I check woz.com from time to time. I think that Woz said on his web site that the depiction of Jobs in "The Pirates of Silicon Valley" accurately demonstrated ONE facet of Jobs's actions and personality, that Jobs could get pretty driven at times, but that Steve Jobs also had other sides not shown in the movie. Still, his comments seemed to say that the movie as a whole was generally accurate as far as the depictions of the characters went, though he wished the depictions had been a bit deeper.
Unfortunately, woz.com is slashdotted, so I can't go check my recollections at the moment:-(.
Actually, Red Hat is one of the parties financing Precision Insight's work on the XFree86 4.0 project. Similarly, SuSE has a couple of people full-time to work on XFree86. You can't fault either Red Hat or SuSE -- they ARE putting their money where their mouth is.
One of the design goals of the "X" project was STABILITY. There are calls in the Win32 API that will totally trash the GUI, such as (hmm) TerminateThread (I suggest that you read the documentation on MSDN on that one -- you can actually lock up the entire system by using TerminateThread on a program that has made a Win32 API call, is in a "critical section" i.e. has already aquired a lock, and you terminate it before it releases the lock -- all other processes and threads will lock up because they'll no longer be able to acquire the lock!).
In addition to reducing fundamental stability, the Windows solution also makes it hard to release resources when a thread or process dies. Windows leaks memory like a seive, whereas all "X" resources are tagged and when the OS sends a SIGPIPE to the "X" server to signal that a socket has closed, "X" can release all resources associated with that socket.
BTW, if you are running the "X" server local to the machine, the socket can be used only for control commands, not for actual data. Actual data would be sent via shared memory. I suggest that you read up on the SysV IPC spec and see why it's not a good idea to send *ALL* data to the video display via shared memory (basically: shared memory does not go away when the process that allocated it dies, and the "X" server would not be notified if that other process died so it wouldn't know to manually de-allocate that shared memory).
Finally, regarding the performance argument: SGI. I think that says it all. SGI has graphics performance unmatched by anyone -- and runs "X". SGI is perfect proof that "X" does NOT have to be slow -- if "X" is slow, that's an implementation problem, not a fundamental problem with "X". Yes, it's faster to draw directly into a frame buffer than it is to draw directly into a shared memory buffer and then send a command via the "X" socket -- but not MUCH faster, especially if (as with SGI) you have made some optimizations at the OS level for local sockets. I think they have it down to where sending data on a local socket is actually putting it into a buffer, and then mapping that buffer into memory on the other end, somewhere around 20 or 30 cycles. The only real time consumer is marshalling and de-marshalling (i.e., converting the data to a stream, then converting it back to native-format binary at the other end), but that's hardly a killer.
Exactly. "anyone who seriously wants to develop or beta test". I'm a busy person. Like many geek types, I often work 16 hour days developing a next-generation product for my employer, in hopes that at its release, I will be showered with praise, bonuses, bigger salary, and stock options. I don't have time to be a "serious" developer or beta tester of anybody else's product. I once thought in the past to join the XFree86 development team, but had the exact same problem (except I was only working 12 hour days back then!).
I do occasionally fix bugs in other people's Open Source software, but not as a "serious" developer. Rather, I download the latest source, see if it fixes my problem, and patch it if it doesn't (and send the patches to the originator). I don't bother trying to fix the source for the "released" version of the program, because it is a duplication of effort if somebody else has already fixed that problem in the latest source, and I do NOT beta-test software that I do not have source code to -- I want to be able to pop it into gdb and do a stack trace if it core dumps, and be able to send a patch as well as a bug report to the author.
Not that I beta test things very often. Usually it's on a whim. E.g., I downloaded the KDE 2.0 betas (1.8?) and compiled them with debugging on, simply because I was feeling frisky one Saturday afternoon. I tried it out, said "hmm, nice, we'll see what happens when the rest of the KDE programs are ported to this", and went back to KDE 1.2. But the point is that, by not requiring me to jump through hoops, this was one more eye that looked at the program. Not a seriously deep look, mind you -- I did not (and do not) have time to be a serious beta tester -- but still, eyes are eyes.
I understand the problems that the XFree86 team faces insofar as NDA's are concerned. After all, the whole reason for forming XFree86 Inc. was to have a corporate entity that could sign NDA's with video card manufacturers. But I am telling you that this IS a reason why the XFree86 project has trouble attracting developers -- the situation adds a hoop to jump through for someone like me, who doesn't have time to be a "serious" developer. Not a seriously high hoop, but hey, I'm not being paid to develop XFree86, y'know, and any barrier at all to participation is too high a barrier for someone who wants to make an occasional casual contribution. I don't have any facile solution to the problem, certainly nothing as simplistic and moronic as "fork the project!" or "boycott NDA-requiring video card makers!". But to deny that it is a problem is to deny reality.
