The corrupt politicians, corporate officers, and government bureaucrats, besides their criminal behavior, have violated something far more valuable than their ill-gotten gains -- the public trust. For them, death by lethal injection is far too easy a way out -- I would recommend a 1 hour public service message on TV that documents their crimes, a brief jury pronouncement of guilt, and a very public execution (perhaps the guillotine or draw-and-quartering). It would be the best reality show on TV.
Nothing quite like taking a logical argument to its illogical extreme. But I do accept your conclusion -- the death penalty should be reserved for only the most aggregious of crimes, and then only after sufficient judicial review to eliminate the possibility of an innocent person being executed.
I think, however, that you might agree with me that there are a number of non-violent crimes that have such an adverse affect upon the victim that demand, in the name of justice, far more strenuous prosecution -- things like "identity fraud", which are growing at such an alarming rate that it is obvious that the penalties, when caught and convicted, are not up to the social task of deterence.
Isn't it interesting how overbearing the Dept. of Homeland Security is when it comes to their desire to know everything about everyone, and with the power to lock up individuals for months or years at a time without regard for writs of habeous corpus?
At the very same time, nearly four years after 9/11/2001, the USA's borders are still unsecure (except when private citizens organized like the Minuteman Project shine the light of publicity), or that less than 5% of incoming container cargo is inspected. The Bush regime will not commit to the increased manpower necessary to do the job -- instead, billions of dollars are spent with defense contractors for high tech toys. UAVs might detect terrorists crossing our borders, but without the manpower to interdict them, we can only watch them disappear into the countryside. And anyone who thinks a $500 Million USD nutrino scanner that cannot find a nuclear bomb in a container cargo box, but can detect kitty litter quite well is not a monsterous joke, please explain your point of view. (And explain why that same $500 Million USD would not have been better spent on "boots on the ground".)
This country has 28 million illegal alien occupiers, most of whom our government knows little about. Bush's "amnesty" program and Social Security reform (including Bush's "Normalization plan") appear to reward these lawbreakers, as well as those employers that hire them. In 2000, 334 employers were prosecuted for hiring illegal aliens, but in 2004 that number dropped to 13.
The methods and purposes of the current regime in power seem less to do with countering terrorism than with curtailing individual rights, as well as draining the US Treasury for the benefit of government contractors. When the next major terrorist attack occurs in the USA, this regime needs to be booted out of office and prosecuted for "dereliction of duty" and "malfeasance". I personally would vote to put them in front of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, but that's only me.
Face it. Intel's Itanium is a special purpose processor that would never make its way into an everyday workstation -- except when bundled in "market-speak" also as a space heater. The 32-bit "compatability" mode runs like PII-300.
OTOH, 64-bit MIPS and PowerPC and UltraSPARC do a credible yeoman's service with 32-bit applications, without the kooky VLIW pipeline and branch prediction issues for the compiler to deal with.
Having used 32-bit and 64-bit applications on both the MIPS and UltraSPARC platforms, I can tell you that overall performance and throughput do count towards usability. The ia64 cannot make such a claim. It has a place in specialized supercomputers dedicated to specific hand-coded applications, and little else. This is a fact that Intel tacitly admits -- just look at their depreciated "roadmap" for this processor.
Netcraft should predict its early demise -- they would be much more correct than their *BSD prediction.
Intel initially did a superb job of marketing the ia64 processor -- they scared the bejeezes out of DEC, HP, and SGI. So much hype from Intel, in fact, that each of these companies which already had 64-bit processors and a market for them, has abandoned their processor in favor of Intel's marketing muscle.
Intel then pulled the plug on much of their ia64 development "roadmap", apparently having created the desired disarray amongst their 64-bit competitors. To top this off, Intel's own marketing bullshit over processor clock speed meaning more than system thoughput shot themselves in the foot.
With no backward compatability to their ia32 architecture, little regard for seeding low cost development platforms to gain market share, and their own internal battle over "processor clock speed rules all", it is really no wonder that the ia64 has not gained widespread acceptance.
Reuse of code from previous generation processors is important -- IBM's PowerPC processor, SGI's MIPS processor, and SUN's UltraSPARC processor all offered backward compatability.
Intel's ia64 processor doesn't even garner respect from Intel. Why would any other computer OEM offer more respect than that?
Worst case scenario: One of the shuttle or booster-mounted cameras fall off and cause shuttle wing/leading edge damage.
Of course, additional wing inspections will take place while docked at the ISS, including a space walk. If damage should be found, there are some untested repair methods that "might" work. Short of evacuating the crew and either (1) casting the shuttle adrift away from the ISS, or (2) remote piloting the shuttle from Kennedy Space Center back to Earth, the crew would still be at some considerable risk. The ISS would be pretty crowded until multiple Russian Federation rescue missions could be launched, if the crew were to evacuate. It is my understanding that the ISS air conditioning/cooling system is already marginal, so living conditions on the ISS could deteriorate.
Apple is not buying into Intel only for their processor -- expect many/most of the first Apple x86 computers to be using Intel chipsets, including the embedded video. This will be an advantage to Apple's profit margins, while still offering some competition to the dregs from Dell and HP that the average comsumers shop for.
