The author stated there's no BeOS support for the 66 controller in the Abit BP6 motherboard. Sure, there may be support for other chipsets/boards, but that wasn't the question. "...the firmament sheweth his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1) Firmament Science and Engineering
While it is true that there remain substantial differences in net access between rich and poor, dual- and single-parent households, based on education and some regional differences, when these things are statistically separated out there is extremely little variation based on race.
The cited Commerce Department report's section on acess and race doesn't offer any help. For example (part I section C, 2), only gives overall racial numbers, and numbers for households below $35K where the differences are greatest because of correlations between race, household status and education.
What's really shameful is where the report talks about "the expanding digital divide" (I C 3 a). The report chooses a completely meaningless metric which makes it look like inequality is increasing when in fact you're just seeing an artifact of the rise in overall net penetration with no increase in white/(black or hispanic) ratio whatsoever!! Click on the link to Chart I-15 to see what I mean.
Properly understood, the difference in access between whites and all minorities is so small- or even counter to what the hype tells us- that a black panalist at the recent Unity convention (five minority journalist organizations) said, "With normalized access rates for Asians and Latinos ahead of whites, and blacks catching up fast, we may soon need a commission of minority experts to help more white people get on line!"
The policy recommendation was obviously tongue-in-cheek, differences based on income, household status and education are significant and need to be addressed. But using this report to say that race needs to be addressed separately will result in wasted effort and bad policy. There are important societal reasons why black and latino families are on average poorer, less educated and more likely single parents- many of which are based on prejudice at various levels. So let's focus on these root causes of these problems and not waste our time on symptoms. "...the firmament sheweth his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1) Firmament Science and Engineering
No no no, you're missing the point. What I'm talking about would piggyback on the recent Appeals Court decision which ruled that the U.S. Law forbidding export of strong crypto could not be used to restrict publication of strong crypto source code, because such restriction would violate First Amendment rights. Essentially, source code is free speech which cannot be restricted.
So, an SRPM is source code is free speech, and restrictions on it, e.g. Software Patents, are invalid. Same for a.tar.gz, cvs repository, or any other form of source code.
As I said though, we do have to wait for the Supreme Court to either rule on the case or uphold the Appeals Court ruling before posting such code, because if they rule otherwise, then the case is shot and there could be pretty steep damages to pay. But if this works, then OSS gains MASSIVE competitive advantage!!
Sorry I wasn't more explicit the first time. Is there any hole in my logic?
We have to wait a little while for the Supreme Court to rule, but...
If source code is Speech, protected by the First Amendment, then software patents cannot legally restrict it, and we can post patent-breaking SRPMs with impunity, right?
"On a related note, a friend is about to go off to college and has about five grand to blow on a nice Alpha for NT and Linux..."
Okay, first, you can get a nice 533 MHz 21164 LX workstation for about half this- best prices I've seen are from DCG. Add options as you would for an Intel(-compatible), but beware, a lot of hardware doesn't work for Alpha, esp. video cards.
However, does your friend really want an alpha? It is getting more mature constantly, but should really be considered a beta platform. The big problem is that there's an awful lot of code written assuming pointers and ints are the same size, but Alpha's 64-bit pointers of course are not. So there is no Netscape, no WordPerfect, a good Mozilla hasn't been built since last July, GNOME and KDE have both had lots of 64-bit problems which showed up in Alpha and (I think) Sparc64 and nowhere else. About one in three kernels builds out-of-box (~1/3 don't build, ~1/3 don't boot), and until very recently, XFree86 had numerous common behaviors which crashed it. (However, there is an Applix for Linux/Alpha which I've heard is great.)
I use Alpha because of the awesome floating performance for my particular apps. I've heard memory bandwidth (~50% above 450 Mhz PII) makes it a slightly better price/performance web server too- but don't quote me. For everything else, it's really not any faster than a same-priced PII, and because of 64-bit problems, count on even good open-source code to be buggy or even unusable, or you will be disappointed.
OTOH, if you're up for the adventure or want the floating-point power and want to help make Linux work on the next generation of hardware, by all means go for it!
