Uh, cygnus dominates gcc and glibc development and have for a long time before they were part of Red Hat. It doesn't say anything about their commitment to Linux that they haven't axed their Cygnus acquisition so they are still leading the work on it. I think the Cygnus people get paid money by companies, under contract, to support these tools for them and it doesn't exactly have anything to do with the rest of Red Hats business model.
Gnome, yawn...me being a KDE user I could care less.
Your mechanism also fails to differentiate between the GOOD Red Hat before they went public and started worship quarterly results, and the new BAD red hat who could care less about anything that isn't profitable.
"dedicating 1/5th of their income to R&D."
That is kind of typical percentage for most tech companies. Wall Street would probably take a dim view of a tech company that didn't invest in R&D, because they wouldn't have any differentiator from their competitors. How benevolent it is depends entirely on where its going and how much of it they are trying to make proprietary one way or another.
"This is the company trying to turn Linux in to the most expensive operating system, not the most economical."
To expand on this more you know there is a problem with Red Hat when Microsoft and SUN can point to them and say Linux is the more expensive option and actually have a plausible arguement when they say it. They are giving a Linux a bad name on the value proposition front and that was its biggest asset and the thing thats fueled its growth.
I know there are big companies that need all the support and are willing to pay for it, well let them throw money at Red Hat, but I think its time Red Hat stop being synonymous with Linux in the U.S. They have painted themselves in to a niche, and its a niche which deserves to be ignored by tech savvy people like the denizens of slashdot who are building systems and servers and know they don't need to throw money at Red Hat for most of what they are doing.
I really with all the people working on Fedora would migrate to Debian or Gentoo and leave Red Hat high and dry and make them actually pay people to do the work they are currently exploiting.
Kyoto as urgently as it is needed is a deeply flawed concept precisely because it doesn't uniformly limit emissions around the world. In particular, as I last understood it, it doesn't limit greenhouse gasses coming out of China and India because they are "developing" nations.
Kyoto shows a mind set that predates globalization because in the modern age polluters can just migrate to countries that don't sign it or to those who are given a blank check to pollute under it, namely "developing" countries.
If post-industrialized countries have to limit emissions and China doesn't it will just further accelerate the migration of heavy industry to China because not having to limit emissions will be just another competitive advantage for China, like it needs anymore.
If China isn't limited it will churn out enough greenhouse gases to make up for and probably surpass the savings in all of the U.S., Japan, Russia and Europe.
To make this work it in fact has to be globally enforced and prevent polluters from just migrating to a country where terms are lax or unenforced. By moving to such a place they gain a competitive advantage over companies who are in a place they are fighting the constraints in wide open markets that usually means the win in the marketplace.
Exactly. Why is this news that one company behind one distribution is relaunching one of their marketing tools. Thank you/. for giving them the free plug.
This is the company trying to turn Linux in to the most expensive operating system, not the most economical.
This is the company the launched a subscription update service for its users and in less than the duration of a one year subscription cut the legs out from it, and the subscribers who paid money for it, and abandoned the whole flagship desktop product and their loyal users.
Well they didn't exactly abandon it, rather they unloaded it on unpaid labor who do all the work for them and they just control, market, exploit and profit from it. Nice business if you can pull it off.
Me I used to go out of my way to buy Red Hat box sets just to support a company that I thought was one of the good guys. No more. Gentoo for me.
As others have said I doubt their is that big of a pay discrepancy. But it is true that visa workers are VERY likely to do whatever it takes to keep their job because if they lose it, without another to immediately replace it, they have to pack and get out of the country quickly or turn illegal. H1B workers really are indentured servents in many ways and thats a key reason companies really like them. Its the same reason companies prefer illegals for low wage jobs. They know they have those workers by the balls and they can screw them in numerous ways.
Visas also insure workers have a stronger motivation to perform, to work more hours, and complain less. They are also probably going to be less demanding in reviews unless they have a job lined up elsewhere. Even if they do get paid the same but they may well put in more uncompensated overtime than someone not worrying about a visa. Most of the Indians on Visa I've worked with racked up way more hours than their American counterparts.
Its also a fact the American education system is for the most part a disaster, companies know, they frequently rant about it so they shop for people from countries where its not as broken as it is in the U.S.. India seeks out all the kids with technical aptitudes and they grow them in to top flight tech workers. Their system really values them. The U.S. culture and education system by contrast values:
A. Ruthless businessmen with a penchant for making money by whatever means necessary B. Athletes
India favors academics by a wide margin over athletics, and I'm guessing places like China, Russia and Ukraine do too. I gather, and maybe someone from India can confirm, that a star academic achiever is going to have the status in school reserved only for star athletes in the U.S. Athletics, outside of cricket, just doesn't have any value in India. Their priorities are focused on math, science and computer skills especially for kids who've entered a technical or science career path.
I'm also willing to conjecture that with wealth and affluence most Americans and Western Europeans are getting lazy, arrogant, spoiled, whatever you want to call it. Most young people in America simply aren't driven to academic achievement the way that kids are in countries where they are surrounded by really grinding poverty. I also don't think there is the same drive towards academic achievement among American there was 50 years ago before the U.S. acquired its world dominating wealth and power. Maybe its the price of empire coming in to play, decadence and corruption.
I'm afraid Alan, being Orthodox Jewish, is more than a little biased. Here is one assault on his work, especially the extent to which he plagarized Peters, though Alex needs to be taken with a grain of salt sometimes.
For the other side you never hear, look for stuff by Ilan Pappe. He is Jewish and Israeli and it takes balls to be that and try to tell the Palestinian side of history, a lot more balls than it takes to be Dershowitz.
A problem is you will flat never hear the Palestinian side in the "West". They have no media voice. The Palestinian side is completely suppressed by governments, media and Jewish groups who start screaming "antisemitism" or "terrorism" at anything that isn't pro Israel, and it works. By contrast you will see a non stop pro Isreali spin in both media and government. It was obligatory in the debates for all four candidates to fall over each other trying to be more pro Isreal than the other guys.
"Palestinians can blame generations of their leaders"
They certainly can blame them, and its deserved, but it wasn't entirely their fault that their homeland and in most cases homes were taken from beneath their feet, often under the threat of violence. If they'd had better leaders, better funding and better organization maybe they would have stopped it. It isn't isn't grow great leaders in the poverty and desperation of the west bank and refugee camps. Their young people are almost inevitably radicalized and desperate.
Not sure of its authenticity but Albert Einstein among others apparently wrote to the New York Times in 1948 condemning Begin and the extremist party that founded Israel. Wish I had an authoritative reference and hope it just isn't fantasy that circulates the Net sometimes:
Letters to the New York Times
December 4, 1948
New Palestine Party Visit of Menachem Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed
TO THE EDITORS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin's political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.
Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin's behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.
The public avowals of Begin's party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real c
"As for what's happened to Dean since the primaries, I have no idea what's up with that."
It wasn't exactly "since the primaries" when the problem started. It started before the Iowa caucus. One obvious problem, he went from having no chance to being a front runner and thinking he could win the thing. When he did he started playing the game instead of being the rebel to try and seal the deal. He forgot he was where he was because he was a rebel.
I'm also not entirely sure the current Dean isn't the real Dean. I suspect Trippi and the Deniacs may have bent Dean to their ideals and it wasn't exactly the real him. When he realized he might actually win the thing he reverted to standard politican...sellout. He is a Yale grad, like so many presidential and VP candidate these days, and a son of a Wall streeter so he's not exactly from outside the establishment.
