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User: dbrutus

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  1. Re:Get real. on The Internet and The War · · Score: 1

    Playing the paranoid for a minute here, imagine intelligence agents who join the US military and attach their technology to our technology, making a gateway into SIPRNet for their hackers to come into.

    Frankly, I think that they've got contingencies on that one too but the problem's not as easy as it might look.

  2. Re:Better watch that EULA! on The Internet and The War · · Score: 1

    Actually I view the combat casualty = accident casualty rates as a real positive since it's achieved by driving the combat casualty rate through the floor.

    In some ways it's like the cancer 'explosion' myth. We have a cancer explosion because all the other things that killed people earlier have been cured so cancers get a chance to show up. When cancer is cured, something else will take its place as leading killer.

  3. Re:RTFA on The Internet and The War · · Score: 1

    I'm reasonably sure that Microsoft would be willing to set up a local replica of their online help facilities for a secure military network for the right $$$. I would suspect that the military would want its helpdesk to continue to function in the event that Microsoft help gets shut down via a DDOS attack.

  4. Re:Soldier Skills. on The Internet and The War · · Score: 1

    One of the things that everyone's overlooking here is that the armed forces are cut to the bone. Officers and soldiers *are buying their own technology* because there isn't enough money around for the government to buy it for them. That was clear enough from the article.

    As time goes on and the budget is better aligned to our needs we're going to end up buying a lot more ruggedized equipment that can stand 150 degree temperatures and be issued to everybody so that you can't just take out one node and the unit's out of touch. The same process of disaster repair that makes taking down the Internet so tough is going to be replicated with each individual soldier being a potential transmission node. The chain of command will be used to hold down traffic/noise but as links get blown out due to enemy action, that 2nd lt who ends up formally controlling a company will have the information flows necessary to do the job and the equipment necessary to handle those info flows.

    We're in a major transition period and the vision I outlined isn't going to happen for 10 years or so. The key is keeping our military lead so that as we move from a fragile network to a robust distributed network we don't get a lot of soldiers unneccessarily killed along the way.

  5. Re:Soldier Skills. on The Internet and The War · · Score: 1

    My wife (an internist from Romania) says the same thing. Nobody who studied in the US in her resident program knew how to properly use a stethascope. They were all shipping patients out for MRI and other expensive diagnostic tests when the foreign medical residents were listening and diagnosing the same case with a $150 stethascope because that was the highest level of technology available back home in most cases.

    I always thought the solution was simple, get HMO's to pony up $1,000,000 for a yearly prize in a stethascope using contest open to residents only. The medical debt burdened residents all across the US would jump at the chance to get their debts paid and have a nest egg to start a debt free private practice. The HMOs would get an appreciable down-tick in the use of expensive tests to diagnose simple conditions and make their money back very quickly. It would be win-win all the way around.

  6. Re:Apple CPU speed on PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple? · · Score: 1

    In other words, advantage Apple and with it on the upswing a portion will rewrite for cross-platform and improve mac availability.

  7. Re:So... on PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple? · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, it just means that a supercomputer isn't as super as it used to be.

    We need a new standard of excellence.

    What would be the performance characteristics of a superdupercomputer in gigaflops?

  8. Re:'Twice as fast' true or false? on PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple? · · Score: 1

    If almost all PCs used a 64 bit memory bus, they wouldn't have a 2GB RAM limit, yet most of them do. Find a motherboard for a couple of hundred bucks that can address 16GB of RAM and come back and tell me how easy it was to find this 'common' part. You'll find that on AMD's 64 bit boards and Itanium boards but that's it.

  9. Re:64 != (2*32) on PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple? · · Score: 1

    There are other improvements that will make this chip much better beyond the width of its registers. The 970 is supposed to have a much faster FSB. This has been a longstanding architectural bottleneck on the G4. The 970 will run faster clock speeds, something that Motorola had problems delivering in the G4. As you mentioned yourself, the addressable memory space will permit a huge decrease in memory paging and hard disk access, major contributors to slow system performance on all computer hardware.

    2x32 may != 64 but with all the other chip improvements, the end user will probably not agree.

  10. Re:Apple CPU speed on PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Quick everybody dump Intel and AMD stock! Their 64bit roadmaps demonstrate that they're pushing useless processors.

    64 bits are coming and Apple's wise decision years ago to go to PPC mean that today it has the easiest roadmap. Itanium requires lots of rewritten software code (not just recompiled) and a lot of people think AMD's solution won't last too long. In contrast, The Power ISA has always allowed 32bit code to run on 64bit processors with little speed penalty. You *can* recompile your application code but the only program that *has* to do it is the Operating System, and even then not all of it has to be recompiled.

