This little company called "Intel" does a lot of its own R&D. The x86 world also has something Apple lacks: competition. Intel routinely slashes prices in order to destroy AMD--and assuming Intel does not succeed, we consumers benefit. There's also competition in just about every other segment of hardware (video cards, hard disk drives, motherboards), driving down prices. The exception, is of course, the operating system, in which case most PC users are no better off, as far as choice is concerned than if they were on a Macintosh.
The MacOS is the high point of the Apple computing experience? An iMac is analogous to a BMW roadster?
Sir, you are quite deluded. The MacOS in its current incarnation is quite old and shows its age. Perhaps when the next version comes out, it might be better. The iMac is not a BMW. It is the new Volkswagon Beetle.
You seem to miss the point that computers and software are commodities now. Apple has just assembled slightly different commodities and wrapped them in teal to appeal to the image conscious and ignorant.
John Katz seems to have missed the extreme irony of his first paragraph: that while the new G4 Macs were released with the usual Apple hype and with Jobs' reality distortion magic, Apple remains a "creative" company.
Where Apple had technical brilliance in the 80s and early 90s, it now possesses amazing marketing skills--it is, in fact, one of the best corporate marketers right now. The iMac's success stems from Apple's ability to seek out a large consumer base (non-techie, aesthetically sensitive persons) and make a computer that aimed right for that mark. However, open up an iMac and one finds little, if any, technical innovations. The iMac, technology-wise, is no different than the $1000 celeron-based offerings of Dell and Gateway--but it was Apple's marketing and attention to design and aesthetics that gave them a winner (although not with the orange ones).
True geeks, technophiles, and the digirati will acknowledge that the G4 is an impressive CPU. But these people will also point out that Apple has coupled their G4 with the same uninspiring graphics chipset from ATI, as well as with the aging MacOS (we are, of course, promised Apple's next OS real soon now). And let's not forget the Apple strategy that has remained unchanged throughout its history: the Apple price premium. Why, most geeks would ask, would I pay 10-20% more for a machine simply because it has translucent plastic and the Apple logo?
Apple's business is not to cater to the needs of diehard geeks, but to cater to the unwashed masses for whom simplicity and aesthetics are more important than one's framerate in Quake.
I think John Katz has it backwards: In years past, "macho" geeks touted their Macs as superior to any Wintel offering, because, in fact, they were. However now, these geeks, and especially the more frugal amongst them shun the Mac not only on technical grounds, but financial ones. And John Katz shows his adherence to the religion of Apple by stating the same old 80s Apple rhetoric of shaking up the rest of the computer industry. The emergence of Apple in the 80s no doubt changed the industry forever, but now, in the 90s, with Jobs' greying beard, Apple is just another entrenched veteran in the most competitive industry around, and has, apparently successfully used its storied past to both sell decent machines at a premium and keep its faithful believing in the myth that is the Apple Computer Company.
So, why is Red Hat's stock so important to so many of you? Sure, it'd be nice to really own a chunk of a company that many of you helped to bring to this point. However, sentimentality rarely makes good investments. You might as well start mortgaging your house or selling your car to pick up a 1000 shares of a stock whose ticker symbol you like.
Rationally, none of you would really go to Vegas, empty out your entire checking account just to let it ride on the Red Hat roulette wheel. And for those of you who've been to Vegas (or invested in AMD), remember what it felt like when you went away from a table significantly poorer than you started. E-Trade's IPO investor requirements aside, if they let go and sell off your organs to buy up RHAT and two, three years from now you have to sell at a significant loss, are you all absolutely sure you can just sit there calmly (while you have creditors harassing you on the phone) saying, "Well, I knew the risks coming in"? It's one thing to sit here and hypothetically rationalize possible losses, and quite another to actually have to live with losing money. Think of RHAT (or any investment) this way: Imagine a bunch of slashdotters broke down your door and stole away $2000 from you. Maybe in the future, they'll be back with $20,000. Maybe not.
Now I'm all for getting rid of barriers to more people investing at all levels--E*Trade's barriers (which apparently aren't even double checked in any way) seem suspect, especially for a company that supposedly caters to the common man. But let me ask how many of you have read the entirety of Red Hat's filing? Yeah, it's pretty boring reading. But if this was not Red Hat would you be so eager to part with your money? Perhaps some of you would, for pure sentimental reasons, and that's fine, although not wise. But I would wager (not a big sum of money, though) that most of you would go over any other company with a fine toothed comb, analyzing how it intends to spend your money.
