From the standpoint of personal liberty, having cameras at every intersection everywhere is much better than having only a few cameras. At least, then, citizens know--univerally--what to expect and can decide accordingly. Of course, no cameras is better, but half-ass solutions like we usually get from law enforcement do much more harm than good.
Not only are there too many laws, but a person has to get a doctorate degree to even begin to understand those laws.
...the only thing that makes it tolerable is that the laws are not much enforced.
I have heard that it is illegal in North Carolina for a man and a woman to have sex in any other postition other than the classic "missonary" style. This is almost as bad as the sodomy laws in Texas. Why these laws were ever written in the first place is completely baffling.
A quick google search returned this. Why people laugh instead of cry out in anger when they read these things shows that the voting public has much to learn.
The Sun is a friend of the government. It is being used to test the waters.
Well, in one sense, this is a working aspect of democracy. In another aspect, it is also a sign that democracy can end up as a mediocracy (making up words is fun, too).
The only way that liberty can be preserved in a democracy is for the citizens to actively challenge any proposal that increases the size of the government (traffic monitoring, government-managed health care, total information awareness, etc.). The proponents of such proposals should be required to put forth terribly convincing arguments, meaning that many many more proposals fail than get adopted. In a healthy democracy I would think the success rate for bills in Congress should be a very small fraction, perhaps 0.5% to 1%--even this may be too high.
Well OBD-III will incorporate a satellite transmitter in every car...if your car goes out of spec, the government will know who you are...and have the authority to revoke your registration until you get it fixed.
If there are United States citizens actually advocating a system like this, then they need to step aside, take a deep breath, and study the history of the USA and a bit of literature to put their zealotry into perspective. People who want systems like this are the real criminals towards humanity. While they are non-violent, their subtle and back-door methods make the "terrorists" look like kittens by comparison.
Most of us have been in the situation where someone is a technically qualified driver - stops when they're supposed to, never exceeds the speed limit, etc. - but they can be among the more dangerous people on the road...
Also, what about those times when a person has to accelerate to avoid getting merged in to by some dolt? Will the traffic monitoring system defend the driver's decision to avoid an accident, or will the ticket simply get mailed leaving the driver to tell his story in front of a judge?
Just wait until someone decides to take a cross-country trip. For every sign hidden behind a tree and every road with worn-out stripes, a ticket gets put in the mail. Imagine the fun and giggles when a person gets home after two weeks with fifteen traffic tickets in the mailbox. It almost sounds like this ticketing system is really a tax collection system in disguise.
Didn't level 7 have the burning desert where the sodomites were damned to wallow?
This means motherboard sockets will have to be renamed from "male" and "female" to "significant other" and "soul mate". I think this will be a bit confusing.
The new version of Word also creates a subspace resonance that envelops the user in a soul-snatching energy field. The new marketing slogan for Microsoft was also revealed today: "Those who try it will buy it and use it for the rest of their life. Bwahahaha!!!" Given that 95% of the world population was captured within one week of the release of Word 2005, the few remaining people who realized what was happenging were quickly isolated and crushed. How did Microsoft find these rebels, you ask? By finding all the houses without a Word 2005 RFID tag within them (the requirement of this Microsoft tag will become an international law during an emergency session of the World Congress to meet this week).
Of course, the preseident of the latter of the two companies was at a diamond conference and was told by a DeBeers fellow that what he was doign was a good way to get a bullet in the head!
After learning about the diamond trade, I even told my wife that she will never get another diamond (one rock is enough). Diamonds are way overvalued both financially and preferentially. The wedding tradition of diamonds should be questioned more widely and other symbols (for those who seem to need symbols to find meaning in their lives) should be used.
as their students scoff at the idea of code optimization...yet again.
One thing I find interesting is that even after CPUs have gone from 30MHz to 3000MHz (two orders of magnitude faster) people still complain about slow software. Yet, ironically, a computer from the early 1980s would boot in a second from ROM. Granted modern computers do way more stuff (e.g., the Solaris run control directories are chock full of fluff by default...easily remedied, though).