And just because the early Apple x86 Developer Platforms can run MSFT WinXP, do not expect this trend to continue. There IS a reason for Apple's embracing the Intel "solution", and that INCLUDES Intel's new embedded DRM. Not only will Apple's x86 release of OSX not run on commodity Wintel hardware, such as that from Dell or HP, but Apple's new x86 hardware will not permit other OSes to run on their platform. Apple will not risk retaliation from MSFT's possibly killing off the MS Office Product for OSX by spiking their endusers' need for MSFT VirtualPC. Right now, Apple's only venue to corporate IT tolerance is the MSFT Office Suite, which they will not risk losing. The adoption of Intel DRM will limit Apple users choices on how, exactly, they can run alternative OSes -- dual booting into WinXP, linux, or *BSD will not be an option. Running them concurrently through MSFT VirtualPC will be the only approved method. The embedded DRM will make certain of that.
Apple's deal/dance with the Wintel devil for the promise of a 10 - 15% market share will have costs that will be revealed over time. Both Intel and MSFT are coldblooded convicted monopolists, and neither should be trusted by Apple, Apple's shareholders or users.
Having mis-spent a season of my life with a circus, with a lot of exposure to the seamier side of carnival life, I believe the proper term is "shill", not "actor".
And considering the multi-year, multi-faceted MSFT attack on F/OSS, GPL, and GNU/Linux, I have no doubt that the MSFT "road show" in Minnesota must have had a carnival atmosphere. AFAIK, in every other aspect of "modern" civilization excepting politics and marketing, snake oil salesmen are run out of town or thrown in jail.
SGI had a very good OS (IRIX), and some outstanding hardware (Onyx, Octane), but they made some really bad decisions along the way. They paid top dollar for Cray Reasearch, got a few good things from the acquisition, and sold the company for pennies on the dollar. They owned the fab for what was, at the time, the best 32-bit and 64-bit processors around (MIPS), but was lured by Intel's marketing siren song for the Itanium, and sold their IP off. They not only built the most carefully engineered (Visual Workstations) Wintel workstations, they even bought one of their failing (also high priced) competitors. If they had stayed the niche player that they were, instead of reaching for marketshare in a portion of the computer industry that is cutthroat, they could have been another Apple Computer.
As it is, the Intel Itanium-based server market is not and will never be the be-all/end-all solution to their financial problems. (And exactly how many computer OEMs rely upon Itanium server sales for their existance?)
Apple Computer had better be paying attention to what is happening to SGI, because it looks an awful lot like they are making some of the same mistakes. Stay away from Intel processors, and stay away from Microsoft -- neither play fairly, and each has alterior motives for any deals they might bring to the table. Oh, and never try to gain market share by competing in the Wintel market -- most users are bottom feeders, where the profit margins are razor thin. And never rely upon Madison Avenue marketing bullsh*t -- throughput counts for a lot more than raw processor speed, and if your customers don't understand that, then educate them instead of trying to play the same game.
I really don't want this to be an eulogy for SGI -- hell, I cut my *nix "teeth" on IRIX and EFS/XFS. Hopefully, they will find a way to step back from the precipice, even if it means selling the company to someone else who will breathe new life into it -- just not Intel nor Microsoft.
Does it really have to be boiled down to the stark choice between one and the other? Why not accept that each OSS license has advantages and disadvantages, depending upon which side of the table you are sitting on.
Personally, I am conflicted on this issue. As a grateful user of OSS, the GPL guarantees that the software I use will continue to improve, even if I have to make the improvements myself or pay someone else to do the same. However, as a software developer in the USA, with all the bullhockey from the USPTO regarding software patents on what is either clearly "prior art" or nonsensical "limpet mines" placed by would be monopolists, I like the idea of keeping my code private, via the BSD license.
The real underlying question that needs to be asked is this: "By what process can the mess made by the USPTO regarding software patents be corrected, while still rewarding those few innovators whose genuine software patents can be acknowledged?"
Steve Jobs is killing off the PowerPC line because he couldn't get IBM to come up with a 3 GHz chip for their laptops, and for the DRM Intel has embedded in their new processor/chipset. Steve Jobs has "bought" hook-line-and-sinker the Intel marketing bullhockey about clock speed being "everything". That, and Apple's adoption of Intel's latest DRM roadmap will help keep OSX on Apple hardware, as well as please the MPAA and RIAA evil twins. A new Mac Mini using Intel's processor/chipset and built-in video could lower prices enough for Apple to compete with Dell and HP in the consumer market, even though the low end of the market has horrible margins.
Personally, I would rather have a dual core G5 laptop running at 2 or 2.5 GHz instead of an Intel-based Apple laptop running at 3 or 3.4 GHz. A fast disk drive and 2 GB of memory would more than make up for a bit lower clock speed, epsecially with todays *nix OSes. As far as desktop or server computers are concerned, I would rather have dual core SMP systems instead of single CPU speed demons. But then, I am one who would rather play games on a game console unstead of my working computer(s). I have been using SMP Intel-based computers for a decade, and even with cludgy MS OSes, two processors smooth out usability far better than a maxxed-out processor clock.
I predict that Apple shareholders will not be happy with Steve Jobs decision to switch from PowerPC to Intel three years from now. Being a niche player (with great margins) in the computer marketplace is a better prospect than gaining 10% marketshare with paper-thin margins. Why even try to compete with the low-ball pricing dreggs from Dell and HP, anyway?
Obviously, Google has far more money than they really know what to do with. A far better option in regards to the power lines is to use that right-of-way to run fiber optic, especially FTTP. If Google is really intent upon pissing money away, I could use a $20 Million USD low interest VC loan.
BPL offers none of the advantages of fiber optic (like low emmissions and high speed), and all of the disadvantages of a 2.4 GHz home wireless phone (interference with WiFi and other RF services). I am not saying that it could not be done. What I am saying is that with everything we already know about BPL (like low bandwidth, serious cross-talk, and RF interference with other services), it should not be done.
