Re:The point is not to watch DVD on Linux.
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Out of curiousity, why do you feel that you have the right to royalty-free dvds? The companies that developed the format pumped in serious cash; why shouldn't they have the rights to the fruits of their labors? You always, technically, have the option of starting up your own format.
Also, I feel that your teeshirt analogy is not a good one. Shirts have been around for a hell of a long time, and even with today's patent system the patents would have expired long ago. Thus, under normal conditions nobody could force you to pay royalties for making shirts.
However, if a company came up with a new fiber for making shirts that made shirts unstainable and last twice as long, would it be unreasonable for this company to want money if your use their new methods?
While I agree that the current situation sucks and that royalties are annoying as hell, especially for free software developers, I don't feel that you or I have any natural born right, in almost all cases, to force a person or company to release their creations on anything other than their own terms.
I was playing around with the idea of signing the appropriate NDAs so that I could create a free/almost free set of binary libs. Then I took a gander at the DVD faq. End of that idea.
Straight from the faq, here's why:
"The official DVD specification books are available from Toshiba after signing a nondisclosure agreement and paying a $5,000 fee. One book is included in the initial fee; additional books are $500 each. "
"Implementation of DVD products and use of the DVD logo for non-promotional purposes requires additional $10,000 format and logo licenses."
"Any company making DVD products must license the patented technology from a Philips/Pioneer/Sony pool, a Hitachi/Matsushita/Mitsubishi/Time Warner/Toshiba/Victor pool, and from Thomson. Total royalties are about 6% (minimum $6) for a DVD-Video player, 6% (minimum $6) for a DVD-ROM drive, 5% (minimum $2) for a DVD decoder, and 10 cents for a DVD disc."
"Dolby licenses Dolby Digital decoders for $0.26 per channel."
On the bright side, getting the specs of CSS seems to be free. So it technically shouldn't be a problem to create a legal binary lib--as long as you don't mind selling off your soul in the NDAs that they'll make you sign.
For the libs necesary to drive a fully functional dvd player, however, you have a $15,000 startup fee, together with a $7/player distribution fee. While I am fond of open source, I'm not willing to bring my bank account balances down to $0 to support it.
Hmmm. If I recall correctly, Islam says that Jesus was just another one of god's prophets, while Christianity says that Jesus was the head honcho in the flesh. This is a rather big difference.
But that leads to the question . . . while Christianity may have plastered its "new" testiment on top of the testiment of the Jews, the Jewish faith has taken nothing from the new testament (once again, if I recall correctly). Perhaps the name jew++ would be more appropriate . . . rather than judeo-christian which implies a bidirectional relationship.
I've heard tons of tech evangelists saying that the days of the PCs are ending. Usually, these evangelists have some vested intersted in the net appliance market. IMHO, this viewpoint is utter bull--PCs will undoubtedly remain a focal point for the computing experience for at least several more years.
Sure, you may be able to read email on a cellphone, but its a far more pleasant experience when you are sitting in a comfy computer screen in front of a nice big 19" monitor. What makes PCs so attractive is their versatility. They can do everything from helping you create essays to letting you entertain yourself.
I take the more moderate view on net appliances. Its obvious that PCs and netappliances will coexist for the conceivable future. In the long term, I think that everything will eventually converge on mobile/wearable PCs. Imagine a future with a computer weighing a few hundred grams, with t3 net connectivity, virtually unlimited battery life, and the ability to project a 19"+ eqiv screen directly onto your retina. Yum.
Thus, in short, net apps won't swallow PCs, and PCs won't be around forever. Eventually they will meet in the middle.
Isn't saying that a stock split might destroy a company going a little to far? Sure, it might cause some harm, but a big fish like Sony isn't dying anytime soon.
Besides, Playstation2 isn't a bad thing to take a risk on. I've been slobering over the specs for some time now. Going to pick one up for myself once its released.