One thing to note: Most companies, internally, do not refer to their product as "Windows 2000" or "BRU 2000" or what have you. Rather, they use a traditional version numbering scheme in addition to the wacky 4-digit number.
I suspect that, as the century progresses, we will see whacked-out stuff like "Windows 2000" replaced by "Windows NT version 6.0" (or what have you) when the time comes to replace them. Sort of like how "BRU 2000" became "BRU 15.1" when it was upgraded (grin).
No no, us Americans don't smoke pot all day long. We're usually too busy sitting on our front porches oiling our guns so that we can go gun down people in drive-by shootings.
Sheesh, you Russians don't know ANYTHING!
(Note: Since English is not your native language -- there is a concept called "humor" which comes into play here).
Many subdivisions here in Phoenix, Arizona, have deed restrictions that you must agree to in order to buy a home in said subdivision. Many of those deed restrictions have clauses similar to the following:
"You shall not rent or sell this property to anybody of Spanish origin, or to Negros, or to Irishmen."
You are stating that this contract is legal and valid?
I don't think so! There is a law which prohibits such clauses in housing contracts, and thus any such clauses in housing contracts are null and void.
The Constitution generally protects us against government, BTW, not against private parties. The rule of law is supposed to protect us from private parties (e.g., someone who mugs us is NOT violating our Constitutional rights, rather, he is violating rights guaranteed by rule of law, specifically, the right to be free of assault).
I have that book somewhere here in my library, Tom. It's rather poorly written, and his ideas of the outcomes are rather far-fetched. I do think that we are approaching an age when nanotechnology and other advances make it possible to literally produce anything for almost nothing, but I also think we've seen the future already and it's staring us in the face -- i.e., the information economy that we are all participating in here on this board. When physical goods are cheap, what will sell is the ideas and notions in our heads. This is one reason why the big corporations are going headlong into the intellectual property business, and also one reason why the patent office and government policy favor the granting of intellectual property patents, they see these as the basis of the new economy that will come about when manufacturing is no longer a major goal of any advanced economy.
Daemon Knight really cannot be faulted for overlooking the impact of computers and the possibility of patenting intellectual property back in the '50's when he wrote that book. But it does make the book, when read in today's nascent information economy, a rather laughable read. It, alas, like so much of 50's science fiction, fails the test of time.
They named Slashdot as a party in the restraining order because Slashdot reported on the event, Tom, including telling where the "illegal" software was located. If this isn't a case of freedom of speech, what is?
This is not unusual. Corporations regularly infringe upon our rights either by buying legislation that grants them rights at our expense (usually under the guise of "tort reform", insurance companies love this, they want us to have no legal recourse if an incompetent doctor kills a loved one, for example), or directly, by refusing to give people jobs unless these people agree to give up all rights to their thoughts and speech (by which I mean those employment contracts that give your employer the rights to all ideas and software that you come up with during your term of employment -- even those ideas thought at home, and software written at home).
Unfortunately, it appears that business interests have managed to brainwash the majority of Americans into believing that giving up their rights is in the best interests of the country. This reasoning reminds me of the reasoning of Southern politicians during the 1950's, when they raved and ranted that the rights of states were more important than the rights of the people who lived in those states. Except today, it's the rights of corporations that are held as being more important than the rights of the people who work for those corporations and the rights of the consumers who buy products from those corporations.
The words that follow that statement are not law. They are not legally binding. But I still believe that this is truth: that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights".
In general, legally-guaranteed rights are not subject to contracts. Many neighborhoods here in Phoenix, Arizona, are deed-restricted with wording along the lines of "you may not sell this property to those of Spanish blood, or to Negros, or Irishmen." This is a contract that is agreed to when you buy the property, and that before the passing of various civil rights laws was enforced regularly. But a contract cannot be enforced if it violates the Constitution or the laws of the United States of America, such as the 1st Amendment right to freedom of the press as was exercised by Slashdot's editorial staff when they posted links to the DeCSS program.
We once had an institution in this country called slavery. It was legal. Most slaves had been legally sold to slavers under the laws of their home country, and the slavers then legally re-sold those slaves to landowners in the Americas. I mention this fact to go one step further than the legalistic argument, which is to say that there ARE rights granted to us by our Creator, and among those are freedom of speech and of thought, freedoms which are being violated every day via "contracts" in which we voluntarily enter servitude in exchange for a livelihood. I could be working for twice the money today if I were willing to sign contracts granting my employer ownership of all ideas and software written while I am in their employ (even ideas thought at home, and software written at home, on my personal time). I will not do that, thus I work for small businesses that are grateful for quality people (grateful enough to overlook my refusal to sign such contracts) but which cannot afford to pay real money.
Enough meandering. But the point is this: That laws and contracts which violate the rights and freedoms granted to us by our Creator exist, and that we are right and just when we protest and try to overturn these laws and contracts, whether they be deed restrictions which prevent Hispanics from buying houses in choice neighborhoods, or a frivolous lawsuit intended to impede free speech on the Internet.
