You are indeed correct here. The person responding to your original post is totally wrong.
There are two key issues about how this law is applied in the US.
1) Constitutionally derived freedom of association.
While not specifically mentioned in the US Constitution the freedom of association is derived from the 1st and 14th ammendments. (http://fact.trib.com/1st.association.html)
This freedom of association is essentially the right of citizens to associate (and also *not* associate) with whomever they choose.
Businesses are *not* public entities, either in the literal physical way or in the more figurative organizational way. Legally a business is simply an association of people.
2) Regulations
This is the part where specific laws constrain the behaviors of businesses. I believe these constraints to be largely unconstitutional but the Supreme Court doesn't... so what can you do. These laws include the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabillities Act and many other regulations regarding hiring, business practices, tax law and a seemly endless stream of other things.
This being said... aside from any other constraints... a business is free to provide or deny service to anyone for any reason.
There is a correlation between this behavior and socialized medicine. Especially if that medical system has "waiting lists".
Canadians have come to the US. Brits have gone to India, France, the US. I'm not saying it's a huge trend. But people with money... want healthcare *now* and they will find ways of doing it. Canada has *actually JAILED* doctors for opening a private MRI clinic. That's just plain silly.
Not to mention the story about a Canadian who's son was gravely injured... he brought is son to the hospital, but he couldn't be admitted without a paramedic or an ambulance. So they waited... while the son died... for an ambulance to come from across down so he could be admitted.
Oddly enough Americans are outraged that it's illegal for them to go north and LEECH off of Canada's heavily subsidized presription drugs.
This is a serious issue with rationing health care because now you have given people motivation to leave the country to get (possibly) substandard healthcare. (But that's better than certian death on a waiting list, no?)
Figuring out who will and who won't get healthcare is a terrible choice to make. That being said no matter how you do it it'll be unfair. I personally happen to believe that it's *least* unfair when you directly pay for a service.
So you didn't find anything wrong with my main points??
The media bias thing was just an aside. In fact I didn't state that there was media bias... I presented a statistic, which another slashdotter backed me up on... and then asked a simple question.
So your answer is that you don't see any liberal bias in the media?
I do... but I haven't done a lot of research so my opinion is largely based on anecdotal evidence and subjective personal feelings.
Humans also have the constitutional right to free association.
Therefore it follows that humans who have associated themselves have the same rights of free speech collectively that they do as individuals.
Therefore they have the right to throw their corporate weight around to promote a particular political viewpoint. Period.
The invention of the corporation as an individual entity (an idea which I am against) has little or nothing to do with free speech arguments. It does however have to do with other issues such as liability and finance.
As for the liberal media "meme" answer me this. Would it be easy or difficult for an industry to maintain objectivity if 90% of it's employees were of one political party? 90% of the media are Democrats. This alone is enough to give pause.
They are quicker, and probably smarter at this time, and almost doubtlessly more in favor of Kerry than Bush.
Older people complain about Kerry's performance as a candidate. Younger people don't want to get shot at in a war that most believe, and firmly, never should have started because it was started with a president lying.
Good grief!
For the record... I'm quick, I'm smart, I fit into the 18-25 age bracket *and* I have only a cell phone.
I just happen to be using my quickness and smarts to make money. Enough money for me to be irritated by high taxes. (Enough money for me to be conservative I guess...)
Perhaps the fact that poor people are more likely to have land lines only and are also more likely to vote Democrat pushes the polls in favor of Kerry??
I'm all for better methods of gathering statistics... web surveys... mail surveys... mind reading... but bitching about a potential bias and then revealing your own undermines your point.
Heck! Nielson is starting to use TiVo statistics as part of ratings! This might favor cool shows like Farscape and Firefly. (yay!)
I've heard several Americans say, "there's nowhere else I'd rather live", but the fact is, even though that may be true, it's meaningless if you haven't actually looked at the real alternatives.
As an American... the resons why I wouldn't live anywhere else are mainly climate.
I love the weather here, but more importantly I love the way our government is set up. Being a Libertarian (who begrudgingly votes republican) I realize that no government is perfect and that we are a ways from ideal. But currently I feel like we have the best there is to offer.
So, while I love to visit other places... my home will always be in the USA. Even if the trade situation "events out" or we cease to become the most dominant millitary/political force in the world.
A good part of the reason we are where we are today as a nation is our acceptance of new people into our country. They tend to work harder and be more patriotic than those of us who have lived here all our lives.
