Re:x86 is popular to hate, but not that bad really
on
Is The x86 Obsolete?
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· Score: 2
Because its NOT THAT BAD. No, its not perfect, but anyone who has ever programmed assembler for one must realize that hey, it works. Modern x86es combines the best of the modern RISC chips with the best of the old-style CISC chips (like hardware stacks and more registers).
No, the reason x86 hasn't died is because it's as bad as can possibly be without forcing people away from it. Blame Microsoft and idiot peecee buyers for its continued plague of the earth. Modern x86s are an excellent implementation of what is likely the worst architecture ever created. Their "design" to the extent that it exists combines the worst of RISC (hard to write good compilers) with the worst of CISC (lots of useless confusing instructions, nowhere near enough registers) and some extra Intel-specific bad bits (stupid CISC->RISC translation mechanism for example, 16-bit compatibility, nonlinear memory model). What a crock.
When a 64-bit processor becomes standard and not "the newest thing on the block since swiss cheese", it'll happen.
I'm sorry you're feeling left out of the 64-bit revolution. We workstation users have had 64-bit CPUs for many years, and they work just fine. 64-bit technology is not new, in fact it's quite mature. Intel is at least 8 years behind the curve; in fact, Intel hasn't been a technology leader since the 70s. They are a fab leader however, but the fabs could be used to make anything.
The fact is that despite its poor design chip makers have done some amazing things to push it to greater speeds
Agreed. So imagine the speeds we'd have if they'd directed those efforts toward implementations of designed architectures. We'd have CPUs twice as fast as anything in existence today. There's no excuse for using something that sucks.
Re:x86 is popular to hate, but not that bad really
on
Is The x86 Obsolete?
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· Score: 5
Interesting. I've programmed a similar set of CPUs and have come to exactly the opposite conclusion. I fail to see the difference between a "hardware stack" which apparently means there are extra instructions just for pushing and popping, and a software stack which presumably means normal load/store/add/subtract instructions are used with one register considered the stack pointer (and maybe another for frame pointer). The instructions do the same things. They take, in general, about the same time to execute. So what it really comes down to is more instructions to do the same things, which means more die size, which means more heat, more power, and more manufacturing cost. Some deal that is. The only reason it can take so long to save registers on a real CPU is that there are so many. Sure, it's fast to push your six general purpose registers. But that's not enough to make up for your memory-accessing instructions and the register-shuffling you have to do to keep useful values in your pitiful register file. If a register has to be saved, it has to be saved. That's true of any architecture. Sparc tries to avoid this and actually does a very good job of lowering call overhead, but the bottom line is that there will always be times when things have to be pushed onto the stack.
Also realize that all of these instructions are fixed at 32-bits on most chips. That's 32-bits to copy a register, 32-bits for a return, etc. This may simplify the hardware, but at the expense of bloat. So you need a bigger instruction cache.
This really depends on your instruction mix. There are longer instructions on x86 too. And let's remember that simpler hardware means less die size, less heat, less power, and less cost. And remember that the SHx has 16-bit instructions, not 32. So on that architecture your code size will always be less than equivalent x86 code.
The bottom line is that x86 has about three orders of magnitude too many instructions and a similar factor too few registers. It exists without the grace of design or forethought. It's too big, too bloated, too hot, and more expensive than it needs to be. Programming it is a nightmare. The only positive thing I'll say for it is that the performance isn't terrible given its complete lack of design. This says good things about Intel's engineers. Of course, if they can do as well with x86, imagine how much better they could do with a decent architecture. In other words, if Intel manufactured MIPS and SPARC chips, they could crush the existing implementations in performance.
The x86 was obsolete 12 years ago. The sacrifice of sanity on the altar of backward compatibility is disgraceful and foolish. I don't use x86 any more, thank God. I just wish nobody else did either. We'd all be better off if x86 died the death immediately or sooner.
Actually (ignoring the fact that your entire post is incorrect and filled with bogus information) OpenBSD is far more relevant than Solaris. Being operating systems, both are condemned to suck, but OpenBSD sucks far, far less. Solaris is slow, obsolete, and has more security holes than an unpatched Red Hat 5.0 [note to ignorant: that's a LOT]. OpenBSD is small, secure, and fast. If you're going to compare the relevance of OpenBSD, please compare it against that of a product with a future.