Regardless of code bloat, however, it seems that 300MHz CPUs (both x86 and RISC ones) were a breaking point for practical speed. The fasted computer I have ever owned is just a 300MHz CPU, but it will still run OpenOffice.org and Mozilla comfortably (thanks, in part, to an Ultra320 SCSI drive...).
Expect a strong government push to make the move, possibly including taxes or outright bans on the old bulbs.
Given that 100 new powerplants could cost 100s of billions of dollars, I wouldn't complain at all about a total migration to LED and fluorescent bulbs. Of course, some incandescent bulbs need to be allowed for people that absolutely need them (I don't know why, but my ignorance shouldn't put a stop to it).
Well, yeah, because you know we all make so much money...
I am literally a millionaire and own loads of property in New York. However, I simply don't know why the bank teller keeps saying, "Sir, Parker Brothers is not a part of the U.S. Treasury, and we cannot exchange this money for you." This liquidity problem is really keeping me from living the lifestyle I worked so hard for. The world is so unfair.
Not really. It's more a matter of them experimenting in multiple things at the same time.
Also, I believe I read something that Mad Hatter is more of a software stack that can be deployed on either Linux or Solaris, so the choice of OS kernel is not terribly significant to the end users. The thing people should care about is that Mad Hatter is potentially a successful open source based software bundle that will be sold at half of the cost of a Microsoft bundle to corporate customers. In environments where the software is pretty controlled and costs are critical to the bottom line, such as call centers, Mad Hatter could be wildly successful, especially with a large corporation like Sun standing behind it.
I think we should be wishing Sun the best of luck in this endeavor, as they are one of the few companies that can give a big middle finger salute to Microsoft without fear of retribution. The significance of this should not be underestimated nor understated, because it really is a rare position in today's software industry.
Considering that GNOME is terribly complex relative to CDE, it will probably be a while before GNOME-derived desktops will see CDEs maturity and stability.
In spite of Motif's spartan ways, CDE gets the job done. It excels as a workstation UI that doesn't have distracting system tray animations, card game integrations, and crash-a-day supplements.
Look at the changes between Windows 3.11 and Windows 95, and between Windows 9x/2k and Windows XP, and look at the screenshots from Longhorn to see how different that will be from XP.
Consider the fact that moving from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 was comparable to a 1983 Chevette vs. a 2003 Impala (I won't go as far as Toyota, now). Also, we can't miss the rediculus promise-the-moon marketing campaign behind Windows 95, either. I still remember the "plays all DOS programs seamlessly" lie. Since Windows 95, the changes are comparatively trivial, with my biggest gripe being how things keep changing location in the UI.
Imagine how much efficiency could be gained from teaching at least some basic regexp skills to secretaries, just to mention one example.
Even more can be gained by teaching Microsoft-educated programmers! I witnessed one such lost soul spend a week writing a program to parse a text file, when, literally, a three-line sed script would have done the same task. Even when informed of this fact, this programmer continued down their first course, due mostly, I think, from NIH syndrome (that UNIX guy tells me how do do my job?).
Not always. I find my current desktop that has Sun CDE semantics, GNOME GTK semantics, and KDE semantics all in one place quite, um, interesting. By far the worst offender in the bunch is KDE's default single-click-to-action. Moving between CDE Motif file selection dialogs and KDE Qt file selection dialogs is a bit frustrating at times.
On the other hand, I wouldn't give up my current setup for the world (100% Microsoft free, if I shut down my SunPCi environment). Freedom is simply more important than drool-along conformity at times (well, most of the time).
What about the fact that many things in Windows XP are simply in a different location relative to Windows 95. The first time I used Windows XP, finding just the networking configuration took some trial and error. The main aspect of "usability" in Windows is the ability to poke around until you find what you are looking for. Even then, I have better luck in UNIX (man pages, find, and grep are amazing).