What could possibly lead to our ruin is that we are currently allowing people to enter our country and leech off of us... rather than what we've done in the past... allowing people to come in and *earn* what they want through hard work and determination. As a result the states of California and Arizona are now quite bankrupt. =(
Just because we love Lunux doesn't mean that clusters are HPCs.
There are real issues that differentiate mainframe/supercomputers from large, powerful, clusters.
Of course this all depends on your definition of an HPC. But I believe that it's reasonable to say that if parts of your computer are connected with low bandwidth connections (10/100,gigabit) they just can't handle the same kinds of transactions that a computer with parts that are connected by 10 gigabit or 1000 gigabit connections or whatever it is nowadays.
As far as I know if you're deploying a large database it's still advisable to have a big huge IBM mainframe or a Unisys box or a Sun 10k instead of 4,8 or 16 clustered 8 proc machines.
My point is there are valid arguments for not including clusters of commodity hardware in the HPC category.
In my mind they aren't High Performance Computers... they are High Performance Clusters of Commodity Computers.
No need to be an such an ass to your "host" country. Most problems of this nature in the US are due to having a much larger land mass. Additionally populations (on average) in the US are much less dense than their northern european counterparts making it much harder to support infrastructure of this kind.
US power companies are regulated... but they don't have the advantages of government run power companies. IE they can't just dip in to the general fund if the feel like they want to make some infrastructure improvements. They actually have to justify it.
I live in a reasonably dense area and my power goes out maybe once every two years. When I lived out in a more rural area my power went out several times a year... the further out you are the less dense the population and the more likely your power will go out.
Astoundingly Americans have learned to deal with it. Frankly it's not worth it to me to pay more to have more reliable electricity. If I want more security I'll make sure I have my own means of power production or UPSes or something.
I would be interested to know the "real" per capita expenditures for electricity in your previous country. I'd also be interested to know the "real" per kilowatt hour price. These numbers would have to include government subsidies.
I think there are some government subsidies for power companies in the US but I would assume (I'm not certian) that they are lower than your previous country of residence.
As for doing your own wiring while you can certianly hire electricians in the US and many new construction projects require inspection from an electrician before permits are approved/issued.
Frankly I'm shocked that other countries wouldn't allow citizens to do their own wiring. Not only is it a freedom issue but a phenomenal waste of money to always have to pay someone else to do work that just about anyone could do.
Additionally European electronics certifications are much more stringent than those in the US. So even if the power is more reliable the government will make darn sure the end user devices are still very robust... and therefore they should cost as much or more than their US counterparts.
I can't really speak for Japan or other Asian/African nations since I just don't know very much about their electrical systems.
While censorship can be used loosely to mean any type of chilling effect from any source... most would agree that your right to free speech applies only to censorship from the government.
Censorship from individuals or corporations is just one of the many consequences the world dishes out at you. Without these concequences society wouldn't work in the way we expect it to. No consequences usually means you will have to deal with "trolls" or "flamebait" all of the time. For (non-scientific) evidence look at the crud most anonymous cowards are willing to post.
Like I said before... "civil rights" as described in the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act are blatantly unconstitutional and in direct contradiction to your right to free association.
Most people wouldn't discriminate in ways that society as a whole believes are harmful but in America people are allowed to be assholes... their right to free speech (and other rights) are just as important as the rights of "good people".
But we can't afford to pretend that there aren't consequences for our actions. Communities will selectively alienate people. People will alienate themselves from communities or other individuals.
They always have.
They always will.
Trying to enforce laws that "prevent" these things are short circuiting our human behavioral traits that have allowed us to survive thus far.
We must live in the real world. A world where people are asses. Where people get hurt. Where people are great humanitarians. Where people are having a "good 'ol time and not botherin' nobody."
Discrimination has become such a negative term these days. I consider myself a person with discriminating tastes. I discriminate when I choose my friends, when I choose the neighborhood where I want to live... the muffin that I want to eat (I prefer poppyseed) etc...
Discrimination is part of our constitutional right to Freedom of Association. I for one am in favor of the government limiting discrimination in it's own actions. But people are promised the right to associated with anyone who would associate with them willingly and they are also free to *not* associated with anyone.
As horrible as it is to discriminate based on things such as race, color, sex, politics, religion etc.
The right to discriminate is just as much a right as the right to free speech.
