I have Visicalc for my spreadsheet needs and the CPM card allows me to use the wonderful WordStar, the king of the word processors.
What is sad is that I'm only 30 and I can tell you that Ctrl-B reformated a paragraph in WordStar. I usually used wsn, however, to edit my C programs, which I then compiled with my lattice C compiler. Those were the days when men were real men and clocks ran at 4.7MHz.
As a user of open source, I think this shouldn't really be a problem at all, should it? I mean, once gcc can compile 64-bit code, than we should simply be able to recompile all of our current apps for these new processors, shouldn't we? I'd be happy if someone out there could point me out as not being in the know...
The Linux-on-Alpha project already did all the heavy lifting needed to run 64 bit almost ten years ago. Linux and *BSD is already running 64 bit on PowerPC. Virtually any package you can download that has an active support community is already 64 bit ready.
I'm not in a hurry to ditch any of my 32-bit machines, so long as I get them replaced by 2038
True, but it is not reasonable to think that two years from now someone would choose to buy a new desktop machine that is reasonably powerful without it being 64 bit. By that time the price points for 64 bit will be down substantially.
I do believe that 32bit will have a somewhat longer life in the laptop market, as well as the low power/small footprint niche of the Mini-ITX form factor.
Legal basis of non-compete
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
"When (The Santa Cruz Operation) sold us the property, included in the property was a non-compete," McBride told IDG News Service. "Last time I checked, Linux was intended to compete with our core products."
I think Darl is going to have to prove that if he wants to enforce that no-compete clause in the contract.
We don't know enough facts about the non-compete agreement to make a real judgement about the validity of this claim. Here are some factors that we need to consider.
First, Novell continued to sell its NetWare product, so we know right off the bat that the non-compete did not apply to any OS on x86.
Second, control of the definition of UNIX was transferred to the Open Group at around the same time. We do need to take into account that Linux is not UNIX. It is a system based on extremely similar principles and conventions, but does not conform to the UNIX standard.
Third, Linux was just starting to make an impact beyond the dorm room in 1995. BSD was already established. It was probably forseeable that BSD and/or Linux would impact the market for SysV on x86.
Lacking further information, we are left with impression that the agreement was likely ambiguous. Typically, when an ambiguity is discovered in a contract, that ambiguity is interpretted against the side that drafted the ambiguous clause. I would guess that SCO drafted that clause. Novell has no interest in it being there, so that would mean the clause would be interpretted as narrowly as possible.
There are a lot of leaps here. We'll see how this actually works out.
Maybe slashdot could implement this. Instead of submitting a comment, we could just submit a small picture. Of course, the lameness filter would have to exclude the goatse.cx images that would occupy most of the discussions.
Except that the US can't own open source and thus can't leverage it. The only thing that the success of open source can do is kill proprietary software companies that put alot of money into the economy and pay lots of taxes.
That is a "straw man" argument. For every less dollar spent by business on the products of a proprietary software company, a dollar will be saved by that business. That business will pay taxes on that additional dollar of profit.
Meanwhile, as the portion of the IT budget spent for "commodities" like OSes and Office Suites drops, companies will take that savings and reinvest it in custom software that promises real productivity gains for that business. developers will find fewer jobs at software companies, but more jobs at companies that use software.
Over the long run, the economy and the standard of living overall rise as the economy becomes more efficient. What is more efficient than free software?
The world is changing. IBM has their boat all ready. Sun is just starting to build theirs. Microsoft is still standing on the shore cursing the rising tide.
And don't try to pretend that Neo used an upatched hole to root the system. He rooted the system after being resurrected from the dead by True Love. The Machines were pretty impressive, but I seriously doubt there's a way to patch "supernatural powers derived from traveling beyond Death's gate and then returning to the world of the living on the wings of True Love".
True Love is also what saved the man in black from dying in the pit of despair. It enabled him to hold out until Miracle Max could make a pill to restore his life, so that he could storm the castle and stop Princess Buttercup's marriage to Prince Ruperdink.
