I see where you're going with this... but you can't possibly be suggesting that printing and delivery of a paper document is more energy efficient than the electronic creation/delivery/display? I don't think electronic documents have much potential to make a dent in the energy comsumption of the western world. I do think that as far as document creation/distribution goes, the electronic variety is better for a wide variety of reasons. Energy consumption being a minor one, while the conservation/preservation of natural resources being a major one.
Using less oil does not necessarily mean cutting fewer trees.
Re:Slashdotters==Curmudgeons?
on
iPod Mini Sells Out
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Good point,
I've been trolling around here for years, and I've only made about 200 posts in all that time. There's a handful of sexual intellectuals who post about everything. They're the ones who make up the bulk of the posts.
Just my 2c. This is the most insightful post in the whole thread. I don't really have anything to add to it. However, while the question of "terrorism" is important, in this case we're talking about a legal issue. Change the name of the crime to "loitering" and then review the definition of the crime, and see if the act is an instance of that crime. In this case, it's called cyberterrorism, and the crime is defined here: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Ter rorism/ 20011025_hr3162_usa_patriot_bill.html and http:/ /www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/1030NEW.h tm
I would consider planting/spreading a script that deceptively changes the dialer to call 911 an act of terrorism, in the same way I would consider falsely reporting a fire, or accusing someone of a crime that you know they did not commit, to be terrorism. But I don't consider it at all to be terrrorism in the same way that I consider bombings or murders to be terrorism. It's not terrorism in the conventional sense that we talk about terrorists, and terrorist networks attacking people and nations around the world.
It is malicous, it is intimidation, and it is uacceptable behavior. If I had to call it something, i'd call it reckless endangerment, a threat to public safety, abusing a public resource, illegal wiretapping, creating/distributing a trojan horse, and unauthorized use of a computer. If you try to decduce the intent, I think you can conclude that the script author had the following intentions:
a) the victim(s) use the script for an entirely different purpose than changing the dial script
b) the victim(s) unknowingly placing multiple calls to 911 emergency response
c) the 911 emergency response operator to dispatch a response to the call(s)
d) the victim(s) to be approached by law enforcement responding to the call
e) the victim(s) to feel threatened/intimidated by the law enforcement response
f) the victim(s) computer to be bugged/monitored without the victims knowlegde
g) the logs of the monitoring to be transmitted from the victim(s) computer to the author
So I think this guy is beyond old enough to know better, and should be punished accordingly. The important point about the patriot act is that these acts were already illegal, and that using the patriot act is a hedge be prosecutors against te possibility that the court determines there was less than $5,000 in damages. I think you can easily show more damage by tallying the cost of the 911 response to the bogus calls. Nevermind that MSN may have been required by law to investigate, and they would have been forced to incurr expenses due to the script. Making prank calls to an emergency-only system like 911 is akin to throwing rocks onto the freeway. Even if you don't hit any cars, even if there's no cars coming by while you're throwing rocks, it still a stupid thing to do, and more importantly, it's dangerous. Only children are expected to do such stupid things without considering the consequences. This is a 40+ year old man who has no excuse for such irresponsible behavior.
That's why you have a "product proficiency quotient"(tm). The customer answers a few relevant questions about the product and the problem that they're having. This (running tally)score gets stored in the customer profile. Each time the customer calls, the phone queue mgmt sowftare decides where to insert the call into the queue based on past calls and their ppq. Mr CCIE gets injected straight to the engineer(L3) queue, no L1 or L2 support at all. Mr "i can't print, and btw aol is slow" goes to L1, and gets the benefit of basic troubleshooting. The key is that there is value to each support level, but requiring all users to go through every level every time is inefficient, i.e more expensive.
How about writing aprogram what actually helps solve the users' suport request? Isn't the real purpose of an automated calling system to do that without having to hire a real person to answer FAQs?
