No fear, I don't live in a country as positively nazi as the USA.
So a country which has civil laws to protect people from harassment is "positively nazi"? What country do you live in where you can falsely accuse people of something without fear of them having legal recourse?
If the info you posted is not the spammer, I hope that the person who gets bombarded with phone calls, catalogs, and hate mail, subpeonas your IP address from Slashdot, subpeonas your identity from your ISP, and sues the living shit out of you.
meaning either two regular EPROMs or the non-standard 16 bit EPROMs. That adds cost.
But you fail to consider that the PC had multiple chips for the BIOS and that it cost no more to pair them for 16 bits than it cost to make them sequential for 8 bits. In fact, it could be argued that it was a bit cheaper to pair them up because it only required decoding a single CE (chip enable) line whereas putting them sequentially required decoding of two CE lines.
That adds cost. Further, decoding a 16 bit data path is considerably more expensive, this was particularly the case back in the old days when the popular peripherals, i.e. 8250 and 8255, had an 8 bit data path.
You're mixing up address bits and data bits. You decode addresses, not data. Using an 8250 UART or an 8255 PIO simply mean tying the lower 8-bits of the data bus to it with a chip-select derived from the decoded address.
It's a legacy concern, but it made the 8088 significantly less expensive.
Having been wire-wrapping computers back then (yes, I am *that* old) I was pretty familiar with the costs trade-offs. Using the 8088 had only a very tiny impact on price -- which is why so many clones came out with the 8086 at lower prices than the PC. I won't dispute that there was a cost difference, but it was realized in things like data buffers, and that was not a big savings since it was a handful of TTL chips.
'Cheaper' refers to price. It was simply a chip intended for retrofitting into existing 8-bit systems, albeit with no small performance loss. Pricewise, it was about on par with the 8086.
The 8088 was not a cheaper version of the 8086. It was a version of the 8086 that used an 8-bit external bus so that it could be easily retrofitted into existing 8-bit systems which, back then, tended to have a passive backplane (like S100) and plug-in cards for RAM, CPU, serial port, diskette controller, etc. The thought was that designers would come up with new CPU cards and keep all of their existing investment in 8-bit hardware (Compupro, for instance, had an 85/88 CPU card which included an 8085 and an 8088). IBM elected (stupidly) to use the 8088 in a new design to save some pittance on external components (buffers, latches, etc.). As a result, the PC was about 40% slower than it would have been had it been designed with the 8086.
You're confusing "amount of monetary damage" with "corporation's money". Why do big corporations deserve less protection than small ones? Why can't we just use the amount of damage, not the size of corporations, as the determining factor?
Because big corporations can afford losses that would devastate small ones and ruin individuals. If Microsoft gets socked with $100,000 in bandwidth charges for a DDoS attack, it's petty change to them. If some anti-spam activist gets DDoS attacked and his colocation facility charges him $50,000, it could bankrupt him. So he's the one that needs the protection.
Also, I think that non-commercial speech needs and deserves more protection than commercial speech. Microsoft, IBM, Gateway, General Motors, RJ Reynolds, and the RIAA can afford to hire teams of attorneys and pay for subpeonas to find out who is behind the attacks. They can buy more bandwidth in order to weather the attacks. Some guy who runs a not-for-profit blacklist cannot. That's why, despite number DDoS attacks, Microsoft and the RIAA still have web sites while these anti-spam activists were forced to shut down.
Your final jab about who I voted for (Gore, incidentally) is immature and senseless. Thank you for making me look good in relationship.
Actually, it showed how poorly you communicated your belief system.
A one million dollar loss sounds worse than a thousand dollar loss, you know. If you've got a finite amount of resources, _someone_ is going to end up getting screwed, so shouldn't we handle the big stuff first?
So you are advocating that the limited law enforcement budgets be spent to help those who already have the most money? To hell with some guy who's spent his own income trying to maintain a blacklist of spammers' IP addresses. You want the feds to step in and protect Microsoft, the RIAA, and other moneyed organizations from cyber crime.
I don't have to earn the right to talk down to you.
Yes, you do, and you have not.
Just like you didn't have to earn the right to label me negatively.
Now you are simply lying. I reread my post and I did not call you names or "label [you] negatively." I defy you to show me a quote from the previous message where I supposedly "labelled" you negatively. Typical right-wing arguing tactic: Lie about what your opponent said. But, since you've already accused me of having labelled you negatively when I did not, I won't hesitate to do it now.
If we ruin our economy doing something that does nothing to help us, we're as dumb the average lefty.
Liberals are far brighter, on average, than conservatives, so that argument is simply hollow. If conservatives were so bright, then Ivy League colleges would be teeming with conservatives -- and that's clearly not the case.
