Also, taxing gas is highly regressive. I suppose if you hate poor people, then it's a wonderful idea. Of course, with higher taxes, they can't afford to buy newer cars, which means they continue to the drive the bottom 5% of vehicles that cause 95% of the pollution.
It's fine and dandy to oversimplify the issue with glib assertions like "if you hate poor people...", but look at alternate possibilities: perhaps the government could increase the sin tax on Hummers, Suburbans etc, and offer price-reduction tax breaks on smaller, fuel-economic cars. Make that Echo hatchback an $8000 car, and it will become much more appealing.
Furthermore, if people are driving these old, polluting cars, then the increase in gas tax will hit them harder, providing further incentive to upgrade. Hell, if you really wanted to be progressive, offer assistance (zero-interest loans etc) to people trading an old, polluting car in for a new, efficient one.
There are stunningly high gas taxes in Europe, and one of the results is that you just don't see old cars on the road. The poor in those countries somehow manage to afford to upgrade, we North Americans can do it too!
Yeah, I'd actually seen that one. However, it was a long while ago (as noted by the impication that a gig of MP3s was a lot). I guess I should have asked if their views have changed. Also, that strip addressed ROMs in general. I'm curious about specifically old ROMs.
How do you guys feel about the downloading of ROMs for older systems (NES, Genesis, SNES etc)? I'm not talking about piracy of modern games, just long-since-discontinued systems. Given that Nintendo (for example) will not be making any money off of the original Super Mario 3 any more, do you think it's acceptable to download that game, so it can be played on a computer?
I apologise if this question has been asked a hojillion times already, but what's the advantage of Linux over MacOS X (not trolling here, honestly curious)?
Back in the Pre-X days, I tried an install of Mandrake 8 or 9. Never played much around with it, but at least it was a chance to play with it. But given that I now have a BSD-based, highly-polished UNIX system, it seems to make less sense. I mean, I have access to the full command line, I can compile pretty much any open-source program for OS X, Apple has their own X11 version, and I can do all the command-line stuff while still having the polished GUI and access to Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, iTunes, etc.
So, it really seems like OS X has all the advantages of Linux, but is also more polished, and has more brand-name apps available. So, what is the advantage of installing Linux on my G5?
A question for anyone who cares to respond: Every time there's a crackdown on a P2P app, Slashdotters are quick to respond "There are legal uses. I don't condone piracy, and think it should stop, but don't kill technology X just because it can be used for piracy!". This is a standpoint I agree with, but my question is this: For those who say they oppose piracy, see it as a crime, etc, how do you propose this crime be faught? I agree that killing the P2P apps is bad, restrive anti-copying DRM is bad and that suing your owns customers is bad, but what's the alternative?
Please don't see this as flamebait, I'm honestly curious; if we are to protest all the anti-piracy measures implemented by the RIAA/MPAA, and yet claim that we're against piracy, how to we propose to handle the logistics of this argument? Or do we expect that the movie studios et al should allow their works to be pirated, thus tacitly condoning the action?
saving resources upfront (minimal packaging) is much, much more effective than say recycling.
Exactly. What most people don't understand is that reduce, reuse, recycle is listed in that order for a reason. Reduction is the best policy; if you can't do that any further, reuse what you can; failing that, recycle.
Recycling is better than landfill, but it's not the best answer, either.
If we are really "stealing" oil, then why does the price of gas continue to climb? I just love those leftists that claim the war in Iraq is for oil. Been to the pump lately?
OK, I'll bite. There are three reasons the prices are so high even though the war was about oil:
Much of the money is going to corporations. The oil is being stolen, but it is Halliburton et all who are profiting, not the average public.
The war is not going well. Bombings on pipelines, uncertainty in the supply and continued resistance pressure lead to higher prices
You're comparing the prices to what they were. I'm comparing the prices to where I think they could be. Most of Europe pays three times what we do for gas. I don't know what the gas prices would be without the war, but neither do you. Yes, the prices are high, but they could just as easily be higher without the war.
It might well play on that system... I've often played games on Macs below the listed minimum specs. But this way, if someone tries to play it on a 1.25gHz G4, they're on their own. If they get crappy framerates, they can't call up and bitch about it, since they're well under the stated minimum specs.