There is a big difference between capitalism and corporatism. Capitalism is a system where buyers and sellers meet and exchange goods and services. Corporatism is a system where state-sponsored "limited liability corporations" are given the right to behave like "artificial people" but where the individuals who own and/or run said business are not held individually responsible for their conduct. Corporatism is a system where these artificial state-created entities are granted special rights by the state at the expense of the rights of individuals. Corporatism is a system where a mid-level executive can decide to poison the water and not be charged with murder when a child dies as a result of that decision but instead, be given a bonus because the out-of-court settlement was cheaper than upfitting the factory would have been. In short, it is a system where individuals are forced to enforce the laws by sueing criminals in civil courts, rather than having the government that we elect protect us from those criminals.
So please, do not confused capitalism and corporatism. Capitalism existed before corporatism, and the only "plus" of corporatism is the same "plus" as fascism (which is a version of corporatism with the state more directly tied to the corporations) -- it's a great way for increasing the wealth of the individuals in power. Which also has some trickle-down effect (though not as much as Reagan hoped for), but at what cost?
"mundane", in SF fandom, is the word applied to those who are not members of science fiction fandom.
Yes, it was originally elitist in nature (sort of like the "fans are Slans" statement back in the 50's -- go look up the Slan books, which are ridiculous Nietsche style hero race books), but the original meaning is long gone today. Much as the original meaning of the word "gay" (to be happy) is long gone today, replaced with today's meaning of the word "gay" (to be homosexual).
I think the biggest problem is that "code monkeys" don't know how to write, don't want to write, don't like to write. I take a day out of the development cycle from time to time to modify and continue my write up of what I've done so far -- not the detailed low-level implementation (that's done in the code), but the Big Ideas -- protocol descriptions, overall program structure, what requirements led me to implement certain things in certain ways. Then I clarify what I'm going to be working on for the next week or two in that same way, and circulate that requirements doc around the office to make sure that I'm not missing something obvious.
Yes, I took a day to specify the requirements for one program that I'm working on. So what. That saves weeks in overall development time, since I won't need to throw away that work in the future due to an implementation that doesn't meet future requirements.
That's what makes me think it's an urban legend. As far as I know, the R&D department for Microsoft isn't anywhere near the product fulfilment department (actually, products are fulfilled from warehouses all around the world).
Your idea about an unmarked building on the outskirts of some town in Arizona won't fly because you could not get developers to go there. I say that as an Arizona resident -- outside of Phoenix, Tucson, and (to a limited extent) Flagstaff, there's no "there" there. You can't even get high speed Internet outside of these three areas -- US Worst's wiring dates back to the 1920's in most rural areas, and they have proven incapable of keeping a T1 up and going anywhere outside of metropolitan areas (don't even talk about ISDN or DSL -- they'd have to upgrade their 60's-era electronic switches out there, and they aren't about to do that).
I had numbness, tingling, and pain on the outside half of my left hand. It turns out that I'd bumped my elbow against something while moving furniture and injured the nerve that runs from the neck down to the outside part of the hand. Ibuprofen and avoiding leaning on my elbows or etc., and lots of time (six weeks before the tingling started going down) solved the problem, thank god (my doctor had said if it didn't, probably the nerve had been jolted out of its channel and I'd probably need surgery), but the point is that pain isn't ALWAYS caused where it occurs. -E
Yes, a good recording engineer or "producer" can do a great job, but do note that most major metropolitan areas have "independent" studios (generally started out as somebody's home studio, then other people started recording there too and it outgrew their home). Having attempted some recording myself and gotten miserable results, it's easy to see that having someone who knows about what "the mix" should sound like, etc., and knows what to do in order to get that sound, is important. But that's not black magic. It's just a matter of hard work and experience, and you could even get that expertise yourself by failing at it enough times (grin). You definitely do NOT need to pay "major studio" production fees in order to get a good-sounding mix that properly represents your band's "sound"!
Not to mention that I've DEFINITELY heard "bad" mixes off of studio labels -- mixes that in no way properly represent the band and its sound. Unless you're Garth Brooks or some other big name, you'll probably get the bottom of the barrel at any major label to mix your album.
Mastering isn't that hard nowdays. Anybody with a mixer, a couple of mikes, and a $29.95 Ensoniq sound card can do direct-to-disk recording that is every bit as good as what the "professionals" do, for a grand total of maybe $1K total expenditure (including mike stands, cables, reference-quality headphones for doing playback while recording tracks and for previewing the mix, etc.). Then you can mix it down using any digital mixer software (all of the professional-quality software runs under Windows or Mac, sigh, but you can get decent software for well under $500) and voila!