Before you flame... consider this.. most people think that there is a constitutional right to seperation of church and state**. I would suggest this line of reasoning
1) There is a right to freedom of association 2) Many people want to protected minorities (etc)for moral reasons
Now ponder this... how different is this from forcing a religion on someone? Forcing morals on someone... but not only that.. forcing morals that the constitution specifically says can not be enforced via freedom of association.
**There isn't any thing saying that there is seperation of church and state in the constitution, read the fine print... the framers just didn't want something like the Church of England. The specific wording was "...shall not establish..." What do you think establishing religion entails?? The line is fuzzy... but maybe today's supreme court has taken it a little to far.
At any rate... I would probably not discriminate based on someone's politics... I get along fine with the "Psycho Seattle Liberals" that I work with everyday... we have fun poking at each other's politics. But I would support the right of someone to choose who works for them.
Goodness knows I get flamed all up and down this joint for espousing conservative views... but that's what I get for having a big mouth. =)
We need to get good Civics classes back into our schools... I feel like I have to explain the entire US Constitution in every political discussion I have ever. Even if there are dissagreements... it's good to have some sort of knowledge of history and how our government was founded.
If I was running Microsoft, I'd just pull out of Europe.
I am totally against ethically dubious practices to achieve a monopoly. But I don't consider "bundling" anti competitive behavior.
This is just another example of the EU over regulating.
It's one thing to regulate coercion, theft, bribery, blackmail or other things that are (in my opinion) actual crimes. To cross the line into listening to companies when they whine about "anti-competitive behavior" that really isn't unfair is ridiculous. Why aren't they suing BMW for including radios in their automobiles?? After all, it is a "value added" additional component. It's not a car. Why aren't aftermarket car stereo manufacturers banding together to petition the EU to sue BMW??? Why?? Because it wouldn't make sense.
I don't mean to start a flame war, but isn't this Microsoft Monopoly crap getting a little old? Slashdot tends to foam at the mouth every time we hear about something like this, but isn't it time we focus our energy into producing a better product??? There are countless examples (especially in the computer industry) of companies that seemed like monopolies (IBM for example) that were devastated overnight when a superior idea entered the market place. True innovation would render all of this legal schmegal bullshit a total waste of time.
Let's spend our energy on things that will actually make a difference.
~foooo
Your rights as I see them
on
Beyond Pay?
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· Score: 1
First off, what your "rights" are according to me and your rights according to the current government are two totally different things. If you want to know what the gov. can do for you talk to a lawer.
Second, my actual opinion on the matter: Employment is a type of contract like any other. If you don't like it find a way (under the terms of the contract) to renegotiate or get out of it.
Many states mandate at will employment meaning either side can end the aggreement at any time for any reason. This is "A Good Thing" it means that you can always make yourself available to other parties who are interested in your labor.
As to the comment above that said the employer has extra responsibilities because they are your sole employer... You might think that they do. It's up to you to negotiate the terms of your employment.
If the government stopped meddling so much in the way businesses work, the forces of capitalism would act much more directly on the way employment aggreements function. As it is there are many outside conditions that cause employers to be more cautious and more obvious in the fact that they are looking out for the company and not nessecarily you.
So to put it bluntly. Deal with it. If it violates laws (most of which I morally dissagree with) then call up the government whistleblower's line (try googling for it), call a lawyer, or get the heck outta Dodge. =)
Re:Dear Slashdot... do my work for me please...
on
Building a Render Farm?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I agree in many configurations good harddrives would be important, but this person isn't talking about a single machine rendering op. He wants some sort of render "farm" implying multiple machines. In which case my first reccomendation (to save money) is to ditch as much cluster "client" storage hardware as possible, after all the cluster clients don't exist to store, they exist to render. Rendering images to a ram drive might be a good thing, or get a small fast hard drive for the images and OS, remembering that the primary storage for any sizable render farm is usually a Fibre Channel RAID array. In best case scenarios all of the render clients have direct fibre channel to the RAID box, making local storage an extra expense.
If you're doing a home cooked solution, I would suspect that local hard drives would become more important. And on a single machine rendering setup you'd want a hella fast raid array.
And obviously the more RAM the better, but budget may constrain this. Chopping images into small pieces might make even 256MB workable even for today's high res requirements for images. Somewhat akin to dividing up large scientific calculations.
My question to you... does Maya provide tools for managing render farms? I'm pretty sure the tools I suggested all offered "render farm" capabillity. Although I admit I have no clue what "extras" are included in Maya.
Without considering budget issues one can't even begin to discuss what the best hardware solution is.
