"I'm just saying that passenger profiling and quick interrogations have also been pretty damn effective, and I cite El Al's record as evidence."
El Al's record has less to do with the interrogations than it does with the fact that the military provides their security. Having armed guards all over place, air marshals on every flight, and extremely well-trained staff are what makes up most of El Al's success. We couldn't possible afford to match El Al's security personnel and such. Having a civilian population forced into military service, and having only a handful of planes to protect means that costs are nothing for El Al compared to what they would be in the US. We'd pretty much have to get ticket prices to about $10,000 a seat to make it balance.
My point is that we don't have to get into the questioning of passengers to get to a point of reasonably good security. The guidlines I stated provide a secure and effective means to protect ourselves without giving up the things we cherish in this country. One of those things is the ability to remain anonymous at our choosing. Fingerprinting visitors does nothing for security. Comparing a photo ID with a list of pictures of known terrorists on a watch list would be a different story. Unfortunately, facial recognition is flawed at best at the current time.
That sounds great! Hey, maybe we can use eyes instead, don't you think? Perhaps retina scanners that scan your eyes wherever you go in public and take care of opening doors, checking identification, and paying for things in the literal blink of an eye! Hey, I think I remember seeing that in a movie once. Yes, that's right...
It's not about being picked out; it's about losing some fundamental human rights, like dignity. The day you reduce the sum of human existence to that which can be filed in a database is the day you reduce the value of humanity to that of a hard drive.
I am not a number. I am a human being. I have God-given dignity, and you won't take that away from me while I still live and breathe.
"I'd fully expect the royal treatment, up to and including the body cavity search."
Why? The right to travel is a fundamental liberty. To be subject to interrogation and invasive searchs is contrary to every principle upon which this nation was founded.
"So if I buy a last-minute one-way ticket with cash, I'm probably trying to hide something."
Where is it written that you must purchase a ticket at a certain time in a certain way? By the way, did it ever occurr to you that Al Qaeda or other similar groups could easily defeat this by using a high-interest credit card to purchase the ticket in advance? The fact that some have done it one way doesn't mean that all have or will. What will you do if terrorists change their buying patterns? Let the cash-paying people on fast so you have plenty of time to strip-search the people who bought tickets in advance with credit cards? Brilliant idea.
"ask questions like"
[TSA Lackey]: "When will you be returning?" [Me]: "Whenever I feel like it." [TSA Lacket]: "Where are you going?" [Me]: "If it were any of your business, I'd tell you to look at the ticket. But it's not, so I won't." [TSA Lackey]: "What are you doing there?" [Me]: "Figured I'd rent some porn, jack off, maybe get a hooker or two. What the hell business is it of your's what I do in my personal life, on my personal time?" [TSA Lackey]: "Who are you meeting there?" [Me]: "Tony Blair and Pope John Paul the second. Again, your question is irrelevant, invasive, and pointless." [TSA Lackey]: "How will you be returning?" [Me]: (Getting pissed off)"By row boat." [TSA Lackey]: "what's the weather like in $CITY" [Me]: "Don't know, I can't see that far. Why don't you try checking the Weather Channel instead of bugging me."
"I hope that the interrogators for folks who do match the enemy's profile, are trained to detect evasiveness."
Enemy's profile? And just what would that be? John Walker Lindh was a young, suburban, American white male. Osama bin Ladin is an older male Arab. The guys who tried to bring bombs into the US to blow things up during the Y2K celebrations were middle-aged Algerians. So let's see, the enemy is either black, white, or brown - is either American, African, or Middle Eastern - is either young, middle-aged, or older - are we getting the picture yet? What's the profile? What does my enemy look like? What language does my enemy speak? English? German? Arabic? All of the above? What's the profile?
You want a better solution to the problems? Let's see, how about we search ALL baggage that's going on to an airplane with good, sound bomb, chemical, and weapons detection devices. Ones with possible problem materials or ones that cannot be properly scanned can be pulled aside for further analysis, including hand searches where required. All baggage is tied to a particular individual, with a thumbprint stamped on the tags for the bag at the counter, like what many banks are now doing with checks. (Basically, you put your thumb on an ink pad, then roll your print onto a spot on the tag). The print would not be taken digitally, and would be used only to verify a bag's owner should there be a problem with the baggage. All passengers must go through a metal detector. Qualified, well-trained security personnel man every terminal. All entrances to the tarmac are monitored 24/7. All airport personnel must undergo background screenings. Those that fail to meet certain minimum requirements are removed immediately. All cockpits are equiped with thick, steel doors that cannot be opened during flight. A simple pressure sensor located somewhere on the plane, in an unreachable(during flight) location could determine the plane's status. Well-trained air marshals travel with every flight, with one visible and one or more in plain clothes.
Does this guarantee safety? No, but neither does any
"It's the people with little or no credit ratings."
So you mean if I choose to live my life 'offline', I'm now a security risk? You mean if I'm a teenager or in my early 20s and haven't bought anything of significant value (in terms of that which would require credit application), then I'm a terrorist? Personally, I don't have much credit at all. I'm in my 20s, haven't bought a home, have paid cash for all three cars I've owned, and don't use credit cards. Please explain why stopping me and the tens of thousands of regular Americans like me is going to make this country safer.
