I don't need to mention anything else. To hell with all the anti-'ism' crap in today's PC world.
To hell with respecting another religion or point of view, in the face of such blatant and utter garbage.
$27 million dollars, 500,000 visitors, political support... the whole situation is something directly from the warped mind of a retard suffering dementia and who had had a frontal lobotomy by rusty ice-picks.
All of this is in Kentucky. If they are able to be serious with their proposition and execution of such garbage as the above mentioned museum, how the hell can anyone expect anything more sane in any other area?
... means is that when you build something complex and demanding, say a dam or an operating system kernel, the end result will have a specific level of quality, no matter how you build it.
First, Mr. Spinellis I found the report to be rather intriguing and captivating. I much respect the work put into it, and I think it'll prove valuable resource for study or reference.
With that said, the above quote struck a chord with me.
Let's take fire control systems for weapons of mass destruction. Without going into detail, the basic fact is that if a thermo-nuclear warhead is launched from Russia, France, UK, Isreal, US or any other country, it was and will be a deliberate act. The systems are far too complex and far too reliable for error or mistake. In other words, regardless of political position, no ruling body is going to ignore the possibility of an oopsie launch.
So, I do understand, that certain objectives, though may be approached and implemented vastly differently, will have strong similarities in the end result and with how it was successfully applied.
My problem is with this. What your saying is that there is no quality difference between Windows and Linux, and this is the discordant chord struck.
I can not extrapolate the agreeable portions of your thought to the seemingly obvious short comings of the Windows operating system. On any facet, whether it is security, stability, functionality or reliability. Windows is, far behind on all fronts.... aside from secrecy from a Microsoft point of view.
I once told my boss, who well understood, that he would never get the quality of code from me in the workplace as I might submit for the Open Source realm. It's just painfully obvious, that I will, at some point, hack an improper solution together for his deadline. And the nature of business, after the product is built, no one wants to change it unless they have to. So, while the economics all come into play here, why Microsoft might choose to fix one bug versus the other, the fact is in Open Source a bug will be fix on merit of a fix being available and acknowledgment that the bug is in fact a bug. Regardless if it's economically sound or feasible to fix the bug, in Open Source, it will be fixed.
While the end results that you present are interesting, I can not accept the proposition that the Windows kernel is too similar in quality. All one has to do is actually use the blasted thing, and no amount of numbers can be that convincing to ignore all the pitfalls well perceived from actually using the dreadful software.
I think you have overlooked overwhelming variables that directly effect the quality of software. Or, perhaps, the WRK has been a meticulous focus at Microsoft before it's release... this is likely possible, as it's WIDELY known, from nearly ALL examples of closed source proprietary software being released to the Open Source, that it takes years just to clean up and prepare for the ultra high standards of the OS community.
Cable was originally created so that television signals could be re-transmitted to people who could not receive the signals because of blocking mountains. The continued right of cable providers to retransmit television signals, with appropriate compulsory licenses, is protected under 17 U.S.C. Sec. 111.
It's seems you are correct and I have been unintentionally misleading. "Paid Television" was for the purpose of commercial free broadcasts.
"If they're successful, this could affect everything from the cost of cable service to the price of TVs," said the attorney close to the litigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity."
I would like to point out, that in America when cable was first offered to the public, the ONLY purpose of buying it was so that you can watch TV WITHOUT commercial interruption. Else, it was the typical bunny ears with tinfoil wrapped around them, watching General Hospital on ABC or was it CBS, and have to watch a commercial every five minutes or so.
I think it happened in or around this order....
MTV proved to attract quite the audience, but most importantly, impressionable young soon-to-be Consumers. Marketing types, shall focus in on this, "untapped" market... or rather, the bucket for which they might shoot the fish; made of gold, with complimentary.50 BMG rounds for all fortune 500 companies.
MTV used to play music videos, as might be suggested by the name. Then came the trends focusing on teen appeal; the first commercials on MTV were Noxima commercials and they even used one of the female VJs.
As MTV was being raped by Capitalism, not to mention the Musicians and Artists--as by this time, it's been established that if a band can get a video to be played on MTV, they are as good as gold--other major networks soon followed suit.
HBO trying so hard to maintain the original concept, of a Home Box Office (hence the HBO), first resorted to in-house production, heavily laden with product placement or other dung such as plots or lines conforming tightly with social trends; like anti-racist tears, or commie-bastard themes...
Then with the marketers pouring so much money into Cable Television, a market they would have loved to defeat for many reasons, let alone the fact that it was a product that freed the Consumer from Advertisements to begin with, Cable television exploded.
Advertisers were SO ADAMANT in penetrating cable television, they did everything from attempt to bankrupt the networks (by means of connections, such as getting buddy buddy with the utilities companies--gas, electricity, phone--and all sorts of other avenues) to outright attempting to sue them for not allowing them slots for their commercials. Forcing the cable television networks to start airing commercials in disregard of the fact that the Consumers were paying for the service, and had expectations of what their product received would be.
Now, this might shed pity upon the cable television networks. And maybe it should. However, for those who still might wonder how this "hurts" the consumer...
Cost of Cable Television, and considering inflation, has only gotten more expensive; it never got cheaper, and that's likely by demand of the Advertisers who insist that if a Consumer has to pay for something, they'll take it more seriously.
So there is something amuck with the whole OP, as when I hear Attorneys blabber stuff like what I quoted... what garbage to fool the Consumer into a reason to jack up the price of Cable Television. When, the fact is, they make so much money from the Advertisers, they can afford to revamp their entire infrastructure twenty times and still come out heads over toes all the while giving it out for free to all those who might have a coaxial jack in their house, outhouse, doghouse or whateverhouse.
And where would the extra money go to; if they do raise prices under this false pretense? Who the fuck knows; but what I do know, who it will go to you probably didn't vote for.
1) Employees of major corporations assigned to opensource could be laid off or reassigned to directly profitable projects.
2) People who work on opensource in their spare time could be laid off and
a) Be unable to buy computers, maintain an internet connection, etc.
b) OR... have lots of spare time and do a lot of cool stuff to build their resume.
3) Folks who are depressed are not every productive. In a deep recession there will be a lot of fear, anxiety, and depression.
4) Donations to opensource bandwidth, download sites, and so on could falter and lead to blackouts of key opensource resources.
99.999% untrue.
1) True, but you can be laid off for any reason, and resignation as well. So it's sorta mute even mentioning a reason for being laid off, as if it matters.
2) Inability to upgrade, leads to more intense skill sets. Proof, for a long time some of the best hackers were coming out of third world countries. An analysis could reflect the fact that they were getting very old hardware. If we do further analysis, well, simply pick up a user manual to any very old modem, and then look at a modern user manual for a new modem or router. Old user manual for a modem explains jumpers, PPP details, AT codes and everything. New user manual, hardware has no jumpers, there's no detail explained et al.
Effectively using used and or old equipment inherently requires a more intimate knowledge of the devices and technologies, as they are not preset, preconfigured, and directed as per factory defaults to ensure that initial use is as expected.
When people can not afford new equipment, they get by with whatever they get. Often, we go to pawn shops and pick up used equipment, or get pass-me-downs from friends et al. No matter how poor you are, in a tech-savvy society you can always find a "computer" in a most technical term. Which leads to the above.
Internet connection? I know people who have been using the Internet all along and never paid a dime. Remember, we are hackers, and this is even long before every body having a WiFi router in their house. All you ever had to do was call up AOL and threaten to leave to another ISP and you'll get another free 5000 hours.
3) Folks who are depressed are HISTORICALLY far more productive and motivated. I can't even believe you even tried to assess the contrary to this fact. The only fact is, serenity and peace leads to laziness and the reason why is there's no desperation motivation action. This is true in every aspect of life, from birth rates being far higher in poverty ridden areas to the fact Leonardo DaVinci and other greats grew up in the thick of social, political and economic turmoil. Nothing will get a man off his ass as surely as a fire lit beneath.
4) The OpenSource community has ALWAYS been strong. You apparently are relatively new to computers in general, probably as much as most of society, long before they even heard of the Apple IIe. The Internet only propogated Open Source, but it was effectively powerful long before AOL was ever around. The whole base philosophy for UNIX is to share, communicate and make such tasks easy! The real irony is, UNIX being able to be more secure than other Operating Systems, and it was never intended to be "secure" from the beginning!
And, to top it off, I resent the SourceForge and all such "organizations". I much enjoy and miss, the days when each project had it's off-beat web-site hanging off of some obscure computer connection, or even hosted by some free hosting site like Geocities. Greatly enhanced the fealing of individuality and added a lot of color to the Linux community. When Sourceforge came around, it so much feals corporate, institutionalized and all the horrible things that most of us hate.
So, take away the "large corporate support sites", Linux got this far without them, Linux will continue on regardless.
Who knows, but my guess would be the truth about car accidents. I seriously doubt, this move is pure politik. I bet the bulk of it is large corporate car manufacturers. (Let's sit back, and see if the trend of recalled motor parts and assemblies sharply decline as investigators now have one more hurdle to jump in investigating a liability civil case against, say, General Motors for faulty break-lines or weak headers.)
