Why do you think that Andrea did not make an honest effort to help fix RVM bugs?
Obviously the only authoritative answer would have to come from Andrea, but my guess can mostly be expressed in one word: ego. He thought his fundamental ideas were better than Rik's.
Hmmm, improperly worded question. What evidence can you present that supports your conclusion that Andrea did not expend effort in debugging Rik's VM component?
No matter how long it might have taken to fix RVM in 2.4, that's no excuse for 2.5 not being open. All of the flip-flopping should have taken place in 2.5, and if AVM turned out to be the "winner" in that environment it could have been back-ported to 2.4 if necessary.
But 2.4 would still be "broken" until that event occured. And don't you think it would have been more difficult to determine the more stable VM with unstable code being tested at the same time? I understand that you think having an embarassing demonstration of 2.4, the "stable" kernel, crashing with IIS chugging along is preferable to the same event occuring after a bad engineering practice. But to users and the magazine writers, it looks like a failure either way. I know you think its better to lose "by the book", but real world managers would grasp at the straw.
I don't believe this decision "calls the whole open-source development model into question". Its always been understood that the linux kernel is Torvald's benevolent dictatorship, and people were welcome to hit the highway. That has always been a structural consideration of O-S development. The only thing this decision does is put Linus's reputation as a project manager into question. "Stands on principle" and "good precedents" sound rather ideological and they don't benefit you if you're "dead".
What would have been preferable, IMO, would have been if more resources had been devoted to fixing and tuning the VM we already had (RVM, for good or ill). Linus could have put his foot down. He could have said "There will be no 2.4 VM except for RVM. The price for admission to the next round of VM redesign is that you help us fix RVM." People - notably Andrea - would have listened, and contributed more constructively.
I am not sure if I am incorrectly grasping what you are trying to say. Is this a variation of "Linus should have stuck to RVM, and people would have "pounded" it into stable operation?" What the hell were developers doing before 2.4.10?
Lets say developers are correct in the opinion that RVM is complex. Sometimes the "ideal" implementation can be so technically challenging that it takes a longer time to make it function properly. (And I recall the nightmare of Solaris v2.1 to v2.5 when I think this.) That may have been the limiting factor in "resources". Linus dictating the adoption of a (perceived) "not-ready-for-primetime" VM would not have corrected the situation if this were the case. Why do you think that Andrea did not make an honest effort to help fix RVM bugs?
I think (and I can be dead wrong here) Andrea (as did at least Linus) took a good look at Rik's RVM, and saw 2.5 being started a year from now because of time needed to fix a "complex" RVM. He decided to rewrite a dumber version of RVM that was more likely to work bugless. I suspect it was an over-the-top kludge, and Andrea will not be pushing AVM for 2.6 when RVM gets cleaned up in 2.5.
First off, are good reviews from places like ZDnet the goal for Linux development?
ZDnet is a metaphor for the technical print media industry. (Obviously, ZDnet can go f**k themselves, good or bad.) What I don't want to see is any media entity running a web load testing suite and watch a Linux 2.4 server meltdown, while IIS runs like a pig without crashing.
Second, do you think it's better for the stable 2.4 kernel to be subtly, unpredictably unreliable? Better the devil you know, and all that.
Except if more (talented) developers can understand the unknown (AVM) devil, but not the better known devil.
Most importantly, what if Linus's gamble - and that's what it was - hadn't succeeded? What would the ZDnet reviews be like then?
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Was Linus better off standing pat? I agree, I hope Linus does not make a habit of playing chicken.
Its not "uninformed garbage", its quite insightful. You're confusing your OS textbook with not-widely-known real world practices.
You also completely ignore a negative with VM; the increased latency in kernel operations (because its screwing around with VM operations).
If companies are pumping away money in hardware resources to prevent cycles lost in paging, there is no need for a sophisticated VM. The VM becomes CPU baggage. The practice of hardware overkill is sometimes referred to as "running in RAM".
One still needs swap to help keep their butts afloat, in case they guess wrong and have too high a request threshold. Swapping will SIGNIFICANTLY slow down the machine (compared to VM), and that is OKAY. It means you need more hardware.
I'm not willing to abandon a Linux VM, because the old swapping scheme requires sharper humans in specialized, tuned purposes. One is better off having a VM in a general purpose environment. You should not be so rude when disagreeing with ideas; it can betray your own ignorance.