"I'm not so sure it's possible to be even-handed and on the side of justice"
I think you are suggesting Israel is more on the side of Justice than Palestine and I really don't think thats true. Both sides are very much in the wrong and have been since the conflict started early in the 20th century. The problem comes when the U.S. gives Israel blank checks even when they do things very wrong, because the get worse. For example the current plan to grab more of the West Bank, build walls, and further ghettoize the Palestinians. Many jews remember ghettos from Poland and World War II. They shouldn't inflict them on other people with their collective memory.
I agree it is a good thing Arafat is gone. He had his chance at the end of the Clinton administration and he blew it. He apparently could only define himself as rebel and guerilla and not peacemaker or statesman.
"I thought he did a disservice by running."
I think the mistake he made was running for President in the first place. Its an exercise in futility and does more harm than good since the media can paint him as a "spoiler" and "fringe" and marginalize him along with the rest of the third party candidates. Sure he gets some press time but I'm not sure its worth the price considering how the press spin it against him.
He would be far better served going back to attacking and advocating issues, the drug companies would seem perfect for him after Medicare "Reform" and Billy Tauzin and Vioxx.
Another option would be for him to run for Congress in a really liberal district in Vermont or California where he has a chance to win, and if he did start a relentless crusade from there against corruption and pork. Not sure he could change anything but he could make the fat cats in Congress a little miserable and nervous. If, by some miracle, he could get a senate seat from Vermont then he would have both parties by the balls.
A most insightful post though I wager its not easy to find the niches you are describing, get a product to fill them and get your product in the face of the people with the niche to fill. It would seem pretty likely you probably had to work in the particular industry for a corporation and hope the don't put enough tentacles in you to prevent you from going out an exploiting the expertise you developed while you were there.
Its confined to pounding away at a keyboard posting on/. at the moment:).... and I have a keen appreciation for how little that actually counts for. Its good practice, though the right wingers on here tend to be pretty lame, and not good adversaries(most of which are listed in my Foes, i.e. Twirlip of the Mists). Maybe I should hang on a right wing site:)
Only political cause I've liked lately was the Deaniacs and unfortunately a liberal movement is doomed in the U.S. at the moment. I also unfortunately dislike about half of the liberal agenda, especially the "big government" part. Dean also proved to be unworthy of his movement especially when he entered the period where he was a front runner and kissing the asses of Carter, Gore and Kerry and is now apparently aspiring to head the DNC. I do admire him for saying the U.S. should treat Israel and Palestine with an even hand since that is the real third rail in American politics, he grabbed it and...
Unfortunately people with political insight are pretty much confined to back stage manipulators, columnists and writers. As soon as you throw your hat in the ring publicly you either become a non-insightful sellout or a liar, because thats what you have to be to win, or you are just raw meat for the attack dogs(other politicians, the media, the pundits, the corporations).
Ralph Nader is a great role model, his message isn't much different than the one I just pitched, about the U.S. government being a wholly owned subsidiary of the big corporations. Ralph Nader did great things in his youth. I think he caught the establishment by suprise and used boundless energy, a squeaky clean lifestyle and a small army of activists to kick the legs out from under them for a while, especially GM. There were a lot more, smarter and better activists back then and most have sold out since. This day and age nearly all Americans are raised to be politicaly clueless and to just chant the slogans of one of the two parties, increasingly just one of the two. If you fast forward to today Nader has been painted in to the lunatic fringe, marginalized and is largely impotent like all the current crop of third party candidates and non right wing activists.
The establishment has learned how to deal with and dispose of activists these days. That is kind of the saddest thing. Michael Moore still gets a few good shots in, though they you have to take liberal doses of salt with them, so maybe there is some hope though I'm not sure how often he actually wins in the end.
I be inclined to say patents are the least of your problems being an independent. The bigger problem is finding a niche where you can make money.
Thanks in particular to the Internet you are in a vice. On one side you have proprietary software companies with potentially vast resources filling most of the big niches, with big marketing clout. If you found a niche, and it was big enough, and it was lucrative they will probably go after you or other lone coders will.
The other side of the vice is open source. If you come up with some cool proprietary software, the open source community will see it and be hacked off that its proprietary, start an open source knock off for free. Since you, the loan coder managed. to develop it, a few dozen open source developers can look at what you did, reverse it and kill you with something free. Its the curse of the Internet that all software is now instantly available to millions of programmers around the world to pick apart and knock off.
I'd be inclined to say, as much as/.'ers will freak, that if you have a great idea, the lone coders saving grace would actually be to patent it and if its really good hope you can sell the patent to a big proprietary company or sue the ass off of anyone that uses it, think Forgent and JPEG.
The other surviving lone coder niche is to do contract work for people who need one offs of things. Unfortunately you wont get rich doing it, you might just make an OK living if you expertise in a niche in demand and get yourself in front of potential customers.
Oops, meant CEV not CRV. Crew Return Vehicle was a previous boondoggle emergency reentry vehicle for the ISS which once again wasted money for a while until someone realized how expensive and useless it was and mercifully killed it. Need a score card for all the worthless projects NASA wastes money on, then kills.
"we would have a radically different society than the one we "enjoy" now."
If's, and's and but's were candy and nuts it would be a merrier Christmas for all.
I appreciate the sentiment and the idealism but there are structural barriers that create inertia that is working against you. The main one being most American's could care less what Congress does day in, day out. They are two busy fixating on reality TV and celebrity trials. Most Americans don't have a clue what Congress, the President or the FCC is doing to them. Corporate execs and lobbyists now exactly what they are doing and how to manipulate them and how to make a LOT of money doing it. They can spend a few million dollars in the right place and reap billion dollar windfall profits from our tax dollars.
"(or pounding away at a keyboard posting on/.)"
This seems to be what you're doing:)
" I think that it was public outcry directed via congress that forced NASA to reevaluate their decision"
Yes and it is an example of how the bureaucracy and coporations will probably thwart the public outcry in the end. Some opportunistic companies saw a chance to make some easy cash on it, and play with cool toys, so they pitched this cool sound robot thing. NASA can waste some money on it for a while, declare it hopeless, cancel it and say , "Sorry guys, we did our best but its just impossible and we can't afford it", or they can launch it, watch it fail and say "oh well". They conveniently gloss over they could just do another shuttle repair mission, like they've already done twice, and actually do something useful with the shuttle, but they seemed determined to make the shuttle expensive and completely useless too so no one will complain when they eventually kill it. Then they will work on the CRV for a while and it will become expensive and useless and it will eventually be killed too. The cynic in me says this is all just George W's way to kill the space program because he hates NASA(rightly so since they deserve to be despised), science and spending money on it. I wager CRV and the moon and mars was more a plan to:
- sew up votes in the crucial space coast in Florida in 2004 - distract space enthusiasts while he slowly kills the space program.
"The FCC *will* change its tune if the public outcry is great enough"
I don't think there is ANY chance the FCC will change its tune though there is a slim chance Congress might step in and change it for them. They sure didn't change their tune on media consolidation in the face of truly massive public outrage.
I think its a little naive to think a bunch of slashdotter's are going to send letters to congressman and change their course. If you want to get on the list of people your Congressman actually listen to you need to accompany your letter with a $1,000 campaign contribution.
"but CORPORATIONS DON'T VOTE!"
Yea but they do control the media and the news most people use to get their view of the world so they do for the most part control the minds of the people that vote. They pay for the ads both commercial and political that decide how most people think these days. Some people are breaking off from this corporate and media hegemony, thanks in particular to the Internet, but I'd say we are a tiny minority.