Also, you have emissions testing, which will have to go through such authority somewhere down the line. It's easy to blame tobacco on cancer, because we see smoke and to a laymen it will seem obvious that it might be bad for you. What isn't so obvious, is all the toxicity coming out of the tailpipes of millions of cars across the country. California has some strick emissions laws that all residents must abide by... and still, some of the best examples of pollution (from vehicles mind you) is... wait for it.... Los Angeles, California. Oils and antifreeze coating the roads for years and mixed with pesticides from peoples lawns after a rain shower... in residential areas, and kids running bare foot across the roads all day to each other's house. Do you believe, for one second, that the oil and car industry is going to tell you a truth if it might shed a negative light on their product? Only a fool might. Yet, a wise one might consider the possibility that they would begin to take measures to protect themselves from nosey people poking around wikipedia adding 1 and 1.
in other words: compiling the code yourself to get better performance is (in the best penn jillette style) BULLSHIT!!!
Oh, and there's another thing. as a professional syadmin, I always favor vendor compiled packages for stability and support. try convincing a middle manager of a fortune 100 company about the advantages of self compiled code, and he'll be glad to staple a copy of their site-support contract with Sun/IBM/HP/Red Hat/whatever to your pink slip. big companies loathe this kind of adventure with the code that runs their business. whith their asses on the line, they want someone to fix any mistake quickly and efficiently (and binary packages are waaaay quicker than compiling), and if it doesn't work, they want some external party to blame and pay contractual fees.
If there is any BULLSHIT here, it's all in italics. Covarde, you claim to be a professional sysadmin, and I might only agree with the accuracy of descriptions of corporate policies and tendancies.
However, as for "professional sysadmin" via technical analysis, I fail to find any justification. Though, you weren't explicit in your comments, it does fly in the face of what many people perceive; these people ranging from your mentors to children you likely, grotesquely underestimate only to cry wolf to the police after they crack your security measures.
When you compile your own code, it WILL be faster than precompiled binaries, especially true for Gentoo based systems. If for no other reason, the inherent freedom given to running code that might not have to account for certain features will allow it to better serve the purpose of the user. In other words, nmap and vi doesn't have to be built with GTK, and show me a Red Hat that isn't going to "assume" that the user wants EVERY DAMN FEATURE THAT A PACKAGE MIGHT SUPPORT. No!
This fact, and level of control snowballs. It really does. By the time you log into KDE on a Gentoo system, those little "1%"s are going to add up (the 1% is a granted measure, even though I'm sure your exaggerating the truth of performance gain). Because from the kernel to glibc to any of the shared libraries and possibly other APIs in there that are functaionally stagnant, you have an AWEFUL lot of 1% gains by the time KDE window manager draws the damn icon on your screen.
A precompiled kernel? Man, you know that they turned every little thing on. No, I'm going to recompile my own kernel, turn off this, that, APM goes bye bye... reboot, run a game, oh dear, I gained 20fps because the kernel isn't too busy swapping interrupts and all that undeeded functionality. If I need it, I'll recompile, till then... why execute the code?
As for your theory that processors optimize code themselves, as I'm not an electrical engineer I can't say much about it. But, what doesn't make sense is what I do know and how I read your assertions. Machines are stupid, dumb and are not self-aware. There is no magic that happens, there is nothing up anyones sleeves. It does, exactly what it's fabricated to do, whether or not it's the desired function or even the intended function, it's going to do, what it was built to do.
On that note, I dare suggest, an AMD chip "re-optimizing" Intel optimizations would first need to identify the optimization? Sounds like a step to me, then perhaps decide the best way to interpret the optimization or 'translate' the instruction? Sounds like another step. What if the system call or ASM instruction returns a specific value that is effected by such optimizations, maybe the processor then also has to figure out how to "speak" the language. I fail to see, and it might be my own ignorance, how one processor that is NOT optimized for a technology such as AltiVec or some such, can simulate the optimization remotely close to the speed of it's native implementation! Perhaps, if the host processor is indeed THAT fast, but we aren't trying to optimize Cyrux chips here, but competitive high speed modern processors against each other. I find it VERY har
How big must the 'windfall' be before we report it? When you're checking out at the supermarket and you notice your item rang up for $2.99 instead of $3.99 that it was supposed to, do you say something? Most of us probably wouldn't say anything, but would raise hell if it was supposed to be $3.99 and it rang up for $4.99. If it's just a $1 difference in our favor, we don't report and let it slide even though we know it's an error in their system. Is that now a crime? If not, then where do we draw the line? If $1 in our favor is not a crime, but say $100 in our favor is, what's the cutoff? Does this just apply to ATM/Slot machines? What if I bought ten items that were $1 off, do I report it then? How about fifty of those items?
It's funny you should say this. A while back, at BestBuy, I approached the counter with 1.5G of DDR RAM for my computer. The girl rang up the purchase, and it totaled 20 bucks. I knew at that instant that I got a good deal, I also know that BestBuy outsources to India; so I have no conscience when taking advantage of them.
Anyways, I went home and plugged the memory in my box, ran memtest, everything was fine. Next morning, the birds were still singing, just another day.
Hijacking, and San Diego Cox Communications
on
TimeWarner DNS Hijacking
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· Score: 4, Interesting
First, as a person who owns and operates many networks, I would be rather annoyed that someone has hijacked one of my domains, for any purpose.
To me, a domain name is the equivalent to a land deed, it's a peace of virtual real-estate. It's a representation and label identifying a group of IP addresses which may or may not be associated to a physical device or service. If I have a problem with some other network, I attempt to contact the powers-that-be of the offending network; in good faith, that they would be cooperative.
Now, I assume many offensive networks out there might not cooperate, or might think that what their network is doing is either legal, moral, or of no harm. Well... I do admit, I block all of APNIC to my mail servers, though, I do not service "customers" either. If I did, I would assume my customer demographic might include a need or desire for correspondence with those in APNIC, and permit the traffic. While I might, on case by case scenerios, filter a range of IPs known for SPAM or whatever, things I certainly wouldn't do is hi-jack a domain, and most disturbingly, attempt to execute code on a clients machine without direct consent for each instance, each time. Basically, what you're doing then is intentionally deceiving a computer system, breaking standards, breaking and entering said computer system, and influencing change which permanently alters HOW that computer operates. And, knowing the practices and the broad generalized sweeping tactics of Cox Communications (for example), I must say I do NOT trust what they MIGHT consider as "malicious" code to delete off my computer "at their whim".
If this becomes "legal", then what's to stop Cox Communications (for example), from considering my MP3s as "malicious or of questionable origin" and on behalf of RIAA, delete my mp3s? How are they going to know?
Now, on to San Diego Cox Communications. While I agree that if you are on someones network, you do what they say. However, as already implied above, if my intention is to provide "Internet Service", then I DO inherently forfeit some of that overall power. And Cox Cable, blocking incoming and outgoing ports is really not within their moral obligation to do so. Nothing illegal about them doing it, no doubt some here might agree with them. But, if I'm going to sell someone "Internet Service", as I have in the past, they get "Internet Service" in full. I don't want a parent above me, and most certainly, I should be allowed unaltered Internet Service from Cox Communications on request against the default safegaurds in-place for the sake of the laymen.
But, Cox Communications does NOT permit one to exercise all of the technologies available. They notoriously block ports, and muck with the traffic. Why? Who knows, and I don't mean to be elitist, but their explanations of some Windows worm really doesn't apply to my Linux box. Besides, if I was running Windows, I still wouldn't appreciate all the port blocking and crap. I'll handle that myself.
As a result, I refuse to use Cox Cable or Time Warners Road Runner services. (Aside from the fact I'm banned from San Diego Cox Cable's network for running VPN clouds on their network, among other things like DoS'ing everyone on my subnet to boost my download speeds...), I warmly welcome other high-speed services that do NOT play parenthood. Sadly, one practically has to purchase a "Business" line instead of a "Home" connection. So, that's in fact what I have so if I want to launch my own webserver/mailserver, SQL Server or whatever, it's simply a matter of just configuring and launching the daemon.
In short, I feel hi-jacking is wrong. And I feel that people should not use Cox Cable as they are the "AOL" of today anyways. Such actions are so typical of Cox Cable... it's truelly ridiculous.
The most complex thinking that humans do (inventing new math, plotting the course of a rocket, designing a 10 million line software system, etc.) is all done CONSCIOUSLY.
This is not true. New math you say? Plotting the course of a rocket you say? No math is "new", it might be "new" to Man, but it's not like Nature wasn't using it since day one. So it's not new at all. Catagorizing and labelling things is NOT difficult, and I don't care how complex the math problem is, that is really all it is, is a label and description of a reocurring natural event or pattern.