Sure, violence may not solve anything, but at least you're not the only one with a bloody nose after all is said and done.
If nothing else, defending yourself against a bully at least teaches the bully that their are consequences for his actions. He may not learn that violence is bad, but at least he learns that he can be on the receiving end of it if he provokes a fight.
If you are a pacisivist, I can understand and respect your belifs. I can not share them, because history has shown me time and time again what happens to people who will not defend themselves.
So, you've never heard of Ghandi?
The prinicples of non-violent resistance only work if your opponent is unwilling to face the results of violence against non-violence. The British government and people were unable to stomach the idea of machine-gunning peaceful protesters. At other times in history, others have shown that they are not adverse to killing the defenseless. Had the Nazi or Imperial Japanese regimes controlled India at that time, they would have put Ghandi and his followers up against a wall and shot them. Neither of those regimes showed any reluctance to use brutal force in the Holocaust or the Rape of Nanking.
Anyone, be they a single bully or a government, who has no fundamental respect for human rights cannot be changed by non-violence. Pacifists are nothing but easy targets. Non-violence is best used to expose hypocracy. People who believe themselves to be good and decent can't stomach violent response to non-violence.
I only had to do it once... as when the coach was pulling me off him I wispered in his hear that they won't find his body next time...
I only had to do it once too. Another kid was harassing me, figuring me to be an easy mark. I was in the high school library and he walked up next ot my chair and started threatening me. Still sitting down, I reached up and got the pressure points on each side of his neck with my thumb and middle finger. I squeezed and pulled him down to the ground. As he was writhing in pain I said to him "That is two fingers. I have eight more." Then I let him go.
It was the coolest moment in my life, especially for a somewhat geeky guy. I'm glad their were witnesses, because that kind of thing is too cool to go unverified.
In general I didn't have too many bully problems. I was friendly with a whole bunch of big guys. I have a very high pain threshold, so I would wrestle and horse around with these guys, even though I was no match physically. When others in the school see you going toe-to-toe with a guy a foot taller and 75 pounds of muscle bigger, just for fun, they tend to give you some slack - you must be a crazy mofo and your bigger friends might come around.
It is frankly none of the schools buisness what kids do when they are not there. I've heard too many cases where schools have attempted to play god and punnish students for activities that too[k] place on weekends etc. If a kid does something bad off school hours, this would qualify, then the parents are responisble. A School is there to teach and keep order/disipline while the kid are there.
I tend to agree with you but I think it is worth playing devil's advocate...
You state "School is there to teach". One might argue that if a kid does something outside of school that substantially disrupts the school's ability to fulfill its mission of teaching, then the school does have a legitimiate interest. As an example, if two kids get into a fist fight in the neighborhood, that in itself shouldn't get the school involved. However, if two kids get into a fight in the neighborhood and the friends of the loser come to school seeking retribution, then the school is disrupted.
And at least the *real* performance of Opteron is a refreshing change from the old Sun habit of relying on myth and illusion to sell their hardware. Now they reserve that role to the OS alone, we'll see how long that will last;-).
SPARC is not a speed demon. For a long time now, lots of "commodity" CPUs have been more impressive performers, especially when one considers price/performance ratios. The benefit of Sun hardware for many years now has been in the IO subsystems. Fiber based drive arrays and the like are far more valuable for many purposes than fast chips. Database hosting, for example, relies far more on large memory for caching and fast disk subsystems than on fast processors.
Hopefully, for Sun's sake, they'll abandon their losing CPU business and concentrate on making making hardware that supports parallelism and high speed disk arrays. It would be nice to be able to buy a box with 106 2GHz Opterons, a hundred GB of Ram, and a few TB of lightning fast disk.
My only problem is that it should be under federal control, and not any local government. The federal government is bound by the constitution and most importantly the first amendment, they would have a much harder time legally filtering content.