Most importantly corporations pay tons of money for the lobbyists who actually control Congress. For example when the Medicare "Reform" bill was on the floor of the house it wasn't citizens out in the lobby of the capital building expressing their opinions to our Congressman, it was lobbyists mostly for the drug and healthcare industry. In the case of Rep. Billy Tauzin they gave him a multimillion dollar job as a drug industry lobbyist after he delivered "Medicare Reform" to them on a silver platter. the name is kind of a euphemisms since its really just a scheme to transfer our tax dollars in to the pockets of the drug industry.
I'd say bottomline is it would have to be a really impressive letter writing campaign to change their course, if there is no money behind it. But if anyone can pull it off its/., its just a major uphill battle.
"Look only to the recent bruhaha over the Hubble Space Telescope"
Last I recall the bruhaha resulted in a bizarre mission to use a robot to try to repair Hubble. There is a good chance its going to end up costing at least twice what an ordinary shuttle repair mission would cost, and there is a high chance the mission will either get cancelled or fail after spending a staggering sum of money, like 2 billion dollars, so in the end those fond of pork will be the only true winners. I don't think I would really call it a success story for public involvement just yet. Here is a pretty good editorial from Space Daily on NASA's penchant for squandering money on doomed programs and the Hubble repair mission smacks of being one.
I'd be inclined to say you are both right and wrong. Here is a pretty good write up on the Afghanistan war. Its is obvious that the war on the ground was waged by special forces working with local militias. Its nearly impossible to sort who among them were CIA and who were Army. It is a certainty the CIA had a major contingent there and that its a normal career path to go from military special forces to the CIA field operations so they are nearly synonymous.
I recall a documentary on the prison uprising where CIA agent Michael Spann was killed showing Americans in civilian dress coordinating the battle, and threatening the news crew for filming them. I'd make a guess they were CIA and not Army.
Here is an article on a couple more CIA agents killed in Afghanistan, they were former special forces soldiers.
Obviously the air war was coordinated from CENTCOM but I imagine there was a mix of CIA and special forces telling them where to bomb.
On the other hand, I don't think I'd say that the plan for the Afghanistan war was really any better than the one in Iraq. They mostly just scattered the Taliban and Al Qaida and didn't really kill them, kind of like Fallujah. Its not like the countryside in Afghanistan is any more under control than the Sunni triangle. Its just a smaller country, a smaller war, and there is a much smaller U.S. contingent that tends to huddle in a few well secured areas so it doesn't make the news as much as Iraq.
Doctors Without Borders has pulled out of both Iraq and Afghanistan because they are both considered dangerous and that is a group that rode out the duration of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Speaking of which that was a war in Afghanistan that was run entirely by the CIA which is another indicator they were probably major players in this war. They used indigenous forces in that war to, and interestingly enough, after they were armed, funded and trained by the U.S. they turned in to the nucleus of Al Qaida.
Re:That's the way it should work.
on
Colin Powell Resigns
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"When it became clear that Iraq wasn't going to comply with international disarmament demands and demands to stop supporting terrorism"
In what way was Iraq not complying with disarmament demands at the time of the invasion, again. There were inspectors on the ground in Iraq, inspecting. There were nits to pick like the precise range of short range missiles, so the inspectors were in the process of destroying them to be sure, but Iraq was obviously not in a major breach justifying a major war and occupation. I know we've whipped this horse to death Twirp but you keep pretending like there was an actual case for invading Iraq, as articulated by te Bush administration, despite the fact pretty much everyone admits there wasn't now.
As for "supporting terrorism", yes Iraq supported Palestinian groups, groups the U.S. has unilaterally labeled as "terrorist", but I don't recall that being the subject of the original surrender terms or any U.N. sanctions. If there is maybe someone can point me to the wording. Most Arab countries support Palestinian groups especially Saudi Arabia and Iran so if that is your standard for taking down governments you better draft some more troops because they are going to be busy.
If you are referring to ties between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists once again there is no evidence of any such link. Saudi Arabia and Iran had far more connections to them than Iraq ever did.
Its been pointed out in other threads, Opera is almost certainly making all their money from licensing their embedded browser to smartphone, PDA and assorted other device manufacturers. It is a major contender in that space, and the device manufacturers no doubt pay them royalties for every device they sell, or a big lump sum.
I'd have to agree Opera is a lost cause on the desktop. Can't see anyone with a brain actually paying money for it when Firefox, Konqueror, Safari and IE are all free. Making money on desktop browsers went the way of the dodo about the time IE came out for free and Netscape was still trying to charge for Communicator.
Can't see using the free Opera version, because as I recall it has adware in it and it just isn't really all that special a browser.
You don't have to have a union to STRIKE. That sounds like the solution to this problem but you do have to get everyone on the same page which is hard and dangerous, and you have to realize you are gambling big on a big win, or destroying your career. Of course when your future career is like this you are better off without it in the long run because it will destroy you physically and mentally. If you've never been severly burned out which is what happens inevitably from this kind workload it permanently damages you mentally and physically.
If you were to strike you have to do it at a point in the project where you have the management by the balls. If they lose their whole staff, and they can't finish with scabs, their schedule and their investment goes in to the dumper. Even with scabs there is a pretty good chance the quality will go in the dumper just because of the time to get them up to speed and they probably wont be able to fix all the bugs in other peoples work.
I know everyone hates unions, deservedly so because they were so thoroughly corrupted over the years. But this is a cautionary tale because this is what life was like for most workers in the early 1900's before unions came on the scene and compelled reasonable work hours and pay.
This is also a cautionary tale of the consequences you can expect from a long duration Republican domination of the government. The Republican party is consistently pro business and anti labor and they are promoting exactly this kind of environment. The euphemism they use for it in the economic reports is high "productivity". It means milking worker for as much work as possible for the lowest wage possible.
Free trade, outsourceing, and turning a blind eye to illegal aliens are all tools designed to pressure labor in to caving to this kind of work environment. Smartly run businesses who want talented, productive, happy workers wont do it, but most businesseses aren't smart and are looking to exploit labor to maximize their extremely inflated salaries and shareholder return. It should be noted passive shareholders don't do any work, they have money, they invest it, they make more money. In an era of plunging capital gains and dividend taxes they ease with which they make money this way and accumulate wealth is accelerating. Meanwhile workers are working more hours, for lower wages and still shouldering a huge burden in income and payroll taxes.
American's poopoo the word and pretend like its a fairy tale but this is what's called class warfare and the elite class is winning the war, big time.
I stand corrected. You are correct it was apparently done via EPA regulation and it appears the oil companies did in fact lobby to put it in there in the first place though now they deny it. It was either Ethanol or MTBE, Ethanol presumably being much the better of the two but the oil companies got the EPA to do MTBE. And yes it is a toxic byproduct of gasoline refining they had to dispose of before. Now they just dump it in your gas tank though 16 states of outlawed it.
It is yet another slimy example of corporations wagging the dog.
Billy Tauzin(R Louisiana) appears to be spearheading the campaign to get the oil companies immunity from the devastation its causing, and you can't find a slimier congressman than him today. He also spearheaded Medicare Reform which is nothing but a giant transfer of tax dollars to drug and healthcare companies. He was supposedly retiring and taking a 2.5 million dollar consulting job with the drug lobby as payola for the Medicare bill. I think his probably equally corrupt son was trying to take his place though I didn't see if he won. There something about Louisiana politicians and corruption.
The nearby resident should be somewhat more concerned about the health hazards of the gas fumes. They should also contemplate the consequences of spillage and underground gas tanks leaking toxic gasoline to the soil and ground water, the additives in particular being historicly nasty.
