Nope. Not dead.
SPARC is up to 8 cores, and unlike above-mentioned quads, it is actually a real processor shipping and running today for reasonable $. I was configuring one a couple weeks ago. Sweeeeeeet box....
It seems like a lot of replies have to do with DOING something that appeals to you. While that makes a certain amount of sense, I know people who are doing things they say they like, but they are still miserable, mostly because their attitude sucks.
I know others who have had life-altering experiences, and ever since, they find joy in even the mundane or irritating things in life.
IMHO, there is no magical career path that will make you happy in the long run. Some are more fun than others, many absolutely suck and will help make you more miserable, but nothing will take a miserable person and make them happy, unless a deeper attitude change occurs as well.
I said nothing about getting more per instruction. I said nothing about bus speeds. I think you're reading too much into my post.
I also said nothing about 64-bit cpus being FASTER than 32 bit cpus. Quite the opposite.
( "if you *don't* then a 64-bit CPU can actually be slower" )
If you picture a motorcycle and an SUV pulling up to a stop light together and seeing who can run faster, who do you think will win?
However, in a situation where more power is needed for a particular task (let's say that " an application that really needs to do lots of 64-bit math" is analogous to towing a boat), the 64-bit cpu / v8 SUV is superior.
Re-read the disclaimer. This is an ANALOGY, not a scientific whitepaper. It is intended to make the simple point that sheer speed does not equal power, and vice versa.
I'm sure that there are people here other than myself that were thrilled with all the "extra" power that the 486dx had over the 386 (no internal math coproc.) Sooner or later, software abilities and user demands will eat up the available hardware performance.
More to the point, though, 32 bit vs. 64bit architecture is about more than clock speeds. In fact, typically I've seen 64bit cpus debut at lower clock speeds than contemporary 32 bit cpus.
[Author hereby warns reader of his intent to use an analogy. The analogy is not designed to be airtight, or absolute proof of anything. It is intended to convey a point of view. Any attempt to stretch/abuse/extend said analogy beyond its intended limits will likely result in confusion.]
Comparing a 32-bit cpu with a 64-bit cpu with half the mhz rating is roughly like comparing a 10k rpm, 4-cylinder motorcycle engine to a 5k rpm v-8.
The bike will take one person (maybe two) and a small amount of cargo, and carry them at outrageous speeds. To carry more people or cargo, an SUV with the v-8 would do a better job.
[Author briefly has a vision of a motorcycle tooling down the highway with an SUV v-8 crammed into it, penguin bumper stickers adhered all over it.]
MHZ = speed, but speed does not necessarily equal power, and powerful does not necessarily equal useful.
Being pro-business doesn't automatically make someone pro-M$FT. Consider the audience he intends to please. Massachusetts has lots of non-M$FT high-tech firms in residence that could possibly benefit from a more aggressive settlement. Also, Mitt ran on a platform that included recruiting companies to open up shop in Mass. I don't think he would object if this might attract M$FT competitors to create jobs in the state.
On the other hand, if M$FT suddenly announced that it was investing billions in a Mass.-based series of new M$FT campuses, might this swing political opinion the other way?
The point I was making was that when cutting "wasteful state government programs", due consideration has to be given to the fallout and who might be hurt. The elderly was one example, but there are others. I intended it to be more metaphorical than a literal example.
That being said, you and others responded to it in a way I hadn't considered. If we look at the particular instance of elder care, I am not completely convinced that charity alone would do a sufficient job of covering all the shortfalls if government assistance were cut.
But your comment got me thinking. By definition, I guess the people who wish to make these changes are both idealistic and motivated, which could mean that charitable means might work better than I had (cynically) estimated. Even so, during any transition, people fall through cracks. Before anything is dismantled, I would think that contingency plans should be made. Too often state government (at least where I am...) fails to look at the consequences of its actions (even the well-intended ones), and people get hurt.
> It may be their job, but it doesn't mean they are doing it correctly or that Libertarians agree with them.
Agree or not, we're bound as a society to follow laws. Granted, following an unjust law (Jim Crow) is unjust, and civil disobedience has its place. But even it is not an exception to the law... the practitioners end up paying the price for breaking a law (even and unjust one).
