Hmm...I wonder if all that Non-binary information could be sampled and quantized? Naaaaaaaaa..
There is a large and growing problem in the modern world... a belief that everything can be 'quantified'. Sure, if you had a model that perfectly replicated every molecule, down to the sub-atomic level, for a volume of space defined by light-speed for the duration of the experiment (e.g. for running the experiment for one second, you need to encompass an area with a radius of 300,000 kilometers), you could accurately predict the future. Realistically, when you start looking at just about anything at the atomic level, it defies prediction. Atomic bombs are about the easiest reaction to simulate, and they're still building computers to adequately model _that_ reaction. At the moment, it's - surprisingly - a rather limited set of parameters - although the results match RW test results OK. Now, that's for a reaction in which the various transition states and interactions are known (e.g. proton hits another nucleus, resulting in...).
Compare that to, oh, DNA. Double helix, with a rather large number of combinations. And it tends to change it's shape in interesting ways. Allowing new chemical bonding. Attempting to model any 'reaction', such as thought processes, without knowing all the reactions that make up one component, is pretty much a shot in the dark, and has virtually zero chance of being correct. The idea that all we need is a bigger and better computer is, ultimately, fallacious. Remember the old acronym GIGO? The same thing applies to attempting to solve equations with incomplete data. The desire to quantify the unquantifiable is just plain stupid - it shows a lack of understanding of what you're attempting to model, and a lack of understanding of chaos theory.
The individual neuron is not much more then a glorified adding machine.
Which kinda highlights the ignorance most computer types have regarding biology. PNP junctions ain't tuff. Let's take a typical neuron... interconnected with a few dozen other neurons - capable of dealing with multiple inputs. Each inter-neuron connection comprises several close 'ends' (to use a non-technical term;-). So what affects the transmission of an impulse? Well, scientists are still working on that. The various chemical levels (Seratonin, to name a highly known one). Virtually every chemical in the body (Had a fright? Epinephrine (a.k.a. adrenaline under the old nomenclature) enhances the transmission of info for certain synapses (those associated with movement, strangely enough). Had another nearby neuron going off recently? Degrades transmission slightly. Same neuron going off twice in a row? Slightly harder to get the signal through. All those chemicals also have a big effect within the neuron itself.
A bit is either on/off. There have been _some_ multistate bit experiments (most recently Intel with its memory), but generally it hasn't gone anywhere. All computer comparisons are BINARY. The neuron is affected by tens of thousands of chemicals. It's affected by other neurons. Every damn one of those interactions is gradiated, i.e. NON-BINARY. Did the nail in you foot cause just one molecule of epinephrine or one hundred to reach that neuron? How does that interact with the other ten thousand chemicals, each of which has the same variable effect?
Are you familiar with the exponent and factorial functions?Ten to the eleventh neurons. Varying numbers of connections, from a min of two to over fifty. Varying number of synaptic gaps. Several thousand chemicals floating around your bloodstream on a regular basis. You start getting numbers that (grossly) exceed the number of atoms in our planet (let alone our system), using the most conservative estimates. Now, given that a binary 'bit' requires quite a few molecules to build, it's kind of, well, ignorant, to view a neuron as a 'glorified adding machine', when an adding machine equivalent to the human brain would require more space than our planet.
OK, read through Natapof's argument... as a fellow mathie, I'm kinda embarrassed. It's all perfectly correct, as far as the math goes, but the underlying assumptions and translations to English and sociology are... well, debatable.
First, I'd like to shoot down the sports analogy. Competitions used to be single eliminations, not 'best of seven'. That's a modern innovation, solely for the purpose of garnering more money for the prinicpals involved (team owners, players, networks, etc).
Second, while the math for 'more powerful' is correct, there's an identical situation in the auto industry that's causing a lot of frustration. Sub-widget A is built with two American screws, one Canadian. Gets designated as 'American'. Two 'American' sub-widgets are combined with a wholly 'Canadian' sub-widget. The new assembly is designated 'American'. The process continues... until we have a car that's designated 'American', which, strangely enough, is composed of a majority of foreign parts.
I think the underlying problem with Natapof's argument is pretty simple... he doesn't agree with the 'One person, one vote' ideal.
The US has problems enough with rural votes being worth significantly more than urban votes. (Which, as an aside, helps explain why the Republican dominated legislatures are loathe to reform this aspect). Re-drawing districts has become a new way of rigging the election before hand. Isolating 'core' sections has become very popular. To illustrate, using a sample of 300 people, suppose candidate W is running at 34%, and candidate G is running at 66%. If W's friends, who control where the lines are drawn, split the district up so one district is 100% for G, and the other two as 51% for W. Which means, come election, W wins two out of three. Using the f!@#ing electoral college as an example, at the state level, that means W takes all three, despite having only 34% of the popular vote. It isn't quite that dramatic as that in the real world, but an analysis of the last re-drawing shows this to be a viable tactic.
I don't agree with the idea Joe from North Dakota has one heck of a lot more influence that Tom from New York city, in both the senate and the presidential race. It strikes at the fundamentals of democracy. Natapof makes plenty of good arguments to support his position, but I believe that none of the benefits outweigh the fact the system, in its current form, is fundamentally flawed. Democracy only works when a large percentage of the population buy into it. The current system creates one heck of a lot of cynicism. And no amount of 'mathematical models' will help to dispell that cynicism while the problem remains.
"All that happens is someone with fewer votes gets elected," temporarily Uh, I really hate to poke a hole in the mud foundations of his ivory tower, but it's a little more serious than that. Various corporations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get 'their' candidate of choice in. And they expect a return on their investment. When an archaic system like the electoral college overturns the popular vote - which is one of the few areas in which the average citizen can still fight back - then the coporations (and the existing political power structure) have won. Getting back to the sports analogy, this means the principals (i.e. the corporations and the entrenched parties), just like in the multi-game innovation, extract more money from the populace.
The math Natapof suggests works... but so does the posibility that the EC can give the election to a person with less votes than his opponent... a lot less. Using the above 300 person example, 34% vs 66%. Using the EC method, it can actually be worse. This is what, the fourth time the person with less popular votes got in? Isn't it about time the system gets reformed?
Out of curiosity, are you claiming that the general public is all subjected to the will of the Tobacco industry? Of US HMO corporations? Of the WTO? Of MacDonalds?
Yep. You can't avoid it. Anywhere.;-)
The other thing that's curious is how on earth you have come to conclude that HMO corporations somehow have any effect on my healthcare system.
Well, first off, I'm a Canuck too, imported into the US healthcare system for the sole purpose of bringing _their_ system up to a decent level.;-) Regrettably, unless you're living in lotusland (that would be BC, and, judging from your usage of french, a long way from Québec), the Canadian health care system is taking the US HMO design to heart... to be precise, the money grubbing politicos who pass the laws that govern the health care system are looking at the kickbacks... oops, political donations... that their US counterparts get... and are seriously pushing towards a two-tiered, private health care system. You don't think the deconstruction of the public health care system, and the corresponding growth of the private sector north of the border has nothing to do with the US system? I think the word I used was _naive_. Check it out
A US-Centric example, but I do see and hear of the "big Tobacco lobby groups" on CNN and NBC from time to time, so to a certain extent you are correct. On the other hand, I don't smoke, and millions of your fellow American citizens don't smoke, and most of the world doesn't smoke Tobacco, or so I would presume.