What going to a studio and recording gets you is a) your landlord doesn't get complaints about you playing too loud (grin), b) better acoustics than the typical garage (but you can alter the acoustics of the typical garage to be suitable by, e.g., hanging drapes over all the walls and draped across the ceiling to muffle the echos), and c) the expertise of the recording engineer. Having attempted to do some recording myself, I can attest that it takes a LOT of work to make it come out right... e.g., a typical problem is "too hot" miking (clips your input) or, more insidious, "too cold" miking (ends up sounding muffled because you lose some of the dynamic range). The problem is that the "heat" varies depending upon your playing style, placement of microphone, mixer settings, and sound card input settings, and getting all of that right is a pain in the @%@!. Then getting a good mix at the end is important. You want the sound to be similar to what they'd hear live, for most music. The worst mix I ever heard was for a South Louisiana band called "The Bluerunners", which played "accordian grunge" (my best estimation of what they played). I'd heard them live at the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival and loved their sound, which was hard-driving, distorted, and mixed to perfection -- think grunge before grunge was cool. Then I bought their CD. *BIG* mistake -- the mix was clear, put the vocalist up front instead of as a background to the driving guitar and accordian (he was NOT a good enough vocalist to be up front!), and it would have been a great mix for Simon and Garfunkel but *NOT* for the BlueRunners, who needed a grittier, grungier mix to duplicate their live sound.
Anyhow, the expertise of a good recording engineer, as noted above, is probably the only thing you can get by going to a studio that you can't cheaply do at home with your PC, but as the BlueRunners example shows, it doesn't always result in a good mix (grin).
The fact of the matter was that there were very few rioters in Seattle. There were perhaps forty or fifty black clad thugs that the Seattle police (deliberately?) let into area in order to get an excuse to invoke martial law, and the corporate media blithely went along with the police and painted all 20,000 protestors (of whom 19,950 were peaceful) as "rioters".
The difference between Chicago '68 and Seattle '99 is that in Chicago, the national media was still independent and thus covered the "riots" in loving detail, including details that were unflattering to Mayor Dailey and the Chicago police department. Now they are corporate owned and report what their corporate owners want them to report. The corporate overlords support the goals of the WTO, so they report that anybody who opposes the WTO is a rioter. Ask Jon Katz why he resigned from his high-paying job with a network news department, why don't you?
Personally, I support the goals of the WTO, but that does not change the fact that Gestapo-like tactics are being used against peaceful protesters and that the corporate media is blithely going along with the "party line" that these are rioters, not peaceful protesters.
I agree that most of the protestors probably are clueless. For the most part, I support free trade and the goals of the WTO. But I am concerned about the jack-booted thuggish response that was received. By reading accounts in the independent media (as vs. the corporate-owned media such as ABC, NBC, or any major city newspaper), I have come to the following conclusions:
The police deliberately allowed a small group of perhaps 40 black-clad punks into the area and allowed them to smash windows and burn dumpsters in order to get an excuse to brand all protesters as "rioters".
Once they had their excuse, rioting was deliberately provoked by the police using tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray in an effort to get an excuse to invoke martial law.
Once the corporate media had compliantly reported that all of the protesters were "rioters" (rather than the 40 or so black-clad punks who were the only rioters in the area), the mayor and governor declared martial law (or, rather, "a state of emergency"), and dispatched the National Guard to clear the streets. Possession of a gas mask was also declared criminal intent, and you were immediately arrested if you had one. National Guardsmen and police officers blocked all entrances and exits from the area and stopped all who wanted to get in to ask them for identification and about their business in the area (shades of USSR!).
It was not reported on the national media, but one of the so-called "riots" was actually residents of the Capitol Hill neighborhood protesting the police presence in their neighborhood. Nothing to do with the WTO at all, but that didn't matter, the cops were in full-bore panic mode and coming down with jack boots on anything that looked like it might be public expression.
To get leads on the "real scoop", follow Salon's links to various independent news sources from the OTHER (non-corporate press) side.
All in all, I think this may be the sort of turning point for labor activism in America that Mayor Dailey's violent breakup of the '68 protests in Chicago were for anti-war protests. The big difference is the way these were covered. In Chicago, the pre-corporate-media national news covered jack-booted thugs whacking peaceful protestors over the head with jacksticks. In Seatle, the corporate-owned national news media did not show those events, and instead showed the rare events where the forty or fifty black-clad thugs that the police had allowed into the area looted and vandalised things.
the problem with Slashdot is that it has no "memory". We gripe and moan and groan, and then the next day we forget all about it and move on to whatever that day's "cause" is.
I'm sure the government actually likes us posting to SlashDot, because if we're posting here, we're not actually DOING anything.
Oh: to see what's really happening in Seattle (jack-booted Gestapo thugs tear-gassing and rubber-bulleting peaceful protestors while allowing anarchists to do whatever they want in order to get an excuse to invoke martial law, which they did in a 40 block area of central Seattle), see the links on Salon's "Anti-WTO Activist Web Pages" page. Now THAT is subversive. Slashdot? Get real!