I am also not convinced that there are significant gains in a non-VM kernel, not having any numbers in front of me. Perhaps what the original author should do is develop an efficient, primitive memory manager to patch into the 2.4 kernel. And then we could run some benchmarks on it.
Hey, Linus f***ed up with accepting the original RVM for 2.4. And now he was between a rock and a hard place. "Marketing" considerations meant that 2.4 needs to be "non-experimental"; that the client base could go to the 2.4 version, and use it with little concern that their server would crash. That would not have been the case with RVM versions up the last month.
So what was Linus to do? Keep dragging out 2.4 until RVM could fulfill minimum "marketing" requirements of stability? How long is that going to take? Do you want to wait and let M$ marketers talk about how amateurish Linux was; that professionals did not use Linux's current "stable" release, but a version that hasn't improved in 3 years?
So Linus decides to commit A REALLY BAD PRACTICE, and changes to a less tested VM over the initial 2.4 VM. Its another f**kup if AVM is buggier than RVM. (But Linus had reason to believe it wouldn't be so, with relatively limited testing.)
Is it still an f***kup even if AVM turns out to be more stable than RVM? If so, are you saying its preferable for new Linux development to be shutdown for another 6 months to a year? And Zdnet to opine on how the "stable" 2.4 kernel is DEMONSTRABLY unreliable? I'll take a "manager" that makes mistakes and makes decisions based on product survival over a manager that religiously follows an engineering practices manual.
What is wrong with the MSNBC reporter??? Why didn't they ask the most obvious question of all???
WHY is AltaVista behind in refreshing their link databases?
This is AV's lifeblood. I can make assumptions about AV having enough financial and infrastructural problems to delay upgrading its value content. But you always get the statement from the official press flak. (If only to gleen truth from spin. Sometimes they even tell the truth.)
These are the journalists you're counting on for information about products, and accurate information concerning anthrax, terrorism, Al Queda, and our government's policies.
Question: Why can I not play networked Quake III in color on a PalmOS PDA? (or process 120 page documents in Word or fry up a side order of hash browns with my Handspring?)
Answer: That is not what a Portable Digital Assistant is for.
Its why Microsoft cannot take a significant chunk of the PDA market. Yes, I can ooh and ahh at the little color videos in the Ipaq. But it is useless as a PROFESSIONAL tool if I have to hunt down a charger after being disconnected for 8 hours. People use their PDAs to keep track of tasks (in rapidly changing order), appointments, and have an address/phone book handy. Those are critical functions. The PDA is not worth crap if I have to worry about whether the battery will hold out.
I don't see what you are bitching about network support. Palm VII and Handspring's with wireless network modules (or even phone module) can do networking. Filesystems, microdrives, blah, blah, blah... Its not what people buy PDAs for.
What you fail to realize is that the PalmOS was designed IN CONJUNCTION with the hardware to be efficient. Until the hardware becomes capable of supporting more (new) features and still be battery efficient, there's no point in changing the OS.
I agree that I would like to see Palm or Handspring move to better hardware. I agree that once the hardware allows for added capabilities, that the PalmOS will need to be revamped or scrapped. I wish Handspring was more financially viable so they would be able to make that jump independent of Palm. But a phone/PDA is not such a critical hardware change that they are crippled with PalmOS. To the contrary, they would be crippled if they went PocketPC or some other feature riddled OS.
(And as a sidenote, I wish more Palm software developers would use Forth for their coding. Its going to make porting less painful when eventually the day to port arrives...)
You're absolutely correct that 3-4 mediocrities does not equate to 1 superlative developer.
But you don't need a world class theoretician to do plumbing. What monster, paradigm-breaking development effort is HP trying to put out that needs a world class UNIX guru?
More important, is it fiscally worth it to a financially challenged company like HP to keep an expensive campus away from their major centers?
I share your reservations about H1-B's, but not about their quality. From what source are you basing these "project failures"? Wouldn't the reason for the failure of these projects more likely be the brain-dead management? They would be more likely to have design flaws, inadequate composition and management of teams, and disrupt a project with "new" bodies that need time to ramp up. Blame management, not the H1-Bs.
