I hardly think your dell with it's one 3.06 GHz P4 is going to be faster than the dual 1.8GHz mac. Did the dell have a 180GB HD? You did get the RAM right though.
You have to check more than just the CPU speed and the amount of RAM. Plus you forget that Apple includes much better software out of box than what Dell gives you.
Better price that out again.
"The new pricing policy really hurt RedHat and Linux at our school. "
You mean the $50 pricetag for Redhat Enterprise AS and $25 price tag for WS?
If you are using the LTSP setup, and you should for labs, then you are paying $50/year for the labs. Much cheeper and easier than XP, imho. Plus you can probably upgrade your labs painlessly if they are capable of netbooting. No need for all new hardware. The lab is controlled by the server.
One minor nit to pick. We aren't running out of room. The world population will start to decline by 2075 according to most projections. Most of the "developed" countries have a decresing population.
Compare last year's government revenue to this year's. Economic activity has a multiplying effect. Thus a tax cut can increase tax revenue, by increasing incomes. If the economy grows more than the rate is cut. The point isn't that most tax cuts pay for themselves, but a 6% tax cut doesn't result in 6% less money. Read up on some Keynes. Deficits aren't always bad, just that our debt should grow slower than the economy, on average.
Actually, the religious monks were among the few well educated people during the dark ages. And the church was one of the few sources of literature and education. If it was not for the work of some monks, we probably would have lost an even greater amout of classical literature and information. The dark ages weren't caused by the rise of religious fundamentalism, it was caused by the fall of a powerful and relatively stable government and it's replacement with a feudal system more of more or less glorified war lords.
"Are you sure? I thought Canada was always way ahead of the states in terms of phone service."
That's not what the parent was talking about. He is saying the the US was the first country to build out it's phone system, both the landline and the cell phones. The US was an early adopter. As a result the US has
1) An old but cheap and reliable landline system.
2) Lots of competing cell phone/wireless standards.
Some of the pricing difference has to do with less competition, some has to do with higher costs of being early adopters (and competing with old but cheep technology), and some has to do with the willingness to pay (Americans are, on average anyway, the wealthiest people in the world.) The combination of all these things is what makes for the current prices in the US.
I really don't understand that logic. In fact, for system facilities, libraries, etc, I think the LGPL makes more sense. If a programmer wants to write a proprietary GTK or QT app it should be able to access all the system level facilities that the respective GNOME and KDE environments offer. Now it shouldn't be able to pull the code of a competing free software project into it with out having to give back. In short, if you are providing an open service/API or other applications to use, I personally dont' think it's right to discriminate as to what apps can use the service. Them actually rolling your code into their package though is a different matter. Kernel = GPL libraries = LGPL apps = GPL (or proprietary if you really want to) The app writer should be able to make that choice.
is to provide a copy of Voting for Dummies at each voting booth.
Or they could just use a machine the prints a final, easy to read, ballot. Imagine that.
Precisely my point. There are many potential pitfalls for humanity, an infinite number of disasters. And we have a limited number of resources with which to live our lives. It's all a question of balance. The wise man plans ahead, the foolish plans not at all, the even more foolish one spends all his time worrying about the future and never does anything about the present. Didn't someone famous once say something like "Life is what happens when you are planning for the future."
"What amazes me is that as a nation we can spend what will sure to be hundreds of billions of dollars to invade a nation...but yet when a much more tangible threat appears on the horizon we hear all these voices demanding absolute proof.
"
Actually the costs of "preventing global warming" is many, many, many..... orders of magnitude greater than the "hundreds of billions of dollars" you are talking about. And the benefits of both of these actions are highly unknowable and difficult (example: save the world from global warming or GiantNukeTM but get obliterate by asteroid and watch that return on your earth saving investment approach nil). I'm not even going to bother arguing about the war with you, but you should realize that what i say above is infinitely true.
