Step 1: Start an open-source based company
Step 3: Profit!
Okay, how about doing this in true open source fashion from them folks. Just an idea, probably won't ever happen.
First off, what Sourceforge has today is a unique combination of services that nobody else I know of has. Sure you can buy web hosting and even FTP serving pretty cheap, but not with full cvs, bug tracking, and built in message boards. Certainly they also have the mind share out there as the place to host an open source project. For all the downsides, this should be a powerful combination.
In my mind, they should do everything they can to keep the tools used on that site open source. At the same time, they should be charging a nominal fee to those folks wishing to host their project there. Heck, it wouldn't have to be much. Figure it like this....
29,275 projects now hosted
$10/month for each project
$5/month additional for mailing list
$1/month for each person authorized to commit code to a project
Let's figure that they only retain 2/3'rds of the accounts in doing this. Of these, let's say about 1/3 add in some features of some sort. The mailing list thing was simply an example.
19,321 projects left
6,376 add in about $7 in features
$193,210 in hosting charges
$44,632 in feature charges
$237,842 total billable each month
$2,854,104 billable annually
This in my mind is a win win for everyone. Sourceforge charges a very reasonable fee for services, and they can show the project off as a profit center, all the while selling their proprietary version on the side. The dead projects that have long since lost developer interest vanish, or are picked up by someone else. Heck, if a project is truly interesting now we'd have a way to get non-developers involved by helping fund their hosting!
At this point though, Sourceforge is probably thinking that if they even charge a fee as low as $10/month they'd lose all the perty market share. I disagree, if for the unique services they provide alone. In order for this to play, those services and bandwidth need to keep themselves to very high standards.
I just know someone is going to find something wrong with my math:)
If the decisions were made on a strict technical basis, what would keep Intel alive?
Lower cost bundling to the OEM's
Fewer customer returns
Faster turn around to OEM's with replacement parts
High power processors ready for laptops today
Mind you, I run 2 Athlon machines at home, and 1 at work. On all of these machines I have been extremely pleased with stability and performance of the AMD processors. I always build my own PC's, and I am not an OEM. I don't have the same kinds of concerns they do.
Mabye the free market rules are not applied to computers?
The free market works just peachy. Athlons are doing quite well with folks such as myself purchasing individual components. It's the OEM space that AMD is hurting in, and for a variety of reasons.
Sooo, you just decided to pop onto this thread and state a comment about a product you didn't like, but didn't take the time to look at even it's most basic features? Well by gosh, on behalf of everyone reading this thread I would like to say thank you for your insightful, and interesting bit of literary magic you have graced us all with.
Gosh, I can only hope we get to hear about more things you haven't used, and your opinions on them really soon.
glwtta, your taking this bit about the meteroite wiping out the dinosaurs thing a little too seriously don't you think? Relax, have a beer, click on some ad banners, and do try to enjoy the show. Geeesh.
Didn't Saddam and Gamora (I know they're spelled wrong, sue me) supposedly get destroyed by falling rock and fireballs?
Man, I just hate when folks don't even take the time to do a little research into a post. Had you done that you would have found the legends from the far-east referring to Gamora being destroyed by Godzilla... or was it Monster X?
That's what I thought going in the theater. Thing is, I have to agree with the reviews I've read here and elsewhere for one simple reason. The movie just wasn't fun.
Was it Jet Li's flat acting? Bad camera work? I honestly don't know. I do know that when I left the theater from seeing "Iron Monkey" I was walking out smiling and glad I got to see it on a big screen.
Definitely a movie to wait for DVD on. At least then there might be some entertainment value in how they did some of the special effects.
Well, at least that's what it sounded like. I think that old silly looking Wolfenstien was the last game that ever got me to jump outta my chair. Not that more modern games don't have some really excellent use of mood and lighting, but now I suppose I'm more used to the genre.
Of course, a friend of mine who once saw me jump to one of them Germans popping out used this against me. Was working late... well, okay, so I was playing Wolf and all. He comes up right behind me and screams...
SPEE-ON!
The landing resulted in bruises. Not sure exactly what height I achieved. Oh yeah, I got him back!
Probably one of the worst mistakes I have made in the past few months
I guess we're just gonna have to disagree here. If something inside of ANY piece of electrical gear goes into a thermal runaway, I want an immediate shutdown. Off, not on, not throttled, but removed from the electrical current feeding it.
