I believe that most people have forgotten the vertical separation of powers that was originally understood when the USA was set up, because the federal government has now assumed so much of the local and state levels.
Originally, the census was used to figure out representation, and also tax liability.
The federal government figured out that it's budget would be X dollars, and it would go to each state and ask for X*Y dollars, where Y was the number of people in that state, as a percentage of total population of all the states. If New York had 5 % of the population, then it (the state) would have to write a check to the federal government which was 5% of the total federal budget.
It was up to the state to decide how to collect the money.
In today's terms, Alaska could pay it from their money from oil, and any single citizen of Alaska might not have to personally pay a dime to the federal government. Nevada might use gambling taxes to do it. Texas might charge fees for exotic game hunters to pay it. New York might have a 100,000 page state tax code to collect it. But, it leaves it up to the state to handle it.
It also gets the federal government out of my pocketbook, and out of my hair. I might interface with a state tax division, but not a federal agency, that is less accountable to me than a state agency.
I truly think we have lost our way in a lot of this, and that the men that set up the USA were far more visionary, and fair, than anyone we know today.
Battlestar Galactica (the original in 1978) had a similar thing going when the captain (Lorne Greene) would speak, the words of his journal would appear on the screen.
So, everyone said, if we switch to SSDs, longer battery life. Did it happen? No.
Memory does not use up that much power, relative to the whole system. Even switching a laptop's screen to LEDs doesn't help that much.
It's almost the same as the mythical new invention that will be out "in 5 years".
Give it up people. Semiconductors improve year after year, These kinds of breakthroughs that drastically change everything just don't happen.
The only thing I can think of that made that kind of a change in the last 30 years was going to an SSD drive for speed and responsiveness. Other than that, each year gets a bit better. Don't expect that to change any time soon.
Why don't tablet makers that want to use a full desktop OS think about using it with Synergy (on sourceforge)???
It's a perfect complement.
If the tablet is running Win7 or x86 Linux, then when it's docked next to my monitor, it fires up synergy and the mouse and keyboard control it just like an extra screen. When I pull it off the cradle, Synergy shuts down, and now it's a distinct computer. If running Ubuntu, it can still run Windows apps via Wine (critical for how I want to use a tablet).
I don't know why these companies don't see this option!!!
Secondly, Intel doesn't need to be bastards, they can just continue with the bog-standard half-speed PCIe 2.0 link that they have on their Atoms. This doesn't provide enough bandwidth to run a retired analog cigarette vending machine let alone a modern GPU. If Intel doesn't want a GPU on their platforms, it is trivial to abide by the letter of the law and still screw Nvidia. Won't this be fun to watch?
Rumors have it that Intel was making changes to their chipsets that detected Nvidia GPUs and hamstrung performance on them. Having the GPU not work at all would be too obvious, but performance losses are a bit of a "he said, she said" argument. These changes broke the PCIe spec, but are basically impossible to prove without a lot of specialized equipment, trained engineers, and time. Given that it was Nvidia complaining, it is more likely that it was simply bad engineering by the GPU (formerly) giant. Either way, it is a moot point now.
Information wants to be free. People want to control it and hide it and charge for it. But, if I told you a secret, you naturally want to share it. If I write a book, and people read it, that information is now theirs too, ie "free".
Of course people want free information. But, some people keep it in chains and lock it up and prevent it from becoming "public" knowledge, for their own personal gain. It's a war that has been waged for ever and will continue to rage...
Once those player pianos were possible, the music industry was not able to sell any more tickets to performances. Artists went to get real jobs and that is why all music you hear is only done by amateurs.
Same sea change. Music is still being done by professionals.
As much as technology changes, the *situation* is still the same. Human behavior is the same. Supply/demand curve stuff. If they want to overcharge for it, I won't pay *their* price, and can either not get it or get a copy of varying quality from someone else. It's been that way for thousands of years. The walkman didn't change it in any way.
Now, Napster was the start of something that I don't think we had a precedent for. (Maybe the jump from no recording devices to the first ones?) Unlinking the content from any physical limitations (ie unlimited copies with very little storage/copying overhead) was an order of magnitude jump in this area. (Think the first replicator from Star Trek fame for physical stuff.)
These kinds of things happen once in a 100-1000 years. The walkman was just the next step in a walk across the country.
