First off, when you donate money, you get to specify where it goes. There should be no problem with the money feeding red tape, because it can be directly specified that it go only to purchasing supplies and resources for the school.
Or why not use the money to set up a voucher/scholarship system? That way you give disadvantaged kids a chance while at the same time setting up competition.
Note that I didn't limit the donations to public institutions.
That said, many of the problems are about supplies. I'm talking about the run-down schools with out-of-date materials. Institutions where school pride is a foreign concept. Placing the blame entirely on unions is, I think, a cop-out. The problems run much deeper than that. Teacher's strikes are an indication of poor working conditions, lack of pride in the workplace and destructive arguments rather than constructive discussions.
Why don't we make school fun again? Let's improve our facilities so teachers enjoy their work! If teachers are in a workplace of which they are proud to be a part, I think you'll see these sorts of problems go away.
Yes, wages will always differ. But right now, the poorer poeple in this country have almost no chance of improving their status. I'm not saying it can't be done. But the barriers in place are large. I'm advocating removing those barriers. It will probably take a lot more than money.
Right now there is a critical shortage of tech. workers. Why can't we provide quality education and fill this need? The jobs are there. We just need to create the skills.
As for the minimum-wage jobs, wages might just go up if more people can get a quality education and find more lucrative employment. We're already seeing a shortage of store clerks, etc. due to the booming economy.
I got much more out of college than engineering and science. I probably got more out of my philosophy and music classes than I did out of most of the science or math courses.
I developed leadership abilities in various clubs and organizations. I was able to make use of various skills in these same organizations. -- skills that I treasure every day and provide an escape from my regular work.
Call me a bleeding-heart Liberal-Arts sympathizer if you want to. I'll take the compliment
You make a very good point. A world-available high-quality education could do wonders. It also won't work over the web.
Where are most of the world's population going to get internet access? Sure, the country might provide publicly-accessible terminals if there weren't more pressing needs such as feeding the populace. Unfortunately, the people that could benefit the most from on-line education are exactly those who can't make use of it.
Perhaps the money could be used to improve the infrastructures of developing nations. Building roads goes a long way.
I don't know about that. In Detroit, the school board was essentially disbanded and re-formed in an attempt to kick-start a sagging school system, so things can be done. And if not, send the money to private schools, whether directly or in the form of vouchers or scholarships.
In any event, I don't think much experimentation is required. Resources are required. Let's fill our poor school libraries with books and magazines. Let's improve the facilities by making much-needed repairs and expansions. Let's hire more teachers to reduce class size and provide more individual attention. It's not rocket science.
I like the idea of philanthropy targeted toward education. But I don't think college is the right place to send it.
Wouldn't it be much more useful to donate this kind of money to our poorer public and private elementary and secondary schools? These schools have much more influence on the development of society as a whole than universities do. They also happen to be the institutions that need resources the most. Imagine what a new computer lab could do for some of these schools. Imagine up-to-date textbooks!
There is an enormous wealth gap in this country. Education is the way to eradicate it. Lets focus on making high quality education available to everyone at all levels.
Personally, I think the P3 is an over-bloated lump of silicon. I feel that it's time that it got divided into a network of high-speed RISC chips that -pretended- to be a single CISC chip. That way, you'd get the speed of RISC, with the power of CISC.
I don't quite follow you here. The PPro and up are O-O-O superscalar machines. In essence, they are a network of high-speed RISC chips. They just have a common fetch and retirement engine. Intel needs to maintain the backward compatibility. It's their bread and butter.
You also don't need QUITE so many duplicate instructions. Last time I counted, I found over 100 ways to program a jump instruction. That is STUPID! Most RISC chips don't even have 100 instructions in total! It makes no sense to scan through that many instructions, when you could start by determining it's a jump, and figuring things out from there. (This would involve an instruction tree, whereby related instructions are in related parts of the tree. By following such an approach, by the time you're far enough in to need to do a linear search, you already know what you're doing and what is involved.)