Apple and Sun seem to have two versions of their OSs, server and non-server.
Well, along this line Sun has only one "version" of Solaris that is ported to a number of architectures. Currently supported: sun4m (more recent 32-bit SPARCstations), sun4u (64-bit from Ultra 1 to Fire 15K), and x86 (for what that's worth). They do, however, release progressively improving versions of Solaris quarterly (Solaris 9 08/2003 is clearly an evolution of Solaris 9 12/2002). Additionally, the SunOS kernel can be patched to more recent versions. There's no reason why I can't have last week's SunOS kernel running on my Solaris 9 12/2002 distribution after patching. So, Sun's complete matrix of OS versions isn't trivial, but it is logical and understandable and, most importantly, transparent to those who care to look.
It can be argued that Microsoft's scheme isnt' very different from Sun's, where Microsoft uses "Service Packs" rather than quarterly releases. However, Microsoft will always be lacking in transparency and objectivity. Also, Sun doesn't shove the latest and greatest down people's throats. For example, Sun still ships Solaris 8 on new servers, because it is mature, utterly stable, and is a known quantity for customers. Solaris 9, even though it is over a year old is still viewed by some as a maturing product. At least at this level, Sun is actually responding to their customers, which is encouraging.
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Hey, they should be at every crossroad.
From the standpoint of personal liberty, having cameras at every intersection everywhere is much better than having only a few cameras. At least, then, citizens know--univerally--what to expect and can decide accordingly. Of course, no cameras is better, but half-ass solutions like we usually get from law enforcement do much more harm than good.
I have concluded we have too many laws...
...the only thing that makes it tolerable is that the laws are not much enforced.
Not only are there too many laws, but a person has to get a doctorate degree to even begin to understand those laws.
I have heard that it is illegal in North Carolina for a man and a woman to have sex in any other postition other than the classic "missonary" style. This is almost as bad as the sodomy laws in Texas. Why these laws were ever written in the first place is completely baffling.
A quick google search returned this. Why people laugh instead of cry out in anger when they read these things shows that the voting public has much to learn.
The Sun is a friend of the government. It is being used to test the waters.
Well, in one sense, this is a working aspect of democracy. In another aspect, it is also a sign that democracy can end up as a mediocracy (making up words is fun, too).
The only way that liberty can be preserved in a democracy is for the citizens to actively challenge any proposal that increases the size of the government (traffic monitoring, government-managed health care, total information awareness, etc.). The proponents of such proposals should be required to put forth terribly convincing arguments, meaning that many many more proposals fail than get adopted. In a healthy democracy I would think the success rate for bills in Congress should be a very small fraction, perhaps 0.5% to 1%--even this may be too high.
blacks, homosexuals, and conservative Republicans
Don't forget women, casual drug users, teenagers, the poor, small businesses, and many environmentalists.
Well OBD-III will incorporate a satellite transmitter in every car...if your car goes out of spec, the government will know who you are...and have the authority to revoke your registration until you get it fixed.
If there are United States citizens actually advocating a system like this, then they need to step aside, take a deep breath, and study the history of the USA and a bit of literature to put their zealotry into perspective. People who want systems like this are the real criminals towards humanity. While they are non-violent, their subtle and back-door methods make the "terrorists" look like kittens by comparison.
Everyone speeds.
Is smoking marijuana more dangerous than speeding? It's interesting how unbalanced our laws really are.
Most of us have been in the situation where someone is a technically qualified driver - stops when they're supposed to, never exceeds the speed limit, etc. - but they can be among the more dangerous people on the road...
Also, what about those times when a person has to accelerate to avoid getting merged in to by some dolt? Will the traffic monitoring system defend the driver's decision to avoid an accident, or will the ticket simply get mailed leaving the driver to tell his story in front of a judge?
