A little bit of computer engineering here for you...
RISC and CISC are the two main forms of processors out there these days. RISC simply means that an operation instruction is embedded with both the opcode and the operands. A CISC chip is one in which the opcode tends to be the first instruction processed and the operands are the next couple of instructions inputted.
My CMPT 150 course (introduction to Computer Design) was done entirely with a Motorola HC11 Processor emulator, which is a CISC processor.
The advantage to RISC processing is that you can put in "Pipelining", which basically means a buffer for all data throughout the CPU at different levels. Now, this means that a single chunk of opcode/operand takes x clock cycles to process (x being the number of levels you have to your pipeline), but it also allows the processor to do multiple things at once, so that after the first instruction goes through to the last buffer, there's one waiting right after it for the next clock cycle, so a RISC processor can give a new CPU instruction with every single clock cycle.
Confused yet? Let me put it this way...
Pretend that your CPU is a plumbing system, with water streaming through hot and cold pipes to deliver a prefered temperature for the water. Now, the water temperatures are your CPU data (signals, bits, whatever...) and your pipes are your cpu circuitry.
Now, you want to send a big chunk of hot water down to the bottom of your pipe system using a bunch of intermediary valves (or/and/not/xor gates) and a specific pathway (Let's not ask why, let's just assume you want to do that). Now, say right after that you want to send a bunch of cold water down a similar path, but not necessarily the same path, however you will want to use some of the same pipes.
Now, with a CISC processor, what you would do is you would send down the hot water, occasionally storing it in some pipes whilst you send down the cold water, and the sheer design of the system would keep the Hot and Cold waters seperate and you would be able to output your hot water, and then output your cold water, once they have gone through their systematic storages and movements around.
The annoying thing about this is you need a sophisticated CPU to do it. And you need a bunch of clock cycles to open and close the valves and whatnot and finally get your desired output.
Now, a RISC processor does something a bit smarter.... It throws your hot water in (First clock cycle) and just lets the valves automatically trickle to the bottom, and then, on the second clock cycle, send the cold water down. The downside of this is the fact that your single clock cycle is going really slow, which means you have a big lineup of people requesting hot and cold water and they have to wait for it to come out (Lag, for those taking notes in computer-world).
So, we instate pipelining.
Pipelining is a bunch of basins (let's say 4) that appear at different levels of the pipe system.
So, you dump your hot water in the top basin. (First clock cycle) Then, you unlock the basin and let it dump into the second basin. Once it's done that, once again, seal the basin and dump your cold water in. Now, (second clock cycle) open the plugs for both basins, and your hot water goes down the tubes (magically) before the cold water shows up and you can re-plug your basin. Now you have room for more water in the top basin.
Every move into a new basin is a clock cycle, so It takes 4 clock cycles for it to finally reach the bottom so you can do whatever the hell it is you would want to do with hot or cold water. However, these are relatively quick clock cycles compared to the clock cycle you had in your non-pipelined RISC architecture. And, ultimately, once the first output reaches the bottom, you only have to wait a single clock cycle for the input right after it, rather than waiting another oh-so-many amounts of clock cycles that you would've in your CISC architecture.
The RC1 was actually released last Wednesday, and that would be the day I installed it and got it running.
Fucking beautiful, except Wine keeps crapping out on me (expected considering it's still in bux-fix mode). Seriously, one of the reviews I read about Mandrake 9.0 was that they had evolved to a lot more of an "expensive" or "professional" look. While I'm sitting here hoping that the installer for RC1 is only a temporary thing and that they go back to the format they had for 8.2 and 9.0, I have to say that they actually outdid themselves for this release. Gnome 2.2 is slick, With a really _really_ nice new font set... New GnomeICU (one of the main programs I use) is a lot nicer than previous versions, etc. etc.
The only main problem I have is with the installer, which I'm guessing is because they're not quite done with it yet... It seems to be missing a whole thwack of packages that are on the CDs (Apache and Wine to name a couple) but all in all this distro is very very slick.
So I've pretty much decided now that I'm a bona-fide Mandrake user....
As soon as I garner up enough money I'm going to be sending in for a 9.1 boxed set... I'd honestly hate to see them go under, because as I see it they're offering me a really quality product.
