Your argument boils down to "Windows is easier to administer than Linux."
This is a fallacy. They're both hard to administer. It just depends on where your experience is. Windows may look nice and friendly, but when something goes wrong, it's a bear to track down and fix in my experience. Now I've got lots of UNIX experience. With time, I'd have no problem picking up the tips and tricks for Windows. The nice thing about UNIX is that once you get a solution you can easily script it up and distribute the tasks over the network to all the machines. Now I'm sure this is possible in Windows as well, but I don't know offhand how to do it.
Try taking a UNIX environment and inserting some Windows boxen. Watch the administrators scratch their heads when something goes wrong and they can't fix it because Windows is "different." I've seen it happen and these people were pretty sharp.
I don't know about this. I got into computers because of a computer lab back in elementary school. We did things like programming in Logo and BASIC. We even had the Apple II manuals for the more adventurous. Now of course we had no idea about what an "operating system" was, but we were not so dimwitted that we couldn't grasp the ideas of logical thinking and problem solving. Fundamentally, programming is simply organizing a task into simple steps and then telling the computer what to do. It's every kid's dream to have that kind of control.:)
I guess my point is that computer courses at the elementary level should not simply be about "how to make the Font bigger for that Report for English Class." Children have a remarkable ability to learn. We should take advantage of that and teach them the fundamentals. Applications can be learned at any time.
Is Linux (or *BSD, etc.) a good choice for this? It certainly comes with a lot of tools. With a properly set-up KDE session, it's not any more difficult than Windows. I like the fact that if students are really interested, they can delve deeper and it doesn't cost the school anything. The multiuser environment will prevent any problems with bad user behavior which is a big win over Windows.
As you point out, administration is a problem. But then maybe the schools should have a full-time administrator. If they're teaching CS courses, you'd hope the instructor would be competent. I think this will be the case now that current graduates have fairly good computer skills.
60 in the left lane is clearly not good. If I'm passing someone, I will tend to speed up a little if someone comes up behind me. Often people will flash their high beams at me when I am passing someone because that someone has decided to hit the gas after they realized they were below the speed limit. Now that is annoying.
IMHO, in the left lane you should at least be going the speed limit.:)
Actually, I consider the flashing of high beams to be quite rude. The only time high beams should be used is in total darkness when no cars are in front of you or to let someone know you are going to pass them (though I don't particularly like this use either, as a turn signal will do just fine).
No, of course not. The unwritten rule of the interstate says you stay in the right lane unless you are passing someone or need to exit left. As soon as I've passed someone, I always move back to the right lane. It's common courtesy.
I don't know if I necessarily agree with this. To me, the fault is with the speeders. I travel long distances on the interstates, and every time I go on such a trip, inevitably someone doing 90 in the left lane comes up behind me (while I'm passing) and makes it very clear they think I'm doing something wrong by tailgating at about 5 inches. Complete idiocy.
But:
Many states have made our interstates more dangerous by setting different speed limits for different vehicles. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people slam on the brakes because a semitruck limited to 60/65 moved to the left lane where cars are running at 70. It is not a good situation and needs to change. All traffic should flow at the same rate.
So the chemicals would interfere with pregnancy? Wouldn't pregnant women qualify under disability or maternity laws? If not, then we need to take a look at those laws.
[Oops, forgot to repond to the following part. Sorry.:)]
Perhaps things like maternity laws and day care would better qualify under that criteria.
What criteria? Those are even less like gadgets than birth control is.
Whoops, I worded that badly. By "criteria," I was referring to the quality of improving the opportunities for working women, not to the Top 25 requirements.
Maternity laws and day care are nice things, but they're hardly necessary for women to enter the work force. Like birth control, they broaden the choices available to women, but in the absence of birth control, they become quite unworkable. Who's going to grant maternity leave to someone every time they get knocked up, just because they won't use some kind of birth control? Who's going to pay for day care for a dozen or so kids?
Again, keep in mind that I've been referring to artificial birth control.
Don't employers by law have to grant maternity leave? As for who's going to pay, that is another question of responsibility. What about options like Natural Family Planning? I once heard a speaker talk about various scientific studies showing the benefits. I asked for some references, but never got them. I wish I had. For me, the jury is still out on its effectiveness, but I'm wondering if anyone here might be able to cite publications.
Yes, you're right of course. I was being sloppy with my terms. My apologies. My questions were phrased in the context of all artifical means of birth control, contraceptive or not.
With the industrial revolution, more jobs required long hours away from home, and women (esp. those with children) were largely excluded.
