It's not a "deep, unwavering belief." It's a simple observation. If you don't know a single Dem. presidential candidate, you obviously don't watch the news or read the paper regularly. If you don't do that, you cannot be an informed voter. The stuff that they feed you during the election is drivel. You have to know what these people are doing *all the time.*
No one gets dragged into court on anti-trust grounds for establishing a monopoly on non-essential commodity items >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Microsoft? Software isn't essential either!
Have you ever tried downloading an "album" from KaZaA? You get a few of the artist's most popular songs, with bad ID3 tags and questionable quality. $15 is a bit steep, but if it was about half that, I'd consider doubling the amount of CDs I purchase (several dozen a year).
That model is fine and dandy --- except when you're dealing with companies that are essentially a monopolizing trust in the industry. Once you say goodbye to good 'ole capitalism, all bets are off.
They were all half-assed, half-hearted attempts. I was seriously considering putting in $20 a month for PressPlay. Then I learned that it required Windows and Internet Explorer (I'm in Linux 99.9% of the time) and there went that idea. I'm a good little CD buyer. I buy dozens of CDs every year, because I enjoy music. I shelled out $400 for an iPod so I could listen to the music I paid for. Treating me like a thief is not in their best interest.
If you can't name a single democratic presidential candiate, then you obviously don't watch the news. If you don't watch the news, you're not doing your duty as a citizen, and deserve whatever you get. Its a well established that government may abridge certain rights if it serves the greater good. If its okay to control what kind of guns I'm allowed to have, I see it perfectly acceptable to restrict someone's voting rights when they don't even show a minimal capability or desire to vote responsibly.
Its a lose/lose situation with Microsoft. When I had Windows auto-update enabled, it downloaded and installed the broken networking update that left several machines on my home network off the internet until I got back several weeks later. After that, I disabled autoupdate on my personal machine (my home machines are behind a firewall) and within 2 hours of being directly connected to the internet at my dorm, I had msblaster. I can't win with Win, and I'm not f*cking going to bother babysitting something that shouldn't need it.
Being an informed citizen is hardly a waste of time. And while it seems popular on Slashdot to throw both parties into the same boat, that couldn't be farther from the truth.
Foreign policy: Dean (Dems) is anti-war. Bush (Reps) is pro-war. Healthcare: Dean and many other Dems are for universal healthcare. Bush (Reps) is for privatized healthcare. Religion: Dems (except for Leiberman) are generally in favor of less religious involvement in government. The conservative wing of the Reps (Bush) is in favor of more religious involvement in government. Taxes: Bush favors more taxcuts. Dems favor fewer taxcuts. Social Morals: Reps favor government intervention in social morals (abortion, etc), Dem's are against it.
And the list goes on and on. If you actually watched the news once in awhile, you'd know that.
You should be aware of the current political situation the entire year. Just watching CNN for a half an hour a day is enough to keep you relatively up to date.
Why do people just wipes their minds clean after they learn it? I seriously think it would be a wise idea to require a test like this in order to retain voting rights. People generally don't want to vote, but if you tell them they *can't* vote, that lights a fire under their ass and they want it back. Also, there are all sorts of social implications like being placed into the same voting catagory as some ex-convicts, which might shame people into trying to retain voting rights.
I second this. The voting public is so unbelievably stupid its not even funny. Beyond the fact that nobody actually knows what's in the Constitution (take a look at the First Amendment link I posted a few items down) there is the fact that they know nothing about anything else either. For example, most Americans believe that the US spends too much on foreign aid. On average, they think that 5% of the budget is a good number to spend on foreign aid. In reality, the US spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign aid. Its unexcusable that people don't know where their tax dollars are going! Another example: 2/3 of people polled could not name a single democratic presidential candiate! The news media played this one down, making the excuse that it is not yet election season, so people can't be expected to know! If my 13-year old little brother can name all of them, than everyone should know at least one! The whole situation is a frace. When my parents got their US citizenship, they had to take a test on American history and the Constitution. If you gave ordinary Americans that test, most of them would have their citizenship revoked...
According to the latest "State of the first Amendment" those "basic" questions would disqualify 98% of Americans from voting. Only 80% would be disqualified if they only had to know 2 of the 5 clauses in the First Amendment, and a mere 42% would be disqualified if they only had to know about the freedom of speech.
Read the tech doc and see where that Hypertransport link is. In the Opteron, its between CPUs, which allows for a very low latency pseudo-NUMA setup. On the G5, its between the Northbridge and the Southbridge. Even low end Athlons these days have Hypertransport links there.
