Agreed about the comment on rare threaded intelligent discourses on/. , it is a welcome site.
I too am sick of this blind unity. I get tired of this crying eagle velvet art, need a hug foundation stuff. I think there needs to be more of a debate as to what is going to happen next; not this unilateral blindness and reverence for the oh-so-sacred "Office of the President."
Agreed on the Missile crisis; America had to knuckle under with regard to missiles in Turkey, and while Krushev was portrayed as a psychotic, he was probably doing what we would have done in the same situation given that they had to expend a far greater amount of resources to keep the superpowers in strategic check. Another notable thing about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that JFK was in a minority about not using force, and that he had to go 'against the grain' and try and opt for a less forceful solution.
The whole situation does suck, and there will be no happy ending. This action will exacerbate the situation, bring into existence some series of events that would have taken place over a longer period of time without agitation. This can be good to find out who is doing this, this could be bad as certain kinds of attack the west may not be prepared to deal with effectively.
The use of force is not unreasonable, I am very to sad to see Powell being sidelined. His more moderate approach to this may be a better way to go. It is noteworthy that Rumsfeld has been around since the Nixon days, so he may know what he is doing... This remains to be seen.
With regards to the isolationist retard policy that has been eructated from Washington before all this happened, I hope that the US will act more like an equal player than an exempted behemoth. The missile defense shield underminds START treaties, which would, by START 4, almost eliminate Strategic Nuclear arms, and ABM doesn't protect against the "piper cub" problem; small plane, suitcase nuke or Bio Chem. aerosol, flying low, at night, possibly unmanned - no trillion dollar ABM can defend against that. Stageic arms have long been the threat, but in the last decade, rouge state attacks and terrorism and now the forerunners in our security problem. The Kyoto pullout was pure trash, the death penalty here is also trash, trying to piss off the Chinese by making demands on the EP3 and targeting them with strategic arms and telling the whole world about it isn't swift either.
It all boils down to more participative foreign policy, less favoritism and more adherence do democratic principles (not the favor the dictator if he isn't a commie) and superior human intelligence - not carnivore and echelon systems that couldn't see this thing coming. (Or the rise of the two new nuclear states, India and Pakistan, both seemingly obtained nuclear capability overnight.)
As to the eternal vigilance, I do honestly think that the proactive role the US played in defending itself from a Soviet invasion wasn't purely paranoia, or have you forgotten the Cuban Missile Crisis? Our preparation for war since 1945 until today has probably done a lot more to deter it from happening, not the converse.
Well, I don't feel it is unjust. There were some sweeping statements made about America. I sought to negate most of the insinuations he made against the people of the US. No one here would presume to think that the evolution of this country was done in a vacuum and that a modicum of European influence did not play a role in the development of government here, in fact, it was quit the opposite. Your arguments seem to me to be more subterfuge than a concise disagreement with my posting, which is an opinion I do not share with the original author. Do you have a problem with my presentation, writing style, me, or my general viewpoint?
Picking a side here is simply not false. Lots of countries leaderships have already done so; I refuse to believe it was done by force. Blair today said there was no doubt in his mind that the evidence is stacked right and proper. The typically pro-middle-east anti-US French are right there with us on this one, going so far as to offer troops in the last statement I saw Chirac make. Switzerland is a country of criminals in my estimation, or at least a government which serves on the criminal's behalf, while this is my opinion, I am entitled to it. Not picking a side lends itself to evil. Look at all the payouts the Swiss had to make for the Nazi gold scandals, hardly neutral. As well laundering money and harboring the assets of people wanted in the ~international~ circle. The have done much to help finance criminals.
And this turning a blind eye completely to American foreign aid endeavors is preposterous. I listened to Pervez Mushareef tonight in the morning news conference in Islamabad. He summed it right up. When asked why he didn't resist the US in using its airspace against the Taliban which he had previously supported, he said some to this effect: "Environments change. Diplomacy endeavors change such as the environment changes. The only constant in international diplomacy is National Interest." From Pakistan to the US, the attitude is the same in every sovereign nation. National interest comes first. So it can be said of any given country it acts to some degree, selfishly.
About the Taliban, Mujahideen, and other topics. I refuse to believe all of the reading I do in English is somehow all made up for my eyes. I tend to read news from foreign sources whenever possible, and to stay far from the television. I remember reading months before this happened a posting on K5 about the horrors of the Taliban. and if the were legitimate, why on earth would only UAE, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia recognize them? I base by distaste for that regime on the U.N., who does not have a Taliban sitting in for Afghanistan on its council.
I am suggesting I have an opinion. Judging on what people say for the most part leads me to believe most people don't read much, and watch a lot of television. I'm probably undereducated about the happenings of the 1900's, but I know from personal experience I know considerably more about the past than do most of my acquaintances. (on September 11th, a few of my friends refused to believe bin Laden was CIA backwash, I pointed out Rambo III as a secular example of who the US liked then and who was the enemy in the Hind helicopter.)
I believe in the core ideology of the US. I think that the people who have their lives to lose and not their financial empire, such as myself, a simple, not rich person, believe in this. I know much has been done in the way of greed and whatnot. I think we stray from our core ideologies in foreign policy a lot and it looks really, really bad 10-20 years later.
I do not believe in or endorse G.W. Bush, his family is riddled with corruption, but I'll save that for another day, right now, retaliation is called for, it is our right, and we are going to execute justice. Justice is to prune the Al-Queda branch for the terrorist tree. I just hope the UN can see eye to eye with the US/GB action here. I know the long term solutions to the terrorist tree lies in its roots, the ethnic and religious disputes such as Palestine and Kashmir that need a just resolution - and no amount of bombing and troop action will solve that.
I believe the progenitors of this system would know what to do with this situation, probably better than what is being done right now. In many of my previous posts here and in other places I have denounced this wave of sweeping and totally un-American legislation that is being passed in the shadows under the ill suited guise of anti-terrorism.
I have faith in those who built the system, not in those who abuse it.
My company is mostly resident aliens, as is my fiancée, so I am well aware of the grotesque legislation being passed (with regards to foreign nationals and other trash like the DMCA/SSSCA/DRM, etc.) and have taken the time to write a letter to both senators and my congressional representative realizing that there are those lawmakers here that would seize the opportunity of public vulnerability to undermine the public's will for personal gain, such as kickback from trash companies like Disney, Fox and Macrovision.
Why was it funny to see my quote what I quote, Paul? Was it trying to insinuate some degree of hypocrisy or lack of forethought? Or was the use of a quote by someone whose legislation helped to create the most powerful and probably still the best nation on earth and drawing a parallel between that and the current set of lawmakers?
I would never dare to say that this, the prowess of the US, will last forever, nor is the US always right and just. However, in formulating my initial response, I believe the reaction to what has happened from a military prospective is not entirely uncalled for.
Be sure to read the entire thread to to see the prograssion of a given discussion.
In response to the forefather-bashing know-it-all who trolled things out of context in my initial post, I shall include the following on Thomas Jefferson. (And I offer him the challenge of creating a new Unions more successful than the US, who, as Jefferson said, "All men are created equal...")(Next time - instead of committing libel try including your source)
While it is true that Jefferson is portrayed in modern history classes as a white supremacist, a deist and a racist, this is, in fact, historical revisionism at its worst. Modern students of history ought to ignore their secular education and go straight to the facts. Students of a historical figure ought to research the character by reading the words of that man or woman themselves, not of secondary sources, as these often reflect the researcher's bias on a particular issue.
Whenever The Forerunner highlights the character of a man or woman who has contributed to our nation's Christian heritage, we are never implying that the person was without fault. We are neither attempting to prove that America is the best nation on earth; nor that our founding fathers were better than those of other nations. We are merely trying to unearth America's Christian heritage which has been obscured by modern history textbooks.
What do modern educators have to gain by distorting the true character of Thomas Jefferson? If we read the words of Jefferson himself, we find that he was silenced even in his own day. At the time of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson revealed his frustration with the other American delegates for ratifying a document that, in his mind, should have been passed without debate. He also records that his clause condemning slavery was censured by the committee:
"The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."
Jefferson's anti-slavery clause originally appeared under the list of grievances to the king of Great Britain: "He has waged cruel wars against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce."
In further research, we were unable to find Jefferson's negative references to blacks. We found instead numerous quotes that tend to support the opposite view: "That all men are created equal." To Jefferson, inferiority was something imposed on a people; it is only tyranny or the enslaving of a race or gender that brings repression.
For instance, on the subject of the treatment of Native American women by their men, Jefferson wrote: "The women are submitted to unjust drudgery. This is the case with every barbarous people. With such, force is law. The stronger sex therefore imposes on the weaker. It is civilization alone which places women in the enjoyment of their natural equality."
Jefferson believed that if civilization were allowed to run its natural course, all races would achieve equality: "Before we condemn the Indians of this continent as wanting genius, we must consider that letters have not yet been introduced among them. Were we to compare them in their present state with the Europeans North of the Alps, when the Roman arms and arts first crossed those mountains, the comparison would be unequal... How many good poets, how many able mathematicians, how many great inventors in arts or sciences had Europe North of the Alps then produced? And it was sixteen centuries after this before a Newton could be formed."
It is true that Jefferson remained an agrarian aristocrat all his life and that his estate owned slaves, but he was a man ahead of his time. He always believed that if the citizens of our country were enlightened, that people of all races, male and female, would be entrusted with the blessings of liberty without hindrance by the federal government.
SOURCES:
The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson. The text used here is from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. A.A. Lipscomb and A.E. Bergh 1903).
Notes on the State of Virginia. Norton edition, edited by William Peden (1954).
Our track record may not be perfect, far from it, but given the power the US actually has and how little the US proportionally "abuses" it, I have no trouble supporting the actions being taken, particularly when some effort of humanitarian aid is being made - and seeing as most of the worlds aid is funded by the US in the first place.
I am assuming this author is not American, and it is clear why.
In the words of our best:
"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." --Thomas Jefferson
Pick a side, be with the free world and pro-civilization, or be against it.
To the bollocks remark; it is simple. It has been western policy for at least a score or years, if not two, to never negotiate with terrorists. The Taliban aid and harbor terrorist. Now they will be destabilized as punishment for failure to comply with an internationally backed ultimatum, 'turn over the prime suspects, now.' (Most foreign prime ministers have seen the evidence and see no reason for not supporting it).
To ask for justice is not conceit. To have a great many more weapons and methods at our disposal and not use them is not arrogance. To give large loans and sums of money in the way of aid over many, many years starting with the Marshall Plan (how quickly history forgets), is not selfish. And judging on the US's political, economic and technological state in the world, it is hardly a nation of stupidity.
Well, I did work there one summer during high school. What a mess. You, the consumer, get to pay for a horrible business model.
Trust me; the cost differential is much larger than $5. The selection is poor and gives you a myopic view of the world. Marketing is essentially selling the cheapest crap at the highest price. CompUSA does a lot more marketing than the web sites who compete on pricewatch. I get the benefit of marketing-free prices, a selection which is unlimited (and I can always find that EXACT model I am looking for), and if you aren't dumb you can usually get FedEx 2-day. I wait two days to get the real-deal. Doesn't seem like a difficult choice.
I have seen Costco sell identical drives cheaper than CompUSA. If something is truly mundane or commoditized it can be purchased at Costco who, on a cursory inspection at finance.yahoo.com, operates at a 3% profit margin:
CSCO Profitability: Operating Margin (ttm) 2.9%
Interestingly, CompUSA's ticker on NYSE was CPU, apparently they have been de-listed, they had to close their online store after 5 months (apparently it is back up), they had to close quite a few stores citing severe overhead problems. Meaning it costs too much to run a store given the low margins of computer hardware and software.