My problem with phone support is that is seems to take so long to establish that I know what i'm talking about, and trying to tell them what I need. It's rare that I call tech support and actually need them to diagnose a problem for me. It would be nice to have a customer profile that incorporates a product proficiency quotient(tm). so that I can go right to an engineer or product replacement on an issue I can diagnose myself.
the same site you link to has "serious" articles with titles like:
Illegals gang-rape New York woman Marriage amendment: Its time has come Gwyneth Paltrow won't raise child in 'weird' U.S.
i'd take their reports with a grain or two of salt. whether or not the articles are factually correct is not my issue. its my concern that real journalism isn't just about the truth, its about the whole truth. telling one side of a story is not news, its propoganda.
absolutely not true... there's lots of support positions and hw/sw maintenance positions where six months is enough time to learn the job. Remember that the kids coming out if high school now have been using computers since kindergarten. I'm 29 and I didn't touch a computer till 5th grade. Casual familiarity with computers means that it's alot easier to pick up the basic administrative stuff. I'm not saying that you can learn to set up BGP within weeks, but you can certainly learn to install/troubleshoot MS Office in six months.
The people in the top 10% for "earned" income are more likely to be mid-large cap corporate executives and other folks with just a whole lot of money. The IRS says that the breakpoint for top 10 [adjusted gross]income earners is $92,764/year. For the top 1%, it's $292,913. I'd love to see what the median is for that group. That's the equivalent of 4.8 mil in the bank earning 6%.
I'd wager that a "skilled, high salary" worker tops out at around 150K. After that, you're talking about salespeople on commission, or executives on contract. I don't consider those people to be "workers", just as when you say iron worker, or factory worker, you aren't talking about the suits, you're talking about the folks who get dirty.
First off, it's definitely not an artificial market. Based on your followup claims, you can call any business that operates over the internet "artificial". Let's triple tax UPS, they don't pay road taxes and drive their trucks all over the place, limey bastards!
Secondly, there is much different about a voip company and the standard telco. Their business is completely different. A telco is many things, an incumbent, a legislated monopoly, and a regulated entity. They might provide an identical service as a viop company, but that does not make them the same thing. Would you say that fedex is the same as the post office? But don't they both deliver packages??
Third, everyone on the Internet shares in the cost of maintaining it. I pay a monthly fee to my ISP for internet access, that covers the cost of maintaining my use of the Internet. Vonage also (obviously!) has an ISP and pays them for internet service. The Internet is absolutely a toll road, and we all pay based on (max theoretical) usage. A higher bandwidth connection costs more.
Fourth, if the govt acts to regulate voip as is does pots, then voip companies still have the advantage. They do not provide/use the local loop for their customers, and should not be taxed for that. As the article stated, when they connect a call to a pots line, they pay for the privilege. As traditional telcos move to voip, they will also gain the advantage of not having to use/maintain as much pots infrastructure. Eventually, we should be able to run on lines providing IP services, and eliminate the pots legacy.
Fifth, traditional phone companies will only bundle phone and internet service(which they do already), because they generate too much revenue on each end to start giving away service. Also a major benefit to having a separate phone & internet company is that you can take your phone with you when you move. Whether you move to a new town, a new state or a new country, your voip phone will still work on the Internet. I'm sure verizon won't start offering voip phone service in France anytime soon (vonage does). They would if they were smart, but remember, they're a telco.
And finally, the lack of Internet tax is mostly a misnomer, individuals and businesses on the Internet both pay taxes. What you don't pay is sales tax on interstate purchases made on the Internet. The govt has taken a hand-off approach to the Internet, and this is their primary contribution. This is a major incentive for small businesses to start on the Internet, and for existing businesses to invest in Internet technologies. As Internet-based markets mature, the govt will surely start to tax and regulate trade, but before these markets reach maturity, this regulation/taxation could kill them.
If this is the case, it sounds like your real problem is with the network. For all your time, effort, and money, you may be better served by tackling this first. A few extra links and a routing protocol can dramatically increase the reliablilty of a lan/wan environment. Consider the Internet, how often do you hear about the WAN links going down? Considering the number of links involved in a normal internet scenario, very few. Consider that 99% reliability means 2.5 days/year of downtime. If you use an average of 3 wan links to get to slashdot, it should be down an average 1 week/year, which is clearly not the case.
