> Radio would be dead except it costs almost nothing to keep a station on the air...
Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. *Broadcast* radio and television cost considerably more to operate than most people think, even if a given station can achieve a state of complete automation.
First, there are simply the costs of putting a station on the air. To give you an idea, our company purchased a Class A (3-6KW) station several years ago for about 1.5 million. To replace the old equipment and antenna system cost several hundred thousand dollars. It ain't cheap. That can be amortized and "spread" over many years, but it still adds up to significant money out of the bottom line.
Second, the "licensing" that you mention (and then toss aside) is a significant expense. It depends on market size, but typically runs several thousand dollars PER MONTH.
Finally, yes, there are many stations that are "automated," but there are degrees of automation. We run many of our stations live. Even those which are automated are live for at least portions of the day. Why? Because that's what the listeners prefer, and in a competitive market, you'd better satisfy them, or you're out of business in short order. Everyone focuses on Clear Channel, but believe me, they keep looking over THEIR shoulders at Cumulus, which tends to prefer live and local programming and which often kicks CC's butt whenever they go head to head. (For that matter, our own company kicked CC's butt in a major market a few years ago. *Cough* and "ahem."):)
Maintenance is not insignificant. Just to have tower lights replaced can cost several thousand dollars. A single lightning strike (especially if idiotic copper thieves have removed your ground wires) can do tens of thousands in damage.
Bottom line: on-line streaming, and networks of completely automated 100-200 watt translator services might not be hideously expensive, but believe me, broadcasting is NOT cheap.
If I had a dollar for everyone I've known to buy or build a station with high hopes, then go bankrupt and end up selling a few years later, I could buy us all a nice dinner. Trust me.
> the fact it happened 10 times is an indicator of something.
Not necessarily, not unless you assume that aliens think as we do. Youngster, I'm old enough to remember when pulsars were first discovered (back in the 60's) and there was all sorts of speculation that they might be a signal from a distant intelligent race. After all, the pulses, while containing no discernible information, were as regular as clockwork! And the frequencies were PRECISE and invariable!:)
So, let's contrive an example. Somewhere out in space is a weird binary stellar system, one in which a big, gaseous giant with strange elements in its outer layers is spilling this stew onto a dwarf. (In other words, similar to the rig-up for a nova, but with key differences.) The dwarf regularly fuses this stewed garbage, cranking out a hash of very complex signals. Between that system and earth, though, is another binary system (maybe even dark matter; who knows?), rapidly rotating, that periodically occludes it. Thus, we meet your criteria: for all we "know," it's a signal containing information, and it's being repeated!
OK, so that's not terribly likely, but it illustrates the point: even if SETI should detect a signal that sounds for all the world like it's an extraterrestrial intelligence, how will we know for sure? Even if it IS a signal from aliens, why do you assume that they think as we do? Maybe their idea of "communication" is something completely and entirely different.
Nah, let's put the money in actually going OUT there.
> As I understand it one of the big markers that they look for is repetition
But it would (at best) be a "complex" repetition. If you're handy with files, use a hex editor to look at a.WAV of some audio, then look at the equivalent in an.MP3. The latter looks like pure random gibberish (even though it's not). In a sense, the repetitions have been *removed* to achieve compression.
Our own HD Radio carriers are similar. They're highly compressed and sound like hissy white noise on an analog radio -- regardless of what we're broadcasting. I'm not saying that it can't be decoded (if it couldn't, there would be any point!). But you have to *know* how to decode that bitstream. What in the world makes anyone, SETI or otherwise, think that they can determine the format of any alien signal? They're just assuming that an alien people would use something that we would recognize and understand.
I have to be honest... as much as I'm a booster of space exploration in general, I've never been a big fan of SETI. I think it's a marvelous waste of time. Just my opinion, and you know what those are worth, but rather than throwing money at them, I'd rather see everyone donate to an effort to, say, build a permanent colony on the moon or in an asteroid.
Or something else entirely. Look at our own communications, which are rapidly switching to all-digital. Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise. And who says aliens use anything like we do?
I postulate that a technical civilization would only stick with radio for approximately 100-200 years before moving to something better -- and something that we probably don't even know how to listen to. When measured against just the age of our local group, that's very narrow odds.
Be better to spend the money actually GOING to the stars than just listening to them, in my opinion.:)
> When people were polled about specific parts OF the bill...
Those polls that supposedly showed that Americans would support the bill if the "knew what was actually in it" contained a carefully-chosen, limited set of questions. In fact, the mandate was just one thing that they hated. Another was the so-called "death panels" -- and whatever you want to call it, by that name or something considerably more innocuous, Americans were fanatically opposed to the idea that a government body would be able to decide on their health care.
I was opposed to it for the reasons stated, but also because of the database/record-keeping provisions. The treatment that I have received, or may receive in the future, is NO ONE's business but my own. Period.
Just setting the record straight. Not that it matters. What's really going to happen is that this decision is going to cause a repeat of 2010. The election is going to be a bloodbath and any politician who insists on supporting this thing, in the face of 60-70% public disapproval, had better have another job lined up.
> assumption that this is an ati vs nvidia debate?