Finally, I thought the whole point of people giving away their hard work was to benefit the community. Why do any of us feel any entitlement to be in on Red Hat's IPO? You all have invested in Red Hat, with your time, your code and your use of their distro. Yeah, your $2000 can be $2,000,000 the next day. But, obvious monetary boon aside, why should it matter whether you buy their stock or not? We're all part of the linux community and no amount of money can take that away from any of us. Or have we abandoned that in favor of better returns on our stocks? I mean, most of us are cheap. Why are we getting so extravagant with our cash all the sudden? You want Red Hat to recognize your good works? Have them send you a t-shirt.
Oh fucking give me a break. Academia is, if you haven't noticed, a male dominated institution--meaning we weed the women out when they're younger. Moreover, who the fuck are you to tell us what is and is not appropriate discourse on slashdot? Are you honestly saying that if a Cindy Crawford lookalike came into your lab, the first thing you'd notice would be her curricula vitae (no, her OTHER vitae, you letches)? Yeah, that's a real nice touch at the end, adding in your analysis of her aesthetic sense. What happened to her vaunted credentials, Einstein? Maybe they melted away in that hypocritical moment, as you waxed poetic about how she lights up a room.
Obviously you DON'T work in academia, since any one who does know that it's ALWAYS important to package grant proposals in the best light, technical merits be damned.
It seems convenient to forget that Mr. Stallman's chosen role is that of being the leader of the FSF. His words, therefore, are carried wide and far. Even if some slick underling were to attempt to recast them for public consumption, first, much meaning and soul would be lost, and second, they'd be ignored in favor of getting the word from the source.
Also free software is not as simple as any cold war dichotomist would have you believe. They have more in common with the idealist view of science than they do with either of the two Cold War protagonists.
Finally, RMS is perfectly acceptable to the States. A founding principle of this nation is that he is entitled to his opinions and has the right to express them. Clearly, he grasps this. Similarly, others also are free to their opinions of RMS. The reason he is a target, both here in the trenches of slashdot and in the mainstream media, is that he is the leader of the Free Software Foundation, which happens to provide such sundry items as a compiler and a license. He is free to express his views as strongly and stridently as he wishes, and others are free to criticize, nitpick, or even misinterpret his words, with equal vigor. And, yes, that includes satire.
I find it intriguing that someone pleading to leave politics out of all of this would recommend prior restraint on debating what RMS says.
It's good to see that even a high school student is capable of doing peer review for a wide variety of advanced research topics. Biologists and physicists around the world will be surprised to know that you, slashdot genius that you are, are able to solve all their problems because of your obvious superior grasp of such totally misunderstood concepts like the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Certainly, we as a society need to stop using devices that are in obvious conflict with your interpretation of the second law. While demolishing every internal combustion engine will take some time, we are progressing quite nicely on destroying a lot of our biological diversity.
If somehow you feel insulted at my response, let me make you aware of my degree in physics conferred upon me by the california institute of technology. I'm glad to know that my understanding of the second law as taught by the best technical school in the world has been disproven by a high schooler. I always assumed if a system had an input of energy (such as that bright, glowing mass of thermonuclear power that appears in our skies daily), entropy need not increase. One would note that the computers they type on require an input of energy (about 200 Watts for a typical PC) such that the information stored in DRAMs will not dissipate into heat.
As for your other "very basic scientific law", I'm afraid that I'm at a loss here. This must be totally new, groundbreaking work. I mean, we must all be in violation of your new law everyday, since we routinely turn "non living" matter into "living tissue" every time we stuff our mouths with food. I guess we should see the error of our ways and stop eating and start hoping some supernatural force will sustain us.
Of course, how could my years of learning compare to your obvious genius? I breathlessly await the publication of "Wire Tap's New Physics" in Physical Review. But I don't want to rush you. After all, a genius like you must attend his AD&D convention and work that night shift at Taco Bell.
I mean, for all of you saying "he should've spent his money on an alpha", would you had rather loaded up a fairly boring page with pictures of an alpha box?
Sure, the costs and time involved in putting together a system as he did are fairly high. So is buying one alpha or xeon processor. Plus you wouldn't get the fun factor and enjoyment from tinkering around when you just slap down a few thousand on a typical high end system. At the cheapest, overclocking means taking some $50 celeron processor and juicing it up (usually with a few fans and a peltier unit) so that it runs faster than a $400 processor. The -40 C goal is to take advantage of properties of CMOS components when they get that cold (there's a graph of potential speed vs temperature at the hardocp). Once you hit low enough temperatures, you have the possibility of doubling the clock speed.
It's not going to be the same as spending $3000 on a high end xeon processor, but it's a lot more fun, something a lot of you are forgetting in the name of price.