The additive MTBE is a classic example of gasoline additive gone bad. It is designed to oxygenate gasoline and make it burn cleaner to improve air quality. Unfortunately its been classified as a carcinogen and its started showing up in ground water and drinking water across the country (drinking water for 15 million in one study I saw). In very small quantities it makes water undrinkable due to its nasty turpentine odor and taste and of course it may cause cancer. It was a key reason the Bush administration's energy bill lost because it was going to exempt the oil companies from liability for the clean up and apparently in New England in particular there is a massive cleanup problem, so moderate Republican senators from New England voted against it over MTBE liability alone. Of course I think Congress mandated it in the first place, to improve air quality, so they are equally to blame.
I haven't actually RTFA but the two models listed in the submission aren't actually Seymour's designs. The T90 is Seymour inspired but I don't think he was anywhere near where it was built. I don't think the T3E has anything to with him, and am not sure he would have liked it much since its kind of a commodity CMOS(DEC Alpha) based MPP and nothing like anything Seymour would have designed. Thats one of the problems with Cray's deity status, his name has been tacked on so many companies and computers at this point its diluted his "brand" and that is unfortunately what his name is today, a brand that that doesn't have anything to do with the man anymore.
"because companies aren't interested in pushing the technological envelope the way Seymour did."
Maybe its because after the Cray-2 and its derivatives Seymour's approach stopped working. There was only one Cray 3 built, it was at NCAR if I recall, and the Cray 4 was never finished. His need to push the envelope pushed him to GaAs and GaAs was hard to make work and very expensive, the antithesis of the commodity CMOS that won. Maybe he could have made it work if he'd had more money and lived. But the fact is commodity CMOS won for some good reasons.
Its also worth looking at his efforts at CDC on the 6600, 7600 and 8600, while offering amazing performance for the time, and quite successful, developing them nearly bankrupted CDC. Its a lot easier to "push the envelope" if you have buckets of money, presumably from government subsidies than it is if you are trying to keep a company afloat. Not sure you've ever run a company but its not easy, and Seymour's, spare no expense approach tended to give the people trying to balance the books fits.
He was a GREAT engineer and he made some major contributions to computer engineering. Not sure I would go so far as to deify him.
Proportional assignment of electoral college votes is really not a great idea even with your twist. It takes huge swings in the vote to register a 1 elector change, you justed added another 1 elector swing at the 50% mark.
Colorado had proportional assignment on the ballot and it was voted down. It would have resulted in candidates ignoring Colorado because its not worth spending time in a state if you have to swing a huge number of voters to get a 1 elector difference. The only reason it was on the ballot was because Democrats had written off Colorado to the Republicans and it was a way to strip them of a few electoral votes. But Colorado is starting to swing Democratic and if it does they will actually want the current winner take all system.
If you make this the rule in every state, it would result in a bizarre system where candidates look at it each state to see how close they are in the polls to crossing a threshold where they would pick up or lose one elector. They might launch a massive campaign in a state that is 80% to one candidate just because it happens to be on the threshold of swinging one elector. All in all it would end up being worse than it is now.
Fact is each person in this country should have one vote and popular vote should decide the election. There really is no reason why someone living in a small state should have 1.1 votes and someone living in a big state should have 0.9 votes.
Some will argue candidates will ignore the small states, well no they wouldn't. They would be forced to campaign for everyone's vote which is the way it should be. Small states already have disproportional clout thanks to the Senate. There is no reason they should have even more clout in choosing a President.
I imagine the Republicans would fight it to death since they win a lot of small states and pick up the extra electors they have under the current system.
If you think it works read this report from a volunteer election monitor in Tampa. You will get an enchanting picture of the still endemic rascism and voter suppression, now Republican inspired, that is designed to disenfranchise minority voters and rig elections.
In her report an old white cracker, and assorted other apparently Republican poll workers do there best to discourage, con and intimidate minorities and people they visually brand as Democrats from voting. This racially inspired voter intimidation is as old as the hills, and used to be the specialty of Southern Democrats but it has since migrated to the Republican's, along with Southern white voters, since the mid 1960's and is a key reason the Republicans now own the south.
This observer was a black lady and an old white guy did everything he could to try to intimidate her in to leaving including physically body slamming her, because she was calling in potential violations of the law and intimidation efforts.
They tried to send con one hispanic, first time voter, in to leaving the precinct where he was supposed to vote and go to a precinct where he wasn't supposed to be and which would have been closed by the time he got there.
A black lady, ex felon who'd apparently gone to the great lengths necessary to have her voting rights reinstated, which Jeb Bush does for a handful of people each year, was put on a phone to Tallahassee and threatened with felony charges if she voted. She did anyway, in spite of the threats, since it was her right under Florida law.
A better question is why geeks would have a fetish for Crays at all these days, other than those with a historical bent. Believe it or not its not like you are going to have some transcendent experience logging in to one, unless you really get off on Fortran and vectorizing code. Obviously they have some fine massively parallel machines but so do a lot of other companies. If you have an app that you want to run that fits on a Cray then maybe its still interesting to you but thats not most people.
OS wise they do have some good software for niches, but in general Linux is better and more broadly developed, and of course some of Cray's machines are running Linux too. CrayOS has never had the critical mass of developers you need to be polished, though again in certain niches it has some really great efforts.
Big Iron had its place a decade ago and back. The tyranny of Carer Mead and CMOS processors has led to an age were smaller, cheaper and mass produced trumps big, expensive and custom built for most, though certainly not all, applications.
For example its why most of us are running Nvidia and ATI GPU's and not SGI big iron graphics anymore. And of course SGI's R8000 among others carved up the low to middle end of Cray's market and ended their last incarnation as an independent company.
I stand slightly corrected but you aren't being particularly accurate yourself. I stand corrected because counterterrorism funding did go up that year, but Ashcroft did slash a proposed $58 millions for counterterrorism analysts, translators and agents.
You didn't answer the fact that his deputy questions, in a major way, his commitment to counterterrorism. He was saying it was a priority in public but internal documents and his own people indicate it was not a priority for Ashcroft and the DOJ right before 9/11, though it may have been for the FBI apart from their leadership.
From my reference:
"However, some internal Department of Justice documents arguably downplayed terrorism, suggesting that Ashcroft's top goals did not include terrorism until after September 11, 2001. Some, such as the FBI's acting director in 2001, Thomas Pickard, have also questioned Ashcroft's priorities publicly."
"A May 10, 2001 letter by Ashcroft identified seven goals for the new administration, which did not include counterterrorism (the New York Times reported that the goals were "reducing gun violence and drug trafficking, helping states with anticrime programs, reducing racial discrimination; securing the nation's borders and cutting the immigration backlog; reducing overcrowding and drug use in prison; securing the rights of victims of crime, and strengthening internal financial and computer systems"). A Department of Justice spokesman said the May 10 letter was meant to draw attention to specific initiatives, not to downplay others."
"An August 9, 2001 chart titled "Strategic Plans - Attorney General Priorities" listed the seven goals from the May 10, 2001 letter with 36 objectives. One of these 36 objectives reportedly referred to terrorists, but it was not one of the 13 objectives highlighted as an "AG Goal.""
Lets not forget that Ashcroft is the one that was telling his deputies to shut up every time they brought up a possible terrorism threat prior to 9/11. Ashcroft is the one that was seeking to slash counterterrorism funding in the DOJ prior to 9/11.
