The 155 figure is interesting, it's the same figure as the gross rate of OC3 SONET or STM-1 SDH optical links, however, OC-3/STM-1 links are 155Mb/s not MB/s. I wonder if the article got confused between the two.
Read my third paragraph of the comment you replied to more carefully.
According to the GCs, they are either POWs or civilians, one or the other, further the *default* is that a combatant is a POW. The GC relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, 1949, Article 4, Part A sets out what classes of detainees must be considered POW, and its a very broad list, eg, here is one class:
"1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces."
Reasonably broad. And it also covers civilian resistance to invasion (during the war at least):
"6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war."
Now, you might quibble about whether someone falls into the classes laid out in Article 4, however, the GC is *explicit* in stating that it requires competent tribunal to class someone as not being a POW, see the short and sweet Article 5:
"The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.
Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."
Note that persons who have not comitted belligerent acts are therefore civilians, and hence afforded the rights laid out under the GC relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. At best you could try them as a spy or saboteur, note the use of the word "try", these classes of people are *still* afforded due process. This convention specifically forbids:
"(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
in Article 3, 1d. Hence if the USA does execute or pass sentence on people detained at Guantanemo bay by means of ad-hoc and closed military courts, the USA would still be in breach, even if these people are *not* POWs - however they clearly must be as the USA has described them as combatants.
Note that the convention does not afford protection to civilians who are nationals of States which are not signatories or which have normal diplomatic relations with the belligerent State. Which is interesting, because while the USA is a signatory to the GCs, I'm not sure whether the USA congress actually ratified the signing of the GC, hence nationals of the USA may not be protected by the GC relative to civilians. Nor would any detainees at Guantanemo who are nationals of non-signatory states, however, they might still have some claim to POW status. They were picked up in belligerent states which the USA had invaded.
Really, it all boils down to: "treat them humanely and be just. If they're combatants you may detain them, but you must still treat them reasonably well and be just."
The DEC Alpha processor unfortunately has not seen much (any?) development in the last five years...
The last major overhaul was indeed 5 years ago, the EV6 / 21264. Development has carried on, but, TTBOMK, mostly for process shrinks/speed bumps. Note that the next, and final, iteration of alpha is due out next year sometime - the EV79.
Digital that found itself in a litigation about patents with Intel, that ended with a settlement that sort of made both parties happy.
NB: it's "digital", not "Digital", also called "DEC", also called "Digital Equipment Corporation". (they rebranded a few times).
digital sued Intel for violating AXP related patents in its PentiumPro. The suit was settled out of court: Intel got DECs FAB, DEC Semiconductor and rights to all its designs (the Intel XScale used in lots of PDAs is basically the DEC SA110 StrongArm), DEC got ~$800M (the fab was worth around $500M to $700M) and got the contract to service (nearly?) all of Intels IT - DEC saw its future in service, not hardware.
But in the mean time, (IIRC), Compaq had bought the part of Digital that made the processor and, basically, did not do much with it.
Compaq bought/all/ of DEC in '99. The suit with intel had been settled in early '97 iirc.
The Alpha would need a significantly lower clock speed than AMD/Intel chips for the same performance.
No, the key premise of AXP was to clock as fast as possible by staying true to the RISC philosophy. The first alpha in 1992 clocked at 200MHz. The second iteration, the 21164, clocked at 500MHz in 1996, around which time the PPro was clocking 180MHz (?), which it trounced in FP performance. However, they didnt manage to ramp clock speed much after that - intel did though. Further iterations (21264 and 21364) developed the width of the CPU more than the clock speed. However, the alpha was already doomed - the intel settlement made that clear.
POW detention facilities aren't illegal. Neither are detention facilities for illegal combattants. I'm not an American and don't know US law (as well as you do...), but it's all in accord with UN/Geneva conventions.
Incorrect. Firstly, the geneva conventions do not, TTBOMK, recognise the term "illegal combatants" - that is something which the Bush administration appear to have invented. Secondly, yes of course POW detention camps are legal. However, POW's have rights under the Geneva Conventions, eg the right to free association for one, the right not to be interrogated for another, the right to the same standard of barracks as is typical for their captors, none of which the prisoners at Guantanemo have.
The whole intent of the Geneva Conventions is to ensure that people are given rights according to their status, be it civilian, soldier, medical personnel, etc.. and, more importantly, that these rights be removed if and *only* if a "competant tribunal" determines otherwise. IOW, the entire point of the Geneva Conventions is to make sure that people are either treated reasonably or else given justice/due process. Which should be an entirely reasonable demand.
You can not simply say "ah they're evil, they dont deserve anything else" or "ah, but they are illegal combatants" or "ah, but national security is at stake". Further, even if they do not wear uniforms or carry a fixed sign they *still* are POWs, as these are just/some/ of the conditions which the Geneva Convention concerned with POWs ascribes as being relevant, the default in the absence of signs is/still/ POW status until competant tribunal rules otherwise. (and if they do not have POW status, then they are *civilians* and you treat them as such, ie due process is required to put them into detention camps).
Anyway, at this point in time, the administration leading the USA firmly believes in unilateralism and firmly believes it should not be bound by international laws and agreements should these be inconvenient. A sad precedent really, eg what will happen if one day american soldiers are captured and their captors decide that the Geneva Conventions are inconvenient, ie follow the precedent the USA has set? Indeed, werent we all outraged during the Iraq war by the display of dead US soldiers on TV, yet the same news programmes also would show images of dead Iraqi soldiers?
anyway... roll on the -1 mods for criticising the camps at Guantanemo bay.