Apparently, a four year old child can pour a glass of milk, and real-time judge trajectory as he learns to play catch. But, none of that, is conscious. Infact, I often argue that genius is nothing more than a better ability to understand how ones ownself solves their own problems. Most people have no clue about Trajectory equations as Man has described in "Physics", yet, every person well understands trajectory, and naturally adheres and demonstrates awareness of the natural mandate; at the same time the fools who memorize the fallible equations somehow think they are more familiar with it than anyone else.
As much as Man has accomplished, it really is very little in the grand scheme of things. And the most complex ideas Man has, really aren't profound enough to explain or compare to Natures most simple and mundane events (like said pouring a glass of milk). And then, Nature has awe inspiring events/patterns... there's stuff yet to discover, stuff known for years yet to be understood.... Man's only complexity is outside of his control, this is fact.
I just had a thought... reading a post within this thread.
Considering the sheer numbers of patent applications alone, of any particular field no less, is it even possible, even one of a million is truelly ground breaking? Or, does it not need to be ground breaking? If not, then what else might we call a unique thought? If it's "useful" as in a utility? But, what of the tangible significance of art such as music and paintings? Anything without prior art, certainly requires a unique thought, and I assert that regardless if that thought is useful to this person or that person, it is inherently 'ground breaking' as it might open an unknown measure of doors, be it applications, philosophies etc.
As for those who even accept the rationale presented, originally, for patents--that is to encourage invention and "progress"--there does exist a blatant blind eye towards the obvious Nature of Man and historical records as far back as we can reach, in any and all cultures. Man solves problems, Man is creative. Nothing is going to defy the fact a Man is a Man, so it only follows that nothing will make a Man less Man. Problem solving and creativity is in our essence, to deprive us of our intentions and expectations by Natural Design, is to deprive of us of what/who we are. Even under a most tyrannical state people will continue to "think", under the most repressive conditions, a man will "solve a problem"; in fact, if Man has no problems, he fabricates a problem just to try to solve. Take away everything you might from Man, he'll still discover he can draw on the walls with crushed berries, and he will do so.
Patents, Capitalism... nothing is going to stop the fact Man will continue to make discoveries. Some might argue that given these Man Made ideas, that he can improve these tendancies, but I argue that a true Great is once in a life time and no amount of "economic" encouragement will render 10,000,000 Mozarts, Einstiens, DaVinci's in one room; or, even 5 of them. If they exist in your life time, they'll be in that room on their own accord, and have always been there.
There is no favoritism. And what's wrong with chatting with developers over MSN? Seriously, get over the jealousy! If John Carmack was willing to chat with me, I'd be interested... hey, maybe he and he and I can be real friends.
EVE-ONLINE, is the ONLY 'real' mmorpg in my opinion. It's the only game that comes remotely close to real life. It's the only game, that places EVERY aspect in control of the players. There is no safe place in EVE-ONLINE, if I were so inclined, I can take my HAC to a 1.0 system like Duripant; first system that a brand new player is in. And start shooting them all as they cluelessly exit the station listening to the tutorial. Risk vs. Reward, very simple, and CCP smeared this game feature throughout the entire game from marketing, public relations, industrialism, empirialism, economics and warfare.
EVE-ONLINE is an excellent game. The only "nerdy game" I ever took an interest in, due to it's realism. Never even played one game of Dungeons and Dragons... Roleplaying, is inherently flawed in the sense that too many restrictions and rules are applied in disregard to environment.
Let people be people, the game mechanics, the game engine, the actual development and implementation of the most complex, indepth game ever is very simple. "A player can do whatever they wan't to do, just like in real life. Are the consequences worth it though? Just like in real life."
After a while, enough players will join. Human Nature will let the game implement the most complex game theory equations, stochastic calculus equations, the most difficult philosophies and social theories....
You can, take what you learn in real life and apply it in EVE, vice versa.
I saw on TV, where Bruce Willis helped put a nuclear warhead in a huge asteroid heading towards earth.
The point? The camera has allowed for the most amazing tricks, and there's good reason why the Magic Bullet theory is flawed. Without going into detail, simply fire a weapon a few times at some targets. I highly doubt ANY shooter has reproduced the results leading up to the Magic Bullet THeory.
First off, a bullet has so much forward momentum and weight, that if tumbling through the air, regardless of change in path (curving), it will always travel in a generalized forward path. The magic bullet theory suggest a bullet turns around in thin air, without carom, all within the about a foot, and maintains enough momentum to continue being deadly and penetrate flesh? That is impossible.
There is always the story of some company needing a "critical" position filled and no one in America can fill it; and this is used to justify why they outsource.
There are a couple of problems with this assertion. One, 99% of all cases of outsourcing are for positions that any country have plenty of qualified people for the positions. Phone support cheifly, but even more intense jobs like software development. Most of the time, the outsourcing is for something that you know for a fact there's tons of people to do... web programming... they aren't breaking any ground.
Besides, even if... the saying "If it can't be found in Los Angeles, it doesn't exist" is so true; to include skills and human feats. From some kid highly experienced with drive-bys with assault rifles, to an 3D FX guru working for MGM FX studios who programs his own renderer on the fly for each movie FX.
You gonna tell me, that in Los Angeles, there's NO ONE qualified or able to do any job a managers tiny brain can concoct? Man, that is bull and you all know it. Infact, you can practically go to any major world city and it would be exactly the same thing. Paris, Moscow, Shainghai, Tokyo, New York City, London, Cairo...
Secondly, are you looking for "qualified" or "able"? The two are very different, and the two are not indicative of the other in the slightest. Fact is, regardless of formal credentials, you can go anywhere and readily find "practicing able" people. I'm not talking about "On The Job Training" either. If the law permitted, I bet I can go to any US highschool and find enough software developers to start my own company in any field of interest. I'm very confident I can do this. It's one of the reasons FOSS is so high-quality, because we don't care about anything but the ability of the person... if he's 12 years old, or a 40 year old cryptographer working for the NSA for the past 20 years.... a well done patch is going to get accepted in total disregard to any formalized, claimed, proposed "credentials". Simply... "He's right, and this works. Congratulations."
But, even if you were looking for specific accredited credentials. Most of this tech crap spawned in America. It's kinda hard to believe that India (who doesn't have Microsoft, ATI, Nvidia, INTEL, Xerox, Zenith, Apple, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Boeing, Lockeheed Martin, a government space program,.... etc etc etc etc...) would have ANY one trained in a technology completely unknown/practiced/implemented by American Engineers.
So, any time I hear "well, there aren't anyone around that can do the job", they are liars. Not even lazy, they are plain lairs to even announce such a stupid idea.
Get off your stupid socio-moralistic high-horse. Just because you point out a problem with a group of people doesn't make you any sort of ist. Racist, sexist, nationalist... nor, is it truthfully a bad thing; for if the thoughts of others really bother you that much, a psychologist can help you and if not, there's the psychiatrist and shock therapy.
Indians do NOT speak English well enough for ANY kind of phone support. This isn't an American grudge, but as I understand it, it's pretty much International as German companies, Russian companies, French companies also attempt to outsource helpdesk to a hand full of Indians.
It is truth, it is real, and I don't care what you label me as. I'm pointing it out, and slamming it in your face.
While I realize that it is convenient and preferable to not have to watch all those damned "Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, do dah dah do dah dah" ads, sometimes back to back, in between sections of your favourite show, that is what finances your show.
Negative. The bill one receives in the mail once a month should finance operations... otherwise, why are they sending out bills? I refuse to pay, for a service that is overwhelmingly compensated by a third party at my expense. If I didn't have to watch ads on Cable television, then I might have bought my first television (Yup, I never have owned a television. Waste of money, crap resolution... ads...). Why spend thousands on a big screen to mount on the wall, despite it's size, with crap resolution (think a 15" UXGA 1600x1200 screen to get my complaint), and as if to add insult to injury, not only be charged once a month for this thousand dollar peace of crap technology to be useful (cable television), we are lambasted with ads. Now, I enjoy a fine debate like any other intelligent person. I love to think, ponder, contemplate... but I'm sorry. When someone baby-talks to me, I'm insulted. And when some mega corporation tries to get me to buy a Budweiser off a imaginary premise outlined in some unrelated scene within a non-name vehicle driving around in the country side and people giggling.... I'm even more insulted. If you have to lie, to convince me to consider your product... I'm insulted.
If I have to pay, do NOT give me advertisements. Why this is legal or unchallanged, I don't know.
Years ago, my boss asked me to write a program. I did, and I presented it to him. I asserted that it was finished, and he confidently mashed keys into the input and... core dump. The argument that as a user, he should at least have an idea what needs to be put into that field didn't fly at all. Nor should it. My program was broke, and I had to fix it. This went on a few times before I realized that, "if my program breaks, it's my fault not the end-users. and if I'm so bold as to ask the user for input, I had better be able to deal with anything they might enter. it's never safe to assume when dealing with ignorance or that many unknowns."
If a program breaks or has a flaw, it's not the end-users fault. Period.