Yes, I am sure that when we would have flown over Bagdad dropping bombs from our
P-52s that their anti-arcraft artillary wouldn't have shot most (if not all) of the aircraft
out of the sky. Sure, I mean... those night time images of anti-aircraft missiles and gunfire
shooting into the night air at F-117A stealth fighters using laser-guided bombs and
nightvision and hitting NOTHING BUT AIR would have been the same result with a
bunch of P-52s... yeah... okay.
I think you need to flash your brain's firmware.
If you're going to make insulting comments about firmware, you should at least get the aircraft right; its B-52, not P-52. And using the B-52s would have achieved similar results, just more collateral damage. Only SAMs, in THEORY, could touch a B-52, but they have to be specific to high-altitude bombers, and could be taken out with anti-radiation attacks by strike aircraft.
The US did not take out the Iraqi army with technology. They took it out with a superior strategy against a strategically inept foe. The US destroyed the Iraqi C&C and intelligence functions, and then used a simple encirclement in force which would not have been possible without destruction of C&C. They could have accomplished similar results with WWII technology.
That's what you said, but that is not what is fact. Due process does not require a "speedy" trial or to be released after X days. Due process means that any legal process upon an individual must follow a proscribed (legal) procedure, that procedure cannot keep an individual in jail (indefinitely) without legal recourse, and it must be applied the same way to all persons.
To give one semi-famous example, Kevin Mitnick, a US citizen, was in jail for over four years without trial. Its egregious, but there were no sucessful legal motions demonstrating a denial of constitutional rights by the federal government.
In the case of aliens, just because Ashcroft SAYS the INS can keep the aliens in lockup indefinitely, does not mean they can actually do it. The courts determine this, not Ashcroft. The SCOTUS legal issue was that the plaintiffs were being left in lockup, and were denied legal resolution of their cases. The US government ALWAYS had the ability to detain a non-citizen for an interminable period of time during national emergencies and when they could convince a court of law that the non-citizen presented a threat to national security.
So, what should we be learning here?
1) Non-citizens enjoy THE right to legal due process as citizens, BUT not ALL rights (and privileges) as citizens.
2) If the federal government "detains" a legal alien in jail for 50 years, and can convince the court that the alien is credible threat to the security of US public for every legal challenge, there is no violation of constitutional rights to the prisoner. If the gov't can't convince the judge the detainee presents a credible threat, then they either must charge the detainee with a crime, or let him go free. The prisoner has due process rights; he doesn't have the right to be accused of a crime and proceed with a legal resolution as a citizen would.
3) John Ashcroft cannot suspend the US Constitution. Sakusha cannot prove that constitutional rights are suspended because an alien can be put into lockup indefinitely.
> or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
All that means is that non-citizens enjoy the due process of law, just as the citizens do. It does not mean the non-citizens has the same privileges and immunities as citizen. SCOTUS means you can't deny an alien person legal due process. It does not mean the US is prevented from booting their butts out of the country because we don't like their opinions or don't like his cultural origins.
Its not about dying for crypto, its about sacrificing one's life to protect a unique system of government whose principles recognise the inalienable rights of citizens.
Its not just dying to protect the country from external threats, its about jeopardizing one's well-being to defend the country from the abrogation of its inalienable rights by the government.
Its the same personal integrity that got three civil rights workers murdered in the South. Though they may have had second thoughts if they had foreknowledge of their deaths. But certainly the civil rights activists knew the risk when the marched in Selma.
More likely, this struggle could resemble the McCarthy hearings. Where people could finger their coworkers as criminals (communists) or suffer the social and economic consequences.
No, constitutional rights are only guaranteed to US citizens. There are "rights" implied to people other than US citizens, but those are merely conventions agreed to in international human rights conferences.
Thank you for the response. It puts the issue in a more meaningful light.
There may still be hope for these gentlemen. Perhaps they can apply for a research grant to develop the software (for scientific infrastructure development).
As for DCC, I'm satified to leave it to private enterprise. I still see an opportunity for these guys to convince these financially challenged companies to pool their resources into a consortium. Everyone wants a competitive advantage, but there is no point in reinventing the wheel X times.
Despite the name, they have active forums concerning cable equipment & service.
From the posts here, it sounds like its either a weak signal or too much line noise. You could try using a signal amplifier on the central cable line. Then try a cable signal filter on the cable modem line.
After that, its the cable company's job to fix their lines.
These experts
were asked to focus on four New York landmarks: Times
Square, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Grand Central Terminal
and the Statue of Liberty.