Whole thing is kinda silly anyway really. My biggest concern outside of a fire would be the heatsink plummetting through all my interface cards and denting the bottom of the case. Ahhh, but this anvil does keep things cool.
Probably one of the worst mistakes I have made in the past few months...
You actually thought that a k6 heatsink and fan would be enough for a 1.4G Athlon? Without thermal gel?? AND you make mistakes like these every couple of months??
Dude, go buy your machines from Dell or Compaq or somebody else before you burn down your house. You should also seriously consider having a trusted friend hide all the sharp objects in your house from you.
Developing one hotfix for a product, testing it, regression testing it and then deploying and tracking that hotfix, then giving free phone support for all hotfixes..... costs LOTS of money.
It's still a LOTS cheaper than not fixing your broken product that you've already sold.
Also, every SDK is online for free plus a shitload of other content.
This is NOT a giveaway! As folks discuss the ability for Linux to take on the desktop it's quite apparent that a lack of key applications keep Windows on corporate machines. Keeping developers actually developing for your platform is not about being a nice company. This is about having lots of other folks keep your platform viable.
So yes, I take it for granted that when a company fixes their broken product they should do so at no cost. Is that really so different than an automobile maker recalling and fixing problems with cars they've already sold? Would you expect to have to pay them too?
In a product that can influence picture quality tremendously...
Yeah, I was seriously wondering about this as well. Simply switching between boxes with different resolutions is more a test for the monitor than the KVM. How about running a cable straight to the monitor, then comparing that to what it looks like when the KVM is inserted? Even with high quality cables there is still a healthy bit of attenuation to the signal on most KVM's.
What is the use of specifying the brand of CD-writer
I liked how we got to hear about what case they used for the PC's. How about something useful, like how many buttons were on the mouse? I've got a Logitech trak ball here with 4 buttons, and I know many KVM's simply won't support that.
From my own testing, Cybex has been the friendliest to my 4-button mouse, but with poor video quality. The Linksys I once owned had great video quality, but no support for button #4.
While I really like the idea of an UDMA100 4GB drive, (solid state would be even better), there just isn't a viable market for such devices.
That's only considering a total replacement of one technology for another. In the same way that hard drives didn't make tape drives obsolete I doubt that solid state would make something else less desirable. For example, a 4 Gig solid state drive would be plenty for the vast majority of users to load their software onto. Data could then go to the old platter style hard drive. With a combination of the two you would see some truly astounding system performance increases.
The good news is that the Unix directory structure already provides a great deal of seperation between user data and the programs that access it. The bad news is that Windows does no such thing across the board. Whether you care about Windows or not, it is the OS that's driving the majority of the hardware market out there.
I'm no fan of Apple, but they may be the only folks out there that might pull something like this off. Assuming OSX utilizes a similar seperation between software and data, they have the hardware and software ability to work something like this.
I just love the fact that Apple is this concerned about a "skin". Heck, skins for desktop OS's that have but a tiny fraction of the Mac market share. Oh sure, it's shallow and petty. Thing of it is, it is some serious recognition of how one of the larger industry players view KDE, Gnome, and the *nix desktop in general.
If something this silly ever did make it to trial I doubt they'd get all that far with it. A "skin" does not a UI make. I have yet to see any of the *nix desktops do that trippy task bar warping magnifying thingy. None of the *nix desktops do that genie bottle thing when minimizing or restoring apps either. Thankfully this is still true. That stuff is slow and annoying, but it sure do look perty.
After using both a bit, KDE's Liquid engine looks and works a LOT better than OSX anyway. Apple and Microsoft should worry. There's just too many folks that would dump them both if the apps they needed were elsewhere. Going to be a real interesting landscape in the computer industry a year or 2 from now.
I should probably not mention that I think a massive tax cut to stimulate the economy, so we can collect even more taxes in the future, is probably not the best of ideas. I mean, we didn't rack up massive government debt in the 1982-1992 period because of that or anything.
I suppose it never fails to amaze me how when one of a certain political bent just believes whatever propaganda that's presented. Rather than simply listening to Gore's campaign speeches, how about looking at the numbers yourself?
You'll find a pretty good run down of both the good and bad about what really happened during the Reagan years concerning the econom. More importantly, what happens to the revenue coming into the government when taxes are lowered. That, or you could take the other pill and believe whatever you want to believe.
Again, I would say history is on our side and in time, our privacy rights and freedoms will return to us unscathed.
