Although Leahy and his colleagues gave Justice Department officials much of what they were seeking, they rejected an administration request that would have allowed the indefinite jailing without trial of noncitizens suspected of involvement in terrorism.
Has Bush's administration actually read the Constitution? How could anyone in this country possibly request this??? I can't believe this was even suggested by government employees our president represents. The Constitution was intended to protect all people in this country. But the administration asked for the Justice Department to get the right to walk into my friends' homes and take them to jail, indefinitely, without trial, just if someone points a finger in their direction. Has McCarthy come back to life and is he working at the White House? What the hell are those people thinking? (end rant)
Sorry, needed to get that out, and my co-workers are tired of hearing my complaints all day.
It's very simple. The US Constitution rightfully contains the following:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Credit card purchases, bank transactions, customer loyalty cards, phone bills, and other such personal information can not be investigated without probable cause, details of what is being searched, and consent of a judge. Getting a universal tracking card basically gives up that right given by the fourth amendment. So yes, we can be tracked by corporations, and corporations could potentially share that information with other corporations, but the government may not be given any such information without warrant. This card gives the government the right to track us without warrant, without even probably cause.
For example, let's say I protest outside the congressional office of a senator. I have a right to free speech, but there's nothing preventing him from tracking me down and possibly using my personal information against me, like blackmail.
These ID cards can only be used at the expense of civil liberties.
Tampa officials sought to close down the house because it allegedly violated the city's zoning rule, Section 27-523, which largely prohibits in residential areas "any premises . . . on which is offered to members of the public . . . for consideration, entertainment featuring . . . specified sexual activities."
Guess that means in Tampa you're not allowed to bring home a date.
I can't believe this case even went to court. Anyone could videotape a porn movie in a private house in that municipality and later sell it in a store. But it's not ok to transmit the video over the internet?
The government really needs to stay out of people's homes.
It's quite simple. 2 apps containing the exact same functionality. One has twice as much code as the other. Assuming all code is used for all functionality, the one with more code will execute more code to do the same procedures, and will therefore be slower. What CS (Common Sense) school did you come out of?
Re:RAM used after boot-up!?!?!?
on
Linux on the Desktop
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· Score: 3, Interesting
And along with the other poster's response, it's about far more than purchasing more ram. Bigger footprint, with little data in memory, means more code is in memory. That's more code running. That's a slower workstation. Just the simple use of more ram means slightly slower processing speeds. Bloated apps = less efficient apps = slower apps and slower workstation.
We have programmers at my company with your opinion... and they write the slowest software in this office. 2 weeks ago our VP yelled at them because of complaints of speed. I sure hope you're not a software developer.
The first sentence is perfect. I think the rest needs to be reworded for the congressman: "Many people are not satisfied with the quality and features of software provided by corporations. Many open-source developers see the free market as not fostering the best-of-the-best in the software industry. Most are also disatsfied with the monopoly which is providing most of our software options. These feelings motivate them to make high-quality, useful software."
There's a great, short book explaining how citizens can make themselves heard and bring about change. Don't be turned off by its title. It's an excellent read by a man who was very influential in his day. Having read it, I can imagine that someone in your position could get quite a few ideas out of it. It's not a direct answer, but I hope it helps.
Judges themselves being watched may set a disturbing precendent. Loss of privacy may spread to every sector of government. Corporations already basically do this to their employees, but it's still a disputed, fuzzy line. This may solidify their rights in monitoring employees. As corporations and government get more influence over our private lives, we may eventually lose privacy to the point where it exists no more.
Interestingly, though, I think that if this concept spreads to the legislative branch, our reps will not like it one bit. They will undoubtedly try to pass a law preventing government employees from being watched. So in the end maybe this'll turn out in favor of privacy.
True, but in this particular instance, monopolies are bad. Relying on one and only one vendor means the government is handcuffed to their business model, bug fix decisions and schedule, and feature enhancements. They can't look to another company to add an enhancement to the OS if it's closed, much less by a monopoly.
... it's rather upsetting and embarassing to see that my country, touting itself as the pillar of freedom, still chooses to favor software from a company that itself identified as a monopoly. You would think, if politicians and tech decision makers were completely unbiased (a utopian dream) that they would look at all of the options, all of the angles, and all of the possible side affects of using proprietary, closed-source software from a monopoly. At the very least, heads of IT departments at US corporations should be looking at every resource available to them, not just one OS and set of software - as my company unfortunately does. I would expect the self-described experts to switch to open-source (as applicable) first, then the non-tech-oriented government to possibly follow. But for my country, mostly thinking it has the best government yet invented by society, to be the last to listen to some of the population and see the benefits of open-source software is very upsetting.