The rights in the constitution apply to all levels of government, starting with the Federal Government and reaching all the way down to the trustees of your local public library. Lesser authorities - states, counties, municipalities - can choose to extend further rights but they can not recind your rights granted under the constitution.
Note that the constitution (as amended) is different than statute law. Federal statutes have much more limited effect over state and local authorities. These are the things that congress can do by federal statutes:
Tax, impose duties, excise fees, etc.
Borrow money
Regulate interstate and international commerce
Establish uniform naturalization law
Establish uniform bankruptcy law
Coin money and establish standard weights and measures
Establish a post office
Establish copyrights and patents
Establish courts below the supreme court
Define and punish piracy and violations of international law
Declare war
Operate a military
Raise a militia
Operate the capitol district
Make laws that apply on federal property
Make laws that implement other powers vested by the constitution
Note that this is a small subset of the types of powers that a government needs to operate. For instance, congress can make it a crime to commit murder while on Federal property (power 15) or while at sea (power 10), or make it a crime to kill a federal officer (via power 16), but they can't make a generic prohibition against murder. That is why many federal laws are written "In order to be eligible for some aid or grant from the Federal Government, the local government must pass a law stating that..." This is how the federal government legislated a 55 MPH speed limit, for instance. They made a 55 MPH speed limit a requirement for the states to recieve highway funding. State can choose not to listen, but most would prefer to recieve the federal money.
They don't explicitly talk about upstream bandwidth so I'll play the cynic and assume the worst.
They do talk about hooking up businesses, so it is safe to assume that - at least in some of the product offerings - upstream bandwidth will be substantial. It is a fiber system, so there is no "natural assymetry" like in a cable modem system. It should be more of a DSL style product, where the bandwidth can be tailored in both directions.
I assume you'll be able to get a symmetric connection, but expect to pay for it.
As I see it, the project is more like building an 8 lane bridge when a 4 lane will do just fine.
That analogy is not a good one to use because roads and bandwidth don't compare well. Network bandwidth can be used for more than one purpose while the roads are pretty much pigeon-holed.
There are lots of applications that "could be" if only the bandwidth was there to support them.
Actually, I think it is a pretty good analogy. A larger road has more bandwidth, and so can support more uses than a smaller road. For instance, if you had a factory, and your margin was very small, a four lane road might mean that your trucks need to sit in traffic for a substantial part of the day. That lost productivity could erase your margin. A larger road might mean that can deliver twice as much product in the same time, which enables you to stay in business.
Saying that roads are "pigeon-holed" because they can only move vehicles from point A to point B is the equiv. of saying that fiber lines are "pigeon-holed" because they only move data packets form point A to point B. It is the payload that matters.
Also, when was the gov't supposed to compete with private businesses? How would you like it if the government set up a business to compete against you?
Government does it all the time. The US Gov't built the interstate highway system, which all but destroyed the railroad business. The Gov't provides tax breaks and financing for Ford to build a new factory in some town. Doesn't GM get peeved that Ford is getting some deal that they arten't getting? Gov't takes these actions for two reasons:
Can you explain what this means? I know 911 is your emergency telephone number for the police etc., but what do you mean by "transfer our 911 protection"?
In most areas of the US, dialing 911 will connect you to a local police/fire/ambulance dispatcher. The 911 system reports your incoming phone number to the dispatch computer system, and it automatically brings up your address at the dispatcher's computer screen.
If you were to call 911, and could not stay on the line to speak to the dispatcher (perhaps you dialed while having a dizzy spell then passed out, or perhaps a criminal took the phone from you and hung up) the police will be dispatched to your home. Most every parent of a toddler has had the experience of the police coming to their door after the child has been playing with the phone.
When you are using a mobile technology, your protection is reduced. If you call 911 from a cell phone and don't stay on the line, the police have no way of determining your exact location. The probably know that you are within a few square mile area around the base station that received the call, but that is all.