Amen on the "intervention" part. My mother used to do psychiatric nursing, and she'd come home shaking her head over what went on in those facilities. Said she, most of the kids just needed someone to talk to, they didn't need to be bundled off to the "bad kids" home.
I was lucky enough to attend a Catholic high school for a couple of years, back when they were run by actual priests and brothers (nowdays they're run by "lay" people and are even more preppy than the public schools). As non-conformists themselves (even then it was getting hard to recruit priests here in the U.S., due to the view that wanting to be a priest was "weird"), they took a benevolent and, might I say, CHRISTIAN attitude towards the "different" amongst their charges. And they would NOT tolerate bullying or harassment, perhaps because they'd recieved their own share when they were kids. But, alas, the "professional educators" have now taken over the Catholic schools, and most of that atmosphere of toleration of the geeky is gone:-(.
Actually, it is not teachers unions that push for low standards. Rather, it is local school boards. For example, half (50%) of the math and science teachers in the state of Louisiana are not qualified to teach the subject -- they are teaching on "emergency credentials", which merely requires that they have had 6 hours of the subject at the college level. Most of these are English or Social Studies teachers teaching out-of-area, but as many as 25% of teachers at some school districts were hired "off the street" as long-term substitutes -- no credentials at all other than that they're somebody's relative.
The problem is that we, as a nation, do not want to pay teachers a competitive wage, and thus potential teachers such as myself look at the pay and go elsewhere. (Actually I put in two years in the teaching profession, but I view those two years as donated labor -- I currently make triple the salary as a software engineer than what I made as a teacher!). Teaching is an enormously stressful job, and finding people who will put up with the stress for the pay is difficult. You end up with the bottom of the barrel, unqualified people dragged in off the streets because they're unfit for any other employment.
As for teachers unions and guidance counsellors: teachers unions generally are in favor of mandatory certification because of the problem of low standards in the "off the street" hires, many of whom aren't qualified to pump gas at a gas station and who are little more than glorified babysitters. I have no idea why they would be concerned about counsellor certification, except to say that counsellors should be certified in some way or manner (as vs. hiring Principal Bob's dumb nephew Arnie to be the school counsellor).
I suspect that if anybody in power were really willing, they could reach a deal on certification of counsellors who have "non-traditional" backgrounds (like social work), something that would maybe require six hours of college coursework over the next twelve months regarding the various federal mandates and programs that counsellors must be expert in (groan). But the problem is that most of the people in power don't want such a compromise. Currently the counsellor position is used as a reward by principals for their cronies who back-stab teachers who want to teach rather than babysit, and allowing "real" counsellors into the profession would mean that they could no longer reward their cronies with counsellor jobs.
-E
Disclaimer: I was a member of the AFT in 1993, and of the NEA in 1995. Guess that makes me brainwashed, eh? (Not quite!).
The problem is that a crash test dummy can tell you how much force is being received, but how do you know if it's enough force to kill a human being? You have to calibrate the crash test dummy somehow to know whether a force is dangerous or not, and also to know if the way you're measuring the force with the crash test dummy is actually accurate.
It's sort of like simulating nuclear explosions on supercomputers. Sure, today you can do it with reasonable accuracy -- but before all that nuclear testing was done, how could you have known that it was accurate?
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, woz.com is slashdotted, so I can't go check my recollections at the moment :-(.
_E
In addition to reducing fundamental stability, the Windows solution also makes it hard to release resources when a thread or process dies. Windows leaks memory like a seive, whereas all "X" resources are tagged and when the OS sends a SIGPIPE to the "X" server to signal that a socket has closed, "X" can release all resources associated with that socket.
BTW, if you are running the "X" server local to the machine, the socket can be used only for control commands, not for actual data. Actual data would be sent via shared memory. I suggest that you read up on the SysV IPC spec and see why it's not a good idea to send *ALL* data to the video display via shared memory (basically: shared memory does not go away when the process that allocated it dies, and the "X" server would not be notified if that other process died so it wouldn't know to manually de-allocate that shared memory).
Finally, regarding the performance argument: SGI. I think that says it all. SGI has graphics performance unmatched by anyone -- and runs "X". SGI is perfect proof that "X" does NOT have to be slow -- if "X" is slow, that's an implementation problem, not a fundamental problem with "X". Yes, it's faster to draw directly into a frame buffer than it is to draw directly into a shared memory buffer and then send a command via the "X" socket -- but not MUCH faster, especially if (as with SGI) you have made some optimizations at the OS level for local sockets. I think they have it down to where sending data on a local socket is actually putting it into a buffer, and then mapping that buffer into memory on the other end, somewhere around 20 or 30 cycles. The only real time consumer is marshalling and de-marshalling (i.e., converting the data to a stream, then converting it back to native-format binary at the other end), but that's hardly a killer.