There have not been any new deaths due to terrorism in the USA after 9/11/2001 only because Osama bin Laden plans carefully. As you yourself stated, 8 years passed between the first attack on the World Trade Center, and the second one. I would expect that the next attack on the USA will be even more devestating than the World Trade Center.
The only link, prior to the USAs March 2003 invasion of Iraq, between Saddam Hussein and terrorism was the $25K USD bounty he offered to the family of each martyred suicide bomber that blew up Israelis. But now that we are there, we are considered infidel occupiers and interlopers who have despoiled Iraq. That makes us as much a target there in Iraq as our military and military-industrial complex has been as infidels on Saudi soil.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he also massed his troops on the border of Saudi Arabia, provoking a response from the USA and the Arab coalition Bush senior formed. Osama bin Laden had offered the Saudi royal family the use of Al-Queda's "militia" to drive out Saddam, which the royals refused.
But the Saudi royal family has been playing a dupliciuos game for the past 40 years -- they support the Wah'habbist sect as their "state religion", and the Wah'habbist religious police help keep the Saudi royal family in power. The Saudi royal family spends hundreds of millions of the West's oil money to spread the Wah'habbist jihad against the West throughout the world. They build (ugly) mosques and religious schools and fill them with Wah'habbist evangelists spreading their hateful bile. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Queda can more properly be thought of as the military arm of the Wah'habbist sect, rather than the "independent terrorist group" they are played up as in the press.
Osama bin Laden is now fighting the infidel USAs' troops occupying Iraq, just as they were fighting the USA on Saudi soil -- the military and the military-industrial complex that was "fouling" Islamic Saudi soil. The Wah'habbist sect's goal is to reconquor all territory once held by Islam. If you check a 15th century map of Europe, the Mediterranean would be an Islamic sea, and the Islamists would hold the Iberian Penninsula, and southern France all the way north to the gates of Vienna, and most of Russia all the way east to the Great Wall of China. That is also Osama bin Laden's goal.
There will be more, and more spectacular, terrorist attacks within the USA. The Bush administration has failed to secure our borders, to inspect all cargo entering our seaports, or to throw out the 28 million illegal aliens now in the USA. Terrorism is not Bush's primary focus, nor is defense of the homeland -- it is political advantage gained by favoring Hispanic minority interests, and the downward spiral of American wages through outsourcing and insourcing, which his corporate business interests (and primary campaign contributors) want. War is big business to government contractors big and small, and no war the USA has ever been involved in has provided as much opportunity for contractors to make that quick buck.
I didn't think that complete genetic material would have lasted long enough to properly sequence. Perhaps the geneticists will splice in some frog DNA to make up the missing segments, thus bringing us to the point of science emulating science fiction.
Just because a thing can be done, it does not necessarily follow that that thing should be done. (Slightly OT:) Such as the amoral decision as allowing GM plants out into the wild, without regard for the risk to the rest of the ecology that modern man depends on.
Netcraft confirmed that it is, indeed, dead. I guess that puts DECnet in the same catagory as BSD, then. DECnet is secure only if it remains on its own network, away from the INTERnet. Security through obscurity is not secure.
While I will agree that VAX and Alpha clusters CAN be reliable, it is due more to the OS than the hardware, VAXs particularly. Of course it does help if you have DEC engineers as employees, especially when one of those 8 level wirewrapped backplanes goes titsup. With the VAXs pretty much obsolete, hardware can be (relatively) inexpensive (but getting harder to find).
I could never understand HP's reasoning behind shutting down Alpha production -- it isn't like HP purchased a "captive and willing market" to migrate to HP's PA-RISC servers, or their Intel IA64 servers. Each was far inferior to the DEC product, OS and hardware alike.
A parallel can be drawn between the sentiments you expressed as a property owner forced to lock your doors, and the security situation the USA is in regarding illegal aliens crossing our borders.
Illegal aliens are a lot closer morally to the burglar that breaks into your home, then claims "squatter's rights" in order to stay. People and organizations that assist in the actions of those "burglars/squatters" are also breaking the law. It's called "aiding and abetting", or "conspiracy to commit". Why do these organizations get not only tax exempt status, but often even get financial aid from our government, instead of prosecution and prison time?
If a real life burglar comes thriough my door or window, I'm going to plug the m*f*er and claim self-defense. Political correctness has run amok in this country, because we're not only setting up food banks and welcome wagons for our "undocumented guests", we're also giving them our jobs. (Those jobs that aren't already being shipped overseas, that is.) Check out this news aggregator website: "www.cis.org" for more details.
Vienna is in Austria. You know, sorta like Germany, but with less touristy places... Okay, okay. Where Arnold the Governator is from. Venice is in Italy -- the western end of the Silk Road. Okay, okay. The city that is sinking into its own sewage system.
Jeez, Dubya, open a geography book once in a while, okay? Geography -- that's the study of places and how its history and culture is different (like Connecticut and Texas). Okay, okay. Book -- Those kinda square things with writing on the inside. A whole bunch of them are used like a wall covering where you live.
(And our lesson is done for the day. Now go outside and play some golf on the moors. Dress warmly, Dubya, 'cause it gets cold and damp in that place your at now (Scotland).)
Title is incorrect. "Killing this directive is dangerous", but the parent/. poster is not.
One is reminded of the infamous USAG John Ashcroft quote "In 1000 attempted terrorist attacks, we must be right 100% of the time. The terrorists need only be correct once."