Likewise, some of the VoIP carriers such as vonage can't determine your location either. You can take your vonage unit and plug it into any broadband internet connection anywhere in the world and call jsut as if you were in your house. Vonage offers a rudimentary 911 service that requires you to update your location, so that vonage can route a 911 call to the correct dispatcher.
In game two, Kasparov played the Berlin defence, which is a more closed game than the traditionally sharp Sicilian that Kasparov usually employs.
Inconceivable. After all, one should never enter a battle of wits with a Sicilian, especially when death is on the line. It is the second greatest strategic blunder, the first being "Never get into a land war in Asia."
IANAL, so I'm wondering how this statement is inapplicable to ink cartridges. It seems to me that a judge sitting on another bench would be unable to make a distinction between this precedent as it applies to one product over another.
Just to take the federal court system as an example: There are district courts that actually hold trials. A group of district courts are supervised by a circuit court, which hears any appeals for cases in those district courts. The supreme court supervises all the circuit courts and hears appeals of circuit court decisions. It is a tree structure, with the supreme court as the root.
When a district court judge sets a precedent, either an interpretation of a statute or by invoking the court's equitable powers, that precedent is binding only on that district. Another district is free to reach a different conclusion.
These conflicts are resolved when a decision is appealed to the circuit court. When the circuit court renders a decision, it is binding on all the districts within the circuit. Still, other circuits and ditrict courts within other circuits are free to reach a different conclusion.
When there is a conflict between the decisions of two circuits, a case will eventually reach the supreme court. Once the supreme court reaches a judgement, it is binding on every court. It can take many years before a case reaches the supreme court and resolves the conflict.
Honestly, isn't this desk worth more than quite a large percentage of US houses? (I live in the UK where the house prices are higher so correct me if I'm wrong...).
I doubt that $40,000 is more than "quite a large percentage" of US houses. But real estate values vary very widely.
I live in the NYC Metropolitan area, which has one of the higher housing costs in the US. A small house (1,500 square feet, 1 bathroom, on less than a quarter acre plot) in a decent neighborhood (good local school system) approximately 1 hours commute from Manhattan is roughly $300,000 dollars. As you move closer to the city, the price rises very quickly. Once in Queens (part of NYC, but not Manhattan) in a neighborhood like Middle Village or Kew Gardens, you are now a half hour commute to Manhattan, and a similar home will cost $500,000. Own an apartment in Manhattan itself, and the price can easily excede $1,000,000.
The other "older" major metro areas have similar price characteristics. Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, for instance, are going to run in the same ballpark. Cities that recently started to grow, such as Charlotte, North Carolina and Austin, Texas still have inexpensive land. A similar house can be had for about $100,000 there.
I don't think there is anyplace where you can have a "nice" house for $40,000 and have a job. Those houses are either in very high crime neighborhoods or in extremely economically depressed areas.
If it were in the states, you're fucked. Completely. And runaway and hide or something. Reason is, the law can't use the information because it was collected without due process (warrants and stuff).
You should have redeemed those cereal box tops for something other than a law degree. The police in the US can most certainly use the information. The restrictions on unlawful search apply only to the government. The police can't perform an illegal search, and they can't encourage a private citizen to perform a search that they could not perform. But if the private citizen made a search on his own initiative, the evidence is most certainly admissable.
The citizen in question here may have commited crimes himself in the course of his investigation, however, so he should probably contact an attorney who can contact the authorities and work out an immunity deal.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe AMD is dropping the lower bit processors, but Intel sure won't as long as there is a demand for them.
More than likely they'll leave them to the niche market. Via, for instance, concentrates on the lower power-small footprint-minimal cooling market.I have Visicalc for my spreadsheet needs and the CPM card allows me to use the wonderful WordStar, the king of the word processors.
What is sad is that I'm only 30 and I can tell you that Ctrl-B reformated a paragraph in WordStar. I usually used wsn, however, to edit my C programs, which I then compiled with my lattice C compiler. Those were the days when men were real men and clocks ran at 4.7MHz.