I think we all heard about social stability in Ireland.
Crikey, what kind of idiot are you? You realise:
- the troubles were confined to the 6 counties in the north of Ireland which remained part of the UK? (typicalled "Northern Ireland")
- there has been a ceasefire in place in the north for 10 years, which by and large has stood. Since when the 2 sides have been slowly resolving their differences by political means.
- the remaining 26 counties (typically called the "south" ie the Republic of Ireland) have been very stable since gaining independence from England - bar the minor civil war in the immediate aftermath of independence.
I cant believe someone would comment on political stability in Ireland based on furking fictional novels not even set in Ireland by an author who has little to do with Ireland. God I wish the/. friend/foe/fan/freak user system also had a way to let me mark you as "-1 clueless"..
Err... the charges against Lt Col Tim Collins were of course found to be baseless (the irony was he was accused of mistreating POWs - by an american!). He's also the guy who made some stirring speech to his troops (irish) the eve of the war whose words impressed Bush so much he had them framed and hung on his wall (in the oval office?).
Many Irish fought in WWII. Indeed, the UK to this day still maintains at least two Irish regiments (The Royal Irish Regiment and the Irish Guards) today, composed of both northern and southern Irish. Lt Col. Tim Collins, who was accused of war crimes (by an american major i think, after Tim made some critical remarks about american conduct (something along lines of 'trigger happy')), is Irish. One of the UK forces soldiers killed in Iraq was in fact from Dublin. For his funeral, iirc, the Irish government gave permission for soldiers from his regiment to attend (ie in their capacities as british soldiers - dress uniform). Indeed, from the telegraph story below, this funeral made history: first time british soldiers have walked the streets of Dublin in uniform since 1922.
Ireland being neutral: Ireland made Shannon Airport available to the US military for stop-overs and refuelling for the planes which ferried troops and supplies over to Iraq.
More info from googling:
http://www.thewildgeese.com/pages/iriraq.html h ttp://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0424/iraq01.html http: //www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2F news%2F2003%2F04%2F25%2Fnfune25.xml
I think it is fair to sat we have different perceptions of risk. Do you prefer life with no risk? Fair enough: I, however, do not. If I want to enjoy scenery, I will go for a hike or take my Moto Guzzi out for a cruise, not sit on a vibrating, uncomfortable sport bike.
No, I believe taking risks with your life is fine. I'd agree with you 100% there. However, when it comes to 'fast riding' on motorbikes on the road (and by fast, we're presumably talking ~80% near the limit of the bike/tyres) I think thats an ultra-foolish risk. For one, you are not justing gambling with your own life, which *is* your right, but you are gambling with other people's lives too, there are other people using the roads. Ok, a bike is not that dangerous to others, but still, it can happen: bikes can slide an awful long way after a high-speed crash and do you really want to be standing there in your scuffed leathers and slowly realise your bike went and took out a pedestrian 50m down the road? Secondly, so much of that risk is outside your control. Just how much is something many of the fast-road-riders just dont appreciate - sadly some will never get the chance to appreciate this.
Not true: Zen has indeed saved me from the unexpected. I have encountered the very gravel you speak of: the Duffy is frequently littered with rocks from slides, and litter from accidents. It is a very dangerous road.
Wrong attitude. Its not that Zen saved you, its that your fast road-riding got you into that situation. I've done it too, arrived at a corner having to scrub maybe 50mph to get round the corner and finding gravel where i need to brake. Very gingerly braking with the front, trusting to the rear brake to scrub the speed and the front to not wash out suddenly and getting lucky and not crashing. Zen is bullshit, had I been going slower I would have had more time to notice the gravel and less speed to scrub. (NB: this isnt a rant about speed - I believe speed can be safe, as long as its not pushing limits of, eg, the road conditions).
But you will not always get away with it, and its not in your own hands if you ride on the road.
Yes, I am an adrenaline junkie. No, I am not a punk kid. Excitement enhances my life in a way that perhaps you do not require. Fine. Respect thy brothers trip.
Oh but I do respect your trip. I wouldnt describe myself as an adreline junky, but I do enjoy speed immensely.:) Ie, I like to enjoy risks which I can control, and the thrust of my argument is that those who enjoy fast road-riding are those who have yet failed to understand just how much of that risk is outside of their control.
The worst thing I can image happening to me (believe it or not) is not a painful death. I imagine that you cannot understand that.
I do. Being para, or worse, quadraplegic is my worst fear. I'd rather have the painful death!:)
And believe me, when one places a bet such as that, one does expect to win.
Exactly my point: not-going-to-happen-to-me-itis, and as I stated I also suffered from this! And it took me a/long/ time to get over it, 2 badish crashes, various small ones, many other "moments" and a few bones and joints that will never be normal again. I've gotten over the condition now, but it still amazes me to see other riders who dont recognise they have this condition and cant be told about it either.
Seriously, save the fast stuff for the track:
1. Your 'fast road riding' is nothing compared to what you can get out of a bike on the track.
2. After/real/ fast-riding on a track, you come to appreciate exactly how dangerous 'slow' fast-riding traffic is on the road with its oncoming traffic, cars, pedestrians, kids, dogs, animals, gravel, sand, trees, telegraph poles, wire fences, biker-unfriendly crash barriers, no run-off areas, etc..
Why risk it when you're not even going that fast anyway? (you cant on the road.)
If you have to ask...
"...Then you dont understand." - bullshit. I do understand. I hope you beat not-going-to-happen-me-itis before it beats you.
An important skill for fast road riding (even more so than on the track) is a zen-like ability to scan your visual field without fixating on anything.