Defeating the EU software patent this time is important, as it must be every time such a bill reaches the EU ministers. The monopolistic corporations that sponser such bills need only be successful once (, and then it passes). The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!
The parent and/. review reminds me about my time working as a sub-subcontractor on the Hubble Space Telescope. The development teams for the science instrument packages that were to upgrade (prior to the SST accident) the HST would check the output of Oracle database stored procedures by comparing trig functions with those from a 20 year old trig tables book.
If you thought proofreading the book in the grand- parent/. post book review was tedious, imagine having to proofread the data tables in that 20 year old trig book! The adjective "mind-numbing" keeps reappearing, like an "8-ball" answer...
"On a side note, I have to leave Texas before my children get in to school. I already had my "linux" fish ripped off my car once since I moved here."
The petty theft/vandalism you experienced with your auto might have been attributed to a childish prank (like collecting M-B hood ornaments) if it were not for the fact that you live in Texas.
I have heard it said that nothing motivates a Texan like either God or football (or both). And that a Saturday night visit to a West Texas whore- house is always followed up with Sunday morning visit with the Lord. Somehow, I think a Russian astrologist would "fit in" quite well in Texas.
Perhaps you should replace that "linux" fish with a penguin with a football under its wing. What you never ever want to do is advertise (via an auto decal) that you are a BSD enthusiast -- they will have you tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail -- it just isn't worth the risk.
There were some poor economic figures that I saw for the IT industry in Connecticut. 78,000 IT workers there were laid off in 2004. During that same time period, employers in that state requested (and got) 62,000 more H1-B visa slots. No statistics were available for the number of L1-A visas (foreign corporate employee coming here), but as more employers set up subsidiaries in China and India, these numbers are bound to go up.
2004 was also a banner year for state government IT outsourcing, as two thirds of the states now outsource "human services" like welfare rolls and unemployment benefits. NJ (God bless "the garden state") legislators actually moved to end such practices there, when it was discovered that the Wisconsin company they outsourced to couldn't or wouldn't handle the new increased workload -- and outsourced THEIR services to an Indian company.
Many IT jobs are being offshore outsourced. But the really disturbing trend is that many more domestic jobs are being "outsourced" to foreign workers moving here. What is even more depressing is that jobs other than IT are seeing similar changes, but without ANY VISAS. Disparate locales like Idahoe, Florida, and Indiana have had news accounts of employers who justify hiring illegal aliens for their construction jobs "because USA's construction workers are not willing to work for minimum wage".
We are watching the emminent destruction of the USA's "Middle Class" as employers race each other to squeeze wages into a death spiral. When only "Wal-Mart" jobs and "Wal-Mart" salaries are open to the American worker, only "Wal-Mart" products will be affordable to them (and those ARE mostly marked "Made in China").
(So now you know why, in spite of increased talk about terrorists slipping into this country, the current administration will not hire the manpower to secure the USA's borders. And why 43 employers were prosecuted in 2000 for hiring illegal aliens, but only 3 were prosecuted in 2004. And why the number of IT jobs available continues to decline, along with the salaries those jobs are now "worth".
"Bullshit. The speed limits havn't changed since the 50s, cars have." "How about human reaction times?"
Amen to THAT sentiment. Consider the range of both legal and illegal pharmaceuticals available these days, the other distractions like cell phones, GPS, and DVD players, and what many people to consider "normal" functions while driving (like reading a book or newspaper, shaving or applying makeup, or even changing clothes. (Yes, I really have seen people changing clothes, including trousers, at 65 MPH in rush hour traffic!)
The cars are more safely designed today, and many roads are more safely designed these days, but the loose nut behind the wheel seems to be worse than ever.
Bill "Maximus" Gatus fully understands the risks of being attached to the "hive" that is totally dependent upon Windows OS -- the viri, worms, trojans, and worst of all -- the blue screen of death. All that is really needed is that monthly mind meld with the "hive", AKA Windows Update.
Besides the direct human-machine interface, no doubt he also avoids MSN like the plague -- I know that I do. Because at that point, resistance to the siren song of the collective truly is futile...
Both jobs listed require on-site service calls, and neither includes travel time as billable. The SF area position includes mostly clients that can be readily accessed via BART and other public transportation. The LA position cannot make use of public transportation, because there isn't any such thing.
A billable 8 hour day in SF works out to perhaps a 10 to 12 hour day, whereas a billable 8 hour day in LA isn't even possible for that same 12 hours. Subtract the cost of the personal automobile, gas, insurance, and maintenence, and the fewer billable hours per day, and the pay differential for LA will barely cover the cost of the tranquilizer prescription needed to deal with LA traffic.
In other words, the difference in per hour salary is entirely consumed by the different working conditions between SF and LA.
IPv6 is the only way that every coffee pot, flower pot, copier, router and switch in the Pentagon will be able to be monitored once Dubya moves much of the Federal government to Texas.
Yes, NAT is good for all of those of us that currently have only one outward-facing IP address. But wouldn't you like your home's coffee pot, stove, refrigerator and HVAC to be readily accessible from the office, or while on the road?
I, for one, would welcome 100% adoption of IPv6 tomorrow. I'll take my 1024 IP addresses and be happy. I'm already ready (screw MSFT's OSes)!
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Amen, brother!
The corrupt politicians, corporate officers, and government bureaucrats, besides their criminal behavior, have violated something far more valuable than their ill-gotten gains -- the public trust. For them, death by lethal injection is far too easy a way out -- I would recommend a 1 hour public service message on TV that documents their crimes, a brief jury pronouncement of guilt, and a very public execution (perhaps the guillotine or draw-and-quartering). It would be the best reality show on TV.
