Probably Macs are quieter than cheap PCs. If you have a reasonable quiet PC, there will likely be no difference.
Memory vs. Megahertz.
Macs have a problem will speed in OS X. I do not know if this is going to be fixed. On my 256K 550 MHz PowerBook, with a HD more than 1/2 full, Mac OS X is slow. If you are buying a tower, I wouldn't worry about the installed memory. You will probably just add 512K chips to it as time goes on. It looks like there are three free slots, each supporting 512K, for a total of 1.5G. Apple generally charges too much for memory, so it can add later.
In terms of speed, go and play with the machines to see what seems reasonable. If you are going to spend a lot of time at the command line and Emac, you will not need a lot of speed. If you are going to spend at lot of time dealing with graphics, buy as much speed as you can afford. If I were buying a machine, and had the cash, I would get the 933MHZ PPC G4 at $2.3K.
The Apple vs. Retail Store thing
I have bought from both. The retail outlets do not get the latest stuff very quickly, nor are they immediately responsive to price changes. The retail chains also are not able to customize the systems as cheaply as Apple, although this is not such an issue with a tower. I would look at the local retailers and compare their stock to the online stock. If you can find something locally, go ahead and buy it. I will save the week shipping. If you do not like to shop, just order online. They are fast and courteous.
The best video.
I don't know.
OS X and SMP
I don't know.
SCSI and IDE.
I have always been a SCSI person. I have quite a number of SCSI devices from when Apple actually supported the adapter. I added a SCSI card to my G4, it was made to work with the G4. However, the card is not 100% compatable with the G4, and often interferes with my G$ sleep mode, and even, on occasion, makes the mouse go away on wake up.
So, if you are going to SCSI, make sure the card you use works very well. I do not believe that Apple is committed to SCSI. For example, the CDRW and harddisk they sell are Firewire, USB, IDE, but no SCSI.
Almost any advance scientific research can, with relatively trivial changes, be made into a weapon. As a matter of fact creating weapon of mass destruction can often be a bit simpler than creating a useful tool, as a tool must be relatively easy to control, while a weapon can be allowed to run rampant.
As a side issue, one must also consider if using this 'high tech' weapon will be strategically more destructive than a lower tech existing technology. Even though the U.S. is obsessed with 'high tech' glamorous weapons, partly in an effort to reduce risk to U.S. soldiers, we have seen that simpler 'high concept' devices can be very effective. With relatively little thought, one can imagine any number of simpler, though higher risk, methods to introduce contagions into an environment.
That said, if a random person followed a recipe they downloaded from the Internet and used gene sequences from a mail-order supplier they would not necessarily be able to generate a virus. For example, having a cookbook and a stove does not mean that you can create a Cheese Souffle or a fresh Baguette. There is a certain skill level needed to succeed. I can, in fact, make a reasonable facsimile of these things, but only after quite a bit of practice.
This isn't to say we should not be worried. But Washington has used the 'download from the Internet' scare card so often, that is very furstrating to see people accept it so readily.
As another example, I have helped researcher create a number of solid state devices. That does not mean that I can recreate those devices, either because the tools needed are too expensive, or the skill needed is beyond my abilities. Even with the tools and adequate materials, the average person would have little hope of figuring out which button to push.
I am not sure how anyone, with a straight face, can say that real web business would have to be insane to limit its clientele to Passport account holders only. Web bussineses have and will continue to limited their customers to those MS find acceptable. For instance such bussineses require IE by using random IE standards. They were able to justify such laziness by saying the user can always go and download IE for free, although, as has been mentioned, downloading IE is only free if your time, bandwidth, and computer, are wothless. The same brainlessness will hold for passport.
There are currently few passport accounts because no one really needs them. The passports accounts that do exist were likely ones forced onto users. This is how it has been, and this is how it will be. The day will come when using windows will require a passport account, getting support will require a passport account, and dowloading p0rn will require a passport account. MS will bundle passport connectivity into front page, and developers will use the connectivity as mindlessly as they use other MS profit centers. It will appear free to the all areas of end users, and therefore it will be used. We will again be in the same situation as we are with IE, where getting the 3% of customer who refuse to conform requires more effort than it is worth.
Furthermore, one would think that users would not like credit card information linked directly to a password, and have that password be the only thing needed to use the credit card. However, there are examples to the contrary of vendors doing exactly this.
First, I think that if one wants to lose weight, one needs to exercise and limit calories. Second, weight loss should not the only issue in a diet. Weight is a major health risk, but not the only health risk. This is why we do not have stories advocating speed and tobacco for wight loss. For instance, a major problem with extremely low fat diet, or an extremely high protein diet, are the possible related health problems. Third, not all foods are created equal. Most people confuse sugar with carbohydrates, juice with fruits and vegetable, and meat with protein. Under these assumptions, a low carb diet makes sense, since it is better to get no carbs at all rather than just sugar.
20 years later obesity is at an all time high BECAUSE people have been more aware of health issues and thought that by eating low-fat foods they could lose weight or stay slim. The government guidelines simply do not work.
As mentioned above. most people do not eat a varied diet. This make the food pyramid ineffective. If grains are considered white bread and pasta, vegetables considered lettuce and the occasional tomato, and fruit is considered juice, one is better off without carbohydrates. All one would eat would be sugar, and the calories would be wasted. On the other hand, if one did follow the pyramid, and ate a few cups of whole grains, a few cups of fresh vegetables, and a few pieces of whole fruit, one would have a healthy and nutritious diet. Combine this with a few ounces of protein, and a very little extra oil, and one would have a very healthy diet.