-E
I do occasionally fix bugs in other people's Open Source software, but not as a "serious" developer. Rather, I download the latest source, see if it fixes my problem, and patch it if it doesn't (and send the patches to the originator). I don't bother trying to fix the source for the "released" version of the program, because it is a duplication of effort if somebody else has already fixed that problem in the latest source, and I do NOT beta-test software that I do not have source code to -- I want to be able to pop it into gdb and do a stack trace if it core dumps, and be able to send a patch as well as a bug report to the author.
Not that I beta test things very often. Usually it's on a whim. E.g., I downloaded the KDE 2.0 betas (1.8?) and compiled them with debugging on, simply because I was feeling frisky one Saturday afternoon. I tried it out, said "hmm, nice, we'll see what happens when the rest of the KDE programs are ported to this", and went back to KDE 1.2. But the point is that, by not requiring me to jump through hoops, this was one more eye that looked at the program. Not a seriously deep look, mind you -- I did not (and do not) have time to be a serious beta tester -- but still, eyes are eyes.
I understand the problems that the XFree86 team faces insofar as NDA's are concerned. After all, the whole reason for forming XFree86 Inc. was to have a corporate entity that could sign NDA's with video card manufacturers. But I am telling you that this IS a reason why the XFree86 project has trouble attracting developers -- the situation adds a hoop to jump through for someone like me, who doesn't have time to be a "serious" developer. Not a seriously high hoop, but hey, I'm not being paid to develop XFree86, y'know, and any barrier at all to participation is too high a barrier for someone who wants to make an occasional casual contribution. I don't have any facile solution to the problem, certainly nothing as simplistic and moronic as "fork the project!" or "boycott NDA-requiring video card makers!". But to deny that it is a problem is to deny reality.
-E
-E
I suspect that, as the century progresses, we will see whacked-out stuff like "Windows 2000" replaced by "Windows NT version 6.0" (or what have you) when the time comes to replace them. Sort of like how "BRU 2000" became "BRU 15.1" when it was upgraded (grin).
-E
Sheesh, you Russians don't know ANYTHING!
(Note: Since English is not your native language -- there is a concept called "humor" which comes into play here).
-E
For what it's worth, finding a Russian who's NOT alcoholic is about as easy as Diogenes finding his man (grin).
-E
"You shall not rent or sell this property to anybody of Spanish origin, or to Negros, or to Irishmen."
You are stating that this contract is legal and valid?
I don't think so! There is a law which prohibits such clauses in housing contracts, and thus any such clauses in housing contracts are null and void.
The Constitution generally protects us against government, BTW, not against private parties. The rule of law is supposed to protect us from private parties (e.g., someone who mugs us is NOT violating our Constitutional rights, rather, he is violating rights guaranteed by rule of law, specifically, the right to be free of assault).
-E
Daemon Knight really cannot be faulted for overlooking the impact of computers and the possibility of patenting intellectual property back in the '50's when he wrote that book. But it does make the book, when read in today's nascent information economy, a rather laughable read. It, alas, like so much of 50's science fiction, fails the test of time.
-E
This is not unusual. Corporations regularly infringe upon our rights either by buying legislation that grants them rights at our expense (usually under the guise of "tort reform", insurance companies love this, they want us to have no legal recourse if an incompetent doctor kills a loved one, for example), or directly, by refusing to give people jobs unless these people agree to give up all rights to their thoughts and speech (by which I mean those employment contracts that give your employer the rights to all ideas and software that you come up with during your term of employment -- even those ideas thought at home, and software written at home).
Unfortunately, it appears that business interests have managed to brainwash the majority of Americans into believing that giving up their rights is in the best interests of the country. This reasoning reminds me of the reasoning of Southern politicians during the 1950's, when they raved and ranted that the rights of states were more important than the rights of the people who lived in those states. Except today, it's the rights of corporations that are held as being more important than the rights of the people who work for those corporations and the rights of the consumers who buy products from those corporations.
-E
The words that follow that statement are not law. They are not legally binding. But I still believe that this is truth: that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights".
In general, legally-guaranteed rights are not subject to contracts. Many neighborhoods here in Phoenix, Arizona, are deed-restricted with wording along the lines of "you may not sell this property to those of Spanish blood, or to Negros, or Irishmen." This is a contract that is agreed to when you buy the property, and that before the passing of various civil rights laws was enforced regularly. But a contract cannot be enforced if it violates the Constitution or the laws of the United States of America, such as the 1st Amendment right to freedom of the press as was exercised by Slashdot's editorial staff when they posted links to the DeCSS program.