You've forgotten the fundamental purpose of a company: to make money. These aren't charitable organizations. They live by supply and demand.
The old standards get in the way of the new, and for that reason alone should they be phased out.
The old standards are far cheaper than the new (one of the first posts is a joke about 486s going for $3, but he's making a good point indirectly). Without the profit margin of using the older technology, the money for research and testing of new products would barely exist for many companies. They must strike a balance between offering new, expensive products, or older, cheaper *and sufficient* technologies. Not every embedded product needs the speed of an Athlon.
I only have experience (but lots of it) with Oracle and - unfortunately - SQL Server. Until SQL Server 6.5, I think it sucked compared to Oracle. But now they're more on level, although Oracle has always, and still does, handle huge data warehouses much better.
That aside, I worked for years with a 4TB data warehouse for a major credit card company. It was Oracle (7?) on a Sun E10000 (22 processors, 1GB ram) and it was screaming. We barely used any "advanced" features that were unique to Oracle. But what impressed me was Oracle's support. They had an office a few miles away and would send DBAs over to help out. Our DBAs were excellent, but when it came to very low-level tweaking, these Oracle DBAs knew their stuff. They would mess around with the OS to keep it as efficient as possible. And if there was ever any kind of failure or error, they came over to check it out.
Now granted, my company paid big bucks for the support, but at the moment that sort of support can't be found for an open source dbms. These were highly skilled experts in the database they supported. I realize (partly from the article) that the current goal of open source databases is to grow in the low-end market - smaller systems and such - and I'd bet they'd stand up to large warehouses. But one big advantage Oracle and DB2, and to a much lesser extend SQL Server, have is their support. You can have a highly skilled technician in your office very quickly if you need it, beyond the support of a consultant could provide. I'd like to see that kind of support in open-source companies. That's when I think they'll give closed-source databases a true run for their money... literally.
I read this cool article in Wired about forging the strongest possible steel... using computers to design it. If you're into knives and swords (like I am) you may find it especially interesting.
You've hit upon a cumbersome problem in computer software. Computer screens and user interfaces are (almost) all designed for 2 dimensions. It's incredibly difficult to add a third dimension. Some good engines have been around for a while to draw 3-d and move around it. But creating a user interface to allow you to modify the world is tricky. For now all 3-d design must be done with a 2-d interface (even a 3-d input device is rendered 2-d on the screen). The best example is CAD software. Traditionally you draw in 2-d, then render into 3. But that's cumbersome software with a decent learning curve. I have yet to see a *good* user interface for drawing a 3-d world that's relatively simple to use. If anyone knows of any, I'd love to see them...
This article covers three distributed OS options, with some intro explination of the difficulties. I would think the easiest (not necessarily the best) solution could be to use Mosix (listed last in the article) and thread your application to a logical extent. Mosix won't interfere with your current linux boxes, just add it on. The tasks will automatically be load-balanced among the machines.
I can't speak for their applications, but from a pure UI point of view KDE and Win95/98 are very similar. Instead of a start button, there's a K. Menus are menus, you navigate through them the same. Running programs in the bar at the bottom, clock in lower-right corner. Upper-right X in window closes it. Other than that any differences are in the apps they use, not KDE.
Actually, I've heard that they lose money on every sale. The games sold more than make up for it. I know for a fact the XBox is the same: it'll sell for about 70% of the price it cost to make (published in Wired and other places). Price wars seemed to have forced this odd situation. Since Sony makes money from every game sold, and they know roughly the average number of games a console user will buy, they can max profit by undercutting competition in prices, selling more games (which have a HUGE profit margin), and make a bundle.
And related to this, my plan is to by a few XBoxes after someone hacks a linux distro for it. I won't buy any games, it looks good just as a high-end graphics linux box (and far cheaper than a comparable PC). And to top it off, I'll basically be taking money from Microsoft.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying, so if I'm wrong, please speak up!
I had to read your post twice, but are you saying that people are installing Win2K and NT with the IIS service automatically running and they haven't noticed??? Wow. The reason I'm surprised is that 2k and NT are usually used by people who are at least a little tech savvy. They're not standard home OSes. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, but it sure doesn't take a server admin to see the little IIS icon next to your clock with a green arrow showing it's running. Move the mouse over it and it says "IIS - Running". That's pure incompetance on the user's part (and bad design on the OS install to have it run auto by default).