64 bit PCs will be here long before IPv6 makes significant inroads in replacing IPv4. (Ducks out of way of ensuing flame war)
The Linux-on-Alpha project already did all the heavy lifting needed to run 64 bit almost ten years ago. Linux and *BSD is already running 64 bit on PowerPC. Virtually any package you can download that has an active support community is already 64 bit ready.
I'm not in a hurry to ditch any of my 32-bit machines, so long as I get them replaced by 2038
True, but it is not reasonable to think that two years from now someone would choose to buy a new desktop machine that is reasonably powerful without it being 64 bit. By that time the price points for 64 bit will be down substantially.
I do believe that 32bit will have a somewhat longer life in the laptop market, as well as the low power/small footprint niche of the Mini-ITX form factor.
We don't know enough facts about the non-compete agreement to make a real judgement about the validity of this claim. Here are some factors that we need to consider.
First, Novell continued to sell its NetWare product, so we know right off the bat that the non-compete did not apply to any OS on x86.
Second, control of the definition of UNIX was transferred to the Open Group at around the same time. We do need to take into account that Linux is not UNIX. It is a system based on extremely similar principles and conventions, but does not conform to the UNIX standard.
Third, Linux was just starting to make an impact beyond the dorm room in 1995. BSD was already established. It was probably forseeable that BSD and/or Linux would impact the market for SysV on x86.
Lacking further information, we are left with impression that the agreement was likely ambiguous. Typically, when an ambiguity is discovered in a contract, that ambiguity is interpretted against the side that drafted the ambiguous clause. I would guess that SCO drafted that clause. Novell has no interest in it being there, so that would mean the clause would be interpretted as narrowly as possible.
There are a lot of leaps here. We'll see how this actually works out.
All models are incorrect. Some are useful.
Second only to the Newtonian model, the standard model has been just about the most successful model ever created.
Maybe slashdot could implement this. Instead of submitting a comment, we could just submit a small picture. Of course, the lameness filter would have to exclude the goatse.cx images that would occupy most of the discussions.
That is a "straw man" argument. For every less dollar spent by business on the products of a proprietary software company, a dollar will be saved by that business. That business will pay taxes on that additional dollar of profit.
Meanwhile, as the portion of the IT budget spent for "commodities" like OSes and Office Suites drops, companies will take that savings and reinvest it in custom software that promises real productivity gains for that business. developers will find fewer jobs at software companies, but more jobs at companies that use software.
Over the long run, the economy and the standard of living overall rise as the economy becomes more efficient. What is more efficient than free software?
The world is changing. IBM has their boat all ready. Sun is just starting to build theirs. Microsoft is still standing on the shore cursing the rising tide.
True Love is also what saved the man in black from dying in the pit of despair. It enabled him to hold out until Miracle Max could make a pill to restore his life, so that he could storm the castle and stop Princess Buttercup's marriage to Prince Ruperdink.
Sure, violence may not solve anything, but at least you're not the only one with a bloody nose after all is said and done.
If nothing else, defending yourself against a bully at least teaches the bully that their are consequences for his actions. He may not learn that violence is bad, but at least he learns that he can be on the receiving end of it if he provokes a fight.
The prinicples of non-violent resistance only work if your opponent is unwilling to face the results of violence against non-violence. The British government and people were unable to stomach the idea of machine-gunning peaceful protesters. At other times in history, others have shown that they are not adverse to killing the defenseless. Had the Nazi or Imperial Japanese regimes controlled India at that time, they would have put Ghandi and his followers up against a wall and shot them. Neither of those regimes showed any reluctance to use brutal force in the Holocaust or the Rape of Nanking.
Anyone, be they a single bully or a government, who has no fundamental respect for human rights cannot be changed by non-violence. Pacifists are nothing but easy targets. Non-violence is best used to expose hypocracy. People who believe themselves to be good and decent can't stomach violent response to non-violence.
I only had to do it once... as when the coach was pulling me off him I wispered in his hear that they won't find his body next time...