We once had an institution in this country called slavery. It was legal. Most slaves had been legally sold to slavers under the laws of their home country, and the slavers then legally re-sold those slaves to landowners in the Americas. I mention this fact to go one step further than the legalistic argument, which is to say that there ARE rights granted to us by our Creator, and among those are freedom of speech and of thought, freedoms which are being violated every day via "contracts" in which we voluntarily enter servitude in exchange for a livelihood. I could be working for twice the money today if I were willing to sign contracts granting my employer ownership of all ideas and software written while I am in their employ (even ideas thought at home, and software written at home, on my personal time). I will not do that, thus I work for small businesses that are grateful for quality people (grateful enough to overlook my refusal to sign such contracts) but which cannot afford to pay real money.
Enough meandering. But the point is this: That laws and contracts which violate the rights and freedoms granted to us by our Creator exist, and that we are right and just when we protest and try to overturn these laws and contracts, whether they be deed restrictions which prevent Hispanics from buying houses in choice neighborhoods, or a frivolous lawsuit intended to impede free speech on the Internet.
-E
So please, do not confused capitalism and corporatism. Capitalism existed before corporatism, and the only "plus" of corporatism is the same "plus" as fascism (which is a version of corporatism with the state more directly tied to the corporations) -- it's a great way for increasing the wealth of the individuals in power. Which also has some trickle-down effect (though not as much as Reagan hoped for), but at what cost?
-E
Yes, it was originally elitist in nature (sort of like the "fans are Slans" statement back in the 50's -- go look up the Slan books, which are ridiculous Nietsche style hero race books), but the original meaning is long gone today. Much as the original meaning of the word "gay" (to be happy) is long gone today, replaced with today's meaning of the word "gay" (to be homosexual).
-E
Yes, I took a day to specify the requirements for one program that I'm working on. So what. That saves weeks in overall development time, since I won't need to throw away that work in the future due to an implementation that doesn't meet future requirements.
-E
Your idea about an unmarked building on the outskirts of some town in Arizona won't fly because you could not get developers to go there. I say that as an Arizona resident -- outside of Phoenix, Tucson, and (to a limited extent) Flagstaff, there's no "there" there. You can't even get high speed Internet outside of these three areas -- US Worst's wiring dates back to the 1920's in most rural areas, and they have proven incapable of keeping a T1 up and going anywhere outside of metropolitan areas (don't even talk about ISDN or DSL -- they'd have to upgrade their 60's-era electronic switches out there, and they aren't about to do that).
-E
I had numbness, tingling, and pain on the outside half of my left hand. It turns out that I'd bumped my elbow against something while moving furniture and injured the nerve that runs from the neck down to the outside part of the hand. Ibuprofen and avoiding leaning on my elbows or etc., and lots of time (six weeks before the tingling started going down) solved the problem, thank god (my doctor had said if it didn't, probably the nerve had been jolted out of its channel and I'd probably need surgery), but the point is that pain isn't ALWAYS caused where it occurs. -E
Not to mention that I've DEFINITELY heard "bad" mixes off of studio labels -- mixes that in no way properly represent the band and its sound. Unless you're Garth Brooks or some other big name, you'll probably get the bottom of the barrel at any major label to mix your album.
-E
What going to a studio and recording gets you is a) your landlord doesn't get complaints about you playing too loud (grin), b) better acoustics than the typical garage (but you can alter the acoustics of the typical garage to be suitable by, e.g., hanging drapes over all the walls and draped across the ceiling to muffle the echos), and c) the expertise of the recording engineer. Having attempted to do some recording myself, I can attest that it takes a LOT of work to make it come out right... e.g., a typical problem is "too hot" miking (clips your input) or, more insidious, "too cold" miking (ends up sounding muffled because you lose some of the dynamic range). The problem is that the "heat" varies depending upon your playing style, placement of microphone, mixer settings, and sound card input settings, and getting all of that right is a pain in the @%@!. Then getting a good mix at the end is important. You want the sound to be similar to what they'd hear live, for most music. The worst mix I ever heard was for a South Louisiana band called "The Bluerunners", which played "accordian grunge" (my best estimation of what they played). I'd heard them live at the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival and loved their sound, which was hard-driving, distorted, and mixed to perfection -- think grunge before grunge was cool. Then I bought their CD. *BIG* mistake -- the mix was clear, put the vocalist up front instead of as a background to the driving guitar and accordian (he was NOT a good enough vocalist to be up front!), and it would have been a great mix for Simon and Garfunkel but *NOT* for the BlueRunners, who needed a grittier, grungier mix to duplicate their live sound.
Anyhow, the expertise of a good recording engineer, as noted above, is probably the only thing you can get by going to a studio that you can't cheaply do at home with your PC, but as the BlueRunners example shows, it doesn't always result in a good mix (grin).
-E
The difference between Chicago '68 and Seattle '99 is that in Chicago, the national media was still independent and thus covered the "riots" in loving detail, including details that were unflattering to Mayor Dailey and the Chicago police department. Now they are corporate owned and report what their corporate owners want them to report. The corporate overlords support the goals of the WTO, so they report that anybody who opposes the WTO is a rioter. Ask Jon Katz why he resigned from his high-paying job with a network news department, why don't you?