I wasn't writing anything off. I was speaking from eperience. This guy said his main factor was the el-cheapo factor, and the bottom line is that you'll be hard pressed to get a cheaper tivo than tivo. And the monthly fee is optional... Note I didn't say that you couldn't get program listings elsewhere, just that you'll have to find somewhere to get them. XMLTV is obviously one option.
Cool! I never knew that. One of the smart things that tivo does with the service is that they provide much more than just channel listings. They do sw updates, service announcements, music samplers, scenic images, and some ads for various movies and tv shows. I'm not a fan of ads, but I like the fact that they have an alternate revenue stream. It helps to ensure that the company will be around to support the hardware & software down the road.
actually what tivo is doing is going after folks who "distribute" images of a tivo drive to others. You're free to hack away at your own tivo, including making drive images. *Distributing* tivo drive images violates Tivo's copyrights to their software, and also it violates linux's copyrights, because you're distributing a binary of linux without the corresponding source. Nevermind all of the other GPL programs that go with the full "gnu+linux" based OS that runs on Tivos. Frankly, Tivo is a company that has shown a very cooperative corporate attitude towards tivo owners and hacking. They recognize that a tivo hacker is a tivo owner and a tivo owner is a tivo customer. What kind of bass-ackwards company would try to prevent their own customers from excercising fair-use with legally purchased products... oh nevermind.
If you add all the hardware costs up, you'll pay close to (or more than) the $250 it takes to get a tivo. Then you'll need to find some way to get program listings if you want to schedule recordings based on something besides just channel & date & time.
And the bottom line is, you don't have to pay tivo a monthly anything. Just buy the tivo and don't subscribe to the listings. Or you can buy the lifetime and not deal with monthly payments. Or buy a used tivo(with lifetime service) on ebay and get a deal. Lots of folks are trading up to series2 this way.
I have to admit that the series2 with home media is awesome. Get a $30 usb nic, and you can stream images/audio from the network. There's a sweet *nix program called byrequest (http://sourceforge.net/projects/byrequest/) that lets you serve files without windows, and they claim is will serve video also...
So why don't you go put that in your pipe and... nevermind.
You are absolutely correct. If the kernel was coded in vb, this wouldn't be happening because the kernel would suck, and it would need win32.dll to crash properly.
I do think that the 1st ammendment limits the ability of corporations to limit speech....Contract law itself was created by Congress, and that law is what is causing your free speech to be restricted.
I think you're extending the "congress shall make no law" phrase. The big separation between contracts and laws is that contracts are optional, laws are mandatory. In theory, you cannot opt-out of a law, and you cannot re-negotiate the terms of a law to suit your needs. Contracts on the other hand may have provisions that would be unconstitutional as laws. Consider that the YMCA can require a member(citizen) to practice christianity, while congress has no such power.
As far as the (proposed) 10.5th amendment goes, i agree wholeheartedly.
I agree it touches on the issue of free speech, but it does not violate his first amendment rights. The first amendment guarantees that the govt cannot prohibit a persons' speaking, regardless of the content of the speech. MS on the other hand, has no obligation to "allow" any kind of speech. They cannot physically prevent him from speaking, but they certainly have to right to hire and fire at their own discretion, even based on his opinions or speech.
