"The US doesn't _need_ tarrifs, which is why it doesn't have any. "
That is abald-faced lie (you might also want to find out what the US is doing in regards to steel, it's the same back-stabbing).
The US government is very happy to force tarrifs, taxes, etc, on imports. They don't like it when an unrefined resource producing country like Canada has a competitive advantage, even though it makes more sense economically for both parties (as you pointed out: the US gets the resources it wants, Canada gets the refined goods it wants, companies make the money they want).
If you wonder why this situation exists, it is because the US government continues to pander to special interest groups. Why do they do this? Because, as the most recent election showed, voting for a republocrat is throwing away your vote -- only a few people, the special interest groups, get to decide the entire fate of the country.
While you can buy a video card that adds TV out to a computer, I'm making the point that you still can't buy a complete computer with DVD ROM, optical out, and component out for 200$ USD.
Unless you can answer that, you don't really have a point, because the Xbox does provide all that for that price.
"Forcing the government to release code under GPL is *removing* competition from the market. "
I fail to see how the gov't releasing code under the GPL is different from end-users releasing code under the GPL. It doesn't remove competition from the market any more than RedHat does by providing its own ISOs for download.
Ever notice how when you buy blank recording media, the RIAA gets a cut of the price, even though they do not manufacture, distribute, or own patents on the product in question?
I say that every time I buy media where I "pay the artists" (so to speak), I buy myself another copy of a song at a lower price, because that's the middle ground that seems to have been legistlated on me.
"His Libertarian opponent, Kelley Ross, doesn't stand a chance."
Probably because people like you assume that they can't win, because no one will vote for them. If no one votes for them, they can't win. It's a terrible cycle caused by the US two party system. Break out of it by voting 3rd party.
"For some unknown reason, it bacame popular to just ramble out your thoughts into an online journal. Whatever. "
Then why are you reading Slashdot? Have you read any of CmdrTaco's news postings?;p
Unless you have 28 years of once daily entries..
on
Blogger Hacked
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
MySQL is really overkill for your work. My changelog uses a Perl script which parses my entries into XHTML. It even nicely preserves my double-spaced end-of-sentences (I really crave that whitespace...). I'm starting to see some slugishness from ext3 because I'm over 1,000 entries now, but I'm planning on hashing my entries into a subdir for the year. That'll limit it to 365 entries per directory (give or take a leap year:)), allowing ext3 to serve my needs for years to come.
A good flat file system lets you reuse the VFS of Linux for smarter caching, and it's easy to NFS or SMB mount it via any machine on my private network. This also means that for someone to compromise my setup and mess with my changelog, they'd also have unrestricted access (pretty much) to my local network, meaning I'd have a whole lot more to worry about than losing my journal entries.
I pay 55$ CDN a month. This gives me voicemail 100 incoming/outgoing SMS/Email, 400 first-incoming daytime minutes, 200 daytime minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends (M-F, 09:00 to 18:00 are daytime). I can roam anywhere AT&T has support (Boston, NYC, Hawaii no problem -- I only pay for airtime), and SMS with any AT&T customer anywhere in the world is flat rate past my first 100. I'm glad about the SMS thing, because new plans require that you allow AT&T to SMS you messages that may be advertisements, in exchange for free incoming SMS (as many as you want).
My minutes don't roll over, not that I've ever gone past them:)
"Except that I could not see how to get the record serving and caching DNS on the same IP address since they both run on UDP 53."
Read what I wrote. You have TinyDNS running on 127.0.0.1, and have dnscache on your public IP. Then you have your DNSCache refer to your 127.0.0.1 for every query relating to your domains.
But you should understand that is a dumb way of having your DNS setup anyways. For networks that need DNS resolution, only cached queries matter. For sending out requests for domains you have authority over, you want to be using the latest DB dumps anyways. There is no excuse for having two opposed functions on one server, but djbdns does not prohibit this bizarre configuration.
"I would also like to point out that the US is in the 10th position as the other countries were tied for their spots."