    Apple's product roadmap seems to involve tighter and tighter coordination with IBM and their Power Series which serve many large Fortune 1000 businesses and are likely to continue to do so with 64 bit Power (and now PPC) technology.

  11. Re:Actually.. on Microbes Pass Valuable Gas · · Score: 1

    The AUTOnomy was out last year and this year they came out with some speculative tops for auto shows. A lot of ideas get thrown out at auto shows as big 'WOW' producers but actually make it into production vehicles with a lot less boldness. Auto shows are for demonstrating how wild you can get and to fire the imagination. The skateboard with bolt on top allows car designers to create wildly innovative designs, something that hasn't truly happened since we standardized on a steering wheel and pedal control system many decades ago.

    I expect that the all glass car will likely never make it to production but boy will it look very Buck Rogers at an auto show or 10.

  12. Re:I just can't resist... on Microbes Pass Valuable Gas · · Score: 2, Funny

    According to the article, they're thinking about using this for implantable devices like pacemakers. Imagine the consequence of too little sugar in the bloodstream then. "I'm dying for a snicker's bar" indeed. B-)

  13. Re:64bit on PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple? · · Score: 1

    64 bit also means that memory is not limited to a 32 bit address space. This will be welcome news to video editors and other RAM hogs as well as to the memory houses who need a sales boost.

  14. Re:Well... on Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed · · Score: 1

    A statewide recount was required by Florida law as the final results were within the statutorily defined margins. The recount was completed on time except for a 1 or 2 tardy counties (they had a week). In accordance with the law, the recounted results were certified and the process moved on to the next phase where individual potential injustices could be challenged.

    As for the SC's jurisdiction, the FL SC had wide, wide lattitude as far as what it could do in the situation. At least 4 justices had to agree to hear the case (this is called the Cooley rule) on the grounds that the court had jurisdiction and the questions raised by the case were worthy of being settled. The US SC voted 7-2 that the FL SC violated the US Constitution. 2 of the majority in this finding joined the dissenters as to remedy so most people remember Bush v. Gore as a 5-4 decision but as far as jurisdiction and unconstitutionality, it was a 7-2 decision, something that could not be properly called a partisan decision.

    When judges ride roughshod over the legitimate decisions of the legislature on the basis of broad equity powers, the court has attempted to overthrow the form of government. The US Constitution guarantees that the states will have a republican form of government and the US SC certainly has the power to step into any case where it is threatened.

    You are further in error on the situation if Florida had not settled matters. Both sides were perfectly clear on their threats. Both slates would have met, voted, and sent the results of their votes to Washington, the Republican slate certified by the legislature, the Democrat, not.

    Al Gore, as Vice President of the United States, was obligated to open all 51 vote packets and would likely have attempted to set aside the Republican slate's votes. A major parliamentary catfight would have ensued and at that point, Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 kicks in and the Congress would have elected the President and Vice President at their discretion. Due to the nature of the Congressional delegations that would be voting, you would still have ended up with George Bush and Richard Cheney in office.

    Once things Constitutionally hit II(1)3, the Supreme Court would have nothing to do with the election at all unless the Congress improperly followed the clear voting guidelines laid out in the text of the Constitution.

  15. Re:Even more interesting on Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed · · Score: 1

    Refined #1
    1a. If a standalone bill were to come before you to shorten copyright terms, would you vote for or against?
    1b. If a standalone bill were to come before you to lengthen copyright terms, would you vote for or against?

    The #2 answer translates to english as , yes, current policy is the best way to advance the arts and sciences via copyright/patent so no refinement necessary here.

    #3 has me a bit stumped on reformulation. I suggest public ridicule in the local paper to shake loose a better answer.

    The obfuscation defense depends on constituents not colluding in pinning down the Congressman/Senator, and that answers are not recorded, compared, and adjusted to in later rounds of the 'pin him down' game.

    I still think that it's possible to identify and reward our friends and punish our enemies on this nexus of issues.

  16. Re:This is just like Congress... on Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed · · Score: 1

    The parent I was responding to claimed that the US Congress doesn't do anything about piracy. They do. The US Navy and Coast Guard are not 100% reliable but neither is any police force or military in the world. Their human fallibility doesn't mean that the Congress is doing nothing.