In a sense, the x86 does have an "instruction tree" if I understand you correctly. Most of those 100 jump instructions are simply prefixes or various forms (register or memory) of operands slapped on a basic jump opcode. The newer x86-type processors (and I'm talking about K6, if not earlier) put predecode bits in the ICache so it's not so expensive to decode instructions. Wilammette will use a trace cache. Even if you don't believe the utility of such a structure, it will cache predecoded instructions.
Typically, a benchtest program will fit entirely in the memory cache, and will probably mostly reside in the processor cache. I don't care if you're using X11R6.3 or Windows 2000, there is no way that a REAL application, or even a REAL window manager would be crammable into that kind of space. If your processor, on a benchtest, has no wait states, but is burning 90% of its time in idle cycles for real applications, then the benchtest is useless.
You're arguing for system benchmarks. If you're designing a processor, why should the disk be a concern? The processor designer is concerned with the next level of memory below the core. That would be main memory. So the architect designs a memory system capable of feeding the processor from main memory (caches and the like). A benchmark that stresses the speed of my virtual memory system would be more approprite for operating system evaluation, not processor evaluation.
Spec95 was notorious for residing entirely within the machine's caches, which is clearly not so good a thing. The jury is still out on Spec2000.
Unfortunately, there is no genuinely useful measure of performance for a processor, and all the benchtests that exist are catastrophically flawed. However, this is getting off-track. To get back to the main point, if you are going to use/need a single, simple benchmark, the MIPS rating is far, far superior to the clock speed, because at least it measures how much the chip is doing in that time. A 1 GHz chip could only be doing 1 instruction per second - what use is that to anyone?
No, there is a single benchmark appropriate for measuring processor performance: time. If processor A executes my task faster than processor B, processor A has better performance, regardless of all the architectural issues.
It takes years to design a processor. Rest assured that Intel has been working on Willamette, Coppermine, etc. for a long, long time. The x86 isn't dead yet. Intel has tried to kill it plenty of times before.
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A New DeCSS
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Can we sue over the removal of our (court-upheld) fair-use rights?
Yes, the DMCA, UCITA, etc. limit such rights. But that's how laws get overturned. Remember CDA?
The problem, as always, is money. Hats of to mp3.com in this area. Are RedHat, VA, et. al. going to get involved? After all, the DVD CCA directly affects their bottom line.
Actually, something like this can be quite useful.
We're developing a research C compiler here and we use lots of programs for benchmarking and regression testing. Doom is one. One of the guys here hacked up a text mode Doom so it could more easily integrate with our regression testing environment (it's much easier to diff textual output:)).
So no, actually this isn't always a waste of time. At least not if your building your own computer or something.:)
Well said! Too often people discount "organized" religion without actually finding out what it is about. Remember, there exist more organized Christian religions than the so-called "Christian right" (referring to those who clearly do not practice the ways of love and inclusion that Christ taught).
I believe religion has no place in politics, education or technology.
This makes the assumption that the religious or spiritual part of a person's life is (or can be) compartmentalized. If so, it would be a hollow and useless spirituality! My walk with Christ permeates my entire life, from the way I read the newspapers (yes, I handle dead trees) to the way I design software, from the time I awake to the time I go to sleep. A person's faith influences their fundamental view on reality. It's impossible for me to take my faith out of any involvement I have in politics, education, and technology!
Now this is just the clearest, simplest expression of faith as a life journey that I have ever read! Bravo!
The proposed strategy for the RTLinux patent sounds like a good idea at first. But I fear people are too quick to embrace the idea of Free Software "Defensive Patents."
The whole idea of a defensive patent is flawed from the start. While it may be an effective deterrent against patent lawsuits, it sets up the patent system as a legal battleground, which was not at all the original intent of the patent system.
The patent system exists to open up ideas which would otherwise be guarded as trade secrets. One poster referred to IBM's plethora of patents. It is true that Big Blue has done an amazing amount of excellent research. The patent system worked in that IBM was able to open up descriptions of their pioneering work without hurting their competitive advantage.