>> Want to see drugs and guns in one place? Visit Columbia or Jamaica.
> No, those would be countries with drugs and guns and a government that either can not or does not protect all of their citizen's rights and property... the primary function expected of a government.
Leaving Columbia and Jamaica aside, The US government can't even protect all its citizen's rights against those with drugs and guns. I have seen too many bad things happen when drugs & guns mix. I am in favor of fewer restrictions on guns... but not both. (I apologize if I seem inflexible here... I respect your opinion, I just don't agree with it.)
1 - Each node requires a certain amount of CPU power, memory, and other resources just to run its OS. By using SMP nodes, you get economies of scale in terms of kernel footprint and overhead.
You mention data locality; this is precisely one of the advantages of a more robust node. Fewer (larger) nodes means that there is a greater chance that the data is already local, avoiding the need to go out over the cluster interconnect to get it. Which leads to the next point...
2 - This will require an incredibly robust interconnect. Building such an interconnect that delivers screaming bandwidth and minimal latency efficiently will not be cheap. As node count goes up, so does cost/complexity of the interconnect.
3 - (Disclaimer: I am not a developer, nor do I play one on TV. However, I have the following from a trusted source.) Writing multithreaded, multi-proc aware s/w IS somewhat more difficult than plain vanilla coding, but it's not THAT much harder. I am sure that whatever engineers they involve in a project like this will have the necessary skills.
4 - Actually, I don't know.what OS they could use for this beast; that was one of my questions on an earlier post. I recently spent some time speaking with an engineer who was intimately involved with SGI's high end stuff, and based on what he said, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Cray-related OS used here.
Although, if some of those Cray engineers started toying around under the hood of a Linux kernel... who knows.
Assuming that you are who you say you are, and not some troll looking for a fight, allow me to respond...
I am posting this response because I (and most others here) believe that what passes for "debate" in this forum is an important part of being a citizen of the world's online community. Regardless of your implication, the majority of posts here are civil and reasonable conversation. Those which are not are pushed to the margins.
I agree with exactly one thing you have said:
"... patents provide a valuable service in our society, protecting people who create value from those who would steal it."
True. Patents protect innovators from thieves. Mayny people who post here work for technology companies, and their livelyhoods depend on their employer being fairly compensated for the licensing of IP that legitimately belongs to their company.
If you care to read other IP conversations on/. , you will see resentment over IP laws. This stems from abusive/overzealous IP protection, curbing consumers' legitimate right to Fair Use. Fair Use is a valid part of IP doctrine. It is NOT "stealing"
The rest of what you posted looks like rubbish. (I'm sorry, but you car metaphor doesn't really apply here.)
PanIP may have other legitimate intellectual property holdings, but in this case it is plain that this is not one of them. You are not protecting any innovation that can be called yours. You are a leech.
There's a good point being made here. This move by itself might be nothing to worry about, and well within the rights of the server admins. However, it starts down a slippery slope, leaving the question of "where does it end" unanswered.
Erosion of freedoms almost always starts in little increments like this.
Does your.sig imply that idiots avoid small groups of people?
First of all, we don't even know what the hardware architecture is going to look like, exactly. We're guessing it will have to be some sort of cluster of multi-cpu nodes, but we don't know how many nodes there will be, or how many cpu's per node.
The Swedish super cluster you refer to is a nice piece of engineering, but even it has its limits. If you want to link 16000 cpu's together in a useful way, 2- or 4-way nodes are going to be marginally useful at best. More cpus per node would be one possible answer.
Scaling nodes in a cluster and scaling CPUs in a node are two different things. Last I heard, Linus was working on increasing the SMP scalability of the Linux kernel, but I don't think that more than 4 to 8 cpus per node is available yet. (Is IBM helping him here? They've got lots of experience with this, and they're always talking about Linux...)
Anyway, my thought was that to scale to that number of cpus, they would probably need heavier nodes, and that would require them to adapt an existing SMP or NUMA architecture to fit their needs. Ergo, Linux may not be the best OS for them.