I don't think cities are going to be suddenly swallowed up by the ocean just from global warming. We are talking about climate change, not a major storm. Fact is that weather has always been crazy and unpredictable, the climate is always changing, and organizims are always becomming extinct. The arrival of native americans thousands of years ago also caused massive extinction and resulted in the introduction of many "new" species. Is nature bad for having past climate changes and mass extinctions? Are humans bad for influencing the bioshpere more than other animals?
Frankly, earth with be just fine with or without us. The only reason to worry about biodiversity is because it serves our interests. The universe could care less, so the only reason for us to act is if it makes sense for us to do so, not because we have some vague "eco-responsibility" to try to keep everything just as it should be. Especially since we cannot know what the outcome(s) would be if we had not influenced the biosphere. We are part of nature. Ahh, the dilemma of the philosopher.
This is exactly the argument for price discrimination. It would make broadband cheeper for the average joe, who might not be as willing to pay $40/month for DSL or cable, highbandwidth users would probably pay a little more. Personally I think a system that combines a low flat rate with a bandwith charge is the most reasonable. The fee covers the administative/connection costs and the user is charged then for whatever bandwith they consume.
The average slashdotter might not like this though since we tend to be "above average" in terms of bandwidth use.
I think thats exactly what the parent post was complaining about. That the Feds only pay for 7% of Primary education, but they seem to make a lot of demands for that little bit of money. I know I'd support my local school, even if it mean a tax hike, if it meant that we could tell the Feds where to shove it. They have no business telling a local school what to teach. Schools aren't the only area where the Federal government sticks its nose that it really doesnt belong.
I don't think this makes sense from a productivity standpoint. Most of us probably believe that linux wins a TCO fight with Windows, but that would not be the case if you had to develop all your basic tools from scratch, even for IBM.
"Oh, I don't mean to speculate that they'll do it from scratch. They'll probably build on top of Redhat or SUSE."
Actually, If I were a big IT corp, I'd use Slackware or Debian (especially on non-X86) as a base for a custom distro. Redhat and SuSE/Novell are nice OOB solutions for companies that don't want to do lots of customizing, but want a well tested and supported solution that they can apply.
"You present an affidavit before a judge, and he decides if the search is reasonable."
Thats not entirely right either. Under the fourth ammendment, such searches of person and property are disallowed unless police can get probably cause, usually from a warrant. The claim being made here is that this said financial information isn't really your property (it's public information, and doesn't have any additional legal protection). If the information not private (thus not protected by the 4th ammendment) then the government can pass whatever laws it deems appropriate. Whether the law is constitutional or not hinges on whether that information is construed as something covered (or not) by the 4th ammendment. That's where the argument is.
You are correct in stating that the Geneva Convention does not recognize the term "illegal combatants". That is a phrase made up to describe those captured who do not, in the opinion of the Bush administration, fall into any of the categories defined by the Geneva Convention. They CANNOT BE POWs under the terms of the GC, nor can they be classified as civilians, by definition. There in lies the problem. The GC cannot provide protection to these people because they do not fall into a group that is defined and protected by the Geneva Convention. Now maybe Bush OUGHT to give them the same treatment as POWs, but you can't say that he is legally required to do so.
"A lot of the MBA types I know really have a problem with listening to other people's ideas. "
I don't think that particular attribute is any more or less prevalent among MBAs than among any other group. Although someone wrote recently, I think a washington post columnist, that it is easy for people who have always been the "smart" ones to develop that attitute.
Your comments about GTK are confusing GTK with Gnome, with regards to the registry. Gtk apps run just fine on windows, just like Qt apps do.
I can't address you developer complaints, but those end user remarks were not correct at all.
If UserLinux wants to standardize on Gnome there are plenty of other distros that still carry KDE.
Even assuming that both Redhat and SuSE/Novell Standardize on Gnome for businesses I'm sure Mandrake will still be a KDE centric Distro. And Slack and Debian will still let you pick which ever you choose. Personally I'm curious to see what E17 (Enlightenment) produces.
