Ah, but I never moderated. Not even once. But I'd like to have the option.
Keep reading, post occasionally with grace and wit, and you'll get your turn to moderate.
All I want for Christmas...
on
SSSCA Editorials
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· Score: 4, Funny
(besides my two front teeth) is... a hardware RAID5 SCSI board, some 10K rpm U-160 SCSI disks, and rather more really fast DDR RAM.
I won't ever buy any of that crippled crap they're thinking they'll push on the market. I'll use what works, and they'll have to pry my system from my cold, dead hands before I'll ever install any DRM hardware. Let 'em come and try to take it away! I'll shoot 'em coming in the door!
AOL-TW, Vivendi Universal, Bertelsmann, Disney/ABC, and all those MPAA and RIAA pimps and their whore lawyers can kiss my ass!
(This will likely cost me a karma point or two, but so what? There's a cap, after all, and it's easy to regain it.)
People get banned from moderating on Slashdot for the simple reason that they have moderated _unfairly_ based upon the _consensus_ of several of Slashdot's meta-moderators.
Moderations that will get you banned from further moderating, if you make a habit of them: * Moderating down people who you dislike. * Moderating down posts you disagree with. * Moderating posts as Troll which aren't trolls. * Moderating posts as Offtopic that are topical. * Other moderating stupidities... see above for clues.
Sheesh, some people! You act, then you must accept the consequences of your actions. Screw up, you pay. Welcome to the real world. Yes, this is off-topic to the article, but it responds to this jerk's whine about having been banned from moderating here. Give me a break.
In my experience it's rarely the local loop (i.e., phone company) at fault when a connection drops - it's almost always your ISP "doing maintenance" or just having a bad day.
So don't blame the phone company - call your ISP and get credit for the day, or the month if it happens often enough. But that won't compensate you for lost connectivity = work time. Use FedEx or get a second link (cable modem) complete with second NIC, connection reconfiguration scripts, whatever it takes. As a telecommuter, it's your responsibility to stay available and in touch, not your phone company, ISP, cable supplier, whoever. They'll never pay your lost wages or any other damages above line cost.
Now, when IPv6 comes along things might change - you might be able to get a Business Grade QoS commitment from your ISP - for a high Business Class price, of course.
Is there a formal difference between low latency and a realtime OS?
Yes. A realtime OS _guarantees_ that certain events trigger defined responses within specified times. A realtime OS is almost by definition an embedded OS, i.e., its hardware is rigorously specific and very tightly bound. A realtime OS also typically provides a very limited set of functions, as opposed to a general purpose OS. A low-latency OS, on the other hand, provides generalized structures for 1st-level/2nd-level interrupt handlers, real/virtual memory management, and facilities for locking, preemptive-priority dispatching, etc., but offers low latency on a merely best-efforts basis depending upon what all happens to be inflight at the moment. See the difference?
Examples of realtime systems: automotive control systems including engine power/emissions management, suspension and braking management, even airbag controls; aircraft fly-by-wire systems that control aerodynamically unstable airframes.
Examples of low-latency systems: mainframes - if you're a high-priority system task, you get _very_ low latencies - but exact timings aren't guaranteed in all situations.
It won't be "in the wild". This article is only talking about it being available to states attorneys and others involved in the case, not the general public.
Cowflop. Once the source is out, it's out. Someone somewhere will leak it (just to friends, of course). Might take 3 days, maybe a week, but it _will_ get leaked to warez.
I hope this ruling will be upheld, but it will likely add another item to the dictionary definition of "open source." I'd like to see the looks on Stallman's and Raymond's faces.
It's the best thing Microsoft might do to disrupt the free-software / open-source community. I mean, we'll all be throwing up and laughing hysterically by turns, for weeks!
Re:Intel's approach
on
Inside Intel
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· Score: 5, Informative
The reason the Athlon proccesors are so much faster in benchmarks isn't the clock-speed, but the memory bottle-neck. Athlon's run with half the level2 cache yet they still are faster. Why? 233 MHz front-side bus speed.
Bzzzt, wrong! Athlons are faster in terms of useful work done per clock because they have a shorter instruction pipeline. Thus their branch mispredict penalty is lower and they have a higher instruction-throughput-rate (ITR) than Intel chips of equal clock speed. Other factors (exclusive L1/L2 cache, lower memory latency, better die space allocation to ALUs and FPUs) influence AMD's higher performance too, but this is the main one. It's just a better balanced processor design, and it certainly yields higher performance for price.
BTW, current DDR memory speed is 2 x 133 Mhz = 266 Mhz, not 233 Mhz.
Government doesn't have a reason to change, therefor, [sic] they won't.
Don't be so sure. Microsoft is providing some rather compelling motivation in the form of their new forced-upgrades, subscription licensed software business model. Many government organizations have in the past followed the wise corporations in only upgrading when there was a compelling case to do so, to a demonstrably stable release. These organizations are rightly appalled at the prospect of paying extortionate annual Microsoft software license fees that are 100% - 200% higher than their historical expenses. And the MSCE's in the IT Department won't be the ones ultimately making the decisions, no matter how much FUD they might throw around about TCO. They are the major drain on TCO, so they'll lose whatever credibility they might have had, once the gimlet-eyed executives who make decisions peruse their budget projections.
