I mean, damn, why let those stupid things get in the way...
You are right, they are stupid. I agree with the original poster that the electoral votes should be split between the candidates. Some states already have it that way. ___
Let's set up a hypothetical. In my state, with X electoral votes, you can vote for a Democrat, a
Republican, or third party. My state is largely Democratic, so it is practically guaranteed that
the Democrat will take the state. If I vote Democratic, my vote is worth something, in that it is part of the X electoral votes that are cast in favor of the Democratic canditate (usually, there
generally isn't (and shouldn't be) anything binding the electors to vote as the popular vote goes). If it were a direct election, my vote would be worth much less, because it is now only 1 voice
out of however many voted, rather than part of a collective that speaks for me, but also for
everyone else in my state who either voted differently than I did or didn't vote at all.
Now this is a completely stupid argument. Consider a similar situation: you are in a predominantly democratic state, but you are a republican. Your vote is worth nothing. Absolutely nothing. You *know* that no matter how you wote a democratic candidate will win. I suspect that this is the major reason why the voter turnover in the US is one of the lowest in the world.
Texas is a largely republican state, but 30% of the votes went for Al Gore. That is 30% of the votes went to/dev/null. Florida is even worse. 50% of the wotes will be wasted because of this winner-takes-all scheme, no matter who actually wins. Think about it. 50%. Again, I am suggesting that this completely stupid voting system is the primary reason for the extrtemely low voter turnover in the US -- there is just no point voting when you know the outcome in advance.
However, it can be improved significantly even without getting rid of your precious electoral college. The number of electoral votes a candidate gets from each state should be proportional to the popular vote the candidate received in that state. I belive this is called the split electoral vote (?), and several states have it already.
But anyway, given that, I think there is much more of an incentive to campaign in the smaller "swing states" under the current system, since, as I showed above, the votes there are potentially worth so much more.
uh-huh. When was the last time a candidate campaigned in Rhode Island/Vermont/Alaska/Hawaii/Kentucki/insert small state here? ___
Apt should also imitate package management routines like Encap and GNU STOW, pm's that essentially isolate packages, installing programs in their own directories and ensuring cleaner and easier removal. With those killer features, Apt would indeed be the Linux standard, regardless of the distribution your using.
You completely misunderstand the purpose of the package management system. Any such system, whether rpm or deb, makes hacks like stow unnecessary. ___
Does NT have some kind of su interface that lets you strip security tokens?
No, and that's the big problem. If you want to make even a tiny change to configuration you need to close all the apps you are running, log out, log in as administrator, do the tiny change, logout, log in as yourself,... This is a major PITA, and that's why everyone just adds their primary login to the administrator group. This is equivalent to running everything as root. Also, many applications expect to have write permissions to some global directories, forcing you to run them as administrator. This is primarily because of the single-user mentality. ___
The audit right was reserved by Microsoft in the damn EULA's for the software that VA beach installed. VA Beach was contractually bound to let M$ perform the audit. Their only defense would be that the audit right was an adhesionary term (not a bad argument against a monopolist.)
Ah, but they can only do it in Virginia and Maryland (?), the two states that passed UCITA. All companies outside these two states can just say piss off to M$ -- this clause is unenforcible.
Will you please explain how to install over ftp? I just installed Debian, and the install disk gave me no such option. I was quite disappointed.
Huh? This is basically a RTFM question. Basically you need to just download a floppy image from ftp.debian.org, write it to a floppy, boot, select network installation in the menu when it asks for it.
I'd really like to see or create a linux distro that makes the current source available via CVSup and has the ability to do "make world" to update the entire OS from source code.
Debain has apt which IMHO is better than downloading and compiling the source. You just say apt-get upgrade to upgrade the entire system. It downloads binary packages, which is good cause you don't need to wait for it to compile. (Especially on my 486 that I use as a firewall...). Installing packages is also easy -- apt-get install. You can also download source and compile it yourself (apt-get source).
I guess cvsup && make world would be the equivalent of apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. make install in ports would equivalent to apt-get install. But one thing is not clear to me -- if you compile everything from source does that mean you need to keep source for every application on your machine? That would be a lot of space.
___
I like FreeBSD for its stability under load, its/usr/ports thingy, iostat (which is a nifty tool for profiling a heavily-loaded server), and its install-via-ftp (through proxy, through firewall, etc) capabilities. Those just rock
dude, have you ever tried Debian? it has apt-get which automates installing & upgrading packages, and it can be installed over ftp easily (that's how I installed it last time).
Dual-channel RDRAM delivers 3 times the memory bandwidth that PC2100 (266MHz) DDR-SDRAM delivers on the AMD760 chipset.
BS. dual channel PC800 RDRAM has 2x 1600MB/s badwidth whereas DDR has 2166MB/s. Because of this the rest of the argument is also BS.
RDRAM is at least 3x more expensive than SDRAM (depending on where you buy it). And it will not get any cheaper. On the other hand DDR costs only marginally more than SDR, and once they ramp up the production it will be same price. The marginal performance improvements RDRAM provides are not worth 3x the price. That's why even Intel is ditching Rambus and goind with DDR. That's also why you'll never see RDRAM based chipset from AMD.
