Just took a quick look. I can't debate it's
contents just yet as I haven't given it a real
read. But it looks interesting enough to puruse,
even though I doubt I'll agree with it's
conclusions. Thanks for the link.
1) If you really meant your statement concerning your future voting habits as written (i.e. "I will vote in this order of preference: Green, Independent, Libertarian."), are you really doing better than those who always vote Democrat or always vote Republican? Individuals are elected to office, not political parties.
Because individual Democrats and Republicans wind up selling their votes out to party considerations rather than personal conscience. For example, I like Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and I would vote for him if he ran in Massachusetts (or I lived in Vermont). However, I wouldn't vote for him as a Democrat since I believe they are beholden to the monied interests that pay out huge sums of soft and hard campaign money to the DNC. Because of this he (or anyone else on the Democrat/Republican ticket) will either be corrupted or pushed out of the party, only to lose his seat at the next election.
The only way out of this mess is to support any and all candidates who are NOT part of the political power base. This is why I'm willing to support Libertarians, even though I completely disagree with their philosophical base. Let's be clear here, the reason why I support the Greens first of all is because I agree with their platform.
2) If your #1 concern, as it seems from your post, is the national debt and the incredible tax burden here in the U.S., why in heaven's name would you vote Green as your preferred party? Their platform contains nothing that would lead me to believe they will ever lower taxes or pay off the debt. In fact, folks like Nader seem even more likely than Gore to raise taxes and spend the excess protecting the ants in your backyard.
Because I agree with their platform. I said in the previous post that I don't mind paying taxes for services in the public benefit. I'll gladly pay 50% taxes for national health care; universal head start and pre-school; national infrastructure including public transportation, roads, bridges, and telecommunications investment; a military which focuses on the defense of our national borders (though I'm not anti-immigration, just anti-overdeployment); free college tuition for everyone who pulls a good GPA; and even targeted tax cuts to push a semi-social agenda such as supporting solar power for homeowners.
I believe that government is most useful when providing services that the entire population needs. That is, it makes no sense to me for private corporations to split apart and profit from our society over basic survival requirements such as health care. However, I don't want our government manufacturing shoes, steel, cars, or other commodities. When the citizenry's lives are at stake, the government should step in with either regulation or services. That's my belief.
Re: your plug for Libertarian... forget it. I think Ayn Rand was a terrible hack of a writer, and her philosophy is as wide reaching in scope as it is shallow in practice. It's yet another utopian fantasy that attempts to shoe-horn a philosophical stance into unworkable policy. JMNSHO.
Finally, WRT my stance on paying down the national debt: From reading my positions you would probably label me as a "Liberal" voter, as I might view your beliefs "Conservative". However, I think BOTH of us agree that paying down the national debt is in the best interest of all citizens. We're paying a good third of the tax revenue in interest on the debt. Don't you think that $300 Billion or so could better go to schools, roads, bridges, or even a tax cut? I'm NOT opposed to a tax cut after we pay down our debt, I'm just opposed to the outright stupidity of promoting one with a $6 Trillion dollar debt to pay off. Again, JMNSHO.
Yes, I completely agree with this sentiment. I have promised myself that from now on I will vote in every local, state, and national election. And I will NEVER AGAIN vote for a Democrat or Republican candidate. I will vote in this order of preference: Green, Independent, Libertarian.
What's wrong with this country is not "Liberal" or "Conservative" philosophy, but entrenched power locked in place for our representatives by multinational corporate power through media management and campaign contributions. The whole system is completely corrupt.
I've protested. I've sent letters (snail-mail) to my representatives. I've voted (though I missed '96). Frankly, no matter what I do I feel completely unrepresented as a constituency and citizen by those in political power. I'm at my wits end here. I'm a pacifist, so no black bloc activity for me.
So, some of my friends tell me that if I don't like it here I ought to leave; these folks are somewhat nationalist. You know, I'm seriously considering emigrating from the United States and removing my taxes from the US revenue base. Maybe they're right! It's the only protest I can think of left to do. If a few tens of thousands of well paid geeks up and blew out of here that would make a real dent on the tax base. A few hundred million anyway. Money is something I know these politicians understand.
I don't mind paying taxes. I'll pay taxes for education, health care, supporting the elderly, safety regulators, defending our borders, etc. But I'M SICK OF PAYING TAXES FOR INTEREST ON OUR NATIONAL DEBT!. I'm sick of paying taxes for ridiculous "defense" systems like SDI, which clearly can't work and serves only as a money funnel to defense contractors. Look at the Bush tax cut: forget how it's spread to benefit mostly wealthy tax payers, and instead consider the rationality of dumping a trillion dollars into our economy at the same time the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates. The Fed doesn't want to stimulate the economy... they're trying to control inflation at the same time the Republicans promote a highly inflationary tax cut, which WILL NOT PAY DOWN THE DEBT! The Democrats are no better... just look at the crap Gore promotes.
Maybe it is time to blow the hell out of this country.