Tobacco is huge business... and growing . While the percentage of people smoking in North America is dropping, the overall numbers are still growing. Turnaround point is a short way off. But elsewhere in the world, the Tobacco industry is growing in the double digit range. Asia is a huge and growing market. As to how it affects you... well, you are totally correct that you don't smoke tobacco, as do millions of others... and totally mistaken if you think that it doesn't affect you. As a Canadian, I was really upset that the outrageous taxes on a package of cigarettes DOESN'T cover the increased health care cost. Second hand smoke aside, under any kind of health plan (whether Canadian or US), _you_ are subsidizing the smokers!!! Self-inflicted injuries normally get you put at the bottom of the medical lists... smoking included. I have an uncle who had a lung transplant up in Ontario, after his gave up after decades of smoking. I know how much that kind of operation costs... and you, mon ami, are footing a piece of that bill - just because _you_ don't smoke doesn't mean it doesn't affect you.
"I don't think that witchcraft is a religion. I wish the military would rethink this decision."
-- George W. Bush to ABCNEWS, June, 1999
So, there it is in the Constitution, freedom of religion. Want to get around it? Simply decide that someone's beliefs aren't actually a 'religion', then you can go after them with all guns blazing!!!
For something really frightening, check out the Texas Republican home page. Same ignorant, intolerant, hypocritical style. First, claim the unswerving perfection of the Constitution. Then, later on, attacks a couple of judges for their decisions, in which, oddly enough, the judges themselves use the Constitution as the basis for their decision.
We have a similar idiot locally. "If you want to know how I'll vote, just look at the constitution!" Sure clears it up for me... now I know how you'll vote on encryption, genetic engineering, cloning... interpret the constitution however the fu$k you want, then stomp over those who disagree.
The original question was how does US law compare? In short, the US system grants longer patents, covers a lot more territory, and allows more broadness in it's patents.
The length is pretty simple to explain - longer patents benefit the corporation (or, in less than 1 percent, the individual) holding the patent. The US politicians take whopping bribes...er, PAC and soft money, and repay their benefactors by extending the patents.
I'm not up on my European law, but England had two points that kept the patent system a lot less corrupt - first, many patents were shot down simply because they were viewed as either 'stifling legitimate competition', or against public interest. The second was that it used to cost a heck of a lot to actually patent something, making spurious and incremental patents much less prevelent than the US.
The second point is what is allowable. To give the simplest example, Europe won't allow you to patent life forms, while it's big business in the US. (Go Stargazers!)
Finally, while the trend is slowing, the US allowed a given patent to cover far more than England (and, AFAIK, Europe). Look at Bell's patent, and read about just how much ended up paying to use it, for a case study in legal elegance. In England, a patent could be struck down if any part of it was invalid (i.e. you patent a new car engine, but forget to specifically exclude the spark plugs, tough). The US _does_ have similar laws... just that they rarely see the light of day. The US, geez, there was some guy who had patented 'sending music over wires using modulated electricity'. And you thought RIAA was bad!
Finally, the US is exactly like England and Europe in one regard - the patent system, since it's inception, has become just another place where corporations (and individuals) fight to establish dominance. The practice of 'licensing' highly questionable patents to a few of your close business partners (for under-the-table considerations), then going after your actual opponents in court ("But your honor, these seven other highly respected software companies are paying licensing fees, Sun is obviously just being criminal!) dates back to the first few years after the patent office came into existence.
Multinationals do NOT dominate this world, or if they do, they only dominate to the extent that people willingly let them.
God, you are sooo naive.
These oh-so-evil companies have no relevance in modern society, and very rarely do they impact our daily lives at all.
OK, not just naive, ignorant too.Here's a few examples of how corporations are dictating policies which are in their interest, and against the public interest (this includes _you_, Angelwrath)
1/ Tobacco. Heck, the gov't even set up a watchdog agency to protect us from harmful, chemical stuff. And cut a huge exemption for one of their large$t contributors.
2/ Health care. HMOs have jumped to become one of the top contibutor$, in the short time they've been around. Average service during this period has dropped dramatically. No correlation there, right?
3/WTO. Oooo, the people in the western countries have implemented horridly anti-capitalist ideas like retirement funds, health care, and living wages. Let's make more money by exploiting the labour in places that don't have such ideas.
4/ McDonalds (to pick on just one), in a number of surveys, is viewed as a good place to take the family for a meal. When one considers the food is among the least healthy around, that's really qute frightening. Then there's that trial over in England. Despite the minor detail every single 'fact' they were being sued over is verifiable, the Golden Arches Corp was able to buy enough 'Professional Witnesses' to win the case. Multinational Corp, 1: The public and truth, 0.
There's a line I've always liked, somthing to the effect that every truth is dangerous, because it threatens a lie that is valuable to someone. That can be applied to everything from the the media muzzling of Nader, to Bush going on about the internet making public schools dangerous. Hemp was criminalized not because it was being used as a recreational pharmaceutical, but because the cotton lobby paid big bucks to buy themselves some politicos. 200+ years later, the trend hasn't changed, except for getting worse.
For this reason kiddie porn is illegal, but drugs are not.
Heh, actually, you got it right the first time. Alcohol is perfectly legal. So is tobacco. It's just a bunch of 'other' things the gov't has decided to go after.
There are very few actual 'lines' in reference to drugs. I view anything that can kill you the first time you try it as worthy of being banned, and anything that can cause you to lose control (i.e. flashbacks) as requiring a tatoo on your forehead saying so (as in, it bans you from ever driving, operating dangerous machinery, or picking up a gun),as for the rest, well, under the heading of 'freedom' people should be allowed to do what the heck they like, as long as it doesn't infringe on others.
The gov't laws on drugs are a perfect example of something pushed as 'morality' that has no coherent base. A number of the laws on the books (specifically, hemp and marijuana) are more a case of politicians being bought by rival economic concerns (cotton and tobacco, respectively).
Some of the worst treatment of employees occurs at legal firms; for exactly the same reason, politicians are extremely ill equipped to deal with issues of morality - they are, as a class, extremely rich, and completely out of touch with, and completely non-representative of the 99% of the people they are supposed to represent.
Carnivore is a typical example. To most politicians, the ends justify the means. There are far too many surveys that show, on this one issue, politicians overwhelming believe this, while the rest of us don't. Getting criminals is good, so what if a few civil rights get crushed in the mud in the process? The modern crop of politicians is far more representative of the English aristocracy Franklin et al rebelled against.
Encryption of sensitive data - there are a number of pruducts available - having the HD alone means squat.
Tracking methods. Hook one of these babies up to the internet, it quietly squeals for the police to come pick it up. As some of the current crop of laptops have built in cell modems, just turning it on is probably enough.
A bit after the fact, in your case, but suggestions for your remaining laptops;-)
Re:There could be something to conspiracy theories
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Air-Powered Cars
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If you look hard enough around on the net, you find all sorts of nasty rumors that the gasoline companies have either threaten or buy the patents
for all competing technologies to maintain thier monopoly.
What rumours? The big three had a rather large slush fund dedicated to purchasing new technologies that threatened their dominance. While bad for the average consumer, it's a simple question of the economic realities for an auto manufacturer. It would cost them more to re-tool an existing plant, than to start from scratch, as many new technologies do. So they have no advantage over someone building a completely new design. Therefore, it is simply more cost effective for them to buy out the new tech.
To be completely fair, a lot of the stuff they purchase the rights to does end up in vehicles, but there's an awful lot that hasn't. I'm aware of a couple of cases where the invention wasn't even patented, the inventors were bought out so fast, under some of the earliest NDAs around.