If you want to see how to ruin an economy, just look to President Bush and his administration. He's doled out huge tax cuts to industries that outsourced U.S. jobs to overseas workers. He's increased government spending, so that we will all pay interest on the debt he is accruing for decades to come. He is Mr. Big Government, increasing the size of the federal work force by 1 million people. He's given huge tax cuts to the rich by borrowing money that the government doesn't have. If there's a surplus, he wants a tax cut because "it's not the government's money" and if there is a horrible deficit, he wants a tax cut to "stimulate the economy." Gee, if everything is a reason to cut taxes, then that doesn't work out very well mathematically, does it? He's taken $500+ from every man, woman, and child in the U.S. to pay for his war in Iraq.
Every time that someone proposes sensible environmental legislation, we hear the same stupid argument about "ruining the economy" from the right-wing assholes: "Requiring catalytic converters on cars will ruin the economy." "Taking lead out of gasoline will ruin the economy." "Limiting water pollution will ruin the economy." "Stopping the use of high-sulphur coal in powerplants will ruin the economy." "Requiring better fuel economy (CAFE) will ruin the economy." Bullshit. Limiting air pollution will take some small quantity of money away from big business while improving the living condition of every man, woman, and child on the earth. Did you grow up with asthma? I did. I know what it's like to not know if you will have enough air to stay alive.
You're typing on a computer. You know what kind of damage merely producing that computer did to the environment? Hypocrite.
Did I say anywhere that there should be legislation requiring zero pollution from all industries? No. Use (or get) some common sense. When right-wing Republicans are sponsoring Senate legislation preventing states from imposing limits on pollution from lawn mowers and other off-road machinery, that's a completely different situation. Ever notice how Republicans scream about "state's rights" until a state wants to do something that they don't like?
And lastly, that quote is irrelevant. The data speaks for itself, and your quote there is merely an opinion, even if the opinion of the author of the study.
The quote is very relevent. It's from someone much smarter than you who has a much better understanding of the problem.
Not really. If you're that dependent on your speed and the reliability, then you need a different class of service. As long as you're expecting first-class service from a standby (coach) ticket, I think you'll be frustrated with the results.
So you admit that you were wrong in claiming that I could "grow a spine, cancel the cable internet, and stick with dialup for a while longer"?
You are mistaking artificial, ex-post-facto limitations put on the service with the actual capability of the service itself. The residential service that I had was fast enough and reliable enough (once the problems were worked out on the cable company's end). But after I got it, they changed the rules. They banned servers. They blocked ports. They put caps in place. Then they said that they would charge me a hefty premium for a SOHO service that removed the restrictions that they added.
This illustrates a common misconception people have that faster equals more. It doesn't. It simply means faster.
I have no "misconception" about it at all. What I said is that faster service is of very limited value to many people if they can't download/upload the quantity of data that they need to.
What gets my goat about this is that so many companies sold "unlimited access" and then, after people were using the service, changed the rules. Here's how Cox Communication has redefined has redefined "unlimited access" in their FAQ:
I thought you offered "unlimited access"? Cox's "unlimited access" messaging was meant to convey that customers' Cox High Speed Internet connection is "always on", so customers do not have to dial-in to access the Internet, that the Cox HSI service is not subject to hourly usage limits, that Cox HSI customers can access any content or websites they choose over the Internet and that the service does not tie up a user's phone line.
All of the complaining won't do a bit of good though, because the broadband providers have been permitted to make contracts which give them the contractual rights to change the service on a month-to-month basis. Bandwidth usage is capped. Ports are blocked. Servers that were once permitted become prohibited. The consumer, who often has no other option, simply lives with the ever-decreasing service.
Soooo...do you suggest we all sit around saying that is hasn't been proven until it is too late to do anything about it? As in "I'm not 100% sure that car is going to hit me, so why move?"
Thank you! I just don't believe that it would be a disaster if we reduced pollution -- even if it was not the cause of global warming. I don't know about you, but I'm not a big pollution fan in general.
It has not been proven that global warming has been mostly caused by CO2/other greenhouse gasses.
So what? I don't care how we got where we are. The question is whether we are going to push ourselves over the cliff with continued pollution. Heat stroke might be caused primarily by the sun, but I'm not going to be found dead at the equator with a winter parka on.
Let's look at the two options:
1. We can do nothing about pollution. 2. We can regulate pollution.
If we take the first approach and discover 30 years hence that pollution does cause global warming, we could find ourselves headed for an unavoidable climactic disaster.
If we take the second approach and find out that it has had no significant effect on global warming, the result will be cleaner air, fewer people with asthma, less acid rain, less soot on homes, cars, and offices, and, maybe, a tiny increase in the cost of living to pay for pollution controls. My guess is that the increased costs will be more than compensated for by lower medical costs.