I just want to reply to this point, the issue of whether a gaming device needs an entire Linux install is one for the advocates to chew over:
multi-process management : don't need it in a game, simple threads work fine.
I point out that threads are simply a light weight process, each with their own context state just like any full blown process. This means that your 'simple threading' system must support saving the stack and register state before switching to the next thread, along with a process table and some kind of queuing algorithm to determine which thread gets CPU; just like with processes.
On a single CPU gaming console multiple lightweight threads per process is pretty much a waste... I leave it up to the reader to determine how to handle interprocess communication between full blown processes, on a gaming console or X86 Linux box. You really don't need threads until you start handling multiple asynchronous events across multiple CPUs in real time. The consoles aren't there yet.
This is said from someone with no game programming experience... but I can't imagine it's much different from any other computer -- especially if it's running Linux.
OK, I like in Massachusetts. There's not a chance in hell my vote will tip the balance from Gore to Bush, in fact Gore is certain to win by a landslide. We might as well hand those electoral votes over right now... which is essentially what the pundits do when they count electoral votes at this point in the race.
If you're a conservative who happens to think that Bush is a complete dolt (I know many who feel this way), AND you happen to live in a state which is solidly Bush turf, what the hell do you have to lose by voting Libertarian, The Constitution Party, or The Natural Law Party? It's not like you're going to hurt Bush by not voting for him, in your state he's going to win! This gives you some freedom to vote your conscience without potentially tipping the race toward the Democrats (who are the party I would vote for if my state were up for grabs).
My point is that only a few states are still undecided... if you live in one of then maybe it makes sense to vote "strategically". But for the most of us it's pretty safe to vote our conscience... me I'll be voting Nader because that's who I like. And I don't feel the slightest concern for the outcome.
BTW: the Reform Party main page is down right now, so I didn't exclude it out of any malice (though I do think Buchanan is a fascist); I assume that's because of the Buchanan rift in the party. Speaking of that, Buchanan taking over the Reform Party has only benefited the Republicans as it's basically killed a major contender party. Wonder if Buchanan was really a poison pill for the party... I guess we'll know if Buchanan re-joins the Republicans after gutting the party and leaving the entrails asunder...
Re:Libertarianism the new Republicism bur more evi
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 2
Re: Nader's politics Bluebomber wrote:
They called it Communism.
You can call it any word you like. I agree with Nader and will vote my conscience. I can't stomach the Democrat and Republican parties corruption any longer. You want to vote Browne? I commend you for making a choice based on philosophy and principle. I do the same and choose Nader.
Look, it makes no sense to only insure those who have little to no risk. Back in the days when Blue Cross was a regulated non-profit they spread their risks across a wide population and adjusted the premiums accordingly.
Recently, after the advent of HMOs and other cost cutting measures, we've seen insurers divide their customer pool by various risk assessments in order to differentiate premiums across the population by various risk factors. This, and other genetic tests like it, provides the insurance industry with yet another mechanism to assess risk in order to deny coverage, or charge higher premiums.
At a certain point, after the risk assessment gets good enough to set premium policy at cost with the coverage of care, as a society we should ask ourselves "what good is paying this policy if it only serves to charge a fee atop whatever my doctor costs?" In other words, when various risk assessments such as genetic testing get good enough at predicting risk, insurance companies will simply be tacking on their fee directly atop your doctor's fee; thereby dismantling the primary purpose of insurance, that of spreading risk across a population.
I agree. Also, the FSF has no business telling me that I can't sell compiled GPL'd software without the source code. I am entitled to sell my forked binaries to anybody who wants them. Why the hell should I follow THEIR RULES?
I agree that this post didn't deserve a -1, flamebait score. However, the point is wrong simply because the shrink wrap license restrictions on Windows primarily affect USE of the product and NOT duplication. Note that the GPL ONLY restricts duplication of a work or derrived work, not how said work might be used. This is a critical difference because there's case law supporting restrictions on duplication going back well over a hundred years, while restrictions on use are still being hashed out. For example, see UCITA. IANAL, etc...
Red Hat Linux release 7.0 (Guinness)
Kernel 2.2.16-22 on an i686
[gelinas@theory gelinas]$ man kgcc
No manual entry for kgcc
[gelinas@theory gelinas]$
I found little documentation regarding the second
compiler and had to do a deja search to find out
what the Redhat folks were up to WRT kernel
compilation.
As a long time Redhat user and supporter, I have
to admit that I'm really unhappy with RH 7.0
because of the inclusion of a patched compiler
and libc off the gcc main tree. Really, I want
my x86 binaries to be compatible with the
other distributions. I want a compiler that's
being actively supported by the gcc community.
I definately want a compiler that won't be
completely obsolete by the time RH-7.2 rolls
around. Anyone want to bet on whether a RH
distribution with gcc-3.0 is going to be a major
release up? Betcha it will...
Maybe we live on separate planets, but from where I come from simply referencing a company's product and stating that it's good doesn't make for flamebait. He seems to like NT; that's his choice and it should be respected.