Oh wait, I'm white, so I'll probably be green-labled anyway, right?
Perhaps a planeload of these fine, upstanding citizens is your cup of tea. Personally, I'd rather have better detection systems and better trained airport security personnel.
Anyone waving Tom's Hardware in your face is part of the "Knows Just Enough to be Dangerous" crowd anyway. These are the folks who think that reading a dumbed-down article or review makes them knowledgable enough to render a viable opinion.
They're also the people who burn up their mainboard and CPU trying some voltage mod they read about, then want to return everything for a refund because it no longer works.
"There several instances of the same + rating with different specs in the same line. "I got a 2600+" "Which one?""
The idea is that you don't have to know what the exact specs are. What AMD is trying to do is show that CPU performance is relative. Within a few percentage points, every 2600+ CPU will perform equally, regardless of its core, amount of cache, socket, memory lines, clock frequency, etc. That's the whole point - you don't have to know. If you're "in the know", you can look at individual 2600+ CPUs to see which one has more of what will help you in the specific applications you use. If you're a general user, then 2600+ is the only thing you need to know. How many people buy a 3.06GHz P4 instead of a 3.00GHz P4 because they think the former is faster? The clock frequency alone belies the fact that the higher FSB on the latter CPU will actually make it perform far better on nearly every application. AMD is trying to hand you the whole package in a single number to simply the buying process for everyday people.
The fact is, neither AMD nor Intel are telling the whole performance truth, nor could they do so. The only way to do that is to educate consumers about CPU mechanics, latency, IPC, L1/L2 cache, cache hits and misses, branch prediction, pipeline stages, and so on. The average consumer (hell, the average geek) can't understand half of these things. Thus, Intel has chosen to show the clock frequency of its CPUs, and AMD has chosen to use performance ratings that give consumers a performance index relative to the Athlon's Thunderbird core. Neither system is perfect, but neither system is more imperfect than the other, in my opinion.
"Is AMD hoping nobody will know what they're buying?"
AMD is hoping that those who need to know, will know, and that the rest who buy the "bigger number" will at least have an idea of what to get.
" Intel has said sometime in the past that their plans for the P4 core will last them until ~11 Ghz."
First of all, "P4" isn't a core, it's an architecture. Secondly, please cite your source for this "11GHz" remark. Thirdly, Prescott couldn't possibly ramp that high, so they'd have to go through at least two more generations of cores before even approaching that frequency. And lastly, getting to 11GHz on the P4 architecture would be both incredibly difficult and to an extent, pointless. Somewhere around 10GHz or so, core optimization and IPC are going to have to be raised substantially to make up for the horrible hits they'll take on latency, cache misses, branch mispredictions, etc. The P4 architecture simply is not designed for anything other than high frequencies. Besides, I'm betting that Tejas comes out labled as a Pentium 5, and with dual cores. At that point, I'm guessing that AMD will also begin to integrate the second core on their A64 chips for sampling, making them available some time in early '05.
I was looking forward to watching the ISS sputter around the sky like a deflating balloon with a couple astronaughts hanging on for dear life and screaming bloody murder.
I almost feel like setting up two VoIP lines, using one to call the other, then have a perpetually repeating recording playing over the line with every keyword and phrase they could possibly be looking for interspersed with me screaming "HA HA! GOTCHA! GET BACK TO DOING SOMETHING USEFUL!".
"I was merely contesting the use of the term racketeering. I've always considered racketeering to be intimidating people into paying you money."
From Findlaw's site, we have the definition for racketeering, which is as follows:
"1: the extortion of money or advantage by threat or force 2: a pattern of illegal activity (as extortion and murder) that is carried out in furtherance of an enterprise (as a criminal syndicate) which is owned or controlled by those engaged in such activity"
Furthermore according to Findlaw, to extort is to:
": to obtain (as money) from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or unlawful use of authority or power"
I think the rule of thumb is "something of value" as opposed to just money.
Why don't some of us get some official-looking jackets made up that say RICO. Then we can go up to the goons in the RIAA jackets, take their jackets, and tell them next time we find them doing the dirty work for a corrupt enterprise, we'll lock their asses up for a good long time.
Oh yeah, and we'll have them sign things saying that they volunteered to have their jackets taken away and threatened.
"So if at 3 in the morning I hear some crackhead breaking in my house I can use my 12 Gauge."
In Maryland, you'd have to wait for him to take a step inside before you pull the trigger. Also, make sure he lands inside the house as well, as that pretty much absolves you of any possible prosecution. I had a government teach in high school (in Maryland) who told the class that if they catch someone carrying a TV out the window in the middle of the night, make sure they're still leaning towards the inside of the house when you shoot them.
"Sounds like a nice little list of felonies. Hopefully some civic-minded FBI agent will recognize this for what it is and arrest the RIAA leadership under the RICO act and seize all their (personal and business) assets."
Outstanding.
Did you happen to notice my post on the subject here? Or my journal entry over there?
"But this is confiscating illegal tangible goods,"
So if you steal a TV from an appliance store, then I break into your house, kill your dog, and steal the stolen TV, I haven't done anything wrong?
"Regarding RICO, how exaclty does one of these raids turn a profit?"