But does it not bother anyone that companies try to patent everything imaginable for defensive purposes? Essentially, what they are doing is short-circuiting the patent system. Assuming I hold strong defensive patents, I can now go look up patents for some technology you developed that I am interested in selling. I can go right out and make a competing product and not worry about getting sued because I have a book of patents I can swing over your head. Rather than protecting the hard work you put into your research, the patent system has allowed me to profit from it.
I am not saying the patent system needs to be abolished. I am not even saying software patents are evil. Some are quite legitimate. What I am saying (which I think most people agree with) is that the patent system needs a better system to research prior art and decide when a patent application is not of acceptable quality.
In the research community we use peer review to decide when something is worth publishing. Can some similar system be used for patents? Clearly there would have to be some sort of NDA agreement to sign if you are a reviewer, but perhaps that's not too onerous if you are compensated in some way.
I know that this next line we incite a few people but LET THE COMPILER OPTIMISE FOR YOU.
More to the point: Don't do any "optimizations" that screw things up for the compiler!
Please do reorganize your algorithms at the high level (using hashes instead of lists, for example).
Please don't perform your own common-subexpression-elimination and loop induction variable transformations. You are wasting your time and will probably only make things worse.
This is a good observation. However, what is the speed of a typical FPGA these days? I find it hard to believe they'd compete with the processes Intel, et. al. are using. Wouldn't it be smarter to have a chip with lots of different specialized function units on it?
As for Crusoe, I think your observation makes the case not for coding to the bare metal but rather for having the ability to generate custom virtual instruction set architectures that can take advantage of the characteristics of individual applications. Once you have the OS loader loading a new ISA on program start, things get interesting.:)
Yes, absolutely a different virtual architecture could help. For one thing, x86 is horribly register limited. The spill code penalty is huge. Crusoe probably does well on x86 because of this. The additional register binding makes up for some of the translation penalty. However, having more registers that the compiler can see lets the compiler generate fewer instructions, reducing the work of the translator. There's a complex set of interactions going on here that is very, very interesting.
I'd like to see a virtual ISA/ABI that had a sensible function calling convention (i.e. none of this "copy struct pieces into registers and spill them back out" junk) and lots of virtual registers. The translation layer could bind excess registers to stack locations.
To do this well, you'd like the ISA to support annotations that could direct the translation layer. For one thing, the compiler could target the alias handling code to look at specific load-store pairs that it has a "pretty good" idea about, but can't prove anything for sure.
Can you please define corporatism for me? If I'm not getting the meaning of your article, I'd hate to think it's because of a misunderstanding of words.
I'm assuming you're referring to the act of corporations filing lawsuits, etc. to protect their investments (in their eyes) and the general drive of corporations to dominate a market and make money.
How could they have imagined that we are, instead, being stalked by invasive and predatory corporations, who don't want to torture or kill us, because each of us is somebody's target demographic. As long as we don't hack into their computer systems, give up some privacy and cash, accept mediocre culture, gadgetry and software, we seem relatively safe, at least for now.
I guess it's quotes like this that led me to my conclusions.
I believe that where we probably differ the most is in our idea of responsibility. I (and many libertarian-minded folks) don't believe that "corporate" responsibility is ever possible. Corporations (and governments, the largest examples of "corporation" we have) are legal fictions. They do not exist except as rearrangements of marks on paper and electronic impulses in brains and computers.
But aren't you forgetting that corporations (and governments) are run by mostly decent, loving, caring human beings?
..rob the recipients of their self-worth and steal the property of those who have earned it to give to those who have not.
Hmm... I see nothing in that statement that implies anything about the moral state of the needy, or anything about fault whatsoever.
I was referring to the boldface clause concerning those who have not (earned it).
Those recipients are most likely fully moral, decent, hardworking folks who have been suckered into dependance on corporate charity.
This is another fallacy. Most people on welfare don't want to be there. They are forced to be there due to idiotic regulations that allow jobs to pay less than what one whould earn on welfare. I'm not necessarily advocating any particular solution. I don't know what the answer is.