___
Intel will market the higher Mhz, but hopefully people will see thru it.
Well, that's exactly what Intel's hoping will not happen. Sadnly, due to the entrenched belief that higher MHz = faster and general ignorance of the cosumers, this is not a bad bet. You mean 1.2GHz is faster than 1.5GHz? No way! ___
Many, many, things use micro-kernels. Or something close to it. WinNT for example.
NT is not a microkernel. You are half-right though. Once upon the time it *was* a microkernel. A long time ago in a galaxy far away... oh wait, nevermind.
They make great UIs everyone likes and can understand.
Let's not make these stupid generalizations. I don't like it. And I do find it confusing at times. Example: those hiding menu options in windows 2000. Oh, and UI keeps changing with every release of windows while adding nothing to usability. I find that annoying too. In fact ever since they "integrated" IE with windows the usability has gone down. Who the hell invented this "view as webpage" crap where half the screen space is wasted on those icons?
KDE and Gnome has great userfaces as well, but haven't brought something completly new and cool up that we haven't seen before
that's $50 Canadian. (about $32.5 US). Also, note that this is (apparently) the maximum cable & DSL companies can charge for residencial access. I am paying $40 per month (that's $26 US).
In short: if I were buying a computer today, I'd go for an Athlon (or dual-PentiumIII). However, I bet 6 months from now, I'd probably be looking at the Pentium4.
Hate to disappoint you, but in 6 months the current P4 will be obsolete and replaced with a completely different board and core. Just go check out Intel road map. This P4 is a dead end. On the other hand, dual AMD boards will be available in 2 months... with DDR memory too. ___
Let's see. My MP3s still don't encode fast enough, my movies still don't render fast enough, and I want my 3D modeler to run in real time dammit! Nope, still not satiated on the power front.
That's *not* something an average home computer user would do.
As for Quake, most computers can't run Quake at 1600x1200 at the highest quality settings over 60fps
And this has *nothing* to do with the CPU. At anything above 800x600 the performance is limited by the video card, so your 1.5GHz CPU will not help you at all.
The thing about P4 is that it uses 2 RDRAM channels, that's 2 x 1.6GB/s (a la i840). Not only does that double the bandwidth but also reduces the latency too. Too bad that each RDRAM channel can only have 2 RIMM slots (oops!). So initially you use 2 RIMMs (one in each channel), and later on you can upgrade *once* and use up the other 2. Not to mention the price of this Rambus crap is and always will be astronomical. Even if it improves the overall performace by a whopping 10%, is it worth 3x price of SDRAM? I think not!
That's all well and good, but that can be achieved *without* XML just as easily as it can with. I see no inherit advantage in using XML, except the gain in "buzzword compliance".
Bingo! What all those XML-loving types don't seem to understand is that XML is just a glorified text file. You are right on the money in saying that a common config file format is what's needed, not "buzzword compliance" as you nicely put it. However, I don't think this can be achieved not only because different projects have to accept it but simply because it may not be practical to do so. Is is possible to make fstab and named.conf use the same format? Maybe. Would that make it more convenient to configure them? Doubt it.
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You are right, they are stupid. I agree with the original poster that the electoral votes should be split between the candidates. Some states already have it that way.
___
Now this is a completely stupid argument. Consider a similar situation: you are in a predominantly democratic state, but you are a republican. Your vote is worth nothing. Absolutely nothing. You *know* that no matter how you wote a democratic candidate will win. I suspect that this is the major reason why the voter turnover in the US is one of the lowest in the world. /dev/null. Florida is even worse. 50% of the wotes will be wasted because of this winner-takes-all scheme, no matter who actually wins. Think about it. 50%. Again, I am suggesting that this completely stupid voting system is the primary reason for the extrtemely low voter turnover in the US -- there is just no point voting when you know the outcome in advance.
Texas is a largely republican state, but 30% of the votes went for Al Gore. That is 30% of the votes went to
However, it can be improved significantly even without getting rid of your precious electoral college. The number of electoral votes a candidate gets from each state should be proportional to the popular vote the candidate received in that state. I belive this is called the split electoral vote (?), and several states have it already.
But anyway, given that, I think there is much more of an incentive to campaign in the smaller "swing states" under the current system, since, as I showed above, the votes there are potentially worth so much more.
uh-huh. When was the last time a candidate campaigned in Rhode Island/Vermont/Alaska/Hawaii/Kentucki/insert small state here?
___
Uhhm, hello? That is what a package manager does! That's the whole point of even having a package manager.
___
You completely misunderstand the purpose of the package management system. Any such system, whether rpm or deb, makes hacks like stow unnecessary.
___
No, and that's the big problem. If you want to make even a tiny change to configuration you need to close all the apps you are running, log out, log in as administrator, do the tiny change, logout, log in as yourself,... This is a major PITA, and that's why everyone just adds their primary login to the administrator group. This is equivalent to running everything as root. Also, many applications expect to have write permissions to some global directories, forcing you to run them as administrator. This is primarily because of the single-user mentality.