Nothing quite like taking a logical argument to its illogical extreme. But I do accept your conclusion -- the death penalty should be reserved for only the most aggregious of crimes, and then only after sufficient judicial review to eliminate the possibility of an innocent person being executed.
I think, however, that you might agree with me that there are a number of non-violent crimes that have such an adverse affect upon the victim that demand, in the name of justice, far more strenuous prosecution -- things like "identity fraud", which are growing at such an alarming rate that it is obvious that the penalties, when caught and convicted, are not up to the social task of deterence.
Isn't it interesting how overbearing the Dept. of Homeland Security is when it comes to their desire to know everything about everyone, and with the power to lock up individuals for months or years at a time without regard for writs of habeous corpus?
At the very same time, nearly four years after 9/11/2001, the USA's borders are still unsecure (except when private citizens organized like the Minuteman Project shine the light of publicity), or that less than 5% of incoming container cargo is inspected. The Bush regime will not commit to the increased manpower necessary to do the job -- instead, billions of dollars are spent with defense contractors for high tech toys. UAVs might detect terrorists crossing our borders, but without the manpower to interdict them, we can only watch them disappear into the countryside. And anyone who thinks a $500 Million USD nutrino scanner that cannot find a nuclear bomb in a container cargo box, but can detect kitty litter quite well is not a monsterous joke, please explain your point of view. (And explain why that same $500 Million USD would not have been better spent on "boots on the ground".)
This country has 28 million illegal alien occupiers, most of whom our government knows little about. Bush's "amnesty" program and Social Security reform (including Bush's "Normalization plan") appear to reward these lawbreakers, as well as those employers that hire them. In 2000, 334 employers were prosecuted for hiring illegal aliens, but in 2004 that number dropped to 13.
The methods and purposes of the current regime in power seem less to do with countering terrorism than with curtailing individual rights, as well as draining the US Treasury for the benefit of government contractors. When the next major terrorist attack occurs in the USA, this regime needs to be booted out of office and prosecuted for "dereliction of duty" and "malfeasance". I personally would vote to put them in front of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, but that's only me.
Face it. Intel's Itanium is a special purpose processor that would never make its way into an everyday workstation -- except when bundled in "market-speak" also as a space heater. The 32-bit
"compatability" mode runs like PII-300.
OTOH, 64-bit MIPS and PowerPC and UltraSPARC do a credible yeoman's service with 32-bit applications, without the kooky VLIW pipeline and branch prediction issues for the compiler to deal with.
Having used 32-bit and 64-bit applications on both the MIPS and UltraSPARC platforms, I can tell you that overall performance and throughput do count towards usability. The ia64 cannot make such a claim. It has a place in specialized supercomputers dedicated to specific hand-coded applications, and little else. This is a fact that Intel tacitly admits -- just look at their depreciated "roadmap" for this processor.
Netcraft should predict its early demise -- they would be much more correct than their *BSD prediction.
Intel initially did a superb job of marketing the ia64 processor -- they scared the bejeezes out of DEC, HP, and SGI. So much hype from Intel, in fact, that each of these companies which already had 64-bit processors and a market for them, has abandoned their processor in favor of Intel's marketing muscle.
Intel then pulled the plug on much of their ia64 development "roadmap", apparently having created the desired disarray amongst their 64-bit competitors. To top this off, Intel's own marketing bullshit over processor clock speed meaning more than system thoughput shot themselves in the foot.
With no backward compatability to their ia32 architecture, little regard for seeding low cost development platforms to gain market share, and their own internal battle over "processor clock speed rules all", it is really no wonder that the ia64 has not gained widespread acceptance.
Reuse of code from previous generation processors is important -- IBM's PowerPC processor, SGI's MIPS processor, and SUN's UltraSPARC processor all offered backward compatability.
Intel's ia64 processor doesn't even garner respect from Intel. Why would any other computer OEM offer more respect than that?
Worst case scenario: One of the shuttle or booster-mounted cameras fall off and cause shuttle wing/leading edge damage.
Of course, additional wing inspections will take place while docked at the ISS, including a space walk. If damage should be found, there are some untested repair methods that "might" work. Short of evacuating the crew and either (1) casting the shuttle adrift away from the ISS, or (2) remote piloting the shuttle from Kennedy Space Center back to Earth, the crew would still be at some considerable risk. The ISS would be pretty crowded until multiple Russian Federation rescue missions could be launched, if the crew were to evacuate. It is my understanding that the ISS air conditioning/cooling system is already marginal, so living conditions on the ISS could deteriorate.
Apple is not buying into Intel only for their processor -- expect many/most of the first Apple x86 computers to be using Intel chipsets, including the embedded video. This will be an advantage to Apple's profit margins, while still offering some competition to the dregs from Dell and HP that the average comsumers shop for.
And just because the early Apple x86 Developer Platforms can run MSFT WinXP, do not expect this trend to continue. There IS a reason for Apple's embracing the Intel "solution", and that INCLUDES Intel's new embedded DRM. Not only will Apple's x86 release of OSX not run on commodity Wintel hardware, such as that from Dell or HP, but Apple's new x86 hardware will not permit other OSes to run on their platform. Apple will not risk retaliation from MSFT's possibly killing off the MS Office Product for OSX by spiking their endusers' need for MSFT VirtualPC. Right now, Apple's only venue to corporate IT tolerance is the MSFT Office Suite, which they will not risk losing. The adoption of Intel DRM will limit Apple users choices on how, exactly, they can run alternative OSes -- dual booting into WinXP, linux, or *BSD will not be an option. Running them concurrently through MSFT VirtualPC will be the only approved method. The embedded DRM will make certain of that.
