You're right that online publishing wouldn't cease alltogether. It would just be limited to those huge megacorps that have the armies of lawyers to advise them of what they can say and defend themselves when they still get it wrong. At that point we may well wish online publishing had ceased:)
I really don't see how you can take this position while still defending the right of a planitf to sue based on the laws in their home state rather than that of the publisher. Either a publisher on the Internet is responsible to the laws of his/her own state or they're responsible to the laws of every jurisdiction in the world. While it certainly does leave room for abuse, I think the only long term practical solution is for publishers to be responsible to their own state/country and nowhere else, to do otherwise would effectivly make virtually everyone who ever posts anything to the Internet a criminal, even if it often isn't immediatly enforcable. BTW I think the same applies to porn, taxes etc as well.
I think the customers should at least have the option of paying on a per bit basis and remaining un-capped. I know many customers wouldn't like it because they don't know how much they use or why but for me it would be preferable to blocking PtoP ports and servers. A carefull consumer might then be able to get their connection VERY cheap.
Well then I guess you won't mind if I just let myself into your house sometime when you're not home and watch some TV. After all you're not using it and it's not costing you anything.
The real question is will M$ allow OEMs to actually use this new functionality. In the past M$ has been pretty strict about what OEMs can put on the user's desktop and what screens can be displayed during initial bootup.
School taxes a big share of the tax base? I think I've been bitten by a troll, but everytime I look the ENTIRE non-military chunk of the budget is a smaller proportion of the total.
Which budget would that be? The military is almost entirely funded at the federal level while while schools (K-12 at least) are mainly funded by local taxes. That is exactly as it should be too.
I've seen the claim about solar being more expensive. I know that it used to be true, but I'm far from convinced that it still is.
Well it IS mostly true IFF you're talking about living completely off the grid and you'll see it for your self if/when you do your homework. Using solar for just part of your electricity needs can have a payback period shorter than your expected lifespan though depending on where you live. In most cases though you'll get more bang/buck by decreasing your usage.
He wants all software to be free. This is a simplified statement, but let it go for now. For the sake of this argument, I'm going to look at the free beer aspect of it.
If you had been paying attention you'd know that the free beer aspect of Free Software is basically irrelivent to Stallman so it makes no sense to draw conclusions about his beliefs/modives based on that aspect. The rest of your post is basically just an example of GIGO.
Why, then, is it important that the OS have the acronym "GNU" in it? Shouldn't it be good enough that people are using it?
Because he wants people to think about the freedom aspect of Free Software that he and the GNU project stand for.
"In other words, you would like the technical aspects of kernel development to be dictated by
political concerns, rather than technical ones. That's the kind of thinking that suits RMS and
PHBs, not kernel developers."
Of course. Moral/political issues DO affect how technical issues are dealt with. When these issues are important/understood by enough people they get codified into laws and effectivly become techinical issues.
I think you need to read it again. He said that GNU/Linux CONTAINS some non-free components, not that it IS a non-free component. So long as he doesn't actually use those drivers it's not hipocracy.
FWIW Stallman doesn't have a problem with binary only firmware, he just doesn't like these being built into the driver code. He's made it clear that it's OK if the firmware is kept seperate. If I sent you a file and said "This is covered under the GPL" and you found that right in the middle was a chunk of binary-only non-free code wouldn't you have a problem with that? Wouldn't you think that I was less than serious about the code being GPL?
>>It is entierely possibal for your comptuer to be >>at 100 volts realtive to your neighbors.
>No, because the ground on both computers is plugged >into, well, the ground.
I hate to break it to you but "ground" here and "ground" a few hundred feet away may NOT be the same and that difference can cause current to flow.... through your computer if necessary.
Considering that the initial installion charge to the consumer when ADSL is installed is more than the cost of a wireless card, it may be the way to go.
Unfortunately the cost card is only one small part of the cost to set up wireless. The total cost at the customer end is often more like $500 - $1000 once you include an antenna, cables, router(if necessary) and installation.
The real cost of the hardware is immaterial to the consumer, it's the amount charged to the consumer that matters.
Sure but WISPS need to make up for that initial cost somehow. It's one thing to pick and choose customers in wireless friendly areas and with wireless friendly buildings but trying to employ it on a large scale is another thing altogether.
More likely they are getting their payment in other ways. Maybe your university is paying MS for the licenses through your tuition and that $5 is just for the CDs/packaging.