You see?
Don't talk down to me. You haven't earned that right.
Science isn't about who has the most politically correct theory.
Nor is science about coming up with a theory that best helps your political allies in the oil industry.
(disclaimer: I'm not saying that article proves global warming to be beyond our control, but it does provide strong evidence.)
No, it does not. It provides strong evidence that we don't have total control. As the author of the study said, "I suspect that the greenhouse lobby have under-estimated the role of solar variability in climate change. However I am not in favour of polluting the atmosphere, for whatever reason."
How long until the pro-global warming myth lot start blaming this on global warming?
According to the article, Derek Mueller of Laval University said "It is difficult to tease out what is due to global warming and what is due to regional warming." He didn't call global warming a "myth." He accepted global warming as fact and only said that there was impossible to say whether it, or regional warming, was the cause of this particular event.
Here's an excerpt from the EPA's web site:
What's Known for Certain? Scientists know for certain that human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide (CO2 ), in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times have been well documented. There is no doubt this atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities.
It's well accepted by scientists that greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and tend to warm the planet. By increasing the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, human activities are strengthening Earth's natural greenhouse effect. The key greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries.
A warming trend of about 1F has been recorded since the late 19th century. Warming has occurred in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and over the oceans. Confirmation of 20th-century global warming is further substantiated by melting glaciers, decreased snow cover in the northern hemisphere and even warming below ground.
If the EPA web site under Bush/Cheney (who are pawns of the oil industry) acknowledges global warming as fact, that should give you head-in-the-sand types a clue. Wouldn't it be terrible if we reduced pollution and it didn't fix global warming? Oh the horror!
but it all comes down to a choice: Do you put up with the monopoly and enjoy whatever speed you get, or do you grow a spine, cancel the cable internet, and stick with dialup for a while longer.
I run a domain complete with web server, mail server, FTP server, secure tunnel, Telnet server, and HTTP proxy. Dial up is simply not an option. That's like suggesting that one could "grow a spine, cancel their electric service, and put up with candles and fires for a while longer."
I've even read that Comcast will be doubling the available bandwidth for their cable internet customers (from 1.5 mbps to 3.0 mbps) sometime in December.
And if you use it, then they'll kick you off for excessive bandwidth usage. What good does it do to have 3.0mpbs of throughput if 30 minutes of usage per day will put you over their (unpublished) cap?
In areas where you do have a choice between broadband providers (DSL vs. Cable, or multiple DSLs, etc), the free market should be able to sort this out.
The problem is that many areas have no competition. So that's where the cable franchises want to be. They move in and then use their monopoly position to bend consumers over. Monopolies, whether government sanctioned or naturally occurring need oversight and regulation.
Because an RTOS will often have a human life at stake it has to bedesigned to higher standards. All that extra testing, design, and higher-skilled engineering time costs significantly more $$, and may be enough to make the costs of an OS prohibitive to a commodity PC.
Surprisingly, many RTOSs have lower per-machine licensing costs than does Windows. QNX is a nice example of a Unix-like RTOS complete with a powerful, graphical front-end. It's reliable, small, and reasonably priced.
I think that engineering software for reliability does not cost any more, and, in fact probably costs less, than engineering it for unnecessary whiz-bang features. Again, I go back to my Windows example. Why, when the OS is bug-ridden and a security nightmare, is Microsoft investing money in useless bundled software like their insanely bad photo editor ("imaging"), their horrible video capture and editing package ("Microsoft Movie Maker"), MSN Messenger, and Windows Media Player?
I firmly believe that, if software were treated as a product, Windows would be much smaller, much more robust, and would be an operating system rather than a collection of bad tools and a bloated, unstable OS. You would buy Windows and if you needed a photo editor, you would choose one from the marketplace. If you didn't, the OS would not force one onto your system.
I think this lack of control is probably the biggest deterrant to OS manufacturers; If they were the only ones designing software for their OS they probably *could* warrant it.
Analogy: A kid buys a Honda Civic. He decides that he will make it a race car by the installation of a wing on the back. Because he mounts the wing behind the rear wheels, the down-force actually unweights the driven front wheels, causing the car to hydroplane at speed. Honda's not responsible. Their warranty doesn't cover that.
If there were a software warranty and a modification that you made (e.g., a screen saver with a buggy driver) caused Windows to bomb, it would not be Microsoft's responsibility to fix it. All that Microsoft would be responsible for was assuring that the OS operated as advertised -- including claims about the system calls and the end-user functionality.