I don't see it that way. Sorry you do. But even if you're right, let's face it, they're the most popular by far, and thus, the ones most likely to be encountered by the average Linux user. The only other major vendor for video might be Intel, and it has been mentioned several times here as well (including by yours truly).
So far, this entire discussion has (overall) been useful to me. And yes, I do see this as directly on topic: Torvalds was discussing the *usability* (that's the operative term) of nVidia.
I've had some problems with all three (I run OpenSuse)... but NOT since I started downloading their own driver packages and building them on the target machine. I most recently did it with the AMD/ATI Radeon graphics on a new HP Probook. Both ATI and nVidia include configuration/tweaking software that will let me fine-adjust, and I just don't have problems with either.
BUT... disclaimer: I haven't bought a *video* card in years. I always buy integrated graphics, because it's cheaper and does what I want. Your mileage will vary. But my Big Test(tm) of any graphics system under Linux is to see how well it runs Celestia. If it will run it at reasonable speed without flickering or other annoyances, I consider it Good.
Actually, I've had considerably more trouble with Intel's 9xx series of built in graphics than with ATI and nVidia combined. My previous laptop had the 945 graphics kit (I think I remember the number correctly) and I suffered through everything from flickers to outright hangs.
And the worst experience of all was with an old S3 card many years ago. Wow, what a piece of joy.
> Any species that was even the slightest bit more violent than humans would certainly destroy itself before reaching off-planet spaceflight.
You obviously don't read much science fiction. That subject has been fully explored in several different ways.
For example, imagine a truly advanced alien race with FTL technology that encounters a violent, savage, less-advanced race. The savages take the technology and storm the galaxy with it. See: Larry Niven's Kzin. Poul Anderson's The High Crusade. (In that case, Britons from the Middle Ages are the "savages.") Or, David Drake's take on the "missing legion," which is enslaved by a star-faring race, then mutinies.
Another twist is that FTL tech is actually very simple, but that humans never discovered it because our research went in the wrong direction. For the life of me, I can't remember the title of the sci-fi I read in this case, but it was a great story. At the end of the book, one of the conquered aliens says to his friend, "can you imagine if humans had FTL capability? They could conquer the universe!" And the alien's comrade says, "well, they have it now." (I.e., we've given it to them!) They stare at each other in horror, and THE END.:)
You assume that the way that humanity developed is the only way that any people could develop. Since we have precisely zero examples to draw from, that's nothing but speculation. A peaceful race of aliens might have developed advanced technology, then turned "bad" after they made it into space, fighting over resources.
> Tell me, what can you do with a clean conscience?
Precisely. There is no cut and dried, absolute way to know for sure if what you're buying came from a "righteous" source. Not that many years ago, if you bought vegetables, many were harvested by badly-abused migrant workers. Before that, if you bought anything made of iron or steel, it was produced by people who were forced to work in horrible conditions where many died. The coal that was mined to create the steel resulted in the deaths of countless miners because of unsafe working conditions. Going back before that, it goes on and on and on.
Where possible, do good and do no evil. If I can help it, I buy what I need from sources that aren't overtly exploitative. But it's not quite as cut and dried as some might make it out to be. And I do agree that "being exploited" is a matter of opinion. If my family was starving and was going to die anyway, I just might take an otherwise-dangerous job at low pay to feed them.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't work to improve conditions for everyone. But to answer the submitter's question and headline, yes, unless I know for a fact that someone was sacrificed to build something, I WILL buy it with a clean conscience.
> corporate types want somebody to blame when things go pear-shaped
I think that's part of it, but an even bigger part is just sheer inertia. Budgets are tight, the economy is still struggling, and even though Windows costs a little more, a lot of PHB's figure they'll just hire people who know how to use Office and Outlook and be done with it.
BUT... and here's the real reason I popped in here; I've been dying to say this for some time now.:)
I think this is changing. Our own company, as recently as three years ago, was still buying standard laptops with Windows and Office pre-installed. We are now migrating over to iPads and Android tablets. The privacy issues concern us somewhat, but I think this is going to increase in the future. People are willing to learn new "apps" to replace what they used under Windows, too.
I think Microsoft had better be very, very worried about this trend. Years ago, most people who bought computers demanded Windows on it. Nowadays, people buying pads and tablets and they are perfectly willing to use something other than Windows. Most significantly, when someone introduces a smart phone or tablet with Windows on it, the marketplace is saying, "ho, hum."
Especially among younger users, Windows is viewed as, "like, SO 1990.":)
> linux isn't secure by itself. you have to configure it to be secure > and you still have to buy firewalls and all kinds of appliances to monitor traffic... make me suspect that you've never actually used a good, modern distribution. To address your latter point (as MightyMartian does elsewhere below), you do NOT have to "buy firewalls and all kinds of appliances," unless you just want to. Our company recently upgraded to Zimbra (the free community build) running on CentOS 6 and we retired our Barracuda Spam Firewall. We just don't need it, saving us several hundred dollars a year in subscription fees. I monitored it very closely for a the first few weeks after going live with it, but now I just check it every other evening or so. Works like a champ and I don't worry a whole lot about someone cracking it.:)
Now for the first point. Any of the major distros that I can think of off the top of my head -- Red Hat/Fedora, SuSE/OpenSuse, Ubuntu, or whatever -- has a default install that is VERY secure. Red Hat even includes the (NSA developed) SELinux, and Suse includes AppArmor. (Not sure about Ubuntu, I don't use it.)