But if you have a single CPU intensive process that can not be multi-threaded, then you are probably better off with the faster CPU.
Yes. I made a similar point when I wrote:
[...]"it really doesn't make sense to buy top of the line, unless you're performing computationally intensive calculations which are memory bound."
So, we're on the same planet with regard to this issue. However, I've yet to find many desktop users (except in the scientific community) who need raw CPU horsepower and high memory bandwidth. Most users need multi-tasking stability and smooth responce under the load of many applications. SMP is perfect in this environment.
His point is valid. I've been running SMP configurations at home since '95, and I can say that without a doubt SMP is the best price/performance solution in contrast to the fastest uni-proc on the market. If you're running an OS which supports SMP (as does NT and Linux), it really doesn't make sense to buy top of the line, unless you're performing computationally intensive calculations which are memory bound. For desktop use cheap SMP really is a good deal.
So, just what made you think his comment was flamebait? I didn't see a disparaging remark against any persons in his post.
What does it matter if we lower population rates at the expense of increased energy consumption, and therefor increased pollution per person? The point is that it's unsustainable and generating noticable global changes right now.
As for "culling our herd", I note that none of the mass killings in Cambodia, Russia, Germany, El Salvador, or where ever has actually reduced local population levels. People respond to such selection pressure by simply having more children.
P.J. O'Rourke talked about this in his books, Parliment of Whores and All the Trouble in the World.
Environmentalism is a special interest group. However, it tries to go beyond that by appeals such as "the environment affects everyone", which is true. I don't disagree with environmentalism per se, but when the environmental groups make statements such as, "...the environment must be preserved, regardless of cost..." you have to wonder what part of it they are smoking.
Now, as far a global warming, and the like goes, does anyone here remember what the big environmental scare of the 70s was?
Global cooling.
And guess what you could do then to prevent global cooling, and stop those glaciers from crashing down on us? The exact same things that are being touted as the cures for global warming.
Quoting a political pundit for scientific evidence supporting or to the contrary of any position is a quick walk to demagoguery. Whatever the long term consequences of fossil fuel energy production and other environmental assaults, it's doubtful P. J. O'Rourke has much to say that's relevant.
That said, there's significant evidence of large scale global change, not about to happen but happening right now. For example:
species all over the world are migrating from equatorial regions to the poles as the climate warms. This includes birds, insects, mammals, rodents; you name it. The important point is that it crosses species boundaries across the globe.
Polar ice cores and tree rings give us the historical perspective you suggest we lack. A reading of ice cores across many thousands of years conclusively state that our planet has never (within the period recorded) seen this level of atmospheric carbon levels change in such a short period of time.
The polar ice caps are melting and breaking up and flowing out to sea. These are some of the largest ice bergs in recorded history. To whit, many pacific islands are flooding from the rising sea levels. Entire countries are disappearing under the sea.
Methane trapped in the polar regions as ice are melting at an alarming rate. Methane traps significantly more heat in the atmosphere than just carbon, and could on it's own lead to catastrophic global warming.
On the point about global cooling, this is ALSO a possible outcome simply because changing a stable system cause unpredictable outcomes; similar to the butterfly effect often widely discussed.
Never mind the global consequences of unregulated energy production from fossil fuels. The fact is that we're running out and NO ONE is proposing sensible solutions toward sustainable energy production.
Coal/oil/natural gas are out, for obvious reasons. Fissionables are out, not only is it unreasonably dangerous but we don't have anywhere near enough uranium to provide the 10 terawatts/year our world now consumes. Photovoltaic is out, it costs more energy to produce a solar cell (with current technology) than it will ever produce across it's lifetime. This leaves:
Solar steam (directed sunlight at a water reserve to turn a steam turbine. Very efficient, though an intermittent supply.
Wind. Like Solar it's intermittent, but it's also highly efficient.
Geothermal. Doable now in certain areas, some scientists are looking into the possibility of drilling down far enough to hit mantle and tap thermal heat directly. This looks quite promising.
Fusion. Who the hell knows?
In addition, coal could be used for the next few hundred years (until we run out) if we can figure out how to cheaply cap the carbon output and bury the materials safely.
This is for real dude. I hate to break the news, but our children are in serious trouble if we don't act now. And unfortunately, our politicians are too busy taking bribes to bother with their primary responsibilities to their citizens and constituents.
Windows and MacOS are significantly better (IMHO, YMMV, yaddah yaddah yaddah) than X because they simply do things faster. X with all its networking overhead makes an inefficent desktop.
X has no networking overhead on your local host. Communication between the X client and the X Server is either handled through the loopback, or more commonly across a UNIX domain socket. This is very fast. Also, other protocols (such as GDI on Windows) also serialize their data stream -- so, the only difference between X and GDI (in terms of performance) is really protocol overhead, not the communications architecture.
That said, X protocol is pretty brain damaged. NeXT had it right with Display Postscript, and now Apple has it right with DisplayPDF. Let's hope the GNUStep team completes their Display Ghostscript X server extension so we can all enjoy the benefits of DPS, for free. GNUStep is probably the most important and underappriciated Free Software projects around...
