Microsoft's format is supposed to store images with the same resolution and loss, but only use half the space of jpeg. If and ONLY if Microsoft's format is REALLY open, with a license that is GPL v2 and proposed v3 compatible, THEN I would go for it, but we need to hear from the legal experts on that. So we need to wait and see. It could be a good thing for the net.
Agree. Don't say yes when your product can't do what the customer what the customer explicitly requires, especially in writing. I had a vendor do that to me once, and we sued and recovered not only the cost of the software, but our costs implementing their "solution" (which was 5 times the license cost) plus legal fees. That vendor will probably be a little more careful next time.
The problem we had in Mexico, is that the quality of the resulting products was HORRIBLE. No matter what manufacturers did, they could not get the quality up to minimum standards. So what happened? Manufacturing moved to China, where the quality was much better for less effort.
But don't get me started on the quality of most all products today - it's just crap. For some reason, all the high quality stuff - tools, appliances, etc. come from Germany. Kudos to German manufacturers who have figured out that some people still care about quality. Boo to all the American companies who have sacrificed their reputation / name with crappy quality cheesy products made in China, eliminating jobs here in America. Boo to all the big-box retailers who think that people only want crappy products. Boo to consumers who put up with that crap and supported this behavior by shopping at Walmart and their ilk while watching all their manufacturing jobs disappear.
I take that a step further - don't just go work with the users. Take some time to do the users' work.
As you see by my anecdote, that is exactly what I did and hence my original statement implied that. "Work with" can also mean "doing the same work." Note that trying to do the users work without knowing how to do it is going to get you nowhere, which is why you need to work with the user to do the work. How else are you going to learn? Read about it in a book? Search the internet?
the marvelous Synaptic (Apt) or Yum (rpm) or any other package manager *requires* a live internet connection in order to install any program.
This is 100% false. Those package manager's search internet based repositories by DEFAULT, but it is hardly required. In fact, all my servers point to a local repository so I don't have all 500 servers downloading the same packages over and over.
I prefer to force every app to use a proxy, and have no direct internet connectivity at all. Anything that won't work with a proxy isn't worth installing.
Once they've got everyone using WGA, they can start dictating terms to governments instead of dealing with irritating lawsuits.
I'm pretty sure that if they did anything like that to the US Gov, Jack Bauer would be sent in to torture Steve Balmer and would have all computers back to normal in less than 24 hours. Beyond that, Microsoft would end up as a department off Homeland Security.
GP was joking I assume, but many jokes are based on truth. There is a tendency to focus on the external appearance.
I once worked with a new-hire programmer who had been asked to prototype some data-entry screens... He ended up demoing a UI with pink text on lime green background. When asked why he chose those colors, it turned out that he was color blind... He was taken off UI projects and put on back-end code:-)
But yeah, I agree with the statement that the customer usually focuses on how things look rather than how they work.
Domain knowledge is what makes you really valuable to a company. As suggested above, go and work with the users to figure it out, and then implement it. If anyone wonders what is taking you so long, be prepared by documenting exactly how you spent your time learning the procedures / formulas. That kind of documentation is useful come review / raise / bonus time. Seriously, it can take years to gain high levels of domain knowledge.
One example I can bring up from my past is designing industrial test equipment used for calibrating mechanical metering devices. I spent a month where I worked side by side with the people who would be using the equipment, 9 months developing prototypes (including all the hardware and software) and ended up with a product that cuts a 15 minute procedure down to 2. Again, I had to work with the users to see how they used the prototypes, and refine the hardware / software to real-life conditions. I even had to consult with a physics professor at the local university to help with some of the complex flow equations (physics is not my specialty, but I know enough to be dangerous...:-)
Could I have ever expected my users to develop detailed specs? No way - it's not one of their core competencies.
Well, for production that is indeed what I have to do. I have to have the entire web stack compiled with all the special features we use, and some very specific versions of libraries. Everything goes in/usr/local. It's a challenge, because there are patches released all the time for one module or another, which frequently requires rebuilding a large chunk of modules due to dependencies.