If Microsoft can't even patch their own servers then how can anyone expect others to do it properly? The best solution (in the long run), is to switch to a server which has less vulnerabilities.
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Sorry, needed to get that out, and my co-workers are tired of hearing my complaints all day.
For example, let's say I protest outside the congressional office of a senator. I have a right to free speech, but there's nothing preventing him from tracking me down and possibly using my personal information against me, like blackmail.
These ID cards can only be used at the expense of civil liberties.
Tampa officials sought to close down the house because it allegedly violated the city's zoning rule, Section 27-523, which largely prohibits in residential areas "any premises . . . on which is offered to members of the public . . . for consideration, entertainment featuring . . . specified sexual activities."
Guess that means in Tampa you're not allowed to bring home a date.
I can't believe this case even went to court. Anyone could videotape a porn movie in a private house in that municipality and later sell it in a store. But it's not ok to transmit the video over the internet?
The government really needs to stay out of people's homes.
It's quite simple. 2 apps containing the exact same functionality. One has twice as much code as the other. Assuming all code is used for all functionality, the one with more code will execute more code to do the same procedures, and will therefore be slower. What CS (Common Sense) school did you come out of?
And along with the other poster's response, it's about far more than purchasing more ram. Bigger footprint, with little data in memory, means more code is in memory. That's more code running. That's a slower workstation. Just the simple use of more ram means slightly slower processing speeds. Bloated apps = less efficient apps = slower apps and slower workstation.
We have programmers at my company with your opinion... and they write the slowest software in this office. 2 weeks ago our VP yelled at them because of complaints of speed. I sure hope you're not a software developer.
The first sentence is perfect. I think the rest needs to be reworded for the congressman: "Many people are not satisfied with the quality and features of software provided by corporations. Many open-source developers see the free market as not fostering the best-of-the-best in the software industry. Most are also disatsfied with the monopoly which is providing most of our software options. These feelings motivate them to make high-quality, useful software."
There's a great, short book explaining how citizens can make themselves heard and bring about change. Don't be turned off by its title. It's an excellent read by a man who was very influential in his day. Having read it, I can imagine that someone in your position could get quite a few ideas out of it. It's not a direct answer, but I hope it helps.
Please at least try the links in the article. 2 clicks got me this. It's everything on their stance of the issue.
Judges themselves being watched may set a disturbing precendent. Loss of privacy may spread to every sector of government. Corporations already basically do this to their employees, but it's still a disputed, fuzzy line. This may solidify their rights in monitoring employees. As corporations and government get more influence over our private lives, we may eventually lose privacy to the point where it exists no more.
Interestingly, though, I think that if this concept spreads to the legislative branch, our reps will not like it one bit. They will undoubtedly try to pass a law preventing government employees from being watched. So in the end maybe this'll turn out in favor of privacy.
But you can't undercut 0 or you'll get a divide by 0 error (or Overflow in Visual Basic!?! - how retarded is that???).
Speaking purely of licensing, MS can never undercut free apps. That's one reason why they've been looking to other revenue sources.
True, but in this particular instance, monopolies are bad. Relying on one and only one vendor means the government is handcuffed to their business model, bug fix decisions and schedule, and feature enhancements. They can't look to another company to add an enhancement to the OS if it's closed, much less by a monopoly.
... it's rather upsetting and embarassing to see that my country, touting itself as the pillar of freedom, still chooses to favor software from a company that itself identified as a monopoly. You would think, if politicians and tech decision makers were completely unbiased (a utopian dream) that they would look at all of the options, all of the angles, and all of the possible side affects of using proprietary, closed-source software from a monopoly. At the very least, heads of IT departments at US corporations should be looking at every resource available to them, not just one OS and set of software - as my company unfortunately does. I would expect the self-described experts to switch to open-source (as applicable) first, then the non-tech-oriented government to possibly follow. But for my country, mostly thinking it has the best government yet invented by society, to be the last to listen to some of the population and see the benefits of open-source software is very upsetting.
Why the need for all the tweaks?
Job security.
Seems to me a decent DB system should hide and deal with as much complexity on it's own as possible.
From the software developer's perspective, I agree. From an admin perspective, the more customizations available, the better - just like in an OS.
I sure hope Britney's real...
You've forgotten the fundamental purpose of a company: to make money. These aren't charitable organizations. They live by supply and demand.
The old standards get in the way of the new, and for that reason alone should they be phased out.