I'm not sure that this is ergonomically correct, but I have never experienced any major discomfort from the method that I use, even after a multi-hour programming rampage.
For typing, I keep about four inches or so away from the front edge of my desk. The weight of my hands rests on the bottom part of my palm, which allows me to arch my fingers (I have big hands) comfortably over the keyboard, while maintaining my usual typing pace (80wpm avg). When possible, I rest my elbows on armrests.
As for my mouse, I keep it and its pad very far away from the front of the desk. Basically, my arm rests flat on the desk almost to the elbow. I keep my mouse sensitivity turned way up so that I can reach any side of my desktop, even at high resolutions, by only moving my hand a few inches. Since my entire arm is supported, this position is quite comfy.
For FPS games however, I move the mouse forward a bit, so that about half of my fore-arm area is supported by the desk. This seems to be more effective for those trigger-reflex type games.
I'm interested in hearing what positions other people use to stay comfy.
Note: I don't use any ergo-stuff. I use the HP keyboard that came with my old 486 (still love it!), and a microsoft serial mouse (no wheel) for mousing.
For many years, becoming a techno-hermit has been a dream for me. Just being able to shut out all those annoying humans and to focus entirely upon the computers that I love. Imagine what one could accomplish if one could dedicate all their time to coding, without having to worry about people complaining about their computer not being able to print or some such problem.
On the flip side of the coin, I do occassionally yearn for human contact. Drinking alone results in missing half the fun.
Hmmm. Maybe I can find ten or twenty other techno-hermits and we could all band together to form a little isolated society. But then we wouldn't really be hermits anymore. Besides, we would probably be strangling one another within a couple of weeks.
This problem requires further thought. A part-time techno-hermit perhaps. . . .:)
Even though it may be fading in popularity, Netscape still has an incredibly strong userbase. Out of a network of about 50 users (many of whom are not techies), about half have specifically requested that I install Netscape for them (as opposed to using IE, which is preinstalled on their computer by the OEM).
Though it is prone to crashes (especially the Win95/98 version), Netscape still has a lot of supporters out there, and won't be dissapearing any time soon. I think that Netscape 5, once it finally gets released, will become the standard web browser on most internet appliances, and will once again regain lost ground on the Windows platforms.
If I were in charge of things, I would have the government setup a series of pgp key servers. When people register to vote, they would then have to appear in a government office (only once) with valid photoid (eg: drivers license, state id card). They would then submit on floppy disk, or in print, their public key, which would then be manually entered into the governments key server system. Though this is somewhat unwieldy, it should pretty much eliminate people submitting false keys. The keys would then, of course, be used to submit signed ballots for each vote. The process is secure and the technology is proven, cheap, and easy to use.
Now as for those people who think that internet voting will ruin the whole process (eg: people won't consider candidates properly), I ask this question: how much do people consider candidates with a traditional voting process. Has Bush Jr. made any real discussion about his policitical agenda yet? Last time I checked (which I confess, was a month of two ago), his campaign party was trying to simply push him based on his personality.
When people pick presidents based on looks and pretty speeches rather than political track records and agendas, you know the system is seriously porked. And with a system like the one we have now, no more damage could be done to this monstrousity. On the other hand, there is a lot to be gained from a proper implementation of a digital/analog hybrid voting system. Indeed it would be easier for everybody to vote, but it is also the first step away from a representative-based government towards a government that truley represents the will of the people rather than the policital action committees.
Finally, just to make things clear, I'm not saying that the old voting method should be eliminated. It should be kept as an alternative method for those who don't have net/computer access.
Remember that treaties are, ultimately, nothing more than a couple of scraps of paper. In themselves, they hold no power to enforce. Whatever enforcement mechanisms are in the world's arms treaties are obviously not worth a rat's ass. Now that the cold war is supposedly over, does the US suddenly head towards peace? Hell no. Our politicians know that their are plenty of other conflicts out there that they can twist to their advantage.