That said, people also choose RHEL so they don't HAVE to maintain everything by hand. With CentosPuls containing PHP5, you don't have to. If you swap out PHP with a hand-compiled version and have an apache issue, will RH still support you??? If not, then the utility / value of RH support contracts is down about NIL.
Redhat doesn't HAVE a "Plus" repository, which is where CentOS puts recent versions of software for those that require it.
Since I can't get that for ANY price from RH, they actually have LESS value to me.
Here is a real world scenario. I have several racks full of blade servers. The hardware is identical. The configuration is identical. The software loaded is identical. These machines are all clones of each other. If I have a problem with the OS, it will affect all of them, and the fix will fix all of them. If cost of support of one machine is X, and I have N machines, the support cost and effort is not N*X, it's more like 2X. RH wants to charge me N*($Retail-20%) for "support." That's just not reasonable. RHEL is not Windows, and the Windows pricing model doesn't work for it.
Ah here we go. Let's put it this way... If RedHat went out of business tomorrow, those same kernel developers would just go to another company, and in all likely hood will still be kernel developers. Looking at that list, IBM which doesn't even have a distro, is not that far behind. More telling is the "Unknown" which is twice RedHat.
Don't get me wrong, I applaud RedHat for all the work they are doing, but I have no illusions that they are the only company willing and able to do that work. Furthermore, they have designed their product line and pricing of it in a way that just doesn't work for a huge segment of the market. Why should I use a product that fails to meet my requirements of having "reasonably" fresh software, and pricing that offers reasonable discounts on large numbers of copies? CentOS, via their Plus repository gives me the best of both worlds. Stability and consistency where I need it, fresh software when I need it, at a price point that can't be beat. RH can learn from Centos.
Centos has another HUGE advantage over the base RHEL - the CentosPlus repository. With Plus, you can grab php5 without needing to go out and grab srpms from fedora and make all sorts of manual changes to make it work, and building / maintaining your own packages.
RHEL could gain a LOT more converts and increase value with their own version of Plus. Plus gives you the best of both worlds.
I don't think your criticisms should be aimed at RHEL. If you wanted new packages over stability or wanted to be able to force upgrade then you picked the wrong distro. You are not their target audience.
I think it depends on the KIND of stability you are looking for... There is stability in the fact that nothing changes, and there is stability in terms of operational reliability.
The problem with the former, is that modern third party software tends to be incompatible with ancient versions of software that are bundled with RHEL 4 for example. If you want to run MediaWiki, you need PHP5. There is no PHP5 for RHEL from RedHat. There is nothing inherently instable about PHP5 - RHEL5 supports it.
CentOS deals with this with a "Plus" repository, which allows you to install more modern versions of software.
So who is the target audience? People that only run Oracle or a Samba server? Or people that want to run modern web applications? The GP has a VERY valid point, and RH has already lost some sales due to their inability to keep the OS "fresh" while still being stable.
Remember, a Linux distribution is not like Windows. It has a LOT more software. In the windows world, you typically use third party software in cases where the functionality is "standard" in Linux. Good examples are PHP and MySQL. It's trivial to upgrade PHP and MySQL on Windows, but quite hard on RHEL.
I need my base framework stable, but not outdated.
That said, when I need to do a major distro upgrade, I do it by installing on a new machine, and move applications / data over. That way I can test it well before cutover. I really don't like in-place upgrades.
Here is the deal... Once you are employed, it's a LOT harder to get good raises - they are typically going to be 0 - 5%. Your big salary jumps are when you change jobs. 1.3X is QUITE reasonable. Even if you change positions vertically within a company, you are unlikely to get a large salary boost. If you are job hopping, obviously that formula isn't going to work, but it should work every 2-3 years. Remember, you have more experience after several years at a job too, and experience matters.
I took a look at the SAGE salary survey and a few other sites. The problem I ran into is that I can't hire competent people for those rates, and have to pay 50% MORE for really good people. If you want really good people, you have to lure them away from positions that they are currently happy with, so it takes a significant incentive to get them to make a move. I've NOT had good luck with people that are currently unemployed - In general, I found their skill sets to be underwhelming.