Sorry pal, but the ATI Radeon will be supported only on XFree 4.0.2 and up...
XFree86-4.x with DRI is acceptable. Thanks for the info, if you're correct then Radeon support in XFree 4.2 isn't too far off. If DRI supports the hardware well, I'll buy the Radeon then.
After getting their act together with XF86 support, they're regained the loving affection of the Linux community.
If "getting their act together" means only releasing proprietary beta drivers for a specific Xfree86 4.x revision without any hardware documentation, then God help us if it's the last act of the play. Frankly, I'm hoping ATI and the Utah-glx project comes through with quality Radeon drivers. And if they don't, then I'll just skip a generation and pray for a decent Voodoo card next time.
The GeForce is quality hardware, but I won't spend a dime for a black box lacking proper documentation. Intelectual property my ass, this is a $400 card we're talking about! Can you imagine Ford claiming they can't document the internals of your new car because of "Intelectual Property" issues? Would you buy that car? Would you have bought an S-100 Dazler shipped without documetation?
I'm a long time Linux user, and let me say: after going through the undocumented video card mess from Diamond years back, nVidia gains no "loving affection" from me. The last thing I need is to be forced into a video card upgrade because nVidia stopped updating drivers for MY old card and nVidia can't release their "Intelectual Property" (read: documentation) to their customers. Been there once before, NOT AGAIN!
There are places to go which would better
represent us as citizens. And frankly, I
think the only way we're going to gain the
attention of our government bureaucrats
and policy makers is to legally withhold
tax revenue by moving off-shore.
Sure, alone it's a Quixotic rationale, but if enough
technically trained citizens just left and worked
off-shore, the tax base decline could be
noticeable. I think these guys understand
money. That might convince our
"representatives" that they're fucking
withthe wrong crowd -- without any violence. I
support non-violent protest of this unjust
system.
Current Intelectual Property law and corporate
political sponsorship benefits only a few while
screwing the populace -- today's/. headlines
only prove my point. The FCC sells bandwidth
rights that were intended as citizen's property --
why wasn't I consulted? "Fair use" my ass!
And we're gonna watch you from now on; as in you
only get to use an appropriate "trusted client"; a
euphamism for "now you really can't do
that!" -- and we'll know it if you do (gee, doesn't that feel like my privacy is being
"respected?"). Our congress sells out to the highest
bidder for all sorts of OTHER critical issues
which we don't follow -- this mess is fucked up
all over public policymaking...
Our representatives and federal officials simply don't listen to their constituents any longer (or maybe they assume corporate america to be their only constituents). Either way, I'm seriously thinking of emigrating from America; this place is going fascist.
If he wants to repeatedly post something helpful
so that/. newbies understand what's at stake in
these IP posts, why should you bitch? I note that
his post genuinely provides useful information,
while your post, on the other hand, simply
derides him for offering help. Who's post is
the more insightful?
The Yggdrasil disk was from mid '94, the Redhat install must have taken place after your Slackware 2.3 release. I've never installed Slackware, but not out of bias against the dist. It's clear that I'm mistaken WRT which distributions were prepared for ELF support first. However, I certainly have had this installation running since RH-2.x, and before that I ran an Yggdrasil dist.
Caldera released the Caldera Network Desktop 1.0 back in late '95 or early '96. It was expensive at $100.00 or so, but included a "simple" proprietary desktop (which sucked), a version of Accelerated X (this is what convinced RedHat to include another commercial X server, MetroLink X, with the commercial Redhat 4.0), and some backup tool which escapes my recolection.
Caldera has also contributed significantly to the Free Software movement, so even though they've been focused on the corporate customer since the early days, they've also contributed to the community; type dmesg and grep for Caldera.
It'll be interesting to see how much of SCO UNIX Caldera releases to the Free Software community. They claim that licensing restrictions on the code they've purchased in the SCO buyout limits their ability to release certain code. INAL, so I can't judge the issue beyond personal opinion... but I think they'd be well advised to release everything they can and explain in detail why they can't release anything else so that a third party can corroborate. This will settle the issue of community obligation, while also letting the community accept the rationale behind any withholding of source.
Note that I say this knowing full well that Caldera has no legal obligation to release any source purchased in the SCO deal, at all. No, this is community obligation. Just what OS have they been selling for the last five years? How much of that did they write? Look at Troll Tech; they've released FreeQT under the GPL. Can you think of anything else a company might do which at first threatens it's bottom line, but at second glance drives the product's succeess through ubiquity?
My primary desktop is a Redhat install I've kept upgrading since Redhat 2.0; that was after I dumped Yddrasil from mid '94 or so. Frankly, they had (at the time) a good package manager, they included a great list of common applications precompiled in package format, and RH-2 and 3.0.3 were excellent distributions. For one thing, I seem to remember that Redhat made the transition from a.out to ELF binary formats faster than anyone else, which made their distribution popular simply because recompiling libc and, ld.so, and binutils, and then recompiling your entire operating system, was a major PITA. Redhat made the transition as simple as plopping in a floppy and a CD. Also, I seem to remember that 3.0.3 attempted an X based install (which was dumped in 4.0) which wowed a bunch of people.