No argument that Grand Central is a busy subway terminal (that will have more traffic as Penn Station renovates its terminal), but I would think that Penn Station would be the busier terminal. Not just does it host traffic for Amtrak (national rail), but its also the only hub in Manhattan for the Long Island Railroad (and a hub for NJ Transit).
Also ran is the Empire State Building, which is now our tallest building. Then there's Yankee Stadium and the Meadowlands. Further back is the Citibank Tower, which houses the 1st/2nd largest monetary conglomerate, Citicorp. And note that Times Square has additional security considerations, such as its bus terminal (popular spot for bombs).
No, from the text, it looks like Congress approved a vague "Police Action" which authorizes the President to blow up whatever he thinks was involved in the terrorist attacks.
Declaration of War needs the words "Declaration of War" and a Nation(s) to direct hostilities towards.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a temporary safety deserve neither liberty
nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
The keyword there is 'essential liberty'. Which liberties are essential? life? speech? movement? privacy? How much privacy is essential? How much of the freedom to travel is essential? I dunno.
I'd say any liberty enumerated in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are essential. While privacy is a good thing, it never was explicitly delineated in the Constitution. The freedom to travel can be crucial. How could a citizen verify there was a concentration camp or war crime atrocity without a firsthand look? Or a mere participation in a political gathering? Remember, travel in the U.S.S.R. was heavily restricted and catalogued, and it was not to defend the motherland from Western suicide bombers.
By my guesses, the FBI is pretty much wasting their time...
No, they are not. If the FBI was installing Carnivore to nail Osama Bin Laden's terrorist cells, then yes, they are wasting their time.
The FBI is using "anti-terrorism" fears to justify installing Carnivore. Then the FBI will be able to snoop into anyone's Internet communications. Oh yes, there will be many benefits from this, like nailing mobsters and pederasts. Or convincing Senator X they need to bump up the FBI budget, or some embarrassing information may be revealed. Or muscling/terminating potential embarrassments to the agency, after learning it through newspaper/ACLU communications...
Best of all, no need to provide a pathetic justification to the Courts that they need to monitor newpaper/ACLU/Congress/Court transmissions. What a timesaver.
Do a little research into the sacrifices that our grandparents and parents had to make during World War II to preserve your peace, freedom and liberty. Speech restrictions? How about food restrictions and travel restrictions. Note that after the war, civil liberties came back.
So lets see if I got you right: voluntarily giving up one's constitutional rights is required to WIN A WAR? So if the US didn't put those American citizens into concentration camps, we would not have won WW2? (Even though the Japanese American population on Hawaii was untouched?) What WAR was being fought during the McCarthy Senate witchhunt?
How many more jet liners have to smash into skyscrapers before people think that there other priorities right now?
What the hell are you doing reading Slashdot while Osama Bin Laden is running around?!?!? Where are YOUR priorities?!?!!? (We fight for the values that make America great.)
Unless we act, this WILL happen again, and next time it might be an even bigger scale.
Sonny, we are acting to make sure that Gov't doesn't f*ck with the Constitution using the excuse "WE'RE AT WAR". (Learn from history.) Preventing the country from becoming a police state will not prevent the US from bombing the heck out of whatever presents a threat to the nation.
What potential revenue stream is VA sacrificing by laying off open-source developers of a UNIX related X graphics library? Is VA in the 3-D graphics business?
Even from a Linux user standpoint, what Linux application will suffer from a lack of Mesa/DRI drivers?
Hey, its sad when someone's ("Holy Grail") quest is thwarted. But these developers will find jobs; just not doing the quest they dedicated themselves.
So VA pays a few less salaries, and hopefully those measures allow it to be financially viable enough to keep Slashdot and SourceForge. One can worry about VA making the cut, but its problems are not going to be solved by spending money on Mesa/DRI development.
In fact, I still don't know what "critical" need Mesa/DRI provides. Linux will not become mainstream because of games; it still has problems providing a user-friendly GUI that matches most features found on commercial boxes, like windoze & Mac. And that's what drives away Mom, Pop, & Mr. Corporate honcho.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you think that Andrea did not make an honest effort to help fix RVM bugs?
Obviously the only authoritative answer would have to come from Andrea, but my guess can mostly be expressed in one word: ego. He thought his fundamental ideas were better than Rik's.