Microsoft is also their own worst enemy, relative to the way they've been playing hardball with government IT managers - threatening them and going over their heads - typical Microsoft gutter tactics, but it's building a broadly based backlash among government IT managers they've abused lately. If you talk to these people, they'll tell you that they're looking at ways to purge their shops of Microsoft software everywhere they can, and yesterday wouldn't be too soon. Microsoft's going to lose in government.
Yes. Capitalism teaches that growth=good, and this is rarely questioned.
Most decent business schools teach the parameters of sustainable growth. A _good_ MBA or CPA (who stayed awake in class and doesn't have a personal agenda or divided loyalties) can make these clear. Any startup or small company needs to trim its sails - review its business plan - at least quarterly if not monthly, and reviewing the sustainability of its growth curve must be one of the principal objectives, because this simply boils down to its continuing viability as a going concern.
A small company seeking capital has to find "angel" investors - people who will inject money, have the patience to watch the company grow, and eventually take out a somewhat higher profit than they could get in the big bond and equity markets. You will often have to give such "angel" investors some equity in the company, but your negotiation objective should be to give them as little equity as they will accept, and meanwhile you must retain control. The "angel" investors know this game, but if they like you and your company business plan, they will agree to let you keep control. After all, they're investors - if they wanted to run a company, they'd do that with their money instead.
But if you get VCs (Vulture Capitalists) involved before you're on the brink of explosive growth, well... get ready to lose your company. The VCs won't invest small sums - that would lead them into too many investments - and they like to closely control their favored few. The VCs will seek out piggish equity stakes and executive control. They want an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and a quick turnover of their big stock holdings for astronomical profits. They need your company to grow 200-300% with no limit in sight in order to unload their stock on the mass of investors. They're always looking for the next Apple, although they'll kill ten small companies for every one that hits the bigtime. That's the moral here, folks. Beware of the VCs. They'll kill you.
I mean, anyone who relates to this story is probably in bed asleep already.
Wrong, you're only exposing your own stupid ignorance of serious mission-critical systems, cognitive ergonomics, and how industrial strength computing actually works.
Although most physical punch cards were replaced by magnetic media about twenty years ago, give or take a few, "card-image" control and program files still run 80% of the large systems in existence - government, banking, insurance, credit-cards, drugs, consumer products, transportation, heavy manufacturing, distribution, retail, etc. The 80-column paradigm is alive and well, and it's not going to go away any time soon. It's merely been extended, but we still think in terms of "lines" of source code, don't we?
Most source-code is still written in a 72-column or 80-column format. Where do think that came from, eh? The ergonomics of composing and reading code are still as valid now as they were then, when the punch card format was defined. Damned puppies! No respect for the technology that runs your world. Too 37337 to learn anything. Bah!
I realize the government is full of red tape, and terribly inefficient at times; but surely they could hire enough people to maintain a Linux distrobution [sic] that contains all the basic software needed for most business or home uses.
Noooo! Governments are the last people you want maintaining a Linux distro. When the US Federal government defined a computing language, they came up with... ADA!
Let the government contribute patches which then compete for adoption - see the NSA Secure Linux patches for an example.
But you don't want government to control software development, because they'll get so tangled up in red tape, multi-year requirements definitions, bloated unwieldy specifications, empire building, incredibly inefficient coding and testing cycles, interagency turf wars, and cover-your-ass political posturing that they'll strangle the software but continue on inertia alone for decades before finally noticing that the systems are dead. Look at the FAA and the Air Traffic Control systems. Look at NASA and it's 5-10 year old "space-certified" hardware and software. Government can't hack big software worth shit, and they should know it by now. Don't even suggest it.
The point of using "public" (open source, or "free as in libre") software in government is that the public writes it and _gives_ it to the government "free as in beer" so the public doesn't then have to pay taxes for the government to license closed, proprietary software.
To think that everything "public" must be done by the government is a classically absurd conclusion of inverted Hegelian-Marxist socialist reasoning that assigns all powers to the State leaving The People (you know, us individuals, citizens, you and me) utterly powerless in the final reckoning.
...just a reminder to all of us to back things up when important. I don't back my drives up either,...
Well, nowadays you only need duplicate copies of _your_ data, e.g., I keep a full copy of all my work products (about 10 years worth) on each of two SCSI drives. Thus I don't worry about losing either drive. Of course you also duplicate customized init scripts, tar files for self-installed software, bookmarks, and maybe email archives too.
(If the probability of one disk crashing on any given day is 1/100, the probability of two disks crashing simultaneously is 1/(100**2) or 1/10000. I'll take those odds, when disk drives get replaced within 3-5 years anyway.)
This works for easily reinstalled OS environments such as most major Linux distributions. But it works less well for Windows, even Win2K, if you've added applications. Even then, however, you're probably going to have to reinstall all of it eventually anyway because Windows degrades over time, especially if you've installed applications.