You can blame McDonalds all you want - the fact is that the majority of the population does not eat there. The studies showed most of peoples calories were coming from carbs, NOT fat - which makes sense, since the food pyramid, which is a sham, has high carb foods as it's base.
McDonalds is a paradigm representing the protein based diet with pure sugars and fataround it. If you have white bread, french fries, and lettuce as you carbs, you are better off without them. Even at restaurants, the carbs tend to be very simple, with only token vegetables, and large amounts of fats added to the food. This is not a good diet. It would be better to have a healthy food pyramid diet, but the food proccesors are making such a diet very difficult to attain.
Atkins, and most low-carb diets DON'T advocate eating fats willy-nilly. There is a clear distinction between good and bad fats, and the good fats can actually help you metabolize store fat - that's why the basic "low-fat" diet doesn't work. People trying low-fat often see an increase in bad cholesterol and triglycerides, while amazingly people on low-carb diets (beyond 3 or 4 months) see a decrease in triglycerides and an increase in HDL - the good cholesterol.
And fats are only part of the issue. As much as we would like to fantasise that we can eat all we want and not get fat, carbs don't make people fat, fat don't make people fat, it is people eating too many calories that make people fat. Processed simple carbohydrates and fats both allow people to consume large amounts of calories without getting full or significant amount of nutrient. Both are fiber poor which can contribute to cholesterol and triglycerides problems. Categorizing all low fat diets as high simple carbohydrates would be like categorizing all low carb diets as high fat. It is not fair.
But I do not have to just quote studies and hand waving dieticians - I have lived it. I did not lose weight - even when exersizing, by following the government guidelines. I have lost 50 pounds in less than five months following low-carb (but not Atkins - but they are all similar). My blood pressure went down to normal. My acid-reflux virtually disappeared. I know a diabetic that no longer has to take medication.
I don't either. I can just point to all the people I know on diabetes diets who have lost weight and become more healthy. I can also point to entire countries of healthy people whose diets are based on complex carbohydrates.
Until you understand that low-carb is not just for losing weight, and the implications of what a high carb diet can do (like CAUSING diabetes - the rate of type 2 diabetes has gone up along with obesity - ever since the government said that low fat was the key to health).
If the purpose of low carb diets is to replace sugar with protein, that is fine. But implying that complex carbohydrates causes diabetes and obesity is just wrong. Eating too many calories makes one fat, and eating too much sugar and fat causes other problems. The same is true with too little fat or too much protien. I think we should not give up on the balanced diet just because it is more profitable to sell processed food.
The flaw in your argument is that only a small portion of the code takes most of the time. If you spend a lot of time on upfront design instead of profiling, much of your effort will be wasted.
Wrong. You design your code as a compromise between factors such as speed, maintainance, reusability, readability, and, most importantly, the resources you are allowed to expend.
If speed is a critical factor, then you might try to do some predictive profiling using exisiting principles to make sure the code is fast. Otherwise, you write the best damn code you can, which generally means using good practices to insure that you don't waste time, and then profile it. Profiling will work best if the code is written is such a way(read a lot of reusabled functions) that allows simple optimization.
BTW, the biggest wrinkle in this is that programmers time has become more valuable the clock cycles. We will now waste some clock cycles to same programmers time, which is why profiling is not nearly as important as it used to be.
If the code is not written well, and has to be rewritten when the profiler says it sucks, then you wasted your time.
I found this press release and it echos the fact that CDs are ripped to hard disk at 8x speed. The potentially more interesting thing is that according to specification the memory stick can only be used "check out" music. Exactly what this means i don't know.
What does seem to be happening is that the forces that be are allowing us to copy music from CD to CD or CD to MP3, but not MP3 from a non-CD to MP3 to a non CD. What this means is that the consumer is going to be inconvenienced by having to rip cd to many different places, instead of ripping the CD once, and then piping it to different stand alone devices. One assumes that if DRM is implemented, this will also apply to the GPC.
There is really no reason why I shouldn't be able to take my portable computer, IPod, or whatever, and transfer MP3s directly to my car.
While deep linking to individual pages within a web site is generally a good thing, what about data mining a site and displaying content as ones own? I would like to know if this ruling has more do wi'th deep linking or data mining.
For instance, we should be able to send a browser to any page 'within' a site, but what about aggregating information or links in a way the designer of the website never intended, or publishing the information in a new media. Is there much difference between data mining a web site and publishing public comments on a site such as/. in dead tree form? I certainly do not know, but it seems to be a relevant question.
There are clearly limits to deep linking. Jakob Nielson gives the example of a quiz on his site. Going to anywhere but the first page of the quiz renders the process meaningless. It is true that in most cases you want as much help as possible to get a user to an 'inner' page, as this appears to one of the greatest impediment to usability, but do we really want people to pull, for example, images or frames from our sites and display them as their own content. As the previous NPR discussion illustated, there are times when this will unfairly transfer hosting costs
What happens if some little newspaper in siberia prints a negative article on me and I don't find out about it until I accidently end up in siberia on the way to japan, 50 years after it is published. Should I be able to sue?