This thread proves, once and for all, that our half-assed science education produces a society filled with people who couldn't calculate the speed a ball rolls down a ramp, let alone the intricacies of nuclear reactions. Instead, we get people who place great faith and fervor in conspiracy theories, where the Man is everywhere, all powerful and crushes everything that is Good.
Yes, you same people who flooded John Katz's mailbox a month ago screaming how high school was hell apparently got nothing out of your science classes and rely just as much on superstition and irrationality as those who believed that the Black Plague was a curse from God (they were wrong--The Spice Girls are a curse from God). Yes, instead of utilizing that which would make you a nerd, namely logical, rational thinking, you sit here and argue that the Bavarian Illuminati, with help from the CIA, the NSA, the Cycle Gangs, and the Convenience Stores, are attacking to destroy the Cold Fusion Scientists. fnord.
Of course, by saying this, I must instantly be part of the Conspiracy. If so, I'll gladly take your money, crush your hopes, see your people scattered before me, and hear the lamentations of your women. It is useless to resist--after all, The Conspiracy is all-powerful, all-knowing. If you feel the need to give up, please send your material belongings to the kind co-conspirators who run slashdot. After all, without them, how would we disseminate disinformation among the disaffected nerds of the world?
You don't seem to feel the mere fact that humanity managed to survive the Cold War without blowing ourselves to kingdom come means much. How do you think arms control treaties are regulated? By mere goodwill?
And lest you start believing that Europeans are nothing but victims in the spycraft game, Europe has far more experience in the ways of stealing secrets from their rivals. They may not have anywhere near the same technological capabilities as UKUSA, but spy cases in the US have almost always indicated that to spy on the US, all one needs is a sufficiently disgruntled employee with a high enough clearance.
That said, nations would be hopelessly naive if they were to believe that other nation states are not out there attempting to get at their darkest secrets. Hence, the reliance on encrypted diplomatic channels, secure channels for military use, and exchange programs where they attempt to glean some information that is not generally publically available. Fact is, every nation of significance does conduct espionage. The United States is in the unique conundrum of doing it against the backdrop of our constitution. We also seem to always have the neatest gadgets and toys.
And to address your point about domestic espionage activities: let me assure you that no matter how tempted our spy agencies may be in conducting such activity, they know full well that if caught, they would face the wrath of those who pay for their existance--namely the Congress. You may say, historically this has been little deterrent. True, but historically, we were engaged in a silent war with the Soviet Union, and our citizens claimed for a time that spying on other citizens was a small price worth paying in the face of a supposed communist threat.
Moreover, even if the UK had dismantled its supposed echelon listening post in HK, what makes you think that the Chinese are not clever or resourceful enough to construct surveillance on their own? Singapore has singlehandedly created a vibrant surveillance culture, there is no doubt that the Chinese could easily do the same.
The article is about European countries portraying themselves as victims in a game they play as well as any other. Do you believe everything your nation's government says? If you don't, then, my friend, you are on equal footing with many Americans in dealing with dichotomies between stated and actual policies. It's just that here in the States, the differences eventually are aired publicly.
>I am just stating facts (besides my fruitless >comments)..
I have unrefutable facts that you are an idiot. Scientists from major research labs have verified these facts many times over, thus they are true. In depth studies have shown you wouldn't know what logic was if it bit you on the ass. They have gone on to demonstrate that you require referrals to your picture dictionary in order to comprehend complex terms like "citation" and "references" as well as mind blowing words like "truth" and "verifiability". However, you excelled at non-words such as "weel", "John Romero" and "paradigm". Apparently, your interpretation of the word "facts" as put to you by your "Mah Furst Dikshunaree" indicates that you believe it is equivalent to conjectures and hearsay.
We have plenty of studies to back up our claims, namely in the form of your report cards and full college transcript. Initial reports are filled with many gold and silver stars. However, this seems to be the apex of your academic achievement. We recommend you lay low for your own protection such that the government doesn't mistake you for a genetics experiment gone awry and have you put to sleep. We also urge a liberal use of contraception on your part in order to save the next generation from a genetics experiment gone awry.
It seems rather weird to me this effort of trying to ascribe responsibility to Romero. After all, how can he be responsible when he hasn't put out a decent game worth waiting five hours to download from a warez site, let alone a game one wants to part with money over?
I mean, sure, deep down, we all WANT him to be responsible, in that remote hope some trailer trash family suing for damages will ride off in his ugly yellow ferrari. But, alas, he can't be, and we must be content with chortling when Daikatana is crushed by Quake 3 Arena.