Shipping is generally not an issue, and I'll order things to be delivered at work. I can usually pick up 2 day shipping for free if you look hard enough.
For example, Micron sells memory through crucial.com and the prices are sometimes a quarter of the price that CompUSA sells it for, and it is usually bulk PNY crap, not genuine Micron with a micron PCB.
I personally have never bought a hard drive that failed in its warranty period, so I don't know what all the fuss is about with regards to returning things.
Retail stores are evil, and will always be especially Fry's. And I stopped using retail stores years ago for the most part, especially for computer stuff. Well, I do use Fry's, "The Shit Store, TM", to "rent" stuff and see if I like it - then I return it and get it somewhere for less in a box that hasn't been opened.
AC posts are always lame. You should try and spell correctly; while, not wile and you're, not your.
You need a high media rate for applicaitons like that, you should look into SCSI drives for that application.
I have had the best luck with speed using IBM drives, make sure it is 7200 RPM, low seek times are always good and the highest possible media rate.
AFAICT the Deskstar 60GXP is one of the fastest drives out there (in IDE land), with the highest platter density, and a 40MB/sec sustained transfer rate (slightly higher than the 75GXP). The 60GB model has a mere 3 platters.
www.tomshardware.com just did a review on high speed drives, he claims that the Seagate Barracuda and the new Western Digitals are slightly better, but I would buy an IBM, having had great luck with them.
Don't pay for a store to staff a bunch of dropouts who don't know SCSI from IDE try to twist your arm into buy a Brio or Presario piece of trash that litter the sales floor.
Maxtor drive are for the most part okay, I have had the most drive failures with Western Digital and will never solicit them, and I've seen the old fluid bearing Seagate 7200 RPM die all the time.
IBM for the most part is good, but the GCP drives I heard are flaky, I believe there is a new "family coming out which will restore reliability.
As for your RMAs, call them and a demand a new drive. I have done this several times with Quantum/Maxtor, I have even gotten next generation SCSI drives after a failure - as you are entitles to this. I have said, "If I don't get a new, sealed drive, I'll just RMA right back.
I don't do drawings, our network here is complex, but it is by no means an enterprise. Xfig cuts it for us here - its all we need. I'm not an OSS lunatic that is trying to convert Visio people to Xfig, I would never suggest such a thing.
I just couldn't believe the fool couldn't export.
I did end up installing NT on this box in vmware and put a pirate copy of Visio on it, 2000.SR1 and I got what I needed. Had I bought Visio and vmware, this would have cost a whole lot more.
Again, I just asked for the diagram, which is so simple even Xfig or some other cheesy diagrammer could easily do, in a format which is readable by people without Visio.
Had the employee at Exodus known how to use Visio "for real" he would have been able to do this.
I do not do diagrams, and pretty much don't care about them in this context. While I realize VISIO is the standard, its not free, and we aren't going to go buy Visio to look at a diagram - its not cheap. We don't use Windows here, period.
I just wanted some other format I could use.
xfig was amongst several other requests, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIF, PDF, anything.
Given that xfig is less featured that Visio, does not make it useless, and the price is right.
We do have diagrams here, they are high level. I don't need a picture of a switch to understand what one rectangle is vs. another. For huge companies, such tools are probably necessary, but to refuse or be unable to export the drawing to something universally viewable is unacceptable incompetency.
Stop focusing in on something that was less than 1% of the text of the original post. AC losers.
I have worked for several companies that host at Exodus, and I have never need such disregard for fiduciary responsibility in my life. Most of the Exodus centers in and about the Santa Clara area, and there are many, many of which I have visited all tell the same story.
This story was capacity that was build on expectation values attained from an unrealistic market. The bigger companies knew this, but the feeding frenzy was not abated even in light of its fiscal mindlessness.
Why not wait to expand until you are bursting at the seams, having problems accepting new customers? Most people at Exodus cheap out anyway, I know a few personally that only buy non burstable 1mbit. Yet they built an infrastructure such that every cage could get an OC3 worth of bandwidth.
I was in awe when my company got us a 6509, a 7206 and a 7507. We got this stuff used and it cost us a mint. I cant believe what Exodus did, the bought miles of $200,000 routers, switches and other things, miles of giant Liebert batteries, huge air conditioners, diesel power generators, hired the most moronic and incapable security guards on the planet, and bought these hand scanners that never - ever - seem to work right.
At Digital Island, much is the same. The lease on all the equipment must be in the millions per month. The sad thing is that most of the carrier technology will probably change before the lease is up on a lot of the stuff.
My suggestion to businesses: Never expect anything - Only expand to meet demand. If you are constantly "full," you can charge a premium rather than build a football field worth or colocation space for 10 customers.
I have seen a few co location centers pop up recently; they are more intelligent in design. They don't wire in bandwidth until its needed, they don't buy equipment until its needed (and the BUY it), they have a building which is neat, like Exodus, but isn't extravagant, I mean, they make all the Exodus co-locations look like clean rooms at NASA or Intel.
Co-location recipe: 1) Cheap warehouse in area close to a few OC-12 central offices. Make place look like Costco with lower roof. Add a few miles of Chatsworth ladder track. Buy routers per every some number of people that reaches three quarters capacity, avoid fiber to the cage until customers actually need it. Hire good people. Don't over invest in lame hand scanners that do work. (If every cage is locked, what would a person do in there anyway? Pull power cords from the mesh? And do this without getting caught?). Peer with a few carriers and scale up when needed. Most bandwidth is idle most of the time, bragging about OC-48 interconnects isn't cool, its useless.
My current place of Employment was trying to get on Exodus's price list with our technology. The concept was to pay Exodus $50,000, the "verify" our product, then they will resell it.
We laughed and moved on, knowing full well they were trying to squeeze for revenue - and we didn't need the endorsement of a dying behemoth.
With Chapter 11, maybe Exodus will need to get smart. It has to now shift from building big, inefficient farms to having to farm the land you have properly to produce revenue.
I wish Exodus the best of luck, and stop thinking you are AT&T or some such. Exodus is an overpriced co-location center with unresponsive technical support and too many dead weight employees.
(One of the employees was shocked to find out we didn't have Visio 2000 installed, and he could not give the diagrams to me in JPG or PNG or PDF or some other useful format. I kept getting VSD files. I asked for a network diagram in xfig or something that we can use, and still, a blank stare)
I agree, the 'not even Arabic' thing in retrospect seemed exclusive of a group of people who in general I have no gripe with so long as they are law abiding.
I mentioned surgical / black ops, etc, because I know full well that the Afghans in general are not the problem here, its militant factions. Collateral damage towards the Afghan people is killing allies for all intents.
I am for middle ground solutions. Now, there would be a merit to temporarily instituting martial law, possibly interning a bunch of "suspects" and processing them quickly. The 48 hours the government has to hold people should be plenty. Extended internment, such as REX84/RX84, or the Japanese in WWII, was an interesting miscarriage of justice. If people who are not citizens or citizens who are interned on racial profiling, which, while wrong, has some merits, they must be handled quickly and if they are found to be innocent, they must be compensated.
Martial law and temporary internment are temporary. They may be wrong, annoying, or seem unfair. If a job NEEDS to get done, and mob rule must prevail, then lets be fair. On the other hand, horribly vague and far reaching legislation is more dangerous over the long term.
People want to do things right now without any ramifications. If law enforcement has to be "ugly," then it should be ugly in front of the public eye and subject to criticism. This highly furtive and secretive approach the government is taking internally with legislation and other such things make me more nervous than anything else.
Sorry for making it seem like Arabians were the exception. One of the guys at work is Turkish, and he is a good guy, and I had a Orthodox Egyptian roommate in college, and he was a good guy.
Privacy is of the utmost importance. Its the freedom we need the most. The art highlighted in these article is a relevant and valuable expression of things that have come and are to come.
The article's spiked chair being useable by cardholders/citizens only and the other link to the wearable camera is an allusion to the underpinnings of fascism.
I get worried about the direction the US government is taking towards us. Half my company is foreigners, and good ones at that. The plausibility that they will become suspect or deported is minimal, but given some of the new legislation in the mill, it is possible to deport resident aliens if they contributed to an organization that terrorizes or makes threats. That could conceivably include Greenpeace.
Expatriate resident aliens are the best people, most of the time. They are not eligible for welfare, must take care of themselves, do no vote and pay taxes. I would fight to defend the rights of my friends at work.
The advent of the Orwellian era is near, I urge everyone to go to the EFF (www.eff.org) as soon as possible and write the senators and congressmen. And if you are from the EU or Canada or some other place, write them too. I'm still in shock about Skylarov not even getting a semblance of habeas corpus, and is being tried on laws that do not apply to him or what he did. And now the SSSCA and the Anti-Terrorism (Implement Fascism) bills by Adolph Ashcroft.
I am hurt by what happened September 11th. Black ops, special ops and "surgical" retaliation is a good thing. But suspending the rights of people who aren't even Arabic, and coining new criteria for "cyber-terrorism," proposing national ID cards and indiscriminately deporting people is NOT a smart thing to do. And developing legislation with such broad and far reaching wording is dangerous to everyone the world over.
The brain drain will begin, where mega corps of the US will have expatriates arrested for violating something inane. Soon, all the people will stop coming because they are afraid. And possible the greatest nation for development with the soundest fiscal policy will become and intellectual pariah.
Remember, stay moderate. Don't jump to conclusions about things, and make sure to check out the art in these articles, its an expression of what's to come.
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies,
No, you don't.
and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment.
No, you can't.
I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
Broad statement. Incorrect. IBM and HP back/develop Linux, Dell sells Linux servers, etc, etc. The Gartner Group just recommended against using IIS. Cobalt and RedHat hardly failed as "Linux startups." Most linux code is portable in one way or another if its correctly written. Open Source has proven and will continue to prove that software should cost nothing. (Given that Mickeysoft doesn't accept liability, its essentially worthless.
I know that that's a strong statement to make,
No, its idiotic.
but I have evidence to back it up!
No, you don't.
At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore. I recommended [SIC]the installation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and file serving.
So you went your own way and installed your own kernel, not using the default kernel or default kernel sources from a particular distribution. You failed to mention the distribution. High performance DNS is best outsourced for large companies try www.ultradns.com. You did no qualifying as 2.4.9 is fresh out of the ftp. The Gartner group recommended against the use of IIS, which owns a mere 25% of that market. 60% is apache. http://www.netcraft.com/survey/. Fileserving is trivial, and Linux offers a myriad of FS choices, XFS (SGI), JFS(IBM), Reiser, ext2, ext3, for various needs. From true logging/journaling to simple filesystems. Most of the time, Samba drastically outperforms NT/2000 boxes with the SMB protocol.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming.
You aren't. Delusion.
I don't believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast.
Troll. C doesn't believe in making it easy for morons, sorry you were left out of the loop.
I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised [SIC] version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive...
GCC 3.1 isn't out yet. 3.01 is. The kernel documentation tell you to use EGCS 1.1.2 / GCC 2.91.66, but you can't read. I've had not problems with Linux 2.4.3 - 1.4.10 with gcc 3.00 or 3.01, nor with Mozilla 0.93/0.94, nor with any other things I have compiled with GCC on Linux. The processes will run without leaking for at least on the order of months. I had shells on Linux kernels that will run on the order of years. You are apparently I'll equipped to manage an enterprise Unix solution.
We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The 3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise" environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's [SIC] IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour [SIC] , we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
Ximian, KDE 2.X are pretty hard to beat. Too much functionality for the basal minded. I've seen a 32MB piece of crap Cobalt box with Linux 2.2.16X survive quite a large beating. You used the wrong compiler to build the 2.4.9 kernel anyway. You probably didn't link/usr/include to the linux source tree. There is ReiserFS in the kernel, there are several distributions including journalled filesystems in them, XFS is offered with RedHat 7.1 via SGI. JFS is able to be put in. Reiser is already there. SMP support has been there since 2.2. You are wrong. The memory is far more protected than it is in Windows anything. I have never seen apache crash, nor BIND for that matter. Funny, your amateur ass stages servers for Fortune 500 companies on production boxes and then has to re-install Windows? Never was there a day where a Unix server could not do more with less hardware than Windows. Ever. Even Apple chimed into that idea.