Take Kosovo for instance. The UN backed by the US goes in to righteously stop a genocide and help throw down an evil dictator. After a war in which no friendly soldiers lose their lives, the politicians declare a victory. Everybody feels happy and confident in the powers of the US and UN. But what about the second genocide that has happened in Kosovo? Where the Albanians are now attacking the Serbs and forcing new mass exoduses? Well . . . those are swept under the rug as life goes on in American politics. A country in ruins and no true resolution to a conflict between to ethnicities, all so that the politicians could bump themselves up a few points in the polls.
You may be wondering what all this has to do with treaties. Well . . . the answer is simple. Treaties in general are nothing more than policitial tools. People listen to them as long as they are convenient and that they can break them without getting in trouble. The only times that treaties in themselves have any use beyond symbolic purposes is when policitians drag us into another war. Treaties can then be used as a justification for attacking the "evil" forces of our enemies.
So in summary: if you think you can find safety behind the walls of a treaty (particularly one related to weapons), you will find out that you are wrong the hard way. There will always be some evil schmuck who will be breaking the treaty, either with or without the permission of their government.
At work, I named all the servers after farm animals. The name matches up to the servers function in (occassionally) wierd, convulted ways. Eg: our primary fileserver is called Pig. Logic: pigs wallow in mud and shit. Fileservers build up giantantic collections of shit over the course of months and years.
The firewall is, of course, called goat. Goats eat everything. The firewall . . . well . . .:-)
The webserver (static content) is called sheep. Because sheeps are pretty unexciting creatures. And when you think about it, once everything is up and running webservers aren't that exciting either.
The NT domino server is named Ox, because of its elegance and speed. The other NT server doesn't have an animal name, but it is called Blimp in honor of the size of the OS that runs on it.
The mail exchange is called cow. Since cows basically munch grass all day, and "cow" does the same for mail.
Why should they feel obligated to send people to their competitors? Remember that these search engines live off advertising. Sending people away to (potentially) better places will be like biting the hand that feeds them.
Besides, any dip who can't figure out that yahoo is located at yahoo.com, or infoseek at infoseek.com, deserves what they get.
Conclusion: there is nothing to get your panties in a knot about here. The actions of Lycos aren't harmful or menancing.
Are they just making a digital version of the traiditional handwriting signature and adding some auditing features to it? If there are, then are ask what in the hell are they smoking? The system the article seemed to mention relies on trusted third parties to validate documents (something which can easily be abused by powerful institutions such as various factions of our government).
Why not go over to a public-private key method of signing document? When I sign something, you don't need an intermediate party as long as you have some way of getting my key (which can be handed over in person, or extracted from dozens of publically run sights). My key can of course be compared to my digital fingerprint (which is on both the sig file of my emails and my business cards).
The whole notion of using handwriting to validate documents is an outdated idea that should be done away with once and for all. Just use pgp or (gpg) or whatever. Makes life simpler. Less open to abuse. Its already there.
Bah. You're being much to conservative;). If you are going to ask for things on a handheld . . . .
- Viewing field equiv of a 19" monitor at 2 ft @ 1280*1024*32bpp.
- 128 mb+ ram
- at least 9gb of harddisk space, at least SCSI quality. Hmmm. Solid-state would be nice.
- 10/100 ethernet and modem
- Beowulf capabilities (had to add this one, sorry). News flash: nasa has joined 1024 Palm Xs to form the new navigational super computer for the manned mission to mars. . . .
- am/fm radio, cell phone capabilities (including cellular data connect ala richocet).
- All this needs to fit in the size of a credit card (like in that one scifi show, the name of which eludes me . ..), and it needs to be capable of projecting a holographic image of a quirky female AI who makes wise cracks and gives unwanted advice.
Just how many different major projects can the market currently support? Theres a finite number of computers and an infinite number of tasks which they can be applied to. Since there seem to be more and more of these massive volunteer distributed projects coming up, is it possible that the user-market will become saturated any time soon?