That depends on whether you really innovate, or if you just rehash the standard CPU socket design. You are assuming that it would be a rehash of what we have today. I would not suggest that. I also think stuffing a raw CPU into a socket on the motherboard is a bad idea - it should be a module that has supporting circuitry, probably even "local" ram. Think of a design that is closer to PCI Express than PCI-X where you have many very high speed serial interconnects rather than a couple ultra-wide parallel. With a reasonable amount of local memory, more can be done "on module" at even higher speeds, with a lower pin count.
CPU integration with system board design has not changed much since the very first CPU. Not changing anything has the advantage of making it easy to integrate new CPU designs, but the disadvantage of what we have today - constantly changing CPU sockets requiring new motherboards for damn near every chip rev. I'm just saying that maybe there is a better way...
Does your phone dock work in the car? On a plane? Does it add CPU power and memory? Does it give you a bigger screen? The answer to all of these is No. Phone docks basically allow you to charge your phone and sync with your desktop. The discussion is about replacing the desktop and using your phone as your main computer. Palmtop's have had add-on keyboards for years - they tend to suck as a primary keyboard however, and are still not very portable (folding keyboards are larger than the device by far.) Phone-style portable computing devices are no where near as powerful as desktop's, and heat / power issues will ensure that they remain that way for the foreseeable future.
As processors get faster and faster, they require more pins. No more 80 pin CPUS for us. If they designed a universal CPU slot today, it would either have twice as many pins as we needed, or we'd run out of pins within 2 years.
That assumes you are plugging in individual processors. This is why I specified "module". Using high speed serial channels, like PCI Express does, you can reduce the pin count on the module level considerably. I would assume that the module would also contain a certain amount of local RAM, such as 1 - 2G. The pin count on CPU's today is also an artifact of legacy design - wider parallel buses, integrating more "support" into the processor, etc.
In order to really advance computing, we have to think differently.
The problem is that the Mac's are all built like standard PC's now. If you replace the Apple firmware with a standard BIOS you could boot DOS. The Mac Mini is basically a standard notebook in a different form factor, ditto for the imac. The Mac pro is not much different in design than a Dell desktop. Why? Cost. They get to use standard parts / software. There is NOTHING on the market like the integrated design of the Amiga. The mac has a lot more in common with a 1982 IBM PC than an Amiga.
The next mainstream computer platform just might be a phone though
Smartphones will (IMHO) evolve to a wireless portable computing device that "oh yeah, it can make phone calls too," but the problem is still that the screen is still WAY to small, and user input still sucks. Maybe they will finally be able to make LCD-like glasses that really are high-resolution, and maybe they will come up with a neural interface so we can ditch the keyboard / mouse... But I don't see those things being practical within the next 10 years. I also see the CPU speed / memory / storage requirements continuing to increase. We may be able to get everything we will want in a hand-held in my lifetime, but I doubt it.
Ahh - the Amiga. My favorite machine during that era. I got my A1000 the first day it was available. Modern OS's could still learn a lot from that 20 year old OS. Why oh why are we still using "DOS Compatible" hardware????
Amiga had 4096 colors at the time.
Better put "4096" with a "*" qualifier. You couldn't assign each pixel an exact color - the scheme got you more colors by being able to set a bit that said that the next pixel modifies the previous pixel by "x". In this way, they could get more colors using less memory than traditional X bits per color per pixel schemes (Amiga was a bitplane architecture.)
Anyway, back on topic, I wish that the CPU manufacturers could finally come up with a "generational" standard socket. A well-designed module socket should last as long as an expansion slot standard (ISA,PCI,PCIe) and not change for damn near every model of chip. I should be able to go out and get a one, 2, 4, 8 socket motherboard, and stick any CPU / GPU / DSP module into it I want. Can we please finally shitcan the 1980's motherboard designs?
You mean to tell me that you pay about $100,000 a year in taxes,and yet you claim you can't afford premium medical insurance? Explain to me how that's possible.