If I come in first, and tie with another person in first, we are both in first. The next person is in third. There is no second place when two people tie for first. This is an accepted standard for ranking things. It happens at the Olympics, it happens in ratings. If you think the US is really in 10th because of ties, you are having a bad case of sour grapes. The only suggestion I can offer is to go get some cheese to go with it.
Creation or change in software is expensive, copying it is not expensive at all.
And it is a lot of work. But if you'll notice, a core group of 5 developers who communicate will with each other can create a lot of software if they put their minds to it.
"..that the GPL is restrictive. It does make it considerably more difficult for a company to profit from code released as GPL."
No. The GPL removes artificial scarcity, since anyone is free to ask for the source code and use it themselves. As I mentioned yesterday, you can easily make money off of it by putting your own time into. This is how Red Hat (et al) make lots of money on freely available software.
Software is digital. Its only non-negligible cost is its creation cost. You have to either reconsider your approach to it and live with a changed economy, or enforce artificial scarcity via something like DRM to make it fit into a traditional economy. It doesn't make it more difficult to profit, it merely changes the method by which you generate your profit.
I don't see RMS lobbying for EULAs to be more restrictive. I don't see RMS hovering over my shoulder, stopping me from using software. I don't see RMS setting up hooks in GNU applications that check, over the internet, how I'm using the software. I don't see RMS holding a gun to my head, forcing me to use the GPL for my code.
RMS has a licence. A licence he believes is the best for allowing a programmer to release software that is meant for use by people who are also programmers, without some company scooping it up and possibly using it in a way the programmer doesn't want. You can choose to use this licence if you want, or choose to not use his licence. There are other licences around (BSD, MozillaPL, et all), and they all have their own little bits and pieces that are different. Find one that suits your work. Use it. You, as the creator of content, have complete freedom to say in a licence how you want your work to be used until its copyright expires. No one is forcing you to use the GPL.
"Another thing, most people listen to the radio for local weather and traffic conditions. Satellite radio doesn't supple[sic] that need." to
"Another thing, most people watch TV for local weather and traffic conditions. Cable television doesn't supply that need."
Yet I find the weather channel easily on cable. I can also find breaking headlines easily as well. Besides, XM does not preclude flipping to FM for a local informational station.
I don't think the negatives you point out are enough to weaken the positives in most people's eyes.
Driving from Saskatoon to Calgary or Edmonton is an 8 hour drive (if you take it fast). You'll spend about 8 of those hours outside of any radio coverage.
XM is a panacea to people who drive between cities in Canada even a few times a year, because it makes it so much more bearable. Plus, the local radio stations have all consolidated under something called Rawlco radio (which puts out tho same bland shit as ever).
To provide caching, use DNScache. If your box is exposed to the internet, you likely don't want to be doing cache requests for the world. You can easily configure DNScache to broker for several internal (TinyDNS) systems. Note that only TinyDNS will set the authoritative flag; DNScache will not.
For dynamically updating zones, I use a small Perl DBI script which dumps zones from the DB into a directory. All files in the directory are sorted (via sort) into a main text file, which is hashed into data.cdb. I also have a big text file from the other DNS server scped over and included in the hash. The entire system is dynamic, with every important entry controllable from within an easily backed-up (and restorted) SQL server. Adding things like DynDNS to this setup would be trivial (all I'd need is another table for actual accounts, which allow people to modify their own zone files).
Best of all, because there is an order of magnitude less code running, TinyDNS is a lot easier to inspect for correctness. You can spend a couple of evenings reading over all the code for the package (even if it's not the best looking C code in the world), and really understand it.
It's really easy to setup a system which dumps your SQL database out to a TinyDNS file. TinyDNS is provably secure software. I would expect that you would use it on the root servers, since it's designed to work at very high levels of output/uptime, and be attack resistant to the point of being attack proof.
A virtual economy, like any economy, must barter in scarcity. After all, it is scarcity which forces the choices of economics on people.
The most obvious object which a virtual economy could manage is time. You can't turn time into an encoded form on a computer which can be played back at any moment. By farming out your own time that you are willing to spend on some problem, you could get some credit that would be useful to negotiate time off of someone else's hands for a task you need completed by a certain time. It'll be the ultimate in specialization, where you need only know one thing well, because you can use that skill to aquire the credits that you use to buy the time of other people who specialize is some task you need completed.