Speaking as a motorcyclist, you're describing precisely why its such a dumb idea to do 'fast road riding'. Now, I'm making a few presumptions, based on your description of being part of the 'sports bike community' and descriptions of fast road riding being quite physical and requiring such zen-like attentiveness to your surroundings that you can not look at the clocks. I'm presuming that you're like the guys I've seen who overtake on blind crests, overtake other bikes round corners, ie sports bike riders who are suffering from not-going-to-happen-to-me-itis.
If you're lucky, you'll have a scary moment or two and get over not-going-to-happen-to-itis lightly. If you're less fortunate, you'll have a minor spill, pay for the damage to your bike and get over it. If you're unlucky, you'll have a real spill and pay for the damage to your bike and your body and get over it. But if you dont get over it pretty quickly, you're going to be dead.
Even at the best of times, even if you dont make a mistake, you can still easily be wiped out on a bike by some idiot in a cage. Why add to the risks? No matter how good you are, one day you'll arrive at a corner and find loose gravel or sand where you need to brake, or you'll go round a corner and have a dog jump out at you or a car parked at the side of the road or a bit of oil on the road or a car cutting the corner.
No amount of zen will save you from the unexpected. Even without the unexpected, you are human, you will one day make a mistake. At best you'll walk away with bruises and a nice repair bill, at worst you'll be dead or paraplegic.
Slow down a bit, give yourself more time to apply your Zen and hence make better use of it to better anticipate the unexpected, maybe enjoy a bit of the scenery. Save the fast riding for the track where you'll enjoy it far more, at far less risk.
NB: I used to have not-going-to-happen-to-me-itis too, thankfully though, it didnt cost me that much.
What is anybody going to do? The internet is not controlled by a single entity, the internet is merely the largest collection of individual networks which inter-connect with each other, by means of consensus based standards. Not even the USA federal authorities control the internet, least no more than the power they can hold over the companies which operate internet connected networks in the USA itself.
There's plenty of internet outside of the USA, and new DNS roots could be setup reasonably quickly if ever there were some odd reason to do so.
The GPL covers redistribution of code, not use.... It *may* be able to prevent me from distributing binary-only
Urg yes, of course. Thanks for correcting me. I meant distribute binary only case Vs distribute binary only with kernel.
not what Linus was talking about.
Well, what was he talking about? (AFAICT, Linus hasnt been at all clear, and hasnt been entirely consistent either wrt his views on binary-only modules, least not on l-k).
The Linux Kernel explicitly allows you to distribute binary-only drivers with the kernel.
You are incorrect.
This is an exception to the GPL that the Linux Kernel contains in its copyright clause.
You are incorrect. The Linux kernel COPYING file is the standard text of the GPL, with 2 provisos before the preamble (would that be a prepreamble then?), namely to explitely state that syscall interface is fair-use / a GPL boundary:
This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
And secondly to state that the version of the GPL which applies to the kernel is v2 unless otherwise explicitely stated:
Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel
is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not
v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.
So you're quite misinformed.
OTOH, Linus has said he does not consider loading of binary modules into the linux kernel to be a licence violation, however, TTBOMK, he said nothing about the distribution of binary modules with the kernel. Further, not all the kernel copyright holders agree with Linus, eg IIRC Alan Cox appears not to hold the view and his comments on the issue tend to be along the lines of "Go ask your lawyer".
Until now, small customers could buy RH for a few dozen $$. With RHEL this is not possible.
Well, that's RedHat's choice isnt it? And its the small customer's choice to not buy it, to instead buy Mandrake or SuSe or whatever. RedHat are not a charity, they do have to find some way of making money to pay for their staff to work on Linux, pay for the ancillary staff to run the business and ultimately, pay dividends to shareholders. And even if RedHat price themselves out of the reach of "small customers" and those small customers have to use something else, if that is what allows RedHat to continue to pay Alan Cox, DM, Jeff Garzik, Havoc, etc.. etc.. to work on Linux, then the small customers/still/ benefit indirectly by virtue of RedHat funding people to contribute to Linux. Just as RedHat users benefit from those who are paid by IBM, SuSe, Mandrake, etc.. etc.. to work on Linux.
Go and use debian for free and you/still/ benefit from the "Big Business" which has chosen to fund people to work on Linux.
As for "RHEL", well if you can obtain it, you should still be able to use it, apart from one or two rpms, its all freely distributable software. See this post of mine where I ponder on some of the legalities. Of course, you dont get the RH support or updates if you dont have the RHEL service contract.
Problem is, they now offer no solution for the little guy. It's all about Big Business.
Why do they have to offer a solution for the little guy? If you think they're neglecting the little guy and there's a niche, why dont you go and fill that niche? Its very very hard to argue that you should have the choice to use RedHat, if by that same argument you deny RedHat their freedom of choice in how they support Linux. And as I've argued in my previous post, even if RedHat are now too expensive for the little guy, the little guy *still* benefits indirectly, and benefits/directly/ if he chooses to use Fedora.
A healthy Linux 'ecosystem' is one that people can make a living from it, and that implies that companies need to be able to make at least some small margin of profit from Linux. As a corollary, if RedHat do better out of this move, then it quite probably is better for the Linux ecosystem in general.
Sorry, Fedora does not sound like an option, it's more like a toy for eternal beta testing.
Yes, but Fedora is being opened back up to the community - slow process, but it's happening. So instead of moaning about it being a toy, why dont you get off your soap-box and get involved to actually make it better? Also, there is the Fedora Legacy project, community driven, which will try to provide long-term updates for Fedora releases, ie backport patches and rebuild RPMs for older Fedora's - something that a lot of reasonably experienced Linux users could help with.