I only had to do it once too. Another kid was harassing me, figuring me to be an easy mark. I was in the high school library and he walked up next ot my chair and started threatening me. Still sitting down, I reached up and got the pressure points on each side of his neck with my thumb and middle finger. I squeezed and pulled him down to the ground. As he was writhing in pain I said to him "That is two fingers. I have eight more." Then I let him go.
It was the coolest moment in my life, especially for a somewhat geeky guy. I'm glad their were witnesses, because that kind of thing is too cool to go unverified.
In general I didn't have too many bully problems. I was friendly with a whole bunch of big guys. I have a very high pain threshold, so I would wrestle and horse around with these guys, even though I was no match physically. When others in the school see you going toe-to-toe with a guy a foot taller and 75 pounds of muscle bigger, just for fun, they tend to give you some slack - you must be a crazy mofo and your bigger friends might come around .
I tend to agree with you but I think it is worth playing devil's advocate...
You state "School is there to teach". One might argue that if a kid does something outside of school that substantially disrupts the school's ability to fulfill its mission of teaching, then the school does have a legitimiate interest. As an example, if two kids get into a fist fight in the neighborhood, that in itself shouldn't get the school involved. However, if two kids get into a fight in the neighborhood and the friends of the loser come to school seeking retribution, then the school is disrupted.
SPARC is not a speed demon. For a long time now, lots of "commodity" CPUs have been more impressive performers, especially when one considers price/performance ratios. The benefit of Sun hardware for many years now has been in the IO subsystems. Fiber based drive arrays and the like are far more valuable for many purposes than fast chips. Database hosting, for example, relies far more on large memory for caching and fast disk subsystems than on fast processors.
Hopefully, for Sun's sake, they'll abandon their losing CPU business and concentrate on making making hardware that supports parallelism and high speed disk arrays. It would be nice to be able to buy a box with 106 2GHz Opterons, a hundred GB of Ram, and a few TB of lightning fast disk.
The rights in the constitution apply to all levels of government, starting with the Federal Government and reaching all the way down to the trustees of your local public library. Lesser authorities - states, counties, municipalities - can choose to extend further rights but they can not recind your rights granted under the constitution.
Note that the constitution (as amended) is different than statute law. Federal statutes have much more limited effect over state and local authorities. These are the things that congress can do by federal statutes:
Note that this is a small subset of the types of powers that a government needs to operate. For instance, congress can make it a crime to commit murder while on Federal property (power 15) or while at sea (power 10), or make it a crime to kill a federal officer (via power 16), but they can't make a generic prohibition against murder. That is why many federal laws are written "In order to be eligible for some aid or grant from the Federal Government, the local government must pass a law stating that..." This is how the federal government legislated a 55 MPH speed limit, for instance. They made a 55 MPH speed limit a requirement for the states to recieve highway funding. State can choose not to listen, but most would prefer to recieve the federal money.
They don't explicitly talk about upstream bandwidth so I'll play the cynic and assume the worst.
They do talk about hooking up businesses, so it is safe to assume that - at least in some of the product offerings - upstream bandwidth will be substantial. It is a fiber system, so there is no "natural assymetry" like in a cable modem system. It should be more of a DSL style product, where the bandwidth can be tailored in both directions.
I assume you'll be able to get a symmetric connection, but expect to pay for it.
Actually, I think it is a pretty good analogy. A larger road has more bandwidth, and so can support more uses than a smaller road. For instance, if you had a factory, and your margin was very small, a four lane road might mean that your trucks need to sit in traffic for a substantial part of the day. That lost productivity could erase your margin. A larger road might mean that can deliver twice as much product in the same time, which enables you to stay in business.
Saying that roads are "pigeon-holed" because they can only move vehicles from point A to point B is the equiv. of saying that fiber lines are "pigeon-holed" because they only move data packets form point A to point B. It is the payload that matters.
