Yes! Giving them the same amount of money a week later would REALLY prove a point. You stick it to those execs!
Surprisingly enough it probably would have at least some effect. Tese days the Hollywood blockbuster films rely on huge opening weekends and huge first weeks to create buzz, attention and momentum for a film. Just consider how much time the media spends discussing which film opened bigger this weekend. If such a boycott actually took place on a large scale it could conceivably suck a lot of the thunder out of Episode 3s opening week and probably create significant negative buzz about the film "not living up to hype" with regard to its failure to open as big as expected. Sure the geeks will go later, but the people that don't care as much will come away with a negative view of the film.
Of course all of this presupposes that the proposed boycott actualy occurs on a mass scale. Which it simply won't. This guy and his friends giving Lucasa the money a week late is, as you say, going to make no difference at all.
I, myself, am simply planning on not seeing the film at all. Perhaps if it's on TV, or a second hand DVD selling for $1 I'll consider it. It doesn't take a huge act of will power - the first two sucked. Badly. Why on earth would I care about this one, which sounds like it has the potential to be even worse?
Modded troll in minutes. Record time. Congratulations to those who choose to cover their ears and chant "la la la la la".
In part because it was largely an anecdote that ran counter to a lot of peoples experiences of modern distros. I could tell you horror stories I had with trying to install Windows on a machine and failing to get it to boot properly for hours trying all manner of things - the problem eventually solved by booting the damn thing with GRUB instead of the windows bootloader. That doesn't mean Windows sucks nor that it isn't ready for the desktop, it just means I had a sucky experience.
If you could actually cite some clear specific reasons (as opposed to vague "everything is unstable/broken/hard" or anecdotes of something not working right for you that usually works fine for everyone else) people might actually listen. You could try making arguments about the ease of 3rd party software installation, or the current infancy of the efforts to provide compatability between KDE and GNOME apps, or the lack of certain significant applications for various major fields (accounting, CAD, whatever), or the lack of Linux support from hardware manufacturers. Then again, all of those issues are undergoing steady improvement, or could change rapidly if there was any significant uptake of Desktop Linux, so maybe they don't let you rant quite the way you want...
He'll get demolished in the primaries. The possible Republican candidates in 4 years time are: McCain, Giuliani, Schwarzenegger. The ticket will be come pairing of 2 out of those 3. Of course Schwarzenegger still needs the constitutional amendment... but you can bet the GOP will be pushing hard for that - a Republican candidate who has a decent chance of carrying California? That right there is an automatic win.
No, seriously. we'll still be feeling the economic effects of 9/11, or if there has been a more recent significant attck (not necessarily even on US soil) it will be blamed on that.
The terrorists are the enemy, the source of fear, and the thing that can be blamed for anything bad, because they are the source of all evil in the world.
If I were George W Bush I would activate ALL military reservists, enact the draft, and send mass troops to Iraq to disarm their entire nation and impose martial law. Oh, and by the way build the Marine base right over there. Set the price of oil about $5 a barrel and start loading up the tankers.
But you see, he won't do that, or even anything remotely like that. A Republican House and Senate and no concerns abour re-election? Sure, but he still has to contend with world opinion, and marching in a shitload of troops to occupy the country then proceeding to bleed Iraq of all its oil for the US... well that wouldn't go over well.
I know, I know, you don't care about world opinion, the rest of the world can go and fuck themselves... but actually you need the rest of the world. The US is running an absolutely unbelievably massive current account deficit. That means your imports are hundreds of billions of dollars more than your exports. That is, you're importing an unbelievable amount of stuff from the rest of the world. If you piss them off enough, you will be in very very serious trouble.
Establishing freedom in the middle east. Be sure, this is a strategic, not a tactical, vision. If Iraq is a free, stable country in 5-10 years, then in 20-30 years we will likely have change following in the other countries
And if the destabilised Iraq collapses into an Islamic state theocracy (Note that Sadr is polling at as much as 50%) in 5-10 years, then in 20-30 years we will likely have change following in the other countries.
In the end, establishing an Islamic state was on of the goals of the group Usama bin Laden is leading. They tried and failed during the 90's in Algeria and Egypt, and in the end had to retreat to the only Islamic state left: Afghanistan, which had converted to such in the chaos after the Soviet invasion and eventual withdrawal. The fact is, most of the middle east countries are too stable to be upset by bin Laden's terrorist tactics. Of course, the now unstable Iraq is a perfect opportunity for Usama to pursue his vision of establishing a new Islamic state, and having that revolution sweep the middle east.
Sure, it may pan out as the neoconservatives are imagining, but at the moment Usama's dream looks just as likely. Aren't we supposed to be hunting this man, not helping him achieve his goals?