At one point in American history it was beyond the imagination that the government would tax personal incomes. Revenue was needed following the Civil War, so an exception was made for a very small percentage of the population.
Later, it was unthinkable that the personal income of every individual would need to be scrutinized by the government. Revenues were needed to pay for our involvement in WWII. The need was apparent, so we allowed that money to be yanked right out of pay before we got it in our hands.
A few generations pass, and the populace gets to believing that things have always been the way they are today. No concept of what exactly was lost to emergencies being dealt with in the prior generation.
If, in the search for terrorists the FBI stumbles across a drug-smuggling ring, or a mass-murderer...
And if this same search just happens to tap into the opposing political party at that time? We know all too well today the kind of power that Hoover had due to his files on individuals. We know what both the Republicans and Democrats are capable of when they think nobody is looking. Imagine these kinds of acts with limitless listening abilities that are also invisible to the public. No hotel break ins, no having to sneak in and set a wire tap, just flip a switch and listen. Type in a back door code and watch.
Orwell understood this power all too well. You might want to give the man a read.
The danger here is not a technical one, but a political one. It's a lesson history tried to teach us once before, but I haven't seen anyone really doing a comparison to a very similar set of circumstances that have happened prior.
Today I'm sure that the majority of our leaders in government are honestly concerned about how to deal with how to thwart attacks like we all saw last week. To do this they see information gathering as a critical tool to use for these ends. To gather this information they wish to put together an infrastructure of snooping abilities that go far beyond issues dealing with cryptography. We're also looking at phone tapping and possible postal snooping. The majority of citizens at this moment are more than happy to give up these liberties to give law enforcement the tools they seek. Lives are at stake after all!
Okay, so what happens when there's no longer a terrorist threat to be dealt with? Does this infrastructure just vanish? Not bloody likely. I don't believe that there's any kind of conspiracy today from either the right or left side of the spectrum to misuse these tools. What about 10 years from now? 20? 50? Can we really entrust a governmental body we haven't even seen yet to only use these kinds of tools in an honest way?
To keep this non-partisan, let's say the "Widget" party takes a majority in both houses and the presidency. Once in a majority, what all stops them to increase this monitoring built on the infrastructure we are proposing today? How can we be assured that what they're monitoring isn't just criminals, but the opposition party campaigns? Rather than a tool for law enforcemnent we could be looking at a tool for political power.
As to the comparison I was referring to at the beginning of this post, I'm of course talking about the rise of the Nazi party to power in Germany. Too many similarities to be funny. Weak economy, terrorist attacks on urban areas, a populace all too willing to give up liberties to those that can deliver on the promise that they won't have to be afraid of a building blowing up on them. Oh, and a bit of a racial element tossed into the mix.
No, I'm not even beginning to suggest that the Nazis are looking to take over America. What I am saying here is that there is a precedent to how people are reacting to these recent events. The German people openly welcomed the kind of lock down the Nazis brought with them because they saw the streets truly get to be a safer place. Unfortunately, what they didn't see was the enormous cost of that safety until it was far too late. What I'm concerned about is that in our fear at this time we may very well not see the high cost we will end up paying decades down the road.
First off, this is not meant to be any kind of definitive list of items, nor a flame on any other OS. Nothing more than what has kept me using FreeBSD rather than Linux.
Not too long ago I decided to get NT off of a laptop I've got here and get a *nix on there. Although I'm far more familiar with FreeBSD I figured that a Linux distro would have a better chance of having hardware support. After reading many a glowing review of Mandrake, I decided to give it a try on here.
The Mandrake installer is every bit as nice as folks claim, and then some. Very professional layout, wicked easy drive partitioner, and all the rest of the steps that get you through the install. It picked up on the proper video settings, handled all the X, Gnome, and KDE installation without a hitch. It's pretty impressive stuff.
Then I got to mucking around with the software updating utility. Darn thing takes as long to load up as a full cvsup of the FreeBSD ports tree. It also didn't seem to store my settings when I didn't want to load software off a CD, constantly demanding for an install CD to be inserted before continuing. Aside from all that, even when I did manage to get it to pull from a network source, the packages seemed to not be updated very often. I guess I'm just spoiled by the constant, daily, hourly, updating of the FreeBSD ports tree.
All this I was willing to deal with to some extent, but then I ran into another small problem. I'll disclaimer this up front by saying that had I put the time into it I'm sure I could have fixed it. For some reason the fancy network config settings for Mandrake kept changing my IP address. It was about then that I decided to dig a bit into the actual config files to see about fixing this problem.