This plan looks like a perpetual drivers' test.
Just wait until someone decides to take a cross-country trip. For every sign hidden behind a tree and every road with worn-out stripes, a ticket gets put in the mail. Imagine the fun and giggles when a person gets home after two weeks with fifteen traffic tickets in the mailbox. It almost sounds like this ticketing system is really a tax collection system in disguise.
Every freakin slashdot article that mentions diamonds in any context has these jokes. That's what the "redundant" tag is for. :)
Actually, the "redundant" tag is more appropiate for jokes about earrings used in a high-availability processing application.
Didn't level 7 have the burning desert where the sodomites were damned to wallow?
This means motherboard sockets will have to be renamed from "male" and "female" to "significant other" and "soul mate". I think this will be a bit confusing.
I'm betting we'll see 1Ghz memory(not effective via DDR or QDR, I'm talking actual bus frequency) within 1 year from this day.
This is fine as long as salespeople can still say "quad pumped." If you take that away from them, they will be crushed.
The new version of Word also creates a subspace resonance that envelops the user in a soul-snatching energy field. The new marketing slogan for Microsoft was also revealed today: "Those who try it will buy it and use it for the rest of their life. Bwahahaha!!!" Given that 95% of the world population was captured within one week of the release of Word 2005, the few remaining people who realized what was happenging were quickly isolated and crushed. How did Microsoft find these rebels, you ask? By finding all the houses without a Word 2005 RFID tag within them (the requirement of this Microsoft tag will become an international law during an emergency session of the World Congress to meet this week).
Of course, the preseident of the latter of the two companies was at a diamond conference and was told by a DeBeers fellow that what he was doign was a good way to get a bullet in the head!
After learning about the diamond trade, I even told my wife that she will never get another diamond (one rock is enough). Diamonds are way overvalued both financially and preferentially. The wedding tradition of diamonds should be questioned more widely and other symbols (for those who seem to need symbols to find meaning in their lives) should be used.
as their students scoff at the idea of code optimization...yet again.
One thing I find interesting is that even after CPUs have gone from 30MHz to 3000MHz (two orders of magnitude faster) people still complain about slow software. Yet, ironically, a computer from the early 1980s would boot in a second from ROM. Granted modern computers do way more stuff (e.g., the Solaris run control directories are chock full of fluff by default...easily remedied, though).
Regardless of code bloat, however, it seems that 300MHz CPUs (both x86 and RISC ones) were a breaking point for practical speed. The fasted computer I have ever owned is just a 300MHz CPU, but it will still run OpenOffice.org and Mozilla comfortably (thanks, in part, to an Ultra320 SCSI drive...).
I want silent water-cooled underwear to protect my high-IQ payload.
Expect a strong government push to make the move, possibly including taxes or outright bans on the old bulbs.
Given that 100 new powerplants could cost 100s of billions of dollars, I wouldn't complain at all about a total migration to LED and fluorescent bulbs. Of course, some incandescent bulbs need to be allowed for people that absolutely need them (I don't know why, but my ignorance shouldn't put a stop to it).
Well, yeah, because you know we all make so much money...
I am literally a millionaire and own loads of property in New York. However, I simply don't know why the bank teller keeps saying, "Sir, Parker Brothers is not a part of the U.S. Treasury, and we cannot exchange this money for you." This liquidity problem is really keeping me from living the lifestyle I worked so hard for. The world is so unfair.
Sun certainly has a trust problem to deal with.
Not really. It's more a matter of them experimenting in multiple things at the same time.
Also, I believe I read something that Mad Hatter is more of a software stack that can be deployed on either Linux or Solaris, so the choice of OS kernel is not terribly significant to the end users. The thing people should care about is that Mad Hatter is potentially a successful open source based software bundle that will be sold at half of the cost of a Microsoft bundle to corporate customers. In environments where the software is pretty controlled and costs are critical to the bottom line, such as call centers, Mad Hatter could be wildly successful, especially with a large corporation like Sun standing behind it.