Hmmm, improperly worded question. What evidence can you present that supports your conclusion that Andrea did not expend effort in debugging Rik's VM component?
No matter how long it might have taken to fix RVM in 2.4, that's no excuse for 2.5 not being open. All of the flip-flopping should have taken place in 2.5, and if AVM turned out to be the "winner" in that environment it could have been back-ported to 2.4 if necessary.
But 2.4 would still be "broken" until that event occured. And don't you think it would have been more difficult to determine the more stable VM with unstable code being tested at the same time? I understand that you think having an embarassing demonstration of 2.4, the "stable" kernel, crashing with IIS chugging along is preferable to the same event occuring after a bad engineering practice. But to users and the magazine writers, it looks like a failure either way. I know you think its better to lose "by the book", but real world managers would grasp at the straw.
I don't believe this decision "calls the whole open-source development model into question". Its always been understood that the linux kernel is Torvald's benevolent dictatorship, and people were welcome to hit the highway. That has always been a structural consideration of O-S development. The only thing this decision does is put Linus's reputation as a project manager into question. "Stands on principle" and "good precedents" sound rather ideological and they don't benefit you if you're "dead".
What would have been preferable, IMO, would have been if more resources had been devoted to fixing and tuning the VM we already had (RVM, for good or ill). Linus could have put his foot down. He could have said "There will be no 2.4 VM except for RVM. The price for admission to the next round of VM redesign is that you help us fix RVM." People - notably Andrea - would have listened, and contributed more constructively.
I am not sure if I am incorrectly grasping what you are trying to say. Is this a variation of "Linus should have stuck to RVM, and people would have "pounded" it into stable operation?" What the hell were developers doing before 2.4.10?
Lets say developers are correct in the opinion that RVM is complex. Sometimes the "ideal" implementation can be so technically challenging that it takes a longer time to make it function properly. (And I recall the nightmare of Solaris v2.1 to v2.5 when I think this.) That may have been the limiting factor in "resources". Linus dictating the adoption of a (perceived) "not-ready-for-primetime" VM would not have corrected the situation if this were the case. Why do you think that Andrea did not make an honest effort to help fix RVM bugs?
I think (and I can be dead wrong here) Andrea (as did at least Linus) took a good look at Rik's RVM, and saw 2.5 being started a year from now because of time needed to fix a "complex" RVM. He decided to rewrite a dumber version of RVM that was more likely to work bugless. I suspect it was an over-the-top kludge, and Andrea will not be pushing AVM for 2.6 when RVM gets cleaned up in 2.5.
First off, are good reviews from places like ZDnet the goal for Linux development?
ZDnet is a metaphor for the technical print media industry. (Obviously, ZDnet can go f**k themselves, good or bad.) What I don't want to see is any media entity running a web load testing suite and watch a Linux 2.4 server meltdown, while IIS runs like a pig without crashing.
Second, do you think it's better for the stable 2.4 kernel to be subtly, unpredictably unreliable? Better the devil you know, and all that.
Except if more (talented) developers can understand the unknown (AVM) devil, but not the better known devil.
Most importantly, what if Linus's gamble - and that's what it was - hadn't succeeded? What would the ZDnet reviews be like then?
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Was Linus better off standing pat? I agree, I hope Linus does not make a habit of playing chicken.
Sorry, my bad. I believe this is the offending statement:
Swapping will SIGNIFICANTLY slow down the machine (compared to VM), and that is OKAY. It means you need more hardware.
Change to "Swapping operations will SIGNIFICANTLY slow down the machine (compared to a demand-paging VM management scheme), and that is OKAY."
The context was about paging VM management schemes vs (older or alternative) application/process-swap memory management schemes.
No wonder why employers only seem to have jobs in the city...
Its not "uninformed garbage", its quite insightful. You're confusing your OS textbook with not-widely-known real world practices.
You also completely ignore a negative with VM; the increased latency in kernel operations (because its screwing around with VM operations).
If companies are pumping away money in hardware resources to prevent cycles lost in paging, there is no need for a sophisticated VM. The VM becomes CPU baggage. The practice of hardware overkill is sometimes referred to as "running in RAM".
One still needs swap to help keep their butts afloat, in case they guess wrong and have too high a request threshold. Swapping will SIGNIFICANTLY slow down the machine (compared to VM), and that is OKAY. It means you need more hardware.