RICO only requires that the act be an illegal action designed to sustain a corrupt enterprise. The fact that this specific act does not directly result in an immediately identifiable profit is irrelevant. The intent of the illegal acts is to put (illegal) competition out of business, thus driving at least a small portion of the (illegal) competition's business back to RIAA members. This is like the mob burning down the casino of a rival family. You can't say that because they were both doing illegal things, illegal acts commited against one another aren't prosecutable.
RICO also looks for a pattern of illegal acts designed to sustain a corrupt organization. Payola, extortion, fraud, price-fixing, anti-trust violations, racketeering, and now this slew of other offenses all paint the exact kind of pictures RICO likes. People say that RICO was "only intended to be used against the mob". I would argue that RICO, like all criminal laws, was enacted to guard society against a particularly destructive action. In the case of RICO, that action happens to be creating an entire business based on illegal acts.
What does this have to do with an American citizen being imprisoned by his government for 19 months with no lawyer, no trial, no jury, no judge, no contact with family, and no hope (from his perspective) of salvation? You know, if he wasn't with Al Qaeda before he was locked up, he most certainly has every reason to be now. To quote a great artist:
"Land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy."
"I've come into contact with Chicago gang members and I'd like to see a lot more of them imprisoned"
Without a trial? On what charge? If someone sells drugs, you put him on trial for selling drugs. If someone kills someone, you put him on trial for murder. This isn't colonial England, and we don't have a king with the power to lock people up in the Tower of London, nor drawn and quartered. In this country, we give everyone the chance to prove their innocence, or to come clean about their actions.
That's what seperates us from the brutal bastards we're fighting.
"The 4th ammendment isn't being violated here because the information in question isn't "yours". It belongs to the financial institution.Since it is accessable to a subset of that financial institution, it weakens any argument that the information is yours since it's available to a number of people besides yourself."
The same could be said for my medical records, documented interactions with my attorney(s) (as in memoranda), documented interactions with my therapist, a crisis counsellor, etc.
My medical records are accessible to any doctor or nurse conducting my treatment, hospital staff including clerks, my medical insurance agency (to an extent), and a whole host of others. That doesn't negate my doctor-patient confidentiality, nor does it mean the doctor or hospital can put my medical records up on a billboard for the world to view.
Any documented interactions with my attorney would be handled by his secretary/assistant, colleagues, or others with whom he may consult in order to further my case. This doesn't negate the fact that all that information is privileged, and that my lawyer would be enjoined from discussing it over lunch with his high school buddies for laughs.
Similarly, my therapist would also be held to a high standard of privilege. While (s)he may discuss me as a patient with colleagues to work out ways to help me, they may not write a book about me without my permission, even if it does not specifically name me, assuming it has enough information to allow a reasonable person to conclude that the book could refer to no one else besides me. The fact that a number of people may handle the information my therapist compiles about me does not negate that privilege.
A crisis counsellor will usually be the most vigilant with regards to confidentiality. If a crisis counsellor (such as a rape counsellor) does not have the complete confidence of those they counsel that what's said between them will never be revealed, then the job of that counsellor goes from incredibly hard to downright impossible.
The fact is, society has recognized that there are situations where the greater good is served by protecting information about people, regardless of what other good may come of its use. The number of people handling the information is irrelevant, so long as an expectation of privacy exists and one can reasonably expect that information to remain private. Personal financial transactions have had a long tradition of being privileged information, with few notable examples. Consider this: if your personal bank published on the internet, every record of every transaction you've ever had with them (including bank accounts, mortage payments, financial status, etc), would you be of the belief that a lawsuit against the bank is reasonable?
Besides, if there is no expectation of privacy in your dealings with a financial institution, and therefore nothing unreasonable about government agents seizing that information, why do they need national security letters at all? The Constitution sets a very simple standard in very simple language - you need a warrant to seize that which you would otherwise have no business seizing, and that warrant must be supported by oath or affirmation. Either the government may seize the information at will, or it must get a valid warrant. The Constitution does not provide a maybe, sometimes, grey area, if, but, or "wiggle room" of any kind to the government - it says what it means and it means what it says. The Constitution restricts the powers and activities of the government; not the other way around.
"if you're imprisoned without being arrested or arrested without being told why, you are in a good position to sue the shit out of whomever is doing it."
I'm sure Jose Padilla will be delighted to hear that, assuming he ever gets out of the military brig he's been imprisoned in for the past 19 months without being charged, much less tried or convicted.
Welcome to the new world; Ashcroft's world; where your rights have been redefined as privileges assigned by the government, to be revoked upon the first sign of their inconvenience.
"power users', 'Windows'... in the same sentance.. what are you smoking?"
I use Windows XP on my laptop at home. I use Windows 2000 on my desktop at work. I also use FreeBSD, Knoppix, and have toyed here and there with a couple dozen other non-windows OSs. I am a 'power user' who also uses Windows. Believe it or not, we really do exist.
In the same token, there are plenty of completely and totally clueless users of Linux. I'm not talking about the annoying kiddies babbling on message boards; I'm talking about people who actually refer to their computer as a "hard drive" or a "modem". You'll often find these types sitting on Mandrake or Red Hat boxes, not to disparage either distro, nor their users.