Premium medical insurance still has deductibles. If you claim that you know of insurance that has ZERO deductibles, show me. They don't exist. The plans with the lowest deductibles at the moment are HMO plans, which SUCK as they require you to get preauthorization for everything through your Primary care physician. No thanks, if I want to see a specialist, I'll go see one.
It's not possible to buy better medical insurance. Why? People don't buy medical insurance. We aren't allowed.
Huh??? No. You can go out and buy insurance from many insurers. How do you think the self-employed people get it??? Now affordability is a whole different issue. When you are not in a group plan, you have to list all your preexisting conditions (which frequently are not covered) and submit to a physical. That insurance can cost you a several thousand a month for a family depending on a number of factors.
The only 100% medical insurance is what the government pays for the completely indigent. However, it's often sucky medical insurance in that it doesn't cover many things (e.g. preventive care). It's only better than regular health insurance in that it does not require copays or have deductibles.
That depends on the state, and it frequently is all based on school lunch subsidies (which is a federal program...) You have no idea how much is tied to whether you qualify for reduced rate school lunches - go research it and get ready to be shocked and angry. Anyway, in my state, if your kids qualify for reduced rate lunches, you get totally free medical / dental. And it covers preventative. Parents are covered as they "need to be healthy" in order to "care for the kids." There is no deductible as the "poor can't afford it." It's the exact same medical care as I get - they go to the same hospitals.
I encourage everyone who thinks that they pay too much taxes to go out and REALLY look at the social programs out there. Do the research. Don't just assume, get the facts. According to my latest social security statement, I'll only get 20% of what I paid in to social security back when I retire. If I was able to invest that money myself, I should receive 5 TIMES what I paid in if it was invested with simple fixed income investments. Of course all the social programs together don't hold a candle to the cost of the fucking Iraq war, but everything adds up.
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Microsoft's format is supposed to store images with the same resolution and loss, but only use half the space of jpeg. If and ONLY if Microsoft's format is REALLY open, with a license that is GPL v2 and proposed v3 compatible, THEN I would go for it, but we need to hear from the legal experts on that. So we need to wait and see. It could be a good thing for the net.
Agree. Don't say yes when your product can't do what the customer what the customer explicitly requires, especially in writing. I had a vendor do that to me once, and we sued and recovered not only the cost of the software, but our costs implementing their "solution" (which was 5 times the license cost) plus legal fees. That vendor will probably be a little more careful next time.
The problem we had in Mexico, is that the quality of the resulting products was HORRIBLE. No matter what manufacturers did, they could not get the quality up to minimum standards. So what happened? Manufacturing moved to China, where the quality was much better for less effort.
But don't get me started on the quality of most all products today - it's just crap. For some reason, all the high quality stuff - tools, appliances, etc. come from Germany. Kudos to German manufacturers who have figured out that some people still care about quality. Boo to all the American companies who have sacrificed their reputation / name with crappy quality cheesy products made in China, eliminating jobs here in America. Boo to all the big-box retailers who think that people only want crappy products. Boo to consumers who put up with that crap and supported this behavior by shopping at Walmart and their ilk while watching all their manufacturing jobs disappear.
I take that a step further - don't just go work with the users. Take some time to do the users' work.
As you see by my anecdote, that is exactly what I did and hence my original statement implied that. "Work with" can also mean "doing the same work." Note that trying to do the users work without knowing how to do it is going to get you nowhere, which is why you need to work with the user to do the work. How else are you going to learn? Read about it in a book? Search the internet?
I'll thank the FAA every time I take my shoes off or have to throw out a perfectly good bottle of water to board.
Why? The FAA, which is part of DOT has nothing to do with the TSA, which is part of DHS.
the marvelous Synaptic (Apt) or Yum (rpm) or any other package manager *requires* a live internet connection in order to install any program.
This is 100% false. Those package manager's search internet based repositories by DEFAULT, but it is hardly required. In fact, all my servers point to a local repository so I don't have all 500 servers downloading the same packages over and over.
I prefer to force every app to use a proxy, and have no direct internet connectivity at all. Anything that won't work with a proxy isn't worth installing.