Thinking About Freedom Robert LeFevre The Freeman, February 1983, p. 115
Could I control others by a simple exercise of my own will I would have no reason to inflict control, punishment or death upon another of my kind. Since my wishes would control others, each and every person would gladly do my bidding. Unhappily, for me, this isn’t true.
Every other person has the same kind of control I have and is as eager for me to act as he wishes, as I am to have him act as I wish.
The result is conflict. And from the days of Plato to Marx, stretching backward and forward from those polarities, the pages of the human record run red with blood and echo with the cries of anguish emitted by those who, at the moment, found themselves under the sway of some human being not content with self-management; seeking always to manage others in a way nature has not bargained for.
It's not "man", in general, but men that want to have some "kind of control" and "is... eager for me to act as he wishes".
Most men don't have such ambitions. For some reason (the ability to actually exert this power over others), politics draws these kinds of men out.
While watching the Macey's Parade last year, they mentioned that the parade balloons (big charlie brown, etc) makes it the single largest helium user in the US (maybe world?) next to the US Government.
Ya, and that was based on early results from Win7, where *all* video card drivers were beta, and nasty to play with.
Any more, when you update ATI drivers, it just blinks the screen as it restarts the driver, and you go on. No reboot needed. No lockups or issues either.
And what if some of your plugins aren't ready for 4? suddenly, websites look different (like maybe a craigslist image laoder stops working), or worse yet your tab extension is borked, and you can't do anything with tabs any more?
Maybe a user doesn't like the new 4.0 look and wants to stay at 3.5?
Although their chances are better than SCO's (debatable, but I'd give it to them), this story sounds as rosy as an SCO fanboy writing their weekly column.
"could mean millions" Could. Could.
I really wish we had a news service that posted honest stories.
Rambus has sued the world, and finally one of them stuck. nVidia is the loser this time. If only Rambus would die, then we could all move on in life.
Galbraith’s magnum opus was The New Industrial State, in which he argued that large firms dominate the American economy. “The mature corporation,” he wrote, “had readily at hand the means for controlling the prices at which it sells as well as those at which it buys. . . . Since General Motors produces some half of all the automobiles, its designs do not reflect the current mode, but are the current mode. The proper shape of an automobile, for most people, will be what the automobile makers decree the current shape to be.”
Well, not quite. Although GM would have loved to “decree” the shape of automobiles in the 1980s, it seems consumers had different ideas. That is one reason why GM, which did produce about half of all U.S.-bought autos in the 1960s, sells only a quarter of all U.S.-bought autos today.
Interestingly, in his autobiography Galbraith presented the very evidence that should have talked him out of his conclusion in The New Industrial State. In 1954 Galbraith was on a consulting team hired by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), Canada ’s dominant railway at the time. He saw quickly that CPR’s most promising assets were its forests and land, not its railway. Yet CPR basically ignored the team’s advice. He wrote, “The railway men did not look with favor on such passing fads as airplanes.” This should have clued him in to the idea that large firms like CPR could “decree” virtually nothing.
To his credit, Galbraith ultimately admitted, with a 15-year lag, the major problem with his thesis. In July 1982 the steel and auto companies he had claimed were immune from competition and recessions were laying off workers in response to both foreign competition and recession. Asked on “Meet the Press” whether he had underestimated the extent of risk that even large corporations face, Galbraith paused and replied, “Yeah, I think I did.”
while our primary sources of energy are running out
And in the 1920s, they claimed we were running out of oil. In the 1970s, they claimed we were running out of oil. Just last year they found a new oilfield off of Brazil bigger than anything found yet. Last year. After everyone said no new large fields would ever be found.
Coal? Clinton locked up the Grand Staircase in Utah, the largest clean coal deposit, with 62 Billion tons of coal.
I don't know. I hate scare-mongering that has been going on already for 100 years, and shown wrong for 100 years, and the next generation doesn't see how poorly it looks.
When I go see a movie that is billed as 'entertainment', I am not there to be preached to about particular message.
When I square off against someone on a forum about, I know it will get nasty, but I'm there for that reason: to test my skills, my power of argument, and possibly to persuade some and be persuaded myself, if the case arises.
I don't want to live my whole life as if I was in a combative forum. And, once "entertainment" crosses over the line, I don't enjoy it. It's not entertainment anymore. It's not the purpose of seeing the movie.
