time/labor expense trying to optimize the software to fit inside 0.01 GB or 0.01 GHz. In 1990 it was necessary to devote that labor time/cost . Today it isn't.
>>>Baidu, MS and Alibaba
Who?
(sigh)
I miss the Motorola 68000-series. For that matter I miss PowerPC too. Now it's nothing but Intel-derived x86.
Mao Tse Tung's personally selected leaders will shoot these "intellectuals" in the head. Problem solved.
And then Obama's Communications Director will give a speech about how Mao is her "favorite philosopher"
No, no, I'm just joking.
:-|
>>>"general welfare" (you know, the one from U.S. Constitution)
GENERAL is the key word. An army is something everyone benefits from because everyone's home is protected. Ditto a navy. What you are endorsing is SPECIFIC welfare that only benefits the sick, not the general populace. --- Healthy people don't get anything out of it. For example my grandmother was never sick until age 68, and then she had a heart attack and died. She paid paid 10s of thousands of dollars into Medicare and Social Security, and gained nothing from it. That's not general welfare (benefits for all) but specific welfare that only benefits a few.
If you still have doubts just ask the AUTHOR of that document.
He knows better than anyone what he meant when he wrote it:
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character, which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - James Madison
AND: "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one,possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one." [A government without limits is a tyranny, or on the edge of tyranny.]
AND: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45
>>>Obviously those in favor of this health insurance reform bill don't think it is morally wrong and, thus, we obviously don't think it is theft.
>>>
Taking someone else's money, at gunpoint, is theft. It doesn't matter if you do it yourself, hire the gangster Mr. Soprano, or the government..... it's still depriving a person of their money & the fruit of their labor.
You are takiing from that person, not for that person's benefit, but for your own benefit to pay your doctors' bills (or buy FCC-installed 100 Mbit internet, or a new hybrid, or whatever). It's old-fashioned theft of another man's property.
>>The problem is that medical insurance has become an essential, and I don't mean by law, so to treat it like any other business is foolish.
I disagree. I don't have medical insurance and I seem to be making out okay. "It's an essential" is a lie that is repeated-and-repeated, but doesn't have an ounce of truth to it. (Along with other lies like highspeed internet is essential, or a cellphone is essential.)
And if I get sick & the bills cost too much? Then I die. So what?
We ALL die eventually, even in places that have "free" taxpayer-supported healthcare. Even in places where the healthcare is limitless, death still happens. The end is always the same.
>>>simple democracy. It sucks, but I haven't seen any form of large-scale government that doesn't suck more.
A Republic (rule of law) that protects you from tyranny of the majority to rape your wallet (or steal stuff from your home/land, or imprison you, or dictate what you can or can not say)..... is superior to a Democracy.
>>>Provision of health care is an important function of a modern state.
Only if you think it's okay to steal money from your neighbors to make them pay for your Doctors' bills (or internet bills, or hybrid car purchase, or whatever). I personally think that's wrong. If you want to buy something then *earn the money yourself*. Don't steal it from your neighbors.
And I don't mind the concept of a safety net, but only as a last resort. - We already have that safety net - any poor person can walk into any Corporate ER and get free care. Everybody else should pay their own bills with their own money.
>>>Otherwise, having used the healthcare in England, I had really hoped that a single payer system could have been gotten through
I feel sorry for your ill health, and sincerely hope you find an insurance company to take you, and that the "no customer can be denied" provision passes.
But I am NOT under any obligation to heal (or pay for) your doctor bills. Or your internet. Or your car. Or your house. Or any other product you want. Your diabetes condition, if you were truly honest, is likely the result of being overweight. It is not my fault.
Therefore it is not my task (or your neighbors' task) to take on the financial burdens for your poor lifestyle choices.
Ownership confers upon you the right to listen to that song for your whole life. - Perhaps I'm in the minority on this but I still listen to tapes or records that were purchased 30-50 years ago, and every listen costs me nothing.
A long, long time. As long as I have a Bluray player I'll be able to play my CD collection. Maybe sometime after 2020 we'll all have 100 Mbit/s HDTV-capable connections, but not yet.
And if Bluray dies out circa 2030 (replaced by internet streaming), I'll just stock up on BRD units like I did with VCRs, so I can continue using my home movies and/or music.
Nowadays RIAA doesn't sue people for having MP3s.
They sue them for uploading the MP3s, so having ownership doesn't matter if they have a record of you ULing the songs.
First off 386s ran at 8 or 16 MHz (typically). Second, the purpose was to play older games that were tied directly to the clock and expecting to see 8 megahertz. So if you didn't enjoy playing Turbo Pacman or Turbo Wing Commander, you could press the button and slow everything to normal speed.
Aside-
I found an old laptop with a 386. I was surprised how responsive the machine was even though it's only ~0.02 GHz and a mere 0.01 gigabytes of RAM. Why is it that we could run Microsoft Word on such low specs back then (pre-1995), but not today? Why have programs grown so bloated.
Minor nitpick:
The 386SX didn't have an FPU. It was actually identical to the 80386, with a 32-bit CPU, but it was seated on a 16-bit bus to save costs. Like a Motorola 68000.
>>>Americans who have health insurance but can't afford to actually use it because the deductibles and co-pays are too high
I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't belong to an HMO now but when I did the copays were only $10-30 per visit. Hardly excessive.
I guess if they can't afford those, then they truly are "chronically uninsured" and would be the 3% of citizens I said need help (perhaps via Welfare). That requires a TWEAK of the current system, not a wholesale takeover by government.
And finally there's the matter of "freedom of choice". A monopoly by government is no better than a monopoly by Microsoft or Comcast sucking ~$100 out of your wallet every month (even if you use neither product).
If patented or copyrighted it should only be for a limited lifespan, say 14 years, with a possibility for ONE renewal of the copyright by the *original inventor*. If the inventor is dead, then it falls into public domain.
This is how the original Copyright Act of 1790 was written.
"It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, whatever belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.
"It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
"Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1813