And do not forget that many of those customers who "did not contribute to revenue" are actually those who push for RH Linux in enterprises which do contribute to revenue.
Well, that is presumably a factor which RedHat considered, duty of care to their shareholders would have demanded it, if nothing else.
True. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.
Who are you referring to exactly? If Keith Packard, well he is about the only person who is actively working on improving X internals, he's already given us Xft, Xft2, XRender, Kdrive (which is/very/ promising). He appears now to be working on 2 extensions to allow X to do compositing. To call him arrogant or narcisstic to ask for CVS access is plain wrong.
Further, he appears to have the support of Jim Gettys, which says a/lot/.
Its a really great idea to dump your flagship producton, and customers.
Which customers have they dumped? The ones who bought into RedHat Network and bought boxed sets can surely continue to buy RHEL. The ones who did not, well why should RedHat lose/too/ much sleep about "customers" who dont pay?
And to be really fair to RedHat, they did still think of the hobbyist/non-paying "customers", they will hosting and developing for Fedora, which is free and will have updates. They did not have to do that.
Now that they are orphaning a big segment of their loyal customer base.
Loyal customer base of which the vast majority did not contribute to revenue. RedHat employ a lot of people to work full-time on Linux, David Miller, Alan Cox, Havoc Pennington, etc.. etc.. etc.. Rather strangely, in order to employ people you have to pay them, and these people depend on having an income in order to live. Very hard to work on Linux if you're a bum as its almost impossible to get telco's to run a DSL line to your cardboard box.
and still leveraging free labor
Oh please, See above. Further, I dont see anyone being forced to work on Fedora for free.
Although, I havn't been out to the local tavern in a while so maybe i missed the RedHat press-gang abducting unsuspecting developers and hauling them off to HMS Enterprise Linux.
Using "trademarked" pictures to do an endrun around the gpl to get "per processor" licensing is an end run around the GPL and ought to be treated as such. (This is, as far as I can tell, what they are doing w/ "enterprise" redhat to prevent me from buying one "enterprise" redhat and apt-proxying my other nodes). Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
You're mistaken I think. The RH trademarked stuff is all in seperate packages - eg redhat-logos and anaconda-images (and i cant actually think of any other package), see also Section 2 of Appendix 1 in the service agreement for RHEL (see URL below). The redhat network packages/might/ also be RedHat trademarked/owned, though they're not listed in App. 1, S.2.
RedHat do/not/ licence Enterprise Linux. The packages, other than the scant few with RH trademarks, are mostly GPL licenced (or other 'free' licence), AIUI, and i've read the document at http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html which, despite the URL is *not* a licence but a service agreement. So you can copy and redistribute them at will, AIUI, as per normal with GPL licenced software. The service agreement for RHEL does claim that "Red Hat and others" own all rights to the software and its components, however with the caveat of "subject to the applicable license" - which obviously would be GPL or BSD style in nearly all cases. Ie, you're pretty much free to take RHEL, strip out the few non-free packages and repackage it under some other non-trademark infringing name. (nor could you make claims to it being like RHEL, same situation as used to exist with resellers of downloaded RHL CDs).
However, what RedHat have done is to make it a condition of their support contract that you honestly report how many machines you deploy RHEL on. The support contract fee scales with number of deployed installs, obviously, and as per the service agreement you are committed to paying at the listed price (or otherwise agreed price) per installed "server", see Part II, Section 2.2 of the agreement at URL above. Further, RedHat are allowed to audit you to establish that you are in compliance with the service agreement, see Part I, S4. So, if you install extra RHEL servers RedHat are entitled to charge you for the discrepancy in the number of installed servers, with a provision for a 20% surcharge if the discrepancy exceeds 5%. If you were to fail to pay, RedHat naturally would have the option to terminate the agreement and sue you for breach of contract, as well as pursue you for the monies owed.
So (bearing in mind that i'm just Joe Random Slashdot Poster):
When you buy RHEL, you are not paying for a "licence" to use RHEL. You are paying for a service agreement for a period of time with RH to gain services such as updates, support, etc. for your installed servers.
You/are/ allowed to copy just about all the RHEL packages AFAICT. RH, TTBOML have *not* been sneaky and tried to 'taint' each package with trademarked material. (probably because of the potential to invalidate the licence and hence lose their right to distribute). There are a couple of packages which are not freely redistributable, and RedHat have been nice enough to point out which ones those are.
If you have a service agreement with RedHat however, you really really should not risk installing copies of RHEL without increasing your agreed installed server count with RH. Certainly not by more than 5%, or you risk hefty penalties (in addition obviously to risking continued RH service itself, and possibly further civil action by RH against you.).
Whether a RH customer could redistribute 'respun' RHEL CDs (ie RHEL stripped of all packages under RH licences/trademark restrictions) without breaching the service agreement is unclear. I do not see any language that disallows this, and Appendix 1, S1 seems to actually affirm that the customer/is/
Intel has quite a few FABs in various parts of the world, including Israel, Malaysia and Ireland as well as USA (cant remember where their FABs are in US. But they did buy DEC's old FAB in Cambridge, MA.)
Most likely they received lots of grants from Saxony government (Saxony, or whichever german state it is:) ). They're allowed to do this because Dresden is in the former DDR, and hence needs development, so have a concession from the EU to give subsidies to attract investment. Same reason why Intel have 2 FABs in Ireland and are building a third - because of grants and subsidies from the Irish govt.