Then again, I would hate to have to reinstall my OS/2 partition (initial install from floppies, find and install obscure drivers, upgrade with more floppies (tailored for my HW), get more drivers, upgrade again from CD-ROM, then tweak until stable. Hmmm... maybe I do need a couple of 1GB HDs to backup that OS/2 partition. I've got a Jazz drive, but that takes witchcraft to get working.
code developed with public money should be, well... public. On the other hand, Microsoft PCs would still be confined to LANs if it weren't for their leverage of the University funded, BSD-licensed TCP/IP stack (which has made Microsoft billions of dollars).
Perhaps publicly funded code needs a modified GPL type license that is free to use (even to run a business) but incurs significant royalties if the code is incorporated into commercial software products. I wonder if RMS would be OK with that?
These boxes are designed for scientific applications (think clusters for matrix calculations).
The machines IBM configures for robust RISC database servers are the pSeries (Power4 CPUs, onboard U160 SCSI RAID controllers and disks or fiberchannel SAN links to Shark RAID box(s)). These run AIX (or maybe Linux, by now) and can run Oracle, but of course IBM will prefer to sell you UDB (DB2) or even Informix. (UDB's advantages are lower database software licensing costs compared to Oracle and easy scalability up to mainframe platforms if workload demands ramp up significantly.)
...if someone wants to see the criteria they used to select "security honorees", will that code be open for viewing?
At least one of these systems is proposing to use a neural-network inference engine. One problem with this is that a neural-net has to learn (or be taught) what inferences are valid over a large number of instances (not too practical when even _one_ terrorist act is unacceptable). Another problem is that there isn't any explicit "code" in the system to examine, so there's no way audit it.
But don't worry, it's the FAA - they haven't even been able to replace or subtantially upgrade air traffic control systems despite decades of effort and billion$ expended.
...the depositions become public record once they are submitted as part of the case,...
Attorneys use depositions to learn how witnesses will testify. In civil cases depositions are sometimes admitted in lieu of direct testimony before the Court if neither side wishes to cross-examine particular witnesses.
Where depositions are taken prior to testimony in court, they provide the opposing lawyers with roadmaps, as it were, to guide strategy in putting questions in both direct and cross examination.
Depositions accepted without testimony are usually noncontroversial (and often not very interesting), whereas the more interesting testimony is normally repeated in court.
Also, Federal proceedings in Court are invariably open to the public (including press). Unless the nine dissenting States can convince the Judge that Microsoft deserves to be prosecuted in one of those new secret terrorism tribunals. (Now, there's an interesting idea....)
Though we enjoy freedom of speech in this country, our words can still come back to haunt us.
Well, possibly - if you're stupid enough to say something on Slashdot that attracts the focused interest of some very serious people with warrants in hand. AFAIK, Slashdot - like your ISP and other subscription based organizations - keeps your personal identity confidential. Unless and until presented with a valid warrant by a law enforcement agency acting within its jurisdiction.
Or, you could use your real name as your Slashdot ID and proceed to post a load of whacko ramblings. Even then, your post history wouldn't be searchable because Slashdot maintains posts in a database that's not accessible to Internet search engines. This is commonly the case at a lot of other websites where you might have a membership, too. But all bets are off if the site gets well and truly hacked, which is where Microsoft is famously vulnerable and an important part of what EPIC is complaining about to the FTC and State AGs.
Do a Google search on your own full name. You'll find your own website (if you have one) and the websites of other people who happen to have your exact same name. But you won't find your birth record, marriage/divorce (if any) data, drivers license information, traffic tickets, or credit information. However all this information is available to anyone with the time and inclination to look for it in all the right ways. And that's OK - it's all public data or information available to those who have reason to seek it (and pay the fee, in the case of a credit report).
But EPIC is concerned about Microsoft deceptively and unfairly collecting personal and financial information (credit card numbers, purchasing history, other profile data) and storing it in an inherently insecure system. Among other things.
as if the reasons they were being shot at weren't partly due to parasites on the dirty status quo like s390.
Such an ad hominem attack doesn't merit any reply, Mr. AC. However I choose to answer because I have no regrets about my political beliefs or actions during that time.
In 1967 I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the local newspaper supporting our Senator for his sole dissenting vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. It _was_ published.
In 1968 I lent my ID to a SDS activist for travel to the Democratic Convention in Chicago. I also canvassed precincts near my college campaigning for George McGovern.
In 1969 I grew disillusioned about pursuing a science career partly because it seemed pointed towards Cold War work for the military-industrial establishment. I also went to San Francisco and rescued a girl who I'd briefly dated in High School from a fundamentalist Christian Missionary school that planned to her ship off to dark Africa upon graduation. Ten years later, she showed up again and moved in with me; we had a child together and married. That didn't last forever, but my daughter's in college, 3rd year.
In 1970 I hitchhiked to San Francisco for the Moratorium March. The lady I hitchhiked with happened to know the woman who designed the poster "War is Unhealthy for Children and Other Living Things." We stayed at the St. Francis with her and a male friend (I shared a room with him, she shared a room with her). We walked from Union Square to Golden Gate Park along with thousands of others who clogged San Francisco in that protest. Lyndon Johnson didn't run again due to that and other war protests.
In 1972 I questioned my employer's processing of accounting data for Evergreen Air (an aircraft supplier to Air America, which was the front for the CIA throughout SouthEast Asia). It was explained to me that _someone_ had to crunch the numbers, and business was business, not politics. That was true, I accepted it and worked.