I too am an expatriate. Currently I live in Asia but I've lived all over the world. Pretty much all expatriate Americans feel the way you do -- disenfranchised. I love America, but very few Americans have experienced what we have; heck, most of them are monoglots and don't even have a passport. It's hard for them to make good foreign policy a priority when they don't have any real experience with the effects of poor foreign policy, first hand. But I digress.
This is a very sad thing indeed. I am from New Zealand and there we have a cultural tradition of getting out and travelling after finshing high school or university. It is expected that young people will take a year or so to do a fair amount of travelling around the world. Originally this was making the trip back to see England, but that quickly expanded to travelling to see Europe, and eventually pretty much anywhere and everywhere. This is equally much and expected thing in Australia. I can't speak quite as well for other countries, but my own experience while travelling has been that I run into a lot of Germans, English, Irish etc. so I imagine it's reasonably common in Europe as well. The number of young people backpacking around from the US I've met - well there have been a number, but it is massively disproproportionately low. In fact, I saw some figures a while ago that the numbers of (non-military) Americans in the 18-25 age group currently overseas is pretty close to the number of New Zealanders 18-25 overseas - that's from populations of 250 million compared to 4 million.
Most Americans seem to do their travel when they are older and retired (which is, I think, what drives the pushy American tourist meme - older people tend to be far more conservative and far less forgiving). I think this is a terrible tragedy. The truth is you don't really know much about the world until you get out there and experience it. The US needs to establish a tradition of young people getting out and exploring the world.
My problem is that I can't tell how "FULL health care" is different from "bankrupt us into 3rd world status" ?
Because, as we all know, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Canada all have higher budget deficits than the US. No, wait, the US actually has the highest deficit of any of the countries on that list. Massively so in fact! Except all those other countries offer, in various forms, a public health care system.
There are lots of ways of implementing a public system, and many allow for a parallel private system as well. Oddly countries that run public systems seem to spend less on healthcare than the US. The fact is that the US is in some weird half assed not quite either system, which is largely private insurance, but has all manner payouts and subsidies some of which amounts to corporate welfare for insurance and drug companies, and some of which amounts to public welfare trying to catch people slipping through the cracks. The end result is that the US health system is haemoraging, because is refuses to commit to either a fully private, or properly funded public healthcare system.
Cobb is simply suggesting ripping out the current system and setting up a properly funded public system. He has stated that he's more than happy to allow a parallel private system running alongside. Such a thing is most certainly possible given that almost every other developed country in the world seems to have managed to fund it (Canada is running budget surpluses, the US is massively in deficit for instance). Sit down and actually consider the proposal before you reject it based on groupthink.
The whole argument is silly because should, one day, it be determined that the direct taxation of wages is illegal under the constitution, you can bet that congress and the senate would have passed a constitutional amendment to make it legel that evening. They only need a 75% majority, and the income of every single one of them is dependent of said taxation. Tell me again who in congress would vote against such an amendment?
The "not bright" comments are not that relavant in my opinion. Bush is surrounded by many smart people. He can get facts and informed opinions if he has a question easier than just about any other human on Earth can get.
Which is to say, he is a complete puppet for whoever provides him with the information, given that he is sufficiently ignorant to not know the difference and do what he's told. So the real question is: who are Bush's advisors, and what are they telling him to do? Well, mostly they are these people and if you read the site, you'll get an idea of what they have in mind.
I don't get it. Do the people who mod this stuff up (or the people who post it, for that matter) say "Boy, there's a new thought! I've never heard that quote before!"
Because each time it comes up it looks more and more like reality. I remember a long time ago when that was being quoted on Slashdot and things were firmly in the "ignore you" stage. People criticized the quote because (quite reasonably) just because someone was ignoring you was hardly a sign you were going to win.
Over time though the "ignore" slowly faded, and Microsoft was mostly mocking Linux as a laughable option written by pimply teenagers in their basements, so again out comes the quote, this time with a little more weight because things had actually made the predicted progression.
A year or two ago Microsoft kicked into gear with a serious range of attacks on Linux, and now they really are fighting it very bitterly even though they still dominate in market share. More and more people are seeing Linux as a viable option. More and more stories about Linux that get posted to Slashdot are, instead of appearing in Wired, eWeek, are from Time magazine or the Wall Street Journal. As the poster points out, presuming things follow this prediction (and they have remarkably well so far) we're well into stage 3, and winning isn't far off.
Of course it depends on what you mean by "win". Realistically, myself, I see winning as Linux gaining sufficient market share and respect to always be considered as a viable option by anyone looking at buying a computer. That's not 90% market share, and that's not crushing Microsoft, that's just crushing Microsoft's monopoly grip.
Jedidiah.
Re:Americans talk about freedom
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Press freedom
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· Score: 2, Interesting
And let's be frank, most of the US press aren't free - they're usually fairly expensive: only the larger corporations can afford them.