After a couple of hours staring at a large number of these files, in which each of them seemed way too complex for their own good I'd had enough. I just kept saying to myself, "This is nuts!" Even the Apache config got busted up into multiple files, adding complexity rather than removing it. This pretty much defined my next course of action.
FreeBSD boot floppies in, re-format to UFS, and a new OS on. The FreeBSD install is pretty straight forward for anyone to follow, but some of the hand holding isn't there. For instance, if you're looking to put a newer version of X on, you get to do a manual config. It does take longer to run through the install up front, but what I keep being reminded is that once it's all in there it's far faster and easier to tweak on things, and to keep them up to date.
In less time than it took to type this out this here laptop completed an update of the source files and ports tree. Later tonight I'll run the make world process and be up to date with the latest stuff. A new release is nearly a non-event for an already running system.
From a user's point of view, one of the biggest differences between FreeBSD and a Linux distro is that FreeBSD doesn't have any specific GUI tools for administration. There is no such thing as a "linuxconf" or "HardDrake" utility. This is offset by what I feel are far simpler and fewer config files that the user can edit directly. Where I feel lost even looking at some of the start up scripts in a Linux/etc/rc.1, I feel totally comfortable going in and working with FreeBSD's scripts and config files.
I've heard a number of arguments stating the opposite of my view on this, but I'll leave those to the folks that hold that viewpoint. This is pretty much how I see it, if that perspective at all helps your understanding of some of the differences.
You mention these features that other email clients don't have. Would you care to elaborate on what they are?
I thought I had, but I'll summarize my top can't live withouts.
1. Addressing. No other E-Mail client handles this half as well as Messenger. A seperate line for each recipient, with each of these being able to toggle to: cc: and bcc: independantly. The full name AND E-Mail address showing up in the address bar. Auto completion of names as you type.
2. LDAP Addressing. All of the above, with a seemless integration to a remote server running LDAP. Other clients have some LDAP abilities, NS handles it darn near perfectly.
3. Multiple address books. This didn't come around until later versions of NS, but when it did it was handled very well.
4. HTML composition and viewing. Pretty much every component of Composer can be utilized when putting together an E-Mail.
5. Threading that works properly.
Yes, I realize that Outlook handles some of these items, but not nearly as well as Netscape. As I personally reviewed these two Outlook came very close feature wise to Messenger, and beat it in certain areas like the handling of multiple accounts. In the final analysis for me, the addressing features won out over multiple account handling. That, and I found over some time that I just preferred the interface that NS provided.
On the *nix side of the house I haven't seen any clients deal with the above features nearly as well. I wish one did, as I really hate the UI on the *nix version of Netscape 4.78. Only thing I'm seeing come close is Mozilla, though I'd personally prefer a stand alone client that called to Mozilla for HTML rendering only. From the looks of things, that ain't happening any time soon.
Just curious here as I'm not immediately familiar with these groupware features. What all does Exchange do that a locally run newsgroup server can't do? From what I've read of it, Exchange sure sounds like a newsgroup server with a pretty interface. How far off is this impression of mine?
Your post does highlight the issue that there are no standard formats in the OSS/Unix world...
What about HTML with CSS? When fully implemented to CSS2, there's very little a word processor or desktop publishing app couldn't save in this format. Tables, columns, kerning, images, the works! And even better, them things ARE open standards that everyone has bought into.
Along these lines I do have a question for the crowd here. Why XML formatting for a word processor anyway? I can appreciate the need for XML for a spreadsheet, but it seems an app like KWord has far more need for layout and formatting rather than data abstraction.
One of the other things I'd love to see fixed up proper in KWord is it's HTML export and import abilities. They are there, but they're pretty weak at this point. Even still, I'm very impressed with how far KWord has come from the previous versions I've worked with.
Slashdot Mirror
Step 1: Start an open-source based company
:)
Step 3: Profit!
Okay, how about doing this in true open source fashion from them folks. Just an idea, probably won't ever happen.
First off, what Sourceforge has today is a unique combination of services that nobody else I know of has. Sure you can buy web hosting and even FTP serving pretty cheap, but not with full cvs, bug tracking, and built in message boards. Certainly they also have the mind share out there as the place to host an open source project. For all the downsides, this should be a powerful combination.