All due respect, but the topic of the article _is_ bands that go gold... I'd consider them to be pretty successful....
The myth got started by N-Sync and the Backstreet boys etc., who would consistently say in all their interviews that they make squat on their albums, and only make money with their touring.
And the iBook doesn't play well with a lot of things that are part of the Microsoft world.
I really don't want to turn this into an anti-microsoft rant, but here goes.
The reason that Mac products don't bode well with Microsoft stuff is not because Macs have a problem dealing with Microsoft but because Microsoft has a problem with dealing with everything else.
Let me give you an example:
I recently finished a course in Software Engineering. As many of you who actually work in the field of Software Engineering, it's basically teaching you how to cover your tracks whilst your coding. In essence, building a system for a customer, which requires Status reports, estimations, schedules, meetings, prototyping, etc. etc. etc. etc. Basically, a whole bunch of business stuff.
Now, Our professor wasn't actually a professor but a sessional lecturer who regularily works as a Software Engineer with IBM. Great! No problems there.
The one thing that bugged us was his preoccupation with Microsoft formats. We were told our coding could be done in any format we wanted to... whatever language we wanted... In the interests of our team (consisting of 3 Windows users, 1 Mac user and 1 Linux user) we decided to develop in Java what with it being cross-platform and everything.
The catch was all our documents had to be handed in in Word format.
Now, in most cases, this shouldn't be a problem. The three windows users each had respective versions of Office, the Mac user had Office for Macs, and the Linux user could make do with OpenOffice and just send documents to the others to verify that it looked good on their comps.
Great, wonderful... no problem whatsoever.
So we get going into the term, and eventually the assignments (paper-deliverables in the Word format) get more and more complicated and demand more and more of Word's "features" to get the right look.
About halfway through the semester, the lecturer puts up an example for one of the assignments and says "Go at 'er"
So we download.
4 different versions of Office gave 4 completely different looks of the same document. The Mac version was different than Office2k, which was different from Office 7 (I think) which was different from OfficeXP... And apparently this was written in some version of office. The most annoying thing about it was the fact that nobody got a perfect representation of what the lecturer had originally intended. In fact, the closest to what was intended (and still not perfectly accurate) was the OpenOffice version.
What did we learn from this? Microsoft file formats bite because they don't like communicating with Microsoft products even well. We tried to configure some of our files to look nice despite the Office version, but the only program that would allow anything like that was in fact OpenOffice...
Now I'm not here to sing the praises of OpenOffice at all... The point I'm trying to make is that saying that a product is bad because it can't interface well with Microsoft products is like saying someone is a bad parent because their kid has down's syndrome.
Anyways. I'm sure I'll get a bunch of "Typical slashdotter Anti-Microsoft propoganda" flames, but this isn't based out of my pre-biases with Microsoft (of which I have many). This is very simply an experience I've had that was made ten times more difficult than it had to be thanks to Microsoft.
Yes, but we also didn't get the "Make your own version of the DMCA" memo, not to mention, thanks to last weekends, insanely loud protest across the nation, the "Let's go to war" memo most likely is going to get lost in the mail room....
Re:cognitive dissonance - linux needs microsoft
on
The Linux Uprising
·
· Score: 1
And I just upgraded to Mandrake 9.1 for a whole (you ready for this?) $0! Of course, you're allowed to supposedly tack on that it cost me $1.51 to do it (A penny for the bandwidth to download it, and $.50 per CD-R).
I'm looking at my panel at the bottom of my GNOME desktop and I have everything shy of a systray in my gui that you could find in a Windows GUI. I have a start menu, a bunch of little app-launchers, a taskbar, a clock and even a multi-desktop organizer (I use all four of them, but it's not for everybody... I have a friend, a Red-Hat User, who sticks to a single desktop... good on him).
Also a little command launcher that I just need to type the command into and it'll run the program.
So far, I've got everything a Microsoft GUI could ask for and two extra features.
Microsoft _does not_ have the best GUI in the market, but the most appreciated in the market. Most people use Microsoft desktops and as such are accomodated to its little quips and quirks (format of the start menu, alt-f4 exits a program, alt puts you in menus, etc. etc. etc. etc.)