I think we should be wishing Sun the best of luck in this endeavor, as they are one of the few companies that can give a big middle finger salute to Microsoft without fear of retribution. The significance of this should not be underestimated nor understated, because it really is a rare position in today's software industry.
actually looks like a step back from CDE.
Considering that GNOME is terribly complex relative to CDE, it will probably be a while before GNOME-derived desktops will see CDEs maturity and stability.
In spite of Motif's spartan ways, CDE gets the job done. It excels as a workstation UI that doesn't have distracting system tray animations, card game integrations, and crash-a-day supplements.
Look at the changes between Windows 3.11 and Windows 95, and between Windows 9x/2k and Windows XP, and look at the screenshots from Longhorn to see how different that will be from XP.
Consider the fact that moving from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 was comparable to a 1983 Chevette vs. a 2003 Impala (I won't go as far as Toyota, now). Also, we can't miss the rediculus promise-the-moon marketing campaign behind Windows 95, either. I still remember the "plays all DOS programs seamlessly" lie. Since Windows 95, the changes are comparatively trivial, with my biggest gripe being how things keep changing location in the UI.
Um, no. In fact, Windows XP sold more than Windows 95 did at its launch.
This is because the IT industry is probably ten times bigger now than it was in 1995. More computers == more sales.
Imagine how much efficiency could be gained from teaching at least some basic regexp skills to secretaries, just to mention one example.
Even more can be gained by teaching Microsoft-educated programmers! I witnessed one such lost soul spend a week writing a program to parse a text file, when, literally, a three-line sed script would have done the same task. Even when informed of this fact, this programmer continued down their first course, due mostly, I think, from NIH syndrome (that UNIX guy tells me how do do my job?).
It's all about duplication. Period.
Not always. I find my current desktop that has Sun CDE semantics, GNOME GTK semantics, and KDE semantics all in one place quite, um, interesting. By far the worst offender in the bunch is KDE's default single-click-to-action. Moving between CDE Motif file selection dialogs and KDE Qt file selection dialogs is a bit frustrating at times.
On the other hand, I wouldn't give up my current setup for the world (100% Microsoft free, if I shut down my SunPCi environment). Freedom is simply more important than drool-along conformity at times (well, most of the time).
XP usability can be identical to Windows 95.
What about the fact that many things in Windows XP are simply in a different location relative to Windows 95. The first time I used Windows XP, finding just the networking configuration took some trial and error. The main aspect of "usability" in Windows is the ability to poke around until you find what you are looking for. Even then, I have better luck in UNIX (man pages, find, and grep are amazing).
Apple and Sun seem to have two versions of their OSs, server and non-server.
Well, along this line Sun has only one "version" of Solaris that is ported to a number of architectures. Currently supported: sun4m (more recent 32-bit SPARCstations), sun4u (64-bit from Ultra 1 to Fire 15K), and x86 (for what that's worth). They do, however, release progressively improving versions of Solaris quarterly (Solaris 9 08/2003 is clearly an evolution of Solaris 9 12/2002). Additionally, the SunOS kernel can be patched to more recent versions. There's no reason why I can't have last week's SunOS kernel running on my Solaris 9 12/2002 distribution after patching. So, Sun's complete matrix of OS versions isn't trivial, but it is logical and understandable and, most importantly, transparent to those who care to look.
It can be argued that Microsoft's scheme isnt' very different from Sun's, where Microsoft uses "Service Packs" rather than quarterly releases. However, Microsoft will always be lacking in transparency and objectivity. Also, Sun doesn't shove the latest and greatest down people's throats. For example, Sun still ships Solaris 8 on new servers, because it is mature, utterly stable, and is a known quantity for customers. Solaris 9, even though it is over a year old is still viewed by some as a maturing product. At least at this level, Sun is actually responding to their customers, which is encouraging.