Show me any software program and give me a budget. I will probably be able to analyze the performance needs of the application and fit *something* into budget. But unless I have some money number I'm operating completely in the dark.
If the question was about hardware then budget is the number one concern. Until that question is answered any advice given is without context and therefore useless.
I'm not just an ass... I'm just looking for someone to give me enough information to provide a meaningful response. Otherwise I'm sticking to my first answer. Buy Pixar.
~foooo
Dear Slashdot... do my work for me please...
on
Building a Render Farm?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
At times like this it's hard to resist kharma whoring... so I won't.
Dear Slashdot, Please do my research for me. I can't possibly use google and look up the 309830983 gazillion studies on cluster/render farm configurations. I won't/can't give you any specific information related to budget, my personal experience with hardware, the team to be working on the project (it could be just me... or 500 people) and the importance of data integrity (if I lose a week of work it might end my life... or I might not care).
-clueless reader
Dear Clueless, Well, if your budget is a billion dollars why not just buy Pixar? They have the whole render farm thing figured out.
If your budget is any thing less than that try looking for open source, GNU, freeware, shareware, free for non-commercial use renderfarmy stuff and run it on AMD based Linux boxes.
Hard drives aren't so important on the individual machines. Get a decent raid on a server machine that will support the number of computers in the render farm. Use 100-1000 mbit ethernet (unless you want to spend a fortune). Get at least 256 mb of ram in each box rendering is memory intensive.
If noise is a concern, build a seperate room or building even.. cause the more computers you have the more it's going to start sounding like a server room and less like a place hospitible to human life.
Take a look at learning Blender instead (or in addition to) Maya. Learning to use special rendering software like BMRT would also be cool. BMRT, which is free for non-commercial use, churns out very good images but is very slow. Renderman is the most popular and the most expensive. It's fast too but there are some things it can't do such as global illumination, which BMRT can do. (I'm not sure about the new release of Renderman, though.) There's also Entropy, a fast BMRT, but not free.
All software I've mentioned works for Linux. For more resources, check out these links:
By the way it took me 5 minutes to find this on google and I know jack shit about animation... my only limited experience was fooling around with good 'ol POV-RAY.
For god sakes! If your'e going to ask a bunch of very smart people questions that demand detailed answers... provide detail on your questions.
It makes me if moderators have any standards at all for ask slashdot items. (Why do I ask when I already know the answer!!)
Common Vector is a technical term for "Common significant identifying traits."
When you determine the common vector for a system failure like this you find the "common" symptom that points to a common problem and therefore can be fixed.
Socialism is big government. Big government takes away my freedom to spend my hard earned money as I please. Big government makes regulations that involve attempting to mold society instead of serving it's citizens.
I'm against the patriot act and all that rot as well, mind you. Our government is *huge* and controlling. But face it. Canada is worse.
Just because this particular law wasn't passed by Parliament does not mean that Parliament doesn't make silly laws.
I compare facism and socialism in respect to politics in Canada as well as the Democrats in the US.
And as far as the comment about drinks with artificial caffeination... here's a link for ya... oh my bad... it's not because of the natural content of the beverage.. its the COLOR.
http://www.dumblaws.com/countries/countries.php? Co untry=Canada
check it out.
Of course the US is starting to collect a lot of dumb laws too, and I'm against them as well. But Canada embraces socialism like junkie to heroine.
The USA doesn't have an official language. I for one expect that people who want to do business with me will do it in english. But the more I think about it the more I'm glad that there isn't a law forcing companies to package products in english... cause then where would I get my japanese direct imported anime?
You can spout off all day about our nation being a disgrace to the concept of democracy... but compared to other nations I feel like we're doing alright. I'm not suggesting that we're perfect. But in general I feel that Canada and Europe are headed in the direction of socialism, which I believe to be a milder friendlier form of facism.
=)
We have our fair share of crappy and strange laws. But I'm against them. My impression of Canada is that the Parliament tends to have no restraint when it comes to regulation of things I personally deem to be silly.
Hence such downright silly laws against drinks with artificial caffeination.
Slashdot Mirror
You are indeed correct here. The person responding to your original post is totally wrong.
There are two key issues about how this law is applied in the US.
1) Constitutionally derived freedom of association.
While not specifically mentioned in the US Constitution the freedom of association is derived from the 1st and 14th ammendments. (http://fact.trib.com/1st.association.html)
This freedom of association is essentially the right of citizens to associate (and also *not* associate) with whomever they choose.