In the country we call what he did for America "closing the barn door" after the horses are already running down the road.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, cygnus dominates gcc and glibc development and have for a long time before they were part of Red Hat. It doesn't say anything about their commitment to Linux that they haven't axed their Cygnus acquisition so they are still leading the work on it. I think the Cygnus people get paid money by companies, under contract, to support these tools for them and it doesn't exactly have anything to do with the rest of Red Hats business model.
Gnome, yawn...me being a KDE user I could care less.
Your mechanism also fails to differentiate between the GOOD Red Hat before they went public and started worship quarterly results, and the new BAD red hat who could care less about anything that isn't profitable.
"dedicating 1/5th of their income to R&D."
That is kind of typical percentage for most tech companies. Wall Street would probably take a dim view of a tech company that didn't invest in R&D, because they wouldn't have any differentiator from their competitors. How benevolent it is depends entirely on where its going and how much of it they are trying to make proprietary one way or another.
"This is the company trying to turn Linux in to the most expensive operating system, not the most economical."
To expand on this more you know there is a problem with Red Hat when Microsoft and SUN can point to them and say Linux is the more expensive option and actually have a plausible arguement when they say it. They are giving a Linux a bad name on the value proposition front and that was its biggest asset and the thing thats fueled its growth.
I know there are big companies that need all the support and are willing to pay for it, well let them throw money at Red Hat, but I think its time Red Hat stop being synonymous with Linux in the U.S. They have painted themselves in to a niche, and its a niche which deserves to be ignored by tech savvy people like the denizens of slashdot who are building systems and servers and know they don't need to throw money at Red Hat for most of what they are doing.
I really with all the people working on Fedora would migrate to Debian or Gentoo and leave Red Hat high and dry and make them actually pay people to do the work they are currently exploiting.
Kyoto as urgently as it is needed is a deeply flawed concept precisely because it doesn't uniformly limit emissions around the world. In particular, as I last understood it, it doesn't limit greenhouse gasses coming out of China and India because they are "developing" nations.
Kyoto shows a mind set that predates globalization because in the modern age polluters can just migrate to countries that don't sign it or to those who are given a blank check to pollute under it, namely "developing" countries.
If post-industrialized countries have to limit emissions and China doesn't it will just further accelerate the migration of heavy industry to China because not having to limit emissions will be just another competitive advantage for China, like it needs anymore.
If China isn't limited it will churn out enough greenhouse gases to make up for and probably surpass the savings in all of the U.S., Japan, Russia and Europe.
To make this work it in fact has to be globally enforced and prevent polluters from just migrating to a country where terms are lax or unenforced. By moving to such a place they gain a competitive advantage over companies who are in a place they are fighting the constraints in wide open markets that usually means the win in the marketplace.
Exactly. Why is this news that one company behind one distribution is relaunching one of their marketing tools. Thank you /. for giving them the free plug.
This is the company trying to turn Linux in to the most expensive operating system, not the most economical.
This is the company the launched a subscription update service for its users and in less than the duration of a one year subscription cut the legs out from it, and the subscribers who paid money for it, and abandoned the whole flagship desktop product and their loyal users.
Well they didn't exactly abandon it, rather they unloaded it on unpaid labor who do all the work for them and they just control, market, exploit and profit from it. Nice business if you can pull it off.
Me I used to go out of my way to buy Red Hat box sets just to support a company that I thought was one of the good guys. No more. Gentoo for me.
As others have said I doubt their is that big of a pay discrepancy. But it is true that visa workers are VERY likely to do whatever it takes to keep their job because if they lose it, without another to immediately replace it, they have to pack and get out of the country quickly or turn illegal. H1B workers really are indentured servents in many ways and thats a key reason companies really like them. Its the same reason companies prefer illegals for low wage jobs. They know they have those workers by the balls and they can screw them in numerous ways.
Visas also insure workers have a stronger motivation to perform, to work more hours, and complain less. They are also probably going to be less demanding in reviews unless they have a job lined up elsewhere. Even if they do get paid the same but they may well put in more uncompensated overtime than someone not worrying about a visa. Most of the Indians on Visa I've worked with racked up way more hours than their American counterparts.
Its also a fact the American education system is for the most part a disaster, companies know, they frequently rant about it so they shop for people from countries where its not as broken as it is in the U.S.. India seeks out all the kids with technical aptitudes and they grow them in to top flight tech workers. Their system really values them. The U.S. culture and education system by contrast values:
A. Ruthless businessmen with a penchant for making money by whatever means necessary
B. Athletes
India favors academics by a wide margin over athletics, and I'm guessing places like China, Russia and Ukraine do too. I gather, and maybe someone from India can confirm, that a star academic achiever is going to have the status in school reserved only for star athletes in the U.S. Athletics, outside of cricket, just doesn't have any value in India. Their priorities are focused on math, science and computer skills especially for kids who've entered a technical or science career path.
I'm also willing to conjecture that with wealth and affluence most Americans and Western Europeans are getting lazy, arrogant, spoiled, whatever you want to call it. Most young people in America simply aren't driven to academic achievement the way that kids are in countries where they are surrounded by really grinding poverty. I also don't think there is the same drive towards academic achievement among American there was 50 years ago before the U.S. acquired its world dominating wealth and power. Maybe its the price of empire coming in to play, decadence and corruption.
"Alan Dershowitz's "The Case for Israel"
I'm afraid Alan, being Orthodox Jewish, is more than a little biased. Here is one assault on his work, especially the extent to which he plagarized Peters, though Alex needs to be taken with a grain of salt sometimes.
For the other side you never hear, look for stuff by Ilan Pappe. He is Jewish and Israeli and it takes balls to be that and try to tell the Palestinian side of history, a lot more balls than it takes to be Dershowitz.
A problem is you will flat never hear the Palestinian side in the "West". They have no media voice. The Palestinian side is completely suppressed by governments, media and Jewish groups who start screaming "antisemitism" or "terrorism" at anything that isn't pro Israel, and it works. By contrast you will see a non stop pro Isreali spin in both media and government. It was obligatory in the debates for all four candidates to fall over each other trying to be more pro Isreal than the other guys.
"Palestinians can blame generations of their leaders"
They certainly can blame them, and its deserved, but it wasn't entirely their fault that their homeland and in most cases homes were taken from beneath their feet, often under the threat of violence. If they'd had better leaders, better funding and better organization maybe they would have stopped it. It isn't isn't grow great leaders in the poverty and desperation of the west bank and refugee camps. Their young people are almost inevitably radicalized and desperate.
Israel's founders were undisputedly good at what they set out to do, unfortunately they did their share of killing innocents to achieve their ends too, Menachim Begin in particular, remember for example Deir Yassin.
Not sure of its authenticity but Albert Einstein among others apparently wrote to the New York Times in 1948 condemning Begin and the extremist party that founded Israel. Wish I had an authoritative reference and hope it just isn't fantasy that circulates the Net sometimes:
Letters to the New York Times
December 4, 1948
New Palestine Party Visit of Menachem Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed
TO THE EDITORS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin's political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.
Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin's behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.
The public avowals of Begin's party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real c
"As for what's happened to Dean since the primaries, I have no idea what's up with that."
It wasn't exactly "since the primaries" when the problem started. It started before the Iowa caucus. One obvious problem, he went from having no chance to being a front runner and thinking he could win the thing. When he did he started playing the game instead of being the rebel to try and seal the deal. He forgot he was where he was because he was a rebel.
I'm also not entirely sure the current Dean isn't the real Dean. I suspect Trippi and the Deniacs may have bent Dean to their ideals and it wasn't exactly the real him. When he realized he might actually win the thing he reverted to standard politican...sellout. He is a Yale grad, like so many presidential and VP candidate these days, and a son of a Wall streeter so he's not exactly from outside the establishment.