Is it a good sign that a major update to my operating system is delayed because someone went on vacation?
I'm sure you meant "Isn't it nice that Linus released a fix for his operating system right after getting back from vacation, and let me use it?"
It's not your operating system. It's Linus's operating system. He just lets you use it. If you purchased an operating system from a commercial vendor, then your gripe is with that vendor - they are responsible for all bugs and security holes they ship, not the authors. The authors just provide software out of generosity, without warranty, express or implied.
Sure. Kids. Yes, the official sources are distributed as single files. There are numerous projects that have their own cvs servers, most of which are kept in sync with the official sources. You are free to bitch as you like about the distribution methods, but calling the linux developers kids is just stupid.
I never said I was. In fact, for all you know I might be a raving postfix fan, or maybe I've written my own mailer in 80 lines of awk and refuse to use anything else. The point is that the post was based on personal bias. To get back on topic somewhat, it should be noted that the sendmail exploit described in the list is for a version that shipped years ago and has since been superceded many times. Invulnerable? Surely not. But I am willing to trust the recent versions. I'm certain that if another mailer was as widely used as sendmail the reward would have been paid many times over by now.
Yes, but they are only concerned with problems that can be fixed. Enntee usually can't, so there's no use in reporting and tracking the problems. If you sign with the devil and use enntee, you just have to accept that you're going to get 0wn3d sooner or later.
That's right, q***l and postfix are fairly obscure, so the kiddies don't have sploits for them. Of course, if everyone used them, then this advantage would disappear. This is really just personal bias against Sendmail, so I'm calling you on it.:)
Once again, the focus should be on 'illegally obtaining passwords.' This is a section where the victim (piegon in a scam) could be prosecuted for their unwitting part in a crime. (Remember the IQ of the average user).
Then, quite frankly, the average user shouldn't be using my systems. If other places are anything at all like the places I've worked, every user is required to receive and acknowledge a usage agreement. In the usage agreement, which is 100% common sense and 0% rocket science and/or brain surgery, users are specifically and explicitly prohibited from disclosing their password(s) to anyone. ANYONE. If you violate this agreement by giving your password to your SO, your friend, or the man on the street, I can and will revoke your access per the terms of the agreement.
Now, failing to read the agreement is no excuse. Just as ignorance of the law is no defense. Just because people are stupid and will give away their passwords doesn't mean we should let them get away with it. The law should stand as written, no excuses for idiocy.
There's no legal penalty for being stupid. Until you leave your hospital room/bubble/cell/ward/cave. If you want to interact with the rest of the world, you're expected to maintain a reasonable level of rationality and common sense.
Yep. I used to have two of them. Didn't have any expansion cases, though, just the speech synthesizer add-on. It's only too bad that machine didn't have a magnesium exterior to match the rest of its construction. The plastic was rather flimsy compared with the rest of it.
Much like "Don't steal; the government hates competition." In this case, the government is concerned that corporate power over our lives is growing to match its own. Can't have that now can we. Evil vs. Evil, and to the victor go the noncombatants.
It really depends on how new/old your machine is. I have found that memory prices for previous-generation non-peecees have been very stable compared with peecee memory prices. When peecee DRAM prices tripled last year, memory for my Sparc 20 stayed exactly the same price - quite a bit lower than peecee memory in fact. So I think it really depends on whether your memory is the same stuff peecees use. If it is, prices will fluctuate. Otherwise they'll probably be stable. It also depends very much on where you get your memory. If you get it new from the workstation vendor it will be much more expensive than third-party and/or used memory. Whether this matters depends on whether you have a service contract.:)
Why, nothing. I never said they did. Only that their so-called open effort is obviously just a thin veil over their true goal of global mind control.
Mozilla builds fine as evidenced by the nightly builds that appear on Mozilla.org
I am aware of the nightlies. Nightlies for winbloze, and the occasional nightly for i386-peecee-linux. Never anything else.
The fact that you can't build says more about your competance than it does for Mozilla.