Corporate espionage has existed for a long time now. It doesn't have to utilize billion dollar satellites and vast interception facilities. Go to any trade show for any industry and you'll see commonly accepted espionage at work. I was just at E3, and let me tell you all the video cameras were not there just to take footage of booth babes. Companies know it happens because they do it to each other as much as they can. Granted, intelligence agencies have an upper hand, but let there be no doubt that every person who lives in a UKUSA country has been an indirect beneficiary of that intelligence gathering capability.
Just remember that when you go buy the petrol for your cocktails that you are able to afford your purchase in part due to some intelligence-enabled arm twisting to get around OPEC's price controls.
If security is a big concern, and your ftp site is really only for a select group of people, you may wish to consider the sendfile suite of utilities based on the SAFT (?) protocol. Basically, it's akin to email or instant messaging systems but with files and with decent security involved (you can filter out spurious senders of files, no passwords need pass over the 'net).
Something to give a shot for those of you wanting to give your friend, who's too lazy/paranoid/poor to set up an ftp server, a file.
The point of the GPL is freedom. Freedom from onerous copyright/intellectual property restrictions. The freedom to hack the program for your (and then other people's) benefit. Nothing in the GPL says you can't make money off of a GPL'd product (there are bits about distribution). Who says Cygnus isn't interested in making money now? People pay them money to hack egcs. Those hacks get incorporated into egcs. Cygnus employees get to put more cars in their garages. The company that contracted them now has a compiler for their architecture. Everyone is happy.
And if Cygnus has VC backing, they already have someone telling them what they should do (or not, depending on the VC firm). Also, it's always good to have an employee stock option incentive plan to retain and reward employees--and stock option plans don't work unless the company goes/is public.
People like you seem to have a distorted view of capitalism and seem to think that just because a company wants to use Wall Street to raise money, they've all but sold their soul and that somehow before this they were giving away product for free, and that employees eschewed salaries in favor of prancing around in a cyber-commune, as opposed to cashing paychecks so they can buy copyleft t-shirts and the latest gear for their home computer.
The bottom line is, you're wrong. Making money and the GPL can coexist. And for linux to take over the world, they have to, because starving and hacking for nothing only gets you so far.
Great. Just what America needs: To arm its worst paid and least respected professionals with firearms. Maybe if our country did more than just pay lip service to education, we wouldn't have pathetically misinformed individuals, mouthing the words of the gun lobby, arguing that arming teachers would solve everything. Obviously, this person has never been near a gun, has never understood the sole purpose of a gun, and has just absorbed the NRA's favorite lines, and worshipped at the temple of action films (which are cool, but fake). If this person understood what it's like to live in an armed society, to sleep nights with the crackle of gunfire in the background, to walk in fear on the street wondering if their next step would be their last, this person wouldn't be so quick to emulate Charlton Heston.
The sad thing is, of course, this person doesn't even appear to have learned anything from the compulsory years at school. Or maybe he has, learning from a system that pounds individual thought out of students, thus churning out drones that can do nothing but parrot what they're told, be it from the idiot box, a web site, or some pamphlet they found on the street.
It seems rather appropriate that the owner of the long suffering Cubs would have someone of this caliber on their payroll. This guy looks like he'd be right at home proclaiming his opinions in some free, local computer rag aimed at people for whom the telephone represents the extent of their grasp of 20th century technology.
His criticism of "homebrew" software means he's never done any IT work in his life. Let alone program a single line of code. The only way these type of people know what a pentium II/III secc looks like is because Intel sent them a glossy press release. If Microsoft told him that he had to sell his organs to upgrade to the next version of windows, he'd probably hop right on the cutting table.
I bet the last time this guy had on opinion on the mark was when the Cubs were last in the World Series.
You know, in about 1994, a colleague of mine was emphatically telling me about how this free little operating system he was tinkering with was going to pose a big threat to Microsoft. I looked at him pretty incredulously as he described what we all know as the open source model of development, and the fact that linux is free. In the intervening time, I became a convert during my time as an MIS guy working with relatively uncomplicated mix of Windows machines and Sun boxes, because it did a lot of things we needed, it didn't suck, and, hey, it's free. To see linux go from nothing to a primetime slot on CNN in less than 5 years is something to be applauded--we shouldn't sit here like geeks at a star trek convention nitpicking the broadcast, because newspeople who view their computer as just something to type up reports on won't understand that one can just take any cheap PC clone and turn it into a machine capable of just about any task in hours. CNN's audience isn't the slashdot audience (hm, maybe that night it was--slashdot effect in Nielson ratings?). Maybe next year, we'll see the penguins in the background of the CNN newsroom.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you're the exact target audience for a Macintosh: someone who wants a computer to just work out of the box. You are not, however, a diehard geek.