I tend to disagree. >>>>>> Really, do you have this conversation often?
Driving is not a privilege, in most situations it is a need for everyday's life. >>>>>>> Iffy. I live in one of the most driver-unfriendly parts of the country (suburbs of DC) and you can get around if you know the bus routes. Exceptions should probably be made for people in less densely populated areas, where bad drivers can't cause as much damage, but half the people not being able to drive would be powerful incentive for decent public transportation to get built.
Making tests harder would only make the learning curve longer. >>>>>>>> That's the point. That, and filtering out those who truely don't get it. The current driving tests barely require sentience! One of the questions I remember from my test was identifying signs. The signs all had their names written on them (Yield, Stop, etc). A pigeon could do the pattern matching involved!
Even this would probably not have a real effect on road safety, as once you've passed your test you can drive as bad as you want >>>>>>>>>> Your logic is flawed. In both cases, people who intentionally drive badly can drive as badly as they want. However, in the second case, you don't have those who just have bad driving skills. IIRC, the statistics show that most accidents are not caused by skilled drivers driving badly, but unskilled drivers driving badly. Also, drivers who would otherwise drive badly (teenagers) might not if they had to undergo a more rigerous screening process first.
To illustrate this, let's take the example of France. This country has "difficult" (compared to several other countries) driving tests, but still experiences a high rate of mortality on its roads... >>>>>>>>> That's because French roads are insane. Paris has no lane markings on the road, and in the countryside, the average speeds hit 160-170km/h.
Personally, I think there are more important skills to emphasize in driving. Like proper signaling. Learning not to tailgate. Knowing that a few snowflakes does not mean you need to go half the limit. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Those aren't skills. That's common sense.
You need to know how to parallel park because if you ever get into a city, it'll be very inconvenient for you if you don't know how.
A solution would be to just cull all the teenagers:)
Seriously, though, I think the driving tests need to be 10x harder. If half the people failed them, the roads would be a whole lot safer and more pleasent.
am a contractor at Dell and our jobs are being outsourced right now. I thought I would share some of the discussions going around the office...
1. The Brazilian Contractor's that our replacing us make $5 a hour. There is no way in hell we can ever compete with that.
2. People keep saying "compete", but its only about price. We are way more educated and skilled than our replacements. For example one Brazilian listed "Internet" as a skill on his resume. Boy he knows the Internet lets snatch this guy up! >>>>>>>> Its entirely possible that this is a language issue at work here. Its a natural reflex to think less of someone's intelligence when they do not speak English properly. It's because, normally, when we encounter people with bad English skills, they also have below-average intelligence. Do a little experiment. Turn on CNN and listen to Vajpayee (the Indian Prime Minister) talk. Now, if you just met him on the street, what would you think of his level of education? Now listen to King Abdullah of Jorden. He as an almost proper English accent (due to being educated in Britain and the US) and comes across as much more impressive. They both have Masters degrees, in political science and international affairs (respectively). Now if you really *are* more skilled, and the lower cost doesn't make up for that difference in skill, then Dell will eventually get what's coming to them. American companies don't hire minimal wage unskilled labor to do skilled jobs, because they'll make less money in the long run. If Dell is trying it, it'll eventually catch up to them.
3. Why is it only IT jobs can be outsourced? I would like to see middle management outsourced. Of course we will never see that. >>>>>>>> Hah! Blue collar jobs have been being outsourced for decades! The outsourcing of IT is just an indication that its not as skilled a profession as it once was. If lower payed grunts can get the job done, why higher someone who wants more money? Middle management cannot be contracted, because management needs to be onsite to do its job. I know tech people hate management, but as someone who knows the work habits of tech people, let me ensure you that it is necessary.
5. When I was getting my CS degree it was hard, and I knew a lot of smart people who dropped out. I just can't believe they can go into these countries and just higher a 100 cheap programmers. I personally think they are lying about their education. >>>>>>>> Of course they're lying! Those evil, decietful foreigners! Seriously, get over yourself. Its relatively easy to get a CS degree in many places here in the US. Especially if its a practical rather than theoretical concentration. Also, consider the type of people these jobs are going to. These aren't poor people over there. They're typically from the professional middle class, and are educated accordingly. Believe it or not, there are some excellent technical schools abroad, especially in the practical concentration. In India specifically, you probably wouldn't make it into the best schools, because India has a very rigerous school system based on the British model. Also, just because they get paid less doesn't mean they don't live as well. The salary of a medium-level engineer will make you a very well-to-do man in India. A salary 1/4 of that is a very good figure for a young professional.