In my mind, they should do everything they can to keep the tools used on that site open source. At the same time, they should be charging a nominal fee to those folks wishing to host their project there. Heck, it wouldn't have to be much. Figure it like this....
29,275 projects now hosted
$10/month for each project
$5/month additional for mailing list
$1/month for each person authorized to commit code to a project
Let's figure that they only retain 2/3'rds of the accounts in doing this. Of these, let's say about 1/3 add in some features of some sort. The mailing list thing was simply an example.
19,321 projects left
6,376 add in about $7 in features
$193,210 in hosting charges
$44,632 in feature charges
$237,842 total billable each month
$2,854,104 billable annually
This in my mind is a win win for everyone. Sourceforge charges a very reasonable fee for services, and they can show the project off as a profit center, all the while selling their proprietary version on the side. The dead projects that have long since lost developer interest vanish, or are picked up by someone else. Heck, if a project is truly interesting now we'd have a way to get non-developers involved by helping fund their hosting!
At this point though, Sourceforge is probably thinking that if they even charge a fee as low as $10/month they'd lose all the perty market share. I disagree, if for the unique services they provide alone. In order for this to play, those services and bandwidth need to keep themselves to very high standards.
I just know someone is going to find something wrong with my math
If the decisions were made on a strict technical basis, what would keep Intel alive?
Lower cost bundling to the OEM's
Fewer customer returns
Faster turn around to OEM's with replacement parts
High power processors ready for laptops today
Mind you, I run 2 Athlon machines at home, and 1 at work. On all of these machines I have been extremely pleased with stability and performance of the AMD processors. I always build my own PC's, and I am not an OEM. I don't have the same kinds of concerns they do.
Mabye the free market rules are not applied to computers?
The free market works just peachy. Athlons are doing quite well with folks such as myself purchasing individual components. It's the OEM space that AMD is hurting in, and for a variety of reasons.
Science is not an answer!
Science is the process of how to ask the question.
Oh man, and I thought I had way too much time on my hands! Wow!
... i didn't try it that long.
Sooo, you just decided to pop onto this thread and state a comment about a product you didn't like, but didn't take the time to look at even it's most basic features? Well by gosh, on behalf of everyone reading this thread I would like to say thank you for your insightful, and interesting bit of literary magic you have graced us all with.
Gosh, I can only hope we get to hear about more things you haven't used, and your opinions on them really soon.
glwtta, your taking this bit about the meteroite wiping out the dinosaurs thing a little too seriously don't you think? Relax, have a beer, click on some ad banners, and do try to enjoy the show. Geeesh.
Didn't Saddam and Gamora (I know they're spelled wrong, sue me) supposedly get destroyed by falling rock and fireballs?
Man, I just hate when folks don't even take the time to do a little research into a post. Had you done that you would have found the legends from the far-east referring to Gamora being destroyed by Godzilla... or was it Monster X?
...just enjoy the gags and the moves.
That's what I thought going in the theater. Thing is, I have to agree with the reviews I've read here and elsewhere for one simple reason. The movie just wasn't fun.
Was it Jet Li's flat acting? Bad camera work? I honestly don't know. I do know that when I left the theater from seeing "Iron Monkey" I was walking out smiling and glad I got to see it on a big screen.
Definitely a movie to wait for DVD on. At least then there might be some entertainment value in how they did some of the special effects.
SPEE-ON!
Well, at least that's what it sounded like. I think that old silly looking Wolfenstien was the last game that ever got me to jump outta my chair. Not that more modern games don't have some really excellent use of mood and lighting, but now I suppose I'm more used to the genre.
Of course, a friend of mine who once saw me jump to one of them Germans popping out used this against me. Was working late... well, okay, so I was playing Wolf and all. He comes up right behind me and screams...
SPEE-ON!
The landing resulted in bruises. Not sure exactly what height I achieved. Oh yeah, I got him back!
Now only real companies, like the MANY that bin Laden's network runs, can get encryption tools.
Probably one of the worst mistakes I have made in the past few months
I guess we're just gonna have to disagree here. If something inside of ANY piece of electrical gear goes into a thermal runaway, I want an immediate shutdown. Off, not on, not throttled, but removed from the electrical current feeding it.
Whole thing is kinda silly anyway really. My biggest concern outside of a fire would be the heatsink plummetting through all my interface cards and denting the bottom of the case. Ahhh, but this anvil does keep things cool.
Probably one of the worst mistakes I have made in the past few months...