I use GP-PVR. It's free. It has a good plugin system with lots of plugins available. Overall, I'm happy with it. It does take some time to get everything set up, but once there, it just works.
I only use it to watch TV and recorded shows. I don't watch DVDs through it, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
one shot from a .30-06 rifle. Punches a nice little hole in the casing, and shatters the platters inside. It's quite fun too!
Let me just say that I admire the man for all that he has done. For his vision, and efforts to push us all to bigger and better things.
Project Gutenberg will be a lasting legacy.
This is why everyone should have their own domain.
I have catch-all email for my domain, so if an email is sent to it that isn't recognized, it goes into my catchall account.
The nice part of this, is I can create 'newegg@domain.com', and I know exactly who sent it, and/or who shared out my contact information.
You can do throw-away emails for single event cases, or just use a generic 'junk@domain.com' for sites you don't care about.
I'm a strict constitutionalist, for many reasons.
I believe that most people have forgotten the vertical separation of powers that was originally understood when the USA was set up, because the federal government has now assumed so much of the local and state levels.
Originally, the census was used to figure out representation, and also tax liability.
The federal government figured out that it's budget would be X dollars, and it would go to each state and ask for X*Y dollars, where Y was the number of people in that state, as a percentage of total population of all the states. If New York had 5 % of the population, then it (the state) would have to write a check to the federal government which was 5% of the total federal budget.
It was up to the state to decide how to collect the money.
In today's terms, Alaska could pay it from their money from oil, and any single citizen of Alaska might not have to personally pay a dime to the federal government. Nevada might use gambling taxes to do it. Texas might charge fees for exotic game hunters to pay it. New York might have a 100,000 page state tax code to collect it. But, it leaves it up to the state to handle it.
It also gets the federal government out of my pocketbook, and out of my hair. I might interface with a state tax division, but not a federal agency, that is less accountable to me than a state agency.
I truly think we have lost our way in a lot of this, and that the men that set up the USA were far more visionary, and fair, than anyone we know today.
Battlestar Galactica (the original in 1978) had a similar thing going when the captain (Lorne Greene) would speak, the words of his journal would appear on the screen.
So, everyone said, if we switch to SSDs, longer battery life. Did it happen? No.
Memory does not use up that much power, relative to the whole system. Even switching a laptop's screen to LEDs doesn't help that much.
It's almost the same as the mythical new invention that will be out "in 5 years".
Give it up people. Semiconductors improve year after year, These kinds of breakthroughs that drastically change everything just don't happen.
The only thing I can think of that made that kind of a change in the last 30 years was going to an SSD drive for speed and responsiveness. Other than that, each year gets a bit better. Don't expect that to change any time soon.
So, when do we go live with the "genesis wave"?
To quote Kirk, if years seemed like eons, how long? A few years away! ;)
What does it mean to "jam" a phone? I've heard of bricking, etc. but to "jam" it? Raspberry or Strawberry?
Why don't tablet makers that want to use a full desktop OS think about using it with Synergy (on sourceforge)???
It's a perfect complement.
If the tablet is running Win7 or x86 Linux, then when it's docked next to my monitor, it fires up synergy and the mouse and keyboard control it just like an extra screen. When I pull it off the cradle, Synergy shuts down, and now it's a distinct computer. If running Ubuntu, it can still run Windows apps via Wine (critical for how I want to use a tablet).
I don't know why these companies don't see this option!!!
Here is a semiaccurate article on this, with human-readable analysis: http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/08/04/intel-settles-ftc-and-nvidia-win-big/
did other people read the title at first glance as 'Predecting erection results with google"?
Information wants to be free. People want to control it and hide it and charge for it. But, if I told you a secret, you naturally want to share it. If I write a book, and people read it, that information is now theirs too, ie "free".
Of course people want free information. But, some people keep it in chains and lock it up and prevent it from becoming "public" knowledge, for their own personal gain. It's a war that has been waged for ever and will continue to rage...
Let's try that again, to make a point:
Once those player pianos were possible, the music industry was not able to sell any more tickets to performances. Artists went to get real jobs and that is why all music you hear is only done by amateurs.
Same sea change. Music is still being done by professionals.