Apple's deal/dance with the Wintel devil for the promise of a 10 - 15% market share will have costs that will be revealed over time. Both Intel and MSFT are coldblooded convicted monopolists, and neither should be trusted by Apple, Apple's shareholders or users.
Having mis-spent a season of my life with a circus, with a lot of exposure to the seamier side of carnival life, I believe the proper term is "shill", not "actor".
And considering the multi-year, multi-faceted MSFT attack on F/OSS, GPL, and GNU/Linux, I have no doubt that the MSFT "road show" in Minnesota must have had a carnival atmosphere. AFAIK, in every other aspect of "modern" civilization excepting politics and marketing, snake oil salesmen are run out of town or thrown in jail.
Why didn't this happen in Minnesota?
SGI had a very good OS (IRIX), and some outstanding hardware (Onyx, Octane), but they made some really bad decisions along the way. They paid top dollar for Cray Reasearch, got a few good things from the acquisition, and sold the company for pennies on the dollar. They owned the fab for what was, at the time, the best 32-bit and 64-bit processors around (MIPS), but was lured by Intel's marketing siren song for the Itanium, and sold their IP off. They not only built the most carefully engineered (Visual Workstations) Wintel workstations, they even bought one of their failing (also high priced) competitors. If they had stayed the niche player that they were, instead of reaching for marketshare in a portion of the computer industry that is cutthroat, they could have been another Apple Computer.
As it is, the Intel Itanium-based server market is not and will never be the be-all/end-all solution to their financial problems. (And exactly how many computer OEMs rely upon Itanium server sales for their existance?)
Apple Computer had better be paying attention to what is happening to SGI, because it looks an awful lot like they are making some of the same mistakes. Stay away from Intel processors, and stay away from Microsoft -- neither play fairly, and each has alterior motives for any deals they might bring to the table. Oh, and never try to gain market share by competing in the Wintel market -- most users are bottom feeders, where the profit margins are razor thin. And never rely upon Madison Avenue marketing bullsh*t -- throughput counts for a lot more than raw processor speed, and if your customers don't understand that, then educate them instead of trying to play the same game.
I really don't want this to be an eulogy for SGI -- hell, I cut my *nix "teeth" on IRIX and EFS/XFS. Hopefully, they will find a way to step back from the precipice, even if it means selling the company to someone else who will breathe new life into it -- just not Intel nor Microsoft.
Does it really have to be boiled down to the stark choice between one and the other? Why not accept that each OSS license has advantages and disadvantages, depending upon which side of the table you are sitting on.
Personally, I am conflicted on this issue. As a grateful user of OSS, the GPL guarantees that the software I use will continue to improve, even if I have to make the improvements myself or pay someone else to do the same. However, as a software developer in the USA, with all the bullhockey from the USPTO regarding software patents on what is either clearly "prior art" or nonsensical "limpet mines" placed by would be monopolists, I like the idea of keeping my code private, via the BSD license.
The real underlying question that needs to be asked is this: "By what process can the mess made by the USPTO regarding software patents be corrected, while still rewarding those few innovators whose genuine software patents can be acknowledged?"
Steve Jobs is killing off the PowerPC line because he couldn't get IBM to come up with a 3 GHz chip for their laptops, and for the DRM Intel has embedded in their new processor/chipset. Steve Jobs has "bought" hook-line-and-sinker the Intel marketing bullhockey about clock speed being "everything". That, and Apple's adoption of Intel's latest DRM roadmap will help keep OSX on Apple hardware, as well as please the MPAA and RIAA evil twins. A new Mac Mini using Intel's processor/chipset and built-in video could lower prices enough for Apple to compete with Dell and HP in the consumer market, even though the low end of the market has horrible margins.
Personally, I would rather have a dual core G5 laptop running at 2 or 2.5 GHz instead of an Intel-based Apple laptop running at 3 or 3.4 GHz. A fast disk drive and 2 GB of memory would more than make up for a bit lower clock speed, epsecially with todays *nix OSes. As far as desktop or server computers are concerned, I would rather have dual core SMP systems instead of single CPU speed demons. But then, I am one who would rather play games on a game console unstead of my working computer(s). I have been using SMP Intel-based computers for a decade, and even with cludgy MS OSes, two processors smooth out usability far better than a maxxed-out processor clock.
I predict that Apple shareholders will not be happy with Steve Jobs decision to switch from PowerPC to Intel three years from now. Being a niche player (with great margins) in the computer marketplace is a better prospect than gaining 10% marketshare with paper-thin margins. Why even try to compete with the low-ball pricing dreggs from Dell and HP, anyway?
Obviously, Google has far more money than they really know what to do with. A far better option in regards to the power lines is to use that right-of-way to run fiber optic, especially FTTP.
If Google is really intent upon pissing money away, I could use a $20 Million USD low interest VC loan.
BPL offers none of the advantages of fiber optic (like low emmissions and high speed), and all of the disadvantages of a 2.4 GHz home wireless phone (interference with WiFi and other RF services). I am not saying that it could not be done. What I am saying is that with everything we already know about BPL (like low bandwidth, serious cross-talk, and RF interference with other services), it should not be done.
There have not been any new deaths due to terrorism in the USA after 9/11/2001 only because Osama bin Laden plans carefully. As you yourself stated, 8 years passed between the first attack on the World Trade Center, and the second one. I would expect that the next attack on the USA will
be even more devestating than the World Trade Center.