Once they've got everyone using WGA, they can start dictating terms to governments instead of dealing with irritating lawsuits.
I'm pretty sure that if they did anything like that to the US Gov, Jack Bauer would be sent in to torture Steve Balmer and would have all computers back to normal in less than 24 hours. Beyond that, Microsoft would end up as a department off Homeland Security.
GP was joking I assume, but many jokes are based on truth. There is a tendency to focus on the external appearance.
:-)
I once worked with a new-hire programmer who had been asked to prototype some data-entry screens... He ended up demoing a UI with pink text on lime green background. When asked why he chose those colors, it turned out that he was color blind... He was taken off UI projects and put on back-end code
But yeah, I agree with the statement that the customer usually focuses on how things look rather than how they work.
Domain knowledge is what makes you really valuable to a company. As suggested above, go and work with the users to figure it out, and then implement it. If anyone wonders what is taking you so long, be prepared by documenting exactly how you spent your time learning the procedures / formulas. That kind of documentation is useful come review / raise / bonus time. Seriously, it can take years to gain high levels of domain knowledge.
:-)
One example I can bring up from my past is designing industrial test equipment used for calibrating mechanical metering devices. I spent a month where I worked side by side with the people who would be using the equipment, 9 months developing prototypes (including all the hardware and software) and ended up with a product that cuts a 15 minute procedure down to 2. Again, I had to work with the users to see how they used the prototypes, and refine the hardware / software to real-life conditions. I even had to consult with a physics professor at the local university to help with some of the complex flow equations (physics is not my specialty, but I know enough to be dangerous...
Could I have ever expected my users to develop detailed specs? No way - it's not one of their core competencies.
Well, for production that is indeed what I have to do. I have to have the entire web stack compiled with all the special features we use, and some very specific versions of libraries. Everything goes in /usr/local. It's a challenge, because there are patches released all the time for one module or another, which frequently requires rebuilding a large chunk of modules due to dependencies.
That said, people also choose RHEL so they don't HAVE to maintain everything by hand. With CentosPuls containing PHP5, you don't have to. If you swap out PHP with a hand-compiled version and have an apache issue, will RH still support you??? If not, then the utility / value of RH support contracts is down about NIL.
Dude: work on your reading comprehension.
CentOS, via their Plus repository
Redhat doesn't HAVE a "Plus" repository, which is where CentOS puts recent versions of software for those that require it.
Since I can't get that for ANY price from RH, they actually have LESS value to me.
Here is a real world scenario. I have several racks full of blade servers. The hardware is identical. The configuration is identical. The software loaded is identical. These machines are all clones of each other. If I have a problem with the OS, it will affect all of them, and the fix will fix all of them. If cost of support of one machine is X, and I have N machines, the support cost and effort is not N*X, it's more like 2X. RH wants to charge me N*($Retail-20%) for "support." That's just not reasonable. RHEL is not Windows, and the Windows pricing model doesn't work for it.
Ah here we go. Let's put it this way... If RedHat went out of business tomorrow, those same kernel developers would just go to another company, and in all likely hood will still be kernel developers. Looking at that list, IBM which doesn't even have a distro, is not that far behind. More telling is the "Unknown" which is twice RedHat.
Don't get me wrong, I applaud RedHat for all the work they are doing, but I have no illusions that they are the only company willing and able to do that work. Furthermore, they have designed their product line and pricing of it in a way that just doesn't work for a huge segment of the market. Why should I use a product that fails to meet my requirements of having "reasonably" fresh software, and pricing that offers reasonable discounts on large numbers of copies? CentOS, via their Plus repository gives me the best of both worlds. Stability and consistency where I need it, fresh software when I need it, at a price point that can't be beat. RH can learn from Centos.
Centos has another HUGE advantage over the base RHEL - the CentosPlus repository. With Plus, you can grab php5 without needing to go out and grab srpms from fedora and make all sorts of manual changes to make it work, and building / maintaining your own packages.