Perhaps, the real reason children are shooting up schools is because adults are wrong and kids know this and become frustrated by it. To be honest, there were times I'm certain I would have done the same thing. Honestly, a feeling of solitude kept me secure from ever actually doing it. This day and age, we can see how wide spread the bullshit is, and there's no feeling of solitude putting doubts into the minds of young ones, as they clearly see, many others who agree. The world is much smaller, thanks to the internet. When I was growing up, I had to go on a back porch to contemplate the world and I had no choice to figure I was in the wrong since I had no other opinions easily available.
However, if my child were to ever get treated like this... I have good aim, and the school officials might be in trouble. Afterall, social workers will probably take my child away anyway to be psychologically evaulated or some other bullshit. You can't take much more from a parent... and you can't dishonor one any more.
Governments catching up with technology? Seriously, there's a lot of people who believe technology only originates or is engineered in someones garage, in the openness of acadamia, universities and research labs of major corporations.
First, Research and Development is akin to flushing money down the toilet; because it's not like an assembly line where you can accurately project shipped product at the end of the day. With Research and Development, you can go for decades and still have NOTHING. Keep this in mind, because the reality is, even Microsoft can't even afford a sustained and honest Research and Development lab. The ONLY people that have the TECHNOLOGY, AUTHORITY and WEALTH to handle such research is the GOVERNMENT. IF a company, university or individual presents something from research, 99.9% of the time that person was heavily funded by a GOVERNMENT entity; via contract or most commonly a federal grant.
Governments DO have all the technology. Without fueling the conspiracy theorist, yes, governments tend to have applied technology or even awareness of algorithms, methods, theories even before acadamia has such benefit; tons of cryptography, physics and organic chemistry for example.
MOST if not ALL technology is developed with ONE interest in mind. Military, and if it can give us an advantage. Ironically, this always boils down to a more efficient way of killing another man. We don't like this part of life, but military often does have fun with technology long before anyone else.
I'm sorry if I'm getting a little over-zealous. It just kills me knowing that there are many people who think the government is the bane of technology while corporations are were it all comes from. Minus federal funding or incentive, corporations ever since the East Indian Trading Company probably can soley account to ONE invention... and we can probably think real hard for that and probably debate this invention... stocks. That's IT! A socio-path CEO to some Company didn't voluntarily give his entire fortune for the sake of good-will and to fund research in making adhesives, anethetics, plastic, space travel, computers, guns, aspirin, paper, jet engines... or even a damn fiber glass fishing pole!
Companies wait for the government to de-classify technology, and shift through it looking for something that they feel they can market to the general public. Who do you think was behind developing the optical mouse... or, more specifically, who do you think has been behind 100% of all LASER research and application?
The reason why is the control of resources, distribution... all of which boils down to WHO is able to PROVIDE. Business is ALWAYS getting "shafted" on cost. Makes sense, if selling something to your neighbor you'd rather assume he can afford less and in view of a potential entity on purchase; even the most level headed would be compelled to think the funds are unlimited. Look at how the Corporations overprice services and products to Governments.
OK, so what about T1 connections? The "garuntee" isn't real, no more real than is what is garunteed from any other type of connection. About the only reason a T1 is a garuntee is due to federal legislation. A T1, is, was and always will be, soley intended for packing PHONE lines on copper... not internet speeds. AT&T developed T1/DS1 technology so they wouldn't have to lay more copper. The fact is... as far as data transfer goes, the only garuntee ANY ISP can realistically give you is a data transfer rate of 9600 baud per second, which is the bare minimum federally required for VOICE COMMUNICATIONS across that line. So I don't have any links regarding this off the top of my head, but I'm sure someone here does have them.
T1's directly represent the phone structure, so their "garuntee" is in disregard to any marketing gimic and a result to government mandate. So, so goes the prospect that 800 a month for a T1 is due to it's so-called 'garuntee', first off, it's not a garuntee as a gesture of good will, but compliance to law; such a garruntee is implicit in nature otherwise someone is breaking the law. As long as you, or most people know this... the garuntee loses market value and becomes worthless for increasing sales.
What the high cost boils down to is speculation of intent.
With a T1 line, you have that much upstream bandwidth. Upstream bandwidth, by nature of being binary in operation, is no more expensive than downstream bandwidth... anyone who attempts to justify the contrary really is defying logic, in a most fundamental way. The real difference is, they want that upstream (philosophically, 'PROVIDING') to be restricted to BUSINESS. Otherwise, BUSINESS lose an objective, incentive, edge and ultimately, they lose CONTROL. So, the real cause of the high costs is the prospect that you SHOULD be a BUSINESS if you have the resources to PROVIDE as much.
There is no technical reason for higher costs... the electrons really don't give a hoot which why they are traveling down the wire. Because there's no real overwhelming technical, sysmtematic and logical method making it more difficult to send electrons in one direction than the other, there really is no resource-economic reason for the higher costs. The Cost is purely, speculation of intent.
Soul food is ours. If you don't know what soul food is, don't bother looking it up.
I really enjoyed your post, stonecypher. You really seem to know your dishes, as if you might be an accomplished chef. However, there is only one kind of person who will mistakenly call a group of dishes as "Soul Food"; and that person would be a non-Southerner.
While "Soul Food" is a common term, my qualifications are grounded by the fact I am Southern, and no Southerner calls mundane table food as "Soul Food", but do call it "Southern Food" even while in the South.
The history of the South is so entangled between Whites and Blacks, that it would be impossible, considering proximity and intimacy, to think that there wasn't strong influence on both sides in all aspects of culture, dining included. Making the term "Soul Food" grossly over biased.
To a Southerner, explained what Yankee's call "Soul Food", he would have only one thing in mind. There is only one dish that might seperate "White" dinner from "Black" dinner in the South. "Chitlins" is such dish, and to be honest, a lot of deep South, back hills white families also eat chitlins too. Everything else, is mundane and precise regardless of which family you visit in the South.
Since there's only one dish that could possibly seperate, statistically, "Soul Food" from "Southern Food", I really shall assert there is no such thing as "Soul Food".
A lot of people, looking into the South are truely ignorant of what they see... and "Soul Food" is a perfect example of such ignorance.
Television is used to control how people think and what they believe. So naturally, it's extremely important for those in power, as the most desirable thing for those in power is subordinate obedience... even moreso than "capital" or "money". More so than "money", usually because they are the source of it to begin with, they just want the pions to play accordingly.
That's the only real reason for Television, is to influence generalized social sentiments. It's not "mind-control" in a direct, precise and immediate effect... but it is influencial to a point of the involuntary connotation "control" has, and over a longer period of time, and broader subjects and not like "What am I thinking?". Mind control in a more broad and devastating sense (60 years ago, a sense of Nationalism and Patriotism was an admirable characteristic... today, in some countries it's illegal. Less than 20 years ago, Communism was openly, confidently and earnestly attacked and criticised... today... no one cares, it's just another governing/economic system. Less than 30 years, bell bottom pants were in style during the Disco 70s, and they are back now...) This isn't necessarily "cycles" that we are led to believe in... these are concrete directions that society as a whole has taken, and often, in 180 degree turns within 10 years of "exposure".
Virtually no one actually sits down and analyzes why they think . And this is especially true for the more controversial opinions like racism, abortion, animal rights etc etc. Because we fear the fact that we might realize that there is absolutely no founding reason for our beliefs, other than, familiarity. We've been told "x", my friends adhere to "x", I'll be alone if I don't.... Yeah, I believe in "x". Some people will think they have a logical explanation for their opinions or beliefs; but you really don't... and I can prove that too you...
Go to a public place, with a pen and paper (I used to do this all the time to show friends how stupid 'society' is.) Look up in the sky, point, look down, jot something down. Do this with confidence, like it's an official effort. The contrast of meaningless with "official" appeal will confuse people... finally, a small group will form and they too will start looking in the same direction. Then the claims of validaty will start forming, one will point and say something like "you see that?" and eventually someone else will agree that they infact saw "something" when they saw nothing at all.
Best part, they'll have no friggin idea why they are participating, and as far as their concerned, they wouldn't believe the truth (or the "cause") of their actions if it were enduldged, and it's garunteed they'll refuse to believe it, if enough people were there pointing at the same void spot in space.
So... It is easy to direct society into believing the dumbest things, and make them honestly believe in them, including having them claim they have a logical basis for their belief or some actual event that once happened that supports the belief.
As a result, the television/radio is extremely important to Government and Corporations alike. Because without, they don't have as much control over how you perceive the world around you....
Dear god, the fact some people need to watch "Reality TV" for 'real life situations' should be bloody apparant, but obviously it isn't as it seems to do well with viewers. What stupidity, all they have to do is pay attention to their own dysfunctional family, or go next door.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Museum
I don't need to mention anything else. To hell with all the anti-'ism' crap in today's PC world.
To hell with respecting another religion or point of view, in the face of such blatant and utter garbage.
$27 million dollars, 500,000 visitors, political support... the whole situation is something directly from the warped mind of a retard suffering dementia and who had had a frontal lobotomy by rusty ice-picks.