What happens if some geek puts notes about me, written in latin, on his web page. I am too stupid to use google to translate, and only find out about it when I happen to have a one night stand with someone who can read latin, 5 years after the fact. Should I be able to sue?
What happens if I am a CEO of a major company, have all sorts of defamatory remarks made about me on the web, but ignore them because it would take more time than it is worth. Ten years later, after being fired and heavily fined for defrauding the stock holders, I try to sue the people who defamed me in an effort to save my million dollar house.
I am not sure what the author is complaining about. The web allows a broader distribution of information, which also means that there is better chance that a person will find out about defamation. If there is some concern about defamation, a regular check of the web would be useful.
Having an infinite limit of statues, much like an infinite copyright, just leads to frivolous and retaliatory law suits. For instance, I write something terrible about company XYZ. At the time it is ignored because I am just a nobody. Five years later, I am involved in an action against the XYZ company. The company takes the opportunity to sue me to within an inch of my life.
Telemarketers are people too. Although many telemarketers are colored, most of them are just like you and me.
So, if I ask them if they are colored, then I can verbally abuse them? Should I also take this to assume that every one on/. is not colored.
I hope this is a grammer mistake.
I would say the difference between junk mail and spam is that most spam, one way or another, is fraudulent. This is an important distinction. If spam were not generally fraudulent, then it could be of more use than junk mail, to the sender and receiver.
This is an interesting question, and not simple as it seems. A government portal for advertisement would be useful, if the quality were up to the standards of junk mail. People might lactually look at such mail, which would be a benifit to the advertiser. Advertiser might also spend some time and effort created good TV quality advertising on the web, which would help the slumping IT sector. If the cost per message were kept high, the adversiters would still be funding the postal service, which would be important. We will get more email, but there would be less of an excuse for spam. Face it, email is much simpler to discard than paper mail. An email pointing to a web site could be much better than paper mail.
Now the problem. In the US junk mail probably justifies and pays for a large part of the U.S. postal service. If we went to such a plan we would lose something, at least we would not have six day a week mail delivery. We might even have to pay more to mail a letter, which might not be so important as people are mailing less letters. On the other hand, we might some commercial demand for subsidized internet, for example, wider broadband.
Most of community colleges have night classes for new students. These courses are, from my experience in them, not university level, but they are a good introduction. These classes will give you time to think about why you want to math, and what is reasonable to do with it. If you wish to continue, most Universities have a limited number of higher level math night classes. I would not enroll in technical school classes, as those are more geared to getting a piece of paper.
Books are also useful, but you don't get the feedback and support of other students. You also lose the motivation of the professor. Math is hard, and most of us need all the help we can get.
Mac junkies have been around for quite some time, and have continued to purchase Macs.
Macs are not really directly relevant to this Linux discussion. I have owned Apples for over 20 years because the hardware and software are relatively reliable, doing basic things are easy and doing difficult things are possible. Apple had a much higher percentage of the market at that time, but lost their edge in the educational market and have never been able to deliver a general business machine(Apple///, Lisa, Mac,...). Nevertheless, they have a lot of desktop fans from many years ago, and get a few converts ever year. This continues to give them a good enough market for their machines.
Linux is much different. The old Unix fans, as far as I can tell, run Windows as a desktop and telnet into their Unix account. A few may install Linux or whatever on the desktop, but Linux as a whole, unlike Apple, has no established desktop base (ATT tried to establish a desktop Unix machine in the Mid 80's, but failed miserably). Linux, and Unix, as a whole, unlike Apple, has little experience designing for the clueless user. And Linux, unlike MS, does not seem to be actively borrowing ideas from Apple to create a good experience for clueless users. Linux developers, rather, seem to gain joy from reinventing the wheel for the tenth time.
Linux could be a good desktop OS, but the development direction is going to have to radically change. Again, I think Apple shows us a good solution. Have companies that design good desktop and integrated machines on top of some GPL kernel. The hackers will not be happy, but the clueless users will have a machine they can use.
a mouse-click, he launched his latest e-mailing software, which appears on the flat-screen monitor perched on his desk. The program allows him to control every aspect of the outgoing e-mail - including masking the sender, randomly changing the subject line or disguising the point of origin.
And herein lies the problem. Even if we assume that he has 80 million valid registered customers (all legitimately obtained and verified), he is still engaging in tactics that should be illegal. An email, particular a commercial email, should have a real and accurate return and from address, and should have real transmission headers. If these are forged , the email is spam, even if there is an opt in list.
Furthermore, i feel the spammer should get sued by those greatly affected by the act. For instance, if the forged address is a domain not related to the spammer, that domain should have every right to sue the spammer for costs of dealing with the misdirected replies, the cost of dealing with angry customers, and the costs associated with defamation of the domain. The ISP that the spammer is doing business with should be able to cut off the spammer immediately, sue for the costs of resources used to send the spam, and any other costs associated with the spam. Maybe, in both cases, treble costs.
Let me be clear, forged headers should a sufficient condition for a commercial email to be considered spam and invoke any all liabilities associated with spamming.
Scelson, who designed the software, says it will penetrate virtually any system designed to stop ads from reaching the intended mailbox.
Of course this is another problem. I may in fact want to receive commercial email. That does not mean that I want it in my in box. Perhaps I have another place, that I review daily, that I want to filter commercial emails into. It seems reasonable that a reputable sender of commercial email would want to help me in this endevour, and in the process create a positive relationship, by using consistent mail headers. For instance the New York Times does this. On the other hand, a scum of the earth spammer, no disrespect to scum intended, would actively try to thwart my reasonable and rational system of prioritizing emails in hope of forcing me to view a message.