Excellent idea! Consistency is the biggest obstacle I can see (making sure that the different additions to the storyline don't violate each others' trivia/characters/place/time/etc.)
But even with that concern, I think this would be great.
AFAIK, Linux doesn't scale above a small number of CPU's. Looks to me that implementing it on a 16,000 cpu computer would require a complete rewrite of the entire OS.
Even high-end UNIXs like Sun's Solaris don't commercially scale much beyond 100+/- cpus, and are generally intended for UMA, not NUMA.
When you step away from standard SMP systems into parallel and NUMA architectures, there are lots of problems to solve that don't exist at the small end of the scale, both at the OS and the app level. OSes better suited to that environment already exist (anyone have more info ???).
Summary: California deregulated its electricity market a few years ago ('98, I think), and made private electricity generation the norm. The rolling blackouts of 2000 were one of the end results.
Getting off-topic, so I'm going to leave you on your own, but a quick internet search will turn up lots of material. Try http://www.impeachgraydavis.com (G.D. is Governor of CA).
Getting a little off-topic, but since this goes to the drugs-n-guns part of the original story, here goes...
I can leave the charity thing alone, although it misses my point, but you are wrong about Columbia and Jamaica.
Most of the shooting in Jamaica is one gang shooting at its rival, not law enforcement picking on innocent little drug lords.
Columbia is much more complex, but most of it comes down to rebels (primarily FARC, but there are others) leveraging criminal enterprises (in addition to drug trade, they specialize in kidnapping, extortion, murder of innocent civilians, blowing up churches, etc) to support and finance their war against the government.
If your point is that the US should mind its own business, I'd say you are probably right. Should the US govt address the problem of domestic demand before it goes after foreign supply? Probably. I'm sure there are better ways to curb this nation's drug problems, but frankly, I haven't heard any so far (including outright legalization) that really appeal to me.
My point was not that they shouldn't take action and stand up for their rights, but rather that they didn't seem to be putting a lot of thought into some of the ramifications of their actions.
Re: heat/old people - I was trying to make the point that if you are going to gut state spending, it will require more forethought than simply taking a machete to the state budget. Generally, there is plenty of pork to cut out of any budget, but hidden in the layers of patronage are some lifelines that need protection. What will they cut? What will they keep? How will they support the measures they keep? Nothing more or less than we should be asking anyone who intends to be politically active.
Re: courts/constitution - I get the feeling that they mean to decide for themselves what is constitutional. Are there any states now being forced to enforce laws that the Supreme Court has found unconstitutional? (Fed Govt/Guantanamo Bay/Al Quaeda is a different issue entirely) I find it odd that they feel they need to reserve that right... AFAIK, the states aren't compelled to enforce laws found to be unconstitutional. (I could be wrong; my kids tell me I am all the time)
Re: Guns/drugs - I have lots of opinions to share here, some might suprise you, (generally for gun owner's rights) but in the name of brevity, [snip].
The combination of the two is bad news. I spent 4 long years raising kids while living near an area where guns and drugs were a problem. Waking up at night to the sound of drug gang gunfire nearby might give you reason to pause and think. "Spoons and forks" don't miss their target, fly a couple hundred yards, and -plunk- nail an innocent kid.
What really set me off was they referred to them in the same sentence, next to each other, as if they were related issues.
Re: California - This illustrates my point that a reform for the sake of reform, made without due thought to the possible ramifications, causes problems. Hey, for all I know, these people could carefully study California's woes and come up with a plan that works... but that will take a lot more insight than what I saw on their site.
Re: drinking age - I'm not sure how that one is related.
I think this experiment might run smoother if they apply a little critical thinking to the manifesto on their site, and maybe think through the consequences of their actions a little further.
What can be done in a single state? A great deal. We will repeal state taxes and wasteful state government programs.
I know that lots of political spending is horribly wasteful, but what are they going to do about the kind of programs that help poor old people afford heat during the winter? I'm sure they have a plan, but I didn't see it mentioned anywhere.
We will end the collaboration between state and federal law enforcement officials in enforcing unconstitutional laws.
It is the courts' job to decide what is constitutional, right?
We will repeal laws regulating drugs and guns.