6. Every big project I have worked on required good communication between developers. I just don't see how the US business team, is going to get across their Specs to the Brazilian developers, who will then hand it off to the Russian QA team. Sounds like the recipe for a quality product to me. >>>>>> Agreed.
The white man comment was out of left field, but he had something of a point, somwhere in there. Its very difficult to get citizenship (for example) in Japan. It is only in this decade that its even possible.
Because Linux runs on a hell of a lot more than just x86 PCs. It would be hell if the kernel developers had to release binaries for all the permutations of configurations the kernel supports. You can't very well package SMP/NUMA/x86 support in the same binary as embedded/ARM support. Windows et al can ship a single set of binaries (actually, 6 for Windows) because they don't even attempt to support all that.
Stuff that Windows or BeOS or MacOS do via loadable modules (drivers, filesystems, etc) are broken out into modules already!
The 2.6 kernel is just incredible. I'm running test3 right now, with 2 emerges and a kernel compile going on in the background. I don't *notice* anything! KDE is just as responsive as it is on an unloaded machine (and since this is KDE CVS, that's *very* responsive) and my MP3s aren't skipping a beat. WinXP would bring my 2GHz P4 to its knees with just *half* this load!
"Certain types of processing" (as a phrase) implies that there is a useful subset of the total problem space that the G5 is particularly good at. RC5 cracking is not a useful problem, and thus the G5's performance on this benchmark is wholly unrepresentative even of the types of processing that AltiVec is particularly suited to.
PS> When you use a very common phrase like "certain types of processing" be prepared to deal with all the semantic baggage it brings along.
That's a *really* bad benchmark. The AltiVec unit has a dedicated vector permute unit which makes RC5 processing results way out of line with the results of most other benchmarks. Its true that the altivec unit is good, but its not *that* good. Besides, both machines have comporable memory bandwidths (if you consider Canterwood P4s) and for many (most?) FP-heavy benchmarks, the code has a "streaming" nature, and is thus almost entirely memory bandwidth limited.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a "deep, unwavering belief." It's a simple observation. If you don't know a single Dem. presidential candidate, you obviously don't watch the news or read the paper regularly. If you don't do that, you cannot be an informed voter. The stuff that they feed you during the election is drivel. You have to know what these people are doing *all the time.*
No one gets dragged into court on anti-trust grounds for establishing a monopoly on non-essential commodity items
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Microsoft? Software isn't essential either!
Have you ever tried downloading an "album" from KaZaA? You get a few of the artist's most popular songs, with bad ID3 tags and questionable quality. $15 is a bit steep, but if it was about half that, I'd consider doubling the amount of CDs I purchase (several dozen a year).
That model is fine and dandy --- except when you're dealing with companies that are essentially a monopolizing trust in the industry. Once you say goodbye to good 'ole capitalism, all bets are off.
They were all half-assed, half-hearted attempts. I was seriously considering putting in $20 a month for PressPlay. Then I learned that it required Windows and Internet Explorer (I'm in Linux 99.9% of the time) and there went that idea. I'm a good little CD buyer. I buy dozens of CDs every year, because I enjoy music. I shelled out $400 for an iPod so I could listen to the music I paid for. Treating me like a thief is not in their best interest.
If you can't name a single democratic presidential candiate, then you obviously don't watch the news. If you don't watch the news, you're not doing your duty as a citizen, and deserve whatever you get. Its a well established that government may abridge certain rights if it serves the greater good. If its okay to control what kind of guns I'm allowed to have, I see it perfectly acceptable to restrict someone's voting rights when they don't even show a minimal capability or desire to vote responsibly.
Its a lose/lose situation with Microsoft. When I had Windows auto-update enabled, it downloaded and installed the broken networking update that left several machines on my home network off the internet until I got back several weeks later. After that, I disabled autoupdate on my personal machine (my home machines are behind a firewall) and within 2 hours of being directly connected to the internet at my dorm, I had msblaster. I can't win with Win, and I'm not f*cking going to bother babysitting something that shouldn't need it.
Being an informed citizen is hardly a waste of time. And while it seems popular on Slashdot to throw both parties into the same boat, that couldn't be farther from the truth.
Foreign policy: Dean (Dems) is anti-war. Bush (Reps) is pro-war.
Healthcare: Dean and many other Dems are for universal healthcare. Bush (Reps) is for privatized healthcare.
Religion: Dems (except for Leiberman) are generally in favor of less religious involvement in government. The conservative wing of the Reps (Bush) is in favor of more religious involvement in government.