Furthermore, don't we have legislation about programs that actively penetrate systems without the owner's consent? Seems like this might be a good application of that law.
I have never knowingly used gator (though I have had blank hidden HTML pages shoot pop up ads every 5 minutes), but it sounds like they in fact interfere with commerce (in ways other than pop up ads) which could be illegal. These other activities could justify the statement in you last paragraph.
The common pop up ad, on the other hand, seems to resemble other, apparently legal, store tactic. First, let me say I think of the retail part of the Internet as a vast flea market. Each vendor is trying to get your attention; the floor is covered with flyers for cheap jewelry, discount tools, and sex services. Since there is often little difference between the vendors, the loudest gets the sale. The web equivalent is the pop up ads. It may steal resources from the user, but not the vendor. And if pop up ads do steal resources, the all companies who use them are liable.
Back to you store metaphor. For the above reason I believe it is inaccurate, and there is even a counter-example that may prove it wrong. Many groceries stores are set up to dynamically print and distribute coupons. The coupons are usually for a competitor of some item purchased. Grocery stores are known to get paid to promote certain products at the expense of others. This has not been proved illigal.
Similarly on the CPU side: Intel and AMD are really the only games in town now. Any new systems would have to "play ball" with one of those two. And again, as large organizations (in Intel's case with large US Government contracts) they will fall into line if pushed.
I do not see how intel and amd are the only chip makers. I believe transmeta, Motorola, IBM, among others, are making chips. Perhaps Intel and AMD account for most chips that run windows, but that will not be the issue. Windows will continue to become more user hostile, and we are going to be looking at other operting systems to fill in the gap.
As a side note, billions of dollars is not what it used to be. Small shops are not going to start up, but if demand is there, it is not a foregone conclusion that there will no new fabs.
It really depends on how you define christian. It is true that many of the founding fathers were not what we would today call christian, but they did have beliefs of christian decent.
For instance, a fair number of those we call the founding fathers, were what we would now call Unitarians. They are often classified as Unitrians, Congregationalist, or Diest. There are trinitarian congregationalist, who, of course, are not Unitarian.
The point is that these people were not Christian Fundementalist, though they were, like many modern unitarians and congregationalist, christian.
So, the point holds. The sources, though flawed, are accurate.
That is one interpretation. There are other intepretations. For instance, some would say that as a consequence of the ruler being of one religion, people of other religions were persecuted, tortured, and killed. To escape this persecution, people came to America. Unfortunately, the early settlers sometimes killed people who did not agree with thier religous beliefs. A strict seperation of church and state minimizes the validation of those murders and allows all people to worship, or not, as they wish.
Everyone saying this is some sort of victory for Open Source is an illiterate moron, or didn't read the article
Well, perhaps everyone who is saying this is a victory for open source may be an illiterate moron. However, for the poster to take such a literal and obvious interpretation of the situation indicates an equal lack of analytical skill and creativity.
The issue here, at the top level, is an open API. In a closed software system, it is often good to insist on an open API to insure fair competition. Microsoft has know this since the early days of DOS, which is why MS has always kept some hooks secret, and varied the API to insure that few people outside of Microsoft could maintain expertise. If the article is correct, it seems that the auto manufacturers are doing the same thing to maintain a non-competitive environment. Consumers are forced to have their cars repaired at dealers and pay artificially high prices.
The link to open source software is direct. If a software project is open source, then the API as a consequence is also open. The API may not be directly published, but it can be more easily and reliably reversed engineered and then published. Likewise, if the software is not only open source but also subject to open review, then the standards may change slowly enough to maintain a large base of expertise(see the difference between the W3C web standards and MS arbitrary extended code).
If the poster cannot make this connection, then I see know reason why the poster should feel the need to insult the rest of this community.
Many posts relate to the dubious assertion that the record sales were negatively affected by dowloaders. Most of these posts that do relate assert that the bad sales could relate to stale music or changes in popular music interest. Frankly this sounds much more likely.
One post even related to a possible mechanism that could cause decreased sales due to download. Specifically, the general problem with albums contains a single decent song, 9 filler songs, and a couple extra bad filler songs. If one can download the single filler song, why buy the album. If Moby has in fact fallen for this failing business practice, then he certainly deserves falling ticket sales.
Of course you correct in assuming that many, if not most of these people, are bringing up the subject in order to improve funding levels.
Of course, inferrring from this, at least for the sake of argument, fact that we have nothing to worry about is invalid. Since September 11 every one and thier corporation has been trying to get on the dole in the name of protected the USA. This does not mean that there is no threat.
There is in fact a threat, and if a rock hits a industrilized area, we will be toast. We most likely will not be lucky enough to be dead, but rather have to live through a massive world wide depression, with the related decline in living standard, and probable military actions.
There will be consequences, and i doubt we are taking enough prudent preventive measures.
I don't see the issue. If something is published, there is some probability it will be archived. In the past such archiving was expensive, and therefore was limited in scope and availability. However, new technology makes archiving, at least for electronic resources, relatively cheap. You no longer need large amount of real estate, staff, and shelve to archived information. A small room with dozens of computers is sufficient.
