Make a note to make certain setroubleshoot or similar utility is always installed (on RH and derivatives it is, IIRC). That would have given you nice log output and instructions on how to resolve the problem.
Silently.
Yah, used to annoy the hell out of me. It's probably leaving a message in some audit log, but that isn't exactly friendly.
With the appropriate daemons and utilities installed you should get a nice syslog message (or even a blinkety desktop icon if it's on your local machine). Then it's basically just a matter of using audit2allow to convert the audit alerts to selinux policy and loading it.
Hard disk speed, until SSDs become very common this is one of the causes of decreased speed because a HD can only run so fast
And the actual reason memory manufacturers have such a hard time selling memory performance is an extension of this; most purchases of memory have an implicit tradeoff: amount versus speed.
In most cases the real memory pain will come when you hit swap. That means you will almost always notice having less memory more than you'll notice having slower memory. So basically the only ones who end up having 'fast memory' on their system purchase checklist is those for whom money isn't an issue at all (ie, there is nothing else you could buy for that money that would improve your system (or life) more than faster memory). Or those who have very small applications they need to execute blazingly fast. Such as benchmarks.
Until those problems get fixed, faster RAM won't make a bit of difference to the end-user.
More accurately, faster RAM will make less of a difference than more RAM.
SElinux alone is an utter pain in the ass to work with, hence many Linux admins simply switch it off.
I used to think so, but IMO, around FC7, F8 and RHEL 5 (ie, last year) the tipping point was reached. setroubleshoot and the tools around it are verbose to the point of telling you what to type so it's neither a problem noticing that there is an selinux denial nor any problem finding out what to do about it anymore.
Many integration problems (applications and libraries doing funky stuff they plain shouldn't be doing, something not unique to selinux) have also been fixed at the appropriate places, leading to far fewer failures.
Switching to MAC security has historically always been a serious pain in the ass (to the point where admins may have been better off implementing security by lack of mains power), but considering how painless it's gotten now I'd say whining about SElinux today says more about the admin than the software...
Assuming that the government could efficiently manage such a thing seems questionable.
Funding doesn't necessarily imply manage. You could construct a system where, instead of getting a monopoly, the 'patenter' gets a funding right. Disclose your invention, if the generics producers pick it up and there are sales, you get a fat paycheck (for some years, according to sales, whatever).
The most damaging aspect is the monopoly right, the trick is to manage a socialized/insurance money flow, while delegating the aspects of invention, development and productization to the free market.
Can someone convince me that these devices are [very] useful to the point of replacing the notebook?
Do you consider your notebook a replacement for your desktop? If it is, then I'd say no, it's not a good replacement.
Personally, however, I don't consider a notebook a useful replacement for a desktop, nor do I consider most notebooks portable enough to even merit bothering with. Some handhelds are there, but are crippled by less-than-useful software, and some ultraportables are there, but are crippled by insane pricing.
The Eee is close to the optimal fit. It's small enough (altho I could use it smaller) to be easily carried around, it can run standard software like openoffice so one can use it for presentations and taking notes, yet it's cheap enough that one can actually bring it along wherever.
It's not going to replace your desktop unless you're a very light user. But it might just replace your calendar and old-style pen-and-paper notebook.
From what it sounds like, the mod doesn't actually change anything, it just modifies the PCI id so the driver thinks the card is Quadro branded instead.
Like so much else in the 'corporate computing' world, it's merely rebranded generics, with a heftier pricetag. The hardware is usually the same, and probably in this case too. Much easier to use software to artificially prevent cross-market competition; as most corporate purchasers aren't spending money out of their own pocket they don't particularly care that they're getting scammed.
From what it sounds like, nothing. The 'professional' applications simply require the quadro driver (heck, the standard drivers might even be preventing acceleration if you have a process named 'autocad' running) and the quadro driver doesn't run on the consumer cards (not because of any hardware difference, but because it checks the pci id, which is what they change in the article).
Well, probably one of the main reasons NVidia doesn't want to open up their drivers.
Well, maybe it's time to quit playing games and instead start taking the issue seriously. Improving the system isn't rocket science; it just means dumping the whole idea of patents and starting paying just for the actual R&D and letting the marketing and production be handled by the free market. In competition.