I'm very glad the Windows has finally gotten its act together and has become more secure, but let's face it, it took years. While they were figuring out that it MIGHT not be a good idea to allow someone execute code from a freekin' email, I was learning how to use Linux. Now I'm married to it and don't plan to get a divorce.:)
> At low power levels (e.g. 10kw) transistorised VHF/UHF output amplifiers are fine. Additionally, you can get a higher power output by operating multiple VHF/UHF output amplifiers in parallel - which also gives some redundancy for transmitter maintenance.
See Pentium 100's reply; he hit the high points. But it's essentially a matter of cost-effectiveness. If you tell me, "I need 30,000 watts at 100 MHz (a typical FM arrangement), I'm going to use a tube. Even after paying $5,000 for the tube and building a 10,000 volt, 5A power supply, I'd still come out ahead. Combining enough 100-200W solid-state modules to get that kind of power level would be far more expensive.
There's a practical matter, too -- for example, or 50 KW AM stations *do* use solid-state, and they're done as Pentium100 describes: you combine bunches and bunches of modules to get that power level. That's at a much lower frequency, and they can be made very efficient.. ... but with full modulation, our Nautel transmitter runs a 300V primary supply and draws in excess of 300 amperes(!). There are giant 3/0 cables (they look like booster cables!) running all over the inside of that thing just to handle the current.
Can't cheat physics: power = voltage times current.
But I'll add this: Some competitively-priced solid state high power transmitters have begun appearing, so I have hope for the future. (We're looking at some of the new Nautel FM units ourselves; www.nautel.com if you're curious.) But seriously, even as recently as 2 years ago, there was no question that a 4CX20000 tube in a tuned cavity was far more cost-effective than trying to do it with solid-state.
What is really heartening to me, by the way, is how our own users are embracing alternatives -- in fact, we are moving to iPads and Android tablets after years of buying standard Dell and Gateway laptops with MS Office installed. I still use a laptop, but I run OpenSuse Linux on it and LibreOffice is plenty good enough for everything that I do in my job (engineering management).
Now, just a few years ago, if I'd tried to get anyone to try anything other than XP or Vista with MS Office, they would have complained. Now now. I find that VERY heartening.
As for mail... if you're talking about setting up your own server, the ONLY way to go is Zimbra. The OS build is absolutely free and it'll do everything you need and more. You'll have a few aggravations (some of our users need port 587 for send, others want 465, for example), but we are loving it. Our Windows folks are using the Zimbra Desktop, which rocks.
Give Zimbra a HARD look. I'm speaking from personal experience.
No, thanks to an AMERICAN. He immigrated here, accepted citizenship and is now an American. I welcome people like him. If he ever shows up at my doorstep, I'm grilling burgers for him -- anyway he likes.:)
> Whatever the youth are interested in will be demonized. 60 years ago it was Elvis's hips
Two points.
First, the unfortunate thing about the article is that it implies that teenagers are the worst. ALL texting while driving is dangerous. I don't care how good you think you are, either, if you're texting, there is NO WAY you could react in time if someone should change lanes in front of you at the precise instant that you're looking down, trying to find the "X" key.
My wife and I were almost run into a ditch the other day by a middle-aged man, staring down at his smart phone, while he flew at 75+ MPH down the interstate. The guy was weaving all over the place. Hey, I'm an older guy now, and the problem is that my eyes aren't as good as they used to be. I'd have to stare at the phone for a second, then look up and let them readjust to the road. This guy apparently didn't realize that.
Second: your argument is invalid anyway. Elvis' hips, rock and roll, and Dungeons and Dragons did not, as a general rule, involve a distracted driver in a ton of steel and glass flying down the road. Simply put, Elvis' Evil Hips(tm) didn't generally kill people.
(Except possibly for old ladies who experienced "the vapors" while watching him gyrate, but that's as may be!!!)
I remember the first time they fell into deep economic doo-doo, because I was a regular in their forums online. They were asking for people to pay $130 euros to join the Mandrake Club, but they required it in a lump sum. I pointed out that they might get more response if they permitted people to do it monthly. But one of their people (might have been Gael himself) posted, "we need the cash NOW." That was when I began to suspect that they were in even more trouble that most people realized.
And sure enough, not long afterward, they were insolvent. My recollection of the "focus on education" thing comes from my time in their forums, and I remember their own people saying that they'd make a mistake with that.
> There is no money in Linux desktop sales. Mandrake was not going to beat RedHat or United Linux... in the enterprise market. > They had always been a desktop product so they couldn't move strongly into servers.
Who knows? If it had worked, no doubt Gael Duval would have been hailed as a genius. But thinking back on that time, I was a *huge* Mandrake Fanbois. I installed it every chance I could (my first Web server was Apache on Mandrake) and loved it.
As I recall, though, the reason it was a dumb move (again, my opinion) was because what people were looking for was Red Hat Certification. If you'd paid and passed a Mandrake course, it was hard to imagine getting a job off of that. But everyone had heard of Red Hat.