The mention of Carnot efficiencies always made me wonder why the K engine was never introduced in cars. (It is found in some larger applications). It a rotary engine (not Wankel), in which the pistons and piston block rotate around a collar, allowing a variable stroke. Still IC, but the efficieny was significantly higher than the standard model. Probably because the patent is held by an existing auto manufacturer. Still, with the huge surge in poularity in monster SUVs, the size limitation is a little less limiting, one would think.
Up in the frozen white north (a.k.a. most of Canada more than 50 miles from the border), a local hobbyist did his van up the electric/diesel route (12 HP Kubuta lawn tractor engine, IIRC). Running around 75 miles per gallon. I think he had a 20 gal tank. That a cruising range of about 1500 miles. Also had the added benefit of about twelve batteries to start a three cylinder diesel, which some might consider a bit of overkill. Then again, when the local donut shops have electrical outlets in the parking lot for the customers to plug their block heaters in, this becomes a little more realistic.
That is besides the fact that the quantity of compressed air necessary for a day of driving is one nice small bomb.
The idea of a compressed air car is nice... also remarkably similar to the flywheel design. The latter is used in trains (occasionally), and in smaller vehicles - quarry trains, tow-motors - where the environment is closed. There was quite a bit of work done in the sixties about sticking flywheels into buses (AEC, England). A small, highly efficient diesel, regenerative braking, and hydraulic motors at the wheels. Unfortunately, the design group noted that t-boning (i.e. getting hit by a truck at 90 degrees) a vehicle so equipped would have the flywheel perform standard gyroscopic physics, ripping itself from the vehicle and punching through any nearby buildings. Armouring the sucker to prevent this pretty much did away with all the efficiencies. (increased weight and size)
Compressed air vehicles have, in the past, been scrapped at the drawing board for exactly the same reason - storing that much energy in an extremely volatile format is just plain dangerous. 200 klicks seems rather low compared to other designs (standard IC is closer to 500 K), but still would tend to rip most things to pieces if punctured (if you've never taken a high-powered rifle to a compressed gas cylinder in the middle of a field, you've missed out on an adrenaline inducing experience!).
On a slight tangent, I'm a little surprised by the latest 'hybrid' vehicles done by Toyota and Honda. They're essentially different from the designs the hobbyists use. These modern things use 50+ HP IC engines, running at variable speeds, bringing in the batteries only when needed (acceleration, up hills, etc). The older design was a 5-20 HP IC engine (it takes only around 8 HP to cruise on the level), running at a constant (i.e. peak efficiency) speed, feeding into the batteries, and the vehicle itself was purely electric driven. Also allowing regenerative braking. I've yet to read _why_ this fundamental change was made - the only reason I can come up with is psychological - people would get upset when they learn their lawn tractor has a bigger engine than their car.
Is it really better to be second best in several areas than to be number one in a few areas?
Most of the time, yes. Just for a dorky example, I'll compare a suite of M$ products versus RH. Set up the server... well, actually, in most quantifiable tests, RH outperforms NT, at least as we were benchmarking it... plus the RH went for $70 vs over a thou for the NT. Then there's the machines... each one requiring their own little M$ license... vs using the same RH CD. Now, depending on how you want to look at it, one could argue that the M$ bunch (NT, Win 95, 98) were better. Personally, I value stability and the low low low cost, hence preferred the RH. Then there's the whole 'office' suite. Let's just say that there are more than enough easy to use free and inexpensive linux suites to make coughing up a couple of hundred per 'M$ Office' package laughable. Now, as to superior, again, I value stability. The ability to seamlessly interface with the gazillions of M$ users out there is nice, but conversely, not having a team dedicated to fighting off M$-specific viruses every other week is also kind of nice.
It all depends on what one defines as 'best'. You want a glossy POS that costs an arm and a leg, crashes on a regular basis, and needs 3-10 times the number of people to support it, just because it IS glossy? Go M$.
While I liked the general gist of the argument, there were a couple of specific lines that I disagreed with, and though they were put in more for shock value than for accuracy.
Linux as Almost Ready for the Desktop. It is not What defines 'ready for the desktop' in Mr.Shirky's mind? Currently running Suse at home and Solaris at work. Both are damn fine desktops.
For any given purpose, best of breed products are either ideal or useless. Say what?!?! Best of breed products may not do everything you want, but to call them useless for anything else is way off base. I play with free agent for news groups. It isn't the best for displaying graphics. But it is the fastest, easiest and one of the best designed newsgroup readers out there. Netscape and IE both do better on the graphics, but suck on any other comparison I can think of (excluding picking up and running hostile code... IE is neck-and-neck with Outlook in that race, leaving all others far behind).
The description of Linux as '...an also-ran desktop OS.' is also a little insulting, and I think a little too certain. There are a number of reasons why Linux _could_ take off as a desktop OS of choice. I believe that some of them (such as being a platform for games, much more network friendly) will probably lead in *nix becoming dominant in 5-10 years.
Overall, I thought the article well thought out, and generally on the money, but these few points needed jumping on.
There is one recurring comment that I could not resist addressing. Namely the regular habit of our critics of comparing Red Hat to Microsoft. I just don't get it.
Hint: An OS that's as buggy as a termite hill.
I snagged RH a few years back. Nice, but I've since traded (up) to Suse. When a new release comes out, it should have LESS bugs than the previous version. Others can do this, why can't you?
There are many things for which we should be justifiably criticised (I have no idea what these might be, but I'm certain they exist;-) but trying to act like Microsoft is not one of them.
There are some areas in which I suspect you are acting exactly like M$ - trying to make a profit, trying to establish yourself as the standard, trying to dominate the market. All of these are good goals (to varying degrees), but the route you take to get there is vitally important. M$'s policy of proprietary software I'm glad to see you don't follow. M$'s policy of active FDU verges on the criminal (i.e. any reasonable person would accept they've broken the law: getting a court to convict them is virtually impossible) - DON'T follow this approach. Intelligent users - that would be the kind who fix those problems you mention - don't like it, and are far more likely to go elsewhere if you spout PR that verges on lies.
Red Hat's business is built on solving the
problem thatMicrosoft's business model has imposed on the software user since Bill Gates disagreed with the members of the Homebrew computing club back in 1980.
A little bit of stretching the truth, covered by a jab at Gates. RH is in the business of making money: don't follow Gate's axiom that the ends justify the means.'Embrace and extend' has resulted in some of the worst POS software around - IBM did it with their 'extensions' to standard COBOL, and M$ has been f$cking people over for years with this approach. There's nothing wrong with 'adding' new features - just try to follow the bl00dy spirit of *nix development - something you seem to have forgotten. Don't incorporate s!@# into the kernel that should be external - that's an M$ stunt that has 1/ left any machine running M$ products a security nightmare 2/ crash the entire machine when one program goes down.
Now, after this rant right back at ya, do you understand - just a little - why you're getting compared to M$?
There's another application for which large numbers of users will be happy... the visually impaired/blind. It's sad how few sites put useful tags/text on images _now_. I could get behind an image tag which is also in braille.
I have reservations as to Sigmund Freud having cogent observations on flaming. It's my impression that Freud is being abandoned by modern psychiatry because his theories are flawed. According to one skeptic I read, Freud's theories may one day be regarded like astrology and alchemy: precursors to valid science, but no longer useful.
Freud's two biggest contributions to psych is simply that, in many cases, there is an underlying reason in the past which explains present behaviour, and, in many cases, simply identifying this problem, and talking about it, will often lead to resolution.