I still believe some sort of safety net is needed. I don't think the current system is necessarily the right way to do it, but without government-mandated taxes, I don't think things like subsidized housing would happen.
Ah! We agree! The "current system" is immoral, if you agree with the above statement that it's wrong to steal from some people to give to others.
The current system is flawed in its implementation and execution. The general concept is still valid, IMHO.
But can you actually say that "subsidized housing" is a good example of how well stealing to give to the poor works??? Subsidized housing??? The destroyer of cities and the creator of ghettoes and gang warfare? How can you possibly see this as good for anybody: taxpayers, poor people, cities, anything?
Again, you're confusing concept with implementation. High-rise public housing is not the way to do things. We should be building neighborhoods, encouraging integration along class lines and so forth. People need to feel they're a part of a community worth keeping up.
And to defend the Salvation Army (I wasn't criticizing them, merely pointing out that corporatizing your giving isn't really "charity" in the Biblical sense)
Why not? What of the woman who gave all three coins she had to the temple poorbox? Can we all improve our charity to the world? Of course we can. There are lots of ways to be charitable and I think it's dangerous to hold one form as superior to another. If I go and entertain some sick kids every weekend, isn't that just as good as working in the local soup kitchen?
To summarize, Libertarians are not blind to the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. Libertarians have more "soul" in that we believe that individual charity can make a much more positive change in people's lives than can corporatized, governmental charity. Libertarians cannot, however, condone kleptocracy (the current steal-from-those-who-have to give-to-those-who-need state) as the means by which to help the poor and the disadvantaged.
I think there are some projects that are just too big for the private charities. I'm talking about multi-hundred-million-dollar sorts of things. Charities don't get enough donations to do such things. By having each taxpayer give a little, we can do a lot of good. I pay taxes to improve the infrastructure of my country. The social infrastructure is just as important as the physical one.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Note that in my above message I never once condoned the actions of the DVD CCA. I think what they are doing is reprehensible.
My point was that Katz generalizes these incidents to corporations as a group, and that's just not valid.
If you don't like what the DVD CCA is doing, don't buy DVD's. I, for one, refuse to give them any money until they wake up and realize that what they are doing is idiotic and probably illegal WRT fair use. Consumers were wise enough to kill DIVX before it got off the ground. We can improve DVD access by educating consumers.
Why don't we sue the DVD CCA for restricting our fair use rights (and they are rights that have been granted us by the courts)?
Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. What upsets me about Katz's article is that he makes sweeping generalizations that are simply false. In the end, corporations are run by human beings. People like you and me. Any legislation passed affects everyone, including members of the corporation.
If freedom-destroying legislation is passed, then we have several options:
We can disobey the law, which I think we have to moral right (and often the obligation) to do.
We can refuse to buy in to the will of the corporations. Don't buy CD's. Check out the locals bands playing the various clubs in town. Read a book. Take a walk with your significant other around the lake. See an opera. There are many opportunities for entertainment, most of them far better than watching a DVD.:)
Ok, I should have clarified myself a bit. My apologies.
What I meant to say is that Libertarians oppose any sort of government-provided safety net for the poor. They generally (I think, so correct me if I'm wrong, please) oppose things like affirmative action, which I believe to be one of the most important methods of closing the gap between the haves and have nots.
If the government were to do as the Libertarians want, then I fear that gap will only widen.
And yes, you're right. I do need to do more work in the area of charity. I try to give as much as possible, but I fall short. A lot. But I'm trying to improve. Thanks for giving me a good kick in the butt. I needed it.:)
But I do question your statement that donations to the Salvation Army, etc. "don't count." Those organizations do a much better job of serving the needs of the poor precisely because they've been organized to do it. They know what the needs are and I trust they'll put my money to good use.
And the worst "corporatist" approach is to use the guns and violence of government to force people to "invest" in government warfare-welfare plans that rob the recipients of their self-worth and
steal the property of those who have earned it to give to those who have not.