A functional system would get us five times the R&D for the same money we're paying the pharmaceuticals today.
I don't like high drug costs as much as the next guy
I don't mind the high drug costs, I mind the fact that of the large amounts of money I pay, more is wasted on marketing than is spent on R&D.
With regard to drugs, doesn't the research and testing that goes into drugs cost major $$$$$ and time?
The research of new drugs costs nowhere near what the marketing does.
Take a look at the financial report of your average pharmco; approximately 15-20% is spend on R&D, 40% on marketing and administration, and 40% on comparatively inefficient production (compare generics pricing).
That means we'd get 5 times as much medical R&D if the insurance companies and government simply funded it outright and let the free market generics handle the production and marketing. Or we could get the same level we're getting today at a fifth of the cost.
The only thing patents give you is monopoly inefficiency. A level of inefficiency that surpasses even what governments can waste on their own.
Imagine the diseases we could cure and the medicines we'd have access to had medical research funding not been bogged down and hindered by a century of patents.
Oh, well, at least you can be sure your doctor is well equipped with complimentary pencils and golf vacations.
Exactly. Personally I've had my service 'upgraded' several times, to faster and faster speeds. None of which I've asked for.
The fact is, many ISP's operate on the principle that 'kbits' are cheap and easy to charge for, so hand out more and you can charge more (without actually incurring any extra costs). Money for free.
Selling lower speed connections would cut their competetive ability or their revenue... unless they can sell lower speed connections and just not tell their customers. Which is essentially what capping is.
So, fine, a 250GB limit works for me. As long as it's sold as a 800kbit service, where I can compare it in price/performance to other 800kbits services.
You freely admit that they can reduce the likelihood of a terrorist attack
The likelyhood of an attack on a plane. The TSA does, on the other hand, provide tempting targets in the form of people waiting in line for security checks.
I, for one, actually believe a government can significantly reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks.
Yeah, well, the chance of getting killed in a terrorist attack in the US is actually lower than the chance of accidentally drowning in a bathtub, so one can question the merits of wasting any money on it at all.
In fact, had islamic fundamentalists really wanted to efficiently kill or maim hundreds of thousands of Americans every year they'd be selling something that could power those mobile deathmachines called 'cars'. Oh, wait...
is that ZFS, despite all its goodness, lacks some incredibly basic features
Personally I find the flawed layering design a severe drawback. Most of the time I use the LVM indirection layer as just that; an indirection layer. The volumes don't have a filesystem on them; they're just block devices.
For example, I have two iSCSI servers. Their diskspace is merged and chopped up with LVM (thus allowing seamless migration of data between disks). The volumes are then exported over iSCSI (and I have the possibility of adding a transparent encryption layer before that), and connected to from Xen instances on other machines. The Xen instances in turn lvm the disks yet again, chop them into filesystem sized parts, and apply appropriate filesystems.
The device-mapper block indirection layer gives me infinite flexibility. Mixing the block layer with the filesystem layer would at best merely make the code more complex and less reliable.
Do you just shoot them? Beat the shit out of them until they stop? Those both are much more lethal than a taser could ever be.
You assume Tasers and similar devices are used instead of guns. They're not. They're used when you could not get away with using a gun (or even with beating the suspect senseless). Which is why we see them used against children, people who are already restrained and annoying questioners at political rallies. In situations where the taser wielder would certainly not have considered shooting or hitting the subject an appropriate action.
I think that just means the police need to be held more accountable for their use
If shooting someone with a taser was regarded as equal to shooting them with a gun, I'd happily see them deployed all over. Then it would actually be a question of using a taser _instead_ of a gun.
I don't know, but am I the only thinking Microsoft lost credibility in the process?
Credibility in what field? In the field of business I'd actually say they gained credibility; a merger with Yahoo would have been horrific for both companies. The fact that the board stopped this shows there's some perspective in the company at least.
Am I just not understanding what this was all about?
Ballmer not being able to stand being second or third in any field? Now, if instead of credibility, you mean Ballmer lost face, then I'd agree.
Maybe it really is about some high-level finance strategy that only people in the know can grasp?
Unfortunately I don't think it's that complicated. I suspect it's just hormones.
In the computer industry, K, M, and G stand for slightly different values than their normal SI meaning.