All of this is in Kentucky. If they are able to be serious with their proposition and execution of such garbage as the above mentioned museum, how the hell can anyone expect anything more sane in any other area?
... means is that when you build something complex and demanding, say a dam or an operating system kernel, the end result will have a specific level of quality, no matter how you build it.
First, Mr. Spinellis I found the report to be rather intriguing and captivating. I much respect the work put into it, and I think it'll prove valuable resource for study or reference.
With that said, the above quote struck a chord with me.
Let's take fire control systems for weapons of mass destruction. Without going into detail, the basic fact is that if a thermo-nuclear warhead is launched from Russia, France, UK, Isreal, US or any other country, it was and will be a deliberate act. The systems are far too complex and far too reliable for error or mistake. In other words, regardless of political position, no ruling body is going to ignore the possibility of an oopsie launch.
So, I do understand, that certain objectives, though may be approached and implemented vastly differently, will have strong similarities in the end result and with how it was successfully applied.
My problem is with this. What your saying is that there is no quality difference between Windows and Linux, and this is the discordant chord struck.
I can not extrapolate the agreeable portions of your thought to the seemingly obvious short comings of the Windows operating system. On any facet, whether it is security, stability, functionality or reliability. Windows is, far behind on all fronts.... aside from secrecy from a Microsoft point of view.
I once told my boss, who well understood, that he would never get the quality of code from me in the workplace as I might submit for the Open Source realm. It's just painfully obvious, that I will, at some point, hack an improper solution together for his deadline. And the nature of business, after the product is built, no one wants to change it unless they have to. So, while the economics all come into play here, why Microsoft might choose to fix one bug versus the other, the fact is in Open Source a bug will be fix on merit of a fix being available and acknowledgment that the bug is in fact a bug. Regardless if it's economically sound or feasible to fix the bug, in Open Source, it will be fixed.
While the end results that you present are interesting, I can not accept the proposition that the Windows kernel is too similar in quality. All one has to do is actually use the blasted thing, and no amount of numbers can be that convincing to ignore all the pitfalls well perceived from actually using the dreadful software.
I think you have overlooked overwhelming variables that directly effect the quality of software. Or, perhaps, the WRK has been a meticulous focus at Microsoft before it's release... this is likely possible, as it's WIDELY known, from nearly ALL examples of closed source proprietary software being released to the Open Source, that it takes years just to clean up and prepare for the ultra high standards of the OS community.
Cable was originally created so that television signals could be re-transmitted to people who could not receive the signals because of blocking mountains. The continued right of cable providers to retransmit television signals, with appropriate compulsory licenses, is protected under 17 U.S.C. Sec. 111.
It's seems you are correct and I have been unintentionally misleading. "Paid Television" was for the purpose of commercial free broadcasts.
"If they're successful, this could affect everything from the cost of cable service to the price of TVs," said the attorney close to the litigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity."
.50 BMG rounds for all fortune 500 companies.
I would like to point out, that in America when cable was first offered to the public, the ONLY purpose of buying it was so that you can watch TV WITHOUT commercial interruption. Else, it was the typical bunny ears with tinfoil wrapped around them, watching General Hospital on ABC or was it CBS, and have to watch a commercial every five minutes or so.
I think it happened in or around this order....
MTV proved to attract quite the audience, but most importantly, impressionable young soon-to-be Consumers. Marketing types, shall focus in on this, "untapped" market... or rather, the bucket for which they might shoot the fish; made of gold, with complimentary
MTV used to play music videos, as might be suggested by the name. Then came the trends focusing on teen appeal; the first commercials on MTV were Noxima commercials and they even used one of the female VJs.
As MTV was being raped by Capitalism, not to mention the Musicians and Artists--as by this time, it's been established that if a band can get a video to be played on MTV, they are as good as gold--other major networks soon followed suit.
HBO trying so hard to maintain the original concept, of a Home Box Office (hence the HBO), first resorted to in-house production, heavily laden with product placement or other dung such as plots or lines conforming tightly with social trends; like anti-racist tears, or commie-bastard themes...
Then with the marketers pouring so much money into Cable Television, a market they would have loved to defeat for many reasons, let alone the fact that it was a product that freed the Consumer from Advertisements to begin with, Cable television exploded.
Advertisers were SO ADAMANT in penetrating cable television, they did everything from attempt to bankrupt the networks (by means of connections, such as getting buddy buddy with the utilities companies--gas, electricity, phone--and all sorts of other avenues) to outright attempting to sue them for not allowing them slots for their commercials. Forcing the cable television networks to start airing commercials in disregard of the fact that the Consumers were paying for the service, and had expectations of what their product received would be.
Now, this might shed pity upon the cable television networks. And maybe it should. However, for those who still might wonder how this "hurts" the consumer...
Cost of Cable Television, and considering inflation, has only gotten more expensive; it never got cheaper, and that's likely by demand of the Advertisers who insist that if a Consumer has to pay for something, they'll take it more seriously.
So there is something amuck with the whole OP, as when I hear Attorneys blabber stuff like what I quoted... what garbage to fool the Consumer into a reason to jack up the price of Cable Television. When, the fact is, they make so much money from the Advertisers, they can afford to revamp their entire infrastructure twenty times and still come out heads over toes all the while giving it out for free to all those who might have a coaxial jack in their house, outhouse, doghouse or whateverhouse.
And where would the extra money go to; if they do raise prices under this false pretense? Who the fuck knows; but what I do know, who it will go to you probably didn't vote for.
1) Employees of major corporations assigned to opensource could be laid off or reassigned to directly profitable projects.
2) People who work on opensource in their spare time could be laid off and
a) Be unable to buy computers, maintain an internet connection, etc.
b) OR... have lots of spare time and do a lot of cool stuff to build their resume.
3) Folks who are depressed are not every productive. In a deep recession there will be a lot of fear, anxiety, and depression.
4) Donations to opensource bandwidth, download sites, and so on could falter and lead to blackouts of key opensource resources.
99.999% untrue.
1) True, but you can be laid off for any reason, and resignation as well. So it's sorta mute even mentioning a reason for being laid off, as if it matters.
2) Inability to upgrade, leads to more intense skill sets. Proof, for a long time some of the best hackers were coming out of third world countries. An analysis could reflect the fact that they were getting very old hardware. If we do further analysis, well, simply pick up a user manual to any very old modem, and then look at a modern user manual for a new modem or router. Old user manual for a modem explains jumpers, PPP details, AT codes and everything. New user manual, hardware has no jumpers, there's no detail explained et al.
Effectively using used and or old equipment inherently requires a more intimate knowledge of the devices and technologies, as they are not preset, preconfigured, and directed as per factory defaults to ensure that initial use is as expected.
When people can not afford new equipment, they get by with whatever they get. Often, we go to pawn shops and pick up used equipment, or get pass-me-downs from friends et al. No matter how poor you are, in a tech-savvy society you can always find a "computer" in a most technical term. Which leads to the above.
Internet connection? I know people who have been using the Internet all along and never paid a dime. Remember, we are hackers, and this is even long before every body having a WiFi router in their house. All you ever had to do was call up AOL and threaten to leave to another ISP and you'll get another free 5000 hours.
3) Folks who are depressed are HISTORICALLY far more productive and motivated. I can't even believe you even tried to assess the contrary to this fact. The only fact is, serenity and peace leads to laziness and the reason why is there's no desperation motivation action. This is true in every aspect of life, from birth rates being far higher in poverty ridden areas to the fact Leonardo DaVinci and other greats grew up in the thick of social, political and economic turmoil. Nothing will get a man off his ass as surely as a fire lit beneath.
4) The OpenSource community has ALWAYS been strong. You apparently are relatively new to computers in general, probably as much as most of society, long before they even heard of the Apple IIe. The Internet only propogated Open Source, but it was effectively powerful long before AOL was ever around. The whole base philosophy for UNIX is to share, communicate and make such tasks easy! The real irony is, UNIX being able to be more secure than other Operating Systems, and it was never intended to be "secure" from the beginning!
And, to top it off, I resent the SourceForge and all such "organizations". I much enjoy and miss, the days when each project had it's off-beat web-site hanging off of some obscure computer connection, or even hosted by some free hosting site like Geocities. Greatly enhanced the fealing of individuality and added a lot of color to the Linux community. When Sourceforge came around, it so much feals corporate, institutionalized and all the horrible things that most of us hate.
So, take away the "large corporate support sites", Linux got this far without them, Linux will continue on regardless.
What is NHTSA hiding from us?
Who knows, but my guess would be the truth about car accidents. I seriously doubt, this move is pure politik. I bet the bulk of it is large corporate car manufacturers. (Let's sit back, and see if the trend of recalled motor parts and assemblies sharply decline as investigators now have one more hurdle to jump in investigating a liability civil case against, say, General Motors for faulty break-lines or weak headers.)