The only link, prior to the USAs March 2003 invasion of Iraq, between Saddam Hussein and terrorism was the $25K USD bounty he offered to the family of each martyred suicide bomber that blew up Israelis. But now that we are there, we are considered infidel occupiers and interlopers who have despoiled Iraq. That makes us as much a target there in Iraq as our military and military-industrial complex has been as infidels on Saudi soil.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he also massed his troops on the border of Saudi Arabia, provoking a response from the USA and the Arab coalition Bush senior formed. Osama bin Laden had offered the Saudi royal family the use of Al-Queda's "militia" to drive out Saddam, which the royals refused.
But the Saudi royal family has been playing a dupliciuos game for the past 40 years -- they support the Wah'habbist sect as their "state religion", and the Wah'habbist religious police help keep the Saudi royal family in power. The Saudi royal family spends hundreds of millions of the West's oil money to spread the Wah'habbist jihad against the West throughout the world. They build (ugly) mosques and religious schools and fill them with Wah'habbist evangelists spreading their hateful bile. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Queda can more properly be thought of as the military arm of the Wah'habbist sect, rather than the "independent terrorist group" they are played up as in the press.
Osama bin Laden is now fighting the infidel USAs' troops occupying Iraq, just as they were fighting the USA on Saudi soil -- the military and the military-industrial complex that was "fouling" Islamic Saudi soil. The Wah'habbist sect's goal is to reconquor all territory once held by Islam. If you check a 15th century map of Europe, the Mediterranean would be an Islamic sea, and the Islamists would hold the Iberian Penninsula, and southern France all the way north to the gates of Vienna, and most of Russia all the way east to the Great Wall of China. That is also Osama bin Laden's goal.
There will be more, and more spectacular, terrorist attacks within the USA. The Bush administration has failed to secure our borders, to inspect all cargo entering our seaports, or to throw out the 28 million illegal aliens now in the USA. Terrorism is not Bush's primary focus, nor is defense of the homeland -- it is political advantage gained by favoring Hispanic minority interests, and the downward spiral of American wages through outsourcing and insourcing, which his corporate business interests (and primary campaign contributors) want. War is big business to government contractors big and small, and no war the USA has ever been involved in has provided as much opportunity for contractors to make that quick buck.
I didn't think that complete genetic material would have lasted long enough to properly sequence. Perhaps the geneticists will splice in some frog DNA to make up the missing segments, thus bringing us to the point of science emulating science fiction.
Just because a thing can be done, it does not necessarily follow that that thing should be done.
(Slightly OT:) Such as the amoral decision as allowing GM plants out into the wild, without regard for the risk to the rest of the ecology that modern man depends on.
Netcraft confirmed that it is, indeed, dead. I guess that puts DECnet in the same catagory as BSD, then. DECnet is secure only if it remains on its own network, away from the INTERnet. Security through obscurity is not secure.
While I will agree that VAX and Alpha clusters CAN be reliable, it is due more to the OS than the hardware, VAXs particularly. Of course it does help if you have DEC engineers as employees, especially when one of those 8 level wirewrapped backplanes goes titsup. With the VAXs pretty much obsolete, hardware can be (relatively) inexpensive (but getting harder to find).
I could never understand HP's reasoning behind shutting down Alpha production -- it isn't like HP purchased a "captive and willing market" to migrate to HP's PA-RISC servers, or their Intel IA64 servers. Each was far inferior to the DEC product, OS and hardware alike.
Best of luck to you and your company.
This is slightly OT. You've been warned.
A parallel can be drawn between the sentiments you expressed as a property owner forced to lock your doors, and the security situation the USA is in regarding illegal aliens crossing our borders.
Illegal aliens are a lot closer morally to the burglar that breaks into your home, then claims "squatter's rights" in order to stay. People and organizations that assist in the actions of those "burglars/squatters" are also breaking the law. It's called "aiding and abetting", or "conspiracy to commit". Why do these organizations get not only tax exempt status, but often even get financial aid from our government, instead of prosecution and prison time?
If a real life burglar comes thriough my door or window, I'm going to plug the m*f*er and claim self-defense. Political correctness has run amok in this country, because we're not only setting up food banks and welcome wagons for our "undocumented guests", we're also giving them our jobs. (Those jobs that aren't already being shipped overseas, that is.) Check out this news aggregator website: "www.cis.org" for more details.
"Choosy Italians Choose Linux! "
Dubya, is that really you on the other end?
Vienna is in Austria. You know, sorta like
Germany, but with less touristy places...
Okay, okay. Where Arnold the Governator is
from. Venice is in Italy -- the western end
of the Silk Road. Okay, okay. The city that
is sinking into its own sewage system.
Jeez, Dubya, open a geography book once in
a while, okay? Geography -- that's the study
of places and how its history and culture is
different (like Connecticut and Texas). Okay,
okay. Book -- Those kinda square things with
writing on the inside. A whole bunch of them
are used like a wall covering where you live.
(And our lesson is done for the day. Now
go outside and play some golf on the moors.
Dress warmly, Dubya, 'cause it gets cold and
damp in that place your at now (Scotland).)
Title is incorrect. "Killing this directive is dangerous", but the parent /. poster is not.
One is reminded of the infamous USAG John Ashcroft
quote "In 1000 attempted terrorist attacks, we
must be right 100% of the time. The terrorists
need only be correct once."