Needless to say, I won't be recommending [SIC] Linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed [SIC]that they won't be able to leverege [SIC]the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
Needless to say you cant spell. You don recommend anything to anyone, your delusions of grandeur are most amusing. If you want to pay for support, you can. RH support is quite good, actually. Given that you recompiled the kernel on a system with the wrong compiler and then whine about it, you complain about Linux? Shared source is not completely open, retard, its chunks of code. And for the complete source you have to shell out big cash. Most appliances run non-Microsoft Code.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
Linux is in academia because it is meritorious. Lotus Notes, Oracle, SAP are all ported to Linux, hardly "Hello World". It's a hobby to you, you clearly have to spend more time with it because you sir, are a complete and utter moron. Nick try on a troll.
I can not bring myself to agree with this position. While I am not Jewish nor do I live in Israel, I know who I would rather trust in a trench in the middle-east fighting off crazed people. In fact I'm not religious much at all, thank God, no pun intended.
I would much rather accept Israeli dominion than an Islam world. If I had to choose between Zionism and Islam, the choice is clear, go with Israel. They have special teams of people there that go and find every piece of body-part so that they may be buried whole; even in death they show some dignity. Not like these people that get incinerated in Jihad when crashing people with actual lives that are worth something into buildings.
The criminals that perpetrate this are usually poor followers of Islam, often drinking and bringing themselves to impure women to bear their all to them while "religious" leaders absolve them with this farce, Jihad.
Be it noted that actual Palestinians who are citizens inside Israel rarely commit murderous acts, yeah, they throw rocks, cheer, and tell the Israeli's to piss off, but none of them would trade the benefits of being under Israeli rule and run to Lebanon or Syria where they would really live in a world of shit.
That whole portion of the world, save Turkey, Israel and maybe Iran is a hypocritical crock with mass terrorism against the people.
This situation is impossible to rationalize, but the closer you look at any system you get myopic/microcostic, and can derive any "view" that you choose.
Step further back and its clear. Iraq, any country with a monarchy over there (puppet states that are criminal against the people and are not democratically elected - often supported for some unknown reason by the US, e.g. Saudi Arabia), Afghanistan/Taliban (the real leader was deposed in 1996) are criminal countries with no value to the rest of the earth. No medicine. No theological advances. No technology. No nothing. Isolated Islands of hate that hold the populace hostage every day using Islam as media tool rather than Television, it's a lot easier to lie in writing.
I feel the need with all the horrible rights violations going recently to highlight Thomas Jefferson's views on copyright. In the writing to ensue, there will be much opinion and conjecture surrounded by a more valued and respected sets of opinions by none other than Thomas Jefferson. Without a doubt, Thomas Jefferson has already covered most of what gets rehashed, particularly when it comes to fair use and the DMCA.
I feel it is important to this case, especially from the American prospective, to point out that one of the most ingenious, prolific and outspoken forefathers of the USA, where the DMCA and other vile laws live, believe firmly that the bill of rights should have included and explicit reference to freedom from burdensome and unfair copyrights and legislation thereof.
Thomas Jefferson was concerned about you and me. The people that read periodicals. He was concerned with everyone as a singular entity. You yourself may not know what's best for you if you belong to something bigger. Our [United States] laws are supposed to protect the little people.
While I'm not suggesting an armed standoff against federal agents necessary in this case, something must be done. We are railroading an expatriate to whom our laws do not bind. Furthermore, our own forefathers, particularly Jefferson, BELIEVE me he is YOUR friend (not the big monopolies like Energy/Petroleum Companies, Microsoft, etc.)
I'm going to excerpt his beliefs below. Realize that even 200 years ago, the pitfalls of burdensome copyright and the legislation that ensues would erode our freedoms.
...
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in his correspondence with James Madison (1751-1836) was initially hostile to the provision for copyright and patent law in the United States Constitution. On Dec. 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to Madison from France concerning the recently-drafted Constitution:
"I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land..."
Note, here IMHO, Thomas Jefferson wants to, along with our other inalienable rights, establish a freedom from Monopoly. These rights, not excluding freedom from monopoly, were to him as core as the rest of our bill of rights. He repeated this view in his letter to Madison dated July 31, 1788:
"I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new constitution by nine states. It is a good canvas, on which some strokes only want re-touching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from North to South, which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty generally understood that this should go to juries, habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion and monopolies. I conceive there may be difficulty in finding general modification of these suited to the habits of all the states. But if such cannot be found then it is better to establish trials by jury, the right of Habeas corpus, freedom of the press and freedom of religion in all cases, and to abolish standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies, in all cases, than not to do it in any... The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression."
Madison, in a letter dated October 17, 1788, responded,
"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government. But is it clear that as encouragements to literary works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the public to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely less danger of this abuse in our governments than in most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many to the few. Where the power is in the few it is natural for them to sacrifice the many to their own partialities and corruptions. Where the power, as with us, is in the many not in the few, the danger can not be very great that the few will be thus favored. It is much more to be dreaded that the few will be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many.
I hold the recent copyright extension as an example of what Madison thought there was little danger of. There it was said, even by Madison, the proponent of the said directives, that there would likely be no "a sacrifice of the many to the "partialities and corruptions" of a powerful few."
I firmly believe the DMCA is both a corruption and a partiality. Anyone with Macrovision stock will try and convince you otherwise.
Jefferson probably saw that there is some purpose in having intellectual property be protected in some fashion or more likely, IMHO, probably decided that he would rather be a part of creating the ground rules for this countries operations and decided to cut bait at this point. He subsequently said to Madison in a letter on August 28, 1789:
"I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additions would have pleased me... Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose."
The blank was to be filled in at some future date, obviously. The law is written with the sense that this right would be the right of the people to protect themselves against intellectual fraudulence by companies, e.g., the theft of the 'little man's' ideas. In addition to which, there is always the stance that the people of the fledgling USA would be safeguarded in the Bill of Rights against unduly long copyrights.
Jefferson's preference for the term of copyright was submitted to Madison a few days afterward, in a letter of September 6, 1789. The proposed term was that of 19 years, based on actuarial calculations:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another seems never to have been started on this [i.e., the European side -- Jefferson was writing from France] or our [American] side of the water... that no such obligation can be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. -- I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it... A generation coming in and going out entire... would have a right on the first year of their self-dominion to contract a debt for 33 years, in the 10th for 24, in the 20th for 14, in the 30th for 4, whereas generations, changing daily by daily deaths and births, have one constant term, beginning at the date of their contract, and ending when a majority of those of full age at that date shall be dead. The length of that term may be estimated from the tables of mortality. Take, for instance, the tables of M. de Buffon... [according to which] half of those of 21 years [of age] and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt... This principle that the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive application... Turn this subject in your mind, my dear Sir... Your station in the councils of our country gives you an opportunity for producing it to public consideration... Establish the principle... in the new law to be passed for protecting copyrights and new inventions, by securing the exclusive right for 19 instead of 14 years."
A Jeffersonian computation using life tables from 1992 gives a Jeffersonian copyright term of 30-35 years. (Vital Statistics of the United States 1992, Volume II--Mortality, Part A, Public Health Service, Hyattsville, 1996, Section 6, Table 6-1.) Note, however, that at least one edition of Jefferson's works has a much abridged version of this letter, in which the 19-year computation and the proposal for the term of copyright do not occur.
One of Jefferson's most famous statements on patent law was in his often-quoted letter of August 13, 1813 to Isaac McPherson, in which he wrote that, since there is no natural right to property in land, how much less is there a natural right to a property in ideas. I think Jefferson's words apply equally well to copyrights as to patents; to "expression" as well as to "ideas": "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
A random set of impressions of these laws with which I agree:
"The scary thing about the DMCA is that it affects everyone, but only a subset of the country realizes it exists, of which a subset understands what it means, of which a subset understands why its so wrong. " quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
"Is there a "voice" amongst this subset that has any power to inflict any change here? Kind of spooky. It makes you wonder where things are headed." quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
As someone pointed out in a discussion, be sure to realize that copyright is referred to at this point as monopoly in Jefferson's letters.
Its fairly clear that Jefferson uses Monopoly in reference to copyright, which is what it is, you can monopolize on your intellectual property for a set period of time. He was willing to give IP of the day 19 years, but he was very much verbal about fair use, and that public fair use was of the utmost importance.
Even cursory inspection of Jefferson's views shows his distrust of allowing monopolies run rampant.
Even Madison has said:
"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government."
They both realized that in order for Monopolies of any sort to be protected by the government, that undue amounts of arbitration would be necessary.
Jefferson also affords a Monopoly to the Individual, not a corporate entity:
"Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose."
Surely he isn't suggesting that one person could create a monopoly on, lets say, corn. He was referring to copyright. He certainly isn't suggesting that corn could only be sold by one person for 19 years.
Another thing, imagine if the copyrights were in fact awarded to the people who invented them, not the companies who subsidized them. It would be interesting to see a world where companies like DuPont and Merck (and every other chemical and drug exploitation companies, because that's what they are, the money is in the treatments, not the cure) are made to treat their patent holding scientists with the utmost respect and regard, even more so than the greedy shareholders, because if they left for another company, so leaves their patents!
The most important of all the Jefferson arguments is this: If IP is so unique, so wonderful and so great, why does it need protection? I don't believe I had quoted this particular argument above, I will work to find it, but the statement is true. If something is obvious, then it really isn't IP. Would you like Bob Metcalfe, the Linux is a piece of crap Windows 2000 rules moron who founded 3COM to hold the patent on 'ethernet'?
Link: http://iwsun4.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/99/06/ 21/990621opmetcalfe.xml
Don't you think its nice that other companies compete with 3COM for the ethernet space, such as Intel, CISCO, et al? Doesn't the standard referred to as "ethernet" get better and better because these companies compete for your business in the same segment?
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181. Link: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/copyright/
The message in this passage is clear: an idea is not matter but energy; it cannot be owned, and it isn't diminished by being shared. In any discussion of copyright, it is useful to begin by reminding ourselves that ideas can't be copyrighted and can't be owned--only expression can. Furthermore, even when expression is copyrighted, academics ought to bear in mind their right to Fair Use, a crucial exception to copyright that exists in order to enable teaching, research, and news reporting.
A few more quotes to muse upon:
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they... undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow "
-- James Madison
And finally:
"The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you & I, & Congress & Assemblies, judges & governors shall all become wolves. "
Thomas Jefferson To Edward Carrington
Paris, Jan. 16, 1787
I do not represent the wolf. Life liberty and property, property in that case being tangible assets, e.g., guns, real estate, houses, possessions. He never said life, liberty and monopoly. In fact, life liberty and property was rephrased as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In my ethos I strive to achieve a more star-trek like existence, where you can serve yourself (with notoriety, money, etc) and mankind at the same time. There is no need to "milk" technologies - look what happened to TUCKER in Detroit. Fucked out of businesses by the monopolists. I want to protect against that. Milking is what petrol and car companies do, prevent fuel cells, ceramic engines, higher fuel efficiencies in motors, etc. We won't see next generation technology in cars for some time because the current has to be milked.
I am upset with you. I never said ban. Copyright. I said freedom from burdensome copyright, not freedom from all copyright.. You don't know how to read and understand this is moderate position.