If I had written the code, yes. Since I didn't, no. I can follow instructions. Compiler errors due to buggy source are not my fault.
If it doesn't build on sparc then fix it for fuck's sake instead of whinging.
I don't have time to trace through 400 megabytes of fuxored code, as I explained. Nor do I have the half gig needed to run in a debugger, as I also explained. So there's little to no chance I'll be fixing anything. Instead I'll just use something that works, or that I can fix if it doesn't.
You only get what you put in.
The problem with Mozilla is that way, way too much has been put in. About 99% of it needs to be taken out.
Maybe, if I cared to try fixing something so fundamentally broken. I really don't see why people want a browser that won't fit in their machine's address space. I have the CVS repository sitting on my machine. But where in the midst of the 400MB of spaghetti code might problem 4553423 of 932497198 be? It's not worth my time. Other pieces of code are better-written, more instructive, and easier to understand.
As for other projects in beta, well, they at least work equally well or poorly on different platforms. Mozilla is so nonportable that it won't even build on most of the platforms I use. And there are a lot of different meanings for "beta." For example, GIMP 1.1 is beta. I've used versions from 1.1.6 through 1.1.20 and I can say that not one has failed to compile for me, and not one has so thoroughly failed to function. Repeatable crashes that give you a nice backtrace versus a monstrosity of random failures each of which requires half a gig of memory and 12 hours just to find. It wouldn't even be so bad if I could get past their damn profile manager. But all it does is hang. No crash, no dump, no error messages. Just a hang. If it did that on every platform, it would have been fixed. But it's on sparc-sun-linux, which won't earn AOL a dime and they know it. So nobody cares.
I'll stick to lynx. It works, and best of all it actually fits in memory. If it breaks, I can probably fix it too. Amazing how much easier it is when there's no bloat.
You're just jealous because IE doesn't have XUL yet.
Wouldn't know - I don't have windoze and I don't use IE. As far as I'm concerned Mozilla doesn't have XUL either. All it has is a profile manager that ignores all input, which I could hack up in 5 minutes, and a 400MB codebase that hasn't compiled in weeks.
Do not assume I like IE just because I hate Mozilla. They all suck my ass and I never use either one. The only difference is that/.ers seem to like Mozilla just because it's Free (oh, sorry, "Open Source"). Free or not, it's still three orders of magnitude too large and doesn't even build on any platform other than those AOL finds commercially attractive. I expect my OS to be up for months or years. I expect my X server to up for months or years. I expect my databases to be up for months or years. Why is it that I should accept browsers that can't stay up more than minutes? And yes, last time I checked (four years ago) this applied to IE as well as Netscape, and it certainly applies to Mozilla. That is, it applies on i386-pc-linux. I can't even get past the Profile Creator on sparc-sun-linux. Good code is portable code. Mozilla is not good code.
If not, it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Mozilla is bugware. You know, the type of software that, upon seeing its behavior, your only possible reaction is "HAS ANYONE EVER ACTUALLY __TESTED__ THIS THING???" Or, in case of Mozilla, "HAS ANYONE EVER ACTUALLY __COMPILED__ THIS THING???" Why anyone would want to build anything using any part of Mozilla is beyond me. The ONLY thing good about Mozilla is that it's Free Software. That's it. Nothing else.
Perl, fine. Python, fine. IDE, fine, if you must. But MOZILLA??? They must be on crack. I can't believe/.ers are this blind to the obvious fact that Mozilla should and will die the death.
The Man hereby predicts: Five years from now Mozilla will be known as the greatest failure in the history of Free Software.
What makes you think that because someone has less money than you, that they're unintelligent and can't be tusted on the net. I agree that the popularization (Ok, that's may not be a real word but you know what I mean) of the internet has made fundamental changes in the type of information out there (and the quantity of spam in my mailbox), but that doesn't mean that trying to deny access to various classes of people will help put things back the way they were.
Not a thing. I have no idea whether you're rich or poor, and I don't care - you have a viewpoint and express it intelligently. That's what is important here. The real problem isn't that universal access (I'm talking about government-based plans here such as Mr. Clinton would like) would give the poor computers, but that it would give fools computers. There are enough fools on the Net already. We don't need more. Those who are hampered not by lack of intelligence but only by lack of funds can easily use existing resources such as public libraries.