What? We no longer have to pay attention to Congress or the Supreme Court? Hooray for Empire!
And Steve Jobs for president!
You are one smart Canuck!
With Bush's "your with me or against me" status on most issues, Republican senators and congresspeople have tended to tow the party line more than ever before. An increase in the republican presence in the Senate and the House leads to an increase of Republican power in those instituations. Couple that with the aforementioned rote following of party dogma and you'll see that a greater portion of the American halls of power are controlled directly or indiretly by one man (and his advisors, natch). Hence, my (admittedly hyperbole-laden) statement labelling the current government as an autocracy.
As for the Steve Jobs for president, I'm sorry you didn't realise a joke when you see one. Next time I'll surround it in <sacrasm> tags so you'll understand, O Wise One. But how about, by the same token, you figure out what's a joke before you talk down to me?
Make me a disappointed Canadian. Still, Bravo Kerry for making a good run, and for conceding, rather than dragging your nation though a long, drawn-out debacle.
Given that Bush lost the popular vote last time, and still won (sort of) the presidency, I guess it's rather suiting that the pesident at least has the popular vote this time. Given how contentious that was last time around, this is at least refreshing.
Note to the Republicans: Look at the backlash of public reprisal coming from several areas (youth, entertainers, etc). You have to do better; eventually the public as a whole will wise up to fear-mongering.
Note to Independents: this could be your chance. A lot of people hate Bush. Get your parties into the public spotlight, and either win more seats or at least force the Democrats to actually act like Democrats again.
Note to Democrats: You have four years to find a dynamic, charismatic leader; a true visionary who can unseat the current Bush autocracy by winning the public's hearts. If you keep putting forth less-than-ideal candidates, you will never truly win. You can't rely on enough people voting against the GOP to count on a win.
Note to Steve Jobs: You are dynamic, charistmatic and visionary. See note above.
Excuse the wiki-noobness, but something I've never really understood. What prevents someone from ranting/raving etc in a wiki? For example, if I go to Wikipedia, and edit an entry to say the world is flat, or that cheese is made out of human entrails, what prevents me from entering that (totally fallacious) information as fact?
In a more realistic scenario, how do you keep a wiki entry for a very controversial subject (for example, abortion) from becoming totally biased? The two phrases "preventing an unwanted child and its mother from having a miserable life" and "slaughtering an innocent fetus" have very different slants to them. Politics, religion etc, all have the potential to have biased or outright misleading data entered in a wiki. What stops this from happening (or does it happen)?
[Wish I could offer you a job, but... we're not in Ohio...
FYI: Ontario!=Ohio. The original post's sig was "Anyone looking for a sysadmin in Southern Ontario", not Ohio.
I know you Yanks wish Canada was the 51st state, but that doesn't mean you can claim our provinces as your own just yet. That's reserved for Bush's second term
I'd be curious as to what the cost/performance ratio of this is. Obviously, it's chock full of vitamin fast, but how much did it cost? As a Mac user, I tend to follow Vigrinia Tech's G5 cluster at least a little bit, and what always impressed me was that it only cost $5.8 million (and that's AFTER the upgrade to XServes). Not too shabby for such an impressive cluster.
Again, not to diminish this new supercomputer, but I'm curious as to how the price/performance ratios stand up.
Hans Moravec's book "Robot" suggests that 100 teraflops is about the level required for human intelligence. So we are up to 10% of his target. But human intelligence still seems very far away, so either he has badly underestimated, or our collective programming skills need significant improvement.
Well, that's probably because it requires more than just computing hardware. (Disclaimer: I haven't read the aforementioned book). Right now, programming is nowhere near enough to simulate a human intelligence, even if we had the hardware to pull it off. It's not like 100 teraflops is some magical goal where AI just "appears" magically as soon as we hit 100 teraflops. We need to know how to simulate "intelligence" in some form, or else the 100-teraflop-computer will just be a really really fast calculator (or weather simulator, or whatnot).
That's the biggest hurdle in AI: coming up with something that can really think for itself; adapt and learn, and maybe even evolve. The hardware is just a matter of time; but we need to know what to do with that hardware.