Also, Redhat gave away rpm under the gpl... this gained them significant user and developer mindshare (even though Debian had dpkg out before -- go figure). Redhat promised a simple, easy install from the start -- and they mostly delivered. The complexity of the install process is what killed Debian to begin with (in my recolection), even though the Debian install process allows for much better tailoring of each individual package. Redhat offered a simple way to install Linux without all the hassles of decisions about how to configure hundreds of programs -- which is largely why they took off. And, they've always had a cutting edge distribution with the latest software and tools. This is what wows the newbies, even though after 3.0.3 all of their major new revisions have been a major mess. 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 were simply unfit for sale... and I think this is why they're losing momentum. Other distributions have done better with quality control while maintaining modern packages... and Redhat is suffering from the competition. Oh well! This is what the free market is all about!
I like Redhat and think they've done a tremendous service to the Linux community. And I own some of their stock... so take what I say knowing I'm (in a small way) an investor. Though, I admit I wish I'd been upgrading a Debian box all these years simply because a five year old RH install has become a real PITA to maintain.
We all agree that copying original source or a binary is a copyright violation. So, how is writing one's own variation on a popular game a "rip off"? Is xgalaga a "rip off" of the arcade classic "Galaga"? It doesn't share any codebase with the arcade console. It doesn't share any original graphics; it just looks similar. Is this a direct "rip off" and if not, then how are these other clones "ripping off" Hasbro? If xgalaga IS a rip off of Galaga, then how do you reconcile this opinion with the legal outcoms of the "look and feel" wars between Microsoft, Apple, and Lotus in the late '80s and early '90s?
If they wrote their own source code, then by definition they created something. This harkens back to the old Apple vs. Microsoft and Lotus vs. Microsoft "Look and Feel" lawsuits of the late '80s and early '90s. BTW: Lotus and Apple lost because the courts determined that a "look and feel" cannot be copyrightable, only the actual source code.
So, now that the DMCA anti-circumvention measures are in place while UCITA looms we're seeing IP "look and feel" lawsuits winning where only a decade back they would have lost. That Hasbro is updating their old codebase is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Slashdot Mirror
Just took a quick look. I can't debate it's
contents just yet as I haven't given it a real
read. But it looks interesting enough to puruse,
even though I doubt I'll agree with it's
conclusions. Thanks for the link.
The only way out of this mess is to support any and all candidates who are NOT part of the political power base. This is why I'm willing to support Libertarians, even though I completely disagree with their philosophical base. Let's be clear here, the reason why I support the Greens first of all is because I agree with their platform.
Because I agree with their platform. I said in the previous post that I don't mind paying taxes for services in the public benefit. I'll gladly pay 50% taxes for national health care; universal head start and pre-school; national infrastructure including public transportation, roads, bridges, and telecommunications investment; a military which focuses on the defense of our national borders (though I'm not anti-immigration, just anti-overdeployment); free college tuition for everyone who pulls a good GPA; and even targeted tax cuts to push a semi-social agenda such as supporting solar power for homeowners.
I believe that government is most useful when providing services that the entire population needs. That is, it makes no sense to me for private corporations to split apart and profit from our society over basic survival requirements such as health care. However, I don't want our government manufacturing shoes, steel, cars, or other commodities. When the citizenry's lives are at stake, the government should step in with either regulation or services. That's my belief.
Re: your plug for Libertarian... forget it. I think Ayn Rand was a terrible hack of a writer, and her philosophy is as wide reaching in scope as it is shallow in practice. It's yet another utopian fantasy that attempts to shoe-horn a philosophical stance into unworkable policy. JMNSHO.
Finally, WRT my stance on paying down the national debt: From reading my positions you would probably label me as a "Liberal" voter, as I might view your beliefs "Conservative". However, I think BOTH of us agree that paying down the national debt is in the best interest of all citizens. We're paying a good third of the tax revenue in interest on the debt. Don't you think that $300 Billion or so could better go to schools, roads, bridges, or even a tax cut? I'm NOT opposed to a tax cut after we pay down our debt, I'm just opposed to the outright stupidity of promoting one with a $6 Trillion dollar debt to pay off. Again, JMNSHO.
Yes, I completely agree with this sentiment. I have promised myself that from now on I will vote in every local, state, and national election. And I will NEVER AGAIN vote for a Democrat or Republican candidate. I will vote in this order of preference: Green, Independent, Libertarian.
What's wrong with this country is not "Liberal" or "Conservative" philosophy, but entrenched power locked in place for our representatives by multinational corporate power through media management and campaign contributions. The whole system is completely corrupt.