Freud is out of favour for a number of reasons, some good, some terrifying. On the good side, Freud was just a leetle too obsessed with sex; Not all problems can be attributed to a single (or repeated) incident;not all problems can be talked through - many do in fact have a biological basis. On the bad side, Western medicine, particularly in the US, is unduly influenced by both the legal system and the drug companies. Doing nothing is dangerous - fear lawsuits - even if it's the correct course to take. And prescribing drugs is even safer, legally. Which ignores the fact that there are many people who would do far better with having a hug and told they did a good job, or led into some form of physical recreation, rather than pre-scribing a chemical fix (i.e. Prozac and Ritalin, respectively). There's a whole bunch of other minor stuff, but that's the key issues. Freud's theories should be kept around, if only as just one tool in the psychiatric toolbox.
I also have suffered from flamers, small minded people lacking the courage to say in person what can be said over the net. The basic mistake most flamers make is failing to allow that they may be mis-interpreting what was originally meant. Text is NOT the same as a face-to-face conversation - clarification takes hours, if not days, and tons of subtle, non-verbal cues/information is missing.
Conversely, I've also had the pleasure of infuriating one idiot to the point he was issuing death threats. Kinda scary when I learned he was trying to locate me in the RW. And had a (brief) history with the psych world (from a patient perspective). Shades of Scientologists! While teasing the animals is stupid in itself, and I kinda regret pushing a loose cannon a little closer to the edge, mass flaming should be an indication to the original poster that maybe, just maybe, he ought to reconsider his/her ideas/behaviour.
Starfleet Command, based on the board game Star Fleet Battles (SFB), is a reasonably well constructed game. The interface could be significantly better, but it does capture real-time tactical decisions. Heck, the reviewer even gave it a decent write-up.
For those that love SFB, there's SFB Online (unsurprisingly enough, at www.SFBOnline). While it's not real-time Quake clone, they've done a damn fine job of implememting the board game to the computer. For those of us who prefer tactics over shooting things up on a computer (I prefer to shoot things up RW), this is GREAT game!!! It uses IRQ as a foundation (not the best choice, but this product started off as more of a hobby), and you get to play against other people, which, IMHO, tend to be far more satisfying than going up against a computer alone.
"Clinton decided to redefine 'sexual relations' instead of owning up to the fact that he did. In short, he lied, and that's a whole 'nother ball of wax."
Clinton most likely sat down with his lawyers, discussed what had happened, and how best to formulate a strategy to work around it. The 'definition' of sexual relations, agreed to by both sides, was pretty much limited to actual penetration. If you read over Clinton's testimony, he truthfully denies having 'sexual relations', truthful given the legal definition he was working with. The bit that's still giving him trouble is, when prosecution tried to pin him down as to what actually happened, he simply referred back to his previous answer. "I don't recall" might have been a bit better, legally speaking, but, also speaking legally, neither did he lie. It's actually gonna be pretty darn hard convicting him of anything - I was rather surprised Douglas fined him, considering the charge - misleading - is what lawyers are paid for. Misleading is a really dicey area in the courts. Perjury is fairly cut and dried. "I don't recall" generally falls closer to the former, but is hell to prove.
And as for Reagan, he of the Alzheimers, is somehow beautifully appropriate that his refrain of "I don't recall" became reality.
Let's see, did the NT on a server thing a few years back, small company, no special deals... $700 odd for the base package, another couple of hundred for a few more users... total came to over a thou, and that's not counting the time wasted on cofiguring the piece of cr@p. After several months of the M$ techies tweaking, the thing still wasn't running anywhere near either the specs or where we needed it. Hired a local Unix type, OS was free, the visit was $250, for less than one hour setup, and the new OS ran everything perfectly.
The cost of an OS is, in the long run, far less dependent on the sticker on the box, and far more on the hours required to support it.
For the *nix products, the cost is almost entirely the support. So, do the math: M$ costs way too f$cking much to start with, and has, on average, far higher support costs.
In answer to your question, I expect to pay the support costs.
I kinda like both RedHat and Suse, then again, these products are around the US$50 mark (RedHat above, Suse below). Compared to the $200-$400 for Win98/2000, I'd call that a good deal. Not to mention I can load the former two on any number of corporate boxes, with no additional costs, while the M$ stuff cost increases on a per-machine basis.
"e-mail gets the same protection as US Mail. The US Postal Service IS the government. If you are a conspiracy theorist, at least do it all the way...:P
While I generally follow the rule of never attributing to evil intentions what can adequately be explained by stupidity, there are many units within the US gov't which can be basically classified as 'evil', worse since they tend to view themselves as having the highest moral authority.
Back north of the border, we've had fun over the years as various black boxes (Made in the U.S.A.) have been found at phone exchanges. (Before we had our own incompetent bunch of spies). As to mail, they've gotten a bit more sophisticated, but there was a period when you simply didn't send anything photo-sensitive if you were on the 'monitored' list. And, I gotta admit, as a computer type, a lot of ingenuity went into the program to assemble scanned strips of shredded paper.
Heck, it was only a decade back you could phone the NSA and ask about the crypto museum, only to be told that such a thing didn't exist. It had been open for a few months before they thought to tell the front desk that they could actually give out the info. Paranoia and rabid patriotism seems to be the prerequesites.
The comment regarding a class of CS101 students is a bit weird. Various security schemes are floated by universities (Go Waterloo!) on a regular basis. One of the basics of security is to assume that people will find out the method, but not the specific keys. (Think RSA). If Carnivore is to be a good security system, the structure should be able to withstand the scrutiny of a CS101 class. If that level of knowledge about the program would compromise it, then I suspect it's already inherently unsuitable to the task.
Just one observation - look north of the border, and see just how radically the Canadian system changed in just a few short elections.
Virtually identical to the US two-party system, there is one fundamental difference in voting patterns: in the US, people vote for the party their parents voted for, in Canada, governments are voted out!!!
The majority government under Brian Mulroney (arguably the most corrupt/criminal PM in Canadian history) dropped to two seats in the next election. This has led to a gov't comprising roughly five parties.
I see a lot of problems with this. OTOH, I also see a number of far more serious issues with the two party system. So don't give up hope, the US may still eventually break the death-grip the two parties have on US politics.
What was that Macallum quote,"The medium is the message." ?
This appears just to be another typical jab by M$ to induce management to buy M$.
"Why does your e-mail look funny?"
"Oh, you must not be using M$ Outlook!"
"I'll have to tell the IT department to switch!"
I suffered through the nightmares of dealing with Outlook when it first emerged from the primordial ooze. It was inferior in every respect to 99% of the products out there, with two exceptions: it looked glossy, and it had M$ pushing it.
For contrast, look at it's main competitor in this arena - Lotus Notes. While anyone with any choice in the matter would avoid both products, I gotta admit M$ is better across the board, from a user perspective. And Lotus has it's own little 'extensions', notably the 'cute' little pictures at the top, and the whole 'To/cc/From/Subject' boxes. These are less of an issue at the receiving end, but still, you are losing some of the message.
To be even more precise, anyone in a non-supervisory position, regardless of 'title', is entitled to overtime, according to Federal laws. So despite the growing 'exempt/non-exempt' classification many companies are naming their employees, the truth is this is just a ploy to avoid paying overtime.
I was rather surprised at a previous company, to discover they had 3 job classes - regular hourly, hourly 'emempt', and salaried. The hourly 'exempt' meant 'exempt from being paid overtime rates for overtime work'. Absofragginlutely illegal. However, we're talking big business here, and it took several years of people screaming at the government before it finally moved, and then another couple before the company actually dropped that category. (Without paying the people the money they were legally entitled to).