Businesses are *not* public entities, either in the literal physical way or in the more figurative organizational way. Legally a business is simply an association of people.
2) Regulations
This is the part where specific laws constrain the behaviors of businesses. I believe these constraints to be largely unconstitutional but the Supreme Court doesn't... so what can you do. These laws include the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabillities Act and many other regulations regarding hiring, business practices, tax law and a seemly endless stream of other things.
This being said... aside from any other constraints... a business is free to provide or deny service to anyone for any reason.
Parent is not a troll.
There is a correlation between this behavior and socialized medicine. Especially if that medical system has "waiting lists".
Canadians have come to the US. Brits have gone to India, France, the US. I'm not saying it's a huge trend. But people with money... want healthcare *now* and they will find ways of doing it. Canada has *actually JAILED* doctors for opening a private MRI clinic. That's just plain silly.
Not to mention the story about a Canadian who's son was gravely injured... he brought is son to the hospital, but he couldn't be admitted without a paramedic or an ambulance. So they waited... while the son died... for an ambulance to come from across down so he could be admitted.
Oddly enough Americans are outraged that it's illegal for them to go north and LEECH off of Canada's heavily subsidized presription drugs.
This is a serious issue with rationing health care because now you have given people motivation to leave the country to get (possibly) substandard healthcare. (But that's better than certian death on a waiting list, no?)
Figuring out who will and who won't get healthcare is a terrible choice to make. That being said no matter how you do it it'll be unfair. I personally happen to believe that it's *least* unfair when you directly pay for a service.
~foooo
So you didn't find anything wrong with my main points??
The media bias thing was just an aside. In fact I didn't state that there was media bias... I presented a statistic, which another slashdotter backed me up on... and then asked a simple question.
So your answer is that you don't see any liberal bias in the media?
I do... but I haven't done a lot of research so my opinion is largely based on anecdotal evidence and subjective personal feelings.
Businesses are composed of human beings.
Human beings have the right to free speech.
Humans also have the constitutional right to free association.
Therefore it follows that humans who have associated themselves have the same rights of free speech collectively that they do as individuals.
Therefore they have the right to throw their corporate weight around to promote a particular political viewpoint. Period.
The invention of the corporation as an individual entity (an idea which I am against) has little or nothing to do with free speech arguments. It does however have to do with other issues such as liability and finance.
As for the liberal media "meme" answer me this. Would it be easy or difficult for an industry to maintain objectivity if 90% of it's employees were of one political party? 90% of the media are Democrats. This alone is enough to give pause.
~foooo
Good grief!
For the record... I'm quick, I'm smart, I fit into the 18-25 age bracket *and* I have only a cell phone.
I just happen to be using my quickness and smarts to make money. Enough money for me to be irritated by high taxes. (Enough money for me to be conservative I guess...)
Perhaps the fact that poor people are more likely to have land lines only and are also more likely to vote Democrat pushes the polls in favor of Kerry??
I'm all for better methods of gathering statistics... web surveys... mail surveys... mind reading... but bitching about a potential bias and then revealing your own undermines your point.
Heck! Nielson is starting to use TiVo statistics as part of ratings! This might favor cool shows like Farscape and Firefly. (yay!)
foooo
strange != hot.
Now if the girl was hot and he let her get away... *that* is a tragedy.
I personally, have gladly let undesirable women "get away".
TiVo is a Linux based PC. It is hackable enough to do a *lot* of interesting things that you can't on a normal TiVo.
The reason why TiVo corporation doesn't support this "hacking" actively is that they need to be legally insulated from lawsuits.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/
~foooo
read this:
6 03 0904.asp
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bate20040
Ralph Nader supports the use of DDT because it saves lives. Additionally the evidence of damage to birds was present but not overwhelming.
As an American... the resons why I wouldn't live anywhere else are mainly climate.
I love the weather here, but more importantly I love the way our government is set up. Being a Libertarian (who begrudgingly votes republican) I realize that no government is perfect and that we are a ways from ideal. But currently I feel like we have the best there is to offer.
So, while I love to visit other places... my home will always be in the USA. Even if the trade situation "events out" or we cease to become the most dominant millitary/political force in the world.
A good part of the reason we are where we are today as a nation is our acceptance of new people into our country. They tend to work harder and be more patriotic than those of us who have lived here all our lives.