Yes, and it seems reasonably straight-forward actually. Though the eRServer approach is probably not the one I use, there are other PgSQL replication managers and I'd investigate those first.
Intel have non-exclusive rights to alpha, at least 21164 anyway, from their settlement with DEC. Presumably that settlement covered future alpha designs too.
Slashdot Mirror
The 155 figure is interesting, it's the same figure as the gross rate of OC3 SONET or STM-1 SDH optical links, however, OC-3/STM-1 links are 155Mb/s not MB/s. I wonder if the article got confused between the two.
Read my third paragraph of the comment you replied to more carefully.
According to the GCs, they are either POWs or civilians, one or the other, further the *default* is that a combatant is a POW. The GC relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, 1949, Article 4, Part A sets out what classes of detainees must be considered POW, and its a very broad list, eg, here is one class:
"1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces."
Reasonably broad. And it also covers civilian resistance to invasion (during the war at least):
"6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war."
Now, you might quibble about whether someone falls into the classes laid out in Article 4, however, the GC is *explicit* in stating that it requires competent tribunal to class someone as not being a POW, see the short and sweet Article 5:
"The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.
Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."
Note that persons who have not comitted belligerent acts are therefore civilians, and hence afforded the rights laid out under the GC relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. At best you could try them as a spy or saboteur, note the use of the word "try", these classes of people are *still* afforded due process. This convention specifically forbids:
"(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
in Article 3, 1d. Hence if the USA does execute or pass sentence on people detained at Guantanemo bay by means of ad-hoc and closed military courts, the USA would still be in breach, even if these people are *not* POWs - however they clearly must be as the USA has described them as combatants.
Note that the convention does not afford protection to civilians who are nationals of States which are not signatories or which have normal diplomatic relations with the belligerent State. Which is interesting, because while the USA is a signatory to the GCs, I'm not sure whether the USA congress actually ratified the signing of the GC, hence nationals of the USA may not be protected by the GC relative to civilians. Nor would any detainees at Guantanemo who are nationals of non-signatory states, however, they might still have some claim to POW status. They were picked up in belligerent states which the USA had invaded.
Really, it all boils down to: "treat them humanely and be just. If they're combatants you may detain them, but you must still treat them reasonably well and be just."
The DEC Alpha processor unfortunately has not seen much (any?) development in the last five years...
/all/ of DEC in '99. The suit with intel had been settled in early '97 iirc.
The last major overhaul was indeed 5 years ago, the EV6 / 21264. Development has carried on, but, TTBOMK, mostly for process shrinks/speed bumps. Note that the next, and final, iteration of alpha is due out next year sometime - the EV79.
Digital that found itself in a litigation about patents with Intel, that ended with a settlement that sort of made both parties happy.
NB: it's "digital", not "Digital", also called "DEC", also called "Digital Equipment Corporation". (they rebranded a few times).
digital sued Intel for violating AXP related patents in its PentiumPro. The suit was settled out of court: Intel got DECs FAB, DEC Semiconductor and rights to all its designs (the Intel XScale used in lots of PDAs is basically the DEC SA110 StrongArm), DEC got ~$800M (the fab was worth around $500M to $700M) and got the contract to service (nearly?) all of Intels IT - DEC saw its future in service, not hardware.
But in the mean time, (IIRC), Compaq had bought the part of Digital that made the processor and, basically, did not do much with it.
Compaq bought
The Alpha would need a significantly lower clock speed than AMD/Intel chips for the same performance.
No, the key premise of AXP was to clock as fast as possible by staying true to the RISC philosophy. The first alpha in 1992 clocked at 200MHz. The second iteration, the 21164, clocked at 500MHz in 1996, around which time the PPro was clocking 180MHz (?), which it trounced in FP performance. However, they didnt manage to ramp clock speed much after that - intel did though. Further iterations (21264 and 21364) developed the width of the CPU more than the clock speed. However, the alpha was already doomed - the intel settlement made that clear.
POW detention facilities aren't illegal. Neither are detention facilities for illegal combattants. I'm not an American and don't know US law (as well as you do...), but it's all in accord with UN/Geneva conventions.
/some/ of the conditions which the Geneva Convention concerned with POWs ascribes as being relevant, the default in the absence of signs is /still/ POW status until competant tribunal rules otherwise. (and if they do not have POW status, then they are *civilians* and you treat them as such, ie due process is required to put them into detention camps).
Incorrect. Firstly, the geneva conventions do not, TTBOMK, recognise the term "illegal combatants" - that is something which the Bush administration appear to have invented. Secondly, yes of course POW detention camps are legal. However, POW's have rights under the Geneva Conventions, eg the right to free association for one, the right not to be interrogated for another, the right to the same standard of barracks as is typical for their captors, none of which the prisoners at Guantanemo have.
The whole intent of the Geneva Conventions is to ensure that people are given rights according to their status, be it civilian, soldier, medical personnel, etc.. and, more importantly, that these rights be removed if and *only* if a "competant tribunal" determines otherwise. IOW, the entire point of the Geneva Conventions is to make sure that people are either treated reasonably or else given justice/due process. Which should be an entirely reasonable demand.
You can not simply say "ah they're evil, they dont deserve anything else" or "ah, but they are illegal combatants" or "ah, but national security is at stake". Further, even if they do not wear uniforms or carry a fixed sign they *still* are POWs, as these are just
Anyway, at this point in time, the administration leading the USA firmly believes in unilateralism and firmly believes it should not be bound by international laws and agreements should these be inconvenient. A sad precedent really, eg what will happen if one day american soldiers are captured and their captors decide that the Geneva Conventions are inconvenient, ie follow the precedent the USA has set? Indeed, werent we all outraged during the Iraq war by the display of dead US soldiers on TV, yet the same news programmes also would show images of dead Iraqi soldiers?
anyway... roll on the -1 mods for criticising the camps at Guantanemo bay.