The first step ought to be anti-fruad laws. It's one thing to send spam from a legitimate domain with a legitimate return address and opt out mechanism. It's quite another to engage in forging headers and sending from open relays and all sorts of other deceptive practices.
The way to do this is to go after the companies who advertise this. Get to the root of the problem; it's not the necessarily the senders, it's the people who think they can push their product this way. If they want to sell it, then they have to give you information at some point. Thats when sic johnny law on them. Other than that, I think congress best stay out. Technology will always be one step ahead of the law. So ammend existing laws that target other deceptive behavior to those spammers who engage in those deceptive practices. Ideally, laws would be general enough to cover these situations already. (Which could launch me into my soapbox about the insane number of laws that we have. All because lawmakers feel the need to react to events and make whole new laws rather than attempting to work within the existing framework. Simplify. Attempt to extend the same principle to all areas where said principle is appropriate. etc.)
The combination of RMX and blocking open relays assures that the mail comes from where it claims to come from. This will eliminate the most deceitful spammers and at least make spam a minor annoyance, much like regular junk mail, rather than an all consuming avalance of junk and waste of bandwith and resources.
all you, "It's all about stealing the oil" people. The US could have taken it in 1991, they didn't. And Iraq is going to get the going market rate for whatever oil they pump from this date forward. The US certainly won't just walk off with it. Hell, the Bush administration just finished trying to get congress to make the Iraq reconstruction money all grants rather than loans, something which pissed off many congressmen.
You don't think the war was justified, or you are morally opposed to all war, fine.
Feel free to disagree, but at least cite some substantive facts rather than just relying on your prejudice against Bush. I don't agree with many of Bush's domestic policies, but I think he was spot on about the character of Saddam. Does the world have the time and resources to do this to every tinhorn crackpot, no. But that doesn't mean that we just throw up our arms and let that kind of behavior run rampant. I suppose you opposed the UN intervention in Kosovo? If so you are at least being logically consistent. If not, you are a flaming hypocite who's hatred for Bush seems to be more important than doing the right thing. Just like the small group of Republicans who were stupid enough to oppose Clinton's involvement in Kosovo, just because they didnt like him.
Furthermore, I have never seen any evidence that the US never sold Saddam mustard gas, sarin, uranium or anything like that, though they did sell him conventional weapons during the Iran Iraq war in the 80s, when he was at war with the religious fundamentalists in Iran (think Bin Laden for those who are too young to remember). And the US certainly wasn't stupid (or greedy) enough to sell him weapons after 1991. All in all I'd say your post is a steaming, emotionally loaded, baseless pile of dung....figuratively speaking.
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I hardly think your dell with it's one 3.06 GHz P4 is going to be faster than the dual 1.8GHz mac. Did the dell have a 180GB HD? You did get the RAM right though. You have to check more than just the CPU speed and the amount of RAM. Plus you forget that Apple includes much better software out of box than what Dell gives you. Better price that out again.
You mean the $50 pricetag for Redhat Enterprise AS and $25 price tag for WS? If you are using the LTSP setup, and you should for labs, then you are paying $50/year for the labs. Much cheeper and easier than XP, imho. Plus you can probably upgrade your labs painlessly if they are capable of netbooting. No need for all new hardware. The lab is controlled by the server.
One minor nit to pick. We aren't running out of room. The world population will start to decline by 2075 according to most projections. Most of the "developed" countries have a decresing population.
Compare last year's government revenue to this year's. Economic activity has a multiplying effect. Thus a tax cut can increase tax revenue, by increasing incomes. If the economy grows more than the rate is cut. The point isn't that most tax cuts pay for themselves, but a 6% tax cut doesn't result in 6% less money. Read up on some Keynes. Deficits aren't always bad, just that our debt should grow slower than the economy, on average.