But why, apart from the ridiculous notion that "the woman's place is in the home?" I think the outcome had more to do with the unwilligness of men to take on childrearing responsibilities.
But without it, most women of childbearing age would be effectively kept out of most jobs. Birth control (including contraception) vastly increases the jobs available to women.
What jobs would be unavailable to women? I guess my fundamental question concerns why these jobs are unavailable to moms, but dads have no problem keeping them. Really, what is the difference, and what does artificial birth control have to do with any of it?
Without some kind of birth control, it's not all that unusual for a woman to have a dozen kids in a lifetime.
By choice, much, much more often than not.
This might have been a good thing when most of the kids died in infancy, but if we're going to have nice things like low infant mortality, we're going to have to breed less kids. That means birth control, whether by low-tech methods like abstainance (how many guys are going to applaud that decision?)
*raises hand*
I do. It is a 100% guaranteed method. Why this stereotype against men?
or inventions like pills, condoms, and abortions.
This is the part I see as unnecessary. I don't think artificial birth control is a miracle answer to the problem of wrong attitudes. If the problem is with men, then we men have to suck it up and realize that we have equal responsibility in this world. No, it won't change overnight, but I think it is changing.
Yes. It's not just a matter of being able to "return" to a job after a pregnancy, but also to be depended on to work straight for years at a time if necessary.
I don't follow you here. Women can't work straight for years at a time if they have kids? Why? If the answer is that they have to stay home to take care of them, then I ask, where is the father? Why can't dads stay home?
Perhaps things like maternity laws and day care would better qualify under that criteria.
These still have to take into account the 6-9 weeks that a woman is physically unable to work for 8 hours a day (for most of them, some don't need to stop).
Yes, they do need to take that into account. Does pregnancy count as a "disability?" It's an awful, loathsome term for it, but it's the best my small brain can come up with to get the point across. Legally, why is it different than the case of someone who throws out a back?
Birth control means that, if a woman chooses, she can avoid pregnancy (and therefore forced in-home time) and stay working consistently at a job for an arbitrarily long length of time.
A woman (and man too, BTW) can always choose to avoid pregnancy. Contraceptives are not necessary to do this.
As for sparking the "sexual revolution," what is that, exactly? Really, what does it mean?
It was equality for women. Before the pill, if a one-nite stand occured, it was the women who bore sole responsibility for anything spawned at the time. That is the same, mostly, but after the pill a women could, arguably, protect herself from unwanted pregnancy, and was there fore "free" to explore her sexuality in any way she wished without fear of conception. This kind of thinking, women are free to explore sexuality, was a revolution in this county.
This seem like more an issue of equal rights and responsibilities than anything else. I still don't see why artificial birth control is necessary to have this.
Did birth control really free half the population to "reliably join the work force?" Why is artificial contraception necessary to hold down a job? Perhaps things like maternity laws and day care would better qualify under that criteria.
As for sparking the "sexual revolution," what is that, exactly? Really, what does it mean?
Actually, the 21264 is an O-O-O machine. Aphas had always been considered "speed demons" because DEC did everything to push the clock, while HP, for example, pushed IPC with O-O-O, leading to the "brainiac" labelling of the PA-RISC.
The 21264, therefore, can be safely called a "demoniac."
Future Alphas will start to make use of Simultaneous MultiThreading to run threads at the CPU level. I don't know what form this will take, initially.
The part that says I can't license my code any way I please.
You're telling me that I can't take the GPL, omit a few sections, add some of my own, generally re-word things to my liking, rename it to Doc Greene's Miracle License for the Legally Challenged and ship it with my code?
The GPL includes at the beginning "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed." This means that I cannot use the GPL without, for example, the preamble.
*scratches head*
Huh? It's your code. You can license it however you wish. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the preamble concerns a user changing the license after the code has been distributed. In other words, only the original owner of the code has the right to change the license.
Nothing prevents you from taking the GPL and modifying it for your needs. Witness all the calls for the KDE folks to release under a GPL + QT exception license. You probably can't call it GPL anymore, but does that really matter?
I also disagree with the statement "When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price."
I disagree with you here. I won't go into the reasons because they've been hashed over many times.
I do agree with you on most of the rest (that free software is a priviledge and so on), though I don't see the contradiction in a license that holds the user to certain responsibilitites. That is exactly what a license is for. The license grants the user certain "rights," which are not the same kind of "rights" as in "Bill of Rights." The license is really granting priviledges, as you rightly (heh) say. Upon further reading, I think we are saying the same thing, that the wording of the GPL is a little silly.