"The increased focus on security will be good not only for the average user who does not spend much time thinking about security her system, but also for 'power users' and those who work supporting end users."
The only security improvement that I would characterize as being "good" for those who work support end users is one which prevented them from using the computer in the first place.
"you could simply shut down portions of the processor on-the-fly to save power. "
They might need it if there is any truth to this. From the article:
"Our motherboard contacts in Taiwan tell us... [that] motherboards they're designing for the middle of the year will support a not-so-cool 150 watts, just in case Intel gets a 3.8GHz Prescott out of the door."
150 watts? This NVRAM would have to shut down about half the CPU (not including L2) to keep the thing from burning a hole in the space-time continuum. If it's of any interest, roadmaps seem to indicate huge jumps in pin counts and die sizes for the P5s. What some have alluded to is an integrated memory controller, similar to AMD's, being integrated into the P5 chips, along with dual core support (just like AMD). The problem with sticking the NVRAM on top of the chip is price. Integrating a memory controller is a far cry in terms of production costs than sticking extras in later. Aside from that, if you're talking about an add-on, you run the risk of seeing huge latency numbers.
I think Intel needs to finally start focusing on CPU efficiency and instruction design. The MHz battle is long since over, and Intel is going to start slamming into some barriers that competitors won't see for quite a long time due to more efficient designs. What good is running a chip at 50GHz if 80% of those cycles are spent waiting for data to arrive due to relativity constraints? Unless Intel is prepared to integrate technology that takes advantage of quantum entanglement, they're not going to have a whole lot of success with their continuation of ramping up clock frequency.
"Intel (as far as I know) are trying to increase cpu speed and reduce the die (or the cpu) size."
Intel is having enough problems getting their P4 'Prescott' chips out the door. These were supposed to be available to consumer in December, but they haven't even been launched yet due to a number of problems. There are now rumours of redesigns going into effect with the Prescott chips to add even more stages to the already staggeringly long pipeline. Intel has moved to the.90 process, with AMD trailing not far behind in that regard. Intel's main problems seem to be leakage and heat. Northwood has hit an architectural limit, and Gallatin (P4 EE) isn't going to ramp up in clock speed very quickly either. Anything AMD releases at this point will be all but unanswered by Intel until some time around late Jan to early Feb at the earliest.
Until Intel gets the Prescott P4s rolling off the line and into PCs, it really shouldn't be concerned with trying to add even more crap into their chips. The real kicker with AMD's 64-bit chips is that they'll upgrade themselves over time. What I mean by that is that when the 64-bit desktop version of Windows (the enterprise version is already available) is released, and applications begin to get recompiled to take advantage of AMD64, the 64-bit AMD chips will look faster and faster without any changes at all. Intel is facing a real challenge in that the AMD64 architecture is built to ramp up in clock speed just as quickly as the P4 did. Intel needs to fix the Prescott problems immediately to keep the P4 line moving, then go on to the next thing as quickly as possible. The more time they spend trying to make Prescott look like less of a dismal failure, the less time they have to strike at AMD. Once AMD makes the changeover to.90 and 939pin, they're going to start tearing through the desktop market like a bat out of hell. If Intel offers nothing for a response, we'll see more than just tier 2s jumping on board. The only ones I don't see getting into the AMD64 game at that point are HP, due to their links to (money dropped on) Itanium.
Intel faces a multitude of problems. The Prescott issues make them unable to respond to faster AMD chips. On a more fundamental level, there's no one who really stands out at this point over at Intel - no one providing direction to the company. In-fighting appears to be holding up a number of things and sending mixed messages to the market and the channel. If Intel doesn't release a 64-bit desktop chip, it risks losing massive market share to AMD. If they do release a 64-bit desktop chip, they reduce Itanium (along with its 10+ years and Billions of dollars of R&D) to a niche product. Investors tend to lose confidence when 10 years of research are brought down by a company that spent most of its years riding your coat tails.
Intel faces some tough choices in the short term, and may end up being forced to choose between the desktop market and the server market. If it goes for both at once, it's going to need to pull some major weapons out within the next year to stay competitive. Multiple cores are not to be considered major weapons, as AMD's AMD64 architecture is already designed with dual-cores in mind. If Intel decides to choose the server market (the more likely choice between desktop and server), and all but abandon the desktop market, it could probably keep AMD from making a whole lot of headway into the low-midrange server market. This would prevent AMD from undercutting Intel's bread'n'butter. The problem with this strategy is that Intel's "glow", if you will, is lost forever.
On AMD's end, they need to pick up the pace with the.90 changeover. They should also consider dumping the 32-bit line as soon as possible, as that will lower the costs of producing the Athlon64 chips, thus lowering the price for consumers. The Athlon64 3000+ was an absolutely brilliant move, and may spell out the entire value market for AMD in the mid term. If they can mo
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm just saying that passenger profiling and quick interrogations have also been pretty damn effective, and I cite El Al's record as evidence."
El Al's record has less to do with the interrogations than it does with the fact that the military provides their security. Having armed guards all over place, air marshals on every flight, and extremely well-trained staff are what makes up most of El Al's success. We couldn't possible afford to match El Al's security personnel and such. Having a civilian population forced into military service, and having only a handful of planes to protect means that costs are nothing for El Al compared to what they would be in the US. We'd pretty much have to get ticket prices to about $10,000 a seat to make it balance.