If this sounds a lot like your day-to-day job life, it is. But it breaks down if you look at it from a non-time perspective. Things that are not direct people services aren't scarce in a digital world. You need to move to something else for the creation and release of digital knowledge, something like the street performer protocol. Then the goods (which, when released, are not scarce) can have the creators of those goods still benefit.
Traditional models of scarcity and resource utilization do not apply in a virtual economy. Once one copy of something is released, infinite copies may be made at any point. The only thing you, as a content producer, can do is set how much you want to release that product. This is the next step (IMO) in the evolution of economic theory because it'll allow people to make things on their own, without a big corporate body (RIAA, MPAA) taking a cut off of everything. Prices will go down, and creations will go up.
"MS doesn't have niether competition nor federal mandates preventing computers from being restricted."
That sentence should be dragged out into the street and shot.
Too bad that Grammar guy isn't here to point out the tragedy of double negatives, improper spelling, confusing wording, and a run-on sentence all in one! It's like looking at a 16-car accident.
That's the tragedy of the commons. All it takes is one asshole to ruin it for everyone. The only solution is to regulate it, and the only way to regulate it online is to block ISPs of bad users, because ISPs are slightly harder to change than MAC addresses.
I'd rather have slower progressive scan than faster interlaced anyday. That's why I prefer monitors over TVs.
If you want better looking 3D acceleration, look into motion blur. Properly done, a blurred 25FPS render can look as good to the eye as a 120FPS static render with no blur. Don't believe me? Go watch a movie in a theatre. Each frame captures that captures a hand in motion tricks the eye into seeing it that much "clearer" than a faster camera would look.
Slashdot Mirror
"The US doesn't _need_ tarrifs, which is why it doesn't have any. "
That is a bald-faced lie (you might also want to find out what the US is doing in regards to steel, it's the same back-stabbing).
The US government is very happy to force tarrifs, taxes, etc, on imports. They don't like it when an unrefined resource producing country like Canada has a competitive advantage, even though it makes more sense economically for both parties (as you pointed out: the US gets the resources it wants, Canada gets the refined goods it wants, companies make the money they want).
If you wonder why this situation exists, it is because the US government continues to pander to special interest groups. Why do they do this? Because, as the most recent election showed, voting for a republocrat is throwing away your vote -- only a few people, the special interest groups, get to decide the entire fate of the country.
With many great features! Although the GameCube's beating it out right now, price/performance and library wise..
While you can buy a video card that adds TV out to a computer, I'm making the point that you still can't buy a complete computer with DVD ROM, optical out, and component out for 200$ USD.
Unless you can answer that, you don't really have a point, because the Xbox does provide all that for that price.
Ah..
But does that video card also include a DVD drive, component out, digital 5.1 out?
Can I play Xbox games on it?
"Forcing the government to release code under GPL is *removing* competition from the market. "
I fail to see how the gov't releasing code under the GPL is different from end-users releasing code under the GPL. It doesn't remove competition from the market any more than RedHat does by providing its own ISOs for download.
Ever notice how when you buy blank recording media, the RIAA gets a cut of the price, even though they do not manufacture, distribute, or own patents on the product in question?
I say that every time I buy media where I "pay the artists" (so to speak), I buy myself another copy of a song at a lower price, because that's the middle ground that seems to have been legistlated on me.
"His Libertarian opponent, Kelley Ross, doesn't stand a chance."
Probably because people like you assume that they can't win, because no one will vote for them. If no one votes for them, they can't win. It's a terrible cycle caused by the US two party system. Break out of it by voting 3rd party.
"For some unknown reason, it bacame popular to just ramble out your thoughts into an online journal. Whatever. "
;p
Then why are you reading Slashdot? Have you read any of CmdrTaco's news postings?