Resetting the whole box should be faster than ssh'ing in and typing a "/etc/init.d/shorewall restart" and "/etc/init.d/openvpn restart".
So restarting all the services on the box should be faster than restarting a single service? Doesn't that require all the other services to manage to restart themselves in negative time?
Or is it the time taken to type all commands compared to hitting a button? Ever thought of writing a script and binding it to key, or even a button you've attached to the machine? That would seem to solve your problems without having to completely optimise the boot process of the linux kernel, the init scripts, and all services being run by several order of magnitude.
are not designed for the same type of work as clusters. If a probably is not effeciently parallizable and requires shared memory then a Cray is the only feasible option A Cray is not a cluster. It's like comparing mph for a sports car and truck: the car is faster but they are meant for different types of loads.
To be fair to the original poster, the Cray system he was referencing is a cluster system. Then again, its a cluster system with very impressive interconnects for which System X just isn't comparable (ie. The Cray system will scale far far better), not to mention the Cray software (UNICOS, CRMS, SFW), and the fact that the Cray system is an "out of the box" solution. So you are right, there is no comparison.
Compare it to this new Cray system. Bang for the buck would make the Apple system better.
Yup, except the Cray comes with far superior interconnect technology, a better range of hardware and software reliability features built in, software designed (by people who do nothing but supercomputers) specifically for monitoring maintaining and administrating massively parallel systems, and most importantly it all works "out of the box". You buy a cabinet, you plug it in, it goes.
Why do these Apple fans, who justifiably claim that comparing a homebuilt PC to a "take it out of the box and plug it in" Apple system is silly, want to compare a build it yourself supercomputer to one that's just plug and go?
And yes, comparing MacOS X to UNICOS for supercomputers is like comparing Linux to OS X for desktops (in fact that's very flattering to OS X as a cluster OS).
You say it's comparing Apples to Oranges but its not really...
Oh, why is that?
The VT Supercomputer specs vs the Cray specs page you pointed to...
Right, so if you compare Virginia Tech forking over money not just for Xserves, but also for all the interconnects, the cooling, setting up the system, developing maintenance, monitoring and administration software etc. to buying a Cray and plugging it in they have almost comparable performance?
If I buy a cheap AMD CPU, cheap motherboard etc. overclock it, install a Linux From Scratch system on it over a couple of weeks, and get a desktop running (that all the Apple fans deride), that's comparable to buying a G5 PowerMac and plugging it in, because, you know, the performance specs are similar, and you can fiddle the Linux desktop so it looks like OS X...
Cray is to supercomputers what Apple is to desktop machines. If you want to argue that a bunch of PC parts is comparable to an Apple desktop, go for it.
So, how does this compare to running Apple's Xserve? Bang per buck? Heat? Space? Etc etc....
There's not a lot to compare. We're talking apples and oranges. It's like asking to compare a PowerMac G5 with a bunch of PC parts scattered on the floor as desktop machines. Sure, you can put the PC together, load it with Linux, tinker with it to get everything working, etc. but that's a fair amount of work compared taking the PowerMac out of the box, plugging it in, turning it on, and having everything work perfectly.
Read the specs, particularly with regard to the interconnect, system administration, and hardware and software reliability features. This thing is seriously engineered to be massively parallel system with top of the line hardware and software to support and maintain that, as well as extremely impressive reliability features.
UNICOS is usually a safe bet. In this case the specs say UNICOS/lc, which is made up of "SUSE(TM) Linux(TM), Cray Catamount Microkernel, CRMS and SMW software"
I'm not entirely clear how to interpet that, but I think it runs as follows: It runs the Catamount Microkernel as the kernel, and uses SUSE for everything else (so we have SUSE Linux, without the Linux - all of a sudden that GNU/Linux stuff starts to make sense). The CRMS is their interconnect management and monitoring software, and SMW is the System Management Workstation - which I'm guessing is their administration frontend.
It's worth noting that that's some pretty serious software there (because Cray has a lot of experience dealing with large systems) - you can bet that the management and monitoring software is some very serious stuff.
This thing is to a beowulf cluster what a dual G5 PowerMac is to homebuilt PC system running Linux From Scratch. It's going to work flawlessly "out of the box" with a smooth and polished interface that lets you get done everything you want to do simply and easily. You can of course make your home built PC with LFS work just as well, it's just going to take you an awful lot of effort.
I am interested in a citation for the 32,000/yr killed under saddam. a link or book/article reference?
Unreferenced it's a pretty vague statement really. I mean, I could say that in 2003 more than 42,000 people were killed under President Bush, and be perfectly factually correct.
More specifically in 2003 more than 42,000 people were killed on the road under President Bush.
Who knows what the 32,000 figure actually means.
Jedidiah.