I personally think it is possible but that it will not happen within the next couple of years. After that, however, the amount of processing power that these distributed projects can amass will probably remain relatively constant (increase processing power offset by less users). On the other hand, the computer-user explosion might continue on for many years to come. So making a forecast on this is like basing a countries budget on a five or ten year financial forecast.
My policy about upgrading is that I stick to what I have for as long as I can comfortably stand it. Right now I'm still using a eight month old PII350, TNT, 128mb RAM, SCSI rig at home. I will probably be able to use this machine as my primary workstation for about one and a half more years. Then I will make a similar investment and bump up several generations of technology (eg: new athlon, geforce, etc).
Once I upgrade, my old workstation gets deligated to an honorable server role (FreeBSD). Thats the way I'm using my old P166 now. I have found that this works very well, since you not only get a new machine, but you realize that your old machine isn't worthless. You'd be amazed by how many cool projects you can do if you have an extra machine sitting around the house that you are willing to experiment with without fear of losing data/a critical resource.
So, for me at least, the normally vicious cycle of PC upgrades really isn't that bad after all.
Now the schumcks in charge will think that they can make America invisible and they will override the MAD (Mutually assured destruction) failsafe. Remember that this interceptor only has to miss once for a city to be turned into a crispy piece of toast.
If I wanted to take out America now, I would first have soldiers infiltrate the US mainland and take out as many US radar installations as possible just about a half minute after launch. The US, thinking that it can simply blast the threat out of the sky, might not immediately launch retaliatory missiles. When their radar is knocked out, it will be too late to launch. Whee.
Finally, the worst thing about the damn interceptor is that we will keep wasting money on worthless military toys instead of something useful like laying new fiber to increase internet bandwidth.
I frankly couldn't care less if a particular software product doesn't completely meet the official definition of "opensource". The things I do care about are:
Price
Quality (features, stability, etc)
Compatability
The compatability requirement means that it should be able to properly read files from other major program and be able to output files so that other major programs can properly read them.
As long as a piece of software meets the compatability requirement, open-source issues become less important, since it will be easy to migrate to a new piece of software if the package you selected doesn't meet your needs anymore.
Sure, it would be nice if all software meet the above three requirements while being properly "open source" and free, but it is by no means a requirement for me, and many other people that I know. As long as a product is of high quality, doesn't restrain my options, and can do this for a reasonable price, I am a happy camper.
Stevens has written many fine books, from which I have learnt tons of information. His Unix Networking Programming taught me nearly everything I know about the topic.
Assuming that his death is real (and not some sick hoax), this truley is a great loss for programmers, and ultimately society, everywhere.
Why not install both? You can play around with them for yourself to see which one you like best.
Personally, I prefer FreeBSD because I'm used to the syntax and it is set up very logically. One of the things I love best is infrequent releases. I don't know about you, but if everything is working fine I don't want to feel compelled to upgrade. This is especially important in my production servers at work, but I also feel somewhat the same about my home machines.
But the only way to find out which one is best for you is to try both of them. Don't take advice that one is better than the other for this or that reason unless one of the OSes has a feature you really need that won't be coming into the other OS any time soon.
Remember, an OS is like a religion. Imagine getting together the most rabid Christians, Islamics, and Hindus and tossing them together into a sack. Then try asking them for advice. They will all happily espouse about the virtues the virtues of the own religion while telling you that you will go to Hell/Hells if you go with someone else. Sound familiar to the situation at hand?
First off . . . this country supposedly has a giant tax surplus, right? Why are smhucks thinking of bringing on new taxes?
Well . . . first off, the "surplus" is sheer bullshit. Its based on a 10 year economic forecast. The odds of it being accurate are about the same of the odds of Microsoft suddenly casting aside its nasty business practices (lets just say a snowball has a better chance in hell . . . though it always could happen). Additionally, if any company did their accounting the way the government does, the accountants would be thrown in jail. Do you know that things like Medicare and Social Security don't count against the national debt or count as spending? Well . . . obviously we are spending big $$$ on them, and we are not reporting them in our ledgers. What does that do to the projected surplus? I doubt there will be much of a surplus at all.