You actually thought that a k6 heatsink and fan would be enough for a 1.4G Athlon? Without thermal gel?? AND you make mistakes like these every couple of months??
Dude, go buy your machines from Dell or Compaq or somebody else before you burn down your house. You should also seriously consider having a trusted friend hide all the sharp objects in your house from you.
Developing one hotfix for a product, testing it, regression testing it and then deploying and tracking that hotfix, then giving free phone support for all hotfixes..... costs LOTS of money.
It's still a LOTS cheaper than not fixing your broken product that you've already sold.
Also, every SDK is online for free plus a shitload of other content.
This is NOT a giveaway! As folks discuss the ability for Linux to take on the desktop it's quite apparent that a lack of key applications keep Windows on corporate machines. Keeping developers actually developing for your platform is not about being a nice company. This is about having lots of other folks keep your platform viable.
So yes, I take it for granted that when a company fixes their broken product they should do so at no cost. Is that really so different than an automobile maker recalling and fixing problems with cars they've already sold? Would you expect to have to pay them too?
In a product that can influence picture quality tremendously...
Yeah, I was seriously wondering about this as well. Simply switching between boxes with different resolutions is more a test for the monitor than the KVM. How about running a cable straight to the monitor, then comparing that to what it looks like when the KVM is inserted? Even with high quality cables there is still a healthy bit of attenuation to the signal on most KVM's.
What is the use of specifying the brand of CD-writer
I liked how we got to hear about what case they used for the PC's. How about something useful, like how many buttons were on the mouse? I've got a Logitech trak ball here with 4 buttons, and I know many KVM's simply won't support that.
From my own testing, Cybex has been the friendliest to my 4-button mouse, but with poor video quality. The Linksys I once owned had great video quality, but no support for button #4.
While I really like the idea of an UDMA100 4GB drive, (solid state would be even better), there just isn't a viable market for such devices.
That's only considering a total replacement of one technology for another. In the same way that hard drives didn't make tape drives obsolete I doubt that solid state would make something else less desirable. For example, a 4 Gig solid state drive would be plenty for the vast majority of users to load their software onto. Data could then go to the old platter style hard drive. With a combination of the two you would see some truly astounding system performance increases.
The good news is that the Unix directory structure already provides a great deal of seperation between user data and the programs that access it. The bad news is that Windows does no such thing across the board. Whether you care about Windows or not, it is the OS that's driving the majority of the hardware market out there.
I'm no fan of Apple, but they may be the only folks out there that might pull something like this off. Assuming OSX utilizes a similar seperation between software and data, they have the hardware and software ability to work something like this.
perhaps they're a bit too shallow
I just love the fact that Apple is this concerned about a "skin". Heck, skins for desktop OS's that have but a tiny fraction of the Mac market share. Oh sure, it's shallow and petty. Thing of it is, it is some serious recognition of how one of the larger industry players view KDE, Gnome, and the *nix desktop in general.
If something this silly ever did make it to trial I doubt they'd get all that far with it. A "skin" does not a UI make. I have yet to see any of the *nix desktops do that trippy task bar warping magnifying thingy. None of the *nix desktops do that genie bottle thing when minimizing or restoring apps either. Thankfully this is still true. That stuff is slow and annoying, but it sure do look perty.
After using both a bit, KDE's Liquid engine looks and works a LOT better than OSX anyway. Apple and Microsoft should worry. There's just too many folks that would dump them both if the apps they needed were elsewhere. Going to be a real interesting landscape in the computer industry a year or 2 from now.
The Cato Institute, btw, is transparently evil, funded by large business with inherent alterior motives. I would rather trust Gore:P
In other words, you didn't bother to read it.
Total tax revenue in 1980: $519,375,273
Total tax revenue in 1990: $1,056,365,652
Taxes were lowered, but the revenue doubled. Umm, just how does a good little socialist account for this anyway?
I should probably not mention that I think a massive tax cut to stimulate the economy, so we can collect even more taxes in the future, is probably not the best of ideas. I mean, we didn't rack up massive government debt in the 1982-1992 period because of that or anything.
I suppose it never fails to amaze me how when one of a certain political bent just believes whatever propaganda that's presented. Rather than simply listening to Gore's campaign speeches, how about looking at the numbers yourself?