But I think it will take a few years of cultural inertia breaking before we could see an OS which could be warranted as a product. It would take a change to the mindset of engineers, engineering managers, marketing (who drives feature roadmaps) and executive management. That's no small feat, although definitely possible.
I think what it would take is the Federal Trade Commission and Congress ruling that software is a product and is covered under the same laws that cover all products. Given the power of lobbyists for the software industry, I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
Seems like there's a pretty big difference between something that is mechanically engineered and something that is software engineered.
Why? Because we hold mechanical engineers to higher standards? I don't think that Windows represents a significantly greater number of man-hours than, say, a modern Boeing aircraft. Why do we expect the Boeing aircraft not to fall from the sky with the aerial equivalent of a Blue Screen Of Death?
The term "product" IMHO applies to something that can be mechanically engineered (constraining myself to the Chrysler vs. software here).
That's exactly what the software industry wants you to believe. They don't want to be held to the same standards that every other industry is held to.
If you try to apply it to SW engineering I don't see how given today's technology it could be warranted as a product.
Why not? That's the reason that Microsoft continues to release bug-filled operating systems while devoting their engineering time into DRM schemes, bad video editors, substandard bundled games, and instant messaging clients.
Chrysler doesn't have to depend on compilers and virtual machines and underlying hardware in the same way that software does...
The average modern vehicle is chock-full of embedded processors. But, because the vehicle as a whole has to be warranted, they make certain that the code is rock-solid rather than being filled with unnecessary frills.
Look at a laser vision correction system. It's got extremely complex software and you don't hear a lot about those crashing while performing surgery.
I really believe, as an embedded systems engineer with over two decades of experience, that software is poor because the companies that produce it face almost no legal consequences for shoddy design and workmanship.
They wouldn't really be a potential market, now would thay[sic]?
Yes, they would. Are you even peripherally aware of what computers are used for?
Would any non-engineering company with 5 employees need anything from Sun?
Because they are a major lawn care business that has a web presence, handles payroll and benefits on their computers, provides web-based scheduling for their clients lawn care needs, and handles advertisement mailings through a database.
In that case, your mythical lawnmowerman could continue to use their Sun hardware and software at their current prices.
Don't talk down to me you smug little shit. The word it "hypothetical", not "mythical."
Ask yourself - is it the engineers that are incompetent?
I just did as you suggested and I answered myself "yes." Cheap is one thing. Badly designed is another. It's no cheaper to make a dash where the controls don't fall to hand. There is no cost savings realized from bad ergonomics. Nor is there a cost savings to be realized from making a car hard to service.
Case in point: the new Thunderbird had the V-8 from the Lincoln LS, DETUNED. Why was it detuned?
There can be many reasons. Ford might not have wanted to have the car viewed as, and compared to, performance cars. They might have had discussions with insurance companies and, like Mazda, Suzuki, and others, detuned the engines to keep the insurance costs down. They might have detuned the engine to produce a more pleasing torque curve. It could be because the body lacked the stiffness to survive long-term with a high-horsepower V8 trying to twist it around the driveshaft. It could have been because they felt that its basic chassis performance was not up to handling that much power. Or it could be just as you surmised.
If you'd watched the lauch today, you would know that's pretty much exactly what Sun is proposing.
You are telling me that Sun will be selling the end-user a product, not a license-to-use, for a one-time fee? Sun will warrant that the product performs as advertised for some reasonable time period (say a year)? You are saying that they will put themselves under the scrutiny of the FTC by labelling their software a "product"?
Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, Steve Jobs, or any other industry big-wig could pronounce that software costs too much and isn't high enough quality and, damn it, {insert one: Microsoft, Sun, Apple} is doing something about it with a 'bold new initiative.' Talk is cheap.
Sun's move is idiotic. They are pricing the software suite at $100 per head. What does that mean? A company which employs five people with computers and 95 people to mow lawns will pay the same as one that employes 100 software engineers. A company which outsources jobs to India will get an additional $100 per American that they lay off. Great. That's your idea of fair pricing?
Stop hiding behind the license-to-use crap and admit that software is a product. Make it do what it is advertised to do and what is described in the manual. If it has bugs, fix them at no cost to the customer. Then charge a fair price for the product and provide the support necessary for people to use it.
You don't see Chrysler telling people that their minivans may crash for no reason and that Chrysler is not liable for damages. Boeing doesn't disclaim all warranties for the fitness of their planes for the purpose of transporting passengers. Trane doesn't tell you that you have to license the firmware in your setback thermostat on a yearly basis or shut down your home heating and AC system. Only the software industry has that kind of gall.
If they were as incompetent as you claim, they would have gone out of business long ago.
Why do you claim that firms with engineering incompetence would have gone out of business? Does that mean that you think that Microsoft's engineering is good? They are not only in business, but are the largest software firm in the world.