Re:A few really good Apps could make the differenc
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Firefox - The Platform
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· Score: 1
Gmail does do some kind of local scripting. I don't know the specifics, but it's very fast, much faster than it would be if it had to access anything online for every click. Also, there's autocomplete boxes that pop up when you start typing in a From: box that narrow down the list with each letter you type. That and other stuff makes me sure that a lot of what it does happens locally.
You didn't click on the link did you? Sure a little scripting of GMail can make it fast, but as far as rich interfaces go, I don't think it would look so good in comparison to a XUL interface. Go look at the demo, and spend some time clicking around and using all the features of it.
Jedidiah.
Re:A few really good Apps could make the differenc
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Firefox - The Platform
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yes, that's a great demo and it shows that there is a lot of functionality in Firefox. But look at what it took to write that code: a dozen JavaScript files and a lot of XML. JavaScript and XML just aren't very nice to use for engineering large, complex interactive software systems.
Sure. I don't think web applications are ever going to take over as many people claim. I don't expect to see web based word processors of any note, nor web versions of any terribly complicated program - but XUL for webmail, for apps like the demo, for online tax calculation apps, for simple bespoke database frontend apps at companies etc. there is plenty of room (and value) in a fully cross platform web application. The utility of having the whole thing be cross platform and remote can be sufficient to justify any extra coding complexity if we're talking about relatively simple applications here.
Does it give me the ability to have processing in a webpage on the desktop? The ability to open windows with controls that look like "normal" (read: non-HTML) Windows-windows? The ability to create my own controls and use those on any desktop?
Um, pretty much, yeah. Open this in Firefox or Mozilla, or better yet, go here and click on the "launch in its own window" link.
Jedidiah.
A few really good Apps could make the difference..
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Firefox - The Platform
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· Score: 4, Insightful
After seeing this demo of exactly what Firefox and XUL can do in the way of fast, rich applications, I think its only going to take a few significant applications in XUL to get people moving to Firefox just to get it.
Does anyone know if someone is writing a webmail client in XUL? If not, someone really needs to (I've even started looking at trying to do it myself, and I'm no coder). Compared to current webmail interfaces a XUL interface would be almost indistinguishable from a local mail client. All you need to do is have browser detection send users to the old style webmail client if they aren't using a browser that supports XUL.
Now, imagine if GMail started doing that... IE users of GMail get the standard webmail interface, but Firefox users get a full fast XUL interface. Have a look at that demo site again, and do some clicking around... then tell me that that wouldn't be an absolutely killer app for Firefox.
I think the main point of that article was not made very clear.
I think a major point from the study was completely missed.
What we have here are two diametrically opposed world views.
Almost...
The scientific world view is bound by the facts and everything is subject to question. The competing view is the fanatic world view where the conclusions are decided in advance, and any disagreeable facts have to be rejected.
But no. Both world views, Democrat and Republican are competeing fanatic world views defined by media publicised talking points and conclusions in advance (the conclusion always being "the other guy is wrong!"). Any disagreeable facts are rejected.
What am I talking about? Take a look at the actual survey, and all the questions asked. Any issue that was a hot button talking point issue for either Democrats or Republicans showed extreme division between the two sides. Issues that weren't... well, to be honest Democrats and Republicans were almost equally deluded on those (on average about 50% were flat wrong).
The only reason the Democrat supporters are closer to reality in general, is because, by chance, they're closer to the factual side on a few of the hot button issues. I see no evidence that they can't be just as deluded as the Republicans.
As Jon Stewart was trying to say on CNN's Crossfire: "This is all theatre!". It's all bullshit. It's all made up talking points that you can vehement disagreement on, but you're disagreeing simply because that's what "you're side" is supposed to do. For God's sake wake up! The United States is in the middle of a massive cultural meltdown - I don't know if it's too late to save you or not, but it won't happen unless you do it for yourselves!
In fact, the study authors have their facts wrong. The 9/11 commission concluded ONLY that Iraq and Al Qaeda did not cooperate with regard to the 9/11 attacks. The primary link is so well known that it is getting rediculous to assert it doesn't exist: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Sure, but the question in the study was that the US government possessed evidence of strong ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. I wouldn't say al-Zarqawi visiting Iraq occasionally represented evidence of strong links to Hussein.
Also, there were quantities of Sarin gas that were discovered in artillery shells. While this is not WMD on the scale predicted, it is enough to refute the absolutist position taken by this study that no WMD have been found in Iraq.
Check the date on the study - it was in late 2003. At that time no WMD had been foudn in Iraq. The question was: "Have WMD been found in Iraq", not "Will WMD be foudn in Iraq".
I d agree that the study had some biases, but at the same time, your refutations are either tenuous or in the case of the WMD issue, not valid.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes! Giving them the same amount of money a week later would REALLY prove a point. You stick it to those execs!