Any questions? I have put myself on the line for what I believed and I changed my life because of it. Have you? Do you think you'll ever have the guts to actually do that?
about such tablecase system design, esthetics, usefulness, and construction:
The example at hand appears, um... less than sturdy. The top appears to be a U-shaped frame with the "bottom" of the U at the back of the desk. The legs must be welded to this U-frame (it would be downright flimsy if they were just bolted somehow). I'd like to see some spreader beams just above the casters, plus some braces or cabled braces tensioned with turnbuckles. A hefty spreader beam at the front below the system case would help keep structural alignment too. Sturdy is good, in an office space.
Second, the airflow doesn't look well thought out. The disk drives appear to be mounted against the front sill of the system case with no air inlet. You won't get away with mounting several high-rev SCSI disks in there without risking overheating and shortened MTBF. The fans don't look up to cooling anything hotter than a Celeron or Duron.
Where are the AGP and PCI cards? The system case doesn't look tall enough to hold either. Is the case designed for onboard graphics, sound, NIC, and modem mainboards? Well, that's rather, er... limiting. This thing looks like something you'd give a teenage kid - a cool-looking desk PC with low-end components for AOL, IM, CDs, and MP3s.
However, the concept of computer systems integrated into furniture, for home or office, is... intriguing. Herman Miller (modular cubicles) should jump all over this idea. Look for end-tables with multimedia digital-convergence PC-based systems hidden under their tops, tucked behind clean looking woodwork, plastic, or metal structures.
I have to wonder.. How fast would Windows 3.1, DOS, or OS/2 boot on a 1.4 Ghz Athlon?:)
I have an OS/2 4.1 FixPak 15 partition on a 1.4 Ghz Athlon. It's useful for Win3.1 Office apps, plays MP3s well; I haven't tried VoiceType but the Athlon is fast enough.
To answer your question, it boots pretty quickly but not blazingly fast because most of the boot activity is I/O bound.
is that I entered college intending to major in Physics. I had the test scores, prep courses, and grades, and was granted a full four-year scholarship at a prestigious College.
Then they screwed up. I was lumped into an "experimental" program that rushed a bunch of us through first year Physics in the first semester, first year Chemistry in the second semester, all in Freshman year. Six months later, few of us could recall much Physics. It didn't help that the Math Department used a different symbology from the Science Departments, either. Long story short, I told them where they could stick their rushed Sciences program (the faculty there had decided that this wholesale abuse of students was the proper response to Russia's Sputnik - after discussing the matter for about ten years). But I still had them on the hook for the full four-year scholarship.
I graduated in Philosophy after _finally_ writing the thesis that this particular school required of all Bachelors candidates. Along the way, I played some poker and some pool (I'm still almost good), hit some decent parties with a few stunning women (my friends didn't know how I managed that), used and lightly dealt drugs among friends, rode a nice motorcycle, traded roommates to share a dorm room with my girlfriend, read and wrote about Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, Marx, etc.; that was a great time.
[To all you young guys in college now: while it's a different era, be really good to the first girls you date at school, I mean _very_ nice, if you get the chance and get my drift. At my college, the ladies restroom in the Library had two lists on the wall: a Green List, and a Black List. I got on the Green List, so I met lots of women while I was there.]
The school had an IBM 1401 computer with a Fortran compiler. The Physics Department was still trying to figure out how to use it for anything instructional. As I recall, they assigned us to calculate a pendulum equation, in Fortran, using punch cards, not realizing that the trig and log functions had been broken by Seniors before graduation. It was also understood that most guys would end up working in the Defense establishment, but I wasn't very enthusiastic about building bombs, no matter what the salary.
Summer before my Senior year, I got a job mounting tapes for a local service bureau on second shift. They had a Honeywell 200, 4' high X 4' wide X 20' long, 32K magnetic core memory, a card-reader and an optical-tape reader for input, 5 X 1600 bpi tape drives, no disk drives whatsoever, but a line printer. Well, I learned how to program it, hacked a datecard loading routine in H200 Assembly language, plus logic to ensure that multiple updates of the master tapes always ran in the proper sequence, built them machines for reviewing their optical tape files, supervised operators, learned COBOL, extended their specialized accounting applications, gambled to drop my student draft deferment only to draw a high lottery number, and watched billions of dollars flow from the CIA to Air America through a regional airplane leasing/services firm (whose small town accountant we happened to serve) while being thankful that I wasn't in uniform or otherwise anywhere near places where people were shooting at Americans.
My former Economics professor offered me the job as Director of my alma mater's Computing Center. I told him thanks, but no, battered about a little, got a job programming COBOL, taught myself IBM S/360 Assembly Language, got promoted to Systems Programmer, rolled out a statewide financial network, etc., etc. After several interesting jobs later, I've spent the last 15 years consulting for IT VPs, CTOs, and CIOs.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I believe that all you have are your values, honor, and personal integrity. Let them guide your career choices, and you will always walk tall.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but I never moderated. Not even once. But I'd like to have the option.
Keep reading, post occasionally with grace and wit, and you'll get your turn to moderate.
(besides my two front teeth) is... a hardware RAID5 SCSI board, some 10K rpm U-160 SCSI disks, and rather more really fast DDR RAM.