This little company called "Intel" does a lot of its own R&D. The x86 world also has something Apple lacks: competition. Intel routinely slashes prices in order to destroy AMD--and assuming Intel does not succeed, we consumers benefit. There's also competition in just about every other segment of hardware (video cards, hard disk drives, motherboards), driving down prices. The exception, is of course, the operating system, in which case most PC users are no better off, as far as choice is concerned than if they were on a Macintosh.
The MacOS is the high point of the Apple computing experience? An iMac is analogous to a BMW roadster?
Sir, you are quite deluded. The MacOS in its current incarnation is quite old and shows its age. Perhaps when the next version comes out, it might be better. The iMac is not a BMW. It is the new Volkswagon Beetle.
You seem to miss the point that computers and software are commodities now. Apple has just assembled slightly different commodities and wrapped them in teal to appeal to the image conscious and ignorant.
John Katz seems to have missed the extreme irony of his first paragraph: that while the new G4 Macs were released with the usual Apple hype and with Jobs' reality distortion magic, Apple remains a "creative" company.
Where Apple had technical brilliance in the 80s and early 90s, it now possesses amazing marketing skills--it is, in fact, one of the best corporate marketers right now. The iMac's success stems from Apple's ability to seek out a large consumer base (non-techie, aesthetically sensitive persons) and make a computer that aimed right for that mark. However, open up an iMac and one finds little, if any, technical innovations. The iMac, technology-wise, is no different than the $1000 celeron-based offerings of Dell and Gateway--but it was Apple's marketing and attention to design and aesthetics that gave them a winner (although not with the orange ones).
True geeks, technophiles, and the digirati will acknowledge that the G4 is an impressive CPU. But these people will also point out that Apple has coupled their G4 with the same uninspiring graphics chipset from ATI, as well as with the aging MacOS (we are, of course, promised Apple's next OS real soon now). And let's not forget the Apple strategy that has remained unchanged throughout its history: the Apple price premium. Why, most geeks would ask, would I pay 10-20% more for a machine simply because it has translucent plastic and the Apple logo?
Apple's business is not to cater to the needs of diehard geeks, but to cater to the unwashed masses for whom simplicity and aesthetics are more important than one's framerate in Quake.
I think John Katz has it backwards: In years past, "macho" geeks touted their Macs as superior to any Wintel offering, because, in fact, they were. However now, these geeks, and especially the more frugal amongst them shun the Mac not only on technical grounds, but financial ones. And John Katz shows his adherence to the religion of Apple by stating the same old 80s Apple rhetoric of shaking up the rest of the computer industry. The emergence of Apple in the 80s no doubt changed the industry forever, but now, in the 90s, with Jobs' greying beard, Apple is just another entrenched veteran in the most competitive industry around, and has, apparently successfully used its storied past to both sell decent machines at a premium and keep its faithful believing in the myth that is the Apple Computer Company.
So, why is Red Hat's stock so important to so many of you? Sure, it'd be nice to really own a chunk of a company that many of you helped to bring to this point. However, sentimentality rarely makes good investments. You might as well start mortgaging your house or selling your car to pick up a 1000 shares of a stock whose ticker symbol you like.
Rationally, none of you would really go to Vegas, empty out your entire checking account just to let it ride on the Red Hat roulette wheel. And for those of you who've been to Vegas (or invested in AMD), remember what it felt like when you went away from a table significantly poorer than you started. E-Trade's IPO investor requirements aside, if they let go and sell off your organs to buy up RHAT and two, three years from now you have to sell at a significant loss, are you all absolutely sure you can just sit there calmly (while you have creditors harassing you on the phone) saying, "Well, I knew the risks coming in"? It's one thing to sit here and hypothetically rationalize possible losses, and quite another to actually have to live with losing money. Think of RHAT (or any investment) this way: Imagine a bunch of slashdotters broke down your door and stole away $2000 from you. Maybe in the future, they'll be back with $20,000. Maybe not.
Now I'm all for getting rid of barriers to more people investing at all levels--E*Trade's barriers (which apparently aren't even double checked in any way) seem suspect, especially for a company that supposedly caters to the common man. But let me ask how many of you have read the entirety of Red Hat's filing? Yeah, it's pretty boring reading. But if this was not Red Hat would you be so eager to part with your money? Perhaps some of you would, for pure sentimental reasons, and that's fine, although not wise. But I would wager (not a big sum of money, though) that most of you would go over any other company with a fine toothed comb, analyzing how it intends to spend your money.