Also, you have emissions testing, which will have to go through such authority somewhere down the line. It's easy to blame tobacco on cancer, because we see smoke and to a laymen it will seem obvious that it might be bad for you. What isn't so obvious, is all the toxicity coming out of the tailpipes of millions of cars across the country. California has some strick emissions laws that all residents must abide by... and still, some of the best examples of pollution (from vehicles mind you) is... wait for it.... Los Angeles, California. Oils and antifreeze coating the roads for years and mixed with pesticides from peoples lawns after a rain shower... in residential areas, and kids running bare foot across the roads all day to each other's house. Do you believe, for one second, that the oil and car industry is going to tell you a truth if it might shed a negative light on their product? Only a fool might. Yet, a wise one might consider the possibility that they would begin to take measures to protect themselves from nosey people poking around wikipedia adding 1 and 1.
in other words: compiling the code yourself to get better performance is (in the best penn jillette style) BULLSHIT!!!
Oh, and there's another thing. as a professional syadmin, I always favor vendor compiled packages for stability and support. try convincing a middle manager of a fortune 100 company about the advantages of self compiled code, and he'll be glad to staple a copy of their site-support contract with Sun/IBM/HP/Red Hat/whatever to your pink slip.
big companies loathe this kind of adventure with the code that runs their business. whith their asses on the line, they want someone to fix any mistake quickly and efficiently (and binary packages are waaaay quicker than compiling), and if it doesn't work, they want some external party to blame and pay contractual fees.
If there is any BULLSHIT here, it's all in italics. Covarde, you claim to be a professional sysadmin, and I might only agree with the accuracy of descriptions of corporate policies and tendancies.
However, as for "professional sysadmin" via technical analysis, I fail to find any justification. Though, you weren't explicit in your comments, it does fly in the face of what many people perceive; these people ranging from your mentors to children you likely, grotesquely underestimate only to cry wolf to the police after they crack your security measures.
When you compile your own code, it WILL be faster than precompiled binaries, especially true for Gentoo based systems. If for no other reason, the inherent freedom given to running code that might not have to account for certain features will allow it to better serve the purpose of the user. In other words, nmap and vi doesn't have to be built with GTK, and show me a Red Hat that isn't going to "assume" that the user wants EVERY DAMN FEATURE THAT A PACKAGE MIGHT SUPPORT. No!
This fact, and level of control snowballs. It really does. By the time you log into KDE on a Gentoo system, those little "1%"s are going to add up (the 1% is a granted measure, even though I'm sure your exaggerating the truth of performance gain). Because from the kernel to glibc to any of the shared libraries and possibly other APIs in there that are functaionally stagnant, you have an AWEFUL lot of 1% gains by the time KDE window manager draws the damn icon on your screen.
A precompiled kernel? Man, you know that they turned every little thing on. No, I'm going to recompile my own kernel, turn off this, that, APM goes bye bye... reboot, run a game, oh dear, I gained 20fps because the kernel isn't too busy swapping interrupts and all that undeeded functionality. If I need it, I'll recompile, till then... why execute the code?
As for your theory that processors optimize code themselves, as I'm not an electrical engineer I can't say much about it. But, what doesn't make sense is what I do know and how I read your assertions. Machines are stupid, dumb and are not self-aware. There is no magic that happens, there is nothing up anyones sleeves. It does, exactly what it's fabricated to do, whether or not it's the desired function or even the intended function, it's going to do, what it was built to do.
On that note, I dare suggest, an AMD chip "re-optimizing" Intel optimizations would first need to identify the optimization? Sounds like a step to me, then perhaps decide the best way to interpret the optimization or 'translate' the instruction? Sounds like another step. What if the system call or ASM instruction returns a specific value that is effected by such optimizations, maybe the processor then also has to figure out how to "speak" the language. I fail to see, and it might be my own ignorance, how one processor that is NOT optimized for a technology such as AltiVec or some such, can simulate the optimization remotely close to the speed of it's native implementation! Perhaps, if the host processor is indeed THAT fast, but we aren't trying to optimize Cyrux chips here, but competitive high speed modern processors against each other. I find it VERY har
How big must the 'windfall' be before we report it? When you're checking out at the supermarket and you notice your item rang up for $2.99 instead of $3.99 that it was supposed to, do you say something? Most of us probably wouldn't say anything, but would raise hell if it was supposed to be $3.99 and it rang up for $4.99. If it's just a $1 difference in our favor, we don't report and let it slide even though we know it's an error in their system. Is that now a crime? If not, then where do we draw the line? If $1 in our favor is not a crime, but say $100 in our favor is, what's the cutoff? Does this just apply to ATM/Slot machines? What if I bought ten items that were $1 off, do I report it then? How about fifty of those items?
It's funny you should say this. A while back, at BestBuy, I approached the counter with 1.5G of DDR RAM for my computer. The girl rang up the purchase, and it totaled 20 bucks. I knew at that instant that I got a good deal, I also know that BestBuy outsources to India; so I have no conscience when taking advantage of them.
Anyways, I went home and plugged the memory in my box, ran memtest, everything was fine. Next morning, the birds were still singing, just another day.
First, as a person who owns and operates many networks, I would be rather annoyed that someone has hijacked one of my domains, for any purpose.
To me, a domain name is the equivalent to a land deed, it's a peace of virtual real-estate. It's a representation and label identifying a group of IP addresses which may or may not be associated to a physical device or service. If I have a problem with some other network, I attempt to contact the powers-that-be of the offending network; in good faith, that they would be cooperative.
Now, I assume many offensive networks out there might not cooperate, or might think that what their network is doing is either legal, moral, or of no harm. Well... I do admit, I block all of APNIC to my mail servers, though, I do not service "customers" either. If I did, I would assume my customer demographic might include a need or desire for correspondence with those in APNIC, and permit the traffic. While I might, on case by case scenerios, filter a range of IPs known for SPAM or whatever, things I certainly wouldn't do is hi-jack a domain, and most disturbingly, attempt to execute code on a clients machine without direct consent for each instance, each time. Basically, what you're doing then is intentionally deceiving a computer system, breaking standards, breaking and entering said computer system, and influencing change which permanently alters HOW that computer operates. And, knowing the practices and the broad generalized sweeping tactics of Cox Communications (for example), I must say I do NOT trust what they MIGHT consider as "malicious" code to delete off my computer "at their whim".
If this becomes "legal", then what's to stop Cox Communications (for example), from considering my MP3s as "malicious or of questionable origin" and on behalf of RIAA, delete my mp3s? How are they going to know?
Now, on to San Diego Cox Communications. While I agree that if you are on someones network, you do what they say. However, as already implied above, if my intention is to provide "Internet Service", then I DO inherently forfeit some of that overall power. And Cox Cable, blocking incoming and outgoing ports is really not within their moral obligation to do so. Nothing illegal about them doing it, no doubt some here might agree with them. But, if I'm going to sell someone "Internet Service", as I have in the past, they get "Internet Service" in full. I don't want a parent above me, and most certainly, I should be allowed unaltered Internet Service from Cox Communications on request against the default safegaurds in-place for the sake of the laymen.
But, Cox Communications does NOT permit one to exercise all of the technologies available. They notoriously block ports, and muck with the traffic. Why? Who knows, and I don't mean to be elitist, but their explanations of some Windows worm really doesn't apply to my Linux box. Besides, if I was running Windows, I still wouldn't appreciate all the port blocking and crap. I'll handle that myself.
As a result, I refuse to use Cox Cable or Time Warners Road Runner services. (Aside from the fact I'm banned from San Diego Cox Cable's network for running VPN clouds on their network, among other things like DoS'ing everyone on my subnet to boost my download speeds...), I warmly welcome other high-speed services that do NOT play parenthood. Sadly, one practically has to purchase a "Business" line instead of a "Home" connection. So, that's in fact what I have so if I want to launch my own webserver/mailserver, SQL Server or whatever, it's simply a matter of just configuring and launching the daemon.
In short, I feel hi-jacking is wrong. And I feel that people should not use Cox Cable as they are the "AOL" of today anyways. Such actions are so typical of Cox Cable... it's truelly ridiculous.
The most complex thinking that humans do (inventing new math, plotting the course of a rocket, designing a 10 million line software system, etc.) is all done CONSCIOUSLY.
This is not true. New math you say? Plotting the course of a rocket you say? No math is "new", it might be "new" to Man, but it's not like Nature wasn't using it since day one. So it's not new at all. Catagorizing and labelling things is NOT difficult, and I don't care how complex the math problem is, that is really all it is, is a label and description of a reocurring natural event or pattern.
Apparently, a four year old child can pour a glass of milk, and real-time judge trajectory as he learns to play catch. But, none of that, is conscious. Infact, I often argue that genius is nothing more than a better ability to understand how ones ownself solves their own problems. Most people have no clue about Trajectory equations as Man has described in "Physics", yet, every person well understands trajectory, and naturally adheres and demonstrates awareness of the natural mandate; at the same time the fools who memorize the fallible equations somehow think they are more familiar with it than anyone else.