As for desktop Linux, that's an old argument that has been rehashed here a million times. Again, who knows? If Microsoft hadn't been so dominant (and hadn't so actively crushed anything that looked like competition), I think Mandrake might have been a contender.
I cut my teeth on the old Mandrake stuff over a decade ago. It had its quirks, but it was a great way to introduce a newbie to Linux. Glad that the code base isn't going away.
Of course, the whole Mandrake/Mandriva story is a sad one in many ways. While Red Hat and SuSE were making money off of support, Mandrake decided to go with education and certification. (This was several years ago, before the name change.) They lost their hineys on it and almost went under then.
Good distribution troubled by a bunch of inexplicably bad business decisions. Just my opinion, anyway.
(Any of my fellow old timers here remember Mandrake 7.0's infamous "Move Your Mouse Wheel!" thing during installation??? Heh. More fun than Duke Nukem getting that thing to work!!!)
OK, one other thing: it's that piggy-backed RF signal thing again. Take your DSL modem out to the demarc box (i.e., the telco's actual junction, typically mounted outside on the wall of your home). If you're lucky, it's one of the newer ones with standard RJ-11 plugs and jacks. Unplug your entire home and connect the DSL model *directly* to the Telco.
If your bandwidth improves noticeably, YOU have a problem with YOUR wiring inside your home.
As for what you can do, it's what many others have said here: your contract probably states that 6 Meg is an "up to" or "best case" figure. But check it just to be sure. But one thing that I'd suggest, if you can, is to try a smaller ISP with personal service, even if they cost a little more. Avoid the Big Bad Telcos(tm) like the plague. Here's why.
Especially if you're in a rural area, then it's a safe bet that, no matter which ISP you use, the signal is actually getting to your house over the Big Bad Telco's lines. Ex., I use Hiwaay info services here in Alabama, but they use ATT's copper and equipment. BUT... if I have a big problem, Hiwaay deals with ATT for me and gets the issue resolved. You get what you pay for.
If you're in the middle of nowhere, you're lucky to get DSL at all. DSL is piggybacked via an RF carrier on your POTS line. Like most spread-spectrum/"stacked bandwidth" services, as the signal degrades, your bandwidth degrades, too. So... that's one thing you can check. A smaller ISP might be more willing to send a tech with test equipment. The tech can run all sorts of QOS and noise tests on the lines. Who knows? Maybe the line is badly grounded at a nearby neighbor's house, and that's eating half your bandwidth.
Here's the thing: the Big Telco doesn't care. They oversell their bandwidth like mad, realizing that most people are just checking email and Facebook. Not high-bandwidth usage. The few who need lots of bits per second are just not that important to them. As long as you have a connection, they'll say, "that's as good as you can get."
> "I have jebus so I don't need to understand anything like technology"
You know, I normally ignore comments like this, because this is arguably off-topic. Besides, you have a right to believe as you wish, and I will defend that right. But this time, I'm going to make an exception.
It actually amuses me the number of people who insist that belief in God automatically prevents critical thinking. Or, as you imply here, that religious people are happy to be "ignorant." (Or whatever.) ANY large group of people, however you sort them, will contain a preponderance of "sheeple" (to use the most common perjorative) who are happy to let others tell them what to believe. That has ALWAYS been true.
But there are plenty of us who believe very strongly in God and admire His design in nature and want to learn more about it. Those who think this is impossible -- sorry, but I'm going to say it anyway: just because YOU are incapable of simultaneously imagining the existence of a higher power and engaging in rational, critical thinking, don't assume that everyone is as narrowminded and limited as YOU.
Of the millions of examples that I could give, I'll provide one: St. Jude's Hospital right up the road from me in Memphis. Many of the doctors and researchers there are devout believers in God, and yet they rigorously apply the scientific method to their research. They don't just pray and sing when sick kids come from treatment, they throw everything in their medical arsenal at that poor child. Further, their SCIENTIFIC research is directly credited with lowering (again, just one example of many) the survival rates of certain types of leukemia in just a few short decades. In the 70's, a child diagnosed with one of these illnesses died, period. Nowadays, the survival rates are over 90%.
All because these *BELIEVING* doctors -- people who actually (*gasp*) believe in God, no less -- are perfectly capable of applying rational, critical thinking to research and methodology. Imagine that.:)
I love how these threads immediately devolve into endless religion-bashing.
I haven't read the actual article, only the summary and the (few) comments here that leave the silly religion-bashing and actually try to figure out what's going on. It's actually quite simple: organizations which take their Web presence seriously will have full-time staff devoted to maintaining it properly -- be they porn, religious, political, or otherwise.
Smaller organizations will try to "roll their own" -- and I'll bet some of them are running ancient IIS or Apache installs that have never been patched. Or, if their Web presence isn't vital to them (they've only got a Website because someone told them they needed one), and especially if they're with a small-time ISP or hosting provider that only checks and patches once a year, then yes, they're going to be attacked.
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> Radio would be dead except it costs almost nothing to keep a station on the air ...
Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. *Broadcast* radio and television cost considerably more to operate than most people think, even if a given station can achieve a state of complete automation.