NT
Note that greater than half of our budget is "non-discressionary" Including Soc Sec. Medicare/Medicade and Interest on the Debt
Actually, the religious monks were among the few well educated people during the dark ages. And the church was one of the few sources of literature and education. If it was not for the work of some monks, we probably would have lost an even greater amout of classical literature and information. The dark ages weren't caused by the rise of religious fundamentalism, it was caused by the fall of a powerful and relatively stable government and it's replacement with a feudal system more of more or less glorified war lords.
That's not what the parent was talking about. He is saying the the US was the first country to build out it's phone system, both the landline and the cell phones. The US was an early adopter. As a result the US has 1) An old but cheap and reliable landline system. 2) Lots of competing cell phone/wireless standards. Some of the pricing difference has to do with less competition, some has to do with higher costs of being early adopters (and competing with old but cheep technology), and some has to do with the willingness to pay (Americans are, on average anyway, the wealthiest people in the world.) The combination of all these things is what makes for the current prices in the US.
I really don't understand that logic. In fact, for system facilities, libraries, etc, I think the LGPL makes more sense. If a programmer wants to write a proprietary GTK or QT app it should be able to access all the system level facilities that the respective GNOME and KDE environments offer. Now it shouldn't be able to pull the code of a competing free software project into it with out having to give back. In short, if you are providing an open service/API or other applications to use, I personally dont' think it's right to discriminate as to what apps can use the service. Them actually rolling your code into their package though is a different matter. Kernel = GPL libraries = LGPL apps = GPL (or proprietary if you really want to) The app writer should be able to make that choice.
is to provide a copy of Voting for Dummies at each voting booth. Or they could just use a machine the prints a final, easy to read, ballot. Imagine that.
Precisely my point. There are many potential pitfalls for humanity, an infinite number of disasters. And we have a limited number of resources with which to live our lives. It's all a question of balance. The wise man plans ahead, the foolish plans not at all, the even more foolish one spends all his time worrying about the future and never does anything about the present. Didn't someone famous once say something like "Life is what happens when you are planning for the future."
Actually the costs of "preventing global warming" is many, many, many..... orders of magnitude greater than the "hundreds of billions of dollars" you are talking about. And the benefits of both of these actions are highly unknowable and difficult (example: save the world from global warming or GiantNukeTM but get obliterate by asteroid and watch that return on your earth saving investment approach nil). I'm not even going to bother arguing about the war with you, but you should realize that what i say above is infinitely true.
Frankly, earth with be just fine with or without us. The only reason to worry about biodiversity is because it serves our interests. The universe could care less, so the only reason for us to act is if it makes sense for us to do so, not because we have some vague "eco-responsibility" to try to keep everything just as it should be. Especially since we cannot know what the outcome(s) would be if we had not influenced the biosphere. We are part of nature. Ahh, the dilemma of the philosopher.
This is exactly the argument for price discrimination. It would make broadband cheeper for the average joe, who might not be as willing to pay $40/month for DSL or cable, highbandwidth users would probably pay a little more. Personally I think a system that combines a low flat rate with a bandwith charge is the most reasonable. The fee covers the administative/connection costs and the user is charged then for whatever bandwith they consume. The average slashdotter might not like this though since we tend to be "above average" in terms of bandwidth use.
I think thats exactly what the parent post was complaining about. That the Feds only pay for 7% of Primary education, but they seem to make a lot of demands for that little bit of money. I know I'd support my local school, even if it mean a tax hike, if it meant that we could tell the Feds where to shove it. They have no business telling a local school what to teach. Schools aren't the only area where the Federal government sticks its nose that it really doesnt belong.
Sodipodi?
"Oh, I don't mean to speculate that they'll do it from scratch. They'll probably build on top of Redhat or SUSE."
Actually, If I were a big IT corp, I'd use Slackware or Debian (especially on non-X86) as a base for a custom distro. Redhat and SuSE/Novell are nice OOB solutions for companies that don't want to do lots of customizing, but want a well tested and supported solution that they can apply.