Elcomsoft had stopped charging for the Ebook software before he entered the company. He had done so at Adobe's request. He is an employee of Elcomsoft and cannot be charged for what that business entity had done. We have similar laws here where companies are formed to financially and legally shield people from faults.
Of government. Your attention to picayune details is annoying. You misinterpret his words, in my opinion. Are you referring to all the monopolistic and tax payer wasting exclusive government contracts?
As far as monopoly and sacrifice. Yes, monopolies are a sacrifice. I don't shun copyright or patent, I just want them used more carefully and for fair use to be protected. You can still make a product, if it so damn good then you don't even need to patent it. People need to focus on being a better company and product and not thinking about sitting on and licensing your IP for all eternity, e.g., RAMBUS. Again, you misread, malign and come up with shoddy arguments.
I'm going to stop responding to you because you have been a troll, this is clearly someone who sits and reads and has his heart set on disagreeing with me for no apparent reason other than the sake of argument. There is always one of you in a discussion thread, so I guess you can say "YHBTYHLHAND." If you weren't trolling me, then you are very un-American in your thinking - I can't think of anyone, conservative or not, that thinks any of Jefferson's reasoning wasn't intelligent and well thought out.
This is a waste of taxpayer money, its designed to veil the actions of foul men like George Bush who steal social security money from us. How about, "Mr. Bush, you're a criminal." is a perfect expression for the Quid Pro Quo thievery that he performs in office, allowing all his business cronies to steal from the American public.
THINK about what you do and who you work for. The headline that lead me here makes believe Mr. George Bush, whose family has Nazi ties and Nazi money infusions in WWII through Prescott Bush, is a real hypocrite for asking for "gossip" to end. Why, he has everything to gain by people not talking about the trash the makes him into what he is, a blindsiding, un-American, Nazi-sympathizing, pro-business anti American bastard.
He is a Skull an Bones elitist, and he thinks the "weak" need to die to make room for the Darwinistic strong.
I suppose Stephen Hawkins in his wheelchair is weak.
I suppose Nancy Reagan begged Bush not to cut stem cell research because Ronnie has Alzheimer's - why, Bush is an elitist prick.
Pro-choice, pro-American, and pro foul-language, Anti-Microsoft, Anti-Monopoly, Anti-Pork Barrel, Libertarian-ish smaller government with good monetary policy.
The Senate is a cabal of scum liars, the congress is worse. My family lineage is rooted here since the 1600's and the modern manifestation of government is an embarrassing attempt to cover up of lies, deceit and misappropriation. These liars don't want gossip - like Chandra Levy, affairs, lies, bribes, etc.
The USA is now "Amerika", Communism forming through corporate elitism.
Exactly. There is a mix to be had, certainly the poindexter depart of defense employee from 1960 isn't precluded from being the next hero, but the next is more than likely not to be this type of human.
Jobs should be based on merit, not quotas.
You work for the group of who are in essence communist-socialist. The potential to generate revenue is first and foremost; at best a tertiary concern could be the ability of that individual to conform to the pointy headed boss' work schedule.
My former IT boss/director was a lamer and inept as his job; but because he was punctual, wore a suit, fit the mold and talked the talk. He just couldn't walk the walk to save his ass. I turned down an offer for his jobs for something in California that paid $20,000 more than his job. Last I heard he was still dressed up in his little suit looking for a job.
I can go either way, California style or NYC Stock market style. Shorts or suit. I want a job to pay the bills. But to not look at me because I don't feel like dressing up for your (recruiter) lame-ass self is real swift. I have always gotten my own jobs, recruiters usually turn up shit jobs. All the recruiters I have ever talked to don't have a f-ing clue what I do for my job - and they clearly suck and finding me jobs because I managed to find myself one here during the.bust in the middle of Si-Valley. In fact, when I mentioned once I had Novell experience, an OS which I like but not nearly as much as the *nix varietals, he said that that was passé - and that Active Ditectory was the new thing. I remember getting my MCSE certification a long time ago so I could tell the PHBs with certainty that running an "All Microsoft Shop" was a -bad- idea. I also remember reading that while Novell has been in better shape, there are a significant number of people going from ADS to NDS (good decision). The "recruiters" knew a buzzword, sure they heard of XML, but they don't know anything about XML, have never seen XML code, and they don't know why the people who want XML people want and XML person, etc.
Most of the recruiters called me back a few times, but they failed to turn up any real leads. I feel bad for the guys washing the floors in the mailroom when they could have probably found something better without a recruiter.
I'll stick to work that I cultivate myself. Sure, I'll give bonehead recruiters a chance, but you guys suck at it (always seem to be well groomed, kempt, ex-jock losers who fail to realize taxi-drivers turn a better dime than they do), and you don't make the loot we make because your work is secondary to this business.
Just like the travel agent, your job is contingent on someone actually going out and doing something. When you contribute nothing to the advancement of humanity, you should serve the ones you do without being mealy mouthed cocky pricks.
The scariest thing about this merger is the totally inept Carly F. gets to run the joint. She has never typed ps -elaf or ps -auxww in her life yet she runs the 2nd larget computer company?
Scary.
FYI, Carly majored in Medieval history at Stanford. At least Gates and Allen can brag about actually having known something about computers at some point, albeit Altairs. Not that being the only non-Unix vendor left is a good isea.
I strive to partake in the non greed based idealistic future of ST TNG!!! I would be happy to help to creat AI like Nooneyoung Soon [SIC] who created Data from TNG. Data from TNG was a prolific character - he, with his positronic brain, we the least prone to 'evil' on the Enterprise - with the exceptional and staid attempt to short circuit him in all his glory. Seems we have to find imperfections in a mechanically perfect being by staging near impossibilities even in a theatrical rendering of the future.
Data is your friend, Data wil protect you from the terrible secret of space:P
I agree with most of what you said. BeOS to me was never anything but a wonderful experience. I use Linux / *nix most of the time now, but wish BeOS had made it further along.
In times where Apple is doing little to really challenge Microsoft, it would have been nice to see Be and Linux challeneg M$ hand in hand.
But... BeOS is not user stratified and is really, really, really hard to program and develop for. The instructions from Be to developers:
"Mulithreading is the answer. Mulithreading will protect you from the terrible secret of space. Multithreading is very hard to program and DEBUG!!! Good Luck. Love Be"
So, I believe that was the fatal problem with Be development. I bought BeOS and GoBe's Be app suite or whatever it was. I also bought Warp 4. Anything to stop M$. Too bad I pissed my money away =). I wish they had done a lot better.
I believe the kitten critters were like called Polls Voice, and you had to use an arrow on them (for instant death) or stab the crap out of them; the Knights which could not be stabbed were Dark Nuts, the interesting thing about that game was you could beat it without getting hit very much at all but you had to be really, really good and obsessed with taking lots of time to avoid getting hit (Wizzrobe cheating no counted).
Remeber the Wizzrobes, the ghosts that had a daddy ghost, the Leevers from teh sand, the dragon ehads, the sheild eating intestine dudes, the magic stealing skull dudes, man, that game has a lot of good stuff.
Memories.
By the way, I had steaming fits of rage that lead to me chewing on NES controllers, I had 4 Nintendos because I have drop kicked, smashed with a hammer and thrown Nintendos against the T.V. I had that NES advantage tank steel controller, and I smashed the Nintendo with that. My last Nintendo (before that New tiny one that top feeds, none of this disappearing cartridge crap) had no top, I smashed it off, and I had to use a brick on top of the cart to keep in depressed.
Remember having to lick the cartridges to get them to contact, remember playing for hours and having the game crash?
Addendum: After looking at the pictures of the new Zelda game, I can tell you for certain I won't be buying that game, he looks like a powder puff girl. Travesty!
I can't wait for the über-version of Metroid or Kid Icarus to come out, yet, I think I will be disappointed. "Tooning" is becoming part of Nintendo, yes, and now that I would qualify as part of the mature audience, I like Nintendo productions less and less. In fact, I am console free at the moment, with the last games being played are Deus Ex and Hitman.
Since I have roots in the console gaming all the way back to Coleco Vision and the 2600, I have to say that the best games lied in middle of both NES and SNES's lifetime. Sega Master games were, okay, P-Star being the best. Genesis provided a lot of fun, but I liked the Nintendo stuff better, in general. Turbo GFX, Neo Geo were too obscure. (Herzog Zwei for Genesis, best PVP game EVER, trust me! =). The rest of the consoles, from PSX 1, N64, and all the rest, don't leave an impression. Nothing like Deus Ex did, anyway.
I'm not getting inflammatory here, but I think the novelty of the consoles are dying off. The games are not rehashes of what worked, they try too hard to be different or innovative, and I just can't bring myself to soliciting them.
A few exceptions to the I don't like this new console rule was Super Mario 64, that was really good, lots of player control, and fair degree of replay-ability. Too childish, but hey... Mario Kart 64 was a lot of fun, I know, I have played it with little cousins, sisters, anyone. Its goofy but its still fun. Finally, I have never felt like I wanted more than with the first Zelda 64. After you got big, the game really kicked ass. I wish the game was 4 times longer, three times harder. I love the stances, the shield and sword techniques, the player control. I mean that game was fabulous. The Majora's mask game turned up to be crap, so I don't know. I watched someone playing it and didn't have a single brainwave form in favor playing that game. I just know they hit a chord with me with the first 3D Zelda. I liked the game, and I would have liked to make that world twenty times bigger to move around and play in that world some more. The only gripe I had with that game is that if you get good with the swordplay it is utterly easy. The AI could get very easy to exploit.
All in all, I would grant luck to any creative company the best of luck in producing games I like. I tend to have friends recommend by word of mouth because the majority of what's out there is not worth playing. I can't tell you all how relived I was to play Deus Ex - I hadn't played a game in a long time. I hope the newer games give us control that we so wanted in NES/SNES games, but couldn't be there. I really liked the original Zelda's, especially Zelda II, again, its the clever swordplay - if you were extremely good with manipulating the in game sword you were nearly invulnerable.
=)
http://www.linux10.org/
on
Linux Is 10 Today
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Linux10 party still has room on the East Coast!! =)
Linux 10th Anniversary Picnic/BBQ
August 25th, 2001 from 11:00 to 6:00
Sunnyvale Baylands Park, Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Bring the kids!
Mark your calendars! The Linux 10th anniversary picnic/BBQ will be Saturday, August 25, 2001 from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
We had to stop taking new RSVPs for Linux10 when the picnic area capacity was reached on Aug 14. However, "Linux10 East Coast" in Philadelphia still has plenty of room. See below for more Linux 10th anniversary events.
Burgers, hot dogs, veggie burgers, and other picnic foods will be served until 3:30 and are free to all those who RSVP'ed
Talk about pirating, what do you think the Shareholders and the people they 100,000,00.00USD to?
Pathetic.
Wasting time doing things your customers will hate your for is not he way to trailblaze new business. The DMCA, RIAA and MPAA and Macrovision, the BSA, and well everyone and evrything else that fixates on us like Orwell 1984 is lame, and will hopefully become deprecated.
I hate soliciting companies that define what is good and bad.
Oh well.
Recent Events
Aug 21 Price hit new 52-week low ($0.37)
July 23 Earnings Announcement
Location
450 Broadway Street
Redwood City, CA 94063
Phone: (650) 556-5000
Fax: (650) 556-5100
Email: mwolfrom@corp.home.net
Employees (last reported count): 2,987
52-Week Low
on 21-Aug-2001 $0.37
Recent Price $0.56
52-Week High
on 14-Sep-2000 $18.563
Beta 2.58
Income Statements
Sales (ttm) $611.0M
EBITDA (ttm) -$5.76B
Income available to common (ttm) -$7.27B
Management Effectiveness
Return on Assets (ttm) -175.50%
Return on Equity (ttm) -276.71%
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed about the comment on rare threaded intelligent discourses on /. , it is a welcome site.