I've protested. I've sent letters (snail-mail) to my representatives. I've voted (though I missed '96). Frankly, no matter what I do I feel completely unrepresented as a constituency and citizen by those in political power. I'm at my wits end here. I'm a pacifist, so no black bloc activity for me.
So, some of my friends tell me that if I don't like it here I ought to leave; these folks are somewhat nationalist. You know, I'm seriously considering emigrating from the United States and removing my taxes from the US revenue base. Maybe they're right! It's the only protest I can think of left to do. If a few tens of thousands of well paid geeks up and blew out of here that would make a real dent on the tax base. A few hundred million anyway. Money is something I know these politicians understand.
I don't mind paying taxes. I'll pay taxes for education, health care, supporting the elderly, safety regulators, defending our borders, etc. But I'M SICK OF PAYING TAXES FOR INTEREST ON OUR NATIONAL DEBT!. I'm sick of paying taxes for ridiculous "defense" systems like SDI, which clearly can't work and serves only as a money funnel to defense contractors. Look at the Bush tax cut: forget how it's spread to benefit mostly wealthy tax payers, and instead consider the rationality of dumping a trillion dollars into our economy at the same time the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates. The Fed doesn't want to stimulate the economy... they're trying to control inflation at the same time the Republicans promote a highly inflationary tax cut, which WILL NOT PAY DOWN THE DEBT! The Democrats are no better... just look at the crap Gore promotes.
Maybe it is time to blow the hell out of this country.
I just want to reply to this point, the issue of whether a gaming device needs an entire Linux install is one for the advocates to chew over:
multi-process management : don't need it in a game, simple threads work fine.
I point out that threads are simply a light weight process, each with their own context state just like any full blown process. This means that your 'simple threading' system must support saving the stack and register state before switching to the next thread, along with a process table and some kind of queuing algorithm to determine which thread gets CPU; just like with processes.
On a single CPU gaming console multiple lightweight threads per process is pretty much a waste... I leave it up to the reader to determine how to handle interprocess communication between full blown processes, on a gaming console or X86 Linux box. You really don't need threads until you start handling multiple asynchronous events across multiple CPUs in real time. The consoles aren't there yet.
This is said from someone with no game programming experience... but I can't imagine it's much different from any other computer -- especially if it's running Linux.
Cheers,
--Maynard
OK, I like in Massachusetts. There's not a chance in hell my vote will tip the balance from Gore to Bush, in fact Gore is certain to win by a landslide. We might as well hand those electoral votes over right now... which is essentially what the pundits do when they count electoral votes at this point in the race.
If you're a conservative who happens to think that Bush is a complete dolt (I know many who feel this way), AND you happen to live in a state which is solidly Bush turf, what the hell do you have to lose by voting Libertarian, The Constitution Party, or The Natural Law Party? It's not like you're going to hurt Bush by not voting for him, in your state he's going to win! This gives you some freedom to vote your conscience without potentially tipping the race toward the Democrats (who are the party I would vote for if my state were up for grabs).
My point is that only a few states are still undecided... if you live in one of then maybe it makes sense to vote "strategically". But for the most of us it's pretty safe to vote our conscience... me I'll be voting Nader because that's who I like. And I don't feel the slightest concern for the outcome.
BTW: the Reform Party main page is down right now, so I didn't exclude it out of any malice (though I do think Buchanan is a fascist); I assume that's because of the Buchanan rift in the party. Speaking of that, Buchanan taking over the Reform Party has only benefited the Republicans as it's basically killed a major contender party. Wonder if Buchanan was really a poison pill for the party... I guess we'll know if Buchanan re-joins the Republicans after gutting the party and leaving the entrails asunder...
Re: Nader's politics Bluebomber wrote:
They called it Communism.
You can call it any word you like. I agree with Nader and will vote my conscience. I can't stomach the Democrat and Republican parties corruption any longer. You want to vote Browne? I commend you for making a choice based on philosophy and principle. I do the same and choose Nader.
..lation.
Look, it makes no sense to only insure those who have little to no risk. Back in the days when Blue Cross was a regulated non-profit they spread their risks across a wide population and adjusted the premiums accordingly.
Recently, after the advent of HMOs and other cost cutting measures, we've seen insurers divide their customer pool by various risk assessments in order to differentiate premiums across the population by various risk factors. This, and other genetic tests like it, provides the insurance industry with yet another mechanism to assess risk in order to deny coverage, or charge higher premiums.
At a certain point, after the risk assessment gets good enough to set premium policy at cost with the coverage of care, as a society we should ask ourselves "what good is paying this policy if it only serves to charge a fee atop whatever my doctor costs?" In other words, when various risk assessments such as genetic testing get good enough at predicting risk, insurance companies will simply be tacking on their fee directly atop your doctor's fee; thereby dismantling the primary purpose of insurance, that of spreading risk across a population.
[gelinas@theory gelinas]$ cat /etc/issue
Red Hat Linux release 7.0 (Guinness)
Kernel 2.2.16-22 on an i686
[gelinas@theory gelinas]$ man kgcc
No manual entry for kgcc
[gelinas@theory gelinas]$
I found little documentation regarding the second
compiler and had to do a deja search to find out
what the Redhat folks were up to WRT kernel
compilation.