What could possibly lead to our ruin is that we are currently allowing people to enter our country and leech off of us... rather than what we've done in the past... allowing people to come in and *earn* what they want through hard work and determination. As a result the states of California and Arizona are now quite bankrupt. =(
~foooo
Just because we love Lunux doesn't mean that clusters are HPCs.
There are real issues that differentiate mainframe/supercomputers from large, powerful, clusters.
Of course this all depends on your definition of an HPC. But I believe that it's reasonable to say that if parts of your computer are connected with low bandwidth connections (10/100,gigabit) they just can't handle the same kinds of transactions that a computer with parts that are connected by 10 gigabit or 1000 gigabit connections or whatever it is nowadays.
As far as I know if you're deploying a large database it's still advisable to have a big huge IBM mainframe or a Unisys box or a Sun 10k instead of 4,8 or 16 clustered 8 proc machines.
My point is there are valid arguments for not including clusters of commodity hardware in the HPC category.
In my mind they aren't High Performance Computers... they are High Performance Clusters of Commodity Computers.
~foooo
No need to be an such an ass to your "host" country. Most problems of this nature in the US are due to having a much larger land mass. Additionally populations (on average) in the US are much less dense than their northern european counterparts making it much harder to support infrastructure of this kind.
US power companies are regulated... but they don't have the advantages of government run power companies. IE they can't just dip in to the general fund if the feel like they want to make some infrastructure improvements. They actually have to justify it.
I live in a reasonably dense area and my power goes out maybe once every two years. When I lived out in a more rural area my power went out several times a year... the further out you are the less dense the population and the more likely your power will go out.
Astoundingly Americans have learned to deal with it. Frankly it's not worth it to me to pay more to have more reliable electricity. If I want more security I'll make sure I have my own means of power production or UPSes or something.
I would be interested to know the "real" per capita expenditures for electricity in your previous country. I'd also be interested to know the "real" per kilowatt hour price. These numbers would have to include government subsidies.
I think there are some government subsidies for power companies in the US but I would assume (I'm not certian) that they are lower than your previous country of residence.
As for doing your own wiring while you can certianly hire electricians in the US and many new construction projects require inspection from an electrician before permits are approved/issued.
Frankly I'm shocked that other countries wouldn't allow citizens to do their own wiring. Not only is it a freedom issue but a phenomenal waste of money to always have to pay someone else to do work that just about anyone could do.
Additionally European electronics certifications are much more stringent than those in the US. So even if the power is more reliable the government will make darn sure the end user devices are still very robust... and therefore they should cost as much or more than their US counterparts.
I can't really speak for Japan or other Asian/African nations since I just don't know very much about their electrical systems.
~foooo
While censorship can be used loosely to mean any type of chilling effect from any source... most would agree that your right to free speech applies only to censorship from the government.
Censorship from individuals or corporations is just one of the many consequences the world dishes out at you. Without these concequences society wouldn't work in the way we expect it to. No consequences usually means you will have to deal with "trolls" or "flamebait" all of the time. For (non-scientific) evidence look at the crud most anonymous cowards are willing to post.
Like I said before... "civil rights" as described in the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act are blatantly unconstitutional and in direct contradiction to your right to free association.
Most people wouldn't discriminate in ways that society as a whole believes are harmful but in America people are allowed to be assholes... their right to free speech (and other rights) are just as important as the rights of "good people".
But we can't afford to pretend that there aren't consequences for our actions. Communities will selectively alienate people. People will alienate themselves from communities or other individuals.
They always have.
They always will.
Trying to enforce laws that "prevent" these things are short circuiting our human behavioral traits that have allowed us to survive thus far.
We must live in the real world. A world where people are asses. Where people get hurt. Where people are great humanitarians. Where people are having a "good 'ol time and not botherin' nobody."
~foooo
Here! Here!
Discrimination has become such a negative term these days. I consider myself a person with discriminating tastes. I discriminate when I choose my friends, when I choose the neighborhood where I want to live... the muffin that I want to eat (I prefer poppyseed) etc...
Discrimination is part of our constitutional right to Freedom of Association. I for one am in favor of the government limiting discrimination in it's own actions. But people are promised the right to associated with anyone who would associate with them willingly and they are also free to *not* associated with anyone.
As horrible as it is to discriminate based on things such as race, color, sex, politics, religion etc.
The right to discriminate is just as much a right as the right to free speech.