/. :)
I too am sick of this blind unity. I get tired of this crying eagle velvet art, need a hug foundation stuff. I think there needs to be more of a debate as to what is going to happen next; not this unilateral blindness and reverence for the oh-so-sacred "Office of the President."
Agreed on the Missile crisis; America had to knuckle under with regard to missiles in Turkey, and while Krushev was portrayed as a psychotic, he was probably doing what we would have done in the same situation given that they had to expend a far greater amount of resources to keep the superpowers in strategic check. Another notable thing about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that JFK was in a minority about not using force, and that he had to go 'against the grain' and try and opt for a less forceful solution.
The whole situation does suck, and there will be no happy ending. This action will exacerbate the situation, bring into existence some series of events that would have taken place over a longer period of time without agitation. This can be good to find out who is doing this, this could be bad as certain kinds of attack the west may not be prepared to deal with effectively.
The use of force is not unreasonable, I am very to sad to see Powell being sidelined. His more moderate approach to this may be a better way to go. It is noteworthy that Rumsfeld has been around since the Nixon days, so he may know what he is doing... This remains to be seen.
With regards to the isolationist retard policy that has been eructated from Washington before all this happened, I hope that the US will act more like an equal player than an exempted behemoth. The missile defense shield underminds START treaties, which would, by START 4, almost eliminate Strategic Nuclear arms, and ABM doesn't protect against the "piper cub" problem; small plane, suitcase nuke or Bio Chem. aerosol, flying low, at night, possibly unmanned - no trillion dollar ABM can defend against that. Stageic arms have long been the threat, but in the last decade, rouge state attacks and terrorism and now the forerunners in our security problem. The Kyoto pullout was pure trash, the death penalty here is also trash, trying to piss off the Chinese by making demands on the EP3 and targeting them with strategic arms and telling the whole world about it isn't swift either.
It all boils down to more participative foreign policy, less favoritism and more adherence do democratic principles (not the favor the dictator if he isn't a commie) and superior human intelligence - not carnivore and echelon systems that couldn't see this thing coming. (Or the rise of the two new nuclear states, India and Pakistan, both seemingly obtained nuclear capability overnight.)
Nice talking on
- Z
As to the eternal vigilance, I do honestly think that the proactive role the US played in defending itself from a Soviet invasion wasn't purely paranoia, or have you forgotten the Cuban Missile Crisis? Our preparation for war since 1945 until today has probably done a lot more to deter it from happening, not the converse.
Well, I don't feel it is unjust. There were some sweeping statements made about America. I sought to negate most of the insinuations he made against the people of the US. No one here would presume to think that the evolution of this country was done in a vacuum and that a modicum of European influence did not play a role in the development of government here, in fact, it was quit the opposite. Your arguments seem to me to be more subterfuge than a concise disagreement with my posting, which is an opinion I do not share with the original author. Do you have a problem with my presentation, writing style, me, or my general viewpoint?
Picking a side here is simply not false. Lots of countries leaderships have already done so; I refuse to believe it was done by force. Blair today said there was no doubt in his mind that the evidence is stacked right and proper. The typically pro-middle-east anti-US French are right there with us on this one, going so far as to offer troops in the last statement I saw Chirac make. Switzerland is a country of criminals in my estimation, or at least a government which serves on the criminal's behalf, while this is my opinion, I am entitled to it. Not picking a side lends itself to evil. Look at all the payouts the Swiss had to make for the Nazi gold scandals, hardly neutral. As well laundering money and harboring the assets of people wanted in the ~international~ circle. The have done much to help finance criminals.
And this turning a blind eye completely to American foreign aid endeavors is preposterous. I listened to Pervez Mushareef tonight in the morning news conference in Islamabad. He summed it right up. When asked why he didn't resist the US in using its airspace against the Taliban which he had previously supported, he said some to this effect: "Environments change. Diplomacy endeavors change such as the environment changes. The only constant in international diplomacy is National Interest." From Pakistan to the US, the attitude is the same in every sovereign nation. National interest comes first. So it can be said of any given country it acts to some degree, selfishly.
About the Taliban, Mujahideen, and other topics. I refuse to believe all of the reading I do in English is somehow all made up for my eyes. I tend to read news from foreign sources whenever possible, and to stay far from the television. I remember reading months before this happened a posting on K5 about the horrors of the Taliban. and if the were legitimate, why on earth would only UAE, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia recognize them? I base by distaste for that regime on the U.N., who does not have a Taliban sitting in for Afghanistan on its council.
I am suggesting I have an opinion. Judging on what people say for the most part leads me to believe most people don't read much, and watch a lot of television. I'm probably undereducated about the happenings of the 1900's, but I know from personal experience I know considerably more about the past than do most of my acquaintances. (on September 11th, a few of my friends refused to believe bin Laden was CIA backwash, I pointed out Rambo III as a secular example of who the US liked then and who was the enemy in the Hind helicopter.)
I believe in the core ideology of the US. I think that the people who have their lives to lose and not their financial empire, such as myself, a simple, not rich person, believe in this. I know much has been done in the way of greed and whatnot. I think we stray from our core ideologies in foreign policy a lot and it looks really, really bad 10-20 years later.
I do not believe in or endorse G.W. Bush, his family is riddled with corruption, but I'll save that for another day, right now, retaliation is called for, it is our right, and we are going to execute justice. Justice is to prune the Al-Queda branch for the terrorist tree. I just hope the UN can see eye to eye with the US/GB action here. I know the long term solutions to the terrorist tree lies in its roots, the ethnic and religious disputes such as Palestine and Kashmir that need a just resolution - and no amount of bombing and troop action will solve that.
I believe the progenitors of this system would know what to do with this situation, probably better than what is being done right now. In many of my previous posts here and in other places I have denounced this wave of sweeping and totally un-American legislation that is being passed in the shadows under the ill suited guise of anti-terrorism.
I have faith in those who built the system, not in those who abuse it.
My company is mostly resident aliens, as is my fiancée, so I am well aware of the grotesque legislation being passed (with regards to foreign nationals and other trash like the DMCA/SSSCA/DRM, etc.) and have taken the time to write a letter to both senators and my congressional representative realizing that there are those lawmakers here that would seize the opportunity of public vulnerability to undermine the public's will for personal gain, such as kickback from trash companies like Disney, Fox and Macrovision.
Why was it funny to see my quote what I quote, Paul? Was it trying to insinuate some degree of hypocrisy or lack of forethought? Or was the use of a quote by someone whose legislation helped to create the most powerful and probably still the best nation on earth and drawing a parallel between that and the current set of lawmakers?
I would never dare to say that this, the prowess of the US, will last forever, nor is the US always right and just. However, in formulating my initial response, I believe the reaction to what has happened from a military prospective is not entirely uncalled for.
Be sure to read the entire thread to to see the prograssion of a given discussion.
While it is true that Jefferson is portrayed in modern history classes as a white supremacist, a deist and a racist, this is, in fact, historical revisionism at its worst. Modern students of history ought to ignore their secular education and go straight to the facts. Students of a historical figure ought to research the character by reading the words of that man or woman themselves, not of secondary sources, as these often reflect the researcher's bias on a particular issue.
Whenever The Forerunner highlights the character of a man or woman who has contributed to our nation's Christian heritage, we are never implying that the person was without fault. We are neither attempting to prove that America is the best nation on earth; nor that our founding fathers were better than those of other nations. We are merely trying to unearth America's Christian heritage which has been obscured by modern history textbooks.
What do modern educators have to gain by distorting the true character of Thomas Jefferson? If we read the words of Jefferson himself, we find that he was silenced even in his own day. At the time of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson revealed his frustration with the other American delegates for ratifying a document that, in his mind, should have been passed without debate. He also records that his clause condemning slavery was censured by the committee:
"The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."
Jefferson's anti-slavery clause originally appeared under the list of grievances to the king of Great Britain: "He has waged cruel wars against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce."
In further research, we were unable to find Jefferson's negative references to blacks. We found instead numerous quotes that tend to support the opposite view: "That all men are created equal." To Jefferson, inferiority was something imposed on a people; it is only tyranny or the enslaving of a race or gender that brings repression.
For instance, on the subject of the treatment of Native American women by their men, Jefferson wrote: "The women are submitted to unjust drudgery. This is the case with every barbarous people. With such, force is law. The stronger sex therefore imposes on the weaker. It is civilization alone which places women in the enjoyment of their natural equality."
Jefferson believed that if civilization were allowed to run its natural course, all races would achieve equality: "Before we condemn the Indians of this continent as wanting genius, we must consider that letters have not yet been introduced among them. Were we to compare them in their present state with the Europeans North of the Alps, when the Roman arms and arts first crossed those mountains, the comparison would be unequal ... How many good poets, how many able mathematicians, how many great inventors in arts or sciences had Europe North of the Alps then produced? And it was sixteen centuries after this before a Newton could be formed."
It is true that Jefferson remained an agrarian aristocrat all his life and that his estate owned slaves, but he was a man ahead of his time. He always believed that if the citizens of our country were enlightened, that people of all races, male and female, would be entrusted with the blessings of liberty without hindrance by the federal government.
SOURCES:
The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson. The text used here is from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. A.A. Lipscomb and A.E. Bergh 1903).
Notes on the State of Virginia. Norton edition, edited by William Peden (1954).
Ibid
http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0203_Jeffers on_-_Who_was_.html
I am appalled at this.
Our track record may not be perfect, far from it, but given the power the US actually has and how little the US proportionally "abuses" it, I have no trouble supporting the actions being taken, particularly when some effort of humanitarian aid is being made - and seeing as most of the worlds aid is funded by the US in the first place.
I am assuming this author is not American, and it is clear why.
In the words of our best:
"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." --Thomas Jefferson
Pick a side, be with the free world and pro-civilization, or be against it.
To the bollocks remark; it is simple. It has been western policy for at least a score or years, if not two, to never negotiate with terrorists. The Taliban aid and harbor terrorist. Now they will be destabilized as punishment for failure to comply with an internationally backed ultimatum, 'turn over the prime suspects, now.' (Most foreign prime ministers have seen the evidence and see no reason for not supporting it).
To ask for justice is not conceit. To have a great many more weapons and methods at our disposal and not use them is not arrogance. To give large loans and sums of money in the way of aid over many, many years starting with the Marshall Plan (how quickly history forgets), is not selfish. And judging on the US's political, economic and technological state in the world, it is hardly a nation of stupidity.
Well, I did work there one summer during high school. What a mess. You, the consumer, get to pay for a horrible business model.
Trust me; the cost differential is much larger than $5. The selection is poor and gives you a myopic view of the world. Marketing is essentially selling the cheapest crap at the highest price. CompUSA does a lot more marketing than the web sites who compete on pricewatch. I get the benefit of marketing-free prices, a selection which is unlimited (and I can always find that EXACT model I am looking for), and if you aren't dumb you can usually get FedEx 2-day. I wait two days to get the real-deal. Doesn't seem like a difficult choice.
I have seen Costco sell identical drives cheaper than CompUSA. If something is truly mundane or commoditized it can be purchased at Costco who, on a cursory inspection at finance.yahoo.com, operates at a 3% profit margin:
CSCO Profitability: Operating Margin (ttm) 2.9%
Interestingly, CompUSA's ticker on NYSE was CPU, apparently they have been de-listed, they had to close their online store after 5 months (apparently it is back up), they had to close quite a few stores citing severe overhead problems. Meaning it costs too much to run a store given the low margins of computer hardware and software.
Shipping is generally not an issue, and I'll order things to be delivered at work. I can usually pick up 2 day shipping for free if you look hard enough.
For example, Micron sells memory through crucial.com and the prices are sometimes a quarter of the price that CompUSA sells it for, and it is usually bulk PNY crap, not genuine Micron with a micron PCB.