I completely disagree with you on this one. Virtually all of the really good teachers I've had have been opinionated bastards. I don't even think it's possible for a person who knolegeable and cares about a subject to fail to develop strong opinions and if they are humans then those opinions WILL show through. Even outside of the classroom I feel like I learn more from people that I disagree with then those that I agree with.
"The point is that the students shouldn't HAVE to block out your opinions."
No they should however be encouraged to recognize opinions when they hear them and use their critical thinking skills to analize those opinions. In this day and age "facts" are a dime a dozen but critical thinking skills are much more valuable.
"Do you realize that what you just wrote directly contradicts your teaching philosophy??? I'm the one arguing that I want my children exposed to all sides of an issue -- without bias."
And I want to live forever but it's not going to happen. Bias is everywhere and the sooner kids learn to recognize and deal with it the better.
Well, even us geeks sometimes get sick of building yet another cheap box for friends/relatives/customers just because all the major OEM machines suck rocks.
Well, it's nice that yours work but the winmodems in the Walmart computer in question don't. Even when you can get winmodems to work they are still likely to cause you problems later on when you update your kernel or move to a new distro or different OS. A $10 piece of hardware is just not worth the trouble these things eventually cause, even under Windows.
Intel was already using 4x100. Now they are using 4x133. I don't know that I'd call it impressive but using a 4xX bus instead of a 1xX bus DOES give better performance. As it stands right now AMD systems still have a price/performance advantage but the difference is small until you get up near the cutting edge. Up untill a few months ago I was building AMD systems almost exclusivly but now I'm building some P4 systems for those rare customers who actually run apps. that can take good advantage of Intels' SSE2 instructions.
Adding a heat spreader between the core and heatsink would reduce the heat transfer efficency and increase the production costs. As for protecting the delicate core from careless home builders, I'd much rather them push motherboard and heatsink vendors to provide a better retention system. They actually seem to be backing away from the 4 hole/screw mounting system (as used with the Swiftech 462 and some Alpha heatsinks) which I think is a mistake. Also, you need to remember that 99% of AMD's (and Intel's for that matter) customers are OEMs who presumably know how to attach a heatsink.
I hate to break it to you but that's exactly the purpose of a corporation. You seem to be argueing that the entire idea of a corporation is absurd but that "it" should have the same rights as a human being anyway.
"What can we do to get OUR government to pass a bill like this?"
We'll have to start by getting politicians at least half as intelligent as the one who wrote that letter. This guy makes our current congress critters look like drooling idiots.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right that online publishing wouldn't cease alltogether. It would just be limited to those huge megacorps that have the armies of lawyers to advise them of what they can say and defend themselves when they still get it wrong. At that point we may well wish online publishing had ceased :)
I really don't see how you can take this position while still defending the right of a planitf to sue based on the laws in their home state rather than that of the publisher. Either a publisher on the Internet is responsible to the laws of his/her own state or they're responsible to the laws of every jurisdiction in the world. While it certainly does leave room for abuse, I think the only long term practical solution is for publishers to be responsible to their own state/country and nowhere else, to do otherwise would effectivly make virtually everyone who ever posts anything to the Internet a criminal, even if it often isn't immediatly enforcable. BTW I think the same applies to porn, taxes etc as well.
I think the customers should at least have the option of paying on a per bit basis and remaining un-capped. I know many customers wouldn't like it because they don't know how much they use or why but for me it would be preferable to blocking PtoP ports and servers. A carefull consumer might then be able to get their connection VERY cheap.
Well then I guess you won't mind if I just let myself into your house sometime when you're not home and watch some TV. After all you're not using it and it's not costing you anything.
The real question is will M$ allow OEMs to actually use this new functionality. In the past M$ has been pretty strict about what OEMs can put on the user's desktop and what screens can be displayed during initial bootup.
Which budget would that be? The military is almost entirely funded at the federal level while while schools (K-12 at least) are mainly funded by local taxes. That is exactly as it should be too.
Well it IS mostly true IFF you're talking about living completely off the grid and you'll see it for your self if/when you do your homework. Using solar for just part of your electricity needs can have a payback period shorter than your expected lifespan though depending on where you live. In most cases though you'll get more bang/buck by decreasing your usage.
If you had been paying attention you'd know that the free beer aspect of Free Software is basically irrelivent to Stallman so it makes no sense to draw conclusions about his beliefs/modives based on that aspect. The rest of your post is basically just an example of GIGO.
Because he wants people to think about the freedom aspect of Free Software that he and the GNU project stand for.
"In other words, you would like the technical aspects of kernel development to be dictated by
political concerns, rather than technical ones. That's the kind of thinking that suits RMS and
PHBs, not kernel developers."