As a long time Redhat user and supporter, I have
to admit that I'm really unhappy with RH 7.0
because of the inclusion of a patched compiler
and libc off the gcc main tree. Really, I want
my x86 binaries to be compatible with the
other distributions. I want a compiler that's
being actively supported by the gcc community.
I definately want a compiler that won't be
completely obsolete by the time RH-7.2 rolls
around. Anyone want to bet on whether a RH
distribution with gcc-3.0 is going to be a major
release up? Betcha it will...
The last line of his post was a flamebait.
Maybe we live on separate planets, but from where I come from simply referencing a company's product and stating that it's good doesn't make for flamebait. He seems to like NT; that's his choice and it should be respected.
But if you have a single CPU intensive process that can not be multi-threaded, then you are probably better off with the faster CPU.
Yes. I made a similar point when I wrote:
[...]"it really doesn't make sense to buy top of the line, unless you're performing computationally intensive calculations which are memory bound."
So, we're on the same planet with regard to this issue. However, I've yet to find many desktop users (except in the scientific community) who need raw CPU horsepower and high memory bandwidth. Most users need multi-tasking stability and smooth responce under the load of many applications. SMP is perfect in this environment.
His point is valid. I've been running SMP configurations at home since '95, and I can say that without a doubt SMP is the best price/performance solution in contrast to the fastest uni-proc on the market. If you're running an OS which supports SMP (as does NT and Linux), it really doesn't make sense to buy top of the line, unless you're performing computationally intensive calculations which are memory bound. For desktop use cheap SMP really is a good deal.
So, just what made you think his comment was flamebait? I didn't see a disparaging remark against any persons in his post.
What does it matter if we lower population rates at the expense of increased energy consumption, and therefor increased pollution per person? The point is that it's unsustainable and generating noticable global changes right now.
As for "culling our herd", I note that none of the mass killings in Cambodia, Russia, Germany, El Salvador, or where ever has actually reduced local population levels. People respond to such selection pressure by simply having more children.
That said, there's significant evidence of large scale global change, not about to happen but happening right now. For example:
On the point about global cooling, this is ALSO a possible outcome simply because changing a stable system cause unpredictable outcomes; similar to the butterfly effect often widely discussed.
Never mind the global consequences of unregulated energy production from fossil fuels. The fact is that we're running out and NO ONE is proposing sensible solutions toward sustainable energy production.
Coal/oil/natural gas are out, for obvious reasons. Fissionables are out, not only is it unreasonably dangerous but we don't have anywhere near enough uranium to provide the 10 terawatts/year our world now consumes. Photovoltaic is out, it costs more energy to produce a solar cell (with current technology) than it will ever produce across it's lifetime. This leaves:
This is for real dude. I hate to break the news, but our children are in serious trouble if we don't act now. And unfortunately, our politicians are too busy taking bribes to bother with their primary responsibilities to their citizens and constituents.
That said, X protocol is pretty brain damaged. NeXT had it right with Display Postscript, and now Apple has it right with DisplayPDF. Let's hope the GNUStep team completes their Display Ghostscript X server extension so we can all enjoy the benefits of DPS, for free. GNUStep is probably the most important and underappriciated Free Software projects around...
The GeForce is quality hardware, but I won't spend a dime for a black box lacking proper documentation. Intelectual property my ass, this is a $400 card we're talking about! Can you imagine Ford claiming they can't document the internals of your new car because of "Intelectual Property" issues? Would you buy that car? Would you have bought an S-100 Dazler shipped without documetation?
I'm a long time Linux user, and let me say: after going through the undocumented video card mess from Diamond years back, nVidia gains no "loving affection" from me. The last thing I need is to be forced into a video card upgrade because nVidia stopped updating drivers for MY old card and nVidia can't release their "Intelectual Property" (read: documentation) to their customers. Been there once before, NOT AGAIN!
There are places to go which would better
/. headlines
represent us as citizens. And frankly, I
think the only way we're going to gain the
attention of our government bureaucrats
and policy makers is to legally withhold
tax revenue by moving off-shore.
Sure, alone it's a Quixotic rationale, but if enough
technically trained citizens just left and worked
off-shore, the tax base decline could be
noticeable. I think these guys understand
money. That might convince our
"representatives" that they're fucking
withthe wrong crowd -- without any violence. I
support non-violent protest of this unjust
system.
Current Intelectual Property law and corporate
political sponsorship benefits only a few while
screwing the populace -- today's
only prove my point. The FCC sells bandwidth
rights that were intended as citizen's property --
why wasn't I consulted? "Fair use" my ass!
And we're gonna watch you from now on; as in you
only get to use an appropriate "trusted client"; a
euphamism for "now you really can't do
that!" -- and we'll know it if you do
(gee, doesn't that feel like my privacy is being
"respected?"). Our congress sells out to the highest
bidder for all sorts of OTHER critical issues
which we don't follow -- this mess is fucked up
all over public policymaking...