But by no means does that mean they're the best.
Re:FUD FUD FUD and more FUD.
on
The Linux Uprising
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Except for the fact pronounces it in a way that rhymes with "Me Next!" As in his name... Lee-nus. It _was_ named after him, you know?
Re:FUD FUD FUD and more FUD.
on
The Linux Uprising
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Lee-nux.
Which is the original pronounciation, considering you pronounce Linus Torvald's name Lee-nus. It's how he pronounces it...
At a trade show in 1998, then-President Steven A. Ballmer referred to Linux, the upstart computer operating system that rhymes with cynics, as "lie-nucks."
Linus doesn't rhyme with cynics, even when pronounced in the North American version....
Do people even research their articles anymore? Linux has about 3 different pronounciations that I know of, none of which are "wrong".
When do you think that the RIAA is going to clue in that the reason that CD sales have been dropping is because they're producing shit, calling it music and charging 400% markup on it?
The difference being that this archiving is _digital_, though...
Didn't you pay attention in that IT class when they were explaining the difference between Digital and Analogue? Digital's main advantage is its reproductability. So if, say, the CIC Lib^H^H^H^H^H^H^HLibrary of Congress were to refresh the information once every five years or something like that, then you've got an indefinate storage period. The problem with it is that it needs constant maintenance. The reason this is better than analogue archives is pretty simple... when analogue decays, it's pretty much never going to achieve its original quality. You can do things to try and make it similar, but you're never going to get it as pure as the original.
With digital archives, you can avoid the decay simply by transferring. This isn't an option really with analogue because once you transfer, you tend to lose quality. But bits are simply 1s or 0s, and digital transfer can be perfect. Throw some md5 checksums in there to make sure that you don't corrupt the data, and boom... you've got perfect digital copy.
... Of Being a Freelance Hacker and Concert Promoter has come true... All I need is a couple of swords and a Pizza Delivery Job and I can make tons just gathering Intel...
Stephenson's a Genius... We're basically looking at the first instance of the CIC Database....
Now we can start looking at the Metaverse and nanodrugs.... I seriously can't wait...
The real issue here is that companies want control over their products after they're sold. That's what the DMCA and EULAs are all about...
BUT THEY CAN'T....
They shut down one p2p system, another follows. They make a new encryption scheme, it gets cracked/leaked. They copywrite something, it eventually gets figured out.
They just want legal leverage so they can sue people by hitting whichever is the biggest thing they can hit (Napster, 2600) and force them into a juicy settlement.
They must have been so incredibly pleased that Napster were such bitches about helping them out from the get-go, because it gave them a really good vantage point to paint them in a bad light and set a nice precedent that would result in p2p system after p2p system being sued successfully... even if it wasn't settled out of court.
I'm very happy to see lawsuits like this one because it puts a check on the companies' money-grubbing ventures. Sure, Napster and Kazaa and AudioGalaxy and 2600 aren't responsible for all the people illegally pirating and sharing mp3s, DivX rips, etc. but at least they have money that RIAA/Microsoft/MPAA can get from them. Which is, ultimately, what they're out there for... I mean, Christ, they're Corporations. Since when are they concerned about personal rights and freedoms over profits? Has any large successful corporation succeeded with that kind of philosophy?
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying I like it. I'm just saying it's true. Selling of Souls = Profits.
Chretien's a bit annoying... although not as much so as Bush... because... well... Chretien was actually elected.
Problem is, while I agree with about half of his politic (thus making him the lesser of a few evils... Yay 5-party system!) I disagree heartily with the other half... but he seems to think "I got elected" equates to "I can't do wrong".
Oh well. I voted for who I voted for (NDP) and my candidate got elected, so I still have at least _some_ belief in democracy.
Yeah... come up here... but start early with writing "favourite" and "colour".
Re:my question to anyone who can answer it...
on
Examining Influenza
·
· Score: 1
Actually, no.
Influenza, much like the common cold, just has a high-mutation rate.
Smallpox was a single species of virus. Influenza is not. Influenza changes and adapts every year.