You seem to think that the average consumer can make an intelligent decision when it comes to buying a complex piece of technology. They cannot. In general, their decisions are based on stupid shit like styling, color, advertising, and image. That's why there are so many four cylinder, front wheel drive, economy cars with wings on the back. It's why there are so many crappy sounding boom boxes covered with chrome and lights. Those customers keep incompetent engineers employed.
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No fear, I don't live in a country as positively nazi as the USA.
So a country which has civil laws to protect people from harassment is "positively nazi"? What country do you live in where you can falsely accuse people of something without fear of them having legal recourse?
If the info you posted is not the spammer, I hope that the person who gets bombarded with phone calls, catalogs, and hate mail, subpeonas your IP address from Slashdot, subpeonas your identity from your ISP, and sues the living shit out of you.
meaning either two regular EPROMs or the non-standard 16 bit EPROMs. That adds cost.
But you fail to consider that the PC had multiple chips for the BIOS and that it cost no more to pair them for 16 bits than it cost to make them sequential for 8 bits. In fact, it could be argued that it was a bit cheaper to pair them up because it only required decoding a single CE (chip enable) line whereas putting them sequentially required decoding of two CE lines.
That adds cost. Further, decoding a 16 bit data path is considerably more expensive, this was particularly the case back in the old days when the popular peripherals, i.e. 8250 and 8255, had an 8 bit data path.
You're mixing up address bits and data bits. You decode addresses, not data. Using an 8250 UART or an 8255 PIO simply mean tying the lower 8-bits of the data bus to it with a chip-select derived from the decoded address.
It's a legacy concern, but it made the 8088 significantly less expensive.
Having been wire-wrapping computers back then (yes, I am *that* old) I was pretty familiar with the costs trade-offs. Using the 8088 had only a very tiny impact on price -- which is why so many clones came out with the 8086 at lower prices than the PC. I won't dispute that there was a cost difference, but it was realized in things like data buffers, and that was not a big savings since it was a handful of TTL chips.
he 8088 was and is a cheaper version of the 8086.
'Cheaper' refers to price. It was simply a chip intended for retrofitting into existing 8-bit systems, albeit with no small performance loss. Pricewise, it was about on par with the 8086.
If deodorant of any type is the cause, then India will be unaffected by this phenomenon.
Closer, but still no cigar.
The 8088 was not a cheaper version of the 8086. It was a version of the 8086 that used an 8-bit external bus so that it could be easily retrofitted into existing 8-bit systems which, back then, tended to have a passive backplane (like S100) and plug-in cards for RAM, CPU, serial port, diskette controller, etc. The thought was that designers would come up with new CPU cards and keep all of their existing investment in 8-bit hardware (Compupro, for instance, had an 85/88 CPU card which included an 8085 and an 8088). IBM elected (stupidly) to use the 8088 in a new design to save some pittance on external components (buffers, latches, etc.). As a result, the PC was about 40% slower than it would have been had it been designed with the 8086.
I guess you're getting confused.
Or you did not express yourself well.
You're confusing "amount of monetary damage" with "corporation's money". Why do big corporations deserve less protection than small ones? Why can't we just use the amount of damage, not the size of corporations, as the determining factor?
Because big corporations can afford losses that would devastate small ones and ruin individuals. If Microsoft gets socked with $100,000 in bandwidth charges for a DDoS attack, it's petty change to them. If some anti-spam activist gets DDoS attacked and his colocation facility charges him $50,000, it could bankrupt him. So he's the one that needs the protection.
Also, I think that non-commercial speech needs and deserves more protection than commercial speech. Microsoft, IBM, Gateway, General Motors, RJ Reynolds, and the RIAA can afford to hire teams of attorneys and pay for subpeonas to find out who is behind the attacks. They can buy more bandwidth in order to weather the attacks. Some guy who runs a not-for-profit blacklist cannot. That's why, despite number DDoS attacks, Microsoft and the RIAA still have web sites while these anti-spam activists were forced to shut down.
Your final jab about who I voted for (Gore, incidentally) is immature and senseless. Thank you for making me look good in relationship.
Actually, it showed how poorly you communicated your belief system.
A one million dollar loss sounds worse than a thousand dollar loss, you know. If you've got a finite amount of resources, _someone_ is going to end up getting screwed, so shouldn't we handle the big stuff first?
So you are advocating that the limited law enforcement budgets be spent to help those who already have the most money? To hell with some guy who's spent his own income trying to maintain a blacklist of spammers' IP addresses. You want the feds to step in and protect Microsoft, the RIAA, and other moneyed organizations from cyber crime.
You voted for Bush/Cheney, didn't you?