If you recall, this is really about companies who've decided to do something for their employees.
It is for now. Unfortunately the US, at least, has seen recent government involvement here that would severely worsen the problem. Obviously I don't care if Ford etc. decide to give things to their employees - that's simply a private contract between two entities which are not me. The problem is that if people get in their heads that information is a right, a computer is a right, that universal computer and Net access is a good thing, then someone is bound to insist that we "think of the children!" and pay more taxes so that everyone will have access.
I mean, we all know that anyone who can't afford to post isn't really intelligent/doesn't have a vaild point anyway, right?
This is a misinterpretation. While I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding people who would agree, I'm not one of them.
It's a pretty slippery slope when people start complaining that they don't see any benefit from where their tax dollars go.
Indeed it is. It sends us down the path to freedom.
Ok, I'll admit you lost me somewhere between the Sparc and how we should all die.
The point is that making everyone equal means lowest common denominator, which is death. There is no other way. Inequality will always be present as long as humans live. I think this is a good thing. But it's also not much the issue here - because I don't think people should be prohibited from expressing their views just because they haven't any money. That's just silly. And not at all the point.
I think that companies providing their employees with "no strings attached" computers for home is a good thing.
Ok. But I would argue that there are always strings attached. Sooner or later, there will be problems with how, when, and for what purpose this stuff can be used. If there really were no strings attached, I would agree that this is good only if the companies are doing it to increase profitability. If they are doing it for feel-good reasons, I'm scared shitless. There's nothing more dangerous than a corporation that has something other than profits as a motivation. As long as they just want money their actions are easily understood and countered. Someone who thinks he is doing something for your own good is infinitely more hazardous than someone doing it for selfish reasons.
Skin color is irrelevant. Gender is irrelevant. Political viewpoint is irrelevant. I don't give a rat's ass what you look like or where you live or who your parents are. All I care about is not having a bunch of ignorant brain-dead AOLer fools polluting the Net. This is a culture, and like any other, it has its own rules, written and unwritten. If you want to be a part of it, you follow the rules. We have rules that, I believe, foster free thinking, open exchange of ideas, and creative humor. Many people who came on the Net as part of its popularization do not believe in these things - they are small, petty, hateful, commercial, ignorant, mindless, and/or disruptive. These are the people who think the Net has the same function as TV - to fill their empty minds with advertising jingles and sound bites. It's not supposed to be that way. This is a voluntary culture, and I see zero reason people should be encouraged to join it. Those who have something to contribute will do so without me being forced at gunpoint to give them computers (yes, I am an Objectivist).
I am not wealthy. Get over the idea that I'm tryin' to keep the po' man down. It just ain't so. But I don't much care to help him either. He can make his own way as I have.
I do not believe in the right to information. You have the right to whatever you can buy for yourself or convince others to give you. Information can and should be made freely available to those who choose to access it. It should not be forced on those who do not want it, have no use for it, and cannot pay the pittance required to get it, especially by forced extraction of money from the rest of us. Why doesn't the government see lack of a television as an inequity in need of redress? How about nice clothes? Suppose there is universal computer and Net access - isn't it unfair that some people have 21 inch monitors, but the poor only get the free 15 inchers? What about those of us who own real workstations not low-end peecees - shouldn't the poor have a right to an Octane or Ultra 2? And what about those of us who don't have vermin in our homes? Shouldn't the government do something about that inequity? Maybe a forced cockroach-infestation law would salve the liberal-extortionist's guilty social conscience.
Where does it end? Death, plain and simple. After all, why should the living have rights denied the dead? We're all supposed to be so damn equal, and death is the only way to achieve that. Every living human should be killed and fed to the same furnace. Right now. If equality is your goal, that is how you must achieve it. There is no other way.
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No, the reason x86 hasn't died is because it's as bad as can possibly be without forcing people away from it. Blame Microsoft and idiot peecee buyers for its continued plague of the earth. Modern x86s are an excellent implementation of what is likely the worst architecture ever created. Their "design" to the extent that it exists combines the worst of RISC (hard to write good compilers) with the worst of CISC (lots of useless confusing instructions, nowhere near enough registers) and some extra Intel-specific bad bits (stupid CISC->RISC translation mechanism for example, 16-bit compatibility, nonlinear memory model). What a crock.