First, there are simply the costs of putting a station on the air. To give you an idea, our company purchased a Class A (3-6KW) station several years ago for about 1.5 million. To replace the old equipment and antenna system cost several hundred thousand dollars. It ain't cheap. That can be amortized and "spread" over many years, but it still adds up to significant money out of the bottom line.
Second, the "licensing" that you mention (and then toss aside) is a significant expense. It depends on market size, but typically runs several thousand dollars PER MONTH.
Finally, yes, there are many stations that are "automated," but there are degrees of automation. We run many of our stations live. Even those which are automated are live for at least portions of the day. Why? Because that's what the listeners prefer, and in a competitive market, you'd better satisfy them, or you're out of business in short order. Everyone focuses on Clear Channel, but believe me, they keep looking over THEIR shoulders at Cumulus, which tends to prefer live and local programming and which often kicks CC's butt whenever they go head to head. (For that matter, our own company kicked CC's butt in a major market a few years ago. *Cough* and "ahem.") :)
Maintenance is not insignificant. Just to have tower lights replaced can cost several thousand dollars. A single lightning strike (especially if idiotic copper thieves have removed your ground wires) can do tens of thousands in damage.
Bottom line: on-line streaming, and networks of completely automated 100-200 watt translator services might not be hideously expensive, but believe me, broadcasting is NOT cheap.
If I had a dollar for everyone I've known to buy or build a station with high hopes, then go bankrupt and end up selling a few years later, I could buy us all a nice dinner. Trust me.
> the fact it happened 10 times is an indicator of something.
Not necessarily, not unless you assume that aliens think as we do. Youngster, I'm old enough to remember when pulsars were first discovered (back in the 60's) and there was all sorts of speculation that they might be a signal from a distant intelligent race. After all, the pulses, while containing no discernible information, were as regular as clockwork! And the frequencies were PRECISE and invariable! :)
So, let's contrive an example. Somewhere out in space is a weird binary stellar system, one in which a big, gaseous giant with strange elements in its outer layers is spilling this stew onto a dwarf. (In other words, similar to the rig-up for a nova, but with key differences.) The dwarf regularly fuses this stewed garbage, cranking out a hash of very complex signals. Between that system and earth, though, is another binary system (maybe even dark matter; who knows?), rapidly rotating, that periodically occludes it. Thus, we meet your criteria: for all we "know," it's a signal containing information, and it's being repeated!
OK, so that's not terribly likely, but it illustrates the point: even if SETI should detect a signal that sounds for all the world like it's an extraterrestrial intelligence, how will we know for sure? Even if it IS a signal from aliens, why do you assume that they think as we do? Maybe their idea of "communication" is something completely and entirely different.
Nah, let's put the money in actually going OUT there.
> As I understand it one of the big markers that they look for is repetition
But it would (at best) be a "complex" repetition. If you're handy with files, use a hex editor to look at a .WAV of some audio, then look at the equivalent in an .MP3. The latter looks like pure random gibberish (even though it's not). In a sense, the repetitions have been *removed* to achieve compression.
Our own HD Radio carriers are similar. They're highly compressed and sound like hissy white noise on an analog radio -- regardless of what we're broadcasting. I'm not saying that it can't be decoded (if it couldn't, there would be any point!). But you have to *know* how to decode that bitstream. What in the world makes anyone, SETI or otherwise, think that they can determine the format of any alien signal? They're just assuming that an alien people would use something that we would recognize and understand.
I have to be honest ... as much as I'm a booster of space exploration in general, I've never been a big fan of SETI. I think it's a marvelous waste of time. Just my opinion, and you know what those are worth, but rather than throwing money at them, I'd rather see everyone donate to an effort to, say, build a permanent colony on the moon or in an asteroid.
> gigahertz and terahertz frequencies
Or something else entirely. Look at our own communications, which are rapidly switching to all-digital. Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise. And who says aliens use anything like we do?
I postulate that a technical civilization would only stick with radio for approximately 100-200 years before moving to something better -- and something that we probably don't even know how to listen to. When measured against just the age of our local group, that's very narrow odds.
Be better to spend the money actually GOING to the stars than just listening to them, in my opinion. :)
> When people were polled about specific parts OF the bill ...
Those polls that supposedly showed that Americans would support the bill if the "knew what was actually in it" contained a carefully-chosen, limited set of questions. In fact, the mandate was just one thing that they hated. Another was the so-called "death panels" -- and whatever you want to call it, by that name or something considerably more innocuous, Americans were fanatically opposed to the idea that a government body would be able to decide on their health care.
I was opposed to it for the reasons stated, but also because of the database/record-keeping provisions. The treatment that I have received, or may receive in the future, is NO ONE's business but my own. Period.
Just setting the record straight. Not that it matters. What's really going to happen is that this decision is going to cause a repeat of 2010. The election is going to be a bloodbath and any politician who insists on supporting this thing, in the face of 60-70% public disapproval, had better have another job lined up.
> assumption that this is an ati vs nvidia debate?
I don't see it that way. Sorry you do. But even if you're right, let's face it, they're the most popular by far, and thus, the ones most likely to be encountered by the average Linux user. The only other major vendor for video might be Intel, and it has been mentioned several times here as well (including by yours truly).