I don't have to earn the right to talk down to you.
Yes, you do, and you have not.
Just like you didn't have to earn the right to label me negatively.
Now you are simply lying. I reread my post and I did not call you names or "label [you] negatively." I defy you to show me a quote from the previous message where I supposedly "labelled" you negatively. Typical right-wing arguing tactic: Lie about what your opponent said. But, since you've already accused me of having labelled you negatively when I did not, I won't hesitate to do it now.
If we ruin our economy doing something that does nothing to help us, we're as dumb the average lefty.
Liberals are far brighter, on average, than conservatives, so that argument is simply hollow. If conservatives were so bright, then Ivy League colleges would be teeming with conservatives -- and that's clearly not the case.
If you want to see how to ruin an economy, just look to President Bush and his administration. He's doled out huge tax cuts to industries that outsourced U.S. jobs to overseas workers. He's increased government spending, so that we will all pay interest on the debt he is accruing for decades to come. He is Mr. Big Government, increasing the size of the federal work force by 1 million people. He's given huge tax cuts to the rich by borrowing money that the government doesn't have. If there's a surplus, he wants a tax cut because "it's not the government's money" and if there is a horrible deficit, he wants a tax cut to "stimulate the economy." Gee, if everything is a reason to cut taxes, then that doesn't work out very well mathematically, does it? He's taken $500+ from every man, woman, and child in the U.S. to pay for his war in Iraq.
Every time that someone proposes sensible environmental legislation, we hear the same stupid argument about "ruining the economy" from the right-wing assholes: "Requiring catalytic converters on cars will ruin the economy." "Taking lead out of gasoline will ruin the economy." "Limiting water pollution will ruin the economy." "Stopping the use of high-sulphur coal in powerplants will ruin the economy." "Requiring better fuel economy (CAFE) will ruin the economy." Bullshit. Limiting air pollution will take some small quantity of money away from big business while improving the living condition of every man, woman, and child on the earth. Did you grow up with asthma? I did. I know what it's like to not know if you will have enough air to stay alive.
You're typing on a computer. You know what kind of damage merely producing that computer did to the environment? Hypocrite.
Did I say anywhere that there should be legislation requiring zero pollution from all industries? No. Use (or get) some common sense. When right-wing Republicans are sponsoring Senate legislation preventing states from imposing limits on pollution from lawn mowers and other off-road machinery, that's a completely different situation. Ever notice how Republicans scream about "state's rights" until a state wants to do something that they don't like?
And lastly, that quote is irrelevant. The data speaks for itself, and your quote there is merely an opinion, even if the opinion of the author of the study.
The quote is very relevent. It's from someone much smarter than you who has a much better understanding of the problem.
Not really. If you're that dependent on your speed and the reliability, then you need a different class of service. As long as you're expecting first-class service from a standby (coach) ticket, I think you'll be frustrated with the results.
So you admit that you were wrong in claiming that I could "grow a spine, cancel the cable internet, and stick with dialup for a while longer"?
You are mistaking artificial, ex-post-facto limitations put on the service with the actual capability of the service itself. The residential service that I had was fast enough and reliable enough (once the problems were worked out on the cable company's end). But after I got it, they changed the rules. They banned servers. They blocked ports. They put caps in place. Then they said that they would charge me a hefty premium for a SOHO service that removed the restrictions that they added.
This illustrates a common misconception people have that faster equals more. It doesn't. It simply means faster.
I have no "misconception" about it at all. What I said is that faster service is of very limited value to many people if they can't download/upload the quantity of data that they need to.
Mine was surprisingly accurate, thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the power that a gaseous orb a zillion miles away exhibits upon my laptop.
So your boss is out of town right now? Still, you better hope he doesn't find out what you just called him.
Soooo...do you suggest we all sit around saying that is hasn't been proven until it is too late to do anything about it? As in "I'm not 100% sure that car is going to hit me, so why move?"
Thank you! I just don't believe that it would be a disaster if we reduced pollution -- even if it was not the cause of global warming. I don't know about you, but I'm not a big pollution fan in general.
It has not been proven that global warming has been mostly caused by CO2/other greenhouse gasses.
So what? I don't care how we got where we are. The question is whether we are going to push ourselves over the cliff with continued pollution. Heat stroke might be caused primarily by the sun, but I'm not going to be found dead at the equator with a winter parka on.
Let's look at the two options:
1. We can do nothing about pollution.
2. We can regulate pollution.
If we take the first approach and discover 30 years hence that pollution does cause global warming, we could find ourselves headed for an unavoidable climactic disaster.