I'm sorry you're feeling left out of the 64-bit revolution. We workstation users have had 64-bit CPUs for many years, and they work just fine. 64-bit technology is not new, in fact it's quite mature. Intel is at least 8 years behind the curve; in fact, Intel hasn't been a technology leader since the 70s. They are a fab leader however, but the fabs could be used to make anything.
Agreed. So imagine the speeds we'd have if they'd directed those efforts toward implementations of designed architectures. We'd have CPUs twice as fast as anything in existence today. There's no excuse for using something that sucks.
Also realize that all of these instructions are fixed at 32-bits on most chips. That's 32-bits to copy a register, 32-bits for a return, etc. This may simplify the hardware, but at the expense of bloat. So you need a bigger instruction cache.
This really depends on your instruction mix. There are longer instructions on x86 too. And let's remember that simpler hardware means less die size, less heat, less power, and less cost. And remember that the SHx has 16-bit instructions, not 32. So on that architecture your code size will always be less than equivalent x86 code.
The bottom line is that x86 has about three orders of magnitude too many instructions and a similar factor too few registers. It exists without the grace of design or forethought. It's too big, too bloated, too hot, and more expensive than it needs to be. Programming it is a nightmare. The only positive thing I'll say for it is that the performance isn't terrible given its complete lack of design. This says good things about Intel's engineers. Of course, if they can do as well with x86, imagine how much better they could do with a decent architecture. In other words, if Intel manufactured MIPS and SPARC chips, they could crush the existing implementations in performance.
The x86 was obsolete 12 years ago. The sacrifice of sanity on the altar of backward compatibility is disgraceful and foolish. I don't use x86 any more, thank God. I just wish nobody else did either. We'd all be better off if x86 died the death immediately or sooner.
No, just that one. Actually, anyone who doesn't know can't call himself a unix admin anyway.
Actually (ignoring the fact that your entire post is incorrect and filled with bogus information) OpenBSD is far more relevant than Solaris. Being operating systems, both are condemned to suck, but OpenBSD sucks far, far less. Solaris is slow, obsolete, and has more security holes than an unpatched Red Hat 5.0 [note to ignorant: that's a LOT]. OpenBSD is small, secure, and fast. If you're going to compare the relevance of OpenBSD, please compare it against that of a product with a future.
I'm sure you meant "Isn't it nice that Linus released a fix for his operating system right after getting back from vacation, and let me use it?"
It's not your operating system. It's Linus's operating system. He just lets you use it. If you purchased an operating system from a commercial vendor, then your gripe is with that vendor - they are responsible for all bugs and security holes they ship, not the authors. The authors just provide software out of generosity, without warranty, express or implied.
That people think anything else is the bad sign.
Sure. Kids. Yes, the official sources are distributed as single files. There are numerous projects that have their own cvs servers, most of which are kept in sync with the official sources. You are free to bitch as you like about the distribution methods, but calling the linux developers kids is just stupid.
I never said I was. In fact, for all you know I might be a raving postfix fan, or maybe I've written my own mailer in 80 lines of awk and refuse to use anything else. The point is that the post was based on personal bias. To get back on topic somewhat, it should be noted that the sendmail exploit described in the list is for a version that shipped years ago and has since been superceded many times. Invulnerable? Surely not. But I am willing to trust the recent versions. I'm certain that if another mailer was as widely used as sendmail the reward would have been paid many times over by now.
You got that right. The real question is whether I could live with myself if I bought it.
Yes, but they are only concerned with problems that can be fixed. Enntee usually can't, so there's no use in reporting and tracking the problems. If you sign with the devil and use enntee, you just have to accept that you're going to get 0wn3d sooner or later.
That's right, q***l and postfix are fairly obscure, so the kiddies don't have sploits for them. Of course, if everyone used them, then this advantage would disappear. This is really just personal bias against Sendmail, so I'm calling you on it. :)
I believe the standard reply is "Windoze isn't a virus; a virus does something."