But you may be wondering what all this has to do with the Slashdot article. The fact of the matter is, the government is already to big and bulky as it is. With the worst case scenario, they should just freeze taxes (not levy any new ones), and they should spend their money smarter. You would be amazed at how much waste there is in the government. There are tons of agencies whose functions overlap and who can be downsized.
The representatives claim that education is in a crisis may be true, but that still doesn't give them the right to tax net usage (which I doubt is very feasible anyway). Why don't the dipshits stop building 20 million dollar airplanes and dragging us into every squabble on this mudball and spend that money on education instead?
It doesn't suprise me that they keep computers for so long, especially when you consider how much crap they have to wade through. My old win95 machine has around 40,000 files and 2,000 directories on it. Of those files, about 80 or so are encrypted with a 4096 length pgp key. That leaves about 39920 files for them to wade through . . . files in which information can be hidden in a wide variety of ways that do not fall before a simple grep (binary data, stenography, etc).
Even though the reasons for them taking so long are rather obvious, law enforcement should be financially liable when the person turns out to be innocent. That computer they seized five years ago could easily have cost $2000, but is now probably worth $200 tops. IMHO, law enforcement should be forced to pony up the missing $1800. Doesn't the constitution mention something about no property being deprived without proper compensation? Hmmm.
Anyway, I've stalled long enough. I have to smack some sense into the NT boxen on the network. Seems the little buggers aren't running Web Site Pro and Cold Fusion properly . . . sigh.
It mentioned that it sends radio waves through the walls. Would products like Tempest glass (www.tempestusa.com) be able to completely stop this little invasion of privacy?
Of course, the down side of tempest glass is that it seems to go for about $55 for a square foot.
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Also, I feel that your teeshirt analogy is not a good one. Shirts have been around for a hell of a long time, and even with today's patent system the patents would have expired long ago. Thus, under normal conditions nobody could force you to pay royalties for making shirts.
However, if a company came up with a new fiber for making shirts that made shirts unstainable and last twice as long, would it be unreasonable for this company to want money if your use their new methods?
While I agree that the current situation sucks and that royalties are annoying as hell, especially for free software developers, I don't feel that you or I have any natural born right, in almost all cases, to force a person or company to release their creations on anything other than their own terms.
I was playing around with the idea of signing the appropriate NDAs so that I could create a free/almost free set of binary libs. Then I took a gander at the DVD faq. End of that idea.
Straight from the faq, here's why:
"The official DVD specification books are available from Toshiba after signing a nondisclosure agreement and paying a $5,000 fee. One book is included in the initial fee; additional books are $500 each. "
"Implementation of DVD products and use of the DVD logo for non-promotional purposes requires additional $10,000 format and logo licenses."
"Any company making DVD products must license the patented technology from a Philips/Pioneer/Sony pool, a Hitachi/Matsushita/Mitsubishi/Time Warner/Toshiba/Victor pool, and from Thomson. Total royalties are about 6% (minimum $6) for a DVD-Video player, 6% (minimum $6) for a DVD-ROM drive, 5% (minimum $2) for a DVD decoder, and 10 cents for a DVD disc."
"Dolby licenses Dolby Digital decoders for $0.26 per channel."
On the bright side, getting the specs of CSS seems to be free. So it technically shouldn't be a problem to create a legal binary lib--as long as you don't mind selling off your soul in the NDAs that they'll make you sign.
For the libs necesary to drive a fully functional dvd player, however, you have a $15,000 startup fee, together with a $7/player distribution fee. While I am fond of open source, I'm not willing to bring my bank account balances down to $0 to support it.
Hmmm. If I recall correctly, Islam says that Jesus was just another one of god's prophets, while Christianity says that Jesus was the head honcho in the flesh. This is a rather big difference.