Surprisingly enough it probably would have at least some effect. Tese days the Hollywood blockbuster films rely on huge opening weekends and huge first weeks to create buzz, attention and momentum for a film. Just consider how much time the media spends discussing which film opened bigger this weekend. If such a boycott actually took place on a large scale it could conceivably suck a lot of the thunder out of Episode 3s opening week and probably create significant negative buzz about the film "not living up to hype" with regard to its failure to open as big as expected. Sure the geeks will go later, but the people that don't care as much will come away with a negative view of the film.
Of course all of this presupposes that the proposed boycott actualy occurs on a mass scale. Which it simply won't. This guy and his friends giving Lucasa the money a week late is, as you say, going to make no difference at all.
I, myself, am simply planning on not seeing the film at all. Perhaps if it's on TV, or a second hand DVD selling for $1 I'll consider it. It doesn't take a huge act of will power - the first two sucked. Badly. Why on earth would I care about this one, which sounds like it has the potential to be even worse?
Jedidiah.
Modded troll in minutes. Record time. Congratulations to those who choose to cover their ears and chant "la la la la la".
In part because it was largely an anecdote that ran counter to a lot of peoples experiences of modern distros. I could tell you horror stories I had with trying to install Windows on a machine and failing to get it to boot properly for hours trying all manner of things - the problem eventually solved by booting the damn thing with GRUB instead of the windows bootloader. That doesn't mean Windows sucks nor that it isn't ready for the desktop, it just means I had a sucky experience.
If you could actually cite some clear specific reasons (as opposed to vague "everything is unstable/broken/hard" or anecdotes of something not working right for you that usually works fine for everyone else) people might actually listen. You could try making arguments about the ease of 3rd party software installation, or the current infancy of the efforts to provide compatability between KDE and GNOME apps, or the lack of certain significant applications for various major fields (accounting, CAD, whatever), or the lack of Linux support from hardware manufacturers. Then again, all of those issues are undergoing steady improvement, or could change rapidly if there was any significant uptake of Desktop Linux, so maybe they don't let you rant quite the way you want...
Jedidiah
What happens if in 4 years Jeb decides to run?
He'll get demolished in the primaries. The possible Republican candidates in 4 years time are: McCain, Giuliani, Schwarzenegger. The ticket will be come pairing of 2 out of those 3. Of course Schwarzenegger still needs the constitutional amendment... but you can bet the GOP will be pushing hard for that - a Republican candidate who has a decent chance of carrying California? That right there is an automatic win.
Jedidiah.
The terrorists. Duh.
No, seriously. we'll still be feeling the economic effects of 9/11, or if there has been a more recent significant attck (not necessarily even on US soil) it will be blamed on that.
The terrorists are the enemy, the source of fear, and the thing that can be blamed for anything bad, because they are the source of all evil in the world.
Jedidiah.
If I were George W Bush I would activate ALL military reservists, enact the draft, and send mass troops to Iraq to disarm their entire nation and impose martial law. Oh, and by the way build the Marine base right over there. Set the price of oil about $5 a barrel and start loading up the tankers.
But you see, he won't do that, or even anything remotely like that. A Republican House and Senate and no concerns abour re-election? Sure, but he still has to contend with world opinion, and marching in a shitload of troops to occupy the country then proceeding to bleed Iraq of all its oil for the US... well that wouldn't go over well.
I know, I know, you don't care about world opinion, the rest of the world can go and fuck themselves... but actually you need the rest of the world. The US is running an absolutely unbelievably massive current account deficit. That means your imports are hundreds of billions of dollars more than your exports. That is, you're importing an unbelievable amount of stuff from the rest of the world. If you piss them off enough, you will be in very very serious trouble.
Jedidiah.
Establishing freedom in the middle east. Be sure, this is a strategic, not a tactical, vision. If Iraq is a free, stable country in 5-10 years, then in 20-30 years we will likely have change following in the other countries
And if the destabilised Iraq collapses into an Islamic state theocracy (Note that Sadr is polling at as much as 50%) in 5-10 years, then in 20-30 years we will likely have change following in the other countries.
In the end, establishing an Islamic state was on of the goals of the group Usama bin Laden is leading. They tried and failed during the 90's in Algeria and Egypt, and in the end had to retreat to the only Islamic state left: Afghanistan, which had converted to such in the chaos after the Soviet invasion and eventual withdrawal. The fact is, most of the middle east countries are too stable to be upset by bin Laden's terrorist tactics. Of course, the now unstable Iraq is a perfect opportunity for Usama to pursue his vision of establishing a new Islamic state, and having that revolution sweep the middle east.
Sure, it may pan out as the neoconservatives are imagining, but at the moment Usama's dream looks just as likely. Aren't we supposed to be hunting this man, not helping him achieve his goals?
Jedidiah.