"I'm not so sure it's possible to be even-handed and on the side of justice"
I think you are suggesting Israel is more on the side of Justice than Palestine and I really don't think thats true. Both sides are very much in the wrong and have been since the conflict started early in the 20th century. The problem comes when the U.S. gives Israel blank checks even when they do things very wrong, because the get worse. For example the current plan to grab more of the West Bank, build walls, and further ghettoize the Palestinians. Many jews remember ghettos from Poland and World War II. They shouldn't inflict them on other people with their collective memory.
I agree it is a good thing Arafat is gone. He had his chance at the end of the Clinton administration and he blew it. He apparently could only define himself as rebel and guerilla and not peacemaker or statesman.
"I thought he did a disservice by running."
I think the mistake he made was running for President in the first place. Its an exercise in futility and does more harm than good since the media can paint him as a "spoiler" and "fringe" and marginalize him along with the rest of the third party candidates. Sure he gets some press time but I'm not sure its worth the price considering how the press spin it against him.
He would be far better served going back to attacking and advocating issues, the drug companies would seem perfect for him after Medicare "Reform" and Billy Tauzin and Vioxx.
Another option would be for him to run for Congress in a really liberal district in Vermont or California where he has a chance to win, and if he did start a relentless crusade from there against corruption and pork. Not sure he could change anything but he could make the fat cats in Congress a little miserable and nervous. If, by some miracle, he could get a senate seat from Vermont then he would have both parties by the balls.
A most insightful post though I wager its not easy to find the niches you are describing, get a product to fill them and get your product in the face of the people with the niche to fill. It would seem pretty likely you probably had to work in the particular industry for a corporation and hope the don't put enough tentacles in you to prevent you from going out an exploiting the expertise you developed while you were there.
"I just hope that you are politically engaged"
/. at the moment :) .... and I have a keen appreciation for how little that actually counts for. Its good practice, though the right wingers on here tend to be pretty lame, and not good adversaries(most of which are listed in my Foes, i.e. Twirlip of the Mists). Maybe I should hang on a right wing site :)
Its confined to pounding away at a keyboard posting on
Only political cause I've liked lately was the Deaniacs and unfortunately a liberal movement is doomed in the U.S. at the moment. I also unfortunately dislike about half of the liberal agenda, especially the "big government" part. Dean also proved to be unworthy of his movement especially when he entered the period where he was a front runner and kissing the asses of Carter, Gore and Kerry and is now apparently aspiring to head the DNC. I do admire him for saying the U.S. should treat Israel and Palestine with an even hand since that is the real third rail in American politics, he grabbed it and...
Unfortunately people with political insight are pretty much confined to back stage manipulators, columnists and writers. As soon as you throw your hat in the ring publicly you either become a non-insightful sellout or a liar, because thats what you have to be to win, or you are just raw meat for the attack dogs(other politicians, the media, the pundits, the corporations).
Ralph Nader is a great role model, his message isn't much different than the one I just pitched, about the U.S. government being a wholly owned subsidiary of the big corporations. Ralph Nader did great things in his youth. I think he caught the establishment by suprise and used boundless energy, a squeaky clean lifestyle and a small army of activists to kick the legs out from under them for a while, especially GM. There were a lot more, smarter and better activists back then and most have sold out since. This day and age nearly all Americans are raised to be politicaly clueless and to just chant the slogans of one of the two parties, increasingly just one of the two. If you fast forward to today Nader has been painted in to the lunatic fringe, marginalized and is largely impotent like all the current crop of third party candidates and non right wing activists.
The establishment has learned how to deal with and dispose of activists these days. That is kind of the saddest thing. Michael Moore still gets a few good shots in, though they you have to take liberal doses of salt with them, so maybe there is some hope though I'm not sure how often he actually wins in the end.
I be inclined to say patents are the least of your problems being an independent. The bigger problem is finding a niche where you can make money.
/.'ers will freak, that if you have a great idea, the lone coders saving grace would actually be to patent it and if its really good hope you can sell the patent to a big proprietary company or sue the ass off of anyone that uses it, think Forgent and JPEG.
Thanks in particular to the Internet you are in a vice. On one side you have proprietary software companies with potentially vast resources filling most of the big niches, with big marketing clout. If you found a niche, and it was big enough, and it was lucrative they will probably go after you or other lone coders will.
The other side of the vice is open source. If you come up with some cool proprietary software, the open source community will see it and be hacked off that its proprietary, start an open source knock off for free. Since you, the loan coder managed. to develop it, a few dozen open source developers can look at what you did, reverse it and kill you with something free. Its the curse of the Internet that all software is now instantly available to millions of programmers around the world to pick apart and knock off.
I'd be inclined to say, as much as
The other surviving lone coder niche is to do contract work for people who need one offs of things. Unfortunately you wont get rich doing it, you might just make an OK living if you expertise in a niche in demand and get yourself in front of potential customers.
Oops, meant CEV not CRV. Crew Return Vehicle was a previous boondoggle emergency reentry vehicle for the ISS which once again wasted money for a while until someone realized how expensive and useless it was and mercifully killed it. Need a score card for all the worthless projects NASA wastes money on, then kills.
"we would have a radically different society than the one we "enjoy" now."
/.)"
:)
If's, and's and but's were candy and nuts it would be a merrier Christmas for all.
I appreciate the sentiment and the idealism but there are structural barriers that create inertia that is working against you. The main one being most American's could care less what Congress does day in, day out. They are two busy fixating on reality TV and celebrity trials. Most Americans don't have a clue what Congress, the President or the FCC is doing to them. Corporate execs and lobbyists now exactly what they are doing and how to manipulate them and how to make a LOT of money doing it. They can spend a few million dollars in the right place and reap billion dollar windfall profits from our tax dollars.
"(or pounding away at a keyboard posting on
This seems to be what you're doing
" I think that it was public outcry directed via congress that forced NASA to reevaluate their decision"
Yes and it is an example of how the bureaucracy and coporations will probably thwart the public outcry in the end. Some opportunistic companies saw a chance to make some easy cash on it, and play with cool toys, so they pitched this cool sound robot thing. NASA can waste some money on it for a while, declare it hopeless, cancel it and say , "Sorry guys, we did our best but its just impossible and we can't afford it", or they can launch it, watch it fail and say "oh well". They conveniently gloss over they could just do another shuttle repair mission, like they've already done twice, and actually do something useful with the shuttle, but they seemed determined to make the shuttle expensive and completely useless too so no one will complain when they eventually kill it. Then they will work on the CRV for a while and it will become expensive and useless and it will eventually be killed too. The cynic in me says this is all just George W's way to kill the space program because he hates NASA(rightly so since they deserve to be despised), science and spending money on it. I wager CRV and the moon and mars was more a plan to:
- sew up votes in the crucial space coast in Florida in 2004
- distract space enthusiasts while he slowly kills the space program.
"The FCC *will* change its tune if the public outcry is great enough"
/., its just a major uphill battle.
I don't think there is ANY chance the FCC will change its tune though there is a slim chance Congress might step in and change it for them. They sure didn't change their tune on media consolidation in the face of truly massive public outrage.
I think its a little naive to think a bunch of slashdotter's are going to send letters to congressman and change their course. If you want to get on the list of people your Congressman actually listen to you need to accompany your letter with a $1,000 campaign contribution.
"but CORPORATIONS DON'T VOTE!"
Yea but they do control the media and the news most people use to get their view of the world so they do for the most part control the minds of the people that vote. They pay for the ads both commercial and political that decide how most people think these days. Some people are breaking off from this corporate and media hegemony, thanks in particular to the Internet, but I'd say we are a tiny minority.