So far, this entire discussion has (overall) been useful to me. And yes, I do see this as directly on topic: Torvalds was discussing the *usability* (that's the operative term) of nVidia.
Discuss on!!!
I've had some problems with all three (I run OpenSuse) ... but NOT since I started downloading their own driver packages and building them on the target machine. I most recently did it with the AMD/ATI Radeon graphics on a new HP Probook. Both ATI and nVidia include configuration/tweaking software that will let me fine-adjust, and I just don't have problems with either.
BUT ... disclaimer: I haven't bought a *video* card in years. I always buy integrated graphics, because it's cheaper and does what I want. Your mileage will vary. But my Big Test(tm) of any graphics system under Linux is to see how well it runs Celestia. If it will run it at reasonable speed without flickering or other annoyances, I consider it Good.
Actually, I've had considerably more trouble with Intel's 9xx series of built in graphics than with ATI and nVidia combined. My previous laptop had the 945 graphics kit (I think I remember the number correctly) and I suffered through everything from flickers to outright hangs.
And the worst experience of all was with an old S3 card many years ago. Wow, what a piece of joy.
That's it! Thanks. I got the final quote wrong, but I remember the story well.
> Any species that was even the slightest bit more violent than humans would certainly destroy itself before reaching off-planet spaceflight.
You obviously don't read much science fiction. That subject has been fully explored in several different ways.
For example, imagine a truly advanced alien race with FTL technology that encounters a violent, savage, less-advanced race. The savages take the technology and storm the galaxy with it. See: Larry Niven's Kzin. Poul Anderson's The High Crusade. (In that case, Britons from the Middle Ages are the "savages.") Or, David Drake's take on the "missing legion," which is enslaved by a star-faring race, then mutinies.
Another twist is that FTL tech is actually very simple, but that humans never discovered it because our research went in the wrong direction. For the life of me, I can't remember the title of the sci-fi I read in this case, but it was a great story. At the end of the book, one of the conquered aliens says to his friend, "can you imagine if humans had FTL capability? They could conquer the universe!" And the alien's comrade says, "well, they have it now." (I.e., we've given it to them!) They stare at each other in horror, and THE END. :)
You assume that the way that humanity developed is the only way that any people could develop. Since we have precisely zero examples to draw from, that's nothing but speculation. A peaceful race of aliens might have developed advanced technology, then turned "bad" after they made it into space, fighting over resources.
> Tell me, what can you do with a clean conscience?
Precisely. There is no cut and dried, absolute way to know for sure if what you're buying came from a "righteous" source. Not that many years ago, if you bought vegetables, many were harvested by badly-abused migrant workers. Before that, if you bought anything made of iron or steel, it was produced by people who were forced to work in horrible conditions where many died. The coal that was mined to create the steel resulted in the deaths of countless miners because of unsafe working conditions. Going back before that, it goes on and on and on.
Where possible, do good and do no evil. If I can help it, I buy what I need from sources that aren't overtly exploitative. But it's not quite as cut and dried as some might make it out to be. And I do agree that "being exploited" is a matter of opinion. If my family was starving and was going to die anyway, I just might take an otherwise-dangerous job at low pay to feed them.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't work to improve conditions for everyone. But to answer the submitter's question and headline, yes, unless I know for a fact that someone was sacrificed to build something, I WILL buy it with a clean conscience.
> corporate types want somebody to blame when things go pear-shaped
I think that's part of it, but an even bigger part is just sheer inertia. Budgets are tight, the economy is still struggling, and even though Windows costs a little more, a lot of PHB's figure they'll just hire people who know how to use Office and Outlook and be done with it.
BUT ... and here's the real reason I popped in here; I've been dying to say this for some time now. :)
I think this is changing. Our own company, as recently as three years ago, was still buying standard laptops with Windows and Office pre-installed. We are now migrating over to iPads and Android tablets. The privacy issues concern us somewhat, but I think this is going to increase in the future. People are willing to learn new "apps" to replace what they used under Windows, too.
I think Microsoft had better be very, very worried about this trend. Years ago, most people who bought computers demanded Windows on it. Nowadays, people buying pads and tablets and they are perfectly willing to use something other than Windows. Most significantly, when someone introduces a smart phone or tablet with Windows on it, the marketplace is saying, "ho, hum."
Especially among younger users, Windows is viewed as, "like, SO 1990." :)
These two statements:
> linux isn't secure by itself. you have to configure it to be secure ... make me suspect that you've never actually used a good, modern distribution. To address your latter point (as MightyMartian does elsewhere below), you do NOT have to "buy firewalls and all kinds of appliances," unless you just want to. Our company recently upgraded to Zimbra (the free community build) running on CentOS 6 and we retired our Barracuda Spam Firewall. We just don't need it, saving us several hundred dollars a year in subscription fees. I monitored it very closely for a the first few weeks after going live with it, but now I just check it every other evening or so. Works like a champ and I don't worry a whole lot about someone cracking it. :)
> and you still have to buy firewalls and all kinds of appliances to monitor traffic
Now for the first point. Any of the major distros that I can think of off the top of my head -- Red Hat/Fedora, SuSE/OpenSuse, Ubuntu, or whatever -- has a default install that is VERY secure. Red Hat even includes the (NSA developed) SELinux, and Suse includes AppArmor. (Not sure about Ubuntu, I don't use it.)