As much as technology changes, the *situation* is still the same. Human behavior is the same. Supply/demand curve stuff. If they want to overcharge for it, I won't pay *their* price, and can either not get it or get a copy of varying quality from someone else. It's been that way for thousands of years. The walkman didn't change it in any way.
Now, Napster was the start of something that I don't think we had a precedent for. (Maybe the jump from no recording devices to the first ones?) Unlinking the content from any physical limitations (ie unlimited copies with very little storage/copying overhead) was an order of magnitude jump in this area. (Think the first replicator from Star Trek fame for physical stuff.)
These kinds of things happen once in a 100-1000 years. The walkman was just the next step in a walk across the country.
Thinking About Freedom
Robert LeFevre
The Freeman, February 1983, p. 115
Could I control others by a simple exercise of my own will I would have no reason to inflict control, punishment or death upon another of my kind. Since my wishes would control others, each and every person would gladly do my bidding. Unhappily, for me, this isn’t true.
Every other person has the same kind of control I have and is as eager for me to act as he wishes, as I am to have him act as I wish.
The result is conflict. And from the days of Plato to Marx, stretching backward and forward from those polarities, the pages of the human record run red with blood and echo with the cries of anguish emitted by those who, at the moment, found themselves under the sway of some human being not content with self-management; seeking always to manage others in a way nature has not bargained for.
It's not "man", in general, but men that want to have some "kind of control" and "is ... eager for me to act as he wishes".
Most men don't have such ambitions. For some reason (the ability to actually exert this power over others), politics draws these kinds of men out.
On Firefox, I use Tree Style Tab with Tab Mix Plus, and I couldn't use any browser now that doesn't have a combo like that.
Having the tabs grouped in a hierarchy view on the left is just so well done. It really make looking at 5-100 tabs easier!
While watching the Macey's Parade last year, they mentioned that the parade balloons (big charlie brown, etc) makes it the single largest helium user in the US (maybe world?) next to the US Government.
Interesting stuff.
Ya, and that was based on early results from Win7, where *all* video card drivers were beta, and nasty to play with.
Any more, when you update ATI drivers, it just blinks the screen as it restarts the driver, and you go on. No reboot needed. No lockups or issues either.
And what if some of your plugins aren't ready for 4? suddenly, websites look different (like maybe a craigslist image laoder stops working), or worse yet your tab extension is borked, and you can't do anything with tabs any more?
Maybe a user doesn't like the new 4.0 look and wants to stay at 3.5?
Give the user a box and ask.
Do not change this behavior!
Although their chances are better than SCO's (debatable, but I'd give it to them), this story sounds as rosy as an SCO fanboy writing their weekly column.
"could mean millions" Could. Could.
I really wish we had a news service that posted honest stories.
Rambus has sued the world, and finally one of them stuck. nVidia is the loser this time. If only Rambus would die, then we could all move on in life.
See how much nicer that would be! ;)
You haven't driven in Oregon, have you? They will give you a ticket for 2-3 over.
That's funny. Even Galbraith later admitted that he was wrong on this point.
link
while our primary sources of energy are running out
And in the 1920s, they claimed we were running out of oil. In the 1970s, they claimed we were running out of oil. Just last year they found a new oilfield off of Brazil bigger than anything found yet. Last year. After everyone said no new large fields would ever be found.
Coal? Clinton locked up the Grand Staircase in Utah, the largest clean coal deposit, with 62 Billion tons of coal.
I don't know. I hate scare-mongering that has been going on already for 100 years, and shown wrong for 100 years, and the next generation doesn't see how poorly it looks.
When I go see a movie that is billed as 'entertainment', I am not there to be preached to about particular message.
When I square off against someone on a forum about, I know it will get nasty, but I'm there for that reason: to test my skills, my power of argument, and possibly to persuade some and be persuaded myself, if the case arises.
I don't want to live my whole life as if I was in a combative forum. And, once "entertainment" crosses over the line, I don't enjoy it. It's not entertainment anymore. It's not the purpose of seeing the movie.
I use GP-PVR. It's free. It has a good plugin system with lots of plugins available. Overall, I'm happy with it. It does take some time to get everything set up, but once there, it just works.
I only use it to watch TV and recorded shows. I don't watch DVDs through it, etc.
It's just a number. Really.
Would it matter if it was going from version 2007 to 2009 (like MS office)? That's only a 0.1% change. At least .21 to .22 is a 4.5% change!