There was a huge stable of H1Bs there, too. And they got essentially the same hosing that this third group did. Work 80 hours, get 80*hourly rate, no overtime, no double time, no bonuses for weekends.
Big business will indulge in as many unethical, hell, even illegal activities as it thinks it can get away with, in the interest of maximizing the money the people at the top get.
You can bet that something will be done to extend the benefits big business is reaping from the H1B/indentured servitude situation.
what is wrong, exactly, with microsoft working in it's own best rational self-interest?
Uh, the simple fact that _their_ best interest is often opposed to the public's best interest?
Compare the stability of WinXXX to Linux. One is the result of MS spending years working on the basis of 'our best interest', the other by people actually working under the assumption of 'what works best' (a.k.a. the public's best interest).
Ran into a similar situation myself. Basically, the company is attempting to create a paper trail to fall back on if you choose to sue them at some point. Legally, it's better not to sign. If you sign, the onus is on you to show duress ("But I was in fear of being fired if I didn't.") That from an outside legal source - I asked.
Could they fire me for that? No idea, as Iowa is also an at-will state. Still, it would have been amusing had it gone to court. Their paper, saying my coding was sub-standard and I needed to work longer and harder, and the internal code review (another department), which had given me the highest marks ever (I kid you not - they had real issues with me only putting in 40 hours!). The other purpose of such papers - attempting to scare you into working harder.
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There is a large and growing problem in the modern world ... a belief that everything can be 'quantified'. Sure, if you had a model that perfectly replicated every molecule, down to the sub-atomic level, for a volume of space defined by light-speed for the duration of the experiment (e.g. for running the experiment for one second, you need to encompass an area with a radius of 300,000 kilometers), you could accurately predict the future. Realistically, when you start looking at just about anything at the atomic level, it defies prediction. Atomic bombs are about the easiest reaction to simulate, and they're still building computers to adequately model _that_ reaction. At the moment, it's - surprisingly - a rather limited set of parameters - although the results match RW test results OK. Now, that's for a reaction in which the various transition states and interactions are known (e.g. proton hits another nucleus, resulting in ...).
Compare that to, oh, DNA. Double helix, with a rather large number of combinations. And it tends to change it's shape in interesting ways. Allowing new chemical bonding. Attempting to model any 'reaction', such as thought processes, without knowing all the reactions that make up one component, is pretty much a shot in the dark, and has virtually zero chance of being correct. The idea that all we need is a bigger and better computer is, ultimately, fallacious. Remember the old acronym GIGO? The same thing applies to attempting to solve equations with incomplete data. The desire to quantify the unquantifiable is just plain stupid - it shows a lack of understanding of what you're attempting to model, and a lack of understanding of chaos theory.
Which kinda highlights the ignorance most computer types have regarding biology. PNP junctions ain't tuff. Let's take a typical neuron ... interconnected with a few dozen other neurons - capable of dealing with multiple inputs. Each inter-neuron connection comprises several close 'ends' (to use a non-technical term ;-). So what affects the transmission of an impulse? Well, scientists are still working on that. The various chemical levels (Seratonin, to name a highly known one). Virtually every chemical in the body (Had a fright? Epinephrine (a.k.a. adrenaline under the old nomenclature) enhances the transmission of info for certain synapses (those associated with movement, strangely enough). Had another nearby neuron going off recently? Degrades transmission slightly. Same neuron going off twice in a row? Slightly harder to get the signal through. All those chemicals also have a big effect within the neuron itself.
A bit is either on/off. There have been _some_ multistate bit experiments (most recently Intel with its memory), but generally it hasn't gone anywhere. All computer comparisons are BINARY. The neuron is affected by tens of thousands of chemicals. It's affected by other neurons. Every damn one of those interactions is gradiated, i.e. NON-BINARY. Did the nail in you foot cause just one molecule of epinephrine or one hundred to reach that neuron? How does that interact with the other ten thousand chemicals, each of which has the same variable effect?
Are you familiar with the exponent and factorial functions?Ten to the eleventh neurons. Varying numbers of connections, from a min of two to over fifty. Varying number of synaptic gaps. Several thousand chemicals floating around your bloodstream on a regular basis. You start getting numbers that (grossly) exceed the number of atoms in our planet (let alone our system), using the most conservative estimates. Now, given that a binary 'bit' requires quite a few molecules to build, it's kind of, well, ignorant, to view a neuron as a 'glorified adding machine', when an adding machine equivalent to the human brain would require more space than our planet.
First, I'd like to shoot down the sports analogy. Competitions used to be single eliminations, not 'best of seven'. That's a modern innovation, solely for the purpose of garnering more money for the prinicpals involved (team owners, players, networks, etc).
Second, while the math for 'more powerful' is correct, there's an identical situation in the auto industry that's causing a lot of frustration. Sub-widget A is built with two American screws, one Canadian. Gets designated as 'American'. Two 'American' sub-widgets are combined with a wholly 'Canadian' sub-widget. The new assembly is designated 'American'. The process continues ... until we have a car that's designated 'American', which, strangely enough, is composed of a majority of foreign parts.
I think the underlying problem with Natapof's argument is pretty simple ... he doesn't agree with the 'One person, one vote' ideal.
The US has problems enough with rural votes being worth significantly more than urban votes. (Which, as an aside, helps explain why the Republican dominated legislatures are loathe to reform this aspect). Re-drawing districts has become a new way of rigging the election before hand. Isolating 'core' sections has become very popular. To illustrate, using a sample of 300 people, suppose candidate W is running at 34%, and candidate G is running at 66%. If W's friends, who control where the lines are drawn, split the district up so one district is 100% for G, and the other two as 51% for W. Which means, come election, W wins two out of three. Using the f!@#ing electoral college as an example, at the state level, that means W takes all three, despite having only 34% of the popular vote. It isn't quite that dramatic as that in the real world, but an analysis of the last re-drawing shows this to be a viable tactic.
I don't agree with the idea Joe from North Dakota has one heck of a lot more influence that Tom from New York city, in both the senate and the presidential race. It strikes at the fundamentals of democracy. Natapof makes plenty of good arguments to support his position, but I believe that none of the benefits outweigh the fact the system, in its current form, is fundamentally flawed. Democracy only works when a large percentage of the population buy into it. The current system creates one heck of a lot of cynicism. And no amount of 'mathematical models' will help to dispell that cynicism while the problem remains.
"All that happens is someone with fewer votes gets elected," temporarily Uh, I really hate to poke a hole in the mud foundations of his ivory tower, but it's a little more serious than that. Various corporations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get 'their' candidate of choice in. And they expect a return on their investment. When an archaic system like the electoral college overturns the popular vote - which is one of the few areas in which the average citizen can still fight back - then the coporations (and the existing political power structure) have won. Getting back to the sports analogy, this means the principals (i.e. the corporations and the entrenched parties), just like in the multi-game innovation, extract more money from the populace.
The math Natapof suggests works ... but so does the posibility that the EC can give the election to a person with less votes than his opponent ... a lot less. Using the above 300 person example, 34% vs 66%. Using the EC method, it can actually be worse. This is what, the fourth time the person with less popular votes got in? Isn't it about time the system gets reformed?
Yep. You can't avoid it. Anywhere. ;-)
The other thing that's curious is how on earth you have come to conclude that HMO corporations somehow have any effect on my healthcare system.