Are these folks backed by a cartel? Want to see drugs and guns in one place? Visit Columbia or Jamaica.
We will privatize utilities and end inefficient regulations and monopolies.
Privitization can be great. Just ask California how they like privatized electric utilities.
Then we will negotiate directly with the federal government for more autonomy
If you lived local to me, it would make a slight difference because I probably would at least buy you a beer for your trouble (assuming 21+). I'd say you probably have made a difference, albeit a small one.
7yrs x 1CD/month = 84 CDs not purchased at $12/CD = some piddly little amount of money to RIAA, but = big difference to small independent band.
The big impact on the RIAA would be that over time, you (plus a bunch of other pissed off music consumers) might actually do to the RIAA & record labels what they THOUGHT Napster was going to do to them: cause a measureable dip in revenues.
If you were hoping that by your actions you could make Britney Spears go away, well... keep trying. We're all behind you.
The thing here is not just to boycott, but to take the $$$ you saved and support bands you DO appreciate. (... and buy beers for people who buy you beers)
Jaguar is no good without Apple h/w to run it on, right? So, presumably, any teacher taking advantage of this would already have a Mac lying around. Other than preventing their current K-12 teacher customer base from eroding, I can't see what this will gain them.
A more effective way to market their product would be bundle their product with every PC manufactured, become a ruthless competitor, butcher other software companies, become a monopoly, and end up in court fighting the government lawyers before finally... oh, wait a minute... no, forget that. It's already been done./insert apology here for off-topic M$FT bashing/
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. Not dead. SPARC is up to 8 cores, and unlike above-mentioned quads, it is actually a real processor shipping and running today for reasonable $. I was configuring one a couple weeks ago. Sweeeeeeet box ....
It seems like a lot of replies have to do with DOING something that appeals to you. While that makes a certain amount of sense, I know people who are doing things they say they like, but they are still miserable, mostly because their attitude sucks.
I know others who have had life-altering experiences, and ever since, they find joy in even the mundane or irritating things in life.
IMHO, there is no magical career path that will make you happy in the long run. Some are more fun than others, many absolutely suck and will help make you more miserable, but nothing will take a miserable person and make them happy, unless a deeper attitude change occurs as well.
I said nothing about getting more per instruction. I said nothing about bus speeds. I think you're reading too much into my post.
I also said nothing about 64-bit cpus being FASTER than 32 bit cpus. Quite the opposite.
( "if you *don't* then a 64-bit CPU can actually be slower" )
If you picture a motorcycle and an SUV pulling up to a stop light together and seeing who can run faster, who do you think will win?
However, in a situation where more power is needed for a particular task (let's say that " an application that really needs to do lots of 64-bit math" is analogous to towing a boat), the 64-bit cpu / v8 SUV is superior.
Re-read the disclaimer. This is an ANALOGY, not a scientific whitepaper. It is intended to make the simple point that sheer speed does not equal power, and vice versa.
Happy New Year.
I'm sure that there are people here other than myself that were thrilled with all the "extra" power that the 486dx had over the 386 (no internal math coproc.) Sooner or later, software abilities and user demands will eat up the available hardware performance.
...
More to the point, though, 32 bit vs. 64bit architecture is about more than clock speeds. In fact, typically I've seen 64bit cpus debut at lower clock speeds than contemporary 32 bit cpus.
[Author hereby warns reader of his intent to use an analogy. The analogy is not designed to be airtight, or absolute proof of anything. It is intended to convey a point of view. Any attempt to stretch/abuse/extend said analogy beyond its intended limits will likely result in confusion.]
Comparing a 32-bit cpu with a 64-bit cpu with half the mhz rating is roughly like comparing a 10k rpm, 4-cylinder motorcycle engine to a 5k rpm v-8.
The bike will take one person (maybe two) and a small amount of cargo, and carry them at outrageous speeds. To carry more people or cargo, an SUV with the v-8 would do a better job.
[Author briefly has a vision of a motorcycle tooling down the highway with an SUV v-8 crammed into it, penguin bumper stickers adhered all over it.]
MHZ = speed, but speed does not necessarily equal power, and powerful does not necessarily equal useful.