The above is precisely the attitude I find so distasteful in Libertarianism. In the statement above is the implied belief that if someone is needy, it is his or her fault for not working hard enough. It pains me to know that people actually think this way.
I understand your sentiment about forced morality, but I still believe some sort of safety net is needed. I don't think the current system is necessarily the right way to do it, but without government-mandated taxes, I don't think things like subsidized housing would happen. It's simply too big a job for any one charity organization to conquer. And frankly, I'm more than glad to fork over 5% of my income so that others not as lucky as myself have a chance at a decent life.
Again, I apologize if I've offended anyone. I certainly did not mean to imply that all Libertarians are not compassionate people. That is clearly false. It's the belief system as a whole (exemplified by the quoted passage above) that I disagree with.
A number of arguments against running on the bare Crusoe metal have been given in the past, so I won't bore anyone with the details. Suffice to say that running like this may very well decrease performance due to the nature of the translation layer. Furthermore, the flexibility code morphing gives Transmeta greatly outweighs, I think, any small performance improvement that might result from eliminating it.
As far as AMD's 64-bit chip is concerned, it's not clear to me which form it will take. But they may be too late. Unless it is 100% IA64 compatible, they're going to have a hard time convincing Microsoft, et. al. to port their software and operating systems. And yes, of course Linux will run on it. But will RedHat make a distribution?
I think Intel is sweating over two things: Transmeta's low power and Sony's Emotion Engine. I have nothing with which to back this up save a few rumors and scuttlebutt, however.
So corporations are all-encompasing, omnipotent, evil beings bent on destroying human individuality and culture. Please excuse me while I move down into my Y2K/Alien Invasion bunker.
If corporations truly have too much control over our lives, then I submit it is we, as a society, who have let this happen. I can't speak for others, but I certainly don't feel oppressed or limited in any way. If I want MP3's, I'll make them from the CD's I own. I have no desire whatsoever to acquire bootleg music (regardless of the fact that MP3's of '30's jazz are difficult to find).
Don't corporations have the right to protect their property? They produced the music and movies. They paid for all the expensive recording equipment. Why do we have a right to copy and distribute it freely?
The artists don't make enough money, you say? Well, they should have signed a better contract. There are lots of independent recording houses. Or why not cut their own CD?
I guess my point is that we each have the control over our lives to either buy in to what the "greedy corporations" are selling us or just ignore it. It's not that hard, really. I own a total of about 15 CD's and 4 movies. I buy something when it looks interesting to me. If the recording house is not selling quality stuff, I won't buy it. I'll go make my own music instead.
As far as destroying culture is concerned, we each make our own culture. Culture is an inherently human thing. I don't understand how a corporate entity can have any control over that. It may take that culture and make it more visible, but the culture was there to begin with.
Now, I'm not saying that corporations should not be held accountable. Clearly there are some serious issues that need to be addressed (the environment comes to mind). But Katz's article sounds more like a child complaining that he can't get what he wants than a rational argument against corporate excesses.
And don't get me started about Kevin Mitnick. Anyone who holds him or any other criminal up as a hero is a fool. Mitnick stole property. He's a common thief using uncommon methods.
Finally, I resent the fact that as a user of the internet I am immediately pigeonholed as a Libertarian. As human beings we have a responsibility to each other that Libertarianism seems to ignore. They talk a lot about personal responsibility but completely ignore the issue of our responsibility to the poor and underpriviledged. I kindly ask Mr. Katz not to make such sweeping generalizations in the future.
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Or why not use the money to set up a voucher/scholarship system? That way you give disadvantaged kids a chance while at the same time setting up competition.
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That said, many of the problems are about supplies. I'm talking about the run-down schools with out-of-date materials. Institutions where school pride is a foreign concept. Placing the blame entirely on unions is, I think, a cop-out. The problems run much deeper than that. Teacher's strikes are an indication of poor working conditions, lack of pride in the workplace and destructive arguments rather than constructive discussions.