I won't ever buy any of that crippled crap they're thinking they'll push on the market. I'll use what works, and they'll have to pry my system from my cold, dead hands before I'll ever install any DRM hardware. Let 'em come and try to take it away! I'll shoot 'em coming in the door!
AOL-TW, Vivendi Universal, Bertelsmann, Disney/ABC, and all those MPAA and RIAA pimps and their whore lawyers can kiss my ass!
(This will likely cost me a karma point or two, but so what? There's a cap, after all, and it's easy to regain it.)
People get banned from moderating on Slashdot for the simple reason that they have moderated _unfairly_ based upon the _consensus_ of several of Slashdot's meta-moderators.
Moderations that will get you banned from further moderating, if you make a habit of them:
* Moderating down people who you dislike.
* Moderating down posts you disagree with.
* Moderating posts as Troll which aren't trolls.
* Moderating posts as Offtopic that are topical.
* Other moderating stupidities... see above for clues.
Sheesh, some people! You act, then you must accept the consequences of your actions. Screw up, you pay. Welcome to the real world.
Yes, this is off-topic to the article, but it responds to this jerk's whine about having been banned from moderating here. Give me a break.
so Internet security isn't an issue. For a shipboard computer, you only need two things:
* No network connections to non-trusted systems (i.e., onboard crew and passenger personal systems)
* Solid stability and reliability in operation.
Given those, your ship computers should be secure.
In my experience it's rarely the local loop (i.e., phone company) at fault when a connection drops - it's almost always your ISP "doing maintenance" or just having a bad day.
So don't blame the phone company - call your ISP and get credit for the day, or the month if it happens often enough. But that won't compensate you for lost connectivity = work time. Use FedEx or get a second link (cable modem) complete with second NIC, connection reconfiguration scripts, whatever it takes. As a telecommuter, it's your responsibility to stay available and in touch, not your phone company, ISP, cable supplier, whoever. They'll never pay your lost wages or any other damages above line cost.
Now, when IPv6 comes along things might change - you might be able to get a Business Grade QoS commitment from your ISP - for a high Business Class price, of course.
not one page, never, nohow. If you want me to pay for your content, convince me that it's worth it, then send it to my by email, if I sign up that is.
Otherwise, they can all go "invoice" themselves....
Is there a formal difference between low latency and a realtime OS?
Yes. A realtime OS _guarantees_ that certain events trigger defined responses within specified times. A realtime OS is almost by definition an embedded OS, i.e., its hardware is rigorously specific and very tightly bound. A realtime OS also typically provides a very limited set of functions, as opposed to a general purpose OS. A low-latency OS, on the other hand, provides generalized structures for 1st-level/2nd-level interrupt handlers, real/virtual memory management, and facilities for locking, preemptive-priority dispatching, etc., but offers low latency on a merely best-efforts basis depending upon what all happens to be inflight at the moment. See the difference?
Examples of realtime systems: automotive control systems including engine power/emissions management, suspension and braking management, even airbag controls; aircraft fly-by-wire systems that control aerodynamically unstable airframes.
Examples of low-latency systems: mainframes - if you're a high-priority system task, you get _very_ low latencies - but exact timings aren't guaranteed in all situations.
It won't be "in the wild". This article is only talking about it being available to states attorneys and others involved in the case, not the general public.
Cowflop. Once the source is out, it's out. Someone somewhere will leak it (just to friends, of course). Might take 3 days, maybe a week, but it _will_ get leaked to warez.
I hope this ruling will be upheld, but it will likely add another item to the dictionary definition of "open source." I'd like to see the looks on Stallman's and Raymond's faces.
It's the best thing Microsoft might do to disrupt the free-software / open-source community. I mean, we'll all be throwing up and laughing hysterically by turns, for weeks!
The reason the Athlon proccesors are so much faster in benchmarks isn't the clock-speed, but the memory bottle-neck. Athlon's run with half the level2 cache yet they still are faster. Why? 233 MHz front-side bus speed.
Bzzzt, wrong! Athlons are faster in terms of useful work done per clock because they have a shorter instruction pipeline. Thus their branch mispredict penalty is lower and they have a higher instruction-throughput-rate (ITR) than Intel chips of equal clock speed. Other factors (exclusive L1/L2 cache, lower memory latency, better die space allocation to ALUs and FPUs) influence AMD's higher performance too, but this is the main one. It's just a better balanced processor design, and it certainly yields higher performance for price.
BTW, current DDR memory speed is 2 x 133 Mhz = 266 Mhz, not 233 Mhz.
Government doesn't have a reason to change, therefor, [sic] they won't.
Don't be so sure. Microsoft is providing some rather compelling motivation in the form of their new forced-upgrades, subscription licensed software business model. Many government organizations have in the past followed the wise corporations in only upgrading when there was a compelling case to do so, to a demonstrably stable release. These organizations are rightly appalled at the prospect of paying extortionate annual Microsoft software license fees that are 100% - 200% higher than their historical expenses. And the MSCE's in the IT Department won't be the ones ultimately making the decisions, no matter how much FUD they might throw around about TCO. They are the major drain on TCO, so they'll lose whatever credibility they might have had, once the gimlet-eyed executives who make decisions peruse their budget projections.