Most importantly corporations pay tons of money for the lobbyists who actually control Congress. For example when the Medicare "Reform" bill was on the floor of the house it wasn't citizens out in the lobby of the capital building expressing their opinions to our Congressman, it was lobbyists mostly for the drug and healthcare industry. In the case of Rep. Billy Tauzin they gave him a multimillion dollar job as a drug industry lobbyist after he delivered "Medicare Reform" to them on a silver platter. the name is kind of a euphemisms since its really just a scheme to transfer our tax dollars in to the pockets of the drug industry.
I'd say bottomline is it would have to be a really impressive letter writing campaign to change their course, if there is no money behind it. But if anyone can pull it off its
"Look only to the recent bruhaha over the Hubble Space Telescope"
Last I recall the bruhaha resulted in a bizarre mission to use a robot to try to repair Hubble. There is a good chance its going to end up costing at least twice what an ordinary shuttle repair mission would cost, and there is a high chance the mission will either get cancelled or fail after spending a staggering sum of money, like 2 billion dollars, so in the end those fond of pork will be the only true winners. I don't think I would really call it a success story for public involvement just yet. Here is a pretty good editorial from Space Daily on NASA's penchant for squandering money on doomed programs and the Hubble repair mission smacks of being one.
I'd be inclined to say you are both right and wrong. Here is a pretty good write up on the Afghanistan war. Its is obvious that the war on the ground was waged by special forces working with local militias. Its nearly impossible to sort who among them were CIA and who were Army. It is a certainty the CIA had a major contingent there and that its a normal career path to go from military special forces to the CIA field operations so they are nearly synonymous.
I recall a documentary on the prison uprising where CIA agent Michael Spann was killed showing Americans in civilian dress coordinating the battle, and threatening the news crew for filming them. I'd make a guess they were CIA and not Army.
Here is an article on a couple more CIA agents killed in Afghanistan, they were former special forces soldiers.
Obviously the air war was coordinated from CENTCOM but I imagine there was a mix of CIA and special forces telling them where to bomb.
On the other hand, I don't think I'd say that the plan for the Afghanistan war was really any better than the one in Iraq. They mostly just scattered the Taliban and Al Qaida and didn't really kill them, kind of like Fallujah. Its not like the countryside in Afghanistan is any more under control than the Sunni triangle. Its just a smaller country, a smaller war, and there is a much smaller U.S. contingent that tends to huddle in a few well secured areas so it doesn't make the news as much as Iraq.
Doctors Without Borders has pulled out of both Iraq and Afghanistan because they are both considered dangerous and that is a group that rode out the duration of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Speaking of which that was a war in Afghanistan that was run entirely by the CIA which is another indicator they were probably major players in this war. They used indigenous forces in that war to, and interestingly enough, after they were armed, funded and trained by the U.S. they turned in to the nucleus of Al Qaida.
"When it became clear that Iraq wasn't going to comply with international disarmament demands and demands to stop supporting terrorism"
In what way was Iraq not complying with disarmament demands at the time of the invasion, again. There were inspectors on the ground in Iraq, inspecting. There were nits to pick like the precise range of short range missiles, so the inspectors were in the process of destroying them to be sure, but Iraq was obviously not in a major breach justifying a major war and occupation. I know we've whipped this horse to death Twirp but you keep pretending like there was an actual case for invading Iraq, as articulated by te Bush administration, despite the fact pretty much everyone admits there wasn't now.
As for "supporting terrorism", yes Iraq supported Palestinian groups, groups the U.S. has unilaterally labeled as "terrorist", but I don't recall that being the subject of the original surrender terms or any U.N. sanctions. If there is maybe someone can point me to the wording. Most Arab countries support Palestinian groups especially Saudi Arabia and Iran so if that is your standard for taking down governments you better draft some more troops because they are going to be busy.
If you are referring to ties between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists once again there is no evidence of any such link. Saudi Arabia and Iran had far more connections to them than Iraq ever did.
Its been pointed out in other threads, Opera is almost certainly making all their money from licensing their embedded browser to smartphone, PDA and assorted other device manufacturers. It is a major contender in that space, and the device manufacturers no doubt pay them royalties for every device they sell, or a big lump sum.
I'd have to agree Opera is a lost cause on the desktop. Can't see anyone with a brain actually paying money for it when Firefox, Konqueror, Safari and IE are all free. Making money on desktop browsers went the way of the dodo about the time IE came out for free and Netscape was still trying to charge for Communicator.
Can't see using the free Opera version, because as I recall it has adware in it and it just isn't really all that special a browser.
You don't have to have a union to STRIKE. That sounds like the solution to this problem but you do have to get everyone on the same page which is hard and dangerous, and you have to realize you are gambling big on a big win, or destroying your career. Of course when your future career is like this you are better off without it in the long run because it will destroy you physically and mentally. If you've never been severly burned out which is what happens inevitably from this kind workload it permanently damages you mentally and physically.
If you were to strike you have to do it at a point in the project where you have the management by the balls. If they lose their whole staff, and they can't finish with scabs, their schedule and their investment goes in to the dumper. Even with scabs there is a pretty good chance the quality will go in the dumper just because of the time to get them up to speed and they probably wont be able to fix all the bugs in other peoples work.
I know everyone hates unions, deservedly so because they were so thoroughly corrupted over the years. But this is a cautionary tale because this is what life was like for most workers in the early 1900's before unions came on the scene and compelled reasonable work hours and pay.
This is also a cautionary tale of the consequences you can expect from a long duration Republican domination of the government. The Republican party is consistently pro business and anti labor and they are promoting exactly this kind of environment. The euphemism they use for it in the economic reports is high "productivity". It means milking worker for as much work as possible for the lowest wage possible.
Free trade, outsourceing, and turning a blind eye to illegal aliens are all tools designed to pressure labor in to caving to this kind of work environment. Smartly run businesses who want talented, productive, happy workers wont do it, but most businesseses aren't smart and are looking to exploit labor to maximize their extremely inflated salaries and shareholder return. It should be noted passive shareholders don't do any work, they have money, they invest it, they make more money. In an era of plunging capital gains and dividend taxes they ease with which they make money this way and accumulate wealth is accelerating. Meanwhile workers are working more hours, for lower wages and still shouldering a huge burden in income and payroll taxes.
American's poopoo the word and pretend like its a fairy tale but this is what's called class warfare and the elite class is winning the war, big time.
I stand corrected. You are correct it was apparently done via EPA regulation and it appears the oil companies did in fact lobby to put it in there in the first place though now they deny it. It was either Ethanol or MTBE, Ethanol presumably being much the better of the two but the oil companies got the EPA to do MTBE. And yes it is a toxic byproduct of gasoline refining they had to dispose of before. Now they just dump it in your gas tank though 16 states of outlawed it.
It is yet another slimy example of corporations wagging the dog.
Billy Tauzin(R Louisiana) appears to be spearheading the campaign to get the oil companies immunity from the devastation its causing, and you can't find a slimier congressman than him today. He also spearheaded Medicare Reform which is nothing but a giant transfer of tax dollars to drug and healthcare companies. He was supposedly retiring and taking a 2.5 million dollar consulting job with the drug lobby as payola for the Medicare bill. I think his probably equally corrupt son was trying to take his place though I didn't see if he won. There something about Louisiana politicians and corruption.
The nearby resident should be somewhat more concerned about the health hazards of the gas fumes. They should also contemplate the consequences of spillage and underground gas tanks leaking toxic gasoline to the soil and ground water, the additives in particular being historicly nasty.