I'm very glad the Windows has finally gotten its act together and has become more secure, but let's face it, it took years. While they were figuring out that it MIGHT not be a good idea to allow someone execute code from a freekin' email, I was learning how to use Linux. Now I'm married to it and don't plan to get a divorce. :)
> At low power levels (e.g. 10kw) transistorised VHF/UHF output amplifiers are fine. Additionally, you can get a higher power output by operating multiple VHF/UHF output amplifiers in parallel - which also gives some redundancy for transmitter maintenance.
See Pentium 100's reply; he hit the high points. But it's essentially a matter of cost-effectiveness. If you tell me, "I need 30,000 watts at 100 MHz (a typical FM arrangement), I'm going to use a tube. Even after paying $5,000 for the tube and building a 10,000 volt, 5A power supply, I'd still come out ahead. Combining enough 100-200W solid-state modules to get that kind of power level would be far more expensive.
There's a practical matter, too -- for example, or 50 KW AM stations *do* use solid-state, and they're done as Pentium100 describes: you combine bunches and bunches of modules to get that power level. That's at a much lower frequency, and they can be made very efficient .. . .. but with full modulation, our Nautel transmitter runs a 300V primary supply and draws in excess of 300 amperes(!). There are giant 3/0 cables (they look like booster cables!) running all over the inside of that thing just to handle the current.
Can't cheat physics: power = voltage times current.
But I'll add this: Some competitively-priced solid state high power transmitters have begun appearing, so I have hope for the future. (We're looking at some of the new Nautel FM units ourselves; www.nautel.com if you're curious.) But seriously, even as recently as 2 years ago, there was no question that a 4CX20000 tube in a tuned cavity was far more cost-effective than trying to do it with solid-state.
What is really heartening to me, by the way, is how our own users are embracing alternatives -- in fact, we are moving to iPads and Android tablets after years of buying standard Dell and Gateway laptops with MS Office installed. I still use a laptop, but I run OpenSuse Linux on it and LibreOffice is plenty good enough for everything that I do in my job (engineering management).
Now, just a few years ago, if I'd tried to get anyone to try anything other than XP or Vista with MS Office, they would have complained. Now now. I find that VERY heartening.
As for mail ... if you're talking about setting up your own server, the ONLY way to go is Zimbra. The OS build is absolutely free and it'll do everything you need and more. You'll have a few aggravations (some of our users need port 587 for send, others want 465, for example), but we are loving it. Our Windows folks are using the Zimbra Desktop, which rocks.
Give Zimbra a HARD look. I'm speaking from personal experience.
> Thanks to a South African entrepreneur
No, thanks to an AMERICAN. He immigrated here, accepted citizenship and is now an American. I welcome people like him. If he ever shows up at my doorstep, I'm grilling burgers for him -- anyway he likes. :)
> Actually, the problem is that it's likely he *did* take college economics.
+25 Insightful, Informative and just plain "Yes." :)
> Whatever the youth are interested in will be demonized. 60 years ago it was Elvis's hips
Two points.
First, the unfortunate thing about the article is that it implies that teenagers are the worst. ALL texting while driving is dangerous. I don't care how good you think you are, either, if you're texting, there is NO WAY you could react in time if someone should change lanes in front of you at the precise instant that you're looking down, trying to find the "X" key.
My wife and I were almost run into a ditch the other day by a middle-aged man, staring down at his smart phone, while he flew at 75+ MPH down the interstate. The guy was weaving all over the place. Hey, I'm an older guy now, and the problem is that my eyes aren't as good as they used to be. I'd have to stare at the phone for a second, then look up and let them readjust to the road. This guy apparently didn't realize that.
Second: your argument is invalid anyway. Elvis' hips, rock and roll, and Dungeons and Dragons did not, as a general rule, involve a distracted driver in a ton of steel and glass flying down the road. Simply put, Elvis' Evil Hips(tm) didn't generally kill people.
(Except possibly for old ladies who experienced "the vapors" while watching him gyrate, but that's as may be!!!)
> [I] bought their stock ...
I remember the first time they fell into deep economic doo-doo, because I was a regular in their forums online. They were asking for people to pay $130 euros to join the Mandrake Club, but they required it in a lump sum. I pointed out that they might get more response if they permitted people to do it monthly. But one of their people (might have been Gael himself) posted, "we need the cash NOW." That was when I began to suspect that they were in even more trouble that most people realized.
And sure enough, not long afterward, they were insolvent. My recollection of the "focus on education" thing comes from my time in their forums, and I remember their own people saying that they'd make a mistake with that.
> There is no money in Linux desktop sales. Mandrake was not going to beat RedHat or United Linux ... in the enterprise market.
> They had always been a desktop product so they couldn't move strongly into servers.
Who knows? If it had worked, no doubt Gael Duval would have been hailed as a genius. But thinking back on that time, I was a *huge* Mandrake Fanbois. I installed it every chance I could (my first Web server was Apache on Mandrake) and loved it.
As I recall, though, the reason it was a dumb move (again, my opinion) was because what people were looking for was Red Hat Certification. If you'd paid and passed a Mandrake course, it was hard to imagine getting a job off of that. But everyone had heard of Red Hat.