Why don't we make school fun again? Let's improve our facilities so teachers enjoy their work! If teachers are in a workplace of which they are proud to be a part, I think you'll see these sorts of problems go away.
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Right now there is a critical shortage of tech. workers. Why can't we provide quality education and fill this need? The jobs are there. We just need to create the skills.
As for the minimum-wage jobs, wages might just go up if more people can get a quality education and find more lucrative employment. We're already seeing a shortage of store clerks, etc. due to the booming economy.
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I developed leadership abilities in various clubs and organizations. I was able to make use of various skills in these same organizations. -- skills that I treasure every day and provide an escape from my regular work.
Call me a bleeding-heart Liberal-Arts sympathizer if you want to. I'll take the compliment
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Where are most of the world's population going to get internet access? Sure, the country might provide publicly-accessible terminals if there weren't more pressing needs such as feeding the populace. Unfortunately, the people that could benefit the most from on-line education are exactly those who can't make use of it.
Perhaps the money could be used to improve the infrastructures of developing nations. Building roads goes a long way.
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In any event, I don't think much experimentation is required. Resources are required. Let's fill our poor school libraries with books and magazines. Let's improve the facilities by making much-needed repairs and expansions. Let's hire more teachers to reduce class size and provide more individual attention. It's not rocket science.
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Wouldn't it be much more useful to donate this kind of money to our poorer public and private elementary and secondary schools? These schools have much more influence on the development of society as a whole than universities do. They also happen to be the institutions that need resources the most. Imagine what a new computer lab could do for some of these schools. Imagine up-to-date textbooks!
There is an enormous wealth gap in this country. Education is the way to eradicate it. Lets focus on making high quality education available to everyone at all levels.
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I don't quite follow you here. The PPro and up are O-O-O superscalar machines. In essence, they are a network of high-speed RISC chips. They just have a common fetch and retirement engine. Intel needs to maintain the backward compatibility. It's their bread and butter.
In a sense, the x86 does have an "instruction tree" if I understand you correctly. Most of those 100 jump instructions are simply prefixes or various forms (register or memory) of operands slapped on a basic jump opcode. The newer x86-type processors (and I'm talking about K6, if not earlier) put predecode bits in the ICache so it's not so expensive to decode instructions. Wilammette will use a trace cache. Even if you don't believe the utility of such a structure, it will cache predecoded instructions.
You're arguing for system benchmarks. If you're designing a processor, why should the disk be a concern? The processor designer is concerned with the next level of memory below the core. That would be main memory. So the architect designs a memory system capable of feeding the processor from main memory (caches and the like). A benchmark that stresses the speed of my virtual memory system would be more approprite for operating system evaluation, not processor evaluation.
Spec95 was notorious for residing entirely within the machine's caches, which is clearly not so good a thing. The jury is still out on Spec2000.
No, there is a single benchmark appropriate for measuring processor performance: time. If processor A executes my task faster than processor B, processor A has better performance, regardless of all the architectural issues.
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And also Koenig's addition:
The reason STL makes C++ feel more useable is that it eliminates much of the tedious work done in C (defining basic data structures and algorithms).
That being said, there are aspects of the STL (actually the C++ standard library in general) which just make me cringe:
I understand the reasons for each of these, but each has also tripped me up more than once. The string class in particular is a bit kludgey.
If I were to ask Bjarne a question, it would be "Ignoring backward-compatability issues, what would you change in the standard C++ library?"
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Yes, the DMCA, UCITA, etc. limit such rights. But that's how laws get overturned. Remember CDA?
The problem, as always, is money. Hats of to mp3.com in this area. Are RedHat, VA, et. al. going to get involved? After all, the DVD CCA directly affects their bottom line.
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We're developing a research C compiler here and we use lots of programs for benchmarking and regression testing. Doom is one. One of the guys here hacked up a text mode Doom so it could more easily integrate with our regression testing environment (it's much easier to diff textual output :)).
So no, actually this isn't always a waste of time. At least not if your building your own computer or something. :)
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Now this is just the clearest, simplest expression of faith as a life journey that I have ever read! Bravo!