I'm not willing to abandon a Linux VM, because the old swapping scheme requires sharper humans in specialized, tuned purposes. One is better off having a VM in a general purpose environment. You should not be so rude when disagreeing with ideas; it can betray your own ignorance.
I am also not convinced that there are significant gains in a non-VM kernel, not having any numbers in front of me. Perhaps what the original author should do is develop an efficient, primitive memory manager to patch into the 2.4 kernel. And then we could run some benchmarks on it.
Hey, Linus f***ed up with accepting the original RVM for 2.4. And now he was between a rock and a hard place. "Marketing" considerations meant that 2.4 needs to be "non-experimental"; that the client base could go to the 2.4 version, and use it with little concern that their server would crash. That would not have been the case with RVM versions up the last month.
So what was Linus to do? Keep dragging out 2.4 until RVM could fulfill minimum "marketing" requirements of stability? How long is that going to take? Do you want to wait and let M$ marketers talk about how amateurish Linux was; that professionals did not use Linux's current "stable" release, but a version that hasn't improved in 3 years?
So Linus decides to commit A REALLY BAD PRACTICE, and changes to a less tested VM over the initial 2.4 VM. Its another f**kup if AVM is buggier than RVM. (But Linus had reason to believe it wouldn't be so, with relatively limited testing.)
Is it still an f***kup even if AVM turns out to be more stable than RVM? If so, are you saying its preferable for new Linux development to be shutdown for another 6 months to a year? And Zdnet to opine on how the "stable" 2.4 kernel is DEMONSTRABLY unreliable? I'll take a "manager" that makes mistakes and makes decisions based on product survival over a manager that religiously follows an engineering practices manual.
From the "Beyond Hope" Hacker Conference:
(streaming real audio)
Social Engineering
It was quite entertaining as well as educational.
Another Soc Eng panel from the "Hope 2000" Conference:
Social Engineering Panel
What is wrong with the MSNBC reporter??? Why didn't they ask the most obvious question of all???
WHY is AltaVista behind in refreshing their link databases?
This is AV's lifeblood. I can make assumptions about AV having enough financial and infrastructural problems to delay upgrading its value content. But you always get the statement from the official press flak. (If only to gleen truth from spin. Sometimes they even tell the truth.)
These are the journalists you're counting on for information about products, and accurate information concerning anthrax, terrorism, Al Queda, and our government's policies.
Question: Why can I not play networked Quake III in color on a PalmOS PDA? (or process 120 page documents in Word or fry up a side order of hash browns with my Handspring?)
Answer: That is not what a Portable Digital Assistant is for.
Its why Microsoft cannot take a significant chunk of the PDA market. Yes, I can ooh and ahh at the little color videos in the Ipaq. But it is useless as a PROFESSIONAL tool if I have to hunt down a charger after being disconnected for 8 hours. People use their PDAs to keep track of tasks (in rapidly changing order), appointments, and have an address/phone book handy. Those are critical functions. The PDA is not worth crap if I have to worry about whether the battery will hold out.
I don't see what you are bitching about network support. Palm VII and Handspring's with wireless network modules (or even phone module) can do networking. Filesystems, microdrives, blah, blah, blah... Its not what people buy PDAs for.
What you fail to realize is that the PalmOS was designed IN CONJUNCTION with the hardware to be efficient. Until the hardware becomes capable of supporting more (new) features and still be battery efficient, there's no point in changing the OS.
I agree that I would like to see Palm or Handspring move to better hardware. I agree that once the hardware allows for added capabilities, that the PalmOS will need to be revamped or scrapped. I wish Handspring was more financially viable so they would be able to make that jump independent of Palm. But a phone/PDA is not such a critical hardware change that they are crippled with PalmOS. To the contrary, they would be crippled if they went PocketPC or some other feature riddled OS.
(And as a sidenote, I wish more Palm software developers would use Forth for their coding. Its going to make porting less painful when eventually the day to port arrives...)
Wow, I disagree with both of you.
You're absolutely correct that 3-4 mediocrities does not equate to 1 superlative developer.
But you don't need a world class theoretician to do plumbing. What monster, paradigm-breaking development effort is HP trying to put out that needs a world class UNIX guru?
More important, is it fiscally worth it to a financially challenged company like HP to keep an expensive campus away from their major centers?