Personally, I support the goals of the WTO, but that does not change the fact that Gestapo-like tactics are being used against peaceful protesters and that the corporate media is blithely going along with the "party line" that these are rioters, not peaceful protesters.
-E
- The police deliberately allowed a small group of perhaps 40 black-clad punks into the area and allowed them to smash windows and burn dumpsters in order to get an excuse to brand all protesters as "rioters".
- Once they had their excuse, rioting was deliberately provoked by the police using tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray in an effort to get an excuse to invoke martial law.
- Once the corporate media had compliantly reported that all of the protesters were "rioters" (rather than the 40 or so black-clad punks who were the only rioters in the area), the mayor and governor declared martial law (or, rather, "a state of emergency"), and dispatched the National Guard to clear the streets. Possession of a gas mask was also declared criminal intent, and you were immediately arrested if you had one. National Guardsmen and police officers blocked all entrances and exits from the area and stopped all who wanted to get in to ask them for identification and about their business in the area (shades of USSR!).
It was not reported on the national media, but one of the so-called "riots" was actually residents of the Capitol Hill neighborhood protesting the police presence in their neighborhood. Nothing to do with the WTO at all, but that didn't matter, the cops were in full-bore panic mode and coming down with jack boots on anything that looked like it might be public expression.To get leads on the "real scoop", follow Salon's links to various independent news sources from the OTHER (non-corporate press) side.
All in all, I think this may be the sort of turning point for labor activism in America that Mayor Dailey's violent breakup of the '68 protests in Chicago were for anti-war protests. The big difference is the way these were covered. In Chicago, the pre-corporate-media national news covered jack-booted thugs whacking peaceful protestors over the head with jacksticks. In Seatle, the corporate-owned national news media did not show those events, and instead showed the rare events where the forty or fifty black-clad thugs that the police had allowed into the area looted and vandalised things.
-E
I'm sure the government actually likes us posting to SlashDot, because if we're posting here, we're not actually DOING anything.
Oh: to see what's really happening in Seattle (jack-booted Gestapo thugs tear-gassing and rubber-bulleting peaceful protestors while allowing anarchists to do whatever they want in order to get an excuse to invoke martial law, which they did in a 40 block area of central Seattle), see the links on Salon's "Anti-WTO Activist Web Pages" page. Now THAT is subversive. Slashdot? Get real!
-E
I was lucky enough to attend a Catholic high school for a couple of years, back when they were run by actual priests and brothers (nowdays they're run by "lay" people and are even more preppy than the public schools). As non-conformists themselves (even then it was getting hard to recruit priests here in the U.S., due to the view that wanting to be a priest was "weird"), they took a benevolent and, might I say, CHRISTIAN attitude towards the "different" amongst their charges. And they would NOT tolerate bullying or harassment, perhaps because they'd recieved their own share when they were kids. But, alas, the "professional educators" have now taken over the Catholic schools, and most of that atmosphere of toleration of the geeky is gone :-(.
_E
The problem is that we, as a nation, do not want to pay teachers a competitive wage, and thus potential teachers such as myself look at the pay and go elsewhere. (Actually I put in two years in the teaching profession, but I view those two years as donated labor -- I currently make triple the salary as a software engineer than what I made as a teacher!). Teaching is an enormously stressful job, and finding people who will put up with the stress for the pay is difficult. You end up with the bottom of the barrel, unqualified people dragged in off the streets because they're unfit for any other employment.
As for teachers unions and guidance counsellors: teachers unions generally are in favor of mandatory certification because of the problem of low standards in the "off the street" hires, many of whom aren't qualified to pump gas at a gas station and who are little more than glorified babysitters. I have no idea why they would be concerned about counsellor certification, except to say that counsellors should be certified in some way or manner (as vs. hiring Principal Bob's dumb nephew Arnie to be the school counsellor).
I suspect that if anybody in power were really willing, they could reach a deal on certification of counsellors who have "non-traditional" backgrounds (like social work), something that would maybe require six hours of college coursework over the next twelve months regarding the various federal mandates and programs that counsellors must be expert in (groan). But the problem is that most of the people in power don't want such a compromise. Currently the counsellor position is used as a reward by principals for their cronies who back-stab teachers who want to teach rather than babysit, and allowing "real" counsellors into the profession would mean that they could no longer reward their cronies with counsellor jobs.
-E
Disclaimer: I was a member of the AFT in 1993, and of the NEA in 1995. Guess that makes me brainwashed, eh? (Not quite!).
It's sort of like simulating nuclear explosions on supercomputers. Sure, today you can do it with reasonable accuracy -- but before all that nuclear testing was done, how could you have known that it was accurate?
-E