Defeating the EU software patent this time is
important, as it must be every time such a bill
reaches the EU ministers. The monopolistic
corporations that sponser such bills need only
be successful once (, and then it passes). The
price of freedom is eternal vigilance!
The parent and /. review reminds me about my time
/. post book review was tedious, imagine
working as a sub-subcontractor on the Hubble Space
Telescope. The development teams for the science
instrument packages that were to upgrade (prior to
the SST accident) the HST would check the output
of Oracle database stored procedures by comparing
trig functions with those from a 20 year old trig
tables book.
If you thought proofreading the book in the grand-
parent
having to proofread the data tables in that 20
year old trig book! The adjective "mind-numbing"
keeps reappearing, like an "8-ball" answer...
"On a side note, I have to leave Texas before my children get in to school. I already had my "linux" fish ripped off my car once since I moved here."
The petty theft/vandalism you experienced with
your auto might have been attributed to a childish
prank (like collecting M-B hood ornaments) if it
were not for the fact that you live in Texas.
I have heard it said that nothing motivates a
Texan like either God or football (or both). And
that a Saturday night visit to a West Texas whore-
house is always followed up with Sunday morning
visit with the Lord. Somehow, I think a Russian
astrologist would "fit in" quite well in Texas.
Perhaps you should replace that "linux" fish with
a penguin with a football under its wing. What
you never ever want to do is advertise (via an
auto decal) that you are a BSD enthusiast -- they
will have you tarred and feathered and run out of
town on a rail -- it just isn't worth the risk.
You are right on target.
There were some poor economic figures that I saw
for the IT industry in Connecticut. 78,000 IT
workers there were laid off in 2004. During
that same time period, employers in that state
requested (and got) 62,000 more H1-B visa slots.
No statistics were available for the number of
L1-A visas (foreign corporate employee coming
here), but as more employers set up subsidiaries
in China and India, these numbers are bound to
go up.
2004 was also a banner year for state government
IT outsourcing, as two thirds of the states now
outsource "human services" like welfare rolls and
unemployment benefits. NJ (God bless "the garden
state") legislators actually moved to end such
practices there, when it was discovered that the
Wisconsin company they outsourced to couldn't or
wouldn't handle the new increased workload -- and
outsourced THEIR services to an Indian company.
Many IT jobs are being offshore outsourced. But
the really disturbing trend is that many more
domestic jobs are being "outsourced" to foreign
workers moving here. What is even more depressing
is that jobs other than IT are seeing similar
changes, but without ANY VISAS. Disparate locales
like Idahoe, Florida, and Indiana have had news
accounts of employers who justify hiring illegal
aliens for their construction jobs "because USA's
construction workers are not willing to work for
minimum wage".
We are watching the emminent destruction of the
USA's "Middle Class" as employers race each other
to squeeze wages into a death spiral. When only
"Wal-Mart" jobs and "Wal-Mart" salaries are open
to the American worker, only "Wal-Mart" products
will be affordable to them (and those ARE mostly
marked "Made in China").
(So now you know why, in spite of increased talk
about terrorists slipping into this country, the
current administration will not hire the manpower
to secure the USA's borders. And why 43 employers
were prosecuted in 2000 for hiring illegal aliens,
but only 3 were prosecuted in 2004. And why the
number of IT jobs available continues to decline,
along with the salaries those jobs are now "worth".
"Bullshit. The speed limits havn't changed since the 50s, cars have."
"How about human reaction times?"
Amen to THAT sentiment. Consider the range of both legal and illegal pharmaceuticals available these days, the other distractions like cell phones, GPS, and DVD players, and what many people to consider "normal" functions while driving (like reading a book or newspaper, shaving or applying makeup, or even changing clothes. (Yes, I really have seen people changing clothes, including trousers, at 65 MPH in rush hour traffic!)
The cars are more safely designed today, and many roads are more safely designed these days, but the loose nut behind the wheel seems to be worse than ever.
Exactly.
Bill "Maximus" Gatus fully understands the risks
of being attached to the "hive" that is totally
dependent upon Windows OS -- the viri, worms,
trojans, and worst of all -- the blue screen of
death. All that is really needed is that monthly
mind meld with the "hive", AKA Windows Update.
Besides the direct human-machine interface, no
doubt he also avoids MSN like the plague -- I
know that I do. Because at that point, resistance
to the siren song of the collective truly is
futile...
This is an easy one to answer.
Both jobs listed require on-site service calls,
and neither includes travel time as billable.
The SF area position includes mostly clients that
can be readily accessed via BART and other public
transportation. The LA position cannot make use
of public transportation, because there isn't
any such thing.
A billable 8 hour day in SF works out to perhaps
a 10 to 12 hour day, whereas a billable 8 hour day
in LA isn't even possible for that same 12 hours.
Subtract the cost of the personal automobile, gas,
insurance, and maintenence, and the fewer billable
hours per day, and the pay differential for LA
will barely cover the cost of the tranquilizer
prescription needed to deal with LA traffic.
In other words, the difference in per hour salary
is entirely consumed by the different working
conditions between SF and LA.
IPv6 is the only way that every coffee pot, flower pot, copier, router and switch in the Pentagon will be able to be monitored once Dubya moves much of the Federal government to Texas.
Yes, NAT is good for all of those of us that currently have only one outward-facing IP address. But wouldn't you like your home's coffee pot, stove, refrigerator and HVAC to be readily accessible from the office, or while on the road?
I, for one, would welcome 100% adoption of IPv6 tomorrow. I'll take my 1024 IP addresses and be happy. I'm already ready (screw MSFT's OSes)!