Taxes: Bush favors more taxcuts. Dems favor fewer taxcuts.
Social Morals: Reps favor government intervention in social morals (abortion, etc), Dem's are against it.
And the list goes on and on. If you actually watched the news once in awhile, you'd know that.
You should be aware of the current political situation the entire year. Just watching CNN for a half an hour a day is enough to keep you relatively up to date.
Why do people just wipes their minds clean after they learn it? I seriously think it would be a wise idea to require a test like this in order to retain voting rights. People generally don't want to vote, but if you tell them they *can't* vote, that lights a fire under their ass and they want it back. Also, there are all sorts of social implications like being placed into the same voting catagory as some ex-convicts, which might shame people into trying to retain voting rights.
I second this. The voting public is so unbelievably stupid its not even funny. Beyond the fact that nobody actually knows what's in the Constitution (take a look at the First Amendment link I posted a few items down) there is the fact that they know nothing about anything else either. For example, most Americans believe that the US spends too much on foreign aid. On average, they think that 5% of the budget is a good number to spend on foreign aid. In reality, the US spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign aid. Its unexcusable that people don't know where their tax dollars are going! Another example: 2/3 of people polled could not name a single democratic presidential candiate! The news media played this one down, making the excuse that it is not yet election season, so people can't be expected to know! If my 13-year old little brother can name all of them, than everyone should know at least one! The whole situation is a frace. When my parents got their US citizenship, they had to take a test on American history and the Constitution. If you gave ordinary Americans that test, most of them would have their citizenship revoked...
According to the latest "State of the first Amendment" those "basic" questions would disqualify 98% of Americans from voting. Only 80% would be disqualified if they only had to know 2 of the 5 clauses in the First Amendment, and a mere 42% would be disqualified if they only had to know about the freedom of speech.
Read the tech doc and see where that Hypertransport link is. In the Opteron, its between CPUs, which allows for a very low latency pseudo-NUMA setup. On the G5, its between the Northbridge and the Southbridge. Even low end Athlons these days have Hypertransport links there.
I tend to disagree.
>>>>>>
Really, do you have this conversation often?
Driving is not a privilege, in most situations it is a need for everyday's life.
>>>>>>>
Iffy. I live in one of the most driver-unfriendly parts of the country (suburbs of DC) and you can get around if you know the bus routes. Exceptions should probably be made for people in less densely populated areas, where bad drivers can't cause as much damage, but half the people not being able to drive would be powerful incentive for decent public transportation to get built.
Making tests harder would only make the learning curve longer.
>>>>>>>>
That's the point. That, and filtering out those who truely don't get it. The current driving tests barely require sentience! One of the questions I remember from my test was identifying signs. The signs all had their names written on them (Yield, Stop, etc). A pigeon could do the pattern matching involved!
Even this would probably not have a real effect on road safety, as once you've passed your test you can drive as bad as you want
>>>>>>>>>>
Your logic is flawed. In both cases, people who intentionally drive badly can drive as badly as they want. However, in the second case, you don't have those who just have bad driving skills. IIRC, the statistics show that most accidents are not caused by skilled drivers driving badly, but unskilled drivers driving badly. Also, drivers who would otherwise drive badly (teenagers) might not if they had to undergo a more rigerous screening process first.
To illustrate this, let's take the example of France. This country has "difficult" (compared to several other countries) driving tests, but still experiences a high rate of mortality on its roads...
>>>>>>>>>
That's because French roads are insane. Paris has no lane markings on the road, and in the countryside, the average speeds hit 160-170km/h.
Personally, I think there are more important skills to emphasize in driving. Like proper signaling. Learning not to tailgate. Knowing that a few snowflakes does not mean you need to go half the limit.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Those aren't skills. That's common sense.
You need to know how to parallel park because if you ever get into a city, it'll be very inconvenient for you if you don't know how.
A solution would be to just cull all the teenagers :)
Seriously, though, I think the driving tests need to be 10x harder. If half the people failed them, the roads would be a whole lot safer and more pleasent.
In Virginia its not a requirements. And yes, it is *very* sad that you cannot parallel park :)
How is KDE any different from CDE, which corporations ran for a long time?
How is KWord any different from MS Word?
The K is just branding. If you notice, most Windows apps have an MS (or a full Microsoft) in front of them:
It's not IE, but MSIE
It's not Word, but MS Word,
etc.
am a contractor at Dell and our jobs are being outsourced right now. I thought I would share some of the discussions going around the office...