No they don't. They are sometimes used as an approximation, or as a lazy you-know-what-I-mean in cases where mistaking one for the other basically doesn't matter much anyway (like, for example, storage sizes!).
Actually believing K means 1024 is, in my experience, a fairly new (last 10-15 years), and something that would have gotten you a big 'F' in any case where it actually mattered.
I'm glad we're finally sticking it to manufacturers for intentionally misleading consumers.
Oh, please. Consumers were intentionally misleading themselves. If a seller is selling you something clearly labeled as being measured in US gallons but you usually use UK gallons to measure it, you getting less liquid than you thought is your own fault.
The label on the storage device is correct. The flaw is in your interpretation of that label; if that creates a problem for you, you would more appropriately sue your school district.
Thankfully, progress is being made in stamping out this error; the last thing we need is _yet_ another unit ambiguity causing everything from rockets blowing up to building collapses.
Then came MythTV. You have no idea the levels of storage you can utilize for video recording if you're not that discriminating (and hey, all those companies saying content is valuable, it's like storing money! Well, ok, I just have issues with throwing stuff away... you never know...).
Then we got MultiRec in Myth which allows you to record all channels on the same multiplex. 6 DVB tuners and you can record every channel transmitted... Imagine the archive! No need to even mark what to record anymore; just record it all and sort it out later. No checking what's on TV, no checking what the PVR has recorded, simply check what's been broadcast. Ever.
So I no longer think storage lasts a fair while. I can see high utilization levels for my storage for at least several orders of magnitude. At least until copyright is reformed so one no longer needs to archive it all on ones own.
Who cares about the "media"? It is just a transport mechanism.
It is also the only thing that is actual property. You own a blue chair. You own a CD with a pattern on it.
What matters is the content.
You own the property and all that is on it. The content isn't it's own property, the content is an impression on the physical media.
The Right to Copy, the copyright, is the right to control the production of copies of that pattern, it is not ownership of the media or the actual pattern on that media.
Now if I did truly own the contents on a physical piece of media, such as a music CD, i could do whatever I wanted to with it.
You can do whatever you want to with it. You can destroy it. You can paint over it. You can play it backwards. You can burn it. You can sell it. Try doing that to 'someone elses property'.
The only things you cannot do with it are the limitations to your property rights inherent in copyright legislation. Like copying it.
You seem to want to argue that I have actual ownership and control over property and that copyright law merely limits the actions I can perform with said property.
Not merely arguing it, it's an actual fact. According to me and most of the actual judicial system (see, first sales doctrine, exhaustion of rights, etc), apart from certain parties that like to confuse intellectual monopoly rights with actual property (do note that in many languages, as well as in english pre-WIPO, it's referred to as immaterial rights, without the propagandistic and faulty 'property' addition.)
Why do we say, "Bob sold the movie and book rights to his story to some studio in Hollywood"? Bob OWNED the content first. He was granted ownership by a copyright.
Bob owned the first incarnation of that content. Bob, owns the Right to Copy, the copyright for that content. Bob is thus the only one who can actually produce copies of that content.
You even say it yourself; Bob sold the movie and book _rights_ to his story. The right to produce _copies_ of Bob's story. He didn't sell the 'story' or sell the 'book', in which case they'd get a legally produced copy they could do whatever they wanted with. Except for the actions limited and reserved for copyright. Which, for a studio that would need to produce copies, might be quite crippling. Therefore they need to acquire parts of the _monopoly rights_, which are contracted with the author. If you must purchase parts of the actual _copyright_, to allow you to _copy_, then you must sign a contract.
If you do not need these rights and are sold a _copy_, then you own that _copy_, including the _content_ of that copy.
just as it recognizes that we own literary, music, dramatic, or artistic works.
No we don't. Again, we can own the temporary right to prevent others from producing more copies, we don't own the actual incarnations and copies of the work once they are sold.
When the copyright expires, the government is stating that the artist no longer possesses ownership of the work.
That would be eminent domain. There is no judicial indication that any such thing is happening. No tax deduction, no replacement of losses, no nothing.
Because it isn't, nor has it ever been, property. It is a temporary, government enforced, right to control what others can do with their property. The only thing that happens is that that right ceases and anyone possessing a copy of the material can do anything they want with it.