ARRRRGH! Time to move.
Our representatives and federal officials simply don't listen to their constituents any longer (or maybe they assume corporate america to be their only constituents). Either way, I'm seriously thinking of emigrating from America; this place is going fascist.
If he wants to repeatedly post something helpful /. newbies understand what's at stake in
so that
these IP posts, why should you bitch? I note that
his post genuinely provides useful information,
while your post, on the other hand, simply
derides him for offering help. Who's post is
the more insightful?
The Yggdrasil disk was from mid '94, the Redhat install must have taken place after your Slackware 2.3 release. I've never installed Slackware, but not out of bias against the dist. It's clear that I'm mistaken WRT which distributions were prepared for ELF support first. However, I certainly have had this installation running since RH-2.x, and before that I ran an Yggdrasil dist.
Caldera released the Caldera Network Desktop 1.0 back in late '95 or early '96. It was expensive at $100.00 or so, but included a "simple" proprietary desktop (which sucked), a version of Accelerated X (this is what convinced RedHat to include another commercial X server, MetroLink X, with the commercial Redhat 4.0), and some backup tool which escapes my recolection.
Caldera has also contributed significantly to the Free Software movement, so even though they've been focused on the corporate customer since the early days, they've also contributed to the community; type dmesg and grep for Caldera.
It'll be interesting to see how much of SCO UNIX Caldera releases to the Free Software community. They claim that licensing restrictions on the code they've purchased in the SCO buyout limits their ability to release certain code. INAL, so I can't judge the issue beyond personal opinion... but I think they'd be well advised to release everything they can and explain in detail why they can't release anything else so that a third party can corroborate. This will settle the issue of community obligation, while also letting the community accept the rationale behind any withholding of source.
Note that I say this knowing full well that Caldera has no legal obligation to release any source purchased in the SCO deal, at all. No, this is community obligation. Just what OS have they been selling for the last five years? How much of that did they write? Look at Troll Tech; they've released FreeQT under the GPL. Can you think of anything else a company might do which at first threatens it's bottom line, but at second glance drives the product's succeess through ubiquity?
My primary desktop is a Redhat install I've kept upgrading since Redhat 2.0; that was after I dumped Yddrasil from mid '94 or so. Frankly, they had (at the time) a good package manager, they included a great list of common applications precompiled in package format, and RH-2 and 3.0.3 were excellent distributions. For one thing, I seem to remember that Redhat made the transition from a.out to ELF binary formats faster than anyone else, which made their distribution popular simply because recompiling libc and, ld.so, and binutils, and then recompiling your entire operating system, was a major PITA. Redhat made the transition as simple as plopping in a floppy and a CD. Also, I seem to remember that 3.0.3 attempted an X based install (which was dumped in 4.0) which wowed a bunch of people.
Also, Redhat gave away rpm under the gpl... this gained them significant user and developer mindshare (even though Debian had dpkg out before -- go figure). Redhat promised a simple, easy install from the start -- and they mostly delivered. The complexity of the install process is what killed Debian to begin with (in my recolection), even though the Debian install process allows for much better tailoring of each individual package. Redhat offered a simple way to install Linux without all the hassles of decisions about how to configure hundreds of programs -- which is largely why they took off. And, they've always had a cutting edge distribution with the latest software and tools. This is what wows the newbies, even though after 3.0.3 all of their major new revisions have been a major mess. 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 were simply unfit for sale... and I think this is why they're losing momentum. Other distributions have done better with quality control while maintaining modern packages... and Redhat is suffering from the competition. Oh well! This is what the free market is all about!
I like Redhat and think they've done a tremendous service to the Linux community. And I own some of their stock... so take what I say knowing I'm (in a small way) an investor. Though, I admit I wish I'd been upgrading a Debian box all these years simply because a five year old RH install has become a real PITA to maintain.
. ... .
We all agree that copying original source or a binary is a copyright violation. So, how is writing one's own variation on a popular game a "rip off"? Is xgalaga a "rip off" of the arcade classic "Galaga"? It doesn't share any codebase with the arcade console. It doesn't share any original graphics; it just looks similar. Is this a direct "rip off" and if not, then how are these other clones "ripping off" Hasbro? If xgalaga IS a rip off of Galaga, then how do you reconcile this opinion with the legal outcoms of the "look and feel" wars between Microsoft, Apple, and Lotus in the late '80s and early '90s?
If they wrote their own source code, then by definition they created something. This harkens back to the old Apple vs. Microsoft and Lotus vs. Microsoft "Look and Feel" lawsuits of the late '80s and early '90s. BTW: Lotus and Apple lost because the courts determined that a "look and feel" cannot be copyrightable, only the actual source code.
So, now that the DMCA anti-circumvention measures are in place while UCITA looms we're seeing IP "look and feel" lawsuits winning where only a decade back they would have lost. That Hasbro is updating their old codebase is irrelevant to the issue at hand.