See the text of the 1st Amendment: (Note how simple and elegant the first ten amendments are. Very clear, very concise. Congress should review these when writing new laws.)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
As I remember it, PC hardware makers supplied the market with plenty of USB systems as early as 1996. The big problem on the PC side was that MS was deep in the first antitrust investigation, and the gubmint was threatening to place restrictions on win98's release with an "integrated" IE as a remedy for some of the actions MS took against netscape. (Win98 was crucial to USB because it was the first MS OS release that fully supported USB out of thh box, 95-OSR2 had limited support for USB and only on certain devices.) Now we all know that the gubmint never did restrict 98's release, and it was released with much fanfare. But it held up the release of win98 by many months, and the PC hardware vendors suffered for it. They had already spend R&D dollars developing the products, but nobody would buy them cuz you couldn't use them with anything. What *did* happen prior to the win98 release was that Apple released the iMacs with copius USB: 2 USB ports, USB keyboards, USB mice, and no floppy (usb floppy optional). This was the first chance that the PC USB vendors had to sell their wares, and the flocked to the mac market with translucent blue USB peripherals. The difference between this story and the bluetooth story is that bluetooth is on plenty of systems, and there's ample software support. The problem is with cell phones not supporting bluetooth. What's the point of a wireless peripheral bus if the primary target devices don't use the bus? With USB ports being very cheap and prividing power to electrically-stingy cell phones, what's the point of paying extra to add support for a wireless (electron chugging) connection when you're already within a couple feet of the PC?
A direct comparison is way out there in left field. Somebody didn't bother to do the basic math. The actual article is full of grand assumptions. They may have a point that the apple cluster is a better value than the dell cluster, but you'ld have to look at several factors before you can realyl say that....
What was UT using previously to perform their calculations/sumulations, and what did it cost to operate? How much does it cost to customize/code the apps that they will be running on the cluster? How do the support costs of the old vs new solution compare? Is the new system fully supported in the 38Mil price tag, or are there additional costs (i.e. AC/power/volume/staff) ?
I think your frustration with mysql and the GPL is based on common misconceptions about free software and teh GPL. First off, "free software" is more like "Freedom" than "zero cost". Look in google for the old discussions about free software vs. free beer. They're not the same thing. Also read Stallman's musings about "software libre" and "software gratis".
Secondly, the GPL's requirements for redistribution are not as all-encompasing as you might think. A program that uses another program that is GPL does not need to be GPL. Consider that many vendors (i.e. Checkpoint, Tivo, Google, VMWare) use linux as a core part of a commercial software product. Some elements of those products, generally modifications to GPL source code, are required to be GPL. However the majority of the product is not at all GPL. Because MySQL release the client software as a library, you may choose to structure your application so that those portions that directly access the GPL client software are distributed separately, and are released under GPL. The rest of the program would go through your client app to access the mysql cliet library to query the database. Note that the FSF advises that passing data to & from a GPL program does not normally constitute a derivative work. You would be passing data in a way that is consistent with simply using the program. see:http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq. html#TOCGP LAndPlugins
Consider these examples, 1. I write a shell script that uses bash, I release that script as a commercial, non-free software product. This is an acceptable distributon of GPL software in conjunction with non-GPL software.
2. I write an extension to bash, that via changes to the bash source code, adds a new capability to bash. Distribution of this extension must be under the terms of the GPL.
Remember that by design, the GPL tries to protect the original rights of the developer, not to attempt to extend those rights onto to new programs not authored by the developer. Don't believ the MS hype about viral software, it's misinformation, and it harms both sides of the free software debate.
Ok. Under Reagan, inflation recovered from the Jimmy Carter mess very quickly, and remained very low for the rest of the 80's bottoming out at 1.86% in 1986, so inflation didn't play a very big roll in that based on your inflation figures: $1000 in 1980 becomes $1708.33 in 1989. primarily because of these two years 1980 - 13.48 1981 - 10.36
so you can credit inflation for 70% of the revenue growth. I'm not making any comments about reagan, or his economic policy, just that the effect of tax rate changes on tax revenue growth cannot be determined by simply comparing the two numbers you presented. I'm sure if you take the revnue numbers in any 9 year period, the later year will be a higher number, regardless of which direction tax rate changes take.
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but you have to consider the effects of: 1. inflation 2. a growing worldwide economy 3. emergence/growth of industries like hi-tech 4. deficit spending (it generates some tax revenue) 5. shifts is gov't spending (i.e. major increases in defense).
I'll rewrite the parent to your post: It is not true that anything always happens, except maybe entropy.
Slashdot Mirror
I see where you're going with this... but you can't possibly be suggesting that printing and delivery of a paper document is more energy efficient than the electronic creation/delivery/display?