It is no more 'property' than the right to receive a welfare check is 'property'. When it ceases it's not a property you own that's taken away, it's a temporary government grant of a sort.
There is a change in "ownership".
There is no change in ownership. Nobody gets a note that 'you now own this song'. Nobody gets to declare income for suddenly getting something of a certain value.
When the copyright is gone, you have all rights to do whatever you wish with your prop
Nobody actually "owns" their music. They own certain contractual rights to music owned by other people, also referred to as an intellectual property license.
This is false. You own the media and the contents on that media. Copyright is merely a legal burden on the right to copy those contents; it doesn't change your actual ownership.
The most obvious way to demonstrate this is to consider the border condition when copyright on a CD you own expires. There is no change in ownership, there is no eminent domain done on someone elses property, there is no termination of a contract. Yet suddenly you can do exactly anything and everything you want with your property, including selling copies, charging for plays of it, etc.
Mmm, to some extent, I'm sad to say you are. 2.5" drives are mostly used for speed; last I looked at some arrays the 2.5" version had the same size and cost the same as the 3.5" version. The 3.5" version with 12 750GB SATA disks had 3 times the storage that the 25 disk 2.5" version did. So space efficient it is not.
In fact, if disk vendors want to survive I'd suggest they go the other way and move back to slower 5 1/4" instead. Flash is going to wipe the floor with disk speed anyway, but by concentrating on storage size rather than speed the disk vendors could probably beat flash on price/GB indefinitely.
They could probably bring out a 5TB disk at the same price as a 1TB drive today. A bit slower in seeks, but perfect for video or other large storage.
The Broken Window fallacy is not directly comparable
The fallacy in this case compares to this; copyright in combination with proprietary software forces people to pay for something they otherwise would not have to (breaks the window) (note that this applies to the current discussion when we're actually talking about OSS replacing proprietary software, but it is also appropriate when considering forced upgrades (but less when we're talking of proprietary software without replacements)). This creates a revenue stream, measured economic activity, for some vendors (window makers). When one engages in this fallacy one disregards that the cost came from somewhere; the people paying for the software when they were _satisfied with the previous version (free) or free version (also free)_.
When they pay to replace something they were happy with they lack the funds to pay for more pots or pans, meaning someone else is losing the economic activity elsewhere, activity that would have created _new_ wealth.
goes up overall throughout the population.
That effect is more appropriately compared to the deadweight loss of monopoly pricing tho (revenue is maximized at a price level where some consumers are deliberately priced out of the market, but due to lack of competition, far, far above competetive price per unit).
Combine the broken window fallacy and monopoly pricing and you can come up with fairly huge theoretical numbers that intellectual monopolies cost society. One could easily come up with calculations supporting indications that a quite significant percentage of GDP is lost.
Or has the government said that only 4,000 of the 5,000 gateways will go behind the new line
Most likely it'll work this way; government agencies are put behind the connection points, connection points become bogged down with administration and security rules, employees can't do their actual work, employees become frustrated enough to set up 3G access on their laptops, government agencies end up with 500.000 gateways instead.
So I think the Maginot comparison isn't that far off the mark.
It can accomplish the same task, but it can also accomplish more. For example, say you have a mythtv machine with mythtv installed from ATrpms. In such a case you may want to protect the base OS from ATrpms, but also protect ATrpms from, for example, livna updates. Or you might have a music workstation running CCRMA packages and want to protect those from lower priority repos, while still retaining base protection.
The difference is probably most noticable if you run some of those high complexity mass-dependency apps, but as it can do the same as protectbase too, I prefer to use priorities instead:)
Dependency hell isn't really a function of the package format, the issue is intrinsic to reasonably complex software dependency environments, and the hell is what you get for not using an automatic depsolver. Of course, as there originally wasn't one that handled RPM's (like apt for debs), it's tended to get the blame.
When I used Fedora back in the Core 3 days I used Apt4RPM and Synaptic
These days you'd probably use yum and yumex. Using yum-priorites for repos and you'll have very little trouble even with several third party repos active.
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Make a note to make certain setroubleshoot or similar utility is always installed (on RH and derivatives it is, IIRC). That would have given you nice log output and instructions on how to resolve the problem.