Jef Raskin, who is often mis-labelled as "The Father of the Macintosh" (despite the fact that he left the Mac team three years before the Mac's unveiling) has been a notorious critic of Apple. He bashes the leadership, the GUI, and the hardware. The more he does this, the harder it gets to construe it as anything other than sour grapes. Especially since his only real attempt at designing "his" computer interface was the complete flop of the Canon Cat
Note to Jef: if your design is so awesome, make it happen! If it's that much better, I'm sure you'll get more than enough sales to rake in the bucks! I know that I, for one, would love to see what it is you consider to be the ideal interface!
In the interview, the interviewer alludes to Hollywood suing ReplayTV into the ground. I hadn't heard of this. Could someone please summarise for me what happened? What was it that ReplayTV did that incurred the wrath of the RIAA et all?
I'd like to see Apple do better with RAM pricing on their online store. I think part of the "Macs are more expensive" flak comes because Apple only includes 256MB RAM in their machines and triple-charges for RAM. When people compare prices to (for example) Dell, they add on another 256 or 512 RAM to match Dell's specs. If done through a third-party, this wouldn't be a problem. But because the comparison is done through the Apple Store, it makes the Macs look even more expensive than they really are.
Of course, even worse is that half the people buying Macs through the Apple Store probably don't know enough to buy their RAM elsewhere and end up getting ripped off, rather than going to DealRAM and finding the best price.
The risk (to my view) here is that WalMart will demand lower CD prices for WalMart stores only (or else they won't care about other distributers). They are also in an advantageous position over dedicated music/DVD stores, as WalMart could live without CD sale revenue if need be.
So, the result of this could be that WalMart (monopoly 2) could get a special deal from the RIAA (monopoly 1) while other stores get stiffed. People will then flock to WalMart to buy music, putting the dedicated music stores out of business, and helping to reinforce monopoly 2 even further.
The reason they don't want you to remove the tag (if you RTFA) is because the tags they're talking about are for identification of (primarily chronic) medical problems. So that when you pass out behind the wheel, the paramedic who pulls you from the wreck of your car can instantly realise you're a diabetic allergic to latex, and thus uses non-latex gloves and puts you on a non-glucose drip. If you take your tag off (or your burning car melts the plastic bracelet), you're SOL.
Slashdot Mirror
But ranting about the iPod on Slashdot? Now *that* makes you cool!
Also, taxing gas is highly regressive. I suppose if you hate poor people, then it's a wonderful idea. Of course, with higher taxes, they can't afford to buy newer cars, which means they continue to the drive the bottom 5% of vehicles that cause 95% of the pollution.
It's fine and dandy to oversimplify the issue with glib assertions like "if you hate poor people...", but look at alternate possibilities: perhaps the government could increase the sin tax on Hummers, Suburbans etc, and offer price-reduction tax breaks on smaller, fuel-economic cars. Make that Echo hatchback an $8000 car, and it will become much more appealing.
Furthermore, if people are driving these old, polluting cars, then the increase in gas tax will hit them harder, providing further incentive to upgrade. Hell, if you really wanted to be progressive, offer assistance (zero-interest loans etc) to people trading an old, polluting car in for a new, efficient one.
There are stunningly high gas taxes in Europe, and one of the results is that you just don't see old cars on the road. The poor in those countries somehow manage to afford to upgrade, we North Americans can do it too!
Yeah, I'd actually seen that one. However, it was a long while ago (as noted by the impication that a gig of MP3s was a lot). I guess I should have asked if their views have changed. Also, that strip addressed ROMs in general. I'm curious about specifically old ROMs.
How do you guys feel about the downloading of ROMs for older systems (NES, Genesis, SNES etc)? I'm not talking about piracy of modern games, just long-since-discontinued systems. Given that Nintendo (for example) will not be making any money off of the original Super Mario 3 any more, do you think it's acceptable to download that game, so it can be played on a computer?
I apologise if this question has been asked a hojillion times already, but what's the advantage of Linux over MacOS X (not trolling here, honestly curious)?
Back in the Pre-X days, I tried an install of Mandrake 8 or 9. Never played much around with it, but at least it was a chance to play with it. But given that I now have a BSD-based, highly-polished UNIX system, it seems to make less sense. I mean, I have access to the full command line, I can compile pretty much any open-source program for OS X, Apple has their own X11 version, and I can do all the command-line stuff while still having the polished GUI and access to Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, iTunes, etc.