I personally have never bought a hard drive that failed in its warranty period, so I don't know what all the fuss is about with regards to returning things.
Retail stores are evil, and will always be especially Fry's. And I stopped using retail stores years ago for the most part, especially for computer stuff. Well, I do use Fry's, "The Shit Store, TM", to "rent" stuff and see if I like it - then I return it and get it somewhere for less in a box that hasn't been opened.
AC posts are always lame. You should try and spell correctly; while, not wile and you're, not your.
I have had the best luck with speed using IBM drives, make sure it is 7200 RPM, low seek times are always good and the highest possible media rate.
AFAICT the Deskstar 60GXP is one of the fastest drives out there (in IDE land), with the highest platter density, and a 40MB/sec sustained transfer rate (slightly higher than the 75GXP). The 60GB model has a mere 3 platters.
www.tomshardware.com just did a review on high speed drives, he claims that the Seagate Barracuda and the new Western Digitals are slightly better, but I would buy an IBM, having had great luck with them.
Try looking on www.streetprices.com or www.pricewatch.com
Don't pay for a store to staff a bunch of dropouts who don't know SCSI from IDE try to twist your arm into buy a Brio or Presario piece of trash that litter the sales floor.
Maxtor drive are for the most part okay, I have had the most drive failures with Western Digital and will never solicit them, and I've seen the old fluid bearing Seagate 7200 RPM die all the time.
IBM for the most part is good, but the GCP drives I heard are flaky, I believe there is a new "family coming out which will restore reliability.
As for your RMAs, call them and a demand a new drive. I have done this several times with Quantum/Maxtor, I have even gotten next generation SCSI drives after a failure - as you are entitles to this. I have said, "If I don't get a new, sealed drive, I'll just RMA right back.
I don't do drawings, our network here is complex, but it is by no means an enterprise. Xfig cuts it for us here - its all we need. I'm not an OSS lunatic that is trying to convert Visio people to Xfig, I would never suggest such a thing.
I just couldn't believe the fool couldn't export.
I did end up installing NT on this box in vmware and put a pirate copy of Visio on it, 2000.SR1 and I got what I needed. Had I bought Visio and vmware, this would have cost a whole lot more.
Again, I just asked for the diagram, which is so simple even Xfig or some other cheesy diagrammer could easily do, in a format which is readable by people without Visio.
Had the employee at Exodus known how to use Visio "for real" he would have been able to do this.
Clarification to my original post.
I do not do diagrams, and pretty much don't care about them in this context. While I realize VISIO is the standard, its not free, and we aren't going to go buy Visio to look at a diagram - its not cheap. We don't use Windows here, period.
I just wanted some other format I could use.
xfig was amongst several other requests, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIF, PDF, anything.
Given that xfig is less featured that Visio, does not make it useless, and the price is right.
We do have diagrams here, they are high level. I don't need a picture of a switch to understand what one rectangle is vs. another. For huge companies, such tools are probably necessary, but to refuse or be unable to export the drawing to something universally viewable is unacceptable incompetency.
Stop focusing in on something that was less than 1% of the text of the original post. AC losers.
I have worked for several companies that host at Exodus, and I have never need such disregard for fiduciary responsibility in my life. Most of the Exodus centers in and about the Santa Clara area, and there are many, many of which I have visited all tell the same story.
This story was capacity that was build on expectation values attained from an unrealistic market. The bigger companies knew this, but the feeding frenzy was not abated even in light of its fiscal mindlessness.
Why not wait to expand until you are bursting at the seams, having problems accepting new customers? Most people at Exodus cheap out anyway, I know a few personally that only buy non burstable 1mbit. Yet they built an infrastructure such that every cage could get an OC3 worth of bandwidth.
I was in awe when my company got us a 6509, a 7206 and a 7507. We got this stuff used and it cost us a mint. I cant believe what Exodus did, the bought miles of $200,000 routers, switches and other things, miles of giant Liebert batteries, huge air conditioners, diesel power generators, hired the most moronic and incapable security guards on the planet, and bought these hand scanners that never - ever - seem to work right.
At Digital Island, much is the same. The lease on all the equipment must be in the millions per month. The sad thing is that most of the carrier technology will probably change before the lease is up on a lot of the stuff.
My suggestion to businesses: Never expect anything - Only expand to meet demand. If you are constantly "full," you can charge a premium rather than build a football field worth or colocation space for 10 customers.
I have seen a few co location centers pop up recently; they are more intelligent in design. They don't wire in bandwidth until its needed, they don't buy equipment until its needed (and the BUY it), they have a building which is neat, like Exodus, but isn't extravagant, I mean, they make all the Exodus co-locations look like clean rooms at NASA or Intel.
Co-location recipe: 1) Cheap warehouse in area close to a few OC-12 central offices. Make place look like Costco with lower roof. Add a few miles of Chatsworth ladder track. Buy routers per every some number of people that reaches three quarters capacity, avoid fiber to the cage until customers actually need it. Hire good people. Don't over invest in lame hand scanners that do work. (If every cage is locked, what would a person do in there anyway? Pull power cords from the mesh? And do this without getting caught?). Peer with a few carriers and scale up when needed. Most bandwidth is idle most of the time, bragging about OC-48 interconnects isn't cool, its useless.
My current place of Employment was trying to get on Exodus's price list with our technology. The concept was to pay Exodus $50,000, the "verify" our product, then they will resell it.
We laughed and moved on, knowing full well they were trying to squeeze for revenue - and we didn't need the endorsement of a dying behemoth.
With Chapter 11, maybe Exodus will need to get smart. It has to now shift from building big, inefficient farms to having to farm the land you have properly to produce revenue.
I wish Exodus the best of luck, and stop thinking you are AT&T or some such. Exodus is an overpriced co-location center with unresponsive technical support and too many dead weight employees.
(One of the employees was shocked to find out we didn't have Visio 2000 installed, and he could not give the diagrams to me in JPG or PNG or PDF or some other useful format. I kept getting VSD files. I asked for a network diagram in xfig or something that we can use, and still, a blank stare)
Interesting.
I agree, the 'not even Arabic' thing in retrospect seemed exclusive of a group of people who in general I have no gripe with so long as they are law abiding.
I mentioned surgical / black ops, etc, because I know full well that the Afghans in general are not the problem here, its militant factions. Collateral damage towards the Afghan people is killing allies for all intents.
I am for middle ground solutions. Now, there would be a merit to temporarily instituting martial law, possibly interning a bunch of "suspects" and processing them quickly. The 48 hours the government has to hold people should be plenty. Extended internment, such as REX84/RX84, or the Japanese in WWII, was an interesting miscarriage of justice. If people who are not citizens or citizens who are interned on racial profiling, which, while wrong, has some merits, they must be handled quickly and if they are found to be innocent, they must be compensated.
Martial law and temporary internment are temporary. They may be wrong, annoying, or seem unfair. If a job NEEDS to get done, and mob rule must prevail, then lets be fair. On the other hand, horribly vague and far reaching legislation is more dangerous over the long term.
People want to do things right now without any ramifications. If law enforcement has to be "ugly," then it should be ugly in front of the public eye and subject to criticism. This highly furtive and secretive approach the government is taking internally with legislation and other such things make me more nervous than anything else.
Sorry for making it seem like Arabians were the exception. One of the guys at work is Turkish, and he is a good guy, and I had a Orthodox Egyptian roommate in college, and he was a good guy.
Thanks for the input.
- Z
Privacy is of the utmost importance. Its the freedom we need the most. The art highlighted in these article is a relevant and valuable expression of things that have come and are to come.
The article's spiked chair being useable by cardholders/citizens only and the other link to the wearable camera is an allusion to the underpinnings of fascism.
I get worried about the direction the US government is taking towards us. Half my company is foreigners, and good ones at that. The plausibility that they will become suspect or deported is minimal, but given some of the new legislation in the mill, it is possible to deport resident aliens if they contributed to an organization that terrorizes or makes threats. That could conceivably include Greenpeace.
Expatriate resident aliens are the best people, most of the time. They are not eligible for welfare, must take care of themselves, do no vote and pay taxes. I would fight to defend the rights of my friends at work.
The advent of the Orwellian era is near, I urge everyone to go to the EFF (www.eff.org) as soon as possible and write the senators and congressmen. And if you are from the EU or Canada or some other place, write them too. I'm still in shock about Skylarov not even getting a semblance of habeas corpus, and is being tried on laws that do not apply to him or what he did. And now the SSSCA and the Anti-Terrorism (Implement Fascism) bills by Adolph Ashcroft.
I am hurt by what happened September 11th. Black ops, special ops and "surgical" retaliation is a good thing. But suspending the rights of people who aren't even Arabic, and coining new criteria for "cyber-terrorism," proposing national ID cards and indiscriminately deporting people is NOT a smart thing to do. And developing legislation with such broad and far reaching wording is dangerous to everyone the world over.
The brain drain will begin, where mega corps of the US will have expatriates arrested for violating something inane. Soon, all the people will stop coming because they are afraid. And possible the greatest nation for development with the soundest fiscal policy will become and intellectual pariah.
Remember, stay moderate. Don't jump to conclusions about things, and make sure to check out the art in these articles, its an expression of what's to come.
- Z
No, you don't.
and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment.
No, you can't.
I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
Broad statement. Incorrect. IBM and HP back/develop Linux, Dell sells Linux servers, etc, etc. The Gartner Group just recommended against using IIS. Cobalt and RedHat hardly failed as "Linux startups." Most linux code is portable in one way or another if its correctly written. Open Source has proven and will continue to prove that software should cost nothing. (Given that Mickeysoft doesn't accept liability, its essentially worthless.
I know that that's a strong statement to make,
No, its idiotic.
but I have evidence to back it up!
No, you don't.
At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore. I recommended [SIC]the installation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and file serving.
So you went your own way and installed your own kernel, not using the default kernel or default kernel sources from a particular distribution. You failed to mention the distribution. High performance DNS is best outsourced for large companies try www.ultradns.com. You did no qualifying as 2.4.9 is fresh out of the ftp. The Gartner group recommended against the use of IIS, which owns a mere 25% of that market. 60% is apache. http://www.netcraft.com/survey/. Fileserving is trivial, and Linux offers a myriad of FS choices, XFS (SGI), JFS(IBM), Reiser, ext2, ext3, for various needs. From true logging/journaling to simple filesystems. Most of the time, Samba drastically outperforms NT/2000 boxes with the SMB protocol.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming.
You aren't. Delusion.
I don't believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast.
Troll. C doesn't believe in making it easy for morons, sorry you were left out of the loop.
I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised [SIC] version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive...
GCC 3.1 isn't out yet. 3.01 is. The kernel documentation tell you to use EGCS 1.1.2 / GCC 2.91.66, but you can't read. I've had not problems with Linux 2.4.3 - 1.4.10 with gcc 3.00 or 3.01, nor with Mozilla 0.93/0.94, nor with any other things I have compiled with GCC on Linux. The processes will run without leaking for at least on the order of months. I had shells on Linux kernels that will run on the order of years. You are apparently I'll equipped to manage an enterprise Unix solution.
We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The 3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise" environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's [SIC] IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour [SIC] , we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
Ximian, KDE 2.X are pretty hard to beat. Too much functionality for the basal minded. I've seen a 32MB piece of crap Cobalt box with Linux 2.2.16X survive quite a large beating. You used the wrong compiler to build the 2.4.9 kernel anyway. You probably didn't link /usr/include to the linux source tree. There is ReiserFS in the kernel, there are several distributions including journalled filesystems in them, XFS is offered with RedHat 7.1 via SGI. JFS is able to be put in. Reiser is already there. SMP support has been there since 2.2. You are wrong. The memory is far more protected than it is in Windows anything. I have never seen apache crash, nor BIND for that matter. Funny, your amateur ass stages servers for Fortune 500 companies on production boxes and then has to re-install Windows? Never was there a day where a Unix server could not do more with less hardware than Windows. Ever. Even Apple chimed into that idea.