Before you flame... consider this.. most people think that there is a constitutional right to seperation of church and state**. I would suggest this line of reasoning
1) There is a right to freedom of association
2) Many people want to protected minorities (etc)for moral reasons
Now ponder this... how different is this from forcing a religion on someone? Forcing morals on someone... but not only that.. forcing morals that the constitution specifically says can not be enforced via freedom of association.
**There isn't any thing saying that there is seperation of church and state in the constitution, read the fine print... the framers just didn't want something like the Church of England. The specific wording was "...shall not establish..." What do you think establishing religion entails?? The line is fuzzy... but maybe today's supreme court has taken it a little to far.
At any rate... I would probably not discriminate based on someone's politics... I get along fine with the "Psycho Seattle Liberals" that I work with everyday... we have fun poking at each other's politics. But I would support the right of someone to choose who works for them.
Goodness knows I get flamed all up and down this joint for espousing conservative views... but that's what I get for having a big mouth. =)
We need to get good Civics classes back into our schools... I feel like I have to explain the entire US Constitution in every political discussion I have ever. Even if there are dissagreements... it's good to have some sort of knowledge of history and how our government was founded.
=)
~foooo
If you can't fire rodents out of cannons what CAN you do???
If I was running Microsoft, I'd just pull out of Europe.
I am totally against ethically dubious practices to achieve a monopoly. But I don't consider "bundling" anti competitive behavior.
This is just another example of the EU over regulating.
It's one thing to regulate coercion, theft, bribery, blackmail or other things that are (in my opinion) actual crimes. To cross the line into listening to companies when they whine about "anti-competitive behavior" that really isn't unfair is ridiculous. Why aren't they suing BMW for including radios in their automobiles?? After all, it is a "value added" additional component. It's not a car. Why aren't aftermarket car stereo manufacturers banding together to petition the EU to sue BMW??? Why?? Because it wouldn't make sense.
I don't mean to start a flame war, but isn't this Microsoft Monopoly crap getting a little old? Slashdot tends to foam at the mouth every time we hear about something like this, but isn't it time we focus our energy into producing a better product??? There are countless examples (especially in the computer industry) of companies that seemed like monopolies (IBM for example) that were devastated overnight when a superior idea entered the market place. True innovation would render all of this legal schmegal bullshit a total waste of time.
Let's spend our energy on things that will actually make a difference.
~foooo
First off, what your "rights" are according to me and your rights according to the current government are two totally different things. If you want to know what the gov. can do for you talk to a lawer.
Second, my actual opinion on the matter:
Employment is a type of contract like any other. If you don't like it find a way (under the terms of the contract) to renegotiate or get out of it.
Many states mandate at will employment meaning either side can end the aggreement at any time for any reason. This is "A Good Thing" it means that you can always make yourself available to other parties who are interested in your labor.
As to the comment above that said the employer has extra responsibilities because they are your sole employer... You might think that they do. It's up to you to negotiate the terms of your employment.
If the government stopped meddling so much in the way businesses work, the forces of capitalism would act much more directly on the way employment aggreements function. As it is there are many outside conditions that cause employers to be more cautious and more obvious in the fact that they are looking out for the company and not nessecarily you.
So to put it bluntly. Deal with it. If it violates laws (most of which I morally dissagree with) then call up the government whistleblower's line (try googling for it), call a lawyer, or get the heck outta Dodge. =)
Your life is your responsibillity. Good luck!
~foooo
And you were too busy trying to close pop-ups to provide a working link??
LINK
~foooo
I agree in many configurations good harddrives would be important, but this person isn't talking about a single machine rendering op. He wants some sort of render "farm" implying multiple machines. In which case my first reccomendation (to save money) is to ditch as much cluster "client" storage hardware as possible, after all the cluster clients don't exist to store, they exist to render. Rendering images to a ram drive might be a good thing, or get a small fast hard drive for the images and OS, remembering that the primary storage for any sizable render farm is usually a Fibre Channel RAID array. In best case scenarios all of the render clients have direct fibre channel to the RAID box, making local storage an extra expense.
If you're doing a home cooked solution, I would suspect that local hard drives would become more important. And on a single machine rendering setup you'd want a hella fast raid array.
And obviously the more RAM the better, but budget may constrain this. Chopping images into small pieces might make even 256MB workable even for today's high res requirements for images. Somewhat akin to dividing up large scientific calculations.
My question to you... does Maya provide tools for managing render farms? I'm pretty sure the tools I suggested all offered "render farm" capabillity. Although I admit I have no clue what "extras" are included in Maya.