___
Ah, but they can only do it in Virginia and Maryland (?), the two states that passed UCITA. All companies outside these two states can just say piss off to M$ -- this clause is unenforcible.
___
Yeah, but I want Thunderbird on my desktop!
___
Huh? This is basically a RTFM question. Basically you need to just download a floppy image from ftp.debian.org, write it to a floppy, boot, select network installation in the menu when it asks for it.
I'd really like to see or create a linux distro that makes the current source available via CVSup and has the ability to do "make world" to update the entire OS from source code.
Debain has apt which IMHO is better than downloading and compiling the source. You just say apt-get upgrade to upgrade the entire system. It downloads binary packages, which is good cause you don't need to wait for it to compile. (Especially on my 486 that I use as a firewall...). Installing packages is also easy -- apt-get install. You can also download source and compile it yourself (apt-get source). I guess cvsup && make world would be the equivalent of apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. make install in ports would equivalent to apt-get install. But one thing is not clear to me -- if you compile everything from source does that mean you need to keep source for every application on your machine? That would be a lot of space.
___
dude, have you ever tried Debian? it has apt-get which automates installing & upgrading packages, and it can be installed over ftp easily (that's how I installed it last time).
___
Is this a deliberate lie or just ignorance?
___
Intel paid Carmack to include SSE optimizations in Quake 3. That delayed the lauch of the game, but I guess the money was good enough.
___
BS. dual channel PC800 RDRAM has 2x 1600MB/s badwidth whereas DDR has 2166MB/s. Because of this the rest of the argument is also BS.
RDRAM is at least 3x more expensive than SDRAM (depending on where you buy it). And it will not get any cheaper. On the other hand DDR costs only marginally more than SDR, and once they ramp up the production it will be same price. The marginal performance improvements RDRAM provides are not worth 3x the price. That's why even Intel is ditching Rambus and goind with DDR. That's also why you'll never see RDRAM based chipset from AMD.
___
Well, that's exactly what Intel's hoping will not happen. Sadnly, due to the entrenched belief that higher MHz = faster and general ignorance of the cosumers, this is not a bad bet. You mean 1.2GHz is faster than 1.5GHz? No way!
___
what a pile of crap! Did you just pull it out of your ass? Next time think before you troll.
___
NT is not a microkernel. You are half-right though. Once upon the time it *was* a microkernel. A long time ago in a galaxy far away... oh wait, nevermind.
___
Let's not make these stupid generalizations. I don't like it. And I do find it confusing at times. Example: those hiding menu options in windows 2000. Oh, and UI keeps changing with every release of windows while adding nothing to usability. I find that annoying too. In fact ever since they "integrated" IE with windows the usability has gone down. Who the hell invented this "view as webpage" crap where half the screen space is wasted on those icons?
KDE and Gnome has great userfaces as well, but haven't brought something completly new and cool up that we haven't seen before
Has windows?
___
that's $50 Canadian. (about $32.5 US). Also, note that this is (apparently) the maximum cable & DSL companies can charge for residencial access. I am paying $40 per month (that's $26 US).
___
Hate to disappoint you, but in 6 months the current P4 will be obsolete and replaced with a completely different board and core. Just go check out Intel road map. This P4 is a dead end. On the other hand, dual AMD boards will be available in 2 months... with DDR memory too.
___
That's *not* something an average home computer user would do.
As for Quake, most computers can't run Quake at 1600x1200 at the highest quality settings over 60fps
And this has *nothing* to do with the CPU. At anything above 800x600 the performance is limited by the video card, so your 1.5GHz CPU will not help you at all.
___
P3 has SSE instructions (yet another MMX-type hype). Oh yeah, and the infamous identification number.
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Wrong. This is the first new core since Pentium Pro, which is how many years old? hmmm....
The P2 first shipped at 120Mhz
Wrong again. P2 first shipped at 266MHz.
Meanwhile, I'm still hoping for my 1024-way UltraSparc 3 box...
I'm pretty sure SGI will sell you a 1024-way box. Not UltraSparc though. MIPS.
___
The thing about P4 is that it uses 2 RDRAM channels, that's 2 x 1.6GB/s (a la i840). Not only does that double the bandwidth but also reduces the latency too. Too bad that each RDRAM channel can only have 2 RIMM slots (oops!). So initially you use 2 RIMMs (one in each channel), and later on you can upgrade *once* and use up the other 2. Not to mention the price of this Rambus crap is and always will be astronomical. Even if it improves the overall performace by a whopping 10%, is it worth 3x price of SDRAM? I think not!
___
What's that? This is the first time I hear about it. Is it even worse than UCITA?
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You mean recompile the kernel?
___
Bingo! What all those XML-loving types don't seem to understand is that XML is just a glorified text file. You are right on the money in saying that a common config file format is what's needed, not "buzzword compliance" as you nicely put it. However, I don't think this can be achieved not only because different projects have to accept it but simply because it may not be practical to do so. Is is possible to make fstab and named.conf use the same format? Maybe. Would that make it more convenient to configure them? Doubt it.
___