In any case, I really don't see the point to these kinds of arguments. Use whatever license suits your needs. There's nothing to be ashamed of if you want to sell your software. Likewise, just because I might license something under the GPL doesn't mean I'm a FSF zealot. I'm doing it for a reason (mainly because I want good code freely available so I can learn).
Some people obviously disagree with that. School vouchers would inevitably lead to public funds going to religious schools. Whether that's good or bad depends on your views.
True, some funds would go to religious schools, but private != religious. And really, why is funding of religious schools so bad? My tax dollars fund lots of things I don't like. Why should education be any different? There's a case before the Supreme Court about student fees at U. Wisconsin. A student doesn't want to pay all of the fees because they go to organizations he doesn't care for. It's the same deal with taxes. Should citizens be able to itemize their taxes, paying only for those things they like? If so, sign me up! I could use some extra cash.:)
Vouchers don't favor any one religion over the other, and no one is forcing any child to attend any particular school (which, ironically, is the case in the public school system).
Seeing sexuality as a destructive force isn't universal.
In general, of course, sexuality is not a destructive force. But with all of the diseases, risk of unwanted pregnancy, etc., some prudence is called for. To me, it is common sense to promote abstinence because it is a 100% guaranteed solution. I'm playing the odds.:)
I looked at this before, and while it is a useful tool, it's important to keep in mind that the wording of the questions may not exactly be the best possible.
For example, the school vouchers program is not a "separation of church and state" issue. The phrase doesn't even appear in the Constitution anyway. "School choice" is not really a good description either.
The "moral issues" question is particularly insidious. My views on these issues are not based on some arbitrary code of "morality." Rather, I view them as common sense positions. Moreover, I don't think the issues listed under this heading can even be grouped together. Some people may not like prayer in public schools, but who can honestly argue against "promoting teen-age sexual abstinence?"
One person's "trade controls" are another's "job protection."
Yup. That's the one thing I don't like about Debian. apt refuses to actually install anything until everything has been downloaded.
Apparently this is being fixed, however. apt will download a package and all its dependencies and then install them before it goes on to the next package. This means you can break your update into pieces.
Most of the time even Debian *unstable* is rock stable. I can compare my impression about Debian unstable to my impressions about RedHat stable.
Hear, hear! "Unstable" is an unfortunate term. Things in there break very, very rarely. Newbies should view "unstable" as "my package list is constantly changing." That is, apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade will do something five minutes after the previous run.:)
Just kidding. I think my second favorite advantage of Debian over RedHat is the config file structure. Now, I haven't tried RedHat since about 4.2 or so, so take this with a grain of salt.
With RedHat, I was constantly frustrated by all the auto-generated config files in/etc. I'd edit something and it would get replaced on the next reboot, package upgrade or whatever. The startup scripts were a complete mess. There was such a high degree of coupling between various files that editing one could produce unexpected results.
In Debian, everything is crystal clear. Even better (ok, I'm going to talk packaging here for a second), apt is smart enough to notice when you've changed a config file in a package. It asks you whether you want to keep your version or install the new one. It even gives you the option of doing a diff on them. Very, very nice.
After that, I'd have to say that interoperability with other distributions is a plus. Alien is a godsend. No more having to wait for.debs of some obscure package (not that the wait is long, mind you).
I don't mean to pick on you personally, but this comment just brought something to the front of my mind.
We'd get a lot bigger performance boost if programmers would take the care to design their algorithms correctly. This is not an easy thing to do. For the project I'm working on, we've seen speedups of several orders of magnitude just by doing a little profiling and recoding of critical program segments. If your program is converting strings a lot, maybe you can cache results in a hash table. It makes a huge difference.
For me personally, I'd be helped a lot more by faster/more memory, disks and network.:)
Compiler scheduling can make a difference on an out-of-order machine. After all, the instructions are still fetched and decoded in-order. You compiler can schedule for decoder hazards and latency. This might be useful on a P6-style machine, where the decoding of different types of instructions use different resources (there are some limited number of simple, complex and microcode decoder engines).
The compiler can look much further down the code than the limited instruction window in an O-O-O processor. So even traditional scheduling can help on O-O-O machine because the compiler can grab code from "far away."
Question: If "fair use" has been upheld by law, can a class-action suit be brought against the recording industry (or any industry for that matter) for preventing such use?