Cheers!
~foooo
Without considering budget issues one can't even begin to discuss what the best hardware solution is.
Show me any software program and give me a budget. I will probably be able to analyze the performance needs of the application and fit *something* into budget. But unless I have some money number I'm operating completely in the dark.
If the question was about hardware then budget is the number one concern. Until that question is answered any advice given is without context and therefore useless.
I'm not just an ass... I'm just looking for someone to give me enough information to provide a meaningful response. Otherwise I'm sticking to my first answer. Buy Pixar.
~foooo
At times like this it's hard to resist kharma whoring... so I won't.
r ont.comD _Modellin g.html
Dear Slashdot,
Please do my research for me. I can't possibly use google and look up the 309830983 gazillion studies on cluster/render farm configurations.
I won't/can't give you any specific information related to budget, my personal experience with hardware, the team to be working on the project (it could be just me... or 500 people) and the importance of data integrity (if I lose a week of work it might end my life... or I might not care).
-clueless reader
Dear Clueless,
Well, if your budget is a billion dollars why not just buy Pixar? They have the whole render farm thing figured out.
If your budget is any thing less than that try looking for open source, GNU, freeware, shareware, free for non-commercial use renderfarmy stuff and run it on AMD based Linux boxes.
Hard drives aren't so important on the individual machines. Get a decent raid on a server machine that will support the number of computers in the render farm. Use 100-1000 mbit ethernet (unless you want to spend a fortune). Get at least 256 mb of ram in each box rendering is memory intensive.
If noise is a concern, build a seperate room or building even.. cause the more computers you have the more it's going to start sounding like a server room and less like a place hospitible to human life.
Take a look at learning Blender instead (or in addition to) Maya. Learning to use special rendering software like BMRT would also be cool. BMRT, which is free for non-commercial use, churns out very good images but is very slow. Renderman is the most popular and the most expensive. It's fast too but there are some things it can't do such as global illumination, which BMRT can do. (I'm not sure about the new release of Renderman, though.) There's also Entropy, a fast BMRT, but not free.
All software I've mentioned works for Linux.
For more resources, check out these links:
http://www.blender3d.com
http://www.aliaswavef
http://www.linux.org/apps/all/Graphics/3
http://www.linuxmovies.org
By the way it took me 5 minutes to find this on google and I know jack shit about animation... my only limited experience was fooling around with good 'ol POV-RAY.
For god sakes! If your'e going to ask a bunch of very smart people questions that demand detailed answers... provide detail on your questions.
It makes me if moderators have any standards at all for ask slashdot items. (Why do I ask when I already know the answer!!)
~foooo
Common Vector is a technical term for "Common significant identifying traits."
When you determine the common vector for a system failure like this you find the "common" symptom that points to a common problem and therefore can be fixed.
~foooo
That's a really cool wallpaper... where did you find it??
~foooo
Socialism is big government. Big government takes away my freedom to spend my hard earned money as I please. Big government makes regulations that involve attempting to mold society instead of serving it's citizens.
I'm against the patriot act and all that rot as well, mind you. Our government is *huge* and controlling. But face it. Canada is worse.
~foooo
Just because this particular law wasn't passed by Parliament does not mean that Parliament doesn't make silly laws.
? Co untry=Canada
I compare facism and socialism in respect to politics in Canada as well as the Democrats in the US.
And as far as the comment about drinks with artificial caffeination... here's a link for ya... oh my bad... it's not because of the natural content of the beverage.. its the COLOR.
http://www.dumblaws.com/countries/countries.php
check it out.
Of course the US is starting to collect a lot of dumb laws too, and I'm against them as well. But Canada embraces socialism like junkie to heroine.
~foooo
Thanks folks... I'll be here all week.
The USA doesn't have an official language. I for one expect that people who want to do business with me will do it in english. But the more I think about it the more I'm glad that there isn't a law forcing companies to package products in english... cause then where would I get my japanese direct imported anime?
You can spout off all day about our nation being a disgrace to the concept of democracy... but compared to other nations I feel like we're doing alright. I'm not suggesting that we're perfect. But in general I feel that Canada and Europe are headed in the direction of socialism, which I believe to be a milder friendlier form of facism.
=)
We have our fair share of crappy and strange laws. But I'm against them. My impression of Canada is that the Parliament tends to have no restraint when it comes to regulation of things I personally deem to be silly.
Hence such downright silly laws against drinks with artificial caffeination.
~foooo