Thats not entirely right either. Under the fourth ammendment, such searches of person and property are disallowed unless police can get probably cause, usually from a warrant. The claim being made here is that this said financial information isn't really your property (it's public information, and doesn't have any additional legal protection). If the information not private (thus not protected by the 4th ammendment) then the government can pass whatever laws it deems appropriate. Whether the law is constitutional or not hinges on whether that information is construed as something covered (or not) by the 4th ammendment. That's where the argument is.
And who is being deprived of their choice here?
Quick, convert 50 euro to american dollars and then tell me that parent post is wrong. You do pay extra for that waranty.
You are correct in stating that the Geneva Convention does not recognize the term "illegal combatants". That is a phrase made up to describe those captured who do not, in the opinion of the Bush administration, fall into any of the categories defined by the Geneva Convention. They CANNOT BE POWs under the terms of the GC, nor can they be classified as civilians, by definition. There in lies the problem. The GC cannot provide protection to these people because they do not fall into a group that is defined and protected by the Geneva Convention. Now maybe Bush OUGHT to give them the same treatment as POWs, but you can't say that he is legally required to do so.
I don't think that particular attribute is any more or less prevalent among MBAs than among any other group. Although someone wrote recently, I think a washington post columnist, that it is easy for people who have always been the "smart" ones to develop that attitute.
Your comments about GTK are confusing GTK with Gnome, with regards to the registry. Gtk apps run just fine on windows, just like Qt apps do. I can't address you developer complaints, but those end user remarks were not correct at all. If UserLinux wants to standardize on Gnome there are plenty of other distros that still carry KDE. Even assuming that both Redhat and SuSE/Novell Standardize on Gnome for businesses I'm sure Mandrake will still be a KDE centric Distro. And Slack and Debian will still let you pick which ever you choose. Personally I'm curious to see what E17 (Enlightenment) produces.
The way to do this is to go after the companies who advertise this. Get to the root of the problem; it's not the necessarily the senders, it's the people who think they can push their product this way. If they want to sell it, then they have to give you information at some point. Thats when sic johnny law on them. Other than that, I think congress best stay out. Technology will always be one step ahead of the law. So ammend existing laws that target other deceptive behavior to those spammers who engage in those deceptive practices. Ideally, laws would be general enough to cover these situations already. (Which could launch me into my soapbox about the insane number of laws that we have. All because lawmakers feel the need to react to events and make whole new laws rather than attempting to work within the existing framework. Simplify. Attempt to extend the same principle to all areas where said principle is appropriate. etc.)
The combination of RMX and blocking open relays assures that the mail comes from where it claims to come from. This will eliminate the most deceitful spammers and at least make spam a minor annoyance, much like regular junk mail, rather than an all consuming avalance of junk and waste of bandwith and resources.
You don't think the war was justified, or you are morally opposed to all war, fine. Feel free to disagree, but at least cite some substantive facts rather than just relying on your prejudice against Bush. I don't agree with many of Bush's domestic policies, but I think he was spot on about the character of Saddam. Does the world have the time and resources to do this to every tinhorn crackpot, no. But that doesn't mean that we just throw up our arms and let that kind of behavior run rampant. I suppose you opposed the UN intervention in Kosovo? If so you are at least being logically consistent. If not, you are a flaming hypocite who's hatred for Bush seems to be more important than doing the right thing. Just like the small group of Republicans who were stupid enough to oppose Clinton's involvement in Kosovo, just because they didnt like him.
Furthermore, I have never seen any evidence that the US never sold Saddam mustard gas, sarin, uranium or anything like that, though they did sell him conventional weapons during the Iran Iraq war in the 80s, when he was at war with the religious fundamentalists in Iran (think Bin Laden for those who are too young to remember). And the US certainly wasn't stupid (or greedy) enough to sell him weapons after 1991. All in all I'd say your post is a steaming, emotionally loaded, baseless pile of dung....figuratively speaking.