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This is a fallacy. They're both hard to administer. It just depends on where your experience is. Windows may look nice and friendly, but when something goes wrong, it's a bear to track down and fix in my experience. Now I've got lots of UNIX experience. With time, I'd have no problem picking up the tips and tricks for Windows. The nice thing about UNIX is that once you get a solution you can easily script it up and distribute the tasks over the network to all the machines. Now I'm sure this is possible in Windows as well, but I don't know offhand how to do it.
Try taking a UNIX environment and inserting some Windows boxen. Watch the administrators scratch their heads when something goes wrong and they can't fix it because Windows is "different." I've seen it happen and these people were pretty sharp.
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I guess my point is that computer courses at the elementary level should not simply be about "how to make the Font bigger for that Report for English Class." Children have a remarkable ability to learn. We should take advantage of that and teach them the fundamentals. Applications can be learned at any time.
Is Linux (or *BSD, etc.) a good choice for this? It certainly comes with a lot of tools. With a properly set-up KDE session, it's not any more difficult than Windows. I like the fact that if students are really interested, they can delve deeper and it doesn't cost the school anything. The multiuser environment will prevent any problems with bad user behavior which is a big win over Windows.
As you point out, administration is a problem. But then maybe the schools should have a full-time administrator. If they're teaching CS courses, you'd hope the instructor would be competent. I think this will be the case now that current graduates have fairly good computer skills.
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IMHO, in the left lane you should at least be going the speed limit. :)
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But:
Many states have made our interstates more dangerous by setting different speed limits for different vehicles. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people slam on the brakes because a semitruck limited to 60/65 moved to the left lane where cars are running at 70. It is not a good situation and needs to change. All traffic should flow at the same rate.
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They're just so much more gadgety than those boring old pop-tops! :)
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Whoops, I worded that badly. By "criteria," I was referring to the quality of improving the opportunities for working women, not to the Top 25 requirements.
Again, keep in mind that I've been referring to artificial birth control.
Don't employers by law have to grant maternity leave? As for who's going to pay, that is another question of responsibility. What about options like Natural Family Planning? I once heard a speaker talk about various scientific studies showing the benefits. I asked for some references, but never got them. I wish I had. For me, the jury is still out on its effectiveness, but I'm wondering if anyone here might be able to cite publications.
--
Yes, you're right of course. I was being sloppy with my terms. My apologies. My questions were phrased in the context of all artifical means of birth control, contraceptive or not.
But why, apart from the ridiculous notion that "the woman's place is in the home?" I think the outcome had more to do with the unwilligness of men to take on childrearing responsibilities.
What jobs would be unavailable to women? I guess my fundamental question concerns why these jobs are unavailable to moms, but dads have no problem keeping them. Really, what is the difference, and what does artificial birth control have to do with any of it?
By choice, much, much more often than not.
*raises hand*
I do. It is a 100% guaranteed method. Why this stereotype against men?
This is the part I see as unnecessary. I don't think artificial birth control is a miracle answer to the problem of wrong attitudes. If the problem is with men, then we men have to suck it up and realize that we have equal responsibility in this world. No, it won't change overnight, but I think it is changing.
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I don't follow you here. Women can't work straight for years at a time if they have kids? Why? If the answer is that they have to stay home to take care of them, then I ask, where is the father? Why can't dads stay home?
Yes, they do need to take that into account. Does pregnancy count as a "disability?" It's an awful, loathsome term for it, but it's the best my small brain can come up with to get the point across. Legally, why is it different than the case of someone who throws out a back?
A woman (and man too, BTW) can always choose to avoid pregnancy. Contraceptives are not necessary to do this.
This seem like more an issue of equal rights and responsibilities than anything else. I still don't see why artificial birth control is necessary to have this.
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As for sparking the "sexual revolution," what is that, exactly? Really, what does it mean?
I'm just trying to understand your reasoning.
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The 21264, therefore, can be safely called a "demoniac."
Future Alphas will start to make use of Simultaneous MultiThreading to run threads at the CPU level. I don't know what form this will take, initially.
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You're telling me that I can't take the GPL, omit a few sections, add some of my own, generally re-word things to my liking, rename it to Doc Greene's Miracle License for the Legally Challenged and ship it with my code?
Right.
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I'd feel a little uncomfortable if I started thinking that way... :)
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*scratches head*
Huh? It's your code. You can license it however you wish. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the preamble concerns a user changing the license after the code has been distributed. In other words, only the original owner of the code has the right to change the license.
Nothing prevents you from taking the GPL and modifying it for your needs. Witness all the calls for the KDE folks to release under a GPL + QT exception license. You probably can't call it GPL anymore, but does that really matter?