Finally, I thought the whole point of people giving away their hard work was to benefit the community. Why do any of us feel any entitlement to be in on Red Hat's IPO? You all have invested in Red Hat, with your time, your code and your use of their distro. Yeah, your $2000 can be $2,000,000 the next day. But, obvious monetary boon aside, why should it matter whether you buy their stock or not? We're all part of the linux community and no amount of money can take that away from any of us. Or have we abandoned that in favor of better returns on our stocks? I mean, most of us are cheap. Why are we getting so extravagant with our cash all the sudden? You want Red Hat to recognize your good works? Have them send you a t-shirt.
Oh fucking give me a break. Academia is, if you haven't noticed, a male dominated institution--meaning we weed the women out when they're younger. Moreover, who the fuck are you to tell us what is and is not appropriate discourse on slashdot? Are you honestly saying that if a Cindy Crawford lookalike came into your lab, the first thing you'd notice would be her curricula vitae (no, her OTHER vitae, you letches)? Yeah, that's a real nice touch at the end, adding in your analysis of her aesthetic sense. What happened to her vaunted credentials, Einstein? Maybe they melted away in that hypocritical moment, as you waxed poetic about how she lights up a room.
Obviously you DON'T work in academia, since any one who does know that it's ALWAYS important to package grant proposals in the best light, technical merits be damned.
It seems convenient to forget that Mr. Stallman's chosen role is that of being the leader of the FSF. His words, therefore, are carried wide and far. Even if some slick underling were to attempt to recast them for public consumption, first, much meaning and soul would be lost, and second, they'd be ignored in favor of getting the word from the source.
Also free software is not as simple as any cold war dichotomist would have you believe. They have more in common with the idealist view of science than they do with either of the two Cold War protagonists.
Finally, RMS is perfectly acceptable to the States. A founding principle of this nation is that he is entitled to his opinions and has the right to express them. Clearly, he grasps this. Similarly, others also are free to their opinions of RMS. The reason he is a target, both here in the trenches of slashdot and in the mainstream media, is that he is the leader of the Free Software Foundation, which happens to provide such sundry items as a compiler and a license. He is free to express his views as strongly and stridently as he wishes, and others are free to criticize, nitpick, or even misinterpret his words, with equal vigor. And, yes, that includes satire.
I find it intriguing that someone pleading to leave politics out of all of this would recommend prior restraint on debating what RMS says.
Is this the same force Yoda uses to get Luke's
X-Wing out of the swamps of Dagobah?
It's good to see that even a high school student is capable of doing peer review for a wide variety of advanced research topics. Biologists and physicists around the world will be surprised to know that you, slashdot genius that you are, are able to solve all their problems because of your obvious superior grasp of such totally misunderstood concepts like the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Certainly, we as a society need to stop using devices that are in obvious conflict with your interpretation of the second law. While demolishing every internal combustion engine will take some time, we are progressing quite nicely on destroying a lot of our biological diversity.
If somehow you feel insulted at my response, let me make you aware of my degree in physics conferred upon me by the california institute of technology. I'm glad to know that my understanding of the second law as taught by the best technical school in the world has been disproven by a high schooler. I always assumed if a system had an input of energy (such as that bright, glowing mass of thermonuclear power that appears in our skies daily), entropy need not increase. One would note that the computers they type on require an input of energy (about 200 Watts for a typical PC) such that the information stored in DRAMs will not dissipate into heat.
As for your other "very basic scientific law", I'm afraid that I'm at a loss here. This must be totally new, groundbreaking work. I mean, we must all be in violation of your new law everyday, since we routinely turn "non living" matter into "living tissue" every time we stuff our mouths with food. I guess we should see the error of our ways and stop eating and start hoping some supernatural force will sustain us.
Of course, how could my years of learning compare to your obvious genius? I breathlessly await the publication of "Wire Tap's New Physics" in Physical Review. But I don't want to rush you. After all, a genius like you must attend his AD&D convention and work that night shift at Taco Bell.
I mean, for all of you saying "he should've spent his money on an alpha", would you had rather loaded up a fairly boring page with pictures of an alpha box?
Sure, the costs and time involved in putting together a system as he did are fairly high. So is buying one alpha or xeon processor. Plus you wouldn't get the fun factor and enjoyment from tinkering around when you just slap down a few thousand on a typical high end system. At the cheapest, overclocking means taking some $50 celeron processor and juicing it up (usually with a few fans and a peltier unit) so that it runs faster than a $400 processor. The -40 C goal is to take advantage of properties of CMOS components when they get that cold (there's a graph of potential speed vs temperature at the hardocp). Once you hit low enough temperatures, you have the possibility of doubling the clock speed.
It's not going to be the same as spending $3000 on a high end xeon processor, but it's a lot more fun, something a lot of you are forgetting in the name of price.