1. The Brazilian Contractor's that our replacing us make $5 a hour. There is no way in hell we can ever compete with that.
2. People keep saying "compete", but its only about price. We are way more educated and skilled than our replacements. For example one Brazilian listed "Internet" as a skill on his resume. Boy he knows the Internet lets snatch this guy up!
>>>>>>>>
Its entirely possible that this is a language issue at work here. Its a natural reflex to think less of someone's intelligence when they do not speak English properly. It's because, normally, when we encounter people with bad English skills, they also have below-average intelligence. Do a little experiment. Turn on CNN and listen to Vajpayee (the Indian Prime Minister) talk. Now, if you just met him on the street, what would you think of his level of education? Now listen to King Abdullah of Jorden. He as an almost proper English accent (due to being educated in Britain and the US) and comes across as much more impressive. They both have Masters degrees, in political science and international affairs (respectively). Now if you really *are* more skilled, and the lower cost doesn't make up for that difference in skill, then Dell will eventually get what's coming to them. American companies don't hire minimal wage unskilled labor to do skilled jobs, because they'll make less money in the long run. If Dell is trying it, it'll eventually catch up to them.
3. Why is it only IT jobs can be outsourced? I would like to see middle management outsourced. Of course we will never see that.
>>>>>>>>
Hah! Blue collar jobs have been being outsourced for decades! The outsourcing of IT is just an indication that its not as skilled a profession as it once was. If lower payed grunts can get the job done, why higher someone who wants more money? Middle management cannot be contracted, because management needs to be onsite to do its job. I know tech people hate management, but as someone who knows the work habits of tech people, let me ensure you that it is necessary.
5. When I was getting my CS degree it was hard, and I knew a lot of smart people who dropped out. I just can't believe they can go into these countries and just higher a 100 cheap programmers. I personally think they are lying about their education.
>>>>>>>>
Of course they're lying! Those evil, decietful foreigners! Seriously, get over yourself. Its relatively easy to get a CS degree in many places here in the US. Especially if its a practical rather than theoretical concentration. Also, consider the type of people these jobs are going to. These aren't poor people over there. They're typically from the professional middle class, and are educated accordingly. Believe it or not, there are some excellent technical schools abroad, especially in the practical concentration. In India specifically, you probably wouldn't make it into the best schools, because India has a very rigerous school system based on the British model. Also, just because they get paid less doesn't mean they don't live as well. The salary of a medium-level engineer will make you a very well-to-do man in India. A salary 1/4 of that is a very good figure for a young professional.
6. Every big project I have worked on required good communication between developers. I just don't see how the US business team, is going to get across their Specs to the Brazilian developers, who will then hand it off to the Russian QA team. Sounds like the recipe for a quality product to me.
>>>>>>
Agreed.
The white man comment was out of left field, but he had something of a point, somwhere in there. Its very difficult to get citizenship (for example) in Japan. It is only in this decade that its even possible.
Business is business. Competition is good. Suck it up and deal! That's the American way, right?
Because Linux runs on a hell of a lot more than just x86 PCs. It would be hell if the kernel developers had to release binaries for all the permutations of configurations the kernel supports. You can't very well package SMP/NUMA/x86 support in the same binary as embedded/ARM support. Windows et al can ship a single set of binaries (actually, 6 for Windows) because they don't even attempt to support all that.
Stuff that Windows or BeOS or MacOS do via loadable modules (drivers, filesystems, etc) are broken out into modules already!
The 2.6 kernel is just incredible. I'm running test3 right now, with 2 emerges and a kernel compile going on in the background. I don't *notice* anything! KDE is just as responsive as it is on an unloaded machine (and since this is KDE CVS, that's *very* responsive) and my MP3s aren't skipping a beat. WinXP would bring my 2GHz P4 to its knees with just *half* this load!
"Certain types of processing" (as a phrase) implies that there is a useful subset of the total problem space that the G5 is particularly good at. RC5 cracking is not a useful problem, and thus the G5's performance on this benchmark is wholly unrepresentative even of the types of processing that AltiVec is particularly suited to.
PS> When you use a very common phrase like "certain types of processing" be prepared to deal with all the semantic baggage it brings along.
That's a *really* bad benchmark. The AltiVec unit has a dedicated vector permute unit which makes RC5 processing results way out of line with the results of most other benchmarks. Its true that the altivec unit is good, but its not *that* good. Besides, both machines have comporable memory bandwidths (if you consider Canterwood P4s) and for many (most?) FP-heavy benchmarks, the code has a "streaming" nature, and is thus almost entirely memory bandwidth limited.