MySQL is really overkill for your work. My changelog uses a Perl script which parses my entries into XHTML. It even nicely preserves my double-spaced end-of-sentences (I really crave that whitespace...). I'm starting to see some slugishness from ext3 because I'm over 1,000 entries now, but I'm planning on hashing my entries into a subdir for the year. That'll limit it to 365 entries per directory (give or take a leap year :)), allowing ext3 to serve my needs for years to come.
A good flat file system lets you reuse the VFS of Linux for smarter caching, and it's easy to NFS or SMB mount it via any machine on my private network. This also means that for someone to compromise my setup and mess with my changelog, they'd also have unrestricted access (pretty much) to my local network, meaning I'd have a whole lot more to worry about than losing my journal entries.
I pay 55$ CDN a month. This gives me voicemail 100 incoming/outgoing SMS/Email, 400 first-incoming daytime minutes, 200 daytime minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends (M-F, 09:00 to 18:00 are daytime). I can roam anywhere AT&T has support (Boston, NYC, Hawaii no problem -- I only pay for airtime), and SMS with any AT&T customer anywhere in the world is flat rate past my first 100. I'm glad about the SMS thing, because new plans require that you allow AT&T to SMS you messages that may be advertisements, in exchange for free incoming SMS (as many as you want).
:)
My minutes don't roll over, not that I've ever gone past them
"Except that I could not see how to get the record serving and caching DNS on the same IP address since they both run on UDP 53."
Read what I wrote. You have TinyDNS running on 127.0.0.1, and have dnscache on your public IP. Then you have your DNSCache refer to your 127.0.0.1 for every query relating to your domains.
But you should understand that is a dumb way of having your DNS setup anyways. For networks that need DNS resolution, only cached queries matter. For sending out requests for domains you have authority over, you want to be using the latest DB dumps anyways. There is no excuse for having two opposed functions on one server, but djbdns does not prohibit this bizarre configuration.
I don't know where you get 3:4 monitors, but it sounds like a neat concept. I know it'd make working on large text files more fun :)
"I would also like to point out that the US is in the 10th position as the other countries were tied for their spots."
If I come in first, and tie with another person in first, we are both in first. The next person is in third. There is no second place when two people tie for first. This is an accepted standard for ranking things. It happens at the Olympics, it happens in ratings. If you think the US is really in 10th because of ties, you are having a bad case of sour grapes. The only suggestion I can offer is to go get some cheese to go with it.
"But worst of all, the software that decodes it REQUIRES the .NET framework to run -- so much for Linux!"
.NET framework?
This
Creation or change in software is expensive, copying it is not expensive at all.
And it is a lot of work. But if you'll notice, a core group of 5 developers who communicate will with each other can create a lot of software if they put their minds to it.
"..that the GPL is restrictive. It does make it considerably more difficult for a company to profit from code released as GPL."
No. The GPL removes artificial scarcity, since anyone is free to ask for the source code and use it themselves. As I mentioned yesterday, you can easily make money off of it by putting your own time into. This is how Red Hat (et al) make lots of money on freely available software.
Software is digital. Its only non-negligible cost is its creation cost. You have to either reconsider your approach to it and live with a changed economy, or enforce artificial scarcity via something like DRM to make it fit into a traditional economy. It doesn't make it more difficult to profit, it merely changes the method by which you generate your profit.
I don't see RMS lobbying for EULAs to be more restrictive. I don't see RMS hovering over my shoulder, stopping me from using software. I don't see RMS setting up hooks in GNU applications that check, over the internet, how I'm using the software. I don't see RMS holding a gun to my head, forcing me to use the GPL for my code.
RMS has a licence. A licence he believes is the best for allowing a programmer to release software that is meant for use by people who are also programmers, without some company scooping it up and possibly using it in a way the programmer doesn't want. You can choose to use this licence if you want, or choose to not use his licence. There are other licences around (BSD, MozillaPL, et all), and they all have their own little bits and pieces that are different. Find one that suits your work. Use it. You, as the creator of content, have complete freedom to say in a licence how you want your work to be used until its copyright expires. No one is forcing you to use the GPL.
Now get back under your bridge.