Then, quite frankly, the average user shouldn't be using my systems. If other places are anything at all like the places I've worked, every user is required to receive and acknowledge a usage agreement. In the usage agreement, which is 100% common sense and 0% rocket science and/or brain surgery, users are specifically and explicitly prohibited from disclosing their password(s) to anyone. ANYONE. If you violate this agreement by giving your password to your SO, your friend, or the man on the street, I can and will revoke your access per the terms of the agreement.
Now, failing to read the agreement is no excuse. Just as ignorance of the law is no defense. Just because people are stupid and will give away their passwords doesn't mean we should let them get away with it. The law should stand as written, no excuses for idiocy.
There's no legal penalty for being stupid. Until you leave your hospital room/bubble/cell/ward/cave. If you want to interact with the rest of the world, you're expected to maintain a reasonable level of rationality and common sense.
Yep. I used to have two of them. Didn't have any expansion cases, though, just the speech synthesizer add-on. It's only too bad that machine didn't have a magnesium exterior to match the rest of its construction. The plastic was rather flimsy compared with the rest of it.
Much like "Don't steal; the government hates competition." In this case, the government is concerned that corporate power over our lives is growing to match its own. Can't have that now can we. Evil vs. Evil, and to the victor go the noncombatants.
It really depends on how new/old your machine is. I have found that memory prices for previous-generation non-peecees have been very stable compared with peecee memory prices. When peecee DRAM prices tripled last year, memory for my Sparc 20 stayed exactly the same price - quite a bit lower than peecee memory in fact. So I think it really depends on whether your memory is the same stuff peecees use. If it is, prices will fluctuate. Otherwise they'll probably be stable. It also depends very much on where you get your memory. If you get it new from the workstation vendor it will be much more expensive than third-party and/or used memory. Whether this matters depends on whether you have a service contract. :)
Why, nothing. I never said they did. Only that their so-called open effort is obviously just a thin veil over their true goal of global mind control.
Mozilla builds fine as evidenced by the nightly builds that appear on Mozilla.org
I am aware of the nightlies. Nightlies for winbloze, and the occasional nightly for i386-peecee-linux. Never anything else.
The fact that you can't build says more about your competance than it does for Mozilla.
If I had written the code, yes. Since I didn't, no. I can follow instructions. Compiler errors due to buggy source are not my fault.
If it doesn't build on sparc then fix it for fuck's sake instead of whinging.
I don't have time to trace through 400 megabytes of fuxored code, as I explained. Nor do I have the half gig needed to run in a debugger, as I also explained. So there's little to no chance I'll be fixing anything. Instead I'll just use something that works, or that I can fix if it doesn't.
You only get what you put in.
The problem with Mozilla is that way, way too much has been put in. About 99% of it needs to be taken out.
As for other projects in beta, well, they at least work equally well or poorly on different platforms. Mozilla is so nonportable that it won't even build on most of the platforms I use. And there are a lot of different meanings for "beta." For example, GIMP 1.1 is beta. I've used versions from 1.1.6 through 1.1.20 and I can say that not one has failed to compile for me, and not one has so thoroughly failed to function. Repeatable crashes that give you a nice backtrace versus a monstrosity of random failures each of which requires half a gig of memory and 12 hours just to find. It wouldn't even be so bad if I could get past their damn profile manager. But all it does is hang. No crash, no dump, no error messages. Just a hang. If it did that on every platform, it would have been fixed. But it's on sparc-sun-linux, which won't earn AOL a dime and they know it. So nobody cares.
I'll stick to lynx. It works, and best of all it actually fits in memory. If it breaks, I can probably fix it too. Amazing how much easier it is when there's no bloat.
Wouldn't know - I don't have windoze and I don't use IE. As far as I'm concerned Mozilla doesn't have XUL either. All it has is a profile manager that ignores all input, which I could hack up in 5 minutes, and a 400MB codebase that hasn't compiled in weeks.