Needless to say, I won't be recommending [SIC] Linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed [SIC]that they won't be able to leverege [SIC]the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
Needless to say you cant spell. You don recommend anything to anyone, your delusions of grandeur are most amusing. If you want to pay for support, you can. RH support is quite good, actually. Given that you recompiled the kernel on a system with the wrong compiler and then whine about it, you complain about Linux? Shared source is not completely open, retard, its chunks of code. And for the complete source you have to shell out big cash. Most appliances run non-Microsoft Code.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
Linux is in academia because it is meritorious. Lotus Notes, Oracle, SAP are all ported to Linux, hardly "Hello World". It's a hobby to you, you clearly have to spend more time with it because you sir, are a complete and utter moron. Nick try on a troll.
I can not bring myself to agree with this position. While I am not Jewish nor do I live in Israel, I know who I would rather trust in a trench in the middle-east fighting off crazed people. In fact I'm not religious much at all, thank God, no pun intended.
I would much rather accept Israeli dominion than an Islam world. If I had to choose between Zionism and Islam, the choice is clear, go with Israel. They have special teams of people there that go and find every piece of body-part so that they may be buried whole; even in death they show some dignity. Not like these people that get incinerated in Jihad when crashing people with actual lives that are worth something into buildings.
The criminals that perpetrate this are usually poor followers of Islam, often drinking and bringing themselves to impure women to bear their all to them while "religious" leaders absolve them with this farce, Jihad.
Be it noted that actual Palestinians who are citizens inside Israel rarely commit murderous acts, yeah, they throw rocks, cheer, and tell the Israeli's to piss off, but none of them would trade the benefits of being under Israeli rule and run to Lebanon or Syria where they would really live in a world of shit.
That whole portion of the world, save Turkey, Israel and maybe Iran is a hypocritical crock with mass terrorism against the people.
This situation is impossible to rationalize, but the closer you look at any system you get myopic/microcostic, and can derive any "view" that you choose.
Step further back and its clear. Iraq, any country with a monarchy over there (puppet states that are criminal against the people and are not democratically elected - often supported for some unknown reason by the US, e.g. Saudi Arabia), Afghanistan/Taliban (the real leader was deposed in 1996) are criminal countries with no value to the rest of the earth. No medicine. No theological advances. No technology. No nothing. Isolated Islands of hate that hold the populace hostage every day using Islam as media tool rather than Television, it's a lot easier to lie in writing.
An essay on IP, etc.
/ 21/990621opmetcalfe.xml
I feel the need with all the horrible rights violations going recently to highlight Thomas Jefferson's views on copyright. In the writing to ensue, there will be much opinion and conjecture surrounded by a more valued and respected sets of opinions by none other than Thomas Jefferson. Without a doubt, Thomas Jefferson has already covered most of what gets rehashed, particularly when it comes to fair use and the DMCA.
I feel it is important to this case, especially from the American prospective, to point out that one of the most ingenious, prolific and outspoken forefathers of the USA, where the DMCA and other vile laws live, believe firmly that the bill of rights should have included and explicit reference to freedom from burdensome and unfair copyrights and legislation thereof.
Thomas Jefferson was concerned about you and me. The people that read periodicals. He was concerned with everyone as a singular entity. You yourself may not know what's best for you if you belong to something bigger. Our [United States] laws are supposed to protect the little people.
While I'm not suggesting an armed standoff against federal agents necessary in this case, something must be done. We are railroading an expatriate to whom our laws do not bind. Furthermore, our own forefathers, particularly Jefferson, BELIEVE me he is YOUR friend (not the big monopolies like Energy/Petroleum Companies, Microsoft, etc.)
I'm going to excerpt his beliefs below. Realize that even 200 years ago, the pitfalls of burdensome copyright and the legislation that ensues would erode our freedoms.
...
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in his correspondence with James Madison (1751-1836) was initially hostile to the provision for copyright and patent law in the United States Constitution. On Dec. 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to Madison from France concerning the recently-drafted Constitution:
"I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land..."
Note, here IMHO, Thomas Jefferson wants to, along with our other inalienable rights, establish a freedom from Monopoly. These rights, not excluding freedom from monopoly, were to him as core as the rest of our bill of rights. He repeated this view in his letter to Madison dated July 31, 1788:
"I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new constitution by nine states. It is a good canvas, on which some strokes only want re-touching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from North to South, which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty generally understood that this should go to juries, habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion and monopolies. I conceive there may be difficulty in finding general modification of these suited to the habits of all the states. But if such cannot be found then it is better to establish trials by jury, the right of Habeas corpus, freedom of the press and freedom of religion in all cases, and to abolish standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies, in all cases, than not to do it in any... The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression."
Madison, in a letter dated October 17, 1788, responded,
"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government. But is it clear that as encouragements to literary works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the public to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely less danger of this abuse in our governments than in most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many to the few. Where the power is in the few it is natural for them to sacrifice the many to their own partialities and corruptions. Where the power, as with us, is in the many not in the few, the danger can not be very great that the few will be thus favored. It is much more to be dreaded that the few will be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many.
I hold the recent copyright extension as an example of what Madison thought there was little danger of. There it was said, even by Madison, the proponent of the said directives, that there would likely be no "a sacrifice of the many to the "partialities and corruptions" of a powerful few."
I firmly believe the DMCA is both a corruption and a partiality. Anyone with Macrovision stock will try and convince you otherwise.
Jefferson probably saw that there is some purpose in having intellectual property be protected in some fashion or more likely, IMHO, probably decided that he would rather be a part of creating the ground rules for this countries operations and decided to cut bait at this point. He subsequently said to Madison in a letter on August 28, 1789:
"I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additions would have pleased me... Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose."
The blank was to be filled in at some future date, obviously. The law is written with the sense that this right would be the right of the people to protect themselves against intellectual fraudulence by companies, e.g., the theft of the 'little man's' ideas. In addition to which, there is always the stance that the people of the fledgling USA would be safeguarded in the Bill of Rights against unduly long copyrights.
Jefferson's preference for the term of copyright was submitted to Madison a few days afterward, in a letter of September 6, 1789. The proposed term was that of 19 years, based on actuarial calculations:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another seems never to have been started on this [i.e., the European side -- Jefferson was writing from France] or our [American] side of the water... that no such obligation can be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. -- I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it... A generation coming in and going out entire... would have a right on the first year of their self-dominion to contract a debt for 33 years, in the 10th for 24, in the 20th for 14, in the 30th for 4, whereas generations, changing daily by daily deaths and births, have one constant term, beginning at the date of their contract, and ending when a majority of those of full age at that date shall be dead. The length of that term may be estimated from the tables of mortality. Take, for instance, the tables of M. de Buffon... [according to which] half of those of 21 years [of age] and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt... This principle that the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive application... Turn this subject in your mind, my dear Sir... Your station in the councils of our country gives you an opportunity for producing it to public consideration... Establish the principle... in the new law to be passed for protecting copyrights and new inventions, by securing the exclusive right for 19 instead of 14 years."
A Jeffersonian computation using life tables from 1992 gives a Jeffersonian copyright term of 30-35 years. (Vital Statistics of the United States 1992, Volume II--Mortality, Part A, Public Health Service, Hyattsville, 1996, Section 6, Table 6-1.) Note, however, that at least one edition of Jefferson's works has a much abridged version of this letter, in which the 19-year computation and the proposal for the term of copyright do not occur.
One of Jefferson's most famous statements on patent law was in his often-quoted letter of August 13, 1813 to Isaac McPherson, in which he wrote that, since there is no natural right to property in land, how much less is there a natural right to a property in ideas. I think Jefferson's words apply equally well to copyrights as to patents; to "expression" as well as to "ideas": "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
A random set of impressions of these laws with which I agree:
"The scary thing about the DMCA is that it affects everyone, but only a subset of the country realizes it exists, of which a subset understands what it means, of which a subset understands why its so wrong. " quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
"Is there a "voice" amongst this subset that has any power to inflict any change here? Kind of spooky. It makes you wonder where things are headed." quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
As someone pointed out in a discussion, be sure to realize that copyright is referred to at this point as monopoly in Jefferson's letters.
Its fairly clear that Jefferson uses Monopoly in reference to copyright, which is what it is, you can monopolize on your intellectual property for a set period of time. He was willing to give IP of the day 19 years, but he was very much verbal about fair use, and that public fair use was of the utmost importance.
Even cursory inspection of Jefferson's views shows his distrust of allowing monopolies run rampant.
Even Madison has said:
"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government."
They both realized that in order for Monopolies of any sort to be protected by the government, that undue amounts of arbitration would be necessary.
Jefferson also affords a Monopoly to the Individual, not a corporate entity:
"Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose."
Surely he isn't suggesting that one person could create a monopoly on, lets say, corn. He was referring to copyright. He certainly isn't suggesting that corn could only be sold by one person for 19 years.
Another thing, imagine if the copyrights were in fact awarded to the people who invented them, not the companies who subsidized them. It would be interesting to see a world where companies like DuPont and Merck (and every other chemical and drug exploitation companies, because that's what they are, the money is in the treatments, not the cure) are made to treat their patent holding scientists with the utmost respect and regard, even more so than the greedy shareholders, because if they left for another company, so leaves their patents!
The most important of all the Jefferson arguments is this: If IP is so unique, so wonderful and so great, why does it need protection? I don't believe I had quoted this particular argument above, I will work to find it, but the statement is true. If something is obvious, then it really isn't IP. Would you like Bob Metcalfe, the Linux is a piece of crap Windows 2000 rules moron who founded 3COM to hold the patent on 'ethernet'?
Link: http://iwsun4.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/99/06
Don't you think its nice that other companies compete with 3COM for the ethernet space, such as Intel, CISCO, et al? Doesn't the standard referred to as "ethernet" get better and better because these companies compete for your business in the same segment?
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181. Link: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/copyright/
The message in this passage is clear: an idea is not matter but energy; it cannot be owned, and it isn't diminished by being shared. In any discussion of copyright, it is useful to begin by reminding ourselves that ideas can't be copyrighted and can't be owned--only expression can. Furthermore, even when expression is copyrighted, academics ought to bear in mind their right to Fair Use, a crucial exception to copyright that exists in order to enable teaching, research, and news reporting.
A few more quotes to muse upon:
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they... undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow "
-- James Madison
And finally:
"The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you & I, & Congress & Assemblies, judges & governors shall all become wolves. "
Thomas Jefferson To Edward Carrington
Paris, Jan. 16, 1787
I do not represent the wolf. Life liberty and property, property in that case being tangible assets, e.g., guns, real estate, houses, possessions. He never said life, liberty and monopoly. In fact, life liberty and property was rephrased as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In my ethos I strive to achieve a more star-trek like existence, where you can serve yourself (with notoriety, money, etc) and mankind at the same time. There is no need to "milk" technologies - look what happened to TUCKER in Detroit. Fucked out of businesses by the monopolists. I want to protect against that. Milking is what petrol and car companies do, prevent fuel cells, ceramic engines, higher fuel efficiencies in motors, etc. We won't see next generation technology in cars for some time because the current has to be milked.
I am upset with you. I never said ban. Copyright. I said freedom from burdensome copyright, not freedom from all copyright.. You don't know how to read and understand this is moderate position.
Elcomsoft had stopped charging for the Ebook software before he entered the company. He had done so at Adobe's request. He is an employee of Elcomsoft and cannot be charged for what that business entity had done. We have similar laws here where companies are formed to financially and legally shield people from faults.