You remember how if you get chickenpox once, you never get it again? Smallpox is the same. Once a virus is terminated within your system, it has no chance to resurface on the basis that you have antibodies with which to defeat it.
How many flu shots have you had in your life? I personally have had about 10... Which would seem pretty silly to have it done needlessly. If I'd already had my shot, it should be done with, and I shouldn't need any more. But the fact of the matter is that every year new influenza viruses come out which is why, theoretically, we should be getting flu shots every year.
Unfortunately, most of us don't have DVD burners/ A couple teras of hd space to store them on.
Not to mention, I've got a plethora of CDs that don't have this same degrading-problem.
But yet, I'm still not allowed to back them up.
Even more importantly, I'm not legally allowed to watch my DVDs without shelling at least another $100, after I've already spent a good $60 on a DVD-ROM.
Did you by chance pay attention in ecology class at all?
Population control and carrying capacity and the like always ends up at a happy medium. Hence why it's called "equilibrium". If a population can sustain itself at a certain level, unless it becomes horribly wiped out (Alvaraz! Wooo!) by some means it will always bring itself back to its original state.
Let's say that New Orleans has a carrying capacity of about x people.
Now let's say a hurricane hits it and destroys about 5% of the population. Understand that this is quite the exagerration as to what _would_ happen if a gigantic hurricane hit it.
Within a couple of years, more people will move in to fill up the carrying capacity. Life continues to thrive. Business goes on as usual.
Dum-dee-dum-dum and so forth.
So nothing really happens differently to the population of New Orleans if the hurricane is dissipated before its formation.
Honestly, this is probably one of the most evolutionary things out there. Too bad I still don't think that humans are responsible enough to use it properly.
It's more that they need reasons OTHER than it being homemade in order to buy it... as in "Just because it's homemade, doesn't mean people are going to buy it."
Slashdot Mirror
A little bit of computer engineering here for you...
RISC and CISC are the two main forms of processors out there these days. RISC simply means that an operation instruction is embedded with both the opcode and the operands. A CISC chip is one in which the opcode tends to be the first instruction processed and the operands are the next couple of instructions inputted.
My CMPT 150 course (introduction to Computer Design) was done entirely with a Motorola HC11 Processor emulator, which is a CISC processor.
The advantage to RISC processing is that you can put in "Pipelining", which basically means a buffer for all data throughout the CPU at different levels. Now, this means that a single chunk of opcode/operand takes x clock cycles to process (x being the number of levels you have to your pipeline), but it also allows the processor to do multiple things at once, so that after the first instruction goes through to the last buffer, there's one waiting right after it for the next clock cycle, so a RISC processor can give a new CPU instruction with every single clock cycle.
Confused yet? Let me put it this way...
Pretend that your CPU is a plumbing system, with water streaming through hot and cold pipes to deliver a prefered temperature for the water. Now, the water temperatures are your CPU data (signals, bits, whatever...) and your pipes are your cpu circuitry.
Now, you want to send a big chunk of hot water down to the bottom of your pipe system using a bunch of intermediary valves (or/and/not/xor gates) and a specific pathway (Let's not ask why, let's just assume you want to do that). Now, say right after that you want to send a bunch of cold water down a similar path, but not necessarily the same path, however you will want to use some of the same pipes.
Now, with a CISC processor, what you would do is you would send down the hot water, occasionally storing it in some pipes whilst you send down the cold water, and the sheer design of the system would keep the Hot and Cold waters seperate and you would be able to output your hot water, and then output your cold water, once they have gone through their systematic storages and movements around.
The annoying thing about this is you need a sophisticated CPU to do it. And you need a bunch of clock cycles to open and close the valves and whatnot and finally get your desired output.
Now, a RISC processor does something a bit smarter.... It throws your hot water in (First clock cycle) and just lets the valves automatically trickle to the bottom, and then, on the second clock cycle, send the cold water down. The downside of this is the fact that your single clock cycle is going really slow, which means you have a big lineup of people requesting hot and cold water and they have to wait for it to come out (Lag, for those taking notes in computer-world).
So, we instate pipelining.
Pipelining is a bunch of basins (let's say 4) that appear at different levels of the pipe system.