Of course. Moral/political issues DO affect how technical issues are dealt with. When these issues are important/understood by enough people they get codified into laws and effectivly become techinical issues.
How is refusing to speak at an event for a group he disagrees with "throwing a hissy fit"?
I think you need to read it again. He said that GNU/Linux CONTAINS some non-free components, not that it IS a non-free component. So long as he doesn't actually use those drivers it's not hipocracy.
FWIW Stallman doesn't have a problem with binary only firmware, he just doesn't like these being built into the driver code. He's made it clear that it's OK if the firmware is kept seperate. If I sent you a file and said "This is covered under the GPL" and you found that right in the middle was a chunk of binary-only non-free code wouldn't you have a problem with that? Wouldn't you think that I was less than serious about the code being GPL?
>>It is entierely possibal for your comptuer to be >>at 100 volts realtive to your neighbors.
>No, because the ground on both computers is plugged >into, well, the ground.
I hate to break it to you but "ground" here and "ground" a few hundred feet away may NOT be the same and that difference can cause current to flow.... through your computer if necessary.
Unfortunately the cost card is only one small part of the cost to set up wireless. The total cost at the customer end is often more like $500 - $1000 once you include an antenna, cables, router(if necessary) and installation.
Sure but WISPS need to make up for that initial cost somehow. It's one thing to pick and choose customers in wireless friendly areas and with wireless friendly buildings but trying to employ it on a large scale is another thing altogether.
More likely they are getting their payment in other ways. Maybe your university is paying MS for the licenses through your tuition and that $5 is just for the CDs/packaging.
I completely disagree with you on this one. Virtually all of the really good teachers I've had have been opinionated bastards. I don't even think it's possible for a person who knolegeable and cares about a subject to fail to develop strong opinions and if they are humans then those opinions WILL show through. Even outside of the classroom I feel like I learn more from people that I disagree with then those that I agree with.
"The point is that the students shouldn't HAVE to block out your opinions."
No they should however be encouraged to recognize opinions when they hear them and use their critical thinking skills to analize those opinions. In this day and age "facts" are a dime a dozen but critical thinking skills are much more valuable.
"Do you realize that what you just wrote directly contradicts your teaching philosophy??? I'm the one arguing that I want my children exposed to all sides of an issue -- without bias."
And I want to live forever but it's not going to happen. Bias is everywhere and the sooner kids learn to recognize and deal with it the better.
Well, even us geeks sometimes get sick of building yet another cheap box for friends/relatives/customers just because all the major OEM machines suck rocks.
Err.. isn't this deal just with the Wal-mart on line? If so then taking it back might be more trouble than you think.
Well, it's nice that yours work but the winmodems in the Walmart computer in question don't. Even when you can get winmodems to work they are still likely to cause you problems later on when you update your kernel or move to a new distro or different OS. A $10 piece of hardware is just not worth the trouble these things eventually cause, even under Windows.
I agree that capitalism (in practice, not theory) sucks. It does however suck far less then other systems.
Intel was already using 4x100. Now they are using 4x133. I don't know that I'd call it impressive but using a 4xX bus instead of a 1xX bus DOES give better performance. As it stands right now AMD systems still have a price/performance advantage but the difference is small until you get up near the cutting edge. Up untill a few months ago I was building AMD systems almost exclusivly but now I'm building some P4 systems for those rare customers who actually run apps. that can take good advantage of Intels' SSE2 instructions.
More likely something else was slowing you down on your old system. Maybe you had a configuration problem or a slower disk.
Adding a heat spreader between the core and heatsink would reduce the heat transfer efficency and increase the production costs. As for protecting the delicate core from careless home builders, I'd much rather them push motherboard and heatsink vendors to provide a better retention system. They actually seem to be backing away from the 4 hole/screw mounting system (as used with the Swiftech 462 and some Alpha heatsinks) which I think is a mistake. Also, you need to remember that 99% of AMD's (and Intel's for that matter) customers are OEMs who presumably know how to attach a heatsink.
You arn't kidding. These two sites could be used as examples of good/bad web design in class.
I hate to break it to you but that's exactly the purpose of a corporation. You seem to be argueing that the entire idea of a corporation is absurd but that "it" should have the same rights as a human being anyway.
"What can we do to get OUR government to pass a bill like this?"
We'll have to start by getting politicians at least half as intelligent as the one who wrote that letter. This guy makes our current congress critters look like drooling idiots.
"Who are these "people" you speak of?"
Anyone with programming skills, the will to learn such skills, OR the money to pay someone with those skills.