Well, first off, I'm a Canuck too, imported into the US healthcare system for the sole purpose of bringing _their_ system up to a decent level. ;-) Regrettably, unless you're living in lotusland (that would be BC, and, judging from your usage of french, a long way from Québec), the Canadian health care system is taking the US HMO design to heart ... to be precise, the money grubbing politicos who pass the laws that govern the health care system are looking at the kickbacks ... oops, political donations ... that their US counterparts get ... and are seriously pushing towards a two-tiered, private health care system. You don't think the deconstruction of the public health care system, and the corresponding growth of the private sector north of the border has nothing to do with the US system? I think the word I used was _naive_. Check it out
A US-Centric example, but I do see and hear of the "big Tobacco lobby groups" on CNN and NBC from time to time, so to a certain extent you are correct. On the other hand, I don't smoke, and millions of your fellow American citizens don't smoke, and most of the world doesn't smoke Tobacco, or so I would presume.
Tobacco is huge business ... and growing . While the percentage of people smoking in North America is dropping, the overall numbers are still growing. Turnaround point is a short way off. But elsewhere in the world, the Tobacco industry is growing in the double digit range. Asia is a huge and growing market. As to how it affects you ... well, you are totally correct that you don't smoke tobacco, as do millions of others ... and totally mistaken if you think that it doesn't affect you. As a Canadian, I was really upset that the outrageous taxes on a package of cigarettes DOESN'T cover the increased health care cost. Second hand smoke aside, under any kind of health plan (whether Canadian or US), _you_ are subsidizing the smokers!!! Self-inflicted injuries normally get you put at the bottom of the medical lists ... smoking included. I have an uncle who had a lung transplant up in Ontario, after his gave up after decades of smoking. I know how much that kind of operation costs ... and you, mon ami, are footing a piece of that bill - just because _you_ don't smoke doesn't mean it doesn't affect you.
So, there it is in the Constitution, freedom of religion. Want to get around it? Simply decide that someone's beliefs aren't actually a 'religion', then you can go after them with all guns blazing!!!
For something really frightening, check out the Texas Republican home page. Same ignorant, intolerant, hypocritical style. First, claim the unswerving perfection of the Constitution. Then, later on, attacks a couple of judges for their decisions, in which, oddly enough, the judges themselves use the Constitution as the basis for their decision.
We have a similar idiot locally. "If you want to know how I'll vote, just look at the constitution!" Sure clears it up for me ... now I know how you'll vote on encryption, genetic engineering, cloning ... interpret the constitution however the fu$k you want, then stomp over those who disagree.
The length is pretty simple to explain - longer patents benefit the corporation (or, in less than 1 percent, the individual) holding the patent. The US politicians take whopping bribes...er, PAC and soft money, and repay their benefactors by extending the patents.
I'm not up on my European law, but England had two points that kept the patent system a lot less corrupt - first, many patents were shot down simply because they were viewed as either 'stifling legitimate competition', or against public interest. The second was that it used to cost a heck of a lot to actually patent something, making spurious and incremental patents much less prevelent than the US.
The second point is what is allowable. To give the simplest example, Europe won't allow you to patent life forms, while it's big business in the US. (Go Stargazers!)
Finally, while the trend is slowing, the US allowed a given patent to cover far more than England (and, AFAIK, Europe). Look at Bell's patent, and read about just how much ended up paying to use it, for a case study in legal elegance. In England, a patent could be struck down if any part of it was invalid (i.e. you patent a new car engine, but forget to specifically exclude the spark plugs, tough). The US _does_ have similar laws ... just that they rarely see the light of day. The US, geez, there was some guy who had patented 'sending music over wires using modulated electricity'. And you thought RIAA was bad!
Finally, the US is exactly like England and Europe in one regard - the patent system, since it's inception, has become just another place where corporations (and individuals) fight to establish dominance. The practice of 'licensing' highly questionable patents to a few of your close business partners (for under-the-table considerations), then going after your actual opponents in court ("But your honor, these seven other highly respected software companies are paying licensing fees, Sun is obviously just being criminal!) dates back to the first few years after the patent office came into existence.
God, you are sooo naive.
These oh-so-evil companies have no relevance in modern society, and very rarely do they impact our daily lives at all.
OK, not just naive, ignorant too.Here's a few examples of how corporations are dictating policies which are in their interest, and against the public interest (this includes _you_, Angelwrath)
1/ Tobacco. Heck, the gov't even set up a watchdog agency to protect us from harmful, chemical stuff. And cut a huge exemption for one of their large$t contributors.
2/ Health care. HMOs have jumped to become one of the top contibutor$, in the short time they've been around. Average service during this period has dropped dramatically. No correlation there, right?
3/WTO. Oooo, the people in the western countries have implemented horridly anti-capitalist ideas like retirement funds, health care, and living wages. Let's make more money by exploiting the labour in places that don't have such ideas.
4/ McDonalds (to pick on just one), in a number of surveys, is viewed as a good place to take the family for a meal. When one considers the food is among the least healthy around, that's really qute frightening. Then there's that trial over in England. Despite the minor detail every single 'fact' they were being sued over is verifiable, the Golden Arches Corp was able to buy enough 'Professional Witnesses' to win the case. Multinational Corp, 1: The public and truth, 0.
There's a line I've always liked, somthing to the effect that every truth is dangerous, because it threatens a lie that is valuable to someone. That can be applied to everything from the the media muzzling of Nader, to Bush going on about the internet making public schools dangerous. Hemp was criminalized not because it was being used as a recreational pharmaceutical, but because the cotton lobby paid big bucks to buy themselves some politicos. 200+ years later, the trend hasn't changed, except for getting worse.
Heh, actually, you got it right the first time. Alcohol is perfectly legal. So is tobacco. It's just a bunch of 'other' things the gov't has decided to go after.
There are very few actual 'lines' in reference to drugs. I view anything that can kill you the first time you try it as worthy of being banned, and anything that can cause you to lose control (i.e. flashbacks) as requiring a tatoo on your forehead saying so (as in, it bans you from ever driving, operating dangerous machinery, or picking up a gun),as for the rest, well, under the heading of 'freedom' people should be allowed to do what the heck they like, as long as it doesn't infringe on others.
The gov't laws on drugs are a perfect example of something pushed as 'morality' that has no coherent base. A number of the laws on the books (specifically, hemp and marijuana) are more a case of politicians being bought by rival economic concerns (cotton and tobacco, respectively).
Some of the worst treatment of employees occurs at legal firms; for exactly the same reason, politicians are extremely ill equipped to deal with issues of morality - they are, as a class, extremely rich, and completely out of touch with, and completely non-representative of the 99% of the people they are supposed to represent.
Carnivore is a typical example. To most politicians, the ends justify the means. There are far too many surveys that show, on this one issue, politicians overwhelming believe this, while the rest of us don't. Getting criminals is good, so what if a few civil rights get crushed in the mud in the process? The modern crop of politicians is far more representative of the English aristocracy Franklin et al rebelled against.
Boot passwords (will stip the trivial thief)
Encryption of sensitive data - there are a number of pruducts available - having the HD alone means squat.
Tracking methods. Hook one of these babies up to the internet, it quietly squeals for the police to come pick it up. As some of the current crop of laptops have built in cell modems, just turning it on is probably enough. A bit after the fact, in your case, but suggestions for your remaining laptops ;-)
What rumours? The big three had a rather large slush fund dedicated to purchasing new technologies that threatened their dominance. While bad for the average consumer, it's a simple question of the economic realities for an auto manufacturer. It would cost them more to re-tool an existing plant, than to start from scratch, as many new technologies do. So they have no advantage over someone building a completely new design. Therefore, it is simply more cost effective for them to buy out the new tech.