Or something like that
Being pro-business doesn't automatically make someone pro-M$FT. Consider the audience he intends to please. Massachusetts has lots of non-M$FT high-tech firms in residence that could possibly benefit from a more aggressive settlement. Also, Mitt ran on a platform that included recruiting companies to open up shop in Mass. I don't think he would object if this might attract M$FT competitors to create jobs in the state.
On the other hand, if M$FT suddenly announced that it was investing billions in a Mass.-based series of new M$FT campuses, might this swing political opinion the other way?
Take a look here to take a look at how many satellites there are in the near-Earth environment.
BTW, does anyone have a similar link to a site showing space junk?
- rotwhylr
Web servers are inherently public. Placing sensitive data on a web server means that one can reasonably expect that it will be accessed.
Stupidity is not a valid business strategy. Companies like this have no business asking a court to defend them from their own inept practices.
Hmmm ... maybe Lego will modify their EULA to include a "developer/personal use " clause.
Sorry for the delay ... business travel.
...) fails to look at the consequences of its actions (even the well-intended ones), and people get hurt.
The point I was making was that when cutting "wasteful state government programs", due consideration has to be given to the fallout and who might be hurt. The elderly was one example, but there are others. I intended it to be more metaphorical than a literal example.
That being said, you and others responded to it in a way I hadn't considered. If we look at the particular instance of elder care, I am not completely convinced that charity alone would do a sufficient job of covering all the shortfalls if government assistance were cut.
But your comment got me thinking. By definition, I guess the people who wish to make these changes are both idealistic and motivated, which could mean that charitable means might work better than I had (cynically) estimated. Even so, during any transition, people fall through cracks. Before anything is dismantled, I would think that contingency plans should be made. Too often state government (at least where I am
Regards,
- rotwhylr
> It may be their job, but it doesn't mean they are doing it correctly or that Libertarians agree with them.
... the practitioners end up paying the price for breaking a law (even and unjust one).
... but not both. (I apologize if I seem inflexible here ... I respect your opinion, I just don't agree with it.)
Agree or not, we're bound as a society to follow laws. Granted, following an unjust law (Jim Crow) is unjust, and civil disobedience has its place. But even it is not an exception to the law
>> Want to see drugs and guns in one place? Visit Columbia or Jamaica.
> No, those would be countries with drugs and guns and a government that either can not or does not protect all of their citizen's rights and property... the primary function expected of a government.
Leaving Columbia and Jamaica aside, The US government can't even protect all its citizen's rights against those with drugs and guns. I have seen too many bad things happen when drugs & guns mix. I am in favor of fewer restrictions on guns
You're absolutely right ... sorry for the confusion, and thanks for straightening it out.
/. discussions generally do not advocate "stealing" IP, as he/she seems to imply, but I fscked it up.
I was trying to make the point that
1 - Each node requires a certain amount of CPU power, memory, and other resources just to run its OS. By using SMP nodes, you get economies of scale in terms of kernel footprint and overhead.
...
... who knows.
You mention data locality; this is precisely one of the advantages of a more robust node. Fewer (larger) nodes means that there is a greater chance that the data is already local, avoiding the need to go out over the cluster interconnect to get it. Which leads to the next point
2 - This will require an incredibly robust interconnect. Building such an interconnect that delivers screaming bandwidth and minimal latency efficiently will not be cheap. As node count goes up, so does cost/complexity of the interconnect.
3 - (Disclaimer: I am not a developer, nor do I play one on TV. However, I have the following from a trusted source.) Writing multithreaded, multi-proc aware s/w IS somewhat more difficult than plain vanilla coding, but it's not THAT much harder. I am sure that whatever engineers they involve in a project like this will have the necessary skills.
4 - Actually, I don't know.what OS they could use for this beast; that was one of my questions on an earlier post. I recently spent some time speaking with an engineer who was intimately involved with SGI's high end stuff, and based on what he said, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Cray-related OS used here.
Although, if some of those Cray engineers started toying around under the hood of a Linux kernel
Is this comment for real?
...