My point is that we don't have to get into the questioning of passengers to get to a point of reasonably good security. The guidlines I stated provide a secure and effective means to protect ourselves without giving up the things we cherish in this country. One of those things is the ability to remain anonymous at our choosing. Fingerprinting visitors does nothing for security. Comparing a photo ID with a list of pictures of known terrorists on a watch list would be a different story. Unfortunately, facial recognition is flawed at best at the current time.
That sounds great! Hey, maybe we can use eyes instead, don't you think? Perhaps retina scanners that scan your eyes wherever you go in public and take care of opening doors, checking identification, and paying for things in the literal blink of an eye! Hey, I think I remember seeing that in a movie once. Yes, that's right...
It was Minority Report, and it was a living hell.
It's not about being picked out; it's about losing some fundamental human rights, like dignity. The day you reduce the sum of human existence to that which can be filed in a database is the day you reduce the value of humanity to that of a hard drive.
I am not a number.
I am a human being.
I have God-given dignity, and you won't take that away from me while I still live and breathe.
"I'd fully expect the royal treatment, up to and including the body cavity search."
Why? The right to travel is a fundamental liberty. To be subject to interrogation and invasive searchs is contrary to every principle upon which this nation was founded.
"So if I buy a last-minute one-way ticket with cash, I'm probably trying to hide something."
Where is it written that you must purchase a ticket at a certain time in a certain way? By the way, did it ever occurr to you that Al Qaeda or other similar groups could easily defeat this by using a high-interest credit card to purchase the ticket in advance? The fact that some have done it one way doesn't mean that all have or will. What will you do if terrorists change their buying patterns? Let the cash-paying people on fast so you have plenty of time to strip-search the people who bought tickets in advance with credit cards? Brilliant idea.
"ask questions like"
[TSA Lackey]: "When will you be returning?"
[Me]: "Whenever I feel like it."
[TSA Lacket]: "Where are you going?"
[Me]: "If it were any of your business, I'd tell you to look at the ticket. But it's not, so I won't."
[TSA Lackey]: "What are you doing there?"
[Me]: "Figured I'd rent some porn, jack off, maybe get a hooker or two. What the hell business is it of your's what I do in my personal life, on my personal time?"
[TSA Lackey]: "Who are you meeting there?"
[Me]: "Tony Blair and Pope John Paul the second. Again, your question is irrelevant, invasive, and pointless."
[TSA Lackey]: "How will you be returning?"
[Me]: (Getting pissed off)"By row boat."
[TSA Lackey]: "what's the weather like in $CITY"
[Me]: "Don't know, I can't see that far. Why don't you try checking the Weather Channel instead of bugging me."
"I hope that the interrogators for folks who do match the enemy's profile, are trained to detect evasiveness."
Enemy's profile? And just what would that be? John Walker Lindh was a young, suburban, American white male. Osama bin Ladin is an older male Arab. The guys who tried to bring bombs into the US to blow things up during the Y2K celebrations were middle-aged Algerians. So let's see, the enemy is either black, white, or brown - is either American, African, or Middle Eastern - is either young, middle-aged, or older - are we getting the picture yet? What's the profile? What does my enemy look like? What language does my enemy speak? English? German? Arabic? All of the above? What's the profile?
You want a better solution to the problems? Let's see, how about we search ALL baggage that's going on to an airplane with good, sound bomb, chemical, and weapons detection devices. Ones with possible problem materials or ones that cannot be properly scanned can be pulled aside for further analysis, including hand searches where required. All baggage is tied to a particular individual, with a thumbprint stamped on the tags for the bag at the counter, like what many banks are now doing with checks. (Basically, you put your thumb on an ink pad, then roll your print onto a spot on the tag). The print would not be taken digitally, and would be used only to verify a bag's owner should there be a problem with the baggage. All passengers must go through a metal detector. Qualified, well-trained security personnel man every terminal. All entrances to the tarmac are monitored 24/7. All airport personnel must undergo background screenings. Those that fail to meet certain minimum requirements are removed immediately. All cockpits are equiped with thick, steel doors that cannot be opened during flight. A simple pressure sensor located somewhere on the plane, in an unreachable(during flight) location could determine the plane's status. Well-trained air marshals travel with every flight, with one visible and one or more in plain clothes.
Does this guarantee safety? No, but neither does any
"It's the people with little or no credit ratings."
So you mean if I choose to live my life 'offline', I'm now a security risk? You mean if I'm a teenager or in my early 20s and haven't bought anything of significant value (in terms of that which would require credit application), then I'm a terrorist? Personally, I don't have much credit at all. I'm in my 20s, haven't bought a home, have paid cash for all three cars I've owned, and don't use credit cards. Please explain why stopping me and the tens of thousands of regular Americans like me is going to make this country safer.
Oh wait, I'm white, so I'll probably be green-labled anyway, right?
What a great idea. Let's see if we miss anyone by going with your new security system, shall we?
Timothy McVeigh
Ted Kaczynski
Eric Harris
Dylan Klebold
George Metesky
David Berkowitz
Jeffrey Dahmer
Perhaps a planeload of these fine, upstanding citizens is your cup of tea. Personally, I'd rather have better detection systems and better trained airport security personnel.