I too am an expatriate. Currently I live in Asia but I've lived all over the world. Pretty much all expatriate Americans feel the way you do -- disenfranchised. I love America, but very few Americans have experienced what we have; heck, most of them are monoglots and don't even have a passport. It's hard for them to make good foreign policy a priority when they don't have any real experience with the effects of poor foreign policy, first hand. But I digress.
This is a very sad thing indeed. I am from New Zealand and there we have a cultural tradition of getting out and travelling after finshing high school or university. It is expected that young people will take a year or so to do a fair amount of travelling around the world. Originally this was making the trip back to see England, but that quickly expanded to travelling to see Europe, and eventually pretty much anywhere and everywhere. This is equally much and expected thing in Australia. I can't speak quite as well for other countries, but my own experience while travelling has been that I run into a lot of Germans, English, Irish etc. so I imagine it's reasonably common in Europe as well. The number of young people backpacking around from the US I've met - well there have been a number, but it is massively disproproportionately low. In fact, I saw some figures a while ago that the numbers of (non-military) Americans in the 18-25 age group currently overseas is pretty close to the number of New Zealanders 18-25 overseas - that's from populations of 250 million compared to 4 million.
Most Americans seem to do their travel when they are older and retired (which is, I think, what drives the pushy American tourist meme - older people tend to be far more conservative and far less forgiving). I think this is a terrible tragedy. The truth is you don't really know much about the world until you get out there and experience it. The US needs to establish a tradition of young people getting out and exploring the world.
Jedidiah.
My problem is that I can't tell how "FULL health care" is different from "bankrupt us into 3rd world status" ?
Because, as we all know, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Canada all have higher budget deficits than the US. No, wait, the US actually has the highest deficit of any of the countries on that list. Massively so in fact! Except all those other countries offer, in various forms, a public health care system.
There are lots of ways of implementing a public system, and many allow for a parallel private system as well. Oddly countries that run public systems seem to spend less on healthcare than the US. The fact is that the US is in some weird half assed not quite either system, which is largely private insurance, but has all manner payouts and subsidies some of which amounts to corporate welfare for insurance and drug companies, and some of which amounts to public welfare trying to catch people slipping through the cracks. The end result is that the US health system is haemoraging, because is refuses to commit to either a fully private, or properly funded public healthcare system.
Cobb is simply suggesting ripping out the current system and setting up a properly funded public system. He has stated that he's more than happy to allow a parallel private system running alongside. Such a thing is most certainly possible given that almost every other developed country in the world seems to have managed to fund it (Canada is running budget surpluses, the US is massively in deficit for instance). Sit down and actually consider the proposal before you reject it based on groupthink.
Jedidiah.
The whole argument is silly because should, one day, it be determined that the direct taxation of wages is illegal under the constitution, you can bet that congress and the senate would have passed a constitutional amendment to make it legel that evening. They only need a 75% majority, and the income of every single one of them is dependent of said taxation. Tell me again who in congress would vote against such an amendment?
Jedidiah.
The "not bright" comments are not that relavant in my opinion. Bush is surrounded by many smart people. He can get facts and informed opinions if he has a question easier than just about any other human on Earth can get.
Which is to say, he is a complete puppet for whoever provides him with the information, given that he is sufficiently ignorant to not know the difference and do what he's told. So the real question is: who are Bush's advisors, and what are they telling him to do? Well, mostly they are these people and if you read the site, you'll get an idea of what they have in mind.
Jedidiah
I don't get it. Do the people who mod this stuff up (or the people who post it, for that matter) say "Boy, there's a new thought! I've never heard that quote before!"
Because each time it comes up it looks more and more like reality. I remember a long time ago when that was being quoted on Slashdot and things were firmly in the "ignore you" stage. People criticized the quote because (quite reasonably) just because someone was ignoring you was hardly a sign you were going to win.
Over time though the "ignore" slowly faded, and Microsoft was mostly mocking Linux as a laughable option written by pimply teenagers in their basements, so again out comes the quote, this time with a little more weight because things had actually made the predicted progression.
A year or two ago Microsoft kicked into gear with a serious range of attacks on Linux, and now they really are fighting it very bitterly even though they still dominate in market share. More and more people are seeing Linux as a viable option. More and more stories about Linux that get posted to Slashdot are, instead of appearing in Wired, eWeek, are from Time magazine or the Wall Street Journal. As the poster points out, presuming things follow this prediction (and they have remarkably well so far) we're well into stage 3, and winning isn't far off.
Of course it depends on what you mean by "win". Realistically, myself, I see winning as Linux gaining sufficient market share and respect to always be considered as a viable option by anyone looking at buying a computer. That's not 90% market share, and that's not crushing Microsoft, that's just crushing Microsoft's monopoly grip.
Jedidiah.