/. , you will see resentment over IP laws. This stems from abusive/overzealous IP protection, curbing consumers' legitimate right to Fair Use. Fair Use is a valid part of IP doctrine. It is NOT "stealing"
Assuming that you are who you say you are, and not some troll looking for a fight, allow me to respond
I am posting this response because I (and most others here) believe that what passes for "debate" in this forum is an important part of being a citizen of the world's online community. Regardless of your implication, the majority of posts here are civil and reasonable conversation. Those which are not are pushed to the margins.
I agree with exactly one thing you have said:
"... patents provide a valuable service in our society, protecting people who create value from those who would steal it."
True. Patents protect innovators from thieves. Mayny people who post here work for technology companies, and their livelyhoods depend on their employer being fairly compensated for the licensing of IP that legitimately belongs to their company.
If you care to read other IP conversations on
The rest of what you posted looks like rubbish. (I'm sorry, but you car metaphor doesn't really apply here.)
PanIP may have other legitimate intellectual property holdings, but in this case it is plain that this is not one of them. You are not protecting any innovation that can be called yours. You are a leech.
Regards,
- rotwhylr
There's a good point being made here. This move by itself might be nothing to worry about, and well within the rights of the server admins. However, it starts down a slippery slope, leaving the question of "where does it end" unanswered.
Erosion of freedoms almost always starts in little increments like this.
Does your .sig imply that idiots avoid small groups of people?
...)
First of all, we don't even know what the hardware architecture is going to look like, exactly. We're guessing it will have to be some sort of cluster of multi-cpu nodes, but we don't know how many nodes there will be, or how many cpu's per node.
The Swedish super cluster you refer to is a nice piece of engineering, but even it has its limits. If you want to link 16000 cpu's together in a useful way, 2- or 4-way nodes are going to be marginally useful at best. More cpus per node would be one possible answer.
Scaling nodes in a cluster and scaling CPUs in a node are two different things. Last I heard, Linus was working on increasing the SMP scalability of the Linux kernel, but I don't think that more than 4 to 8 cpus per node is available yet. (Is IBM helping him here? They've got lots of experience with this, and they're always talking about Linux
Anyway, my thought was that to scale to that number of cpus, they would probably need heavier nodes, and that would require them to adapt an existing SMP or NUMA architecture to fit their needs. Ergo, Linux may not be the best OS for them.
Excellent idea! Consistency is the biggest obstacle I can see (making sure that the different additions to the storyline don't violate each others' trivia/characters/place/time/etc.) But even with that concern, I think this would be great.
AFAIK, Linux doesn't scale above a small number of CPU's. Looks to me that implementing it on a 16,000 cpu computer would require a complete rewrite of the entire OS.
Even high-end UNIXs like Sun's Solaris don't commercially scale much beyond 100+/- cpus, and are generally intended for UMA, not NUMA.
When you step away from standard SMP systems into parallel and NUMA architectures, there are lots of problems to solve that don't exist at the small end of the scale, both at the OS and the app level. OSes better suited to that environment already exist (anyone have more info ???).
Massachusetts, USA isn't much better. I have friends in bands struggling to make money and keep their integrity at the same time - no easy matter.
Thanks for the link - I'll take a look.
Summary: California deregulated its electricity market a few years ago ('98, I think), and made private electricity generation the norm. The rolling blackouts of 2000 were one of the end results.
Getting off-topic, so I'm going to leave you on your own, but a quick internet search will turn up lots of material. Try http://www.impeachgraydavis.com (G.D. is Governor of CA).
Getting a little off-topic, but since this goes to the drugs-n-guns part of the original story, here goes ...
I can leave the charity thing alone, although it misses my point, but you are wrong about Columbia and Jamaica.
Most of the shooting in Jamaica is one gang shooting at its rival, not law enforcement picking on innocent little drug lords.
Columbia is much more complex, but most of it comes down to rebels (primarily FARC, but there are others) leveraging criminal enterprises (in addition to drug trade, they specialize in kidnapping, extortion, murder of innocent civilians, blowing up churches, etc) to support and finance their war against the government.