I don't think electronic documents have much potential to make a dent in the energy comsumption of the western world. I do think that as far as document creation/distribution goes, the electronic variety is better for a wide variety of reasons. Energy consumption being a minor one, while the conservation/preservation of natural resources being a major one.
Using less oil does not necessarily mean cutting fewer trees.
Good point,
I've been trolling around here for years, and I've only made about 200 posts in all that time. There's a handful of sexual intellectuals who post about everything. They're the ones who make up the bulk of the posts.
Maybe keystroke logging, or some other kind of covert monitoring. I suppose wiretapping is not the right word, but you get the idea.
Just my 2c. This is the most insightful post in the whole thread. I don't really have anything to add to it.r rorism/ 20011025_hr3162_usa_patriot_bill.html/ /www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/1030NEW.h tm
However, while the question of "terrorism" is important, in this case we're talking about a legal issue. Change the name of the crime to "loitering" and then review the definition of the crime, and see if the act is an instance of that crime. In this case, it's called cyberterrorism, and the crime is defined here:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Te
and
http:
I would consider planting/spreading a script that deceptively changes the dialer to call 911 an act of terrorism, in the same way I would consider falsely reporting a fire, or accusing someone of a crime that you know they did not commit, to be terrorism. But I don't consider it at all to be terrrorism in the same way that I consider bombings or murders to be terrorism. It's not terrorism in the conventional sense that we talk about terrorists, and terrorist networks attacking people and nations around the world.
It is malicous, it is intimidation, and it is uacceptable behavior. If I had to call it something, i'd call it reckless endangerment, a threat to public safety, abusing a public resource, illegal wiretapping, creating/distributing a trojan horse, and unauthorized use of a computer. If you try to decduce the intent, I think you can conclude that the script author had the following intentions:
a) the victim(s) use the script for an entirely different purpose than changing the dial script
b) the victim(s) unknowingly placing multiple calls to 911 emergency response
c) the 911 emergency response operator to dispatch a response to the call(s)
d) the victim(s) to be approached by law enforcement responding to the call
e) the victim(s) to feel threatened/intimidated by the law enforcement response
f) the victim(s) computer to be bugged/monitored without the victims knowlegde
g) the logs of the monitoring to be transmitted from the victim(s) computer to the author
So I think this guy is beyond old enough to know better, and should be punished accordingly. The important point about the patriot act is that these acts were already illegal, and that using the patriot act is a hedge be prosecutors against te possibility that the court determines there was less than $5,000 in damages. I think you can easily show more damage by tallying the cost of the 911 response to the bogus calls. Nevermind that MSN may have been required by law to investigate, and they would have been forced to incurr expenses due to the script.
Making prank calls to an emergency-only system like 911 is akin to throwing rocks onto the freeway. Even if you don't hit any cars, even if there's no cars coming by while you're throwing rocks, it still a stupid thing to do, and more importantly, it's dangerous. Only children are expected to do such stupid things without considering the consequences. This is a 40+ year old man who has no excuse for such irresponsible behavior.
That's why you have a "product proficiency quotient"(tm). The customer answers a few relevant questions about the product and the problem that they're having. This (running tally)score gets stored in the customer profile. Each time the customer calls, the phone queue mgmt sowftare decides where to insert the call into the queue based on past calls and their ppq. Mr CCIE gets injected straight to the engineer(L3) queue, no L1 or L2 support at all. Mr "i can't print, and btw aol is slow" goes to L1, and gets the benefit of basic troubleshooting.
The key is that there is value to each support level, but requiring all users to go through every level every time is inefficient, i.e more expensive.
Cutting costs: That's what I meant by "to do that without having to hire a real person to answer FAQs?"
How about writing aprogram what actually helps solve the users' suport request? Isn't the real purpose of an automated calling system to do that without having to hire a real person to answer FAQs?