Slashdot Mirror
The author stated there's no BeOS support for the 66 controller in the Abit BP6 motherboard. Sure, there may be support for other chipsets/boards, but that wasn't the question.
"...the firmament sheweth his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1)
Firmament Science and Engineering
While it is true that there remain substantial differences in net access between rich and poor, dual- and single-parent households, based on education and some regional differences, when these things are statistically separated out there is extremely little variation based on race.
The cited Commerce Department report's section on acess and race doesn't offer any help. For example (part I section C, 2), only gives overall racial numbers, and numbers for households below $35K where the differences are greatest because of correlations between race, household status and education.
What's really shameful is where the report talks about "the expanding digital divide" (I C 3 a). The report chooses a completely meaningless metric which makes it look like inequality is increasing when in fact you're just seeing an artifact of the rise in overall net penetration with no increase in white/(black or hispanic) ratio whatsoever!! Click on the link to Chart I-15 to see what I mean.
Properly understood, the difference in access between whites and all minorities is so small- or even counter to what the hype tells us- that a black panalist at the recent Unity convention (five minority journalist organizations) said, "With normalized access rates for Asians and Latinos ahead of whites, and blacks catching up fast, we may soon need a commission of minority experts to help more white people get on line!"
The policy recommendation was obviously tongue-in-cheek, differences based on income, household status and education are significant and need to be addressed. But using this report to say that race needs to be addressed separately will result in wasted effort and bad policy. There are important societal reasons why black and latino families are on average poorer, less educated and more likely single parents- many of which are based on prejudice at various levels. So let's focus on these root causes of these problems and not waste our time on symptoms.
"...the firmament sheweth his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1)
Firmament Science and Engineering
No no no, you're missing the point. What I'm talking about would piggyback on the recent Appeals Court decision which ruled that the U.S. Law forbidding export of strong crypto could not be used to restrict publication of strong crypto source code, because such restriction would violate First Amendment rights. Essentially, source code is free speech which cannot be restricted.
.tar.gz, cvs repository, or any other form of source code.
So, an SRPM is source code is free speech, and restrictions on it, e.g. Software Patents, are invalid. Same for a
As I said though, we do have to wait for the Supreme Court to either rule on the case or uphold the Appeals Court ruling before posting such code, because if they rule otherwise, then the case is shot and there could be pretty steep damages to pay. But if this works, then OSS gains MASSIVE competitive advantage!!
Sorry I wasn't more explicit the first time. Is there any hole in my logic?
We have to wait a little while for the Supreme Court to rule, but...
:-)
If source code is Speech, protected by the First Amendment, then software patents cannot legally restrict it, and we can post patent-breaking SRPMs with impunity, right?
This would be fun to litigate.
"How come I'm reading your message in Navigator 4.5 on Alpha Linux?"
How come it freezes on me after an average of about 1 minute? (Yes, I followed the FAQ at AlphaLinux to the letter.)
Okay, first, you can get a nice 533 MHz 21164 LX workstation for about half this- best prices I've seen are from DCG. Add options as you would for an Intel(-compatible), but beware, a lot of hardware doesn't work for Alpha, esp. video cards.
However, does your friend really want an alpha? It is getting more mature constantly, but should really be considered a beta platform. The big problem is that there's an awful lot of code written assuming pointers and ints are the same size, but Alpha's 64-bit pointers of course are not. So there is no Netscape, no WordPerfect, a good Mozilla hasn't been built since last July, GNOME and KDE have both had lots of 64-bit problems which showed up in Alpha and (I think) Sparc64 and nowhere else. About one in three kernels builds out-of-box (~1/3 don't build, ~1/3 don't boot), and until very recently, XFree86 had numerous common behaviors which crashed it. (However, there is an Applix for Linux/Alpha which I've heard is great.)
I use Alpha because of the awesome floating performance for my particular apps. I've heard memory bandwidth (~50% above 450 Mhz PII) makes it a slightly better price/performance web server too- but don't quote me. For everything else, it's really not any faster than a same-priced PII, and because of 64-bit problems, count on even good open-source code to be buggy or even unusable, or you will be disappointed.
OTOH, if you're up for the adventure or want the floating-point power and want to help make Linux work on the next generation of hardware, by all means go for it!