SUPPLY-SIDE TAX CUTS AND THE TRUTH ABOUT THE REAGAN ECONOMIC RECORD
You'll find a pretty good run down of both the good and bad about what really happened during the Reagan years concerning the econom. More importantly, what happens to the revenue coming into the government when taxes are lowered. That, or you could take the other pill and believe whatever you want to believe.
Again, I would say history is on our side and in time, our privacy rights and freedoms will return to us unscathed.
At one point in American history it was beyond the imagination that the government would tax personal incomes. Revenue was needed following the Civil War, so an exception was made for a very small percentage of the population.
Later, it was unthinkable that the personal income of every individual would need to be scrutinized by the government. Revenues were needed to pay for our involvement in WWII. The need was apparent, so we allowed that money to be yanked right out of pay before we got it in our hands.
A few generations pass, and the populace gets to believing that things have always been the way they are today. No concept of what exactly was lost to emergencies being dealt with in the prior generation.
If, in the search for terrorists the FBI stumbles across a drug-smuggling ring, or a mass-murderer...
And if this same search just happens to tap into the opposing political party at that time? We know all too well today the kind of power that Hoover had due to his files on individuals. We know what both the Republicans and Democrats are capable of when they think nobody is looking. Imagine these kinds of acts with limitless listening abilities that are also invisible to the public. No hotel break ins, no having to sneak in and set a wire tap, just flip a switch and listen. Type in a back door code and watch.
Orwell understood this power all too well. You might want to give the man a read.
The danger here is not a technical one, but a political one. It's a lesson history tried to teach us once before, but I haven't seen anyone really doing a comparison to a very similar set of circumstances that have happened prior.
Today I'm sure that the majority of our leaders in government are honestly concerned about how to deal with how to thwart attacks like we all saw last week. To do this they see information gathering as a critical tool to use for these ends. To gather this information they wish to put together an infrastructure of snooping abilities that go far beyond issues dealing with cryptography. We're also looking at phone tapping and possible postal snooping. The majority of citizens at this moment are more than happy to give up these liberties to give law enforcement the tools they seek. Lives are at stake after all!
Okay, so what happens when there's no longer a terrorist threat to be dealt with? Does this infrastructure just vanish? Not bloody likely. I don't believe that there's any kind of conspiracy today from either the right or left side of the spectrum to misuse these tools. What about 10 years from now? 20? 50? Can we really entrust a governmental body we haven't even seen yet to only use these kinds of tools in an honest way?
To keep this non-partisan, let's say the "Widget" party takes a majority in both houses and the presidency. Once in a majority, what all stops them to increase this monitoring built on the infrastructure we are proposing today? How can we be assured that what they're monitoring isn't just criminals, but the opposition party campaigns? Rather than a tool for law enforcemnent we could be looking at a tool for political power.
As to the comparison I was referring to at the beginning of this post, I'm of course talking about the rise of the Nazi party to power in Germany. Too many similarities to be funny. Weak economy, terrorist attacks on urban areas, a populace all too willing to give up liberties to those that can deliver on the promise that they won't have to be afraid of a building blowing up on them. Oh, and a bit of a racial element tossed into the mix.
No, I'm not even beginning to suggest that the Nazis are looking to take over America. What I am saying here is that there is a precedent to how people are reacting to these recent events. The German people openly welcomed the kind of lock down the Nazis brought with them because they saw the streets truly get to be a safer place. Unfortunately, what they didn't see was the enormous cost of that safety until it was far too late. What I'm concerned about is that in our fear at this time we may very well not see the high cost we will end up paying decades down the road.
First off, this is not meant to be any kind of definitive list of items, nor a flame on any other OS. Nothing more than what has kept me using FreeBSD rather than Linux.
/etc/rc.1, I feel totally comfortable going in and working with FreeBSD's scripts and config files.
Not too long ago I decided to get NT off of a laptop I've got here and get a *nix on there. Although I'm far more familiar with FreeBSD I figured that a Linux distro would have a better chance of having hardware support. After reading many a glowing review of Mandrake, I decided to give it a try on here.
The Mandrake installer is every bit as nice as folks claim, and then some. Very professional layout, wicked easy drive partitioner, and all the rest of the steps that get you through the install. It picked up on the proper video settings, handled all the X, Gnome, and KDE installation without a hitch. It's pretty impressive stuff.