"As for Tom's Hardware,"
Anyone waving Tom's Hardware in your face is part of the "Knows Just Enough to be Dangerous" crowd anyway. These are the folks who think that reading a dumbed-down article or review makes them knowledgable enough to render a viable opinion.
They're also the people who burn up their mainboard and CPU trying some voltage mod they read about, then want to return everything for a refund because it no longer works.
"There several instances of the same + rating with different specs in the same line. "I got a 2600+" "Which one?""
The idea is that you don't have to know what the exact specs are. What AMD is trying to do is show that CPU performance is relative. Within a few percentage points, every 2600+ CPU will perform equally, regardless of its core, amount of cache, socket, memory lines, clock frequency, etc. That's the whole point - you don't have to know. If you're "in the know", you can look at individual 2600+ CPUs to see which one has more of what will help you in the specific applications you use. If you're a general user, then 2600+ is the only thing you need to know. How many people buy a 3.06GHz P4 instead of a 3.00GHz P4 because they think the former is faster? The clock frequency alone belies the fact that the higher FSB on the latter CPU will actually make it perform far better on nearly every application. AMD is trying to hand you the whole package in a single number to simply the buying process for everyday people.
The fact is, neither AMD nor Intel are telling the whole performance truth, nor could they do so. The only way to do that is to educate consumers about CPU mechanics, latency, IPC, L1/L2 cache, cache hits and misses, branch prediction, pipeline stages, and so on. The average consumer (hell, the average geek) can't understand half of these things. Thus, Intel has chosen to show the clock frequency of its CPUs, and AMD has chosen to use performance ratings that give consumers a performance index relative to the Athlon's Thunderbird core. Neither system is perfect, but neither system is more imperfect than the other, in my opinion.
"Is AMD hoping nobody will know what they're buying?"
AMD is hoping that those who need to know, will know, and that the rest who buy the "bigger number" will at least have an idea of what to get.
" Intel has said sometime in the past that their plans for the P4 core will last them until ~11 Ghz."
First of all, "P4" isn't a core, it's an architecture. Secondly, please cite your source for this "11GHz" remark. Thirdly, Prescott couldn't possibly ramp that high, so they'd have to go through at least two more generations of cores before even approaching that frequency. And lastly, getting to 11GHz on the P4 architecture would be both incredibly difficult and to an extent, pointless. Somewhere around 10GHz or so, core optimization and IPC are going to have to be raised substantially to make up for the horrible hits they'll take on latency, cache misses, branch mispredictions, etc. The P4 architecture simply is not designed for anything other than high frequencies. Besides, I'm betting that Tejas comes out labled as a Pentium 5, and with dual cores. At that point, I'm guessing that AMD will also begin to integrate the second core on their A64 chips for sampling, making them available some time in early '05.
I was looking forward to watching the ISS sputter around the sky like a deflating balloon with a couple astronaughts hanging on for dear life and screaming bloody murder.
G.nu is Not Usable
:-/
".NU Search Results for "g.nu"
Your domain name, including ".nu", must contain between 6 and 65 characters. "
Some blinking LEDs are all that are left of their web server.
I almost feel like setting up two VoIP lines, using one to call the other, then have a perpetually repeating recording playing over the line with every keyword and phrase they could possibly be looking for interspersed with me screaming "HA HA! GOTCHA! GET BACK TO DOING SOMETHING USEFUL!" .
Hang on, there's a knock at [Lost comm with host]
"-- (IAAP - I Am A Programmer - easier to type than IANAL, etc.)
-Ok, so you saved one character... Then wrote an explanation consisting of 57 extra characters. Did that really make much sense?"
It most certainly does if you code in LISP.
"I was merely contesting the use of the term racketeering. I've always considered racketeering to be intimidating people into paying you money."
From Findlaw's site, we have the definition for racketeering, which is as follows:
"1: the extortion of money or advantage by threat or force
2: a pattern of illegal activity (as extortion and murder) that is carried out in furtherance of an enterprise (as a criminal syndicate) which is owned or controlled by those engaged in such activity"
Furthermore according to Findlaw, to extort is to:
": to obtain (as money) from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or unlawful use of authority or power"
I think the rule of thumb is "something of value" as opposed to just money.
Why don't some of us get some official-looking jackets made up that say RICO. Then we can go up to the goons in the RIAA jackets, take their jackets, and tell them next time we find them doing the dirty work for a corrupt enterprise, we'll lock their asses up for a good long time.
Oh yeah, and we'll have them sign things saying that they volunteered to have their jackets taken away and threatened.
"So if at 3 in the morning I hear some crackhead breaking in my house I can use my 12 Gauge."
In Maryland, you'd have to wait for him to take a step inside before you pull the trigger. Also, make sure he lands inside the house as well, as that pretty much absolves you of any possible prosecution. I had a government teach in high school (in Maryland) who told the class that if they catch someone carrying a TV out the window in the middle of the night, make sure they're still leaning towards the inside of the house when you shoot them.
"Sounds like a nice little list of felonies. Hopefully some civic-minded FBI agent will recognize this for what it is and arrest the RIAA leadership under the RICO act and seize all their (personal and business) assets."