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The whole idea of a defensive patent is flawed from the start. While it may be an effective deterrent against patent lawsuits, it sets up the patent system as a legal battleground, which was not at all the original intent of the patent system.
The patent system exists to open up ideas which would otherwise be guarded as trade secrets. One poster referred to IBM's plethora of patents. It is true that Big Blue has done an amazing amount of excellent research. The patent system worked in that IBM was able to open up descriptions of their pioneering work without hurting their competitive advantage.
But does it not bother anyone that companies try to patent everything imaginable for defensive purposes? Essentially, what they are doing is short-circuiting the patent system. Assuming I hold strong defensive patents, I can now go look up patents for some technology you developed that I am interested in selling. I can go right out and make a competing product and not worry about getting sued because I have a book of patents I can swing over your head. Rather than protecting the hard work you put into your research, the patent system has allowed me to profit from it.
I am not saying the patent system needs to be abolished. I am not even saying software patents are evil. Some are quite legitimate. What I am saying (which I think most people agree with) is that the patent system needs a better system to research prior art and decide when a patent application is not of acceptable quality.
In the research community we use peer review to decide when something is worth publishing. Can some similar system be used for patents? Clearly there would have to be some sort of NDA agreement to sign if you are a reviewer, but perhaps that's not too onerous if you are compensated in some way.
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More to the point: Don't do any "optimizations" that screw things up for the compiler!
Please do reorganize your algorithms at the high level (using hashes instead of lists, for example).
Please don't perform your own common-subexpression-elimination and loop induction variable transformations. You are wasting your time and will probably only make things worse.
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As for Crusoe, I think your observation makes the case not for coding to the bare metal but rather for having the ability to generate custom virtual instruction set architectures that can take advantage of the characteristics of individual applications. Once you have the OS loader loading a new ISA on program start, things get interesting. :)
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I'd like to see a virtual ISA/ABI that had a sensible function calling convention (i.e. none of this "copy struct pieces into registers and spill them back out" junk) and lots of virtual registers. The translation layer could bind excess registers to stack locations.
To do this well, you'd like the ISA to support annotations that could direct the translation layer. For one thing, the compiler could target the alias handling code to look at specific load-store pairs that it has a "pretty good" idea about, but can't prove anything for sure.
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I'm assuming you're referring to the act of corporations filing lawsuits, etc. to protect their investments (in their eyes) and the general drive of corporations to dominate a market and make money.
I guess it's quotes like this that led me to my conclusions.
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But aren't you forgetting that corporations (and governments) are run by mostly decent, loving, caring human beings?
I was referring to the boldface clause concerning those who have not (earned it).
This is another fallacy. Most people on welfare don't want to be there. They are forced to be there due to idiotic regulations that allow jobs to pay less than what one whould earn on welfare. I'm not necessarily advocating any particular solution. I don't know what the answer is.
The current system is flawed in its implementation and execution. The general concept is still valid, IMHO.
Again, you're confusing concept with implementation. High-rise public housing is not the way to do things. We should be building neighborhoods, encouraging integration along class lines and so forth. People need to feel they're a part of a community worth keeping up.
Why not? What of the woman who gave all three coins she had to the temple poorbox? Can we all improve our charity to the world? Of course we can. There are lots of ways to be charitable and I think it's dangerous to hold one form as superior to another. If I go and entertain some sick kids every weekend, isn't that just as good as working in the local soup kitchen?
I think there are some projects that are just too big for the private charities. I'm talking about multi-hundred-million-dollar sorts of things. Charities don't get enough donations to do such things. By having each taxpayer give a little, we can do a lot of good. I pay taxes to improve the infrastructure of my country. The social infrastructure is just as important as the physical one.
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My point was that Katz generalizes these incidents to corporations as a group, and that's just not valid.
If you don't like what the DVD CCA is doing, don't buy DVD's. I, for one, refuse to give them any money until they wake up and realize that what they are doing is idiotic and probably illegal WRT fair use. Consumers were wise enough to kill DIVX before it got off the ground. We can improve DVD access by educating consumers.