As for desktop Linux, that's an old argument that has been rehashed here a million times. Again, who knows? If Microsoft hadn't been so dominant (and hadn't so actively crushed anything that looked like competition), I think Mandrake might have been a contender.
I cut my teeth on the old Mandrake stuff over a decade ago. It had its quirks, but it was a great way to introduce a newbie to Linux. Glad that the code base isn't going away.
Of course, the whole Mandrake/Mandriva story is a sad one in many ways. While Red Hat and SuSE were making money off of support, Mandrake decided to go with education and certification. (This was several years ago, before the name change.) They lost their hineys on it and almost went under then.
Good distribution troubled by a bunch of inexplicably bad business decisions. Just my opinion, anyway.
(Any of my fellow old timers here remember Mandrake 7.0's infamous "Move Your Mouse Wheel!" thing during installation??? Heh. More fun than Duke Nukem getting that thing to work!!!)
OK, one other thing: it's that piggy-backed RF signal thing again. Take your DSL modem out to the demarc box (i.e., the telco's actual junction, typically mounted outside on the wall of your home). If you're lucky, it's one of the newer ones with standard RJ-11 plugs and jacks. Unplug your entire home and connect the DSL model *directly* to the Telco.
If your bandwidth improves noticeably, YOU have a problem with YOUR wiring inside your home.
As for what you can do, it's what many others have said here: your contract probably states that 6 Meg is an "up to" or "best case" figure. But check it just to be sure. But one thing that I'd suggest, if you can, is to try a smaller ISP with personal service, even if they cost a little more. Avoid the Big Bad Telcos(tm) like the plague. Here's why.
Especially if you're in a rural area, then it's a safe bet that, no matter which ISP you use, the signal is actually getting to your house over the Big Bad Telco's lines. Ex., I use Hiwaay info services here in Alabama, but they use ATT's copper and equipment. BUT ... if I have a big problem, Hiwaay deals with ATT for me and gets the issue resolved. You get what you pay for.
If you're in the middle of nowhere, you're lucky to get DSL at all. DSL is piggybacked via an RF carrier on your POTS line. Like most spread-spectrum/"stacked bandwidth" services, as the signal degrades, your bandwidth degrades, too. So ... that's one thing you can check. A smaller ISP might be more willing to send a tech with test equipment. The tech can run all sorts of QOS and noise tests on the lines. Who knows? Maybe the line is badly grounded at a nearby neighbor's house, and that's eating half your bandwidth.
Here's the thing: the Big Telco doesn't care. They oversell their bandwidth like mad, realizing that most people are just checking email and Facebook. Not high-bandwidth usage. The few who need lots of bits per second are just not that important to them. As long as you have a connection, they'll say, "that's as good as you can get."
Hah! Typo alert. Obviously, I meant, RAISED the survival rates (or, LOWERED the death rate).
Heh. Thanks.
> "I have jebus so I don't need to understand anything like technology"
You know, I normally ignore comments like this, because this is arguably off-topic. Besides, you have a right to believe as you wish, and I will defend that right. But this time, I'm going to make an exception.
It actually amuses me the number of people who insist that belief in God automatically prevents critical thinking. Or, as you imply here, that religious people are happy to be "ignorant." (Or whatever.) ANY large group of people, however you sort them, will contain a preponderance of "sheeple" (to use the most common perjorative) who are happy to let others tell them what to believe. That has ALWAYS been true.
But there are plenty of us who believe very strongly in God and admire His design in nature and want to learn more about it. Those who think this is impossible -- sorry, but I'm going to say it anyway: just because YOU are incapable of simultaneously imagining the existence of a higher power and engaging in rational, critical thinking, don't assume that everyone is as narrowminded and limited as YOU.
Of the millions of examples that I could give, I'll provide one: St. Jude's Hospital right up the road from me in Memphis. Many of the doctors and researchers there are devout believers in God, and yet they rigorously apply the scientific method to their research. They don't just pray and sing when sick kids come from treatment, they throw everything in their medical arsenal at that poor child. Further, their SCIENTIFIC research is directly credited with lowering (again, just one example of many) the survival rates of certain types of leukemia in just a few short decades. In the 70's, a child diagnosed with one of these illnesses died, period. Nowadays, the survival rates are over 90%.
All because these *BELIEVING* doctors -- people who actually (*gasp*) believe in God, no less -- are perfectly capable of applying rational, critical thinking to research and methodology. Imagine that. :)
I love how these threads immediately devolve into endless religion-bashing.
I haven't read the actual article, only the summary and the (few) comments here that leave the silly religion-bashing and actually try to figure out what's going on. It's actually quite simple: organizations which take their Web presence seriously will have full-time staff devoted to maintaining it properly -- be they porn, religious, political, or otherwise.
Smaller organizations will try to "roll their own" -- and I'll bet some of them are running ancient IIS or Apache installs that have never been patched. Or, if their Web presence isn't vital to them (they've only got a Website because someone told them they needed one), and especially if they're with a small-time ISP or hosting provider that only checks and patches once a year, then yes, they're going to be attacked.
It's really quite simple.