To be completely fair, a lot of the stuff they purchase the rights to does end up in vehicles, but there's an awful lot that hasn't. I'm aware of a couple of cases where the invention wasn't even patented, the inventors were bought out so fast, under some of the earliest NDAs around.
The mention of Carnot efficiencies always made me wonder why the K engine was never introduced in cars. (It is found in some larger applications). It a rotary engine (not Wankel), in which the pistons and piston block rotate around a collar, allowing a variable stroke. Still IC, but the efficieny was significantly higher than the standard model. Probably because the patent is held by an existing auto manufacturer. Still, with the huge surge in poularity in monster SUVs, the size limitation is a little less limiting, one would think.
Up in the frozen white north (a.k.a. most of Canada more than 50 miles from the border), a local hobbyist did his van up the electric/diesel route (12 HP Kubuta lawn tractor engine, IIRC). Running around 75 miles per gallon. I think he had a 20 gal tank. That a cruising range of about 1500 miles. Also had the added benefit of about twelve batteries to start a three cylinder diesel, which some might consider a bit of overkill. Then again, when the local donut shops have electrical outlets in the parking lot for the customers to plug their block heaters in, this becomes a little more realistic.
The idea of a compressed air car is nice ... also remarkably similar to the flywheel design. The latter is used in trains (occasionally), and in smaller vehicles - quarry trains, tow-motors - where the environment is closed. There was quite a bit of work done in the sixties about sticking flywheels into buses (AEC, England). A small, highly efficient diesel, regenerative braking, and hydraulic motors at the wheels. Unfortunately, the design group noted that t-boning (i.e. getting hit by a truck at 90 degrees) a vehicle so equipped would have the flywheel perform standard gyroscopic physics, ripping itself from the vehicle and punching through any nearby buildings. Armouring the sucker to prevent this pretty much did away with all the efficiencies. (increased weight and size)
Compressed air vehicles have, in the past, been scrapped at the drawing board for exactly the same reason - storing that much energy in an extremely volatile format is just plain dangerous. 200 klicks seems rather low compared to other designs (standard IC is closer to 500 K), but still would tend to rip most things to pieces if punctured (if you've never taken a high-powered rifle to a compressed gas cylinder in the middle of a field, you've missed out on an adrenaline inducing experience!).
On a slight tangent, I'm a little surprised by the latest 'hybrid' vehicles done by Toyota and Honda. They're essentially different from the designs the hobbyists use. These modern things use 50+ HP IC engines, running at variable speeds, bringing in the batteries only when needed (acceleration, up hills, etc). The older design was a 5-20 HP IC engine (it takes only around 8 HP to cruise on the level), running at a constant (i.e. peak efficiency) speed, feeding into the batteries, and the vehicle itself was purely electric driven. Also allowing regenerative braking. I've yet to read _why_ this fundamental change was made - the only reason I can come up with is psychological - people would get upset when they learn their lawn tractor has a bigger engine than their car.
Most of the time, yes. Just for a dorky example, I'll compare a suite of M$ products versus RH. Set up the server ... well, actually, in most quantifiable tests, RH outperforms NT, at least as we were benchmarking it ... plus the RH went for $70 vs over a thou for the NT. Then there's the machines ... each one requiring their own little M$ license ... vs using the same RH CD. Now, depending on how you want to look at it, one could argue that the M$ bunch (NT, Win 95, 98) were better. Personally, I value stability and the low low low cost, hence preferred the RH. Then there's the whole 'office' suite. Let's just say that there are more than enough easy to use free and inexpensive linux suites to make coughing up a couple of hundred per 'M$ Office' package laughable. Now, as to superior, again, I value stability. The ability to seamlessly interface with the gazillions of M$ users out there is nice, but conversely, not having a team dedicated to fighting off M$-specific viruses every other week is also kind of nice.
It all depends on what one defines as 'best'. You want a glossy POS that costs an arm and a leg, crashes on a regular basis, and needs 3-10 times the number of people to support it, just because it IS glossy? Go M$.
While I liked the general gist of the argument, there were a couple of specific lines that I disagreed with, and though they were put in more for shock value than for accuracy.
Linux as Almost Ready for the Desktop. It is not What defines 'ready for the desktop' in Mr.Shirky's mind? Currently running Suse at home and Solaris at work. Both are damn fine desktops.
For any given purpose, best of breed products are either ideal or useless. Say what?!?! Best of breed products may not do everything you want, but to call them useless for anything else is way off base. I play with free agent for news groups. It isn't the best for displaying graphics. But it is the fastest, easiest and one of the best designed newsgroup readers out there. Netscape and IE both do better on the graphics, but suck on any other comparison I can think of (excluding picking up and running hostile code ... IE is neck-and-neck with Outlook in that race, leaving all others far behind).
The description of Linux as '...an also-ran desktop OS.' is also a little insulting, and I think a little too certain. There are a number of reasons why Linux _could_ take off as a desktop OS of choice. I believe that some of them (such as being a platform for games, much more network friendly) will probably lead in *nix becoming dominant in 5-10 years.
Overall, I thought the article well thought out, and generally on the money, but these few points needed jumping on.
Hint: An OS that's as buggy as a termite hill.
I snagged RH a few years back. Nice, but I've since traded (up) to Suse. When a new release comes out, it should have LESS bugs than the previous version. Others can do this, why can't you?
There are many things for which we should be justifiably criticised (I have no idea what these might be, but I'm certain they exist ;-) but trying to act like Microsoft is not one of them.
There are some areas in which I suspect you are acting exactly like M$ - trying to make a profit, trying to establish yourself as the standard, trying to dominate the market. All of these are good goals (to varying degrees), but the route you take to get there is vitally important. M$'s policy of proprietary software I'm glad to see you don't follow. M$'s policy of active FDU verges on the criminal (i.e. any reasonable person would accept they've broken the law: getting a court to convict them is virtually impossible) - DON'T follow this approach. Intelligent users - that would be the kind who fix those problems you mention - don't like it, and are far more likely to go elsewhere if you spout PR that verges on lies.
Red Hat's business is built on solving the problem thatMicrosoft's business model has imposed on the software user since Bill Gates disagreed with the members of the Homebrew computing club back in 1980.
A little bit of stretching the truth, covered by a jab at Gates. RH is in the business of making money: don't follow Gate's axiom that the ends justify the means.'Embrace and extend' has resulted in some of the worst POS software around - IBM did it with their 'extensions' to standard COBOL, and M$ has been f$cking people over for years with this approach. There's nothing wrong with 'adding' new features - just try to follow the bl00dy spirit of *nix development - something you seem to have forgotten. Don't incorporate s!@# into the kernel that should be external - that's an M$ stunt that has 1/ left any machine running M$ products a security nightmare 2/ crash the entire machine when one program goes down.
Now, after this rant right back at ya, do you understand - just a little - why you're getting compared to M$?
There's another application for which large numbers of users will be happy ... the visually impaired/blind. It's sad how few sites put useful tags/text on images _now_. I could get behind an image tag which is also in braille.
Freud's two biggest contributions to psych is simply that, in many cases, there is an underlying reason in the past which explains present behaviour, and, in many cases, simply identifying this problem, and talking about it, will often lead to resolution.