My problem with phone support is that is seems to take so long to establish that I know what i'm talking about, and trying to tell them what I need. It's rare that I call tech support and actually need them to diagnose a problem for me. It would be nice to have a customer profile that incorporates a product proficiency quotient(tm). so that I can go right to an engineer or product replacement on an issue I can diagnose myself.
the same site you link to has "serious" articles with titles like:
Illegals gang-rape New York woman
Marriage amendment: Its time has come
Gwyneth Paltrow won't raise child in 'weird' U.S.
i'd take their reports with a grain or two of salt. whether or not the articles are factually correct is not my issue. its my concern that real journalism isn't just about the truth, its about the whole truth. telling one side of a story is not news, its propoganda.
On a side note, wealth is a zero sum game. Everyone cannot be wealthy.
absolutely not true... there's lots of support positions and hw/sw maintenance positions where six months is enough time to learn the job. Remember that the kids coming out if high school now have been using computers since kindergarten. I'm 29 and I didn't touch a computer till 5th grade.
Casual familiarity with computers means that it's alot easier to pick up the basic administrative stuff. I'm not saying that you can learn to set up BGP within weeks, but you can certainly learn to install/troubleshoot MS Office in six months.
The people in the top 10% for "earned" income are more likely to be mid-large cap corporate executives and other folks with just a whole lot of money. The IRS says that the breakpoint for top 10 [adjusted gross]income earners is $92,764/year. For the top 1%, it's $292,913. I'd love to see what the median is for that group. That's the equivalent of 4.8 mil in the bank earning 6%.
I'd wager that a "skilled, high salary" worker tops out at around 150K. After that, you're talking about salespeople on commission, or executives on contract. I don't consider those people to be "workers", just as when you say iron worker, or factory worker, you aren't talking about the suits, you're talking about the folks who get dirty.
First off, it's definitely not an artificial market. Based on your followup claims, you can call any business that operates over the internet "artificial". Let's triple tax UPS, they don't pay road taxes and drive their trucks all over the place, limey bastards!
Secondly, there is much different about a voip company and the standard telco. Their business is completely different. A telco is many things, an incumbent, a legislated monopoly, and a regulated entity. They might provide an identical service as a viop company, but that does not make them the same thing. Would you say that fedex is the same as the post office? But don't they both deliver packages??
Third, everyone on the Internet shares in the cost of maintaining it. I pay a monthly fee to my ISP for internet access, that covers the cost of maintaining my use of the Internet. Vonage also (obviously!) has an ISP and pays them for internet service. The Internet is absolutely a toll road, and we all pay based on (max theoretical) usage. A higher bandwidth connection costs more.
Fourth, if the govt acts to regulate voip as is does pots, then voip companies still have the advantage. They do not provide/use the local loop for their customers, and should not be taxed for that. As the article stated, when they connect a call to a pots line, they pay for the privilege. As traditional telcos move to voip, they will also gain the advantage of not having to use/maintain as much pots infrastructure. Eventually, we should be able to run on lines providing IP services, and eliminate the pots legacy.
Fifth, traditional phone companies will only bundle phone and internet service(which they do already), because they generate too much revenue on each end to start giving away service. Also a major benefit to having a separate phone & internet company is that you can take your phone with you when you move. Whether you move to a new town, a new state or a new country, your voip phone will still work on the Internet. I'm sure verizon won't start offering voip phone service in France anytime soon (vonage does). They would if they were smart, but remember, they're a telco.
And finally, the lack of Internet tax is mostly a misnomer, individuals and businesses on the Internet both pay taxes. What you don't pay is sales tax on interstate purchases made on the Internet. The govt has taken a hand-off approach to the Internet, and this is their primary contribution. This is a major incentive for small businesses to start on the Internet, and for existing businesses to invest in Internet technologies. As Internet-based markets mature, the govt will surely start to tax and regulate trade, but before these markets reach maturity, this regulation/taxation could kill them.
If this is the case, it sounds like your real problem is with the network. For all your time, effort, and money, you may be better served by tackling this first. A few extra links and a routing protocol can dramatically increase the reliablilty of a lan/wan environment.