As much as Man has accomplished, it really is very little in the grand scheme of things. And the most complex ideas Man has, really aren't profound enough to explain or compare to Natures most simple and mundane events (like said pouring a glass of milk). And then, Nature has awe inspiring events/patterns... there's stuff yet to discover, stuff known for years yet to be understood.... Man's only complexity is outside of his control, this is fact.
I just had a thought... reading a post within this thread.
Considering the sheer numbers of patent applications alone, of any particular field no less, is it even possible, even one of a million is truelly ground breaking? Or, does it not need to be ground breaking? If not, then what else might we call a unique thought? If it's "useful" as in a utility? But, what of the tangible significance of art such as music and paintings? Anything without prior art, certainly requires a unique thought, and I assert that regardless if that thought is useful to this person or that person, it is inherently 'ground breaking' as it might open an unknown measure of doors, be it applications, philosophies etc.
As for those who even accept the rationale presented, originally, for patents--that is to encourage invention and "progress"--there does exist a blatant blind eye towards the obvious Nature of Man and historical records as far back as we can reach, in any and all cultures. Man solves problems, Man is creative. Nothing is going to defy the fact a Man is a Man, so it only follows that nothing will make a Man less Man. Problem solving and creativity is in our essence, to deprive us of our intentions and expectations by Natural Design, is to deprive of us of what/who we are. Even under a most tyrannical state people will continue to "think", under the most repressive conditions, a man will "solve a problem"; in fact, if Man has no problems, he fabricates a problem just to try to solve. Take away everything you might from Man, he'll still discover he can draw on the walls with crushed berries, and he will do so.
Patents, Capitalism... nothing is going to stop the fact Man will continue to make discoveries. Some might argue that given these Man Made ideas, that he can improve these tendancies, but I argue that a true Great is once in a life time and no amount of "economic" encouragement will render 10,000,000 Mozarts, Einstiens, DaVinci's in one room; or, even 5 of them. If they exist in your life time, they'll be in that room on their own accord, and have always been there.
From the movie Gangs of New York, Leonardo De Caprio's character shares a bit of wisdom.
"It's a funny feeling being under the wing of a dragon. It's warmer than you think"
There is no favoritism. And what's wrong with chatting with developers over MSN? Seriously, get over the jealousy! If John Carmack was willing to chat with me, I'd be interested... hey, maybe he and he and I can be real friends.
EVE-ONLINE, is the ONLY 'real' mmorpg in my opinion. It's the only game that comes remotely close to real life. It's the only game, that places EVERY aspect in control of the players. There is no safe place in EVE-ONLINE, if I were so inclined, I can take my HAC to a 1.0 system like Duripant; first system that a brand new player is in. And start shooting them all as they cluelessly exit the station listening to the tutorial. Risk vs. Reward, very simple, and CCP smeared this game feature throughout the entire game from marketing, public relations, industrialism, empirialism, economics and warfare.
EVE-ONLINE is an excellent game. The only "nerdy game" I ever took an interest in, due to it's realism. Never even played one game of Dungeons and Dragons... Roleplaying, is inherently flawed in the sense that too many restrictions and rules are applied in disregard to environment.
Let people be people, the game mechanics, the game engine, the actual development and implementation of the most complex, indepth game ever is very simple. "A player can do whatever they wan't to do, just like in real life. Are the consequences worth it though? Just like in real life."
After a while, enough players will join. Human Nature will let the game implement the most complex game theory equations, stochastic calculus equations, the most difficult philosophies and social theories....
You can, take what you learn in real life and apply it in EVE, vice versa.
Let me give you an example. If you are No. 1 or No. 2 in your industry, you hate open source.
Let's expand on this.
Sony, has got to be No.1 AND No.2 in MANY different mainstream and niche markets. Home and handheld consoles? Cell phones? Semi-conductors?
Sony even sold PS2 Linux kits.
My only complaints are Starscream looks stupid as a robot and Bumblebee is supposed to be a VW Bug.
I saw on TV, where Bruce Willis helped put a nuclear warhead in a huge asteroid heading towards earth.
The point? The camera has allowed for the most amazing tricks, and there's good reason why the Magic Bullet theory is flawed. Without going into detail, simply fire a weapon a few times at some targets. I highly doubt ANY shooter has reproduced the results leading up to the Magic Bullet THeory.
First off, a bullet has so much forward momentum and weight, that if tumbling through the air, regardless of change in path (curving), it will always travel in a generalized forward path. The magic bullet theory suggest a bullet turns around in thin air, without carom, all within the about a foot, and maintains enough momentum to continue being deadly and penetrate flesh? That is impossible.
There is always the story of some company needing a "critical" position filled and no one in America can fill it; and this is used to justify why they outsource.
There are a couple of problems with this assertion. One, 99% of all cases of outsourcing are for positions that any country have plenty of qualified people for the positions. Phone support cheifly, but even more intense jobs like software development. Most of the time, the outsourcing is for something that you know for a fact there's tons of people to do... web programming... they aren't breaking any ground.
Besides, even if... the saying "If it can't be found in Los Angeles, it doesn't exist" is so true; to include skills and human feats. From some kid highly experienced with drive-bys with assault rifles, to an 3D FX guru working for MGM FX studios who programs his own renderer on the fly for each movie FX.
You gonna tell me, that in Los Angeles, there's NO ONE qualified or able to do any job a managers tiny brain can concoct? Man, that is bull and you all know it. Infact, you can practically go to any major world city and it would be exactly the same thing. Paris, Moscow, Shainghai, Tokyo, New York City, London, Cairo...
Secondly, are you looking for "qualified" or "able"? The two are very different, and the two are not indicative of the other in the slightest. Fact is, regardless of formal credentials, you can go anywhere and readily find "practicing able" people. I'm not talking about "On The Job Training" either. If the law permitted, I bet I can go to any US highschool and find enough software developers to start my own company in any field of interest. I'm very confident I can do this. It's one of the reasons FOSS is so high-quality, because we don't care about anything but the ability of the person... if he's 12 years old, or a 40 year old cryptographer working for the NSA for the past 20 years.... a well done patch is going to get accepted in total disregard to any formalized, claimed, proposed "credentials". Simply... "He's right, and this works. Congratulations."
But, even if you were looking for specific accredited credentials. Most of this tech crap spawned in America. It's kinda hard to believe that India (who doesn't have Microsoft, ATI, Nvidia, INTEL, Xerox, Zenith, Apple, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Boeing, Lockeheed Martin, a government space program,.... etc etc etc etc...) would have ANY one trained in a technology completely unknown/practiced/implemented by American Engineers.
So, any time I hear "well, there aren't anyone around that can do the job", they are liars. Not even lazy, they are plain lairs to even announce such a stupid idea.
I demand that morari gets +5 and "Insightful".
Get off your stupid socio-moralistic high-horse. Just because you point out a problem with a group of people doesn't make you any sort of ist. Racist, sexist, nationalist... nor, is it truthfully a bad thing; for if the thoughts of others really bother you that much, a psychologist can help you and if not, there's the psychiatrist and shock therapy.
Indians do NOT speak English well enough for ANY kind of phone support. This isn't an American grudge, but as I understand it, it's pretty much International as German companies, Russian companies, French companies also attempt to outsource helpdesk to a hand full of Indians.
It is truth, it is real, and I don't care what you label me as. I'm pointing it out, and slamming it in your face.
While I realize that it is convenient and preferable to not have to watch all those damned "Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, do dah dah do dah dah" ads, sometimes back to back, in between sections of your favourite show, that is what finances your show.
Negative. The bill one receives in the mail once a month should finance operations... otherwise, why are they sending out bills? I refuse to pay, for a service that is overwhelmingly compensated by a third party at my expense. If I didn't have to watch ads on Cable television, then I might have bought my first television (Yup, I never have owned a television. Waste of money, crap resolution... ads...). Why spend thousands on a big screen to mount on the wall, despite it's size, with crap resolution (think a 15" UXGA 1600x1200 screen to get my complaint), and as if to add insult to injury, not only be charged once a month for this thousand dollar peace of crap technology to be useful (cable television), we are lambasted with ads. Now, I enjoy a fine debate like any other intelligent person. I love to think, ponder, contemplate... but I'm sorry. When someone baby-talks to me, I'm insulted. And when some mega corporation tries to get me to buy a Budweiser off a imaginary premise outlined in some unrelated scene within a non-name vehicle driving around in the country side and people giggling.... I'm even more insulted. If you have to lie, to convince me to consider your product... I'm insulted.
If I have to pay, do NOT give me advertisements. Why this is legal or unchallanged, I don't know.
Years ago, my boss asked me to write a program. I did, and I presented it to him. I asserted that it was finished, and he confidently mashed keys into the input and... core dump. The argument that as a user, he should at least have an idea what needs to be put into that field didn't fly at all. Nor should it. My program was broke, and I had to fix it. This went on a few times before I realized that, "if my program breaks, it's my fault not the end-users. and if I'm so bold as to ask the user for input, I had better be able to deal with anything they might enter. it's never safe to assume when dealing with ignorance or that many unknowns."