By present standards no one says that I have to destroy a book after a certain amount of time, or who I may share it. No one says I can't print out a web site and, within fair use laws, shares it with posterity. No one says that I can't take a book whose copyright has expired and post it on the net. The kind of laws that would be necessary to protect on-line work beyond what is already granted for other works would lead to the kind of legislation promoted by the RIAA and their ilk.
That said, it is scary that everything we say may be saved for the future. There should be some social standard on what can be saved and what can't. I would say that general emails may not be good candidates for archiving, as they are not published (Although notice that many peoples personal letters do make it into books, so there is some wiggle room here). On the other hand, publicly accessible web pages are pretty much subject to the same archiving standards as other published works. We can certainly pick nits over copyrights, but this is slashdot after all:-).
Well, duh, of course it is editorial bullshit. That is what slashdot is, an editorial forum.
As continuing to bash Clinton, let it go. He is no longer the sitting president, and we as Americans tend to be worried more about the sitting president than the past president. It is the sitting president who has the power. Move on, accept that he is no longer the easy target, and look elsewhere for liberal conspiracies. It is not Clinton that is going to let M$ go, it is Bush.
I do not often frequent the big box retailers that treat me like a criminal, but when I do, I make a sport of it. For instance, they will try to take you bag when you walk in. Of course females can take huge handbags in, but a male cannot take a small backpack. So, claim the backpack is a purse. It totally flusters them, and after a few minutes, they will give up. On exit, they will try to check the bags. I generally avoid eye contact and keep walking.
Of course, this is not 1980 and we all know the consequences of shopping big box stores. We know that the service sucks. We know that we are going to be treated like criminals. We know that the prices will often be lower. So, what I don't understand is why people keep going to these stores only to complain how horrible the experience is. If we want the low prices, we should live with the inconvenience. If we do not need the low prices, go somewhere else. In this case, we know that discount electronic stores make thier money through the extended warrenty plan. We know that the electronics are just loss leaders. Why we treat these known facts as new discoveries are beyond me.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably Macs are quieter than cheap PCs. If you have a reasonable quiet PC, there will likely be no difference.
Memory vs. Megahertz.
Macs have a problem will speed in OS X. I do not know if this is going to be fixed. On my 256K 550 MHz PowerBook, with a HD more than 1/2 full, Mac OS X is slow. If you are buying a tower, I wouldn't worry about the installed memory. You will probably just add 512K chips to it as time goes on. It looks like there are three free slots, each supporting 512K, for a total of 1.5G. Apple generally charges too much for memory, so it can add later.
In terms of speed, go and play with the machines to see what seems reasonable. If you are going to spend a lot of time at the command line and Emac, you will not need a lot of speed. If you are going to spend at lot of time dealing with graphics, buy as much speed as you can afford. If I were buying a machine, and had the cash, I would get the 933MHZ PPC G4 at $2.3K.
The Apple vs. Retail Store thing
I have bought from both. The retail outlets do not get the latest stuff very quickly, nor are they immediately responsive to price changes. The retail chains also are not able to customize the systems as cheaply as Apple, although this is not such an issue with a tower. I would look at the local retailers and compare their stock to the online stock. If you can find something locally, go ahead and buy it. I will save the week shipping. If you do not like to shop, just order online. They are fast and courteous.
The best video.
I don't know.
OS X and SMP
I don't know.
SCSI and IDE.
I have always been a SCSI person. I have quite a number of SCSI devices from when Apple actually supported the adapter. I added a SCSI card to my G4, it was made to work with the G4. However, the card is not 100% compatable with the G4, and often interferes with my G$ sleep mode, and even, on occasion, makes the mouse go away on wake up.
So, if you are going to SCSI, make sure the card you use works very well. I do not believe that Apple is committed to SCSI. For example, the CDRW and harddisk they sell are Firewire, USB, IDE, but no SCSI.
As a side issue, one must also consider if using this 'high tech' weapon will be strategically more destructive than a lower tech existing technology. Even though the U.S. is obsessed with 'high tech' glamorous weapons, partly in an effort to reduce risk to U.S. soldiers, we have seen that simpler 'high concept' devices can be very effective. With relatively little thought, one can imagine any number of simpler, though higher risk, methods to introduce contagions into an environment.
That said, if a random person followed a recipe they downloaded from the Internet and used gene sequences from a mail-order supplier they would not necessarily be able to generate a virus. For example, having a cookbook and a stove does not mean that you can create a Cheese Souffle or a fresh Baguette. There is a certain skill level needed to succeed. I can, in fact, make a reasonable facsimile of these things, but only after quite a bit of practice.
This isn't to say we should not be worried. But Washington has used the 'download from the Internet' scare card so often, that is very furstrating to see people accept it so readily.
As another example, I have helped researcher create a number of solid state devices. That does not mean that I can recreate those devices, either because the tools needed are too expensive, or the skill needed is beyond my abilities. Even with the tools and adequate materials, the average person would have little hope of figuring out which button to push.
There are currently few passport accounts because no one really needs them. The passports accounts that do exist were likely ones forced onto users. This is how it has been, and this is how it will be. The day will come when using windows will require a passport account, getting support will require a passport account, and dowloading p0rn will require a passport account. MS will bundle passport connectivity into front page, and developers will use the connectivity as mindlessly as they use other MS profit centers. It will appear free to the all areas of end users, and therefore it will be used. We will again be in the same situation as we are with IE, where getting the 3% of customer who refuse to conform requires more effort than it is worth.