Consider the Internet, how often do you hear about the WAN links going down? Considering the number of links involved in a normal internet scenario, very few. Consider that 99% reliability means 2.5 days/year of downtime. If you use an average of 3 wan links to get to slashdot, it should be down an average 1 week/year, which is clearly not the case.
I wasn't writing anything off. I was speaking from eperience. This guy said his main factor was the el-cheapo factor, and the bottom line is that you'll be hard pressed to get a cheaper tivo than tivo. And the monthly fee is optional...
Note I didn't say that you couldn't get program listings elsewhere, just that you'll have to find somewhere to get them. XMLTV is obviously one option.
Cool! I never knew that. One of the smart things that tivo does with the service is that they provide much more than just channel listings. They do sw updates, service announcements, music samplers, scenic images, and some ads for various movies and tv shows. I'm not a fan of ads, but I like the fact that they have an alternate revenue stream. It helps to ensure that the company will be around to support the hardware & software down the road.
actually what tivo is doing is going after folks who "distribute" images of a tivo drive to others. You're free to hack away at your own tivo, including making drive images. *Distributing* tivo drive images violates Tivo's copyrights to their software, and also it violates linux's copyrights, because you're distributing a binary of linux without the corresponding source. Nevermind all of the other GPL programs that go with the full "gnu+linux" based OS that runs on Tivos.
Frankly, Tivo is a company that has shown a very cooperative corporate attitude towards tivo owners and hacking. They recognize that a tivo hacker is a tivo owner and a tivo owner is a tivo customer. What kind of bass-ackwards company would try to prevent their own customers from excercising fair-use with legally purchased products... oh nevermind.
If you add all the hardware costs up, you'll pay close to (or more than) the $250 it takes to get a tivo. Then you'll need to find some way to get program listings if you want to schedule recordings based on something besides just channel & date & time.
And the bottom line is, you don't have to pay tivo a monthly anything. Just buy the tivo and don't subscribe to the listings. Or you can buy the lifetime and not deal with monthly payments. Or buy a used tivo(with lifetime service) on ebay and get a deal. Lots of folks are trading up to series2 this way.
I have to admit that the series2 with home media is awesome. Get a $30 usb nic, and you can stream images/audio from the network. There's a sweet *nix program called byrequest (http://sourceforge.net/projects/byrequest/) that lets you serve files without windows, and they claim is will serve video also...
So why don't you go put that in your pipe and... nevermind.
You are absolutely correct. If the kernel was coded in vb, this wouldn't be happening because the kernel would suck, and it would need win32.dll to crash properly.
I do think that the 1st ammendment limits the ability of corporations to limit speech....Contract law itself was created by Congress, and that law is what is causing your free speech to be restricted.
I think you're extending the "congress shall make no law" phrase. The big separation between contracts and laws is that contracts are optional, laws are mandatory. In theory, you cannot opt-out of a law, and you cannot re-negotiate the terms of a law to suit your needs. Contracts on the other hand may have provisions that would be unconstitutional as laws. Consider that the YMCA can require a member(citizen) to practice christianity, while congress has no such power.
As far as the (proposed) 10.5th amendment goes, i agree wholeheartedly.
I agree it touches on the issue of free speech, but it does not violate his first amendment rights. The first amendment guarantees that the govt cannot prohibit a persons' speaking, regardless of the content of the speech. MS on the other hand, has no obligation to "allow" any kind of speech. They cannot physically prevent him from speaking, but they certainly have to right to hire and fire at their own discretion, even based on his opinions or speech.
See the text of the 1st Amendment:
(Note how simple and elegant the first ten amendments are. Very clear, very concise. Congress should review these when writing new laws.)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
As I remember it, PC hardware makers supplied the market with plenty of USB systems as early as 1996.
The big problem on the PC side was that MS was deep in the first antitrust investigation, and the gubmint was threatening to place restrictions on win98's release with an "integrated" IE as a remedy for some of the actions MS took against netscape. (Win98 was crucial to USB because it was the first MS OS release that fully supported USB out of thh box, 95-OSR2 had limited support for USB and only on certain devices.)