Microsoft is also their own worst enemy, relative to the way they've been playing hardball with government IT managers - threatening them and going over their heads - typical Microsoft gutter tactics, but it's building a broadly based backlash among government IT managers they've abused lately. If you talk to these people, they'll tell you that they're looking at ways to purge their shops of Microsoft software everywhere they can, and yesterday wouldn't be too soon. Microsoft's going to lose in government.
Yes. Capitalism teaches that growth=good, and this is rarely questioned.
Most decent business schools teach the parameters of sustainable growth. A _good_ MBA or CPA (who stayed awake in class and doesn't have a personal agenda or divided loyalties) can make these clear. Any startup or small company needs to trim its sails - review its business plan - at least quarterly if not monthly, and reviewing the sustainability of its growth curve must be one of the principal objectives, because this simply boils down to its continuing viability as a going concern.
A small company seeking capital has to find "angel" investors - people who will inject money, have the patience to watch the company grow, and eventually take out a somewhat higher profit than they could get in the big bond and equity markets. You will often have to give such "angel" investors some equity in the company, but your negotiation objective should be to give them as little equity as they will accept, and meanwhile you must retain control. The "angel" investors know this game, but if they like you and your company business plan, they will agree to let you keep control. After all, they're investors - if they wanted to run a company, they'd do that with their money instead.
But if you get VCs (Vulture Capitalists) involved before you're on the brink of explosive growth, well... get ready to lose your company. The VCs won't invest small sums - that would lead them into too many investments - and they like to closely control their favored few. The VCs will seek out piggish equity stakes and executive control. They want an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and a quick turnover of their big stock holdings for astronomical profits. They need your company to grow 200-300% with no limit in sight in order to unload their stock on the mass of investors. They're always looking for the next Apple, although they'll kill ten small companies for every one that hits the bigtime. That's the moral here, folks. Beware of the VCs. They'll kill you.
I mean, anyone who relates to this story is probably in bed asleep already.
Wrong, you're only exposing your own stupid ignorance of serious mission-critical systems, cognitive ergonomics, and how industrial strength computing actually works.
Although most physical punch cards were replaced by magnetic media about twenty years ago, give or take a few, "card-image" control and program files still run 80% of the large systems in existence - government, banking, insurance, credit-cards, drugs, consumer products, transportation, heavy manufacturing, distribution, retail, etc. The 80-column paradigm is alive and well, and it's not going to go away any time soon. It's merely been extended, but we still think in terms of "lines" of source code, don't we?
Most source-code is still written in a 72-column or 80-column format. Where do think that came from, eh? The ergonomics of composing and reading code are still as valid now as they were then, when the punch card format was defined. Damned puppies! No respect for the technology that runs your world. Too 37337 to learn anything. Bah!
I realize the government is full of red tape, and terribly inefficient at times; but surely they could hire enough people to maintain a Linux distrobution [sic] that contains all the basic software needed for most business or home uses.
Noooo! Governments are the last people you want maintaining a Linux distro. When the US Federal government defined a computing language, they came up with... ADA!
Let the government contribute patches which then compete for adoption - see the NSA Secure Linux patches for an example.
But you don't want government to control software development, because they'll get so tangled up in red tape, multi-year requirements definitions, bloated unwieldy specifications, empire building, incredibly inefficient coding and testing cycles, interagency turf wars, and cover-your-ass political posturing that they'll strangle the software but continue on inertia alone for decades before finally noticing that the systems are dead. Look at the FAA and the Air Traffic Control systems. Look at NASA and it's 5-10 year old "space-certified" hardware and software. Government can't hack big software worth shit, and they should know it by now. Don't even suggest it.
The point of using "public" (open source, or "free as in libre") software in government is that the public writes it and _gives_ it to the government "free as in beer" so the public doesn't then have to pay taxes for the government to license closed, proprietary software.
To think that everything "public" must be done by the government is a classically absurd conclusion of inverted Hegelian-Marxist socialist reasoning that assigns all powers to the State leaving The People (you know, us individuals, citizens, you and me) utterly powerless in the final reckoning.
I could go on, but I won't.
...just a reminder to all of us to back things up when important. I don't back my drives up either,...
Well, nowadays you only need duplicate copies of _your_ data, e.g., I keep a full copy of all my work products (about 10 years worth) on each of two SCSI drives. Thus I don't worry about losing either drive. Of course you also duplicate customized init scripts, tar files for self-installed software, bookmarks, and maybe email archives too.
(If the probability of one disk crashing on any given day is 1/100, the probability of two disks crashing simultaneously is 1/(100**2) or 1/10000. I'll take those odds, when disk drives get replaced within 3-5 years anyway.)
This works for easily reinstalled OS environments such as most major Linux distributions. But it works less well for Windows, even Win2K, if you've added applications. Even then, however, you're probably going to have to reinstall all of it eventually anyway because Windows degrades over time, especially if you've installed applications.
Then again, I would hate to have to reinstall my OS/2 partition (initial install from floppies, find and install obscure drivers, upgrade with more floppies (tailored for my HW), get more drivers, upgrade again from CD-ROM, then tweak until stable. Hmmm... maybe I do need a couple of 1GB HDs to backup that OS/2 partition. I've got a Jazz drive, but that takes witchcraft to get working.