Outstanding.
Did you happen to notice my post on the subject here? Or my journal entry over there?
"But this is confiscating illegal tangible goods,"
So if you steal a TV from an appliance store, then I break into your house, kill your dog, and steal the stolen TV, I haven't done anything wrong?
"Regarding RICO, how exaclty does one of these raids turn a profit?"
RICO only requires that the act be an illegal action designed to sustain a corrupt enterprise. The fact that this specific act does not directly result in an immediately identifiable profit is irrelevant. The intent of the illegal acts is to put (illegal) competition out of business, thus driving at least a small portion of the (illegal) competition's business back to RIAA members. This is like the mob burning down the casino of a rival family. You can't say that because they were both doing illegal things, illegal acts commited against one another aren't prosecutable.
RICO also looks for a pattern of illegal acts designed to sustain a corrupt organization. Payola, extortion, fraud, price-fixing, anti-trust violations, racketeering, and now this slew of other offenses all paint the exact kind of pictures RICO likes. People say that RICO was "only intended to be used against the mob". I would argue that RICO, like all criminal laws, was enacted to guard society against a particularly destructive action. In the case of RICO, that action happens to be creating an entire business based on illegal acts.
"the guy is an ex-Chicago gang member."
What does this have to do with an American citizen being imprisoned by his government for 19 months with no lawyer, no trial, no jury, no judge, no contact with family, and no hope (from his perspective) of salvation? You know, if he wasn't with Al Qaeda before he was locked up, he most certainly has every reason to be now. To quote a great artist:
"Land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy."
"I've come into contact with Chicago gang members and I'd like to see a lot more of them imprisoned"
Without a trial? On what charge? If someone sells drugs, you put him on trial for selling drugs. If someone kills someone, you put him on trial for murder. This isn't colonial England, and we don't have a king with the power to lock people up in the Tower of London, nor drawn and quartered. In this country, we give everyone the chance to prove their innocence, or to come clean about their actions.
That's what seperates us from the brutal bastards we're fighting.
"The 4th ammendment isn't being violated here because the information in question isn't "yours". It belongs to the financial institution.Since it is accessable to a subset of that financial institution, it weakens any argument that the information is yours since it's available to a number of people besides yourself."
The same could be said for my medical records, documented interactions with my attorney(s) (as in memoranda), documented interactions with my therapist, a crisis counsellor, etc.
My medical records are accessible to any doctor or nurse conducting my treatment, hospital staff including clerks, my medical insurance agency (to an extent), and a whole host of others. That doesn't negate my doctor-patient confidentiality, nor does it mean the doctor or hospital can put my medical records up on a billboard for the world to view.
Any documented interactions with my attorney would be handled by his secretary/assistant, colleagues, or others with whom he may consult in order to further my case. This doesn't negate the fact that all that information is privileged, and that my lawyer would be enjoined from discussing it over lunch with his high school buddies for laughs.
Similarly, my therapist would also be held to a high standard of privilege. While (s)he may discuss me as a patient with colleagues to work out ways to help me, they may not write a book about me without my permission, even if it does not specifically name me, assuming it has enough information to allow a reasonable person to conclude that the book could refer to no one else besides me. The fact that a number of people may handle the information my therapist compiles about me does not negate that privilege.
A crisis counsellor will usually be the most vigilant with regards to confidentiality. If a crisis counsellor (such as a rape counsellor) does not have the complete confidence of those they counsel that what's said between them will never be revealed, then the job of that counsellor goes from incredibly hard to downright impossible.
The fact is, society has recognized that there are situations where the greater good is served by protecting information about people, regardless of what other good may come of its use. The number of people handling the information is irrelevant, so long as an expectation of privacy exists and one can reasonably expect that information to remain private. Personal financial transactions have had a long tradition of being privileged information, with few notable examples. Consider this: if your personal bank published on the internet, every record of every transaction you've ever had with them (including bank accounts, mortage payments, financial status, etc), would you be of the belief that a lawsuit against the bank is reasonable?
Besides, if there is no expectation of privacy in your dealings with a financial institution, and therefore nothing unreasonable about government agents seizing that information, why do they need national security letters at all? The Constitution sets a very simple standard in very simple language - you need a warrant to seize that which you would otherwise have no business seizing, and that warrant must be supported by oath or affirmation. Either the government may seize the information at will, or it must get a valid warrant. The Constitution does not provide a maybe, sometimes, grey area, if, but, or "wiggle room" of any kind to the government - it says what it means and it means what it says. The Constitution restricts the powers and activities of the government; not the other way around.
"if you're imprisoned without being arrested or arrested without being told why, you are in a good position to sue the shit out of whomever is doing it."
I'm sure Jose Padilla will be delighted to hear that, assuming he ever gets out of the military brig he's been imprisoned in for the past 19 months without being charged, much less tried or convicted.
Welcome to the new world; Ashcroft's world; where your rights have been redefined as privileges assigned by the government, to be revoked upon the first sign of their inconvenience.
"power users', 'Windows'... in the same sentance.. what are you smoking?"
I use Windows XP on my laptop at home. I use Windows 2000 on my desktop at work. I also use FreeBSD, Knoppix, and have toyed here and there with a couple dozen other non-windows OSs. I am a 'power user' who also uses Windows. Believe it or not, we really do exist.