Then I got to mucking around with the software updating utility. Darn thing takes as long to load up as a full cvsup of the FreeBSD ports tree. It also didn't seem to store my settings when I didn't want to load software off a CD, constantly demanding for an install CD to be inserted before continuing. Aside from all that, even when I did manage to get it to pull from a network source, the packages seemed to not be updated very often. I guess I'm just spoiled by the constant, daily, hourly, updating of the FreeBSD ports tree.
All this I was willing to deal with to some extent, but then I ran into another small problem. I'll disclaimer this up front by saying that had I put the time into it I'm sure I could have fixed it. For some reason the fancy network config settings for Mandrake kept changing my IP address. It was about then that I decided to dig a bit into the actual config files to see about fixing this problem.
After a couple of hours staring at a large number of these files, in which each of them seemed way too complex for their own good I'd had enough. I just kept saying to myself, "This is nuts!" Even the Apache config got busted up into multiple files, adding complexity rather than removing it. This pretty much defined my next course of action.
FreeBSD boot floppies in, re-format to UFS, and a new OS on. The FreeBSD install is pretty straight forward for anyone to follow, but some of the hand holding isn't there. For instance, if you're looking to put a newer version of X on, you get to do a manual config. It does take longer to run through the install up front, but what I keep being reminded is that once it's all in there it's far faster and easier to tweak on things, and to keep them up to date.
In less time than it took to type this out this here laptop completed an update of the source files and ports tree. Later tonight I'll run the make world process and be up to date with the latest stuff. A new release is nearly a non-event for an already running system.
From a user's point of view, one of the biggest differences between FreeBSD and a Linux distro is that FreeBSD doesn't have any specific GUI tools for administration. There is no such thing as a "linuxconf" or "HardDrake" utility. This is offset by what I feel are far simpler and fewer config files that the user can edit directly. Where I feel lost even looking at some of the start up scripts in a Linux
I've heard a number of arguments stating the opposite of my view on this, but I'll leave those to the folks that hold that viewpoint. This is pretty much how I see it, if that perspective at all helps your understanding of some of the differences.
Brand new final release of FreeBSD 4.4
Update to KDE 2.2.1
New even more stable Mozilla release
cvsup cvsup cvsup make install!!!
Tasty!
You mention these features that other email clients don't have. Would you care to elaborate on what they are?
I thought I had, but I'll summarize my top can't live withouts.
1. Addressing. No other E-Mail client handles this half as well as Messenger. A seperate line for each recipient, with each of these being able to toggle to: cc: and bcc: independantly. The full name AND E-Mail address showing up in the address bar. Auto completion of names as you type.
2. LDAP Addressing. All of the above, with a seemless integration to a remote server running LDAP. Other clients have some LDAP abilities, NS handles it darn near perfectly.
3. Multiple address books. This didn't come around until later versions of NS, but when it did it was handled very well.
4. HTML composition and viewing. Pretty much every component of Composer can be utilized when putting together an E-Mail.
5. Threading that works properly.
Yes, I realize that Outlook handles some of these items, but not nearly as well as Netscape. As I personally reviewed these two Outlook came very close feature wise to Messenger, and beat it in certain areas like the handling of multiple accounts. In the final analysis for me, the addressing features won out over multiple account handling. That, and I found over some time that I just preferred the interface that NS provided.
On the *nix side of the house I haven't seen any clients deal with the above features nearly as well. I wish one did, as I really hate the UI on the *nix version of Netscape 4.78. Only thing I'm seeing come close is Mozilla, though I'd personally prefer a stand alone client that called to Mozilla for HTML rendering only. From the looks of things, that ain't happening any time soon.
...but I loose the exchange groupware features.
Just curious here as I'm not immediately familiar with these groupware features. What all does Exchange do that a locally run newsgroup server can't do? From what I've read of it, Exchange sure sounds like a newsgroup server with a pretty interface. How far off is this impression of mine?
Your post does highlight the issue that there are no standard formats in the OSS/Unix world...
What about HTML with CSS? When fully implemented to CSS2, there's very little a word processor or desktop publishing app couldn't save in this format. Tables, columns, kerning, images, the works! And even better, them things ARE open standards that everyone has bought into.
Along these lines I do have a question for the crowd here. Why XML formatting for a word processor anyway? I can appreciate the need for XML for a spreadsheet, but it seems an app like KWord has far more need for layout and formatting rather than data abstraction.
One of the other things I'd love to see fixed up proper in KWord is it's HTML export and import abilities. They are there, but they're pretty weak at this point. Even still, I'm very impressed with how far KWord has come from the previous versions I've worked with.