So, it really seems like OS X has all the advantages of Linux, but is also more polished, and has more brand-name apps available. So, what is the advantage of installing Linux on my G5?
A question for anyone who cares to respond:
Every time there's a crackdown on a P2P app, Slashdotters are quick to respond "There are legal uses. I don't condone piracy, and think it should stop, but don't kill technology X just because it can be used for piracy!". This is a standpoint I agree with, but my question is this: For those who say they oppose piracy, see it as a crime, etc, how do you propose this crime be faught? I agree that killing the P2P apps is bad, restrive anti-copying DRM is bad and that suing your owns customers is bad, but what's the alternative?
Please don't see this as flamebait, I'm honestly curious; if we are to protest all the anti-piracy measures implemented by the RIAA/MPAA, and yet claim that we're against piracy, how to we propose to handle the logistics of this argument? Or do we expect that the movie studios et al should allow their works to be pirated, thus tacitly condoning the action?
If that's all it takes to obsolete a sex, then following that logic and given the "gadgets" out there, men have been obsolete for years.
Shhhh.... don't tell anyone. We're hoping nobody notices.
saving resources upfront (minimal packaging) is much, much more effective than say recycling.
Exactly. What most people don't understand is that reduce, reuse, recycle is listed in that order for a reason. Reduction is the best policy; if you can't do that any further, reuse what you can; failing that, recycle.
Recycling is better than landfill, but it's not the best answer, either.
If we are really "stealing" oil, then why does the price of gas continue to climb? I just love those leftists that claim the war in Iraq is for oil. Been to the pump lately?
OK, I'll bite. There are three reasons the prices are so high even though the war was about oil:
It might well play on that system... I've often played games on Macs below the listed minimum specs. But this way, if someone tries to play it on a 1.25gHz G4, they're on their own. If they get crappy framerates, they can't call up and bitch about it, since they're well under the stated minimum specs.
With Bush's "your with me or against me" status on most issues, Republican senators and congresspeople have tended to tow the party line more than ever before. An increase in the republican presence in the Senate and the House leads to an increase of Republican power in those instituations. Couple that with the aforementioned rote following of party dogma and you'll see that a greater portion of the American halls of power are controlled directly or indiretly by one man (and his advisors, natch). Hence, my (admittedly hyperbole-laden) statement labelling the current government as an autocracy.
As for the Steve Jobs for president, I'm sorry you didn't realise a joke when you see one. Next time I'll surround it in <sacrasm> tags so you'll understand, O Wise One. But how about, by the same token, you figure out what's a joke before you talk down to me?
No problem. Just figure out where to insert the Eh's and you're all set.
No problem eh, just use them anywhere you use commas.
Make me a disappointed Canadian. Still, Bravo Kerry for making a good run, and for conceding, rather than dragging your nation though a long, drawn-out debacle.
Given that Bush lost the popular vote last time, and still won (sort of) the presidency, I guess it's rather suiting that the pesident at least has the popular vote this time. Given how contentious that was last time around, this is at least refreshing.
Note to the Republicans: Look at the backlash of public reprisal coming from several areas (youth, entertainers, etc). You have to do better; eventually the public as a whole will wise up to fear-mongering.
Note to Independents: this could be your chance. A lot of people hate Bush. Get your parties into the public spotlight, and either win more seats or at least force the Democrats to actually act like Democrats again.
Note to Democrats: You have four years to find a dynamic, charismatic leader; a true visionary who can unseat the current Bush autocracy by winning the public's hearts. If you keep putting forth less-than-ideal candidates, you will never truly win. You can't rely on enough people voting against the GOP to count on a win.
Note to Steve Jobs: You are dynamic, charistmatic and visionary. See note above.
Excuse the wiki-noobness, but something I've never really understood. What prevents someone from ranting/raving etc in a wiki? For example, if I go to Wikipedia, and edit an entry to say the world is flat, or that cheese is made out of human entrails, what prevents me from entering that (totally fallacious) information as fact?
In a more realistic scenario, how do you keep a wiki entry for a very controversial subject (for example, abortion) from becoming totally biased? The two phrases "preventing an unwanted child and its mother from having a miserable life" and "slaughtering an innocent fetus" have very different slants to them. Politics, religion etc, all have the potential to have biased or outright misleading data entered in a wiki. What stops this from happening (or does it happen)?