  17. Re:Well... on Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed · · Score: 1

    The reason that electoral officials have partisan affiliations is so when they screw up people know who to punish up and down the ballot across all elections if they monkey around with the electoral system. If you have a 'nonpartisan' system the partisanship is still there but it's harder for the outsiders to make out who to blame when things go wrong.

    As for the legitimacy of the election, I remember a Congressional election (Gejdensen D-CT) where he won by 2 votes. A recount was held and he ended up with a margin of ~150. He took his seat and served his term without any noticeable deference to the other party because his win was very much within the margin of error.

    Democrats are coming off a multi-generation dominance spree in US politics. It seems they can't get their egos around the fact that they're turning into the secular minority party and are likely to stay that way for decades. We wuz robbed just doesn't cut it in the adult world of politics and is a loser with swing voters.

  18. Re:Well... on Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed · · Score: 1

    I can't believe 3 years into the Bush Presidency and you still don't understand that election boards are county institutions. Democrat counties have election boards that tilt Democrat and vice versa.

    The butterfly ballot was designed by a Democrat. The butterfly ballot was submitted to both the Dem and Rep county party organizations for comment and they signed off on the ballot as fair. Only *after* the polls had closed were nefarious interpretations put on the way the ballot was put together.

    Al Gore insisted on recounts in heavily Democrat counties which means that not only were these Democrat rich voting areas but the counting personnel would also be dominated by people in his party.

    Why don't you learn a little about Federalism. It's only been a major portion of the US govt since the Articles of Confederation.

  19. Re:Even more interesting on Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No, it's not time to spam them (not ever, really) but it *is* time to get them to lay down markers. Some questions I wish every Congressman and Senator was on record:
    1. Do you think the present copyright terms is too short, too long, or just right
    2. Copyright and patent are in the Constitution to "advance the progress of the arts and sciences". Is present policy the best we can do? If not, how should the rules be changed to do better?
    3. What's the maximum amount of time "limited terms" can last when it comes to patents and copyrights before terms are essentially permanent and the Constitution is violated?

    These are questions that are more open ended, are likely to be answered more thoughtfully absent a bill and a recent campaign contribution, and would be useful in future campaigns because it would allow the other party to criticise an officeholder if he later sold his vote for money. At that point, it's not some obscure issue that most normal citizens don't care about but going back on your word and being untrustworthy. That kind of damage is to be avoided if possible.

  20. Re:This is just like Congress... on Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed · · Score: 1

    The US Navy and Coast Guard both are charged with anti-piracy duties in their respective areas of competence. I also suspect a measurable amount of spy satellite time is tasked to this as well.

    Your tax dollars at work.

  21. Re:Nice Piece of flamebait there in the article on Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed · · Score: 1

    It's 2-1 so far. I expect that this freshman Republican is going to get an earful from the conservative intellectual elite which isn't crazy about piracy but does have a great respect for the original intent of the Constitution. If he stick's it's going to be against a lot of headwind inside his party.

  22. Re:Really.. on What if SCO is Right? · · Score: 1

    There is no wildcard pronunciation AFAIK, at least in english. It would be kind of neat to ask a linguist.

  23. Re:Yes it would hurt their case on What if SCO is Right? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually, it's not so clear, IMO. When you install RedHat Linux (for example) you are agreeing to hundreds, if not thousands of licenses. Every single individual project may have the identical GPL, but they are separate licenses AFAIK. If a compilation of hundreds, or thousands of separate programs are available on a few cds, a cease and desist order really shouldn't be against the compilation, but against the individually licensed subsections. In it's simplest manifestation it's the old RMS distinction between "Linux" and "GNU/Linux". In fact, if SCO insists in not distinguishing between the legally innocent GPL IP holders and those who are not, the non-infringing project leaders may have grounds for suit themselves, for defamation of character at least...

  24. Re:Really.. on What if SCO is Right? · · Score: 1

    And *BSD will inherit the earth...

  25. Re:Hum... on Why Panther May Tear Up Longhorn · · Score: 1

    You're not quite getting it. GNUStep is an OSS project with no connections to Apple. Think of it as WINE for Mac OS X. Not that the two projects are strictly related from a computing standpoint but for the end user they do similar things in theory, let you run software on an OS that the software was not written for. Unfortunately GNUStep is very much out of step right now but they're working on it. In 4-5 years, they may even have their act together enough that any Apple thoughts towards reverting to their bad ways (and they have had those instincts from time to time) will laregly be tempered by the happy warriors who keep GNUStep in sync with Cocoa and let cheapskates run Mac OS X Cocoa software without actually needing to purchase a mac.