And let's be frank, most of the US press aren't free - they're usually fairly expensive: only the larger corporations can afford them.
Jedidiah.
Resetting the whole box should be faster than ssh'ing in and typing a "/etc/init.d/shorewall restart" and "/etc/init.d/openvpn restart".
So restarting all the services on the box should be faster than restarting a single service? Doesn't that require all the other services to manage to restart themselves in negative time?
Or is it the time taken to type all commands compared to hitting a button? Ever thought of writing a script and binding it to key, or even a button you've attached to the machine? That would seem to solve your problems without having to completely optimise the boot process of the linux kernel, the init scripts, and all services being run by several order of magnitude.
Jedidiah.
are not designed for the same type of work as clusters. If a probably is not effeciently parallizable and requires shared memory then a Cray is the only feasible option A Cray is not a cluster. It's like comparing mph for a sports car and truck: the car is faster but they are meant for different types of loads.
To be fair to the original poster, the Cray system he was referencing is a cluster system. Then again, its a cluster system with very impressive interconnects for which System X just isn't comparable (ie. The Cray system will scale far far better), not to mention the Cray software (UNICOS, CRMS, SFW), and the fact that the Cray system is an "out of the box" solution. So you are right, there is no comparison.
Jedidiah.
Compare it to this new Cray system. Bang for the buck would make the Apple system better.
Yup, except the Cray comes with far superior interconnect technology, a better range of hardware and software reliability features built in, software designed (by people who do nothing but supercomputers) specifically for monitoring maintaining and administrating massively parallel systems, and most importantly it all works "out of the box". You buy a cabinet, you plug it in, it goes.
Why do these Apple fans, who justifiably claim that comparing a homebuilt PC to a "take it out of the box and plug it in" Apple system is silly, want to compare a build it yourself supercomputer to one that's just plug and go?
And yes, comparing MacOS X to UNICOS for supercomputers is like comparing Linux to OS X for desktops (in fact that's very flattering to OS X as a cluster OS).
Jedidiah.
You say it's comparing Apples to Oranges but its not really ...
Oh, why is that?
The VT Supercomputer specs vs the Cray specs page you pointed to...
Right, so if you compare Virginia Tech forking over money not just for Xserves, but also for all the interconnects, the cooling, setting up the system, developing maintenance, monitoring and administration software etc. to buying a Cray and plugging it in they have almost comparable performance?
If I buy a cheap AMD CPU, cheap motherboard etc. overclock it, install a Linux From Scratch system on it over a couple of weeks, and get a desktop running (that all the Apple fans deride), that's comparable to buying a G5 PowerMac and plugging it in, because, you know, the performance specs are similar, and you can fiddle the Linux desktop so it looks like OS X...
Cray is to supercomputers what Apple is to desktop machines. If you want to argue that a bunch of PC parts is comparable to an Apple desktop, go for it.
Jedidiah.
So, how does this compare to running Apple's Xserve? Bang per buck? Heat? Space? Etc etc....
There's not a lot to compare. We're talking apples and oranges. It's like asking to compare a PowerMac G5 with a bunch of PC parts scattered on the floor as desktop machines. Sure, you can put the PC together, load it with Linux, tinker with it to get everything working, etc. but that's a fair amount of work compared taking the PowerMac out of the box, plugging it in, turning it on, and having everything work perfectly.
Read the specs, particularly with regard to the interconnect, system administration, and hardware and software reliability features. This thing is seriously engineered to be massively parallel system with top of the line hardware and software to support and maintain that, as well as extremely impressive reliability features.
Jedidiah.
what kind of operation system runs on this beast?
UNICOS is usually a safe bet. In this case the specs say UNICOS/lc, which is made up of "SUSE(TM) Linux(TM), Cray Catamount Microkernel, CRMS and SMW software"
I'm not entirely clear how to interpet that, but I think it runs as follows: It runs the Catamount Microkernel as the kernel, and uses SUSE for everything else (so we have SUSE Linux, without the Linux - all of a sudden that GNU/Linux stuff starts to make sense). The CRMS is their interconnect management and monitoring software, and SMW is the System Management Workstation - which I'm guessing is their administration frontend.
It's worth noting that that's some pretty serious software there (because Cray has a lot of experience dealing with large systems) - you can bet that the management and monitoring software is some very serious stuff.
This thing is to a beowulf cluster what a dual G5 PowerMac is to homebuilt PC system running Linux From Scratch. It's going to work flawlessly "out of the box" with a smooth and polished interface that lets you get done everything you want to do simply and easily. You can of course make your home built PC with LFS work just as well, it's just going to take you an awful lot of effort.
Jedidiah.
I am interested in a citation for the 32,000/yr killed under saddam. a link or book/article reference?