So, you dump your hot water in the top basin. (First clock cycle)
Then, you unlock the basin and let it dump into the second basin. Once it's done that, once again, seal the basin and dump your cold water in. Now, (second clock cycle) open the plugs for both basins, and your hot water goes down the tubes (magically) before the cold water shows up and you can re-plug your basin. Now you have room for more water in the top basin.
Every move into a new basin is a clock cycle, so It takes 4 clock cycles for it to finally reach the bottom so you can do whatever the hell it is you would want to do with hot or cold water. However, these are relatively quick clock cycles compared to the clock cycle you had in your non-pipelined RISC architecture. And, ultimately, once the first output reaches the bottom, you only have to wait a single clock cycle for the input right after it, rather than waiting another oh-so-many amounts of clock cycles that you would've in your CISC architecture.
Did that make sense to anybody? I hope it did.
The RC1 was actually released last Wednesday, and that would be the day I installed it and got it running.
Fucking beautiful, except Wine keeps crapping out on me (expected considering it's still in bux-fix mode). Seriously, one of the reviews I read about Mandrake 9.0 was that they had evolved to a lot more of an "expensive" or "professional" look. While I'm sitting here hoping that the installer for RC1 is only a temporary thing and that they go back to the format they had for 8.2 and 9.0, I have to say that they actually outdid themselves for this release. Gnome 2.2 is slick, With a really _really_ nice new font set... New GnomeICU (one of the main programs I use) is a lot nicer than previous versions, etc. etc.
The only main problem I have is with the installer, which I'm guessing is because they're not quite done with it yet... It seems to be missing a whole thwack of packages that are on the CDs (Apache and Wine to name a couple) but all in all this distro is very very slick.
So I've pretty much decided now that I'm a bona-fide Mandrake user....
As soon as I garner up enough money I'm going to be sending in for a 9.1 boxed set... I'd honestly hate to see them go under, because as I see it they're offering me a really quality product.
All due respect, but the topic of the article _is_ bands that go gold... I'd consider them to be pretty successful....
The myth got started by N-Sync and the Backstreet boys etc., who would consistently say in all their interviews that they make squat on their albums, and only make money with their touring.
Quick, Lucas... Get all the promising, cool battle scenes of the Clone Wars out of the way so you can make room in the next movie for more SUCK!!!!!!
Good job. Way to go. Keep up the good work. Been enjoying having my finger in my eye for 2 movies thus far, can't wait for it....
And the iBook doesn't play well with a lot of things that are part of the Microsoft world.
I really don't want to turn this into an anti-microsoft rant, but here goes.
The reason that Mac products don't bode well with Microsoft stuff is not because Macs have a problem dealing with Microsoft but because Microsoft has a problem with dealing with everything else.
Let me give you an example:
I recently finished a course in Software Engineering. As many of you who actually work in the field of Software Engineering, it's basically teaching you how to cover your tracks whilst your coding. In essence, building a system for a customer, which requires Status reports, estimations, schedules, meetings, prototyping, etc. etc. etc. etc. Basically, a whole bunch of business stuff.
Now, Our professor wasn't actually a professor but a sessional lecturer who regularily works as a Software Engineer with IBM. Great! No problems there.
The one thing that bugged us was his preoccupation with Microsoft formats. We were told our coding could be done in any format we wanted to... whatever language we wanted... In the interests of our team (consisting of 3 Windows users, 1 Mac user and 1 Linux user) we decided to develop in Java what with it being cross-platform and everything.
The catch was all our documents had to be handed in in Word format.
Now, in most cases, this shouldn't be a problem. The three windows users each had respective versions of Office, the Mac user had Office for Macs, and the Linux user could make do with OpenOffice and just send documents to the others to verify that it looked good on their comps.
Great, wonderful... no problem whatsoever.
So we get going into the term, and eventually the assignments (paper-deliverables in the Word format) get more and more complicated and demand more and more of Word's "features" to get the right look.
About halfway through the semester, the lecturer puts up an example for one of the assignments and says "Go at 'er"
So we download.