RHEL could gain a LOT more converts and increase value with their own version of Plus. Plus gives you the best of both worlds.
I don't think your criticisms should be aimed at RHEL. If you wanted new packages over stability or wanted to be able to force upgrade then you picked the wrong distro. You are not their target audience.
I think it depends on the KIND of stability you are looking for... There is stability in the fact that nothing changes, and there is stability in terms of operational reliability.
The problem with the former, is that modern third party software tends to be incompatible with ancient versions of software that are bundled with RHEL 4 for example. If you want to run MediaWiki, you need PHP5. There is no PHP5 for RHEL from RedHat. There is nothing inherently instable about PHP5 - RHEL5 supports it.
CentOS deals with this with a "Plus" repository, which allows you to install more modern versions of software.
So who is the target audience? People that only run Oracle or a Samba server? Or people that want to run modern web applications? The GP has a VERY valid point, and RH has already lost some sales due to their inability to keep the OS "fresh" while still being stable.
Remember, a Linux distribution is not like Windows. It has a LOT more software. In the windows world, you typically use third party software in cases where the functionality is "standard" in Linux. Good examples are PHP and MySQL. It's trivial to upgrade PHP and MySQL on Windows, but quite hard on RHEL.
I need my base framework stable, but not outdated.
That said, when I need to do a major distro upgrade, I do it by installing on a new machine, and move applications / data over. That way I can test it well before cutover. I really don't like in-place upgrades.
Here is the deal... Once you are employed, it's a LOT harder to get good raises - they are typically going to be 0 - 5%. Your big salary jumps are when you change jobs. 1.3X is QUITE reasonable. Even if you change positions vertically within a company, you are unlikely to get a large salary boost. If you are job hopping, obviously that formula isn't going to work, but it should work every 2-3 years. Remember, you have more experience after several years at a job too, and experience matters.
That's interesting, I found the opposite.
I took a look at the SAGE salary survey and a few other sites. The problem I ran into is that I can't hire competent people for those rates, and have to pay 50% MORE for really good people. If you want really good people, you have to lure them away from positions that they are currently happy with, so it takes a significant incentive to get them to make a move. I've NOT had good luck with people that are currently unemployed - In general, I found their skill sets to be underwhelming.
That depends on whether you really innovate, or if you just rehash the standard CPU socket design. You are assuming that it would be a rehash of what we have today. I would not suggest that. I also think stuffing a raw CPU into a socket on the motherboard is a bad idea - it should be a module that has supporting circuitry, probably even "local" ram. Think of a design that is closer to PCI Express than PCI-X where you have many very high speed serial interconnects rather than a couple ultra-wide parallel. With a reasonable amount of local memory, more can be done "on module" at even higher speeds, with a lower pin count.
CPU integration with system board design has not changed much since the very first CPU. Not changing anything has the advantage of making it easy to integrate new CPU designs, but the disadvantage of what we have today - constantly changing CPU sockets requiring new motherboards for damn near every chip rev. I'm just saying that maybe there is a better way...
Does your phone dock work in the car? On a plane? Does it add CPU power and memory? Does it give you a bigger screen? The answer to all of these is No. Phone docks basically allow you to charge your phone and sync with your desktop. The discussion is about replacing the desktop and using your phone as your main computer. Palmtop's have had add-on keyboards for years - they tend to suck as a primary keyboard however, and are still not very portable (folding keyboards are larger than the device by far.) Phone-style portable computing devices are no where near as powerful as desktop's, and heat / power issues will ensure that they remain that way for the foreseeable future.
As processors get faster and faster, they require more pins. No more 80 pin CPUS for us. If they designed a universal CPU slot today, it would either have twice as many pins as we needed, or we'd run out of pins within 2 years.
That assumes you are plugging in individual processors. This is why I specified "module". Using high speed serial channels, like PCI Express does, you can reduce the pin count on the module level considerably. I would assume that the module would also contain a certain amount of local RAM, such as 1 - 2G. The pin count on CPU's today is also an artifact of legacy design - wider parallel buses, integrating more "support" into the processor, etc.