"Another thing, most people listen to the radio for local weather and traffic conditions. Satellite radio doesn't supple[sic] that need."
to
"Another thing, most people watch TV for local weather and traffic conditions. Cable television doesn't supply that need."
Yet I find the weather channel easily on cable. I can also find breaking headlines easily as well. Besides, XM does not preclude flipping to FM for a local informational station.
I don't think the negatives you point out are enough to weaken the positives in most people's eyes.
Driving from Saskatoon to Calgary or Edmonton is an 8 hour drive (if you take it fast). You'll spend about 8 of those hours outside of any radio coverage.
XM is a panacea to people who drive between cities in Canada even a few times a year, because it makes it so much more bearable. Plus, the local radio stations have all consolidated under something called Rawlco radio (which puts out tho same bland shit as ever).
To provide caching, use DNScache. If your box is exposed to the internet, you likely don't want to be doing cache requests for the world. You can easily configure DNScache to broker for several internal (TinyDNS) systems. Note that only TinyDNS will set the authoritative flag; DNScache will not.
For dynamically updating zones, I use a small Perl DBI script which dumps zones from the DB into a directory. All files in the directory are sorted (via sort) into a main text file, which is hashed into data.cdb. I also have a big text file from the other DNS server scped over and included in the hash. The entire system is dynamic, with every important entry controllable from within an easily backed-up (and restorted) SQL server. Adding things like DynDNS to this setup would be trivial (all I'd need is another table for actual accounts, which allow people to modify their own zone files).
Best of all, because there is an order of magnitude less code running, TinyDNS is a lot easier to inspect for correctness. You can spend a couple of evenings reading over all the code for the package (even if it's not the best looking C code in the world), and really understand it.
Why?
It's really easy to setup a system which dumps your SQL database out to a TinyDNS file. TinyDNS is provably secure software. I would expect that you would use it on the root servers, since it's designed to work at very high levels of output/uptime, and be attack resistant to the point of being attack proof.
Say what you will about D. J. Bernstein, he does have a very capable DNS solution available.
A virtual economy, like any economy, must barter in scarcity. After all, it is scarcity which forces the choices of economics on people.
The most obvious object which a virtual economy could manage is time. You can't turn time into an encoded form on a computer which can be played back at any moment. By farming out your own time that you are willing to spend on some problem, you could get some credit that would be useful to negotiate time off of someone else's hands for a task you need completed by a certain time. It'll be the ultimate in specialization, where you need only know one thing well, because you can use that skill to aquire the credits that you use to buy the time of other people who specialize is some task you need completed.
If this sounds a lot like your day-to-day job life, it is. But it breaks down if you look at it from a non-time perspective. Things that are not direct people services aren't scarce in a digital world. You need to move to something else for the creation and release of digital knowledge, something like the street performer protocol. Then the goods (which, when released, are not scarce) can have the creators of those goods still benefit.
Traditional models of scarcity and resource utilization do not apply in a virtual economy. Once one copy of something is released, infinite copies may be made at any point. The only thing you, as a content producer, can do is set how much you want to release that product. This is the next step (IMO) in the evolution of economic theory because it'll allow people to make things on their own, without a big corporate body (RIAA, MPAA) taking a cut off of everything. Prices will go down, and creations will go up.
"MS doesn't have niether competition nor federal mandates preventing computers from being restricted."
That sentence should be dragged out into the street and shot.
Too bad that Grammar guy isn't here to point out the tragedy of double negatives, improper spelling, confusing wording, and a run-on sentence all in one! It's like looking at a 16-car accident.
That's the tragedy of the commons. All it takes is one asshole to ruin it for everyone. The only solution is to regulate it, and the only way to regulate it online is to block ISPs of bad users, because ISPs are slightly harder to change than MAC addresses.
I'd rather have slower progressive scan than faster interlaced anyday. That's why I prefer monitors over TVs.
If you want better looking 3D acceleration, look into motion blur. Properly done, a blurred 25FPS render can look as good to the eye as a 120FPS static render with no blur. Don't believe me? Go watch a movie in a theatre. Each frame captures that captures a hand in motion tricks the eye into seeing it that much "clearer" than a faster camera would look.