Oh well, nevermind...
I dont think i`ve ever read any genuinely funny computer related humour...
Obviously you've never seen "The Devil's Dictionary" (likely out of print now, though).
code developed with public money should be, well... public. On the other hand, Microsoft PCs would still be confined to LANs if it weren't for their leverage of the University funded, BSD-licensed TCP/IP stack (which has made Microsoft billions of dollars).
Perhaps publicly funded code needs a modified GPL type license that is free to use (even to run a business) but incurs significant royalties if the code is incorporated into commercial software products. I wonder if RMS would be OK with that?
These boxes are designed for scientific applications (think clusters for matrix calculations).
The machines IBM configures for robust RISC database servers are the pSeries (Power4 CPUs, onboard U160 SCSI RAID controllers and disks or fiberchannel SAN links to Shark RAID box(s)). These run AIX (or maybe Linux, by now) and can run Oracle, but of course IBM will prefer to sell you UDB (DB2) or even Informix. (UDB's advantages are lower database software licensing costs compared to Oracle and easy scalability up to mainframe platforms if workload demands ramp up significantly.)
(Disclaimer - I don't work for IBM, now.)
...if someone wants to see the criteria they used to select "security honorees", will that code be open for viewing?
At least one of these systems is proposing to use a neural-network inference engine. One problem with this is that a neural-net has to learn (or be taught) what inferences are valid over a large number of instances (not too practical when even _one_ terrorist act is unacceptable). Another problem is that there isn't any explicit "code" in the system to examine, so there's no way audit it.
But don't worry, it's the FAA - they haven't even been able to replace or subtantially upgrade air traffic control systems despite decades of effort and billion$ expended.
...the depositions become public record once they are submitted as part of the case,...
Attorneys use depositions to learn how witnesses will testify. In civil cases depositions are sometimes admitted in lieu of direct testimony before the Court if neither side wishes to cross-examine particular witnesses.
Where depositions are taken prior to testimony in court, they provide the opposing lawyers with roadmaps, as it were, to guide strategy in putting questions in both direct and cross examination.
Depositions accepted without testimony are usually noncontroversial (and often not very interesting), whereas the more interesting testimony is normally repeated in court.
Also, Federal proceedings in Court are invariably open to the public (including press). Unless the nine dissenting States can convince the Judge that Microsoft deserves to be prosecuted in one of those new secret terrorism tribunals. (Now, there's an interesting idea....)
IANAL...
Though we enjoy freedom of speech in this country, our words can still come back to haunt us.
Well, possibly - if you're stupid enough to say something on Slashdot that attracts the focused interest of some very serious people with warrants in hand. AFAIK, Slashdot - like your ISP and other subscription based organizations - keeps your personal identity confidential. Unless and until presented with a valid warrant by a law enforcement agency acting within its jurisdiction.
Or, you could use your real name as your Slashdot ID and proceed to post a load of whacko ramblings. Even then, your post history wouldn't be searchable because Slashdot maintains posts in a database that's not accessible to Internet search engines. This is commonly the case at a lot of other websites where you might have a membership, too. But all bets are off if the site gets well and truly hacked, which is where Microsoft is famously vulnerable and an important part of what EPIC is complaining about to the FTC and State AGs.
Do a Google search on your own full name. You'll find your own website (if you have one) and the websites of other people who happen to have your exact same name. But you won't find your birth record, marriage/divorce (if any) data, drivers license information, traffic tickets, or credit information. However all this information is available to anyone with the time and inclination to look for it in all the right ways. And that's OK - it's all public data or information available to those who have reason to seek it (and pay the fee, in the case of a credit report).
But EPIC is concerned about Microsoft deceptively and unfairly collecting personal and financial information (credit card numbers, purchasing history, other profile data) and storing it in an inherently insecure system. Among other things.
as if the reasons they were being shot at weren't partly due to parasites on the dirty status quo like s390.
Such an ad hominem attack doesn't merit any reply, Mr. AC. However I choose to answer because I have no regrets about my political beliefs or actions during that time.
In 1967 I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the local newspaper supporting our Senator for his sole dissenting vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. It _was_ published.
In 1968 I lent my ID to a SDS activist for travel to the Democratic Convention in Chicago. I also canvassed precincts near my college campaigning for George McGovern.
In 1969 I grew disillusioned about pursuing a science career partly because it seemed pointed towards Cold War work for the military-industrial establishment. I also went to San Francisco and rescued a girl who I'd briefly dated in High School from a fundamentalist Christian Missionary school that planned to her ship off to dark Africa upon graduation. Ten years later, she showed up again and moved in with me; we had a child together and married. That didn't last forever, but my daughter's in college, 3rd year.
In 1970 I hitchhiked to San Francisco for the Moratorium March. The lady I hitchhiked with happened to know the woman who designed the poster "War is Unhealthy for Children and Other Living Things." We stayed at the St. Francis with her and a male friend (I shared a room with him, she shared a room with her). We walked from Union Square to Golden Gate Park along with thousands of others who clogged San Francisco in that protest. Lyndon Johnson didn't run again due to that and other war protests.