I share your reservations about H1-B's, but not about their quality. From what source are you basing these "project failures"? Wouldn't the reason for the failure of these projects more likely be the brain-dead management? They would be more likely to have design flaws, inadequate composition and management of teams, and disrupt a project with "new" bodies that need time to ramp up. Blame management, not the H1-Bs.
Yes, I am sure that when we would have flown over Bagdad dropping bombs from our
P-52s that their anti-arcraft artillary wouldn't have shot most (if not all) of the aircraft
out of the sky. Sure, I mean... those night time images of anti-aircraft missiles and gunfire
shooting into the night air at F-117A stealth fighters using laser-guided bombs and
nightvision and hitting NOTHING BUT AIR would have been the same result with a
bunch of P-52s... yeah... okay.
I think you need to flash your brain's firmware.
If you're going to make insulting comments about firmware, you should at least get the aircraft right; its B-52, not P-52. And using the B-52s would have achieved similar results, just more collateral damage. Only SAMs, in THEORY, could touch a B-52, but they have to be specific to high-altitude bombers, and could be taken out with anti-radiation attacks by strike aircraft.
The US did not take out the Iraqi army with technology. They took it out with a superior strategy against a strategically inept foe. The US destroyed the Iraqi C&C and intelligence functions, and then used a simple encirclement in force which would not have been possible without destruction of C&C. They could have accomplished similar results with WWII technology.
That's what you said, but that is not what is fact. Due process does not require a "speedy" trial or to be released after X days. Due process means that any legal process upon an individual must follow a proscribed (legal) procedure, that procedure cannot keep an individual in jail (indefinitely) without legal recourse, and it must be applied the same way to all persons.
To give one semi-famous example, Kevin Mitnick, a US citizen, was in jail for over four years without trial. Its egregious, but there were no sucessful legal motions demonstrating a denial of constitutional rights by the federal government.
In the case of aliens, just because Ashcroft SAYS the INS can keep the aliens in lockup indefinitely, does not mean they can actually do it. The courts determine this, not Ashcroft. The SCOTUS legal issue was that the plaintiffs were being left in lockup, and were denied legal resolution of their cases. The US government ALWAYS had the ability to detain a non-citizen for an interminable period of time during national emergencies and when they could convince a court of law that the non-citizen presented a threat to national security.
So, what should we be learning here?
1) Non-citizens enjoy THE right to legal due process as citizens, BUT not ALL rights (and privileges) as citizens.
2) If the federal government "detains" a legal alien in jail for 50 years, and can convince the court that the alien is credible threat to the security of US public for every legal challenge, there is no violation of constitutional rights to the prisoner. If the gov't can't convince the judge the detainee presents a credible threat, then they either must charge the detainee with a crime, or let him go free. The prisoner has due process rights; he doesn't have the right to be accused of a crime and proceed with a legal resolution as a citizen would.
3) John Ashcroft cannot suspend the US Constitution. Sakusha cannot prove that constitutional rights are suspended because an alien can be put into lockup indefinitely.
> or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
All that means is that non-citizens enjoy the due process of law, just as the citizens do. It does not mean the non-citizens has the same privileges and immunities as citizen. SCOTUS means you can't deny an alien person legal due process. It does not mean the US is prevented from booting their butts out of the country because we don't like their opinions or don't like his cultural origins.
Its not about dying for crypto, its about sacrificing one's life to protect a unique system of government whose principles recognise the inalienable rights of citizens.
Its not just dying to protect the country from external threats, its about jeopardizing one's well-being to defend the country from the abrogation of its inalienable rights by the government.
Its the same personal integrity that got three civil rights workers murdered in the South. Though they may have had second thoughts if they had foreknowledge of their deaths. But certainly the civil rights activists knew the risk when the marched in Selma.
More likely, this struggle could resemble the McCarthy hearings. Where people could finger their coworkers as criminals (communists) or suffer the social and economic consequences.
No, constitutional rights are only guaranteed to US citizens. There are "rights" implied to people other than US citizens, but those are merely conventions agreed to in international human rights conferences.
You'd also be safer if police agencies could just throw terrorist suspects into jail indefinitely without a trial.
(or would you?)
Thank you for the response. It puts the issue in a more meaningful light.
There may still be hope for these gentlemen. Perhaps they can apply for a research grant to develop the software (for scientific infrastructure development).