But that leads to the question . . . while Christianity may have plastered its "new" testiment on top of the testiment of the Jews, the Jewish faith has taken nothing from the new testament (once again, if I recall correctly). Perhaps the name jew++ would be more appropriate . . . rather than judeo-christian which implies a bidirectional relationship.
Just my $0.20 (after inflation).
I've heard tons of tech evangelists saying that the days of the PCs are ending. Usually, these evangelists have some vested intersted in the net appliance market. IMHO, this viewpoint is utter bull--PCs will undoubtedly remain a focal point for the computing experience for at least several more years.
Sure, you may be able to read email on a cellphone, but its a far more pleasant experience when you are sitting in a comfy computer screen in front of a nice big 19" monitor. What makes PCs so attractive is their versatility. They can do everything from helping you create essays to letting you entertain yourself.
I take the more moderate view on net appliances. Its obvious that PCs and netappliances will coexist for the conceivable future. In the long term, I think that everything will eventually converge on mobile/wearable PCs. Imagine a future with a computer weighing a few hundred grams, with t3 net connectivity, virtually unlimited battery life, and the ability to project a 19"+ eqiv screen directly onto your retina. Yum.
Thus, in short, net apps won't swallow PCs, and PCs won't be around forever. Eventually they will meet in the middle.
Isn't saying that a stock split might destroy a company going a little to far? Sure, it might cause some harm, but a big fish like Sony isn't dying anytime soon.
Besides, Playstation2 isn't a bad thing to take a risk on. I've been slobering over the specs for some time now. Going to pick one up for myself once its released.
For typing, I keep about four inches or so away from the front edge of my desk. The weight of my hands rests on the bottom part of my palm, which allows me to arch my fingers (I have big hands) comfortably over the keyboard, while maintaining my usual typing pace (80wpm avg). When possible, I rest my elbows on armrests.
As for my mouse, I keep it and its pad very far away from the front of the desk. Basically, my arm rests flat on the desk almost to the elbow. I keep my mouse sensitivity turned way up so that I can reach any side of my desktop, even at high resolutions, by only moving my hand a few inches. Since my entire arm is supported, this position is quite comfy.
For FPS games however, I move the mouse forward a bit, so that about half of my fore-arm area is supported by the desk. This seems to be more effective for those trigger-reflex type games.
I'm interested in hearing what positions other people use to stay comfy.
Note: I don't use any ergo-stuff. I use the HP keyboard that came with my old 486 (still love it!), and a microsoft serial mouse (no wheel) for mousing.
On the flip side of the coin, I do occassionally yearn for human contact. Drinking alone results in missing half the fun.
Hmmm. Maybe I can find ten or twenty other techno-hermits and we could all band together to form a little isolated society. But then we wouldn't really be hermits anymore. Besides, we would probably be strangling one another within a couple of weeks.
This problem requires further thought. A part-time techno-hermit perhaps. . . . :)
Though it is prone to crashes (especially the Win95/98 version), Netscape still has a lot of supporters out there, and won't be dissapearing any time soon. I think that Netscape 5, once it finally gets released, will become the standard web browser on most internet appliances, and will once again regain lost ground on the Windows platforms.
Now as for those people who think that internet voting will ruin the whole process (eg: people won't consider candidates properly), I ask this question: how much do people consider candidates with a traditional voting process. Has Bush Jr. made any real discussion about his policitical agenda yet? Last time I checked (which I confess, was a month of two ago), his campaign party was trying to simply push him based on his personality.
When people pick presidents based on looks and pretty speeches rather than political track records and agendas, you know the system is seriously porked. And with a system like the one we have now, no more damage could be done to this monstrousity. On the other hand, there is a lot to be gained from a proper implementation of a digital/analog hybrid voting system. Indeed it would be easier for everybody to vote, but it is also the first step away from a representative-based government towards a government that truley represents the will of the people rather than the policital action committees.