If we take the second approach and find out that it has had no significant effect on global warming, the result will be cleaner air, fewer people with asthma, less acid rain, less soot on homes, cars, and offices, and, maybe, a tiny increase in the cost of living to pay for pollution controls. My guess is that the increased costs will be more than compensated for by lower medical costs.
You see?
Don't talk down to me. You haven't earned that right.
Science isn't about who has the most politically correct theory.
Nor is science about coming up with a theory that best helps your political allies in the oil industry.
(disclaimer: I'm not saying that article proves global warming to be beyond our control, but it does provide strong evidence.)
No, it does not. It provides strong evidence that we don't have total control. As the author of the study said, "I suspect that the greenhouse lobby have under-estimated the role of solar variability in climate change. However I am not in favour of polluting the atmosphere, for whatever reason."
According to the article, Derek Mueller of Laval University said "It is difficult to tease out what is due to global warming and what is due to regional warming." He didn't call global warming a "myth." He accepted global warming as fact and only said that there was impossible to say whether it, or regional warming, was the cause of this particular event.
Here's an excerpt from the EPA's web site:If the EPA web site under Bush/Cheney (who are pawns of the oil industry) acknowledges global warming as fact, that should give you head-in-the-sand types a clue. Wouldn't it be terrible if we reduced pollution and it didn't fix global warming? Oh the horror!
but it all comes down to a choice: Do you put up with the monopoly and enjoy whatever speed you get, or do you grow a spine, cancel the cable internet, and stick with dialup for a while longer.
I run a domain complete with web server, mail server, FTP server, secure tunnel, Telnet server, and HTTP proxy. Dial up is simply not an option. That's like suggesting that one could "grow a spine, cancel their electric service, and put up with candles and fires for a while longer."
I've even read that Comcast will be doubling the available bandwidth for their cable internet customers (from 1.5 mbps to 3.0 mbps) sometime in December.
And if you use it, then they'll kick you off for excessive bandwidth usage. What good does it do to have 3.0mpbs of throughput if 30 minutes of usage per day will put you over their (unpublished) cap?
In areas where you do have a choice between broadband providers (DSL vs. Cable, or multiple DSLs, etc), the free market should be able to sort this out.
The problem is that many areas have no competition. So that's where the cable franchises want to be. They move in and then use their monopoly position to bend consumers over. Monopolies, whether government sanctioned or naturally occurring need oversight and regulation.
Because an RTOS will often have a human life at stake it has to bedesigned to higher standards. All that extra testing, design, and higher-skilled engineering time costs significantly more $$, and may be enough to make the costs of an OS prohibitive to a commodity PC.
Surprisingly, many RTOSs have lower per-machine licensing costs than does Windows. QNX is a nice example of a Unix-like RTOS complete with a powerful, graphical front-end. It's reliable, small, and reasonably priced.
I think that engineering software for reliability does not cost any more, and, in fact probably costs less, than engineering it for unnecessary whiz-bang features. Again, I go back to my Windows example. Why, when the OS is bug-ridden and a security nightmare, is Microsoft investing money in useless bundled software like their insanely bad photo editor ("imaging"), their horrible video capture and editing package ("Microsoft Movie Maker"), MSN Messenger, and Windows Media Player?
I firmly believe that, if software were treated as a product, Windows would be much smaller, much more robust, and would be an operating system rather than a collection of bad tools and a bloated, unstable OS. You would buy Windows and if you needed a photo editor, you would choose one from the marketplace. If you didn't, the OS would not force one onto your system.
I think this lack of control is probably the biggest deterrant to OS manufacturers; If they were the only ones designing software for their OS they probably *could* warrant it.
Analogy: A kid buys a Honda Civic. He decides that he will make it a race car by the installation of a wing on the back. Because he mounts the wing behind the rear wheels, the down-force actually unweights the driven front wheels, causing the car to hydroplane at speed. Honda's not responsible. Their warranty doesn't cover that.
If there were a software warranty and a modification that you made (e.g., a screen saver with a buggy driver) caused Windows to bomb, it would not be Microsoft's responsibility to fix it. All that Microsoft would be responsible for was assuring that the OS operated as advertised -- including claims about the system calls and the end-user functionality.
But I think it will take a few years of cultural inertia breaking before we could see an OS which could be warranted as a product. It would take a change to the mindset of engineers, engineering managers, marketing (who drives feature roadmaps) and executive management. That's no small feat, although definitely possible.
I think what it would take is the Federal Trade Commission and Congress ruling that software is a product and is covered under the same laws that cover all products. Given the power of lobbyists for the software industry, I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
Seems like there's a pretty big difference between something that is mechanically engineered and something that is software engineered.
Why? Because we hold mechanical engineers to higher standards? I don't think that Windows represents a significantly greater number of man-hours than, say, a modern Boeing aircraft. Why do we expect the Boeing aircraft not to fall from the sky with the aerial equivalent of a Blue Screen Of Death?