Why don't we sue the DVD CCA for restricting our fair use rights (and they are rights that have been granted us by the courts)?
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If freedom-destroying legislation is passed, then we have several options:
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What I meant to say is that Libertarians oppose any sort of government-provided safety net for the poor. They generally (I think, so correct me if I'm wrong, please) oppose things like affirmative action, which I believe to be one of the most important methods of closing the gap between the haves and have nots.
If the government were to do as the Libertarians want, then I fear that gap will only widen.
And yes, you're right. I do need to do more work in the area of charity. I try to give as much as possible, but I fall short. A lot. But I'm trying to improve. Thanks for giving me a good kick in the butt. I needed it. :)
But I do question your statement that donations to the Salvation Army, etc. "don't count." Those organizations do a much better job of serving the needs of the poor precisely because they've been organized to do it. They know what the needs are and I trust they'll put my money to good use.
The above is precisely the attitude I find so distasteful in Libertarianism. In the statement above is the implied belief that if someone is needy, it is his or her fault for not working hard enough. It pains me to know that people actually think this way.
I understand your sentiment about forced morality, but I still believe some sort of safety net is needed. I don't think the current system is necessarily the right way to do it, but without government-mandated taxes, I don't think things like subsidized housing would happen. It's simply too big a job for any one charity organization to conquer. And frankly, I'm more than glad to fork over 5% of my income so that others not as lucky as myself have a chance at a decent life.
Again, I apologize if I've offended anyone. I certainly did not mean to imply that all Libertarians are not compassionate people. That is clearly false. It's the belief system as a whole (exemplified by the quoted passage above) that I disagree with.
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As far as AMD's 64-bit chip is concerned, it's not clear to me which form it will take. But they may be too late. Unless it is 100% IA64 compatible, they're going to have a hard time convincing Microsoft, et. al. to port their software and operating systems. And yes, of course Linux will run on it. But will RedHat make a distribution?
I think Intel is sweating over two things: Transmeta's low power and Sony's Emotion Engine. I have nothing with which to back this up save a few rumors and scuttlebutt, however.
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If corporations truly have too much control over our lives, then I submit it is we, as a society, who have let this happen. I can't speak for others, but I certainly don't feel oppressed or limited in any way. If I want MP3's, I'll make them from the CD's I own. I have no desire whatsoever to acquire bootleg music (regardless of the fact that MP3's of '30's jazz are difficult to find).
Don't corporations have the right to protect their property? They produced the music and movies. They paid for all the expensive recording equipment. Why do we have a right to copy and distribute it freely?
The artists don't make enough money, you say? Well, they should have signed a better contract. There are lots of independent recording houses. Or why not cut their own CD?
I guess my point is that we each have the control over our lives to either buy in to what the "greedy corporations" are selling us or just ignore it. It's not that hard, really. I own a total of about 15 CD's and 4 movies. I buy something when it looks interesting to me. If the recording house is not selling quality stuff, I won't buy it. I'll go make my own music instead.
As far as destroying culture is concerned, we each make our own culture. Culture is an inherently human thing. I don't understand how a corporate entity can have any control over that. It may take that culture and make it more visible, but the culture was there to begin with.
Now, I'm not saying that corporations should not be held accountable. Clearly there are some serious issues that need to be addressed (the environment comes to mind). But Katz's article sounds more like a child complaining that he can't get what he wants than a rational argument against corporate excesses.
And don't get me started about Kevin Mitnick. Anyone who holds him or any other criminal up as a hero is a fool. Mitnick stole property. He's a common thief using uncommon methods.
Finally, I resent the fact that as a user of the internet I am immediately pigeonholed as a Libertarian. As human beings we have a responsibility to each other that Libertarianism seems to ignore. They talk a lot about personal responsibility but completely ignore the issue of our responsibility to the poor and underpriviledged. I kindly ask Mr. Katz not to make such sweeping generalizations in the future.
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