This thread proves, once and for all, that our half-assed science education produces a society filled with people who couldn't calculate the speed a ball rolls down a ramp, let alone the intricacies of nuclear reactions. Instead, we get people who place great faith and fervor in conspiracy theories, where the Man is everywhere, all powerful and crushes everything that is Good.
Yes, you same people who flooded John Katz's mailbox a month ago screaming how high school was hell apparently got nothing out of your science classes and rely just as much on superstition and irrationality as those who believed that the Black Plague was a curse from God (they were wrong--The Spice Girls are a curse from God). Yes, instead of utilizing that which would make you a nerd, namely logical, rational thinking, you sit here and argue that the Bavarian Illuminati, with help from the CIA, the NSA, the Cycle Gangs, and the Convenience Stores, are attacking to destroy the Cold Fusion Scientists. fnord.
Of course, by saying this, I must instantly be part of the Conspiracy. If so, I'll gladly take your money, crush your hopes, see your people scattered before me, and hear the lamentations of your women. It is useless to resist--after all, The Conspiracy is all-powerful, all-knowing. If you feel the need to give up, please send your material belongings to the kind co-conspirators who run slashdot. After all, without them, how would we disseminate disinformation among the disaffected nerds of the world?
You don't seem to feel the mere fact that humanity managed to survive the Cold War without blowing ourselves to kingdom come means much. How do you think arms control treaties are regulated? By mere goodwill?
And lest you start believing that Europeans are nothing but victims in the spycraft game, Europe has far more experience in the ways of stealing secrets from their rivals. They may not have anywhere near the same technological capabilities as UKUSA, but spy cases in the US have almost always indicated that to spy on the US, all one needs is a sufficiently disgruntled employee with a high enough clearance.
That said, nations would be hopelessly naive if they were to believe that other nation states are not out there attempting to get at their darkest secrets. Hence, the reliance on encrypted diplomatic channels, secure channels for military use, and exchange programs where they attempt to glean some information that is not generally publically available. Fact is, every nation of significance does conduct espionage. The United States is in the unique conundrum of doing it against the backdrop of our constitution. We also seem to always have the neatest gadgets and toys.
And to address your point about domestic espionage activities: let me assure you that no matter how tempted our spy agencies may be in conducting such activity, they know full well that if caught, they would face the wrath of those who pay for their existance--namely the Congress. You may say, historically this has been little deterrent. True, but historically, we were engaged in a silent war with the Soviet Union, and our citizens claimed for a time that spying on other citizens was a small price worth paying in the face of a supposed communist threat.
Moreover, even if the UK had dismantled its supposed echelon listening post in HK, what makes you think that the Chinese are not clever or resourceful enough to construct surveillance on their own? Singapore has singlehandedly created a vibrant surveillance culture, there is no doubt that the Chinese could easily do the same.
The article is about European countries portraying themselves as victims in a game they play as well as any other. Do you believe everything your nation's government says? If you don't, then, my friend, you are on equal footing with many Americans in dealing with dichotomies between stated and actual policies. It's just that here in the States, the differences eventually are aired publicly.
>I am just stating facts (besides my fruitless >comments)..
I have unrefutable facts that you are an idiot. Scientists from major research labs have verified these facts many times over, thus they are true. In depth studies have shown you wouldn't know what logic was if it bit you on the ass. They have gone on to demonstrate that you require referrals to your picture dictionary in order to comprehend complex terms like "citation" and "references" as well as mind blowing words like "truth" and "verifiability". However, you excelled at non-words such as "weel", "John Romero" and "paradigm". Apparently, your interpretation of the word "facts" as put to you by your "Mah Furst Dikshunaree" indicates that you believe it is equivalent to conjectures and hearsay.
We have plenty of studies to back up our claims, namely in the form of your report cards and full college transcript. Initial reports are filled with many gold and silver stars. However, this seems to be the apex of your academic achievement. We recommend you lay low for your own protection such that the government doesn't mistake you for a genetics experiment gone awry and have you put to sleep. We also urge a liberal use of contraception on your part in order to save the next generation from a genetics experiment gone awry.
It seems rather weird to me this effort of trying to ascribe responsibility to Romero. After all, how can he be responsible when he hasn't put out a decent game worth waiting five hours to download from a warez site, let alone a game one wants to part with money over?
I mean, sure, deep down, we all WANT him to be responsible, in that remote hope some trailer trash family suing for damages will ride off in his ugly yellow ferrari. But, alas, he can't be, and we must be content with chortling when Daikatana is crushed by Quake 3 Arena.