Silently.
Yah, used to annoy the hell out of me. It's probably leaving a message in some audit log, but that isn't exactly friendly.
With the appropriate daemons and utilities installed you should get a nice syslog message (or even a blinkety desktop icon if it's on your local machine). Then it's basically just a matter of using audit2allow to convert the audit alerts to selinux policy and loading it.
Hard disk speed, until SSDs become very common this is one of the causes of decreased speed because a HD can only run so fast
And the actual reason memory manufacturers have such a hard time selling memory performance is an extension of this; most purchases of memory have an implicit tradeoff: amount versus speed.
In most cases the real memory pain will come when you hit swap. That means you will almost always notice having less memory more than you'll notice having slower memory. So basically the only ones who end up having 'fast memory' on their system purchase checklist is those for whom money isn't an issue at all (ie, there is nothing else you could buy for that money that would improve your system (or life) more than faster memory). Or those who have very small applications they need to execute blazingly fast. Such as benchmarks.
Until those problems get fixed, faster RAM won't make a bit of difference to the end-user.
More accurately, faster RAM will make less of a difference than more RAM.
SElinux alone is an utter pain in the ass to work with, hence many Linux admins simply switch it off.
I used to think so, but IMO, around FC7, F8 and RHEL 5 (ie, last year) the tipping point was reached. setroubleshoot and the tools around it are verbose to the point of telling you what to type so it's neither a problem noticing that there is an selinux denial nor any problem finding out what to do about it anymore.
Many integration problems (applications and libraries doing funky stuff they plain shouldn't be doing, something not unique to selinux) have also been fixed at the appropriate places, leading to far fewer failures.
Switching to MAC security has historically always been a serious pain in the ass (to the point where admins may have been better off implementing security by lack of mains power), but considering how painless it's gotten now I'd say whining about SElinux today says more about the admin than the software...
Assuming that the government could efficiently manage such a thing seems questionable.
Funding doesn't necessarily imply manage. You could construct a system where, instead of getting a monopoly, the 'patenter' gets a funding right. Disclose your invention, if the generics producers pick it up and there are sales, you get a fat paycheck (for some years, according to sales, whatever).
The most damaging aspect is the monopoly right, the trick is to manage a socialized/insurance money flow, while delegating the aspects of invention, development and productization to the free market.
Can someone convince me that these devices are [very] useful to the point of replacing the notebook?
Do you consider your notebook a replacement for your desktop? If it is, then I'd say no, it's not a good replacement.
Personally, however, I don't consider a notebook a useful replacement for a desktop, nor do I consider most notebooks portable enough to even merit bothering with. Some handhelds are there, but are crippled by less-than-useful software, and some ultraportables are there, but are crippled by insane pricing.
The Eee is close to the optimal fit. It's small enough (altho I could use it smaller) to be easily carried around, it can run standard software like openoffice so one can use it for presentations and taking notes, yet it's cheap enough that one can actually bring it along wherever.
It's not going to replace your desktop unless you're a very light user. But it might just replace your calendar and old-style pen-and-paper notebook.
From what it sounds like, the mod doesn't actually change anything, it just modifies the PCI id so the driver thinks the card is Quadro branded instead.
Like so much else in the 'corporate computing' world, it's merely rebranded generics, with a heftier pricetag. The hardware is usually the same, and probably in this case too. Much easier to use software to artificially prevent cross-market competition; as most corporate purchasers aren't spending money out of their own pocket they don't particularly care that they're getting scammed.
From what it sounds like, nothing. The 'professional' applications simply require the quadro driver (heck, the standard drivers might even be preventing acceleration if you have a process named 'autocad' running) and the quadro driver doesn't run on the consumer cards (not because of any hardware difference, but because it checks the pci id, which is what they change in the article).
Well, probably one of the main reasons NVidia doesn't want to open up their drivers.
It's a high risk game
Well, maybe it's time to quit playing games and instead start taking the issue seriously. Improving the system isn't rocket science; it just means dumping the whole idea of patents and starting paying just for the actual R&D and letting the marketing and production be handled by the free market. In competition.
A functional system would get us five times the R&D for the same money we're paying the pharmaceuticals today.