In 1972 I questioned my employer's processing of accounting data for Evergreen Air (an aircraft supplier to Air America, which was the front for the CIA throughout SouthEast Asia). It was explained to me that _someone_ had to crunch the numbers, and business was business, not politics. That was true, I accepted it and worked.
Any questions? I have put myself on the line for what I believed and I changed my life because of it. Have you? Do you think you'll ever have the guts to actually do that?
about such tablecase system design, esthetics, usefulness, and construction:
The example at hand appears, um... less than sturdy. The top appears to be a U-shaped frame with the "bottom" of the U at the back of the desk. The legs must be welded to this U-frame (it would be downright flimsy if they were just bolted somehow). I'd like to see some spreader beams just above the casters, plus some braces or cabled braces tensioned with turnbuckles. A hefty spreader beam at the front below the system case would help keep structural alignment too. Sturdy is good, in an office space.
Second, the airflow doesn't look well thought out. The disk drives appear to be mounted against the front sill of the system case with no air inlet. You won't get away with mounting several high-rev SCSI disks in there without risking overheating and shortened MTBF. The fans don't look up to cooling anything hotter than a Celeron or Duron.
Where are the AGP and PCI cards? The system case doesn't look tall enough to hold either. Is the case designed for onboard graphics, sound, NIC, and modem mainboards? Well, that's rather, er... limiting. This thing looks like something you'd give a teenage kid - a cool-looking desk PC with low-end components for AOL, IM, CDs, and MP3s.
However, the concept of computer systems integrated into furniture, for home or office, is... intriguing. Herman Miller (modular cubicles) should jump all over this idea. Look for end-tables with multimedia digital-convergence PC-based systems hidden under their tops, tucked behind clean looking woodwork, plastic, or metal structures.
I have to wonder.. How fast would Windows 3.1, DOS, or OS/2 boot on a 1.4 Ghz Athlon? :)
I have an OS/2 4.1 FixPak 15 partition on a 1.4 Ghz Athlon. It's useful for Win3.1 Office apps, plays MP3s well; I haven't tried VoiceType but the Athlon is fast enough.
To answer your question, it boots pretty quickly but not blazingly fast because most of the boot activity is I/O bound.
MPlayer
is that I entered college intending to major in Physics. I had the test scores, prep courses, and grades, and was granted a full four-year scholarship at a prestigious College.
Then they screwed up. I was lumped into an "experimental" program that rushed a bunch of us through first year Physics in the first semester, first year Chemistry in the second semester, all in Freshman year. Six months later, few of us could recall much Physics. It didn't help that the Math Department used a different symbology from the Science Departments, either. Long story short, I told them where they could stick their rushed Sciences program (the faculty there had decided that this wholesale abuse of students was the proper response to Russia's Sputnik - after discussing the matter for about ten years). But I still had them on the hook for the full four-year scholarship.
I graduated in Philosophy after _finally_ writing the thesis that this particular school required of all Bachelors candidates. Along the way, I played some poker and some pool (I'm still almost good), hit some decent parties with a few stunning women (my friends didn't know how I managed that), used and lightly dealt drugs among friends, rode a nice motorcycle, traded roommates to share a dorm room with my girlfriend, read and wrote about Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, Marx, etc.; that was a great time.
[To all you young guys in college now: while it's a different era, be really good to the first girls you date at school, I mean _very_ nice, if you get the chance and get my drift. At my college, the ladies restroom in the Library had two lists on the wall: a Green List, and a Black List. I got on the Green List, so I met lots of women while I was there.]
The school had an IBM 1401 computer with a Fortran compiler. The Physics Department was still trying to figure out how to use it for anything instructional. As I recall, they assigned us to calculate a pendulum equation, in Fortran, using punch cards, not realizing that the trig and log functions had been broken by Seniors before graduation. It was also understood that most guys would end up working in the Defense establishment, but I wasn't very enthusiastic about building bombs, no matter what the salary.
Summer before my Senior year, I got a job mounting tapes for a local service bureau on second shift. They had a Honeywell 200, 4' high X 4' wide X 20' long, 32K magnetic core memory, a card-reader and an optical-tape reader for input, 5 X 1600 bpi tape drives, no disk drives whatsoever, but a line printer. Well, I learned how to program it, hacked a datecard loading routine in H200 Assembly language, plus logic to ensure that multiple updates of the master tapes always ran in the proper sequence, built them machines for reviewing their optical tape files, supervised operators, learned COBOL, extended their specialized accounting applications, gambled to drop my student draft deferment only to draw a high lottery number, and watched billions of dollars flow from the CIA to Air America through a regional airplane leasing/services firm (whose small town accountant we happened to serve) while being thankful that I wasn't in uniform or otherwise anywhere near places where people were shooting at Americans.
My former Economics professor offered me the job as Director of my alma mater's Computing Center. I told him thanks, but no, battered about a little, got a job programming COBOL, taught myself IBM S/360 Assembly Language, got promoted to Systems Programmer, rolled out a statewide financial network, etc., etc. After several interesting jobs later, I've spent the last 15 years consulting for IT VPs, CTOs, and CIOs.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I believe that all you have are your values, honor, and personal integrity. Let them guide your career choices, and you will always walk tall.