Finally, just to make things clear, I'm not saying that the old voting method should be eliminated. It should be kept as an alternative method for those who don't have net/computer access.
Take Kosovo for instance. The UN backed by the US goes in to righteously stop a genocide and help throw down an evil dictator. After a war in which no friendly soldiers lose their lives, the politicians declare a victory. Everybody feels happy and confident in the powers of the US and UN. But what about the second genocide that has happened in Kosovo? Where the Albanians are now attacking the Serbs and forcing new mass exoduses? Well . . . those are swept under the rug as life goes on in American politics. A country in ruins and no true resolution to a conflict between to ethnicities, all so that the politicians could bump themselves up a few points in the polls.
You may be wondering what all this has to do with treaties. Well . . . the answer is simple. Treaties in general are nothing more than policitial tools. People listen to them as long as they are convenient and that they can break them without getting in trouble. The only times that treaties in themselves have any use beyond symbolic purposes is when policitians drag us into another war. Treaties can then be used as a justification for attacking the "evil" forces of our enemies.
So in summary: if you think you can find safety behind the walls of a treaty (particularly one related to weapons), you will find out that you are wrong the hard way. There will always be some evil schmuck who will be breaking the treaty, either with or without the permission of their government.
The firewall is, of course, called goat. Goats eat everything. The firewall . . . well . . . :-)
The webserver (static content) is called sheep. Because sheeps are pretty unexciting creatures. And when you think about it, once everything is up and running webservers aren't that exciting either.
The NT domino server is named Ox, because of its elegance and speed. The other NT server doesn't have an animal name, but it is called Blimp in honor of the size of the OS that runs on it.
The mail exchange is called cow. Since cows basically munch grass all day, and "cow" does the same for mail.
Besides, any dip who can't figure out that yahoo is located at yahoo.com, or infoseek at infoseek.com, deserves what they get.
Conclusion: there is nothing to get your panties in a knot about here. The actions of Lycos aren't harmful or menancing.
Why not go over to a public-private key method of signing document? When I sign something, you don't need an intermediate party as long as you have some way of getting my key (which can be handed over in person, or extracted from dozens of publically run sights). My key can of course be compared to my digital fingerprint (which is on both the sig file of my emails and my business cards).
The whole notion of using handwriting to validate documents is an outdated idea that should be done away with once and for all. Just use pgp or (gpg) or whatever. Makes life simpler. Less open to abuse. Its already there.
Just my 2c.
Bah. You're being much to conservative ;). If you are going to ask for things on a handheld . . . .
.), and it needs to be capable of projecting a holographic image of a quirky female AI who makes wise cracks and gives unwanted advice.
- Viewing field equiv of a 19" monitor at 2 ft @ 1280*1024*32bpp.
- 128 mb+ ram
- at least 9gb of harddisk space, at least SCSI quality. Hmmm. Solid-state would be nice.
- 10/100 ethernet and modem
- Beowulf capabilities (had to add this one, sorry). News flash: nasa has joined 1024 Palm Xs to form the new navigational super computer for the manned mission to mars. . . .
- am/fm radio, cell phone capabilities (including cellular data connect ala richocet).
- All this needs to fit in the size of a credit card (like in that one scifi show, the name of which eludes me . .
Hmmm. eSenator.com -> buy yourself an ear in American politics. Methinks I have a new startup idea.
I personally think it is possible but that it will not happen within the next couple of years. After that, however, the amount of processing power that these distributed projects can amass will probably remain relatively constant (increase processing power offset by less users). On the other hand, the computer-user explosion might continue on for many years to come. So making a forecast on this is like basing a countries budget on a five or ten year financial forecast.
Sigh.
Once I upgrade, my old workstation gets deligated to an honorable server role (FreeBSD). Thats the way I'm using my old P166 now. I have found that this works very well, since you not only get a new machine, but you realize that your old machine isn't worthless. You'd be amazed by how many cool projects you can do if you have an extra machine sitting around the house that you are willing to experiment with without fear of losing data/a critical resource.