Unreferenced it's a pretty vague statement really. I mean, I could say that in 2003 more than 42,000 people were killed under President Bush, and be perfectly factually correct.
More specifically in 2003 more than 42,000 people were killed on the road under President Bush.
Who knows what the 32,000 figure actually means.
Jedidiah.
Gmail does do some kind of local scripting. I don't know the specifics, but it's very fast, much faster than it would be if it had to access anything online for every click. Also, there's autocomplete boxes that pop up when you start typing in a From: box that narrow down the list with each letter you type. That and other stuff makes me sure that a lot of what it does happens locally.
You didn't click on the link did you? Sure a little scripting of GMail can make it fast, but as far as rich interfaces go, I don't think it would look so good in comparison to a XUL interface. Go look at the demo, and spend some time clicking around and using all the features of it.
Jedidiah.
Yes, that's a great demo and it shows that there is a lot of functionality in Firefox. But look at what it took to write that code: a dozen JavaScript files and a lot of XML. JavaScript and XML just aren't very nice to use for engineering large, complex interactive software systems.
Sure. I don't think web applications are ever going to take over as many people claim. I don't expect to see web based word processors of any note, nor web versions of any terribly complicated program - but XUL for webmail, for apps like the demo, for online tax calculation apps, for simple bespoke database frontend apps at companies etc. there is plenty of room (and value) in a fully cross platform web application. The utility of having the whole thing be cross platform and remote can be sufficient to justify any extra coding complexity if we're talking about relatively simple applications here.
Jedidiah.
Does it give me the ability to have processing in a webpage on the desktop? The ability to open windows with controls that look like "normal" (read: non-HTML) Windows-windows? The ability to create my own controls and use those on any desktop?
Um, pretty much, yeah. Open this in Firefox or Mozilla, or better yet, go here and click on the "launch in its own window" link.
Jedidiah.
After seeing this demo of exactly what Firefox and XUL can do in the way of fast, rich applications, I think its only going to take a few significant applications in XUL to get people moving to Firefox just to get it.
... then tell me that that wouldn't be an absolutely killer app for Firefox.
Does anyone know if someone is writing a webmail client in XUL? If not, someone really needs to (I've even started looking at trying to do it myself, and I'm no coder). Compared to current webmail interfaces a XUL interface would be almost indistinguishable from a local mail client. All you need to do is have browser detection send users to the old style webmail client if they aren't using a browser that supports XUL.
Now, imagine if GMail started doing that... IE users of GMail get the standard webmail interface, but Firefox users get a full fast XUL interface. Have a look at that demo site again, and do some clicking around
Jedidiah.
I think the main point of that article was not made very clear.
I think a major point from the study was completely missed.
What we have here are two diametrically opposed world views.
Almost...
The scientific world view is bound by the facts and everything is subject to question. The competing view is the fanatic world view where the conclusions are decided in advance, and any disagreeable facts have to be rejected.
But no. Both world views, Democrat and Republican are competeing fanatic world views defined by media publicised talking points and conclusions in advance (the conclusion always being "the other guy is wrong!"). Any disagreeable facts are rejected.
What am I talking about? Take a look at the actual survey, and all the questions asked. Any issue that was a hot button talking point issue for either Democrats or Republicans showed extreme division between the two sides. Issues that weren't... well, to be honest Democrats and Republicans were almost equally deluded on those (on average about 50% were flat wrong).
The only reason the Democrat supporters are closer to reality in general, is because, by chance, they're closer to the factual side on a few of the hot button issues. I see no evidence that they can't be just as deluded as the Republicans.
As Jon Stewart was trying to say on CNN's Crossfire: "This is all theatre!". It's all bullshit. It's all made up talking points that you can vehement disagreement on, but you're disagreeing simply because that's what "you're side" is supposed to do. For God's sake wake up! The United States is in the middle of a massive cultural meltdown - I don't know if it's too late to save you or not, but it won't happen unless you do it for yourselves!
Jedidiah.
In fact, the study authors have their facts wrong. The 9/11 commission concluded ONLY that Iraq and Al Qaeda did not cooperate with regard to the 9/11 attacks. The primary link is so well known that it is getting rediculous to assert it doesn't exist: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Sure, but the question in the study was that the US government possessed evidence of strong ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. I wouldn't say al-Zarqawi visiting Iraq occasionally represented evidence of strong links to Hussein.
Also, there were quantities of Sarin gas that were discovered in artillery shells. While this is not WMD on the scale predicted, it is enough to refute the absolutist position taken by this study that no WMD have been found in Iraq.
Check the date on the study - it was in late 2003. At that time no WMD had been foudn in Iraq. The question was: "Have WMD been found in Iraq", not "Will WMD be foudn in Iraq".
I d agree that the study had some biases, but at the same time, your refutations are either tenuous or in the case of the WMD issue, not valid.
Jedidiah.