Freud is out of favour for a number of reasons, some good, some terrifying. On the good side, Freud was just a leetle too obsessed with sex; Not all problems can be attributed to a single (or repeated) incident;not all problems can be talked through - many do in fact have a biological basis. On the bad side, Western medicine, particularly in the US, is unduly influenced by both the legal system and the drug companies. Doing nothing is dangerous - fear lawsuits - even if it's the correct course to take. And prescribing drugs is even safer, legally. Which ignores the fact that there are many people who would do far better with having a hug and told they did a good job, or led into some form of physical recreation, rather than pre-scribing a chemical fix (i.e. Prozac and Ritalin, respectively). There's a whole bunch of other minor stuff, but that's the key issues. Freud's theories should be kept around, if only as just one tool in the psychiatric toolbox.
I also have suffered from flamers, small minded people lacking the courage to say in person what can be said over the net. The basic mistake most flamers make is failing to allow that they may be mis-interpreting what was originally meant. Text is NOT the same as a face-to-face conversation - clarification takes hours, if not days, and tons of subtle, non-verbal cues/information is missing.
Conversely, I've also had the pleasure of infuriating one idiot to the point he was issuing death threats. Kinda scary when I learned he was trying to locate me in the RW. And had a (brief) history with the psych world (from a patient perspective). Shades of Scientologists! While teasing the animals is stupid in itself, and I kinda regret pushing a loose cannon a little closer to the edge, mass flaming should be an indication to the original poster that maybe, just maybe, he ought to reconsider his/her ideas/behaviour.
For those that love SFB, there's SFB Online (unsurprisingly enough, at www.SFBOnline). While it's not real-time Quake clone, they've done a damn fine job of implememting the board game to the computer. For those of us who prefer tactics over shooting things up on a computer (I prefer to shoot things up RW), this is GREAT game!!! It uses IRQ as a foundation (not the best choice, but this product started off as more of a hobby), and you get to play against other people, which, IMHO, tend to be far more satisfying than going up against a computer alone.
Clinton most likely sat down with his lawyers, discussed what had happened, and how best to formulate a strategy to work around it. The 'definition' of sexual relations, agreed to by both sides, was pretty much limited to actual penetration. If you read over Clinton's testimony, he truthfully denies having 'sexual relations', truthful given the legal definition he was working with. The bit that's still giving him trouble is, when prosecution tried to pin him down as to what actually happened, he simply referred back to his previous answer. "I don't recall" might have been a bit better, legally speaking, but, also speaking legally, neither did he lie. It's actually gonna be pretty darn hard convicting him of anything - I was rather surprised Douglas fined him, considering the charge - misleading - is what lawyers are paid for. Misleading is a really dicey area in the courts. Perjury is fairly cut and dried. "I don't recall" generally falls closer to the former, but is hell to prove.
And as for Reagan, he of the Alzheimers, is somehow beautifully appropriate that his refrain of "I don't recall" became reality.
The cost of an OS is, in the long run, far less dependent on the sticker on the box, and far more on the hours required to support it.
For the *nix products, the cost is almost entirely the support. So, do the math: M$ costs way too f$cking much to start with, and has, on average, far higher support costs.
In answer to your question, I expect to pay the support costs.
I kinda like both RedHat and Suse, then again, these products are around the US$50 mark (RedHat above, Suse below). Compared to the $200-$400 for Win98/2000, I'd call that a good deal. Not to mention I can load the former two on any number of corporate boxes, with no additional costs, while the M$ stuff cost increases on a per-machine basis.
While I generally follow the rule of never attributing to evil intentions what can adequately be explained by stupidity, there are many units within the US gov't which can be basically classified as 'evil', worse since they tend to view themselves as having the highest moral authority.
Back north of the border, we've had fun over the years as various black boxes (Made in the U.S.A.) have been found at phone exchanges. (Before we had our own incompetent bunch of spies). As to mail, they've gotten a bit more sophisticated, but there was a period when you simply didn't send anything photo-sensitive if you were on the 'monitored' list. And, I gotta admit, as a computer type, a lot of ingenuity went into the program to assemble scanned strips of shredded paper.
Heck, it was only a decade back you could phone the NSA and ask about the crypto museum, only to be told that such a thing didn't exist. It had been open for a few months before they thought to tell the front desk that they could actually give out the info. Paranoia and rabid patriotism seems to be the prerequesites.
The comment regarding a class of CS101 students is a bit weird. Various security schemes are floated by universities (Go Waterloo!) on a regular basis. One of the basics of security is to assume that people will find out the method, but not the specific keys. (Think RSA). If Carnivore is to be a good security system, the structure should be able to withstand the scrutiny of a CS101 class. If that level of knowledge about the program would compromise it, then I suspect it's already inherently unsuitable to the task.
Virtually identical to the US two-party system, there is one fundamental difference in voting patterns: in the US, people vote for the party their parents voted for, in Canada, governments are voted out!!!
The majority government under Brian Mulroney (arguably the most corrupt/criminal PM in Canadian history) dropped to two seats in the next election. This has led to a gov't comprising roughly five parties.
I see a lot of problems with this. OTOH, I also see a number of far more serious issues with the two party system. So don't give up hope, the US may still eventually break the death-grip the two parties have on US politics.
What was that Macallum quote,"The medium is the message." ? This appears just to be another typical jab by M$ to induce management to buy M$.
"Why does your e-mail look funny?"
"Oh, you must not be using M$ Outlook!"
"I'll have to tell the IT department to switch!"
I suffered through the nightmares of dealing with Outlook when it first emerged from the primordial ooze. It was inferior in every respect to 99% of the products out there, with two exceptions: it looked glossy, and it had M$ pushing it. For contrast, look at it's main competitor in this arena - Lotus Notes. While anyone with any choice in the matter would avoid both products, I gotta admit M$ is better across the board, from a user perspective. And Lotus has it's own little 'extensions', notably the 'cute' little pictures at the top, and the whole 'To/cc/From/Subject' boxes. These are less of an issue at the receiving end, but still, you are losing some of the message.
To be even more precise, anyone in a non-supervisory position, regardless of 'title', is entitled to overtime, according to Federal laws. So despite the growing 'exempt/non-exempt' classification many companies are naming their employees, the truth is this is just a ploy to avoid paying overtime.
I was rather surprised at a previous company, to discover they had 3 job classes - regular hourly, hourly 'emempt', and salaried. The hourly 'exempt' meant 'exempt from being paid overtime rates for overtime work'. Absofragginlutely illegal. However, we're talking big business here, and it took several years of people screaming at the government before it finally moved, and then another couple before the company actually dropped that category. (Without paying the people the money they were legally entitled to).
There was a huge stable of H1Bs there, too. And they got essentially the same hosing that this third group did. Work 80 hours, get 80*hourly rate, no overtime, no double time, no bonuses for weekends.
Big business will indulge in as many unethical, hell, even illegal activities as it thinks it can get away with, in the interest of maximizing the money the people at the top get. You can bet that something will be done to extend the benefits big business is reaping from the H1B/indentured servitude situation.
Uh, the simple fact that _their_ best interest is often opposed to the public's best interest?
Compare the stability of WinXXX to Linux. One is the result of MS spending years working on the basis of 'our best interest', the other by people actually working under the assumption of 'what works best' (a.k.a. the public's best interest).
Do you need it spelled out clearer than that?
Could they fire me for that? No idea, as Iowa is also an at-will state. Still, it would have been amusing had it gone to court. Their paper, saying my coding was sub-standard and I needed to work longer and harder, and the internal code review (another department), which had given me the highest marks ever (I kid you not - they had real issues with me only putting in 40 hours!). The other purpose of such papers - attempting to scare you into working harder.