So, if spim is IM spam, shouldn't email spam have been named spem?
[Wish I could offer you a job, but... we're not in Ohio...
FYI: Ontario!=Ohio. The original post's sig was "Anyone looking for a sysadmin in Southern Ontario", not Ohio.
I know you Yanks wish Canada was the 51st state, but that doesn't mean you can claim our provinces as your own just yet. That's reserved for Bush's second term
I'd be curious as to what the cost/performance ratio of this is. Obviously, it's chock full of vitamin fast, but how much did it cost? As a Mac user, I tend to follow Vigrinia Tech's G5 cluster at least a little bit, and what always impressed me was that it only cost $5.8 million (and that's AFTER the upgrade to XServes). Not too shabby for such an impressive cluster.
Again, not to diminish this new supercomputer, but I'm curious as to how the price/performance ratios stand up.
Also, it seems silly to create something that not only was already done, but can be played via existing NES emulators!
No, what they're going to do is remaster the Original Star Wars series, right from the laser disc versions!!!!
So, the question of how much it would cost to get an unadulterated version of Star Wars is finally answered: it would cost $5.8million.
Alright Slashdot, everyone chip in ten bucks!
Well, that's probably because it requires more than just computing hardware. (Disclaimer: I haven't read the aforementioned book). Right now, programming is nowhere near enough to simulate a human intelligence, even if we had the hardware to pull it off. It's not like 100 teraflops is some magical goal where AI just "appears" magically as soon as we hit 100 teraflops. We need to know how to simulate "intelligence" in some form, or else the 100-teraflop-computer will just be a really really fast calculator (or weather simulator, or whatnot).
That's the biggest hurdle in AI: coming up with something that can really think for itself; adapt and learn, and maybe even evolve. The hardware is just a matter of time; but we need to know what to do with that hardware.
Jef Raskin, who is often mis-labelled as "The Father of the Macintosh" (despite the fact that he left the Mac team three years before the Mac's unveiling) has been a notorious critic of Apple. He bashes the leadership, the GUI, and the hardware. The more he does this, the harder it gets to construe it as anything other than sour grapes. Especially since his only real attempt at designing "his" computer interface was the complete flop of the Canon Cat
Note to Jef: if your design is so awesome, make it happen! If it's that much better, I'm sure you'll get more than enough sales to rake in the bucks! I know that I, for one, would love to see what it is you consider to be the ideal interface!
In the interview, the interviewer alludes to Hollywood suing ReplayTV into the ground. I hadn't heard of this. Could someone please summarise for me what happened? What was it that ReplayTV did that incurred the wrath of the RIAA et all?
I'd like to see Apple do better with RAM pricing on their online store. I think part of the "Macs are more expensive" flak comes because Apple only includes 256MB RAM in their machines and triple-charges for RAM. When people compare prices to (for example) Dell, they add on another 256 or 512 RAM to match Dell's specs. If done through a third-party, this wouldn't be a problem. But because the comparison is done through the Apple Store, it makes the Macs look even more expensive than they really are.
Of course, even worse is that half the people buying Macs through the Apple Store probably don't know enough to buy their RAM elsewhere and end up getting ripped off, rather than going to DealRAM and finding the best price.
The risk (to my view) here is that WalMart will demand lower CD prices for WalMart stores only (or else they won't care about other distributers). They are also in an advantageous position over dedicated music/DVD stores, as WalMart could live without CD sale revenue if need be.
So, the result of this could be that WalMart (monopoly 2) could get a special deal from the RIAA (monopoly 1) while other stores get stiffed. People will then flock to WalMart to buy music, putting the dedicated music stores out of business, and helping to reinforce monopoly 2 even further.
The reason they don't want you to remove the tag (if you RTFA) is because the tags they're talking about are for identification of (primarily chronic) medical problems. So that when you pass out behind the wheel, the paramedic who pulls you from the wreck of your car can instantly realise you're a diabetic allergic to latex, and thus uses non-latex gloves and puts you on a non-glucose drip. If you take your tag off (or your burning car melts the plastic bracelet), you're SOL.