The term "product" IMHO applies to something that can be mechanically engineered (constraining myself to the Chrysler vs. software here).
That's exactly what the software industry wants you to believe. They don't want to be held to the same standards that every other industry is held to.
If you try to apply it to SW engineering I don't see how given today's technology it could be warranted as a product.
Why not? That's the reason that Microsoft continues to release bug-filled operating systems while devoting their engineering time into DRM schemes, bad video editors, substandard bundled games, and instant messaging clients.
Chrysler doesn't have to depend on compilers and virtual machines and underlying hardware in the same way that software does...
The average modern vehicle is chock-full of embedded processors. But, because the vehicle as a whole has to be warranted, they make certain that the code is rock-solid rather than being filled with unnecessary frills.
Look at a laser vision correction system. It's got extremely complex software and you don't hear a lot about those crashing while performing surgery.
I really believe, as an embedded systems engineer with over two decades of experience, that software is poor because the companies that produce it face almost no legal consequences for shoddy design and workmanship.
Well, that's a conversation ender, isn't it.
Yep -- unless you feel like apologizing.
They wouldn't really be a potential market, now would thay[sic]?
Yes, they would. Are you even peripherally aware of what computers are used for?
Would any non-engineering company with 5 employees need anything from Sun?
Because they are a major lawn care business that has a web presence, handles payroll and benefits on their computers, provides web-based scheduling for their clients lawn care needs, and handles advertisement mailings through a database.
In that case, your mythical lawnmowerman could continue to use their Sun hardware and software at their current prices.
Don't talk down to me you smug little shit. The word it "hypothetical", not "mythical."
Ask yourself - is it the engineers that are incompetent?
I just did as you suggested and I answered myself "yes." Cheap is one thing. Badly designed is another. It's no cheaper to make a dash where the controls don't fall to hand. There is no cost savings realized from bad ergonomics. Nor is there a cost savings to be realized from making a car hard to service.
Case in point: the new Thunderbird had the V-8 from the Lincoln LS, DETUNED. Why was it detuned?
There can be many reasons. Ford might not have wanted to have the car viewed as, and compared to, performance cars. They might have had discussions with insurance companies and, like Mazda, Suzuki, and others, detuned the engines to keep the insurance costs down. They might have detuned the engine to produce a more pleasing torque curve. It could be because the body lacked the stiffness to survive long-term with a high-horsepower V8 trying to twist it around the driveshaft. It could have been because they felt that its basic chassis performance was not up to handling that much power. Or it could be just as you surmised.
If you'd watched the lauch today, you would know that's pretty much exactly what Sun is proposing.
You are telling me that Sun will be selling the end-user a product, not a license-to-use, for a one-time fee? Sun will warrant that the product performs as advertised for some reasonable time period (say a year)? You are saying that they will put themselves under the scrutiny of the FTC by labelling their software a "product"?
Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, Steve Jobs, or any other industry big-wig could pronounce that software costs too much and isn't high enough quality and, damn it, {insert one: Microsoft, Sun, Apple} is doing something about it with a 'bold new initiative.' Talk is cheap.
Sun's move is idiotic. They are pricing the software suite at $100 per head. What does that mean? A company which employs five people with computers and 95 people to mow lawns will pay the same as one that employes 100 software engineers. A company which outsources jobs to India will get an additional $100 per American that they lay off. Great. That's your idea of fair pricing?
Here's a new strategy:
Stop hiding behind the license-to-use crap and admit that software is a product. Make it do what it is advertised to do and what is described in the manual. If it has bugs, fix them at no cost to the customer. Then charge a fair price for the product and provide the support necessary for people to use it.
You don't see Chrysler telling people that their minivans may crash for no reason and that Chrysler is not liable for damages. Boeing doesn't disclaim all warranties for the fitness of their planes for the purpose of transporting passengers. Trane doesn't tell you that you have to license the firmware in your setback thermostat on a yearly basis or shut down your home heating and AC system. Only the software industry has that kind of gall.
If they were as incompetent as you claim, they would have gone out of business long ago.
Why do you claim that firms with engineering incompetence would have gone out of business? Does that mean that you think that Microsoft's engineering is good? They are not only in business, but are the largest software firm in the world.
You seem to think that the average consumer can make an intelligent decision when it comes to buying a complex piece of technology. They cannot. In general, their decisions are based on stupid shit like styling, color, advertising, and image. That's why there are so many four cylinder, front wheel drive, economy cars with wings on the back. It's why there are so many crappy sounding boom boxes covered with chrome and lights. Those customers keep incompetent engineers employed.