I don't like high drug costs as much as the next guy
I don't mind the high drug costs, I mind the fact that of the large amounts of money I pay, more is wasted on marketing than is spent on R&D.
With regard to drugs, doesn't the research and testing that goes into drugs cost major $$$$$ and time?
The research of new drugs costs nowhere near what the marketing does.
Take a look at the financial report of your average pharmco; approximately 15-20% is spend on R&D, 40% on marketing and administration, and 40% on comparatively inefficient production (compare generics pricing).
That means we'd get 5 times as much medical R&D if the insurance companies and government simply funded it outright and let the free market generics handle the production and marketing. Or we could get the same level we're getting today at a fifth of the cost.
The only thing patents give you is monopoly inefficiency. A level of inefficiency that surpasses even what governments can waste on their own.
Imagine the diseases we could cure and the medicines we'd have access to had medical research funding not been bogged down and hindered by a century of patents.
Oh, well, at least you can be sure your doctor is well equipped with complimentary pencils and golf vacations.
Exactly. Personally I've had my service 'upgraded' several times, to faster and faster speeds. None of which I've asked for.
The fact is, many ISP's operate on the principle that 'kbits' are cheap and easy to charge for, so hand out more and you can charge more (without actually incurring any extra costs). Money for free.
Selling lower speed connections would cut their competetive ability or their revenue... unless they can sell lower speed connections and just not tell their customers. Which is essentially what capping is.
So, fine, a 250GB limit works for me. As long as it's sold as a 800kbit service, where I can compare it in price/performance to other 800kbits services.
You freely admit that they can reduce the likelihood of a terrorist attack
The likelyhood of an attack on a plane. The TSA does, on the other hand, provide tempting targets in the form of people waiting in line for security checks.
I, for one, actually believe a government can significantly reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks.
Yeah, well, the chance of getting killed in a terrorist attack in the US is actually lower than the chance of accidentally drowning in a bathtub, so one can question the merits of wasting any money on it at all.
In fact, had islamic fundamentalists really wanted to efficiently kill or maim hundreds of thousands of Americans every year they'd be selling something that could power those mobile deathmachines called 'cars'. Oh, wait...
is that ZFS, despite all its goodness, lacks some incredibly basic features
Personally I find the flawed layering design a severe drawback. Most of the time I use the LVM indirection layer as just that; an indirection layer. The volumes don't have a filesystem on them; they're just block devices.
For example, I have two iSCSI servers. Their diskspace is merged and chopped up with LVM (thus allowing seamless migration of data between disks). The volumes are then exported over iSCSI (and I have the possibility of adding a transparent encryption layer before that), and connected to from Xen instances on other machines. The Xen instances in turn lvm the disks yet again, chop them into filesystem sized parts, and apply appropriate filesystems.
The device-mapper block indirection layer gives me infinite flexibility. Mixing the block layer with the filesystem layer would at best merely make the code more complex and less reliable.
Just use LVM snapshots. It's not like snapshots are a particularly new technology.
Do you just shoot them? Beat the shit out of them until they stop? Those both are much more lethal than a taser could ever be.
You assume Tasers and similar devices are used instead of guns. They're not. They're used when you could not get away with using a gun (or even with beating the suspect senseless). Which is why we see them used against children, people who are already restrained and annoying questioners at political rallies. In situations where the taser wielder would certainly not have considered shooting or hitting the subject an appropriate action.
I think that just means the police need to be held more accountable for their use
If shooting someone with a taser was regarded as equal to shooting them with a gun, I'd happily see them deployed all over. Then it would actually be a question of using a taser _instead_ of a gun.
I don't know, but am I the only thinking Microsoft lost credibility in the process?
Credibility in what field? In the field of business I'd actually say they gained credibility; a merger with Yahoo would have been horrific for both companies. The fact that the board stopped this shows there's some perspective in the company at least.
Am I just not understanding what this was all about?
Ballmer not being able to stand being second or third in any field? Now, if instead of credibility, you mean Ballmer lost face, then I'd agree.
Maybe it really is about some high-level finance strategy that only people in the know can grasp?
Unfortunately I don't think it's that complicated. I suspect it's just hormones.
In the computer industry, K, M, and G stand for slightly different values than their normal SI meaning.