Do not assume I like IE just because I hate Mozilla. They all suck my ass and I never use either one. The only difference is that /.ers seem to like Mozilla just because it's Free (oh, sorry, "Open Source"). Free or not, it's still three orders of magnitude too large and doesn't even build on any platform other than those AOL finds commercially attractive. I expect my OS to be up for months or years. I expect my X server to up for months or years. I expect my databases to be up for months or years. Why is it that I should accept browsers that can't stay up more than minutes? And yes, last time I checked (four years ago) this applied to IE as well as Netscape, and it certainly applies to Mozilla. That is, it applies on i386-pc-linux. I can't even get past the Profile Creator on sparc-sun-linux. Good code is portable code. Mozilla is not good code.
Perl, fine. Python, fine. IDE, fine, if you must. But MOZILLA??? They must be on crack. I can't believe /.ers are this blind to the obvious fact that Mozilla should and will die the death.
The Man hereby predicts: Five years from now Mozilla will be known as the greatest failure in the history of Free Software.
Godwin's Law is thusly invoked. You lose.
Not a thing. I have no idea whether you're rich or poor, and I don't care - you have a viewpoint and express it intelligently. That's what is important here. The real problem isn't that universal access (I'm talking about government-based plans here such as Mr. Clinton would like) would give the poor computers, but that it would give fools computers. There are enough fools on the Net already. We don't need more. Those who are hampered not by lack of intelligence but only by lack of funds can easily use existing resources such as public libraries.
If you recall, this is really about companies who've decided to do something for their employees.
It is for now. Unfortunately the US, at least, has seen recent government involvement here that would severely worsen the problem. Obviously I don't care if Ford etc. decide to give things to their employees - that's simply a private contract between two entities which are not me. The problem is that if people get in their heads that information is a right, a computer is a right, that universal computer and Net access is a good thing, then someone is bound to insist that we "think of the children!" and pay more taxes so that everyone will have access.
I mean, we all know that anyone who can't afford to post isn't really intelligent/doesn't have a vaild point anyway, right?
This is a misinterpretation. While I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding people who would agree, I'm not one of them.
It's a pretty slippery slope when people start complaining that they don't see any benefit from where their tax dollars go.
Indeed it is. It sends us down the path to freedom.
Ok, I'll admit you lost me somewhere between the Sparc and how we should all die.
The point is that making everyone equal means lowest common denominator, which is death. There is no other way. Inequality will always be present as long as humans live. I think this is a good thing. But it's also not much the issue here - because I don't think people should be prohibited from expressing their views just because they haven't any money. That's just silly. And not at all the point.
I think that companies providing their employees with "no strings attached" computers for home is a good thing.
Ok. But I would argue that there are always strings attached. Sooner or later, there will be problems with how, when, and for what purpose this stuff can be used. If there really were no strings attached, I would agree that this is good only if the companies are doing it to increase profitability. If they are doing it for feel-good reasons, I'm scared shitless. There's nothing more dangerous than a corporation that has something other than profits as a motivation. As long as they just want money their actions are easily understood and countered. Someone who thinks he is doing something for your own good is infinitely more hazardous than someone doing it for selfish reasons.
I am not wealthy. Get over the idea that I'm tryin' to keep the po' man down. It just ain't so. But I don't much care to help him either. He can make his own way as I have.
I do not believe in the right to information. You have the right to whatever you can buy for yourself or convince others to give you. Information can and should be made freely available to those who choose to access it. It should not be forced on those who do not want it, have no use for it, and cannot pay the pittance required to get it, especially by forced extraction of money from the rest of us. Why doesn't the government see lack of a television as an inequity in need of redress? How about nice clothes? Suppose there is universal computer and Net access - isn't it unfair that some people have 21 inch monitors, but the poor only get the free 15 inchers? What about those of us who own real workstations not low-end peecees - shouldn't the poor have a right to an Octane or Ultra 2? And what about those of us who don't have vermin in our homes? Shouldn't the government do something about that inequity? Maybe a forced cockroach-infestation law would salve the liberal-extortionist's guilty social conscience.
Where does it end? Death, plain and simple. After all, why should the living have rights denied the dead? We're all supposed to be so damn equal, and death is the only way to achieve that. Every living human should be killed and fed to the same furnace. Right now. If equality is your goal, that is how you must achieve it. There is no other way.
Damn your bleeding heart to eternal Hell.