I think we all heard about social stability in Ireland.
/. friend/foe/fan/freak user system also had a way to let me mark you as "-1 clueless"..
Crikey, what kind of idiot are you? You realise:
- the troubles were confined to the 6 counties in the north of Ireland which remained part of the UK? (typicalled "Northern Ireland")
- there has been a ceasefire in place in the north for 10 years, which by and large has stood. Since when the 2 sides have been slowly resolving their differences by political means.
- the remaining 26 counties (typically called the "south" ie the Republic of Ireland) have been very stable since gaining independence from England - bar the minor civil war in the immediate aftermath of independence.
I cant believe someone would comment on political stability in Ireland based on furking fictional novels not even set in Ireland by an author who has little to do with Ireland. God I wish the
Err... the charges against Lt Col Tim Collins were of course found to be baseless (the irony was he was accused of mistreating POWs - by an american!). He's also the guy who made some stirring speech to his troops (irish) the eve of the war whose words impressed Bush so much he had them framed and hung on his wall (in the oval office?).
Many Irish fought in WWII. Indeed, the UK to this day still maintains at least two Irish regiments (The Royal Irish Regiment and the Irish Guards) today, composed of both northern and southern Irish. Lt Col. Tim Collins, who was accused of war crimes (by an american major i think, after Tim made some critical remarks about american conduct (something along lines of 'trigger happy')), is Irish. One of the UK forces soldiers killed in Iraq was in fact from Dublin. For his funeral, iirc, the Irish government gave permission for soldiers from his regiment to attend (ie in their capacities as british soldiers - dress uniform). Indeed, from the telegraph story below, this funeral made history: first time british soldiers have walked the streets of Dublin in uniform since 1922.
h ttp://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0424/iraq01.html: //www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2F news%2F2003%2F04%2F25%2Fnfune25.xml
Ireland being neutral: Ireland made Shannon Airport available to the US military for stop-overs and refuelling for the planes which ferried troops and supplies over to Iraq.
More info from googling:
http://www.thewildgeese.com/pages/iriraq.html
http
I think it is fair to sat we have different perceptions of risk. Do you prefer life with no risk? Fair enough: I, however, do not. If I want to enjoy scenery, I will go for a hike or take my Moto Guzzi out for a cruise, not sit on a vibrating, uncomfortable sport bike.
:) Ie, I like to enjoy risks which I can control, and the thrust of my argument is that those who enjoy fast road-riding are those who have yet failed to understand just how much of that risk is outside of their control.
:)
/long/ time to get over it, 2 badish crashes, various small ones, many other "moments" and a few bones and joints that will never be normal again. I've gotten over the condition now, but it still amazes me to see other riders who dont recognise they have this condition and cant be told about it either.
/real/ fast-riding on a track, you come to appreciate exactly how dangerous 'slow' fast-riding traffic is on the road with its oncoming traffic, cars, pedestrians, kids, dogs, animals, gravel, sand, trees, telegraph poles, wire fences, biker-unfriendly crash barriers, no run-off areas, etc..
No, I believe taking risks with your life is fine. I'd agree with you 100% there. However, when it comes to 'fast riding' on motorbikes on the road (and by fast, we're presumably talking ~80% near the limit of the bike/tyres) I think thats an ultra-foolish risk. For one, you are not justing gambling with your own life, which *is* your right, but you are gambling with other people's lives too, there are other people using the roads. Ok, a bike is not that dangerous to others, but still, it can happen: bikes can slide an awful long way after a high-speed crash and do you really want to be standing there in your scuffed leathers and slowly realise your bike went and took out a pedestrian 50m down the road? Secondly, so much of that risk is outside your control. Just how much is something many of the fast-road-riders just dont appreciate - sadly some will never get the chance to appreciate this.
Not true: Zen has indeed saved me from the unexpected. I have encountered the very gravel you speak of: the Duffy is frequently littered with rocks from slides, and litter from accidents. It is a very dangerous road.
Wrong attitude. Its not that Zen saved you, its that your fast road-riding got you into that situation. I've done it too, arrived at a corner having to scrub maybe 50mph to get round the corner and finding gravel where i need to brake. Very gingerly braking with the front, trusting to the rear brake to scrub the speed and the front to not wash out suddenly and getting lucky and not crashing. Zen is bullshit, had I been going slower I would have had more time to notice the gravel and less speed to scrub. (NB: this isnt a rant about speed - I believe speed can be safe, as long as its not pushing limits of, eg, the road conditions).
But you will not always get away with it, and its not in your own hands if you ride on the road.
Yes, I am an adrenaline junkie. No, I am not a punk kid. Excitement enhances my life in a way that perhaps you do not require. Fine. Respect thy brothers trip.
Oh but I do respect your trip. I wouldnt describe myself as an adreline junky, but I do enjoy speed immensely.
The worst thing I can image happening to me (believe it or not) is not a painful death. I imagine that you cannot understand that.
I do. Being para, or worse, quadraplegic is my worst fear. I'd rather have the painful death!
And believe me, when one places a bet such as that, one does expect to win.
Exactly my point: not-going-to-happen-to-me-itis, and as I stated I also suffered from this! And it took me a
Seriously, save the fast stuff for the track:
1. Your 'fast road riding' is nothing compared to what you can get out of a bike on the track.
2. After
Why risk it when you're not even going that fast anyway? (you cant on the road.)