The old standards are far cheaper than the new (one of the first posts is a joke about 486s going for $3, but he's making a good point indirectly). Without the profit margin of using the older technology, the money for research and testing of new products would barely exist for many companies. They must strike a balance between offering new, expensive products, or older, cheaper *and sufficient* technologies. Not every embedded product needs the speed of an Athlon.
I only have experience (but lots of it) with Oracle and - unfortunately - SQL Server. Until SQL Server 6.5, I think it sucked compared to Oracle. But now they're more on level, although Oracle has always, and still does, handle huge data warehouses much better.
That aside, I worked for years with a 4TB data warehouse for a major credit card company. It was Oracle (7?) on a Sun E10000 (22 processors, 1GB ram) and it was screaming. We barely used any "advanced" features that were unique to Oracle. But what impressed me was Oracle's support. They had an office a few miles away and would send DBAs over to help out. Our DBAs were excellent, but when it came to very low-level tweaking, these Oracle DBAs knew their stuff. They would mess around with the OS to keep it as efficient as possible. And if there was ever any kind of failure or error, they came over to check it out.
Now granted, my company paid big bucks for the support, but at the moment that sort of support can't be found for an open source dbms. These were highly skilled experts in the database they supported. I realize (partly from the article) that the current goal of open source databases is to grow in the low-end market - smaller systems and such - and I'd bet they'd stand up to large warehouses. But one big advantage Oracle and DB2, and to a much lesser extend SQL Server, have is their support. You can have a highly skilled technician in your office very quickly if you need it, beyond the support of a consultant could provide. I'd like to see that kind of support in open-source companies. That's when I think they'll give closed-source databases a true run for their money... literally.
I read this cool article in Wired about forging the strongest possible steel... using computers to design it. If you're into knives and swords (like I am) you may find it especially interesting.
You've hit upon a cumbersome problem in computer software. Computer screens and user interfaces are (almost) all designed for 2 dimensions. It's incredibly difficult to add a third dimension. Some good engines have been around for a while to draw 3-d and move around it. But creating a user interface to allow you to modify the world is tricky. For now all 3-d design must be done with a 2-d interface (even a 3-d input device is rendered 2-d on the screen). The best example is CAD software. Traditionally you draw in 2-d, then render into 3. But that's cumbersome software with a decent learning curve. I have yet to see a *good* user interface for drawing a 3-d world that's relatively simple to use. If anyone knows of any, I'd love to see them...
This article covers three distributed OS options, with some intro explination of the difficulties. I would think the easiest (not necessarily the best) solution could be to use Mosix (listed last in the article) and thread your application to a logical extent. Mosix won't interfere with your current linux boxes, just add it on. The tasks will automatically be load-balanced among the machines.
I can't speak for their applications, but from a pure UI point of view KDE and Win95/98 are very similar. Instead of a start button, there's a K. Menus are menus, you navigate through them the same. Running programs in the bar at the bottom, clock in lower-right corner. Upper-right X in window closes it. Other than that any differences are in the apps they use, not KDE.
Actually, I've heard that they lose money on every sale. The games sold more than make up for it. I know for a fact the XBox is the same: it'll sell for about 70% of the price it cost to make (published in Wired and other places). Price wars seemed to have forced this odd situation. Since Sony makes money from every game sold, and they know roughly the average number of games a console user will buy, they can max profit by undercutting competition in prices, selling more games (which have a HUGE profit margin), and make a bundle.
And related to this, my plan is to by a few XBoxes after someone hacks a linux distro for it. I won't buy any games, it looks good just as a high-end graphics linux box (and far cheaper than a comparable PC). And to top it off, I'll basically be taking money from Microsoft.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying, so if I'm wrong, please speak up!
I had to read your post twice, but are you saying that people are installing Win2K and NT with the IIS service automatically running and they haven't noticed??? Wow. The reason I'm surprised is that 2k and NT are usually used by people who are at least a little tech savvy. They're not standard home OSes. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, but it sure doesn't take a server admin to see the little IIS icon next to your clock with a green arrow showing it's running. Move the mouse over it and it says "IIS - Running". That's pure incompetance on the user's part (and bad design on the OS install to have it run auto by default).
If Microsoft can't even patch their own servers then how can anyone expect others to do it properly? The best solution (in the long run), is to switch to a server which has less vulnerabilities.
- He wasn't arrested for speaking.
- The finger was pointed at him by Adobe - a corporation.
- Corporations pushed for the DMCA.
Thanks for prooving my point.