If a program breaks or has a flaw, it's not the end-users fault. Period.
Perhaps, the real reason children are shooting up schools is because adults are wrong and kids know this and become frustrated by it. To be honest, there were times I'm certain I would have done the same thing. Honestly, a feeling of solitude kept me secure from ever actually doing it. This day and age, we can see how wide spread the bullshit is, and there's no feeling of solitude putting doubts into the minds of young ones, as they clearly see, many others who agree. The world is much smaller, thanks to the internet. When I was growing up, I had to go on a back porch to contemplate the world and I had no choice to figure I was in the wrong since I had no other opinions easily available.
However, if my child were to ever get treated like this... I have good aim, and the school officials might be in trouble. Afterall, social workers will probably take my child away anyway to be psychologically evaulated or some other bullshit. You can't take much more from a parent... and you can't dishonor one any more.
Governments catching up with technology? Seriously, there's a lot of people who believe technology only originates or is engineered in someones garage, in the openness of acadamia, universities and research labs of major corporations.
First, Research and Development is akin to flushing money down the toilet; because it's not like an assembly line where you can accurately project shipped product at the end of the day. With Research and Development, you can go for decades and still have NOTHING. Keep this in mind, because the reality is, even Microsoft can't even afford a sustained and honest Research and Development lab. The ONLY people that have the TECHNOLOGY, AUTHORITY and WEALTH to handle such research is the GOVERNMENT. IF a company, university or individual presents something from research, 99.9% of the time that person was heavily funded by a GOVERNMENT entity; via contract or most commonly a federal grant.
Governments DO have all the technology. Without fueling the conspiracy theorist, yes, governments tend to have applied technology or even awareness of algorithms, methods, theories even before acadamia has such benefit; tons of cryptography, physics and organic chemistry for example.
MOST if not ALL technology is developed with ONE interest in mind. Military, and if it can give us an advantage. Ironically, this always boils down to a more efficient way of killing another man. We don't like this part of life, but military often does have fun with technology long before anyone else.
I'm sorry if I'm getting a little over-zealous. It just kills me knowing that there are many people who think the government is the bane of technology while corporations are were it all comes from. Minus federal funding or incentive, corporations ever since the East Indian Trading Company probably can soley account to ONE invention... and we can probably think real hard for that and probably debate this invention... stocks. That's IT! A socio-path CEO to some Company didn't voluntarily give his entire fortune for the sake of good-will and to fund research in making adhesives, anethetics, plastic, space travel, computers, guns, aspirin, paper, jet engines... or even a damn fiber glass fishing pole!
Companies wait for the government to de-classify technology, and shift through it looking for something that they feel they can market to the general public. Who do you think was behind developing the optical mouse... or, more specifically, who do you think has been behind 100% of all LASER research and application?
The reason why is the control of resources, distribution... all of which boils down to WHO is able to PROVIDE. Business is ALWAYS getting "shafted" on cost. Makes sense, if selling something to your neighbor you'd rather assume he can afford less and in view of a potential entity on purchase; even the most level headed would be compelled to think the funds are unlimited. Look at how the Corporations overprice services and products to Governments.
OK, so what about T1 connections? The "garuntee" isn't real, no more real than is what is garunteed from any other type of connection. About the only reason a T1 is a garuntee is due to federal legislation. A T1, is, was and always will be, soley intended for packing PHONE lines on copper... not internet speeds. AT&T developed T1/DS1 technology so they wouldn't have to lay more copper. The fact is... as far as data transfer goes, the only garuntee ANY ISP can realistically give you is a data transfer rate of 9600 baud per second, which is the bare minimum federally required for VOICE COMMUNICATIONS across that line. So I don't have any links regarding this off the top of my head, but I'm sure someone here does have them.
T1's directly represent the phone structure, so their "garuntee" is in disregard to any marketing gimic and a result to government mandate. So, so goes the prospect that 800 a month for a T1 is due to it's so-called 'garuntee', first off, it's not a garuntee as a gesture of good will, but compliance to law; such a garruntee is implicit in nature otherwise someone is breaking the law. As long as you, or most people know this... the garuntee loses market value and becomes worthless for increasing sales.
What the high cost boils down to is speculation of intent.
With a T1 line, you have that much upstream bandwidth. Upstream bandwidth, by nature of being binary in operation, is no more expensive than downstream bandwidth... anyone who attempts to justify the contrary really is defying logic, in a most fundamental way. The real difference is, they want that upstream (philosophically, 'PROVIDING') to be restricted to BUSINESS. Otherwise, BUSINESS lose an objective, incentive, edge and ultimately, they lose CONTROL. So, the real cause of the high costs is the prospect that you SHOULD be a BUSINESS if you have the resources to PROVIDE as much.
There is no technical reason for higher costs... the electrons really don't give a hoot which why they are traveling down the wire. Because there's no real overwhelming technical, sysmtematic and logical method making it more difficult to send electrons in one direction than the other, there really is no resource-economic reason for the higher costs. The Cost is purely, speculation of intent.
Soul food is ours. If you don't know what soul food is, don't bother looking it up.
I really enjoyed your post, stonecypher. You really seem to know your dishes, as if you might be an accomplished chef. However, there is only one kind of person who will mistakenly call a group of dishes as "Soul Food"; and that person would be a non-Southerner.
While "Soul Food" is a common term, my qualifications are grounded by the fact I am Southern, and no Southerner calls mundane table food as "Soul Food", but do call it "Southern Food" even while in the South.
The history of the South is so entangled between Whites and Blacks, that it would be impossible, considering proximity and intimacy, to think that there wasn't strong influence on both sides in all aspects of culture, dining included. Making the term "Soul Food" grossly over biased.
To a Southerner, explained what Yankee's call "Soul Food", he would have only one thing in mind. There is only one dish that might seperate "White" dinner from "Black" dinner in the South. "Chitlins" is such dish, and to be honest, a lot of deep South, back hills white families also eat chitlins too. Everything else, is mundane and precise regardless of which family you visit in the South.
Since there's only one dish that could possibly seperate, statistically, "Soul Food" from "Southern Food", I really shall assert there is no such thing as "Soul Food".
A lot of people, looking into the South are truely ignorant of what they see... and "Soul Food" is a perfect example of such ignorance.
Television is used to control how people think and what they believe. So naturally, it's extremely important for those in power, as the most desirable thing for those in power is subordinate obedience... even moreso than "capital" or "money". More so than "money", usually because they are the source of it to begin with, they just want the pions to play accordingly.
That's the only real reason for Television, is to influence generalized social sentiments. It's not "mind-control" in a direct, precise and immediate effect... but it is influencial to a point of the involuntary connotation "control" has, and over a longer period of time, and broader subjects and not like "What am I thinking?". Mind control in a more broad and devastating sense (60 years ago, a sense of Nationalism and Patriotism was an admirable characteristic... today, in some countries it's illegal. Less than 20 years ago, Communism was openly, confidently and earnestly attacked and criticised... today... no one cares, it's just another governing/economic system. Less than 30 years, bell bottom pants were in style during the Disco 70s, and they are back now...) This isn't necessarily "cycles" that we are led to believe in... these are concrete directions that society as a whole has taken, and often, in 180 degree turns within 10 years of "exposure".
Virtually no one actually sits down and analyzes why they think . And this is especially true for the more controversial opinions like racism, abortion, animal rights etc etc. Because we fear the fact that we might realize that there is absolutely no founding reason for our beliefs, other than, familiarity. We've been told "x", my friends adhere to "x", I'll be alone if I don't.... Yeah, I believe in "x". Some people will think they have a logical explanation for their opinions or beliefs; but you really don't... and I can prove that too you...
Go to a public place, with a pen and paper (I used to do this all the time to show friends how stupid 'society' is.) Look up in the sky, point, look down, jot something down. Do this with confidence, like it's an official effort. The contrast of meaningless with "official" appeal will confuse people... finally, a small group will form and they too will start looking in the same direction. Then the claims of validaty will start forming, one will point and say something like "you see that?" and eventually someone else will agree that they infact saw "something" when they saw nothing at all.
Best part, they'll have no friggin idea why they are participating, and as far as their concerned, they wouldn't believe the truth (or the "cause") of their actions if it were enduldged, and it's garunteed they'll refuse to believe it, if enough people were there pointing at the same void spot in space.
So... It is easy to direct society into believing the dumbest things, and make them honestly believe in them, including having them claim they have a logical basis for their belief or some actual event that once happened that supports the belief.
As a result, the television/radio is extremely important to Government and Corporations alike. Because without, they don't have as much control over how you perceive the world around you....
Dear god, the fact some people need to watch "Reality TV" for 'real life situations' should be bloody apparant, but obviously it isn't as it seems to do well with viewers. What stupidity, all they have to do is pay attention to their own dysfunctional family, or go next door.