Of government. Your attention to picayune details is annoying. You misinterpret his words, in my opinion. Are you referring to all the monopolistic and tax payer wasting exclusive government contracts?
As far as monopoly and sacrifice. Yes, monopolies are a sacrifice. I don't shun copyright or patent, I just want them used more carefully and for fair use to be protected. You can still make a product, if it so damn good then you don't even need to patent it. People need to focus on being a better company and product and not thinking about sitting on and licensing your IP for all eternity, e.g., RAMBUS. Again, you misread, malign and come up with shoddy arguments.
I'm going to stop responding to you because you have been a troll, this is clearly someone who sits and reads and has his heart set on disagreeing with me for no apparent reason other than the sake of argument. There is always one of you in a discussion thread, so I guess you can say "YHBTYHLHAND." If you weren't trolling me, then you are very un-American in your thinking - I can't think of anyone, conservative or not, that thinks any of Jefferson's reasoning wasn't intelligent and well thought out.
This is a waste of taxpayer money, its designed to veil the actions of foul men like George Bush who steal social security money from us. How about, "Mr. Bush, you're a criminal." is a perfect expression for the Quid Pro Quo thievery that he performs in office, allowing all his business cronies to steal from the American public.
THINK about what you do and who you work for. The headline that lead me here makes believe Mr. George Bush, whose family has Nazi ties and Nazi money infusions in WWII through Prescott Bush, is a real hypocrite for asking for "gossip" to end. Why, he has everything to gain by people not talking about the trash the makes him into what he is, a blindsiding, un-American, Nazi-sympathizing, pro-business anti American bastard.
He is a Skull an Bones elitist, and he thinks the "weak" need to die to make room for the Darwinistic strong.
I suppose Stephen Hawkins in his wheelchair is weak.
I suppose Nancy Reagan begged Bush not to cut stem cell research because Ronnie has Alzheimer's - why, Bush is an elitist prick.
Pro-choice, pro-American, and pro foul-language, Anti-Microsoft, Anti-Monopoly, Anti-Pork Barrel, Libertarian-ish smaller government with good monetary policy.
The Senate is a cabal of scum liars, the congress is worse. My family lineage is rooted here since the 1600's and the modern manifestation of government is an embarrassing attempt to cover up of lies, deceit and misappropriation. These liars don't want gossip - like Chandra Levy, affairs, lies, bribes, etc.
The USA is now "Amerika", Communism forming through corporate elitism.
Exactly. There is a mix to be had, certainly the poindexter depart of defense employee from 1960 isn't precluded from being the next hero, but the next is more than likely not to be this type of human.
.bust in the middle of Si-Valley. In fact, when I mentioned once I had Novell experience, an OS which I like but not nearly as much as the *nix varietals, he said that that was passé - and that Active Ditectory was the new thing. I remember getting my MCSE certification a long time ago so I could tell the PHBs with certainty that running an "All Microsoft Shop" was a -bad- idea. I also remember reading that while Novell has been in better shape, there are a significant number of people going from ADS to NDS (good decision). The "recruiters" knew a buzzword, sure they heard of XML, but they don't know anything about XML, have never seen XML code, and they don't know why the people who want XML people want and XML person, etc.
Jobs should be based on merit, not quotas.
You work for the group of who are in essence communist-socialist. The potential to generate revenue is first and foremost; at best a tertiary concern could be the ability of that individual to conform to the pointy headed boss' work schedule.
My former IT boss/director was a lamer and inept as his job; but because he was punctual, wore a suit, fit the mold and talked the talk. He just couldn't walk the walk to save his ass. I turned down an offer for his jobs for something in California that paid $20,000 more than his job. Last I heard he was still dressed up in his little suit looking for a job.
I can go either way, California style or NYC Stock market style. Shorts or suit. I want a job to pay the bills. But to not look at me because I don't feel like dressing up for your (recruiter) lame-ass self is real swift. I have always gotten my own jobs, recruiters usually turn up shit jobs. All the recruiters I have ever talked to don't have a f-ing clue what I do for my job - and they clearly suck and finding me jobs because I managed to find myself one here during the
Most of the recruiters called me back a few times, but they failed to turn up any real leads. I feel bad for the guys washing the floors in the mailroom when they could have probably found something better without a recruiter.
I'll stick to work that I cultivate myself. Sure, I'll give bonehead recruiters a chance, but you guys suck at it (always seem to be well groomed, kempt, ex-jock losers who fail to realize taxi-drivers turn a better dime than they do), and you don't make the loot we make because your work is secondary to this business.
Just like the travel agent, your job is contingent on someone actually going out and doing something. When you contribute nothing to the advancement of humanity, you should serve the ones you do without being mealy mouthed cocky pricks.
New , EV-PARisc technology from HPaq!
The scariest thing about this merger is the totally inept Carly F. gets to run the joint. She has never typed ps -elaf or ps -auxww in her life yet she runs the 2nd larget computer company?
Scary.
FYI, Carly majored in Medieval history at Stanford. At least Gates and Allen can brag about actually having known something about computers at some point, albeit Altairs. Not that being the only non-Unix vendor left is a good isea.
- Z
I agree.
:P
I strive to partake in the non greed based idealistic future of ST TNG!!! I would be happy to help to creat AI like Nooneyoung Soon [SIC] who created Data from TNG. Data from TNG was a prolific character - he, with his positronic brain, we the least prone to 'evil' on the Enterprise - with the exceptional and staid attempt to short circuit him in all his glory. Seems we have to find imperfections in a mechanically perfect being by staging near impossibilities even in a theatrical rendering of the future.
Data is your friend, Data wil protect you from the terrible secret of space
- Z
I agree with most of what you said. BeOS to me was never anything but a wonderful experience. I use Linux / *nix most of the time now, but wish BeOS had made it further along.
In times where Apple is doing little to really challenge Microsoft, it would have been nice to see Be and Linux challeneg M$ hand in hand.
But... BeOS is not user stratified and is really, really, really hard to program and develop for. The instructions from Be to developers:
"Mulithreading is the answer. Mulithreading will protect you from the terrible secret of space. Multithreading is very hard to program and DEBUG!!! Good Luck. Love Be"
So, I believe that was the fatal problem with Be development. I bought BeOS and GoBe's Be app suite or whatever it was. I also bought Warp 4. Anything to stop M$. Too bad I pissed my money away =). I wish they had done a lot better.
I believe the kitten critters were like called Polls Voice, and you had to use an arrow on them (for instant death) or stab the crap out of them; the Knights which could not be stabbed were Dark Nuts, the interesting thing about that game was you could beat it without getting hit very much at all but you had to be really, really good and obsessed with taking lots of time to avoid getting hit (Wizzrobe cheating no counted).
Remeber the Wizzrobes, the ghosts that had a daddy ghost, the Leevers from teh sand, the dragon ehads, the sheild eating intestine dudes, the magic stealing skull dudes, man, that game has a lot of good stuff.
Memories.
By the way, I had steaming fits of rage that lead to me chewing on NES controllers, I had 4 Nintendos because I have drop kicked, smashed with a hammer and thrown Nintendos against the T.V. I had that NES advantage tank steel controller, and I smashed the Nintendo with that. My last Nintendo (before that New tiny one that top feeds, none of this disappearing cartridge crap) had no top, I smashed it off, and I had to use a brick on top of the cart to keep in depressed.
Remember having to lick the cartridges to get them to contact, remember playing for hours and having the game crash?
Emulators fricking rule! =)
Addendum: After looking at the pictures of the new Zelda game, I can tell you for certain I won't be buying that game, he looks like a powder puff girl. Travesty!
I can't wait for the über-version of Metroid or Kid Icarus to come out, yet, I think I will be disappointed. "Tooning" is becoming part of Nintendo, yes, and now that I would qualify as part of the mature audience, I like Nintendo productions less and less. In fact, I am console free at the moment, with the last games being played are Deus Ex and Hitman.
Since I have roots in the console gaming all the way back to Coleco Vision and the 2600, I have to say that the best games lied in middle of both NES and SNES's lifetime. Sega Master games were, okay, P-Star being the best. Genesis provided a lot of fun, but I liked the Nintendo stuff better, in general. Turbo GFX, Neo Geo were too obscure. (Herzog Zwei for Genesis, best PVP game EVER, trust me! =). The rest of the consoles, from PSX 1, N64, and all the rest, don't leave an impression. Nothing like Deus Ex did, anyway.
I'm not getting inflammatory here, but I think the novelty of the consoles are dying off. The games are not rehashes of what worked, they try too hard to be different or innovative, and I just can't bring myself to soliciting them.
A few exceptions to the I don't like this new console rule was Super Mario 64, that was really good, lots of player control, and fair degree of replay-ability. Too childish, but hey... Mario Kart 64 was a lot of fun, I know, I have played it with little cousins, sisters, anyone. Its goofy but its still fun. Finally, I have never felt like I wanted more than with the first Zelda 64. After you got big, the game really kicked ass. I wish the game was 4 times longer, three times harder. I love the stances, the shield and sword techniques, the player control. I mean that game was fabulous. The Majora's mask game turned up to be crap, so I don't know. I watched someone playing it and didn't have a single brainwave form in favor playing that game. I just know they hit a chord with me with the first 3D Zelda. I liked the game, and I would have liked to make that world twenty times bigger to move around and play in that world some more. The only gripe I had with that game is that if you get good with the swordplay it is utterly easy. The AI could get very easy to exploit.
All in all, I would grant luck to any creative company the best of luck in producing games I like. I tend to have friends recommend by word of mouth because the majority of what's out there is not worth playing. I can't tell you all how relived I was to play Deus Ex - I hadn't played a game in a long time. I hope the newer games give us control that we so wanted in NES/SNES games, but couldn't be there. I really liked the original Zelda's, especially Zelda II, again, its the clever swordplay - if you were extremely good with manipulating the in game sword you were nearly invulnerable.
=)
http://www.linux10.org/
Linux10 party still has room on the East Coast!! =)
Linux 10th Anniversary Picnic/BBQ August 25th, 2001 from 11:00 to 6:00 Sunnyvale Baylands Park, Sunnyvale, CA, USA Bring the kids!
Mark your calendars! The Linux 10th anniversary picnic/BBQ will be Saturday, August 25, 2001 from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
We had to stop taking new RSVPs for Linux10 when the picnic area capacity was reached on Aug 14. However, "Linux10 East Coast" in Philadelphia still has plenty of room. See below for more Linux 10th anniversary events.
Burgers, hot dogs, veggie burgers, and other picnic foods will be served until 3:30 and are free to all those who RSVP'ed
They wonder why they are almost out of business?
Talk about pirating, what do you think the Shareholders and the people they 100,000,00.00USD to?
Pathetic.
Wasting time doing things your customers will hate your for is not he way to trailblaze new business. The DMCA, RIAA and MPAA and Macrovision, the BSA, and well everyone and evrything else that fixates on us like Orwell 1984 is lame, and will hopefully become deprecated.
I hate soliciting companies that define what is good and bad.
Oh well.
Recent Events
Aug 21 Price hit new 52-week low ($0.37)
July 23 Earnings Announcement
Location
450 Broadway Street
Redwood City, CA 94063
Phone: (650) 556-5000
Fax: (650) 556-5100
Email: mwolfrom@corp.home.net
Employees (last reported count): 2,987
52-Week Low
on 21-Aug-2001 $0.37
Recent Price $0.56
52-Week High
on 14-Sep-2000 $18.563
Beta 2.58
Income Statements
Sales (ttm) $611.0M
EBITDA (ttm) -$5.76B
Income available to common (ttm) -$7.27B
Management Effectiveness
Return on Assets (ttm) -175.50%
Return on Equity (ttm) -276.71%