No they don't. They are sometimes used as an approximation, or as a lazy you-know-what-I-mean in cases where mistaking one for the other basically doesn't matter much anyway (like, for example, storage sizes!).
Actually believing K means 1024 is, in my experience, a fairly new (last 10-15 years), and something that would have gotten you a big 'F' in any case where it actually mattered.
I'm glad we're finally sticking it to manufacturers for intentionally misleading consumers.
Oh, please. Consumers were intentionally misleading themselves. If a seller is selling you something clearly labeled as being measured in US gallons but you usually use UK gallons to measure it, you getting less liquid than you thought is your own fault.
The label on the storage device is correct. The flaw is in your interpretation of that label; if that creates a problem for you, you would more appropriately sue your school district.
Thankfully, progress is being made in stamping out this error; the last thing we need is _yet_ another unit ambiguity causing everything from rockets blowing up to building collapses.
I used to think storage lasted a fair while.
Then came MythTV. You have no idea the levels of storage you can utilize for video recording if you're not that discriminating (and hey, all those companies saying content is valuable, it's like storing money! Well, ok, I just have issues with throwing stuff away... you never know...).
Then we got MultiRec in Myth which allows you to record all channels on the same multiplex. 6 DVB tuners and you can record every channel transmitted... Imagine the archive! No need to even mark what to record anymore; just record it all and sort it out later. No checking what's on TV, no checking what the PVR has recorded, simply check what's been broadcast. Ever.
So I no longer think storage lasts a fair while. I can see high utilization levels for my storage for at least several orders of magnitude. At least until copyright is reformed so one no longer needs to archive it all on ones own.
Who cares about the "media"? It is just a transport mechanism.
It is also the only thing that is actual property. You own a blue chair. You own a CD with a pattern on it.
What matters is the content.
You own the property and all that is on it. The content isn't it's own property, the content is an impression on the physical media.
The Right to Copy, the copyright, is the right to control the production of copies of that pattern, it is not ownership of the media or the actual pattern on that media.
Now if I did truly own the contents on a physical piece of media, such as a music CD, i could do whatever I wanted to with it.
You can do whatever you want to with it. You can destroy it. You can paint over it. You can play it backwards. You can burn it. You can sell it. Try doing that to 'someone elses property'.
The only things you cannot do with it are the limitations to your property rights inherent in copyright legislation. Like copying it.
You seem to want to argue that I have actual ownership and control over property and that copyright law merely limits the actions I can perform with said property.
Not merely arguing it, it's an actual fact. According to me and most of the actual judicial system (see, first sales doctrine, exhaustion of rights, etc), apart from certain parties that like to confuse intellectual monopoly rights with actual property (do note that in many languages, as well as in english pre-WIPO, it's referred to as immaterial rights, without the propagandistic and faulty 'property' addition.)
Why do we say, "Bob sold the movie and book rights to his story to some studio in Hollywood"? Bob OWNED the content first. He was granted ownership by a copyright.
Bob owned the first incarnation of that content. Bob, owns the Right to Copy, the copyright for that content. Bob is thus the only one who can actually produce copies of that content.
You even say it yourself; Bob sold the movie and book _rights_ to his story. The right to produce _copies_ of Bob's story. He didn't sell the 'story' or sell the 'book', in which case they'd get a legally produced copy they could do whatever they wanted with. Except for the actions limited and reserved for copyright. Which, for a studio that would need to produce copies, might be quite crippling. Therefore they need to acquire parts of the _monopoly rights_, which are contracted with the author. If you must purchase parts of the actual _copyright_, to allow you to _copy_, then you must sign a contract.
If you do not need these rights and are sold a _copy_, then you own that _copy_, including the _content_ of that copy.
just as it recognizes that we own literary, music, dramatic, or artistic works.
No we don't. Again, we can own the temporary right to prevent others from producing more copies, we don't own the actual incarnations and copies of the work once they are sold.
When the copyright expires, the government is stating that the artist no longer possesses ownership of the work.
That would be eminent domain. There is no judicial indication that any such thing is happening. No tax deduction, no replacement of losses, no nothing.
Because it isn't, nor has it ever been, property. It is a temporary, government enforced, right to control what others can do with their property. The only thing that happens is that that right ceases and anyone possessing a copy of the material can do anything they want with it.