Corporate espionage has existed for a long time now. It doesn't have to utilize billion dollar satellites and vast interception facilities. Go to any trade show for any industry and you'll see commonly accepted espionage at work. I was just at E3, and let me tell you all the video cameras were not there just to take footage of booth babes. Companies know it happens because they do it to each other as much as they can. Granted, intelligence agencies have an upper hand, but let there be no doubt that every person who lives in a UKUSA country has been an indirect beneficiary of that intelligence gathering capability.
Just remember that when you go buy the petrol for your cocktails that you are able to afford your purchase in part due to some intelligence-enabled arm twisting to get around OPEC's price controls.
If security is a big concern, and your ftp site is really only for a select group of people, you may wish to consider the sendfile suite of utilities based on the SAFT (?) protocol. Basically, it's akin to email or instant messaging systems but with files and with decent security involved (you can filter out spurious senders of files, no passwords need pass over the 'net).
Something to give a shot for those of you wanting to give your friend, who's too lazy/paranoid/poor to set up an ftp server, a file.
The point of the GPL is freedom. Freedom from onerous copyright/intellectual property restrictions. The freedom to hack the program for your (and then other people's) benefit. Nothing in the GPL says you can't make money off of a GPL'd product (there are bits about distribution). Who says Cygnus isn't interested in making money now? People pay them money to hack egcs. Those hacks get incorporated into egcs. Cygnus employees get to put more cars in their garages. The company that contracted them now has a compiler for their architecture. Everyone is happy.
And if Cygnus has VC backing, they already have someone telling them what they should do (or not, depending on the VC firm). Also, it's always good to have an employee stock option incentive plan to retain and reward employees--and stock option plans don't work unless the company goes/is public.
People like you seem to have a distorted view of capitalism and seem to think that just because a company wants to use Wall Street to raise money, they've all but sold their soul and that somehow before this they were giving away product for free, and that employees eschewed salaries in favor of prancing around in a cyber-commune, as opposed to cashing paychecks so they can buy copyleft t-shirts and the latest gear for their home computer.
The bottom line is, you're wrong. Making money and the GPL can coexist. And for linux to take over the world, they have to, because starving and hacking for nothing only gets you so far.
Great. Just what America needs: To arm its worst paid and least respected professionals with firearms. Maybe if our country did more than just pay lip service to education, we wouldn't have pathetically misinformed individuals, mouthing the words of the gun lobby, arguing that arming teachers would solve everything. Obviously, this person has never been near a gun, has never understood the sole purpose of a gun, and has just absorbed the NRA's favorite lines, and worshipped at the temple of action films (which are cool, but fake). If this person understood what it's like to live in an armed society, to sleep nights with the crackle of gunfire in the background, to walk in fear on the street wondering if their next step would be their last, this person wouldn't be so quick to emulate Charlton Heston.
The sad thing is, of course, this person doesn't even appear to have learned anything from the compulsory years at school. Or maybe he has, learning from a system that pounds individual thought out of students, thus churning out drones that can do nothing but parrot what they're told, be it from the idiot box, a web site, or some pamphlet they found on the street.
It seems rather appropriate that the owner of the long suffering Cubs would have someone of this caliber on their payroll. This guy looks like he'd be right at home proclaiming his opinions in some free, local computer rag aimed at people for whom the telephone represents the extent of their grasp of 20th century technology.
His criticism of "homebrew" software means he's never done any IT work in his life. Let alone program a single line of code. The only way these type of people know what a pentium II/III secc looks like is because Intel sent them a glossy press release. If Microsoft told him that he had to sell his organs to upgrade to the next version of windows, he'd probably hop right on the cutting table.
I bet the last time this guy had on opinion on the mark was when the Cubs were last in the World Series.
You know, in about 1994, a colleague of mine was
emphatically telling me about how this free little
operating system he was tinkering with was going
to pose a big threat to Microsoft. I looked at
him pretty incredulously as he described what we
all know as the open source model of development,
and the fact that linux is free.
In the intervening time, I became a convert during
my time as an MIS guy working with relatively
uncomplicated mix of Windows machines and Sun
boxes, because it did a lot of things we needed,
it didn't suck, and, hey, it's free.
To see linux go from nothing to a primetime slot
on CNN in less than 5 years is something to be
applauded--we shouldn't sit here like geeks at
a star trek convention nitpicking the broadcast,
because newspeople who view their computer as
just something to type up reports on won't
understand that one can just take any cheap
PC clone and turn it into a machine capable of
just about any task in hours. CNN's audience
isn't the slashdot audience (hm, maybe that night
it was--slashdot effect in Nielson ratings?).
Maybe next year, we'll see the penguins in the
background of the CNN newsroom.