Government does it all the time. The US Gov't built the interstate highway system, which all but destroyed the railroad business. The Gov't provides tax breaks and financing for Ford to build a new factory in some town. Doesn't GM get peeved that Ford is getting some deal that they arten't getting? Gov't takes these actions for two reasons:
In most areas of the US, dialing 911 will connect you to a local police/fire/ambulance dispatcher. The 911 system reports your incoming phone number to the dispatch computer system, and it automatically brings up your address at the dispatcher's computer screen.
If you were to call 911, and could not stay on the line to speak to the dispatcher (perhaps you dialed while having a dizzy spell then passed out, or perhaps a criminal took the phone from you and hung up) the police will be dispatched to your home. Most every parent of a toddler has had the experience of the police coming to their door after the child has been playing with the phone.
When you are using a mobile technology, your protection is reduced. If you call 911 from a cell phone and don't stay on the line, the police have no way of determining your exact location. The probably know that you are within a few square mile area around the base station that received the call, but that is all.
Likewise, some of the VoIP carriers such as vonage can't determine your location either. You can take your vonage unit and plug it into any broadband internet connection anywhere in the world and call jsut as if you were in your house. Vonage offers a rudimentary 911 service that requires you to update your location, so that vonage can route a 911 call to the correct dispatcher.
Inconceivable. After all, one should never enter a battle of wits with a Sicilian, especially when death is on the line. It is the second greatest strategic blunder, the first being "Never get into a land war in Asia."
I have a copy of Sargon 3 on 5 1/4" floppy. Can I gat this stuff backported to that?
Just to take the federal court system as an example: There are district courts that actually hold trials. A group of district courts are supervised by a circuit court, which hears any appeals for cases in those district courts. The supreme court supervises all the circuit courts and hears appeals of circuit court decisions. It is a tree structure, with the supreme court as the root.
When a district court judge sets a precedent, either an interpretation of a statute or by invoking the court's equitable powers, that precedent is binding only on that district. Another district is free to reach a different conclusion.
These conflicts are resolved when a decision is appealed to the circuit court. When the circuit court renders a decision, it is binding on all the districts within the circuit. Still, other circuits and ditrict courts within other circuits are free to reach a different conclusion.
When there is a conflict between the decisions of two circuits, a case will eventually reach the supreme court. Once the supreme court reaches a judgement, it is binding on every court. It can take many years before a case reaches the supreme court and resolves the conflict.
I doubt that $40,000 is more than "quite a large percentage" of US houses. But real estate values vary very widely.
I live in the NYC Metropolitan area, which has one of the higher housing costs in the US. A small house (1,500 square feet, 1 bathroom, on less than a quarter acre plot) in a decent neighborhood (good local school system) approximately 1 hours commute from Manhattan is roughly $300,000 dollars. As you move closer to the city, the price rises very quickly. Once in Queens (part of NYC, but not Manhattan) in a neighborhood like Middle Village or Kew Gardens, you are now a half hour commute to Manhattan, and a similar home will cost $500,000. Own an apartment in Manhattan itself, and the price can easily excede $1,000,000.
The other "older" major metro areas have similar price characteristics. Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, for instance, are going to run in the same ballpark. Cities that recently started to grow, such as Charlotte, North Carolina and Austin, Texas still have inexpensive land. A similar house can be had for about $100,000 there.
I don't think there is anyplace where you can have a "nice" house for $40,000 and have a job. Those houses are either in very high crime neighborhoods or in extremely economically depressed areas.
If it were in the states, you're fucked. Completely. And runaway and hide or something. Reason is, the law can't use the information because it was collected without due process (warrants and stuff).
You should have redeemed those cereal box tops for something other than a law degree. The police in the US can most certainly use the information. The restrictions on unlawful search apply only to the government. The police can't perform an illegal search, and they can't encourage a private citizen to perform a search that they could not perform. But if the private citizen made a search on his own initiative, the evidence is most certainly admissable.
The citizen in question here may have commited crimes himself in the course of his investigation, however, so he should probably contact an attorney who can contact the authorities and work out an immunity deal.