In order to really advance computing, we have to think differently.
So basically have a passive backplane like industrial computers have been doing for YEARS, except that you allow multiple CPU boards. I like it.
The problem is that the Mac's are all built like standard PC's now. If you replace the Apple firmware with a standard BIOS you could boot DOS. The Mac Mini is basically a standard notebook in a different form factor, ditto for the imac. The Mac pro is not much different in design than a Dell desktop. Why? Cost. They get to use standard parts / software. There is NOTHING on the market like the integrated design of the Amiga. The mac has a lot more in common with a 1982 IBM PC than an Amiga.
The next mainstream computer platform just might be a phone though
Smartphones will (IMHO) evolve to a wireless portable computing device that "oh yeah, it can make phone calls too," but the problem is still that the screen is still WAY to small, and user input still sucks. Maybe they will finally be able to make LCD-like glasses that really are high-resolution, and maybe they will come up with a neural interface so we can ditch the keyboard / mouse... But I don't see those things being practical within the next 10 years. I also see the CPU speed / memory / storage requirements continuing to increase. We may be able to get everything we will want in a hand-held in my lifetime, but I doubt it.
Ahh - the Amiga. My favorite machine during that era. I got my A1000 the first day it was available. Modern OS's could still learn a lot from that 20 year old OS. Why oh why are we still using "DOS Compatible" hardware????
Amiga had 4096 colors at the time.
Better put "4096" with a "*" qualifier. You couldn't assign each pixel an exact color - the scheme got you more colors by being able to set a bit that said that the next pixel modifies the previous pixel by "x". In this way, they could get more colors using less memory than traditional X bits per color per pixel schemes (Amiga was a bitplane architecture.)
Anyway, back on topic, I wish that the CPU manufacturers could finally come up with a "generational" standard socket. A well-designed module socket should last as long as an expansion slot standard (ISA,PCI,PCIe) and not change for damn near every model of chip. I should be able to go out and get a one, 2, 4, 8 socket motherboard, and stick any CPU / GPU / DSP module into it I want. Can we please finally shitcan the 1980's motherboard designs?
I'll respond to both of you.
You mean to tell me that you pay about $100,000 a year in taxes,and yet you claim you can't afford premium medical insurance? Explain to me how that's possible.
Premium medical insurance still has deductibles. If you claim that you know of insurance that has ZERO deductibles, show me. They don't exist. The plans with the lowest deductibles at the moment are HMO plans, which SUCK as they require you to get preauthorization for everything through your Primary care physician. No thanks, if I want to see a specialist, I'll go see one.
It's not possible to buy better medical insurance. Why? People don't buy medical insurance. We aren't allowed.
Huh??? No. You can go out and buy insurance from many insurers. How do you think the self-employed people get it??? Now affordability is a whole different issue. When you are not in a group plan, you have to list all your preexisting conditions (which frequently are not covered) and submit to a physical. That insurance can cost you a several thousand a month for a family depending on a number of factors.
The only 100% medical insurance is what the government pays for the completely indigent. However, it's often sucky medical insurance in that it doesn't cover many things (e.g. preventive care). It's only better than regular health insurance in that it does not require copays or have deductibles.
That depends on the state, and it frequently is all based on school lunch subsidies (which is a federal program...) You have no idea how much is tied to whether you qualify for reduced rate school lunches - go research it and get ready to be shocked and angry. Anyway, in my state, if your kids qualify for reduced rate lunches, you get totally free medical / dental. And it covers preventative. Parents are covered as they "need to be healthy" in order to "care for the kids." There is no deductible as the "poor can't afford it." It's the exact same medical care as I get - they go to the same hospitals.
I encourage everyone who thinks that they pay too much taxes to go out and REALLY look at the social programs out there. Do the research. Don't just assume, get the facts. According to my latest social security statement, I'll only get 20% of what I paid in to social security back when I retire. If I was able to invest that money myself, I should receive 5 TIMES what I paid in if it was invested with simple fixed income investments. Of course all the social programs together don't hold a candle to the cost of the fucking Iraq war, but everything adds up.