I disagree with you here. I won't go into the reasons because they've been hashed over many times.
I do agree with you on most of the rest (that free software is a priviledge and so on), though I don't see the contradiction in a license that holds the user to certain responsibilitites. That is exactly what a license is for. The license grants the user certain "rights," which are not the same kind of "rights" as in "Bill of Rights." The license is really granting priviledges, as you rightly (heh) say. Upon further reading, I think we are saying the same thing, that the wording of the GPL is a little silly.
In any case, I really don't see the point to these kinds of arguments. Use whatever license suits your needs. There's nothing to be ashamed of if you want to sell your software. Likewise, just because I might license something under the GPL doesn't mean I'm a FSF zealot. I'm doing it for a reason (mainly because I want good code freely available so I can learn).
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True, some funds would go to religious schools, but private != religious. And really, why is funding of religious schools so bad? My tax dollars fund lots of things I don't like. Why should education be any different? There's a case before the Supreme Court about student fees at U. Wisconsin. A student doesn't want to pay all of the fees because they go to organizations he doesn't care for. It's the same deal with taxes. Should citizens be able to itemize their taxes, paying only for those things they like? If so, sign me up! I could use some extra cash. :)
Vouchers don't favor any one religion over the other, and no one is forcing any child to attend any particular school (which, ironically, is the case in the public school system).
In general, of course, sexuality is not a destructive force. But with all of the diseases, risk of unwanted pregnancy, etc., some prudence is called for. To me, it is common sense to promote abstinence because it is a 100% guaranteed solution. I'm playing the odds. :)
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I looked at this before, and while it is a useful tool, it's important to keep in mind that the wording of the questions may not exactly be the best possible.
For example, the school vouchers program is not a "separation of church and state" issue. The phrase doesn't even appear in the Constitution anyway. "School choice" is not really a good description either.
The "moral issues" question is particularly insidious. My views on these issues are not based on some arbitrary code of "morality." Rather, I view them as common sense positions. Moreover, I don't think the issues listed under this heading can even be grouped together. Some people may not like prayer in public schools, but who can honestly argue against "promoting teen-age sexual abstinence?"
One person's "trade controls" are another's "job protection."
It's all in the wording.
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Apparently this is being fixed, however. apt will download a package and all its dependencies and then install them before it goes on to the next package. This means you can break your update into pieces.
Should be nice!
--
Hear, hear! "Unstable" is an unfortunate term. Things in there break very, very rarely. Newbies should view "unstable" as "my package list is constantly changing." That is, apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade will do something five minutes after the previous run. :)
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Just kidding. I think my second favorite advantage of Debian over RedHat is the config file structure. Now, I haven't tried RedHat since about 4.2 or so, so take this with a grain of salt.
With RedHat, I was constantly frustrated by all the auto-generated config files in /etc. I'd edit something and it would get replaced on the next reboot, package upgrade or whatever. The startup scripts were a complete mess. There was such a high degree of coupling between various files that editing one could produce unexpected results.
In Debian, everything is crystal clear. Even better (ok, I'm going to talk packaging here for a second), apt is smart enough to notice when you've changed a config file in a package. It asks you whether you want to keep your version or install the new one. It even gives you the option of doing a diff on them. Very, very nice.
After that, I'd have to say that interoperability with other distributions is a plus. Alien is a godsend. No more having to wait for .debs of some obscure package (not that the wait is long, mind you).
--
We'd get a lot bigger performance boost if programmers would take the care to design their algorithms correctly. This is not an easy thing to do. For the project I'm working on, we've seen speedups of several orders of magnitude just by doing a little profiling and recoding of critical program segments. If your program is converting strings a lot, maybe you can cache results in a hash table. It makes a huge difference.
For me personally, I'd be helped a lot more by faster/more memory, disks and network. :)
--
Compiler scheduling can make a difference on an out-of-order machine. After all, the instructions are still fetched and decoded in-order. You compiler can schedule for decoder hazards and latency. This might be useful on a P6-style machine, where the decoding of different types of instructions use different resources (there are some limited number of simple, complex and microcode decoder engines).
The compiler can look much further down the code than the limited instruction window in an O-O-O processor. So even traditional scheduling can help on O-O-O machine because the compiler can grab code from "far away."
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Probably not, but I'm curious.
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Most people in Europe around that time were illiterate, and those that could read and write had no efficient means of distributing their information.
I'd wager that most people in Europe had no idea a new millenium was even upon them. Not to mention that many of them weren't even Christian.
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