So, for me at least, the normally vicious cycle of PC upgrades really isn't that bad after all.
If I wanted to take out America now, I would first have soldiers infiltrate the US mainland and take out as many US radar installations as possible just about a half minute after launch. The US, thinking that it can simply blast the threat out of the sky, might not immediately launch retaliatory missiles. When their radar is knocked out, it will be too late to launch. Whee.
Finally, the worst thing about the damn interceptor is that we will keep wasting money on worthless military toys instead of something useful like laying new fiber to increase internet bandwidth.
- Price
- Quality (features, stability, etc)
- Compatability
The compatability requirement means that it should be able to properly read files from other major program and be able to output files so that other major programs can properly read them.As long as a piece of software meets the compatability requirement, open-source issues become less important, since it will be easy to migrate to a new piece of software if the package you selected doesn't meet your needs anymore.
Sure, it would be nice if all software meet the above three requirements while being properly "open source" and free, but it is by no means a requirement for me, and many other people that I know. As long as a product is of high quality, doesn't restrain my options, and can do this for a reasonable price, I am a happy camper.
Assuming that his death is real (and not some sick hoax), this truley is a great loss for programmers, and ultimately society, everywhere.
Just to be more specific, I was talking about Walnut Creek CDROM releases.
Personally, I prefer FreeBSD because I'm used to the syntax and it is set up very logically. One of the things I love best is infrequent releases. I don't know about you, but if everything is working fine I don't want to feel compelled to upgrade. This is especially important in my production servers at work, but I also feel somewhat the same about my home machines.
But the only way to find out which one is best for you is to try both of them. Don't take advice that one is better than the other for this or that reason unless one of the OSes has a feature you really need that won't be coming into the other OS any time soon.
Remember, an OS is like a religion. Imagine getting together the most rabid Christians, Islamics, and Hindus and tossing them together into a sack. Then try asking them for advice. They will all happily espouse about the virtues the virtues of the own religion while telling you that you will go to Hell/Hells if you go with someone else. Sound familiar to the situation at hand?
Well . . . first off, the "surplus" is sheer bullshit. Its based on a 10 year economic forecast. The odds of it being accurate are about the same of the odds of Microsoft suddenly casting aside its nasty business practices (lets just say a snowball has a better chance in hell . . . though it always could happen). Additionally, if any company did their accounting the way the government does, the accountants would be thrown in jail. Do you know that things like Medicare and Social Security don't count against the national debt or count as spending? Well . . . obviously we are spending big $$$ on them, and we are not reporting them in our ledgers. What does that do to the projected surplus? I doubt there will be much of a surplus at all.
But you may be wondering what all this has to do with the Slashdot article. The fact of the matter is, the government is already to big and bulky as it is. With the worst case scenario, they should just freeze taxes (not levy any new ones), and they should spend their money smarter. You would be amazed at how much waste there is in the government. There are tons of agencies whose functions overlap and who can be downsized.
The representatives claim that education is in a crisis may be true, but that still doesn't give them the right to tax net usage (which I doubt is very feasible anyway). Why don't the dipshits stop building 20 million dollar airplanes and dragging us into every squabble on this mudball and spend that money on education instead?
Even though the reasons for them taking so long are rather obvious, law enforcement should be financially liable when the person turns out to be innocent. That computer they seized five years ago could easily have cost $2000, but is now probably worth $200 tops. IMHO, law enforcement should be forced to pony up the missing $1800. Doesn't the constitution mention something about no property being deprived without proper compensation? Hmmm.
Anyway, I've stalled long enough. I have to smack some sense into the NT boxen on the network. Seems the little buggers aren't running Web Site Pro and Cold Fusion properly . . . sigh.
Of course, the down side of tempest glass is that it seems to go for about $55 for a square foot.