Furthermore, one would think that users would not like credit card information linked directly to a password, and have that password be the only thing needed to use the credit card. However, there are examples to the contrary of vendors doing exactly this.
20 years later obesity is at an all time high BECAUSE people have been more aware of health issues and thought that by eating low-fat foods they could lose weight or stay slim. The government guidelines simply do not work.
As mentioned above. most people do not eat a varied diet. This make the food pyramid ineffective. If grains are considered white bread and pasta, vegetables considered lettuce and the occasional tomato, and fruit is considered juice, one is better off without carbohydrates. All one would eat would be sugar, and the calories would be wasted. On the other hand, if one did follow the pyramid, and ate a few cups of whole grains, a few cups of fresh vegetables, and a few pieces of whole fruit, one would have a healthy and nutritious diet. Combine this with a few ounces of protein, and a very little extra oil, and one would have a very healthy diet.
You can blame McDonalds all you want - the fact is that the majority of the population does not eat there. The studies showed most of peoples calories were coming from carbs, NOT fat - which makes sense, since the food pyramid, which is a sham, has high carb foods as it's base.
McDonalds is a paradigm representing the protein based diet with pure sugars and fataround it. If you have white bread, french fries, and lettuce as you carbs, you are better off without them. Even at restaurants, the carbs tend to be very simple, with only token vegetables, and large amounts of fats added to the food. This is not a good diet. It would be better to have a healthy food pyramid diet, but the food proccesors are making such a diet very difficult to attain.
Atkins, and most low-carb diets DON'T advocate eating fats willy-nilly. There is a clear distinction between good and bad fats, and the good fats can actually help you metabolize store fat - that's why the basic "low-fat" diet doesn't work. People trying low-fat often see an increase in bad cholesterol and triglycerides, while amazingly people on low-carb diets (beyond 3 or 4 months) see a decrease in triglycerides and an increase in HDL - the good cholesterol.
And fats are only part of the issue. As much as we would like to fantasise that we can eat all we want and not get fat, carbs don't make people fat, fat don't make people fat, it is people eating too many calories that make people fat. Processed simple carbohydrates and fats both allow people to consume large amounts of calories without getting full or significant amount of nutrient. Both are fiber poor which can contribute to cholesterol and triglycerides problems. Categorizing all low fat diets as high simple carbohydrates would be like categorizing all low carb diets as high fat. It is not fair.
But I do not have to just quote studies and hand waving dieticians - I have lived it. I did not lose weight - even when exersizing, by following the government guidelines. I have lost 50 pounds in less than five months following low-carb (but not Atkins - but they are all similar). My blood pressure went down to normal. My acid-reflux virtually disappeared. I know a diabetic that no longer has to take medication.
I don't either. I can just point to all the people I know on diabetes diets who have lost weight and become more healthy. I can also point to entire countries of healthy people whose diets are based on complex carbohydrates.
Until you understand that low-carb is not just for losing weight, and the implications of what a high carb diet can do (like CAUSING diabetes - the rate of type 2 diabetes has gone up along with obesity - ever since the government said that low fat was the key to health).
If the purpose of low carb diets is to replace sugar with protein, that is fine. But implying that complex carbohydrates causes diabetes and obesity is just wrong. Eating too many calories makes one fat, and eating too much sugar and fat causes other problems. The same is true with too little fat or too much protien. I think we should not give up on the balanced diet just because it is more profitable to sell processed food.
Wrong. You design your code as a compromise between factors such as speed, maintainance, reusability, readability, and, most importantly, the resources you are allowed to expend.
If speed is a critical factor, then you might try to do some predictive profiling using exisiting principles to make sure the code is fast. Otherwise, you write the best damn code you can, which generally means using good practices to insure that you don't waste time, and then profile it. Profiling will work best if the code is written is such a way(read a lot of reusabled functions) that allows simple optimization.
BTW, the biggest wrinkle in this is that programmers time has become more valuable the clock cycles. We will now waste some clock cycles to same programmers time, which is why profiling is not nearly as important as it used to be.
If the code is not written well, and has to be rewritten when the profiler says it sucks, then you wasted your time.
What does seem to be happening is that the forces that be are allowing us to copy music from CD to CD or CD to MP3, but not MP3 from a non-CD to MP3 to a non CD. What this means is that the consumer is going to be inconvenienced by having to rip cd to many different places, instead of ripping the CD once, and then piping it to different stand alone devices. One assumes that if DRM is implemented, this will also apply to the GPC.
There is really no reason why I shouldn't be able to take my portable computer, IPod, or whatever, and transfer MP3s directly to my car.
For instance, we should be able to send a browser to any page 'within' a site, but what about aggregating information or links in a way the designer of the website never intended, or publishing the information in a new media. Is there much difference between data mining a web site and publishing public comments on a site such as /. in dead tree form? I certainly do not know, but it seems to be a relevant question.
There are clearly limits to deep linking. Jakob Nielson gives the example of a quiz on his site. Going to anywhere but the first page of the quiz renders the process meaningless. It is true that in most cases you want as much help as possible to get a user to an 'inner' page, as this appears to one of the greatest impediment to usability, but do we really want people to pull, for example, images or frames from our sites and display them as their own content. As the previous NPR discussion illustated, there are times when this will unfairly transfer hosting costs
What happens if some little newspaper in siberia prints a negative article on me and I don't find out about it until I accidently end up in siberia on the way to japan, 50 years after it is published. Should I be able to sue?