4 different versions of Office gave 4 completely different looks of the same document. The Mac version was different than Office2k, which was different from Office 7 (I think) which was different from OfficeXP... And apparently this was written in some version of office. The most annoying thing about it was the fact that nobody got a perfect representation of what the lecturer had originally intended. In fact, the closest to what was intended (and still not perfectly accurate) was the OpenOffice version.
What did we learn from this? Microsoft file formats bite because they don't like communicating with Microsoft products even well. We tried to configure some of our files to look nice despite the Office version, but the only program that would allow anything like that was in fact OpenOffice...
Now I'm not here to sing the praises of OpenOffice at all... The point I'm trying to make is that saying that a product is bad because it can't interface well with Microsoft products is like saying someone is a bad parent because their kid has down's syndrome.
Anyways. I'm sure I'll get a bunch of "Typical slashdotter Anti-Microsoft propoganda" flames, but this isn't based out of my pre-biases with Microsoft (of which I have many). This is very simply an experience I've had that was made ten times more difficult than it had to be thanks to Microsoft.
Yes, but we also didn't get the "Make your own version of the DMCA" memo, not to mention, thanks to last weekends, insanely loud protest across the nation, the "Let's go to war" memo most likely is going to get lost in the mail room....
And I just upgraded to Mandrake 9.1 for a whole (you ready for this?) $0! Of course, you're allowed to supposedly tack on that it cost me $1.51 to do it (A penny for the bandwidth to download it, and $.50 per CD-R).
I'm looking at my panel at the bottom of my GNOME desktop and I have everything shy of a systray in my gui that you could find in a Windows GUI. I have a start menu, a bunch of little app-launchers, a taskbar, a clock and even a multi-desktop organizer (I use all four of them, but it's not for everybody... I have a friend, a Red-Hat User, who sticks to a single desktop... good on him).
Also a little command launcher that I just need to type the command into and it'll run the program.
So far, I've got everything a Microsoft GUI could ask for and two extra features.
Microsoft _does not_ have the best GUI in the market, but the most appreciated in the market. Most people use Microsoft desktops and as such are accomodated to its little quips and quirks (format of the start menu, alt-f4 exits a program, alt puts you in menus, etc. etc. etc. etc.)
But by no means does that mean they're the best.
Except for the fact pronounces it in a way that rhymes with "Me Next!" As in his name... Lee-nus. It _was_ named after him, you know?
Lee-nux.
Which is the original pronounciation, considering you pronounce Linus Torvald's name Lee-nus. It's how he pronounces it...
At a trade show in 1998, then-President Steven A. Ballmer referred to Linux, the upstart computer operating system that rhymes with cynics, as "lie-nucks."
Linus doesn't rhyme with cynics, even when pronounced in the North American version....
Do people even research their articles anymore? Linux has about 3 different pronounciations that I know of, none of which are "wrong".
When do you think that the RIAA is going to clue in that the reason that CD sales have been dropping is because they're producing shit, calling it music and charging 400% markup on it?
Nahhhhhh. Must be piracy.
The difference being that this archiving is _digital_, though...
Didn't you pay attention in that IT class when they were explaining the difference between Digital and Analogue? Digital's main advantage is its reproductability. So if, say, the CIC Lib^H^H^H^H^H^H^HLibrary of Congress were to refresh the information once every five years or something like that, then you've got an indefinate storage period. The problem with it is that it needs constant maintenance. The reason this is better than analogue archives is pretty simple... when analogue decays, it's pretty much never going to achieve its original quality. You can do things to try and make it similar, but you're never going to get it as pure as the original.
With digital archives, you can avoid the decay simply by transferring. This isn't an option really with analogue because once you transfer, you tend to lose quality. But bits are simply 1s or 0s, and digital transfer can be perfect. Throw some md5 checksums in there to make sure that you don't corrupt the data, and boom... you've got perfect digital copy.
... Of Being a Freelance Hacker and Concert Promoter has come true... All I need is a couple of swords and a Pizza Delivery Job and I can make tons just gathering Intel...
Stephenson's a Genius... We're basically looking at the first instance of the CIC Database....
Now we can start looking at the Metaverse and nanodrugs.... I seriously can't wait...
Three Starbucks have just recently set themselves up on the same corner....
ssh -X home.box.address
pyslsk
Error 23 came out, and everybody copied Error 23.