If you have to ask...
"...Then you dont understand." - bullshit. I do understand. I hope you beat not-going-to-happen-me-itis before it beats you.
An important skill for fast road riding (even more so than on the track) is a zen-like ability to scan your visual field without fixating on anything.
Speaking as a motorcyclist, you're describing precisely why its such a dumb idea to do 'fast road riding'. Now, I'm making a few presumptions, based on your description of being part of the 'sports bike community' and descriptions of fast road riding being quite physical and requiring such zen-like attentiveness to your surroundings that you can not look at the clocks. I'm presuming that you're like the guys I've seen who overtake on blind crests, overtake other bikes round corners, ie sports bike riders who are suffering from not-going-to-happen-to-me-itis.
If you're lucky, you'll have a scary moment or two and get over not-going-to-happen-to-itis lightly. If you're less fortunate, you'll have a minor spill, pay for the damage to your bike and get over it. If you're unlucky, you'll have a real spill and pay for the damage to your bike and your body and get over it. But if you dont get over it pretty quickly, you're going to be dead.
Even at the best of times, even if you dont make a mistake, you can still easily be wiped out on a bike by some idiot in a cage. Why add to the risks? No matter how good you are, one day you'll arrive at a corner and find loose gravel or sand where you need to brake, or you'll go round a corner and have a dog jump out at you or a car parked at the side of the road or a bit of oil on the road or a car cutting the corner.
No amount of zen will save you from the unexpected. Even without the unexpected, you are human, you will one day make a mistake. At best you'll walk away with bruises and a nice repair bill, at worst you'll be dead or paraplegic.
Slow down a bit, give yourself more time to apply your Zen and hence make better use of it to better anticipate the unexpected, maybe enjoy a bit of the scenery. Save the fast riding for the track where you'll enjoy it far more, at far less risk.
NB: I used to have not-going-to-happen-to-me-itis too, thankfully though, it didnt cost me that much.
What are they gonna do, take it by force?
What is anybody going to do? The internet is not controlled by a single entity, the internet is merely the largest collection of individual networks which inter-connect with each other, by means of consensus based standards. Not even the USA federal authorities control the internet, least no more than the power they can hold over the companies which operate internet connected networks in the USA itself.
There's plenty of internet outside of the USA, and new DNS roots could be setup reasonably quickly if ever there were some odd reason to do so.
NFS is stateless from the server's perspective. .... So the server, by design, has no notion of the number / names of users connected to it.
NFS is indeed stateless, however the server does know of users "connected" to it via the mount RPC protocol which is stateful. Try 'showmount'.
The GPL covers redistribution of code, not use. ... It *may* be able to prevent me from distributing binary-only
Urg yes, of course. Thanks for correcting me. I meant distribute binary only case Vs distribute binary only with kernel.
not what Linus was talking about.
Well, what was he talking about? (AFAICT, Linus hasnt been at all clear, and hasnt been entirely consistent either wrt his views on binary-only modules, least not on l-k).
You are incorrect.
This is an exception to the GPL that the Linux Kernel contains in its copyright clause.
You are incorrect. The Linux kernel COPYING file is the standard text of the GPL, with 2 provisos before the preamble (would that be a prepreamble then?), namely to explitely state that syscall interface is fair-use / a GPL boundary:
And secondly to state that the version of the GPL which applies to the kernel is v2 unless otherwise explicitely stated:
So you're quite misinformed.
OTOH, Linus has said he does not consider loading of binary modules into the linux kernel to be a licence violation, however, TTBOMK, he said nothing about the distribution of binary modules with the kernel. Further, not all the kernel copyright holders agree with Linus, eg IIRC Alan Cox appears not to hold the view and his comments on the issue tend to be along the lines of "Go ask your lawyer".
Until now, small customers could buy RH for a few dozen $$. With RHEL this is not possible.
/still/ benefit indirectly by virtue of RedHat funding people to contribute to Linux. Just as RedHat users benefit from those who are paid by IBM, SuSe, Mandrake, etc.. etc.. to work on Linux.
/still/ benefit from the "Big Business" which has chosen to fund people to work on Linux.
/directly/ if he chooses to use Fedora.
Well, that's RedHat's choice isnt it? And its the small customer's choice to not buy it, to instead buy Mandrake or SuSe or whatever. RedHat are not a charity, they do have to find some way of making money to pay for their staff to work on Linux, pay for the ancillary staff to run the business and ultimately, pay dividends to shareholders. And even if RedHat price themselves out of the reach of "small customers" and those small customers have to use something else, if that is what allows RedHat to continue to pay Alan Cox, DM, Jeff Garzik, Havoc, etc.. etc.. to work on Linux, then the small customers
Go and use debian for free and you
As for "RHEL", well if you can obtain it, you should still be able to use it, apart from one or two rpms, its all freely distributable software. See this post of mine where I ponder on some of the legalities. Of course, you dont get the RH support or updates if you dont have the RHEL service contract.
Problem is, they now offer no solution for the little guy. It's all about Big Business.
Why do they have to offer a solution for the little guy? If you think they're neglecting the little guy and there's a niche, why dont you go and fill that niche? Its very very hard to argue that you should have the choice to use RedHat, if by that same argument you deny RedHat their freedom of choice in how they support Linux. And as I've argued in my previous post, even if RedHat are now too expensive for the little guy, the little guy *still* benefits indirectly, and benefits
A healthy Linux 'ecosystem' is one that people can make a living from it, and that implies that companies need to be able to make at least some small margin of profit from Linux. As a corollary, if RedHat do better out of this move, then it quite probably is better for the Linux ecosystem in general.