As for DCC, I'm satified to leave it to private enterprise. I still see an opportunity for these guys to convince these financially challenged companies to pool their resources into a consortium. Everyone wants a competitive advantage, but there is no point in reinventing the wheel X times.
Check out http://DSLreports.com
Despite the name, they have active forums concerning cable equipment & service.
From the posts here, it sounds like its either a weak signal or too much line noise. You could try using a signal amplifier on the central cable line. Then try a cable signal filter on the cable modem line.
After that, its the cable company's job to fix their lines.
These experts were asked to focus on four New York landmarks: Times Square, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Grand Central Terminal and the Statue of Liberty.
No argument that Grand Central is a busy subway terminal (that will have more traffic as Penn Station renovates its terminal), but I would think that Penn Station would be the busier terminal. Not just does it host traffic for Amtrak (national rail), but its also the only hub in Manhattan for the Long Island Railroad (and a hub for NJ Transit).
Also ran is the Empire State Building, which is now our tallest building. Then there's Yankee Stadium and the Meadowlands. Further back is the Citibank Tower, which houses the 1st/2nd largest monetary conglomerate, Citicorp. And note that Times Square has additional security considerations, such as its bus terminal (popular spot for bombs).
No, from the text, it looks like Congress approved a vague "Police Action" which authorizes the President to blow up whatever he thinks was involved in the terrorist attacks.
Declaration of War needs the words "Declaration of War" and a Nation(s) to direct hostilities towards.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
The keyword there is 'essential liberty'. Which liberties are essential? life? speech? movement? privacy? How much privacy is essential? How much of the freedom to travel is essential? I dunno.
I'd say any liberty enumerated in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are essential. While privacy is a good thing, it never was explicitly delineated in the Constitution. The freedom to travel can be crucial. How could a citizen verify there was a concentration camp or war crime atrocity without a firsthand look? Or a mere participation in a political gathering? Remember, travel in the U.S.S.R. was heavily restricted and catalogued, and it was not to defend the motherland from Western suicide bombers.
No, they are not. If the FBI was installing Carnivore to nail Osama Bin Laden's terrorist cells, then yes, they are wasting their time.
The FBI is using "anti-terrorism" fears to justify installing Carnivore. Then the FBI will be able to snoop into anyone's Internet communications. Oh yes, there will be many benefits from this, like nailing mobsters and pederasts. Or convincing Senator X they need to bump up the FBI budget, or some embarrassing information may be revealed. Or muscling/terminating potential embarrassments to the agency, after learning it through newspaper/ACLU communications...
Best of all, no need to provide a pathetic justification to the Courts that they need to monitor newpaper/ACLU/Congress/Court transmissions. What a timesaver.
So lets see if I got you right: voluntarily giving up one's constitutional rights is required to WIN A WAR? So if the US didn't put those American citizens into concentration camps, we would not have won WW2? (Even though the Japanese American population on Hawaii was untouched?) What WAR was being fought during the McCarthy Senate witchhunt?
How many more jet liners have to smash into skyscrapers before people think that there other priorities right now?What the hell are you doing reading Slashdot while Osama Bin Laden is running around?!?!? Where are YOUR priorities?!?!!? (We fight for the values that make America great.)
Unless we act, this WILL happen again, and next time it might be an even bigger scale.Sonny, we are acting to make sure that Gov't doesn't f*ck with the Constitution using the excuse "WE'RE AT WAR". (Learn from history.) Preventing the country from becoming a police state will not prevent the US from bombing the heck out of whatever presents a threat to the nation.
What potential revenue stream is VA sacrificing by laying off open-source developers of a UNIX related X graphics library? Is VA in the 3-D graphics business?
Even from a Linux user standpoint, what Linux application will suffer from a lack of Mesa/DRI drivers?
Hey, its sad when someone's ("Holy Grail") quest is thwarted. But these developers will find jobs; just not doing the quest they dedicated themselves.
So VA pays a few less salaries, and hopefully those measures allow it to be financially viable enough to keep Slashdot and SourceForge. One can worry about VA making the cut, but its problems are not going to be solved by spending money on Mesa/DRI development.
In fact, I still don't know what "critical" need Mesa/DRI provides. Linux will not become mainstream because of games; it still has problems providing a user-friendly GUI that matches most features found on commercial boxes, like windoze & Mac. And that's what drives away Mom, Pop, & Mr. Corporate honcho.