DVDs were encrypted, and it got cracked.
The real issue here is that companies want control over their products after they're sold. That's what the DMCA and EULAs are all about...
BUT THEY CAN'T....
They shut down one p2p system, another follows. They make a new encryption scheme, it gets cracked/leaked. They copywrite something, it eventually gets figured out.
They just want legal leverage so they can sue people by hitting whichever is the biggest thing they can hit (Napster, 2600) and force them into a juicy settlement.
They must have been so incredibly pleased that Napster were such bitches about helping them out from the get-go, because it gave them a really good vantage point to paint them in a bad light and set a nice precedent that would result in p2p system after p2p system being sued successfully... even if it wasn't settled out of court.
I'm very happy to see lawsuits like this one because it puts a check on the companies' money-grubbing ventures. Sure, Napster and Kazaa and AudioGalaxy and 2600 aren't responsible for all the people illegally pirating and sharing mp3s, DivX rips, etc. but at least they have money that RIAA/Microsoft/MPAA can get from them. Which is, ultimately, what they're out there for... I mean, Christ, they're Corporations. Since when are they concerned about personal rights and freedoms over profits? Has any large successful corporation succeeded with that kind of philosophy?
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying I like it. I'm just saying it's true. Selling of Souls = Profits.
Chretien's a bit annoying... although not as much so as Bush... because... well... Chretien was actually elected.
Problem is, while I agree with about half of his politic (thus making him the lesser of a few evils... Yay 5-party system!) I disagree heartily with the other half... but he seems to think "I got elected" equates to "I can't do wrong".
Oh well. I voted for who I voted for (NDP) and my candidate got elected, so I still have at least _some_ belief in democracy.
Yeah... come up here... but start early with writing "favourite" and "colour".
[i]Oh boy, that quote never stops being funny![/i]
Except... oh, i dunno... when it stopped being funny about 2 years ago...
That's like... what... 20 usenet trolls?
Actually, no.
Influenza, much like the common cold, just has a high-mutation rate.
Smallpox was a single species of virus. Influenza is not. Influenza changes and adapts every year.
You remember how if you get chickenpox once, you never get it again? Smallpox is the same. Once a virus is terminated within your system, it has no chance to resurface on the basis that you have antibodies with which to defeat it.
How many flu shots have you had in your life? I personally have had about 10... Which would seem pretty silly to have it done needlessly. If I'd already had my shot, it should be done with, and I shouldn't need any more. But the fact of the matter is that every year new influenza viruses come out which is why, theoretically, we should be getting flu shots every year.
Unfortunately, most of us don't have DVD burners/ A couple teras of hd space to store them on.
Not to mention, I've got a plethora of CDs that don't have this same degrading-problem.
But yet, I'm still not allowed to back them up.
Even more importantly, I'm not legally allowed to watch my DVDs without shelling at least another $100, after I've already spent a good $60 on a DVD-ROM.
Great! They'll get right on that as soon as the Windows port comes out.
*sigh*
Did you by chance pay attention in ecology class at all?
Population control and carrying capacity and the like always ends up at a happy medium. Hence why it's called "equilibrium". If a population can sustain itself at a certain level, unless it becomes horribly wiped out (Alvaraz! Wooo!) by some means it will always bring itself back to its original state.
Let's say that New Orleans has a carrying capacity of about x people.
Now let's say a hurricane hits it and destroys about 5% of the population. Understand that this is quite the exagerration as to what _would_ happen if a gigantic hurricane hit it.
Within a couple of years, more people will move in to fill up the carrying capacity. Life continues to thrive. Business goes on as usual.
Dum-dee-dum-dum and so forth.
So nothing really happens differently to the population of New Orleans if the hurricane is dissipated before its formation.
Honestly, this is probably one of the most evolutionary things out there. Too bad I still don't think that humans are responsible enough to use it properly.
I personally call it the Inter-web, or even more endearingly, Mr. Interweb (whom I play with under the supervision of my close friend, Mr. Google).
It's more that they need reasons OTHER than it being homemade in order to buy it... as in "Just because it's homemade, doesn't mean people are going to buy it."