Sorry, Fedora does not sound like an option, it's more like a toy for eternal beta testing.
Yes, but Fedora is being opened back up to the community - slow process, but it's happening. So instead of moaning about it being a toy, why dont you get off your soap-box and get involved to actually make it better? Also, there is the Fedora Legacy project, community driven, which will try to provide long-term updates for Fedora releases, ie backport patches and rebuild RPMs for older Fedora's - something that a lot of reasonably experienced Linux users could help with.
And do not forget that many of those customers who "did not contribute to revenue" are actually those who push for RH Linux in enterprises which do contribute to revenue.
Well, that is presumably a factor which RedHat considered, duty of care to their shareholders would have demanded it, if nothing else.
True. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.
Yes.
Ah, sorry, you were referring to the XFree people who deny access as being narcissistic, sorry :), and yeah, they seem to be (from what little i know.)
Who are you referring to exactly? If Keith Packard, well he is about the only person who is actively working on improving X internals, he's already given us Xft, Xft2, XRender, Kdrive (which is /very/ promising). He appears now to be working on 2 extensions to allow X to do compositing. To call him arrogant or narcisstic to ask for CVS access is plain wrong.
/lot/.
Further, he appears to have the support of Jim Gettys, which says a
Its a really great idea to dump your flagship producton, and customers.
/too/ much sleep about "customers" who dont pay?
Which customers have they dumped? The ones who bought into RedHat Network and bought boxed sets can surely continue to buy RHEL. The ones who did not, well why should RedHat lose
And to be really fair to RedHat, they did still think of the hobbyist/non-paying "customers", they will hosting and developing for Fedora, which is free and will have updates. They did not have to do that.
Now that they are orphaning a big segment of their loyal customer base.
Loyal customer base of which the vast majority did not contribute to revenue. RedHat employ a lot of people to work full-time on Linux, David Miller, Alan Cox, Havoc Pennington, etc.. etc.. etc.. Rather strangely, in order to employ people you have to pay them, and these people depend on having an income in order to live. Very hard to work on Linux if you're a bum as its almost impossible to get telco's to run a DSL line to your cardboard box.
and still leveraging free labor
Oh please, See above. Further, I dont see anyone being forced to work on Fedora for free.
Although, I havn't been out to the local tavern in a while so maybe i missed the RedHat press-gang abducting unsuspecting developers and hauling them off to HMS Enterprise Linux.
Using "trademarked" pictures to do an endrun around the gpl to get "per processor" licensing is an end run around the GPL and ought to be treated as such. (This is, as far as I can tell, what they are doing w/ "enterprise" redhat to prevent me from buying one "enterprise" redhat and apt-proxying my other nodes). Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
You're mistaken I think. The RH trademarked stuff is all in seperate packages - eg redhat-logos and anaconda-images (and i cant actually think of any other package), see also Section 2 of Appendix 1 in the service agreement for RHEL (see URL below). The redhat network packages /might/ also be RedHat trademarked/owned, though they're not listed in App. 1, S.2.
RedHat do /not/ licence Enterprise Linux. The packages, other than the scant few with RH trademarks, are mostly GPL licenced (or other 'free' licence), AIUI, and i've read the document at http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html which, despite the URL is *not* a licence but a service agreement. So you can copy and redistribute them at will, AIUI, as per normal with GPL licenced software. The service agreement for RHEL does claim that "Red Hat and others" own all rights to the software and its components, however with the caveat of "subject to the applicable license" - which obviously would be GPL or BSD style in nearly all cases. Ie, you're pretty much free to take RHEL, strip out the few non-free packages and repackage it under some other non-trademark infringing name. (nor could you make claims to it being like RHEL, same situation as used to exist with resellers of downloaded RHL CDs).
However, what RedHat have done is to make it a condition of their support contract that you honestly report how many machines you deploy RHEL on. The support contract fee scales with number of deployed installs, obviously, and as per the service agreement you are committed to paying at the listed price (or otherwise agreed price) per installed "server", see Part II, Section 2.2 of the agreement at URL above. Further, RedHat are allowed to audit you to establish that you are in compliance with the service agreement, see Part I, S4. So, if you install extra RHEL servers RedHat are entitled to charge you for the discrepancy in the number of installed servers, with a provision for a 20% surcharge if the discrepancy exceeds 5%. If you were to fail to pay, RedHat naturally would have the option to terminate the agreement and sue you for breach of contract, as well as pursue you for the monies owed.
So (bearing in mind that i'm just Joe Random Slashdot Poster):
Intel has quite a few FABs in various parts of the world, including Israel, Malaysia and Ireland as well as USA (cant remember where their FABs are in US. But they did buy DEC's old FAB in Cambridge, MA.)
Most likely they received lots of grants from Saxony government (Saxony, or whichever german state it is :) ). They're allowed to do this because Dresden is in the former DDR, and hence needs development, so have a concession from the EU to give subsidies to attract investment. Same reason why Intel have 2 FABs in Ireland and are building a third - because of grants and subsidies from the Irish govt.
Yes, and it seems reasonably straight-forward actually. Though the eRServer approach is probably not the one I use, there are other PgSQL replication managers and I'd investigate those first.
Good job then that PgSQL supports kerberos authentication. (at least means the auth data in your DB connection is^Wcan be made safe).
still no native replication.
One of the new features in 7.4 is the replication technology contributed from eServer.
As did AMD.
Intel have non-exclusive rights to alpha, at least 21164 anyway, from their settlement with DEC. Presumably that settlement covered future alpha designs too.