It is no more 'property' than the right to receive a welfare check is 'property'. When it ceases it's not a property you own that's taken away, it's a temporary government grant of a sort.
There is a change in "ownership".
There is no change in ownership. Nobody gets a note that 'you now own this song'. Nobody gets to declare income for suddenly getting something of a certain value.
When the copyright is gone, you have all rights to do whatever you wish with your prop
Nobody actually "owns" their music. They own certain contractual rights to music owned by other people, also referred to as an intellectual property license.
This is false. You own the media and the contents on that media. Copyright is merely a legal burden on the right to copy those contents; it doesn't change your actual ownership.
The most obvious way to demonstrate this is to consider the border condition when copyright on a CD you own expires. There is no change in ownership, there is no eminent domain done on someone elses property, there is no termination of a contract. Yet suddenly you can do exactly anything and everything you want with your property, including selling copies, charging for plays of it, etc.
I could be wrong
Mmm, to some extent, I'm sad to say you are. 2.5" drives are mostly used for speed; last I looked at some arrays the 2.5" version had the same size and cost the same as the 3.5" version. The 3.5" version with 12 750GB SATA disks had 3 times the storage that the 25 disk 2.5" version did. So space efficient it is not.
In fact, if disk vendors want to survive I'd suggest they go the other way and move back to slower 5 1/4" instead. Flash is going to wipe the floor with disk speed anyway, but by concentrating on storage size rather than speed the disk vendors could probably beat flash on price/GB indefinitely.
They could probably bring out a 5TB disk at the same price as a 1TB drive today. A bit slower in seeks, but perfect for video or other large storage.
The Broken Window fallacy is not directly comparable
The fallacy in this case compares to this; copyright in combination with proprietary software forces people to pay for something they otherwise would not have to (breaks the window) (note that this applies to the current discussion when we're actually talking about OSS replacing proprietary software, but it is also appropriate when considering forced upgrades (but less when we're talking of proprietary software without replacements)). This creates a revenue stream, measured economic activity, for some vendors (window makers). When one engages in this fallacy one disregards that the cost came from somewhere; the people paying for the software when they were _satisfied with the previous version (free) or free version (also free)_.
When they pay to replace something they were happy with they lack the funds to pay for more pots or pans, meaning someone else is losing the economic activity elsewhere, activity that would have created _new_ wealth.
goes up overall throughout the population.
That effect is more appropriately compared to the deadweight loss of monopoly pricing tho (revenue is maximized at a price level where some consumers are deliberately priced out of the market, but due to lack of competition, far, far above competetive price per unit).
Combine the broken window fallacy and monopoly pricing and you can come up with fairly huge theoretical numbers that intellectual monopolies cost society. One could easily come up with calculations supporting indications that a quite significant percentage of GDP is lost.
Or has the government said that only 4,000 of the 5,000 gateways will go behind the new line
Most likely it'll work this way; government agencies are put behind the connection points, connection points become bogged down with administration and security rules, employees can't do their actual work, employees become frustrated enough to set up 3G access on their laptops, government agencies end up with 500.000 gateways instead.
So I think the Maginot comparison isn't that far off the mark.
It can accomplish the same task, but it can also accomplish more. For example, say you have a mythtv machine with mythtv installed from ATrpms. In such a case you may want to protect the base OS from ATrpms, but also protect ATrpms from, for example, livna updates. Or you might have a music workstation running CCRMA packages and want to protect those from lower priority repos, while still retaining base protection.
:)
The difference is probably most noticable if you run some of those high complexity mass-dependency apps, but as it can do the same as protectbase too, I prefer to use priorities instead
"dependancy hell" issues
Dependency hell isn't really a function of the package format, the issue is intrinsic to reasonably complex software dependency environments, and the hell is what you get for not using an automatic depsolver. Of course, as there originally wasn't one that handled RPM's (like apt for debs), it's tended to get the blame.
When I used Fedora back in the Core 3 days I used Apt4RPM and Synaptic
These days you'd probably use yum and yumex. Using yum-priorites for repos and you'll have very little trouble even with several third party repos active.
Even better, use priorities so you can protect repos you are more dependent upon over peripheral ones.
After setting up yum priorities I don't think yum has had any dependency problems even with three or four external repos active.