Now we all know that the gubmint never did restrict 98's release, and it was released with much fanfare. But it held up the release of win98 by many months, and the PC hardware vendors suffered for it. They had already spend R&D dollars developing the products, but nobody would buy them cuz you couldn't use them with anything.
What *did* happen prior to the win98 release was that Apple released the iMacs with copius USB: 2 USB ports, USB keyboards, USB mice, and no floppy (usb floppy optional). This was the first chance that the PC USB vendors had to sell their wares, and the flocked to the mac market with translucent blue USB peripherals.
The difference between this story and the bluetooth story is that bluetooth is on plenty of systems, and there's ample software support. The problem is with cell phones not supporting bluetooth. What's the point of a wireless peripheral bus if the primary target devices don't use the bus? With USB ports being very cheap and prividing power to electrically-stingy cell phones, what's the point of paying extra to add support for a wireless (electron chugging) connection when you're already within a couple feet of the PC?
Absolutely!
A direct comparison is way out there in left field. Somebody didn't bother to do the basic math. The actual article is full of grand assumptions. They may have a point that the apple cluster is a better value than the dell cluster, but you'ld have to look at several factors before you can realyl say that....
What was UT using previously to perform their calculations/sumulations, and what did it cost to operate? How much does it cost to customize/code the apps that they will be running on the cluster? How do the support costs of the old vs new solution compare? Is the new system fully supported in the 38Mil price tag, or are there additional costs (i.e. AC/power/volume/staff) ?
SlashChick,
. html#TOCGP LAndPlugins
I think your frustration with mysql and the GPL is based on common misconceptions about free software and teh GPL. First off, "free software" is more like "Freedom" than "zero cost". Look in google for the old discussions about free software vs. free beer. They're not the same thing. Also read Stallman's musings about "software libre" and "software gratis".
Secondly, the GPL's requirements for redistribution are not as all-encompasing as you might think. A program that uses another program that is GPL does not need to be GPL. Consider that many vendors (i.e. Checkpoint, Tivo, Google, VMWare) use linux as a core part of a commercial software product. Some elements of those products, generally modifications to GPL source code, are required to be GPL. However the majority of the product is not at all GPL.
Because MySQL release the client software as a library, you may choose to structure your application so that those portions that directly access the GPL client software are distributed separately, and are released under GPL. The rest of the program would go through your client app to access the mysql cliet library to query the database.
Note that the FSF advises that passing data to & from a GPL program does not normally constitute a derivative work. You would be passing data in a way that is consistent with simply using the program.
see:http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq
Consider these examples,
1. I write a shell script that uses bash, I release that script as a commercial, non-free software product. This is an acceptable distributon of GPL software in conjunction with non-GPL software.
2. I write an extension to bash, that via changes to the bash source code, adds a new capability to bash. Distribution of this extension must be under the terms of the GPL.
Remember that by design, the GPL tries to protect the original rights of the developer, not to attempt to extend those rights onto to new programs not authored by the developer. Don't believ the MS hype about viral software, it's misinformation, and it harms both sides of the free software debate.
Ok. Under Reagan, inflation recovered from the Jimmy Carter mess very quickly, and remained very low for the rest of the 80's bottoming out at 1.86% in 1986, so inflation didn't play a very big roll in that
based on your inflation figures:
$1000 in 1980 becomes $1708.33 in 1989.
primarily because of these two years
1980 - 13.48
1981 - 10.36
so you can credit inflation for 70% of the revenue growth. I'm not making any comments about reagan, or his economic policy, just that the effect of tax rate changes on tax revenue growth cannot be determined by simply comparing the two numbers you presented. I'm sure if you take the revnue numbers in any 9 year period, the later year will be a higher number, regardless of which direction tax rate changes take.
lies, damn lies... and republicans
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but you have to consider the effects of:
1. inflation
2. a growing worldwide economy
3. emergence/growth of industries like hi-tech
4. deficit spending (it generates some tax revenue)
5. shifts is gov't spending (i.e. major increases in defense).
I'll rewrite the parent to your post:
It is not true that anything always happens, except maybe entropy.