What happens if some geek puts notes about me, written in latin, on his web page. I am too stupid to use google to translate, and only find out about it when I happen to have a one night stand with someone who can read latin, 5 years after the fact. Should I be able to sue?
What happens if I am a CEO of a major company, have all sorts of defamatory remarks made about me on the web, but ignore them because it would take more time than it is worth. Ten years later, after being fired and heavily fined for defrauding the stock holders, I try to sue the people who defamed me in an effort to save my million dollar house.
I am not sure what the author is complaining about. The web allows a broader distribution of information, which also means that there is better chance that a person will find out about defamation. If there is some concern about defamation, a regular check of the web would be useful.
Having an infinite limit of statues, much like an infinite copyright, just leads to frivolous and retaliatory law suits. For instance, I write something terrible about company XYZ. At the time it is ignored because I am just a nobody. Five years later, I am involved in an action against the XYZ company. The company takes the opportunity to sue me to within an inch of my life.
How is this fair?
Telemarketers are people too. Although many telemarketers are colored, most of them are just like you and me. So, if I ask them if they are colored, then I can verbally abuse them? Should I also take this to assume that every one on /. is not colored.
I hope this is a grammer mistake.
I would say the difference between junk mail and spam is that most spam, one way or another, is fraudulent. This is an important distinction. If spam were not generally fraudulent, then it could be of more use than junk mail, to the sender and receiver.
Now the problem. In the US junk mail probably justifies and pays for a large part of the U.S. postal service. If we went to such a plan we would lose something, at least we would not have six day a week mail delivery. We might even have to pay more to mail a letter, which might not be so important as people are mailing less letters. On the other hand, we might some commercial demand for subsidized internet, for example, wider broadband.
Books are also useful, but you don't get the feedback and support of other students. You also lose the motivation of the professor. Math is hard, and most of us need all the help we can get.
Macs are not really directly relevant to this Linux discussion. I have owned Apples for over 20 years because the hardware and software are relatively reliable, doing basic things are easy and doing difficult things are possible. Apple had a much higher percentage of the market at that time, but lost their edge in the educational market and have never been able to deliver a general business machine(Apple ///, Lisa, Mac, ...). Nevertheless, they have a lot of desktop fans from many years ago, and get a few converts ever year. This continues to give them a good enough market for their machines.
Linux is much different. The old Unix fans, as far as I can tell, run Windows as a desktop and telnet into their Unix account. A few may install Linux or whatever on the desktop, but Linux as a whole, unlike Apple, has no established desktop base (ATT tried to establish a desktop Unix machine in the Mid 80's, but failed miserably). Linux, and Unix, as a whole, unlike Apple, has little experience designing for the clueless user. And Linux, unlike MS, does not seem to be actively borrowing ideas from Apple to create a good experience for clueless users. Linux developers, rather, seem to gain joy from reinventing the wheel for the tenth time.
Linux could be a good desktop OS, but the development direction is going to have to radically change. Again, I think Apple shows us a good solution. Have companies that design good desktop and integrated machines on top of some GPL kernel. The hackers will not be happy, but the clueless users will have a machine they can use.
And herein lies the problem. Even if we assume that he has 80 million valid registered customers (all legitimately obtained and verified), he is still engaging in tactics that should be illegal. An email, particular a commercial email, should have a real and accurate return and from address, and should have real transmission headers. If these are forged , the email is spam, even if there is an opt in list.
Furthermore, i feel the spammer should get sued by those greatly affected by the act. For instance, if the forged address is a domain not related to the spammer, that domain should have every right to sue the spammer for costs of dealing with the misdirected replies, the cost of dealing with angry customers, and the costs associated with defamation of the domain. The ISP that the spammer is doing business with should be able to cut off the spammer immediately, sue for the costs of resources used to send the spam, and any other costs associated with the spam. Maybe, in both cases, treble costs.
Let me be clear, forged headers should a sufficient condition for a commercial email to be considered spam and invoke any all liabilities associated with spamming.
Scelson, who designed the software, says it will penetrate virtually any system designed to stop ads from reaching the intended mailbox.
Of course this is another problem. I may in fact want to receive commercial email. That does not mean that I want it in my in box. Perhaps I have another place, that I review daily, that I want to filter commercial emails into. It seems reasonable that a reputable sender of commercial email would want to help me in this endevour, and in the process create a positive relationship, by using consistent mail headers. For instance the New York Times does this. On the other hand, a scum of the earth spammer, no disrespect to scum intended, would actively try to thwart my reasonable and rational system of prioritizing emails in hope of forcing me to view a message.
Furthermore, don't we have legislation about programs that actively penetrate systems without the owner's consent? Seems like this might be a good application of that law.
The common pop up ad, on the other hand, seems to resemble other, apparently legal, store tactic. First, let me say I think of the retail part of the Internet as a vast flea market. Each vendor is trying to get your attention; the floor is covered with flyers for cheap jewelry, discount tools, and sex services. Since there is often little difference between the vendors, the loudest gets the sale. The web equivalent is the pop up ads. It may steal resources from the user, but not the vendor. And if pop up ads do steal resources, the all companies who use them are liable.