In the same token, there are plenty of completely and totally clueless users of Linux. I'm not talking about the annoying kiddies babbling on message boards; I'm talking about people who actually refer to their computer as a "hard drive" or a "modem". You'll often find these types sitting on Mandrake or Red Hat boxes, not to disparage either distro, nor their users.
"The increased focus on security will be good not only for the average user who does not spend much time thinking about security her system, but also for 'power users' and those who work supporting end users."
The only security improvement that I would characterize as being "good" for those who work support end users is one which prevented them from using the computer in the first place.
Please, God, take me now....
(been a long day)
"you could simply shut down portions of the processor on-the-fly to save power. "
They might need it if there is any truth to this. From the article:
"Our motherboard contacts in Taiwan tell us... [that] motherboards they're designing for the middle of the year will support a not-so-cool 150 watts, just in case Intel gets a 3.8GHz Prescott out of the door."
150 watts? This NVRAM would have to shut down about half the CPU (not including L2) to keep the thing from burning a hole in the space-time continuum. If it's of any interest, roadmaps seem to indicate huge jumps in pin counts and die sizes for the P5s. What some have alluded to is an integrated memory controller, similar to AMD's, being integrated into the P5 chips, along with dual core support (just like AMD). The problem with sticking the NVRAM on top of the chip is price. Integrating a memory controller is a far cry in terms of production costs than sticking extras in later. Aside from that, if you're talking about an add-on, you run the risk of seeing huge latency numbers.
I think Intel needs to finally start focusing on CPU efficiency and instruction design. The MHz battle is long since over, and Intel is going to start slamming into some barriers that competitors won't see for quite a long time due to more efficient designs. What good is running a chip at 50GHz if 80% of those cycles are spent waiting for data to arrive due to relativity constraints? Unless Intel is prepared to integrate technology that takes advantage of quantum entanglement, they're not going to have a whole lot of success with their continuation of ramping up clock frequency.
"Intel (as far as I know) are trying to increase cpu speed and reduce the die (or the cpu) size."
.90 process, with AMD trailing not far behind in that regard. Intel's main problems seem to be leakage and heat. Northwood has hit an architectural limit, and Gallatin (P4 EE) isn't going to ramp up in clock speed very quickly either. Anything AMD releases at this point will be all but unanswered by Intel until some time around late Jan to early Feb at the earliest.
.90 and 939pin, they're going to start tearing through the desktop market like a bat out of hell. If Intel offers nothing for a response, we'll see more than just tier 2s jumping on board. The only ones I don't see getting into the AMD64 game at that point are HP, due to their links to (money dropped on) Itanium.
.90 changeover. They should also consider dumping the 32-bit line as soon as possible, as that will lower the costs of producing the Athlon64 chips, thus lowering the price for consumers. The Athlon64 3000+ was an absolutely brilliant move, and may spell out the entire value market for AMD in the mid term. If they can mo
Intel is having enough problems getting their P4 'Prescott' chips out the door. These were supposed to be available to consumer in December, but they haven't even been launched yet due to a number of problems. There are now rumours of redesigns going into effect with the Prescott chips to add even more stages to the already staggeringly long pipeline. Intel has moved to the
Until Intel gets the Prescott P4s rolling off the line and into PCs, it really shouldn't be concerned with trying to add even more crap into their chips. The real kicker with AMD's 64-bit chips is that they'll upgrade themselves over time. What I mean by that is that when the 64-bit desktop version of Windows (the enterprise version is already available) is released, and applications begin to get recompiled to take advantage of AMD64, the 64-bit AMD chips will look faster and faster without any changes at all. Intel is facing a real challenge in that the AMD64 architecture is built to ramp up in clock speed just as quickly as the P4 did. Intel needs to fix the Prescott problems immediately to keep the P4 line moving, then go on to the next thing as quickly as possible. The more time they spend trying to make Prescott look like less of a dismal failure, the less time they have to strike at AMD. Once AMD makes the changeover to
Intel faces a multitude of problems. The Prescott issues make them unable to respond to faster AMD chips. On a more fundamental level, there's no one who really stands out at this point over at Intel - no one providing direction to the company. In-fighting appears to be holding up a number of things and sending mixed messages to the market and the channel. If Intel doesn't release a 64-bit desktop chip, it risks losing massive market share to AMD. If they do release a 64-bit desktop chip, they reduce Itanium (along with its 10+ years and Billions of dollars of R&D) to a niche product. Investors tend to lose confidence when 10 years of research are brought down by a company that spent most of its years riding your coat tails.
Intel faces some tough choices in the short term, and may end up being forced to choose between the desktop market and the server market. If it goes for both at once, it's going to need to pull some major weapons out within the next year to stay competitive. Multiple cores are not to be considered major weapons, as AMD's AMD64 architecture is already designed with dual-cores in mind. If Intel decides to choose the server market (the more likely choice between desktop and server), and all but abandon the desktop market, it could probably keep AMD from making a whole lot of headway into the low-midrange server market. This would prevent AMD from undercutting Intel's bread'n'butter. The problem with this strategy is that Intel's "glow", if you will, is lost forever.
On AMD's end, they need to pick up the pace with the