If your point is that the US should mind its own business, I'd say you are probably right. Should the US govt address the problem of domestic demand before it goes after foreign supply? Probably. I'm sure there are better ways to curb this nation's drug problems, but frankly, I haven't heard any so far (including outright legalization) that really appeal to me.
No offense taken.
... AFAIK, the states aren't compelled to enforce laws found to be unconstitutional. (I could be wrong; my kids tell me I am all the time)
... but that will take a lot more insight than what I saw on their site.
My point was not that they shouldn't take action and stand up for their rights, but rather that they didn't seem to be putting a lot of thought into some of the ramifications of their actions.
Re: heat/old people - I was trying to make the point that if you are going to gut state spending, it will require more forethought than simply taking a machete to the state budget. Generally, there is plenty of pork to cut out of any budget, but hidden in the layers of patronage are some lifelines that need protection. What will they cut? What will they keep? How will they support the measures they keep? Nothing more or less than we should be asking anyone who intends to be politically active.
Re: courts/constitution - I get the feeling that they mean to decide for themselves what is constitutional. Are there any states now being forced to enforce laws that the Supreme Court has found unconstitutional? (Fed Govt/Guantanamo Bay/Al Quaeda is a different issue entirely) I find it odd that they feel they need to reserve that right
Re: Guns/drugs - I have lots of opinions to share here, some might suprise you, (generally for gun owner's rights) but in the name of brevity, [snip].
The combination of the two is bad news. I spent 4 long years raising kids while living near an area where guns and drugs were a problem. Waking up at night to the sound of drug gang gunfire nearby might give you reason to pause and think. "Spoons and forks" don't miss their target, fly a couple hundred yards, and -plunk- nail an innocent kid.
What really set me off was they referred to them in the same sentence, next to each other, as if they were related issues.
Re: California - This illustrates my point that a reform for the sake of reform, made without due thought to the possible ramifications, causes problems. Hey, for all I know, these people could carefully study California's woes and come up with a plan that works
Re: drinking age - I'm not sure how that one is related.
Cheers.
What can be done in a single state? A great deal. We will repeal state taxes and wasteful state government programs.
I know that lots of political spending is horribly wasteful, but what are they going to do about the kind of programs that help poor old people afford heat during the winter? I'm sure they have a plan, but I didn't see it mentioned anywhere.
We will end the collaboration between state and federal law enforcement officials in enforcing unconstitutional laws.
It is the courts' job to decide what is constitutional, right?
We will repeal laws regulating drugs and guns.
Are these folks backed by a cartel? Want to see drugs and guns in one place? Visit Columbia or Jamaica.
We will privatize utilities and end inefficient regulations and monopolies.
Privitization can be great. Just ask California how they like privatized electric utilities.
Then we will negotiate directly with the federal government for more autonomy
Good luck. I am sure they will take it seriously.
After reading this, the recent /. story about brain cells on a chip takes on a WHOLE different tone.
0 /1 7/1519202
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/1
Part of the solution????
If you lived local to me, it would make a slight difference because I probably would at least buy you a beer for your trouble (assuming 21+). I'd say you probably have made a difference, albeit a small one.
... keep trying. We're all behind you.
... and buy beers for people who buy you beers)
7yrs x 1CD/month = 84 CDs not purchased at $12/CD = some piddly little amount of money to RIAA, but = big difference to small independent band.
The big impact on the RIAA would be that over time, you (plus a bunch of other pissed off music consumers) might actually do to the RIAA & record labels what they THOUGHT Napster was going to do to them: cause a measureable dip in revenues.
If you were hoping that by your actions you could make Britney Spears go away, well
The thing here is not just to boycott, but to take the $$$ you saved and support bands you DO appreciate. (
#setenv RANT=false
Jaguar is no good without Apple h/w to run it on, right? So, presumably, any teacher taking advantage of this would already have a Mac lying around. Other than preventing their current K-12 teacher customer base from eroding, I can't see what this will gain them.
... oh, wait a minute ... no, forget that. It's already been done. /insert apology here for off-topic M$FT bashing/
A more effective way to market their product would be bundle their product with every PC manufactured, become a ruthless competitor, butcher other software companies, become a monopoly, and end up in court fighting the government lawyers before finally