Back to you store metaphor. For the above reason I believe it is inaccurate, and there is even a counter-example that may prove it wrong. Many groceries stores are set up to dynamically print and distribute coupons. The coupons are usually for a competitor of some item purchased. Grocery stores are known to get paid to promote certain products at the expense of others. This has not been proved illigal.
I do not see how intel and amd are the only chip makers. I believe transmeta, Motorola, IBM, among others, are making chips. Perhaps Intel and AMD account for most chips that run windows, but that will not be the issue. Windows will continue to become more user hostile, and we are going to be looking at other operting systems to fill in the gap.
As a side note, billions of dollars is not what it used to be. Small shops are not going to start up, but if demand is there, it is not a foregone conclusion that there will no new fabs.
For instance, a fair number of those we call the founding fathers, were what we would now call Unitarians. They are often classified as Unitrians, Congregationalist, or Diest. There are trinitarian congregationalist, who, of course, are not Unitarian.
The point is that these people were not Christian Fundementalist, though they were, like many modern unitarians and congregationalist, christian.
So, the point holds. The sources, though flawed, are accurate.
That is one interpretation. There are other intepretations. For instance, some would say that as a consequence of the ruler being of one religion, people of other religions were persecuted, tortured, and killed. To escape this persecution, people came to America. Unfortunately, the early settlers sometimes killed people who did not agree with thier religous beliefs. A strict seperation of church and state minimizes the validation of those murders and allows all people to worship, or not, as they wish.
2. The BSA tells us that piracy costs the idustry about 11 biliion.
As far as I can tell, the software industry owes us around 19 Billion in refunds.
Isn't playing with fake statistics wonderful?
Well, perhaps everyone who is saying this is a victory for open source may be an illiterate moron. However, for the poster to take such a literal and obvious interpretation of the situation indicates an equal lack of analytical skill and creativity.
The issue here, at the top level, is an open API. In a closed software system, it is often good to insist on an open API to insure fair competition. Microsoft has know this since the early days of DOS, which is why MS has always kept some hooks secret, and varied the API to insure that few people outside of Microsoft could maintain expertise. If the article is correct, it seems that the auto manufacturers are doing the same thing to maintain a non-competitive environment. Consumers are forced to have their cars repaired at dealers and pay artificially high prices.
The link to open source software is direct. If a software project is open source, then the API as a consequence is also open. The API may not be directly published, but it can be more easily and reliably reversed engineered and then published. Likewise, if the software is not only open source but also subject to open review, then the standards may change slowly enough to maintain a large base of expertise(see the difference between the W3C web standards and MS arbitrary extended code).
If the poster cannot make this connection, then I see know reason why the poster should feel the need to insult the rest of this community.
One post even related to a possible mechanism that could cause decreased sales due to download. Specifically, the general problem with albums contains a single decent song, 9 filler songs, and a couple extra bad filler songs. If one can download the single filler song, why buy the album. If Moby has in fact fallen for this failing business practice, then he certainly deserves falling ticket sales.
Of course you correct in assuming that many, if not most of these people, are bringing up the subject in order to improve funding levels. Of course, inferrring from this, at least for the sake of argument, fact that we have nothing to worry about is invalid. Since September 11 every one and thier corporation has been trying to get on the dole in the name of protected the USA. This does not mean that there is no threat. There is in fact a threat, and if a rock hits a industrilized area, we will be toast. We most likely will not be lucky enough to be dead, but rather have to live through a massive world wide depression, with the related decline in living standard, and probable military actions. There will be consequences, and i doubt we are taking enough prudent preventive measures.
By present standards no one says that I have to destroy a book after a certain amount of time, or who I may share it. No one says I can't print out a web site and, within fair use laws, shares it with posterity. No one says that I can't take a book whose copyright has expired and post it on the net. The kind of laws that would be necessary to protect on-line work beyond what is already granted for other works would lead to the kind of legislation promoted by the RIAA and their ilk.
That said, it is scary that everything we say may be saved for the future. There should be some social standard on what can be saved and what can't. I would say that general emails may not be good candidates for archiving, as they are not published (Although notice that many peoples personal letters do make it into books, so there is some wiggle room here). On the other hand, publicly accessible web pages are pretty much subject to the same archiving standards as other published works. We can certainly pick nits over copyrights, but this is slashdot after all :-).
As continuing to bash Clinton, let it go. He is no longer the sitting president, and we as Americans tend to be worried more about the sitting president than the past president. It is the sitting president who has the power. Move on, accept that he is no longer the easy target, and look elsewhere for liberal conspiracies. It is not Clinton that is going to let M$ go, it is Bush.
Letting go is important. That is why we hardly ever hear about the multiple conviction of the Reagan Administration anymore. Or the profits the Bush family made from the Savings and Load scandal. It is in the past, and there are more interesting things to talk about. Like President Bush's association with the Baptist hate mongers.
Of course, this is not 1980 and we all know the consequences of shopping big box stores. We know that the service sucks. We know that we are going to be treated like criminals. We know that the prices will often be lower. So, what I don't understand is why people keep going to these stores only to complain how horrible the experience is. If we want the low prices, we should live with the inconvenience. If we do not need the low prices, go somewhere else. In this case, we know that discount electronic stores make thier money through the extended warrenty plan. We know that the electronics are just loss leaders. Why we treat these known facts as new discoveries are beyond me.