The additive MTBE is a classic example of gasoline additive gone bad. It is designed to oxygenate gasoline and make it burn cleaner to improve air quality. Unfortunately its been classified as a carcinogen and its started showing up in ground water and drinking water across the country (drinking water for 15 million in one study I saw). In very small quantities it makes water undrinkable due to its nasty turpentine odor and taste and of course it may cause cancer. It was a key reason the Bush administration's energy bill lost because it was going to exempt the oil companies from liability for the clean up and apparently in New England in particular there is a massive cleanup problem, so moderate Republican senators from New England voted against it over MTBE liability alone. Of course I think Congress mandated it in the first place, to improve air quality, so they are equally to blame.
I haven't actually RTFA but the two models listed in the submission aren't actually Seymour's designs. The T90 is Seymour inspired but I don't think he was anywhere near where it was built. I don't think the T3E has anything to with him, and am not sure he would have liked it much since its kind of a commodity CMOS(DEC Alpha) based MPP and nothing like anything Seymour would have designed. Thats one of the problems with Cray's deity status, his name has been tacked on so many companies and computers at this point its diluted his "brand" and that is unfortunately what his name is today, a brand that that doesn't have anything to do with the man anymore.
"because companies aren't interested in pushing the technological envelope the way Seymour did."
Maybe its because after the Cray-2 and its derivatives Seymour's approach stopped working. There was only one Cray 3 built, it was at NCAR if I recall, and the Cray 4 was never finished. His need to push the envelope pushed him to GaAs and GaAs was hard to make work and very expensive, the antithesis of the commodity CMOS that won. Maybe he could have made it work if he'd had more money and lived. But the fact is commodity CMOS won for some good reasons.
Its also worth looking at his efforts at CDC on the 6600, 7600 and 8600, while offering amazing performance for the time, and quite successful, developing them nearly bankrupted CDC. Its a lot easier to "push the envelope" if you have buckets of money, presumably from government subsidies than it is if you are trying to keep a company afloat. Not sure you've ever run a company but its not easy, and Seymour's, spare no expense approach tended to give the people trying to balance the books fits.
He was a GREAT engineer and he made some major contributions to computer engineering. Not sure I would go so far as to deify him.
Proportional assignment of electoral college votes is really not a great idea even with your twist. It takes huge swings in the vote to register a 1 elector change, you justed added another 1 elector swing at the 50% mark.
Colorado had proportional assignment on the ballot and it was voted down. It would have resulted in candidates ignoring Colorado because its not worth spending time in a state if you have to swing a huge number of voters to get a 1 elector difference. The only reason it was on the ballot was because Democrats had written off Colorado to the Republicans and it was a way to strip them of a few electoral votes. But Colorado is starting to swing Democratic and if it does they will actually want the current winner take all system.
If you make this the rule in every state, it would result in a bizarre system where candidates look at it each state to see how close they are in the polls to crossing a threshold where they would pick up or lose one elector. They might launch a massive campaign in a state that is 80% to one candidate just because it happens to be on the threshold of swinging one elector. All in all it would end up being worse than it is now.
Fact is each person in this country should have one vote and popular vote should decide the election. There really is no reason why someone living in a small state should have 1.1 votes and someone living in a big state should have 0.9 votes.
Some will argue candidates will ignore the small states, well no they wouldn't. They would be forced to campaign for everyone's vote which is the way it should be. Small states already have disproportional clout thanks to the Senate. There is no reason they should have even more clout in choosing a President.
I imagine the Republicans would fight it to death since they win a lot of small states and pick up the extra electors they have under the current system.
If you think it works read this report from a volunteer election monitor in Tampa. You will get an enchanting picture of the still endemic rascism and voter suppression, now Republican inspired, that is designed to disenfranchise minority voters and rig elections.
In her report an old white cracker, and assorted other apparently Republican poll workers do there best to discourage, con and intimidate minorities and people they visually brand as Democrats from voting. This racially inspired voter intimidation is as old as the hills, and used to be the specialty of Southern Democrats but it has since migrated to the Republican's, along with Southern white voters, since the mid 1960's and is a key reason the Republicans now own the south.
This observer was a black lady and an old white guy did everything he could to try to intimidate her in to leaving including physically body slamming her, because she was calling in potential violations of the law and intimidation efforts.
They tried to send con one hispanic, first time voter, in to leaving the precinct where he was supposed to vote and go to a precinct where he wasn't supposed to be and which would have been closed by the time he got there.
A black lady, ex felon who'd apparently gone to the great lengths necessary to have her voting rights reinstated, which Jeb Bush does for a handful of people each year, was put on a phone to Tallahassee and threatened with felony charges if she voted. She did anyway, in spite of the threats, since it was her right under Florida law.
A better question is why geeks would have a fetish for Crays at all these days, other than those with a historical bent. Believe it or not its not like you are going to have some transcendent experience logging in to one, unless you really get off on Fortran and vectorizing code. Obviously they have some fine massively parallel machines but so do a lot of other companies. If you have an app that you want to run that fits on a Cray then maybe its still interesting to you but thats not most people.
OS wise they do have some good software for niches, but in general Linux is better and more broadly developed, and of course some of Cray's machines are running Linux too. CrayOS has never had the critical mass of developers you need to be polished, though again in certain niches it has some really great efforts.
Big Iron had its place a decade ago and back. The tyranny of Carer Mead and CMOS processors has led to an age were smaller, cheaper and mass produced trumps big, expensive and custom built for most, though certainly not all, applications.
For example its why most of us are running Nvidia and ATI GPU's and not SGI big iron graphics anymore. And of course SGI's R8000 among others carved up the low to middle end of Cray's market and ended their last incarnation as an independent company.
I stand slightly corrected but you aren't being particularly accurate yourself. I stand corrected because counterterrorism funding did go up that year, but Ashcroft did slash a proposed $58 millions for counterterrorism analysts, translators and agents.
Here is a pretty "fair and balanced piece on it".
You didn't answer the fact that his deputy questions, in a major way, his commitment to counterterrorism. He was saying it was a priority in public but internal documents and his own people indicate it was not a priority for Ashcroft and the DOJ right before 9/11, though it may have been for the FBI apart from their leadership.
From my reference:
"However, some internal Department of Justice documents arguably downplayed terrorism, suggesting that Ashcroft's top goals did not include terrorism until after September 11, 2001. Some, such as the FBI's acting director in 2001, Thomas Pickard, have also questioned Ashcroft's priorities publicly."
"A May 10, 2001 letter by Ashcroft identified seven goals for the new administration, which did not include counterterrorism (the New York Times reported that the goals were "reducing gun violence and drug trafficking, helping states with anticrime programs, reducing racial discrimination; securing the nation's borders and cutting the immigration backlog; reducing overcrowding and drug use in prison; securing the rights of victims of crime, and strengthening internal financial and computer systems"). A Department of Justice spokesman said the May 10 letter was meant to draw attention to specific initiatives, not to downplay others."
"An August 9, 2001 chart titled "Strategic Plans - Attorney General Priorities" listed the seven goals from the May 10, 2001 letter with 36 objectives. One of these 36 objectives reportedly referred to terrorists, but it was not one of the 13 objectives highlighted as an "AG Goal.""
Lets not forget that Ashcroft is the one that was telling his deputies to shut up every time they brought up a possible terrorism threat prior to 9/11. Ashcroft is the one that was seeking to slash counterterrorism funding in the DOJ prior to 9/11.
In the country we call what he did for America "closing the barn door" after the horses are already running down the road.